DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED: FICTION FORMING FACT IN CICERO'S DIALOGUES

Author(s): DAN HANCHEY

Source: The Classical Journal , Vol. 110, No. 1, Special issue on Cicero (October-November
2014), pp. 61-75
Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Inc. (CAMWS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5184/classicalj.110.1.0061

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED: FICTION FORMING FACT
IN CICERO’S DIALOGUES ∗

Abstract: This paper analyzes Cicero’s citations of the not-always-historical past in his theoretical
corpus. Examining both the Marian oak in the prologue of De Legibus and Cicero’s overall use
of historical references, I suggest that Cicero explicitly employs unhistorical (or at least not
certifiably true) exempla, with a view to the internal consistency of the dialogues’ fictional world.
By encouraging the reader’s acceptance of such fictional examples, Cicero establishes an
intersubjective and empathetic relationship with his audience. Ultimately, Cicero seeks to uphold
and use others to confirm his internal world as an alternative to the tense world of Roman politics.

I n the De Republica Cicero explains the importance of the past and memory:
when a society loses touch with the past through negligence and ultimately
through forgetfulness, the very identity of the community is threatened. 1 But
in the preface to De Legibus Cicero adds nuance to this idea, suggesting that the
way in which an author deals with the past is in part due to the spirit of the genre
in which he writes. 2 While a poet might put the past to one use, a historiographer
might put it to an entirely different one, based on his different goals and
circumstances. What makes this observation in the prologue of the De Legibus
particularly interesting is the implications it holds for the genre in which Cicero is
writing, especially in Ciceronian dialogues. This paper examines the question
through two complementary methods, first through the consideration of how
Cicero himself addresses the issue in the programmatic prologue of De Legibus,
and, secondly, by examining briefly Cicero’s own pattern of exempla-usage within

∗ Thanks go both to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments have helped clarify my

arguments, and to the audience at the meeting of CAMWS in April 2014 for their questions and
suggestions.
1
See Gowing (2005) 3. Cf. Rep. 5.1. On Cicero’s use of exempla and the past in Rep., see Asmis’
article in this volume.
2
For a survey of how historiographers developed their perspectives on the past, see Chaplin
(2000), esp. 6–11. Gowing (2005) discusses the importance of remembrance and the past across
many genres (9). For memory in poetry, see Seider (2013).
THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL 110.1 (2014) 61–75

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62 DAN HANCHEY

the dialogues. Both methods of inquiry reveal Cicero acknowledging the

fictionality of his version of the past, demonstrating both the literary self-
consciousness of the dialogues and their invitation to the reader to be complicit
in this self-awareness. I ultimately identify this complicity between writer and
reader with Husserl’s phenomenological concept of intersubjectivity and suggest
that Cicero aims to recreate the republic’s past in cooperation with his audience
as a blueprint for how to work in cooperation to reshape the republic’s present.
Though it is not always the aim of the historian to be accurate, the audience’s
expectation of accuracy or reliability typically differentiates history from a poem
or speech or any other genre. 3 At the same time, the “truth” of historiography
should not necessarily be held to a higher standard than the type of truth Cicero
generally pursued via his philosophical skepticism, viz. the plausible (probabile). 4
That is to say, for any Ciceronian interlocutor, the truth might, in a particular
situation, encompass not only that which was or is, but that which could have
been or could be. 5 The flexibility of the truth in ancient historiography in part led
to a tradition of historiography based on exemplarity. In contrast to a philosophy
of history that views the past and its conditions as distinct or unique, exemplary
history locates the particular value of the past in its relevance for the present.
Because of the basic continuity of the human experience (or at least the
experience of a given cultural group), the lessons of the past have specific bearing
on the situations of the present, by presenting past actors and their actions either
as comparanda or imitanda. Roller outlines the process of exemplarity in four
steps: (1) an actor performs an act before the public or an audience; (2) the
audience passes ethical judgment on the act; (3) a monument or text of some
sort commemorates the act; (4) the act is imitated (or avoided) by the audience
of the monument, often before an audience, with the result that steps (1) and (2)

3
Cf. De Or. 2.62. Marincola (1997) 225–36 discusses how elements not directly oriented
toward truth in Roman historiography did not violate the historian’s fundamental interest in
providing a truthful narrative. For an argument asserting the Roman historian’s basic interest in
truth, see Lendon (2009), contra Wiseman (1979) and Woodman (1988). Cf. Feldherr (2009) 7–
8. For more of Cicero’s perspective, see Leg. 1.5. On the De Or. passage, see Marincola (1997) 160–
2 (cf. Marincola (2009) 18–19) and Lendon (2009) 49–51 contra Wiseman (1981) 375–6 and
Woodman (1988).
4
Cicero summarizes the Academic position on truth and the plausible in Acad. 2.7–8. On
probabile, truth, and the veri simile, see Glucker (1995).
5
For the suggestion that historians viewed the past in the same way, as a core susceptible to
rhetorical elaboration, see e.g Wiseman (1979), (1981), and (1993) and Woodman (1988).

