¹ Momigliano, A., review of B. Farrington, Science and Politics in the Ancient World, in JRS 31 (1941), 149–57Google Scholar; other related studies include two valuable papers in Griffin, M. and Barnes, J. (eds), Philosophia Togata (1989)Google Scholar: Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, politics and politicians’, 1–37Google Scholar, esp. 28–31, and D. Fowler, ‘Lucretius and politics’, 120–50. The sources for Cassius' Epicureanism are collected by Castner, C. J., A Prosopography of Roman Epicureans (1988), 24–31.Google Scholar

² Cic., , Ad fam. 15.16.3Google Scholar; Griffin, op. cit. (n. 1), 28–32.

³ Cic., , Ad fam. 15.15.1Google Scholar, cf. 15.19.4.

⁴ Epicurus frr. 8, 551 Usener; Lucretius 5.1143–51; Plut., Col. 1124D.

⁵ Thus Griffin, op. cit. (n. 1), contra Momigliano, op. cit. (n. 1).

⁶ Plut., Brut. 36–7. There is nothing un-Epicurean about Cassius' behaviour described at Brut. 66.2 (cf. B. Frischer, The Sculpted Word (1982) for Epicureans drawing inspiration from statues). His explanation of Brutus' portentous vision as illusory at Brut. 37 is not easy to square with Epicureanism (see Brenk, F. E., ‘Cassius' “Epicurean” explanation of Brutus’ vision in Plutarch's Broutos’, in Gallo, I. (ed.), Aspetti dello Stoicismo e dell' Epicureismo in Plutarco (1988), 109–18)Google Scholar; fortunately the episode must in any case be fictional (since, as John Moles has observed to me, Brutus' vision was itself an invention of Caesarian propaganda), but Plutarch's insistence that Cassius was, as customarily, arguing an Epicurean position against Brutus, should still carry some weight.

⁷ Cic., Brutus 120, 149, 332; Fin. 5.8; Tusc. 5.21; Ad Att. 13.25.3; Plut., , Brut. 2.2–3Google Scholar. For Antiochus' philosophical position, see esp. J. Barnes, ‘Antiochus of Ascalon’, in Griffin and Barnes, op. cit. (n. 1), 51–96. However, my stress on the separation of Antiochean from Stoic ethics represents to some extent a disagreement with Barnes.

⁸ e.g. Cic., , Fin. 5.89–90Google Scholar, Ac. 2.132.

⁹ Plut., , Brut. 2.3Google Scholar; Cic., Brut. 332.

¹⁰ Quint. 10.1.123; Tac., , Dial. 21.5Google Scholar.

¹¹ For De virtute, see below. A phrase from the De patientia is quoted by Diomedes in Keil, H., Grammatici Latini I (1857), 383.8Google Scholar.

¹² Seneca, Ep. 95.45.

¹³ MacMullen, R., Enemies of the Roman Order (1966), 49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Such exaggerated notions of eclecticism are powerfully criticized in J. M. Dillon and A. A. Long (eds), The Question of Eclecticism (1988), see esp. 15–33, Pierluigi Donini, ‘The history of the concept of eclecticism’.

¹⁴ The upshot is a preference for a Stoic theological world-view (ND), but subtracting the closed future which Stoic belief in divination would imply (Div.), in order to be able to preserve free will (Fat.).

¹⁵ This applies to Cicero himself too: ND 1.7.

