[FREE PDF sample] Cicero's academici libri and lucullus: a commentary with introduction and translat
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://ebookmass.com/product/ciceros-academici-libri-and-lucullus-a-commentary-wi th-introduction-and-translations-tobias-reinhardt/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
The Roman Martyrs: Introduction, Translations, and Commentary Michael Lapidge
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-roman-martyrs-introductiontranslations-and-commentary-michael-lapidge/ Euripides: Troades. Edited with Introduction and Commentary David Kovacs
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Data is available at the Library of Congress
ISBN 978–0–19–927714–8
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Für Eva, Anna und Arthur Reinhardt
Acknowledgements
The aims of this commentary are adumbrated in the initial sections of the introduction. I began work on it and on the critical edition which it accompanies in 1999; completion has taken longer than originally anticipated. Secondary literature is considered up to September 2021, no doubt incompletely.
On the way I have accumulated many debts of gratitude to individuals who gave me the benefit of their advice, made me think harder, or shared forthcoming publications with me; they include Jim Adams, Michael I. Allen, Sophie Aubert-Baillot, David Blank, Mauro Bonazzi, George Boys-Stones, Ada Bronowski, Lesley Brown, Felix Budelmann, Myles Burnyeat, Riccardo Chiaradonna, Ursula Coope, Paolo Crivelli, Serafina Cuomo, Kilian Fleischer, Therese Fuhrer, Dorothea Frede, Michael Frede, Miriam Griffin, Stephen Heyworth, Gregory Hutchinson, Brad Inwood, George Karamanolis, Arnd Kerkhecker, David Langslow, Jane Lightfoot, Ermanno Malaspina, Wolfgang-Rainer Mann, Anna Marmodoro, Wolfgang De Melo, Ernest Metzger, Ben Morison, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Hindy Najman, Reviel Netz, Giuseppe Pezzini, Harm Pinkster, Oliver Primavesi, Donald Russell, Barnaby Taylor, Malcolm Schofield, David Sedley, Gisela Striker, Harold Tarrant, Teun Tielemann, Katja Maria Vogt, Katharina Volk, James Warren, Gareth Williams, and Jim Zetzel. Michael Winterbottom took the time to comment on the translations in the summer of 2021; his friendship and encouragement have been an enrichment. I have learnt a great deal from exchanges with James Allen.
There are a number of scholars with whose published work I am frequently in dialogue, notably Charles Brittain, John Glucker, Woldemar Görler, and Carlos Lévy. This commentary owes much to their insights and arguments.
During my work I have been a member of three different Oxford colleges, Merton, Somerville, and Corpus Christi. I am indebted to all of them and to the colleagues who made them congenial and stimulating places.
I was fortunate to have access to the Bodleian Library, the Weston Library, the Taylorian Library, and the libraries of the three colleges named above. Colleagues working in these institutions have been very helpful, especially Julia Walworth, Pauline Adams, Joanna Snelling, Charlotte Goodall, and Martin Kauffmann.
Much appreciated financial assistance came from the Craven Committee, the Loeb Foundation, and the Leverhulme Trust (in the form of a Major Research Fellowship, awarded for the years 2014–17).
Revised versions of Reinhardt (2018a) and (2021a) appear here as sections 6 and 8; revised material from Reinhardt (2018b) appears in section 10; and revised material from Reinhardt (2018) in the commentary on Ac. 1.30–4 and 1.40–2. I am grateful to Cambridge University Press, Walter de Gruyter GmbH, and Brepols Publishers, respectively.
At Oxford University Press, the Classics editors past and present, Hilary O’Shea and Charlotte Loveridge, the project editor, Henry Clarke, and the production editor,
Meghan Watson, have been unfailingly patient and supportive. Timothy Beck’s attentive copy-editing has done much to enhance the volume.
Others who have aided this project, sometimes in ways that may not be apparent to them, are Audrey Cahill, Raúl Lafuente Sánchez, Edgar Scharf, my parents Sabine and Mathias Reinhardt, and Andrea and Sebastian Reinhardt.
The dedication is to my wife and our children, with love.
Oxford, July 2022
T.R.
Contents
Note on the Text xi
Note on Translations xv
Abbreviations xvii Introduction xxi
1. Opening xxi
2. Philosophy and History in Acad. xxii
3. Acad. within the Ciceronian Corpus xxvi
4. Academic Positions and Academic Arguments xxxvii
4.1 The Clitomachean Position xli
4.2 Mitigated Scepticism xliv
4.3 The Roman Books View xlvii
4.4 Metrodorus’ Position xlviii
5. The Debate about the Cataleptic Impression l
5.1 Definitions li
5.2 The Interpretation of the Second Clause liv
5.3 The Stoics: Epistemological Internalists, Externalists, or Something in Between? lvi
5.4 The Interpretation of the Third Clause lx
5.5 Cataleptic Impression: Perceptual or also Non-perceptual? lxiii
5.6 Ἀπαραλλαξία lxiv
5.6.1 Dreams and Madness lxix
5.6.2 Very Similar Objects lxxii
5.7 Arrangement lxxvi
5.8 Generalization lxxvi
Appendix—Ἀπαραλλαξία in the Different Versions of the Core Argument in Acad. lxxviii
6. The Carneadean πιθανόν and Cicero’s probabile lxxx
6.1 The Evidence from Sextus lxxxi
6.2 ἔμϕασις before Carneades lxxxix
6.3 Back to Sextus, M. 7 xci
6.4 Stoic πιθανά xcvii
6.5 The Evidence from Cicero ci
6.6 The πιθανόν/probabile, Clitomacheanism, and Mitigated Scepticism cvi
7. Constructions of History and of Historical Figures in Acad. cviii
7.1 Sceptical Histories cix
7.2 Antiochus’ Construction of the Old Academy cxiv
7.3 Socrates cxxiv
7.4 Plato cxxvii
7.5 Arcesilaus cxxviii
8. Cicero’s Clitomacheanism cxlii
9. Editions of Acad. and Their Reconstruction clvii
9.1 Evidence from Cicero’s Letters to Atticus on the Creation of Acad. clviii
9.2 Ciceronian Editions of Acad. and Their Reconstruction clxvi
9.3 Sources clxxii
9.3.1 Luc. clxxii
9.3.2 Ac. 1 clxxv
9.3.3 Earlier Scholarship clxxvii
9.4 The Title(s) clxxviii
9.5 The Hortensius and Acad. clxxx
10. The Linguistic Form of Acad. clxxxii
10.1 Impressions I: uidere, uideri, uisum clxxxii
10.2 Impressions II: uisio, species, nota, signum clxxxix
10.3 ‘Beliefs’ cxci
11. Table of Contents for Ac. 1 and Luc. cxciii
Translations
Note on the Text
The text to which the commentary refers is that of the Oxford Classical Text, whose preface explains the transmission of Ac. 1 and Luc. and gives full references.
