Cicero’s Philippics 10 and 11 are the published versions of two speeches delivered during the war between Mark Antony and the commonwealth in early 43 b.c.Footnote 1 While Decimus Junius Brutus, who had been in charge of Cisalpine Gaul, was besieged by Antony at Mutina, and consular armies were being mobilized to free him, Cicero’s attentions turned to the east.Footnote 2 At the end of 44 b.c. Marcus Brutus, joint ringleader of the conspiracy against Julius Caesar, had been assigned the governorship of Crete, but had instead gone to Athens, making contact with the outgoing governor of Macedonia, Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, son of the famous rhetorician and consul of 69 b.c. Footnote 3
When Gaius Antonius, Antony’s brother, arrived in the area to assume the governorship of Macedonia in January 43 b.c., Hortensius transferred his armies to Brutus instead. Soon after, Publius Vatinius, the governor of Illyricum, also joined Brutus, and their combined forces pushed Gaius Antonius into the Illyrian city of Apollonia. In early February, Brutus wrote to Rome’s Senate, explaining that he now controlled the entire region, and would proceed according to its instructions (Cic. Phil. 10.1, Ad Brut. 2.3; Livy, Per. 118; Plut. Vit. Brut. 25–6; App. B Ciu. 3.79; Dio Cass. 47.22). In the ensuing debate, Cicero urged that Brutus be officially invested with a ‘military command’ (imperium), and the Senate is usually thought to have approved this request.Footnote 4
At around the same time, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who had been consul together with Antony in 44 b.c. and was now a committed Antonian, was making the long march to his assigned province of Syria. One possible impediment to his route was the governor of Asia, Gaius Trebonius, who was a murderer of Caesar, and who was known to be hostile to Antony’s supporters. In various accounts, Dolabella captured Trebonius by surprise in the city of Smyrna, and treated him brutally: perhaps after torturing the unfortunate man for several days, he murdered him, paraded his severed head, and tossed his mangled body into the sea (see, for example, Livy, Per. 119; Vell. Pat. 2.69; App. B Ciu. 3.26; Dio Cass. 47.29).
In late February or early March, this news reached Rome to general uproar, and the consul Gaius Vibius Pansa convened the Senate. Almost immediately, Dolabella was voted an official ‘enemy’ (hostis) of the res publica, and even those senators who were sympathetic to Antony supported the resolution. There was more debate, however, about whom to appoint to command the war against him. Before Cicero arose to speak, two suggestions had just been made: one, from Lucius Julius Caesar, would have appointed the consular Publius Servilius Isauricus, who had military experience but was living as a private citizen, while another would have entrusted the operation to Pansa and his colleague Aulus Hirtius.
After delivering a long invective about Dolabella’s cruelty and inhumanity, Cicero laid out his objections to these proposals, which he regarded as introducing an unnecessary delay.Footnote 5 Granting an ‘extraordinary command’ (imperium extraordinarium) to a ‘private citizen’ (priuatus) was out of step with Republican precedent, and had only been done when no alternative was available. As for Hirtius and Pansa, these generals were preparing for war against Antony in Cisalpine Gaul, and were in no position to embark for Syria. Meanwhile, Brutus’ friend and associate Cassius, who had also left the previous year and had been assigned the government of Cyrenaica, was rumoured to have arrived in the region and to be fighting Dolabella already: Cicero proposed that he be invested with imperium as Brutus had recently been.
