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The Human and the Humane: Humanity as Argument from Cicero to Erasmus
 9783737004411, 9783847104414, 9789863500827, 9783847004417

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Reflections on (In)Humanity

Volume 8

Edited by Sorin Antohi, Chun-Chieh Huang and Jörn Rüsen

Assistant Editors: Stefan Jordan (München), Marius Turda (Oxford) EditorialAssistants: AngelikaWulff(Witten) Editorial Board: Aziz Al-Azmeh (Budapest), Hubert Cancik (Berlin), Dipesh Chakrabarty (Chicago), Pumla Gobodo-Madizikela (Cape Town), Moshe Idel (Jerusalem), Oliver Kozlarek (Morelia), Grazia Marchianò (Montepulciano), Jutta Scherrer (Paris/Berlin), Hayden White (Santa Cruz), Zhang Longxi (Hong Kong)

Christian Høgel

The Human and the Humane Humanity as Argument from Cicero to Erasmus

V&R unipress National Taiwan University Press

Published in cooperation with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, National Taiwan University.

This book series is sponsored by the Orbis Tertius Association, Bucharest.

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MIX Papier aus verantwortungsvollen Quellen

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Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available online: http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISSN 2198-5278 ISBN 978-3-8471-0441-4 (Print, without Asia Pacific) ISBN 978-986-350-082-7 (Print, Asia Pacific only) ISBN 978-3-8470-0441-7 (e-book) ISBN 978-3-7370-0441-1 (V&R eLibrary) You can find alternative editions of this book and additional material on our website: www.v-r.de Supported by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Southern Denmark. © 2015 by V&R unipress GmbH, 37079 Goettingen, Germany © 2015 by National Taiwan University Press, Taipei, Taiwan All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Cover image: © photocase.de Page 2: Engraving by Johann Heinrich Meyer for the title page of Johann Gottfried Herder, Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität Printed on aging-resistant paper.

Contents

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 1: The Humane as Argument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 2: The Humanitas of Cicero . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laws and diplomacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The empire: provincials, barbarians, and slaves . . . . . The dynamic turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Subject or object or both: cultural education or the law?

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Chapter 3: Implementing Humanitas . . Imperial responses . . . . . . Humanitas as ‘humanitarian’ Seneca . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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69 70 74 76

Chapter 4: Christianizing Humanitas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lactantius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Other medieval usages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 5: Humanitas as Argument Against War The Italian humanists . . . . . . . . . First beginnings in the Renaissance . . Erasmus and later humanists . . . . .

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99 100 106 107

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Contents

Epilogue: Ancient Humanitas after Erasmus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

115

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

119

Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Foreword

This book would have remained a flimsy idea had it not been for the help I have received. I have profited greatly from discussing the matter with friends, colleagues, and members of my family, who at times have had to tolerate my persistent talk on the subject. I should like to thank the various audiences at the University of Southern Denmark to whom I have presented my topic, especially colleagues, some now former colleagues, at the Institute of History, at the department of Classical Studies and the Centre for Medieval Literature. With some I have had long and productive discussions, especially Jørgen Hass, Jo Hermann, Jacob Isager, Ulrik Langen, Kirsten Dige Larsen, Lars Boje Mortensen and Jeppe Nevers. I should like to thank participants at various seminars in Odense and elsewhere for pertinent questions and intriguing observations. I have also profited much from discussions with Anders Toftgaard (Royal Library, Copenhagen). Ingunn Lunde (University of Bergen), Christian Svendsen, and Birthe Arendrup helped me with linguistic matters. All mistakes remain mine. Special thanks go to my wife Elisabeth, who read part of the transcript, and to Mathilde, Laurits, Ulrikke, and Oskar, for their patience in dealing with my time-consuming interest. Finally, I should like to thank Anton Jørgensen, and due to a long-term indebtedness I dedicate this book to him.

Introduction

In times of conflicts and crises, an argument insisting on the humane is commonly heard. In wars, voices demanding a humane treatment of prisoners – as decreed by the Geneva Convention – will be raised. Opposition to social injustice may be framed in a collected call for a humane society. Even educational systems may insist on having a humane perspective among its leading causes. Words referring to man – humane, but also humanistic, humanitarian, even humanity – thus take on status of ideals for mankind. Man, in common and legal speech, thus becomes the conceptual marker of his own perfection. The subject of this book is the early history of this linguistic feature and in particular its argumentative use, from its starting point till early modern times. Not all societies, or all times in history, have been guided by the possibility of such reference to man. This manner of speaking – and especially the argumentative use of it – had its beginning, in the Roman Empire, and from this point its ups and downs. In modern times and even more so now in a time of globalization, societies have increasingly adopted the manner of speaking, taking various stances towards the arguments of the humane, experiencing it at times as too weak, too all-encompassing, too difficult to amend, or simply indispensable. Many of the ultimate goals or higher ideals encapsulated in words as humane or humanity – in the ethical sense – may be expressed through other words, based on religious or (other) ethical beliefs, but the framing of these views with reference to man includes these ultimate goals within a universal understanding. This has at least the immediate advantage of pointing beyond any particular religion or confession, which may prove an asset in a globalized world. And with the increasing importance of human rights, the growing attention to global and postcolonial processes, and the still evolving need to discuss man and society within a humanistic frame, also the conceptual past of the humane gains importance. The idealistic use of words referring to man has its history, and it is the early parts of this history that will be traced in the following chapters, based on the assumption that much of what was formulated in that early phase has been taken for granted in the following ages.

10

Introduction

History may thus show us that what is taken to be natural to man is often only one possible feature within the unimaginable fecundity of mankind’s dealings with the world. Thinking and speaking in terms of the humane may seem obvious to some, but it arose at some point in history, and gained importance as part of a civilisation process. As will be shown, arguing from the humane is not a natural feature in man’s conceptual universe – what is? – but by now an inescapable fashioning in our modern world. The argument of the humane was first really expressed in Latin, in words as humanus, humanitas, etc. Given the vast dependency of Roman world views on Greek thinking, it is surprising to see that this particular feature had hardly any roots in Greek thought. The humane was never an argument in Ancient Greek. All cries for clemency, justice, well-ordered government and control, or true learning were in the Greek world (or any other ancient society) voiced in different terms. Not all times, places, and societies think and talk in this manner. But does it really make any difference, since all these claims may be made through other concepts, in the name of other supreme ideals? According to this book, there is a difference. The humane, as an ethical proposition, bases its argument on man, on the universal definition and understanding of man. What is argued as humane is at the same time taken to be human. The circular argument in this constitutes both the weakness and the strength of the thrush of the humane, and no matter what ultimate stance is adopted towards the concept, it is indispensable to be aware of its history and function. A main problem when dealing with such a concept from an academic perspective – which is the intention of this book – is the conceptual volatility of the humane. Words as humanism, Roman humanitas, and derivations of these enter modern discussions of almost any past age, often with little conscience of whether the words were at all used by people at the time and in what sense, or to what extent. For obvious reasons (or we would find it impossible to discuss the past in a way that made sense), we allow in general for much anachronistic usage. Still, the common application of, for example, the nineteenth-century concept humanism to various phenomena throughout history has often been misused simply to state that readable texts were written in that period. In other cases the concept is certainly attested but limits will be set for its application. When dealing with e. g. renaissance humanists, various scholarly works will refer to the rebirth of classical studies as a new kind of humanism, but at the same time insist that this kind of humanism had only little to do with the ethical or ideological use that this concept was put to later. This may seem rather surprising, for already Cicero (106–43 BCE) and other authors in antiquity had used the word humanitas in the sense of ‘humane-ness’, as well as (true) education and conformity to the laws of mankind. Why then speak of humanism as something solely literary if ages before and after have seen ethical ideals in this

Introduction

11

word? As we shall see, to insist on the purely learned meaning of humanism, and in this disregard its obvious ancient ethical ancestry, is both problematic and in fact part of a common way to deal with the concept of the humane. There is in the use of the word a frequently unidentified ideological background to its employment. And as with all ideologies, the basic role of the core concept is to both express a fundamental truth or reality and to insist on a programme that makes this truth become implemented. Due to this ideological, or semi-ideological, core a constant possible confusion of the simply human and the humane takes place. This book offers an exploration of these instances of conflation, tracing thereby the historical background to modern issues as humanism and human rights. Due to the volatility of the matter, a basic assumption will be that the concept of the humane is characterized by an inherent interpretative need. There is a circular argument in the humane: our ethical ideals are in it ascribed to humanity, even though many (or all) humans do not comply with the standards; therefore we must exhort/educate/sentence others and ourselves into complying with them. The circularity found here approximates the concept to ideological concepts, in which such circularity is fundamental. Still, no discussion on the basic ethical parameters across confessions and linguistic borders can be undertaken without a common denominator. And few other concepts than the humane (in its various linguistic formations) seem to offer themselves. This book is, however, only in a secondary sense about ethics. Its primary object is the background to and outcome of ascribing a certain number of virtues, or educational and/or societal goals, to the name of the humane/humanity. From early beginnings in Greek philosophy, the central importance of Rome will here be stressed. The foundation of the concept for almost all of modernity comes out of the writings of Cicero, and the development in his thinking and use of the humane will be studied closely. Also his afterlife, and specifically the strong opposition as voiced by the church father Lactantius will become central. Important is also the Arab exposition of insaniyya, primarily as evidenced in the writings of the Persian writer Miskawayh (932–1030 CE). The possible common background of these Latin and Arab notions in Greek philosophy will be touched upon but, as a modern concept, the dependence of the humane on Cicero and the Latin tradition is by far the most influential, and the history of the Latin concept will therefore receive more attention. The main new contribution of the book, as opposed to other accounts, is that it takes the ‘humane’ to be a semi-ideological construction dating back to premodern times, primarily to ancient Rome. It was in Rome that ‘human’ (humanus) and especially the noun humanitas could be taken to refer to the ‘humane’, even when used in a neutral context. Through it a theme or sub-theme for a text could be announced, or it could constitute the core of an argument. Giving an exposition of the early history of this concept from Cicero to Erasmus will

12

Introduction

show that, even if experiencing long intermissions, the argumentative use of this concept goes back to ancient times, and that its ancient (pre-colonial but highly imperial) roots are of importance today. Through a historical exposition some main steps in the evolution of the concept will be addressed in this book, based mainly on authors and thinkers who thematize the concept and in this enable us to define their conceptual horizon (as opposed to mere references or approximations). Erasmus (1466–1536 CE) has been chosen as end point, because forming a bridge to modern (and colonial) times he both establishes and embodies the modern conceptualization of humanism and of the humane. To put the thesis of this book succinctly, it may be claimed that there is a very direct link back to the ancient in the modern use of the words ‘human, humane, humanistic, etc.’. And what the present book would like to prove is that this link is central to comprehending it. The first chapter offers the conceptual and historical background to the humane, on the basis of comparison with other languages (all major Western languages, Greek, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese). Central texts and authors before Cicero will be cited and discussed, and the most important thinking, not least Stoicism, will take a key position in discussing background and effects. Modern study areas primarily involved in discussing and analysing these issues are philology, philosophy, history, and history of law. In the second chapter (The Humanitas of Cicero), the most important exponent of Roman humanitas, Cicero (106–43 BCE), will be discussed. Uniting the various themes that former studies have often treated separately, the chapter attempts an all-encompassing exposition, insisting on the concrete problems that made Cicero take so frequent recourse to this concept. Major themes are the Greek inheritance, law and administration, subject-object relations and slavery, education and republican ideals. A close reading of Cicero’s works is indispensable, for his uses of humanitas are fundamental to the complete history of humanitas and therefore to this book. He is not only the Roman author who makes the most extensive use of humanitas; in the two millennia following his death, he has also been one of the most well-read authors in the western world. His contribution is therefore – also when seen in a long perspective – the foundation of the concept, and much that looks like later indirect developments of his thoughts turns out, due to his many readers in later ages, to be direct influence upon people who had read him. The chapter contains three main parts, and a final discussion. After a short introduction, the first part will show how Cicero picked up from the Greek inheritance and from the humanitas in the Ad Herennium. The political-legal implications are here in focus. The second part deals with Cicero’s ideals of humanitas in the context of the Roman Empire. To Cicero, humanitas could characterize the good administrator or imposer of Roman law in e. g. Roman provinces. Thus, the issue of the empire, including

Introduction

13

slaves, is brought into the sphere of an all-inclusive humanitas. In the third part, Cicero’s frequent use of humanus to mean ‘well-educated’ will be explored. This will be labelled a “dynamic turn.” Humanitas is now seen by Cicero as a goal for a personal striving. The implied parts of this educational process will at times become evident in his exposition. Given the Greek origin of these disciplines, Cicero will even go to the extreme of pronouncing humanitas as altogether Greek, thus producing an externalized image of what is human. This will lead to the final part of the chapter that will discuss the various meanings of Cicero’s humanitas on the basis of a passage from his De officiis. Central issues are the subject/object relation, slavery, legislation, and education. Thus, areas within philosophy, law, psychology, history, and history of education are touched upon. The third chapter (Implementing Humanitas) takes the following centuries of Rome into account. Cicero’s humanitas made a great impression on later thinkers and writers, who would in many cases try to make the Ciceronian world view come true, both in imperial (Valerius Maximus) and provincial politics (Vitruvius, Pliny), while others would criticize the same views (Tacitus). At the same time a much more colloquial use of humanitas in the sense of ‘minimum aid’ gradually becomes more frequent. This usage will have a long history, being the historical origin of the sense of ‘humanitarian’. A more philosophical response is seen in the writings of Seneca, where especially his central concept beneficium (‘benefit’) is here interpreted as a response to what Seneca deemed insufficient in Cicero’s humanitas. Christianizing the concept of the humane, as shown in chapter four, was not a smooth process. Lactantius, who as rhetorician was deeply indebted to Cicero, but as Christian found humanitas insufficient, levelled a direct attack on the Ciceronian concept. His arguments, even if not always expressed in clear language, marks a clear break with the pagan past and can be taken to mark the beginning of a new age. Latin humanitas never becomes an argument in Latin Christianity before Erasmus. All ancient usages of humanus and humanitas continued to be employed, but in a medieval context the concept of the humane is generally restricted – the adjective humanus e. g. hardly ever means ‘humane’ – for due to the notions of sin and man’s downfall references to man will rather point to his sinfulness or proneness to error. Also the human-ness of Christ reaches into the semantics of humanitas, but with little influence from the Ciceronian concept (except in a few writers as Hugh of St Victor). Chapter five (Humanitas as Argument against War) describes the gradual readoption in the renaissance of humanitas in a sense close to that of Cicero and with a similar argumentative aim. In the early renaissance, new emphasis is given to the meaning of learnedness in humanitas, particularly in the compound studia humanitatis, the ‘humanity studies.’ With the early humanists the concept of humanitas carried no ethical importance, and – as shown in the chapter – it was

14

Introduction

only through the writings of Erasmus that the concept again was brought to argumentative use. This involves the history of the humanists in circle of Erasmus, as well as the topic of war. A short epilogue closes the book. The modern, political implications of this topic are profound. The humane is everywhere in modern media, in literary and legal texts, and in university programmes. It is repeatedly used as guiding line in legal and ethical debates, involving issues of warfare, third world policies, social security, etc. The basic finding that such linguistic phenomenon as humanitas does not exist in all languages or have at least not been activated into possibly argumentative use, but that the process of globalization is introducing it into ever more languages is important. This is not a linguistic – or notional – phenomenon that is universal in human society. We have at some point adopted, and repeatedly re-adopt, this word. It is a concept in need of definition, but also in widespread use. It faces man with the obligation to reach beyond himself. In this it resembles religious attitudes, and in a world of separately defined confessions that will have to live together – as was the case in the age of Erasmus – no clear alternative seems to offer itself. Most former scholarship on humanitas is in German, starting with the seminal inauguration speech by Reitzenstein from 1907. There are historical reasons for this German preponderance in the use of concepts as humanism (cf. German Humanismus), but also linguistic. English is one of the few languages (Modern Greek is another) that separate the two meanings of Latin humanus in two words both based on ‘man,’ i. e. human and humane. This has complicated the exposition of the subject in English and made it simply impossible to translate the German studies into English. I have – as the title indicates – attempted to make the special linguistic situation in English the centrepiece of the exposition. Other central expositions of the concept of humanitas have come from Koselleck and Veyne, from whom I have profited very much. However, despite offering deep insight, these do not discuss the fundamental problems involved in what is here called the circularity and the (semi-) ideological nature of the concept. Also the linguistic issues have received only slight attention. As to laws, the presentation here will disagree with the most recent scholarly exposition of humanitas as a precursor of human rights. In his book Human Rights in Ancient Rome (2000), R.A. Bauman takes both the Greek ‘human laws’ and the Roman humanitas to mean ‘human rights.’ Such direct equation of the ancient expressions with modern concepts disregards the historical distance and does away with the other meaning of humanitas as ‘(cultural) education.’ Insisting, instead, on the linguistic observation that what the Romans invented was the use of a word meaning both ‘human’ and ‘humane’ (i. e. ‘respecting others’, ‘well-educated’, etc.) the chapter takes us much closer to the ancient world. This in no way

Introduction

15

excludes discussing the law and legal notions, which take a central position in Cicero’s humanitas. In a sense, this book is a product of concept history, and as such follow in the track of Reitzenstein, Koselleck and others. But methods from other fields will be included: comparative linguistics and, to some extent, psychology or psychoanalytic theory. Former studies of humanitas have made only few attempts to look beyond a Western perspective; a broader perspective is here given by including a study of the linguistic situation in various western and non-western languages (e. g. in the translations of the Geneva Convention) and by including the important conceptual thinking of Miskawayh. The basic fact that languages differ in the possibilities of expression they offer leads to an acknowledgment of the complexity of the matter and of the need to sort things out. When using these words unexplained in a global context, misinterpretation is likely to occur. But misinterpretations may – as indicated – also happen due to what is labelled the inherent interpretative need in the concept. A central issue of the humane is the question of roles intended in the ideal of humanitas. Is humanitas, e. g. an act confirming the humanness of the agent or the recipient? This will be dealt with in psychological terms, as a question of the relation between subject and object. In this the book will enter into dialogue with, for example, Martha Nussbaum and her advocacy of humanitas in modern education.

Chapter 1: The Humane as Argument

Modern debates very often revolve around the argument of the humane. We witness this not least when crises of violence, or legal and political procedures to counter these, reach public mass media. When trying to appeal to universal values that reach beyond the interests of the speaker the humane – as defined by various institutions (not least the UN) and in legal and humanistic texts – often becomes an ultimate point of reference. Many will, to counter what is deemed wrong, refer to humane principles, arguing for humane treatment, a humane society, or the like. A universal ideal understanding of mankind thereby becomes a guiding principle for man’s dealings. The origin of this manner of arguing, so central to our modern world, takes us back to antiquity, and to a very particular manner of speaking that is thematized in Latin and Arabic texts, but is hardly voiced in the Greek philosophy upon which these texts build. Despite clear roots in Greek thinking, the humane never became an issue of importance in premodern Greek texts. This surprising, and quite complex, background to the concept of the humane forms the backbone of the following presentation, which will also stress the value of linguistic issues. The argument of the humane only works once the universal idea of mankind (the human) has been brought into some correlation with ethical parameters based on a universal perspective. Only once this has taken place, often as a product of a (cultural) translation, can the argumentative force of the humane operate. Let us begin by seeing how the linguistic field of modern-day speakers form our possibility of entering the debate based on the humane. In many languages a derivation or a loan translation of the Latin word humanus is used in the meaning of ‘respecting the dignity of other human beings, benevolent, friendly.’ French humain, Spanish and Portuguese humano, Italian umano, and Catalan humà may, to mention a few, all carry these meanings. To give an example from French, a call for un traitement humain (‘humane treatment’) is common in discussions on the issue of war prisoners. The derivations of humanus may, however, equally well be used in the general sense of ‘what regards or pertains to man.’ An example – again from French – could be le corps humain (‘the human body’). Expressed in

18

The Humane as Argument

English, we could say that derivations of humanus may mean both ‘human’ and ‘humane’, two English words that are themselves derivations of humanus. The argumentative value of ‘humane’ often uses the universal ‘human’ as its ploy. It is in Latin, too, that the noun and fundamental concept of humanitas is developed, a word that – as we shall see – despite an enormous inner tension succeeds in containing both meanings of the ‘human’ and the ‘humane’, and may variously be translated as ‘humanity’, ‘mildness’, ‘good education’ etc.1 Man is, at times, prone to speaking of himself in a positive, optimistic manner. Many – perhaps all – languages include some notion of endearment in their various usages of a word meaning ‘man’ or ‘human’. The Arabic insan ‘man’, for example, is etymologically connected to uns ‘conviviality’; the Germanic words for ‘man’ (Mensch, menneske, etc.) all originate as diminutives of words for ‘man,’ implying perhaps some degree of endearment towards mankind. The Chinese case is fairly complex, for even ancient texts speak of ren, normally ‘man’, in the meaning of ‘kindness’, and indicating the new (or extended) meaning of the word through a compounded character with the sign for ‘man’ plus the sign for ‘two’.2 The concept of ren plays a major role in Chinese philosophy and may imply the notion ‘love for all humanity’.3 Many more examples of this general combining of man and positive view of him could be given, but all displaying a variety in connotations. Variation is specifically clear in the use of adjectives. German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish speakers have the choice between the Latin derivation human (in Dutch humaan) and its loan translation menschlich/menselijk/ mänsklig/menneskelig for both ‘human’ and ‘humane’.4 In ancient and medieval Greek, despite long-standing contacts with Latin, the potential for equivocation 1 I here use the notion of tension in a less historical way than Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979), who speaks of the tensions that arise diachronically from the discrepancy between what a word has been for and the new circumstances in which it may be used. Here tension regards primarily the incompatibility between the (synchronic) general and universal meanings. 2 ren ‘kindness’: 仁. See Karyn L. Lai, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 22. For the antiquity of the compound sign, see also Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata serica recensa, Repr. from the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, bulletin no. 29 ed. (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1957), no. 388. 3 In the Confucian Analects 12.22, according to Lai, An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy , 24ff. 4 In the Germanic languages the emphatic use of both derivations and loan translations of humanus goes back to at least the eighteenth century. In Swedish emphatic human is found already in 1657, see Ordbok över svenska språket, ed. Svenska akademien (Lund: Gleerup, 1898–2005) See in general definitions in G. Wahrig, H. Krämer, and H. Zimmermann, Brockhaus-Wahrig Deutsches Wörterbuch (Wiesbaden: Brockhaus, 1980–84); Johan Hendrik van Dale, G. Geerts, and H. Heestermans, Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal, 12 ed. (Utrecht: Van Dale Lexicografie, 1995); V. Dahlerup, Ordbog over det danske sprog, ed. H. JuulJensen and alii, 32 vols. (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1981–83).

The Humane as Argument

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was only slight; anthropinos/anthropeios ‘human’ could generally only carry the meaning ‘human’, though the adverb anthropino¯s does in a few cases take on the meaning of ‘humanely’.5 Only in Modern Greek can anthropinos – when the stress is on the last syllable anthropinós – denote ‘humane’; when stressed as in classical Greek anthrópinos, it means ‘human’.6 In Arabic there are two words for ‘human’: bashari and insani. Bashari is used especially in contrast to the animal world, whereas insani is based on the root that is also found in ins ‘mankind’ and uns ‘conviviality’.7 In Russian chelovecheskij or chelovechij mean ‘human’, but do not carry the meaning ‘humane’; only the loan word gumannyj (from French or German humain/human) carries this meaning.8 It is, of course, important to note when taking these linguistic differences into account that all these languages, in fact all languages of the world, can express what is meant by ‘humane’, i. e. to ‘treat others with respect’ etc. The point being made here is that the equivocation of the human and the humane is not a feature that a language will necessarily reproduce in the same way, or have as a possible activated argument. For this a thematization of the humane is needed. Within the catalogue of languages that has now been presented, English – ever itself and yet also the language of today’s globalised world – is a somewhat special case. In English the connotation of ‘respectful’ is carried by the old form of the adjective, humane (which originally also meant ‘human’), whereas the form human was introduced in the seventeenth century to express the more general, non-emphatic meanings of Latin humanus.9 English may, then, distinguish between ‘human’ and ‘humane’ on the basis of two distinct words both deriving from a word meaning ‘man’, with just a slight difference in pronunciation to set the two meanings apart. So, English resembles other languages mentioned above in deriving a meaning ‘humane’ from the same root as a word signifying ‘human’, and the close linguistic connection between the two words human and humane is obvious to native English speakers. That humane may bear the connotation of both ‘human’ and ‘respectful’ (i. e. ‘humane’) is only, as shown above, only to some extent in-built in various lan5 i. e. ἀνθρώπινος, ἀνθρωπεῖος; see H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 9 ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 6 See Lexiko tis kinis neoellinikis (Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής), ed. Ινστιτούτο νεοελληνικών σπουδών: Ίδρυμα Μανόλη Τριανταφυλλίδη (Θεσσαλονίκη: Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης, 1998). 7 i. e. ‫ ﺑﺸﺮﻱ‬and ‫ ; ﺍﻧﺴﺎﻧﻲ‬see A. de B. Kazimirski, Dictionnaire arabe-français, 2 vols. (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1860). 8 On челoвеческий, челoвечий, гуманный see Slovar′ sovremennogo russkogo literaturnogo jazyka (Словарь современного русского литературного языка), ed. Institut Russkogo Jazyka Akademija Nauk SSSR (Moscow: Moskva Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1950–65). 9 See The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, ed. C.T. Onions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).

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guages. For the notion to be truly present, a thematization is needed. From this the semi-ideological usage may spread, and in modern times this has gradually taken place. By now, the usage is just about everywhere, in newspapers, novels and in the law. Complex debates on the ethical aspects of warfare, humanitarian aid, immigration laws etc. often conclude with a call for a “humane stance”, or an appeal to the “humanity” of the participants. Hotly debated issues are intimately tied to this concept. And yet, once we attend to the equivocation inherent in the word, many statements involving the humane either require some elaboration in order to make sense or are downright nonsense. If speaking in a general context, one were to ask: Are human beings humane? (Sind die Menschen menschlig/ human?‫ﻫﻞ ﺍﻻﻧﺴﺎﻥ ﺍﻧﺴﺎﻧﻲ‬, etc.) the tautological implications would become clear.10 And few would insist on an affirmative answer. Human beings may be humane; it is part, but only part, of their nature.11 Empirical studies of humankind will under no circumstances lead to the conclusion that man is a being whose humane-ness is so self-evident that this characteristic can be conveyed through his very name. There are many other features that are unique to him. Why, then, is this quality directly connected to the general denomination human? And how does one explain to those whose language has not activated the semi-ideological humane the meaning of this word? The predicament behind this question may – at least partly – be the reason for various newly introduced usages of words as humane, humanitarian, etc. In Danish, of the word humanistisk is now often found in the sense of ‘circumscribed by human reasoning’ or ‘atheistic’; even a life philosophy may be “humanistic”, though many would object to this use of the word. Such expressions only elaborate on the (modern) confusion in the word humanist, which can denote a ‘learned person’ but also a ‘person with a caring heart.’ The semantic field of words as humanitarian (normally ‘providing welfare/alleviating suffering’) has also been expanded, as in the case of the compound humanitarian intervention, coined by the German sociologist Ulrich Beck to denote a just cause for war.12 The semi-ideological use of derivations of humanus thus seems to be undergoing a clear shift that may be the result of certain unease, or of a wish to avoid the ideological implications in the argument of the humane. Similar dilemmas must have arisen, and will probably continue to arise, for translators of, for example, the Third Geneva Convention, where the English version states that “Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, 10 See also Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft. 11 See Slavoj Zizek, “The Obscenity of Human Rights: Violence as Symptom,” http://www.lacan. com/zizviol.htm., where it is said: “The problem of human rights humanism is that it covers up this monstrosity of the “human as such,” presenting it as a sublime human essence.” 12 See e. g. U. Beck, “Neither Order nor Peace. A Response to Bruno Latour,” Common Knowledge 11, no. 1 (2005).

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and combatants who are hors de combat (out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause shall in all circumstances be treated humanely”.13 From the preceding discussion it is clear that the word “humanely” in the article is a tricky word that will, according to its translation, generate different considerations as to how the declaration should be interpreted. The Arabic version insists on mu’a¯malah insa¯niyyah ‘humane treatment’14 using the word that may also mean ‘human’ and here possibly picking up from the use found in Miskawayh, though the wording may equally be seen as a loan translation from the Western tradition. In the Russian version, on the other hand, “humanely” is rendered gumannym obrasheniem,15 which from a linguistic point of view links the Russian version of the declaration more closely to a ‘humanistic’ (gymannisticheskij) than to a ‘human’ (chelovecheskij) context. Translations into various languages will thus produce varying associative responses. That said, the passage will in any language need legal interpretation, and any society will be able to act according to the intention of the text. What concerns us is here is the differing semantic position that various languages offers its speakers, the variation in the argumentative value of the words referring to man’s humanity when insisting on a ‘humane’ treatment. This conundrum of usages of the humane is further aggravated by the fact that the word is involved in various other specific manners of expression, two of which will be dealt with briefly here. First, words meaning ‘human’ are often used to refer to the restricted world of mankind, to mankind bereft of all power over its fate. In ancient Greek, Latin, and many modern languages, “something human” may occur to someone, meaning that they have been subject to death, misfortune or other vicissitude. “It is only human” is an expression that implies man’s lack of wisdom or lack of control over his doings, a meaning found in various languages both ancient and modern. In conjunction with a discussion of ‘humane’, these meanings often define man in relation to God or gods. Man is liable to error and short-sightedness in a sense that sets him apart from the divine. This use of ‘human’ has more of a basis in common sense (“this could or will also happen to you or anyone”), but it is also recognizable from religious notions of sin or human inability to measure up to the divine. And the humane as discussed here has clear affinities with this idea of man’s failings and errors. For it is when acknowledging these, and acting in accordance with this knowledge, that man becomes ‘humane’.16 Though this notional background is central for the devel13 For the text of the Geneva convention in various languages see e. g. the homepage of the Red Cross: http://www.icrc.org. 14 ‫ ; ﻣﻌﺎﻣﻠﺔ ﺇﻧﺴﺎﻧﻴﺔ‬see http://www.icrc.org/Web/ara/siteara0.nsf/html/5NTANG?OpenDocument. 15 гуманным обращением; see http://www.icrc.org/Web/rus/siterus0.nsf/iwpList133/42849F 9156A62CE7C325710700291228. 16 This point is most forcefully made by W. Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,” in Aufstieg und

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opment of the humane, this trait is seldom singled out in pre-modern discussions of the humane. According to ancient writers, what sets man apart from (other) animals is his rational capacity, which is supposed to give him the capacity for social bonding, and thus a ‘humane’ attitude. This was at least the view offered by Stoic philosophers. So both the failings and the rational capacities of man may be used as evidence for man’s ‘humane-ness.’ Closely related to the notion of the humane, we find the idea of the inhumane. In most of the languages mentioned above, some negation of ‘human’ is used to indicate what is beyond or foreign to mankind. In ancient Greek apanthropos, literally ‘off-human’, denoted a behaviour unacceptable as a human expression. The same is found in Russian (with a distinction between ‘inhuman’ beschelovechnyj and ‘inhumane’ negymannyj). These derivations are paralleled by the Latin inhumanus. When looking into the ways in which such negations of what is ‘human’ are used, it is noticeable that these words are almost exclusively used when speaking of human action. What is ‘in-human’ turns, in most cases, out to be only all too human. Animals, for instance, though savage cannot behave inhumanely. So, just as the universality of the notion of man may easily, e. g. in various racist discourses, be restricted to apply to only a certain part of humanity, so is the inhuman used to question the human status of human beings or their actions. To call something inhumane is to bracket it and seclude it from a general definition of man, despite its human origin. Still, the meaning of inhumane is often rather indefinite.17 The exact meaning of a negative prefix, such as in-, depends on what kind of negation it construes. The outcome may be contrary (‘something that is not human’) or contradictory (‘all that is not human’) as well as much else. Thus, inhuman may take on many meanings, including ‘in-humane’, but its argumentative value is liable to be weakened by its negated and generally less focused meaning. It will normally serve better in agitated utterances, as has been the case of the Latin inhumanus and its derivations from antiquity and into the modern world. On the basis of all these linguistic and conceptual observations, we may state that the positive use of the humane, in an idealistic meaning apparently derived from ‘what characterizes man,’ has strong ideological potential, and can only be given full weight if the designations ‘human’ and ‘humane’ are closely connected and have been thematized.

Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), vol. I, 4. 17 This point is also made by Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft 248, who sees the use of human and inhuman as an example of “asymmetrical oppositions” (unbalanced oppositions, such as also Greek-barbarian, etc.). See also Vito R. Giustiniani, “Homo, Humanus, and the Meanings of ‘Humanism’,” Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985).

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Therefore, unlike many other studies of concept history, this exploration will be very restrictive in the use of equivalents, i. e. words that are found as substitutes for, or used to denote parts of, the given concept. Like all concepts, the humane is often described or implied through other words, many of them concepts in themselves, and some of these will be discussed in the chapters to come; but it is only when a word or concept designating both the human and the humane is used that the semi-ideological argument becomes a possibility.18 Its presence is required for the argumentative implications to become activated. We cannot therefore commence our investigation by producing a definition of, for example, the Latin humanitas (‘humane-ity’), and then search for ancient text passages commenting upon mildness, leniency, sociability etc. (in Latin mansuetudo, clementia, facilitas). We cannot proceed in analogy with how concepts like liberty or freedom are commonly discussed, equating it with sub-parts, in this case e. g. free choice, political rights, liberal education, and so on. The mere presence of equivalents is not enough in our case to make a text eligible for scrutiny, for unless the author (or his correspondent) makes use of the humane the ideological implication is precluded. When the use of e. g. humanitas implies mildness, leniency, sociability, and so on, a reference to a general definition (of man) is simultaneously made that is not found in the other concepts. And this general reference is of immense importance. In fact, the mere mention of the humane may easily amount to a claim on the reader/listener that will almost force him or her into consent. As Koselleck puts it: “In the reference to humanity lies a claim which nobody can refuse; for who would want to deny being a human being?”19 Humanitas is a very special concept that by its possible inclusion of all that is human may easily defy criticism. Special attention will therefore be paid in this book to what in concept theory is called the linguistic core (the ‘word itself ’), and to what it implies, hides or enforces. It will be argued that the humane is neither a natural concept, nor a superfluous aberration, but a notion historically based on a gradual acknowledgment, which has today become an ideological construct of immense importance.20 Focus here will be on the very fact that such a concept arose and gained a permanent foothold in our conceptual landscape, on its argumentative use, and on the historical circumstances in which this happened. The humane has gained both a far more central and more global significance in today’s world, but 18 This has been discussed in various works on humanitas, see e. g. Rudolf Rieks, Homo, humanus, humanitas. Zur Humanität in der lateinischen Literatur des ersten nachchristlichen Jahrhunderts (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1967), passim. 19 Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft, 248; my translation. 20 On the emergence of such ideological spaces – also labelled ‘rigid designators’ – see Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London & New York: Verso, 1989), esp. ch. 3 “Che vuoi?”.

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a study of the early history of the concept will from the start reveal the use of this semi-ideological term within crucial and powerful fields of interests. In order to grasp also today the full potentials of the term, its early history needs to be explored, for it is through analysis of the ancient argumentative context that the full force of the modern concept is revealed. Such an analysis has to my knowledge not yet been fully carried out, despite the numerous scholarly works over the past century or so, tracing the history of humanus and its derivations.21 The fact that most studies on the subject originate from German speaking countries is probably due to the originally German coining of the word Humanismus in the early nineteenth century and the central importance of this concept in German academics. The main focus of these studies lies, in most cases, on the Latin noun humanitas, which is the forerunner of humanity (in German Humanität) and, indirectly, of humanism. A general trait of these earlier studies of humanitas (as well as of terms such as Humanismus), in contrast to the present study, is that the exploration has almost always been done in the spirit of tracing the gradual discovery or perception of some true ideal. Former studies have barely broached the issue of whether the concept of the humane, rather than just designating a substance, actually generated new perceptions of what is in man’s nature;22 and far too little has been done to take a global view, using comparative linguistics. In fact, despite finding the humane only partially in evidence in real life, many advocates of humanitas have insisted that the notion was meaningful and could be unequivocally signalled by the word for man. This is important in explaining why the ancient roots of modern humanistic ideology have hardly been studied.23 Instead, its ideological traits have been traced back only to the renaissance. It is the aim of the present study to insist on the ancient roots of our modern ideology. This modern ideology is reflected in the commonly held notion that only education and/or law is needed to lead 21 The most important studies on humanitas in the ancient world are: R. Reitzenstein, Werden und Wesen der Humanität im Altertum (Strassburg: J.H.E. Heitz, 1907); I. Heinemann, “Humanitas,” in Paulys Realenzyklopädie, ed. August Pauly (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1931), vol. Supplement V; K. Büchner, “Humanum und humanitas in der römischen Welt,” Studium Generale 14 (1961); F. Klingner, “Humanität und humanitas,” in Römische Geisteswelt. Essays zur lateinischen Literatur (München: Hermann Rinn, 1965); B. Snell, “Die Entdeckung der Menschlichkeit und unsere Stellung zu den Griechen,” in Die Entdeckung des Geistes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975); Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,”; Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft; H.E. Bödeker, “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett, 1982), vol. 3; and R.A. Bauman, Human Rights in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 2000). 22 See e. g. Klingner, “Humanität und humanitas,” 705ff. 23 An exception, though only treating the political-administrative side of humanitas is Christian Rothe, Humanitas, fides und verwandtes in der römischen Provinzialpolitik. Untersuchungen zur politischen Funktion römischer Verhaltensnormen bei Cicero, Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1978).

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people into doing what they inherently, by way of their human nature, know is right. The modern ideology of the humane is tied to the core arguments of humanism, human rights, and humanitarian aid at least since the Second World War and the recognition of man’s evident power to destroy himself: based on the acknowledgment that we are all ‘only human’ we need to insist on making the world a bit more ‘humane’ in order to survive. But the close connection between these conceptual fields and their common humane designation is ancient. Taken as a whole, this view has not been reflected in the general approach of former scholarship, for studies of the humane have normally focused either on humanitas as the precursor of humanism, seen as a new programme of studies and, later, a new frame of mind arising in the European renaissance, or on humanitas as the precursor of modern human rights (or of humanitarian aid). This split view of the humane – generally concentrating on the noun humanitas – has become increasingly evident in recent decades, which have seen a thorough study of the historical roots of human rights. In the field of humanism, studies of humanitas have suffered from a too narrow a scope in its field of interest by starting in the renaissance As for the western roots of human rights, the disregard of the full meaning of humanitas has led to misrepresentations of ancient perceptions of natural law. Let us take a brief look at the two approaches. The word humanism is, as indicated above, an early nineteenth-century German invention, first intended to describe an important aspect of the renaissance cultural movement in Europe, but soon extended in various languages, including English, to apply to other ages as well. When used of times before the renaissance, of the ancient or medieval world, for example, humanism has normally been used in the sense of the study of old, literary texts.24 But when used in the context of the renaissance and later, the concept begins to take on a double status, on the one hand referring to literary studies or literary production inspired by the reading of ancient authors, and, on the other, reflecting an ideology based on notions of the nature of mankind.25 As is clear from this subdivision, only the second definition corresponds clearly to the present discussion of the humane. The first definition, concerning ancient literature, seems to be only indirectly involved. But the two meanings are closely connected, at least historically, both being based on the meanings of ancient humanitas. For Roman humanitas included an aspect of cultural education; humanitas referred to man’s 24 See e. g. N. Mann, “The Origins of Humanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, ed. J. Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 25 Incidentally, these two meanings of humanism are distinguished in modern Chinese, both through words that refer to man, ren: 人道主义 (ren dao zhu yi) indicating the ideology of humanism, while 人文主义 (ren wen zhu yi) is humanism in the sense of text studies. An enormous literature may be found on humanism in China, see e. g. Wang Roshui, “A Defense of Humanism,” Chinese Studies in Philosophy 16 no. 3 (1985).

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nature, but in many ancient passages on humanitas it is suggested that this human nature can only be fully developed through studies.26 This is why humane may still mean ‘well-educated’ in some modern languages, though this meaning is waning. In western history and beyond, the humane has a long tradition of having close ties to humanistic studies, and more specifically to learned studies of old texts and thoughts, as is reflected linguistically in the general use of the words humanistic, humanities etc. But in studying ancient humanitas only as precursor of the humanistic tradition the other major strand in the concept is generally left out. Humanitas (as well as humanus) is repeatedly used in Classical Latin to express moral values and ideal notions of man, i. e. the ‘humane’. This semantic field is, however, normally, seen as springing from modern humanistic ideology. Instead, this moral part of the legacy of humanitas has been dealt with primarily within the field of natural law, and increasingly so in recent decades.27 The concept of natural law, an important topic in ancient Greek philosophy, found vague expression in both Plato and Aristotle28 and became a central issue in the ancient school of Stoic philosophy. Stoicism taught that the world was permeated by logos, a mind stuff that structured the world and produced certain areas of high tension (tonos), and within this universe man constitutes the areas of greatest tension in the ordinary world.29 This logos (at least according to the Stoic Panaitios) made use of the process of individual oikeiosis (‘appropriation (of one’s own nature)’) to make man aware of his need to protect his offspring, as in the animal world. It also induced and enabled him to form societies and establish social bonds.30 The Stoic influence on the Roman concept of humanitas is beyond question, especially in the writings of Cicero (see chapter 2). This notion of natural law, originally Stoic, was to become a central issue in the European tradition at least from the rise of the medieval faculties of law in Salerno, Bologna and is the western ancestor of modern human rights. There are, then, links to be made from ancient humanitas, influenced by notions of natural law, to modern human rights. The connection is certainly there, but this does not imply, as suggested by some historians, that the idea of human rights may be taken back 26 Especially in the works of Cicero, see chapter 2. 27 See H. Cancik and H. Cancik-Lindemaier: Europa – Antike – Humanismus. Humanistische Versuch und Vorarbeiten (Bielefeld, transcript Verlag, 2011), 135–50; Bauman, Human Rights Bauman also speaks of “human laws” or “laws of humanity,” but in most cases uses the modern expression “human rights.” 28 Plato Gorgias 484a; Arist. Pol. 1253a. 29 See e. g. J. Christensen, An Essay on the Unity of Stoic Philosophy (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962), 35, 65ff. 30 On the oikeiosis, see S.G. Pembroke, “Oikeiosis,” in Problems in Stoicism, ed. A. A. Long (London: Athlone Press, 1971) and Troels Engberg-Pedersen, The Stoic Theory of oikeiosis. Moral development and social interaction in early Stoic philosophy (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990).

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into antiquity and that humanitas may hence be translated as ‘human rights’.31 Various ideas on universalism or cosmopolitanism, not least those of the Stoics, do support abstract thinking along these lines, but the very idea of general rights for human beings, disconnected from citizenship, was in itself hardly discussed in antiquity, though some minimal measure of protection for slaves was insisted upon by some ancient thinkers.32 Furthermore, natural law was discussed among law experts in the ancient world, but only as the foundation for civil law, not as an applicable legal code. There is a historical thread linking ancient humanitas and modern human rights, but no continued conceptual cohesion. In order to discuss the role and history of the humane, including that of humanitas, without restricting the field of interest to the modern fields either of the humanities or of human rights, a unified view on the ancient concept of the humane must be attempted. In view of the very long time that separates us from antiquity and the complexity of the issue, this may be deemed impossible. Modern perspectives and fields of interest will necessarily influence such a study into the precise semantic usages in ancient times. To solve this methodological impasse, this study will take a pragmatic approach. It will try to create the unified view that has been proposed by constant inclusion of both fields of interest. In fact, the approach of the present study will be guided by the conviction that two separable theoretical and in part academic fields have continuously been involved in discussions, definitions and implementations of the humane. These two fields are the law and cultural education (or the humanities). As we shall see already in the writings of Cicero, seen from a modern perspective, there is a constant wavering between these two approaches to reality. Either the law is seen as the potential or actual guarantee of the humane, or cultural education is presented as the medium through which to attain it, whether individually or as a society. Or to put it in simple terms, either man’s actual inability to comply with the best norms is used to support the establishment of laws, or man’s inborn abilities, whether moral or rational, are given as an argument for educating man into his true, natural self. To Cicero, at least in his final writing, there really was only one discussion. Thus we reach the full programme for the procedure of this book: to trace the humane as it becomes constituted as an educational and legal concept in antiquity that was gradually readopted and turned into an ideological tool in the renaissance. In this, two strands, commonly kept separate in modern times, will constantly merge, namely notions of natural law and educational ideals, both

31 See e. g. Bauman, Human Rights, 28ff. 32 See the close discussions in Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987).

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seen as universal for mankind. Historically speaking, the humane has been an object of debate in the borderland between law and education.

Beginnings Tracing first beginnings is bound to present difficulties. To find the actual moment at which some thought, method or concept appeared is to search for a magic moment. As will become evident from this exposition, there is no such thing as a starting point for the humane. There is only, perhaps, a first representative author. Furthermore, the full concept is in many ways a by-product of a cultural transmission, for it may well be described as a Roman attempt to encompass a specific area of Greek thinking. Greek culture had a tremendous impact on the Roman world, which for a long time felt itself to be – like many other ancient Mediterranean cultures – on the fringe of the Hellenistic world. The Greeks could build, sculpt, and write like nobody else in that part of the world, and copying things Greek became attractive, if not crucial, for members of the new ruling nation, the Romans. Greek building techniques were adopted; artefacts of Greek origin were either copied or stolen. In the literary world, too, the cultural transmission from the Hellenistic world made a powerful impact on Rome, beginning with epic and theatre. In this process, the introduction of the humane may well have been a product that stemmed from difficulties in translation. When trying to represent (or re-present) cultural products in a new language, choices of vocabulary have to be made, choices that may eventually produce new notional boundaries. What the Romans did in producing the concept of the humane was to take some tentative linguistic developments in Greek and combine them with Latin to create new forms of expression.33 And, as will be seen, in the new concept lay a deep acknowledgment of its fundamentally Greek origins. Just the same could be claimed for the Persian writer Miskawayh (932–1030 CE), who in his ethical writings in Arabic was much in the same position as Cicero. Also he was responding to and, to a large extent, translating Greek thinking into a new cultural context. But to see what the Romans built on, we need first to look at Greek developments. There are no expressions with a clear bearing on our subject to be found in the extensive Greek literature until to the end of the fifth century BCE, a fact that may itself promote reflection. Words signifying ‘human’ could not be used in archaic and early classical Greek (in Homer and the tragedians, for example) in the sense of ‘humane.’ Stories could, as when Cyrus in Herodotus’ Histories realizes that 33 A good presentation of this is found in Klingner, “Humanität und humanitas,” though with only little discussion of the Greek material in its own right.

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“being a man he was handing over to the flames a man, alive and of no lesser fortune than himself”, come close to implying this.34 But in Herodotus’ scene the element of shared royalty is central in explaining Cyrus’ clemency. Some important thoughts for the discussions that were to arise concerning the concept are found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. In discussing the Good Aristotle bases his ideas, and in many ways reacts against Platonic notions, introducing a definition of ‘human being’ as a brief parallel to the variety of meanings of ‘good.’ For, so argues Aristotle, one could ask whether it is the same substance that is under investigation, seeing that one and the same definition of man applies both to the ‘ideal man’ (autoanthropos, litterally man-himself) and to ‘man’.35 Aristotle here is, however, only criticizing Plato’s lack of precision, and he will not repeat such imprecision, opting rather for expressions such as the “human good”.36 It is only from around the turn of the fifth century BCE that we find in Greece a few linguistic attempts to express something approaching the humane. Two speech writers, Andocides (440–390 BCE) and Demosthenes (384–322 BCE), have a few passages (not more than a dozen in all) where the adjective anthropinos ‘human’ or the adverb anthropino¯s ‘human-ly’ may be taken to mean ‘humane(ly)’. In the works of Demosthenes, reference is in some places made to anthropinos logismos or ‘human intelligence’, which falls below that of the gods and which later scrutiny may judge to be ‘only human’ i. e. insufficient or faulty.37 Taking such human failing into account, he remarks for example in the Speech against Aristocrates that the original lawgivers, whether heroes or gods, had intended certain laws “to alleviate problems in a humane way, as much as was good”.38 Other passages use similar language to speak of the leniency of specific laws and whether such leniency was due to those who made them or to those who applied them.39 All this later led the historian Polybius (ca. 203–120 BCE) to refer to “the common laws of human beings.”40 But the use of anthropinos in the context of ‘humane laws/norms’ is only found again in pre-modern Greek literature in the writings of the historian Diodorus Siculus (ca. 90–30 BCE), and then only in two passages concerning the proper treatment of delegates.41 To 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

Her. Hist. I.86.6. Arist. Nic. Eth. 1.6 (1097b – 1098a); 10.7–8 (117b – 1178a). Arist. Nic. Eth. 1.7 (1098a). The discussion of this is carried on later (10.7–8; 1177b – 1179a). See e. g. Demosth. De corona 193.4, 300.2; In Neaeram 57.1; Epist. 1.11.2, De falsa leg. 300.1. See also Aesch. In Timarchum 84.8. Demosth. In Arist. 70.4: ἀλλ’ ἀνθρωπίνως ἐπεκούφισαν, εἰς ὅσον εἶχε καλῶς, τὰς συμφοράς. Demosth. In Arist. 44.6, 82.10, In Neaeram 57.1, Andoc. De myst. 57.2, De red. suo 6.6. Pol. Hist. 2.38.1–8, 57–8, 60.7 τοὺς κοινοὺς τῶν ἀνθρώπων νόμους. See also Dionys. Halic. Ant. Rom. 3.10.3, 3.23.19 & 16.4.1. Diod. Sic. Bib. hist. 11.26.2: “After delegates had been sent and had asked him in tears to treat them humanely, he let them have a peace settlement,” ἀπεσταλμένων πρέσβεων καὶ μετὰ δακρύων δεομένων ἀνθρωπίνως αὐτοῖς χρήσασθαι, συνεχώρησε τὴν εἰρήνην; 24.10.2: “And

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reiterate the point, ‘human’, used to indicate the deficiency of man’s mental or moral powers, is by extension also employed to denote actions that take such deficiency into account. Thus, notions of the humane occur in Classical Greek but only in a dozen passages and ever as anything approaching an argument. There was another way of stressing the “humane” aspect of laws that was to become widespread in the Greek world. A related expression was developed, using the compound philanthropos, which can be dated at least as far back as in the age of the tragedian Aeschylus (525–456 BCE).42 The meaning of philanthropos can be discerned from its constituent parts: phil- meaning ‘-loving’ (as in philhellenic, philosopher etc.) and anthropos meaning ‘man.’ To be philanthropos, or to show philanthropia, had both social and political connotations in ancient Greek. A sociable person or a generous host would show philanthropia, but so would a magnanimous politician or military leader.43 The political aspect of the concept is already evident from the fifth century BCE but gains increasing use and force in the fourth. From this time, acts of benevolence or benefits conferred on a ruler’s subjects would be labelled ta philanthropa (lit. ‘man-loving acts’).44 The word indicates that whatever is spoken of is positively disposed towards some human being. Because of some action a person may be philanthropos, but this in no way implies his ‘humanness’; only the object of his act s indicated as a human being (to whom he is showing some sort of philia ‘love/ friendship/kindness’). These Greek expressions exclude, then, any form of equivocation, for in themselves they include no general reference to mankind or man’s relation to man in general. The concept says nothing about the human nature of the ruler or benefactor. And the objects of the ruler’s love are only those who are the receivers of the benefices, not mankind in general. There are a few other instances of ancient Greek expressions that come close the meaning of the humane but, as observed earlier, nothing that really amounts to an ancient Greek equivalent of the concept. In two passages concerning fourth century philosophers, we find the rare nouns anthropismos and anthropotes, nouns that from a linguistic point of view are to some degree parallel to Latin humanitas. Anthropismos, which in later Greek would be used to cover the meaning ‘humanism’ is attested in a saying of Aristippos (ca. 435–360). According to the later historian of philosophy, Diogenes Laertios, Aristippos proclaimed “it is better to be a beggar than to be uneducated; for the former lacks

when the delegates had come forward holding signs of supplication and had asked that they be treated humanely, …,” καὶ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων προσελθόντων μεθ’ ἱκετηριῶν καὶ δεομένων ἀνθρωπίνως ἑαυτοῖς χρήσασθαι. 42 Aesch. Prom. 11 & 28. 43 See Bauman, Human Rights, 10ff. 44 See ibid., 16ff.

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(only) money, whereas the other lacks human-ness”.45 Here anthropismos (etymologically ‘humanization’) is equated with education. It is an interesting case, but an isolated one, for there are no further examples of the usage in ancient Greek. While it is not unknown for Diogenes Laertios to be an insecure source, it is possible that the word could have been used in the cultural sense by Aristippos. According to Vitruvius (80/70 – ca. 25 BCE), on being shipwrecked and finding geometrical drawings on the coast he landed on, the same Aristippos also exclaimed, “We can await good things, for I see traces of human beings”.46 In the eyes of Vitruvius, Aristippos was in this case right in his supposition, for after having displayed his abilities in disputation to some people in the nearby city of Rhodes, he was offered clothing and food. Thus, if we put all elements of the story together – the geometrical drawings, the appreciation of rhetoric, and the gifts in exchange – the result is an admixture of elements similar to those included in the humane. But the moral of the story as we have it was expressed by the Roman author Vitruvius, who lived centuries after Aristippos, and we have far too little left of Aristippos’ philosophical output to draw any conclusions from this. But even if Aristippos did entertain such views, he had no Greek followers. In late sources we find reference to a statement by the philosopher Antisthenes (ca. 444– 365 BCE) that includes the word anthropotes (‘human-ness’). Reflecting on the insubstantiality of categories, Antisthenes argues that he “sees the horse but not horse-ness, the man but not man-ness (or human-ness)”.47 This use of the word is certainly not related to the concept of the humane, but gives us the last instance in ancient Greek of a word comparable to the Latin noun humanitas. Finally, the emphatic use of anthropos ‘man’ is found in a few Greek comedies of the fourth century, though unfortunately these are only in fragmentary form. In a fragment from a play by the dramatist Philemon (ca. 362–262 BCE) someone, perhaps a soldier, is being cursed as a “soldier and not a man being and consumer of a holy meal”.48 Another fragment from a play by the dramatist Menander caught the attention of earlier scholars, for it seemed to make a general comment on the grace of man. In the play by Menander, a character says “man is a graceful

45 Diog. Laert. Vit. phil. 2.70: ἄμεινον ἔφη ἐπαιτεῖν ἢ ἀπαίδευτον εἶναι· οἱ μὲν γὰρ χρημάτων, οἱ δ’ ἀνθρωπισμοῦ δέονται. λοιδορούμενός ποτε ἀνεχώρει. 46 Vitruv. De arch. 6.praef.1. 47 Antisthenes frg. 50C: λέγων ὅτι ”ἵππον μὲν ὁρῶ, ἱππότητα δὲ οὐχ ὁρῶ” καὶ πάλιν ”ἄνθρωπον μὲν ὁρῶ, ἀνθρωπότητα δὲ οὐχ ὁρῶ.” See Antisthenes, Antisthenis fragmenta, ed. Fernanda Decleva Caizzi (Milano: Instituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1966), with references to various sources for the saying. 48 Philemo frg. 142: στρατιῶτα κοὐκ ἄνθρωπε καὶ σιτούμενε/ ὥσπερ ἱερεῖον … The latter part of the text is uncertain, see Poetae comici graeci, ed. R. Kassel and C. Austin (Berlin & New York1989), VII.300.

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being, when he is a man”.49 Here we certainly find an emphatic use of man, but the sentence may have appeared on stage as a general comment about man but may equally have been a polite expression of gratitude or the like. In any case, it is hard to deduce much about Menander’s possible use of the humane on this account. In the Greek tradition there are, then, a few examples of usages that approach the Latin humanus and humanitas, but these are few and far between, have a more restricted meaning and are not further developed. As has been noted by many scholars, nothing really corresponding to the noun humanitas is found in Greek, and this may be taken to indicate that the notion never caught on, not even through Latin influence. A few authors – Andocides, Demosthenes, and Diodorus Siculus – opted for the short form anthropino¯s instead of the more common expression, but his probably reflects the same kind of development later found in Latin. It certainly looks more like a short-lived experiment and is not found again in Greek literature. The two instances of the word anthropismos similarly seem to prefigure the humane, but they only reflect the opinions of one, not very influential Greek philosopher. The noun anthropotes ‘humanity/humanness’, appearing once in pre-Christian literature, carried no ‘humane’ meaning but is found later in Christian discussions of the nature of Christ (see chapter 4 and 5). In order to find the full meaning of ‘humane’ conveyed in a word that also means ‘human’ we have to go to Roman texts. In the Roman material, the earliest literary texts that include the humane are also the earliest texts that have come down to us in full. In the comedies of Plautus (ca. 254 – after 184 BCE) and Terence (in Latin: Terentius, 195/185–159? BCE) various scenes present actors employing humanus and homo (‘man’) in the emphatic sense. Most of these plays are either translations or adaptations of earlier Greek plays from the Hellenistic period, mostly by the famous Menander mentioned above, and some of the uses of homo could well reproduce the emphatic use of man found in the few fragments of Greek comedies discussed above. The fragmentary state of the Greek plays (Menander, for example, wrote more than a hundred comedies; we have just about two, supplemented by a mass of fragments) allows us little room for comparison, and as a result very few possibilities of ascertaining what was taken from the original Greek plays and what is a Roman addition. In the following, an attempt will nevertheless be made to isolate various types of expressions that include some notion of the humane, search for its Greek origins, and evaluate the importance of the expressions for the development of the concept. In the plays of Plautus and Terence there are quite a few instances of homo ‘man’ used in or approaching, the sense of a ‘humane’ person. Some of these have 49 Menander frg. 707 (484) ὡς χαρίεν ἐστ’ ἄνθρωπος ἂν ἄνθρωπος ἦ, ibid., VI.2.348. See also Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,” 49, note 18.

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a clear ring of daily speech and have, despite a single Greek parallel, been taken to reflect colloquial Roman expressions. For instance, in the Adelphi by Terence where Demea suggests to his son Aeschines, adopted by Micio, that he should persuade Micio to get married:50 si tu sis homo, hic faciat if you are a human being [= if you talk to him in the right manner], he will do it

Or, as it is put in a comedy by the older Plautus:51 homo es, qui me emunxisti mucidum you are a human being, who wiped my nose when snivelling

These sentences are clearly not elaborate or weighty constructions to be rehearsed with grave diction but examples of ordinary daily speech. To say of someone that he (it is never said of women) was a ‘human being’, meaning more or less ‘a humane being’, was thus to be heard on a Roman stage. This way of saying ‘good fellow’ could hardly in itself justify us speaking of a concept of the humane, and scarcely any tension is generated by alluding to a collected mankind. A search for possible Greek sources to this usage rests, as indicated earlier, on only very slight evidence: In the sole instance where we can compare a Latin text that makes use of anything similar to the humane with its Greek original, the word corresponding to the Latin homo is missing: in Terence’s Hecyra, which was in broad terms a translation of a play by the Greek Apollodoros of Karystos (fl. between 300 and 260 BCE), Laches tells Sostrata:52 Tu, inquam, mulier, quae me omnino lapidem non hominem putas. Yes, I mean you, woman, who thinks I am altogether a stone and not a man.

In the commentary of Donatus (fourth century CE), we find the corresponding Greek passage from the play by Apollodoros:53 σύ με παντάπασιν ἥγησαι λίθον You deem me all together a stone

So, in this one case where comparison is possible, the expression “and not a man” is only found in the Latin text. But the apparently colloquial usages of Latin homo in the meaning of ‘good fellow’ were taken further and introduced into passages where a deeper human interest is at play. The natural propensity for social bonding and taking interest in the well-being of one’s fellow beings, as developed in Stoic thinking, finds ex50 51 52 53

Ter. Adelph. 934. Plaut. Epid. 493. Ter. Hec. 214. Apollodorus Carystius frg. 9, Poetae comici graeci, 2.492.

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pression in a famous passage from a play by Terence. At the beginning of his comedy Heauton timoroumenos (The Self-Tormentor), Terence has the newly settled farmer Chremes approach his new neighbour Menedemus, who is strenuously working his field. As it turns out, the reason for Menedemus’ hard labour is that he tries to forget his broken relationship with his son. In an act of sympathy Chremes invites Menedemus to speak out and explain the reason why he needs to toil everyday, from early morning till late in the evening. Menedemus refuses to open his heart, but Chremes persists: homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto (v. 25) I am a man, and I take nothing human to be foreign to me

This famous passage draws on ideas that there is a natural bond between men; as a human being (homo) Chremes finds that everything human (humani) concerns him, or at least is something that is within his reach. There may be no doubt about the compassion expressed in these lines, a compassion that is linked to a propensity to empathy that comes with being a man. Thus, it is in the word homo ‘man’ that we find the emphatic meaning; this is a kind of man that has inbuilt a concern for others. But what conveys most clearly the humane meaning is the action taken by Chremes. He sees pain and chooses to address it. It is the drama, not the words by themselves, that points to what is humane in the scene; and the idea that Menedemus is labouring hard in order to forget his pains shows the psychological depth of Terence’s play. Even closer to what we are looking for are expressions with the adjective humanus that reflect upon the proper behaviour of characters involved in the dramas. In Plautus’ Mostellaria, a response to admonitions not to sadden an old man goes like this:54 intellego et bene monitum duco atque esse existumo humani ingeni I understand and find it a good advice, and I believe it to reflect a humane disposition

And, in the Andria, a son is reflecting on the conduct of his father:55 hocine est humanum factum aut inceptum? hocine est officium patris? Is it humane to do or to devise this? Is this the right act of a father?

Earlier in the same play by Terence, Simo, an old man, is reflecting on the ways of his son, deeming them “the acts of a humane thinking and of a civilized mind” (humani ingeni mansuetique animi officia, v. 113). And from the Hecyra comes yet another example of what to do if one suspects others of being involved in a romance:56 54 Plaut. Most. 814. 55 Ter. Andria 236. 56 Ter. Hec. 553.

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nonne ea dissimulare nos magis humanum est quam dare operam id scire? is it not more humane to feign ignorance than to insist on knowing?

These instances of humanus are the first clear instances of the humane, as indicated in the translations given above. Actions are judged according to whether, or to what degree, they are humane, though it is difficult for the modern reader to judge to what extent a general definition of man lies behind the words. In these quotations from the comedies, it is interesting to reflect on what might have been said in the Greek originals, now unfortunately lost. As we saw in the Greek comedies as well as in some speeches from the fourth century, slight evidence for the emphatic use might be said to exist. Yet, in the one instance where we could check the Latin wording up against the Greek original, the Greek contained nothing of the sort. Furthermore, had this usage been common in Menander’s plays this would – given the immense popularity of Menander in antiquity – be evident from other sources. But should the Greek comedies make a sudden reappearance, we might be in for something of a surprise. Homo and humanus are thus found in the Roman comedies to a degree that makes it reasonable to argue that these playwrights offer us the first texts that can be said to express the humane. If the idea that these expressions could be direct translations from Greek is rejected, as it is by most scholars, other possible Greek sources for the notional content here could offer themselves. Terence, who has far the greatest number of expressions that approach the humane, belonged to what has been called the Scipionic circle. Scipio Africanus, the Roman general and conqueror of Carthage in 146 BCE, is credited both by the contemporary historian Polybius and later in the works of Cicero with a profound interest in arts, philosophy, history, education and so on. At least three famous writers were known to have been close to him: the historian Polybius who had come to Rome as a slave but was brought into contact with Scipio, Terence, the dramatist who wrote the texts quoted above, and the Stoic philosopher Panaitios. Despite the scepticism of some scholars, the “humanistic” interests of Scipio can hardly seriously be doubted, not least because of his relations with Panaitios.57 Panaitios redirected Stoic thinking sufficiently for some historians of philosophy to make him the first representative of the so-called middle Stoa. His teachings included a discussion of ethical questions relating not only to the Stoic wise man, but also to anyone aspiring to that position. His works included a treatise entitled Peri tou kathekontos (On the right), which Cicero used extensively in his De officiis (see chapter 2). In it, Panaitios discussed whether a dilemma between what is useful and what is right would ever occur; the premise of this discussion was that claims to usefulness can only be made for what is 57 See Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,” 53 with references.

