On the Republic / On the Laws by Marcus Tullius Cicero

On the Republic / On the Laws Reviews

• 
  Robert

  In high school I read Cicero in third year Latin. My teacher, like most classics teachers, found him indispensable. The proposition he put was twofold:Cicero was a master of Latin prose (very difficult to translate because of his long, complex sentences) and Cicero was a defender of a republic that was more than worth saving--for after Cicero, the republic became an empty, corrupt dictatorship that only went through the motions of giving all citizens a voice and protecting their rights.
  
  My impressions many years later are twofold: Cicero was one of the earliest political actors/philosophers who defined what we still understand as conservatism, and Cicero, like many Roman writers, worked in the shadow of the genius of Greece.
  
  Cicero's conservatism rested on two pillars as well: respect for Rome's religious practices and respect for Rome's system of government, wherein the aristocracy held the upper hand, the plebeians had some protections, and the general administration of state -- through the Republic and the first emperor /dictator Augustus --was efficient and effective.
  
  If we look at Cicero's take on religion in these two tracts (especially the laws) what we see is the conservatism of ritual, not belief. Most people interested in the classical world ask themselves at some point whether sophisticated men and women could have believed in the myths and legends of Olympus or Romulus being suckled by a wolf. I think it's safe to say that few aristocrats did believe. Instead, they promoted ritual observances and religious law as a means of stabilizing a society where the vast majority were subordinate to a tiny minority. At best Cicero held up religion as William James ultimately did: if it works for you, fine; no one can disprove it. So Cicero employed religion as a means of preserving a social structures that had been hollowed out.
  
  On the political front, Cicero deeply honored history and believed in its great figures more than he believed in the gods. What he feared was that he was a minority, and that the greatness of Rome, having learned to govern itself without a king, was in free fall. His optimum form of government, therefore, happened to be Rome's history. He was not a Platonist, proposing what never was and never could be. But he was every bit as conservative and elitist as Plato. The wisdom of Rome, for him, was how it used various offices to reflect what he termed the highest justice, i.e., the justice of the natural order. This is a backward looking posture, hingeing on the notion that the one thing divine about humanity is reason, a spark from the gods. Untethered reason, of course, can lead anywhere, but not if it is linked to the wisdom of Zeus, or Jupiter. Then it must come up with a balanced approach to human existence that fends off chaos, accumulates power, wealth and land, and preserves the necessary prerogatives of, in Cicero's case, the Roman Senate.
  
  From our perspective 2000 years later we can see that Rome was astonishingly great, even majestic, and that at the height of its powers, it used its power in appalling ways, conquering the Mediterranean and much of western Europe to feed its insatiable appetite so that the rich could become richer and the powerful, ultimately, could become lunatic. The descent from Tiberius through Caligula, Claudius, and Nero was nauseating. Cicero was right back in the days of Pompey and Julius Caesar. Rome was on a precipice, and the free fall was about to begin.
  
  Today, in America, conservatism clings hard to God as a living reality and it clings equally hard to history, notably the Founding Fathers, and the Constitution, which has Biblical sanctity that should be read as it was written, not reinvented to accommodate later circumstances. Here we have the Judeo-Christian / Roman approach to standing pat in yesterday. A third element, the market, has been brought in to deal with America's immense complexity, but it functions, as we have seen, more in the interests of the conservative rich -- keeping their wealth--than in the interests of the more liberal poor (although not all poor folk in America are liberal; many are so traditionally religious that they cannot help being conservative in the broadest sense.)
  
  Rome was a formal empire in its ultimate decline. America has been an informal empire since the Monroe Doctrine. Does this mean America will decay, too? I tend to think not necessarily, but as I write, the polarization between conservatives and liberals is breathtaking. Conservatives tend to be the anti-scientific party (as in global warming isn't real and maybe evolution isn't real and research with stem cells is sinful.) Liberals tend to be more forward-looking but less well-endowed and more unfocused, lacking the conservatives' deep faith in the constitution and the Bible. They fear the future less and cherish the past less. There is unlikely to be a sweeping, final win by one of these forces over the other, but that is good. It keeps us fighting on the cliff rather than falling to our demise.
• 
  Erick

  The works included here are rather fragmentary -especially The Republic, so it's hard to give the works a fair appraisal. That being said, I did gain some insight into ancient Roman politics. I also think some of the ideas in here speak to us all these centuries later. There is one quote that had to do with the anarchic tendency of democracy that particularly caught my attention:
  
  "In a state of that kind total freedom must prevail. Every private household is devoid of authority…Father fears son, son ignores father, respect is completely absent. In the interests of universal freedom there is no distinction between citizen and foreigner… Youngsters assume the authority of older men… As this unlimited license comes to a head… citizens become so tender and hypersensitive that at the slightest hint of authority they are enraged and cannot bear it. In consequence they begin to ignore laws too; and the final outcome is total anarchy."
  
