doctrina sed vim promovet insitam rectique cultus pectora roborant; utcumque defecere mores, indecorant bene nata culpae.
—Horace Carmina 4.4
Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, or human greatness… Liberal education consists in listening to the conversation among the greatest minds. —Leo Strauss11. Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 6-7.
Introduction
What is a “classical” education and what is it for? In many contemporary discussions, especially within the Christian classical education movement, the answer tends toward an ever-expanding ideal: the formation of pious and virtuous students who, by the end of their schooling, have read (and understood) the great books of the Western tradition, acquired fluency in Latin (and perhaps Greek), mastered a STEM curriculum comparable to that of their public school peers, and perhaps, learned to play the violin in their free time. Yet for all its ambition, this ideal often leaves unclear how these aims are to be ordered, or even whether it is possible to pursue them together in any kind of coherent way. Moreover, it reflects a hesitation to state clearly what the ancients took for granted, namely, that education is, in a fundamental sense, political. Most of us prefer to speak of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” or to invoke the talisman of “Great Books,” rather than sully the name and reputation of the “Classics” with the idea that education should be ordered to the shaping of citizens for participation in a particular political regime. The result is a certain ambiguity about the end of classical education itself. Is it ordered to the pursuit of truth? To moral formation? To civic responsibility? Or to all three at once? Even the best modern approaches tend to affirm these aims together, often without clarifying their relation to one another.
The classical tradition, however, did not treat these aims as easily harmonized. From at least the fifth century B.C., Greek education was characterized by a tension between the demands of philosophy and the claims of the city. On the one hand, the philosophic life seeks knowledge of the whole and so cannot be confined within the limits of political opinion or civic utility. On the other hand, education is always situated within a political community and must, in some sense, serve its needs, forming citizens capable of judgment and action. This tension is most clearly seen in the competing ideas about education put forward by the greatest minds of the classical Greek world—Socrates and the sophists, Isocrates and Plato—ideas that were transmitted to posterity chiefly through the writings of the Roman statesman, orator, and philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero.
This essay, therefore, is not an attempt to recover a single, unified model of classical education, but to clarify this underlying tension and the different ways it has been ordered within the tradition. Only by recovering this problem can we begin to answer, with greater precision, the question with which we began: what, in fact, is a classical education for?
Greek Paideia
The standard Greek term for education was paideia. It should be distinguished from what the Greeks called trophē, upbringing within the household, and from technē, the training in particular crafts or skills. Paideia is neither familial upbringing nor vocational training, but the cultivation of those capacities necessary for participation in civic life. It is closest to what Cicero would later call the artes liberales (Inv. 1.35): the studies proper to a free person, preparing him to take part in governing the city.
Although Plato later says that Homer “educated Greece” (Resp. 10.606e), the term paideia itself does not appear in Homer and is not attested in extant Greek literature before the fifth century B.C. Nevertheless, Homer does show us an aristocratic education oriented toward the cultivation of virtue (aretē). The Homeric epics depict young noblemen who are formed through athletic contests and training, immersion in music and heroic poetry, and instruction in persuasive speech, all ordered toward prowess in war and sound judgment in the assembly. Phoenix is sent to teach Achilles “to be a speaker of words and a doer of deeds” (Il. 9.442–443), while Achilles himself sings the deeds of heroes, and the funeral games for Patroclus display a fully developed program of aristocratic competition—chariot racing, boxing, wrestling, and footraces—in which honor (timē) and excellence (aretē) are publicly recognized and ranked.
Thus, traditional Greek paideia aimed at excellence (aretē) of both body and soul. Homeric aretē, however, was not yet understood primarily in the later philosophical sense of moral virtue, but more broadly as aristocratic excellence expressed in war, speech, athletic prowess, and public honor. A line from the Roman poet Juvenal is often invoked as a shorthand for this classical ideal: “One must pray for a sound mind in a sound body” (orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano, Sat. 10.356).22. Cf. John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1996), 10. Physical training and intellectual cultivation were both essential, each disciplining and perfecting the other.
Paideia began naturally at home, as parents habituated their children in the manners, morals, customs, and ancestral traditions (nomoi) of their city. When children reached the age for more formal education, parents would usually hire tutors. As Xenophon relates: “the parents teach [their children] whatever they themselves have that is good for one’s life, and they go to expense to send them to someone else when they think that one will be more competent to teach certain things” (Xen. Mem. 2.2.6).33. Amy Bonnette, Xenophon: Memorabilia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2014). Given the expense involved, such schooling was confined to the aristocratic class, except in Sparta, where there was a compulsory civic educational system in place, the agōgē.
