Dignitas Recast
Cicero’s “Cum Dignitate Otium” As a Radical Reconstruction of Roman Virtue
During Rome’s late Republic — an era marred by political instability and escalating tensions among the ruling class — Cicero emerged as a figure keenly focused on the nature of dignitas and its role in shaping the behavior of Roman leaders. In his 56 BC speech, Pro Sestio, Cicero challenges conventional Roman notions of dignitas, offering an alternative interpretation that aims to reinforce Rome’s Republican institutions.
This essay probes Cicero’s exploration of dignitas by 1) establishing the centrality of dignitas to Roman morality and political life and 2) offering a new English translation of Pro Sestio and arguing that Cicero’s “cum dignitate otium” represents a radical reconstruction of dignitas focused on empowering good men to preserve the Republic.
I. Dignitas Is Central to Roman Moral And Political Identity
Roman identity formation stems directly from pan-Mediterranean ideas about virtue. The Greeks — via their poleis (cities) to Rome’s east and apoikiai (colonies) to Rome’s south — exported a robust tradition of written myth, theater, and philosophy emphasizing the cultivation of virtues for flourishing individuals and states. The Etruscans to Rome’s north, writing in their own language, offered a different interpretation of virtue that emphasized piety and ritual purity via the auguries and auspices. Rome’s predecessors, the Latini, living south of Etruria and north of Villanova, endeavored to craft a distinct moral infrastructure in their eponymous language.
As Latin-speaking peoples matured into Romans and came to dominate first Latium, then Etruria, and ultimately the hellenized regions of Greece and North Africa, Roma became a magnet for pan-Mediterranean ideas. Just as a medley of Doric, Ionian, Corinthian, and Tuscan columns dotted Rome’s physical landscape by Cicero’s Late Republic, a diverse array of ideas and philosophies characterized Roman moral and political life. A set of decidedly Roman virtues, understood in Latin, came to the fore and highlighted both Greek ethics and Etruscan religious observance.
While there is no direct corollary in Greek, Greek observers of Roman politics circle around notions of dignitas and illuminate the significance of dignitas to a virtue ethics regime. In his Histories, Polybius describes Rome at the intersection of Greek virtues, “Just as the combination of courage and self-discipline curbs vice and makes individuals virtually indomitable by others, so it does for communities too” (6.48). Similarly, Plutarch, in his Parallel Lives, deploys Greek virtue to describe the ambition of Julius Caesar. Greek interpretations situate Roman politics, and its leading figures, within a world that understands a pair of layered constitutions — the constitution of the state and constitution of the individual — both operating along axes of virtue. These Latin virtues emerged at the intersection of Greek notions of courage, wisdom, and goodness as well as Etruscan notions of piety:
If you combined in your life all the vectors of excellence … manly deeds … in war and peace … fulfilling the many obligations of reciprocity that bound you to the living, the dead, and the divine … you would also possess dignitas, an attribute signifying that you enjoyed a certain standing in the community … and the respect others were willing subjectively to grant you … you would also inevitably possess auctoritas, the quality that caused others to receive your suggestions as though they were binding injunctions … You would, in short, be living the sort of life that all good men would want to live (Kaster 7).
Dignitas, and consequently auctoritas, capture numerous dimensions of virtue. In Pro Murena, Cicero writes, “For all the arts which win the interest of us Roman people must have both an admirable dignitatem and a gratifying utility” (20.42). Thus, dignitas, a uniquely Roman confluence of power, honor, piety, and goodness, became a most sought after label among Roman elites.
Importantly, the dignitas of an individual is inseparable from the dignitas of Rome. Livy uses dignitas somewhat sparingly, conferring the label only upon people and places playing a critical role in Rome’s narrative history. Dignitas appears six times in the first two chapters of Ad Urbe Condita: it references the Sabine women (1.13), King Servius Tullius (1.42), the Esquiline Hill (1.44), Sp. Lucretius Tricipitinus, the father of Lucretia (2.2), and the Senate’s loss of dignitas after the Plebeian secession (2.60). The vice inverse, indignitas, is invoked seven times. All seven instances reflect existential threats to the state: Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (1.34), the indignities to Rome under Superbus (1.40), the death of Lucretia (1.59), more indignities under Superbus (1.59), slander against L. Junius Brutus (2.7), the siege of the Etruscans (2.12), and Coriolanus’ relationship with the plebs (2.34). To Romans, dignitas transcended Greek moral virtue, it captured one’s relationship to state and was central to Rome’s political health.