The stemma of Ac. 1 is bipartite. On one side there is manuscript P. On the other side, there is a reconstructed manuscript (Γ), whose closest descendants relate to one another as follows:
Of the manuscripts from which μ is reconstructed only Mu offers the entire text. Two descendants of Ma, C and N2, can be used in its place where it is not available.
The stemma of Luc. is bipartite too, with B representing one branch and three other manuscripts (AVS), whose agreement I call ζ, representing the other, as follows:
In §104 V breaks off and its readings must be reconstructed from descendants of V which reflect V before mutilation. A and B were cross-corrected in the ninth century, and V was corrected ope ingenii as well as against ξ and another lost witness (Vm), which, however, did not offer vertically transmitted readings not attested elsewhere. There is also a ninth-century copy of—for the text of Luc.—A after correction (F). The commentary on occasion discusses not just variants and emendations, but also places which speak to the nature of the corrections in A, B, and V.
I have not examined manuscripts of Nonius, Augustine, or any of the other authors preserving fragments of the Academici libri.
The sigla referred to above are resolved as follows:
Ac. 1
P Paris, Bibl. Nationale Lat. 6331, saec. 12
Ma Madrid, Bibl. Nacional 9116, saec. 14 (§§1–38 in ratione esse dicerent)
C Cesena, Bibl. Malatestiana, S.12,6, saec. 14
N2 Naples, Bibl. Nazionale IV.G.46, saec. 15
Mu Modena, Bibl. Estense Lat. 213, saec. 14
N1 Naples, Bibl. Nazionale IV.G.43, saec. 15 (§19 prauumue quid–§26 itaque aer, §32 ad probandum–fin.)
L Firenze, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, Strozzi 37, saec. 15
V Vatican, Bibl. Apostolica Vaticana, Lat. 1720, saec. 15
Scor.2 Madrid, El Escorial, Real Bibl. de San Lorenzo T.III.18, saec. 15
F Firenze, Bibl. Nazionale Centrale, Magliabecchi XXXI 30, saec. 15
ω agreement of ΡΓ
Γ agreement of μγ
γ agreement of ϕF
ϕ agreement of LV
Note on the Text xiii
μ agreement of MaMu (§§1–19 rectum in oratione) or MaMuN1 (§§19 prauumue quid–26 itaque aer) or MaMu (§§26 hoc quoque utimur–32 notis ducibus utebantur) or MaMuN1 (§§32–8 in ratione esse dicerent) or CN2MuN1 (§§38 sed quasdam uirtutes–fin.)
ν a lost manuscript once owned by Petrarch
ν1 agreement of CN2
Luc.
A Leiden, Universiteitsbibl. Voss. Lat. F84, saec. 9
B Leiden, Universiteitsbibl. Voss. Lat. F86, saec. 9
V Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibl. 189, saec. 9 (§§1–104 . . . aut etiam aut non)
V agreement of witnesses derived from V
S Madrid, El Escorial (Antolin. R.I.2), saec. 14
F Florence, Bibl. Medicea Laurenziana, San Marco 257, saec. 9
ω agreement of ABVS (or ABVS)
ζ agreement of AVS (or AVS)
ξ agreement of VS (or VS)
Note on Translations
This volume contains my own translations of all texts included in the Oxford Classical Text.1 In the introduction I translate quotations in Greek and Latin as a matter of course, whereas in the commentary I give translations of longer Greek quotations, while leaving longer Latin quotations untranslated except when a particular point of interpretation needs to be illustrated (so that consultation of an existing translation would not necessarily be informative). For longer quotations I have sometimes cited published translations with acknowledgement, and sometimes offered my own translation. Quotations of Latin and Greek words and phrases are only translated when their meaning does not emerge from the context.
In the translation of Luc. I have attempted to render, as far as possible, the flexibility of the terminology Cicero uses to speak about impressions (see section 10.1 on uses of uidere, uideri, uisum, quod uidetur, etc.). The Latin term probabile, corresponding to Greek πιθανόν, is translated ‘plausible’; this choice is justified in section 6 of the introduction.
