1) Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC; sometimes anglicized
as Tully), was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, orator, political
theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal
family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists. He
introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy and
created a Latin philosophical vocabulary (with neologisms such as humanitas, qualitas, quantitas, and essentia).
Though he was an impressive orator and successful lawyer, Cicero
thought his political career was his most important achievement.
Oratory was considered a great art in ancient Rome
and an important tool for disseminating knowledge and promoting oneself
in elections, in part because there were no regular newspapers or mass
media at the time. Cicero was neither a patrician nor a plebeian noble;
his rise to political office despite his relatively humble origins has
traditionally been attributed to his brilliance as an orator.
His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture.
During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government.
Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite. Cicero looked back to the great Greek thinkers as one deeply conscious of his debt to them and yet aware of distinctive Roman ways and the general Roman resistance to any dependence on the Greeks. As a very public man in his actions as well as his writings he had to walk a careful line between his wanting to share his convictions of the primacy of the thinking of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and the requisite manifestations of his genuine Roman patriotism. He considered Plato as the first among all philosophers, Aristotle second. It seems that he directly engaged a number of Aristotle’s texts, but he also knew Aristotelian thinking through the representatives in his day of the Peripatetic school of philosophy which Aristotle had founded. Centuries later Dante would look back on Cicero as Rome’s “best Aristotelian.”. Cicero, however, affiliated himself quite explicitly, not with the Peripatetics, nor with the Stoics as is sometimes thought. Rather, he considered himself a Socratic and thus belonging, in his day, to the school of Academic skepticism. In Socrates Cicero found the beginnings of an approach to philosophy that attracted him and that he famously captured in his observation that “Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from heaven and set her in cities and even to bring her into households and compel her to inquire about human life and customs as well as matters good and evil."
Cicero started his career as a lawyer around 83-81 BC. His first major case, of which a written record is still extant, was his 80 BC defense of Sextus Roscius on the charge of patricide. Taking this case was a courageous move for Cicero; patricide was considered an appalling crime, and the people whom Cicero accused of the murder, the most notorious being Chrysogonus, were favorites of Sulla. At this time it would have been easy for Sulla to have the unknown Cicero murdered.
Cicero married Terentia probably at the age of 27, in 79 BC. According to the upper class mores of the day it was a marriage of convenience, but endured harmoniously for some 30 years.
Although his marriage to Terentia was one of convenience, it is commonly known that Cicero held great love for his daughter Tullia. When she suddenly became ill in February 45 BC and died after having seemingly recovered from giving birth to a son in January, Cicero was stunned. "I have lost the one thing that bound me to life" he wrote to Atticus. Atticus told him to come for a visit during the first weeks of his bereavement, so that he could comfort him when his pain was at its greatest. In Atticus's large library, Cicero read everything that the Greek philosophers had written about overcoming grief, "but my sorrow defeats all consolation."
His first office was as one of the twenty annual Quaestors, a training post for serious public administration in a diversity of areas, but with a traditional emphasis on administration and rigorous accounting of public monies under the guidance of a senior magistrate or provincial commander. Cicero served as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BC and demonstrated honesty and integrity in his dealings with the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, he was able to successfully ascend the Roman cursus honorum, holding each magistracy at or near the youngest possible age: quaestor in 75 (age 31), aedile in 69 (age 37), and praetor in 66 (age 40), where he served as president of the "Reclamation" (or extortion) Court. He was then elected consul at age 43
Cicero was elected Consul for the year 63 BC. His co-consul for the year, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, played a minor role. During his year in office, he thwarted a conspiracy centred on assassinating him and overthrowing the Roman Republic with the help of foreign armed forces, led by Lucius Sergius Catilina. Cicero procured a Senatus Consultum de Re Publica Defendenda (a declaration of martial law) and drove Catiline from the city with four vehement speeches (the Catiline Orations), which to this day remain outstanding examples of his rhetorical style. The opening remarks are still widely remembered and used after 2,000 years:
The Orations listed Catiline and his followers' debaucheries, and denounced Catiline's senatorial sympathizers as roguish and dissolute debtors clinging to Catiline as a final and desperate hope.
In 58 BC, Publius Clodius Pulcher, the tribune of the plebs, introduced a law (the Leges Clodiae) threatening exile to anyone who executed a Roman citizen without a trial. Cicero, having executed members of the Catiline conspiracy four years previously without formal trial, and having had a public falling out with Clodius, was clearly the intended target of the law. Cicero argued that the senatus consultum ultimum indemnified him from punishment, and he attempted to gain the support of the senators and consuls, especially of Pompey. When help was not forthcoming, he went into exile. He arrived at Thessalonica, Greece, on May 23, 58 BC.Cicero's exile caused him to fall into depression.After the intervention of recently elected tribune Titus Annius Milo, the senate voted in favor of recalling Cicero from exile. Clodius cast a single vote against the decree. Cicero returned to Italy on August 5, 57 BC.
Cicero became a popular leader during the period of instability following the assassination of Caesar. He had no respect for Mark Antony, who was scheming to take revenge upon Caesar's murderers. In exchange for amnesty for the assassins, he arranged for the Senate to agree not to declare Caesar to have been a tyrant, which allowed the Caesarians to have lawful support. But Cicero’s plan to drive out Antony failed. Antony and Octavian reconciled and allied with Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate after the successive battles of Forum Gallorum and Mutina. The Triumvirate began proscribing their enemies and potential rivals immediately after legislating the alliance into official existence for a term of five years with consular imperium. Cicero and all of his contacts and supporters were numbered among the enemies of the state.
Cicero's last words are said to have been, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." He bowed to his captors, leaning his head out of the litter in a gladiatorial gesture to ease the task. By baring his neck and throat to the soldiers, he was indicating that he wouldn't resist. According to Plutarch, Herennius (a centurion) first slew him, then cut off his head. On Antony's instructions his hands, which had penned the Philippics against Antony, were cut off as well; these were nailed and displayed along with his head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum.
Cicero's son, Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor, during his year as a consul in 30 BC, avenged his father's death, to a certain extent, when he announced to the Senate Mark Antony's naval defeat at Actium in 31 BC by Octavian and the capable commander-in-chief of his, Agrippa (Agrippa was as responsible for most of Octavian’s military victories, most notably winning the naval Battle of Actium)
De Oratore, a dialogue written by Cicero, is an exposition of issues, techniques, and divisions in rhetoric; it is also a parade of examples for several of them and it makes continuous references to philosophical concepts to be merged for a perfect result.
De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations) is an essay by Cicero divided into three books, in which Cicero expounds his conception of the best way to live, behave, and observe moral obligations. The work's legacy is profound. Although not a Christian work, St. Ambrose in 390 declared it legitimate for the Church to use (along with everything else Cicero, and the equally popular Roman philosopher Seneca, had written). It became the moral authority during the Middle Ages. Of the Church Fathers, Saint Augustine, St. Jerome and even more so St. Thomas Aquinas, are known to have been familiar with it. Illustrating its importance, some 700 handwritten copies remain extant in libraries around the world dating back to before the invention of the printing press. In the 16th century, Erasmus developed a pocket version of it, since he thought it so important that one should always be able to keep it at hand. It continues to be one of the most popular of Cicero's works because of its style, and because of its depiction of Roman political life under the Republic.
Cicero was declared a “righteous pagan” by the early Catholic Church, and therefore many of his works were deemed worthy of preservation. Subsequent Roman writers quoted liberally from his works "De re publica" (On The Republic) and "De Legibus" (On The Laws), and much of his work has been recreated from these surviving fragments.
