by Cicero
When Scipio had finished, he saw Lucius Furius Philus appear suddenly in the doorway. After giving him a friendly welcome, he took him by the arm and showed him to a place on his own couch. He also welcomed Publius Rutilius, our source for this conversation, who had come in at the same time, and bade him sit beside Tubero.
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PHILUS: So, what’s going on? I hope we haven’t caused an interruption by arriving in the middle of your conversation.
SCIPIO: Certainly not. The question that Tubero was raising a moment ago is just the sort of thing that you are usually eager to consider. Our friend Rutilius, too, would sometimes discuss such subjects with me even beneath the walls of Numantia.*
PHILUS: And what, may I ask, was the point at issue?
SCIPIO: Those two suns. I’d like to hear what you think about them, Philus.
Scipio had just said this when a servant told him that Laelius* had already left home and was on his way. He at once dressed, put on his shoes, and left the bedroom. After walking up and down for a few minutes in the portico, he greeted Laelius on his arrival, along with his companions, namely Spurius Mummius (a close friend), and Laelius’ sons-in-law, Gaius Fannius and Quintus Scaevola, well-educated young men who were now old enough to have been quaestors.* After receiving them all, he turned round in the portico, putting Laelius in the middle. For there was a kind of rule between the two friends that on campaigns Laelius should venerate Africanus as a god because of his outstanding military reputation, while in civilian life Scipio should respect Laelius like a father in that he was the older of the two. Then, after exchanging just a few words while they took a turn or two, and Scipio had expressed his great joy at their coming, it was decided that they should sit in the sunniest part of the lawn, because it was wintertime. They were about to do so when Manius Manilius came in, a great authority on law, who was regarded by all as a delightful friend. After being welcomed by Scipio and the rest, he sat down beside Laelius.
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PHILUS: Just because these gentlemen have come, I don’t think we need look for another topic of conversation; why don’t we consider it more precisely and say something good enough for their ears?
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LAELIUS: And what, pray, were you talking about? What subject have we interrupted?
PHILUS: Scipio asked me what I thought about the appearance of the two suns being accepted as a fact.
LAELIUS: Really, Philus? And have we, then, concluded our research on everything relevant to our homes and country, since we are now wondering about goings on in the sky?
PHILUS: Don’t you think it relevant to our homes to know what is going on and taking place in the house—not the one surrounded by our walls but this whole universe* which the gods have given us to share with them as a dwelling-place and fatherland? After all, we must remain ignorant of many important things if we are ignorant of these. I myself, yes, and even you, Laelius, and indeed all who aspire to wisdom, take pleasure in learning about and pondering upon the physical world.
LAELIUS: I have no objection, particularly as it’s holiday time. But can we hear something about it, or have we come too late?
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PHILUS: The discussion hasn’t started yet. So, as we have a clean sheet, I would gladly hand over to you, Laelius; do tell us your views on the subject.
LAELIUS: No no, let’s hear from you, unless perhaps Manilius thinks some decree* should be framed between the two suns whereby they shall possess the sky on the same terms as each possessed it heretofore.
MANILIUS: Laelius, you will persist in making fun of the profession in which you yourself excel, and without which no one can know what is his own and what is another’s. But we’ll come to that in due course; now let’s hear what Philus has to say. I see he’s already being consulted about weightier matters than Publius Mucius or I deal with.
PHILUS: I have nothing new to tell you; nothing that I have worked out or discovered by myself. I remember that Gaius Sulpicius Gaius* (a very learned man, as you know) happened to be staying with Marcus Marcellus, his one-time colleague in the consulship, when this same visual phenomenon was reported. He asked for the globe to be brought out—the one which Marcus Marcellus’ grandfather had removed from Syracuse on the capture of that wealthy and much-adorned city, though he had shipped nothing else home from such a vast collection of booty. I had often heard tell of this globe* thanks to the fame of Archimedes; yet I was not so impressed with it when I saw it. For the other one, also made by Archimedes, which the same Marcellus had put in the temple of Valour,* was more beautiful and more widely known to the public. But when Gaius began to give a very expert account of this device, I came to the conclusion that the famous Sicilian possessed more genius than any human being seemed capable of containing.
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According to Galus, that other globe,* which was solid throughout, was an ancient invention; it had first been turned on the lathe by Thales of Miletus; then it was marked by Eudoxus of Cnidus, reputedly a pupil of Plato’s, with the constellations and stars which are fixed in the sky. Many years later, Aratus, taking over the whole structure and design from Eudoxus, celebrated it in verse—not with any knowledge of astronomy but with a certain amount of poetic talent. This newer type of globe, however, displaying the movements of the sun and moon and of the five stars which are called wanderers or ‘planets’, could not be fitted on to the surface of the earlier, solid, globe. Archimedes’ invention was amazing in that he had worked out how a single rotation could reproduce the diverse paths of the various bodies with their different speeds. When Galus operated this sphere the result was that the moon was as many revolutions behind the sun on that brass contraption as it was days behind it in the sky. Hence the very same eclipse of the sun took place in the sky and on the globe; and the moon then came round to the cone-shaped shadow* of the earth cast by the sun from the opposite side …
[Five leaves have been lost. Scipio is now speaking of the Gaius mentioned above.]
