Roman Republic of Letters by Katharina Volk | Notes & Summary
Introduction
What this book is about
The intellectual life and production of great men (politics) between 60 and 40BC (fall of Republic)
It is a special time where the political elite also happened to be the intellectual elite (there is overlap not 1-1)
It seeks to answer the following questions:
Why are the same men political players and intellectual luminaries?
What are the social, political, and larger cultural circumstances that enable this convergence of roles?
How do these men’s political and intellectual activities relate to one another?
And what is the relationship (if any) between the late Republic’s cultural flourishing and its concomitant political collapse?
It's methodology
It's not a history of just ideas NOR does it take the view that ideas are strongly determined by the sociological circumstance
It treats ideas and the sociology that produces them as deeply intertwined
It focuses on great men
Rome was structured to give agency to a few
The sources we have are from (mostly) Cicero and thus is about him and his friends
The people dealt with truly were "great men" in intellectual life that set the agenda for Roman philosophy
Usually intellectual history is about 1. intellectuals and 2. intellectual institutions but this focuses on neither. The dominant production of intellectual work in this period is men of action.
It tries to recreate the past in their own rhetoric and not to apply too many modern categories to it.
It does not dismiss ideas of Roman elite as merely "functionalist" serving primarily a political purpose for advancement. Instead, Volk is interested in understanding the "motivations" of different people. She is going to examine when people lived up to their expectations and when they failed.
It does not fully subscribe to this "cultural revolution" theory of Roman decline that:
Roman republic began declining where it started off with morals that were held in consensus and then started splintering. Instead she thinks it’s a lot more messy. Furthermore, she rejects the teleological way of understanding history. There are a lot more different paths that history could have taken.
Intellectual life became more "rational." Instead writing becoming popular is the reason that it appeared to be more rational.
Chapter breakdown
Chapter 2 drawing from Cicero to examine what the aristocratic intellectual “diet” consisted in.
Chapter 3 investigates how much philosophy lives up to its claim of being an “art of living” how much political actors were actually influenced by the philosophies they subscribed to.
Cato and stoicism
Cicero and skepticism
Epicureans and how they reconciled engaging in political life with withdrawal
Chapter 4 deals with philosophy after the defeat of Pompey.
Philosophy used as consolation of the losers.
Cicero’s encyclopedic corpus as mourning the loss of republic and daughter.
Philosophical justification of pro vs. anti-Caesarian camps after the assassination.
Chapter 5 discusses how Romans used intellectual life to think about their own origins and traditions
Chapter 6 is more “theology” how Caesar, Cicero and others used divination to their political favor.
Conclusion is a summary of the text, emphasizing just how “republican” this period of intellectual production was. This all changed in the Empire when the Emperor had top-down control. The republic of letters did not survive the republic itself.
Chapter 2: Res Publica of Letters
This chapter is to trace out the intellectual life of the Roman elite in the late republic.
Republic of Letters was a renaissance term that denoted a community of equal scholars that exchanged ideas. It is a republic because it transcended national and political boundaries. The same was the case here, where learned scholars would often use learning as a way to bridge the gap and build relationships.
Volk first wants to defend the label that Cicero puts for his age “the most learned of times”
The case for:
Upper classes received tremendous education in Greek and Latin
Many of them patronized poets and scholars
Two critiques against
Roman’s were not great intellectuals
This is due to comparison with Greek culture (and a fetishization of Greek culture) alongside a romantic notion of originality (because they imitated the Greeks, they were lesser)
The second critique has more ground which is that Romans themselves held very low opinion of intellectual life
They often recognize the superiority of the Greeks
But this is usually followed up with the idea that the contest is still “open” and that 1. They surpass the Greeks in other domains OR 2. They are eventually going to beat the Greeks even at their own game.
There are a lot of instances where they mock philosophers
But this is a common trope, one that Cicero himself uses a great deal (the absent-minded intellectual). Of course, Cicero is not against intellectual life at all.
Cicero feeling a need to defend his own intellectual activity / questioning it
No other intellectuals at the time do this. It might just be because Cicero himself is a very introspective person.
The picture we get is of a Roman elite class that
Was very much focused on learning
Who produced important intellectual work but was very different from professional intellectuals
Who mocked the overly formal methods of the intellectuals
Who mocked the overly theoretical concerns of the intellectuals
Whose primary mode of engagement was in dialogue with each other and not lectures
Typically, the reading and writing of a Roman senator takes place during Otium, in his villa in the countryside when he is not engaged in business. With that said, study is deeply communal:
They would often go on grand tours together.
Philosophers would often be brought on campaign.
