Aspects of The Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and of The Stoics

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Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and

of the Stoics
P. A. Brunt
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society / Volume 19 / January 1973, pp 9 - 34
DOI: 10.1017/S0068673500003576, Published online: 28 February 2013
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068673500003576

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P. A. Brunt (1973). Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and of the Stoics.
Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 19, pp 9-34 doi:10.1017/
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ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND OF THE STOICS'
On re-reading Dio of Prusa's Euboicxts, I formed the impression that his ideas on
manual labour and on the respectability of occupations open to the poor are somewhat
different from those conventionally adopted by Greeks and Romans of the upper
class, to which Dio belonged. Part i of this paper discusses these ideas in the Euboicus
and in some related works of Dio. It will inter alia afford some conjectural support
to von Arnim's hypothesis that the Euboicus was delivered at Rome. Probably Dio's
attitude was influenced by his experience in exile, when he had known what it was
to be poor and had even propounded Cynic opinions. But the Euboicus is a work of
his old age (vn. i), and his conduct after his restoration to his home in A.D. 96 was
conspicuously non-Cynic.2 If then we find some indication that he was also indebted
to some previous theorizing on appropriate occupations for the free poor, we need
not think of a Cynic model; indeed we should not, for the Cynics were little given to
the kind of casuistry involved. In Part 1 some evidence will be found that Dio was also
influenced by Stoic teaching, and in Part 11 it will be argued that his discussion of the
way in which the poor could decently earn their living goes back to Stoic works on
practical morality of the kind illustrated by Panaetius' treatise On Appropriate Action;
however, Dio's ideas are not those of the Middle Stoa and more probably derive from
Cleanthes or Chrysippus. In this connection I take Cicero, de officiis 1. 150 f., to
represent the views of Panaetius, and as I have found that this interpretation can be
contested, I have tried to justify it in the Appendix.
After telling of his encounter in exile with the Euboean huntsmen and of their simple
and virtuous life, Dio concludes that the poor are at least as well able as the rich to
live 'becomingly' (euaxTjP6vcos) and in accordance with nature; they may be more
hospitable, and readier to light a fire for a stranger, to put him on his path or to make
him gifts which, unlike the great gifts of the rich, do not 'look for gifts again'; in
fact the rich are mostly stingy, while good men, though poor, have enough to give
away (vn. 81-93). It is indeed in the country rather than in the town that the poor can
most easily live a life worthy of free men (66,103), and Dio asks if it is not necessary
to settle the free poor in the city on the land (106-8); the unstated implication of this
1
An earlier version of this paper was read to the Oxford and Cambridge Philological Societies.
I am indebted for various points which I have incorporated or tried to answer to participants in the
subsequent discussions, notably to Professor Moses Finley, Mrs Miriam Griffin and Dr Vivian
Nutton.
2
On Dio's life and opinions see H. von Arnim, Dio von Prusa, 1898, passim; on the Euboicus
and its autobiographical character, pp. 4928"., cf. pp. 455 f.; 472 f.; he does not discuss the themes
of this paper. He took Rome to be the unnamed city in vn. i46:fvfKE(vijTîTT6XEi,cf. 142 (Ke!); 143
(otCrrddi); Mrs Griffin inclines to think that Dio merely means the kind of place described, one of the
' luxurious cities' (147); but there is at least one pretty clear allusion to Rome in 104: TCOV v 6OTEI
Kal KOCTCf Tr6XlV.
10
P. A. BRUNT
proposal would inevitably be that all essential manual work in towns must be left to
slaves. However, Dio realizes that it is quite impractical. There will always be free,
poor men in the towns, and he had seen how in Euboea they were oppressed by
'unemployment and poverty' (36). Everywhere they had to pay for rent, clothes,
household belongings, food, fuel and indeed all necessities but water, which alone
cost nothing. He doubts if they could live wholly on their earnings without supplementation from other sources (105); if he was speaking at Rome (below), he no
doubt had the corn dole in mind (which of course did not supply all needs, and therefore did not enable the poor even at Rome to subsist without doing any work),
though in other cities too there were irregular distributions of various kinds. Work
had to be provided for men whose only assets were their own bodies (107). Towns
offered many profitable kinds of employment, and though they were not all compatible with the good life (109 ff.), some might be no worse than the ways in which
the rich supported themselves, such as usury, leasing tenements, owning ships and
slaves (104); presumably in this reference to slaves Dio is thinking of the common
practices of hiring out slave workmen or setting them up in business for a share of the
takings. (It is not clear to me why he objects to these particular sources of income,
and deprecates urban rents rather than rents from rural estates. Most of the upper
class everywhere were landowners, including Dio himself; perhaps he could see the
motes in the eyes of slum landlords better than in his own.) Dio promises in fact to tell
us what kinds of occupation are really suitable for poor men who are to live virtuously
and in accordance with nature (103; 109). Unfortunately, after he has listed many
which are to be excluded on moral grounds, his discourse breaks off. All that one can
be sure of is that in principle he allows manual labour (103; 116; 125) and also working for a wage: it is wrong to gibe at anyone because his mother was a hired servant,
a grape picker or wet nurse, or his father a teacher (114). (The allusion to grape picking in an urban context is explicable, since farmers had to rely on hired seasonal labour
for the harvest and vintage, and would find it partly in neighbouring towns.)
Von Arnim (p. 9 n. 2) accepted Dio's claim that the story of his visit to the Euboean
huntsmen is autobiographical (vn. 1) and held that the views he expresses reflect his
own experience. That may be so; by his own account elsewhere (1.51) he had in exile
mixed with the rural poor in the Peloponnese, keeping away from cities and spending
his time among herdsmen and hunters,' honest folk of simple habits'. He had wandered
about in rags as a beggar or Cynic preacher. Nor need we suppose that he had had no
contact at all with the urban poor, though Philostratus' statement1 that he earned his
daily bread by planting, digging, drawing water for baths and gardens and performing other menial tasks, is unconfirmed by any of his own statements, and it is
methodically unsound to accept without hesitation the unsupported account of
a biographer, some of whose other reports of Dio's life are demonstrably incorrect.
However, personal experience may have done no more than commend ideas he had
learned from others.
Thus his admiration for rural morality was nothing new; in both Greek and Latin
1
V. Soph. 488. Von Arnim, pp. 224ff.,shows the unreliability of much of Philostratus' account,
but rather uncritically accepts this.
DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT
II
literature it is a conventional theme, long ago given classic expression by Xenophon,

