Cicero's Academica and the foundation of a Roman academy

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Content O.Cappello, Title Page 1 Cicero’s Academica and the Foundation of a Roman Academy Orazio Cappello May 2014 This dissertation is submitted to the University of Southern California in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy O.Cappello, Table of Contents 2 Table of Contents Introduction 3-8 Part I: The Way to Academici Libri 9-83 1. Shadows of Apography 9 2. Stories from the Writer’s Desk 14 3. Epistolary Thresholds: The Letter in its Context 34 4. Counter-Figuring Indifference: Varro and the Politics of Composition 43 5. Effecting Cicero: Fiction, Criticism, Subjectivity 62 6. Conclusion 82 Part IIa: The Pedigree of Doubt. Introduction 84-111 1. Historical Philosophy 84 2. Program Notes 85 3. Situating the Academica 88 4. Method 97 5. Setting the Scene: Re-reading the Index 100 Part IIb: The Pedigree of Doubt. Ciceronian Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy 112-188 1. Introduction 112 2. Aitia: Philosophy’s Parallel Itineraries 115 3. Rediscovering Progress. Historical Models in Cicero’s Philosophy 123 4. The Academy in Numbers: The History of the Academy as Seen from the Outside 146 5. The Academy as Theatre 151 6. Critical Philosophy, or Philosophy at the Limit 161 7. Community: Reason, Philosophy and the Canon 172 8. Conclusion 187 Part III: Skeptical Strategies: Conflict, Assimilation and the Rhetoric of Cicero’s Academy 189-265 1. Re-Configuring Conflict. Introduction 189 2. A Question of Frame 194 3. Antiochus versus Philo: Fictionalizing the Drift 197 4. Antiochus and Philo: Profiles in Conversation 206 5. Parallel Trajectories and the Myth of Crisis 223 6. Debate as Topos 227 7. Crisis and Assimilation 235 8. Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism 249 9. Into Subjectivity: Doubt and/as Experience 258 10. Conclusion 264 Conclusion 266-278 Bibliography 279-315 O.Cappello, Introduction 3 Introduction* The thesis conducts a parallel philological and philosophical examination of Cicero’s Academica, a work on Hellenistic epistemology written in the first half of 45 BCE, two versions of which are extant: the second half of a two-volume first edition and a fragment of the first book of the four-volume second edition. 1 Both versions ostensibly explore a controversy, which divided the Academy at the turn of the first century BCE, pitting Philo of Larissa against his pupil Antiochus of Ascalon. Their dispute concerns the foundation of knowledge. Antiochus argues against Philo’s skeptical Academy whose arguments for the unknowability of all perceptual and conceptual objects (akatalêpsia) and for withholding assent to any proposition or percept (epochê) he claims as wrong and a betrayal of the Platonic legacy. Antiochus finds in Stoic epistemology, namely in their concept of ‘kataleptic impression’ (καταληπτικὴ φαντασία), a firm basis for positive knowledge and a route back to the systematic spirit of Platonism. As the terminology suggests, the dispute centers on katalêpsis (‘comprehension’), the keystone of Stoic philosophy asserting that perception grants the individual access to the truth of the world if certain perceptual conditions are met. This possibility is denied by the Academy after Arcesilaus’ leadership in the third century BCE, and is still rejected by Philo, whose innovatory publication Cicero points to as the root of the disagreement. 2 Composed after Cicero’s Consolation for the death of his daughter Tullia in 45 BCE and the protreptic Hortensius, and contemporaneous with On Moral Ends, the Academica stands out even more as a technical work, indifferent to Cicero’s personal situation, to the reasons for doing philosophy or to ethical dilemmas we may suppose he was facing during that period. The spring and summer of 45 BCE in fact represent a momentous phase in Roman history and in Cicero’s life. Caesar’s victory at Pharsalus and Cato’s suicide at Utica left the Republican world-order in chaos and pushed Cicero out to the margins of a world he once led. Further burdened by the death of Tullia 1 The extant fragments of the two editions will be distinguished according to the following titles: the Lucullus (Luc) for the second book of the first edition (in the same manner the first book of that edition will be referred to by its title character, Catulus (Cat)). The second edition will be indicated by the collective title Academici Libri (Academic Books), and where relevant, the book number will be specified (Ac.1-4). When discussing the project as a whole, implying all editions, the traditional term Academica will be employed, though it is notably absent from Cicero’s own range of references to this work. 2 In order not to betray the original complexity of Greek technical vocabulary and for the ease of the reader I transliterate concepts I refer to throughout, namely katalêpsis, akatalêpsia and epochê. Getting to grips with their meaning is part of the exercise of understanding the debate and I therefore prefer to leave the terminology in play. When discussing Greek passages, I refrain from transliteration while, in discussing the Academica, I follow Cicero in sometimes translating katalêpsis as ‘comprehension’ (on the model of comprehensio at Luc.17). *All translations herein are my own, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge my debt to Brittain 2006 and Schäublin 1995. O.Cappello, Introduction 4 in February, and having just returned to Italy as a suppliant to the Caesarian party, at this juncture Cicero reflects on the fundamentals of knowledge, the usefulness and legitimacy of reason and the individual’s relation to the world in terms of perception. The aim of the thesis is to show that the Academica is no less rooted in its context than the rest of Cicero's works, and that to understand this profound relationship between philosophical discourse and personal, social and political concerns, the critic must appreciate Cicero’s philosophical position and method. Striking a balance between philosophical and rhetorical analysis, this thesis builds on two currents in Anglo-American studies of Ciceronian philosophica. One approach which has taken root over the last thirty years understands Cicero’s philosophical dialogues as an alternative form of political action. In line with historical, political and sociological readings of his speeches and oratorical treatises, scholars working in this tradition argue that in the philosophica Cicero is taking up a particular position towards Caesar’s regime, offering new intellectual paradigms through which to reflect on the changing situation or affirming and legitimizing certain values or courses of action connected to himself or his view of the world. This camp is populated by specialists of Latin literature and Roman intellectual and cultural history, and their analyses are consequently directed to sections of the text which address political and cultural issues: prefaces, dramatic interludes or ethical discussions in which examples are drawn from contemporary Roman history. 3 Historians of ancient philosophy make up the second group, whose aim is to reconstruct philosophical arguments, trace their origin and development, and evaluate their originality and consistency. With limited interest in the historical specificity of Ciceronian philosophy, such studies often extract threads of arguments from the text in order to comment on their validity or to profile a coherent philosophical position. 4 Sensitive to the social and political implications of Ciceronian theorizing and seeing a value in monographic studies of single treatises, a continental tradition has bridged the gap outlined above. On the French side, the works of Auvray-Assayas, Boyancé, Grimal, Lévy, Michel and Ruch have shaped an interpretive tradition that reads Cicero’s philosophy as a literary accomplishment and a rhetorically inflected adaptation of Greek models. Cicero the Republican orator is foremost in their work, but not to the detriment of his philosophical acumen. On the German side, Koch’s and Lefèvre’s monographs on the Tusculan Disputations have nuanced our understanding of this treatise, 3 See, for example, Habinek 1990, 1995 and 1998; Henderson 2000; Gildenhard 2007; Baraz 2012; also, the monographs on the Tusculan Disputations by Koch 2006 and Lefèvre 2008. 4 A perfect illustration of this approach is Inwood and Mansfeld 1997, which brings together most of the major exponents of this approach to discuss the Academica. Another example still focusing on the Academica is Sedley’s 2012 collection of articles on Antiochus. O.Cappello, Introduction 5 highlighting the Tusculans’ therapeutic and oppositional function. They also emerge from a national tradition interested in the philosophica’s political orientation and especially the logic of resistance implied in pursuing a form of dialogue outside the forum and the law-courts (Bringmann 1971; Strasburger 1990; and Wassmann 1996). My debt to this continental approach is immense, especially to Carlos Lévy’s monograph on the Academica, a magisterial blend of close textual analysis with exhaustive and astute philosophical commentary. Despite claiming a closer lineage to this critical tradition, the thesis still aims to overcome the limitations of this perspective, namely its fixation with the unity of Ciceronian thought. The dissertation ranges readings of the Academica according to three discrete perspectives. Since each of the three parts focuses on a different aspect of the Academica, adopting its own methodology and bibliography, I draw a line under the status quaestionis at this point. The rest of the introduction will broadly outline the structure of the argument, briefly discuss the argumentative style and finally make two methodological observations. Part I investigates the social, political and literary context within which Cicero composed and disseminated the Academica through a close reading of his letters. In this part, I argue two coordinated points. Firstly, the hesitation and uncertainty concerning all aspects of the Academica’s editing and its dedication to Varro forms a thematic whole with Cicero’s fears for the political future of Rome and his own place within that future. Cicero’s epistolary conversations anticipate many themes of the work and so carve out space for philosophy in the quotidian. Secondly, Cicero exploits the mechanics of epistolary exchange and, especially, of literary dedication to shape a social network of individuals interested in philosophical discourse. Exchanging philosophical views through letter- writing is a way to forge social connections and create a new sense of community amongst those marginalized by the Civil War. Against the backdrop of a developing philosophical register, correspondence with Atticus or Varro looks to philosophy as a new intellectual paradigm through which to think about and intervene in the new world order. Part II explores the historical dimension of Cicero’s philosophy. Analyzing the competing historiographical models of Academic doctrinal development presented in the Lucullus and the Academic Books, alongside the history of disagreements in all branches of philosophy that concludes Cicero’s speech in the first edition, I argue that his interest in the historiography of philosophy is to be understood through two perspectives. Firstly, Cicero addresses the philosophical legacy of Plato’s school to situate his own work within that institutional tradition as well as to legitimize his own O.Cappello, Introduction 6 philosophical methodology. As the Greek philosophical community is shown to have been constituted by a network of thinkers linked by debate on given philosophical issues and on institutional legacy, his Roman readership joins such a community by the very act of reading the Academica and so participating in its arguments. Secondly, Cicero continuously demonstrates that philosophical discourse is a historical practice insofar as theoretical discussions involve both reviewing older philosophical views and using them as aspirational models of accomplishment and success. Philosophy’s past proves to be a disputational resource as well as a way of authorizing one’s place in the discipline. Because this is an argument about Cicero and the Academy, Part II is exceptionally prefaced by a discussion of the institutional history of Greek philosophy focusing on the life of the Academy during the second and first centuries BCE. Part III focuses on Cicero’s Academic skepticism, arguing that, because of its dialectical nature, this philosophical position offers the author of the Academica the opportunity to survey and critique the whole spectrum of Hellenistic philosophies. Developing this historiographical theme from Part II, I illustrate this strategy of appropriation from the perspective of the critical mechanisms of skeptical philosophy and how these are deployed in the representational economy of Cicero’s Academica. However, analysis of this dialectical mode of thought also leads the argument to a properly philosophical (r)evaluation of Cicero’s skepticism. I argue that his philosophical position, when extracted from the texture of the Academica as a whole, amounts to an original expression of Carneadeanism, a philosophy of doubt that is both radical and pervasive, and privileges in its method the subjective experience of the examiner. A final section draws a series of conclusions developing the implications of Cicero’s corrosive skepticism and the open-endedness of the Academica’s discourse for the political and social aspect of his work. Returning to Part I and the profound sense of situatedness within its historical context that the Academica continuously re-affirms, the conclusion highlights how Cicero’s political reflections are characterized by a sense of caution, hesitation and uncertainty about the future- an important corrective to political philosophical studies of Cicero which portray him unswervingly advocating a specific agenda (Lepore 1954; Wood 1988; Perelli 1990; and Radford 2002). There is an overarching ring structure to the argument, which begins with Cicero and his milieu seen from the perspective of his letters and his intention of making space for philosophy in a time of chaos, and ends with the author looking at Roman society from the perspective of a O.Cappello, Introduction 7 philosophy of chaos, anti-systematic and aimed at destabilizing the certainties of the commonplace. Against this broad directionality, the structure of the argument will at times become episodic and recapitulatory, as the same themes or issues are treated from different perspectives. So for example both Part II and Part III offer views on the importance of the individual to the economy of Ciceronian philosophy. I adopt this strategy of explication for three reasons. Firstly, the dissertation puts forward a range of readings in the Academica whose general aim is to re-evaluate the complexity of this text. To present this work as reducible to a single ‘airtight deductive system,’ a ‘philosophy of identity,’ would be to misunderstand its polyphony and the sophistication of its literary form (Adorno 1984: 163). 5 Secondly, as the study situates itself between literary and philosophical analysis, the argument necessarily progresses through discrete readings, which cumulatively build a case for reading philosophical passages rhetorically and vice-versa. The third reason is more prosaic and concerns Ciceronian studies as scholarly domain. Through a comprehensive reading of the Academica that hopes to be exacting in its philology and sensitive in its philosophical analysis, I hope to show the value of conducting such a collaborative reading to scholars of ancient philosophy as well as to cultural and intellectual historians. Finally, two further points of methodology require clarification. Readers looking for a global theory of Ciceronian thought as seen through the Academica will find no such interpretation here. The argument minimizes use of other passages in the philosophica (or the rhetorica or speeches for that matter) as comparanda to explicate Cicero’s application of certain terms or concepts. I do not, for example, look to the De Republica or the De Officiis to integrate his view on virtus (‘moral excellence’) or libertas (‘freedom’) cursorily sketched in the prefaces to the Lucullus or the first Academic Book. Instead, the approach is founded on the view elaborated in Part I, that to do so is to misunderstand the nature of Cicero’s philosophical project. The myth of the unity of Cicero’s thought and that of the philosophica as a carefully integrated encyclopedia of philosophy takes no notice of the discontinuity which characterizes Cicero’s approach to philosophical composition. Not only does the collection as a whole defy clear-cut systematization, but the reader is often told, as in the preface to the De Finibus’ second book, that he continued writing as a response to a popular demand for his works. Furthermore, as I discussed in my reservations about broad trends in French scholarship above, to read the philosophica as an incorporated conceptual unity disregards the historical 5 Adorno (1984: 169) comments on the essay form: ‘the rule requiring the exhaustive enumeration of the individual elements claims that the object can be presented in an airtight deductive system: a supposition of a philosophy of identity.’ Like his notion of the essay, the form of the present argument aims to be a ‘compelling construction that does not want to copy the object, but to reconstruct it out of its conceptual membra disiecta.’ O.Cappello, Introduction 8 specificity of the deployment of certain concepts and speculative approaches. This is especially noticeable in the case of the De Divinatione, whose two books bridge Caesar’s assassination in March 44 BCE, and it is a principle which still holds in the case of other works responding to a political situation that was continually evolving. I do not condemn panoptic approaches to Ciceronian thought tout court, but I maintain that the brief of monographic contributions to the explication of that (continuously discontinuous) thought is to explain and explore the text at hand on its own terms. While the first methodological proposition narrows the field of investigation to an examination of Ciceronian philosophy as expressed in the Academica, the second widens the field by recourse to comparative material from modern and contemporary philosophy. In Part II I broaden the discussion of the historiography of philosophy to Hegel’s, Gueroult’s and Derrida’s treatment of the question in order to draw out certain characteristics of Ciceronian historical philosophy. Similarly in Part III my understanding of Ciceronian skepticism is nuanced through a reading of Horwich’s and Cavell’s interpretations of late Wittgenstein’s anti-systematic meta-philosophy and Kierkegaard’s critique of Hegelian systematicity. Beyond the analogical use of relevant philosophical material to extricate the threads of the Academica’s arguments, the comparativist aspect of my analysis also underwrites a broader ambition of the thesis to re-evaluate Cicero’s originality as a philosophical author. O.Cappello, Part I 9 Part I The Way to the Academici Libri An Analysis of the Correspondence Surrounding the Composition of the Lucullus and the Academici Libri* “Why not leave open the discussion of this question of the position, of the positions (taking a position: position (/ negation))? position - affirmation? overturning / displacement? etc.” J.Derrida, Positions 1 1. Shadows of Apography: Introduction Eight days after completing the first edition of the Academica, Cicero sent a letter to his friend Atticus which was to have an enormous impact on how later scholarship would interpret his philosophy. 2 The coda to this letter, written in his villa at Tusculum on the twenty-first of May 45 BCE, turns to a general account of Cicero’s authorial efforts. In a context in which he appears to compare his work to someone else’s, 3 he discusses his writings in the following terms (Att.12.52.3 [294]): ἀπόγραφα sunt, minore labore fiunt; verba tantum adfero, quibus abundo (‘my works are copies, they require less work. I only add the words, and I’ve got plenty of those’). The Greek term ἀπόγραφα, taken as an adjective or neuter substantive, is used to identify its referents as imitations. The brief phrases which follow qualify this description further. The comparative minore implies that 1 2004: 60. 2 He tells Atticus in the fourth and final section of Att.12.44 [285]: ego hic duo magna συντάγματα absolvi (‘I have finished two big treatises’). Note that the term σύνταγμα, translated by Shackleton Bailey as ‘Section’ (ad loc), simply refers to something which has been ‘put together in order,’ and we infer, for reasons to be discussed momentarily, that Cicero is writing about the Catulus and the Lucullus. 3 Textual problems beset the first of two sentences that make up the coda. The archetype writes: de lingua Latina securi es animi. dices ‘†qui alia quae scribis?†’ Purser’s Oxford Classical Text, representing the vulgate, instead of the problematic question, prints qui talia conscribis?, and the meaning is as follows: ‘Rest assured about the Latin language. You will ask ‘how do you compile such works?’ Cicero is anticipating a concern that Atticus might have about his Latin style as he takes up writing philosophical works with such intensity. What is clear is that the dices introduces a direct question bearing on the way Cicero approaches composition. Beaujeu (ad loc) and Lévy 1992, both of whom offer emendations, emphasize alia and suggest that Cicero imagines Atticus inquiring after minor works, or works that do not concern this particular exchange. Lévy, for example, achieves this by substituting the generic quaedam for quae. Shackleton Bailey, however, makes two conjectures whose result is to turn the passage into a comparison between Cicero’s philosophica and Varro’s work de Lingua Latina (‘On the Latin Language’). He capitalizes lingua and inserts quid ad illa quae scribis? (‘What’s that compared to your writings?’). Whatever one makes of this issue, the framework is crystal clear: Cicero is critiquing his own work. * A note on the numeration of letters: I have used both the manuscript system and in square brackets the chronological numeration proposed by Shackleton Bailey in his edition, whose dating I generally follow (departures will be noted) and whose translation I use as basis for my own. O.Cappello, Part I 10 this kind of derivative work comes about through ‘less’ strain than, by implication, something that is not a copy, something original. Cicero then develops this reflection by explaining that his originality is limited to ‘words alone’ (verba tantum). The pair of co-ordinate phrases that end the letter shapes an interpretive approach to these ‘copies’ which effectively distinguishes content and form, and situates Cicero’s contribution in the latter. The historical portrait of a Roman politician, an expert orator who, conscious of his own academic inadequacy, struggles with Greek abstraction, is rationalized from the formalist angle and finds confirmation in the complicit quibus abundo. In what effectively amounts to a post-scriptum intended to comfort Atticus about his writing, Cicero establishes the genetic code for Quellenforschung. This practice, now fashionably demonized, 4 involves precisely reading the philosophica to decipher the Greek sources it purports to copy and, in its effort to obliterate the author’s voice, it regularly presumes his incompetence in grasping the material. This transition from self-critique to hermeneutical touchstone took place through the influence of the Danish philologist, Johan Nicolai Madvig, and his particular understanding of Att.12.52 [294]. In the preface to his edition of the De Finibus (1839), the editor takes a dim view of Cicero’s flair for philosophical disquisition, emphasizing rather his stylistic grace. As he strives to account for the poverty of Cicero’s theory, 5 he portrays his subject as an elegant wordsmith , 6 and a thinker who, openly aware of his limitations, selects and summarizes others’ works. This perceived commitment to anthologizing leads Madvig to profess further admiration for his subject’s merits as a reasonably faithful abridger 7 and for his role as warden of Greek philosophy. 8 Allocating areas of competence in line with the Hellenocentric view of Western culture, Madvig manufactured the 4 Often little more than half-heartedly. See Glucker 2004. 5 Clear to Madvig because of Cicero’s continuous misunderstanding and obfuscation of Greek concepts wrecking a range of works from the Orator to the De Officiis. Cf. Madvig 1839: lxv-lxvi. 6 Nos vero Ciceronem admiremur in orationibus (‘but we admire Cicero’s speeches’), Ibid: lxvii. 7 Dialogorum morem and formam (‘the form and character of the dialogues’), Ibid: lx; ipsa ea, quae e Graecorum libris in brevius contracta, interdum exornata rhetorice, exponit, satisne fideliter et accurate reddiderit (‘he set forth those positions, which he had extracted from Greek books and distilled into briefer form, and oftentimes rhetorically rendered, and he translated them accurately and faithfully enough’), lxiii. 8 Habeamus debitam gratiam, quod et Latine philosophiam docuit et tantam materiam ad Graecorum philosophiam cognoscendam nobis servavit (‘we should be grateful for the fact that he both taught philosophy in the Latin language and for the fact that he preserved so much material to enable us to learn about Greek philosophy’), lxvii. O.Cappello, Part I 11 reductive framework within which Cicero’s philosophy will be read forever into the twenty-first century. 9 The critic’s apology also identifies in the final sentences of Att.12.52 [294] the keystone of the interpretive structure. The content-form dichotomy he relentlessly promotes is only explained once, and is supported by a single reference. On page lxvii he addresses Cicero’s method, describing it as one of choosing a source (dux) that he would follow ‘in each branch and in each sub-discipline of philosophy, which he intended to write about’ (in singulis partibus philosophiae singulisque disciplinis, quas erat tractaturus). The reference employed is Att.12.52.3 [294]. From here on after, scholarly debate about the value of Ciceronian philosophy- and of Roman philosophy as a whole- depend on this passage. 10 Despite its broad implications, this letter constitutes a specific concern for readers of the Academica. After all, the present tense of its many active verbs (sunt, fiunt, abundo, adfero) and its chronological position bind this confession to the subject of the present thesis. Notably, Glucker (1978: 407-412) and Lévy (1992: 59-74 and 183-186) have devoted substantial portions of their interpretation of the Academica to reading this letter and thereby justifying how they view the relationship between Cicero’s work and its sources. However, once contextualization of those infamous lines gets under way, a number of questions arises that inevitably problematise Madvig’s original position and the interpretation we have outlined above. Does ἀπόγραφα refer to the Catulus and Lucullus, for instance, or to the Torquatus which we know Cicero had just completed? If Cicero is publicizing the authorial principle that guided him in writing the Academica, can we square that with his later observation that the Academici Libri are, in fact, an original? Why does he choose this unusual term, ἀπόγραφα- as part, perhaps, of the same elusive strategy involving other Greek expressions like συντάγματα and σύνταξις? And finally, how can this awkward declaration- plagued with textual problems, phrasing a vague comparison and relating to a definite period of writing - be used to construe such a straightforward appreciation of Cicero’s philosophical production as a whole? 9 Madvig worked within a cultural framework that was deeply influenced by the strong philhellenic currents of the German Idealist tradition. For an example of the roots of such orientation which favored the originality, transcendence and purity of Greek thought above the derivative cultures which followed and denatured that tradition see Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation 1807-8 in Moore 2008. 10 Glucker 1978 performs a wise critical recusatio as he waves away the task of reviewing scholarship on the letter in his exhaustive Antiochus and the Late Academy. ‘No sane person,’ he claims, would attempt such endeavor since ‘there is hardly a book or article in the field which does not mention it and speculate about it’ (412n43). Lévy shares this frustration in Lévy 1992: 62. O.Cappello, Part I 12 Letters negotiating the compilation, revision and distribution of the Academica before an audience of close friends represent not only an opportunity to study the relationship between the letters and that particular text, but offer a way into rethinking the general connection between Cicero’s epistolography and his philosophical production. This is not only because, after Madvig, to read Ciceronian philosophy is to read his letters- the apographic letter, but also- and most significantly- because the Academica is the most talked about treatise in his epistolary collection. Totaling eighteen explicit references over a period of two years, the author produces an extended and determined reflection on writing philosophy that he links specifically to his treatise on Academic epistemology (Hunt 1998: 10n4). 11 Such critical attention sets the Academica apart as a unique window on an ancient philosopher at work; 12 yet it should also reframe our approach to Att.12.52 [294]. Those final lines ought to be situated in their literary and intellectual context, and read as part of a broader reflection on, and characterization of the early phase of Cicero’s philosophical thought. 13 Accordingly, the present chapter has two interrelated aims. The first is to study how Cicero’s exchange with Atticus and Varro during that period situates his Academic treatise within a series of literary and philosophical reflections, as well as at the centre of a social and political network, that were intended to guide the work’s reception. In this context, the two corpora, the philosophic and the epistolary, will be shown to enjoy an open and fluid dialogue, where the real-life concerns of the latter are both the source for and subject of the conceptual deliberation and register of the former. Letters of the period, I argue, should not foreclose interpretation by positing a sincere authorial voice owning up to his incompetence and fears. As we shall see, there is no single clear-cut editorial position detailing how the Academica ought to be read. On the contrary a series of postures unveil multiple possibilities of how to read the Academica that centre on Cicero’s ambition for his philosophy’s effect on its readership, within which Varro holds a privileged position, and on the (experimental) adaptation of Academic epistemology to act as expression of and response to the crumbling certainty of the Republican world. To this effect, the fourth section will examine the letter of dedication to Varro, Fam.9.8 [254], reading it within the more extensive epistolary dialogue that engaged the pair over the years of 11 Implicit references are far more numerous: between March and August of 45 BCE we have at least twenty letters discussing execution of this literary project constructing a veritable narrative of composition which will be examined in the next section. 12 As a chance that, as Schofield 2013: 74 has recently suggested, ‘Platonists and Aristotelians must envy keenly.’ 13 Hutchinson 1998: 15n23, for example, in discussing those letters expressing Cicero’s hesitation over dedicating the work to Varro, intuits that their ‘full significance’ has not been ‘grasped.’ O.Cappello, Part I 13 the Civil War. The section will explore Cicero’s efforts to use the philosophical exchange as grounds on which to voice social and political concerns, arguing that the letters to his friend, and in particular the dedicatory letter of the Academici Libri, constitute more than invitations to act, but less than directives of a well-defined political agenda. The confrontational tone of many of these letters, dependant on the social code of reciprocity and on the allegation of moral shortcomings, articulates the urgency to establish an alliance before Caesar’s return from Spain and to find in philosophical speculation an alternative way of reflecting on the problems facing the Republic and of finding possible solutions. The fifth section will then push beyond the socio-political perspective, linking literary concerns expressed in the letters, like the question of authorship, of authorial persona or of generic classification of the treatise, to the real-life anxieties that moved Cicero to write the Academica. Here I explore the verbal correspondences between the introductions to the extant editions and the relevant letters, as well as thematic and conceptual correlations, suggesting that Academic doubt, whose foundation and scope are explored in the treatise, seeps into the epistolary Cicero and shapes his attitude to his work and to the world around him. Furthermore, I attempt to sharpen our understanding of what we might call Cicero’s Weltanschauung by drawing parallels between the obsession over his work and anxieties about his relationship to Caesar and his milieu and about the construction of his daughter’s-Tullia’s- funerary monument (fanum). The second objective is to clear the ground for a more fertile approach to the philosophica from the perspective of the letters. The material does indeed present a unique opportunity to re-open the question of Cicero’s engagement with his philosophical writing and to refute, or at the very least significantly nuance, the documentary approach which has so far muted the literary and rhetorical sophistication of the letters. The following two sections, section two and three, open the discussion from two different, yet co-ordinate, points of view. In section two we will set out the material for our analysis, reviewing scholarship on the relevant letters and filling in the personal and historical context of the Academica’s production. The status quaestionis delivered within a detailed narrative reconstruction of those industrious months will evidence the problems that generalization and monolithic biographic interpretations have willfully overlooked in their portrait of Cicero. Section three will then develop a theoretical perspective on epistolarity that, leaning on Genette, Derrida and Ruch, will help re-frame the problems which surfaced in section two and point the way to the aesthetic and sociological analysis of our corpus in the final stages of our argument. O.Cappello, Part I 14 2. Stories from the Writer’s Desk. Documenting Cicero’s Writing of the Academica The 1990s was the decade of the Academica. The Anglophone academy contributed to Lévy’s masterful Cicero Academicus (1992) with a volume edited by Inwood and Mansfeld (1997), and a year later Brill also published a thorough assessment of the manuscript tradition of the Academici Libri (Hunt: 1998). All three publications, though essentially different in focus, propose to review the various stages of composition according to their interpretation and dating of the period’s letters. Inclusion of a detailed discussion of the letters in works about the Academica or Cicero’s Academicism confirms the widely held recognition of the interpretive symbiosis linking the treatise to the epistolary corpus. Following in their footsteps, the present section will work through the corpus of relevant letters, structuring the process that generated the Academica into four major chronological phases. This temporal scheme, for which I am much indebted to the aforementioned scholars, offers a simple way of organizing the material while also furnishing a detailed introduction to its complexity. Indeed, once the phases have been set out, the section will isolate and define the problematics thematically, foregrounding the key questions which the theoretical model of section three will then address. The first compositional phase begins on the seventh of March, 45 BCE, and comprises the period of emotional turmoil in which the author turns to literary pursuits in order to grieve for the loss of his daughter and for the end of his Republic. After a disconcerting silence in the letters to Atticus lasting since November of 46 BCE, 14 the epistolary conversation with Atticus resumes in medias res, with Cicero painting a maudlin picture of himself at Astura, committed to his literary pursuits and fighting the same ardor that had evidently been persecuting him for a while. 15 This first mention of literary activity and the subsequent reference to ardor have been linked by Griffin, through a reading of the letter of the eighth of March where the grieving father openly discusses his Consolation. 16 We learn here of its completion, a fact confirmed by Cicero’s admission that it is with librarii, and by his intention to send it to Atticus. 17 The expression utor litteris used on the eighth of 14 Att.12.11 [249], of uncertain date, cf. Shackleton Bailey ad Att.11.13 [250]. 15 Sed litteris non difficilius utor quam si domi essem; ardor tamen ille idem urget et manet, non mehercule indulgente tamen repugnante (‘But I engage in my studies with no more difficulty here than at home. That torment however harasses me and remains the same, though I do not indulge, you can be sure of that, but I in fact fight it’), Att.11.13.1 [250]. 16 Griffin 1997: 28 reading Att.12.14 [251]. 17 Quem librum ad te mittam, si descripserint librarii (‘which book [Consolation] I will send to you, once the copyists have finished their job’), Att.12.14.3 [251]. O.Cappello, Part I 15 March is placed alongside Cicero’s totos dies scribo (‘I write all day long’) to sketch a portrait of the artist resurfacing as a committed author of philosophical tracts. 18 From these two letters, Griffin, Hunt and Shackleton Bailey infer that Cicero is already at work on other treatises (what else would he be writing, if he had already finished the Consolation?). Furthermore, his literary activity is clearly identified as therapeutic: left rather vague in the letter of the seventh, Cicero clarifies the link on the eighth and brings together the related activities of reading and writing consolations as a beneficial, though hardly successful, strategy in his internal war. 19 A fascinating aspect of the later letter is not simply the intimation that other works were under way; rather, Cicero seems to celebrate his own originality in composition, claiming that no one before him had written a consolation aimed at oneself. 20 He performs the first act of literary criticism in this period, connecting his writing with the tradition from which it originates and within which it exists, 21 and also with its function, as operating on his self and for the consumption of others, namely Atticus. Between the eighth of March and the first open discussion of his Epicurus, 22 Cicero rehearses many of the themes of the first two letters of March: his solitude, his interaction limited to reading and writing which play a central role in his routine, and which alone bring comfort. 23 Indeed, on the day before he discusses the Epicurus, we are given yet another insight into his literary-compositional activities. To Atticus’ complaint that the public at large judges him to be grieving excessively, Cicero claims that his turn to litterae is, at the very least, the perfect disguise for sorrow. 24 In the next section of the same letter, he moves to those literary concerns properly and asks his friend for some information ‘relevant to the treatise [he] is writing on the alleviation of pain,’ referring to the 18 Cf. Shackleton Bailey ad loc, ‘C. now was writing rather than reading.’ 19 Totos dies scribo, non quo proficiam quid sed tantisper impedior- non equidem satis (vis enim urget), sed relaxor tamen (‘I write all day long, not because it does me any good but it occupies me a little- not in any way enough (for grief is a persistent force), but still it softens the blow’), Att.12.14.3 [251]. 20 Quin etiam feci quod profecto ante me nemo ut ipse me per litteras consolarer (‘But I have done something which I think no one before has done: I consoled my own self with a Consolation’), Att.12.14.3 [251]. 21 Note how Cicero compares his Consolatio with Brutus’ inefficacious litterae in both Att.12.13.1 [250] and Att.12.14.4 [251]. 22 Att.12.12.2 [259]. This is generally accepted to be some early version of the De Finibus. Cf. Shackleton Bailey ad loc. and Ruch 1958: 153 and the table on 161. 23 Mihi omnis sermo est cum litteris (‘all my conversation is with books’), Att.12.15 [252]; me scriptio et litterae non leniunt sed obturbant (‘reading and writing don’t soothe me but they do distract me’), Att.12.16 [253]. 24 Quod me hortaris idque a ceteris desiderari scribis ut dissimulem me tam graviter dolere, possumne magis quam quod totos dies consumo in litteris? (‘You encourage me to disguise the fact that I am so deeply mournful and you write that according to others I don’t do so enough, but can I do more than spend my whole day buried in literature?’), Att.12.20.1 [258]. Later in the same letter he will admit that, although his studies do little to alleviate his pain, they do at any rate provide a disguise (si mihi minus proficio, simulationi certe facio satis (‘but even if I gain little advantage from it, at least I do enough in the way of dissimulating’), Att.12.20.2 [258]). O.Cappello, Part I 16 Consolation. 25 Despite the fact that, as we just saw, the treatise was with copyists, these queries suggest Cicero was still working on it. While we must assume he is carrying out specific emendations to the Consolation, Cicero is also beginning to articulate general concerns about his choice of characters. In fact, mention of the Epicurus, in the letter of the sixteenth, introduces the problem of casting, which the author frames as a question of genre, dressing the debate in Greek terminology. 26 It is in this context that, at least according to Reid, Cicero begins to formulate his Academica project. Reid (1885: 29) identifies the first ‘trace of any intention’ in the expression of Cicero’s research interest in Carneades’ embassy to Rome at Att.12.23.2 [262]. 27 As in Att.12.20 [258], this letter enquires after specific historical information, namely: the date and circumstances of Carneades’ embassy to Rome, the identity of the Garden School’s leader at that time along with names of famous πολιτικοί (‘politicians’). Reid’s inference rests on the fact that the embassy is alluded to in the Lucullus, although no mention of contemporary Epicureans or other Athenian πολιτικοί is made throughout that dialogue. 28 Two days before Att.12.23 [262], Att.12.21 [260] anticipates a number of themes that will rise to prominence in future correspondence and within the pages of the Academica. Firstly, Cicero comments on his estrangement from the centre of power: the emptiness and meaninglessness of institutions such as the Senate and the courts prevent him from entering the Forum altogether. 29 Secondly, he reflects on his relation to individuals who now people Rome and so to his relation to 25 Pertinent ad eum librum quem de luctu minuendo scripsimus, Att.12.20.2 [258]. This conversation on exempla of loss in Roman history is pursued at Att.12.22.2 [261] and at Att.12.24.2-3 [263]. 26 De Epicuro ut voles; etsi μεθαρμόσομαι in posterum genus hoc personarum. incredibile est quam ea quidam requirant. ad antiquos igitur; ἀνεμέσητον γάρ (‘About the Epicurus, I’ll do as you wish, although in the future I’ll do things differently with respect to the type of characters I pick. It is incredible how much certain people want in. Therefore, back to the ancients! That will cause me much less grief.’), Att.12.12.2 [259]. 27 Note the familiar tones with which Cicero introduces the Academica: et ut scias me ita dolere ut non iaceam: quibus consulibus Carneades et ea legatio Romam venerit scriptum est in tuo annali. Haec nunc quaero, quae causa fuerit? (‘Now, to let you know that though I am still grieving I am not languishing: you have recorded in your Annals the year in which Carneades and that embassy came to Rome. What I want to know now is their reason for coming?’) 28 Cum Carneades et Stoicus Diogenes ad senatum in Capitolio starent (‘when Carneades and the Stoic Diogenes were waiting on the senate on the Capitol’), Luc.137. 29 Quid enim mihi foro sine iudiciis, sine curia (‘what’s the forum to me without the courts, without the senate- house?’), Att.12.21.5 [260]. This point is taken up again at Att.12.23.1 [262] where self-exclusion becomes a death sentence: sed domus est, ut ais, forum. quid ipsa domo mihi opus est carenti foro. occidimus, occidimus Attice, iam pridem nos quidem, sed nunc fatemur, postea quam unum quo tenebamur amisimus (‘But you say that my house is the forum. What use have I got for a house if I can’t go to the forum? It’s all over for me, Atticus, over; and it has been for a while, but now I admit it, after I have lost the one thing that kept me together’). O.Cappello, Part I 17 Atticus and to his own self. 30 Cicero embraces his social isolation not as a mark of self-pity; rather he characterizes this moment as one where he elevates himself to being his own judge, 31 and this promotion is sponsored by and limited to the ‘most learned of men’ (doctissimi homines), whose works he reads and ‘translates’ into his own, assimilating them as medicina. Finally he notes that this activity is a sign of his coping, not of his indulging. 32 In the same letter, Cicero suggests that his literary activity amounts to translation. As he describes the influence of those doctissimi homines, he notes that reading their ‘works’ (scripta) is not enough and confesses his appropriation of them through translation. The phrase in mea etiam scripta transtuli (‘I have transferred their works into my own’) 33 foreshadows Att.12.52.3 [294] and introduces the verb transfero, which will describe on three occasions the re-casting of roles in the Academica. 34 Furthermore, Cicero for the first time links the political and social situation to his philosophical activity, characterizing the latter as a hermeneutic key through which to view and measure himself against the events. Philosophy in mid-March of 45 BCE is firmly instituted not only as therapy for his loss, but also as an important aspect of his social and political agenda. 35 The second phase begins with Att.12.44 [285] of the thirteenth of May. From Astura Cicero confirms he has completed duo magna συντάγματα. A flurry of letters over the next twenty-three days constitutes this phase and determines to some extent the works to which the problematic συντάγματα may refer. Indeed, on the twenty-first of May Cicero produces yet another puzzling Greek term, the much maligned ἀπόγραφα, in a context that is equally difficult to interpret. 36 On the twenty-ninth of 30 Shackleton Bailey supposes that those individuals whose eyes Cicero cannot meet are returned exiles. So he interprets the participial phrase in oculos incurrentibus iis quos animo aequo videre non possum? (‘with people crossing my path whose eyes I cannot meet without unease?’), Att.12.21.5 [260]. 31 Ne me quidem contemno meoque iudicio multo stare malo quam omnium reliquorum (‘nor do I in fact hate myself, and I prefer to stand by own judgment than by the judgment of all the rest of them’). 32 Cf. Att.12.12.1 [258]. 33 Att.12.21.5 [260]. 34 Att.13.13-14 [321]; Att.13.16 [323] and13.12.2 [320]. Each time transfero describes the switch to Varro as protagonist. Clearly what we make of this re-writing has repercussions on what we make of this comment about his activity. Yet, curiously, Att.12.21 [260] is nowhere to be seen in the secondary literature on the Academica. 35 Note that Lévy 1992 does not discuss this letter, despite the fact that (or precisely because) it seems at odds with his overall interpretation of Cicero’s anti-dogmatism. According to Lévy, dogmatism, of the Epicurean or Stoic kind, is connected to an impulse to elevate oneself to the un-Republican state of a god. Cicero’s skepticism is in opposition to this conceptual authoritarianism; yet, in these letters he adheres to the dictates of Greek wisdom, doing only as much as they allow him to: neque tamen progredior longius quam mihi doctissimi homines concedunt (‘nor do I go any further than those most wise of men allow me to’). 36 Att.12.52.3 [294]. Note that this is not the end of this Hellenic referential net, since as late as the eleventh of July, Cicero will tell Atticus to do as he pleases with the four διφθέραι he has at his disposal, Att.13.24.1 [332]. The term refers to hide that has been treated, perhaps referring to the Academici Libri being written on parchment, or otherwise referring to the material within which the papyrus was kept. O.Cappello, Part I 18 the same month, Att.13.32 [305], he tells Atticus that the Torquatus is on its way to him, along with new prooemia for the Catulus and the Lucullus, which he already has in his possession. He concludes the letter by clarifying what historical facts he required from Atticus on the twenty-eighth of May, details intended for a work that he soon after scrapped. 37 This stage of authorial activity is remarkably complex in the way it conceptualizes literary production. In the first place, both συντάγματα and ἀπόγραφα present serious obstacles for scholarly interpretation, as critics seem unable to pin down a precise text or set of texts to which these expressions refer. Both terms indicate a collection of writings composed, in all likelihood, in and around that period- a combination of some early versions of De Finibus and Academica. 38 These terms stage a general and sophisticated account of his works: Cicero mainly chooses Greek words, which he rarely repeats- either by using cognate variants or by omission and whose referent is left vague. This is an approach that, as we shall see, will continue to evolve through new editions, as the title of the work remains stably fluid. 39 Several letters written between the end of March and the first ten days of May offer a panoramic view of the author’s other literary engagements and help contextualize direct references to the Academica. 40 On the one hand, the orator pursues in unabated fashion his apology for his grief, using writing both as therapy and as a public statement of his recovery. Indeed, at Att.12.38a.1 [279] and Att.12.40.2 [281] he boasts that his intellectual achievements of the period could not have been realized by one in such deep mourning as he was being accused of. His philosophical activity is therefore presented as a token of his re-integration into a productive life- though in fact he considers himself above his detractors whom he challenges to read as much as he wrote. This activity is furthermore defined on the seventh of May as a helpful aberratio a dolore (‘distraction from 37 Torquatus Romae est. misi ut tibi daretur. Catulum et Lucullum, ut opinor, antea. his libris nova prohoemia sunt addita quibus eorum uterque laudatur. eas litteras volo habeas et sunt quaedam alia (‘The Torquatus is in Rome. I sent it so that it could be delivered into your hands. I think I have already sent you the Catulus and the Lucullus. To these books I have added new introductions in which both title characters are praised. I want you to have these introductions, and some other things’), Att.13.32.3 [305]. Cicero was looking for information to facilitate the staging of a πολιτικὸν σύλλογον more Dicaearchi (‘a political conference in the style of Dicaearchus’), Att.13.30.2 [303]. The Torquatus, like the Epicurus, is another version of the first (according to Shackleton Bailey, ad loc), or first two (rather more convincingly argued by Ruch 1958: 153 and 162-4), books of the De Finibus. 38 Cicero in fact uses σύνταξις to describe both the De Finibus and the Academici Libri: περὶ Τελῶν σύνταξιν (‘the treatise On Ends’), Att.13.12.3 [320], followed by the solitary Ἀκαδημικὴν, whose gender and case imply σύνταξιν on the model of Ἀκαδημικὴν σύνταξιν found later at Att.13.16.1 [323]. On συντάγματα/σύνταξις see Reid 1885: 30-1. Also Ruch 1958: 153-5 who mobilizes Madvig 1839; Krische 1845; Lörcher 1911; and Plasberg 1922. 39 Repackaged anachronistically by Hunt 1998: 13-16 as the question of the proper title for the Academici Libri. 40 Note that in April the correspondence was interrupted as Cicero was with Atticus at his Nomentanum, a fact which he openly refers to: triginta dies in horto fui (‘I spent thirty days in your garden’), Att.12.40.2 [281]. O.Cappello, Part I 19 sorrow’) and worthy of his status because maxime liberalis (‘especially fitting for a free man’). 41 Nonetheless, earlier in March Cicero labeled the success of his Consolation as purely cosmetic, as relieving nothing but the outer appearance of his ‘grief’ (maeror). 42 This letter, dating to the twenty- fourth of March, is of further interest because it unravels the parallel mourning for Tullia and for the Republic, 43 making sense of his retreat into himself, his obsession over building a shrine for his daughter and the feverish philosophical lucubration. On the other hand, there is an explicit and controversial political component to his literary activity. His research is not limited to brooding consolations or teleological explorations in ethics, but it concerns political philosophy and is expressly aimed at opening a dialogue with the Caesarian camp. The coda to a letter dating to the seventh of May points the way. 44 Cicero mentions his admiration for a work by the founder of the Cynic school, Antisthenes, the title of which is Cyrus. Shackleton Bailey has convincingly argued that the numeration following the title indicates the second of two dialogues Antisthenes had written on this Persian king, the subtitle of which is περὶ βασιλείας (‘on kingship’). 45 The commentator integrates this reference with Cicero’s confession that he failed to write a συμβουλευτικóν (‘advisory letter’) to Caesar and with the discussion of Aristotle as potential model for that letter. Cicero is employing Greek philosophical models of political deliberation in order to open and participate in the political debate. 46 This intervention extends to a review of two works that react to Cicero’s laus Catonis, a pamphlet by Hirtius 47 and a πρόπλασμα (‘rough draft’) of Caesar’s Anticato. 48 The exchange, this guarded pamphlet war, defines the nature of the debate between Caesarian works and Cicero’s own: these in fact represent a search for dialogue, 41 Att.12.38a.1 [279]. 42 Att.12.28.2 [267]. For Reid 1885: 30 the expression quod me ipse per litteras consolatus sum refers not to the Consolatio but to a reflection on the effects of the ongoing composition of the Academica. 43 The expression lugere rem publicam (‘to mourn for the state’) introducing the cause of his grief and anticipating his reflections on the Consolatio about Tullia make this connection clear. Att.12.28.2 [267]. 44 Att.12.38a.2 [279]. 45 The catalogue of Antisthenes’ works is found in Diogenes Laertius’ Vitae Philosophorum at 6.1.5-17. See Vitae 6.1.1-19 for an account of this philosopher’s life and thought. 46 In his note to Att.12.38a.2 [279]. The letter of advice and the reference to Aristotle are made two days later in Att.12.40.2 [281], where Cicero explores the possibility of drawing on the relationship between Aristotle and Alexander to think about how to approach Rome’s homegrown king: συμβουλευτικὸν saepe conor. nihil reperio, et quidem mecum habeo et Ἀριστοτέλους et Θεοπόμπου libros πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον. sed quid simile? illi et quae ipsis honesta essent scribebant et grata Alexandro. ecquid tu eius modi reperis? mihi quidem nihil in mentem venit (‘again and again I try my hand at a letter of advice to Caesar. But I find no inspiration, even though I have with me both Aristotle’s and Theopompus’s Letters to Alexander. But where’s the similarity? They were writing stuff in order to do themselves justice as writers and to please Alexander. Do you see anything similar in this situation? I can think of nothing myself’). 47 Att.12.40.1 [281]. Cicero gleans from Hirtius’ book what Caesar’s ‘condemnation of [his] tribute’ to Cato would look like (qualis sit Caesaris vituperatio contra laudationem meam). 48 Att.12.41.4 [283]. The dissemination of this book will be encouraged by Cicero at Att.12.44.1 [285]. O.Cappello, Part I 20 which is in turn beset by failures to compose and to speak directly, exploring, as they do, literary and historical parallels that do not quite fit and delegating responses to minor figures and third parties. The third phase involves revision. Two letters, Att.13.16 [323] of the twenty-sixth of June and Att.13.19 [326] of the twenty-ninth, describe the movement from the first edition to the third that is, from the Catulus and Lucullus to the Academici Libri. In the earlier letter, Cicero explains that once he arrived at Arpinum on the twenty-second of June, he switched interlocutors from the inexperienced Catulus and Lucullus to Cato and Brutus, and then, because of Atticus’ suggestion to find Varro a place in his works, Cicero made him the protagonist of the final version. 49 The weather and his dissatisfaction with Catulus and Lucullus 50 are the backdrop to the edit, the first of which happened within a few days of his arrival, while the second took place a little later, prompted by the idea of including someone whose philosophical pedigree made him an ideal candidate. It is precisely Varro’s suitability which Cicero emphasizes in his retelling of the twenty-ninth: the intermediate version drops out, and he celebrates Atticus’ suggestion of Varro as a ἕρμαιον (‘godsend’). 51 These two accounts expand on particulars of which we were already informed at Att.13.12 [320], Att.13.1-2 [321] and Att.13.14 [322], of the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of June respectively. The first time Cicero thinks of a role for Varro is the day after arriving in his home town. 52 At Att.13.12.3 [320] he introduces reasons for the possible change: Catulus and Lucullus are ‘aristocrats but not scholarly’ (homines nobiles sed nullo modo philologi), whereas Varro is appropriate for two reasons: his academic pedigree and his affiliation with Antiochus’ philosophy. 53 49 It is difficult to date the letters from Arpinum written during the last week of June. The dating of his journey to Arpinum depends on two letters: at Att.13.10.3 [318] he makes known his intention leaving, indicating that Att.13.11 [319] is sent from Arpinum. Thereafter, as Shackleton Bailey acknowledges in a note to Att.13.11 [319], we can only speculate. I follow Shackleton Bailey in the dating of these letters. 50 Ita magnos et adsiduos imbris habebamus. illam Ἀκαδημικὴν σύνταξιν totam ad Varronem traduximus. primo fuit Catuli, Luculli, Hortensi; deinde, quia παρὰ τὸ πρέπον videbatur, quod erat hominibus nota non illa quidem ἀπαιδευσία sed in iis rebus ἀτριψία, simul ac veni ad villam, eosdem illos sermones ad Catonem Brutumque transtuli. ecce tuae litterae de Varrone. nemini visa est aptior Antiochia ratio (‘we have been having such heavy and continuous rain. I have handed over the whole of that Academic treatise to Varro. At first Catulus, Lucullus and Hortensius were the protagonists; but then, because it didn’t seem right anymore, on account of these men’s lack of experience in these matters- I won’t say ignorance; so then as soon as I got here I transferred the dialogues to Cato and Brutus. Then came your letter about Varro. No one is more suitable to speak Antiochus’ views’), Att.13.16.1 [323]. 51 Att.13.19.5 [326]. Deriving from Hermes, ἕρμαιον suggests divine provenance. 52 Note that if we accept Shackleton Bailey’s emendation of Att.12.52.3 [294], Varro must have been on Cicero’s mind well before this date. 53 Att.13.12.3 [320]. O.Cappello, Part I 21 The transfer is introduced through a complex literary frame. After a short line about the success of Atticus as his publicist, 54 Cicero discusses his abortive exchange of dedications with Varro. He overlooks Atticus’ previous suggestion to include him, 55 and mentions that Varro himself had promised a dedication and that his own current batch of works, described as φιλολογώτερα (‘more philological’), is of a genus (‘literary genre’) that would allow his involvement. Varro’s speed proves an obstacle for Cicero’s reciprocating gesture: he describes Varro comically as a Καλλιπίδης, while he reserves Hesiodic notes for himself as he complains that his friend’s dedication never came. 56 Thereafter Cicero surveys the network of dedications, finding space for Varro in the Academica. The De Finibus, dedicated to Brutus, offers Cicero an opportunity to reflect on the parallel existence of these two works. In the first place, the title of both are, as mentioned earlier, set out in parallel not only because they are in Greek but they are grammatically interdependent as σύνταξιν following περὶ Τελῶν must be carried over to make sense of the feminine singular illam Ἀκαδημικήν. From a thematic point of view, reflecting on the De Finibus introduces Cicero’s aesthetic appreciation of his work as well as the need to win Atticus’ approval for the dedication. 57 It is in search of that approval- a search which will amount to an obsessive anxiety over the next month- that the orator concludes the section. 58 Over the next two days, these concerns- aesthetic judgment and anxiety over Atticus’ sanction- gain prominence. Att.13.14-15.1 [322] models the fretfulness to come: in a handful of short phrases Cicero puts the onus on Atticus to consider the appropriateness of the dedication, inviting him to reflect on the problem and offering the option of another change of names. Significantly, 54 Ligarianam praeclare vendidisti. posthac quicquid scripsero tibi praeconium deferam (‘you have publicized my speech for Ligarius admirably well. Whatever I write in the future, I will leave the publicity to you’), Att.13.12.2 [320]. Cf. Att.13.19.2 [326] and Att.13.20.2 [328]. 55 Dating to 54 BCE, Att.4.16.2 [89]. 56 Quod ad me de Varrone scribis, scis me antea orationes aut aliquid id genus solitum scribere ut Varronem nusquam possem intexere. postea autem quam haec coepi φιλολογώτερα, iam Varro mihi denuntiaverat magnam sane et gravem προσφώνησιν. biennium praeteriit cum ille Καλλιπίδης adsiduo cursu cubitum nullum processerit. ego autem me parabam ad id quod ille mihi misisset ut “αὐτῷ τῷ μέτρῳ καὶ λώϊον,” si modo potuissem; nam hoc etiam Hesiodus ascribit, “αἴ κε δύνηαι.” (‘As to what you write about Varro, you know that previously I was in the habit of writing speeches or treatises of a kind in which I could nowhere include Varro. Afterwards, once I took up these more bookish pursuits, Varro had already declared that he was going to make me a weighty and serious dedication. Two years have gone by and that turtle has been working hard without advancing an inch. I on the other hand was preparing to respond to whatever he would send me “in the same measure, and better” if I only I had been able to, for even Hesiod adds, “if you can.”’), Att.13.12.3 [320]. The προσφώνησιν has been thought to be the De Lingua Latina. 57 Nunc illam περὶ Τελῶν σύνταξιν sane mihi probatam Bruto, ut tibi placuit, despondimus (‘as it is, I have dedicated my book On Ends, a work which I like, to Brutus, something that you approved of’), Att.13.12.3 [320]. 58 Ita tamen si tu hoc probas; deque eo mihi rescribas velim (‘thus if you do approve of the idea; I would like it if you wrote back to me with your opinion on this matter’), Att.13.12.3 [320]. O.Cappello, Part I 22 Cicero implicates Atticus on a personal level by including him in the dialogue. 59 From this point onwards, there is hardly a letter that does not exhibit a similar state of mind; and many do only that. 60 At Att.13.13-14 [321] two further perspectives are developed. The first involves the relation between amicitia and dedication. Cicero conjectures that jealousy for Brutus 61 prompted Varro to want a work dedicated to himself. This suggestion makes the re-write more than an issue of reciprocity between Varro and Cicero, 62 exploring the hierarchy of privileges among amici expressed via the circulation of philosophical and historical tracts. 63 In the next section, in fact, Cicero expands the circuit further by reflecting on another request, this time by Dolabella. 64 While the first perspective yields a sociological understanding of these works, the second is literary. The author describes the new versions of the Catulus and Lucullus as originals. The works have in fact expanded into four books, and, although greater, the author admits that many things have been edited out and that the work itself is shorter. 65 This paradoxical play underlines Cicero’s elusive approach: on the one hand he discusses the size of the work, on the other he reflects on the tautness of argument and thrust. The final breviora is part of a tricolon celebrating his achievement, splendidiora, breviora, meliora (‘more brilliant, more succinct, better’). Playing into the earlier comment on size, the description packs a qualitative judgment that employs quantitative categories. Discussing the quality and length of his work emphasizes the originality which he attributes to the Academic Books. The distinctiveness of the Academica emerges from a generic comparison with Greek works- presumably those Academic treatises the author is using as models- that characterizes Cicero’s thoughts on his production as attentive to questions of genre. 59 Illud etiam atque etiam consideres velim, placeatne tibi mitti ad Varronem quod scripsimus. etsi etiam ad te aliquid pertinet. nam scito te ei dialogo adiunctum esse tertium. opinor igitur consideremus. etsi nomina iam facta sunt; sed vel induci vel mutari possunt (‘I wish you would consider this matter more closely, whether you think it right to dedicate this book I’ve written to Varro. This now concerns you too for I have added you as a third interlocutor. I therefore think we ought to think this over. Although the names are already in, they can be erased or changed’), Att.13.14-15.1 [322]. 60 See for example Att.13.22 [329]; Att.13.23 [331]; Att.13.24 [332]; Att.13.25 [333]. 61 Jealousy returns at Att.13.18 [325]. 62 As it was at Att.13.12.3 [320]. 63 The Brutus and the Paradoxa Stoicorum must have been on Varro’s mind (it is unclear whether he knew about the De Finibus, though perhaps he did through Atticus). Cicero is hard at work also to minimize the tension by expressing his contemporary’s feelings in Greek, ζηλοτυπεῖσθαι (‘to be jealous’) and ζηλοτυπεῖν. 64 Going back to Att.13.10.2 [318]. 65 Ex duobus libris contuli in quattuor. grandiores sunt omnino quam erant illi sed tamen multa detracta (‘From two books I composed four. They are all together bigger than the old version, though much has been taken out’), Att.13.13-14.1 [321]. O.Cappello, Part I 23 The fourth stage takes place post revision and up to and including the confirmation of Varro’s receipt of the Academici Libri and the dedication letter. 66 In this period Cicero picks up on and elaborates three major themes. First: endorsement of his feat from a stylistic point of view. Positive judgment on his achievement is mentioned again on the twenty-eighth of June. 67 On the twenty-ninth, however, Cicero doubts the quality of the work. At first he abstains from an objective verdict, though he underlines his exertion with respect to accuracy, 68 but in the end his commitment reassures his reader that Ciceronian elegance breathes through it, combined with persuasive argument and the acumen of his erstwhile teacher, Antiochus. 69 Secondly: genre. Over the same letter, discussion of genre achieves its fullest development. Picking up on Att.13.12.3 [323] and 13.13.1-2 [321], the author frames his response to those who might criticize his use of Varro as an act of glory-hunting with a discussion of the formal possibilities allowed by his adoption of the Ἀριστοτέλειον morem (‘Aristotelian style’) of dialogue. Cicero contrasts his former use of Heraclides Ponticus as model to the opportunity of employing an Aristotelian approach. 70 The old form implicated his dialogues in a historical setting with historical personages, while the new form gives Cicero a chance to write in his contemporaries and, crucially, himself. In fact, the new form seems to oblige Cicero to write himself in as a protagonist. He uses the De Finibus as an example of this new direction, while mentioning the De Republica and De Oratore as instances of the former. 71 This apology develops an essential perspective on this second wave of philosophica, mapping Cicero’s refusal to be a κωφὸν πρόσωπον (‘non-speaking part’) onto generic and socio-political considerations. The author quite literally walks onto the stage of his philosophical ruminations in prima persona, making it clear that this entrance has social and political implications. In Aristotle’s footsteps, he now holds the principatus (‘commanding place’) over his interlocutors, a 66 Att.13.44 [336] and Fam.9.8 [254]. 67 Att.13.18 [325]. 68 Et absolvi nescio quam bene, sed ita accurate ut nihil posset supra, Academicam omnem quaestionem libris quattuor (‘and I completed treatment of the whole subject of Academic philosophy in four books- I don’t know how well they turned out, but I couldn’t have done it with more accuracy’), Att.13.19.3 [326]. 69 Sunt enim vehementer πιθανὰ Antiochia; quae diligenter a me expressa acumen habent Antiochi, nitorem orationis nostrum si modo is est aliquis in nobis (‘Antiochus’ position is extremely persuasive; these I have expressed faithfully, and they have the sharpness of Antiochus and the brilliance of my oratory style, if such a thing I do have’), Att.13.19.5 [326]. He will later add that there is nothing more elegant than the [Academici Libri]’ (nihil est enim elegantius illis), Att.13.25.3 [333]. 70 For Aristotle’s dialogues I have found Zanatta’s 2008 edition useful. For further reading on Heraclides of Pontus see Schütrumpf’s 2008 text and translation along with its companion volume edited by Fortenbaugh and Penderer 2009 which contains an excellent article by Matthew Fox on the dialogue form (41-57). See also Gottschalk 1980 for a broad discussion of this hazy figure, and the standard collection of fragments with commentary by Wehrli 1969. 71 Att.13.19.3-4 [326]. O.Cappello, Part I 24 position which he assumes in full knowledge that it has the potential to rouse jealousy in his contemporaries because of the authority he, as speaker in the debate, lays claim to. 72 Finally: Varro’s reception. Cicero mounts the pressure on his friend to reflect on this move. The first simple, yet insistent, requests to think about the implications of this gift quickly become invitations to discuss the issue viva voce. 73 This invitation finally becomes a total delegation of responsibility in favor of Atticus. In fact, the question of distribution and ‘publication’ is related to the role his correspondent plays in the circulation of his works. In the same letters where Cicero laments the unauthorized escape of some of his works from Atticus’ library, he also formulates his eagerness to have the Academici Libri ready for his friend to send. 74 The parallel notions of a polished version, in the hands of Atticus, and that of the dedication as his responsibility characterize the final phase of composition. Initially, Cicero suggests sending a copy to Varro himself. 75 The fact that Atticus has a copy is mentioned only on the eleventh of July. As soon as Atticus has a copy, he shifts position in the exchange by taking up a role as a spectator: quod egeris id probabo (‘whatever you do, I shall approve’). 76 He will play this role right until the twenty-eighth of July, when Cicero welcomes Atticus’ offering as a gesture of daring and portrays himself as expecting a reaction. 77 The author binds this dedication to the distributive economy of amicitia by diffusing responsibility, making himself and Atticus at once spectators and actors in this social drama written around the Academica. There are two final references to the Academica which keep this work on the horizon of Ciceronian epistolography. The first involves an emendation suggested to Atticus, and indirectly to Varro, to be made to the text of the Academici Libri, towards the end of August of 45 BCE. 78 After a month spent worrying about Caesar’s return and its implications for his whereabouts and activities, 72 On the question of jealousy: Cicero thinks he got away with involving Torquatus and Cato in the De Finibus because they were dead and ‘not likely to rouse jealousy’ (ἀζηλοτύπητον). The political angle is carried over from the reference to his generic musings over De Republica. After a public reading of a ‘Heraclidean’ version of the work, Sallustius advised Cicero to write himself into it because his experience of government and consular rank would add authority (auctoritas) to the arguments. Q.fr.3.5.1 [25]. According to Zetzel 1995: 4 this fear of offending contemporaries in the De Republica is pointedly ‘political.’ 73 Att.13.18 [325]. Also at 13.19.5 [326] 13.22.3 [329]. 74 At Att.13.21a.1 [327], Cicero complains that the fifth book of De Finibus is in Balbus’ hands, unfinished and before Brutus was presented with it. A few days later, Att.13.22.3 [329], Caerellia comes in the picture as being in possession of ‘certain works’ (quaedam) she should not have access to. 75 Att.13.22.3 [329]. 76 Att.13.24.1 [332]. 77 Att.13.44.2 [336]. 78 Att.13.2.3 [351]. O.Cappello, Part I 25 and about his irritating nephew, 79 Cicero opens a lengthy discussion on inhibere (‘to restrain’) as equivalent to epochê (‘withdrawal of assent’). The experience of witnessing a boat rowed aground near his house in Astura compelled the author to question the use of inhibere to translate the Carneadean epochê, a translation suggested by Atticus. This nautical metaphor is entirely misapplied since it does not portray an image of stillness to match those employed by Carneades, but on the contrary implies motus (‘movement’). 80 As the author draws ever closer to meeting with Caesar, Academic concerns continue to appeal to him, and the need to pay unfailing attention to minute editorial matters. 81 The second concerns a misplaced prooemium for the third Academic Book. 82 Almost a year later, on the twenty-fifth of July 44 BCE he sends Atticus the De Gloria, using, however, the preface to the third Academic Book. He attributes this blunder to his use of a ‘collection of prefaces’ (volumen prohoemiorum), out of which he picks one for each σύγγραμα (‘treatise’). Whatever critics make of this volumen, it is crucial to notice the resurfacing of the Academica at this late date- note that Cicero realizes his mistake because he is re-reading the Academici Libri- 83 and the potential applicability of its content to works of later date. 84 Moreover, an intriguing correlation is developed between the attitude Cicero expresses towards his work, the fact that it can be quickly discarded and substituted for something new, 85 and the subject matter of that work, centered on justifying via epistemological arguments the mutability of an Academic skeptic’s opinion. Our account, structured according to four phases, was firstly concerned with outlining the timeline generally accepted by scholars. The secondary aim was to undermine such ‘periodisation’ and destabilize its boundaries by showing not only how many concerns return at different stages of 79 Att.13.45 [337], Att.13.46 [338], Att.13.47 [339], 13.37.4 [340], Att.13.38 [341], Att.13.40 [343]. Also to be considered is the idea of writing an epistolary response to Caesar’s Anticato on Atticus’ recommendation, Att.13.50 [348] and Att.13.51 [349]. On his nephew: Att.13.38 [341], Att.13.38 [341], Att.13.39 [342], Att.13.41 [344], and Att.13.37 [346]. 80 In nautical terms, to stop a boat means to row in the opposite direction, meaning that it implies movement. Cicero, however, wants stillness like the images used by the Academic scholarch: semperque Carneades προβολὴν pugilis et retentionem aurigae similem facit ἐποχῇ (‘Carneades is always comparing a boxer’s guard or a charioteer holding back his chariot to the suspension of assent’), Att.13.21.3 [351]. 81 According to Shackleton Bailey’s arrangement we are only two letters away from Cicero’s review of an evening with the Dictator, Att.13.52 [353]. Note also that this is a second emendation: our orator wishes for a return to sustinere (cf. Luc.94). 82 Att.16.6.4 [414]. 83 Cum autem in navi legerem Academicos, adgnovi erratum meum (‘while I was re-reading the Academici Libri on board a ship, I realized my mistake’), Att.16.6.4 [414]. 84 Baraz 2012: 6-7 uses this reference in her preface to characterize the philosophica as a ‘unified project’ which dealt with ‘the same kind of objections and concerns’ throughout the prefaces. 85 Itaque statim novum prohoemium exaravi et tibi misi. tu illud desecabis, hoc adglutinabis (‘therefore I immediately ploughed through writing a new preface and sent it to you. Detach the old one and glue this one in’), Att.16.6.4 [414]. O.Cappello, Part I 26 composition and revision but also that both within the same phase, and across different phases, Cicero adopts radically different perspectives on the Academica. These letters, which have been the subject of such ‘straightforward’ criticism, appraised from a chronological perspective cannot be shown to yield a simple time-line, because to do so would mean to limit the wealth of thematic correspondences and conceptual reflections which color Cicero’s half of the exchange with Atticus and position the Academica at the heart of a complex system of literary and philosophical meditations. 86 Over the second half of this section I will explore problems of this ‘periodizing’ approach, isolating three key problematic areas in the scholarship and then outlining a set of issues that the scholarship has so far ignored. The question of ‘publication’ has garnered much interest, but has unfortunately been treated with little intelligence. Despite the opportunity these letters offer to study the process of publishing in Antiquity, the word is used uncritically according to modern standards thus limiting potential avenues to investigate how our author went about ‘publishing’ his work. Hunt (1998: 9) uses these letters as the earliest testimonia for the transmission of the text. As he opens his chapter on the period going from Antiquity to the Renaissance, he asks three text-historical questions which determine entirely the way he situates Cicero’s reflection on the text: why do two editions survive, why is each fragmentary and can we determine at which point they became fragmentary? The way that he structures his response exemplifies his understanding of the letters as documentary evidence informing three interrelated but clearly defined aspects of the transmission of the text: composition, publication and reception. Each area is portrayed as a moment in the life of the text that translates directly into the manuscript history. So Hunt argues for definite contours of a chronology, trying to ascertain specific dates on which specific modifications or ideas for such changes had come into Cicero’s purview. Once he has established a time-line, which interestingly eliminates all together the notion that the transfer to Brutus and Cato constitutes an ‘edition,’ he turns to account for the survival of the two editions (Ibid: 11). He points to Att.13.13-14.1 [321] and argues for two ‘likely’ reasons: the existence of an ‘informal tradition’ which initiated ‘publication’ through a private circuit, and so did 86 For another suggestive observation on the architecture of this part of Cicero’s correspondence, notice the presence of lacunae framing the exchange about the Academica, with the first three month hiatus, November 46 to March 45, matched by a second three month break, from August to December 45. O.Cappello, Part I 27 not waste the efforts of Atticus’ copyists; and that Atticus published the first edition posthumously ‘to defray his expenses’ (Ibid: 13). The move to tackle the question of the title and then his interest in establishing a readership (who in Antiquity had which version?) articulates his perspective clearly: there was for Cicero a single authorized title and two editions of the Academica which survived him and found their way to other readers (Ibid: 13-16 and 18-25). The letters help reconstruct these early phases to which he thinks they self-evidently refer. His approach is founded on a text-historical angle which tries to review and hypothesize archetypes, with the authorial hand being, of course, the privileged origin. Nonetheless, a number of questions arise from his own observations that spoil the picture: Hunt himself glosses the reasons for the survival of the Catulus and Lucullus with a note on the ‘striking coincidence’ of the escape of the De Finibus from Atticus’ library that happened at about the same time as he was composing the Academica (Ibid: 13). Similarly, he cannot explain the disappearance of the Catulus 87 and the letters certainly do not help him settle on an authorized title. 88 As will become evident, the textual critic applies an anachronistic strategy of text-analysis that flattens the early vicissitudes of the Academica’s life, namely through misapplication of the categories of publication and authorization. The second problem concerns three interrelated issues centered on revision: what the intermediate version, involving Brutus and Cato, consisted of; the motives for revision; and the Cicero–Varro relation. Lévy and Reid are keen on reading the authorial mind for clues to his motivation for editing. The French scholar frames his section on composition, l’élaboration des Académiques, through a reflection on the relationship between Varro and Cicero, after which he turns to the question of the deux versions in which he discusses the first choice of protagonists (1992: 133- 140). It is Reid nonetheless who sets the tone as he indulges in psychological interpretations of the Cicero-Varro bond. Like Lévy he underwrites the distance between the two, and expands on it. Reid understands the situation as a mix of opportunism and social etiquette: Cicero gives in to Atticus, and to the promise of a work dedicated to him, as well as taking advantage of the situation to resolve his dissatisfaction with his first casting. In his argument the letters are used significantly more than in Lévy to analyze different states of mind accompanying the shifts: disappointment, doubt and anxiety. 87 The last mention is at Att.13.12.3 [320]. 88 The title changes at every epistolary turn. Att.13.12.3 [320], Att.13.13-14.1 [321] where de Academicis refers to the Catulus and Lucullus, Att.13.16.1 [323], Att.13.19.3 and 5 [326], Att.16.6.4 [414]. This pattern spreads into the treatises: Off.2.8 and Timaeus 1, Tusc.2.4, Nat.D.1.11 and Div.2.1.Only the final three refer to the second edition using Hunt’s favorite title, Academici Libri. O.Cappello, Part I 28 What his argument lacks, however, is a discussion of the content or form of the treatises in their various stages: Reid foregoes entirely reading the letters for clues to how editions ‘one’ and ‘two’ might have been different, and he situates the entire transition within the social parameters of Cicero’s relation to Varro (1885: 33-4). 89 Lévy’s original contribution to this debate focuses on the intermediate re-shuffle with Cato and Brutus. In the part of his study titled l’oeuvre, les sources, he analyses three letters, Att.12.52 [294], Fam.9.8 [254] and Att.13.19 [326], in order to study the process of revision. His first move is to dismiss the weight that Att.12.52 [294] bears for both the Academica and the De Finibus. He emends the problematic phrase preceding ἀπόγραφα to qui alia quaedam scribis and refers alia quaedam to other minor translations that Cicero had undertaken in the same period, but cared little for (1992: 183). This suggestion allows Lévy to challenge the plagiaristic attitude towards the Academica. Indeed, he then looks to the dedication letter and to the opening of both fragments of the treatise (in particular to the Lucullus), and wonders about the extent to which the expression partes Antiochinae (‘Antiochus’ role’), elsewhere Antiochia ratio, 90 implies that the source for Varro’s and Lucullus’ speeches is Antiochus’ Sosus. 91 As he debates the question of closeness to a single source and the distribution of Antiochus’ philosophy throughout the versions, a paradox emerges: Varro’s partes Antiochinae do not easily map onto Lucullus’ position, and so the question of a univocal source for both roles comes under scrutiny. The argument proceeds from a straightforward comparison of each character’s position on sense-perception. Where Lucullus maintains an orthodox Stoic position, which assumes the senses as the foundation of its epistemology, Varro presents a view that clearly distances him from the senses. 92 Lévy (Ibid: 189-191) offers three solutions, finally suggesting that the Sosus itself contained a plurality of voices, and that Lucullus’ position was in fact a counterpoint to Antiochus’ position in that same work. This is by no means an entirely unproblematic solution, insisting as it does on a 89 Both scholars in the sections relevant to the question of editing take an entirely historicizing perspective. They acknowledge their debt to Quellenforschung methodology, and to historical works, among which are Krische 1845; and Engstrand 1860. Lévy mentions Kumaniecki 1962; Boissier 1861; and Hirzel 1895. 90 Att.13.16 [323] and Att.13.19.3-5 [326]. 91 Fam.9.8.1 [254] and Luc.12. 92 Lucullus opens with an exhortation which amounts to a statement of his position: ordiamur igitur a sensibus (‘let us begin from the senses’), Luc.19. Varro, however, is quick to critique the accuracy of the senses calling them omnis hebetes et tardos (‘completely dull and inadequate’), Ac.1.31. Lévy 1992: 188 talks of ‘deux philosophies de la connaissance incompatibles.’ O.Cappello, Part I 29 single-source approach, 93 yet it explains another puzzling presence: that of the orthodox Stoic Cato, mentioned at Att.13.16.1 [323], who would then become a shoe-in for Lucullus himself. In fact, Lévy’s analysis brings to light the difficulty in employing the epistolary exchange as a straightforward commentary on the works, even- especially- when the two openly refer to each other. The presence of Cato and Brutus is in fact deeply unsettling for the simple geometries that critics have come up with to explain the transition from the initial to the final version. Brutus is, like Varro, a devoted Antiochian who enjoyed familiar as well as pedagogical relations with Antiochus’ brother Aristus. Cato, on the other hand, repeatedly comes into view in Cicero’s philosophica as a committed Stoic. 94 Consequently, both could play the ‘part’ of Antiochus as it is voiced by Lucullus, since it amounts unequivocally to a Stoic position. For Lévy, this is a problem of source-derivation in so far as it involves deducing a base text that allows for a plurality of voices. What happens between the two editions is thus underlined as a problem not merely of structural reform and re-casting, but as implicating a variety of other moves. Ultimately, in fact, the documentary approach to the letters problematises the question of the Academica’s sources and, thereby, of its content. Partes Antiochinae and Antiochia ratio do not function as straightforward Roman labels for a Greek source text, indexing what to expect from Varro or Lucullus. The letters do not only fail to tell us what will be in the treatise; they test our expectations about content. Related to this issue is the broader problematic of what revision actually entails. Griffin is also interested in the intermediate version, though she does not tackle it from the perspective of an alleged Antiochian source. The fourth and concluding section of her study of the exchange gives more weight to the Cato and Brutus version, and forms the basis to the solution of a problem that is central to her: how could Cicero have undertaken such a substantial re-write in such a short period (1997: 23-7)? Her chronology of the early phases of composition is followed up by an attentive analysis of Att.13.16 [323], the only mention of Brutus and Cato as protagonists of an edition (Ibid: 14-16 and 20-21). The verb transtuli is given important critical emphasis: she implicitly underscores its perfective sense when she claims that this version had been completed, and she calls into question its semantic field, dismissing the possibility that the two versions have the ‘same shape.’ Indeed, from her analysis of the letter and consideration of related issues, such as the surprising speed with 93 The main difficulty is to then justify why the Sosus is presented as an anti-Philonian tract. Lévy, in fact, has to do a lot more creative ‘mapping’ to parry that particular criticism. 94 Brutus is named as a student of Aristus at Brut.332, although his links to Antiochus are frequently mentioned in the treatises and the letters, as, for example, at Brut.120 and 139, at Tusc.5.21 or at Fin.5.8. Cf. Sedley 1997. Cato’s role in the De Finibus pinpoints him as Stoic. O.Cappello, Part I 30 which Cicero completed the final version and the frequently voiced option of returning to the intermediate version should Varro not look upon the third kindly, 95 she concludes that by the time Atticus introduced the idea of Varro as interlocutor, the bulk of rethinking had been done. Analogously to Lévy’s reading, Griffin reflects on the possible redistributions of parts. However, her perspective is focused on Catulus, whose participation adds yet another level of difficulty to the repartition of roles. Different scenarios are examined: would Cato be a suitable alternative, if the Catulus were really only a general discussion of the history of the Academy? 96 Or would Cicero be the ideal candidate, leaving Brutus to play the part of Hortensius? 97 The symmetries are never quite perfect, and the elimination of Catulus, she argues, would lead to further issues of content. Namely, the old guard serves a dramatic purpose in so far as it is necessary to re-create a historical link with the Philonian controversy. 98 Similarly that of Hortensius does not appear so straightforward either, if his sermo were replaced by Atticus’. 99 The second problem Griffin plans to resolve concerns the speed of composition. The five days between Atticus’ proposal and the declaration of completion is rather too short. 100 As we have seen above, she argues that Cicero had already significantly transformed the first edition once he introduced Brutus and Cato. However, her explanation is not so convincing: if we are to take Cicero to the letter, as she does, then he only undertook the transfer to the intermediate version on the twenty-first at the earliest which suggests that only two days were devoted to the intermediate version. 101 The issue is perhaps to be clarified towards the other end of the process of writing. Her understanding that it was on the twenty-eighth that the books were actually finished problematizes her interpretation of the perfects found in two previous letters (scripsimus, traduximus, transtuli). Completion of a work seems to be in fact a rather more fluid notion: on the one hand, the treatise is in a continuous state of being finalized; on the other hand, this ‘transitively’ finished product is always at risk of being turned back into its earlier form in the case of a failed exchange with Varro. 95 Att.13.14-15 [322]; Att.13.16 [323]; Att.13.25 [333]. 96 Hirzel’s 1895 suggestion. 97 Lévy’s solution. 98 Griffin 1997: 24 argues in fact that Cato could tie the discussion into the embassy of 155, but without any of these characters, perhaps the debate itself between Philo and Antiochus was eliminated. 99 The latter is in fact little more than a spectator in Ac.1, while Hortensius is cited at Luc.10 as making a decisive contribution to the debate in the Catulus. 100 She takes Att.13.18 [325] of the twenty-eighth of June as sign-off to the project; the beginning is marked by Att.13.12 [320] of the twenty-third. Hunt 1998: 11 is also interested in this chronological question. Taking his cue from Att.12.52 [294], he suggests that, since Cicero was only copying, not much time was in fact needed. 101 He started ‘as soon as [he] got to the villa’ (simul ac veni ad villam), Att.13.16.1 [323]. O.Cappello, Part I 31 This commentary on the intermediate cut is only part of Griffin’s important contribution to the field. She, in fact, casts her net much wider in the opening sections of her article to frame Cicero’s motivation for revision within the context of the political aim of his Academic project and its place in the cycle of works to come. Her close reading of the letters, however, turns up a series of ‘inconsistencies’ in Cicero’s discussion of the Academica which ‘cast doubt at times on his sincerity’ (Ibid: 1). In both areas Griffin fails to piece together a coherent account, showing up her documentary approach to the material as self-undermining. Firstly, she opposes to Lévy’s interpretation of the Academica as a radically anti-Caesarian work a series of letters proving that Cicero’s hostility had not taken such trenchant form (Ibid: 13). 102 This critique is premised on reading the letters as transparent indices of a psychological state readily applicable to the political and social character of the works. This critique of Lévy is perfectly sensible insofar as it draws on an alternative set of letters to question the consistency of his claim. However, the conflict that begins to emerge between focus on the Academica as a text written at a time of political dialogue with Caesar and the later conciliatory tones adopted upon the Dictator’s return suggest a rhetorical posturing on the part of Cicero. The contradictions cannot be ignored, as indeed she does not when she questions his ‘sincerity.’ This is even more conspicuous when we come to motives of an intellectual nature. Griffin acknowledges that the Academica’s revision throws into question the established thesis that the second wave of Ciceronian philosophica functions as a fully integrated encyclopedia. This is indeed a term found everywhere in studies of Cicero’s late philosophical output, but whose significance has had its most visible effects on the French tradition. Lévy’s central objective in Cicero Academicus is to construe Ciceronian philosophy as a series of interlocking and well organized reflections which find their genesis and foreword in the Academica, and specifically in the promise at the end of the Lucullus to continue the dialogue. 103 The review of philosophical disagreements, which concludes Cicero’s speech, is seen as shaping his philosophical agenda and acting as a table of contents for future works on knowledge, ethics and physics. 104 102 Att.12.40 [281], Att.13.19 [326], Att.13.51 [349] and Att.13.42.3 [354]. Cicero’s attitude was rather ‘accommodating’ and ‘tactful.’ 103 Michel’s 1968 article clearly expresses this attitude, which is reflected in Grimal 1986 and shapes Lévy’s 1992 overall approach. Cf. Philippson 1939; and Bringmann 1971. Cicero and Lucullus agree to pursue discussion at Luc.147-8. 104 Luc.116-146. The doxography correlates with the promise to prolong the dialogue as it still centers on an analysis of disputes amongst philosophers, and touches on issues of physics, ethics and logic (in the same order). Levy works this into the structure of his book which moves from connaissance to éthique and finally to physique. O.Cappello, Part I 32 However, there are numerous problems with this comprehensive vision. In the first place, an occasionalist attitude is revealed at various points in Cicero’s works and letters, especially at the start of his career, through which his writing is characterized as developing in response to the reception of his treatises. 105 In second place, the sequence Hortensius, Catulus, Lucullus, 106 is shattered by the revision of the last two dialogues into a foursome with a new set of protagonists and with a different spatial and temporal setting. The Academica’s editorial process underwrites an alternative logic for the philosophica. Thirdly, the overarching system for this wave of philosophica appears to comply with the tripartite division of Hellenistic philosophy into logic, ethics and physics. 107 However, not only does this apparent structural outline fail to account for the production as a whole, raising questions of the systematicity of the encyclopedia, 108 but it also casts the Academica as a logical work, an interpretation which Cicero never endorses. The author prefers to characterize the treatise as patrocinium, as an expression of ‘support’ for the school to which he was affiliated throughout his life. And, yet again, this methodological perspective is destabilized: the isosthenic structure of many of his works, like the De Divinatione or the De Finibus, integrate the numerous references in which Cicero designates the Academici Libri as explicative of his investigative method. 109 However, as Griffin incisively notes, certain other works, among which the Disputationes and the De Officiis, can ‘hardly be regarded as anything but dogmatic’ (Ibid: 6). 110 The only interlocking characteristic that emerges from Cicero’s meta-critical approach to his writings is the elaboration of different perspectives through which he invites readers to reflect on his philosophical activity. Implementing a developmental narrative for the execution of this encyclopedia, premised on the variability of Cicero’s state of mind over the period, fails to acknowledge the rhetorical complexity with which the author approaches his own production. The single, choral, answer that scholarship has brought to bear on the puzzles and paradoxes which it has exposed in the portrait of Cicero as writer and publisher depends on authorial intent and 105 As we can see from the preface of Fin.1.2, or, as Griffin 1998: 7-8 keenly argues, from Att.12.12.2 [259] where Cicero is reacting to the success of his Hortensius and telling Atticus he will follow his advice. 106 They involve the same characters holding discussions in each other’s villae on succeeding days. There is also a topical progression: from justifying the importance of philosophy to arguing about what particular school to follow. Cf. Hirzel 1895. 107 Cicero states that his work aims to address all the partes (parts), the membra (limbs), the queastiones (issues) of philosophy, Nat.D.1.9 and Div.2.4. 108 Works like the De Senectute or De Gloria are not an easy fit; the De Natura Deorum does not amount to a work on physics. 109 See especially Nat.D.1.11-3 and Div.2.2; also Tusc.5.11. 110 Her critique of the ‘possible functions’ of the Academica are at pages 5-7. O.Cappello, Part I 33 its chronicle in the epistolary collection and the ‘Ciceronian preface.’ 