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Romans 1:18-2:29 connects with Stoic philosophy in a way that would be unmistakable to a Gentile audience. While acknowledging the Hellenistic tone of the passage, this paper focuses on the Stoic elements of natural law that were broadly recognized in Rome. Particularly, Cicero's speeches, rhetorical handbooks, and philosophical treatises provide a comprehensive account of the connections between Hellenistic philosophy and Roman law and declamation. Although no direct evidence exists to show that Paul had read Cicero, these texts reveal the culture of the Roman Christians to whom Paul was writing. Key concepts of natural law appear in Romans that contextualize Paul's message on internal obedience in 2:27-29, although he reworks them. Paul emphasizes spirit 'πνεῦμα' as the generating force of obedience. Two interpretations of πνεῦμα echo Stoic perspectives as the intent opposed to the letter of the law and as the inward motivation of the person obeying the law. The third interpretation as a foreshadowing of the Holy Spirit would be new for Paul's Roman audience. This paper demonstrates that by incorporating Stoic elements on natural law, Paul presents the central significance of internal obedience in a way that would be understandable to his Christ-believing auditors and readers in Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ciceroniana On Line is the property of Ciceroniana On Line and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Other Modernities / Altre Modernita / Otras Modernidades / Autres Modernités is the property of Altre Modernita and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The sacred and moral duty of family members, primarily heirs, was to bury the deceased. The funeral ceremony and the size of the funeral monument reflected the social status of the decedent; nonetheless the funeral itself had a dual role – to ensure a peaceful transition of the soul into eternity and to provide peace for the descendants. Reading the legal texts, it could easily be seen that the issue of funeral costs was at the high level of importance for the offspring. In addition, we can assert that the Roman legislators, lawyers and priests were particular aware of its importance. In this regard, the praetor issued the Edictum de sumptibus funerum, establishing the actio funeraria, in order to determine who and under what conditions acquires the right of reimbursement of funeral costs, but also to ensure that no one is buried at someone else’s expense. The aim of this paper is to answer the questions who had the liability and responsibility to organize the funeral and bear it costs, when and under what conditions could organizer sue for the incurred expense and what was considered as the funeral cost. Results indicate the following. The grandeur of the funeral and the amount of funeral expenses depended on the social status and wealth of the deceased. The costs of the funeral were divided into necessary, which cover expenses in the name of activities without funeral could not take place and convenient, which depend on the reputation of the defunctus. Although there have been attempts to expand Ulpian’s classification into necessary and convenient expenses, this does not seem to have been the case at the outset. Funeral expenses were mostly – with a few exceptions, covered from the inheritance, and the obligation to reimburse the costs incurred was most often borne by the persons burying the deceased. From Cicero’s and Ulpian’s texts, we learn which persons were obliged to bury the deceased, i.e. cover funeral expenses. It is important to note that research shows that from the moment of death until the costs are paid, the inheritance is in the regime of hereditas iacens, and that it is administered by the praetor to ensure that no one is buried at someone else’s expense. The paper uses linguistic, historical and systematic interpretation of passages D.11.7.12.4–6, D.11.7.13, D.11.7.14.3,4,6 and 10, D.11.7.21, Cic.Leg.2.48–49, as well as historical method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the presentation of the Epicurean virtues offered in the Letter to Menoeceus and in Cicero's On Ends. It evaluates the proposals advanced by Phillip Mitsis and Pierre-Marie Morel. Against Morel, it is argued that Torquatus' presentation of the virtues in On Ends is not part of an elaborate dialectical strategy. Instead, the paper sides with Mitsis' more modest proposal: while Torquatus, like any good speaker, with high likelihood adapts his presentation to his audience, his ideas also have a strong foundation in Epicureanism. Given the extant state of textual evidence, it is difficult to determine precisely, however, to what degree his presentation of the virtues (1) directly draws on ideas already present in the founder of the Garden himself, (2) reflects a later development in the Epicurean school, or (3) falsifies Epicurean ideas to make them more palatable for a Roman audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues, in response to scholarly criticism, that Thomas Aquinas's account of the virtue of humility in the Summa Theologiae does not undermine the importance of humility in the Christian moral life. While the Summa' s classification of humility as a 'potential part' of temperance, which results from Thomas's reliance on classical sources, has been blamed for this work's perceived belittling of humility, an understanding of the Summa' s overall scope and Aquinas's system of organizing virtues therein helps demonstrate that this categorization does not imply a lesser significance of humility either than other virtues in the Summa or than humility as treated in his Bible commentaries. Furthermore, even if the Summa' s structure creates limited space for an extensive