Medieval philosophers were influenced by Cicero's writings on natural law and innate rights. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance
While Cicero the humanist deeply influenced the culture of the Renaissance, Cicero the republican inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States and the revolutionaries of the French Revolution. John Adams said of him "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight." Camille Desmoulins said of the French republicans in 1789 that they were "mostly young people who, nourished by the reading of Cicero at school, had become passionate enthusiasts for liberty". Cicero’s De Officiis, highly regarded and influential throughout much of Western history, was regularly present in the libraries of early America. John Adams and James Wilson were notable in the founding period for recalling Cicero and his teaching on “the principles of nature and eternal reason.” Wilson had contributed in important ways to the success of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the subsequent ratification of the Constitution. His important lectures on law in 1790–91, which saw President Washington, Vice President Adams, and Secretary of State Jefferson in attendance at times, gave prominent attention to Cicero on natural law.
In passages from "On the Laws" Cicero writes that Fundamental law that is to be directive of human beings comes from a choosing or selection of the “highest reason implanted in nature” (1.18–19); the human mind grasps that fundamental law and derives from it the rules of right and wrong. Thus the effective natural law for humans is “the mind and reason of the prudent man” (1.19). In reaching into nature and learning from her, the wise person shares in a divine force or the very mind of god. In Cicero's thought we can find the Stoic conception of Natural Law, i.e., that Law is derived from God, Nature (Universe) and Human Reason. Indeed, Cicero inherits from Stoicism the Pantheistic view of Natural Law as right Reason in agreement with Nature and God (who is its author, its promulgator and its enforcing judge as well). It is a true Law of universal application, unchanging and everlasting, valid for all nations and all times.
While Cicero derived many ideas on Natural Law from the Greeks, he also contributed some key ideas of his own, for instance, that whoever seeks to disobey the Natural Law flees from himself and rejects man's nature. In other words, when man obeys the Natural Law he is obeying not only a natural and divine rule but also a rule that he gives himself as a fully rational and autonomous legislator.
Also On the Laws points to the enrichment of his thinking on natural law in On Duties, the final philosophical work in his richly productive life. “Not only right and wrong are distinguished by nature,” writes Cicero, “but also in general all honorable and disgraceful things. For nature makes common understandings for us and starts forming them in our minds so that honorable things are based on virtue, disgraceful things on vices”. In Book One of On Duties there is an explanation of the basic human inclinations that give rise, with reason’s guidance, to the foundational (later to be called “cardinal”) virtues of wisdom, justice, courage/magnanimity and temperance/moderation. Finding these virtues is the way to finding nature’s way for humans, to finding the law of nature and thereby what is right.
A complete reading of "On Duties" shows Cicero saving, as it were, the idea of utility by showing that there is a true utility that is in accord with right; there is, for example, a rightful attention to resources, property, and reputation. Never, when fully understood, are the right and the useful at variance, though they may indeed often seem so. In this work, Cicero is shown applying the right rooted in nature to issues that range from determining one’s specific vocation in life to decisions about just war. Since humans are by nature communal and political beings, he is emphatic in stressing that a natural justice means that one must never do harm and must always serve the common good. Cicero in this text and throughout his writings shows his awareness of the complexity entailed in understanding what true “harm” and the true “common good” are.
Cicero has made a monumental contribution to the tradition of natural law and natural rights in the West. While revering and learning from his great Greek predecessors in the tradition of moral and political philosophy as well as from the schools of philosophy in his own time, he brings forward in a more explicit way the language of natural law, thus developing the notion of “following nature” or of what is “right according to nature.” He points quite unambiguously to a divine source for this law and anticipates later developments of the notion of conscience by stressing that all humankind have a sense of the right within them, seeds needing nourishing and guidance to flourish as mature reason. This maturing entails reason being brought to work upon the gift of our inclinations and thus to formulate the virtues and the very law of nature. This law then is to be the standard shaping the commonalities in the laws of nations and against which one can judge the rightness of any specific civil laws and the edicts and rulings of magistrates. So we can also conjecture that the laws of morality are immutable laws of God that could be derived from nature in a way similar to the laws of Physics, Mathematics or Chemistry.
Quotes by Cicero:
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
“Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body”
"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct".
“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.”
"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started".
"Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system".
"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief".
“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you".
"According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another".
"I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know".
"Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money".
"Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth".
"We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings".
"The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due".
"The good of the people is the greatest law".
"If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains".
"Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability".
"The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquility, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.”
"In time of war the laws are silent".
"Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage".
"One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees".
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
"Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything".
"Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world".
"This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again".
“God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.”
“If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.”
“Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?”
“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”
2) Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger) (c. 1 BC – AD 65)
His family was from Cordoba in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula), and he may have been born there, although there is no documentary evidence for it. There is no way of knowing when the family came to Spain. At Rome he was trained in rhetoric and was introduced to Hellenized Stoic philosophy by Attalus and Sotion. Seneca's own writings describe his poor health. At some stage he was nursed by his aunt; as she was in Egypt from 16 to 31 AD, he must have at least visited and perhaps lived for a period in Hellenistic Egypt.
Seneca and his aunt returned to Rome in 31, and she helped him in his campaign for his first magistracy.
In 65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of a plot to kill Nero. Although it is unlikely that he conspired, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. He followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death
Seneca generally employed a pointed rhetorical style. His writings expose traditional themes of Stoic philosophy: the universe is governed for the best by a rational providence; contentment is achieved through a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and duty to the state; human suffering should be accepted and has a beneficial effect on the soul; study and learning are important. He emphasized practical steps by which the reader might confront life's problems. In particular, he considered it important to confront one's own mortality. The discussion of how to approach death dominates many of his letters.
Most famous Dialogues
* (40) Ad Marciam, De consolatione (To Marcia, On consolation) - Consoles her on the death of her son
* (49) De Brevitate Vitæ (On the shortness of life) - Essay expounding that any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely.
* (56) De Clementia (On Clemency) - written to Nero on the need for clemency as a virtue in an emperor
* (63) De Tranquillitate Animi (On tranquillity of mind)
* (64) De Providentia (On providence)
etc...
De Brevitate Vitæ (On the shortness of life) - Essay expounding that any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely.
"The life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. "
"You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained! "
"Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. "
"Decrepit old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend that they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a falsehood, and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at the same time. But when at last some infirmity has reminded them of their mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that they are being dragged out of life, and not merely leaving it. They cry out that they have been fools, because they have not really lived, "
"Does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders28 of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human"
"Those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing."
"How long will these things last?" This feeling has led kings to weep over the power they possessed, and they have not so much delighted in the greatness of their fortune, as they have viewed with terror the end to which it must some time come. When the King of Persia,in all the insolence of his pride, spread his army over the vast plains and could not grasp its number but simply its measure,he shed copious tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty army would be alive"
Ad Marciam, De consolatione (To Marcia, On consolation) - Consoles her on the death of her son
"Why then," you ask, "do we all so persist in lamenting what was ours, if it is not Nature's will that we should?" Because we never anticipate any evil before it actually arrives, but, imagining that we ourselves are exempt and are travelling a less exposed path, we refuse to be taught by the mishaps of others that such are the lot of all. So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death! So many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants — how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed to their father's property! So many rich men are stricken before our eyes with sudden poverty, yet it never occurs to us that our own wealth also rests on just as slippery a footing! Of necessity, therefore, we are more prone to collapse; we are struck, as it were, off our guard; blows that are long foreseen fall less violently. And you wish to be told that you stand exposed to blows of every sort, and that the darts that have transfixed others have quivered around you!
"Again, why this forgetfulness of what is the individual and the general lot? Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. You, who are a crumbling and perishable body and oft assailed by the agents of disease,— can you have hoped that from such frail matter you gave birth to anything durable and imperishable? Your son is dead; that is, he has finished his course and reached that goal toward which all those whom you count more fortunate than your child are even now hastening. Toward this, at different paces, moves all this throng that now squabbles in the forum, that looks on at the theatres, that prays in the temples; both those whom you love and revere and those whom you despise one heap of ashes will make equal. This, clearly, is the meaning of that famous utterance ascribed to the Pythian oracle:
KNOW THYSELF.
