Penpals with the Past: Petrarch Writes to Cicero
On being friends with long-dead philosophers and other intellectuals
It’s not uncommon to admire long-dead historical figures for their various feats and achievements. But what if we looked at them not as distant paragons of virtue, but as friends? This is how intellectuals from antiquity and well into the early modern period often viewed the heroes of the past.
How did they get in touch with these intellectual greats of bygone times? Well, in the case of late Medieval/early Renaissance humanist Petrarch, it was pretty simple: he would write them letters.
Around the mid-1300s, Petrarch wrote letters to Roman philosopher/orator Cicero, who lived in the first century BCE, and Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, who lived in the first century CE. In part, this exercise was inspired by the rediscovery of Cicero’s letters to his friends, which contain much historical, cultural, and philosophical insight.
In these letters, Petrarch writes to his long-dead friends “from the land of the living,” as though Cicero and Seneca were not solidly in the past, but somehow also in the present too, just separated from Petrarch by virtue of the fact that they are dead and Petrarch is alive.
And, indeed, Petrarch does not write letters that are wholly glowing. In fact, although he repeatedly addresses Cicero as “friend” (amice), he takes him to task in not one but two letters.
Why? Well, according to Petrarch, Cicero’s political career and the turbulent end to his life—assassinated in the proscriptions for his support of Octavian (later Augustus) over Mark Antony—means that he failed to truly live up to the standard of a philosophical life. He was too caught up in ego, Petrarch chides him, ever chasing the glory of military triumphs and courtroom wins against villains like Catiline.
At the end of the first of the two letters to Cicero, Petrarch sums up his main argument (text VIII.2 Fantham 2017, translations are my own):
I grieve the change in your fate, my friend, and your errors I both feel embarrassment for and pity, and now, just like in the case of Brutus, “I attribute nothing to these talents, in which I know that you were taught.” For what good is it to teach other people, how does it help you to perpetually speak with most eloquent words about virtue, if you do not listen to your own self? Ah, how much better it would have been for a philosopher to grow old in a tranquil place, pondering that immortal life, as you wrote yourself in some work, not this paltry one we’re living now. How much better would it have been for you to have had no fasces [symbols of power in the Roman government], to have yearned for no triumphs, for no Catilines to have gotten you all worked up. But I know I say these things in vain. Farewell forever, my Cicero.
Doleo vicem tuam [i.e. your untimely assassination], amice, et errorum pudet ac miseret, iamque cum eodem Bruto ‘his artibus nichil tribuo, quibus te instructissimum fuisse scio.’ Nimirum quid enim iuvant alios docere, quid ornatissimis verbis semper de virtutibus loqui prodest, si te interim ipse non audias? Ah quanto satius fuerat philosopho presertim in tranquillo rure senuisse, de perpetua illa, ut ipse quondam scribis loco, non de hac iam exigua vita cogitantem, nullos habuisse fasces, nullis triumphis inhiasse, nullos inflasse tibi animam Catilinas. Sed hed quidem frustra. Eternum vale, mi Cicero.
Petrarch gives his friend Cicero some advice: live in tranquillity, removed from the chaos of contemporary politics, and focus on the philosophical teachings Cicero himself so revered. It is, of course, too late now: Cicero is already dead. But that doesn’t stop Petrarch of being, of all things, embarrassed for him (erroroum pudet)! I actually laughed when I read that line. Petrarch might think that Cicero acted foolishly in certain ways during his life, but to actually be embarrassed for him? What does Petrarch think that Cicero would do? Blush? We know from Cicero’s own letters that this would hardly be the case.
The real answer, of course, is “nothing”—Petrarch is writing as much for Cicero as he is his contemporary readers. But, nevertheless, a personal epistle to Cicero as a friend strikes a certain chord.
One letter was not enough; Petrarch needed two to get all his points across. In his second letter, he elaborates on the ways in which Cicero’s philosophical ideas are at odds with his unphilosophical life (text VIII.3 Fantham 2017):
With your leave, I shall say, Cicero, that you lived like a man, spoke like an orator, and wrote like a philosopher; it was your life I criticized, not your intellect or eloquence, as one who marvels as the former, and am awed by the latter; and I find missing from your life nothing except consistency, the devotion to repose owed to the profession of philosopher and the flight from civil wars, once liberty was quenched and the republic already buried and lamented. See how differently I treat you than you treated Epicurus in many places, but most explicitly in De Finibus, in which you approve his life everywhere but mock his intellect.
Tu quidem, Cicero, quod pace tua dixerim, ut homo vixisti, ut orator dixisti, ut philosophus scripsisti. Vitam ego tuam carpsi, non ingenium aut linguam, ut qui illud mirer, hanc stupeam. Neque tamen in vita tua quidquam praeter constantiam requiro, et professioni philosophicae debitum quietis studium, et a civilibus bellis fugam, extincta libertate ac sepulta iam et complorata Republica. Vide ut aliter tecum ago ac tu cum Epicuro multis in locis, sed expressius in libro De Finibus agebas. Eius enim ubilibet vitam probas, rides ingenium.
