47 pages • 1 hour read
Cicero: On Duties (De Officiis)
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Key Figures
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Cicero was born just outside of Rome in 106 BC. He belonged to the second-highest social class, just below the senatorial class, the equites. Well-educated, he made his way up thecursushonorum, orprogression of government offices, in the Roman Republic. He first served as an advocate in the courts of law. His successful defense and prosecution in multiple cases aided in his eventual election to consulship, the highest elected office in the Roman Senate, in 63 BC. Cicero's consulship coincided with an upheaval in Roman politics, beginning with the Catiline Conspiracy, which Cicero helped put down, and culminating in the rise of the First Triumvirate: Julius Caesar, Pompeius Magnus, and Marcus Crassus.
These three men had formed an alliance with aims to reduce the power of the Roman Senate. Caesar had offered Cicero a place in the partnership, but he had turned it down.He believedthe three men acted out of self-interest rather than for the common good. Cicero continuously made choices while in office that he felt served the Roman Republic, and because of his loyalty, was forced to live in exile for a time. Upon his return to Rome in 57 BC, he continued to serve in office, but focused more on his writing. He chose to support Pompeius Magnus over Caesar, as he felt Pompeius supported the preservation of the Republic. Following Pompeius' defeat by Caesar in the Battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, Cicero was pardoned by Caesar. Though he opposed Caesar's ideas for the Republic, Cicero was not among those who carried out Caesar's assassination in 44 BC.
These political events heavily influence Cicero's writing in On Duties. Whether to act out of self-preservation or for the greater good, weighs perhaps the heaviest in Cicero's letters to his son in On Duties. His ideas about honorableness likely come from the way he thinks the Roman Republic should function, while his ideas about usefulness tend to address issues of greed and seizures of property and power for personal gain. Throughout the text, Cicero wrestles with his position as a former government official and the paradoxes that humans face as they attempt to form systems of governance.
Gaius Julius Caesar
Born into a patrician family outside of Rome in 100 BC, Caesar also made his way up the cursushonorum, beginning with his service as military tribune. When he ran for consulship in 60 BC, he courted an alliance with Marcus Crassus, who had come to Caesar's financial aid following his loss of inheritance during Sulla's reign, and Pompeius Magnus, a Roman general. Through this alliance, Caesar hoped to amend what he perceived to be a breakdown of the Roman Senate's authority, due to imperialism and a redistribution of power to the Republic's provinces. Despite this, Caesar began military missions of conquest to the surrounding regions. This resulted in a civil war in which Pompeius sided with the conservative Senate, but which Caesar eventually won. In 46 BC, Caesar was declared dictator, a position set to last ten years. However, in 44 BC, a group of Roman senators conspired to assassinate Caesar and end his dictatorial reign, a plot which they carried out on the Ides of March, 44 BC.
Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor
Cicero's only son, Marcus was born in 65 BC. Like his father, he supported GnaeusPompeius Magnus during Julius Caesar's Civil War (49-45 BC), and was, like his father, pardoned by Caesar after Pompeius' defeat at Pharsalus. He went to Athens to study with the Peripatetic philosopher, Cratippus, and it is during this time that Cicero writes to him. Though not as intellectually inclined as his father, he did, nonetheless, go on to serve as consul in 30 BC, during the reign of Gaius Octavius (aka Augustus) Caesar.
Panaetius
At the time Cicero wrote On Duties, Panaetius of Rhodes was considered the authority on the interaction between honorableness and usefulness. A Stoic philosopher, he had also written a treatise on appropriate action for good men. The treatise detailed the difference between an honorable action and a disgraceful one, as well as between a useful and useless one, however, he did not, as he had claimed he would, examine situations in which a conflict arose between what was honorable and what was useful. As he lived another thirty years after writing the treatise, it confused Cicero as to why Panaetius never wrote on that third subject, so he set out to do so for himself.
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