an author he valued highly (xvm. 14 ff.). In the Oeconomicus Xenophon deprecates
the 'banausic' crafts of the city artisan in a manner also familiar from the writings of
Plato, Aristotle and others; they impaired his bodily strength, forced as he was to sit
indoors by the fire, and also in some unexplained way softened his spirit, besides
leaving him no time to aid his friends and city (iv. 2 f.).1 How different was the hard
and healthy life of the farmer, who gained his subsistence from the iustissima tellus
and whose body was trained for all that a free man should do, notably fighting for his
country (iv. 24-v. 17). Dio too observes that hard life in the country produces men
of strong physique, capable of serving their cities in arms (49) ;2 he does not feel the
irrelevance of this ancient platitude to the normal conditions of a Greek city under
the Roman peace, nor (if he was speaking at Rome) to those which obtained in the
capital itself or throughout Italy; under Trajan the whole peninsula now furnished
few legionaries. This repetition of an outworn commonplace, so characteristic of the
so-called Greek renaissance of the second century, may warn us not to assume that
Dio was easily capable of original thinking.
Xenophon's objection to the banausic crafts was, however, not the only reason for
which these and other forms of employment had been rejected as unworthy of the
free man. The depreciation of the artisan's work was only a special case of aversion to
any occupation that denied a man leisure for the good life, and though Aristotle's
conception of the use to be made of leisure materially differed from that of the leisured
class in general, his apophthegm (EN 1177 a 12), aoxpAovneBa yap ivoc axoXcVjconEV,
would surely have been widely accepted.3 From this standpoint the unending work
of the farmer, as distinct from the landowner who lived off his rents, was no better
than that of the smith, though Aristotle conceded that working farmers and herdsmen had some virtue, perhaps only bodily fitness, which artisans, traders and wageearners lacked (Pol. 1319 a 20 ff.). Because they had not the leisure that qualified them
to acquire arete (1329 a 1), they were unfit for political rights in the ideal state, as
Plato had already held; oddly enough, it was this same lack of leisure that made that
form of democracy least objectionable in which the peasants preponderated, because
they were unable to make effective use of their power and in practice left government
to their betters (1318b 11 ff.). On closer inspection even Xenophon's encomium on
the rural life turns out to relate rather to the landowner than to the tiller of the soil.
1
Much other evidence (cf. p. 13 n. 1) for Greek prejudices against the crafts, trade and working
for a wage in W. L. Newman, Politics ofAristotle, 1886,1, 96126 and in his notes on various texts
cited below, and in H. Bolkestein, Wohltdtigkeit u. Armenspflege im vorchristlichen Altertum, 1939,
pp. 181 ff.; for Rome cf. F. M. de Robertis, Lavoro e lavoratori nel mondo romano, ch. n (unfortunately with many false references).
2
Romans too thought this (Cato, de agr. pref.; Livy vm. 20, 4), and it corresponded to actual
Italian recruitment in the Republic (Brunt, JRS 1962, pp. 73 f.), and doubtless to recruitment in
the provinces under the Principate, for which see G. Forni, II reclutamento delle legioni da Augusta
a Diocleîano, 1953, chs. v and VI. The platitude is also in Sen. ep. 51, 10; Colum. 1 pr. 17; Gell.
m. 1, 9 f.
3
See the valuable discussion by J. Brake, Wirtschaften u. Charakter in der antiken Bildung, 1935,
esp. pp. 80 ff., stressing that Greeks condemned xP1l-crno-u6s only if it interfered with higher
activities, cf. Pindar, Pyth. ni. 54: K^pSei KOCI aoyia. 88ETCCI. See also A. J. Festugiere, t. dephil.
gr. 1971, pp. 117ff.,esp. pp. 148 ff.
12
P. A. BRUNT
Ischomachus, his mouthpiece in the Oeconomicus, rides round his property, giving
directions to the employees (xi. 14 ff.); he owns so much land that he needs bailiffs
and foremen to assist him (xn); he is allegedly an entrepreneur who buys neglected
farms, improves them and sells at a profit (xx. 21 ff.); and in his very eulogy of the
life of die autourgoi he refers to the overseer and the slaves (v. 6; 10). If he does any
physical work himself, it is foi the pleasure of it and to keep up bodily fitness (iv. 24;
v. 1). (As Bolkestein observed (p. 11 n. 1), work was no disgrace to a Greek of high
status, provided that he was not compelled to resort to it, to earn his daily bread.)
Menander's line (642 K)
TO
ydp yecopyeiv fpyov iorlv OIKTOU
more realistically represents the attitude of Xenophon's class than his own utterances.
Certainly, Xenophon did not praise poverty for its own sake. That was a Cynic
peculiarity, and we may perhaps see some Cynic influence in the Euboicus on this
subject; however, Dio is not writing of the outright beggary the Cynics favoured;
his huntsmen have enough to give away to odiers.1
Bearing in mind the possibility that his audience was Roman, we may also properly
consider Roman attitudes. Cicero prefers agriculture to all other sources of income
(ex quibus aliquid adquiritur).2 His' Cato' is eloquent in its praise, not only because of its
profits but from sheer delight in the processes of nature and the arts of cultivation.
But he is also the owner of arable fields, vines, meadows, woods and cattle, a man of
substance who does not labour widi his own hands (de senect. 514), as the historic
Cato is said to have done in his early years (Festus 3 50 L.; Plut. Cato Maior 3). In his
own treatise on agriculture Cato had observed that peasants make the best soldiers
and the least disaffected citizens (praef. 4); there was still some trudi in this when he
wrote, but his work shows that he and his readers relied chiefly on slaves to cultivate
their lands.3 For Cicero digging and ploughing are menial occupations (de Jin. 1. 3)
and peasant soldiers more like cattle than men (Phil. vm. 9). More candid than most
writers who had never turned a sod, Sallust describes cultivating the soil and even
hunting as servile tasks (Cat. 4). Not indeed that it was ungentlemanly for the Roman
noble to take a hand in the work of the farm for recreation, as the emperor Pius and
his family did (Fronto 69 Naber). Virgil, like some other poets, appears to commend
the unremitting toil and simple virtues of the farmer, but the very refinement of his
style is proof that he was not addressing any one who might actually have occasion
to feel shame at manuring the soil, and his gospel of work is perhaps a paradigm for
those who might apply it in very different occupations, his peasant part of a romantic
landscape viewed by the observer with no personal experience of the scenes described;
one may compare the urban dweller of our own time who loves the nature from which
1
Naturally wealth and poverty are relative terms, and the right nuance has to be detected from
the context.
2
He is accepting Panaetius' view, cf. Appendix. See further Brunt, JRS 1972, pp. 154 f.
3
For Cato (pref.) agriculture is quaestus stabilissimus; that was not true for Roman peasants in
his time. Aristotle, Rhet. 1. 5, 7 observes that wealth, as an ingredient in the good life, must be
secure. The high social value attached to land in antiquity probably derived from the fact that it
was normally the safest investment.
13
he does not need to obtain his livelihood, especially in its wildest and most unproductive aspects.
Dio, it seems to me, goes further than most others in his admiration for the poor
farmer who actually works the soil. I find one clear precedent for his attitude in that
of the Stoic, Musonius. He declared that all activity on the land was liberal and
becoming to free men (fr. xi Hense). Nothing better accords with nature than to
seek one's livelihood from the land, nothing is more manly or healthy; Musonius
makes the usual contrast with the soft indoor life in cities, which he illustrates from
the occupation of sophists, not of artisans (59, 7). He even suggests that work on
the farm is perfectly compatible with philosophy and philosophical teaching,
during the intervals of rest; with some realism he prefers the more leisurely life
of the herdsman to that of the cultivator (59, 1 ff.). The pupils will actually benefit
both from seeing their teachers give a practical demonstration that it is right to
labour and endure physical hardships rather than to depend on others for subsistence,
and by being removed from the distractions and temptations of the city to live
under the constant supervision of the master (60, 4 ff.). Even Musonius is plainly
thinking of the independent farmer who is his own master, whether or not he owns
the land he works (58, 8), and who has no need to rely on others for necessaries
(59> 9)> while his belief that the working farmer has time enough for philosophy
rests on his conception of philosophy as consisting in a few, simple maxims of
ethics (60, 18, cf. fr. 1 passim). None the less, he anticipates Dio, and indeed goes
further: in his view the worker on the land can not only live virtuously in practice but
come to know theoretically what virtue is. An eques by birth, Musonius (like Dio)
had learned what it was to suffer exile and poverty, and this may have widened his
sympathies. He was also a Stoic, and his reiteration that labour on the land was' fitting'
(frpsTrov) to a free man and a philosopher (58, 3 and 9; 63, 6) may be an application
of a famous doctrine of Panaetius (Part 11); we may compare Dio's use of the term
ECCTXT|U6VGOS. NOW Fronto (115 N) calls Musonius the master of Dio, and it is conceivable that Musonius' teaching helped to inspire Dio's views on rural life.
As for the free poor in cities, Dio would have them follow occupations 'that are
not unbecoming (dorpem)) and implant no vice in the soul' (112), which must none
the less provide an adequate livelihood. It is plain that he did not share the views
of Plato and Aristotle; the latter pronounced all traders, artisans and hired labourers
incapable of virtue (Pol. 1319828), and both would have excluded them from
effective political rights,1 whereas in a speech roughly contemporary with the Euboicus
Dio advocated the conferment of citizen rights at Tarsus on the linen-workers and is
not shocked that such rights are already enjoyed by dyers (contrast vn. 117), cobblers
and carpenters (xxxiv. 21-3); occupations fit for citizens were obviously fit a fortiori
for free men. In exile Dio had adopted Cynic sentiments at times,2 making Diogenes
1
In the Republic the third class (T6 XPTlUOtriOTtKdv) has citizen rights only in name. Cf. Laws
741 E; 806 f.; 842 DE; 918 f.; Aristotle, Pol. I. 3 passim; 1278 a 1 ff.; vn. 8 passim. See also
Appendix.
2
I do not know how far 'Diogenes' is always meant to be Dio's mouthpiece; the shameless
sayings (von Arnim 263, 267) are probably inserted only for dramatic appropriateness.
14
P. A. BRUNT
his mouthpiece in advocating the simple life and in exalting TTOVOI for their own sake
and ocuTOvpyioc as an ideal; idleness is most likely to ruin a man without sense, a slave
is better off if kept busy, and the master himself ought not to be dependent on slaves,
since nature has given him hands to work with (x. 7-10). In the same spirit he now
turns on its head the traditional contention that to work for wages makes a man
dependent on his employer and is inconsistent with freedom (Appendix vm, xn,
xiv): if the poor are properly employed, he argues, the rich will not be able to call
them men without means (coropoi); on the contrary, they will supply what the
rich need, lacking nothing for themselves (uSAAov EKeivcov OVTES fropiOTOcl KOCI ixnSevos
dnTopouvTEs, 113). In principle he seems to be free from prejudices which were not
peculiar to Plato and Aristotle but were widely shared among the upper classes in
both the Greek and Roman worlds.
It is tempting to suppose that such prejudices did not extend to men actually engaged
in the despised occupations. In that event when Dio, who came himself from the local
aristocracy at Prusa, asks how the poor can live reputably, he is posing a question that
would only have occurred to a man with no understanding of the sentiments prevalent
in the class he proposed to help. There is some force in the arguments adduced by for
instance Bolkestein1 and de Robertis2 to show that in the Greek and Roman worlds respectively traders and craftsmen did not always lack self-esteem and even public honour.
But honour at least came to those who had acquired riches which permitted them to
render valuable public services. At all times money could make the man. Respect paid
to the rich does not prove that the occupations by which they had attained wealth
were regarded as respectable in their own right, that is to say, respectable for those
who remained poor. Aristocratic conceptions may have been pervasive and dominant
because the lower classes were not sufficiently reflective or articulate to criticize them
or substitute something different. Nor must we underrate the inherent attractiveness of
the aristocratic ideal of independence and leisure. Even the Cynics may be said to have
preached the same ideal, though in their view it was to be realized by men who restricted their wants and sacrificed their potentialities; the appeal of such teaching was
bound to be limited. At any rate, if we can believe Lucian's account of his boyhood
at Samosata (Somnium 9 ff.), we must admit that the outlook of the upper class had
penetrated into a quite humble milieu, where there would have been nothing strange
in Dio's belief that care should be exercised by free but poor persons in selecting an
appropriate calling. When Lucian left school, his family felt that he must contribute
to their income by practising a craft, but they considered not only which craft he
could most easily learn that would be sufficiently profitable, but also which would
be suitable (npfrrouaa) for a free man. Practical considerations indeed forced
1
Wohhdagkeit. . ., 326 ff. He points inter alia to the numerous honorary decrees for traders,
but it was a matter of a city's self-interest to win favour of rich men (often foreigners) who could
render services. Even in democratic Athens a Cleon or a Demosthenes could be besmirched for his
connection with industry.
2
Lavoro e lavoratori, pp. 21 ff., pointing to the immense number of epitaphs and bas-reliefs that
allude to the trades practised [or financed] by their subjects; but many were set up for freedmen.
In some untypical towns of the Roman empire the highest local offices go to men 'in trade*. The
cities needed the services of the rich as such: dat census honores.
15
them to apprentice him to his uncle, who was a sculptor, although sculptors had
no prospects of wealth or esteem at Samosata, where a Phidias would have been
despised as a mechanic living by his hands.1 Prompted largely by social ambition,
Lucian contrived to escape and take up the profession of a sophist, which brought
him large fees, reputation and ultimately a government post - but of course only
exceptional talent made this possible. Originally his parents were doing precisely
what Dio recommends the poor to do: select an occupation fitting for free men
who were bound to depend on the labour of their hands.
As already noted, Dio's discourse breaks of before he tells us what occupations the
urban poor should choose; we have only a list, itself not necessarily complete, of those
to be rejected. In this category he places those which involve little exercise and' produce
weakness, quaking and softness in the body' (112); all crafts which serve luxury and
not the public interest ( n o ) , e.g. dyers (but see above), perfumers, 'beauticians',
decorators, professional actors, dancers, lyre and flute players (117-19); auctioneers
and proclaimers of rewards for the arrest of thieves and fugitive slaves (123);2 scriveners (ouyypcpeTs), who drew up legal documents, with the possible exception of
those who drafted official registers and edicts (124); pettifogging lawyers who would
take any case for a fee (123 f.).3 The final part of the speech reprobates brothelkeeping at great length. What then is left? One may think of those open-air occupations he is said to have followed himself in exile, and of the work which was at least
healthy, of hired builders, dockers, porters, which the free poor at Rome must have
relied on.4 Perhaps seamen might be added, though they appear in a list of conventionally blameworthy occupations in Pollux, along with retail traders, publicans, auctioneers, brothel-keepers, inn-keepers and various kinds of artisans.5 It is to be noted that
1
Plut. Per. 2, 1 f. says that labour with one's hands on low objects attests indifference to higher
things; hence no youth of noble nature would wish, because of admiration for their works, to be
Phidias or Polyclitus any more than to be Anacreon, Archilochus or Philemon: none is worthy of
esteem. Friedlander, Sittengesch. Roms m 9 , 102, argues (without regard to thefirstor last statement)
that so far from depreciating artists Plutarch is putting them on the same level as poets; but the
poets are chosen with care; the first two at least were regarded as men of bad character. And
cf. Cimon 4, 5 : Polygnotus is only exempted from description as banausos because he did not charge
for painting the Athenian Stoa. Seneca, ep. 88, 18 excludes painters and sculptors from practitioners
of the liberal arts on another ground, that they are luxuriae ministri; Posidonius (ibid. 21 f.) had
perhaps described their arts as ludicrae, not liberates; his views may be the basis for Galen, Protrept.
5,7f.;Philostr. v. Apoll. vm.7;Philo, Spec. leg. 1. 331 f. (A. Stiickelberger, Senecas 88. Brief, 1965),
where (with various differences) they rank below the liberal arts. At Rome painting, once respectable enough for a noble, Fabius Pictor, had by Cicero's time fallen into disrepute for gentlemen,
cf. Tusc. Disp. 1. 4; Pliny, NHxxxv. 19 f., Valerius Max. vm. 14, 6, though Cicero would rather
have excelled as a sculptor or painter than as a carpenter (!), since the former have the rarer talent
(Brut. 257). Much later, Firmicus Maternus was to set the sculptor's art below the painter's and that
of others engaged in artes honestae et mundae, because it involved heavy and nasty manual labour
(I. Calabi Limentani, Studi sulla societa romana, 1958, pp. 53 ff.). Pliny says that from the 4th century in Sicyon and all Greece painting ranked as a liberal art suitable for honesti (NH xxxv. 77).
2
On the frauds perpetrated by those occupied in recovering such slaves see D. Daube, Juridical
Rev. 1952, 12 ff.
3
Cf. Lucian, Rhet. Praec. 25.
Brunt, Past and Present 1966, pp. 13 ff.
5
vi. 128: pio: &<p' ols <5v TIS 6vei6iCf6E(r|, Tropvo|3ocn<6s, KcnrnXos, 6trcopcbvT]S 6TrcopoircbATis,
TTCXVSOKEOS, TropSueOs, uaCTTpcrmJs, CnrnpETTis, pupooSEvyris CTKUTOSEVJ/TIS,
l6
P. A. BRUNT
1
Dio does not ban retail trade, and in view of what he said at Tarsus (p. 13), we
cannot be sure how far he held that all artisan work was injurious to physique. Like
Musonius (pp. 11 f. Hense), who held that women were as capable of virtue as men,
he may have thought that respectable free women could properly spin, a task that
did not need to be left to slave girls. (Even though Musonius may have considered
spinning not appropriate to males, it is clear that he did not think manual crafts as such
disreputable for free men.) Dio also has no mention of fine arts such as sculpture and
painting (cf. p. 15 n. 1), perhaps because they could obviously give little employment,
and that only to persons of special talent, but at rate they are not condemned as mere
aids to luxury.
His list of exclusions corresponds in part to conventional or philosophical views
held by Greeks, but it also fits Roman social values; for instance, auctioneers and
brothel-keepers were infames in Roman law (e.g. Dig. HI. 2,1), though it was another
matter if you merely drew rents from houses of ill repute, nam et in multorum hones torum virorum praediis lupanaria exercentur {ibid. v. 3, 27). But some items in the list
tend to support von Arnim's view (p. 9 n. 2) that his audience was Roman; we may
suppose that he was appealing to Roman prejudices, as in his objection to acting,
dancing and professional music-making. At Rome actors were subject to legal disabilities, and, though the stars might be honoured, were normally men of low, often
of servile station, while dancing, and, if it went beyond amateurish dilettantism,
music were disapproved; Nero's performances earned him almost as much censure as
his crimes (e.g. Tacitus, Ann. xv. 65; 67). Now though Aristotle had been against
teaching freeborn boys to play instruments that required manual dexterity, like the
cithara, and worse still, the aulos, which contorted the face and denied the performer
the use of speech, the privileges the Dionysiac guilds of actors and musicians had
long secured from cities, kings and emperors, show that in general Greeks esteemed
these skills in a way Romans did not.2 Dio himself tells how in his own age virtuosi
attracted the same enthusiastic following as pop-singers today. He gives us a vivid
picture of 3,000 people at Cyzicus flocking to hear a famous citharoedus, and
he once confesses his own passion for the art (xix. 2 ff.). He had indeed personally
come to feel that the popular devotion to music was grossly excessive. While granting
that classical modes could properly be used 'to soothe the savage breast' (xxn. 57 f.),
in his Alexandrine speech, which is roughly contemporaneous with the Euboicus, he
deplores the modern styles, which make the audiences go wild (62) and promote mass
hysteria (41 f.) or a kind of general intoxication (56), plunging the Alexandrines into
continuous revelry (69) and an unbridled emotionalism (5) inimical to moral seriousness (1; 4; 96) and productive of political disorders (70 ff.)! In one of his discourses
on kingship, delivered before Trajan, he urges that the king should pay no heed to
players of the aulos and cithara, and ban from the capital indecent dancing and at
1
Plato, Laws 918 f., argues that traders and innkeepers are necessary and only discredited by
habitual fraudulence; men of integrity would be respected in such business. But Dio is prescribing
ex hypothesi for poor men of integrity.
2
Actors: Friedlander, Sittengesch. Moms n, 137 ff. (cf. REvm. 2126 ff.);musicians:ibid., 175 ff.
Dionysiac artists: e.g. A. H. M. Jones, Greek City, pp. 231 ff. Aristotle: Pol. vm 4 to end, esp.
1341 a 17-b 8; Newman, Politics of Aristotle, I, 359 ff.
17
least the corrupting forms of music (n. 56). In the Euboicus itself he admits that he
is condemning activities, dramatic and musical, which the Greeks regard as most
important, but maintains that they are not for self-respecting free men, as they produce, it is not clear how, 'shamelessness' and insolent pride in the masses, as well as
other unmentioned evils (119-22). It is easier to understand how he could omit to
argue this case, if he were addressing a Roman audience, which could be expected
readily to concur; and indeed he speaks here of the Greeks as if they were not present.
We can also perhaps most readily reconcile his objection to other paid employments
with Roman traditions. He disapproves of lawyers and advocates who take fees; that
was a practice which was to some extent, however ineffectively, limited by Roman
law.1 Dio's 'scriveners' are puzzling. In commenting on the position of archigrammateus held by Eumenes under Alexander (Plut. Eum. 1), Nepos observes (Eum. 1,5)
that scribes are held in higher regard by Greeks than by Romans, 'for in our view,
which corresponds to the facts, they are wage-earners (mercennarii)'. Yet Cicero had
sometimes found it prudent to flatter the order (e.g. Dom. 74), and in the Principate,
as in the late Republic, not only freedmen but men of free birth, some of whom
attained to equestrian rank and municipal dignities, and might count the position
of scribe as an honor, were among its members (ILS 18771901; 2727 etc.). Perhaps Dio is thinking of the exceptores who could certainly be despised as mercennarii, since they hired out their services {Dig. xix. 2, 19, 9), and were suspected
of falsifying documents, though I am unable to discover what they did in this
period; in the late empire they too were minor officials.2 At any rate there are
several instances in which Dio's sentiments appear to conform best with Roman
prejudices.
Dio's discourses that date from or after his exile are often coloured by Stoic ideas,
though he never adopted a consistently Stoic position and remained capable of asserting that pleasure was the aim of all animals (LXVIII. 3), contrary to the old Stoic
doctrine (SVFm. 178; Seneca, ep. 121, 8), and even the aim of men (xxxvm. 43)^
and of classifying as real goods and evils those external 'advantages' and 'disadvantages' to which Stoics assigned only a secondary value (ibid. 13 f.). In the Euboicus
itself his description of the good life as accordant with nature (81) is not specifically
Stoic, since it had been adopted by other schools (e.g. Lucretius 11. 15 ff.; Cicero,
definibus v. 17, 26 and 73 etc.), but he has a vague reminiscence of the Stoic doctrine
of the City of Gods and Men, which he himself voices more explicitly in other late
works (1.42; xxxvi. 23), when in condemning prostitution he says that men should not
tolerate ill-treatment of slave girls, 'because the human race in its entirety is in
1
A. N. Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 313; p. 3 20 for summary statement, cf. p. 15 n. 3; p. 3 3

