Roman Ideas in Musonius’ Concept of Freedom

Musonius’ surviving corpus often addresses the theme of freedom. Although this reflects the high value placed on autarky in Stoic philosophy, the argumentation is not reduced to conventional philosophical positions: Occasionally, common topoi are transformed, and the ideas expressed do not always quite fit the context. Instead, connections to traditional Roman notions can be discerned.

Musonius scholars agreee that the philosophical thought of this author features elements from Roman culture, even though he chose to write in Greek. This is not unexpected in the case of an author from an ancient Etruscan lineage of knights who explicitly assigns primacy to practice over theory, thus seeking to anchor philosophy in everyday life (cfr. Dillon and Lutz / Reydam-Schils). However, a more precise definition of how these Roman traits are transformed and integrated is a desideratum (best advanced so far by Laurand). The topic of freedom is particularly revealing in this context. Rome had been developing its own discourse on freedom since the late Republic, encompassing both the political and the individual-ethical side. In a posthumously published lecture, Arnaldo Momigliano rightly called for the reconciliation of these two discourses, which are commonly treated as fundamentally different.

The starting point of the paper is Diatribe 11, which develops the ideal of the philosopher who earns his living by working the land with his own hands and not only philosophises himself in the meantime, but establishes his philosophy school in the countryside. This ideal reflects the high value assigned to agriculture in Rome (cfr. Carlsen), boldly merging Stoic individual ethics and the concept of Roman villeggiatura: for the villa is simultaneously a privileged free space for intellectual activity and an agricultural enterprise. However, certain developments occured, as Musonius interprets the conventional vir bonus ideal of one’s own agricultural work (exemplified by Sen. Ep. 86.5 on Scipio at his villa) as a concept of freedom in a completely un-Greek way. Other cases will also be examined, such as Diatribe 9 on the subject of exile, where Musonius surprisingly links considerations on freedom of speech with a reflection on social relations; through this concept of reciprocity, he deviates from established individual-ethical ideas of freedom. However, as Laurand has shown, this is an overarching trait in Musonius’ thinking, in which he converges with a characteristic of the Roman discourse on freedom (cfr. Vogt-Spira). By analysing such concepts, the paper seeks to shed light on Musonius’ original synthesis of ideas about freedom in early imperial Rome.