  The above struck me because of how relevant it is to our current state of democracy in this country, where a certain contingent of voters really see no difference between criminal illegal immigrants, extremist foreign dissidents and legal citizens. They insist on conflating all of the above to the point that they will cause riots if people vote against them and all the while they will insist that they are tolerant, peaceful, freedom-loving, egalitarians. This country embodies to a great extent that puerile and idiotic freedom that Cicero decried.
  
  Like Plato, Cicero recognized the shifting tides of political systems. Absolute democracy becomes the rule of an ignorant mob, who lack the knowledge and wisdom to even govern themselves responsibly, let alone govern others. Left to it's own devices, absolute democracy degrades into chaos; a chaos where everything is a constant leveling to the lowest common denominator until there is no longer any respect for authority, nor law. When society degrades to this point, it opens the way to tyranny in order to put a stop to that increasing tide of societal chaos. And that tyranny will hold sway until, once again, some control is yet again given to the masses after some kind of revolution or government upheaval; and the cycle starts again.
  
  As was in Plato's day and in Cicero's day, so in our day. There are still tyrants waiting to seize the reigns of power and there are still ignorant and unruly masses of people that will give them the impetus they need to seize control. An ever watchful vigilance must always be on guard against both extremes. Cicero seems to advocate a mixed system of government. That is what our founding fathers attempted to create here. Even in an optimal system of government that embodies the best aspects of a republic and a democracy, personal accountability and responsibility are needed to make it work. That's what was lacking in the past and that is still what is lacking today.
• 
  AB

  I won't discuss The Republic because I really did not find it very informative or interesting. Beyond Cicero describing his own consulship and exile it was rather basic information on the republic working at its best.
  
  What was really interesting for me was The Laws. Here Cicero is attempting to right the wrongs of the republic as he sees fit. The really interesting part was the discussion on the tribunate and how much he tapped danced around the issues and unlike Sulla attempts to have the system self regulate. In fact his insistence to have the entire system regulate itself by the conduct of the patricians seems at odds with what he must have experienced. The fact that he even admits that it is near impossible is interesting. But then again, he is using a Plato as an example. His insistence that laws not be enacted to deal with a single person was quite amusing. I guess someone is upset that they got exiled.
  
  I do think that I might have had a better appreciation for the work if I had read Plato. Its hammered home quite hard that Cicero has an undying appreciation for platonic thought. For my first 2 pieces by Cicero, I enjoyed what I read. Even if it wasn't exactly new or riveting thoughts.
• 
  Bread

  Its difficult to give the two works a fair appraisal, as they survive only with large sections missing. Perhaps the most interesting section of the Republic was his discussion of the Roman constitution and how it developed historically. Cicero's philosophy is pretty derivative, taking heavily from Plato and the Stoics, but just grounding them in a Roman context with a mixture of political pragmatism and conservatism. He attempts to frame his works as Socratic dialogues, but they're really just presentations where the interlocutors mostly just nod their heads every once in a while and tell the main speaker how cool and smart he is, and how stupid and stinky democracy and the Gracchi brothers are.
• 
  Davis Smith

  An almost ideal blend of Plato and Aristotle and a wonderfully relevant read regarding statesmanship, public morality, and tradition. The gaps in the text are certainly frustrating and Cicero isn't nearly as artful an author as he thinks he is, but there are still plenty of unique insights here that prove the worthiness of Rome's contributions to political theory, and the Dream of Scipio is one of those things that everyone in classical education should be familiar with. Best read after, before, or alongside the Federalist Papers.
• 
  Scriptor Ignotus

  “Many years later, the emperor Augustus (who had acquiesced in Cicero’s murder) found one of his grandsons with a work of Cicero’s in his hand. The youngster tried to hide the book under his cloak, but Augustus took it from him and read through a large part of it where he stood. Then, handing it back, he said ‘That was a master of words, my boy. A Master of words and a lover of his country.’”
  
  - Jonathan Powell, referencing Plutarch, from the introduction
  
  
  The Republic (De re publica) and The Laws (De legibus) were Cicero’s Latin counterparts to the identically-titled works of Plato. Both treatises were likely composed between 54 and 51 BC; just a few years before Caesar crossed the Rubicon, heralding what future generations have arbitrarily marked off as the transition of the Roman state from an oligarchic republic to an autocratic empire. Both works survive only in fragments, making it difficult to determine the significance of the surviving portions in the context of the whole. Much of The Republic has been stitched together from passages quoted in Augustine, Macrobius, and Lactantius, as well as from another portion that was rediscovered in the Vatican in 1819. The final section of the text, The Dream of Scipio, was the only part that was known to have survived in the middle ages. One passage in my Oxford edition is even presented with paraphrases of Lactantius’s snarky marginalia in parentheses:
  
  “Goodness clearly likes to be honoured, and it has no other reward. (But the Bible, which you knew nothing about, shows that there is another reward.) Yet, while it readily accepts the reward of honour, it does not stridently demand it. (You are seriously mistaken if you think that goodness can ever receive its reward from men. Why, you yourself in another passage rightly said) What riches will you offer as an incentive to such a man? What kinds of power?”
  
