Pompeius ApolitikOtatos:
Action versus Speech in Cicero’s Letters to Atticus

Jonathan P. Zarecki (University of North Carolina, Greensboro)

In January 61 Cicero made the “most severe criticism he ever made” against Pompeius (Holliday [1969], 20): after Pompeius failed to sufficiently acknowledge Cicero’s service to Rome during the Catilinarian conspiracy and to give Cicero the praise that the orator felt he deserved, the orator claimed that in Pompeius there was nihil come, nihil simplex, nihil en tois politikois honestum, nihil illustres, nihil forte, nihil liberum (Att. 1.13.4). A decade later, however, with civil war looming, Cicero would praise Pompeius for finally speaking politikōs, that is, in the manner of a statesman (Att. 7.8.4). What had changed in those ten years to change Cicero’s opinion of Pompeius and Cicero’s definition of politikos will be the subject of this paper.

Though Powell (1994), 19-29, has shown a definite connection between the ideals of Plato’s politikos and the rector rei publicae of the De Republica, the use of politikos in Cicero’s letters gives no indication that we should understand it to be taken in the Platonian sense. For Cicero the rector of the De Republica does not yet exist; he is a hypothetical ideal politician. But the idea of politikos is rooted firmly in the present, in the realm of the possible, and not in some hypothetical future of the sort found in Plato’s Republic. A politikos concerns himself with plausible and necessary actions on behalf of the state, and will be expected to carry them out. Cicero’s use of politikos in the letters, especially the letters to Atticus, makes clear that there is a difference between a rhetor and a politikos. He cites Demosthenes as his proof, who, in his Philippics, which called for the end of debate and negotiations and the preparation for war with Philip, se ab hoc refractariolo iudiciali dicendi genere abiunxerat ut semnoteros tis et politikōteros videretur “released himself from this stubborn, judicial manner of speaking in order to appear in more elevated guise of a statesman” (Att. 2.1.3). Later on, Cicero would make this distinction even clearer by describing L. Manlius Torquatus as non tam cito rhetorem…quam ut…politikon, “not so much an orator as a politikos” (Brut. 265).

Pompeius was a particularly suitable example of this definition of politikos, since his career was deemed successful not on the basis of his oratorical ability but on his actions in military affairs. His public pronouncements were in fact often spectacular failures (Att. 1.14.1-2). However, in October 51 Pompeius declared that should there be no resolution to the Caesar question by 1 March 50, he would not hesitate to take definitive action (Fam. 8.8.9); this, and the attendant insinuation that he would treat Caesar like a child who strikes his father with a stick, is likely to be the source of the compliment of Att. 7.8.4 mentioned above. Pompeius would not, however, act in concert with Cicero’s desires, and in March 49, having failed to raise his promised armies and take steps to defend the capital, Cicero calls him apolitikōtatos (Att. 8.16.1). The futility of speech without action becomes even more pronounced after Caesar had consolidated his authority. As Caesar became more autocratic, rumors of assassination began to circulate (Phil. 2.74; Plut. Ant. 11.2, 13.2). Cicero realized that Caesar could not be removed by speech alone, and thus in the Brutus (265) of 46 BC and De Finibus (4.5, 5.66) of 45, the idea of speech is completely removed from the idea of a politikos, and the emphasis is instead placed on the concept of civic duty and loyalty to the res publica (an idea first broached in 49 [Att. 9.10.5]), not slavish devotion to the dictator Caesar (Att. 12.51.2).