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Cicero's Tusculan Disputations by Marcus Tullius Cicero

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CICERO'S TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS;




ALSO, TREATISES ON

THE NATURE OF THE GODS,

AND ON

THE COMMONWEALTH.





LITERALLY TRANSLATED, CHIEFLY BY
C. D. YONGE.


NEW YORK:
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS,
FRANKLIN SQUARE.
1877.


HARPER'S NEW CLASSICAL LIBRARY.


COMPRISING LITERAL TRANSLATIONS OF


CAESAR.
VIRGIL.
SALLUST.
HORACE.
CICERO'S ORATIONS.
CICERO'S OFFICES &c.
CICERO ON ORATORY AND ORATORS.
CICERO'S TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS, the Republic, and the Nature of the Gods.
TERENCE.
TACITUS.
LIVY. 2 Vols.
JUVENAL.
XENOPHON.
HOMER'S ILIAD.
HOMER'S ODYSSEY.
HERODOTUS.
DEMOSTHENES. 2 Vols.
THUCIDIDES.
AESCHYLUS.
SOPHOCLES.
EURIPIDES. 2 Vols.
PLATO. [SELECT DIALOGUES.]


12mo, Cloth, $1.50 per Volume.


HARPER & BROTHERS _will send either of the above works by mail, postage
prepaid, to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price_.






NOTE.


The greater portion of the Republic was previously translated by
Francis Barham, Esq., and published in 1841. Although ably performed,
it was not sufficiently close for the purpose of the "CLASSICAL
LIBRARY," and was therefore placed in the hands of the present editor
for revision, as well as for collation with recent texts. This has
occasioned material alterations and additions.

The treatise "On the Nature of the Gods" is a revision of that usually
ascribed to the celebrated Benjamin Franklin.






CONTENTS.


_Tusculan Disputations_

_On the Nature of the Gods_

_On the Commonwealth_






THE TUSCULAN DISPUTATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.


In the year A.U.C. 708, and the sixty-second year of Cicero's age, his
daughter, Tullia, died in childbed; and her loss afflicted Cicero to
such a degree that he abandoned all public business, and, leaving the
city, retired to Asterra, which was a country house that he had near
Antium; where, after a while, he devoted himself to philosophical
studies, and, besides other works, he published his Treatise de
Finibus, and also this treatise called the Tusculan Disputations, of
which Middleton gives this concise description:

"The first book teaches us how to contemn the terrors of death, and to
look upon it as a blessing rather than an evil;

"The second, to support pain and affliction with a manly fortitude;

"The third, to appease all our complaints and uneasinesses under the
accidents of life;

"The fourth, to moderate all our other passions;

"And the fifth explains the sufficiency of virtue to make men happy."

It was his custom in the opportunities of his leisure to take some
friends with him into the country, where, instead of amusing themselves
with idle sports or feasts, their diversions were wholly speculative,
tending to improve the mind and enlarge the understanding. In this
manner he now spent five days at his Tusculan villa in discussing with
his friends the several questions just mentioned. For, after employing
the mornings in declaiming and rhetorical exercises, they used to
retire in the afternoon into a gallery, called the Academy, which he
had built for the purpose of philosophical conferences, where, after
the manner of the Greeks, he held a school, as they called it, and
invited the company to call for any subject that they desired to hear
explained, which being proposed accordingly by some of the audience
became immediately the argument of that day's debate. These five
conferences, or dialogues, he collected afterward into writing in the
very words and manner in which they really passed; and published them
under the title of his Tusculan Disputations, from the name of the
villa in which they were held.

* * * * *




BOOK I.

ON THE CONTEMPT OF DEATH.