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useful to society as a whole or to those who uphold it. And this conclusion was, again according to Panaitios, only conforms to man’s natural rational capacity, which induces him to establish ordered societies. Had Panaitios presented his ideas using a Greek word for humane word, this would certainly have been a direct source for the humane in Terence. But once again, Panaitios’ text is lost; what we know about it stems from Cicero’s Latin rephrased and extended version, his De officiis. We have no evidence to indicate that Panaitios ever used a word approaching the humane in his text. But his ideas clearly influenced the Latin writers notionally in their gradual construction of the humane. As to the importance of the concept of the humane in the Scipionic circle, it is important to stress the fact that the noun humanitas never appears in the plays by Terence (or Plautus), only the adjective humanus and the noun homo. In twentieth century scholarship, the view was commonly held that humanitas appeared in Rome in the so-called Scipionic circle.58 As we saw, the plays of Terence give no support for this, Polybius writes in Greek and produces no linguistic evidence, and the works of Panaitios, who also wrote in Greek, are lost to us. What is more, the Greek anthropotes never carries the meaning ‘the humane’,59 and the rare anthropismos only denotes ‘higher education.’ All evidence for a Scipionic use of the concept of humanitas, therefore, depends on the evidence of Cicero, who lived several generations later (106–43 BCE). Heated scholarly controversies have raged as to whether Cicero actually represents discussions that took place in Scipio’s entourage, or whether it is all Cicero’s invention.60 It is a most difficult question to settle, given that we have so little evidence with which to check the picture as presented by Cicero. What we can say, however, is that no extant original passage from Scipio or his circle includes the word humanitas at all. Furthermore, the writings of Cicero are studded with humanitas passages, and Cicero’s persistent use of the concept bears witnesses primarily to his own interests (see chapter 2). Finally, Aulus Gellius (c. 125 – after 180 CE) points to Cicero, and to Cicero’s contemporary, Varro, as the most outstanding examples of the “old who employed [the concept of] humanitas”.61 Had someone in the Scipionic circle been among them, Gellius would probably have told us. Beginnings in historical matters are, as has been said, always hard to establish. There is always the chance that something unknown to us may have happened 58 Ibid., 52ff., reissuing statements by Reitzenstein, Werden und Wesen. 59 In Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,” 52 n. 25 anthropotes is, with no evidence, treated as a Greek Christian translation of the Latin humanitas. This seems quite unlikely, given the early first instance of anthropotes. 60 See references in ibid. 61 Gell. Noct. Att.13.17.1: Sic igitur eo verbo [sc. humanitate] veteres esse usos, et cumprimis M. Varronem Marcum Tulliumque, omnes ferme libri declarant.

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prior to the data that is available to us. Humanitas may have been used earlier, but the first author demonstrably to employ this noun is the anonymous author of the so-called Rhetorica ad Herennium, a rhetorical treatise from around the early 80’s BCE. In this treatise humanitas turns up in short texts that are to exemplify the rhetorical use of figures and styles. As an example of ratiocinatio (the manner of expression where a speaker repeatedly employs rhetorical questions), a model speech on the issue of war prisoners is given and an argument from this is resented as follows:62 It pertains to the brave man to regard as enemies those with whom he competes for power, but to deem those who are overcome to be men, in such a way that courage may reduce warfare and humanitas increase peace.

Humanitas expresses here the mental disposition or behaviour fitting for the victorious part and is what guarantees the future possibility of peace. It is hardly irrelevant for an understanding of this passage that Rome was at the time of composition of this text (or a few years prior to it) experiencing one of its most cruel periods of civil war, the Social War (91–88 BCE). The belief, reflected in the passage quoted, that courage in the struggle for power will eventually reduce war is much less heroic than the common slogan that courage will lead to victory. And even less martial is the idea that humanitas may pave the way for peace; humanity is used to express mildness here, with the universality implied in the word adding to its forcefulness. This is certainly not a military man speaking, as is evident from another passage of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. When wanting to give an example of sermocinatio (i. e. an extended dialogue) the author gives a heart-rending description, refurbished with lively dialogue, of the unlawful execution of a citizen in his home, in front of his household, during what seems to be times of civil war.63 Behind the rhetorical advices given in this text, there seems to lie a moral agenda. Humanitas appears again in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, in a passage where examples of elevated (high) style are given. The following words are taken from a constructed speech arguing for the punishment that should be given to those guilty of treason:64 62 Rhet. ad Her. 4.23: viri fortis est, qui de victoria contendant, eos hostes putare, qui victi sunt, eos homines iudicare, ut possit bellum fortitudo minuere, pacem humanitas augere. In the translations humanus is always translated as “humane,” humanitas as “humanity,” though this in some cases goes beyond normal idiomatic use of the word in English. All translations are by the author, unless otherwise indicated. 63 Rhet. ad Her. 4.65. 64 Rhet. ad Her. 4.12: In iis, qui violassent ingenuum, matremfamilias constuprassent, volnerassent aliquem aut postremo necassent, maxima supplicia maiores consumpserunt: huic truculentissimo ac nefario facinori singularem poenam non reliquerunt. Atque in aliis maleficiis ad singulos aut ad paucos ex alieno peccato iniuria pervenit: huius sceleris qui sunt

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Our forefathers exhausted the stock of hard punishments for those who had attacked a free man, had violated married wives, had attacked or – at worst – killed someone; but for this most brutal and unspeakable crime [treason] they produced no special penalty. Yet, in the case of other crimes, the injury caused by a person’s fault affects only a single person or few; but those who are accessory to this crime inflict, through one act, the worst disasters upon all citizens. O wild men! O cruel thoughts! O men bereft of humanity!

This example has a similar ring to the first quotation from the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Once again a discussion on the correct conduct in warfare insists on humanitas. The statement is, however, somewhat more poignant in this second passage, where it is made clear that the wrong kind of warfare may threaten to place persons beyond the human pale. The fact that they are wild (feros) sets them in opposition to proper civilized behaviour and brackets them with wild animals (in Latin fera), but the possibility that men may forsake the sphere of humanitas underscores these implications. Furthermore, it is not without importance that the conduct that is so harshly condemned is treason. Humanitas here no longer concerns the interactions between nations who had no common laws, as in the earlier Greek cases of delegates between warring parties. Here it is now questioned within society, again probably in response to the actuality of civil war. A call for humanitas is to the author what may guarantee a proper society. These instances of humanitas in the Rhetorica ad Herennium clearly pick up on the use of anthropinos in conjunction with ideas of natural law, cited above from Greek authors. Behind both lies the notion of universal guidelines for human warfare, notions that are referred to as belonging naturally to the human sphere. But what to the Greeks was based on the failings of human rationality and on vague ideas of common laws is in Latin simply referred to through the single noun humanitas (‘humanness/humanity’). This may well be explained as a result of a translation process.65 In the process of expressing Greek ideas in Latin, words and constructions had to be adjusted, and idioms already established in the recipient language may have been used in novel contexts, in the same way as difficulties in finding equivalents may have led to the coining of new words. It is possible that both factors influenced the Latin use of humanitas. The emphatic use of homo/humanus seems to have been common in Latin, while humanitas was probably a new word reflecting ideas that the Greeks really had no noun for. In any case, the linguistic twist introduced in the Latin noun is crucial, for whereas Greek authors could blame combatants for not sticking to what ought to adfines, uno consilio universis civibus atrocissimas calamitates machinantur. o feros homines! o crudeles cogitationes! o derelictos homines ab humanitate! 65 The view that humanitas is a (mis)translation of Greek notions such as philanthropia goes back to the early twentieth century, cf. J. Mayer, “Humanitas bei Cicero,” (Freiburg im Breisgau 1951), 2. Mayer speaks in general of two approaches to the concept – one based on a Greek origin, the other on a Roman; he opts for the second, p. 4–6 and passim.

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be the general rules, Romans – the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, for example – could simultaneously imply (or state with linguistic support) that those who infringed these rules precluded themselves from the world of man. It is difficult for us – as it may have been for the ancient reader – to assess exactly whether those who were derelictos … ab humanitate ‘bereft of humanity’ were simply ignoring the principles of humanitas, or were really excluded from the human realm. But the words allowed also for the latter possibility, unlike that of similar Greek expressions. In this implied or potential meaning, the ideological concept of the humane is born. With it, too, the best in man is called upon as a way to avert the evils of war. We shall see this recourse to a belief in the higher qualities in man – as opposed to his martial qualities – repeated in the renaissance. What may have originated as a side product of cultural translation could thus be turned into a concept of immense importance. At various times, recourse to humanitas and serious attempts to uphold its argumentative value would restate the question put by the Stoics as to whether mankind had been created for the sake of mankind. Being a very special concept, humanitas is, as explained earlier, in need of positive definition. In many contexts it may appear alongside other virtues such as fortitudo, clementia, sapientia, i. e. ‘bravery,’ ‘clemency,’ ‘wisdom’ etc. But in such lists humanitas still stands out as being difficult or even impossible to define simply from the root of the noun (unlike, for example, fortitudo ‘bravery’ from fortis ‘brave’ and so on). In later texts, humanitas very often comes as one item in a list of virtues, and very often at the end of this list.66 Whether this is done to clarify its meaning or to make the impressive word enhance the list is difficult to judge. Many studies have, nevertheless, tried to derive the meaning of humanitas by searching for its relationship to other virtues.67 This is a difficult procedure and threatens to make nothing but a list of partially equivalent positive virtues. Of much greater importance is the fact that with the advent of humanitas a manner of expressing the highest virtue in the name of, and on the basis of, man was found. Some secular thoughts are almost bound to be associated with this topic. The ideology of the humane expresses a view of man in some secularized way which insists that human ideals be found in man. In the self-reference lies the acknowledgment that this restriction is a fact that no theology can ultimately overcome. In the following chapters various instances of the humane will be discussed in texts from first century BCE Rome, through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. For obvious reasons not all occurrences will be noted, but all texts that deal substantially with the concept will be taken into account. ‘Substantially’ will 66 See e. g. Cic. Pro Rab. perd. 26; Amm. Marc. 29.1.8; Quint. Inst. Or. 6 pr. 10; Fronto Ep. 2.3. 67 This is the case of the central study, Mayer, “Humanitas.”

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in this context mean that the humane may reasonably be interpreted as the theme or a sub-theme in the text or seen as an argument in itself. Authors that have produced such texts will be presented in full, and their texts will be read in a way that not only reflects upon the particular meaning of the humane words, but also strives to grasp the rhetorical advantages that were sought and maybe achieved by the author. Humanitas will in some translations be rendered as “humanity” in support of the attempt to reinstate the humane meaning of this word into English.68

68 Such an attempt is most forcefully seen in Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity. A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997).

Chapter 2: The Humanitas of Cicero

In what was to be his last philosophical treatise and last major literary contribution altogether, the De officiis (On Duties), Cicero combined a translation or paraphrase of a work by the Greek Stoic philosopher Panaitios with an ending that was completely his own. The subject of Panaitios’ Greek text had been the duties of the ordinary person, the average person as opposed to the Stoic wise man who was normally the subject of Stoic ethical discussions. The conduct of the average person, who had little hope of reaching Stoic perfection, was also an important issue for Cicero, who did not share the beliefs in the human perfection held by the Stoic wise; Cicero claimed allegiance to the academic school, which in his days had further developed upon Plato’s criticism of empirical approaches and had, in fact, become a school of sceptics. Despite this sceptical outlook, which is most clear in his Academics, Cicero nevertheless found the discussions of the ethics of Stoicism useful, for they included thoughts on what makes human society work, which was a major concern to Cicero. Clearly welcoming Panaitios’ adjustment of the tenets held by the Stoic school, Cicero translated or paraphrased his Peri tou kathekontos (On Duty) in two books or volumes, adding a third book or volume of his own to fill in what he thought was lacking in the exposition of the Greek Stoic. We cannot be sure how closely Cicero followed his model, since Panaitios’ work is lost to us, but in the part where Panaitios is the basis Cicero is probably reproducing closely the Stoic philosopher’s discussion of what is morally right and wrong, and of how this accords with what is useful. According to Cicero’s rendering of Panaitios, the morally right or good (in Cicero’s words honestum) consists in four things: 1. wisdom, 2. maintenance of human community (abiding by laws, fulfilling agreements, being helpful etc.), 3. courage and 4. moderation.69 In his immaculate Latin Cicero explains that man, as a naturally rational being, is by his very nature inclined to follow this scheme, which in broad terms is a repetition of Plato’s four cardinal virtues. Since what is good cannot, however, 69 Cic. De off. 1.15–19.

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always be taken to be what the situation demands, Cicero (following Panaitios) asks himself whether what is required as morally right is ever in conflict with what is required as useful. Panaitios reached the conclusion that what is good and what is useful are never in conflict. This conclusion, which may surprise a modern reader, depends on the Stoic beliefs that the world may be viewed as one substance or organism, that it is made for the sake of man, and that man is by nature equipped with a rationality that conforms to the natural state of the world.70 Cicero, though agreeing in general, complains that Panaitios never really tests his convictions, and the third book of the De officiis is therefore an attempt to make up for this deficiency. Despite being dissatisfied with the limitations of Panaitios’ system, Cicero never gets to put the cause of his dissatisfaction into words. In the third book he presents a list of examples, many of which are taken from earlier philosophical literature, in which the good and the useful seem to be in conflict. The examples accumulate towards the end of the book, where the text adopts a less even flow until it becomes so jumpy and incoherent as to suggest a lack of redaction. We know that the De officiis was written to his son Marcus in the very last months of Cicero’s life, just before he was killed by the soldiers sent out by the triumvirs in 43 BCE, and it is possible that death surprised him. But the jumpiness of the exposition could also be attributable to the fact that, in attempting to supplement the thinking of the Greek philosopher, Cicero was venturing into complex issues for which he had no words. Many of the ideas that appear towards the end of the book address examples of extreme situations in which the Stoic doctrine would seem insufficient or simply faulty. In this book, for example, Cicero discusses how two ship-wrecked Stoic wise men would react if their lives depended on a single raft, which could carry only one of them.71 Would each fight for his survival (being useful to themselves), or would they do what is right, Cicero asks himself. The answer, that they would obviously know which of them was more useful to society and would let that wise person be rescued by the raft shows what sort of intricate arguments were needed to show that the good and the useful can be harmonized – even within a community of two wise men. Just before depicting this hypothetical – and almost existentialist – dilemma, borrowed from the Greek author Hekaton, Cicero uses the same source to present one of similar complexity. In order once again to enquire into where 70 For the Stoic belief that the world was one substance, see J. Christensen, An Essay on the Unity of Stoic Philosophy (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962), 12–13. That it was created for the sake of man, see Cicero De off. 1.7.27, De nat. deor. 2.53.133; that man’s rationality conforms to the world: De leg. 1.15.43, and that Nature induces man to help his fellow-being “because he is a man”, see Cicero De off. 3.27 and the discussion in Cancik, Europa – Antike – Humanismus, 97–98 & 262–68. 71 De off. 3.90.

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man’s duty lies, this time not necessarily for the wise Stoic, Cicero asks what we should do if we were on a sinking ship and the only possibility of salvation lay in lightening the boat by casting overboard either an expensive horse or a cheap slave.72 Cicero, possibly like his source, cannot solve the dilemma of which to throw overboard, the horse or the slave. Money argues against the former, humanitas against the latter, is Cicero’s answer. This story contains the last instance of humanitas in the writings of Cicero, and in a very poignant way it exemplifies a set of issues and questions that are raised by Cicero’s very frequent use of the word (229 instances in total).73 As is clear from the overall thrust of the passage and the De officiis in general, the scene is yet another illustration of the dilemma of having to choose between the good and the useful; throwing the expensive horse overboard is an act contrary to utility, while throwing the slave is an infringement of the good or morally right, here expressed as humanitas. In a modern reader the story may prompt various reactions, ranging from outrage in at this laissez faire attitude towards taking the life of another human being, to bewilderment as to the moral of the story. As Cicero presents it, the central issue here is the force and value of humanitas. Humanitas sounds like an argument taken from the semi-legal context of what is right, as we saw in the Greek anthropino¯s and in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, but it is questionable whether this is the same concept we are dealing with. The military and diplomatic context of those authors now seems to have been replaced by a social context, that of slavery. In the slave-owner’s dilemma we still recognize an issue that may have universal resonance, but it seems that we are now dealing with issues in society no longer at war. As to whether the concept applies universally, the passage also leaves us in some doubt, for the reference to humanitas only speaks in favour of a certain conduct and does not finally solve the dilemma. Furthermore, we may ask how a notion as humanitas may at all make sense in the context of slavery. That a slave to a Roman mind had an inferior position to that of a free person was firmly set in Roman law, where slaves were not persons and were therefore not protected in general by laws.74 The point of the boat story depends completely on this very marked difference in status between the people involved: the person caught in the dilemma must, unlike the slave, be a free person, most likely the owner; and it is only because the slave is a slave that he is comparable in monetary terms to a horse. Had he been a free person, he could not have been thrown to his death without the offender facing criminal charges. As it 72 De off. 3.89. 73 See the list in J. Mayer, “Humanitas bei Cicero,” (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1951), 300–316. 74 See e. g. Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987), 7– 22.

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is, the offender is liable only for compensation. It might be thought that humanitas in the story expresses an opposition to the institution of slavery, or at least an attempt to bridge in part the social and legal gulf between freeman and slave. In fact, in some parts of Roman law, we find it explicitly stated that slavery was not a natural institution, that it went against nature.75 In the works of Cicero there is no other passage that can support the contention that he held such views, though some argue, albeit only in passing, for the amelioration of the slaves’ conditions.76 The story clearly only makes sense if we accept that the human being is regarded on the one hand as a slave and therefore as a person whose worth may be expressed in monetary terms; on the other, it is because the slave is a human being – unlike the horse – that humanitas applies in his case. There seems thus to lie some contradiction in the manner the story is presented. Lastly, given doubt surrounding the human status of the slave, at least from a legal point of view, we may ask whether the humanitas advocated for concerns only the slave or also the owner of horse and slave. Is it because the owner is a person endowed with a humane frame of mind, or because the slave is a human being, or both, that the horse is to be chosen on account of humanitas? To put it in modern psychological terms, does humanitas concern the subject or the object of a particular action, or both? And what interaction does humanitas prescribe for the agents involved? What is expected of the subject and the object in exchanges of humanitas? This will in the end take us back to the question – central to the understanding of Cicero – of whether law or cultural education should guarantee the force of humanitas in the world. It is the purpose of the present chapter to attempt some answers to these questions on the basis of the works of Cicero. In scholarship within the last century, there has been a fair degree of consensus as regards explaining or translating Cicero’s humanitas by indicating three semantic fields, or three areas of application, thus proposing three possible translations for humanitas: 1. ‘mankind,’ ‘nature of mankind’, 2. ‘mildness’, ‘meekness’, equivalent to the Greek philanthropia, and 3. ‘(proper) education’, ‘(cultural) taste’, ‘culture’, often said to reflect Greek notions of paideia. This scheme is essentially taken from the Roman author Aulus Gellius (citation discussed below) and, though criticized, it is reflected in dictionaries and commentaries.77 This rough scheme covers the semantic fields of humanitas. But many studies have been far too interested in compartmentalizing the areas of meaning and in finding the various 75 See Just. Inst. 1.3.2: Servitus autem est constitutio iuris gentium, qua quis dominio alieno contra naturam subicitur. “Slavery is a provision of the Law of Nations by means of which one person is subjected to the authority of another, contrary to nature.” 76 See e. g. De off. 1.13.41. 77 See e. g. under ‘humanitas’ in C.T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

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nouns (Latin or other) that cover the meaning of humanitas in the given passage.78 One of the consequences of this fragmentation in a modern understanding of humanitas is that it is hardly ever dealt with as one coherent concept. In addition, the importance of the concept is easily overlooked when reading Cicero in modern translations, for in most cases it is not rendered uniformly (e. g. as humanity), but is translated into a variety of terms depending on which of the three areas the text passage is felt to be dealing with. Thus, to a modern reader humanitas does not appear as a concept at all; it vanishes into what is thought to be its disparate areas of meaning. But humanitas does, not least due to its frequency in the writings of Cicero and others, constitute a concept in classical Latin, and the following exposition will insist that the various uses that the concept was put to are heavily intertwined and that, despite some inconsistencies, as a whole it was felt to build a collected meaning, at least to Cicero. Cicero is the Roman author who uses the concept of humanitas the most, and though he never dedicates any specific writing to discussing humanitas itself, it is a constant point of reference and argument. In fact, when discussing humanitas in the sense of ‘culture’, Aulus Gellius pointed out that the word had been used in this sense by the old writers and “in particular M. Varro and Marcus Tullius [Cicero]”.79 To the Romans the works of Cicero (and Varro, whose works are unfortunately almost entirely lost to us) were central when thinking of humanitas. And, we may add, such has been the case for many of subsequent generations. As an author with an immense readership throughout the western tradition, Cicero is, of all thinkers, the one who introduced the humane to the western world and, by tradition, to the globalized, world.

Laws and diplomacy Cicero was an ambitious man. He aspired to excellence in a variety of fields, as orator, poet, statesman, and philosophical writer, and through the ages there has been heated debate about the extent to which he succeeded. He originated from the second highest social class in Roman society, the equites (lit. ‘knights’), and 78 The clearest example of this is found in Mayer, “Humanitas”, who will discuss the meaning of humanitas by defining its relatedness to a row of virtues that are taken up one by one (first the more political-religious amicitia and pietas, followed by clementia, mansuetudo, lenitas, misericorida, benevolentia, liberalitas, facilitas/comitas, philanthroipia). Better are the discussions, along the same lines, in F. Klingner, “Humanität und humanitas,” in Römische Geisteswelt. Essays zur lateinischen Literatur (München: Hermann Rinn, 1965) and W. Schadewaldt, “Humanitas Romana,” in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed. Hildegard Temporini and Wolfgang Haase (Berlin-New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), vol. I, 4. 79 Gell. Noct. Att. 13.17.1.

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yet he made it to the top posts in the Roman political system at the earliest age possible. He was quaestor in 75 BCE (at the age of 30), curule aedile in 69 (age 36), praetor in 66 (age 39, though the requirement was 40), and reaching the very top as consul in 63 (age 42). Unlike other political leaders who based their power on military command, his was built on oratorical prowess, and, in common with all, on political alliances. But he ended up becoming yet another victim of a civil war that had wrought havoc on Roman society for decades, and the style of his political leadership was to disappear with him. Only his literary works left a firm imprint on subsequent ages. In the ancient world, Cicero is the person whose doings we can follow most closely, not least because, in addition to the almost complete transmission of his works, we also possess a vast number of his letters. Letters to friends, family members, political foes and allies, sometimes more than one per day, give us a chance of following closely the shifting sentiments and situations in which he found himself. Given the good source material available for his time and place – Rome in first century BCE – it is possible to produce a biography of Cicero that approaches the fullness of a biography of a modern writer or statesman, and excellent ones have been written.80 On the other hand, Cicero has at times had a very bad press, not least in nineteenth and early twentieth century Germany, which was probably the most productive period of European classical scholarship. The great historian Mommsen called him an opportunist, a general characterization that lasted for quite a while, and Cicero’s regular return to expressions of self-infatuation, especially in his letters, has dismayed many readers.81 Yet, few have ever questioned the rhetorical excellence of his writings. As to his command of the spoken word, his success was not restricted to his own time but has lasted to this day. His philosophical output, on the other hand, has been repeatedly attacked as merely recycling or translating Greek material, or as being unoriginal and dull.82 But Cicero’s philosophical outlook is characterized by at least two traits that have made a long-standing contribution to Western thinking: his common-sense scepticism, which makes his presentations of philosophical schools, especially Stoicism, the more interesting, and his constant reference to 80 I refer in particular to K. Büchner, Cicero. Bestand und Wandel seiner geistigen Welt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1964), D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero (London: Duckworth, 1971), and Elizabeth Rawson Cicero. A portrait (London: Lane, 1975). In a more popularizing vein, but with excellent research, see Robert Harris, Imperium (London: Hutchinson, 2006). 81 See Theodor Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, 8 vols. (München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1976), 5. 82 For the best counter attack to this view, see ch. 1 in H. A. K. Hunt, The Humanism of Cicero (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1954).

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humanitas. With Cicero, the humane gradually becomes part of a philosophical discourse and approaches the status of a fully-fledged concept. His philosophical output belongs only to the last decade of his life (starting with the De re publica from 51 BCE), but the importance he posited in humanitas is evident already from the early part of his career. In the endeavour to become a real Roman patronus, a protector of clients that were to support him politically, Cicero began his ascent in Roman society as a barrister. In one of his first appearances in court in 80 BCE Cicero made a speech for the defence in the case of the young Sextus Roscius, an inhabitant of the small town Ameria near Rome. Roscius had been accused by two Amerians of killing his father, clearly a serious crime and one that in Roman society was punished the more severely since fathers had ownership of their household including their children. The last of three in a row, Cicero’s defensive speech was to give the final reasons for finding Roscius not guilty, and Cicero’s strategy was to show that the case had actually been turned on its head (the Amerians being the most probable perpetrators) and, more importantly, that political issues were at stake involving the most powerful men in Rome at the time. We are in no position to judge the extent of the political intricacies preceding Cicero’s performance, but there can be no doubt about the courage shown by the young orator when insisting that the true culprits were those in power. The individuals accused by Cicero were the freedman Chrysogonus, who had belonged to the circles around Sulla and, less directly, Sulla himself, who since 82 BCE had held power in Rome. Sulla’s capture of Rome in 82 had been extremely bloody, and in the course of the massacres a new phenomenon had been introduced that was to reappear several times in the following decades. These were the proscription lists that would be set up in public, announcing those citizens who could be killed without legal reprisal and even for a reward. Under During the proscriptions, criminal law courts did not function and had been closed down by Sulla. But in 80 BCE the period of lawlessness seemed to be approaching its end, and the case against Roscius was actually the first legal criminal action allowed after that. But, according to Cicero, this first legal activity was only pretence; in fact, it was no more than a cover-up for the illegal dealings of those in power and the result of a conspiracy. For, Cicero explains, subsequent to the killing of Roscius’ father, action was taken by both the Amerians and Chrysogonus to procure the estates of Roscius’ father. Although he was probably a supporter of Sulla and already dead, the father’s name was put on the proscription lists. His belongings were, as was customary for the proscribed, put up for auction and sold to Chrysogonus for a trifling sum. To avoid scandal, they made sure to accuse the young son of the murder.83 Cicero’s long, ironic and 83 Cicero tries to establish these possibilities throughout the last third part of the speech, beginning at Pro S. Rosc. Am. 15.42.

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dramatic exposure of the true story ends in a plea to the judges to use their power to put things right. As he says, Romans who have been known for their leniency towards their enemies, are now suffering from cruelty inflicted at home. In this atmosphere of cruelty, so ends the speech from Cicero, “we lose from our souls every sense of humanity”.84 The link in this address back to the Rhetorica ad Herennium and further back to Greek notions of treating others anthropino¯s, discussed in the previous chapter, is clear; references to the humane again insist on certain common rules, and express concern for what is lost if law is abolished. Cicero takes up the thread from his predecessors, and yet a development may be detected. When the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium and others referred to humanitas, they implied a proper conduct to be entered upon in legal or military issues. When Cicero uses the word, he puts it to a political use in a dangerous public situation. In his case, the word has the ring of a manifesto; and, as in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the context of civil war and of (at least periodic) literal lawlessness again forms the backdrop to this reference to humanitas. Though Cicero later regretted that the words he as a young man had used “had not cooled off sufficiently” and that he had aroused hopes rather than given evidence of a mature performance, he also acknowledged that the case proved him a capable barrister in all fields.85 There can be no doubt about the prominent place that this speech held in Cicero’s career, and it is explicitly singled out by Cicero in his later De officiis as an example of how it is honourable to fulfil the duty of defending those who are the innocent victims of conspiracy.86 What had dominated the political scene were the past atrocities committed, and this is what comes through in Cicero’s speech.87 In countering this, Cicero took the rhetorical sword of humanitas and insisted it would secure compassion.88 Thus, his words seemed to promise, the proper application of law would lead to human fulfilment. In this defence of Roscius, Cicero is explicitly using the humane for a political aim. It now represents an argument in itself, one that can be used in political contexts. Such political use of humanitas, and in a few cases also the adjective

84 Pro S. Rosc. Am. 53.154: sensum omnem humanitatis ex animis amittimus. 85 Promises for a mature performance, see Orator 30.107 “sunt enim omnia sic ut adulescentis non tam re et maturitate quam spe et exspectatione laudati.” Proved himself a capable barrister, see Brutus 90.312. 86 De off. 2.14.51. Cf. Gell. Noct. Att. 15.28. 87 What Cicero at beginning of the speech calls iniquitatem temporum “the iniquities of the times” Pro S. Rosc. Am. 1.1, finds a much harsher expression at the end, where he speaks of domestica crudelitate “cruelty at home”, mali, quod tot cives atrocissime sustulit “evil, which has removed so many citizens in the most atrocious way”, ibid. 53.154. 88 misericordiam (which has been taken from even the mildest), ibid. 53.154.

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humanus, is found throughout Cicero’s career.89 To him, the humane carried a weight that made it an obvious parameter in political debate. And in view of the splendid career that Cicero was subsequently to have in the agitated political system, his argumentative use of humanitas voiced a need for lawfulness. Law and the origin of legislation continued to be a central topic in the writings of Cicero.90 In his view, the foundation of law could even be formulated as man’s natural propensity to love his fellow being.91 As Cicero was to say, supported by Stoic tenets, nature commands that the well-being of others be in the interest of man.92 Many of these statements were presented as having been uttered by speakers of Stoic orientation. Cicero himself never confesses to such adherence, but his constant deployment of humanitas as the true expression of law make these sayings part of his own manner of speaking. In this way, Ciceronian humanitas must, even if propagated by an Academic sceptic, be seen as a reflection of Stoic thinking, transmitted into Latin and into a Roman context. Thus, Cicero’s reference to law, and specifically to natural law, is fundamental to the understanding of humanitas, but humanitas does not mean law, it rather presupposes it.

The empire: provincials, barbarians, and slaves It was not only at home in Rome that lawlessness was a concern. Within the span of generations before Cicero, Rome had grown from being a strong power limited to the western Mediterranean to governing what, to a Roman, would have been virtually the entire known world. Rome had conquered or acquired all lands bordering on the Mediterranean, and an unequalled system of law and administration had been developed and refined to cope with this new situation. In the writings of Cicero many of the agendas and contemporary conflicts in this process found full expression. A very famous case concerns his attack on the politician and provincial administrator Gaius Verres. Verres belonged to the senatorial class in Rome and, in compliance with the Roman official system, had become governor of various provinces after completing a term of duty in Rome. His first provincial post was as quaestor in Asia in 80 BCE; in 73 BCE he became propraetor in Sicily. After what seems to have amounted to exceptional exploitation of the province, in 70 BCE Verres’ case was brought to court following complaints from several Sicilians, whose possessions 89 See e. g. also in one of Cicero’s very last speeches, The Philippica 11 from 44 BCE, where he three times (11.8, 11.9, and 11.10) denounces Dolabella’s lack of humanitas. 90 De or. 1.41.185–1.42.189; De leg. 1.5.16. 91 De leg. 1.15.43. 92 De off. 3.6.27.

