The first letter is addressed to Cicero’s closest friend, his confidant from his schooldays and life-long publisher Titus Pomponius. He is better known by his cognomen Atticus that reflects his love of ‘Attic’ (Athenian) learning which united him with Cicero. The epistle projects the immediacy of the events of Catiline’s conspiracy against the Republic in 63 BCE; it resulted in an open civil war, which, however, could be contained to and extinguished in northern Italy (62 BCE). Yet the reference to Cumanus seems to quote Cicero’s dialogue Laelius – De Amicitia, which he composed only late in 44 BCE. We leave it to more skilled philologists to decide whether Cicero was actually referring to an earlier work where he had cited the same example or whether his recollection of his feelings from his consulship had remained so fresh until late in his life. At all events, the present letter shares the confusion about the loyalty we owe to our state, easy to pledge when our community paves our roads and keeps us safe, yet more challenging when we dislike its current government or the changed mood of the people. Let us hear Cicero’s very own voice …

My dear Atticus, no one would ever think that I have moments like this. I seem so certain in all my speeches and writings. But I am doubting myself about a basic subject that I speak about a great deal. Now I wonder: What does fides, loyalty, mean? Even though I have written about it, I find it to be very complex, and right now, because I am being criticized, I am doubting myself and wondering if I even know what loyalty to Rome means. Perhaps if I write my jumbled thoughts down, without fear of this being seen, I may find some reassurance that I am doing the right thing, and that I truly am a loyal citizen of Rome.

As consul, I have tried to convince the Senate to authorize war against Catiline and his supporters. I believe that this is a battle for the salvation of the Republic. But, someone might ask, whose Republic? When there is a crisis of legitimacy, and two sides are contending for control of the state, who has the right or the authority to adopt the voice of the Republic and label those who dissent as disloyal?

Catiline is not just a senator, but a scion of a patrician family that far outclasses my ancestry. I am a novus homo a new man. So even as I am urging the Senate to condemn Catiline, I must deal with the fact that my enemy can assert, by his very presence, legitimacy and status. I urged Catiline to leave the city, so that by literally being outside of the center of power, I can remove the image of his centrality to everything.

I have spoken as if I am the Republic. I am certain that anyone who is an enemy of the Republic cannot be a citizen. But someone could ask: Who is qualified, in times of crisis, to say who is the loyal citizen and who the enemy?

So when I took my seat, Catiline, in what he feigned to be a humble manner, begged the Senate not to imagine that he, a patrician and distinguished like his ancestors for service to Rome, had the least desire or need to overturn the Republic, while someone like me, who he denigrated as a "naturalized immigrant" in the city of Rome, is certainly not the man to save it. Loyalty to the state is a fine slogan, but in a crisis, loyalty can be contested, and the word can seem like mere partisanship.

It may seem simple. If you have a family, you are loyal to your family. If you have a friend, you are loyal to that friend. If you are a citizen of a state, you are loyal to it. It is not, however, simple at all. When I have written on friendship, I have asked what we should do when a friend demands something of us that goes against our moral principles. What if you have a conflict between loyalty to a friend and your responsibility to Rome, or again, to your principles? Should one be loyal to a government that is oppressive? Many friendships, and family relationships, end because of disagreements over what side or position to take in an issue facing the Republic.

I have written that friendship can never justify becoming a rebel against Rome. The Stoic Gaius Blossius Cumanus maintained that, if his friend Tiberius Gracchus had asked it of him, he would have set fire to the Capitol (cf. Laelius - On Friendship 11.37). What if your friend, or your leader, tells you to bear arms against your country, to participate in an insurrection?

There must be limits to loyalty. Or better, loyalty should be to a Republic that is built on a permanent, moral foundation.

