walTer nIcgorskI

Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians

ABSTRACT: Set against tendencies in the Renaissance and later political theory to
see Cicero in tension with Aristotle, this research essay reports the results of a close study
of all of Cicero’s texts that bear on his reading, understanding and assessment of Aristotle
and the Peripatetic school. The essay necessarily attends to Cicero’s sources for his encoun-
ter with Aristotle and affirms, with some qualifications, Cicero’s overall continuity with
the moral and political thought of Aristotle.

KEYWORDS: Aristotle, cicero, socrates, Theophrastus, Peripatetic, new

Academy, rhetoric, stoic, dialogues, Virtue, equality, Petrarch.

[M]y philosophical writings differing very little from Peri-

patetic teachings, for both i and those men wish to follow
in the socratic and Platonic tradition… (cicero, De Officiis
i. 2)

cicero was rome’s “best Aristotelian”. (dante)1

The authority of the American declaration of independen-

ce rests in part on its drawing from “elementary books of
public right as Aristotle, cicero, locke, sidney, etc.” (Tho-
mas Jefferson, 1824/1973. 12)

This research essay provides the basis, in cicero’s own writings, to see his moral
and political thinking as a significant roman manifestation of political Aristo-
telianism. it examines closely his assessment of Aristotle’s political legacy and
the necessary preliminary topic of cicero’s sources for understanding Aristotle

1 This was dante’s judgement according to A. e. douglas (1965, 162) and Paul renucci

(1954, 331). A seemingly different claim made by the 20th century scholar ernest fortin (1996,
33) was that cicero and Varro are “Plato’s roman disciples.”
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 35

and the teachings of the Peripatetic school founded by Aristotle. The essay thus
lays important groundwork for more focused comparative examinations of such
topics as equality, democracy, mixed government, human rights and natural law.
Since Cicero’s selective but substantial appropriation of Aristotle’s practical phi-
losophy to his thinking entails a commentary on it, his own moral and political
philosophy illuminates not only some of the possible features but also some of
the difficulties and challenges for a modern Aristotelian public philosophy.

The Tradition of Opposing Aristotle and Cicero

Following Dante and indeed Cicero himself and thus seeing Cicero largely in
continuity with Aristotle, requires, at the very least, some notice of those who
have thought otherwise. There is a “modern” tradition that emphasizes the op-
position and tension between Cicero and Aristotle. Manifestations of this appear
at least as far back as the early Renaissance. Here it is possible only to give a
sketch and small sampling of the arguments and concerns of this tradition. It
is well to have such arguments and concerns in mind as this essay proceeds to
examine the texts of Cicero.
The more recent manifestation of this tradition and the form of it that has
had a direct impact on the study of political theory in the past century is that
most often traced to the Carlyles’ opening chapter on Cicero in their six-volume
work entitled A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West.2 They argue that
“the dividing-line between the ancient and the modern political theory” occurs
in the period between Aristotle and Cicero and is signaled by the “change …
startling in its completeness” between Aristotle’s “view of the natural inequal-
ity of human nature” and Cicero’s opposing view. In Cicero’s and later Roman
thought they see “the beginnings of a theory of human nature and society of
which the `Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’ of the French Revolution is only
the present-day expression.”3 Cicero is seen as seminal to and largely in accord
with the liberal thinking of modernity, and his frequent antithesis in these por-
trayals, Aristotle, is consigned to a quite alien and justly irrelevant past.4

2  R.W. Carlyle and A.J. Carlyle (1903). Cicero’s position in this larger work dramatizes the

Carlyles’ view that Cicero’s political thought marks an important turn, to be further devel-
oped via mediaeval political theory, toward the egalitarian and popular foundations of modern
political thinking.
3  Carlyle & Carlyle (1903, I, 8–9). Following in this vein of seeing a fundamental divide

between Aristotle and Cicero are McIlwain 1932, 1947, Sabine 1960, Cumming 1969, McCoy
1950, 1963. The latter three are not as focused on equality as are the Carlyles and McIlwain
in seeing this as the single fundamental difference.
4  All of those writers here associated with the Carlyles’ “great divide” thesis do acknowl-

edge various continuities between Cicero’s and Aristotle’s thought. In the case of the Car-
lyles’ own work, even as they focus on Cicero as a champion of human equality they notice
36 The Politics of Aristotle

This embrace of Cicero at the expense of Aristotle runs more deeply in mo-
dernity than the formative analysis by the Carlyles at the turn into the last cen-
tury. In 1706, at the very beginning of what has been not unfittingly called “a
Ciceronian century” (Wood 1988, 3), Jean Barbeyrac published An Historical
and Critical Account of the Science of Morality which initially in French and then
later in English translation (1749) appeared as a preface to Pufendorf’s The Law
of Nature and Nations. Richard Tuck, my source for the account of Barbeyrac’s
work, reports his view that among ancient philosophers “only the Stoics had
come anywhere near to giving an adequate account of man’s moral life” (1979,
174–75). “…[W]ithout Dispute, the best Treatise of Morality, that all Antiquity
has produc’d” claimed Barbeyrac, is Cicero’s De Officiis. As for Aristotle, Bar-
beyrac saw his influence as a moral teacher ever ascendant after the fall of Rome
and lamented this, for from Aristotle came “Scholastic Philosophy; which …
with its barbarous Cant, became even more prejudicial to Religion and Moral-
ity, than to the speculative Sciences” and produced an ethics which “is a Piece
of Patchwork; a confus’d Collection, without any Order, or fix’d Principles … .”
At the root of what unfolded in Western history was, according to Barbeyrac,
Aristotle’s failure to grasp “just Ideas of the natural Equality of Mankind; and,
by some of his Expressions, he gives Occasion to believe, that he thought some
Men to be, by Nature, design’d for Slaves … . Thus this vast Genius of Nature,
this Philosopher, for whom such Numbers have so great a Veneration, proves
to be grosly (sic) ignorant of, and, without any Scruple, treads under Foot, one
of the most evident Principles of the Law of Nature”. Barbeyrac’s work shows
then not only a modern ancestry for the Carlyle’s thesis of the “great divide” but
also an emphasis on the way human equality is treated as the significant point
at issue in the divide. The Carlyles’ and Barbeyrac’s understanding of what is at
issue in the “divide”, with varying emphases in one or another expression of this
position, sees Aristotle as viewing man as never simply equal and in his place in
a structured polis which has nourished and educated him; Cicero is found em-
phasizing man as an individual, substantially if not simply equal to others, with
whom he stands in a universal human community under nature and equipped to
read nature with reason to provide self-direction. The making of such a division
between Aristotle and Cicero obviously involves interpretations of Aristotle as

passages where they find him “speaking under the influence partly at least of the Aristotelian
principle of the fundamental distinction in human nature; [they] find him thinking of man-
kind as capable of being divided into those who are able to govern themselves and those who
are not” (12). Adding that these passages do not change their overall view, they see these
passages being in contradiction to that view and take refuge in Cicero’s alleged weakness as
a philosopher: “It must be remembered that Cicero’s eclecticism is in part the expression of
a certain incoherence in his philosophical conceptions, and that it is not a matter for any great
surprise that we should find him holding together opinions hardly capable of reconciliation.”
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 37