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Verres had confiscated. The Sicilians, who had known of Cicero from his position as quaestor in western Sicily in 75 BCE, succeeded in gaining his support; and Cicero was happy to step in as prosecutor in a case that could both help others and gain honour for him. His motives were, however, also political, for the case soon acquired importance in the heated political debates about who were to occupy the seats of judges (or jurors) in the important public courts. The privileges of the senators had been threatened by the ambitions of the equites, to whom Cicero belonged. Nevertheless, in the case against Verres he relied on winning the senators’ support by proving their incorruptibility and upright nature through condemning their peer, Verres, for his mistreatment of several provinces. For the proceedings Cicero prepared a speech that took a somewhat uncommon course in Roman juridical speeches. Instead of constructing one long indictment according to the rhetorical precepts of the time, Cicero opted for short expositions of the Verres’ activities, followed by evidence produced by the Sicilian plaintiffs. We do not know whether he counted on this being sufficient, but at some point in the course of the case he also produced a long, a indeed very long, indictment text. This speech, or rather set of speeches, normally referred to as Speech 2, was never delivered in court but were published as five separate and elaborate orations. They presented to Cicero’s contemporaries, as they now do to us, the grand picture Cicero’s critique of Verres. In this elaborate version, the overall portrait of Verres as a stupid, greedy and cruel administrator presented in the speech he did actually hold, is developed.93 But to make the scandal of Verres’ behaviour even clearer, Cicero presented a contrasting image of how the glorious conquest of Sicily had been achieved in the past through the high moral standards of Rome’s leaders, such as the generals Marcellus and Scipio Africanus. And instead of simply referring to the efficiency and military prowess of these men, he insisted that it was the ideals of humanitas that had been central to their success, as they were the potential solution for the future. It may only have been introduced to create a contrast to the conduct of Verres, but the humanitas of these men is depicted in full (the word itself occurs 15 times, to which should be added the occurrences of inhumanitas, humanus, inhumanus etc.) and with great variety. This gives us a new framework into which humanitas may be seen to work, namely provincial rule, including relations with non-Roman citizens and barbarians.94 93 audacem … amentem … impudentem 2.1.1.1 picking up on the first speech, see esp. 1.1.2.5. 94 This aspect of Ciceronian humanitas is dealt with by P. Josef Schneider, Untersuchungen über das Verhältnis von humanitas zu Recht und Gerechtigkeit bei Cicero (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rota-Druck, 1964) and Christian Rothe, Humanitas, fides und verwandtes in der römischen Provinzialpolitik. Untersuchungen zur politischen Funktion römischer Verhaltensnormen bei Cicero, Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1978),

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The first part of Speech 2 had already seen the introduction of M. Marcellus and (Scipio) Africanus, because even the monumenta honouring these glorious Roman generals of the past had been stripped by Verres.95 Cicero uses the image of the depletion of monuments in a twofold way, for it applies both to the concrete thefts that Verres are being accused of and to the more political depletion that Verres is conferring on the empire by his misuse. In a broad and, in passages, almost historicizing exposition, Cicero tells us how at the end of the First Punic War in 146 BCE Scipio Africanus displayed his humanitas by letting the surviving inhabitants of the former Carthaginian main city in Sicily, Himera, settle at Thermae.96 Scipio’s role as lawgiver in Agrigentum is also mentioned, and in this city the humanissimus (‘most humane’) Scipio had erected an Aesculapius temple with an Apollo statue, with the name of Myron inscribed in silver-letters on the thigh.97 This statue was among the many thefts of Verres, who thus showed himself in complete opposition to the humanitas of Scipio. The good deeds of M. Marcellus, the conqueror of Syracuse in 214–12 BCE, are also contrasted with those of Verres. After a most attractive description of ancient Syracuse, Cicero shows how Marcellus, though entering the city as a conqueror, left many temples and treasuries untouched; the very same temples and treasures that Verres later robbed.98 In fact, in dealing with the city’s treasures, Marcellus acted both according to the demands of victory and of humanitas: as victor he removed some monuments that could adorn the city of Rome, but left others out of humanitas. All this was done in contrast to Verres, who erected the stolen on his own estate.99 In Cicero’s exposition, Scipio and Marcellus (and other Roman generals who are mentioned briefly) are used as examples of just conquerors and governors. This is a point which Cicero insists upon in some detail,100 as part of his general strategy to have Verres condemned, not least to prove the general moral uprightness of the senatorial class to which he belonged. In the course of the presentation, the Roman generals of old become the exemplars of humanitas, proving that this is possible even in wars of conquest. The will for power at Rome

95 96 97 98 99 100

Schneider from the perspective of Roman political-administrative ideals, Rothe from a more Marxist, with a harder emphasis on Roman power politics (spelled out clearly in the shorter C. Rothe, “Ciceros humanitas und römische Provinzverwaltung,” Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift Rostock 23 (1974)). Both authors share a surprising willingness to understand Cicero’s word as reflecting “Roman” attitudes or even praxis. In Verrem 2.1.4.11 In Verrem 2.2.35.86. On Scipio as lawgiver, see In Verrem 2.2.50.123; on the Apollo-statue, In Verrem 2.4.43.93. In Verrem 2.4.53.118–119. In Verrem 2.4.54.120–121. See esp. In Verrem 2.2.10.28ff.

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constituted no breach with humanitas in itself. In fact, the conquering generals had been conveyors of humanitas, as the laws of Scipio in Agrigentum proved. The way that Verres’ actions had contrasted with this was certainly not left for the listeners to imagine. Alongside Cicero’s detailed – and hilariously funny – cataloguing of Verres’ misdeeds, his lack of humanitas is denounced. Already as legatus in Asia, before coming to Sicily, Verres is found looting temples, showing no veneration for ancient monuments, and in general his lack of humanitas or his inhumanitas is denounced.101 A comparison to Scipio leads to the simple conclusion that Verres is sine humanitate “without humanitas”; the Sicilians are shocked at his inhumanitas.102 Some of Verres’ helpers are also denounced for their lack of humanitas, not least his accomplice Apronius.103 In fact, the lack of humanitas on Verres’ part signals his (lack of) understanding and appreciation for people living in the provinces. Cicero says he thinks him incapable of viewing the Sicilians as human beings. And to Verres himself, Cicero’s argument suggests that the governor’s expectation was that infliction of torture would work as proof of his humanitas.104 Cicero pushes his argument almost to the absurd. It is not only the famous Roman heroes that are set up in contrast to Verres. Some of the local victims of Verres’ crimes are also guardians of humanitas. While in Lampsacum in Asia Minor, Verres wishes to install himself and Rubrius, one of his staff, in the house of the local magnate Philodamus. Philodamus protests since his high social position normally implied that he be the host only of praetors and consuls, not of their attendants.105 But Philodamus has no inkling of what is to be expected from a man like Verres. Once he has been installed by force and invited to a party, Rubrius asks his host, Philodamus, to let the daughter of the house, one of the attractions that had caused Verres to opt for this accommodation, to join in, a proposition that was wholly inappropriate in a Greek household. Outraged and furious, Philodamus nevertheless holds his tongue, but, when the demand is repeated, he orders the slaves to shut the front door and guard the entrance. Soon the house is in turmoil, with Philodamus’ son and a large group of Lampsacians turning up at the gates. Throughout his account, Cicero insists that Philodamus was very keen on being on good terms with the Romans, and that even when the attendant Rubrius was forced upon him as

101 Looting temples In Verrem 2.1.17.46ff.; Verres’ inhumanitas, In Verrem 2.2.40.97; 2.3.4.8. 102 sine humanitate, In Verrem 2.4.44.98; judgment by Sicilians for his inhumanitas, In Verrem 2.5.22.115. 103 In Verrem 2.3.9.23. 104 crucem .. illam .. quam iste civibus Romanis testem humanitatis in eos ac benevolentiae suae voluit esse, In Verrem 2.3.24.59. 105 In Verrem 2.1.24.65.

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resident of his house, “he did his best to maintain his humanitas and hospitality”.106 The picture presented by Cicero of how a sense of humanitas directed the actions of generals and provincials is possibly largely wishful thinking, but apart from helping explain to his Roman audience their right to world power, it would also help him – if accepted – to condemn Verres. Humanitas and its opposite were the sure companions of lawfulness and its opposite. But, most importantly, the concept of humanitas also represented a virtue that could be common to all, making no distinct roles for the persons involved. The interests of both Romans and inhabitants of Roman provinces – but not those of the accused Verres – all meet in the ideal of humanitas. This ideal seems to be the catchword for good governance and in fact for mutual and beneficial respect. This is witnessed directly in court. The unlucky Sthenius, citizen of Thermae and present at court as claimant, had also housed Verres and suffered from his greed. After narrating in detail the humiliating threats that Verres had inflicted on Sthenius in Sicily and in Rome, Cicero wraps up his account by referring to his personal knowledge of Sthenius, insisting that the only proper response to the hospitality of the Sicilian would have been humanitas.107 As part of a rhetorical strategy in the face of a threat to political privileges, Roman provincial rule is thus expressed in terms of humanitas. It is the one virtue that may cover the proper behaviour of both conqueror or governor and provincial citizen. Most other virtues (such as clemency, bravery etc.) would either only be honourable to one party or would, as in the case of clemency, confer quite different roles on individuals involved by insisting on differences in status. Such was not the case of the virtue of humanitas. In a world of power politics, this may have been hard to believe in, but Cicero seems to have convinced his audience that humanitas was a workable model. As it had glorified the deeds of the past, it could also be the solution for the future. At the very end of his Speech 2 against Verres, Cicero sends prayers with extreme pathos to a number of gods. The last of these invoked by name are Ceres and Libera, both agricultural gods, and their cults are called upon as the original founders of rules, laws, humanitas and cities, and Cicero expresses the hope that these may not only be thought of as having been brought to Rome, but that Rome may also be known as the transmitter of these gifts of civilisation.108 Thus, humanitas had been and should remain central to Rome’s role as ruler of provinces.

106 In Verrem 2.1.25.65. 107 In Verrem 2.2.34.83ff. 108 In Verrem 2.5.72.187.

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Cicero’s ideals of provincial rule are also to be found elsewhere.109 In a famous letter to his younger brother Quintus (Epist. ad Quintum 1.1), Marcus Cicero, our Cicero, expounds on the merits of humanitas, partly as an excuse for not having helped Quintus to be relieved of his administrative duties. Quintus had been propraetor of the province of Asia for two years but was now being forced into a third year of duty. But, says his elder brother, Quintus is an outstanding administrator, and if he continues as in the same way as before, everything will work out fine, especially if he can control his temper.110 Thus, underneath the excuse and professed praise, Cicero is advising his brother. From the way the letter is composed, it may be argued that the true advice being given is the suggestion that Quintus show humanitas. Cicero in one place praises Quintus’ humanitas; nevertheless, while insisting repeatedly that Quintus needs no advice, he tries to mollify Quintus through exhortation to humanitas.111 This is done in part through the good example of others. He acclaims the humanitas of Octavius, the praetor of 61, adding the example of Cyrus from Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.112 Furthermore, early in the letter Cicero has already told Quintus that he has had the good fortune to govern a province in which the native population is of the humanissimum kind, “the most humane kind”; in fact, if Quintus treats them well, especially the Greeks, they will take him to be “a person out of the historical accounts, or a divine human being that has come down from heaven into the province”.113 In fact, not only does humanitas characterize his province, Asia, but – and here Cicero reaches a climax – Quintus has had the fortune to become governor of the very birthplace of humanitas. As Cicero says in clearly admonishing terms: If luck of the draw had made you governor of Africans or Spaniards or Gauls – savage, barbarous nations – it would still have been a reflection of your humanity to take care of their interests and devote yourself to their needs and welfare. But since we are governing the nation in which humanity itself not only exists but from which it is also believed to

109 Apart from the examples given below, the clearest examples of humanitas as ideal virtue for the governing of provinces are given in Cicero’s speech De Cn. Pomp. imp. (De lege Manilia), 13, 18, 36, 42. 110 The issue of Quintus’ temper comes up first in Ep. ad Q. fr.1.7. 111 On Quintus’ humanitas, see 1.1.25: toto denique imperio nihil acerbum esse, nihil crudele atque omnia plena clementiae, mansuetudinis, humanitatis. Cicero insists that Quintus needs no advice in Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.18, 1.27, 1.36, 1.45, but cautious admonitions against anger are expressed in 1.7, 1.37–39. 112 On Octavius, see Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.21; on Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, see Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.23. 113 Constat enim ea provincia primum ex eo genere sociorum quod est ex hominum omni genere humanissimum, 1.1.6 and nam Graeci quidem sic te ita viventem intuebuntur ut quendam ex annalium memoria aut etiam de caelo divinum hoiminem esse in provinciam delapsum putent, 1.1.7. The translation owes some to that of Shackleton Bailey.

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have passed to others, we definitely ought to show this humanity especially to those from whom we have received it.114

Thus, Quintus is obliged to show humanitas as a provincial governor in general, but now even more because he is in the very land from which this ideal has sprung. And, as was made clear from the start of the letter, the implications of humanitas are both the good management of provinces and the proper control of one’s temper. The correlation is directly expressed in 1.7: “How should it be a challenge to control those you govern, as long as you control yourself ?”115 Cicero is using the nation that Quintus governs as an excuse for advising him to act with humanitas, and by ‘nation’ he clearly means the Greek. Cicero insists that his words imply no exaggeration; he is not ashamed to confess that he has learned “everything he has acquired” from the Greeks.116 Elsewhere in the letter Cicero may express annoyance at the Greek aversion to paying taxes, but when it comes to humanitas Greece stands as the fountainhead, and it is to the ideals of this nation that Roman power – including Quintus’ exercise of it – should conform. Humanitas, then, again constitutes the proper interaction between Rome as empire and its dominions. However, considered in the case of a province inhabited (partly) by Greeks, a surprising externalization of the concept takes place. Humanitas, a human ideal that is to be applied by Romans even when ruling, is suddenly made the product of another nation, the Greeks. In Cicero’s words, the humane acts that are being advocated are the product of a single nation, and that is not Cicero’s nation. Humanitas, despite its universal implications (as relating to all human beings), may be presented as originating from an isolated part of mankind, a part that does not comprise the speaker himself. As in the final prayers in the speech against Verres, Rome should become the transmitter of a humanitas that, despite the universality implied in the concept, is of Greek origin.117 This philhellenic bias seems to point straight to discrimination 114 Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.1.27: quod si te sors Afris aut Hispanis aut Gallis praefecisset, immanibus ac barbaris nationibus, tamen esset humanitatis tuae consulere eorum commodis et utilitati salutique servire; cum vero ei generi hominum praesimus non modo in quo ipsa sit sed etiam a quo ad alios pervenisse putetur humanitas, certe iis eam potissimum tribuere debemus a quibus accepimus. The translation owes some to that of Shackleton Bailey. 115 Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.1.7 quid est enim negotii continere eos, quibus praesis, si te ipse contineas? 116 Cicero here seems to be stepping out of his role as correspondent with Quintus and directing himself to a wider audience: non enim me hoc iam dicere pudebit, praesertim in ea vita atque iis rebus gestis in quibus non potest residere inertiae aut levitatis ulla suspicio, nos ea quae consecuti simus iis studiis et artibus esse adeptos quae sint nobis Graeciae monumentis disciplinisque tradita, “For I will not be ashamed to say the following – especially regarding the life and acts in which there must remain no suspicion of dullness or negligence – that we have acquired everything that we have attained from the research and arts that has been transmitted to us through the monumental works and theoretical disciplines from Greece.” Ep. ad Q. fr. 1.1.9.26. 117 On the Greek origin of humanitas, see also Cic. Pro Flacco 62; Pliny, Ep. 8.24.2.

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against the other nations under Roman rule. Cicero does not discuss how Africans, Spaniards or Gauls fitted into the grand scheme of things. They probably did not, and even the status of Greeks is not universally acclaimed in Cicero’s dealings. In his speech in defence of Lucius Flaccus, Cicero tries to exculpate Flaccus of extortion in Asia Minor by claiming that the Greeks of Flaccus’ province are unreliable, and their status as Greeks does not help them, for Greek humanitas originated in Athens, not in Asia Minor.118 The use of humanitas as witnessed in Cicero’s letter to his brother Quintus and in the speech in defence of Flaccus gets close to excluding the universalism implied in humanitas. Though referring to things human, the word seems to shake off this connection and become a denominator only of the virtuous (or, in fact, of the Romans). Perhaps most importantly, Cicero’s hailing of humanity as a Greek invention, or as pertaining particularly to Greeks, shows him linking the concept with theories of Greek learning and civilisation that exclude other nations. Cicero here acknowledges his deep indebtedness to Greek thinking, even if he is uncertain as to how far Greeks under Roman rule should benefit from this contribution. Through this acknowledgement, Cicero is signalling the large role played by education and the mental activities that precede the establishment of learning. If law, whether natural or as codified by, for example, the Romans, is a precondition for humanitas, the same must go for learning. Cicero was not as clear on the latter in his younger days as he would become in his later years and especially in his philosophical writings. But his indictment of Verres’ lack of understanding of Greek sculpture already pointed in this direction. The insistence on the merits of Greek learning nevertheless meant the exclusion of those deriving from other parts of humanity, and thus a reduction in the universal character of humanitas. In fact, when exposed to a broad selection of mankind, Cicero’s humanity was seriously hampered as to its universalism. Another case that leads to exclusion from such universal thinking can be found in his discussion of cruel people. We saw that Cicero sarcastically presented Verres as thinking that torture would be a proof of his humanitas. The recurrent example of the cruel ruler in Cicero’s texts is the tyrant Phalaris, who ruled Agrigentum in the sixth century BCE. According to a story often cited, Phalaris had acquired a brazen bull, in which he locked up his enemies to have them roasted alive. Cicero mentions Phalaris in his accusation of Verres, not least because Scipio Africanus could serve here again as a contrast. It was Scipio who returned the bull to the Acragantines, recommending them to deliberate on whether it was preferable to be the slaves of a local ruler or the subjects of Rome.119 In the De 118 See Cicero’s long presentation of Greek areas, dialects, and manners in Pro Flacco 27.64–66. See also De leg. 2.14.36; In Verrem 2.2.5.187; De or. 3.24.94. 119 In Verrem 2.4.33.74.

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officiis, Cicero simply states that people like Phalaris may, like bodily members, be cut off and no longer be regarded as part of the body, the body of humanity (in the sense of ‘mankind’); in fact, Phalaris and his likes may rightfully be killed.120 Humanitas, it is implied, does not simply cover anything done, said, or expressed by human beings. You have to deserve it. As far as Phalaris is concerned, then, if we follow Cicero we may conclude that, by not complying with the laws of humanitas, he should no longer be regarded as belonging to humanitas.121 A double externalization occurs, therefore, in Cicero’s use of the concept of the humane. First, despite Rome’s central role in transmitting humanitas, this ideal stems from another nation, the Greeks, not just from the best in any nation. Second, it does not cover acts or people that are cruel. The question that then arises is how to address this segregation from humanitas. In Cicero’s attacks on, or advice against, bad provincial rule, he presents suggestions for improvement. Humanitas, even if sometimes in short supply, may prevail. If we look at the descriptions of Verres’ misrule, Cicero clearly takes it to be the duty of the jurors to end his criminal conduct. The law will thus, in the eyes of Cicero, put an end to misgovernment. But another solution existed. If Verres had an understanding of the roots of humanitas, if he had any grasp of what monuments mean or who Myron was, he would – Cicero seems to be saying – have acted differently.122 Cicero may not have entertained any expectations of that kind in the case of Verres (and he would in any case not have expressed them in a legal case against him), but in the case of his brother’s apparent lack of humanitas, Cicero is definitely more optimistic. In this way, room was left for personal striving, though perhaps not for everybody. In general, though, citizens of the empire, whether from Rome or settled in the provinces, could partake in humanitas, even if mechanisms of exclusion were at work. While the position of provincial citizens and barbarians was more or less clear in Cicero’s humanitas system, that of slaves was less so.123 A slave could be humanissimus,124 but apart from this – except in the dilemma on the endangered boat – humanitas is not invoked in regard to slaves. Their lack of humanitas, in

120 Etenim, ut membra quaedam amputantur, si et ipsa sanguine et tamquam spiritu carere coeperunt et nocent reliquis partibus corporis, sic ista in figura hominis feritas et immanitas beluae a communi tamquam humanitatis corpore segregenda, De off. 3.32. For a similar view on Phalaris, see De off. 3.6.32; see Cicero De off. 3.27 and the discussion in Cancik, Europa – Antike – Humanismus, 98–99. On Cicero’s opposition to cruelty, see also Pro rege Deiot. 32, Pro Sestio 92, and De off. 3.11.46. 121 Another kind of behaviour that according to Cicero could entail the loss if human status was lust (voluptas), see esp. De off. 1.30.105. 122 In Verrem 2.4.6.12. 123 On slaves in the writings of Cicero, see Pro S. Rosc. Am. 121; Ep. ad Att. 15.1 A.1 & 7.7 124 Ep. Att. 7.7.

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whatever sense, may even be ironically hinted at.125 In his speech in defence of king Deiotarus, Cicero attacks the king’s grandson, who was the prosecutor in the case, of having bribed a slave from his grandfather’s household. This Cicero takes to be a threat that may “violate the rights of humanity”.126Anyone inclined to think that Cicero is rejecting bribery here need only look at the contrasting ideal example that he adduces. A few lines later Cicero tells us that in his boyhood Gnaeus Domitius had rejected the indictment presented to him by a slave and sent the slave back to his master. So what Cicero is pointing the finger of blame at is not bribery but the use of slaves’ opinions in serious matters.127 And far from referring to the interests and possible rights of the slave, the reference to humanity in fact excludes them. In extending this sphere of reference beyond citizens of more or less equal standing, Cicero exposes a weakness in the integrity of his concept, for, even if certain slaves whom he knew personally could arouse his liking and respect,128 he had no clear idea of their place within the concept of humanitas. Despite the universality inherent to humanitas, status based on citizenship, ethnic origin and so on clearly influenced the potential argumentative weight of humanitas. Still, the inclusion of the concept into such discussions through Cicero’s persistent use of the ideological discourse of the humane showed that it could be applied as a common parameter at least for governors and non-Roman citizens, i. e. rulers and subjects, of a Roman province. Cicero opened up for a discussion that could only be conducted in the name of humanitas. Elaborations on this may be seen in the writings of Seneca (see chapter 3) and in the history of the humane.

The dynamic turn The case of Phalaris, whose cruelty placed him beyond the sphere of humanitas, demonstrates that Cicero saw humanitas not simply as a particular form of conduct or relationship that one could insist on or argue for. It was – or perhaps gradually became in the dealings of Cicero – a personal quality that could be acquired. Verres lacked cultural understanding, but knowledge of ‘culture’ could 125 See Pro S. Rosc. Am. 121. 126 Cic. Pro reg. Deiot. 11.30: adeone ut omnia vitae salutisque communis atque etiam humanitatis iura violentur? 127 Schneider, Untersuchungen über das Verhältnis, 10–25 completely misses the point by only looking at the legal terms involved; this leads to a complete overstatement of the legal implications and a disregard of the rhetorical use of humanitas in an legally ambivalent case. Slaves were used as witnesses in Roman courts, often under torture, see Watson, Roman Slave Law, 84–89. 128 See Bailey, Cicero, 131–33.

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have qualified him for humanitas. This need for a personal acquisition of proper knowledge becomes gradually more and more important in the writings of Cicero, and in a later speech, when defending the young nobleman Caelius, Cicero persistently characterizes Caelius’ acquaintances as endowed with humanitas or as humanissimus ‘very humane’.129 That humanissimus could be used to characterize the moral and cultural attributes of the young Caelius points to an idiomatic development that took place with Cicero, or at least became accentuated through his writings and those of his contemporary Varro, as witnessed by Gellius (see above). Cicero’s generation initiated the use of the adjective humanus – normally in the comparative (with the suffix -ior) or in the superlative (-issimus) – for a person. In Varro’s Res humanae (Human Antiquities), which assembled a vast amount of information on people, places, times and events particularly in Rome and Italy, the author added that the artist Praxiteles “because of his artistic excellence is not unknown to those who are just a bit more humane”.130 Humanus here means ‘endowed with proper education or taste’, and this usage also became frequent in the writings of Cicero. The adjective denoting the ‘human’ became the measure of human perfection became a way of referring to the goal of what a person should strive for. It no longer belonged solely to the world of laws and society as a whole but also made sense on an individual level. This personalization of the ideal takes the concept of humanitas through what could be termed a dynamic turn. It becomes integrated into discussions of what personal development and education are all about. Discussions or expressions dealing with humanitas are increasingly found linked to terms such as studium, litterae, doctrina, words that associate humanitas with education or learning. This is also seen in the Vita Attici (Life of Atticus), written by Cicero’s friend and contemporary Cornelius Nepos.131 Cicero may have been aware throughout his career of the interdependence of humanitas and education, touched upon in his glorification of Greece’s invention of humanitas,. But it is only towards the end of his life that he makes it central to his use of the concept of humanitas. Despite his emphasis on education, Cicero seldom defines what fields of study are needed in order to acquire humanitas. The compound studia humanitatis, which would gain such importance in the Renaissance and would gradually come 129 Pro Cael. 24, 54; this is also suggested to characterize the judges, see Pro Cael. 75. 130 Gellius Noct. Att. 13.17.3: Itaque verba posui Varronis e libro rerum humanarum primo, cuius principium hoc est: “Praxiteles, qui propter artificium egregium nemini est paulum modo humaniori ignotus”. “Humaniori” inquit non ita, ut vulgo dicitur, facili et tractabili et benivolo, tametsi rudis litterarum sit – hoc enim cum sententia nequaquam convenit -, sed eruditiori doctiorique, qui Praxitelem, quid fuerit, et ex libris et ex historia cognoverit. 131 Corn. Nep. Vit. Att. 3.3, 4.1; see also K. Büchner, “Humanitas. Die Atticusvita des Cornelius Nepos,” Gymnasium 56 (1949).

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to include a specific range of study areas, is found only twice in Cicero’s works and in a much looser sense than the one it acquired in the Renaissance. The most important instance of studia humanitatis comes in a speech that Cicero held in 62 BCE in defence of his acquaintance Archias, whose Roman citizenship had been questioned. Archias was a poet and as such was defended by Cicero not least as a cultured person, one man of letters defending another. From the very beginning of his speech Cicero strikes a personal note and makes the claim that his own rhetorical abilities stem from the acquaintance with Archias; if the judges consider it surprising that a source of such expertise in handling serious business should be a a Greek poet, Cicero dispels any doubts by saying that he sees a bond between “all the arts that belong to humanity”.132 Shortly afterwards, Cicero addresses the humanitas of the judges and asks to be allowed to dwell a bit on studia humanitatis by recounting Archias’ personal life.133 This leads to a description of Archias’ career as a poet and of how he obtained citizenship; in order to defend the accused’s profession, Cicero enters upon a praise of literature. All this establishes Cicero’s ethos, for by knitting together the humanitas of the accused, of Cicero himself and of the judges, he ends up establishing humanitas as their common ground. Much of the defensive mode that Cicero employs in praising what he acknowledges is a leisure occupation can be explained as a forensic obligation; love of literature was not fitting substance for a speech to the court, but in the defence of a poet it could work. To prove or depict the humanitas of poetry, Cicero finally gives a description of the pedagogical merits of literary pursuits. In a passage that was to become famous, not least in the Renaissance, we are told that literature stays with us for our entire life:134 Even so, I think you would hold that no mental employment is so broadening to the sympathies or so enlightening to the understanding. Other pursuits belong not to all times, all ages, all conditions; but this gives stimulus to our youth and diversion to our old age; this adds charm to success, and offers a haven of consolation to failure. In the home it delights, in the world it hampers not. Through the night-watches, on all our journeying, and in our hours of country ease, it is our unfailing companion.

The other instance of the compound studia humanitatis comes from the speech in defence of the consul elect Murena, where it rather loosely describes the 132 Pro Arch. 1.2. 133 Pro Arch. 2.3. 134 Pro Arch. 16: Nam ceterae neque temporum sunt neque aetatum omnium neque locorum: haec studia adulescentiam alunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solacium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur. The English translation is from Cicero. The Speeches: Pro Archia Poeta, Post reditum in Senatu, Post reditum ad Quirites, De domu sua, De haruspicum responsis, Pro Plancio, trans. N.H. Watts, Loeb Classical Library (London & New York: Heinemann, 1923).

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natural qualities of the prosecutor M. Cato.135 The ethical and legal sense of the humane that they to some extent inherit from the preceding generations is extended by Cicero and Varro to include an educational use that indicates directly how to achieve the basis for conforming to the tenets of humanitas. Cicero never attempts a complete definition of his concept of humanitas; normally it is referred to as an obvious parameter. But it must have become increasingly clear, even to himself, that his constant reference to the term stood in need of clear demarcation. In one of his most important literary works, De oratore (On the Orator), Cicero then took humanitas as point of departure for a cultural and political exploration of what the perfect education of the orator, i. e. the political leader, should comprise. The treatise was written in 55 BCE, almost a decade after Cicero had held the highest post in Roman society, the consulship. His political role had since then experienced a clear deterioration. In 60 BCE three leaders, Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, had made the illegal political agreement normally referred to as the first triumvirate. This soon led to the banishment of Cicero, accused of having executed some of the leaders of the Catalinarian conspiracy. He was allowed back in Rome in 57 BCE and, despite the injustices that he experienced, continued to be prominent as the oppositional leader of the senate. With the renewal of the agreement of the triumviri in 56 and the election of Pompey and Crassus as consuls in the year 55, Cicero had to acknowledge that things were not going his way. In a letter to a friend from December 54, he describes in gloomy terms his situation over the past two years and announces that he is now in a position to send a copy of his latest work, De oratore.136 This gloom clearly also affected the writing the De oratore, in which he hoped to set out the ideals that, according to him, had governed the Roman state in the old days: the auctoritas ‘authority’ of the nobility, and the free exchange of words and views based on the laws and on utility for the state. According to the De oratore, these should continue to form the basis of society. In the letter mentioned above, Cicero explains that he has written Aristotelio more ‘in the manner of Aristotle’.137 The dialogues of Aristotle are lost to us, but were much lauded in antiquity for their clear style and structured introductions to every book. And since all three books of the De oratore have their proper introduction by the author, Cicero’s reference to Aristotle may indicate just that. But the reference could also points to the aim of the text. Cicero’s main point in the dialogue was that what a political leader most needed was rhetorical qualifications in combination with philosophical training, a view Aristotle would have seconded. This 135 Pro Murena 61. 136 On the preceding events, see Ep. ad fam. 1.9.10ff. 137 De or. 1.9.23.