The core of Greek education was centered on three subjects: gymnastics, music, and letters (grammata). Plato recommended that boys start gymnastics at the age of six, letters at ten, and music at thirteen, a practice which became the norm in Hellenistic Greece. The gymnastic trainer began by teaching games to young children and, as they grew older, introduced more athletic training. Running, jumping, throwing the discus and javelin, boxing, wrestling, and pankration were the chief athletic events.44. Pankration was an ancient Greek combat sport, first introduced into the Olympic Games in 648 B.C., that combined elements of boxing and wrestling into a nearly unrestricted form of hand-to-hand fighting. Gymnastic training was expected to cultivate strength and speed and, in turn, endow the youth with their characteristic beauty. The Greeks—those inventors of the Olympic Games—certainly delighted in the beauty of the human body in motion, and bestowed glory on victors in contests of strength, speed, and skill. Yet, gymnastic training was not merely for the sake of bodily goods—health, strength, and beauty—but also for the good of the soul; it provided a training ground for the cultivation of virtue. In gymnastic training, young men learned how to discipline their bodies, how to control their fear, and moderate their rashness. In short, they learned courage and self-control, virtues necessary for defending oneself, one’s family, and one’s homeland. Gymnastic training that was oriented toward mere sport, therefore, was often rejected as unfit for men who are to be “noble and free” (Pl. Leg. 796d; Arist. Pol. 1338b20; Plut. De lib. 11).
The Greek term, mousikē, had a much broader meaning than the English “music”; mousikē referred to any art over which the Muses presided. In terms of education, however, what the term chiefly meant was learning to sing and play the kithara, or lyre. The music teacher, therefore, taught children lyric poetry—choral and monodic poetry accompanied by the lyre.
Aristotle writes that, unlike gymnastics and letters, which are “useful for life and have many uses,” music has no obvious practical benefits; it is the quintessential “leisure” activity (scholē, Pol. 1337b25 ff.).55. Carnes Lord, Aristotle’s Politics, 2nd Ed. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2013). The Greeks understood that music shapes our souls in profound ways. Different rhythms and melodies are imitations (mimēmata) of different ethical characters, and consequently, it was thought essential to teach the young those melodic forms that imitate and so produce virtue. For example, the Dorian mode was thought to imitate manly and warlike sounds, thereby producing courageous characters. The music teacher, therefore, also provided an early formation in ethics.
Finally, choral singing had a distinctly civic function. The chorus—the coordinated union of song and movement under the direction of a choral leader, in which many voices and bodies act as one—provided a child with an image of a well-ordered political community and likely served as his first formation in citizenship. Plato, therefore, argues that “a lack of training in choral poetry” is essentially “a complete lack of education” (Leg. 654a-b).
The third subject in a traditional Greek paideia was “letters” (grammata, lit. “the written things”). This course of study began by learning the alphabet, and proceeded to instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. By the fifth century, the study of letters began to include the study of literature. Students would copy passages of the poets, especially Homer and the lyric poets, commit them to memory, and then recite what they had learned both in the classroom and at public competitions. Through the teaching of letters, a literary canon and a shared cultural identity thus developed among educated Greeks throughout the Hellenic world.
Moreover, just as music was expected to contribute to the ethical formation of the child, so too was the study of Homer and the poets. As Plato tells us in his Protagoras: “Contained in these works [of the poets] are many detailed descriptions and praises and encomia of the good men of old, so that the boy, out of emulation, imitates them and longs to become such himself” (326a).66. Robert C. Bartlett, Plato: Protagoras and Meno (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004). In this way, the study of letters did not merely transmit the practical skills of reading and writing, but also formed character through imitation. Children learned to inhabit the moral world of the poets and to model their lives upon it. Plato, therefore, warns that great care should be taken in selecting the poets that the students should learn by heart, choosing only those that are both “the most well-measured… and especially appropriate for the young to hear” (Leg. 811d), by which he means poets whose style is worthy of imitation and whose works are filled with models of virtue. Thus, in addition to the practical skills—reading, writing, calculation, and public speaking— the study of letters provided intimate knowledge of the best that had been said or written in the Greek language, and in so doing shaped both the student’s style of speech and his way of life. Letters were thus an initiation into the sources and foundations of Greek culture and identity, its customs, traditions, and highest aspirations. This poetic formation would remain the foundation of Greek education even as later thinkers sought to question, reinterpret, or censor it, or lay claim to its authority.
