Beneficia in Cicero’s De Officiis and Philippic II

Aaron W. Wenzel (Ohio State University)

In the fall of 44 BC, Cicero was a busy man. With the assassination of Caesar in March, Cicero ended his self-imposed retirement and re-entered the world of politics. He did so with gusto. In September, he composed the first two of his Philippics, a series of speeches excoriating Marcus Antonius and deploring Antonius as a new autocratic tyrant bent on destroying the Republic. We know from his letters (Att. 15.13.6 and Att. 16.11.4) that at almost exactly the same time, Cicero was composing the De Officiis, a philosophical treatise about moral obligation, expediency, and the conflict between the two. The coincident period of composition makes it difficult not to read the speeches and the treatise alongside one another, and several scholars have done so. Michel (1960), Gabba (1990), and Dyck (1996) have all noted instances of verbal, and to some extent, thematic parallels between the De Officiis and Philippic II. I think, though, that there is something more substantial going on. By focusing on the concept of beneficium in the two works, I show that Cicero is engaged in a project of redefining and recasting a traditional concept of Roman aristocratic behavior for the new political realities of the late Republic.

In the De Officiis, Cicero discusses beneficia by enumerating how moral obligations (officia) arise from each of the four cardinal virtues. For Cicero, showing kindness to others falls under the realm of justice, and he proceeds to describe under what circumstances showing kindness is appropriate, what the moral character of the recipient should be, and in what kinds of relationships it is given. Meanwhile, in Philippic II, the notion of beneficium comes to the fore near the very beginning of the speech. After the delivery of Philippic I, Antonius seems to have accused Cicero of violating their friendship and ignoring Antonius’ many beneficia by delivering such a negative speech against him. In Philippic II, Cicero defends himself against this charge by claiming that Antonius never showed him any real beneficia, and even if he had, it is still Cicero’s duty to defend the Republic against tyranny. The rest of the speech expands on this idea that Antonius is not a provider of beneficia and is not worthy to receive any himself, for a number of reasons. My paper shows that when the discussions regarding beneficium in the De Officiis and Philippic II are read in conjunction, it becomes clear that in the philosophical treatise, Cicero has Antonius in mind as a negative example of a traditional and, to Cicero’s mind, proper giver of beneficia. My paper also demonstrates that in the rhetorical work, Cicero has an opportunity to express publicly, in the midst of a political crisis, his redefined conceptions of beneficia and officia and how they relate to the health of the Republic.

Long (1995) and Habinek (1990) have shown that in the De Officiis and the De Amicitia, both philosophical works written after the assassination of Caesar, Cicero was attempting to recast traditional aristocratic values such as gloria and amicitia for a new political order. Similarly, I argue that Cicero is trying to resurrect the old-fashioned idea of what a beneficium is and how it should be shown but, unlike Long and Habinek, I find that this process of redefinition is occurring across two works, one philosophical and one rhetorical. Interestingly, Cicero, while using traditional terms like beneficium, addresses the De Officiis to his son Marcus (and, by extension, to the younger generation of Roman aristocrats) and addresses Philippic II to his fellow aristocrats. In so doing, I believe that Cicero is using both works as a way to inspire young Roman nobles to resist Antonius, restore the values of the Republic, and return Roman politics to the way they were before the civil wars.