n. 3. W. Kunkel, Herkunft u. soîale Stellung der rom.Juristen, 287, says that we do not hear of fees for
jurisconsults (as distinct from advocates), but in Cicero's day their expertise contributed ad opes
augendas {de offic. n. 65), doubtless in the same indirect way as advocacy, supposedly given free
(n. 65), and it would be perilous to argue e silentio that they too did not later take fees, all
the more since they increasingly came from a lower station than in the Republic (as shown by
Kunkel).
* Exceptores, RE\l. 1565; scriiae, II A. 848 ff.
3
However, Posidonius held that animals and children were moved by pleasure (F. 169, cf. 158,
160 Edelstein-Kidd).
18
P. A. BRUNT
common held in honour, and indeed in equal honour, by the god who begat it, and
because it bears the same marks and tokens that it is justly to be honoured, reason
and knowledge of what is evil and good (138)'.1
Dio goes perhaps rather further than most Stoics in drawing out consequences
from diis doctrine. On the strict Stoic view ill-treatment of others harmed the agent
who suffered in the soul, rather than the victim who lost only those external
advantages which in the last analysis were not goods at all; his virtue, and therefore his blessedness, were unimpaired, and at worst he could find refuge in death.
In particular, all men, whatever their degree, are slaves if they are subject to their
passions: only the wise man is free, and free, whatever his legal status. Dio himself
takes this position in his fourteenth discourse, but in the fifteenth (both belong to
his exile) he goes further than any other writer of Roman times known to me in
subverting the legal institution of slavery; his argument there tends to show that
there are no natural slaves and no just way, i.e. no way according with natural
law, of acquiring title to another human being. Unfortunately this is another of his
speeches that seems to be left incomplete, and some doubt may be felt about his final
view. We must not suppose that alone of ancient moralists he advocated the abolition
of slavery.2
Of course Stoics urged masters to treat their slaves justly and kindly. Seneca recalls
that they are men and that the masters are their fellow-slaves, being alike subject to
fortune; the masters should treat them as they themselves would be treated by their
superiors, and seek to be loved rather than feared (ep. 47). But one constantly feels
that Stoics were concerned rather with the moral evil involved in injustice than
with the sufferings of the slaves. In describing the humiliations imposed on slaves
by some owners (ibid.), Seneca seems to be primarily castigating the vices of arrogance and luxury that the owners display. Musonius condemned sexual intercourse
between master and handmaiden not out of regard to her feelings but because of his
lack of self-restraint (p. 66 Hense). Dio makes his compassion for the girl more apparent. He had once noted that ancillae were less apt to rear children they had by their
masters, so as to avoid the trouble of caring for them in addition to the burden of
bondage (xv. 8). In the Euboicus he pities the slave-girl reduced to prostitution against
her will and unable to bring up children even if she wished (148). I am inclined to
connect this difference of tone with his inability to accept consistently the Stoic and
Cynic indifference to external goods and evils (above). He does also reinforce his
humane objection to slave prostitution by considerations of expediency: it is in1
For Stoic views in Dio, SVFlv. 196 f. Von Arnim, 476ff.,in a generally admirable discussion,
does not make clear how loose was his attachment to Stoicism, vil. 135 recalls the religious tone of
xii. 76 (Zeus teaches us ur|S dAXoTpiov fiyeiaOai dvOpcoircov ur|6va).
2
Cf. perhaps the view of Florentinus (mid second century A.D.) that slavery was contrary to
natural law (for Stoics the rule of eternal justice, known by the reason that is common to gods and
men, SVF in. 76 ff.) and only legitimated iure gentium; Florentinus refers to a natural kinship
among men (Dig. I. 5, 4). Ulpian's conception of natural law as ius quod natura omnia animalia
docuit, with reference to inborn impulses to procreate and rear progeny, is clearly non-Stoic;
reason comes in with ius gentium (1. i, 1, 3 f., cf. 1. 1, 2); Gaius (1. i, 9) identifies the latter both with
naturalis ratio and the common legal usages of all peoples; on this kind of view slavery was rational,
and if so, justified by natural law.
19
jurious, he argues, to the society of slave-owners, leading on to adultery, seduction

