STOIC AND CYNIC UNDER VESPASIAN*
B.F. Harris
Even the casual reader o f the ancient sources for the period A.D. 69-96
becomes aware o f a prominent theme — what we may call the ‘ideological
conflict’ between the Flavian emperors and certain teachers o f philosophy and
others, mainly senators, who were devotees. Whereas in the Julio-Claudian
period one reads o f intermittent expulsions from Rome and Italy o f mathe­
matici, Chaldaei and magi, our sources refer on several occasions to the
expulsion o f ph ilosoph i This term presumably means ‘professional’ teachers o f
philosophy. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish sharply between the teachers
and their adherents in the Flavian period, and one o f the historian’s tasks is to
explore the private and public relationships between them. The purpose o f this
paper is to review the evidence for Stoic, and to a lesser extent, Cynic, activity in
the early years o f Vespasian.
We may refer initially to the general attitudes o f Romans to philosophy in the
first century, which come through at various points in our sources. There was a
very practical emphasis about philosophizing, both amongst the practitioners
and their critics. What we call metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy o f
science were all in the background; it was moral philosophy and its application
in personal and political life that occupied by far the m ost attention. Teachers o f
philosophy were respected if their life-styles were in accordance with their
creeds; we think o f Pliny’s descriptions o f Euphrates, who apparently was a
profound and articulate thinker but whose highest quality is that ‘he leads a
wholly blameless life while remaining entirely human; he attacks vices not
individuals, and aims at reforming wrongdoers instead o f punishing them’: and
similarly o f Artemidorus.1 These men were both pupils o f Musonius Rufus, and
were presumably provincial Greeks who did not hold the Roman citizenship.
Philosophizing amongst the Roman senatorial classes was viewed with
considerable scepticism. The young Agricola w ho ‘would have imbibed a keener
love o f philosophy than becomes a Roman and a senator’ was restrained by his
mother’s prudentia. Tacitus by way o f explanation says that his father-in-law as
a youth looked for gloria in this direction, but that reason and age restored the
balance and Agricola at least emerged from his philosophizing with the quality
o f moderation (ex sapientia m odu m ).2 The remarks are significant in the light o f
what he wrote later in the Annals and Histories on ideological opponents o f the
*This article, slightly revised, com prises part o f a paper read at the Classics S ection o f the
AULLA Congress in W ellington, January, 1977.
1. Epp. i.1 0 , iii. 11.
2. Tac. Agr. 4
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B.F. HARRIS
Caesars. Seneca, in spite o f his fame and popularity as Nero’s mentor ,3 had to
defend the reputation o f philosophizers in general and o f Stoics in particular: ‘I
say they are wrong who believe that the faithful adherents o f philosophy are
rebellious and fractious people, despisers o f magistrates or kings or other public
administrators.’4 Quintilian, the leading rhetorician of the age, reflects the
common view o f its esoteric side when he deplores the fact that ‘philosophy no
longer moves in its true sphere o f action and in the broad daylight o f the forum,
but has retired first to porches and gymnasia and finally to the gatherings o f the
schools’: for him, the true sapiens o f the Roman type reveals his statesmanship
not in esoteric debates but in the practice and experience o f affairs (by which he
means chiefly public office ).5 Roman nobles often showed a patronising attitude
towards the practitioners o f lower rank, and even Nero used them in after-dinner
entertainment, since, says Tacitus, he enjoyed the wrangles o f philosophers; ‘nec
deerant qui ore vultuque tristi inter oblectamenta regia spectari cuperent ’.6
But the best teachers and the more worthy Senatorial adherents were a much
more significant phenomenon than most Romans allowed. On the positive side,
they provided some o f the most effective and courageous criticism o f autocratic
power and its abuse by the early emperors; on the negative side, they were
accused o f very serious subversion, to the point o f glorifying tyrannicide and
implicating themselves in plots.
In spite o f the loss o f the later books o f the Histories, Tacitus remains the
most important literary source for this topic. Libertas is o f course a central
theme in his account o f the principate, and this seems to resolve itself into two
main issues. In the political sphere, it is libertas Senatus, that is, the ability of
the Senate to take a real share in the government o f the empire, to conduct
debates on matters o f state, to reach decisions and to see them implemented;
while with regard to personal conduct, libertas is linked above all to freedom o f
speech and o f writing. Hence the continued tension between the adulatio and
the παρρησία themes in both Annals and Histories.
