Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the On Duties podcast with the Ciceronean Society. I'm Josh Bowman, executive director of the Ciceronean Society. I'm joined by my friends Catherine Bradshaw with the Ancient Language Institute and Chris Anadale of Mount St. Mary's University. We're so glad you're joining us on this adventure through Cicero's On Duties, his most influential work and arguably his most widely read throughout history, incredibly important text that is unfortunately under read in our present time. So we're glad you're joining us. We're reading from the Cambridge text in the History of Political Thought edition, and that translation in particular. Speaking of translations, back in episode three, we came to chapter one, I mean book one, chapter 13.
And I'm just going to read this in English.
The passage we came to on the top of page seven, it says, consequently, Cicero says, we understand that what is true, simple and pure, is most fitted to the nature of man. In addition to this desire for seeing the truth, there is a kind of impulse towards preeminence, so that a spirit that is well trained by nature will not be willing to obey for its own benefit. Someone whose advice is teaching and commands are not just and lawful. Greatness of spirit and a disdain for human things arise as a result. You may recall back in that episode, and this is before we get into chapter 38 here shortly back in that episode, I was, I asked the question about what the translation there is, because is he essentially kind of taking a Platonic, at least in one way to read Plato, disdain for or contempt for physical things, for history, for time, for the imminent. The particular right. Is that where he's going with this? My suspicion is that that's not the case. But we have Catherine with us who knows how to speak Latin. And so I'm wondering, Catherine, now that we have you here, can you go back to that translation and tell us what does he mean by disdain in this case?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Sure. So I'm.
And for our listeners, I'm looking at the Loeb Classical Library edition of On Duties that has the Latin in it. So the word that gets translated as disdain in the Cambridge is contempt.
And that word, I'm sorry, Catherine, could.
[00:02:27] Speaker C: You say it again? I think your video froze just a moment. The Latin is what?
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So the word is contemptio.
And that word is, has a range of meaning that goes from despising, disregard, contempt, scorn, disdain. So any of those is a perfectly acceptable translation.
But contextually here, because he talks about greatness of spirit or greatness of soul, it's Magnitudo animi in the. In the Latin.
I would be inclined to say that this is about.
The disdain or scorn is more in the sense of not valuing it highly. It's not a Platonic, oh, the material is not to be. Is to be rejected completely. It's more that the person with a great soul will not consider the things that are physical or this worldly to be the highest good, and so will find glory and honor and doing the right thing, higher priorities than his own wealth or prosperity.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's such a. It's a limitation of the English language that we don't necessarily make that distinction. I mean, you were saying earlier that just like the passage. And again, I can't remember where this is either. The bad Protestant I am, where Jesus says, unless you hate your father and mother, you know, he doesn't mean literally hate your father and mother. But in English, that's our best translation.
It's something similar to this, where it's like, look.
And this, this is certainly a Christian view that we, We. We. Sure. We love our mother and father. We're told to honor your father and mother. Right.
But not above and beyond our Lord. Right. There is something to be said there. So. Well, I don't want to dwell on that too much, but I just want to encourage our listeners and viewers and, you know, whenever you run into questions about the translation or about how we're looking at that, please go ahead and comment down below.
We love those questions. Those are interesting. And as long as, you know, Catherine's around, we'll be able to answer them. Chris and I cannot do so. So. But we will. We will lean on her as we have many times before.
All right, Chris, if you could. We're going to start back up in this episode. This is episode eight, and we are going to start at chapter 38, book one of Cicero, on duties. If you could go ahead and read that, Chris.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:04:57] Speaker C: We're at the bottom of page 16 of the Cambridge version.
When then we are fighting for empire and seeking glory through warfare, those grounds that I mentioned a little above as just grounds for war should be wholly present.
But wars in which the goal is the glory of empire are. Are waged less bitterly.
For just as in civilian matters, we may compete in one way with an enemy, in another with a rival. For the latter contest is for honor and standing, the former for one's civic life or reputation.
Similarly, the wars against the Celtiberi and the Cimbri were waged with enemies.
The question was not who would rule, but who would exist with the Latins, Sabini, Samnites, Carthaginians and Pyrrhus, on the other hand, the dispute was over empire. The Carthaginians were breakers of truces and Hannibal was cruel, but the others were more just.
Indeed, Pyrrhus's words about the returning of the captives were splendid.
And this is a long block quote.
My demand is not for gold, nor shall you give me a price. Let us each determine our lives by iron, not by gold, not by selling, but by fighting war. Let us test by our virtue whether Mistress Fortune wishes you or me to reign, or what she may bring.