  Nonetheless, the surviving passages offer critical insights on the self-understanding of the Roman Republic during its most tumultuous century, presented by one of its leading statesmen.
  
  Whereas Plato worked inductively, constructing his imaginary politeia by interrogating his own mind, Cicero worked deductively; analyzing the practical workings of the most durable and successful state ever seen in the Mediterranean world, and extrapolating general principles on the nature of law and good governance therefrom. In The Republic, Cicero takes on the persona of Scipio Aemelianus: a grandson of Scipio Africanus (the vanquisher of Hannibal), a celebrated Roman general in his own right (who would oversee the destruction of Carthage during the Third Punic War), and a conservative opponent of the populist Tribune, Tiberius Gracchus. Responding to the promptings of three other men, Scipio discusses the best constitution, the advantages and vulnerabilities of the three “simple” forms of government, the historical development of the Roman constitution, and the qualities of the ideal statesman.
  
  The primary criterion for the success of any form of government, according to both Scipio the character and Cicero himself, is its ability to sustain the res publica; that is, to protect the public and its collective property from private interests and arbitrary power. The public, in classical republican fashion, is defined as “a numerous gathering brought together by legal consent and community of interest.” In contrast with modern liberal theories of social organization, the state is formed not primarily due to individual weakness or mutual enmity, but rather because of an innate human tendency to gather and form communities. It is thus the integrity of the community itself, rather than that of any discrete individual or faction within it, that a state must sustain to qualify as a republic.
  
  In their positive aspects, each of the three simple forms of government (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy) can theoretically fulfill this role; but each stands on a precarious foundation, being always prone to corruption and liable to collapse into another form. Scipio, for instance, favors monarchy over the other simple forms, because the governance of one wise, benevolent, and capable ruler can provide unity and justice in a more efficient manner than the inevitably messier practices of aristocracies and democracies; but the best of the simple forms is always a hair’s breadth away from the worst, because the moment a monarch begins to consider his own interests before those of the state, the monarchy has turned into a tyranny. Aristocracies, at their best, could provide a healthy middle ground between “the inadequate autocrat and the reckless mob”, bringing together the best citizens to guide the state through wise deliberation; but in practice, they are often merely cliques of the wealthy and well-connected. As for democracies—well, suffice it to say Scipio has little patience for them.
  
  Because of the instability of the simple forms, the best constitution will incorporate a “carefully proportioned mixture” of all three. Each element contributes to the integrity of the whole and provides concord between social classes. As Scipio puts it, “Kings attract by affection, aristocracies by good sense, and democracies by freedom.” These attractions must be combined to produce a stable political order.
  
  There is a distinction, it must be noted, between Cicero’s understanding of the proper operation of a mixed constitution and that of—to provide a counterexample—James Madison. Madison saw the mixed constitution as a means of providing a balance of power between competing institutions: the gravitational pull of one faction’s self-interest would be counteracted by that of the others, and the res publica, though always tending towards collapse, would be kept suspended in the air by this mutual tension. Cicero, by contrast, thought of his constitutional arrangement more in terms of concord than of acrimony. The various constitutional inputs would buttress and ameliorate one another, producing a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
  
  In discussing the history of the Roman state, Scipio refers approvingly to his political mentor, Cato the Elder, who attributed the superiority of the Roman constitution to the fact that it developed organically and incrementally, through the contributions of each social class over many generations, as opposed to being artificially designed and handed down by one statesman, such as Minos of Crete or Lycurgus of Sparta. From the God-hero kingship of Romulus, the association of “fathers” that became the Senate, and the religious establishment of Numa Pompilius; to the expulsion of the Tarquin dynasty and the establishment of the republic and its Consuls; to the emergence of the Tribunate and its nullification power over Consular prerogatives for the protection of the common people, the Roman Republic was able to incorporate the disparate needs and interests of the one, the few, and the many, harmonizing their often-violent divergences and keeping them all invested in the success of the state as a whole.
  
  The Republic ends with the Dream of Scipio, a kind of pious fable analogous to the Myth of Er in Plato’s Republic. Little of Cicero’s discoursing on the ideal statesman survives, but some fundamental principles can be deduced from this section. Scipio tell his compatriots about a remarkable dream he had during a visit to Masinissa, the Numidian king who had allied with Scipio’s grandfather against Hannibal. In the dream, Scipio is visited by the old man himself, Scipio Africanus, who takes him to an outer realm far above the earth. Africanus prophesies that Scipio will destroy Carthage, become one of Rome’s leading citizens, and later be appointed to a dictatorship. He then shows Scipio the celestial spheres by which the earth is encompassed; from heaven, to the various planets, and down to the earth itself, which is situated as an unmoving center of gravity towards which everything heavy (presumably in both a literal and a spiritual sense) falls. Scipio notes how small the earth appears from this height, and Africanus enjoins him to reflect on the triviality of popular acclaim in one’s mortal life and the senselessness of vainglorious pursuits. Those who embody honor and justice, living lives of selfless duty to country, will transcend the ephemerality of mortal affairs and become demigods in the afterlife. Cicero’s heaven is for humble and courageous patriots.
  