And is this the prime
And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time?
What is man? A vessel that the slightest shaking, the slightest toss will break. No mighty wind is needed to scatter you abroad; whatever you strike against, will be your undoing. What is man? A body weak and fragile, naked, in its natural state defenseless, dependent upon another's help, and exposed to all the affronts of Fortune; when it has practiced well its muscles, it then becomes the food of every wild beast, of everyone the prey; a fabric weak and attractive only in its outer features, unable to bear cold, heat, and toil, yet from mere rust and idleness doomed to decay; fearful of the foods that feed it, it dies now from the lack of these, and now is burst open by their excess; filled with anxiety and concern for its safety, it draws its very breath on sufferance, keeping but a feeble hold upon it — for sudden fear or a loud noise that falls unexpectedly upon the ears will drive it forth and fosters ever its own unrest, a morbid and a useless thing.
Do we wonder that in this thing is death, which needs but a single sigh? Is it such a mighty undertaking to compass its destruction? For it, smell and taste, weariness and loss of sleep, drink and food, and the things without which it cannot live are charged with death. Whithersoever it moves it straightway becomes conscious of its frailty; unable to endure all climates, from strange waters, a blast of unfamiliar air, the most trifling causes and complaints, it sickens and rots with disease — having started life with tears, what a mighty bother all the while does this despicable creature make! Forgetting his inevitable lot, to what mighty thoughts does man aspire! He ponders upon everlasting and eternal things, and makes plans for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while meantime, amid his far-reaching schemes, death overtakes him, and even this, which we call old age, is but the passing round of a pitifully few years.
Reflect that there are no ills to be suffered after death, that the reports that make the Lower World terrible to us are mere tales, that no darkness is in store for the dead, no prison, no blazing streams of fire, no river of Lethe, that no judgment-seats are there, nor culprits, nor in that freedom so unfettered are there a second time any tyrants. All these things are the fancies of the poets, who have harrowed us with groundless terrors. Death is a release from all suffering, a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass — it restores us to that peaceful state in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he must also pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor an evil; for that only which is something is able to be a good or an evil. But that which is itself nothing and reduces all things to nothingness consigns us to neither sphere of fortune: for evils and goods must operate upon something material.
In the first place, suppose he had survived — grant him the very longest life a man can have — how many years are there after all? Born as we are for the briefest space, and destined soon to yield place to another coming into his lease of time, we view our life as a sojourn at an inn. "Our" life do I say, when Time hurries it on with such incredible swiftness? Count the centuries of cities; you will see how even those that boast of their great age have not existed long. All things human are short-lived and perishable, and fill no part at all of infinite time. This earth with its cities and peoples, its rivers and the girdle of the sea, if measured by the universe, we may count a mere dot; our life, if compared with all time, is relatively even less than a dot; for the compass of eternity is greater than that of the world, since the world renews itself over and over within the bounds of time.
What, then, is to be gained by lengthening out that which, however much shall be added on to it, will still not be far from nothing? The time we live is much in only one way — if it is enough! You may name to me men who were long-lived and attained an age that has become proverbial, and you may count up a hundred and ten years for each, yet when you turn your thought upon eternal time, if you compare the space that you discover a man has lived with the space that he has not lived, not a whit of difference will you find between the shortest and the longest life.
And so you must not burden yourself with the thought: "He might have lived longer." His life has not been cut short, nor does Chance ever thrust itself into the years. What has been promised to each man, is paid; the Fates go their way, and neither add any thing to what has once been promised, nor subtract from it. Prayers and struggles are all in vain; each one will get just the amount that was placed to his credit on the first day of his existence. That day on which he first saw the light, he entered upon the path to death and drew ever nearer to his doom, and the very years that were added to his youth were subtracted from his life.
"There eternal peace awaits it when it has passed from earth's dull motley to the vision of all that is pure and bright. There is no need, therefore, for you to hurry to the tomb of your son; what lies there is his basest part and a part that in life was the source of much trouble — bones and ashes are no more parts of him than were his clothes and the other protections of the body. He is complete — leaving nothing of himself behind, he has fled away and wholly departed from earth; for a little while he tarried above us while he was being purified and was ridding himself of all the blemishes and stain that still clung to him from his mortal existence, then soared aloft and sped away to join the souls of the blessed.
A saintly hand gave him welcome — the Scipios and the Catos and, joined with those who scorned life and through a draught of poison found freedom, your father, Marcia."
Now l may have the view of countless centuries, the succession and train of countless ages, the whole array of years: I may behold the rise and fall of future kingdoms, the downfall of great cities, and new invasions of the sea. For, if the common fate can be a solace for your yearning, know that nothing will abide where it is now placed, that time will lay all things low and take all things with it. And not simply men will be its sport — for how small a part are they of Fortune's domain! — but places, countries, and the great parts of the universe. It will level whole mountains, and in another place will pile new rocks on high; it will drink up seas, turn rivers from their courses, and, sundering the communication of nations, break up the association and intercourse of the human race; in other places it will swallow up cities in yawning chasms, will shatter them with earthquakes, and from deep below send forth a pestilential vapor; it will cover with floods the face of the inhabited world, and, deluging the earth, will kill every living creature, and in huge conflagration it will scorch and burn all mortal things.
"And when the time shall come for the world to be blotted out in order that it may begin its life anew, these things will destroy themselves by their own power, and stars will clash with stars, and all the fiery matter of the world that now shines in orderly array will blaze up in a common conflagration. Then also the souls of the blest, who have partaken of immortality, when it shall seem best to God to create the universe anew — we, too, amid the falling universe, shall be added as a tiny fraction to this mighty destruction, and shall be changed again into our former elements." Happy, Marcia, is your son, who already knows these mysteries!
Some other famous quotes by Seneca:
Timendi causa est nescire Ignorance is the cause of fear.
Errare humanum est: To err is human.
Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis: Times are changing and we are changing with them.
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.
A great fortune is a great slavery.
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.
God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.
Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.
There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.
Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ]
3) Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.
Marcus' family originated in Ucubi a small town southeast of Córdoba in Iberian Baetica. The family rose to prominence in the late 1st century AD. Marcus' great-grandfather Marcus Annius Verus (I) was a senator and (according to the Historia Augusta) ex-praetor; in 73–74 his grandfather Marcus Annius Verus (II) was made a patricia
Over the winter of 161–62, as more bad news arrived—a rebellion was brewing in Syria—it was decided that Lucius should direct the Parthian war in person. He was stronger and healthier than Marcus, the argument went, more suited to military activity. Lucius' biographer suggests ulterior motives: to restrain Lucius' debaucheries, to make him thrifty, to reform his morals by the terror of war, to realize that he was an emperor.Whatever the case, the senate gave its assent, and, in the summer of 162, Lucius left. Marcus would remain in Rome; the city "demanded the presence of an emperor".
In 165, Roman forces moved on Mesopotamia. Edessa was re-occupied, and Mannus, the king deposed by the Parthians, was re-installed. The Parthians retreated to Nisibis, but this too was besieged and captured. The Parthian army dispersed in the Tigris. A second force, under Avidius Cassius and the III Gallica, moved down the Euphrates, and fought a major battle at Dura. By the end of the year, Cassius' army had reached the twin metropolises of Mesopotamia: Seleucia on the right bank of the Tigris and Ctesiphon on the left. Ctesiphon was taken and its royal palace set to flame. The citizens of Seleucia, still largely Greek (the city had been commissioned and settled as a capital of the Seleucid empire, one of Alexander the Great's successor kingdoms), opened its gates to the invaders. The city got sacked nonetheless, leaving a black mark on Lucius' reputation.
