Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Josh Bowman: Hello everyone. You're listening to On Duties with the Ciceronian Society. We are reading through Cicero's magnum opus, or at least his most seminal work, De Officiis, chapter by chapter, book by book. And I We know you're enjoying it because you're leaving some great comments. Want to encourage you to keep doing that and throughout all of this. As a reminder, we're bringing to bear the perspective of folks in Latin and the classics and history and philosophy and political science, as well as our Christian faith. We are Christians reading the classics in this podcast, and I'm so glad you have tuned in to read along with us. We're reading through the version of Cicero on Duties with the Cambridge Text and the History of Political Thought, so you can get that to read along with us. If you're just starting, make sure you go back to the first episode. We've started to put together some longer compilations so you can catch up with us. It won't be too hard at all, and I just want to I'm Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronian Society that puts this on. We're joined by Catherine Bradshaw with the Ancient Language Institute and Chris Anadale with Mount St. Mary's University.
I want to just tell you about a couple quick things. So we have our other podcast, the Sower. The deadline is passed for our spring conference, but for proposals. But it's not passed for registrations. Registrations are open for the next several months. That'll be in Virginia Beach March 11th through the 13th, so please register for that. It's going to be an amazing time. You can have conversations like this with us in person if you want. It'd be a little weird just to walk up to us with a copy of Cicero in your hand and just start chatting away about a chapter. But it's the we're just weird enough where that won't It'll work. Like we'll sit down with you.
We also have another conference, the Fall Symposium, October 22nd through the 24th in Holland, Michigan. The topic of that is Scholars and Educators in a Brave New World, focusing on higher education and Thoughts on that. Registration is open for that through October 5th, and the program is online. We also have a new event on civil discourse, very much related to Cicero's legacy, if you will. That's taking place in Scottsdale, Arizona, January 23rd and 24th. That's a free event if you can make it to Scottsdale. So take a look at our website to learn more about that. Without further ado, we're going to jump Right into book two of Cicero's On Duties. We're going to start at chapter 52. We're going to read. Catherine will start reading first. Then I'll offer the first comment. We'll go around the circle, and then I'll read, and then Chris will read, and so on as we go through. So, Catherine, if you could go ahead and start us off with chapter 52.
[00:02:46] Katherine Bradshaw: I have now explained such dutiful services of a young man as may be effective in securing glory.
Next, I must discuss beneficence and liberality.
There are two methods here. One may show kindness to the needy, either by personal services or by giving money. The latter is easier, especially for a wealthy man. The former, however, is both more brilliantly illustrious and more worthy of a brave and notable man. For both involve a liberal willingness to gratify others. But the one draws upon a money chest, the other upon one's virtue.
Again, gifts of money that come from personal wealth drain the very source of kindness.
Thus kindness is destroyed by kindness. For the more people that one has treated in that way, the less one is able to so to treat many others. If men are beneficent and liberal through services, that is, through virtue and diligence, then in the first place, the more men they benefit, the more helpers they will have in acting kindly. Secondly, the custom of being beneficent will make them the readier to deserve well of many and, so to speak, more practiced in it.
Philip does splendidly to accuse his son Alexander in a letter on the grounds that he has sought the goodwill of the Macedonians by gifts of money. What reason, he asked, led you, alas, to entertain the thought that men who you had corrupted with money would be faithful to you? Or are you trying to make the Macedonians hope that you will not be their king, but their servant and their provider.
Servant and provider was well said because it is degrading for a king. And it was better still to speak of gifts of money as a corrupting influence, for he who accepts them becomes a worse man, and the ready are always to expect the same.
Philip wrote that to his son, but we may well think it good advice for everyone.
[00:04:39] Josh Bowman: What a fantastic passage this is.
He is so ahead of his time.
Well, I don't know if he's ahead of his time as much as he is prescient here today, when we think of those who are in need or in poverty, there is a tendency to simply write a check. Let's solve everything by giving of resources. And I'm not going to discount that entirely. Sometimes that's exactly what is needed.
But overwhelmingly, poverty is a multifaceted, nuanced issue that policymakers, some economists and others are just so at pains to misunderstand.