Roman elite did intellectual pursuits in discussion/dialogue with each other.
Even writing (dictating to a scribe) and reading (listening to a lector) are social.
There were no public libraries so people borrowed each other’s books.
People are being asked for feedback all the time.
They would dedicate works to each other.
Many of their works would be in dialogue form and would include each other as characters.
It was how they networked and it was a way of discussing something interesting and “light” e.g. Caesar and Cicero after defeating Pompeii spending time together to discuss oratory and not politics, both said they had a good time.
Chapter 3: Engaged Philosophy
Philosophy is considered an “art of life” the question is whether they actually changed people’s lives.
The dominant scholarly position is that it did not that people’s philosophical positions did not match to their political actions
Volk’s position is that it’s too strict a criteria to expect their philosophies to show up in politics, especially because politics does not have a one-to-one correspondence with these schools (which are much more abstract) anyways. She’s more interested in seeing HOW these schools (not IF) have impacted them, if at all.
Cato and Stoicism
Stoicism contra popular imagination was not popular in the late Republic. It became more popular in the Empire.
Cato was great grandson of a famous censor. He was famously unwilling to compromise and hyper conservative.
Cato was very eccentric and unusual. Neither his politics nor his philosophy were unusual but how doggedly he pursued them was.
He pursued his studies as fervently as he did his politics.
Cato was almost playing “Cato” the character
He read Plato’s Phaedo twice before committed suicide.
He would not wear his Cloak and sandals for show
Cato leaving the arena so people could see an immoral act
BUT … there is something stoic about adhering to what one is so closely. Cato was very aware of this and he wanted to become an extraordinary person.
QUESTION: is this in tension with his stoicism?
This is Volk’s key claim: stoicism did not determine the content of Cato’s thought but it determined the form of Cato’s thought. He’s very indifferent to the outcome. Three examples:
Convict someone who is guilty even if it led to good outcome
His physical courage during Election Day
He failed his consulship because he was too stubborn
But he was also not the perfect stoic:
Bursts of anger
Favoritism
Would compromise the ideal for the practical
Cicero and the Political Imperative
Cicero was primarily interested in politics, only in exile did he fully engage in his studies. Even then, he conceived of his studies as a way to help the commonwealth.
Many reasons he engaged in philosophy
Introducing fellow romans to Greek thought
Creating body of latin philosophy
Comfort and distraction for himself in hard times
Reasoning and deliberating on the best course of action (this was very close to his skeptic training)
Cicero was a proponent of the Academic Skeptics. They were taught to pit each school against one another and make “progress” that way. They do not believe that capital-T truth is probable but that we can distinguish which are falsehoods, which are likely and which are “similar to the truth.”
Skepticism did not prevent him from holding views, but instead empowered him to play around with multiple views and adopt different positions which seem probable.
Question: did skepticism lead to Cicero’s concern for the political good?
“In the Dream of Scipio, the eschatological vision that concludes De re publica, Cicero reaffirms his belief in politics as man’s highest calling, incorporating it into a grand cosmological scheme, whereby virtuous statesmen, such as the father and grand father of the dialogue’s main protagonist Scipio Africanus, are granted a blessed afterlife among the stars, in the Milky Way.”
Question: how do we get from skepticism to affirming such exaggerated religious views?
Cicero has key doctrines which he holds namely 1. The primacy of virtue and 2. The importance of helping the community. Both of these led him to attack the Epicureans for their withdrawal and their priority of pleasure over righteousness.
Because of 2. He thinks learning shouldn’t be done for its own sake but to help the community.
Cicero had two ways to adjust to the political currents
Debating between different options in the new academic manner
Adjust his own actions to the virtuous course laid out in his own works
Siding of Pompey over Caesar was to choose between two lesser evils
Epicureanism
This was the most popular school of philosophy by far
Why it was appealing (Cicero’s critique)
Easy to understand
People lured by pleasure
No better alternatives
It might have seemed extremely satisfying in a time when there was extreme political strife
This is my default position
It was very friendship driven and it built many communities around communal living. It also had many proselytizers
Epicureanism suggested that public life and political ambition was something that thwarted the good life. So how could it become the dominant theory even within the senate?
One answer is that if you have a strong desire for glory, you aren’t going to be very happy if you don’t achieve it. So for different people epicureanism might suggest different things.
But most epicureans like Atticus stayed out of politics.
There is a suggestion that there is a distinctively Epicurean way of doing politics that favored peace and non-confrontation.
Piso declined a Roman Triumph out of Epicureanism and the most interesting thing is that Cicero considered it a moral depravity. Because it represents a lack of social spiritedness. That you almost become an animal.