well as of Cicero’s texts; in what will follow later, we proceed only from the side
of Cicero.
First, however, there is need to look to the second form of the “modern” tra-
dition of opposition and to bring out the nature of the differences between Aris-
totle and Cicero as found in this approach. This form of opposing Aristotle and
Cicero goes more deeply into our past than the strain which we have just found
as far back as Barbeyrac at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Though
apparently beginning in the Renaissance and humanist enthusiasm for Cicero,
the outcome of this way of opposing “the philosopher” and “the orator” works
in time to elevate Aristotle in a manner that significantly diminishes the philo-
sophical weight of Cicero. This form of the tradition seems then to be rooted
both in the Renaissance enthusiasm for Cicero over Aristotle and in the coun-
terattack of Aristotelians that, later joining with the concern for a comprehensive
and scientific knowledge that emerges in the post-Baconian period, appears to
have been largely successful.5
The conflict between Aristotelians and Ciceronians as the Renaissance
dawned is signaled by observations like that of Jerrold Seigel that in the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries Cicero became among humanists, “the object of
the kind of enthusiasm” directed earlier at Aristotle (1968, 30). The new enthusi-
asm for Cicero should not, however, invite generalizations that oversimplify and
too sharply differentiate the Renaissance as Ciceronian and the Medieval period
as Aristotelian, or that consider Cicero as first really embraced and properly un-
derstood in the Renaissance. Earlier in a similar vein in his Cicero Scepticus, C. P.
Schmitt wrote (1972, 33) that “Cicero’s influence during the Middle Ages was
enormous … . perhaps as great as Aristotle’s”. And on the Renaissance side of
this divide, there is, of course, a vigorous Aristotelianism that manifests itself, in
one way, in what seem to me sound efforts to emphasize the essential harmony
between Cicero and Aristotle at least in moral philosophy and specifically with
respect to rhetoric’s moral status.6 Though the concepts of Aristotelianism and
Ciceronianism, just as the much attacked concepts of the Renaissance and Mid-
dle Ages, do tend to sharpen artificially and thus falsely actual differences (not to
speak of how they might contribute to polarizing our conceptions of Aristotle’s
and Cicero’s thought), these concepts and the conflict they are used to describe
in this case are hardly mere constructs of intellectual historians. My purpose

5  Cicero’s philosophical ability and significance first comes under attack in the course of

the controversy between Ciceronians and Aristotelians in the Renaissance. Before that, there
is pervasive respect, if not acclaim, for him as a philosopher though there is a tradition, to
which Augustine chiefly gives birth, of differentiating Cicero’s thought from the fullness of
truth and genuine wisdom that is possible in the light of Christian Revelation.
6  See especially Seigel 1968, Chap. IV, and 1966, 38–39. See also Tuck 1979, 44–45, 176.

Tuck emphasizes at several points that the Renaissance Aristotle is not invariably the Aristo-
tle of the scholastics.
38 The Politics of Aristotle

here, of course, is not to detail the development of this conflict or describe fully
its many varieties and complexities. My knowledge of the conflict is dependent
on the work of other scholars supplemented by my study of a substantial por-
tion of Petrarch’s writings.7 It is Petrarch, that great Ciceronian enthusiast of the
early Renaissance, whom I primarily utilize in an effort to state what is at issue
in this form of the tradition of opposition.
Petrarch’s writings provide considerable material not only on what he thought
distinguished Cicero’s thought but also on the nature of the Aristotelian attack
on his Ciceronianism and his response to it. Petrarch is direct and unqualified in
making clear that his initial attraction to Cicero was based on his eloquence, that
this dimension of Cicero remains critically important for him, and that the lead-
ing edge of the Aristotelian attack echoes an old charge against Cicero, namely
“much eloquence but little wisdom”. Thus Cicero’s rhetorical achievement and
notable concern with rhetoric seem for the Aristotelians a badge of his philo-
sophical inferiority. The chief issue in the conflict, as it emerges in Petrarch’s
writings, is then a Ciceronian esteem for eloquence and rhetoric versus an Aris-
totelian “despising” of it, or at the least holding it suspect (1948b, 53–54, 61–62,
85, 87, 91).
To state the conflict, however, in terms of Cicero the orator versus Aristotle
the philosopher would concede to the Aristotelians the definition of the issue
and does not represent the view of Petrarch and no doubt other Ciceronians.
Rather, eloquence is related to a certain conception of philosophy in which Cic-
ero is seen to excel.8 This is philosophy characterized by a moral focus and hav-
ing the actual practice of virtue, the living of the good human life, for its end.9
For Petrarch, Cicero’s eloquence is a part of his wisdom; rhetoric is seen to be,
and properly so, in the service of wisdom and philosophy.10 Petrarch finds the
broad and pure learning of the Aristotelians aimless and needlessly contentious

7  Schmitt 1972, for example, describes some of the vigorous conflict in the Renaissance

between those who proclaimed themselves Aristotelians and those who followed Cicero; see
79 ff. and especially his discussion of Pierre Galland (1510–59), 98 ff.
8  A defense of Cicero in this respect, inclusive of a finding that he is essentially consistent

with Aristotle, is found in Garsten 2006. Bird 1976 and Kimball 1986 accentuate the differ-
ence between the rhetorical (oratorical) strain and the philosophical one in the Western tradi-
tion of the humanities.
9  Petrarch 1948b, 61–62, 103, 105. Also, Seigel 1968, 34–35 where he cites Petrarch in On

the Remedies of Both Kinds of Fortune invoking Cicero and writing that the way to eloquence is
found in giving “your attention first of all to virtue and wisdom.”
10  Seigel is on the mark when he appreciates Petrarch’s reading of Cicero, writing that

“Petrarch’s intelligence penetrated deeply into the structure of Cicero’s mental world” (1968,
33; also 60, 224, 259). However, Seigel’s conclusion on Cicero’s understanding of the relation
of rhetoric and philosophy undermines Cicero’s significance as a philosopher: The Ciceronian
combination of rhetoric and philosophy was complex and intricate. As a philosophical posi-
tion it was weak and inconsistent, but it was also humane. It allowed the intellectual to waver
between a position based on the standards of thought and one based on those of action (1968,
15, 26, 29).
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 39

(1948b, 56, 77; 1948a, 137). Furthermore, he contrasts Cicero’s Academic skepti-
cism and its humility with the arrogant assurance and argument from authority
manifested by some Aristotelians and sees the latter as a threat to a genuine
philosophical spirit.11
Especially on this last point, Petrarch makes clear, as did other critics of the
Aristotelians, that his differences are with the Latin-using Aristotelians rather
than with Aristotle.12 He cites (1948b, 53–54, 102) indications in Cicero and
other sources that Aristotle was himself eloquent and more favorable to rhetoric
than those marching under Aristotle’s banner in Petrarch’s own time. Although
he does find that Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics lacks the sting to virtuous action
which he finds in Cicero’s writings and in that respect it is inferior, he concedes
greater “acumen” to the analysis of Aristotle.13 For Petrarch the issue is between
a Cicero whose texts he knows well and the practices of the Aristotelians. One
might say it is between two differing conceptions of philosophy, but for Petrarch
such a portrayal would be too gentle and insufficiently precise; for him Cicero
represents genuine philosophy in the Socratic-Platonic tradition, the Aristoteli-
ans often manifest a muddled, arrogant and false philosophy that is not a legiti-
mate offspring of Aristotle’s own thought and writings.
That distinctive conception of philosophy that Petrarch finds in Cicero seems
thereafter to ever lose ground as a way of knowing or science in the Western
tradition. The ideal of a comprehensive and assured knowledge that appears
in the Aristotelians merges much more readily with the emerging and subse-
quent Enlightenment aspiration to a comprehensive science. The anomaly with
which we are faced regarding comparisons of Cicero and Aristotle comes into
focus in that Ciceronian eighteenth century, for then Cicero is heralded (as in
Barbeyrac and later in the Carlyles) as a moral thinker and a “modern” even
as his stature as a philosopher suffers. One can see in the dual view of Cicero
the Kantian problematic at the heart of that century: new and sure foundations

Neither Petrarch nor Cicero would have appreciated a severance of the standards of action
from those of thought. Nor is the positivism – rhetoric and law seen as distinct from reason and
nature – that Tuck 1979, 33 ff., 44–45 traces in the Renaissance Petrarchan or Ciceronian.
11  1948b, 124–25; also, 1948c, 34–35. In On Familiar Matters 3. 6 (1975, 128–29), Petrarch

seems an exemplary Ciceronian Academic skeptic as he adopts a Stoic position on what con-
stitutes happiness and points to Cicero’s De Finibus for a fuller treatment of the matter. Not-
ing the teachings of various ancient philosophical schools, Petrarch tells his correspondent
that “the authority of philosophers does not prevent freedom of judgment” and that he is
here providing “not the truth of the matter (for that perhaps is hidden) but how it appeared
to me.”
12  1948b, 74, 107. Schmitt (1972, 91) notes a general tendency among humanists in the

fourteenth through sixteenth centuries to find Aristotle’s actual writings quite acceptable and
to focus their protests against pollutions of his teachings which were seen in “scholastic ver-
sions and interpretations of Aristotle.”
13  See his exchange with Jean de Hesdin, a French calomniateur of Cicero, in De Nolhac,

1907, and also,1948b, 102–03.