I. At a time when I had entirely, or to a great degree, released myself
from my labors as an advocate, and from my duties as a senator, I had
recourse again, Brutus, principally by your advice, to those studies
which never had been out of my mind, although neglected at times, and
which after a long interval I resumed; and now, since the principles
and rules of all arts which relate to living well depend on the study
of wisdom, which is called philosophy, I have thought it an employment
worthy of me to illustrate them in the Latin tongue, not because
philosophy could not be understood in the Greek language, or by the
teaching of Greek masters; but it has always been my opinion that our
countrymen have, in some instances, made wiser discoveries than the
Greeks, with reference to those subjects which they have considered
worthy of devoting their attention to, and in others have improved upon
their discoveries, so that in one way or other we surpass them on every
point; for, with regard to the manners and habits of private life, and
family and domestic affairs, we certainly manage them with more
elegance, and better than they did; and as to our republic, that our
ancestors have, beyond all dispute, formed on better customs and laws.
What shall I say of our military affairs; in which our ancestors have
been most eminent in valor, and still more so in discipline? As to
those things which are attained not by study, but nature, neither
Greece, nor any nation, is comparable to us; for what people has
displayed such gravity, such steadiness, such greatness of soul,
probity, faith--such distinguished virtue of every kind, as to be equal
to our ancestors. In learning, indeed, and all kinds of literature,
Greece did excel us, and it was easy to do so where there was no
competition; for while among the Greeks the poets were the most ancient
species of learned men--since Homer and Hesiod lived before the
foundation of Rome, and Archilochus[1] was a contemporary of
Romulus--we received poetry much later. For it was about five hundred
and ten years after the building of Rome before Livius[2] published a
play in the consulship of C. Claudius, the son of Caecus, and M.
Tuditanus, a year before the birth of Ennius, who was older than
Plautus and Naevius.

II. It was, therefore, late before poets were either known or received
among us; though we find in Cato de Originibus that the guests used, at
their entertainments, to sing the praises of famous men to the sound of
the flute; but a speech of Cato's shows this kind of poetry to have
been in no great esteem, as he censures Marcus Nobilior for carrying
poets with him into his province; for that consul, as we know, carried
Ennius with him into AEtolia. Therefore the less esteem poets were in,
the less were those studies pursued; though even then those who did
display the greatest abilities that way were not very inferior to the
Greeks. Do we imagine that if it had been considered commendable in
Fabius,[3] a man of the highest rank, to paint, we should not have had
many Polycleti and Parrhasii? Honor nourishes art, and glory is the
spur with all to studies; while those studies are always neglected in
every nation which are looked upon disparagingly. The Greeks held skill
in vocal and instrumental music as a very important accomplishment, and
therefore it is recorded of Epaminondas, who, in my opinion, was the
greatest man among the Greeks, that he played excellently on the flute;
and Themistocles, some years before, was deemed ignorant because at an
entertainment he declined the lyre when it was offered to him. For this
reason musicians flourished in Greece; music was a general study; and
whoever was unacquainted with it was not considered as fully instructed
in learning. Geometry was in high esteem with them, therefore none were
more honorable than mathematicians. But we have confined this art to
bare measuring and calculating.

III. But, on the contrary, we early entertained an esteem for the
orator; though he was not at first a man of learning, but only quick at
speaking: in subsequent times he became learned; for it is reported
that Galba, Africanus, and Laelius were men of learning; and that even
Cato, who preceded them in point of time, was a studious man: then
succeeded the Lepidi, Carbo, and Gracchi, and so many great orators
after them, down to our own times, that we were very little, if at all,
inferior to the Greeks. Philosophy has been at a low ebb even to this
present time, and has had no assistance from our own language, and so
now I have undertaken to raise and illustrate it, in order that, as I
have been of service to my countrymen, when employed on public affairs,
I may, if possible, be so likewise in my retirement; and in this I must
take the more pains, because there are already many books in the Latin
language which are said to be written inaccurately, having been
composed by excellent men, only not of sufficient learning; for,
indeed, it is possible that a man may think well, and yet not be able
to express his thoughts elegantly; but for any one to publish thoughts
which he can neither arrange skilfully nor illustrate so as to
entertain his reader, is an unpardonable abuse of letters and
retirement: they, therefore, read their books to one another, and no
one ever takes them up but those who wish to have the same license for
careless writing allowed to themselves. Wherefore, if oratory has
acquired any reputation from my industry, I shall take the more pains
to open the fountains of philosophy, from which all my eloquence has
taken its rise.