discourse on humility, the establishment of humility's reciprocity with magnanimity and absolute contradiction of pride leave no doubts as to the magnitude of this virtue. Thus, the 'humble' portrayal of humility in the Summa not only adequately but aptly expresses this uniquely Christian virtue, capturing the way it disposes human beings to 'creaturely' reverence before the Creator, and invites a more holistic understanding of Aquinas's virtue ranking in the Secunda Secundae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I explore the Stoic view on attachment to external goods, or what the Stoics call "indifferents." Attachment is problematic, on the Stoic view, because it exposes us to loss and exacerbates the fragility that comes with needing others and things. The Stoics argue that we can build resilience through a robust reeducation of ordinary emotions and routine practice in psychological risk management techniques. Through a focus on selected writings of Seneca as well as Cicero's Tusculan Disputations and Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, I nonetheless ask whether Stoicism leaves any room for grief and distress. I argue that it does, and that consolation comes not from a retreat to some inner citadel, but from the support and sustenance of social connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The following paper proposes that Sallust offers a conceptualization of civil conflict more in line with the Greek paradigm of stasis than with its Roman counterpart bellum ciuile. In doing so, it argues for the actual coexistence of these two differentiated conceptual strands in the political thought of the Late Republic. To this end, Sallust's corpus is analysed to identify the main threads that articulate civil strife in its multifarious manifestations: how it arises and who its protagonists are or, conversely, how it is kept in check, how it is connected to the human passions that drive ideology, and the violence that stems from the clash between political and familial spheres of influence. The article shows how the pathos of familial drama is what characterizes civil conflict for Sallust, rather than the struggle for legitimacy found in Cicero's narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether the presence or absence of ut in the subjunctival complementation of uolo in Archaic Latin – specifically Plautus and Terence – has any underlying rule. In more than two-thirds of their instances, inflected forms of uolo appear in juxtaposition with their subjunctival clauses, i. e. without a conjoining ut. This juxtaposition occurs most often in some high-frequency collocations, with larger distances between main and subordinate verbs, and in interrogative sentences. The most relevant criterion, however, turns out to be the morphology of uolo itself: 91 % of all 'uolo + subjunctive' tokens are restricted to only three forms. These results indicate that the usage of uolo + subjunctive was already specialized in Archaic Latin. To test this theory, data from Cicero show that the subjunctive complementation of uolo as a whole, with or without a subordinating ut, was under a process of fossilization: the existing tendencies of Archaic Latin are intensified in Classical Latin. The results for uolo are finally compared with similar data for facio (Mazzanti 2020), and similar results are evidenced: distance between main and subordinate verbs and main verb morphology are the main factors determining the use of the conjunction. Subjunctive subordinate clauses without an introductory ut therefore seem to have undergone a process of fossilization between Archaic and Classical Latin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Cicero was the most revered and read classical figure in colonial America, his influence on the political thought of that era, specifically its most defining moment – the Constitutional Convention – has been underappreciated. But due to insights that recent scholarship on Cicero has provided, it is possible discern elements of uniquely Ciceronian strains of political thought alongside the more well-established Polybian ones in the debates at the Convention. This paper will argue that presence of Ciceronian constitutional thought at the Convention can be traced back to the founders' early education as well as continued reading habits, of which Cicero's De Re Publica played a vital role. By proposing Ciceronian solutions to political issues, the founders advocated a unique form of republicanism which depended on the elites' virtue, understood as their political wisdom, and the primacy of the elite-controlled Senate. Through virtue and the Senate so composed, the founders believed that they might harmonise differing class interests and establish a stable federal government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Appian of Alexandria wrote in a time of peace long after the end of the Roman civil wars. How does he approach the polemical elements included in his sources in more fractious periods by many more partisan authors? By examining his treatment of M. Tullius Cicero (about whom everyone else had a strong opinion), this paper exposes Appian's unwillingness to engage in polemic even while he consistently displays his preference for monarchic government and his belief that the 'happy' outcome for Rome was the result of divine guidance and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cornelius Nepos' Life of Atticus shows its author as living a life of deliberate withdrawal from politics. This paper compares that life to other models of political withdrawal in Greco-Roman thought and finds that it does not cohere very closely with any of them. Nepos, the paper proposes, deviates from these existing models in showing Atticus as avoiding politics not out of a desire to