111 However, as appreciation of the collection as literature has developed over the last three decades, two aspects of the context of the Academica’s production demand more nuanced study: Cicero’s ‘performance’ as critic and the rhetorical agenda shaping those inconsistencies that have driven scholars to confront the material as obstacle to rather than as object of study. 112 The figure of Cicero is presented in two different lights: as critic, he develops a language and network of models through which to read his work. The Greek terms that consistently define his work- συντάγματα, σύνταξι   ἀπόγραφα, διφθέραι, σύγγραμα- are not exceptional or mere flourishes. They underscore a system of shifting titles and references that, as we have seen, act as more than labels. The problem of referencing the work also brings into focus the temporal contours of the production of the Academica. The ‘where-and-when’ of the first references is problematic, since the chronology of the treatise’s production could extend from Orat.237 of 46 BCE to July of 44 BCE (Shackleton Bailey 1971: 88-9). 113 At lengthy intervals and with renewed vigor Cicero meditates on the work he avowedly produced so quickly. And these reflections, as illustrated above, took a variety of forms: glosses on the persuasiveness of certain parts alternate with appreciations of the work’s quality and its generic innovativeness. At the same time, Cicero appears as a very particular type of publisher. The two letters lamenting the escape of the Torquatus from Atticus’ copyists, Att.13.21a [327] and Att.13.22 [329] parade fascinating concerns with authorization and control of distribution. Cicero comes close to reprimanding his friend for his loose management of the De Finibus, versions of which had ended up in the hands of the persistent Caerellia and Balbus. Silence about the Lucullus and Catulus is 111 Schofield 2013: 73 uses this expression to set out very clearly the resources available for the reader who wants to see Cicero at work. 112 At the vanguard of this (r)evolution is the work of Hutchinson 1998; Leach 1999 and 2006; and Beard 2002. Hutchinson 1998, as already pointed out, has expressed interest in this epistolary context as fertile ground for literary analysis. Fox 2007: 8 considers the letters to be among many elements that furnish the critic with ‘unparalleled knowledge’ of Cicero and that these elements ‘act as a limitation to the kinds of readings to which his writings are amenable.’ 113 The later date is marked by Att.16.6.4 [414], while the first allusions could be (tenuously) assigned to the Orator’s sign-off, where Cicero distances himself from the opinions shared in the work using Academic vocabulary (adfirmare, adsensus, iudicium, simillimum veri, probare) and positing a skeptical outlook. O.Cappello, Part I 34 suggestive. Equally suggestive is the question of what characterized a final version, seeing that Att.13.21.3 [351] aims at making changes in three copies. 114 Furthermore, the exclusion of a number of letters from the discussion of composition severely limits the exploration of issues which the above mentioned canonical approaches have nonetheless drawn into their analyses. Undoubtedly the character of the Varro-Cicero friendship deserves a broader contextualization. The dedication letter warrants closer analysis, but that epistle itself comes at the tail end of an exchange between the two which occupies the ninth book of the ad Familiares, and to which it makes continuous reference. 115 Moreover, the psychological portrait of Cicero suffers from the omission of other themes present in letters contiguous to the ones directly referencing the Academica. If we are to examine the postures of Cicero’s epistolary persona, it is crucial to bring into the picture the anxieties and hopes that shape this character. Among these, Caesar’s return from Spain and the construction of the fanum (‘shrine’) for his lost Tullia take up considerable space, and strike, together with the literary critical, comparable postures. The question of what kind of Cicero is presenting his works to his audience must be read alongside other rhetorics of self-presentation that stimulate the orator to write, among which we must also number letters concerning the De Finibus. Ruch alone develops the two chronologies of composition alongside each other, arguing that their origins are impossible to disentangle and that in fact, if better defined, they would offer insights into the philosophical evolution of the period. 116 3. Epistolary Thresholds. The Letter in its Context The homogeneity of past approaches to the Academica’s composition is founded on a particular view of how to read the letters. This refers not merely to what guides exegesis of the language, themes and tropes of the letters, but also to the process of selection and exclusion which shapes the corpus. Which epistles are relevant? What part of the exchange bears on the documentary 114 Not particularly convincing, yet notable for its explosive implications is the suggestion, made by Shackleton Bailey in his comments to Att.16.6.4 [414], and also voiced by Reid and Tyrell and Purser, that the letter actually refers to the Lucullus. Cicero, in other words, implicitly accepts- authorizes even- the first version. 115 What exactly Cicero is trying to achieve in this re-write in terms of its socio-political impact is intimately linked to this question. Boes 1990 alone seeks answers from the exchange as a whole. 116 ‘Il est presque impossible d [‘en] dissocier les origines,’ Ruch 1958a: 151. See also the table on page 161. For alternative interpretations see Lörcher 1911; and Emonds 1941. Whatever one makes of the discussion of precise dating of phases, the contemporary attention to the De Finibus expands and complicates the field of issues relating to the composition of the Academica. Several statements outline different positions with respect to reasons for philosophizing (Fin.1.10) and to dogmatism (Ac.1.11). O.Cappello, Part I 35 aspect of composition, which bears on the psychological and/or practical aspects? These are questions intimately related to semantic appreciation of the epistles themselves: to what extent is the exchange sincere or rhetorical artifice? Is their meaning constrained/exploited by ‘generic’ conventions? Is there an intended audience beyond Atticus and Varro? The present section casts a wider net on the topic of epistolography and constructs a theoretical framework as foundation for an interpretation of the relevant corpus. The questions above are indeed connected to, if not premised by the issue of what the parameters are for integrating Cicero’s epistolary exchange within the reading of his works. That is: how does one locate the correspondence with respect to the works it is contemporary with, talks about, describes, comments on? The problematic is two-fold: on the one hand, evaluating semiological and semantic approaches to the letter form- a concern dear to many structuralist and post-structuralist discourse analyses- and on the other hand, situating this evaluation alongside the significance of authorial intent in the mechanisms of interpretation. Theorizing epistolography is not a uniquely contemporary concern. Achard’s informative booklet on La communication à Rome convincingly argues that how the letter was conceptualized in the Late Republic was far from defined. Not only does he review a number of compositional and reading situations (how letters were written and read), but he also discusses a variety of functions and scenarios with the object of complicating monolithic assumptions about the world of letter-writing in Rome. 117 Cicero’s interpretation of the genre, which is diffused throughout his collection in observations that have elicited much critical commentary, matches the variety of aims and uses found in Achard. From the pithy characterization in the Second Philippic to several more prolix discussions of different epistolary modes and functions, Cicero constructs letter-writing as a genre, with its uses and abuses, conventions and innovations. 118 Even within the six-month period that occupies Cicero with the writing and revision of the Academica, the orator articulates a number of overlapping functions for his letters, among them protecting the emotional and practical life-line linking him to Atticus, publicizing his literary relationship with Caesar through a series of letters on the Anticato and reference to the epistolary 117 ‘L’idée que la lettre est un moyen de communication, voire intime et confidential [...] n’allait pas de soi à Rome.’ Achard 1991: 142. 118 Amicorum colloquia absentium (‘conversations between absent friends’), Phil.2.27, Fam.2.4.1 [48] and Fam.13.15.3 [317]: in both occasions he speaks of a genus litterarum. For Cicero on letter writing see Hutchinson 1998: 5-9. Also, White 2010: 21 who describes Fam.2.4 [48] as the ‘rudiments of a theory.’ O.Cappello, Part I 36 sub-genre of the συμβουλευτικὸν, and lobbying Varro into resisting the Dictator’s advances. Furthermore, he shares letters that have been sent specifically to him, or sent by him to specific recipients; 119 he comments on the mechanics of composing some letters, and the importance of sending letters as representative acts of friendship rather than exchanges for the purpose of information. 120 In the context of studies on the Academica, the letters have been used to establish a chronology of writing and to compose a ‘life-like’ portrait of Cicero’s intentions with respect to his literary project. The letters are treated as documents and so assume the characteristics of transparency and honesty. This created not a few problems in terms of the different façades Cicero presents to his interlocutors, a self-fashioning that occurs with alarming frequency. So alarming, in fact, that some critics committed to this form of biographism have developed decidedly eccentric landscapes for Cicero’s psyche (Boissier: 1865; Carcopino: 1951). Responses to these works, many of which have been perceived as outrageous, have nonetheless used the same template to provide a different picture. If Carcopino underscored the fickleness of his Cicero, Boes counter-proposed a meditative and focused intellect, whose letters correspond and integrate perfectly with his philosophical works. 121 Boes, whose work has attracted scant attention in the Anglo-American world, 122 opens up an all-important direction, broadly characterizing the relationship between the philosophica and the letters as specular. The letters implement Cicero’s philosophy or they provide a situational reading of them, but this is constantly mediated and indirect- limited, in other words, to a critic eavesdropping on a conversation between Cicero and a private audience. The shortcoming of Boes is precisely the elision of a key question: how does the orator see the letters in relation to his other works? As corollaries, disseminated aspects, thresholds? And finally, does it matter? If we take the example of Fam.9.8 [254], the letter of dedication to Varro, many views have been expressed on whether this letter was ‘published’ with the work or not. On the one hand, Plasberg (1922) and Rackham (1933) employ it as a preface, while, on the other, Ruch (1958a: 226) and Shackleton Bailey maintain it was 119 Att.13.38.1 [341] and Att.13.25.3 [333]. 120 Att.13.25.3 [333]; for the theme of ‘nothing to write’ see for example Att.12.30.1 [270], Att.12.41.1 [283], Att.12.53 [295], with Garcea 2005: 113-116. 121 For the wave of indignation burying Carcopino 1951 see Marrou 1936; Piganiol 1949; Boyancé 1949; Taylor 1951 and the introduction to Shackleton Bailey 1965. For a sobering review, see Lévy 2006. Boes’ 1990: 7 monograph is presented as a direct response to this post war critic. 122 Hall 2009 for example does not cite him. O.Cappello, Part I 37 entirely private. This is surely a crucial question, which involves a number of issues about the involvement of authorial intent and the importance and impact of its absence. 123 This section will argue that the letters are an integral part of Cicero’s entire opus, and that their reading necessarily constitutes the horizon of interpretation of any of his works, by constructing a theoretical framework out of the work of the Latinist Michel Ruch and the structuralist critic Gérard Genette. The very position of the letters, between and beyond works, makes them both an access, as well as an exit point for any hermeneutic iter in terms of the philosophica of the 50s and 40s. The observed fact that scholarship has not produced many answers to the questions raised above is intimately linked to the position of the epistulae in Cicero’s canon. Beard’s (2002) status quaestionis is a convincing examination of many of the assumptions underlying how the letters have been, and continue to be read. Disentangling the question of arrangement is her objective, and she begins with what she calls the ‘modern orthodoxies’ that have developed from the chronological sequentialisation of Tyrrell and Purser and Shackleton Bailey. The letters, read in this way- that is constructed as, and constructing a life narrative- privilege the historical perspective. As she pursues the vicissitudes of compilation, the book takes centre stage in her analysis, and defines the importance of the collector/editor’s work, leading her to conclude that in fact ‘through their collection and publication...[the letters] were progressively reformulated as a literary collection.’ This process works upon the categorical boundary between literature and documentation which is always already ‘contested.’ Above all she points out that despite recent acceptance of the ‘literary’ qualities of single epistles, the inescapable fact of their ‘reality’ continues to undermine and make suspect their interpretation as literary performances (Beard 2002: 124). The letters inhabit a problematic liminal ground between document and literature. The critique of Shackleton Bailey’s biographism that has better defined the contours of that threshold, and to which Beard owes much, is Hutchinson’s idiosyncratic Cicero’s Correspondence (1998). Beginning with an examination of Ciceronian colometry, the Oxford critic locates the stylistic merit of the letters alongside Cicero’s other works, elevating them to the status of objets d’art (Hutchinson 1993 and 1995). Indeed, artifice is read through seven aspects of the letters, analyzed in as many 123 This is a question that has interested biblical scholars since the last century as evidenced by Deissmann’s 1903 distinction between public ‘epistle’ and private ‘letter.’ I have been careful so far to refer to the correspondence in terms of letters, although, as we will shortly see, this is a distinction I do not find useful with respect to Cicero’s corpus. See Doty’s 1969 critique of Deissmann. O.Cappello, Part I 38 chapters, and contextualized in an epistolographic tradition fully aware of its artistic - rhetorical genealogy (Hutchinson 1998: 5). Cugusi’s work attempts to devise a full classification of that genealogy, illustrating the artistic pedigree of the letter (1983: 151-9), while Bernard complements Hutchinson by studying ‘les rapports entre la rhétorique, la tradition littéraire et l’épistolarité’ (2006: 67). The work of these three scholars sketches a picture of the letters firmly centered on a stylistic model akin to the published works; yet they stumble on the issue of publication. The private nature of the letters, so runs the premise of historicist arguments, is defined by the fact that Cicero did not publish them himself. 124 They may be artistic, but they are not art. A shadow is cast on this view by the oft-quoted, and often disbelieved, Att.16.5 [410], which clearly outlines an idea, in an embryonic stage of execution, to publish a συναγωγή (‘collection’) of his letters. This selection to which Cicero is referring is composed of seventy letters in Tiro’s possession which he clearly intends for publication. 125 In another letter to Tiro, his secretary, he seems to confirm the existence of archives, intimated as resources for literary publication. 126 The letters enjoyed a life well beyond the confines of the correspondents’ desks, so to speak. Many were shown around to garner approval or censure, as for example a series of epistles to and from his nephew Marcus. Moreover, many show in their language an awareness of formulating a response to a reading public broader than the recipient. 127 Setaioli, in a thoughtful review on the question of publication provides a conclusion which expands the observations intimated here into the field of textual criticism. Indeed, for the Italian critic, it is impossible to separate ‘general availability’ from ‘publication’ of the letters, a conclusion that leads him to think that in fact this distinction in itself is a ‘sophism’ which ‘has methodically no value’ (Setaioli 1976: 114). A work’s entrance into the public domain is not homologous to (modern understanding of) publication, and it is Cicero’s words themselves that stage an epistolographer reflecting on his letters as artifices and often commenting on their existence within that public domain. 128 Public and private, literature and 124 Cf. Hall 2009. Few would now suggest that Cicero did publish his own letters; the notable exception being Kytzler 1960. 125 Tum denique edentur (‘they will then be published at a later date’). Gurlitt 1879 persuaded Peter 1901: 36, Büchner 1936: 1217 and 1222 and Shackleton Bailey (ad loc) that this group of letters was the nucleus for the thirteenth book of the ad Familiares. 126 Fam.16.17 [186]. 127 Cf. Att.12.12 [259] and Att.12.40 [281]. 128 I am particularly weary of entering the debate about publication, focusing on Cicero’s self-presentation and his conceptualization of the process. For historical and sociological discussions of this process see Kenney 1982; Starr 1987; and recently Johnson 2000. O.Cappello, Part I 39 document are therefore categories that the orator construes and ponders when writing letters and they do not necessarily articulate rigid separations between the letters and the works. What then are the models of epistolary analysis on which to build a constructive reading of the interaction between the Academica and the rich vein of letters surrounding its composition? Michel Ruch’s (1958a) study of the Ciceronian préambule is a solitary and remarkable effort to theorize the place of the letter in the field of the orator’s philosophical production. His use of terminology is essential: préambule for him translates prooemium, a word often used by Cicero himself. 129 There are three constitutive elements to prooemia: the letters, the mise en scène and the entretien préliminaire (Ibid: 9). Ruch does not investigate the letters to the exclusion of the setting, or even prologue, as prefaces, but the relationship that these ‘margins’ of the text have to each other and to the body of the dialogue. Despite the fact that by and large he takes a historicist perspective on the letters, their inclusion is all the same an important methodological statement about their significance. Not only are they set side by side with canonically literary features (so in his fourth part under the label prooemia he discusses both prologues and letters, reserving for dramatic scene-setting its own section), but they are anatomized in precisely the same way: Ruch is keen on a rigid formalist approach that commits, in its conclusion, to discerning patterns in the material and elevating these to the status of operational rules. So, for example, he isolates functional, structural and formal features of the dedicatory letters and defines these in a section titled ‘structure et fonction de l’épître dédicatoire’ (Ibid: 338). Therein he elaborates homological relations between dedicatee and function of the epistle and underwrites these correspondences with rhetorical strategies employed. 130 Finally, he sets down the ‘lois fondamentales du préambule.’ The letters are in other words to be considered as a narrative prologue, or a rhetorical preface, enjoying the same functions and subject to the same laws (Ibid: 343 and 353). According to Ruch, Cicero sees the letters and dialogues as continuations and imitations of viva voce disputes. Many exchanges self-reflexively situate themselves as inceptions or extensions of conversations that have happened, or will happen elsewhere. Famously in our case the dedicatory epistle promises a face to face interaction in the future, conceiving of itself as the beginning of that 129 Att.16.6.4 [414]. 130 So for example, the author may intend for the letter to be a protreptic, writing to a junior, and using autobiographic details. O.Cappello, Part I 40 particular exchange. Ruch similarly characterizes the De Fato as an extension of a lived and/or wished for discussion. 131 Letters can also enjoy a mimetic relationship with real and/or litterarised discourse. So for example the coda to Fam.11.27 [348] lays bare its philosophical colors by openly mimicking the style of his disputationes (Ibid: 75-6). 132 The terminological elision of prooemia and litterae detected in material relevant to our period 133 follows his introduction on the close relationship between dialogue and letters, characterizing the former as an ‘entretien à distance,’ and suggests to Ruch that in fact the prologues were conceptualized as letters by Cicero (Ibid: 337). On the one hand, sensible remarks have been made on the issue by Madvig (1876) and Reid (1885) commenting on Cicero’s description of his treatise as his litteris at Fin.1.12. The latter calls attention to a parallel with English usage: between libri and litterae the same difference exists as between ‘books’ and ‘writings.’ On the other hand, the frequency with which this slip presents itself in the letters, as well as the orator’s attested exploitations of ‘manipulations linguistiques à function connotative,’ intimates a more sophisticated approach (Biville 2003: 17 and 31). Indeed, his insistence on referring to the Consolation as litterae has led commentators to invoke an epistolary form for the work. 134 Furthermore, the semantic elision is not limited to the term litterae. Hirtius’ summary of the Anticato is in fact alternately defined as liber and epistula. 135 Finally, Ruch develops the historicist perspective on the epistulae by insisting that these situate the philosophical production in Cicero’s present. The letters are, in other words, a response to the context in which he lived and, together with the prologues, they exist as ‘fragments d’une vaste autobiographie intellectuelle’ (Ruch 1958a: 345 and 429-31). The importance of this analysis rests in auto-referentiality: Cicero introduces himself on the stage of his writing through both the letters and the prose prefaces, and he does so by closely relating the fictional realm of the dialogue to his lived present. Ruch’s sophisticated analysis of Fam.9.8 [254] attests this commitment. In his reading, the dedicatory letter operates on three distinct levels: the intellectual, the political and literary. Cicero does not simply want to parry philosophical objections Varro might raise, but rather aims at employing Varro to act on the public in their reception of the work; ultimately, to achieve both aims, 131 ‘Certains traités philosophiques sont même le prolongement direct et immédiate de conversations,’ Ruch 1958a: 76 and 337. 132 Ex his sermonibus utinam essent delatae ad te disputationes meae (‘I wish that these arguments, which emerged from these debates, had reached you’), Fam.11.27.8 [348]. 133 E.g. Att.13.32 [305]. 134 Att.12.14.3 [251]; Att.12.28.2 [267] with Shackleton Bailey ad loc. Cf. ad Br.1.9 [18]. 135 Att.12.40.1 [281] and Att.12.44.1 [285]; then Att.12.41.4 [283]. O.Cappello, Part I 41 the letter inflects the dialogue as symbolic rather than fictional, by showing the two meeting half- way, and thematising amicitia in order to re-affirm their reciprocal and collaborative relation (Ibid: 271). The letters surrounding the dialogues, whether private or public, are in themselves works of a literary nature by contamination or contiguity with in-set features of the text, namely the prologues. This proximity is accounted for in two ways: in the first place, functionally. Prologues and letters are autobiographical and pragmatic: they insert Cicero’s life into the fiction, as well as attempting to affect the world without the text. Secondly, as Ruch’s aesthetics makes repeatedly clear, they are governed by the same generic conventions, and operate in the same way. Ruch’s systematic and systematizing work anticipates in many of its contentions the structuralist and post-structuralist fascination with the ontology of the text. Genette’s foundational Paratexts is a panoramic investigation of ‘literary’ materials contributing to the reception and dissemination of a(ny) text. He revisits and expands upon Derrida’s intuition in the avant propos to his Dissemination which discusses what constitutes the inside and outside of a text, and what role an ‘out-of-text’ plays in the semantics of the ‘in-text.’ Essentially, marginalia or paratextual elements are drawn into the limelight to assist the deconstruction of the old opposition margin - periphery: prefacing is, as Derrida underscores, a sophisticated literary strategy that affirms authorial control over the text. It therefore performs a determining role in the process of signification, though it posits itself as standing ‘outside’ it. 136 The principle of this analysis should function as a backdrop to our ‘assimilation’ of Genette. Although in fact the former continues to be attracted by marges, and especially epistolary constructions, 137 it was the structural narratologist who produced the seminal review of the strategies which will set coordinates for the reading elaborated over the next two sections. A paratext includes, in Genette’s broad definition, all those ‘liminal devices and conventions’ which frame a book. He elaborates the spatial metaphor implicit in the French title of the work, Seuils, by providing alternative figurative labels, such as ‘fringe, threshold, undefined zone.’ Such features are simply characterized as devices and conventions which have a mediating function: they 136 ‘Pour l’avant-propos, reformant un vouloir-dire après le coup, le texte est un écrit - un passé - que, dans une fausse apparence de présent, un auteur caché et tout-puissant, en pleine maîtrise de son produit, présente au lecteur comme son avenir,’ 1972: 13. He develops this view over and against Hegel’s gestural contestation of prefacing in the Vorrede to his Phänomenologie des Geistes 1-4. 137 See for example the post-scriptum to Positions 2004, the material used for parts of Mémoires 1986 and the obfuscating format of La carte postale 1980. O.Cappello, Part I 42 frame the text and its reception by the public; they constitute, as suggested above, a necessary access point to the work. These devices he organizes firstly into epitext (outside-the-work) and peritext (within-the-work), and then proceeds to articulate ever finer subcategories, including those that classify public and private, official, semi-, and non-official (Genette 1997: xviii, 2 and 9-10). Genette introduces three key perspectives on the function and effect of paratexts. Firstly: authorial intention. Despite the very casual execution of the gesture, Genette premises his study of paratexts by roundly dismissing the question of intentionality. For the French critic, the question is better articulated through the paratext’s definition as authorial. In other words, paratexts are primarily discourses ‘more or less legitimated’ by their author, and their relationship to the work whose limen they constitute, is implicitly acknowledged by their dissemination, whatever the nature or extent of that diffusion (Ibid: 2). Secondly: paratext as field for author-reader negotiation. The question of maîtrise first voiced by Derrida is afforded more ample treatment. Insisting on spatialisation, Genette identifies this area as one of ‘transaction:’ paratextual devices pave the way to the text, but in the brief journey to the text, they play an important strategic and pragmatic role by guiding the public to receiving and interpreting the text in a ‘better’ and ‘more pertinent’ way. This is intimately linked with his emphasis on the functionality of paratexts. Indeed, he states that ‘the paratext in all its forms is a discourse that is fundamentally heteronomous, auxiliary, and dedicated to the service of something other than itself that constitutes its raison d’être.’ That something other than itself is, of course, the text. This ancillary service performed by the paratext is highlighted on the final page, where Genette reminds his reader of its functional essence, which is axiomatically tied to its discursive position, between the ‘ideal and relatively immutable identity of the text’ with the ‘empirical (sociohistorical) reality of the text’s public’ (Ibid: 5, 12, 407 and 408). Thirdly: paratextual effect. The third aspect is centered on an issue we intimated earlier as highly problematic in terms of the difficulties/implications of relevance when selecting a corpus. As he turns to public and private forms of epitexts, namely journals and private correspondence, Genette affirms that the nature of some of these makes them relevant, though they do not discuss directly the work in question. Their involvement is analyzed under the rubric, ‘paratextual effect.’ His analysis tends to the inclusive, though he qualifies his approach with two observations. In the first place he warns of the trap of extreme dissemination: he acknowledges that these epitexts may be ‘endlessly O.Cappello, Part I 43 diffused,’ and pushes the reader to think laterally, yet attentively, about reasons for selection. The second is a sophisticated and downright crucial distinction: he differentiates between paratextual function and paratextual effect, relating these to the dialectic between public and private discourse. Indeed, in some cases he claims paratextual literature that is private often aspires to, or takes into account, the possibility of publication or of its diffusion to a wider audience than a single addressee. Nonetheless Genette protests that, in the case of letters, this does not imply that they are any less ‘intimate.’ There is simply a distinction to draw between function and effect, in the first of which authorial intent plays a significant role (as he perhaps may expect something specific, like a response), while this objective is rather more diffuse and elusive with respect to the public at large (Ibid: 346 and 371). Between them, the works of Ruch and Genette furnish a template for re-reading the letters of March to August of 45 BCE. The Latinist’s work develops important categories for analysis, which (so to speak) Genette takes up and, à son insu, explores. Ultimately, the letters are rhetorical - artistic constructs: they develop literary postures for the author, both as an explicit strategy to elicit particular responses, as well as to participate in the literary signification of the text they introduce. In section four we will study Cicero’s relation to Varro, the dedicatee of his work, as expressed in the letters of ad Familiares book nine. We will examine their correspondence from the point of view of epistolary transaction and of the political objectives Cicero seems to set out for that relation within the context of a literary exchange built around the Academica. In section five we will focus on sociological issues relating to the wider network of letters of the period: we will look at questions of subjectivity as the effect of these letters, and reflect on the concerns and anxieties that engage Cicero the epistolographer. I will argue that beyond the political agenda, composing and revising the Academica fits into a logic of uncertainty, fear and doubt about how to react to current events which characterizes all areas of his personal life, as well as being one of the emerging concerns of the skeptical philosophy expressed in the Academica itself. 4. Counter-Figuring Indifference. Varro and the Politics of Composition This section proposes to address the specific political trajectory Cicero imparts to his Academici Libri, as they are introduced and conceptualized through letters of the period. Two major aspects will be identified and examined: in the first place the letters themselves will be constructed as acts, namely distributive acts that frame reception of the dialogue and simultaneously fashion a social O.Cappello, Part I 44 network, as well as situate the work within it. In a second instance, the political and pragmatic positions assumed within the epistolary exchange will be shown to foreshadow and highlight certain features of the dialogues, thereby shaping interpretations of the Academici Libri. The separation of form and content is a useful structuring device for the argument, isolating the socio-linguistic perspective from the pragmatic-rhetorical. The framework within which the letters have been read as ‘political’ texts has so far relied on a strict division between form and content. On the one hand, we find a socio-linguistic perspective analyzing the letter as a communicative act. The works of Achard, Garcea, Rouzy and Biville frame the discussion of the letters as a study in Late Republican communication. Indeed, it is precisely for its communicative role that Rouzy does not hesitate to label the letter an ‘objet social,’ a definition which underscores the premise of the collection to which his article belongs (2003: 12). Colloquia absentium takes its cue from a Ciceronian gloss on epistolary exchange to articulate the ways in which corresponding is a social practice. 138 Letters, Biville explains, think of themselves as litterarised conversations, either self-consciously, 139 or implicitly, embedded in the mechanisms of equivalence and substitution of language, as demonstrated by the fact that verbs employed in oral communication (loqui - audire) can substitute for scribere - legere, but not the other way (Biville 2003: 15). Ultimately this methodology elucidates the extent to which Cicero’s epistolary exchange presents itself as a vehicle of inter-communication, as such concretely occupying a social function. 140 Recent ideological analyses of Cicero’s opus have identified the letters as social objects from an altogether different perspective. Critics have recognized the importance of Ciceronian intellectual production as a Roman response to a Roman crisis, and they have highlighted social networks as the site of Cicero’s creative reaction. Habinek’s (1990) article on amicitia tackles the business of networking explicitly, portraying the consular struggling to re-think the broken down mechanisms that distributed power in the now defunct Republic. The reproduction of a cohesive- literary- group committed to the old ideology clearly takes centre stage as motive force for the diffusion of the works themselves, and it is precisely this perspective that Lévy (1992) and Auvray-Assayas (2006) share when they comment on the ‘space’ of philosophy, an arena in which correspondents and readers can participate in open dialogue with each other. Perhaps Haury offers the best formulation 138 Phil.2.27. 139 Loquor tecum absens (‘I speak with you, although I am absent’), Att.12.39 [280]. 140 The collection’s theoretical premise is shared by Hall 2009, whose analytical categories (e.g. affiliative or redressive politeness) depend on socio-linguistics. See also White 2010: 17 and 20. O.Cappello, Part I 45 of the principle, pointing out that once the Republic fell ‘lettres et traités continueront de mener la lutte’ (1955: 278). On the content side of our argument, it is important to recognize the debt to Hutchinson’s analysis that perceptively reads the close connection between aesthetics and politics in Cicero’s letters. Inflection of epistolary language is, just as in the orations or treatises, exercised to achieve political and social ends. The letters not only sustain amicitia; they also function as tools for intervening in an array of social, personal and political situations. Though he doesn’t see their literariness as totally subordinate to functionality (contra Genette), he characterizes them as ‘devices’ and ‘tactics.’ Cicero’s prose artistry is plainly connected to the function of persuasion; the aesthetic drive organizing, arranging, presenting the material, however experiential its origin, is consistently placed under the aegis of a social and political function (Hutchinson 1998: 11, 199 and 115 with respect to time). In an article published in 2007, Sean Gurd developed an original reading of Cicero’s correspondence that brings together issues of form and content, and that focuses closely on the Academica. Examining the process of editorial revision as represented in the letters, the article proposes to read the number of epistulae inviting, offering, and responding to criticisms and comments about the composition of particular works as intensely political. Indeed, Gurd identifies collaborative revision as playing ‘an important part in negotiating, establishing and maintaining group coherence and stability,’ and so ultimately providing the ‘template and substance for a renewed republicanism.’ This ongoing dialogue about correcting works, a dialogue that was earlier identified in the very composition of the Academica, represented in fact a system that enabled correspondents to participate in Cicero’s works, and through participation to inscribe themselves in a collectivity whose ideological raison d’être was Republicanism. It is worth unraveling further this intuition about what he calls ‘collective inscription,’ ‘textual collectivization’ and ‘paper republicanism’ (Gurd 2007: 50, 53 and 68). Two texts form the basis of this analysis. The first suggestively indicates said process of inclusive revision through the metaphor of a painting in need of renewal. 141 This image of disintegration grieves for the inability of Romans to preserve the res publica, whose ancient perfection has faded, like a pictura in need of restoration. Gurd, who has just surveyed the complex history of the composition and ‘publication’ of Cicero’s de Republica and de Legibus, convincingly 141 Rep.5.1-2. Cf. Plato Leg.769a-b. O.Cappello, Part I 46 reads into the analogy an insistence on the need to collaborate and to participate collectively in such process of restoration and preservation; a process, he remarks, which is conceptualized as one of emendation. The second source is the Brutus. The date is pivotal for Gurd’s argument: written around the time of Thapsus and the final throes of the Civil War, the work packs a subtle anti-Caesarian punch. While the defeated orator portrays Caesar’s stylistic perfection as uncooperative, closed off, isolationist, he himself on the one hand develops what Gurd labels an ‘incohitionist canon’- that is a way of identifying Republican authors with an open-ended approach to literary composition- on the other hand, he makes his own qualities as orator depend on the extent to which he represents the ‘language of society’ and is open ‘to further involvement and correction’ (Ibid: 59-60 and 63-4). The epistolary exchange surrounding the Academica is of great interest to the critic, who sees the correspondence with Varro and the contemporary anxiety about emendation as reflecting a ‘committed vision of literature as a form of sociality cemented through the exchange of corrections’ (Ibid: 74). Gurd’s perspective engages with three different and equally important aspects of the composition of the work: firstly, it accounts for the sustained interest in involving Atticus in the project; secondly, it links this phase of composition to that of the 50s, inserting the Academica in a broader project. Finally, it goes some way towards explaining the survival of the Lucullus or, at the very least, the interest in swift dissemination of his works that excites and worries our philosopher throughout the writing of the De Finibus and Academica. Although we will return to each of these three topics, the significance of Gurd’s contribution is primarily methodological: in brief, the reification of writing, publishing, and, most importantly, revising as a political and communal practice in Cicero’s oeuvre. In a long letter to his brother sent between October and November of 54 BCE, Cicero describes his struggle with completing a set of libri he had begun at Cumae, de optimo statu civitatis et de optimo cive (‘about the best constitution and the best citizen’). He describes features of the first edition- characters, format and setting- as he had already done in an earlier letter to Atticus, but confesses that he had changed his whole ratio and consilium about the work a number of times already. One of the reasons given for this revision, as we already mentioned, is Sallustius’ critique of the first two books of an early version: the work, his colleague contends, needs the auctoritas of a consular, and therefore Cicero should look to Aristotle, whose dialogues include the author as O.Cappello, Part I 47 speaker, and not to Heraclides Ponticus, writer of historical dialogues. Cicero, as we know, does not take on board Sallustius’ advice, nor does he take on board Atticus’ request to include Varro. 142 The orator’s first foray into the world of philosophical publication provides an important point of comparison with the situation that develops over March to August of 45 BCE, especially in terms of Cicero’s compositional ethos. If in the mid 50s his return from exile brought renewed vigor to his political negotiations, 143 and the de Republica and de Legibus stuck fast to their idealized setting, when the conquered Republican makes his way back from Pharsalus the attitude towards his work is marked by considerable shift as he recasts the Catulus and Lucullus. Suddenly, Cicero’s voice, and that of his living contemporaries breaks into the philosophica. The anxiety about revision, the requests for inclusion, the battle with format and models all materialize in both periods of epistolary exchange; in both periods, these aesthetic and social concerns are hedged in by political lobbying, mainly conducted in the form of a deferred or broken dialogue with Caesar. 144 The issue of revision takes centre stage as a political question, invested in the ever-changing economies of the orator’s social network. 145 The key to the shift outlined above is Varro, the new protagonist and source of endless anxieties. His presence clearly underscores Cicero’s approach to the Academica, an attitude that not only colors reception of the Academici Libri, but also prompts the question of what Cicero found in the first (and the intermediate) version which drew him to the work as a possible vehicle for his political message. What now follows is an attempt to openly situate Fam.9.8 [254] in the sophisticated political mechanisms of Cicero’s political activities in the wake of Thapsus. The dedicatory letter, somewhat marginalized in discussions of the Academica, is by Cicero’s own confession a work of painstaking complexity. 146 It draws on a year-long correspondence with Varro, and is a barely understated provocation not simply to participate in a Republican network of exchange, but- as it were- to respond in kind. The letter is about how to read the Academici Libri, no less, and how to write philosophy. It challenges Varro not only in terms of form, but also of content. Finally, as it is shown to Atticus in a ferment period of wider philosophical debate and posturing, it 142 Q.Fr.3.5.1 [25] and Att.4.16.2 [89]. 143 Classically described as ‘recantation’ by Rawson 1983: 122-45, or, mercifully, as rapprochement to the triumvirs. Cf. Att.4.5 [80] or Fam.1.9.21 [20]. 144 So in the 50s a number of letters to Quintus illustrate this seesawing, cf. Q.fr.3.1 [21]; Q.fr.2.13 [17]; Q.fr.2.16 [19]; Fam.7.5 [26]. In March to July of 45 BCE, as he waits for Caesar to return from Spain, he refrains from responding to the Anticato and from sending him an advisory letter, having discussed his tergiversations with Atticus and important Caesarians like Hirtius and Dolabella. 145 See Schmidt 2001; Boes 1990: 145-200; and Gurd 2007: 52-8. 146 Dictated syllabatim to Spintharus, Att.13.25.3 [333]. O.Cappello, Part I 48 formulates a critique of philosophizing in the public domain, proposing in fact a tentative maquette for the public intellectual to the man who will come to be the first institutional intellectual of Rome. 147 Before we turn to the letter in question, we must examine the history of the relationship between Cicero and Varro, paying particular attention to how the letters in ad Familiares book nine construct the relation. Between 54 and 46 BCE, except for a cursory mention on the sixth of July 51, Varro remains out of Cicero’s epistles. 148 This absence is often seized upon as a key factor when critics comment on the nature of this duo’s relationship: its fundamental question being reformulated in terms of why the exchange is born and what precisely Cicero finds in his correspondent. Lévy’s answer depends on an intimate reading of his psyche: Varro is ‘un modèle,’ ‘un compagnon,’ someone with whom Cicero shares a ‘culture philosophique commune.’ For the French critic, three elements characterize their amicitia: bitterness over past antagonism, a new found solidarity in their predicament and a sincere admiration (1992: 134 and 135). Kumaniecki, to whose classic article Lévy and the present study owe much, takes a rather more detached position. The two were never friends, because they differed significantly in their personalities. The senior Varro is of a scientific disposition, more willing to conform to the regime, and a-political, while Cicero, his junior, finds his manner tiresome (1962: 240-2). 149 There are a number of letters that indicate displeasure with Varro, as for example Att.13.33a [330] about his importunate visit. Nonetheless Kumaniecki picks Att.12.6 [306] to explore this dislike: Varro’s bon gout is dismissed because appreciative of Hegesias’ Asiatic vitium. 150 This opposition is moderated, however, by two facts: their bond of common interests and their condition of inhabiting the same Republican universe- the same world Cicero uses to populate his dialogues. 151 These positions on the couple’s relation are orthodoxy, and convincingly so. It is nigh impossible to read the relationship as one of positive integration, open sharing or close amicitia as we 147 Suetonius, Jul.44, refers to Caesar commissioning Varro with founding Rome’s first public library. 148 Att.5.11.3 [104]. 149 See also Baier’s 1997: 15-27 account of their ‘gespannte Freundschaft.’ 150 Cf. Orat.230. 151 ‘Interessi scientifici e letterari.’ Kumaniecki 1962: 222-3 lists the dedicatees of Varro’s books that were friends of Cicero’s as well: ‘aristocratici, conservatori, repubblicani, pompeiani.' Wiseman’s 2009: 110 and 125 understanding of this relationship stays on the same tracks, as he defines it as an ‘uneasy one’ characterized by ‘literary rivalry’ and less than complete political sympathy.’ O.Cappello, Part I 49 encounter in the correspondence with Atticus, Brutus or even Matius and Cassius, where philosophical ramblings offer a full palette of shades of intimacy. As Kumaniecki and Wiseman note, their predicament shares a number of parallels, especially towards the beginning and end of Cicero’s political career. Earliest mentions of Varro in the correspondence bind him tight to Atticus and Pompey. 152 This connection with the leader of the Republican opposition sealed Cicero’s and Varro’s fate in the civil war, where their involvement is characterized as hesitant and passive. This parallel can be pushed into their life in the world after Pharsalus: both are pardoned by Caesar, Varro a little earlier than Cicero, and so both assume a difficult position tainted by distrust, subjected to the contempt of old Pompeian friends and the suspicious eyes of their victors. And it is finally in their relationship to Caesar that their parallel fates come to a close. After the assassination on the Ides of March, which apparently drew the two closer, 153 Antony is no longer held back in his persecution of Varro, whom he finally proscribes and whose villa he seizes, and can give free reign to his fury against Cicero. 154 They are not only afflicted by the same wave of Republican decadence, but are actually brought together into cooperation in two distinct arenas. The first is practical: Varro plays an active role in helping Cicero during his exile, despite the fact he disappears after the orator’s return, and is notably absent from the list of those for whose help Cicero makes expression of public gratitude. 155 The second, and the one which forms the core of the present study, is their collaborative intellectual relation. As early as mid-May of 54 BCE, the orator communicates to Atticus his desire to gain access to Varro’s libri, and probably no later than two weeks later, Varro is promised a place in Cicero’s philosophica. 156 Thereafter, the series in ad Familiares book nine, covering their exchange between 47 and 45, identifies their relationship as self-avowedly academic. However, the history of their relationship, at least up to 46 BCE, is often tainted with more or less explicit accusations and, as mentioned above, revealing silences. Antagonism seems to originate from their parallel trajectories, which nonetheless generated two distinctive, irreconcilable readings- and (non-) reactions- to the political disintegration of their world. 152 Att.2.20 [40]; Att.2.21 [41]; Att.2.22 [42]; Att.2.25 [45]. 153 Cf. Att.15.5.3 [383] and Att.15.26.5 [404]. As these texts show- or fail to- this point is rather debatable. 154 For the confiscation of Varro’s property see Appian Bellum Civile 5.47.203 and Phil.2.103ff. 155 Att.3.8.3 [53]; Att.3.15.1 [60]; and Att.3.18.1 [63]. 156 Includetur in aliquem locum (‘he will be involved at some other stage’), Att.4.16.2 [89]. O.Cappello, Part I 50 In the eyes of Cicero, Varro worked alongside Caesar all too willingly. In the first half of July 59 BCE, Cicero confesses that, for reasons of honor and safety, he will refuse to take the place of Cosconius as one of the Vigintiviri. Indeed, in Caesar’s consular year, acceptance of such position is connected to the implementation of his land reform. 157 Varro, however, accepts the place as one of the Vigintiviri agris dividendis (‘board of twenty for the distribution of land’) and sets thereby a precedent for cooperation in relation to Cicero’s resistance (Wiseman 2009: 117). 158 With due attention for the source, the description of his surrender to Caesar in Spain conforms to the picture developed so far. 159 Indeed, Kumaniecki (1962: 234-5) argues that even after the civil war Varro gained his safe return earlier than Cicero by almost a year and that in 45, his projected meeting with Caesar, which the orator lobbies to stall throughout the letters of 46 and early 45, not only takes place, but actually leads to the post as head librarian, which the Dictator creates expressly for Varro. The question of his appointment is conventionally tied not just to that particular meeting, but also to the dedication of the second part of his Antiquitates, Res Divinae, to Caesar as Pontifex Maximus. 160 Modern narratives underscore the dedication as a critical moment for the reconciliation of the two, and make the librarianship depend on that gesture (Della Corte 1954: 134; Kumaniecki 1962: 231; and Horsfall 1972). It is again, the exchange of an intellectual product that plays an important role in the politics of the new Roman order; nonetheless, the conflict itself, more so than the Vigintivirate, furnishes an important precedent for Varro’s cooperative spirit. Caesar’s account of Varro’s surrender to Quintus Cassius’ two legions already symbolically welcomes the intellectual into the post-Pompeian order. 161 In September of 59 BCE Cicero makes his distrust for Varro explicit. The views he expresses about him, couched though they are in Euripidean half-verses, are nonetheless damning. Although the occasion seems to suggest that Cicero is simply reacting to a request unfulfilled by Varro, the morsels of verses borrowed from the Attic tragedian are a comment on Varro’s twisted, unknowable and autocratic personality. Interestingly, in this introduction to Varro, Cicero employs Euripides to frame their relationship as a hierarchical one, and alludes to his colleague’s perversion, as well as un- (anti-, even) patriotic agenda. The central focus of each reference is the parallel situation of the 157 Att.2.19.4 [39]. On Caesar’s lex agraria see Cassius Dio 38.1-8 where the measure and its implementation are described in the context of Caesar’s rivalry with his co-consul Bibulus. I found Goldsworthy’s 2006: 164-181 narrative useful. 158 References to Varro holding this position at his Res Rusticae 1.2.10 and Pliny NH 7.176. 159 De bello civili 2.17-21. 160 Evidence for the dedication is at Lactantius Divinarum Institutionum 1.6.7 and Augustine de Civitate Dei 7.35. 161 De Bello Civili 2.17-20. O.Cappello, Part I 51 speakers who find themselves, Polyneices and Andromache, in the condition of slavery and of exile, and whose circumstances affect their ability to communicate clearly and directly with their rulers. 162 Varro’s jealousy for Brutus, which Cicero labors as he is transferring the Catulus and Lucullus to the antiquarian, is again perhaps to be constructed not as a jeu de moeurs but as another potential crisis in the history of their relationship. In fact, although the consular time and again voices his commitment to the dedication, he raises from the outset a number of problems which he characterizes as originating from Varro. Immediately after the change of personae is announced, his anxiety about the antiquarian’s reaction is connected to Brutus. 163 Only a few days later the question of envy is reiterated, but there its contours become rather more mysterious. The fact that Cicero commits certain objections to a letter, namely that Varro may feel hard done by the fact that Cicero’s case is more persuasive, or being subjected to the orator’s principatus, confirms the existence of other graver ones that could only be settled viva voce. 164 In the final few moments of anxious exchange, Cicero relinquishes responsibility and couches his preoccupations in Greek, with a phrase first borrowed from Atticus’ own ‘book,’ followed by one cited from Homer. 165 That labyrinthine quality he attributes to Varro is replayed here, in this game of preoccupations and investigations that underscore the breakdown of an exchange. And indeed, Cicero fails to influence Varro both in preventing his rendezvous with Caesar, and significantly also in cooperating on the delicate question of the treatment of the Julian iuvenis Octavian later in 44 BCE. 166 Evidently the relationship was of a particularly complex nature, made of stops and starts, invitations, rejections, silences, indifferences but also studied dialogue, appreciations, rapprochements. There are two major aspects to be highlighted before returning to the letters: firstly, as a proviso, many of these comments made above are digested from the correspondence of Cicero himself. Secondly, above and beyond the instinct to novelize the relationship, it is of critical 162 Att.2.25.1 [45]. Nb. ἑλικτὰ κοὐδὲν ὑγιὲς ἀλλὰ πᾶν πέριξ / φρονοῦντες (‘with thoughts that are twisted, noxious and in every way tortuous’), Andromache 447-8. τὰς τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίας φέρειν χρεών. (‘the madness of rulers must be endured’), Phoennissae 393 [words underlined are those actually quoted]. Wiseman 2009: 110-112 emphasizes the tyrannical undertone of these allusions, suggesting that they place Varro firmly on the side of the tyrant (=Caesar). I contend that such descriptions do more than merely place the two ‘on opposite sides of an ideological divide.’ 163 Att.13.13-14.1 [321]. 164 Sed haec coram (‘but we will talk of these other concerns face to face’), Att.13.18 [325]. 165 Att.13.24.1 [332] and Att. 13.25.3 [333], in which Cicero describes Varro with the words Patroclus speaks of Achilles before Nestor at Iliad 11.654: δεινὸς ἀνήρ· τάχα κεν καὶ ἀναίτιον αἰτιόῳτο (‘he is a fearsome man, quick to blame even he who has no blame’). 166 Though the correspondence does not explicitly confirm that the meeting took place, historians agree that it did take place, disagreeing rather on the ‘when.’ The silence nonetheless is critical. Whatever the outcome of Cicero’s attempts to persuade Varro, it certainly gave him no reason to celebrate. See Att.16.9 [419]. O.Cappello, Part I 52 importance to emphasize the parallel roles they both play on the margins of power, both individuals displaced and resorting to intellectual production: it is this final trajectory from the margins back to the centre through investment in culture that is axiomatic to how Cicero wants us, as we shall see, to “read” their relationship and its dramatization in the first Academic Book. The ninth book of the ad Familiares collection is divided into three parts according to correspondents: the first eight letters are addressed to Varro, letters nine to fourteen concern Dolabella while the final eleven are an exchange with Paetus. 167 The series of eight letters spans the years 47 to 45 BCE, but is mainly scattered throughout the anarchic 46 BCE. We will argue through the first seven letters that the eighth and the opening of the first Academic Book express, in their proclamation of a societas studiorum, the great aspiration of Cicero’s commitment to that relationship as he tried to fashion it through the exchange. There is a marked attention in Cicero’s words to the creation of a common ground, and the formation of a bond that might serve as an alternative to the political world, if not an anticipation of a return to it. The book’s opening triad, Fam.9.1 [175], Fam.9.2 [177] and Fam.9.3 [176] set the tone for the rest of the exchange. 168 As 47 BCE drew to a close, Cicero renews contacts with Varro. This first letter constructs the relationship between them through a number of important images, tropes and themes. Furthermore, its entire aim is to delineate a space, to create, even, the preconditions for an interaction between the two Republican thinkers. The letter suggestively begins with the directional ex to identify Atticus as the central figure of the exchange: he acts as both mediator and point of origin of their interaction. It is however the central image of Cicero’s return to veteres amici that figuratively structures the relationship in terms of a differed cultural dialogue. 169 Resignation to the absence of possible solacium (‘solace’) or adlevatio (‘relief’) in such circumstances is balanced precisely by the possibility offered by books. Indeed, these books, crucially referred to as nostri, speak with Cicero, comfort him and thereby establish two interrelated paradigms: they themselves assume the mantle of teacher and master, while Varro is characterized as 167 Note that Dolabella and Paetus are Caesarians. 168 This is not the place for underwriting the sharpness of Beard’s 2002 intuition. Nonetheless, the analysis will clarify that, at least for the first third of Fam.9, the editor was well aware of important thematic developments and arranged the letters accordingly. 169 Ex iis litteris (‘from that letter of yours’), Fam.9.1.1 [175]; scio enim me, postea quam in urbem venerim, redisse cum veteribus amicis, id est cum libris nostris, in gratiam (‘I should tell you that, since I have come back to Rome, I restored relations with my old friends, that is with my books’). Fam.9.1.2 [175]. O.Cappello, Part I 53 a stable model of sapientia. 170 Their communal intellectual activity is asserted as central to their renewed association; this activity is figured, both metaphorically and metonymically, as connecting the two. And finally, this common ground brings the narrative of despair to tentatively face the future. Indeed, despite the apparent occlusion of relief, future verbs and present subjunctives are extremely frequent in this short epistle, and, alongside the theme of hope and endurance, project forward the relation between the two, and describe a sense of potentiality. 171 The text is in more senses than one foundational, engendering the possibility of collaboration and determining its symbolic trajectory: for sure, the figure of the speaking libri will play a key role in Fam.9.8 [254]. Over the next few letters in the chronological sequence Cicero expands the foundations of their cooperation, extending their common ground beyond the intellect to a shared past and present predicament. Bridging the news of Thapsus, Fam.9.2 [177] 172 is drawn out and confessional: Cicero introduces his ratio, explaining his line of conduct to Varro, as well as supplying him with consilia to the same end. Said ratio nonetheless hinges on their situation with respect to the war that is, with respect to their singular position they occupy as losers who have surrendered before their time. Their impossible circumstances are strikingly depicted as shared, paradoxical and involved with their past choices. 173 Before we examine the propositive observations offered to Varro- optimistic especially in terms of their studies- it is crucial to note once again that the orator constructs them out of this sense of a common trajectory. At Fam.9.5 [179], Cicero explicitly revisits that past and offers a sophisticated justification for their parallel choices. Just as in Fam.9.2.2 [177], Fam.9.5.2 [179] leads into the past as a reading of a consilium (‘plan’), of reacting to a present situation. The slip from spes 170 Note the moral and pedagogical succession of expressions: etsi non idcirco eorum usum dimiseram quod iis suscenserem sed quod eorum me suppudebat; videbar enim mihi, cum me in res turbulentissimas infidelissimis sociis demi<si>ssem, praeceptis illorum non satis paruisse. Ignoscunt mihi, revocant in consuetudinem pristinam teque, quod in ea permanseris, sapientiorem quam me dicunt fuisse (‘Not that I had renounced their companionship because I was angry with them, but because they made me ashamed of myself. For I felt that in throwing myself into this very chaotic situation with most untrustworthy allies, I had not obeyed their precepts enough. They forgive me and call me back to the old way and they tell me that you are wiser than I for you did not deviate from it’). Fam.9.1.1-2 [175]. 171 I count ten verbs in the future tense. We also find the substantive spem once, the verb sperare twice; note also impendeant. 172 Tantis… novis adlatis (‘once such terrible news arrived’), Fam.9.2.1 [177]. 173 Qui enim victoria se efferent quasi victos nos intuentur, qui autem victos nostros moleste ferunt nos dolent vivere (‘those who celebrate victory look at us as counting amongst the defeated, while those who find it hard to come to terms with the defeat of our friends, mourn the fact that we are still alive’), Fam.9.2.2 [177]. O.Cappello, Part I 54 (‘hope’) to officium (‘duty’) to desperatio (‘despair’) is articulated through first person plural verbs and pronouns. 174 Within this framework, the orator clearly constructs a future for the duo, a ‘common line of conduct’ as Kumaniecki (1962: 232) will suggest, out of the dilapidated landscape of their past, and their common motivations. He proposes to Varro to integrate intellectual activity into their exile, and he portrays such activity as both an alternative to and an opportunity for political engagement. Fam.9.2 [177] and Fam.9.3 [176] introduce a double perspective on their scholarly diversion. In the former, actually to be dated after Fam.9.3 [176], the relocation of the space for academicism occurs in three stages: first delectatio, then salus, and finally as preparation for the possibility of their return ad aedificandam rem publicam (‘in order to build a/the republic’). That final moment is all important: writing and reading occupy a number of positions within the spectrum of possibilities that their predicament offers. Firstly they are recognized as propaedeutic to the restructuring of the republic, as the terms architecti and fabri indicate respectively a theoretical and practical body of knowledge that is implicitly coupled with their studies. Indeed, the connective tamen that leads into the second position works hard to build that premise, which is underscored by the object of their study: πολιτειαί (‘Republics’). 175 The second position is articulated through a balanced phrase that celebrates writing and reading as not simply a valid alternative to serve the Republic, but one which enjoys a distinguished precedent in the work of the doctissimi veteres. Indeed, the parallel in curia atque in foro/in litteris et libris presents through physical terms a conceptual symmetry that centers on fulfilling civic duty. Whether in fact their theoretical disquisitions will be given room for application, or will remain in the domain of the abstract, scribere et legere πολιτείας continues to perform a public office. This theme 174 Secuti sumus (‘we followed’), reliquimus (‘we left’); previously nostri, nobis. Commenting on Fam.9.2 [177], Wiseman states that ‘the use of the first person plural indicates the nature of the relationship… two men who saw eye to eye on everything important, in life, literature and politics’ 2009: 109. 175 modo nobis stet illud, una vivere in studiis nostris, a quibus antea delectationem modo petebamus, nunc vero etiam salutem; non deesse, si quis adhibere volet, non modo ut architectos, verum etiam ut fabros, ad aedificandam rem publicam, et potius libenter accurrere; si nemo utetur opera, tamen et scribere et legere πολιτείαs et, si minus in curia atque in foro, at in litteris et libris, ut doctissimi veteres fecerunt, *gnavare* rem publicam et de moribus ac legibus quaerere (‘Only let’s agree on one thing: to live together in our literary studies. We used to resort to them only for pleasure, but now we do so for salvation. If anyone wants to call on us as architects or even as craftsmen to build the republic, we shall gladly run to their help; if no one wants our help, like the most learned ancients did, we must still read and write Republics, serve the state in our letters and in our books, if not in the Senate House and the Forum, and continue our research into custom and law’), Fam.9.2.5 [177]. A note on *gnavare*: I agree with Shackleton Bailey that this must be preferred to gravare which is the reading found in the best manuscripts. O.Cappello, Part I 55 will not only return again and again in many of the treatises of the second wave of philosophica, 176 but it specifically ties into the relationship between Varro and Cicero. The final phrase of this sentence brings together the topics of mores and leges indicating the binary interests shaping the couple’s output: the ratiocination on laws, with its connotations of Platonism, and perhaps hidden reference to the orator’s own De Republica call on Cicero, 177 while mention of mores characterizes the antiquarian project of Varro. The division and collaboration intimated here is precisely what structures the artificial dialogue at Ac.1.1-13: Varro the researcher accounting for the history and customs of Rome, while Cicero meditates on the (re-)foundation of a togate philosophy. 178 Boes (1990: 207-8) rightly concentrates on the proselytizing appeal of Fam.9.2 [177], illustrating the ways in which civic officium is the strategy through which Cicero implicates Varro in a partnership founded on philosophizing. Their predicament nonetheless calls for this activity to be presented as a wish: nobis stet illud, una vivere in studiis nostris. 179 It is at Fam.9.3.1-2 [176] that the chase for consolation in their common artes becomes an imperative hunt for medicina. Boes indicates this letter as the first call to arms. His motives are not simply chronological. Two strategies interrelate to color this letter with greater urgency: firstly, the creation of a common enemy, the public opinion, nameless and faceless, which haunts their every move; 180 and secondly, the use of the first person plural, enacting a sophisticated control over the duo’s moves and psychological states. 181 This drama of positions is played both metaphorically and geographically. If the letters reviewed above were interested in coordinating their presence within and without Rome, the second half of Fam.9.7 [178] and the opening sections of Fam.9.6 [181] constitute an interesting episode of Varro and Cicero’s negotiations over Caesar’s return. 176 The theme of philosophia as service is a staple of Cicero’s apologiae. The prologues to the Lucullus, Ac.1 and de Finibus are all committed to this rhetoric. For a synchronic and detailed analysis see Gildenhard 2007: 51-63. 177 As Shackleton Bailey suggests in his commentary ad loc. 178 Cicero tells Varro that, despite serving Rome in many ways through his publications, his philosophy remains somewhat scant. The following passage therefore leaves it rather clear how Cicero’s own late work fits into the picture: Latinis et litteris luminis et verbis attulisti atque ipse varium et elegans omni fere numero poema fecisti philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti, ad impellandum satis, ad edocendorum parum (‘you have also shed a great deal of light on our poets and on Latin literature and language altogether. And you have yourself written varied and elegant poetry in nearly every meter, as well as introducing the rudiments of philosophy at many points in a way that suffices to stimulate interest, although it’s too slight to give instruction’ translation from Brittain 2006), Ac.1.9. 179 Fam.9.2.5 [177]. 180 Iis qui nesciunt nobis (‘those who don’t know that...’), omnes (‘all of them’), neglecta barbarorum inscitia (‘taking no notice of the ignorance of those barbarians’), Fam.9.3.1-2 [176]. 181 Boes 1990: 207 speaks of the ‘habileté de la première personne du pluriel.’ O.Cappello, Part I 56 The former letter presents a dense set of difficult short phrases, referring to the negotiations about where either should or should not be when Caesar lands. Calumniatus sum (‘I stand falsely accused’) refers, as Shackleton Bailey (ad loc) clarifies, to his doubts about heading for Campania and his advice to Varro to avoid Baiae, both suspected ports of entry for Caesar’s return. The highly inflected language raises suspicions about Cicero’s motives: he concludes with the intention of accommodating his plans to Varro’s, as he will do at Fam.9.6.2 [181], and yet he links this flexibility with an elliptical portrayal of his newfound socializing with a crew of victors, among whom Dolabella. He repeatedly speaks of being a slave to the moment, to the inescapable need to accept circumstances and the chaotic state of the Republic, 182 framing the question of meeting Caesar not within an openly anti-Caesarian discourse 183 but one of adaptation and a particular mental predisposition to collaborate with the new regime. In other words, this pair of letters first epitomizes only a long and evidently fraught negotiation about how to welcome Caesar, intimated by the reassuring and often defensive tone Cicero takes towards their consilium; 184 and second they mask an attempt on Cicero’s part to limit Varro’s cooperation within the boundaries of his own. Therein we must situate the specular construction of past incentives and present commitments. The historical narrative speaks volumes for the success of Cicero’s attempt: between the last letter of this series, dated to June of 46 BCE and the dedication letter of the Academici Libri, sent around the eleventh of July 45, one year and a handful of days have elapsed. The silence and remoteness exhibited when Cicero tells Atticus of an impromptu meeting with Varro must be taken seriously as the backdrop to the anxiety of the nine letters that detail the development of Cicero’s uneasiness about the commission. 185 182 Tempori serviendum est (‘we must go with the times’), Fam.9.7.1 [178]; non enim est idem ferre, si quid ferendum est, et probare, si quid non probandum est (‘it is not the same thing to put up with what has to be put up with and to approve of something that cannot be approved’), Fam.9.6.2 [181]; at in perturbata re publica vivimus (‘we live in a state that has been turned upside down’), Fam.9.6.4 [181]. 183 Note the generous fatalistic touches in the following: etsi <ne> quid non probem equidem iam scio, praeter initia rerum ; nam haec in voluntate fuerunt. vidi enim (nam tu aberas) nostros amicos cupere bellum, hunc autem non tam cupere quam non timere. ergo haec consili fuerunt, reliqua necessaria, vincere autem aut hos aut illos necesse esse (‘Although I don’t know any more what to disapprove of, except the beginning of this whole story; which was a matter of volition. For I saw (you were away) that our friends wanted war, while he, whom we are waiting for, did not so much want it, as not fear it. Therefore this was a matter of design, the rest was a necessary consequence of it. It was inevitable that one of the two sides would come out on top’), Fam.9.6.2 [181]; tum vero extremum malorum omnium esse civilis belli victoriam (‘we realized that victory in civil war is the worst of all evils’), Fam.9.6.3 [181]. 184 See Boes 1990: 210 on Fam.9.5 [179]. 185 Att.13.33a [330]. Kumaniecki 1962: 236 inserts them into this context. O.Cappello, Part I 57 The consular tries, and apparently fails, to gain influence over Varro. He manufactures a relationship built on their precarious state as outsiders and as liminal figures, somewhere between Rome and their country villas, somewhere between the victors and the vanquished. In the final letter, he composes a eulogy for Varro, along the lines of the praise that opened the exchange. 186 The antiquarian, in his retirement, is shown to anticipate life’s disasters: the high rhetorical language, self-consciously introduced by the expression huc [...] fluxit oratio (‘our conversation has streamed forth to this point’), parades the greatness of doctrina (‘learning’), using images of cultivation and safe harbors. 187 But Cicero inserts himself, as he did in that opening letter, as comparandum, and so as a reminder of the political duties without. The rhetoric used here is equally sophisticated: he would have relinquished all to be like Varro, but he could not- though the reasons are tellingly omitted. Then he constructs an explicative cum clause to engineer the possibility for their return to studies: the fact that the state cannot, or does not want to avail itself of their opera is the sole reason for this retirement, and as he characterizes their isolation in the language of precedent he introduces doubt about the legitimacy of their model: can the doctissimi viri be wrong? This final exclusionary binarism, politics or culture, is problematised in complex ways. It opens the way for a return to the collaborative paradigm outlined at Fam.9.2.5 [177], replicating once again that movement from consilium to philosophia. Cicero treads very carefully when commenting on his renewed engagement with Caesarians. The prolix ratiocinations about the interchangeability of victors, the gestural appeals to fate and conditioning, and the resigned commitment to dining with awkward teachers, 188 all are underwritten by sophisticated philosophical language. This application warrants commenting on, as it has a part to play in the way Cicero conceptualizes philosophy as a means of communication between the two. At Fam.9.7.2 [177], he masks his fear towards Caesarians in the wake of Thapsus through use of the term ἀποπροηγμένον (‘that which is to be rejected’): this is a term arising from Stoic theory that, although nothing is good or bad except for virtue or vice, some things can still be preferred or not for 186 Fam.9.6.4-5 [181]. Cf. Fam.9.1.2 [175]. 187 cum enim te semper magnum hominem duxi tum quod his tempestatibus es prope solus in portu (‘For I have always thought you a great man and I do so even now that you have alone reached safe harbor in these tempestuous times’), Fam.9.6.5 [181]. 188 For the final image cf. adventat enim Dolabella. Eum puto magistrum fore. πολλοὶ μαθηταὶ κρείσσονες διδασκάλων (‘Dolabella is about to arrive and I think he will be our teacher: many teachers are worse than their pupils’), Fam.9.7.2 [178]. O.Cappello, Part I 58 their value, or because they are appropriate to us. 189 Stoic theory is brought in cursorily as a template, which then will provide the basis for another intense epistle, Fam.9.4 [180]. This short note 190 tackles the indecision of Varro about where to be when Caesar lands through an opposition of two philosophical arguments: the Master Argument of the Dialectician Diodorus Cronus and its refutation by Chrysippus. Simply put, this argument concerns the relationship between necessity and possibility: Diodorus explores logical modalities by defining what is possible as that which is either true or will be true. Gaskin characterizes this position, known in Antiquity as ‘The Principle of Plenitude,’ as proposing that ‘all possibilities must at some time be realized’ (1995: 218). The Stoic philosopher disagrees with a particular premise of this position which states that the impossible cannot follow from the possible. By arguing against this, he unlocks definition of the possible as what is going to turn out to be true, provided that circumstances do not prevent it, allowing therefore for his world, as Sedley puts it in his summary, ‘to be governed by fate, but not by necessity’ (Sedley 1977: 100). 191 Griffin discusses the letter from two perspectives. The first is the aim of the letter, made explicit in the final reference to Chrysippus, which is to push Varro to visit him. Alongside this persuasive aspect, Griffin (1995: 339-341) also comments on the relation this text enjoys with De Fato as a broader reflection on determinism. 192 Boes (1990: 224) expands this final observation to a wider network of philosophica connecting this letter to both the Academica and the De Fato. He argues that Cicero’s analysis of the possibility of human intervention occurs in two stages: the first deals with the ability of man to engage in action with full epistemological certitude (which is the subject of the Academica), while the second questions the notion of responsibility in action (de Fato). This highlights an important aspect of the letter: Varro’s reaction to Caesar’s landing can be digested philosophically in terms of a trans-temporal dialectic between a Dialectic and Stoic philosopher on the topic of actuality and potentiality. 193 In other words- and bearing in mind that in the correspondence of 46 BCE, philosophy is alluded to as an activity- Cicero finally stages the 189 Cicero himself explains the theory at Fin.3.15. His reference to the African massacre is couched in an Ennian hexameter: Africa terribili tremit horrida terra tumultu (‘the land of Africa, shaking, trembled with a fearsome uproar’). 190 Boes 1990: 222 calls it a billet. 191 The fullest testimonia on the argument and its refutation is Epictetus, Dissertationes 2.19.1. Denyer 1981 and 1996 disagrees with Gaskin’s 1995: 282-296 reconstruction, which he defends again in 1996. Gaskin 1995: 297-305 also conjectures Cleanthes’ and Chrysippus’ critique, and Cicero’s own take on pages 306-318. Both make it an important step in the formulation of formal logic. Note that Diodorus and the dialectical school make a crucial appearance in the Lucullus, where Cicero uses another argument attributed to Diodorus, the sorites, to attack logic. 192 .Hoc etiam κατὰ Χρύσιππον δυνατὸν (‘according to Chrysippus this also counts as “possible”’), Fam.9.4 [180]. 193 For the argument cf. Fat.13. O.Cappello, Part I 59 applicability of philosophy to politics: the substance of that philosophical engagement is political, and the model of political engagement is structured philosophically. 194 After a year’s silence and a long debate about the appropriateness of a dedication, Cicero presents Atticus with a letter and a work on Academic epistemology to forward to Varro. From the relevant ad Atticum volumes, the epistolary relationship between the philosopher and antiquarian seems entirely mediated through Atticus. In this suggestive context the dedicatory letter, Fam.9.8 [254], has enjoyed surprisingly little attention. The letter itself is, as mentioned above, a dense product of Ciceronian rhetoric that derives much of its complexity from its connection to the earlier correspondence, and casts a particular light on the disputation it introduces. It is therefore not simply the case of examining the evolution of a historical relationship, but rather of uncovering a possible reading for the Academici Libri Cicero himself develops for the privileged spectators, Varro and Atticus. The meandering subordination of the opening four sentences along with the highly figurative imagery employed to describe the books and the Academy itself barely mask the confrontational message they convey. 195 The repetition of verbs such as flagitare, admonere- substantivised as admonitor - rogare, remunerare, as well as the noun munus which opens the passage, makes the message abundantly clear: the reception of the Academici Libri on the part of Varro represents a perverted form of the norms of exchange, and Cicero invites Varro to redress this imbalance. 196 Although the language of literary request and dedication has not made it into the remit of Latin prose studies, White’s (1993: 65-69) thorough survey of the idiom of patronage (focused on verse), actually constructs its categories through a reading of Cicero (and Pliny). 197 In fact, the language of requests is organized according to its insistence, or virulence. On the scale White outlines, going from ‘deferential’ to ‘peremptory,’ the verbs of Fam.9.8 [254] sit squarely in the latter end. White himself offers a cursory reading of our letter that underlines ‘discomfort’ with the forcefulness of the 194 Dettenhoffer’s 1990 thesis that philosophy is the encryption of politics is an interesting thesis brought to its extreme. Baier 1997: 30 judiciously claims that philosophy for Cicero is not a ‘Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln’ but the ‘Grundlage jeder geistigen Betätigung.’ 195 Etsi munus flagitare, quamvis quis ostenderit, ne populus quidem solet nisi concitatus, tamen ego exspectatione promissi tui moveor ut admoneam te, non ut flagitem. misi autem ad te quattuor admonitores non nimis verecundos; nosti enim profecto os huius adolescentioris Academiae (‘Even though the populace does not usually demand a show, unless someone has promised it, nonetheless I am driven by the expectation roused by your promise to remind you - not to demand from you. For this reason I sent you four monitors who aren’t all too shy, since you know the countenance of our youthful Academy’), Fam.9.8.1 [254]. 196 On munus as activating ‘reciprocality’ in literary relationships see Stroup 2010: 66-72. 197 Especially Fam.3.9 [72], Fam.12.16 [328], Fam.5.12 [22] and Fam.8.3 [79]. O.Cappello, Part I 60 expressions used. Cicero’s previous search for common ground on which to build collaboration is now concretized in the urgency of the exchange at hand (Ibid: 67-8). 198 Reciprocity is a fundamental theme of the letter throughout. The text, deploying the strategic fluency outlined above, fixes itself around the pronominal poles of ego, tu and nos as it defines the duo’s interaction along the lines of personal devotion, common interest and predicament. 199 While these three tropes appeared earlier as strategies to coordinate their projected meeting, and more broadly response to Thapsus and Caesar’s return, in this case they model Cicero’s action towards Varro: he underlines the reasons why he has taken the first step in this round of dedication and, especially important, why he has moved to publicize it. 200 This intensely social language of exchange sustains the architecture of the whole piece. The affirmation and regularization of a social bond, seems to exist in a tension towards the future where the two will meet, explore the subject matter of the books, discuss their own affairs and ultimately pursue Cicero’s musing over the end of the Republic. 201 The correspondence is, as prefigured in the earlier series between the two scholars, deeply embedded in the expectation of future social intercourse, and this letter plays up the ways in which the treatise itself should be conceptualized in those terms. In fact, the orator presents the dialogue as an incentive to hold a viva voce debate in the future, in a particularly complex and surprising light that aims at emphasizing the vraisemblance of the work itself. 202 Varro’s objection is provocatively imagined to draw attention to the power of the fiction as a valid mimetic alternative to real-life conversation. The parenthetic sero (‘late’), sign of the orator’s despair, inflects the value of the fiction: deferred and fictionalized disputations may after all be the conversations under the new order. Despite the melancholy and self-involved appearance, the letter plays out a subtle and provocative challenge to its recipient. The ball is clearly put in Varro’s court by the insistence on 198 Interestingly, he argues that urgency is often a perceived product of hierarchical imposition. However, he does admit a number of cases where the project itself warrants immediate and keen attention, this point he extracts from Cicero’s response to Quintus’ request for a Britannica in Qfr.2.16.4 [15], Qfr.3.4.4. and Qfr.3.5.4. 199 On the use of nos and the Latin pluralis pro singulare see Conway 1899; Pieri 1967; and Risselada 1993. 200 Their amor (‘love’), the coniunctio studiorum (‘shared academic interests’), and the status civitatis (‘political situation’), Fam.9.8.1-2 [254]. Ac.1.1-3 rehearses many of the same themes through the same words (inter alia: flagitare, expectare). 201 Quam plurima, si videtur, et de nobis inter nos (‘if it seems right, we shall enjoy many discussions between ourselves and about ourselves’); sed haec coram et saepius (‘but all this we will talk over together and often’), Fam.9.8.1-2 [254]. 202 Puto fore ut cum legeris mirere nos id locutos esse inter nos quod numquam locuti sumus (‘I think that once you have read it, you will be surprised that you and I discussed this matter which we in fact never have discussed’) , Fam.9.8.1 [254]. O.Cappello, Part I 61 themes of reciprocity and obligation, and this ingeniously turns his attention to the future. 203 Within this set of social expectations, Cicero introduces a political theme straight after his wish that the fictional conversation be filled out and supplanted by the real: again, the adverbial shifter sero speaks volumes about the hopes Cicero pins on that conversation. That verbal exchange is linked to the fortuna of the Republic- a fate which itself needs to bear the responsibility of the fall. 204 If the first part of the letter reworks intellectual-literary discourse into a set of social obligations, here that relation is turned into a political one. Categories of public and private are elided, and a sense of urgency surfaces about the future, and about the implications of their relationship. It is vital to note that the urgency Cicero impresses upon Varro echoes that of the earlier epistles in the need to turn to- and think of- intellectual activity as a civic duty; nonetheless, there is a more fundamental opportunity the consular offers in this letter to leave the question of the location of philosophy open. Indeed, the final lines, beginning with the wish at section two, articulate the position which Cicero wants their studia to occupy. Already defined as a foil to and replacement for a real conversation, it is then circuitously characterized as a replacement for worthy concerns and actions; finally it is defined as an activity integral to Cicero’s life. 205 The consular uses forceful expressions, full of drama and rhetoric, yet he never commits to an interpretation of how to fit these studia in the panorama of his own and the Republic’s fate. The paradox articulated at the end of the letter confounds the two categories of studia and pax, and necessarily engages Varro in the question of their position: the interchangeability of politics and philosophy along the axis of war and stability is formulated as a question. It is precisely this challenge- perhaps the challenge of the philosophica as 203 Notice also towards the end of the letter the intensification of subjunctives, cf. unfulfilled wish utinam; the number of remote conditionals e.g. si non bono...non possemus; quamquam tum quidem; the rhetorical question introducing his own fear for the future in the case that his studies are taken away: mihi vero cum his ipsis vix, his autem detractis ne vix quidem (‘I have little enough desire for life even with their assistance, if you take them away I won’t even have that little’). 204 Cicero claims that he and Varro are not responsible for the fall. But this absolution from responsibility is only a step to discuss things that they can be and are responsible for. 205 Sero fortasse; sed superiorum temporum Fortuna rei publicae causam sustineat, haec ipsi praestare debemus. Atque utinam quietis temporibus atque aliquo, si non bono, at saltem certo statu civitatis haec inter nos studia exercere possemus! quamquam tum quidem vel aliae quaepiam rationes honestas nobis et curas et actiones darent; nunc autem quid est, sine his cur vivere velimus? (‘Perhaps it is too late. But let the Fortune of the Republic answer for what is past, we must be responsible for the present. If only we could pursue our studies together in peaceful times and a settled, if not satisfactory state of the community! And yet, if that were the case, there should be other claims upon us, calling us to honorable responsibilities and tasks. As it is, why should we desire life without studies?’), Fam.9.8.2 [254]. O.Cappello, Part I 62 a whole- that pulls Varro into a debate about the location of studia in their difficult times, and it is this very question that closes the piece, accentuating the customary haec coram with saepius. 206 The four books of the Academici Libri are introduced through the theme of verecundia. 207 The books, like the school of which both Cicero and Varro are affiliates, 208 will not be remembered for their politeness or modesty. Rather, this image and theme act as a key to the letter and the works: 209 Cicero admits his transgression, yet turns it into an invitation to see beyond those formalities, and engage with the call to arms of the letter and thereafter with the revolutionary potential of their respective intellectual output, beginning with the libri enclosed. As he tries to commit Varro to an intellectual exchange, he defends the continuity existing between their works. 210 At first this appears born only of a community of practice. The two are colleagues and eminent contributors to the intellectual landscape of Latin prose. However, the questions further posed about the place of that practice within their life and predicament, move the focus onto content, interpretation and reception of these investigations. Cicero defies Varro to join him in charting new territory at the intersection of the public and the private and to reflect on how books may- or may not- constitute that intervention. 5. Effecting Cicero. Fiction, Criticism and Subjectivity Section four identified the Academica as a provocation, a challenge set to Varro. Cicero works his offer of a treatise into a network of claims for the place of philosophy in his broken world: namely that politics can happen within that discursive context and that ‘publication’- the public expression of conceptual activity- can be an avenue of, as well as a resource for, resistance. The question of resistance then implies a well-formed political agenda. Indeed, for many critics, Cicero’s ‘cultural warfare’ is a deliberate campaign with its clear objectives and thought-out methods (Gildenhard 2007: 76; Habinek 1995). However, the letters about the Academica and the letters campaigning for the Academica do not presume to welcome Varro into a precise scheme. This 206 For references to the ‘convention’ see Att.1.18 [18], Att.4.1 [73], Att.4.4 [76] and Q.fr.2.6 [10]. 207 See Kaster 2005: 15 and 27 on verecundia, that which ‘animates the art of knowing your proper place in every social transaction.’ 208 As he reminds Varro: tibi dedi partes Antionchinas, quas a te probari intellexisse mihi videbar, mihi sumpsi Philonis (‘I gave you the part of Antiochus, which I was under the impression you approved of, while I took the part of Philo’), Fam.9.8.1 [254]. 209 It is impossible not to evoke the reference to the Academia perturbatrix spurned at Leg.1.39. 210 Cf. Ac.1.9-12. O.Cappello, Part I 63 section, in fact, contends that Cicero does not offer a course of action to his readers, nor does he outline a specific agenda. As he sets out his philosophical speculation, which crucially comes onto the stage of a personal battle against grief over the loss of Tullia, Cicero is primarily interested in reacting to the anarchy and uncertainties that beset his world and in situating his philosophy of doubt as a potential response to it. Ciceronian skepticism, as it is introduced into the world through the epistolary collection, constitutes the search for a way of dealing with instability: it represents the search for that agenda, rather than its foundation. Uncertainties, changes of heart, re-writings, modulations of tone and perspectives define the process of composition and distribution, to the point where tracking a particular course entails excluding a whole array of other aspects and material from the study. The image of Cicero we find in Boes, Michel and Lévy thrives precisely on this over-determination: as simply as the letters are transparent about their protagonist’s intentions, so do they, and the dialogues they refer to, parade a philosopher who is steadily in control of his literary enterprise, always foreshadowing, intimating, prefacing, organizing, situating, the works to come- and those already completed. Such a Cicero writes as if he were revising a closed corpus. 211 This section proposes to nuance understanding of Cicero’s artistry through analysis of two aspects. The first sally is to investigate his inclination to discuss his work through aesthetic - generic considerations. Cicero conceptualizes his work in a variety of ways, touching again and again on literary models, literary relationships and generic expectations to produce a flexible web of interpretive paradigms. The letters, in this context, are not only contiguous to, but also continuous with this Academic project whose central focus is pursuit of epistemological stability. Furthermore, the aesthetic inflection of the exchange about the Academica underlines the question of fictionality and foregrounds this aspect in its reception. From this self-reflective fictional essence the second aspect takes its cue, bidding to engage with the- now fashionable- business of self-fashioning. 212 Gunderson (2007) and Leach (1999 and 211 Boyancé’s 1970 : 221 injunction to ‘jamais perdre de vue l’unité de la personnalité cicéronienne’ and Michel’s 1968 : 120 celebration of the ‘grande unité de la pensée cicéronienne’ continue to determine this teleological perspective. We see this, as discussed earlier, in Lévy 1992 who treats the final doxography of the Lucullus as a plan for the treatises to follow, or in Auvray-Assayas 2006 : 52, who characterizes the Academica, De Finibus, De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione and De Fato as a ‘série d’enquêtes rendues nécessaires par la première réflexion menée sur la meilleure forme de gouvernement.’ Also Boes 1990: 5 indulges this viewpoint in the interpretation of the letters, as he carries out his self-declared mission to ‘apporter toute la lumière possible sur l’unité souvent contestée de l’action et de la pensée de Cicéron.’ 212 Epitomised by Dugan’s 2005 Making a New Man. O.Cappello, Part I 64 2006) have already pointed the way to a different methodological approach to the letters which aims to study systems and modes of constructing the self- a process which, if we take heed of the private and honest confessionalism of the epistles, we might call with Althusser ‘subjectivation.’ 213 We have already described Cicero’s epistolary activity in terms of performance, and it is precisely the relationship between performance and language that shapes the focus of the second tack of the argument, as we investigate the construction of authorial interiority. Cicero’s epistolary obsessions, as it were, of the period centre on writing and editing, the loss of Tullia and Caesar’s return. Studying the writer’s subjectivity consequently involves extending the field of research into letters of the period that articulate and address the other two issues with the aim of showing how political anxieties, personal despair and Academic thinking are profoundly connected. Self-fashioning then amounts to a strategy of self-questioning through which Cicero stages his effort to situate himself and his work within an ever-changing world order. In the preface to the first Academic Book, discussions of genre position Ciceronian philosophy within the evolving field of Latin literature. After a speech in which Varro justifies his view that Romans interested in philosophy should turn to original Greek sources and in which he reveals the presence of philosophy in his Menippean Satires, funeral orations and Antiquitates, 214 Ac.1.9 introduces a Ciceronian eulogy of Varro’s work. Cicero surveys his colleague’s output in terms of its anthropological, sociological, geographical, historical and literary subject matter. 215 The 213 Subjectivation has been alternatively translated as ‘subjectification’ or ‘subjectivization’ and defines the process of the individual transitioning into subjecthood through linguistic and cultural practices. The concept is closely associated with the work of Foucault, e.g. 1988: 51, although it originates from Althusser’s 2001 groundbreaking ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’ and so from Lacan’s analysis of language in the constitution of the suJEt parlant (about which, see in his Écrits 1966: 243-322, ‘Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychoanalyse’ and 1966: 93-100 ‘Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je telle qu'elle nous est révélée dans l'expérience psychanalytique,’ with Fink 1995). Stein and Wright 2005: introduction usefully suggest ‘subjectivization involves the structures and strategies that languages evolve in the linguistic realization of subjectivity and the relevant processes of linguistic evolution themselves.’ As an endnote to this theoretical run- through it is important to note the dialectic nature of the process through which language shapes the subject; an aspect that is picked up on by such political thinkers such as Žižek 2009, who co-opts Lacan in his colorful tirades, and Rancière 1992: 60 who terms subjectivation as ‘the formation of a one that is not a self but is the relation of a self to another.’ 214 Philosophy’s spectral presence in non-philosophical works is a theme taken up by Cicero when he reviews his own work at Nat.D.1.6: cum minime videbamur, tum maxime philosophabamur (‘when it least looked like we were doing philosophy, it was then that we were truly philosophizing’). 