1 I have benefitted from comparing the translations of Reid2, Rackham (1951), Schäublin et al., Gigon, Brittain (2006), Kany-Turpin and Pellegrin (2010), as well as those of particular passages in Dörrie (1987), Long and Sedley (1987), and Hülser (1987–8).
Abbreviations
Editions and translations not included in the following list of abbreviations are cited by author and date. A detailed discussion of important editions from the editio princeps (i.e. the Roman edition of 1471) onwards with reference to Ac. 1 is in Hunt (1998: 225–59).
Section (1): Editions, Translations, Commentaries
Aldina M.T. Ciceronis de philosophia volumen primum, Venice 1523 (published by Andreas Asulanus).
Alleemudder Asraff Alleemudder, A Philosophical Commentary on Cicero, Academica Priora II, 1–62, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1979.
Baiter M. Tullii Ciceronis opera quae supersunt omnia ediderunt J. G. Baiter, C. L. Kayser, vol. VI, Leipzig 1863.
Camerarius Opera Marci Tullii Ciceronis quotquot ab interitu vindicari summorum virorum industria potuerunt cum veterum exemplarium, tum recentiorum collatione restituta et recognitione Ioachimi Camerarii Pabergensis elaborata: cuius et locorum aliquot praecipuorum annotationes subiunguntur, Basel 1540.
Davies M. Tullii Ciceronis Academica. Recensuit, variorum notis suas immiscuit, et Hadr. Turnebi Petrique Fabri commentarios adiunxit Ioannes Davisius, Cambridge 1725.
Durand Académiques de Ciceron avec le texte latin de l’édition de Cambrige, et les remarques nouvelles, outre les conjectures de Davis et de Bentley, suivies du commentaire latin de Pierre Valence. Par David Durand, Paris 1740.
Ernesti M. Tullii Ciceronis ex recensione Jo. Aug. Ernesti qui et notas suas adjecit. Voluminis quarti pars prima. Opera philosoph., Halle 1776.
Gigon Hortensius, Lucullus, Academici libri. Herausgegeben, übersetzt und kommentiert von Laila Straume-Zimmermann, Ferdinand Broemser und Olof Gigon. Düsseldorf and Zürich 1997.
Goerenz M.T. Ciceronis philosophica omnia, ex scriptis recens collatis editisque libris castigatius et explicatius edidit Io. Aug. Goerenz, volumen secundum, Leipzig 1810.
Gruter M. Tullii Ciceronis opera omnia quae exstant, xx sola fere codd. mss. fide emendata studio atque industria Jani Gulielmii et Jani Gruteri, Hamburg 1618.
Halm M. Tullii Ciceronis opera quae supersunt omnia ex recensione Io. Casp. Orellii, editio altera emendatior, opus morte Orellii interruptum continuaverunt
I. G. Baiterus et Car. Halmius, volumen quartum, Zurich 1861.
Haltenhoff Andreas Haltenhoff, Kritik der akademischen Skepsis: ein Kommentar zu Cicero, Lucullus 1–62, Frankfurt 1998.
Klotz M. Tullii Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia recognovit Reinholdus Klotz, partis iv. vol. i, Leipzig 1854.
Lambinus Tomus quartus operum M. Tullii Ciceronis philosophicos libros a Dionys. Lambino Monstroliensi ex auctoritate codicum manuscr. emendatos, Paris 1565.
‘Lambinus’ M.T. Ciceronis philosophicorum librorum pars prima, Paris 1573.
Manutius M. Tullii Ciceronis de philosophia prima pars, Venice 1541 and 1565 (‘Paulus Manutius Aldi filius’).
Mueller M. Tullii Ciceronis scripta quae manserunt omnia, recognovit C. F. W. Mueller, partis IV volumen I, Leipzig 1878.
Plasberg1 Otto Plasberg, M. Tulli Ciceronis Paradoxa Stoicorum, Academicorum Reliquiae cum Lucullo, Timaeus, De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, De Fato, fasc. 1, Leipzig 1908.
Plasberg2 Otto Plasberg, Academicorum Reliquiae cum Lucullo, Leipzig 1922.
Reid1 James S. Reid, M. Tulli Ciceronis Academica, a text revised and explained, London 1885.
Reid2 The Academics of Cicero, translated by James S. Reid, London 1885.
Schäublin et al. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Akademische Abhandlungen—Lucullus. Text und Übersetzung von Christoph Schäublin. Einleitung von Andreas Graeser und Christoph Schäublin. Anmerkungen von Andreas Bächli und Andreas Graeser. Hamburg 1995.
Schütz M. Tullii Ciceronis opera quae supersunt omnia ac deperditorum fragmenta, recognovit potiorem lectionis diversitatem adnotavit, indices rerum ac verborum copiosissimos adiecit Christianus Godofr. Schütz, Leipzig 1816.
Sigonius Fragmenta Ciceronis in variis locis dispersa, Caroli Sigonii diligentia collecta, et scholiis illustrata, Venice 1559.
Heumann-Seckel H. G. Heumann, Handlexikon zu den Quellen des römischen Rechts, in 9. Auflage neu bearbeitet von E. Seckel, Jena 1926.
Hofmann-Szantyr
Kühner-Gerth
Kühner-Stegmann
J. B. Hofmann and Anton Szantyr, Lateinische Syntax und Stilistik, Munich 1972.
Raphael Kühner and Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der Griechischen Sprache, 2 vols, Hannover 1992 [reprint of the 3rd edn, Hannover and Leipzig 1898] [cited by volume number and page].