As Rome’s power grew, so did its perception of dignitas and the dignitas of Rome’s leading men. Kaster explains: “Rome’s imperial expansion brought the individual to the fore in still more dramatic and consequential ways. Extended military commands and brilliant victories over foreign foes threw a spotlight on a series of individuals who claimed virtually unprecedented glory and dignitas” (8). These individuals included the likes of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Scipio Africanus in the third century BC.
However, Rome’s increasingly militaristic notions of dignitas yielded an imbalance within aristocratic competition. Kastor argues that dignitas stratification led to the rise of individuals such as Pompey the Great, who “accumulated unparalleled power and prestige almost completely outside a traditional senatorial career” (8). The imperialization of dignitas eventually resulted in the emergence of a single man with de facto and de iure control over all the important levers of power, Augustus, the first to be acknowledged as the princeps (8). The transformation dignitas thus preceded and perhaps provoked the transformation of Rome.
II. Cicero Introduces Otium Dignitas Optimatum to Bulwark The Republic Against Malitia Populares
After returning from exile in 57 BC, amidst intensifying competition between Pompey and Julius Caesar, Cicero delivered Pro Sestio and endeavored to address a crisis of dignitas. In the first line of his speech, Cicero addresses a glaring incongruity between Rome’s apparent dignitas, public apathy, and mounting threats against the Republic. “With so much wealth of the Republic and such dignitate imperi, not enough citizens with courage and great spirit … would dare to put themselves and their safety in danger for the state of the nation and for common freedom … [citizens are] more concerned for themselves than for the public interest” (1.1). Sestius, who Cicero defends, is tribune of the plebs accused of inciting public violence. Questions of when violence is permissible and by whom immediately make reference to the Catalinian episode that catalyzed Cicero’s exile. More importantly, Cicero’s concerns about just violence implicate dignitas, which suggests when and where violence might be constitutionally permissible. It is therefore unsurprising that Cicero specifically highlights dignitas as the focus of his defense: “but the rei publicae dignitas comes before my eyes and urges me to take it up, and it encourages me to leave these minor things aside” (3.7).
Cicero then proceeds to subtle subversions of traditional dignitas, using the Cataline conspiracy to orient late Republican political upheaval within Rome’s nuanced moral infrastructure. Cicero ascribes dignitas to men such as Cato and Sestius, as well as their supporters, who stood against Catilina and defended the Republic. Cicero exclaims, “the dignitatem of those who had defended the common safety at the risk of their own lives” (5.12). Consequently, Cicero’s next mention of dignitas focuses on those who facilitated the conspiracy, “the betrayers of your dignitatis, the enemies of all good men, who thought that they were adorned with those fasces and other emblems of the highest honor and power, in order to destroy the Senate, to crush the equestrian order, and to extinguish all the laws and institutions of our ancestors” (7.17). At first glance, Ciceronian dignitas does not appear to diverge from the Livian dignitas; both emphasize power, history, and loyalty to the state. However, by levying charges of indignity against conspiratorial Senators, Cicero challenges prevailing notions that Rome’s military officers and senatorial elite monopolize Roman virtue. Cicero contends, “But those who said that we should dignitati esse serviendum (serve our dignitas), take care of the Republic, follow a code of conduct in all of life, not to be led by self-interest, and that it was necessary to face dangers on behalf of our country, to accept wounds, and to face death, he said, prophesied and were mad” (10.23). Cicero initiates his subversion of dignitas by tethering dignitas to the maintenance of the Republic or the “public interest,” as opposed to individual “private interest.”