After his triumph over Catiline (63/62 BCE), the tide gradually changed in Rome, and the tribune of the plebs Publius Clodius forced Cicero into exile for his vigorous stance in his consulship (58/57 BCE). When his friends had finally managed to arrange for his official recall from Macedon, the masses welcomed Cicero enthusiastically – but the vicissitudes of life and human temper did not give him a good night’s sleep upon his return. These are his musings he shared with his friend Atticus.

My dear Atticus, I usually write from within a state of depression when I am stoically attempting to work through life’s vicissitudes. For example, I wrote a great deal last year in Greece when I was sent into exile by Clodius. His supporters demolished my house on the Palatine and my villas at Formulae and Tusculum. That time is still with me.

But today, on one of the most glorious days of my life, after I was met by a cheering crowd all the way from Brundisium to the Capitol, and I have been told that my properties will be rebuilt at public cost, why am I sitting here writing? I should be thrilled. I have emerged from the depths of life to glory.

It is because after emerging from Hades and being feted on Olympus, I realize, more than ever before, how precarious and volatile the sovereign of our Republic is: the people. That same crowd cheering me today could be screaming for my head tomorrow.

There is a paradox at the center of any constitution with a strong democratic element, like two horses running in opposite directions, open communication means that a free society cannot protect itself from free speech. Anything is possible because anyone can say anything and therefore anyone can be convinced of anything. To say that everything is permitted to say is not to say that everything is justified or justifiable.

I have read how the Elder Cato failed to persuade at the Galba trial though he invoked rage (Brutus 89–90). The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his death (149 BCE), attempted to bring Galba to account, but the weeping children of the general, and perhaps the gold which he had brought home with him, proved his innocence to the Roman people.

I thus trained myself in rhetoric, and I have trained myself well. Even with all this, I am more aware than ever of the perils of persuasion. I may persuade them today, but I may not persuade them tomorrow.

Persuasion, not truth is the master in a Republic. What people believe is more important than what is actually true because what people do in the world is a function of what they believe about the world.

So even on this day of glory, I fear for my future, and for the future of Rome.

This letter was written in mid-August 57 BCE, one day after Cicero’s return from his exile in Macedon.

My dear Atticus:

I should be full of joy and pride, after all the affection and appreciation the conscript fathers and the entire people of the city showed me yesterday. Later on, I was finally re-united with my faithful Terentia, and hugging my sweet little Marcus meant the world to me.

No surprise that I could not fall asleep that night, from all the excitement. Over time, sleep did not come, but the sentiment changed, and I gradually went through the worst depression of my life. No one knows the reasons I was so depressed, and I am revealing this only to you, my alter ego. As someone adept at arguing, I find myself thinking about issues from the other side. So yes, I went down into the pit of despair when I was in exile. I was bitter and despondent. But only I know the depth of my anguish – for I realized that it had not been wrong to exile me.

It is one thing to miscalculate. And I miscalculated. But what was worse, I was wrong in a deeper way. If you truly believe in the law and the Republic, then you must be consistent. And I was involved in a terrible inconsistency.

I am not saying that the Catilinarian conspirators did not deserve to die. I believe that they deserved death. Do I believe that they were an immediate threat to the very existence of the Republic? Yes. And my own life was at stake.

But I was involved in the illegal executions of men. I was the one who ordered the magistrates responsible for the prisoners to take them to the dungeon below Capitoline Hill and strangle them. They still should have undergone trial.

Caesar, to his credit, though I will never admit it in public, was absolutely right. He stated that the conspiracy was horrific, but that Roman dignity should be placed ahead of the desire for revenge. He said, “all bad precedents originated in cases that were good.” He warned that if we execute them, it will provide a basis for future vengeful or incompetent leaders to execute their enemies who will not deserve such punishment.

And even though I was given a triumphal escort by torchlight as I headed home, and I soon was voted “Father of the Country,” I had a sickening feeling that I had aroused dark and angry feelings in everyone.

