Chapter 5 - Semper Manebit: Poetry and Cultural Memory Theory in Cicero’s De Legibus

Summary

Unlike Cicero the orator, philosopher, and celebrated opponent of tyrants, Cicero the poet died a relatively speedy death and left an uncontested legacy. Cicero’s poetic activity earned little mention after his death, and, except for a more holistic assessment from Plutarch, was typically discussed only to be mocked or wished away.¹ Regardless of its literary value, I suggest that Cicero understood his poetry as a means to influence and codify memory, and that discussions of his poetry led him to intuit concepts relevant to modern memory studies. To demonstrate this, I turn to Cicero’s De Legibus, a fragmentary dialogue from the late 50s BCE.² Although the work’s central concerns are legal and political philosophy, it opens with a discussion of a scene from Cicero’s Marius, alongside consideration of Cicero’s potential to write history. Because of this, scholarly treatments that eschew philosophical and legal approaches often examine questions of genre and historical writing.³