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C h a p t e r   Cicero’s Discourse on Religion Throughout this book, and in particular in Chapter 12, Cicero has been looming in the background. While the whole process—or rather the bundle of processes—analyzed so far was decisively informed by the (or some) Romans’ reaction to Greek rational thought, Cicero must be given pride of place. Toward the end of his life, motivated by the death of his daughter Tullia as well as by his experience of political silencing under Caesar’s dictatorship, Cicero embarked on the project of providing a systematic account of Greek philosophy in the Latin language. He completed this endeavor in less than two years, counting from the (lost) Consolatio, directed toward himself, in February 45 to November 44, when he stopped working on De officiis. According to his own exposition in the beginning of the second book of De divinatione he stressed both the systematic and the cultural aspects of his enterprise: the Latin language opened up and commended philosophy, in particular Cicero’s brand of Academic-skeptical philosophy, to the Romans.1 What the history of philosophy has for centuries viewed as the most comprehensive account of, and hence an invaluable source for, Greek Hellenistic philosophy, also represents a major landmark in Greco-Roman history in terms of acculturation. Professional Greek-style philosophy, with Cicero, became an accepted field of Roman senatorial activities and was presented as such.2 Cicero’s late writings are of even greater importance for the history of the rationalization of religion. In a seminal article, Mary Beard has stressed ‘‘that the importance of De Divinatione for the historian of religion lies not in the evidence it provides for the supposed scepticism of the Roman élite in the late Republic, but in its position as a specifically religious treatise; for as such it represents an important stage of cultural development at Rome—the definition of ‘religion,’ for the first time, as an independent subject of discourse .’’3 In view of the conclusions reached in previous chapters in this Cicero’s Discourse on Religion 187 book, Beard’s statement needs serious adjustments with regard to temporal priority and the necessary qualification of the discourse as philosophical, as distinct from antiquarian. Even the use of the term ‘‘independent’’ requires qualification. Cicero’s treatment of the gods and divination is embedded in an encyclopedic project, just as Varro’s Antiquitates rerum divinarum is the sequel to a series of books dealing with Antiquitates rerum humanarum. Finally , the word ‘‘religion’’ also needs quotation marks—it is even less clear in Cicero’s case than in Varro’s that any equivalent of our contemporary notion of ‘‘religion’’ is being employed. Yet Beard is right in stressing that something new did happen in Roman culture in these treatises. It will be our task in this chapter to define more clearly what Cicero achieved and how it relates to the process of rationalization delineated so far. From On the Laws to On the Nature of the Gods As early as the 50s, Cicero had substantially addressed religion in his second book De legibus (On the Laws), a work obviously intended as an expansion of his six books De re publica, which were published shortly before he started his period of service as governor of Cilicia in May 51. De legibus was probably drafted at the same time but not published.4 The entire second book, that is to say, the first series of positive regulations, is devoted to religion. Following this, in the third book, the dialogue’s character Marcus addresses questions of power and legitimate rule in the form of magistracies and procedures, as well as legislation. For the present analysis it is not so much the content of De legibus that is of interest, but the argumentative framework and epistemological status of the discussion therein. Following a Stoic line of argumentation (the speaker explicitly rejects the destructive effects of the New Academy),5 Marcus establishes the fundamentals in the first book: the fundamental lex, prior to every written law and the iura civilia of the peoples (1.17), is a consequence of natura, and to be derived from nature by means of ratio, as given by and related to divina mens, the will of the immortal gods and the highest god in particular (1.21ff.). The sharing of ratio constitutes a community (societas) of men and gods that is to be understood as...

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