¹⁶ See e.g. Hendrickson, G. L., ‘Cicero's correspondence with Brutus and Calvus on oratorical style’, AJP 47 (1926), 234–58Google Scholar, at 240; Momigliano, op. cit. (n. 1), 157; MacMullen, op. cit. (n. 13), 12; R. G. M. Nisbet and M. Hubbard, A Commentary on Horace Odes II (1978), 114 (corrected on the point by Griffin, J., JRS 70 (1980), 183Google Scholar); Moles, J., ‘Some “last words” of M. Iunius Brutus’, Latomus 42 (1983), 763–79Google Scholar, at 779 n. 52; Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (1985), 285–6Google Scholar; Moles, J., ‘Politics, philosophy, and friendship in Horace Odes 2, 7’, Quaderni Urbinati di Cultura Classica 54 (1987), 59–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 64–5; C. Pelling, ‘Plutarch: Roman lives and Greek culture’, in Griffin and Barnes, op. cit. (n. 1), 199–232, at 222–6; Swain, S., ‘Hellenic culture and the Roman heroes in Plutarch’, JHS 110 (1990), 126–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 134. Honourable exceptions include Gelzer, M., ‘Iunius 53’, RE X (1919), 973–1020Google Scholar, esp. 987–8; Griffin, op. cit. (n. 1); and M. L. Clarke, The Noblest Roman: Marcus Brutus and his Reputation. The credit for having actively opposed the assumption goes not to any student of ancient history or philosophy, but to the Shakespearian scholar Maxwell, J. C., ‘Brutus' philosophy’, Notes and Queries 215 (1970), 128CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁷ This is the view defended by Moles, op. cit. (n. 16). I can here deal only very briefly with his evidence. (1) Cic., , Ad Brut. 1.15.5Google Scholar, addressing Brutus, makes fun of their mutual Stoic friends, but it no more makes Brutus a Stoic than it does Cicero himself. (2) Plut., , Brut. 50.1–9Google Scholar: the ‘immunity of virtue to physical assault’ is no more characteristic of Stoicism than of other schools; and even if ‘the idea of the sage as Virtue incarnate’ were distinctively Stoic (which I doubt), it is surely not present in the Plutarch passage. (3) Dio Cassius 47.49.1–2 gives the dying Brutus a tragic couplet taken from the mouth of Heracles, ‘a Stoic hero’. This last description, though a commonplace, seems to me exaggerated. As a superhero and benefactor of mankind, Heracles is common property (to be found, among philosophers, in Plato, Clitomachus, Lucretius etc., as well as the Stoics); allegorized as an exemplary moral figure, as first in Prodicus, he had been absorbed into Stoicism by the first century A.D. (I know of no clear evidence before that, apart from the entirely different and depersonalized allegorization by Cleanthes, , SVF 1.514Google Scholar), but was above all a Cynic hero (see R. Höistad, Cynic Hero and Cynic King (1948)) — which may account for his frequent appearance (Sen., , Const. 2.2.1Google Scholar, Epictetus, , Diss. 3.24.133Google Scholar., etc.) alongside Ulysses, the archetype of the wandering Cynic. (4) Velleius Paterculus 2.72.1: I see no way in which the assertion that a single day, that of Brutus' death, ‘illi omnes virtutes … abstulit’ might be seen as ‘recalling the Stoic doctrine that there are no gradations of vice’. (5) Plut., , Brut. 40.8Google Scholar surely does not attribute to Brutus ‘an essentially Stoic justification of suicide’, cf. n. 65 below. (6) Horace, , C. 2.7.11Google Scholar: the Stoicizing interpretation is optional, and fails if the above parallels are discounted. Pelling, op. cit. (n. 16), does better to see Plutarch's portrayal as tending to make Brutus a philosopher, rather than specifically a Stoic. Even where Pelling does for once smell Stoicism (p. 223), the mixture of vocabulary which he cites could have been argued to be at least as Epicurean as Stoic (two schools equally detested by Plutarch!).

¹⁸ Maxwell, op. cit. (n. 16), lists ten examples.

¹⁹ Admittedly only sixteen of the sixty conspirators can now be named: see Gröbe, P., RE X (1919), 254–5Google Scholar. However, note that at Tac., , Ann. 16.22.7Google Scholar the best that Thrasea's accuser Capito can do to associate Stoicism with the plot against Caesar is to name Favonius, who (see below) was rejected as an accomplice by the conspirators, although he subsequently fought on their side.