IV. But, as Aristotle,[4] a man of the greatest genius, and of the most
various knowledge, being excited by the glory of the rhetorician
Isocrates,[5] commenced teaching young men to speak, and joined
philosophy with eloquence: so it is my design not to lay aside my
former study of oratory, and yet to employ myself at the same time in
this greater and more fruitful art; for I have always thought that to
be able to speak copiously and elegantly on the most important
questions was the most perfect philosophy. And I have so diligently
applied myself to this pursuit, that I have already ventured to have a
school like the Greeks. And lately when you left us, having many of my
friends about me, I attempted at my Tusculan villa what I could do in
that way; for as I formerly used to practise declaiming, which nobody
continued longer than myself, so this is now to be the declamation of
my old age. I desired any one to propose a question which he wished to
have discussed, and then I argued that point either sitting or walking;
and so I have compiled the scholae, as the Greeks call them, of five
days, in as many books. We proceeded in this manner: when he who had
proposed the subject for discussion had said what he thought proper, I
spoke against him; for this is, you know, the old and Socratic method
of arguing against another's opinion; for Socrates thought that thus
the truth would more easily be arrived at. But to give you a better
notion of our disputations, I will not barely send you an account of
them, but represent them to you as they were carried on; therefore let
the introduction be thus:

V. _A._ To me death seems to be an evil.

_M._ What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?

_A._ To both.

_M._ It is a misery, then, because an evil?

_A._ Certainly.

_M._ Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to
die, are both miserable?

_A._ So it appears to me.

_M._ Then all are miserable?

_A._ Every one.

_M._ And, indeed, if you wish to be consistent, all that are already
born, or ever shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so;
for should you maintain those only to be miserable, you would not
except any one living, for all must die; but there should be an end of
misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to
eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a
hundred thousand years ago; or rather, all that have ever been born.

_A._ So, indeed, I think.

_M._ Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed
Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the
passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the
water touches his chin; and Sisyphus,

Who sweats with arduous toil in vain
The steepy summit of the mount to gain?

Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus;
before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and
where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be
able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a
very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look
on death as an eternal evil.

VI. _A._ Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such
things?

_M._ What, do you not believe them?

_A._ Not in the least.

_M._ I am sorry to hear that.

_A._ Why, I beg?

_M._ Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.

_A._ And who could not on such a subject? or what trouble is it to
refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters?[6]

_M._ And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against
these.

_A._ A great waste of time, truly! for who is so weak as to be
concerned about them?

_M._ If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there
can be no one there at all.

_A._ I am altogether of that opinion.

_M._ Where, then, are those you call miserable? or what place do they
inhabit? For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.

_A._ I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.

_M._ Then they have no existence at all.

_A._ Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that
they have no existence.

_M._ I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus
inaccurately.

_A._ In what respect?

_M._ Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the
same breath. Where now is your sagacity? When you say any one is
miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.

_A._ I am not so absurd as to say that.

_M._ What is it that you do say, then?

_A._ I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus is miserable in being
deprived of such great riches as his by death; that Cn. Pompey is
miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and, in short, that
all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.

_M._ You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies
an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence:
if, then, they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not
even miserable.

_A._ Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very
circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable.

_M._ What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those
who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we
ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before
we were born: but I do not remember that I was miserable before I was
born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you
recollect of yourself before you were born.

VII. _A._ You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are
miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.

_M._ You say, then, that they are so?

_A._ Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed
they are miserable.

_M._ You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for
what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only
miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist?
When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini,
the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable?

_A._ Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they
are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they
have no existence.

_M._ You do not say, then, "M. Crassus is miserable," but only
"Miserable M. Crassus."

_A._ Exactly so.