Greek paideia aimed at forming virtuous citizens who would take an active role in the governance of the city-state. As Plato has Protagoras observe, once young men “are released from their teachers, the city in turn compels them both to learn the laws and to live in accordance with these paradigms… [and] compels them both to rule and to be ruled in accord with these” (Prt. 326c-d). By the mid to late fifth century, however, ambitious young men began to think that traditional Greek paideia did not adequately prepare them for political life. This is a common theme, whether explicitly or implicitly, in much Greek literature from the period. Aristophanes’ Clouds, for example, first produced in 423 BC, portrays a conflict between the “old” education that focused on gymnastics, music, and letters, and the “new paideia,” which he associates with the sophists generally, and Socrates in particular (Nu. 937a-b; cf. Pl. Thg. 122e-123e). This period witnessed an explosion of new and competing ideas about the nature and purpose of education.
These competing educational ideals centered above all on the rivalry between the rhetorical education advanced by the sophists and later refined by Isocrates, and the philosophic education associated with Socrates and the Socratics, above all, Plato. It is important to stress that all of these competing schools were concerned almost exclusively with what we would call higher education: the sophists, the Socratics, and Isocrates all accepted the traditional elementary education in gymnastics, music, and letters as preparatory for the kind of higher education they offered.77. It is true, however, that both Plato and Isocrates, as we shall see, expand elementary education to include subjects that are roughly analogous to the seven “liberal arts” of the medieval period (Pl. Rep. 525a–531d, 536d–e; Isoc. Antid. 261-267). Nor was there any serious debate about who was to be educated: education was understood to prepare the leisured, gentlemanly class for political responsibility and leadership.
The debate, then, was about the end of education: whether education should prepare young men for “a life of public usefulness as statesmen,” or “a life of calm tranquility as students of philosophy” (Plut. De lib. 10). Questions of curriculum and method were largely secondary to this fundamental disagreement about the end of education. What follows is an account of the competing alternatives to higher education in antiquity. My aim is not to choose between them, but to show why the tension between them cannot be resolved without distortion, for it is endemic to the tradition of classical education itself.
The Sophistic Revolution
The sophists were itinerant teachers from other Greek city-states, who were attracted to Athens because of its increased wealth and position of power in the aftermath of the Persian War, and because Athenian statesmen, like Pericles, were willing to spend lavishly on an extensive arts and culture project aimed at increasing Athens’ status and reputation in the Greek world.
Moreover, the demands of participatory democracy highlighted the need for new skills and training suited to a new political landscape. Any citizen over the age of twenty had the right to speak and vote in the people’s assembly, and, since there were no professional lawyers in ancient Greece, citizens were required to speak on their own behalf in all court cases and legal proceedings. This led to a demand for instruction, especially in the political and judicial branches of rhetoric.
Hence, the sophists were responding to a practical civic need, not a theoretical or philosophical one. They claimed to provide a “democratic education,” that is, they claimed to be able to teach anyone, regardless of birth or lineage. The aim of sophistic education was “to make men good citizens” (Pl. Prot. 319a), or “to make men clever at speaking” (legein deinous, Pl. Men. 95c), which, for them, more or less amounted to the same thing. For “the political art,” in the words of Plato’s Gorgias, is the ability “to persuade by speeches judges in the law court, councilors in the council, assemblymen in the assembly, and in every other gathering whatsoever, when there is a political gathering” (Pl. Grg. 452e; cf. Prt. 319a, Men. 91a ff.).88. James H. Nichols Jr., Plato: Gorgias (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998). The sophists were revolutionary not only in their pedagogical aims, but also in their methods. As Werner Jaeger observes, they were “the founders of educational science… [or] pedagogy.”99. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture: Vol. I, transl. by Gilbert Highet (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1939) 298. They pioneered the scientific study of grammar, including morphology, syntax, etymology, prose composition, as well as the interpretation and analysis of poetry. Protagoras’ exegesis of a poem by Simonides in Plato’s Protagoras is a remarkable demonstration of sophistic poetic analysis and criticism, which Protagoras calls “the greatest part of a man’s education” (338e ff.). As Plato makes clear, such interpretation was not an end in itself, nor an attempt to elevate poetry as art, but a way of subjecting it to critical scrutiny. The sophists sought to replace the poets as the educators of Greece, and thereby to assume for themselves the formative authority once exercised by poetic tradition.