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 63

are reiterated in a new setting by an actor imitating the original actor. 6 Both act
and commemoration are necessary for the repetition of the cycle.
In the opening words of De Legibus, Cicero broaches the ideas of history and
exemplarity in the context of his role as author. The scene balances intimacy (set
in Cicero’s boyhood home, Arpinum, with his friend, Atticus, and brother,
Quintus) with a literary self-consciousness. As the proem of De Finibus 5 shows,
the relationship between place and experience often stimulates memory. 7
Cicero’s Atticus shows himself particularly susceptible to such stimulations in
that proem (Fin. 5.4). He seems to hope to make a similar connection in the
proem of De Legibus which features the “Marian oak,” a tree owing its reputation
to Cicero’s poem on the Roman general Marius. Having spotted a tree that he
believes to be that of Cicero’s poem, Atticus speaks first.
Quintus responds to the identity of the trees that Atticus proposes by
introducing a third tree. His statement problematizes the relationship between
the tree of the Marius and the real tree it was intended to signify, which, according
to Quintus, may or may not be growing in Arpinum. Quintus’ response to Atticus
hinges on Atticus’ query about whether or not the actual, signified tree was still
alive (si manet). Quintus responds that it does in fact live and always will
(manet...et semper manebit), though he has changed the subject of discussion to
the signifying tree of the poem. This tree, as the object of a “famous” poem, will
last forever, a monimentum aere perennius. Quintus, partly because of his own
interest in poetry, appeals to the trope of poetic immortality.8 The poetic survival
of the tree, he continues, will ensure that any oak growing in the spot in which the
interlocutors are standing will be identified with the original “Marian oak.”
Quintus thus implies the possible existence of at least three trees, the oak of the
poem, the original tree it once signified, and a third, actual tree, which has grown

6
Roller (2009) 216–17.
7
There is a sense in which this kind of association renders the space timeless or transtemporal.
On the association between time and space, as well as the distinction between place and space in
Roman considerations of the past, see Riggsby (2009).
8
The discussion of trees recalls both the plane tree of Plato’s Phaedrus and Cicero’s earlier De
Oratore (1.28), which itself recalls the Phaedrus with its own plane tree. Dyck (2004a) points out
that the De Or. focuses on the “growth” of the tree while Quintus is more concerned with the tree’s
“permanence” (60). On the similarities of setting between Plato’s Phaedrus and Leg., see Dyck
(2004a) 20–3 (who also discusses the influence of Plato’s Laws) and 57–60 passim. Cf. Eigler
(1996) 139 on the function of the tree as a symbol of an idealized past. Benardete (1987) connects
the oak to the theme of Socratic self-knowledge discussed by Cicero at the end of Leg. 1 (298).

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64 DAN HANCHEY

in a spot near to where the original tree stood. To complicate the discussion
further, the second tree is not actually crucial to Quintus’ argument. The
identification of an actual tree in modern Arpinum with the oak of the Marius
need not be predicated on an actual oak to which the oak of the Marius made
reference. That is, the “real” tree is authorized by the fictional one.
Atticus processes the implications of Quintus’ description quickly before
rephrasing his original question explicitly for Cicero. He wishes to know whether
Cicero in fact invented (literally “planted,” severint) the oak tree (Leg. 1.3). Not
surprisingly this leads to consideration of the truth-value of stories and how
assess that value. As befits his historical bent, Atticus persists in his concern over
the validity of a given story. Cicero, donning the role of poet, insists that the
poetry renders such concerns insignificant: the goal of history is veritas, while that
of poetry is delectatio. 9 In the wake of this description, the question of the “truth”
of the signifier oak in the poem goes unresolved.
Even more interesting is what remains unmentioned, namely the tree that
inspires Atticus’s question. Although that “tree” is itself a literary construct in this
dialogue, it serves as the touchstone for Atticus’ appeal to truth and is the one tree
that must be real, though it cannot be proved to be so. The connection between
genre and truth comes into play, as this dialogue either will view the past as
historical reality or create it, as poetry does. The closest we get to finding out
which is in the paragraphs that follow, when Cicero does not identify the genre of
the dialogue per se but explicitly tells Atticus that he cannot write history. He
simply does not have the time to do it justice, finding instead only “windows of
time” in which to write (subsciva tempora, 1.9). Such windows are insufficient for
historiography, but quite enough for the prolific writing of dialogues.
When considered alongside the preceding discussion of literary trees, this
confession hints strongly at the dialogue’s distinction from historiography, 10
perhaps placing it closer to poetry in its concern with “facts.” 11 While there were

