Scholars generally agree that, according to Aristotle, factionalizers are motivated by a sense of injustice (the ‘first cause’) to redress imbalances in wealth and honor (the ‘second cause’). Recent discussions, however, have offered a misleading interpretation of Aristotle’s third cause, which he identifies as the origin of the factionalizers’ sense of injustice. It involves, most importantly, greed, hubris, and other factors such as fear and ‘disproportionate growth’. In conversation with a recent publication in Polis, this article restores the third cause (...) to its proper place in Aristotle’s account. Abusive power holders, driven by greed, hubris, and overreaching, oppress their fellow citizens – following in the tradition of Homer’s Agamemnon, Hesiod’s basileis, and Solon’s aristocrats. These power holders prompt a sense of anger, indignation, and injustice in their fellow citizens, who ultimately form factions and take action on their own behalf. (shrink)

At the beginning of Book 9 of the Politeia (571cd), Platon suggests that all people bear in themselves unlawful desires like the desire to have sex with their own mother or with any other human, god, or beast, the desire to murder anyone, or the desire to eat anything. Modern scholars take it for granted that by the desire to eat anything, Platon means cannibalism. This view is based on the fact that Platon discusses unlawful desires in connection with the (...) tyrannical man and that the tyrant is, elsewhere in the Politeia, twice connected with anthropophagy (at 8.565d–566a and 10.619c). This paper challenges this communis opinio and argues that we have no reason to assume that at Politeia 9.571d Platon claims that every one of us has the hidden desire to consume human flesh. Also, the alleged cannibalism of the Platonic tyrant is questioned. A close reading of the passages 8.565d–566a and 10.619c reveals that in the depiction of the tyrant Platon makes use of mythological motifs and literary topoi but never literally claims that the tyrant has cannibalistic desires. (shrink)

This short article is a response to Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, and Kleanthis Mantzouranis, who in Polis 39 (2022) explicitly criticize both of my previous interpretations of Aristotle’s view of democratic justice and of the relation of proportional and numerical equality. Against Cairns et al., I argue that there is no tension or contradiction between Aristotle’s statements on these two kinds of equality and on democratic justice. The paper suggests a new reading of Aristotle’s texts that strictly distinguishes between Aristotle’s (...) own views and his references to ‘respected opinions’ (endoxa). It concludes that Aristotle consistently identifies democratic justice with ‘numerical’ or ‘arithmetic’ equality and not with proportional equality, which he usually identifies with equality ‘according to worth or merit’ (kat’ axian). (shrink)

Scholars often turn to Livy’s famous digression on Aulus Cossus and the spolia opima (4.17–20) to shed light on his larger political inclinations. These readings generally regard Livy as either an Augustan (or at least a patriotic Roman) or an apolitical skeptic. Yet neither view, I argue, fully explains the Cossus affair. What is needed is an interpretation that recognizes the political nature of the Cossus digression and its skepticism toward Augustus. Attending to Livy’s rhetorical strategy in the digression allows (...) us to see it as an instance of oblique criticism of Augustus and his control over Roman life. The explanatory power of this reading extends to episodes from the life of Romulus as well. I argue Livy uses these stories to make a theoretical argument about the nature of despotism, namely, that it seeks to control narratives of the past just as much as it aims for political domination. (shrink)

In the proposed law-code in De legibus there is a law that votes are to be known by the best citizens (the optimates) but free to the common people (the plebs) (3.10). This law, Cicero claims, grants ‘the appearance of liberty’ (libertatis species), preserves the authority (auctoritas) of the optimates, and promotes harmony between the classes (3.39). The law and the precise meaning of libertatis species remain opaque even with the lengthy commentary (3.33–39), and much scholarly debate and discussion has (...) arisen as a result – most of it very critical of Cicero’s proposal and the arguments supporting it. This paper offers a fresh analysis of the voting law that is more charitable to Cicero. It unpacks the full details of the voting system that is developed in De legibus and sheds new light on developments in Cicero’s thinking about the best state. (shrink)

The following paper offers a study on how contestation over the meaning of language forged the political ideology present in the second of the Epistulae ad Caesarem. ‘Ideology’ being a notoriously malleable concept, Michael Freeden’s theoretical approach is used to focus what it means, how it is manifested in the sources, and how it can be located and analysed. The political thought of the Late Republic is studied by examining the vocabulary contained in one of the disputed letters that Sallust (...) addressed to Julius Caesar. Taking libertas as a case study of an ‘essentially contested concept’, the relation between language, meaning and ideology is dissected, outlining the morphological configuration that underlies the second Epistula. It is argued that the resulting array of political arguments is one iteration of what has been called popularis ideology. (shrink)

The meaning of the word tyrannos in Greek tragedy is much debated. Some have assumed that the word is always a neutral term signifying ‘ruler’ alone. Others argue for competing ideologies regarding tyranny: the result of an evolution in thinking on autocracy. This article challenges both of these assumptions. The negative meaning of tyrannos is always latent in tragedy, even where the word is used objectively and not as a term of abuse. Tyrannos does not simply indicate a powerful individual (...) but implies absolute power, fortune and wealth. This absolute power leads to ruin and tyrannical vice. Tyrannos signifies not a bad or illegitimate ruler, but rather one with the potential to develop such characteristics. It is the tyrant who evolves, whereas Greek conceptions of tyranny remain largely unchanged from at least the time of Aeschylus to that of Aristotle. (shrink)