Cicero is explicit that his own life has been a project in dignitas. “I have always considered everything in relation to dignitatem, and have believed that nothing should be sought by a man in life without it,” Cicero claims (21.48). However, in light of Kastor’s account, Cicero’s self-definition was potentially surprising to a late Republican audience. While Julius Caesar and Pompey, among others, amassed dignitas by vanquishing military foes, both foreign and domestic, Cicero spent a life making speeches and politicking, including a period of otium (leisure/study) in exile.
In this way, Cicero begins to invert notions of dignitas and anticipates his forthcoming reconstruction. Two sections later, Cicero goes further, dubbing himself a paragon of dignitas and model for aspiring elites, “young men … who seek dignitatem, the Republic, and glory, not to be sluggish if any necessity ever calls you to defend the Republic against wicked citizens, and do not flee from courageous plans by remembering my fate” (23.51). Indeed, Cicero even describes his emergence from exile as a function of dignitas, “I was nevertheless called back to my former dignitatem by the voice of the Republic after a short time of grief” (23.52).
Cicero contrasts the dignitas he cultivated in a life of politics against emergent anti-Republican laws and wicked men. “What would a man born for virtue, dignitatem, and glory do, strengthened by the violence of wicked men, with the laws and judgments abolished?” (41.89). Cicero thus views the crisis of dignitas as a political struggle over laws contested between good men and bad men with the soul of Republic at stake.
At the thematic climax of his speech, Cicero introduces “cum dignitate otium,” recasting dignitas as a virtue of otium, a Roman concept capturing divergent notions of leisure, study, and peace. Cicero defines two classes of Roman leaders to contextualize his reconstruction of dignitas: the populares and the optimates. The populares “are those who want to be pleasing to the masses with what they do and say” while the optimates “are those who act in a way that approves the plans of the best” (Pro Sestio, 45.96). To Cicero, optimates are not simply aristocrats. Instead, Cicero proposes an interpretation of optimates heterodox to Rome’s social and economic hierarchy. Cicero writes, “they are innumerable … men of the highest order who have access to the Senate, rural and municipal Romans, businessmen, and even freedmen … neither guilty, nor naturally bad, nor mad, nor prevented by domestic ills” (45.97). In other words, the optimate class represents all of the fundamentally good men of Rome in every social class. While populares aim at favor among the masses, optimates seek what is true and best for the state. Thus, optimates cannot simply follow dignitas, as they may be perverted by lust for wealth, power, and popular acclaim. Optimates must, therefore, subscribe to a new kind of dignitas. Cicero asks, “What is the goal for these governors of the Republic that they must look at and steer their course towards? It is the most excellent and most desirable thing for all healthy, good, and happy people: cum dignitate otium” (45.98). Dignitas with leisure or dignitas with peace — and perhaps, indeed, dignitas oriented by both — constitutes Cicero’s radical reconstruction of Rome’s sacred virtue.
Cum dignitate otium is most clearly a rebuttal against prevailing notions in late Republican Rome that dignitas ought to be achieved through military jockeying against other Roman elites. At one level, when it comes to statecraft, otium simply means peace. Thus, Cicero perhaps calls for a kind of ceasefire among Roman power-brokers. But in private life, otium takes on a different meaning, describing thoughtful leisure, reflection, or meditation; the inverse of negotium (toilsome work). In this sense of otium, Cicero proposes a more thoughtful and reverent dignitas. Cicero clarifies, “the foundations of this otiosae dignitatis are as follows: religion, auspices, powers of the magistrates, authority of the Senate, laws, customs of the ancestors, courts, jurisdiction, trust, provinces, allies, military power, treasury. It requires great courage, great intelligence, and great perseverance to defend and advocate for all these things” (45.98-99). Cicero hereby calls upon the powerful men of Rome to engage in self-reflection, harmonizing their pursuit of dignitas with respect for the Republic and the gods.
Without otium, dignitas drives Roman elites to become populares in a kind of restless frenzy for power. They “seek new uprisings and changes in the state … nourished by a certain inherent frenzy of the soul and are delighted by the discord and sedition of the citizens,” Cicero contends. Otium thereby counterbalances the worst impulses of dignitas and restores Republican virtue, bridging the divide between private interest and Rome’s interest.