… for I myself was fond of the man, and I knew that my father Paulus had particularly liked and approved of him. l remember when my father was consul in Macedonia and we were in camp (I was quite young at the time), our army was troubled with superstitious fear because on a clear night the bright full moon suddenly failed. Gaius was then our staff officer, about a year before he was elected consul. On the next day, without any hesitation, he made a public statement in the camp to the effect that this was not an omen; it had happened then, and would continue to happen at fixed times in the future, when the sun was in a position from which its light could not reach the moon.
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TUBERO: Really? Did he manage to put this across to fellows who were virtually peasants? And did he risk saying such things in front of ignoramuses?
SCIPIO: He did indeed, and with great… [Some lines have been lost, describing the nature of Gaius’ speech.] There was no arrogant display, nothing in his manner that was out of keeping with the character of a deeply serious man. He relieved those desperately worried soldiers from groundless superstition and fear. That was a highly important feat.
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Something of that kind also happened in the great war which was fought with such ferocity between Athens and Sparta.* When an eclipse of the sun brought sudden darkness, and the Athenians’ minds were in the grip of panic, the great Pericles is said to have told his fellow-citizens a fact which he had heard from his former tutor Anaxagoras, namely that this thing invariably happened at fixed intervals when the entire moon passed in front of the sun’s orb; and so, while it did not occur at every new moon, it could not occur except in that situation. By pointing out this fact and backing it up with an explanation he released the people from their fear. At that time it was a new and unfamiliar idea that the sun was regularly eclipsed when the moon came between it and the earth—a fact which was reputedly discovered by Thales of Miletus. On a later occasion the point was also noted by our own Ennius. He writes that about three h
undred and fifty years after the foundation of Rome
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On June the fifth the moon and night* blocked out The sun.
In this area there is so much scientific sophistication that earlier solar eclipses are calculated from this day (recorded by Ennius and the Major Annals*) right back to the one which occurred on July the seventh in the reign of Romulus.* In that darkness nature carried Romulus* off to a normal death; yet we are told that on account of his valour he was raised to heaven.
TUBERO: Do you realize, Africanus, that not long ago you thought otherwise …
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[One leaf is missing. When the text resumes, the speaker is Scipio.]
SCIPIO: … which the rest may see. Moreover, what can seem impressive in human affairs to one who has contemplated those divine realms, or long lasting to one who has comprehended eternity, or glorious to one who has perceived the smallness of the earth (both as a whole and in the areas inhabited by human beings) and to how tiny a part of it we are confined, and how countless nations have never heard of us, in spite of our hopes that our fame flits and wanders far and wide? As for estates, buildings, herds, and huge amounts of silver and gold—how blessed should we count that man who does not think or speak of such things as ‘goods’, because he regards their enjoyment as frivolous, their usefulness slight, and their ownership precarious, and observes that the worst kind of person often has them in measureless quantities! He alone can truly claim everything as his in virtue, not of the citizen’s, but of the wise man’s right,* not by the guarantee of civil law, but by the universal law of nature. (For nature decrees that nothing belongs to anyone except the person who can handle and use it.) Such a man considers that our military commands and consulships belong to the class of necessary rather than desirable things,* that they should be undertaken from a sense of duty, not coveted for the sake of glory or rewards. Such a man, finally, can say of himself what, according to Cato, my grandfather Africanus used to say: that he was never doing more than when he was doing nothing, and was never less alone than when alone.
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Who can really believe that when Dionysius, by every conceivable exertion, deprived his citizens of their liberty, he did more than his fellow-citizen Archimedes, when the latter, by apparently doing nothing,* constructed the aforementioned globe? Again, who believes that people who can find no one to talk to in the crowded forum are not more alone than those who, with no one present, either converse with themselves or share the company, as it were, of the greatest minds by enjoying their discoveries and writings? Who would think anyone richer than the man who lacks nothing—nothing, at least, that is required by nature, or anyone more powerful than the man who obtains all he desires, or anyone more blessed than the man who is free from emotional disturbance, or anyone more secure in his prosperity than the man who possesses everything that he could, as they say, take with him from a shipwreck? What power, what office, what kingdom can be more desirable than the ability to look down on all things human, ranking them lower than wisdom, and never turn over in one’s mind anything except what is divine and eternal, or the conviction that, while others are called men, only those who are skilled in the specifically human arts are worthy of the name? That remark of Plato’s (or whoever made it) strikes me as very apt. When he had been driven by a storm at sea to an unknown land and cast up on a lonely shore, and the others were in terror because they knew nothing of the place, he is supposed to have noticed some geometric figures drawn in the sand. On seeing them he cried ‘Take heart! I see the traces of men!’ He drew this conclusion, evidently, not from any crops which he saw growing in the fields, but from the signs of intellectual activity. That is why, Tubero, I have always valued learning, and educated men, and those interests of yours.
