Panaetius

I'm Chris Anadale from Mount Saint Mary's University, and joining me today are our regular co-hosts, Katherine Bradshaw of the Ancient Languages Institute, Ben Peterson of Abilene Christian University, and Coy O'Neill of College of the Ozarks.

We've come now to book three, chapter seven of On Duties, and, uh, Cicero will now walk us through his, uh, his summary and evaluation of Panatius', of, of...

Panatius? Panatius' approach to this same topic.

We'll begin with chapter seven and eight.

Ben, may I ask you to read those for Catherine lead-off comment?

"Now, Panatius indisputably discussed the question of duties with extreme precision, and I have followed him in particular, though applying some amendments.

He proposed three headings under which men are accustomed to deliberate upon and discuss the matter of duties.

The first, when they doubt whether the course in question is honorable or dishonorable; the second, whether it is beneficial or harmful; and the third, if that which has the appearance of honorableness conflicts with that which seems beneficial, how one should decide between them.

The seventh is the one you'd least expect coming from him.

And at the end, you'll discover what the richest philosopher in Rome did with his entire fortune.

This is Stoicism for Winners, and this is another rule of a Stoic.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was born in Córdoba in Roman Hispania a few years before the birth of Christ.

His father, a cultured and demanding man, moved the family to Rome so that his sons could make their careers there.

And Seneca, while still a boy, began to seek out the city's philosophers.

One of them left his mark on him for good.

His name was Attalus, a Stoic teacher with a fiery tongue.

The, the other one that, that jumps out to me as, as one that we found, a connection we found later is, you know, Marcus talking about, you know, being like a wrestler and he talks about pankration and fighting and how you close your fist and you have your weapon.

And then when we were writing Lives of the Stoics, I believe we found, was it Panaitius or was it Posidonius? That, that had said, it, we realized that Marcus is borrowing this metaphor

Yeah, he, an idea is he was saying you have to be ready for the unexpected-

Yeah

And I am surprised that Posidonios has but briefly touched upon this subject in certain memoirs of his, and especially as he states that there is no other topic in the whole range of philosophy so essentially important as this.

Now I cannot possibly accept the view of those who say that that point was not overlooked, but purposely omitted by Panaetius, and that it was not one that ever needed discussion, because there never can be such a thing as a conflict between expediency and moral rectitude.

But with regard to this assertion, the one point may admit of doubt, whether that question which is third in Panaetius' classification ought to have been included or omitted altogether.

But the other point is not open to debate, that it was included in Panaetius' plan, but left unwritten.

For if a writer has finished two divisions of a threefold subject, the third must necessarily remain for him to do.

Besides, he promises at the close of the third book that he will discuss this division also in its proper turn.

We have also in Posidonius a competent witness to the fact.

He writes in one of his letters that Publius Rutilius Rufus, who also was a pupil of Panaetius', used to say that, as no painter had been found to complete that part of the Venus of Cos which Apelles had left unfinished, for the beauty of her face made hopeless any attempt adequately to represent the rest of the figure, so no one, because of the surpassing excellence of what Panaetius did complete, would venture to supply what he had left undone.

No moral treatise, perhaps, has exercised so widespread an influence as that which was known to our forefathers under the title of Tully's Offices.

Now, that work is founded on Panetius, a rather unorthodox Stoic, and it does not profess to treat of the ideal morality at all, but only of the intermediate proprieties.

We may notice, also, that in that work the attempt to regard virtue as one and indivisible is frankly abandoned, as being unsuitable to the popular intelligence.

we pass on now to another instance of accommodation according to the high stoic doctrine there was no mean between virtue and vice all men indeed received from nature the starting-points for virtue but until perfection had been attained they rested under the condemnation of vice it was to employ an illustration of the poet philosopher cleanthes as though nature had begun an iambic line and left men to finish it until that was done they were to wear the fool's cap the peripatetics on the other hand recognized an intermediate state between virtue and vice to which they gave the name of progress or proficience yet so entirely had the stoics for practical purposes to accept this lower level that the word proficience has come to be spoken of as though it were of stoic origin seneca is fond of contrasting the sage with the proficient the sage is like a man in the enjoyment of perfect health but the proficient is like a man recovering from a severe illness, with whom an abatement of the paroxysm is equivalent to health, and who is always in danger of a relapse.

For I must inform you that in comparing various authors with each other, I have discovered that some of the latest and most dignified writers have transcribed, word for word, from former works, without making any acknowledgement.

Not avowedly rivalling them, in the manner of Virgil, or with the candour of Cicero, who in his treatise De Republica professes to coincide in opinion with Plato, and in his essay on consolation for his daughter says that he follows Crantor, and in his Offices, Panaetius, volumes which, as you well know, ought not merely to be always in our hands, but to be learned by heart.

For it is surely the mark of a perverted mind and a bad disposition to prefer being caught in a theft to returning what we have borrowed, especially when we have acquired capital by usurious interest.

The Greeks were wonderfully happy in their titles.

You just have to keep your eyes and ears open." The Stoics were here 2,000 years earlier, obviously.

Um, Panatius, the, the Greek who took Stoicism to Rome, built his whole ethics on what you owe the people around you.

And Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor, uh, put the payoff in one line in his private book called Meditations.

He said, "Have I done something for the general interest? Well, then I have had my reward." Something for the general interest, that's the Roman for contrib-contribution.

I shall, therefore, at this time and in this investigation follow chiefly the Stoics, not as a translator, but, as is my custom, I shall at my own option and discretion draw from those sources in such measure and in such manner as shall suit my purpose.

Since, therefore, the whole discussion is to be on the subject of duty, I should like at the outset to define what duty is, as, to my surprise, Panetius has failed to do.

For every systematic development of any subject ought to begin with a definition, so that everyone may understand what the discussion is about.

3.

Whatever is right they define as absolute duty.

But mean duty they say is duty for the performance of which an adequate reason may be rendered.

The consideration necessary to determine conduct is, therefore, as Panetius thinks, a threefold one.

First, people question whether the contemplated act is morally right or morally wrong.