40 The Politics of Aristotle

of comprehensive science are to be set down, and at the same time in another
sphere, where Cicero and the Stoics are given a strong voice, the moral life is to
be nourished. The nature of the modern tradition of seeing opposition between
Cicero and Aristotle and what is at stake in it has now been sketched. The re-
examination of this complex tradition properly begins with a return to the texts
of Cicero and Aristotle; in this case, a first step, attended to here, is looking to
Cicero on Aristotle.

Sources for Cicero’s Aristotle

One is required to ask, at the very beginning, whether Cicero knew the same
Aristotle whom the Renaissance knew and we can know today.14 Does he have
access to essentially the same corpus of Aristotle’s works which later, through
the first century B. C. edition of Andronicus of Rhodes, provided the Aristote-
lian canon for the future? The perhaps surprising answer is that Cicero had more
of Aristotle’s work available to him than we do and than most people have had
both before and after his lifetime. Cicero lived at the very juncture in time and
even in place when and where the new Aristotelian corpus of Andronicus was
put together and made available and the hitherto known popular or exoteric
writings of Aristotle begin their disappearance which has resulted in their all
but complete loss.15 One would expect, given Cicero’s sustained interest in phi-

14  In the larger context in which this paper is set, namely, that just reviewed, that of later

comparisons of Cicero and Aristotle and contentions between Ciceronians and Aristotelians,
it is also appropriate to ask whether we twenty-first century political theorists know the same
Cicero whom the Renaissance did. With the exception of Cicero’s De Re Publica (Rep.), lost it
appears sometime shortly after Augustine wrote and recovered with significant lacunae early in
the nineteenth century, the same texts of Cicero are available at both times. Chiefly through
Augustine and Macrobius’s fourth century Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, the Middle Ages
and Renaissance had some knowledge of the nature of Rep. The “great divide” thesis of the
Carlyles does not seem dependent on the Rep. in particular; note above that Barbeyrac’s ver-
sion of the thesis is early eighteenth century. It is not a new and different Cicero revealed in
Rep. Given Cicero’s embrace of the mixed regime in Rep. and his related Platonic-inspired
critique of democracy, one wonders how the alleged egalitarianism of Cicero could play such
a defining role for those who would see him as essentially “modern.”
15  The story of both the puzzle of the disappearance of Aristotle’s popular writings after

the Andronicus edition of Cicero’s lifetime and the development of that edition at Rome,
with the hand of Cicero likely involved, is told succinctly in Masters, 1977, 31–33. See also
M. Frede 1999, 773–75, 784 who thinks the Andronican edition may have been completed
before Cicero’s life and that it had considerable impact on other schools of philosophy and the
Aristotelian revival Cicero encountered. See also Gottschalk 1987, 1095 for a summary view
of the various placements of the Andronican edition. For materials indicating the evidence of
various lost works of Aristotle in the texts of Cicero, see MacKendrick, 1989, 9, n. 38 on 319.
Since Masters’ and other earlier work, there has been a significant but largely reaffirming ef-
fort by David Sedley and especially by Jonathan Barnes to examine the presence of Aristotle
and Aristotelianism in the period of Hellenistic philosophy and to speculate further on the
timing and significance of the edition of Andronicus. Sedley (1989, 118) has observed, “It
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 41

losophy throughout his life, his specific concern to introduce Greek philosophy
to Rome and his evident interaction with other learned Romans, that he would
be aware of, if not in close contact with, the enterprise of assembling the new
and true Aristotle that has just occurred or was occurring right in Rome during
the very years of his adult life. His writings support this expectation and at the
least indicate that he consulted the non-popular works (commentarios) of Aristo-
tle then being recovered and assembled.16 In the reference to these works at De
Finibus v. 12, Cicero actually uses the Greek cognate (ἐξωτερικόν) for “exo-
teric” to describe the popular works which are contrasted with those (limatius)
“more carefully composed” commentarii, usually translated as “notebooks”.17 In
this passage, Cicero reveals that the distinction between the exoteric works and

has always been a struggle for modern scholars to accept how extraordinarily little notice the
Hellenistic philosophers apparently took of Aristotle, in view of his immense importance to
the subsequent history of philosophy.” Sedley sees Aristotelianism being resurrected in and
just before Cicero’s time by means of taking Aristotle and his school to be part of the Platonic
revival and the synthesis of Antiochus. Lynch (1972, 204) concluded that Cicero’s knowledge
of Aristotle came largely through Antiochus. Barnes (1989, 1997) is in essential agreement and
believes there was much Aristotle available to Cicero even if it is likely that the Andronican
edition was first put together after Cicero’s death.
16  De Finibus (Fin.) iii. 10; v. 12. There is nothing in Cicero’s writings to indicate that he

did not read what he could of the new Aristotle with care. At present I am not convinced that
Cicero has the Aristotle we know wrong in some significant way. As early as 55 B. C. during
a time when other letters indicate Cicero is reading Aristotle, Cicero writes Atticus (Epistulae
ad Atticum [Ep. Att.] iv. 10) that he “is being sustained by the library of Faustus” at Cumae, a
library thought to contain the esoteric writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus. See D. Frede,
1989, 95, n. 18. Glucker (1978, 223) saw one impact of the rediscovery of Aristotle’s texts be-
ing was that those turning to the texts were becoming Aristotelians rather than Peripatetics.
Otherwise before and no doubt somewhat into the last generation of the Republic, it would
have been unusual to describe oneself as an Aristotelian rather than a Peripatetic. While con-
ceding that Cicero could “have discovered all the Andronican Aristotle”, Earl (1972, 850ff.,
853) raises doubts about the presence of the Aristotle manuscripts in the library at Cumae and
Cicero’s knowledge of the new Aristotle, A similar conclusion regarding Cicero’s knowledge
of “the mature Aristotle” was reached earlier, though without much argument, in How, (1930,
27). Powell (1995, 18) emphasizes the different views on the extent of Cicero’s knowledge
of the Andronican Aristotle while claiming that Cicero had a good knowledge of Aristotle’s
published writings including, it seems, the esoteric works brought to Rome in 84 by Sulla;
Long (1995, 42–43 and n. 11) urges readers to keep an open mind on the question even as he
inclines against thinking Cicero knew much of our Aristotle.
Regarding Aristotle’s “scientific work”, Harris (1961, 10) claims their study was abandoned
by the Peripatetics of Cicero’s time who were “imbued with the spirit of Stoicism.” It seems,
however, in the light of Cicero’s references to Aristotle’s and the Peripatetic teaching in Fin.
v and Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusc.) i, that Cicero had some contact with the scientific side of
the Peripatetic tradition. Sedley (1980, 5) has taken a different turn on this matter. In writing
of the comparative weakness of the Peripatetic school in the Hellenistic period (noting inter
alia the loss of Aristotle’s library upon the death of Theophrastus), he remarks “However
the philosophical writings of Aristotle and Theophrastus were certainly available to any Hel-
lenistic philosopher sufficiently interested to seek them out, and their influence should not
be discounted. It is apparent above all in Hellenistic physics and cosmology, and to a lesser
extent in ethics, though surprisingly little in logic.”
17  Cicero also uses the Greek term to describe this set of Aristotle’s writings in Ep. Att. iv. 16.
42 The Politics of Aristotle