The Stoics in the Senate A.D. 69-70
To appreciate the Senate’s mood at the beginning o f Vespasian’s reign we
must take into account not only the immediate past, i.e. from Galba’s accession
and the adoption o f Piso Licinianus in January o f 69 to the voting o f imperial
powers to Vespasian in December, but equally the ‘Neronian crisis’ o f 66-8 7 ,
events which were all too fresh still in the memory o f the Senate, depleted
though it now was both by Nero’s repression and the Civil War.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
‘ut fuit illi viro ingenium am oenum et tem poris eius auribus accom m odatum
Ann. xiii.3.
Ep. Mor. 73.1
Inst.Or. xii.2.7-8
Ann. xiv.16.
as Momigliano calls it in his review o f Wirszubski’s book on Libertas, JRS XLI, 1951,
146ff.
STOIC A N D CYNIC U N D E R VESPA SIA N
107
The trials and deaths w hich followed the Pisonian conspiracy th ro w in to the
m ost lurid light T acitus’ them e o f autocracy unrestrained by reason and good
sense. The philosophic attachm ents of leading figures have been prom inent
earlier in the N eronian narrative; after the m urder o f A grippina in 59, for
exam ple, w hen the Senate endures the indignity o f listening to N ero’s
hypocritical letter about his escape from his m o th e r’s designs on his life, Tacitus
com m ents th a t Seneca rather than Nero was in bad odour — the Stoic, th a t is,
w ho had stooped to com pose such a nauseating piece.8 There im m ediately
follows, in the account o f the adulatory m otions o f the Senate, the detail th at
Thrasea Paetus (equally well know n as a Stoic) could stand no m ore and
m arched o u t o f the House. This juxtaposition is surely n o t accidental on Tacitus’
part, and exhibits starkly the libertas-adulatio contrast.9 A nother ‘signpost’ is
recorded in A.D.62 w ith the trial and death o f Rubellius Plautus, then proconsul
o f A sia.10 It was p art o f the indictm ent o f him pressed upon Nero by Tigellinus
th at ‘instead o f enjoying his w ealth and leisure Plautus was parading his
im itations o f the ancient Rom ans and had taken upon him self the arrogance o f
the Stoics, a sect which makes m en tu rbulent and m eddlers in public affairs’11
(the im plication is that they were involved in treasonous plots.)
Still m ore em phasis is given by Tacitus to the trial and conviction o f Thrasea
Paetus and Barea Soranus in 66. There is no need to rehearse the prior actions o f
the form er, w ho led the Stoic faction: evidently they were all faithfully
traversed by the delator Capito Cossutianus, in whose indictm ent the Stoic
faction is satirised: ‘he has his followers, or rather his retinue; they do n o t yet
pursue the obstinacy o f his ideas, b u t do his dress and expression — they are
unbending and gloom y, so as to reproach your lightheartedness’.12 The m ention
o f M. Cato in the same speech was significant, for Thrasea had w ritten a life o f
Cato — as an ideological gesture, one might say. Cato had long since been used as
a m odel o f philosophic heroism , and C apito’s attem p t to trace a line o f dissent
and disloyalty from the Republic onw ards is also evident. Tacitus in xvi.28 gives
more m aterial from the indictm ent, in the m outh o f Eprius Marcellus the second
inform er. Three m ore Stoic nam es occur, Helvidius Priscus (who w ith M usonius
Rufus forms the chief link betw een N ero’s and V espasian’s principate in regard
to the ‘philosophical opposition’), Paconius A grippinus13 and Curtius M ontanus
(who re-appears in the H istories14). All are said to have insulted N ero’s clementia
8. Ann. xiv. 11.
9. eg. xiv.49 libertas Thraseae servitium aliorum rupit. .
10. xiv. 57-9
11. ibid.51 ad fin. Tacitus later m en tion s a report that tw o teachers o f p h ilosop h y, one o f
them Musonius, counselled Plautus.
12. Ann. xvi.22.
13. his nam e, and an account o f his trial, are found in E pictetus (i.i.2 8 and fr. 56 ed. Par.
Ρ-21).