The sophists are most well-known for their contributions to the study of rhetoric. Protagoras was the first to write a treatise on the part of rhetoric devoted to invention, collecting standard lines of argument, “topics” (topoi), that could be imitated and adapted by students. It should be stressed that the sophists as a whole taught not by precept, but by example and imitation (Gk. mimēsis , Lat. imitatio). As Aristotle tells us, the sophists “gave their students speeches to learn by heart,” which they, in turn, would imitate in both form and content in their own speeches, a method that also trained students to argue either side of a case and thus exposed them to the charge of making “the weaker argument the stronger” (SE 184a).
In this respect, the sophists did not invent the practice of imitation but repurposed it—from the poetic models of virtue that had formed earlier generations to rhetorical models of persuasion, and from formation in the Greek way of life to victory in political contests. This practice of imitation was gradually systematized into a more comprehensive art of rhetoric.
Gorgias is credited with inventing the rhetorical canons of arrangement and style. Hippias taught a system of mnemonics, which had the obvious practical purpose of helping the orator learn his speech by heart, and which we may identify as the precursor to the rhetorical canon of memory. Thus, in the sophists, we find four of the five classical canons of rhetoric.
In the sophists, we may also discern the beginnings of what would later be codified in the medieval tradition as the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric), while figures such as Hippias taught the arts that would come to form the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music). Thus, the sophistic revolution in education laid the groundwork for much of what we today would call a classical or liberal education: a systematic teaching of the arts of language and persuasion with a view to creating virtuous citizens. It is important to stress, however, that the kind of education offered by the sophists was a form of secondary education; it was not a replacement for, but built upon, traditional Athenian elementary education in gymnastics, music, and letters. Moreover, while the sophists are often lauded for inaugurating a spirit of democratic egalitarianism in education, this was still education for wealthy and aspiring gentlemen..
Although they claimed they could, in theory, teach anyone the political art, in fact they taught only those who could pay their fees, which were often quite high. Their pupils, therefore, tended to be wealthy young men driven by ambition to acquire political power and influence, and they often used the rhetorical techniques they learned from their masters to obfuscate and manipulate the people into believing that their proposals were on behalf of the common good, while, in reality, it was their own self-interest they pursued.
Plato
Plato and other Socratics like Xenophon criticized this immoral and manipulative aspect of sophistic education. They questioned whether the sophists possessed genuine knowledge of virtue and the political art, and consequently whether they were able to teach it. If the sophists were confused about what virtue is and so were unable to teach it to their pupils, then it was irresponsible, even dangerous, to put powerful tools of argumentation and persuasion into their hands. Moreover, Plato criticized the sophists’ willingness to take on anyone who wished to study with them, regardless of their aptitude or previous education. For Plato, rigorous testing was necessary to determine whether students possessed the intellectual and moral capacities required for higher study.
Here, we can give only the barest outline of the extensive and ambitious educational system Plato developed in the Republic and Laws for training the philosophers of the future. In Plato’s educational system, only the best and brightest would prove capable of the highest education in philosophy. Plato was not attempting to make everyone a philosopher. He nevertheless did provide all free-born men and women with a civically-minded “preparatory education” (propaideia)—that is, an “education from childhood in virtue, that makes one desire and love to become a perfect citizen who knows how to rule and be ruled with justice” (Leg. 643b-644a).1010. I distinguish here between “philosophy” as inquiry into the whole and “moral or civic formation” as the shaping of character for action. For Plato, questions of virtue belong within philosophy. Yet questions such as the unity of virtue or whether virtue is teachable remain open to inquiry. This is distinct from the early habituation in moral and civic life that must precede such inquiry, for one must be formed within a way of life before one can critically examine it. As we saw earlier, this civic education was essentially the traditional Greek elementary education in gymnastics, letters, and music, along with rudimentary instruction in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. Plato, however, introduced a further stage of civic and military training, which became the model for the ephebic paramilitary training required of young Athenian men before they could become full citizens.1111. Ephebic derives from the Greek ephēbos, meaning a youth or young man approaching adulthood, especially one undergoing civic and military training in preparation for citizenship. This civic education was directed chiefly toward the formation of character—toward the education of the heart rather than the intellect. Its purpose was to produce pious, patriotic, and moral citizens, not philosophers.
