hat constitution which our fathers received from their ancestors and have bequeathed to us...... The roman commonwealth will be the model; and to it shall apply, if I can, all that I must say about the perfect state."5 Clearly Cicero Identifies the perfect state with Rome, he suggested that Rome was the closest thing their was to such an aspiration. The perfect state was the expression and embodiment of the universal community of mankind, to link Rome with the ideal state; was to link Rome with the universal community. The early stoics held that a specific community was nothing more than its laws borders. Thus, arises the notion of a universal community, since we are all under the natural law imposed by the universe. The fundamental problem lays in that Rome could not realistically impose the natural law. Rome could simply impose laws of convention, which it could pass as natural law. This brought about a belief in dual citizenship; one roman, the other universal. But Cicero believed that Rome was the closest manifestation of the common community of man. A very clear bias was present, Cicero forced Roman sentiment on stoic thought; thereby changing it into something less grandiose than the stoics meant by universal citizenship. The accommodating of stoic philosophy into Roman society is very present in the argument of the ideal state. The accommodating brings about the validity of imperialistic Roman virtue. The Roman expansion was part of the divine plan, to draw together a universal community under Roman society. At this point early stoics and Roman virtue conflicted. Roman expansion contradicted stoic indifference doctrine; the natural plan cannot be changed. Yet Roman expansion was rationalized by accepting the belief that it was part of the divine plan. For stoicism to be adopted by Roman some ideals had to be compromised. Cicero saw this notion of compromise more so than the idea of the early stoic view on universal citizenship. I...
