In a sense, of course, we find the fruit of Cicero’s experiences in these also, since he usually chose for paraphrasing what he felt to be significant, and in each work he omitted what met with his disfavor, expanding and illustrating the ideas which appealed to him. Furthermore, since he was concerned rather in presenting clearly the points that interested him than in giving a faithful translation of the Greek, the resultant essays often, even when they are to some extent mosaics, give us very precisely the Ciceronian pattern. Large parts of his philosophical compilations may therefore be taken to illustrate Cicero’s own convictions reached through his own experience; and when we deal with such work it may be more fruitful to consider Cicero’s own contribution to the final design than to hunt the original quarry from which he drew each tessera.
Let us turn to another illustration of how Cicero’s views altered and enlarged through personal experience until at last, even though he expressed himself through paraphrased passages, he succeeds in making us feel that he is giving us an epitome of his own personal convictions. For this purpose we may consider his statements about the survival of the soul after death.
In his youth, especially during the civil wars when a public career seemed for a time closed, Cicero had devoted much time to the study of philosophy, and, being a normal Roman of the old type, to whom the actualities of life meant more than metaphysical speculation, for whom the world of realities was too full of interest to allow any time for mystical contemplation, he had naturally accepted the agnostic attitude of the New Academy toward the “unknowable.” With the New Academy he was theoretically ready to admit “probabilities,” even to act on probabilities, but epistemology had no appeal for him. Of course there are degrees of likelihood and the degrees are apt to vary with mood and occasion. When Cicero spoke before the populace he could see enough plausibility in the argument for Divinity to assume its existence for the time being. But when he wrote to his intimate friends the likelihood did not seem pressing enough to receive mention. He supposed with many other agnostic statesmen of his day that official worship of the gods was useful in the maintenance of the social system,[17] and this explains why, when he stood before the people, giving official advice, his faith seemed to expand. We need not take such faith very seriously. With the problem of the survival of the soul—except for a brief toying with a Platonic Myth in the De Republica—Cicero did not concern himself till very late in life. Like most Romans he explained to himself the phrases of the Greek mystics in a simple formula of “Gloria,” which, when analyzed, resolved itself into something like the “immortality of fame.”[18]
We all know how great a rôle the insistence upon fame and reputation played in the education of the aristocracy at Rome. Since parents and teachers had no religious authority and no fixed ethical sanctions to which to appeal in presenting the claims of duty, the examples of ancestral heroes and the mos majorum came to be their decalogue. In their own homes children were shown the imagines of their famous ancestors and taught to read the inscribed tituli of their honors and triumphs. “Go thou and do likewise” was the obvious inference from daily lessons. It is safe to say that the constantly instilled respect for heroic ancestors was the most powerful factor in ethical teaching that ancient Rome knew. When Cicero so readily drops into the remark that what concerns him is what posterity will say of him a thousand years hence, he reveals the effectiveness of this moral pedagogy. Again and again in his speeches he frankly admits that Gloria, the immortality of fame, is what spurs him to incessant activity. The immortality of the “Choir Invisible”[19] was the only survival that the normal Roman of the cultured classes of the time expected.
Cicero, who read very widely in Greek writers, had of course come in contact with many mystics. He had enjoyed the poetry of Plato’s myths; he was a good friend of Neo-Pythagoreans like Nigidius Figulus, with whom he had long conversations on this very subject at Ephesus in 51; he had also conversed with and read the works of Posidonius, who interpolated much oriental mysticism into his Stoicism. But all of this had left few traces in Cicero’s utterances, until a very great grief overwhelmed him.[20] In February of the year 45, two years before his death, his daughter Tullia, his one deep passion, died after years of suffering. Cicero gave in completely to his sorrow and withdrew to the forest of Astura, where he walked alone and communed with himself for several weeks. All his friends sent him letters of consolation, but they were typical Roman letters that gave little cheer, only reminding him that it was the duty of a Cicero to be strong, that life had little of value now that liberty was lost, that his own life was near its end. What he wanted was some ray of hope, and he sought the books of the mystics to give him what he needed. He read and pondered and temporarily accepted a “probability” that he had occasionally used in speeches to the populace, but never considered of use to himself. And he wrote it out in a Consolatio in order to make it more persuasive. The basis of this pamphlet was Crantor’s argument, taken from Plato, that the soul reveals capacities that imply eternal existence.[21] But Cicero carried the argument to a conclusion that neither Crantor nor Plato would have accepted, the conclusion that Tullia still lived, would live eternally as a divine being, and if divine must have a shrine. This means that Cicero’s new faith, though suggested by reading which had hitherto had no appeal for him, was vitalized now through his deep love for Tullia, that it took its meaning from his own experience, and must reach the conclusion that his love for her dictated. We know, of course, that he sought justification for this conclusion in whatever authority he could find. He says so explicitly in a letter to Atticus:[22]
In trying to escape from the painful sting of recollection I take refuge in recalling something to your memory. Whatever you think of it, please pardon me. The fact is I find that some of the authors over whom I am poring consider appropriate the very thing that I have often discussed with you, and I hope you approve of it. I mean the shrine. Please give it all the attention your affection for me dictates.... I shall use all the opportunities permitted in an age as erudite as this to consecrate her memory by every kind of memorial borrowed from the genius of all the masters, Greek and Latin. Perhaps it will only gall my wound: but I consider myself pledged by a kind of vow or promise; and I am more concerned about the long ages when I shall not be than about my short day, which, short though it is, seems all too long to me. I have tried everything and find nothing that gives me rest.
In Greek writers, who justified the apotheosis of Hellenic rulers by appealing to the cult of “Heroes,” he could find such arguments and he seems even to have employed Euhemeristic writings, for he ended the strange Consolatio with the words:[23]
If the children of Cadmos, of Amphion and of Tyndarus were carried to heaven in glory, she too deserves this honor. This I shall accomplish and with the approval of the immortal gods shall declare and consecrate you before all the world ... as one of the immortals.
His well-stocked library of Greek books was full of such mystical ideas, but they had had no meaning for him till this moment. Now he seized the idea with determination, and to Atticus, who doubtless thought it a passing whim and gave him no encouragement, he wrote almost every day urging him to find a suitable spot for the shrine he proposed to consecrate, and to engage an architect who should plan its erection.
This mood of mysticism probably lasted only a few months. The reading he went through in seeking justification for his conclusions led him to write the Hortensius, that enthusiastic eulogy of philosophy which converted St. Augustine to a new mode of life. In its fragments we find traces of the same un-Roman mysticism. Then in the first Tusculan Disputation, which he wrote in May of the same year, he repeated the gist of the argument which he had used in the Consolatio and with nearly as much assurance. However, in this same month he began his first draft of the Academica, a careful review of epistemological theory, and this brought him back to his earlier agnosticism. His letters now show less interest in the proposed shrine. In July they cease entirely: it would seem that the “apotheosis” of Tullia was abandoned.