This paper argues that Cicero’s critique of Epicureanism in De finibus is motivated by a concern about its degrading effect on the moral sensibility of Rome’s best men. In place of earlier objections to Epicureanism, which centered on its inability to explain or recommend the virtuous conduct of Roman maiores, De finibus focuses on its inability to do so properly and, more prospectively, to assist boni in the work of maintaining the dignity and respectability of Roman civic life. Responding to (...) optimates like Cassius who claimed that Epicureanism was compatible with Roman politics because it treats virtue as being necessary for pleasure, Cicero holds that instrumentalizing virtue in this way is actually a grave corruption of it. Not only do Epicureans debase politics by reducing it to considerations of utility alone: they also introduce deeper forms of civic confusion by distorting and abusing the very idea of honorableness. (shrink)

This essay examines two articles by Rex Stem about Cicero and Cato: ‘The First Eloquent Stoic and Cato the Younger’ and ‘Cicero as Orator and Political Philosopher: The Value of the Pro Murena for Ciceronian Political Thought’. It places these articles in dialogue and draws upon them to present an overarching argument about Cicero’s critique of Cato’s Stoicism. It also assesses their respective defenses of Roman republicanism, offering counterarguments to Cicero’s critique of Cato and underlining the ways in which the (...) two men were allies. (shrink)

Drawing on Rex Stem’s analysis of exempla, I explore Mercy Otis Warren and John Marshall’s narrations of the Society of the Cincinnati, and Washington’s place within it, to draw out the lessons they sought to impart. Beginning with an exploration of Cincinnatus’ exemplum in antiquity, its relationship to late 18th-century portrayals of Washington, and its invocation in the establishment of the Society of the Cincinnati, I also discuss the exemplum by a prominent critic of the Society of the Cincinnati, Aedanus (...) Burke. I then turn to Warren and Marshall’s accounts of the Cincinnati. I do so with a particular focus on how a single exemplary American – George Washington – is depicted in two different ways, exemplifying two different sets of moral teaching. I conclude by suggesting that Warren, Marshall, and Burke’s battle over the exemplum of Cincinnatus is a battle over the moral ordering of America’s future. (shrink)

This article offers a critical appraisal of approaches to ‘friendship’ (amicitia) in Cornelius Nepos’s Atticus and Cicero’s De Amicitia, as found in the scholarship of Rex Stem and Grant Nelsestuen. In light of the former’s untimely passing in 2020, it uses an exchange of personal correspondence in 2019 between these two scholars – as well as John Alexander Lobur’s 2021 book on Nepos – as a basis for sketching new approaches to the role that friendship plays in Nepos’s biographies. Friendship (...) thus turns out to be both an important aspect of Nepos’ political thought and a crucial means for advancing scholarly understanding of Nepos’ project in Atticus and his other biographies. (shrink)

In the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli claims that writers who are afraid to condemn Caesar instead criticize Catiline. I argue that Machiavelli follows this advice by inverting it. He openly condemns Caesar and the empire he founded while signaling that he has in mind another inimical example: the Church. He signals his intention by echoing Cicero’s fourth Catilinarian oration, imitating Cicero’s image of the ruin of Rome if Catiline’s conspiracy were to succeed through his own vision of the Italy wrought (...) by wicked Roman emperors who succeeded Caesar. The reader of Machiavelli who recognizes this echo is in a position to see Machiavelli’s own Catilinarian oration against another successor of Caesar. In making my argument, I draw on Rex Stem’s treatment of the functions of exemplementarity as employed by authors of texts and as received by their readers. (shrink)

Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus shows its author as living a life of deliberate withdrawal from politics. This paper compares that life to other models of political withdrawal in Greco-Roman thought and finds that it does not cohere very closely with any of them. Nepos, the paper proposes, deviates from these existing models in showing Atticus as avoiding politics not out of a desire to transcend human life, to reorder politics, or to create a substitute politics of his own, but (...) rather to live what the paper calls ‘social life.’ Atticus embraces human interdependence while rejecting the civic forms in which that interdependence was traditionally expressed in Greece and Rome. (shrink)

In Pro Murena, Cicero argues that Cato’s rigid philosophical comportment to politics reflects a mistaken understanding both of philosophy and of politics. By implication, he suggests that there is an approach to philosophy that is compatible with political leadership. Specifically, he argues that a thoroughgoing commitment to the philosophy of the Platonic Academy (i.e., Academic Philosophy) is entirely compatible with a thoroughgoing commitment to political leadership in the late Roman Republic. This essay looks at the most famous treatment of philosophical (...) leadership in the Platonic corpus, the philosopher ruler of the Republic, and asks to what extent Cicero’s depiction of politics and philosophy is consonant with that account. (shrink)

This paper examines the intricate relationship between De Senectute and the Second Philippic, arguing that De Senectute is an important lens through which to read the Second Philippic. When Cicero decided on irrevocable opposition to Antony, the moral and political theorizing about the role of senes (literally, ‘old men/elders’) in the state found in De Senectute provided a convenient and topical framework for synthesizing the invective of the Second Philippic. A close reading of De Senectute with the Second Philippic demonstrates (...) that the philosophical thinking of De Senectute informed Cicero’s political persona in the Second Philippic and establishes the Second Philippic as the intellectual successor to De Senectute. (shrink)