Pythius: Cicero’s De Officiis

Cambridge Latin Anthology – Personae non Gratae

In this course, Dr Andrew Sillett (University of Oxford) explores four ‘personae non gratae’ from Roman history: Pythius (from Cicero’s De Officiis), Sempronia (from Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae), Clodia (from Cicero’s Pro Caelio) and Regulus (from Pliny’s Letters). It will be particularly useful for those reading the ‘Personae Non Gratae’ set text for OCR Latin GCSE (J282). Over a course of twelve lectures, we look at each of the four ‘personae non gratae’ in turn, providing an introduction to the text in which they appear, the reason why have been presented as ‘personae non gratae’, and the reason why there may be more to each of these figures than meets the eye.

Pythius: Cicero’s De Officiis

In this lecture we introduce the text in which the story of Pythius appears: Cicero’s De Officiis. In particular, we think about: (i) what Cicero’s De Officiis is about, including its basic three-part structure; (ii) the four cardinal virtues introduced in Book 1: wisdom, justice, courage and temperance; (iii) the comforts of life introduced in Book 2, e.g. wealth, health, friends, etc.; and (iv) Cicero’s discussion of what to do when the desire to increase the comforts of life (e.g. to make more money) clashes with the desire to act virtuously (e.g. to always tell the truth).