Hear these words too. If the fortune of war spares the virtue of any, take it as certain that I shall spare them their liberty. Take them as a gift, and I give them with the will of the great gods.
That is certainly the view of a king and one worthy of the race of the Achaeidae.
I'm sorry, Acidae.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: Well, how are you supposed to say it? Catherine?
[00:06:57] Speaker A: Ayakadai.
Wow.
[00:06:59] Speaker C: Ayakadai. Thank you.
[00:07:01] Speaker B: You weren't even close.
[00:07:02] Speaker C: Nope.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: There are many ways to pronounce things.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: Yeah, that's not how I would have. That's not how I would have pronounced it either. Chris.
That was great.
I. I am.
Yeah. So again, I. I think this, this, this makes me think back to our. Our previous episode about how when the Romans went to war, again, it was just a formality, but historically when they went to war, they would rely on the priest to essentially give the. The enemy, the. Those who you're about to attack or, or defend yourself against, a chance to, to talk it out. And if they didn't, you. You could go to war. So there, there was a religious aspect to the battle. And this makes a distinction, if I'm understanding it right, and I'm not sure I am, there's wars for glory.
And I wonder about the use of the word empire here. That's an interesting choice.
Wars for glory and who's going to rule and wars for survival. It's one thing to decide who's going to be in charge now and another thing to say who's going to. Not who's going to exist after this, because back then, you know, they don't have this concept of sovereignty.
They don't have a concept of, as far as I can understand, I guess, the way we think of, you know, states and nations as having sovereignty and borders and things like that. And so how do you determine who's in charge over this particular geographic area.
It's essentially the will of the stronger or the will of the smarter. And the gods, because they're overseeing these battles, will make sense of that. And so that distinction has to be weird to the modern reader. It's like we, if, you know, we're just. I hate to bring this example because it's so stupid, but if the United States and Canada wanted to fight it out, you know, just to see who's going to be in charge of North America, that might make sense to a Roman audience. Because it's like, well, the gods will, you know, will decide who's going to be in charge of North America through that battle.
We would rightly think that's insane today, but back then there is a concept in which, look, it's almost, it's almost like animals and mating rituals, right? Like, who's going to be in charge of all the women in this harem? That's a really weird example, but that's also what I had in mind thinking here.
This is random. I had in mind a nature documentary I saw recently with walruses. So right now in my mind, the Roman army, the Roman Empire is a walrus.
Take that for what you will, listener. Take that fortune. This is, this is the, the high quality content you tune into the Ciceronean Society for. All right, so Chris, why don't we go back to you. Save me from my, my immaturity here. How do you look at this particular passage?
[00:09:57] Speaker C: Well, I do wonder, maybe there's a historical question here about whether Sisera regards republic and empire as being incompatible. Because he's speaking about wars for empire and he's speaking about the sort of the past, some past battles as well.
But he is making a distinction between existential warfare and warfare for glory, for love of fighting, for advantage, for utilitarian purposes. Differences between who will rule, which has more the character, kind of a domestic conflict, we might say, in terms of our own politics, and who will live, who will survive, right? So wars that might end in the extermination or the subjugation or absorption of an entire people.
And his suggestion is for these latter kind of wars, you still have to have all the conditions for a just war, right? Including the expectation of a just peace.
Wars for the glory of empire are, he says, are waged less bitterly. And I was expecting a normative word there, I was expecting him to say they should be waged less bitterly. But he seems to phrase it here just as a descriptive fact. If we're fighting for empire, look, we're not willing to Go all the way to the wall for this. We're not willing to kill and to be killed, you know, in extreme numbers.
It's more like a rivalry.
But he does plainly leave room for wars of extermination, of which there are some, you know, in living memory, in historical memory at his time.
So he's not ruling out certain kinds of extremes of warfare, it seems.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Catherine, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. And also the translation of empire. Does that make sense?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
So imperium, which is the word that he's using, is where we get our word empire. But for the Romans, up until really we start having official emperors, so not even Augustus, we're talking post Augustus.
Imperium just means authority over something, dominion, command, control, the right or power of something. We even would say sovereignty, perhaps.
Okay, so the. The idea of a republic having an imperium is completely normal.
Even generals are given imperium over their soldiers.
That's why they're called imperatores. They're called, so commanders.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: Is there. Is there a relationship between that?