In terms of miscalculation, Catiline himself was still with his army in Etruria. And there was a reaction against me personally. When I was about to address the Roman people in my final address as consul, I was prevented from speaking by Nepos because I had killed Roman citizens without trial, I had to swear a public oath that I had done it to save the Republic. This may not sound important, but it shows that the regular order of things had been disrupted. Nepos exploited the situation and proposed to bring back Pompey’s force against Catiline’s army, though he knew full well that most of Catiline’s army had deserted. It was a ploy to increase Pompey’s power.

Without reviewing everything that happened, the thought I want to put down here and unfold before you, my dear Atticus, is that there is chaos and stability, and law maintains stability. By subverting the law, I contributed to the chaos. And when there is chaos, flawed men will capitalize on it. Chaos begets chaos, and even in this moment of my triumph, I fear that chaos and darkness are coming.

My dear Atticus

Many years ago, when I was in Greece, I asked the oracle at Delphi how I might attain the greatest glory. The pythoness said, “By making your own genius and not the opinion of the people the guide of your life.”

I have tried to follow this, which has led me both to great glory and terrible infamy. I am now trying to balance how I feel about my life by thinking about the good ideas I have presented as opposed to the actual events that have happened. No matter what has happened, or will happen, I have attempted to introduce and teach concepts that seem essential for the future of the Republic, if it is to have a future as a republic.

If anyone really understands my concept of concordia ordinum (‘the respectful and friendly agreement of the leading social classes’), he would see that I am trying to throw new light on the role of internal conflict in republics. Concordia ordinum is not a ‘theory’ like those of the philosopher Plato. I do not use it to describe a permanent ideal state but a temporary state of affairs, which is important because of the terror that antagonism between the classes can cause.

While striving to promote, defend, and redefine the concept of concordia to safeguard my beloved Republic, I have experienced so many struggles in my public and private life. And so I have given three answers to this issue; two are my unique contributions. All three varieties of concordia are the fundamental principles of a stable republic.

First, the conventional sense. Concordia is unity, friendship, and agreement, which secures the harmony of the republic. The avoidance of internal divisions and discord is an indispensable condition of prosperity and freedom. The Republic must eliminate hatred and build friendship and agreement among its citizens.

Second, concordia ordinum is a political harmony or coalition of the two orders of the Senators and our second aristocratic class, the equites. The best way to secure concord in a republic is to maintain a balance between its two main orders.

Third, the key to preserving concord must be to preserve the common good in a consensus of all good people and the idea of concordia as a consensus omnium bonorum - what I also call concord of the citizens (concordia civium).

And here is what I haven’t explained well in my previous writing. The meaning of concordia must shift in direct response to the political needs of the day. When the conventional idea is not sufficient to achieve our aims, we need concordia ordinum. If it fails, we need to reach a wider audience and work towards concordia civium.

If my concepts are an army, all the political turmoil has outflanked my best intentions: concordia ordinum has failed. And I despair to say this but I was likewise unable to put concordia civium into practice. But I do not abandon my belief that both connotations of concordia should be the founding principles of the Roman res publica. I will never disavow the belief that the traditional meaning of concordia as friendship should be the foundation of a stable republic.

I want to be even more basic. No one seems to understand how great the force of friendship and concordia is. Just look at a society filled with quarrels and disputes. For what house is so firm, or what state so well established as not to be able to be utterly overthrown by hatred or strife? It sounds so simple, but why don’t people understand how much good there is in friendship?

Editorial note: Since his strong stance in the Catilinarian conspiracy (63 BCE), Cicero developed the notion of concordia as one of his political key terms (Catil. 4.15). Initially, it centered around the relation between the two aristocratic classes at the top of Roman society, the Senators and the larger group of the very wealthy, who were traditionally called equites ‘equestrians’ or ‘horsemen’. This is what Cicero coined ‘concord of the orders’. He knew from history that pitching the interests of the noblemen on the one hand and the rich investment bankers on the other had repeatedly led to civil strife since the time of Gaius Gracchus (123 BCE). Concordia ordinum thus advanced to a key principle in Cicero’s state philosophy (Rep. 1.48). The present letter reflects his insights that led him to articulate a more inclusive notion of concordia, later in his life (40s BCE). He extended its significance to all citizens, making it the foundation of a fair and just society (Off. 2.78, 82) and regarded it as the essence of friendship (Laelius 23).