215 tu aetatem patriae, tu descriptiones temporum, tu sacrorum iura, tu sacerdotum, tu domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedum regionum, locorum, tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera, officia, causas aperuisti, plurimumque idem poetis nostris omninoque Latinis et litteris luminis et verbis attulisti, atque ipse varium et elegans omni fere numero poema fecisti philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti, ad impellandum satis, ad edocendorum parum (‘you have revealed the age of our homeland, the chronology of its history, the laws of its religion and of its priesthoods, our domestic and military practice, the topography of our regions and districts, the names, classes and duties of all things human and divine. You have also shed much light on our poets and on Latin O.Cappello, Part I 65 sprawling selection is rhetorically motivated to prepare the way for a return to the criticism which Cicero leveled at Varro at Ac.1.3: the absence of the philosophical genus from the list. 216 As the orator reinforces his disapproval with arguments justifying the need for Latin philosophy, he casts the achievements of his colleague as both useful and incomplete with the phrase ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum. The precise contours of that imperfection have already been outlined by Cicero in the earlier section and closely related to his own philosophical activity: it is as a consequence of writing the Academica that he has isolated an important blank in Varro’s work. Thus when the scene is set for the dialogue to begin, the reader is under no false impression that the necessary supplement to Varro’s far-reaching antiquarianism is right there in his hands. Cicero considers his work collaborative, pedagogical, and as occupying a well-defined generic position in the literary domain- three aspects which are interdependent and amply foreshadowed in the letters about the composition. The prologue to the first book of the Academici Libri establishes the principle of collaboration. As noted above, Cicero positions himself next to Varro, mapping this location in generic language: alongside anthropology, sociology and history the author carves out a space for philosophy. Cicero, however, goes further than framing the question of collaboration as spatial or relational: he characterizes it as functional. Indeed, Varro’s work is praised as a contribution to Roman intellectual life because it answers a fundamental question: qui et ubi essemus (‘who we are and where we live’). Lévy has improved on Reid’s literal explication by suggesting that the enquiry has deep philosophical implications- Socratic implications. For the French scholar, Cicero portrays both his and Varro’s pursuits as answers to the Socratic injunction: γνῶθι σεαυτόν (‘know thyself’). 217 The functional space both researchers occupy is effectively that of Roman discursive identity, sharing thus in generic and personal terms the rights to the field of discussing Rome. Generic evaluation represents a strategy of discursive assimilation, where the author shares out analysis of Roman culture between Varro and himself, and locates philosophy securely within that frame. literature and language in general, and have written many varied and elegant poems in almost every meter; you have introduced philosophy at many stages of your writing, enough to whet the student’s appetite but not enough to teach him), Ac.1.9. 216 Quaero quid sit cur cum multa scribas hoc genus praetermittas? (‘I want to know why despite your extensive catalogue you miss out this one genre?’). 217 Reid 1885: ad loc shares out the qui to Varro’s historical works, while the ubi to his topographical ones (1885). Lévy 1992: 144 talks of a ‘réponse au précepte delphique.’ This connection is particularly fascinating when we consider the Academic subject-matter of the treatise itself. O.Cappello, Part I 66 Furthermore, this collaboration is structured hierarchically, and this structure in turn fleshes out the function of the duo’s work in terms of a pedagogical system. The implication of the balanced phrase quoted above, ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum, is that there exists a continuity between the typologies of answers to the question of Romanitas that Varro and Cicero offer, and in fact Varro is shown to pursue that trajectory as he first outlined philosophy in a variety of places in his works. The historical works that attract attention and elicit questions, must then move into the abstract to offer potential answers: so the necessity to integrate that abstraction into the domain of education should secure Ciceronian ruminations on the history of epistemology a place in the field of studies of Romanitas. Cicero will later characterize his work as aiming to assist the Roman citizen by teaching them. 218 The service is, in other words, for and about Romans. In both dialogue and epistolary forms, the exchange with Varro anticipates the debate of the Academici Libri. In the correspondence, the conversation as manufactured on Cicero’s end approached Varro through philosophical language, and insistently offered openings and invitations to respond, to constitute that dialogue that would be then fictionally reproduced in the work. Fam.9.4 [180] is a particularly relevant example of this strategy because it intimates the historical dimension within which Cicero places that contemporary exchange. In the letter, he works the question of their respective movements over the coming days into a philosophical debate between Diodorus and Chrysippus. Whether Varro will or will not join Cicero is absorbed into a blunt invitation for Varro to characterize his determinism, to reveal where he stands on the relation between time, necessity and possibility. This mimetic mediation of their relationship is ever-present in Cicero’s epistolary discussion of the Academici Libri. 219 Beyond that, the logic of division and collaboration form the architecture of both versions of the treaty: debate between Varro and Cicero, or between Lucullus and Cicero, is a re-enactment of other debates, between Philo and Antiochus-itself a foil to the debates between founders of Hellenistic schools. This recessive frame of intellectual exchange interlinks two forms of dialectic. Firstly the viva voce engagement of, for example, Antiochus’ refutation of Philo before a group of colleagues in Alexandria or the arguments between Arcesilaus and Zeno or Carneades and Chrysippus; 220 and secondly the written, in fact epistolary, exchange between Clitomachus and 218 Ad nostros cives erudiendos (‘in order to teach our citizens’), Ac.1.11. 219 As the two take up opposite sides of a doctrinal divide: e.g. Tibi dedi partis Antiochinae...mihi sumpsi Philonis (‘you’re playing the part of Antiochus and I am Philo’), Fam.9.8.1 [254]. 220 The scene of the dispute is at Luc.11-12. Zeno vs. Arcesilaus is at Luc.77, while Carneades critiques Chrysippus at Luc.87. O.Cappello, Part I 67 Lucilius and L.Censorinus, and between Philo and Antiochus themselves. 221 The epistolary exchange must be seen as part and parcel of this desire to cloak relations not only in philosophical role-playing, but as a collaborative form of role-playing that re-enacts the gesture of philosophical interaction. Cicero is careful to insist on the Roman social and political evolution of this practice: Varro and Cicero are engaged in an educative process which, as both letters in ad Familiares book nine and the prologue to Ac.1 confirm, is between Romans, who talk about Rome. Furthermore, Cicero leans on the Academic disputatio in utramque partem (‘arguing for both sides of a proposition’) as a methodology that justifies his approach to philosophy and that will characterize the dialogues to come. Dialogism, as a collaborative approach to research, is therefore not just a principle of philosophy, rather a specific Academic approach to the genre. Through this claim, therefore, Cicero invites his readers into the Academy, appropriating Roman aristocratic exchange for his school. 222 The theme which is set out in the Lucullus becomes an even more important component in the second edit, when the relationship with Varro allows Cicero to explore the political and pedagogical implications of dialectic, situating politics and education in an intellectual exchange between potential allies in a post-Thapsus world. In addition to the collaborative element, another active ingredient of the generic perspective which is treated explicitly in the letters and fictionally addressed in the dialogues is amicitia. The absence of Cicero’s response to Varro makes it difficult to judge the extent to which his argumentation was openly aggressive. 223 Nonetheless, if the Lucullus stands as a model for the type of engagement in the later version, Cicero maintains a cordial tone throughout. In fact, more than cordiality or aristocratic deference, the principles that Cicero espouses in his Academic manifesto are liberty- as freedom to choose- and, importantly, a self-conscious flexibility with respect to conclusions (dogmas). In the apologia for his Academy, he begins with a negative definition of their position with respect to dogmatists: the skeptic questions his conclusions, an attitude that induces Cicero to claim their comparative freedom. 224 This ‘refus d’embrigadement au nom de la liberté’ 221 Clitomachus writes about withholding assent ‘to’ (ad) Lucilius and Censorinus, Luc.102. Philo and Antiochus hold a ‘written’ debate, with the Sosus responding to the Roman Books. This issue will be taken up in Part III. 222 The Lucullus’ opening defense of Academic skepticism inflects the collective nature of philosophical inquiry through emphasis on a skeptic’s broader perspective and on the historical continuity of the research, Luc.7-9. Note also that Cicero rejects ‘argument for argument’s sake’ (studio certandi, Luc.65), insisting on the constructive nature of dispute. The locus classicus for praise of dialogue is Fin.2.1-6. 223 Although as we know he feared Varro would think his ‘position’ (partes) was defended ‘more thoroughly’ than his (copiosius), Att.13.25.3 [333]. 224 Nec inter nos et eos qui se scire arbitrantur quidquam interest nisi quod illi non dubitant (‘there is no difference between us and those who think they know except that they do not doubt what they know’); liberiores et solutiores O.Cappello, Part I 68 ensures the principles of open dialogue that make this idealized amicitia possible (Haury 1955: 193). In the letters this is prefigured time and again. Cicero displays his thinking to Varro, as he does in the longer letters of 46 BCE, and to Atticus as an explicit induction to respond, to fulfill the altera pars (‘the second half’). 225 The dialogue of the treatises is therefore constructed in epistolary fashion, so that the two are not simply co-extensive or mimetic, but are products of the same philosophical methodology guaranteed by the dialogic commitment to the New Academy. Amicitia in the Late Republic is not a straightforward or readily assimilable social category. It describes a ‘vast’ range of social and political interactions which Cicero himself, as he reflects on it throughout his career- from the De Inventione to the De Amicitia- saw as problematic and at the very least in need of clearer definition (Brunt 1965: 20. Emphasis in the original). 226 Habinek makes a compelling argument for the reformative approach Cicero takes to that polymorphic practice in the Laelius. Indeed, modeling its thrust on an early letter, the consular rethinks amicable interaction as one of ‘openness to rebuke and criticism’ not only between two friends of unequal social position, but also between equals. 227 Beyond the political advantages that this ‘redefinition’ may offer, it is the focus on the reciprocal structure of friendship, a structure selected from that ‘vast’ array, that is of particular relevance to the fictional construction of the dialogue and its interdependence with the letters (1990: 180 and 170). 228 The position that Cicero takes towards Varro appears in this light as an ideological posture: the method of frank dialogue towards a living contemporary- candid to the point of the possibility of his taking offence - identifies the treatise as a prescriptive paradigm. As it fictionalizes written and oral intercourse, it develops this exchange as a model for interaction that evidently has an injunctive force for the reader/correspondent. Varro receives as part of the exchange with Cicero a literary repackaging of real-life exchange. Cicero’s epistolary persona, especially when considered in relation to his philosophical production, has received little attention from the scholarship. This is partly due to the fact that fictional elements of the philosophica itself are consistently overlooked as little more than decorative and ornamental, and, although in recent times prefaces have attracted rhetorical analysis, the works’ central parts have remained sheltered from this kind of study (Gildenhard 2007). Blame for this sumus quod integra nobis est iudicandi potestas (‘we are freer and more uninhibited since our ability to judge is unimpaired), Luc.8. 225 Fam.9.6 [181] and Att.13.19 [326]. 226 See for example his caution at Inv.2.167; and Williams 2012: 17-23. 227 Att.1.17 [17]. 228 Cf. Bellincioni 1970 179-237 on the De Amicitia. O.Cappello, Part I 69 critical blindness is not solely to be assigned to the discipline of Classics, slow as it may be to engage with paradigm shifts in the humanities, but rather it has been- and in the Anglo-American academy it continues to be- a prevalent attitude in philosophy to believe in the sanitized scientificity of philosophical language. 229 However, in the case of the Academica this exclusivist approach lacks all justification. 230 The Cicero of the letters to Atticus over the period of the composition consistently invites his friend to understand the work as a piece of philosophical fiction, not documentary reproduction. Form, choice of characters, models, and generic conventions: these are aspects that dominate his reflections on writing and re-writing and they must inform any interpretive perspective. Furthermore, his meditations are in themselves far from being reductive and monosemic. Indeed, the great straitjacketing compulsion of the epistulae- to deduce exactly the (one) way in which to read the work they discuss- is antithetical to the diversity and complexity of perspectives that the orator puts on display. An important moment in this auto-critique has been noted by Lévy in the final letter of what we might call the ‘revision series,’ Att.13.19 [326]. This winding discourse explores details of the changes and their rationale, and provides old and contemporary comparanda. Ultimately, it settles on a judgment of the work in terms of the role Varro is to play. The antiquarian’s ‘role’ (partes) is not only the one that suits him best, corresponding to the philosophy which he enjoys most; the arguments ‘Varro’ deploys are, despite the author’s best efforts, more convincing than the ones ‘Cicero’ presents. 231 The word he uses to qualify their success is πιθανά. This is hardly a neutral description when it refers to a debate about the Hellenistic Academy, since, as Cicero himself establishes in the pars construens of his speech, πιθανόν grounds and defines Carneadean epistemology. 232 The French critic, who is otherwise a careful reader of the philosophical language, limits himself here to pointing out the paradoxical nature of such assertion: if, as Cicero will declare 229 Derrida’s work can be characterized as a series of meditations on this issue aimed at dispelling the notion that such insulation can and does exist. Perhaps the finest illustration of this approach is ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’ in Derrida 1982: 207-271. His deconstruction is anticipated by thinkers like Hamann, Kierkegaard and Nietsche. For an overview of the linguistic turn’s impact on philosophy see Norris 2010. 230 Plato does not need, nor ever has needed, such an apology. Critics since the time of the Academy were well aware of the literary merits of his dialogues and the need to account for those aesthetic elements in interpreting his philosophy. 231 Aptius esse nihil potuit ad id philosophiae genus quo ille maxime mihi delectari videtur, eaeque partes ut non sim consecutus ut superior mea causa videatur. sunt enim vehementer πιθανὰ Antiochia; quae diligenter a me expressa acumen habent Antiochi, nitorem orationis nostrum, si modo is est aliquis in nobis. (‘no one could have been better suited to voice this philosophical position, which he seems to me to greatly enjoy, and his role is such that I couldn’t make my case sound stronger than his. For Antiochus’ position is indeed very persuasive. His arguments, which I have carefully expressed have the acumen of Antiochus and the brilliance of my rhetoric, if I do possess such thing’), Att.13.19.5 [326]. 232 Luc.98-99, where he translates πιθανόν with probabile. O.Cappello, Part I 70 in his endorsement of the New Academy, liberty amounts to the freedom to follow the most convincing argument, then how does this admission of the greater persuasive value of Antiochus’ dogmatic position fit into his self-declared philosophical views? 233 Also, and no less problematically, he classifies Antiochian arguments with the label used by New Academics to refer to a philosophical concept through which they challenge Antiochus. 234 The awkward stance is normalized by Lévy through a circuitous route: once he establishes the sincerity of the letter, 235 he declares that it is in fact not a gnoseological dogma that makes Cicero a skeptic; rather, as he will go on to argue, it is a position that allows him to construct a Republican, open, anti-Caesarian philosophy. This use of the Carneadean term is the disposable launch pad for Ciceronian philosophical Republicanism, and the contradiction within the letter enables this reading. On the one hand, this interpretation isolates two important features of Cicero’s presence as author and character in the Academica. Firstly, he plays with the identification of the two positions: the question of loyalty to the school is only pertinent if the character in the dialogue speaks for the author as well. In fact, the emergence of an authorial voice seems to side-step that of the character in the dialogue when he suggests that he was unable to make his own argument better, and when he emphasizes the nitor orationis that made the Antiochean acumen shine. Cicero admits the weakness of his position and so the impossibility of holding the view he assigns to his character. This is precisely what for Lévy moves the focus onto the significance of the methodology. There is, secondly, another eccentric effect produced by the voice of the critic: Cicero, in Lévy’s important and untranslatable expression, ‘s’interroge sur son œuvre.’ 236 Wondering out loud, as it were, about the rhetorical qualities of his work legitimizes an open rather than closed interpretive dialectic centered on aesthetic principles, and which is enabled by the distance he puts between his authorial self and the persona of the dialogue. In fact, the judgment on persuasiveness is presented as far from conclusive. Again and again he will ask Atticus to reflect on its validity, and 233 Lévy 1992: 133 setting the letter against Luc.7-9. 234 Cicero introduces Carneadean probabilism with the jingoistic: iam explicata tota Carneadis sententia Antiochea ista conruent universa (‘once I have explained fully Carneades’ position, all these Antiochian arguments will collapse’), Luc.98. 235 ‘Si l’on admet que cette déclaration est sincère - et rien ne permet de prouver le contraire...’ Lévy 1992: 133. 236 Ibid. O.Cappello, Part I 71 will even offer the opposite view originating from Varro’s perspective. 237 Both of these elements stand even if we buy into the confessional and documentary character of the epistolary. On the other hand, this interpretive approach limits an important function of the key term πιθανά. By qualifying the remark as honest, Lévy constrains the possibilities of investigating the allusive character of this literary strategy. Indeed, the letter had already staged a waltz of Greek philosophical terms, among which the New Academic ἀκαταληψία (‘incomprehensibility’), that makes it impossible not to take stock of the philosophical connotations of the expression. The puzzling nature of Cicero’s assertion then extends its boundaries: he describes Antiochia ratio through the theory that he himself uses in an earlier version of the same work to attack Antiochus’ Stoicising Platonism. Furthermore, the connection which is made to the nitor orationis stretches the semantic horizons of this word to include rhetoric. Is this a rhetorical judgment cast in philosophical language or vice-versa? Cicero’s theorizing of the Carneadean πιθανóν- which as Auvray-Assayas (2006: 37) shows is, in its Latin translation, an original concept central to the very vision of Ciceronian philosophy- focuses precisely around that liminal zone of rhetoric-and-philosophy. 238 This letter epitomizes the epistolary strategy of perspectival shifts, and links this attitude to Academic skepticism. Cicero, as critic of his own work, assumes a detached position from the arguments voiced which amounts to the performance of the skeptical stance towards all opinions. Technical terms like ἀκαταληψία and πιθανά leave no doubt as to what scholastic affiliation that position represents. Furthermore, Academic terminology is also merged with rhetorical postures. Cicero is not evaluating philosophical arguments, but rather the quality of a treatise whose persuasiveness, or lack thereof, might cause offence to another Roman. This elision between the world of rhetoric and philosophy is another key factor in how the letter introduces the Academy. Academic philosophy is concerned with personal judgment and does, therefore, have a part to play in the social and political world of Rome. A final and crucial literary perspective that Cicero brings to bear on the Academica is genre. Already on two occasions we have touched on the generic framework which guides Cicero in the re- writing of the Catulus and Lucullus into the four Academic Books. Involving generic concerns in the conceptualization of the Academica is a strategy which, parallel to the one analyzed just now, aims at establishing a multifocal approach to the treatise from a literary critical angle, as well as at working 237 That, in Varro’s eyes, Cicero’s Philonian arguments will be defended more assiduously than Antiochus’, Att.13.25.3 [333]. 238 Luc.32-9 and Luc.98-110. O.Cappello, Part I 72 out connections between this angle and the socio-political sphere from which the treaty originates and on which it wants to intervene. Returning to the first generic reflections on his work, Cicero’s discussion with his brother about the De Republica in 54 BCE anticipates many of the issues he is concerned with in 45. Sallustius’ advice to participate in the dialogue he is writing is principally political, founded on the added value of having the auctoritas of a Roman consular behind the enquiry into the ideal state. In the epistolary passage, our author is happy with the dignitas (‘rank’) of the interlocutors of the version that is read out before Cicero and Sallustius. To dignitas, however, the latter opposes auctoritas and then brings in Heraclides Ponticus to suggest that Cicero’s political persona has more to offer than the literary mould he has chosen. 239 Cicero, in turn, comes up with Aristotle to fit this Sallustian possibility into a Greek theoretical genre: Aristotle, after all, wrote a de Republica in which he starred. 240 The connection between generic paradigms and political influence is foremost in both Cicero and Sallustius, and both critics associate the manipulation of Greek models with the demands of a Roman voice. It is in fact interesting to note that already in June of 54 BCE, as Cicero was thinking of finding a place in the De Republica for Varro he mentions the exoteric works of Aristotle which would allow him to insert him into the dialogue. 241 Varro links up with Aristotle, while the idealized Republican past retreats to the safe fictionality of a Heraclides. As is well known, furthermore, Cicero does not heed Sallustius’ advice. The importance of this letter therefore lies in its exploration of compositional possibilities before Quintus; an exploration which amounts to a critical performance before a literate audience that, on the model of the internal audience represented by Sallustius, is interested in finding the symmetries between Greek content and Roman form. Cicero’s response to the proposal to find a place for Varro in the treatise echoes the letter of 54 BCE. Literature and politics interlock as Varro transcends the ignorance of the dead Catulus and 239 Sermo autem in novem et dies et libros distributus de optimo statu civitatis et de optimo cive. sane texebatur opus luculente hominumque dignitas aliquantum orationi ponderis adferebat. ii libri cum in Tusculano mihi legerentur audiente Sallustio, admonitus sum ab illo multo maiore auctoritate illis de rebus dici posse si ipse loquerer de re publica, praesertim cum essem non Heraclides Ponticus sed consularis et is qui in maximis versatus in re publica rebus essem (‘The conversation [de Republica], spread over nine days, so nine books, is about the ideal state and the ideal citizen. The work was proceeding very well, and the high rank of the characters lent weight to their words. But when those two books were read out to me and Sallustius in Tusculanum, I was warned by him that these arguments could be stated with much greater authority if I myself spoke about the republic, since I am no Heraclides but a consular and as such much better versed in the running of the state’), Q.fr.3.5.1 [25]. 240 Indeed he lists this final reason for such a change: Aristotelem denique quae de re publica et praestanti viro scribat ipsum loqui (‘Finally, there is the fact that Aristotle spoke in the first person in those writings on the republic and the best individual’), Q.fr.3.5.1 [25]. 241 Ἐξωτερικοὺς, Att.4.16.2. [89]. O.Cappello, Part I 73 Lucullus, 242 though he presents an imminent social danger as a subject to Cicero’s principatus. Within the context of Cicero’s more ‘erudite compositions’ (φιλολογώτερα) Varro the philologus begins to make sense as a potential character. 243 The opportunity to involve Varro opens up with the realization that the works are ‘too logically fine’ (λογικώτερα) for Catulus and Lucullus and the new, Aristotelian, direction that his works have taken, exemplified by the De Finibus, where he plays a major role alongside contemporaries. 244 In the same letter, Cicero refers back to the editorial opportunity he faced in his first theoretical tracts, the De Oratore and De Republica, and underlines the present change of course. The focus is now on his own presence in the debate, as he justifies to Atticus why he rejected the involvement of Cotta, and the principatus that this entails. Three interesting moves are made in these comments. First, Cicero shows he is thinking about the present work in terms of the previous wave of intellectual production in two co-ordinated ways: in formal-generic terms, displaying points of contact and points of departure and in aesthetic terms, that reach out beyond philosophy into rhetoric (hence the inclusion of the De Oratore). Second the comparative move is channeled through Greek models: his departure from the first wave of philosophica is reflected upon in terms of historical models, from Heraclides to Aristotle. Third, as in the Sallustian opposition between auctoritas and dignitas, which pits the two generic possibilities against each other, the choice of genre is once again firmly established as a question of characters. Indeed, this is a point of critical importance even to the political underpinnings of the dialogue, because Cicero rehearses two options to avoid direct confrontation with Varro, and rejects both on dubious generic grounds. He reaffirms the exclusively personal, non-generic, choice of Varro. He could have substituted himself for Cotta, or used dead contemporaries as he tells us he does in the περὶ Τελῶν (= De Finibus), and yet the first he refuses citing the Aristotelian bind, while the second he offers no reason for, except that the characters of Lucullus, Catulus and Hortensius made unlikely philosophers. The issue of genre is far from characterized as prescriptive, but rather it is a way of exploring the possibilities which Greece offers Cicero, and is careful to present himself as an author reflecting on these opportunities. The use of Varro entails a number of other choices, which he descriptively thinks through as generic, such as his participation and principatus. Furthermore, the contrast with earlier works performs an important service for how we are to think Cicero understands his project as 242 Att.13.16 [323] and Att.13.19.5 [326]. 243 Att.13.12.3 [320]. 244 Att.13.19.3-5 [326]. O.Cappello, Part I 74 a whole: namely, in terms of varying aesthetic choices, selections made at each juncture and which correspond to social and political positions. The trajectory is staged not as a single-minded pursuit, but as a synchronically evolving set of alternatives which form, and derive from, socio-aesthetic axioms. The literary emphasis that the letters put on the Academica implicates the presence of Cicero as a rhetorical construct in so far as his literary critical position links him to the New Academic standpoint his persona champions in that treatise. The final section seeks to develop the contours of the authorial voice as presented in the letters and to demonstrate its dialectical relation to the Academica whose concerns and anxieties it articulates in the domain of his personal and political life. Extending analysis of the epistolary collection to letters that do not explicitly address composition is of critical importance to situating the Academica for two reasons. Firstly, the field of Ciceronian studies is shaped by psychologizing approaches, making it difficult to ignore this perspective. In particular, students of the Academica have consistently addressed this type of issue when examining motives for composition. Tullia and the inconsolable state of the consular come into the picture at this point, as well as anxieties relating to Caesar’s return. Cicero, as the prefaces tell us, does philosophy as a father bereaved of his daughter and a politician bereaved of his state. To examine the wider context within this fragile state of mind is developed offers an opportunity to nuance critical understanding of this state of mind, rather than accept it as commonplace. In a more propositive sense- and this is the second reason- broadening investigation to other letters of the period allows us to study what we have already described as the dialectics of subjectivation. Studying these egological mechanisms draws attention to a number of important parallels with respect to the architectural structure of the ego projected in the dialogue. Subjectivation is constituted as an effect of the epistolographic discourse (Garcea 2005: 267). In what follows we will first read the relevant corpus analyzing aspects of subject formation elaborated in the exchange with Varro and coordinating literary exegesis through the Lacanian interpretative paradigm. Following on from this psychoanalytic model, we will then expand that corpus to work through some of the themes explored in the epistles about Tullia, her fanum and the return of Caesar (Gunderson 2007; Leach 1999 and 2006). Cicero’s theory of friendship in the De Amicitia outlines the interactive role of the amicus in the formation and stimulation of the self. Although this is implied throughout the tract, describing O.Cappello, Part I 75 virtus as constructed within that relational space, he explicitly defines friend as is qui est tamquam alter idem (‘he who is just like another self’). 245 The passage confirms the dialectic implicit throughout the epistolary exchange that (definition of) the self emerges through the dialogue with the other. 246 Leach’s (2006) article on the rhetorical construction of the self in Ciceronian epistolography draws an important parallel with the elegiac “I.” Through her analysis of the orator’s exchange with younger correspondents, she formulates two major points of contact between the poetic “I” of Late Republican elegy and the epistolographic ‘Cicero’. In the first place, the personal address to the reader plays into a binary strategy that amounts to ‘writing the profile of the recipient’ into the author’s self-presentation by acknowledging the separation of sender and receiver and the dialogue opened therein. Secondly, this aperture through which ‘identity’ is isolated as a literary process allows the author to invent the rules of said processual discourse. This freedom amounts to an open discourse, unfolding outside ‘straitjacketed tradition’ (Ibid: 249; also Altman 1982 on epistolary dialogues). These critical axioms of self-presentation in the epistulae were already at play in a (1999) article whose argument is specifically relevant to the correspondence with Varro. The letters in ad Familiares book nine are for Leach Cicero’s ‘most artful’ (Ibid: 140). Against the backdrop of Caesar’s return, Cicero draws two ‘old friends’- Varro and Paetus- into the process of rhetorical self- styling in order to reason through the possibilities open to them in the wake of Thapsus. In the case of Varro, Cicero’s letters exploit lengthy analyses of past actions to construct a picture of his persona. Furthermore, Cicero punctuates their dialogue with sketches of himself in his exilic present and with impressions of future activity: his return to books, his course of studia. 247 Across temporal fields, Cicero is staging himself for Varro, at the same time as playing himself against him. The epistolary persona that writes Varro a dedicatory epistle is taking shape through these litterae. 248 245 Amic.80. Cf. Gellius NA 13.10.4: frater est dictus quasi fere alter (‘a brother is said to be almost another self’). 246 Auvray-Assayas’ 2006 : 137 amitié amounts to ‘tout le résau des relations grâce auxquelles l’homme progressivement se construit.’ Construction of the self through anOther has a particular Lacanian flavour: this is in fact the cornerstone of the psychoanalytic experience on the phenomenology of which Lacan builds his return to Freud. See his Écrits 243-322 in which he sets out the interlocutory context within which the subject, the analysand, constitutes his/her history. 247 E.g Fam.9.1.2 [175] or Fam.9.3.2 [176]. Notice the displacement of the self, which is acted upon by the litterae or libri. Cf. in primis autem constituendum est, quos nos et quales esse velimus (‘first however we must decide who we are and what sort of people we want to be’), Off.1.117. 248 ‘This set of deliberations is not a one-time event to mark the commencement of a career, but a recurrent exercise in which he engages every time he takes up the stylus,’ Leach 1999: 145. O.Cappello, Part I 76 The fact that Cicero views himself throughout that intercourse as ‘imperfect and incomplete’ makes his position ‘paradigmatic of the Lacanian subject of desire’ (Ibid: 145). This situation is intensified by the arrival of Caesar which, as Leach puts it, shakes the already problematic relation between Cicero and the ‘symbolic’ substituting a tyrant for the mos maiorum and leaving him unsettled and struggling to reconstruct a stability for himself. Leach is calling on two fundamental Lacanian principles to characterize the pressures on Cicero’s epistolary self. Lacan’s ‘symbolic order’ designates the field of cultural institutions and practices within which an individual is born and against which he constructs his subjectivity. As the first century BCE saw the laws, traditions and culture of Rome undergo profound and traumatic change, Cicero’s epistolary testimony stages precisely this drama of an individual looking to reconnect with a stable subjectivity that can only be grounded in the world around him. The second principle concerns the structure of subjectivity and is famously explored by Lacan in his description of the ‘Mirror Stage.’ Representations of the self are premised upon a lack which tends towards integration: the infant seeing an image of himself in the mirror at an early stage of psychic development does not recognize himself but an image, an idealized “I”, whose wholeness contrasts with the fragmentation of his physical body, perceived in parts. 249 All discourse of the self and other constitutes therefore an attempt to make whole that initial, fundamental, structural lack. Cicero’s imperfection is thus in a sense historical while at the same constitutive of his effort to write his own self. Leach explores the self-conscious ways in which Cicero opens that dialogue as one turned inwards. She examines the dialogic structure with respect to three areas of Cicero’s literary output of the period. The first she derives from a statement made by the voice of Varro himself in the opening of the Academici Libri, where the adverbial phrase multa dialectice defines the Menippean Satires as philosophical. 250 This expression, Leach presumes, refers to the architecture of a section of the satires which Cicero aims to adopt as a model of introspection- a section titled ‘Bi-Marcus’ where Varro speaks to his alter ego. 251 This method of specular identity-building is in Cicero’s mind as he writes the introduction to the Academici Libri. The second and third aspects have been touched on briefly above: the constant deferral of a meeting and the pronominal back and forth of ego and nos. Leach in this case constructs a 249 The ‘historical’ nature of this account is later de-emphasized in favor of its structural value as for example in Lacan 1994. 250 Ac.1.8. 251 On the Satires see Boissier 1861; Mosca 1937; and Relihan 1993. O.Cappello, Part I 77 tropological model for the deferral, wherein she argues the eight letters are always only anticipatory: of their meeting, of Caesar’s arrival, of their future. This open temporal field corresponds to the grammatical space, whereby the use of nos and ego design the open dialectic of self and other. Within this architecture of self-definition, Cicero assigns to Varro the role of stable ‘model’ to which the orator tries to assimilate himself. This desire to portray the Sabine as a melior ego (‘better self’) is clear in those letters where Cicero assigns to Varro the merit of having ‘pursued a better course of action than himself’ (Ibid: 166). 252 Leach’s final model presents problems when viewed through some of our earlier conclusions. In the first place, each letter employed an idealized model for a particular purpose. The ideal model ‘Varro’ is not an honest reduplication of a Ciceronian fantasy: it is the embodied representation of a prescriptive agenda for both. While Cicero binds the two to a common past and a community of intent, he attracts his correspondent to fulfill those parallels in action. It is, as we argued, a strategic provocation. Furthermore this dialectic of sharing confounds the contours of the ego and nos. If in two letters Cicero constructs Varro as an improved version of himself, in the dedicatory letter, as well as in the philosophical jingoism of Fam.9.4 [180] he reconfigures the intellectual priorities of their studia as philosophical, thereby asserting his own merits above those of his colleague. In the final analysis, the intuition of Leach is inspiring: the psychological construction of the epistolary ego is complex, dialectical, and it moves ahead into the territory of the treatises. However, what she does miss is the variability of those positions that the authorial ego wears with each letter. As in the generic disquisitions and the characterizations of the project undertaken, Cicero shows himself as interested in multiplying perspectives, moving around that relational and self-definitional space. Gunderson’s (2007) critique of documentary interpretations anticipates the drama of shifting positions outlined above. Despite the parallels with Leach, 253 his work differs in its remarkable attention to the interstitial spaces of subject formation, those areas outside the remit of self- fashioning where a Cicero ‘obsessed with letters’ consistently produces another version of himself. Indeed, he constructs the ‘epistolary Cicero’ as one that is not only fragmented, but also ‘constantly renegotiating how “you” are or are not to read him’ (Ibid: 43). These gestural phrases capture the 252 Cf. Fam.9.1.2 [175], Fam.9.6.4 [181]. 253 ‘We will find in [the letters] a point of intersection between the process of epistolography, the construction of the author-function, and the rhetoric of the self as articulated specifically within the encounter of the absent other,’ 2007: 8. O.Cappello, Part I 78 double perspective of the author constructing himself and providing perspectives on how to interpret that self. This approach underscores from a psychoanalytic perspective the dual position of author and critic we argued for above and introduces the final movement of the argument in which we study Cicero building impossible scenarios and making changeability the very mechanism of self-portrayal. The theme of loss, hesitation and anxiety complete the picture of ‘Cicero’ during the period of the Academica’s composition. The state of the Ciceronian epistolary subject is clearly unstable, playing out its indecisions and doubts across a range of issues beyond the literary, grounding his scholarly work into his lived life. Garcea (2005: 115) had already isolated what he calls an important aspect of Ciceronian epistolography as a whole. The letters’ ‘strutture a dilemma,’ which in a number of important letters to do with dolor emphasize Cicero’s fragmentation, incapacitate Cicero with respect to decisive courses of action. In his survey of the exile letters, Garcea draws a parallel between, dolor, hesitation, fragmentation and his aptitude to imagine improbable situations. This is indeed similar to what we find in early to mid 45 BCE. The projection of impossible scenarios, the dwelling on desire, lack and alienation are characteristics not only of the correspondence with Varro, or the anxiety displayed to Atticus about the dedication of the Academici Libri. They give life to two further obsessions that dominate the correspondence of that period: the construction of the fanum for Tullia, and Caesar’s return. Grief over Tullia compulsively rehearsed throughout the letters and in many prologues has interested critics very little. An integral part of that obsession, the building of a memorial, has warranted even fewer studies. 254 Nonetheless, both the fanum and the deep sense of instability that the loss of his daughter caused Cicero are motive features in the choices and attitudes of our protagonist. The expression of pain found in the prologues and the constant assimilation of studia to the ineffectual medication of dolor in the letters are staple justifications for philosophizing. Indeed, as Henderson put it in a language that is relevant to that employed in the present analysis, bereavement produces the stage on which Cicero can test out the ‘therapeutic ambitions of Hellenistic philosophy:’ he plays through the Consolation ‘the writer writing to himself for “us”’ (2006: 173). 254 Two brief studies over the last century. Shackleton Bailey’s appendix III to the fifth commentary volume on ad Atticum and Boyancé 1970: 335-341. O.Cappello, Part I 79 The correspondence is jump-started in March 45 BCE by his devotion to litterae, which in turn kindles his compositions. The Consolation, the opening of the Lucullus and of the first Academic Book tell Atticus that doing philosophy is always already doing something else: medicating. Furthermore, as is abundantly clear from the first three letters of 45 BCE, 255 the therapeusis is not working. The philosophical commitment is an introspective project- a practice, always aimed at something other than its conclusions and not quite fulfilling its promise. This dialectic of search and failure is characteristic of Cicero’s obsession with the fanum, a project beset by necessary adjustments and disappointments that ultimately vanishes out of the epistulae in June of that same year. The tribulations of this project are concentrated in no less than twenty-four letters: the last ten days of March offer a continuous insight into complications of buying a plot of land for the fanum’s construction. 256 However, when he discusses the function of this monument, as well as its origin, there are interesting parallels to draw on for the writing of the Academica. Indeed, as he introduces the idea to Atticus in Att.12.18 [254], litterae justify the impulse to build this shrine. 257 Not only do older auctores inspire Cicero, but Greek and Latin writers will contribute lines to consecrate Tullia’s memory. The project is formulated in terms of a literary pastiche. 258 The hesitations and indecisions of completing the fanum and the Academica run a parallel course throughout, and in the case of the former they acquire even stronger overtones of desperation and paralysis. We have already tracked the course of Cicero relinquishing responsibility for his Academici Libri, and doing so as Atticus receives the manuscript to copy: the first transfer is weakly suggested at Att.13.23.2 [331], and then resolutely confirmed at Att.13.24.1 [332] with the placing of the four volumes in his friends’ potestas (‘power’) and reversing the role of approver. 259 In the same way, Cicero reiterates his practical dependence on Atticus. On the twelfth of May, he enumerates 255 Att.12.13 [250], Att.12.14 [251] and Att.12.15 [252]. 256 From the twenty-first to the twenty-ninth: Att.12.25 [264], Att.12.26 [265], Att.12.27 [266], Att.12.28 [267], Att.12.29 [268], Att.12.33 [269], Att.12.30 [270], Att.12.31 [272]. 257 Etenim habeo non nullos ex iis quos nunc lectito auctores qui dicant fieri id oportere quod saepe tecum egi et quod a te approbari volo: de fano illo dico... (‘I know several authors whom I am constantly reading who recommend the plan about which I have often talked to you and which I want you to approve: I am talking about the shrine’), Att.12.18.1 [254]. 258 Ego, quantum his temporibus tam eruditis fieri potuerit, profecto illam consecrabo omni genere monimentorum ab omnium ingeniis sumptorum et Graecorum et Latinorum(‘for my part, as far as possible in this age of great cultural awakening, I will celebrate her with every kind of memorial taken from the genius of Greek and Latin artists’), Att.12.18.1 [254]. Omni genere is problematic: Shackleton Bailey is confident in translating ‘different types of literary compositions,’ but from our study of the letters in books twelve and thirteen genus might exhibit literary- generic shades. 259 Sed tu videris; quod egeris id probabo (‘it’s up to you. Whatever you do, I’ll approve’). O.Cappello, Part I 80 problems with the acquisition of Otho and Clodia’s property, to the point of blasting his correspondent with effice quidvis (‘do whatever you want’). 260 Without Atticus the project cannot come to fruition, and Cicero is desperate to impress its necessity upon him. But again, different perspectives are brought to bear alongside the alleviatory one. Early on Cicero sees the shrine as a religious vow and duty, thereafter going so far as to associate it with ritual purification. 261 The fanum like the litterae occupies a variety of positions in this dialogue that Cicero opens with himself, as he tries to re-assemble a stable world of meaning and structure around him. It fundamentally acts on him, and, even more so than the philosophica, represents an architectural show of that interior dialogue, hesitant, imperfect, displaced. Another important aspect of the shrine’s symbolic power concerns Caesar’s intrusion. Although mopping up resistance in Spain, Caesar creeps into this undertaking in two letters. On the fourth of May, Cicero considers the possibility of acquiring property owned by Scapula ideal for the fanum. 262 This plan quickly gains favor and, by July, Cicero’s heart is set on it. 263 Nonetheless, at Att.13.33a.1 [330] Cicero is seen engaging Capito, an unexpected guest at his Tusculanum, in a debate over the Scapulan property. The latter advises his host not to invest because Caesar’s expansion of Rome will expropriate that land. The possibility of this appropriation is confirmed on the thirteenth of July, irrupting into the consular’s life with full blown horror: Caesar’s Rome swells- Cicero’s world contracts. 264 The Dictator plays a fundamental part in the economy of Cicero’s self-fashioning, and analysis of their relationship outside of the philosophical production reveals the extent to which the author’s exploration of doubt is connected to the political context in which he is writing. His anxieties over Caesar are expressed in the censorship of his letter to the Dictator, a letter whose composition and review runs from the ninth of May to the beginning of June. This initiative is a reaction to the Anticato, more specifically to the précis of that work made public by Hirtius. Just as the back and forth about the second edition of the Academica, Cicero solicits wide approval, although 260 Att.12.43.3 [284]. 261 Votum, Att.12.18.1 [254], and officium, Att.13.38a.2 [279]. Then he claims: scelere me liberatum non putabo (‘I will not consider myself free from sin, [if the shrine isn’t built]), Att.13.41.4 [283]. And: ego me maiore religione quam quisquam fuit ullius voti obstrictum puto (‘I consider myself bound by the greatest vow anyone ever has been bound to’), Att.13.43.3 [284]. 262 Att.12.37.2 [276]. 263 Att.12.38a [279], Att.12.40 [281] and Att.13.29 [300]. 264 Att.13.35-6 [334]. O.Cappello, Part I 81 the explicitly political content forces his hand to circulate the piece more widely. 265 After another anxious wait, these unnamed amici propose a number of alterations that cause Cicero to abandon the project all together. 266 His considerations are twofold: the question of offensio (‘offence’) becomes in these times one of periculum (‘danger’) and the modifications, the toning down, would implicate him in a form of turpis adsentatio (‘dishonorable acquiescence’). 267 We should not pass over the hesitation of Cicero and his anxiety about withdrawing the letter itself. Atticus, for example, seems to give his approval to the letter and Cicero agrees, thinking it moderate and pertinent to the times. However, the canon seems to have changed as the optimus civis (‘best citizen’), from whose perspective he claims to write, cannot find firm footing within the vacuum of power that Caesar will return to fill. Indeed, as he dismisses the whole project, Cicero cannot even think of the need to have it published: ‘there is absolutely no need for any of the letter,’ he claims as he withdraws further into theoretical philosophy- into the Academica. 268 The train of thought in Att.13.27 [298] characterizes the self-censorship as a kind of generic retrenchment. The letter has no use because it has no function: if it is to read as a eulogy of Caesar, then it should have been completed before the war. Now, Cicero continues, it may appear as a Catonis μείλιγμα (‘propitiatory offering for Cato’) which is precisely the kind of offering the author disavows. 269 His letter emerges out of reading Hirtius’ ghost-written Anticato - as a reaction to it, in fact. 270 This begs once again the all-important question we asked above about genre: what is this epistula ad Caesarem (‘letter to Caesar’)? Initially a συμβουλευτικὸν, based on a soon to be disavowed model of Aristotle and Alexander, 271 inspired by a Greek tract on Eastern kingship 272 but also, as just stated, a critique of the vituperatio Catonis (‘attack on Cato’) pursued by Caesar and Hiritus, yet embedded in civic advice (Damon 2008: 176). The impossibility of fixing a genre is an open reflection on the difficulty of defining what exactly the new situation of Rome is: Caesar is not 265 Att.12.51.2 [293]. 266 Att.13.27 [298], Att.13.28 [299] and Att.13.31 [302]. 267 Att.13.27.1 [298] and Att.13.28.2 [299]. Note that adsentatio, found in the later letter, is the epistemological crux of the Academica, as Cicero strives to argue for the impossibility of ever assenting to anything with any certainty, and to castigate the rashness and groundlessness of those who do. 268 Totis igitur litteris nihil opus est, Att.13.28.2 [299]. 269 Μείλιγμα captures the ambiguity of the situation. For Shackleton Bailey, who translates ‘peace-offering after the Cato,’ the Greek word refers to an offering meant to appease Caesar. The term, an Aeschylean favorite, also has a funerary significance as peace-offering to the dead (Choephori, 15, and Eumenides, 107). In this sense, the objective genitive takes on a different meaning, turning the letter into a peace offering to the dead Republican. My translation prefers to emphasize the second sense. 270 Att.12.41 [283], Att.12.44 [285], Att.12.48 [289] and Att.12.45 [290]. 271 Att.12.40.2 [281], cf. Att.13.28.2 [299]. 272 Att.12.38a.2 [279]. O.Cappello, Part I 82 Alexander, so Cicero is no Aristotle; yet for the orator, evocation of the model is in itself an invitation to comparison, a dialogue with himself about the reigning chaos played through a discourse on genre. The campaign Cicero wages through the epistula ad Caesarem is differed and diffused. The Anticato is in the background. Cicero speculates on its content and mentions it indirectly. It is Hirtius’ compendium of insults which Cicero writes against. And he writes against it by a strategic act of dissemination: in three separate letters he encourages Atticus to spread the pamphlet, second- guessing that the brave few Republicans left will see its faults. 273 Publication becomes an instrument of opposition, and a sophisticated act of critical engagement. After Thapsus, however Cicero and Caesar limit their exchanges to literary philosophical litterae. The worn-out author of philosophical tracts even receives a Consolation from the conquering general 274 and the latter, once in Italy as Cicero’s guest, enjoys an evening where ‘nothing serious is discussed, quite a lot about literature.’ 275 The obsessively pleasant tone of this famous letter about hosting celebrity reveals the extent to which on the one hand Cicero represents an excluded voice from Roman politics, while on the other hand it signals the centrality of φιλόλογα in addressing the seat of power. As Caesar’s world looms on the horizon, Cicero shows himself in the letters expressing the uncertainty consequent to the shifting cultural and political paradigm. Literary and cultural models are alternately employed to shore up his world, although these are ultimately shown to fail, to never quite fit. Nonetheless, his reaction to the transformations hinges upon opening alternative avenues of dialogue. His need for others to participate in erecting a shrine or editing a work is not merely an expression of frailty and withdrawal, but rather exemplifies his attitude of co-operation. In this way, Cicero turns his marginalization into an opportunity to institute and expand a network of individuals, a community of the letter. Greek models, in turn, are the language of that dialogue which aims to involve old Republicans and members of the new regime alike, as Cicero looks for new systems of building consensus. 6. Conclusion The argument of Part I aimed at exploring the ways in which Cicero frames the production and distribution of his treatise on Academic epistemology through the letters. First and foremost, I 273 Att.12.44 [285], Att.12.48 [289] and Att.12.45 [290]. 274 Att.13.20.1 [328]. The ‘consolatory letter’ (litteras consolatorias) is sent on the thirtieth of April. 275 Σπουδαῖον οὐδὲν in sermone, φιλόλογα multa, Att.13.52.2. O.Cappello, Part I 83 hope to have shown that the epistolary collection is an inestimable resource for those interested in Cicero’s philosophical thought, and one deserving of a more sophisticated analysis than has so far been accorded to it. Documentary approaches that reveal little sensitivity to rhetorical postures and literary allusions are limited in the way they interpret Cicero both as historical figure and as intellectual. My emphasis in this first part has been on studying a nexus of themes and tropes which Cicero foregrounds in the letters in order to present the philosophical concerns of the Academica as grounded in the lived reality of his times, and therefore relevant to them. Ciceronian doubt and hesitation, so far simply valued as marks of vulnerability, become in the relationship between the letters and the Academica the central strategy of his philosophical discourse. His constant perspectival shifts, his mood swings and changes of heart- his volatility- are quintessentially Academic. And our author recognizes this when, taken by surprise by his own relentless about-turns on the issue, he exclaims, ‘the Academy is volatile and yet always true to itself.’ 276 The paradoxical nature of that expression, the constant inconstancy of the Academy, key to our discussion of Ciceronian skepticism in Part III, perfectly describes Cicero’s voice in the letters. The Academica is accordingly presented as the epistemological investigation of an attitude that emerges from a world in chaos and that is unsure about its significance. While Part I has time and again emphasized philosophy’s nature as a passive reflection on the changing regime, a self-defeating voice from the margins that polices its limits, there is another important feature that emerges from the correspondence. Philosophy as public discourse asserts itself as a way not just to digest, but also to- propositively- react to the events. Through that theoretical register and through the exchange of letters and tracts, Cicero finds a language and a means to develop a community committed to dialogue and to the use of new conceptual paradigms to address new questions. The tension between these two attitudes will shape the rest of the thesis as I examine how Ciceronian historiography of philosophy and Ciceronian skepticism performs this back and forth, asserting new discursive models and priorities and withdrawing into radical auto-critique. At this early stage of his engagement with philosophy, the question for this nascent Roman discursive practice is, in Cicero’s eyes, where and how it can establish itself. 276 O Academiam volaticam et sui similem, Att.13.25.3 [333]. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 84 Part IIa Introduction The Pedigree of Doubt Ciceronian Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy 1. Historical Philosophy Ciceronian philosophy is profoundly historical. The philosophical works of the 50s and 40s BCE openly situate themselves within the doctrinal and scholastic history of Greek philosophy and they draw, just as continuously, on examples from Roman political history as well as institutional practice. Scholarship is proof enough of the importance of this dimension of Cicero’s speculative thought in so far as it has noticed very little else in the treatises. Quellenforschung, as we have already touched on, is exclusively concerned with decoding influences on Cicero’s work that are manifest enough to warrant this attention. Despite the fixation with the challenge of Ciceronian historiography, this approach has either missed the elementary question of why Cicero wrote philosophy historically or dismissed it by attributing to our subject incompetence or excessive haste in composition. The second part of the thesis addresses this gap in the scholarship by investigating why and how Cicero uses the history of philosophy in his Academica. Both surviving fragments of the Academic treatise are, in fact, important to this topic not only because of their primary position in the series, through which we can examine Cicero’s initial attempts to configure his philosophical interests, but also because they show a sustained interest in Academic history and in the historical dimension of philosophical problems. Notably the extant half of the first Academic Book tackles the history of Platonism after Plato once it has described the system of philosophy as set up by Plato himself; 1 the Lucullus showcases a similar conflict on the historiography of philosophy, specifically on the Academic uses of philosophical precedents; 2 finally, the review of disagreements between philosophers that ends Cicero’s speech in the Lucullus is a catalogue of philosophical problems as seen from the viewpoint of conflict between historical individuals. 3 Study of history’s role in Cicero’s philosophy requires understanding three contextual aspects of Ciceronian historiography of philosophy: firstly, the Academica’s agenda as a text on the history 1 Ac.1.19-32 on the tres partes philosophiae (‘the three sub-fields of philosophy’) followed by critiques of Platonism from Aristotle to Zeno at Ac.1.33-42 to which Cicero responds at Ac.1.44-6. 2 Luc.13-15 and Luc.72-6. 3 Luc.116-146. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 85 of a philosophical school; secondly, previous models of historiographical approaches to philosophy; and finally, the historical-institutional context within which Cicero wrote about Hellenistic schools. 2. Program Notes A tight chronological sequence binds the Hortensius, both editions of the Academica and the De Finibus. Although evidence for the dating of the lost protreptic is slight, 4 internal references from the two later works make it clear that not only does it predate them, but it also establishes itself as their point of origin. 5 This relationship of interdependence, the historical and epistolary dimension of which we have already explored in the previous chapter, 6 is markedly strong between the Hortensius and the Catulus and Lucullus. The triad shares more than just compositional synchrony. The dialogues are hosted in turn by each of the eponymous protagonists at their Campanian villae, and seemingly on successive days. 7 With the structure of the De Republica in the backdrop, a number of critics have used these elements to argue for the artistic integration of the three works. This integration has, in turn, an important effect on the way the intellectual project is interpreted. Hirzel (1895), Philippson (1939) and Bringmann (1971) have insisted on the coherence of the aesthetic frame as indicator of the unitary nature of this trilogy, intended from the very start to hang together and to serve as an introduction to the whole cycle of philosophica. Discussion of the implications for such reading has been subject to many reviews, with Griffin offering the latest ‘plausible’ options to choose from (1997: 6). The major point about continuity of the works is the interlocking sequence of apology for philosophy followed by exploration of Academic philosophy. The Hortensius, through the laudatio philosophiae (‘eulogy of philosophy’), cuts out a space for this activity in Roman discursive practices. 8 The Academica pursues this program by focusing on the form this discursive practice will 4 An intriguing allusion to graviora et maiora (‘more serious and greater things’) at Orat.148 has suggested an even earlier dating for the Hortensius. Cf. Reid 1885: 29. There are no direct references to it in the letters. 5 See Luc.6, Luc.61 and Fin.1.2. The Hortensius sets up the project by taking care of the apologetic Grundriss. Later references lend further credence to this outline, so Tusc.3.6, Div.2.1 and Off.2.6. 6 Especially with regards to the final two works that enjoy a parallel narrative of composition and revision throughout spring and summer of 45 BCE. Cf. Att.13.32 [305] and Att.12.12 [259] with Ruch 1958a: 149-167. 7 The location is confirmed with respect to all three (Hortensius fr.2 and 3). Chronology is rather more complex to prove about the fragmentary Hortensius (fr.1-7), though we are at the very least on terra firma when placing the dramatic date in close relation to the other two: the late 60s. For a synthetic review of scholarship on dating the Hortensius see Ruch 1958b: 67-9. For the fragment numeration and structural outline I have followed Grilli’s 1962 edition. So: (i) Hortensius @ Lucullus’; (ii) Cat. @ Catulus’; (iii) Luc. @ Hortensius’. 8 See especially Luc.61 and Fin.1.2. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 86 take: Academic skepticism. With the protreptic setting out the justificatory rhetoric for the transfer of philosophy from Greece to Rome, 9 the Catulus and Lucullus- and their four part rewrite- set up another rhetoric that re-traces the same cultural iter: the move from Athens to Rome of the Academy. The Academica operates as manifesto for the institution of a Roman Academy: an act of assimilation that is literary, personal and cultural. Without the Hortensius, critics have been condemned to read the project through the program notes that are the epistemological debates of the Academica. Questions of foundation, origin and institution have been sidelined in favor of intellectually profiling leaders of the Academy, protagonists and vectors of Cicero’s narrative of translation. The aim of this introductory review is to situate the Academica within its context. This means first and foremost understanding the intellectual scene into which his disquisition on Academic epistemology is introduced. In order to evaluate the rhetorical and philosophical aspects of Cicero’s historiographical performance we must understand the material with which the author is working. And in order to understand how he positions himself, we must understand the broader field within which he does so. Such necessity justifies the introduction to Part II, as we focus on the literary and historical context of the Academica. Cicero positions the Academica in an already crowded world. Obstinate ‘dogmatists,’ anti- skeptical polemicists, Epicureans and Stoics are all identified in the introduction to both Lucullus and Ac.1 as having a voice in Rome. Epicureans can even count on a stronghold of Latin publications. 10 Varro, Cicero and Lucullus, however, enjoy only secret affiliations with the Academy: Lucullus kept his studies private, Varro hid his philosophy in satires and eulogies while Cicero only now finds the time to write and to fill the gap in the literature and take head on those critics of philosophy and of the Academy. 11 Rawson’s (1985: 282-97) portrait of Roman intellectual life at the time of Cicero confirms that not only Latin philosophy predated Ciceronian philosophica but it also almost exclusively concentrated on Epicureanism and Stoicism. Amafinius, Rabirius and Catius published Epicurean tracts in Latin, whose quality was so poor that even Cassius, an Epicurean, makes no attempt to defend them. 12 Sallustius produced an Empedoclea, mentioned in the same breath as 9 The cultural friction is felt most acutely in the terminological opposition of philosophia and sapientia (fr.51-3; 54; 93-4; 106-9), and the problem of otium (‘free time’) and oblectatio (‘pleasure’) (fr.33; 35-6; 39; 55-6). 10 Luc.7-9 and Ac.1.4-8. 11 Luc.6 and Ac.1.8. The reprehensori (‘detractors’) which Cicero rebukes in the opening sections of the Lucullus. The occasion for his writing is the Civil War and grief over his daughter’s death, Ac.1.11. 12 At Tusc.4.7 Cicero names Amafinius as the first of the two to write philosophy, though he will go on to complain about Amafinius’ and Rabirius’ style and incompetence at Ac.1.5, Tusc.1.6, Tusc.2.7 and Tusc.4.7. For Catius, see O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 87 Lurcetius’ De Rerum Nature in a letter to his brother, though the latter is too technical while the former requires a super-human effort to read. 13 In the above-quoted letter Cassius complains about rustici Stoici (‘Stoic ignoramuses’) who are just as bad as Catius and Amafinius. The comparative implies that Stoicism did enjoy a Latin reading public at Rome, just as perhaps Horace’s second book of Satires takes on what may be a recognized tradition of Stoic Latin authors. 14 Whatever one makes of the intellectual context on the Roman side, Cicero’s apology for the Academy shapes the historical conditions for the establishment of such institution in Rome. The diatribes, which open the Academica and which involve the other speakers and in particular the Antiochian Varro, are representational mechanisms through which Cicero legitimizes a place for his Academy among other philosophies that already have a place in Rome. There are two aspects of this historiographical endeavor I would like to emphasize before we turn to situating the Academica in the Ciceronian philosophical corpus. By constructing the image of his Academy historically, Cicero creates a tradition, a lineage, within which he locates himself or rather, within which he asks the reader to locate him. The practice of philosophizing he will subscribe to as speaker and the one constructed authorially through the dialogue, will inevitably be developed against the backdrop of his chosen models. As text, as writer and as dramatis persona Cicero places himself within a tradition he is communicating and re-creating. The historicity of the intellectual project, in other words, determines the very situation of that project. Secondly, the skeptical angle should always be foremost in our reading. The analytic philosophical criticism that has so far set the parameters for investigating Cicero’s Academica has regularly found comfort in the schematization of various skeptical strains in the work, and has thereby drawn firm outlines around the kind of skeptical position adopted by the author. 15 Yet, the position of a skeptic is far from simple. It is fundamentally conditioned by its inability to stake out a claim, to assert and defend a theory, even to set up a critical standard from which to deliver interpretations. This is an important, if not decisive, point of contact between the philosophical Fam.15.16.1 [215] and Fam.15.19.1-2 [216]. Cassius snubs his fellow Epicureans in a letter to Cicero preserved as Fam.15.19 [216]. 13 Lucreti poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt, multis luminibus ingeni, inultae tamen artis. sed cum veneris, virum te putabo si Sallusti Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo (‘Lucretius’ poem contains, as you write, many moments of brilliance, but style does not get a say. When you get back I will think you a hero for reading Sallustius’ Empedoclea, though not a man’), Q.fr.2.9.2 [17]. 14 No kinder than Cassius, Professor Snore, or Stertinius, makes an appearance at Sat.2.3. 15 The Platonic hyphegetic, the Platonic zetetic, the Arcesilean, the Metrodoran-Philonian; then again, the dogmatic skeptic, the classical skeptic, the aporetic etc. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 88 content of the dialogue and the representational choices Cicero makes when writing historically. How does a skeptical pen underwrite a positive history of its pedigree? How does that vantage point affect the approach to identifying a school, its doctrines and argumentative strategies? Finally, and more generally to what extent is Ciceronian skepticism important to the construction of philosophy as a historical practice? 3. Situating the Academica. The Corpus and the Tradition This section addresses the literary context of the treatise by arguing for its centrality in Cicero’s philosophica as well as its dependence on historiographical approaches to philosophy espoused by Aristotle and Plato, as well as its relation to the second- and first-century BCE resurgence in this dimension of philosophy. The position of the Academica within the corpus- especially its position in relation to the Hortensius- was already discussed in order to underline its programmatic nature; to invite closer scrutiny, in other words, of how the kinds of questions it poses are decisive in shaping his philosophical project; to show that this work was founded on shaping an Academic heritage, an institutional history and ‘position’ to which he as an author and as a philosophical persona- voice and text- is committed. Situating the two editions in the cycle of treatises is not only a hermeneutic responsibility handed over to the reader through the interlinking frames of the dialogues. Cicero in his successive works develops the role of the Academica within the growing series by openly reflecting on it and exploring its value. This self-conscious contextualization is critical to the programmatic punch of his ‘voice’ and the importance of analyzing it in relation to this foundational text. Reading the letters, a sustained interest in switching perspectives on the Academica-in- progress emerges, as Cicero narrates and frames the editions’ development. In the case of internal references to the Academici Libri, however, there is a remarkable consistency in how the author assigns to it the role of bearer of ‘his’ philosophy and of ‘his’ position. The De Officiis provides an unwittingly sophisticated closure to the cycle of late treatises, not least because, as Cicero’s last work, it refers young Marcus back to the philosophica, and particularly to the Academic Books, while he was in Athens pursuing his philosophical education under the Peripatetic Cratippus (Daly 1950). Prologues to the first two books combine to outline a strategy O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 89 through which Cicero carefully insinuates his reflections and ‘manuals’ into his son’s curriculum. He opens the work with an invitation to continue to study under the princeps huius aetatis philosophorum (‘the foremost philosopher of our age’) for as long as he feels his progress requires it. Nonetheless, the princeps Cratippus is presented as only one half of Cicero’s idealized educational trajectory. The passage contrasts Cratippus, on the one hand- associated with Aristotle’s school, with Athens, the doctrines and practices of philosophy, scientia and the Greek language- with Cicero himself. Our author, in fact, defines a complementary direction, informed by his own example. To his name are attached the concept of utilitas (‘use’) and the Latin language, the exercitatio dicendi (‘practice of speaking’) and the facultas orationis (‘ability to speak publicly’). 16 Although Cicero appears to be emphasizing the need for (Greek) philosophy to be complemented by (Latin) oratory, 17 references to his philosophical works set Ciceronian philosophica up as an all together different alternative. 18 Indeed, the reminder that his own arguments are not very different from those endorsed by the Peripatetics and the suggestion that both Cratippus and himself only claim a Socratic and Platonic pedigree, imply that Cicero’s views are Academic, that they stand on the Academic side of the binary Socratic-Platonic legacy. 19 In the passage just paraphrased, nostra, the object of legens, clearly labels his philosophical production as Academic, revealing how the works’ ambition is shared with other Peripatetic thinkers. This nod to himself as the Academic voice in the philosophical panorama of the time is picked up and clarified in the prologue to the second book. After a routine apology for philosophy and his own troubled involvement, 20 Cicero turns to defend his own Academic position and the ‘doctrine’ of probability. In a language strongly reminiscent of the Lucullus’ prologue, 21 the father’s voice emerges to direct Marcus to his Academici, where probabilia and the disputational strategies of contra omnia disputare (‘speaking against every proposition’) and ex utraque parte contentio 16 Off.1.1. 17 He develops the theme through comparison between Plato and Demosthenes at Off.1.4. 18 Off.1.1 and Off.1.2. 19 Sed tamen nostra legens non multum a Peripateticis dissidentia, quoniam utrique Socratici et Platonici volumus esse (‘nonetheless, reading my own works that are not so far from the position of the Peripatetics, since we both wish to be Socratic and Platonic...’), Off.1.2. 20 Sed haec cum ad philosophiam cohortamur, accuratius disputari solent, quod alio quodam libro fecimus. Hoc autem tempore tantum nobis declarandum fuit, cur orbati rei publicae muneribus, ad hoc nos studium potissimum contulissemus (‘but when I am encouraging people to study philosophy, I am accustomed to discussing this matter at greater length, which I did in another book of mine. At this time, however, I am only interested in stating why, once bereft of public service, I betook myself to these very studies’), Off.2.6. 21 Luc.7-9. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 90 (‘disputation on either side of the question’) are explained. 22 Again, the common pedigree with Cratippus is evoked and the contiguous, though markedly non-identical, theoretical systems. Cicero’s Academici are furthermore unassumingly portrayed as the vehicle through which the consular can teach Marcus about his doctrinal views. 23 For an apology of philosophy, Cicero sends Marcus to the Hortensius; for a defense of the Academy, to the Academici Libri. This bibliographic indexing, subtly contextualized in the opposition with Cratippus, informs a broader perspective on his epistemological treatise. The work is the only contemporary Academic voice, and more specifically, it is Cicero’s voice. The preface to De Natura Deorum book one sets the stage for both these themes. After deflecting the excessive curiosity of those interested in his opinion, Cicero goes on to justify his choice of disciplina. 24 He develops two parallel arguments to characterize his relationship to the Academy. In the first place, his allegiance is defended in prima persona, as can be seen in the superlative appreciation for his school (potissimum), the connection with his four expository books on Academic thinking, the review of those epistemological arguments already formulated alio loco (‘elsewhere’) and the despondent tone towards those that are nimis indociles (‘excessively stubborn’) and tardi (‘slow’) in the face of his apologies. 25 All these elements closely connect Cicero’s defense of Academic skepticism with his own philosophical position, and its expression in the Academic Books. 26 22 Quibus vellem satis cognita esset nostra sententia. Non enim sumus ii, quorum vagetur animus errore nec habeat umquam quid sequatur. Quae enim esset ista mens vel quae vita potius, non modo disputandi, sed etiam vivendi ratione sublata? Nos autem, ut ceteri alia certa, alia incerta esse dicunt, sic ab his dissentientes alia probabilia, contra alia dicimus (‘I only wish they understood our position. For we are not the kind of people whose soul wanders in error and who never have any certainty to follow. For what mind would that be or even what kind of life, when not only every method of dialogue is taken away, but even every reason for living? While certain schools teach that some things are certain and other uncertain, we, however, differ from them and say that some things are improbable while others are probable’), Off.2.7. 23 Sed haec explanata sunt in Academicis nostris satis, ut arbitror, diligenter. Tibi autem, mi Cicero, quamquam in antiquissima nobilissimaque philosophia Cratippo auctore versaris iis simillimo, qui ista praeclara pepererunt, tamen haec nostra, finituma vestris, ignota esse nolui (‘But I think I have done a good job of explaining all this in my Academic Books. Although, my dear Cicero, you are now a student of that ancient and most noble philosophy under Cratippus, who is a master worthy of those who have founded the school, I don’t want you to be ignorant of my school’s views, which are not so different from yours’), Off.2.8. 24 Qui autem requirunt, quid quaque de re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt, quam necesse est (‘those who ask what I actually think about any particular matter do so with more curiosity than is necessary’), Nat.D.1.10. 25 I summarise Nat.D.1.11-12. 26 Non enim sumus ii, quibus nihil verum esse videatur, sed ii, qui omnibus veris falsa quaedam adiuncta esse dicamus tanta similitudine, ut in iis nulla insit certa iudicandi et adsentiendi nota (‘For we are not those who think that nothing is true, but are those who assert that certain false sensations are linked to all true sensations and resemble these so greatly that there is no certain mark by which we can judge or assent to a sensation’), Nat.D.1.12. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 91 Secondly, within this studious defense of a personal Academy, Cicero makes a case for the renewed patronage of this apparently deserted philosophical cause, but under his own direction. In response to the accusation that the Academic position, to which he subscribes, is bereft of leaders, Cicero develops a sophisticated response. He denies that he has taken up patrocinium of a neglected movement on the grounds that the death of its leaders does not automatically decree the end of the sententiae. 27 He further specifies that these doctrines would only perhaps lack the lux auctoris, and that he understands that this particular ratio disserendi no longer has sponsors in Greece. However, several ambiguous elements beset this pessimism and introduce Cicero’s voice as a valid candidate for patrocinium of a cause which does not need one. When in fact Cicero reflects on how the school can still operate as a sententia without exponents, he quickly outlines a hereditary line which he suggests, after Arcesilaus and Carneades, reaches his own aetas. Furthermore, the indefinite intellego and the limiting reference to Greece open up the possibility that the auctor the reader is looking for is the one authoring the prologue, and therein reiterating a defense of the Academy that had been fully constructed in his quattuor Academici Libri. 28 Punctuating this constant return to the Academica, references in the Tusculanae Disputationes and the De Divinatione underline the affection and personal relationship to that work and its foundational significance alongside the Hortensius. 29 This return shapes an important, yet unexplored, dimension of the coherence of Cicero’s late philosophica centered on the Academica. 27 Nec vero desertarum relictarumque rerum patrocinium suscepimus; non enim hominum interitu sententiae quoque occidunt, sed lucem auctoris fortasse desiderant. Ut haec in philosophia ratio contra omnia disserendi nullamque rem aperte iudicandi profecta a Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila, confirmata a Carneade usque ad nostram viguit aetatem; quam nunc prope modum orbam esse in ipsa Graecia intellego. Quod non Academiae vitio, sed tarditate hominum arbitror contigisse. Nam si singulas disciplinas percipere magnum est, quanto maius omnis; quod facere is necesse est, quibus propositum est veri reperiendi causa et contra omnes philosophos et pro omnibus dicere. Cuius rei tantae tamque difficilis facultatem consecutum esse me non profiteor, secutum esse prae me fero (‘nor is it true that I have taken up patronage of a dead and abandoned school, for it is not by the death of men that opinions disappear, although they might perhaps lose the brilliance of their author. Look at the example of the philosophical system which speaks against every position and which approves of nothing positively, a system that started with Socrates, was revived by Arcesilaus, strengthened by Carneades and lasts into our own period. I understand that now in Greece it has almost no affiliates left. But this is not because of a fault with the Academy; rather I think it is due to the slowness of men. If it is a big task to learn each philosophy separately, how much greater a task it is to learn all of them. And this is exactly what is needed if you want to discover the truth by arguing for and against each school. I don’t claim that I have succeeded in this huge and difficult task, but I will say that I have attempted it’), Nat.D.1.11-12. 28 His reticence to proclaim himself auctor is a further strategy in this process of assimilation. The deflection of the curiosi in the previous section insisted on the need to abandon the inflection on auctoritas when learning, teaching and practicing philosophy. non enim tam auctoritatis in disputando quam rationis momenta quaerenda sunt (‘for when debating you should not be looking for authority more than reason’); about the tyrannical Pythagoras: tantum opinio praeiudicata poterat, ut etiam sine ratione valeret auctoritas (‘so great was the power of preconceived opinion that authority took precedence even without reason’), Nat.D.1.10. 29 Tusc.2.4 and Div.2.1. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 92 Since at least the time of Hirzel’s expansive study on Cicero, the notion of a philosophical curriculum or philosophical encyclopedia has become part of the register through which the corpus is approached (1877-1883). 30 However, the logic determining progression of dialogues is far from clear, and it positively lacks a lucid illustration by their author. Certain elements, like the topical division of dialogues matching the discussion of the partes philosophiae or expressions of intent like Luc.147, make arguments for a reasoned sequence plausible. However, claims of occasional inspiration and the difficulty of fitting the dialogues themselves into an order of partes recognizable from his descriptions, or even as fulfillments of earlier promises, undermine that order. Indeed, works like the Disputations, the De Senectute and the De Officiis appear to compromise even the isosthenic pattern set by the inconclusive and anti-dogmatic earlier works. We have already debated this problematic sequentialisation of the corpus, yet, in the context of how the Academica interacts with the works that follow, this discussion takes on new meaning. Indeed, there are three features that bind the philosophica: the authorial and dramatis persona of Cicero, and a return to the Academici Libri. The author sets up this text as the consistent backdrop for the progression of his works. The Academica thereby assumes the status of a clef de lecture of each entry to his encyclopedic effort. If the Academica constantly reasserts its value intratextually, and develops its foundational significance as the cycle progresses, its generic pedigree is in turn established through imitating the historicizing gesture of its philosophical models. Cicero consistently shows himself preoccupied with paradigms of philosophical authorship, and these models, as far as their fragmentary nature allows us to witness, shape their own arguments in and through historical narration. Plato and Aristotle provide the central models for Cicero’s historiographical approach, and the argument will now turn to these original figureheads, before considering the resurgence of historical philosophy closer to Cicero’s time. Analyses of the dependence of Cicero on Plato and Aristotle are numerous, as are the references in which Cicero explicitly praises their vital influence on his own work (Gigon 1959; Burkert 1965; Gerch 1986; and Long 1995). Specifically in the case of the Academica, Cicero activates a number of generic paradigms that involve Aristotle directly and Plato indirectly, making 30 The notion of curriculum is first introduced by the humanist reading of Hunt 1954. It is in the French tradition that the case has found its most exhaustive proponents, with Boyancé’s 1936 article serving as its ‘manifesto’ as Glucker 1978: 391n3 calls it. Michel 1968 in turn writes the program for the culmination of this movement, for sophistication and length, which is Lévy’s Cicero Academicus. For a more nonchalant encyclopaedism see Rackham 1933: 400; Schofield 1986: 47n2; and Bonazzi 2003: 112. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 93 the dialogue form a point of contact amongst the three authors. 31 Nonetheless, this literary dimension has remained marginal to discussion of influence and of its implications for the historical dimension of the text. 32 An article by Carlo Viano (1986) represents an isolated attempt to fill the lacuna, seeking to examine the principles according to which Plato’s works are fundamentally historical in character, and how this character left its mark on Plato’s pupil, Aristotle. His conclusions are illuminating. Taking his cue from the Theaetetus, Viano suggests that Plato’s Academy was the birthplace of the use of the history of philosophy as a tool in the practice of debate. 33 When Theaetetus puts forward his first definition of knowledge as perception, Socrates refutes this position indirectly by attacking Protagoras’ and Heraclitus’ views which he sees as underlying that proposition. 34 Plato has Socrates investigate each theory and show how each is applicable within a different ontological sphere, the intelligible and the sensible. The disputational strategy, in turn, presents Heracliteanism and Protagoreanism as partial aspects of the truth, otherwise distinct moments of the path towards truth. Argument and refutation proceed from Plato’s broad understanding- codification, even- of the opposition between the two philosophers. The doctrines of each thinker are reified and absorbed into a broader movement. 35 Biographical and doctrinal specificity is lost in favor of shaping a generalized position which Socrates then addresses. 36 Furthermore, the broader movement is constituted into a community. Heraclitus and Protagoras become Heracliteans and Protagoreans, whose behavior is a caricature of their leaders’. The former are shown as pugnacious and committed to renewing their legacy, while the latter appear as devoted to the same set of doctrines that are clearly transmitted from one generation to the next, master to pupil (Viano 1986: 88). It is however not only the relation between thinkers that is reconstructed, but in a sense their very persona: philosophers are characters with idiosyncratic behaviors and doctrines. As Plato creates networks of debate, he outlines doctrinal perspectives that 31 As examined at length in Part I. See Att.13.19.3-5 [326]. 32 With the exception of Levine 1958; Zoll 1962; Fantham 2004: 48-77 on the De Oratore; and Schofield 2008. Recent discussions on the dialogue form also include Steel 2013 and Gildenhard 2013. Hösle 2012 offers an interesting panoramic of the genre. 33 ‘L’Accademia fu dunque la sede in cui forse nacque l’uso del riferimento alla storia della filosofia come strumento di argomentazione, sopratutto di confutazione’, Viano 1986: 97. 34 Theaetetus 151e-183c. This is a complex and sophisticated dialogue whose topic, the nature of knowledge, makes it of direct relevance to the Academica. Reid’s commentary is already a witness to this relationship- a relationship which Reinhardt’s forthcoming commentary will do much to explore. The present argument will not, however, tread this ground except for this brief moment in which we sketch out the Theaetetus’ groundbreaking role in the historiography of philosophy. I have use Burnet’s 1967 text and have been guided by Burnyeat, Levett and Williams’ 1992 edition and translation. 35 Theaetetus 152e. 36 Eleaticism is explained as a transformation in the predicative function of εἶναι (‘to be’); Heracliteanism is a sense- perception theory. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 94 entail an interpretive project and that form the substance of his refutations. Moreover, these networks remain centered on historical figures, thereby reaffirming the bond between dramatic and philosophical development within a historical frame. Plato is interested in giving an account of the clash between two positions, and he does so by embodying those sets of ideas into speaking characters and tribes, grounding the debate itself in a historical event. Although the dialogue is aporetic, ending with the rejection of the three paradigms of the nature of knowledge, 37 the methodology adopted heralds the use of the history of philosophy to assert and validate a particular theory. 38 The key aspect for Viano is the link between refutation and interpretation, as others’ positions are (re)constructed to serve the progression of the dialogue and thereby legitimize the position of the authorial voice as critic and innovator. The history of philosophy is put to the service of framing the issue of the dialogue in evolutionary terms. Contemporary readers are probably already familiar with such strategy through Aristotle’s Physics, where his dialectic is employed to reconstruct past doctrines in order to show them refuting each other, and finally being refuted by Aristotle himself. This teleological strategy is differently articulated in the first book of the Metaphysics, where Aristotle’s compilation of the four causes is a journey into the history of philosophy that allows the author to compile and offer an exhaustive view of causality from the vantage point of his superior wisdom and later historical position. 39 Plato’s pupil simply structures the master’s system according to a telos: doctrinal history is the history of a progressive revelation of truth (Viano 1986: 99). Although the esoteric works just mentioned offer clear examples of this approach, the point of origin for this methodology is situated in the dialogic brand of philosophizing proposed by Plato’s Academy. 40 Through the contraposition of philosophical perspectives, through putting views in dialogue and fashioning connections between them, the historicity of philosophizing emerges as a key aspect of the practice. Plato and Aristotle insist on history as a gesture of foundation for their doctrinal edifice: their theoretical development uses tradition to structure their own thought as well as deploying past views to construct a space within which to position their philosophy. In the main body of Part II, we will focus on Plato’s and 37 We are left only with what knowledge is not: Theaetetus 210c. See also Theaetetus 183a5, 187a1 38 ‘Nascerà da questo atteggiamento storiografico interpretativo ed esplicativo l’uso della storia della filosofia come prova della validità di una dottrina’, Viano 1986: 98. 39 Metaphysics 983a-993b. Aristotle introduces the main part of book one of the Metaphysics by indexing the four causes. He then sets out which causes philosophers had already discussed, only to then critique their position. The historical narrative is linear, beginning with the first philosophers and material causality (983b) and ending with a critique of the Forms of Plato and the Platonists (990b-993a). 40 See Zanatta 2008 whose introduction is particularly helpful in terms of examining the principles of Aristotelian dialogue composition. Berti 2004 and 1986 argues for this developmental picture. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 95 Aristotle’s philosophical uses of history, namely their conceptualization of truth in terms of the historicity and multiplicity of philosophical truths. At this point, however, it is essential to note that Cicero’s historicizing outlook is well-founded in the Greek philosophical tradition, and this allusion is, in itself, programmatic of the author’s ambition. Interest in historical philosophy undergoes a revival at the turn of the second and first century BCE. The two advocates of this renewed interest are Posidonius and Antiochus. Both thinkers are attentive readers of Platonic dialogues, and base their brand of Stoicism and Academicism on a re- examination of past figures and their relation to other schools. 41 Antiochus in particular shapes his syncretic Academy on the theory of shared identity between early Academy, Peripatos and Stoa. This identification marks his philosophy as distinctly committed to history. 42 Donini (1982), in fact, claims that Antiochus’ originality lay exclusively in his original reading of the history of philosophy and he celebrates the Academic as a brilliant professor of history. 43 Antiochus and Posidonius represent two lenses through which critics have read Cicero’s thought since the middle of the nineteenth century. 44 Their contribution to the Roman intellectual scene is undeniable, 45 but it is worth following Glucker in exploring the generation of scholars before this duo. He, in fact, suggests that it was precisely at the time of Clitomachus and Panaetius that investigating theoretical positions became a topic for written treatment. Glucker’s analysis is terminological, centered on the word αἵρεσις, which he convincingly shows to be used as an abstract 41 For the historical character of Posidonius’ approach to knowledge see Kidd in Barnes and Griffin 1997 and the 1988 introduction to his commentary of the fragments. Also, for the Platonic Posidonius, see Tarrant 2000: 62-4; and for the relation between Platonism and Stoicism throughout antiquity see the articles in Bonazzi and Helmig 2007. 42 This has otherwise come to be known as the correctio thesis, according to which these three positions evolved as ‘corrections’ of the preceding one. The model is taken from Ac.1.33-42. In order to avoid the circular trap of using Cicero’s Academica as the context for the Academica it is important to note that Antiochus’ interest in history is noted in other works like Sextus Empiricus’ Adversus Mathematicos which quotes verbatim from Antiochus’ lost Canonica (Math.7.202) and which Brittain 2012 has recently argued is the palimpsest, as it were, for Sextus’ doxography at Math.7.141-260. Tarrant 1985a: 110 had already suggested this influence, expanding from Math.7.89 to 260. 43 ‘[Egli] perviene alla formulazione del suo platonismo dogmatico mediante una reinterpretazione della storia della filosofia greca del IV e III secolo’, Donini 1982: 74. This represents an interesting spin on the many accusations of lack of originality in the substance of his philosophy; a differentiation which in itself is quite interesting, as it obstinately denies the possibility that the history of philosophy is the substance of his philosophy. 44 Two phases of the reception of Cicero’s thought can in fact be described as inflected by the Panposidonianism, rife in the Anglo-American world from the 1880s; and this was soon to be replaced by the Panantiochian phase out of which we are slowly- and only recently- emerging. For a history of the latter see Mette 1986/7: 27-9, for a critique of the former see Dobson 1918. 45 See Ferrary 1988 for an exhaustive account which looks at the history of their interaction with Rome, as well as their intellectual activities and their impact on the Republican cultural scene. See also Garbarino 1973. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 96 term meaning ‘attitude,’ ‘disposition’ or ‘view.’ 46 As he separates this word out from references to philosophical ‘schools’ in the practical or institutional sense, 47 he argues, through two passages in Diogenes Laertius, that by the mid second century BCE the word was used in philosophical contexts to designate works that were exclusively interested in the philosophical theories of various ‘sects.’ 