Quite frankly, when we think of what causes poverty, what causes homelessness, what causes loneliness and other kinds of issues. It's not simply a matter of a lack of resources, though, again, that doesn't occur at times.
It's often a breakdown of relationships. It's often a breakdown of families and institutions and connection and education, or especially in the case of homelessness, significant mental illness.
And so there's Cicero sees these needs because in order to be beneficent, there needs to be someone in need, right? So Cicero just assumes someone is going to need your beneficent, your liberality.
Obviously, of course, in this time period, the overwhelming majority of people are not wealthy, right?
Wealth is not spread out, so there's always going to be a need to do something about it. And Cicero's like, look, don't lead with treasure, lead with virtue.
It's just such an insightful. Actually, I want to read it again. He says if men are beneficiate and liberal through services, that is, through virtue and diligence, then in the first place, the more men they benefit, the more helpers they will have in acting kindly.
So let me just stop there for a second. It means that when he's being beneficiate and helping people through relationships, through education, through friendship, right? Which of course a big theme for him, then you're not acquiring, as we'll go on with the passage by Alexander, you're not acquiring servants or sycophants, right? Or you're not becoming a servant to them in a way.
You're not so much buying their friendship, you're earning it in a way through virtue. You're inspiring virtue in them.
And he says, secondly, the custom of being beneficiate will make them the readier to deserve well of many and so to speak, more practiced in it.
I'm going to leave that one open for you all to comment. But where to deserve well of many? It's almost like he's the virtuous, the person who is serving others and being beneficient through service and love and friendship will actually make the object of your service make more worthy of receiving more of that. Right. You're transforming them with that love and affection. It's, it's, you know, this is, this is Christian in many ways.
It kind of goes back to something I said several episodes ago, where Martin Luther just Sees him at like, why can't Cicero be in heaven? Because he's almost there. And finally, the example he gives with Alexander, I think is so interesting. And it makes me think of. And Catherine, help me with this.
The, the Shakespeare play, is it Pericles of Athens or. No, Pericles of.
[00:08:18] Katherine Bradshaw: Timon of Athens.
[00:08:20] Josh Bowman: What?
[00:08:20] Katherine Bradshaw: Timon of Athens.
[00:08:22] Josh Bowman: I always said Timon, I guess because of the Lion King.
It's either that or the play called Pericles, the one where the guy, he's really beneficient to everybody, but then when he's in need, everyone ignores him. Is that.
[00:08:35] Katherine Bradshaw: Yeah, that's Timon. That's Timon.
[00:08:37] Josh Bowman: Okay. Timon. It's a miracle.
[00:08:39] Katherine Bradshaw: Which is based on Plutarch, interestingly enough.
[00:08:41] Josh Bowman: Is based on Plutarch, which is it based on Cicero? Anyways, the suggestion here is that, like, look, you're. This is where you're going to end up, Alexander, Philip of Macedon saying, you don't understand. You can't just bribe all these people.
And this is almost Machiavellian in a sense that like, well, Machiavelli is actually in some ways the opposite. He's like, no, you should buy them off, right, because they love property.
But this is quite true to both Philip and Cicero saying, look, you're. You think this is going to earn you friends or make them. Or make them more worthy of beneficence. It's not. It's going to do the opposite. You're going to become their slave and you are not going to actually be helping them. Anyways, I could go on about that, but I thought that example was absolutely brilliant.
So anyways, Chris, what are you thinking?
[00:09:28] Chris Anadale: Yeah, I noticed the same thing, that obviously comparing you can give money or you can give services, and giving services is superior.
I noted that he kind of lists four or five different defects or limitations of giving money. Right. It's easier. Yes, that's a point in its favor, but it's also limited.
It also, as a source of corruption in the powerful. And this example of Alexander especially brings out. It's also shameful for a person in authority to buy the loyalty of people in this way. And then he goes on further, it weakens the recipient instead of strengthening him.
And it is. Maybe if I can borrow, I'm not an economist, but borrow some economic language. It's a zero sum game. If I give money, I don't have the money anymore to help other people with. That money's been spent on whoever I've given it to. But if I, through my services, bring virtue to virtuous service to someone.
