Cicero And Ovid: The Conflict Between Natural Law And Civil Law

686 Words2 Pages

Writers, such as Cicero and Ovid, investigated philosophical issues of life that bewildered antiquated Romans. These problems include, how to compose laws that can be justified as moral and civil absolutes, and how to manage the changes of love between two individuals. Within Cicero's On The Laws and poems written by Ovid, the authors address some of these issues and offer a resolution for each. In Cicero's eyes there were two points of views, natural law and civil law. However, a problem is presented when deciding which law to follow. Natural law, for example, being a sense of right and wrong within humans from birth, a morality that comes naturally. Civil law revolves around human developed concepts that are made up by officials such as a government or king. For instance, execution for being a traitor or an assassin/murderer. "If nature has given us law, she hath also given us right. But she has bestowed reason on all, therefore right has been bestowed on all."(109) This explains that we as humans are born with a specific mindset, in we were born with certain natural laws implanted into our minds. However, on the opposing side, civil law is in which explained here "the dictator should be empowered to put to death with impunity whatever citizens he pleased, without hearing them in their …show more content…

Cicero the right of way of human nature and having a sense of right and wrong, and Ovid the crazy roller coaster that is love. For Cicero he wanted to reveal that there is indeed a right law, natural law, which is considered more favorable compared to civil law because it is universal. Ovid presented various backgrounds of love both warm and cold stories which the characters or ideas expressed show people can love indefinitely and others be unfaithful and harsh. These two men opened a new point of view on topics not previously discussed in

More about Cicero And Ovid: The Conflict Between Natural Law And Civil Law

Open Document