Cicero and Dionysios the Elder, or the End of Liberty

Latin writing often conceals more than might be uncovered by a mere philological and historical approach. To understand the message of a text, traditional analyses ought to be supported by the more recent requirements of the fields of textual criticism and literary science. Close reading, combined with a more structural textual analysis, may offer insights which, from a historical point of view, perhaps, might have no implications, but which, nonetheless, can contribute to a better understanding of an author's writing technique and of his intentions in writing the text under discussion.

This article proposes a more complex reading of Cicero's Tusculanae disputationes, especially of the fifth book, taking as a point of departure Cicero's handling of Dionysios of Syracuse as a prototype of tyranny. The extraordinary emphasis put on this particular example can, in my opinion, only be understood in its connection to the contemporary political situation, dominated by Caesar's victory. Close reading thus renders a striking actuality to the text and the writing of Cicero's philosophical masterpiece.

At different places in his oeuvre, Cicero mentions Dionysios the Elder, tyrant of Syracuse (406–367).¹ The frequency of Dionysios' appearance, especially in the later works belonging to the so-called second philosophical period, seems to indicate that, by this time, the tyrant had assumed a charged significance for Cicero. This article seeks to evaluate Cicero's rhetorical use of Dionysios in an attempt to understand the message which he intends to transmit to the reader. As the most elaborate evocation of Dionysios appears in the fifth book of the Tusculanae disputationes, our analysis will concentrate on this work, without ignoring its historical and literary context.

I. Dionysios and Cicero

A first observation ought to be made: Cicero never distinguishes clearly between the elder and the younger Dionysios, between the father and the son. Although he must have been conscious of the existence of two Syracusan tyrants with this name, he refers only once explicitly to the first as superiorem illum Dionysium (Off. 2.7.25), whereas he refers once clearly to the younger one as Dionysius tyrannus (Fam. 9.18). Normally, however, he combines the tradition attaching to both tyrants in one rhetorical unity of a Syracusan tyrant Dionysios, exemplifying the strange combination of sanguinary cruelty with refined education.²

In the earlier works, Dionysios simply appears as the best historical example of cruel despotism, in line with the semi-mythical Phalaris or with Alexander the Great, who brutally murdered Callisthenes.³ In the later period, however, the tyrant takes on a new dimension as a counterexample to true wisdom.⁴ He does not lose his despotic traits, but from that point Cicero concentrates more on the tension between Dionysios' refined education and the consequences of his tyranny. In Tusculanae 5 this tension is most widely developed, illustrated most clearly in the story of Damocles.

The reader of the Tusculanae has, on arrival at this passage, already passed four days in the philosophical school of Cicero's Tusculum, and the fifth and last day is half done. Today he is to learn that virtus suffices to assure the sage, everywhere and always, a blissful life. As an illustration Cicero enumerates some counterexamples from recent Roman history. Cinna's fourfold bloody consulship (87–84) is opposed to the much admired Gaius Laelius, who was destined to become the protagonist of one of Cicero's subsequent treatises (Laelius de amicitia) and who had been consul only once in 140 after having suffered a refusal the year before. Marius' six consulates are contrasted with the attitude of Quintus Lutatius Catulus, his colleague in the consulship, with whom he shared the victory over the Cimbri.⁵

This enumeration is crowned by the most extensive and liveliest portrait of the Syracusan Dionysios in Cicero's entire oeuvre.⁶ Even in the Tusculanae, this passage is exceptional with respect to its dimensions. No figure is allowed such prominence in the earlier books, although many names have been mentioned and several examples have been presented to the reader, especially in the first book.⁷ Yet they consist...