The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought 1009389297, 9781009389297

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THE BODY POLITIC IN ROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

How did Roman writers use the metaphor of the body politic to respond to the downfall of the Republic? In this book, Julia Mebane begins with the Catilinarian Conspiracy in 63 bce, when Cicero and Catiline proposed two rival models of statesmanship on the senate floor: the civic healer and the head of state. Over the next century, these two paradigms of authority were used to confront the establishment of sole rule in the Roman world. Tracing their Imperial afterlives allows us to see how Romans came to terms with autocracy without ever naming it as such. In identifying metaphor as an important avenue of political thought, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of ideas. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details. julia mebane is an assistant professor in the Department of Classical Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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THE BODY POLITIC IN ROMAN POLITICAL THOUGHT JULIA MEBANE Indiana University, Bloomington

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Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge cb2 8ea, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, ny 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, vic 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 103 Penang Road, #05–06/07, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore 238467 Cambridge University Press is part of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, a department of the University of Cambridge. We share the University’s mission to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781009389297 doi: 10.1017/9781009389334 © Julia Mebane 2024 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press & Assessment. First published 2024 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library A Cataloging-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the Library of Congress isbn 978-1-009-38929-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press & Assessment has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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For my parents

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Contents

Acknowledgments

page viii

Introduction

1

1

Defining the Roman Republic Approaching Roman Republicanism Metaphor as a Source of Political Thought Chapter Outlines

3 13 20 25

The Divided Body Politic

29

Senate and People in the Republican Body Politic Discord as Division and Doubling Missing and Monstrous Heads

2 The Sick Body Politic Moral Decline and the Sick Body Politic Curing the Catilinarian Conspiracy Violent Remedies

3 The Augustan Transformation The Curative Powers of the Princeps Historicizing the Head of State Augustus as the caput orbis

4 Julio-Claudian Consensus and Civil War

31 41 47

61 63 72 83

95

96 104 126

131

Augustus and the End of Civil War Tiberius and the Transfer of Power Caligula and the Return of Discord

133 140 150

5 Addressing Autocracy under Nero

163

The Ideal of Imperial Interdependence The Problem of Bad Rule The Fate of the Body Politic

165 172 181

Conclusion

195

Works Cited Index Locorum Index

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205 246 250

Acknowledgments

It is a pleasure to thank the many people who have offered their expertise and support in the completion of this book, which began as a dissertation at the University of Chicago. My deepest gratitude goes to Michèle Lowrie, who introduced me to Lucan’s Bellum Civile in a seminar during my first year of graduate school. Her encouragement to keep working on a paper on the beheading of Pompey sparked my interest in the conceptual history of the Roman body politic. Since then, I have benefited in countless ways from her mentorship and scholarship. As my dissertation took shape, I had the good fortune to receive additional guidance from Clifford Ando and Shadi Bartsch. They joined Michèle in offering incisive and thoughtful feedback on multiple drafts of every chapter. It is a rare gift to have scholars of such formidable intellect engage deeply with one’s work. I have tried my best not to squander the opportunity. I turned my dissertation into a book in the Classical Studies department at Indiana University, Bloomington, which has provided a wonderful home over the past five years. Matthew Christ and Cynthia Bannon have been mentors in research and teaching, while Lindsey Mazurek, Kenneth Draper, and the rest of the junior faculty have become great friends as well as colleagues. The Scholarly Writing Program at Indiana University kept me accountable throughout the writing and publication process, while the Chicago Regional Workshop for Junior Classics Faculty provided a place for conversation among peers. Many of the ideas in this book began in classroom conversations with graduate students. I thank them for patiently enduring every reference to the body politic I found in our readings. I happened to become interested in the metaphor of the body politic around the same time as Hunter Gardner and Brian Walters, whose excellent books on the topic precede mine. Both have been incredibly generous in sharing this intellectual territory; Hunter reached out to me on the topic of pestilence in Livy, while Brian shared a copy of his manuscript with me before its publication. I have tried to flag my intellectual debts to them in the pages that follow. viii

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Acknowledgments

ix

My sincerest thanks go to the press’s readers, whose careful critiques greatly improved the manuscript. Dean Hammer revealed himself as one of those readers, providing the opportunity for further conversation on Roman political thought. I also benefited from the careful reading of Harriet Fertik, who provided feedback on nearly every chapter. I tried out many of my ideas before audiences at the University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and Pomona College, as well as at various meetings of the Society for Classical Studies and Classical Association of the Middle West and South. A conference on Lucan organized by Laura Zientek and Mark Thorne allowed me to expand my discussion of the Bellum Civile beyond its original scope. Gwendolyn Gibbons provided diligent editorial assistance in the final stages of the book’s completion. Chapter 5 uses material previously published as “Pompey’s Head and the Body Politic in Lucan’s De Bello Civili,” TAPA 146.1 (2016): 191–215 and “Lucan and the Specter of Sulla in Julio-Claudian Rome,” in Lucan’s Imperial World: The Bellum Civile in Its Contemporary Contexts, ed. Laura Zientek and Mark Thorne, 173–90 (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). The reproduction of these pieces has kindly been granted by Johns Hopkins University Press and Bloomsbury Press. The path from a dissertation to a book is a long and arduous one. It is wonderful to look back on the friends and family who have helped me along the way. Natalie Trevino, Paul Vădan, and Andrew Horne were great friends at the University of Chicago and remain so today. My parents, to whom this book is dedicated, have supported me in more ways than I can mention. I am lucky to count my brothers among my closest friends. Above all, I would like to thank my husband, Carlos, who has been a true partner at every stage of this journey. It is difficult to imagine traveling such a long road without him and I am grateful I never had to. I submitted the revised manuscript to the press the night before our son, Maxwell, was born. While the publication of this book is a great achievement, it pales in comparison to the gift of watching him grow.

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Introduction

In the fall of 43 bce, Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus met on a small island near Bononia, Italy, to formalize an alliance that became known as the second triumvirate.1 Among the provisions of their agreement was the implementation of a new round of proscriptions to fund their armies in the wars to come. After marching to Rome, they ensured their extraordinary commission was invested with the force of law through the passage of the Lex Titia. The next night, the first names of the proscribed were publicly posted. The triumvirs had already sent execution squads ahead to eliminate the most prominent of their enemies, foremost among them Cicero. Fleeing down the coast of Italy with hopes of reaching Brutus in Macedonia, Cicero was apprehended near his villa at Formiae. According to Livy, his assassins caught him as he was being carried on a litter to the sea. Declaring his intention to die in the country he had often saved, he thrust his head forth to be severed.2 The soldiers also removed the hands with which he had penned the Philippics, a series of speeches that portrayed Antony as a rotting limb in need of surgical removal: in rei publicae corpore, ut totum salvum sit, quicquid est pestiferum amputetur (“In the body of the res publica, in order that the whole is safe, whatever is pestilential must be cut out,” Cic. Phil. 8.15). As Antony displayed the severed membra of his adversary on the speaker’s platform, he offered a symbolic rejoinder to the rhetoric of the Philippics. It was not he but Cicero, it seemed, who required amputation from the body of Rome. All translations are my own unless otherwise indicated. I have used Oxford Classical Texts when available; most other quotations follow the texts used by the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI). Exceptions are acknowledged in the notes and bibliography. Greek quotations of Appian, Dio, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Plutarch follow standard Loeb editions. Primary source abbreviations accord with the Oxford Classical Dictionary. 1 See App. B Civ. 4.2–6; Cass. Dio 46.54–6, 47.1–2; Plut. Cic. 46, Ant. 18–19 alongside Richardson 2012: 34–8. 2 prominenti ex lectica praebentique inmotam cervicem caput praecisum est (“Leaning out of the litter and offering his steady neck, he was beheaded,” Sen. Suas. 6.17). Osgood 2006: 78–9 discusses the difficulty of separating fact from fiction in the tales of Cicero and other proscribed men.

1

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Introduction

In the years after Cicero’s death, his severed head became an object of fascination to his fellow Romans.3 Stories fueled by the declamatory schools began circulating that Antony dined with his head on the table and that his wife Fulvia stuck her hair pins in his tongue.4 Much of what we know of this tradition comes from the Elder Seneca’s Suasoriae, which preserves several accounts of Cicero’s death. It also includes a eulogy composed by the late Augustan poet Cornelius Severus, from whose epic Res Romanae twenty-five lines are excerpted.5 The verses open with the jarring image of the rostra piled high with the heads of great men. Despite the horror of their nearly still breathing visages (oraque . . . spirantia paene), Severus’ imagined viewers do not linger upon them.6 They are instead seized by the imago of Cicero, so extraordinary that it seems to stand alone: sed enim abstulit omnis, | tamquam sola foret, rapti Ciceronis imago (“but the face of slaughtered Cicero pushed them all aside, as if his were there alone,” Sen. Suas. 6.26). Treating his decapitated head as if it were an ancestor mask, Severus draws out its symbolic significance: egregium semper patriae caput, ille senatus | vindex, ille fori, legum ritusque togaeque, | publica vox saevis aeternum obmutuit armis (“The eternally extraordinary head of his country, that champion of the senate, of the forum, of laws and customs and civic life, a public voice forever silenced by savage weapons,” Sen. Suas. 6.26).7 Despite writing half a century after the fall of the Republic, Severus is fluent in the elements of its political language: the foundational institutions of the senate and the courts, the civic markers of the forum and the toga, and the role of the statesman in religious rites and public speech. Yet there is one element of his eulogy that reveals him as a thinker of the late Augustan age: his celebration of Cicero as a head of state. At first glance, Severus’ description of Cicero as a head of state might seem like little more than a rhetorical cliché. Yet in the political discourse of the early-to-mid first century bce, this metaphor was laden with regal connotations that made it inappropriate as a term of praise. Late Republican thinkers instead envisioned the res publica as an autonomous organism composed of interdependent parts. This tradition was primarily oriented towards the relationship between the senate and people. When a statesman was incorporated into it, he typically played the role of 3 5 6 7

Richlin 1999 addresses the symbolism surrounding Cicero’s head. 4 Roller 1997. Quintilian calls Severus a better versificator than poeta (Inst. 10.1.89). Conte 1994: 430 suggests that his works represent the extreme convergence of epic, oratory, and historiography. The use of ora rather than capita foregrounds the theme of eloquence (von Albrecht 1999: 218). Dahlmann 1975: 101 interprets patriae caput as a variation on pater patriae, an idea developed by Feddern 2013: ad loc. Lobur 2008: 150 argues that these lines equate the death of Cicero with “the death of the republic.”

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Defining the Roman Republic

3

a protector or healer. On the rare occasions when capital symbolism did appear, it was used to criticize those whose ambitions posed a threat to collegial governance. Over Severus’ lifespan, however, the caput reversed its signifying force. It was not only Cicero who came to be celebrated in this manner, but also Pompey, Caesar, and the princeps himself. By the end of the Julio-Claudian era, the res publica had been radically reimagined as a collection of limbs and organs unable to survive without a head to command it. Its transformation, I argue, illuminates how Roman writers responded to the establishment of sole rule without acknowledging it as such. The metaphor of the body politic therefore offers a new perspective on the constitutional transformation of the late first century bce and its representation in Latin literature.

Defining the Roman Republic My book takes a historicizing approach to figurative speech to explore the paradoxical persistence of Roman Republicanism under the Principate.8 Roman thinkers famously declined to acknowledge the arrival of sole rule for nearly a century after the Battle of Actium, producing a disjuncture between constitutional form and political language that has invited divergent modes of explanation. Ronald Syme influentially argued that Romans were aware of the changes wrought by Augustus but were unwilling to address them directly. “Contemporaries,” as he succinctly put it, “were not deceived.”9 Those who share his perspective explain this unwillingness in different ways: as a product of the Roman elite’s own value system,10 a collective act of self-censorship,11 and the occasional result of direct pressure from above.12 Others have since questioned Syme’s consciously 8

I employ an upper-case R when referring to the Roman Republic or the political thought that arose in relation to it (Roman Republicanism). I use a lower-case R to refer to the classical republican tradition that I will go on to discuss. 9 Syme 1939: 2. 10 Kennedy 1992: 42–8 and Feeney 1992: 3 argue against a top-down approach to “Augustanism,” emphasizing contestation and dialogue instead. 11 The concept of self-censorship is exemplified in Asinius Pollio’s well-known witticism, non est enim facile in eum scribere qui potest proscribere (“It is no easy thing to write against the one who can proscribe,” Macrob. Sat. 2.4.21). Griffin 1984 engages with this theme in his discussion of Hor. Sat. 1.3.4 (Caesar, qui cogere posset), while Ziogas 2015 addresses self-censorship as a literary trope. 12 Evidence for direct pressure only emerges in the late Augustan era, when the princeps reportedly ordered the burning of defamatory books (Cass. Dio 56.27.1). The Elder Seneca writes that Labienus avoided reciting certain parts of his history due to fears of retribution and that his books were burnt by his enemies (Sen. Controv. 10 praef. 5–8). One of those enemies, Cassius Severus, was charged with maiestas for writings that offended Augustus (Tac. Ann. 1.72.3). See Howley 2017: 217–18 on the uncertainties surrounding the practice, which was almost certainly not formalized during this

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Introduction

Tacitean approach to the Principate.13 Rather than viewing Augustan writers as “mere mouthpieces of the political regime” or trying to find hidden moments of subversion in their texts, they invite us to take claims of Republican restoration seriously.14 At the very least, Karl Galinsky argues, we should recognize that witnesses to this era “saw a sea of flux without a big marker that shouted ‘Actium!’”15 To insist that Romans not only perceived, but also understood the significance of, a constitutional change for which they provide no evidence might say more about our own political attachments than theirs.16 Both approaches carry potential pitfalls; the former risks imposing our own conceptual categories onto people who did not experience their world in these terms, while the latter risks internalizing an ideology that benefited the consolidation of power into the hands of the few. Central to this debate are divergent perspectives on what we mean by “Roman Republic” in the first place. Latin famously lacked a word – whether res publica or something else – to specify the political system that evolved after the mythologized expulsion of the kings. As Claudia Moatti writes, “the Romans could not say in Latin that they lived in a Republic.”17 Res publica only came to signify non-monarchical governance in the Italian Renaissance, when thinkers like Leonardo Bruni reworked it in service of their own political preoccupations.18 Prior to this point, Latin writers could speak comfortably of the res publica that existed under Romulus or that over which Augustus presided.19 When seeking to distinguish between different regimes or constitutions, they

13 15 16 18

19

period. Syme 1939: 486 argues that there were “stern measures of repression against noxious literature,” but Raaflaub and Samons 1990: 439–47 advocate a more moderate approach. On Tacitus as a model for Syme, see Toher 2009b. 14 Galinsky 2005: 2. Galinsky 2005: 8. Eder 2005: 13–18 emphasizes that the “monarchical” perspective derives from High Imperial rather than contemporary literature. Roller 2015: 11–15. 17 Moatti 2020: 118. Hankins 2010 persuasively illustrates the origins of this tradition in the fifteenth century and considers its impact on “exclusivist republicanism,” which holds that a republic is the only legitimate form of government. As Béranger 1953: 219 long ago observed, “La monarchie est compatible avec la res publica.” Latin writers provide ample proof of this point; when Cicero’s Scipio discusses Romulus’ regal foundation of Rome, he asks, quod habemus igitur institutae rei publicae tam clarum ac tam omnibus notum exordium, quam huius urbis condendae principium profectum a Romulo? (“Therefore, what origin of a res publica’s creation do we consider as famous and well-known to all as the beginning of this city’s foundation accomplished by Romulus?” Cic. Rep. 2.4). On the “Augustan restoration,” Velleius famously writes, prisca illa et antiqua rei publicae forma revocata (“That old and ancestral form of res publica was revived,” Vell. Pat. 2.89.3). Res publica is often construed as “Republic” in this passage (e.g. Gowing 2005: 40), but as Millar 1973: 64 writes, “We could reasonably paraphrase this passage as ‘Augustus restored the res publica’, but not as ‘Augustus restored the Republic’.”

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Defining the Roman Republic

5

used words like forma, status, and species.20 The three standard formae rei publicae were rule by the many (populus), few (pauci), and one (una potestas).21 It was not the distribution of power within them that mattered, but rather their orientation towards the best interest of their citizens. This idea underpins Scipio’s famously vague definition of res publica as res populi, “the property of the people,” in De Republica.22 Any form of unjust rule, whether that practiced by Greek tyrants or Roman decemvirs, could serve as its lexical opposite.23 To declare the end of the res publica, as Cicero and his contemporaries often did, was to make a point about political legitimacy rather than constitutional form.24 The usage of this term is therefore not the best place to look for evidence of the “Roman Republic” or its demise. If it is clear that res publica did not mean “republic” in the modern sense, however, its semantic range in Latin remains to be more fully explicated. Louise Hodgson argues that this term did not designate a political system, but rather the civic affairs and property over which a political community (civitas) presided.25 She describes it as both the communal space within which public administrators moved and the sphere of action created by their movements. Although this concept remained stable for several centuries, it saw increasing manipulation in the first century bce. As Roman statesmen appealed to the res publica in the service of increasingly tendentious ends, they politicized what had once been neutral. This breakdown of linguistic consensus mirrored and contributed to the disintegration of the political system we call the Roman Republic. The eventual hollowness of the term finds expression in Caesar’s famous quip, nihil esse rem publicam, appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie (“There is no res publica, only 20 21

22

23

24

25

On these terms, see Moatti 2017: 37–40; Atkins 2013b: 18–19. Quintilian cites Cicero for this classificatory system (Inst. 5.10.63–4), which appears in similar form in Tacitus (nam cunctas nationes et urbes populus aut primores aut singuli regunt, “For either the people or leading men or individuals rule all peoples and cities,” Tac. Ann. 4.33.1). This model was, of course, indebted to the typologies of regimes elaborated in Greek political philosophy. The bibliography on this topic is immense, but see Atkins 2013a: 128–38, who stresses the importance of the property metaphor, which points towards the world of Roman law; Schofield 1995, who argues that Scipio’s definition operates as a criterion of political legitimacy within the text; Asmis 2004, who stresses Scipio’s portrayal of the res publica as a partnership between citizens. nam si nobis non placebat Syracusis fuisse rem publicam neque Agrigenti, neque Athenis cum essent tyranni neque hic cum decemviri (“For if we have agreed that there was no res publica at Syracuse nor Agrigentum nor Athens, when there were tyrants, nor here, when there were decemvirs,” Cic. Rep. 3.45). See Bringmann 2002 on the res publica amissa trope. To deny the existence of the res publica was to dispute that governance served shared public interests and conformed to customary rules and procedures (Mouritsen 2017: 3). My discussion summarizes Hodgson 2017: 1–20.

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Introduction

a name without body or form,” Suet. Iul. 77). Rather than take Caesar’s words as an anachronistic declaration of the end of the Republic, Hodgson sees them as an acknowledgment that res publica had lost any agreed upon definition.26 This loss ultimately helped enable the sustained usage of the term under the Principate, where it could be redefined in new ways.27 Moatti addresses the indeterminacy of res publica from a broader historical perspective.28 Beginning her analysis in the fourth century bce, she argues that this term designated nothing more than that which was shared between and debated by citizens. Never a locus of stable signification, its meaning was determined by context on a case-by-case basis. The linguistic conflict that Hodgson ascribes to the last decades of the Republic, in other words, was there all along. Its resistance to definition, embodied in the ambiguity of the word res, was precisely the point.29 It conveyed a totality composed of plural elements but did not specify what those elements were or how they ought to interact.30 Such questions were negotiated through the interactions of citizens themselves, who had competing perspectives, concerns, and voices. Embodying the manifold tensions that structured Roman society, res publica served as a conceptual nexus around which politics revolved. Whereas Hodgson sees this concept becoming more malleable in the post-Gracchan era, Moatti suggests that it became less so.31 As members of the elite sought to stabilize and control an increasingly turbulent political process, they began to formalize and delimit the definition of res publica in the service of their own interests. They gradually replaced the old idea of “a community of affairs” with a new idea of a unified and unalterable entity separate from and above the citizenry. They used this idea to establish the legitimacy of the senatus consultum ultimum and other extralegal interventions on behalf of the res publica, which came to function as a normative public authority. It was this public authority, not a “republic,” that became the object of the Augustan restoration. Despite the departure in their conclusions, Hodgson and Moatti agree that the meaning of res publica was highly contested in the first century 26 27 29 30

31

Translations of this quote tend to render res publica as “republic” (Carter 2008: xlix; Edwards 2000: 35; Graves 2007: 37), which is potentially misleading. Hodgson 2017: 261–76. 28 Moatti 2018 synthesizes her work on this topic. Drawing on Claude Lévi-Strauss, Moatti 2018: 30 describes res as “une sorte de ‘signifiant flottant’”. Moatti 2018: 55–7 discusses the impossibility of breaking the res publica down into partes with clearly delineated functions. While we might identify the senate, people, magistrates, priests, army, allies, and treasury as elements of the res publica, such a list varied according to context and was never exhaustive. Moatti 2020: 125–36 lays out the argument paraphrased here.

