history of Plato's school, who taught that certain knowledge was not to be had, but that probability was
an intellectually respectable basis for practical life. They were naturally committed to the Academic
tradition of arguing both sides of a question, which gave excellent practice in speaking. Their beliefs
also gave Cicero the freedom to choose what philosophical view he found most convincing on particular
issues. For example, he was able without inconsistency to favour Stoic views on divine providence and
on fundamental morality, while rejecting their view that oratory should be unemotional.
Though Cicero always maintained that public service should take precedence over study and writing,
philosophy remained his favourite leisure activity. But it really came into its own when the political
scene ceased to be hospitable to his talents. Given his priorities, it is not surprising that the first
theoretical works he produced were the treatises on rhetoric we have mentioned and two works of
political philosophy, De re publica and De legibus ('On the State' and 'On the Laws'). But already in 46,
two minor works gave the sign of things to come. The Paradoxes of the Stoics is a rhetorical tour de
force in which Cicero defends these extreme formulations of Stoic doctrine, for instance, that virtue is
the only good, and that all bad deeds are equally wicked. The work is dedicated to Cato's nephew Brutus
and opens with praise of Cato for his ability to make his philosophy acceptable to the general public.
Cato was then leading the Republican forces in Africa, which no doubt explains why Cicero wished to
make amends for the ridicule he had heaped on his Stoicism some seventeen years earlier. Later in the
year, after Cato's suicide, Cicero was to produce a moving eulogy of him.
By the next year he had embarked oft a grand plan 'to provide for my fellow citizens a path through the
noblest form of learning'. In the next two years he produced a dozen works, mostly in the dialogue form
that Plato and Aristotle had invented, covering the three branches of ancient philosophy. The series
began with the Hortensius, an exhortation to the study of philosophy now lost but whose impact can be
judged from the words of St Augustine: 'That book changed my character and directed my prayers to
you, Lord.' To the logical branch of philosophy, he devoted only one work, the Academica, which
presented the sceptical standpoint of the New Academy. In the other two branches, he started with an
'academic' exposition of the views of the different schools on the most basic and general philosophical
questions and then proceeded to defend his preferred doctrine on the more specific and practical
questions. Thus in natural philosophy, the dialogue On the Nature of the Gods was followed by •works
On Divination and On Fate, and in moral philosophy the dialogue On Ends, discussing the goal of life as
advocated by the different dogmatic schools, was followed by the Tusculan Disputations and On Moral
Obligations, -which defend the Stoic view of happiness and of duty.
Yet Cicero's purpose was not to preach particular philosophical doctrines. Indeed, even in his more
dogmatic works, he asserts that there is no certain truth and defends his right to find different views
more convincing according to the argumentation used on each occasion. His desire was to do the state
some service and, in the process, to earn glory for himself when other avenues were closed. He made no
claim to original philosophical ideas. What he had to contribute was his ability to reproduce Greek
philosophy in eloquent Latin, to create a philosophical literature for Rome that could rival that of
Greece, as Roman oratory already did. The eloquent orator would repay his debt to his education.
Serious philosophical discourse had up to now been written in Greek: even Lucretius seems to have been
regarded as a poet rather than as a philosopher. Cicero did not altogether reverse the pattern; but he had