Cassius' army, although suffering from a shortage of supplies and the effects of a plague contracted in Seleucia, made it back to Roman territory safely. The returning army carried with them a plague, afterwards known as the Antonine Plague, or the Plague of Galen, which spread through the Roman Empire between 165 and 180. The disease was a pandemic believed to be either of smallpox or measles, and would ultimately claim the lives of two Roman emperors—Lucius Verus, who died in 169, and Marcus Aurelius, whose family name, Antoninus, was given to the epidemic. The disease broke out again nine years later, according to the Roman historian Dio Cassius, and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day at Rome, one quarter of those infected. Total deaths have been estimated at five million.
Starting in the 160s, Germanic tribes and other nomadic people launched raids along the northern border, particularly into Gaul and across the Danube. This new impetus westwards was probably due to attacks from tribes farther east. A first invasion of the Chatti in the province of Germania Superior was repulsed in 162. Far more dangerous was the invasion of 166, when the Marcomanni of Bohemia, clients of the Roman Empire since 19, crossed the Danube together with the Lombards and other German tribes.
Both Marcus and Verus led the troops. After the death of Verus (169), Marcus led personally the struggle against the Germans for the great part of his remaining life. The Romans suffered at least two serious defeats by the Quadi and Marcomanni, who could cross the Alps, ravage Opitergium (Oderzo) and besiege Aquileia, the main Roman city of north-east Italy. At the same time the Costoboci, coming from the Carpathian area, invaded Moesia, Macedonia and Greece. After a long struggle, Marcus Aurelius managed to push back the invaders. Numerous Germans settled in frontier regions like Dacia, Pannonia, Germany and Italy itself.
Marcus Aurelius died on 17 March 180, in the city of Vindobona (modern Vienna). He was immediately deified and his ashes were returned to Rome, and rested in Hadrian's mausoleum (modern Castel Sant'Angelo) until the Visigoth sack of the city in 410. His campaigns against Germans and Sarmatians were also commemorated by a column and a temple built in Rome.
Having fathered a son, Marcus Aurelius naturally gave the succession for Commodus,
whom he had named Caesar in 166 and made co-emperor in 177. This
decision, putting an end to the series of "adoptive emperors", was
highly criticized by later historians since Commodus was a political and
military outsider, as well as an extreme egotist with neurotic
problems. The naming by Marcus Aurelius of his son Commodus was
considered to be an unfortunate choice and the beginning of the Empire's decline
Marcus Aurelius' work Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration. The meditations serve as an example of how Aurelius approached the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king and how he symbolized much of what was best about Roman civilization. The preponderance of Greek tutors indicates the importance of the language to the aristocracy of Rome. This was the age of the Second Sophistic, a renaissance in Greek letters. Although educated in Rome, in his Meditations, Marcus would write his inmost thoughts in Greek
The book has been a favourite of Frederick the Great, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Goethe and Wen Jiabao.
Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself. (IV. 33, trans. Scot and David Hicks)
Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations? (IV. 50, trans. George Long)
...
From my brother Severus i learnt to love my kin, and to love truth and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; I learned from him also consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy; and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes, and to believe that I am loved by my friends; and in him I observed no concealment of his opinions with respect to those whom he condemned, and that his friends had no need to conjecture what he wished or did not wish, but it was quite plain.
...
Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same; and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution.
Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him: and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.
4) Saul of Tarsus (c.5 – c. 67)
Saul of Tarsus (later Paul the Apostle or St. Paul) was a Jewish Roman citizen who persecuted the early Christian church and who helped to facilitate the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian. Saul underwent a dramatic conversion, becoming a Christian leader who wrote a number of epistles, or letters, to early churches in which he taught doctrine and theology. In some ways he functioned in the manner of the popular marketplace philosophers of his day (Cynics, Skeptics, and some Stoics). A number of his speeches and debates with Greek philosophers are recorded in the Biblical Book of Acts, and his epistles became a significant source for later Christian philosophies.
Tartus was from a devout Jewish family in the city of Tarsus—one of the largest trade centers on the Mediterranean coast. It had been in existence several hundred years prior to his birth. It was renowned for its university, one in which students could receive a superior education. During the time of Alexander the Great, Tarsus was the most influential city in Asia Minor.
Stoicism was the dominant philosophy there. In addition to his becoming steeped in Orthodox Pharisaic Judaism, his early life in Tarsus allowed him to learn "Classic Greek", Greek philosophy, and Koine Greek which was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, spoken by the common people.
In his letters, Paul reflected heavily from his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the revealed word of God.
Paul taught of the life and works of Jesus Christ and his teaching of a New Covenant, or "new testament", established through Jesus' death and resurrection.
Fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have been attributed to Paul, and approximately half of the Acts of the Apostles deals with Paul's life and works.
Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message:
God sent his Son.
The Son was crucified for the benefit of humanity.
After being dead three days, the Son was raised from the dead defeating death.
The Son would soon return.
Those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever.
Followers are to live by the highest moral standard—"May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ".
Today, his epistles continue to be deeply rooted in the theology, worship, and pastoral life in the Roman and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Orthodox traditions of the East. Among the many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith, his influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as "profound as it is pervasive". Augustine of Hippo developed Paul's idea that salvation is based on faith and not "works of the law". Martin Luther's interpretation of Paul's writings heavily influenced Luther's doctrine of sola fide. The Bible does not record Paul's death.
Infused righteousness forms the basis for the doctrine of justification in the Roman Catholic Church and is rooted in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. The doctrine states that through keeping the commands of Christ, regular confession and penance, and receiving the sacraments, God’s grace/righteousness is “infused” in believers more and more over time, and their own “righteousness in the flesh” becomes subsumed into God’s righteousness. As the individual then progresses in his Christian life, he continues to receive God's grace both directly through the Holy Spirit as well as through the sacraments. This has the effect of combating sin in the individual's life, causing him to become more righteous both in heart and in action. If one falls into mortal sin they lose justification and it can be gained back through the sacrament of confession.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Antiquity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_Ages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Philosophers_by_century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Father
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| Cicero |
His voluminous correspondence, much of it addressed to his friend Atticus, has been especially influential, introducing the art of refined letter writing to European culture.
During the chaotic latter half of the 1st century BC marked by civil wars and the dictatorship of Gaius Julius Caesar, Cicero championed a return to the traditional republican government.
Cicero used his knowledge of Greek to translate many of the theoretical concepts of Greek philosophy into Latin, thus translating Greek philosophical works for a larger audience. It was precisely his broad education that tied him to the traditional Roman elite. Cicero looked back to the great Greek thinkers as one deeply conscious of his debt to them and yet aware of distinctive Roman ways and the general Roman resistance to any dependence on the Greeks. As a very public man in his actions as well as his writings he had to walk a careful line between his wanting to share his convictions of the primacy of the thinking of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and the requisite manifestations of his genuine Roman patriotism. He considered Plato as the first among all philosophers, Aristotle second. It seems that he directly engaged a number of Aristotle’s texts, but he also knew Aristotelian thinking through the representatives in his day of the Peripatetic school of philosophy which Aristotle had founded. Centuries later Dante would look back on Cicero as Rome’s “best Aristotelian.”. Cicero, however, affiliated himself quite explicitly, not with the Peripatetics, nor with the Stoics as is sometimes thought. Rather, he considered himself a Socratic and thus belonging, in his day, to the school of Academic skepticism. In Socrates Cicero found the beginnings of an approach to philosophy that attracted him and that he famously captured in his observation that “Socrates was the first to call philosophy down from heaven and set her in cities and even to bring her into households and compel her to inquire about human life and customs as well as matters good and evil."