Raphael Kühner and Carl Stegmann, Ausführliche Grammatik der Lateinischen Sprache, Zweiter Teil: Satzlehre, 2 vols, Hannover 1992 [reprint of the 2nd rev. edn, Hannover 1914] [cited by volume number and page].
LGPN The Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, edited by P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews (et al ), Oxford 1987–.
Löfstedt Einar Löfstedt, Syntactica—Studien und Beiträge zur historischen Syntax des Lateins, Lund 1928 and 1933 [cited by volume number and page].
LSJ A Greek-English Lexicon. Compiled by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart
Jones with the Assistance of Roderick McKenzie and with the Co-operation of many Scholars, with a Supplement. Oxford 1968.
Merguet H. Merguet, Lexikon zu den philosophischen Schriften Cicero’s, 3 vols, Jena 1887–94.
OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary, edited by P. G. W. Glare, Oxford 1994.
Pinkster Harm Pinkster, The Oxford Latin Syntax, Volume I: The Simple Clause; Volume 2: The Complex Sentence and Discourse, Oxford 2015 and 2021 [cited by volume number and page].
RE Pauly’s Real-Encylopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. Neubearbeitung, begonnen von Georg Wissowa, fortgeführt von Wilhelm Kroll und Karl Mittelhaus. Stuttgart 1894–1963 (1. Reihe I–XXIX), 1914–72 (2. Reihe I–X), and 1912–78 (Supplementbände).
TLL Thesaurus linguae latinae, editus iussu et auctoritate consilii ab academiarum quinque germanicarum Berolinensis Gottingensis Lipsiensis Monacensis Vindobonensis. Leipzig 1900–.
Section (3): Collections of Texts
DDG Hermann Diels, Doxographi Graeci, Berlin 1879.
DK Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, griechisch und deutsch von Hermann Diels. Herausgegeben von Walther Kranz. 12th edn, 3 vols. Dublin and Zurich 1966.
DM K. Döring, Die Megariker- Kommentierte Sammlung der Testimonien, Amsterdam 1972.
DNO S. Kansteiner, K. Hallof, L. Lehmann, B. Seidensticker, and K. Stemmer (eds) Der Neue Overbeck (DNO)—die antiken Schriftquellen zu den bildenden Künsten der Griechen, Berlin and New York 2014.
FDS K. Hülser, Die Fragmente zur Dialektik der Stoiker: Neue Sammlung der Texte mit deutscher Übersetzung, 4 vols, Stuttgart 1987–8.
LS A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, Vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary; Vol. 2: Greek and Latin Texts with Notes and Bibliography, Cambridge 1987 [cited either by section and text or by volume number and page number].
SH Supplementum Hellenisticum ediderunt H. Lloyd-Jones, P. Parsons, Berlin and New York 1983.
SSR Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae collegit, disposuit, apparatibus notisque instruxit G. Giannantoni, 4 vols, Naples 1990.
SVF Hans von Arnim (ed.), Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, 3 vols, Leipzig 1903–5. Index volume by M. Adler, Stuttgart 1924. Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Opening
The remains of the Academici libri and the Lucullus (the second book of their twovolume predecessor), which are jointly referred to as ‘Acad.’ in this commentary,1 are as fascinating as they are complex. They were composed near the end point of a twohundred-year debate between sceptical Academic philosophers and Stoics, by which time discussion had reached a considerable level of intricacy. While much of ancient philosophical writing situates itself self-consciously within a historical context, Acad. is an unusual case, in that the opposing philosophical positions in play each cast themselves as the legitimate representative of the same tradition. If these historical claims are not just deemed assertions, the question arises whether ancient readers would have found them credible, how a modern reader should evaluate them, and whether the text as we have it provides information on the grounds for the claims which would have been cited. Acad. is of course written in Latin, and while Latin authors, notably in dramatic genres and in didactic poetry, had begun to write about perceptual phenomena with a more than intuitive awareness of the challenges involved, Cicero did have to develop ways of talking about his subject in his native language.
For the creation of Acad. sources were used, albeit with autonomous creativity and variability regarding the notional distance between source and Ciceronian text. It is one of the contentions of this commentary that Antiochus of Ascalon underpinned his construction of the history of philosophy by developing it where possible from Platonic texts. If this is correct, a particular kind of elucidation will be required in the commentary, viz. the identification of possible references to particular Platonic texts in the Ciceronian text even when some of the normal cues are absent.
As a work of Roman literature, Acad. is a set of dialogues. Thus it needs to be read against other dialogues by Cicero as well as Greek philosophical dialogues, and there is a small set of passages which are central to the philosophical interpretation of the text whose appraisal in the round requires attention to their literary form. Firstperson speakers called Cicero are a presence throughout the Ciceronian corpus, and they demand to be considered together.
For the cultural history of Europe Acad. is significant, as a substantial and selfcontained body of evidence for one of two sceptical schools in antiquity, as evidence for Stoic thought presented on its own terms and in interaction with objections as opposed to, say, in occasionally hostile doxographical reports, as a key text in a broader tradition which is devoted to the possibility of knowledge arising from
1 The letters documenting the creation of Acad., which are included in the Oxford Classical Text, are referred to by ‘T’ and a number. The fragments and testimonia of Acad., likewise included in the edition, are referred to by ‘t.’ and a number.
perceptual experience, and as evidence for the fate of Plato’s Academy in its final phase as a functioning school. Acad. had an extensive reception in late antique, Renaissance, early modern, and even twentieth-century thought, and it is to be hoped that work on this reception will be facilitated by this commentary, whose aim it is to explain Acad. in its complexity, without trying to replace the elementary linguistic and stylistic elucidation which Reid1 provided in an exemplary way.
