Work
On Duties
Addressed to his son Marcus, the treatise examines what honour demands, what advantage recommends, and why their conflict is only apparent when utility is rightly understood. Cicero translates Greek ethics into Roman responsibilities.
- Composition
- 44 BCE
Sources and precision
The range describes composition or formation of the text, distinct from the dates of the editions held.
Confidence B · strong consensus
- Tradition
- Greek and Roman traditions
- Period
- Antiquity
- Languages
- Latin · English · French
- Extent
- 371 passages · 114,758 words
Before reading
What you will learn
Distinguish the honourable from apparent advantage, analyze a conflict of duties, and follow the Roman adaptation of Greek ethical categories.
Short summary
Addressed to his son Marcus, the treatise examines what honour demands, what advantage recommends, and why their conflict is only apparent when utility is rightly understood. Cicero translates Greek ethics into Roman responsibilities.
Long summary
The books examine sources of duty, kinds of advantage, and cases where profit, loyalty, justice, or reputation seem to conflict. Historical examples and concrete dilemmas give doctrine a political, familial, and economic field.
The pedagogical argument maintains that injustice never becomes truly advantageous. That normative coherence is tested by the republican crisis in which Cicero writes and by the accommodations his own examples force readers to discuss.
Inside this work
The table of contents follows the divisions actually carried by the corpus.
Work › Division
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All 371 references remain accessible through the reader and search. This table shows the first 240 to remain manageable.
Concepts covered
Historical context
The world around the text
The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.
These are modern reconstructions. They situate a documented place, practice, or transmission and are not period documents.
What the world looked like
Roman world, 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE
- State of technology
- Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood.
- Science and knowledge
- Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory.
- Medicine and care
- Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist.
- Transport
- On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky.
- Agriculture and food
- Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour.
- Communication
- Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand.
- Clothing and fashion
- Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin.
Editions, translations, and provenance
The following carriers represent the text. They do not create new passage identities.
- Latinoriginal
- English AI-generated translation, non-officialCodex gpt-5.6-sol · Non-official working translation · 2026-09-11
- French AI-generated translation, non-officialCodex gpt-5.6-sol · Non-official working translation · 2026-09-11
- Frenchhistorical_translation
- English AI-generated translation, non-officialCodex gpt-5.6-sol · Non-official working translation · 2026-09-11
- Englishhistorical_translation
- French AI-generated translation, non-officialCodex gpt-5.6-sol · Non-official working translation · 2026-09-11
- Englishhistorical_translation
- French AI-generated translation, non-officialCodex gpt-5.6-sol · Non-official working translation · 2026-09-11
Source manifests: cicero.de_officiis, cicero.translation_carrier_fr_25, cicero.translation_carrier_en_02, cicero.translation_carrier_en_13
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On DutiesCicero