Hence Cicero’s stark distinction between
the ethical duties of public and private,
‘active’ and ‘passive’, citizens. For Cicero
moral duties are specific to particular types of
person and their public roles (Hellegouarc’h,
1963: 152–6). His major ethical treatise,
revered by the early moderns as ‘Tully’s
Offices’, is explicitly directed towards the
personal ethical demands of this public citizen.
By developing the great Stoic attributes
of constantia and apathaeia he is to be made
capable at once of personal self-assertion
and of civic self-control. And he is to understand
that the quest to enlarge his own dignitas
is secondary to his quest to maintain
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the dignitas of the city (Burchell, 1998).
Cicero’s political theory, when he resorts to
that style of argument, also serves as a kind
of leash for the man of dignitas, a method
for domesticating the beast. In his De Re
Publica he describes his ideal statesman.
This individual should regard himself as a
pilot (gubernator), ensuring the safety of the
passengers, rather than as a military hero,
ensuring their own immortality through
glory: his reward will come in another life.9
Yet Cicero is always disappointed by the
incapacity of the ‘great men’ of his time to
submit themselves to this form of selfconstraint:
instead, they always want to rule,
‘like kings’, by the force of their own
personality.