14. iv.40, 42 .
108
B.F. H ARRIS
in different ways. In the case o f Barea Soranus the prosecutor called as a witness
Publius Egnatius Celer w ho is here, as in the Histories, portray ed as the
traitorous friend. For Celer professed the ‘auctoritas Stoicae sectae’, ‘being
skilled in displaying the semblance o f virtue by his garb and his expression’ as
Tacitus puts it.15
What m ust have been fresh in the Senate’s m em ory in Decem ber 69 is n o t
only the extinction o f these men and m any others (including those for whom we
have no record from Tacitus for A.D. 67-8) b u t the enorm ous m onetary and
other rewards received by the inform ers, some of which are m entioned by
Tacitus (xvi.33) and others by Cassius D io.16 They received sums far beyond
their legal entitlem ent, and the knight Ostorius Sabinus (prosecutor o f Soranus)
w ith the q uaestor’s ornam ents gained im m ediate admission to the Senate. Two
things are apparent. First, the ease w ith which a philosophical attachm ent,
particularly Stoic or Cynic, could be linked w ith the charge o f subversive
activity, was plain for all to see. For it appears th a t once belief translated itself
into action, even the negative action o f Thrasea Paetus’ abstention from that
participation in political affairs w hich becam e his rank, there lay open the path
to indictm ent by an unfriendly em peror or his agents; equally dangerous was any
show o f παρρησία in a senatorial speech or in a piece o f writing. Secondly, there
were the b itter divisions created w ithin the Senate itself, often no doubt only
partly revealed by the way men spoke or voted. Tacitus exaggerates the
servitium them e in depicting the Senate as a whole, but as a senator and
constitutionalist he felt m ost deeply the corruption o f senatorial affairs under
the Julio-Claudians, and in the early chapters o f the Histories heavily
underscores this same them e. In i.2, for exam ple, after describing wars and
natural disasters he continues ‘atrocius in urbe saevitum ’ and includes in that the
political and moral degeneration o f the senatorial class, w ith the Civil War
following hard upon the Neronian repressions.
With regard to the im m ediate past, from G alba’s accession to the death o f
Vitellius, the adoption o f Piso should first be m entioned, n o t so m uch because it
is given prom inence in Histories i, b u t because the principle enunciated,
‘optim um quem que adoptio inveniet’ (i.16), offered an alternative to the
dynastic principle and was apparently taken up in the 70s by some o f the critics
of Vespasian. The only passage where the them e o f political liberty is explicit in
this connexion is the famous sentence which concludes G alba’s adoption speech:
‘im peraturus es hom inibus qui nec totam servitutem pati possunt nec totam
libertatem ’ (ibid). A lthough each o f the new em perors o f 69 made a show o f
collaboration w ith the Senate, the later m onths can only have worsened its
internal dissension. The two leading Stoics o f the period happen to be
m entioned at ii.9 1 . Helvidius Priscus, now praetor-elect, had opposed the wishes
15. xvi.32; c f Juvenal’s condem nation o f him (Sat. iii.l 16ff.).
16. for P. Egnatius Celer, LX II.26.2.
STOIC A ND CYNIC U N D E R VESPASIAN
109
of Vitellius on some m a tte r; Vitellius passes o ff the con ten tio n lightly by
remarking th a t he him self had earlier often presum ed to oppose Thrasea. There
is the im plication at least that philosophical loyalties were liable at any time to
affect the course o f a senatorial debate.
Mucianus and Domitian
In the period D ecem ber 69 to the first m onths o f 70 it is im p o rtan t to
observe M ucianus and D om itian and their relations w ith the Senate. A lthough
Vespasian was to remain far away from Rom e until the autum n, once his
imperial pow ers were v o te d 17 the Senate could adjust itself to the new realities;
‘laetus et spei certus’ is how Tacitus describes it, b u t the con tex t is th at o f relief
from the devastation o f war rather than the return o f some political vitality. But
there is significance for our topic in the business w hich followed. The House was
atten u ated in num bers and still bitterly divided, but it seems th at the Stoic
coterie determ ined to test the situation by taking the offensive against those
inform ers w ho had destroyed their leaders under Nero. In fact Helvidius Priscus,
returned from exile, had already moved to avenge his father-in-law Thrasea
against the form idable Eprius Marcellus the previous spring, u nder G alba; Tacitus
gives a very favourable description o f the man and his creed, w ith the libertas
theme p ro m in en t.18 The upshot, however, was th a t Helvidius dropped the
charge when Galba failed to make clear his view, and the issue re-opened all the
dissensions about the delatores in the S enate’s ranks.