Although the highest form of Platonic education, namely, philosophy, presupposes and depends on a lower, non-philosophic, civic education, its ultimate aim lies beyond the city. The pursuit of truth can begin only on the basis of an earlier formation in civic virtue and intellectual discipline, but it proceeds through a radical re-examination of that formation—a questioning of one’s deepest commitments, one’s first principles, and thus of one’s morals, politics, and religion.
In other words, a potential philosopher must first be formed in the way of life of his political regime—its customs and traditions, its laws and institutions, even its gods—before he can begin to radically question that way of life.
This means that no regime’s educational system, even the best’s, can truly promote and support philosophy; philosophic education will always be regarded by the city as an attempt to “corrupt the youth” (Pl. Apol. 24b-26a). Thus, a conflict between the philosopher and the city is always inexorable. This is, at least partly, why Plato considered it dangerous to introduce philosophy to the young, or to the masses more generally, and why he insisted that only those who had been rigorously tested and found fit in both intellect and character should be permitted to pursue higher studies in mathematics and philosophy (Resp. 535c–540e).
Thus, while Plato considered moral and civic formation a necessary foundation for the highest form of education, philosophy, his system of education was neither subordinate to politics nor derived from the teachings of the political regime, even from the perfectly just city of the Republic. His aim was not to produce ideal rulers but philosophers. Even the “philosopher-kings” of the Republic rule only by necessity and compulsion, for they are rulers precisely because they are philosophers, not philosophers because they are rulers (Resp. 519c–521b; 540a–b). Just as politics is subordinate to philosophy, so Plato’s educational system aims first at the ascent of the soul toward truth, while political rule remains a secondary civic obligation imposed upon the best natures.
Thus, philosophy may offer statesmen some guidance in political life, but its ultimate aim lies beyond the horizon of the city and its claims. As a result, such an education proved too remote from the immediate demands and concerns of fourth-century Athenian political life.
Plato’s philosophic education required exceedingly rare natures, long discipline, and a degree of withdrawal from ordinary civic life that placed it beyond the reach of most. Isocrates’ program, by contrast, was explicitly directed toward the formation of gentlemen for public life and could be taught, imitated, and reproduced within the life of actual cities, not utopias. It offered not a philosophic reorientation of the soul, but a practical formation in judgment and speech, grounded in shared opinions and oriented toward political action.
For this reason, while Plato may have given us one of the most comprehensive theories of education from antiquity, in historical fact it was Isocrates, not Plato, who educated fourth-century Greece and, through his influence, the Hellenistic and Roman worlds. His emphasis on rhetorical training, literary study, and the disciplined imitation of exemplary models proved far more adaptable to the needs of schools and states alike. Nor was his influence limited to antiquity: the educational ideals of Renaissance humanism were ultimately derived either directly from Isocrates or through his Roman heirs, above all Cicero and Quintilian.
Isocrates
As a student of the sophist Gorgias, and a friend of Socrates, Isocrates occupies a position that may be described as a revision of sophistic teaching in light of the Socratic critique (Pl. Phdr. 278d–279b). Like Plato, he rejects the purely technical conception of rhetoric as a tool for persuasion without regard to truth or virtue. Yet he also departs from the Socratic inclination to treat virtue as a form of knowledge. Isocrates emphasizes instead the role of judgment in a domain where certainty is elusive. For Isocrates, the aim of education is not theoretical knowledge of ultimate reality, but the ability to deliberate well about human affairs—to weigh circumstances, to perceive what is fitting, and to arrive at sound decisions where no fixed rule can guarantee the right result. Rhetoric, understood not as a technique but as an art of speech grounded in experience and refined through practice, is the proper instrument for developing this capacity. What does not admit of abstract knowledge must instead be approached through prudence (phronēsis).
Although he was indebted to the sophists for their pedagogical methods, Isocrates did not aim to teach his students merely to be successful in the assembly or courtroom. Nor was his teaching amoral; it had a distinct civic and patriotic purpose, namely, the re-establishment of Athenian power and influence following their disastrous defeat in the Peloponnesian War.