_M._ As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of in that manner
either is or is not. Are you not acquainted with the first principles
of logic? For this is the first thing they lay down, Whatever is
asserted (for that is the best way that occurs to me, at the moment, of
rendering the Greek term [Greek: axioma]; if I can think of a more
accurate expression hereafter, I will use it), is asserted as being
either true or false. When, therefore, you say, "Miserable M. Crassus,"
you either say this, "M. Crassus is miserable," so that some judgment
may be made whether it is true or false, or you say nothing at all.

_A._ Well, then, I now own that the dead are not miserable, since you
have drawn from me a concession that they who do not exist at all can
not be miserable. What then? We that are alive, are we not wretched,
seeing we must die? for what is there agreeable in life, when we must
night and day reflect that, at some time or other, we must die?

VIII. _M._ Do you not, then, perceive how great is the evil from which
you have delivered human nature?

_A._ By what means?

_M._ Because, if to die were miserable to the dead, to live would be a
kind of infinite and eternal misery. Now, however, I see a goal, and
when I have reached it, there is nothing more to be feared; but you
seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus,[7] a man of some
discernment, and sharp enough for a Sicilian.

_A._ What opinion? for I do not recollect it.

_M._ I will tell you if I can in Latin; for you know I am no more used
to bring in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse than Greek in a Latin
one.

_A._ And that is right enough. But what is that opinion of Epicharmus?

_M._
I would not die, but yet
Am not concerned that I shall be dead.

_A._ I now recollect the Greek; but since you have obliged me to grant
that the dead are not miserable, proceed to convince me that it is not
miserable to be under a necessity of dying.

_M._ That is easy enough; but I have greater things in hand.

_A._ How comes that to be so easy? And what are those things of more
consequence?

_M._ Thus: because, if there is no evil after death, then even death
itself can be none; for that which immediately succeeds that is a state
where you grant that there is no evil: so that even to be obliged to
die can be no evil, for that is only the being obliged to arrive at a
place where we allow that no evil is.

_A._ I beg you will be more explicit on this point, for these subtle
arguments force me sooner to admissions than to conviction. But what
are those more important things about which you say that you are
occupied?

_M._ To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil, but a
good.

_A._ I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear you argue it,
for even though you should not prove your point, yet you will prove
that death is no evil. But I will not interrupt you; I would rather
hear a continued discourse.

_M._ What, if I should ask you a question, would you not answer?

_A._ That would look like pride; but I would rather you should not ask
but where necessity requires.

IX. _M._ I will comply with your wishes, and explain as well as I can
what you require; but not with any idea that, like the Pythian Apollo,
what I say must needs be certain and indisputable, but as a mere man,
endeavoring to arrive at probabilities by conjecture, for I have no
ground to proceed further on than probability. Those men may call their
statements indisputable who assert that what they say can be perceived
by the senses, and who proclaim themselves philosophers by profession.

_A._ Do as you please: We are ready to hear you.

_M._ The first thing, then, is to inquire what death, which seems to be
so well understood, really is; for some imagine death to be the
departure of the soul from the body; others think that there is no such
departure, but that soul and body perish together, and that the soul is
extinguished with the body. Of those who think that the soul does
depart from the body, some believe in its immediate dissolution; others
fancy that it continues to exist for a time; and others believe that it
lasts forever. There is great dispute even what the soul is, where it
is, and whence it is derived: with some, the heart itself (_cor_) seems
to be the soul, hence the expressions, _excordes_, _vecordes_,
_concordes;_ and that prudent Nasica, who was twice consul, was called
Corculus, _i.e._, wise-heart; and AElius Sextus is described as
_Egregie_ cordatus _homo, catus AEliu' Sextus_--that great
_wise-hearted_ man, sage AElius. Empedocles imagines the blood, which is
suffused over the heart, to be the soul; to others, a certain part of
the brain seems to be the throne of the soul; others neither allow the
heart itself, nor any portion of the brain, to be the soul, but think
either that the heart is the seat and abode of the soul, or else that
the brain is so. Some would have the soul, or spirit, to be the
_anima_, as our schools generally agree; and indeed the name signifies
as much, for we use the expressions _animam agere_, to live; _animam
efflare_, to expire; _animosi_, men of spirit; _bene animati_, men of
right feeling; _exanimi sententia_, according to our real opinion; and
the very word _animus_ is derived from _anima_. Again, the soul seems
to Zeno the Stoic to be fire.