48 It was this climate and the development, to whatever extent in yet embryonic stages, of a haeretic genre that seems to have rehabilitated the significance of the ‘historical’ in philosophy. Glucker boldly claims that there was no interest in that element since Aristotle, and that even within his own school such pursuits were abandoned soon after his death (Glucker 1978: 180). Despite the unverifiability of his assertion due to the poor state of the evidence on Hellenistic philosophy, there are suggestive conclusions to draw about the Ciceronian project and his choice of models. If indeed the intellectual climate favored historiographical reconstructions as the materia of philosophy, the return to Plato and Aristotle is not only a recognition of their canonical status and an appreciation of their stylistic brilliance. It is first and foremost an appropriation of a philosophical- textual practice that looks to the dialogue form and to the historiography of philosophy. Cicero sets the scene for his Academic philosophizing by writing the history of philosophy on the model of two philosophers who formulated its principles. The Academica is therefore not only constructed intratextually as the point of origin for Ciceronian philosophizing, it also claims an intertextual basis by locating the history of philosophy as the starting point of philosophy. 49 46 This is the preliminary part of his review, working off Polybius and inscriptions and acknowledging its debt to New Testament and Early Church historians. Glucker 1978: 166-174. 47 Which is precisely his aim in the section: to understand what the philosophical-institutional vocabulary tells us about how ‘schools’ and ‘doctrines’ were conceptualized. Ibid: 159-205. 48 Diogenes Laertius 2.92 and 2.87. I will omit discussion of Hippobotus, who is referenced at 1.18-21 and seems both to play a rather important part in the doxographical tradition followed by Diogenes himself, as well as perhaps offering a definition of αἵρεσις. See Gigante’s 1983: 156-7 status quaestionis on the problem of dating; and von Arnim 1913. 49 Heraclides Ponticus, as the other major influence acknowledged by Cicero in his letters, must of necessity be excised from discussion because of the little known about him, and the consequently modest scholarly attention he has received. Nonetheless, Hirzel’s 1895: 272-336 suggestion that he is an anomaly is somewhat enticing. Hirzel’s 1895: 308-9 narrative of degeneration of ‘true’ dialogism after Plato follows the fortune of the genre as it descends into a monologizing and dogmatizing shadow. However, while Aristotle develops the first person authority (Plato as ‘Socrates’), Heraclides is seen searching for a more concealed authorial voice (playing up the self-effacing side of Platonic dialogue). Fox 2009: 65 recently supported this outline, describing the ‘practice’ of Heraclidean dialogue composition as committed to ‘abnegating any notion of an authoritative voice.’ So what we would end up with is Heraclides standing in for a side of Plato that is ‘aporetic,’ self-effacing (what we would recognize as Platonic), while Aristotle affirms the other side of the Platonic legacy, the ‘dogmatic.’ O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 97 4. Method Before we turn to a discussion of the institutional history of the Academy, a number of points that have so far been taken for granted in my approach need to be clarified. Preliminaries to studies of the Academica have generally rehearsed similar concerns. Since those two fragmentary editions are, after all, the single most precious resource for the history of the Academy, no approach that is not committed to reconstructing that history through - in spite of - the text, or, put simply, to handling it as a very specific type of source, has been attempted. Indeed, not only is the Academica a source of biographical and institutional detail, but also, perhaps more importantly, it is a resource for understanding the doctrines of those protagonists. This treatise on epistemology is our earliest witness to the history of the Academy (along with the Herculanean Index Academicorum), and of Hellenistic philosophy (alongside the Index Stoicorum). Crucially it also puts forward what we might call a view from the “inside.” Quellenforschung, reviled and revived in recent years, 50 studies the Academica as a dense, descriptive account of the history of the Academy told through the lens of its final schism between Philo and his pupil Antiochus. Part II aims to reverse the hierarchy of source and product. Instead of using Cicero as a source for the history of the Academy after Plato, it will focus on the history of the Academy as a source for the Roman philosopher’s meditations on philosophy. This is not to imply that there is no external or empirical history of the Academy to which Cicero refers, or that his description is entirely fictional despite the ‘reality’ he is ostensibly commenting on. On the contrary, this ‘reality’- or reconstructions of it- is going to play an important part in studying Cicero’s account, both as reaction to it and as manipulation of it. Methodologically, however, a rhetorical commitment to the text will be foremost: how Cicero portrays the Academy, the details he singles out, the disputes and the ways he chooses to narrate them, his focus on certain characters or certain doctrines- all these are elements which the orator has selected in order to contribute to the rhetorical and literary texture of his portrait. Two important challenges to interpreting the Academica remain to be examined. 50 Recent enlightened studies, including Tarrant 1985a, Lévy 1992, Inwood and Mansfeld 1997 and Brittain 2001 reject Quellenforschung in the most critical of terms, but consistently follow its broader tenets. As they match each others’ books with reviews, they seem to find it extremely easy to tease out the source-hunting soul from the colleague’s approach, on which see, for example, Lévy 1985: 34. Textual exegesis is always put to the service of analytic reconstructions of arguments and positions, which in turn bring to light the actual source of the whole treatise, or of one of its parts. See Glucker 2006: 102-107. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 98 In the first place, there is a danger of deadlocking analyses in interpretive tautologies. The problem of circularity is especially evident in a work like Dillon’s The Middle Platonists (1997: 52- 113), where the theories of Antiochus are entirely reconstructed from the first Academic Book and Lucullus, and in turn these theories become the foundations for understanding Cicero’s position. Lévy’s review of Tarrant’s Scepticism or Platonism (1985a: 34-5), as perceptive and brilliant as it may otherwise be, trenchantly denies the possibility of using other sources comparatively. His critique, rehearsed in the introduction to Cicero Academicus, puts his own work at risk of the same circularity as Cicero is elevated to the status of comparans and comparandum for his study of the Hellenistic Academy (1992: 1). The second issue concerns critical perspectives on the obscurities that riddle the text. Part I has already argued for an approach sensitive to the rhetoric of the letters, and it is now time to justify a similar strategy towards the philosophy. The assumption governing every source-directed reading is that the interpreter is eavesdropping on a conversation he can only partially hear. The reconstruction of the other half thus depends on inferences from the extant fragments. This conceit is upheld in all commentaries that premise their reconstructive effort on the same issue of ambiguity and obscurity. So for example Bonazzi describes how the Academica reflects the tensions within the Academy in its final years ‘ma in modo oscuro, allusivo’ (2003: 112). Similarly, Burnyeat comments on the ‘allusiveness’ of the text and its ‘truncated’ nature, imputed to the fact that it accounts for two- hundred years of epistemological debate (1997: 277 and 279). A quick scan of the text will show that these observations are well-founded. A significant number of passages are compressed and clearly depend on the reader’s awareness of the wider context; 51 some passages seemingly challenge others, or present startling contradictions; 52 at other times the text itself lets us down- and very often at crucial moments. 53 The text is the problem in the same way as the Latin language was for Madvig an obstacle to retrieving the precise Greek philosophical terminology. Critics often fail to see that the rhetorical texture of the work, its aesthetic dimension, functions as an important part of the content. Instead, as 51 Cf. the final doxographic section Luc.116-146 or the arguments against logic Luc.91-8. The question of readership is however not that straightforward- who would necessarily know all these two centuries of debate among Cicero’s readership? Was his readership ‘specialized’? 52 Cf. Cicero’s adoption and rejection of Clitomachean Carneadeanism; or his claim at Luc.109 that he is refuting an attack on Carneades made by Antiochus, while at Luc.40 the same critique against Carneades is attributed to Antipater. 53 The key example is the presence/absence of a negative at Luc.148 that fails to tell us whether Catulus approves or rejects epochê. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 99 we see time and again, the characters of the Academica become rarefied sets of syllogisms, axioms, reconstituted palimpsests, so that language can be conclusively written out of the task of reconstructing a coherent picture for philosophy as transmitted through Cicero. This abandoning of rhetoric is what in fact ends up truncating the text, and shutting out useful strategies to decipher these characters and their thought. In response to the challenges of circularity and indecipherability I wish to briefly propose three approaches. Firstly, a greater attention to rhetoric. The whole context, texture and raison d’être of the work are rhetorical: the protagonists are arguing about a point of history, whether the Academy’s history was or wasn’t split into two by Arcesilaus’ doctrines; also, the Lucullus refers to Roman tribunals and agonistic oratorical performances; finally, both the historical and the epistemological issues are about ways to justify a claim, not about the claim itself. The subject-matter is, in other words, the foundations of arguing for a position. A recent work that has gone down this route has done so most convincingly and with, to my mind, great results. Lévy’s Cicero Academicus (1992: 141-180), by commenting on the structure of the speeches and on use of images and themes, has demonstrated the close relationship between philosophical content and its rhetorical presentation, proposing a collaborative reading of both in terms of an anti-Caesarian strategy. This dimension is therefore shown to be a crucial complement to the philosophical analysis of doctrines and their filiation, as the recognition of themes, patterns and voices can- must even- be understood as determining the presentation of those theories. In second place, schematizations must be abandoned all together. The paradoxes and contradictions should no longer be explained by affording Cicero the authorial maturity of an adolescent finishing his homework. These difficult passages warrant explanation; they must be considered in their own right as part and parcel of the way the philosophica develops, singularly in each treaty and across the corpus as a whole. Thirdly, the patient reconstructive work of the historians of philosophy is undoubtedly of key importance to the present reading. The rich texture of the work is significantly constituted by the network of voices it seeks to co-opt; the point of the work is, indeed, as we discussed, to situate Cicero’s own voice within a continuous intellectual and institutional tradition. The characters that populate the Academica are to be considered as both dramatis personae as well as extrinsic figures whose thought is a starting point for Ciceronian meditations. This study will be pre-eminently concerned with the textual construction of the characters, but will also be committed to analyzing O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 100 such constructions through the possibility that they represent, or are held up to represent, an institutional and historical reality within which Cicero is operating and to which he is reacting. In this comparative gesture, the restoration of ancient philosophers will be followed and put to use, as well as later sources, from Aenesidemus to Numenius, from Sextus to Augustine. 5. Setting the Scene: Re-reading the Index The earliest and major sources for the history of the Athenian philosophical schools during Cicero’s age are Cicero himself and the two Indices found in the Villa of the Papyri and attributed to Philodemus. 54 In both cases, the Academy receives greater attention: in the former, as we mentioned earlier, because of Cicero’s personal interest, and in the latter, because the luck of the draw left PHerc.1018, containing the History of the Stoics, in an extremely fragmentary state. From the complex of three rolls and the round of Ciceronian philosophica, the historian of philosophy can discern the outline of a fascinating history for the century which Sedley, in a recent and important article, has consecrated as the turning-point for ancient philosophy, and whose ‘epoch-making’ and ‘radical’ changes have split that history into two discrete halves (2003: 31 and 32). The present section reconsiders this history with two main aims. Firstly, there is room for improvement. Noteworthy paleographic and bibliological advances have been made through Dorandi’s edition of the Index Academicorum (1991a) and through Puglia’s (2000) further comments on the biographies of Philo and Antiochus. 55 Secondly, these advances allow us to reconstruct more specifically the context for Cicero’s Academica, without using Cicero as source. The Indices provide a window onto the institutional and doctrinal world within which Cicero’s skepticism developed, as well as the challenges and opportunities he faced when writing about the Academy. Well before the dramatic split between Philo and Antiochus in 87 (Glucker 1978: 13-15), the Academy was undergoing severe internal strain, both from the perspective of its theoretical coherence and of its institutional integrity. 56 Indeed, the succession crisis after Carneades is acute: from Carneades to his short-lived successor, also called Carneades, Crates, then to Clitomachus and 54 For an overview of the finds and an introduction to the philosopher see Gigante 1995, while Cavallo 1983 remains the most incisive work on the papyri themselves. 55 See also Dorandi 1994; Mekler 1958; and Gaiser 1988. 56 Dorandi 1997: 95 talks of a ‘crisi profonda, sia come istituzione, sia dal punto di vista dottrinario’. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 101 Philo, who takes over c.110 BCE, 57 the diadochical succession is continuous, though plagued by antagonisms and rivalries. The Index Academicorum and the De Oratore tell this complex story. Clitomachus, a thinker who influenced Ciceronian Academicism, spent eight (/ten) years teaching in the Palladium in Athens, before dramatically bursting through the doors of the school and claiming the scholarchate. 58 Yet he appears not to have been the only pretender to Carneades’ inheritance. Metrodorus of Scepsis, Clitomachus’ contemporary, proposed a very different type of approach to their shared Academic master. His brand of Carneadean teaching, though never broadcast from the ‘official’ halls of the Academy, seems to have gained considerable attention amongst students of philosophy at the time. 59 This schismatic episode, coupled with the apparent conflict over the interpretation of Carneades’ legacy, rehearses the rupture that will inform Cicero’s Academica. Furthermore, Clitomachus himself is a fascinating and groundbreaking figure. According to Luc.98 and, especially, Luc.102, this keen Poenulus (‘little Carthaginian’) was strengthening the ties with Rome that Carneades had inaugurated with the embassy of 155 BCE, and he was doing so through a flurry of publications, some of which, as Cicero tells us, were dedicated to Roman aristocrats. 60 Even before Philo leaves for the capital of the Empire in 88 BCE, Rome looms large on the horizon of the philosophical Academy, and the practice of circulating books already appears as an important vehicle for expansion of Academic networks. 61 During Philo’s scholarchate, the First Mithridatic War and Sulla’s sack of Athens accelerated the process of devaluation of Athens as seat of Hellenistic philosophy which was already well under way in the second century BCE. The war between Mithridates VI and Rome over Asia drew Athens into the conflict and marked, at least according to Geagan, the end of Athens’ independent status (Geagan 1979; Badian 1976; and Appian’s Mithridatica for the ancient narrative). Political and social collapse implicated the cultural sphere as well, as it appears that Epicureans and Peripatetics 57 For an overview with some conceptual analysis see Lévy 2010: 82-9; for a suggestive reconstruction of the marginal characters of this period see his 2005 article. 58 Ind.Acad.24.35-7. 59 The details of the doctrinal dispute will play a key role in the development of the next two sections. For his inheritance claim see Ind.Acad.35.33-5 and 36.8-10. Ind.Acad.32.13-16 seems to inform us that he never held a school in Athens (entirely dependent on Mekler’s reconstruction of [Μητρόδ] ωρ [ος] (‘Metrodorus’) at 32.16), just as De Or.1.45 seems to suggest he never taught in the Academy. 60 Multitudo librorum, Luc.16. See also Diogenes Laertius 4.67. Ferrary 1988: 433 confirms: ‘le traité de Clitomaque dédié à Censorinus reste en tout cas le plus ancien ouvrage de philosophie dont nous savons qu’il fut dédié à un Romain.’ 61 See Ferrary 1988: 395-433 on Clitomachus and Panaetius and their new Roman public. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 102 supported the king of Pontus and were, in turn, rewarded with prominent political roles. Athenion the Peripatetic played an important role as Mithridates’ ambassador to Athens in convincing the city to side with Mithridates in 88 BCE, while Apellicon, another Peripatetic, was sent to rein in the still pro-Roman Delos. 62 Finally, Archelaus, Mithridates’ general, appointed an Epicurean, Aristion, as tyrant of Athens ruling from 88 BCE to the city’s sack in 86 BCE. Whether we agree with Ferguson that lines were drawn between pro-Roman Stoics and Academics against the ‘Asiatic’ Peripatetics and Epicureans or accept Ferrary’s view that by 88 BCE Stoics had already abandoned Athens leaving only Academics to face self-exile, undoubtedly philosophical teaching in Athens suffered from the war (Ferguson 1911: 338-9; Ferrary 1988: 435-473). Philo leaves as soon as Athenion comes onto the scene and Antiochus not long after, following Lucullus’ train. The latter’s return in 79 BCE leaves us with only three known philosophers in the wake of the invasion: Antiochus, and the Epicureans Zeno and Phaedrus. In 51 BCE, Cicero tells Atticus philosophy at Athens is ‘in a state of chaos.’ 63 The troubled and divided voice of Academic skepticism enters an even more fractured phase with the death of Philo. As Ind.Acad.33.42 confirms, Philo dies only two years after his arrival in Italy in 88 BCE, leaving no defense for the cause of the skeptical Academy. Glucker suggests that Charmadas and Heraclitus alone pursued the patrocinium of this movement beyond 86 BCE. Neither of them, however, is linked to a diadochical context. Heraclitus, who appears as an orthodox skeptic in the Lucullus, never shows up as a teacher in Athens in other evidence, and Charmadas, despite enjoying greater attention in the works of Cicero and Philodemus, is also a figure left on the sidelines of the Academic world. Indeed, seven years after beginning his studies in Athens under Carneades, he sails for Asia (146/5 BCE) whence he returns a little later to obtain citizenship and found a school operating out of the exedra in the Ptolemaeum. 64 There is a strong sense in which the melancholy notes spread throughout Ciceronian treatises, lamenting the absence of an Academic leadership pursuing the skeptical direction, have a solid basis in the institutional reality of Plato’s school. 65 62 The story is in Athenaeus’ Deipnosophistai 211d-215b. 63 Sed multum <ea> philosophia sursum deorsum (‘philosophy is in a real state of chaos’), Att.5.10.5. The text is unfortunately very corrupt. Shackleton Bailey emends <ea> making two sentences: sed mu<tata mul>ta. Philosophia sursum deorsum (‘a lot has changed. Philosophy is a mess’). The sense however remains clear. 64 Ind.Acad.31.34-32.10. It is tempting to read Charmadas at Fin.5.4, where Cicero points out that very exedra in his tour of Athens. Valerius offered this reading as more convincing than the almost unanimous MSS Carneades. Recently Glucker 1978: 110 has supported Valerius against Madvig’s restoration cum correctione of Carneadis. 65 Among the many references, some of which have already been mentioned, Luc.17, Nat.D.1.11 Fin.5.4, Att.5.10. This absence is also clearly implied in the invitation to young Marcus at Off.1.1. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 103 In this desolate landscape, Antiochus and his brother Aristus emerge as the sole leading figures of the Platonic school. However Stoic his teaching may have appeared to Cicero and to subsequent generations, 66 Antiochus walks into the Academic limelight in the first third of the first century BCE. He is portrayed as a man stretched both in his educational and political duties: he follows Lucullus in his Eastern campaign, heads to Rome on an embassy later in his life, and still manages to collect a significant number of pupils. 67 Nonetheless, both his and his brother’s official relations to the Academy are far from straightforward. So far references to the institutional dimension of ancient philosophy have been deployed uncritically: terms like diadochê, scholarchy, place-names like the Ptolemaeum or Palladium. In particular, the issue of leadership is in need of demystification. The orthodoxy, born of nineteenth- century concerns for direct filiation and spellbound by the myth-historical image of a catena aurea (‘golden chain’) running from Plato to Neoplatonists, subscribed to the idea that Antiochus not only heralded a return to dogmatism and the theory of forms, but that he was also- necessarily- an official heir in the Platonic dynasty. 68 Zumpt’s tabulation of the heads of Athenian schools was of crucial importance in the propagation of this canonical view. By including Antiochus as Academic scholarch, he converted hypothesis into fact. As an appendix to his seminal discussion on the Hellenistic schools and their continuity from Classical foundation to later Neoplatonism, he presents a continuous list of scholarchs which includes Antiochus. The table, which (literally) draws hasty conclusions from unconvinced reflections, was enormously influential (1843: 68). 69 Indeed, following in his footsteps a long list of historians of ancient philosophy, among them notably Zeller (1923: 3.1.619), Praechter (1926: 470), Lueder (1940: 3) and Luck (1953), all invested their analysis in the acceptance of this fabled continuity. 70 66 This ‘accusation’ is even more heavy-handed at Sextus PH 1.235. 67 For his pupils see Ind.Acad.35.8-10 and the unlikely Ind.Acad.34.6-16; for his relationship with Lucullus and Cicero, see Plutarch’s Lucullus 42.3, and Cicero’s Br.315, Nat.D.1.6 and Fin.5.1. For the embassy see Ind.Acad.34.36-7. 68 For the catena aurea see Damascius’ Vita Isidori apud Photius Bibl.242 and Marinus Vita Procli. For the theory of Ideas as finding a new champion in Antiochus, see Theiler 1964; Dillon 1997; and Donini 1982. The myth of continuity hounds the story of ancient philosophy right into the sands of Arabia: Michel Tardieu 1986 and 1987, and Ilsetraut Hadot’s 1987 and 1990 works have prolonged the Platonic chain into ninth-century Baghdad by suggesting that a band of wandering Platonists, exiled after Justinian’s reform of 529 CE, settled in Harran (Carrae) and founded an Academy that repackaged Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus for the Abbasid renaissance. See Lameer 1997 and van Bladel 2009 for the sensible mise au point. 69 He is clearly unsure about the official position of Antiochus, though he manages to convince himself by the time he pens the lineage on page 117. 70 For a review of nineteenth-century scholarship see Glucker 1978: 98-106. Dorandi 1991b: 1-20 condenses his reading of the Academic Index into a quick narrative of the scholarchy from Plato to Antiochus and he ends his short O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 104 Only recently, and building on the intuition of Brochard and Lynch as well as on the Herculanean papyri, the opposite view has taken hold. Our earliest source, Cicero, is very careful never to connect Antiochus, or his brother, to the scholarchate, and in fact, as we mentioned on the last page, constantly insists on the derelict state of the Academy (Glucker 1978: 103). The absence of any evidence linking Antiochus to the official ‘register’ of diadochê is however a question deserving further attention, not least because of the contested reading of the very corrupt Ind.Acad.34.1-6. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the context of the passage has been read in conjunction with the Ciceronian evidence to suggest that Antiochus’ διατριβή (‘study’ or ‘school’), inherited by his brother Aristus, is not identical with the Academy. Indeed, despite his many students and his ‘school,’ 71 Cicero’s anecdote of Antiochus lecturing in the Ptolemaeum in 79/8 and his resistance to calling him a διάδοχος (‘head’) convincingly severs the connection between that ‘school’ and the Academy. 72 There is yet another element suggesting Antiochus’ separation from the Platonic succession: he is consistently represented on the move. In the five years before his death in the East, perhaps around the time of the battle of Tigranocerta in 69 BCE, 73 he is travelling in Lucullus’ retinue, at times following him and at others perhaps on the move independently in an ambassadorial function. 74 He was also in Alexandria from 87 BCE, so he is in the Lucullus, until 79 BCE, when he is back in Athens teaching the young orator. And indeed, Fin.5.1 is one of the few occasions where we find him in Athens. His brother Aristus, who is with him in Alexandria appears to be based in Athens when Cicero is composing the Brutus, but is dead by the time the eponymous Republican visits in 44. 75 Even despite the indirect testimony of other Ciceronian passages and the Index, Antiochus’ prolonged absence from Athens would force the historian to take a very different view of his activity as head of the (or any) school. Aristus’ school, with its aristocratic patrons and its Stoicising brand of book with a set of tables on Zumpt’s model, including dates of key individuals and institutional successions at 1991b: 59-79. 71 Ind.Acad.35.1-10 72 Perhaps this was the vetus Academia. See Br.315 and 332, and Ac.1.14 with Glucker 1978: 102-6. 73 Plutarch, Luc.28.8. Sources agree that he died if not in Mesopotamia (Ind.Acad.34.39-42), at least in the East (Luc.61). 74 Ind.Acad.34.36-9; cf. also Plutarch Cicero 4.5and Aelian VH12.25. For his ambassadorial function see Rawson 1989. 75 As we may perhaps glean from the expression hospes et familiaris meus (‘a friend and guest of mine’) at Br.332. Cf. Plutarch Brutus 2 and 24. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 105 Platonism, endures for a few years before disappearing completely from the panorama of ancient philosophy. 76 Scholars unanimously proclaim the end of the skeptical Academy with Philo. And yet Ind.Acad.34.1-6 may tell a different story. The passage is clearly discussing a succession, in which a school is handed down to an anonymous character after Philo, and a list of pupils is then attached to that character. 77 This σχολή (‘school’) is emphatically not the διατριβή of Ind.Acad.35.2-3. If this diadochical inheritance does concern the Academy, as recent papyrological re-evaluations suggest, it is crucial to re-contextualize both Cicero’s claims that the Academy in Athens is a sedes orbata (‘an empty hall’) and his use of the word patrocinium in an institutional sense. Why, in other words, does Cicero consistently desist from all mention of the diadochê after Philo while the papyrus attributed to Philodemus extends the lineage beyond the princeps Academiae (‘head of the Academy’)? 78 Glucker, Dorandi and more cautiously Barnes agree that neither Antiochus nor his brother ever did head the Academy in the aftermath of Philo’s exile to Rome, the doctrinal schism, or his death. This reaction to nineteenth-century orthodoxy is justified on the basis of the Ciceronian (non- )evidence, outlined above, and the difficult col.33-6 of the Index. This text, carefully reconstructed by Mekler and Dorandi, has recently been subjected to a fresh papyrological survey which has found some significantly more persuasive solutions. Puglia’s article on the last two columns of the historia Academicorum offers important clarifications in three areas. The first concerns the verb died [ex] ato, read by Dorandi at 34.34. The verb designates official succession elsewhere in the Index but at this point it crucially lacks a subject. 79 Following on from the reconstruction in his contribution to Assent and Argument, Dorandi (1997: 103) suggests that, since neither Aristus nor Antiochus are its subject, behind this anonymity lies the official successor of Philo: the individual who, in other words, pushed the brothers into the Ptolemaeum. 80 Puglia conclusively put an end to the merry-go-round of hypotheses by an attentive examination of the papyrus itself: the second ‘ ’ is a misreading, and the ‘ ’ before the ‘-  ’ is in fact an ‘ ’ (2000: 22). His reconstruction is compelling: built around the presbe [u] ōn earlier at 34.36, and the conjecture [Athē] nēth [en] in the same line, it is die [gen] eto 76 Theomnestus of Naucratis is recorded as taking over in only one passage, Plutarch’s Brutus 24. He is also independently referenced as a Sophist in Eunapius’ Vitae Sophistarum 1.6. 77 Ind.Acad.34.6-16. 78 Fin.5.4, Nat.D.1.11 and Br.306. 79 For example at col.33.2, indicating that Philo succeeded Clitomachus. It is also found with this techincal meaning in Diogenes Laertius. 80 Why wouldn’t it make sense for Antiochus to be the subject, since this section seems to concern him is a mystery to me- as it is for Barnes 1989: 58. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 106 that is put forward as a likely candidate. The sentence is no longer about succession, but it describes Antiochus’ continued role as Athenian ambassador to Rome and to other allied cities. 81 The second point involves simply relocating the mysterious character to the beginning of col.34. Indeed, Philo is the subject of 33, and the first three lines of 34 as reconstructed by Mekler indicate someone obtaining the school from Philo. This subject cannot be Antiochus, whose διατριβή will be inherited by Aristus at 35.1-5, and who will return to lecture from the Ptolemaeum. Someone however clearly does succeed Philo in the σχολή; this someone either comes forward or is selected by Philo perhaps in 88 BCE, and is to be associated with the impossible word Maikios at 34.3. Puglia’s suggestion that it stands as the ethnonym of this unknown scholarch is perhaps the best, if at least safest, proposal (Ibid: 20-1). 82 Thirdly, the papyrologist makes a structural observation: the pupils listed at col.34.6-16 are not Antiochus’ but Philo’s. Since the former’s life is narrated at 34.33ff, it would be against the structural precepts of the rest of the Index to list his pupils before he becomes the formal subject of a section. This sensible observation has two major implications: it confirms the inference that the successor of Philo was not Antiochus and secondly, against the orthodox grain, it means that Antiochus’ pupils, subsequently inherited by Aristus, are the ones listed at 35.8-10 (Ibid: 24-5). 83 Three negative conclusions emerge from the papyrus: nothing is known about the list of names at 34.6-16, nothing can be learned about this mysterious scholarch, and nor is there a ‘trace’ of Aristus’ school after the 40s (Sedley 2003: 35). Only three of Antiochus’ ‘many’ pupils are mentioned by Philodemus, 84 and these three are protagonists of a doctrinal and geographical diaspora. Dio and Aristo, whom we meet in Alexandria, are never again connected with Athens. Dio is in fact sent on an embassy from Alexandria to Rome in 57 BCE, where he meets his untimely end as a guest of L. Lucceius. 85 Their stay in Alexandria after Antiochus’ visit has given rise in the past to much speculation about a Platonic Alexandrian school, linked to Eudorus, Potamo’s eclecticism and finally to the great commentary tradition (Dillon 81 The translation would run: ‘for most of his life, [Antiochus] never stopped travelling in an ambassadorial capacity from Athens to Rome and to the governors of the provinces.’ 82 Otherwise, we would have to deal with the presence of a morphologically Roman name in a first-century BCE diadochical list- a presence that would disturb most, if not all the assumptions underlining Graeco-Roman philosophical exchange. Notice that he keeps Dorandi’s punctuation. Mekler has Maikios start a new sentence. 83 The papyrus does not explicitly say that those Antiochian pupils ever were inherited by Aristus, except indirectly as he inherits the diatribê. 84 Col.35.6-7. 85 Cicero Cael.23-4 and 51-57. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 107 1997: 61; Barnes 1989: 57 rightly calls it a ‘fiction’). This fable of filiation rests on thin grounds, yet it captures the fragmentation of Antiochus’ followers, and it explains why Dio and Aristo, Alexandrians by birth, remained there. 86 This fits into the pattern, noticed by both Ferrary and lately Sedley (2003: 33), of Stoic and Academic centers flourishing in the hometowns of great thinkers, like Rhodes and Miletus. Cratippus, in Cicero’s admiring testimony, develops this aspect of the Antiochian legacy. In the first instance, he also has some difficulties in situating his practice in Athens. He teaches for very long periods of time in Mytilene, and in 44 BCE it is only Cicero’s intercession that allows him to settle in Athens with a grant of citizenship. 87 This trend of moving away from Athens is underscored by the strange expression defining those who followed Charmadas. Philodemus in fact calls them οἱ πλανωμένοι (‘the wanderers’) as if the brand of itinerant intellectuals was recognizable to his (Italian) readership. 88 Athens was evidently no longer understood to be the centre of Academic scholarship, and indeed the geography of philosophy in the first and second centuries BCE shows that this decentralization was already a reality in the second century and that philosophers moved fluidly around the Empire. This estrangement from Athens is paralleled by a gradual separation from the grounds of the Academy itself. The vexata quaestio of school property and the implications of its possession for leaders of the various schools have been exhaustively tackled by the paradigmatic studies of Lynch and Glucker. In terms of the grove of Akademos, the site of Plato’s garden and house, it is interesting to note two details: Charmadas is the last known Academic to teach there, 89 and Cicero, whose preface to the fifth book of De Finibus turns the Academy’s spatia (‘area’) into a memorial, is most certainly ‘the last piece of evidence, before the age of Proclus, for an Academic or Platonic philosopher having anything to do with the historic area of the Academy’ (Glucker 1978: 237). The very title ‘Academic’ is never used by second-century CE followers of Plato, partly because of the severed link between locality and philosophy. Another aspect of the diaspora- and probably an important stimulus to rethinking institutional labels- concerns doctrinal integrity. Indeed alongside Aristo, Cratippus is described by Philodemus as abandoning the Academy to become a Peripatetic. The Index’ story is corroborated by the De Officiis 86 Ind.Acad.35.7-8. 87 He is in Mytilene in 51 BCE (Tim.1). In 49 BCE he welcomes Pompey (Plutarch Pompey75) and from 48 BCE teaches Marcellus (Br.258). For the intercession see Plutarch Cicero 24. 88 Ind.Acad.34.36. 89 That is, if Valierus’ emendation of Fin.4.5 is allowed to stand. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 108 in which Cratippus is called a Peripatetic and the sole heir to the Platonic tradition in Athens. 90 Glucker has explained this move away from the Academy among the Antiochii 91 through Antiochus’ own evocative syncretism. Since Antiochus preached the unity of Peripatetics and Old Academics in what he defined as the ‘Old’ Academy, a number of his positions are characterized by Cicero as fully Peripatetic. Drifting in the opposite direction, Aenesidemus, an Academic and contemporary of Cicero’s, turned to Pyrrho and a more radical form of skepticism writing against the dogmatic inflection of current Academicism. 92 The vicissitudes of doctrinal affiliation in this period of the first century BCE suggest two conclusions. Firstly, with Glucker, we might say that the intellectual environment seemed to call for a ‘return to more authentic ancient positions’ (1978: 120). 93 In this context, a return to titles evoking founders of movements does more than underline the gradual move away from Plato’s home. Paradoxically, in fact, it claims a figurative return to origins: Antiochus looking to Plato and Aristotle, the ‘Old’ Academy, Aristo and Cratippus to Aristotle, Aenesidemus to Pyrrho. In this sense the expression Socratici et Platonici volumus esse, quoted above, inflects the modal volumus, emphasizing the etiological tendency of philosophy at the time. Secondly, however, the pattern is harnessed by Cicero himself for a particular end. Labeling Antiochian positions as Peripatetic, as he does in the ethical section of his speech in the Lucullus, or in his definition of books four and five of the De Finibus as ta peripatetika, and setting up a duality with Cratippus in the De Officiis carves out the philosophical inheritance of Plato into two, with the direct line of teachers occupying the Lyceum, while his own works inevitably remain the sole occupiers of Academic ground. Whatever we make of the reasons for this drift, it is impossible not to remark on the largely Roman support that Antiochus’ teachings cultivated and so to confirm the tendency we began to isolate above in relation to Clitomachus that Rome was emerging as an important centre for Academic thinking. Barnes’ list of ‘Roman connections’ is an eloquent enough testimony of the philosopher’s trans-cultural appeal. His intimacy with Lucullus turns into a veritable following, as Varro, Cicero and his cousins Quintus and Lucius, Piso and Brutus enjoy either a close personal relationship with the Platonist or simply share his doctrines (Barnes 1989: 60-62). 90 Ind.Acad.35.10-16. Glucker 1978: 113 inexplicably adds Dio to this list. 91 Or ‘pupils of Antiochus’ as they are called at Luc.70. 92 We will discuss Aenesidemus in relation to the skeptic-dogmatic controversy in part III. For a biographical overview see Declava Caizzi 1992; and Mansfeld 1995. 93 Aenesidemus apud Photius Bibl.212. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 109 Antiochus and Aristus, his brother, exemplify four important thematic patterns which seem to structure the narrative of the last generation of Academics and with which I will conclude the section. Two of these points are geographical, concerning firstly, the magnetic appearance of Rome on the horizon while Athens’ star dwindles, and secondly the demise of a sense of official school unity due to the significant expansion of intellectual networks eastwards and the multiplication of competing Academic voices within Athens itself. Thirdly, and related we seem to witness the disappearance of an institutionally backed position which was recognizably Academic. Thinkers like Antiochus, Philo and Aenesidemus develop new doctrines through a return to old names. Fourthly, the narrative of rupture and collapse must be viewed not merely as fact, but as a tendency which Cicero is committed to underline. The Index does in fact suggest continuity, however fragile, beyond Philo. Furthermore, the number of departures from the skeptical Academy underscores a moment of intense productivity and revision among Academics of Cicero’s generation, when the very label ‘school’ is undergoing a doctrinal and institutional re-evaluation. Antiochus is alternatively pushed out to the Lyceum and at other times to the Stoa, so that this period of intense reflection appears to amount to a flight from the Academy. Hellenistic philosophy as a whole was undergoing very similar changes. The diadochical lists for all schools in Diogenes Laertius end no later than the first century BCE- in terms of the Stoa for example, neither Cornutus nor Epictetus is present. 94 The same pattern is notably repeated in doxographies of authors later than that century: Seneca, Diogenes of Oenoanda, Plutarch and Sextus never refer to Stoic thinkers active after the last quarter of the first century BCE. This is certainly not to say that there were no philosophers left as the Republic emerged into Empire. The evidence is, on the contrary, strong for the continuation of philosophical activity in all the traditional schools, but this is carried out in smaller local philosophical networks and outside Athens. 95 What emerges is a new approach to writing the history of philosophical schools, linked to the way these schools are conceptualized. After the Mithridatic and the Civil Wars, which for Lynch, 94 The one exception is the appendix to the Pyrrhonist School that runs all the way to Sextus. Epigraphic evidence indicates official succession at Athens for the Epicureans and the Stoics into the second century CE, though there is still a gap around the age of Augustus. 95 See Diogenes Laertius 10.9 and 10.25 for the continuation of the Epicurean school; the commentary tradition for both Plato and Aristotle is fully underway with Imperial exponents like Thrasyllus, Eudorus, Ammonius and Alexander of Aphrodisias. For the situation of philosophy in the Late Republic see Rawson 1985: 282-97; and Beard 1986: 36-8. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 110 Glucker, Ferrary and Sedley, are the turning point for philosophy as an Athenian practice, 96 doxographers reflect on the history of philosophy as a completed development. Philodemus’ history reserves a very insignificant portion for Philo and Antiochus, relative to other figures; and like Diogenes’ vitae it tails off with the first century BCE. The history ends just when its interpretation begins. Andronicus of Rhodes undertakes his editorial work on Aristotle around that time, just as Thrasyllus is about to re-organize the Platonic corpus into tetralogies (Tarrant 1993; Barnes and Griffin 1997). Reading and interpreting the words of the ancients becomes the central modus operandi of philosophical writing, where both intellectual output and historical existence are reified and subjected to exegesis. As I have underlined above with respect to Cicero and the history of the Academy, it is paramount not to confuse what may be a manifestly historical development with the way in which it is presented. The number of gaps in our knowledge of that crucial century does not allow us to generalize about the extent to which philosophers as a group were witnesses to, or bearers of epochal transformations. Fragmentation, dispersal and decentralization are the structuring conditions of the narrative of the history of philosophy of that century in our earliest sources. But these principles do not necessarily result in a localized crisis after Mithridates leading to the ‘end’ of philosophy. Crucially, all these processes were already under way in the Academy after Carneades. Furthermore, on a correct reading of key sections, the Academic Index suggests that Cicero chooses to obscure the course of diadochical succession after Philo. In the same vein arguments derived from Philodemus, Diogenes and, for that matter, all the Stoic scholars named above, are simply ex silentio. Crisis and disappearance are suggestive motifs of the tale, as well as perhaps reflections of a new order. Lévy in yet another accomplished article reviewing the history of the skeptical Academy asserts that Cicero was fully aware of the challenges and risks that Philo’s legacy would meet in a world after Athens. Faced with this scenario, Cicero ‘took over the succession of the Academy in his own way’ (2010: 102). The aim of the present chapter was to contextualize Cicero’s claim to Academic leadership and its transfer to Rome to prepare for the study of how his ‘own way’ of appropriating the institution relied on and exploited the historiography of philosophy. In the opening section of the chapter, an excerpt from the doxographic finale of the Lucullus illustrated Cicero’s awareness of competing historiographical models shaping the field of philosophy and their significance for issues of doctrinal and institutional integrity. The contest over the systematization of 96 With exile comes the loss of libraries. Lynch 1971: 160-2 and 204-7; Glucker 1978: 373-9; Ferrary 1988: 437; and Sedley 2003: 34. O.Cappello, Part IIa Introduction 111 moral ends echoes the central opposition of the Academica between two histories of the Academy; however, it reveal with greater poignancy and clarity the critical relationship between the individual surveying the panorama of previous philosophical positions and his own philosophical orientation. Why this issue matters in the context of production of the Academica, both in terms of the historical period of intellectual history of Graeco-Roman antiquity and in terms of Cicero’s philosophical project is the concern of the rest of the chapter. I have shown that Cicero turns to the history of philosophy not simply to appropriate the foundational gesture of Plato and Aristotle, or to confirm the pattern of first- and second-century return to philosophical origins. Our author is writing in a period of institutional and doctrinal disarray, where thinkers in the Academy, competing over Carneades’ heritage, are pulling in different directions doctrinally as well as in their exodus from Athens and the grounds of the Academy. The siege of Athens, although not the event that ‘decentralized’ philosophical networks, undoubtedly played an important role in dispersing Plato’s school even if only for a decade. From the corrupt passages of the Index Academicorum the official story of the Academy continues beyond Philo, and yet Cicero’s plot draws to an end with the melancholy emptiness of the De Finibus’ halls. Or rather, it carries on otherwise. His philosophica reports Academics occupying new scholastic positions that are not Academic: Antiochus’ pupils who leaned on Peripatetic and Stoic theory are now Peripatetics or Stoic, while Cicero’s developing body of work indicates his original dissertation on epistemology as Academic and as the statement of Academic affiliation. The Academica is concerned with Cicero’s position in Academic history as well as the Academica’s position in the history of philosophy. The main body of Part II will explore the ways in which this positioning depends on historiography, and how, through it, it develops an identity for Ciceronian philosophy as practice and theory. O.Cappello, Part IIb 112 Part IIb The Pedigree of Doubt Ciceronian Essays in the Historiography of Philosophy Das Gespräch, das wir sind. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutik im Rückblick. 1 L’histoire de la philosophie, c’est terrible, on n’en sort pas facilement. Y substituer, comme vous dites, une sorte de mise en scène, c’est peut-être une bonne manière de résoudre le problème. Une mise en scène, cela veut dire que le texte écrit va être éclairé par de tout autres valeurs, des valeurs non-textuelles (du moins au sens ordinaire) : substituer à l’histoire de la philosophie un théâtre de la philosophie, c’est possible. Gilles Deleuze, L’île déserte. Textes et entretiens 1953-74. 2 1. Introduction The Lucullus and the first Academic Book- as well as the Catulus, as far as reconstructions agree- instantly plunge the reader into a historical dimension. The opening vignette of the second edition centers on an exchange between the protagonists, Cicero, Varro and Atticus, on the place of philosophy and history in the landscape of Roma intellectual discourse. Cicero criticizes his soon-to- be adversary by developing an opposition between writing philosophy and writing works in a historical vein. Whatever Varro’s achievements in giving Romans a better idea of their place in history and a better sense of their identity through treatises on history, law, religion and literature, Cicero considers his socio-institutional anthropology as ‘enough to stimulate the learner, but too little to give him a complete education.’ 3 In asking Varro why his interests exclude philosophy, Cicero uses a distinctive periphrasis to describe his own philosophical project as built around ‘that ancient philosophy descended from Socrates.’ 4 This expression indicates the fundamental etiological aspect of Cicero’s own philosophy, which, anticipating the debate between Philo’s and Antiochus’ disagreement over the Academy’s legacy, opens with Socrates and his foundational imprint on that institution and on Ciceronian 1 2007: 140. 2 2002: 199. 3 Ad impellendum satis, ad edocendum parum. Ac.1.9. 4 Philosophiam veterem illam a Socrate ortam, Ac.1.3. O.Cappello, Part IIb 113 philosophy. Varro’s response to the question- and Cicero’s reaction to it- addresses the topic of the history of Latin philosophical publications, hijacked by artless Epicureans, and more generally the history of Graeco-Roman translation. 5 The preface to the first Academic Book clearly associates writing philosophy historically and writing history philosophically even before the debate opens onto Philo and Antiochus’ interpretations of Academic history. The preface to the Lucullus weaves an even more intricate web of historical elements into which the self-same controversy is introduced. In what has become known as the laudatio Luculli (‘eulogy of Lucullus’) Cicero presents a biographical narrative of his protagonist, interweaving military and political history, organized around anecdotes, he produces an apology that examines the pedigree of Greek intellectual activity in the Middle Republic and finally he introduces Lucullus’ telling of the Alexandrian episode, through Hortensius’ desire to hear a more thorough investigation of the issues discussed ‘yesterday’ (heri), in the Catulus. 6 All three prefatorial topics concern the quest for revision, be it of a life, of a period in history or of a debate; all three elements identify telling a story as a site for contestation and negotiation, a site within which and through which the philosophical subject-matter will develop. The aim of Part II is to study Cicero as a ‘historical philosopher.’ The term is borrowed from Campbell’s Truth and Historicity where it is used to describe a philosopher who operates ‘with a strong sense of his or her own situatedness in history,’ engaging in a ‘historically orientated task whose point is precisely to enrich the self-understanding of their own historical situation’ (1992: 9 and 10). The author was reacting to the devaluation of historiographical elements in philosophical learning and practice brought about by analytic philosophy. This tradition viewed doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy as entirely different and irreconcilable activities. Famously, Quine remarked that ‘there are two sorts of people interested in philosophy, those interested in philosophy and those interested in the history of philosophy’ (quoted in MacIntyre 1984: 39-40). His attitude reflected a concern that progress in philosophy proper could only happen through logic, and that history and philosophy depended on their own methods of inquiry and had their own objectives 5 Ac.1.5-8 and Ac.1.10. 6 'Equidem' inquit Hortensius 'feci plus quam vellem; totam enim rem Catule Lucullo integram servatam oportuit. et tamen fortasse servata est; a me enim ea quae in promptu erant dicta sunt, a Lucullo autem reconditiora desidero (‘Indeed, I did more than I wanted to, said Hortensius, for, my dear Catulus, I should have left the whole matter for Lucullus to explain. And perhaps I did reserve the whole subject for Lucullus, for I spoke only those things that came to mind and I look to Lucullus for the more technical details’), Luc.10. The comparative reconditiora clearly strengthens the continuity between the two dialogues and has created not inconsiderable issues to reconstructions of the Catulus, with commentators scandalized by the possibility that different versions of the same speech were offered. Cf. Schäublin 1995: lvii and Mansfeld 1997: 51-3 and 65. O.Cappello, Part IIb 114 and rationales. While historical inquiry into philosophy aimed at ‘contextual understanding,’ at studying the history of ideas, how these emerged from particular contexts, the impact they had on them and how they changed over time, philosophy focused on the singular, eternally-valid truth, produced as the solution to contemporary philosophical problems (Piercey 2003: 781; and Campbell 1992: 8-9). The debate about philosophy and its past, although considered nonsensical by many 7 or merely symptomatic of the growing disparity between so called ‘continental’ philosophy and the philosophy coming out of the Anglo-American academy (Gracia 1992: 22), produced a series of important reflections aimed at exploring and justifying positive uses of history in philosophy, defining this activity as ‘historical philosophy’ or ‘doing philosophy historically.’ The various models put forward by the studies on this problem have shaped the argument of Part II, providing not just inspiration for how to frame the issue, but also a methodology which molded my intuitions about the importance Cicero attributes to philosophy’s past in his own epistemological disquisition in the Academica. 8 As the brief extracts quoted above illustrate, the author exhibits a keen interest in the search for the singular eternal truth, while also proving committed to exploring the plural tradition of philosophical inquiry stretching back to Socrates. However, the relevance of modern discussions to Cicero’s case goes beyond investigating how the Roman philosopher looks to the past to solve philosophical problems. The challenges Cicero’s philosophica faced were also of a historical nature: philosophy was a discipline with a history that was Greek, and for Cicero’s translative project to succeed his works needed to link that history to Rome. In this sense the stakes of his historical philosophy were significantly greater and leaned on his rhetorical talents, as the tradition needed to be co-opted to create an institutional identity for philosophy that would justify its introduction into the Roman intellectual landscape, as well as shape the way philosophy was going to be done in this new setting. In studying how Cicero does philosophy historically, we will keep both the philosophical and the historical orientation in mind and argue that for Cicero there is no separation between history and 7 Rée 1988: 47, for example, thinks that ‘“history or philosophy” is a false dilemma.’ 8 The edited volumes by Rorty, Schneewind and Skinner 1984, by Hare 1988 and two special numbers of Archivio di filosofia 1954 and 1974 are the foundations of the debate, along with works by Passmore 1965, Gueroult passim, Campbell 1992, Gracia 1992 and Piercey 2003. Scholars of ancient philosophy have generally not participated in the debate, except for Frede’s and Burnyeat’s contributions to Rorty, Schneewind and Skinner 1984. Significantly, both discuss skeptical philosophy. O.Cappello, Part IIb 115 philosophy and that for his brand of philosophy, thinking philosophically means thinking through the history of philosophy. Resting on a comparativist methodology, the argument will first examine the interdependence between systematicity (philosophy) and historicity (history of philosophy) in the Academica to then study how Cicero handles the controversy over the legacy of the Academy. I will suggest that, for the author, presenting two competing models of how the Academy developed since Socrates and Plato constitutes a way into exploring the opportunities that doing philosophy historically offers: namely, the creation of a community of thinkers who delineate the discipline’s field, formulating problems and inspiring approaches to them. This is a live tradition that is fundamentally useful to its inheritors. In the third section we will take a step back and look at how later Academics have written about the history of the Academy. This comparison will highlight Cicero’s originality in presenting the history of skepticism as the history of philosophy, a sophisticated strategy for a theorist founding Roman philosophy through his Academic writing. Over the fourth, fifth and sixth sections, I will argue that the shape of his history legitimates a style of philosophizing centered on the individual, that this subjective engagement takes the form of debate and that community, both past and present, plays an important part in the identity of this new practice. 2. Aitia: Philosophy’s Parallel Itineraries The first step in the rhetorical analysis of Cicero’s historiography is to study its connection to epistemology and show how the author understands history and epistemology to be linked as philosophy’s aition, or point of origin, as well as the discipline’s keystone. The Academica, in other words, presents the foundations of philosophizing as a double task, of looking into its historical origin, and of examining the conceptual basis of thinking, its first element: perception. The two topics reflect the above mentioned differentiation between philosophy as system and philosophy as historically situated practice, and reflecting on their correlation, problematised by Cicero in his judgment on Varro’s corpus quoted above, constitutes a fundamental aspect of the text. I will argue that this attention to the foundations of philosophy that Cicero sees in epistemology and historiography accomplishes two major objectives: firstly, it positions the Academica as a primary text in his philosophica and secondly it justifies the necessity for philosophy, in this first work of the series, as the groundwork for life, in the ethical, social and technological sense. O.Cappello, Part IIb 116 Epistemology is presented in both Lucullus and Cicero’s speech as the cornerstone of ethical, metaphysical and technological intellectual practices. Again and again, the reader is reminded of the impossibility of conceptualizing human life, even the divine, in all its social, political, economical and artistic dimensions without laying down firm epistemological roots. Sense-perception and its connection with judgment understood in its fundamental criteriological sense, is emphatically constructed as the point of origin of an itinerary that leads from the empirical to the abstract. The term ‘itinerary’ is borrowed from Lévy’s interpretation of Luc.19-40, where the critic sees the passage as constructing a ‘véritable pyramide de la connaissance’ and as an ‘itinéraire,’ a movement, leading from sensation to sapientia (‘wisdom’) (1992: 164). Indeed, Lucullus transitions into the epistemological part of his speech with a proclamation that could serve as slogan for the whole of the Academica: ordiamur a sensibus (‘let us begin from the senses’). 9 Once he has located the core of the dispute, he rapidly proceeds to develop the axiomatic importance of sense-perception for human intellect and society. Not only is reliance on sensation key to the composition of concepts, but also to the development of ‘conceptions’ and so of memory and ‘technical ability’ (ars). The conceptual network expands, maiora nectens (‘linking greater percepts’), to include ‘virtues’ (virtutes), steadfastness (constantia) and ‘wisdom’ (sapientia), which he defines as ‘the art of living’(ars vivendi), and so the ethical resolution of the ‘good man’ (vir bonus). All these notions are linked to the social values of ‘trust’ (fides), aequitas (‘justice) and the conception and logic of laws. 10 Community begins to participate in the architecture of Lucullan thought alongside the individual, once the value of sense-perception coordinates two seemingly remote domains: ‘impulse’ (appetitio), which motivates the individual to action and to fulfill his ‘duty’ (officium), and research, enquiry, investigation, which organizes the principles of logic and the mechanics of contemplation. 11 From Luc.27 to Luc.39 the progression is re-presented and amplified with the insertion of technical concepts like decretum (‘principle’), iudicium (‘judgment’), mens (‘mind’), πρόληψις (‘conception,’ an alternative to ἐννοία), κατάληψις (‘comprehension’ or ‘grasp’), nota (‘criterion’), συγκατάθεσις (‘assent,’ translated as approbation/adsensio) and finally οἰκείωσις (‘the process by which an animal looks to appropriate what is suitable to its nature’). The section provides a specular 9 Luc.19. 10 Luc.21, Luc.22 and Luc.23. I prefer Brittain’s 2006 ‘conception’ for notitiae, the Latin translation of ἐννοίαι. The Stoics use the term to describe the mechanism by which relationality operates, and which amounts to the very apparatus of rationality. That is: how notions and impressions are set in relation to each other especially through the important structure of consequentiality and/or compatibility. See Adv.Math.8.275-7. 11 Luc.25-6. O.Cappello, Part IIb 117 repetition of the sequentiality of the argument encountered so far, highlighting the significance of form and of the interconnection of the series. 12 Progress is the constant in this passage, harmonizing logical-syntactical movement with the ever-evolving complexity of intellectual capacity itself. There is a high incidence of logical connectives, rhetorical questions and factual conditionals that structure the intense development of Lucullus’ Stoic epistemology. The passage could in fact be organized into two halves, with Luc.27-39 fleshing out the outline sketched in Luc.19-26. Concepts like technical ability, memory and mind, for example, which were inserted early on in the series, are reconstructed later through the lens of assent, nature and dogma to play the basic structural role of the senses themselves. 13 These in turn constitute the very possibility of philosophy, morality, life, judgment and truth. Lucullus insists on the systematicity of his Stoic vision, pointing not only to the interdependence of each element, but also to perception as the stable foundation of the structure. Indeed, he returns to sensation and the necessary distinction between true and false percepts at every juncture to reaffirm the bond between keystone and edifice, origin and conclusion. The argument proceeds according to two interlinking patterns. The first, at Luc.19-40, is characterized by circularity. The second half, as discussed above, covers the same ground as the first, reproducing the terminology and expressions, mirroring the very movement of the argument and is punctuated with continuous summarizations and clarifications. Accepting and trusting the truth in sensation is considered on several occasions not just the beginning, but also the end of the process of concept-building: notitiae both arise from sensation and the perception of similarity 14 and they enable sensation and perception. 15 Later on sense-perception, impulse, reason and research are also shown to be part of a circular system. ‘Reason,’ Lucullus observes, ‘is the starting point for inquiry, reason 12 So for example he goes over this part of the sequence: Sed haec etiam secuntur, nec memoriam sine adsensione posse constare nec notitias rerum nec artes (‘but this also follows: there is no memory without assent, nor can there be conception of objects or technical knowledge), Luc.38. 13 Mens enim ipsa quae sensuum fons est atque etiam ipsa sensus est (‘for the mind itself is the source of the senses and itself a sensation’), Luc.30. quocirca et sensibus utitur et artes efficit quasi sensus alteros (‘for this reason [the mind] uses the senses and also employs bodies of technical knowledge almost as a second set of senses’), Luc.31. 14 Quo e genere nobis notitiae rerum imprimuntur (‘from which class of percept conceptions of things are imprinted upon us’), Luc.21. Mens... cetera autem similitudinibus construit, ex quibus efficiuntur rerum notitiae (‘the mind synthesizes some other percepts according to their similarity, out of which arise conceptions’), Luc.30. 15 Sine quibus nec intellegi quicquam nec quaeri disputarive potest (‘without which it is not possible to either investigate or argue about anything), Luc.21. Eo cum accessit ratio argumentique conclusio rerumque innumerabilium multitudo, tum et perceptio eorum omnium apparet et eadem ratio perfecta his gradibus ad sapientiam perveni (‘when reason, proof and many countless facts have been added, then both the perception of those facts becomes apparent and reason itself, perfected through each of these stages, reaches wisdom’), Luc.30. O.Cappello, Part IIb 118 which perfects virtue since it is itself strengthened by inquiry.’ 16 And, in turn, ethics, the ‘study of virtues’ (cognitio virtutum), is proof of the truth of sensation since in ethics alone does that kind of stable and unchangeable type of knowledge called sapientia exist. 17 Lucullus explicitly borrows ἀπόδειξις, the Greek term for ‘syllogistic demonstration,’ to describe the connection and the enabling function of the epistemically valid sensation. Both the beginning of investigation, which is the most sophisticated process implicating reason, and the finality of perceiving and comprehending is contained within reason. 18 The return to sense-perception is thus a structuring device of Lucullus’ presentation, as well as the mechanics of the system that presentation describes. The second pattern concerns forward movement or progressive serialization. Stylistic features, like the syntactical-logical armature of the piece, were shown above as mimetically reproducing the philosophical construction of categories and concepts. The frequency of verbs like sequi (‘follow’), amplecti (‘to include’) and the gloss on series 19 all underscore the thematization of progress already present in the figure of movement implicit in initium (‘beginning’/‘premise’) and exitus (‘end’/‘conclusion’). Sense-perception is the point of origin for an ever-developing number of worldly and intellectual practices: ‘craftsmen’ (artifices), start from firm percepts in their creative work; good men undergo difficulties on the basis of sapientia; philosophy progresses through reason founded on comprehension. 20 Lucullus introduces a hierarchy of individuals whose practices imply varying degrees of epistemic complexity: the everyman, who depends on sensory impressions to make his way through the world, is then replaced by the technician (artifex), who has an acute understanding of the use of those senses. Finally, he moves onto philosophers, at first through the abstract figure of the vir bonus grappling with such important matters as virtutes and sapientia. His activity however is not intellective, but active: it is his behavior, which is under scrutiny. Through the prism of dialectic in section 26, Lucullus moves onto philosophy and its practitioners, whom he associates to contemplation, definition and argumentation. Antipater, Carneades and Antiochus come onto the 16 Quaerendi initium ratio attulit, quae perfecit virtutem, cum esset ipsa ratio confirmata quaerendo (‘reason is both the starting point of investigation- reason which perfects virtue, when itself it is strengthened by investigation’), Luc.26. 17 Luc.23. 18 Sic et initium quaerendi et exitus percipiundi et comprendendi tenetur (‘thus [reason] is the beginning of investigation and the final result of perceiving and of apprehending’), Luc.26. 19 Luc.21. Mirrored at Luc.31 with mens as subject. 20 Luc. 20-2, Luc.23 and Luc. 27. O.Cappello, Part IIb 119 scene arguing about decreta and the skeptic’s relation to them. Thereafter, the Stoic architecture of the general’s belief is portrayed in its technical uniform, and against the backdrop of debates against other philosophers. 21 These intersecting patterns, which position sense-perception at the heart of Lucullus’ speech, are only two among many other strategies that confirm the foundational importance of epistemology. So for example, the passage adopts a destructive tone in contraposition to the constructivism examined so far, which elevates its conceptual system-building as the only strategy of resistance against the abyss of skeptical relativism and doubt. To stray into uncertainty is not simply a matter of error; it is a negation of all that is human. 22 Denying the validity of sense-perception undoes the whole structure of sensory, intellectual, social and metaphysical experience, 23 and it rejects the divinity of the world and of natura, who ‘as if by craft has first created every animal, then most importantly man: the power that is present in the senses, the way in which perceptions first strike us, then in response to this stimulus impulse follows and finally we direct our senses to perceive these objects.’ 24 A stark moral language is used to arraign the skeptic’s position, defining it as ‘depravity’ (pravitas) and as generative of the kind of conceptual chaos (vitium) that would give rise to betrayal of friends and state. 25 This register complements the use of light and darkness to juxtapose the activity of skeptics and dogmatics: the system explicated by Lucullus generates light, not only as an organizing principle of ethical life and logic, 26 but also as a methodology to confront the problematic 21 Luc.35-6 introduces the Carneadean probabile (‘the probable’) and the concept of verisimilitude. At Luc.32and 34 he had already intimated a distinction between uncertainty and non-comprehensibility that distinguished two movement within the skeptical Academy. Two interesting elements to note: firstly, Greek as the lingua franca of philosophy is here introduced substantially for the first time. Specifically, it is the Graeci who define the objects of Lucullus’ theory (Luc.37 and 38). Secondly, a sophisticated intellectual strategy is employed to pursue the defamation of Epicureans, whose founder appears early on, Luc.19, in the context of everyday sensory experiences. 22 Ergo ii qui negant quicquam posse comprendi haec ipsa eripiunt vel instrumenta vel ornamenta vitae, vel potius etiam totam vitam evertunt funditus ipsumque animal orbant animo (‘therefore those who deny that anything can be grasped snatch from us the very instruments and equipment of life, or in fact they overthrow the whole of life itself from its foundations and deprive the sentient being of soul’), Luc.31. 23 Ita neque color neque corpus nec veritas nec argumentum nec sensus neque perspicuum ullum relinquitur (‘thus neither color, nor body, truth, proof, sensation or anything perspicuous is left’), Luc.34. 24 Quasi artificio natura fabricata esset primum animal omne, deinde hominem maxime, quae vis esset in sensibus, quem admodum prima visa nos pellerent, deinde adpetitio ab his pulsa sequeretur, tum sensus ad res perspiciendas intenderemus (‘it had been fashioned’) Luc.30. Proof of this design is again a reiteration of the mechanics of transforming visa, perceptions, into percepts which the mind assimilates and either stores (memoria), or uses for the purpose of constructing notitiae rerum, perceptio, ratio and sapientia, out of which artes are also made and philosophy is strengthened for the creation of virtue, Luc.31. 25 Luc.26-7. 26 Lux lumenque vitae (‘light and illumination of life’), Luc.26. O.Cappello, Part IIb 120 physical make-up of the world. 27 The metaphorical coordination of color and epistemology is continuously referenced throughout the following sections, in particular Luc.58-62 where Lucullus concludes his case dealing with a peroratio ‘fondée sur le symbolisme de la lumière et des ténèbres.’ 28 Lucullus brilliantly expands and develops the standard anti-Skeptic charge of apraxia, to include the impossibility of action without trusting senses and of the whole edifice of human and cosmic life. 29 Detailed study of Lucullus’ speech has shown how in terms of ontology, of logic and of ethics- from the perspective of all three branches of philosophy- sense-perception is the critical grounding of the discipline as a whole; it is the grounding of the way humans relate to technology, nature and each other. Concern for a correct epistemology therefore implies not simply a robust philosophical theory, but a moral integrity and a productive existence in the world. The same position is taken up by Cicero in his response, in which he not only trades in the same representational economy of his adversary, but he crucially replaces probabilitas (‘probability’) for certitude while keeping the Lucullan conceptual framework intact. 30 The scope of this technical debate about epistemological issues is anything but technical. Philosophy-as-epistemology is the necessary groundwork for life in all its dimensions, and both Roman philosophers are committed to this attitude. Locating senses in intellection is in fact continuously represented as the axiom upon which all of philosophy is based, all of its parts and its mechanisms, and as the principle to which it constantly returns. Essentially, the debate about epistemology is characterized as a debate about evaluative statements, about what the criteria for making judgments are. Iudicium, the construction of boundaries between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable are the focal points that emerge, as we have just seen, from the debate between Cicero and Lucullus. 31 The issue does not simply revolve around action, and what makes it possible, it evolves around the value of existence as a whole. 32 27 Luc.30. 28 He returns to arguments he dismissed at the opening of his piece ‘about the bent oar’ (de remo inflexo) and ‘about the dove’s neck’ (de collo columbae), Luc.19. Luc.61. Lévy 1992: 167. 29 Luc.25 and Luc.37 refer to apraxia, or the inability to act. 30 Luc.99-111. The skeptical practical criterion, probabile, is developed at Luc.98-105, reacting to Luc.32-6. Over Luc.106-111 we see the same sophisticated rational mechanisms enabled: memory, technical ability, assent, we also see agriculture, navigation, philosophy. 31 The term iudicium appears twenty-four times throughout the text, and is distributed evenly between Cicero’s and Lucullus’ speech. Lucullus insists on this concept as one of two constituent parts of philosophy (etenim duo esse haec maxima in philosophia, iudicium veri et finem bonorum, (‘there are two axiomatic principles in philosophy: the criterion of truth and moral ends’), Luc.29) and he makes decretum the formula for providing the lex veri rectique O.Cappello, Part IIb 121 The two philosophers are keen to provide a solid foundation for the social, political and moral life that they already inhabit, making sense of it through their epistemological position. The threat of chaos, of the upheaval of life is the adversary of both their positions; 33 both their conclusions are entirely concerned with social judgment and perfectly illustrate the axiological dimension of the epistemological controversy. There is in fact a powerful dramatic-historical dimension to their argument: in Lucullus’ eyes, Cicero’s political involvement is made possible through knowledge: he acted against the Catilinarians on facts he publicly swore to have found out. 34 Establishing a link with adsensio, 35 Lucullus speaks to Cicero’s social standing, his auctoritas, which he himself would lessen by removing the concrete foundations of his actions. 36 His response to Lucullus comes at the end of his own speech, with the affirmation that, as Rome’s maiores knew, public prosecution is not a matter for scientia. The whole practice of public iudicium, as paradigm for reasoned judgment in all areas of life, is a matter for arbitration, of doing one’s best with the available evidence. 37 Epistemology also occupies a primary historical position: as a historical event in the drama of the dialogue, and as the historical origin of philosophy. Cicero and Lucullus’ respective positions are not the only philosophical perspectives differentiated by the contentious possibility of distinguishing true from false perceptions. The whole of Hellenistic philosophy is established around that particular epistemological distinction. Zeno and Arcesilaus’ debate is nothing but a dispute over the conditions enabling perception, and from this dispute Cicero derives the position of Carneades, as well as Metrodorus and Philo. 38 Similarly, Lucullus identifies in that controversy between the two pupils of Polemo, Zeno and Arcesilaus, the starting point for the progress of Hellenistic philosophy as a whole, (‘the law regulating truth and right action’) as the ‘stable, fixed, decreed’ (stabile, fixum, ratum) parameter for socio- ethical life, Luc.27. The term is employed slightly differently, and in a non-technical sense in Cicero’s speech, where it represents practical iudicia (‘judgments’) made on the basis of reasonable and probable evaluations. 32 Axiology perfectly encapsulates the ambition of the Lucullus’ treatment of sense-perception. Formally conceived of as a philosophical sub-discipline in the twentieth century with its roots in Brentano’s theory of judgment, it connects, in Hart’s 1971: 29 words, reflections on ‘the conditions of [man’s] life, the structure of reality, the order of nature and man’s place in it.’ 33 Note the constant return to eversio (‘overthrow’) and perversio (‘distortion’), Luc.31, Luc.53, Luc.58, Luc.99. 34 Iuratus dixeris ea te comperisse (‘you swore that you found those facts out’), Luc.62. 35 Sublata enim adsensione omnem et motum animorum et actionem rerum sustulerunt; negabis esse rem ullam quae cognosci, comprehendi, percipi possit (‘once assent is taken out of the picture they remove any movement of the soul or action of the body; you will deny that there is anything which can be perceived, comprehended, assented to’), Luc.62. 36 Vide quaeso etiam atque etiam ne illarum quoque rerum pulcherrimarum a te ipso minuatur auctoritas (‘I implore you to take care that your authority derived from that most glorious of events be not diminished by your own words’), Luc.62. 37 Luc.147. 38 Haec est una contentio (‘this is the whole dispute’), Luc.78. O.Cappello, Part IIb 122 and the theoretical origin of all subsequent Academic philosophizing. 39 Just so Varro, despite the strong Antiochian tenor of his historical analysis which characterizes Stoicism as nothing other than a verbal costume change for Platonism, introduces Zeno as innovative in a single area: the interaction between natura and sensus that is the theory of visum (known in Stoicism as κατάληψις, ‘kataleptic impression’). 40 Epistemic legitimacy is not only the key to the branching of Hellenistic philosophy, but also to the birth of the Academy. The contest over the Socratic and Platonic legacy is effectively a dispute over either philosopher’s stand on certainty. Cicero identifies in ironia (‘irony’) the continuity between master and pupil. Plato’s works continue in the refusal to affirm certain knowledge because they share the same epistemological foundation of Socrates’ teaching. 41 Thereafter, Arcesilaus, Carneades and later Cicero pursue this philosophy of doubt. The founder of the New Academy, in fact, gave new breadth to this doubt by removing the one axiom that Socrates proposed, denying even knowing that he knew nothing. 42 However, both Varro and Lucullus prefer to separate out Socratic dubitatio (‘doubting’) from the Platonic heritage as a whole. Ironia is a methodological position, constructed to focus on questions of ethics and to pursue an educative agenda. 43 Plato on the other hand discontinues what is merely a rhetoric and constructs a disciplina (‘academic field’), described as perfectissima (‘most perfectly constructed’), and equivalent to an ars, an ordo (‘arrangement’) and a descriptio (‘proper disposition’). 44 The aitia of both systems, the ‘dogmatic’ and the ‘skeptic,’ are selected on epistemological grounds: Socrates is the point of origin for Ciceronian philosophizing, translating into the Hellenistic Arcesilaus, while the positivist reception of Plato defines the genetic material for Varro and Lucullus who assign to Zeno the role of Hellenistic aition. While epistemology enables theory-construction, serving as the keystone for the system, it also represents the privileged access point to the beginning of philosophical practice that is to the 39 Listing in series Lacydes, Carneades, Clitomachus, Hagnon, Charmadas, Melanthius Rhodius, Metrodorus and Philo- a catalogue held together by each member’s relationship to the position of Arcesilaus. Luc.16. 40 Primum de sensibus ipsis quaedam dixit nova (‘in the first place he offered some original thoughts on perception’), Ac.1.40. 41 Luc.74. 42 Ac.1.45. 43 Nihil adfirmet ipse, refellat alios (‘[Socrates] affirms nothing himself, but he refutes others’), Ac.1.16. Socrates autem de se ipse detrahens in disputatione plus tribuebat iis quos volebat refellere (‘however Socrates, stopping himself from proposing anything in debate, used to give more space to his interlocutors whom he wanted to refute’), Luc.15. 44 Luc.15 and Ac.1.17. O.Cappello, Part IIb 123 beginning of philosophical discussion. Disputing epistemology is the origin of the history of philosophy, and a return to such controversy is the generative moment for institutional and intellectual movements. The Lucullus and the first book of the Academici Libri, in coordinating interest in epistemology and history of philosophy, are about revisiting origins, returning to the foundations of philosophy as system, and philosophy as institution. 45 As for Aristotle and Hegel, the history of philosophy is for Cicero equivalent to philosophy itself: just as Hellenistic systems depend on epistemic standards as their origin so for him philosophy itself depends on its history to take place. In other words, the disciplina philosophiae is made possible by epistemic criteria, and is only possible within a historical framework. 3. Rediscovering Progress: Historical Models in Cicero’s Philosophy Discussing the logic of the dual aitia in Cicero’s Academica, we further elaborated the distinction between philosophy proper, or philosophy as a conceptual system regulated by its own rules, and the history of philosophy, or the drama of ideas that have an historical existence, being publicly voiced and debated, and ultimately undergoing change. Following on from this distinction, the present section looks more closely at the historiography of philosophy. The first task is to squarely confront the challenges of writing philosophy historically by examining different approaches in the historiographic tradition, linking what I believe are the most perceptive and useful outlooks for our study of the Academica, which include Aristotle, Plato, Hegel and Martial Gueroult. These thinkers not only provide critical stages in the story of positive approaches to historical philosophy, but, by sketching out a historiography of the history of philosophy around these figures, important themes and features of this particular approach to philosophy will come to light which will enrich our understanding of Cicero’s interest in it. Indeed, the section will converge on those passages of the Lucullus and of the first of the Academic Books in which the author debates competing versions of the history of the Academy. 46 Ultimately, the argument justifies Cicero’s historical method in terms of the way it provides Rome with a live philosophical tradition in written form, which has a direct use in the practice of philosophizing and which hinges on the balance between subjective response of the reader and the objective aim of getting closer to truth. 45 Scholarship has so far done little to explore the issue of how exactly the Academica’s debate works as the starting point for Ciceronian philosophica and whether Cicero himself attributed to this work a positional pre-eminence. For discussions of how Cicero uses this text as an anchor for his ethical works see Douglas 1965 and MacKendrick 1989. 46 Luc.13-16 and 72-8; Ac.1.19-42 and 44-6. O.Cappello, Part IIb 124 The historiographic sections of the Academica pit two visions of how Academic thought developed. 47 Lucullus and Varro, who speak for Antiochus, see a break in that school’s history at the point at which Arcesilaus in the third century BCE professed his radical philosophy of doubt that ostensibly claimed a return to Socrates, but in fact halted the doctrinal progression that the Academy had undertaken under Plato, Aristotle and later Polemo. Hence, Lucullus and Varro speak of two Academies, the Old and the New. Cicero, however, only sees one. The emphasis is on continuity, on the skeptical outlook as the unifying features of Academic philosophy since the time of Socrates. Critics agree that this is one of two disagreements that caused the rift between Antiochus and Philo, the template for the Academica. 48 Selecting this schismatic moment as the channel through which to assimilate Academic philosophy into the Roman intellectual world is a puzzling choice. Cicero could have grafted his philosophica into a different historical context, one where Philo and Antiochus were in agreement and arguing against Stoics- a disputational world of simpler geometries. However, his selection picks crisis and the contest over historical legitimation. Indeed, among the reasons why Cicero chooses to introduce his late philosophical works with such emphasis on historical legitimation is, I argue, that he wants his readership to think historically about the institution and the academic discipline he is introducing to Rome. Pluralism is at the heart of the author’s philosophical project. Canonical historiography of philosophy celebrates Aristotle as the first to endow philosophy with a historical texture. As Berti argues, Aristotle anticipates Hegel in one fundamental way: he shows that ‘la storia della filosofia non è fine a se stessa, ma è uno strumento imprescindibile per la ricerca della verità, cioè per la costruzione della stessa filosofia’ (Berti 1986: 103). History is part of the mechanism through which the Peripatetic develops his ontology and makes sense of the practice of philosophizing both synchronically and diachronically. The first book of the Metaphysics illustrates a key component of this mechanism: the discovery of the four causes is described as a 47 This historical orientation is evident from the ‘title’ itself, as the author always thinks of it as a foray into Academic thinking. As discussed in Part I, this is virtually unique in the Ciceronian corpus, as perhaps Cicero himself recognized. For the earliest references to the title, cf. Att.13.12.3 [320] and Att.13.16.1 [323]: Ἀκαδημικὴν [σύνταξιν], also de Academiciis at Att.13.13.1 [321]. 48 See Ac.1.13 and Luc.13: both conversations start with the contested formulation of two Academies, with the second taking shape in the wake of Arcesilaus’ provocation. Commentators all agree that one of the two areas of contention between Philo and his pupil Antiochus was precisely this issue of the continuity or disruption in Academic tradition. Brittain 2001 is the most extensive evaluation of this issue yet. But from Mette to Barnes, from Tarrant and Lévy to Glucker there is a concerted effort to isolate and contextualize that particular issue as key to the debate. In the absence of direct evidence for the debate for another 150 years, it appears clear at least that this was central to Cicero’s understanding of their conflict. O.Cappello, Part IIb 125 succession of historical moments, each supplementing, correcting and developing the previous one, and taking place within a genetic account of man’s intellectual explorations. 49 This teleological structure is all the more significant in its operation for two crucial characteristics. Firstly, the contributive and cumulative directionality of the history: all thinkers play a part in the classificatory system that Aristotle elaborates, and their theories, reduced to a position on causality, map out that issue in toto. 50 Significantly, there is no sense in which theories which have been superseded are wrong and thereby necessarily written out of the discipline altogether. Rather, all structurally belong to the fabric of Aristotle’s reflections on physics, ethics and epistemology. This aspect will be formally recognized in two later moments of the treatise, where he will openly claim that those who make mistakes are equally important in the journey towards ‘the contemplation of truth’ and that the road to clarity necessarily traverses aporiai. 51 Secondly, and as Berti points out following Cherniss’ influential evaluation of Aristotle’s methodology (Cherniss 1964), the Peripatetic’s historiography is organized around the principle of dialectic. He uses characters from the history of philosophy as interlocutors in a dialogue in order to highlight the limits and problems of different systems and finally to propose his own as solution (Berti 1986: 105). The movement is evident in the first book of his Metaphysics, where the critique evolves from the Milesian school to his own lengthy analysis of Plato’s Forms. The pedigree of this typology of ‘dialogue’ is originally Platonic, as we discussed in the introductory section to this chapter. Works such as the Theaetetus and the Parmenides schematize and assimilate philosophical positions and schools in order to refute them. Aristotle depends on the very same equivalence of interpretation and refutation to structure his argument (Viano 1986: 98). However, his narrative is directed towards a telos, evolving chronologically and cumulatively towards his own ontology, and this retrospectively makes sense of each evolutionary moment. The terms in which Gigon (1954) locates Aristotle in his own historical dialectic can be straightforwardly applied to Hegel’s relation to philosophy’s past. The Peripatetic places himself as 49 Met.1.982a-993a. From the first philosophers’ connection to the material cause (τῶν δὴ πρώτων φιλοσοφησάντων οἱ πλεῖστοι τὰς ἐν ὕλης εἴδει μόνας ᾠήθησαν ἀρχὰς εἶναι πάντων (‘most of the earliest philosophers thought that the causes of all things were only material’), 983b) to Aristotle’s critique of Plato ideal-formal causality (987a-993a). 50 Graham 1988: 143 calls this approach ‘schematic,’ defining it as ‘a teleological structure in which the episodes can be seen as stages in the plot.’ 51 Ἡ περὶ τῆς ἀληθείας θεωρία, Met.2.993a. οὐ μόνον δὲ χάριν ἔχειν δίκαιον τούτοις ὧν ἄν τις κοινώσαιτο ταῖς δόξαις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἐπιπολαιότερον ἀποφηναμένοις· καὶ γὰρ οὗτοι συνεβάλοντό τι· τὴν γὰρ ἕξιν προήσκησαν ἡμῶν· (‘it is not right to be grateful only to those whose views we share, but also to those who have expressed more superficial opinions. For those men have also offered something, since their preliminary work has shaped our thinking’), Met.2.993b. And Met.3.995a-b. O.Cappello, Part IIb 126 telos of the progressive schemes he introduces to explain a variety of philosophical issues. 52 He is the telos of the tradition, as both its perfective moment and the element that makes understanding said tradition possible. His dependence on earlier thinkers therefore plays a fundamental, structural and epistemological role (1954: 155). This evolutionary and autotelic impulse is found anew in and is elaborated by Hegel. Unlike Plato and Aristotle, Hegel worked against the trivialization of the history of philosophy with the intent of turning it once again into a philosophical topic. 53 The introduction to his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, a lecture-course he offered continuously from his promotion in Jena to Extraordinary Professor in Berlin, 54 opens on the contradiction which has inspired the argument so far concerning the difference between philosophy and history: while the latter deals in things past, things that are perishable and subject to change, the former concentrates on Truth, unchangeable and eternal. This distinction throws into doubt the legitimacy of the history of philosophy which would therefore be reduced to a show of derelict philosophies. Hegel however posits the unity of philosophy and, by relating the history of philosophy to the history of thought, he argues that all successive configurations of conceptual thinking amount to the truth in philosophy. His aim is to uncover in thought ‘the universal element through which the manifold that emerges in this succession is bound together, through which a whole comes about and a totality is formed’ (Hegel 2009: 47). The premises of his lecture course according to which he will explicate the history of philosophy are the following: firstly, as we have said, the multiplicity of philosophies in reality underscores unity of thought (Ibid: 47); secondly, philosophy is a ‘totality’ and a ‘system’ (Ibid: 54); thirdly, the development of thought over time, its self-realization or ‘concretization,’ occur through the ‘inner necessity of the concept itself’- tensions that are inherent to each philosophical system lead to their change. The act of refutation, or going beyond those tensions, preserves the refuted 52 Gigon 1954: 155-6 points out that just as Aristotle has the last word on causes (Met.1.983b-987a), he also completes analysis on the principles of motion, the soul (De Anima 1) and ethics (Eudaimonian Ethics 1214a-b). 53 Rée 1978 offers an excellent overview of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century context for Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. He calls it the historiography of ‘warring schools,’ exemplified by Brucker’s hugely influential Historia Critica Philosophiae (1742-4) and characterized by an episodic plot, a ‘story of quarrels’ in which “-isms” exist as entrenched and unchanging positions in conflict with no progressive design, 1978: 7. Passmore 1965: 3 notes that Kant was already dissatisfied with this senseless plot and proposed a science of metaphysics unburdened by a catalogue of names in his Prologue to Any Future Metaphysics, 1783 in Allison and Heath 2002. For the continuation of this approach well into the nineteenth century see, for example, Renouvier 1885-6; Krüger 1984: 79-84, for whom this method amounts to ‘problem history;’ and Rorty 1984: 61-7 who labels it ‘doxography.’ 54 In the Academic year 1805-6. The seventh series of the course was cut short by his death in 1831. See Westoby 1978: 67 for a timeline. I use Brown and Stewart’s translation based on Jaeschke’s critical edition of the Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie. O.Cappello, Part IIb 127 philosophy as the negative image of what refuted it. In other words, what comes after depends on what has been superseded, and remains in the genetic memory of that system (Ibid: 58). 55 It is worth exploring the implications of these premises further. Hegel makes the history of philosophy into a philosophical topic from a number of perspectives which link this series of lectures to the very core of his metaphysical system, and so to works like Phänomenologie des Geistes and the Encyclopaedia Logic. 56 The mechanics of negation, touched on in the third premise of his introductory lecture, is of critical importance in a historical and a-historic sense. To take up the a- historic orientation first, Hegel’s project is first and foremost to define philosophy, to identify, in other words, the subject of his study. He presents philosophy as the sum total of philosophies which make up its history, since he sees each of these systems as defined not just by what it is, but also by what it is not. Negation here must be understood in an ‘inclusive’ sense, so that when a philosophy is negated by another we are not dealing with an exclusion of the refuted philosophy from the field of history or of thought. In fact, the negated philosophy continues to define the philosophy it has been negated by and both exist as such within philosophy. 57 I label this an a-historical perspective because, although this specular relation constitutes the seeds of the dialectic movement with which we have become so accustomed, the relation between a philosophy and its negation is not necessarily one of direct influence. Dialectic plays a fundamental part in the historical development of Hegel’s history of philosophy. Equating the history of philosophy to the history of thought in the introduction to his Lectures means that the latter shares in the structure of thinking and is subject to the same developmental logic. 58 Discussing Hegelian dialectic in the context of the logical part of his work, Inwood highlights the parallel between the evolution of concepts and the history of philosophy. Concepts are subject to change, modification and re-interpretation not because, from a subjective standpoint, men ascribe faults to them and revise them; rather, Hegel suggests that concepts evolve because of objective flaws inherent to them, which cause their development or rejection. From the standpoint of the history of thought, the objective and subjective are not distinguishable, or, in 55 Refutation relies on exhibiting the negative side and the limits of the antagonized system. It is therefore intrinsically an act of preservation. Put differently, rethinking a particular philosophy successfully entails demoting it to a secondary position in a particular age. See also Hegel 2009: 58-62. 56 For what follows I am indebted to the debate between Schmitz 1988; Lawler and Shtinov 1988; and Inwood 1983. 57 In Schmitz’s words 1988: 254, ‘the negative relation of one philosophy to another is intrinsic and constitutive in the first instance as a relation of the difference in meaning of one philosophy to another within the unity of philosophy as such.’ (Emphasis in original). 58 ‘The history of philosophy follows the course of logic.’ Inwood 1983: 307. O.Cappello, Part IIb 128 Inwood’s words, there is no distinction ‘between our criticism of them and their own self-criticism’ (1983: 308). In the final analysis, because it traces the story of pure thinking, the history of philosophy changes dialectically in history, though it is absolutely not dependent on contingent events in that history to develop. It moves according to a predetermined pattern, according to an ‘immanent dialectic’ 59 and so under its own steam, as it were and it is this pattern which supplies the ‘underlying structure of history’ (Ibid: 299). There are two observations to be made about the dialectical form of Hegel’s history which are all too often forgotten in historiographical debates. The subjective perspective is sidelined in favor of focusing on the metaphysical systematicity of objective pure thought, but for Hegel thinking is an activity which is sustained by communities. Thinking is a social activity which transcends the individuated mind, but can only exist in a community of thought (Schmitz 1988: 256-9). This community carries on thought in time, and is thus the bearer of the dialectic development: hence philosophy makes its appearance at a given historical moment in Greece, because of the freedom of that community to speculate, and evolves to the Germanic philosophy of spirit, of which Hegel is the greatest exponent (2009: 88-93). Secondly, the shape of dialectic, moving through the triad thesis, antithesis, synthesis, determines that each synthesis incorporates the thesis and antithesis so that each philosophy, like a thought-determination in the Logic, contains its predecessor. Finally, the concept of Nachdenken must be introduced to clarify the position of Hegel towards his own history. Literally ‘after-thinking,’ translated as ‘meditation’ or ‘thinking-over,’ it refers to the cognitive process through which an individual discovers the truth about an object by looking beyond its primary data and into its essence, history and internal logic (Hegel 1991: 6 and 30-3). Nachdenken is a reflective mode of thought that relies on the critical distance opened up by the historical movement itself: we can only understand how something developed, we can only spot the pattern in that development, once that object of our reflection is allowed to develop. This has two implications for Hegel’s historiography: in the first instance, philosophical truths are ‘mediated’ in so far as they are what they are because of the way they came about. 60 In the second instance, the whole of the history of philosophy then makes sense from the position occupied by Hegel himself. Standing at the end of that evolution as voice of the free Germanic world, like Aristotle before him, Hegel is 59 As opposed to what he calls ‘external dialectic’ referring to the critique of ideas by, for example, reference to empirical data. 60 Campbell 1992: 16 expands: ‘philosophical truths can be grasped only by a mode of reasoning which sets out to reconstruct the development of the subject-matter itself.’ For Hegel’s explanation of Vermittlung see 1991: 115 and 175-9. O.Cappello, Part IIb 129 able to explain the pattern and make sense of the history of philosophy as its greatest expression because it is its final expression. The idealist carries forward the Kantian project of unifying philosophy as a discipline and locates the history of the discipline as granting access to that identity. There are three major aspects to bear in mind from his contribution. Firstly, the unification of philosophy and its past under the aegis of rational thinking; secondly, the emphasis on community uniting past and present thinkers to the same intellectual project; thirdly, the correspondence between past and present, insofar as all philosophies constitute the unity of philosophy and insofar as any particular system has a genetic memory. As each determination participates in (our) thinking, as each school is present in some shape in the actuality of the philosophically deliberating subject, Hegel insists that examining the history of this humanistic discipline is identical with thinking (doing philosophy) in the present. 61 Current debates have reacted differently to the Hegelian challenge. The analytic tradition has dismissed the metaphysical infrastructure of idealism and has turned to the history of philosophy, if ever, as a playground of philosophical arguments in which a thinker could hone his skills before engaging in the real job of philosophizing. This approach fundamentally instrumentalizes past arguments, discarding their historical dimension and adapting and correcting them for new uses. Critics of this methodology have alternately defined it as treating past thinkers as less qualified contemporaries, ‘pen-pals’ conversing across time or have accused it of reducing interpretation to ‘contemplating the unknowable convictions of insulated ghosts’ (Williams 2007: 63; Hacking 2002: 5; and Mulhern 1969: 640; see also Ayers 1978). Furthermore, this ability to converse across time derives from a monolithic vision of the philosophies that make up its past as anticipations of the analytic method. With Russell’s study of Leibniz, Ayer’s Language, Truth and Logic provides a concise illustration of this: for Ayer, the majority of key thinkers in the history of philosophy were analysts, not metaphysicians, and so he rolls out a list including Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Hobbes, Bentham and Mill (Ayer 1952: 52-6; Parkinson 1965). Despite the limits of this list being obvious to the point of absurdity, Anglo-American philosophical culture is still very much predicated on the pragmatic and pedagogic dimension of this standpoint. 61 Hegel 2009: 62 claims the history of philosophy is not history but is historical. The terminological distinction is more clearly observable in the German, where Historie is characterized as the subject of empirical study external to the investigator (what the modern Academy would understand as belonging to a History faculty), and Geschichte, where the past exists in the temporal sense, but its relevance is markedly different because of the way its shapes present forms of culture and of thinking. O.Cappello, Part IIb 130 Philosophers working in the continental tradition have nonetheless continued to deliver original philosophical work in the guise of interpretations of philosophy’s past. Deconstruction or German existentialism, in the work of Derrida and Heidegger, are notable examples of this “use” of the history of philosophy. Return to the “origin” of philosophical inquiry, the unmasking of its authentic principles underlies their methodology, though they do not challenge the sense of writing a pedigree for the discipline of philosophy. It is the original contribution of Martial Gueroult (1979- 1988b) to address the history of philosophy in his extensive Historiographie de l’histoire de la philosophie that occupied him in the last decade of his life. And it is with his science of the history of philosophy, his dianoematics with which we will close our sketch of historiographical approaches to philosophy. 62 Gueroult begins by addressing two methodological paradoxes that run through all histories of philosophy (1954: 47 and 53). The first concerns the predetermination of the essence of philosophy. All histories of philosophy presuppose, more or less explicitly, a certain idea of what philosophy is- a notion which coincides entirely with the historian’s idea of philosophy. Through a comparison between Hegel and Winckelmann, 63 Gueroult summarizes the problem: just as the latter began with an abstract idea of beauty and proceeded to organize artistic objects accordingly, so does the former presuppose an essence of philosophy, the Idea, and fits all other systems around it. The validity of past systems is therefore entirely dependent on the way they relate to the one currently describing them, and how they in turn validate that system. 64 What this leads to is the obliteration of such systems as having a life of their own. As autonomous objects of study they are suppressed. 65 Histories of philosophy sell themselves as the prism through which to understand the diversity of the tradition, and yet they serve as tombstone for said multiplicity. They are an act of 62 His two-book project remained unfinished and was published posthumously, though never translated into English. Nonetheless, he had presented outlines of certain parts in article or lecture form in 1954 and 1974, and these reflections were influential to the development of seminal figures of structuralism and post-structuralism who translated successfully across the Channel and the Atlantic. See Deleuze 1969. 63 See Hegel 1986: 171: Wie die Idee schöner Kunst durch die Kunstkritik nicht erst geschaffen oder erfunden, sondern schlechtin vorausgesetzt wird, eben so ist in der philosophischen Kritik die Idee der Philosophie seblst die Bedingung und Voraussetzung, ohne welche jene in alle Ewigkeit nur Subjektivitäten gegen Subjektivitäten, niemals das Absolute gegen das Bedingte zu setzen hätte. For further discussion on parallels between the history of art and that of philosophy see Dorfles 1974. 64 ‘On commence par poser son concept et sa définition pour valoriser l’ensemble des systèmes passés au moyen de leur réduction à ce concept.’ In the same breath ‘l’histoire illustre in concreto, de façon subsidiaire quelques unes seulement des formules que la philosophie fournit a priori de façon précise.’ 1954: 47. 65 Schmitz 1988: 254-5 convincingly argues that Hegel was aware of this issue, choosing therefore to introduce his history lectures with a ‘plan of interpretation,’ an orientation, through which he then arrives at the convergence of rational thinking with Pure thinking and Truth. The Vorrede to the Phenomenology of the Spirit clearly identifies this awareness and maps out the textual itinerary of his work according to his dialectical methodology. O.Cappello, Part IIb 131 closure towards, and a termination of the tradition. Each version, founded on the conviction of its own truth, necessarily excludes the other and so winds up undermining the very possibility of a history of philosophy. This exclusion, rejecting the claim to truth of other philosophies, turns them into nothing but historical events (Gueroult 1979: 40). Secondly, the idea of progress that legitimizes the use of the history of philosophy must be defined against progress in the history of science. Gueroult articulates the principle of the history of science as dependent upon the notion of a truth that is given (vérité acquise) towards which scientists work. The object of study for the historian of science is predetermined and so progress is the necessary structure of that narrative, the story of forward movement, of a succession of discoveries and not the story of mistakes. Reacting to the progressivism of Condorcet and Comte, 66 he presents philosophy has having no such vérité acquise but as the search for that truth which then enables the progressive story of its development. Therefore, the narrative of philosophy depends on a ‘cosmos indéfiniment en équilibre de possibilités spéculatives,’ possibilities which are not hierarchically situated in relation to a given truth, but are all on the same plane, as it were, all equally related to the truth of which they speak. Empirically, this is observable in the historical survival of philosophies and the continuous exploratory interest these elicit: they are ‘indestructibles pour l’histoire’ and they always perform the function of ‘objets éternellement valables pour une réflexion philosophique possible’ (1954: 43, 44 and 59). Gueroult brings together the notion of usefulness of past philosophies, their inspirational and aspirational draw, as well as the unity of the field. Gueroult’s dianoematics, from the Ancient Greek dianoêma (‘doctrine’), rises to the challenge of both issues. In order to keep a balance between the historical and the philosophical perspective, the French thinker sees the study of an older doctrine as understanding that view in terms of its internal coherence and in that moment of examination the view must be held to be universally valid. To do so, the historian of philosophy must engage directly with older philosophical texts and it is his/her philosophical perspective that makes that particular object of study worthy of the history of philosophy (Ibid: 46 and 49). Crucially, therefore the critical spirit has a creative effect on the tradition. Alongside the objective value in the doctrines themselves, there is an important subjective element to this historiography. Past doctrines act as a psychological stimulus for the thinker, they shape the philosophical intellect and offer a range of solutions and approaches to 66 Note that Gueroult’s dianoematics is not reacting to analytic positivism, like Hare 1988, Gracia 1992 or Campbell 1992, but to the French positivist tradition of Auguste Comte. See Gueroult 1979: 16-24. O.Cappello, Part IIb 132 problems. Subjectively, the value of the history of philosophy is to elicit a reaction from the individual. Coordinating the subjective and objective facets of his dianoematics results in a comparison with aesthetics and the notion of Beauty. Study of the history of philosophy needs to keep an eye on the transcendental aspect of speculative thinking, which is not historically bounded or temporally specific. Just like the notion of the Beautiful in a work of art transcends the historical context of that work’s production, the student of philosophy needs to examine that concept in its universal essence, as independent and valid. On the other hand, it is also important to look at these philosophical systems from the human perspective, as inspirations and, in order to better understand them, as historical determinations of thought (Ibid: 61-6). Cicero is a marginal figure in Gueroult’s ambitious Histoire de l’histoire de la philosophie. In a compressed review of antiquity split around Aristotle, Cicero appears as an after-thought to Posidonius and Antiochus, an appendix to the rise of syncretism and its scholastic mistress, the erudite doxography (1984: 23-70, especially 50-3). Gueroult shares this disdain for Cicero with all the critics mentioned above. Only Gigon is committed to linking Ciceronian historiographical philosophy to the Aristotelian tradition. Already in 1954 he spoke of the primarily historical infrastructure of Cicero’s works, built out of two Antiochian principles: the comparative review of ethical telê, and the syncretism of Peripatetic, Academic and Stoic philosophies. In an article appearing the following year he insisted further on the specific relationship between Cicero and Aristotle, remarking that Ciceronian historiography is a return to the Aristotelian collaborative view of the discipline, where each system under examination is capable of offering some truth, and a revival of the conceptualization of truth as a trans-historical collective effort. 67 Nonetheless, Cicero’s story is far from resembling the diachronic linearity of Metaphysics book one or De Anima book one. It is characterized, as we shall see, by a very complex form of variatio (‘variation’) that relishes in alternating points of view and multiple voices, and is committed, in a style reminiscent of Gueroult’s critique, to evading the monolithic and exclusivist tendency of all philosophical historiographies. At first glance, the historiographical dispute involving the two pairs of antagonists in the Lucullus and the first Academic Book appears to offer a straightforward alternative between two 67 ‘Die Grundlage seiner Diskussionen zu einem guten Teil in einer bestimmten philosophiegeschichtlichen Konstruktion besteht.’ 1954: 140; 1955; and 1972b. O.Cappello, Part IIb 133 heuristic models of the history of the Academy. While Lucullus and Varro introduce a break in Academic tradition which follows on from the teaching of Arcesilaus, Cicero supports the Philonian theory of continuity: in brief, as Glucker has put it, the One-Academy theory is a Philonian reaction to Antiochus’ Two-Academy theory (1978: 80). 68 The design of Cicero’s Academic history emerges distinctly from Ac.1.44-6, where he begrudgingly accepts to use Varro’s terminology of ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Academy. 69 The ontological obstacle that philosophers face, obscuritas rerum (‘obscurity of things’), as well as their admission of the failure and shortcomings of sensation and intellection, remains eternal. Realization of this impasse binds the Academic tradition to the Presocratics, the veteres, and unifies the Academy itself. This harmony is specifically founded on the reaction to such problems, so on the suspension of judgment that follows on from unknowability. Around these two axioms, akatalêpsia and epochê, Cicero can also justify the corrective input of Arcesilaus, who extends the principle of unknowability to include the principle itself, 70 and integrate Plato, whose activity repackages in writing the vocal practice of Arcesilaus and Socrates. This emphasis on continuity must be further qualified by two observations. Firstly, Arcesilaus harks back to Socrates and Plato. Secondly, his extension of Socratic ignorance is presented as an improvement, a more consistent reaction to the elimination of veritas (‘truth’) grasped by Democritus. 71 Brittain and Palmer see Arcesilaus’ doubt as a third stage in Cicero’s narrative, as something new but also as the ‘culmination of a more gradually reflective turn’ (2001: 43-4). 72 The logical connective itaque opening Ac.1.45 emphasizes Arcesilaus’ contribution as a correction of the Socratic doctrine, hijacking Varro’s Antiochian picture of the history of philosophy that tells a story of progress and systemic improvement. 73 68 Ac.1.13 suggests that Antiochus was the one to introduce this distinction, as Cicero suggests that Antiochus had set a precedent of ‘returning from the new school to the old’ (remigrare in domum veterem e nova). 69 Hanc Academiam novam appellant, quae mihi vetus videtur (‘this is what they call the new Academy, which looks like the old one to me’). Sed tamen illa quam exposuisti vetus haec nova nominetur (‘nonetheless, let what you have just described be called old and these ones I am discussing new’), Ac.1.46. 70 Arcesilas negabat esse quicquam quod sciri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum quod Socrates sibi reliquisset (‘Arcesilaus denied that it was possible to know anything, including that very assertion which Socrates had held onto’), Ac.1.45. 71 Ac.1.44. 72 I have learned much from this detailed analysis of the passages which constitute the focus of the present argument. Nonetheless, their approach differs significantly from mine insofar as they are attempting to reconstitute an Academic historiographical strategy, while I see the historiography as quintessentially Ciceronian. 73 Ac.1.43. O.Cappello, Part IIb 134 The Antiochian version of Academic history, in fact, takes correctio (‘correction’) as its structuring principle, and allows it to inform a series of breaks between thinkers. Philosophy becomes a forward moving process, offering something new with each stage and not concerned with the same eternal problems. Varro’s story begins with Plato and the disciplina, a speculative system which was sketched out by Plato and which Academics and Peripatetics finalized and perfected. He presents this system as a clean break from Socrates, whom he sees as only interested in discursive methodology. 74 Once the three branches of philosophy are set out, he introduces a series of mutationes (‘changes’): firstly along Peripatetic lines, then in the Academic tradition and he concludes with a longer treatment of Zeno’s revision. 75 The philosophical inheritance of Plato branches into Peripatetic critiques, Academic preservation and it culminates in Zeno’s total innovation. Plato’s forms don’t survive Aristotle, nor does his ethics find continuity in Theophrastus or interest Strato at all, who is exclusively committed to physics. Only the Academy is portrayed as preserving the ratio and auctoritas of Plato, although Polemo’s two pupils, Arcesilaus and Zeno, give rise to the corrective revolution known as Stoicism. 76 Despite the paradox of underlining the dissidence of Peripatetics while insisting on the community of Peripatetics and Academics, 77 it is through Zeno that the structure of philosophy evolves beyond recognition and is strangely presented as both a correctio of the Platonic tradition and a catalogue of departures and disagreements. 78 The tyranny of reason displaces the middle ground of morality, removing any attention to commoda (‘worldly goods appropriate to the body’); fire emerges as the 74 Sed utrique Platonis ubertate completi certam quandam disciplinae formulam composuerunt et eam quidem plenam ac refertam, illum autem Socraticam dubitanter de omnibus rebus et nulla affirmatione adhibita consuetudinem disserendi reliquerunt. ita facta est, quod minime Socrates probabat, ars quaedam philosophiae et rerum ordo et descriptio disciplinae (‘but both schools [Peripatetic and Academic], inspired by the richness of Plato’s teachings, set forth a fixed systematic doctrine, one that was full and detailed, and they left behind the Socratic method of arguing with a doubtful orientation about all things and without affirming anything. Therefore what emerged is something that Socrates would not have approved of: an art of philosophy and a defined disposition of subjects and a doctrinal system’), Ac.1.17. 75 Ac.1.33-4 for Lyceum and Academy; Ac.1.35-42 for Zeno. 76 Iam Polemonem audiverant assidue Zeno et Arcesilas. sed Zeno, cum Arcesilam anteiret aetate valdeque subtiliter dissereret et peracute moveretur, corrigere conatus est disciplinam (‘Finally, Zeno and Arcesilaus had been keen students of Polemo. But Zeno, who was older than Arcesilaus and a brilliant dialectician and a sharp thinker, set out to revise the system’), Ac.1.35. The use of dissereret in the context of their argument in the Lucullus as well as the fact that the two are named together suggests that their contribution to philosophy was generated in conversation between each other. 77 Rebus congruentes nominibus differebant (‘agreeing on theoretical matters they differed only in name’), Ac.1.17. Nihil enim inter Peripateticos et illam veterem Academiam differebat (‘for there was no difference between Peripatetics and that Old Academy’), Ac.1.18. Communis haec ratio et utrisque hic bonorum finis videbatur (‘they seemed to share doctrinal system and moral ends’), Ac.1.22. 78 Note the repetition corrigere… correctionem, Ac.1.35. Also commutatio (‘change’) and dissensio (‘disagreement’), Ac.1.42. O.Cappello, Part IIb 135 single element out of the Aristotelian mire of five, or the ‘canonical’ four; finally, in matters of epistemology Varro sheds the conceit of Zeno changing only verba (‘words’) of the Peripatetic/Old Academic system, conceding that the senses, once ineffectual and slow, were now reliable dispensers of certainty. 79 There are a number of important correspondences with the dispute in the Lucullus that reflect the same sharp division between Antiochian and Philonian historiographies. 80 At Luc.72-6 Cicero lists a number of seemingly disconnected philosophers and movements, among whom important Presocratics, the Cyrenaics and Chrysippus, in order to show historical agreement on the axiom: nihil percipi posse (‘nothing can be perceived’). Crucially, the emphasis is on sensation and methodology. The senses are inadequate for the purpose of making knowledge claims, and the suspension of assent which follows becomes common practice for Cicero’s historical community. 81 There is, in other words, no sense of an evolving system but, as the verb imitari (‘imitate’) indicates, there is a community of practice beholden to the same problematics and committed to the same methodological principle. Brittain and Palmer read into this section a ‘developmental view of history’ in which the ‘dogmatic skepticism’ of the Presocratics becomes the ‘more reflective (and methodological) skepticism of Socrates and Plato’ and finally turns into the ‘radical skepticism of Arcesilaus’ (2001: 49-50). Arcesilaus, however, is presented as doing little more than hitting the reset button on the conditions of ignorance. The conversation between Zeno and Arcesilaus at Luc.77 depends on a repackaged expression of unknowability on the part of the Academic. Urged on by his desire for truth, Arcesilaus homes in on Zeno’s original position that a wise man cannot hold opinions and directs the discussion back to the axiom nihil percipi posse asking: ‘what would happen if the wise man could not perceive anything and yet opining was not something a wise man could do?’ 82 In response, Zeno formulates the conditions of apprehension: a ‘percept,’ visum, is impressed from what is, stamped, fixed and molded just as it is in reality and that a true presentation is qualitatively different from a false one. This tripartite definition, and the controversy over the third clause constitutes the task of Academic skepticism. Indeed, Carneades, Clitomachus, Philo and Metrodorus 79 Ac.1.38; Ac.1.39. Aristotle is specifically assigned the fifth element at Ac.1.26; Ac.1.31 and Ac.1.40-2. 80 Brittain 2001: 175 calls the content of Ac.1.44-6 and Luc.72-8 ‘identical.’ 81 Democritus calls the senses tenebricosos (‘dark’), Luc.73; Metrodorus of Chios, Empedocles, Parmenides, Xenophanes and Chrysippus speak out against making confident truth-directed assertions Luc.73-5. 82 Quaesivit de Zenone fortasse quid futurum esset si nec percipere quicquam posset sapiens nec opinari sapientis esset, Luc.77. O.Cappello, Part IIb 136 merely present different strategies in the face of the same issue established in the intellectual theatres of Archaic Greece: nihil posse percipi (‘nothing can be perceived’) so numquam adsensurum esse (‘one can never assent to anything’), or akatalêpsia and epochê. 83 The ‘developmental’ model consists of a heightened awareness of the implications of doubt, but the crucial aspect of the history of philosophy is the skeptical practice that links them all. Arcesilaus is indeed playing the part of Socrates in the conversation, as is evident from two aspects of the dialogue. Firstly, he picks an original Zenonian position and pursues a line of questioning whose objective is to lead Zeno to a controversial axiom. Zeno, in fact, intuits the difficult corner into which Arcesilaus has pressed him and tries to anticipate the aporia by the addition of the third clause. 84 Both Lucullus and Varro understand Socrates as someone solely interested in debate. 85 Secondly, emphasis on the instrumentality of the sapiens, which echoes the human-ethical dimension of philosophy which for Varro defines Socrates’ activity. 86 In this vivid representation of the origins of Hellenistic philosophy, Cicero offers a sophisticated re-reading of the Lucullan/Varronian Socrates and turns Arcesilaus into a return of Socrates and to the Socratic moment of philosophy. The historiographical model proposed by Cicero yields three conclusions. Firstly, without denying the changes within the remit of Academic doubt, there is a sense in which this community of skeptical practice is interested in finding new uses for old approaches. The connection between Socrates and Arcesilaus seals this dialogue between past and present. Secondly, linked to recurrent approaches is the focus on philosophical problems: skeptical philosophy is interested in the same issues, viewed from an ontological and then an epistemological perspective. Thirdly, Cicero expands the discussion to include the history of philosophy as a whole, reaching back to Presocratics, but also horizontally across, as it were, to Stoics like Chrysippus. In contrast, Lucullus and Varro allow for the systematicity of philosophy to develop within a chronological frame. The Antiochian model suggests that philosophy is about a constituta and perfectissima disciplina (‘a perfectly set up system of doctrines’), and that only within that framework can intellectual progress occur. Varro’s story of philosophy, as we have already pointed 83 Illud certe opiniatione et perceptione sublata sequitur omnium adsensionum retention ut si ostendero nihil posse percipi tu concedes numquam adsensurum esse, Luc.78. Carneadean probabilitas, explored at Luc.99-111 is therefore already marked as a constructive response to the Arcesilean, and so traditional, set of problems. 84 Hic Zenonem vidisse acute (‘Zeno had clearly seen…’), Luc.77. 85 Ac.1.16 and Luc.15. 86 Ac.1.15. O.Cappello, Part IIb 137 out, follows the tripartite scheme of the disciplina, with Peripatetics being interested in particular fields or Zeno making revisions within each field but leaving the overall Platonic structure untouched. It is interesting to note that Lucullus inserts into this logic of inheritance and perfecting the contribution of Carneades. The scholarch perfects Arcesilean ratio (‘philosophical system’), which Lacydes managed only to preserve. 87 Furthermore, although he does not offer the same evolutionary picture of Varro, Lucullus still identifies historical movement as one of change. And indeed, his outlook on Socrates and Plato illustrates this attitude, with Socrates playing the ironic disputant to his pupil, the great systematizer Plato: the break between the two is evident and builds into philosophical history the opportunity for a pupil to move the tradition forward though in a totally different direction. When comparing the two models, an approach embraced by Brittain in his monograph on Philo (2001) and his article with Palmer (2001), several further observations can be made about the author’s historiography of philosophy. From the perspective of Cicero’s approach to the tradition, the historiographical debate sets out coordinates that are followed in the rest of the treatises, and so the discussion that follows takes those sections as a starting point for a reading of all historical episodes in the Academica. Firstly, Cicero’s overall approach to historiographical models is inclusive. As Brittain has observed, no interpretation of historical figures is condemned or straightforwardly rejected as false. There is a difference between historical ‘disagreement’ and ‘fabrication’ and no one is accused of the latter (2001: 179). A glimpse into the inclusivity of Academic skepticism is introduced at Luc.78, where Cicero discusses two interpretations of Carneades by his pupils. Whether the scholarch approved the axiom that opining was possible or simply used it as an argumentative strategy divides the Clitomacheans, among whom Cicero counts himself, and the Metrodorean-Philonians. 88 The phraseology which makes this distinction eliminates neither as incorrect: the author merely expresses his preference and here, as throughout the dialogue, never suggests there is a correct reading of Carneades. 89 87 Luc.16. 88 I use it here as it is used in the passage which we are discussing. Brittain takes this label to make it into a veritable phase of Academic history, with a distinctive position on all areas of ancient philosophy. 89 Licebat enim nihil percipere et tamen opinari quod a Carneade dicitur probatum: equidem Clitomacho plus quam Philoni aut Metrodoro credens hoc magis ab eo disputatum quam probatum puto (‘for [the sage] might perceive nothing and yet opine, which possibility is said to have been approved by Carneades: trusting Clitomachus more than Philo or Metrodorus, I personally believe he said this more in the way of argument than because he approved of O.Cappello, Part IIb 138 The same openness characterizes the contest over origins. Socrates and Plato, and their relationship, are read in very different ways, and yet neither perspective is directly attacked as a fabrication. In both editions, Cicero portrays continuity as a key factor in the skepticism of Socrates and Plato, with the former practicing in writing what the latter performed in conversation. 90 Lucullus and Varro however sever the connection by interpreting Plato’s work as an elaborate and systematic philosophy. Significantly, no attempt to address uncertainty in the Platonic texts is made at all, and in the outline of Platonism at Ac.1.15-34, no claim whatsoever is made to Socratic authority (Tarrant 2000: 65-6). On Socrates, in fact, Varro and Cicero agree: his belief ‘that he knew nothing’ (nihil se scire) amounts to his modus philosophandi, in the same way as ironia- εἰρονεία/dissimulatio- will be used by both Lucullus and Cicero to define Socrates’ contribution to philosophy. Antiochians will suggest his methodology hides doctrines, while Cicero prefers to highlight the evident absence of assertions. 91 Even the grand rhetorical sweep employed by Lucullus to portray Academic skeptical history as a travesty does not suggest that the pedigree is a fabrication. Brittain hides this insightful observation in a footnote, but this is an important illustration of this aspect of Ciceronian historiography (2001: 179n14). Lucullus catalogues ancestors whom seditious citizens enlist as precedents for their activity as popularis, populist revolutionaries. Lucullus sees that this appropriation depends on the ancestors’ legislative activity favoring the Roman populus, but does not contest it. And on the subject of Marius he goes so far as to concur with the populist pedigree. 92 What is at stake is not the political exploits of these men, but their moral fiber, as the vocabulary characterizing the comparison makes clear. 93 The overall impression that this inclusivity yields, especially through the prism of the political simile in Lucullus’ and Cicero’s speeches, is that the greatest resource of the philosophical tradition is its great men, and that the field accommodates plurality. Plurality is in fact the second point of my argument: the author offers great variatio in his representation of tradition. This is clearly evident from the fact that the perspectives from which the it’), Luc.78. Even his introduction of probabilitas evades being formulated as either something approved by Carneades or simply used in argument, Luc.99-111. 90 Ac.1.44-6 = Luc.74. 91 Ac.1.16 and Ac.1.45. Luc.15 and 74. 92 Et de hoc quidem nihil mentiuntur (‘and indeed they are not lying about him at all’), Luc.13. 93 See the use of calumnia (‘slander’) and verecundia (‘scruples’) at Luc.14. illi cum res non bonas tractent similes bonorum videri volunt (‘those men wish to look like good men although they do not engage in activities for the good’), Luc.72. O.Cappello, Part IIb 139 histories are written are not consistent in themselves, nor do they seem to reflect the positions they purport to represent. Cicero’s agreement with Antiochian correctio in the first Academic Book, which we indicated above, is in fact entirely incongruent with the doxography concluding the Lucullus. There is no identity posited between Peripatetics, Academics and Stoics in Luc.112-146. At the start of the section just mentioned Aristotle, Theophrastus, Xenocrates and Polemo are characterized as decidedly pre-Stoic in matters of epistemology: they had no third condition for perception, and equally had no problem with opinions. 94 Furthermore, despite the allocation of roles in Fam.9.8 [254] and early on in Ac.1.13-14, Cicero’s partes cannot be Philonian, or at least not across both editions, as he clearly identifies himself with the Clitomachean position and against the Philonian at Luc.78. 95 Antiochian history is beset by the same inconsistencies. 96 In the first instance, Lucullus’ and Varro’s views on Socrates do not correspond. In the earlier edition, Socrates is removed from the list of skeptics because he only dissimulates a philosophical view which he in fact does endorse. This veiled dogmatism is however not present in Varro, who, although keen to underline the methodological bias of his dubitatio, focuses entirely on the confessio ignorationis which distinguishes Socrates from his contemporaries. 97 In the second instance, Ac.1.19-42 is dense with transformations, parallel, often contradictory, views and inset voices. We already mentioned the innovations of Zeno, who not only redefines the physical, but also the epistemological outlook of Aristotle and Plato. 98 Two important studies of this section bring to light further voices entwined therein. Lévy (1992: 148-50) presents a close study of the order of the partes philosophiae (‘branches of philosophy’). 99 Despite a correspondence in the order of presentation between Ac.1.19-33 and Ac.1.35-42- that is between the disciplina a Platone tradita and the Zenonian emendation- which orders philosophy along the axis ‘ethics-physics-logic,’ the list of Peripatetics from Aristotle to Strato play havoc with the 94 Luc.112-3. Cf. Brittain 2001: 184-7. This logic endures throughout the doxography: Aristotle vs. Stoics on physics, Luc.119; he begins separating out Polemonian Academy, Aristotle and Antiochus from the Stoics on moral ends, Luc.131-4; or Antiochus from Old Academy on emotions Luc.135. 95 Partes is used at Fam.9.8.1 [254] and to introduce Cicero’s speech at Ac.1.43. Brittain 2001: 180-1 and Barnes 1989: 71n82 discuss this problem concluding that the Philonian position Cicero is defending is pre-Roman Books, therefore representing an orthodox New Academic position. This is a convincing thesis, but is entirely relevant to source-discussions- nowhere in the Academica is this specified. 96 Correctionem explicabo sicut solebat Antiochus (‘I will explain correctio just as Antiochus used to’), Ac.1.35. Cf. Ac.1.43. 97 Quorum e numero tollendus est et Plato et Socrates (‘both Plato and Socrates must be removed from that list’), Luc.15. See Ac.1.17. See also Brittain’s 2001: 182-3 succinct commentary on this contradiction, which is also spotted by Reid 1885: ad loc. 98 Ac.1.39-40. 99 This is an area that has interested French scholars in the past, see Boyancé 1971; and Hadot 1979. O.Cappello, Part IIb 140 arrangement. Not only does the order in which they are introduced re-arrange the partes into logic (Aristotle), ethics (Theophrastus), physics (Strato), but they appear as exclusively interested in a single branch of the network. Variatio is clearly at work within the same tradition, or at least within the same historiographical view, which shifts perspectives on individuals and on the way the discipline itself is organized. In addition, Peripatetic and ‘Old’ Academic voices appear in the description of the Platonic system (ratio) itself. 100 It is worth considering this presence further, because it suggests a sophisticated approach on the part of Cicero who, in compressing a variety of theories into one descriptio, is illustrating the historical texture of philosophy in which ideas are picked up and carried forward by the community as well as integrated into new philosophical systems wherein the voices keep their identity. Sedley’s (2002: 55-81) classic analysis of the origins of Stoic theology proposes a convincing, if entirely conjectural, interpretation of Ac.1.24-9 that assimilates Antiochus’ position to Polemo. Beyond the speculation on possible sources, and beyond the reconstruction of Polemo’s physics, his analysis brings to light the composite nature of the dualism inscribed in the section. The Timaeus looms large in the division of the physical world between active and passive principles, the interchangeability of initia (‘first principles’) and elementa (‘elements’), as well as the formulation of a view on qualitas (‘what is proper/quality’), and the notion of providence and world soul. 101 Nonetheless, the Forms, which constitute the third principle in the Timaeus, are not mentioned, despite the fact that Varro will suggest a consistency in the Old Academy with Plato’s position; though Ideas find no space, Aristotle’s fifth element is introduced as an addendum, neither rejected nor included in the division between active elements and passive. 102 Furthermore, the dualism sketched out fits uneasily with Stoic materialism, especially the kind of materialism which from Ac.1.28 onwards underlines the equivalence of materia, vis and natura. The section is an echo chamber, tending to integrate proto-Stoic notions with the textual tradition of Plato. Polemo might be 100 Ac.1.22 and Ac.1.26. 101 Vis (‘power/energy’) and materia (‘matter’), Ac.1.24, Ac.1.26, Ac.1.25 and Ac.1.29 For the correspondences between the passive principle and its characteristics, see Sedley 2002: 66-73 and 2002: 57 for ‘qualities.’ 102 Ac.1.33-4. Notice that Aristotle and Theophrastus are mentioned in that section as having moved on from that idealistic construct. O.Cappello, Part IIb 141 the conductor, between Plato, Xenocrates and Zeno, but from the compression of the section, the reader is only offered an ambiguous glimpse of a complex history of exchange and transformation. 103 From the broader view of Varro’s history, the competing and correcting succession of positions are integrated into a single system, illustrating thereby the way in which different attitudes- competing positions within the Academy itself- construct an overall system. The tensions that this generates, highlighted by our reading but present in all critics who spot contradictions and exert themselves in their resolution, is partly to blame on this self-conscious use of the philosophical past. 104 There is also a dialectical function which is, as Brittain and Palmer (2001: 69) have noticed, important to the way the Academy and Cicero operate, and which has much to say about their historiography. Indeed, in offering some concluding remarks on the Academica’s appeal to Presocratics, Brittain and Palmer suggest that the variation depends on the dialectical context within which the New Academy is making these claims: as New Academics are only interested in a community of practice, not in a genealogy of doctrines, they can afford to emphasize different lineages, as it were, to suit the debate. The present argument, however, limits this observation to Cicero, whose adaptable historiography provides a framework within which the whole of the history of philosophy can be preserved and no theory is thereby reduced to footnoting another. Academic history is made to serve as a map to chart the course of the history of philosophy in general, to understand what the origins of philosophical problems are, who the key players in the history are and how they- and their ideas- relate to each other: what constitutes, in other words, the coordinates of the field. Furthermore, as philosophy and the history of philosophy are constructed as equivalents, Academic historiography has the duty to thematise and reflect on the concepts that in turn structure it: origin, relation, consequentiality, influence, problem, solution, imitation. Philosophy is an open and unified field of inquiry that focuses on a given set of problems and that offers the possibility of multiple perspectives and positions to coexist. The historical community that emerges is not merely an Academic one, but one that incorporates the whole history of philosophy. The disagreement of philosophers at Luc.118-146 offers the same self-conscious and pluralistic approach to the history of philosophy we have just discussed. The extensive review of 103 Conversely, the presentation of the homogeneity of Early Academy at Ac.1.34 cannot fail to raise some eyebrows, seeing the diversity in scope and aims of those early heirs to Plato. Cf. Tarrant 2000 and Dillon 2003. 104 Examples of this elucidating approach are endless. Brittain’s 2001: 194-206 is perhaps the most ingenious of such exertions, suggesting that, despite the lack of real evidence, the skeptical Academy produced two histories: the first is a ‘weak-unity’ theory, endorsed by Philo and Metrodorus who argued that Academics held the same view after the ‘Old’ Academy, the second is the Arcesilean ‘core skeptical history’ which extends unity back to Socrates. O.Cappello, Part IIb 142 opinions on Physics, Ethics and Logic which occupies the final third of Cicero’s speech, is a veritable exploration and systematization of past thinkers. It is ostensibly committed to demonstrating the impossibility of making an assertive choice in any philosophical field: the eternal disagreement between philosophical voices, and the complexity and vastness of the subjects themselves thwart any attempt at discursive harmony and justify epochê. 105 Despite the promise to deliver a picture of the history of philosophical debate as the grounds for unknowability, disengagement and chaos, Cicero in fact outlines the problematic of how to think about relationality between doctrines in thematic and historical context. The privileged area for critical examination of the doxography as a whole has been the section on ethics, Luc.128-141. Two doxographic methods are explicitly implemented to organize the discussion on moral telê – the Carneadean and the Chrysippean. As Brittain noted when identifying the number of competing and colluding voices in the historical reconstructions of Lucullus, Varro and Cicero, this part of the journey into the history of ethics openly relies on two systems to present the history of, and relation between, a number of doctrines. Again, superficially the contrast between the two is regulated by the logic of irreconcilability: on the one hand, the Carneadean approach offers seven telê and depends entirely on identifying individuals with positions, as names are reeled off and associated with a set of ethical axioms. He begins with Aristippus, the Socratic, who believes in voluptas (‘pleasure’) and winds up with Zeno’s honeste vivere (‘living virtuously’), through lesser known figures such as Hieronymus, Diodorus, Erillus, as well as the Academic and Peripatetic leaders Polemo and Aristotle. On the other hand, Chrysippus presents a rather stark contrast, producing a quick succession of ends- honestas, voluptas and a combination of the two- explaining the reasons for the synthesis but without inserting names. 106 The rhetorical effect of this juxtaposition relies not only on the ‘rapidité étourdissante’ with which doctrines are compressed into a very small space, but perhaps most significantly it depends on the impossibility faced by doxographers to construct a coherent system out of them (Lévy 1992: 339). Not only are the doctrines themselves incompatible, but incongruity extends to the way in which they are assimilated into an arrangement. The context of the section on ethics underscores this contrastive vein: the two divisiones frame Cicero’s attempt to separate out Antiochian and Stoic moral doctrines. Antiochus’ correctio, as we have seen especially with reference to Ac.1 above, is predicated on the doctrinal identity of Peripatetics, Old Academics and Stoics. Cicero plays up the 105 Luc.114-9. See Algra 1997: 133-137 who emphasizes the epistemic dimension of the doxography. 106 Luc.131 and Luc.138. O.Cappello, Part IIb 143 problematic aspects of this unity and prises these positions apart in Luc.132-7. Not only is the passage emphatically constructed around expressions of disagreement and conflict, but the author sketches out two specific divergences between Antiochus and Zeno as a springboard to explore the differences between these three schools. 107 The germanissimus Stoicus (‘out and out Stoic’) that is Antiochus holds a middle ground in matters of ethics and psychology, unlike Zeno he shares with Peripatetics and Academics the belief that virtue alone is not enough for a happy life and that emotions are in fact useful. 108 However, the incompatibility of the divisiones can be read as two variations on the same theme. The Carneadean arrangement can be seen as an extension of the Chrysippean. While the latter develops a trilemmatic scheme, the former keeps all three as discrete telê within the list, complementary to the basic three shared with Chrysippus, and ads a seventh of his own invention. 109 Lévy describes Chrysippus’ version as the simplest illustration of ‘désaccord,’ and explores, through a closer reading of the divisio as it appears at Fin.5.16-23, the polemical nature of Carneades’. The Academic, he claims, is explicitly attacking Stoics, reformulating it and satirizing it through this brusque, catalogue-style presentation (Ibid: 344 and 354-9). Carneades is showing up Chrysippus by offering a better and sharper arrangement. This dependence of Carneades on Chrysippus, a thesis that has found universal favor in the scholarship, is in fact a convincing suggestion not only because of the nature of the former’s dialectical modus philosophandi, but especially because Cicero clearly points to this polemical vein of the skeptic as he concludes the presentation. 110 The flexibility of this methodology is evident especially when we survey their different shapes in Cicero’s ethical texts. The Carneadea divisio serves as a recurring formulation of ethical discussions, figuring in its most extensive version at Fin.5.16-23, 111 but also in briefer versions at Fin.2.34, Fin.4.49-50 and Tusc.5.84-5, while Chrysippus’ model makes a fleeting appearance at 107 Verbs indicating disagreement: dissentiunt twice at Luc.132, dissident also repeated at Luc.132 and 133, discrepant at Luc.134. Also dissensio at Luc.134 and contentio at Luc.132. 108 Placet Stoicis omnia peccata esse paria; at hoc Antiocho vehementissime displicet. (‘Stoics think that all sins count as the same, but Antiochus strongly disagrees with this’), Luc.133. Zeno in una virtute positam beatam vitam putat. quid Antiochus? 'etiam' inquit 'beatam, sed non beatissimam' (‘Zeno believes that a happy life is achieved through virtue alone. What about Antiochus? He says, ‘a happy life, but not the most happy life.’’), Luc.134. 109 Luc.138 and Luc.131. 110 Introducebat etiam Carneades non quo probaret sed ut opponeret Stoicis (‘Carneades introduced this point not because he approved it but in order to oppose Stoics’), Luc.131. See also Giusta 1964: 224 who discusses the Chrysippean precedents of the divisio, defining Luc.138 and especially Fin.2.44 as a summary of the Academic arrangement. He also describes the function of the division as ‘schema polemico’ not simply ‘dossografico,’ Ibid: 259. 111 Where it is technically acknowledged as Carneadea [...] divisio, and described as an Antiochian tool- qua noster Antiochus libenter uti solet (‘which our friend Antiochus often uses’), Fin.5.16. O.Cappello, Part IIb 144 Fin.2.44, but is also operating in Cato’s speech at Fin.3.30-1, and in Cicero’s at Fin.2.35. None of these instances are identical, and furthermore their shape can change to the extent that Algra can critique Lévy for confusing the two (Algra 1997: 118-9; also Annas 2007). Four conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of the divisio that can help us see their inclusion in the Academica as parallel to and a development of the historiographic sections on the Academy. Firstly, there is a shared problematic at the heart of the field. As Michel (1968: 118) notes, Cicero surveys ethics with the explicit intent of refuting the possibility of an Antiochian synthesis, both in philosophical and historical terms. Nonetheless, the section as a whole is firmly centered on the construction of a ‘problématique commune’ or ‘cohérente’ (Ibid: 114 and 177): how to make apparently irreconcilable philosophical schools, philosophers and doctrines enter into dialogue with each other. Fundamental points of how to think about ethical problems are laid out, such as philosophizing according to telê, the need to consider alternatives governing the logic of choice and the role of ‘thought’ (φρόνησις) in the context of ethical ends (Giusta 1964: 260-2). Secondly, structure and arrangement is a pre-eminent and self-conscious preoccupation of Ciceronian doxographic method. Michel claims that what binds together the ethics section is ‘désordre,’ and Lévy follows his mentor in characterizing the chaos as ‘très soigneusement organisé’ (1968: 118 and 1992: 341). The paradoxical reading brilliantly isolates the strategy through which Cicero allows for patterns to emerge in the systematization of opinions, and yet allowing no harmonious resolution for the conflicting orders. Thirdly, the relation between the divisiones articulates no simple systemic antagonism, but invites, through reification of, and emphasis on, said logic of incongruity, a search for reconciliation. It presents a study in the history of philosophy that leaves the question of the relationship between ideas and thinkers- that is about the very structure of the history of philosophy- open for the reader. And this excerpt, especially in the French tradition, has come to represent a distillation, a synthesis, of Ciceronian philosophical methodology as whole. 112 The fourth and final reason concerns the instrumental use of the divisio. Considering the extent of the variations on the same scheme, Algra, Lévy, Michel and Giusta agree on the 112 Michel 1968: 120 argues that Cicero conceptualizes the history of philosophy in a Platonic way, i.e. as a movement through others’ opinions to arrive at one’s own, the application of ‘les lois du dialogue platonicien à la philosophie de l’histoire.’ See also Lévy 1992: 376. O.Cappello, Part IIb 145 instrumentality of the divisio and interpret the variations as adaptations to context. Algra (1997: 129- 130) goes as far as concluding that source-investigation is counter-productive, because each application is a variation original to the author and is used for different ends in each instance. The fact that Cicero and Antiochus are associated with the divisiones in their ethical theorizing indicate that the history of philosophy is an instrument for philosophical debate: Cicero looks to these divisions to clarify Antiochus’ view and to provide a template for his own decision-making. It also means that arguing about ethics, about the moral ends of man, is to argue through the history of ethics: doing philosophy is doing the history of philosophy. 113 In order to make this typology of approach available to his readers, Cicero is keen to preserve the polysemy of interpretive systems and to keep both individuals and their ideas within the field. He must, in other words, maintain a live tradition in which each position is not neutralized as a footnote to another, but can independently furnish the thinker with valid approaches to philosophical problems. This level of meta-reflection has been eschewed by modern and contemporary critics, who have nonetheless seen in Cicero’s doxographic methodology the rough sketch for a philosophy of the history of philosophy. Michel (1968: 119), as noted above, interprets Cicero’s historical method as a kind of Platonic-dialogic approach to the history of philosophy; Lévy (1992: 346), who compares the Carneadean diaeresis to the ambition of Aristotelian intellectual history, identifies the doxographic merry-go-round as an exigency to interpret the history of philosophy. Only Auvray-Assayas in her monograph on Cicero notes a connection, between the open-endedness of philosophical dispute, a ‘substrat des conceptions de l’histoire de la philosophie’ and finally the genetic importance of this reflection as an ‘occasion de réfléchir à ce qu’est un héritage philosophique’ (2006: 35 and 36). The present argument has reached beyond Classical Antiquity to show how Cicero’s approach to his tradition can stand up to the complexity of a Hegel or a Gueroult. This comparative methodology aimed to present the Academica’s historiography not as a series of views on the history of the discipline that are paralyzed by internal tensions, but as a sophisticated and sustained reflection on how the history of philosophy can be presented to a Roman audience. The emphasis on changing viewpoints and the maintenance of competing voices is essential to Cicero’s project of delivering to a new Roman audience a complete and live discipline with which each reader can come to terms on his own. Keeping a variety of perspectives legitimizes the subjective experience of thinking through and 113 Nineteenth-century interpretations of Antiochian thought link it closely with the divisio to the point that Hoyer 1883 even suggests it is particular to Antiochus alone. See also Chappius 1854 and Strache 1921. O.Cappello, Part IIb 146 about that history. He insists on community, like Hegel, to integrate his own work and that readership and give them a sense of belonging as well as of right to the inheritance. 4. The Academy in Numbers: the History of the Academy Seen from the Outside In this next section, I will study Cicero’s approach to the history of his school as compared to later histories of the Academy as a way to underline aspects of his historical thought. The crucial difference between Cicero and later students of the Academy is our author’s panoptic vision. Unlike Sextus, Diogenes and Numenius, Cicero looks outside the Academy to integrate the history of all philosophical schools in the mechanisms that characterize the practice of his school. Against this background, the main argument of this section is the emergence of the central role of the individual in Cicero’s history. This is in fact something that he shares with these histories, and an aspect that we will analyze at greater length. Perspectives on the history of the Academy are consistently introduced as interpretations of the contributions of its key theoreticians. What thinkers make of Socrates, or Plato or Arcesilaus determines how they view Academic history and their own philosophical position. The difficulties that have arisen in shaping a definitive narrative of institutional evolution, from the dialogic treatises of Plato, through the numerological-ontological inflection of his immediate heirs, to Arcesilaus’ radical skepticism and back to the onto-mysticism of Neoplatonists, is partly to be explained by the hermeneutic foundations of each theory. As far as the sources allow us to see, in fact, each new position is defined by an interpretation of how it fits into the history of the institution, of how in other words it interprets its predecessors. 114 So the ‘New’ Academy, for example, poses a complex historiographical problem, as its history is known to us only through interpretation, and appears to be in its own right an interpretation of the Socratic inflection of Platonic philosophy: as Lévy has brilliantly expressed it, the history of this school ‘est en grande partie celle des interprétations dont elle a fait l’objet’ (1992: 11). 115 114 The secondary bibliography on this question is enormous. It is within the reach of this section to at least consider the ancient material on the history of the Academy, slim as it is. For an overview of the grand narrative see Dillon 1997 and 2003; Donini 1982; Ioppolo 1986, 1995 and 2009; Krämer 1971; Lévy 1978; Long 1988; Opsomer 1998; Tarrant and Baltzly 2006; Tarrant 2000; and Theiler 1964. This impulse to reconstruct the ‘storyline’ of philosophy according to interactions between individuals is not alien to modern historians of philosophy cited throughout this study who are almost exclusively committed to the search for patterns of theoretical filiation. 115 Appeal to past skeptics is in fact one of three unifying characteristics of the skeptical tradition recognized by Lévy 1992: 5-6. O.Cappello, Part IIb 147 Ancient historians of the Academy have, in fact, consistently associated phases of its history with the leadership of certain individuals and developed a chronological frame based around continuities and discontinuities. Sources for five- or three-Academy theories are relatively homogenous in their dependence on names to fix a moment of doctrinal re-orientation, yet they vary significantly in their choice of names and display at least two conversant traditions in labeling each phase. Sextus sets out both traditions, aligning the numerical categorization to the chronological terms of Old, Middle and New, extending the New into a fourth and fifth Academy. Plato belongs to the first and Old Academy, Arcesilaus represents the second, or Middle, while Carneades and his pupil Clitomachus constitute the third and, according to some readings, the final ‘New’ stage. The skeptic adds the tradition according to which Philo and Charmadas, and Antiochus respectively count as a fourth and fifth Academy. The very same organization can be found in Numenius, though he does not offer the alternatives ‘Old,’ ‘Middle’ and ‘New.’ 116 Diogenes Laertius and Clement present versions of a three-Academy theory, both using the comparative nomenclature of Old, Middle and New but offering alternative variations on leaders of each phase. Diogenes conscripts Lacydes to take the place of Carneades as leader of the final period, while Clement, who only alludes to the ‘New’ school in connection with Carneades, excludes Plato from the series of ‘Old’ thinkers, taking the founder as marker for the beginning of the phase, and makes Hegesinus partner of Arcesilaus in the Middle. 117 These staple narratives differ significantly from the ones we studied in the Academica. The question of unity is, for one, defended from an eccentric angle. At Luc.72-6 Cicero responds to the accusation of sedition, and in particular to the indictment of Arcesilaus as agent provocateur, not by 116 Φασὶ μέντοι τινὲς ὅτι ἡ Ἀκαδημαϊκὴ φιλοσοφία ἡ αὐτή ἐστι τῇ σκέψει· διόπερ ἀκόλουθον ἂν εἴη καὶ περὶ τούτου διεξελθεῖν. Ἀκαδημίαι δὲ γεγόνασιν, ὡς φασὶν οἱ πλείους ἢ, τρεῖς, μία μὲν καὶ ἀρχαιοτάτη ἡ τῶν περὶ Πλάτωνα, δευτέρα δὲ καὶ μέση ἡ τῶν περὶ Ἀρκεσίλαον τὸν ἀκουστὴν Πολέμωνος, τρίτη δὲ καὶ νέα ἡ τῶν περὶ Καρνεάδην καὶ Κλειτόμαχον· ἔνιοι δὲ καὶ τετάρτην προστιθέασι τὴν περὶ Φίλωνα καὶ Χαρμίδαν, τινὲς δὲ καὶ πέμπτην καταλέγουσι τὴν περὶ τὸν Ἀντίοχον (‘some however think that Academic philosophy is the same as skepticism; for this reason, I should deal with this topic. Most people think that there were three Academies. The first and oldest was that of Plato and his followers. The second or middle Academy was that of Arcesilaus, the pupil of Polemo, the third and new Academy was that of Carneades and Clitomachus. Some people put forward the idea that there was a fourth under Philo and Charmadas and others yet think a fifth existed under Antiochus’), Sextus Empiricus PH 1.220. See also Numenius apud Eusebius PE 14.4.15-16. 117 Ἀκαδημαϊκῆς μὲν οὖν τῆς ἀρχαίας προέστη Πλάτων, τῆς μέσης Ἀρκεσίλαος, τῆς νέας Λακύδης (‘the leader of the old Academy was Plato, Arcesilaus of the middle, and Lacydes of the new’), Diogenes Laertius.1.19. Πολέμωνος δὲ ἀκουσταὶ Κράτης τε καὶ Κράντωρ, εἰς οὓς ἡ ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος κατέληξεν ἀρχαία Ἀκαδημία. Κράντορος δὲ μετέσχεν Ἀρκεσίλαος, ἀφ’ οὗ μέχρι Ἡγησίνου ἤνθησεν Ἀκαδημία ἡ μέση. εἶτα Καρνεάδης διαδέχεται Ἡγησίνουν καὶ οἱ ἐφεξῆς (‘the disciples of Polemo were Crates and Crantor with whom the old Academy founded by Plato ceased to exist. Arcesilaus was a colleague of Crantor, and after him and until Hegesinus the middle Academy flourished. Carneades succeeded to Hegesinus, and others came after him’), Clement Stromata 1.14.63-4. O.Cappello, Part IIb 148 justifying the assimilation of Presocratics, Academic scholarchs and Socrates to a single doctrinal position. On the contrary his argument turns on two theses: firstly, the precedent of skeptical claims and their appeal. The Academic skeptical position is in fact introduced both as a moderate version of Presocratic theoretical furor (‘madness’), and as shared at least in part by a dogmatist like Chrysippus. Secondly, within this continuity that resists homogeneity, Cicero makes it very clear that Arcesilaus and Zeno shared the role of modernizers in the matter of opining. Comparing this claim and Arcesilaus’ role in the premise-building dialectic with Zeno at Luc.77 and Luc.112-3, the picture of the maturation and change of philosophical concerns is re-affirmed: it is only with Zeno, and by implication Arcesilaus, that sense-perception and opinion become central issues in philosophy. Cicero breaks down barriers between ‘schools’ in order to evoke a type of philosophizing, an intellectual activity, that operates according to skeptical parameters and that is shared amongst individuals, from Anaxagoras to Chrysippus. Within this framework, Arcesilaus is introduced as an innovator, responsible for shaping a new direction for both the Academy, and philosophy as a whole. We have noted before that the internal history of the Academy amounts to a history of philosophy as a whole. This equivalence depends on a historical approach predicated on a network of individuals who collaborate and innovate even from conflicting standpoints. The individual, similarly to the later Academic historiographies, takes pride of place in Cicero’s design. Indeed, when Cicero does discuss the institutional history of the Academy from within, he does so through a contest over the legacy of Socrates and Plato. Plato’s ironia sustains the only allusion to doctrinal continuity in the whole of Cicero’s defense of the unity of the Academy. This occurs as a complex echo of the Lucullan thesis presented at Luc.15, in which irony is attributed to Socrates as proof of his clandestine dogmatism. Whereas Lucullus defines the pedagogic approach as dissimulatio, interpreting it as a strategy of concealment, Cicero attributes ironia to the work of Plato as he follows his teacher. Irony is a Platonic reading of Socrates, which digests the Socratic view that ‘there is nothing that can be known’ (nihil sit visum sciri posse) for literary reproduction- a logic, ratio, which, in its rhetorical presentation, preserves the respective originality and intimate relation between the two thinkers. In fact, by associating irony with Plato rather than Socrates, Cicero affirms the unity between the two which Lucullus’ argument obliquely casts doubt upon. However, it is through Carneades that the Academica reveals just how central the individual is as nexus of innovation, debate and so fundamentally of philosophy. At Luc.98 Cicero introduces this figure as the turning point of his speech, where the negative polemics on Antiochus’ persona at O.Cappello, Part IIb 149 Luc.69-71, Academic history at Luc.72-7, and sense-perception and logic at Luc.79-98 are all exchanged for the positive-constructive economy of the Carneadean probabile. This section of the Roman Academic’s speech is the pivot of his argument, where, as he himself claims, he divests his words from the thorny constraints of logic and shows Lucullus, and the reader, the propositive face of his, and his schools’, position. 118 And what Cicero turns to is the Carneadea sententia (‘Carneades’ position’). There is an emergence of a differentiated system of Academic theorizing centered on the system of Carneades. 119 Like Arcesilaus before him, whose contribution was characterized as an innovative perspective on opinion and perception, Carneades is a key constituent of the positive evolution of Academic thinking. In this context, Görler’s (1997: 38-39) reading of Cicero’s rejoinder divided into an Arcesilean and Carneadean section is more than suggestive. Both halves depend on a theory attributed to each thinker as specifically theirs, so Arcesilaus embodies the paralyzing akatalêpsia, which governs the logic of Luc.66-98, while Carneades speaks from a ‘probabilistic’ position that structures Luc.99-115. 120 Cicero’s Academy, as tantalizingly reflected in the architecture of his speech, develops through historically circumscribed moments in which individuals, despite the common skeptical register, transform the course of the debate. Crucially, the key role of Carneades is defined not according to the theories he elaborates and which he hands down, but almost entirely according to the interpretative contest his obscure methods elicit from his pupils. And his significance as a whole in the evolution of skepticism appears to rely on the debate he generates rather than on the content of his πιθανόν (probabile or ‘the probable’) the disagreement is about legitimizing a constructive view of this concept – Carneades endorsed this positively and set up a philosophical system around it- or a dialectic view of it- Carneades only supported this insofar as it served a particular anti-Stoic purpose, but he never did elaborate a positive doctrine. 121 The legacy is the interpretation of the intellectual activity of an individual, whose 118 The moment of conversion is rhetorically accomplished not only from the structural perspective, with the beginning of Cicero’s pars construens, but is underlined by the transitive: sed ut omnes istos aculeos et totum tortuosum genus disputandi relinquamus ostendamusque qui simus (‘let us leave all these thorny arguments behind and let us this totally convoluted style of argumentation and let us show who we are’), Luc.98. 119 Not different, because Cicero does interweave strong continuities between the two halves of his speech through a variety of verbal and notional correspondences. 120 As the historian of ancient philosophy notes, this depends on making the whole expression isti aculei et tortuosum genus disputandi of Luc.98 refer to destructive philosophizing as a whole, and not just logic, of which Cicero was just speaking at Luc.91-8. This might make better sense, and gain in conviction if confronted with the extension of the simile at Luc.112, where the philosopher expresses a wish to escape the straightjacket of anti-Stoic dialectic- a moment at which logical puzzles are certainly not directly referenced. 121 This controversy shaping Ciceronian skepticism will be the subject of Part III. O.Cappello, Part IIb 150 work inspires a movement. This is not a question, as it is about Plato in Varro’s history in the first of the Academic Books, concerning the content of the theory, how it can improved, perfected or otherwise. The texture of Cicero’s confirmatio exploits the ambiguity of the status of Carneades’ probabile to show that interpreting such seminal theory is at the heart of understanding what Academic skepticism of the post-Carneadean phase stands for. It is the founding moment of a different type of skepticism altogether, which gives rise to the positivist turn many scholars associate with Philo and with the return to Platonism of Middle Platonism. And yet, the Clitomachean interpretation, behind which Cicero himself hides, contradicts this ‘revolution’ and stays the course of Academic skepticism as a purely dialectical endeavor. Both interpretations turn on understanding the intentional force driving Carneades’ πιθανόν; both shape Academic history, and especially the phase that constitutes the Academica, as a journey into the personal dimension of theorizing; both show that the contest over the ownership of a thinker’s contribution is the stuff of philosophy. The complex articulation of Catulus’ position with which the dialogue closes appears to be in effect an attempt to reconcile, as Lévy (1992: 275) has put it, the Metrodorean with the Clitomachean position. It proposes a contest over what Catulus thought, and this interpretive problem leaves the reader to figure out where Catulus stands and so involves the reader in a contest similar to that generated by Carneades. The reader is thereby invited into the Academy, made to play the Academic part. Catulus’ Carneades, which is said to be like his father’s, 122 supports the view that nothing can be perceived, and yet that the wise man will opine, all the while conscious that he is opining and thus that nothing can be perceived or comprehended. This uneasy formulation, apparently associating epochê and opinion, and creating some terminological confusion with the paradoxical use of vehementer adsentior (‘I strongly assent’) alongside nihil esse quod percipi possit (‘there is nothing which it is possible to perceive’) 123 makes it not only rather difficult to tackle the textual corruption 122 Ad patris revolvor sententiam, quam quidem ille Carneadeam esse dicebat ([Catulus speaking] ‘I go back to my father’s view which indeed he used to say was identical to that of Carneades’), Luc.148. Luc.8-9 and Luc.63. On the relation between Catulus sr. and jr. in the matter of their philosophical preferences see the intelligent remarks of Mansfeld 1997. Lucullus at Luc.59 sends the reader back to heri (‘yesterday’), to the Catulus, where the group ‘heard about’ (audiebamus) Carneades’ link to the moderate skepticism which would lead him to accept that the sapiens holds opinions. Lucullus anticipates Catulus junior’s position even before Catulus junior himself can voice his displeasure with the interference of auctoritas (‘authority,’ in this case his father’s) in philosophy. 123 Interestingly, in the passage just analyzed, Cicero also uses adsentior to show his agreement with Lucullus at Luc.101, although adsensus is consistently detailed as a translation of συγκατάθεσιs at Luc.37 and Cicero himself O.Cappello, Part IIb 151 of the passage, but necessarily defines the conclusion as a reflection on the legacy of Carneades. The textually corrupt clause reads (in Plasberg’s edition), per epochen illam omnium rerum conprobans illi alteri sententiae, nihil esse quod percipi possit, vehementer adsentior (‘agreeing with the suspension of judgment on all things, I strongly assent to their second view that nothing can be perceived’). 124 The problem is conprobans, suggesting that Catulus agrees with epochê, which contrasts with the previous sentence in which he agrees that the wise man can assent, so the suspension cannot be held as total. Davies, Madvig and recently Brittain in fact emend to a negative. 125 Textual critics must make sense of the text, and yet analysis of the passage as a whole shows the frame for this corruption (maybe the very cause of it) is in itself ambiguous. Is the author, as Reid suggests, sending us back to Luc.104 where two types of assent are described (adprobatio (‘approval’) and adsensus (‘assent’)), one held absolutely and one temporarily, or are we being sent back to a similar type of dilemma that characterizes Carneades’ legacy? The argument presently advocates that we do not need to choose: the perplexity is a fitting conclusion to the Lucullus in which the reader participates in the contest over interpreting an individual’s position. This is a quintessentially Academic activity, only this time the protagonist is a Roman aristocrat. 5. The Academy as Theatre The interpretation of philosophical psychologies, as evidenced in the case of Catulus just mentioned, occurs at the dramatic level of Cicero’s work. This logic interests much of Cicero’s late philosophical output. Beard (1986) and Schofield (2002), for example, have underlined the way the De Natura Deorum leaves one rather perplexed as to what Cicero thinks, partly because of the lack of what Beard calls ‘directed conclusions’ and partly also because of paradoxical statements like Cicero’s character, a New Academic, stating his preference for the Stoic position (1986: 33). 126 The political context of his dialogues, implicating figures from Rome’s past, plays out the same mechanisms regulating the history of philosophy but in a Republican arena. This section explores commits to the emergence of probo (‘I approve’) and teneo (‘I hold temporarily as true’) in the later section as alternatives to assent. 124 Luc.148. 125 Plasberg, Reid, Rackham and Schäublin keep comprobans, which derives from the A family probans (the reliable ninth-century Vossianus 84, and the later Florentinus Marcianus 257 and Monacensis 528). Davisius 1725 turned the participle into inpr-, while Madvig, accepted by Brittain, shows non pr-. 126 Mihi Balbi ad veritatis similitudinem videretur esse propensior (‘I thought that Balbus’s position was closer to the truth’), Nat.D.3.95. O.Cappello, Part IIb 152 how the Academica anticipates this hermeneutic engagement and sets up the correlation between philosophical and Republican history. Whether Catulus supports the Philonian-Metrodorian position alluded to by Cicero at Luc.78, as Brittain (2001: 80-1) and Bonazzi (2003: 106-8) have recently suggested, or whether that position has little do with the earlier passage and a Philonian brand of Academicism, as Opsomer (1998: 58n125) and Lévy (2005: 74n57) argue, the ambiguity is played up in the finale by the phraseology which articulates his position. This open-endedness is upheld and accentuated when read in conjunction with Hortensius’ response. Cicero’s great rival appears in fact to be an ideal sort of skeptic resorting to comedy as a cover for his total absence of commitment. Cicero clearly states that he cannot understand Hortensius’ reaction to Lucullus’ speech, and the final tollendum (‘lift up the anchor!’ or ‘[assent] must be withdrawn’) plays on the nautical and technical-philosophical registers to exempt him once again from any clear opinion. Whether the reader and Cicero are agreeing with a Hortensius that wants to hear Cicero’s reply to Lucullus or with a Hortensius that supports epochê is a matter entirely left to interpretation of his playful utterances. 127 Lucullus and Cicero similarly extend an invitation to the reader to analyze their position. The author in fact introduces challenging and paradoxical elements into each voice in order to stimulate interpretations and explore the participative act of reading. In the first place, Lucullus simply assumes a rhetorical pose, erecting an attack on the Academy which Cicero qualifies as subtilius (‘rather clever’), because of his friendship with Antiochus and the role he is made to play in the debate. Catulus expects Lucullus to fulfill his promise and speak what he heard from Antiochus, a more technical perspective on the Antiochian position than the one pursued in the Catulus. 128 And Lucullus limits himself to that remit: what he proposes are not his own words. This distance means he is not invested in whether the arguments are convincing or not. In total self-awareness Lucullus admits he plays a role, and his interiority, the position he assumes, and the intentionality behind his words remain an open question mark for the reader. 129 127 Cicero had already found understanding Hortensius difficult Iocansne an ita sentiens non enim satis intellegebam (‘For I was not able to understand whether he spoke in jest or in earnest’), Luc.63. As my translation suggests, the gerundive (either) refers to the elimination of adsensus and (/or) it is an exhortation to set sail. Interestingly at Att.13.21.3 [351] Cicero explores the appropriateness of nautical terminology to translate the Carneadean concept of suspension of assent. 128 Luc.10. 129 Sed quia non laboro quam valde ea quae dico probaturus sim, eo minus conturbor. dicam enim nec mea nec ea, in quibus non si non fuerint vinci me malim quam vincere (‘but because I am not upset because of the fact that I am not worked up about how convincingly I make my arguments. For I won’t make arguments that I call my own nor O.Cappello, Part IIb 153 Although Lucullus challenges the reader and his audience with his introductory attestation of role-playing, the attack he launches on Academic skepticism and his own Academic theory offer a consistent and integrated philosophy. 130 The same cannot be said of his opponent, whose philosophical perspective emerges as a confused mix of the various sub-categories of Academicism he himself alludes to. The central question is whether Cicero belongs to the Clitomachean camp, committed to dialectic over and above any attempt to construct a positive epistemic frame, or to the Philonian- or Philonian-Metrodorian in Brittain’s terminology- which is characterized by a tentative epistemological positivism. The text does seem prima facie to offer a straightforward answer. At the very moment where Cicero introduces the differentiated Academic positions directly, and with the labels to which modern criticism has habituated us, he sides with the unrelenting dialectical perspective of Clitomachus. 131 The participle credens (‘trusting in’) gives an explicative sense to the subordinate clause which establishes that Cicero is convinced by Clitomachus’ view that Carneades’ theory of opinion is merely held as a ‘position relative to a debate’ (disputatum) and ‘not held absolutely’ (probatum). Commitment to that particular portrait is re-iterated on several occasions. Firstly, tota Carneadis sententia (‘the whole of Carneades’ position’) introduced at Luc.98 and pursued throughout the section to Luc.104 is twice attested as being drawn from Clitomachus’ work. The first citation opens the topic and ushers in Carneadean probabilitas while three sections later Cicero responds to another attack by quoting a different Clitomachean source confirming the picture of Carneades given at Luc.99-101. In this excerpt alone, dedicated to outlining the function of the probabile as a practical criterion, Cicero quotes and openly agrees with three books by Clitomachus, upon the last of which he even confers the status of handbook on the whole issue of Carneadean probabilism. This is an attestation that no other author receives in the whole of the Academica. 132 Furthermore, at Luc.108 Cicero revisits the Clitomachean gospel on Carneades, once again employing the verb credo in relation to his written word on his teacher and confirming the portrait of ones that if they weren’t true, I would prefer to lose the argument than to win’)... agam igitur sicut Antiochus agebat (‘I will go about it just as Antiochus used to go about it’), Luc.10. This is a particularly provocative claim in a debate about commitment to conclusions, especially when the speaker plays the part of the dogmatic. 130 Orthodoxy until Lévy’s great work on the Academica has in fact deemed Lucullus’ speech far more convincing- because structurally sound- than Cicero’s. See Haltenhoff 1998. 131 The division between mitigated and absolute skepticism have already been alluded to in Lucullus’ speech at Luc.59, and in Cicero’s at Luc.66. 132 The three books are the de sustinendis adsensionibus (‘on suspending assent’), a work dedicated to the poet Lucilius and one dedicated to the politician and consul L. Censorinus which treat the same topic (scripsisset isdem de rebus (‘he had written on the same topic’)). This final work he outlines as containing the prima institutio and quasi disciplina (‘the first principles for instruction’ and ‘almost a doctrinal system’), Luc.102. O.Cappello, Part IIb 154 a scholarch who refuses both adsensio and opinatio. 133 From the last two examples, the provisional and dialectical character of the Carneadean position is re-affirmed. At Luc.102 the verb diceret indicates Carneades’ oral response to the Stoic allegations against the lack of perception, and the same disputational posture is adopted by Cicero who at Luc.108 frames the Carneadean ‘Herculean labor’ as a stepping stone to argue for the possibility of a practical criterion, with the whole phrase geared as a retort. 134 The specter of this brand of Carneadeanism is moreover felt in Cicero’s constant refusal to admit the possibility that the sapiens can opine. The tenor of Luc.66-7 is devoted to the construction of an idealized position which eliminates opinion altogether. The common ground between Cicero’s position and Lucullus’ is precisely their refusals to accept that the wise man opines- a position shared by Zeno and Arcesilaus. 135 Arcesilaus’ philosophy is founded at Luc.67 through a simple ‘syllogism’ (conclusio) whose minor premise is that the wise man will never opine. 136 When Cicero elaborates Carneades’ variation- what Striker calls a ‘corollary argument’- which modifies the second premise so that the sapiens will be admitted to opinion, he does so in order to overtly disagree with this variation and reconnect with Lucullus’ position (1996b: 139). 137 The Carneadean alternative is an anticipation of the division between Clitomacheans and Philonians voiced at Luc.78, and Cicero immediately stakes his view as a rejection of opinion as an absolute position. Nonetheless, the Roman philosopher very often appears to operate within what Thorsrud has described as a positive ‘Philonian framework’ (2002: 14). In our analysis of the Carneadean 133 credoque Clitomacho ita scribenti, Herculi quendam laborem exanclatum a Carneade, quod ut feram et inmanem beluam sic ex animis nostris adsensionem id est opinationem et temeritatem extraxisset (‘I believe Clitomachus when he writes thus: that Carneades carried out a Herculean task when he had extracted from our mind assent, that opinion and rashness, just as if it were a wild and huge beast’), Luc.108. 134 'Nihil igitur cernis, nihil audis, nihil tibi est perspicuum?' Explicavi paulo ante Clitomacho auctore quo modo ista Carneades diceret (‘’do you therefore see nothing, hear nothing and nothing is clear to you?’ I explained a little earliuer with the aid of Clitomachus what Carneades said about this...’), Luc.102. 135 Sapientis autem hanc censet Arcesilas vim esse maximam Zenoni adsentiens, cavere ne capiatur, ne fallatur videre; nihil est enim ab ea cogitatione, quam habemus de gravitate sapientis, errore levitate temeritate diiunctius. Quid igitur loquar de firmitate sapientis? quem quidem nihil opinari tu quoque Luculle concedis (‘however, Arcesilaus thought that the strongest asset of the wise man- and in this he agreed with Zeno- is that he avoids being taken in and in making sure he is not deceived. For there is nothing further removed from our view of the wise man than error, foolishness or rashness. What shall I say therefore about the wise man’s control? Even you Lucullus allow that he never opines’), Luc.66. Notice the link between temeritas and opinio- a connection first established here, and re-affirmed at Luc.87, Luc.108 and Luc.114. 136 (i) 'si ulli rei sapiens adsentietur umquam, aliquando etiam opinabitur (‘if the wise man assents to anything, then he is opining;’ (ii) numquam autem opinabitur (‘the wise man never opines’); (iii) nulli igitur rei adsentietur (‘therefore the wise man will never assent to anything’). For a schematic representation see Brittain 2006: 39. 137 Carneades non numquam secundum illud dabat, adsentiri aliquando; ita sequebatur etiam opinari, quod tu non vis, et recte ut mihi videris (‘Carneades never agreed to the second premise, so that he thought the wise man would sometimes assent; thus it followed that he would opine. You don’t agree with this, and rightly so’), Luc.67. O.Cappello, Part IIb 155 probabile, Cicero’s approach was shown to be haunted by an ambiguity which enabled both a dogmatic and skeptical construal of this form of practical criterion. This sophisticated play of interpretations is set within the wider question of how Cicero’s position throughout his speech is to be read. Indeed, at Luc.66 before he embarks on his crusade against opinion, Cicero not only expresses the possibility of discovering something similar to the truth, which is at the root of his investigative curiosity, but he also claims for himself the mantle of a magnus opinator. 138 Functioning through opinion is a characteristic that twice in the passage defines Cicero’s intellectual activity in contradistinction to the sapiens, and yet Cicero still posits an epistemological basis for progress towards truth. 139 This very progress is what motivates writing the treatise: a spirit of research and intellectual engagement affirmed in the passage through the repetition of verbs indicating examination, the confirmation of the concept of verisimilitude and expressions of freedom in iudicium. 140 Thorsrud has integrated into this issue the references we find in the prefatory Fam.9.8 [254] and at Ac.1.43, through which the authorial voice of Cicero links himself to Philo’s position. Does Cicero look more like Philo in the Academic Books and in the earlier edition he looks more like Clitomachus? The question is still more complicated than Thorsrud envisages: it is not simply about whether Cicero’s image of Carneades changes between editions, but also whether it changes between the two halves of the project itself (Ibid: 14). The paradox resulting from this discontinuity is irresolvable as far as the lost parts of the work are concerned, but Thorsrud argues for a harmonization of both views which depends on an unconvincing reading of Luc.78- the problem passage. Fundamentally, Carneades cannot assent to either proposition- that the sage can or cannot opine- and so Clitomachus, whom Cicero uses for his portrait, shows him arguing for both, and so for neither. Philo’s ‘mistake’ is to approve one position- but ultimately for Thorsrud Cicero does not consider this coming down on either side as ‘important,’ and so the orator is able to engage with both without committing an ‘intentional’ or ‘unintentional misrepresentation’ (Ibid: 17). Apart from the 138 Qui enim possum non cupere verum invenire, cum gaudeam si simile veri quid invenerim? (‘how can I not desire to discover truth itself when I rejoice if I find even just something similar to it?’), Luc.66. 139 Non enim sum sapiens… non sum sapiens (‘for I am not wise’), Luc.66. This is where Cicero parts ways with Catulus. 140 Luc.7-9. qui verum invenire sine ulla contentione volumus idque summa cura studioque conquirimus (‘we only wish to arrive at the truth without any contention and we pursue it with the utmost keenness and care’)... Neque nostrae disputationes quicquam aliud agunt nisi ut in utramque partem dicendo eliciant et tamquam exprimant aliquid quod aut verum sit aut id quam proxime accedat (‘our disputations are solely aimed to draw out and shape, almost, what is true or that which is closest to it, through arguing on both sides of the topic’), Luc.7. Hoc autem liberiores et solutiores sumus quod integra nobis est iudicandi potestas (‘yet we are freer and less constrained because our ability to judge is unimpeded’), Luc.8. O.Cappello, Part IIb 156 difficult interpretative journey the historian of philosophy embarks upon when he claims to read the intentional force of the paradox, the problematic and divisive nature of Carneades’ teaching seems in fact to be played out in the positions Cicero himself adopts. While some form of constructive movement is necessary to sustain dialogue, any commitment would undermine the impurity of doubt necessary to maintain a consistent position. As Cicero declares, in words that could describe a reader’s view of the experience of reading this dialogue, Carneades ‘is not afraid of appearing to throw everything into chaos and make everything uncertain.’ 141 Finally, the argument for finding a consistent voice for Cicero would need to tackle other instances in the text where apocryphal shadows of Aristotelianism, Platonism and Antiochianism make their presence felt. At Ac.1.6, for example, Varro, who is looking for common territory with Cicero to explain the impossibility of writing philosophy in Latin, invites him to understand their physica. This physics, tellingly qualified by nostra, is articulated quite clearly around Aristotelian causes: the material (corpusculorum ‘bodies’, material ‘matter’), the formal (fingere, formare ‘to mould’ and ‘to shape’) and efficient (effectio, efficiens ‘the efficient cause’). The fourth and final cause, may, as Ruch shrewdly observed, be alluded to in the rejection of the fortuitous nature of atomistic physics which motivates the passage (Ruch 1970b: 78-80). Not only is the differentiation between vetus and nova expressed at a later stage in the following section, but Cicero’s reply never contradicts Varro on this point. Indeed ultimately he travels in the same direction as Varro when he suggests that the models to imitate are Plato, Aristotle and Theophrastus. 142 Cicero’s doctrinal volte-face in the Lucullus seems to defy intellectual integrity. Cicero introduces the final doxography through a nostalgic appeal to the Lyceum and the Academy, which he claims as offering a preferable way of going about philosophical enquiry than the strictures of Hellenistic epistemology to which he has repeatedly adhered. As he looks to widen the field of the dispute, he explains that the third clause limiting Hellenistic sense-perception, does not interest Aristotle, Theophrastus, Xenocrates or Polemo. 143 Moreover, as he insists on this line of enquiry concerning apprehension and reaches the conclusion that he finds nothing, Cicero sharply contrasts the veto on opinion formulated by Lucullus, but with which he agreed, with the tolerance of the vetus Academia and the Peripatetici. Pre- Zenonian philosophy is not concerned with either axiom of the 141 Non metuit ne confundere omnia videatur et incerta reddere, Luc.110. 142 Ac.1.10. 143 Luc.112. O.Cappello, Part IIb 157 current debate: no one claimed the necessity of a third clause to verify perception, and opining was a licit act. 144 This section extends the Peripatetic spirit to infect Carneades himself. As in the alternative conclusio of Luc.67 examined above, Carneades re-affirms his difference with Arcesilaus, but is now also shown as fully conversant with the spirit and tenor of early Academic and Peripatetic philosophy: that the wise man can assent, and that an impression can be acted upon even if it does not offer cast-iron guarantees of its truth are the suggestions of an anonymous Peripatetic with which Cicero is happy to go along because Carneades is too. 145 Cicero maneuvers both his own position and that of Carneades to be aligned with that of the veteres- assimilating his voice specifically to that of the vetus Academia and Lyceum which Antiochus reconstructs, as we know, as his legitimizing origin. However, this alignment amounts to more than a compelling rhetorical strategy of appropriation. The coda to the section, where Cicero approves the two axioms he just rejected as irrelevant constraints, strikes a jarring note in the argumentative economy of his words. The excerpt already contained two adverbial comparatives indicating that both Carneades and Cicero would to some extent disagree with that position. Expressions, in other words, which begin distancing the skeptics from their forefathers. 146 Integration with an older philosophical tradition is further complicated by the fact that Cicero ‘approves’ (probo) these principles, and in fact specifies his commitment to them as ‘truth’ (verum) and not held as such ‘provisionally’ (nec dico temporis causa). This final sentence alone, with its juxtaposition of veritas, probabilitas and provisional approval disengages the Ciceronian voice across the variety of positions whose outline he has constructed across Luc.99-104. The addition of Antiochian veteres provides an extended template for the distribution of his position, and that of the ever-more complex Carneades. The excerpt as a whole 144 Itaque incognito nimirum adsentiar id est opinabor. Hoc mihi et Peripatetici et vetus Academia concedit; Vos negatis, Antiochus in primis…Quis umquam dixit aut veteris Academiae aut Peripateticorum vel id solum percipi posse quod esset verum tale quale falsum non posset, vel sapientem opinari? Certe nemo (‘therefore I will assent to something unknown that is I will opine. Peripatetics and the Old Academy allow me this. You don’t. And Antiochus is the first among you... Which member of the Academy or which Peripatetic ever said that the only thing that can be perceived is an impression that is true in such a way that it cannot be false or that the wise man cannot opine. None, I tell you’), Luc.113. 145 Si, cum ego nihil dicerem posse comprendi, diceret ille sapientem interdum opinari non repugnarem, praesertim ne Carneade quidem huic loco valde repugnante (‘If [a Peripatetic] were to say, once I have stated that nothing can be apprehended, that a wise man does sometimes opine, I would not argue back, especially since Carneades does not in any way reject this position’), Luc.112. This involves, as Görler 1997: 45 has pointed out, no small ‘doxographical distortion,’ since Arcesilaus, as seen at Luc.66 and Luc.77, directly negates the possibility that the sapiens can opine. 146 Magno opere (‘greatly’), Luc.112 and valde (‘especially’) Luc.113. O.Cappello, Part IIb 158 finally assumes the dimensions of a de-familiarizing strategy aimed at re-modeling the ways in which approaches to Cicero’s philosophical persona can and need to be unified and consistent. The problem of persona develops in the Academica along twin tracks: the dramatic character of ‘Cicero’ in the debate, and the authorial voice, emerging in the preface to the Lucullus. Görler (1997: 36) equates the character in the work with Cicero the author. 147 His analysis takes as its interpretative key Cicero’s claim to speak out of conviction, and the personal note which interpenetrates his self-definition as an opinator. 148 Through this model, he commits to a series of readings which, as with Thorsrud above, involve downplaying certain declarations because of a preconceived notion of how the Ciceronian voice should sound. So for example, in the case of the problematic declaration of Luc.113 analyzed above, Görler hears a ‘subdued voice,’ forced to ‘tail the line’ and which, because of its dislike for the destructive side of skepticism, must eliminate Arcesilaus altogether (1997: 46-7). The impulse to level the differences depends on the construction of Cicero as a thinker of libertas (‘freedom’), idealizing skepticism as a moral and essentially political position, thereby requiring philosophy to retain a constructive intellectual aspect (Strasburger 1990; and Lévy 1992). In this case, interpretations which take stock of the paradoxes and contradictions haunting Cicero’s philosophical position turn to the personality of the thinker. The issue confronting the reader is to shape a Ciceronian position that would make sense of these inconsistencies, to fit them within a coherent scheme. This scheme must account for the historical dimension of the Republican hero, as a dynamic, participative figure whom we have come to know so well through his actiones. In relation to Lucullus, but more so in relation to the ambiguities of Catulus and Hortensius, we have shown that these interpretive challenges draw attention to a particular focus of the debate: the reader is made to play into the logic of the philosophical historian by interpreting these Roman philosophers-in-drama. With ‘Cicero,’ as Görler notes, the rhetoric of persona is expanded and its contours are better defined. On the one hand, the personal interjections structuring his defense, especially those introducing it at Luc.65-6, thematise his position: what ‘Cicero’ thinks is central to his argument. 149 147 He confidently opens with the remark that Cicero’s philosophical position is the same as that ‘reported and defended’ by ‘Cicero’ in the dialogue. 148 Luc.65-6. 149 As opposed to Lucullus’ role-playing, to which Cicero himself is no stranger. See Rep.3.7, Nat.D.3.51 and 3.95, Tusc.3.46. O.Cappello, Part IIb 159 On the other hand, the connection between argument and prefatory frame complicates the fictional nature of the characters, and this is felt most directly in the case of Cicero himself. Apart from the endlessly challenging issue of staging historical characters, the interplay of narrative and authorial voice produces a number of significant effects. 150 Firstly, the whole disputational edifice is given a historical grounding: the characters elicit interest not simply for their position, but for the personal connection between individual and philosophy. The example of the Lucullus, which begins as an exposé of the eponymous hero as theoretician, is of crucial importance to directing the reader’s attention to philosophy as a key constituent of his historical personality. 151 However, it is in the introduction to the Academic Books that the issue of philosophical position involves issues of consistency and of authorial persona. In fact, the vastly influential Ac.1.13 opens the debate on Cicero’s position and its switch. Varro introduces the discussion by questioning the Ciceronian migration from ‘Old’ to ‘New’ Academy- an accusation which is crucially neither accepted nor outright rejected by Cicero. Not only does the verb tractari imply a written work, referring to a perspective held in writing rather than personally, 152 but Cicero himself first invokes his right to change by comparing himself to the renegade Antiochus, and then discusses the possibility that such difference between nova and vetus may be non-existent, at least in so far as the Philonian reading of history suggests. 