[00:00:09] Chris Anadale: Hello. Welcome to another episode of Cicero On Duties, where we are reading through all of De officiis with scholars of the Ciceronian Society. I'm Chris Anadale, and joining me this week are my co hosts Catherine Bradshaw of the Ancient Language Institute and Ethan Alexander Davy of Campbell University.
We have come as far as Chapter 71 in Book 2 of On Duties, and we're going to turn today to chapter 72.
Catherine, may I ask you to read chapters 72 and 73. And Ethan, take lead off. Comment, please.
[00:00:43] Katherine Bradshaw: All right.
I have now spoken about the sort of kind services that regard individuals. Next, I must discuss those that concern everyone and those that concern the nation. Of these, some are of such a kind as to concern all citizens and others as to affect only individuals. These are also more productive of gratitude.
Every possible effort should be made in both areas. One should consider the interests of individuals just as fully, but in such a way that the matter benefits or at least does not harm the Republic. The corn dole of Gaius Gracchus cost a great deal of money. Therefore he began to drain the treasury dry. More modest was that of Marcus Octavius. His could be borne by the Republic, and you could provide the need, and yet could provide the needs of the poorer classes. It was therefore healthy for both the citizens and the republic. The men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds on to what is his and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public acts.
Philippus acted perniciously in his tribunate in proposing an agrarian law, though when it was rejected, he accepted that readily and showed himself here extremely restrained.
But in promoting it, he said many things as a populares, including the wicked claim that there were not 2,000 men in the citizenship who possessed anything.
That speech deserved to lose him his civic rights, pointing as it did to an equalization of goods. What greater plague could there be than that for political communities and citizenships were constituted especially so that men could hold on to what was theirs? It may be true that nature first guided men to gather in groups, but it was in the hope of safeguarding their possessions that they sought protection in cities.
[00:02:34] Ethan Alexander-Davey: All right, so we're back to one of those really thorny issues that comes up a number of times in this book, the the distribution of property and property rights.
And he does say here that there are situations, there are cases where it is appropriate to distribute goods to the poor.
So he gives the example of the corn dole.
But if it is too lavish, then it will bankrupt the state.
So if there's going to be some kind of material welfare provision. It has to be consistent with what the finances of the state will support.
But then we get into the most thorny issue, and he's talked about this many times before, that things go wrong when we start whipping up a popular frenzy and envy of those who have little or no property against those who have it.
And then eventually, I think we get a reference again to the spear planted on someone's property and declaring that someone's property is now spoils of war to be redistributed.
So, on the one hand, certain kinds of sharing or redistribution are necessary and support the state. But the kind of redistribution that in effect robs Peter to pay Paul, that is the kind of thing that.
That is one of the most disruptive acts one can engage in. And he even says that the man who spoke as a popularis claiming that there was an inequality of property that had to be rectified, even speaking in those terms is incendiary and should not be permitted.
[00:04:29] Katherine Bradshaw: Yes, Ethan, this is definitely like one of the main issues for the ancient Romans, particularly.
So Philippus, the one that makes that incendiary speech later, actually retracts just about everything and ends up becoming more of a conservative. But the Gracchi are not.
I mean, Cicero's talked about them before. They're the ones who propose the agrarian laws and. And really get things going.
And of course, some trace kind of the fall of the Republic back to them that you're stirring up.
It's kind of like when Plato says, in an oligarchy, there are two states, not one.
And it's that same idea here, where you have two warring factions and they no longer are working for the good of the res publica, the good of all of them. They're saying my little group is important and at the expense of the other group.
[00:05:37] Chris Anadale: Yeah, well, Cicero certainly has plenty of examples in mind from very, very recent history. For him, the plundering of private property. So he seems to, as somebody who appeals to prudence, would give you the sort of reasons on both sides, right.
The poor do have to be fed. They do have to have their needs met. And there is an appropriate type of public political distribution of common property to that end, of course, with moderation and not too much, and not to bankrupt the state and not to encourage dependence or revolution and the like.
But then he gives us the sort of opposite pole, that between which we're trying to reach the prudential middle, which is that we must never seize private property for public benefit. That's just never permitted because private property is rooted in nature. He doesn't walk through the whole argument here, but he does remind us, and he's got, obviously very vividly in mind, that spear planted in front of. To indicate an auction of private goods that has to be seized and distributed for the benefit of the. Of the leader. This is clearly an abuse of the ability of the state to provide goods for the poor and for others.