9
For a consideration of the fictionality of poetic history, see Dyck (2004a) 65–6. Aristotle
distinguishes history from poetry by claiming the former speaks of things that have happened, the
latter of things that might happen (Poet. 1451b4–5). According to Benardete (1987), “de legibus is a
poem about law” (300).
10
Fleck (1993) tackles the difficult question of how Cicero did in fact function as a historian. In
other respects dialogues, like oratory, resemble historiography. Cicero’s Antonius introduces a
discussion on the relationship between history and oratory in De Or. (2.51). At stake in Antonius’
discussion is not truth so much as style. Cf. Leeman (1955) 188–90.
11
In one sense this poetic quality of dialogue is seen in Cicero’s willingness to be loose with
historical detail in the historical settings he creates. See Ad Quint. Fr. 3.5; Ad Att. 13.12, 13.

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 65

of course real trees in Arpinum, of all the possible trees proposed in the De
Legibus, none is explicitly real. Nevertheless, the effect of the exchange about trees
is to implant firmly in the reader’s mind a belief in a specific real tree in Arpinum.
This proem thus reaffirms the reality of the oak of the Marius through purely
literary devices. The discussion of the oak, as if it is the one signified, functions as
a means of legerdemain. Such literary adroitness directs the reader’s attention to
a set of questions about the tree’s identity, thus allowing the account presented to
serve as a reference point for “truth.”
The generic character of the dialogue becomes particularly important when
assessing the truth-value of Cicero’s characterizations and usage of exempla,
which themselves have the potential to function differently in the dialogues from
in Cicero’s speeches. This is the case because the speeches have the capacity to
make references that have two meanings. In the dialogues, most “historical”
references are ventriloquized through the mouths of the interlocutors, which
automatically places their historical value in question.12 The dialogue’s generic
affinity to poetry and the two-layered historical referentiality create a strong sense
of ambiguity regarding the role of “truth” for these exempla.
Cicero’s treatment of the oak demonstrates why it is difficult to map Roller’s
schema of exemplary history onto the dialogues, in which Cicero offers only a
smattering of historical detail due to the limits of subsciva tempora. These
dialogues operate primarily in Roller’s steps 3 (actor before audience) and 4
(actor imitating actor). They function equally well whether or not they are
appealing to actual events. The proem of De Legibus cautions its audience against
the assumption that cited examples have historical referents. Instead they rely on
an internal consistency emblematic of Cicero’s literary efforts in the dialogues.
Though he readily admits in his letters (and, implicitly, in many parts of the
dialogues) to the fictive nature of the dialogues themselves, these works maintain
an internal historical plausibility and are regularly used to reinforce the dialogues’
own accounts. Cicero sometimes even goes so far as to use characters from his
other dialogues as exempla.

12
In Bakhtin’s studies of dialogism in the novel (1981) he identified “voices” as a critical
medium through which communication happens (262–3). By “voices” he meant the idea that most
communication involves an unexpectedly high proportion of direct or indirect quotation of
another’s words, complicating the utterance and removing it from the isolated subjectivity of the
individual speaker. Cf. Gillespie and Cornish (2010) 34–5.

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66 DAN HANCHEY

On at least five different occasions within the De Legibus an interlocutor cites

Scipio as an exemplum based specifically on words attributed to him in De
Republica. 13 The characters within the De Legibus treat Scipio’s words in De
Republica as if they are historically valid.Thus, Quintus ribs Cicero for his loyalty
to Scipio (Leg. 3.37–38), citing negatively Scipio’s advocacy of the Cassian law. In
response, Cicero (qua interlocutor) defends Scipio by appealing to “Scipio’”s
discussion of the Cassian law in De Republica, and so blurs the lines between the
historical and the literary Scipio. This technique differs slightly from the one
Cicero uses in, e.g., De Finibus 2.59, where he cites certain words of Laelius in De
Republica, but qualifies them with the phrase in nostris libris. The references to
Scipio in De Legibus consistently and conspicuously leave out the nostris, with the
result that, as in the dialogue’s opening discussion of the oak tree, Cicero never
has to rely on himself as the authority. 14 The text itself is sufficient to authorize.
This is not to say that Cicero’s own authority was not at stake in lending weight
to his dialogues. When he identifies a Cotta in De Oratore or a Rutilius in De
Republica as his “source” for the details of the dramatized dialogue, he reveals the
importance of the chain of information. These chains represent efforts to ensure
historical plausibility by relying on genuine historical relationships that precede
the texts. But even these types of source chains are subject to the dialogues’
patent literary fictions. 15 In the first place, by using these relationships to
introduce fictional conversations Cicero undercuts their reliability as non-textual,
historical realities. Secondly, by repeating relationships in multiple contexts,
Cicero transposes those relationships from historical realities to components of a
constructed literary milieu. Cotta can again serve as an example. In the proem of
De Oratore Cicero identifies Cotta as his source for the conversation, since he
himself, a fifteen-year-old at the dramatic date of the dialogue, could not have
attended a gathering of such eminent figures. Cicero’s relationship with Cotta is
then revisited in De Natura Deorum, where both men appear as interlocutors. The
conversation there lends weight to the idea of their relationship, and hence to the
suggestion that Cotta could have reported the De Oratore to Cicero. One text
thereby begins to authorize another. But it is noteworthy that the explicitly
fictional part of the authorizing text, that is, the dialogue itself, is used to authorize
the less obviously fictionalized portion of the authorized text, namely its proem.