²⁰ That is, Caesar's dictatorship was the price currently being paid for the cessation of civil war. I do not necessarily mean to imply a recognition at this date that Caesar's elimination would lead to renewed civil war.

²¹ See Gröbe, op. cit. (n. 19).

²² On the technical terms μοναρΧία παράνομος and καθήκειν, see below. Plutarch never presents his own ethics in terms of καθήκοντα, and the only (partial) parallel to the phrase μοναρΧία παράνομος that I have found in his works is Caes. 28.5, νομιμωτέρᾳ μοναρΧίᾳ, which I shall argue below to reflect Brutus once again.

²³ See Plut., , Brut. 2.4Google Scholar.

²⁴ For Plutarch's sources in Brutus see Pelling, C. B. R., ‘Plutarch's method of work in the Roman lives’, JHS 99 (1979), 74–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 86–7. That Empylus was the source of ch. 12 is argued by Moles, J., A Commentary on Plutarch's ‘Brutus’ (unpub. D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1979), livGoogle Scholar.

²⁵ This larding of Latin speech with Greek terminology is typified by Cassius in Cic., , Ad fam. 15.19.2–3Google Scholar, part of which is quoted below p. 46.

²⁶ For this probable implication of the term, cf. Plut., , Brut. 24.1Google Scholar, where Brutus is described at Athens Θεομνήστου … ἀκροώμενος τοῦ Ἀκαδημιακοῦ καί Κρατίππου τοῦ Περιπατητικοῦ καὶ συμϕιλοσοϕῶν.

²⁷ Epicurus, , Sent. Vat. 28.Google Scholar

²⁸ See e.g. Philodemus, Lib. dic. cols 1–2, and cf. Cassius in Cic., , Ad fam. 15.19.2–3Google Scholar, ‘ea quae maxime mali petant et concupiscant, ad bonos pervenire’. Cf. also Theodorus the Cyrenaic, who (DL 2.98) had advised the good not to die for their country, so as not to sacrifice their own wisdom (ϕρόνησις) for the benefit of the foolish (ἄϕρονες).

²⁹ Cic., , Fin. 5.69Google Scholar; cf. Plato, Phd. 89e–90b.

³⁰ Of course there is no sign of such reasoning in Plutarch, Brut. 10, where Cassius persuades Brutus to join the conspiracy. An Epicurean argument would be unsuitable to use on a Platonist.

³¹ cf. Sen., , De otio 3.2Google Scholar, where it is attributed to Epicurus himself. For further discussion of this and other Epicurean principles regarding political involvement, see Fowler, op. cit. (n. 1).

³² Cic., , Ad fam. 15.19.2–3Google Scholar, where Cassius is replying to Cicero's friendly jibe at 15.17.3. I do not agree with Fowler (op. cit. (n. 1), 149) that this letter suggests ‘the conversion of the world’ as the motive underlying Cassius' Epicureanism: a comparison with the remark from Cicero which prompted it (Ad fam. 15.17.3) shows that there is no such issue at stake, simply whether the Epicurean explanation of values is a credible one.

³³ Porphyry, , Abst. 1.7.1Google Scholar. I agree with Waerdt, P. A. Vander, ‘Hermarchus and the Epicurean genealogy of morals’, TAPA 118 (1988), 87–106Google Scholar, at 104–6, against Long, A. A. and Sedley, D. N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987), 2.137Google Scholar, that the structure of Abst. 1.7.1–2 shows that the reference to oikeiôsis derives from Hermarchus (whether or not that was his own word), not Porphyry. However, if (as Vander Waerdt accepts) the passage comes from Hermarchus' Against Empedocles, it cannot be echoing a specifically Stoic theory, since this work was written in the late fourth century, before the emergence of Stoicism (see F. Longo Auricchio, Ermarco, frammenti (1987) fr. 29 and p. 33). Cf. also the Epicurean Diogenes of Oenoanda's admission of ‘philanthropy’ as a motive (3 V Smith).