the notebooks is one which the Peripatetics themselves make,18 that it is a dis-
tinction which applies to various works of the school, not simply to Aristotle’s
writings, and that he is sufficiently familiar with both the exoteric writings and
the notebooks to comment on the appearance of inconsistency between them
with respect to content.
Cicero did not, it seems, know with assurance that our Nicomachean Ethics
and Politics were works of Aristotle. Cicero cites neither of these works directly,
though he mentions the Nicomachean Ethics and shows himself aware that this
work is attributed to Aristotle; he himself is inclined to think it was authored
by Aristotle’s son Nicomachus.19 Though the scholarly consensus is that Cicero
did not know our Politics, there is a possibility, as the late Elizabeth Rawson
suggests, that he knew the Politics or much of it as the work of Theophrastus,
Aristotle’s successor as head of the Peripatetic school.20 Whether or not Cicero
did give close attention to the texts of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics or en-
countered their teachings in other sources, his work shows the impact of such
teachings and appears largely consistent with them. The teaching of the Ethics
is quite clearly reflected in De Finibus, especially in Book II where Cicero speaks
in his own persona, and the De Finibus is a book that Cicero regards as his most
important and that treats the topic which he holds to be foundational to all phi-
losophy.21 Quite directly Cicero associates what he does in De Re Publica and De
Legibus with the tradition of political inquiry in which Aristotle and his school are

18  The use of the term “exoteric” to describe his other works has been found within our

Aristotle of Andronicus; see Masters, 1977, 32, 49 & n. 2. Earlier these usages had been dis-
cussed by Jaeger 1948, 32ff. who brought a skeptical spirit to all such references. Aulus Gel-
lius (20.5) reported that Aristotle used to give rigorous courses for specialists in the morning
and more popular ones in the afternoon, Gottschalk 1987, 1172–73.
19  Fin. v. 12. Cicero’s suggestion of authorship is firmly rejected by Jaeger, 1948, 230.

Barnes (1997, 58, 64) thinks it likely that Nicomachus was editor of one set of Aristotle’s ethi-
cal writings, and Eudemus editor of another set.
20  D. Frede (1989, 81) reports this scholarly consensus and makes a set of supportive ar-

guments, which I do not find compelling, based on a comparison of certain teachings of the
Politics with Cicero’s, primarily as found in De re publica. The consensus is reflected in the “In-
troduction” to Laks & Schofield 1995, 2. Ferrary (1995, 54) doubts that Cicero had any direct
acquaintance with the Politics, and while noting his encounter with Aristotelianism through
what Annas calls, later in the same volume, “hybrid” theories like those of Antiochus and Pa-
naetius, he emphasizes, as does this paper in what follows, the significance of Theophrastus
as a source for Cicero. In the essay that follows, Annas focuses on Antiochus and Arius Didy-
mus as evident carriers of Aristotelian thinking. In an interesting, related observation, hardly
irrelevant to Cicero’s thinking, Annas remarks that the modification of Aristotelian ideas to
meet Stoic objections is one of the most important developments in Hellenistic philosophical
debates (74, n. 3). For Rawson’s suggestion, see Rawson, 1985, 290. The reader of the Politics
will find some support for her suggestion in the way Cicero describes a political writing of
Theophrastus at Fin. v. 11. Note Masters’ hypothesis (1977, 36–41) that Andronicus has com-
bined lectures of Theophrastus and some of Aristotle in our edition of the Politics. See recent
support for a hypothesis like this and for the likely impact of Theophrastus on the work of
Cicero in D. Frede, 1989, 86, 88, 94.
21  Fin. i. 11; De Divinatione (Div.) ii. 2.
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 43

perceived as distinguishing themselves.22 Could not the Politics or some version

of it be what Cicero has in mind when he so credits the Peripatetic heritage in
political philosophy?
There are no doubts, however, about Cicero’s considerable knowledge and
use of Aristotle’s exoteric works as well as the writings of other Peripatetics.
In fact, those exoteric works, which apparently were chiefly in the form of dia-
logues, are partly known to us through fragments and paraphrases preserved in
the writings of Cicero. Among the exoteric works that seem to be particularly
influential on Cicero is an exhortation to philosophy known as the Protrepti-
cus which seems to have impacted on Cicero’s Hortensius, limited though our
knowledge of that work is.23 The Protrepticus appears to have considered the
relationship between rhetoric and philosophy. For his understanding of Aristo-
tle, Cicero cites and apparently relies heavily on a work titled On Philosophy, also
among the lost exoteric writings. Regarding Aristotle’s political teaching in the
exoterica, two dialogues – on justice and on the statesman – are thought to have
been Cicero’s primary sources.24 It seems likely that it is these which he has in
mind when in October 54 he writes his brother about his efforts in composing
De Re Publica and mentions Aristotle’s writings “concerning the polity and the
statesman” (de republica et praestante viro).25 Later as he reviews his philosophical
works in his prologue to Book II of De Divinatione, Cicero adds but one comment
(Div. ii. 3) when mentioning his De Re Publica, namely, that it concerns “an im-
portant topic, appropriate to philosophy, and a topic very fully treated (tractatus
uberrime) by Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and the entire Peripatetic school”.
These indications that Cicero associates his political philosophy with a Peri-
patetic heritage are supported by his fuller comments in his own persona in the
De Finibus where he reports that “the topic of civic life (which the Greeks call
political) was treated authoritatively and fully (graviter et copiose)” by the early
Peripatetics and Academics who had no important disagreement between them-

22  De Legibus (Leg.) iii. 13–14, a passage where Cicero indicates that much of his material

both in Rep. and in Leg. comes from the wing of the Academy developed by Aristotle and
Theophrastus.
23  Jaeger, 1948, 55, 65 ff. Anton-Hermann Chroust (1964) is one of the scholars who has

sought to reconstruct the Protrepticus from fragments and passages found here and there, in-
cluding some from Cicero’s texts.
24  How, 1930, 27. Ferrary (1995, 62, n. 30), here following Moraux, attributes an aspect of

Cicero’s political theory to the dialogue on justice. Another work of Aristotle’s which there is
clear evidence Cicero had in hand and read is “Aristotle’s books to Alexander”; see Ep. Att.
xii. 40. This appears to be the work that was alternatively titled On Colonization, and Jaeger
contends (1948, 24, 259) that if we had the work it would provide considerable insight into
Aristotle’s later political thought.
25  Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem (Ep. Q.) iii. 5–6. 1–2. See Powell’s (1994, 23) strong sense

that Cicero is looking to Aristotle regarding the concept of a “first citizen” or statesman.
44 The Politics of Aristotle

selves.26 When he refers to “the early Peripatetics”, Cicero seems to have in

mind the work of Aristotle, presumably his exoteric dialogues on justice and the
statesman, and that of Theophrastus. What Cicero has in mind, though, might
well include treatises that later came to be part of Andronicus’s version of the
Politics. However that may be, in what immediately follows in this passage there
is an indication that Cicero saw the Peripatetic branch of the Academy as the
major voice in political philosophy and a voice that spoke quite directly to his
own program of writings. He exclaims, “How much those men have written on
the polity (de republica), how much on laws (de legibus)! How much about the art
of rhetoric and how many examples of speaking well have they left for us!”27
A few lines later (Fin. iv. 6) he enumerates some of the specific topics they have
treated, listing “on justice, on moderation, on courage, on friendship, on the
conduct of life, on philosophy and on statesmanship”. Later (Fin. v. 11), Cicero
has Piso, a Peripatetic of a certain stripe and one with whom he shares much,
report that both Aristotle and Theophrastus have taught a model statesmanship
and have written even more extensively on the best regime (qui esset optimus rei
publicae status).28
In the 50s when Cicero wrote his first philosophical works which consist in
his De Re Publica, De Legibus, and his major work on rhetoric, De Oratore, Aristotle
seems much on his mind as already indicated in the October 54 letter. His works
of this period are all dialogues, and his correspondence shows him consciously
wrestling with Aristotle’s precedents as a writer of dialogues – following them at
times and quite aware of what he is doing when he does not do so.29 These pas-

