The Republic and The Laws (Oxford World's Classics) (7 page)

Since I have had the good fortune
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to achieve something of note in government, and also possess a certain ability in expounding political principles not only as a result of experience but also through my enthusiasm for learning and teaching (I am not unqualified
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for this task. This is not true of most) authorities; for some of my predecessors have been highly accomplished in theoretical discussion, without any discernible achievement in practice; others, with a creditable practical record, have lacked analytical skill. Not that this account which I am about to give is novel or original. I intend rather to recall a discussion that took place within a group of people who at a particular time were the wisest and most distinguished of our countrymen. This discussion was once reported by Publius Rutilius Rufus to you and me
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in our youth, when we were spending several days with him in Smyrna. In it pretty well nothing, I think, was omitted that was of central importance to the analysis of this whole matter.
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It was in the consulship of Tuditanus and Aquilius.
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Publius Africanus, the son of Paulus, had decided to spend the Latin holidays
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on his estate, and his closest friends had promised to visit him several times over that period. Early on the first day his nephew, Quintus Tubero, arrived before the others. Scipio was glad to see him and greeted him warmly. ‘Tubero!’ he said, ‘why are you here so early? Surely the holiday gave you a welcome chance to extend your reading.’

TUBERO
: My books are available to me at any time, for they’re never busy. But it’s a huge stroke of luck to find you relaxing, especially when the country is in such a state of turmoil.

SCIPIO
: Ah yes. You’ve found me relaxing all right, but more in body, I can tell you, than in mind.

TUBERO
: Well, you need some mental relaxation too. Several of us are looking forward to making full use of this holiday with you as planned—provided, of course, it’s convenient.

SCIPIO
: Happy to agree, I’m sure. It will give us a chance at last to remind ourselves of intellectual activities.

TUBERO
: Well then, as you in a sense invite me and encourage my approach, may we consider this question first, Africanus, before the others arrive? What’s all this about a second sun
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that was reported in the Senate? Quite a number of serious people claim they have seen two suns; so we shouldn’t refuse to believe them, but rather look for an explanation.

SCIPIO
: I do wish we had our friend Panaetius with us. He always goes into these celestial matters very carefully, like everything else. Yet I’ll tell you frankly what I think, Tubero. I don’t exactly agree with our friend in all that kind of thing. He pronounces with such confidence on phenomena whose nature we can barely guess that you’d fancy he saw them with his own eyes or held them firmly in his grasp. I always think Socrates was wiser. He refused to concern himself with matters of that kind, holding that problems about the physical universe were either too enormous for reason to comprehend or else quite irrelevant to human life.

TUBERO:
I don’t know why tradition has it, Africanus, that Socrates ruled out all speculation of that kind and confined himself to the study of everyday moral behaviour. We can cite no higher authority about him than Plato, can we? Yet in Plato’s books Socrates speaks in many passages in a way which indicates that, even when he is discussing behaviour, moral values, and political topics, he is still keen to include arithmetic, geometry, and musical theory, just as Pythagoras did.

SCIPIO
: That’s right, Tubero. But I expect you have heard that on Socrates’ death Plato travelled first to Egypt on a study tour, and then to Italy and Sicily to gain a thorough mastery of Pythagoras’ discoveries. He spent a lot of time in Tarentum with Archytas, and in Locri with Timaeus, and he obtained the use of Philolaus’ notes. As Pythagoras’ reputation was high at that time in those centres, Plato
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devoted himself to his adherents and
interests. That’s why, as he was fond of Socrates above all others and wished to attribute everything to him, he interwove Socrates’ charm and verbal acuteness with the abstruseness of Pythagoras and his weighty contributions to so many areas of knowledge.

When Scipio had finished, he saw Lucius Furius Philus appear suddenly in the doorway. After giving him a friendly welcome, he took him by the arm and showed him to a place on his own couch. He also welcomed Publius Rutilius, our source for this conversation, who had come in at the same time, and bade him sit beside Tubero.

PHILUS
: So, what’s going on? I hope we haven’t caused an interruption by arriving in the middle of your conversation.

SCIPIO
: Certainly not. The question that Tubero was raising a moment ago is just the sort of thing that you are usually eager to consider. Our friend Rutilius, too, would sometimes discuss such subjects with me even beneath the walls of Numantia.
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PHILUS
: And what, may I ask, was the point at issue?

SCIPIO
: Those two suns. I’d like to hear what you think about them, Philus.

Scipio had just said this when a servant told him that Laelius
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had already left home and was on his way. He at once dressed, put on his shoes, and left the bedroom. After walking up and down for a few minutes in the portico, he greeted Laelius on his arrival, along with his companions, namely Spurius Mummius (a close friend), and Laelius’ sons-in-law, Gaius Fannius and Quintus Scaevola, well-educated young men who were now old enough to have been quaestors.
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After receiving them all, he turned round in the portico, putting Laelius in the middle. For there was a kind of rule between the two friends that on campaigns Laelius should venerate Africanus as a god because of his outstanding military reputation, while in civilian life Scipio should respect Laelius like a father in that he was the older of the two. Then, after exchanging just a few words while they took a turn or two, and Scipio had expressed his great joy at their coming, it was decided that they should sit in the sunniest part of the lawn, because it was wintertime. They were about to do so when Manius Manilius came in, a great authority on law, who was regarded by all as a delightful friend. After being welcomed by Scipio and the rest, he sat down beside Laelius.