Unfortunately for both Cicero and Cassius, however, this command was rejected by the Senate, who opted instead to entrust the war to the consuls. While he had moderately favoured the appointment of Brutus in Macedonia, Pansa vociferously opposed any such grant for the other conspirator, and Cicero admitted in a letter to Cassius that this had been instrumental in swaying the majority of senators.Footnote 6 Later, on 27 April 44 b.c., however, when both consuls had perished during the Mutinensian War, Cassius was finally given a Syrian command, and it is likely that Cicero’s advocacy of him had influenced elite opinion in the intervening period.Footnote 7
Cicero’s speech in support of Brutus from early February 43 b.c. was published in the form of Philippic 10; that promoting Cassius in late February or early March was published as Philippic 11. Both speeches are concerned with the eastern Mediterranean, and defend the operations of the two leading conspirators against Caesar in that theatre: as such, they are commonly discussed as a pair.Footnote 8 These works were published quickly: Brutus wrote to Cicero to say that he was reading Philippic 10 in his camp at Dyrrachium on 1 April, and Cicero responded on 12 April by indicating that Philippic 11 was on its way.Footnote 9 As a consequence, it might be inferred that neither was revised much before publication, and that their rhetoric is close to what was originally delivered in the Senate.
From what we can tell, Cicero was compelled to respond, on both occasions, to the charges of his opponents that the conspirators had broken the law by entering the provinces of other governors; existing legislation even allowed for the prosecution of governors simply for leaving their own provinces.Footnote 10 When the Senate was arguing about Brutus, Quintus Fufius Calenus, an Antonian sympathizer, had spoken before Cicero, urging that Brutus be denied authorization and recalled to Rome. Most likely, it was he who alleged that Brutus’ incursions were illegal, and Cicero admits in Philippic 10 that an ‘unfriendly person’ (improbus) had already blamed him for entering Vatinius’ province of Illyricum (10.12). Given Cicero’s keenness in Philippic 11 to explain what Cassius was doing in Syria, too, it is almost certain that the same charge was levelled a second time.
In response, Cicero said that Brutus’ invasion of Macedonia and Cassius’ of Syria were legally justified in a higher sense. Arriving in the theatre of war, Brutus ‘laid down a law for himself that, wherever he came, he would seem to come as a kind of light, and as a sure hope of safety’ (eam legem sibi statuerat, ut, quocumque uenisset, lux uenisse quaedam et spes salutis uideretur, Phil. 10.12). In Philippic 11, Cicero reminded his audience that Brutus and Cassius always ‘judged the safety and liberty of the fatherland as the holiest law and best custom’ (salutem libertatemque patriae legem sanctissimam et morem optimum iudicauit) (11.27). Indeed, when he entered the province of Syria, technically governed by another man, Cassius obeyed only the ‘law of nature’ (lex naturae) and ‘right reason’ (recta ratio) (11.28):
quid? C. Cassius pari magnitudine animi et consilii praeditus nonne eo ex Italia consilio profectus est, ut prohiberet Syria Dolabellam? qua lege, quo iure? eo, quod Iuppiter ipse sanxit, ut omnia, quae rei publicae salutaria essent, legitima et iusta haberentur; est enim lex nihil aliud nisi recta et a numine deorum tracta ratio imperans honesta, prohibens contraria. huic igitur legi paruit profectus, alienam prouinciam, si homines legibus scriptis uterentur, his uero oppressis suam lege naturae.
‘What? Did not Gaius Cassius, possessing equal greatness of mind and judgement, set out from Italy with the plan to keep Dolabella from Syria? By what law, what right? By that which Jupiter himself sanctioned, that all things salutary for the commonwealth should be held as legitimate and just. For law is nothing other than right reason, transmitted from the will of the gods, ordering honourable things, prohibiting the opposite. Therefore, he obeyed this law when he set out, to another’s province if people used written laws, but to his own according to the law of nature, since those laws, indeed, had been suppressed.’
As scholars note, this sophisticated metaphysical-ethical language recalls Cicero’s philosophical treatises, particularly his De legibus, composed in 51–50 b.c. Footnote 11 In fact, as this article will explore, De legibus supplies the intellectual foundations for Cicero’s defence of Brutus and Cassius in these speeches. To rebut the allegation that he endorsed his allies’ lawbreaking, Cicero returned to the philosophical ideas about law outlined in his previous work, using them to construct an argument that might satisfy moderates eager to restore order. In so doing, he stressed the shocking nature of Antony’s provincial arrangements, which, he implied, posed a threat to the Republican legal system.