26  Fin. iv. 5. Annas (1995, 81) is so assured that this statement is that of Antiochus that she

quotes it and attributes it to him without any mention that Cicero presents himself as making
the statement.
27  When Cicero comes to listing his rhetorical writings in the catalogue of his philosophical

writings in Div. (ii. 4), he mentions Aristotle and Theophrastus, and no others, as providing
precedents for his joining here the precepts of rhetoric with philosophy. Schofield (1999, 744)
has listed the evidence we have of the extensive writing on politics in the Peripatetic school.
28  Here Cicero through Piso enters into an apparent difference between Aristotle and The-

ophrastus with the latter seen to attend more to the dynamics of change related to regimes
including the best one; such dynamics appear to be reflected in Cicero’s earlier work, De Re
Publica.
29  Ep. Att. iv. 16 (July, 54); Epistulae ad Familiares (Ep. Fam.) i. 9. 23 (Dec., 54) and the later

letter Ep. Att. xiii. 19 (June, 45). In the July, 54, letter to Atticus, Cicero claims, as he works on
Rep., that he is following Aristotle’s model in his exoteric books (apparently Aristotle’s now
lost dialogues) by writing a prooemium to each book of the work. The letter to Atticus and the
variety of dialogue and other forms utilized by Cicero all along make unlikely the conjecture
of Rawson (1975, 233) that he lost interest in the dialogue form in his last writings. Rather,
Cicero is better seen throughout his writings as a highly conscious adapter of established
forms (primarily the Platonic and Aristotelian dialogues) to his specific rhetorical objective in
the work at hand.
Aristotle’s dialogues appear to have been a major influence in Cicero’s shaping of his own
dialogue form. J. S. Reid (1885, 25) writes of the “later Greek type” of dialogue which is ap-
parently the Aristotelian dialogue and possibly that of a contemporary of Aristotle, Heraclides,
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 45

sages provide evidence that at least some of Aristotle’s lost dialogues were very
much before him as he launched his efforts as a philosophical writer and did it
on the topics of the polity, the laws and the orator. Cicero has then turned both
to the writings of Aristotle, the old and possibly the new, and the writings of
other Peripatetics, most notably Theophrastus. These are not just some sources
among many he employs; they are materials of distinctive importance for one
concerned with the practical topics at the forefront of Cicero’s philosophical
agenda. It is possible, of course, that Aristotle and the Peripatetics helped shape
that agenda, that practical focus, rather than simply serving as good and ample
material at hand and to the point.

Cicero’s Assessment of Aristotle and His School

Not only have the writings of Aristotle and other Peripatetics loomed large and
significant among Cicero’s sources, but they were also, as one might expect,
very much in harmony with his own thinking. Recall our initial epigraph where
Cicero is found writing that his philosophical writings differ “very little from
Peripatetic teachings”,30 an observation reinforced later in the De Officiis where
he indicates that his school of philosophy is very close (finitima) to the Peripatet-
ics.31 Shortly before this comment Cicero has unambiguously identified his own
philosophical school as that of the New Academy characterized by a commit-
ment to challenging and testing all positions and by a qualified skepticism, and
thus capable of embracing Peripatetic teachings as well as those of other schools
on any substantive philosophical questions.32 Cicero in other words understands
himself as a Peripatetic follower to the degree that this school seems to teach the
truth. As W. W. How (1930, 27) states it, “it remains clear that Cicero, though he
makes good use of the Peripatetics, is no slavish disciple of the School”.

who is mentioned several times in Cicero’s correspondence. In an earlier letter (Fam..1.9.23),

written as he completed De Oratore, (De Or.), Cicero says that he has written this work ac-
cording to the way of Aristotle (Aristoteleus mos) – meaning here, I believe, that he uses longer
speeches, for he himself is not cast as a participant in this dialogue. See Jaeger’s precise and
discerning statement on the three Aristotelian precedents as to dialogue form that surface
in Cicero’s correspondence; 1948, 29–30, n. 2. How we miss Aristotle’s dialogues! It appears
that the Aristotle Cicero knew was notably more eloquent than the Aristotle we now have.
See Gorman (2005) to consider more fully how Socratic method might be seen to impact on
Cicero’s dialogues and thus merge with Aristotelian influences.
30  De Officiis (Off.). i. 2.
31  Off. ii. 8; he does not actually use the term “Peripatetics” which he often employs but

here he writes literally of the school of Cratippus, his son’s Peripatetic teacher in Athens; the
philosophy or school of Cratippus is called antiquissima nobilissimaque.
32  Tarrant (1985) overall and specifically at 107 highlights the high comfort level of Aca-

demics and Cicero himself with a Peripatetic epistemology. Long (1981, 98 & passim) has
brought out how Aristotle grasps the issues that propel Greek skepticism which arises more
widely and systematically after him.
46 The Politics of Aristotle

That one might even think of Cicero as a disciple of Aristotle and a Peripatetic
is made even more credible by the great esteem in which he holds Aristotle. For
Cicero, Aristotle is at the peak in any ranking of philosophers. His overall view
of Aristotle is captured in his description of Aristotle as “a man marked by the
greatest genius, knowledge and fertility of mind and speech” (vir summo ingenio,
scientia, copia).33 At another point, Fin. i. 7, Plato and Aristotle are described by
Cicero as “those divine geniuses” (divina illa ingenia). Aristotle may be at the
peak among philosophers, but when it comes to a comparison, Cicero’s view is
clear: Plato is the peak. Thus, for example, only a little later in Tusculanae Dis-
putationes from that point where Cicero has spoken of Aristotle as marked with
summo ingenio, he returns to describe Aristotle as first among thinkers except for
Plato, in brilliance (ingenio) and thoroughness (diligentia).34 On the one occasion
when Cicero speaks of Aristotle as simply beyond compare, he uses the words
“fine or sharp” (acutus) and “elegant or polished” (politus) to describe the ways
in which Aristotle is superior.35 In this instance where the context is a discussion
of logic, Cicero seems to be pointing toward Aristotle’s achievement in the Orga-
non and possibly to his more explicit (compared with Plato) embrace of rhetoric.
When we find Cicero recommending an overall philosophical model (Ac. i. 10),
a task closely related to if not entailed in his major mission to introduce Greek
philosophy to Rome, it is to Plato and Aristotle as well as Theophrastus to which
he turns.
That recommendation says much about Cicero’s understanding of his own
philosophical lineage, specifically with how he locates himself in one line of
descent from Plato, the prince of all philosophers. Expanded versions of this
philosophical lineage are given at times. The most significant expansions are
backward from Plato and forward, in a sense, from Theophrastus. Backward it
is expanded to Socrates; recall again our epigraph from the De Officiis where
Cicero was found saying that his agreement with the Peripatetics was substan-
tial because both he and they were seeking to follow “the Socratic and Platonic
tradition”. In a preface to one version of the Academica (Ac. i. 3), Cicero describes
his mission in writing as an effort “to elucidate in Latin letters that old phi-
losophy stemming from Socrates” (philosophiamque veterem illam a Socrate ortam
Latinis litteris illustrare). Then in Tusculanae Disputationes (Tusc. iv. 6), also in a

33  Tusc. i. 7; Orator (Orat.)5, 172; also Div. i. 53 where Cicero’s brother Quintus is made to

speak comparable praise of Aristotle.

