What morality is, is a question for each of us. What is morality, is a question for whose answer we look to the Roman lawyer and statesman Cicero.
In 2014, another lawyer and statesman rose in the US Senate to talk about yet another lawyer and statesman:
Shame on the age and on its lost principles! The Senate is aware of these things; the Senate sees them; and yet this man dictates by his pen and his phone.
The speaker was Senator Ted Cruz, the subject was President Barack Obama. The text is drawn directly from a speech by Cicero to the Roman senate which opens O tempora O mores. While Cruz’s words capture the sentiment, a transliteration is “Oh the times! Oh the morals!”
Today’s little extra is that Cicero actually invented the word “morality”. In De Fato, he says that what the Greeks called ethos and what the Romans usually called part of the philosophy of morals was ready for a new word: decet augentem linguam Latinam nominare moralem, or “It is fitting to enlarge the Latin language with the name ‘morality'”.
Cicero’s speech was given in 63BC. One of its targets was Mark Anthony’s stepfather. Whatever the morality of revenge, it remains a dish best served cold, and 7 December 43BC marks the day that Cicero was assassinated on orders of Mark Anthony.