  The Laws—or what survives of it—is most notable for Cicero’s articulation of a theory of natural law. The law, for Cicero, is not simply a collection of behavioral rules put forward by a society for its own cohesion. Rather, the law is something innate in our capacity for reason and moral discretion: our knowledge of good and evil. Our sentience is a divine spark; something we share with the god(s) who created the cosmos. Every person, regardless of culture or nationality, participates in this divine nature to the extent that he allows reason to govern his conduct. Justice is not something created or—to use the formulation of the American Constitution—established by human societies; rather, this divine and preexistent Law is incorporated in a given social order to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the degree to which that society has either preserved it in its pure form or allowed it to become corrupted through its own fallibility.
  
  There was something about the way Cicero describes this primordial, benevolent Law, which governs all things and guides them toward itself, that reminded me of the way Wisdom is described in the Wisdom of Solomon. So I did a bit of googling and, yes, De legibus and Wisdom were written right around the same time, in the middle of the first century BC. In the cosmopolitan world of Roman antiquity, pagan and Jewish thinkers alike were seeking a sturdy, universal foundation for reason and morality amidst the multifarious and cross-cutting cultural norms of a diversely-peopled and tumultuous civilization.
• 
  Callum

  If only The Republic by Cicero had survived until modernity in its entirety. Alas. Cicero was heavily influenced by Plato's Republic: the eponymous title, its equal composition of six books, and utilising the Socratic dialogue. Rather than discussing the ideal state, however, Cicero outlined the development of Rome's constitution. With concomitant philosophical scepticism, this approach enabled Cicero to obliquely criticise aspirational tyrants of his age--i.e., the First Triumvirate: Caesar, Pompey and Crassus. Moreover, Cicero applies Greek political theory to help understand the ultimately fatal afflictions facing his beloved Roman Republic.
  
  The Laws--similarly influenced by Plato--have also had large sections lost to time. Nonetheless, enough survives to ascertain sufficient understanding of Cicero's jurisprudence. He conceptualises an idealised state of Roman law prior to the Gracchi brothers when Rome's classes ostensibly existed in harmony. Only minor reforms were considered necessary, namely providing the senate with legislative authority and tweaking the roles of various magistrates. Cicero also articulates his views on natural law, which he described as eternal, governing the actions of a reasoned person, commanding what should be done and what is prohibited.
  
  Tribunes represented the plebeians and checked the magistrates. Plebeians' latent power intimidated the patricians. The populist Gracchi used the power of the tribune's office to promote plebians' desire for land reform. Both Gracchi were murdered. Cicero considers this moment as the beginning of Rome's constitutional decline--not murder, but the dereliction of Rome's superficial class harmony. The plebians sought fairness, whereas the patricians sought tyrannical power. The latter unleashed violence upon the people, the Republic, and ultimately Cicero. Perhaps if the plebeians were given more power, Rome's Republic may have endured.
• 
  Jacob Aitken

  Cicero. The Republic and the Laws ed. By Niall Rudd. New York: Oxford, 1997.
  
  Thesis: Nature has given to mankind a desire to defend the well-being of the community (R1.1).
  
  The “republic” is the “property of the public,” and the “public” is defined as a legal gathering. It comes together because men want to defend and form communities (1.39). Cicero turns to Aristotle’s discussion of the 3 types of government and their corresponding virtues and vices. Monarchy is the best type of government, but it has a precarious nature (1.54ff).
  
  Philus gives the standard rejection to natural law: there is no “justice” because men often prefer to enact injustice and different countries have different customs. As Scipio begins his response, we have to navigate some difficulties in the text. Laelius is speaking that “law in the proper sense is right reason in harmony with nature” (III.33).
  
  In Book IV Cicero gives a scathing rebuke of Greek “male love,” for lack of a more delicate phrase.
  
  What is the purpose of life? Religious worship, rearing a family, and participating in the community. This is impossible without a well-ordered state (5.7).
  
  Mind, Body, Soul
  
  “You are not mortal, but only that body of yours. You are not the person presented by your physical appearance” (6.26). A man’s true self is his mind.
  
  >>Whatever is in constant motion is eternal. There must be something that moves others but itself is not moved. Cicero then makes the (albeit not very clear) inference that minds possess this property. His reasoning is that inanimate matter can’t move itself but must be moved. Only a mind can do this.
  
  The Laws
  
  The nature of justice must be deduced from the nature of man (L. 1.17). Law is the highest reason and enjoins what “ought” to be done. If Cicero can make this argument work, then he just did an end-run around the “is-ought” problem.
  
  Reason is a “middle term” between God and man (1.23). If you share in reason (i.e., participate in that reason which is connected to God), then you share in law. If you share in law, you share in justice. This mutual sharing is a single universe of God and man.
  
