R. and P. = Ritter and Preller’s Historia Philosophiae ex fontium locis contexta.

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THE ACADEMICA OF CICERO.

INTRODUCTION.

I. Cicero as a Student of Philosophy and Man of
Letters: 90—­45 B.C.

It would seem that Cicero’s love for literature was inherited from his father, who, being of infirm health, lived constantly at Arpinum, and spent the greater part of his time in study.[1] From him was probably derived that strong love for the old Latin dramatic and epic poetry which his son throughout his writings displays.  He too, we may conjecture, led the young Cicero to feel the importance of a study of philosophy to serve as a corrective for the somewhat narrow rhetorical discipline of the time.[2]

Cicero’s first systematic lessons in philosophy were given him by the Epicurean Phaedrus, then at Rome because of the unsettled state of Athens, whose lectures he attended at a very early age, even before he had assumed the toga virilis.  The pupil seems to have been converted at once to the tenets of the master.[3] Phaedrus remained to the end of his life a friend of Cicero, who speaks warmly in praise of his teacher’s amiable disposition and refined style.  He is the only Epicurean, with, perhaps, the exception of Lucretius, whom the orator ever allows to possess any literary power.[4] Cicero soon abandoned Epicureanism, but his schoolfellow, T. Pomponius Atticus, received more lasting impressions from the teaching of Phaedrus.  It was probably at this period of their lives that Atticus and his friend became acquainted with Patro, who succeeded Zeno of Sidon as head of the Epicurean school.[5]

At this time (i.e. before 88 B.C.) Cicero also heard the lectures of Diodotus the Stoic, with whom he studied chiefly, though not exclusively, the art of dialectic.[6] This art, which Cicero deems so important to the orator that he calls it “abbreviated eloquence,” was then the monopoly of the Stoic school.  For some time Cicero spent all his days with Diodotus in the severest study, but he seems never to have been much attracted by the general Stoic teaching.  Still, the friendship between the two lasted till the death of Diodotus, who, according to a fashion set by the Roman Stoic circle of the time of Scipio and Laelius, became an inmate of Cicero’s house, where he died in B.C. 59, leaving his pupil heir to a not inconsiderable property.[7] He seems to have been one of the most accomplished men of his time, and Cicero’s feelings towards him were those of gratitude, esteem, and admiration.[8]