Metaphysics in Cicero’s “De natura deorum”

Abstract

At first sight, in Cicero’s treatise «De natura deorum», written in the form of a dialogue, metaphysical ideas are expressed only by a stoic participant, Balbus, who cannot argue them convincingly enough in the face of criticism from Cotta, a representative of the academic tradition, to which, in epistemology at least, the author considers himself to belong. However, the situation looks like this only if you read the treatise in isolation from other works of Cicero and taking into account what is stated, but not what is hidden. Meanwhile, there is every reason to consider this treatise as the central one in the group of works of the second half of the 40s, which is why the omissions in it are no less important than the direct text. From the comparison of various statements of Cicero about the divine, scattered in different works, it turns out that there undoubtedly was some metaphysical content in them, and it was built with an appeal to Plato, reinterpreted in the context of academic skepticism. And the key to understand the treatise «De natura deorum» is to be found in its composition, built on the opposition of the exoteric religiosity of the epicurean and stoic participants to the unspoken ideas of both their academic critics.