153 The crucial debate over the One- or Two-Academy theses is immediately characterized as one of (self-)positioning. Cicero seems to provide an incisive and original response to key issues in historiographical philosophy. He avoids what Faurot (1969: 646) has identified as the unhistorical nature of philosophical history- that is the schematization of a thinker’s work into a compilation of doctrines, with no room for the difficulties of precisely defining a philosopher’s thought. Ryle (1966) expressed this issue by pointing to the confusion between Plato and Platonism. Philosophers often engage in this practice of defusing intricacies of interpretation by as it were de-personalizing thought and 150 On the literary regime of Ciceronian dialogue see Dyck 1998; Schofield 2008; Gildenhard 2013; and Steel 2013. 151 So Cicero concludes, turning to the less celebrated aspect of Lucullus’ erudition, nos autem illa externa cum multis, haec interior cum paucis ex ipso saepe cognovimus (‘we know about his external qualities along with many others, but these hidden qualities we often had a chance to enjoy’), Luc.4. Note also that Cicero draws attention to the integrity of his fictional creation by parrying criticisms that their erudition (scientia) is an unlikely attribute: sunt etiam qui negent in iis qui <in> nostris libris disputent fuisse earum rerum de quibus disputatur scientiam. qui mihi videntur non solum vivis sed etiam mortuis invidere (‘there are even some who say that those protagonists who debate in my works have no knowledge of the matters in question. These critics seem to me not only to envy the living but the dead too’), Luc.7. 152 Görler 1992 presses this sense of the verb to exclude the possibility that Cicero’s position ever did change. Cf. Reid 1885: ad loc who sees the verb as a clumsy disruption of the literary illusion. 153 For Antiochus’ change see also Luc.69-71. O.Cappello, Part IIb 160 conjecturing a consistent movement out of a single (or series of) works. But Cicero preserves the historical texture by showing thought and doctrine in their historical becoming, leaving to the reader the possibility of active engagement with the thinkers populating his work, a live philosophical tradition. The rhetoric of self-positioning and the construction of philosophy as a personal practice also make sense from the perspective of the hermeneutical tradition. Gadamer’s work- in particular Truth and Method (2010) - offers a valuable template to think about the significance of Ciceronian engagement with individuals. Philosophy, as an intellectual practice, is for Gadamer intimately linked with the mechanics of Verstehen. This term indicates a form of cognition different from the objectivizing, and rule-based engagement of Erklären which is at home in scientific enquiry. As theorized by Dilthey and Heidegger, Verstehen is connected to a more immediate sense of subjective participation in the world, and is positively not rule-bound. 154 Gadamer takes this mode of cognition as starting point for his treatment of the historiography of philosophy, as a solution to the challenge the philosopher is faced with when put before another philosophical text. Reflecting on the impossibility of escaping the constraints of interpretation, understood as the impossibility of attaining a completely a-historical and objective position vis-à-vis the object of one’s work, the German philosopher cautions the interpreter to fully realize his position within his own historical moment, and so gauge the distance- chronological and cultural- from the work he is treating. Verstehen, as the subjectivizing constituent of philosophy immediately defines the discipline as a personal practice, fundamentally identified with moving oneself into a place, taking up a position, within a continuing tradition (Gadamer 2010: 246 and 2001: preface; and Bianco 1974). The situatedness of Cicero’s Academica is inextricably linked to the personal, individuated dimension of philosophy that shapes Cicero’s historiography and which he puts at the heart of how the reader approaches his text. The objective of this ‘live’ tradition is to bring philosophy to Rome: to bring the characters populating its history, but also a brand of rational thinking that is both abstract and aware of its new surroundings. 154 Both Heidegger 2008 and Gadamer 2010 distance themselves from the sociological vein of Dilthey’s 1989 definition, and the former immortalises Verstehen as one of the structural constituents of Dasein, a modality of being-in-the-world. O.Cappello, Part IIb 161 6. Critical Philosophy, or Philosophy at the Limit Although philosophical tradition emerges as a historical process, characterized by discontinuities and revisions, Cicero’s protagonists are consistently associated with fully formed, integrated ideas and methodological perspectives. The model of debate which Cicero follows, presupposes that participants assume a determined position on the philosophical spectrum and argue from that platform. The form of the conversation, two long expository orations, depends on the configuration of a position, against which the second speaker argues. 155 Furthermore, many of his works establish directly which character will represent which school, if not which exact philosopher. So in the treatise on epistemology, Philo and Antiochus are the sources for Lucullus’/Varro’s and Cicero’s position. This approach to dialogue, as Schofield (2008) has argued, offers an opportunity to give greater breadth to the development of theories, more so than the Socratic at least, while it also allows for more detailed critique. The eristic aspect of the Academica, the notion of philosophizing through conflict, and what the implications are for Cicero’s historiographical agenda, is the concern of the present section. Firstly, through analysis of the rhetorical regime of the Lucullus, we will explore the extent to which Cicero’s philosophy is a fundamentally critical form of theorizing. Secondly, through a sensitive reading of Kant by Derrida, the argument will consider the ways in which Ciceronian philosophy is a philosophy about the limits of the history of philosophy, how it corresponds, in other words, to the ‘philosophy of limit,’ a label which the poststructuralist uses to describe Kantian Kritik. Through Kant we will finally turn to the third part of the argument which describes the way in which ‘limit’ underscores progress, how criticism and the search for the limits of a position define the boundaries for philosophy to cross, and so constitute the foundations of development. Part II has so far already attempted to define and catalogue the perspectives involved on both sides of the argument. Through Lucullus and Cicero, just as through Varro and Catulus, the Academica as a whole engages in an attentive critique of arguments which are related to established positions. Criticism of Academic, Peripatetic or Stoic positions, just as attacks on Arcesilaus, Carneades, Zeno, Chrysippus, or of Lucullus himself, all shape the arguments deployed by each speaker. The speeches exist as disputations aimed at highlighting the inconsistency and inadequacy of other systems. 155 Cf. De Or.3.80, Tusc.1.8, Fat.4 and Fin.2.3. O.Cappello, Part IIb 162 The progress of Varro’s history of philosophy, shifting from Platonic descriptio to the devolution of correctio, offers an interesting case of how criticism stimulates the narrative of that history. In the first part of his speech, as the philosopher sets out the threefold division of the discipline, only two proper names are mentioned, while the edifice itself is ascribed to the Academy and the Lyceum. 156 Once the foundation is established, names of philosophical schools fade out and are replaced by individual thinkers and their attack on the system. In the space of ten paragraphs Varro lists all the major figures of Aristotle’s and Plato’s school down to Arcesilaus, and finally describes the Stoic departure in terms of Zeno’s critique alone. The fact that the criticism is nonetheless structured around schools, with the Peripatos introducing the Old Academy and then finally the Stoics, indicates that it is not the antiquarian’s intention to dissolve the institutions in favor of isolating philosophers. 157 On the contrary, the rhetorical strategy clearly associates progress with individual critique of positions. And this mechanism does not only highlight the importance and singularity of the thinker, but identifies the role of criticism as the vehicle for philosophical development. 158 The reader is left with a clear sense of the limitations of Platonism. Each subsequent thinker, apart from Plato’s direct heirs in the Academy, isolates an area of Platonic doctrina with which he takes issue. In the end, Zeno develops what amounts to a sustained critique of the entire structure, a catalogue of changes and adaptations which amount to a new comprehensive system. 159 This model operates on a different scale in the Lucullus where two critiques are delivered, each of which isolates the inconsistencies and inadequacies of the other, but both of which remain inconclusive. There is no sense at the end of either of a Zenonian re-systematization. Rather, the treatise appears to thematise critique itself as an aspect of philosophical dialogue. 156 Ac.1.19-33. Aristotle, Ac.1.26 and Plato, Ac.1.30. Both times however they anticipate the criticism that is to come, with the former associated to matter and the latter to his Forms. Note also that I am arguing about the way in which the Platonism is presented in the speech, and not, as discussed above, how it in fact emerges as the outcome of a pick and mix scenario of Early Academic positions. 157 Ac.1.33-42. Eleven names are mentioned. In terms of names of institutions only the Academy is named as a place of congregation at Ac.1.34. It is also the institution that delivers no attack on any part of the system, though they themselves are manifestly involved in the construction of that system at Ac.1.19-33. 158 This is foremost in Cicero’s retort to Varro about choosing the New Academy, since certe enim recentissima quaeque sunt correcta et emendata maxime (‘for undoubtedly the most recent theories are the most correct and most revised’), Ac.1.13. 159 Ac.1.35-42; in his fere commutatio constitit omnis dissensioque Zenonis a superioribus (‘almost all Zeno’s changes to and disagreements with his precursors is reported above’), Ac.1.42. O.Cappello, Part IIb 163 The debate on whether Cicero’s speech is an adequate reply to Lucullus’ has been a point of controversy since Hirzel’s magnum opus, and has in itself caused not inconsiderable problems to eager sponsors of Ciceronian acumen. The technical and tightly organized attack by Lucullus on the clearly identified problems of Arcesilean and Carneadean skepticism are met by the immediate performance of a melodrama by his opponent. As Ruch has illustrated, the opening sections of Cicero’s reply are a concerted play of rhetorical strategies. From Luc.64 to Luc.98, the part of the speech he defines according to the ‘schéma oratoire’ as the disputatio, the intensity of exclamations, rhetorical questions and ad personam attacks defy the philosophical demands of his opponent in favor of constructing the oratorical ethopoeia (1958a: 320-1). What emerges throughout Cicero’s defense is an emphasis on the rhetorical dimension of the speaker’s involvement: a sense of ‘désordre concerté’ seems in fact to haunt Ruch, who uses this expression to deal with the constant alternation of argumentative strategies, from the frequent questions, to the exclamations, from the syllogisms to the confessions of ignorance (Ibid: 322). The superficial sense of chaos in Cicero’s response has led a number of scholars to agree that Lucullus’ attack on Academic skepticism is vastly more consistent and sophisticated than Cicero’s riposte. Hirzel is perhaps the most prominent voice on this side of the debate, and the inadequacy of Glucker’s revision shows precisely the extent to which his work is still important. In the third volume of his Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophiscen Schriften, Hirzel (1883: 251-341) explains that the inadequacy of Cicero’s rebuttal is a matter of source-material. Lucullus’ speech is based on the Sosus, the work mentioned at Luc.12 as the response to the Roman Books, while Cicero’s is founded on the treatise that the Sosus refutes. Glucker, whose interest is also in the source of Cicero’s speech, summarizes and critiques Hirzel’s lengthy analysis of Luc.64-147. 160 In doing so, he details nine weaknesses in Cicero’s response, ranging from an inadequate historical discussion of Academic ancestry to Cicero’s incompetence in matters of logic and sense-perception. 161 Glucker, it must be said, often resorts to improbable explanations for the consular’s shortcomings, the doubtfulness of which confirms the difficulty of seeing a self-evident logic in Cicero’s speech. On the issue of the characterization of 160 Glucker 1978: 413 tries to show that Cicero’s response is satisfactory and that the source for his speech is a Philonian response to the Sosus. This theory was anticipated by Plezia 1937; and Philippson 1939. The distorting influence of a source-based approach is most palpable in these ingenious constructions of stemmata that commit baffling logical fallacies in their interpretative schemes, in this case trying to fit the rhetorical texture of the speech into a pre-determined idealized version of Cicero philosophus. (Glucker 1978: 405 thinks Cicero is far too intelligent to commit such a “howler”, so he must be using a book that refutes the refutation). 161 Hirzel 1883: 322-3 with Glucker 1978: 399; Hirzel 1883: 325-8 with Glucker 1978: 400. O.Cappello, Part IIb 164 Arcesilaus, for example, Cicero appears unable to rid this scholarch of the accusation of sophistry pinned on him by Lucullus. 162 While he suggests that it is the search for truth that constitutes Arcesilaus’ objective, the interrogation of Zeno which follows runs counter to this objection. 163 Furthermore, Cicero never responds to the accusation that skepticism essentially negates the idea of progress in philosophy. On this point, Glucker (1978: 400) has to admit that it is impossible to determine where exactly the reply can be found in the text, although the promise to deliver one comes as early as Luc.76. For Glucker he simply forgets. 164 Ciceronian forgetfulness riddles other issues, especially in terms of sense-perception and the thorny intricacies of logic. His response to Luc.19-20 depends in part on showing the similarities between Lucullus’ view and Epicurus’. Yet Lucullus had expressly denied that he would pursue that particular line of argument. Glucker is right in pointing out that at Luc.80 Cicero will clarify where Antiochus and Epicurus differ. Nonetheless the opening cannot fail to strike a jarring note: Cicero goes back to the arguments about the dove’s neck and about the bent oar (stock arguments about the trickiness of the senses), which Lucullus had decided not to get into. For Cicero, however, this is a chance to show that Epicurus, reviled by both parties, is at least more consistent than Antiochians. 165 A similar tune is played in the discussion of hallucinatory experiences, where at Luc.88 Cicero repeats almost verbatim an argument that was raised and refuted at Luc.52. 166 Cicero’s speech is not a specular copy of Lucullus’ with a matching architecture and point- by-point refutation. The ‘chaotic’ element, nonetheless, endows it with a different and equally important identity. His speech is fundamentally about critique, about using rational thinking in a critical fashion to isolate problematic areas and, by destabilizing a particular philosophical picture, to look for new grounds for philosophical discourse to develop. Lévy re-reads the section with great acumen and sophistication to redress the interpretive orthodoxy. Through his eyes, the speech is not only ‘sans aucun doute supérieur’ to Lucullus’, but its 162 Luc.16. 163 Arcesilan vero non obtrectandi causa cum Zenone pugnavisse sed verum invenire voluisse sic intellegitur (‘From what follows one can understand that Arcesilaus did not argue with Zeno for the sake of arguing but rather because he wanted to discover the truth’), Luc.76. The sophismata are mentioned in relation to Stilpo, Diodorus and Alexandrinus, Luc.75. 164 For Reid 1885 it begins at Luc.91, while Plasberg 1908 points to Luc.116. 165 Luc.79-80 and Luc.19. 166 For Glucker 1978: 403 there is nothing else to say on the matter. In the final analysis, Glucker must claim that Cicero often ‘forgot a promise’ and ‘forgot a detail’; and he proposes that Cicero himself realized the ‘confused’ nature of his response in Att.13.19.5 [326], where he acknowledges up-front that Antiochus’ arguments are more convincing. O.Cappello, Part IIb 165 superiority is in fact to be ascribed to the rhetorical brilliance it displays. Following Ruch and Michel, Lévy investigates the rhetorical texture of the speech, especially its structure, and tabulates the correspondences between the two speeches. This grid visually substantiates the scholar’s claim that Cicero’s defense not only underscores a ‘très grande recherche de la varietas’- avoiding as it does simply mirroring his opponent- but also that the network of correspondences deployed is a sophisticated and pointed response (1992: 170 and 169). 167 Furthermore, the attention that Cicero's speech exhibits towards his opponent’s is marked by his use of direct citations. So for example Luc.74 engages directly with Luc.14, on the motivations of Arcesilaus’ intellectual project, or the praeteritio of loci communes (‘stock arguments’), or the review of artes and memoria replying to Lucullus’ opening concerns. 168 Nonetheless, Lévy’s argument is limited to showing that Cicero’s rhetorical intensity does not amount to a convincing refutation of Lucullus’ attack on Academic skepticism. 169 He undermines and destabilizes the Lucullan system, but does very little to construct a coherent alternative and certainly this positivism is abandoned in the final doxography, which sets out to show how philosophical disagreement is symptomatic of the impossibility of certain knowledge. Cicero often uses arguments that are internally incoherent and paradoxical with regard to his argumentative strategies and philosophical persona. The attack on Antiochus’ inconstantia is the most blatant illustration of both shortcomings. A barrage of questions and critiques ushers the breakaway Academic into center-stage. This introduction depends on the accusation that his move away from Philo, his reneging on the writings and schooling of his youth, weakens his auctoritas. Indeed, the ‘New’ Academic accepts that the intellectual quality of Antiochus’ philosophy remains consistent, but the shift in position is entirely unacceptable. 170 This attack is problematic for two reasons. The first concerns the freedom of Academic skepticism to which Cicero strongly commits in 167 The table at page 168 illustrates at the most basic level the ‘résau très dense’ of the correspondences, and its ‘intensité.’ The whole treatise is in fact chiastically organized so that Lucullus opens with his pars construens (confirmatio) and closes with a pars destruens (reprehensio), while Cicero begins with the latter and ends with the former. 168 Luc.106-7 and Luc.22. 169 This is after all a ‘refutation of a refutation,’ as Burnyeat 1997: 277 points out. 170 Sed prius pauca cum Antiocho, qui haec ipsa quae a me defenduntur et didicit apud Philonem tam diu ut constaret diutius didicisse neminem, et scripsit de iis rebus acutissime, et idem haec non acrius accusavit in senectute quam antea defensitaverat. quamvis igitur fuerit acutus, ut fuit, tamen inconstantia levatur auctoritas (‘But first let us discuss the figure of Antiochus, who studied for so long under Philo those arguments which are being defended here by me that everyone agreed that no one had studied them for longer. He also wrote on these arguments with great acumen. This same man now in old age attacks this position no less keenly than he once had defended it. Therefore, although he was sharp, and indeed he was, his authority is diminished by his inconstancy’), Luc.69. O.Cappello, Part IIb 166 his opening defense of that doctrine and throughout his speech. Freedom from auctoritas is a positive, almost axiomatic, necessity for scientific enquiry, determining the philosopher’s ability to change his mind and select the most persuasive position. 171 His unqualified attack on inconstancy, formulated through the prism of auctoritas, produces a problematic effect on the way his own speech is read. Secondly, after the accusation of inconstantia, Cicero diversifies and intensifies the tenor of his assaults, posing a series of questions aimed at challenging the integrity of Antiochus’ position. The disbelief produced by the secession leads him to wonder why the ‘Old’ Academy was invented, suggesting that perhaps Antiochus would have preferred to have given his own name to the school, Antiochii, or that he should have joined the Stoics. The teacher is portrayed as manipulative, self- interested and entirely divorced from the Academy. 172 Nonetheless, in the introduction to the doxography Cicero develops his critique of Antiochus, pursuing his ambiguous identification with the ‘Old’ Academy and the Lyceum, all the while re-affirming his devotion to the man and thinker. 173 His observations avoid personal attacks, 174 presenting Antiochus in a different light, and they implicitly recognize that Old Academics and Peripatetics can be legitimately cast into a single operative category, which for Cicero is a type of probabilism in tune with Carneades. The personal worth of Antiochus, as well as the credibility of his project, is reinstated. The section on logic expresses the spirit of this strategy most brilliantly. 175 Through a series of complex and very dense explorations of key logical paradoxes, namely the pseudomenos and the sôritês, 176 Cicero attacks ratio as the foundation for intellectual progress and constructive philosophizing. At two different stages of Lucullus’ speech, ratio plays a key part in arguing for the necessity of stable epistemological grounds for life to be possible. Specifically at Luc.26 ratio qua 171 Luc.7-9. For Cicero exercising that freedom see the final doxography, especially the section on ethics. 172 This last is an accusation we shall see again at Luc.132: qui appellabatur Academicus, erat quidem si perpauca mutavisset germanissimus Stoicus (‘[Antiochus] who was called an Academic, although indeed, had he made very minimal changes to his doctrines, he was an out and out Stoic’). 173 Luc.113. 174 A textual problem at Luc.113 has led Reid, and Brittain in tow, to read the expression qui minor est to indicate the individual who, rather than Theophrastus, Xenocrates, Polemo, would answer Cicero’s question quod comprendi possit. Behind that expression, both Reid and Brittain have no doubt in seeing Antiochus. Schäublin keeps with Plasberg and an important part of the MSS tradition in retaining minores thereby indicating that, in all probability, the Stoics are the ones to answer. The latter is rather more convincing on the evidence, and fits with the register of the debate, which is ‘historical’ rather than personal. 175 Luc.91-8. Barnes 1997 offers a logical-positivist approach, which stands alone as a concerted analysis of the section. For a source based approach see Mayet 2010: 25-78. 176 Respectively Luc.92-4 (the ‘liar paradox:’ if a man declares: I am lying, the epistemic status of the statement and of the individual professing that statement is paradoxical) and Luc.95-8 (the ‘heap’ paradox concerns vague predicates: if I keep adding grains of sand, for example, to each other, when does that number amount to a heap?). O.Cappello, Part IIb 167 dialectic (in its technical sense, conclusio or ἀπόδειξις) is the mechanism by which perception evolves into cognition and thereafter memoria, ars, virtus, philosophia. Cicero does not outright reject the structure of Lucullus’ theory, nor does he provide a positive model to tackle the paradoxes. On the contrary, he holds on to them as a ‘wrong and convoluted type of argument,’ as his opponent had described them. 177 They are confirmed as problematic elements that cannot be circumvented or avoided and which make ratio an insecure foundation for philosophy. Emphasis in the passage is not on the destructive impact of logical aporiai, but on the necessity to confront them. The image of Chrysippus and Carneades sleeping and snoring, of the tribune presenting an exceptio, and that of the horses held back from the precipice- images that underline the risks of logic’s pitfalls- must be understood precisely in this sense, of impressing upon the arid technical dimension a rhetorical significance. 178 This is the limit of philosophical discourse for Cicero, the foundation of Lucullus’ world-picture that must be addressed. Cicero’s attack on logic is in fact not an evaluation of how dialectic does or does not enable life, but rather an analysis of its inconsistencies, of how logic behaves at the limit and performs its own undoing. Cicero’s analytic mode operates within theories, and on their own premises, to express their limitations and isolate these as problem areas. Proceeding by identifying issues and constituting them as problems to be dealt with is a method which both Lucullus and Cicero use. The eponymous character steers the debate away from Philo and onto Arcesilaus and Carneades, and maneuvers it again on to the relationship between life and sense-perception; Cicero on three different occasions compresses the debate into capita, and circumscribes the area of contention. 179 The debate is in other words not simply highlighting the critical process by which the limits of theories are exhibited, but it is also, arguably crucially, about isolating those limits and defining them as philosophical problems. Critics so far have addressed this feature as the unrolling of Academic in utramque partem in literary garb, a demonstration in extenso of that method which Cicero endorses in the opening of the Academica. Linked to this strategy is the indeterminateness of Ciceronian dialogue form, which performs the debate between two sides and allows the reader to exercise his iudicium at the end. Furthermore, skepticism itself can be, perhaps should be, characterized as nothing more than a methodology, an insubstantial principle of philosophical engagement. So in the Lucullus not only can 177 Vitiosum sane et captiosum genus, Luc.49. 178 Luc.93, Luc.97 and Luc.94. 179 Luc.12, Luc.19, Luc.68, Luc.77 and Luc.83. O.Cappello, Part IIb 168 the critic see the ‘isosthenic’ structure at work, but Cicero’s voice seems to be repeatedly committed to a simple critical perspective, engaged only insofar as it criticizes. Though these observations go some way to explaining why Cicero chooses to write this kind of dialogue, and why criticism appears as the principal form of philosophizing, this typology of analysis does not account for the implications of this method for his historiography of philosophy. My insistent use of the trope of ‘limit’, and the exploration of images and metaphors associated with boundaries, aims to connect this specific aspect of Ciceronian philosophy with a Derridean analysis of Kant, and in particular of what the use of Kant implies in post-Kantian philosophical discourse. This connection will in turn help clarify Cicero’s approach to philosophical discourse through critique, and how that approach involves an intimate and unique understanding of the institutional history of the discipline. In 1990 Derrida edited a collection of articles and essays, published between 1975 and 1990, addressing the institutional dimension of philosophy, that describe the philosopher’s active participation in the preservation of philosophy as a university and school discipline. 180 The preface investigates by way of introduction the themes of memory, legitimation, origin, history, language and authority which will characterize the rest of the work. Derrida acknowledges that the crisis in the humanities prompted him to think about why and how philosophy should be taught and the role it should play in the curriculum: it is fundamentally a crisis of identity for modern philosophy that provokes his search for the grounding of this discipline. In the context of the broad and sophisticated critical essence of Cicero’s Academica his remarks on Kantianism are immediately pertinent. As he confronts the issue of how philosophical discourse legitimizes itself, he uses the figure of Kant as the enclosure of philosophical thinking: recourse to Kant in the banality of teaching and essay writing, as well as in the loftiest echelons of theorizing, has, apart from the obvious inherent interest, the quasi-bureaucratic function of admitting 180 Derrida 2002 and 2004 is a response to the loi Haby, an educational reform that was perceived at the time as a frontal attack on the role of philosophy in secondary education and gave rise to widespread debates in France on the role that philosophy could and should play in school The États généraux de la philosophie were convened by a group of philosophers, including Derrida, in 1979. Works like Bourdieu’s Homo Academicus are another example of studied reactions to this watershed moment in the history of French state education. Derrida’s work includes the inaugural address delivered at the Etats généraux de la philosophie (1980), and documents concerning discussions held at that meeting, as well as relating to the charter of the Collège international de philosophie (1982), founded by, amongst others, Derrida, and the Commission de Philosophie et d'Epistémologie (1990). O.Cappello, Part IIb 169 the discussion to the philosophical standard. 181 Kantianism is the ‘norm’ because it is a philosophy of criticism, committed to investigating the critical idea itself, of beginning from the possibility of philosophy and developing a system, with all the structural qualities of a system (boundaries, architecture, oppositions). Kantianism, in short, offers an ‘efficient machine to judge and institute’ (Derrida 2002: 53). 182 Deconstruction is thereby assimilated to this structure as an essentially philosophical activity, dealing as it does with oppositions, with limits, and so with the thinking of the possibility of philosophy. In this short survey of the pedagogic and institutional role of Kant, Derrida not only situates his own brand of philosophy within a methodological tradition reaching back to Idealism, but also defines in broad strokes the ‘responsibility’ ruling philosophy. ‘Every philosophy,’ he goes on to claim, proceeds by ‘systems of conceptual delimitations and oppositions’ though he specifies that Kant’s system is quintessentially committed to presenting itself as ‘the essential project of delimitation: the thinking of the limit as the position of the limit, the foundation of legitimation in view of these limits’ (Ibid: 53. Emphasis in the original). Beyond the linguistic détournements, Kantian methodology and the ambition of the project emerge clearly as the focus of Derrida’s interest. The value of the Idealist’s contribution to philosophy is in large part ascribed not to the theories he delivers to posterity, but to the very shape of the system. This system is defined by Kritik, by the construction of boundaries within which metaphysics is possible- boundaries which are in their turn limits, working against other systems and ideas, and constructed as oppositions. The author’s task, as described by Kant himself in his introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, is in fact none other than to establish the foundations of philosophy, and this foundation is articulated against what he perceived as the limits of empiricism and rationalism (‘Gründe vorzulegen’ 1999: 11). Such analysis of the spirit of Kantian critique provides suggestive parallels with the tenor of Ciceronian philosophizing as expressed in the Academica. Turning back to the first section on aitia and the constitutive aspect of Cicero’s treatise, and bringing to bear the element just evaluated of criticism as theme, it is surely impossible not to characterize the position of Ciceronian philosophy as 181 ‘Kant is the norm’ he exclaims after having described the ‘major and authentically philosophical gesture’ of citing Kant. The gesture he goes on to justify as both ‘necessary and interesting from a philosophical point of view in the strict (proper, internal, intrinsic) sense’ and as it ‘guarantees, authenticates, legitimates the philosophical dignity of an argument.’ 2002: 50 and 48. Emphasis in the original. 182 The introduction to Kant 2004 is perhaps the best example of this foundational spirit, though of course the celebrated instance of the rhetoric of Kritik is the opening of its three-volume cycle in 1999. O.Cappello, Part IIb 170 a search for the foundations of a project that thinks itself in terms of a critique of its tradition. And the structural pattern of rupture and critique is itself deployed in the way Cicero imagines the history of philosophy as proceeding: critique is in other words characterized as the privileged mechanism for understanding intellectual engagement. Alasdair MacIntyre (1984) examines the connection between criticism, groundwork and progress from a different perspective. The central question which he confronts is the problem of continuity in the history of philosophy: histories of philosophy, he contends, often employ strategies that aim to ‘mask difference, to bridge discontinuity and to conceal unintelligibility’ in order to provide a coherent historical narrative. Indeed, the philosopher wonders whether, citing Kuhn’s notion of incommensurability, theories are in fact able to speak to each other, and so be compared. The issue is, in other words, to identify the ‘framework of continuity’ within which differences and alterations can still take place without deserting the boundaries of the discipline (Ibid: 33 and 42). In this respect, the history of science poses a slightly different challenge because of the ‘essentially historical’ character of its theories. As he puts it, there is no ‘theory of gases,’ but a theory as it was in 1650 or in 1850. Therefore historically relative theories progress or fail to progress because of their ability to provide for their failures and limits: these ‘incoherences and inadequacies,’ judged against the standards of the body of the theory itself, are constituted as problems, the solution to which becomes the foundation for a change in direction of the theory itself. The natural sciences offer MacIntyre an important paradigm of progress, in the sense that they construct a model in which theoretical weaknesses and shortcomings are in fact ‘points at which [a theory] provides itself with problems, those problems in dealing with which it shows itself capable of growth’ (Ibid: 42). Continuity in this case is provided by the interaction between small-scale theories and the larger body of theories within which they are contained. MacIntyre finds an important commonality between philosophy and the natural sciences grounded in this evolutionary scheme. The way in which philosophical theories speak to each other is through a process of transcending critique, imitative in many ways of the growth and theoretical reformulation that characterizes the history of science. The reason why all philosophers are not Platonists, in his example, is that philosophers after Plato have met the challenge of differentiating themselves from Plato’s position. This differentiation involves identifying the limits of Platonic philosophy (or what these are taken to be by the interpreter) and thereby creating ‘sufficient reason for failing to recognize [oneself] as a Platonist’ (Ibid: 45). Although his emphasis is on the moment O.Cappello, Part IIb 171 of transcending, the moment of solution, the primary duty of a thinker as it convincingly emerges from his analysis is to identify those inadequacies and inconsistencies that constitute ‘problems.’ These problems are precisely what in turn set out the goals of philosophical investigation and constitute fundamentally the narrative of progress. Antiochian correctio which introduces the challenge of the history of philosophy is nothing but an account of philosophy that depends on the identification of problems as creating the conditions for a form of intellectual progress. Similarly, the Lucullus’ interest in isolating difficulties and incoherences in Academic ‘Stoicism’ and skepticism exemplify the first part of the process, the moment in which progress in research is made possible. 183 On the one hand philosophical critique is a search for the possible foundations of philosophy; on the other hand, critique provides the set of problems, and therefore goals to be overcome. Philosophy at the limit is not a negative economy of thought, but proves itself to be quintessentially productive. Cicero’s Academica is about self-positioning within an institution and an intellectual tradition- in this sense, by adhering to a dialogic format that confronts fully formed theories with each other, that is theories generated by, and constitutive of that tradition, the Roman examines Greek philosophy in toto according to its failures. The limits of this tradition are exhibited, performed, in his dialogues, and this performance is legitimized by the fact that the Greek intellectual tradition itself is shown to be characterized by a narrative of re-thinking, a story of problem and solution. Cicero plays into this model of progress, presenting himself in line with its tenets, but also as its ultimate arbiter. Philosophy is not the moment of transcending, but the moment at which the Greek tradition of philosophy is shown reflecting on itself, finding its limitations and examining its shortcomings. A moment that is importantly historical and productive for what is to come, engendering as it does a whole cycle of dialogues, and reflecting the socio-political contingencies of the period, where tradition seems to have arrived at a crisis point. 184 183 See the programmatic Luc.7-9. Also Tarrant 1985a; and Lévy 1992 who thinks the message of the Academica amounts to underlining the primacy of research in Cicero’s philosophica engagement. 184 In a reading of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, Hoy 1978: 331 reflects on the logic of rupture and rethinking of the past that stimulates the German scholar’s work: ‘a rethinking a tradition if it is genuinely thoughtful involves a criticism, deconstruction, or “destruction” of traditional ways of thinking and of the traditional history of philosophy.’ However, he continues, criticism is made possible by tradition: ‘the destruction is not of the tradition or of the past per se, but of a present way of thinking that has become merely traditional, losing sight of the genuine goals and real historical potency of the tradition.’ O.Cappello, Part IIb 172 7. Community: Reason, Philosophy and the Canon This final section looks back to the notion of community and philosophy and argues that community and speculative epistemology are fundamentally connected, and that Cicero in his first foray into Greek theorizing in the spring of 45 BCE seeks to underline that link, and display philosophia as a space for communal self-definition. I contend that the relation between thought and collectivity plays a crucial role in how Cicero develops the treatise and that such relation finds its roots, in all likelihood, in the philosophy of Philo. As with Hegel, Cicero looks at speculative thinking as something that emerges from a network of individuals and as something firmly rooted within that community. What makes a community of philosophers is an issue that, I argue, fascinates Cicero, who is keen on extending the historical Greek network into his own times and create a sense of membership amongst his readers. Selection of members, arguing over the canon and over what philosophical problems are worth debating are all ways to institute a philosophical community and, in Derrida’s words, the space of philosophy. Ultimately, I aim to show that Cicero’s interest in the historical dimension of the field has an institutional finality that consists in presenting his readership with a paradigmatic outline for this new field of research which they can become a part of. Membership of a philosophical school is a key constituent of the shape Cicero gives to the discipline. There are many groups which intersect and create the backdrop within which individuals operate. Perhaps the most palpable expression of this presence and one which was alluded to earlier is the direct identification of philosophical schools. Thinkers always belong to one group or another and philosophical practice is unthinkable without labels, no matter how far individuals within those networks may depart from the orthodox tenets of their school. In the first Academic Book, in Varro’s speech, thinkers are distributed according to three schools, Academic, Peripatetic or Stoic, and their thought is presented under each respective category although often thinkers are not shown to operate within the same specific sub-discipline or even share a philosophical outlook. The Antiochian theory of correctio as represented in Varro’s speech can be read as a challenge to the reader- a challenge to construct group membership through the distribution of ideas and labels in a historical context: how, in other words, do categories, which exist contingently, relate to the individuals set within them, and how does this relation change in time? 185 185 Strato is perhaps the best example of how group identity is necessarily asserted over individual differences. Zeno’s corrective approach to Platonism begs the same question about group identity, see Ac.1.34 and 35-42. The unity of Peripatetics and Academics is especially interesting in this sense: at Ac.1.17 Varro tells us that the different names derive from the space where they practice philosophy, but that the practice itself was identical, because O.Cappello, Part IIb 173 The doxography concluding the Lucullus exhibits a parallel logic of doing and undoing, masking and unmasking group identities. In the first place, for each branch of philosophy, groups of thinkers are ushered in according to their specialization: the geometrae (‘geometricians’), the physici (‘natural philosophers’), the ethicists and the dialectici (‘dialecticians’). 186 Furthermore, within each respective area the space is distributed according to different orders which nonetheless identify individuals as belonging to a network. The first philosopher to be named in the doxography, perhaps unsurprisingly, is Thales, counted as unus e septem (‘one of the seven [sages]’) and as princeps (‘first among them’)- both expressions clearly identifying him within a defined order- an arrangement which evolves with particular attention to chronological sequence. 187 The following section on ethics organizes its protagonists through an altogether different and original pattern: in the first instance between those whose ideas are current and those who have no contemporary exponents 188 and secondly, according to the ends defended. Furthermore, a complex dynamic, similar to the one examined above with respect to Varro’s speech, constructs the history of ethics as a development of groups of thinkers. Place names play a vital part in the constitution of a variety of Socratic and Platonic crews, like the Megarici and Cyrenaici. Cicero also presents other categories, tied to leaders of the Presocratics or linked to individual Stoics, like the Eretriaci and Eleatici. 189 Finally, the idiosyncratic motif of being pressured to take a stand corners Cicero into undoing the complex web of intra-group differentiation and reduce the positions once again to the general labels of Academic, Peripatetic or Stoic. 190 Examples of this tendency to compose networks of allegiance underscore the whole of the Academica. From the historical portraits of Lucullus, Varro and Cicero arranging and re-arranging theoretical conversations between the veteres and the post-Zenonians and post-Arcesileans, to the debates over the division of the Academia itself into one or two sects, the logic of school identity is defined against the backdrop of philosophi and those in Rome who appreciate their influence and practice, against those who deny them any value. Rome is divided into two broad communities to steeped in Plato (Luc.15). However, the rest of the speech in Ac.1, like a large part of the Lucullus, insists on the Peripatetic correctio of Platonism and the second life of philosophy after Arcesilaus and Zeno. This is not to argue that the Academica suggests that there is no identity, but that in fact the question of identity is left open as a challenge to reader. 186 Luc.116-117. 187 Luc.118. 188 These are subdivided into two groups, at Luc.129-130. 189 Luc.129-131. 190 Luc.132: cupio sequi Stoicos (‘I will go with the Stoics on this issue’). O.Cappello, Part IIb 174 which Cicero is speaking. 191 The mirroring of scholastic allegiance and sectarian division in Roman society is articulated well beyond the apologetic prefaces, where Rome is divided according to Hellenophile affinities of its various ruling class. Lucullus in fact provokes Cicero by casting him into the role of a tribune, stirring the populus with his skeptical rhetoric, while he identifies with the boni and optimates. The response to this accusation sees Cicero in his turn attack his opponent with the same charge, and go well beyond in defining his following as a band of ‘exiles, slaves and fools.’ 192 This attention to group interaction and identity politics is entirely congruent with the explication of the foundations of reason at the heart of the philosophical project of the Academica. The final image with which Cicero leaves his reader is that of a courtroom, where judges are expected to pass judgment on the basis of the information available to them, like partial testimonies and other kinds of evidence. For the speaker their predicament offers a parallel for that of the skeptic, and provides a surprising illustration of the prescience of the greatness of Rome’s founders. The foresight of ancient Romans, understanding the condition of ignorance which besets life, set up a judiciary ‘practice’ (ratio) in which those swearing oaths do so ‘according to their own opinion’ (ex sui animi sententia), in which witnesses express what they saw consciously admitting it is from their perspective, even if they had seen the event, and finally in which judges comment on what appears to them as true, not on ‘facts’ (facta). 193 In the argument introducing this image, Cicero comments on the impossibility of scientia, and the Stoic inability to point to flesh-and-bone sapiens. 194 Exploiting the extreme standard of Stoic wisdom, he turns the case on its head by claiming that it is in fact his opponent’s view which eliminates knowledge, and that Academic skepticism both agrees with that position and, consistent with it, provides a foundation for practical existence through the probabile. The repetition of satis over the next two sections underscores the enabling purpose of skeptical epistemology, and shows how that foundation is shared by the practices of the community. 195 Cicero’s achievement in this remarkable final illustration is to embed the language and mechanism of the skeptical community in the history and social ritual of the Roman state. The 191 Luc.5 and Ac.1.4. 192 Exules servi insani, Luc.13.Both wind up as cives seditiosi (‘seditious citizens’), or tribuni, in the contio (‘public meeting’), Luc.13 and Luc.144. 193 Luc.146. 194 Sed qui sapientes sint aut fuerint ne ipsi quidem solent dicere (‘but as to who these wise men are or whether there had been any in the past they themselves cannot say’), Luc.145. 195 Id quod probabile esset satis magnam vim habere ad artes (‘that which is probable is enough to give a strong foundations to technical skills’), Luc.146. O.Cappello, Part IIb 175 dialogue as a whole, and especially his intervention, is cast as a search for the grounds of ratio, for the institution of solid foundations for intellectual and philosophical enquiry; this institution is finally compared to the establishment of a key Roman practice. Wittgenstein’s work provides a suggestive backdrop to this identification of reason and community. Both Bloor (1973 and 1983) and Cavell (1979) develop an analysis of Wittgenstein’s later work, namely the Philosophical Investigations, On Certainty and the Blue and Brown Books, in sociological and communitarian terms. Concepts like ‘rules,’ ‘criteria,’ ‘language games,’ ‘belief’ and ‘common sense’ are convincingly shown to underline a philosophical perspective committed to thinking as a social, collective, practice (Bloor 1983: 168). Cavell (1979) identifies the method of Wittgenstein, his appeal to common sense and everyday belief, to the ‘we’ or ‘us’ of common parlance, as an attempt to analyze the foundations both of reason and community. 196 The central issue of criteria depends, in Wittgenstein and in this final image of the Lucullus, on the authority of the collective; as Cavell perceptively comments ‘the philosophical appeal to what we say, and the search for our criteria on the basis of which we say what we say, are claims to community. And the claim to community is always a search for the basis upon which it can or has been established.’ He finalizes this prefatory observation by claiming that ‘the wish and search for community are the wish and search for reason’ (1979: 20). The image of the courtroom is intimately related to the question of ars, of a body of technical knowledge which would enable human practices, and of memoria, a cognitive mechanism enabling the transmission of these practices and the intellectual development of civil society. Luc.144-6, as well as Luc.107, respond to the system laid out in Luc.21-9 in which only a solid grounding of sense- perception in veritas would guarantee a solidity to human existence, both practical and intellectual. As argued above, for Cicero apprehension is not, cannot, be the cornerstone of civility or civilization, but the probabile does offer stable grounding for human agency. Both thinkers begin with a descriptive analysis of a functioning society, and determine what epistemological mechanism facilitates such operations. The Lucullus interestingly presents two accounts of the epistemological foundations of the Roman community, thereby exemplifying philosophy’s attention to issues of society at large, not in its idealized, utopian character, but in its Realien. The origin, or inspiration, for Cicero’s communitarian approach to epistemology can be found in Philo. This scholarch has been the subject of two important monographs, both of which 196 See Wittgenstein 1973: 1.116, ‘What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.’ O.Cappello, Part IIb 176 characterize his revolutionary- mutinous, even- Platonism as the turn of metaphysics to the quotidian, or the integration of popular belief and ontological abstraction (Tarrant 1985a; and Brittain 2001). 197 Though the methodology embraced so far has studiously avoided source-investigation, study of Philo’s intellectual portrait would broaden our understanding of the influences on the Academica and better delineate the connection which we have so far read through Wittgenstein. Philo’s innovations are notoriously difficult to isolate in both editions of the Academica, and depend not simply on the sparse moments in which he is named, but on the extent to which we read Cicero’s speech as an expression of his theories. 198 Luc.18, along with the cry of astonishment and surprise at Luc.11-2, is our main source for Philo’s nova, the ‘Roman’ theses that Antiochus reacts to. Luc.18 clearly sets out the position as epistemological: Philo gave way to criticism against Academic pertinacia (‘obstinacy’), and manipulated the third clause of apprehension, which was the Zenonian innovation, eliminating it, or weakening it. Thus he made a form of apprehension possible that was non-kataleptic. 199 Sense-perception is re-evaluated as theoretically having a truth-content, but apparently outside the constraints of the Stoic definition. Positing access to truth leads Lucullus to accuse Philo of going back on himself, in other words reneging on his skepticism; and it calls for a violent reaction from Antiochus and Heraclitus in that theatre of philosophical disillusionment that 197 See Mette (1986/7) for a collection of fragments; Glucker 1978: 70-74 for a full review on the scholarship on Philo from the nineteenth century monographs of Chappius 1854 and Krische 1845 down to the histories of skepticism by Brochard 1969 and Dal Pra 1975. 198 Hirzel alone maintains that all of Cicero’s words are Philonian. Goedeckemeyer 1905, Fritz 1938, and Brochard 1969 agree that the speech is based on Philo’s response to the Sosus, which merely rehearses the original position expressed in the Roman Books. 199 cum enim ita negaret quidquam esse quod conprehendi posset (id enim volumus esse ἀκατάληπτον), si illud esset, sicut Zeno definiret, tale visum (iam enim hoc pro φαντασίᾳ verbum satis hesterno sermone trivimus), visum igitur inpressum effictumque ex eo unde esset quale esse non posset ex eo unde non esset (id nos a Zenone definitum rectissime dicimus; qui enim potest quicquam conprehendi, ut plane confidas perceptum id cognitumque esse, quod est tale quale vel falsum esse possit?) — hoc cum infirmat tollitque Philo, iudicium tollit incogniti et cogniti; ex quo efficitur nihil posse conprehendi. ita imprudens eo quo minime volt revolvitur (‘For when he thus maintained that there was nothing that could be comprehended (this is the term we settled on to translate akatelêptic), if that ‘impression’ (this is the word we chose yesterday to translate phantasia) is an impression molded and impressed from the object from which it came in such a way that it could not have come from an object from which it did not come (we agreed that Zeno offered the most correct definition, for how can anyone apprehend anything in such a way that one can be confident to know that it is perceived and known, if that perception could have come from a false object?)- this clause Philo weakens and removes, and in doing so he takes the away the criterion of what is knowable and unknowable, which leads to the deduction that nothing can be grasped. He winds up in a position which he did not want to be in’), Luc.18. Note that buckling under pressure is an accusation made against Antiochus as well, Luc.70. The third clause, often referred to as the heart of the dispute by both Lucullus and Cicero, states that a visum (‘impression’) can only be perceived and cognized if it derives uniquely from its source, and not from anything else. O.Cappello, Part IIb 177 was Alexandria. 200 Since Chappius and Hermann in the nineteenth century, scholarship has seen this acceptance of truth as the key to explain the Middle Platonist turn to dogmatic Platonism. 201 Tarrant’s study of the Platonism of the fourth Academy reviews the orthodoxy of Brochard, Glucker and Dal Pra, and characterizes Philonianism as an original theory that shifts the grounds of Hellenistic epistemology, thereby opening a route back to Plato. The concession made to comprehensibility (‘apprehensibility’ in Tarrant) at Luc.18 involves for Tarrant a third position on the problem. Despite Cicero’s disagreement with the Philonian position at Luc.77, the notion of comprehensio emerges from the dialogue as precisely that intermediate position between katalêpsis and non-katalêpsis (1985a: 53-62). 202 The possibility this opens up for fourth-Academy epistemology is discussed in the opening pages of Tarrant’s work. The Carneadean concept of consistency, according to which impressions are probable if all objections to them being held as such are eliminated, forms the basis for the Philonian epistemology of the evident. 203 The ‘evident,’ as the cornerstone of valid sense-perception, cannot refer to something observably true but must involve a substantial degree of investigation on the part of the observer. The impression is examined carefully to eliminate possibilities that it is false, and so it can finally be accepted as ‘persuasive’ and utilized as a basis for judgment and action. Tarrant is careful to clarify that this system does not aim at infallibility, but at identifying ‘reliable’ impressions. He goes on to infer that this approach cannot reasonably affect ‘sensible particulars,’ one off percepts that occupy our senses in our daily lives, but that it must apply to ‘what is either universally or generally or frequently the case’ (Ibid: 15-20). Taking this model on board, along with the desertion of Stoic katalêpsis, the Philonian third position and the investigative tenor of the Academica, Tarrant convincingly argues that agreement of witnesses is a key condition for the constructive epistemology of the fourth Academy. When a community of individuals over time maintains a particular idea, or a view on something, then this agreement, consolidated in the judgment of many individuals, acquires the status of knowledge. If that idea had been wrong or false, objections would have arisen to eliminate it. 200 In id ipsum se induit quod timebat (‘he led himself to that position which he was afraid to accept’), Luc.18. 201 Augustine’s portrayal of an esoteric Philo at contra Academicos 3.41 has been vastly influential in this sense, and has been used as a document to identify this break with a return to Plato’s doctrines 202 Cf. Sextus Empiricus PH 1.3 and Aenesidemus apud Photius Bibl.170a29-30. 203 Luc.99: the clause is repeated at Luc.101. Cf. Luc.33. Perspicuitas is indirectly connected to Philo at Luc.33-6 and Luc.44. O.Cappello, Part IIb 178 The problem for Philo and his Academy was then the study of particulars, for which there was no way of ascertaining a positive epistemic value. When impressions of a similar kind are gathered, experienced and examined by a number of witnesses, the guarantee of their probable status increases. Sense-perception- which in the re-assertion of the possibility of ontological truth becomes the main obstacle on the road to that truth- is moderated and made less noxious to the probability of an impression through the confirmatory participation of witnesses (Ibid: 12). For Tarrant the community starts to play a critical role in the epistemological system of Philo and his Academy, a position whose implications are felt in the investigative register of the Academica. 204 Brittain’s exacting analysis goes further than Tarrant and proposes a fully developed Philonian system whose very orientation is popular and communal belief. His reading of Philonianism offers a number of perspectives on how his system engaged with community, and opened itself up to its participation. For Brittain, the Academica alludes to three stages in Philo’s thought, the evolution of which is marked by Philo’s desire to ‘insulate ordinary experience from skepticism’ (2001: 166). After the orthodox Clitomachean phase in which both akatalêpsia and epochê were embraced, Philo moved onto the Metrodorian-Philonian position which amounts to a mitigated form of Carneadeanism defined by a rejection of universal epochê and insistence on akatalêpsia. 205 According to Brittain (2001: 94-128), the Metrodorian-Philonian skeptic has a particular approach to concepts and concept-formation which echoes directly the way Tarrant treated universals. His reading takes its cue from the involvement of ratio in the acquisition of beliefs. Unlike Arcesilaus and Carneades, for the Philo of the 100s BCE the in utramque partem dissertatio does not lead to epochê, but constitutes a rational approach to knowledge. The conceptual impression thus evaluated needs to be subjected to a coherence test (i.e. it needs to be in agreement with other experiences and beliefs of the examiner), and also with the degree of acceptance that such concept has acquired in society. This second test of a concept, evocative of Tarrant’s agreement of witnesses, relies on ‘identifying the degree of entrenchment of the concept within the community of (imperfectly) rational persons;’ to put it differently, if the notion shares the trait of ‘universality’ or if it obtains because of its ‘status as a postulate of common sense,’ then its epistemic validity grows, 204 The framework of this new epistemology is committed to embrace the rediscovery of Platonism: this is evident in the rational examination of percepts, distrust of the senses and the focus on universals (read Forms). It also allows Tarrant to connect these reliable universals to Stoic common notions. 205 His reading of this phase depends on Luc.78, Luc.148 and Lucullus’ criticisms at Luc.32-6. It also mirrors, as we shall see, important elements of Tarrant’s analysis of the fourth Academy. O.Cappello, Part IIb 179 and it has a better chance of being assented to (Ibid: 127). Concepts acquire epistemic legitimacy in time and through social diffusion. The Roman phase goes beyond overturning epochê, accepting katalêpsis as a rational epistemological process. As is evident from Luc.18, Philo rejects Stoic perception, but holds onto a form of katalêpsis. Brittain inflects the argument in terms of cognition: unlike the conventional readings upheld by Brochard (1969: 196-202), Glucker (1978: 64-88) and Sedley (1981: 69-75), which focus on the passage as stating that things are knowable in themselves, but not to the human observer, Brittain emphasizes the perceptual quality of things. Objects and concepts can be kataleptically perceived, if the perceiver exercises his judgment under correct perceptual conditions; or rather ‘a subject who assents to a true, “clear” impression has katalêpsis of the object it represents’ (Brittain 2001: 151). However, this does not necessarily imply that the kataleptically perceived object is also truly perceived: there is in other words a differentiation between truth and katalêpsis. This position is developed through the case of identical twins at Luc.84-7. The Academic position on akatalêpsia came to be illustrated through the identical nature of two or more impressions, which thereby trick the observer because they do not possess any ‘mark’ (nota) by which they can be individuated. In Cicero’s example, if one sees Publius Servilius Geminus and thinks he is his twin brother Quintus, then the observer has assented to a wrong impression. It matters not at all whether ontologically Publius and Quintus are or are not the same person: 206 the issue is epistemological, and as such the two impressions must be qualitatively different, or it will be impossible for the observer to tell them apart. If so, the whole existence of a mechanism by which one can distinguish true from false impressions is undone. Philo, however, does think that the impressions differ qualitatively under the correct perceptual conditions; nonetheless, because of his weakening of the third clause of perception at issue here, he can assign kataleptic validity to that impression, even if the observer sees the wrong 206 Qui igitur P. Servilium Geminum videbat, si Quintum se videre putabat, incidebat in eius modi visum quod percipi non posset, quia nulla nota verum distinguebatur a falso; qua distinctione sublata quam haberet in C.Cotta, qui bis cum Gemino consul fuit, agnoscendo eius modi notam quae falsa esse non possit? negas tantam similitudinem in rerum natura esse; pugnas omnino, sed cum adversario facili. ne sit sane: videri certe potest; fallet igitur sensum. et si una fefellerit similitudo, dubia omnia reddiderit (‘When therefore a person who was looking at P. Servilius Geminus used to think that he saw Quintus, he tripped up in the kind of impression which could not be apprehended, because there are no marks that distinguished that impression from a false one. And once that way of making distinctions is removed, what mark would that person have to distinguish C. Cotta who was twice consul with Geminus, a mark of such a kind that it could not be false? You deny that such similitude does exist in nature: you do show some fight, but you battle with an easy opponent. Let us say that it does not exist: but you have to admit that it exists in appearance, and that it thus deceives the senses, and if one example of such resemblance holds then everything is thrown into doubt’), Luc.84. O.Cappello, Part IIb 180 twin (Ibid: 152). Under certain constraints (perceptual conditions and coherence-testing) and so at a given point in time katalêpsis is possible- and this type of cognition is no less firm because revisable at a later date. The possibility of error is, in other words, accepted and recognized, but does not diminish the epistemic stability of the cognized object. Enabling katalêpsis is indeed a ‘radical change’ which has significant implications for Philo’s philosophical orientation (Ibid: 166). Everyday life is now grounded in a cognition that is stable and secure, insulated from the impossible demands of Stoic scientia. The opposition to dogmatism is then entirely transferred to the plane of philosophical theorizing and abstractions. Philo in fact remains a skeptic in relation to philosophical knowledge, as he doubts knowledge-claims based on empirical evidence. Experience is, in other words, ‘adequate’ for ordinary life, but cannot be a stable foundation for ‘claims about theoretical wisdom’ (Ibid: 166). Ars, as a system based on empirical foundations, is a paradigm for Philo of systematic knowledge and a practical yet still ‘effective “system of cognitions”’ (Ibid: 163). Because of its diffusion, its successful application tested in time and its neutrality vis-à-vis metaphysical claims, Philo’s approach to ars underlies his ethical and rhetorical theory. Indeed, his ethics, as Brittain convincingly argues through an analysis of Stobaeus Ecl.2.7.39-41, is a non-metaphysical, prescriptive encounter with morality. Philo seems in fact to deliver a non-dogmatic, yet still systematic set of prescriptions for the attainment of a happy life. Through an analogy with empiricist medicine, Brittain emphasizes Philo’s theory as entirely committed to supplying the reader or audience with practical means to achieve a happy life. Such means consist in prescriptions that derive not from knowledge, but from principles that have proved empirically effective in the past (Ibid: 258- 261). 207 Similarly, Philo’s rhetorical theory is based on a body of generalized techniques distilled from the history of the practice. Brittain sees Philo behind Cicero’s formulation of oratorical practice in the De Oratore, especially in Crassus’ definition of ars and in Cicero’s own analysis of theseis. 208 The theory is a codification of the successful experience of past orators, and is therefore unconnected 207 Philo entirely eschews ‘metaphysical and psychological postulates on which dogmatic ethics depends,’ Brittain 2001: 261. Note also that the definition of his ethics is non-dogmatic ‘in virtue of its method and its avoidance of theoretical postulates,’ ibid: 295. The connection with ancient medicine of the first century BCE is, as Brittain admits, entirely analogical. 208 De Or.1.109 and De Or.3.111-8. O.Cappello, Part IIb 181 to ontological claims to truth. 209 Philo’s innovation in this field followed in the footsteps of Hermagoras’ analysis of deliberative oratory. 210 This second-century BCE rhetorician understood political oratory to be subdivided into thesis, or the confrontation with general, abstract, questions and the hypothesis, which concerns particulars. For Philo, as Brittain argues, the two levels are connected in so far as the hypothesis is the foundation of the thesis. This development of Hermagorean theory achieves two objectives: it connects oratory and epistemology analogically, and it opens up political and ethical issues to rhetorical treatment. Despite the problematic nature of Brittain’s evidence, and the often far-fetched approach to reconstructing philosophical systems, the picture that emerges is of a Philo whose epistemology and rhetoric are rooted in the parameters of collective belief. The late scholarch is convincingly shown to recast community as an integral part of the way philosophical reason and practice are conceptualized- a perspective which is evidently dear to the Ciceronian project. In the Academica and especially in the Lucullus the argument is never far from the Roman civitas, both as a desired audience for the work and as arbiter of the treatise’s validity. The orientation of Ciceronian epistemology is congruent with this Philonian portrait. Apart from the prefatory remarks responding to charges emerging from a Roman intellectual milieu, the speeches of Lucullus and Cicero start and end with images of judicial practice and everyday life on which their respective arguments depend. Especially powerful is Lucullus’ provocation which concludes the speech, connecting Cicero’s position in epistemology to his political career. 211 The elaboration of an interconnected system of ars, ethics (virtus and sapientia), action, intellectual investigation and philosophy is connected by the speaker to the definition of humanitas. Stable unimpeded sensation is the cornerstone of the system, and it accounts for all aspects of human life, and is punctuated by reminders of the ‘aberrations’ that following Academic skepticism would lead to: a denial of community, with all its beliefs and practices (Lévy 1992: 164). When finally Lucullus turns to his opponent he re-deploys the metaphor of light and dark- developed to illustrate the difference between 209 ‘The experience of successful orators gives rise to a body of operationalised techniques sufficient for a methodical procedure to develop,’ so rhetoric in a sense is understood as ‘an empiricising art.’ Brittain 2001: 330. 210 De Or.3.110. Brittain 2001: 328. See also Reinhardt 2000: 537. 211 Luc. 61-2. O.Cappello, Part IIb 182 Antiochian and Philonian Academic thinking throughout 212 - to threaten his public career with the charge of false judgment, which would in turn diminish his auctoritas. 213 The relationship between the political and philosophical dimension of Cicero’s life, between theory and practice, is expertly constructed to question the implications of his belief system with regard to his political and social achievements. The section balances an insistent number of second person singular verbs, imperatives, striking visual and moral language, with a technical summary of the charges of apraxia. 214 The peroration constitutes a brilliant summary of Lucullus’ attack on skepticism, and the linking of such an attack to the specific personal and political dimension of Cicero’s life grounds the debate again in a communitarian perspective. Lucullus reassures the reader that the foundations of Lévy’s ‘pyramide de connaissance’ are, in a sense, firmly rooted in the Roman state and its society. Cicero then begins and ends the debate in the law-courts- a realm which he claims as his own, especially in the opening to his speech. 215 Furthermore, as Lévy has already noted, adducing it as a reason for the greater brilliance of the consular’s speech over his opponent, Cicero constantly returns to the fallacies of perception as experienced by himself and his audience: his meditations are rooted ‘dans le quotidien et dans la nature’ (1992: 179). This constant invitation to confront empirical data from his friends with theoretical doubt on sense-perception stages an argument that appeals directly to common sense and experience as its grounds, and is oriented towards it, aiming to explain and describe it. 216 Cicero’s attention in the Academica is concerned with rooting philosophy in the community, but it also about setting up a philosophical community. This process of institution takes place as 212 Lux: Luc.26, Luc.30, Luc.31 and Luc.46. Lumen, Luc.19, Luc.26 and Luc.63. 213 An tu, cum res occultissimas aperueris in lucemque protuleris iuratusque dixeris ea te conperisse (quod mihi quoque licebat qui ex te illa cognoveram), negabis esse rem ullam quae cognosci conprendi percipi possit? vide quaeso etiam atque etiam ne illarum quoque rerum pulcherrimarum a te ipso minuatur auctoritas. (‘when you exposed those most secret plots and brought them to light and you swore an oath saying that you had discovered them (something I also could have said since I had found out about them from you), do you yet deny that there is nothing which can be known, comprehended or perceived? I beg you take great care that you don’t diminish the authority of that greatest of all achievements’), Luc.62. 214 Eight second person singular verbs; two imperatives; the second person singular pronoun appears thrice. 215 Tum ego non minus conmotus quam soleo in causis maioribus huius modi quadam oratione sum exorsus (‘then I was moved just as much as what I am accustomed to when I am undertaking important court cases I began my speech in the following way’), Luc.64. 216 I do not agree with Lévy’s contention that Lucullus’ argument is less convincing because less rooted in ‘reality.’ The argument so far hopes to have shown that both protagonists are aware of the experiential context of their theories: the point is perhaps not to focus on a qualitative assessment, but to underline the inescapability of contextualizing strategies throughout. O.Cappello, Part IIb 183 Cicero, and Lucullus and Varro, define the borders of philosophical enquiry, outlining what can or cannot be included in this typology of intellectual engagement, and by what emblems a philosophical network can be recognized as such. Rorty (1984) tackles the problem of how to approach the historiography of philosophy by suggesting, somewhat reluctantly, that canon-formation is a process that is both historical and central to philosophical investigation. Reflecting on the historiographical approach of Heidegger and Ayer, Rorty suggests that a crucial activity of the philosopher’s engagement with the discipline’s history is to set up a canon of authors who shape and inform the problems that the thinker wants to confront (Ibid: 58). 217 Indeed, he differentiates between two uses of the term ‘philosophical question:’ the first is a ‘descriptive’ use, indicating the problems and issues discussed by contemporary schools, or philosophers. The second refers to an ‘honorific’ use of the term, designating prescriptively questions that must be debated, questions that are timeless and thus characterize the discipline. This evaluation poses a number of problems to Rorty’s approach. Namely, whether a descriptive use guarantees connection between historical periods, and whether canons which are timeless are always relevant. He points out that it is an anachronism to impose the same question on the whole breadth of the history of philosophy, and that equally any group can ‘legitimize’ itself as a group of philosophers so long as they agree on certain points, premises, the aim of pursuit of knowledge, and a ‘self-conscious community of philosophers.’ ‘The existence of such a community,’ he goes on to specify, ‘is however irrelevant to the question of whether anything links that community to Aristotle, Plato’ and so forth (Ibid: 67). His proposal to do away with canons and the history of philosophy is nonetheless halted by the recognition that the mechanisms of philosophy as he describes them, especially in terms of the construction of a discipline with reference to its historical dimension, cannot do without a canon. In quick succession he develops his acceptance of the value of historiographical philosophy in three points: canons are aspirational, as they set up standards to be surpassed. They are constructed through employing ‘honorific’ philosophical questions, and so are crucial to the notion of community. 217 He is thinking of Heidegger’s dismissal of Kierkegaard as a ‘religious’ writer in his essay ‘Nietzsche’s Word: God is Dead,’ or Ayer’s 1969: 203-218 dismissal of existentialists as a group of thinkers who misunderstood the grammatical ambiguity of the noun ‘nothingness.’ O.Cappello, Part IIb 184 Finally, the self-justificatory conversation that canon-formation invites is essential to the constitution of the boundaries of that community (Ibid: 73-4). 218 The tenor of his argument as he categorizes and critiques four types of historiographical approaches is constantly, though perhaps unselfconsciously, founded on the necessary notion of a philosophical community. That is a given, an established a priori, which he then ultimately seeks to justify. The history of philosophy participates in setting up goals for the contemporary community, it guarantees a sense of continuity in terms of the questions and issues that are at stake, and it thirdly offers precedents, alternatives, against which the present community can, perhaps must, define itself. In the Academica, a recurring trope performs exactly this search for canon and community. As Quellenforscher tirelessly scour the text for evidence of which thinker is represented at which specific point, their analysis yields a catalogue of attempts made by Lucullus and Cicero to construct a canon of reference for their brand of philosophizing. Lucullus opens the debate by isolating Carneades and Arcesilaus as the key problematic figures and openly excluding Philo. Cicero rehearses this process of selection in two distinct moments, where he openly characterizes the question of the Academica in terms of an original debate between Zeno and Arcesilaus. The philosophical question characterizing ‘Hellenistic’ epistemology emerges from that debate, and concerns the twin issues of the third clause enabling sense-perception, and the sage’s ability to opine. Significantly, at Luc.112 the ‘Hellenistic’ philosophers are distinguished against the backdrop of the Peripatetics and Old Academics, towards whom Cicero shows an emotional attachment, but whom he excludes from the debate. 219 Rorty’s intuition can undoubtedly be read in conjunction with the historical sections of both editions of the Academica, where the acceptance or not of certain thinkers in the ‘canon’ leads to label the Academy according to two different nomenclatures; yet it is interesting to note that the problem of canon-formation is not a marginal architectonic feature of Ciceronian philosophy, but is presented as a theme which Cicero openly wants the reader to reflect on. Who belongs or does not belong to the debate, the logic of inclusion or exclusion is an issue that explicitly defines the course of both Lucullus’ and Cicero’s arguments. At Luc.17-18 and again at Luc.32, Lucullus excludes 218 See MacIntyre 1984 for the idea of progress as a goal-based evolution. Also, Gracia 1992: 140; and Rée 1988: 58. 219 The ‘periodisation’ implied by the term ‘Hellenistic’ seems to be not so entirely anachronistic when reading the Academica. More than one critic evaluates the contribution of Philo in terms of whether he escapes the strictures of Hellenistic epistemology by dropping the third Stoic clause, or remains fully within it. O.Cappello, Part IIb 185 nameless groups from the debate, establishing the grounds of his argument around a network of thinkers associated to a position. That position is well-defined, but the group is bereft of a name. 220 The intellectual opposition is in other words mediated as a conflict between groups. Source-investigation, with good reason, endeavors to fix a historically contingent identity on those deictic, indefinite, pronouns- but this attempt engages the fascinating problem of why these pronouns are so consistently left with no proper antecedents. Significantly, it operates to illustrate the mechanism according to which the dispute proceeds. Lucullus’ position is defined according to Antiochus and his canon of Peripatetics and Old Academics, against Arcesilean and Carneadean skepticism. Cicero’s epistemology depends on an integration of the Hellenistic scholarchs with Plato and Aristotle, and its contours are negatively defined by Stoics and Epicureans. Openly and self- consciously, their positions are affirmed as systems creating allegiances and networks across time. Rorty’s ‘honorific’ perspective offers a propositive approach to formulating specifically how a community comes to see itself as such around a set of concerns and issues. So canon-formation is understood as a selection of authors, who set up particular problems and difficulties which the Geisteshitoriker, as he calls the type of historian of philosophy of which he approves, thinks worth debating. Despite the extent to which both Cicero and Lucullus seem conversant with this approach- isolating the central axioms that cause the contention and the ones worth considering as interesting challenges, and the ones to dismiss- one of the central problems of the Academica, though one could make the case for the whole of cycle of philosophica, concerns the very definition and function of philosophy: why do philosophy?, what is ‘philosophy’?, and what does ‘philosophy’ involve? Both speeches in the Lucullus, as well as the fragment of the first Academic Book, attempt to ground philosophia. Lucullus’ confirmatio is epitomized by philosophy, the highest and most complex intellectual practice which reliance on the senses can lead to. At Luc.29 he explicitly articulates sense-perception as the regula totius philosophiae (‘condition for all philosophy’), and at Luc.32, as he turns to a sect of Academics who accept the difference between ‘clear’ and ‘unclear’ percepts, he reiterates this point negatively by claiming that without a stable epistemic foundation there is no quaerendo (‘research’) or disserendo (‘debate’). Cicero’s response in a sense frames Lucullus’ charges, as he opens the debate by characterizing philosophy as a search for a probable position and closes it by suggesting that it is indeed through reason and investigation that one can 220 In the latter section, for example, the thinker refuses to engage with the differentiation between certa and incerta. O.Cappello, Part IIb 186 find at least a temporary grounding for it. 221 The circularity involved in the disputation, its punctual return to the question of how the very discipline of philosophy is to be grounded, constitutes in an important way a preliminary question to the one(s) that Rorty titled ‘honorific.’ The first and essential question the Academica insists on is about the identity of philosophy. Crucially however there is no clear-cut answer- it is the question that defines the contours of the community engaged in the problem. The key issue in Derrida’s Right to Philosophy is to describe and classify what he calls the philosophical ‘space.’ Before arguing about the institutional role of philosophy in the university, and in educational programs as a whole, he tackles the way in which philosophy operates within its boundaries, and how its operations and its boundaries are mutually articulated. For the poststructuralist, it is not an agreement on the problematics of philosophy, or an agreement on what philosophy is, that creates the sense of community. The community is a ‘community of the question,’ it is ‘constituted as and from the question of philosophy’ (2002: 12. Emphasis in the original). This perspective should be seen as an extension- not a negation- of Rorty’s analysis of the philosophical community. The fact that the community is a given does not mean that it should not be, or is always already, open to re-examination as to what fundamentally holds it together. 222 Thus the Academica, developing its investigation over a rather specific field of philosophy, constantly returns to how that affects the discipline as a whole. The final doxography is the epitome of this approach, with its catalogue of perspectives uneasily gathered around questions and issues. Indeed, in that final third of the dialogue the history of philosophy characterizes the discipline as an aporetic practice. From the doxography what can only emerge is a historicized synoptic picture of what the debate itself, as well as the preface, offered: a community that is held together by questions and problems as to what constitutes the boundary of the discipline itself. In his speech Cicero seems to bear the mechanisms of this search for a question, as he constantly attempts to redefine the parameters of the debate. At both Luc.68 and Luc.78 he opens the case on epistemology by defining that infamous third clause as a point of contention. But again at Luc.80, Luc.83 and Luc.115 with expressions such as controversia (‘controversy’), tota quaestio (‘the whole question’), omnis pugna (‘the whole debate’) and omnis quaestio (‘the whole question’) 221 Luc.7, Luc.99 and Luc.146. 222 So Derrida ibid: 17: ‘not every community will be called philosophical from the moment it practices skepsis, epochê, doubt, contestation [...], irony, questioning and so forth, regarding its constitutive bond, and thus the properness of what is proper to it. But no community will be called philosophical if it is not capable of re- examining, in every possible fashion, its fundamental bond.’ O.Cappello, Part IIb 187 he not only rhetorically controls the direction of the debate but illustrates the way in which search for the question itself interlinks the community. The relationship between this strategy and the doxography has been overlooked by critics who far too often have assumed the closing sections of the Lucullus to be a lengthy illustration of a single point, 223 which also performs the role of a table of contents for the rest of the ‘encyclopedia’ (Lévy 1992: Part III to V; and Michel 1986b). Though I do not find this entirely wrong, the crucial point from the perspective of Cicero as a historian of philosophy is that the doxography participates in the distributive economy of the rest of the Lucullus by apportioning the philosophical space around particular thinkers and groups who come together around specific questions and problems. The effect of this analytic representation of the space of philosophy is to inflect the dynamic role of questions in creating and defining a sense of collectivity. 224 8. Conclusion Cicero emerges from the Academica as a historical philosopher. His historiographical approach to philosophy is not limited to reporting the debate between Antiochus and Philo, but it interpenetrates all areas of philosophical inquiry. Examining questions of ethics or of epistemology is never done in a historical vacuum, where only logical thinking obtains, but takes place in within a historical framework. I argued that this historical frame is developed both on a dramatic level, where Ciceronian dialogue stages individuals arguing with each other, and on a purely historical level, where philosophical positions and ideas progress through conflict. Interpretive themes like the role of the individual, of community, of canons and of limit are, from a historiographical perspective, more than just a way for Cicero to understand how philosophy operated in the past in its Hellenic origin. Similarly to the division between historical and dramatic in the analysis of levels of historicity, Cicero’s interpretation is motivated by a prescriptive agenda keen to merge two historical communities, that of Greece and that of Rome. Philosophy’s past plays a substantive role in 223 ‘Nostra’ inquires ‘sola vera sunt.’ Certe sola, si vera; plura enim vera discrepantia esse non possunt (‘you say: ‘only our system is the right and true one.’ Yes it would be the only one, if it were true; for there cannot be several true yet conflicting positions’), Luc.115. 224 This reading offers an alternative perspective to those critics who suggest that Cicero’s works only aim at soliciting philosophical activity. I would contend that this invitation is in fact a sophisticated way of constructing a community of philosophers, by looking for a definition of the space in which they operate. An interesting alternative perspective on the ‘space’ of philosophical discourse is offered by the social constructivist analysis of Randall Collins 2000, which opens up a dialogue between the Wittgensteinian sociological analysis of reason and Derrida’s invitation to understand philosophy as the space of a practice. Collins in fact analyses the ‘practice’ through Goffmanian and Durkheimian concepts to identify the mechanisms according to which groups elaborate a continuous identity through time, but also how, synchronically, conflict shapes the ‘space’ of the discipline. O.Cappello, Part IIb 188 philosophical inquiry while it is also rhetorically geared to occupy a position in Rome’s intellectual landscape. The reader is the centre of this rhetorical strategy, as he is asked to engage with the same questions and problems that have determined the rise and shape of a philosophical community in Classical and Hellenistic Greece. Creating what I have called a live tradition has its foundations in the open-endedness of Ciceronian discourse, where a plurality of perspectives and voices is put in play at every juncture of the dialogue to characterize one or another’s position or perspective. Such logic of variability and pluralism is the bridge between Part II and Part III, where we will explore how this historical strategy is reflected in the critical mechanics of skeptical philosophizing. O.Cappello, Part III 189 Part III Skeptical Strategies: Conflict, Assimilation and the Rhetoric of Cicero’s Academy Philosophy would repeat itself and would reproduce its own tradition as the teaching of its own crisis and as the paideia of self-critique in general. Jacques Derrida, Who’s Afraid of Philosophy? 1 1. Re-Configuring Conflict. Introduction A staple of the critical tradition on the Academica is to affirm that the text is a difficult one to interpret, irremediably fragmented and shot through with paradoxes and obscurities. Burnyeat’s contribution to the Assent and Argument volume defines these difficulties when he laments the extreme ‘allusiveness’ of the text (1997: 277). His article also exemplifies the response to the challenge offered by ancient philosophers and textual critics. For Burnyeat the complex rhetorical structure of both editions reflects the intricate history of the debates which it claims to review and evaluate. He perceptively comments on the self-reflexive nature of the positions adopted by all the speakers, where for example Cicero’s speech in the Lucullus is a refutation of Lucullus’ refutation of the Academic refutation of the possibility of knowledge. This merry-go-round is given historic grounding in his analysis of the Academic Books, where Varro voices Antiochus’ refutation of Philo’s refutation of the Two-Academy thesis. What’s more, this entropic history itself - the two- hundred years of epistemological argument and counter-argument between Stoics and Academics - is not available to the modern reader except through Cicero, rendering the text not only obscure but ‘truncated’ (Ibid: 279). It is to the unraveling of these traces, to the work of reconstruction that the historian of ancient philosophy turns in order to accomplish the interrelated tasks of gaining a better understanding of the text, as well as a better understanding of the context which informs it. 2 1 2002: 101. 2 The Anonymous Commentary on the Theaetetus might count as a second source, depending on dating. This is a controversial issue, recently pitting Brittain’s 2001: 249-52 late second-century CE dating against Sedley and Bastianini’s 1995 argument for an earlier one. Whatever the date, the Anon. in Theat. is interested in working out its theories as distinct to Academic skepticism and as closer to a dogmatic form of Platonism, and not in discussing the evolution of Academic skepticism. See also Diels-Schubart 1905; Glucker 1978; and Tarrant 1983. Similarly, Sextus Empiricus, who in the third century CE returns to the Academic skeptical tradition as foil to his own brand of skepticism, does not adopt a dialogic or historical perspective. He aims at reconstructing Academic skepticism as a monolithic dogmatism, emerging as such out of the Hellenistic period. Both sources do of course offer suggestive glimpses of how this form of Academicism might have evolved, as do the later fragmentary testimonia on Philo (in Stobaeus and Numenius), Aenesidemus (in Photius), Carneades and Varro (in Augustine). But this plays out the O.Cappello, Part III 190 With an almost exclusive emphasis on either historical reconstruction of Hellenistic philosophy, or on the elucidation of Cicero’s specific debt to Academic skepticism, readings of the Academica have advanced according to interpretations of positions outlined therein. The question of who ‘speaks’ in the Academica is central to the way we have understood, and continue to understand its sources and purpose. This is as true of Assent and Argument as of Hirzel’s Untersuchungen zu Ciceros philosophischen Schriften. As soon as the nineteenth century discovered some enthusiasm for the enigmatic figure of Antiochus of Ascalon, study of the Academica has been synonymous with analyses of Antiochus or Philo and how their doctrines evolve in dialogue with each other and with the Classical and Hellenistic traditions from which they developed. 3 On this model, the critic’s task is to map as specifically as possible statements, paragraphs, sections of the speech- or even the speech in its entirety- back onto an original source. From this perspective, the relationship between the arguments in the Ciceronian drama and the history of Hellenistic epistemology is cemented with the former acting as documentary evidence for the latter. Nonetheless, as Burnyeat has pointed out, the dialogue is also the continuation of the latter as well as a representation and re-presentation of it. The conversation extends the epistemological controversy into Roman times and ‘translates’ it into a Roman context, while also mimetically reiterating the structure of that dispute, which, as the dialogue itself illustrates, proceeded by refutation and counter- refutation. The complexity and obscurity of the Academica emerges from this interference of the drama’s aesthetics with its ostensible documentary purpose. Glucker’s reconstruction of the Academica’s sources in his Antiochus and the Late Academy is the most exhaustive attempt to assign exact source-works to the various speeches in the Academica and to explain the crisscrossing levels of refutation (1978: 68-97). A review of his position develops the outline of the problems faced by a ‘documentary’ approach to the text and better defines the kinds of dilemmas posed by the treatises concerning the presentation of its protagonists and speakers. There are two basic premises to his study: that the episode narrated at Luc.11-12, the ‘Sosus Affair’, is historically plausible and that the speeches in the Academica faithfully reproduce the same interpretive dilemma we are facing with Cicero. See also Ioppolo 2009: 11; Bonazzi 2003: 112; and Brittain 2001: xxxvi. 3 On Antiochus and Philo see Grysar 1848-9; Hermann 1851 and 1855; Chappius 1854; and Hoyer 1883. Readings and commentaries of the Academica include Ranitz 1809; Krische 1845; and Engstrand 1860. O.Cappello, Part III 191 opinions of Antiochus and Philo. 4 In the second appendix, he engages in a lengthy refutation of Hirzel’s (1883: 251-341) attribution of Cicero’s speech in the Lucullus to Philo’s Roman Books (Glucker 1978: 391-421). Hirzel notes that aspects of Cicero’s position are not congruous with Academic skepticism, and that his refutation of Lucullus is weak and unpersuasive. On the one hand, he explains Cicero’s unconvincing response by relating it to the later date of the Sosus: Cicero is using arguments that have already been refuted by Antiochus. On the other hand, he clarifies why Cicero’s view does not appear skeptical, suggesting that he adopts a late Philonian position in the speech that endorses a dogmatic form of skepticism. Glucker argues against these two points in order to show that Cicero’s speech is not only superior to Lucullus’ but also that the Roman Books cannot stand behind the speech, since the position argued for in Luc.112-146 is attributable to orthodox Academic skeptics, like Carneades and Clitomachus (Ibid: 399-405). Ultimately Glucker contends that Cicero’s speech derives in its entirety from Philo’s response to the Sosus, a work which marks a return to Clitomachean and Carneadean positions- that is ‘traditional’ skeptical positions- from which it can promptly refute Antiochus’ Stoicism. There is nothing new in this book, but a renewed emphasis on Academic strategies used to refute Stoicism (Ibid: 415). 5 Glucker’s view is a nuanced version of the orthodox source analysis on the Academica which emerged from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The likes of Brochard (1969), Goedeckemeyer (1905) and Fritz (1938) had already attributed parts of Cicero’s speech to a work of Philo postdating the Roman Books, although they maintained that such treatise replicated the same arguments as that earlier controversial work. What did not make it into the Philonian parts, they divided out amongst other Academics who were named in the speech, and whose supposed outlook matched the tenor of Cicero’s dialectic. Clitomachus, whom Cicero quotes on two occasions, is assigned a major role by Hirzel (1883), Krische (1845: 195-6), Credaro (1893: 27-33) and Zeller (1923: 674). Krische implicates all thinkers mentioned in the speech, including Chrysippus and Crantor, alongside the more remote influences of Antiochus and Lucretius. Lörcher (1911: 258-284) follows Hirzel, although he reverses Hirzel’s order by arguing for the presence of the Roman Books in the first half of the speech, while he insists on the Carneadean origin of the second. 4 Glucker 1978: 14 asks ‘why doubt the historicity of the story?’ The rhetorical question concerning Att.12.52 [294] speaks volumes for Glucker’s attitude to the philosophica: ‘are we to be allowed to ascribe to Cicero greater originality than he has claimed for himself?’ Ibid: 407. For the whole argument see pages 406 to 412. 