transcend human life, to reorder politics, or to create a substitute politics of his own, but rather to live what the paper calls 'social life.' Atticus embraces human interdependence while rejecting the civic forms in which that interdependence was traditionally expressed in Greece and Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine in Cicero's oratory speeches the criticisms of his opponents regarding either their lack of erudition or their poor intellectual abilities. From our viewpoint, this original locus of invective is closely linked to the consolidation of a new intellectual nobilitas at the end of the Roman Republic and is especially relevant in the context of Cicero's return from exile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper engages with MS Harley 647 in the British Library, London, a manuscript produced probably at the imperial court in Aachen during the reign of Louis the Pious (814–40 CE), which contains the surviving portion (about four hundred and eighty lines) of Cicero's Latin translation of the Greek poem Phaenomena, written by Aratus of Soli between 275 and 250 BCE. The poem is a description of the night sky based on the earliest celestial globe, manufactured by the astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus in the first half of the fourth century BCE. The text itself, however, is not the most important element of the manuscript: in fact, its dominant feature are the full-page images of constellations, to which Cicero's text, at the bottom of each page, functions as a caption. This article examines the interaction between words and images in the astronomical illustrations of the manuscript, showing how their scientific content is conveyed to the user (at the same time viewer and reader) through the unity of the verbal and the visual. The long-debated question of the originality of their peculiar layout is also addressed, with conclusive evidence supporting the theory of a late Roman model. Finally, the insertion of the text within the illustrations will be interpreted as an allusion to the idea, presented in the proem of the Phaenomena, that the constellations are God's message 'written' in the sky to help humans in their basic activities, above all agriculture: a key concept in Stoic theology that could also appeal to a Christian audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Niccolò Machiavelli's account of virtues in his famous work The Prince. The Italian philosopher uses three different stages or steps of argumentation. All these steps are analyzed in this paper. It is argued that in each step, Machiavelli makes partial conclusions which are neglected in the next step. In the last step, Machiavelli concludes that not only some virtues lead to failure, but all virtues are harmful to a successful leader. Instead of an honest and just way of acting, Machiavelli proposes the slyness of a fox - the most effective and successful way of acting. Cicero's De Officiis effectively helps to understand the radicality of Machiavelli's account of virtues. Cicero's work enables one to explain all the central metaphors and analogies used in Machiavelli's The Prince. Comparing Cicero's and Machiavelli's radically different accounts of the same virtues and vices shows that Machiavelli changed the traditional understanding of virtues, thus refuting traditional moral and political philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the fact that Andocides is nowhere mentioned in Cicero's oeuvre it is universally assumed that Cicero could not have read, let alone been inspired by, the works of Andocides. By comparing several passages from both orators, this paper argues that this is not necessarily the case. In terms of both language and content, these texts bear so close a resemblance to one another, that a direct influence does not seem beyond question. If Cicero had indeed, whether deliberately or otherwise, borrowed some ideas and/or phrases from Andocides, the absence of the latter's name in Cicero's extant writings can be explained in two different ways: (1) either certain expressions that occur in Andocides' speeches could have been known to Cicero from indirect tradition, (2) or Cicero was simply reluctant to admit to his acquaintance with the least esteemed of the ten Attic orators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I revisit nature as a source of normativity for law in the later Hellenistic period, that is beyond the opposition of law and nature in the early classical period, Plato's and Aristotle's naturalism, or the early Stoics' conception of the common law. I will focus on the first century BCE, when the expression 'natural law' gained prominence, reconstructing its origins in the interaction between Hellenistic philosophers and the Roman elite, including jurists. I argue that for the jurists the Stoic doctrine of law in nature offered a theoretical underpinning for their unique practice of dispute resolution, whereas for the Stoics this Roman practice offered an unexpected opportunity to instrumentalise their conception of law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines Cicero's use and introduction of direct speech in nine selected letters to Atticus. It shows that despite the informal traits found in the letters, Cicero is not innovative in his choice of means to introduce direct speech. The paper also notes transitional zones on the margin of the domain of direct speech and the interplay of intervening voices. In this way, it contributes to improving the knowledge of direct speech in classical Latin, which is a necessary starting point for research into its development. The analysis is divided into two parts. This part is aimed at the theoretical background, use and introduction of direct speech in the letters to Atticus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how