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argument, however, fitted with Cicero’s situation at the time. If we judge that situation on the basis of his own letter, the most obvious requirement lacking in his case was military competence; all his opponents were qualified generals. But Cicero was insisting on what has later been termed the republican view of political life: that the only salvation for the state, the res publica, was that it be represented and led by a group of the most able, in Cicero’s terms by welleducated speakers. Out of this concern – and that of others who shared his views – grew republicanism. In support of his argument, Cicero claimed that Rome had earlier known such men. In the philosophical dialogue De oratore, the scene would be set a generation back, in September 91 BCE, the year the Civil War broke out. The pleasant conversations described taking place at the villa, or rural property, of the politician Lucius Crassus (not the triumvir) in Tusculum could be seen as reflecting the world view of the generation of statesmen that had governed Rome before internal fights for power had disrupted civic life. What Cicero was advocating would, therefore, be understood as quintessentially Roman. Nevertheless, much of what is described in the dialogue has been backdated from Cicero’s own times, not least the rhetorical training which Cicero was among the first Romans to receive; as a pioneer in the field, he even had to start off by exercising in Greek, as neither theory nor praxis was yet available in Latin. In Cicero’s depiction of the gentlemen’s exchange in Tusculum, the prime hero Crassus, as well as the other main speaker Marcus Antonius (grandfather of Mark Antony), are both well versed in Greek rhetorical terms and praxis, all now expressed in Latin.138 And in Cicero’s presentation they become his mouthpiece in explaining why there are so few really able speakers; as the dialogue will show, this is due to lack of training, not least philosophical training.139 The conversations stretch over two days, while secondary participants join in or return home. The grand old man and iuris consultus (law expert), Quintus Mucius Scaevola, only takes part the first day, whereas the politician Quintus Lutatius Catulus and his half-brother Gaius Iulius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus join the party on the second day. Two promising and eager young men, Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta, participate all the way through. The tone of the conversations is gentle; in fact, the speakers have opted out of festivities that are taking place in Rome, having chosen instead to be among fellows. It all adds up to an image of a landed nobility, genuinely engaged in ruling the state as best they can; yet, a certain gloom is also cast over the scene. As was well-known to Cicero’s contemporary readers, civil war was imminent, and four of the participants were to become victims of proscriptions within few years. 138 Cicero acknowledges the anachronism indirectly in the prologue to book 2, De or. 2.3.11. 139 This central theme is presented in the passage De or. 1.2.6–1.6.23.

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In the balanced atmosphere that is gradually built up, Crassus plays a dominant role. Crassus was to die shortly after the discussions – a fact that would have been known at least to those who had read Cicero’s Brutus – and it is around his persona that Cicero makes the scene revolve.140 As host he makes sure to avert the lugubrious mood that had dominated the political discussions that, Cicero mentions in passing, were held the day the party met. At the point where Cicero starts reproducing – or in fact composing – the words of the debate, he tells us that Crassus showed such humanitas, as well as joy and wit, that the evening ended up becoming merry.141 This form of humanitas, which seems to stem from both social and mental capacities, is made more explicit when shortly after Crassus makes the following general proclamation:142 For is it not admirable when from the multitude of many one person stands forth and is able alone or together with a few to fulfil the capacity that nature has provided us all with? Is there any greater joy for mind or ear than to hear a well-prepared speech, clad in wise and weighty phrases? And what other act may be as powerful or magnificent as when the will of the people, the restrictions of the judges, or the gravity of the senate are bent by the oration of a single person? What is more kingly, more worthy of free men, more magnanimous than to help supplicants, to raise the hurt, offer aid, liberate them from dangers, or retain the exiled in the city? What may be as necessary as to hold the arms with which you, at your own safety, may unscathed challenge others and take revenge when offended? In fact – we should avoid always speaking of courts, politics, or

140 In 3.1.1 it is stated that the conversations took place just ten days before Crassus’ death. 141 De or. 1.7.27: Eo autem omni sermone confecto, tantam in Crasso humanitatem fuisse, ut, cum lauti accubuissent, tolleretur omnis illa superioris tristitia sermonis eaque esset in homine iucunditas et tantus in loquendo lepos, ut dies inter eos curiae fuisse videretur, convivium Tusculani. 142 De or. 1.8.31–34: Quid enim est aut tam admirabile, quam ex infinita multitudine hominum exsistere unum, qui id, quod omnibus natura sit datum, vel solus vel cum perpaucis facere possit? aut tam iucundum cognitu atque auditu, quam sapientibus sententiis gravibusque verbis ornata oratio et polita? aut tam potens tamque magnificum, quam populi motus, iudicum religiones, senatus gravitatem unius oratione converti? Quid tam porro regium, tam liberale, tam munificum, quam opem ferre supplicibus, excitare adflictos, dare salutem, liberare periculis, retinere homines in civitate? Quid autem tam necessarium, quam tenere semper arma, quibus vel tectus ipse esse possis vel provocare integer vel te ulcisci lacessitus? Age vero, ne semper forum, subsellia, rostra curiamque meditere, quid esse potest in otio aut iucundius aut magis proprium humanitatis, quam sermo facetus ac nulla in re rudis? Hoc enim uno praestamus vel maxime feris, quod conloquimur inter nos et quod exprimere dicendo sensa possumus. Quam ob rem quis hoc non iure miretur summeque in eo elaborandum esse arbitretur, ut, quo uno homines maxime bestiis praestent, in hoc hominibus ipsis antecellat? Ut vero iam ad illa summa veniamus, quae vis alia potuit aut dispersos homines unum in locum congregare aut a fera agrestique vita ad hunc humanum cultum civilemque deducere aut iam constitutis civitatibus leges iudicia iura describere? Ac ne plura, quae sunt paene innumerabilia, consecter, comprehendum brevi: sic enim statuo, perfecti oratoris moderatione et sapientia non solum ipsius dignitatem, sed et privatorum plurimorum et universae rei publicae salutem maxime contineri.

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senate meetings – what may in our free time be more pleasant or a clearer mark of humanity than a brilliant and in no way rude speech? For in this we distance ourselves from animals, namely that we speak to each other and may express our meanings in words. But so that we reach the very climax of this, we may ask what other force could have gathered separately living human beings into one place and have lead them from a wild and uncultivated life into this human culture and civilization, to lay down laws, courts, proceedings in well-organized city states? And so that I do not attempt more among things innumerable, I shall briefly sum up: I believe that through the leadership and wisdom of the perfect orator is not only his own dignity assured, but also the wellbeing of many citizens and, indeed, the state all together.

In this passage we see much of Cicero’s programme presented in exhortative style. First, what constitutes the basis of human social life, and of the joy we derive from it, is well-ordered and well-informed speech; this is proprium humanitatis, the ‘mark of humanity.’ For this is what sets man apart from animals and therefore what men should strive to excel in, or surpass each other in. And, in the end, all human civilization depends on the ability to speak, an ability that has enabled man to organise life, build communities, make laws etc. The dialogue emphasises again and again that well-ordered, well-informed speech, or man’s rational capacity combined with the ability to express it, is his particular privilege and may therefore be referred to as the central trait of humanitas.143 This humanitas is a source of enjoyment, and Cicero devotes much attention to the aesthetic value of oratory, a fact that may not seem all that surprising in a text that advocates the need for rhetoric. But the aesthetic quality inherent in human speech is furthermore supported by its societal potential; this is what sets man apart from (other) animals. Though speech may on occasion be judged according to its power to enchant, its more profound, historical value may be gathered from the establishment of human civilization.144 All this chimes well with value system recurring in Cicero’s text that places man somewhere between God or gods and the animal world. In general man emerges as not belonging exclusively to either of these categories but sharing features with both. Their language, reason, thoughts they share with the gods; their need for nurture, their procreation and their death with the animal world.145 But despite their origins in the gods or in nature, which may end meaning the same thing from a Stoic perspective, language, reason and thought constitute humanitas, a word that encapsulates man. And the only way of securing this is by educating good orators with a solid knowledge of philosophy.

143 See esp. De or. 1.9.35, 1.16.71, 1.23.106, 1.60.256, 2.17.72, 2.20.86, 2.53.212, 2.56.230, 2.67.270 (on Socrates), 3.15.58, 3.24.94; see also De off. 2.14.51. 144 See also the long passage De or. 1.41.85–42.191, and De off. 1.16.50. 145 See De or. 1.23.106, 2.20.86, 2.74.298, 3.2.6, 3.3.12, 3.4.15, 3.6.23, and De off. 2.3.11.

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In this treatise that focuses so much on education Cicero does not forget his legal approach. One extensive passage in the first book of the De oratore reflects on the establishment of law.146 To Cicero, law is important not least because it has created a society in which the possibility of leisure led to broader education and the establishment of the arts and sciences “that were invented in order to fashion the minds of the young to humanity and virtue”.147 Thus, a balance between law and cultural education has both in the past and in Cicero’s present been the single way of securing a society in which speech plays a fundamental role. This is the basic notion on which Cicero builds in his De oratore. Cast as a dialogue, the central theme of the treatise may be education rather than the humane, but what Cicero’s writing expresses most clearly is the basic requirement of the humane, the balance between law and education, or the view that they are indissolubly interconnected. If Cicero is expounding the necessity of rhetoric in the De oratore, he is doing so on a very philosophical basis, arguing for the need of philosophical training. Set alongside his assertion that men may be humanissimi is Cicero’s belief that proper education could enhance the workings of humanitas, and this is a major theme of the De oratore. Cicero has other ways of viewing man’s claim to a high position in the animal-divine spectrum. In a few passages Cicero speaks of the dignitas, the dignity of man.148 This idea, which, grafted onto a Christian base, was to receive considerable attention in the late Middle Ages and into the Renaissance and beyond, receives comparatively less attention in Cicero’s works What constitutes the humane for Cicero is man’s rationality, the faculty that enables him to establish laws, but which also demands education.

Subject or object or both: cultural education or the law? Our explorations into Cicero’s universe as it developed through his active life have revealed a variety of meanings and motives that made Cicero choose humanitas as the concept to express an ideal both for individuals and for society. His ways of using the word may not add up to a consistent concept, but there is no reason not to believe that Cicero felt they did. To him they pointed to a collectively perceived ideal, based primarily on Stoic tenets to which in this respect he subscribed. Now, it is time to revisit the man on the boat who, in order to save the ship from sinking, must throw either his expensive horse or his cheap slave 146 See De or. 1.41.185–1.72.189. 147 De or. 3.15.58: quae repertae sunt, ut puerorum mentes ad humanitatem fingerentur atque virtutem… 148 See De or. 1.43.194 & De fin. 1.28.97–99.

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overboard, the man we met in the initial story from Cicero’s De officiis. How, in Cicero’s system, would humanitas work against the slave being the victim? According to Stoic theology, man – or any being or substance that displays or embodies the highest aims – is a holder of logos, the divine mind-substance. The discussion above leads us to conclude that for Cicero humanitas as a divine gift, or a gift from nature, would be present in a person in accordance with the amount of logos working in that person. It is evident from passages about slaves, however, and indirectly those about barbarian people that humanitas is not judged as being independent of national or social status. Here Cicero agrees with many voices in antiquity that take social status to be the result of some moral or intellectual superiority, even if it is clearly based on riches; the rich have deserved their influence on society.149 This does not mean that a slave is excluded from humanitas; for example, Cicero calls Alexis, a slave from his friend Atticus’ household, humanissimus.150 But this seems to constitute the exception that proves the rule. Slaves would have only very slight chances of being educated and of acquiring the culture required in Cicero’s humanitas. As to rights, slaves were under no protection under civil law, and the legal protection that the law of nature was thought to offer and which would by extension be associated with humanitas was probably only thought of in extreme situations, such as the boat scene at the end of the De officiis. Nowhere in the writings of Cicero are there signs of true empathy that could go beyond such direct questions of life and death. This was to change slightly in the following generations, as witnessed in the writings of Seneca. To Cicero humanitas is based on man’s rational capacities, either in producing ordered societies based on laws or in his ability to acquire learning. All this depends on a view of a collective humanity, which is one of the meanings of humanitas. Since Cicero follows the Stoics in never really allowing the higher interests of humanity to be anything but common to all men, no clear division of roles takes place in the meeting of, for example, provincial ruler and provincial citizen, or, as in the boat scene, between slave owner and slave. The arguments of humanitas may, it is true, pull one way, but in Cicero’s thinking those of utility argue another. Cicero has pushed his argument in such a way that he no longer has words to describe the situation; he cannot acknowledge the contradiction between necessity of society and the guiding lines of his humanitas. In the end he left the dilemma for others to try to resolve. Through his many discussions, however, he argued for a sustained effort to create equilibrium between a legal and an educational view of man, subsumed in his concept of humanitas, and to 149 On this, see e. g. the first chapters in Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur, 2 ed. (Bern: Francke, 1959). 150 See Ep. ad Att. 7.7.7.

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insist that the only right practise of mankind was along these lines, even if in his political life this very practice had deprived him of influence and made him a writer of philosophical deliberations.

Chapter 3: Implementing Humanitas

Among the poems of the Roman poet Catullus (ca. 84 – ca. 54 BCE) we find a short piece (carmen 49) addressed to his contemporary Cicero:151 Most eloquent of Romulus’ descendants, as many as there are, have been, Marcus Tullius, or will later be in the years to come, Catullus, the worst poet of all, offers you the greatest thanks, as much the worst poet of all as you are the best patron of all.

This poem by Catullus is a mock praise of (Marcus Tullius) Cicero, a tongue-in– cheek gesture of reverence for the great ‘patronus’, with ironical self-deprecation on the part of the poet (who did not deem himself ‘the worst of all poets’, as is clear from a number of his other poems). The background to the poem – the reasons for this small-scale attack on Cicero – is not clear. It is possible that Catullus simply did not like Cicero’s style. Catullus’ friend and fellow-poet Calvus, whom Cicero had defended in court, found Cicero’s oratory ‘diffuse and without force’.152 But it may also have been Cicero’s ambition of appearing as a statesman advocating humanitas that prompted ridicule. Cicero, with his frequent self-infatuation and striving for power based on morality, must have been an irritant to many of his contemporaries.153 An advocacy of humanitas meant, at least if realised through one’s personal life, that whole avenues of pleasure had to be abandoned, not least the domination fantasies staged by the Roman elegists. For them Cicero’s worldview undermined much of what was to be enjoyed in poetry, and possibly also in life. And Catullus was not alone. In fact, though few 151 Dissertissime Romuli nepotum / quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli, / quotque post aliis erunt in annis, / gratias tibi maximas Catullus / agit pessimus omnium poeta, / tanto pessimus omnium poeta / quanto tu optimus omnium patronus. 152 Tac. Dial. 18. 153 Some found it ‘inflated, turgid, too unrestricted’, according to Tac. Dial. 18.

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would have questioned his command over the spoken word or his contribution as a writer, Cicero may not have been liked by many of his generation. If we look at the judgement of subsequent generations, however, praise of his works was almost unanimous. Thus, what may to Cicero’s contemporaries have been seen as preposterous self-indulgence and the use of high-flown words to promote restricted personal interests, later stood unshakeably as lucid expressions of idealistic views. Despite their republican origin, Cicero’s views were to have a continuous influence both on everyday and imperial ethics in the subsequent age of emperors. Reading across the reactions of later readers, we see a number of initiatives, or at least mental projections, attempting to implement Ciceronian humanitas. These attempts never became official policy, of course, or even became the stated code of conduct of any individual, but they clearly reflect an argumentative value that the concept continued to carry, despite its need for interpretation. Nevertheless, some of the central problems posed by humanitas would, as will be shown at the end of this chapter, be central in provoking the philosopher Seneca to declare a whole new ethical programme.

Imperial responses While we have to acknowledge the ridicule directed at Cicero by Catullus, almost all later ancient assessments were positive, even from people least to be expected to be his followers. The Greek writer Plutarch (c. 46–120 CE) recounts a telling scene from about half a century after Cicero’s death. One day the emperor Augustus entered a room where one of his grandsons was reading a work by Cicero. The young man instantly tried to hide the text-roll in his lap, but Augustus detected it, grabbed the roll, read a passage and said: “He was a learned man, my child, learned and patriotic”.154 As this story shows, Cicero was popular reading, even in the household of a man who had been among the triumviri that ordered Cicero’s execution. The republican cause was de facto lost, but as its most articulate champion and almost its martyr, Cicero had become an almost indispensable intellectual and political legacy. Even if the republican views voiced in Cicero’s writings did not accord well with the new political system of the principate, this did not prevent a use of humanitas as ideal for the new emperors’ dealings. The historian Valerius Maximus, who wrote under Augustus’ successor, Tiberius (who ruled from 14–37 CE), accorded humanitas a most conspicuous place in his writings. The term occurs no less than twenty times in his Facta et dicta memorabilia (Memorable deeds and sayings), a large collection of short historical narratives that exemplify 154 Plut. Cic. 49.5.

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various virtues, first from Roman, then from foreign (non-Roman) history. One chapter (chapter 5.1 in modern editions) is devoted to presenting examples (sixteen Roman and nine foreign) of humanitas and clementia. Valerius begins his book 5 with discussing the interrelation of these two virtues with liberalitas, the topic of the last part of book 4.155 Liberalitas, Valerius writes, pertains to virtuous disposition in the face of poverty, whereas humanitas reflects virtuous conduct in conquests, and clementia in cases of pending judgments. And though it as hard to say which of these is the most commendable, “the one which has its name from man himself seems to have precedence”.156 Most of the examples in Valerius’ section on humanitas and clementia concern the clemency of military or political leaders, and, as is also clear from the coupling of humanitas with clementia, the two words mean almost the same to Valerius. But Valerius was not a great thinker, or historian, and what comes out of these moral lessons offers no surprises. The most profound dogma seems to be that humanitas is great, especially when found in a person who was also a great military leader. Most of his examples take the matter no further than to proclaim and praise the joy that humanitas/clementia created in the particular instance.157 No reflection is offered as regards the problems that such mildness may cause when shown by generals and officials in dangerous situations. And unlike Cicero, who conceded that humanitas is hard to combine with gravitas ‘respect’,158 Valerius Maximus has no scope for including such observations. To him the emperor Tiberius, the recipient of his text, was close to the divinity of his (adopted) father and grandfather (Augustus and Caesar), who had been posthumously deified, and the presentation of any good virtue was probably meant to honour him, even if there is no hint as to how humanitas should work in Tiberius’ case. Valerius’ most recent example of humanitas is, perhaps surprisingly, an action taken by Mark Anthony.159 One could therefore claim that humanitas was an ideal to be found in the republican age, but with little political relevance for Valerius’ own time. On the other hand, Valerius’ cataloguing of humanitas shows

155 Val. Max. Fact. et dict. mem. 5.1 pr. Furthermore, the word humanitas occurs at the beginning of almost all examples. 156 Val.Max. Fact. et dict. mem. 5.1 pr.: Liberalitati quas aptiores comites quam humanitatem et clementiam dederim, quoniam idem genus laudis expetunt? quarum prima inopiae, proxima occasioni, tertia ancipiti Fortunae praestatur, cumque nescias quam maxime probes, eius tamen commendatio praecurrere videtur cui nomen ex ipso homine quaesitum est. I have corrected the misprint in the first word, found in the used edition. 157 See the endings of examples 5.1.1a, 1e, 4, 5, 6, ext.1a, and ext.3a. 158 Cic. De leg. 3.1.1: Cuius et vita et oratio consecuta mihi videtur difficillimam illam societatem gravitatis cum humanitate. “Whose life and speech seems to me to have attained that very difficult combination of gravity with humanity.” 159 Val. Max. Fact. et dict. mem. 5.1.11.

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the firm status the concept had acquired, as does its appearance in a collection of exemplary stories dedicated to the emperor Tiberius. One of Valerius’ examples of the virtue of humanitas concerns the great Carthaginian general Hannibal. Hannibal had allowed the regular burial of several Roman generals that fell in battles against him. To Valerius this proved that “the sweetness of humanity finds its way even into the savage natures of barbarians”.160 As we saw, Cicero had also envisaged humanitas characterising other, barbaric nations, but his views had been somewhat inconclusive. For in his view, although within the reach of other nations, humanitas was particularly accessible to the Greeks and to those partaking of their wisdom, not least the Romans, whereas people barred from such education had few chances of partaking in humanitas. Nevertheless, to Romans of Cicero’s generation and especially later, humanitas would remain a central word when discussing the potential accomplishments of barbarians. To some, the ‘sweetness of humanitas’ was within reach of these ‘others’. This often depended upon Roman influence and the spread of Roman rule, which these authors then ascribed a positive role. Other writers would – also with reference to humanitas – question precisely this idealistic presentation of the influence of Roman rule among barbarians and would insist that barbarians would be best off as long as they could stay clear of humanitas. Let us take a look at the authors taking part in this discussion. Among authors assigning humanitas a positive role is Vitruvius (ca. 80/70 BC – ca. 25 BC), who wrote about architecture. According to him, Greco-Roman humanitas could be what attracted barbarians to join the Roman sphere. In his De architectura, Vitruvius tells of the spring of Salmacis, situated near Halicarnassus in south-western Asia Minor, and in his exposition of this site Vitruvius is anxious to present the correct version of the effects of the spring.161 Vitruvius regrets that a story about the waters of the spring causing venereal diseases has gained prevalence. On the contrary, says Vitruvius, the excellence of the waters induced the earliest Greek colonists to set up a shop or booth at the spot in order to attract and mollify the original inhabitants, whom they had forced out into the mountains. And, says Vitruvius, the Greek colonists actually succeeded. Peaceful contact was established, and the spring thus “acquired its renown through the sweetness of its humanity, by softening the minds of the barbarians”.162 In Vitruvius’ view, then, the sweetness of the spring water served at the booth embodies the civilizing merits offered by the newcomers to the 160 Val. Max. Fact. et dict. mem. 5.1.ext.6. Τhe translation is – with minor adjustments – by Shackleton Bailey. 161 On this see also M. Robinson, “Salmacis and Hermaphroditus: When Two Become One: (Ovid, Met. 4.285–388),” The Classical Quarterly 49 (1999). 162 Vitruv. De arch. 2.8.12: ergo ea aqua non inpudici morbi vitio sed humanitatis dulcedine mollitis animis barbarorum eam famam est adepta.

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original inhabitants. The contribution of the newcomers must, then, have been the manner of serving, since the water had formerly been freely accessible to the locals. In the case of Halicarnassus the newcomers were Greeks, but Vitruvius voiced similar positive notions of the merits of civilisation catered by Romans elsewhere in the De architectura.163 That such imported values were a blessing to nations that were not GrecoRoman was not obvious to all. Caesar (100–44 BCE) had earlier expressed the belief that the Belgians were the bravest among the Gauls precisely because they lived farthest from the humanitas of the Roman province.164 And though bravery was a good thing in itself, other hopes were nourished for the barbarians who came into direct contact with Greco-Roman centres, as we saw in the case of Vitruvius. In his account of the glorious military exploits of his father-in–law Agricola, the historian Tacitus (ca. 56 – ca. 117), tells us how the influence of Agricola and his retinue introduced a new lifestyle among the newly subdued Britons:165 Those who had recently rejected Latin now wished to acquire eloquence; also, honour became connected to our dress code and the toga ever more frequent. Soon followed the descent into the pleasures of vice: the city alleys, bath-houses, and the extravagant parties. And all this would be called humanity by the inexperienced locals, though it was part of their enslavement.

The sarcasm at work in this grim image of humanitas as nothing but a complacent cover for the surrender to the vices of civilisation now even found in the speech of the locals may be one of the reasons why Tacitus avoided the term altogether when writing of Romans. Only in his Germania, where Tacitus depicted the manners of the Germans as being close to nature, would he talk of humanitas and then only to denote their traditional boundless hospitality.166 A form of trade-off is in evidence in such reflections on humanitas regarding the merits of Greco-Roman culture as a potential, and perhaps questionable, gift from the Romans to the barbaric nations under their rule. But, even if disputable in the case of barbarians, some would not hesitate to equate humanitas, or expressions of the humane, with the most outstanding products of human civilization. In the words of Pliny the Elder (in Latin Plinius, 23–79 CE), who wrote an encyclopaedia covering virtually everything that was known in his day, the arts of man, not least his artistic activities and products, could be called humanissimus, ‘most humane’. So, when he spoke of sculpture, it was humanissima

163 164 165 166

See Vitruv. De arch. 1.6, and the prefaces to books 2 and 9. Caesar Bell. Gall. 1.1.3. Tac. Agric. 21.2. Tac. Germ. 21.

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ars, “the most humane art”.167 The adjective here must mean ‘displaying the highest degree of the humane’.This idea is perfectly in accordance with Pliny’s keen interest in the arts that reflect man’s cultural dexterity in representing the world.168 Aulus Gellius (ca. 125 – after 180) dedicated a short chapter of his Noctes Atticae, a collection of learned comments on various topics, to humanitas.169 In it Gellius comments on a widespread difference in the employment of the word humanitas, insisting that ‘well-educated/endowed with good education’ (Greek paideia) is the correct meaning, not ‘benevolence’ (Greek philanthropia). Clearly taking the same stance as Pliny and others, he contrasted this with the ‘humanitarian’ usage that was also widespread. And though both meanings are present in Cicero, the latter gains much more emphasis during this period.

Humanitas as ‘humanitarian’ For all Cicero’s ambitions, the civilizing potential subsumed in humanitas was not necessarily restricted to the broad framework of cultural encounters but could easily be included in ordinary dealings of everyday life. As we saw with the Sicilian host of Verres (see the preceding chapter), humanitas could be shown in the ordinary doings of man and could, in fact, be inferred from day-to-day exchanges. Examples of such usage of humanitas and other humane words are found in Latin poems and novels that often seem to reflect spoken language. The poet Phaedrus (ca. 15 BCE – 50 CE) wrote metrical versions of Aesop’s fables, and in his version of the story of the grasshopper and the owl he begins by stating that “those who do not give in to humanity, often end up being punished for their haughtiness”.170 According to Phaedrus this can be seen in the story of how the owl, despairing of the grasshopper’s endless singing, finally invites him to a drink and finishes him off. The noisy grasshopper had clearly not shown sufficient humanitas. Three fables further into his collection, Phaedrus recounts a strange story about his literary master, Aesop, who had to go out to find kindling one day. Returning in bright daylight with his torch now lighted, he took a short cut home across the marketplace. Here a garrulous man asked him what he was searching for, and Aesop replied that he was searching for a human being, implying that the 167 Plin. Nat. hist. 34.33. 168 See Jacob Isager, “Humanissima ars: Evaluation and Devaluation in Pliny, Vasari, and Baden,” in Ancient Art and Its Historiography, ed. A. A. Donohue and Mark D. Fullerton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Isager also speaks of “an art that is worthy of man,” ibid. 49. 169 Aul.Gell. Noct.Att.. 13.17.1. 170 Phaedrus 3.16.1

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dullard was no man at all.171 This story of the man with the torch on the market place in broad daylight, of which a reduced version not including Aesop is known,172 may have been triggered by the earlier mention of humanitas. Humanitas was a subject for discussion, it seems, even in the genre of fables, which mostly featured animals as protagonists. As with our own contemporary television dramatization of animals, there is a clear but complex correlation with the basic dealings of humans. Despite the fact that they are not human, we experience hardly a surprise in seeing animals endowed, or not endowed, with humanitas. The word may be being used ironically here, since we would hardly expect an animal, even the most polite grasshopper, to be equipped with this most human quality. In any case, the idea of having animals speak in this way supports the impression that this manner of speaking was current among people of the age. Even more everyday are the expressions of humanitas found in a novel by Petronius (ca. 27–66 CE). In his burlesque and witty, though unfortunately only partially transmitted, Satyrica, Petronius describes various characters encountered by our three picaresque heroes, Encolpius, Ascyltos and Giton. The most famous of these characters is Trimalchio, not least because he appears in a passage transmitted in its entirety. He is an upstart who has made good, starting as a slave and becoming a well-off salesman. The dinner party at his place is an occasion for Petronius to entertain us with all sorts of gags, but the scene is also a fantastic window onto the common speech and the social thinking of the time.173 Much fun, and reality, finds expression in the accounts of the social ups and downs of people presented in the novel. And a clear perception emerges of society as a game involving humans also as objects, in terms of slavery or types of subjugation. We find a response to these instances of degradation in the recurrent expression from the novel homo inter homines “human being among human beings”. The phrase is used, for example, when Trimalchio describes how he bought his wife, then a chorus girl, at the slave market and turned her into a “human being among human beings”.174 Trimalchio uses the expression after having thrown a cup in her face because she had complained about his kissing a boy. Nevertheless, the expression – as used in the novel – seems to point, however faintly, at the unacceptable nature of slavery. Later during the same meal, Trimalchio’s dog Scylax almost picks a fight with a puppy belonging to Trimalchio’s favourite Croesus, an event that is diverted by the breaking of a lamp and a 171 Phaedrus 3.19. 172 A short version of the story, figuring the Cynic philosopher Diogenes is found in Diog. Laert. Vit. phil. 6.41. 173 Erich Auerbach, Mimesis. Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur, 2 ed. (Bern: Francke, 1959), 28–31. 174 Petr. Sat. 74; see also Sat. 39 and 57.

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spontaneous game of leapfrog. After this, Trimalchio invites everybody to yet another drink, for, as he says, “business in the daytime, but pleasure at night”.175 This invitation is called humanitas by the narrator, Petronius, or “kindness”, as we have translated it earlier. This use of humanitas to refer to an offered drink or meal is repeated later in the novel, in the story of the widow of Ephesus.176 This woman, who is described as being in extreme mourning for her dead husband, is visited by a soldier, who has been posted to ensure that some crucified robbers are not taken down from their crosses. The soldier has noticed the beauty of the woman but also her need for food, and therefore approaches her. At first she refuses to respond to his offers, but, when the soldier persists, the woman’s maid, attracted by the wine offered, gives in and reaches “for the humanity of the inviting man”.177 This may be a rhetorical manner of expression, the humanitas being a sort of metonymy for the meal, but it is a usage that caught on, as we shall see in the following chapter. Despite Cicero’s political association with the republican system, his ethical ideas on humanitas lived on in the imperial age. The idea that humanitas could be a guiding principle for contact between Romans (or Greeks) and barbarians caught on, though there were also harsh critics of the cultural imperialism felt to lie behind it, among them Tacitus. In Phaedrus and especially Petronius, we see the beginnings of a use of the concept more focused on daily life, and this had potential implications for the perception of slavery. Generally, we see authors striving at some level to fit humanitas into their worldview, Pliny offering probably being the most inclusive in his assertion that man’s artistic production may be what is most humane. Yet, none of these authors copy Cicero in the extent to which they let humanitas be the basis of an argument. It seems as though for them the line of argument is already there, to be supported, accepted or declined. Some in the same age confront the lack of consistency in the argumentive use of humanitas and attempt to introduce something better, or at least philosophically more coherent.

Seneca Among the writers living during the century after Cicero, the philosopher Seneca (ca. 4–65 CE) offers what is possibly the most complete response to Ciceronian humanitas. Seneca, though very different in his literary style, can hardly be thought of in isolation from Cicero, in whom he found an eloquent Latin 175 Petr. Sat. 64. 176 Petr. Sat. 111. 177 Petr. Sat. 111: porrexit ad humanitatem invitantis victam manum.

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transmitter of Stoic wisdom. And, unlike Cicero, Seneca was a self-proclaimed Stoic. But times were different now. Seneca’s whole life depended on the will of emperors, both as an exile and, subsequently, first as teacher and then as adviser to the emperor Nero. Nero was not an easy pupil.178 Though also Seneca would occasionally use humanitas as marker of pedagogical aims, his overall approach to the concept was to avoid it. To him, as a Stoic teacher, it seemed much more important to name the specific contents of a liberal education and to define the actual social workings of ethical relationships. In the end Seneca felt induced to establish a whole new ethical system, one based on beneficia ‘benefits’, understood as ‘good deeds performed in exchange’. Seneca’s precarious situation, coupled with the political and social conditions in general, may be seen as driving force behind a number of his writings. These, not least his last major philosophical work, the De beneficiis, will here be analysed primarily as a response to Ciceronian ethics. Despite his philosophical inclination, Cicero never discussed humanitas as a concept and never seemed to mind the contradictory sides of humanitas. For Seneca these presented problems. In one passage Seneca insists that humanitas is an abstract concept, pointing to the attributes of man: “Men may perish, but humanity, according to which man is moulded, persists”.179 This attempt to delimit the semantic field of the concept is in direct conflict with other passages in his writings. Seneca will make fairly frequent use of humanitas, especially in his early writings, and adopts the familiar range of Ciceronian meanings. This means that humanitas may mean kindness of any kind.180 It may refer to the respectful treatment of legates, as shown in an anecdote about Alexander the Great.181 In one passage he states clearly that, if equivalent to clementia, humanitas only applies in the case of a superior towards and inferior person.182 He will even slip into using the term in the Petronian sense of kindness in offering drink and food.183 But Seneca also articulates the difficulties inherent in the concept. In a letter where he criticizes the pleasure-seeking nature of the majority, he proclaims that humanitas is “a rare virtue in man”, only to be found in the soul of the (Stoic) sage.184 The exclusivity of the humane as expressed here by Seneca, conforms both to the central Stoic view – partly avoided by Cicero – of the Stoic 178 See the recommendable discussion in Villy Sørensen, Seneca. The humanist at the court of Nero, trans. W. Glyn Jones (Canongate, 1984), ch. 6. 179 Sen. Ep. ad Luc. 65.7: itaque homines quidem pereunt, ipsa autem humanitas, ad quam homo effingitur, permanent … 180 Sen. De ben. 2.17.1, 3.7.5, 4.29.3, 5.20.5; De tranq. anim. 15.5; Ep. ad Luc. 4.10, 5.4, 81.26, 99.20, 104.4, 115.3, 116.5. 181 Sen. De ben. 1.1.3.2; see also De const. sap. 13,4. 182 Sen. Nat. quaest. 4. praef 18 (cf. Cic. Att. 3.20.3); see also Ep. ad Luc. 88.30. 183 See Sen. Ep. ad Luc. 4.10; 21.20. 184 Sen. Ep. ad Luc. 115.3: in homine rarum humanitas bonum.