I don't know if there's an etymological one. It doesn't look like it. But the way you just described imperium almost sounded to me like the whole idea of apartrophomelius, of. Of the. Of ancient Rome. Right. Is it. You can. Rather than becoming a paterfamilias, simply biologically or through adoption or something, or marriage, you become kind of the paterfamilias of a given area by winning this war for glory.
Is that taking it too far?
[00:13:02] Speaker A: It's a little different because the paterfamilias, the head of household has what's called the patria potestas. He has the paternal power.
So that's. That's power.
Like, it's a slightly different word. Imperium is. Is a. Is usually a military command. So there's a. There's a sense of power, but it's power that has kind of a military force behind it. Whereas patria potestas, there is some element of violence in there, at least early on, but eventually it just becomes, well, the pot. The pater familias is the. The decision maker and head of household.
So slightly different.
But the.
The interesting thing with. With Cicero here is he says that the.
The wars he picks as examples are kind of surprising for these categories, the Kimberi and the Celtiberi, those. Those make sense. Those are wars of survival in the Roman mind.
But the fact that he puts the Carthage, the punic wars in war for empire, territory instead of war for survival. Territory is interesting because it shows kind of a disconnect between his view of that war and possibly Cato the Elder, the guy who said Carthago Delenda, Esther.
His view, because there is a sense in which Hannibal was an existential threat to Rome.
So it's odd that he puts Hannibal there. It seems like he's putting Hannibal there to kind of make a bigger distinction between Hannibal and Pyrrhus, the guy that is quoted so extensively here, because Pyrrhus was a noble enemy and Hannibal was a cruel enemy.
And the Carthaginians are so notorious for breaking treaties that there's actually a proverb in Rome, punica fides, Punic trustworthiness, which means treachery.
[00:15:06] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I'll just note that he had said previously at the end of the war, you spare the enemies who were not cruel during the war. He's thinking plainly, I think, of examples like that. The Carthaginians, look, they were cruel. They crossed the line. That's it for them. No mercy for them.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: Right?
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's really. I mean, think thinking of. Of. Of act actions in war and thinking of what comes next. I mean, there is a sense in which, strategically, you want to. If you. If I survive this. This fight, I want to be treated well. Right. If. If I'm going to be a pow, I want to make sure that I'm.
That they at least feed me. Which is. Which is interesting.
Again, it kind of goes back to. I can't remember if it was this episode or last one, about Cicero favoring a just peace as. As in addition to a just war.
So if y' all are ready, why don't we move on to chapter 39. And, Catherine, could you read that for us?
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Certainly.
If any individuals have been constrained by circumstance to promise anything to an enemy, they must keep faith even in that.
Indeed, Regulus did so when he was captured by the Carthaginians in the First Punic War and was sent to Rome for the purpose of arranging an exchange of captives, having vowed that he would return, for first of all upon his arrival, he proposed in the Senate that the captives should not be returned. And then when his friends and relatives were trying to keep him, he preferred to go back to his punishment than to break the faith he had given to the enemy.
[00:16:47] Speaker C: All right.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: It'S like, even if you have to make a promise under duress, essentially, you got to keep it.
And he gives this example of Regulus, I don't know.
So he proposed in the Senate that the captive should not be returned. And then when his friends and relatives were trying to keep him, he preferred to go back to his punishment than to break the faith he had given to an enemy.
That's just really interesting. It's like you have to keep your promise when you could have escaped.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: There's other stories of this in the ancient world.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: I think this is the most famous.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: In the Roman world, at least. And this is one of my favorites as the Roman exemplum or example of.
Of this idea, because Regulus, so Cicero before said that we should not keep promises if they harm the person we promised to or if they harm us way more than they harm someone else.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:56] Speaker C: That was back in chapter 32. We spoke about that. Yeah.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Right.
But Regulus is not an example of this. Regulus is the commander of the Roman forces for this particular battle that he lost and is told by the Carthaginians, you have to negotiate a prisoner exchange or we will, and you must come back if you don't.
And so actually a lot of Romans say, this is a promise distracted by force. You don't have to abide by it. And Regulus says, no, this is my honor. I'm going to go back. I'm going to do this. And he dies by sleep deprivation because the Carthaginians basically torture him to death when he gets back. And he knows that. He knows what the Carthaginians are like and he goes back anyway.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: So does he go back for the sake of honor? He feels that he has given his word. He, as an honorable man, now has this officium to. Even to the enemy not extracted under force.
[00:18:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Or torment. Not because it's disadvantageous. Is this a matter of the duty of honor trumping the base duty, that sort of the more basic level duty that we'd spoken about back in chapter 32.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: I think this is also partially because he is a commander. He has the imperium. And so as that he is a representative of the Roman people. And so I think it's more than just personal. He feels the weight of the entire Roman people on his shoulders is the sense that I get from various tellings of the story.