So, of course, notice the way he does this.
Both gives something to both sides, but also the way that he absolutely insists upon the principle of people must be allowed to keep what is their own. That is the entire purpose of political society.
Catherine, you have any. Any further thoughts on this part?
[00:07:17] Katherine Bradshaw: Yes, and my apologies for getting mixed up the.
The.
I think that the best part of this is that he's going back to what is the purpose of society.
It's not just that this is inconvenient. It's not just that this is not advantageous. It's that it's wrong, because it goes against the very nature of society. What do we gather in cities for? It is to protect the property of everybody involved. And if we go against that, then, as you said, Chris, it just is against nature, which for Cicero, as a natural law guy, is going to be very, very important.
[00:07:59] Chris Anadale: Okay, Ethan, may I ask you to read next chapters 74 and 75, please?
And I'll do. First comment.
[00:08:13] Ethan Alexander-Davey: Our ancestors, because the treasury was depleted and there was continual warfare, often used to impose a property tax. But we must make an effort to avoid this and must provide long in advance so that it does not happen.
And if the necessity for such a burden does befall any nation, I prefer to say that than to speak forebodingly of our nation. For I am not discussing ours alone, but everyone.
Then every effort must be made so that all understand that if they want to be safe, they must comply with that necessity. Furthermore, all those who control public affairs ought to plan for there to be a plentiful supply of necessities. We need not discuss how these tend to be or ought to be acquired, for that is obvious enough. The topic had merely to be mentioned. The chief thing when undertaking any public business or public duty is that even the smallest suspicion of avarice should be expelled. Gaius Pontius the Samnite said, would that fortune had reserved me until the day when Rome had begun to accept bribes. Would that I had been born then. In that case, I should not have suffered their rule any longer.
And indeed he would have needed to wait many generations for Only now has that evil assailed our republic.
I am happy enough, therefore, that Pontius lived then, if he was indeed so mighty. A hundred and ten years have not yet passed since the carrying of Lucius Piso's bill to punish extortion. Previously there had been no such law, but there have been so many laws since, and even one harsher than the one before, and each one harsher than the one before. So many defendants, so many convicted. The Great Italian War was stirred up because of fear of the law courts. And when the laws and law courts were overturned, there was widespread pillaging and plundering of the Allies.
Consequently, we are strong only through the failings of others and not through our own virtue.
[00:10:14] Chris Anadale: Thank you. Yeah, I'm very interested to hear Catherine's perspective on the history of this tumultuous century, just before Cicero's writing and the affairs which he's drawing lessons from.
What I'm struck by from chapter 74, is that he talks about the need to avoid a property tax. We know how much people hate property taxes right now, don't we, folks? But as is noted, I think here in a footnote, and as people know, who know Roman history, the reason the Romans could do without property tax and taxes, internal taxes generally, is because they were able to live off of their. Their subjects, off of conquered peoples and the wealth that they're extracting from remoter parts of the empire.
So this feels a little bit iffy, both in a moral sense and also from the perspective of the kind of advice that it could offer for us. Could we go back to a situation in America where just the foreigners pay the taxes to us and we don't tax each other? All of that seems a little bit.
I don't want to say it's suspicion making for maybe the contemporary 21st century American that one ought to be suspicious of tax, one ought to be reluctant to impose taxes, but it seems that the life of empire not available to us. Although perhaps we might say in Cicero's defense, this is the way things are. And Cicero's very intent on living in and giving practical advice for living in the world as it is, not transforming it by some utopian scheme. So perhaps that's. That's what I can say in his defense. Catherine?
[00:11:50] Katherine Bradshaw: Yes, Chris, I think that's. I mean, that's kind of where we have to land with Cicero here is. Is he's. Because. Because this comes up in some of his legal cases as well, where he will address the equites who are the kind of tax collecting class that's where most of the tax collectors, if you're, if you're a Roman publicanus, that's where, that's where you're gonna come from. Is this like not the upper class that Cicero's in? Not the lower class. It's that middle equites class which he courts pretty hard in a lot of his cases because they're the jury.
And so you have this, this kind of moral.
It, it almost smacks of hypocrisy to us moderns that like it's okay to tax foreigners but not the Romans, which, that is the system that they have. And so Cicero is not one to go, okay, well the entire system has to be overworked and, and redone.
And therefore just we're going to do that.
He's actually one of his proudest accomplishments is defeating someone who decided to do that Catiline.
