Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome back to the On Duties podcast where we are reading through all of this work by Cicero with scholars from the Ciceronian Society. I'm Chris Anadale and my co hosts today are Catherine Bradshaw, Ethan Alexander Davy and Coyle Neal.
Last episode, we finished with Cicero's advice about speech and his warning to be mild and selfish, self controlled, and not to praise ourselves like the boastful soldier.
Now we turn to a few chapters in book one about houses. And this is not a trivial matter. If we're tempted to think that way, we should remember that we've already been told by Cicero that no area of life is exempt from the requirements of decorum and seemliness. So we might think of this as Cicero kind of putting the finishing touches on a truly excellent and admirable life.
So we'll turn now to book one, chapter 38. I think I'll read the chapter this first time and Catherine asking you to do first comment and we'll go around the circle.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Okay, Sounds good.
[00:01:13] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Since I am covering everything here, or at least that is my wish, I must also speak about the kind of house of which I would approve. For a man of the first rank who has achieved political honors, its purpose is its use. The design of its buildings should be adapted to this, though one must attend carefully to the requirements of comfort and of standing.
Gnaeus Octavius, who was the first of his family to be made a consul, was honored, we are told, for having built a splendid home, such as gives one great standing upon the Palatine.
That house, open as it was to the public gaze, is thought to have won for its master. A new man votes for his consulship.
Scaurus demolished it and built an annex to his own dwelling. The one then was the first to bring the consulship to his house, while the other, the son of a fine and most notable man, brought back to the house he had extended not just rejection, but humiliation and disgrace.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Well, we'll start off with quite the ideas here of again, Cicero being practical. We keep returning to Cicero's practicality here.
The suitability of a house is determined by what is its proper function.
So we're drawing upon the peripatetic or Aristotelian thought of what is the telos, what is the function, the end goal of the house? Well, the end goal of the house is to be something that will house, yes, but also that will add to the dignitas, the dignity and be convenient for its owner.
So it's not just pure function, but its goodness as a house is determined by what its End goal is. And so that idea for Cicero is that there is a suitability and what determines the suitability, its end goal.
[00:03:27] Speaker B: Very good, Coyle.
[00:03:30] Speaker C: Yes. So unrelated to this podcast in Cicero I was reading this morning, History of Rome that was talking about Scipio, who Cicero draws on in De Republica as this sort of main figure, and Cato, who are kind of the two big opponents, I think, two centuries before Cicero, two different visions for the Roman Republic. And this author I was reading pointed out that they both lived in very humble houses and that was often held up up as this is what you should be doing. So you as a good Roman virtuous citizen, should have a very humble home with your wife and all 30 of your kids, all living in the same 10 by 10 square foot building. So I don't know, I mean, that changes as Rome gets more and more exposed to the wealth of the East. But Cicero is definitely out of step with the older Roman tradition on this.
The idea that you even should have a nice, maybe I'm just reading nice as big, maybe I shouldn't be doing that. But the idea that you should reflect your greatness in a house, I don't know that Cicero is using that badly here, but it's definitely unique for a Roman in that tradition. Now that'll change when the empire comes along. And bigger is better at that point, but it's still interesting to read in that context. Anyway, that's what I've got on this section.
[00:04:57] Speaker D: Well, also, this is something that Cicero talks about elsewhere. He comes back to the question of what your home looks like on the Republic and on the laws.
So this is a topic that's of interest to him. But here I think I would point out this is not just the right home for anyone, but the home of a person of the first rank. So we're talking about a consul, the senator, the people who are of highest status in the state, and they need to have homes that are consistent with that standing and will add to it or at least be consistent with it. So on the one hand it shouldn't be overly splendid, but on the other hand, it should be consistent with the dignity that is represented in that person.
And so this is related also to questions we were talking about earlier. Right.
The comportment of the gentleman must be gentlemanly in order that people would respect him. And so the home of a gentleman, the home of a man of the first rank, must also elicit that kind of respect for the status and the authority of the person.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree.
My thought on this Notice that he mentions upon the Palatine exposed to the public gaze. So a place where, say, ah, well, there's the house of so and so. And it might be a good sort of house that attracts the admiration and approval of people thinking, well, there's a good sort of guy. Or it might be, I don't know, the whole story of this other fellow scaurus who had brought disgrace upon himself by humiliation and disgrace.