I not only have plenty more virtue still to go around at the end of the day, I inspire their imitation and their love, and I create helpers. So there's this kind of positive sum game where virtue begets virtue. And I'm thinking, listening to you talk, Josh, that perhaps one way to think about this is to add money to somebody's situation. To help them out, in a sense, is to do for them what you could do for any object, for any inanimate thing, which is to apply more resources plus sort of an additive adding resources or money to it, whereas to engage in service for someone using virtue, calling forth from them. Their virtue is a uniquely human type of service and donation and beneficence and liberality.
It engages the more human element in the giver, and it inspires a more human response in the receiver than simply the transfer of money from my bank account to your bank account, however simple that seems at first. So I thought that, as well as your idea, that he's very prescient in this sense, that he's seeing this same sort of division that we see in our own time, in our own way. So that's my take, Catherine, what's yours?
[00:11:45] Katherine Bradshaw: Yeah, both of you are bringing up points that I want to build on a little bit, because, Josh, you brought up friendship and that it seems like wealth will buy one friends. And of course, Philip of Macedon is very strident in his contradiction of this.
But I think this gets to a bit where in Chris, your point that virtue begets virtue, there's a sense in which this is Aristotelian in its feel, because we're talking about, going back to an earlier chapter where Cicero talks about the motivations for why the common people love someone.
And of course, the lowest reason is because they've received money.
And so you have this, if you're looking at it as friendship, you know, the buying of friends, that puts you in the useful friend category. For Aristotle, which is the lowest category and not the one that endures. It's the most temporary, it's the most fleeting, and it's the one where the relationship becomes, on the one hand, more defined because it's transactional, but on the other hand, less defined in terms of who's.
[00:13:03] Josh Bowman: Who's.
[00:13:03] Katherine Bradshaw: Who's.
Who's the master and who's the servant here for Alexander.
But then if you are serving someone else, you're raising the other person into at least the pleasant category, if not the virtue category. If you're calling out the virtue of the other person, then you are raising it into the virtue friendship territory because you're making each other better.
Now this obviously isn't just like just for the friend category, but it maps on nicely into Aristotle's categories. The other thing is that it's a force multiplier.
So service, where Cicero says that it someone gives, you know, brings himself many more helpers, the service is not just my service, but it's the service that I render to someone else, then enables him to render. Service to someone else enables him to render. And so it's this expanding network of helping that is not possible to do in the same way if it's just a monetary gift.
[00:14:18] Josh Bowman: This may seem a little gratuitous, but I think this gets a little bit to the heart of what the Cicerone society believes in the sense that if we love and serve and encourage and equip other scholars by means of our virtue primarily, I think this kind of force multiplier attitude is there and we will all become better scholars and thinkers and writers and students, all in community and friendship. Of course I'm not going to say that I'll feel loved if you give a tax deductible gift to the Ciceronean society today.
But again, I mean, that's not right.
We could have a million dollar endowment and be very much not virtuous. Right. So I don't want that to be the case either. So I think there's a lot to be said there. I also one of the things that came up when you guys were talking was I thought about how Christ says the poor you always have with you, which could be taken as like, well, I guess they're always going to be here. So, you know, what's the point in trying so hard? The other way to read that is you will always have this responsibility. You're never going to have an excuse. They're never. You're never going to completely eliminate poverty, but you're always going to need to be trying to lessen it, trying to make sure that there's someone, if there's someone in need, we as Christians should respond.
And I think the other thing that Cicero is getting at is that whatever this virtue of beneficiates and liberality are, it's not just the province of the wealthy to live it right, that everyone from the slave on up is responsible to live out this virtue. All right, with that, I want to read the next two paragraphs.
So we've already started chapter 54 where this is the second sentence of chapter 54.
There is no doubt, therefore, that the kindliness that consists of personal effort and diligence is more honorable and extends more widely and can benefit more people.
But sometimes one should give money. That type of kindness should not be entirely rejected. To suitable men who are in need, one should often give a share of one's wealth. But one should do so with care and moderation.
For many have squandered their patrimony by improvident gifts of money.
But what is more foolish than to ensure that you are no longer able to do the very thing that you enjoy doing?
