Cicero’s De legibus: Environment and the Symbolic Value of locus

Authors

  • Georgia Tsouni University of Crete

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/9342

Abstract

The prologues to the first and second books of Cicero’s De legibus uniquely represent a rural environment as the setting of the discussion. While Cicero has a Platonic model in mind, I discuss how his depiction of the rural environment in the De legibus goes beyond its Greek model. This is visible both in the way the surrounding environment provides the context for authorial remarks on the genre and dialogical style of the text but, furthermore, in the way the rural landscape bears symbolic value which links it directly to Roman ancestral values and exempla. As such it may also be read as a counterpart to the city landscape of Athens, a locus related to theoretical virtue and intellectual exempla, which is depicted in De finibus 5. The symbolic investment of rural environment aims at underlining the “practicability” and superiority of Rome’s traditional constitution but also Cicero’s own role as a defender of the res publica.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Georgia Tsouni, University of Crete

Georgia Tsouni is Assistant Professor in Classics at the University of Crete. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests centre on Hellenistic and Roman literature and philosophy with a particular focus on ethics, political philosophy, the history of the Academy and the Peripatos and the reception of Greek philosophy in Rome (especially in Cicero’s philosophical dialogues). She has published the monograph Antiochus and Peripatetic Ethics (CUP, 2019), a new critical edition and English translation of The Epitome of Peripatetic Ethics, which survives in the Anthology of Stobaeus in B. Fortenbaugh (ed.), Arius Didymus on Peripatetic Ethics, Household Management, and Politics. Text, Translation, and Discussion (2017), and numerous articles on the Hellenistic Academy, Aristotle, the Stoics and Cicero.

"Cicerone e l'Ambiente", Bologna 2023

Downloads

Published

2023-12-31

How to Cite

Tsouni, G. (2023). Cicero’s De legibus: Environment and the Symbolic Value of locus. Ciceroniana On Line, 7(2), 433–453. https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/9342

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2023): “Cicéron et l’environnement” Proceedings edited by Adalberto MAGNAVACCA & Tommaso RICCHIERI

Section

Reflecting on Nature in Cicero’s Philosophical Works

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.