34  Tusc. i. 22. At Fin. v. 7, Piso is made to describe Aristotle as the chief (princeps) of the

Peripatetics and the one who is, except for Plato, princeps philosophorum. For a fuller discus-
sion of Cicero’s assessment of Plato and specifically with respect to the work and achieve-
ment of Socrates, see Nicgorski, 1991b.
35  Academica (Ac.) ii. 143.
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 47

context where he is discussing his mission as writer, Cicero speaks of the need
to give Latin expression to “that true and choice philosophy which developed
from Socrates and now has come to abide in the Peripatetic school” (illius ve-
rae elegantisque philosophiae, quae ducta a Socrate in Peripateticis adhuc permansit).
Though in Cicero’s view the Socratic torch has passed to the Peripatetics, he
adds at once a couple of complicating dimensions to that picture, by noting
that the Stoics are saying, in a different manner, essentially the same thing as
the Peripatetics and that the Academics are on hand to adjudicate the disputes
of these two schools. While Cicero appears in that very sentence to be describ-
ing the then current philosophical situation, the larger context for the passage
and what Cicero has said elsewhere allow us to see this statement as self-
revealing on how he stands with respect to the philosophical schools. Again as
to substance, Cicero appears to understand himself as a Peripatetic who from
his methodological commitment to the New Academy finds the true legacy
of Socrates here, though he is attracted to at least one Stoic formulation and
the school’s rigorous consistency regarding this matter. More exploration of
this limited attraction to the Stoics and of Cicero’s effort to purify the Socratic
legacy through his allegiance to the New Academy will follow shortly when
this essay turns to consider in what ways Cicero differentiates himself from or
criticizes the Peripatetic school.
There were developments in the Peripatetic school simultaneous with and
after the life of Theophrastus that seemed to play a part in Cicero’s attraction
to that school. These are developments reflected in the writings and actions
of Dicaearchus, a contemporary of Theophrastus with whom he disputed on
some matters, and Demetrius of Phalerum, a student of Theophrastus and a
highly regarded orator who came to political leadership in Athens in the late
fourth century. Dicaearchus and Demetrius give a yet more practical turn to the
Peripatetic tradition. That Cicero associates himself with these developments
is clear in a couple of other statements of his philosophical lineage. In the De
Legibus (iii. 13–14) as he is about to take up quite specific constitutional provi-
sions for magistrates, Cicero observes that, over against the Stoic tradition, that
part of the Platonic tradition which develops through Aristotle and Theophras-
tus engages, like himself, in discussions of the polity (de re publica) intended to
be useful or applicable. He then adds that it is to this strain in the tradition he
will turn for much of his material. After naming Theophrastus in this strain he
adds Dicaearchus, “also taught by Aristotle and in no way lacking in this science
(huic rationi) and inquiry (studio)”. Then he mentions Demetrius as a follower of
Theophrastus and a man distinguished as a philosophical statesman. The words
Cicero uses here have suggested to more than one commentator that Demetrius
is a model for Cicero himself. Demetrius is described as one who “has done
the quite extraordinary thing of drawing learning out from its shaded scholarly
retreat, not only into the sunlight and dust but even into the very frontlines of
48 The Politics of Aristotle

political contention”.36 Another self-reflection on his philosophical lineage oc-

curs, it appears, when Cicero praises Panaetius (Fin. iv. 78–80), a man whose
writing was especially formative for his approach to ethics in the De Officiis and
one whose impact on the De Re Publica is strongly suggested in that very text,
(Rep. i. 34). Panaetius is being praised for criticizing certain harsh Stoic teachings
and their complex, thorny discourse, and Cicero approvingly notes that Pana-
etius had always on his tongue those same philosophers whom Cicero recom-
mends for careful study, namely, Plato, Aristotle, Xenocrates, Theophrastus and
Dicaearchus.
Regarding the impact of Dicaearchus and Demetrius on him, Cicero’s corre-
spondence and other writings provide additional evidence, especially significant
evidence in the case of Dicaearchus. Demetrius is praised as a very learned man
who is also very adept in public affairs and skilled as an orator.37 There is but a
whiff of criticism of him, that centering on his overly restrained, too academic
style of oratory.38 Regarding Dicaearchus, Cicero’s correspondence reveals his
reading works of Dicaearchus as well as of Theophrastus before and during his
writing of his major political and rhetorical writings of the 50s. In December of
60, Cicero writes Atticus about his reading of Dicaearchus, calling him a “great”
and “extraordinary” man; writing from outside Rome, Cicero claims to have a
large pile of the writings of Dicaearchus with him at the time and makes specific
mention of possessing, in Rome, Dicaearchan treatises on the constitutions of
Corinth and Athens.39 There are indications that Dicaearchus, in opposition to
Theophrastus’s more traditional Aristotelian view, developed a position that el-
evated the life of political action and statesmanship to a higher status than that
of inquiry and contemplation, and it appears that in this respect the thought of
Dicaearchus was especially formative for Cicero’s De Re Publica.40 Late in Cic-
ero’s life in 45, well into that intense florescence of philosophical writing that
marked the last three years of his life, Cicero is very interested in Dicaearchus,
calling for or recalling certain of his works, and reading them as he plans com-
parable writings of his own.41 Yet as always, Cicero is no “slavish” follower: he

36  For another notable similarity to Cicero, see Fin. v. 54 where Cicero has Piso describe

how Demetrius turned his banishment from politics to writing certain notable works that
provided cultivation of the soul (animi) and nourishment in humanity (humanitatis).
37  Leg. ii. 66; Pro Rabirio Postumo 23; Off. ii. 60; Rep. ii. 2; Orat. 92; De Oratore (De Or.) ii. 95;

Ep. Fam. xvi. 22. 2.

38  Brutus 37; Off. i. 3. At Orat. 62 and 127 this criticism is also directed at the style of Aris-

totle and Theophrastus and the entire Peripatetic school. This is done in a context of overall
praise for their rhetorical and stylistic excellence.
39  Ep. Att. ii. 2. See also the strong praise for Dicaearchus in Ep. Att. ii. 12.
40  Ep. Att. ii. 16 is especially significant in revealing Cicero’s own struggle with this ques-

tion prior to writing De Re Publica. See also, Ep. Att. vi. 2; vii. 3; Jaeger, 1948, Appendix II.
41  Ep. Att. xiii. 31, 32 & 33. In these letters as well as the De Off. (ii. 16), Cicero mentions

four different works of Dicaearchus including one concerning the mixed constitution. At least
some of the work of Dicaearchus seems to have been in dialogue-form; see Tusc. i. 21.
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 49

is, most notably, not in accord with Dicaearchus in his arguments against per-
sonal immortality, but Cicero does show himself aware of and draws attention
to this position of the man he so admires and from whom he seems to be con-
tinually learning, at least over the last twenty years of his life.42 Cicero locates
himself then in the Socratic-Platonic tradition as it develops from Aristotle to
that especially practical thinker, Dicaearchus, and to the philosopher-statesman,
Demetrius. He is a Peripatetic, if anything, though a critical one in the Socratic
sense and a practical one in the Dicaearchan sense.
There are two aspects of Cicero’s self-revealed philosophical lineage that
merit some additional comment here, for they seem significant to understanding
Cicero’s thought and classical political philosophy before him. These aspects are
first the essential unity he finds (in fact, stresses) between the Platonic Acad-
emy and Aristotle/Theophrastus, and second, his interest in certain differences
within the Peripatetic school. Regarding the unity between the first Academy
and the old Peripatetics, Cicero indicates at De Legibus i. 38 that the break from
the Academy by Aristotle and Theophrastus entailed no difference in the con-
tent (re) of their teaching and only a slight difference in their manner of teaching
(genere docendi paulum differentis). This statement is made in a context of discuss-
ing the positions of schools on the ultimate human end or the nature of happi-
ness. Since the question of the ultimate end is the fundamental philosophical
question for Cicero, it would constitute the most important way philosophical
schools could be compared, and if they do not differ on this, they might be seen
to hardly differ at all.43 Earlier, we had occasion to mention another passage
where the fundamental agreement of Plato and the early Peripatetics was noted
in a specific context referring to treatment of the topic of political life.44 It seems
justifiable to conclude that all of Cicero’s references to this essential unity have
in mind politics in an Aristotelian or classical sense, that is political science as
a moral science based on a certain understanding of what constitutes the true
human end.45