Caesar saying he lived long enough for both nature and glory.
The conclusion Volk comes to is that philosophy did not furnish individuals with actual political content but it did furnish them with ways of thinking about living and life.
Chapter 4: Philosophy after Pharsalus
This chapter deals with how philosophy was used after the defeat of Pompey.
Philosophy was a form of group therapy for the defeated Pompeians.
They all wrote letters to each other
Cicero’s philosophy at this time took on a strong stoic bent:
What matters is not the outcome but virtue
He who is virtuous with the right intentions is blameless
Preferred indifferents (like power/money) are to be pursued, but happiness does not depend on the outcome of the pursuit
Virtue is sufficient to live happy lives (but the happiest life requires external goods)
The consolation was a genre that Cicero studied very closely
The whole genre is to try and show what is perceived as an evil is actually not an evil.
Cicero used philosophy as a way to do politics but by other means
Cicero needed to be careful what he could or could not say. In his Brutus it appears to be a discussion about oratory. But there is a deeper message: only in a just republic is oratory the mode by which political decisions are made. In his time, the sword has sway over the pen.
Volk doesn’t think Cicero had a clear and explicit political motive behind treatise like this ^ but that he was trying to create a safe space that was freed from Caesar, namely in the constructs of his writings.
Caesar was also trying to push people in this direction to turn senators into just intellectuals while he held the political power.
Cicero was caught in tricky situations like being asked by Brutus to write a dedication to Cato.
What’s interesting is that both the pro and anti Cato treatise focused on his life and not political actions and were cordial (gentlemen scholars)
This did not mean people had free speech. Caecina was one of the people Caesar did not extend clemency to because he had written a book against Caesar in the civil war. These things stick.
Cicero used a technique called the mirror of princes which is to try and shower obliging praises on the recipient. In this case, it was an attempt to get Caesar to restore the republic.
Cicero eventually gives up trying to persuade Caesar, citing how even Aristotle failed at educating Alexander.
Philosophy is not just an art of living in that it teaches you how to live, but for Cicero it was a pastime that at the very least distracted him.
Cicero’s ambition is to make philosophy Roman. He thought his innovation was to combine rhetoric with philosophy.
The competition of ideas after the death of Caesar
The pro Caesar side cited arguments around loyalty and friendship
The anti Caesar side cited arguments around tyranny and liberty
Brutus was Cato’s nephew and descended from two tyrant-slayers. He made “virtue” his trademark.
How does Brutus decide who to let into his circle of conspirators? He has a philosophical debate at his home.
Volk takes the fact that the conspirators had no plan afterwards to sieze power as proof that they were motivated by mostly ideological reasons.
Cicero argues that Caesar’s death shows that the just and the expedient (power) are ultimately aligned
The friendship narrative won out over the liberty argument.
Caesar miscalculated, he was extremely cynical and thought everyone like him didn’t care about the republic and its values anymore but it turned out to be just him. Ironically enough, his adopted son Augustus was a lot more deferential to the republic and her values while being the person who effectively ended it.
Chapter 5: The Invention of Rome
This chapter is about how Romans investigated their past. How they studied “Romanness”
What was a really important genre was Etiology this included family genealogy the origin of language, determining the foundation of Rome, and synchronizing Roman history with what has happened in the known world.
History and etiology/antiquarianism were very different disciplines. The first was about getting things objective, properly cataloguing them but the second was about connecting past with present.
Brutus is unlikely to be descended from Brutus but it was socially useful.
Motivation
A common (mis)reading of why the Romans were so engaged in this discipline was that they believed Rome was on a downward trajectory. They did it out of nostalgia.
The first issue is that Romans were capable of telling the other story (the one Cicero tells of increased flourishing of learning).
Varro was interested not for nostalgic, reactionary movement but present day public service.
Another common mis-reading was that Roman scholarship was becoming more rational and that’s why this project of dialoguing the past was created.
But this isn’t right either because ratio could also mean the inherent logic in things. That people were interested in investigating the past not because they had become more rational but because they were interested in the rational structure at the origin of things.
Volk wants to show it’s not about ratio nor is it about an antiquarian project but what defines Romanness is a lot less glamorous: force of habit. That is to say, Rome is defined by trial and error and what that trial and error leads to is not necessarily a perfect alignment with nature or reason but sometimes is arbitrary.
Polybus attributes Rome’s success to 1. Mixed Constitution 2. Roman Religion. Cicero and Varro each examine a piece of this claim both of their conclusions is that Rome resists neat generalizations.
