Judgment and Obligation in Roman Intellectual History

In his obituary of the Neronian historian Servilius Nonianus , Tacitus praises the man for his achievements in oratory and historiography, but also for his elegantia vitae -- his “well-curated life,” as we might say.

Seneca is perhaps best known for his alleged hypocrisy: the wealthy equestrian who espoused the merits of asceticism. His philosophical output is often considered a refuge from, or a rejection of, his monetary wealth. And yet the language of commerce and debt pervades his letters.

Cicero’s De officiis is a foundational text for two important but seemingly opposed traditions: republicanism and cosmopolitanism (see respectively Viroli (1995) and Nussbaum (1997)). The former tradition identifies the res publica as the object of one’s greatest allegiance and thus sees patriotism as an important virtue for citizens; the latter holds that one’s greatest allegiance should be to the world community of justice and reason, and views patriotism as a potentially dangerous impediment to this wider community of human beings.

Varro’s de Rebus Rusticis is a tantalizing, troubling, dialogue by any account. Published between 37 and 27 BCE, dRR is both the only complete work by Rome’s “most learned individual” (Quint. I.O. X.1.95), and one that has resisted cohesive interpretation. The traditional approach to this text has been to take it at face value, as a straightforward, and dizzyingly encyclopedic, farming manual.

Varro’s De Lingua Latina is now recognized as a milestone in the history of linguistics, and scholars have done much to show just how sophisticated Varro’s deployment of morphology and historical phonology can be (on the former, see Taylor 1974; for the latter, Pfaffel 1981). This paper shows that Varronian semantics can be launched into the same orbit of study.