Quoting, Translating, Paraphrasing. Poetic ‘Reuse’ in Cicero’s Philosophical Work

This paper aims to demonstrate the ways in which Cicero reuses poetic texts, with a particular focus on his Tusculan Disputations, Books 3 and 4. In these texts, Cicero addresses the topic of emotions, drawing on the Stoic concept of apatheia and contrasting it with the more moderate stance of the Peripatetics. The paper analyses three methods of incorporat- ing poetic text into prose, namely quotation, paraphrase and translation. In certain instances, Cicero employs poetic fragments with the dual objective of refuting the opposing thesis and Romanizing the philosophical concept, thereby rendering it more accessible to his readers. Cicero makes selective use of poetic elements to facilitate the development of his argument. Con- versely, he excludes or minimizes those elements that are incompatible with the Stoic ideal of the sage, such as physical symptoms of emotion. Moreover, Cicero’s translations in Tusc. 3, 18 and 63 are distinguished by a tendency towards dramatization, universalization and an autobiographical interpre- tation of the Homeric text.