Isocrates believed that the excesses of democracy had led Athens into a ruinous policy of expansion and imperial overreach, which had not only caused the war with Sparta but also bankrupted the city. The cause of Athens’ downfall, however, was not external, but the result of a democratic regime that taught its citizens that they were “free” to do whatever they wanted (Areop. 36–37). More importantly, he argues that the problem lies not simply in the corruption of the regime, but in the complacency of the citizens themselves, a perennial problem of political life:
We sit around in our shops denouncing the present order and complaining that never under a democracy have we been worse governed, but in our actions and in the sentiments which we hold regarding it we show that we are better satisfied with our present democracy than with that which was handed down to us by our forefathers (Areop. 15).1212. George Norlin, Isocrates, Vol. III: On the Peace, Areopagiticus, Against the Sophists, Antidosis, Panathenaicus (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).
Thus, for Isocrates, the central problem of politics is how to change men, and the answer is to change the regime itself, by restoring the old mixed constitution associated with Solon. His ultimate educational goal was to train a small number of young gentlemen in ethics, politics, and public speaking, who would, in turn, make Athens great again.
In this sense, Isocrates is sometimes described, not without exaggeration, as the leader of the “new right-wing party” because he advocated a return to an earlier and more moderate constitutional order.1313. H. I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, transl. by George Lamb (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964), 87. Greek paideia had always been oriented toward the cultivation of those who would rule the city. With Isocrates, however, this aim becomes explicit in the training of gentlemen for political leadership through speech, understood not merely as a technical skill, but as the means by which authority is established, and the life of the city is ordered.
In short, Isocrates’ program endured because it treated education as a practical means of preparing citizens to lead and govern actual cities. Moreover, his emphasis on the study and composition of prose, alongside and increasingly in place of the poets, established rhetoric as the organizing principle of higher education. Unlike most Attic orators, however, Isocrates did not build his reputation on speeches delivered in the courts or the assembly, but on speeches written for circulation rather than delivery, intended to be read, studied, and imitated. Having abandoned speechwriting early in his career, he established a school devoted to the teaching of rhetoric through written discourse.
In this way, Isocrates played a decisive role in the transition from an oral to a literary culture of education. By elevating the study and composition of prose and directing students to the careful imitation of exemplary texts, he helped to establish a canon of authors whose works would serve as enduring models of thought and expression. Taken together, these developments mark Isocrates as both the culmination of classical Greek paideia and the foundation of what later came to be called ‘classical education,’ a tradition taken up and developed in Rome, above all in the writings of Cicero, who systematized and transmitted a broadly Isocratean vision of education to the Latin West.
Cicero
In Cicero’s Rome, there had been a long-standing uneasiness about Greek philosophy and learning. Staunch traditionalists such as Cato the Elder warned against its corrupting influence, fearing that it would weaken the moral and political discipline of Roman life. Both philosophers and rhetoricians were at times expelled from the city, but the Romans quickly recognized the political usefulness of rhetoric, whereas philosophy continued to be regarded with suspicion, even long after Cicero’s time. Thus, to understand Cicero’s account of education, we must remember that his first aim is to make the case for philosophy—namely, that it is not a threat to the city. To do so, he had to present a philosophic education in the service of the city.
Like Plato before him, Cicero recognized the distinction between the education of the philosopher and the education of the gentleman and even affirmed the superiority of the philosophic life. Yet, Cicero’s focus was almost entirely on the education of the gentleman, the statesman, and orator who is not merely skilled in speech but also a good man. Cicero’s emphasis on oratory and politics thus gives his account of education a more Isocratean flavor, insofar as philosophy is not rejected but subordinated to the demands of civic life. Rome nevertheless also inherits, through Cicero, the Platonic philosophical tradition, while giving institutional priority to the Isocratean model of civic and rhetorical education.
In his dialogue, De Oratore (On the Orator), Cicero has his former teacher of rhetoric, Lucius Licinius Crassus, argue that the primary aim of the education of Roman gentlemen should be oratorical skill, or eloquence. If Roman gentlemen are to be effective political leaders, wise and just lawmakers, prudent statesmen, and competent advocates for their clients in the courtroom, then they must be eloquent. Moreover, Crassus declares that eloquence is not confined to the forum or the Senate House but extends as well to the broader cultivation of the mind. Not only does the perfect orator possess the leadership and wisdom to provide for “the safety of countless individuals and of the State at large,” but he is also “perfectly accomplished in every kind of refined conversation,” which is itself characteristic of human culture (Cic. De Orat. 1.32; 3.144–45).1414. May, James M., and Jakob Wisse, eds. and trans., Cicero: On the Ideal Orator (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). Crassus thus presents eloquence not merely as a technical skill but as a standard of intelligence, moral character, and a cultivated and polished style of speech. The orator emerges as a political and cultural leader, capable of influencing public affairs and shaping Rome’s broader cultural ideals through the power of rhetoric.
