부산대학교 도서관

When, in spite of the senatorial faction's vehement opposition, the tribune Tiberius Gracchus tried to redistribute the ager publicus among the poor and landless proletariat of Rome, he was, according to ancient sources, strongly urged on by a certain Blossius, a citizen of Cumae and an adherent of the Stoic sect. And since Blossius was a Stoic, people assume that Tiberius's schemes of reform were inspired by Stoic ideas. In The Journal of Roman Studies 31 (1941), p. 94, D. R. Dudley, however, casts doubt on this assumption, refers Blossius's attitude to the democratic tradition in his Campanian family background, and states that in those times the Stoa was rather connected, through Panaetius, with the party of Scipio Aemilianus and its conservative opposition to Tiberius. An analysis of Tiberius's motives reveals, apart from some personal ambition and demagoguery, a strong underlying humanitarian feeling, a longing for social justice, and a conviction that the common good was not being served in Rome; his measures also reveal tact and statesmanship. In political leadership he considered the interests of the people as the highest criterium, and for this purpose, by his re-election, he even broke a strong constitutional tradition and apparently aimed at establishing a kind of individual pre-eminence or 'principate' in the state. In Stoic thought only the sapiens (or, at the very least, the proficiens) — a single individual, therefore — is capable of being a ruler in the state, i.e. of interpreting the ratio recta in terms of human law, and of working for the benefit of the community. This idea of individual leadership and of the common good closely corresponds to the attitude of Tiberius. The Stoicism of the aristocratic Scipionic circle, as influenced by Panaetius, on the other hand, was accomodated to the reality of the Roman state and sought to justify its existence. Blossius (and Tiberius), however, remained attached to the more orthodox and idealistic phase of Stoic thought, amongst other reasons perhaps also due to his democratic Campanian background. Panaetius and Blossius were both pupils of Diogenes and Antipater. In the debate between these two teachers in Cicero de Off. III. 50, Diogenes appeals to the ius civile and private property, while Antipater insists on the claims of the societas humana. In their political thought, Panaetius was apparently more attracted to the attitude of Diogenes, while Blossius preferred the stricter old Stoic idealism of Antipater. So we may, in some measure, retrace the opposition between Tiberius and the Scipionic circle to that between Antipater and Diogenes.