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Defining the Roman Republic

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bce. The metaphor of the body politic served as one avenue through which Roman thinkers debated its signifying force. The parts of the civic body were never standardized in the political discourse of the Late Republic; one writer might see the senate and people as its core components, while another might focus on physical spaces like the Capitoline or Cloaca Maxima. A speaker might praise a consul as a healer or criticize him as a cancerous growth. These divergent figurations of the res publica gave concrete expression to competing visions of the political and social order. They reflected different conceptions of social structures, public institutions, statesmanship, imperial geography, civic values, and the interconnections between them.32 Crafted in dialogue with and in response to each other, they created a rhetorical battlefield marked by experimentation, contradiction, and disagreement. My aim is not to impose order upon this tradition, but instead ask what its disorder reveals about Roman political thought. In prioritizing indeterminacy over constancy, I draw inspiration from Hodgson and Moatti even as I diverge at points from their conclusions. The linguistic history of res publica underscores the extent to which our own categories of “Republic” and “Principate” are a product of modern scholarship rather than ancient perception.33 Just because Romans never employed these conceptual categories, however, does not mean they lack value. “Roman Republic” remains a useful descriptor of a civic community predicated upon the self-governance of a (male) citizen body that expressed its will through voting and regulated its civic affairs through law and custom.34 Most scholars would agree upon the existence of such a community between the fifth and first centuries bce, though key elements of its political form, as well as the dates of their instantiation and demise, remain open to debate. Referring to it as the “Roman Republic” is not to deny its evolution over the span of several centuries; innovations in officeholding, legislation, and voting, as well as shifts in citizenship, social identity, and wealth distribution, produced a governing system in constant flux.35 Such changes were compounded and intensified 32 33

34 35

I spell imperial with a lower-case i when referring to the concept of empire, but an upper-case I when referring to the chronological era that postdated the Republic. See Ando 2011a: 39 on the “profound and unwise fetishization of constitution arrangements” implicit in this periodization, ancient attitudes towards which are examined by Sion-Jenkis 2000: 19–53. Flower 2010: 11 enumerates these key components of a Republic, which she uses as a metric for evaluating the “Roman Republics” operating at different points in Roman history. On “institutional fluidity” as “the true hallmark of Roman republican government,” see Ando 2013: 935.

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Introduction

by the acquisition of an empire that stretched across much of the Mediterranean world.36 Yet whether we stress continuity or change in our analysis, it is still useful to distinguish between a res publica predicated upon the participation of citizens – even if a narrower swath of citizens than Republican political ideology would suggest – from one in which powers of decision-making were consolidated into the hands of a single individual.37 I therefore continue to employ the traditional categories of “Republic” and “Principate,” even as I remain on guard against their distortion of key elements of Roman political culture. Asserting the existence of the Roman Republic raises the question of its constitutional basis. Just as Romans shied away from adopting an agreed upon definition of res publica, they also avoided formalizing their customs, traditions, institutions, and laws into a single, prescriptive document. Many scholars have nevertheless followed Polybius in describing a Republican constitution based upon three pillars: the senate, magistracies, and popular assemblies.38 These institutions were flexible yet also regulated by a complex combination of unwritten customs and written statutes.39 Underpinning them, Benjamin Straumann argues, was “the fundamental constitutional principle of the sovereignty of the Roman people,” which took precedence over other political rules and was not open to revision.40 He suggests that a conceptual apparatus began to arise in relation to this principle in the Late Republic, when emergency politics and extraordinary powers prompted Cicero, in particular, to identify a set of higher order norms to guide political life.41 The failure of the Republic nevertheless underscores the insufficiency of Cicero’s “inchoate constitutionalism” as a regulatory force. An important theme of my study is how Cicero and his contemporaries used figurative speech to circumvent the judicial norms to which they proclaimed allegiance. Asserting the need for “civic amputations” when public law fell short, they ultimately undermined their own constitutional arguments. 36 37 38 39 40

41

Millar 1984 considers the evolution of the Roman constitution in relation to the demands of external expansion. For the impact of war-making on Republican society more broadly, see Rosenstein 2004. On the reality of this change, see Rosenstein and Morstein-Marx 2006: 626. Pina Polo 2016: 85; North 2006: 260; Lintott 1999: 16–26. Lintott 1999: 4 describes a constitutional tradition that operated on a spectrum ranging from mos to ius. Straumann 2016: 37. He proposes the existence of a constitution if a set of political rules meets the following criteria: they are entrenched (harder to change than other rules), politically important (they govern the institutions through which power is exercised), normatively important (they reveal the political theory that undergirds a political system), and assigned a juridical quality (they are used as part of legal arguments) (18). Straumann 2016: 149–90.

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In describing the authority of the Roman people as a form of popular sovereignty, Straumann wades into contested interpretive waters. Many have found the concept of sovereignty useful in conveying the wideranging powers of the populus Romanus, which was responsible for electing magistrates and conferring the right of command (imperium) upon them, voting on public laws, ratifying foreign treaties, serving on criminal juries, distributing public honors, and fulfilling countless other functions in the res publica.42 A constitutive body that represented more than the sum of its parts, its acclamatory consent was necessary for the legitimation of electoral, judicial, and legislative outcomes.43 More than that, it was regarded as “the sole source of legitimate public opinion” in the Republic, so that its will became the nexus around which public discourse revolved.44 Every speaker in the contio competed to be seen as the truest representative of the people, as Robert Morstein-Marx has shown, and every piece of legislation had to be publicly construed in its favor.45 While the actions that supported or undermined its interests were open to debate, the primacy of those interests was not.46 The conceptual and practical power of the Roman people was encapsulated by the term maiestas populi Romani, a legal formula that arose in the context of external relations but that came to operate internally as well.47 Embedded within this concept was the “greater-ness” of the Roman people as the organizing principle of civic and foreign affairs. Invocations of the maiestas populi Romani have therefore often been interpreted as ancient expressions of a doctrine which later came to be known as popular sovereignty.48 Many political theorists nevertheless argue against the operation of popular sovereignty in ancient contexts. They stress the inseparability of 42

43 45 46 47

48

Millar 1984: 19 articulates the full spectrum of the Roman people’s powers to argue in favor of popular sovereignty; Brunt 1988: 19–23 addresses the practical application of these powers to arrive at a more measured assessment. Schofield 2021: 46 asserts the sovereignty of the Roman citizen body, though acknowledges there is no “expression in Latin that actually means ‘sovereignty’ (or anything at all close to it).” Mouritsen 2017: 16 and Ando 2011b: 69–70 suggest that modern definitions of sovereignty do not map perfectly onto the Roman Republic, but that ancient approximations of this concept can be discerned. Hammer 2014: 10. 44 Russell 2019: 42. Morstein-Marx 2004: 230–40 influentially describes this phenomenon as “ideological monotony.” To borrow the language of Hölkeskamp 2010: 40, the supremacy of the populus Romanus was not in “the range of ‘politicizable’ issues” in the Roman Republic. Davies 2020: 80 argues that Roman relations of empire “revolved around a core belief in the maiestas, or ‘greater-ness,’ of Rome.” The redirection of this principle inwardly, Williamson 2016: 335 argues, was a product of the destabilization of politics in the last century of the Republic. On the importance of Saturninus’ Lex Appuleia in prompting the shift, see Ferrary 1983. Hammer 2022: 59 confirms the centrality of the maiestas populi Romani to Roman Republicanism but argues against its co-equivalence with popular sovereignty.

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Introduction

this concept from that of the state, which did not exist in the pre-modern world due to the fragmented nature of public authority, the sources of which were neither singular nor stable.49 The powers of the populus Romanus, for example, were exercised within a political system that also granted authoritative functions to the senate, priestly colleges, courts, and other institutions. Political life, as Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi argues, was characterized by the overlap and competition between these institutions, which operated within a tense and unstable equilibrium.50 Because this equilibrium was regulated largely by custom, it produced a more complicated field of power relations than public law might suggest. Daniel Lee argues that the doctrine of popular sovereignty was invented in the early modern period to resolve the problem of plural authority; it designated the people as a single, indivisible source of public power conferred upon an inseparable entity called the “state.”51 Imperial Roman jurists helped lay the groundwork for this innovation through their citation of the lex regia, a statute by which they claimed the Roman people had yielded its governing power to the princeps.52 As Clifford Ando has shown, however, this legal fiction had no basis in the historical Republic. Like many other elements of Roman constitutionalism, it was invented after the fact to justify the political transition it purports to describe.53 This reality is reflected in the body politic tradition, which betrays no evidence of a single, agreed upon source of public authority. When Latin writers sought to identify the institution that best approximated the command of mind over body, for example, they arrived at a variety of conclusions. Because the “normative suppositions and metahistorical assumptions”

49

50

51 52

53

See Skinner 1978: x on the “distinctively modern” concept of the state as “the sole source of law and legitimate force within its own territory, and as the sole appropriate object of its citizens’ allegiances.” Cornell 1991: 63 argues that the Romans had “no concept of the state in the modern abstract sense . . . as an impersonal entity that stood apart from the individuals who composed it.” For recent scholarly debate on this question, see Lundgreen 2014. Capogrossi Colognesi 2014: xxiv. He stresses “the remoteness of the Roman model from our own paradigms, which since the Middle Ages have tended to define political systems in terms of a unitary hierarchical order.” Lee 2016: 10. Lee 2016: 25–50. Johnston 2000: 633 notes that while the jurists founded the authority of the emperor on a statute that transferred the sovereignty of the people to him, they did not explain the nature of that sovereignty or of the statute that transferred it to him. Their efforts are therefore “not analytically profound.” According to Ando 2013: 935, “Constitutionalism as discourse thus emerges as an important theme of republican life in retrospective efforts by Romans to explain to themselves, within a single framework and using a single language, both the failure of democratic republicanism and its resolution in the pernicious façade of republican monarchy.”

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associated with sovereignty risk effacing the nature of their disagreement, I avoid its invocation in this study.54 Whatever one’s stance on the concept of popular sovereignty, few would deny the ideological and practical importance of the populus Romanus in the Republic. Whether its importance ought to be understood as a genuinely democratic element in the political process, however, is less clear. Challenging the traditional idea that civic affairs were controlled by a narrow senatorial faction, Fergus Millar has made an influential case for the political efficacy of the crowd gathered in the comitia or contio.55 “Far from being a tightly controlled, ‘top-down’ system,” he argues, “the late Republic was on the contrary a very striking example of a political system in which rival conceptions of state and society . . . were openly debated before the crowd in the Forum.”56 His argument has received significant pushback, however, from those who doubt the efficacy of the assemblies as a venue for the expression of popular power. Henrik Mouritsen underscores the extent to which the popular will was suppressed at every stage of the political process.57 Only magistrates could convene assemblies and only they could propose the legislation upon which the people voted.58 Voting itself was conducted in blocks to advantage members of the elite, who employed a variety of strategies to discourage turnout.59 Those of lower classes who did manage to attend assemblies had the option of voting yes or no, but not of making more substantive contributions to legislation.60 Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp argues that their acclamatory consent ultimately served to reaffirm, reproduce, and renew the political class.61 The distinction can be summed up as one between ideals and practice. Understood as a political concept, the authority of the populus Romanus was paramount. When viewed in relation to the actual composition of the citizen body, it

54 55

56 58 59

60 61

Hölkeskamp 2010: 68. Millar 1998 synthesizes over a decade of work on this topic. Yakobson 1999 pursues a similar approach in an effort to correct the elite focus of the prosopographical school, on which see Cornell 2022: 220. Millar 1998: 6–7. 57 Mouritsen 2001: 16–17. Lintott 1999: 40 notes that such constraints complicate any simple equation between the assembly and popular sovereignty. These strategies included keeping venues small, implementing time-consuming legislative procedures, and banning comitia on market days to prevent the participation of the rural citizenry (Mouritsen 2017: 27–8). Brunt 1988: 26 acknowledges such limitations but suggests that the assemblies could still express the will of sections of the citizen body whose interests diverged from those of the senatorial oligarchy. Hölkeskamp 2010: 103.

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Introduction

was restricted – though not negated – by an essentially aristocratic political culture.62 I have thus far described the Roman Republic as a political community that evolved between the fifth and first centuries bce in relation to the ideal of a self-governing citizen body. Because the Romans did not describe their res publica in these terms, however, they also did not identify a moment at which this system ceased to exist. The question is nevertheless an important one. As Harriet Flower writes, “Our whole picture of what republican politics consisted of in Rome depends on when and how we think it came to an end.”63 Commonly cited endpoints include Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 bce, Caesar’s assassination in 44 bce, the formation of the second triumvirate in 43 bce, the Battle of Actium in 31 bce, or the Augustan Settlement in 27 bce.64 According to the definition of the Republic offered earlier, the outbreak of civil war between Caesar and Pompey in 49 bce serves as the most fitting endpoint. From this date forward, public institutions no longer served as the primary avenue through which politics was conducted. One could argue that similar conditions prevailed under the so-called First Triumvirate or amid the chaotic episodes of street violence during the late 50s bce. In my view, however, such events signified the faltering but not ultimate failure of the Republic. To identify 49 bce as a pivot point is not to date the beginning of sole rule from this moment. The years between 49–27 bce represent an important period of transition that should not be subsumed under the labels of “Republic” and “Empire.”65 Nor did the Augustan Settlement mark the definitive instantiation of a new political system called “the Principate.” It represented an initial attempt at explaining the position of a single individual whose authority eventually came to supersede that of other institutions.66 It took much longer for the fundamentals of this new constitutional order to be worked out and appreciated for what they were. That Romans had begun to recognize a shift in the operation of political power by the late first century bce is nevertheless a central claim of this book. 62

63 64 65 66

Mouritsen 2001: 16 writes, “There were two ‘peoples’ in Roman politics: the ideal and the actual. The people as a political concept were distinct from the people as physical reality, and the direct nature of participation meant that the two were effectively separated.” Flower 2010: 15. For the methodological challenges inherent in identifying an endpoint, as well as an overview of the vast bibliography on this question, see Rosenstein and Morstein-Marx 2006. See Osgood 2006: 4 on the importance of recognizing a “triumviral period” of literature, in particular. Ando 2011a: 37. See Ferrary 2001 on the nature of the powers established via the settlement.

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Approaching Roman Republicanism

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One argument against equating the rise of Augustus with a significant constitutional shift is that elements of monarchy had long been woven into Republican politics. The regal nature of consular power was fundamental to the theory of the mixed constitution and a recurrent theme of exemplary tales.67 That an even stronger, singular form of authority was beneficial during emergencies was a principle enshrined in the office of the dictatorship.68 Antipathy to kingship was also likely not as deeply rooted as was once assumed. Andrew Erskine suggests that such hostility only arose out of encounters with Hellenistic kings during the second century bce.69 Late Republican thinkers retrojected this sentiment onto their narratives of Archaic Rome, using the expulsion of the Tarquins to mark the beginning of the Roman people’s odium regalis nominis (Cic. Rep. 2.52).70 Even in the Late Republic, it was often tyrants rather than kings who served as the villains of political discourse.71 It must therefore be proven rather than simply assumed that the position of Augustus was regarded as an aberration in need of conceptual justification. I argue that we find such proof in the figurative language that Latin writers used to represent the res publica. In reimagining the shape of the body politic in response to sole rule between the 20s bce and 60s ce, they implicitly acknowledged and confronted a shift in Rome’s governing form. Their imagery allows us to engage with fundamental questions about historical periodization, the nature of Roman Republicanism, and the transformation of politics under the Principate.

Approaching Roman Republicanism In examining the political thought of the Roman Republic and its Imperial reception, my work draws on, yet also diverges from, the revival 67

68

69 70

71

See Zetzel 1995: ad loc. Rep. 2.56, where Cicero explains, consules potestatem haberent tempore dumtaxat annuam, genere ipso ac iure regiam (“The consuls exercised a power that, although annual in length, was regal in nature and legal basis,” Cic. Rep. 2.56). Livy endorses this idea in his portrayal of the Republic’s foundation, writing, libertatis autem originem inde magis quia annuum imperium consulare factum est quam quod deminutum quicquam sit ex regia potestate numeres (“Moreover, you may reckon the beginning of liberty more from the fact that consular authority was made annual than because anything was diminished from kingly power,” Liv. 2.1.7). Haimson Lushkov 2015: 4 identifies the nature of consular power as a key theme in Livian exempla. Although the dictatorship originated and operated primarily as a military office (see Lintott 1999: 109–10), Cicero’s Scipio uses it to make more generalized statements about the necessity of sole rule during crises (Rep. 1.63). Erskine 1991: 106. The question is controversial and speaks to a broader debate over the historicity of Archaic Rome; Smith 2006: 61, for example, speculates that tales of the adfectores regni were an “original feature” of Archaic political discourse. On Cicero’s vilification of Caesar as a Greek tyrant, see Gildenhard 2006 and Erskine 1991: 119–20.

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Introduction

of interest in classical republicanism associated with what has been termed the Cambridge School of intellectual history. This movement is closely tied to Quentin Skinner, who began pioneering the methodology of “linguistic contextualism” alongside J. G. A. Pocock and John Dunn in the late 1960s.72 Skinner argues that the essential question we confront in the study of a text is what its author, writing at a specific time and place for a specific audience, meant to communicate. The aim of the intellectual historian is “to delineate the whole range of communications which could have been conventionally performed on the given occasion by the utterance of the given utterance, and, next, to trace the relations between the given utterance and this wider linguistic context as a means of decoding the actual intention of the given writer.”73 Skinner uses the concept of “intended illocutionary force,” borrowed from J. L. Austin, to situate ideas within the historical and ideological contexts that enabled their expression.74 Only by considering the discourse communities within which authors operated, as well as how political problems were formulated within those communities, is it possible to ascertain the purpose and significance of their works.75 Skinner is especially critical of the assumption that canonical texts engage with perennial questions that transcend the historical and cultural particulars of their composition.76 Contextualizing such texts rather than treating them in isolation is one of the operative principles of his work.77 That this idea might seem obvious today speaks to the success of the Cambridge School, which has transformed the field of intellectual history over the past half century.78 The now dominant model of linguistic contextualism is not without its critics. Many have expressed skepticism towards the feasibility of Skinner’s methodology, which requires one to know what an author “was doing” (a phrase that encapsulates both what the author intended to do and 72 74 75

76 77 78

Skinner 1969; Dunn 1968; Pocock 1962. 73 Skinner 1969: 49. Emphasis original. Austin 1962: 94–107 theorizes the illocutionary act. Skinner 1972: 406 argues that one must “focus not just on the text to be interpreted, but on the prevailing conventions governing the treatment of the issues or themes with which the text is concerned.” He draws inspiration in part from Collingwood 1939: 31, who writes, “you cannot find out what a man means by simply studying his spoken or written statements . . . you must also know what the question was . . . to which the thing he has said or written was meant as an answer.” As Hamilton-Bleakley 2006: 23 puts it, texts are as particular and contingent as the problems they answer. Exemplified in his work on Thomas Hobbes, much of which has been collected in Skinner 2002. See Whatmore 2016: 99 on the success of Skinner’s project within the history of ideas. For the compatibility of historical contextualism and New Historicism, which has risen to similar dominance in literary studies, see Coiro and Fulton 2012: 5.