[00:19:28] Speaker C: Okay, well, he also advises the Senate not to do the prisoner exchange which would save his life. He puts the national interest over his own survival and then walks back into certain death for the sake of honor. I can see why this is so memorable and so admirable for and among the Romans and their fans.
[00:19:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Particularly since he is young. He's older, and the prisoners are young. That's why he says you should not make the exchange. Because I'm. I only have a few years left, and these are very able men who will fight against Rome later.
Sorry, Josh.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: No, you're fine.
It's a really, really interesting example. And also because, you know, Cicero, you know, way.
Several episodes ago, we discussed how Cicero is trying to make distinctions between what is honorable and dishonorable, but also what is beneficial and not beneficial.
So in this sense, Regulus is not doing something that's beneficial to him.
In. In one sense. Right. I mean, but he certainly is doing something that's beneficial to the people of Rome so that they.
Yeah, I mean, it's. It's. It's striking, but it's. In that. In that sense, Cicero is saying, like, look, we honor this man because he. He chose what is honorable and he chose what is beneficial. Maybe not to himself, but to.
To the. To. To the Republic. That's what. What makes him. What makes him different.
[00:20:55] Speaker C: A true patriot. Right.
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Why don't we move on to chapter 40?
Chris, if you could read that.
Actually, just read to the end of that, the. The paragraph that starts chapter 41.
[00:21:10] Speaker C: Sure will. That's to the end of Enough about the Duties of war.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: Yeah, that one.
[00:21:14] Speaker C: Yep, you got it.
In the Second Punic War, after the battle of Cannae, Hannibal sent to Rome ten men bound by a solemn oath that they would return if they did not succeed in arranging for those whom the Romans had captured to be ransomed.
The censors disenfranchised all of them for the rest of their lives on the grounds that they had broken their oath.
They treated similarly one of them who incurred blame by fraudulently evading his solemn oath. For after leaving the camp with Hannibal's permission, he returned a little later saying that he had forgotten something or other. He then considered that he had released himself from his oath on leaving the camp, but he had done so only in word and not in fact.
For on the question of keeping faith, you must always think of what you meant, not of. Of what you said.
Another very great example of justice towards an enemy was established by our forefathers when a deserter from Pyrrhus promised the Senate that he would kill the king by giving him poison.
Fabricius and the Senate returned him to Pyrrhus.
In this way, they did not give approval to the killing in a criminal way of even a powerful enemy and one who was waging war on unprovoked.
Enough has been said about the duties of war.
[00:22:39] Speaker B: Cicero, the lawyer here. Right.
It's. It's not, it's not. Listen, he said this, but what he really meant was, you know, I'm. I, I find, I find this entertaining. It's, it's their convenient.
I don't know if it's twisting, but, you know, he has a point here in, in, in. In a way, because, you know, when you make an oath and you. And you mean it, especially if the gods are involved.
Well, let me take a step back. I mean, to what extent in kind of a Roman religion does that distinction take place, right?
I actually don't know the answer to that. Where if you say, I promise to do X, but really you promise, and you really meant, yeah, I promise. Why. Right.
Do the gods hold you to account for what you said or what you meant?
Does that make sense in the Roman religious context? Is that really what's going on there?
[00:23:44] Speaker A: It's a debate in the ancient world. It's a big debate, actually, because way later, Cicero is going to return to this question and he's going to quote from Euripides, if I remember correctly, or Aeschylus, one of the great tragedians. And he says, there's a character who says, I swore with my tongue, but not with my heart.
And Cicero says, that's a cop out. You can't do that.
You can't just say, oh, I said it, but I didn't mean it.
You have to. You have to abide by it.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: But. But this is different in war, apparently. For Cicero.
[00:24:25] Speaker A: No, no, he's saying it's the same thing because he's actually dispraising the man who says, oh, I forgot something. So I returned.
He's saying, that was, that was a, that was a bad thing. That man should not have done that. He should. He's saying the 10 should have gone back.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: It should have been like Regulus. And actually one of the censors who disenfranchised those 10 men were. Was the son of Regulus.
Wow, that.
[00:24:50] Speaker B: That's a cool fact.
[00:24:51] Speaker A: That's very cool. So he's so. I mean, you can imagine him going, my father was in exactly the same situation and went back. I have no sympathy for you all.