5 Precedents for this view are Plezia 1937: 2.29-30 and 3.169-70; and Philippson 1939: 1132-4. O.Cappello, Part III 192 Asserting the factuality of the Alexandrian episode, this approach must a fortiori explain the reasons for the reverse order of presentation, where Lucullus is apparently replicating Antiochus’ critique of Philo while Cicero is left to defend an already refuted position. Furthermore, literary re- performance of that event distorts the specific temporality that the narrative assumes: the crisis and schism is presented as instantaneous, even though the inverse arrangement necessarily extends the dialogue. There is also the problematic issue that the orator quotes verbatim from Clitomachus’ works, a thinker whose opinions, as the Lucullus tells us, are different from those of Philo. Glucker’s solutions to these challenges highlight the problem presented by the Academica. Firstly, the need to posit a further publication by Philo which responds to Antiochus by returning to older Academic positions, and secondly, the autopsy of both speeches to identify and isolate specific influences on the variety of arguments staged. The Academica does indeed introduce a number of positions, both within and outside the Academy, which are ultimately diametrically opposed and they do so within the context of a single historical opposition, between Antiochus and Philo, which, as critics over the last two centuries have noted, cannot explain either the structure of the Ciceronian drama or the positions adopted to stage that conflict. This history of interpretation culminates in Antiochus and the Late Academy, which is as much analytical of the primary sources as it is doxographical of the severe Quellenforscher. Glucker’s bibliographical review on all questions pertaining to source criticism and philosophical- and institutional- historiography closely follows his discussion of Cicero and epitomizes the complexity which Burnyeat ascribed to the Academica itself. As he individualizes the voices of Cicero’s protagonists, defining their role in the debate and in the history of epistemology, he reconstructs a similar panorama for the history of scholarship on the Academica. Just as in the Lucullus Philo exploits a whole array of Academic strategies to face Antiochus’ polemic despite his departure from that orthodoxy, so Glucker resurrects a century-long tradition of readings in the Academica, none of which he fully agrees with, in order to interpret the text and the history it condenses. The present discussion is not concerned with assessing the merits of Glucker’s or Burnyeat’s approach and the persuasiveness of their analyses, or in joining in the condemnation of Quellenforschung in all its spectral returns. 6 The aim of this review is to highlight how perspectives 6 For reviews of Glucker see Tarrant 1980; and Sedley 1981. On Quellenforschung Kleywegt 1961: 1-9 is useful. O.Cappello, Part III 193 on the Academica, focusing on its documentary value, are hypnotized by the rhetorical elements of the debate and end up producing versions of themselves ad infinitum. Elements, furthermore, whose relevance they sideline in favor of de-contextualizing discrete sections which express a particular position. With whatever degree of accuracy this anatomy is executed, the Ciceronian project of drawing on all these thinkers and positions, and setting them out in a particular order and in a particular dramatic context is neglected. Instead of addressing the aesthetic construction of each character and the interrelationship of the arguments with each other and with their expression, critics have chosen to fragment the text and reconstruct an extra-textual historicity for each ‘trace’ left by Cicero. Consequently, from Krische to Brittain, the critical tradition offers variations on the theme of attribution. Part III offers a study of the dialogue focusing on the epistemological controversy itself. It argues that Cicero and his particular brand of skepticism are invested in the way the debate is represented, from its themes to its topics, from its structure to its progression, from the images and the terminology it employs to the characters who voice them. There is a purpose to the intricacies that run through Cicero’s Academica which is intimately connected to the type of dialectical skepticism Cicero embraces and to his broader aim of importing and assimilating the whole spectrum of Greek philosophy into Roman litterae. I argue that Cicero’s skepticism is an original philosophical position, responding to particular tensions within the Academic tradition since Plato. His originality is not however restricted to the philosophical substance of his work. Just as Part II demonstrated that Cicero’s historiographical approach had a rhetorical finality in legitimizing his brand of skepticism and positioning himself as heir to the Academy, so Part III suggests that the radical dialectical doubt which Cicero endorses constitutes an astute representational strategy through which the author can address and thereby incorporate the whole spectrum of Classical and Hellenistic philosophies under the aegis of his Academy. Furthermore, in the same way as Part II claimed that Cicero expressed the kind of philosophy he wanted to transmit by creating a historical precedent for it, so in Part III I argue that Cicero shapes the way his Roman readership should philosophize by laying down certain principles of philosophical discourse, chief among which is that philosophy is a subjective practice and a mental attitude that is both critical and self-reflective. O.Cappello, Part III 194 2. A Question of Frame The hypnotic aura of the Academica’s voices is not a fabrication of the critics. Cicero constantly raises expectations about sources and the structure of his work in his letters and prefaces, as well as in the body of the disputes themselves. The orator repeatedly answers the question, ‘what is the Academica about?’ by offering the same response: it is about the argument between Antiochus and Philo. The dedicatory letter to Varro and the framing of each speech, as far as the fragmentary nature of the first Academic Book allows, insist that Varro and Cicero speak as Antiochus and Philo. On leaving the floor to Cicero’s response, Varro calls on his colleague to perform his ‘role’ (partes) and comment on the ‘split’ (discidium) and ‘defection’ (defectio), which according to Antiochus had divided Academic history into two distinct periods. Cicero had in fact just complimented Varro on his speech which summarized Antiochus’ view of the relationship between the Old Academy and the Stoa. 7 Though crucially neither protagonist openly states that they are about to review either Philo’s or Antiochus’ opinions, the passage’s connection to Ac.1.13 and Fam.9.8 [294] points to the source. Already at Ac.1.13 the parameters of the debate are set out involving Philo’s rejection of the Two- Academy theory and Antiochus’s response. The very word partes echoes directly the dedicatory letter, where Cicero anticipates what he has accomplished in those four volumes, namely a dialogue between the two correspondents re-enacting the debate between Antiochus and Philo. The content of the dialogue is, however, not specified. Cicero points to the Academy and its youthful, provocative nature as a preliminary frame and only implies that Varro understands what is at stake in the controversy. 8 In the letters to Atticus, and in the Lucullus, the editorial frame emerges as even more problematic. Firstly, Philo is never specifically mentioned in those letters or in the introduction to Cicero’s own speech. 9 Many references define the subject matter as Academic. But these references 7 Ac.1.43. 8 Fam.9.8.1 [294]. It is tempting to link the school’s adulescentia (‘adolescence’) to Cicero’s insistence at the start of the first Academic Book on the importance of what’s new, putting the old-timer Varro on the back foot even before he has begun reading the debate. In fact at Ac.1.13 Cicero proclaims that ‘the most recent theories’ (recentissima) are superior because they have undergone ‘emendation’ (emendata) and ‘correction’ (correcta). 9 Although he does play an important role in Cicero’s ad hominem attack on Antiochus at Luc.69, where the latter’s auctoritas is doubted because of his defection. As the orator embarks on his refutation, Arcesilaus and Carneades are the counterpoint to Antiochus, Luc.64-8. O.Cappello, Part III 195 are general giving little away about the specific content or angle of the treatise itself. 10 In three of these cases, alongside a later epistle, expressing anxiety at the imminence of the exchange, Antiochus is brought forward as the focal point of the treatises. The adjective Antiochia appears in the first letter of the series, specifying the subject-matter of the treatise and the reason for introducing Varro. 11 It re- appears thrice thereafter, in different cases, underlining the preferential connection between Varro and Antiochus, and also explicitly designating the Antiochian ownership of the arguments and opinions presented. So at Att.13.16.1 [323] the adjective qualifies ratio (‘philosophical system’) and is introduced as suited to Varro. The comparative aptior (‘more suited’), used to express suitability in that letter is picked up again at Att.13.19.5 [326], where Cicero explores in greater detail both the content and the form of his treatise. 12 Twice he outlines the division of roles with precision: firstly, describing how the Antiochian section is given to Varro while he responds in his own voice and later, at the very end of the letter, when he introduces partes and brings out the eristic nature of the debate. 13 The second use of Antiochia informs the comparison between the persuasiveness of Varro’s partes over and against those of Cicero. The qualitative judgment on Antiochus’ position is illustrated by the Greek πιθανά (‘persuasive arguments’), describing the neuter substantive Antiochia, and the use of acumen (‘sharpness’) and nitor (‘brightness’), all of which detail Cicero’s admiration for the philosopher and present Varro’s arguments as more convincing. These adjectives and nouns amount to aesthetic reflections that define the scope and tenor of the dialogue and emphasize its anti- logic structure. The strategy of commending his virtuosity of style, and its close relation with intellectual brilliance had already been signaled earlier in Att.13.19 [326] and at Att.13.12 [320] through an interrelated set of Greek comparatives: λογικώτερα (‘more logical’) and φιλολογώτερα (‘more philological’). Both epithets describe the sophistication of the project as rooted in its literary qualities, but also foreshadow the symbiotic relationship between gnoseological content and literary form. 10 References often consist in provisional ‘titles,’ about which see Part I. The key letters are Att.13.12 [320], Att.13.13-4 [321], Att.13.16 [323] and Att.13.19 [326]. 11 Note the corroborative etenim at Att.13.12.3 [320]. 12 Aptius esse nihil potuit ad id philosophiae genus (‘nothing can be more appropriate to this type of philosophy’). 13 Varroni dedi. Ad ea ipsa respondeo (‘I assigned Antiochus’ position to Varro. To these arguments, I respond’), Att.13.19.3 [326]. O.Cappello, Part III 196 Φιλολογώτερα is an important element in the prefatorial economy of Att.13.19 [326]. Although Philo is yet to make an appearance, Cicero identifies the epistemological subject matter and alludes to a series of arguments presented in the work. Indeed, he summarizes the ‘Academic controversy’ (Academica quaestio) as centered on quae erant contra ἀκαταληψίαν praeclare conlecta ab Antiocho (‘the arguments which were famously collected by Antiochus on akatalêpsia’), argument for and against incomprehensibility endorsed by Varro and repeated by Cicero. 14 Resistance in designating a source for Cicero’s role is nonetheless suggestively emphasized by πιθανά, which, collaboratively with akatelêpsia, indicates Academic skepticism of the Arcesilean and Carneadean brand. 15 The reference to logikê packed into his supercilious contempt for Lucullus and Catulus also anticipates an important direction of the treatise: epistemology is in fact classed under ‘logic’ in the tripartite division of philosophy, and, as we shall see especially with reference to the Lucullus, is characterized by a constant return to logic. The sprawling paratext is anything but as directive and precise about issues of content and form as critics have presumed. Undoubtedly, there are instances where the structural unfolding of the debate is clearly demarcated. We know that Cicero responds to Varro, and that this debate reproduces that between Philo and Antiochus. Conversely, the content of the treatise is alluded to in the letters though never explicitly revealed. This imbalance has the consequence of drawing attention to the formal qualities of the Academica, focusing on the anti-logic form as its key feature. Furthermore, the spotlight on Philo and Antiochus inform a sense of the historical texture of this debate that, in keeping the conflict within the Academy, define Varro’s, Lucullus’ and Cicero’s activity as intrinsically Academic. 16 The figure of Antiochus polarizes and produces the crisis at the heart of the Academy. The crisis itself is replayed by contemporary Romans as a fictional debate. Cicero frames the Academica with a keen interest in the tension these two temporal orders create when set side by side, as the dispute in the present both imitates and extends the arguments that have caused it in the first place. 14 Note that Varro is said to endorse these arguments: ille maxime mihi delectari videtur (‘he seems to me to admire these arguments’); and that Cicero only repeats them, diligenter a me expressa (‘attentively translated by me’), Att.13.19.5 [326]. 15 As we learn from both editions, each of these terms is closely connected with Carneades and Arcesilaus respectively. 16 The expression collecta at Att.13.19.3 is very suggestive in this context. Antiochus builds up his case against incomprehensibility selectively, gathering together strands of arguments which presuppose a tradition, an origin outside, and even independent of the selector. O.Cappello, Part III 197 3. Antiochus versus Philo: Fictionalizing the Drift The crucial point at which this fictional world comes crashing into the philosophical discourse is in the original schismatic narrative at Luc.11-12. The incident, glossed in turn as the ‘Alexandrian episode’ and the ‘Sosus affair’, is recounted in vivid detail, and involves the immediate reaction of Antiochus of Ascalon to two books by his teacher Philo (Glucker 1978: 13). This reaction is not only immediate and spontaneous, and indeed intensely physical and emotional, but it is also public. An audience of Greek and Roman familiares (‘friends’) view and participate in the philosopher’s revulsion as he develops his case against Philo’s perceived heresy. Such rejection of what have become known as the Roman Books gives rise to a single disputation held over a number of days. In turn this argument leads to the publication of Antiochus’ book Sosus, and it furnishes the material for Lucullus’ speech. Antiochus’ response to Philo is clearly what stimulates the debate of the Lucullus as well as what frames its issues. A careful reading of Luc.11-12 and an attempt to contextualize it within the dialogue as a whole, as well as within the third edition and the letters cited above, reveals that this crisis is nothing but a conceit, and a thinly disguised one. The deferred aspect of the quarrel held across the Mediterranean and carried out through books and stand-in audiences, draws out the symbolic implications of this representation: between Philo and Antiochus the split was in fact a drift, whose chronology- though perhaps impossible to pin down with any certainty- is undoubtedly more extended than Lucullus is made to portray. Deferral also intimates the way in which the philosophical evolution of these two characters is represented throughout the dialogue, as their changing positions are disseminated across the treatise and assimilated to other schools, as in the case of the Stoic Antiochus, or different versions of the Academy itself. The distance between the two philosophers gives rise to questions regarding the authenticity of Philo’s manuscript and the specificity of Antiochus’ adversary. The position of both philosophers in the treatise emerges as an interpretive challenge. On the one hand, the myth of a clean and instantaneous break between two absolute and fully established heterodoxies exercises a powerful pull over the reader, and over Lucullus as its first ‘reader’. On the other hand, drawing attention to the mythological status of the debate it portrays, the Academica invites the reader to see its significance as pertinent to the philosophical content of the work. The conflict between Philo and Antiochus is more than a dramatic context, but an anticipation of the epistemic importance of dialogue in research. The aim of this section is to explore how the fictionality of the debate is O.Cappello, Part III 198 elaborated and what the implications for this fictionality are in the philosophical and rhetorical economy of the treatise The account of the episode itself presents a number of contradictory elements that problematise the status of the narrative and alert the reader to a number of important issues. These inconsistencies also prepare the way for the reverse perspective on the split offered by Cicero at the start of his own speech at Luc.69-70. In line with the expectations raised in the letters and with the invitation issued by the other interlocutors in the dialogue, the figure of Antiochus emerges as the focal point of the work and the direct source for Lucullus’ opinions. 17 Indeed, Lucullus presents himself in no uncertain terms as Antiochus’ understudy, a role that, as he is careful to tell us, he prepared for through attentive listening over a long period of time. Cicero himself had, in the opening eulogy, already prepared the reader for Lucullus’ suitability for this part by praising his exceptional memory: not only was his capacity for memorizing outstanding even compared to Classical Greek standards, but this divine attribute shaped his transformation into a successful military man through reading and listening to military experts over a single voyage. 18 Now, as the general is about to become a philosopher, a homologous process is described in his own words. Lucullus’ ability to perform as Antiochus is in fact justified in a number of ways throughout the narrative and its brief preface: the subject-matter is known to him because of his keen focus on Antiochus’ words, which is characterized as uncritical, exclusive and established solely from the point of view of a spectator. 19 Furthermore, it is the 17 See for example the expectations raised by Catulus at Luc.10: tamen expecto ea quae te pollicitus es Luculle ab Antiocho audita dicturum (‘nonetheless, Lucullus, I expect to hear those arguments you heard from Antiochus which you promised to repeat’). 18 Sed incredibilis quaedam ingenii magnitudo non desideravit indocilem usus disciplinam. Itaque cum totum iter et navigationem consumpsisset partim in percontando a peritis partim in rebus gestis legendis, in Asiam factus imperator venit, cum esset Roma profectus rei militaris rudis. Habuit enim divinam quandam memoriam rerum- verborum maiorem Hortensius; sed quo plus in negotiis gerendis res quam verba prosunt, hoc erat memoria illa praestantior. Quam fuisse in Themistocle, quem facile Graeciae principem ponimus, singularem ferunt (‘but the extraordinary extent of his knowledge did not require the chaotic training one gets from experience. Therefore, when he had spent the whole voyage partly in questioning men with experience and partly in reading about military history, he arrived in Asia a military general although he had set out from Rome ignorant of military matters. For he had a divine memory for facts- Hortensius’ was better for words; but since a memory for facts is more useful than a memory for words in practical pursuits, we should say that his memory was more distinguished. They say that Themistocles, whom I rate without a doubt as the finest of all Greeks, had this sort of unique memory’), Luc.2. 19 Agam igitur sicut Antiochus agebat: nota enim mihi res est (‘I will therefore proceed in the way Antiochus proceeded: for his position is known to me’), Luc.10. Note that in Luc.10-12 the verb audire (‘to hear’) is repeated seven times, thrice with Lucullus as subject and in those cases always in the imperfect. I suspect that Cicero is showing up Lucullus’ lack of critical awareness in his approach to Antiochus through expressions such as vacuo animo illum audiebam (‘I used to listen to him with an empty mind’), Luc.10. I am aware that such expressions may indicate a ‘free’ or ‘unprejudiced mind,’ but when we look a little further ahead, to when Lucullus is listening to the O.Cappello, Part III 199 extension over time of the same debate and the repetition of older ones which make Lucullus proficient in re-performance. Indeed, in this sense the adverb item (‘again’) describing the argument between Heraclitus and Antiochus confirms the earlier expression indicating that Lucullus heard ‘the same arguments very often.’ 20 Lucullus’ investment in the part he will perform is significantly mentioned only to be suspended, to underline his withdrawal from the proceedings and emphasize accuracy of reproduction. 21 Even before the reader engages with the episode and its historical reliability, a thick web of intra-textual references highlights the rhetorical significance of this passage. Cicero’s apology for Academic skepticism anticipates Lucullus’ narrative and astutely directs its reception. Posing as the defender of Academiae ratio, 22 Cicero establishes the foundation for the position he will go on to defend in his speech, centered on the impossibility of certain knowledge and the methodology of intellectual exchange to approach truth. Indeed, the injunction to participate critically in all philosophical engagements is expressed repeatedly in the preface in terms of the rejection of auctoritas (‘authority’) in matters doctrinal, and of the childish impulse to defend a position without having subjected it to thorough examination. 23 In a muscular tone, Cicero insists on ‘freedom’ as a defining characteristic of the Academic: a libertas constituted by a negative aspect, dependent on not being bound to any doctrine, but also by a positive, or pro-positive, side which depends on active criticism of all positions (a freedom to criticize). 24 Lucullus’ passive stance and his obsessive reliance on the Antiochian side of the dispute echoes this apology, revealing itself as inadequate and deeply anti-Academic. Temporality and repetition focus the contrast between the Ciceronian and Lucullan approach to philosophizing. While debate, he presents an impermeable attitude towards Antiochus’ critics, as he says dedi Antiocho operam diligentius (‘I paid very close attention to Antiochus’), Luc.12. 20 Eadem de re etiam saepius, Luc.10. The disputation in Alexandria described by Lucullus happened over the course of ‘several days’ (conplures dies): multum temporis in ista una disputatione consumpsimus (‘we spent a lot of time on this one question’), Luc.12. 21 Luc.10. 22 Luc.7. Note there is no epithet specifying which Academy. 23 Luc.7-9. The whole section could be usefully cited, but see especially the link between the total obstruction of cognition, due to ‘obscurity of objects themselves’ (in ipsis rebus obscuritas) and the ‘weakness of our capacity to judge’ (in iudiciis nostris infirmitas), and the insistence on research conducted in no other way than as disputationes in utramque partem dicendo et audiendo (‘argument carried out by arguing on both sides and listening to arguments on both sides’). Reid, Rackham and Brittain eliminate et audiendo, although three important manuscripts preserve it (including Madvig’s favorite fifteenth-century Erlangen 847). The pointed contrast between this introduction and Lucullus’ self-presentation has not been adduced as a reason for deletion or retention, but my analysis leans towards the latter, following Plasberg and Schäublin. 24 Burkert 1965 was the first to point out that ‘freedom’ as an aspect of skepticism is not something we see in the Greek tradition. See also Görler 1997: 54-55. Cf. Luc.120 and Tusc.5.33. O.Cappello, Part III 200 Lucullus adopts a studious and silent attitude towards the re-performance of intellectual scenarios, seeing them as an opportunity to memorize and assimilate arguments, Cicero understands continuous participation in debates as a necessary form of philosophical maturation. Sustained investigation of viewpoints is not only what preserves the ‘ability to judge’ (iudicandi potestas) as ‘unimpaired’ (integra). It also prevents the individual from prematurely attaching himself to received opinions. This blind attachment is cast very clearly in terms of two questions: the identity of the sapiens and the patronage of sententiae (‘philosophical positions’). 25 Cicero’s defense is articulated through a reductio ad absurdum and an insistence on research and experiment. The questions which lead to the reductio and those which emerge from it are of great importance to embedding, within a thematic foreshadowing of the debate to come, the development of the antinomic relation between Cicero and Lucullus. 26 Indeed, Cicero’s methodological program not only introduces central issues from an Academic skeptical perspective- such as the problematics of sense perception, the ontological inaccessibility of truth, Carneadean probabilia and the identity of the sapiens- it also connects this perspective with the historical staging of disputes. The philosophica are inserted within the Academic temporality of continuous research, and the Lucullus is specifically introduced, in medias res as it were, as an instance of this pursuit. The two frames, the Ciceronian preface and Lucullus’ prologue, are interlinked by the recurrence of philosophical exchange where both attitudes are constructed as contrary to each other. 27 Cicero’s manifesto for an Academic approach to philosophy interacts with the characterization of Lucullus to open the dialogue up to two different models of philosophical engagement, and to evaluate them against each other. The adjective rudis in the eulogy is employed to comment on the transformation of the urbane lawyer into a respected general: the trajectory of 25 The figure of maturity, and impetuousness, are developed through the twin expressions infirmirmissimo tempore aetatis (‘at the most impressionable age of a person’) and ad quamcumque sunt discplinam quasi tempestate delati, ad eam tamquam ad saxum adhaerescunt (‘pushed out towards whatever system as if by a storm, they cling to it as if to a rock’), Luc.8. 26 On the rashness of some in their decision to follow someone they consider wise Cicero parenthetically states: statuere enim qui sit sapiens vel maxime videtur esse sapientis -sed ut potuerint, potuerunt omnibus rebus auditis cognitis etiam reliquorum sententiis (‘for to decide who is a wise man is an ability that seems to firmly belong to a wise man. But even if they were capable of making this discovery, they could do so only once all the issues had been heard and considered, along with other philosophical positions’), Luc.9. With Brittain and Reid, Madvig’s emendation seems to get the best sense out of this sentence. By assimilating vel maxime… sapientis to ut potuerint, Plasberg and Schäublin eliminate the possibility that Cicero’s imagined ‘detractors’ genus reprehensorum might include Academics; a possibility which is more than just suggestive. 27 The discussion begins: Quibus de rebus et alias saepe nobis multa quaesita et disputata sunt et quondam in Hortensi villa... (‘on these matters, we often have held discussions and investigations at other times in the past and once in Hortensius’ villa...’), Luc.9. O.Cappello, Part III 201 development is a useful myth in Lucullus’ biography to show the importance and real consequences of study. 28 Use of the term in the skeptical apology, however, produces an ironic commentary on the rashness adopted in philosophy, especially when Lucullus proves himself a victim of it. Cicero claims that rudes (‘uncultivated people’) and indocti (‘ignorant people’) cannot in fact issue judgments on the wise man 29 - and Lucullus himself has experienced the graduation from ignorance to proficiency in matters military. When the general then turns to Antiochus, and his promise to perform only one role, from an exclusive and uncritical perspective, Cicero has already prepared his audience to view this methodology as contradictory with regard to Lucullus’ real life and experience. The homology between the practical and theoretical life serves thus both to integrate philosophy into real life and to argue for the advantages and common sense appeal of the skeptical method. 30 Arguing for the superiority of Academic skepticism is a crucial aspect of this interaction. Cicero appears to construct the debate as between the Academy and the rest of the philosophical world as he develops his apology from those who are against the institution as a whole, to those who specifically reject the Academiae ratio as a productive arena for discussion. Lucullus is significantly shut out of the Academy and the debate is introduced as Cicero’s Academia versus Antiochus’. By not including the distinction- foremost in the first Academic Book- between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Academy, Cicero excludes his adversary from a claim to the hallowed institution. 31 The prefatorial frame constructs the authority of the Academy as a specifically skeptical Academy even before the debate takes place. It is this particular strategy that a fortiori leads the reader to question the inset frame of Lucullus’ narrative, where in fact the institutional and doctrinal position of Antiochus is far from clear, and so the poles of the debate itself are problematised. Before the arrival of the Roman Books, Antiochus is already shown as occupied with a dispute; but this dispute is with Heraclitus of Tyre, an Academic, whose position is identified with the teaching of Clitomachus and Philo, and with a philosophy which, as the present continuous sense of revocatur implies (especially in contrast with 28 Luc.2 and Luc.9. 29 Luc.9. 30 Comparative methodologies of philosophy explicitly occupy Cicero in the prologue to De Finibus book two- written contemporaneously with the Academica- where he makes the case for the superiority of Socrates’ approach, revived by Arcesilaus, over and against other schools. There are numerous verbal correspondences with our passage, but most suggestively the use of percontando paralleling Lucullus’ voyage to Asia, wisely spent in percontando a peritis (Fin.2.2 = Luc.2). 31 Ac.1.13 and Luc.13. O.Cappello, Part III 202 the perfect participle dimissa (‘abandoned’)) is being revived- ‘called back’- by that Roman debate. 32 The impact of Philo’s work is therefore to intensify an antagonism between Antiochus and Philo, 33 and so it merely incites and extends Antiochus’ anti-Academicism and his argument with Heraclitus. This is evident in the coordinated participial phrase Heraclitum contra Antiochum disserentem et item Antiochum contra Academicos (‘Heraclitus was arguing with Antiochus and again Antiochus against Academics’), and in the final exclusion of Philo from the debate altogether with which Lucullus ends his prologue. 34 It seems thus untenable to interpret the vignette as of documentary value alone, and it further appears to raise crucial questions about the institutional and doctrinal nature of the debate. Even the oppositional frame my interpretation has so far offered is simplistic. Cicero’s Academicism only superficially appears to foreclose the possibility of Lucullus’ position being Academic. In the first instance, Lucullus speaks the language of an Academic skeptic when he prefaces his speech by stating his uncommitted attitude towards the position he is about to voice. The fact that the words are not his own is directly linked to his indifference to whether they are persuasive or not. Nonetheless he expresses his provisional assent to them in terms entirely reminiscent of Academic skepticism. 35 Lucullus implicitly shows himself to be open to persuasion, putting himself in play in this dispute and doing so to an even greater degree than his skeptic rival, who takes centre-stage with a strong assertion of personal investment in the tenets of the Academy. 36 32 Et erat iam antea Alexandriae familiaris Antiochi Heraclitus Tyrius, qui et Clitomachum multos annos et Philonem audierat, homo sane in ista philosophia, quae nunc prope dimissa revocatur, probatus et nobilis (‘there was also already there in Alexandria a friend of Antiochus’, Heraclitus of Tyre, who had been a pupil of Clitomachus and of Philo for many years. He was a virtuous man and enjoyed a good reputation in that philosophical school which is now being revived, but was once almost abandoned’), Luc.11. The nunc suggestively reaches back to Cicero’s apology and thus characterizes the Lucullus itself as constituting the revival. 33 Note how the description of Antiochus’ reaction to Philo’s books packages such intensification in characteriological terms: cum quo et Antiochum saepe disputantem audiebam- sed utrumque leniter; et quidem isti libri duo Philonis, de quibus heri dictum a Catulo est, tum erant allati Alexandriam tumque primum in Antiochi manus venerant; et homo natura lenissimus (nihil enim poterat fiery illo mitius) stomachari tamen coepit (‘I used to listen to Antiochus as he often debated with [Heraclitus]- but both did so calmly. And then those two books of Philo, about which Catulus spoke yesterday, arrived in Alexandria and came first into the hands of Antiochus. He, who was the most calm individual by nature (no one was more composed than him), began to get angry’), Luc.11. 34 Sed ea pars quae contra Philonem erat praetermittenda est… ad Arcesilan et Carneademque veniamus (‘we must omit that part which was aimed against Philo… let us deal with Arcesilaus and Carneades’), Luc.12. Lucullus confirms his true target over the next few sections: ut contra Academicos disseramus (‘in order to argue against the Stoics’), Luc.17, and again omnis oratio contra Academiam suscipitur a nobis (‘I am taking up the whole case against the Academy’), Luc.18. 35 Ea quae dico probaturus sim (‘I approve the arguments I am about to report’)… videtur esse verissima (‘they seem to me to be most truthful’), Luc.10. Cicero has already promoted the notion that a skeptic cannot ‘affirm’ (adfirmare, Luc.10), but only ‘follow what is probable’ (probabilia… sequi, Luc.8). 36 Ea sentire quae dicerem (‘I endorse the position I am about to report’), Luc.65. Note the parallel phraseology. O.Cappello, Part III 203 Furthermore, while Lucullus approaches the debate with the flexible outlook of an Academic skeptic, Philo himself is dissociated from the Academy. Although he is initially paired with Clitomachus and Heraclitus, his works are unrecognizable as Academic products and he is finally excluded from the dispute on the grounds of his lies and his departure from the orthodoxy of Arcesilaus and Carneades. 37 The effect of this deconstructed opposition is as complex as it is essential to the interpretation of what is at stake in the Academica: the very notion of fixity of philosophical positions is scrutinized, as Philo’s exit from the Academy is parallel to Antiochus’ characterization as already outside it. Lucullus similarly is implicitly excluded, although his tentative self-abnegation re-integrates him into Academic methodology- a trajectory reversed in the case of Cicero, who introduces the position he intends to defend as one he fully endorses and concludes with the aporia of how one can choose anything when so many philosophical positions seem appealing and justifiable. The protagonists on all narrative levels occupy, as we shall explore in greater detail, a variety of positions in their career. Moreover, the virtue of skepticism, its freedom, is presented in this paradoxical vein as the condition of examining and perhaps even occupying different positions. Inclusivity emerges as the one distinctive characteristic of Cicero’s skeptical project. It is exactly through this logic of assimilation that the debate is introduced, through two strategies. Explicitly, he accepts criticism as the necessary counterpart of Academic methodology of contra omnes dicere (‘debating with everyone’). Dissent is a calculated part of the philosophical game, and it is inscribed within the very nature of Academic philosophizing, as well as determining the manifesto of the project itself. Implicitly, by blurring the boundary between inside and outside, the Academy develops a fluid understanding of what it means to operate within the institution. In this sense, other doctrines and institutions, namely Antiochus and his Stoic views, are incorporated- appropriated even- within the Academy, the school in which the debate takes place. Antiochus’ doctrinal position, understood by Lucullus as opposed to the Academy of Heraclitus- and so Clitomachus, Carneades and Arcesilaus- is further evaluated by Cicero in his rejoinder. With the same aggression that characterized reactions to Philo’s heterodoxy, Antiochus is 37 At ille Heracliti memoria implorans quaerere ex eo, viderenturne illa Philonis aut ea num vel e Philone vel ex ullo Academico audivisset aliquando. Negabat (‘But [Antiochus], appealing to Heraclitus’ memory asked him whether he recognized these views as Philo’s or whether he recognized them as belonging to Philo or some other Academic. Heraclitus said no’), Luc.11. enim mentitur (‘for [Philo] was lying’), Luc.12. O.Cappello, Part III 204 portrayed as exchanging old beliefs for new, and most shockingly, Stoic ones. 38 Cicero’s counter- critique emphasizes the fictional aspects of the Alexandrian episode and, through numerous thematic correspondences with the preface, renews the link between narrative frame and philosophical subject matter. In the first place, he dates the Antiochian secession from the Academy to a period preceding the reception of the Roman Books. The barrage of rhetorical questions with which Cicero criticizes Antiochus’ betrayal at Luc.69 not only ironizes on the existence of a precise secession date, 39 but also pinpoints the historical period in which the Academic spoke as a Stoic. Cicero uses the names of Mnesarchus and Dardanus, ‘leaders of the Stoa’ (principes Stoicorum), and refers to Athens in order to provide a backdrop, both geographical and chronological for Antiochus’ switch- securely placing it in the 90s BCE, and so before the Sosus Affair. 40 Antiochus was not only already a Stoic, but, picking up on the clan accompanying the philosopher in Alexandria, Cicero implies that the secession had occurred before his arrival at Alexandria sometime late in 87 BC. 41 The temporal sequence which Cicero is careful to construct in order to undermine Lucullus’ narrative of the break is underlined by a causal approach to the schism; or, better, the absence of such connection. Indeed, as Barnes succinctly put it, there is no explicit link made between the ‘affair’ and the ‘conversion,’ or the two sections Luc.11-12 and 69-70 (1989: 69). Because of this incompatibility, Dorandi deems both sections hopelessly un-historical, with neither Antiochus’ conversion or the Roman Books mentioned in the earlier passage, nor the Sosus mentioned in the later one: Cicero ‘non è interessato a una rappresentazione “storica”’ (1997: 98). The impact- even the existence- of the Roman Books is not acknowledged at all in Luc.69-70, and Cicero seems to be interested in discussing the life of Philo and Antiochus during their time in Athens, characterized by divergence and conflict. Most critics have commented on the challenge of reconciling the Sosus Affair, understood as the moment of secession between Philo and Antiochus, and Antiochus’ earlier move towards a 38 See for example the ad personam attack, starting at Luc.69, which leads his rebuttal. 39 Quis enim iste dies inluxerit quaero qui illi ostenderit eam quam multos annos esse negitavisset veri et falsi notam? (‘Which day was it, I ask, that shone on him and showed him that criterion of truth and falsehood whose existence he had denied for so many years?’), Luc.69. 40 Cf. Index Academicorum 34.3-6 and Index Stoicorum 21.2-7. Glucker 1978 suggests the early part of that decade; Barnes agrees 1989: 69. 41 He accuses Antiochus that ‘he would never have left Philo until after he had acquired his own students’ (numquam a Philone discessit, nisi postea quam ipse coepit qui se audirent habere), Luc.69. O.Cappello, Part III 205 syncretic philosophy merging Stoicism and Platonism. A ‘realistic’ account underwritten by the vast majority of scholars involves inserting the Alexandrian episode within an extended narrative of drift between the two. So in fact we have the triad quoted above- Glucker (1978: 15-31), Barnes (1989: 68-78) and Dorandi (1997: 93-105)- leading a longer list, within which we find Hirzel (1883: 337-8), Goedeckemeyer (1905: 111), Sedley (1981: 67-75), (Tarrant1985a: 91), Donini (1993: 93-105), Mansfeld (1997: 68-71) and Bonazzi (2003: 112-117). This evolved against the perceived orthodoxy of reading the reception and critique of the Roman Books as the cause of their separation, an orthodoxy endorsed by, amongst others, Lueder (1940: 3-4) and Luck (1953: 15), but perhaps most influentially by Mette (1986/7: 22) and Dillon (1997: 54). Among these, Glucker, Tarrant, Inwood and Mansfeld, Lévy’s Cicero Academicus and Brittain, raise questions about the orator’s approach to the schism, trying to make sense of the problematic description of events. 42 Nonetheless, the documentary approach underestimates, if it does not all together overlook, the rhetorical force of Cicero’s response to the Alexandrian episode, especially in its relation to Luc.11-12. The fact that the so-called secession anticipates Antiochus’ reaction to the Roman Books is not an isolated accusation leveled at Lucullus’ story, but is rather integrated in a thematic response to the passage as a whole. Significantly, citing the Stoic principes re-introduces the problem of school allegiance. Antiochus operates within the Academy: not only does he belong to it in his assiduous defense of Philonian tenets, a characteristic which defines Cicero’s own affiliation, but even when he preaches Stoicism he continues to work under the Academy’s name. 43 Even if the reader presumes, as does Tarrant (1985a: 93), that Cicero willfully misinterprets Antiochus’ correctio thesis as Stoic, the way in which Cicero’s accusation is made is telling. 44 And it reinforces the initial questions about who speaks as an ‘Academic’ in its history- whether Clitomachus, Arcesilaus, Carneades, Heraclitus, Cicero or Lucullus; and how speaking from ‘within’ a school is significant. 42 Lévy 1992 comments on the crisis the Academy undergoes with Philo and Antiochus, and briefly analyses the various doctrinal phases of both thinkers. Brittain 2001: 6 is an assiduous schematizer of these phases, dating the Roman Books phase as coming after the ‘notable defections’ of Aenesidemus and Antiochus. 43 At first Antiochus still labors under Philo’s direction, then with his own auditores (‘pupils’), and finally under the customized title vetus Academia. The evolution is described at Luc.70. 44 Donini 1982: 74 shares this view as he portrays Antiochus as a ‘brillante professore di storia della filosofia’- an Academic able to manipulate texts in order to highlight the essential identity of views between Platonists, Aristotelians and Stoics. Antiochus is as good an interpreter of Stoicism as Long 1974 and Rist 1969, whose works Donini uses to defend as reasonable the foundations of Antiochus’ Platonism. O.Cappello, Part III 206 The act of switching doctrinal viewpoints is treated as a complex issue on two levels. The ironic quis iste dies of Luc.60 refers back to the awkward instantaneity of Lucullus’ story. It underlines, in fact, the continuous nature of the debate which the story, through the figure of Heraclitus, already posited. Cicero is teaching us how to read the Sosus Affair. Implicitly, however, the very premise of the attack, Cicero’s sententious ‘authority is weakened by inconstancy’ (inconstantia levatur auctoritas), must necessarily appear problematic not only for the surprising importance given to the term auctoritas, painted as deleterious to the search for truth in the preface, but also for the very inconstancy ascribed to the Academic method which Cicero endorses. The very opposition between Philo and Antiochus is nuanced and deconstructed, as is the one between Cicero and Lucullus, as each antagonism parades a complex and parallel intellectual biography. The lengthy examination limited to the biographical introductions to each speech established the initial case for reading the Lucullus with sensitivity to its aesthetic properties. It affirmed the need to read through the superficial oppositions asserted by Cicero not just as a contemporary heuristic imperative on our part, but as an intelligent response to Cicero’s own presentation of the philosophical material. The issues introduced through these framing devices link epistemology and sense-perception to institutional problems of the period, such as the crisis of the Academy, and to broader questions of how, and even where, philosophy is meant to be conducted, and how schools legitimize or outlaw doctrines and individual voices. 4. Antiochus and Philo: Profiles in Conversation. A fundamental aspect of the Academica which emerges particularly from the first edition is the elaborate intellectual trajectories of its main characters. The philosophical and professional biographies of Philo and Antiochus are not portrayed as consistent, self-identical and coherent but are characterized by a narrative of conversion and restoration which complicates the history of the institution that they represent. The two vicarious protagonists offer more than glimpses into the history of the Academy through their interpretation of it. They themselves are made to embody that complex history in their own profiles as scholars since, especially as we will see in the case of Philo, different phases of their theoretical development correspond to different periods of the institution. By alluding to different phases of these two thinkers’ lives, Cicero narrates the complex history of the O.Cappello, Part III 207 Academy with its internal tensions and its different approaches to the same philosophical challenges and problems. Cicero and Lucullus, the dramatis personae who ostensibly translate that conflict for a Roman audience, in turn act as vessels for the range of positions their teachers have occupied. Indeed, just as Cicero and Lucullus and Varro accuse Philo or Antiochus of changing opinion, so the author draws attention to the changing allegiances of his own cast. He chooses to introduce the debate in his final edition through an exchange between Varro and Cicero on the latter’s mutable philosophical stance. Varro asks Cicero about his movement from vetus to nova Academia, to which Cicero responds by drawing a parallel between himself and Antiochus, who made the same journey but in the opposite direction. 45 This sentence has opened the debate on Cicero’s allegiances, and his relationship to Antiochus- a century-old scholarly controversy which has focused on the semantics of tractari. 46 The verb, as Reid suggests, indicates specifically ‘some writing’ and is therefore probably auto-referential (1885: ad loc). 47 Beyond semantic analysis, the section as a whole introduces the problem of philosophical allegiance making this issue relevant not only to its Roman adaptation, but also and most significantly to the life of the author who has just engaged in a lengthy apology for philosophy. 48 If we contrast this introduction with the Lucullus- with the due proviso that the first Academic Book constitutes a rewriting of the lost Catulus- it is crucial to note that the theme is treated through the direct involvement of its protagonists, rather than displaced as an issue concerning only Antiochus and Philo. Cicero throws open his own literary project to scrutiny, and thereby Varro’s philosophical commitment too. The tenor of this statement would not have passed unnoticed. At the very outset of his ambitious philosophical project, he invites the untrained Roman reader, as well as those enthusiasts who have travelled east to experience philosophy, to reflect on the significance and implications of consistency and conversion. The first Academic Book therefore dwells on the concerns expressed in the Lucullus about auctoritas and doctrinal coherence, 45 Relictam a te veterem illam, inquit, tractari autem novam. Quid ergo? Inquam. Antiocho id magis licuerit, nostro familiari, remigrare in domum veterem e nova quam nobis in novam e vetere? (‘“you have left the old Academy and are now dealing with the new,” Varro observed. “What’s the problem?” I replied, “is it permissible for Antiochus, our friend, to head back into the old house leaving the new and I am not allowed to go in the opposite direction?”’), Ac.1.13. 46 Recent orthodoxy seems to have swung towards Görler 1995 who argues that there was no such conversion. Hirzel 1883: 488-9n1), Weische 1971 and Glucker 1988 and 1992 insist on an Antiochian phase beginning with Cicero’s voyage east in 79 BCE. 47 Brittain’s 2006 translation agrees with Reid. See also Glucker 1988. 48 Ac.1.9-12. O.Cappello, Part III 208 repackaging them as a key challenge for the community of aristocrats for whom he is writing. The issue is developed not merely as characteristic of the Academy in its last years, but as a question about the condition of philosophy in general. However, there is no explicit prescriptive agenda in all the passages discussed so far. These excerpts are inflected by the anti-logic rhetoric of the debate and are therefore contradictory within the logic of the drama, and also- most importantly perhaps- within the logic of the treatise itself which presents the freedom to change one’s mind as the single most important pillar of the author’s Academic affiliation. 49 Nonetheless, there is an important consideration to make concerning the way in which the contending voices represent their professional Greek counterparts: although, as we have seen, the two halves of the dialogues approach their ‘source’ differently, neither Lucullus/Varro nor Cicero compress the historical depth of Antiochus and Philo. In the case of the two Antiochians, correctio entails dependence on the history of philosophy as the main field and resource for doctrinal speculation. Cicero on the other hand makes a very allusive use of Philo, and in fact disseminates Philo’s thought throughout his speech and intersperses it with quotations from Clitomachus as well as allusions to Arcesilean thought independent of later adjustments. Despite the programmatic claims, there is no passage in the Academica which expressly describes the evolution of either philosopher. This progress is alluded to repeatedly though not necessarily in any chronological or logical sequence, to the extent that the reader must piece it together for himself. And, as he pieces together the evolution of what Cicero presents as the last institutional voices of Academic thinking, he is working through Academic history in its total extent. Crisis is not dissociable from renewal as each voice is made the bearer of the entire tradition. 50 49 This is felt most spectacularly in Cicero’s inconstantia levatur auctoritas cited above. For Lévy 1992: 635 libertas is the keystone of the Academica, which he celebrates as a ‘hymne à la liberté.’ 50 One objection immediately springs to mind in the context of the allusive nature of the Academica stating that Cicero’s audience would not have needed to piece anything together, since they would have been acquainted with the intellectual vicissitudes of a Philo and an Antiochus. At least two points can be raised in response: firstly on a theoretical level, allusion, as elegy teaches the Latinist, is an (inter-) active process involving both evocation and shaping of the tradition / text it refers to; it does not operate as a glorified card indexing system- although as Foucault, Derrida and others who have written about catalogues and archives show, even the most automatic form of indexical organization implicates the user in more complex discourses than perhaps s/he can anticipate. Secondly, the question of Cicero’s readership remains just that: a question. It is not, as this critique implies, so obvious that the orator wrote to and for experts. Varro, Brutus, Atticus might be expected to be versed in the politics of the fin de l’Académie, but the number of objectors who Cicero addresses in his prefaces are characterized as new to the discipline as a whole. O.Cappello, Part III 209 The rest of this section will show how Philo and Antiochus are represented as two composite figures whose complex intellectual development Cicero compresses into the fabric of the work and which he uses to discuss more generally the doctrinal development of the Academy. Philo’s innovations constitute a, if not the, key question of the Academica. The text promises to deliver a record of his research and his traumatic heterodoxy when in fact it explicitly re-centers the debate around Clitomachus, and especially the founding duo Arcesilaus and Carneades. 51 To be deceived about the presence of Philo is the predicament of every reader of the Lucullus, and the disappointment of readers of the Academici Libri, where not only Academic history but also the last of the New Academic texts ends before the last scholarch can speak. 52 As we said in an earlier review of the question, a number of critics, especially from the turn of the nineteenth century, argued that Cicero’s speech in the Lucullus was Philonian and more specifically that it was drawn either from the Roman Books or from his reply to the Sosus. However, Cicero not only sidelines Philo in his speech in favor of other sources which are consistently named, if not outright cited, but he even agrees with Lucullus’ censure of Philo’s Roman views. 53 This strategy puts some distance between the orator and his teacher’s late doctrines, and, when taken in conjunction with the forceful endorsement of the views he will put forward in his rejoinder, 54 Cicero makes it very difficult for the reader to accept those views as deriving from that final phase of Philo’s thought. Our analysis will therefore start from explicit references to Philo: Luc.11-12, Luc.18, Luc.32-4, 55 Luc.78 and Luc.111; Ac.1.13 and 1.46. 56 Firstly, for the purposes of this philosophical archaeology it is worth reiterating that Philo is not linked to the same view throughout his career. Critics have been drawn to study the Roman phase in particular, the one which appears to be closely connected with the composition of the Academica and whose innovations have been identified in two separate passages. The first is the belief in the unity and continuity of the Academy throughout its history, which is linked to the historical controversy at Luc.13-17, Luc.72-8 and explicitly at Ac.1.13. The second innovation, which is 51 Luc.12. 52 Ac.1.46. 53 I am thinking of Clitomachus, whose works are cited at Luc.99, Luc.102 and Luc.104. For the disagreement between Philo and Clitomachus, and Cicero’s preference for the latter’s view see Luc.78. 54 Luc.65 discussed above. 55 This section is rather problematic because Philo is not actually named, though quite a few critics insist that the position attacked represents the last scholarch’s views. See Hirzel 1883: 208; Reid 1885: ad loc; Zeller 1923: 615-6; Fritz 1938: 2540; and Brochard 1969: 197-8. Also Tarrant 1985a: 53 and 2011: 72 and Brittain 2001. 56 See the collection of Philo’s fragments in Mette 1986. O.Cappello, Part III 210 presented as the foundation for the first, concerns a new epistemology, nova quaedam, that deals with the ἀκατάληπτον (‘incomprehensible’) in a way that distances him from the three-clause definition of κατάληψις established by Zeno. 57 These two concepts are the culmination, or the refutation, of a long intellectual career. In these distinct phases- which may be three, as Brittain has recently and thoroughly argued, or two, in Sedley’s view- Philo entertained different epistemologies: he began as a loyal follower of Clitomachus and wound up distancing himself from the Arcesilean and Carneadean orthodoxy in his later life, effecting the ‘drift’ from radical skepticism to a form of dogmatism- a condition wearily described by the contemporary Aenesidemus who claims that Academics had become nothing but ‘Stoics attacking Stoics.’ 58 Brittain’s tripartite construction of Philo’s career is without doubt the most exhaustive to date. Despite the sense that he is very often not interpreting the Academica or Sextus’ Hypotheses, but a standardized, informal logical version of those works, 59 his Philo best expresses the coincidence between the thinker’s career and the intellectual evolution of the Academy. He takes issue with the thesis of a gentle glide into dogmatism, the ‘drift’ narrative of Sedley (1981: 71) and Tarrant (2011: 67), and sees ‘radical discontinuities’ characterizing the move from the Clitomachean phase to the Metrodorean-Philonian phase and finally to the Roman phase (Brittain 2001: 73). Early Philo is a follower of Clitomachus, under whom he studied for fourteen years in Athens and from whom he inherited the scholarcate. Glucker suggests on two separate occasions that Philo was a safe choice because of his lack of originality and the promise his mediocrity implied to 57 Catulus senior, Antiochus, and, depending on how we read the first person plural in id nos a Zenone definitum rectissime dicimus (‘we/I believe that Zeno defined comprehension in the most correct way,’ Luc.18), the whole Academic establishment accepted the definition. It will certainly be re-read as a genuine plural through Cicero’s speech, when he characterizes this definition as a collaborative effort between Zeno and Arcesilaus, and so stakes Academic history on its very existence, Luc.76-7. 58 Οἱ δ’ ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀκαδημίας, φησί, μάλιστα τῆς νῦν, καὶ στωϊκαῖς συμφέρονται ἐνίοτε δόξαις, καὶ εἰ χρὴ τἀληθὲς εἰπεῖν, Στωϊκοὶ φαίνονται μαχόμενοι Στωϊκοῖς (‘Philosophers coming out of the Academy, he says, especially those that are around now, sometimes agree with Stoic opinions and, if I must speak the truth, they appear as Stoics fighting Stoics’)Aenesidemus apud Photius Bibl.212.170a. Sextus Empiricus formalizes this critique at PH 1.1-4 where he associates the Academy with a negative form of dogmatism, and isolates it from skepticism: διόπερ ἴσως καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν κατὰ φιλοσοφίαν ζητουμένων οἱ μὲν εὑρηκέναι τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔφασαν, οἱ δ’ ἀπεφήναντο μὴ δυνατὸν εἶναι τοῦτο καταληφθῆναι, οἱ δὲ ἔτι ζητοῦσιν […] ὅθεν εὐλόγως δοκοῦσιν αἱ ἀνωτάτω φιλοσοφίαι τρεῖς εἶναι, δογματικὴ Ἀκαδημαϊκὴ σκεπτική (‘Therefore insofar as philosophical investigations are concerned, some have said that they have discovered the truth, others have declared that it is impossible to comprehend it and others are still investigating. […] For this reason, the most reasonable types of philosophy are three, the dogmatic, the Academic and the skeptic’). 59 See Glucker 2004: 188. O.Cappello, Part III 211 ‘toe the line’ and behave as if ‘under contract’ (1978: 88 and 77). This represents an idiosyncratic extreme of a generally accepted view that Philo surely did have a Clitomachean phase which was connected with his studentship and succession (Lévy 2010: 85). This phase corresponded with endorsement of both akatalêpsia and epochê, being therefore firmly dialectical and rejecting all claims to ontology and truth. Luc.98-104 summarizes and even cites directly from Clitomachus, centering its steadfast skepticism on Carneades whose point of view is portrayed as totally averse to dogmatism. The thesis on probabilia is carefully developed so as to uphold suspension of assent as the only logical and coherent response to the condition of the inability to know anything for certain. The impossibility of perception is developed throughout the passage: the speaker begins with the categorical separation of visa (‘impressions’) into perceptible and non-perceptible, and probable and improbable. There follows a critique of the ‘mark of distinction between truth and falsehood’ (veri falsique nota), and the section ends with the argument on ‘similarity’ (similitudo). 60 Cicero guides the reader to the Clitomachean conclusion that no adsensus (‘assent’) takes place, but rather a movement in response to probabilitas. 61 Constant emphasis on the ‘persuasive’ aspect of percepts and their expediency, 62 leads Brittain to define Carneades’ belief as one that is ‘truth-indifferent’ (Brittain 2001: 73). Furthermore, epochê and akatalêpsia are not introduced as doctrines upholding their own truth, but responses to assumed axioms of the debate 63 and conditions of real life. 64 Clitomachus will be shown 60 Duo placet esse Carneadi genera visorum; in uno hanc divisionem, alia visa esse quae percipi possint, alia quae non possint; in altero autem alia visa esse probabilia alia non probabilia. Itaque quae contra sensus contraque perspicuitatem dicantur ea pertinere ad superiorem divisionem, contra posteriorem nihil dici oportere (‘According to Carneades impressions fall into two categories; in the first category he puts those impressions which can be perceived and those which cannot, and in the second he puts impressions that are probable and those which are not probable. Therefore, arguments against the senses and against clarity are relevant to the first category, but are not relevant to the second’), Luc.99. Nota at Luc.101. Academicis placer eesse rerum eius modi dissimilitudines, ut aliae probabiles videantur, aliae contra. Id autem non esse satis, cur alia posse percipi dicas, alia non posse, propterea quod multa falsa probabilia sint, nihil autem falsi perceptum et cognitum possit esse (‘According to Academics dissimilarities between things exist in such a way that certain impressions are probable and others are not. But this is not enough to claim that certain impressions can be perceived and that others cannot, because many false impressions are probable, while nothing that is false can be perceived or cognized’), Luc.103. 61 Nam cum placeat eum, qui de omnibus rebus contineat se ab adsentiendo, moveri tamen et agere aliquid, relinqui eius modi visa, quibus ad actionem excitemur, item ea, quae interrogati in utramque partem respondere possimus sequentes tantummodo, quod ita visum sit, dum sine adsensu (‘According to this view, he who withholds assent from any impression nonetheless must still be moved and must still act and that certain impressions must remain through which we are aroused to act, and again impressions that allow us, when questioned, to respond on either side of the question, following them only insofar as they seem to be the case and doing so without assent’), Luc.104. 62 Illustrated in the dramatic plea for the humanity of the skeptic who is not ‘hewn from stone or fashioned from wood’ (e saxo sculptus aut e robore dolatus), Luc.101. 63 Luc.103. 64 As for example the wise man navigating at Luc.100. The point of Carneades’ position is to provide solutions to the dire perceptual conditions in which man lives. O.Cappello, Part III 212 to undermine even the foundations of this view when he admits that he never was able to understand what Carneades approved, 65 and when he celebrates Carneades’ contribution to philosophy, the total removal of assent, as a Herculean labor. 66 According to Brittain (Ibid: 76-128), by 95 BCE Philo had taken up a new position labeled Philonian-Metrodorian skepticism. He continued to defend akatalêpsia, though he abandoned suspension of judgment. 67 In Luc.78 a mitigated form of skepticism is attributed to Metrodorus and Philo indirectly through their interpretation of Carneades’ theory of probabilitas: Carneades positively approves probability, rather than merely using the theory for the purpose of argument, as Clitomachus claims. The move from the Clitomachean position is made explicit by arguing for the rationality of abandoning withholding assent while insisting on akatalêpsia. Indeed Luc.76-8 develops from the argument between Arcesilaus and Zeno about opining to the focus on the third clause of katalêpsis, a movement which side-steps opining in favor of concentrating on akatalêpsia. 68 The final clause of Luc.78 sharpens the distinction between Clitomachean akatalêpsia and epochê, and the Philonian-Metrodorian acceptance of a weak, non-kataleptic form of assent. Passing over Philo’s view of Carneades, Cicero contends: ‘once opining and perception are removed, this follows: the withholding of all assent so that if I will have shown that nothing can be perceived, you will have to concede that one can never assent.’ 69 Luc.148 invites a closer reading of the relationship between the Lucullus and the Catulus. Again, Carneades’ view on opinion takes centre-stage. Luc.78 appears closely interlinked to Luc.59, where Lucullus differentiates between Arcesilaus’ withholding assent and Carneades’ adprobare non cognitum (‘approval of a non-cognized impression’) in order to attack the later scholarch as inconsistent with respect to akatalêpsia. There are two elements of the passage that proleptically link it to Luc.78 and Luc.148: the first concerns the implication that Carneades maintains the possibility of opining as a theory that he endorses, therefore indicating that Lucullus is attacking the Philonian- 65 Luc.139. 66 credoque Clitomacho ita scribenti, Herculi quendam laborem exanclatum a Carneade, quod ut feram et inmanem belvam sic ex animis nostris adsensionem, id est opiniationem et temeritatem, extraxisset (‘I believe Clitomachus when he thus writes that Carneades performed an almost Herculean labor, when had eliminated assent from our soul, as if a huge and wild beast- assent that is opinion and rashness’), Luc.108. 67 The Philonian-Metrodorian phase is already in Brochard 1969; 198 who reads perspicuitas at Luc.34 as Metrodorus’ influence on Philo’s thought. 68 Luc.78. 69 Illud certe opiniatione et perceptione sublata sequitur, omnium adsensionum retentio, ut, si ostendero nihil posse percipi, tu concedas numquam adsensurum esse, Luc.78. O.Cappello, Part III 213 Metrodorian interpretation. 70 Secondly, the temporal adverb heri (‘yesterday’) ties the examination of this epistemology to the Catulus so that when we come to Catulus’ concluding remarks at Luc.148 it is tempting to read his ad patris revolvor sententiam as a return to an opinion voiced in that previous work. 71 The philosophical sense of the passage confirms this for Brittain: Catulus on the one hand asserts akatalêpsia, while on the other he weakens if not outright abandons epochê. In those sections where he quotes from Clitomachus, Cicero sets out a different interpretation of Carneades linked to Philo and Metrodorus and one which is to be identified in contradistinction to the skepticism of Clitomachus. Brittain however goes further in an attempt to complete the construction of Philonian- Metrodorian epistemology. And to accomplish this restoration he depends on Lucullus’ attacks leveled at the skeptical Academy at Luc.32-6, Luc.59-60 and Luc.61-2 (Brittain 2001: 102-5). The second stage of Philo’s thought is characterized by a mitigated skepticism, which takes seriously Carneades’ πιθανόν (‘probable’) as a ‘rational discriminatory mechanism.’ A probable percept is not just what is subjectively more persuasive to the individual and can only be used in the immediate, but it is a perception which, taking into account clarity in perceptual conditions and coherence with other percepts, is rationally verifiable and thus has some objective validity. Philonian-Metrodorians thus subject perceptions to coherence tests, rationally evaluate them and use what is persuasive as having some objective value, in theoretical as well as practical matters (Ibid: 107). 72 This brand of skepticism confronted the ontological problem of claiming that there was no perceptible distinction between true and false, while using that distinction as an axiom for their case for akatalêpsia. 73 They accept such distinction as ontologically and rationally valid- they approve it- and believe that clarity, perspicuitas, and ratio offer a way for the individual to operate within the objective (= ontological) domain (Ibid: 108). Nonetheless, the impression thus taken to be true is only provisionally or tentatively held to be so. The proviso added by Catulus to the sage’s activity of opining is essential to avoid any 70 Ut diceret opinaturum id est peccaturum esse sapientem (‘he said that the sage will opine that is that he will commit a sin’), Luc.59. 71 Luc.59 suggests that there was a more detailed discussion of epistemological matters on the day before, with the Philonian-Metrodorian position defended by Catulus against Cicero’s support of the Clitomachean view. See Brittain 2001: 77-8; and Mansfeld 1997 on the two Catuli. 72 He also talks of the objectivization of the πιθανόν. Lucullus appears to address this same group of skeptics when he accuses those who employ ‘that which is probable or similar to the truth both in life and in research and debate’ (probabile aut veri simile et in agenda vita et in quaerendo ac disserendo), Luc.32. 73 Luc.33-4. O.Cappello, Part III 214 presumption that such assent corresponds to knowledge: he who opines must be aware of the fact that the impression is non-kataleptic, and that no conditions exist within which it is rational for him to claim knowledge of such impression. Perception is thus tentative because incomplete in what it can obtain as knowledge and because of the recognition that what it has obtained might be false. Akatalêpsia is thus central to their system, and the single provisional belief to which it is reasonable to presume that Philonian-Metrodorians have assented. 74 The third phase, which Brittain correlates with the Roman Books, involves a new break, this time one that aims to rethink the concept of knowledge itself. 75 Tarrant's book on the fourth Academy makes much of the Roman phase, elevating the Roman Books to the transformative moment of Academic Skepticism into Middle Platonism. Philo prepares the way for a return to dogmatic Platonism through his cautious yet positive approach to epistemology; a new approach which depends on the formulation of what Tarrant calls the ‘limited non-apprehensibility doctrine’ (1958a: 53). The historian of philosophy, who otherwise roams through an extensive collection of disparate texts, here singles out the Academica to argue that Philo found a way out of akatalêpsia and opened the way for comprehension of a non-kataleptic kind. He suggests that Philo removes the third condition defining Stoic and Academic katalêpsis, thus making the latter possible within new, simplified parameters. Between the possibility and impossibility of comprehension, Philo finds a third position which we see him taking up in the Academica: 76 we know from the critique at Luc.18 that Philo ‘weakened’ (infirmat) Zeno’s definition of ‘impression’ (visum), suggesting his disagreement with Antiochus for the need of a Stoic definition of katalêpsis for comprehension to be possible at all. This seems to be supported in Cicero’s speech, where on the topic of defining the Zenonian visum he approves of the description while distancing himself from Philo. 77 Finally, Tarrant reads a strong 74 Such reading of Philo’s and Metrodorus’ thought is very well attested in the scholarship, to the extent that we could have followed Glucker’s 1978: 75-87, Tarrant’s 2011: 66-97 and 1985: 15-19, or Sedley’s 1981 account to describe what essentially is understood to be a positive Carneadeanism: an epistemology built around the πιθανόν as a criterion to evaluate truth or its approximation. 75 Not all historians of the late Academy see this either as a break with the second phase or even distinguishable from it. Sedley for example maintains that such a position is nothing but the continuation of the drift away from skepticism. Inversely, Glucker suggests that the third phase coincides with a return to orthodox skepticism, or at least to a reiteration of old arguments against Stoic katalêpsis, while the Roman Books simply articulate Philonian- Metrodorian epistemology. Interpreting the Roman Books as a platform for that epistemology is accepted by Brochard, Dal Pra, Glucker, Long and Sedley -- and Tarrant 1985a: 42, who even describes them as a ‘handbook of Academic theory.’ 76 ‘The Academica display Philo taking up this third position.’ Tarrant 1985a: 57. 77 Luc.77-8 with Tarrant 1985a: 55. O.Cappello, Part III 215 Philonian influence in a later passage where Cicero contests the fact that Stoics limit the debate on sense-perception through this third clause. 78 Although this section cannot be directly assigned to Philo, especially since his name is never mentioned, its implications for the present argument are important. Cicero contrasts the narrow confines of the Stoic conversation on epistemology with Aristotle, Theophrastus, Xenocrates and Polemo. The exchange he imagines with a Peripatetic indicates exactly such a third position on comprehension as Tarrant argues for: a Peripatetic ‘would not add that great appendage [to comprehension] that it cannot be formed in a manner, in which it could derive from a false impression,’ and so implicitly comprehension would not constitute a philosophical problem. 79 Cicero clearly suggests that, stepping outside those kataleptic limitations things would be comprehended, though without that degree of certainty expected in the Stoic theory. 80 Furthermore, on Tarrant’s interpretation there is symmetry in Cicero dissociating from this weak position, as he does from Philo at Luc.77-8, and the strength of Cicero’s reaction, shared with Antiochus, to this shocking and revolutionary move by Philo. 81 Brittain characterizes this Roman epistemology as a form of fallibilism. 82 Philo emerges from the debate with two principles which define his Roman phase, namely that Stoic katalêpsis is wrong and that a katalêpsis of a non-Stoic kind is possible. After offering a detailed reading of two key testimonia for this phase, Luc.18 and PH 1.235, Brittain sets out four separate claims of this epistemology and shows how they integrate with the post-Carneadean Academy, outlining a genetic account of Philonian innovations. These four points are worth setting out: there is no Stoic katalêpsis, the Stoic definition of katalêpsis is false, katalêpsis is in fact possible through assent to true impressions with ‘an appropriate causal history’ and finally, katalêpsis is possible (Brittain 2001: 146 and 147-158). An important aspect of this expanded directory of axioms is the way in which it configures the ‘radical change’ as nothing but a redrafted Philonian-Metrodorianism (Ibid: 159). Philo shifts the ground of the debate on epistemology and redefines Academicism, all the while reassuring his audience that his philosophy continues to operate within the Academy of Arcesilaus and Carneades. 78 Luc.112-3. 79 Neque adhiberet illam magnam accessionem- ‘quo modo imprimi non posset a falso’, Luc.112. 80 The issue of doubt is not eliminated in the section, but as Tarrant 1985a: 61 remarks, ‘absence of that kind of knowledge does not entail absence of apprehension.’ 81 He concludes the section strongly endorsing Zeno’s position: ego tamen utrumque verum puto, nec dico temporis causa, sed ita plane probo, (‘I nonetheless believe both [referring to the third clause of katalêpsis and to the sage never opining] to be true, and I do not say so provisionally, but I fully approve both’), Luc.113. 82 See Luc.40-4 and Luc.111 with Brittain’s 2001: 130-138. O.Cappello, Part III 216 The starting point of Brittain’s interpretation is the distinction which Philo draws between true belief and kataleptic impression. Lucullus’ attack at Luc.44 is aimed at a contradiction in the skeptical premise that true impressions cannot be distinguished from false. Such a thesis presupposes an ontological distinction between true and false, which is presented as the foundation of the skeptical argument. 83 Antiochus unsettles the grounds of the kind of skepticism that accepts this distinction as an approved, although provisional, premise. This would be an effective attack on Philonian-Metrodorian skepticism, rather than on the dialectical brand, for two reasons: firstly, because of its emphasis on rationality, and secondly because of its commitment to its conclusion. Philo responds to this objection by claiming an ontological difference between true and false impressions- a distinction which is comprehensible under the correct perceptual conditions. 84 The fact that an object may be truly perceived does not necessarily mean it is kataleptically perceived. The case of identical twins is the perfect illustration of this distinction: seeing Publius Servilius while thinking him to be Quintus means that the impression was non-kataleptic, but that does not imply that such impression was not true. 85 The visum is in fact true, because it faithfully reproduces the object, so that the truth of the belief for Philo is not related to the object that causes the impression. However, for the impression to be kataleptic, it requires examination, coherence-test with other impressions, and rational evaluation. It needs to go a step further, evaluating the objective qualities of the percept through subjective scrutiny (Ibid: 152). 86 Crucially, Philonian katalêpsis is totally different from its Stoic counterpart in that it is not ‘self-evident,’ and it is ‘not infallibly criterial of [its] own truth’- rather, it acts as the criterion for apprehending other impressions: it occupies the same identical position as the Philonian-Metrodorian ‘clear impressions’ and presupposes an internalist methodology- but it is now called kataleptic (Ibid: 153, 155 and 159). 83 Maxime autem convincuntur, cum haec duo pro congruentibus sumunt tam vehementer repugnantia, primum, esse quaedam falsa visa (quod cum volunt, declarant quaedam esse vera), deinde ibidem, inter falsa visa et vera nihil interesse. At primum sumpseras, tamquam interesset: ita priore posterius, posterior superius convincitur (‘They are completely refuted when they take the following two premises as consistent when they are in fact utterly inconsistent: first, they say that false impressions exist (and accepting this means conceding that true ones exist), and secondly, that there is no difference between true and false impressions. But you had accepted the first premise as if there were a difference. The first premise is undermined by the second and the second by the first’), Luc.44. 84 Luc.111 where Philo is said to take this critique very seriously: reprehensionem Antiochi … qua solebat dicere Antiochus Philonem maxime perturbatum (‘Antiochus’ attack, which Antiochus used to say rattled Philo greatly’). 85 Luc.55 and Luc.84. 86 He uses the terms internalism and externalism to define the change from Philonian-Metrodorian to the Roman phase: the latter defines cognition as what happens in the relation between the subject and the object when the impression is true and accurately represents its object. The former refers to the rational examination of cognized objects, like coherence testing. On externalism in Philo see also Hankinson 1998: 118. For the contemporary debate see Bonjour 1985; Alston 1986; and Kornblith 2001. O.Cappello, Part III 217 There are two important consequences to this epistemological shift. The first involves the sage. With a view to the absence of infallibility, and thus the possibility that the sapiens could rationally and un-provisionally assent to something false, the Philonian wise man is eo ipso fallible and liable to error. 87 Secondly, sense-perception is re-integrated as a safe basis for holding true beliefs. Since Philo grounds cognition in true belief, he makes the process of assenting possible for the Academic while maintaining the same critical stance towards the percept which can always be subjected to review. The effect of this second point for Brittain is to insulate the world of experience from that of theoretical disquisition. While sense-perception yields firm foundations for the conduct of life, evaluation of philosophical systems or propositions could at best yield probable results or results that approximate truth (Ibid: 165). Ultimately, Philo remains a skeptic in the arena of philosophical abstractions, where he continues to assert the primacy of research. Indeed, doubt is relocated at the level of speculative thought where, as seems to be explored throughout the Academica, thinkers must pursue the road of exacting analysis to attain what is only probable or close to the truth. Nonetheless, Philo moves the Academy away from both epochê and akatalêpsia, which had for so long framed everyday life, its beliefs, techniques and practices, in an impossible negativity. The Academy, to use Tarrant’s turn of phrase, now ‘dogmatized’ (1985a: 63). 88 The case in the scholarship for Philo’s Roman innovations largely depends on a much later set of texts that include Photius’ summary of Aenesidemus, Sextus Empiricus, Numenius and Augustine. So far, the argument has kept out later sources, mainly because its purpose is not intellectual profiling of historical figures, but rather evaluation of the way in which elements of these profiles are deployed and (re-)constructed in the text. It is unavoidable in this case to look at two later passages, one from Aenesidemus and one from Sextus in order to see how the shape of the scholarch’s epistemology acquired the contours we described above and determine which elements of the sketch are discernible in the Academica. 87 Brittain’s Ibid: 160 ‘erring sage.’ 88 The leitmotif of research as the axiom of Cicero’s text, both in the dramatic frame and in Cicero’s speech, is omnipresent in the scholarship. Tarrant 1985a: 26 is foremost in characterizing the fourth Academy as a ‘group of “examiners,”’ while Lévy 1992: 180 deems ‘le seul authentique enseignement du Lucullus’ to be ‘la nécessité de la recherche.’ O.Cappello, Part III 218 In his Outline of Pyrrhonism, Sextus argues against Academic skepticism as a dogmatic form of skepticism because of its assertion, albeit negative, of akatalêpsia. 89 The point of his criticism of Carneades and Carneadeans is to associate them with δογματικοί, including Epicureans, Peripatetics and Stoics as two sides of the same coin: what one proclaims the other negates, but both positions imply forms of assent which σκεπτικοί reject outright. Later on in his discussion of Philo, he produces a problematic statement which contrasts the late scholarch with Stoics precisely on the point of katalêpsis, claiming in effect that ὅσον μὲν ἐπὶ τῷ Στωικῷ κριτηρίῳ, τουτέστι τῇ καταληπτικῇ φαντασίᾳ, ἀκατάληπτα εἶναι τὰ πράγματα, ὅσον δὲ ἐπὶ τῇ φύσει τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν, καταληπτά (‘as far as the Stoic criterion is concerned- that is as far as the kataleptic impression is concerned- things are not comprehensible. However, as far as the nature of things themselves is concerned, things are comprehensible’). 90 The expression ἐπὶ τῇ φύσει led to dissonant interpretations, which can be summarized under three heads. Firstly, those who believe that the adverbial phrase drives a wedge between the epistemic capability of the subject and the objective knowability of things themselves- this has been the orthodoxy for the best part of the last century: in principle things can be known, but our cognitive weakness means that in practice we cannot know things (Brochard 1969: 196; Glucker 1978: 80; and Sedley 1981: 72-3). Tarrant offers a completely different approach in his translation of ὅσον to mean, ‘the extent to which’, while ἐπὶ is made to refer to the condition of φύσις. The implication drawn from this rendition takes issue with the above translation and suggests that the passage indicates the possibility of katalêpsis as far as nature requires. Things are comprehensible in an everyday, self- evident sense which does not require the degree of certainty of the Stoic definition. Thirdly, Brittain critiques the philological aspect of Tarrant’s claim, and lists parallel expression to show how Sextus uses ὅσον ἐπὶ to mean ‘in fact.’ The excerpt then is ‘straightforward,’ clearly signaling that like the Stoics Philo thinks there is such a thing as katalêpsis, only not in the terms stipulated by his rivals (Brittain 2001: 139-140). The minutiae pursued in the debate can obfuscate the central contrast. To whatever extent, in whatever condition and according to whatever strictures, Philo allows for the possibility of 89 Ὡς δὲ περὶ ἀκαταλήπτων ἀπεφήναντο οἱ περὶ Κλειτόμαχον καὶ Καρνεάδην καὶ ἄλλοι Ἀκαδημαϊκοί (‘those who claim that things are not comprehensible are the school of Clitomachus and Carneades and other Academics’) PH.1.3. This group is the second of three typologies of philosophical method, a taxonomy constituted by οἱ μὲν εὑρηκέναι τὸ ἀληθὲς ἔφασαν, οἱ δ’ ἀπεφήναντο μὴ δυνατὸν εἶναι τοῦτο καταληφθῆναι, οἱ δὲ ἔτι ζητοῦσιν (‘those who claim to have found the truth, those who deny that katalêpsis is possible, and those who are still searching’), PH 1.2. 90 PH.1.235. O.Cappello, Part III 219 comprehension as a variation on the Stoic one. The symmetrical structure of the sentence, dependent on the adverbial ὅσον, the balancing particles μὲν… δὲ and the apo koinou hinging on the predicative εἶναι τὰ πράγματα, all make it clear that things are in some way καταληπτά (‘comprehensible’) for Philo. Thus his theory is still very much anchored in its Hellenistic roots, but it turns the tables on Stoic epistemology by firstly rejecting the conditions of their katalêpsis, then undermining them through an alternative kataleptic model, and thereby appropriating it. The phrase τουτέστι τῇ καταληπτικῇ φαντασίᾳ, in apposition to the noun κριτηρίῳ, highlights the central motif of the passage: the criteriological transformation of perception from a Stoic to a Philonian model. Following his claim that contemporaries in the Academy were nothing but Stoics fighting Stoics, Aenesidemus launches upon a description of how these skeptics were now dogmatizing. 91 Part of his review of Academic dogmatic activity is the statement about the existence of things that are comprehensible in a ‘general way.’ 92 Tarrant argues firstly that Aenesidemus is here describing the fourth Academy, and secondly he reads the adverb κοινῶς as referring to common cases, that is non- philosophical cases. Comprehension is therefore assumed to be possible in a limited way, in direct encounters with objects of experience which can be said to be comprehended kataleptically. 93 The two authors share a Pyrrhonist agenda: to distance themselves from the skeptical Academy and assert their school’s claim over skepsis. In spite of this program, and Aenesidemus’ influence on Sextus, the Philonian approach to katalêpsis is consistently presented as hinging on Stoic terminology, while escaping its limitations. Philo turns to a form of dogmatism which eschews the certainty of Stoic perception: his version of comprehension is imperfect when considered in the light of Stoicism, but it is anchored in a relation to the object of perception and so to an ontological sense of truth. Doubt and fallibility still play an important role in the structure of his epistemology, albeit in a structure which is now positive as far as the perceptual capabilities of man are concerned. 94 91 περὶ πολλῶν δογματίζουσιν (‘[Academics] dogmatize on many subjects’) , apud Photius Bibl.212.17 92 τὸ γὰρ ἅμα τιθέναι τι καὶ αἴρειν ἀναμφιβόλως, ἅμα τε φάναι κοινῶς ὑπάρχειν καταληπτά, μάχην ὁμολογουμένην εἰσάγει (‘for to posit something while rejecting it without hesitation, and to claim at the same time that things exist which are commonly comprehensible and also to deny that, all this leads to a glaring contradiction’), Ibid.212.29-30. 93 Tarrant 1985a: 61-2 sees a connection between κοινῶς and the Stoic koinai ennoiai, perceptions kataleptically comprehended on which men agree and which determine concept formation mechanism in Stoic epistemology. 94 Two further testimonia which indicate a similar overture to a constructive epistemology are found in Numenius, where Philo relinquishes epochê as a reaction to τῶν παθημάτων […] ἐνάργειά τε καὶ ὁμολογία (‘the clarity and agreement of affections’), apud Eusebius Praeparatio Eveangelica 14.9.1-2), and Augustine, whose mysterious qui iam veluti aperire cedentibus hostibus portas coeperat (‘[Philo] who already had begun to open the doors to the enemy who was yielding’), contra Academicos 3.41 points to a gradual return to dogmatism. O.Cappello, Part III 220 Turning back to the Academica we see Cicero introducing the different phases of Philo’s thought and linking them to the progression of Academic doctrinal history. There are two indications that Lucullus is discussing the Roman phase at Luc.18: the first is the reference to ‘new doctrines’ (nova), in a clause containing six verbs in the present 95 and the second is the contrast between nova and the recognizably Academic skeptical position. The adversative autem (‘however’) early in Luc.18 draws a distinction between Lucullus’ reflections on certain philosophers’ contempt for those who bother arguing against Academics, like Antipater, and Philo’s new skepticism. Certain dogmatists, he claims, do not think it worth their time to develop proofs for ‘either cognition or perception’ (cognitio aut perceptio), because no argument can be clearer than ‘clarity or evidence’ (perspicuitas aut evidentia) themselves. Another group will only respond to criticisms of comprehension, but make no propositional effort to define it. 96 In this section, Lucullus aims to justify taking on these positions, which he clearly distinguishes from Philo, through that adversative autem. By confirming the object of his disagreement in this way, he refers back to Luc.11-2 where he first focused the debate away from Philo, and onto Arcesilaus and Carneades. While in the earlier passage Philo was identified as the schismatic Academic and dismissed, in this section we get a sense of his epistemological revolt. Philo is first implicitly distanced from those skeptics who reject ‘self-evident clarity’ (perspicuitas), and is also dissociated from those who require definition, or a designation of the conditions for perception. 97 And in fact, it is this element which dominates the next section, Luc.18, where a hypothetical conditional reveals Philo’s thoughts on katalêpsis: comprehension is not possible ‘as Zeno defined it’ (sicut Zeno definiret). Lucullus then parenthetically lists the three conditions of the visum, the word here explicitly adopted for katalêpsis, 98 only to return to underline how Philo ‘weakened and destroyed it,’ thereby ‘eliminating the criterion of what is known and unknown’ and so the very possibility of comprehension. 99 No positive doctrine is ascribed to Philo, unlike in the sources quoted above. Instead we have a rejection of comprehension, but one which crucially does not claim its impossibility. When Antiochus is cited suggesting his teacher had ended up undermining his own project, Lucullus is addressing the positive 95 Commovet, mentitur, infirmat, tollit twice and volt. 96 Luc.17. 97 Luc.17. 98 The identity of visum and katalêpsis occurs in a Stoic context: impression is its comprehension insofar as all impressions are comprehended. Stoic theory does not differentiate between what we might today call perception and cognition, since perceiving something entails assenting to it, so comprehending it. 99 Hoc cum infirmat tollitque Philo, iudicium tollit incogniti et cogniti; ex quo efficitur nihil posse comprehendi (‘once Philo weakened and eliminated it, he eliminated the criterion of what is known and unknown; this leads to the fact that nothing can be comprehended’), Luc.18. O.Cappello, Part III 221 side of Philo’s theory, re-instating the possibility of cognition but winding up subverting the possibility of telling true and false impressions, which in turn makes cognition possible. 100 Philo opposes the definition of katalêpsis, and this explains the repetition of the verb definio (‘I define’) in adjectival, substantival and verbal forms, as well as insistence on technical terminology and subordinations detailing the full extent of those definitions. 101 The rest of the philosophical field, which includes Lucullus and Antiochus, but also implicitly Cicero and the Academics referred to in Luc.17, sees Philo as operating outside the terms of Hellenistic epistemology. Without such definition for the Stoics there is no iudicium, no road to comprehensio. The Academics also depend on this definition since it guarantees an underlying conceptual rigor in comprehension, although its parameters cannot be met. 102 The definition which Philo abandons is at the heart of both schools’ epistemologies. This Academic philosopher is then characterized as living through a final phase in his thought which deserts the tenets not only of his school, but of the debate as a whole. And this intellectual insubordination with respect to epistemology separates Philo not merely from the history of his school, but also from his own previous positions. Cicero coordinates Philo’s intellectual journey with that of his school by inserting the Roman phase just after he describes the recent history of the Academy at Luc.16. Therein Philo is linked doctrinally and institutionally with the Academy, whose patrocinium (‘patronage’) suffered a blow with his death. According to Cicero, after Philo, heir to Carneades and Clitomachus, Academic skepticism is bereft of a leader. 103 Luc.16 constructs a direct lineage for Philo, going all the way back to Arcesilaus’ ratio and its perfection by Carneades. The following section, Luc.17, introduces a negative perspective on Academics, in terms of dogmatists who refuse- or hesitate- to join in the debate with those Academics on matters of perception. Finally, Luc.18 indicates in Philo’s nova a dismissal of the terms of the debate all together, and a retreat from Academicism. The scholarch is therefore implicitly characterized as a complex and schismatic figure, both the culmination of Academic history and its destabilizer. 100 Ut docuit Antiochus, in id ipsum se induit, quod timebat (‘As Antiochus taught, [Philo] ended up in that position which he was afraid of’), Luc.18. What links that id ipsum to the problem of cognition is the explicative sense of the cum which follows, which is highlighted by the logical connective enim. 101 Derivatives of definio occur four times over the two sections, and we have the same number of translations from Stoic terms (katalêpsis, evidentia, phantasia and akatalêpton). 102 See Luc.77. Zeno develops the three clauses in conversation with Arcesilaus, for whom the restrictions appear necessary and right. 103 Note that Lucullus uses the expression operam dare (‘pay attention to’) to describe the relationship between Philo and Clitomachus, an expression he used at Luc.12 to indicate his own adoration for Antiochus. O.Cappello, Part III 222 Furthermore, the author is not merely reflecting on the relationship between the intellectual developments of one individual and the history of an institution, but also on the boundaries of the debate on epistemology. The phases of Philo’s theoretical evolution receive oblique yet important attention in the Lucullus, even though they are ultimately dismissed. What is clearly intimated is the sense of a forward movement, a push to crisis and schism that leads to real reflection; the intensification of a controversy, on past Academic positioning on epistemology and sense-perception. Taking this on board requires a review of the intimate link between Stoics and Academics, and so too a review of the whole field of Hellenistic epistemology in the attempt to understand not only the genesis of the debate, but what exactly is at stake in it. The same strategy of representing phases of an intellectual’s thought is deployed in the figure of Antiochus. As with Philo, doctrinal inconstancy appears to be a key issue of his characterization. However, Antiochus’ thought draws a sharper focus around scholastic identity, as his Stoicising tendencies raise the question of whether he is, or should be thought of as Stoic, or simply as a variety of Academic. 104 A brief analysis of Antiochus’ philosophical persona would indicate that although his reactions to Philo’s innovations springs from a Clitomachean camp, 105 he is often linked to his own school, the vetus Academia, and his band of followers, the Antiochii. 106 Central to this portrait, however, is Antiochus’ relationship to the Stoa which Cicero at times shows to be one of total identity, 107 while at other times he characterizes it as one misunderstood by Antiochus himself who is in fact closer to early Academics and Peripatetics like Aristotle, Theophrastus and Polemo. Ethics is 104 Besides Barnes 1989 and Sedley 2012, Görler 1990b and 1994 and Fladerer 1996 are useful. 105 His reaction in both Luc.18 and Luc.11-2 is like that of the Clitomachean Academics, Heraclitus and Cicero. In both cases, disbelief at Philo’s innovations is aligned with reactions of orthodox Academics, and culminates in the accusation of fraud. 106 The division between nova and vetus is explicitly formulated only at Ac.1.13, though implied by Antiochus’ critique of Philonian skepticism which comes from within the Academy for which see Luc.13-16 and Luc.19-39. His group is introduced in Alexandria at Luc.11-12, including Roman friends, the Selii and Tetrilius Rogus, his brother Aristus, and the two soon-to-become Peripatetics, Aristo and Dio. Cf. Index Academicorum 35.10-16. The term Antiochii is found at Luc.70. 107 So for example he is called an adstipulator (‘supporter’) of the Stoics and a germanissimus Stoicus (‘out-and-out Stoic’) at Luc.67 and Luc.132 respectively (see also Luc.137). A skim through Lucullus’ or Varro’s ‘Antiochian’ speeches would support this identity, as they consistently deploy Stoic vocabulary, construct their epistemology and their philosophical historiographies on Stoic foundations and even- in the case of Lucullus- use stock Stoic critiques against Academic skepticism. On apraxia see Obdrzalek 2012; and on aparallaxia see Striker 1997. O.Cappello, Part III 223 shown to be the main point of contention between Antiochus and the Stoa. 108 While Stoics consider all ‘sins’ (peccata) as having equal weight, and that the happy life resides in virtus alone, Antiochus disagrees resolutely with the first and thinks the second proposition only partially true. 109 His position, that virtus is enough for a happy life but not for the most happy, is founded on the acceptance that there are certain goods found in the everyday conditions of life that improve an individual’s life. This view links him with Xenocrates, Aristotle and Polemo and situates Antiochus firmly within the Academic tradition. 110 Cicero uses these two figures as vehicles to describe the broader history from which their philosophy emerged and developed. Like Philo, Antiochus’ thought defines a trajectory that associates him with Clitomachean skepticism, Platonism and Aristotelianism and Stoicism. In his case, however, the author inserts a fascinating critique of his un-self-consciousness, as he confuses boundaries between schools, seeing himself as Stoic all the while professing Old Academic views. Representing technological, cultural or intellectual development in terms of human maturation is a well attested strategy, observable in, for example, Platonic maieutics or Aristotle’s child-like early philosophers in the first book of his Metaphysics. The author of the Academica, however, is not keen on elaborating a historiographical paradigm, as his use of biography is sporadic, allusive and not strictly chronological. His focus is institutional: through Philo and Antiochus he can re-tell the history of the Academy, concentrated in two figures on which he is founding his own position. 