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wise man as the true exponent of ethical perfection, and to Seneca’s general distinction between high and low in social terms. As his writings frequently bear witness, Seneca loathes being among the mob, and in one passage this loathing finds expression through the humane. In a letter to Lucilius, he argues against the games at the amphitheatre, saying, “I return home more inhuman, because I have been among humans”.185 As we shall see, the contradictory nature of the concept is causing Seneca problems. Seneca’s use of the humane indicates a number of things but the most consistently, as will become apparent in his De beneficiis, it suggests avoidance. In the following, important phases in his philosophical development will be traced along these lines. In the De ira (On Wrath), a philosophical treatise probably of early date, it was Seneca’s intention to warn the young Nero not to be carried away by the vice of anger. At the beginning of the text, Seneca is replying to a certain Novatus, who has asked him to give precepts on how to assuage the onset of fury. Seneca admits that this is one of the most hideous and untameable vices, agreeing with some philosophers who see anger as a sort of madness, where the person “is mad due to a desire that is humane to the least degree”.186 Throughout the three books of the treatise, anger is then attacked for its demeaning consequences, and the final paragraph of the text runs:187 In the meantime, while we breathe, while we are among men, let us revere humanity; let us not cause terror or danger to anyone; let us contemn losses, wrongs, abuses, and taunts, and bear our short pains with magnanimity; while we look back, as they say, and turn around, mortality will already be upon us.

If we take its very beginning and especially end into consideration, the De ira seems to present an attack on the inhumanity of anger and an invitation to embrace humanity, possibly also understood as an ethical precept. The treatise is definitely open to such a reading, but it is a distressing fact that words denoting the humane are only found in the instances mentioned and in two other inconspicuous places.188 It is as if Seneca marks his text at both ends with imposing phrases referring to the humane, but throughout his discussions avoids using the term for any serious purpose. In fact, humanitas seems to function as no more than a catchword. Though the use of humanitas here may be seen to parallel that of Cicero in his Pro Roscio (see preceding chapter), the recourse to humanitas at

185 Sen. Ep. ad Luc. 7.3: … et inhumanior, quia inter homines fui. 186 Sen. De ira 1.1.1. 187 Sen. De ira 3.43.5: Interim, dum trahimus, dum inter homines sumus, colamus humanitatem; non timori cuiquam, non periculo simus; detrimenta, iniurias, convicia, vellicationes contemnamus et magno animo brevia feramus incommoda: dum respicimus, quod aiunt, versamusque nos, iam mortalitas aderit. 188 Sen. De ira 2.28.2 & 2.32.1.

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the end has no political thrust in Seneca’s case, as it did in Cicero’s, and rings out more like an attempt to create a concluding note of pathos. Seneca was tempted into including the Ciceronian concept but made little use of it. In other writings he makes greater use of the humane, but with clear intentions of substituting it. In his Letters to Lucilius, probably produced over an extended period of his life, Seneca addresses someone who seems to be a student or some younger person with a keen interest in the advice from the philosopher. In what is possibly a literary construction, Seneca will often take daily matters or a direct petition from Lucilius as a starting point that leads him on to discussions of central philosophical matters. The apparently casual starting point has the advantage of making the style of the letters essayistic and less focused on dogma. In letter 5, Seneca congratulates Lucilius on his philosophical progress. Lucilius has commendably concentrated on improving his inner qualities and not, as those who have misunderstood what philosophy is all about, on developing a particular outward appearance. As Seneca puts it, one should find a way different from, not contrary to, that of the common people.189 The reason for this is preponderantly pedagogical: we should not scare away those whom we wish to improve. In fact, as Seneca proceeds to announce, “The first thing that philosophy has to give is a sense of community, of humanity and sociability”.190 This line of thought then undergoes slight development; Seneca believes that dissociation from others will eliminate this sense of community, and he soon rephrases this to accord with Stoicism: it is his intention to live according to nature. Would-be philosophers who dress shabbily and seek out quirky food live quite contrary to nature, and Seneca’s advice to Lucilius is to live maintaining the right balance between the good and public norms. What we see in this short summary is a large claim made in the name of philosophy and in accordance with assertions found in Cicero, now phrased in more genuine Stoic terms. Mankind is tied together by its human nature, and the very word for mankind may therefore express this sense of social cohesion or obligation. A fair amount of such professions can be found in the writing of Seneca, but, as in letter 5, these will often subsequently be rephrased or recast into expressions concerning nature. Seneca will introduce the Ciceronian concept, only to shift over to the traditional Stoic technical terms. When discussing fundamental issues concerning teaching and education Seneca argues in most cases against the programme of ‘liberal arts’, which he basically defines as the purveyor of humanitas, as opposed to a true philosophical training, which is what 189 Sen. Ep. ad Lucil. 5.3: Id agamuus, ut meliorem vitam sequamur quam vulgus, non ut contrariam. 190 Sen. Ep. ad Lucil. 5.4. hoc primum philosophia promittit, sensum communem, humanitatem et congregationem.

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he believes in. Here the lack of ethical results will be a main argument in Seneca’s criticism, a criticism that will make use of humanitas as a deficient argument:191 Humanity forbids us to be condescending towards allies, to be greedy. In words, actions and expressions it demands that we are gentle and compliant. It sees no evil in the other. It really loves its own good in as much as it will benefit somebody else. But does a liberal education really teach this?

This reflects an uneasiness, a criticism even that Seneca feels obliged to offer, and a reluctance to accept liberal education that will, as we shall see below, make him argue for a different approach to man’s ethical obligations. When he comes to formulate his ultimate ethical principles, Seneca will find little room for the humane. But reluctance or even opposition to a liberal education does not necessarily demand a wholesale rejection of the use of humanitas. Seneca’s reading of Cicero (and maybe other lost adherents of humanitas) seems to have inspired him but also convinced him of the need to sharpen the conceptual approach. Throughout his writings Seneca took up many themes that were, at least in a Roman context, sparked off by Cicero’s reference to the humane. Seneca’s outspoken attacks on slavery, gladiatorial games and imperialistic provincial rule could hardly have been envisaged without the discussions and reference to the ideals of expressed in humanitas.192 But the tension and equivocation of the concept’s linguistic form has, it may be argued, persuaded Seneca into expressing himself in more practical, easily definable terms, leaving the word humanitas itself to be used only in a few exhortative passages. Thus, if Seneca substituted humanitas for other words, we may search for the traces of his substitutions. This will be the approach here to his De beneficiis. In this, his largest and perhaps last philosophical treatise, Seneca reflects upon the reasons why most men know neither how to give, nor how to receive beneficia, ‘benefits’.193 In Seneca’s Latin vocabulary a beneficium signifies any gift given or action done for the benefit of somebody else, but it also includes the positive feelings enjoyed by the giver. For, from a beneficium the giver also derives joy.194 Therefore the spirit in which the beneficium is conferred is crucial, and, to explain this, the De beneficiis offers a huge range of examples of people who, for one reason or other, have not been able either to give or receive a beneficium. He says little about humanitas in this context, though he does make some unobtrusive comments, some of which are quite revealing. 191 Sen. Ep. ad Lucil. 88.30. 192 See chapter 7 in Miriam T. Griffin, Seneca. A Philosopher in Politics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). 193 See the introductory paragraph Sen. De ben. 1.1.1–2. 194 See Sen. De ben. 1.6.1.

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As an example of a wasted opportunity of a beneficium, Seneca reproaches Alexander the Great for the way that he received the gift of Theban citizenship. He treated the Theban delegates “to invitations and other forms of humanity”, but in his reply of gratitude, he lost himself in dreams of equalling Theban Hercules, instead of sticking to praising the actual content of the gift.195 According to Seneca, Alexander may have been complying with the precepts of humanitas, but he still disregarded the nature of a beneficium. More is needed, seems to be Seneca’s argument, than a humane attitude to secure ethical understanding and action. Another example from the De beneficiis addresses the other end of the social hierarchy. The Greek Stoic thinker Hekaton, whom Cicero also depended on in his De officiis, had posed the question whether a slave could ever do his master a favour. Seneca, almost irritated, replies that obviously a slave can do so; anyone who rejects this possibility is “ignorant of the humane right” (ignari … iuris humani).196 What is important, Seneca reasserts, is not the status of the giver but his intention. Everybody may act out of virtue: free, freedmen, slaves, kings and exiles, for virtue is not selective as to birth or social class; only the action of the fundamentally nude person (nudo homine) counts.197 This reference to nakedness and implied lack of the protection or privilege that come with social class is underlined by Seneca’s assertion that people who do not know this are ignorant of the rules that pertain to humanity. Still, Hekaton’s question has clearly caused Seneca some misgivings, for he avoids confronting the actual problem raised by Hekaton: if whatever a slave does for his master may be seen as part of his duty as slave, no room is left for beneficia. But Seneca rejects such reasoning; to him beneficia are opportunities open to all. Like Ciceronian humanitas, Senecan beneficium finds that it is a step too far to take into account the situation of slaves. But the most interesting way that the humane occurs in Seneca’s De beneficiis is in two passages where humanitas specifically denotes actions that are not beneficia. Here we need to repeat the basic requirement of a beneficium: that both 195 Sen. De ben. 1.13.2. 196 Sen. De ben. 3.18.1–2: Quamquam quaeritur a quibusdam, sicut ab Hecatone, an beneficium dare seruus domino posuit? Sunt enim qui ita distinguunt, quaedam beneficia esse, quaedam officia, quaedam ministeria; beneficium esse, quod alienus det: alienus est, qui potuit sine reprehensione cessare; officium esse filii, uxoris, et earum personarum, quas necessitudo suscitat, et ferre opem iubet; ministerium esse serui, quem conditio sua eo loco posuit, ut nihil eorum qui praestat, imputet superiori. Praeterea seruos qui negat dare aliquando domino beneficium, ignarus est iuris humani; refert enim cuius animi sit, qui praestat, non cuius status. Nulli praeclusa uirtus est: omnibus patet, omnes admittit, omnes inuitat, ingenuos, libertinos, seruos, reges, et exsules; non eligit domum, nec censum: nudo homine contenta est. 197 See the fine sociological study of the De beneficiis, including much discussion on the intricacies of exchange in Miriam T. Griffin, “De Beneficiis and Roman Society,” The Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003).

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giver and receiver obtain enjoyment. Now Seneca says in a passage from the book that if exchange does not take place in the right spirit, if a gift is given as a worthless trifle, or as if the receiver were worthy only of such worthless gifts, “we give it not to a man, but out of humanity”.198 Here, the humanitarian gift is excluded from being a beneficium, precisely because it does not involve the right spirit of reciprocal benefit. A giver of gifts may only find pleasure in giving if the recipient is someone he has respect for and if the gift is of some value. In another passage along the same lines, Seneca makes a fictitious interlocutor claim to know of an action that may be done to the benefit of nobody, and yet it is a benefit, namely if a person buries someone else’s dead father.199 But that is a benefit, replies Seneca, for it is doing what the son of the dead would have liked us to do, but only if it is done as a favour. If not, it is an act of mercy or humanity. Thus, to Seneca, humanitas involves a kind of disinterestedness that makes it difficult to combine it with his central philosophical thinking on beneficia.200 Acts of humanitas include no enjoyment on the part of the giver; therefore they have no share in the reciprocal nature of beneficia. The criticism that the poet Catullus was probably levelling, as we saw at the beginning of this chapter, is now meted out philosophically against Cicero’s humanitas. We see here an initial reflection on the complex issue of what impulse to humanitarian aid may be. But we also witness Seneca’s anxiety at squeezing the principles of beneficia into the domain of humanitas; he would rather have reciprocity of benefit with some degree of pleasure confirmed as the true ethical principle in social life. This argument works to the detriment of Ciceronian humanitas, which here is seen as excluding the notion of pleasure and being restricted to the sense of ‘humanitarian’. Seneca is both attracted to and deeply dependent on the Ciceronian heritage of the humane. He does exhort us to “revere humanity” and in many instances insists on various expressions of the humane. On the other hand, again and again he is uncomfortable with the inner tensions in the concept and actually prefers a more technical Stoic vocabulary. In the De beneficiis he introduces a critique of the humane, hoping that his system of beneficia may to a large extent cover the same field as that envisaged in his reading of humanitas. In insisting on the notion of joy, he is forced to disregard the difficulties slavery represents for his system. At the same time, his protests against the artes liberales, which is “liberal education” on the basis of literature, history and the arts, was arguably directed against the educational ideals of Cicero and a further restriction on the appli-

198 Sen. De ben. 4.29.3: non homini damus sed humanitati. 199 Sen. De ben. 5.20.5. 200 Acts of humanitas may, however, be done out of spite, as is clear from Sen. Ep. ad Luc. 4.10, where Seneca speaks of contumeliosam humanitatem “condescending humanity.”

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cation of humanitas. Seneca preferred proper philosophical terms and philosophical training. Cicero’s influence is widespread and intense during the first two centuries following upon his death. The potential application of the humane in various discussions, not least on barbarous nations and the empire, and on education and everyday exchanges of help and gifts, made Ciceronian formulas come in handy. And in the attempt to restructure ethical fundamentals, the humane was a notion that had to be countered. In the centuries after Seneca and Pliny, various other writers use the humane, but few with any argumentative purpose or clear agenda. Humanitas, as well as incidentally humanus and the adverb humane, turn up in all sorts of texts, including Christian writings. Among pagans it is noteworthy that a few laws also refer to humanitas, either in the general meaning of kindness or as a more explicit command concerning the burial of the dead.201 In Christian writings, an author like Minucius Felix (second century CE), who was well versed in Classical writings, uses the word only in the non-emphatic sense (‘mankind’).202 In the Vulgate, the Latin Bible translation by Hieronymus (ca. 347–420 CE), the word occurs five times only, each time meaning ‘mildness’.203 The adjective humanus occurs twenty times, twice in the humane sense, to which should be added two instances of the adverb humane.204 All this reflects the general use of humanitas in non-Christian writings, but with little adhesion to Ciceronian usages. Nevertheless, for all the high-strung reproaches that would later be heard – not least from the Christian writer Lactantius – Ciceronian thinking clearly continued to impress.

201 See e. g. the laws formulated by Ulpian (dead 228 CE), included in the Digesta 11.7.14.7, 11,7,6 pr. (on burial), 50,2,3 pr. (kindness). 202 See Min. Fel. Octav. 8.2, 17.2, 21.8, 26.11. 203 Vulgata Tit. 3.4: cum autem benignitas et humanitas apparuit salvatoris nostri; 2 Ma. 6.22: ut hoc facto a morte liberaretur et propter veterem amicitiam hanc in eo facerent humanitatem; 2 Ma. 14.9: sed his singulis oro rex cognitis et regioni et generi secundum pervulgatam omnibus humanitatem tuam prospice; Act 28.1: et cum evasissemus tunc cognovimus quia Militene insula vocatur barbari vero praestabant non modicam humanitatem nobis; 2 Ma. 4.11: et amotis his quae humanitatis causa Iudaeis a regibus fuerant constituta per Iohannem patrem Eupolemi qui apud Romanos de amicitia et societate functus est legationem legitimam civium iura destituens prava instituta sancibat. 204 Vulgata Sap. 7.23: humanus stabilis certus securus omnem habens virtutem omnia prospiciens et qui capiat omnes spiritus intellegibiles mundos subtiles; Sap. 12.19: docuisti autem populum tuum per talia opera quoniam oportet iustum esse et humanum et bonae spei fecisti filios tuos quoniam das locum in peccatis paenitentiae; Ma. 9.27: confido enim eum modeste et humane acturum et sequentem propositum meum communem vobis fore; Act. 27.3: sequenti autem die devenimus Sidonem humane autem tractans Iulius Paulum permisit ad amicos ire et curam sui agere.

Chapter 4: Christianizing Humanitas

Despite the existence of modern compounds as Christian humanism, for a long time humanitas in the meaning discussed in this book was not easily aligned with Christian dogma. At first, Christian thinkers opted for other ideals, and other words for these ideals came to dominate. One major reason for this was that the concept of humanitas placed much too much weight on an inborn ability in man to govern his own life, on man being the measure of his own ethical principles, and this was not easily compatible with a monotheistic world-view. Humanitas in its ethical sense seemed to be in stark contradiction to conceptions of sin, not least original sin. Pagan attacks on the humanity of Christ are also likely to have made Christian authors wary of using the concept. Yet the matter is more complicated still. The ideals embedded in the concept had close resemblances to Christian virtues, and at least one early Christian writer was clearly divided as regards which stance to take towards the Ciceronian ideal. No matter how we interpret the difficulties experienced by the Christian author Lactantius, humanitas was of key importance to him. The concept is repeatedly used and discussed against the background of Cicero’s ideals in the sixth book of his Divinae insitutiones, and those deliberations are central to our issue.

Lactantius Lactantius (ca. 240 – ca. 320 CE) was teacher of rhetoric before he converted to Christianity. In the Renaissance he was referred to as the Christian Cicero, a name he earned for his dedicated use of Cicero’s writings within a Christian frame of thinking. The references in his writings to Cicero are legion, and, apart from being a devotee of Cicero’s style, he depends heavily on Ciceronian thinking. Lactantius’ dependence will, however, now and again prove incompatible with the Christian teaching expounded in his own works, and when the incompatibility is too evident not to be acknowledged, Lactantius often turns reproachful, in several instances addressing Cicero – who had been dead for

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more than three hundred years – directly in the second person. Lactantius seems to have been in almost living dialogue with his literary master, and he probably wished to address readers who had similar inclinations. Just as St Jerome would be confronted in his dreams with the frightful thought that he was more a Ciceronian than a Christian, so does Lactantius appear to be trying to shake off an intrusive voice. Lactantius’ almost obsessive dependence on Cicero, and his frequent frustration with him, make his theological treatise an interesting document in the transition from an outlook that was primarily pagan to a rhetorically educated Christianity.205 His Divinae Institutiones, dedicated at some point to the emperor Constantine, was written sometime between 303 and 311 CE in response to the Porphyry and Hierocles, whose attacks on Christianity under Diocletian Lactantius had witnessed.206 Lactantius’ attempt to redirect Christian responses to pagan criticism from an apologetic to a law-founded political outlook fits well into the need for a new Christian discourse of law and power appropriate to the early fourth century.207 In the Divinae Institutiones, normally known in English as The Divine Institutions, but the title actually means ‘Theological Elementary’, Lactantius establishes the truth of various Christian beliefs through reference to pagan texts, ranging from various philosophical writers to Sibylline oracles. Biblical citations are extremely rare, and, when discussing central ethical or political issues, Lactantius constantly adduces Cicero’s philosophical writings.208 One aim of the Divinae Institutiones was clearly to discuss various main topics in the Christian faith in a way that could convince the philosophically minded. But a much more profound reason for addressing central writings was that here, as in Eusebios’ Praeparatio evangelica, we for the first time encounter a Christian writer seriously deliberating how the empire could be viewed and ruled from a Christian perspective. To envisage such undertaking of imperial responsibility, a dialogue or confrontation with those hitherto responsible was needed. For this to be at all convincing, all central aspects of future Christian authority and justice were at stake. The Divinae Institutiones thus has an all-embracing ambition and could be 205 See Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire. Lactantius & Rome (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2000), whose publication is an immense advance in the scholarship on Lactantius. 206 Lact. Div. Inst. 1.1. On the background to the Divinae institutiones, see Digeser, The Making of a Christian Empire, 7–17. 207 A good discussion of Lactantius’ use of Cicero is found in Marcia L. Colish, The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 2.37–47. Surprisingly no mention of Lactantius is found in Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, Sather Classical Lectures (Berkeley: University of Californai Press, 1991). 208 On this, see also Michel Perrin, Homo christianus. Christianisme et tradition antique dans l’anthropologie de Lactance. Thèse présentée devant l’Université de Paris IV, 2 vols. (Lille: Université de Lille, 1979), 355 & 435.

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– and has been – called a first Latin summa (in the style of the medieval complete theological exposition). As the titles of the first three books show (On the false religion of gods, On the cause of error, On the false wisdom of the philosophers), these dealt to very large extent with refuting pagan beliefs by criticizing their insufficient foundation. In attempting this, Lactations was not always successful in presenting theological issues in a structured manner. In book three, which attempted to reveal how philosophers had failed to face and acknowledge the truth of monotheism, Lactantius ends up using humanitas as part of his argument against the philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 500 BC–428 BCE). Anaxagoras was once asked what the purpose of his birth could have been. His answer was that it was to look upon the heaven and the sun. This clearly did not satisfy Lactantius, and he concedes that Anaxagoras may have given this reply in order to save him from the embarrassment of not saying anything at all. In any case, Lactantius disagrees and professes that the true object of man’s intellectual life is God, who is the creator of all things to be seen. And, in a way that well illustrates the lack of consistency in Lactantius’ thought, he now argues that what characterizes man is humanitas (apparently only based on the etymological link but seemingly continuing his train of thought on man’s ultimate purpose), and, he says, since humanitas equals justice, and since justice is the same as piety, which for its part is nothing but the recognition of God as creator (of mankind), he may end up declaring that man’s primary object is to dedicate himself to the study of God.209 The chain of declarations leading Lactantius to this conclusion hardly deserves the name of argumentation, not least because his handling of central concepts is shaky. Lactantius uses the word humanitas first in the sense of ‘what is characteristic of man’ and then as ‘justice/piety’. This is a good example of the way that humanitas may serve as loose argument departing from a general reference to mankind and leading to man’s specific nature and ultimate goal. But the history of the humane has many such loose arguments. In books 4–7 of the Divinae Institutiones (entitled On true wisdom and religion, On justice, On true worship, On the blessed life), Lactantius attempts to define basic Christian legal and ethical values, still taking pagan notions as his point of departure. At the beginning of book five (on justice) Lactantius imagines that a pagan may find his book uninviting, but “by the right of humanity” he asks this person to consider the matter before passing his final verdict.210 As we shall see, Lactantius is asking his reader to exhibit humanitas in the Ciceronian spirit,

209 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 3.9 (PL 6.373B): Expedita est igitur hominis ratio, si sapiat; cujus propria est humanitas. Nam ipsa humanitas quid est, nisi justitia? quid est justitia, nisi pietas? pietas autem nihil aliud est, quam Dei parentis agnitio. 210 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 5.1 (PL 6.547A).

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though he is also promoting a religion that preaches charity, and he is trying to make the Ciceronian concept conform as far as possible with Christian dogmas. In book six comes Lactantius’ real confrontation with humanitas. This part of the Divinae institutiones repeats some of the arguments of book three, in which the false wisdom of the pagans was exposed, only now in the context of the topic of book 5, divine and human law. Repeating legal notions largely derived from the Stoics, Lactantius states that man has a twofold obligation: to be united with God, and with man. In Lactantius’ words, the unification with God is what we call religion, whereas union with man is a reflection of mercy (misericordia) or, says Lactantius, humanitas.211 By thus comparing (Stoic) humanitas with Christian misericordia, Lactantius ends up expressing the fundamental difference between the two concepts. Misericordia overlaps with the notion of humanitas in the sense that mutual respect and interest shown by man towards his fellow beings is what makes society run. But Stoics, to some extent also the semi-Stoic Cicero, had difficulties with this; to them apatheia – disengagement with problems of a superficial (non-differentiate) nature – was a goal. Misericordia would lead to pathos being accorded far too much importance. To them, Christian mercy was certainly excessive.212 As we have seen, humanitas could also be used in the sense of ‘humanitarian’, which was the very reason that Seneca rejected it. But Lactantius disregards this and restricts his discussion to including only the central Ciceronian usage. With this exclusion of any humanitarian sense, Lactantius turns to the pagan tradition and decries that “philosophers have taken away mercy from man” and have thereby “dissociated themselves from [the community of human society] by the rigor of their inhuman virtue”.213 Thus, in Lactantius’ view, the humanitas of the philosophers has been proven to be inhuman. It reduces man’s opportunity to fulfil his obligations – according to his version of human law – to show mercy. But Lactantius is actually correcting pagan wisdom, and arguing for transforming it into Christian belief by making humanitas act as a preliminary but partially faulty expression of misericordia. Only Christian misericordia can fulfil what the Stoics have forbidden in pagan humanitas. In exposing the central difference between pagan – or Stoic – and Christian values, Lactantius turns to Cicero, who, supported by Stoicism, insisted that one should help “appropriate people in need”.214 These words lead Lac-

211 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 6.10 (PL 6.666B). See also Th. Zielinski, Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte, (Leipzig: Teubner, 1908), 104–106. 212 For the importance of Stoic apatheia for Lactantius’ argument, see Colish, Stoic Tradition , 42–47. 213 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 6.10 (PL 6.668A). 214 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 6.11 (PL 6.672C). See the excellent footnote in the Patrologia, which may be correct in claiming that Lactantius actually misunderstood Cicero’s

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tantius to protest against the notion of ‘appropriate people’ and to hurl a protest at Cicero: “Here, here, Marcus Tullius, did you err from true justice and did away with it in one word, for you have measured the duties of piety and humanity by way of utility”.215 The desperate tone reveals both Lactantius’ deep respect for Cicero, and his disappointment at him. As Lactantius uses it, pagan humanitas does not fully live up to the requirements of Christian misericordia, and for this he blames Cicero. Had Lactantius taken the ideas of Seneca into account, he would have seen that Seneca actually thought of humanitas in the humanitarian sense and rejected it on those grounds. But, like Cicero, Lactantius insists on being inclusive in his notion of humanitas, while respecting Stoic restrictions that recipients and occasions of humanitas be appropriate. In the following chapter he expands the concept by including in the notion of humanitas virtues such as hospitality, ransom of prisoners, and general protection of the weak, but these positive aspects do not alter the image of a virtue that is deficient in not offering mercy and charity (misericordia, beneficentia) to all in need.216 Lactantius’ argumentation thus reveals a thinking that attempts to bridge the gap between old and new, and, in correcting the old, his conclusions reveal that the notions of a new age have become embedded. In the process of making humanitas fit into Christian notions of mercy, Lactantius is forced into a difficult position of both wanting to retain the Ciceronian worldview and opting for a religion in which such positioning will, at least for some time, seem quite misplaced. For a very long time after Lactantius it is difficult to find a text in which the humane plays any substantial role. Despite a heavy debt to Cicero, humanitas or expressions of the humane play no significant role in Augustine’s works, for example.217 Humanitas occurs in various Christian texts, but other concepts are much more in focus. And when humanitas does appear, it is mostly as a sort of equivalent to misericordia. In the transition to a purely Christian rule, we find laws referring to humanitas. In the Codex Theodosianus, issued in 429 CE, a number of decrees passed by various emperors from the year 312 until the then reigning Theodosius II (ruled 408–50 CE) take the law text to be founded on the humanitas of the emperor. As explained by Honig, whose study remains the sole exploration of this subject, the word is often used in the emperors’ self-referidonei, taking it to denote ‘nobles’, whereas Cicero simply referred to the ‘appropriate’ people. 215 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 6.11 (PL 6.673A). Hic, hic, Marce Tulli, aberrasti a vera justitia; eamque uno verbo sustulisti, cum pietatis et humanitatis officia utilitate metitus es. 216 Lactantius, Divinae Institutiones 6.12 (PL 6.676A-684A). 217 See the otherwise splendid Peter Burnell, The Augustinian Person (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), in which ch. 4 is entitled “Humanitas”. But no Augustinian passage supports this nomenclature.

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ences, such as in the compound imperatoria humanitate (‘by (our) imperial humanity’) or in more elaborate compounds such as nostrae pietatis humanitate (‘by the humanity of our piety’).218 These expressions thus validate or at least signal the institutional origin of the foundation of a law. That humanitas so often is used to describe the imperial source may have various explanations. According to Honig’s analysis, the formula expresses the emperor’s “self-obligation”, his duty to stay within certain ethical bounds.219 Besides such imperial self-references, it is clear from the frequent use of humanitas in the laws that the focus is on the compassionate qualities in humanitas and never, for example, the non-divine nature of the emperor.220 Humanitas could then, not least in the case of the emperor, (still) serve to support Christian laws in this period, but this is not repeated in later Christian, or other, legislation. Despite Lactantius’ criticism, humanitas in the merciful sense lived on in Christian discourse, too, and soon increasingly in the particular meaning of ‘humanitarian’ that Lactantius had complained was lacking in humanitas. The tendency, present at least since Petronius, to restrict the meaning of humanitas and to have stand for ‘food and drink offered’ becomes even more evident, both in medieval Latin and in the spoken languages that Latin developed into, the Romance or vernacular languages. The parallel observed here could be supported by the fact that even in Petronius humanitas in this sense seemed to reflect a colloquial usage. What was colloquial Latin – often Late or Vulgar Latin – was what gradually changed into the Romance languages. Though the Latin usage is to be found in rulings from only a few Christian Latin texts, they are influential ones, and it may go even further back. A first and important example comes from the monastic rules of John Cassian (ca. 360–435 CE). Cassian, who may have originated from Scythia (modern-day Rumania), spent his early life involved in various religious activities in the eastern Mediterranean and was obviously primarily acquainted with the Greek-speaking part of the church. From the beginning, however, he may have been Latin-speaking. In 404 he came to Rome and later, in 415, he founded the Abbey of St Victor near Marseille. It is hard to say what his models were, but in two passages of his monastic rules Cassian would employ the word humanitas to signal the care that was to be shown by the senior monk when receiving pilgrims and visitors.221

218 The examples are found in Richard M. Honig, Humanitas und Rhetorik in spätrömischen Kaisergesetzen (Göttingen: Otto Schwartz, 1960), 70–72 and chapter 4. Honig’s earliest example comes from the year 286, in an edict from the emperor Diocletian, see ibid., 26. 219 In German Selbstverplichtung, see Honig, Humanitas und Rhetorik, 13–17. 220 See Honig, Humanitas und Rhetorik, 72–84. 221 See PL 49.160A, De institutis coenobiorum 4.7: [senior] habet curam peregrinorum et advenientium deputatam, eisque omnem diligentiam susceptionis et humanitatis impendit; see

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We have seen such use of humanitas, in a broadly humanitarian sense implying essential assistance, earlier in Petronius (see chapter 2). It is even clearer in the later monastic rules that followed the wording of Cassian. The monastic rules laid down by St. Benedict (ca. 480 – ca. 547 CE), the Regula Benedicti, state in chapter 53 concerning visitors:222 Received visitors should be led to prayer, and afterwards the prior, or someone whom he has asked to do so, should sit with them. The Holy law should be read to the visitor in order to instruct him, and after this every kind of humanity should be shown him. The fast may be broken by the prior on account of the visitor, unless it is a special day of fast, which cannot be infringed upon. The brethren should, however, continue the ordinary course of the fasting. The abbot should pour water over the hands of the visitors; the abbot as well as the whole congregation should wash the feet of all visitors; when this is done, they should repeat these words: We have received, Lord, your mercy in the midst of your temple.