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succeeded in doing) at any given moment.79 They doubt whether the intention of a writer can ever be conclusively ascertained, let alone independently verified.80 Pocock distances himself from this critique by focusing on performance rather than intention.81 What matters to him is not what an author meant to say, but how the modes of discourse available to them delimited the range of speech acts they could perform. Pocock’s focus is therefore on the “political languages” operative at a certain time and place. Such languages provide the “categories, grammar, and mentality” that speakers use to formulate political questions and problems.82 Because their norms and conventions set limits on what individuals can say or be understood to have said, they exert a powerful influence over the discourse communities in which they operate. At the same time, they do not exist independently of their speakers. Every act of communication represents “a moment in a process of transformation of that [linguistic] system and of the interacting worlds which both system and act help to constitute and are constituted by.”83 These “paradigms,” as Pocock terms them, are in constant flux, acquiring new idioms and foregoing old ones in response to diverse cultural forces. When they no longer provide a sufficient description of lived experience, they are set aside in favor of alternatives.84 Delineating their development, operation, transformation, and abandonment over time is the essence of Pocock’s approach to the history of ideas.85 The methodologies developed by Skinner and Pocock have had a particularly pronounced impact on the study of classical republicanism. In perhaps his most influential work, Pocock identifies a political language called “Florentine republicanism,” which arose in the works of Niccolò Machiavelli and his contemporaries in the Italian Renaissance.86 This paradigm was later coopted by thinkers during the English Civil War and American Revolution, who sought a new vocabulary through which to criticize the monarchies against which they rebelled. By tracing the operation of this language across pivotal intellectual and historical 79 80

81 82 84 85 86

On this famous formulation, see Whatmore 2016: 99 and Lewis 2010: 371. This critique is particularly prominent among postmodernist critics, who argue that authorial intention is irrecoverable or unimportant (see Hamilton-Bleakley 2006: 23, fn. 20). Skinner 2001 discusses the barriers to yet ultimate value in recovering authorial intention. Sheppard 2016: 114 stresses the differences between the work of Pocock and Skinner. For Pocock’s own reflection on his relationship to the Cambridge School, see Pocock 2009: vii-ix. Pocock 1985: 28. 83 Pocock 1989: 15. Pocock 1989: 14–15 draws inspiration from the model of scientific paradigm shifts theorized in Kuhn 1962. Pocock 2009: viii envisions a plurality of languages, consisting of a plurality of language acts, coming together to constitute the history of political thought. Pocock 1975.

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Introduction

junctures, Pocock helped spark what has been called “the republican revival.”87 His theoretical framework has since been applied to the study of concepts like liberty, constitutionalism, and civic virtue. A subset of scholars within this movement sees classical republicanism as a solution to some of the problems that beset contemporary liberal democracies, including political apathy, disparities in wealth and power, and infringement upon civil liberties.88 These “neo-republicans” often trace the origins of their conceptual project back to the Roman Republic, where texts like De Republica and events like the Conflict of the Orders prove useful to think with.89 Insofar as they use the example of Rome to develop a political philosophy with contemporary relevance, however, they employ an interpretive lens that differs from my own. It is therefore worthwhile to distinguish between their “republicanism,” which refers to a specific intellectual tradition, and my “Roman Republicanism,” which denotes a mode of political discourse operative under certain historical and cultural conditions. Neo-republicanism is perhaps most closely associated with Philip Pettit, who has drawn inspiration from the Roman world to theorize the idea of liberty as non-domination.90 Critiquing the negative conception of liberty as the absence of interference and the positive conception of liberty as the right to democratic participation, he argues that republican freedom requires individuals to be in a position where no one can arbitrarily interfere in their affairs.91 At stake is not whether anyone actually does interfere, only whether they could. Liberty is hence unrealizable under kings regardless of their character; in Cicero’s words, desunt omnino ei populo multa, qui sub rege est, in primisque libertas; quae non in eo est ut iusto utamur domino, sed ut nul[lo] (“There are certainly many things lacking to that populace which lives under a king; first and foremost is freedom, which does not lie in having a just master, but in having none,” Cic. Rep. 2.43).92 Pettit’s inclination to 87 88

89

90 91 92

For the intellectual origins of the “republican revival,” in which Bernard Bailyn, Gordon Wood, and Quentin Skinner also play prominent roles, see Rosati 2000: 83–4. Key works include Maynor 2006; Maynor 2003; Honohan 2002; Viroli 2002; Skinner 1998; Pettit 1997. See Kimpell 2009: 375 on the orientation of their thought towards “present-day commercial, representative democracies.” Pettit 1997: 19 writes that “the long republican tradition . . . had its origins in classical Rome, being associated in particular with the name of Cicero.” Skinner 1998: 44 identifies Livy as “perhaps the most important conduit” for the transmission of the idea of the civitas libera to early modern Europe. Pettit 1997: 20. Pettit 1997: 17–50 positions his work in relation to the duality of positive and negative liberty influentially theorized by Berlin 1958. On freedom as an ideal formulated in opposition to slavery in Roman discourse, see Wirszubski 1950: 1–2. Kennedy 2014: 493 argues that Cicero’s view of libertas is far more ambiguous than this quote suggests.

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Approaching Roman Republicanism

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locate the origins of liberty as non-domination in the Roman Republic receives historical grounding from Valentina Arena, who traces this concept through the political discourse of the first century bce.93 Neo-republicans see liberty as non-domination as the organizing principle of an intellectual tradition unified across time and space by a shared set of texts, values, and ideals.94 Using the label “republican” to denote ideas in accordance with it, they are primarily interested in the development of a normative system able to inform the practice of politics in the present.95 It is perhaps unsurprising that scholars have identified a variety of disjunctures between the forward-looking ideals of neo-republicanism and the historical particularities of the Roman Republic.96 Janet Coleman stresses the extent to which Medieval and Renaissance thinkers created rather than rediscovered the republican tradition, piecing together “from disparate and fragmentary sources what they thought the Roman republic to have been.”97 Clifford Ando underscores the ease with which the ideals of the Roman Republic proved amenable to monarchical cooptation under the Principate, a lesson that cautions against the uncritical reception of this tradition in the present.98 They are joined by many others in drawing attention to the deep inequities of the Roman world, which took slavery, patriarchy, imperialism, poverty, and countless other injustices for granted.99 Why should those invested in contemporary democratic ideals, they ask, look back to a political system organized around and in service to the interests of an elite interested primarily in its own selfperpetuation? “To those who have observed in the Roman republic the 93 94

95

96

97 98

99

Arena 2012: 14–72. Pettit 1997: 20 writes, “The republican tradition was unified across time, partly by a deference to the same textual authorities, partly by a shared enthusiasm for the ideals and the lessons of republican Rome . . . The most important unifier of the tradition, in the end, may be the habit of conceptualizing liberty in a distinctive fashion.” Springborg 2001: 851–2 distinguishes Skinner’s and Pocock’s “careful historiographical accounts of republicanism,” on the one hand, and Pettit’s “republicanism as a normative system,” on the other. Because normative theorists are focused on the definition of values, Kimpell 2009: 377 notes, they necessarily “gloss over some of the complexities found in historiography.” For the tension between historical and normative analyses of the Roman Republic, see Kapust 2004: 377–80. As Maddox 2002: 425 argues, “Neither Pettit’s nor Skinner’s account takes note of the actual context of the original [Roman] republic,” which was markedly hostile to popular participation in governance. Yet Schofield 2021: 3, fn. 12 points out that criticisms of neo-republicanism are often equally reflective of “contemporary concerns.” Coleman 2002: 297. Ando 2010: 184. In a similar vein, Atkins 2020 shows how Tertullian reconciled liberty as nondomination with autocracy. “Tertullian,” he writes, “shows that non-domination is a highly flexible idea that does not necessarily entail the participatory ‘free state’ of republicanism,” (145). Connolly 2018: 94 argues that neo-republicans construct a “new liberal philosophy as heir to the Roman tradition, while staying at a careful distance from Roman practices like slavery . . . ”

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Introduction

rule of an enduring senatorial oligarchy,” Graham Maddox notes, “the choice of Rome as the fount of liberty for the subsequent history of the West may seem curious.”100 Liberty as non-domination might have resonated with Cicero and his contemporaries, but it was an ideal that could only be realized at the expense of most Roman citizens, provincial subjects, and slaves. In failing to emphasize this fact, neo-republicans risk replicating the inequities they seek to remediate. Critics of neo-republicanism also question the extent to which contestability and consensus, two prerequisites for the achievement of liberty as non-domination, can be traced back to the Roman Republic. In Pettit’s view, citizens can only achieve freedom if they are able to effectively contest the arbitrary interference of individuals and laws.101 Public institutions like courts and assemblies serve as the primary avenues through which such contestation takes place. The decisions rendered by those institutions, which should be made on the basis of “reasoned deliberation,” allow for the effective resolution of conflicts and the realization of consensus.102 Consensus, in turn, enables the successful repetition of this process over time. Joy Connolly argues that Pettit’s model of deliberative democracy rings hollow in the context of the Roman Republic, which prioritized more aggressive forms of conflict and confrontation.103 She characterizes Republican politics as a field of antagonism between the overreach of the senatorial elite and the resistance of the people. Freedom was rooted in the capacity of individuals to fight back against inevitable incursions by the more powerful. Their resistance might find institutional expression but might also manifest in “the relatively unpoliced territory of protest or mass action.”104 Neo-republicans, she points out, are often reluctant to consider such forms of popular resistance, which can disrupt the nexus of civic norms and virtues that Pettit terms “civility.”105 Those who see civility as the foundation of deliberative democracy ignore a key strand of confrontational populism within Roman Republicanism. For scholars interested in developing a more agonistic model of Roman Republicanism, the tribunate plays a key role. Citing Cicero’s description of the tribunate as “born for sedition” (ad seditionem nata sit, Cic. Leg. 3.19), Maddox underscores the revolutionary possibilities of this office and the vociferous resistance of the senatorial elite to their realization.106 John 100 103 105 106

Maddox 2002: 418. 101 Pettit 1997: 61–3. 102 Pettit 1997: 190. Connolly 2015: 27–34. 104 Connolly 2015: 33. “One of the recurrent themes in the tradition,” Pettit 1997: 245 writes, “is that the republic requires a basis in widespread civility; it cannot live by law alone.” Maddox 2002: 424.

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McCormick makes a similar point in his reading of Machiavelli’s Discorsi, the text that made Livy’s portrayal of the Conflict of the Orders central to classical republicanism. He argues that members of the Cambridge School “seriously distort Machiavelli’s thought and the republican tradition itself” through their de-emphasis on class conflict as a constitutive element of his political vision.107 He underscores Machiavelli’s appreciation of the tribunate as an office that arose out of discord and embodied the resistance of the many to the few. Praising tribunes for encouraging public shouting, street demonstrations, and popular withdrawals from the city, Machiavelli correlates their confrontational actions with the realization of freedom. The value that he places on “public tumult,” McCormick suggests, confirms the insufficiency of rational deliberation and public institutions as checks on elite oppression.108 His reading of Livy shows instead “the necessity of properly institutionalized class conflict for healthy domestic politics within popular governments.”109 In tracing this strand of Machiavelli’s thought, McCormick joins Connolly in reorienting the republican tradition away from consensus and towards conflict. The productive, generative nature of class-based struggles has been a central focus of recent scholarship on Roman Republicanism. Equally important to confront, however, is the ease with which such struggles could become destructive and deadly. Daniel Kapust centers this problem in his interpretation of Sallust’s “antagonistic republicanism,” which revolved around conflicts between and within social classes.110 Sallust viewed these conflicts positively insofar as they encouraged citizens to achieve rights and rewards compatible with the public good, including liberty, virtue, honor, and glory. When pursued in the name of selfish aims like wealth and domination, however, they turned toxic. It was therefore necessary to implement societal mechanisms that could effectively channel individual ambitions towards collective ends. Kapust focuses on fear of a foreign enemy (metus hostilis) as one such mechanism within Sallust’s texts.111 Other Roman writers were interested in alternative mechanisms; Cicero stressed the role of oratory in communicating and reinforcing shared civic values, while Livy endorsed the didactic function of exempla in achieving goodwill among citizens.112 While Cicero and Livy tended to 107

McCormick 2011: 8. For pushback against McCormick’s argument, see Hörnqvist 2011. For the importance of “tumult” to Machiavelli’s political vision, as well as Pocock and Skinner’s avoidance of the issue, see also Pedullà 2018: 1–4. 109 McCormick 2011: viii. 110 Kapust 2011: 31. Fontana 2003 discusses Machiavelli’s reception of Sallust’s vision. 111 Kapust 2011: 27–80. 112 Alongside Kapust, see Connolly 2007 and Vasaly 2015. 108

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Introduction

prioritize consensus over conflict, they joined Sallust in identifying the boundary between productive and destructive conflict as a key problem of political thought. Their works gesture towards a model of Roman Republicanism that is more conflictual, yet perhaps also more fragile, than that theorized by neo-republicans. My own approach to Roman Republicanism takes methodological inspiration from the Cambridge School while also shying away from the normative political vision associated with neo-republicanism. Drawing on the studies of Skinner and Pocock, I define Roman Republicanism as a linguistic paradigm used to think and talk about the system of governance operative in the res publica between the fifth and first centuries bce. Its boundaries were not coextensive with the dates of the historical Republic, a prerequisite that would exclude Tacitus, Livy, and even Sallust from consideration as Republican thinkers.113 Nor were they defined by the values that later came to dominate the classical republican tradition, an approach that risks overemphasizing those elements of Roman Republicanism with contemporary relevance.114 I instead use this term descriptively to denote the questions, problems, and concepts that Romans themselves regarded as politically important. Although such an inclusive definition might risk interpretive dilution, it conveys the fluidity of a discourse community that largely avoided systematizing its terminology, formalizing its constitution, or extrapolating abstract principles from norms and customs. This paradigm originated in a specific time and place, but it ultimately outlasted the downfall of the system that it arose to describe. What enabled the survival of Roman Republicanism under the Principate is a guiding question of my study. I use the metaphor of the body politic to show how its persistence was paradoxically enabled by its transformation.

Metaphor as a Source of Political Thought The republican revival and the critiques formulated in response to it have transformed the study of Roman political thought, a field that used to be regarded as theoretically impoverished. As the political theorist Sheldon Wolin once wrote, “Although there is no dearth of material for the student of Roman political practices, the student of political ideas must deal with 113 114

See Atkins 2018b: 2–3, whose definition of Roman Republicanism influences my own. See Hankins 2019: xii on how the persistent scholarly focus on republican liberty has left other elements of political thought in the shadows.

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a period notoriously lacking in great political thinkers.”115 This attitude can be traced back to the Romans themselves, who often positioned their culture in opposition to the Greek philosophical tradition.116 Styling themselves as doers rather than thinkers, they largely resisted the conceptual abstraction favored by Plato and Aristotle.117 Those who did make forays into political philosophy, Cicero foremost among them, were later dismissed as derivative translators of Greek originals.118 As a result, Roman politics was long understood as a set of practices rarely subjected to critical analysis.119 If we set aside the presumption of theoretical abstraction, however, we can find evidence of political thought throughout Latin literature. Romans examined the nature of the res publica across generic boundaries, putting historiography, rhetoric, epic, satire, and other genres in the service of political questions.120 They implanted lessons about virtue, justice, civic duty, and legitimacy in historically specific yet constantly evolving exempla.121 They communicated their values in public speeches, ritual performances, and religious practices.122 While they sometimes distilled their ideas into treatises like De Republica and De Clementia, these texts represent the exception rather than norm. They are important but not exclusive contributions to a conversation conducted across countless genres by thinkers of varying backgrounds, intellect, and prestige. 115 116

117 118

119

120

121 122

Wolin 1960: 65. Emblematic was the motion that the Elder Cato put before the senate to expel Greek philosophers from Rome (Plut. Cat. Mai. 22). Yet scholars have long viewed his anti-Hellenism as rhetorical selffashioning rather than straightforward xenophobia, on which see Gruen 1992: 52–83. As Hammer 2014: 7 writes, “To the contemporary political theorist steeped in abstraction, Roman political thought seems mired in a hopelessly complex array of names, places, laws, and events.” Sedley 2003: 7 notes that while “it is easy to view it [Roman philosophy] as nothing more than Greek philosophy in translation,” it “does in certain ways constitute an autonomous tradition, harnessed to an indigenous moral code, to the dynamics of Roman political life, and to home-grown literary genres.” On the perception of Cicero as a derivative translator, see Hawley 2022: 4 and Schofield 2021: 7. Both help establish the originality of Ciceronian philosophy, which also emerges in McConnell 2014; Zarecki 2014; Atkins 2013a; Baraz 2012; Gildenhard 2007. Adcock 1959: 3 suggests that the continuity of the Roman political tradition “is not so much due to logic or political speculation as to the practical adaptation to events of certain ideas which are really ingrained habits of mind and character,” while Scullard 1959: 9 describes the Romans as “a practical people who distrusted speculative inquiry unless directed to purely utilitarian ends.” In the realm of political theory, Michael Oakeshott treats Rome as an exemplar of “pragmatic politics,” on which see Callahan 2012. For Roman political thought across generic boundaries, see Strunk 2017; Connolly 2015; Haimson Lushkov 2015; McCarter 2015; Nelsestuen 2015; Vasaly 2015; Hammer 2014; Hammer 2008; Kapust 2011; Connolly 2007; Adler 2003. For the importance of exempla in Roman political culture, see Langlands 2018; Roller 2018; van der Blom 2010; Chaplin 2000. On public speech, see Gildenhard 2011; Morstein-Marx 2004; Steel 2001. On ritual performance, see Sumi 2005; Stewart 1998; Flower 1996. On religious practice, see Cole 2013; Rüpke 2012; Ando 2008.

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Introduction

Because the methodology of the Cambridge School insists upon viewing political ideas in relation to the linguistic contexts in which they operate, it is well-suited to the exploration of this discourse community. I also draw inspiration from Dean Hammer, who describes Roman political thought as “the assimilation of different practices, interests, and experiences into symbolic systems that orient how one makes sense of and responds to the political world.”123 These symbolic systems go beyond formal institutional arrangements, explicit usages of terms like res publica and princeps, and legal opinions of jurists under the High Empire.124 They are not worked out in the mind of the philosopher, but rather in the shared experience of a messy and complicated world. It is in Romans’ affective responses to this world, Hammer argues, that the “conceptual core” of their political thought can be found.125 My work builds on his by identifying figurative speech as an important avenue through which Romans made sense of their shifting political landscape. By tracing their evolving metaphors of the body politic, we can discern a key symbolic system through which they responded to constitutional change. This system sheds new light on an ageold question: how the transition from the Republic to Principate was perceived by those who lived through it. Central to my study is an understanding of metaphors as historically contingent rather than timeless elements of political discourse. In this respect, I am guided by Hans Blumenberg’s theory of metaphorology.126 Blumenberg argues against the common perception of metaphors as intuitive ways of thinking that eventually yield to the clarity of logic. He describes them more like imaginative reserves that invest concepts with vitality, explaining, “They have a history in a more radical sense than concepts, for the historical transformation of a metaphor brings to light the metakinetics of the historical horizons of meaning and ways of seeing within which concepts undergo their modifications.”127 By tracing the evolution of metaphors across time, we can discern shifts in the mental superstructures that guide the formation of new ideas. Figures of speech can therefore provide access to a more gradual model of conceptual change than the paradigm shifts pioneered by Kuhn and Pocock. In the case of Rome, they provide tangible evidence for the incremental adaptation of an 123 124 125 126 127

Hammer 2014: 5. Johnston 2000: 633 argues that the intellectual contribution of the Roman jurists is to be found in the realm of private law, not in the “classic questions of political thought.” Hammer 2014: 7. See Blumenberg 2010, as well as the practical application of his methodology in Blumenberg 1997. Blumenberg 2010: 5.

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Metaphor as a Source of Political Thought

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old political language to a new constitutional form, one that proceeded so carefully that it never produced a major rupture in discourse. By allowing us to see how Romans responded to a political shift they did not discuss directly, they offer a new perspective on the persistence of Roman Republicanism under the Principate. Roman writers relied on metaphors of civic organization because they offered a space for exploration and play that was less encumbered by the norms regulating the direct expression of political ideas. As participants in a discourse community that prioritized continuity over change, they discovered that allusive speech facilitated shared conversation. The dynamics of this conversation provide access to the shifting “ways of seeing,” to borrow Blumenberg’s phrase, that eventually allowed the Younger Seneca to refer to the mutatio rei publicae that followed the death of Cato.128 Seneca does not explain what exactly he means by this phrase, but his willingness to diverge from a normative narrative of political continuity has rightly been identified as a turning point in Roman political discourse.129 Karin Sion-Jenkis describes it as the first explicit acknowledgment in Latin literature that the Republic had come to an end.130 My book uses figurative speech to show how earlier thinkers laid the conceptual groundwork for Seneca’s claim. In examining the symbolic resonance of the body politic, I also respond to recent work by Brian Walters and Hunter Gardner. In The Deaths of the Republic: Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome, Walters treats organic imagery as a key site of rhetorical conflict in the Late Republic.131 He illuminates how metaphors of wounding and healing operate in the writings of Cicero, who provides most of our evidence for this tradition during the early-to-mid first century bce. Walters’ comprehensive study establishes an invaluable foundation for my more selective approach. Because I am primarily interested in figurations of political authority, I make no claim to account for all the corporeal metaphors that appear in Cicero’s works. I instead approach Cicero as one of many thinkers reexamining the relationship between the statesman and res publica at a pivot point of Roman history. Although his outsized influence on the source tradition is unavoidable, it is nevertheless my ambition to foreground the discourse community in which he operated rather than his individual intellectual contribution. Insofar as my focus is on the Julio-Claudian 128 129

Quidni ille mutationem rei publicae forti et aequo pateretur animo? (“Why should he [Cato] not have tolerated the transformation of the res publica with a brave and level spirit?” Sen. Ep. 71.12). Kaldellis 2015: 28, fn. 107; Gowing 2005: 69. 130 Sion-Jenkis 2000: 23. 131 Walters 2020.

