On Duties (De Officiis) was written in 44 BC — the last year of Cicero's life — in the weeks following the assassination of Julius Caesar, while Cicero was withdrawn from political life and writing with the urgency of a man who knew that everything he had worked for might not survive. It is the most widely read work of ancient ethics in Western history. More manuscripts survive of On Duties than of any other classical Latin text. It was used as a school text throughout the medieval period, translated by Coluccio Salutati in the fourteenth century, printed in one of the earliest batches of books produced after Gutenberg, and read by every educated European for five hundred years.
It is also, in a strict sense, not a Stoic text. Cicero was not a Stoic. He was an Academic skeptic who drew heavily on Stoic philosophy while maintaining philosophical reservations about Stoic commitments he found too demanding. On Duties is addressed to his son Marcus, then studying philosophy in Athens, and presents an account of ethics derived primarily from the Stoic philosopher Panaetius — but filtered through Cicero's own judgment about what was correct and what was excessive.
The result is the most complete ancient account of applied ethics: what a person actually owes to other people, to society, and to themselves, worked out in enough practical detail to be genuinely useful.
What On Duties Is
The text is organized into three books. Book 1 addresses the honorable (honestum) — what is genuinely good and right, independent of consequences. Book 2 addresses the expedient (utile) — what is advantageous, useful, or in your interest. Book 3 addresses apparent conflicts between the two — situations where what seems expedient appears to conflict with what is honorable — and argues that such conflicts are always illusory. What appears expedient but is not honorable is not actually expedient.
This three-part structure comes directly from Panaetius, whose own two-book work on the same topics Cicero completed by adding a third book from other Stoic sources. The attribution matters because On Duties is, in substantial part, an account of Middle Stoic applied ethics — the practical application of Stoic principles to the specific demands of political and social life in the late Roman Republic.
The Four Roles
Book 1 contains one of the most practically influential ideas in the history of ethics: the doctrine of the four persons, or four roles (personae).
Cicero, drawing on Panaetius, argues that every person occupies four distinct roles simultaneously:
The first role is the universal one — membership in the human species, which confers on every person the capacity for reason and the dignity that comes with it. This role is the source of universal obligations: the duties we owe to every human being by virtue of their humanity.
The second role is the individual one — the specific character, talents, and natural inclinations that make each person distinctively themselves. This role creates obligations to develop and exercise your particular gifts rather than imitating someone else's.
The third role is the circumstantial one — the social position, profession, and obligations that historical chance has placed you in. Birth, education, profession, and social standing all create specific duties that general principles alone cannot determine.
The fourth role is the chosen one — the deliberate choices you make about how to live, what to pursue, and what kind of person to become.
Good ethical reasoning, in this framework, requires attending to all four roles simultaneously. Universal principles apply to everyone; their application to a specific person in a specific situation requires knowing which roles that person occupies.
The Honorable and the Expedient
The most philosophically important argument in On Duties is Cicero's treatment of conflicts between the honorable and the expedient. This is the problem that generates most of the interesting ethical dilemmas in practical life: situations where doing the right thing appears to cost you something, or where pursuing your interest appears to require doing something wrong.
Cicero's argument — following the Stoics — is that these apparent conflicts always dissolve on examination. What appears expedient but is dishonest is never genuinely expedient, because:
- Your reputation for honesty is itself a practical asset, and dishonesty undermines it.
- The trust of other people is a practical necessity for any sustained project, and dishonesty destroys trust.
- The kind of person dishonesty makes you is not the kind of person whose life goes well in any deep sense.
This argument does not depend on consequentialist premises in the ordinary sense. Cicero is not saying that honesty pays. He is saying that the benefits apparently available through dishonesty are not genuine benefits — that a conception of self-interest narrow enough to recommend dishonesty is a confused conception of self-interest, because it misidentifies what you are actually interested in.
On Duties and the Western Ethical Tradition
The influence of On Duties on subsequent thought is difficult to overstate. Thomas Aquinas drew on it extensively in the Summa Theologica. Erasmus considered it essential reading. Grotius and Pufendorf's accounts of natural law in the seventeenth century are substantially shaped by it. Adam Smith's account of justice in The Theory of Moral Sentiments engages directly with it. The American founding generation read it; Jefferson and Hamilton both cite it.
This influence is partly a matter of historical accident — the survival of so many manuscripts, the early adoption as a school text — but it also reflects genuine philosophical quality. On Duties provides something that most philosophical texts do not: a sustained, detailed account of what the principles of good ethics actually require in specific situations, worked out with enough precision to be usable.
Cicero and Stoicism
Readers coming to On Duties through an interest in Stoicism should be aware of the complications. Cicero endorsed the Stoic framework with reservations and was honest about where he thought the Stoics went too far.
Most notably, he was skeptical of the Stoic doctrine that only virtue is genuinely good — the claim that health, wealth, and external circumstances are preferred indifferents with no real value. His practical ethics incorporates these external goods in a way that strict Stoic doctrine would not entirely sanction. He was also more comfortable than the Stoics with acknowledging that outcomes matter, not just intentions.
These departures do not undermine the text. They make it more useful for most readers, who share Cicero's intuition that outcomes matter and that circumstances make a practical difference even to people of good character. On Duties is Stoic ethics with the edges rounded — more applicable to ordinary life, less demanding than the strict philosophical ideal.
Which Translation to Use
P.G. Walsh (Oxford World's Classics, 2000) is the best modern English translation — clear, accurate, and accompanied by a useful introduction. The standard recommendation.
Walter Miller (Loeb Classical Library, 1913) is the complete translation with Latin on facing pages, available through Perseus Digital Library. Reliable and formally rendered.
Andrew Peabody (1887) is available through Project Gutenberg. Older but serviceable for free access.
The Walsh Oxford World's Classics edition is strongly recommended for most readers.
Further Reading
- Atkins, E.M. and T.H. Irwin. Cicero: On the Ends of Good and Evil. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Wood, Neal. Cicero's Social and Political Thought. University of California Press, 1988.
- Dyck, Andrew R. A Commentary on Cicero: De Officiis. University of Michigan Press, 1996. The scholarly standard.