13
Scipio: Leg. 1.20, 1.27, 2.23, 3.12, 3.38.
14
In illis de re publica libris or simply in illis libris.
15
Ad Quint. Fr. 3.5.2.

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 67

Cicero consistently uses these sorts of interrelationships between dialogues with

results similar to his use of the Marian oak. The texts within this circle authorize
one another and their correspondence to historical realities becomes secondary
to their internal consistency. This pattern, foregrounded in De Legibus, cautions
that exempla and historical detail in the dialogues cannot be relied upon to have
historical realities as their foundation. While they might accurately report the
past, they do not rely on an accurate account for their authority. 16
If Cicero’s exempla in the dialogues are not concerned primarily with
historiography’s accuracy, then perhaps they might be better identified with
oratory’s interest in persuasion. In the Orator Cicero claims that, like philosophy
or civil law, history lends delight, authority, and trustworthiness to an orator’s
account, and leads the orator ultimately to identify correctly the specific causa at
stake in his case. The orator’s fundamental aim is to persuade his audience, and
the knowledge of the past both helps him to find the arguable core of a case and
makes his audience sympathetic and pliable. In the undelivered second actio of
Cicero’s case against Verres, Cicero elaborates further: exempla acquire
their persuasive force both from the authority to which they appeal and
the pleasure which they offer the listener (haec enim plurimum solent et
auctoritatis habere ad probandum et iucunditatis ad audiendum; Verr.
2.3.209). The authority of an exemplum resides both in the precedent the
example supplies and the significance of the figure to whom the example appeals.
Further, the pairing of an authoritative actor with an authoritative action only
increases the exemplum’s impact. The fact that an audience takes pleasure in
hearing about past events supports the orator’s exempla even more.
Van der Blom analyzes how Cicero employs exempla in practice, identifying
five different types of exempla in Ciceronian oratory: the exemplum aimed at
persuasion through legitimation, the persuasive exemplum based on aesthetic

16
Fox (2007) and Asmis (this volume) draw similar conclusions from the interchange between
Laelius and Scipio in De Republica 2, wherein Scipio claims to base his understanding of ideal
constitutions on Roman history, but where Laelius also questions the historical accuracy of Scipio’s
narrative (62–8). Fox points to Cicero’s use of “irony about the possibility of anchoring
transcendence in factual account” (66) and suggests that Cicero “is exposing the fictional quality of
his dialogue structure” (62). For Fox these kinds of ironies ultimately argue against dogmatic
readings of the dialogues (67–8). Asmis examines the same passage, concluding that Cicero’s irony
leads to the mythologizing of Scipio’s account of history and paves the way for the somnium at the
treatise’s conclusion as an exhortation to virtue as the means of redemption for the republic.

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68 DAN HANCHEY

appeal, the moral-didactic exemplum (which could also be aimed at persuading

the audience to future action), the consolatory exemplum, and the legal
precedent.17 The first four of these she identifies as historical exempla, each of
which could be manipulated according to the speaker’s need. The general goal of
these exempla was to use the past to influence the present and future, by
encouraging either continuity or distinction from the past. 18
Many of the goals in Cicero’s dialogues resemble those of oratory.19 In
particular, dialogues such as De Natura Deorum or the paired speeches of De
Finibus 1–2 and De Finibus 3–4 balance arguments in utramque partem, and rely
upon rhetoric to advance them. These dialogues have at stake not only the
accurate representation of a position, but their effort to demonstrate its
plausibility to others. This method lay at the core particularly of Academic
epistemology, and induced Philo to make rhetorical training a part of his
recommended curriculum for other skeptics (such as Cicero himself).20 Other
dialogues do not have the same balance in social status among interlocutors as De
Natura Deorum and De Finibus; instead they feature privileged interlocutors (a
Crassus in De Oratore, a Laelius in De Amicitia, etc.) whose audiences are
generally predisposed to accept their opinions. Even so, it is the fundamental
dramatic conceit of these dialogues that these privileged interlocutors, despite
the persuasive advantage lent them by their social standing, are asked to make
arguments to persuade their audience, arguments buttressed but by no means
clinched by the speakers’ status. 21 The individual interlocutor in various
dialogues therefore has goals that closely parallel those of the orator, and so his
exempla might likewise be expected to aim at similar ends. Cicero’s exempla in the