of freeborn virgins and homosexuality.1
This type of consideration corresponded to the Stoic view that as virtue was the
only good, virtuous activity was always in the highest interest of the agent, that is
to say, in his own moral interest (e.g. SVF\. 557). But even the old Stoics conceded
some value to external advantages, and I shall argue later that Panaetius and Posidonius held that they could be preconditions of attaining the good life. As we can
see from the second book of Cicero's de officiis, Panaetius attempted to show how in
general the claims of duty coincided with those of self-interest in the plain man's
sense of self-interest. Arguments could be adduced to convince masters that it was
prudent as well as right to treat slaves kindly; Seneca himself suggests this (ep. 47,5).
In his account of the Sicilian slave-risings Posidonius appears to have stressed also
that the injustice and cruelty of individual owners had brought down disaster on
their own heads and on their communities (Jacoby, FGH no. 87,108 c and f). In the
same spirit Pius was to rule that ' it was in the interest of masters that relief from
cruelty, starvation and unendurable injury should not be denied to slaves who lawfully
entreat it' {Coll. m. 3, 2). It would be too cynical to suppose that either Posidonius
or Pius deprecated ill-treatment of slaves merely because of the dangers for their
masters or for society that it might foment. Like Seneca, both produced an argument
for the protection of slaves that might gain the assent of owners who would not
themselves have regarded humanity as a dictate of moral law. Dio's contention
that slave prostitution injured society may be construed on the same basis.
II. THE SOURCE OF DIO'S VIEWS
Dio claims that' investigation of kinds of labour and crafts and in general of a life
that is fitting (-rrpocTi'iKOVTos) or unfitting to decent people has proved to be intrinsically
worthy of much very exact theory' and that his discussion is 'relevant to matters
essential and suitable to philosophy' (vn. 128). Musonius prefaces his own discussion
of farming as a livelihood (p. 57 Hense) with the words: Icrn KOCI i=Tspos Tropos O08EV
TOUTOV Kondcov; it was perhaps part of a more general examination of occupations
that could be honourably chosen. This was in fact a subject treated by Panaetius in
his irspl TOO KOCOT^KOVTOS which Cicero followed in the de officiis.
The context of Panaetius' discussion is his theory of T6 TTPCTTOV, a sort of moral
beauty which 'shines out' in virtuous action.2 This is achieved only by the individual
who restricts his efforts to performing those good acts which are appropriate
to his own special circumstances and personality: 'neque enim attinet naturae
repugnare nee quicquam sequi, quod assequi non queas' (de offic. 1. n o ) . Hence
he redefined the Stoic conception of the telos as living in accordance with nature by
1
In Dio's day Roman law gave modest and probably inefficacious protection to ancillae by
upholding covenants ne prostituatur in contracts of sale (W. W. Buckland, Roman law ofslavery
1908, pp. 70 f., 603 f. HA, Hadrian 18, 8 is too sweeping, cf. e.g. Dig. n. 2, 24).
2
See R. Philippson, Philol. LXXXV, 3 57ff.;M. Pohlenz, Kl. Schr. 1,100ff.and Antikes Fiihrertum,
1934, passim; L. Labowski, Die Ethik des Panaitios, 1934. On this subject, M. van Straaten,
Panitius, sa vie et son ceuvre, 1946, pp. 158 ff. adds nothing fresh.
2.0
P. A. BRUNT
saying that it was T6 KCCTCC T&S SeSoii&ccs f)(juv hi qnio-ecos d<popnds (fr. 96 van Straaten).
For the old Stoics d<popncc{ had meant simply the opposite of dpuccf (impulses):
Panaetius gave it a different sense; it now referred to the conditions, surely both
material and psychological, which limited the activities practically open to any given
individual.1
Despite the elder Pliny's statement {N.H. pr. 22) that Panaetius' or Cicero's books
on the kathekon ought to be daily in men's hands and even learned by heart, there is
a tendency to think that Panaetius was little read by the Christian era.2 In my own
judgement his concepts of decorum (up^n-ov), of the individual personality and of the
different duties that flow from different stations in life remained influential, notably in
Epictetus; this is not a theme that can be developed here.3 It is relevant, however, to
notice possible traces of his terminology or ideas in the writings of Dio. When Dio
says that poverty nupiccs d<popnds irpos T6 jfjv irapexei T0I5 ocuroupyelv (JouAon&ois
ofrre daxripovas OUTE |3Acc|3epds (vn. 125) he is using d<popucis in Panaetius' way (but
of course also in its most usual Greek sense), while daxi'movccs (cf. euoxnuovcos, 81;
dcTXTlHocnivri, n o , xxx. 43), for which TrpETrouaoci is an antonym in vn. 126 (cf. drrpenfj
112), may recall Panaetius' emphasis on TO Trpeirov. In Panaetius' thought TO Trpirrov
expressed an inner harmony and was particularly, though not only, manifest in those
virtuous acts which could be subsumed under sophrosyne. Dio too in his Alexandrine
discourse finds that virtue in orderly and moderate public behaviour (xxxn. 32; 45;
52; 57; 60):SeiSe PET& Koanoi/Kod axruiorros irp^rrovTos ccvSpcotrots lAeuQepfas (45); it
springs from a natural harmony (46; 58). No doubt this evidence is somewhat
tenuous; approval of order and moderation was part of the Greek heritage, Chrysippus
had used the adjective daxrmcov in a moral sense (SVFiu, p. 13, 32), and Ariston had
foreshadowed Panaetius' conception of sophrosyne, when he defined it as lTfi9uplocv
KoanoOaccKodTo li^TpiovKaiToeuKaipovevfiSovaisdpijouaa^J^F 1. 375). Again,
we may find in a discourse that seems to belong to Dio's exile an allusion to Panaetius'
doctrine of the individual personality and the duties that arise from a man's station in
life in Dio's statement (LXXVII-LXXVIII. 38) that the man who is 'brave and highsouled' - the latter term for courage was favoured by Panaetius {de offic. 1. 13; 61 ff.)
but was also used by Chrysippus {SVF111. 49, 157)-will in all circumstances seek
to preserve his own individuality (TO KOQ' OCOTOV) in a way that is seemly and steadfast
(eOcrxnPovcos KCCI peftecicos), never leaving his station (Td|iv), a term important in the
practical ethics of Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In LXX. 8 Dio also mentions
the special duties that fall to the philosopher; they include rules on dress and table
manners, and Panaetius too had dilated on such matters of etiquette {de offic. 1. 102 f.;
12640; 144). If it is right to think that speaking at Rome Dio shows special respect
for Roman traditions, that would also thoroughly accord with the outlook of Panaetius {ibid. 1.148). However, the early Stoics had already given cuiquepersonaepraecepta
1
Van Straaten (op. cit.) interprets as 'aspirations' (140) or 'appetits' (158) or 'whatever incites
men to act' (192), too restrictively. Some instances of Panaetius' usage occur in SVF (see index
s.v.); Philippson (pp. cit.) showed that doxographic sources transcribed there sometimes reflect
Panaetian influence.
2
Athenaeus 186 A refers to 'Panaetiasts' in his own day.
3
I hope to elaborate this elsewhere. Cf. de offic. 1. 93-151, Epict. 1, 2 etc.
21
(below), and the doubt must arise whether Panaetius himself did more than lay
special emphasis on the particular duties that emerged from a man's individual place
in society.
When we come to Panaetius' actual discussion of occupations that may be chosen
without violation of'decorum', there is no analogy to Dio's claim that some are open
to the urban poor.1 Much that Panaetius said is clearly relevant only to the upper
class, those who can follow the genus vitae {de offic. I. 117) of the statesman, general,
orator or jurist or who may, in certain circumstances, honourably retire to manage
their estates or spend their leisure in philosophic and scientific studies. Panaetius
specifically examines the forms oiquaestus, of making money, that are honourable for
the good man (1. I5of.). The only quaestus he unconditionally approves is landowning; that is indeed compatible with approval of the life of the peasant as well as
of the large owner, who lives off his rents. Commerce on a large scale is allowed,
especially if the merchant invests his profits in land and retires to the country. Gain
is also permissible from the liberal arts, but only us quorum ordini conveniunt; by this
qualification it is naturally not meant that doctrina rerum honestarum, which must
include the teaching of philosophy, was prohibited to men of high birth such as
Panaetius himself or Cicero, who both practised it, but that for them it was inappropriate as a source of gain. Obviously neither large-scale commerce, requiring
capital, nor the liberal professions, for which a costly education was indispensable,
were accessible to the poor. But the callings which were accessible, the manual crafts,
retail trading, working for hire, are all pronounced degrading on traditional grounds,
although Panaetius recognized (as Plato and Aristotle had done) that they were
necessary for civilized society. True, we hear of the inops et optimus vir and of the
number of humble but respectable people in every large city (11. 60; 70); these may
be peasants, and inops can mean merely 'not very rich' (cf. p. 12 n. 1).
Similarly, Panaetius' pupil, Posidonius, who regarded his master's treatise on the
kathekon as of surpassing excellence {de offic. in. 10), while suggesting in mythmaking vein that in the most primitive times it was philosophers who had invented
the manual crafts (Sen. ep. 90, 7 ff.), was careful to add: omnia haec sapiens quidem
invenit, sed minora quam ut ipse tractaret sordidioribus ministris dedit {ibid. 25); we too
should be apt to differentiate between the engineer who devises a tool and the mechanic
who uses it. It is no surprise then that in his division of the arts into four classes, one
should be said to consist of {artes) vulgares et sordidae, the crafts of artisans quae manu
constant et ad instruendam vitam occupatae sum, in quibus nulla decoris, nulla honesti
simulatio est {ep. 88, 21, cf. 20).2 Posidonius follows Panaetius' doctrine of decorum
to the same practical conclusion, at least in regard to the work of artisans.
It is less clear how Posidonius judged of the other three categories of artes, (1)
ludicrae quae ad voluptatem oculorum atque aurium tendunt; (2) pueriles; (3) liberates.
Under (1) Seneca singles out stagecraft for his scorn, but the class is so defined as to
include painters, sculptors and musicians. Seneca gives no indication that Posidonius
did not share his contempt.3 Similarly there is nothing to suggest that Seneca was
1
3
2
See Appendix.
For the last phrase cf. p. 24 n. 3.
For other possible evidence of Posidonius' views cf. p. 15 n. 1.
22
P. A. BRUNT
revising Posidonius' categories when he defines the artes pueriles so as to equate them
with what Latin writers normally described as artes liberates (T^XVOCI tyKOKAioi)*1
reserving that title for philosophy alone, the only study worthy of a truly free man
(ep. 88,22-4, cf. 2 giving Seneca's own opinion). But in any event the liberal arts were
not open to those too poor to secure an adequate education. "We cannot tell if Posidonius would have concurred in the view Seneca expresses himself at the outset of
his letter: nullum (studium) suspicio, nullum in bonis numero quod ad aes exit. However,
Panaetius had allowed practice of the liberal arts as a source of gain, and probably
Posidonius would not have demurred.
Seneca proceeds: meritoria artificia sum, hactenus utilia sipraeparant ingenium, non
detinent {ep. 88, 1). That was common Stoic doctrine; on the one hand the knowledge
and pursuit of virtue was the only good, on the other hand the ' liberal arts' made
a useful education (Chrysippus, SVF in. 738). But after urging that the liberal arts
(so called) prepare the mind for virtue (20) but do not produce it (23, 29 f.) Seneca
puts an objection: 'Cum dicatis (sc. Stoici), inquit, sine liberalibus studiis ad virtutem
nonperveniri,2 quemadmodum negatis ilia nihilconferre virtuti?' (88, 31), and suggests
(a) that the supposed necessity of education as an adiutorium? to the acquisition of
virtue does not make it more relevant to virtue than food, which is by implication
certainly an indispensable condition; (b) that it is possible for an illiterate to be wise.
The second suggestion can hardly be taken as realistic, especially given Seneca's own
description of the knowledge the wise man will possess, but if the first is pressed, we
get the practical conclusion that wisdom and virtue are only within the reach of those
who could afford education. This may well have been the view of both Panaetius and
Posidonius, which Seneca himself was perhaps reluctant to accept.4
Diogenes Laertius (vn. 128) states that Panaetius and Posidonius held 'that virtue
is not self-sufficient but that it requires health, means (xopnyfocs) and strength', and
also (vn. 103) that Posidonius classed wealth and health among the goods. The second
statement is undoubtedly incorrect; his argument reported in Seneca's 87th letter
(31 ff.) shows that he took the orthodox Stoic line that wealth was material for the
good life, of which we may make good use or bad.* But the error was the more natural
if both he and Panaetius regarded 'means' as a sine qua non of the good life, which is
all that Diogenes' first statement alleges. The facts that Panaetius regarded every
livelihood open to the poor as disreputable and that Posidonius admired his work on
1
H. I. Marrou, Hist, de I'education dans I'antiquite3, pp. 244, 378.

