Classical Precedents

Abstract

Several ancient writers recount a familiar quasi-anthropological myth of the birth of civilization, the story of mankind’s exodus from a nomadic, wilderness existence to the immured life of highly organized communities.¹ Cicero records in the De inventions:

Men were scattered in the fields and hidden in sylvan retreats when [an eloquent man] assembled and gathered them in accordance with a plan; he introduced them to every useful and honourable occupation, though they cried out against it at first because of its novelty, and then when through reason and eloquence they had listened with greater attention, he transformed them from wild savages into a kind of gentle folk. (1.2)