Moreover, the giving of money brings robbery in its wake. For when men, because of their giving, begin to be in need themselves, they are forced to lay their hands on others goods. Consequently, although they wish to be beneficent for the sake of acquiring good will, they do not gain as much support from those to whom they have given as hatred have given as hatred from those from whom they have taken.
Therefore, one's personal wealth is not to be locked in such a way that kindness cannot open it, nor so unsecured that it is open to everyone.
Due limit should be observed, a limit determined with reference to one's capabilities. In sum, we should remember the phrase that has so often been employed by our countrymen that it has acquired the status of a proverb. Bounty has no bottom.
For what limit can there be when both those who are used to it and those who are not alike desire the same thing?
Chris?
[00:17:50] Chris Anadale: Yep, it's a great passage and really a guide for sort of rules for how to. How to give money when it is appropriate.
I was thinking, as you're reading this, Josh, about the contrast with Socrates, who maybe is the kind of person who squanders, who give, gives away his patrimony.
I don't know that he actually, I suppose I shouldn't say he spent it on political office, but a man certainly by the end of his life who is quite poor.
We have the example of the philosopher's poverty or the saint's poverty, the ascetic life, and this is very much not for Cicero, very much not the kind of life of the sort of gentleman, scholar, statesman that he's extolling to his son Marcus in this work and generally. But for a person like the kind of person who wants to be excellent in the way that Cicero is describing here. Well, one should, while recognizing that virtuous service is more honorable, extends more widely, so is more beneficial to everyone involved and to the whole.
One should give money. And then we get a lot of caution. This is again Sort of, you know, dad posting here, right? Cicero saying, well, you know, don't give away to anybody. Don't squander your inheritance so that you can no longer give. If you enjoy giving, make sure you give in such a way that you can do it sustainably over time.
What I noted here, see, he says to suitable men who are in need, right? So there has to be need. There also has to be. The person you're giving to has to be a suitable sort of person, the sort of person who can, we might say, benefit from your gift. So don't give in such a way or to such a person that the gift harms or does no good.
And then he gives the example of robbery. All these things that I'm thinking to myself, you wouldn't have to worry about that if you followed the path of virtuous poverty. But this is virtuous giving, virtuous liberality. This is the way in which you try to give out of your personal wealth. And maybe the most fatherly bit of advice here is at the start of chapter 55, one's personal wealth should not be locked up in such a way that no kindness can open it, but it should also not be so unsecured that you just give it away freely to anyone. So be prudent, be wise, observe due limit and moderation in this specific way, and then you'll do the sort of lesser of the two kinds of liberality, which is financial liberality, properly and well and sustainably as part of an overall excellent life, which presumably includes a great deal more virtuous service in addition to financial giving.
[00:20:26] Katherine Bradshaw: Yes, and there's several different things here that are worth noting, but there's.
I want to go to this little proverb kind of at the end here.
Bounty has no bottom in Latin. This is a pun because the word for bottom here is fundum, which means, yes, the bottom, like the bottom of a chest, but it also.
Like a treasure chest, but it also means foundation.
So lavish giving. Bounty is kind of an almost misleading word to translate this, this idea with, because it's, it's.
[00:21:10] Josh Bowman: It's a.
[00:21:11] Katherine Bradshaw: It's a different.
The word in, in Latin is more like largitio, which has more the sense of lavish giving.
So it's not just bounty, it has this sense of like, being lavish about it in, in and of itself. And of course, as in English, lavish has this sense of almost extravagance and too. Almost too much.
So extravagance has no bottom, as in it. It doesn't have a stopping point, but it also doesn't have a foundation. It's not. It's not well founded. It will topple eventually.
And so there's the idea of giving to the proper people at the proper time, in the proper way, to the proper degree, because prudence and moderation, which, again, as you said about something earlier, Josh, is a Christian principle in the sense of, you look at St. Paul saying, Honor the, you know, support the widows who are widows. Indeed, if they have someone else who can support them, then that family member needs to support them, not the church, in order that the church can give to the widows who have nobody.
So it's a similar principle of being prudent about the recipient in order that one may give continuously and not run out prematurely, and because of foolishness rather than just because of other reasons.
[00:22:48] Josh Bowman: Yeah, I won't add a ton here.
