ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes a neo-Stoic theory of warfare that became influential at Rome. It was very important to Romans at all times, even in the cynical late republican age, to claim that all Rome's wars were fought to repel or avenge injuries and to think of the imperium as a shield held over Rome's grateful clients. The idea that a just hegemony should benefit its subjects was a commonplace in Greek thought, and Cicero doubtless found it in the Stoic treatise that was his source for On Duties, but there it appears in Roman dress. Stoic ethics was meant for an ideal wise man, a morally perfect human being; when Stoics contrast true freedom and false freedom they mean the true freedom of the wise man. The literature of the Roman Empire is filled with criticisms of war and empire, especially from Stoics and Cynics, some of which is so extreme it has been called a "flirtation with pacifism".
