MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO The Defense of Injustice
Marcus TULLIUS CICERO (106-43 B.C.) lived in Rome during some of the empire’s most turbulent times. He was a great writer and a legendary orator. His works, with some exceptions, have survived to modem times and are often cited by rhetoricians—those who study the art of persuasion and fine writing. His letters are collected in four volumes; his books include De Amicitiae (On Friendship), De Officiis (On Duty), De Oratore (The Orator), De Senectute (On Old Age), Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and many more influential texts, including some interesting poetry.
These books were written in a characteristic style that has been described as Ciceronian, a reference to his fullness of expression, his sometimes decorative language, and his rhythmic flow. His elegance inspired many imitators, including some modem writers who read him only in translation. His reliance on dialogue in his serious works connects him with Plato, whose dialogues were well known in Rome. Often, Cicero included philosophical ideas taken from his reading of Plato and Aristotle, whom he may have read in Greek.
Cicero was not just a philosopher. He was a lawyer and a politician as well as one of the most eloquent of Romans during a period when political debate was conducted at a very high level in the Roman Senate. He was a fierce republican and wrote On the Republic to help foster ideas that would help maintain the Republic at a time when civil wars were threatening it. Cicero was close to Julius Caesar, who was victorious in a struggle against Pompey and others and became the equivalent of a dictator in Rome. Cicero urged Caesar to honor the republican ideals that he felt represented the highest values of justice of any government in Rome. He also realized that he might be in danger if Caesar were out of office.
From On Government. Translated by Michael Grant.Cicero had spoken against Marc Antony, who came into a position of influence when Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. Cicero was not in the senate when Caesar was murdered, nor did he have any connections with Brutus and the conspirators, and for a short while he stayed away from Rome.
Eventually Marc Antony joined in a new triumvirate with Octa- vian, Caesar’s adopted son. Cicero had been guilty of speaking about Octavian in such a way as to seem disloyal and perhaps dangerous. Despite the fact that Cicero supported Octavian, and that Octavian tried to protect him against his enemies, Cicero was marked as dangerous by Marc Antony because he had condemned Marc Antony’s policies in his collection of political criticism called Philippics. Because his arguments against the triumvirate were so powerful, Cicero was captured and killed on December 7, 43 B.C.His head and hands were brought to Octavian in Rome as a symbolic gesture.
Cicero’s Rhetoric
The selection that follows is from pieces he wrote on the nature of the state. It begins with a dialogue between two powerful speakers. Laelius challenges Philus to argue against justice and in praise of injustice. This is a typical approach among master rhetoricians, whose skills often permit them to argue either side of an issue with equal deftness. For many people this skill invalidates rhetoric because they see the disputants as having no fundamental interests to defend, instead behaving like lawyers who are willing to argue a case that they know is not worthy to be argued. However, in this situation Cicero is clever. He realizes that in the hands of a skillful rhetorician, the case against justice will do a great deal to reveal the qualities of justice that make it most valuable to society. Philusis chosen to make this argument in part because he has a reputation for being impeccably honest, is profoundly committed to justice, and is the last person one would connect with a speech against justice. Cicero tells us as much in an effort to convince us that Philus is playing the role of devil’s advocate for injustice.
In a way perhaps designed to protect his own reputation, Philus tells us that he will argue by using the words and arguments of another important rhetorician, Cameades (c. 213-128 B.C.), who had a reputation for ridiculing “the best causes.” Cameades was a skeptic philosopher who enjoyed dismantling what appeared to be the most secure arguments just to demonstrate that there was nothing one could absolutely believe without examination. Cicero hopes that, as powerful as Philus’s speech may be, we will not accept his views as desirable. However, Philus makes such a remarkable case for injustice that, if we are not careful, we may end up accepting it.
Philus begins by reminding Laelius and us that justice is rare and valuable, “far more valuable than all the gold in the world” (para. 4). Once that is said, he launches into his argument for injustice by commenting on those people who have praised it and wondering whether there could be such a thing as natural justice. He reasons that justice must be unnatural and a creation of government because, unlike things in nature, it is not “the same thing to all human beings” (para. 6). In paragraph 7, he surveys different societies and points out the diversity of ideas on important subjects. Since there is no universal view of justice, it must be constructed by each government independently.
In paragraph 10, Philus tells us that justice has been interpreted differently over the ages. Justice is not one static thing; it changes over time and in different places because it is not—like trees, rocks, and colors—a natural thing that is perceptible to everyone. Justice may mean obeying the laws, but which laws should a person obey? If laws came from God or from nature they would be easy to follow. Philus says, “laws are not imposed on us by nature — or by our innate sense of justice. They are imposed by the fear of being penalized. In other words, human beings are not just, by nature, at all” (para. 12).