Cf. 88, 2 non discere debemus ea, sed didicisse.
3
Posidonian language, cf. ep. 88, 24 ff. with F. 18 Edelstein-Kidd, and see Stiickelberger,
cited in p. 15 n. 1.
4
Cf. p. 23 n. 1. Like the concept of the illiterate sage, this does not at all fit Seneca's own
argument in much of ep. 88, 1-20, which I suspect he has largely taken over from Posidonius, who
is first cited in s. 21.
5
Cf. Tusc. Disp. n. 61. Zeller, Die philosophie der Gr. in 4 , 585 argued from these texts that
Diogenes was certainly mistaken on Posidonius, and therefore unreliable for Panaetius. In fact
Panaetius too equated the bonum and honestum, cf. Appendix VI. But that does not mean that both
did not think 'means' a necessary (but not sufficient) condition of the good life, cf. Reinhardt,
RE xxii. 760 on Sen. ep. 92 which he derived from Posidonius. What was required was doubtless
'enough property for the good life', not unlimited riches, cf. Ar. Pol. 1256 b 31.
2
23
the kathekon and shared his contempt for manual crafts, and the possibility that Posidonius was among those who treated the liberal arts as essential preparatory aids to
philosophic study (which was in fact common sense), strongly suggest that on this
point Diogenes was right. Contrast Seneca's dictum: nullipraecisa virtus est; omnibus
patet, omnes admittit, omnes invitat et ingenuos et libertinos et servos et reges et exules.1
It is to this way of thinking that the concept of the illiterate philosopher belongs, and
likewise Dio's insistence that virtuous employments are available to the poor.
But if it is unlikely that Dio was indebted to Panaetius, except perhaps for the
concepts of decorum and of the individual personality and station in life, Panaetius'
work at least shows that the question of choice of occupation was one discussed by
Stoics. Dio refers to 'much very exact theory'; we need not assume that Panaetius'
discussion was the first. The subject may well have been treated in Chrysippus' own
work On Appropriate Action, the contents of which cannot be determined from the
sparse fragments, but which ran to at least seven books (SVFiu, p. 197), against three
by Panaetius (Gellius xm. 28 (27), 1). Moreover Chrysippus also composed four
books Peri Bion (SVF in, p. 196), and in some of the extant fragments he is found,
as we should expect from the title, examining proper ways of earning a living. Admittedly other fragments have a very different theme (11. 42; 70; in. 703; 716), but
his mode of exposition was probably always discursive, and in illustration of this our
subject reappears in his treatise On Nature (in. 701).
Chrysippus indeed appears from the fragments only to be concerned with the
choice of livelihood open to the wise man (in. 685; 691; 6935697; 702; cf. 701; 703),
and we might think that a discussion so limited could hardly have been much to Dio's
purpose. However, I think that we should be wrong to assume that the Stoic account
of the wise man was irrelevant to the problems of ordinary, decent people. A digression
will be necessary.
The Stoic sage is familiar: possessed of perfect and stable knowledge and virtue, he
'does all things well'; hence he alone is able to perform all the 'appropriate acts'
(Koc6f|KovTC() and to make them ' successful acts' (KccTop0cbucrra) by the perfection of
the disposition in which he performs them (in. 493 f.; 498; 500 ff.). All others can be
called foolish and evil, and even when they do perform 'appropriate acts', these acts
must still be regarded as 'faults' (&nocpTr|uaToc), because they do not issue from
comprehensive knowledge and abiding virtue. Now Chrysippus himself acknowledged
that the wise man, who was on a par with God (in. 526), was a being of apparently
superhuman qualities (in. 545), and that neither he himself nor any of his acquaintances or 'guides', a class that should include the earlier Stoic masters, had attained
to wisdom (m. 668). If the Stoics had left matters there, it is hard to see how their
moral teaching could have had any practical effect on men's actual behaviour, yet it
plainly did.
In fact Chrysippus also taught that there were various stages of moral progress
(HI. 510; 539; 691), as did Seneca later {ep. 75, 8 ff.), and though the Stoic concept of
moral progress was a riddle to the unsympathetic Plutarch (in. 535), and the way in
which the Stoics contrived to reconcile it with their other doctrines remains obscure
1
de benef. 111. 18, 2, cf. e.g. Musonius fr. 2.
24
P- A. BRUNT
1
to us, it must be the key to their practical morality. It is significant that Chrysippus
himself chose to write not only about the ' successful acts' of the wise man but also
about the' appropriate acts' which were within the scope of ordinary men. Moreover,
to say that the wise man would act in such and such a way was in general equivalent
to saying that it was appropriate for others to do likewise, since ex hypothesi the wise
man knew what was appropriate. Hence, though exceptions occur,2 the wise man is
normally a model, and we can assume that the early Stoics did what Seneca, for
example, patently does in much of his de beneficiis, that is to say, treat statements about
the conduct of the wise man as precepts for the actions of others. Alternatively, the
Stoic could, like Panaetius, prescribe duties for the ordinary mortal, since in eis in
quibus sapientia perfecta non est, ipsum illudperfectum honesturn nullo modo, similitudines
honesti essepossum.3 But that was not a novelty with Panaetius, as often held: we can
catch Chrysippus doing the same thing. In strict Stoic doctrine only the wise can be
friends, and they never commit any faults (m. 625 f.; 631; 633), yet Chrysippus could
say that not every fault is a ground for dissolving a friendship, and that friendships
may properly be more or less close (724); like Cicero (de amicitia 21), he must have
in mind the friendships that spring from the similitudines honesti in ordinary men.
Cicero too quotes Chrysippus on conduct that befitted every man (quemque) and not
just the wise (de offic. in. 42), and Panaetius (ibid. 1. 41) seems to have adopted his
precepts for the treatment of slaves by masters (SVF in. 351).
The last text shows that Chrysippus treated earn partem philosophiae quae dat
propria cuique personae praecepta.* Ariston of Chios had already decried all such
precepts on the ground that they were superfluous for the wise man, who knew from
first principles how to act in every contingency, and inefficacious for all others, since
they were ignorant of such principles; very probably, he was polemizing against Zeno
himself, but however that may be, Cleanthes certainly defended the casuistry Ariston
rejected, provided that it was founded on the decreta ipsa philosophiae et capita, and as
he wrote about the kathekon, he concerned himself with prescribing rules that ordinary,
decent people should follow. Chrysippus, who devoted much attention to refuting
Ariston's heresies, followed his example by discussing the kathekon at still greater
length. The instances that Seneca gives of the praecepta that Ariston banned and that
presumably figured in early Stoic writings include rules for persons following specific
occupations, such as moneylenders, traders, farmers, and advisers of kings.5 But the
initial choice of suitable occupations was a problem no less fitted to engage the scrutiny
of such practical moralists than the kinds of conduct appropriate once the choice had
been made, and it was surely treated, for instance, in Chrysippus' Peri Bion. And if
early Stoic casuistry dealt with the moral problems of men in specific circumstances,
1
I do not find O. Luschnat, Philol. 1958, pp. 177 ff. illuminating.

