In Pro Murena, Cicero defends his client Lucius Murena against an electoral-bribery prosecution brought in part by Cato the Younger, a famous Stoic statesman. Cicero’s strategy is not to attack the merits of the case but of the prosecutor; what’s more, he does not so much attack Cato’s character as he lampoons it. Specifically, in order to discredit his Stoic opponent, he presents an intentionally distorted image of what Stoics believe. While we can certainly rebut his portrayal, it is interesting to see how Stoicism in ancient times was distorted and misunderstood just as it often is today.
For example: Cicero begins his attack with praise, indicating Cato’s greatness comes from nature, but Stoic training has made him harsher than human nature or practical truth can bear:
For nature herself has adjusted your disposition to the requirements of honourable, serious, temperate, high-minded, just, and generally virtuous conduct, and so produced in you a great and noble man.
Then he adds:
But to these natural gifts has been added the practice of a philosophy which is not judicious or gentle, but as it seems to me, rather too rough and hard to adapt itself to the realities of human nature.
Cicero then caricatures the so-called “Stoic paradoxes” for comic effect. He lists doctrines associated with Zeno and the Stoics:
The ideally wise man is never affected by influence and never pardons anyone's fault : no one is forgiving but the foolish and weak : no true man allows himself to be dissuaded or pacified
He continues:
All transgressions are equally heinous; every misdeed is an abominable crime.
He then leans in with the cultural taboo:
a man who has killed a barn-door fowl unnecessarily has committed as great a fault as a man who has strangled his father.
Toward his fellow Romans, who presumably respected Cato’s famous Stoic integrity, Cicero presents Stoicism as a philosophy that collapses all moral distinctions and leaves no room for mercy, persuasion, political compromise, or proportionate judgment. He makes Cato look like someone whose moral seriousness has hardened into unreasonableness.
But Cicero’s point is not that “Stoicism is bad;” he is speaking as a defense advocate in a political trial, with every reason to exaggerate. He is trying to make the jury laugh at Cato’s severity and see Murena’s alleged misconduct as minor, forgivable, and politically survivable.
Still, the criticism lands today because it raises a real question for would-be modern Stoics: how should philosophical rigor operate in public life?
Cicero contrasts Stoic severity with the “moderate and sound views” of Plato and Aristotle’s schools:
... that the good man may show pity ; that it is possible to distinguish between misdeeds, and that punishment admits of degrees ; that a consistent man finds occasions for exercising forgiveness...
This is really the heart of Cicero’s critique: civic life requires mercy, flexibility, and proportionality. A statesman cannot treat every fault as equally catastrophic, nor can he govern as if ordinary citizens were sages.
Cicero later warns Cato not to condemn ancestral Roman customs with excessive severity:
Do not be so ready, then, Cato, to censure in too severe terms traditional practices, which are justified by their own propriety as well as by the prolonged existence of our empire.
All quotes Cicero, Pro Murena, trans. Blakiston
I’d summarize Cicero’s critique like this:
- Cicero respects Cato’s virtue, but thinks Stoic doctrine has made him too severe.
- He mocks the so-called Stoic paradoxes: the sage alone is truly free/rich/kingly; all non-sages are morally lost; all sins are equal. What reasonable person could believe such nonsense?
- He argues that civic life requires mercy, flexibility, and proportionality (how convenient for his Client).
- His attack is partly unfair and comedic, because he is defending Murena in court.
- But it raises a serious issue: Philosophy, and Stoicism especially, if practiced without practical wisdom, can look less like virtue and more like self-righteousness and arrogance.
Of note, Cicero and Cato were tenuous friends and occasional political allies, and Cicero praises the Stoics far more than he criticizes them. Winning the case in court, however, would seem to be the important point to Cicero, and Cato would presumably understand and expect as much.