Laelius : Scipio :: Cicero : Pompey:
Cicero’s Continuing Application of the Laelius/Scipio
Friendship in His Relations with Pompey

John H. Starks, Jr. (Randolph-Macon Woman's College)

Cicero’s famous closing to Fam. 5.7, ShB3 (April 62 BCE) in which he asks to be Pompey’s confidant and advisor (Laelius to Pompey’s Scipio) has often been assessed in its immediate context as a vain miscue by Cicero or a vain rebuff by Pompey. And although Cicero’s subsequent opinions of Pompey would ebb and flow with the varied fortunes of the republic and of Pompey himself, his analogy to the friendship of Laelius and Scipio became a canonical topos within his own literary career and a personal reminder of his frequently recycled hopes for Pompey and ultimately Pompey’s memory.

A.M. Ward (Princeton, diss., 1968) argues that the sage Poseidonius, an inspiration and acquaintance of both Pompey and Cicero, most likely stirred Cicero’s fascination with the Laelius/Scipio relationship, which he had not alluded to earlier. Thus, Cicero, from his first reference to them, would see this bond of renowned orator and soldier in broad rhetorical terms taught by a noted philosopher, not simply as an historical exemplum. Thereafter, Scipio and Laelius feature most prominently as interlocutors in the de Re Publica, de Senectute, and de Amicitia, with further significant allusions in the de Legibus, Brutus, and de Officiis, several of which contain cross-references to each other that further interweave the force of the allusion. 

The de Re Publica  and the de Amicitia most prominently reveal Cicero’s points of reference between the two sets of statesmen. The conclusion from the de Re Publica giving primacy to the mixed Roman constitution (see Asmis AJPh 2005) is however admittedly tempered by insistence on one-man rule by a noble guardian in times of distress (Lintott Constitution 1999.224-5), a guardianship that Cicero felt would be best managed by Pompey in the crises of 54-52 BCE (Att. 4.18; 8.3) while he was writing this work. On the other side of the civil war, after disillusionment with Pompey’s failures, desertion and murder, the Pompeians’ defeats in Spain and Africa, and Caesar’s increasing dominance, Cicero turned to rhetoric in Brutus, praising Laelius,’ Scipio’s, Pompey’s, and his own oratory to varying degrees. In 46-45, he defended various Pompeians (Marcellus, Ligarius, Deiotarus) before Caesar increasing his praise for Pompey’s memory, character, and conquests with each speech. Some time after Caesar’s assassination, Cicero set his dialogue on friendship as an extended eulogy by Laelius and friends after Scipio’s tragic death.  The surprise and the intrigue surrounding Scipio’s and Pompey’s rather unheroic deaths are somewhat parallel; but even more important the de Amicitia itself several times directly cites Laelius’ prior dialogue on government with Scipio as recorded in the de Re Publica, creating a cyclical interconnection of Cicero’s political philosophy with his assessments of friendship as the synthesis in the concordia ordinum and the senatorial republic. This work in some ways appears to have helped steel Cicero for his final friendship obligation to Pompey when he reentered active issue-advocacy in the senate and defended Pompey’s name, property, honor, and legacy (especially his sometimes unpraiseworthy sons) against Antony in Philippics 2, 5, and 13.

So in spite of Pompey’s reluctance to fully accept Cicero’s Laelius/Scipio analogy, Cicero reciprocated nonetheless by usually being Laelius to Pompey’s Scipio, especially in the philosophical works that envelope the last phases of his career. His personal hesitations about Pompey’s ambivalence and hesitation in his letters are overshadowed by a perceived public need for an experienced man of accomplishments.