17
Van der Blom (2010) 66–7.
18
Van der Blom (2010) 67–72.
19
The overlap is particularly pronounced in the parallel usage of inventio by both the philosopher
and the orator. Aristotle, in the introductions to his Rhetoric and Topics, first identified this
similarity, but proceeded to divide the two disciplines of rhetoric and philosophy according to the
former’s use of inventio in the consideration of hypotheses and the latter’s interest in theses (see
Quint., Inst. Orat. 3.5.5). Even this distinction was later challenged by Hermagoras, who allowed the
orator to consider theses, and Philo, who saw the value of hypotheses for the philosopher. See Brittain
(2001) 332–42. Cicero via Crassus in De Or. (3.104–25) emphasizes the fundamental
interdependence of the disciplines. On the merging of philosophy and rhetoric in De Or., see May
and Wisse (2001) 20–6 and, on hypotheses and theses in the same work, Wisse (2002) 394–7 Cf.
Hanchey (2013b) on the overlap of philosophical and rhetorical inventio in Cicero’s first Tusculan.
20
On rhetoric in the New Academy, see Brittain (2001) 296–344.
21
See, e.g., Sulpicius’ persistent questioning of Crassus in De Or. 1.98.

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 69

dialogues are too numerous to consider in toto. Rather, let us consider a few of his
more common choices, beginning with the über-example, M. Porcius Cato,
whose cited authority and integrity made him a touchstone for discussions of
republican mos maiorum. Cicero appeals to Cato’s example on more than forty
occasions in the dialogues outside of the dialogue in which he appears as
interlocutor (De Senectute), making him among the most named figures. At De
Oratore 2.271 Cicero even directly addresses Cato’s value as a source of
exemplary actions and sayings.
A typical example of Cato’s function in the dialogues comes in the opening
words of the second book of De Republica. Scipio claims he wishes to start the
discussion by considering Cato’s regard for the Roman constitution. He was,
Scipio continues, a man estimable both in experience and speech. For Cato, the
Roman constitution, as a product of the input of many citizens, surpassed any
Greek forebear. Many of the hallmarks of rhetorical exempla are present: Scipio is
speaking, and his personal connection to Cato both adds authority to his account
and provides pleasure. Further, Scipio is a worthy example in his own right, and
he had chosen Cato as an example; the pleasure of the example is increased by
the fact that it celebrates Roman activity at the expense of Greek activity; and,
more generally, Scipio cites Cato’s political experience and thereby encourages
others to commit to similar experiences in public life. Cato is all the more
germane because of his own experience as a historian, a fact that lends at least an
air of plausibility to his cited words. In Scipio’s mouth Cato closely fits the mold
of an orator’s exemplum. But other Ciceronian interlocutors treat Cato
differently.
Early in De Legibus (1.6) Atticus lists Cato among those historians whose style
lacked flourish and rhetorical ornaments. 22 Atticus’ appraisal directly contradicts
Scipio, who had both admired and sought to imitate Cato’s style. The
discrepancy is easily explainable: first, Scipio could be thinking of Cato’s speech,
while Atticus has in mind Cato’s writings. Additionally, the aesthetics of Roman
rhetorical style had evolved considerably between Scipio and Atticus, such that
Scipio’s judgment could be reasonable in the last third of the second century,
while Atticus’ would befit the mid-first century. But the discrepancies continue
elsewhere. 23 In the Brutus, Cicero as interlocutor admits to certain flaws in Cato’s

22
On the influence of the historian Cato on Cicero, see Fleck (1993) 109–15.
23
Cicero quips on Cato’s style some eight times in the dialogues (Leg. 1.6; Rep. 2.1; De Or. 2.51,
2.53, 3.135; Brutus 68, 293, 298).