At the end of the year the clash betw een Helvidius and Eprius Marcellus was
renewed over a m otion before the House. This was im m ediately prior to
M ucianus’ entry into R om e19 when A ntonius Primus was the ‘princeps
Vespasianorum ’ in the city, and we may assume th a t D om itian, appointed
praetor w ith the consular im perium 20, if n o t present in the Senate was being
fully inform ed of the course o f its business. It seems that Helvidius had a strong
following at this tim e, w hich encouraged him to move once m ore: he was also
well-disposed tow ards Vespasian.21 The tw o opposing speeches are brilliantly
com posed by Tacitus in chs. 7-8, and the ideological dispute, as we m ay describe
it, was clearly m ore im portant than the substance o f the m otion (about the
choice o f envoys to Vespasian).
A Stoic faction-leader had taken the offensive; at the same tim e a Stoic
teacher, the renow ned Musonius Rufus, moved against P. Celer, the betrayer of
Soranus. The case was heard in the courts and the condem nation o f Celer was
widely approved?2 Two other Stoics are also m entioned in the Senate business of
17. Hist, iv.3 at Rom ae senatus cuncta principibus solita Vespasiano decernit; cf. the ‘lex de
imperio V espasiani’, ILS 2 4 4 .
18. Hist, iv.5-6.
19. ibid. i. 11.
20. iv. 3 fin.
21. iv.4 fin.
110
B .F. HARRIS
the same day. Curtius Montanus23 got a m otion passed that the memory o f Piso
should be honoured as well as o f Galba, a motion which may have some
significance for the succession issue in the 70s, and Junius Mauricus (later
banished by Domitian )24 asked Domitian to allow the Senate access to the
commentarii principales, as a basis for further prosecutions o f informers. Not
surprisingly, Domitian drew back from this and referred the matter to Vespasian.
The delatores theme is continued in the next chapters (iv.41-2) with the framing
o f an oath by the Senate which was intended to unmask further the informers
amongst its members. This appears to have encouraged fresh initiatives by the
Stoics. Montanus attacked Aquilius Regulus in a speech in which he upholds the
libertas Senatus and describes Nero’s rule as a tyranny; Helvidius a third time
attacked Eprius Marcellus.
Were the Stoics, then, to make the running for a revived Senate? Any such
hopes were largely dashed, at least in Tacitus’ view, by the speeches of Mucianus
and Domitian at the next session. Domitian advocated a general amnesty, and
Mucianus went further by supporting the informers (no doubt in principle
chiefly) and dissuading those who now wanted revenge. Tacitus with heavy
emphasis writes ‘patres coeptatam libertatem, postquam obviam itum,
omisere’.25 That Mucianus took this action is likely enough; but was he the one
who subsequently pressed Vespasian to have the philosophers expelled? This is
the tradition preserved in D io ,26 and is consistent with the other evidence.
Mucianus is portrayed in the Histories as basically an opportunist27; at the
beginning o f Vespasian’s rule he will have watched for any incipient dissidents,
as indeed his action in the Senate has already indicated, and Helvidius’
philosophy did look dangerous.
It is also clear that these events o f 69-70 had a profound effect on Domitian.
At eighteen years o f age he seems not to have shrunk at all from the potentia
that came his way following his escape from trouble in the last days o f the war
in Rome; he readily accepted the salutation as Caesar.28 (We need not, o f course,
accept wholly the description by Tacitus o f his unworthy conduct before
Mucianus’ arrival.29) His previous knowledge o f the Stoics will have been gained
mainly through Vespasian’s friendships under Nero, but now, in the Senate, he
must have been acutely aware o f the fierce passions which still smouldered there
after Nero, and which now began to burst into flame once more. Tacitus had
22. iv.40.
23. unsuccessfully indicted under N e r o ;/i/ 2«. xvi. 28-9,33.
24. Plin. Ep. iii. 1 1 ; cf. Tac. Agr. 4 5 .
25. iv.44.