Some lines or pages are lost between paragraphs 13 and 14, and when Philus returns to his speech he begins describing the action of governments, comparing government by men “exploiting their wealth or noble birth” with government by “the people.” He condemns the latter as a government in chaos, and in his analysis he arrives at the compromise Scipio recommends: a government with a single leader, but with the council of the nobles and with the voice of the people in evidence. This structure would balance the powers of three important groups and possibly produce justice.
In paragraph 16, Philus begins to offer us some frightening alternatives:
1.We can perform injustice and not suffer it ourselves;
2.We can both perform it and suffer it; or,
3.We can neither perform it nor suffer it.
He evaluates the choices and says the best one is to perform injustice and get away with it without suffering it ourselves. In paragraph 17, he slyly reveals that the current policy of Rome, and by implication all empires, is to conquer lands and take them from other people. If justice were the uppermost concern, Rome would be merciful to all people, but if that were true Rome would lose its empire.
Philus contrasts what he calls wisdom with justice. Everyday wisdom says that the empire must be preserved. But justice says that merciful behavior is right and all other behavior is wrong. Justice says people should not be conquered against their will; wisdom says that the empire cannot grow and be great unless weak people are conquered by the strong. In paragraph 19, Philus begins to examine the choices of an individual, and in paragraph 20, he unleashes his most powerful argument against justice. He offers a hypothetical argument: “Let us imagine that there are two men, one a paragon of virtue, fairness, justice, and honesty, and the other an outrageous ruffian.” He asks: Which would we rather be, a good man who has been blinded, ruined, expelled, and beggared, or a bad man who receives all the world’s blessings? Philus knows which we would choose.
Then, by process of analogy, he likens the condition of the individual to the condition of the state. “No country would not rather be an unjust master than a just slave” (para. 21). Unfortunately, much of Philus’s speech is lost at this point, and Laelius ends the “experiment” by making some profound and direct statements that are designed to counter Philus’s argument.
In paragraph 22, Laelius begins by talking about “true law,” something Philus implied did not exist. Laelius defends the concept of a natural law that conforms to reason and is the same for everyone. “To invalidate this law is sinful,” he says. He goes on to say in the next and final paragraph that “[t]here will not be one law at Rome, and another at Athens,” by which he means that laws should be consistent from state to state. “Instead there will be one single, everlasting, immutable law, which applies to all nations and all times. The maker, and umpire, and proposer of this law will be God, the single master and ruler of us all.”
PREREADING QUESTIONS:
WHAT TO READ FOR
The following prereading questions may help you anticipate key issues in the discussion of Marcus Tullius Cicero’s “The Defense of Injustice.” Keeping them in mind during your first reading of the selection should help focus your attention.
•Why does Philus point out the differences in the ways people in other nations practice their religions?
•Which arguments for injustice are most persuasive?
•Which virtues of justice seem most important in light of Philus’s argument?
The Defense of Injustice
laelius: For the purposes of argument, see if you can offer a defense of injustice!
PHILUS: What a fine cause you have handed over to me — to speak in favor of evil!
laelius: Yes, I can see what you have reason to fear. You are afraid that, if you repeat the customary arguments against justice, you might be supposed also to approve of them. Yet you yourself, I must point out, stand for old-fashioned integrity and honor to an almost unparalleled degree! And your habit of arguing on the other side—on the grounds that you find it the easiest way to arrive at the truth—is something with which we are quite familiar.
philus: All right, then. In order to humor you, I will smear myself with dirt, quite deliberately. For that is what people who are looking for gold always feel that they have to do. So we who are looking for justice, which is far more valuable than all the gold in the world, surely ought to do the same, without shrinking from any hardship whatever.
But 1 only wish that since I am now going to make use of what someone else has said, I could also use his own language! The man I am referring to is Cameades.[1] For he, with his gift for sophistical disputation, was quite accustomed to making the best causes sound ridiculous! And so, after reviewing the arguments of Plato and Aristotle in favor of justice—a subject on which the latter filled four large books[2]—what Cameades then proceeded to do was to refute them! From Chrysippus[3] I did not expect anything substantial or impressive. He uses his own peculiar method of argument, analyzing everything from a purely verbal rather than a factual point of view.
