CICERO ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: DE NATURA DEORUM AND DE DIVINATIONE. A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by John Patrick Frederick Wynne January 2008 CICERO ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION: DE NATURA DEORUM AND DE DIVINATIONE. John Patrick Frederick Wynne, Ph. D. Cornell University, 2008 Cicero wrote de Natura Deorum (dND), de Divinatione (Div.) and de Fato (Fat.) in succession and describes the latter two as continuations of the first. I argue that the three dialogues form a trilogy, in which Cicero as author indicates a stance on the material he presents (but that too little of the fragmentary Fat. remains to be useful for my purposes). There are much-debated attributions of preferences to Cicero’s propriae personae at the conclusions of dND and Div.; I take these preferences to express Cicero’s authorial stance. I examine relevant parts of the speeches to which they react and, first, make philosophical interpretations of each (often comparing other sources for Hellenistic thought) and, second, pay attention to the interaction of Cicero’s characterization of each speaker with the arguments the speaker gives. I find that Balbus in dND advocates the avoidance of superstition and the reform of religious beliefs in line with Stoic physics and that Cotta has a strong commitment to traditional Roman religious views consistent with his sceptical epistemology. Cotta’s scepticism is elusive in its details but perhaps yields a kind of fideism. I find that Quintus Cicero’s advocacy in Div. of a Stoic account of divination (one that was developed after Chrysippus fully to distinguish two kinds of divination, natural and artificial) is formally based on empirical arguments for a natural divinatory capacity in humans and the possibility of fallible empirical divinatory arts. But Quintus also provides a theory of divination based in Stoic pneuma theory, psychology, theology and fate. Marcus Cicero’s reply makes a general argument against the prospects for divination in a Stoic fated world, and many specific arguments against Quintus’ empirical data that accept the data but suggest that they do not support the reality of divination. Cicero’s authorial stance, it emerges, is that traditional religion should stand but that religious beliefs should be reformed in line with physics (for him nature, eternal and admirable, is divine) broadly as Balbus suggested (hence Cicero’s vote against Cotta in dND), but that belief in divination errs by that very standard and is superstitious. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH John Wynne attended Lincoln College, Oxford where he took a BA in Literae Humaniores in 2001. iii Illi Valde Reverendo Leighlinensi Decano F. J. G. Wynne. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My thanks to my classmates in a seminar on de Divinatione in the Fall of 2005 for their provocative conversation; of them, special mention goes to Evan McElravy and Aaron Kelsh. The patient staff in the Classics office at Cornell, notably Susan Payne and Katrina Neff, have helped me with countless administrative matters. Many of the faculty in the Classics Department have helped invaluably in one way or another, and my thanks to all who attended my Dissertation Colloquium and for particular help to Pietro Pucci, Frederick Ahl, Michael Fontaine and Eric Rebillard. An audience at Northwestern University heard and helped refine a version of chapter 2. As I finished up, Tad Brennan showed great fortitude and generosity in reading a complete draft and offering many fresh and incisive comments. Of course, I must acknowledge above all the invaluable help and advice I have had from my committee, Hayden Pelliccia, Terry Irwin and Charles Brittain, and thank them for their hard work. Charles, as chair, has been a tireless and rich fund of help, encouragement and scepticism in the best sense of the term. I alone am responsible for all remaining errors and failings. v TABLE OF CONTENTS. Biographical sketch iii Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Table of Contents vi List of Figures vii List of Tables viii List of Abbreviations ix Preface x Chapter 1: de Natura Deorum, de Divinatione, de Fato: A Trilogy? 1 Chapter 2: Cicero’s Presentation of Cotta the Sceptic. 56 Chapter 3: Balbus on Religion. 92 Chapter 4: Quintus’ Argument in de Divinatione Book 1: eventa. 138 Chapter 5: Quintus’ Argument in de Divinatione Book 1: rationes. 190 Chapter 6: Marcus’ Arguments and Views in de Divinatione Book 2. 288 Appendix 367 Bibliography 370 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Epistemologies of the Academica. 63 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Aristophanes’ Platonic trilogies. 50 Table 2: Balbus’ typology of the gods. 97 Table 3: Stoic etymology of divine names. 