  Law is an “eternal force” and natural law is “coeval with God” (L 2.8-10). So far that sounds like medieval and classical natural law theory. Cicero then goes pantheist: universal nature possesses intelligence (16). His argument makes sense: law is embedded in nature because nature is able to reason. This overcomes the “is-ought” problem but at a very high cost.
• 
  Dr. George H. Elder

  It is terribly difficult to judge fragments, and especially to compare them with complete works such as Plato's Republic. That being said, Cicero clearly takes a much different approach than does Plato. He proposes that philosophy must be intermixed with pragmatism and experience to produce the optimal leaders and laws. In this sense, Cicero's Republic and Laws pays attention to more practical concerns than does Plato, who lacked any degree of actual involvement with real-world affairs when compared with Cicero. Moreover, the two luminaries philosophies differed, with Cicero being what I would call a liberal Stoic. The problem is, just when one gets into one of Cicero's arguments, it is often the case that a fragment is missing. Yet it is clear from the fragments that Cicero is bound by common approaches vs high-minded ideals in some cases, as in his seeming understanding of the need for greed, for lack of a better word. He does come down against tyranny and speaks highly about legal equality as a bulwark against the power of wealth. That being said, Cicero was able to turn a blind eye when opponents were strangled, as in the Catilinarian conspiracy. "It is done," was his final word on the matter, if my feeble memory serves me. Certainly no outrage there! Overall, this is a must read in understanding the evolution of the Western approach to justice and government.
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  David Sarkies

  Cicero’s Republic
  11 May 2020
  
  This is sort of a lost book. Not quite but it certainly isn’t complete, namely because it was only recently discovered, namely in the 19th Century when somebody was having a look for something else while they were down in the Vatican library. In fact, since it was discovered in the Vatican library, and released to the public, it sort of destroys my hope that there are a lot of other lost books hidden down there, as conspiracy theorists are apt to suggest, because since it does happen to be Cicero, they obviously didn’t have too much of an issue in releasing it back into the world. Also, I should point out that there is an awful lot missing, and they have had to reconstruct parts of it by referring to other texts in which parts exist, meaning that there are points where the author is actually mentioned, despite the events taking place much earlier. (though the conspiracy theorist might end up suggesting that the only reason it is in fragments is because the Vatican redacted a heap of it).
  
  The book sort of follows the works of Plato, though I suspect that the discussion that took place didn’t actually happen, unlike many of the conversations that Plato records (and might have even witnessed as well). The main actor is Scipio Africanus, and he is at some party with other Romans of note, and they begin to discuss the idea of the perfect commonwealth. Unfortunately, much of what is discussed is missing, particularly the parts on the roles of the priesthood and of entertainment venues, but the first part is relatively intact.
  
  Ironically, many of these texts seem to think that an autocracy is the best form of government, though there is also this idea that governments tend to work cyclically, namely that they begin as autocracies, have a revolution and become democracies, and as time progresses, move to an oligarchy and then back to an autocracy, which will eventually end in revolution. Mind you, this progress can take decades, if not centuries, so it is certainly not a slow progress. Another thing that should be of note is that Cicero did witness the end of the Roman Republic, though he had died well before it had become an autocracy.
  
  However, one of the problems that is discussed is that while autocracies may be all well and good, it does eventually rest upon the character of the tyrant. If one has a good tyrant, then all is well and good, but if they have a bad one, then that is going to be a problem since there is no doubt going to be revolution fermenting. We actually see this quite often through the Roman Empire period where insane emperors would be ousted, which would eventually result in a period of civil war, before stability once again ensured.
  
  The three types of government they discuss is the democracy, where everybody has a say in government, the oligarchy, in which a few have power, and of course the autocracy. The problem with democracy is that as the Greeks found out, government decisions tend to be based on a majority vote, and the mob can be swayed quite easily to install rather dubious people in power, and thus end up making some rather dubious decisions. That is no doubt why rhetoric was considered to be the greatest of skills back in Ancient Rome, and while many prominent leaders attained their position through the use of fine words.
  
  However, we also need to consider the other problems that are faced. First of all, there has never been a true democracy, and even in places like Athens, there were large numbers of people who are disenfranchised. These days, we work on representative democracies, namely due to logistical problems in having everybody participating in the day to day running of government, and the fact that most people don’t actually want to have to worry about things like that. Then again, the Athenians also would elect specific people to deal with the day to day running of the state, though all major decisions would be made by the citizens as a whole.
  
  Mind you, there is also a section on the history of Rome, namely from its founding to the ousting of the Tarquins. This demonstrates a significant problem with autocracies because they rely on the fact that the autocrats need to be good people, and while this may have been the case initially, particularly with Numa Pompilius, it pretty quickly degenerated. We also see that with the Roman empire, since the emperors pretty quickly became pretty bad – in fact from the first after Augustus. However, it is the problem of bad tyrants that eventually lead to the overthrow of the current system and the installation of the new.
  