Cicero started his career as a lawyer around 83-81 BC. His first major case, of which a written record is still extant, was his 80 BC defense of Sextus Roscius on the charge of patricide. Taking this case was a courageous move for Cicero; patricide was considered an appalling crime, and the people whom Cicero accused of the murder, the most notorious being Chrysogonus, were favorites of Sulla. At this time it would have been easy for Sulla to have the unknown Cicero murdered.
Cicero married Terentia probably at the age of 27, in 79 BC. According to the upper class mores of the day it was a marriage of convenience, but endured harmoniously for some 30 years.
Although his marriage to Terentia was one of convenience, it is commonly known that Cicero held great love for his daughter Tullia. When she suddenly became ill in February 45 BC and died after having seemingly recovered from giving birth to a son in January, Cicero was stunned. "I have lost the one thing that bound me to life" he wrote to Atticus. Atticus told him to come for a visit during the first weeks of his bereavement, so that he could comfort him when his pain was at its greatest. In Atticus's large library, Cicero read everything that the Greek philosophers had written about overcoming grief, "but my sorrow defeats all consolation."
His first office was as one of the twenty annual Quaestors, a training post for serious public administration in a diversity of areas, but with a traditional emphasis on administration and rigorous accounting of public monies under the guidance of a senior magistrate or provincial commander. Cicero served as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BC and demonstrated honesty and integrity in his dealings with the inhabitants.
Nevertheless, he was able to successfully ascend the Roman cursus honorum, holding each magistracy at or near the youngest possible age: quaestor in 75 (age 31), aedile in 69 (age 37), and praetor in 66 (age 40), where he served as president of the "Reclamation" (or extortion) Court. He was then elected consul at age 43
Cicero was elected Consul for the year 63 BC. His co-consul for the year, Gaius Antonius Hybrida, played a minor role. During his year in office, he thwarted a conspiracy centred on assassinating him and overthrowing the Roman Republic with the help of foreign armed forces, led by Lucius Sergius Catilina. Cicero procured a Senatus Consultum de Re Publica Defendenda (a declaration of martial law) and drove Catiline from the city with four vehement speeches (the Catiline Orations), which to this day remain outstanding examples of his rhetorical style. The opening remarks are still widely remembered and used after 2,000 years:
Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia?Also remembered is the famous exasperated exclamation, O tempora, O mores! (Oh the times! Oh the customs!)
How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will your unbridled audacity hurl itself?
The Orations listed Catiline and his followers' debaucheries, and denounced Catiline's senatorial sympathizers as roguish and dissolute debtors clinging to Catiline as a final and desperate hope.
In 58 BC, Publius Clodius Pulcher, the tribune of the plebs, introduced a law (the Leges Clodiae) threatening exile to anyone who executed a Roman citizen without a trial. Cicero, having executed members of the Catiline conspiracy four years previously without formal trial, and having had a public falling out with Clodius, was clearly the intended target of the law. Cicero argued that the senatus consultum ultimum indemnified him from punishment, and he attempted to gain the support of the senators and consuls, especially of Pompey. When help was not forthcoming, he went into exile. He arrived at Thessalonica, Greece, on May 23, 58 BC.Cicero's exile caused him to fall into depression.After the intervention of recently elected tribune Titus Annius Milo, the senate voted in favor of recalling Cicero from exile. Clodius cast a single vote against the decree. Cicero returned to Italy on August 5, 57 BC.
Cicero became a popular leader during the period of instability following the assassination of Caesar. He had no respect for Mark Antony, who was scheming to take revenge upon Caesar's murderers. In exchange for amnesty for the assassins, he arranged for the Senate to agree not to declare Caesar to have been a tyrant, which allowed the Caesarians to have lawful support. But Cicero’s plan to drive out Antony failed. Antony and Octavian reconciled and allied with Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate after the successive battles of Forum Gallorum and Mutina. The Triumvirate began proscribing their enemies and potential rivals immediately after legislating the alliance into official existence for a term of five years with consular imperium. Cicero and all of his contacts and supporters were numbered among the enemies of the state.
Cicero's last words are said to have been, "There is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me properly." He bowed to his captors, leaning his head out of the litter in a gladiatorial gesture to ease the task. By baring his neck and throat to the soldiers, he was indicating that he wouldn't resist. According to Plutarch, Herennius (a centurion) first slew him, then cut off his head. On Antony's instructions his hands, which had penned the Philippics against Antony, were cut off as well; these were nailed and displayed along with his head on the Rostra in the Forum Romanum according to the tradition of Marius and Sulla, both of whom had displayed the heads of their enemies in the Forum.
Cicero's son, Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor, during his year as a consul in 30 BC, avenged his father's death, to a certain extent, when he announced to the Senate Mark Antony's naval defeat at Actium in 31 BC by Octavian and the capable commander-in-chief of his, Agrippa (Agrippa was as responsible for most of Octavian’s military victories, most notably winning the naval Battle of Actium)
De Oratore, a dialogue written by Cicero, is an exposition of issues, techniques, and divisions in rhetoric; it is also a parade of examples for several of them and it makes continuous references to philosophical concepts to be merged for a perfect result.
De Officiis (On Duties or On Obligations) is an essay by Cicero divided into three books, in which Cicero expounds his conception of the best way to live, behave, and observe moral obligations. The work's legacy is profound. Although not a Christian work, St. Ambrose in 390 declared it legitimate for the Church to use (along with everything else Cicero, and the equally popular Roman philosopher Seneca, had written). It became the moral authority during the Middle Ages. Of the Church Fathers, Saint Augustine, St. Jerome and even more so St. Thomas Aquinas, are known to have been familiar with it. Illustrating its importance, some 700 handwritten copies remain extant in libraries around the world dating back to before the invention of the printing press. In the 16th century, Erasmus developed a pocket version of it, since he thought it so important that one should always be able to keep it at hand. It continues to be one of the most popular of Cicero's works because of its style, and because of its depiction of Roman political life under the Republic.
Cicero was declared a “righteous pagan” by the early Catholic Church, and therefore many of his works were deemed worthy of preservation. Subsequent Roman writers quoted liberally from his works "De re publica" (On The Republic) and "De Legibus" (On The Laws), and much of his work has been recreated from these surviving fragments.
Medieval philosophers were influenced by Cicero's writings on natural law and innate rights. Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance
While Cicero the humanist deeply influenced the culture of the Renaissance, Cicero the republican inspired the Founding Fathers of the United States and the revolutionaries of the French Revolution. John Adams said of him "As all the ages of the world have not produced a greater statesman and philosopher united than Cicero, his authority should have great weight." Camille Desmoulins said of the French republicans in 1789 that they were "mostly young people who, nourished by the reading of Cicero at school, had become passionate enthusiasts for liberty". Cicero’s De Officiis, highly regarded and influential throughout much of Western history, was regularly present in the libraries of early America. John Adams and James Wilson were notable in the founding period for recalling Cicero and his teaching on “the principles of nature and eternal reason.” Wilson had contributed in important ways to the success of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and the subsequent ratification of the Constitution. His important lectures on law in 1790–91, which saw President Washington, Vice President Adams, and Secretary of State Jefferson in attendance at times, gave prominent attention to Cicero on natural law.
In passages from "On the Laws" Cicero writes that Fundamental law that is to be directive of human beings comes from a choosing or selection of the “highest reason implanted in nature” (1.18–19); the human mind grasps that fundamental law and derives from it the rules of right and wrong. Thus the effective natural law for humans is “the mind and reason of the prudent man” (1.19). In reaching into nature and learning from her, the wise person shares in a divine force or the very mind of god. In Cicero's thought we can find the Stoic conception of Natural Law, i.e., that Law is derived from God, Nature (Universe) and Human Reason. Indeed, Cicero inherits from Stoicism the Pantheistic view of Natural Law as right Reason in agreement with Nature and God (who is its author, its promulgator and its enforcing judge as well). It is a true Law of universal application, unchanging and everlasting, valid for all nations and all times.