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Introduction

reception of Roman Republicanism, the ramifications my study diverge significantly from those of Walters’. In Pestilence and the Body Politic in Latin Literature, Hunter Gardner considers the role of plague narratives in Latin literature between the Late Republic and Early Empire.132 She argues that Roman writers exploited the symbolic capacities of pestilence to address the collapse of the social order in the mid-first century bce and evaluate remedies for its recovery. She draws on the work of René Girard to stress “the homogenizing force of contagious disease,” which transforms individual citizens into a heap of corpses.133 By leveling the status distinctions that give rise to discord, pestilence emerges as a horrifying yet effective tool in reconstructing a more unified civic body. I draw on her persuasive treatment of this material at key points in my study, though there is relatively little overlap in the texts we consider. My interest in political authority steers me instead towards figurations of statesmanship like the healer and the head of state. By asking what these models can tell us about the implementation of sole rule in the res publica, I engage with a different set of questions than those posed by Gardner or Walters. Our studies work in complementary fashion, however, to assert the fundamental importance of the body politic metaphor to Roman political culture. My book further expands our knowledge of Roman political thought by using the evolution of single metaphor to reconstruct a discourse community over the longue durée.134 In an ideal world, this discourse community would encompass every thinker who compared the res publica to an organism to make a point about the nature and operation of political power. Of course, most of these thinkers and their works have been lost to the vagaries of time. Yet there remains much to be learned from putting Cicero in conversation with P. Albinovanus, a rival orator in the trial of P. Sestius, treating G. Valgius Rufus alongside Ovid, and rehabilitating the Elder Seneca and Curtius Rufus as political thinkers. Interweaving these voices and others in a chronological narrative that stretches from the 80s bce to 60s ce, I seek to reconstruct, however imperfectly, a conversation among Latin writers who lived through a transformative period of Roman history and sought to communicate their understanding of it to their peers and posterity. Taken together, they tell the story of how a society deeply committed to Roman Republicanism eventually reconciled itself with the conditions of autocracy. 132 134

Gardner 2019. 133 Gardner 2019: 4. For the idea of a cultural longue durée, see Skinner 1995.

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Chapter Outlines

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Chapter Outlines The conceptual history of the Roman body politic begins in Chapter 1 with the Fable of the Belly, a foundational myth of social organization that Romans linked to the Conflict of the Orders. Legend held that Menenius Agrippa resolved the First Secession of the Plebs in 494 bce by comparing the plebeians to a group of limbs that rebelled against the belly, analogous to the patricians, only to end up starving themselves. When the plebeians realized that their survival was intertwined with that of the belly, they abandoned their revolt in the name of organic harmony. Using the fable to naturalize the hierarchical distribution of power between the senate and people, Menenius Agrippa identified concord as the foundation of civic health. Late Republican thinkers drew on this interpretive framework to explain the problem of discord, which seemed akin to the splitting or doubling of the res publica. While writers like Cicero and Sallust crafted such imagery to lament the loss of civic unity, Catiline used it to justify the acquisition of personal power. Standing on the senate floor in the summer of 63 bce, he described the senate and people as separate bodies that should be governed by separate heads. Cicero interpreted Catiline’s words as those of a tyrant, confirming the transgression inherent in naming oneself the caput populi. Although Catiline’s conspiracy would be put down in a matter of months, the language he used to articulate his ambitions proved more difficult to extinguish. Cicero counteracted the rhetoric of his adversary by proposing a rival model of the body politic in his consular oratory. Chapter 2 shows how he used medical metaphors to assert the need for an exemplary statesman capable of diagnosing and curing the Republic’s ills. This idea drew upon a well-established moralizing tradition that identified vice as a contagion that had infected Rome’s governing class. Using the corrupted bodies of the Catilinarian conspirators as proof of a figurative civic disease, Cicero framed their deaths as a curative purge. Although he sought to protect a constitutional order that was under threat, he ended up exacerbating the problems he meant to solve. After the conclusion of the Catilinarian Conspiracy, he simply identified new contagions that required expulsion from the body politic. Foremost among them was P. Clodius Pulcher, whose murder on the Via Appia was portrayed as a remedy that the law could not administer. This cycle of violence culminated in Pompey’s sole consulship and Caesar’s dictatorship, two constitutional innovations that were likewise justified through the language of healing. While Cicero could not have foreseen the transition to autocracy, his descriptions of a body

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Introduction

politic in urgent need of a healer proved susceptible to appropriation by those less invested in collegial governance than he. Both Catiline’s model of a head of state and Cicero’s model of a healer made their way into the political language of the Principate, but their Republican histories invested them with divergent Imperial trajectories. Chapter 3 examines the role that each played in Augustan political discourse. Because Cicero had already normalized the figure of the healer, it could soon be incorporated into the burgeoning language of Imperial panegyric. An early example comes from G. Valgius Rufus, whose treatise on medicinal botany opens with a prayer for Augustus to heal the ills of humanity. The regal resonance of the head of state metaphor, in contrast, made it inappropriate for describing the position of the “first citizen.” It is therefore absent in the works of Vergil, Horace, and Propertius, all of whom were highly attuned to the nuances of political representation. The dichotomy of head and body was nevertheless of obvious utility to thinkers seeking to explain the relationship between the princeps and res publica. Livy responded to this quandary by incorporating the head of state metaphor into his Archaic history, investing it with the Republican pedigree that it historically lacked. His first pentad stages its adaptation to Republican politics through the figure of Camillus, who cures a body politic sickened by discord and earns the role of caput rei Romanae. Suggesting that Rome had always needed a head to thrive, Livy pursued a project of historical revisionism that helped make capital imagery available for contemporary usage. When Cornelius Severus and Ovid began using the caput as a term of praise, they confirmed the success of this conceptual rehabilitation. Although the rise of Augustus prompted the transformation of the body politic metaphor, its figurative potential was only fully realized under Tiberius. Chapter 4 considers the role of Tiberian writers in constructing a normative narrative of civic regeneration under sole rule. Celebrating Augustus for banishing civil war to the distant past, they identified the princeps as both a head of state and healer. Despite their best efforts, however, they struggled to incorporate the transfer of power into this imagistic tradition. Velleius Paterculus chose to portray Augustus and Tiberius as the two heads of the body politic, inadvertently importing a signifier of discord into the representation of the Principate. The idea that discord might have found a new home in the House of the Caesars came into clearer view under Caligula. The instability and inefficacy of his rule prompted the Elder and Younger Senecas, as well as Philo of Alexandria and Curtius Rufus, to return to imagery of an aged, sick, and headless body

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Chapter Outlines

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politic. In doing so, they implicitly acknowledged that the establishment of the Principate might not have been the panacea for which they had hoped. As they began to describe a body politic whose health fluctuated in relation to the virtue of its ruler, they anticipated the transformation of political discourse under Nero. In Seneca’s De Clementia, the metaphors of the healer and the head of state were finally subjected to critical examination. That their theorization came nearly a century after the transition to sole rule is a testament to the conservative nature of Roman political thought. Chapter 5 puts Seneca in dialogue with his nephew Lucan, both of whom describe a body politic that has changed too drastically to ever regain its earlier form. Seneca portrays Nero and Rome as inextricably intertwined, proclaiming that the former needed strength and the latter a head. Although he frames this arrangement as natural, he elsewhere explores the risks posed by a head that grows sick and surgeon whose scalpel cuts too deeply. The negative manifestations of these increasingly common metaphors of command reappear in Lucan’s Bellum Civile, which uses historical figures to represent competing models of statesmanship. Through the figures of Sulla and Pompey, Lucan stresses the precarity of a body politic dependent upon a healer or head of state for its survival. Yet his critique of these metaphors need not indicate his Republican sympathies or revolutionary impulses. By expressing skepticism towards the ability of the res publica to survive on its own, he joins Seneca in setting aside the fantasy of ancestral refoundation and confronting the ramifications of autocracy in the present. The Conclusion brings this story up to the so-called Year of the Four Emperors, which served as a practical realization of the fears of civil war latent in Julio-Claudian literature. While the overthrow of Nero exposed the vulnerability of the Imperial body politic, it also confirmed the practical entrenchment of sole rule. For whatever the flaws of the Principate, there was no talk of its abandonment. As Tacitus’ Galba puts it, si immensum imperii corpus stare ac librari sine rectore posset, dignus eram a quo res publica inciperet (“If the huge body of the empire were able to stand and maintain balance without a guide, I would be worthy to be the one from which the res publica began,” Tac. Hist. 1.16.1). Too much had changed, however, for such a counterfactual to ever be realized. This book helps clarify how such a foreclosure of political alternatives became possible. By using figurative speech to adapt the paradigm of Roman Republicanism to the House of the Caesars, Roman thinkers refashioned the ancestral res publica in their own image. Doing so enabled them to respond to the arrival of autocracy without violating the norms of

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a discourse community predicated upon its denial. Yet it also made it difficult to recover the conditions under which there had ever been an empire without an emperor. Gradually ceasing to speak a political language rooted in collective governance, Roman thinkers effected a conceptual revolution without ever recognizing it as such. One reason why the transformation of the Roman body politic has escaped scholarly notice is because Julio-Claudian writers went to such lengths to deny the novelty of their imagery. Repeatedly blurring the boundary between the old and the new, they created fictive precedents for the position that Augustus and his successors occupied in the res publica. They thereby avoided the paradigm shift we might expect in the aftermath of Actium. Yet their impulse to incorporate a head of state onto their civic body confirms that they were under no illusions about the constitutional changes wrought in the late first century bce. This recognition might not have been communicated in juridical or constitutional language, but it was given expression in a shared symbolic system. Even as Roman thinkers participated in a discourse community characterized by extraordinary conservatism, they still found ways of acknowledging the revolution through which they lived. Their efforts confirm that no paradigm is ever so entrenched as to forestall the development of new ideas. Recognizing the articulation of those ideas, however, requires us to rethink what constitutes political thought in the first place. I offer this book as an example of what might be gained by pursuing a more expansive approach to Roman Republicanism and its Imperial reception.

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chapter 1

The Divided Body Politic

In the summer of 63 bce, rumors of a conspiracy began spreading in Rome. Catiline, it was said, had held a meeting at his home in which he alluded to the cancellation of debt and other radical proposals if his bid for the consulship were successful.1 In response, Cicero proposed that the senate delay the election and hold a meeting to debate the allegations. When Catiline was called onto the senate floor to defend himself, he decided to forego a typical explanation and instead offer his audience an unusual metaphor of the body politic. As Cicero later recalled, tum enim dixit duo corpora esse rei publicae, unum debile infirmo capite, alterum firmum sine capite; huic, si ita de se meritum esset, caput se vivo non defuturum (“He said then that the res publica had two bodies, one feeble with a weak head, the other strong without a head; and that the latter, if it proved worthy of him, would not lack a head while he was alive,” Cic. Mur. 51). The senators were so horrified at Catiline’s figuration of the res publica that they cried aloud in response (congemuit senatus frequens), convinced of his intention to overthrow the Republic.2 Yet Cicero never explains what made the metaphor so provocative. Did the controversy stem from Catiline’s description of a doubled body politic? Was it his proclaimed intention to serve as the head of the people? Or was it his implication that someone else was already playing a capital role in the senate? Cicero’s lack of explanation suggests that the answer would have been obvious to his audience, if not to readers today.3 Only when Catiline’s speech is situated 1 2 3

Frolov 2018: 245–7 and Tatum 2013: 146–7 discuss the ideological import of Catiline’s contio domestica, as Cicero paradoxically terms it (Cic. Mur. 50). Plutarch tells the same story but declines to mention the feebleness of the senate’s head. He calls Catiline’s response “mad” (μανικὴν ἀπόκρισιν, Plut. Cic. 14.4). The lack of clarity surrounding Catiline’s metaphor is reflected in its scholarly interpretations. Fantham 2013: ad loc. notes the ambiguity of infirmo capite, asking “who? Cicero?”, while Walters 2020: 14, fn. 42 asks, “the senate? Cicero?”; Meister 2012: 160 does not address the ambiguity; Ash 1997: 196–7, drawing on Adamietz 1989: ad loc., speculates that the first body is “the senate with its weak consuls” and the second “the leaderless plebs.”

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in relation to the norms of Roman Republicanism, I suggest, does the source of his transgression become clear. This chapter argues that Catiline’s speech operated at the intersection of two familiar problems of Roman political thought: how to understand the relationship between the senate and people and how to define the role of the ambitious statesman within the constraints of the mixed constitution. The metaphor of the body politic equipped speakers with a set of familiar images to address both these concerns. The origins of the tradition can be traced back to the Fable of the Belly, which suggested that the senate and people tended towards harmony in the same way the parts of a human body did. Yet the context of the fable’s delivery, the First Secession of the Plebs, points to the recurring problem of civil strife in a community structured around an ideological divide between the “senate” and “people.” As factionalism threatened to expose the disjuncture between the idealized body politic of myth and the actual operation of politics, Roman thinkers began to portray the res publica as a wounded, severed, and doubled organism. Their imagery of civic fragmentation expressed anxiety over the tendency of productive contestation to devolve into something more sinister. Catiline drew on this mode of discourse but mobilized it to new ends. Rather than lament the division of the Republic or propose strategies for its reunification, he used it as an opportunity for the acquisition of personal power. Catiline conveyed his interest in acquiring a form of authority beyond the parameters of Republican statesmanship when he proclaimed himself the caput populi. Romans were familiar with the head of state metaphor, but it had implicit associations with kingship that made it inappropriate for figuring magisterial authority inside the Republic. There is in fact no extant example of a consul or other statesman being positively described as a head of state prior to the establishment of the Principate. An institution or place might play this role, but in the rare cases that individuals were linked to such imagery, it marked their deviation from ancestral norms. In announcing his desire to assume this position, Catiline revealed his tyrannical aspirations. Therein lay the shock to his audience and Cicero’s extreme response to his adversary. Although his words were quickly dismissed as the musings of a madman, they were indicative of broader shifts in political language. Treating his imagery alongside that of Cicero, Sallust, Varro, and others, I identify the metaphor of the body politic as a key site of contestation between competing visions of the res publica in the midfirst century bce. The consequences of this investigation extend into the

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Senate and People in the Republican Body Politic

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next chapter, which considers the figurative diseases burrowing in Rome’s veins and viscera.

Senate and People in the Republican Body Politic According to Livy, Dionysius, and later Imperial writers, the Roman body politic tradition began with a speech that Menenius Agrippa delivered in response to the First Secession of the Plebs in 494 bce.4 Addressing the plebeians who had withdrawn to the Sacred Mount in protest of their mistreatment by the senate, Menenius described a body whose limbs became resentful because they seemed to do all the work while the belly received all the food. They decided to stop eating to punish the belly, but soon found themselves wasting away. Only then did they realize the important role that the belly played in distributing nutrients throughout the body; what seemed like a position of privilege was in fact one of duty and responsibility. Having learned this lesson, the members abandoned their revolt, reconciled themselves with the belly, and revived their shared body. Comparing the tale to current affairs, Menenius suggested that the patricians were akin to the belly and the plebeians to the members. Civic health depended upon the deference of the latter to the former. His audience evidently agreed; according to Livy, comparando hinc quam intestina corporis seditio similis esset irae plebis in patres, flexisse mentes hominum (“By comparing in this way how the intestinal sedition of the body was similar to the anger of the plebeians towards the patricians, he changed the minds of men,” Liv. 2.32.12). As the plebeians descended from the Sacred Mount, they physically and symbolically reunified the res publica. The metaphor of the body politic enabled this process by naturalizing concord in a community that seemed predisposed towards conflict. By the Augustan era, the Fable of the Belly had begun playing an important role in the foundational mythology of the Republic.5 Its persuasiveness derived from its representation of contingent social groupings (plebes and patres) as interdependent parts of a larger civic whole. Such interdependence did not carry any corollary notion of social equality, but rather validated an institutional hierarchy predicated upon senatorial 4

5

The fable appears at Liv. 2.32.8–12; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.86; Val. Max. 8.9.1; Plut. Cor. 6.3–4; Quint. Inst. 5.11.19; Flor. Epit. 1.17.23; Cass. Dio 4.17.10–12 (Zon. 7.14). Scholarly treatments include Walters 2020: 7–17; Gershon 2020; O’Gorman 2019: 133–6; López Barja de Quiroga 2007: 104–18; Koschorke 2007: 15–54; Hillgruber 1996: 42–56; Bertelli 1972; Hale 1968; Ogilvie 1965: ad loc. 2.32; Momigliano 1942; Nestle 1927. See Ch. 3 for a discussion of the fable in its Augustan context.

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authority and popular acquiescence.6 Even as the fable justified the unequal distribution of power, however, it also emphasized the affective bonds between citizens, whose shared identification with the res publica elides distinctions in status within it.7 In identifying the First Secession of the Plebs as the point of origin for this tradition, Roman writers tied the metaphor of the body politic to the structural conflict between the senate and people. This duality vastly oversimplified the complexity of Republican politics but was nevertheless central to its representation.8 The statesman, in contrast, was not a central preoccupation of the story. While Menenius Agrippa stands out for the eloquence of his delivery, the fable does not assign him any specific role in the political community. Over the course of the next two chapters, we will see how its silence on the question of individual authority proved fertile ground for imagistic innovation. To what extent can the Fable of the Belly be interpreted as an authentic product of Republican political thought? Dionysius describes it as an Aesopic fable told in all the ancient histories, while Livy says it was narrated in an old-fashioned and rustic manner.9 Their emphasis on its antiquity raises the question of Greek influence. Metaphors of the body politic first appeared in Greek literature in the Archaic era, when Theognis compared Megara to a pregnant woman and Solon lamented a wound on the body of Athens.10 Oriented towards civic disruption and stasis, such imagery soon became commonplace across the genres of drama, philosophy, and oratory.11 It was perhaps first theorized in Aristotle’s Politics, where it is used to naturalize the polis: καὶ πρότερον δὲ τῇ φύσει πόλις ἢ οἰκία καὶ ἕκαστος ἡμῶν ἐστιν. τὸ γὰρ ὅλον πρότερον ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι τοῦ μέρους· ἀναιρουμένου γὰρ τοῦ ὅλου οὐκ ἔσται ποὺς οὐδὲ χείρ, εἰ μὴ ὁμωνύμως (“Thus also the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually. For the whole must necessarily be prior to the part; since when the whole body is destroyed, foot or hand will not exist except in an 6 7 8 9

10 11

Corbeill 2006: 439 describes the senate’s privileged role as a function of the natural order. See Connolly 2007: 45 and Feldherr 1998: 121, who suggests that the fable “provides a constant resource for the generation of collective loyalty.” Mouritsen 2017: 73 discusses the ideological importance of binaries like senatus populusque Romanus in Roman political culture. λέγεται μῦθόν τινα εἰπεῖν εἰς τὸν Αἰσώπειον τρόπον . . . ὁ λόγος καὶ φέρεται ἐν ἁπάσαις ταῖς ἀρχαίαις ἱστορίαις (“It is said that he told this sort of story in an Aesopic manner . . . and the speech is handed down in all the ancient histories,” Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.83.2); prisco illo dicendi et horrido modo (“in that ancient and rough manner of speaking,” Liv. 2.32.8). κύει πόλις ἥδε (Thgn. Fr. 39–40 West); ἕλκος ἄφυκτον (Solon Fr. 4.17 West). e.g. Herod. 5.28; Pind. Pyth. 4.270–1; Soph. Ant. 1015; Eur. IA 411. See Brock 2013: 69–82; Cagnetta 2001; Kosak 2000; Cambiano 1982.