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LAELIUS: I hesitate to say, Scipio, that you or Philus or 30 Manilius are so (devoted) to those questions … [One leaf is lost in which Laelius said that while he is not hostile to physics and astronomy he regards them as less important than legal and political matters.| … that friend of ours, who was related to him* on his father’s side, is well worth taking as his model; I mean
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Aelius
Sextus, a shrewd and very able man,
who was called ‘shrewd’ and ‘very able’ by Ennius, not because he sought for things which he could never find, but because he gave answers which relieved his clients’ anxiety and worry. When he spoke against the astronomical interests of Gaius, he would always quote the famous words of Achilles in Iphigenia:*
Why should diviners seek celestial signs?
When goat or scorpion or some other beast
Comes up, then no one sees what lies before
His feet; they scan the regions of the sky.
Yet this same man would say (for I have often listened to him— yes, with pleasure) that Pacuvius’ Zethus* was too antagonistic to culture. He approved more of Ennius’ Neoptolemus, who said he wanted to practise philosophy ‘fitfully’, not ‘totally’. But if you are so keen on the interests of the Greeks, there are other, less limiting and more wide-ranging, subjects, which can be applied to practical life and even to the conduct of politics. If your skills are good for anything, it is for sharpening up a bit and, as it were, provoking the minds of youngsters, to help them learn more important things more easily.
TUBERO: I don’t disagree with you, Laelius; but I wonder what more important things you have in mind.
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LAELIUS: Well then, I’ll tell you, at the risk of incurring your derision. You asked Scipio about those celestial phenomena, whereas I should regard what happens before our very eyes as more worthy of study. Why, I ask you, does the grandson of Lucius Paulus, and the nephew of our friend here, born into an illustrious family and this far-famed country, enquire how two suns can have been seen, but does not enquire why in one country there are now two senates and almost two nations? As you realize, the death of Tiberius Gracchus and, even before that, the whole policy of his tribunate, split a single people into two camps. The critics and opponents of Scipio were initially inspired by Publius Crassus and Appius Claudius. Now that those two are dead the critics still ensure that one section of the Senate, led by Quintus Metellus and Publius Mucius, is opposed to you. They have stirred up the allies and our Latin comrades; they have broken treaties; every day the three commissioners* contrive some new act of sedition; and the one man, here, who is capable of rectifying this dangerous situation is not allowed to do so. Take my advice, then, my young friends, and don’t worry about the second sun. It may not exist at all; or, as it has been seen, let it exist provided it does no harm. In any case we can know nothing of such things, and even if we come to know a great deal, that kind of knowledge will not make us better or happier people. To have one Senate and one citizen body is achievable; if it isn’t achieved, we are in serious trouble. The opposite is obviously true at present, and we can see that if unity is brought about we shall live better and happier lives.
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33–7. Scipio is asked what form of government is best
MUCIUS: So what do you think we should learn, Laelius, in order to achieve what you require?
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LAELIUS: Those skills which make us fit to serve the community. That, in my opinion, is the finest duty that wisdom has, and the greatest proof and function of moral excellence. So then, to make sure that we spend this holiday in discussions that are primarily of benefit to the state, why don’t we ask Scipio to tell us what form of government he regards as the best? Then we’ll go on to other questions. After clarifying them, we will come step by step, I hope, to these very problems, and will get a systematic understanding of the difficulties that now beset us.
After Philus, Manilius, and Mummius had given their whole- 34 hearted approval … [One leaf is missing here. When the text resumes, Laelius is addressing his request to Scipio.]
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… I wanted this to happen, not just because it wa
s right that a talk about the state should be given, preferably, by a statesman, but also because I recalled that you used to have frequent conversations with Panaetius in the company of Polybius* (the two Greeks who were possibly most expert in political theory); you would adduce numerous arguments to prove that much the best form of government was the one we had inherited from our ancestors. Since you are more au fait with that debate, you would do us all a favour (if I may also speak for the others) by presenting your views about the state.
SCIPIO: Well, I can’t pretend that there’s any subject to which I give more attention than the one which you are suggesting, Laelius. I am aware that every craftsman in his own work, if he is any good, thinks, ponders, and strives for nothing except to improve in that field. I have inherited this task from my parents and ancestors, that is, the supervision and management of the country. So I suppose I would be admitting that I was lazier than any craftsman* if I devoted less effort to that great art than they do to their little ones. Yet I am not satisfied with what the fore most and wisest Greeks have left us in their writings about that topic. Nor do I venture to set my own opinions above theirs. So, as you listen, I suggest you think of me as not wholly ignorant of the Greek views, nor as ranking them above our own, especially in this field. Think of me rather as one of the toga-wearing people,* who has been given a liberal education thanks to his father’s kindly concern, and has been fired from boyhood with a love of learning, but who has, nevertheless, been trained by experience and family sayings much more than by books.