In Rhetoric, Aristotle was more detached from issues of morality than his teacher Plato. Rhetoric, for him, is finding and using the available means of persuasion. I think about his three useful terms: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos gives the audience insight into the persuader’s character and goodwill toward them. Pathos is the emotional appeal. Logos is the speech itself, its reasoning, and arguments.

In turn, Aristotle’s student Alexander changed the world. Of course, he was one of the great military strategists of all time. He was personally brave and so his soldiers loved him because he did not sit in the rear and watch them fight for their lives. But he was also a master of the symbol and the importance of significant events, as seen in so many ways:

• Marrying Barsine, daughter of the Persian King Darius, and arranging the marriages of his officers to Persian noblewomen and ten thousand of his troops to Persian concubines.

• Reconciling two cultures, becoming the son of Zeus, like Heracles. Statues, monuments, his face on coins, his portrait everywhere adorning pottery and art.

• Promoting cohesion in his empire.

• Using symbols to make himself the sun, the center of power.

But of course, I am thinking about our would-be Alexander, Caesar. Yes, I have severely criticized Caesar and I am not wrong. He is a master, like Alexander of the symbol and the word. I keep thinking about the genius of veni, vidi, vici. The words are alliterative and rhyming and roll off the tongue with ease. Only few will remember that it was a report after the victory over Pharnaces when he invaded Pontus. The details and circumstances do not matter. The phrase shows mastery in war but also mastery of the word, of the memorable – logos.

He also knows how to use pomp to show power making the maximum use of spectacles and to demonstrate how much he ‘loves’ the people – ethos.

He understands the needs and desires of his Roman audience – pathos.

These things may seem to be simple, but they are very sophisticated use of techniques that present him as powerful and even invincible. When he tells stories about the terror he struck in the hearts of his enemies, he strikes terror in the hearts of his domestic enemies here at Rome. If Alexander claimed to be born from the gods, Caesar has hinted here and there that he is descended from Venus.

I fear many things in this world. But for my nation, I fear, more than anything else, a dangerous master of the symbol and the word. For if he becomes the sun, we will all burn.

The beginning of this letter is lost, so we do not know how exactly Cicero was induced to speak about Caesar’s eloquence and boundless ambitions. The timing is clear, the dictator’s last stay in Rome after his return from the war in Spain (fall 45 BCE) and his murder on the ides of March 44 BCE. The addressee is probably either his most intimate friend Atticus or his younger friend Brutus, whom he had also dedicated a dialogue on oratory in Rome in 47/46 BCE.

Dear Marcus,

I am proud that you are in Athens, studying philosophy. After all the tumultuous events I have been a part of, it is a relief to me to devote my attention now to philosophy as well. So you, with your life ahead of you, and I, with full understanding that I am in the last stage of my life, may meet, through writing, in the mind, though we are apart physically. I have written you a longer letter that is more than a letter, it is a three-part treatise on appropriate actions, which I call On Duties (44 BCE). I hope that you will read it and consider it and come back to it long after I am gone.

This is a time, as you know, of great political upheaval in Rome, as it comes in the wake of Caesar's assassination. The Republic itself is in danger. I feel like the world is being tossed around in a tempest.

But before I speak directly, let me broaden the scope so that we can observe the particulars of our day in the context of the whole of life. It may seem like a strange time to be thinking philosophically, but I would say, on the contrary, it is a time for rational, dispassionate thought.

In this treatise I send you, On Duties, I try to frame morally correct actions. The virtues of human life are the public good, and the leaders of the public are entrusted with promoting those virtues. Then there is what is useful for the private citizen, the necessities of a person’s life. When one needs to make a decision about what action is appropriate, there is a spectrum of choices: between what is honorable and what is disgraceful.

