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Plato, which he knew well and translated, is especially important. It must not be forgotten, also,
that the Stoic physics were in the main Aristotelian, and that Cicero was well aware of the fact.
Very few words are necessary in order to characterize Cicero's estimate of the Peripatetic and
Epicurean schools. The former was not very powerfully represented during his lifetime. The
philosophical descendants of the author of the Organon were notorious for their ignorance of
logic [112] , and in ethics had approximated considerably to the Stoic teaching. While not much
influenced by the school, Cicero generally treats it tenderly for the sake of its great past, deeming
it a worthy branch of the true Socratic family. With the Epicureans the case was different. In
physics they stood absolutely alone, their system was grossly unintellectual, and they discarded
mathematics. Their ethical doctrines excited in Cicero nothing but loathing, dialectic they did not
use, and they crowned all their errors by a sin which the orator could never pardon, for they were
completely indifferent to every adornment and beauty of language.
III. The aim of Cicero in writing his philosophical works.
It is usual to charge Cicero with a want of originality as a philosopher, and on that score to
depreciate his works. The charge is true, but still absurd, for it rests on a misconception, not
merely of Cicero's purpose in writing, but of the whole spirit of the later Greek speculation. The
conclusion drawn from the charge is also quite unwarranted. If the later philosophy of the Greeks
is of any value, Cicero's works are of equal value, for it is only from them that we get any full or
clear view of it. Any one who attempts to reconcile the contradictions of Stobaeus, Diogenes
Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, Plutarch and other authorities, will perhaps feel little inclination to
cry out against the confusion of Ciceros ideas. Such outcry, now so common, is due largely to the
want, which I have already noticed, of any clear exposition of the variations in doctrine which
the late Greek schools exhibited during the last two centuries before the Christian era. But to
return to the charge of want of originality. This is a virtue which Cicero never claims. There is
scarcely one of his works (if we except the third book of the De Officiis), which he does not
freely confess to be taken wholly from Greek sources. Indeed at the time when he wrote,
originality would have been looked upon as a fault rather than an excellence. For two centuries,
if we omit Carneades, no one had propounded anything substantially novel in philosophy: there
had been simply one eclectic combination after another of pre-existing tenets. It would be hasty
to conclude that the writers of these two centuries are therefore undeserving of our study, for the
spirit, if not the substance of the doctrines had undergone a momentous change, which ultimately
exercised no unimportant influence on society and on the Christian religion itself.
When Cicero began to write, the Latin language may be said to have been destitute of a
philosophical literature. Philosophy was a sealed study to those who did not know Greek. It was
his aim, by putting the best Greek speculation into the most elegant Latin form, to extend the
education of his countrymen, and to enrich their literature. He wished at the same time to strike a
blow at the ascendency of Epicureanism throughout Italy. The doctrines of Epicurus had alone
appeared in Latin in a shape suited to catch the popular taste. There seems to have been a very
large Epicurean literature in Latin, of which all but a few scanty traces is now lost. C. Amafinius,
mentioned in the Academica [113] , was the first to write, and his books seem to have had an
enormous circulation [114] . He had a large number of imitators, who obtained such a favourable
reception, that, in Cicero's strong language, they took possession of the whole of Italy [115] .
Rabirius and Catius the Insubrian, possibly the epicure and friend of Horace, were two of the
most noted of these writers. Cicero assigns various reasons for their extreme popularity: the easy
nature of the Epicurean physics, the fact that there was no other philosophy for Latin readers, and
the voluptuous blandishments of pleasure. This last cause, as indeed he in one passage seems to
allow, must have been of little real importance. It is exceedingly remarkable that the whole of the
Roman Epicurean literature dealt in an overwhelmingly greater degree with the physics than with
the ethics of Epicurus. The explanation is to be found in the fact that the Italian races had as yet a
strong practical basis for morality in the legal and social constitution of the family, and did not
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