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equivocal sense,” Arist. Pol. 1253a, trans. Rackham 1932). Just as limbs and organs can only function as part of a larger whole, individuals and households cannot live fully outside their communities.12 Justifying the primacy of collective interests over individual ones, the analogy is similar in orientation to the Fable of the Belly.13 Yet the precise path by which the body politic tradition made its leap to Rome remains a mystery. Equally unclear is when this leap occurred. Scholars have proposed dates ranging from the fourth to first centuries bce, though many would likely agree on a mid-Republican date.14 More important to my study than its early history, however, is its role in Late Republican political discourse. This focus places us on firmer footing. In the Brutus, Cicero refers to a speech delivered on the Sacred Mount during the First Secession of Plebs. Although he does not specify its contents, he confirms that it was used to quell discord: dicendo sedavisse discordias (Cic. Brut. 54).15 In the roughly contemporary De Officiis, he seems to draw inspiration from the Fable of the Belly to describe a body sickened by the selfishness of its limbs. Developing the comparison to convey the injustice of violating individual interests, he explains, si unum quodque membrum sensum hunc haberet, ut posse putaret se valere si proximi membri valitudinem ad se traduxisset, debilitari et interire totum corpus necesse esset (“If each individual limb were to have this idea, that it thought it could thrive by drawing away the strength of a neighboring limb to itself, the whole body would necessarily grow weak and perish,” Cic. Off. 3.22).16 In the same way, he continues, each person must respect what belongs to others or risk 12

13

14

15

16

As Riesbeck 2016: 2 puts it, “it is only in and through political community that rational animals can flourish in a fully human way.” See Cherry and Goerner 2006: 572–3 on the polis as ontologically prior to the household. Nestle 1927 explores the scanty Greek evidence for the metaphor, tying it to sophistic literature of the fifth century bce. Perhaps the most direct precedent comes from Xenophon, who likens two quarreling brothers to a body whose members refuse to work together. He does not extend the moral of the story to the political sphere, however (Xen. Mem. 2.3.18–9). Bertelli 1972: 227–8 and Momigliano 1942: 118 suggest a fourth century bce date; Ogilvie 1965: 312–3 argues for a date in the late third century bce; López Barja de Quiroga 2007: 114–7 sees the early second century bce as more likely; Nestle 1927 delays the entrance of the fable to the mid-first century bce. I am inclined to follow Ogilvie’s location of the fable “in the formative period of Roman historiography” initiated by Fabius Pictor. Cicero identifies the speaker as Marcus Valerius rather than Menenius Agrippa. Wiseman 1998: 87 suggests the discrepancy resulted from the intervention of the Late Republican historian Valerius Antias, who was notorious for inserting his own family members into historical events. Pieper 2016: 159–64 expresses doubt towards this idea, stressing the absence of Menenius Agrippa in all preAugustan evidence for the fable. Dyck 1996: ad loc. discusses the points of contact between Cicero’s metaphor and the Fable of the Belly.

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endangering the partnership (societas) upon which community hinges.17 In this case, it is the limbs’ disrespect for private property rather than any explicit dissatisfaction with the political order that spells societal doom. Yet the distribution of property was always a way to talk about that of political power, and never more so than amid the contentious land reform bills of the first century bce.18 Cicero’s argument that each member should have only its just deserts is if anything a rephrasing of Menenius’ warning that the limbs not overstep the boundaries of their assigned roles. In both cases, Rome is analogized to a human body to protect elite privilege. Although the Brutus and De Officiis were composed in the 40s bce, Cicero’s engagement with the body politic tradition began much earlier. The phrase corpus civitatis appears for the first time in De Inventione, the youthful rhetorical treatise that marked the start of his writing career.19 He uses the analogy to explain the concept of common advantage (utilitas), writing, ut in re publica quaedam sunt, quae, ut sic dicam, ad corpus pertinent civitatis, ut agri, portus, pecunia, classis, nautae, milites, socii, quibus rebus incolumitatem ac libertatem retinent civitates (“Just as in the res publica there are certain things which, so to speak, relate to the body politic, like fields, ports, wealth, fleets, sailors, soldiers, and allies, through which political communities preserve their security and liberty,” Cic. Inv. 2.168). Cicero acknowledges his use of figurative speech with ut sic dicam but assumes his audience’s familiarity with the metaphor, which allows him to define utilitas in relation to the res publica.20 Insofar as his commonplace stresses the advantages shared by all citizens, it has a unifying function that is similar in orientation to the examples considered earlier. The treatise suggests the circulation of the Fable of the Belly tradition by the early first century bce, engendering confidence that it played a meaningful role in the political discourse of the Late Republic. Oversimplified models of command and obedience were a recurrent element of this tradition, though the institutions selected for analysis varied in accordance with rhetorical aims. Whereas the Fable of the Belly focuses on the senate and people, the Pro Cluentio sets up a dichotomy between the law and other parts of the res publica. Comparing lex to mens, Cicero explains, ut corpora nostra sine mente, sic civitas sine lege suis partibus 17 18 19 20

See Hammer 2014: 63 on the “differential contributions of societas” in Cicero’s political thought, as well as further discussion of this idea later. For agrarian reform as a leitmotiv of the last century of the Republic, see Brunt 1988: 240. Cicero later characterized the two books of De Inventione as inchoata ac rudia (Cic. De Or. 1.5), suggesting that the language used within them was not innovative. Wood 1988: 128–9.

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ut nervis ac sanguine et membris uti non potest. Legum ministri magistratus, legum interpretes iudices, legum denique idcirco omnes servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus (“As our bodies are not able to use their nerves and blood and limbs without the mind, so our political community cannot use its parts without the law. Magistrates are the servants of the laws, judges are the interpreters of the laws, and we are all finally slaves of the laws so that we may be free,” Cic. Clu. 146).21 Just as the mind enables the various parts of the human body to function, the law allows the diverse elements of the Republic to do so. Cicero elaborates on this point by identifying three components of the human body that rely upon reason (nerves, blood, and limbs) and three groups in the body politic that rely upon the law (magistrates, judges, and the citizenry). His idealistic portrait of the law obscures its practical status as a combination of the senate’s deliberative authority, people’s right of acclamation, and magistrate’s duty of enforcement. It is instead portrayed as an autonomous and rational authority that unilaterally presides over the rest of the res publica. Social differences within this system are effaced as everyone is represented as equally enslaved to – and paradoxically liberated by – a higher power. Stressing organic unity over disparities in political, economic, and social power, Cicero crafts a vision of the body politic that is distinctive yet works within the parameters of an established tradition. The analogy that Cicero constructs between lex and mens points to the role of the reasoning faculties in figuring political authority. In debating which element of the mixed constitution best approximated the role of reason in the body, Roman thinkers explored broader questions about the distribution of power in the Republic. Cicero’s own views on this topic changed from text to text; in the Pro Milone, for example, the senate assumes the role of mens. He makes the comparison as part of a sustained attack on those who participated in burning down the Curia at the funeral of P. Clodius Pulcher. To convey the significance of the building they destroyed, he calls it templum sanctitatis, amplitudinis, mentis, consili publici, caput urbis, aram sociorum, portum omnium gentium, sedem ab universo populo concessam uni ordini (“the temple of sacredness, grandeur, intellect, public counsel, the head of the city, altar of the allies, haven for all nations, 21

Cicero uses a similar metaphor elsewhere to describe natural law, writing, ea est enim naturae vis, ea mens ratioque prudentis, ea iuris atque iniuriae regula (“For this [lex] is the power of nature, this is the mind and reason of the sensible man, this is the measure of justice and injustice,” Cic. Leg. 1.19). Here, however, he refers to “right reason” rather than the imperfect statutes created by human societies. On his approach to natural vs. human law, see the recent discussions of Hawley 2022: 15–62; Atkins 2013a: 155–87; Asmis 2008.

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seat granted to one order by all the people,” Cic. Mil. 90). His description of the Curia as the head of the city is surprising; as we will soon see, the Capitoline typically played this role in Rome’s urban landscape.22 Here, however, the comparison reinforces the senate’s association with the ideals of logic and rationality. Those who gather in the Curia stand in contrast to the unlearned crowd (multitudo imperita, Cic. Mil. 90), whose illogical impulses make it more akin to the mutinous limbs described in the Fable of the Belly.23 A famous quip attributed to the Elder Cato illustrates the intersection between the trope of the irrational crowd and the metaphor of the body politic. Reversing the symbolism of the Fable of the Belly, Cato responded to a popular request for a grain dole by identifying the people as Rome’s stomach: χαλεπὸν μέν ἐστιν ὦ πολῖται πρὸς γαστέρα λέγειν ὦτα οὐκ ἔχουσαν (“It is difficult, citizens, to argue with the belly since it has no ears,” Plut. Cat. Mai. 8.1). Rather than stress the role of the belly in distributing nutrients throughout the body, Cato draws on its more familiar association with the sensual appetites.24 Denied the ears necessary to participate in rational debate, the people are cast as a drain on public resources. Cicero often expressed similar views when speaking privately; in a characteristic letter to Atticus, he refers to illa contionalis hirudo aerari, misera ac ieiuna plebecula (“Those contio-attending bloodsuckers of the treasury, the miserable and hungry rabble,” Cic. Att. 1.16.11). He compares the crowd to leeches feasting on the treasury, an institution elsewhere identified as the viscera of Rome (Cic. Dom. 23, 124). Although he would likely insist that this crowd, whose parasitic greed justifies its subordination, had little in common with the idealized populus Romanus, he shares Cato’s impulse to use organic imagery to diminish popular contributions to the shared project of governance.25 The Epistulae ad Caesarem goes further in using the reasoning faculties to validate senatorial authority against the popular will. Although likely an 22

23 24

25

Keeline 2021: ad loc. dismisses the textual variant caput orbis, despite Cicero’s identification of the senate as the counsel of the world elsewhere (e.g. in publico orbis terrae consilio, Cic. Fam. 3.8.4; summo consilio orbis terrae, Cic. Phil. 7.19). It is perhaps worth noting that Varro argues for cor as the etymological root of curia (Varro, Ling. 6.46), on which see Spencer 2019: 156–7. Morstein-Marx 2004: 68 notes that the adjective imperitus attaches to plebs or multitudo “virtually as a formula.” Morstein-Marx 2004: 83 writes “A bestialized urban mob, whose enslavement to its appetites and desperate circumstances make it incapable of reason, is one of the stock characters of the Roman political drama scripted by ancient writers.” Mouritsen 2001: 40–1 and Millar 1998: 120 discuss the letter’s attempt to distinguish between this mob and the populus Romanus.

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Imperial forgery, it remains a valuable source for what later Romans believed to be characteristic of Republican discourse.26 Throughout the text, Ps.-Sallust sustains the persona of a Caesarian partisan eager to identify the shortcomings of the senate. Even so, he does not question the propriety of its command, writing, igitur ubi plebs senatui sicuti corpus animo oboedit eiusque consulta exsequitur, patres consilio valere decet, populo supervacuanea est calliditas (“Therefore, since the plebs obey the senate as a body does its mind and follow its recommendations, the senate should be strong in respect to its counsel; cleverness is unnecessary for the people,” Ad Caes. sen. 2.10.6).27 His phrasing echoes the prefaces of the Bellum Catilinae and Bellum Iugurthinum, both of which foreground the duality of mind and body.28 Sallust does not explicitly extend these comparisons to the Republic, though we will see in the next chapter how the sick body politic is incorporated into his text. Ps.-Sallust, however, picks up where his predecessor left off. He represents the model of a senatorial mind and popular body as an ideal from which the contemporary res publica has deviated. While he blames the senate for creating this situation, he leaves the more fundamental assumption of its supremacy unchallenged. The limited scope of his critique suggests the normativity of senatorial privilege in figurations of the Republican body politic. These examples suggest the frequency with which the duality of mind and body was used to validate the deliberative authority of the senate. Could the same rhetorical strategy be used to assert the power of the Roman people? A passage from Varro’s De Lingua Latina raises this possibility. Explaining the propriety of conforming to the popular will in relation to language, Varro writes, ego populi consuetudinis non sum ut dominus, at ille meae est. ut rationi optemperare debet gubernator, gubernatori unusquisque in navi, sic populus rationi, nos singuli populo (“I am not the master of the usage of the people, but it is the master of mine. As a helmsman ought to conform to reason, and every individual on the 26

27 28

Syme 1958a made an influential case for the text’s status as an Imperial forgery, but Duplá, Fatás Cabeza, and Pina Polo 1994 argue for its authenticity. Novokhatko 2009: 111–49 offers an overview of the debate. Santangelo 2012: 41–2 sees the senatorial–popular divide as a central theme in both letters which he praises for their fluency in Republican political language. sed nostra omnis vis in animo et corpore sita est: animi imperio, corporis servitio magis utimur (“But all our strength has been placed in the mind and body; we use the command of the mind and rather the servitude of the body,” Sall. Cat. 1.1); nam uti genus hominum conpositum ex corpore et anima est, ita res cunctae studiaque omnia nostra corporis alia, alia animi naturam secuntur (“For just as the human race is composed of body and soul, so are all our affairs and pursuits; some follow the nature of the body, others that of the mind,” Sall. Iug. 2.1). Earl 1961: 7–8 addresses the role of the mind–body duality in Sallust’s political thought.

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ship to the helmsman, so the people ought to conform to reason, and all of us to the people,” Varro, Ling. 9.6). Although Varro writes in the context of linguistic usage rather than politics, his attribution of rational authority to the people is striking.29 It is brought into sharper relief through comparison to Cicero, who describes the senate as the master of public deliberation (senatus dominus sit publici consili) and suggests that the people should be steered by its judgment (consilio rem publicam gubernari, Cic. Leg. 3.28).30 T. P. Wiseman uses these passages as evidence that Cicero and Varro stood “on opposite sides of an ideological divide,” the former interested in protecting elite privilege and the latter sympathetic to the popular cause.31 Varro’s inversion of the normative configuration of the mind–body duality supports this view, hinting at an alternative strand of Roman Republicanism. The conservative bent of our extant sources, however, prevents us from saying much more.32 This section has argued that Roman thinkers used the metaphor of the body politic to make weighted claims about the distribution of political power in the mixed constitution. On the one hand, their imagery was marked by a high degree of variety; the senate could be identified as the mind or belly of the civic organism, while the people could be compared to mutinous limbs or bloodsucking leeches. Such diversity confirms that there was no single model of the body politic in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism, just as there was no agreed upon definition of res publica.33 Which institutions were most relevant to the practice of politics and how power should be distributed between them were questions contested both practically and figuratively. On the other hand, a unified organism composed of two rival social groups was a recurrent element of this tradition. It is not necessarily obvious that the Romans would have conceptualized their community in this way. The Republic encompassed a patchwork empire that was geographically dispersed, linguistically and ethnically heterogeneous, with belonging regulated by gradients of citizenship. Those living within Rome were distinguished on the basis of birth, wealth, residency, and other classifiers.34 Even a category like nobiles effaced substantial differences in the social standing, economic power, and 29 30 31 32 33 34

De Melo 2019: ad loc. comments, “essentially the terminology is that used for slave-owners.” See Mebane 2022 on metaphors of pilotage in Republican political discourse. Wiseman 2009: 112–20. See Millar 1998: 207 on the difficulty – but importance – of accessing “conceptions of popular political rights” through the “partial and indirect view” provided by our elite sources. On the indeterminacy of this term, see Introduction alongside Moatti 2018 and Hodgson 2017. Ando 2015: 54 describes this sort of pluralism as “the essence of empire as a political form,” while Dench 2005: 4 stresses “the plural nature of Roman identity” as central to Roman self-conception.

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political outlook of those who comprised its ranks.35 To translate such complexity into an ideology predicated upon the existence of only two classes required a persuasive conceptual apparatus. The human body, composed of many elements yet also reducible to the duality of animus– corpus, provided one. The metaphor of the body politic was not only useful in naturalizing the existence of two rival social groups, but also in explaining their coalescence into a larger whole. While Romans embraced the conflictual aspects of their political process, they also saw civic cohesion as a precondition for its success.36 Cicero’s Scipio makes this clear in his famous definition of res publica as res populi, explaining, populus autem non omnis hominum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu et utilitatis communione sociatus (“Yet a people is not just a group of men who have been brought together in any manner, but the gathering of many individuals united by a shared view of justice and a commitment to the common advantage,” Cic. Rep. 1.39). Scipio describes the res publica as a partnership (societas) predicated upon shared values.37 A prerequisite for this partnership is the cohesion of its members, a point stressed through a pointed succession of co-compounds.38 Yet Scipio does not detail the institutional mechanisms that produce cohesion.39 His vagueness is characteristic of Cicero’s political thought more broadly, which tends to assume “a subjective notion of ongoing agreement” without delving into specifics.40 Of greater concern was the ability of oratory and philosophy to generate affective bonds between citizens and foster their emotional attachment to the res publica.41 Metaphors of social organization facilitated this conceptual project by prioritizing the instinctual over the logical. They allowed Cicero to frame 35 36

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38 39 40 41

See Hölkeskamp 2010: 32 on internal hierarchies within the governing elite. Connolly 2015, in particular, theorizes an agonistic model of Roman Republicanism against the consensualism associated with neo-republicanism. McCormick 2011 makes a similar case in his study of Machiavelli’s Discorsi. On concordia as an equally foundational ideal of Ciceronian political thought, however, see Kennedy 2014: 491–6. Only if citizens hold the same view on justice and common advantage can they achieve the societas upon which the res publica is based (Schofield 1995: 74). On the res publica as “a cooperative enterprise undertaken for the common benefit of all its members,” see Atkins 2013a: 134 alongside discussion in Introduction. Asmis 2005: 400–1. Atkins 2013a: 115 suggests that this unity is envisioned as a byproduct of a political culture rooted in the customs and traditions of the past. Hammer 2014: 47. Hammer 2008: 38–77. Connolly 2015: 79 warns that such affective associations provide little guidance on questions of civic judgment and justice.

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unity as the primordial state of a citizenry increasingly unable to find common ground by the first century bce. This point becomes clearer in relation to the famous analogy between musical harmony and societal concord that appears in Book 2 of De Republica. When individuals come together to play instruments or sing, Scipio explains, they achieve harmony (concentus) through the blending of distinct sounds (ex distinctis sonis). Concord does not derive from an insistence upon sameness, but rather the successful blending of difference: isque concentus ex dissimillimarum vocum moderatione concors tamen efficitur et congruens (“This harmony, through the moderation of very unlike voices, is nevertheless made concordant and consistent,” Cic. Rep. 2.69). Just as musical harmony does not require everyone to sing the same note, civic concord does not demand homogeneity: sic ex summis et infimis et mediis interiectis ordinibus, ut sonis, moderata ratione civitas consensu dissimillimorum concinit (“In the same way, the political community, regulated through the symmetry of the highest and lowest and intervening middling orders, as if sounds, produces harmony from the agreement of very different people,” Cic. Rep. 2.69). Embracing difference through his use of the superlative (dissimillimorum), Scipio suggests that social hierarchy is an integral element of rather than barrier to the realization of concord.42 The clarity of this principle in a musical context is used to naturalize its less obvious operation in politics.43 The metaphor of the body politic worked similarly.44 Showing how parts as diverse as the belly, feet, and mind could coalesce into a single organism, it invited Romans to extend their own ontological experiences of “unity and integration, identity and concord, wholeness and indivisibility” to the res publica at large.45 In this way, it helped Cicero and his contemporaries reconcile the ideals of conflict and consensus. 42

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Scipio does not posit concordia as a byproduct of the mixed constitution, but rather the balance of the senatorial, equestrian, and popular orders (Asmis 2005: 406). This balance is made possible by “the mutual recognition by the ‘orders’ of the equitableness of their differing contributions and entitlements,” (Schofield 2021: 45). Or as Kapust 2011: 83 describes it, the bond of concordia unites what is dissimilar through agreement. Ando 2011b: 99 writes, “The problem of concord was of course one that preoccupied Cicero, and not only him; alas, nowhere in his extant works does he outline in substantive terms a mechanism by which consensus among most dissimilar individuals – the superlative is important – was to be achieved, even as the very great differences internal to the populace were respected and, indeed, protected.” Ferrary 1995: 65 suggests that it is not an institution, but rather a prudens, or wise man, that can merge these elements and secure concord. Arena 2020: 107–8 treats Scipio’s metaphor alongside the Fable of the Belly to illustrate the “need of concordia for the effective working of the commonwealth.” Neocleous 2003: 14. See also Uden 2020: 132.