Cicero forges a late style in the Second Philippic that reflects the political stance he adopts in the face of existential crisis. The fluidity of Cicero's trademark, consular hypotactic style hardens into a paratactic, rigid crisis style in the Philippics, where Cicero's arguments for extra-legal measures reveal his shift towards a Catonian view of reality in which, he, his style, and Rome itself must be sacrificed in order to be preserved. Nevertheless, and reflecting the Machiavellian paradox that republics must often be destroyed in order to be saved and renewed through re-founding, Cicero preserves stylistic continuity through variation. His late style is the paradigmatic classical republican response to the crises that republics, then and now, inevitably engender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The real object of study in this paper is the speech as a text with all its full appearance. Speech is studied from a functional and interpretive point of view, which serves to understand, analyze and use it more effectively. Another important object in the paper is the perspective for academic purposes of speech analysis and their use in the service of professors, students and education in general. This paper is distinguished for theoretical and practical approaches. The study of contemporary literature and inductive methods help to clarify the position that rhetoric occupies today in general and speech as a text in relation to other texts. The second part of the paper is characterized by the use of the deductive method. This part of the paper focuses on the analysis of the most selected speeches by the world fund and authors who have noted with their rhetoric. Looking into the present to understand more about how words shape the fates of peoples, many questions were answered in the past. After a retrospective journey through time, the function, objectives and definition of rhetoric and rhetoric became clearer, from its conception to the present day. Very early in time philosophers clarified that rhetoric, like the art of communication, was the systematization of naturally born rhetoric. Created as a necessity of the time, rhetoric and rhetoric directly influenced the interpretation of social events and phenomena. The fact that rhetoric and rhetoric took on such special importance led many philosophers to offer its systematization. They created theoretical schemes, the function of which has not diminished even today. The merit of defining the three basic categories of discourse based first on the behavior of the audience and the intent of the speaker, belongs to Aristotle. These categories are respectively legal, persuasive and ceremonial. Under the contribution of other philosophers such as Cicero and Quintilian, rhetoric was organized into five structures which were the same as the structures of speech organization: invention / invention, organization, style, memorization, presentation.The clarity and democracy offered by the word organized according to the theory of rhetoric posed a threat to new forms of government that began to flourish at the beginning of the new era. Rhetoric and rhetoric began to become the "property" of autocratic leaders, thus moving away from the pure purposes for which they were created. This period together with the Middle Ages represent the most difficult moments for rhetoric, which was put at the service of imperial, dictatorial and Christian forms of government. The Middle Ages marked the greatest fragmentation of internal and external rhetoric. The flourishing of logic and theology marked the final blow to rhetoric. From now on, rhetoric would be called 'lost art'. Along with it, the public-lecturer relationship was lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the rhetorical uses of praise are at least as culturally interesting as the use of invective, which has received much more scholarly attention. After brief comments on "Cicero's conceit" - the title of Walter Allen's classic article on the subject, which held (correctly, I believe) that Cicero's self-regard did not exceed the generous bounds allowed by his contemporaries - the paper uses Cicero's defense of Publius Sestius (Pro Sestio, March 56 BCE) to demonstrate the variety and tactical precision with which Cicero used both praise of himself and - perhaps more interestingly - praise of others to advance his and his client's interests. The paper concludes by suggesting some of the ways in which further study of the "economy of praise" - the ways in which praise circulated as a form of currency among members of the Roman elite - could further illuminate late Republican culture and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Stylos is the property of Pontificia Universidad Catolica Argentina and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ennodius' panegyric for Theoderic the Great shows the employment of Roman rhetorical tradition and republican-era virtues to legitimise the new Germanic ruler of Italy. After Ennodius' general strategies to depict Theoderic as a Roman are discussed, this paper analyses two specific samples from the speech which show the use of traditional symbols, exempla , and even Ciceronian conceptions of tyranny alongside contemporary views of Romans and barbarians. These strategies were used to shape a version of Theoderic that removed the ruler from his Germanic background and reinterpreted him as a Roman ruler. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the translation and interpretation of a succinct quip of Sextus Clodius, a rhetorician in Antony's entourage, on the subject of Fulvia's swollen cheek. The jest is often interpreted as having suggested that she tempted Clodius' pen, and various double meanings have been proposed. Contextualization may supply a key. The remark could mean that Fulvia seemed to be testing the point of her stylus, and the dark allusion might then be to reports of the manner in which Fulvia had allegedly mistreated the severed head of Cicero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the striking affinities of classical Greek and Latin rhetoric with the pragmatist/interactionist analysis of the situated negotiation of reality and its profound relevance for the analysis of human group life more generally, few contemporary social scientists are aware of the exceptionally astute analyses of persuasive interchange developed by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Having considered the analyses of rhetoric developed by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Cicero (106-43 BCE) in interactionist terms (Prus 2007a; 2010), the present paper examines Quintilian’s (35-95 CE) contributions to the study of persuasive interchange more specifically and the nature of human knowing and acting more generally. Focusing on the education and practices of orators (rhetoricians), Quintilian (a practitioner as well as a distinctively thorough instructor of the craft) provides one of the most sustained, most systematic analyses of influence work and resistance to be found in the literature. Following an overview of Quintilian’s “ethnohistorical” account of Roman oratory, this paper concludes by drawing conceptual parallels between Quintilian’s analysis of influence work and the broader, transcontextual features of symbolic interactionist scholarship (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Prus 1996; 1997; 1999; Prus and Grills 2003). This includes “generic social processes” such as: acquiring perspectives, attending to identity, being involved, doing activity, engaging in persuasive interchange, developing relationships, experiencing emotionality, attaining linguistic fluency, and participating in collective events. Offering a great many departure points for comparative analysis, as well as ethnographic examinations of the influence process, Quintilian’s analysis is particularly instructive as he addresses these and related aspects of human knowing, acting, and interchange in highly direct, articulate, and detailed ways. Acknowledging the conceptual, methodological, and analytic affinities of The Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian with symbolic interactionism, an epilogue, Quintilian as an Intellectual Precursor to American Pragmatist Thought and the Interactionist Study of Human Group Life, addresses the relative lack of attention given to classical Greek and Latin scholarship by the American pragmatists and their intellectual progeny, as well as the importance of maintaining a more sustained transcontextual and transhistorical focus on the study of human knowing, acting, and interchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nova Tellus is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones Filologicas - UNAM and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In Paradoxa Stoicorum, the Roman philosopher Cicero defends six important Stoic theses. Since these theses seem counterintuitive, and it is not likely that the average person would agree with them, they were generally called 'paradoxes'. According to the third paradox, (P3), (all) transgressions (wrong actions) are equal and (all) right actions are equal. According to one interpretation of this principle, which I will call (P3′), it means that if it is forbidden that A and it is forbidden that B, then not-A is as good as not-B; and if it is permitted that A and it is permitted that B, then A is as good as B. In this paper, I show how it is possible to prove this thesis in dyadic deontic logic. I also try to defend (P3′) against some philosophical counterarguments. Furthermore, I address the claim that (P3′) is not a correct interpretation of Cicero's third paradox and the assertion that it does not matter whether (P3′) is true or not. I argue that it does matter whether (P3′) is true or not, but acknowledge that (P3′) is perhaps a slightly different principle than Cicero's thesis. The upshot is that (P3′) seems to be a plausible principle, and that at least one part of paradox III in Cicero's Paradoxa Stoicorum appears to be defensible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper wants to address the Aristotelian analysis of the concept of mimesis from a social and cultural angle. It is going to show that mimesis is crucial if we want to understand why the institution of the theatre played such a crucial role in the civic educational programme of classical Athens. The paper's argument is that the magic spell of theatrical imitation, its aesthetic machinery was exploited by the city for civic educational function. Dramas, and in particular tragedies helped to articulate the city's political expectations from the citizens, and they achieved it with far better efficiency than any other medium of propaganda which was available in those days. It will first reconstruct the duality within the internal structure of the Aristotelian account of mimesis in Poetics: it will show both 1.) the aesthetic and 2.) the sociocultural dimensions of his theory of civic initiation through dramatic imitation. In the second part it will compare this Greek cultural context with a similar context in Rome in the activity and writings of Cicero. Finally, the paper presents the Renaissance republican context of early modern Europe, which also connected politico-moral education with the idea of mimesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Myth of Er, Plato describes the 'Spindle of Necessity', a contraption presenting the cosmos as guided by Sirens and Fates, and ascribes different colours to the planets (Rep. 616e-617a). This paper argues that