I read a book a couple months ago. I don't know if I mentioned it or at least part of the book. It's called through the Eye of the Needle by Peter Brown, who's an early church historian. And it's about the challenge that wealth and the question of wealth presented for the early church.
So. So Cicero's writing at a time right where the Roman Republic is falling, but it's still. I mean, there's still plenty of wealth to go around to a point.
It's about to get a little weird, but I'm not, I'm not an ancient economist, but.
And so he's. He wants this balance, right? Don't, don't give everything away. Like, what in the world would you do that for? But don't, don't be so stingy. Don't be, you know, you don't want to hold everything back. You want to be kind.
The early church is going to go through a struggle shortly after this, especially over the next 300 years, where they're like, well, poverty seems to be part of the life of Jesus. For example, I don't think Jesus, in the time of the Incarnation, he's not born to a wealthy family. He does not acquire material wealth in the time between his birth and the resurrection.
Although I certainly would never. To call Jesus poor almost seems crazy, right? When you think of he is God, but at the same time, he as. As a human being living on earth, he is not wealthy by human standards.
And the early church is going to take this very seriously. The suspicion of wealth, the suspicion of being rich as being so powerfully corrupting of the human soul that you're going to see these moments of wealthy Romans who just give everything away and become Christians, right?
Early saints who take vows of poverty or the desert fathers, etc. But they're also going to run into this weird thing where they're like, well, crap, now we're in charge. Now we're not persecuted. Now we can have businesses. Now we can make money. Now we need leaders who can read and write because we have public churches. We're part of the governing. What are we going to do?
Do we keep the wealthy out?
And they give a lot of different answers to this. I encourage you to read the book. It's really interesting. But I think Cicero would appreciate this problem that the early church faces after Constantine in particular, where he's like, look, he would probably say, you're going to need some wealthy people who don't give everything away, but who are willing to, always willing to.
Because it's often, especially in ancient times, the wealthy are the ones who can read and write.
Not always, but sometimes, you know, at least the men.
Sometimes they're the ones who have the administrative experience. They're the ones who understand the economics. They're the ones who understand, you know, geopolitics in the ancient world is kind of a complicated term given the lack of, you know, But I mean, that's a real thing, right? With the roads and things like that. But I don't want to belabor this point too much, but I. I just think it's interesting that Cicero in some ways is unintentionally and indirectly speaking to this. It'd be curious to me how Augustine reads this part of Cicero.
I don't remember enough to know that. But, you know, hey, if you're listening and you know where Augustine addresses this, put it in the comments. We'd love to hear more.
So for the next passage, I think we're headed to Catherine, right?
[00:26:05] Chris Anadale: No, it's me.
In general, there are two kinds of men who give amply. The one extravagant and the other liberal.
The extravagant, with their banquets, their public distributions of meat, their gladiatorial performances, their spectacular provisions of games and of wild animals in combat, pour out their money on things for which they will be remembered briefly, if at all.
The liberal, however, out of their resources, ransom captives from bandits, or assume their friend's debts, or help them to finance their daughter's marriages, or give them assistance in acquiring or enlarging their property.
I wonder, therefore, what could have been in Theophrastus's mind when he wrote in his book on riches, which contains much that is splendid, something as absurd as the following, he is expansive in his praise of the personal provision of magnificent public events, and he considers the harvest of riches to lie in having the resources and for such expenditure. To me, however, it seems that the fruit of liberality, of which I have given a few examples, is much greater and much more certain.
Aristotle speaks with far more weight and truth when he reprimands us for not being amazed at such squandering of money, the purpose of which is to soothe the masses.
If those who are under siege from an enemy are forced to buy water at one mina a pint, at first that seems unbelievable to us, and everyone is surprised, but when they think more about it, they grant that necessity may excuse it.
With regard to this enormous wastage and endless expense, however, we are not greatly surprised, and that though it serves no necessity and enhances no one's standing, indeed, though the very delight of the masses lasts for but a brief and paltry moment, and though that delight belongs only to the most frivolous, for whom the moment that their satiety dies, so does the very memory of their pleasure.