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Discord as Division and Doubling In the last section, I argued that Roman thinkers favored the metaphor of the body politic because it naturalized both the social divisions embedded in the Republic and the subordination of those divisions to an overarching ideal of concord. Yet it is important to emphasize how rare depictions of a well-functioning body politic were. Far more common were portrayals of a political community on the brink of death.46 Such claims were part of a broader conversation about civic decline that took many rhetorical forms.47 When the paradigm of decline intersected with the problem of discord, it produced distinctive imagery of a body politic that had lost its physical integrity. Rome was figured as an organism that had doubled, divided, or simply collapsed into a heap of bloody parts. Such imagery located the realization of consensus in the past and expressed concern over its absence in the present. It conveyed bewilderment at how the conflictual politics upon which the Republic had long been based had turned toxic and deadly. Tracing the expression of this theme within Cicero and Sallust allows us to see what was so different about Catiline’s two-bodied res publica. There was nothing inherently negative about the trope of doubling in Roman discourse.48 Duplication had long been woven into the fabric of the Republic, which was founded by the twins Romulus and Remus, refounded as a Republic led by two consuls, and composed of two antagonistic social groups. As we saw in the last section, Romans considered these dualities to be integral to their political process. In Ps.-Sallust’s view, they were stamped with the imprimatur of ancestral precedent: in duas partes ego civitatem divisam arbitror, sicut a maioribus accepi, in patres et plebem (“Personally, I think that the political community has been divided into two parts, the senate and the people, as I have heard from the ancestors,” Ad Caes. sen. 2.5.1). Although the phrase in duas partes was often used to signify factionalism, as we will see in passages from Cicero and Sallust later, Ps.-Sallust does not interpret this division as antithetical 46 47

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Walters 2020: 23 describes the healthy body politic as a nostalgic ideal against which the present was judged. See Pocock 2003: 17–60 on competing Roman paradigms of decline; Seng 2017 on the model(s) of decline operative in Cicero’s and Sallust’s thought; Levick 1982 and Lintott 1972 on the historical merits (or lack thereof) of Roman analyses of decline; Williams 1978: 6–51 on Imperial proclamations of literary decline. In the realm of metaphor, we might think of Cicero’s famous comparison of Rome to a painting that has faded with age (Cic. Rep. 5.2), on which see Hammer 2008: 58–9; Connolly 2007: 154–6; Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 14. On doubling, see Neel 2015: 5–11; Bettini 2011: 171–237; Feeney 2010; Konstan 1986: 202–4.

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to the realization of concord. Among the ancestors, he says, the res publica was one: quippe apud illos una res publica erat (Ad Caes. sen. 2.10.8). Those writing in the mid-first century bce, however, were highly aware of the ease with which such conflicts could devolve into violence that suspended rather than invigorated the political process. As widespread anxiety arose over Rome’s “ideal twinned harmony going rancid,” to use Denis Feeney’s memorable phrase, a body politic structured around social division was recast as one that lacked any structure at all.49 In Book 1 of De Republica, Cicero uses imagery of a divided, doubled, and lacerated body to denote the tipping point of productive contestation into destructive discord. The dialogue opens with the programmatic appearance of two suns in the sky, an event that prompts Q. Aelius Tubero and his fellow interlocutors to begin debating their astrological significance.50 When prompted for his opinion, C. Laelius connects the symbolism to the political crisis precipitated by the death of Tiberius Gracchus, asking, quid enim mihi Luci Pauli nepos . . . quaerit quomodo duo soles visi sint, non quaerit cur in una re publica duo senatus et duo paene iam populi sint? (“Why does the grandson of L. Paulus . . . ask me why two suns are visible, not why there are two senates and nearly now two peoples in a single res publica?” Cic. Rep. 1.31). Although Laelius’ description of social division strikes a familiar chord, it is more complex than the simple duality of senate and people. What worries him is the loss of senatorial consensus, which has produced a rift within the elite that is replicated in the populace at large.51 Blaming Tiberius Gracchus for this situation, he continues, nam ut videtis, mors Tiberi Gracchi, et iam ante tota illius ratio tribunatus, divisit populum unum in duas partes (“For as you see, the death of Tiberius Gracchus and even earlier the whole program of his tribunate split one people into two parts,” Cic. Rep. 1.31).52 Laelius ties Rome’s civic divide to the rise of a new class of statesmen interested in pursuing political advancement through popular rather than senatorial channels. His analysis points to the centrality of intra-elite competition to Cicero’s understanding of discord and its potential remedies. Of primary concern 49 50 51 52

Feeney 2010: 282. On the importance of astronomical metaphors to the interpretation of De Republica, see Gallagher 2001. The “discord of the optimates” assumes structural importance in the roughly contemporary De Haruspicum Responsis, where it appears in a warning issued by the haruspices (Cic. Har. resp. 40). Cicero uses in duas partes in the traditional sense of factionalism, on which see Hellegouarc’h 1963: 110–5; Taylor 1949: 10–11. Caesar attributes similar phrasing to the Massilians: intellegere se divisum esse populum in partes duas (“They understood that the Roman people were divided into two parts,” Caes. BCiv. 1.35.3).

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is restoring concord to the senate, not reconciling its interests with those of the people. Although the extant sections of De Republica do not reprise the theme of the two senates, the same idea recurs in the Pro Sestio, a speech famous for its specious description of Republican politics.53 In the “manifesto” that dominates the latter third, Cicero suggests that the senate has long been divided into two halves.54 He explains, duo genera semper in hac civitate fuerunt eorum qui versari in re publica atque in ea se excellentius gerere studuerunt (“In this political community, there have always been two kinds of men who have wanted to involve themselves in the res publica and conduct themselves excellently within it,” Cic. Sest. 96). He then introduces the dichotomy of the populares and optimates, two rival senatorial factions vying for supremacy: quibus ex generibus alteri se popularis, alteri optimates et haberi et esse voluerunt (“Of which some wanted both to be and be considered populares and others optimates,” Cic. Sest. 96).55 Whereas the populares pander to the crowd and seek its approval at all costs, the optimates are guided by virtue and only value the opinions of the best sort of men. The gulf between them is reflected in the broader composition of the populace, in which the idealized populus Romanus stands in contrast to the demonized plebes. As long as public policy is determined by the optimates and their allies, this divide does not preclude the realization of concord.56 When the populares seek excessive power, however, a more dangerous sort of factionalism arises that threatens the long-term stability of the mixed constitution. Cicero joins Laelius in tracing its origins back to the Gracchi, whose legislation produced discordia between the leading men and the crowd (Cic. Sest. 103). Insofar as the division described in the Pro Sestio originates within the senatorial elite, whose disagreement filters down into the larger populace, it mirrors the doubled suns that open De Republica. The two texts work in tandem to confirm Cicero’s perception of intra-elite 53

54 55

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Balsdon 1960: 47 memorably argued for “the political barrenness” of Cicero’s thought in the speech. Lacey 1962 responded with a defense of the Pro Sestio, which remains one of the few post reditum speeches held in high regard. See Kaster 2006: 31 on the tendency to read this section as “a freestanding political ‘manifesto.’” Recent work on the terminology of optimates and populares stresses the divergence between Cicero’s use of these terms and their standard function in Late Republican discourse. See Gildenhard 2011: 146–56; Kaster 2006: 33; Robb 2010; Stone 2005; Ferrary 1997; Seager 1972. Kenty 2020: 190–1 emphasizes the inclusivity of this alliance, which allows Cicero to use the broader term boni instead of the more polarized label of optimates. Stone 2005: 63 suggests optimates was too exclusive a term for Cicero to use in relation to his own faction, the existence of which he sought to deny.

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competition as the primary catalyst for the splitting of the political community. It is not the urban masses, but rather the politicians who pander to them, who are held responsible for the dysfunctional politics of the 50s bce. Cicero frequently conveyed this idea by portraying popular politicians as assailants of the body politic. By wielding figurative weapons against the res publica, they challenged its physical integrity and destroyed the consensus connoted by organic wholeness.57 In the preface to Book 1 of De Republica, for example, he urges that readers “not let the res publica be torn to shreds by these men,” (neve ab eis dilacerari rem publicam patiantur, Cic. Rep. 1.9). Cicero does not specify the identity of the wicked men (improbi) to whom he refers, but he elsewhere uses the same formula in relation to Clodius: annum integrum ad dilacerandam rem publicam quaereret (“He was seeking a whole year [as praetor] to rip the res publica apart,” Cic. Mil. 24). Comparing the praetorship to a weapon allows Cicero to represent a magistrate elected by the Roman people as a hostile attacker. He employs the same tactic against Piso and Gabinius, who are accused of using their consulship like a sword: ii summi imperi nomine armati rem publicam contrucidarunt (“Armed with the title of the highest power, they cut the res publica to pieces,” Cic. Sest. 24).58 How statesmen like Cicero ought to respond to a body politic on the brink of death is a question taken up in the next chapter. For now, it is sufficient to note that the wounded res publica denotes strife that has gone too far. It is used to distinguish productive and destructive modes of conflict, the boundary between which was fading in the 50s bce. Although Cicero crafts remarkably bleak imagery of the Roman body politic, he also expresses faith in the prospect of its healing. As Laelius’ excursus on the doubled suns comes to an end, he remarks, senatum vero et populum ut unum habeamus, et fieri potest et permolestum est nisi fit (“But that we have one senate and people is both possible and worrisome if not achieved,” Cic. Rep. 1.32). Laelius suggests that what was once whole can be made so again; the two suns need not remain in the sky for long. The seemingly fundamental divide between the optimates and populares in the Pro Sestio likewise disappears almost as quickly as it is introduced.59 In its place is the harmony of the orders (concordia ordinum) and the consensus 57 58

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See Walters 2020: 62 on the language of laceration here and elsewhere. Contrucido, as Walters 2020: 54 notes, connects the suffering of the Republic to that of P. Sestius, the nominal subject of the speech and a man whose own body has been mangled in more literal fashion (debilitato corpore et contrucidato, Cic. Sest. 79). On the rhetorical collapse of this divide, see Gildenhard 2011: 162 and Kaster 2006: 34.

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of all good men (consensus omnium bonorum), both of which are tied to the cultivation of civic virtue on an individual level.60 The inclusivity of Cicero’s ethical language elides the ideological differences that he has just explicated at length. Provided that his fellow senators nurture their sense of duty and honor, they will naturally arrive at a shared course of action for the res publica. He thereby identifies a moral solution to what might be viewed as a structural problem: the increasing frequency with which public institutions like the assembly and the courts exacerbated rather than remediated the political struggles of the mid-first century bce.61 Insofar as he views discord as a consequence of moral failure rather than a byproduct of the mixed constitution, Cicero confirms his continued faith in the traditional paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Writing in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, Sallust was even more highly attuned than Cicero to the problem of discord in a political community structured around class-based difference. His texts embrace what Daniel Kapust calls an “antagonistic republicanism,” one that sees social conflicts as beneficial if they are oriented towards the realization of collective goods like libertas and virtus.62 Channeling ambition towards public rather than private ends, however, does not come naturally to the competitive and glory-obsessed Romans. It is a byproduct of extrinsic forces like the fear of a foreign enemy (metus hostilis), which allows citizens to struggle for acclaim at the expense of others rather than each other.63 The looming threat of Carthage ensured the successful operation of this mechanism for centuries, enabling the senate and people to set aside their differences and collaborate in governance: nam ante Carthaginem deletam populus et senatus Romanus placide modesteque inter se rem publicam tractabant, neque gloriae neque dominationis certamen inter civis erat; metus hostilis in bonis artibus civitatem retinebat (“For before the destruction of Carthage, the Roman people and senate were managing the res publica together peacefully and moderately, and there was a struggle for neither glory nor domination between citizens; fear of a foreign enemy was holding the political community to honorable means,” Sall. Iug. 41.2). Sallust constructs this passage to emphasize the primacy of collective over individual 60 61

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Wood 1988: 198–9. While neo-republicans see such public institutions as the primary mechanism through which contestation yields to consensus, the Roman Republic asks us to consider what happens when public institutions worsen the conflicts they are theoretically designed to resolve. Kapust 2011: 31. Earl 1961: 59 discusses the role of metus Punicus, specifically, in Sallust’s political thought. Dunsch 2006 traces variations on this theme across Sallust’s works, while Vassiliades 2013 argues that a lack of external enemies leads to the creation of internal ones.

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interests (inter se; inter civis). As long as class-based identities are subordinated to the common good, he suggests, concord remains an achievable aim. Perhaps more than his contemporaries, however, he recognized that civic cohesion had to be actively secured rather than passively assumed. His interest in the forces that facilitated its realization yields a strikingly structural analysis of Republican politics. The Bellum Iugurthinum illustrates what happens when a societal mechanism responsible for producing concord is removed.64 After the downfall of Carthage, Sallust explains, individuals began to pursue their own interests at the expense of the community. The spread of vice and deterioration of virtue soon followed.65 As the people prioritized their freedom (libertas) and the senate their standing (dignitas), a once unified res publica was torn to shreds: ita omnia in duas partis abstracta sunt, res publica, quae media fuerat, dilacerata (“In this way everything was split into two parts; the res publica, which had been shared, was chopped to pieces,” Sall. Iug. 41.5).66 Sallust joins Cicero in using imagery of a wounded body politic to denote the devolution of generative social conflict into destructive civil strife. Both blame the corrupted morals of the Roman elite, who have perverted ancestral tradition through their pursuit of personal gain. Yet whereas Cicero restricts this criticism to the so-called populares, Sallust extends it to the senatorial class at large.67 The two thinkers likewise diverge in their identification of solutions to the problem. Cicero focuses on the cultivation of civic virtue, which can rehabilitate the flawed morals of individual statesmen, restore senatorial consensus, and set the Republic back on its proper course.68 Sallust, in contrast, portrays men as predisposed towards difference and disagreement. Overriding this predisposition is not a matter of philosophical study; it requires the implementation of new mechanisms for channeling “antagonistic energies.” He sees the practice of rhetoric as one such solution; balancing the tensions of political life without removing them, the rhetorical battlefield offered a potential 64 65

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Shaw 2022: 194 stresses the close connection between the absence of Carthage and decline of Roman morals in the Bellum Iugurthinum. Balmaceda 2017: 48–82 argues that vitium gradually replaces virtus in Sallust’s narratives, while McDonnell 2006: 356–84 sees a confrontation between Greek and Roman conceptions of virtus within them. On the conflict between dignitas and libertas in Sallust’s political thought, see Earl 1961: 53–7. Connolly 2015: 100 asks, “If wealth corrupts the republic at the top, must not poverty and deprivation corrupt it everywhere else . . . ?” Honohan 2002: 33 cites Cicero for his argument that the maintenance of republican liberty hinges on the virtue of the political classes. Philp 1996: 387–8 extends the argument for civic virtue to the citizenry at large. On the intellectual origins of this idea in Cicero’s political thought, see Schofield 2021: 147–51.

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path back to political vitality.69 Whether the words of the orator might indeed provide a civic cure is a question that we will see Cicero approaching from a different direction in the next chapter. While Cicero and Sallust diverge in their interpretations of the discord plaguing the Republic, they share a nostalgic attachment to the unified body politic enjoyed by their ancestors. So does Ps.-Sallust, whose fictive letters to Caesar explore strategies for reestablishing una res publica (Ad Caes. sen. 2.10.8). Catiline’s image of a two-bodied Republic (duo corpora esse rei publicae) emerged from this tradition but worked towards opposite ends. It denied the interdependence upon which the Fable of the Belly and other normative organic metaphors were based. After all, why should a political community rooted in dichotomies and dualities coalesce as one? The factionalism that others treat as the corruption of the political process is reframed as the status quo. Catiline was not interested in reconciling these bodies but rather adapting Rome’s governing structure to better meet their different needs. He made this point clear when he announced his desire to serve as the caput populi. Putting a head atop an organism that conspicuously lacked one, he sought to incorporate an exceptional statesman into a tradition that left little room for individual authority. In doing so, he raised the troubling possibility that the body politic might need to change its shape to survive.

Missing and Monstrous Heads Catiline’s description of the duo corpora rei publicae marked a purposeful intervention in the normative body politic tradition. Rather than describing the people as limbs subordinate to senatorial authority, he argued that they had a fully-fledged body of their own. His words confirmed that organic imagery could be mobilized to validate the authority of the people against that of the senate. Yet Catiline also described the body of the people as headless (sine capite), implying that its autonomy was only possible under his command. In doing so, he transgressed an implicit boundary in the figuration of political authority. While Romans were comfortable comparing institutions like the senate and the courts to the reasoning faculties, they rarely used such analogies in relation to individual statesmen. They were not only disinclined to label a magistrate the mens, ratio, or animus of the Republic, but also avoided the body part with which reason was often associated: the head. In fact, there are no extant examples 69

Kapust 2011: 54–5.

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in Late Republican texts in which the authority of the statesman is validated through the comparison of head and body. I argue that this silence stemmed from the head’s association with kingship, a connection that went back to Plato. In the rare cases where Republican writers applied capital imagery to the res publica, they did so to draw attention to the subversion of Republican norms. In making explicit use of this symbolism, Catiline laid bare his desire for dominatio.70 This section begins by exploring the symbolic capacities of the head in Roman thought. Although Roman writers did not understand the function of the brain in the body, they nevertheless assigned the head a privileged role in corporeal analogies from an early date.71 There were multiple reasons they might have done so. Foremost among them was the head’s association with personhood, which allowed it to synecdochally represent one’s life and citizenship. It could also represent the source of something, whether an action or a river, or its chief part, like a geographic capital.72 The symbolism likely stemmed in part from ancient awareness that a body could not survive without its head. This principle found expression in the Greek body politic tradition as early as the sixth century bce. According to Herodotus, the Argives received an oracle before the invasion of Xerxes that advised them to guard their figurative head: καὶ κεφαλὴν πεφύλαξο· κάρη δὲ τὸ σῶμα σαώσει (“Keep your head well guarded, and it will save the body,” Herod. 7.148, trans. Strassler 2007). The Pythia does not specify who – or what – constitutes the head of the Argives. Some suggest it refers to the ruling class, others to those with full citizenship.73 More important for our purposes, however, is the oracle’s assumption that the condition of the head dictates that of the body. This principle is used to validate a certain distribution of resources – and power – inside the polis. Herodotus reports the delivery of a similar oracle 70 71

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For dominatio as a signifier of illegitimate authority in Republican political thought, see Atkins 2018a: 760; Arena 2012: 244–8; Hellegouarc’h 1963: 562–3. Homeric epic reveals no awareness of the head as the seat of consciousness (Collins 1996: 63–85), while the Hippocratic texts were divided over the location of the reasoning faculties (van der Eijk 2005: 119–35). The Alexandrian physicians Herophilus and Erasistratus proved the cognitive function of the brain in the third century bce (Cambiano 1999: 600–1), but the question continued to provoke philosophical debate well into the Imperial era (on which see Tracy 1976). See OLD s.v. 4 for the caput as the life of a person; s.v. 7 for its signification of personhood; s.v. 5–6 for its connection to citizenship, about which Cloud 1994: 493 writes, “The head as the most obviously vital part comes to mean ‘life’ and then ‘civil rights,’ since a citizen deprived of these ceases to exist as a citizen.” On the caput as the source or chief part of something, see s.v. 9–12, and as a capital city, s.v. 14b. How and Wells 1928: ad loc. suggest the head signifies “the remnant of the ruling class,” while Godley 1922: ad loc. proposes it refers to those with full citizenship, “the nucleus of the population.”

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to the Athenians around the same time. In this case, the tottering of the head foretells the destruction of the limbs.74 These oracles confirm an early impulse to derive political lessons from the relationship between the head and body. By the fourth century bce, the symbol of the head was being used to justify the authority of one over many. Polyaenus reports that the Athenian general Iphicrates employed the comparison in relation to his army, explaining (Polyaenus, Strat. 3.9.22):75 Ἰφικράτης τὴν σύνταξιν τῶν σρατοπέδων εἴκαζε τῷ σώματι. θώρακα ἐκάλει τὴν φάλαγγα, χεῖρας τοὺς ψιλοὺς, πόδας τὴν ἵππον, κεφαλὴν τὸν σρατηγόν. ‘τὰ μὲν δὴ ἄλλα ὅταν ἐπιλείπῃ, χωλὸν καὶ πηρὸν τὸ σρατόπεδον· ὅταν δὲ ὁ σρατηγὸς ἀπόληται, τὸ πᾶν ἄχρηστον οἴχεται.’ Iphicrates compared the ranks of troops to the body. He called the phalanx the trunk, the light-armed troops the hands, the cavalry the feet, and the general the head. ‘When the other parts are lacking, the army is lame and maimed. But when the general is killed, the whole army – useless – is ruined.’