2. Philosophy and History in Acad.
Acad. offers insights into the debate two and a half centuries long between Stoics and Academics on the nature and possibility of knowledge, and into the chronologically overlapping inner-Academic debate about the most consistent sceptical response to the Stoic conception of knowledge.2 It does this through the format of a dialogue featuring Roman characters, modelled on historical individuals, who make the competing views in the debate their own and thereby re-enact aspects of it, in a Roman context and in the medium of Latin. Only parts of two different editions of Acad. have come down to us, featuring different interlocutors, and set at different dramatic dates and consequently in somewhat different historical contexts.
The inner-Academic debate is fairly overtly the subject of the conversation in Acad.; e.g. different speakers in the first edition represent two of the available options, explain their origins and articulate them, while a third one is explicitly considered and dismissed. By contrast, the debate between Stoics and Academics is over long stretches of text presented in a synchronic fashion, as one about issues and problems, to which philosophers whom we can place chronologically contribute a consideration or new turn. Thus key moments in the historical development of the debate are only occasionally marked or stylized as such,3 and the sequence of moves and countermoves over time has to be pieced together, as far as this is possible, by selecting evidence from Acad. and contextualizing it with information from elsewhere.
One way in which a historical dimension does come into view in Acad. is through different constructions of the history of philosophy deployed by both sides to underpin their stance. These are largely kept separate from the substantial debate, and while the Antiochian speakers did not attempt to recount the period from Arcesilaus down to Antiochus (instead ending with Zeno), the Academic speakers did offer sketches of the main protagonists on the Academic side in chronological order. However, this appears to have been done, as is suggested by Ac. 1.44–6 on Arcesilaus (the text breaks off after that), in a manner which did not closely trace the sequential steps of the debate. Relatedly, in Ac. 1.40–2 the Antiochian speaker Varro introduces the concept of κατάληψις, but does so without citing the definition of the cataleptic impression on which some of the debate focused. That the definition features explicitly in Luc. suggests that in the final edition it was introduced in a later, synchronic
2 With this section, cf. Brittain (2006: xiii–xv).
3 This is partly a function of the fact that the speakers deliver long speeches rather than have quick-fire exchanges, but it is not altogether clear whether Cicero or his source material had a detailed notion of the development of the debate about the cataleptic impression over time.
part of the dialogue.4 The dialogue (or dialogues) thus exhibits a fairly clear separation between accounts of history and argumentative back-and-forth.
One can distinguish the following phases in the debate between Stoics and Academics:
(i) Zeno (born c.334/3; died 262/1),5 before he founded the Stoa a pupil of Polemo in the Academy like Arcesilaus (Ac. 1.34), develops the conception of κατάληψις and formulated the two-clause definition of the cataleptic impression. Arcesilaus (born c.316/15; died in the period 244–240), who eventually became head of the Academy between 268 and 264,6 challenged the doctrine, arguing that there could be an impression ‘just like’ a cataleptic one but which was false (the ἀπαραλλαξία objection); see Luc. 77 and section 5 of this introduction. Zeno, or so the story goes, responded by adding a third clause to the initial two-clause definition, which, however, did nothing to stop Academics from continuing the challenge. Zeno and later Stoics went on to make the cataleptic impression the basis for other central components of their thought (Luc. 19–39).
(ii) After Arcesilaus the sceptical stance and argument practices introduced by him may not have solidified immediately (see on Luc. 16 and appendix 2 on Numenius).
(iii) Chrysippus (born between 281 and 277; died at the age of 73 in the period 208–204)7 continued the debate with the Academics, possibly reinterpreted the Zenonian definition slightly, and devised further arguments to counter the Academic challenge. See again section 5. Overall, Chrysippus has a smaller presence in the extant parts of Acad. than might have been expected.
(iv) Carneades (born 214/13; died 129/28)8 reinvigorated and expanded the Academic challenge, which in turn prompted a response from younger, unnamed Stoics, notably the addition of a constraint on cataleptic impressions winning assent (Sextus, M. 7.253–7; see section 6.4). Crucially, drawing on Stoic theory, Carneades proposed the πιθανόν as an alternative to the cataleptic impression (see ibid. and on Luc. 32–6, 98–111). Diogenes of Babylon, head of the Stoa in the mid-second century bc , may have been a contributor to the debate, even though his fragments in the field of epistemology are concerned with other matters.9
(v) Antipater, who may have succeeded Diogenes as scholarch and who died in 129 bc , 10 continued the engagement with Carneades, as is clear from Luc. 28–9 and 109. Antipater may have been one of the younger Stoics mentioned in (iv).
4 These features of the dialogue may in part be inherited from the sources used by Cicero, and when Cicero sat at the feet of Philo and Antiochus (sc. at different times), each will have strived to present their chosen stance as reasoned and warranted in itself.
5 On his dates, see Dorandi (1991a: 7–10) and the modification in Dorandi (1999: 32); Vezzoli (2016: 10); Gourinat (2018: 364).
6 See Dorandi (1999: 32).
7 See Dorandi (1999: 40).
8 See Dorandi (1994d: 225).
9 See Aubert-Baillot (2009); Guérard et al. (2018).
10 See Dorandi (1999: 41).
(vi) In the 90s bc , while still in the Academy, Antiochus adopted Stoic epistemology as one element within his Old Academic position; see on Luc. 69–71. This pitted him against his teacher Philo of Larissa, head of the Academy at the time. In Acad. speakers representing Antiochus (Hortensius, Lucullus; Varro) assume the role of the dogmatists/Stoics.
