What Cicero Knew About Your Best Life

The Atlantic

03-07-2025

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I do a lot of public speaking for business leaders about how using the science of happiness can improve their organization and make life easier for everyone. But there's one question I get very frequently: 'What about when I have to do hard things that make people un happy?' For example: having to fire someone, or asking people to make sacrifices. How do I think about this common scenario?
This quandary is as old as time, and no one addressed it better than Marcus Tullius Cicero, the Roman philosopher and statesman who lived more than two millennia ago. For much of his career, Cicero lived a comfortable, uncontentious life of the mind, respected by all. But after Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.E., he felt a civic duty to speak out about a threat to the republic in the person of Mark Antony, who was vying for power. Cicero denounced Antony as a tyrant in a series of speeches called the Philippics. It was a risky move, one that made a powerful enemy, but Cicero honestly believed that by doing the right thing as he understood it, he was making no sacrifice at all.
In a book written around the same time as the Philippics, titled De Officiis ('On Duties'), Cicero explained exactly why he believed that doing what is difficult but morally correct is also what most reliably and enduringly brings the rewards we seek in life. Despite our flawed instinct to take the path of least resistance, he reasoned, we will always be better served by choosing to do the right thing. In this masterwork, Cicero created a guide for how to have a successful life through honorable behavior. Take that to heart, and you have a guide for living a happier life as well.
From the September 1865 issue: Life and times of Marcus Tullius Cicero
De Officiis was written in the form of a very long public letter to Cicero's son, Cicero Minor, who was a philosophy student in Athens at the time. College life then being not so different from what it is today, he appears to have sorely needed advice on his duties. According to what the philosopher Seneca wrote some years later, the young man 'was not gifted with a good memory, and drunkenness was gradually destroying any that he had.'
Cicero's book is in three parts, beginning with a study of what is honorable in life. He asserts that 'all that is morally right rises from some one of four sources,' which he lists as truth, justice, nobility, and moderation. These are, essentially, a variation of Plato's four cardinal virtues of wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance, and Cicero argues that these traits are the foundation for a life of integrity and rectitude.
His letter offers limited encouragement to people who write advice columns. Modern research demonstrates that virtues are indeed most effectively transmitted by parents and peers, whereas outside interventions to teach virtue show only modest effectiveness. But as far as paternal influence goes, the book perhaps had some effect: Though Cicero Minor did not enjoy the illustrious career that his father did, he went on to hold a series of official positions in the Roman Republic.
The second part of De Officiis discusses the worldly rewards people naturally want. Cicero focuses on honor, wealth, and power—prizes bound up with a desire for status that is encoded in our genes. As evolutionary biologists have long argued, these rewards correlate with both reproductive success and resource acquisition. Our ancestors' drive to succeed has surely passed on to us a craving to be superior to others in money, power, and prestige. Cicero acknowledges this reality, but notes that there are morally better and worse ways to acquire these rewards. Less honorable ways include disloyalty toward others and dishonesty in our dealings. The morally superior means for doing so include generosity, courtesy, and excellence—the virtues from part one, above.
Part three of De Officiis is the most important because he argues that the honorable route to worldly rewards is also the most expedient and effective way to get them and keep them. In other words, there is no conflict between doing well and doing good. Back in part two, he realizes that people tend not to believe this, because they operate on the zero-sum assumption that someone must 'take something from his neighbour' and so 'profit by his neighbour's loss.' But in part three, Cicero rejects this completely. 'For a man to take something from his neighbour and to profit by his neighbour's loss is more contrary to Nature than is death or poverty or pain or anything else that can affect either our person or our property.'
Cicero makes three arguments to bolster his claim that virtue is more profitable than vice. First, using Stoic reasoning, to behave unethically degrades your character, making any success that you realize not worth having. Second, any short-term gain by taking advantage of others will harm your reputation and therefore your long-term worldly success. Third, to use a not very Roman word, karma. Bad behavior, Cicero believed, disrupts the universe's natural harmony, with negative consequences for the perpetrator.
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Cicero's argument—that lasting worldly success is not possible without virtue—can apply to happiness as well. In an effort to raise their well-being, at least temporarily, people constantly engage in behaviors they may not be proud of. People may cheat on their spouse for a thrill or to feel romantic love again. They may steal for an easy gain or lie for personal advantage. They may act selfishly by looking after their own interests and ignoring other people's.
Few of us would brag about being disloyal, dishonest, or selfish. As Cicero notes, people act in these ways because they evidently believe that happiness in life 'will assuredly clash with moral rectitude.' People think that you can't always feel good by being good, so you may have to sacrifice the former for the latter. Predictably, Cicero says this is bunk—a 'sorry state of servitude' and mere 'pandering to sensual pleasure.'
By the same logic that the exercise of virtue ultimately delivers worldly success, Cicero believed it also brings true happiness. Modern social science shows that he was spot-on. For example, a happy marriage is not simply linked to conjugal fidelity; that loyalty is itself a central ingredient in marital contentment. Similarly, honesty in one's personal dealings reliably raises life satisfaction. And generous behavior has been found again and again to increase happiness. In the long run, then, the best way to feel good is to do good, despite any temptation to cut corners.
This dictum offers a reassuringly simple formula for a happier life. That doesn't mean it will always be easy to follow, but instead of asking, 'What will make me happy right now?,' consider how to answer the question, 'What is the virtuous path in this situation?' That correct path may involve tough decisions, but it will ultimately lead you to the greatest happiness in life.
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To return to the leader's quandary I began with: How should we think about a situation when, in acting properly, we inflict unhappiness? Cicero's answer was unambiguous: Do your duty—even when doing so may harm your own and others' short-term happiness.
In Cicero's case, this was not hypothetical. Mark Antony came to power in a three-man dictatorship and sought to eliminate all of the dictators' opponents, starting with Cicero. With a warrant out for his execution, Cicero attempted to flee his villa for Macedonia, but was captured by Roman soldiers. As legend has it, seeing that the arrestee was the famous, noble Cicero, a tribune named Popillius hesitated in carrying out the execution. Cicero, the man of honor, did not plead for his life, but rather schooled the centurion on his duty: 'Approach, veteran soldier,' he said, 'and, if you can at least do so much properly, sever this neck.'