One of Leo Strauss’ most controversial revelations — revelations insofar as they rely on a rather imaginative reading of the texts they rely upon — is his ‘discovery’ of ‘esoteric writing,’ which has been applied by all and sundry, without discrimination or context, as a suitable methodological framework. It is my contention here that the biggest challenge to Strauss’ concept of esoteric writing can be found in the works of Cicero, particularly in his dialogues De Republica and De Legibus.¹

Strauss lays out his discovery of esoteric writing in his book, Persecution and the Art of Writing ² In his introduction, Strauss points out that there is an irresolvable dispute between philosophy and society, and that philosophers “defended the interests of philosophy and of nothing else,” and to protect philosophy from the ignorant, the written word was shrouded in a blanket of misleading meaning, “the armour in which philosophy had to appear.”³ The fear of persecution was the guiding principle for these philosophers, who wrote and passed on the ‘true’ meaning of their texts through contradictions and seeming errors that are only reconcilable to the astute reader. Strauss neatly sums up his views here: “An exoteric book contains then two teachings: a popular teaching of an edifying character, which is in the foreground; and a philosophical teaching concerning the most important subject, which is indicated only between the lines.”⁴ This learning is unavailable to the student of history or of the history of philosophy, who, by some sleight of hand, a leap of faith, cannot understand the character of esoteric writing, for “the rise of modern historic consciousness came simultaneously with the interruption of the tradition of esotericism.”⁵

It is my contention here that Strauss’ conception of esoteric writing is remarkably poor, both in conception and application, and his ignorance of Cicero as a philosopher and educator is notable and revealing. It is unlikely that Strauss never heard of Cicero, or was not familiar with him: Cicero’s letters have been an object of admiration since Plutarch discovered them in the Trecento, and his legal speeches and orations have enjoyed a canonical status for they reflect the Roman adoption of Greek thought, and more particularly, of philosophy in general: a paradigm shift for a city that had under the guide of Cato the Elder expelled Carneades and the philosophers in 155 BC. If only Strauss bothered with history, instead of dismissing it preemptively as a form of knowledge that ipso facto precluded one from being a good student of philosophy, he would have known that Cicero’s dialogues, written during the sunset of the Republic, where Cicero was actually under careful watch and persecution, did not indulge in ‘esoteric’ writing. (I will concern myself with the supposed ‘examples’  of esoteric writing that Strauss’ disciple, Arthur M. Melzer, makes in Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), toward the end of this post; much of the supposed examples provided in the appendix arise from poor translation and a general unfamiliarity with the manner in which Cicero thought and spoke: amateurish mistakes at best).

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest statesman, orator, and philosopher of the Roman Republic, found himself increasingly alienated from the Roman Republic after Clodius’ measure forced him into exile. In August of 57 BC, the Senate voted to recall Cicero, who wrote to Atticus in the following month to describe his return to Rome. Yet, by November of 54 BC, Cicero’s letters to Atticus reveal a certain cynicism and disillusionment with life in the Republic, and in Ad Atticus IV.18, he writes:

“The republic no longer exists to delight and comfort me. … Many things bring me consolations without forsaking my prestige. I turn back to the life which accords most with nature, that is, to literature and to my studies. The labour of pleading I mitigate by my delight in oratory. … So long as my brother and yourself are with me, these politicians can be consigned to perdition. I can come chat with you comme un philosophe.”⁶

Even though the death knell of the Republic was to come much later, certainly Cicero consciously knew that the end was nigh, and he made efforts to ensure that even though he had made enemies with the populares, he would still be able to teach and live in the way that he did. Ultimately, it was his Phillipics, not all of which he could deliver, that pushed Cicero’s name on the proscription list. Cicero intimately knew what political persecution looked like, having been the victim of it; it reduced his dignity and his standing as a senior statesman to a mere common citizen that held an office — if only in name (see Fam. 4.14.1 to Plancius). Cicero, too intelligent to not know the Republic was a shell of its former self, existing more on the surface than in spirit, refused to mince his words, both in his dialogues and in his speeches. In another letter to Atticus, he writes, “here in Rome the Republic in which we dwell is enfeebled, wretched, and unstable” (Ad Atticus 1.16.8). The Cicero we get from the letters is revealing: he is fallible, makes mistakes, has doubts, and grieves, most prominently for the two loves of his life — Rome and his daughter, Tullia. He lives, jumping from the page, using the same language, the same meter and cadence that marked his wondrous oration, that one can see in the dialogues. Prof. Melzer’s error is in treating Cicero the friend and human differently from Cicero the philosopher; the two seem to be strangers who would barely know each other if they happened to meet, in Prof. Melzer’s world, a tragic error for anyone acquainted with Cicero’s brilliance.