  They also have this discussion of what a Republic is, and my understanding of the differences is that in a Republic, the rule of law holds sway, whereas in other systems, the rule of an individual, or group of individuals, hold sway. I’m not entirely sure if this was discussed, since while constitutions did exist back then, many of them weren’t worth the paper that it was printed on (even though paper was pretty expensive in any event) because they were fairly quickly discarded. Mind you, some of the modern republics have been around for a significant period of time, though of course, the constitutions do seem to have an almost divine status, which is problematic at best, not only because they are human documents, but that they were drafted in a time that was much, much different from our own.
  
  I would say that this book was interesting, except that because there are whole chunks missing, and what we have now is a patchwork of sections, it makes it rather difficult to follow, especially where entire pages are missing. In a way it is okay, but certainly not something that would be of interest beyond academic circles.
• 
  Illiterate

  Scipio’s dream is great. The rest of Commonwealth is of interest but only fragments remain. Laws is nicely set but dull.
• 
  Michael

  This is another book I taught for World Civilization courses in the middle of the previous decade. Judging by the notes I made, we focused mainly on “The Republic,” although I have also read “The Laws” separately. It was a useful text for transitioning from discussion of Ancient Greece to Ancient Rome, since Cicero was familiar with the Greeks and frequently uses them as points of departure for his own arguments. He is especially interested in Plato, and to some degree his “Republic” is an answer to Plato’s. He clearly admires Plato, although he is trying to set out something uniquely “Roman” and not simply borrow from Greece. In the end, his State is often based in moderating between extremes, where Plato’s was uncompromising in pursuing “the good” as Plato saw it.
  
  Since Cicero takes the more practical, compromising approach, it is likely that his system has had more influence on actual governments, although during his lifetime he had little power. Today, nearly every nation in the world describes itself as a “republic,” and Cicero can be seen as the originator of the understanding of most of them as to how popular sovereignty is invested in their systems – from the freest to the most tyrannical. Understanding Cicero’s arguments, from his defenses of aristocracy and democracy to his historical analyses of the Roman and Greek past, will give any student insight into the modern world.
  
  This edition of the book is designed to be useful to the instructor but also easily approachable to the student. The text itself is not long, and is laid out with minimal explanatory notes within the text itself. An interesting but brief introduction and bibliography precede the text, and extensive explanatory and biographical notes are available at the end for those who need them and are willing to take the time to read them.
• 
  Diem

  Darn those ravages of time and the texts we have lost because of them.
  
  I had a hard time feeling like I really understood Cicero from just these two fragmentary writings. But I'm intrigued enough to read more.
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  David Withun

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  'Izzat Radzi

  Great works of Cicero, since the discussions pn the best forms of government for instance is based on real, past forms of government.
  Just sad that it did not survived in full.
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  Amaranta

  Goodreads me obliga a reseñar cada libro que leo porque si no, no lo toma en cuenta para los topreviewers gggg
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  Dolf van der Haven

  These two books by Cicero are the Latin parallels to Plato's Republic and Laws (which I now have to read) and therefore have unsurprisingly similar titles.
  On the Commonwealth is highly incomplete and the editor has done a great job trying to puzzle all the fragments together (frequently derived from them being quoted in other books such as Augustine's City of God), but it is often hard to find the overall argument in the fragments. It basically discusses three forms of the state: monarchy, oligarchy and democracy, and suggests that a mix of these would be the best form.
  On the Laws is far more complete and therefore easier to read. It fills in the details of the previous book from a legal perspective and in fact spells out proposed laws literally. Due to their local nature, these have fairly limited universal application, though.
  Cicero's rhetorics are excellent - it is a pleasure to read his well-formed sentences again.
  The editing of the books is superb, with an extensive introduction, copious notes and appendices.
• 
  Tori

  I must admit to quite a bit of skimming. I wanted to see the basis for Cicero's arguments more than I cared about the arguments or examples themselves. And skimming felt somewhat justified given the (frustrating!) fragmentation of the available text.
  
  The whole using-dialogues-to-address-the-reader thing became kind of annoying when the speakers started blending together. They weren't really offering (counter-)arguments, so it became kind of self-promoting. Or something.
  
  Cicero's good ol'-fashioned sense of an ordered universe (appealing, of course, to God) was definitely pervasive. He started to get on my nerves with how much he would appeal to this innate hierarchy, that "natural" abstract concept of "reason." And when he was talking about the history of Rome and the development of an ideal constitution, he presumed that there was a progression, an improvement toward perfection. I can't help dismissing these "progress"-related presumptions as part of an outdated/offensive/patriarchal worldview. My liberal-artsiness blanches at that worldview.
  
  Aaaanyway....Cicero makes some nice points. Like that pure monarchy/aristocracy/democracy is not ideal. And that monarchy is a great idea as long as you understand that monarchs should be beacons of wisdom rather than tyrants.
  
  Cicero says in book 2 of The Republic that the proper form of a constitution is one with a permanent power (a just and wise individual) who controls security and peace and equal rights for a people. Which sounds nice.
  
