17 On Encountering Antiquity (I)

I was recently asked how I found my way to the Classical authors, given that I am neither a historian nor a classical philologist.

Many years ago in a library I came across a volume of Cicero, the “Letters to Atticus.”i I thumbed through the book, seeking nothing in particular, and was curious about certain passages that did not in any way represent the preconceptions of that dreadfully boring Latin I had held since my time in school. I discovered there a very human, very lively, and interesting contemporary—of the forename Marcus Tullius—who conversed passionately, in great detail, and from a comprehensive education with his best friend about matters of daily politics, of their view of the world, and of private affairs.

A bit about the visit to the 18-year-old Octavian, later to become Caesar Augustus, at his seaside villa in the vicinity of present-day Naples. About the political and also literary rivalry with the ruling Consul and Potentate Gaius Julius Caesar, who would soon visit him again, and would probably partake of an emetic. Of raising his son, his daughter, about his new wife who was still so young. Whether he really should purchase this expensive statue for the garden in his villa.

He expresses his feelings about his service as the Consul to a great empire, about his problems as an unaccepted and ostracized immigrant among the ruling classes, perhaps a “lateral hire,” as we might describe it today, who never really felt recognized by the long-established aristocratic families of Rome. About his priestly duties as High Priest and Pontifex Maximus, about his young friend Brutus and his “pending request,” urgently imploring his support (for the meticulously planned assassination of Caesar), and so on up to his flight from Rome and his mortal fears in the civil war after the death of Caesar.ii

Again and again, he gives accounts of his efforts at interpretation and his literary works, which were intended to popularize for a Roman audience the Greek manner of thinking (today one would say “Classical Thought”), Greek philosophy, and culture, to find them a home, as it were, in the new capital city of the world.

Especially useful for me in these readings were the expert commentaries from the editor and translator Helmut Kasten, which could only serve to make the entry into the living world of the Romans 50 years before the advent of the Common Era even more exciting. Now here was no rigid and exalted-for-all-time marble bust looking down on me from its pedestal, but rather a human being like you and me. Made curious, I was now interested to learn somewhat more about Cicero’s philosophical positions.iii Where did he stand, what were his literary and philosophical exemplars, what did he want politically? His talents in the daily business of the law and in politics, above all as an orator, was already familiar to me. Up until this point, these texts evoked little reaction from me—even though the art of seduction (as practiced by an orator gifted in, and occasionally obliged to, the use of all the various Roman tricks and ideals of rhetoric) as it appears in his public addresses to the audience of his age gradually interested me more deeply.

Is such an address truly more “sung,” as if we witnessing a scene from the theater, was it (so to speak) a sort of performance? What was the purpose of the so-called paeans and eulogies? At mass events, comparable to present-day open-air pop-concerts, the oratorical “star” had to prove, according to the will of the audience, that a flea was more useful than a horse, that blue was red and that red could be yellow, and so forth.iv Then, I gathered up Laelius’ “On Friendship,” also the thoughtful reflections “De finibus bonorum et malorum” (“On the Ends of Good and Evil”), and finally also the “Orator.”

Starting from Cicero’s works I felt my way slowly forward, towards further Roman literature, first the lyricists Catullus and Juvenal, then to Horace. I discovered in the Roman works affinities between the conditions of society of former times and those of the present, not to say anything of the forms of society, of “decadences,” of which one so colorfully complains, even nowadays and especially in the United States. With Juvenal and Catullus, it was less about politics or philosophy, and more about life, love and sex, good living and passion, food, war, and so on.

In any case, Roman antiquity was for quite some time no longer as alien as I had believed—quite the opposite. Imperialism, striving for power, oppression and exploitation of the poor, multiculturalism, disorientation and “anything goes,” luxury, decadence—I understood, now all of a sudden, the ardently pursued discourse in the United States over the “good life” in Classical times and the present. One spoke—and still speaks—of the “American Imperium,” also of the Post-American Age (“post-Americanism”) that would ring in a new age, and not only for Muslims—to no avail, I would argue.

Now I systematically combed through the entire corpus of Roman literature, to name but a few works. From the Letters of Cicero, of Plutarch or Pliny on contemporary poetry, or on the novel (Petronius), or the writing of history (Tacitus), I finally arrived, whether I wanted to or not, at the philosophical schools, which played—both as a way of life and an instance of morality—an exceedingly important and largely underestimated role in the contemporary lives of the Roman and Greeks. Even our present is largely determined by those past debates—just as much as from Christian, Jewish, or Islamic faith.

The Greek-speaking Lucian (120–after 180) also fascinated me.

In a satirical work, “Sale of Creeds,” the entire Weltanschauung of the Roman Empire was gathered up. The founders of these schools, above all Socrates, Aristotle, and Heraclitus were to be sold at the market as slaves. In just a few words they were to present themselves and their philosophy to potential customers—with Lucian’s ironic and humorous commentary they then departed the stage, most of them successfully handed over to a satisfied customer.

Even warnings of a completely new and “fundamentalist” group,v as we would describe it today, are to be found in Lucian’s work. It concerns the Galileans, who later named themselves Christians. Even these are lately stirring up trouble abroad, in Rome and Athens. Direct antecedents and epigones of their figurehead, Jesus Christ, were always to be found in the Roman Empire, again and again. The philosophic or worldviewing masters had mostly gathered their students (disciples) around them for long periods, had traveled with them through the countryside, taught openly and were quoted in every tongue.

The best example of this is perhaps Pythagoras (400—320 BCE) with his bizarre group of disciples, their years-long silences, ascetic abstaining, and the mathematical-musical exercises, their communal living and learning together, all of this had starkly impressed even Plato. Lucian satirized even such saviors as these, in his texts “Peregrinus” and “Alexander,” who were apparently, with their marvels and prophecies, quite successful in the Roman Emptre.

iThe volume in question is Cicero, „Atticus-Briefe,“ in German and Latin from Helmut Kasten (Heimeran-Verlag München 1980). A suitable and freely available English translation is from Evelyn Shuckburgh, “Letters to Atticus,” published in 1923.

iiCicero, along with his brother Quintus, was slain by Caesar’s followers out of revenge in the aftermath.

iiiAround this same time I was active with a colorful assortment of artists (occasionally among them the musician Adriana Hölszky, Bernd Konrad, Carol Morgan or Gerhard Koch von der Faz), who dealt intensively with the subject of postmodernism and the revivification of the past (cf. Reinhold Urmetzer, Ästhetik Band 2 – Kunstbuch, 2002)

ivSee, as always, the topic of “isosthenia,” the equivalence of opposing arguments.

vI’ll spare myself at this point the discussion over the various meanings of the words “cult,” or “sect,” or “school.” Even Christoph Wieland still used “cult,” while today the word remains limited and restricted to religious connotations and has with worldviews or philosophical questions and reaching all the way to formal logic (as in the case of the Stoics) very little to do.

(To be continued)