SVFm. 759-63, on suicide. Panaetius held that ordinary men, unlike the sage (ibid. 650 ff.),
should avoid 'love', Sen. ep. 116, 5.
3
de offic. m. 13, cf. 16; 1. 46.
4
Sen. ep. 94, 1. What follows relates to the dispute between Ariston and Cleanthes. Chrysippus
polemized against Ariston, partly for his rejection of the proegmena (SVF in. 27), a connected
topic, cf. Sen. ep. 94, 8.
5
ep. 94, 14, cf. 'personae' in 35.
2
25
we might also expect it to take account of the conditions that must limit any individual's choice of occupation. Hence, it could have addressed itself to the choices open
to the poor.
Unfortunately little is known of Chrysippus' Peri Bion. Stobaeus says that for the
Stoics there were three 'leading' modes of livelihood, those of the king, the statesman
and the man of knowledge (S VF m. 686). Naturally this does not mean that no others
were allowable or worth consideration: rather the contrary. The second mode embraced the role of adviser to a king, and four citations from Chrysippus' Peri Bion
(685,692,693,702), like other evidence (690,692), show that he thought it proper for
the wise man to accept support from a royal patron, just as he might also depend on
friends (685, cf. 686). A life devoted to pure knowledge, on whose merits he expressed
superficially contradictory opinions (702 ff.), could also be a source of emolument; in
his work On Nature he categorically permitted the wise man to charge fees for instruction.1 It is thus at least clear that he discussed the means by which a wise man
could properly support himself (if he lacked a competence from his own property).
But obviously few men had the opportunity for political activity or the capacity to
teach philosophy, and it is inconceivable that no less than four books Peri Bion were
confined to these topics. Moreover, like Panaetius in his treatise On Appropriate
Action, Chrysippus may have adverted to the question of proper kinds of livelihood
for ordinary men in his own work with the same title. We need to keep in mind that
thanks to the survival of Cicero's de officiis Panaetius' treatise is the first and last work
by one of the great Stoics on whose contents we have adequate information and are
not obliged to resort to extensive conjecture. The detailed moral teaching of early
masters of the school is largely unknown, and what we know is determined by the
interests of later writers. The nature and extent of a good man's duty to serve the
state was a theme that naturally attracted their attention, while Plutarch finds a handle
to ridicule the claims made for the Stoic sage in Chrysippus' readiness to let him
'descend to hiring himself out as a sophist'; how can such a man despise moneymaking (cf. n. 1)? Dio's concern with humble folk was quite unusual, and nothing
forbids us to think that he has preserved old Stoic views about their problems, which
all other writers have neglected.
It is at least certain that Chrysippus did not hold that it was in principle debasing
to take fees or wages. But so much was also recognized by Panaetius. It does not
follow that Chrysippus or any early Stoic looked more favourably on the manual
crafts, etc. than Plato and Aristotle had done or than the Middle Stoic teachers were
to do. Moreover, Zeno had said that his ideal city would have no temples, since there
was no value in the work of builders and banausic people (SVFi. 264 f.). Chrysippus
certainly used the term 'banausic', since he tried to explain its etymology (11. 162).
But we do not know that he gave it the same range of connotation as Zeno had done
in his work on the Ideal City. He cannot have shared the opinions of Panaetius and
Posidonius on the value of 'means', for he exalted the simple life (m. 705 ff.). His
1
SVF HI, 701, cf. Plutarch's comments, 1043 E-1044 B from a Platonic standpoint. Cf.
Lucian, cited pp. 32 f. Quintilian xn. 7, 9 says that Zeno, Cleanthes and Chrysippus took fees.
According to Hecato(D.L. vn. 181), Chrysippus' property had been confiscated.
26
P. A. BRUNT
own master, Cleanthes, had controverted popular admiration for riches (Plutarch 33c)
in a work to which Dio perhaps refers in vn. 102. Cleanthes was a poor man, who is
said to have worked for hire, bringing up water for gardens by night, and grinding
barley (SVF1. 463; 465 f.), while philosophizing by day; it was no doubt later that
he (like Zeno and Chrysippus) lived by fees from pupils (p. 25 n.). His experience
must have proved to Chrysippus as well as to himself that paid occupations that were
generally despised might be compatible with a good life.
It is natural to turn to Epictetus for confirmation that Dio and Musonius drew their
unconventional views on employment for the poor from early Stoic writings. As
a former slave Epictetus might have been expected to evince more interest in the poor
than upper-class thinkers. However, he has rather little to say about concrete duties,
and what he does say is adjusted to the spiritual needs of his hearers. The philosopher's
lecture-room, he held, should be a hospital (in. 23, 30), and it is easy to see that he
would have conceived it as his task to heal those who were actually his patients. But
most of the individuals who are described in Arrian's notes of his teaching were men
like Arrian himself, of rank and wealth, and the scattered but numerous allusions to
the slaves and other possessions of his pupils, to their hopes of advancement and fears
of imperial disfavour, suggest that these individuals are typical. Yet a very few texts
indicate that Epictetus did share the views of Musonius and Dio, even though Bonhoffer went too far in asserting that he energetically stressed the duty to work and too
lightly claimed that Stoicism freed manual labour from shame.1 According to Epictetus
we can and should praise God while digging, ploughing and eating (1. 16, 16), and
a man can make a good death, if he has the right principles, whether farming, digging
or trading, just as much as if he is holding the consulship.2 Addressing a man who
entertained rather absurd fears of destitution (m. 26,2ff.),considering that he apparently
had a host of slaves to cook and buy for him, dress him, give him massage and follow
at his heels (ibid. 21 f.), he asks: if you lose your property, can't you draw water, act
as a scribe, escort boys to and from school or be a doorkeeper, and without disgrace?
(ibid. 7). And he bids him remember the healthiness of the life of slaves and workmen,
or of genuine philosophers, Diogenes, Socrates and Cleanthes, who combined study
with drawing water (ibid. 27). That is all. Perhaps it is enough. And we may recall
that to Epictetus the great master was Chrysippus, whose moral teaching in essential
points he seems to have followed.3
APPENDIX
PANAETIUS AND CICERO, ' DE O F F I C I I S ' I. I$O f.*
I. We have Cicero's own testimony that in his first two books de officiis he followed
Panaetius (An. xvi. 11,4), though he asserts that he did not simply translate his work
(11. 60) and that he made occasional modifications (m. 7), and it is clear that sometimes
1
2
Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet, 1894, pp. 73 f.
IV. 10, 11.
See the index s.v. Chrysippus in Bonhoffer's book, cited in n. 1, which refers also to his Epictet
und die Stoa, 1890.
4
Professor Finley's forthcoming Sather lectures take a rather different view.
3
27
he abbreviated (11.16) for instance he did not include the eloquent passage rendered
by Gellius xm. 28 (27) - and that he often introduced Roman exempla of a date after
Panaetius' time and that he must in some of these cases have given a different turn to
the theory he found in Panaetius' text. All such modifications of course confirm his
claim that he was not slavishly copying out Panaetius' views; where he did not make
changes, it was because he approved of what Panaetius had written. But it would be
easy and dangerous to exaggerate the extent to which he did import his own opinions.
Panaetius himself had already made some use of Roman exempla (11. 76). And if we
had not Cicero's explicit reference to his views on the subject, we might too readily
have jumped to the conclusion that it was Cicero and not Panaetius who recommended
from his own experience that an advocate should be prepared to defend persons he
thought guilty (11.51). Panaetius was himself a Rhodian aristocrat by birth (Pohlenz,
RE xxxvi. 2, 420) and a friend of Scipio Aemilianus, and Cicero may well have found
that Panaetius' sentiments agreed well with those of the Roman aristocracy. This is
not to say that there could be no differences in their inherited outlooks, and we might
go too far if we were to infer from 11. 60, where Cicero is reluctant to endorse his
condemnation of lavish expenditure by private persons on temples, theatres and
colonnades, that Cicero would necessarily have called attention to any point in which
he chose to depart from (and not merely to develop) the views Panaetius had expressed. But it would be equally unwarranted to assume that just because Cicero's
statements in de officiis appear to be characteristic of Romans of his class, they cannot
also have been the opinions of Panaetius.
II. Cicero writes in I. 150: iam de artificiis et quaestibus, quiliberates habendi, quisordidi
sint, haecfere accepimus. The last three words need not indicate that Cicero is appealing
to Roman tradition: some such phrase may well have stood in the original. It was
certainly Panaetius' view (as the context shows) that quae vero more agentur institutisque civilibus, de Us nihilestpraecipiendum; it is Panaetius, not Cicero, who would have
urged that Socrates and Aristippus (the latter not a person who would naturally occur
to a Roman's mind) were only entitled to deviate from conventions because of their
superhuman virtues, and who would have explicitly rejected the Cynicorum ratio,
which in Cicero's time had no vogue at Rome (1. 148). In any case haecfere accepimus
can refer to received doctrines, and the doctrines summarized would for the most part
(note fere) have had the approval of Plato and Aristotle, thinkers who are known to
have influenced Panaetius almost as much as his Stoic predecessors.
III. Cicero would hardly have interpolated a review of the means of earning a living
available to the humbler classes. He would surely have seen no reason to add to what
he found in Panaetius except for the purpose of giving practical guidance to his
son, to whom his treatise is addressed, and other Romans of the same class.1 The
1
In particular the liberal arts had little relevance for Cicero's circle, even though he can speak
of a Greek doctor as L. Crassus' friend {de orat. 1. 62), cf. para. XI, and for medicine, Pliny,
NH XXIX. 17: solam hanc artium Graecarum nondum exercet Romana gravitas, in tanto fructu
paucissimi Quiritium attigere.
28
P. A. BRUNT
section as a whole naturally belongs to the work of a systematic philosopher. Of