CICERO’S RHETORICAL CHALLENGE
The Senate in late 44 and early 43 b.c. contained a faction of senators who had been close to Antony, which regularly called for accommodation with him. One of its leaders was Calenus, who spoke against Brutus’ command and was subject to an ad hominem attack in Philippic 10.Footnote 12 In early January 43 b.c. Calenus had opposed granting honours to Octavian, including those advocated by Cicero in Philippic 5, and unsuccessfully moved that an embassy be sent to Decimus Brutus as well as to Antony, thereby treating both generals alike (Phil. 5.1; Dio Cass. 46.1–29). When the embassy returned with Antony’s counter-demands at the start of February, Calenus spoke about peace (Cic. Phil. 8.11, 8.18). When the Syrian war came to be debated, moreover, he outflanked his opposition by proposing that Dolabella be declared a hostis, but then was probably responsible for the delaying tactic of entrusting the operation to the consuls.
Hardliners like Calenus aside, a great number of unaffiliated senators, suspicious both of Cicero and of Antony, and who wanted a return to normality, would have had some reservations about giving official authorization to Brutus or Cassius. For months, Antony had bombarded these men with propaganda suggesting that, rather than freeing the res publica from a tyrant, the conspirators had reintroduced factional conflict into the political system, and revived the defeated ‘Pompeian party’ from its deathbed.Footnote 13 In the summer of 44 b.c. he alleged that Brutus and Cassius were recruiting followers and raising funds for an uprising in Italy, and these charges may have had merit.Footnote 14 Upon discovering that the conspirators had obtained control of much of the eastern Mediterranean, not a few in the moderate middle would have been reluctant to throw the Senate’s weight behind them, and were open to the argument, in either case, that illegal behaviour was involved.
At the same time, however, many suspected that Antony’s provincial arrangements during his consulship, covering both Macedonia and Syria, were a major cause of the various crises abroad, in which context Brutus and Cassius were operating. On 1 June 44 b.c. Antony presented the Senate with a list of radical proposals, including a reform of the courts and land-settlement for Caesar’s veterans. The most controversial, however, was to extend his own forthcoming proconsulship, and that of his colleague Dolabella in Syria, from two to five years, violating the limits on provincial commands imposed by Caesar in 46 b.c. (Cic. Phil. 1.25, 2.6, 2.109, 5.7–8, 8.28, Att. 14.4, 15.4–5, 15.11, Fam. 11.2; Vell. Pat. 2.60; App. B Ciu. 3.27–30; Dio Cass. 45.9). Two days later, the tribal assembly passed this in the form of a lex de prouinciis consularibus, since veterans had been brought in to vote for Antony’s agenda.
In addition to these provisions, Antony’s law on the consular provinces may have exchanged his assigned province of Macedonia for two of the Gallic provinces, enabling him to station legions on Italy’s doorstep; if this was not done at this moment, the swap was achieved through a decree or law in the following weeks or months. Macedonia and its armies, meanwhile, were not to be allowed to fall into the hands of Antony’s enemies in 43 b.c. On 28 November 44 b.c., immediately before departing for Cisalpine Gaul, the consul strong-armed the Senate into allotting Macedonia to his brother Gaius: as Cicero was later to allege, the usual process of sortition was ignored (Phil. 3.25–6).
While most senators had acquiesced to Antony’s earlier initiatives, which they regarded as being in the interest of the res publica, his arrangements for the provinces from June onwards were infuriating to them: as well as reminding them of Caesar’s five-year Gallic command in 59 b.c., they showed that the consuls lacked interest in conforming to even the loosest restrictions on office-holding.Footnote 15 Antony’s Senate meeting on 1 June 44 b.c. was apparently boycotted by the consuls-designate, Hirtius and Pansa, in addition to Cicero. At the start of August, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, hardly a long-standing enemy of Antony’s, made a vocal speech against the consular legislation (Cic. Phil. 1.14–15).
