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How did Cicero describe the relationship between true law and nature?
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natural law
Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, oil on canvas by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1653; in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
In his work De republica, the Roman philosopher Cicero famously described true law as "right reason in agreement with nature."1
He posited that this law is universal, eternal, and unchangeable, transcending local jurisdictions like Rome or Athens. For Cicero, this natural law reflects a cosmic order, serving as an objective moral standard against which human-enacted statutes must be measured. Consequently, he argued that any "wicked and unjust" statutes that fail to align with these moral truths do not qualify as real law at all. This conception established a foundational framework for the natural law tradition, asserting that political power must be moralized and held accountable to higher, objective principles.12