The inner-Academic debate arose amongst the pupils of Carneades, notably Clitomachus and Metrodorus, who were viewed or declared themselves as privileged interpreters of Carneades (see on Luc. 78, 98, and 139), and was continued by the generation of Academics after them (cf. phase vi above) at least until the end of the Academy as a functioning school—and then amongst the Roman speakers in Acad. Three positions are in evidence, but their precise distinguishing features are contentious, as is the exact status of one of the positions within the Academy. Each of the three, of which the first two are attested to have been formulated by Carneades as an ad hominem response to the Stoics, is advanced as the most consistent sceptical response to the Stoic theory and the claim that only it is able to account for human action inter alia (see section 4). They are:
(a) the Clitomachean position, so called because it represents Clitomachus’ interpretation of Carneades’ stance. It is crucially characterized by a commitment to universal suspension of judgement.11 This is the position Cicero maintained throughout his life in first-person statements in his writings (see section 8). I also think that it was the position Philo of Larissa maintained until he conceived view (c) below (pace Brittain 2001: passim and 2006: xiv), as well as the overall position of the Academy prior to the formulation of view (c), and that Antiochus’ (and Aenesidemus’) departure from the Academy happened partly in response to the Clitomachean position. I further believe that the Clitomachean position evolved over time, accommodating many of the features ascribed to view (b) by others until it differed from view (b) primarily on what alternative to dogmatic belief it permitted.
(b) a position of mitigated scepticism, which abandons universal suspension of judgement and instead allows for self-aware assent (i.e. acceptance of certain impressions as true with the proviso that one might be mistaken). This position is clearly adopted by the younger Catulus in Luc. 148, and has been linked—less convincingly, I think—with ‘Philo or Metrodorus’ in Luc. 78. It has been claimed that it represented the official position of the Academy and of Philo in the period of c.100–87 bc and the reference point for hostile or dismissive statements about the Academics as quasi-dogmatists,12 but in this commentary it is assumed that it represented a philosophical option which had some currency but was not endorsed by Philo, and that the attacks mentioned may equally have been directed at the Clitomachean position.
11 The Clitomachean position has also been given other designations, e.g. ‘radical scepticism’; I shall discuss these in section 4.
12 All relevant texts are assembled, translated, and discussed in appendix 1.
(c) the position Philo advanced in the Roman Books, which appears to have claimed a form of κατάληψις for the Academics, albeit one which the Stoics would not have recognized and would instead have categorized as opinion (δόξα). It apparently operated the first two clauses of the Zenonian definition only and permitted assent as well.13 This stance is only characterized in outline in Acad. (see on Luc. 12 and 18; Ac. 1.13) and dismissed by all sides, including—reportedly—Antiochus (Luc. 11). There is reason to believe that Philo only formulated this position after his arrival in Rome and that he did not immediately present it as his official view. It is likely that the Roman Books view led Antiochus to modify his account of the history of philosophy and that Varro’s speech in Ac. 1 reflects a post-Roman Books version of it. I do not think that there is evidence that Philo, before he died in 84/3 bc , 14 reverted to position (a) after the perceived failure of the Roman Books,15 or that he adopted yet another position.16
In Acad. it is of course Roman speakers who speak to the philosophical issues and the historical constructions which underpin them—a different set in both partially extant editions, with Cicero the only recurrent character, as an active consularis in the late 60s bc and as a politically sidelined elder statesman in the mid-40s respectively; see section 3. In the first edition Hortensius and Lucullus spoke for Antiochus, Catulus the son for the Academic position (b) above, and Cicero for the Academic position (a), while in the final edition Antiochus was represented by one speaker only, Varro, and the Academic side by Cicero only. However, already in the first edition, i.e. in Luc., Lucullus can attack the Academy generally, without distinguishing clearly between positions (a) and (b), and Cicero can reply on behalf of the Academy generally; see esp. on Luc. 27–8, 40–4. How this ‘conflation’ of two positions manifests itself demands careful study and illuminates the very nature of position (a).
Attention also needs to be paid to who introduces certain pieces of information. It is for instance striking that it is the Antiochian Lucullus who furnishes some unique pieces of information on the probabile within the remains of Acad. (Luc. 32–6). Here one can glimpse an earlier discussion by an Academic speaker in the lost Catulus. Equally striking, but probably not to be explained in the same way, is that it is again Lucullus who surveys leading figures of the sceptical Academy in Luc. 17.
How the speakers invoke authorities is another interesting feature of the text, which in turn informs the status of Acad. as evidence for these authorities. Thus the character Cicero uses Arcesilaus as a philosophical model in passages which provide a fundamental characterization of position (a); see sections 7.5, 8, and Luc. 65–7. And while much or possibly all of the exposition on κατάληψις in Lucullus’ speech (Luc. 19–39) is orthodox Stoic, Chrysippus is not there invoked, and the fact that he
13 See Barnes (1997: 70–6); Brittain (2001: 154–8) and (2006: xiv and xxx–xxxi).
14 See Fleischer (2017) and (2017b).
15 Pace Glucker (1978) and (2004), who is led to his view by assumptions about the source which underlies Cicero’s speech in Luc.; see section 9.3. See also Barnes (1997: 76–8).
16 The Roman Books view has been characterized as a form of fallibilism by some, while others use the term to describe mitigated scepticism.
is invoked occasionally elsewhere obscures the degree to which he and his writings must have been the ultimate origin for large parts of the Stoic dogmatic sections.