Plato probably used astronomical data for that passage, but possibly gave them a metaphorical sense, and discusses the likelihood of his having used Mesopotamian sources. The second half of the paper studies receptions of and allusions to the image, with context-based astronomical, political, and metaphysical features. Cicero adjusted the image to contemporary astronomy, and to the political function of the cosmic structures in the Somnium Scipionis. His commentator Macrobius emphasizes empirical correctness, but possibly with metaphysical undertones. Apuleius' Metamorphoses alludes to the image in a portrait of Isis, perhaps to refer to her metaphysical role. Finally, Proclus interprets the Platonic passage as primarily metaphysical, and pointing to truths beyond astronomical phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Filozofija i Drustvo is the property of University of Belgrade, Institute for Philosophy & Social Theory and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In his letters to Lucius Papirius Paetus from 46 bc Cicero provides striking reports on his thoughts and activities as he seeks to accommodate himself to the new political realities following Caesar's decisive victory over the republican forces in Africa. In these letters Cicero also engages in a kind of performative role-playing: he casts himself variously as a teacher of oratory to two of Caesar's close associates (Hirtius and Dolabella), as a bon vivant immersed in the Caesarian social scene, and as a man of moral principle who measures himself against the model of the wise man. Philosophical jokes, allusions, and arguments all figure prominently: Cicero is evidently drawing on a rich range of philosophical material to frame his actions and how he should be judged. This paper brings out the full significance of these underlying philosophical frameworks and makes clear the ways in which Cicero exploits the resources of the Greek philosophical tradition in his self-fashioning in the letters to Paetus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new synthetic account of the presence of Cicero as both character and source in Lucan's Bellum Ciuile. Lucan's treatment is derived primarily from Virgil's technique for creating intertextually complex characters, but further builds on Sallust's displacement of Cicero in his narrative of the Catilinarian conspiracy and on the declamatory practice of reducing the orator to a few prominent and recognizable traits. Cicero the character, as he briefly appears at the opening of the seventh book, is not simply an ahistorical caricature: he is constructed through a careful series of allusions designed to indict his use of violence in the suppression of Catiline. Other prominent aspects of Cicero in the tradition are displaced and transferred to other characters more important to Lucan's design, Cato and Pompey. Lucan's depiction of Pompey, especially his death and decapitation, draws on the language and affect of the tradition associated with Cicero, using Cicero's own words and the obituary of Cicero in the lost historical epic of Cornelius Severus. Finally, the language of Cicero's peace-making efforts in his correspondence, suppressed in Lucan's depiction of him as a warmonger, forms an important part of the narrator's own emotional evocations of the impending catastrophe of civil war. The combination of models Lucan uses is more broadly reflective of his technique in composing a historical epic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between philosophy and theatre has mostly been an ambiguous one, frequently informed with a certain playful irony. Plato's aversion to include the tragic poets in his Republic, which itself remains a philosophical work written in the dramatic form of dialogues, testifies to this traditional ambiguity. It is well known that in this tradition of philosophic dialogues, the name which perhaps immediately follows Plato is that of Marcus Tullius Cicero. This paper would examine certain Ciceronian dialogues in order to argue that a certain theatricality was also prominent in Cicero's thinking, which makes it distinct not only from other philosophical schools of his time but also from Socratic dialogues. The paper would try to argue that this theatricality was expressed not through irony but a process of masking philosophical presentations. At the same time, to such a theatrical gesture par excellence as that of masking was added the art of rhetoric to present such philosophical enunciations to an 'audience' in order to persuade them of the practical functions of philosophy. It is this public application of a private and leisurely practice of philosophy, which this paper would discuss through an examination of the style of Ciceronian dialogues and the nature of skeptic philosophy that Cicero's New Academy championed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The didactic epos Φαινόμενα καὶ Διοσεμεῖα by Aratus of Soloi was very popular among the Romans. Thus, it was translated into Latin by several Roman authors including Marcus Tullius Cicero and Germanicus Iulius Caesar. The aim of this paper is to find out whether these two authors only translated the information contained in Aratus' text or whether they also managed to imitate the didactic tone of the poem. Did both translators manage to play their roles as teachers? Did they try to make the lectures more interesting and perhaps to interact with the reader? Or did they minimize the didactic aspects of the epos and concentrated on other features of the text? The main goal of my paper is to analyse the ways in which Cicero and Germanicus applied the features of the didactic poetry genre in their translations. This includes a comparison of these with Aratus' text and with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]