Marcus Tullius Cicero: Law and Citizenship 1

1) Background: a) Broad time frame: Roman République [509 B.C. – 27 B.C.] b) Specific time and location: Born: January 3, 106 B.C., Arpinum, Rome, Italy – Assassinated: December 7, 43 B.C., Formia, Italy c) Social setting: i) The Romans started their journey as a race of hardworking farmers growing crops in the rugged terrains of the Italian peninsula in southern Europe. ii) During the 5 th to 3 rd century B.C. they got involved in a protracted strife between the patricians – the aristocrats and the plebeians – the peasants, artisans and traders. iii) In the end the Romans were able resolve this conflict amicably by evolving a skilful compromise between the classes based on codified Roman laws of the ‘Twelve Tables’ consolidated the Roman Republic. iv) Between the 3 rd to 1 st century B.C. the Romans were in a spree to establish an empire by conquering the whole of Italy, Greece and all round the Mediterranean Sea. It was further extended to the entire European continent. v) The Romans sought to consolidate and maintain their control over this vast empire at an age of poor means of communication through a uniform system of well codified laws and the universal rights of citizenship. vi) By the end of 2 nd century B.C. the Romans got involved in a protracted civil war over the ownership of huge amount of wealth acquired through foreign conquest – it was a war between the wealthy nobles composing the Senate led by Sulla and Pompeius willing to establish an aristocratic rule and the poor proletariat represented in the assemblies under the leadership of Gracchi brothers, Marius and Julius Caesar aiming the formation of a proletarian dictatorship. vii) In 45 B.C. Julius Caesar was made a dictator for life after his triumph over the battle of Munda and finally a few decades later in 30 B.C. the Roman Republic was converted into an empire with the coronation of Augustus Caesar as the first emperor of Rome. d) Intellectual setting: i) Plato and Aristotle: Cicero borrowed the titles of his main works from Plato and deals with the same subject matter: justice – he also believes that political deliberations should begin with the search for an ideal political arrangement. ii) The Stoic philosophy: The Stoics like Zeno were Greek philosophers who like the Cynics and the Epicureans belonged to the 3 rd to 2 nd century B.C. when Greece was politically overtaken by the Romans and who chose to focus on the natural phenomena instead of the political. Through their observations the Stoics found the nature was orderly, coherent and rational; and it was governed by universally applicable, eternal and uniform laws. They sought to explore the possibility of applying these natural laws to the human society and had emphasized on the principles of universal laws, equality of all and cosmopolitanism to ensure justice. Cicero was greatly influenced by these ideas which were in sharp contrast to the Platonic and Aristotelian ideas of justice typically aimed at preserving a divided social order. 2) Ideas: a) Relevant works: On the Republic and On the Laws b) Justice: Cicero rejected the Platonic concept of justice which may well prevail in an unequal social order – to him justice is linked with natural equality of all men – which can be realized through universally applicable laws. c) Laws: Human laws are capable of securing justice by distinguishing the just things from the unjust when they represent the highest reason and when they are universal, unchanging and everlasting like the laws of the nature. Natural laws are prior to humans and they can only be perceived by human rationality. So man

1 Prepared by Sandipan Sen for PLSA – I CC 2 Module 1 Topic 2 1 must apply them to bring order and justice in society. Thus for Cicero law is the right reason in agreement with nature that commands those things ought to be done and forbids the contrary. d) Equality: Only human beings are endowed with right reason. So the human society is made of equal men endowed with the virtues of common reason and common law. There cannot be anything called ‘natural inequality’. Inequality is always artificial and the source of vices. e) Citizenship: Cicero conceives of man as a natural being having a claim to equality along with others as everyone possesses rationality. He does not differentiate among men in terms of their social classes or moral virtues. Cicero endows everyone with the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. For him the relation between the state and the citizens is legally determined by universal, rational, well-defined and codified laws. So instead of unlimited moral authority of the state as suggested by Plato and Aristotle, Cicero argues for the limited legal authority of the state over its citizens. f) State: Man is by nature a social animal and the state is a natural institution rooted in the natural instincts of sociality of men. But it is not a moral institution as depicted by Plato and Aristotle; rather it is a legal institution, a community of men united by a common law for the common well-being. It is also distinguishable from the society and the government. g) Sovereignty: The state is founded on the consent of the whole people and it represents a people brought together by a bond of law into a corporate body with supreme legal authority. With the state the sovereignty belongs to the people as a whole, however in different forms of government the supreme authority may be held and used by different groups of people. h) Forms of government: Depending on the number of persons holding the sovereign authority in a state Cicero classifies the governments into three pure forms and three degenerated forms corresponding to them:

No. of persons holding political authority Original form Degenerated form One Monarchy Tyranny Few Aristocracy Oligarchy Many Democracy Mobocracy None of these forms of government is perfect. None is immune from corruption.

i) Ideal form of government: A combination of the virtues of the three basic forms of government is the ideal where there would be a royal and pre-eminent chief, an aristocratic deliberative body and enough scope for the masses to express their opinion on certain aspects of governance. Cicero considers this as the best form of government as it is able to hold a balance between the diverse elements of society so as to increase its stability. The traditional Roman Republic was a close approximation to this ideal type – according to Cicero. 3) Critical appreciation: a) Opposition: Cicero was not only a thinker but also an active politician as well as a gifted orator. He was elected as the Consul – the highest public office in the Roman Republic. Despite his progressive outlook he was criticized and vehemently opposed by a section of his contemporary Roman politicians. Cicero pleaded for retaining and strengthening the republican character of Rome while his opponents were vying for transforming it into an empire. As a consequence Cicero was detained for several times and denied access to politics. Eventually he was assassinated for his contending political ideas. b) Legacy: i) The Romans learnt from Cicero about how to administer a vast territory with the help of uniform laws and reconcile the conflicting attitudes and interests of a diverse group of people living there by providing them all a guarantee of minimum equality and autonomy in the form of universal citizenship. These ideas fortified the foundations of the Roman Empire which lasted for more than a thousand years. ii) Cicero liberated the European political thoughts from the confines of the Greek city states and the moral burdens imposed on it by the thinkers like Plato and Aristotle and made it a mundane affair accessible to everyone irrespective of his moral virtues or artificially assigned class positions. This facilitated the rise of the materialist tradition in Western political thought.

2 iii) By denouncing any moral role of the state in individual’s life and making it simply a legal entity with well defined scope of authority Cicero paved the way for individual autonomy and the concept of a limited state – which were made popular by the Liberal thinkers of the modern era.

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