113 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Acad. Academica. Div. de Divinatione. DL Diogenes Laertius. dND de Natura Deorum. EK Edelstein and Kidd (1972-99). Fat. de Fato. Fin. de Finibus. Leg. de Legibus. LS Long and Sedley (1987). LSJ Liddell, Scott, Jones, Lexicon. M. Adversus Mathematicos. OCD Oxford Classical Dictionary. OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary. Rep. Republic. SB Shackleton Bailey. SVF Von Arnim (1903-24), Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. TLG Thesaurus Linguae Graecae. TLL Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Tusc. Tusculan Disputations. ix PREFACE. (A) Cicero’s philosophical project. ‘…hoc primum, Africane, videamus, ante quam veniunt alii, quidnam sit de isto altero sole quod nuntiatum est in senatu? Neque enim pauci neque leves sunt qui se duo soles vidisse dicant, ut non tam fides non habenda quam ratio quaerenda sit.’ Hic Scipio: ‘quam vellem Panaetium nostrum nobiscum haberemus! Qui cum cetera tum haec caelestia vel studiosissime solet quaerere.’ (Rep. 1.15) [Tubero:] “Let’s see to this first, Africanus, before the others arrive—what should we say about this second sun that’s been reported in the senate? The people who say they saw two suns are neither few nor negligible, and it’s not so much that we shouldn’t trust them as that we must look into an explanation.” Here Scipio said, “How I wish we had our friend Panaetius here with us! He’s one to look into all sorts of things, but he’s particularly keen on heavenly matters.” Thus begins the (philosophical) conversation of Cicero’s first philosophical dialogue, the Republic, written in 54 BC (Zetzel (1995) 1-3). Scipio opines that, like Socrates, he prefers to learn about human affairs before taking on the heavens (1.15). When ‘the others’ do arrive, quot homines, tot sententiae on the prodigy of the two suns. Laelius agrees with Scipio that domestic affairs are more important, but Philus thinks that cosmos is itself a great home that the gods give to us, and besides, physics is a delight (1.19). Philus recounts two mechanical models of the heavens built by Archimedes and brought back as loot from Syracuse by Marcus Marcellus (1.21-22). Scipio praises Gaius x Sulpicius Gallus who understood the models and, like Themistocles, could calm the soldiers in his camp by explaining eclipses, and endorses the perspective on human affairs that study of physics and theology yields. Someone with such perspective is lucky, …cui soli vere liceat omnia non Quiritium, sed sapientium iure pro suis vindicare, nec civili nexo, sed communi lege naturae… (1.27) …only he can really claim everything not by Roman justice, but by the justice of the wise, not by civil obligation, but by the common law of nature… In his Dream, Scipio was given just this perspective (6.9-29). Republic is fiction. Cicero hardly thought that Scipio and his circle discussed matters of state religion in the light of Greek learning. But he probably wished that they had, and when twenty years later he returned to the topics of god, religion and physics, he certainly hoped that his contemporaries would acquire from him the habit (de Natura Deorum = dND 1.6-9). Cicero was a novus homo who had joined the elite club of the senatorial class by dint of intellect. He wanted to preserve the constitutional arrangements in which he had risen, but he also had the perspective of an outsider and an intellectual. Just as Gaius Sulpicius Gallus had understood the Archimidean models his predecessors looted (Rep 1.21-22) Cicero hoped that, confronted with the philosophy he was helping to make available, some Romans could apply the new intellectual resources to the care of the state. But how should they react to this elegant, foreign model of the world? One advantage of writing in dialogue form was that Cicero could supplement philosophical exposition with pen portraits. In dND, de Divinatione (=Div.) and de Fato (=Fat.) he presented not only philosophical textbooks on his subject but sketches of characters each of whom uses Greek philosophy to think about Roman religion xi differently, and who each have a different attitude to the philosophical arguments they give. Through them Cicero sets before his readers different ways a Roman could come to terms with philosophy about the gods, physics and religion. Among these characters are Cicero’s propriae personae. Through his propriae characters, I think, Cicero indicates a stance on his material in these three dialogues, which together form something of a trilogy. This stance not an original view but rather a personal preference among other views, and it is subtly indicated and broadly conforms to Cicero’s discipline as an Academic Sceptic (Div. 2.150).12 Although I argue that Cicero wrote a trilogy on these matters I concern myself, for the most part, with only two works of that trilogy. Specifically, I give no intensive treatment of Fat.. This is because Fat. has survived only in substantial but inadequate fragments. It contains useful information on fate and related matters of which I make use from time to time, but not enough of it remains for us to know, for example, what (if any) attitude the Marcus Cicero of Fat.