(b Arpinum [now Arpino], 3 Jan 106 bce; d Caieta [now Gaeta], 7 Dec 43 bce). Roman statesman, orator and man of letters. The hundreds of references to music in his writings (see Wille, 1967) include no comprehensive statement of theory; individual passages show that his usual eclecticism prevailed here as well. The Epicurean condemnation of music and of late Stoic musical theory by a philosopher well known to him personally, Philodemus of Gadara, influenced his thinking; nevertheless, he occasionally used Platonic and Stoic doctrines. He accepted the view of Democritus and Epicurus that music is one of the fine arts, not a pursuit necessary for life (Tusculan Disputations, i.25.62); at the same time, the musical culture of Hellenic Greece seemed to him admirable (ibid., i.2.4).
Cicero's orations usually referred to the place of music in private life and for forensic purposes treated it as a sign of dissolute tendencies; but his treatises on rhetoric show a lively awareness of the rhythmic and melodic elements that entered into oratorical technique. The influence of Cicero's oratorical theory is most directly seen in the Institutio oratoria of Quintilian. Evidence of Cicero's views on fundamental points may be gained by comparison of his Republic and Laws with statements in the corresponding dialogues of Plato. Two passages have special importance: Republic, vi.9–29 on the music of the spheres (the ‘Somnium Scipionis’, preserved in the commentary of Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, which enjoyed considerable influence in the Middle Ages), and Laws, ii.15.38–9 (cf ii.9.22) on the power of music, the beliefs of Plato about ethos (perhaps derived from Damon) and the musical conservatism of the old Greek city-states. Cicero's Republic was known to Aristides Quintilianus, who referred to it explicitly in his On music (ii.6; he also seems to have known Cicero's oration Pro Q. Roscio comoedo), and Cicero was regularly cited as a musical authority in early medieval treatises such as those by Martianus Capella, Remy of Auxerre and Regino of Prüm, and very frequently in later treatises of the 15th and 16th centuries.
J.E. King, ed. and trans.: Cicero: Tusculan Disputations (London and New York, 1927, 2/1945/R)
C.W. Keyes, ed. and trans.: Cicero: De republica, De legibus (London and Cambridge, MA, 1928/R)
P.R. Coleman-Norton: ‘Cicero musicus’, JAMS, i/2 (1948), 3–22
P.R. Coleman-Norton: ‘Cicero and the Music of the Spheres’, Classical Journal, xlv (1950), 237–41
W. Edinger: Ciceros Stellung zur Kunst (Dichtkunst, bildende Kunst, Musik) in seinen rhetorischen Schriften (diss., U. of Innsbruck, 1951)
G.B. Pighi: ‘Impressio e percussio in Cic., De orat. 3, 185 f’, L'antiquité classique, xxviii (1959), 214–22
G. Wille: Musica romana (Amsterdam, 1967)
G. Wille: Einführung in das römische Musikleben (Darmstadt, 1977), 97–112
J.T. Ramsey: ‘Cicero Pro Murena 29: the Orator as Citharoedus, the Versatile Artist’, Classical Philology, lxxix (1984), 220–25
H. Schueller: The Idea of Music (Kalamazoo, MI, 1988), 96–105
WARREN ANDERSON/THOMAS J. MATHIESEN