³⁴ The fact that Cassius in his letter (Cic., , Ad fam. 15.19.2–3Google Scholar) had described morality as the means to ‘pleasure and tranquillity’ might even be thought to confirm that he did not consider tranquillity itself the sole kind of pleasure obtainable by moral action. However, his main point, in context, is that ‘the things which the bad most seek and covet’ (viz. pleasure and ataraxia) are what the good actually obtain. Hence the pairing ‘pleasure and ataraxia’ is primarily dictated by the Epicurean thoughts (a) that everyone is seeking pleasure (Cic., , Fin. 1.29Google Scholar ff.), and (b) that those who seek fame and power do so in a (usually vain) quest for security (Epicurus, KD 7, Lucr. 5.1117–35). For a more subtle reading of this letter than mine, see Griffin, M., ‘Philosophical badinage in Cicero's letters to his friends’, in Powell, J. G. F. (ed.), Cicero the Philosopher (1995), 325–46Google Scholar.

³⁵ Anon., , In Plat. Tht. 4.17–23Google Scholar, probably written a few decades later: see text and commentary by Bastianini, G. and Sedley, D. in Corpus dei Papiri Greci e Latini III (1995)Google Scholar.

³⁶ Cic., , Fin. 5.15, 18, 22, 23, 30, 69, 82Google Scholar.

³⁷ Ep. 95.45.

³⁸ cf. Brutus, in Cic., , Ad Brut. 1.13.1Google Scholar, on his officium as an uncle.

³⁹ cf. Cicero, Academica 1.23, where the Old Academy is said to locate in ‘the things recommended by nature’ the principle of duty (officium).

⁴⁰ However, cf. Cic., , Fin. 4.46Google Scholar, where it is assumed that Epicureans, on the basis of their hedonism, can give a coherent account of their officia (= kathêkonta). Likewise at Off. 1.5–6, despite disputing the right of some philosophers to discourse on officia, Cicero nevertheless writes ‘atque haec quidem quaestio communis est omnium philosophorum: quis est enim qui nullis officii praeceptis tradendis philosophum se audeat dicere?’.

⁴¹ Tac., , Ann. 16.22Google Scholar, Plut., , Brut. 34.5, 7Google Scholar. See further, D. Babut, Plutarche et le Stoicisme (1969), 168–9; Geiger, J., ‘M. Favonius: three notes’, Rivista Storica dell' Antichità 4 (1974), 161–70Google Scholar, at 167–70; Moles, J., ‘“Honestius quam ambitiosius”: an exploration of the Cynic's attitude to moral corruption in his fellow men’, JHS 103 (1983), 103–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 121 n. 129; Griffin, M., ‘Le mouvement cynique et les Romains: attraction et répulsion’, in Goulet-Cazé, M.-O. and Goulet, R. (eds), Le Cynisme ancien et ses prolongements (1993), 241–58Google Scholar, at 244–6.

⁴² In calling civil war ‘worse’ than law-flouting monarchy, Favonius was not using the word in its strict Stoic sense, according to which only vice is ‘bad’ and troubles like civil war and tyranny are merely ‘dispreferred’ (ἀποπροηγμένα).

⁴³ For contemporary acknowledgement that classifying constitutions is a distinctively Platonist enterprise, see Cic., , Fin. 4.61Google Scholar. For Stoic non-appreciation of the Platonic classification, cf. Seneca, , Ben. 2.20.1–2Google Scholar, n. 53 below.

⁴⁴ See Div. 2.3 for Cicero's acknowledgement (of what is anyhow obvious) that the De republica itself draws on a Platonist/Aristotelian tradition.

⁴⁵ 302e2, 303a8, as well as 302e7 quoted above.

⁴⁶ Cic., , Fin. 5.16Google Scholar ff.

