In his discussion of decorum Cicero supposes that most people would agree to the general principle that in our speech, bodily deportment, and actions we should avoid giving offence to others. This is because we possess a sense of shame or verecundia. The particular details are very culture-specific: customs and conventions largely set the parameters of verecundia, and we do well to follow them. Cicero also admits that philosophical figures often flaunt established customs and conventions: he points to Socrates, who is justified in doing so owing to his great and godlike virtue, and the Cynics, who are not justified in doing so at all (1.148). He then sets out a bold thesis: ‘Indeed the reasoning of the Cynics must be rejected absolutely; for it is inimical to a sense of shame (verecundia), without which nothing can be upright (rectum), nothing honourable (honestum)’. For the Cynics, verecundia is not natural; hence we are justified in flaunting customs and conventions. Cicero develops a counter-argument against the Cynics: the source of shame or verecundia is indeed natural. I explore his argument for this thesis (which appears at 1.126ff.) and assess his critique of the Cynics.

The De re publica contains a sophisticated strain of reflection on the place of the honor motive in a good life, and in particular in the good life of public service. Cicero finds a way for a conscientious public servant to be interested in receiving honor while still directing his actions at the public good and that only. Further, he finds a use for merited honor and merited shame in the moral education of citizens and political leaders. The chapter argues that Cicero’s account of how honor motivates a person, both ordinarily and in the normative case, is fundamentally more similar to the views on honor put forward by the Hellenistic Stoics than it is to the tripartite model of psyche used by Plato in his Republic. As so often in De re publica, what we have is Platonism filtered through and modified by subsequent Stoic thought. But Cicero’s own experience in politics has also given stimulus to his reflections; and conversely, the philosophical position on honor that he develops in his writing becomes part of his self-representation as a public figure.

The role of third-party politeness, in the sense of (im)politeness that pertains not (primarily) to the face of the addressee but is aimed at the face of a third party, has not received much attention in politeness studies, but plays an important role in public interaction in the Late Roman Republic. Both in private letters, which often circulated in a wider circle, and in speeches we find courtesies to or critical remarks about ‘others’ that were clearly meant to be heard or read by the persons involved. As such, third-party politeness appears to have been one of the complicated ways in which the Roman elite maintained and shaped their social relations. After a brief discussion of the various forms of third-party politeness, three case studies, concerning Cicero’s relations with Vatinius, Appius and Dolabella, serve as a first exploration of the phenomenon. It turns out that third-party politeness can be used to fulfil the same interpersonal functions which were discussed by Hall (2009) with regard to addressee-oriented politeness, viz. affiliative politeness, politeness of respect and compensation for FTAs.