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31 the Syllogisms of Zeno of Citium MALCOLM SCHOFIELD In

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31 the Syllogisms of Zeno of Citium MALCOLM SCHOFIELD In The Syllogisms of Zeno of Citium MALCOLM SCHOFIELD in memoriam Colin Macleod I At paragraph 20 of Book II of de Natura Deorum Cicero has Balbus pause in his defence of the theology of the Stoic school. He reflects with satis- faction on the excellence of the exposition Cicero is going to put in his mouth: "When these tenets are argued in a richer and more expansive style, as I have it in mind to do, it is easier for them to escape the captious objections of the Academics. But when they are inferred by briefer and closer reasoning, as Zeno used to do, then they are more open to criticism. For just as a river in full flow suffers little or no pollution, but an enclosed body of water is easily contaminated, so the censures of the critic are washed away by a stream of eloquence, but the confinement of a closely reasoned argument affords it no easy self-defence. The ideas we develop at length Zeno used to compress in this fashion: What employs reason is better than what does not employ reason. But nothing is better than the universe. Therefore the universe employs reason. One can similarly bring it about that the universe is wise, is happy, is eternal: for all these are better than those which lack them, nor is anything better than the universe. And from this one can bring it about that the universe is god." Balbus' Roman urbwnity seems barely to conceal Cicero's acute consciousness of fundamental and radical differences between Greek and Roman taste, culture, and national temperament. The Greekness of philosophy is a subject on which he shows himself capable of considerable embarrassment. It is a constant topic of the prefaces to his treatises (es- pecially A cad. I 3-12); he feels obliged to discuss it as something which may be expected to deter Romans from reading his Latin presentations - whether because they dislike Greek culture (e.g. A cad. II 4-5) or because they esteem it (e.g. Fin. I 4-12). The introduction of Zeno's syllogisms surely marks a point in his account of Stoic theology where the issue can scarcely fail to obtrude itself, even if the preceding paragraphs (especially the examples in paragraphs 5-14) have been designed to assure the reader that philosophy is at home at Rome and in Latin. Nonetheless Cicero deftly avoids treating this subliminal subject, transmuting it into the question, 31 worthy of interest in its own right, of the relative merits of dialectic (a very Greek activity) and rhetoric (a very Roman and Ciceronian preoccu- pation). Not that even this question is broached expressis verbis; nor, of course, is Cicero concerned with rhetoric as such, but with the presentation of philosophy in a broadly rhetorical style. (cf. Fin. II 17) Elsewhere, however, he makes what I take to be the same contrast and the same evaluation quite explicitly. In the Paradoxa Stoicorum he refers with pleasure to his allegiance to the Academy, as a school more hospitable than Stoicism to dicendi copia and flos orationis (and, we may add, to his own fluency). And he is confident that he can recommend the Stoic paradoxes more effectively than the Stoics do themselves, relying as is their practice on minutae interrogatiunculae (Parad. 3): "Nothing is so incredible that oratory cannot make it acceptable (probabile), no- thing so rough and uncivilized that it cannot acquire brilliance and (if you permit the metaphor) cultivation." What Cicero objects to in Zeno's syllogisms, as in the Stoics' own versions of their paradoxes, is not that their premises or conclusions are false or their reasoning fallacious. His criticism is rather the response appropriate in an orator, if we follow Aristotle in taking the province of rhetoric to be the consideration of the possible means of persuasion (TOiv6ExdpEvov sT10«vov, Rhet. I 2, 1355b25-6; cf. I 1, 1355b15-16). A stream of oratory may be no more nor less invalid or unsound than a syllogism, but (if done well, presumably) it is invariably more convincing, at least as measured by the ability of objectors to make apparently telling criticisms of it. Exactly why Cicero thinks this is unclear here, but at Fin. II 3 he repeats the metaphor and - speaking now as an Academic dialectician - suggests that, unlike a syllogism, a rapid torrent of oratory leaves you with nothing to hold on to (or as we might say, to get your teeth into). Zeno's syllogisms evoked an equally strong and even more hostile reaction from a later Roman author, himself a Stoic steeped in rhetoric. Seneca advises Lucilius to gird himself about with philosophy, as a wall impregnable by the engines of fortune. But he warns him to "expect no encouragement or cheer from those who try to make you believe, by means of their sophistries (cavillationes), that death is no evil" (Ep. Mor. LXXXII 5,8). Seneca has the ridiculous ineptiae Graecae in view. He continues (ibid. 9): "Our master Zeno employs this syllogism: No evil is glorious. But death is glorious. Therefore death is no evil. 32 .
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