Indeed, after Antony had departed for Cisalpine Gaul, and Decimus Brutus had written to the Senate informing them that he would resist this incursion at Mutina, the feelings of the body towards Antony’s policies became all the more clear. On 20 December 44 b.c. the Senate passed Cicero’s motion, contained in Philippic 3, requiring that outgoing governors hold their provinces until further notice.Footnote 16 Among other things, this entailed that Gaius Antonius was to be denied Macedonia, Dolabella Syria, and Antony Gaul. Even though the procedure through which legislation could be annulled by the Senate had been ignored, only one senator, the inveterate Antonian Lucius Varius Cotyla, opposed Cicero’s plan (Phil. 5.5). By February 43 b.c. Pansa was preparing a bill for the comitia centuriata which would have re-enacted some of the ‘good laws’ passed by Antony (Phil. 10.17): clearly, leading members of the elite had come to suspect that parts of Antony’s legislation were invalid.
Although Cicero was initially unconcerned by Antony’s ideas (Att. 14.11, Fam. 16.23), his rhetoric grew more strident as time passed. In Philippic 5, delivered in early January 43 b.c., he alleged that the lex de prouinciis consularibus violated several procedural rules when it was passed: it was not published on three successive market-days, as the lex Caecilia et Didia stipulated, nor was a copy deposited in an archive, as mandated by the lex Iunia et Licinia, while there was a thunderstorm, so the day was inauspicious, and there were armed men in the forum, so the law was carried by force.Footnote 17 Speaking about Antony’s lex iudicaria, also formally deficient, he said that, ‘even if [this and other laws] had been passed without violence and with proper auspices, I would argue for their annulment; but why should I do so now, since, I think, they were not actually ever passed?’ (etiamsi sine ui saluis auspiciis essent rogatae, censerem tamen abrogandas; nunc uero cur abrogandas censeam, quas iudico non rogatas?) (5.16). For Cicero, Antony’s provincial legislation, and everything consequent upon it, could be disregarded.
By the time the Senate came to debate Brutus and Cassius’ activities in the east, Cicero had long since realized that Antony had destroyed the legal order as far as the provinces of 43 b.c. were concerned, and he was hardly the only one who felt this way. At such a moment, Cicero had to convince others that granting Brutus and Cassius sweeping provincial commands, extra ordinem as they were, was still a more ‘Republican’ solution than allowing legal chaos to persist in the regions around Macedonia and Syria. To do so, he drew upon his own acquaintance with philosophical notions of law.
NATURAL LAW IN DE LEGIBVS
Like Philippics 10 and 11, Cicero’s De legibus posits the existence of a divine and unchanging law of nature, identified with ‘right reason’, which prescribes just actions and bans unjust ones. In Book 1, it is noted that ‘law is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands what ought to be done and prohibits the opposite’ (lex est ratio summa insita in natura, quae iubet ea, quae facienda sunt, prohibetque contraria, 1.18; cf. 1.23). In Book 2, ‘they say that law is the principal and ultimate mind of god, compelling or forbidding all things by reason’ (principem legem illam et ultimam mentem esse dicebant omnia ratione aut cogentis aut uetantis dei, 2.8). In addition, the ‘true and final law, applied to commanding and forbidding, is the right reason of highest Jupiter’ (lex uera atque princeps, apta ad iubendum et ad uetandum, ratio est recta summi Iouis, 2.10). Although De legibus dates from the 50s b.c., Cicero kept these intellectual commitments in later years; in his De officiis, composed at the end of 44 b.c., he claims that ‘nature is the source of law’ (iuris natura fons sit).Footnote 18
For Cicero, natural law is applicable to human beings because they have reason, a possession in common with the gods; since the gods possess right reason, which is natural law, this law governs gods and humans alike, and invites them to attain the virtues, chiefly justice (Leg. 1.22–3). Although this was Stoic doctrine, it is doubtful that Cicero regarded it as uniquely such: he credits ‘learned men’ (doctissimis uiris) for its formulation, in whose number he must have included the ‘prudent and sharp’ (prudens et acutus) Antiochus of Asculum, under whom a young Cicero studied in Athens, and who had tried to assimilate the teachings of Plato’s Academy with those of the Stoa (1.18, 1.54).