In the introduction to the commentary I have tried to adopt a ‘Cicero first’ approach whenever possible,17 since my purpose is of course to elucidate Acad. in the first instance. This distinguishes the commentary in its intentio operis from e.g. studies of particular Academic philosophers, including collections of fragments and testimonia, or of the history of the Academy. In many cases the ‘Cicero first’ approach raises a problem of method. While it is never true that writing a commentary involves taking a text which is perceived as a problem and explaining it with reference to other texts which are unproblematic (so that all they want is for parts of them to be gestured at by ‘cf.’), in the case of Acad. most other texts to be drawn on are opaque, and problematic in their status, form, content, and intent, so that the task of explaining Acad. becomes one of creating a hopefully accessible account of the dynamic interrelationship of intertexts and target text from the perspective of Acad. Section 7.5 on Arcesilaus might serve as a particularly telling illustration of these challenges.
3. Acad. within the Ciceronian Corpus
In this section I propose to contextualize Acad. with the factual evidence concerning Cicero’s literary activity in the 50s and 40s bc as well as with higher-level statements in his writings about the purpose of this activity.18
I shall not here discuss the details of the compositional and editorial history of Acad. (for which see section 9.1 on the relevant letters to Atticus). Nor shall I analyse here how Cicero’s dialogues function pragmatically, i.e. by what means or to what extent Cicero accomplishes the stated aims of his literary activity which are the subject of the present section, as well as possibly additional ones not recoverable from first-person statements in the texts. To be sure, how Ciceronian dialogues demand to be read tells us something about Cicero’s intentions including as an Academic sceptic creating such texts. Passages in the texts which appear to speak to these issues explicitly need to be measured against observations regarding the structure and stylization of the dialogues. In this book the pragmatics of Acad. as a dialogue are a running theme in the commentary. They are also covered in section 8, where I give a summary of my views on the matter.
In Ac. 1.11, having asked Varro why he had written nothing about philosophy when he had contributed to so many areas of knowledge, Cicero states that for him
17 A subject where this is not easily possible is section 6, on the πιθανόν/probabile, given that our evidence from Sextus is much more extensive than that from Cicero, partly due to the loss of relevant passages of Acad.
18 Discussions which centre on Acad. include Reid1 pp. 20–8; Bringmann (1971: 111–37); Alleemudder (1979: 38–45); Griffin (1997: 1–14); Brittain (2006: xi–xii). Studies devoted to the whole corpus of Cicero’s dialogues are Hirzel (1895: 457–552); Philippson (1939: 1104–92); Bringmann (1971); Görler (1974); Schmidt (1978–9); Steinmetz (1989). Gildenhard (2007) is devoted to Tusc. in the wider corpus, and Baraz (2012) is a study of the prefaces of the philosophical works.
philosophy had remained a private pursuit while he was still active as a politician and statesman, but that now (the dramatic date of Ac. 1 is the same as the date of composition) grief over his daughter’s death, the desire to do something honourable, the wish to educate his fellow citizens, or the sheer absence of anything better to do have lead him to compose philosophical works.
The passage illustrates neatly some of the problems one faces in reconstructing Cicero’s motivation for writing his dialogues. Four different reasons are mentioned, connected by aut—thus Cicero almost invites the interlocutor and the reader to select the most important (or convincing) one rather than identifying it himself. In context this vagueness about Cicero’s purpose partly serves a dramatic function. It signals a certain weariness on Cicero’s part, due to personal grief and political despondency, and it would also have been discourteous to Varro if he had suggested that he, Cicero, was pursuing an admirable cause to which he was unqualifiedly committed (and which Varro could pursue, too, but does not want to). Nonetheless, there is a general point here: in his published works, and up to a point also in his letters, Cicero often talks about his motivations, but rarely in a way which can make the modern reader confident that a stable hierarchy of the historical Cicero’s reasons can be drawn up. Unsurprisingly, it is easier to identify and describe justificatory themes and motifs in the texts than to reach beyond them to the author’s intention.19 Moreover, depending on context and date of composition, Cicero’s own accounts of his literary activity may vary. In Ac. 1.11 Cicero chooses to present his own philosophical writing as a recent development,20 whereas in the preface to Div. 2, the famous review of Cicero’s philosophical work to date written after Caesar’s death, the two substantial dialogues written between 55 and 51 bc (De orat.; Rep.) are included among the philosophical works (as well more recent works), albeit at one remove.21 The works of the 50s influence the way modern scholars look at the works of the following decade. De orat. and especially Rep. were overtly concerned with political subjects and thus can straightforwardly be read as intended to be beneficial to Cicero’s fellow Romans.22 So when Cicero repeats in the works of the 40s that it is his
19 Wiseman (2009: 128) notes that both Cicero and Varro actually turned to historical writing after the Ides of March. And Cicero returned to the political stage when the opportunity arose.
20 The point is specifically about writing: in N.D. 1.6 Cicero rejects the claim that he was a new convert to philosophy, citing his personal contact with philosophers; cf. Brut. 306, 309, 315.