At the same time, Cicero does not present a unified doctrine of eloquence but dramatizes a debate over the relation between rhetoric and philosophy, and over the kind of knowledge required for the orator. De Oratore stages a quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy through Crassus and another one of Cicero’s teachers, Marcus Antonius. Antonius presents a powerful line of objection to Crassus’s conception of the philosophic orator, especially the claim that such comprehensive knowledge cannot be mastered within the constraints of an active political life.
Antonius’ objection is not that philosophy is useless, but that the orator does not require precise or comprehensive knowledge of the whole, nor even of human nature in the philosopher’s sense. Rather, he works from commonly held opinions about justice and the good, addressing audiences who possess political authority without necessarily possessing knowledge. Eloquence, therefore, depends less on systematic knowledge than on natural ability, good judgment, and long experience in public life.
This point is especially clear in the conditions of the forum, where persuasion depends not simply on argument (logos), but on the speaker’s character (ethos) and his ability to move the emotions (pathos) of his audience. In such settings, the orator must adapt himself to the dispositions, expectations, and prejudices of those he addresses; it is not abstract truth alone that carries the day, but the prudent management of audience, circumstance, and his reputation as a good man. In Antonius, we thus see the hard-boiled and common-sense objections typical of a Roman gentleman.
Nor does Cicero take sides in this debate. Though Crassus gets the last word, it is not clear that he has won, and the dialogue instead suggests that Cicero—Rome’s greatest orator, statesman, and philosopher—was the product of both traditions. From Crassus, he inherits the exalted ideal of rhetorical eloquence joined to philosophic wisdom and virtue; from Antonius, the practical insistence on experience, training, and natural ability, as well as the recognition of the limits of reason or philosophy in political life. Accordingly, while Cicero insists that the orator must possess some knowledge of ethical and political matters and not merely persuasive skill, he does not treat the philosophic way of life—understood as inquiry into the whole—as the governing end of education for the Roman gentleman. Rather, the demands of political life set the limits within which such knowledge must be acquired and employed. The orator does not speak to philosophers but to fellow citizens and judges, whose authority rests not on knowledge but on opinion, and who must be persuaded as they are. He, therefore, requires not comprehensive philosophical knowledge, but a practical grasp of human affairs sufficient to guide judgment and move an audience. Thus, in Cicero, as in Plato, we find a distinction between a civic or “liberal” education, directed toward the gentlemanly class, and a truly philosophic education, which remains the province of an even rarer few. Yet, Cicero’s focus in De Oratore and elsewhere is directed almost exclusively on the former; in this sense, his account of education is thoroughly Isocratean.
Against this background, Cicero turns to the concrete practices by which the orator is formed. Whatever one’s natural talent, Crassus and Antonius agree that learning from exemplary orators, both contemporary and historical, is a central method for developing rhetorical skill.
Again, imitatio (Gk. mimēsis), the study and conscious imitation of features recognizably characteristic of a canonical author’s style or content, remains essential to eloquence. Cicero has Crassus recommend that young orators practice mock exercises, taking “as a starting point some case very similar to those brought into the forum,” and speaking on it “in a manner that is as true to life as possible” (De Orat. 1.149). Speaking extemporaneously is useful, he says, but “it is more useful to take some time for reflection, in order to speak better prepared and with great care” (1.150). For this reason, he recommends writing as much as possible. Writing is indispensable for learning how to develop arguments: it trains invention, arrangement, and style, and even strengthens memory. A speech once written and internalized continues to guide delivery even when the written text is removed, like “a ship at full speed, when the rowers rest upon their oars” (1.153).