Petrarch is disappointed that Cicero lived merely ut homo, as a human, and a philosopher should be more than that, larger and greater than life itself. Producing philosophical words is not enough to actually lead a philosophical life—Cicero’s words were certainly philosophical, but his life (vita) was not a philosopher’s life, a paradox that Petrarch hastens to resolve in this second of the two letters to Cicero. It seems that, in Petrarch’s view, Cicero failed to “live unknown,” as Epicurus, whom Cicero so disagreed with, might recommend—that is, the Epicurean maxim to “live unknown” (λάθε βιώσας), to lead a life of tranquility away from the turmoil of life in human society.
We can take a look at Petrarch’s letters to Seneca another time, but for right now I want to take a look at Seneca’s actual work. For he too considered the intellectual greats of the past to be his friends (amici). Although this time he is not writing letters to these friends, but rather about them: for they are always present in his life via his home’s collection of marble portraits of past philosophers, poets, and other celebrated thinkers.
In Epistle 64, Seneca discusses the merits of the great men of the past, and the ways in which it is important to carry on their legacies. Even if these historical figures did not achieve everything, Seneca says, we must still revere them. He writes (Ep. 64.9, text Gummere 1917, translation my own):
Those who lived before our time did many things, but they did not completely finish them. Nevertheless, they ought to be taken up and worshipped like the gods. Why shouldn’t I have statues of great men as sources of inspiration and celebrate their birthdays? Why shouldn’t I always address them for the sake of honoring them? The same veneration which I owe to my teachers I owe to those teachers of the human race, from whom the beginnings of so great a good have flowed.
Multum egerunt, qui ante nos fuerunt, sed non peregerunt. Suspiciendi tamen sunt et ritu deorum colendi. Quidni ego magnorum virorum et imagines habeam incitamenta animi et natales celebrem? Quidni ego illos honoris causa semper appellem? Quam venerationem praeceptoribus meis debeo, eandem illis praeceptoribus generis humani, a quibus tanti boni initia fluxerunt.
In Roman villas, it was common to have a variety of marble statues, often of historical and/or mythological and religious figures. Some scholars have suggested that certain Romans liked to set them up in alphabetical order, like a marble encyclopedia, and the statues might have had little inscriptions with a quotation of the person’s work. But Seneca takes his philosophercore household aesthetic to another level: his statues serve as inspiration to him, and he loves them so much that he actually celebrates their birthdays and even talks to them.
It’s interesting that Seneca does not really describe who these people are. I imagine that maybe Socrates and Homer would be present, or possibly Heraclitus or another of the pre-Socratics. Maybe some of these were his own ancestors or notable Romans; it’s hard to be sure, but the enthusiasm that Seneca feels for his marble friends is almost contagious.
Is this activity of befriending the long-dead an act of nostalgia, of glorifying these past intellectuals? Maybe. Or maybe it’s also the desire to make ourselves, in the present moment, part of their worlds, to imagine that we could not only emulate a Cicero or a Homer, but also be their peers.
It’s interesting to note that, although Petrarch rebukes Cicero for his love of military triumphs, Petrarch himself also loved the idea: he wrote a work actually called Triumphs, which describes the triumphs of allegorical figures Love, Chastity, Fame, Time, Death, and Eternity.
Ultimately, Eternity triumphs over all of the others, including Death, and I think this point is important. Remember that Petrarch asks Cicero why he focuses so much on the human when he should turn his gaze to the immortal or eternal life—presumably the one that, from Petrarch’s Christian perspective, awaits in Heaven. It is possible that, in writing backwards to Cicero, Petrarch is concerned for the future: how can the figures of the past—and thus the present—find redemption and absolution from the discord of human life on earth? Does Petrarch’s act of writing to Cicero offer some Eternity to a centuries-dead man whose human failures caused him to fall short of a truly philosophical life?
The implied answers to these questions put Petrarch in a position of power over Cicero. We can look at it the other way around, too, though. Does Petrarch ever wonder what Cicero would have written back to him? Does he feel that he measures up against a great like Cicero and comes out ahead? These letters raise more questions than answers. But I think they are in part inspired by an impossible desire to live in a timeless, eternal world where we are surrounded by the intellectual greats of the past—a desire that seems to have resonated as much with Petrarch as it did with the Romans who came long before him. The simple activity of writing a letter offers a means of opening up a parallel world in which the early modern period can engage in dialogue with antiquity, and the Romans can have the great Greek thinkers as their interlocutors, and so on. The only trouble is that writing backward is, well, backward. The past remains silent until we reanimate it by engaging with it. We will not be getting a letter back from Cicero, but we can imagine one based on what we know about him.
Ultimately, we can only imagine how Cicero might defend himself against Petrarch’s complaints—but maybe that’s good enough. Cicero’s philosophical words outlived his all-too-human body, giving him his own Eternity with or without Petrarch’s help. In his letters, Petrarch seems as inscrutable to me as Cicero, even though the epistolary format humanizes them and makes their perspectives more vivid to us. It seems funny to me that most of Petrarch’s portraits are in profile, emphasizing his regal bearing but not allowing the viewer to look at him in the eye.
What historical figure intrigues you so much that you would write a letter to them? What would you say? Would you consider them a friend? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
As always, take care until next time.
MKA
A fascinating subject, brilliantly written. 🤍✨