And so this is his way of working in the system that he's got.
His other big complaint here is bribery, particularly of electors, but just generally as well.
So the, the quote that he's giving of like, oh, if I'd only been around when the Romans took bribes is from the Samnite wars, which are like 4th century, early 3rd century B.C. so this is long before Cicero, but they, but Rome wins.
And later in what is more recent history for Cicero and Sallust talks about this. You have the war with Jugurtha, the African warlord. And this is when Rome has started to take bribes and he is able to bribe the Senate in order to rule in Jugurtha's favor. And Jugurtha says, hannah, he leaves Rome and he goes, ah, they're all for sale.
And that's how far they fall in a couple centuries.
And this is, this is Cicero's lament. This is one of the things that gets Caesar into power is he bribes all the electors. So this is so much a part of their culture, but it's one that Cicero and other moral thinkers like him are deploring and with good reason.
[00:14:33] Ethan Alexander-Davey: Obviously I can't top what Catherine has to say about the historical context here. So I'm going to try to draw parallels to our time.
So the idea of having the periphery of the empire pay for the citizens, you could say that the United States in a certain way perhaps practices something like that.
Especially most recently, how much of our finances are going to be paid by Venezuelan oil that we now have a share in.
And is that such a terrible thing? I don't know.
But also on the other point about taxation, right. So I think I've heard it said that perhaps this might be one of Cicero's blind spots. On the one hand, he makes this strong argument in defense of property rights.
There are some ways we can try to ameliorate the inequality of property. We have the dole for the poor and maybe if necessary, a property tax.
But the idea of redistributing property is something he wants to stay away from, and there might have been a case for some. So as Rome continued to conquer more and more territories, most of those territories ended up in the hands of the nobilis.
And could some of that land have been redistributed to the rest of the population? Might that have addressed some of the envy? Perhaps, but Cicero doesn't seem to want to consider that.
[00:16:23] Chris Anadale: Okay, thank you very much. We've got chapter 76 coming up. It's my turn to read. I'll read chapters 76 and 77 for Catherine's lead off comment.
Pana praises Africanus because he was uncorrupted by greed.
Why should he not praise him?
But there were other greater things about him. And praise for such incorruptibility belonged not only to the man, but also to his age.
When Paulus won possession of all the treasure of the Macedonians, a great quantity indeed, he brought into the treasury so much money that the booty of a single general put an end to all property taxes. But he took nothing to his own home except the everlasting remembrance of his name.
Africanus, emulating his father, was none the wealthier for his overthrow of Carthage. And one of his colleague as sensor, Lucius Mumius, was he a penny richer when he had raised to the ground that richest of cities?
He preferred to adorn not his house, but Italy.
Though by that very adornment of Italy, his own house, it seems to me, was ornamented the more.
No vice therefore, is more foul than avarice. To bring my discussion back to the point from where I digressed, particularly among leading men and those who control public affairs. For to use public affairs for one's profit is not only dishonorable, but criminal and wicked too.
Pythian Apollo pronounced that Sparta would not perish unless through avarice. The oracle seems to have been a prophecy, not only for the Spartans, but for all who wealthy peoples. There is nothing by which those in charge of public affairs can more easily endear themselves to the goodwill of the masses than by incorruptible abstemiousness.
[00:18:21] Katherine Bradshaw: All right, well, that's quite the sentence to end the section with.
I, I, I think, I think If Coyle were here, he might have something to say about that.
But it depends on. I think. I think we get back to. For Cicero, a lot of times it depends on is the people virtuous in order to fit what Cicero says?
If the people. If it's a virtuous mass, then, yes, incorruptibility will recommend someone to them.
If it's a mass full of vice, then it's an odd situation because there will be a liking for corruption as long as it benefits them, but a dislike of corruption in the abstract.
So, I mean, we still see this now with.
There's a dislike for graft as long as it doesn't benefit the individual who's talking.
And you. You see this in ancient Rome as well. There's. There's prosecutions for political corruption when it's advantageous to whoever is prosecuting and, and less. I mean, it's the, you know, for my. For my friends, mercy for my enemies, the law in, in ancient Rome. And that political philosophy definitely flourishes in Cicero's era.
But then also, I think it's an interesting observation that he says that Africanus, yes, was worthy of praise, but maybe not quite as much as Panaetius heaps upon him because he lived in virtuous times.
So there is an era.