21 Discussions of the ‘catalogue’ in Div. 2 init. include Fox (2007: 218–20); Baraz (2012: 188–94); Schofield (2012c).
22 Cf. the end of the preface of Rep. 1 (§12), Q.fr. 3.5.1 (= SB 25; sermo autem in nouem et dies et libros distributus de optimo statu ciuitatis et de optimo ciue, ‘The conversation, distributed over nine days and nine books, was concerned with the ideal constitution and the ideal citizen’) from end of October or beginning of November of 54 bc , and Fam. 9.2.5 (= SB 177; to Varro, written shortly after 20 April 46, before Cicero embarked on his major philosophical works): Sed haec tu melius, modo nobis stet illud: una uiuere in studiis nostris, a quibus antea delectationem modo petebamus, nunc uero etiam salutem; non deesse, si quis adhibere uolet, non modo ut architectos, uerum etiam ut fabros, ad aedificandam rem publicam, et potius libenter accurrere; si nemo utetur opera, tamen et scribere et legere πολιτείας et, si minus in curia atque in foro, at in litteris et libris, ut doctissimi ueteres fecerunt, gnauare [see Hunt 1981: 219; nauare ς, grauare MVDH] rem publicam et de moribus ac legibus quaerere, ‘But you will judge better than me. Let us just establish the following: to live together in our literary studies, from which we used to seek pleasure and now seek salvation; not to decline if anybody cares to call us in as architects or even as workmen to help build a commonwealth, but rather to apply ourselves to the task readily. If nobody requires our help, we must still read and write “Republics.” Like the most learned men of the past used to, we must serve the
desire to benefit the citizens of Rome, without ever clarifying in the prefaces of the dialogues what precisely this benefit should consist in, the door is opened for a political interpretation of the philosophica (see p. xxxvi). One feature of the prefaces of the works of the 50s is that, although they were written at a time when Cicero was largely sidelined politically and restricted in his activities as an advocate, they present the dialogues as the product of an otium which Cicero struggles to secure given the enormous demands of his public career.23 The works of the 40s, by contrast, are overtly written during an otium enforced by dicatorship, when the question of whether it is honourable to pursue projects which do not directly advance the business of the negotium has become marginal. This is one reason why different justificatory concerns come to the fore in the later group.
Let us recall the chronological sequence of some of Cicero’s planned and actually executed works under the dictatorship:24
46 bc
• [Cicero’s exchange of letters with Varro began in late 47 or early 46 with Fam. 9.1 and ended in the second half of June 46 with 9.6.]
• Brutus: composed between January and April.
• Paradoxa Stoicorum: beginning of April. De optimo genere oratorum: composed in the spring.
• Cato (which prompted Caesar’s Anticato): composed in the summer.
• Orator: soon after the Cato.
• Pro Marcello (composed around mid-October, delivered in September).
• Pro Ligario (November).
45 bc
• [some scholars date the uolumen prooemiorum to January or February,25 but there is no solid evidence to support this early date, and we have no independent grounds for thinking that Cicero’s plans for a series of dialogues were sufficiently advanced at the very beginning of 45 bc for him to draw up the uolumen then. The uolumen is better placed right after the decision to move away from the initial cast of speakers featuring in Hort., Catul., and Luc. The attractive idea (see below) that the uolumen was not a file of disparate texts but an attempt to pursue the themes of self-justification and of the difficulty of writing
state in our libraries, if we cannot in Senate House and Forum, and enquire into customs and laws’ Against this background it is also readily understandable that De orat. and Rep. (as well as Leg.), unlike those of the 40s, offer explanations for their existence cast in terms of the otium/negotium distinction (Schmidt 1978–9: 120 even sees a ‘lack of apologia’ in the prefaces of the works in question). Gildenhard (2007: 45–63) offers a sequential reading of the prefaces from De orat. to Fin.
23 See Gildenhard (2007: 51 n. 184) for scholarship on whether the claim is credible.
24 Cf. Steinmetz (1990: 142–3) for a similar table; Marinone (20042), who lists relevant bibliography for the dating of each work.
25 See Marinone (20042: 213).
philosophy in Latin across a number of prefaces would seem to require the opening-up of Cicero’s project which arises from the replacement of the original speakers.] See on t. 20 (Cic., Att. 16.6.4 = SB 414).
• [mid-February: Tullia dies].
• around 7–11 March:26 consolatio (to himself) completed. Hortensius probably completed in the course of March, but some assume completion in February prior to Tullia’s death.27
• 24 June: works begins on the final version of Acad. (Att. 13.13.1–2 = SB 321 = T19).
• 30 June: final version of Acad. completed; Fin. 1–5 completed (Att. 13.21a.1 = SB 327 = T24).
• August: Laudatio Porciae completed (Att. 13.37.3 = SB 346; Att. 13.48.2 = SB 345).28 Tusc. 1–5 in progress (already on Cicero’s mind when he worked on the first edition of Acad., cf. Luc. 135; completed after Fin. but before N.D., probably end of July/August); dialogue on natural philosophy, incorporating Tim., in progress (after the final version of Acad. and Fin., before N.D., presumably autumn 45), see below, p. xxxii.
• November: Pro rege Deiotaro. N.D. 1–3 (completed probably near the end of 45; work on it first attested in August).29
44 bc
• Cato maior (probably early 44, certainly before Caesar’s assassination).30 Div. in progress before Caesar’s death; preface to Book 2 composed after his death.31
• 15 March: Caesar assassinated.
• since March: Ἡρακλείδειον, a dialogue in justification of Caesar’s assassins; not completed.32 Thus Cicero attempted a return to political subjects when the opportunity seemed to arise.
• June: Fat. completed (presupposes the situation after the Ides of March).33
• 27 June: work on De gloria begins.
• 11 July: first version of De gloria completed.
• 17 July: De gloria 1–2 sent to Atticus.
• 20–8 July: Topica composed during the journey to Regium.
