Conceptualizing and Theorizing Peace in Ancient Greece

Prologue

In January 2008, Ruth Scodel gave her presidential address on "Stupid, Pointless Wars" (2008). As it happens, my address focuses on a different dimension of the same problem. Although I will explore mostly Greek ideas, I could easily have chosen Roman ones too. In the late republic, after centuries of almost incessant warfare and the conquest of a huge empire, both Cicero and Sallust tried hard to demonstrate that intellectual achievements (in rhetoric, law, and history) had as much merit as those of the statesman and general. As Sallust puts it, "It is beautiful to do good for the res publica, but neither does it lack distinction to speak well: it is possible to gain renown in peace as well as in war (vel pace vel bello clarum fieri licet); both those who were doers (qui fecere) and those who wrote about the deeds of others are praised in great numbers" (Cat. 3.1). Even so, Sallust knew that in the quest for glory in his society the doer and warrior prevailed over those who were committed to peaceful works, the thinkers, speakers, and writers. So did Cicero (e.g., Pro Mur. 22–24; cf. De or. 3.33.133–34; De off. 2.19.65). It was only during and after the civil wars of the 40s and 30s B.C.E. that Roman authors raised their voices to express wide-spread hopes for peace, especially when, rarely enough, events seemed to justify such hope. It is no accident, of course, that the literature surviving from Augustus's life-time yields much richer material for the exploration of thoughts about peace than any other period of Roman history, and that peace and pacification played a central role in Augustus's own self-presentation.¹ Moreover, one of the early Augustan authors offers a good entry into our topic.

A Late Reflection: Varro's Pius Aut De Pace

In Book 19 of De civitate Dei, before embarking on a discussion of heavenly peace, Augustine offers a general and broad survey of the many ways in which peace, delightful and dear to all humankind, is in fact the ultimate desire of every being on earth. I quote only a few sentences from the beginning:

Anyone who joins me in an examination . . . of human affairs, and the human nature we all share, recognizes that just as there is no man who does not wish for joy, so there is no man who does not wish for peace. Indeed, even when men choose war, their only wish is for victory; which shows that their desire in fighting is for peace with glory . . . It is an established fact that peace is the desired end of war. For every man is in quest of peace, even in waging war, whereas no one is in quest of war when making peace

(19.12. Trans. Bettenson).

Augustine's argument covers many aspects of human (and even animal) life and strikes us, at least in part, as quite bizarre and truly "sophistic"—as we shall see, with good reason.

Long ago, Harald Fuchs (1926) argued in a detailed examination that Augustine took the essence of this digression from an essay by the first-century B.C.E. polymath Marcus Terentius Varro. Even if this view has been contested (Laufs 1973), the reference to Varro proves useful. His Pius aut de pace (Pius or On Peace) was one of 76 logistorici, prose works, probably in dialogue form, in which Varro discussed important philosophical and political issues (Zucchelli 1981; Sallmann 2002: 1140). Cicero's Laelius de amicitia is an extant example of this genre. The person named in the title, usually the main interlocutor in the dialogue, had some relationship to the topic indicated in the title as well. In this case, the Pius in question probably is Sextus Pompeius, the son of Pompeius Magnus. If so, the occasion prompting Varro to write an essay on peace was the Peace of Misenum, concluded in 39 between Octavian and Sextus Pompeius (Katz 1985: 144–58; Zecchini 1985)—only one year after the Peace of...