Cicero wrote the De republica between 54 and 51 B.C., while retreated from political life. Composed during those hard years, such a work originates from the need to reflect on the current situation and on the whole history of Rome. Starting from the title, Cicero draws inspiration from Plato’s Republic, but departs from the model under several respects. The most important difference is certainly the dismissal of Plato’s project, which Cicero considers cut off from reality. He carries out instead a historical-institutional analysis and attributes it, within the dialogical fiction, to the members of Scipio’s circle. The essay focuses on the analysis of the proems put before the three days in which the discussion is imagined to have been held. In particular, I examine the proem of book I, where Cicero criticizes the doctrines of the philosophers who, by preaching abstention, jaundice the best Roman citizens, leading them to abandon public offices. The relationship between the two types of life, the political one and the philosophical one, is present in the other two proems as well and is always solved in favor of political life: philosophical life can and indeed should complement it, yet without replacing it.