26. L X V .13.2.
27. esp. Hist, i.1 0 - luxuria industria, com itate adrogantia, malis bonisque artibus m ixtus,
cf. Cass. Dio ibid.
28. Hist. iii.74, 86.
29. nondum ad curas intentus, sed stupris et adulteriis filium principis agebat (iv.2 init.).
STOIC A ND CYNIC U N D E R VESPASIAN
111
found am ong his sources an indication th a t D om itian did have some trial o f
strength against Mucianus in January o f 70, w hen he to o k up the praetorship,
but his language is vague — ‘pleraque D om itianus instigantibus amicis aut propria
libidine au d ebat’ (iv.39). B oth Suetonius and Dio also preserve a hostile trad itio n
o f D om itian’s activities at this period.30 It seems very reasonable to conclude
that his antipathy tow ards the Stoic faction dates from the events o f 69-70,
fortified by the case o f Helvidius Priscus as it now developed.
Helvidius Priscus and Musonius Rufus
With Helvidius and Musonius Rufus we have, as indicated previously, the
prim e examples o f faction-leader and teacher. B oth o f them ran foul o f
Vespasian, b u t there are questions w hich our evidence raises. Vespasian was
w ith o u t d o u b t tolerant in m any aspects o f his adm inistration, and in spite o f his
outstanding m ilitary and senatorial career he never attem p ted to gloss over his
equestrian and Italian origin. Suetonius m entions his patience ‘w hen philoso­
phers affected to despise h im ’31 and cites the incident when the banished Cynic
teacher D em etrius happened to m eet Vespasian and his entourage. His abuse m et
only a m ild reply, in D io’s expanded version ‘I d o n ’t slay a barking dog!’32
M usonius was the m ost respected Stoic teacher in R om e, and provides our
link w ith the Dom itianic period via his pupils, am ong w hom were A rtem idorus,
Euphrates, Dio o f Prusa and E pictetus.33 Some errors o f judgm ent in public
affairs (as w hen he tried unsuccessfully to harangue the Vespasianic tro o p s in N.
Italy, a case, as Tacitus says, o f intem pestiva sapientia34) did n o t seriously affect
his rep u tation, and he was the only philosopher exem pted from the expulsion
decree o f 71. Vespasian will have know n him under Nero, and evidently was also
on good term s w ith the em inent Stoic senators o f the 60s, Thrasea, Soranus and
Sextus; so at least Helvidius is made to claim in the Histories, 35 In circum stances
unknow n to us, how ever, Musonius was later banished, for his return from exile
under T itus is recorded. It can only be said th a t, toleran t as Vespasian was, he
could n o t have allowed the independence o f either teacher or devotee to result
in a serious challenge to his im perial pow er. All our evidence goes to show th at
in the vital area o f dignitas and auctoritas the Flavians rapidly built and
consolidated a secure foundation. As Gavin T ow nend’s article36 has em phasised,
there was a continuity o f political and marriage alliances established by the
family b o th before and after V espasian’s accession to the principate.
Any ideological challenge to the Flavians, then, m ust have been sharp and
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
Suet. Dom. 1, Cass.Dio LX V .9-10.
Vesp. 13.
LX V I.13.
Fronto ii p .50 (H aines).
Hist, iii.8 1.
iv.7.
‘S om e Flavian C on n ections’, JRS 51, 1961, 54-62.
112
B .F . HARRIS
strong to produce the action it did, and the case o f Helvidius is o f course clear
evidence o f this. What was the m otivation and form o f this challenge? In D io’s
account it is claim ed th at Helvidius at an early stage openly confro n ted
Vespasian and provoked his h atred n o t on personal grounds so m uch as on
grounds o f principle. Suetonius agrees about the strong provocation during
Helvidius’ praetorship in 70, when his actions seem extraordinarily perverse.37 It
is difficult at first sight to reconcile this w ith Tacitus in Histories iv.4, where
Helvidius shortly before his praetorship spoke in the Senate: ‘prom psit
sententiam u t honorificam in bonum principem . . .et studiis senatus atto l­
leb atu r.’ W hether his public stance changed gradually or dram atically, he was
eventually banished and very reluctantly executed by Vespasian.