This should not be hard, correct? A public official who has any character at all should only choose what is honorable. He should not speak with a foul mouth, or denigrate the vulnerable, or seed hatred between parts of society. All such actions are disgraceful.

Another easy kind of decision is between useful and useless. A hard decision is between two honorable actions, or between two useful actions, or between what is honorable and useful. Let me add now: When one must decide between personal ambition and the public good. You will say: This is an easy kind of decision, of course!

But now let us think about the world we live in, a world when men become consumed with their ambition to the exclusion of everything else. I have been looking at my life as from a distance and thinking about what I have experienced. As I moved up, office by office in the Roman way, I saw many men holding and exercising public responsibilities. And what they were mostly concerned with was the next highest office.

I now speak to you directly. Consider the audacity of Caesar, who overturned all laws, human and divine, to seek the sovereignty which he had shaped for himself in his mind. Ennius wrote, “Where kingship is concerned, no social bond or covenant is sacred.”

My entire treatise is a meditation on three men seizing power in Rome, and the consequences. As you know, I refused an offer to become part of that Triumvirate (60 BCE) that resulted in the election of Caesar as consul. I later refused to take up the position of legion commander under Caesar’s proconsulship (58 BCE), or to serve him as a proconsul when the civil war broke out (49 BCE).

You asked me why. I strongly supported the Roman Senate and rejected Caesar’s ambition because I perceived him as putting his self-interests above the interests of the common good, and the common good is the function of government.

Marcus, as you study philosophy, remember two precepts of Plato. The first is that leaders must always be watching out for the well-being of their fellow-citizens; they must refer to it in whatever they do, forgetting their own private interests; the other is that they care for all citizens and not, while they watch over one part of the populace, neglect the other parts. If leaders do not live by these precepts, if they do not make decisions that choose honorable actions over disgraceful actions, if they care about nothing and no one but themselves, they will ruin their lives, our lives, and the greatness of our nation.

Marcus, my dearest son:

Thank you for sharing your recent study report with me, I am so proud of the progress you are making, and am flattered that, although you are surrounded by the leading philosophers of our time, you take one important and indeed difficult question back to your old father: ‘What shall a reasonable person make of the chresmologues? They are collectors and transmitters of oracles. Are they also creators of oracles?’

Did you know that I have always been fascinated with oracles? But my main reason has actually been my uncertainty as to what I should believe about them. I believed in the oracle when it told me to follow my own genius. I have read historical works that showed how events did follow the prophecies. I have read accounts of battles where the commanders fought with the assumption that the oracles were true and strategized along those lines. Was this the reason they were victorious?

Some of them were fulfilled because they worked within the lines; the commanders consciously fulfilled the prophecies.

I muse sometimes that the whole idea of oracles fits the Stoic’s position; if you should resign yourself to fate, you are assuming that there is a prescribed fate.

But in my own thoughts here, I must say that while I believe some are true, I am deeply cynical that many oracles reflect the attempt of the creator of the oracle to be on the winning side or to serve the highest briber.

I think about the Delphic oracle and how it ruined its own reputation and undermined its own power. Until the time of the Persian wars, the authority of the oracle was almost undisputed. But when Xerxes was about to invade, the Pythia did not encourage the Greek defenders of their independence. The Pythia predicted defeat for the Greeks, but when the battles of Salamis and Plataea dramatically changed everything, there was an attempt to save face and say the oracle had been right and its ambiguous message had been misinterpreted. When those wars ended, the oracle became the servant of Athens and then Sparta and then Thebes and Macedonia and then the Aetolians and finally of Rome.

Over the course of the centuries, more and more skepticism grew about the worth of the oracle. Demosthenes, who was an even greater orator than me, said: “Should we go to war now for the shadow that is at Delphi?”

How often have we gone to war for shadows?

