Copyright by Daniel Parker Hanchey 2009 The Dissertation Committee for Daniel Parker Hanchey certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Cicero the Dialogician: The Construction of Community at the End of the Republic Committee: __________________________________ Andrew M. Riggsby, Supervisor __________________________________ Stephen A. White __________________________________ Jennifer V. Ebbeler __________________________________ Lawrence Y. Kim __________________________________ Joy Connolly Cicero the Dialogician: The Construction of Community at the End of the Republic by Daniel Parker Hanchey, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2009 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Andrew Riggsby for his sustained instruction and input over the entire course of my graduate school career, including the direction of both my Master’s report and my dissertation. I am also grateful to the members of my committee, Steve White, Jen Ebbeler, and Larry Kim, each of whom helped me to complete this project under unusual circumstances. And I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Joy Connolly, who gave me comments and help as if I were her own student and colleague, rather than a student half of a continent away. I would also like to thank my parents and in-laws for their constant support. Most of all I wish to say thank you to my wife, Ginger, who has been so selflessly supportive, even as she has worked and attended graduate school, and my son, Oliver, who has known me only as a graduate student until now. It is to them that I dedicate this project. iv Cicero the Dialogician: The Construction of Community at the End of the Republic Daniel Parker Hanchey, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 Supervisor: Andrew M. Riggsby In the opening lines of the preface to De Divinatione 2, Cicero describes his motivation in composing of the complures libros of his post-exilic years. Most of all, he says, he wished to prevent any interruption in his service to the state. Though he does not say so explicitly, he clearly refers to an interruption occasioned by his exile and Caesar’s ascension. Elsewhere Cicero describes this period of his life as enforced otium, an otium threatened by the absence of the dignitas which Cicero identifies with the otium of L. Crassus in the opening words of De Oratore. As he claims in Div. 2, Cicero achieved a level of usefulness to the state (and so maintained a certain amount of dignitas) by writing his theoretical books, books which he says communicate the optimarum artium vias to the Roman reading public. What Cicero does not explicitly explain is why the great majority of those works assume the form of the dialogue. In this dissertation I seek to explore the formal capabilities of the dialogue which would make it attractive to a Cicero seeking to v maintain dignitas and to render significant service to a state faced with a rapid shift of political and social structure. In general I argue that the dialogue form itself represents an antidote to the decommunalizing and populizing nature of Caesarian hegemony. As I contend, the dialogue achieves its communal nature through an emphasis on three major ethics, each of which is demonstrated in the theories expressed within the dialogues, in the actions of the interlocutors, and in the activity of Cicero himself as author. These three ethics (imitatio, memoria, gratia) each depend on community for their actualization and themselves generate the bonds that lead to community. By placing significant, multi-layered emphasis on each of these ethics, Cicero aims to communicate their validity to a generation of boni faced with the non-traditional, non-communal power of Julius Caesar. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 - Introduction ......................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 - Imitatio …………...…………………………………………………………18 Chapter 3 - Memoria …………...………………………………………………………..69 Chapter 4 - Gratia ………………...……………………………………………………144 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..229 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...233 Vita ……………………………………………………………………………………..245 vii Chapter 1 - Introduction Upon his return from the imposed silence of his exile in 57, Cicero quickly and regularly made his voice heard in Rome, delivering speeches in thanks for his recall, de domo sua, de haruspicum responsis, pro Sestio, in Vatinium, pro Caelio, pro Balbo, and in Pisonem all between 57 and 55. Over the remaining twelve years of his life, however, Cicero’s opportunities for public speaking became rarer and rarer, limited by civil unrest and the transfer of power into new hands. He delivered only a handful of speeches between 55 and 43, the majority of which at times feel like little more than Caesarian flattery. Faced with the realities of Rome’s new political climate, Cicero had to turn gradually to a new medium for self-expression and public communication. For Cicero this medium was the literary dialogue. In this dissertation I examine Cicero’s use of the dialogue form in an effort to determine why Cicero considered it the best choice to replace his oratory and to communicate his ideas on the republic. On a certain level, Cicero the orator turned to dialogue partly because of the influence of predecessors like Plato and partly because of a general affinity for the methods of Academic skepticism. 