Crassus then describes the exercises he himself practiced as a young man. At first, he would restate poetry or speeches from memory using different words, but he came to see the limitations of this method: either one merely repeats the best expressions or else grows accustomed to inferior ones. He therefore turned to a more demanding and fruitful practice: translating and reformulating the speeches of the great Greek orators into Latin. The advantage of this approach, he argues, is twofold. It allows the student to employ the finest available expressions in his own language and, at the same time, to enrich that language by adapting Greek forms—provided they are used with judgment. Yet this practice requires discernment: one must carefully choose one’s models, lest imitation produce not excellence but deformity. In this way, imitatio becomes not mere repetition, but appropriation and transformation: the disciplined reworking of inherited forms within a new linguistic and cultural setting. This practice of imitation through translation provides the model by which the classical tradition itself would be received, adapted, and transmitted in later ages.
Thus, Cicero’s educational vision appears to be fundamentally Isocratean. Rhetoric and political life provide the primary framework within which the intellectual and moral development of the gentleman takes place. Philosophy is not rejected; it is appropriated and subordinated to the practical demands of public life. Thus, while Cicero draws freely on Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, the center of gravity in his account lies with the formation of the orator-statesman, whose task is not the contemplation of truth as such, but the prudent and persuasive guidance of the political community.1515. Cicero’s understanding of Plato and Aristotle, of course, is shaped in part by the Hellenistic Academic tradition, especially through figures such as Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon.
Conclusions
What emerges most clearly in Cicero is not a resolution of the tension between the philosophic and civic aims of education, but a stable ordering of them. Philosophy has a secure place in Cicero’s educational regime, but it does not rule. This ordering proved decisive for the history of classical education in the West. The Roman appropriation of Greek paideia, especially in its Ciceronian form, established a model in which the education of the gentleman—through language, literature, and rhetoric—became the central and enduring framework of higher education. Philosophy, though never absent, was incorporated into this framework as one discipline among others, valued for its contribution to judgment and moral formation rather than, in most cases, pursued as an end in itself, as we see in Quintilian and later in Renaissance humanists such as Erasmus. The result was not the resolution of the tension between the philosophic and political aims of education, but only a partial and uneasy accommodation of them within the very institutions that came to define Western education— above all, the rhetorical schools of Rome and the later liberal arts and humanist traditions. On the one hand, the classical tradition continued to preserve, in Plato and his successors, the ideal of a life devoted to the pursuit of truth beyond the confines of the city. On the other hand, it formed generations of gentlemen through a rhetorical and literary education ordered to the active political life. These two strands—philosophic and civic—remained intertwined but not reconciled.
The modern “classical” education movement, for all its strengths, has in important respects lost its bearings. What we call primary and secondary education would, for the ancients, have been understood as a fundamentally political formation: the shaping of the mind, the heart, and the body for participation in public life. Modern classical schools often imitate only the literary residue of ancient paideia rather than its full formative regime. Too often, they treat paideia primarily as the study of “Great Books,” while relegating gymnastics and music—once essential to the formation of the soul and body alike— to the margins as electives rather than foundational disciplines. At the same time, the central pedagogical method of the classical tradition has largely fallen into disuse. The practice of imitatio, by which students learned through the disciplined imitation and transformation of exemplary models, has been displaced by methods that prioritize analysis over formation. The result is an education that retains fragments of the classical curriculum while losing sight of its animating tension. Even recent efforts to recover spoken Latin pedagogy—often described as “Living Latin”—can, despite their pedagogical benefits, overlook Cicero’s deeper insight: that the highest exercise of imitation lies not in fluency alone, but in the careful translation and reworking of great models into one’s own language. A recovery of classical education today would therefore require reviving older pedagogical practices of imitation, paraphrase, memorization, recitation, declamation, and translation through which students learned not merely to study a great work, but to internalize and reproduce the excellence of the ancients in thought, word, and deed.
Today, the classical tradition is often reduced to a set of harmonious ideals—the true, the good, and the beautiful—without sufficient recognition of the tensions among such ideals. The pursuit of truth does not always confirm what is traditionally held to be good or beautiful.
Rather, it sometimes unsettles, challenges, and even overturns established opinions and attachments. The legacy of classical education, then, is not a settled program but a perennial question. It asks whether education is ordered to the pursuit of truth as such or to the formation of citizens capable of acting well within a political order—and whether these aims can be held together without distortion. That question remains with us still, not as an antiquarian concern, but as a live and pressing problem for any account of education that would claim to be both humane and serious.1616. I would like to thank Joshua Patch, and David DeMarco for their helpful comments and feedback on earlier drafts of this essay, and especially Patrick Timmis, who first encouraged me to undertake this project.