[00:25:05] Speaker B: It's really, it's really interesting. I don't in this way think about the, the Pyrrhus example then as well.
[00:25:13] Speaker A: Mm.
[00:25:15] Speaker B: I'm not sure I quite follow him here. So they don't actually kill. So does he actually. Does the deserter actually kill the king in this case?
[00:25:29] Speaker A: No. So the Cicero assumes that his reader is very familiar with this story, and so he sort of just references it without actually telling it.
[00:25:37] Speaker C: He'll tell it again on page 132 in book 3. Sorry to jump in there.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: No, that's helpful, because the deserter says, if you want me to, I will kill King Pyrrhus for you, because I have access to him, and Fabricius is the Roman general. Fabricius says, no, absolutely not. In fact, I'm going to put this deserter in chains and send him back to Pyrrhus and say, this is what happened. Do with him what you want, because we want to conquer Pyrrhus by.
In an honorable way, not in a underhanded, deceitful way.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Well, as we. As we close here, then, I'm wondering what we make of assistance, because he's going to come back to questions of war, right? I think he does come back later, but he started out, I mean, in this whole conversation of justice and injustice, he's gonna. In our next episode, we'll talk about injustice by force and deceit. That'll be the next theme, as well as some other things.
But it's. It's curious to me, you know, underlying all this seems to be a sense of kind of a Ciceronean natural law, that there. That there is a. It's not. You know, he's not looking toward Machiavelli the way Machiavelli is going to portray these. These. Or answer these questions later on.
It's not all about survival. It's not all about just winning. Right. There are moral consequences to how you respond, how you treat your enemies, how you treat the stranger, how you treat the foe, how you wage war, how you wage peace, for lack of a better word.
Is that. I mean, just as we close this little section here, is that how you read it as well?
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Absolutely. There's a sense in which.
Because, again, we're. He's writing to his son, and his son is young and has done some things, but is still becoming the man that he will be later. And so Cicero is saying, no, be this kind of person, not this other kind of person. That's what all these exempla. These examples are for. Be like these people. Don't be like these people.
There is a moral component that is what will shape your character in the Aristotelian sense of virtue being a habit.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Mm.
Chris?
[00:27:58] Speaker C: Well, I think. I think absolutely, you're right. And it's interesting, of course, also, that rather than giving us a lot of moral theory, or a set of rules to follow. He gives us all of these examples, right? Very memorable ones, in fact, ones that you see your heart swells, you think, wow, you know, what a really admirable thing to do. I would like to be that person already sort of engaging my desire to be the better and nobler. And so he's also, I think, here linking up with this idea that, you know, the Romans are very good people. And when they were offered an opportunity to eliminate a key enemy who was fighting a war unprovoked, perhaps even with great cruelty, perhaps even an existential threat, though I don't know the details of that, they immediately disdained. Right. Sort of rose above the whole idea that we would actually send an assassin after him or take this guy's filthy deal, in fact, like you said, put him in chains, send him back to Pyrrhus to kill him himself. Because this man's sort of far beneath the kind of honor that Romans should bring to their international affairs, including warfare.
[00:29:03] Speaker B: This is all really good stuff. Just thinking about this as well. From a Christian perspective of love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, there's something higher than winning. There's something higher than simply making you. Making sure your enemies are crying. Right? Cry harder, enemy. That's not the Christian perspective. It doesn't seem to be Cicero's perspective either, although there's certainly more room for going on the offense here in Cicero's case and just in the Roman case generally.
And I also like the fact that Cicero's knowledge of history and his attention to it and use of it is instructive. Right. So much of Roman history and Greek history for him is parable, right? This is how we learn what we're doing. He's. He's going to give you, you know, maybe principles and. And quotable pieces, but in this. In this book as well as his other writings, it's look at this person and. And emulate them, just like you said, Chris, don't look over here at this person and don't emulate them. Right. Those.
The focus on examples is so encouraging and it gives us. I mean, this is a theme of the Ciceronean Society, right? The theme of tradition. Tradition is that story of mistakes and triumphs, of success and failure for each of us individually and for our civilization as a whole. Well, Katherine and Chris, thank you so much for joining us. I really appreciate this.
We are going to continue reading Cicero's on Duties. We have some more guests lined up, some new ones, some old ones, and I'M sure you're going to enjoy what comes next. Please keep reading along with us. Take a look at our other podcast, the Sower, and be sure to sign up for our newsletter and take a look at more of what the Ciceronean Society is doing. We'd love to have you along for the ride. There's much more from where this came from. Have a great week and we'll see you next Wednesday.