His conclusion is also a good one. Those things are gratifying to boys and to weak women, to slaves and to those free men that are most like slaves. But a serious man who weighs them with steady judgment, who weighs with steady judgment what is done, cannot in any way approve of them.
[00:28:44] Katherine Bradshaw: Well, this one is full, as are all the sections. But here we get into a very fraught issue for the ancient Romans, because the way that their electoral system works involves a lot of public expenditure.
But public expenditure goes to a lot of times, these spectacles, it goes to gladiatorial shows, it goes to feasts that are public. Like there's a big sacrifice and everyone gets meat, which is very expensive in the ancient world. And so basically, if you're going to have meat, it's part of a community sacrificial ceremony, because, I mean, it's your cow otherwise. And your cow also is used for plowing the field or something like that. So those sorts of expenditures. Cicero knows well that those are the ways that you get votes, particularly if you're in certain positions. He's going to talk about that in the upcoming sections, but he also has just said that giving money and everything is the sordidissima, the least, the dirtiest, the most low way of getting the public to love you. And so he's in this kind of Almost a catch 22 position where he's backed himself into a bit of a corner here.
And so this is how he is Working up to getting out of said corner.
But he has to set up what his whole case is.
And as we see here, there's. There's a couple. There's several different opinions where Theophrastus says, oh, no, it's great to give public spectacles. And Aristotle says, no, this is a terrible idea because the public just forgets about it as soon as it's done and just wants another one.
So, again, lavish giving has no bottom here.
[00:30:50] Josh Bowman: Yeah, I don't have a ton to add to that. This, this, this passage is quite straightforward. I do. I wonder. And maybe. Actually I'm going to pose this question back to Catherine.
This use of the word liberal to me is interesting because. I mean, especially because in our modern times, it's such an abused word in the sense that what the crap does it mean half the time? To me, it seems to me that a liberal person is someone who is virtuous in their generosity and their affection for others and helping others.
That, that is what.
It's not squandering. It's not extravagance.
He's very deliberately.
It's not stinginess. Right. It's not greedy.
But to be liberal is to be prudent and wise in this. So just to go back to you, Catherine, what's the Latin here?
[00:31:46] Katherine Bradshaw: The Latin is liberalis, which is why it's translated as liberal. It's just a cognate.
Liberalis has a bunch of different meanings in Latin that range from free.
You can hear the liberty root there. But what Cicero is using here is something more like bountiful, generous, munificent, something like that.
[00:32:11] Josh Bowman: Okay, that's interesting.
[00:32:13] Chris Anadale: What's the word for extravagance again?
[00:32:16] Katherine Bradshaw: Extravagant is. Well, so there's largitio, which is more like lavish giving, which is what you saw. Yeah, so it's that same. It's that same root, but it's to give abundantly, generously.
But the word for extravagant that he has here in this section is actually prodigus, which is a different one.
And that one, I'm just making sure that one is actually negative. So largitium can be. Largitio can be like positive, like positive or negative. But prodigus is wasteful, prodigal, lavish, something like that. It's often negative.
[00:33:00] Chris Anadale: Wow.
[00:33:02] Josh Bowman: I mean, to me, it's just, it's so interesting. I mean, it just, it goes back to the, the value.
If I can make a plug for Ancient Language Institute on. You know, this is not sponsored by the Ancient Language Institute, but there is the richness of what you're reading. When you know the Latin, right? When you know the original language in which you're reading. I mean, it's one of my great. I don't know, great desires in life is. I wish I had the time not only to know Latin better, but to know Greek and Hebrew, which I've never studied. To read the Bible, for example. There's so much more richness there.
But this notion on spectacle and just overdoing it, I think is really interesting.
There's not a lot of virtue in it, of course. It's wastage and endless expense. However, we are not greatly surprised. And that though it serves no necessity and enhances no one's standing, indeed, though the very delight of the masses last but for a brief and paltry moment, and through that delight belongs only to the most frivolous, for whom the moment at their satiety dies, so does the very memory of their pleasure.
You know, it's. It's kind of a therapeutic.
It's not. It's extravagance in the sense that we're gonna. We're gonna make you happy for like five seconds.
You're gonna love it, it's gonna be great, but you're gonna forget about it, right?