According to Cicero and his intellectual predecessors, a select few individuals, known as ‘wise men’ or ‘sages’ (sapientes), were so virtuous and rational that they had perfected reason as right reason in their own mind, and were able to conform to the law of nature. Indeed, this law was ‘the reason and mind of the sage, suitable for commanding and deterring’ (ratio mensque sapientis ad iubendum et ad deterrendum idonea, 2.8); alas, as Stoics believed, such persons were as rare as the Ethiopian phoenix.
As for human laws, such as those which Cicero proposes for Rome from Books 2–3 onwards, these too can direct people towards justice, which secures tangible political goods for them: ‘laws were invented for the safety of citizens, the security of states, and a calm and blessed life for human beings’ (ad salutem ciuium ciuitatumque incolumitatem uitamque hominum quietam et beatam inuentas esse leges, 2.11). As is explained in Atkins’s influential monograph, Cicero imagines positive law to be specific, temporary and modified for human nature, though it is linked to the lex naturae in its capacity to distinguish justice from injustice.Footnote 19 For him, the laws of states and peoples ‘participate’ in natural law, which acts as a standard for their validity: as he states in Platonic language, ‘law is the distinction between just and unjust things, modelled on the oldest and first of all things, nature, to which human laws are directed’ (lex iustorum iniustorumque distinctio, ad illam antiquissimam et rerum omnium principem expressa naturam, ad quam leges hominum deriguntur).Footnote 20
Furthermore, wicked and pernicious statutes, which are not oriented towards justice, bear no relation to right reason or natural law. In a Roman context, Cicero cites the radical legislation of the tribunes Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Sextus Titius (100–99 b.c.), as well as the Livian laws of 91 b.c., as undeserving of the name of law (2.14). Without a positive legal order, however, the res publica has no hope of achieving justice or the goods that it provides: ‘if a state lacks law, must it not be considered worthless?’ (lege autem carens ciuitas estne ob id ipsum habenda nullo loco?, 2.12).
It is often remarked that Cicero’s speeches, and especially the Philippics, are stuffed with philosophical allusions that assume a familiarity with Stoic, Academic or Epicurean ideas on the part of his senatorial audience.Footnote 21 By the late first century b.c. Roman elites were immersed in Hellenistic philosophy either because of an education in Greece itself or via exposure to Greek philosophers at Rome, and many were allied to one of the philosophical schools.Footnote 22 When Cicero couched his defence of Brutus and Cassius in terms of a metaphysical conception of natural law in which the laws of the commonwealth participated, he could depend upon other senators’ understanding the basic components of his argument, and hope to persuade them thereby.
CICERO’S RESPONSE
Drawing on De legibus, Philippics 10 and 11 reply to accusations of lawbreaking by declaring that Brutus and Cassius are virtuous, and suited to following the law of nature. In Philippic 10, Cicero observes that, ‘had not Marcus Brutus’ virtue opposed their crime’ (sceleri uirtus M. Bruti obstitisset), the enemy would have conquered Macedonia and Illyricum already.Footnote 23 ‘What a plague there would have been in Greece, had not the incredible and divine virtue [of Brutus] checked the madman’s boldness and audacity! What speed Brutus had, what shrewdness, what virtue!’ (quae pestis Graeciae fuisset, nisi incredibilis ac diuina uirtus furentis hominis conatum atque audaciam compressisset! quae celeritas illa Bruti, quae cura, quae uirtus!, 10.11). Brutus was ‘born for the commonwealth, not only because of his most brilliant virtue, but also because of some judgement of Fate attached to his paternal and maternal name and heritage’ (cum sua excellentissima uirtute rei publicae natus, tum fato quodam paterni maternique generis et nominis, 10.14). Because of his ‘efforts, planning, industry and virtue’ (opera, consilio, industria, uirtute, 10.25), Brutus must be commended.