1 But the form also has a fundamental connection to his theoretical project of the same period. This theoretical project, reiterated over the course of all of his dialogues, through a wide variety of topics and characters states in its essence that: Rome needs a republic; a republic needs an aristocracy of good men; and 1 The philosophical influences on Cicero should not be underestimated. In the following chapter on imitatio I will specifically examine the suitability of Plato as a model for Cicero. On Cicero’s philosophical affiliations, see the work of Glucker and Görler, including their respective chapters in J.G.F. Powell, ed., Cicero the Philosopher. Glucker has argued that, at first, Cicero’s loyalties lay with Philo of Larissa and the “New Academy,” that he later became an adherent to the “Old Academy” of Antiochus of Ascalon, and finally returned to the “New Academy” and its methodology of skepticism. Görler argues that Cicero was always a disciple of Philo and never changed his affiliation. 1 the aristocracy must be a unified group.2 This syllogism locates the survival of Rome in community, however restricted it may be. And it is the dialogue form’s emphasis on community that made it the most suitable mode of political expression for Cicero; in contrast to the monologic perspective of a literary treatise or even a speech given to a limited audience, such as Cicero’s speeches of 46, the dialogue form is a polyphonic medium for the expression and exhibition of right community. Cicero had conceived early in his career of the unity of form and content in the written word. In his first theoretical work, De Inventione, Cicero opens with an Isocratean argument on the importance of the unity of philosophy and oratory for the leader of the state. This argument, as it had for Isocrates, arises from the general principles that eloquence gives a wise man influence and wisdom tempers an eloquent man’s temptation toward manipulation. Such had been the case ever since the dawn of society. Before eloquence men had wandered about as animals, unable to employ their ratio for any positive purpose. There was no system of governance and physical might carried the day. Only when an unnamed vir joined oratio to ratio did men decide to arrange themselves in societies governed by laws.3 Community was the offspring of speech. 2 Robert Hariman describes this project as ‘republican style.’ As he says, the “republican style begins with a relish for the pleasures of composing and delivering persuasive public discourse, it includes other modes of exchange and becomes a more focused mode of action by defining consensus as the foundational means and end of governance, and it culminates in a model of leadership that features personal embodiment of the civic culture” (102). After his exile, Cicero uses the dialogue as his “other mode of exchange” precisely because the forum for “delivering persuasive public discourse” through oratory had become so limited. 3 DInv 1.2: Quo tempore quidam magnus videlicet vir et sapiens cognovit, quae materia esset et quanta ad maximas res opportunitas in animis inesset hominum, si quis eam posset elicere et praecipiendo meliorem reddere; qui dispersos homines in agros et in tectis silvestribus abditos ratione quadam conpulit unum in locum et congregavit et eos in unam quamque rem inducens utilem atque honestam primo propter insolentiam reclamantes, deinde propter rationem atque orationem studiosius audientes ex feris et inmanibus mites reddidit et mansuetos. 2 In this proem, the first words of Cicero’s career as a theorist, he adumbrates two general ethical ideas, neither specific to oratory, which remain true for him until his death in 43. In the first place, Cicero justifies his project (in this case, the explanation of the principles of oratory) with an appeal to its role in the construction of community. While Cicero would go on to show himself a divisive figure in many instances leading up to his exile, two of his clearest political ideals were the concordia ordinum and its partner, the consensus omnium bonorum. His objections to figures from Verres to Catiline to Clodius to Antony centered on their rejections or manipulations of traditional principles of Roman society. In the second place, even at this early stage, Cicero demonstrates an appreciation of the unity of form and content in the written word. So he synthesizes the beginning of this treatise with the origins of society in general, and implies a further synthesis of ratio and oratio in the treatise to follow.