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70 DAN HANCHEY

style, attributing them to the limitations of his age (68, 298), while Atticus
criticizes Cato more generally (293). At De Oratore 2.51–53 Antonius cites Cato
as an unornamented and dry annalist, while Crassus, like Cicero, defends Cato
based on his time period (De Oratore 3.135). In De Legibus, Cicero appears to
employ these passages to confront a contemporary criticism of Cato (voiced by
Atticus and Antonius) and to justify thinking of him as a straightforward
exemplar seen in De Republica 2.1. This kind of defense is important for Cicero’s
self-formulation. As a successful new man committed to excellence in several
different fields of Roman aristocratic activity, including writing, Cato provided
both a personal exemplum and a worthy comparandum for Cicero. 24 An ideal Cato
paves the way for an ideal Cicero.
At the same time, the sum of these exempla places disproportionate emphasis
on Cato as a prose stylist. In her study of exempla in Livy, Chaplin considers
repetition of the same exemplum, distinguishing between the effects of each
individual use on the given internal audience and the cumulative effect of the
repeated example on the external audience. 25 She notes how the Romans evolved
in their use of the example of Cannae, while the Carthaginians failed to do so, to
their peril. Only an external audience can understand such consequences. Cicero
does something similar but, rather than repeating an example such as Cannae,
Cicero chooses topics such as Cato’s prose style. By repeating the talking points
on Cato’s style across several dialogues Cicero begins to mold a new version of
Cato, whose identity can be recovered not in the historical record, but in the
dialogues. Cicero influences Cato as much as Cato might influence another. The
same is true of Cato qua historian. Cicero specifically mentions Cato’s Origines
on nine different occasions. 26 In five of those instances, he cites a specific episode
from the work, but only two different episodes are mentioned, one used twice,
another thrice.27 Not surprisingly, perhaps, such repetition conveys a hackneyed
quality, for the very redundancy gives these examples the feel of stock material.
Such ingredients, even if easily recognizable, can nevertheless border on cliché.
This pattern of repetition is by no means limited to Cato. Another of Cicero’s
preferred exempla is Scipio Aemilianus, who like Cato appears dozens of times as
an example in the dialogues outside of his role as a speaker. Many times he is

24
Dugan (2005) 11 and passim.
25
Chaplin (2000) 50–72.
26
Tusc. 1.3, 4.3; Brut. 66, 75, 89, 293; De Or. 1.227, 2.51, 2.53.
27
Tusc. 1.3, 4.3; Brut. 75, 89; De Or. 1.227. The first three instances relate a story of a flute being
passed at a banquet, the latter two refer to the prosecution of Galba.

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 71

simply adduced for his exemplary statesmanship.28 But Cicero also reinforces this
general exemplarity with a set of specific modes of characterization Five times
Scipio serves as an example of an aristocrat with an interest in philosophy. 29 Six
times he is invoked for his oratorical skill. 30 Three times he appears as a successful
general.31 Each of these traits conforms to Cicero’s standards of the mos maiorum,
though as with Cato, they are not traits that would necessarily be associated with
Scipio generally. Cicero uses three specific pieces of data to establish Scipio’s
philosophical interests: his association with Panaetius first and foremost, his
affinity for Xenophon, and his attendance of the philosophers’ speeches during
the embassy of 155. 32 Each time Cicero brings up Scipio’s association with
philosophy, he contextualizes it with Scipio’s fundamentally exemplary
statesmanship, which serves as proof of the appropriateness of the Roman
aristocrat’s philosophical pursuits.
Cicero discusses Scipio’s oratory in similar terms: he is repeatedly praised for
his skill as an orator, with particular attention to his style and Latinity. 33 But these
references are contextualized by Antonius’ explanation in De Oratore 1.211 that
Scipio, like his friend Laelius, was a statesman who happened to speak well, rather
than an orator who served as a statesman. Scipio is first recognized as exemplary,
after which his approval of philosophy and oratory can serve as an example to
others. Implicit in Scipio’s practice of both philosophy and oratory is the claim
that he lived in a formative age, when moral standards were still being developed.
This implication creates a divide that is more than chronological. Despite the fact
that Scipio had lived only a century earlier, after the first two Punic Wars and
several generations of exemplary Romans, Cicero has imbued Scipio with the
status of a lawgiver or founder. 34 He lived when decisions could still be reached
about what behaviors best suited the Romans. While appealing to Scipio’s
historical example Cicero de-historicizes him, replacing chronology with an
ideological then and now. The shift from chronology to ideology allows Cicero
again to forge an identity between the exemplum, excellent statesmen generally

28
De Or. 1.211, 2.341, 3.56, 3.87; Fin. 5.70; Nat. D. 2.165; Leg. 1.20.
29
De Or. 2.154; Acad. 2.5; Tusc. 1.81, 2.62; Fin. 4.23.
30
De Or. 1.255, 2.106, 3.28; Brut. 80–5, 258; Tusc. 1.5.
31
Tusc. 2.62, 4.50; Fin. 5.70.
32
See n. 29 above.
33
Especially in Brut. 80–5 and De Or. 1.255.
34
Cf. the mythologization and essentialization addressed by Asmis (this volume).