42  Tusc.i. 21, 24, 41, 51–52, 77

43  This statement should also be helpful in understanding what Cicero goes on to say here
as well as elsewhere (for instance, at Tusc. v. 120 where this view is associated with Carneades)
regarding the Stoics, namely they only employ new words but make no essential change in
the teaching of the Academy and the old Peripatetics. In Cicero’s view, there was no good
reason for Zeno, the Stoic founder, breaking with the Peripatetic tradition (Fin. iv. 3). The
Stoics, as separated, tended in Cicero’s view to be drawn to an unreasonable extremism; thus,
over against the Stoics, Cicero praises the moderation of Plato and Aristotle (Ac. ii. 112–13;
Pro Murena 63), and he welcomes, of course, the work of Panaetius as a deflection of Stoicism
back in the direction of the great tradition represented by Plato and Aristotle.
44  Above, pp. 43–44 and n. 26.
45  Other passages bearing on the teaching of an essential unity are Ac. ii. 15; Off. i. 6; iii. 11,

35; Tusc. v. 87, 120. Cicero’s conviction about this essential unity and his understanding of
its nature can be seen to support an interpretation of his Rep. based on evidence internal to
50 The Politics of Aristotle

Cicero is aware of at least one, and that being often seen by others as the most
important, of the differences Aristotle seems to have with his teacher Plato. In
the Academica (i. 33–34) he portrays Varro, whom he very much respects and
whom he intends to honor by giving him this role in the dialogue, commenting
upon Aristotle’s “undermining of the forms” which had such an integral part in
Plato’s teaching. Immediately after this comment Varro adds that Theophrastus
made “in a way a more decisive and penetrating break with the authoritative
teaching” of the Academy (vehementius etiam fregit quodam modo auctoritatem vet-
eris disciplinae). This more important breach wrought by Theophrastus concerns
his coming to understand human happiness as requiring something more than
virtue alone. Shortly we will see that this development in the thought of Theo-
phrastus, which Cicero does not take to be involved in the initial Peripatetic
break from Plato by Aristotle, concerns Cicero deeply; it is, after all, a matter of
the ultimate end. The Platonic theory of forms, hardly attended to by Cicero
beyond this passage, does not seem to put so much at stake as does a shift in
understanding between Socrates/Plato and Theophrastus on the ingredients of
human happiness.
For Cicero, the Socratic/Platonic tradition that comes via Aristotle does not
turn out to be homogeneous on the very questions central to Cicero’s practical
philosophical interests. Two differences within the Peripatetic school are espe-
cially reflected in key thematic issues of Cicero’s own philosophical work. These
have both already been noted, the first being Dicaearchus’s elevation of the ac-
tive political life in opposition to Theophrastus’s more traditional Peripatetic
defense of the superiority of the philosophical life and of the goodness of knowl-
edge in itself. Cicero’s letter to Atticus of May 59 (Ep. Att. ii. 16) coupled with
his handling of this issue in De Re Publica and in De Officiis, his last philosophical
work, indicate a profound and continuous struggle with this issue.46 Through
this struggle he comes down on what is, it seems, the side of Dicaearchus.
The second issue among the Peripatetics has surfaced just above in our com-
ing upon the breach of Theophrastus over the ingredients of the ultimate end
or human happiness. Cicero sees this development resulting in a difference be-
tween Theophrastus on the one side and Aristotle as well as much of the Peri-
patetic school on the other. Cicero welcomes Aristotle’s ennobling but realistic
position on the ingredients of happiness as virtue plus well-being throughout a

that text (see Nicgorski, 1991a), that it is from Plato that he draws the basis for his criticism of
Plato’s The Republic or of a certain reading of it.
46  Lévy (2012) has recently examined the texts bearing on Cicero’s life-long struggle with

this choice. Annas (1995) in her Chap. 3 and the editors in the Introduction to that volume
highlight the relevant interaction between Stoicism and Aristotelianism in the lead-up to
Cicero. One might conclude that if Stoicism entailed “a dilution of the strong Aristotelian
conception of the polis and its treatment of political activity as inherent in the moral idea”
(2), Cicero’s siding with Theophrastus was a kind of Aristotelian response to some of the anti
or apolitical aspects of Stoicism. See also Annas 1996, Chap. 20.
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 51

lifetime.47 However, he sees in Theophrastus a slide in the direction of de-em-

phasizing the primacy of virtue in the understanding of the good and happiness,
a slide toward elevating the importance of ordinary expediencies – the goods of
body and fortune – in determining the human good.48 This issue also is power-
fully present in Cicero’s philosophical writings, being especially prominent in
the Tusculanae Disputationes and the De Finibus. Ciceronian magnanimity is char-
acterized by its being wedded to the very notion that the sole good is the way of
the right and of virtue, an emphasis not so evident in Aristotle.49
The fact that these two thematic issues, so important to Cicero, had been
or were being argued out within the Peripatetic school may seem to constitute
even more reason for seeing Cicero as within that school and taking upon him-
self a couple of its very important internal divisions. However that latter issue,
manifested in the breach and apparent slide of Theophrastus, seems to work to
draw Cicero back in the Stoic direction and outside the Peripatetic fold. To note
this is to remind ourselves that however much he respects and associates with
the Peripatetic tradition and its first citizen Aristotle, he does not call himself a
Peripatetic and, as our initial epigraph indicates, he implies that his substantive
philosophical positions, though much the same as those of the Peripatetics, are
not entirely so. How then does he differentiate himself from Aristotle and/or the
Peripatetics?
Reading across the texts of Cicero we are able to find three points of differ-
entiation, and they may help toward understanding the distinctive philosophic
voice of Cicero so close to but not identical with that of the Peripatetic tradition.
Only a brief indication of these points of self-differentiation can be offered here.
Let us take first what has just been before us, the break from the Peripatetic
tradition by Theophrastus. Cicero seems to see this as a symptom of a weak-
ness in the Peripatetic position on the human end being virtue plus some of the
goods of body and fortune; attracted as he is by the Peripatetic formulation, he
is concerned about its sliding to a quite ordinary utilitarian calculus. He wonders
how much does a person need, beyond virtue, of the goods of body and fortune
for happiness? The ambiguous and different responses to this question within
the Peripatetic tradition leave him very uneasy, and he regularly shows himself
attracted by the “splendor” of virtue in the Socratic and Stoic formulation that
happiness and the good is found in virtue alone.50 Yet that formulation is not

47  Fin. ii. 19; Ac. ii. 136, 139; Tusc. v. 30, 39.
48  Fin. v. 12 (Piso speaking), 74 ff.; Tusc. v. 23 ff.; 47–48, 85; Off. ii. 56; also, Annas, 1996,
385 ff.
49  Off. i. 66–67. For a fuller comparison of Aristotle and Cicero on magnanimity see Fetter

and Nicgorski, 2008.