These heroes acted correctly in exalting the virtue of justice, in disrepair as it was. For justice, when it exists, is the most generous and liberal of all virtues, loving itself less than it loves all the people in the world, and living for the benefit of others rather than of itself. In seating it, therefore, upon that heavenly throne, not far from wisdom itself, those philosophers were perfectly right. But one more thing has to be pointed out. They did not, evidently, lack the desire to exalt justice. For, if they had, what would have been their reason and purpose for writing at all? Nor did they lack the ability to do so, in which, indeed, they surpassed everyone else. Yet their enthusiasm and eloquence alike were undermined by a certain weakness. For the justice into which we are inquiring is not just, something that naturally exists, but a quality that is created by those who are occupied in government. It cannot be merely natural, because if it was, justice and injustice would be the same thing to all human beings, like heat and cold, or bitter and sweet.
But that is not the case; on the contrary, beliefs on the subject vary enormously. If, for example, one could climb into Pacuvius’s “chariot of winged snakes”[4] and drop in on many diverse nations and have a good look at them, one would find, first of all, that in Egypt, that most unchanging country of all in which the written records of the events of a vast series of centuries are preserved, a bull is considered a god—which the Egyptians call Apis.And numerous other monsters and animals of every kind are ranked among divinities and regarded as holy. That, to us, appears thoroughly alien. Here in Rome, on the other hand, as in Greece, splendid shrines can be seen, adorned with statues of deities in human form.
Yet the Persians have always considered that to be a blasphemous custom. Indeed, Xerxes I is said to have commanded that the temples of Athens should be burnt down, for this sole reason, that he considered it blasphemous to keep the gods shut up within walls, when they belong to the entire world. Indeed subsequently Philip II of Macedonia, who planned to attack the Persians, and Alexander III the Great,[5] who actually did so, quoted as their pretext their determination to avenge the Greek temples—which the Greeks had decided that they must never rebuild, so that later generations would always have before their eyes this visible memorial of Persian sacrilege.
Furthermore, a considerable number of peoples, unlike ourselves, have believed that the practice of human sacrifice is pious and thoroughly pleasing to the immortal gods. They include the Taurians on the coast of the Euxine Sea, King Busiris of Egypt,[6] and the Gauls and the Carthaginians. Indeed, people’s life-styles are sometimes so divergent that the Cretans and Aetolians consider banditry respectable. As for the Spartans, they declared, habitually, that any territory whatever that they could touch with their spears belonged to themselves! And the Athenians, too, swore oaths, in public, pronouncing that every piece of ground that produced olives or grain was their own property. The Gauls, however, consider it degrading to grow grain by manual labor. For that reason they take up arms so that they can go and reap other people’s fields. But consider the customs that we—who are, of course, the most just of men!—habitually follow. What we do is to tell the Gauls across the Alps that they must not plant olives and vines, because we want to increase the value of our own. That, you might say, is prudent; “just” is not the word you could apply to it. One can see, from this example, that what is sensible is not always truly wise. Consider Lycurgus.[7] He invented a series of admirably wise and sensible laws. Yet he felt able to insist, all the same, that the lands of the rich should be cultivated by the poor as if they were slaves.
Moreover, if I wanted to describe the differing ideas of justice, and the divergent institutions and customs and ways of life, that have prevailed, not only in various nations of the world, but even in this single city of our own, I could show you, also, that they have not remained the same, but have been changed in a thousand different ways. Take for example ManiusManilius here, our interpreter of the law. The advice that he generally gave you about women’s legacies and inheritance he was a young man, before the Voconian Law[8] was passed, was not at all the same advice as he would give you now. (Yet that law, I might add, was passed for the benefit of males, and is very unfair to women. For why should a woman not have money of her own? And why should a Vestal Virgin be permitted to have an heir, when her mother cannot? Nor can I see why, if a limit had to be set to the amount of property a woman could possess, the daughter of PubliusLicinius Crassus Dives Mucianus,[9] provided that she were her father’s only child, should be authorized by law to own a hundred million sesterces, while three million is more than my own daughter is entitled to own.)[10] . . .
So laws, then, can vary considerably, and can be changed. If they had all come from God, that would not be so. For, in that case, the same laws would be applicable to all, and, besides, a man would not be bound by one law at one time of his life and by another later on. But what I ask, therefore, is this. Let us accept that it is the duty of a just and good man to obey the laws. Butwhich laws is he to obey? All the different laws that exist?
There are difficulties here. Inconsistency, between laws, ought to be impermissible, since it is contrary to what nature demands. But the point is that laws are not imposed on us by nature—or by our innate sense of justice. They are imposed by the fear of being penalized. In other words, human beings are not just, by nature, at all.