PHILUS
: Just because these gentlemen have come, I don’t think we need look for another topic of conversation; why don’t we consider it more precisely and say something good enough for their ears?

LAELIUS
: And what, pray, were you talking about? What subject have we interrupted?

PHILUS
: Scipio asked me what I thought about the appearance of the two suns being accepted as a fact.

LAELIUS
: Really, Philus? And have we, then, concluded our research on everything relevant to our homes and country, since we are now wondering about goings on in the sky?

PHILUS
: Don’t you think it relevant to our homes to know what is going on and taking place in the house—not the one surrounded by our walls but this whole universe
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which the gods have given us to share with them as a dwelling-place and fatherland? After all, we must remain ignorant of many important things if we are ignorant of these. I myself, yes, and even you, Laelius, and indeed all who aspire to wisdom, take pleasure in learning about and pondering upon the physical world.

LAELIUS
: I have no objection, particularly as it’s holiday time. But can we hear something about it, or have we come too late?

PHILUS
: The discussion hasn’t started yet. So, as we have a clean sheet, I would gladly hand over to you, Laelius; do tell us your views on the subject.

LAELIUS
: No no, let’s hear from you, unless perhaps Manilius thinks some decree
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should be framed between the two suns whereby they shall possess the sky on the same terms as each possessed it heretofore.

MANILIUS
: Laelius, you will persist in making fun of the profession in which you yourself excel, and without which no one can know what is his own and what is another’s. But we’ll come to that in due course; now let’s hear what Philus has to say. I see he’s already being consulted about weightier matters than Publius Mucius or I deal with.

PHILUS
: I have nothing new to tell you; nothing that I have worked out or discovered by myself. I remember that Gaius Sulpicius Gaius
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(a very learned man, as you know) happened to be staying with Marcus Marcellus, his one-time colleague in the consulship, when this same visual phenomenon was reported.
He asked for the globe to be brought out—the one which Marcus Marcellus’ grandfather had removed from Syracuse on the capture of that wealthy and much-adorned city, though he had shipped nothing else home from such a vast collection of booty. I had often heard tell of this globe
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thanks to the fame of Archimedes; yet I was not so impressed with it when I saw it. For the other one, also made by Archimedes, which the same Marcellus had put in the temple of Valour,
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was more beautiful and more widely known to the public. But when Gaius began to give a very expert account of this device, I came to the conclusion that the famous Sicilian possessed more genius than any human being seemed capable of containing.

According to Galus, that other globe,
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which was solid throughout, was an ancient invention; it had first been turned on the lathe by Thales of Miletus; then it was marked by Eudoxus of Cnidus, reputedly a pupil of Plato’s, with the constellations and stars which are fixed in the sky. Many years later, Aratus, taking over the whole structure and design from Eudoxus, celebrated it in verse—not with any knowledge of astronomy but with a certain amount of poetic talent. This newer type of globe, however, displaying the movements of the sun and moon and of the five stars which are called wanderers or ‘planets’, could not be fitted on to the surface of the earlier, solid, globe. Archimedes’ invention was amazing in that he had worked out how a single rotation could reproduce the diverse paths of the various bodies with their different speeds. When Galus operated this sphere the result was that the moon was as many revolutions behind the sun on that brass contraption as it was days behind it in the sky. Hence the very same eclipse of the sun took place in the sky and on the globe; and the moon then came round to the cone-shaped shadow
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of the earth cast by the sun from the opposite side …

[Five leaves have been lost. Scipio is now speaking of the Gaius mentioned above.]

… for I myself was fond of the man, and I knew that my father Paulus had particularly liked and approved of him. l remember when my father was consul in Macedonia and we were in camp (I was quite young at the time), our army was troubled with superstitious fear because on a clear night the bright full moon suddenly failed. Gaius was then our staff officer, about a year before
he was elected consul. On the next day, without any hesitation, he made a public statement in the camp to the effect that this was not an omen; it had happened then, and would continue to happen at fixed times in the future, when the sun was in a position from which its light could not reach the moon.

TUBERO
: Really? Did he manage to put this across to fellows who were virtually peasants? And did he risk saying such things in front of ignoramuses?

SCIPIO
: He did indeed, and with great…
[Some lines have been lost, describing the nature of Gaius’ speech.]
There was no arrogant display, nothing in his manner that was out of keeping with the character of a deeply serious man. He relieved those desperately worried soldiers from groundless superstition and fear. That was a highly important feat.

Something of that kind also happened in the great war which was fought with such ferocity between Athens and Sparta.
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When an eclipse of the sun brought sudden darkness, and the Athenians’ minds were in the grip of panic, the great Pericles is said to have told his fellow-citizens a fact which he had heard from his former tutor Anaxagoras, namely that this thing invariably happened at fixed intervals when the entire moon passed in front of the sun’s orb; and so, while it did not occur at every new moon, it could not occur except in that situation. By pointing out this fact and backing it up with an explanation he released the people from their fear. At that time it was a new and unfamiliar idea that the sun was regularly eclipsed when the moon came between it and the earth—a fact which was reputedly discovered by Thales of Miletus. On a later occasion the point was also noted by our own Ennius. He writes that about three hundred and fifty years after the foundation of Rome

On June the fifth the moon and night
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blocked out The sun.