⁴⁷ Augustine, , CD 19.1–3Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ See esp. Brutus' letter to Atticus (Plut., , Brut. 29.9Google Scholar), whose authenticity is defended by Moles, op. cit. (n. 16, 1983), 763–7: ἣ γαρ νικήσας ἐλευθερώσειν τὸν Ρωμαίων δῆμον, ἤ δουλείας ἀποθανὼν ἀπαλλαγήσεσθαι. For Brutus on ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ see also Crawford, Dio Cassius 44.1.2, 19.2, 21.1 etc.; Plut., , Brut. 10.4, 29.6Google Scholar; Nicolaus Dam., Vit. Caes. 25 (ὑπὲρ κοινῆς ἐλευθερίας); Cic., , Ad Brut. 1.16.9 and 1.17.6Google Scholar (the latter with a possible reference to monarchia paranomos as well; regarding the authenticity of these two letters, see n. 59 below); and the libertas coinage issued by Brutus and Cassius in 43–42 B.C., in Crawford, M. H., Roman Republican Coinage (1974), no. 500.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Quoted by Quintilian 9.3.95.

⁵⁰ cf. Brunt, P. A., ‘Stoicism and the Principate’, PBSR 43 (1975), 7–35Google Scholar. DL 7.131, an isolated statement on the Stoics’ ‘best constitution’, has been thought to reflect Panaetius (cf. Cic., , Rep. 1.34Google Scholar). Cic., , Leg. 3.13–14Google Scholar confirms that, despite contributions by Diogenes of Babylon and Panaetius, Stoicism was not well known for non-utopian political theory (and even a text like SVF 3.611 does not suggest otherwise). A significant attempt to undo this picture has been made by A. Erskine, The Hellenistic Stoa (1990); for doubts about his thesis, see esp. Waerdt's, P. A. Vander review article, ‘Politics and philosophy in Stoicism’, OSAP 9(1991), 185–211Google Scholar.

⁵¹ Erskine, op. cit. (n. 50), ch. 2, does succeed in demonstrating that the Stoics recognized a second metaphorical sense of ‘slavery’, namely ‘subordination’ (see DL 7.121–2), which could in principle include political subordination. But I see no good evidence that any such usage played a serious role in their political thought.

⁵² Plut., , Cato minor 67.1–2Google Scholar.

⁵³ Sen., , Ben. 2.20.1–2Google Scholar. Seneca's philosophical objection as a Stoic is that Caesar's regime, being a monarchy, was at any rate halfway to the best regime, namely a just monarchy. This shows no appreciation of the Platonic ranking of constitutions in the Politicus, where a good monarchy is the best regime but a bad one the worst.

⁵⁴ On the entire tradition of Stoic suicide, see Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, Cato, and Roman suicide’, G&R 33 (1986), 64–77, 192–202Google Scholar. Thrasea's suicide, like Seneca's (Tac., , Ann. 15.64Google Scholar), recalled that of Cato (as well as Socrates' death) with his libation in blood to ‘Iovi liberatori’ (Tac., , Ann. 16.35Google Scholar) Ζεũ Ελευθέριε (Dio 62.26.4). The reference may, therefore, be as much to personal as to political freedom.

⁵⁵ cf. Schofield, M., The Stoic Idea of the City (1991), 46–56Google Scholar. The strongest exception to this claim may seem to be in Lucan, whose Cato in the Pharsalia is undoubtedly a champion of political libertas. However, although there may be much Stoicism in Lucan, I see no necessity to view his portrayal as exclusively representing Cato the Stoic, as distinct from Cato the great Roman. For well-founded doubts about the purity of Lucan's ‘Stoicism’ in other respects, see Colish, M. L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages: I, Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature (1985), 252–75Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ There may be some connection — but I cannot pursue the question here — between Brutus' Antiochean political outlook and his equally Antiochean cultivation of rhetorical eloquence, which Cicero explicitly contrasts, as being politically more effective, with Cato's uncompromising Stoic handling of rhetorical argument (Par. St. 1–2, cf. Brut. 332).

⁵⁷ Fin. 5.71, 81, Tusc. 5.22.