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72 DAN HANCHEY

and, ultimately, himself, just as he has done with Cato. The ideal Roman of the
past looks a lot like the Cicero of the present. This connection could be harder to
uphold on the subject of Scipio’s military activity, a major component of the
historical Scipio’s life and a key distinction between Scipio and Cicero. But
Cicero only mentions this activity three times. 35 Each time he is presented not as
an example of a military commander per se, but as an individual who found
philosophical fulfillment even in the midst of his military affairs. Scipio’s military
action is ancillary to his virtuous (or, in Fin. 5.70, pleasurable) life.
Nothing in Cicero’s use of Scipio as an exemplum is unexpected, from the
manipulation of historical detail to the identification of Scipio’s priorities with
Cicero’s own to the use of Scipio as a touchstone for the mos maiorum. In each
instance, one interlocutor is attempting to persuade another by citing Scipio’s
positive example, often in the moral-didactic tradition of rhetorical exempla. But
as a whole the picture these exempla paint is peculiar. Because each exemplum
occurs in a literary context and is part of a repeated pattern emphasizing select
traits of Scipio, the single instances of exempla result in a consistent and well-
defined caricature of Scipio that takes on a life unique to the dialogues. 36 This
effect is a bit different from that seen in Livy’s repeated use of the Cannae
exemplum, in large part because topics such as Cato’s prose style and Scipio’s
philosophical pursuits are hardly touchstones of the past like Cannae. As with
Cato or even the Marian oak, the dialogues’ representations of figures from the
past consistently reinforce themselves. Accordingly, while internally within a
dialogue an individual exemplum functions like a rhetorical exemplum and aims in
the first instance to persuade, the collection and pattern of exempla contribute
further to the consistency and self-referentiality of the dialogues’ internal
universe. 37 When faced with such repeated examples, the reader of the dialogues
becomes progressively aware that he or she is being presented with a
caricaturized version of an historical figure that belongs to Cicero’s literary world.
With each use of an exemplum such as Scipio then the dialogues make less of an
appeal to the historical Scipio and more of one to Cicero’s Scipio. This effect
mirrors the way in which the interlocutors of De Legibus consistently cite the

35
See n. 31 above.
36
On the historical Scipio, see Astin (1967), who paints a very different picture than that painted
by Cicero.
37
So compelling is this internal universe that it led to one of the most prominent fallacies of 20th
century Roman scholarship, the Scipionic circle. On the fallacy of this construct, see Strasburger
(1966) and Zetzel (1972).

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 73

example of Scipio from De Republica. Cicero’s use of repeated and stock exempla
ensures that many of his exempla operate on the level of caricature and may be
accepted for the literary devices they are.
Cicero forges a kind of cooperation between himself, the literary world he
constructs, and his reader’s expectations, a cooperation identifiable with the
phenomenological/sociological concept of intersubjectivity developed by
Husserl, and elaborated in competing ways in discourse studies by Heidegger
and Habermas. 38 Intersubjectivity in the wake of Husserl is not always clearly
defined, 39 but it consists in general of empathy between subjects. 40 In a positive
sense it involves one subject, relying on a common set of cultural and
communicative principles (Husserl’s “lifeworld,” Lebenswelt), communicating
clearly and effectively with another subject, with each subject understanding one
another and one another’s perspective in large part because of their shared
Lebenswelt.41 Butte encapsulates this positive sense of what he calls “deep
intersubjectivity” in literary contexts with the phrase “I know that you know that I
know.” 42 One subject does not merely make assumptions about another, but
establishes agreement through actions so that each can recognize their
intersubjectivity. In his dialogues Cicero self-consciously uses stock exempla; his
audience can perceive them as such; and Cicero is aware that they are so
perceived, never requiring for them to pass as anything other, as the excursus on

38
Husserl (1988). The work of Heidegger (1962) and Habermas (1990) has advanced the
work of Husserl on intersubjectivity in competing ways, with Heidegger emphasizing
intersubjectivity as a reaction to a presupposed world, and Habermas suggesting that
intersubjectivity constitutes an objective world.
39
Confusion over intersubjectivity can in part be traced to various appropriations of the term in
various capacities within the disciplines of sociology, psychology, and philosophy. But as
mentioned in the previous note, even within philosophical/phenomenological studies, a line has
been drawn between the work of Habermas (1990) and the work of Heidegger (1962), the former
of whom, as Kompridis (2006) summarizes, “is committed to defending the priority of validity to
meaning (truth to disclosure)” in intersubjective relations, while the latter was committed to “the
priority of meaning to validity (disclosure to truth)” (46).
40
Husserl (1988). Gillespie and Cornish (2010) offer perhaps the most basic and
encompassing definition of intersubjectivity as “the variety of relations between perspectives” (19).
41
Husserl (1970); for Habermas (1990), the shared circumstances of the subjects connote an
objectivity to their experiential world.
42
Butte (2004) draws his inspiration for the complex multipart interchange of deep
intersubjectivity from the idea of Merleau-Ponty’s chiasm (5–7).