At the very beginning of De Republica, Cicero recognises that there will be those who will take offence at not being mentioned, which is why he refrains from mentioning the names of anyone in his generation, and consequently sets his dialogue in the past (DR 1.1). Cicero obliquely references his refusal to surrender to the throes of Pompey and Caesar — by 54 BC he had recognised that they were but two sides of the same coin, the die had been cast, and he was not to be a part of it — and resigns himself to his ultimate fate whilst trying his best to defend whatever remained of the Roman Republic. Cicero reaches his position in the midst of a criticism of the Epicureans, “men who normally think it more miserable to decay in the normal course of old aage than to have the chance of laying down, as a supreme gift to their country, the life which in any case would have to be given back to nature” (DR 1.5). Cicero goes to the extent of saying that Rome “did not give us life and nurture unconditionally,” for “it reserved the right to appropriate for its own purpose the largest and most numerous portions of our loyalty, ability, and sagacity, leaving to us for our private use only what might be surplus to its needs.” (DR 1.8) It is more than man’s moral duty to serve his country, to conserve that which is admirable and worthy of conservation, and to participate in politics as per his status in society. Those endowed with superior intelligence — and Cicero certainly counted himself, rightly so, as having earned a position in those hallowed ranks — were to serve the country first and foremost, for that is right according to nature. What is one’s right — Rome’s right — is another’s duty, the duty to give the best and brightest to service of the state. The consequences of such actions are immaterial to this requirement: one must, if called to do so, give one’s life to the service of Rome.

Such is the thrust of Cicero’s writing and philosophy, which forms a more or less unified whole. One important part, however, that has been left out is Cicero’s dislike of the masses, of the hoi polloi. It is a sentiment he expresses in private and in public, in letters and in treatises, to juries and to his fellow senators. He writes to Atticus (II.1), describing his senatorial colleague Cato the Younger, as follows:

“As for our Cato, your affection for him is no greater than mine. Yet in spite of his exemplary attitude and total integrity, he sometimes inflicts damage on the state, for he delivers speeches as if he were in Plato’s république and not in Romulus’ cesspit.” (§8)

This letter finds fragmentary mention in De Legibus.⁷ Most of Cicero’s denunciations. This contempt for those who Cicero considers to not have the same intellect and force of personality as he does — this includes Pompey as much as the masses, who are referred to together in Ad Atticus 1.19.4 — is a common thread for Cicero, a prominent member of the optimates. When Clodius, who he testified against for desecrating the rites of the Bona Dea, was acquitted in a case of brazen and open bribery and corruption, Cicero wrote to Atticus: That is, if ‘trial is the right word when thirty of the most fickle and most depraved members of the Roman people pocket their wretched cash and extinguish all low, human, and divine, and Tolna and Plautus and Spongia, and the other riff-raff of that ilk, announce that no. crime was ever committed, when not only humans but also beasts of the field knew that there had been been” (Ad Atticus 1.17.6). Cicero continues: “… I am in even better standing with the dregs and dross of the city…” (Ad Atticus 1.17.11).

The second point which Strauss and Melzer find incomprehensible is that one can be a rigorous syncretist in philosophy. Cicero, writing to Atticus, tells him that “the works I have written in recent days are in the Aristotelean mode, win which the contributions of the others are introduced in such a way as to lend the leading role of the author himself” (Ad Atticus 13.19.4). Melzer accuses Cicero of falsifying his public position, of advocating on the surface a falsehood like no other:

“One sees an element of this dissimulation even in Cicero, the most politically active of ancient philosophers. In his Laws and De finibus, he defends the highly political and moralistic Stoic doctrine; indeed he personally plays the role of the Stoic in these dialogues. … [questioning] the validity of natural law, and which had no illusions about the defects and depredations of Rome as indeed of all political regimes.”⁸

Melzer then ‘reveals’ something that no one with even an elementary education in the history of Rome — or alternatively, $15.99 and six hours’ time for Mary Beards’ brilliant sketch, SPQR, would have dared to make: that Cicero and the other ancient philosophers wore “this mask of citizenship—this exaggerated patriotism and republican virtue.”⁹ For a man given the honorific pater patriae, can any reasonable person make such a conclusion? The insinuation here is that Cicero, in fact, hated the Republic, refused to defend it, and ran thinly veiled attacks against it because he wanted to protect himself as a philosopher. If Melzer intends to make sandcastles on the sky, perhaps the shores of Lake Michigan and not the classrooms of Michigan State University may prove to be better for his imagination, run amok and untethered from any grasp of reality, of history.

Cicero professed membership of the New Academy, yes, of which the marker was a certain scepticism, but no inherent nihilism. This did not preclude that there was a law of nature, of the stoic precept that Cicero most often drew upon in De Legibus and De Republica. Cicero drew from Aristotle, the Stoics, and Plato in equal measure, refusing to bind himself to any single individual or source of knowledge. He was a curious individual with the gift of the Muses, and he made haste in using it. Cicero held that a dignified disposition was essential, and from there presumably gained his admiration of the Stoics. His sense of justice, similarly, and his hatred of vascilating tendencies and poor, ungrounded thought. Melzer’s other examples are all quoted out of context, or poorly translated by someone with no Latin, and then thrust into his book to support today’s episode of what SPQR can mean: it is not the Senile, Poor Quacks of Reykjavik or the Shoddy Parasitic Quartet of Reims, and certainly not the Senate and the People of Rome for Mr. Melzer. Cicero is as blank a book as one can get from the ancient world, and he can only be used to support ‘esotericism’ when he is torn apart, broken into fragments, and viciously compartmentalised in a brutal and despicable manner. Perhaps this is why Strauss does not mention him and Melzer makes every effort to misread Marcus Tullius Cicero. To reduce Cicero to meaninglessness in the way of Melzer is an act that involves a degree of ignorance and hatred for the ancients, not a love for close reading, for history, and for philosophy.