But I think also here of our own sort of contemporary debate, the past decade or so, people react in different ways to the aesthetics of Trump. We might say some people finding it garish and vulgar and even being very, very offended about that. Not necessarily in a moral way, but perhaps in some way that corresponds to the level of seemliness. There's just something distasteful about that.
On the other hand, what's vulgar could be described as being flashy or as being appropriate to the man. So I think the aesthetics of the housing and the kind of public presentation of prominent men, not a thing that's limited to just Cicero's place and time, I think.
Catherine, may I ask you to read chapter 139 and Coyle to Comet?
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Certainly one standing ought to be enhanced by one's house, but not one entirely because of it. The master should not be made honorable by the house, but the house by the master.
Just as in other matters, one should take account not only of one's own affairs, but also of others. So a notable man ought to be concerned that his house is spacious, for he will have to receive many guests there and to admit to it a multitude of men of all sorts. On the other hand, a grand dwelling can, if there is emptiness there, often bring disgrace upon its master. And very much so, if once upon a time with a different master, it had usually been thronging with people. It is indeed unpleasant when passersby can say, ancient house. You are governed, alas, by a master who is not your equal. There are many cases at the moment where one might well say that.
[00:08:38] Speaker C: Well, yeah, when I read this, my first thought was a few years ago there was this spate of prosperity preachers who went on social media and explained exactly why they needed a private jet in great detail. And of course the reaction was exactly what you expect the reaction to be. But I don't think that's exactly what Cicero is doing here. And I think this, this maybe moderates it a little bit where he's saying that you really need to know yourself, you need to have a house that is relative to the level of your standing. And as we've seen in earlier sections, that is tied into your virtue. So there's a self knowledge that needs to be reflected in your house, otherwise people will properly judge you.
Look at that guy, he has too much. That guy has a private jet and he obviously should not.
And I had the thought and this is not fully worked out and I suspect it's going to trigger all of us a little bit. What is the application of this to academics?
And I thought this in part because I guess you can't see it on my screen, but all of us are currently surrounded by books. So if I were to turn my camera, you'd see my bookshelves off on the side. Also, I don't have a mansion. I'm assuming none of us have mansions for academics. Maybe the question is what, what size and nature of library ought we to have and how should that be reflected? How should that be reflective of who we are as people and as academics? I will throw that out there without knowing the answer to it. So there you go,
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Ethan.
[00:10:15] Speaker D: Right, so on this point, right, this was related to the last paragraph, obviously, but here we have. And also as Coyle said, what really matters here is the virtue of the man. And so a man of the first rank who is virtuous is going to have lots of people coming to his house, the people that he serves, the people with whom he works for the good of the state. He's going to have a lot of business.
And it is appropriate for such a man to have a large house, to entertain large groups of people who are his.
His colleagues, his associates in serving the common good. But one who is not much of a statesman is not going to have very many guests. And so for such a person to have a large. A grand dwelling is ridiculous, right?
It is not suitable for a person of little virtue and little ability to have a grand house. It's unseemly.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: I wonder, thinking about this, just how much of this simply reduces to the question of function, right where he said the purpose is its use. Well, what are you going to use the house for? If you're a prominent man, you need to have your supporters come there. I think perhaps in American history of Andrew Jackson having his sort of throng of supporters come to the White House.
But okay, well, it should be appropriate for it. If it's too small for the purpose, this reflects poorly upon you. If it's too large for the purpose, it reflects poorly upon you.
And if it's merely that, then perhaps this is just a list of historical examples or not Historical. The contemporary examples for Cicero of people of whom you might think I did note here a sort of Roman appearance of the sort of recent Internet quip. Many such cases.
[00:12:15] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: And the footnote even in here, notes, Anthony has acquired the house of Pompey. And there's something that everybody will be thinking about this perhaps when they're reading this. Oh, yeah, there's that guy who's got too much house and the wrong sort of house, the house of a much better man.
And so it reflects badly upon him. So perhaps some of this is just connected with the circumstances of Cicero's own specific place and time. Just applying a general principle. Well, nothing out of place, nothing too much, nothing too little. Make sure it fits.
The next chapter is 140. Might I ask you to read that one, Coyle and Ethan, to lead comment?
[00:12:52] Speaker C: Nope.