It has been claim ed by some scholars (for exam ple, D udley and T oynbee38)
th a t the explanation for b o th Musonius and Helvidius is th a t in varying degrees
they ‘w ent Cynic’; the form er moving from his Stoic principles to some more
inflam m atory attack on the Flavians, or at least being suspect as a dissident,
Helvidius going the full distance in to Cynic rabble-rousing and abuse. This is
unconvincing. It is pure speculation w ith Musonius, and in the case o f Helvidius
rests on the evidence o f Dio which is surely confused. Dio treats Stoic and Cynic
teachings as virtually interchangeable (LX V .13 in it.) and M ucianus’ description
o f the form er is obviously the stock one o f the vagrant, provocative Cynic.
Stoics certainly did n o t parade any illiteracy! Similarly in LXV 12.2 the
description o f Helvidius is rather th a t o f a Cynic revolutionary. Dio does b etter
at 12.3 in his contrast betw een the restraint o f Thrasea and the m ore personal
bitterness o f Helvidius. On the negative side, there is no evidence elsewhere o f
Helvidius stirring up the crowds w ith a revolutionary program m e, and m ore
positively, we do see examples o f Cynics publicly abusing the Flavian family.
D em etrius had been exiled in 71, b u t it appears th a t other Cynics infiltrated
Rom e, o f w hom Dio gives us tw o examples, b o th in connexion w ith Titus and
Berenice and the displeasure m any felt at this ‘affair’. Diogenes before a full
theatre ‘denounced the pair in a long, abusive speech’, for which he was flogged,
and Heras after a similar sham eful perform ance was beheaded.39
Now there is a great difference betw een this type o f protest, in the co n tex t of
a com plete casting aside o f the conventions o f Rom an society, and the challenge
against the abuse o f autocratic pow er made by Stoic senators. A crow ded
Rom an theatre is n o t the place a consular like Thrasea or an ex-praetor like
Helvidius w ould choose to publicise his case; it was in the Senate itself, or in
37. Cass.Dio L X V .12, Suet. Vesp. 15.
38. D .R . D udley, A H istory o f Cynicism p p .136-7 (where this seems im plied); Jocelyn M.C.
T oynbee, ‘D ictators and Philosophers in the First Century A .D .’ GR 13, 1944, 43-58.
39. L X V .15.5: the terms used for Heras are πολλά καί άτοπα κυνηδόν e%€Kpaye. The image
o f public rantings is im plicit also in Mucianus’ w ords ( 1 3 .l a). It is worth notin g that T itus’
second w ife was Marcia F um illa, a relative o f the Stoic Barea Soranus, and he appears to
have divorced her at the tim e o f Soranus’ condem nation under Nero (Suet. Tit.4)
STOIC AND CYNIC UN D E R VESPAS IAN
113
private gatherings or in writings (as becam e com m on under D om itian).
The Dynastic Question
A m ore likely explanation o f Vespasian’s reaction, or at least a facto r, is the
dynastic question, w hich was distinct from th a t o f the principate as such. As for
the Stoics, there is ample evidence for the early Empire th a t th ey harm onised
the reality o f the principate w ith their tradition o f the ‘kingdom o f th e wise
m an’ and consciously displayed an ideal o f im perial rule w hich they hop ed
would influence the Caesars. In the N eronian period M usonius Rufus was
describing a king as ‘Law incarnate, the contriver o f good rule and o f harm ony,
im itator o f G od and like him the father o f his subjects’, and Seneca was referring
to the em peror as ‘the vice-regent o f G od on ea rth ’.40 Dio is th u s im plausible
when he speaks o f Helvidius ‘continually attacking kingship and praising
dem ocracy’; Hostilianus w hom he has just m entioned as being d eported for his
strong denunciations o f m onarchy is a m uch m ore likely exam ple, and is to be
regarded as a Cynic rather than a Stoic.41
It m ay be conceded th a t our only explicit evidence abou t the dynastic issue
for this period is the saying o f Vespasian found in b o th Suetonius and Dio.
S uetonius has the saying ‘either m y sons will succeed me o r no-one w ill’ in the
co n tex t o f V espasian’s confidence in horoscopes, b u t in Dio it is m ore
persuasively linked to his feud w ith Helvidius.42 Vespasian seems to have reacted
strongly to any expression o f opinion th at som eone other th an T itus m ight
follow him , by a revival o f G alba’s ‘ado p tio ’ principle 43 He had obviously
p rom oted his dynastic intentions for b o th his sons as soon as his victory was
gained.