Who knows how many times this actually happened.
Actually, one example that comes to mind. I'm not going to get this story exactly right.
When Andrew Jackson's elected president the first time, everyone wants to, like, look at him, right? Because at the time in the 18th, in the 19th century, it wasn't super hard to get access to the White House.
Well, and again, I don't even know if this has a point, but I think it's just in terms of giving the spectacle and the satisfying you for the masses for a moment, the way he gets them out of the White House, because it becomes a security issue. There's too many people in there. Dude's already been shot. You know how many times at this point he says, they bring a bunch of whiskey and they just put it in the yard outside, and that's how all the people get out. Like, here's a bunch of. Look, just drink yourself out of the White House.
And so we can move on with American history.
But that's one of those things that came to mind.
But again, I don't want to belabor the point. I just think it's. It's really interesting how Cicero is also very directly criticizing many of his contemporaries. And he's only going to get more prescient, right? This is how the Emperors are going to rule, right? This is how they're going to rule and keep their rule.
Maybe less so. Caesar Augustus, I'm not going to defend him entirely, but certainly there are others later on who their entire shtick, if you will, is. I love this line. It's from the movie the Gladiator. He'll give them death and they'll love him for it. When they're talking about Comedist, right? The guy who plays the, the emperor in that movie where Derek Jacoby, amazing actor, is basically saying, like this emperor, he's crazy, but he's brilliant in this.
The, the, the Coliseum is what moves the mob, right?
And the, the unfortunate reality is that that is very powerful, even if it's fleeting for the moment. When you entertain the masses, it can give you a lot of power. Anyways, I don't want to belabor that point because we have some. A lot more to cover.
[00:36:19] Chris Anadale: Well, I'll just add one little comment for this section. Was noting here that Cicero's contrasting extravagance with liberality. Extravagance bad, liberality good. And I think we might be tempted from our perspective, to think initially in terms of public versus private expenditure of funds. Well, is this tax money that he's spending, is it the state's money, is it the people's money? Or is it his own private money? But it seems that he's talking here instead of people who spend out of their own sort of personal stock. Of course, by the time you get sort of Sulla and Caesar appropriating private property for themselves, it gets a little bit blurred. But what he's praising really is the use of people who out of their own resources will ransom captives, assume debts for friends, be immensely generous in our own day as well, provide dowries, help them to acquire or enlarge their property. All those things are useful and beneficial to individuals. In contrast, the kind of flash in the pan, the sort of flash paper you light the. Well, we saw a spectacle with a tiger fighting an elephant. Wasn't that great?
And it's over, it's gone. So all the expense, all of that has a kind of frivolity to it and the kind of people it pleases, the kind of people it buys the support of. And by the end of this section, he's really piling on the epithets, the criticism, the sneering, even perhaps some of the justified, frivolous people, the moment they're satiated, they've forgotten even that it was there. So it's not even like it's a lasting comfort or happiness or satisfaction, it slips the memory. And they're asking, what are you giving to me next? Right, so there's an implicit critique of the mob here. And this last line that we read here, this is these things, please, boys, weak women, slaves, the slavish minded. But the serious man, like you, Marcus, like us, like the gentleman statesman that we're sort of praising here and elaborating a rule of life for who weighs with steady judgment, can't approve of this kind of thing. This is just absolute waste of money. And it's kind of beneath a bit like the way that buying the loyalty of people with money should be beneath young Alexander. It should be beneath all of us to imagine that this kind of expenditure, which he does say earlier on, raises no one's standing right. Does he say that as well, that it doesn't, doesn't actually improve anybody's reputation even because the people forget about it as soon as they've, as soon as they've consumed it. So that's, that's my comment.
We've been going on for about 40 minutes now, so perhaps it's time to wrap up this episode and we'll turn to the next chapters of book two in the next episode. So I'll thank again my co hosts Josh Bowman and Katherine Bradshaw for joining me here for this episode of On Duties, a podcast of the Ciceronian Society. To learn more about the Ciceronian Society and our many events coming up, as well as several podcasts, please go to our website, ciceroniansociety.org thank you for watching today. Goodbye,
[00:39:35] Josh Bowman: Sam.