But more, a chresmologue, for me, is anyone who, to further their finances or their position, purports to tell a truth that they know is a lie.

Are we all chresmologues? We say the expedient thing.

It is not just that we are hired and bribed.

Our ambition hires us and bribes us.

I mourn for Delphi. I mourn for certainty. I mourn for the gods and the certainty of the Fates’ decrees.

Do you know what I long for? One true institution that has not been bribed or politicized.

An oracle

A senate

A court

A consul

A general

A man

Something or someone who tells the truth whatever effect it has on them.

While I would claim to be that man in public, I know I have not been that man.

I wonder if that man could live in this world, or if he lived, could he be successful and accomplish anything?

My dear Atticus

They came to me today and said that they want me to be princeps senatus. I don’t know whether this will happen. It is too clearly a move against Mark Antony, and I don’t know if calling this the restoration of a traditional office will enable it to come to pass.

My incessant ambition would not let me refuse their offer, and it was very flattering. I know that my furious writing to protect Rome has made some think I am the last fortress defending the republic.

But as I was agreeing to let them pursue this, I had a fantasy and for once, I was not in it. Instead I mused about who would be the perfect princeps senatus who would always make sure to give a fair hearing to all sides, so that the ensuing decree of the Senate and the law proposed to the people be based on firm knowledge and transparency about conflicting interests, to be sure the best and fairest solutions would be chosen.

In my fantasy, Socrates was princeps senatus. He would actively weigh and measure each claim, see through and object to every falsehood, brook no nonsense, demand evidence, seek precedents, challenge every self-serving lie, dismiss every superficiality, ensure the truth, defend the innocent, look toward the broader good, cut off the long-winded, and always ask: Is this good for Rome? Is this good for Romans?

Imagine a Senate governed by such a leader. This would be the salvation of Rome. But it would take the strength of a Socrates to conduct the Senate and keep the animal spirits in their places. And it would take a spirit like that of Socrates who placed the truth above his life.

Then, again, look what happened to him.

My dear Atticus

I am happy to read that you liked my thoughts about Socrates as the princeps Senatus. Well, unfortunately, that was just a dream. But I’d still like to continue this conversation about the principles that keep our state and society together. I think about how life and events are always changing and unfolding; no form of government will be the most appropriate for every time and place. What every responsible statesman wants to do is to create the constitution that is the most just and the most stable.

So, let us think about the three elementary forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. A mixed constitution will combine two or three of these forms. The Greek philosophers wanted to draw up a constitution safeguarding against overthrows and rebellions and the co-opting of government by one faction.

Plato and Aristotle saw the mixed constitution as a search for balance between the two forms of government that they found extreme: direct Athenian democracy on the one hand and the total exclusion of the people from the government on the other. Then Polybius saw the three-part constitution of our Republic. For Polybius, consuls were nearly like monarchs, the Senators were the aristocrats, and the comitia, the assemblies, were the democratic part.

When I discussed the idea of the mixed constitution in De re publica, I did this in light of my personal situation and also taking to heart what was then going on in Rome. I am now watching, once more, sometimes helplessly, as the Republic is sliding down the slope into a monarchy. In response, I want to strengthen and maintain the important role of the Senate. I learned about balance from Aristotle, and I see a mixed constitution as protecting or restoring the lost balance between the consuls, the Senate, and the comitia. I see this restoration as the last chance to save the Republic.

Although I think about Rome and the present, I do see that a mixed constitution is the best possible idea for any people in any time and place. And I imagine a country in the distant future struggling to hold on to its balanced government.

Which brings me back to mixed constitutions. Human beings being what they are, some leaders always will emerge to destroy the delicate balance for their own ends. Between their naked ambitions and the inevitable force change, it will be hard to withstand their lust for power, when they come with spears and swords to cut the mixed constitution into the bits and pieces from which it came. We thus need to defend the political balance, together with Aristotle and Polybius, as the safeguards of peace, freedom, and justice.