Cicero, Socrates, and the Fear of Death

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the connections between the arguments against the fear of death in Plato’s Apology and the first book of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. It argues that Cicero’s dialogue adapts and develops Socrates’ arguments and dialectical method. Cicero signals this debt through his philosophically loaded translation of Ap. 40c-42a at Tusc. 1.97-99. But Cicero also casts Socrates as a foil, drawing an important contrast between Socrates’ philosophical stance and his own: while Socrates deploys irony to hide his view about the nature of death, Cicero advocates a particular form of skepticism that allows one to suspend judgment on certain matters, while nevertheless accepting certain ethically beneficial conclusions.