For the remainder of the citizenry – the
great mass of the free male population –
Cicero’s formula is much simpler. The private
citizen (privatus) should seek only to live on
fair and equal terms with his fellow citizens,
neither submissively and abjectly nor inflating
his own importance. And he should will that
res publica be preserved in peace and honour.
Such is the man we call a good citizen (De
Officiis: I. (24); cf. Burchell, 1998). Hence the
private citizen becomes the necessary foil to
the more charismatic but unstable public one.
And the unheroic virtues of civility – trying to
be fair and reasonable with others, not raising
one’s voice above the throng – become
an antidote to the sometimes uncivil civicmindedness
of the great.