While Cicero derived many ideas on Natural Law from the Greeks, he also contributed some key ideas of his own, for instance, that whoever seeks to disobey the Natural Law flees from himself and rejects man's nature. In other words, when man obeys the Natural Law he is obeying not only a natural and divine rule but also a rule that he gives himself as a fully rational and autonomous legislator.
Also On the Laws points to the enrichment of his thinking on natural law in On Duties, the final philosophical work in his richly productive life. “Not only right and wrong are distinguished by nature,” writes Cicero, “but also in general all honorable and disgraceful things. For nature makes common understandings for us and starts forming them in our minds so that honorable things are based on virtue, disgraceful things on vices”. In Book One of On Duties there is an explanation of the basic human inclinations that give rise, with reason’s guidance, to the foundational (later to be called “cardinal”) virtues of wisdom, justice, courage/magnanimity and temperance/moderation. Finding these virtues is the way to finding nature’s way for humans, to finding the law of nature and thereby what is right.
A complete reading of "On Duties" shows Cicero saving, as it were, the idea of utility by showing that there is a true utility that is in accord with right; there is, for example, a rightful attention to resources, property, and reputation. Never, when fully understood, are the right and the useful at variance, though they may indeed often seem so. In this work, Cicero is shown applying the right rooted in nature to issues that range from determining one’s specific vocation in life to decisions about just war. Since humans are by nature communal and political beings, he is emphatic in stressing that a natural justice means that one must never do harm and must always serve the common good. Cicero in this text and throughout his writings shows his awareness of the complexity entailed in understanding what true “harm” and the true “common good” are.
Cicero has made a monumental contribution to the tradition of natural law and natural rights in the West. While revering and learning from his great Greek predecessors in the tradition of moral and political philosophy as well as from the schools of philosophy in his own time, he brings forward in a more explicit way the language of natural law, thus developing the notion of “following nature” or of what is “right according to nature.” He points quite unambiguously to a divine source for this law and anticipates later developments of the notion of conscience by stressing that all humankind have a sense of the right within them, seeds needing nourishing and guidance to flourish as mature reason. This maturing entails reason being brought to work upon the gift of our inclinations and thus to formulate the virtues and the very law of nature. This law then is to be the standard shaping the commonalities in the laws of nations and against which one can judge the rightness of any specific civil laws and the edicts and rulings of magistrates. So we can also conjecture that the laws of morality are immutable laws of God that could be derived from nature in a way similar to the laws of Physics, Mathematics or Chemistry.
Quotes by Cicero:
"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
“Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body”
"The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct".
“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.”
"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started".
"Nothing is more unreliable than the populace, nothing more obscure than human intentions, nothing more deceptive than the whole electoral system".
"Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief".
“Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you".
"According to the law of nature it is only fair that no one should become richer through damages and injuries suffered by another".
"I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know".
"Nothing is so strongly fortified that it cannot be taken by money".
"Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth".
"We forget our pleasures, we remember our sufferings".
"The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due".
"The good of the people is the greatest law".
"If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains".
"Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability".
"The name of peace is sweet, and the thing itself is beneficial, but there is a great difference between peace and servitude. Peace is freedom in tranquility, servitude is the worst of all evils, to be resisted not only by war, but even by death.”
"In time of war the laws are silent".
"Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage".
"One who sees the Supersoul accompanying the individual soul in all bodies and who understands that neither the soul nor the Supersoul is ever destroyed, actually sees".
“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.”
"Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything".
"Just as the soul fills the body, so God fills the world. Just as the soul bears the body, so God endures the world. Just as the soul sees but is not seen, so God sees but is not seen. Just as the soul feeds the body, so God gives food to the world".
"This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again".
“God's law is 'right reason.' When perfectly understood it is called 'wisdom.' When applied by government in regulating human relations it is called 'justice.”
“If a man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all.”
“Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?”
“To study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one’s self to die.”
2) Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger) (c. 1 BC – AD 65)
His family was from Cordoba in Hispania (the Iberian Peninsula), and he may have been born there, although there is no documentary evidence for it. There is no way of knowing when the family came to Spain. At Rome he was trained in rhetoric and was introduced to Hellenized Stoic philosophy by Attalus and Sotion. Seneca's own writings describe his poor health. At some stage he was nursed by his aunt; as she was in Egypt from 16 to 31 AD, he must have at least visited and perhaps lived for a period in Hellenistic Egypt.
Seneca and his aunt returned to Rome in 31, and she helped him in his campaign for his first magistracy.
In 65, Seneca was caught up in the aftermath of a plot to kill Nero. Although it is unlikely that he conspired, he was ordered by Nero to kill himself. He followed tradition by severing several veins in order to bleed to death
Seneca generally employed a pointed rhetorical style. His writings expose traditional themes of Stoic philosophy: the universe is governed for the best by a rational providence; contentment is achieved through a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and duty to the state; human suffering should be accepted and has a beneficial effect on the soul; study and learning are important. He emphasized practical steps by which the reader might confront life's problems. In particular, he considered it important to confront one's own mortality. The discussion of how to approach death dominates many of his letters.
Most famous Dialogues
* (40) Ad Marciam, De consolatione (To Marcia, On consolation) - Consoles her on the death of her son
* (49) De Brevitate Vitæ (On the shortness of life) - Essay expounding that any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely.
* (56) De Clementia (On Clemency) - written to Nero on the need for clemency as a virtue in an emperor
* (63) De Tranquillitate Animi (On tranquillity of mind)
* (64) De Providentia (On providence)
etc...
De Brevitate Vitæ (On the shortness of life) - Essay expounding that any length of life is sufficient if lived wisely.
"The life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. "
"You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained! "
"Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. "
"Decrepit old men beg in their prayers for the addition of a few more years; they pretend that they are younger than they are; they comfort themselves with a falsehood, and are as pleased to deceive themselves as if they deceived Fate at the same time. But when at last some infirmity has reminded them of their mortality, in what terror do they die, feeling that they are being dragged out of life, and not merely leaving it. They cry out that they have been fools, because they have not really lived, "
"Does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according to report, was conspicuous among the leaders28 of old for the kindness of his heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk! Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise human"
"Those who forget the past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing nothing."
"How long will these things last?" This feeling has led kings to weep over the power they possessed, and they have not so much delighted in the greatness of their fortune, as they have viewed with terror the end to which it must some time come. When the King of Persia,in all the insolence of his pride, spread his army over the vast plains and could not grasp its number but simply its measure,he shed copious tears because inside of a hundred years not a man of such a mighty army would be alive"
Ad Marciam, De consolatione (To Marcia, On consolation) - Consoles her on the death of her son
"Why then," you ask, "do we all so persist in lamenting what was ours, if it is not Nature's will that we should?" Because we never anticipate any evil before it actually arrives, but, imagining that we ourselves are exempt and are travelling a less exposed path, we refuse to be taught by the mishaps of others that such are the lot of all. So many funerals pass our doors, yet we never think of death! So many deaths are untimely, yet we make plans for our own infants — how they will don the toga, serve in the army, and succeed to their father's property! So many rich men are stricken before our eyes with sudden poverty, yet it never occurs to us that our own wealth also rests on just as slippery a footing! Of necessity, therefore, we are more prone to collapse; we are struck, as it were, off our guard; blows that are long foreseen fall less violently. And you wish to be told that you stand exposed to blows of every sort, and that the darts that have transfixed others have quivered around you!