course that does not prove that Cicero has made no alteration in what Panaetius
wrote. Perhaps he abbreviated Panaetius' praise of landowning (i. 151) because it
would have been repetitive of what he had himself already written in his de senectute
(51 ff.).
IV. The whole section is concerned with quaestus; the word is repeated four times
in 1. 150 f., cf. omnium rerum ex quibus aliquidadquiritur (151); hence artes or artificia
are considered only as modes of making money: here Cicero's subject is not a man's
occupation (genus vitae or the like, 1.117) as such. Following Panaetius, he has already
had much to say of the army officer, the advocate and the jurist (1.115 f.; 121, cf. also
11. 45; 48-51; 68), and the duties of the statesman are seldom absent from his pages.
Indirectly these callings were at Rome often sources of enrichment, not invariably
illegitimate, but as they were not openly pursued for that purpose, they are irrelevant
to the new question raised in 1. 150. Similarly Cicero has more than once adverted to
the extent to which a gentleman can properly devote his time to Wissenschaft (1. 19;
71; 92), but only here is doctrina rerum hones tarum an ars from which a man may make
money, and only in that sense is it patently not honourable for a man of his own social
position; it is not unfitting for him to impart such doctrine, as he is imparting it in the
de officiis, in a wholly disinterested way.
V. Cicero treats as sordid
(a) all forms of money-making which incur odium, e.g. collecting tolls, usury;
(b) all hired labour by those quorum operae, non artes emuntur;
(c) retail trading which necessarily involves lying (cf. p. 16 n. 1);
(d) the work of artisans, nee enim quicquam ingenuum potest habere officina;
(e) skills that minister to pleasure,1 e.g. that of cooks, unguentarii, dancers.
But he allows as liberal
( / ) arts which require much knowledge2 and render great benefits, like medicine,
architecture, doctrina rerum hones tarum (presumably the whole range of teaching from
grammar to philosophy), though only eis quorum ordini conveniunt;
(g) large-scale trading, especially if the profits are invested in land.
However, the only livelihood unconditionally worthy of a free man is agriculture
(i.e. landowning, 1. 92; cf. p. 12).
VI. In the Stoic view (cf. in. 11 and 20) virtue (honestum) was the only good, and
Cicero makes it clear that Panaetius did not dissent (m. 12, 18 and 34); wealth was
one of the gifts of fortune (1. 115). But like other Stoics Panaetius also held that it was
one of the proegmena or commoda, which we should take, when opportunity offered,
rather than reject. Thus it is reasonable for us to use due care in preserving and
1
Cf. Sen. ep. 88, 19 (Posidonius?).

Advocates of every art tended to urge that it included much knowledge of all or most others,
cf. Cicero himself on the orator's in his rhetorical works, likewise Quintilian; for painting, Eupompus ap. Pliny, 2W/xxxv. 76; for architecture, Vitruvius 1. 1; for agriculture Columella 1, pr. 22 ff.;
for medicine, Galen 1. 53 ff. K (8TI Spioros lorrpds Kod
2
29
augmenting our property (i. 92; 11.64; 87); in Aristotelian vein Panaetius recommends
a mid-course between meanness and lavishness. Cicero complains that he gave no
precise rules for care of property (11. 86), but in general terms he prescribed that we
should not resort to base or odious gains (neque turpi quaestu neque odioso, 1. 92). It
would be particularly characteristic of Panaetius, as in 1. 150, to ban quaestus qui in
odia hominum incurrunt, since he, unlike some later Stoics, made men's approbation
a test of good conduct (1. 98, cf. 128 f.; 148 f.);1 it is almost as if the beauty of correct
action lay in the beholder's eye.
VII. In his account of the origins of society Panaetius stressed the importance of
manual crafts and of trade, and particularly mentioned medicine as a necessity of
civilized life (11. 12-17). But Plato and Aristotle had held similar views without
drawing the conclusion that craftsmen or traders were respectable people. It need not
then surprise us if Panaetius regarded retail trade and most of the artes as sordid or
gave a relatively low value even to the 'liberal arts'.
VIII. In my judgement 1. 150 f. corresponds pretty closely to the views of earlier
Greek philosophers, Cynics and probably some Stoics excepted. The ideal is still that
of the life of leisure and independence; in 1. 69 f. we have already had an expression of
approval for the conduct of men who retired to their estates to enjoy liberty cuius
proprium est sic vivere, ut velis, when they could endure nee populi nee principum mores.
Aristotle would certainly have endorsed the condemnation of retail trading, hired
labour and the work of artisans (p. 13 n. 1). He had also disapproved of usury
(1258 b 1 ff.). Publicans had a bad name in Greece (p. 15 n. 5, cf. Aristoph. Knights
248); Polybius thought them banausic (xn. 13,9). I will come back to the liberal arts.
The oddity is the qualified licence given to large-scale trading.2 But Rhodes was
a great trading city, and we can conjecture (evidence seems to be lacking) that merchants enjoyed exceptionally high esteem there, even among the governing class to
which Panaetius belonged.
IX. Of course much of all this corresponds also to upper-class Roman ideas. Cicero's
own contempt for retailers, artisans and hirelings is expressed, for instance, in de orat.
I. 83; in. 128; Brut. 297, and in speeches which also show that he could count on
similar feelings in his senatorial and equestrian audiences (Rose. Amer. 134; Flacc.
ljf.; Dom. 89). His definition of merces as auctoramentum servitutis may recall
Plautus, Cure. 482: in Tusco vico, Hi sunt homines qui ipsi sese venditant (cf. Hor. Sat.
II. 3, 226ff.).3At Rome too usury was traditionally disreputable (de off. 11. 89; Cato,
1
Cf. Sen. ad Polyh. 6, 3 (in Panaetian context); contrast Dio LXVIIpassim; Marc. Aur. 11. 6 {.;
IV. 3, 3 and often.
2
But there are no merchants (or usurers) in Pollux's list, p. 15 n. 5.
3
De Robertis, Lavoro e lavoratori, need not be right for Cicero's time in pressing Dig. vn. 8,4 pr.
(quos loco servorum in opens habet, Ulpian) and the implications of other late texts that hired
labourers were under the legal power of employers, and he misinterprets de offic. n. 22 on those
who subiciunt se imperio alterius. . .mercede conducti: they are the political hirelings of a Clodius.
1.41 assimilates slaves to mercennarii, but this is not only Panaetius but Chrysippus (SVFm, 351).
30
P. A. BRUNT
de agric. pref.). And it needs no proof that at Rome the highest social acclaim attached
to the landowner.
X. However, there are various indications that what Cicero writes hardly accords
with the actual social values at Rome. The publicans, with whom he was himself
closely associated, ranked as the 'flower of the equestrian order'; by contrast merchants were persons of much less note and respectability even than bankers, who were
generally moneylenders as well; indeed usury was openly practised by nobles, including some like Brutus whom Cicero himself esteemed,1 and the old-world prejudice against it could more easily have led Cicero to slip into copying out what
Panaetius had said than to have purposefully introduced the opprobrious allusion
from his own experience and reflection. (We cannot suppose that he is merely condemning moneylending as a whole-time occupation, but not when it was practised as
a sideline, for quaestus denotes ' gain' as such.) Again, it is true that Cato (de agric.
pref.) had described the merchant favourably as strenuum studiosumque rei quaerendae,
though unfortunately too prone to suffer calamitous losses, a fact Cicero may have
in mind in urging him to make for the haven of a country estate, and it would go too
far to suggest that Cicero or other Romans would have treated large-scale commerce
as altogether unfit for a free man; but the relative position of the merchant and the
publican in our text's scale of values is un-Roman. Cicero glosses this over by use of
the word portitor, which he had employed in referring to the unpopularity of taxfarmers in Italy itself (Qu. fr.i. i, 33), and he was of course aware of their oppressive
conduct in the provinces, though he implies that that of the publicans of Rhodes,
Panaetius' home, was worse (ibid. 325). But while it is odd that he should not have
excised altogether a censure of publicans that he found in Panaetius' treatise, it is surely
impossible to believe that he himself inserted it; the allusion must be seen as another
trace of hasty and uncritical reproduction of Panaetius' views.
XL I come now to the liberal arts. We have Cicero's own testimony (Tusc. Disp.
1. 3 ff.) that in general the arts were held in more honour by the Greeks than by the
Romans, though the instances he chooses, poetry, music and mathematics, are not all
clearly germane to our subject. However, of the liberal arts he mentions in de officiis
1. 151 medicine and doctrina rerum honestarum, when practised as a paid profession
(the kind of instruction Romans of high rank gave in law and oratory to their proteges, for which no fees were charged, was another matter), were in the hands of freeborn Greeks, if not of freedmen or slaves. It is commonly held that architecture, which
he also names, was considered respectable for ingenuous Romans.2 But Cicero does not
deny that all these arts are respectable to men of a certain, evidently inferior, social
status, and no examples can, I think, be found of professional architects at Rome drawn
1
Brunt ap. Seager, Crisis ofRoman Rep. pp. 122-8 gives the chief evidence; more in C. Nicolet,
L'ordre Squestre, 1966, pp. 287-387; in pp. 358 ff. he points out that few Romans, and no equites,
styled themselves mercatores.
2
So Friedlander, Sittengesch. Roms in 9 , 105. But over half of the civilian architects whose inscriptions Calabi Limentani, Studisulla societa romana collects (pp. 174ff.)are slaves and freedmen.
31
from the higher orders. It is then incontestable that the passage reflects the prejudices of
Cicero's Roman milieu. But it does not follow that it is not derived from Panaetius.
XII. According to Aristotle {Pol. 1337 b 4-22) free men should learn useful activities
which are liberal, but should not devote themselves even to these to an extent which
makes them resemble banausic and hireling work in hindering actions of virtue and
preoccupying and debasing the mind;1 moreover, an activity is only liberal if it is
pursued for one's own sake (in 1277 b 5 we read that a gentleman may even learn
manual crafts for his own occasional use) or that of his friends or for the sake of
virtue, but that the very same pursuit would often appear GT|TIK6V Koci SOUAIKOV, if
carried on 'because of others'. The banausic crafts themselves are condemned because
'it is the mark of a free man not to live in dependence on anyone else' (Rhet. 1367 331)
and the same objection evidently applies to working for a misthos. Now this is what the
thes does, and when Aristotle suggests that to practise the liberal arts 'because of
others' is characteristic of a thes, he is surely banning the liberal arts as a source of
gain, as professional livelihoods. In particular, professional musicians are stigmatized
as banausic (1339 b 9; 1341 b 9 ff.). The sophists of the fifth century had been censured for taking fees,2 and though there were special objections to taking money for
making men wise and virtuous, Xenophon, in relating that Socrates abstained from
charging for instruction on the ground that anyone who did so in effect turned himself into a slave of his pupils (Memor. 1. 2, 6), imputes to him a principle of general
application.
XIII. Now in de officiis I. 151 we are not concerned with the value of the subjectmatter of the liberal arts - indeed that is acknowledged to b e ' honourable' - but with
the propriety of making money out of them. The views expressed are less rigid than
Aristotle's. Free men may charge for professional services, but this is only appropriate
for persons of a certain standing. The question is simply whether Panaetius could not
probably have thought it degrading for a true gentleman to earn his living by skill
in the liberal arts.
XIV. Beyond doubt the practice of the sophists in taking fees had long become common in the Greek world. Isocrates did so, for instance, but in the Antidosis he skirts
delicately round the subject and carefully avoids the odious term misthos.^ His pupil,
Theopompus, excused the master on the ground of his lack of means but boasted that
he himself was able to devote his life to 'philosophy and learning' without resort to
fees.4 At Athens the profession of logographoi could be abused in public partly at
1
Cf. de offic. 1. 19; though it certainly contains Ciceronian additions, it may reflect Aristotle's
2
influence on Panaetius.
Grote, Hist, of Greece, 1888, vn. 34 fF.
3
He claims to take money, only because he had lost his patrimony (xv. 161 f.), and then only
from foreigners, and they make him gifts in gratitude (39 f.; 164-6); moreover, neither he nor any
sophist has ever made large a fortune (154 ff.). Jaeger's interpretation {Paideia, Eng. tr. Ill, 141 f.)
seems to me perverse. In xm. 18 he criticizes eristic philosophers for taking fees on false pretences.
4
FGH no. 115 F 25. This and other evidence shows that prejudice against teaching for money
did not die out after the fifth century, as E. R. Dodds, Plato, Gorgias, p. 365 seems to think,
32
P. A. BRUNT
least on the ground that such men worked for pay.1 DrNutton informs me that, so
far as we know, doctors almost invariably made charges.2 Still, this was a source of
some embarrassment. 'All arts are honourable' declares a Hippocratic writer of the
Hellenistic period,3 ' if they are not accompanied by base greed and unseemliness
(&ayr\\ioativr\s) and are practised with professional method'; the true physician is not
interested in making money and is contrasted with banausic cheats. The author of
Precepts would have him adjust his charges to the patient's means and sometimes give
treatment free; he must not begin by discussing fees with the sick man; 'better to
reproach a patient you have saved than extort money from one at death's door'. 4
This procedure meant that there was no contractual relation, and that the doctor in
effect relied on gifts made in gratitude; one may compare Protagoras' mode of charging his pupils.5 Long afterwards, Galen condemned those who practised medicine in
order to get rich and urged doctors also to treat the poor who need them (i. 57 ff. K); 6
this is not of course equivalent to disapproval of professional fees, but amounts to
insisting that the art must be followed for its own sake. In Galen's time indeed the
masters of the second sophistic, though often men of high degree, charged both for
teaching and for advocacy in the courts, or took salaries as professors from the emperor or from cities, though again some of the payments they received were disguised
as gifts, and some were commended for accepting pupils or undertaking cases without
fee.7 Lucian himself was among those who earned large sums by declamations.8 He
seems to find no shame in this, whereas he thinks that a salaried post, except in the
public service,9 is disgraceful; the holder loses his freedom.10 Presumably he held with
reason that this was not true, when a man was not dependent on a single employer.
Apparently employees would palliate their conduct by pleading fate or necessity or
their supposed affection for their patrons.11 Philosophers too now commonly taught
for money, evincing in Lucian's view contemptible greed and even flouting their
professed principles; in reality his second accusation may justly have lain only against
the Cynics and some Stoics whose judgement on 'wealth' approximated to that of
1
RE xni. 1024,1027 ff.

