Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
De Re Publica
The best constitution is mixed — combining the strengths of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy — and the just statesman serves a cosmic order that outlasts his political career
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | De Re Publica (Mid-mature (Cicero's political philosophical synthesis, composed during the breakdown of the late Republic)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Matter · Conservation | Conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Space Instance | Multiple |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Reason |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
De Re Publica
The historical time of Roman political development — kingship, the early Republic, the mature Republic, the threat of decay — that the dialogue narrates.
Space
De Re Publica
The Roman polis and its territorial expansion; in the Somnium, the cosmic space of the celestial spheres in which earthly politics is dwarfed.
Matter
De Re Publica
The materiality of political institutions — senate, comitia, magistracies — whose proper arrangement realises the mixed constitution.
Observer
De Re Publica
Scipio, Laelius, and the dialogue partners; in the Somnium, Scipio elevated to the cosmic observer who sees Rome from the sphere of fixed stars.
Energy
De Re Publica
The political energies of the three orders (monarchic, aristocratic, democratic) whose balanced contention sustains the mixed constitution.
Information
De Re Publica
Historical political knowledge — how constitutions have actually worked across the Greek and Roman experience — is the empirical evidence that constitutional theory must respect.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
The text's fragmentary survival (Books III-V largely lost, the long argument about justice in Book III preserved mainly through Lactantius's Christian polemic against it) makes the full argument harder to reconstruct than De Officiis. The mixed-constitution thesis was politically loaded — Cicero defended the Republic against both Caesarean monarchy and popular-tribune radicalism, and the work's argument has historical political agendas underneath the timeless philosophical claims. Macrobius's commentary on the Somnium ensured that the most Neoplatonic-otherworldly part of De Re Publica was the most-read for a thousand years, somewhat unbalancing the work's overall political-philosophical orientation.