Iphicrates uses the analogy not only to explain the need for different types of troops, but also to draw attention to their collective dependence on their general.76 Just as a person can survive the amputation of a limb but not a decapitation, an army can lose individual soldiers but not its commander. The contrast between the necessity of the head and expendability of the parts naturalizes the authority of the general, reminding soldiers of their subordination to him. This model worked well in the context of the army but was less applicable to the dispersed power relations of the polis.77 Perhaps for this reason, Iphicrates’ metaphor finds no parallel in contemporary discussions of Athenian politics.78 It is difficult to determine the extent to which Roman writers were familiar with these precedents from the Greek world. Yet the longest surviving fragment of the Elder Cato’s Origines, which describes the heroism of an unnamed military tribune during the First Punic War, 74

75 76 77 78

οὔτε γὰρ ἡ κεφαλὴ μένει ἔμπεδον οὔτε τὸ σῶμα, | οὔτε πόδες νέατοι οὔτ᾿ ὦν χέρες, οὔτε τι μέσσης | λείπεται, ἀλλ᾿ ἄζηλα πέλει· (“For neither the head nor the body remains in its place, | Nor the feet underneath, nor the hands nor the middle | Is left as it was, but now all is obscure,” Herod. 7.140, trans. Strassler). Plutarch preserves the same story (Plut. Pelop. 2.1). Lendon 2005: 92 interprets Iphicrates’ quote in relation to growing awareness that armies should balance hoplites with other types of soldiers. See Hamel 1998: 59–61 on the strong form of authority exercised by Athenian generals. There is no evidence for the head of state metaphor in Athenian political discourse, although the head could be used to designate the person in charge of something (e.g. Plut. Per. 3.4).

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evokes Iphicrates’ analogy.79 Cato reports that the tribune, whom Aulus Gellius identifies as Q. Caedicius, chose to sacrifice himself and his troops in Sicily to facilitate the escape of the rest of the army. In a twist on the typical devotio, however, he alone survived the battle: nam ita evenit: cum saucius multifariam ibi factus esset, tamen volnus capiti nullum evenit, eumque inter mortuos defetigatum volneribus atque, quod sanguen eius defluxerat, cognovere (“For the following happened: although he had been wounded in many places there, nevertheless his head received no wound, and they recognized him among the dead, exhausted from his wounds and the blood he had lost,” Gell. NA 3.7). Caedicius’ body figuratively represents the outcome of the battle; his severely wounded torso reflects the loss of the troops under his command, while his perfectly intact head signifies his own survival as a leader. His survival, in turn, enables that of the rest of the army: eum sustulere, isque convaluit, saepeque postilla operam reipublicae fortem atque strenuam perhibuit illoque facto, quod illos milites subduxit, exercitum ceterum servavit (“They carried him off, and he recovered, and often afterwards offered brave and active service to the res publica, and by that deed, because he led those soldiers, he saved the rest of the army,” Gell. NA 3.7). Like Iphicrates, Cato suggests that an army can survive the loss of its limbs if its head remains intact. Bill Gladhill consequently interprets this anecdote as an early example of corpus–civitas metaphor.80 This reading should not be pushed too far, for Cato does not offer any overt invitation to interpret the anecdote figuratively. Yet the story raises the possibility that the symbolic capacities of the head had begun making their way into Latin literature. The most explicit evidence for Romans’ interest in the hierarchy of head and body comes from the symbolism they used in relation to their own urban geography. Emily Gowers has illustrated how Romans conceptualized the Capitoline Hill as the head of the city and the Cloaca Maxima as its bowels.81 Varro provides further anatomical detail in the satire Marcopolis, which calls the gates of the city its senses, the aqueducts its veins, and the sewers its intestines: sensus portae; venae hydragogiae; clavaca intestini (Varro, Sat. Men. Fr. 290 Astbury 1985).82 The primacy of the Capitoline in the landscape was explained through the legendary discovery of a human head in its soil when the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter were being laid. Livy interpreted this story as a divine sign of Rome’s 79 80 82

See Gotter 2009: 116 on Cato’s emancipation of “the exemplary action from the name” and Walter 2004: 292 on his effort to foreground the populus Romanus as a whole. Gladhill 2012: 316. 81 Gowers 1995: 25–6. See Spencer 2019: 129–59 on Varro’s etymological “tours” of the city in De Lingua Latina.

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imperial prerogative: quae visa species haud per ambages arcem eam imperii caputque rerum fore portendebat (“This sight not at all ambiguously foretold that it would be the citadel of an empire and the head of everything,” Liv. 1.55.6). It is worth noting that Varro, our primary Republican source for the myth, does not connect the Capitoline head to the project of empire.83 Yet as the pinnacle of Rome’s urban geography, the home of its chief deity, and the recipient of offerings made by victorious generals, the Capitoline must have seemed a “guarantor of empire,” as Catharine Edwards puts it, well before it was officially designated the head of the world.84 This tradition suggests a connection between capital symbolism and political authority. The Capitoline’s status as the head of Rome mirrored Rome’s status as the head of the territory under its command. Although this connection was not fully developed until the Augustan era, its conceptual groundwork was laid in the Late Republic. A letter that Cicero wrote to Atticus shortly after the outbreak of war between Caesar and Pompey confirms as much. Complaining that Pompey had abandoned the coastal towns of Italy to Caesar, he writes, nec sum miratus eum qui caput ipsum reliquisset reliquis membris non parcere (“I was not surprised that he who had already abandoned the head itself was not sparing the remaining limbs,” Cic. Att. 8.1.2). Playing upon the commonplace use of the term caput to signify capital cities, Cicero crafts a metaphor of the body politic in which the head is the seat of governing authority.85 We might also think of his description of the Curia as the caput urbis, a revision of the Capitoline tradition meant to validate senatorial supremacy against encroaching claims of popular prerogative (Cic. Mil. 90). Such examples suggest that Roman writers were aware of the metaphorical ends to which the relationship between head and body could be put. Their disinclination to adapt the dichotomy to their internal governing structure consequently seems more akin to a choice than an accident. This hesitancy can be explained in relation to the regal resonance of the caput in Republican political thought. The utility of the head–body 83

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e quis Capitolinum dictum, quod hic, cum fundamenta foderentur aedis Iovis, caput humanum dicitur inventum (“Among these [hills] the Capitoline is so named because it is said that a human head was discovered here, when the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter were being excavated,” Varro, Ling. 5.41). As De Melo 2019: ad loc. notes, the story of the head is almost certainly a later invention designed to etymologize the hill’s name. Edwards 1996: 71. See also Borgeaud 1987: 91 on the Capitoline as “le signe idéologique de l’impérialisme romain.” For the relatively late appearance of the caput orbis figure in Latin literature, see Nicolet 1991, 192 fn. 9 alongside further discussion in Ch. 3. OLD s.v. 14b.

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dichotomy in justifying sole rule went back to Plato’s Timaeus, which maps the elements of the tripartite soul onto the parts of the human body.86 The dialogue locates reason (λογιστικόν) in the head, courage (θυμός) in the chest, and desire (ἐπιθυμία) in the belly. Reason is placed in the separate chamber of the head to facilitate its command over the baser elements of the soul, whose influence is regulated by the neck. Plato uses an elaborate metaphor of the polis to explain this framework, calling the head an acropolis (τῆς ἀκροπόλεως, Pl. Tim. 70a), the neck an isthmus and boundary (ἰσθμὸν καὶ ὅρον, Pl. Tim. 69e), and the heart a guardhouse (τὴν δορυφορικὴν οἴκησιν, Pl. Tim. 70b).87 Scholars have long noticed that the layout of this figurative city is reminiscent of Syracuse, a kingdom whose palace was located on an island connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus.88 Just as the Syracusan king exercises authority over his subjects, reason commands organs and limbs obedient to its orders (Pl. Tim. 70b-c). This divinely prescribed arrangement, Plato explains, ensures that the best part of the body is allowed to rule (καὶ τὸ βέλτιστον οὕτως ἐν αὐτοῖς πᾶσιν ἡγεμονεῖν ἐῷ, Pl. Tim. 70b). Although Plato’s primary concern is to articulate the role of reason in the soul, he constructs a corporeal hierarchy in which the head plays a regal role. The political implications of his argument emerge elsewhere in his writings, where the ideal of the rational philosopher-king assumes central importance.89 The Timaeus had a significant impact on Cicero, who translated portions of the dialogue into Latin.90 Its theory of the tripartite soul pervades the Tusculanae Disputationes, a text constructed in self-conscious dialogue with Plato. Summarizing his predecessor’s theory in Book 1, Cicero writes, Plato triplicem finxit animum, cuius principatum, id est rationem, in capite sicut in arce posuit, et duas partes parere voluit, iram et cupiditatem, quas locis disclusit: iram in pectore, cupiditatem supter praecordia locavit (“Plato fashioned a tripartite soul, whose principal part, that is, reason, he placed in the head as if in a citadel. He wanted the other two parts, anger and desire, each separated in its own location, to obey it. He situated anger in the chest and 86 87 88 89 90

Nutton 2004: 118 argues that Plato’s description of the human body owes less to his knowledge of anatomy than to his preconceptions about the soul. For the analogy between city and soul in the Republic, see Renaut 2017; Blössner 2007; Ferrari 2005; Williams 1999; Smith 1999. See Taylor 1928: ad loc. 69d6-70a2 on the compatibility of Plato’s language with the topography of Syracuse. On Plato’s familiarity with the politics of Syracuse, see Monoson 2000: 145–53. On the philosopher-kings, whose legitimacy derives from their wisdom, see Desmond 2011: 19–43; Klosko 2006: 170–91; Schofield 2006b: 155–63; Ferrari 2005: 100–8; Reeve 1988. On Cicero as a reader and translator of the Timaeus, see Hoenig 2018: 44–101; Sedley 2015; Puelma 1980.

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desire below the diaphragm,” Cic. Tusc. 1.21).91 He subsequently endorses Plato’s bodily hierarchy, making the case for the head as the home of reason: in quo igitur loco est? credo equidem in capite et cur credam adferre possum (“And so where is it [mens] located? I for one believe it is in the head, and I can explain why I think so,” Cic. Tusc. 1.70). The generous attention paid to the tripartite soul foreshadows its importance in subsequent books.92 It comes to the fore again in Book 2, when Cicero refers to reason as the mistress and queen of everything (domina omnium et regina ratio, Cic. Tusc. 2.47). Its control over the soul mirrors that of a master over a slave, general over his troops, or father over his son.93 This model of absolute authority was an ill fit for the Roman consulship, which was collegial, temporally limited, and resistible through the right of provocatio.94 It was more compatible with kingship and other forms of sole rule. The political ends towards which the tripartite soul could be put are confirmed in De Republica, where Scipio uses the reasoning faculties to argue in favor of monarchy as the best form of simple government. Seeking to illustrate the operation of sole rule in daily life, he draws on analogies like the helmsman and ship, physician and patient, bailiff and farm, and reason and soul (Cic. Rep. 1.62).95 Elaborating on the last of these comparisons, he explains, et illud vide, si in animis hominum regale imperium sit, unius fore dominatum, consili scilicet – ea est enim animi pars optima (“Consider this: if there is any kingly power in the souls of men, it would involve the domination of one element, surely reason – for this is the best part of the soul,” Cic. Rep. 1.60). Scipio’s description of reason as a regale imperium sets up a political analogy upon which he elaborates as the dialogue continues: sub regno igitur tibi esse placet omnes animi partes, et eas regi consilio? (“Do you think it right, then, that all the parts of the soul are under kingship, and are ruled by reason?” Cic. Rep. 1.60). When Laelius agrees, Scipio applies the same argument to the political sphere: cur igitur dubitas quid de re publica sentias? In qua, si in plures translata res sit, intellegi iam licet nullum fore quod praesit imperium; quod quidem nisi unum sit, esse nullum potest (“Why then do you doubt what you perceive about the res 91 93 94

95

See Douglas 1985: ad loc. for the reference to Tim. 69d. 92 Gildenhard 2007: 239. vel ut dominus servo vel ut imperator militi vel ut parens filio (Cic. Tusc. 2.48). Although the nature of consular imperium continues to provoke debate, the legal and practical constraints on its exercise in the domestic sphere are well-established (see Pina Polo 2011; Beck 2011: 78–9; Lintott 1999: 18). On the metaphors of statesmanship in the dialogue, see Mebane 2022; Zarecki 2014: 89–90; Nelsestuen 2014; Gallagher 2001. See Ch. 2 for further discussion of Rep. 1.62.

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publica? For if its management should be handled among many, you can now understand that there will not be any power that has command; for such power is in fact not worth anything, unless it is singular,” Cic. Rep. 1.60). Scipio’s argument operates in the realm of the theoretical; in practice, he remains committed to the mixed constitution as the best practicable form of government.96 It nevertheless confirms that the command of reason could be used to justify monarchy and other types of sole rule.97 The risks of applying the analogy to statesmen within the Republic are readily apparent. Because Cicero adhered to Plato’s model of the tripartite soul, it comes as little surprise that he associated the rational head with strong forms of political authority. But what about the Roman thinkers who did not follow Plato? Two passages from Lucretius confirm that the caput retained its association with command even among those who located reason elsewhere in the body. Lucretius follows standard Epicurean doctrine in arguing that the soul (anima) is distributed throughout the body, but that reason (animus) is placed in the chest.98 He introduces this idea with a bit of wordplay, explaining, sed caput esse quasi et dominari in corpore toto | consilium quod nos animum mentemque vocamus. | idque situm media regione in pectoris haeret (“But the head, so to speak, and the commanding force in the whole body, is reason, which we call the mind and intellect. And this adheres to its location in the middle region of the chest,” Lucr. 3.138–40). Lucretius conveys the authoritative force of reason by analogizing its power to that of the caput. By qualifying the comparison with quasi, however, he hints that readers should interpret his words figuratively rather than literally. For the true home of reason, he now reveals, is the chest (pectus).99 Lucretius’ pun only makes sense if his readers were predisposed to see the head as the ruler of the body. He draws on this tradition even as he positions his philosophy in opposition to it, confirming its prevalence in Roman discourse. 96

97

98 99

itaque quartum quoddam genus rei publicae maxime probandum esse sentio, quod est ex eis quae prima dixi moderatum et permixtum tribus (“And so I believe that a certain fourth type of res publica should be ranked highest, that which has been balanced and mixed from those three about which I spoke first,” Cic. Rep. 1.45). On the Roman constitution as the best exemplification of the best practicable regime, see Atkins 2013a: 159; Nicgorski 1993: 241. Scipio introduces the dictatorship as another example of efficacious sole rule (Cic. Rep. 1.63) but does not apply the analogy of mind and body to it. Perhaps because this office had fallen into disuse after 202 bce, it did not play a significant role in the Late Republican body politic tradition. See Sanders 2008 on the persistence of this idea among Epicureans long after medical consensus on the brain had been achieved. On the construction of the joke, see McOsker 2019: 904; Kenney 2014: ad loc. 136–9.

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The regal connotations of the head reappear when Lucretius describes the rise of a civilization similar to Rome.100 Political communities, he argues, were initially founded by kings who built citadels for their refuge and governed the less powerful. Yet as men driven by ambition began competing for the highest honors, these kings were toppled and the symbols of their power overturned: ergo regibus occisis subversa iacebat | pristina maiestas soliorum et sceptra superba, | et capitis summi praeclarum insigne cruentum | sub pedibus vulgi magnum lugebat honorem (“And so, after the kings were slain, the ancient majesty of thrones and proud scepters were lying in ruins, overturned; and the illustrious symbol of the highest head, bloodied under the feet of the crowd, was mourning its great honor,” Lucr. 5.1136–9). Lucretius refers to the rex as the highest head, a term that signifies both his personhood and his political supremacy. Surrounded by the symbols of the throne, scepter, and crown, three elements of royal insignia that Rome borrowed from Etruria, the summum caput is imbued with regal significance.101 Only after its abolishment do men discover how to implement magistracies (magistratum) and create laws (iura, Lucr. 5.1143–4).102 The leveling of heads is cast as a prerequisite for the establishment of a political community reminiscent of the Roman Republic. Though less explicitly than Cicero, Lucretius too distances capital symbolism from the norms of statesmanship operative in the contemporary res publica. The monarchical history of the head of state metaphor explains why Romans avoided its usage in relation to domestic politics. That the res publica did not have a king was a hallowed principle of political discourse in the first century bce. Cicero traced it back to the expulsion of the Tarquins, which sparked the Roman people’s odium regalis nominis (Cic. Rep. 2.52).103 Andrew Erskine argues that this antipathy arose much later, likely during Romans’ encounters with Hellenistic kingdoms during the second century bce.104 Whatever triggered its development, by the 80s bce the Rhetorica ad Herennium could represent the expulsion of the kings as coextensive with the realization of liberty.105 In subsequent decades, accusations of regnum, often intertwined with invocations of the 100 101 102 103 104 105

See Fowler 2007: 422–3 on Lucretius’ five stages of social development. See Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 3.61.1 alongside the discussion of Tagliamonte 2017: 126–8. See Fratantuono 2015: 377 on the transition into a world “not unlike that of the Roman Republic.” On the Romans’ odium regni, see Russo 2015; Sigmund 2014; Martin 1994. See Erskine 1991, whose proposal remains controversial. Glinister 2006 and Smith 2006 offer counterarguments. Imagining a speech delivered by Lucius Junius Brutus, the author writes, ego reges eieci, vos tyrannos introducitis; ego libertatem, quae non erat, peperi, vos partam servare non vultis (“I expelled kings, you

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Greek tyrannus, became a standard element of invective.106 This is true despite the fact that Romans did not see kingship as an evil in and of itself.107 In De Republica, Scipio is quick to select it as the best form of simple rule.108 Nor does he hesitate to identify the consulship as a monarchical element in the mixed constitution (potestas . . . regia, Cic. Rep. 2.56). Cicero’s Pro Rege Deiotaro, among other texts, confirms that foreign kings could be praised effusively without raising any ideological hackles. When it came to the internal governing structure of the Republic, however, the potential merits of kingship were not open for discussion. A reliably negative signifier in the context of internal politics, the figure of the rex denoted the perversion of Roman Republicanism. This hostility extended to the caput and other symbols with which kingship was associated. While Romans avoiding using the head to validate the authority of the statesman, they did use it to police the boundaries of Republican governance. Our first evidence for this tradition comes from a joke that Cicero preserves about Scipio Africanus. Discussing the rhetorical value of humor in De Oratore, he praises a bon mot delivered by P. Licinius Varus. Commending its combination of gravity and levity, he writes, Africano illi superiori coronam sibi in convivio ad caput accommodanti, cum ea saepius rumperetur, P. Licinius Varus ‘noli mirari,’ inquit, ‘si non convenit, caput enim magnum est,’ (“P. Licinius Varus said to that famous Africanus the Elder, who was fitting a garland on his head at a banquet, when it kept breaking, ‘Do not be surprised if it does not fit, for it is a head of great size,’” Cic. de Or. 2.250).109 Varus suggests that the convivial garland does not fit Scipio’s head because it has become too large to be accommodated within the bounds of civic life. He hints at symbolism that was later made explicit by Livy, who reported that Scipio was criticized for presuming to be caput columenque imperii Romani esse

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bring in tyrants; I secured liberty, which did not exist, you do not wish to preserve what has already been secured,” Rhet. Her. 4.66). Baraz 2018; Kalyvas 2007; Gildenhard 2006; Smith 2006. Baraz 2020: 79–80 argues that a positive discourse on kingship developed firstly from the historical tradition of the early kings and secondly from the influence of the Greek philosophical tradition. “Although Scipio repeatedly expresses his preference for the mixed form of constitution,” Fox 2007: 96 notes, “the dialogue circles strangely around the issue of monarchy.” Schofield 2021: 73 suggests that “the attraction monarchy at its best holds for Cicero, as for Plato, is its supreme embodiment of the union of power and consilium.” See also Sigmund 2014: 61–84; Atkins 2013a: 96–7; Zetzel 1995: 19–22. In his translation of this passage, Plass 1988: 9 inserts the phrase “head [of state]” to clarify the joke. Sutton and Rackham 1942: ad loc. likewise comment, “the Head of e.g. a body politic.”

