Outliving the Republic

Chapter 4 examines claims in republican oratory and letters that the body politic was dead, dying, or would have died, if not for some timely intervention. To some degree, invocations of the republic’s death overlap with the images of wounding and disease explored in earlier chapters, to which at least a few are directly connected. The suggestion of urgency and permanence and the complex emotional resonances evoked by death, however, also often impart meanings of their own. References to the body politic’s demise are particularly common not only in invective but also in consolatory contexts, as Cicero’s letters to and from friends in the period of the civil wars (from 49 to 45 BCE) and Caesar’s dictatorship poignantly show. Common assumptions that Rome’s republic ought to have been undying lent further significance to statements about the political body’s death.

Murdering the Fatherland

Examining claims about “parricide” and “murdering the fatherland” in the wake of Caesar’s assassination, chapter 5 historicizes the discussions of earlier chapters by turning its attention to a single controversial image. The struggles of Cicero and his allies to paint Caesar and Antony as parricidae patriae (against opposing assertions about “murdering the parens patriae”) reveal the full panoply of body-political imagery being marshalled for a specific cause. Evocations of “parricide” are enjoined with images of disease, violence, and murder to strengthen their persuasiveness and drive the point home. Conflicting attempts to control the meaning of “parricide” mark the last traceable instance when imagery of Rome’s afflicted body was used to persuade in such a way, thus making the conflict a fitting end to the inquiry as a whole.

Butchering the Body Politic

Chapter 3 explores images of wounding, dismemberment, and violence against the state in republican oratory. Cicero’s speeches of the 50s are sometimes argued to be unusually gruesome in their claims about violence to the body politic. Cataloguing references to the republic’s mutilation and trauma in surviving oratory, this chapter puts the images of these speeches in context and reveals that such violent imagery is in fact prevalent in all periods. Violent imagery is shown to have been persuasive for tapping into anxieties about disability, social status, and liberty. Cicero’s references to the body politic’s wounds in the speeches of the 50s are remarkable only insofar as they refer to the orator’s exile, a fact which highlights the self-serving character of such imagery in general.

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.

The Republican Body Politic

Chapter 1 explores the legendary fable in which Menenius Agrippa (or Manius Valerius Maximus) compared the Roman state to a body to win over the sympathies of the rebellious plebs. The fable is read as offering a pattern for nearly all surviving discourse of the republican body politic, in which perceptions of crisis provoke an account of a dysfunctional political body. The fable is also shown to embed a number of central assumptions and anxieties about harmony, order, and discord that are common to references to the body politic. Bodily anatomy and composition and historiographic commonplaces about moral and physical degeneration are also examined. Observations provide a foundation for the discussions of subsequent chapters.

Introduction

The Introduction briefly sets out the ubiquity and importance of bodily imagery in late republican political discourse and argues for its conventional nature. A case is made for situating the uses of Cicero, our best surviving source, alongside those of his forebears and peers. An emphasis on persuasion is stressed and theoretical approaches to imagery, both ancient and modern, are concisely discussed. Likewise, an overview of subsequent chapters is provided, with justification for the work’s arrangement and a quick review of related scholarship. Arguments are addressed primarily to classicists interested in the literature and politics of republican Rome, but the continued centrality of bodily imagery (especially in areas such as contemporary biopolitics and the like) may find a wider audience.