See L. Cohn-Haft, Smith College St. in Hist. 1956; H. Below, Der Artf im rb'm. Recht, 1953,
for some evidence. When doctors treated slaves, often valuable, the masters presumably paid.
3
Decorum 2 against doctors IOETA pccvccucfris ctTTcniovTes, cf. 5 and 18; the stress on decorum
supports W. H. S. Jones's view that the writer was under Stoic (Panaetius'?) influence (Loeb ed. of
Hippocrates n. 270).
4
Precepts 4-6; here too decorum recurs, 6, 8 and 13.
s
Plato, Protag, 328 B.
6
AT. Pol. 1258 a 11 had said that it was a perversion ofmedicineif it subserved money-making.
Cf. Quint. 1. 12, 16 on oratory. Charges could be defended on the basis that the professional man
needed them for maintenance, though he did not practise his art for pecuniary motives.
> Philostr. v. Soph. 519, 525, 526, 527, 533, 535, 566, 604, 605, 615; gifts, 521, 533, 538, 574;
charges remitted or scaled down for poor, 519, 604, 606. Rhetoricians were suspected of being
avaricious, 499, but Ph. argues that men value most what they pay for, in defence of Protagoras,
494.
8
Apology 15.
> Ibid. 11 f.
10
Ibid. 1, 3 f., 6, 11, cf. Salaried Posts, passim (which recalls Macaulay on chaplains in English
noble houses, c. 1700, Hist, of England, ch. m).
11
Apology 8-10.
2
33
Cynics. Even Cleanthes had lived on fees (p. 25 n. 1). But as late as the second
century the practice was not universal. There is no indication that Epictetus made any
charge: he had a little estate.2 Lucian's Nigrinus, said to be a Platonist and owner of
property, could also dispense with professional earnings. And not only Lucian but
Plutarch still finds it unworthy of a philosopher to make money from his doctrines
(p. 25 n. 1). But philosophy,' the greatest of divine blessings' (Galen, Scr. Min. 1,
p. 104), was the queen of the sciences or arts, and like Galen (1. 53 ff. K), the masters
of other arts all tended to exalt their own skills by connecting them with philosophy.
XV. So far as I am aware, there is no evidence before the second sophistic, too late
to be relevant to Panaetius, that Greeks of high station and hereditary wealth obtained
an income overtly from professional earnings. What Quintilian says of the orator is
no doubt suspect, since it is Roman, but I suspect that it holds also for the best Greek
practice; even the blind can see that it is 'by far most honourable and worthy of
liberal disciplines not to sell one's services'; only if a man lacks sufficient means to
give them is he entitled to a modest and necessary compensation for the time he
devotes to the affairs of others, but still that compensation should not be contractual;
ne pauper quidem tamquam mercedem accipiet sed mutua benivolentia utetur. This
corresponds to the persistent Greek tendency to treat fees as gifts,3 or the pleas of
salaried teachers Lucian rejects (p. 32 n. 10). In the same spirit Vitruvius asserts that
he had not studied architecture to make money and that by taking a commission only
when invited he was in the position of one who conferred a favour (vi pr. 5). The
reality was no doubt generally different, and Marcus Aurelius can still assimilate the
architect and doctor to banausic craftsmen (vi. 35).
XVI. Panaetius himself spent his life in philosophic study, justified no doubt in terms
of his own theory excellenti ingenio {de offic. 1. 71). Some other thinker, probably
Posidonius, held that it was natural and right for the philosopher to teach as well as
learn (1. 158). Panaetius did in fact become head of the Stoic school at Athens. But
he was also a Rhodian aristocrat, and there is no record that he took money for his
teaching. Plutarch says that the fruit of the friendship with Scipio Aemilianus he and
Polybius enjoyed lay in benefits to their fatherlands (814 CD). A very inaccurate
account cited by Gellius (xvn. 21) refers to the gifts of money Carneades received
from Alexander(!) and to Panaetius as merely living with the elder Scipio(!). Quintilian
names no eminent philosopher after Chrysippus who took fees (p. 25 n. 1). With his
admiration for Plato and Aristotle and his social background Panaetius is likely enough
to have done no more than modify the old objections to every kind of gain that did
not come from the land, objections that had not been wholly abandoned in the Greek
world centuries later.
1
E.g. Hermotimus 9, 59, 80 (cf. 10 for Stoic moneylending; also Philosophies for Sale, 23);
Anabiountes 34; Parasite 52, etc. (cf. p. 32 n. 10). Contrast Nigrinus 26. Some criticisms amount to
saying that the teachers charged too much or were fraudulent.
2
Diss. 1. 1, 10.
3
xii. 7, 8 ff. Cf. p. 31 n. 3, p. 32 nn. 5, 6. Epicurus took cnrotpxorf from pupils, Plut.
1117D.
34
P. A. BRUNT
XVII. There are positive reasons for believing that de officiis i. 150 f. stems from
Panaetius. However, given the generally derivative character of Cicero's first two
books, the burden of proof lies with anyone who maintains that they are Cicero's
own addition and reflect views that are characteristic of upper-class Romans only and
not also of Greeks. But there is no indication, unless it be a quotation from Terence,
that Cicero has altered what he found, and the burden cannot be sustained.
BRASENOSE COLLEGE, OXFORD
P. A. BRUNT

Aspects of The Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and of The Stoics

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Aspects of the Social Thought of Dio Chrysostom and

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ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL THOUGHT OF

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DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

literature it is a conventional theme, long ago given classic expression by Xenophon,

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A. N. Sherwin-White, Letters of Pliny, p. 313; p. 3 20 for summary statement, cf. p. 15 n. 3; p. 3 3

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

jurious, he argues, to the society of slave-owners, leading on to adultery, seduction

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

H. I. Marrou, Hist, de I'education dans I'antiquite3, pp. 244, 378.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

I do not find O. Luschnat, Philol. 1958, pp. 177 ff. illuminating.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

section as a whole naturally belongs to the work of a systematic philosopher. Of

Cf. Sen. ep. 88, 19 (Posidonius?).

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

RE xni. 1024,1027 ff.

DIO CHRYSOSTOM AND STOIC SOCIAL THOUGHT

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