  Also nice: book 3 raises some questions on the "justice" of female subjugation. Book 3 is where Cicero generally makes "justice" a problematic term....and by not refuting it as unwise and unnatural in the dialogues of The Republic, he kind of left me flailing to understand his reasoning in The Laws.
  
  Another interesting bit of The Republic before I rant about The Laws: Book 5 damns eloquence as a corrupting influence worse than bribery (because it works on honest men).
  
  The dream sequence annoyed me.
  
  The Laws was just a tedious outlining of specific laws, defended by appealing to religion and hierarchy. It is, like so much of the text, dated. And fragmented.
  
  I kind of liked the analogy of laws serving justice the same way that medicine serves health (it can't be a law if it isn't just, just like it can't be medicine if it doesn't help the patient). And the extended metaphor of a ship with a captain and a doctor. But other than that I was just bored and irritated for about 70 pages.
  
  That's pretty much all I can muster to say about this. Other people have said more insightful and more coherent things. But I find it fitting that this fragmented and kind of preachy, hard-to-follow philosophizing inspired a similarly fragmented and holier-than-thou-because-I'm-educated-and-oh-so-modern review.
  
  
  
  ALSO! The name "Atticus" reminded me of
  To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm not sure if Lee meant for Atticus Finch's name to be an allusion to Cicero's Laws or if it's some sort of coincidence. But Cicero's Atticus provides impetus for delving into the origin of laws, and agrees with Cicero's delineation of justice. Which is a preeetty nifty connection to noble, justice-upholding, don't-shoot-mockingbirds-touting, innocent-man-defending Atticus Finch.
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  Alexander Young

  Provides great insight into Rome at the end of the Republic, as well as Cicero’s thoughts on justice and natural law. Worth the read.
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  Xenophon

  This slim volume holds a special place in my heart- it's the first real book of philosophy I pawed through as a teenager. It's also, to my recollection, one of the first books I bought online. I got it on the recommendation of some book or other about the American fathers which cited Cicero as a big influence on my own (still favorite) founder, Thomas Jefferson.
  
  Boy howdy I can still see why. Cicero takes the idealized vision of Plato's Republic and shows how the "perfect regime", in-so-far as we can attain it, exists in spacetime. It's almost an addendum to Aristotle's rumination's on Constitutions in a style in keeping with Plato's.
  
  When Cicero is allowed to speak in his fullness, this book is a five-star heavyweight. Yet there are parts of this text where he is lamentably silenced. First by all the missing leaves (not his fault). Here you are, reader, tracking with one of the greatest minds who ever lived and then there is a bit conspicuously missing. This is true for a good many ancient texts, but it seriously hampers the quality of this one relative to the others.
  
  Second are the damn notes. I'm spoiled by University of Chicago texts, because Oxford really pulled a swing and a miss here. The translator injects too much of their own opinion. That or they state the obvious thereby wasting the reader's time. The notes just don't sufficiently illuminate what the reader needs to see.
  
  Don't skip this one, but do yourself a favor and avoid Oxford. I'm sure there are better editions out there.
  
  
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  Stefan Mandic

  Should be a 3+ out of 4 on the test. This one's 4th out of 5
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  Scott Zuke

  I felt a little sorry for Cicero in these books. He was really trying to imitate the style of the Platonic dialogue, but...Romans just didn't have the personality to pull off such a feat--it just wasn't in their blood. As a result, rather than getting a timeless discussion of philosophy and the nature of the world and humanity, we get two self-serving, overly-long discourses on the wisdom of the *soon-to-be-overthrown* Roman republic.
  
  The "overly-long" part would refer to the dialogues had they survived intact into the modern period. The Republic is terribly fragmented, making its reading feel like a bout of attention deficit disorder on caffeine. A few occasional insightful lines and thoughts survive, and the Dream of Scipio is fun to read.
  
  The Laws, while surviving in better condition, is VERY tied to its time period and doesn't offer a modern reader much more than a historical account of antiquated political and religious practices.
  
  My own background is that I've taken a handful of ancient Greek & Roman history courses as an undergrad. I would say that I have enough of a grounding in the period to recognize most of the names and events mentioned, and to grasp the arrangement of the republic government system of the time. However, I don't know the period well enough to honestly *care* about much of the content these books contain. Perhaps a graduate student involved in deep research of the period would find more to hold onto.
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  Diego

  Una obra clásica en la filosofía política de su tiempo y uno de los trabajos de Marco Tulio Cicerón que aun sobreviven; se pueden observar en el una clara y profunda influencia de la filosofia griega no solo de Platon con quien se le asocia con regularidad, si no también con otros como Aristoteles, Anaximandro, Pitagoras etc.. Para los interesados en conocer sobre el sistema político y el derecho romano es un libro clave pues retrata con gran elocuencia la composición de las magistraturas y diferentes cargos del sistema.
  
  La República y las Leyes como se le conoce en español, es un libro muy importante en la tradición occidental y se puede ver su influencia en las obras de autores muy adelante en el tiempo como Maquiavelo. Sam Agustín por mencionar un par que resaltan en los comentarios del traductor y curador de esta obra.
  