Just as dignitas fails without otium, otium is insufficient without dignitas. “It is not suitable for men to be carried away by the dignitas of public affairs without providing for otium, nor to embrace any otium that is contrary to dignitas” (45.98). Indeed, while the optimates are “innumerable,” they suffer from apathy, otium without dignitas, and are unable to save the Republic from an emboldened populares (45.97). “Bold and wicked men are urged on by whim and also incite themselves against the Republic, while the good are somehow slower and … while they want to retain otium even sine dignitate, they lose both,” writes Cicero (47.100). Cicero’s project is thus a two-fold call to action: for bad men to find otium and for good men to achieve dignitas.
Cicero further explicates his novel Roman virtue by emphasizing the transience of popularis ambition and the divinity of optimate pursuits. Cicero ultimately views dignitas populares as a perversion of weak, insecure, and restless souls craving immediate favor among the masses and willing to sacrifice their souls and lose the Republic. Cicero implores those perverted by a wrongheaded dignitas to exit the realm of politics: “For those who are led by pleasures and have given themselves over to the allurements of vices and desires, let them be sent off to pursue honors, let them not touch the state” (66.139). Cicero illustrates the fickleness of popular acclaim, arguing that while some populares might achieve temporary recognition from assemblies, great men are “adorned by every sign of approval from the Roman people” (59.127). Cicero thus extols the virtues of the optimates, urging young men of both low and noble birth to follow in his footsteps and embrace intellect and virtue as the paths to true honor and glory (Pro Sestio, 65.136-137).
By dedicating oneself to the state and its values through cum dignitate otium, the optimates achieve immortality. Cicero again anticipates Livian dignitas by listing the greatest optimates in Roman history:
“In this respect we should imitate our Brutus, Camillus, Ahalas, Decius, Curios, Fabricius, Maximus, Scipio, Lentulus, Aemilius, and innumerable others who established this state. Whom indeed I place in the company and number of the immortal gods. Let us love our country, be equal to the senate, and consult the good; let us neglect the fruits of the present, and serve the glory of posterity” (68.143).
He who endures temporal adversity and emulates noble Republican forefathers is destined to divine immortality, a fate far superior to any fleeting popularity enjoyed by a popularis (66.138). Optimates appreciate that the Republic requires hard work and sacrifice, “with dignitate, not with pleasure” (66.139). Ultimately Cicero asserts that “those who have repressed the impulses and efforts of [populares] … have always been considered grave, leaders, commanders, and authors of dignitatis atque imperi” (66.139). Cicero implores: “Imitate these things, by the immortal gods, you who seek dignitas, praise, and glory! These things are great, divine, and immortal; these things are celebrated by fame, recorded in the annals, and propagated to posterity” (48.102).
III. Conclusion
Cicero’s Pro Sestio reorients Roman dignitas, focusing on the preservation of the Republic at a time of political upheaval. By introducing “cum dignitate otium,” Cicero calls for a shift in the values of Roman elites, advocating for a more thoughtful and reverent pursuit of dignitas harmonized with respect for the Republic and the divine. This transformative vision implores both the good and the wicked to find a balance between otium and dignitas, urging each faction to reject fleeting ambitions of popular acclaim and instead dedicate themselves to the enduring legacy of virtuous statecraft. The payoff for an honorable life, Cicero argues, is immortality.
Cicero’s radical reconstruction of Rome’s sacred dignitas — though met with resistance during his lifetime — offers an enduring reminder about how one might harmonize individual ambition with collective interests.
Sources Cited
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, and Michael Grant. Selected Political Speeches of Cicero. Penguin, 1994.
Kaster. “Values and Virtues, Roman.” Oxford Reference, 2010, https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780195170726.001.0001/acref-9780195170726-e-1307;jsessionid=56FE54A0B05E4A4615CF71E5EBAC523C.
Livy, and Aubrey De Selincourt. The Early History of Rome. Penguin, 2002.
“M. TVLLI CICERONIS PRO P. SESTIO ORATIO.” Cicero: Pro Sestio, https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/sestio.shtml#2.
Plutarch. “The Life of Julius Caesar.” Life of Caesar, https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html.
Polybius, et al. The Rise of the Roman Empire. Penguin, 2003.