X. But what I have said as to the heart, the blood, the brain, air, or
fire being the soul, are common opinions: the others are only
entertained by individuals; and, indeed, there were many among the
ancients who held singular opinions on this subject, of whom the latest
was Aristoxenus, a man who was both a musician and a philosopher. He
maintained a certain straining of the body, like what is called harmony
in music, to be the soul, and believed that, from the figure and nature
of the whole body, various motions are excited, as sounds are from an
instrument. He adhered steadily to his system, and yet he said
something, the nature of which, whatever it was, had been detailed and
explained a great while before by Plato. Xenocrates denied that the
soul had any figure, or anything like a body; but said it was a number,
the power of which, as Pythagoras had fancied, some ages before, was
the greatest in nature: his master, Plato, imagined a threefold soul, a
dominant portion of which--that is to say, reason--he had lodged in the
head, as in a tower; and the other two parts--namely, anger and
desire--he made subservient to this one, and allotted them distinct
abodes, placing anger in the breast, and desire under the praecordia.
But Dicaearchus, in that discourse of some learned disputants, held at
Corinth, which he details to us in three books--in the first book
introduces many speakers; and in the other two he introduces a certain
Pherecrates, an old man of Phthia, who, as he said, was descended from
Deucalion; asserting, that there is in fact no such thing at all as a
soul, but that it is a name without a meaning; and that it is idle to
use the expression "animals," or "animated beings;" that neither men
nor beasts have minds or souls, but that all that power by which we act
or perceive is equally infused into every living creature, and is
inseparable from the body, for if it were not, it would be nothing; nor
is there anything whatever really existing except body, which is a
single and simple thing, so fashioned as to live and have its
sensations in consequence of the regulations of nature. Aristotle, a
man superior to all others, both in genius and industry (I always
except Plato), after having embraced these four known sorts of
principles, from which all things deduce their origin, imagines that
there is a certain fifth nature, from whence comes the soul; for to
think, to foresee, to learn, to teach, to invent anything, and many
other attributes of the same kind, such as to remember, to love, to
hate, to desire, to fear, to be pleased or displeased--these, and
others like them, exist, he thinks, in none of those first four kinds:
on such account he adds a fifth kind, which has no name, and so by a
new name he calls the soul [Greek: endelecheia], as if it were a
certain continued and perpetual motion.

XI. If I have not forgotten anything unintentionally, these are the
principal opinions concerning the soul. I have omitted Democritus, a
very great man indeed, but one who deduces the soul from the fortuitous
concourse of small, light, and round substances; for, if you believe
men of his school, there is nothing which a crowd of atoms cannot
effect. Which of these opinions is true, some God must determine. It is
an important question for us, Which has the most appearance of truth?
Shall we, then, prefer determining between them, or shall we return to
our subject?

_A._ I could wish both, if possible; but it is difficult to mix them:
therefore, if without a discussion of them we can get rid of the fears
of death, let us proceed to do so; but if this is not to be done
without explaining the question about souls, let us have that now, and
the other at another time.

_M._ I take that plan to be the best, which I perceive you are inclined
to; for reason will demonstrate that, whichever of the opinions which I
have stated is true, it must follow, then, that death cannot be an
evil; or that it must rather be something desirable; for if either the
heart, or the blood, or the brain, is the soul, then certainly the
soul, being corporeal, must perish with the rest of the body; if it is
air, it will perhaps be dissolved; if it is fire, it will be
extinguished; if it is Aristoxenus's harmony, it will be put out of
tune. What shall I say of Dicaearchus, who denies that there is any
soul? In all these opinions, there is nothing to affect any one after
death; for all feeling is lost with life, and where there is no
sensation, nothing can interfere to affect us. The opinions of others
do indeed bring us hope; if it is any pleasure to you to think that
souls, after they leave the body, may go to heaven as to a permanent
home.

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