Cicero’s attitude to the Greek culture and education

The article by Harold Guite “Cicero's Attitude to the Greeks” is first published in Russian. H. Guite is a specialist in ancient history, associate professor of the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), professor at the University of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, in the 1970s, President of McMaster University (Canada). His works are well familiar to researchers specializing in the history of education and culture of the ancient world. This article, like all Guite’s works, presents a panoramic vision of the history of ancient culture in which a special place is occupied by Mark Julius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC). An orator, politician, philosopher and public figure of the epoch that preceded to the fall of the Empire, Cicero had a huge impact on the ancient Roman and later on all European pedagogics. Numerous sources, reflecting Cicero’s life and career, suggest that the effects of his coming into the educational arena were no less significant than the consequences of his moving to the political scene. Cicero's works are a kind of exposition of the educational ideal of Greek mentors adopted by the Roman with some improvements. Cicero’s ideas of the Greeks were inseparable from the ideas of their educational ideal and the ways to achieve it. Those quite contradictory views were structured in H. Guite’s article, which gave us the right to change the title of his article at translation. The article “Cicero's Attitude to the Greeks” is preceded by the author’s commentary, “Cf. Sister M. A. Trouard, O.P., Cicero's Attitude towards the Greeks (Chicago, 1942), which offers a different approach to the same problem. There is an excellent essay on ‘The Hellenism of Cicero and his friends’ in J. P. Mahaffy, The Silver Age of the Greek World (Chicago, 1906), ch. vii. I am indebted for several details to my colleague Mr. A. R. Hands.” This commentary illustrates the fact that the theme of Cicero's attitude to the Greeks continues to be relevant, though not a new one. H. Guite’s commentary stresses a polemical character of the article and highlights the key points in this debate: the ambiguity of evaluating Cicero’s attitude to the Greeks is largely due to the ambiguity of the attitude to Cicero himself. As the article is addressed to those who are able to deploy a sufficiently broad time perspective comparing the writings of Cicero with his biography and biographies of his contemporaries, we felt it appropriate to supplement the translation with extended commentary which specifies Cicero’s pedagogical views. There is no detailed pedagogical commentary to Cicero’s works. The commentary to this article is the first attempt to create such a commentary based on existing annotated editions (Mark Tullij Ciceron. Tri traktata ob oratorskom iskusstve / pod red. M.L. Gasparova; per. F.A. Petrovskogo, komment. M.L. Gasparova. M.: Nauka, 1972; Tuskulanskie besedy M. Tullija Cicerona. Vyp.1, kn.1: O prezrenii k smerti. / podstroch. per. s komment. i vybrannymi slovami. - Odessa: Tipografija V. Kirhnera, 1885; Ciceron. O predelah blaga i zla. Paradoksy stoikov / per. s lat. N.A. Fedorova; vstup. st. N. P. Grincera; komment. B. M. Nikol'skogo. M.: RGGU, 2000; Ciceron. Filosofskie traktaty / otv. red., sost. i avt. vstup. st. G.G. Majorov; per. s lat. M. I. Rizhskogo. M.: Nauka, 1985. Ciceron. Jestetika. Traktaty, rechi, pis'ma / sost. i vst. st. G.S. Knabe, per. M.L. Gasparova, V.O. Gorenshtejn i dr.; komment. N.A. Kul'kovoj, E.P. Orehanovoj. M.: Iskusstvo, 1994), a takzhe sledujushhie raboty: Elizarova N.M. Vystuplenija rabov i ugnetennyh narodov rimskih provincij (po dannym Cicerona) // Antichnyj mir i arheologija, 1972. Vyp. 1. S. 77-93; Skrzhinskaja M.V. Drevnegrecheskie prazdniki v Jellade i Severnom Prichernomor'e. SPb.: Aletejja, 2010; Tokarev A. N. Stanovlenie oficial'noj ideologii principata imperatora Avgusta. Har'kov: Har'kovskij nacional'nyj universitet im. V.N. Karazina, 2011, et al.). H. Guite cites quotations form Cicero’s works and letters exclusively in Latin. Some of these quotations have not been translated into Russian. In the commentary, translations correspond to the available Russian editions or, if the latter are not listed, are performed by the translator. In Russian translations, references include the edition.