It w ould have been a bold move therefore, b u t it is n o t at all impossible th at
Helvidius or another Stoic m ight have spoken to a m otion before the Senate for
the grant o f further offices to T itus or D om itian, criticising the dynastic
principle and using the very recent precedent o f G alba and Piso. Reckless,
perhaps, b u t consistent w ith libertas and a good conscience, and reference could
have been made to a senatorial decree honouring the m em ory o f Piso.44
Demetrius and the Cynic element
While it is safe in some respects to speak o f ‘Stoic-Cynic’ doctrine in this
period, on the question o f the principate as well as on others,45 our
40. Musonius, fr.viii.8.1; Sen. De Clem. i.2. For other exam ples, D u d ley op.cit. p .129.
41. L X V .1 3 .2 f. For his id en tity, R. M acmullen, Enemies o f the Rom an Order p p .308-9
n .18.
42. Suet. Vesp. 25 , Cass.Dio L X V .12 init.
43. it is interesting that T itu s’ nam e was probably considered in Galba’s selection in 6 9
(Suet. T it.5).
44. Tac. Hist, iv.40.
B.F. HARRIS
114
consideration o f Cassius Dio above has show n the need for caution. For
em perors, no d o u b t, and for m any senators hostile to any philosophic
pretensions, the question o f w hat was com m on to the tw o schools and w hat
distinguished them was o f no m om ent at all. Philosophi were to be tolerated if
they did n o t th reaten political stability and were to be banished as a group if
they did, w hatever their individual colours. It was only the few who gained
exem ption because they had influential links.
In the attacks on Stoics attrib u ted to Mucianus it is natural to refer some o f
the charges at least to Cynic utterances, in particular the words ‘they despise
everyone and call the m an o f good birth a spoilt child, the low-born a sim pleton,
the handsom e m an licentious, the ugly man attractive, the w ealthy man
avaricious, the poor m an slavish’.46 This wholesale social as well as political
denunciation is characteristic o f the Cynic, and we have n o ted above the few
examples th at occur in our sources o f their public raillery.
The Cynic D em etrius, how ever, was o f a som ew hat different order. As early
as Gaius he had a reputation for integrity, and under Nero he had been a friend
o f Seneca, w ho adm ired his uninhibited sayings.47 But m ost notable was his
close association w ith Thrasea Paetus, who chose him to converse w ith on the
im m ortality o f the soul as he faced his death.48 D em etrius seems then to have
been him self exiled, b u t re-appears in Rome before being again banished by
Vespasian. One public act w hich surprised his contem poraries was his defence o f
Egnatius Celer the delator when he was prosecuted by Musonius Rufus for
having unlaw fully brought about the destruction o f the Stoic Barea Soranus.49
We can only guess at his motives, since T acitus’ w ords ‘am bitiosius quam
honestius’ do n o t enlighten. Celer was already denigrated as the professed Stoic
w ho had betrayed his fellow. D em etrius, how ever, will no t have been concerned
about his public reputation, a fact which is em phasised by his ignoring
Vespasian’s retinue in the Suetonius episode.
In spite o f some coincidence in their teachings and conduct it was the Stoics
of these years who were a force to be reckoned w ith in public life rather than
the Cynics. The great unpopularity o f the Cynics appears to have precipitated
expulsions by w hich Stoic philosophers were equally affected, b u t in the Senate
there were political and ideological contentions which were m uch closer to the
seat o f pow er. Here in the early years o f Vespasian the Stoic senators continued,
though briefly and unsuccessfully, the cause that was to attract the m ore severe
repressions o f D om itian tw enty years later.
45.
see, for exam ple, M. R o sto v tz e ffs discussion, Social and Economic H istory o f the
Roman Empire 1.119ff; D udley op.cit. p. 137.
46.
47.
48.
49.
Cass.Dio L X V .13.
Sen. De Ben. v ii.l 1, Ep. Mor. XCI.
J zc .A n n . xvi.34.
Suet. Vesp. 13, Tac. Hist, iv .1 0 ,4 0 .