I mean, it gets back to. I mean, I think it's CS Lewis who talks about how there's different eras and they have different vices that are sort of the reigning vice or the reigning virtue of that era. And one of the things about reading old books is they have different reigning vices and virtues, and so it's easier for us to see ours.
This is a similar idea for Cicero, that there's a reigning virtue of abstemiousness and goodness with money in that era. And so you have more virtue there in that way than you do in Cicero's era.
[00:20:54] Ethan Alexander-Davey: So for me, in these passages, I think it's much easier to defend Cicero's point. So we're talking about the war with Carthage, which was a deadly enemy, and Rome had to either fight them and defeat them or be defeated by them. So there wasn't much of a choice there. But having conquered their deadly enemy, Africanus used that wealth to adorn Italy. So that is what a virtuous statesman does with the spoils of war. He uses it to adorn his own country and not to enrich himself, but to make his own country richer and more beautiful. So I think on that argument is a lot easier to defend.
[00:21:49] Chris Anadale: Yeah, I think maybe we're Back here again to maybe the similarity or difference between Cicero's time and our own. I'd said earlier that I thought there's a certain kind of cynicism that's characteristic of our own time and our own attitude towards our ruling elites, where Cicero still seems to believe in the virtue of his people. And here he is again, sort of, you know, elevating and holding up, you know, who are the best among us. They're the ones who had all this wealth in their hands and kept none of it for themselves, preferring to adorn Italy and therefore adorning. This is the rhetorical twist, right? Therefore adorning their own reputations, earning the praise and of the eloquence of Cicero now, you know, preserved for eternity. I would not have read the names of these men out loud ever in my life, except that their virtue so impressed Cicero and his words and his eloquence so impressed history, that this text has come down to us now, you know, millennia later.
So here's the place where the, you know, again, the last sentence of the chapter is the kind of meaningful one. There is nothing that those in charge of public affairs can more easily do to endear themselves to the goodwill of the masses. How do you earn their masses? Not by bribing them, not by putting on great spectacles, not by promising them advantage. Remember, those are all the sort of most deplorable and maybe the weakest form of attraction, but by incorruptible abstemiousness. I love that pair of words the English translator has chosen, but by being absolutely above it all, connected to this kind of greatness, of spirit, right?
The vast wealth of Carthage, that's nothing to me. Take it, spend it on the.
Adorn Italy, build great buildings, do something for Rome, for the Imperium, for the people. And I, like Cincinnatus in a different context, will simply go back to my life. I don't care for those things that's not in important to me and everybody.
[00:23:46] Ethan Alexander-Davey: Wow.
[00:23:47] Chris Anadale: What a magnificent person. The greatest among us, the great Roman. Let his name redound forever. And so this is the kind of the uplifting speech that Cicero is giving us now in praise of virtue as being advantageous and winning immortality and winning all the advantage that would seem from a material sense to be given up by a man who refuses to keep maybe 5 or 10% of the net income from what he's plundered.
So does that bring us, I think, around to the final chapters for today? Catherine may ask you to read those chapters 78 and 79 and Ethan lead off comment for us, certainly those who
[00:24:30] Katherine Bradshaw: wish to present themselves as popularities
[00:24:35] Ethan Alexander-Davey: and
[00:24:35] Katherine Bradshaw: for that reason attempt agrarian legislation so that landlords are driven from their dwellings, or who think that debtors ought to be excused from the money that they owe are undermining the very foundations of the political community.
In the first place, concord, which cannot exist when money is taken from some and bestowed on others and secondly, fairness which utterly vanishes if everyone may not keep that which is his. For as I have said above, it is the proper function of a citizenship and a society to ensure for everyone a free and unworried guardianship of his possessions. Moreover, even when they ruin the community in this way, they do not actually achieve what they think they will achieve. That is, gratitude. For the man whose property has been stolen will be hostile, but the one to whom it has been given pretends that he did not want to receive it. And he hides his joy most of all when his debts are cancelled so that it is not obvious that he was insolvent.
The man who has been treated unjustly, however, remembers it. Indeed, he parades his anguish before him. Even if those who have been given things dishonestly are more numerous than those who have been unjustly deprived, they are not for that reason the more powerful.
For these things are judged not by number but by weight. Again, how can it be fair that when a piece of land has been owned for many years or even generations, a man who has none should take possession of it, while he that had it should lose it?
[00:26:06] Ethan Alexander-Davey: Back to our argument about property and this very thorny issue.