It is clear from this passage that humanitas, as prescribed after the reading of the Holy text, is equated with the misericordia (‘mercy’) that the visitors acknowledge when saying the verse of the last sentence.223 Thus, the alignment of misericordia and humanitas found in Lactantius persists, though humanitas now clearly refers to the provision offered. All other, and originally more central, aspects of the concept are left out. Benedict’s text requires the offering of food, water and a form of cleansing, perhaps more ritual than bodily. Together these constitute humanitas. For Benedict it goes almost without saying that humanitas refers to this offering of basic needs, for it is not used to cover the broad sense of ‘care.’ In chapter 36 on “ill brethren”, Benedict does not speak of humanitas but of cura ‘care/treatment’. Nor in the very long chapter 7 on “humility” is humanitas used at all. In this very important monastic tradition, then, humanitas takes on a meaning that is the basis of the modern concept of the humanitarian. In the early Middle Ages, a rudimentary sense of humanus and humanitas (and its Romance derivations) are found in the meaning of ‘humanitarian minimum’.224 Lactantius’ attempt to make misericordia supplant humanitas may also 5.23: Adventantibus autem fratribus magis humanitatis ac dilectionis offerri debere virtutem. 222 Ben. Reg. 53: Suscepti autem hospites ducantur ad orationem, et postea sedeat cum eis prior aut cui iusserit ipse. Legatur coram hospite Lex divina ut ædificetur, et post hæc omnis ei exhibeatur humanitas. Ieiunium a priore frangatur propter hospitem, nisi forte præcipuus sit dies ieiunii qui non possit violari; fratres autem consuetudines ieiuniorum prosequantur. Aquam in manibus abbas hospitibus det; pedes hospitibus omnibus tam abbas quam cuncta congregatio lavet; quibus lotis, hunc versum dicant: Suscepimus, Deus, misericordiam tuam in medio templi tui. 223 The wording recals that of Hier. Vulg. Psalm. 47.10: aestimavimus, Deus, misericordiam tuam in medio templi tui. 224 See e. g. Charles du Fresne Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, Repr. of the

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perhaps have succeeded – misericordia plays a huge part in Christian thinking – but humanitas in the Petronian or colloquial sense of ‘indispensable aid’ now became commonplace, not least through a text as widely read and applied as Benedict’s. The word ‘humanitarian’ is now on its way to being firmly settled.

Other medieval usages In the contemporary Christian Greek world, developments were also taking place in this period that were relevant for the discussion of humanitas. These would influence Latin only at a surprisingly late stage. In Christian Greek the word anthropotes, as explained in chapter 1, had in Pagan writings been rare. It was now introduced into discussions on the nature of Christ and is first attested in Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150–211 CE).225 Here and in other Christian texts, anthropotes would be used to stress Christ’s ‘human-ness’, as opposed to his divine nature. The main thrust of these discussions was that the ‘human-ness’ of Christ referred to his living in the flesh, his life on earth and to whatever he had experienced or done that resembled the ordinary doings of man. When used in this sense, the Greek anthropotes – and later the Latin humanitas – stress the less exalted nature of Christ and are not really humane in the Ciceronian (or modern) sense. These expressions denote all the general qualities of man and human life, though not perhaps including actions that would be deemed incompatible with the earthly life of Christ. Since Christological controversies are found throughout the Christian era, Greek patristic and later Christian writings make an abundant use of anthropotes. Despite this sudden increase in the use of anthropotes, which, linguistically speaking, is a close parallel to Latin humanitas, it appears to have exerted no influence on the Latin concept before Greek patristic writings were translated into Latin by Rufinus of Aquileia (or Tyrannius Rufinus 340/5–410 1883–1887 ed., 5 vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1954), 4.262, where the following example concerning burial appears: An cum maximo dolore, uti viros humanissimos decet? For the Romance languages, see e. g. Adolf Tobler, Erhard Lommatzsch, and Hans Helmut Christmann, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols. (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1905–2002), 11.36–38 (under “umain” and “umanité”). 225 Clemens Alex. Strom. 3.1.3 (Werke, edited by O. Stählin. (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1936– 85): ἡ δὲ διάνοια ἔγκειται ἐπὶ τὸ ἁμαρτάνειν. ὁ τοιοῦτος διὰ φόβον οὐ ποιεῖ ὃ θέλει, ἵνα μὴ ἡ κόλασις αὐτῷ ἐλλογισθῇ. ἡ δὲ ἀνθρωπότης ἔχει τινὰ ἀναγκαῖα καὶ φυσικά, μόνα. “Conscience weighs upon sin. And a person of such disposition will not do want he wishes out of fear that punishment will measured out for him. Humanity has some things that are obligatory and natural, other things that are only natural.” Corpus Hermeticum, Peri tou koinou 1.7 (Discours XII, edited by A.D. Nock. Paris: Collection Budé, 1945–54; vol 1): νοῦς έν μὲν ἀνθρώποις θεός ἐστι· διὸ καί τινες τῶν ἀνθρώπων θεοί εἰσι, καὶ ἡ αὐτῶν ἀνθρωπότης ἐγγύς ἐστι τῆς θεότητος· “Mind is god in men. Therefore some men are are gods, and their humanity is close to divinity.”

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CE). In his translations anthropotes was rendered humanitas, as is natural enough from a linguistic point of view.226 This meant that new meanings were added on to the word humanitas, but not before roughly four centuries into the Christian era. Due to their particular usage in discussions of the nature of Christ, in the early Christian tradition anthropotes and humanitas soon acquired a clear focus on the ‘human’ in the sense of the ‘less than divine’. But while anthropotes had only this meaning, humanitas covered both this and the common classical spectrum. It could be argued that some contradiction might result from this simultaneous use of the word humanitas in these meanings. But, in a sense the idea of the human as something ‘restricted’ and ‘fallible’ had always been included, even in Latin (see chapter 1), and the co-existence of various meanings was never criticized or even referred to. And this was perhaps even more true in the early period of Latin Christian literature. In the early Middle Ages the meaning of ‘humanitarian aid’ and the ‘humanness’ of Christ dominate in the usage of the Latin noun humanitas. To this may be added a very small number of instances of humanitas used with reference to education, acquaintance with ancient literatures, almost always in the compound studia humanitatis.227 So, despite its numerous appearances, – a word search of ‘humanitas’ in the online Patrologia Latina runs into many thousand instances – little of the humane survived in the word humanitas. Much ancient thinking, including that of Stoic origin, had had substantial influence on medieval notions of natural law.228 Some common ground between law and theology was there to be exploited, but not much came out of it, for concerning man, and when using the words for human (and its derivatives), most monotheistic thinkers and writers were prone think in terms of man’s, and not least Adam’s, (original) sin and fallibility. Such Thus, words, derived from man could not be used to establish guiding principles for his conduct, as it had in the pagan world. For the sake of completeness, we shall explore briefly some medieval usages of the word, followed by some central examples of medieval texts and authors that do revive Ciceronian usages, thereby prefiguring in some ways the resurgence of humanitas in the Renaissance. The most common medieval use of the noun humanitas is found in discussions aimed at creating definitions of man, or of the humanity of Christ. The Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (c. 560–636), confirming an ancient definition, 226 That Rufinus was the first to use humanitas in this sense, is indicated by Honig, Humanitas und Rhetorik, 34. 227 A search in the on-line version of the Patrologia Latina “Patrologia Latina.” gives around 30 instances of stud- + humanitatis (or vice versa). 228 On natural law, see e. g. the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/natural-law-theories/.

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found homo to be etymologically connected to humus ‘earth’ and as composed of two parts, body and soul.229 No further connotations were assigned to mankind, and Isidore uses humanitas in the sense of ‘kindness’ only once and in passing.230 Isidore’s application of the term was often repeated and reused elsewhere, but of perhaps equal importance for the use of humanitas in the Middle Ages was the application of Aristotelian terminology to discussions of ‘human-ness.’ These discussions, which do not include notions of the humane, are nevertheless important for understanding what takes place later in the Renaissance, first of all because scholastic discussions stress again and again the universality implied in the word humanitas. To exemplify this, a passage from the great scholastic Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1275) may be of help. In his De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence), assessing the term humanitas within a completely Aristotelian frame of thinking, he writes:231 It is clear, therefore, that the word ‘man’ and the word ‘ humanity’ signify the essence of man, but diversely, as we have said ; the word ‘man’ signifies it as a whole, inasmuch as it does not exclude designation by matter, but contains it implicitly and indistinctly, as we have said before that the genus contains the difference. And this is why the word ’man’ is predicated of individuals. But the word ‘humanity’ signifies it as a part, because it contains in its signification only what belongs to man as man, and it excludes all designation by matter. Whence it is not predicated of individual men.

As is evident from this passage, the educational or ethical potential of humanitas is nowhere commented upon, even if humanitas is said to signify “only what belongs to man as man”. In fact, the idea of speaking of the humanitas of an individual is here explicitly rejected. If this is not in some way a rejection of the humane, such a rejection will at least easily follow from it. But despite these restrictions, Ciceronian usage did appear in various places from the eleventh century onwards. An early example of a writer actually displaying a persistent use of the Ciceronian humanitas is Meinhard of Bamberg (d. 1088). In his letters, the frequent reuse of Ciceronian expressions including humanitas adds up to a linking of the concept with learning and with the moral ideals expressed by him.232 Studia humanitatis is now even taken to have en-

229 On Isidore, see Hans-Joachim Diesner, Isidor von Sevilla und das westgotische Spanien, Abhandlungen der sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1977), 66–83. 230 See Diesner, Isidor von Sevilla, 79. 231 Thomas Aquinas De ente et essentia 48. The translation is from Aquinas. On Being and Essence, trans. Joseph Bobik (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1965), 107–108. 232 See C. Stephen Jaeger, “Cathedral Schools and Humanistic Learning, 950–1150,” Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 61, no. 4 (1987), 598ff.

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dowed the receivers with lepor humanitatis ‘the charm of humanity’.233 The Ciceronian link between learning and moral astuteness can now be loosely expressed, though not argumentatively, through learned and charming humanitas. Also, the human nature of Christ, His humanitas, could in some cases go beyond implying the simple fact of an earthly living. As His deeds reflected various virtues, the word humanitas could serve to show correlation between these two aspects. Thus, His life as man could be used as argument for compassion, humanitas, for only mankind (humanitas) may be compassionate, so one argument would go. In fact, His life in the flesh (humanitas) proves mankind’s (humanitas) need to demonstrate compassion (humanitas). This complex argument only works, of course, in Latin and, in time, in the Romance languages. It shows a new and particular use of humanitas that differs from the Ciceronian first of all because it envisages no educational aspect leading rather but calls instead for an imitation of Christ. A good example is Hugo of St. Victor (1096– 1141):234 For piety is called humanity, and those who are pious and are prone to showing compassion with others are called humane. For it befits humanity to feel compassion and to be moved by piety by the misery of others. A beast may suffer (pati), but to be compassionate (compati) is a characteristic of mankind. Therefore the proneness to compassion is called a proneness to humanity, as it befits man to be moved by piety… Therefore, there is no contradiction if, according to the feeling of piety which He had assumed in His humanity, Christ as man wanted something which according to the divine will (by which he controlled everything together with the Father) he knew could not take place. For the fact that He would be moved by piety referred to His true humanity; in the same way, the fact that He would not be moved away from His intention would refer to His true divinity. Thus, according to both, He did what He must.

This passage, among the first expressions of a Christian humanitas, did not gain widespread currency but shows how strongly the notion of humanitas as a signifier of compassion could be felt and employed argumentatively. An argument over Christ’s human nature had ended up including humanity as an argument for 233 Meinhard of Bamberg, Briefe Meinhards von Bamberg, ed. C. Erdmann – N. Fickermann, vol. 5, Epp. Kaiserzeit (Brepols, 1950), ep. 11, p. 193. 234 Hugo of St. Victor De quatuor coluntatibus in Christo libellus, PL 176: 842B. Nam ipsa pietas humanitas vocatur, et dicuntur humani qui pii sunt, et facile alienis miseriis compatiuntur. Proprium est enim humanitatis compati et moveri pietate in miseria aliena. Bestia pati potest, compati autem humanitatatis est proprium. Idcirco voluntas pietatis, voluntas humanitatis vocatur, quia hominis est pietate moveri; 845A-B Propterea nihil contrarietatis erat. Si Christus homo secundum affectum pietatis quam in humanitate sua assumpserat, aliquid volebat quod tamen secundum voluntatem divinam in qua cum Patre omnia disponebat futurum non esse praesciebat; quia et hoc ad veram humanitatem pertinebat, ut pietate moveretur, et hoc ad veram divinitatem pertinebat, ut a sua dispositione non moveretur. Itaque secundum utrumque fecit quod debuit.

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Christ’s (and man’s) compassion. In complete contrast to Lactantius’ thinking, humanitas can now have conceptual force in a discussion of Christian dogma. Gone are, however, the Stoic restrictions but gone, too, the educational aspect proposed by Cicero. Still, this passage is among the first few expressions of a Christian humanitas. Such voices did not attain widespread acclaim. More successful than Hugo of St. Victor were treatises insisting on man’s sinfulness like the De miseria humanae conditionis by Lothar, the later pope Innocent III (1160/ 61–1216). Some twelfth-century Latin authors, keen readers of Cicero, would include Ciceronian humanitas in moral discussions, though normally only in passing. An interesting case is a passage from the Polycraticus by John of Salisbury (ca. 1120– 1180). Chapter 13 of this text on scholastic and ancient learning deals with frugality. In a fashion that resembles that of Dante and Montaigne, John will shift with complete ease between adducing arguments and citations from pagan and from Christian authors. When discussing how frugality is to be thought of in the context of hospitality, where complete frugality would be a vice, John is equally prepared to discuss Abraham’s reception of angels and Cicero’s reference to the Roman laws of the Twelve Tables.235 Here, however, having spoken of hospitalitas for quite some time, John shifts into talking of humanitas at the point where he introduces Cicero (auctore Cicerone). It is clearly the very mention of Cicero that sparks off this shift in concepts. In fact, Cicero only seldom used humanitas as a direct parallel to hospitalitas, and John soon mentions the actual source for his use of humanitas: humanitas was also prescribed by Benedict, not only as a religious duty but also as a friendly and well-mannered response to visitors.236 So John clearly recognizes the Ciceronian heritage behind Benedict’s wording, but he is still caught in the medieval perception of what humanitas is. The Middle Ages did not reject the idea of mercy or education, but the discourse of the humane had little place in the discussions.237 Quite a few modern scholars speak of medieval humanism, Christian humanism or humanitas in various medieval contexts. As all these concepts play a role in modern thinking, the anachronism should be allowed, though precision as to the employment of the humane is here more needed than for any other age of European thinking and writing. The humane came under heavy attack from 235 The discussion comes in PL 199.765C – 767C. 236 PL 199.767B. The passage goes: Et sic quidem sedulitas hospitis humane prius, deinde salubriter remunerata est. Postremo etsi urbanitatis in hospites exercendae apud ethicos nulla regula esset, beatus Benedictus in capitulo de hospitibus, frugalem humanitatem non modo religiose, sed etiam comiter et urbane videtur exprimere. 237 This is so even if humanitas entered certain lists of virtues, see H.E. Bödeker, “Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett, 1982), vol. 3, 1068.

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Lactantius, the only Christian writer of a Latin treatise to try to redress the worldview of Cicero, his rhetorical master. From that point on, humanitas as a central ethical concept is seen only in few and rather inconspicuous places, such as in the texts of Hugh of St. Victor. Elsewhere the concept is used either as expression of the specific offer of food and drink, or as an abstract noun often denoting Christ’s human-ness. It is also found in the sense of learning, especially in the compound studia humanitatis. But these various meanings are not combined, and not applied in combination in any argumentative context. So, when reading modern expositions of medieval humanism, we should remember that here humanism means the ‘reading of old texts’, reflecting the general meaning of studia humanitatis.238 Christian humanism or humanitas may rightfully be used to refer to authors such as Hugh of St Victor, but applying the words to, for example, St Augustine or Ivo of Chartres, is prompted by a modern attempt to collect ethical views under one heading, or by the reflection of modern interest in finding humanitas where very little material actually supports this.239

238 See e. g. the short discussion in R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), 29–33, and the excellent comments in Erik Petersen, “‘The Communication of the Dead.’ Notes on Studia humanitatis and the Nature of Humanist Philology,” in The Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays, ed. A.C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts (London: The Warburg Institute, 1988), 60). 239 See e. g. Rolf Sprandel, Ivo von Chartres und seine Stellung in den Kirchengeschichte, Pariser Historische Studien (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1962), p. 24–28, where all examples of humanus simply indicate ‘non-divine’.

Chapter 5: Humanitas as Argument Against War

One of the most influential writers on Renaissance philosophy, the late Paul Oskar Kristeller, insisted in more than one of his writings that to talk of the Italian humanists in terms of the modern concept of humanism presented problems. According to Kristeller, to label the literary activities of these men ‘humanism’ is to use the concept in an anachronistic way, for much of what is included in the modern concept is completely foreign to the Italian humanists. To the learned men of the Renaissance the studia humanitatis meant the study of grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy, not a set of ethical ideals.240 In this way, Kristeller corrected a widespread tendency to impute to man a ‘humane’ attitude whenever any upsurge of literary interest occurs, as a footnote of his makes clear.241 To some extent Kristeller’s point is justified. The Italian humanists hardly ever wrote in terms of the humane. Even if Kristeller exaggerates the precision with which Salutati names the fields of study included in his new programme, the prime concern of the Italian humanists was education, very often referred to in Ciceronian terms as studia humanitatis.242 In the writings of these people, humanitas hardly ever implies a tension between the studies advocated and a notion of an ethical disposition or law in man.

240 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Concepts of Man and other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 126–27; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), 21–23. 241 Kristeller refers to various scholars in Renaissance Thought, 261 n. 1. This position – namely that the studia humanitatis in the Italian renaissance do (also) refer to ethical principles – is e. g. voiced in Eugenio Garin, L’umanesimo italiano (Bari: Laterza, 1994). On p. 27 Garin claims (without reference) that Petrarca’s definition of the studia humanitatis was “ceterorum hominum charitas” (“love of all other human beings”). I have not been able to find this citation, or in fact any use of the compound studia humanitatis, in the works of Petrarca (cf. Benjamin G. Kohl, “The changing concept of the studia humanitatis in the early Renaissance,” Renaissance studies 6 (1992), 187. 242 On this, see Kohl, “The changing concept of the studia humanitatis”.

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One point that Kristeller never comments upon, however, has been the cause of some confusion. Even if the early Italian humanists did not nourish any of the beliefs later associated with humanism, there were some humanists – i. e. people who stood in the tradition of the studia humanitatis – who at some point did. And this is the reason why these two areas of interest are once again associated in modern usage. The humanitas adopted by the humanists in the compound studia humanitatis was at some point (re)combined with the sense of ethical/legal foundation in man; the discourse of the humane did find its way into the humanistic movement through the (re)adoption of humanitas in a sense approaching the full semantic field found in Cicero’s usage. There are some early clues to be found in the discussions of the Italian humanists (and a few medieval authors discussed in the previous chapter), but the evidence that will produced in the present chapter suggests that the actual reintroduction of the discourse of the humane – now more powerfully presented than ever – was brought about through the pen of Erasmus of Rotterdam (c.1466–1536). Pace Kristeller, then, it was in the Renaissance, though only late in the period, that the humane made its (re)appearance as an ethical yardstick. After centuries in which only a more restricted use of humanus and humanitas had been found (see the preceding chapter), humane words regained their importance. This happened step by step in a process that is surprising, not least in that it has apparently gone unnoticed by scholarship. What takes place is, briefly, first that the concept of humanitas is adopted in the Renaissance ideal of studia humanitatis “the studies of humanity”, as an expression of a cultural or educational ideal. Subsequently, and only gradually, this is taken to be the embodiment of a moral or ethical stand. To the humanists of the Italian Renaissance, humanitas meant merely a form of cultural endowment or potential, but from Erasmus onwards it comprised a moral obligation. The theme of the present chapter is to trace the process that led to this re-adoption and to follow the various strands in its development.

The Italian humanists Ever since the publication of Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (German edition in 1860), it has been common to associate the Renaissance with the growth of a new interest in the individual. Petrarch’s absorption in the active and learned life and person of Cicero was to result in novel professions of man’s abilities, and eventually in proud assertions such as that of Pico della Mirandola, who has God tell man that, unlike the other creatures, “thou shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature” and “mayest fashion thyself

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in whatever shape thou shalt prefer”.243 Later, Machiavelli was able to write a political handbook that would take the prince’s perspective, even explaining how he could transform the piety of his subjects into a workable tool of power for himself. The creators of the Italian Renaissance are often acclaimed as the heralds of a modern individuality that is firmly centred on a new human perspective, a view that is corroborated by the development and application of the rules of perspective in the visual arts and by the theory, later supported by empirical observation, that the earth does not lie at the centre of the universe. But such new thinking did not emerge from a void. Various strands of thought contributed to this new development. The ground had been prepared for treatises on the dignity of man by a range of medieval essays, not least the De miseria hominum (“On man’s misery”) by Lothar (1160/ 61–1216), the future Pope Innocens III.244 This text prompted a response by Gianozzo Manetti in around 1452,245 the De dignitate et excellentia hominis (On man’s dignity and excellence), and after Pico’s speech in 1486 (frequently referred to as De hominis dignitate) the theme was firmly established in the European tradition. These discourses on the dignity of man interacted with other fundamental debates on the status of mankind. Opposition to warfare, which was to become central to the humanistic movement in the sixteenth century, had already been voiced in Marsilio of Padua’s Defensor pacis (The Defender of Peace) from 1324. In his strongly anti-papal attack on acquisitive warfare, Marsilio did much to promote the idea that man has a natural reason to want to avoid war, not least because law – the opposite to war – is man’s most precious creation. Much of what was pronounced in these new terms relied heavily on ancient texts and beliefs, not least Stoicism. This unquestionable influence of pagan learning was, in fact, intensified in the wake of the early humanists. This dependence on pagan notions has led some modern scholars to question the sincerity of the Christian faith of some of these people. But all these thinkers and writers, including the humanists, cared sincerely about the orthodoxy of their faith and, when suspicions of a conflict between faith and pagan thinking arose, these persons would offer assurances as to their faith.246 In the case of the Italian 243 See Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (New York: Columbia University Press,1948), 225. The translations are by E.L. Forbes. 244 See Ianotii Manetti. De dignitate et excellentia hominis, ed. Elizabeth R. Leonard (Padova: Editrice Antenore, 1975). 245 Edited in ibid. Both Lothar’s and Manetti’s texts are found in translation in Two Views of Man: Pope Innocent III. On the Misery of Man; Giannozzo Manetti. On the Dignity of Man, trans. Bernard Murchland (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1966), to which I have not had access. 246 A topic already in the correspondence of Salutati, see Erik Petersen, “‘The Communication of the Dead.’ Notes on Studia humanitatis and the Nature of Humanist Philology,” in The

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humanists, faith was hardly under discussion at all; literary style, methods of enquiry, and fields of knowledge much more so. As any modern presentation of the early humanists will emphasise, the primary innovation of these men was their new approach to ancient writers. The humanists resumed the reading of authors who for centuries had received only scant attention or been read solely for stylistic interest. They used their language and expressions as models, just as they became acquainted with whole new continents of literature through their knowledge of Greek and, later, Hebrew.247 By 1369 at the latest this new strand of learned activities acquired the label of studia humanitas.248 The innovation so forcefully presented through the literary interests of Italian humanism is beyond question, as these umanisti – a term that was invented only in the early sixteenth century – were only too keenly aware of.249 It was a matter of pride and selfassurance for them to have revived, explored and mastered the ancient authoritative texts and thereby attained a new kind of learning. This process of cultural appropriation was soon to become the argument used to promote a new general scheme of education, including ancient topics of learning such as grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy.250 On the other hand, we should not exaggerate the abruptness of this innovation. What we see as the humanistic studies programme had already set its course during the Middle Ages. A budding interest in classical authors, in literature and rhetoric that had closer links to the pagan literary authors of antiquity than to the philosophical tradition or to biblical exegesis, was visible in various European centres before the Renaissance. Starting early with the Carolingians, most prominently with Alcuin, and flowering in the twelfth century (the most famous figures being Abelard and John of Salisbury), it reached a peak in Italy with men such as Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. These men not only read, enjoyed and cited pagan authors; they also recommended these texts as useful for study and imitation. Petrarch (1304–1374) was to become the clearest spokesman of this new direction in textual studies. Despairing of the scholastic tradition, he insisted that ancient authors be read not least as a means to acquire a new and

247 248 249

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Uses of Greek and Latin. Historical Essays, ed. A.C. Dionisotti, Anthony Grafton, and Jill Kraye, Warburg Institute Surveys and Texts (London: The Warburg Institute, 1988), 66. See also Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 22. See chapters 2 & 6 in Jill Kraye, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For the attestation of the earliest renaissance use of studia humanitatis in 1369, see Petersen, “The Communication of the Dead,” 61. Augusto Campana, “The Origin of the Word ‘Humanist’,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 9 (1946), 61. The first instance of the word umanista comes in a Bologna document of 1512. The term humanism is an early nineteenth-century German coining (Humanismus), see chapter 1. See Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 22.

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more elevated language; style was a major concern in this redirection of intellectual energy. As ordained priest, Petrarch did not consider that these studies interfered with his view of himself as a Christian. For him, as for many others, the rhetorical training of St. Augustine and other church fathers offered proof that rhetoric could easily be combined with a religious life, though Petrarch “grieved in silent sorrow” for Cicero, “who did not know the true God”.251 In a similar vein, the literary interests of the Italian humanists could be seen as a continuation of medieval literary activities. Large bodies of ancient texts, including an abundance of pagan or non-Christian works, had been read, even if mostly for stylistic reasons, ever since the conversion the Roman Empire to Christianity, and pagan authors such as Virgil, Lucan and Martianus Capella had arguably been the centre of an interest comparable to that now devoted to Cicero and Seneca. And within philosophy, neither the central philosopher of the age, Aristotle, nor his most famous commentator, the Arab Averroes, had been Christians. Petrarch was not the first writer to be open-minded about the orthodoxy of the writers he fancied. Still, a craving for studia humanitatis, for learning that was not primarily scholastic or dogmatic, did not ipso facto adopt an ethical slant. Though Petrarch was a fervent reader of Cicero, to whom he even wrote literary letters, he never thought of connecting his new programme with Ciceronian humanitas.252 What he argued for was imitatio, a revived recapturing of the old masters. In fact, humanitas never appears in his works at all, a curious fact given his high regard for Cicero’s language and idioms. Instead it was his followers who established this nomenclature. Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), the chancellor of Florence who lived a generation later and was a dedicated partisan of Petrarch’s ideas, was the first to insist on calling the new studies studia humanitatis, a term that had long been used for any learned studies. Whether he actually thought of this as a separate object of study rather than as a method is questionable.253 As to the nomenclature, it is not hard to find the origin of the expression. Given Salutati’s numerous references to Cicero, he had clearly discovered that in his way of referring to studia humanitatis he was in complete alignment with Cicero. The outcome of the studia humanitatis was in Salutati’s view not a code of ethics but the rhetorical power to persuade, through knowledge and sweetness of expression. In a letter to Lombardo della Seta, one of many adherents of the new studia humanitatis, Salutati says he is not surprised by the fact that these studies

251 See Cassirer, Kristeller, and Randall, eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, 79. 252 See Kraye, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism, 13 & 22. This was so, even though he had read Cicero’s Pro Archia, a text that included a most direct exhortation to studia humanitatis. 253 See the excellent remarks in Petersen, “The Communication of the Dead,” 66.

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advocated by Petrarch and himself have attracted Lombardo, though different studies may appeal to different people:254 “you may find nobody so sluggish or stout that he is not attracted to the sweetness of these studies [studia humanitatis]; it may be that some kind of higher divinity appears in these, or that they contain a more efficient enticement to our senses, a song of a harmony believed to be heavenly, or somehow have some other power of eloquence – which is the outcome of our studies; in any case everybody admires them greatly”.

The enticements of the studies are here praised as well as the most important outcome, rhetorical prowess; the sweetness of the Ciceronian studia humanitatis (cf. Vitruvius, chap. 3) may even stem from some divine or heavenly speech, as expressed in the letter. But ethical arguments or ethical implications are not adduced in favour of Cicero’s humanitas. During his readings of Cicero, Salutati must have noted this aspect of Cicero’s concept, but he never really employs it so himself. This may simply be due to lack of interest or utility; these facets of humanitas were of no use to Salutati. Only in one passage did Salutati adopt the Ciceronian concept in a fuller extension, in a letter complaining about the greed and desires of his adversary Malpaghini. Here Salutati asserts that it should not be possible for such qualities to exist in a person engaged in studia humanitatis, defined as “eruditionis moralis” (“moral education”). In an agitated moment Salutati can then call upon a moral quality in the studia humanitatis.255 This is only a simple instance in which the application of the studia humanitatis differs from Salutati’s general stance in seeing them exclusively as erudite learning. Generally, the literary pursuits ascribed by Cicero to the poet Archias remained Salutati’s goal, whereas the wider notion of Ciceronian humanitas also found in the Pro Archia is not central for him – the closely knitted combination of the professional activity of the accused poet Archias, the clemency of the judges who stand for justice, and the learned ethos of Cicero, the defendant speaking. It is true that, following the normal practice of Latin, even in medieval times, he does occasionally use humanitas to mean ‘kindness’.256 But these references are not in the context of studia humanitatis.

254 Salutati, ep. IV.1, 1.229–230: ut, cum cetera studia aliqua aliquibus placeant, multis et nonnulla displiceant aut negligantur, neminem tamen tam tardi ingenii aut tam duri propositi invenire queas, qui horum studiorum dulcedine non trahatur, et sive in his quedam divinitas maior appareat, sive efficacior affectuum nostrorum illecebra, sive credite celestis armonie melos, sive quecunque alia vis eloquentie insit, studiorum nostrorum alumne, hec maxime cuncti mirantur. 255 See also Kohl, “The changing concept of the studia humanitatis,” 190. 256 See Petersen, “The Communication of the Dead,” 62–64, where Petersen speaks of the standard topoi of humanitas.

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Salutati’s disregard for the legal implications of Ciceronian humanitas is surprising, given the fact that he was trained as a jurist and an outspoken defender of law studies. In his De nobilitate legum et medicinae of 1399, Salutati argued that law gave its practitioners renown and was generally more useful to mankind than medicine, and he was thus used to thinking of his professional training and activity as a gift to society.257 Yet, humanitas is never in this or any other of his writings, or of any of the Italian humanists, brought in to confirm or support legal thinking. Nor does the study of law, as presented by these humanists, ever have any implications for the studia humanitatis. Many of the Italian humanists were lawyers by training (in the generations after Salutati this is true of, for example, Bruni, Valla, and Machiavelli); yet none of them seems to find the ideals of natural law as expressed in Cicero relevant or interesting for their advocacy of the studia humanitatis. It is noteworthy that when humanitas comes up as a denominator of a very important new field of interest, it is without these legal connotations, despite the fact that the advocates of these studies were in many cases lawyers. Early humanist usage of the term humanitas only includes very little of the tension in the humane. For them, humanitas qualifies a certain study activity. The meaning of the word carried over from Cicero is ‘learned/well-educated’, not ‘humane’. The use of humanitas by the humanists was restricted and, apparently, unaffected by common use. Learned scholastic discussions on humanitas, as exemplified by a passage from Thomas Aquinas’ De ente et essentia in the preceding chapter, were largely ignored in presentations of studia humanitatis, and the humanitas epithet remained an abbreviated reference to a specific literature and to the mental activity that made the production of new types of texts possible. Approaches towards an understanding of the word in the humane sense could be seen in the professions from humanists that humanitas will perfect or beautify men, but these are only faint echoes of the claims made by Varro and Cicero.258

257 Lino Coluccio Salutati, Vom Vorrang der Jurisprudenz oder der Medizin (= De nobilitate legum et medicinae), lateinisch-deutsche Ausgabe, ed. Peter Michael Schenkel (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1990); on the moral pre-eminence of (the study of) law, see in particular ch. 33, p. 228ff., where Salutati – with references to Cicero – argues that law encompasses all parts or moral philosophy, both the divine and the human. He may thus be arguing his case in a manner very typical of Italian humanists, but he is making no pronouncement on the humane in this context. 258 Such views are most famously expressed in Bruni: propterea humanitatis studia nuncupantur, quod hominem perficiant et exornent, “they are called studia humanitatis because they perfect and embellish man,” (Leonardi Bruni Arretini epistolarum libri VIII, ed. Laurentius Mehus, 2 vols. (Firenze1741), 2.49), and subsequently in various humanist texts, e. g. in the inaugural lectures of Bartolommeo della Fonte, see Charles Trinkaus, “A Humanist’s Image of Humanism: The Inaugural Orations of Bartolommeo della Fonte,” in The Scope of Renaissance Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983), 55.