"Again, why this forgetfulness of what is the individual and the general lot? Mortal have you been born, to mortals have you given birth. You, who are a crumbling and perishable body and oft assailed by the agents of disease,— can you have hoped that from such frail matter you gave birth to anything durable and imperishable? Your son is dead; that is, he has finished his course and reached that goal toward which all those whom you count more fortunate than your child are even now hastening. Toward this, at different paces, moves all this throng that now squabbles in the forum, that looks on at the theatres, that prays in the temples; both those whom you love and revere and those whom you despise one heap of ashes will make equal. This, clearly, is the meaning of that famous utterance ascribed to the Pythian oracle:
KNOW THYSELF.
And is this the prime
And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time?
What is man? A vessel that the slightest shaking, the slightest toss will break. No mighty wind is needed to scatter you abroad; whatever you strike against, will be your undoing. What is man? A body weak and fragile, naked, in its natural state defenseless, dependent upon another's help, and exposed to all the affronts of Fortune; when it has practiced well its muscles, it then becomes the food of every wild beast, of everyone the prey; a fabric weak and attractive only in its outer features, unable to bear cold, heat, and toil, yet from mere rust and idleness doomed to decay; fearful of the foods that feed it, it dies now from the lack of these, and now is burst open by their excess; filled with anxiety and concern for its safety, it draws its very breath on sufferance, keeping but a feeble hold upon it — for sudden fear or a loud noise that falls unexpectedly upon the ears will drive it forth and fosters ever its own unrest, a morbid and a useless thing.
Do we wonder that in this thing is death, which needs but a single sigh? Is it such a mighty undertaking to compass its destruction? For it, smell and taste, weariness and loss of sleep, drink and food, and the things without which it cannot live are charged with death. Whithersoever it moves it straightway becomes conscious of its frailty; unable to endure all climates, from strange waters, a blast of unfamiliar air, the most trifling causes and complaints, it sickens and rots with disease — having started life with tears, what a mighty bother all the while does this despicable creature make! Forgetting his inevitable lot, to what mighty thoughts does man aspire! He ponders upon everlasting and eternal things, and makes plans for his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while meantime, amid his far-reaching schemes, death overtakes him, and even this, which we call old age, is but the passing round of a pitifully few years.
Reflect that there are no ills to be suffered after death, that the reports that make the Lower World terrible to us are mere tales, that no darkness is in store for the dead, no prison, no blazing streams of fire, no river of Lethe, that no judgment-seats are there, nor culprits, nor in that freedom so unfettered are there a second time any tyrants. All these things are the fancies of the poets, who have harrowed us with groundless terrors. Death is a release from all suffering, a boundary beyond which our ills cannot pass — it restores us to that peaceful state in which we lay before we were born. If anyone pities the dead, he must also pity those who have not been born. Death is neither a good nor an evil; for that only which is something is able to be a good or an evil. But that which is itself nothing and reduces all things to nothingness consigns us to neither sphere of fortune: for evils and goods must operate upon something material.
In the first place, suppose he had survived — grant him the very longest life a man can have — how many years are there after all? Born as we are for the briefest space, and destined soon to yield place to another coming into his lease of time, we view our life as a sojourn at an inn. "Our" life do I say, when Time hurries it on with such incredible swiftness? Count the centuries of cities; you will see how even those that boast of their great age have not existed long. All things human are short-lived and perishable, and fill no part at all of infinite time. This earth with its cities and peoples, its rivers and the girdle of the sea, if measured by the universe, we may count a mere dot; our life, if compared with all time, is relatively even less than a dot; for the compass of eternity is greater than that of the world, since the world renews itself over and over within the bounds of time.
What, then, is to be gained by lengthening out that which, however much shall be added on to it, will still not be far from nothing? The time we live is much in only one way — if it is enough! You may name to me men who were long-lived and attained an age that has become proverbial, and you may count up a hundred and ten years for each, yet when you turn your thought upon eternal time, if you compare the space that you discover a man has lived with the space that he has not lived, not a whit of difference will you find between the shortest and the longest life.
And so you must not burden yourself with the thought: "He might have lived longer." His life has not been cut short, nor does Chance ever thrust itself into the years. What has been promised to each man, is paid; the Fates go their way, and neither add any thing to what has once been promised, nor subtract from it. Prayers and struggles are all in vain; each one will get just the amount that was placed to his credit on the first day of his existence. That day on which he first saw the light, he entered upon the path to death and drew ever nearer to his doom, and the very years that were added to his youth were subtracted from his life.
"There eternal peace awaits it when it has passed from earth's dull motley to the vision of all that is pure and bright. There is no need, therefore, for you to hurry to the tomb of your son; what lies there is his basest part and a part that in life was the source of much trouble — bones and ashes are no more parts of him than were his clothes and the other protections of the body. He is complete — leaving nothing of himself behind, he has fled away and wholly departed from earth; for a little while he tarried above us while he was being purified and was ridding himself of all the blemishes and stain that still clung to him from his mortal existence, then soared aloft and sped away to join the souls of the blessed.
A saintly hand gave him welcome — the Scipios and the Catos and, joined with those who scorned life and through a draught of poison found freedom, your father, Marcia."
Now l may have the view of countless centuries, the succession and train of countless ages, the whole array of years: I may behold the rise and fall of future kingdoms, the downfall of great cities, and new invasions of the sea. For, if the common fate can be a solace for your yearning, know that nothing will abide where it is now placed, that time will lay all things low and take all things with it. And not simply men will be its sport — for how small a part are they of Fortune's domain! — but places, countries, and the great parts of the universe. It will level whole mountains, and in another place will pile new rocks on high; it will drink up seas, turn rivers from their courses, and, sundering the communication of nations, break up the association and intercourse of the human race; in other places it will swallow up cities in yawning chasms, will shatter them with earthquakes, and from deep below send forth a pestilential vapor; it will cover with floods the face of the inhabited world, and, deluging the earth, will kill every living creature, and in huge conflagration it will scorch and burn all mortal things.
"And when the time shall come for the world to be blotted out in order that it may begin its life anew, these things will destroy themselves by their own power, and stars will clash with stars, and all the fiery matter of the world that now shines in orderly array will blaze up in a common conflagration. Then also the souls of the blest, who have partaken of immortality, when it shall seem best to God to create the universe anew — we, too, amid the falling universe, shall be added as a tiny fraction to this mighty destruction, and shall be changed again into our former elements." Happy, Marcia, is your son, who already knows these mysteries!
Some other famous quotes by Seneca:
Timendi causa est nescire Ignorance is the cause of fear.
Errare humanum est: To err is human.
Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis: Times are changing and we are changing with them.
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.
We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.
A great fortune is a great slavery.
Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.
The first step in a person's salvation is knowledge of their sin.
God is the universal substance in existing things. He comprises all things. He is the fountain of all being. In Him exists everything that is.
Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.
Anger is like those ruins which smash themselves on what they fall.
There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.
Nothing is void of God, his work is everywhere his full of himself.
Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” ]
3) Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman Emperor from 161 to 180. He ruled with Lucius Verus as co-emperor from 161 until Verus' death in 169. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.
Marcus' family originated in Ucubi a small town southeast of Córdoba in Iberian Baetica. The family rose to prominence in the late 1st century AD. Marcus' great-grandfather Marcus Annius Verus (I) was a senator and (according to the Historia Augusta) ex-praetor; in 73–74 his grandfather Marcus Annius Verus (II) was made a patricia
Over the winter of 161–62, as more bad news arrived—a rebellion was brewing in Syria—it was decided that Lucius should direct the Parthian war in person. He was stronger and healthier than Marcus, the argument went, more suited to military activity. Lucius' biographer suggests ulterior motives: to restrain Lucius' debaucheries, to make him thrifty, to reform his morals by the terror of war, to realize that he was an emperor.Whatever the case, the senate gave its assent, and, in the summer of 162, Lucius left. Marcus would remain in Rome; the city "demanded the presence of an emperor".