So he gives you two arguments. First, according to justice, right? And as we said before, this is the purpose of a political community, or one of the main purposes is to protect property. It is a question of justice that that which belongs to someone should stay in his possession.
But then we also have the prudential argument.
If you decide you're going to do it anyway, just consider the depth of resentment that it creates among those who have had their property, in effect stolen from them, and they will remember their anger more deeply than the people who benefit from the redistribution of wealth will remember any kind of gratitude that they might have for having received something so unjust as such.
But also the kind of thing that creates the worst kind of civic tension among citizens. When you rob Peter to pay Paul
[00:27:23] Chris Anadale: Absolutely. And I think here we see obviously that sort of the absolute rock solid principle, the purpose of politics is justice, which at its heart is each person has security in what is theirs. That's maybe the whole purpose and origin of the state, a state that violates that is just no good. It's turning against its very telos. But we have here, as you've said, Ethan, a kind of what I'd call observations in political psychology, like how do the people behave? Not perhaps how ought they behave if they were, if they were supremely virtuous in an ideal state. But they will be sullen and resentful. They will fail in their duty of gratitude. They will pretend if their debts are forgiven. And think about people with debt, student loan debt, he's suggesting if their debts are forgiven, they'll minimize it because they don't want to admit that they were that badly off, that they've received as great a boon and a benefit as they have because it would be humiliating. So there are all these, as you say, kind of prudential reasons or practical reasons to prefer to do the right thing, the good thing, the virtuous thing, and not to attempt this other thing, which is shameful in itself but also not going to be to your advantage anyway. So again we see the good and the useful align.
They're not pulling in opposite directions, as more modern thinkers might try to tell us. That seems to me to really be at the heart of Cicero's ethical message.
[00:28:53] Katherine Bradshaw: Yes, and we're going to, we're going to dive real deep into that in book three.
But the, the, the thing that interests me again, Chris, like you said, is the political psychology here because the, particularly the recipients.
And it goes back to the gratitude thing that we were talking about earlier in the, in the series of the, the one who is in good fortune doesn't want to offer gratitude. Similarly, the one who is in dire straits but receives debt cancellation or confiscated property knows that this is not a worthy thing to have received and therefore wants to get as far away from it as possible possible.
In the case of confiscated property, it becomes a well, I received it, but I didn't really want to.
I just took it because it was there.
And, and there is there underneath that. You can feel the kind of uncomfortable conscience pricking here of just like I probably shouldn't have this, so I'm going to dismiss it. So I can't show gratitude.
And then in the case of debt, it's a, it's a, it's a question of reputation again of because the Romans are an honor shame culture. So it's, it's shameful to be in so much debt that you need your debt forgiven for, for the Romans. And so if, if I acknowledge that I got my debts canceled.
That means I'm acknowledging that I was in debt in the first place, which would be very shameful.
So there are a lot of things that make gratitude impossible in this situation.
And then on top of that, you have the resentment, Ethan, that you were talking about. And so all of this is this nasty brew of lots of different vices that don't produce virtue. And then, of course, the leaders have been unjust, so you have more vice. And it's just this downward spiral that Cicero is kind of looking back and saying, okay, you know, this is. This is what happens. This is what has been proposed, and this is why it's. It undermines the entirety of the res publica of the Republic, not just the state, but the community and the trust that is in the community as well.
[00:31:24] Chris Anadale: It feels like there's a certain amount of I told you so coming in this part of Cicero's writing. Do you think that's right?
[00:31:31] Katherine Bradshaw: Yeah. Yeah. At least a little bit.
[00:31:35] Chris Anadale: Okay, well, thank you very much, Catherine. Ethan, anything to add?
[00:31:39] Ethan Alexander-Davey: I was just going to say, and it's interesting also that Machiavelli in the Discourses more or less agrees with Cicero, although he is more on the side of the populares than Cicero in general.
He remarks also in the Discourses, that the insistence on the redivision, redistribution of land was what ultimately led the Republic to ruin. So on that point, they were in agreement, it seems.
[00:32:13] Chris Anadale: Thanks very much. That brings us to the end of this episode of Cicero on Duties. I want to thank my co hosts, Catherine Bradshaw and Ethan Alexander Davy. This is the Cicero on Duty's podcast, a production of the Ciceronian Society. To learn more about us and our programming in support of civic and cultural renewal, please visit our
[email protected] thank you for watching today. Goodbye.