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To the Italian humanists, humanitas describes an object of study, an amalgam of ancient texts that offered language, culture and a better understanding of the world of man. Various expressions that expand on the merits of this activity include intimations of high ideals, often Ciceronian extracts; but, when it came to humanitas, the Italian humanists understood Cicero eclectically. It is hard to believe than none of these intellectuals saw the potential of humanitas that would be realised only slightly later in the writings of Erasmus. But they show very little sign of it.

First beginnings in the Renaissance Though humanitas entered the world of the Italian humanists in the compound studia humanitatis, the full Ciceronian meaning of humanitas is not applied as an argument in their ethical writings. We saw the single instance of a reference to a moral definition in a letter by Salutati; to this may be added a similar formulation in a letter by Poggio.259 In the Cornu Copiae of Niccolò Perotti (1429– 1480) – a commentary from 1478 (first printed in 1489) on the Roman poet Martial that gradually took the semblance of a Latin encyclopaedia – we find for the first time in the Italian tradition a discussion of humanitas that will combine the full lexical meaning of the word into an ethical statement.260 Perotti begins by claiming (as had Isidore of Seville) that the word homo ‘man’ is etymologically connected to the word humus ‘earth’. Then, citing Terence’s homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto (“I am a man, and I take nothing human to be foreign to me”; see chapter 1), Perotti infers that those who seek erudition acquire a learning that is rightfully called humanitas, for such education was only made available to man (and not to the other animals). And, continuing in this Ciceronian vein, Perotti adds that “since man is particularly meek among the animated creatures to whom death befalls, the word humanus may be used in the 259 See note 16. 260 See Nicolai Perotti, Cornv copiae: seu linguae Latinae commentarii, ed. J.L. Charlet and P. Harsting, vol. 5 (Sassoferrato: Instituto Internazionale di Studi Piceni, 1995), 64. The full text is: Veteres non hominem, sed homonem dicebant, a quo homonium hoc est humanum. Quippe ab homo humanus fit, sicut a fera ferinus, a belua beluinus. Humanum proprie dicitur quod hominis est et ad hominem spectat. Terentius Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. Hinc humanitas dicta eruditio atque institutio in bonas artis, quas qui sinceriter cupiunt atque assequuntur, hi sunt maxime humani; quapropter et artes ipsae liberales humanitatis studia appellata sunt. Huius enim scientiae cura et disciplina ex universis animalibus soli homini data est. Sed quia homo inter omnia animalia quae morti obnoxia sunt maxime mitis est, idcirco humanus pro facili et miti et tractabili ponitur, et humanitas interdum facilitatem quandam et tractabilitatem benivolentiamque erga omnes significat, quam Graeci φιλανθρωπίαν vocant, quasi amorem in homines: φίλος enim amor est, ανθρωπος homo. Humanum sacrificium veteres dicebant, quod mortui causa fiebat.

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sense of ‘meek’ and ‘sociable’ and humanitas sometimes as denoting ‘friendliness’ and ‘sociability’.” Having thus presented both the educational and ethical aspects of Ciceronian humanitas, Perotti continues with a reference to Gellius’ equation of the concept with Greek philanthropia, and finally combines all this with the curious observation that in the old days people talked of human sacrifice (humanum sacrificium) because these were made in honour of the dead. Apparently, Perotti is here offering a euphemistic explanation of what human sacrifice is, by claiming it to be an ordinary sacrifice made in honour of a dead human being. He seems to find implicit support for his argument in an etymology that links ‘man’ and ‘earth’ and from the reference to death as the common fate of all animals. Whatever larger perspectives were envisaged by Perotti, we see in his explanation a combination of the ethical and the educational aspects of humanitas. The claim that man is a meek creature is only based on the Latin etymology, as in Bruni, whereas the humane argument that derives from the explanation is only employed in order to give a non-historical explanation for human sacrifice. So, despite their palpable restrictions, we glimpse here the beginning of tension of the concepts of humanitas as stated in the Italian Renaissance.

Erasmus and later humanists But the movement of the humanists, which soon spread to many educational centres in Europe, came to be more intimately associated with ideal notions pertaining to ancient humanitas, and this was caused by renewed discussions of warfare. As noted above, Marsilius of Padua had much earlier voiced such an opposition, but in a world still marked by knightly ideals and calls for holy wars against the Turks this was a belief hard to uphold. Among humanists, the first to denounce war as such was John Colet (1467–1519), soon followed by Erasmus, More and Vives, learned scholars who were all in dialogue during the first decades of the sixteenth century.261 These men were all passionately devoted to the studia humanitatis that had spread from Italy, and it is in their activities that we find the renewal in the use of humanitas that in some ways re-appropriated its old Ciceronian ethical and legal value. The primary reason inducing this group of intellectuals to include in their humanist activities an ethical dimension was their growing determination to 261 For the following exposition I depend heavily on Robert P. Adams, The Better Part of Valor. More, Erasmus, Colet, and Vives, on Humanism, War, and Peace, 1496–1535 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962) and James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus. A Pacifist Intellectual and His Political Milieu (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978).

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oppose war and what they saw as a meaningless glorification of warfare. In 1496 John Colet gave a series of lectures on the Epistles of St. Paul, in which he included attacks on what had become conventional Christian ideas about warfare. In the generation after Christ and in a Roman imperial context, St. Paul had spoken out against opposition to the State. Christianity was to be spread through persuasion rather than violence. This was based on Christ’s saying of “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”.262 Yet, later Christians, notably St. Augustine, had laid down the rules that were to govern Christian warfare in the West, making provisions for rightful procedures of war. These had been developed, not least during centuries of crusades to the Holy Land, and although clergymen were still not allowed to participate in bloodshed and although many voices were heard decrying the evils of war, few would link this criticism to Christian values – and no one with those of the studia humanitatis. Nor did Colet, but he was the first to set the interpretation of the Biblical foundation on a new track. What Colet did was to insist on a humanistic approach to the reading of the Bible, and in this he was followed by the others from the group. When searching for an understanding of Biblical words, he would sweep away all scholastic commentaries on the passage and instead use the “grammatical method” (which we would probably call the philological method), and, when searching for a better understanding of a word or passage, he would go to sources contemporary with the text he was trying to understand. So, when deliberating on what was meant by “Caesar”, he would take down from his shelf a volume of Suetonius, an ancient historian, instead of depending exclusively on the Christian tradition. What came out of this was a clear Christian pacifism that could accept wars, even against Turks, only as a means of defence. The evil that was war could not lead to a good end, such as peace; war could only be seen as the product of greed and stupidity. Pacifist ideas, which had been common in the early Church and in the Middle Ages had still prohibited clergymen from committing bloodshed, were now re-introduced as the virtue of every Christian. Yet, despite being a humanist, Colet never called the foundation of his pacifist beliefs humanitas. In order to find such expressions, we must turn to Erasmus. In the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466/9–1536), opposition to war plays a significant role. Much of Erasmus’ life was spent either in personally avoiding war or in speaking out against it. His strongest argument against war was that it was not proper conduct for a Christian. But he soon needed to expand on this, not least because Christianity of itself did not suffice as argument against war, and in some cases even seemed to offer grounds for warfare. It was under the shadow of the approaching wars of religion that the Christian humanist opposition to war was to include the notion of humanitas. 262 Matthew 22.21.

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In his Anti-Polemus (The War Opponent) of 1515, Erasmus had already treated this theme with literary élan. Throughout this text, Erasmus adduces the argument of nature, or rather ‘Nature’, for Nature personified has herself a short speech in the course of Erasmus’ attack on warring people and parties, presenting arguments that are repeated throughout the text. For man’s nature provides the fundamental reason why war is wrong. Nature gave man a countenance to show his feelings, arms to embrace, and “lips to express a union of heart and soul”, and these traits are proofs against warfare being part of man’s inborn qualities.263 The general tenor of Erasmus’ thoughts on man here owe much to Stoic thinking, regardless of what his direct sources were. The central idea is again that by nature man forms societies and respects laws, the idea now supplemented with physiological arguments. What has happened to man in Erasmus’ times is, however, that some kind of madness has taken over. “Man has arrived at such a degree of insanity, that war seems to be the grand business of human life”, as he says. And shortly after, we see in more detail what types of conflict he is referring to:264 Nation rises against nation; and, which the heathens would have reproached as unnatural, relatives rise against their nearest kindred, brother against brother, son against father! – more atrocious still! – a Christian against a man! and worst of all, a Christian against a Christian!

In this paragraph we are explicitly confronted with Erasmus’ real problem. Though he may want to deny the right to make just war on the Turks,265 his prime concern revolves around wars between Christian nations or between people of the same Christian nation. How can this be? is a recurring rhetorical question in his text. “Even monks fight and, in a business truly diabolical, dare use the name and authority of Jesus Christ,” he says at one point, adding that “Thus two armies shall meet, both bearing before them the standard of the cross”.266 To underscore the foolishness of this, Erasmus produces, scattered throughout the work, a number of comparisons taken from history whether ancient or contemporary, Christian or heathen. In one place he points to the Persian king Xerxes and Alexander the Great, both of whom are taken to be well-known for their lust for war, but who, according to Erasmus, fought “with greater humanity than we”.267 And shortly after, commenting upon the fighting of non-Christians, he proposes to compare Christian conduct with “the humane discipline of the ancient war263 Desiderius Erasmus, Antipolemus: or, the plea of reason, religion, and humanity, against war. A fragment, trans. V. Knox (London: C. Dilly, 1794), 5. 264 Ibid. 28. 265 Ibid. 83. See also the direct attacks on the regulations of Christian warfare laid down by Bernard (of Claivaux) and Thomas (of Aquinas), ibid. 73, and an interesting acceptance of Turks as “half Christians,” ibid. 89. 266 Ibid. 30. 267 Ibid. 58.

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riors in Heathen nations”. In the English translation used here, a sub-title is inserted to this section: “The plea of reason, religion and humanity against war”, but the two cited passages are the only ones explicitly to use the humane argument to display the unnaturalness of human warfare. Throughout Erasmus uses the argument of nature (or Nature in her own voice), while the humane plays virtually no role in his argument. And referring to inborn qualities, Nature, even man’s nature, works as a wider concept and argument than that of humanity. But in the face of civil war – with Christian nations bent upon war, and even with sub-groups within these nations expected to take up arms against each other – Erasmus continued, and elaborated upon, his arguments. The following year (1516) he produced his pedagogical Enchiridion (or Institutio) principis Christiani (Handbook for a Christian prince), in which the final chapter (chapter 11) gives the student advice on how to avoid warfare. The appeal here depended upon those actions that would fittingly characterize the “truly Christian prince”, and warfare – unless in self-defence – was not part of such activities.268 The date was 1516, the year that also saw the publication of Thomas More’s Utopia, and among the many things that attracted and bewildered its readers were the descriptions of what could be called the humane warfare of the Utopians. In More’s description, the martial strategy of the Utopians included some surprising features, such as the accumulation of money to enable sufficient pay for mercenaries, the transfer of shore beacons to inland positions in order to fool enemy ships to be shipwrecked (and thereby overcome without bloodshed), and the assassination of enemy leaders.269 In this fashion, More staged his anti-war polemic in a far-away country that purportedly existed but was obviously fictitious, but this did nothing to lessen its relevance as a denouncement of war in an everworsening political situation. More had earlier in the prefatory letter to his ode (1509) for the coronation of Henry VII praised Henry for his “inherent humanitas”.270 But times were fast deteriorating. Wars with France constantly threatened England, where More lived and where Erasmus was frequent in residence. In 1517 a new type of anti-war polemic was to appear with Erasmus’ Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace), which he wrote in despair of the unsuccessful attempt of bringing together all the great European princes to a peace meeting.271 This work was to be the turning point in the development investigated here.

268 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften. Lateinisch und Deutsch, trans. Gertraud Christian, 8 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1990), 5.339. 269 See Adams, The Better Part of Valor, 152–157. 270 Gerard B. Wegemer, Young Thomas More and the Arts of Libery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 88–90. 271 See Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus, 54–55.

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In 1511 Erasmus had published the Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly), which had been a great success. The book’s mocking, self-ironic speech, presumably held by the personified lady Folly herself, had enchanted Erasmus’ readers. Six years later Erasmus composed another anti-war speech, the Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace) published in 1517, now with a personified Peace blaming man for his martial stupidity. Like Folly, also Peace is a female personification, not least because the Latin noun – pax – is of feminine gender. It is in this speech held by Peace that humanitas appears for the first time as a central argument against war. Peace, who is the sole speaker of the text, complains about the aberrations of mankind, but insists she will not forsake him but pity him, for “it is inhuman to reject a lover”.272 This loose reference to the humane is corroborated a little further on. Peace insists on building her argumentation on nature; man is not made for war. And comparing man to animals and insisting on the intellectual and communicative capacity found in man, Peace reaches a point in her exposition where she finds it necessary to support what the common people mean by humanitas: “This is presumably why people commonly denote whatever pertains to mutual benevolence humane, so that the word humanity now does not point to our nature, but to the behaviour that is worthy of man”.273 Using Peace as his mouthpiece, Erasmus is adopting a “common” use of the word humanitas, i. e. one not normally used in his learned world, and insisting that people are right in this usage. Erasmus is thereby creating, or rather re-creating, the link between the word as used by the well-educated (he is writing as a partisan of the studia humanitatis) and its ancient ethical/legal usage. This gives him his final argument: “Without any other addition, the common denomination of man was enough to ensure that men reach agreement” and, by extension, to avoid war, which man has nevertheless failed to do.274 To Peace, and to Erasmus, the humane is the true and self-sufficient argument against war. The fact that this has not been sufficient to avoid war is included in Peace’s exposition, but Erasmus nevertheless insists that this central argument holds true. He can do so not least because it is not himself, Erasmus a man, who speaks but personified Peace herself as his mouthpiece, and as abstract, almost semi-divine spokeswoman

272 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften, 5.360. 273 Ibid. 5.366: Hinc est, videlicet, quod vulgus, quidquid ad mutuam benevolentiam pertinet, humanum appellat, ut humanitatis vocabulum non jam naturam nobis declaret, sed mores hominis natura dignos. The novelty of these lines is noted by Rudolf Pfeiffer, Humanitas Erasmiana, Studien der Bibliothek Warburg (Leipzig & Berlin: Teubner, 1931), 6 and 17; but Pfeiffer only draws the conclusion that Erasmus differs from the Italian humanists, “from whose tongues the word humanitas flies more easily and flows into the pen,” ibid., 6. 274 Erasmus von Rotterdam, Ausgewählte Schriften 5.370: Ut nihils etiam accesserit, satis erat commune hominis vocabulum, ut inter hominess conveniret.

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Peace resembles Folly. They are both in a double position, arguing for what they cannot prove despite their nature, only that Peace lacks the irony of Folly.. In the following passages of the Querela pacis, Peace complains that true humanitas is hard to come by; everywhere, among kings, learned people, even the church, she sees nothing but officia humanitatis, the “display of humanity”.275 This is followed by long tracts of Christian argument, which do nothing to change her case. Erasmus, as humanist and practitioner of the studia humanitatis, has incorporated the common, originally Ciceronian notion of humanitas as the natural propensity in man to love his fellow being into an argument that will hold for all mankind or humanity: humanitas proves that war is wrong. The humane, a manner of speaking invented in Rome, here became integrated into the modern world. There are differences between Cicero’s and Erasmus’ arguments – not least that Cicero is not the pacifist Erasmus is and only argues for balanced conduct in warfare, not least by the conqueror. But the idea is thus re-established that a natural, and legally binding, propensity or obligation in man is connected to the need for cultural education, and that this connection may be referred to using the word for man. Unlike the other anti-war writings by Erasmus, which had been printed in larger collections of writings under general headings, his Querela Pacis was published as a single text and in a small quarto format. This shows how the publication took advantage of the new forms of communication; the printing press had made texts accessible to many more readers, especially if produced in small and inexpensive volumes. The Querela Pacis was to become a great success, running into twenty-four editions before 1530.276 Lactantius, the first Christian writer to deal extensively with the concept of humanitas, put all his efforts into aligning it with Christian virtue, in the end only reducing its centrality within a Christian context. In the many centuries following upon his Divinae institutiones, few expressions of the humane are heard, except for humanitas in the humanitarian sense. A few medieval writers – notably Meinhard of Bamberg, Hugo of St. Victor and John of Salisbury – took up the concept, but the real breakthrough comes with Erasmus and the printing press. A large new reading public would endorse an image of man’s dignity equated with this ancient, non-confessional, to some degree tautological, concept. It served as a timely anti-war argument and contributed to the introduction of a new type of discourse. The obvious utility of humanitas for his anti-war argument makes it difficult to understand why he did not employ it earlier. Perhaps he needed a more confirmed position before doing so. Perhaps he or the other supporters of 275 Ibid.5.372. 276 Eramus of Rotterdam, Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. A.H.T. Levi, 86 vols. (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 1974–2003), 27.290–1.

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the studia humanitatis felt that the humane could even reduce or endanger their position as learned persons. Erasmus was making a political statement, and he was, at least in his Querela pacis, carefully balancing arguments based on commonplace Christian dogma with the newly founded intellectual standpoint of the practitioners and admirers of studia humanitatis.

Epilogue: Ancient Humanitas after Erasmus

Ancient humanitas had a long afterlife, in antiquity, in the Middle Ages, and in the Renaissance and beyond. In many instances this can be explained as renewed interest taken in the writings of Cicero, sometimes just as re-circulated as byproduct of a deep admiration for a sublime prose writer but some times in an imitation that goes deeper than style. In Cicero, expressiveness blends with a certain belief in the faculties and abilities of man, and in times when people felt compelled to think and to act, and felt that these activities were compatible, Cicero became energizing reading. Cicero was not a great philosopher, but his action-based thinking has had an enormous impact on later ages. In terms of humanitas Cicero’s main contribution to posterity has been an insistence on discussing the concept as a truly universal principle, one that mediates the border between education or cultural education/humanities and law. In trying to solve the fundamental issues of the solitude of the human condition, of our ethical and intellectual self-understanding, we are basically on our own. In this solitude, we need to think in terms of guiding ourselves through education and laws. It is here that a basic discussion or demonstration of humanitas, of man’s true action, became inevitable. Within his world, Cicero saw the requirements of humanitas challenged and needed in the face of political repression (during Sulla’s reign), in Roman control over its provinces (in the case against Verres, concerning slaves, etc.), and in the need to give the next generation a chance (in the De officiis, written to his son). Within changing historical circumstances, the same worries have been voiced ever since in Ciceronian terms. As shown in this book, the first generations after him felt a need to discuss, and even to implement, his thinking, despite the criticism that was voiced, not least from Seneca. An implementation of sorts would be the use of the word humanitas for the offering of actual food and drink. Christianizing humanitas was a difficult process, involving first a move in the direction of humanitarian understanding, to the detriment of other aspects of the humane. Some voices – not least Hugh of St Victor – announced new times, and the use of the humane for argumentative purposes reached a climax with the Renaissance humanists, first and foremost

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Erasmus. It is in his anti-war writings that the humane reappears with the argumentative force that it had in Cicero. If we take a broad view across the progress of the humane after Erasmus and his generation, its impact becomes gradually compartmentalized and to some degree institutionalized. Ideas and notions broadly in line with Erasmus’ thinking now work towards the inclusion of humanistic interests within university programmes; it could be claimed that the humane thereby became institutionalized, and a process of institutionalization of humanitas takes place in other spheres. In fact, it belongs to certain periods of history to be able to uphold the humane as a collected vision; the legal, humanitarian, and literary aspects of humanitas have in most periods been kept clearly segregated in institutional terms, from the Renaissance till now. As discussed in chapter 1, humanistic and humanitarian institutions and organizations make sure not to confound their notion of humanitas with that of the others. Defenders of human rights argue for their legal foundation rather than for their educational or ethical rationales. In this way there has been a reinforcement of the divisions between various strands and aspects of the humane in modern times. The division of the humane into various professional fields does not detract from the main contributors to the discussion of the concept. Rather, it makes it even more necessary to include these in discussions of its history. That history is not the topic of the present book but may be read about elsewhere.277 But even to list them should make some of the major consequences clear. Opposition to slavery (de las Casas, 1484–1566), new foundations of natural law (Grotius, 1583– 1645), the actual formulation of the subject of the humanities (G. Vico, 1668– 1744), new ideas on the usefulness of punishment (C. Beccaria, 1738–94),278 the conception of world literature (J.W. Goethe, 1749–1832) could not have been put into words without the discourse of the humane. In order to properly discuss these developments and innovations, the shifting meanings and implications of words meaning human or humane, mankind, benevolence or charity need to be taken into account. The irregularities and inconsistencies found in this process may call for criticism – as, indeed, they sometimes do, especially from religious exponents. Other presentations of the topic have the tendency to become pan277 A good starting point is Tony Davies, Humanism (London: Routledge, 1997). For the further development of the concept, see also – but in a different light – H.E. Bödeker, ”Menschheit, Humanität, Humanismus,” in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe ed. O. Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett, 1982). 278 Dei delitti e delle pene (1764), An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, chap. 5 (on the consequences of the introduction of printing): our “ancestors were alternately slaves and tyrants, but within two or three centuries have sprung the most tender virtues, humanity, benevolence, and toleration of human errors. In the name of Christ and God former cruelty has disappeared,” (anonymous 1767 English translation).

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egyric and to evade the problems involved. But until a common religious belief is shared by mankind – and for that we may have to wait some time – the concept of humanitas, for all its inherent need for interpretation, has no alternative.

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Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources

All quotations from the ancient works listed below are from the editions found in the Loeb Classical Library, Cambr. Mass: Harvard University Press, 1911- (but may be found in many other editions, incl. on the internet). Aeschines In Timarchum In Timarchum Aeschylus Prom. Prometheus Andocides De myst. De mysteriis De red. suo De reditu suo Aristotle Nic. Eth. Nicomachean Ethics Pol. Politics Caesar Bell. Gall. Bellum Gallicum Catullus Carm. Carmina Cicero, Marcus T. Brutus De Cn. Pomp. imp. De fin. De leg. De nat. deor.

Brutus De Cnaei Pompeii imperio De finibus De legibus De natura deorum

126 De off. De or. De senect. Ep. ad Att. Ep. ad. fam. Ep. ad Q.fr. In Verrem Orator Par. Stoic. Pro Arch. Pro Cael. Pro Flacco Pro Murena Pro Rab. perd Pro rege Deiot. Pro Sestio Pro S. Rosc. Am. Tusc. disp.

Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources

De officiis De oratore De senectute Epistula ad Atticum Epistula ad familiares Epistula ad Quintum fratrem In Verrem Orator Paradoxa Stoicorum Pro Archia poeta Pro Caelio Pro Flacco Pro Murena Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo Pro rege Deiotaro Pro Sestio Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino Tusculanae disputationes

Cornelius Nepos Vit. Att. Vita Attici Demosthenes De corona De corona De falsa leg. De falsa legatione Epist. Epistulae In Arist. In Aristocratem In Neaeram In Neaeram Diodorus Siculus Bib. hist. Bibliotheca historica Diogenes Laertios Vit. phil. Vitae philosophorum Dionysios of Halicarnassos Ant. Rom. Antiquitates Romanae Fronto, Marcus Cornelius Ep. Epistulae

Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources

Gellius, Aulus Noct. Att. Noctes atticae Horatius Od. Odes Sat. Satires Minucius Felix Oct. Octavius Petronius Sat. Satyrica Phaedrus Plato Gorgias Gorgias Plautus Epid. Epidicus Most. Mostellaria Pliny the Elder (C. Plinius Secundus) Nat. hist. Naturalis historia Pliny the Younger (C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus, C.) Ep. Epistulae Plutarch Cic. Cicero Polybius Hist. Historiae Quintilianus, Marcus Fabius Inst. or. Institutio oratoria Rhet. ad Her. Rhetorica ad Herennium Seneca De ben. De const. sap.

De beneficiis De constantia sapientis

127

128 De ira Nat. quaest. De tranq. anim. Ep. ad Lucil.

Abbreviations of ancient, Greek-Roman sources

De ira Naturales quaestiones De tranquilitate animi Epistula ad Lucilium

Tacitus Agric. Agricola Germ. Germania Terentius Adelph. Adelphoe Andria Andria Hec. Hecyra Valerius Maximus Fact. et dict. mem. Facta et dicta memorabilia Vitruvius De arch. De architectura

Index

Aeschylus 30 Andocides 29, 32 Antisthenes 31 Apollodoros of Karystos 33 argument [argumentative] 9–14, 17–25, 27, 30, 37, 39 seq., 42 seq., 45, 48 seq., 52, 58, 62, 66, 70, 76, 80–83, 87 seq., 95–97, 99, 102, 104, 106–113, 115 seq. Aristippos 30 seq. Aristotle 26, 29, 61, 103 Benedict, St.

91 seq., 96

Caesar 61 seq., 71, 73, 108 Cassian 90 seq. Catullus 69 seq., 82 Cicero 10–13, 15, 24, 26–28, 35 seq., 38, 41– 66, 69–72, 74, 76–83, 85 seq., 88 seq., 96 seq., 100, 103–106, 112, 115 seq., 127 – Archias (Pro Archia) 60, 103 seq., 126 – Caelius (Pro Caelio) 59, 126 – De officiis 13, 35 seq., 41–43, 48, 57, 66, 81, 115, 126 – De oratore 61 seq., 65, 126 – Murena (Pro Murena) 60 seq., 126 – Roscius (Pro Roscio) 47 seq., 78 – Verres (In Verrem) 49–53, 55–58, 74, 115, 126 Cicero, Quintus 54–56 Clement of Alexandria 92 codex Theodosianus 89 Colet 107 seq. concept theory 23 Crassus 61–63

Demosthenes 29, 32, 126 Diodorus Siculus 29, 32, 126 Diogenes Laertios 30 seq., 126 diplomacy [ambassador(s)] 45 Donatus 33 education [educational] 9–15, 18, 23–25, 27 seq., 31, 35 seq., 40, 44, 56, 59, 61, 65 seq., 72, 74, 77, 79 seq., 82 seq., 93–96, 99 seq., 102, 104, 106 seq., 112, 115 seq. Erasmus (of Rotterdam) 11–14, 100, 106– 113, 115 seq. Gellius, Aulus 36, 44 seq., 59, 74, 107, 127 Geneva convention 9, 15, 20 seq. Herodotus 28 seq. Hugo of St. Victor 95 seq., 112 humanism 10–12, 14, 20, 22, 24 seq., 30, 46, 85, 96 seq., 99 seq., 102 seq., 105, 107, 116 humanist 10, 13 seq., 20, 77, 97, 99–103, 105–108, 111 seq., 115 humanitarian 9, 13, 20, 25, 74, 82, 88–93, 112, 115 seq. ideology [ideological] 10 seq., 14, 20, 22– 27, 39, 58 inhuman(e) [inhumanity, inhuman(e)-ity] 22, 78, 88, 111 Innocent III 96, 101 Isidore of Seville 93, 106 John of Salisbury

96, 102, 112

130

Index

Lactantius 11, 13, 83, 85–91, 96 seq., 112 law/natural law 10, 12–15, 20, 24–30, 38, 41, 43–45, 47–49, 52 seq., 56–59, 61 seq., 64–66, 73, 83, 86, 88–91, 93, 96, 99, 101, 105, 109, 115 seq. Machiavelli 101, 105 Manetti 101 mankind 9 seq., 17–19, 21 seq., 25, 28, 30, 33, 39, 44, 55–57, 67, 79, 83, 87, 94 seq., 101, 105, 111 seq., 116 seq. Marcellus 50 seq. Marsilio of Padua 101 Meinhard of Bamberg 94 seq., 112 Miskawayh 11, 15, 21, 28 modern languages [Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German(ic), Modern Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish] 12, 14, 17–22, 24–26, 28, 37, 40, 60, 73, 86, 90, 99–103, 105–107, 110 seq., 116 More, Thomas 81, 96, 107, 110 Myron 51, 57 Nepos, Cornelius

59, 126

object 11–13, 15, 20, 23, 28, 30, 44, 65, 75, 87, 103, 106 ‘only human’ 21, 25, 29 Panaitios 26, 35 seq., 41 seq. Perotti 106 seq. Petrarch 100, 102–104 Petronius 75 seq., 90 seq., 127 Phaedrus 74–76, 127 Phalaris 56–58

Philemon 31 Pico della Mirandola 100 Plato 26, 29, 41, 127 Plautus 32–34, 36, 127 Pliny the Elder 73, 127 Plutarch 70, 127 Polybius 29, 35 seq., 127 Rhetorica ad Herennium 127 Rufinus 92 seq.

37–39, 43, 48,

Salutati 99, 101, 103–106 Scipio Africanus 35, 50 seq., 56 Seneca 13, 58, 66, 70, 76–83, 88 seq., 103, 115, 127 slavery [slave(s)] 12 seq., 27, 35, 43 seq., 49, 52, 56–58, 65 seq., 75 seq., 80–82, 115 seq. stoicism [stoic] 12, 22, 26 seq., 33, 35, 39, 41–43, 46, 49, 64–66, 77, 79, 81 seq., 86, 88 seq., 93, 96, 101, 109, 126 Tacitus 13, 73, 76, 128 Terence 32–36, 106 thematization [thematize] 12, 19 seq. Thomas Aquinas 94, 105 United Nations 17 universalism [universal] 9 seq., 14, 17 seq., 27 seq., 38, 43, 55 seq., 115 Valerius (Maximus) 13, 70–72, 128 Varro 36, 45, 59, 61, 105 Vitruvius 13, 31, 72 seq., 104, 128 Vives 107

Further Volumes: Volume 7: Oliver Kozlarek (ed.)

Multiple Experiences of Modernity

Volume 3: Mihai Spariosu / Jörn Rüsen (eds.)

Exploring Humanity

Toward a Humanist Critique of Modernity

Intercultural Perspectives on Humanism

2014. 228 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-8471-0229-8

2012. 295 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-8471-0016-4

Volume 6: Jörn Rüsen (ed.)

Volume 2: Stefan Reichmuth / Jörn Rüsen / Aladdin Sarhan (eds.)

Approaching Humankind Towards an Intercultural Humanism 2013. 300 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-8471-0058-4

Volume 5: Marius Turda (ed.)

Crafting Humans From Genesis to Eugenics and Beyond 2013. 197 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-8471-0059-1

Volume 4: Christoph Antweiler

Humanism and Muslim Culture Historical Heritage and Contemporary Challenges 2012. 188 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-89971-937-6

Volume 1: Longxi Zhang (ed.)

The Concept of Humanity in an Age of Globalization 2012. 233 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-89971-918-5

Inclusive Humanism Anthropological Basics for a Realistic Cosmopolitanism 2012. 262 pages, hardcover ISBN 978-3-8471-0022-5

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