What is more, Brutus’ ‘virtue’ in Philippic 10 is implicitly related to his philosophical background.Footnote 24 The reference to his maternal heritage (10.14) was meant to recall his uncle Cato, already being venerated as a Stoic martyr since his death in 46 b.c. Allusions to Brutus’ own De uirtute, which claimed that virtue alone enabled one to live ‘happily’ (beate) regardless of geographical location, are interwoven throughout the speech (Tusc. 5.1, 5.12, 5.21, Brut. 249–50; Sen. Helu. 8.1, 9.4–7; Cic. Phil. 10.7, 10.14). For his part, Brutus was talented enough at crafting a virtuous public image that Cicero had ample material to draw upon: he too was hardly shy about incorporating philosophy into his oratory, and had persuaded some contemporaries to see him as a moral exemplar.Footnote 25
To the philosophically inclined, this emphasis on Brutus’ intellectual virtue was reminiscent of the Stoic sage, who had access to natural law and was qualified to obey its commands and prohibitions. Because Brutus is virtuous, Cicero is saying, he has no need of statutes or decrees to guide him towards justice: instead, he has apparently laid down his own law in the provinces along his route (10.12).
Emphasizing Cassius’ virtue was more daunting for Cicero. In contrast to Brutus, Cassius had not established a reputation for moral excellence, but was renowned for his aggression and impetuosity.Footnote 26 Before introducing Cassius in Philippic 11, Cicero admits that Brutus would have been more suitable for a Syrian command, were he not occupied elsewhere (11.26). Only once Brutus’ bona fides has been re-established can he hint that Cassius is also virtuous, and, even then, he is careful to do so by invoking the other conspirator’s close relationship to Brutus: ‘these are great men, of such virtue, authority and nobility, one of whose army is known to us and the other of whose is rumoured to exist’ (essent tales uirtute, auctoritate, nobilitate summi uiri, quorum alterius iam nobis notus esset exercitus, alterius auditus, 11.27).
As with Brutus in Philippic 10, this emphasis on the virtue of Cassius primed other senators for the argument that Cassius too was capable of following natural law. When Cicero says that Brutus and Cassius judged ‘the safety and liberty of the fatherland as the holiest law’ (salutem libertatemque patriae legem sanctissimam, 11.27), or that Cassius obeyed the law of nature ‘which Jupiter himself sanctioned’ (quod Iuppiter ipse sanxit, 11.28), the figure of the sapiens, who has possession of the lex naturae in his own mind, is an obvious point of reference.
Crucially, however, Cicero adds the significant caveat that following the lex naturae is only necessary because the force of positive law in Macedonia and Syria has been overturned by Antony’s decisions of 44 b.c. Footnote 27 In Philippic 10, Cicero gestures to the legal vacuum in Macedonia by observing that, when Gaius Antonius set out for the province in January 43 b.c., he had already been blocked by the senatorial decree of 20 December, which had acknowledged that Antony had created a political crisis, and sought to offer a temporary expedient for it (10.10–11). In Philippic 11, it is explained that Brutus and Cassius pursued their own initiatives because they were faced by ‘a confusion and perturbation of all things’ (conuenio et perturbatio omnium rerum, 11.27). Borrowing more explicitly from the language of his De legibus, Cicero argues that Antony’s arrangements were so pernicious as to have ‘suppressed’ (oppressis) the ‘written laws’ (legibus scriptis) in Syria, and that Cassius followed natural law in invading the province because it was the only kind of law available to him (11.28).
