'Hateful' and 'Doubtful' Wisdom: Roman Disdain and Appropriation of Greek Philosophy in Cicero's Laelius
New England Classical Journal 41.3 (2014)
21 Pages Posted: 21 Aug 2019 Last revised: 22 Aug 2019
Date Written: 2014
Abstract
In arguing that the writer of the Laelius both appropriates and disdains Greek philosophy, I am advancing a series of observations that will cast light on each other. The first and less problematic one is that Cicero draws heavily from the Greek philosophical tradition whenever he either positively or negatively defines friendship in the text. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, for example, ubiquitously haunt the Latin dialogue. A second one is that the de Amicitia simultaneously and systematically disdains and downplays Greek intellectuals, offering the reader the wisdom of Roman counterparts instead. Such opposite–if not contradictory–tendencies at the heart of one and the same text strongly beg to be explained. I contend that, although dealing with philosophy, the text itself is not philosophical, but mostly rhetorical in both nature and aim. The Laelius is not ultimately concerned with the truth of particular arguments about friendship, but itself as a text and a cultural product aims at becoming an argument in favor of a different (and strictly cultural) ‘truth:’ that the Romans had a philosophical tradition of their own, and a pantheon of wise men to resort to no less than the Greeks. This conviction lies behind the spirit of words such as those with which Cicero invites his contemporaries to snatch glory from an already weary Greece, and bring it back to Rome as cultural spoils.
Keywords: Cicero, Laelius, de amicitia, philosophy, Aristotle, appropriation, disdain
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