Resumen de Augustus and self-defence as the stoic reason of state in the roman legal order

J. Giltaij

• Stoic political theory has to be pieced together from the surviving scraps in the sources. Possibly, one of these sources is Cicero's defence of Milo. In the oration, Cicero uses the Stoic notion of self-defence to justify the killing of the 'tyrant' Clodius in a trial held for violations of public order. Arguably, Augustus would employ that same theory in his decision regarding a lawsuit in the town of Knidos. But does this mean a Stoic theory of state was more generally present at some point in the development of the Roman legal order? To examine this, this article will treat the con taken in the course of the late republic and early empire, and compare them to the Stoic theory of self-defence mandating the killing of tyrants .