What is more, Cicero’s solution to the legal emergency is that Brutus and Cassius be given a legal grant of imperium by the Senate to achieve their military objectives, and the text of his formal ‘legislative proposals’ (sententiae), meant for incorporation into senatorial decrees, is published in our versions of the two speeches.Footnote 28 As Cicero urges in Philippic 10, the Senate can ‘pay tribute’ (tribuere) to Brutus by giving him a proper command (10.23). Similarly, though Brutus and Cassius are said in Philippic 11 to have been ‘a Senate for themselves’ (ipse senatus sibi fuit) and to have failed to ‘wait for our decrees’ (exspectauit decreta nostra) over the preceding months, Cicero tells the Senate that Cassius’ activities must now be retrospectively ‘confirmed by your authority’ (uestra auctoritate firmentur) in a formal manner (11.27, 11.29).
In Cicero’s De legibus, one of the fundamental arguments is that positive law is modelled on natural law because it can distinguish between justice and injustice, and so can provide for genuine human goods, including political stability. Continuing in this vein in Philippics 10 and 11, Cicero strongly implies that Antony’s provincial arrangements of 44 b.c. are unjust, and that they have contributed to the destruction of public law and Republican government. In this vacuum, Brutus and Cassius, being virtuous men, have acted according to natural law; to secure the foundations of the res publica, then, the Senate must decree that Brutus and Cassius have imperium in the worst-affected regions, in order that its lawmaking may truly reflect the divine law which this pair have illuminated. As Cicero’s audience realized, his real aim was not to validate Brutus and Cassius with respect to public law, but rather to validate public law with respect to Brutus and Cassius, and ultimately with respect to right reason and the law of nature.
CONCLUSION
In defending Brutus and Cassius from the charge of illegal entry to Macedonia and Syria respectively, Cicero’s Philippics 10 and 11 claim that these generals followed a ‘law for (him)self’ (legem sibi, 10.12), the ‘holiest law’ (legem sanctissimam, 11.27), ‘right reason’ (recta … ratio, 11.28) and the ‘law of nature’ (lege naturae, 11.28). Attempting to persuade the Senate to grant commands to the two conspirators, Cicero could hardly have hoped to persuade the most fervent Antonians in that body. Instead, he wanted to win over those senators closely attached neither to him nor to Antony: though these men mistrusted Brutus and Cassius, they also recognized that Antony’s consulship of the previous year had brought about a chaotic situation in the provinces. In their eyes, Cicero had to prove that supporting his own friends and allies in the eastern Mediterranean was more ‘legal’ than not doing so, and potentially allowing the crisis to persist.
To make his arguments, Cicero relied upon the conception of law examined in his philosophical treatise De legibus, which he continued to think about in the 40s b.c. Here, natural law, unchanging and divine, is accessible only to the sage, who is virtuous. Positive law, applicable to cities and states, can help human beings because it is modelled on this natural law, which prescribes just actions and forbids unjust ones. Unjust statutes, without a connection to justice, are destructive to commonwealths. Given the philosophical literacy of the Roman elite in the late first century b.c., Cicero could have expected a senatorial audience to be familiar with the basic outline of these ideas.
In Philippics 10 and 11, then, Cicero emphasizes the philosophical virtue of Brutus, and by extension that of Cassius, though it is harder to make the same argument in the latter’s case. Because of this virtue, he implies, they have been able to follow the lex naturae during their operations in the east, in a manner that is reminiscent of the Stoic sage. At the same time, though, he notes that they were only compelled to do so because Antony has destroyed the positive legal order with respect to Macedonia and Syria. To reconstitute it, the Senate must pass decrees which are modelled on the law of nature, in so far as they commend the actions of Brutus and Cassius. Whether or not one might be personally convinced by this philosophical tour de force—and it should be noted that Cicero’s proposal in Philippic 11 was rejected by the Senate—the two speeches are very sophisticated pieces of work, which undoubtedly merit further study.
Open access