⁵⁸ For a valuable reconstruction of this work, see Hendrickson, G. L., ‘Brutus De virtute’, AJP 60 (1939), 401–13Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ This surely must be what he means by ‘neque usquam exsul esse possum, dum servire et pati contumelias peius odero malis omnibus aliis’: he cannot be an exile, wherever he may be, until (‘dum’: not ‘so long as’, as standardly translated here — otherwise he would indeed be open to Cassius' criticism in my opening quotation) the day when he hates enslavement and vilification more than all other evils. Against Bailey, D. R. Shackleton (Cicero's Epistulae ad Quintum Fratrem et Brutum (1980), 10–14Google Scholar), who argues for rejecting the letter as inauthentic along with 1.17 (on which cf. esp. 1.17.4–5), see Moles, op. cit. (n. 16, 1983), 765 n. 6, and now especially idem, ‘Plutarch, Brutus and Brutus’ Greek and Latin letters', in Mossman, J. (ed.), Plutarch and his Intellectual World (1997), 141–68Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ Cic., , Tusc. 5.107Google Scholar.

⁶¹ At all events, Brutus' position here must not be mistaken for a Stoic one. Seneca (Helv. 9.4) reports Brutus as saying that he had seen Marcellus ‘quantum modo natura hominis pateretur, beatissime viventem’. This makes it unambiguous that his superlative beatissime assumes variable degrees of happiness, an Antiochean but totally un-Stoic position.

⁶² Athenodorus, a Greek Stoic who lived through the late Republic and served Augustus in the early Principate, recommended abstention from political life (Sen., Tranq. 3), but this is a development which I cannot parallel among Roman Stoics of the late Republic.

⁶³ Esp. Plato, Laws 9.873c–d; Aristotle, EN 5.11. Cf. Griffin, op. cit. (n. 54), 70–1. As far as I know, Platonist (tentative) acknowledgement of morally honourable suicide starts much later: Plotinus, , Enn. 1.4.7–8, 1.9Google Scholar; Porphyry, , Abst. 4.18Google Scholar; Olympiodorus, In Plat. Phd. 8–9.

⁶⁴ Brut. 40.5–9.

⁶⁵ It has often been noted that at Brut. 40.7 οὐχ ὄσιον and ἀποδιδράσκειν echo the objections to suicide canvassed by Socrates at Plato, Phd. 61c–62c. (It is hard to decide whether this reflects Brutus', or Plutarch's, familiarity with Plato's text.) Whether Brutus considered his final change of heart justifiable from within his Platonist creed, or a move away from it, Plutarch leaves unclear, but the very special ad hoc pleading he puts into Brutus' mouth (that he effectively gave up his life on the Ides of March, and has been living on borrowed time since then) may suggest that he intends the former. Since Plutarch's dialogue here is no doubt fictional, we cannot know whether Brutus in fact offered any philosophical justification for his suicide. At all events, there is no hint in Plutarch or any other source that he underwent any sort of conversion to Stoicism; and among Romans honourable suicide was far from being an exclusively Stoic activity.

⁶⁶ Why should Brutus reject this Stoic redefinition of ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ while himself similarly redefining ‘exile’? The implication is that he does not object methodologically to the Stoic paradoxes, but to their actual content.

⁶⁷ See e.g. Cic., , off. 1.85–6Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Plut., , Brut. 40.7Google Scholar; followed by Shakespeare, Julius Caesar Act 5 Scene 1.

⁶⁹ See Crawford, op. cit. (n. 48), no. 433 1 and 2. Cf. also Cic., , Phil. 2.26Google Scholar.

⁷⁰ Index Academicorum 6.13 Dorandi.

⁷¹ See Düring, I., Chion of Heraclea: A Novel in Letters (1951).Google Scholar

⁷² Plut., Dion 1–2 and Synkrisis 2–4.

⁷³ Plut., , Brut. 12.1–2Google Scholar.