You must also be careful, particularly if you are building yourself not to overstep the limit in expense and magnificence. Indeed, in this area, much harm lies even in the example set where most men eagerly imitate the actions of their leaders. In this matter in particular, take the excellent Lucius Lucullus, who imitated his virtue. How many imitated the magnificence of his country houses?
But a limit to these certainly ought to be set and brought back to an intermediate level. The same intermediate standard should be applied to all questions of one's needs and style of life. I have said enough now on this subject.
[00:13:28] Speaker D: Right. In fact, that's what I was referring to earlier. I think he refers to Lucius Lucullus specifically on the laws, where Lucius Lucullus is the one who had these magnificent villas in the countryside. And Cicero says that that display by this man corrupted other people because other people wanted to imitate it. They wanted also to have magnificent villas in the country. And so a prominent man has to be careful in that way to avoid displays of luxury, unnecessary luxury that will spur other people to do the same. So you have the.
The argument earlier about function.
A grand house is appropriate if you actually need a grand house. But a grand house just for the sake of the grand house is also a corrupting example for other people.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: I'll just extend your remark, Ethan, by noting that something similar might apply to prominent people in our time, perhaps not in politics, but in terms of celebrity, right? People who we say set a good example, thinking here specifically of houses and real estate. But it seems as though part of the way in which you conduct yourself, not just as a sort of ethically proper person, but as a person who takes full responsibility for the way he or she is seen as a public person, it means to take account of how people will react and imitate you. And as he says, who imitated his virtue? His virtue was the best thing about him to imitate. Instead, people tried to acquire similar houses to his own. They admired the wrong thing about him. And it seems it would have been incumbent upon him perhaps, to recognize this and to conduct his life differently for that very reason.
The houses might be pleasing to him, they might even be useful to him. But if they're setting a poor example that's not sort of counterbalanced by some other great good they're achieving, that's not to be done. A good, really, truly excellent person would forbear from doing those things for fear of causing scandal or setting a bad example, leading other people astray. So it seems like more and more of the kind of element of seemliness that we've been talking about and finishing up with now, is concerned with having a realistic, prudential assessment of how other people, people who are not you and people who you can't control, will react to what they see of you, and then incorporating that into your own sense of duty and behavior.
That's what the sort of superlative human being will do.
Catherine?
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a sense in which the house matching the function, again, for Lucullus, the house itself undermines the function, at least in his legacy.
And you see this particularly with Antony that we talked about in the last section, because Antony is imitating the luxury and improving upon, quote, unquote, more like exacerbating in the Roman sense, the luxury that one would see in Lucullus, because it's perfectly fine with the Roman ceremony of what's called the salutatio, which is when a powerful Roman who has a bunch of clients for whom he is a patron, the clients will come and say good morning to him every day.
This is perfectly appropriate to have a large house.
But if they see luxury in the house when they come to visit, then it becomes a bit of a hindrance.
Whereas someone like Anthony, who is just over the top, all over the place. I mean, Plutarch talks about there were, I think it was eight wild boars for one meal. Because the idea was that nobody knew when Antony was going to want dinner. And so they were started at different times so that all of them, so that one of them would be perfectly cooked whenever Anthony wanted dinner. This kind of luxury and excess is going to create that bad reputation.
And it's very similar to how when we were Talking about a couple episodes ago, the old being models for the young, and the young will take what the old do and then just run with it. Similarly, the public man, those who are not public people, will take what he does and just run with it without necessarily understanding the suitability for him. That is not, not suitable for them.
[00:18:25] Speaker B: Very good. Qu Any comment?
[00:18:28] Speaker C: Yeah, I, I, I think Cicero missed a, a small opportunity here. This, this entire section is, is obviously targeted at wealthy mansion owners, right?
I, I don't think you have to be rich to have an orderly house, even if you don't own it. You can, you can be poor and still have a clean house. Uh, I, I think that the point is more of a universal one than he, he makes it. Now, maybe you externals, if you are a mansion owner, than if you are renting a hovel in a skyscraper in downtown Rome that's going to be torched by the next fire that comes through anyway. But there's still a point that applies to everyone, right? There's still something that could have been said that we know. Cicero knows about it because he is familiar with poverty.
