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Rome

Philosophy came to Rome in Greek, and the first Roman task was to give it Latin words. Lucretius, setting out Epicurus in verse, named the difficulty: Nec me animi fallit Graiorum obscura reperta / difficile inlustrare Latinis versibus esse, / multa novis verbis praesertim cum sit agendum / propter egestatem linguae et rerum novitatem, nor does it escape me that the dark discoveries of the Greeks are hard to light up in Latin verse, especially since much must be done with new words, because of the poverty of the language and the newness of the matters (De rerum natura 1.136–139). Cicero made it a programme: Philosophia iacuit usque ad hanc aetatem nec ullum habuit lumen litterarum Latinarum; quae inlustranda et excitanda nobis est, philosophy has lain neglected until our time and had no light from Latin letters; it is for us to light it up and rouse it (Tusculan Disputations 1.5). In his Academica it is Varro who says qualitates igitur appellavi quas ποιότητας Graeci vocant, I have called them qualitates, what the Greeks call poiotētas, and who argues that new things need new names, aut enim nova sunt rerum novarum facienda nomina aut ex aliis transferenda, either new names must be made for new things or names carried over from others (1.24–26). In De finibus Cicero speaks of “we, who must even give birth to words and put new names on new things”, nobis, quibus etiam verba parienda sunt inponendaque nova rebus novis nomina (3.3–4).

What philosophy is the Romans said in Greek terms made Latin. For Cicero it is nothing but studium sapientiae, the pursuit of wisdom, and wisdom, as the ancient philosophers defined it, is rerum divinarum et humanarum causarumque … scientia, knowledge of things divine and human and of their causes (De officiis 2.5). For Seneca, “Wisdom is that which the Greeks call σοφία”, sophia, and the Romans once used sapientia where they now say “philosophy” (Letters 89.4–7, tr. Gummere). Lucretius gives the honour to Epicurus: deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi, / qui princeps vitae rationem invenit eam quae / nunc appellatur sapientia, a god he was, a god, noble Memmius, who first found that plan of life which is now called wisdom (5.8–10).

Cicero named what philosophy does: efficit hoc philosophia: medetur animis, inanes sollicitudines detrahit, cupiditatibus liberat, pellit timores, philosophy does this: it heals minds, takes away empty cares, frees from desires, drives out fears (Tusculan Disputations 2.11); “Philosophy is certainly the medicine of the soul”, est profecto animi medicina, philosophia (3.6, tr. Yonge); and O vitae philosophia dux, o virtutis indagatrix expultrixque vitiorum!, “O Philosophy, thou guide of life! thou discoverer of virtue and expeller of vices!” (5.5). Varro, as Augustine reports him, counted 288 possible sects by their views of the highest good, and held that only a different view of the ends makes a sect, quando quidem nulla est homini causa philosophandi, nisi ut beatus sit, “For man has no other reason for philosophizing than that he may be happy” (City of God 19.1, tr. Dods). Seneca insists that it is a matter of living: “Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show. It is a matter, not of words, but of facts … It moulds and constructs the soul; it orders our life, guides our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should leave undone” (Letters 16.3); facere docet philosophia, non dicere, “philosophy teaches us to act, not to speak” (20.2). He complains of teachers who teach “how to debate and not how to live”: quae philosophia fuit facta philologia est, what was philosophy has become philology (108.23).

His own method was the Academic one, which he took to be Socrates’: ut nostram ipsi sententiam tegeremus, errore alios levaremus et in omni disputatione, quid esset simillimum veri, quaereremus, to hide our own opinion, free others from error, and in every discussion seek what is most like the truth (Tusculan Disputations 5.11). In debate non enim tam auctoritatis in disputando quam rationis momenta quaerenda sunt, it is the weight of reason, not of authority, that is to be sought (De natura deorum 1.10).

Epictetus’s teaching and Marcus Aurelius’s notes to himself are in Greek. For Epictetus “The school of a philosopher is a surgery”, iatreion, a doctor’s room: “You are not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain” (Discourses 3.23.30, tr. Higginson). He put the beginning in self-knowledge: “The beginning of philosophy, at least to such as enter upon it in a proper way, and by the door, is a consciousness of our own weakness and inability in necessary things” (2.11.1). Philosophy “does not promise to procure any outward good for man … For as the material of a carpenter is wood; of a statuary, brass; so of the art of living, the material is each man’s own life” (1.15.2). Its first lesson is that “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things” (Enchiridion 5), and its order of work was being turned upside down: “The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is the practical application of principles, as, We ought not to lie; the second is that of demonstrations … the third, that which gives strength and logical connection to the other two … But we do just the contrary … Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are very ready to show how it is demonstrated that lying is wrong” (52). So “Never proclaim yourself a philosopher … but show them by actions” (46). Marcus Aurelius asked what can see a man on his way through life: “One thing and one alone—Philosophy; and this consists in keeping the divine ‘genius’ within pure and unwronged, lord of all pleasures and pains” (Meditations 2.17, tr. Haines); “Come not back to Philosophy as to a schoolmaster, but as the sore-eyed to their sponges and their white of egg” (5.9).