Plato

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 2.1 §8 as if he were in the Republic of Plato

  Cicero's barb at Cato: he votes as though living in Plato's ideal commonwealth rather than "the dregs of Romulus" (the messy real Rome), insisting on principle where compromise was needed.

• Ad Atticum 7.13 §4 it is more obscure than the number of Plato

  A byword for impenetrable obscurity: the "nuptial number" of Plato's Republic (8.546) was already proverbially baffling in antiquity. Cicero says Atticus's riddle of the Oppii is harder still.

• Ad Atticum 9.13 §4 says Plato

  Cicero quotes Plato (Epistles 329d) on the menace lurking in a tyrant's "requests" --- pleas that are really commands, mixed with compulsion; he applies it to Caesar's coaxing invitations, which he fears more than open force.

• Ad Familiares 1.9 §12 written with divine insight in our Plato

  Cicero appeals to Plato (Laws and Republic) for the maxim that the character of a state's leaders sets the character of its citizens; Plato is the philosophical authority he invokes throughout the letter to justify yielding to circumstance.

• Ad Familiares 9.22 §5 I keep, and shall keep (such is my habit), Plato's reserve

  Against the Stoic insistence on calling everything by blunt names, Cicero aligns himself with the verbal decorum (verecundia) characteristic of Plato's dialogues, writing of these matters in 'veiled words.' The closing salute 'an honour to the Kalends of March' (the Matronalia, 1 March) sets a date for resuming the banter.

• Ad Familiares 15.18 §1 to avoid having to hear Plato's rebuke

  Cicero, ashamed to 'serve' the present regime, busies himself with trivia so as not to face the reproach of Plato, whose ideal is that the philosopher should engage in public life rather than withdraw.

• Ad Quintum Fratrem 1.1 §29 that prince of talent and learning

  Plato (c. 428-348 BC), whose Republic argues that states flourish only when philosophers rule or rulers philosophise --- the 'philosopher-king' doctrine Cicero applies to Quintus's learned governance of Asia.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.2 those little gardens of his close by

  Plato is said to have owned a small property beside the Academy; Cicero has Piso evoke it to make the philosopher's presence vivid. The detail underlines the book's theme that places summon up the memory of great men.

• On the Ends of Good and Evil §5.58 For Plato says it splendidly

  A paraphrase of a Platonic sentiment that it is a blessing to attain wisdom and true opinion even late in life. Cicero quotes it to mark how slowly the light of virtue dawns.

• On the Nature of the Gods §2.32 let us hear Plato, as a kind of god among philosophers

  Plato (c. 429-347 BC), here drawn on for the doctrine (Phaedrus, Timaeus) that self-motion is the mark of soul. Balbus enlists him to argue that the self-moving world must be ensouled.

• On Duties §1.85 two precepts of Plato

  Cicero's summary of principles he draws from Plato's Republic: that rulers govern for the citizens' benefit, not their own, and care for the whole state rather than one faction. The thought recurs throughout his political writing.

• Orator: To Marcus Brutus §10 These forms of things Plato calls

  Plato's Ideas (Greek ideai): the eternal, intelligible Forms apprehended by mind alone. Cicero opens the work by grounding the perfect orator in this Platonic doctrine, an ideal pattern of eloquence that no real speaker fully embodies.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.20 His teacher Plato fashioned a threefold soul

  Plato's tripartite soul (Republic 4, Timaeus): reason in the head, spirit (anger) in the breast, appetite below the midriff. Cicero summarizes it as part of his survey of theories of the soul.

• Tusculan Disputations §1.97 the speech which Plato gives him to make before the judges

  Cicero's free Latin rendering of the closing of Plato's Apology (40c-42a), Socrates's speech to the jurors after his condemnation, on the two possibilities of death: extinction like dreamless sleep, or migration to the company of the great dead.

• Tusculan Disputations §4.71 the authority of our own Plato, whom Dicaearchus accuses not unjustly

  Plato is charged with lending philosophical authority to love (cf. the Symposium and Phaedrus); the Peripatetic Dicaearchus of Messana criticized him for this, and Cicero thinks not unjustly.