In 165, Roman forces moved on Mesopotamia. Edessa was re-occupied, and Mannus, the king deposed by the Parthians, was re-installed. The Parthians retreated to Nisibis, but this too was besieged and captured. The Parthian army dispersed in the Tigris. A second force, under Avidius Cassius and the III Gallica, moved down the Euphrates, and fought a major battle at Dura. By the end of the year, Cassius' army had reached the twin metropolises of Mesopotamia: Seleucia on the right bank of the Tigris and Ctesiphon on the left. Ctesiphon was taken and its royal palace set to flame. The citizens of Seleucia, still largely Greek (the city had been commissioned and settled as a capital of the Seleucid empire, one of Alexander the Great's successor kingdoms), opened its gates to the invaders. The city got sacked nonetheless, leaving a black mark on Lucius' reputation.
Cassius' army, although suffering from a shortage of supplies and the effects of a plague contracted in Seleucia, made it back to Roman territory safely. The returning army carried with them a plague, afterwards known as the Antonine Plague, or the Plague of Galen, which spread through the Roman Empire between 165 and 180. The disease was a pandemic believed to be either of smallpox or measles, and would ultimately claim the lives of two Roman emperors—Lucius Verus, who died in 169, and Marcus Aurelius, whose family name, Antoninus, was given to the epidemic. The disease broke out again nine years later, according to the Roman historian Dio Cassius, and caused up to 2,000 deaths a day at Rome, one quarter of those infected. Total deaths have been estimated at five million.
Starting in the 160s, Germanic tribes and other nomadic people launched raids along the northern border, particularly into Gaul and across the Danube. This new impetus westwards was probably due to attacks from tribes farther east. A first invasion of the Chatti in the province of Germania Superior was repulsed in 162. Far more dangerous was the invasion of 166, when the Marcomanni of Bohemia, clients of the Roman Empire since 19, crossed the Danube together with the Lombards and other German tribes.
Both Marcus and Verus led the troops. After the death of Verus (169), Marcus led personally the struggle against the Germans for the great part of his remaining life. The Romans suffered at least two serious defeats by the Quadi and Marcomanni, who could cross the Alps, ravage Opitergium (Oderzo) and besiege Aquileia, the main Roman city of north-east Italy. At the same time the Costoboci, coming from the Carpathian area, invaded Moesia, Macedonia and Greece. After a long struggle, Marcus Aurelius managed to push back the invaders. Numerous Germans settled in frontier regions like Dacia, Pannonia, Germany and Italy itself.
Marcus Aurelius died on 17 March 180, in the city of Vindobona (modern Vienna). He was immediately deified and his ashes were returned to Rome, and rested in Hadrian's mausoleum (modern Castel Sant'Angelo) until the Visigoth sack of the city in 410. His campaigns against Germans and Sarmatians were also commemorated by a column and a temple built in Rome.
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Although there were many equestrian imperial statues, they rarely survived because it was practice to melt down bronze statues for reuse as coin or new sculptures in the late empire. Statues were also destroyed because medieval Christians thought that they were pagan idols. The statue of Marcus Aurelius was not melted down because in the Middle Ages it was incorrectly thought to portray the first Christian Emperor Constantine. Indeed, it is the only fully surviving bronze statue of a pre-Christian Roman emperor. The original is on display in the Palazzo Nuovo, with the one now standing in the open air of the Piazza del Campidoglio being a replica made in 1981 |
Marcus Aurelius' work Meditations, written in Greek while on campaign between 170 and 180, is still revered as a literary monument to a philosophy of service and duty, describing how to find and preserve equanimity in the midst of conflict by following nature as a source of guidance and inspiration. The meditations serve as an example of how Aurelius approached the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king and how he symbolized much of what was best about Roman civilization. The preponderance of Greek tutors indicates the importance of the language to the aristocracy of Rome. This was the age of the Second Sophistic, a renaissance in Greek letters. Although educated in Rome, in his Meditations, Marcus would write his inmost thoughts in Greek
The book has been a favourite of Frederick the Great, John Stuart Mill, Matthew Arnold, Goethe and Wen Jiabao.
Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself. (IV. 33, trans. Scot and David Hicks)
Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations? (IV. 50, trans. George Long)
...
From my brother Severus i learnt to love my kin, and to love truth and from him I received the idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of the governed; I learned from him also consistency and undeviating steadiness in my regard for philosophy; and a disposition to do good, and to give to others readily, and to cherish good hopes, and to believe that I am loved by my friends; and in him I observed no concealment of his opinions with respect to those whom he condemned, and that his friends had no need to conjecture what he wished or did not wish, but it was quite plain.
...
Death is such as generation is, a mystery of nature; a composition out of the same elements, and a decomposition into the same; and altogether not a thing of which any man should be ashamed, for it is not contrary to the nature of a reasonable animal, and not contrary to the reason of our constitution.
Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him: and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus tomorrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.
4) Saul of Tarsus (c.5 – c. 67)
Saul of Tarsus (later Paul the Apostle or St. Paul) was a Jewish Roman citizen who persecuted the early Christian church and who helped to facilitate the martyrdom of Saint Stephen, a Greek-speaking Jewish Christian. Saul underwent a dramatic conversion, becoming a Christian leader who wrote a number of epistles, or letters, to early churches in which he taught doctrine and theology. In some ways he functioned in the manner of the popular marketplace philosophers of his day (Cynics, Skeptics, and some Stoics). A number of his speeches and debates with Greek philosophers are recorded in the Biblical Book of Acts, and his epistles became a significant source for later Christian philosophies.
Tartus was from a devout Jewish family in the city of Tarsus—one of the largest trade centers on the Mediterranean coast. It had been in existence several hundred years prior to his birth. It was renowned for its university, one in which students could receive a superior education. During the time of Alexander the Great, Tarsus was the most influential city in Asia Minor.
Stoicism was the dominant philosophy there. In addition to his becoming steeped in Orthodox Pharisaic Judaism, his early life in Tarsus allowed him to learn "Classic Greek", Greek philosophy, and Koine Greek which was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, spoken by the common people.
In his letters, Paul reflected heavily from his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the revealed word of God.
Paul taught of the life and works of Jesus Christ and his teaching of a New Covenant, or "new testament", established through Jesus' death and resurrection.
Fourteen of the twenty-seven books in the New Testament have been attributed to Paul, and approximately half of the Acts of the Apostles deals with Paul's life and works.
Paul's writings reveal what he calls the essence of the Christian message:
God sent his Son.
The Son was crucified for the benefit of humanity.
After being dead three days, the Son was raised from the dead defeating death.
The Son would soon return.
Those who belonged to the Son would live with him forever.
Followers are to live by the highest moral standard—"May your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ".
Today, his epistles continue to be deeply rooted in the theology, worship, and pastoral life in the Roman and Protestant traditions of the West, as well as the Orthodox traditions of the East. Among the many other apostles and missionaries involved in the spread of the Christian faith, his influence on Christian thought and practice has been characterized as being as "profound as it is pervasive". Augustine of Hippo developed Paul's idea that salvation is based on faith and not "works of the law". Martin Luther's interpretation of Paul's writings heavily influenced Luther's doctrine of sola fide. The Bible does not record Paul's death.
Infused righteousness forms the basis for the doctrine of justification in the Roman Catholic Church and is rooted in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. The doctrine states that through keeping the commands of Christ, regular confession and penance, and receiving the sacraments, God’s grace/righteousness is “infused” in believers more and more over time, and their own “righteousness in the flesh” becomes subsumed into God’s righteousness. As the individual then progresses in his Christian life, he continues to receive God's grace both directly through the Holy Spirit as well as through the sacraments. This has the effect of combating sin in the individual's life, causing him to become more righteous both in heart and in action. If one falls into mortal sin they lose justification and it can be gained back through the sacrament of confession.
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_philosophy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Antiquity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Middle_Ages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Philosophers_by_century
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Father
