Magnitudo animi and cosmic politics in Cicero’s De re publica

Author: McConnell, Sean
Title: Magnitudo animi and cosmic politics in Cicero’s De re publica
Review/Collection: "The Classical Journal", 113
Year edition: 2017
Pages: 45-70
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Politique - Politica - Politics
Description: This paper offers a fresh interpretation of the role played by the Dream of Scipio in Cicero's De re publica. It explores Cicero's key distinction between the cosmic and the local levels of statesmanship and the problems he sees with localism, and it details fully for the first time the importance that Cicero attached to the virtue of magnitudo animi (“greatness of soul”). The paper makes the case that in De re publica Cicero promotes his own innovative cosmic model of politics, in which magnitudo animi is developed through an educational process situated in the traditional Roman mos maiorum. [Author]
Works:
Author initials: McConnell 2017