He's a new man himself. He talks earlier about the new man whose house became part of his campaign for consul. Well, Cicero had done something like that too, so he's aware of that and doesn't use it. And I think it's kind of a missed opportunity here. But we can reason out of it like we can assume the principles there.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Very good. Thanks.
Last chapter we'll cover in this episode is 141. Ethan, may I ask you to read that one, and I'll start the comments.
[00:19:43] Speaker D: To sum up, when undertaking any action, we must hold fast to three things.
First, impulse must obey reason.
Nothing is more suited to ensuring the observance of one's duties than that.
Secondly, we must keep in mind the importance of the thing we wish to achieve, so that we employ neither more nor less care and effort than the case requires.
The third thing is that we should be careful to moderate all things that may affect our appearance and standing as a gentleman.
The best limit, moreover, is to maintain seemliness itself, which we have discussed already, and not to step beyond it. However, of these three things, the most important is for impulse to obey reason.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Thank you. And this is a very short but fantastic summary chapter. And it proceeds very much like a lecturer or a teacher wrapping up a major unit. Three things to remember, in fact, the most important, if you remember nothing else, is to ensure that impulse and emotion obeys reason. So, general rules for life, right?
Moderation seems to be the sort of theme running through all of this. Make sure that you are able to control and moderate your desires and impulses according to reason.
The second piece of advice, keep in mind the importance of the thing you wish to achieve. Sounds to me like a variety of prudence, right? So that you don't care too much about unimportant things or too little about important things. So you could sort of moderate decide how far to push how much of yourself to give to a particular task.
And then this sort of direct appeal to seemliness. Pay attention to be moderate in all things that affect the outward signs, right? Whatever is going on inward, make sure you are attending to your public presence, not merely your sort of private inner virtue. And in all things, that's really just a recipe for seemliness then. And that sounds to me like as good a 10 line summary of this part of the book as we're likely to get.
Catherine, what do you think?
[00:22:01] Speaker A: It is a beautifully done conclusion. And you can see Cicero is always an orator as well as a philosopher here. And so you have that wrap up and we've returned again to that impulse following reason idea, where again, impulse is the Latin is appetitus, so appetite.
So it's not just our emotions but also our desires. What we hunger for metaphorically and literally must follow the thing that is the what the Romans would consider the higher thing, the reason itself, the thing that is human.
Sallust, who's a contemporary of Cicero's, talks about how everyone should strive as much as possible to be following the reason because that is what separates the humans from the animals. And he talks about how animals tend to look at the ground because they're four footed and man is the only creature that has been made to stand up straight and to look upward by the gods. And so here that same idea of following the reason and allowing what Plato calls the charioteer of the soul to rule the horses of the appetites
[00:23:35] Speaker B: to
[00:23:35] Speaker A: make that rule and reign perfect rather than just inverted where the appetite controls the reason.
[00:23:45] Speaker B: Coyle.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, I think with the four of us, Cicero is obviously speaking to a friendly audience, right?
If this podcast ever gets to cover Rousseau, we might have different things to say and impulse can dominate, but we're not there today. So I don't know that I have anything to add here either, other than I'm with Cicero on this one.
[00:24:07] Speaker D: I'll take a page from Coyle with my comment this time because I always emphasize the references to men of rank and gentlemen and of course it is essential for men of rank especially to be seemly because they are in the public eye and they have public responsibility to perform. But I think we can acknowledge that this is important for for anyone to be seemly, to be at least somewhat concerned with how you are seen with your reputation, because the willingness of other people to trust you and to work with you is going to depend on whether you have a decent reputation or not. And so all of this concern about how other people see us is important for anyone who has important business to do in the city. I would say
[00:25:06] Speaker B: I think here of if we try to generalize this, the principle to everybody, not just the prominent and the wealthy. I can think of the old I don't know if it's the status of a proverb, but the saying I've heard in several different contexts, nobody's so poor they can't pick up the trash in their yard, for crying out loud. So you can always sort of take some care. And that seems to It's a kind of social virtue. It seems to actually care about how I'm seen and it shows a certain level of character as well as sort of sociability.
So that brings us to the end of section 141, I think, the end of a long treatment on seemliness. We're going to look in the next episode at the topic of orderliness in all things.
So you've been listening to Cicero on Duties, a production of the Ciceronian Society. Please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. Thanks to my co hosts today and thanks thanks to you for watching. We'll see you next week. Goodbye.