  Cicerón muestra en esta obra que su fama era y es bien merecida como uno de los hombres mas brillantes y elocuentes del mundo antiguo.
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  Maddie Fenster

  Republic 3/5, Laws 5/5. Love how unabashedly oligarchic he is. Live your truth king ❤️
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  Ian Caveny

  Cicero's writing is, as always, a mastery of rhetoric and Roman political thought. For me, he has been a much-needed interlocutor and antagonist to the various oppositional political factions (namely: libertarianism and progressivism) of modern political thought.
  
  In the Republic, one finds such a wide diversity of discourse taking after Plato's work of the same name while importing Roman legal and civil practice into Platonic thought. The famous discussion of the monarchy as "the best" (with its own distinctions) is worthy of note here, as well as the famous Dream of Scipio that undergirds much of later Medieval thought (thanks to Macrobius!).
  
  Unfortunately, the Republic is in tatters as the result of the ravages of time. And the Laws (a solid companion piece in this OWC collection) were left incomplete in light of Cicero's own sudden (tragic) demise. One can feel the weight of lost knowledge in reading the fragments, something Petrarch reminds us of as well in his own writings on Cicero.
  
  As a holistic set of thought, however, neither Cicero's Republic nor his Laws offer anything particularly more exciting than Plato. The common reader of his works would be fine in skipping this volume. But there are some insights into the politico-religious order of Roman religion that might be of interest for, as an example, Christian theologians interested in the effect of Ciceronian political thought on later Church political theology.
  
  Beyond that, there are surely some general political lessons we, post-modern Americans, could take away from Cicero: a commitment to some sense of virtue, the reality of the admixture of religion and politics (cloaked, but not absent in our secular order; re: Taylor, MacIntyre, etc), and the questions of freedom, equality, and the like which Rome dealt with very differently from our liberal democratic governments. Surely our present populist moment should reveal that something has gone dreadfully wrong with the democratic project; could it be that we lack a republican vision necessary for a more peaceful governmental order?
  
  That, of course, is conjecture and maybe a bit historically romantic. After all, Cicero himself died in light of the failures of his own age's government. Still, I find his writings useful to breathe context into our own debates and crises.
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  geoffrey Paugher-Storree

  On the Republic is probably the more interesting of these 2 works, but is even less in tact than On the Laws. The constant [REDACTED] really ruins the dialogue in On the Republic and some chapters are nearly completely lost. Ultimately, Cicero doesn't modify a whole lot from the Roman state in his utopia, but instead explains how they are in line with his first principles groundwork.
  
  The groundwork is essentially Stoic virtue and humans operating rationally in accordance with the laws of god/nature. After this groundwork is laid out you get a decent history of the early Roman republic. I admit I tapped out of On The Republic around book 4 due to frustration with all the missing parts. I think I mostly missed his own version of Plato's Myth of Er in Book 6 because so much was missing from the rest.
  
  My dissatisfaction with On the Laws is similar to Plato's dialogue "The Laws". Book 2 felt like a giant list of religious rituals that was nicely summarized by Quintus or Atticus as basically the religious reforms of Numa (although sometimes there are interesting justifications described and we get Cicero's mouthpiece, Marcus, admitting to believe in the divination of the augurs). Book 3 is when we finally get some interesting commentary on Roman Political structure, but don't get your hopes up too high. I was expecting some big augmentations to the Roman state in the tradition of Plato's republic, but all we get is a few suggestions and modifications, which were mostly forgettable and minor. A "Yes Socrates" type side character finally disagrees with one of Marcus' laws and it is never resolved (Discussing the role of the Tribunes and whether it is dangerous to give power to the plebs).
  
  This book was OK, but not worth reading too closely due to the incomplete nature and disappointing depth compared to Plato, Aristotle, or Livy.
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  Erik Champenois

  Cicero's Republic and Laws are somewhat modeled after Plato but whereas Plato focuses on an ideal (hypothetical) polis, Cicero focuses on a real one - Republican Rome as the ideal polis. In doing so, Cicero argues - much as Burke and later conservatives have - that the evolutionary development of Roman institutions serves as a stronger model than a hypothetical polity (though he does suggest a few adjustments to the Roman structure). At the same time, Cicero is more focused on virtue than on institutions as ultimately making the difference to a polity's stability - in my opinion, somewhat downplaying the importance of structure. In his Laws, Cicero additionally speaks of natural law as the foundation of all law and as religious law as a vital part of that - lamenting that augury has been neglected in the Rome of his day.
  
  One quote that stood out to me (Laws, Book Three, 31-32, page 162): "If you're prepared to go back over the records of history, it is plain that the state has taken its character from that of its foremost men. Whatever changes have taken place in the conduct of its leaders have been reproduced in the lives of the people... Corrupt leaders do a more deadly disservice to their country in that they not only contract vices themselves but also infect the community. They are a menace, not just because they are corrupt themselves but because they corrupt others. They do more damage by their example than by their misdemeanours."