Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/753

 2. De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum Libri V.

A series of dialogues dedicated to M. Brutus, in which the opinions of the Grecian schools, especially of the Epicureans, the Stoics, and the Peripatetics, on the Supreme Good, that is, the finis, object, or end, towards which all our thoughts, desires, and actions are or ought to be directed,—the kernel, as it were, of practical wisdom,—are expounded, compared, and discussed. The style is throughout perspicuous and highly polished, the doctrines of the different sects are stated with accurate impartiality according to the representations contained in accredited authorities; but, from the abstruse nature of many of the points investigated, and the subtilty of the arguments by which the different positions are defended, this treatise must be regarded as the most difficult, while it is the most perfect and finished, of all the philosophical performances of Cicero.

These conversations are not supposed to have been all held at the same period, nor in the same place, nor between the same parties. They agree in this, that, after the fashion of Aristotle (ad Att. xiii. 19), the author throughout assumes the most prominent place, and that the rest of the actors, at least those to whom important parts are assigned, were dead at the time of publication—a precaution taken to avoid giving umbrage to living men by exciting jealousy in reference to the characters which they are respectively represented as supporting (azêlotupêton, id fore putram, ad Att. l. c.), but the time, the scene, and the performers are twice changed. In the third and fourth books they are different from those in the first and second, and in the fifth from those in any of the preceding.

The first book opens with an apology for the study of philosophy; after which Cicero relates, for the information of Brutus, a debate which took place at his Cumanum, in the presence of C. Valerius Triarius, between Cicero himself and L. Manlius Torquatus, who is represented as being praetor elect and just about to enter upon his office—a circumstance which fixes this imaginary colloquy to the close of the year в. с. 50, a date agreeing perfectly with the allusion (ii. 18) to the excessive power then wielded by Pompey. Cicero, being challenged by Torquatus to state his objections to the discipline of Epicurus, briefly impugns in general terms his system of physics, his imperfect logic, and, above all, the dogma that the Supreme Good is Pleasure, and the Supreme Evil, Pain. This elicits from Torquatus a lengthened explanation of the sentiments really entertained by Epicurus and the worthiest of his followers respecting hêdonê, sentiments which he contends had been misunderstood and misrepresented, but whose truth he undertakes to demonstrate in a series of propositions ; in opposition to which Cicero, in the second book, sets in array the reasonings by which the Stoics assailed the whole system. In the third book we find ourselves in the library of young Lucullus in his Tusculan villa, to which Cicero had repaired for the purpose of consulting a work of Aristotle, and there meets Cato, immersed in study and surrounded by the books of the Stoics. In this way a controversy arises, in which Cicero maintains, that there was no real discordance between the ethics of the Porch and those previously promulgated by the Old Academy and the Peripatetics ; that the differences were merely verbal, and that Zeno had no excuse for breaking off from Plato and Aristotle, and establishing a new school, which presented the same truths in a worse form. These assertions are vigorously combated by Cato, who argues, that the principles of his sect were essentially distinct, and descants with great energy on the superior purity and majesty of their ideas concerning the Supreme Good; in reply to which Cicero, in the fourth book, employs the weapons with which the New Academy attacked the Stoics. The second discourse is supposed to have been held in в. с. 52, for we find a reference (iv. 1) to the famous provision for limiting the length of speeches at tile bar contained in a law passed by Pompey against bribery in his second consulship, an enactment here spoken of as having recently come into force. This was the year also in which L. Lucullus the elder died and left his son under the guardianship of Cato.

In the fifth book we are carried hack to в. с. 79 and transported from Italy to Athens, where Cicero was at that time prosecuting his studies. [See above, p. 709, b.] The dramatis personae are Cicero himself, his brother Quintus, his cousin Lucius, Pomponius Atticus, and M. Pupius Piso. These friends having met in the Academia, the genius of the place calls up the recollection of the mighty spirits who had once trod that holy ground, and Piso, at the request of his companion, enters into a full exposition of the precepts inculcated by Aristotle and his successors on the Summum Bonum, the whole being wound up by a statement on the part of Cicero of the objections of the Stoics, and a reply from Piso. The reason which induced Cicero to carry this last dialogue back to his youthful days was the difficulty he experienced in finding a fitting advocate for the Peripatetic doctrines, which had made but little progress among his countrymen. M. Brutus and Terentius Varro were both alive, and therefore excluded by his plan; L. Lucullus, although dead, was not of sufficient weight to be introduced with propriety on such an occasion ; Piso alone remained, but in consequence of the quarrel between Cicero and himself arising out of his support of Clodius, it was necessary to choose an epoch when their friendship was as yet unshaken. (See Goerenz, introd. xix.) It will be observed that throughout, the author abstains entirely from pronouncing any judgment of his own. The opinions of the Epicureans are first distinctly explained, then follows the refutation by the Stoics ; the opinions of the Stoics are next explained, then follows the refutation by the New Academy; in the third place, the opinions of the Peripatetics are explained, then follows the refutation by the Stoics. In setting forth the opinions of Epicurus, in addition to the writings of that sage enumerated by Diogenes Laërtius, much use seems to have been made of his epistle to Menoeceus and his , and not unfrequently the very words of the original Greek have been literally translated ; while the lectures of Phaedrus and Zeno [see above, p. 709 ] would supply accurate information as to the changes and additions introduced by the successive disciples of the Garden after the death of their master. The Stoical refutation of Epicurus, in book second, was probably derived from Chrysippus  and from the writings and oral communications of Posidonius [see above, p. 709, b.]; the Stoical doctrines in book