50  Off. iii. 20, 106; Tusc. i. 35; v. 1, 32–34; Fin. v. 22. In the light of such passages as some

of the preceding, we must assume that Cicero is not entirely unsympathetic with the Stoic
critique of the Peripatetics on the supreme good which he puts in the voice of Balbus in De
Natura Deorum i. 16.
52 The Politics of Aristotle

wholly the truth for Cicero.51 It is in his De Officiis, above all, that he strives to
and seems to work out a resolution that preserves that noble and attractive view
that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness. He does so by working ordinary
expediences like security and property into the very notion of virtue or right
(honestatem). Here he can be seen working a Peripatetic substance into a Stoic
formulation.
A second matter on which Cicero differentiates himself from the Peripatetics
concerns the nature of their philosophical conclusions and overall goal. They
like the Stoics are seen to suffer, in Cicero’s eyes, from an approach to philoso-
phy as a school with a systematic doctrine and from their ambitious explanations
in natural philosophy.52 In fact, Cicero believes that something of the heritage
of Socrates, his inquiring skepticism, was lost already in the passage of his legacy
to Plato and Aristotle.53 Thus Cicero associates most explicitly, as already noted,
with the New Academy and the effort to reform the philosophical work of the
schools of his time by a renewal of Socratic, skeptical inquiry.54 Cicero’s skepti-
cism is not a practically disabling kind but rather that associated with Carneades
which allows and encourages the determination of what appears to be true. It
is on this Academic basis that Cicero accepts the substance of the Peripatetic
moral and political teaching.
Finally Cicero shows himself aware that his very model in joining together
eloquence and wisdom, rhetoric and philosophy, the man who did so much for
the art of rhetoric, namely Aristotle, had some hesitancy in giving his attention
to rhetoric.55 Cicero does not share this hesitancy, and in fact, took explicit is-
sue with Plato, whom he otherwise regarded so highly, because he found in

51  Fin. v. 77; Ac. ii. 134.

52  For a discussion of the critical role of prudence in Cicero and how it might differ from
that role in Aristotle, see Nicgorski, 1984.
53  Ac. i. 17 ff. (Cicero has Varro speaking at this point). See also Tusc. iii. 69 where Cicero

indicates that he finds the understanding of philosophy in Aristotle and Theophrastus to be

one of expecting philosophy to progress to complete explanation of all things.
54  Above, p. 45; Div. ii. 1. At Tusc. ii. 4–5 it is clear that Cicero distinguishes the “selectiv-

ity” of his Academic approach with the drive for substantial consistency and the obstinacy
of the other philosophical schools. One might say that philosophy in the Academic school of
Cicero, or in the Socratic sense of philosophy, is paradoxically seen as distinct from the school-
approach to philosophy. See also Tusc. iv. 7; v. 33–34; Ac. ii. 114–15, 119–20; De Inventione
(Inv.) ii. 5. See n. 32 above for a key reason why the school of Aristotle may be comparatively
attractive to the skeptical Cicero.
55  On the Aristotelian hesitancy: Off. i. 4 and, in the voice of Antonius, Aristotle is seen to

have “despised” the technicalities of the art of rhetoric (De Or. ii. 160). On Aristotle as model
for the unification of rhetoric and philosophy and as contributor to the art of rhetoric, see
for example Inv. i. 7; De Or. i. 43; iii. 71–72; Tusc. i. 7. Also see above, pp. 43–44, n. 27, n. 28,
Buckley 1970, 146–47, and Garsten 2006, 115–41. Long 1995, 52ff. stresses with respect to
Aristotle as well as to Plato that Cicero seeks to identify with them by accentuating aspects
of their writings that harmonize with his dominant rhetorical interests and the pro and con
method of Academic skepticism.
Walter Nicgorski: Cicero on Aristotle and Aristotelians 53

the Gorgias an unjustifiable depreciation of rhetoric.56 Aristotle in his contention

with Isocrates is seen as having pragmatically (in the struggle for students) and
somewhat reluctantly turned his attention to the art of the orator,57 yet his school
then becomes for Cicero a receptive home in which to nurture the philosophi-
cal statesman/orator.58 In the texts of Cicero the hesitancies of Aristotle must
be ferreted out of a few places; the support of Aristotle and the Peripatetics for
rhetoric and their contributions to the development of the art are frequently in
evidence.59 If there is an underlying difference with Aristotle here and one that
accounts for different degrees of receptivity to rhetoric’s importance, it is likely
found in Cicero’s embrace of the Dicaearchan position of the superiority of the
active political life; in that horizon, attention to rhetoric is a duty of a high order,
not simply a necessity for the protection of philosophy.

*
How then does Cicero stand on Aristotle and Aristotelians? Perhaps one could
mount some argument that his few explicit differences with the Peripatetic
school do provide the bases for the conflicts between his thought and Aristotle’s
which come to be emphasized in later periods of the West. Most clearly Cicero’s
association with the reform of the schools through a renewal of Socratic skepti-
cism could be related to the resistance of later Ciceronians like Petrarch to a
comprehensive and arrogant Aristotelianism. Cicero’s greater esteem for and re-
ceptivity to rhetoric might be taken in one direction to see him as less a philoso-
pher and in another direction to view him as embracing more clearly a politics
of liberty and persuasion. Cicero stands, quite explicitly and with respect to his
substantive positions in moral and political philosophy, chiefly in the Aristo-
telian line of Plato’s Academy. The traditions of opposition between Aristotle
and Cicero that later develop must not be allowed to obscure this self-confessed
continuity between Cicero and that Aristotelian line. Though a facile or false
harmonization should never be encouraged or tolerated, the study of Cicero’s
writings benefits immensely from taking seriously the tradition of moral and

56  De Or., in the voice of Crassus or, in one case, of another character repeating his position

back to him: i. 47, 63; iii. 60, 72, 122, 129.

57  De Or. iii. 141 as well as Tusc. i. 7.
58  De Or. iii. 3. 67.
59  There is an irony in the criticism of Cicero as merely eloquent by the Aristotelians of the

Petrarchan period (above) in the light of Aristotle’s considerable impact on Cicero as a stu-
dent of rhetoric. See Long’s observations (1995, 52 ff.) with his emphasis on the tie between
Aristotle’s emphasis on in utramque partem dicere and the Carneadean skeptical tradition with
which Cicero chiefly identifies. See the introduction to May and Wisse’s translation of De Or.,
(2001, 30 ff. and especially 39 and n. 52) for detail on Aristotle’s impact on Cicero’s rhetorical
writings and a perspective on whether Cicero knew directly Aristotle’s Rhetoric as we have it
today. Wisse, (1989, especially 168, 174, 318), while exploring the similarities and differences
of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s De Or. further develops the case for Cicero’s indebtedness
to Aristotle in rhetorical theory. See also Runia 1989.
54 The Politics of Aristotle

political inquiry in which he professes to stand. In turn, Cicero can be usefully

read as an illuminating commentator on and extender of the practical philosophy
of Aristotle and his school. In his distinctive way and in the context of the late
Roman Republic, Cicero has appropriated and represented the Aristotelian tra-
dition of practical philosophy in a number of respects: (1) in his understanding
of the relation of ethics and politics, (2) in his conception of the nature and end
of political life, (3) in his thinking about the relationship among rhetoric, politics
and philosophy, (4) in his treatment of the basic virtues and friendship, of the
mixed constitution, and of the critical role of leaders or statesmen and, in turn, of
their education. Where there are differences from or concerns with the Aristote-
lian tradition, they help us critically appropriate that tradition better and thus be
better prepared for adapting it to circumstances quite different from both those
of Aristotle and those of Cicero.60

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