Here is what is true across both these authors
Neither roman religion nor politics was formed in a day nor by one person its strength lied in the fact that it was the outcome of pragmatic trial and error. Individuals added to the original foundation.
Cicero wants to tell a teleological story, he has the burden of showing how all the developments of Rome are in some sense “good”. He needs to show not only that there is a perfect city (Plato’s task) but that his Rome is that perfect city.
What makes Roman constitution perfect is that it is mixed with aristocratic (senate), monarchical (consul), and democratic (tribunate) elements.
The development is quite a peaceful one because Romulus got so much “right” in setting up the senate.
Now the republic is not perfect in its early stages. It has, for example, a lust for war.
But this story shows its cracks especially with the development of the tribunate. It’s ambiguous as Cicero had been hurt by them and it comes from suspicious origins.
Ultimately, this shows that Rome did not result from perfect ratio (rationality) and that nature as well as necessity (habit) played an important role.
Varro does not need to tell a teleological story he’s interested in getting to the historical facts of the growth of Roman religion
His story is more conflictual with gods fighting for real estate in the pantheon.
Development of cult images is highly ambiguous
Varro suggests a pragmatic dimension that even if they are false, it’s good for people to believe.
There is a metaphysical and civil way of investigating religion. Varro’s way of investigation is civil. It’s to understand its social and political uses.
But then he sometimes at the end goes to metaphysical speculation about the nature of the gods.
Volk thinks that Cicero and Varro are going in opposite directions. Cicero is starting from the ideal state and then trying to match it to the real. Varro is starting from the real and trying to see if it may have rationality in it.
Language was another popular etiological domain. The big debate is what should triumph rationality or habit for the correct uses of language.
Varro thinks habit supersedes rationality.
Cicero and Caesar wrote treatise on good oratory. Cicero believed correct usage of latin was just the beginning of good oration. His style is embellished. Caesar believed that rationality supersedes habit and that the essence of good oration is correct usage and clarity. His style is an elegant minimalism its unembellished yet systematic (not unlike his military/political style).
Caesar wrote a book on Latin oratory during his Gaulic campaign. He believed that with the influx of non-native speakers, the ability to speak correct latin had deteriorated.
Caesar gives praised to Cicero that rhetoric alone was enough to stop the Catalonian conspiracy. But this is a double-edged praise as he tried to “box” Cicero in and make him into just an intellectual. Cicero can dominate the domain of letters, but Caesar’s goal is to hold political power.
Chapter 6: Coopting the Cosmos
This chapter is on how Roman religiosity was co-opted and used in the political process. The same people in charge of the senate also were in charge of public rituals and communing with the gods. At the end of the late republic, religious practices were increasingly being shaped by and used for political purposes.
An example of this is Cicero’s house, during his exiled, was partially transformed into a religious venue. When he came back, he had to (and did) convince the senate that the enlistment was improper due to a technicality.
Caesar’s co-consul was rendered impotent through augury.
Augury came into conflict with popular philosophies. For epicureans, god did not interfere in human events. For the stoics, the world was already fated so whats the point of expiating weird signs?
As republic gave way to empire astrology became more and more dominant. Because it became about the individual and not the entire community since everyone had their own unique chart.
Cicero’s religious position
Cicero was very cynical about augury, thinking it was just a political tool.
Cicero’s skepticism helped him distinguish views into wrong, probably, and similar to the truth.
But even if he was skeptical about religious claims privately he still held them publicly.
Cicero seems to have a few starting axioms that he takes for granted like he primacy of virtue for the good life.
For Cicero, virtue is something we can determine ourselves and we don’t need to rely on signs form the gods.
Skipped the section about Nigidius who is a good example of a learned senator who was very much into divination.
Caesar’s first innovation: the calendar.
Before the calendar had 355 days even though everyone knows that didn’t match with the year.
This gave the Pontifex Maximus a lot of power to decide where to insert the extra days (intercalation).
No one thought of a wholesale reform but Caesar just forced it upon everyone.
What was important for Caesar’s reforms was to have a calendar that everyone could trust. Not arbitrary.
Caesar’s second innovation was his own deification.
Before him, the Roman elite cozied up to the divinities. Many claimed divine lineage. Cicero in his epic poem about his consulship had himself visit mount Olympus.
After Caesar, the deification of mortals became commonplace.
But for his contemporaries the greater worry was not that Caesar would be a god but that he would be the King.
Conclusion
Even if the philosopher senators themselves would say that that turmoil is not helpful for their study, its clear that it created the intellectual backdrop for their theorizing.
This kind of republic of letters did not survive the death of the actual republic. It became a lot more top down. Not just funding and commissions but control over thought became much more centralized.