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74 DAN HANCHEY

the Marian oak suggests. 43 In this self-conscious use of exempla in which he

makes his readers complicit in the literary fictionality of his dialogues Cicero
develops the dialogues’ world as a viable alternative Roman experience, 44 thereby
implicitly bringing into question the notion that the volatile conditions of the late
republic are objectively real and inevitable. He invites his readers to be complicit
in his reconstruction of the past so that his constructed reality may avoid the
potential irrelevancy of solipsism. 45 As Kompridis explains, “any reflective
redisclosure of the world depends on intersubjective accountability and
recognition—on cooperatively achieved freedom and acknowledged mutual
dependence.” 46 Cicero’s past, ratified by the intersubjectivity forged with his
audience, offers hope for a new present; 47 that hope is perhaps an ideal, but one
that Cicero believes is achievable.
This pattern of caricaturizing historical figures holds too for minor exempla. M.
Pupius Piso Frugi makes three appearances in the dialogues, and in all three he is
mentioned specifically for his interest in Peripatetic philosophy and
philosophical nomenclature. S. Sulpicius Rufus appears twice, both times in
reference to his role in the civil strife of the late 90s/early 80s (cf. the proem of De
Oratore 3). Antonius is only mentioned twice outside of the Brutus, and both
instances focus on his emotional oratory. All of these exempla are further
reinforced by reference to the characterization of these individuals when they
operate as interlocutors within certain dialogues.
The pattern of exemplarity that Cicero consistently deploys and the doubt it
casts on the technical veracity of his examples does not make his exempla any less

43
The self-awareness of De Legibus is further confirmed in 1.15, when Atticus encourages Cicero
to write a treatise on laws as a companion to his treatise on the state. As so often, Cicero blurs lines
between written and spoken discussions (cf. Benardete (1987) 300–1, who connects this
ambiguity in Leg. both to Plato’s Phaedrus and the legal differentiation between lex and ius civile).
44
Asmis (this volume) considers a specific instance of self-aware fiction, the myth of the
founders in Rep. 2, and how this fiction prepares the way for how to read the fiction of Scipio’s
dream.
45
Connolly (2007) argues that Cicero’s ideal world of virtue can only come into being via
communal interaction: “The subjects in the interdiscursive relationship are not always already
there in the first place, at least not as fully virtuous subjects; it is precisely the moment of encounter
that produces virtue. What was there before… is a potentiality that becomes an identifiably good
self only in the process of contact with other human beings” (144).
46
Kompridis (2006) 48.
47
Gowing (2005) describes a similar phenomenon as a sort of “‘surrogate’ memory.” Such
memories “become part of the individual’s experience and understanding of the past, and, to the
extent that such memories are shared, part of the culture’s ‘collective’ memory” (10).

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 DAYS OF FUTURE PASSED 75

effective than those of other genres. For, in one sense, the dialogues’ exempla
recall for the present audience the events and figures of the past in the manner of
history; and, as with oratory, they are in part used to persuade or even improve
their audiences. 48 But the dialogues’ exempla also co-opt significant figures from
republican history and deploy them to create a self-contained literary circle
within the dialogues, a fictional para-reality, that authorizes itself and can function
independently or even in parallel to the fraught world of the late republic. 49 They
then take the process a step farther when they admit to their awareness of this
independence from reality, particularly in passages such as those discussing the
Marian oak or those in which lines between fictional dialogue characters and
their historical referents are conspicuously blurred. They are self-aware and they
allow the audience into this awareness. Such awareness is not mere nostalgia for
days of a future that passed, but rather a palpable intersubjectivity between
author and audience, one that invites readers to share Cicero’s perspective on the
past and the republic. Just as the dialogues themselves rely on social communities
rather than single voices to express their ideas, so Cicero offers his readers not so
much an accurate picture of the past as a plausible alternative model of Roman
life and community that they can adopt. When the prevailing contemporary
realities have become too undesirable Cicero proposes an alternative that is
viable and achievable if taken to heart and invites his audience to understand and
participate in his proposal. That complicity is the first step towards his goal of a
renewed republican community.
DAN HANCHEY
Baylor University, Dan_Hanchey@baylor.edu

48
Asmis (this volume) shows convincingly how Cicero can manipulate and mythologize history
in service to an exhortation to virtue.
49
The co-opting and reconstructing of history itself is of course not alien to any literary genre,
and is in fact crucial to the development of aristocratic identity in republican literature. As Habinek
(1998) argues, the mos maiorum involves hardly anything else (53). “Latin literature of the early
classical period both participates in the invention of tradition and makes itself part of the tradition
that is being invented. In this way it secures for itself a permanent role as an agent of aristocratic
acculturation” (54).

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