Healing the State with Violence
Chapter 2 examines imagery of medicine and disease in late-republican oratory and their use as a means of conceptualizing disorder and persuading and justifying a range of actions. After a brief overview of medical imagery in republican politics, including in earlier periods, the chapter turns to a consideration of Roman preconceptions about medical knowledge and practice. Republic images of disease are also distinguished from similar Greek imagery. Commonplace appeals to salus rei publicae, “the health or wellbeing of the state,” as justifications for violent interventions are also read through the lens of medical necessity. It is argued that imagery involving medicine was useful in part for its capacity to characterize disparate courses of action, no matter what they actually were, as salutary for the republic, while enabling the interests of one’s political enemies to be written off as causes of harmful disease. A close reading of the arguments of Cicero and his opponents in the Pro Sestio shows these tendencies in action.