111 5. Parallel Trajectories and the Myth of Crisis Profiling Antiochus and Philo through the Academica has led to a number of surprising conclusions. On a preliminary reading of this conflict, the above discussion examined how impossible it is to read both the Lucullus and what remains of the first Academic Book as a summary of a dispute which resulted directly from Antiochus’ reception of his teacher’s Roman Books. This difficulty arises from the fact that the Academica involves positions which predate their heretical conversion at the end of their life. Furthermore, they are never clearly assigned a fixed position from 108 Though he intimates differences in psychology, namely over emotions at Luc.135 and discursive method, namely the use of mirabilia or paradoxes at Luc.137-8. 109 Luc.133-4. This divergence causes Antiochus emotional distress: cum ipse Antiochus dissentit quibusdam in rebus ab his, quos amat, Stoicis (‘since Antiochus himself disagrees over these issues with the Stoics, whom he loves’), Luc.133. 110 Luc.137-8. 111 On ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny in the history of philosophy see Gracia 1988: 151-2. O.Cappello, Part III 224 which they present their arguments. ‘Philo’ and ‘Antiochus’ are constructed as flexible referents, accommodating a number of philosophical positions which account for the full development of Hellenistic epistemology. Both fragments of the Academica indicate Antiochian and Philonian positions as constituted by doctrines which predate these protagonists, or, as in the case of Philo, a heterodoxy that is only obliquely described. Cicero intimates that in fact there is no conflict, because Philo is not a dialectical Academic and Antiochus is not a Stoic. He introduces his readers to two parallel narratives, two figures who operate out of the Academy and whose epistemological position develops from the extreme dialectic of an Arcesilaus and Carneades, who uphold epochê and akatalêpsia, to a more constructive approach to sense-perception. Both philosophers’ intellectual trajectory is traced in the Lucullus and is shown to consist of a movement from a dialectical interpretation of Carneades to a dogmatic grasp of akatalêpsia. While Philo makes it possible to comprehend by rejecting the limits of the Stoic- Academic conditions, Antiochus adopts those conditions unreservedly and underlines the fact that it is not only possible to meet them, but it is necessary to do so on two accounts: firstly, because katalêpsis is fundamentally an Academic theory, integral to Plato and the Old Academy, and secondly, because, as Lucullus repeatedly argues, without katalêpsis the very fabric of knowledge, society and morality would collapse. The similarities are furthermore grounded in the intellectual context in which their dogmatism develops. Both Philo’s and Antiochus’ conversions are reactions to the very same pressure exercised by dogmatists: it is criticisms from outside that force the two philosophers to find refuge in a reformed Academicism which accepts some form of positive assent. The fictional split is not simply a conceit orchestrated in order to dramatize the confrontation, but constitutes the culmination of a long history of dogmatic attacks on the Academy. The crisis faced by that institution is characterized as internal disintegration, and as a collapse caused from the outside. Luc.18 and Luc.70 shape parallel reactions to unrelenting critiques, creating the picture of a school reaching breaking-point. Both passages employ the verb sustinere (‘withstand’), and both define the object of the attack as the pertinacia Academicorum (‘obstinacy of Academics’). 112 The former excerpt describes Philo’s nova as a lie resulting from this pressure, while in the latter 112 All philosophers agree to reject Academic epistemology. On sustinere and the ‘epistemological isolation’ of the Academy see Barnes 1989: 68, who notes the parallelism between the reasons to abandon the Academy and those to innovate. O.Cappello, Part III 225 Antiochus escapes criticism by taking refuge under the protection of Old Academics, just as a Roman shopper seeks protection from the sun under the Maeonian portico. The play of light and darkness in Cicero’s metaphor answers the charge of intellectual fraud made by Lucullus at Luc.18. He had constructed the synonymy of light and truth in his peroration, drawing especially on the obscurity that suspension of assent implies for positive knowledge. Cicero then uses the image of the sol (‘sun’) to describe the contradictory position of Antiochus, who shelters from truth under the artificial label of vetus Academia- the Academy’s darkness is in this case a welcome effect. 113 Dramatizing the stress which shook the skeptical determination of the Academy’s last leading members, alongside the recognition that Antiochus was a marginal figure and that Philo died leaving the school without patrocinium, draws attention to the institutional situation of the Academy at the time. Cicero gives the leader’s innovations a ‘political’ spin when he compares their activity to populist rabble-rousing. 114 The author discusses the moment of crisis and transformation by connecting doctrinal change with the identity of the school in the institutional sense. The issue of why Antiochus and Philo are engaged in this contest is in other words one that is more global than an isolated contest over two distinct epistemological models, but it centers on the tenure and direction of the Academic legacy itself. For this reason, it is important to contextualize the arguments a little further. Although Glucker insists on a documentary reading of the Academica, he persuasively reflects on the need to understand Antiochus’ claim to the vetus Academia in the context both of Philo’s exile and the historical focus of Panaetius’ work, a Stoic interested in the doctrines of the early Academy. 115 On the one hand, Antiochus is institutionally linked to Panaetius, through Mnesarchus, whom Cicero connects with Antiochus at Luc.69, and, according to Numenius, under whom Antiochus himself studied. 116 On the other hand, Philo is in Rome and so away from the institutional centre of the Academy. He joins the debate about the origin and identity of Academic theory against the Stoic threat of appropriation, represented by a former pupil who is still in Athens. At stake in the controversy was the succession to Plato and the legitimacy of his position within that institution. Some elements of Glucker’s argument fail to convince, namely the fetishization of consistency with 113 Luc.61-2 with Lévy 1992: 167-8. 114 Especially in the historical passages at Luc.13 and Luc.72. But the parallels are sustained throughout. See for example Luc.62 or Luc.97. 115 The title of his work περὶ αἱρέσεων (‘on doctrines’) at Diogenes Laertius 2.87 is quoted as indication of this interest. 116 Numenius apud Eusebius Praeparatio Evangelica 14.9.3. O.Cappello, Part III 226 the founders as the sole criterion for legitimacy and the implication that Panaetius understood Plato ‘better’ (Glucker 1978: 30-1). Nonetheless, his perspective and the questions it raises are crucial to understanding the project of the Academica. Cicero is interested in thinking about the philosophical institution at a time of crisis, and he makes use of the conflict between these leaders to illustrate his own writing of philosophy at the end of time. Their parallel trajectories within the broader narrative of a school under duress are the ideal frame within which to discuss how and why philosophize in Rome. The presentation and evaluation of Philonian and Antiochian doctrines in the Lucullus and in the first Academic Book have posed numerous problems of interpretation. The author handles these two figures, whom, in his epistolary and prefatory voice, he enlists as the background for the debate, idiosyncratically. At Luc.12 Lucullus defies the author’s intentions and leaves Philo out of the picture, although he goes on to defining the last phase of his thought as a lie on two occasions. This accusation will not be redressed by ‘Cicero’ who in fact twice resists Philo’s Roman phase and disagrees with his erstwhile teacher on two separate points. 117 Nonetheless, as we argued above, Philo- even in his twilight heresy- is always present on the horizon of the conversation, either because he is directly mentioned or by providing a background to Cicero’s position. This presence has given rise to endless mining of the text to reconstruct the Academic’s intellectual profile, and to justify ways in which Philo can actually be considered the source of Cicero’s speech. 118 Cicero never details the reasons for the schism between Philo and Antiochus. He is on the contrary careful to extend the temporality of the debate from the Alexandrian episode, a single chronotopically defined incident, firstly to the expanse of the Hellenistic controversy in epistemology pitting Arcesilaus against Zeno, and in a second instance to the whole field of philosophy, reticulated into ethics, physics and logic. Cicero leads his readership to a lateral exploration of the context and history of the debate which is held in a villa at Cumae or at Bauli, therefore projecting that sense of temporality into a Roman present. Continuity is perhaps the most essential aspect of the ‘mythopoetic’ treatment of the institutional crisis, linking Cicero’s senatorial actors to Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and the whole history of Greek philosophy. Indeed, even the open-endedness of the 117 The Lucullan mentitur at Luc.12 and Luc.18. Resistance at Luc.78 and Luc.98 and disagreement at Luc.77 and Luc.133. 118 Perhaps the most thoroughgoing justification, and the most fantastical, is Glucker 1978: 393-8 on Luc.112-147. O.Cappello, Part III 227 debate participates in this logic. There is no sense of an agreement, or refutation at the end of the Lucullus, but rather a promise to open the debate further to all aspects of philosophy. 119 Furthermore, the coherent narrative connecting Antiochus and Philo, their parallel journey, leads both from the Academy in Athens to Rome. The story of the Academy, varied as it may be, provides a consistent backdrop for a Roman claim to Plato’s school. Temporal continuity between the school’s Greek past, its Mediterranean present and Roman future is an important aspect of how Antiochus’ and Philo’s stories legitimize Cicero’s inheritance claim. Just like his teachers and close friends, Cicero’s philosophy is inclusive of a variety of phases and compresses a greater temporal spectrum than the argument requires, presenting an exhaustive and far-reaching picture of the philosophical tradition. It also authorizes Cicero to repeat debates, a logic that is at the heart of his philosophica, by illustrating how philosophical discourse consists in re-presenting positions, working over and critiquing arguments already expressed and finding new contexts for them. 120 6. Debate as Topos The unity of the narrative is sealed by the figure of the dialogue itself. Debate is how philosophy took place in the past, how philosophy progressed and how, according to Cicero’s dialogic approach, Roman philosophy began and continues to thrive, in discussions between generals and consulars or between two scholars in political exile. The Lucullus is constructed out of a series of interlocking dialogues that take place across the whole history of post-Aristotelian philosophy, and whose occurrences are dramatically represented- and further re-enacted- by the Roman protagonists of Cicero’s work. This aspect is more than simply an indicator of that continuity in tradition which the orator wants to promote in his work, but it defines his philosophical agenda prescriptively: the modus operandi of philosophy is and always has been dialogue. Connecting this historicizing approach with the prefatory insistence on debate as the appropriate vehicle for philosophizing is precisely what anchors the orator’s account to an 119 Luc.147. 120 Note how Antiochus is locked in repeating his critique of Philo: haec Antiochus fere et Alexandreae tum et multis annis post multo etiam adseverantius, in Syria cum esset mecum paulo ante, quam est mortuus (‘Antiochus put forward these sorts of arguments both at that time in Alexandria and even many years later he expressed these much more strongly, when he was with me in Syria just before his death’), Luc.61. Or again, the Lucullus is introduced as another study of the arguments of the Catulus at Luc.10. O.Cappello, Part III 228 epistemological position, thus giving his picture of philosophical engagement a specific philosophical significance. 121 The debate between Arcesilaus and Zeno narrated at Luc.76-77 epitomizes this approach to philosophy, as it proves not only that dialogue is the way in which philosophy progresses, but it also illustrates how dialectic is ultimately the creative dynamic of Hellenistic epistemology. The section is a direct response to Lucullus’ claim that skepticism does not allow for progress in philosophy. Luc.15-16 articulates, within the attack on skeptical historiography, a preoccupation about the absence of progress since the time of the Old Academy and Peripatetics. Lucullus’ critique is presented in the form of a reductio ad absurdum which defies the skeptical approach to the history of philosophy by challenging the purpose of philosophizing, which, particularly once akatalêpsia is established as an axiom, appears a fortiori as devalued. Each paragraph reiterates the question about the achievement of philosophy in its long history and it does so by dividing that history into two halves, pre- and post- Arcesilean. 122 Specifically, Lucullus’ attack singles out the confrontation between Arcesilaus and Zeno as the key episode in the history of philosophy, after which the possibility and impossibility of knowledge is formalized. Arcesilaus, who was earlier compared to Tiberius Gracchus, 123 institutes akatalêpsia, undermining Zeno’s definitions of comprehension- which are in Lucullus’ Antiochian reading substantially the same as Plato and Aristotle- 124 and shrouding everything in obscurity. Besides the sophistication of this criticism, which contrives to question the worth of a philosophical tradition based on the reiteration of ignorance, the author aligns the birth of a tradition with the way in which it develops. 121 See his apology for Academic philosophy at Luc.7-9 122 Nihilne tot saeculis summis ingeniis maxumis studiis explicatum putamus? (‘do we think that in so many centuries the finest minds with such careful study have discovered nothing?), Luc.15, which is reinforced at Luc.16 where Lucullus asks directly, nihilne est igitur actum? (‘therefore nothing has been accomplished then?’). 123 Ut in optima re publica Ti Gracchus qui otium perturbaret sic Arcesilas qui constitutam philosophiam everteret (‘just as Tiberius Gracchus at the best time of the Republic destroyed the peace, so Arcesilaus overthrew the well- established philosophical discipline’) Luc.15. 124 Quorum e numero tollendus est et Plato et Socrates, alter quia reliquit perfectissimam disciplinam, Peripateticos et Academicos nominibus differentes re congruentes, a quibus Stoici ipsi verbis magis quam sententiis dissenserunt (‘Plato and Socrates must be removed from that list [list of philosophers that subscribe to akatalêpsia], since Plato left behind a most well-formed system, the Peripatetic and the Academic schools which agree in substance though they do not have the same name, and from these schools the Stoics themselves differe more in their use of terminology than in their doctrines’), Luc.15. O.Cappello, Part III 229 Cicero’s response integrates Lucullus’ epistemological premises to prove how the field of epistemology was established in conversation between Zeno and Arcesilaus. Although he begins with a praeteritio, claiming that what has been inventum (‘discovered’) will be dealt with at a later stage, 125 he characterizes that dialogue between scholarchs not only as an original advance in philosophy, a quality which Lucullus had already anticipated, but also as the foundation for any future debate. The exploration of the theme of beginnings and of foundations, discussed Part II, is here closely associated with a constructive and not a destructive approach to philosophizing. Arcesilaus is cast as the great innovator, establishing the two fundamentals of the epistemological controversy which he shared with his adversary: the first is that a wise man cannot opine, and the second is the addition of a third clause to Zeno’s definition of a visum. Cicero portrays the Academic skeptic as the active agent over and against the reactive Zeno both by casting the former as the leader in the dialogue, the one asking the questions, and by openly describing him as the first to articulate the view that the wise man cannot opine. 126 The author is keen to connect the discussion between the two to the question of progress, promoting this exchange as a fundamentally constructive and original moment of that progress. This link is highlighted by the way the conversation is handled by Cicero. In the first place, the dramatic fiction shows Zeno and Arcesilaus cooperating. Arcesilaus is helping Zeno define the principles of Stoic epistemology, and their interaction intimates a harmony of intent and seems to focus on shared conceptions. The Academic scholarch triggers two innovations in Stoic theory: that a wise man cannot opine and that a true impression cannot be just like a false one. Zeno not only implicitly accepts the view about opining, something that is cleverly underlined by the word superiorum, 127 but he also understands and anticipates Arcesilaus’ line of inquiry, thus proposing the third clause himself after having stated the first two. 128 Arcesilaus is in agreement, as he holds the first principle as axiomatic, while openly supporting Zeno’s addition. 129 125 At Luc.91ff. 126 Nemo umquam superiorum non modo expresserat sed ne dixerat quidem posse hominem nihil opinari, nec solum posse, sed ita necesse est sapienti (‘none of his predecessors had ever articulated- not even stated- the principle that it is possible for an individual to hold no opinions, and not only that it is possible but that in the case of a wise man it is necessary’), Luc.77. 127 Translating superiorum as ‘Zeno’s predecessors’ as does Brittain 2006: ad loc emphasizes the strategic importance of Arcesilaus’ intervention. 128 Luc.77. 129 Visa est Arcesilae cum vera sententia tum honesta et digna sapienti (‘It seemed to Arcesilaus to be both a true doctrine and honorable and worthy of a wise man’). And later recte consensit Arcesilas ad definitionem additum (‘Arcesilaus agreed that this addition to the definition was correct’), both at Luc.77. O.Cappello, Part III 230 The fact that the two protagonists agree on these principles is intimated earlier in the work. At Luc.66, Cicero suggests that Arcesilaus agrees with Zeno on the matter of the sapiens. 130 The skeptic’s relation to this issue is precisely defined: he puts in words the principle, he believes in its importance, and it appears true to him, but it is Zeno who formulates it. 131 Equally, in terms of the tripartite definition of katalêpsis we see a very similar logic at work. Luc.18 attributes the description to Zeno alone, but it also suggests that skeptic orthodoxy rested on the very same premise- hence the heterodoxy of Philo, whose revolution, as we argued above, consisted in abandoning the Stoic version of katalêpsis. The verbal and thematic correspondences between Luc.18 and Luc.77 underline this shared territory between Stoics and Academics. The key characteristic of their cooperation is its constructive aspect. The episode is not closed within itself, but rather it opens onto future conversations. And indeed, the debate between the two parties builds on that set of premises and carries on in the same interdependent fashion in which it was born. Cicero immediately isolates this proposition by characterizing the dialogue as the starting point of, as well as the frame for the disagreement. In the first place, the consensus on the third clause directly leads to their disagreement, as the phrase incubuit in eas disputationes (‘they spent a long time over these debates’) makes clear. 132 Arcesilaus sets out to argue for the impossibility of the existence of an impression that derives from something true and that cannot derive from something false, as a consequence of Zeno’s definition. The essence of akatalêpsia depends on this indistinguishability. However, Cicero extends the debate further by connecting this disagreement, on whether such an impression can or cannot exist, with the debate that is being held there and then at Bauli through the summary observation that haec est una contentio quae adhuc permanserit (‘this is the one argument that still remains today’). 133 Cicero underlines the continuity 130 sapientis autem hanc censet Arcesilas vim esse maximam Zenoni adsentiens, cavere ne capiatur, ne fallatur videre (‘Arcesilaus, agreeing with Zeno, thought that the finest quality of a wise man was his avoidance of being taken in and in taking care not to be deceived’), Luc.66. 131 Note expresserat and dixerat at Luc.77, aligned with censet, Luc.66, and visa est, Luc.77. The ownership of this ‘addition’ is not openly contested, however Cicero’s account at Luc.77 stakes an Academic claim to it, underlining the collaborative interaction between the two schools in constructing the premises of their dissent. Sextus presents a different historical analysis, suggesting that the third condition is post-Zenonian, but he keeps the idea that it is a reaction to Academic pressure, Adv.Math.7.247-252. For an excellent analysis of the development of this position see Frede 1987c. 132 Luc.77. 133 Luc.78. O.Cappello, Part III 231 between the line of enquiry pursued by Arcesilaus in conversation with Zeno and the debate between Lucullus and himself by drawing the focus closely around that central issue of disagreement. 134 This argument about continuity is illustrated by the intratextual relationship between the vignette and the logical exposition of the controversy on the impossibility of perception. Luc.77 constitutes a sophisticated aetiology for two instances in the text in which the principles of the Academic position are rendered axiomatically. Both protagonists in fact reproduce the Academic ‘core argument,’ as Brittain defines it in his translation, by setting out its fundamenta or capita (‘points’ or ‘principles’) at Luc.40-2 and Luc.83. 135 And these premises play on the definition of visum, and specifically on the differentiation between a verum and falsum visum. Positing the existence of the latter, and conceding that a false impression is incomprehensible, creates the conditions for the Academic claim that if one cannot tell the difference between a true and false impression, what follows is incomprehensibility and so, necessarily, suspension of assent. These two passages, which constitute Academic proof, depend entirely on the premises elaborated at Luc.77. These axioms are therefore presented as the starting point of the dialectic: they represent the beginning of the debate and are characterized as an integral part of that same conversation. Finally, these two passages also express the same logic of collaboration in giving shape to disputes which we find at Luc.77. At Luc.40-2, two premises are defined as being in common not just with the Stoics, but with any philosopher ‘for no one disputes them’ (neque enim quisquis repugnat): quae visa falsa sint, ea percipi non posse (‘impressions which are false cannot be perceived’) and inter quae visa nihil intersit, ex eis non posse alia talia esse, ut percipi possint, alia ut non possint (‘concerning impressions between which there is no difference, it is not possible that some are such that they can be perceived while others cannot be perceived’). 136 The two more controversial premises, which they fight over, articulate the impossibility of distinguishing true and false impressions. This is paralleled in the shorter version of this summary at Luc.83, where two premises are universally granted by Stoics, Academics and Epicureans, while two remain the stronghold of Academic doubt. The essence of Academic critique is emphatically shaped by the interdependence between them and the Stoics, which is troped as a viva voce exchange between the founders. 134 Cicero’s insistence on keeping a tight control over the central issue at stake is continuous enough to become a thematic feature in and of itself: see omnem questionem, Luc.40, una contentio, Luc.78, tota quaestio and omnis pugna, Luc.83 and omnis haec quaestio, Luc.115. 135 The terms are employed by way of introduction to the syllogisms. See Brittain 2005: 26n24. 136 Luc.41. O.Cappello, Part III 232 In light of the above analysis, it is interesting to note that scholarly orthodoxy has attempted reconstructions of the early phases of Academic skepticism, disregarding the details of Cicero’s text. They generally promote a dialectical reading of skepticism that characterizes this movement as entirely parasitic on Stoic doctrine. 137 Lévy, summarizing Couissin, elegantly identifies the nature of this modus philosophandi as a ‘jeu destructeur à l’intérieur des dogmes stoïciens,’ where the principles of epochê and akatalêpsia corner the Academic into a position from which he can only critique- react to- his adversaries’ doctrines (1992: 18). Whatever the plausibility of this reading in terms of the history of philosophy, Cicero’s story differs on two important points: Arcesilaus is not reacting to Zeno, but rather is actively leading a penetrating line of inquiry whose immediate outcome is the establishment of premises they both agree on. Furthermore, this exchange highlights that the two schools have collaboratively identified an arena within which the debate is to be confined, and, as Ioppolo perceptively observed, a common objective: the infallibility of the sage. 138 Historians of philosophy explain such passages by inflecting the necessity for Academics of finding a common ground in order to critique Stoicism. However, the dramatization of this search for shared premises is an emphatic way of drawing the reader’s attention to the collaborative and constructive nature of that interaction. Progress is shown to begin with the axiomatization of akatalêpsia and epochê. The philosophical exchange which characterizes the Hellenistic period is the elaboration of the conversation held between Zeno and Arcesilaus. Cicero illustrates this development by organizing his speech around it, focusing the first phase on Arcesilaus and the second on Carneades, and through the progression of the text he mirrors the progressive economy of the argument. The Arcesilean first phase, described by critics with a rhetorical bent as the epitome of the pars destruens of Cicero’s speech, follows on from the conversation between Zeno and Arcesilaus, and addresses akatelêpsia. 139 The section is divided into two parts: the first aims to demonstrate the inability of the senses to ground epistemic knowledge in truth, while the second turns to logic and 137 The orthodoxy generally known as the dialectical interpretation is founded on the pioneering work of Pierre Couissin 1929a and b. For its status as a critical staple see Hankinson 1998: 77 and Görler 1997: 43. 138 Maconi 1988: 238 is an important voice outside the chorus- and one whose approach should not be side-lined when reading the Lucullus- when he contends that ‘Arcesilaus was not a parasite on the Stoic body; rather, he provided it with sustenance- and later Stoicism fed fatly on the conceptual enquiries of the New Academy.’ See Ioppolo 1986: 13-20. 139 Luc.78-98. Cicero sets aside the principle dealing with the sage opining with a dismissive nihil ad hanc controversiam pertinebat (‘it was completely irrelevant to this issue’), Luc.78. O.Cappello, Part III 233 shows its defectiveness. 140 The latter section responds to the issue of what philosophy has ‘invented,’ confronting directly Lucullus’ criticism, setting up ‘dialectic’ (dialectica) as the butt for the attack. Qualifying dialectic as ‘devised to be a kind of judge and arbitrator of truth and falsehood’ (inventam… veri et falsi quasi disceptatricem et iudicem), the language echoes Lucullus’ case for the centrality of logic in uncovering truth at Luc.27; it also, through the use of the past participle and the apposition, develops an ironic commentary on the problem of progress (Reid 1885: ad loc). 141 The orator characterizes philosophical advancement as varying approaches to the issue of akatalêpsia, and links these developing lines of argument to that initial Arcesilean questioning of the visum’s third condition. The second phase of Hellenistic epistemology concerns the second principle, the sage opining, and it is Carneades that moves the conversation forward. Already in the section on logic, the second-century scholarch makes an appearance as the focus of the Academic attack on the sorites, at Luc.93, and on the liar paradox at Luc.98. This passage is especially significant for two reasons: in the first place, Carneades is cast as a sound heir of Arcesilaus’ mission, pursuing arguments about incomprehensibility; secondly, the very depiction of this pursuit develops symmetrically to his predecessor. He takes issue with Chrysippus’ desire to ‘rest’ (quiescere) once he sees the paradox as insurmountable, and he will take him up again later on the same issue at Luc.98. 142 The plot which begins to emerge of the epistemological battle between Stoics and Academics is one structured around two sets of conversations: Zeno and Arcesilaus, followed by Chrysippus and Carneades. And this narrative secures a place for viva voce debate as the philosophical method par excellence. Cicero, as we argued above, explicitly sidelines the problem of the sage opining as he focuses on the issue of comprehension. This concern with opinion at Luc.77 is the primary proposition that leads to the question of perception. Its centrality to Academic thought is sustained in both Carneades’ position, introduced as founded on the conditional acceptance of opining, as well as in the self- 140 Graesar’s and Schäublin’s 1995: lxxvi-lxxvii ‘Analyse des Aufbaus’ clearly sets out the question for each part. The first part, running from Luc.79-90, revolves around the premise ‘durch die Sinne kann nichts erfaßt werden;’ the second, Luc.91-8, around the parallel observation ‘durch die Vernunft kann nichts erfaßt warden.’ 141 Bächli and Graesar explore the sarcastic undertones in the relationship between the two passages, ‘die emphatische Ausdruckweise "Was man gefunden hat" scheint in ironischer Absicht verwendet zu sein. Dies würde auch durch den Zusammenhang in 91 insofern bestätigt, als dort die Dialektik im engeren Sinn von formaler Logik als Disziplin charakerisiert wird, die nichts mit der Erkenntnis der Wirklichkeit zu tun hat.’ In Schäublin 1995: 247n211. 142 Per me vel stertas licet, inquit Carneades, non modo quiescas (‘as far as I’m concerned you can snore away, Carneades said, and not just rest’), Luc.93. And: Carneades solebat, 'si recte conclusi, teneo; sin vitiose, minam Diogenes, reddet, (‘Carneades used to say: if logical proofs hold, I approve the system. But if not, then Diogenes should give me my money back’), Luc.98. Note the oratio directa. O.Cappello, Part III 234 presentation of Cicero as the ‘greater opinion-holder’ (magnus opinator). 143 The latter reference introduces his first sketch of the relationship between Arcesilaus and Carneades where the two scholarchs manipulate the same syllogism to reach different conclusions on the wise man’s ability to opine. 144 The rhetorical force of this brief passage is its foreshadowing of the architecture of Cicero’s speech, which in turn structures the continuity between the two philosophers. The condition of impossibility of knowledge inflects Arcesilaus’ attention on proving akatalêpsia, which in turn gives rise to progress founded on shifting assaults on sense-perception and gnoseology. This prolonged attack, shared and furthered by Carneades, then moves onto the re-institution of the sage’s relationship to assent, with the introduction of probatio (‘approval’) providing that link between opinion and the epistemic integrity of the sapiens. 145 This is a return to and exploration of Arcesilaus’ intuition at Luc.77, as well as Cicero’s pithy distinction between the two scholarchs at Luc.66-7. The epistemological project of Academic skepticism evolves from the same starting point, and it progresses in the same way as it started, through dialogue. This logic of exchange also defines the movement of philosophy as a whole, involving the founding fathers of the Stoa and the Academy. The discussion so far has focused on the central conversation that institutes the logic and genesis of Cicero’s history of epistemology, attempting to explain the significance of its fictional and rhetorical aspects. 146 Once due attention has been placed on this dramatic trope, the whole treatise appears as an interlinking and recessive set of philosophical exchanges, on many aspects of which we have already commented. Cicero and Lucullus, as well as Cicero and Varro, stage the debate rehearsed by Philo and Antiochus. In the case of the Lucullus, we have Heraclitus and Antiochus directly anticipating the debate between the general and his junior, Cicero. It is in the latter’s response that this drive to direct engagement is furiously pursued, not just in its etiological 143 Luc.78 and Luc.66. 144 Haec primum conclusio quam habeat vim considera: 'si ulli rei sapiens adsentietur umquam, aliquando etiam opinabitur; numquam autem opinabitur; nulli igitur rei adsentietur.’ hanc conclusionem Arcesilas probabat; confirmabat enim et primum et secundum. Carneades non numquam secundum illud dabat, adsentiri aliquando; ita sequebatur etiam opinari (‘first, think about the soundness of this syllogism: if the wise man ever assents to anything, he will at some point hold an opinion; the wise man never holds opinions; he will therefore never assent to anything. Arcesilaus approved this inference, for he used to accept both the major and minor premises. Carneades however never accepted the minor premise, claiming instead that the wise man did sometimes grant assent, and thus it followed that he held opinions’), Luc.66-7. 145 Luc.99. 146 Brittain 2005: 45n110 comments, with shades of disappointment, that we should indeed read Luc.77 as a ‘“philosophical reconstruction” rather than the record of an actual debate…’ O.Cappello, Part III 235 explorations, but also through the continuous - prodding, purposive, ongoing - use of rhetorical and direct questions. 147 This section has explored the same rhetorical strategy analyzed in section five from a different perspective. Cicero uses his characters and the structure of his speech to retell the story of Hellenistic philosophy. The tactic does not only have the merit of introducing the reader to philosophy’s complex past through the Academy, but it also presents a particular Ciceronian view of what counts as effective philosophizing. 7. Crisis and Assimilation Another aspect defining the significance of the Academica as both prolegomena and program notes for Cicero’s philosophica is the assimilative principle which underlies many of the rhetorical strategies outlined above, and which ultimately shapes his translation of Greek philosophy for a Roman audience into a strategy of appropriation of the entire spectrum of the Hellenistic philosophical tradition centered on, and authorized by, the method of Academic skepticism. In discussing Philo’s and Antiochus’ philosophies, Cicero’s treatment of his cast was revealed as focused on highlighting the interdependence of intellectual figures. The first Academic Book and the Lucullus propose to explore a doctrinal conflict between Philo and Antiochus, though they quickly switch to a survey of Hellenistic epistemology which pits Stoicism against Academic skepticism, in the form of parallel disputes between Arcesilaus and Zeno, and Carneades and Chrysippus. This jarring adjustment of focus provides an important insight into Cicero’s ambition in telling the story of Hellenistic philosophy as the account of a disagreement internal to the Academy itself: 148 Academic skepticism is characterized, both in terms of its historical-institutional and doctrinal identity, as the privileged lens through which to survey and understand the field of philosophy as a whole. Philosophizing within an Academic framework, whether viva voce or through literary exchange, provides not only a sense of continuity with the past and a model of interaction which is both constructive and cautious; it also, and perhaps most significantly in this first chapter of Cicero’s project, provides access to the whole spectrum of this Greek discipline insofar as the dialectical 147 On the rhetorical tenor of Cicero’s response see especially Lévy 1992: 168-180. 148 Mansfeld 1997: 61 states with elegant simplicity that the whole debate is about un-Academic stances, with each participant accusing the other of ‘heterodoxy.’ O.Cappello, Part III 236 method of Academic skepticism operates as a critique of other philosophical positions. In order to argue for this assimilative strategy based on the exploitation of skepticism’s critical spirit, this section firstly examines the philosophical implications of Academic methodology and then studies how this method is deployed in the Academica. The impact of Couissin’s ‘masterly article’ on interpretations of the philosophy of Arcesilaus and Carneades was to focus attention on their dependence on Stoicism (Glucker 1978: 33 on Couissin 1929a). His analysis of both thinkers, and in particular of key concepts like ἀκαταληψία, ἐποχή, εὔλογον and πιθανόν, illustrate how their philosophy borrows from Stoicism not only ‘les matériaux de leurs discours contradictoires’ but also their terminology. Academic skepticism thinks in the Stoic conceptual register and consists entirely in refuting those concepts (Couissin 1929a: 242). Doctrines are only adopted to be refuted and therefore skepticism exists as a philosophy which is purely dialectical, ‘drawing consequences from others’ positions’ and ‘seeking only the elimination of belief’ (Thorsrud 2001: 1). The canonization of this view in the work of, among others, M. Frede, Striker and Burnyeat, has contributed to defining the problem of skepticism and its evolution in antiquity in Hegelian terms. 149 Hegel indeed characterized skepticism as the ‘negative totality’ of Stoicism, a movement whose very expression could only be articulated as pure negativity, and which can only, by virtue of its emphasis on method, focus on the contingent- that is refute what is presented to it. 150 The antithetical position ascribed to skepticism is not, however, occupied statically. Both the Phenomenology of the Spirit and the work whose transcendental design it sublimates, the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, describe the ‘gradual degeneration into dogmatism of the skeptical tradition through history.’ Hegel saw this evolution as a weakening of skepticism, arguing for the superiority of the ancient version against the modern whose obsession with the ‘veil of perception’ issue supplied this kind of skepticism with dogmas (2006: 12-13). 151 This developmental pattern is 149 For Michael Frede see the two articles on skepticism in his 1987 collection; Striker 1980, 1981 and 2001; Burnyeat 1980. 150 ‘Der Skeptizismus ist die Realisierung desjenigen, wovon der Stoizismus nur der Begriff, – und die wirkliche Erfahrung, was die Freiheit des Gedankens ist; sie ist an sich das Negative, und muß sich so darstellen.’ Hegel 1986c: 202. See also Hegel 1986a: 197 and Hegel 2006: 13 and 303 with Forster 1989. 151 Hegel is fascinated with the methodical nature of Pyrrhonian tropes which directs his access to ancient skepticism in general. This white-washing perspective is deeply embedded in his history-as-concretization approach, which retrojects his own ideal onto the history of ideas. See Foster 1989: 36-41. Ancient skeptics he perceptively claims would reject the Berkeleyan question of perception because of its reliance on the objectivity or truth of the mental state of the doubter. O.Cappello, Part III 237 yet another point shared by the dialecticians named above, who see already in Carneades’ πιθανόν the shadow of compromise with positive doctrines. Michael Frede’s (1984) story of descent into what he calls ‘dogmatic skepticism’ outlines the movement from the ‘classical’ form, which corresponds to the doctrine-less, non-aligned picture we just discussed, into an intellectual practice that allows assent to certain propositions, including the proposition that nothing can be known. 152 In a register reminiscent of Hegel’s approach, and incorporating the criticisms of Academic skepticism leveled at the school by Aenesidemus and Sextus Empiricus, Frede calls dogmatic skepticism a ‘degenerate form of skepticism’ and elevates Carneades’ thought, and especially its legacy, to the historical moment at which this involution begins (1984: 277 and 268-271). His practical criterion, the πιθανόν, instigated, as we already discussed, the Philonian-Metrodorian interpretive line which allowed for the skeptic to hold opinions, and so actively adopt a view. The passive, parasitic stance is abandoned in favor of pursuit of assent, however weakened in form. Carneades emerges as the dividing line between two phases of Academic epochê: the first is the Arcesilean paradigm, extending the Socratic approach of withholding assent to denying commitment even to the validity of that very argument. The second involved the constructive acceptance of epochê, and the consequences this entailed, namely probability as a form of assent. 153 Whether Carneades was finally a probabilist or not has been yet another vexata quaestio of the scholarship, with the dialectical interpreters pressing the reactive side of this view against the recent corrective approach which emphasizes the positive nature of the scholarch’s contribution. The former group insists on the practical criterion as entailing no commitment to the truth-content of one’s impressions. Allen’s work offers a sophisticated formulation of this perspective, making sensible use of Cicero’s Academica. 154 In his view probabilism constitutes a ‘response to Stoic certitude,’ one that proposes ‘an alternative account of the epistemological framework’ that remains as profoundly uncommitted to its conclusions as the Arcesilean attack on Stoic katalêpsis. Thus Allen explores the ways in which Carneades’ project is a reaction to Stoicism by presenting Carneadean thought as nothing but the demonstration that alternatives to the Stoic extensive and integrated system are 152 Striker’s 1981: 138 dogmatic skeptic is a ‘skeptical Stoic.’ 153 That Arcesilean skepticism is the extreme phase, closer to the Pyrrhonian mode, seems to be established already in antiquity. Notice in fact that Sextus at PH 1.3 excludes Arcesilaus from the list of Academic skeptics antagonized as dogmatists. 154 The list of those supporting the ‘weak interpretation’ of Carneades includes Couissin, Frede, Striker and Burnyeat in the articles quoted above. Also Allen 1994 and 1997; Bett 1990; Brittain 2001; Hankinson 1998; and Schofield 1999. I borrow the categorical term, as well as the bibliographical sketch from Obdrzalek 2006: 244-5. O.Cappello, Part III 238 possible. So, for example, the Lucullus showcases a set of ‘virtuoso variations’ on Stoic arguments: Carneades concedes that action is impossible without assent, only to suggest a different solution in the probable: action without assent. Similarly the probable offers a substitute ‘basic unit’ for Stoic katalêpsis, shifting the epistemological edifice onto new, alternative premises (1997: 222, 237, 228 and 239). This interpretation explains the seemingly optimistic epistemology detailed at Luc.32-4, which scholars, according to Allen, have for this very reason, refused to assign to Carneades. Integrating the proposal made in that section that not everything is uncertain (the theory of perspicuitas) with the definition of the probable at Luc.98-111 allows for the Carneadean view to emerge as a direct dialectical response to the challenge posed by the Stoic model that all cognition is either kataleptic or akataleptic. Sense-perception, clarity and evidence, against which skeptics argue, are all possible if conceived outside katalêpsis, and centered on the πιθανόν. It is this optimism which constitutes a sophisticated provocation to Carneades’ rivals, and for this reason Cicero underlines this positivism repeatedly, without committing the scholarch to its conclusions. 155 This reading also involves privileging the dialectical characterization of the thinker. This involves preferring the Clitomachean interpretation, referred to at Luc.78 and Luc.104, to the Metrodorean- Philonian as well as isolating other moments in which Carneades is portrayed as engaging in arguments or adopting views without committing to their premises or conclusions, such as at Luc.98, Luc.137 and Luc.139. Thorsrud’s (2002, 2009 and 2012) work on skepticism provides an excellent counterpoint to Allen, both because it represents an astute articulation of the revisionist movement and because it focuses on the Academica. 156 Similarly to Frede and Striker, Thorsrud concedes the narrative of deterioration of pure skepticism into a compromised form, with Carneades’ πιθανόν representing the moment of transition. In his book on ancient skepticism, the critic endorses a positive understanding of this practical criterion in terms of its probabilistic value: the probabilism of Carneades entails both an acceptance of the possibility that an impression might be true, and a loosening of epochê. This 155 Luc.99, Luc.102-3 and Luc.110 for the insistence that not everything is ἄδηλα (‘unclear’). 156 This movement rests on the work of Ioppolo passim, though 1986 is the locus classicus. See also Maconi 1988; Bett 1989 and 1990; D.Frede 1996; and Obdrzalek 2006. There are differences between each reader, although the debate is firmly centered on what one is supposed to make of the epistemic status of practical criteria. Finally, it is worth pointing out that this ‘revisionism’ is perhaps best defined as ‘counter-revisionist,’ as it actually effects a return to Hirzel’s nineteenth-century orthodoxy supporting the Philonian-Metrodorian view of Carneades as the correct one. See Hirzel 1883: 162-80; Brochard 1969: 134-5; Goedeckemeyer 1905: 64; Robin 1944: 99; Dal Pra 1975: 298; and Stough 1969: 58. O.Cappello, Part III 239 conclusion rests on the understanding that the πιθανόν is not just about action, but also about deliberation. In other words, this criterion does not constitute a passive, uncommitted response to charges of apraxia, but rather it enables a form of assent that is theoretically justified- that is, an assent that could probably correspond to truth. 157 In Thorsrud’s historical sketch, Cicero occupies a double role in development of Academic skepticism: he is the culmination of the ‘slide’ into dogmatism, with his fallibilistic version of skepticism, and he is also the first and privileged narrator of the plot which Thorsrud adopts (2009: 13-14). Cicero’s view, a ‘mitigated skepticism’ which the critic extracts from his whole philosophical output, is founded upon a number of principles that present his position as unmistakably dogmatic. Among these is his belief that the Academic method can lead one closer to the truth, which presupposes both the ontological existence of truth and the reliability of reason to attain it. 158 There are further dogmatically held principles which determine Ciceronian skepticism, some of them underlying anthropological assumptions such as the importance of truth for virtue and so for achieving the vita beata (‘happy life’), while others are points laid down in dialogue such as the infallibility of the sage and the epistemic role of the probable. 159 Crucially, Cicero’s mitigated skepticism makes possible his extensive philosophical project and explains the continued emphasis on ethical normativity, on social responsibility and the implicit and explicit reiteration of those positive, optimistic, outlines of method cited above. The essential challenge of this portrait is its focus on harmonizing the skepticism expressed in the Academica, to which the orator continuously points the reader in order to justify his perspective, 160 with the positivistic epistemic regime underlying the philosophica as a whole. 161 The problems posed by certain ‘confusing’ and ‘paradoxical’ aspects of Cicero’s Academica are twofold 157 On Carneades, see Thorsrud 2009: 60-83. The formulation of his view is articulated in two oppositions: the first is differentiating Carneades’ project from his predecessor’s; secondly, his own probabilism is contrasted to Burnyeat’s (unpublished) and Allen’s (1997) emphasis on the skeptical perspective. 158 Cicero’s Academic method is described at Nat.D.1.11 and Tusc.5.11. Thorsrud is keen to identify these arguments in the Academica for reasons which will soon become clear: the first point, for example, is straightforwardly presented in his preface to the Lucullus (Luc.7 or again at Luc.60 and 66); Cicero’s argument for reason is put forward in Luc.146 in connection with ars; the latter is used alongside his theoretical endorsement of the existence of truth, found at Luc.111 and in his use of veri simile. 159 Tarrant 1985a: 29 extracts two doctrines from the Academica: things are non-comprehensible and one should not assent to something which one has not ascertained to be true. 160 Nat.D.1.11, Tusc.2.4, Div 2.1, Off 2.8. 161 The merit and originality of Thorsrud’s work, apart from its strategic value for the present argument in taking us back to the Academica, is precisely to have revised the nineteenth-century orthodoxy on Ciceronian skepticism through the Couissinian global view of the movement. O.Cappello, Part III 240 (Thorsrud 2012: 133 and 2002: 9 and 15): the first concerns a potential historical misrepresentation by Cicero of his Academic predecessors, while the second relates to the tension between radical and mitigated skepticism and how he understands these two versions of Academicism. The former constitutes a rarely-discussed ‘serious problem’ which Thorsrud addresses as follows: ‘if the dialectical interpretation of Arcesilaus and Carneades is correct, then Cicero seriously misunderstands, or at least misrepresents, his Academic predecessors.’ The difficulty is to square the retrojection of Philonian fallibilism onto Arcesilaus and Carneades with assigning to them a strictly dialectical relation to their practical criterion (Thorsrud 2002: 4-5). Explicating this issue leads Thorsrud to affirm a consistency between radical and mitigated skepticism which excludes the dialectical approach as a valid key through which to read the Academic tradition. His approach to the Academica involves absolving first Arcesilaus and then Carneades from uncompromising skepticism by contextualizing their thought in Socratic and Philonian frameworks respectively. Arcesilaus is not only associated with positive doctrines, but his understanding of epochê is shown to be prophylactic, that is not an absolute ‘ban on belief’ but a preventive measure to avoid falling into improbable beliefs (Ibid: 5-12). 162 The real paradox, however, emerges from how Cicero deals with the Philonian and Clitomachean interpretations of Carneades, which have been widely accepted as ‘incompatible.’ Cicero twice endorses the Clitomachean versions, at Luc.78 and Luc.108 while quoting extensively from the scholarch’s work on epochê. Thorsrud admits the existence of these polar interpretations, but aims to show that in reality ‘they are consistent and mutually supportive.’ This ‘unified’ vision of Carneades depends on arguing on both sides the matter of whether the sage can or cannot assent, an argument contingent on the possibility or impossibility of Stoic katalêpsis. Focusing on Luc.78, Thorsrud shows how Cicero comes to understand Philo’s view as a ‘mistake.’ He plays up the fact that Carneades debated both sides to show that Clitomachus was in fact right, while underlining that his teacher erred in suggesting the scholarch approved of the sage opining as a positive view, since the contingent argument on katalêpsis had not been established (Ibid: 15, 16 and 17). Carneades might look as if he is assenting to the possibility of opining, but he is in no position to assent to anything, as that part of the dispute had not been resolved, nor could be. Ultimately, ‘common’ to both Philo’s and Clitomachus’ interpretation of Carneades is the spirit of caution with which each embarks on the 162 The beliefs are: unknowability of things and infallibility of sage which are associated with him at Ac.1.44-6, and Luc.66-7 and 76-8 respectively. For the prophylaxis of doubt see page 8. O.Cappello, Part III 241 philosophical adventure. In his 2012 article, he returns to this integrated Ciceronian vision of Philo and Clitomachus by asserting that probabilitas brings both sides together, designating both the former’s ‘fallibility’ and the latter’s ‘truth indifference.’ Again, Thorsrud (2012: 146) hypothesizes that it is a matter of emphasis: Cicero sees no difference between the two positions when it comes to approving something as convincing. To corroborate this point he draws on the supposed function of the Academica to explain as well as persuade the audience of his own methodology. Such interpretation, sophisticated and ingenious as it is, rests consciously on a leap of faith. The Academica must be understood as a straightforward document on the theories and methods of the Academy on the uncritical grounds that Cicero is our ‘most extensive and sympathetic source’ for that movement, as well as the earliest, and moreover that his personal investment in it authenticates his ‘credentials’ (Thorsrud 2009: 11 and 2002: 18). Thorsrud, in other words, isolates the paradoxes in the Academica in historiographical and personal terms, only to present the reader with the option of supposing that Cicero either intentionally or unintentionally misrepresents his Academy, or that we must take this representation as coherent because of the author’s presumed good faith. His difficulty in reconciling the exploration of New Academic thinkers to the fallibilist framework in the Academica rests on the fact that throughout both editions of the Academica the author insists on the dialogical nature of skepticism, and its essential symbiosis with Stoic doctrine. This emphasis makes sense as a rhetorical aspect of the treatise, especially once it is contextualized in the intra-Academic nature of the dispute: Cicero demonstrates that critiques and counter-critiques to dogmatic and skeptical positions emerge from and are contained within the Academy itself, thereby portraying the whole of what we have come to define as Hellenistic philosophy as an expression of Academic debates. Where Thorsrud sees paradoxes in need of resolution, and employs extra-textual arguments to square the figure of the politician with that of the Academic doubter, the present study contends that interpretations should not stray from the text but rather find alternative hermeneutic strategies to explain and evaluate these challenges. 163 The ‘dialectical’ or radical 163 Commentators of Cicero’s philosophy since at least the time of Hirzel have been spell-bound by his historical personality, which rests on a mixture of fascination for his aesthetic paradigms, and admiration for his political engagement. Out of this adulation and his perceived pragmatism critics have understood his philosophy as simply an expression of socio-political strategizing, aimed at doing rather than thinking. This perspective is beset by fallacies, and it raises the age-old opposition of Romans as the muscular cousins of the intellectual Greeks. In the first place, this biographic stimulus to find Cicero in the philosophica should open and not preclude interpretations. Secondly, and contingent upon the obsession with biographic approaches, it is precisely that auctoritas which the orator expressly wishes to leave behind in the philosophica, as is evident from the Lucullus; this must raise certain questions about importing his political fame to iron out a coherent narrative. Thirdly, it is surely anachronistic to O.Cappello, Part III 242 skepticism articulated throughout the Academica is a crucial part of the project and not a misunderstanding, modern or ancient. Cicero employs this notion of withdrawal from assent and its resulting critical posture for a very specific purpose: to introduce the reader to Hellenistic philosophy, and to give this tradition a well-defined shape of inter-personal debates and antagonisms- a structure which emerges from and endorses his school’s methodology. Even the contradictions that emerge from the treatises are in themselves productive in light of Cicero’s aim to adopt and adapt Greek philosophy for a Roman audience, making the case for the whole of the discipline as well as for skepticism. 164 Examples and illustrations of Cicero’s inclusivity in the Academica are numerous, and we have already dedicated much of our discussion on showing the cooperation between the Stoa and the Academy which together shape Hellenistic epistemology. A student of the Academica could find another way of illustrating this collaboration in the deeply Stoic vein in which Antiochianism is portrayed in both Lucullus’ and Varro’s speeches, founded as they are on Stoic terminology and the explication of Stoic concepts. Antiochian correctio allows Varro to introduce Zeno onto the philosophical scene as the culmination of Academic and Peripatetic philosophy. 165 The correctio thesis, combined with the Two-Academy theory, characterizes the skeptical phase of the Academy as a heterodox graft on a united dogmatic tradition. Varro eliminates Arcesilaus and Carneades from the picture altogether, naming the former only once as Polemo’s pupil at Ac.1.35. Similarly, Lucullus’ approach inaugurates a closer dialectical interdependence between the two schools and so the process of assimilation. His speech is not only constantly signposted by Stoic terms, but the strategy of his refutation is founded on making skeptics look like Stoics. Indeed, Luc.40-2 corroborates this similarity by making the skeptical Academy look as systematic and as committed to validity and efficacy of logic as Stoics. Lucullus discusses skepticism through words like ratio, fundamenta, ars and partes applicable to a well-articulated, systematic and assertive philosophy. The passage in fact uses two premises, propositively asserted, out of which Academic skepticism extracts a proof leading then to more read Cicero post-Pharsalus as the chronicling of a political and social success story, of Republican resistance to autocracy, when in fact Caesar’s dictatorship was yet a rumor, the consular’s life was, in Fox’ words, a ‘political failure,’ and he wrote hovering far from the centre of the action. Fox 2007 is to my knowledge the only author that has given this alternative narrative a chance. 164 And these are in fact the two objectives which introduce the works, at Luc.4-9 and Ac.1.9-12. 165 Antiochus is firmly committed to remaining within his school at Luc.69. With Polito 2012; 40 we can note the use of present continuous dicit and defenduntur, pointing up that contrast of an Academic voice in constantly articulating Stoic doctrines. O.Cappello, Part III 243 logical procedures like the articulation of philosophical branches (partes) and subdivision (diaeresis). This integration of argument and dogmatizing is directly reminiscent of the syllogistic approach paraded in Lucullus’ system-building exercise. 166 The effect of this strategy and its position as the first attack on skepticism is to raise questions about how that caution initially advocated by Cicero will play out in the use of ratio and in the articulation of skepticism as system (disciplina). 167 And in fact, at Luc.83-7, Cicero approaches the dispute (lis) with a disciplined logical exposition of four ‘premises’ (capita) to match Lucullus’. The use of a syllogistic method early on to outline skepticism as a position anticipates certain ways in which Ciceronian skepticism will characterize itself. Dialectic and doctrine paradoxically coexist as the author harmonizes Stoicism and Academicism, showing them as ultimately parallel philosophical trajectories. Cicero’s speech in the Lucullus consistently leans on Stoicism to express its position, exemplifying this assimilative approach. While mirroring that orderly scansion of skeptical notions, Cicero also consciously employs the Stoic philosophical register and certain premises in order to mount his critique. The section on logic epitomizes this perspective, and even furnishes the dialectical methodology with a biographic coloring. Barnes’ pithy analysis of logic in the Academica had already come to the simple conclusion that Ciceronian logic, despite being introduced as Platonic at Ac.1.33 and Ac.1.40-2, ‘is essentially Stoic logic’ (1997: 145). The orator goes some way toward explaining this uniformity when he attacks logic, and claims that he learned its ‘ways’ (viae) from Antiochus. 168 This passage puts together four significant aspects: firstly, Cicero establishes the Stoic copyright over this branch of philosophy, repeatedly making Chrysippus responsible not just for the mechanism, but also for its shortcomings. 169 His attack on logic is therefore quintessentially dialectic, with Cicero manipulating axioms and methods usurped from the Stoa. Secondly, the relationship between Carneades and Stoicism anticipates important elements of the critique and gives a sense of continuity to Cicero’s dialectic. He impersonates Carneades in his duel with Chrysippus, and Carneades is said to have learnt logic from 166 Cf. Luc.26 on logic and system. 167 Having Cicero’s response to Varro’s correctio would have been invaluable in this sense. 168 Luc.98. 169 Co-opting Chrysippus’ self-critique is a point we will explore momentarily. On the Chrysippean signature Luc.93 and Luc.96. O.Cappello, Part III 244 a Stoic. Both Cicero and Carneades are acting on someone else’s principles. 170 Thirdly, Chrysippean ἡσυχάζειν (quiescere), ‘coming to a rest’ or ‘falling silent’), emerges as an interesting counterpoint to skeptical epochê, suggesting familiarity with that mechanism in the Stoa as both entail withholding or holding back. 171 Finally, the boundaries between schools are further confused as individuals in each institution borrow freely from the other: Cicero learning Stoic logic from the Academic Antiochus. The technical-syllogistic armature of his treaty on the Academy is ultimately Stoic in vocabulary and approach, and yet it is shown as taught within the school in the Lucullus and represents, in the first Academic Book, the culmination of Platonic practice. Following Couissin, Lévy characterizes the Academy as a spin on Stoic language and doctrine, arguing that the practical criterion of both Arcesilaus and Carneades were in fact Stoic concepts taken to their limit. 172 Anti-Stoic polemic is what dominates Lévy’s account of the Academy, going so far as stating that even his pedestrian Philo is merely a continuator of that dispute. Indeed, his revolutionary view on the possibility of katalêpsis outside Stoic limits relativises epochê and characterizes it as an ‘anti-Stoic weapon’ Lévy (2001: 87 and 1985: 38). Within a Roman context, Cicero capitalizes on this mode of philosophizing by pursuing it in his work and integrating new aspects to this co-dependence, which centre on the depiction of the internal politics of the Academy. Emphasizing the assimilative strategy put in practice by the author in the Lucullus, Cicero’s speech reverses Lucullus’ rhetoric and makes the Stoa look like the Academy. So for example the Stoa emerges as victim of the same kind of institutional fragmentation and is characterized by similar dialectical impulse, with Chrysippus emerging as compiler and originator of skeptical arguments against sense-perception, thus lending weight to their validity. Indeed, the logical puzzles at Luc.91-8 are called Chrysippea and the Stoic is said to have been unable to solve them. 173 Already at Luc.75 Cicero had found in Chrysippus an illustrious precedent for Academic skepticism, a thinker who came up with ‘many arguments against the senses and many arguments against everything that is accepted in ordinary life.’ 174 The fact that Cicero goes onto state that Chrysippus failed to refute these arguments satisfactorily allows him to demonstrate to his reader that this Stoic opponent of the 170 The same verb is used in both Cicero’s and Carneades’ case, didicerat and didici at Luc.98. If the trick doesn’t work, the scholarch will have his money (mina) back from Diogenes. 171 Luc.93. 172 See Couissin 1929a; Krämer 1971: 59 stating that all Arcesilean terminology is Stoic; and Lévy 1992: 283 and 259. 173 Ne ab ipso quidem dissoluta (‘nor indeed did he manage to solve them’), Luc.96. 174 Quam multa ille contra sensus quam multa contra omnia quae in consuetudine probantur, Luc.75. O.Cappello, Part III 245 Academy was essentially a skeptic. And in fact he claims that Chrysippus’ activity of collecting these arguments is proof enough that sensory and intellective problems exist. 175 Chrysippus’ activity also signals the divisions internal to the Stoa. At Luc.87, where Cicero tells that Chrysippus’ anthology of arguments ‘against the senses and clarity’ (contra sensus et perspicuitatem), ‘against common experience’ (contra omnem consuetudinem) and ‘against reason’ (contra rationem) alienated other Stoics, the reader gets a glimpse of the different interests and directions the Stoa itself can take. It is members of his school who complain about this self-refuting activity. The grievance is determined by his failure to resolve these critiques- note that the oratio obliqua implies the focalization of disappointment through the Stoici, and their foundational contribution to Carneades’ attacks. Taking this parallel to its radical conclusion Cicero can reassure Lucullus that on the matter of sense-perception skeptics ‘do not put forward arguments that are different to those put forward by Stoics.’ 176 Antipater is the main figure through which the Lucullus constructs an image of the Stoa parallel to that of the Academy, as an institution riven by internal dissent. This portrait culminates in Luc.143, where Cicero reflects on the doctrinal unity of the Stoa as a broader question about the nature of philosophical schools. One of those ‘truncated’ areas about which Burnyeat (1997) complains is precisely the figure of Antipater. Burnyeat sees Antipater’s career as a continuous attempt to refute Carneades, as the fragment of book one found in Nonius seems to suggest: quid Antipater digladiatur cum Carneade tot voluminibus (‘why did Antipater fight it out with Carneades over so many books’)? The most significant aspect of this thinker as he is presented in the Lucullus is however to point up dissent within Stoic ranks, especially in terms of that doctrinal ‘project.’ He emerges early on as a solitary voice from within the second century, reproached for his dialectical engagement with Academics, and recuperated by Lucullus’ undertaking. Alone out of the ranks of philosophers, he takes up the challenge of doing what certain philosophers do not think ought to be done at all: giving katalêpsis a 175 Chrysippus collects these types of arguments which ‘he himself resolved’ (at dissolvit idem). But Cicero observes that he did not do so satisfactorily (mihi quidem non videtur (‘it does not seem to me that he did solve them’)), and that even if he did so, collecting and presenting them is significant in itself (certe tam multa non collegisset quae nos fallerent probabilitate magna, nisi videret iis resisti non facile posse (‘undoubtedly he would not have collected so many arguments so that they would deceive by the fact that they are so convincing unless it seemed to him that they were difficult to refute’)). 176 Neque nos contra sensus aliter dicimus ac Stoici, qui multa falsa dicunt longeque aliter se habere ac sensibus videantur (‘nor do we speak out differently from Stoics against the senses, who claim that many things are false and very different from what they appear to the senses’). O.Cappello, Part III 246 linguistic, philosophical definition. 177 In this early appearance, Antipater is contrasted with two generalized groups of philosophers, and assimilated to another one: those who believe perspicuitas has no need for definition, those who will only respond to arguments against it, and finally those who, like him, think such debates worthy of their time. 178 This tripartite structuring of the field, articulated through indefinite pronouns, brings forth this figure who invests significantly in his dialectical project and who, thereby, anticipates important elements of Lucullus’ speech as well as of the treatise as a whole. 179 Although side-lined by the Stoa, Antipater’s interest in self-refutation is picked up and elaborated by Antiochus, as Luc.29 indicates. It is also integrated, as Burnyeat (1997: 290-300) pointed out, with the Socratic inheritance of Hellenistic philosophy as avoidance of self-refutation is reminiscent of Socrates himself. Luc.74, Ac.1.16 and Ac.1.45 reiterate his view that nothing can be known with the single exception of that one visum, that nothing can be known. The origin of this ill- defined Stoic attack then is connected to the Socratic heritage of both movements, which is surprisingly upheld by the Stoic branch than by Arcesilaus and Carneades who reject the exception. Finally, the Stoa is shown to be divided in matters of logic as well where, significantly, Antipater turns up. At Luc.142-3, his dissent with Archidemus is cited as the final nail in the coffin in a discussion whose objective is to demonstrate the range and scope of disagreements both within and without the Academy and the Stoa. Plato is implicitly differentiated from Xenocrates and Aristotle as well as remarkably ‘excluded’ from the list of Antiochus’ ‘intellectual progenitors,’ while the ostensibly simple method of employing a criterion to separate truth from falsehood generates dissent within the Stoa, between Diodorus, Philo, Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Antipater and Archidemus (Reid 1885: ad loc). The parallelism drawn between the two institutions epitomizes the internal differences already explored throughout the whole section. Both the Academy and the Stoa produce divergent interpretations on all three parts of philosophy, articulating the whole spectrum of philosophy as a set 177 Sed, quod nos facere nunc ingredimur, ut contra Academicos disseramus, id quidam e philosophis et ii quidem non mediocres faciundum omnino non putabant, nec vero esse ullam rationem disputare cum iis qui nihil probarent, Antipatrumque Stoicum qui multus in eo fuisset reprehendebant (‘But what we are about to carry out, a refutation of Academic philosophy, certain philosophers- by no means mediocre ones- thought it not worth carrying out at all, and they thought there was no reason at all to argue with those who approved nothing, and they criticized Antipater the Stoic for wasting time doing so’), Luc.17. 178 Luc.17-18. 179 Antipater’s exchange with Carneades on self-refutation is developed at Luc.28. Antipater seems to have required that Academics accept as a positive ‘principle’ (decretum) that nothing can be perceived. Carneades rejected this exception. See Burnyeat 1997 and Brittain 2005: ad loc. Generally, on self-refutation in Antiquity see Castagnoli 2010. O.Cappello, Part III 247 of individuals disagreeing with each other, rather than rigidly categorizing disagreements according to schools. The figure of Aristo from Chios for example is characterized as a voice outside the Stoic chorus in the section on physics as well as ethics; 180 the Platonic legacy in physics is treated very differently among Peripatetics and later Academics, while Cicero underlines the extent to which Stoics argue amongst themselves on this issue. 181 The similarity between the Academy and Stoa is more than simply implied in the way Lucullus, Varro and Cicero make them look like each other. At Luc.143, Cicero asks what use scholastic labels have, since they refer to many dissonant positions, and he also wonders why someone like Antiochus, who conforms to Stoicism in logic but not in ethics would call himself an Academic. The impression the author leaves us with is that while Stoicism claims ownership over certain doctrines, unconscious of its borrowing from the Academy, the Academy is alert to the fluidity that characterizes philosophical views and schools over time. Comparison between the two philosophies serves to identify the Academy’s fluid tradition as the normative and realistic model for the field as a whole. Plato’s school explicitly operates according to mechanisms which are in fact shown to be at work in all its rivals. From this vantage point Cicero can not only claim the methodological superiority of the Academy, but also the hermeneutic importance of skepticism, which allows for a better understanding of philosophical exchange. It is not simply a question of showing that the Stoics are as divided as the Academics; rather it is about conceptualizing division as the structure of the tradition. In the case of Antiochus the issue of why use scholastic titles had already been raised, but as he turns to illustrate how far in logic Antiochus had strayed from own school and followed Chrysippus, Cicero wonders to what extent his criticism rests on a sound basis. Disagreements within both schools devalue the use of ‘titles’ (nomina), since there is no coherent doctrinal line. 182 His attack on intellectual branding turns on the abuse of nomina, but also on the compulsion of following 180 Luc.123 and 130. 181 Luc.126. 182 Num quid horum probat noster Antiochus? ille vero ne maiorum quidem suorum! ubi enim et Xenocraten sequitur, cuius libri sunt de ratione loquendi multi et multum probati, aut ipsum Aristotelem, quo profecto nihil est acutius nihil politius; a Chrysippo pedem nusquam (‘surely our Antiochus does not approve any of their doctrines? But in fact he does not approve of any doctrine of his predecessors either! For where does he follow Xenocrates, whose books on dialectic are also very well respected, or Aristotle himself, who is sharper and more elegant than all of them? He sticks close to Chrysippus), Luc.143. O.Cappello, Part III 248 groups of philosophers who are divided by internal disagreements. 183 This is a startling reflection. On the one hand, it problematises the argument about coherence when adopting an institutional position and it questions what it means to operate from within a school. 184 On the other hand, it invites further reflection on what is repeatedly presented as a dichotomy between dogmatism and skepticism, embodied in the institutional division between Stoicism and Academic skepticism. The subtle paradox that emerges has implications about how the field of philosophy is to be understood. Cicero once again privileges the subjective over collective forms of thinking, sharpening the picture of the tradition as individuals coming together in reflecting on issues, rather than propagating a particular creed. Co-opting the dialectical approach for treatise-writing leads Cicero to develop a further insight into the character of the tradition he is translating for his audience: the individual emerges out of the apparent chaos of the doxography, out of a deluge of names, to define the course of philosophical debate as less institutionally determined, but rather more about the experience of the subject examining, evaluating, contesting. Cicero’s Academica cultivates a portrait of the Academy as the privileged locus for open debate within and between schools. Its open-ended, fluid identity provides an ideal setting for thinking about and recreating the Greek philosophical tradition. However, this same openness somewhat paradoxically leads to a rethinking of that tradition in terms of school affiliation. When observed under the light of dialogue and exchange, Stoics have as much to disagree with amongst themselves as they do with Academics, or indeed Epicureans. It is worth contextualizing the argument historically, in order to show once again the extent to which critics miss Cicero’s sophistication in meditating on a period of change, rather than simply documenting or expressing it unawares. Tarrant has tried to make sense of the internalist orientation of the Academica by suggesting that it was motivated by change in material factors. With the destruction of Athens and the dissipation of schools, the co-dependence between Stoics and Academics also came to an end, allowing for ‘the emergence of the enemy within’ (Tarrant 1985a: 127). The implications of this new situation are manifold. Primarily, it spells out the end of the critical role for the Academy, which turns against itself. It also underscores the rise of teacher-pupil 183 Qui ergo Academici appellamur (an abutimur gloria nominis?) aut cur cogimur eos sequi qui inter se dissident? (‘Why therefore are we called Academics? Are we just abusing the renown of the title? Or why are we compelled to follow those who disagree amongst themselves?), Ibid. 184 Luc.69-70 and Ac.1.13. O.Cappello, Part III 249 relationships, moving therefore towards a philosophical panorama less committed to ‘-isms’ and institutional affiliations. This explication is shared from a general perspective by Collins’ monograph on the ‘sociology of philosophies,’ which examines the relation between historical transformations and variation in theoretical content of philosophies. He understands the change from the Hellenistic to the Roman period as one which sees the rise of individual teachers and of forms of philosophy, like skepticism, eclecticism and syncretism, which reveal a ‘lack of solid organizational backbone for distinctive lineages.’ Similarly to Tarrant, he points to the disintegration of institutionalized and direct successions in schools to explain the new shape of philosophizing in the first century CE. In terms of content, he sees the ‘change in the material base’ as reforming the ‘partitioning of intellectual space’ (Collins 2000: 114 and 94). This final observation offers a powerful insight into how Cicero’s Academica participated in the ‘change.’ Rather than merely documenting a changing scenario, the Roman philosopher internalizes it and translates it into a textual strategy: he assimilates the Stoic school through Antiochus, and provides a picture of the Academy which is progressive, developing new ideas and new heterodoxies, as well as conservative in its constant returns to Arcesilaus and Carneades. Alongside this institutional portrait, which is manipulated to accommodate different positions, there is the emphasis on the thinker as an independent subject, merely connected to institutions, not totally dependent on them. In this light, the final thoughts on school names offer a powerful meditation on Hellenistic philosophical networks. The dramatic events of Athens in the 80s BCE and Philo’s exile tendered a pretext for Cicero to reflect on tendencies already inherent in philosophy to fragment and to diffuse lineages. The assimilative principle governing his account as well his attention to the individual and his ideas creatively structures the philosophical landscapes, it partitions the intellectual space, to use Collins’ phrase, in order to accommodate Roman philosophy as a privileged cell in the network. 8. Dialectical Trajectories of Ciceronian Skepticism Cicero’s Academic skepticism is not however solely implemented for rhetorical purposes, to foster a practice based on subjective involvement or to claim for his work exhaustiveness and control over other schools. Cicero’s philosophy as articulated in the Academica is in itself an original O.Cappello, Part III 250 expression of Academic skepticism that addressed certain tensions within the tradition. For many scholars, Cicero’s philosophy is dogmatic. It is unthinkable to claim otherwise, especially from the emphasis on practicality and the situatedness of his meditations which find a way to respond to the demands of real life by accepting perceptions and thereby establish principles. 185 This section argues that this position is selective and ultimately one-sided and that the originality of Cicero’s position lies in the exact opposite view, that his doubt is absolute, corrosive and contagious, and that this view must be extrapolated from an integrated reading of the whole text and not just a few select passages. 186 Unraveling the opposition between skepticism and dogmatism does not quite reflect the way in which Cicero employs the register of dogmatism- and skepticism for that matter- to define his intellectual activity, and that of his school. The language of dogmatism, with which we have seen his position invested, is constantly undercut and challenged by statements about which the ‘recent orthodoxy’ of dialectical interpretations of the New Academy has provided more compelling explanations (Opsomer 1998: 11 on Couissin). Indeed, if we analyze the claim that systematic knowledge is not a prerequisite of ‘technical ability’ (ars) at Luc.146, Cicero explains that the Academy removed ‘knowledge’ (scientia) which anyway ‘had nowhere existed’ (quod nusquam esset). The adverb nusquam could refer back to the case made in the preceding paragraph about Stoics never being able to identify someone who had this kind of certainty. 187 This would not deny the possibility of such scientia existing, and the nusquam would have a spatio-temporal valence. On the other hand, if we translate the phrase with Brittain (2005: ad loc), the existential sense of esset emerges as the semantic focus, and the predication is entirely negative- knowledge does not exist anywhere. Such ambiguity is pointed: the possibility of scientia is at once denied and at another endorsed, in a fluctuation that reminds the reader of Carneades’ relationship to his criterion, the probabile. Indeed, Cicero’s originality lies in the way he deals with Carneades’ legacy. Reading Carneades is the central challenge for any interpretation of Ciceronian philosophy in this work, since it is around his theory on opinion and probability that the ‘dogmatizing’ tendencies in Cicero are 185 See especially Luc.109-11 and Luc.146. 186 My approach in this part of the study is inspired by poststructuralist close readings of philosophical works, as for example De Man 1979, and Platonic “third way” studies, a collection of which can be found in Gonzal 1995 and Press 2000. 187 Sed qui sapiens sit aut fuerit, ne ipsi quidem solent dicere (‘but who this wise man is or if he ever existed, they themselves cannot say’), Luc.145. O.Cappello, Part III 251 constructed. 188 The status of probabilia is consistently treated as of critical importance to the very structure of Cicero’s thought. In the passages discussed above, as in the prefatory Luc.7-9, the configuration of ars and the practice of jurisprudence, the probabile substitutes the kataleptically held dogma while the architecture remains the same. A decretum is simply held as probable, and, in Cicero’s estimation, the same speculative procedures are open to the skeptic as to the Stoic, to conduct his life and to inquire after the truth. Not only is much invested in this re-definition of decretum, which must imply some form of stability, but the position of these passages, opening and closing the examination of Cicero’s skepticism, draws the focus around Carneades. So at Luc.8 Cicero exchanges the unhesitating vera (‘truths’) of the Stoics for the multa probabilia (‘many probably arguments and perceptions’) of his school, while he assures in his rival in the conclusive Luc.146 that the probabile has enough ‘strength to sustain the technical practices’ (vim ad artes). These two references, anticipating and recapitulating the centrality of the probabile as cornerstone of Ciceronian skepticism, take us back to the figure of Carneades and the confirmatio at Luc.98-111. The problematic nature of this theory for both ancient and modern scholars has already been sketched out, and it is surely not worth burdening the enquiry with yet another doxography. The issue appears straightforward in terms of the history of Carneadeanism: his legacy was fought over between those who like Philo and Metrodorus considered that probabilism involved positive propositional content, and others who, like Clitomachus and Cicero after him, accepted this outlook as devoid of any epistemic value at all, and considered Carneadean notions as disposable controversial perspectives. The purpose of this section is not however to assess the correctness or legitimacy of either interpretation, but to contextualize the issue of interpretation within the fabric of Cicero’s speech and the work as a whole. We have already spoken of the significant choice made by the author to construct the treatise around a crisis internal to his school, and how that heterodox dispute replays a history of crises that involve directly the legacy of Carneades. Ultimately, Cicero’s treatment of this thinker’s philosophy perpetuates the interpretive difficulties which have made his inheritance not simply problematic, but also have given a direction and orientation to the history of the Academy after him. Furthermore, in recreating, rather than reporting or explaining, the ambiguities and uncertainties which beset Carneades’ intellectual production, Cicero provides the history of the 188 This of course includes Tarrant, but also all those historians of philosophy who interpret the New Academy as descending into a form of dogmatism, like M.Frede, Striker and Sedley. O.Cappello, Part III 252 skeptical Academy with a text which is fundamentally skeptical, which stimulates the speculative caution and hesitation that was original and intrinsic to the movement. Cicero unequivocally connects himself not to the Philonian position, which positively endorses Carneades’ theory on opining as probable, but rather with Clitomachus, who denies this theory any epistemic status at all. Already at Luc.67 Cicero distances himself from Carneades conceding the proposition that the wise man can hold opinions. This disagreement is reviewed later at Luc.78 where Carneades’ view is described as voiced for the sake of the argument (disputatum) rather than endorsed (probatum). The distinction between these terms introduces a formidable possibility for the skeptic in relating to his statements in a self-effacing way, in a way which is profoundly destabilizing for the epistemological authority of those propositions and thereby produces, as we can see from their legacy, considerable problems of interpretation. This negative epistemic relation is further associated with Carneades on a number of occasions thereafter. His participation in the debate with Chrysippus on logic involves disavowal of those conceptual instruments because they are Stoic. A parallel denial occurs later, in his response to Albinus, where the consular mistakes his views for Stoic ones. 189 In both cases, Carneades impersonates another’s voice while at the same time rejecting any doctrinal affiliation to it. Twice in the ethical section of the doxography his approbation is questioned, just as in Luc.79. At Luc.131 and Luc.139 his activity of defending a position and arguing against Stoics is mistaken for approval, with the verb probare used on both occasions. In the former case, probare is substituted for an attack on Stoics, whereas the second invites a more general, infectious doubt on his approval through the conditional videretur. Luc.139 is extremely significant in the context of Cicero’s approach to Carneades. His use of Clitomachus is pervasive throughout his speech, citing directly from the author on four distinct occasions and crucially deriving the very explication of the probabile from him. 190 At Luc.98, the movement away from refutation to confirmation is made by the adversative sed and the hortatory verbs relinquamus and ostendimus, which introduce the development of a positive sententia. Cicero then embarks on a systematic exposition of Carneades’ visa involving differentiation of types of percepts and the possibility of probation. Many aspects of this description, deriving from the first book of Clitomachus’ de sustinendis adsensionibus, are not only of a propositional character, but the 189 Luc.98 and Luc.137. 190 Luc.98, Luc.102, Luc.108 and Luc.137. O.Cappello, Part III 253 theory is underpinned by an ontology implied by the use of similia veri, its connection with natura and the stabilizing effect on life. 191 However, Clitomachus’ confession at Luc.139 that he was never able to understand what Carneades approved shakes the foundations of this system. 192 The verb probaretur is used to determine this uncertain relation between the second-century scholar and an indeterminate object of cognition. The parenthetical nature of this revelation lends it a generalizing force, a sense which abstracts it from the context. Significantly the register belongs to Carneadean probabilitas, there is an admission that the link between the theory and the theoretician is far from straightforward. 193 Carneades’ approval is impossible to determine even for his closest student and immediate successor. The point of this devastating admission is twofold: it explains the rift following his death since there was clearly no way to interpret authoritatively his thought. Certain of his theories may have received approval in the sense in which this practice is explained at Luc.98ff, but which these were it was impossible to determine; some, however, were held only in order to be discarded after their use. 194 Secondly, this indeterminacy necessarily contaminates every Carneadean proposition Clitomachus writes about, and Cicero, as such, reports. The re-assurance that Carneades’ system provides a natural, solid enough basis to live a rational and productive life is problematised by the emphasis on the ‘dialectical’ character of his thought. The context within which this declaration is found underlines its perverse and disruptive influence. Cicero is illustrating disagreement on ethical ends, discussing the varying positions on life and moral ends which constitutes a significant part of the philosophical project as defined by himself in the preface and by Lucullus in his explanation of the aims of philosophy. Carneades plays a crucial part in this discussion through his divisio. This method arranges other voices and does nothing else - it is a schematization of positions, within which the co-ordinator introduces a view to complete the 191 Sic quidquid accident specie probabile, si nihil se offeret quod sit probabilitati illi contrarium, utetur eo sapiens, ac sic omnis ratio vitae gubernabitur. Etenim is quoque qui a vobis sapiens inducitur multa sequitur probabilia non conprehensa neque percepta neque adsensa sed similia veri quae nisi probet omnis vita tollatur (‘therefore the wise man will use whatever probable impression he comes upon, if nothing present itself that is contrary to that probable impression, and in this way he will direct his life. Even the person who you introduce as wise follows many probable impressions, impressions that he has not grasped or perceived or assented to, but which are similar to the truth and without which life would not be possible’), Luc.99. This is Cicero’s defense against the infamous apraxia charge on which most recently Obdrzalek (2012). 192 Clitomachus adfirmabat numquam se intellegere potuisse quid Carneadi probaretur (‘Clitomachus used to say that he never was able to understand what Carneades approved’), Luc.139. 193 Probare and its derivatives occur fifty-one times in the Lucullus. Only twelve of those incidences belong in Lucullus’ speech, five of which describe Academic activity. 194 Note that Clitomachus does not suggest Carneades did not approve anything. O.Cappello, Part III 254 arrangement. This is exactly what the scholarch does on two occasions in the doxography, the second of which introduces Clitomachus’ doubts over his probatio. The division, which in itself might be a system borrowed from Chrysippus, cannot give its reader an impression of positive doctrinal advancement on the part of its author, since it merely suggests a way to coordinate others’ voices for a specific dialectical end. Furthermore, offering a discouraging insight into the constructive orientation of Carneades’ thought, it questions the stability probabilitas can lend to vita. The brilliance of this skeptical textual artifice is its avoidance of pure negativity, of constructing an either/or oppositional categorization of views in the Hegelian vein. There is no denial that a proposition is valid or invalid, as there is no negation of a philosophical position, which Carneades may or may not have approved. A system is explored and rationalized, its use and coherence is advocated, but its status is questioned, or better, it is thrown into doubt in order to invite further examination. The use of Clitomachus by Cicero is therefore of crucial importance to the project because it translates the Carneadean legacy, the legacy of the skeptical Academy, into a challenge, an interpretive quest which is anything but prescriptive or exclusive. The Academic inheritance which Cicero lays claim to is one which does not offer a serialization of positive doctrines or even intellectual strategies. It offers nothing at all, in sum, but an ethics of doubt, counter-examination and questioning, whose scope is alarmingly extensive. 195 Logic also plays a fundamental and hugely underestimated role in the skeptical economy of Cicero’s text. The same strategy operates in the use of Clitomachus as in the constant use of definitions and syllogistic exposition, with each being undermined at different stages of their employment. With logic, this indictment comes early on in the amply analyzed passages on dialectica at Luc.91-8. Therein, Cicero firstly contests the domain over which logic reigns, limiting its applicability to a self-enclosed area involving what is now known as propositional logic, namely disjunction and inferentiality: ‘if it judges this and similar matters then it judges about itself.’ 196 After defining the object of his critique, he proceeds to invalidate those mechanisms, which he does through the sorites and liar paradox, each of which aims at the modus ponens, integral to inference, and disjunctions respectively. His conclusions are clearly set out: ‘this is not a science’ (ars ista nulla 195 On the question of originality I hold back because the reading I develop has much in common with the pure skepticism which certain critics, among whom Sextus, attribute to Pyrrhonism and Arcesilaus. In the manner of Brittain, who openly shaped Philo’s epistemology on the Stoic model, I have emphasized the indeterminate elements in Academic philosophy, from Socrates to Carneades, to suggest how a text which tries to channel and adapt that tradition might look like. The model I adopt is the Pyrrhonist-Arcesilean doubt as defined in Sextus, navigating the middle way between proposition and negation. 196 Si haec et horum similia iudicat, de se ipse iudicat, Luc.91. O.Cappello, Part III 255 est). 197 Without the ability to resolve these paradoxes, dialectic is worthless: a functional tautology in philosophy, and inconsistent. The force of this critique is its uncompromising attack on the form of reason, as is emphasized in the introductory sentence. Cicero insists on quoting propositions, giving examples and reflecting on the connection, often paradoxical, between major and minor premises, as well as between elements of a disjunction. In this way what the orator is questioning is the reliability of the system as a whole, to which Stoics are profoundly, doggedly attached. A cursory glance over Brittain’s (2005) translation which adopts the informal logic standardizing notation is the most immediate way to observe the extent to which Cicero himself, and not just Lucullus, utilizes this rational systematization. 198 Moreover, characterization of Carneades’ position both in Lucullus as well as in the section immediately following the critique of logic depends on the scholarch’s systematic division of percepts into a hierarchical arrangement on the Stoic model, 199 and on borrowing the logical infrastructure of the Stoics. At Luc.83 he digests the dispute into four premises (capita); at Luc.101 he borrows axioms from Epicurus and the Stoics proving his point by speaking like a Stoic; this recourse to syllogisms is repeated at Luc.106 to contest Lucullus’ position on memoria and at Luc.107 on ars. Probabilitas in other words is not only built on a problematic foundation, but the very validity of its shape, its rational armature, is questioned. Indeed, at Luc.141 he introduces logic in the doxography, with a provocation, echoing Luc.96, that ‘these logical criteria are non-existent’ (iudicia ista dialecticae nulla sint). He cites four different approaches, enlisting Protagoras, the Cyrenaics, Epicurus and Plato, making the question of dialectic into one of iudicium. 200 This subtle shift connects the shape of a logical argument to its ontological foundation: so for example Platonic dualism sets up mens (‘mind’) and cogitatio (‘thought’) as the authoritative locus of ratiocination, while Epicurus’ monism sets it squarely in the senses. Judging truth from falsehood is the bridge to the elementa dialectici (‘foundations of dialectic’), the connection of statements which make possible criteriological iudicium. And so at Luc.143 Cicero reflects on conditional sentences like ‘si dies est, lucet’ (‘if day has dawned, it is light’) sending us back to the syllogistics of Luc.91-8. This 197 Luc.96. 198 We find it on six pages, 39, 40, 48, 55, 56 and 75. 199 Luc.99. 200 The word appears four times in Luc.142. O.Cappello, Part III 256 association highlights the way Cicero reflects on the difficulties of employing rational argumentation to build a positive doctrinal system, even for the purposes of practical life. The tone of this rhetorical strategy is set right from the start of Cicero’s speech, where he contrasts the aspirational impulse of his philosophy to the self-conscious limitations of his own capability as a thinker. He makes it clear that he is speaking from the perspective of the philosophy he has chosen, a philosophy which sets out before him the possibility of verum invenire (‘discovering the truth’) and which at the same time sternly cautions him against rash assent, battling against the tryptic of error (‘error’), levitas (‘inconstancy’) and temeritas (‘rashness’). Through this register, Cicero builds continuity with his prefatory voice where his philosophy was grounded in the same preoccupations. 201 The ontological importance