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(“the head and pillar of the Roman empire,” Liv. 38.51.4).110 Both stories draw attention to Scipio’s head to express concerns over his potentially excessive power. They gesture towards a rhetorical tradition that came into fuller view in the polarized politics of the Late Republic. The transgressive capacities of the head found explicit expression in the trope of the multi-headed body politic, which was used to denote the perversion of Roman Republicanism.111 Such imagery merged two strands of thought under consideration in this chapter: one that associated the head with sole rule and the other that figured discord as doubling. Twoheaded organisms had long served as signifiers of societal disruption in Roman thought, appearing frequently in catalogs of portents that preceded civic crises. Livy reports the birth of a two-headed pig (porcus biceps, Liv. 28.11.3) during the Second Punic War, a two-headed and five-footed lamb after a feud between consuls and tribunes (agnus biceps cum quinque pedibus natus, Liv. 32.29.2), and a two-headed boy amid a plague (biceps natus puer, Liv. 41.21.12).112 In the months leading up to the Pisonian Conspiracy of 65 ce, Tacitus describes the discovery of two-headed fetuses (bicipites hominum aliorumve animalium partus, Tac. Ann. 15.47.1) and the birth of a calf with a second head on its leg (cui caput in crure esset, Tac. Ann. 15.47.2).113 Cicero confirms the significance of these portents in De Divinatione, where Quintus explains, si puella nata biceps esset, seditionem in populo fore, corruptelam et adulterium domi (“When a two-headed girl was born, it foretold sedition among the people and seduction and adultery at home,” Cic. Div. 1.121). Mapping the home onto the res publica, Quintus connects doubled heads to the problem of discord.114 It required only a small conceptual leap to transfer this symbolism from the body of the individual to that of the Republic. The locus classicus for the two-headed body politic is Varro’s De Vita Populi Romani, a genealogy of the Roman people modeled upon Dicaearchus’ Bios Hellados.115 The organic analogy implied by the title of the work is reflected in its extant fragments, which rely on metaphors of

110 111 112 113 114 115

See further discussion of this passage in Ch. 3. Wiseman 2010 identifies “the two-headed state” as a trope of Roman civil war literature. For further examples of two-headed births, see those cataloged throughout Rasmussen 2003. See Ash 2018: ad loc. on Tacitus’ engagement with this trope. Wardle 2006: ad loc. connects the portent to the biceps civitas created by the Gracchi, on which see later. Ax 2000 addresses the relationship of De Vita Populi Romani to the Bios Hellados. For its pairing with De Gente Populi Romani, which investigated legends surrounding the early kings of Rome, see Taylor 1934.

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growth and decay to narrate Roman history.116 In Book 4, Varro criticizes Gaius Gracchus for reassigning control of the bribery courts from the senatorial to equestrian class, which created a political community with two heads: iniquus equestri ordini iudicia tradidit ac bicipitem civitatem fecit, discordiarum civilium fontem (“He unjustly handed the courts over to the equestrian order and made the political community two-headed, the source of civil discords,” Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 114 Riposati).117 Varro blames Gracchus for dividing a form of institutional power that had previously been in the exclusive possession of the senate. His analysis seems to validate the governing authority of the senatorial class, an idea that complicates the popular politics he expressed elsewhere.118 It is not the relationship between the senate and people that preoccupies him, however, but rather that between the senatorial and equestrian orders. Incorporating yet another duality into the Roman body politic tradition, he identifies their struggle as a point of origin for the civil strife that had overtaken politics by the time that he was writing in the late 40s bce.119 Using the biceps civitas as an explicit marker of discordia, Varro represents this rhetorical tradition at its fullest expression. De Vita Populi Romani was not the first time that Varro explored the symbolism of the multi-headed body politic. According to Appian, he composed a pamphlet about the so-called First Triumvirate entitled Τρικάρανος, or “The Three-Headed Monster.”120 Little is known about the text aside from its title, which was borrowed from Anaximenes of Lampsacus’ attack on Sparta, Athens, and Thebes.121 Its character has long puzzled interpreters, who have struggled to reconcile its apparently 116 117

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See Ch.2 for further discussion of this text. The context of the passage is confirmed by Florus, who follows Varro but blames both brothers: iudiciaria lege Gracchi diviserant populum Romanum et bicipitem ex una fecerant civitatem (“Through their judiciary law the Gracchi had divided the Roman people and had made a two-headed body politic from one,” Flor. 2.5.17). See Nicolet 1979 on the historical import of the passage. Wiseman 2010: 29 argues that Varro was interested in diagnosing the structural causes of discord, not blaming Gaius Gracchus specifically. The fragmentary nature of the text makes it difficult to say much either way. Although scholars do not agree on a precise composition date for De Vita Populi Romani, most would place it in the late 40s bce (Riposati 1972: 84–6 offers an overview of dating issues). Its companion De Gente Populi Romani can be securely dated to 43 bce due to a reference to the consulship of A. Hirtius and G. Vibius Pansa. καί τις αὐτῶν τήνδε τὴν συμφροσύνην συγγραφεύς, Οὐάρρων, ἑνὶ βιβλίῳ περιλαβὼν ἐπέγραψε Τρικάρανον (“A certain historian, Varro, treating this alliance of theirs in a book, wrote ‘The ThreeHeaded Monster,’” App. B Civ. 2.9). Pausanias reports that the text was circulated in Theopompus’ name as an act of revenge (Paus. 6.18.5). Flower 1994: 21–2 casts some doubt on Anaximenes’ authorship, but the question need not concern us here.

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negative title with Varro’s collaboration with Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus.122 Although some have speculated that he circulated the pamphlet in support of the alliance, it strains belief that this analogy was intended to communicate praise.123 It was an image with “factionalism and discord already built in,” as Diana Spencer argues, and one that Varro himself used as a mode of critique.124 The more common trope of doubling becomes tripling in order to fit the context, but the underlying principle of multiplied heads as a marker of constitutional deviation remains the same. I am therefore inclined towards Raymond Astbury’s view that Varro simply changed his mind about the alliance after its formation.125 Yet whatever the purpose and tone of the Τρικάρανος, it clearly compared Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus to three heads atop the Roman body politic. Perhaps this image was inspired in part by the one Catiline had used just a few years earlier. In tracing the role of capital imagery in Republican political language, we can now discern what was so provocative about the speech that Catiline delivered in the summer of 63 bce.126 As we saw earlier, one layer of his transgression stemmed from his portrayal of the senate and people as two separate bodies, an idea that denied their inherent predisposition towards unity. Yet it was the latter half of the metaphor that located him firmly outside the bounds of normative discourse. Asserting that the senate had a weak head (infirmum caput) and the people no head at all (sine capite), he challenged the deeply held belief that the Roman body politic did not have a head of state. In laying claim to this role for himself, he sought to import a novel form of individual authority into the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. It comes as little surprise, then, that Cicero interpreted his words as proof of his guilt: atque ille, ut semper fuit apertissimus, non se purgavit sed indicavit atque induit (“And that man, as he was always so audacious, did not exculpate himself but betrayed and entangled himself,” Cic. Mur. 51). Cicero sought to limit the transgressive potential of 122 123

124 125 126

On the problem, see Zucchelli 1976: 611–2. Anderson 1963: 45 speculates the pamphlet was intended to mock someone else’s use of the term or argued for the value of the alliance “by associating it with the marvels of myth.” Della Corte 1970: 77 suggests that it was a satire of “Roma democratica” rather than the alliance. Wiseman 2009: 117 and Fantham 2003: 111 deny its hostility. Spencer 2019: 23 nevertheless remains ambivalent on the question of tone, asking, “Could it be funny to make a joke about this?” Astbury 1967: 406 bases his argument on Cicero’s letters from July 59 bce, which criticize Varro for his political insincerity. In the terms of Skinner 1974: 297, Catiline attempted “to reverse the standard speech-act potential of an existing and unfavorable evaluative-descriptive term,” applying a term normally used to express disapproval (the two-headed body politic) in such a way as to neutralize its negative force.

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Catiline’s speech by casting his words as those of a madman. While Catiline might have been unique in his daring and premature in his revolution, however, he was not the only one rethinking the shape of the Roman body politic. As we turn our attention to imagery of the sick body politic in the next chapter, we will see that this was a project to which Cicero contributed as well. Catiline’s effort to incorporate the exceptional statesman into the body politic was symptomatic of the shifting political landscape of the early-tomid first century bce. Although his conspiracy was put down relatively quickly, the tension he identified between powerful individuals and Republican governance would only grow more acute. Amid institutional innovations like the First Triumvirate and Pompey’s sole consulship, Roman thinkers began reconsidering and revising their normative models of statesmanship. Cicero played a key role in this conceptual shift. Deploying medical terminology across his speeches, he crafted imagery of a civic healer able to cure the intertwined ills of discord and decline. Unlike Catiline and his caput populi, Cicero developed this figure to safeguard a constitution that he believed to be under threat. In proclaiming the need for drastic intervention to save the body politic, however, he too acknowledged the failure of the Fable of the Belly. Because he located the legitimacy of the civic healer in the wisdom he possessed rather than the legal position he occupied, he also created a rhetorical framework susceptible to appropriation by those less committed to Republican governance than he. For within half a century, his medical metaphors would find their way into the burgeoning political language of the Principate.

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chapter 2

The Sick Body Politic

When Catiline stood before the senate and described the two bodies of the res publica, he challenged the assumption of unity at the core of the Fable of the Belly. He compounded his revision of the body politic tradition by announcing his desire to become the head of the people, importing a regally inflected metaphor of command into public discourse. Cicero’s consular oratory responded to Catiline in the rhetorical terms set by his adversary. Rejecting Catiline’s emphasis on division and doubling, Cicero instead compared the res publica to an organism suffering from a prolonged and potentially deadly disease. His medically inspired language drew on an alternative strand of organic imagery that was oriented less towards the structural division between the senate and people and more towards the problem of moral decline. Portrayals of vice as a contagion that had infected Rome’s ruling class had become commonplace by the second century bce, if not earlier. Cicero adapted this tradition to the events of 63 bce by using the debauched bodies of the Catilinarian conspirators as proof of the figurative contagion they were spreading in the body politic. Framing their expulsion as both a purge and an amputation, he encouraged his audiences to prioritize the health of their political community over the laws by which it was governed. He thereby used the metaphor of the diseased body politic to create a climate of emergency in which radical action seemed necessary to save the Republic.1 Cicero’s vilification of the conspirators was intertwined with the construction of his consular authority, the precarity of which has been identified as a key problem in the Catilinarians.2 By declaring the body politic sick, diagnosing its ills, and proposing the proper course of treatment, Cicero took on the role of a civic healer. While some have resisted this 1 2

For the importance of the Catilinarian Conspiracy to the construction of emergency politics in Rome, see Straumann 2016: 88–100; Golden 2013: 125–33; Drummond 1995: 79–114. See Steel 2006; Batstone 1994; Konstan 1993; May 1988: 51–8.

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interpretation due to the low status of physicians in the Roman world, Cicero’s generalized language points not to the realm of medicine but to that of philosophy, where analogies between the philosopher, orator, and statesman, on the one hand, and the physician, on the other, were common. He drew on this tradition to theorize the relationship between the exemplary statesman and the res publica in his oratory. The language of healing was useful because it located him in a position of privileged oversight rather than absolute command, encouraging his audiences to recognize their dependence on his civic knowledge but not mandating their obedience to his will. Able to convey a style of authority that was neither regal nor permanent, Cicero’s civic healer fit the paradigm of Roman Republicanism in a way that Catiline’s caput populi did not. Presenting their rival metaphors in tandem in the Pro Murena, Cicero prompted his fellow citizens to consider which model of the body politic was a better fit for the embattled Republic. Cicero developed this figurative framework to protect a constitution that he perceived to be under threat. By using it to justify the illegal execution of the conspirators, however, he revealed its potential to destabilize the practice of politics instead.3 The final section of this chapter considers the decade that followed the Catilinarian Conspiracy, which saw Cicero’s identification of P. Clodius Pulcher as another Catiline in need of removal from the body politic. Although Cicero criticized Clodius’ use of violence as a political tool, he also portrayed violence perpetrated by the boni as a necessary cure. Defending P. Sestius and T. Annius Milo for their use of vis against Clodius and his supporters, he argued that Rome’s laws sometimes stood in the way of its treatment. In this way, he used medical metaphors to circumvent the judicial system in which he expressed faith elsewhere.4 His rhetoric contributed to a cycle of civic violence that culminated in Pompey’s sole consulship, a constitutional innovation likewise framed as a curative remedy. As Cicero went on to portray Caesar’s dictatorship in similar terms, he illustrated the utility of disease imagery in justifying individual authority as a solution to civic strife. The intersection of these themes ensured that his rhetoric would outlast the political system it was meant to protect. The next chapter will consider its cooptation by a new generation of thinkers interested in explaining the constitutional arrangement that arose after Actium. 3 4

Sontag 1978: 82 identifies this risk in her critique of medical metaphors, commenting, “The concept of disease is never innocent.” Cicero’s medical metaphors therefore add a new dimension to recent scholarship on his political thought, which tends to stress its juridical basis (e.g. Straumann 2016).

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Moral Decline and the Sick Body Politic The metaphor of the sick body politic pervades Cicero’s consular oratory, where warnings of figurative pestilences, contagions, and diseases abound.5 To understand the construction and reception of his imagery, however, it is necessary to address the broader rhetorical tradition in which it operated. We saw in the last chapter how portrayals of stasis as a physical malady were familiar in the Greek world by the sixth century bce. They had grown so conventional by the Classical era that Aristophanes mocked their usage in the Wasps, where Bdelycleon declares, χαλεπὸν μὲν καὶ δεινῆς γνώμης καὶ μείζονος ἢ ʼπὶ τρυγῳδοῖς | ἰάσασθαι νόσον ἀρχαίαν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐντετοκυῖαν (“It is a difficult task – a matter of great cleverness and beyond the scope of comedy – to cure a sickness in the city that is both ancient and innate,” Vesp. 650–1).6 Aristophanes provides little detail about the etiology or symptomology of the disease that Bdelycleon describes. Nor do other Greek writers, who prefer to describe political ailments in highly generalized terms.7 Vagueness was rhetorically useful because it encouraged collective recognition of a common threat while sidestepping the disputes and antagonisms that gave rise to that threat in the first place. This principle held true as the Greek tradition made its way to Rome, where nebulous warnings of collective maladies were quickly incorporated into conversations about civic decline. The last chapter explored Roman nostalgia for the ancestral body politic, the unity of which was positioned in contrast to the factionalism and strife of the present. Writers relied on imagery of splitting and doubling to expose and interrogate the risks of a res publica structured around dualities like “senate” and “people,” which seemed an increasing threat to the realization of concord. Disease metaphors were part of the same tradition but more explicitly oriented towards the problem of moral corruption. Writers like Varro and Sallust compared avarice, ambition, and luxury to contagions that had infected Rome’s governing class. These metaphors allowed them to frame the unfettered passions and the corollary pursuit of private interests as antithetical to the health of the body politic. By leveling this critique against their fellow members of the elite, they complicated the validation of senatorial privilege apparent in many iterations of the mind-body duality. Because they approached civic corruption 5 6 7

See Walters 2020: 27–52. Biles and Olson 2015: ad loc. note the reprisal of “the sickness-theme” introduced in the prologue. Brock 2013: 69–70 discusses the persistent vagueness of this imagery despite growing interest in medicine.

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as a personal rather than structural problem, however, their metaphors did little to clarify the steps that should be taken to restore the res publica. If anything, they insisted upon decline as the natural and inevitable consequence of an organic model of constitutional development. The persuasiveness of this tradition stemmed from the overlap between moral corruption and physical illness in Roman thought. It was a central tenet of ancient philosophy that vices were diseases of the soul and could be represented in terms borrowed from medicine.8 In the Tusculanae Disputationes, Cicero criticizes the Stoics for continuing to harp on this tired theme, commenting, hoc loco nimium operae consumitur a Stoicis, maxime a Chrysippo, dum morbis corporum comparatur morborum animi similitudo (“At this point, too much attention has been paid by the Stoics, especially by Chrysippus, to the similarity between diseases of the body and those of the soul,” Cic. Tusc. 4.23).9 Promising to summarize only the pith of their arguments, he compares immoderate desire to a fever (fervor) that settles in the veins and marrow (in venis medullisque), causing both disease and illness (et morbus et aegrotatio, Cic. Tusc. 4.24). The “diseases” he goes on to enumerate include avarice, ambition, love of women, obstinacy, gluttony, drunkenness, and gourmandism, all of which have deleterious effects on body and mind (Cic. Tusc. 4.26). The only cure is reason, which is called a Socratic medicine (ratio quasi quaedam Socratica medicina, Cic. Tusc. 4.24). Despite criticizing the Stoics for their excessive coverage of this theme, Cicero frequently approaches the disordered soul through what Ingo Gildenhard calls “the semantic field of pathology.”10 The tangible world of the body vivifies the imaginative world of the mind, clarifying the existential stakes of moral failure. The relationship between vice and disease was not simply figurative, for it was widely believed that the disordered soul left physical evidence on the body.11 The idea was commonplace in Latin literature by the second century bce; as a fragment of Lucilius declares, animo qui aegrotat videmus 8

See Nussbaum 1994 on “the philosopher as a compassionate physician whose arts could heal many pervasive types of human suffering,” (3). Whereas she addresses the Hellenistic schools of philosophy, Holmes 2010: 192–227 considers the medical analogies of the Classical era. 9 See Rabel 1981 on diseases of the soul in Stoic thought, for which the Tusculane Disputationes is a key source. 10 Gildenhard 2007: 168. Graver 2002: 148 locates the utility of such medical analogies in their ability to account for individual variations in character. Just as a body could fall short of the ideal of health in various ways, each of which carried its own level of severity, so the mind could fall short of moral and epistemic ideals in different ways with varying degrees of ethical import. 11 See Von Staden 1999: 260 for the impact of this belief on Celsus, whom he calls “a ‘moral’ historian of medicine.”

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corpore hunc signum dare (“He who is sick in the mind, we see that he gives proof of it on his body,” Lucil. Fr. 678 Warmington).12 Lucilius asserts that the same principle also works in reverse, so that the sick body impedes the function of the mind: tum doloribus confectum corpus animo obsistere (“Then a body wearied by ailments obstructs the mind,” Lucil. Fr. 679 Warmington).13 T. H. M. Gellar-Goad approaches these fragments in relation to the Epicurean tradition, drawing attention to their compatibility with Lucretius’ description of the soul as “corporeal in nature” (ergo corpoream naturam animi esse necessest, Lucr. 3.175).14 Seneca crafts a symptomology of his own in the Epistulae Morales, where trembling limbs, stiffening fingers, stumbling steps, sluggish muscles, staggering gait, dropsy, indigestion, distended bellies, jaundice, paleness, discolored complexions, intestinal rot, heart palpitations, dizziness, pains in the ears and eyes, headaches, ulcers, and fevers are all listed as “punishments” for luxury (Sen. Ep. 95.16–7). Returning to this theme in a later letter, he asks, non vides, si animus elanguit, trahi membra et pigre moveri pedes? si ille effeminatus est, in ipso incessu apparere mollitiam? (“Do you not see how if the mind has languished, the limbs are dragged and the feet move lazily? If it is effeminate, how softness appears in one’s very step?” Sen. Ep. 114.3). The physical manifestation of luxuria, mollitia, and other vices meant that medicine was oriented towards the condition of the soul as much as that of the body. Philosophers and poets could therefore assume a place alongside physicians as dispensers of remedia in the literary if not practical realm.15 The corporeal focus of Roman moralizing carried important consequences for the metaphor of the body politic. It allowed discord to be cast as an ill with its origins in moral decay. This theme takes center stage in Varro’s De Vita Populi Romani, which portrays vice as a disease that gradually overtakes the res publica. Book 1 opens with the ideal of civic consensus, conveyed through imagery of Romulus mixing and blending the tripartite state together.16 Yet as early as Book 2, which covers the 12 13 14 15 16

For analogies related to disease and medicine in Latin satire, see Larmour 2016: 295–320; Kivistö 2009; Freudenburg 2001: 173–83. Barchiesi and Cucchiarelli 2005: 210 use this passage to frame Lucilius’ moral discourse as a medical cure within the text. Gellar-Goad 2020: 59–61. For the corporeality of the animus in Lucretius, see Kenney 2014: ad loc. As Freudenburg 2001: 173 memorably writes in relation to satire, “Persius routinely uses his satiric arthroscope to peer straight into the muscle, veins, and heart of his society.” sed quod ea et propter talem mixtura inmoderatam exacescunt, itaque quod temperatura moderatur in Romuli vita triplicis civitatis (Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 5 Riposati). The fragment is quite corrupt but conveys the metaphor of blending disparate elements. La Penna 1976: 400, fn. 7 speculates that a reference to the body politic might have fallen out of the text, offering a potential reconstruction as follows: sed quod ut ea propter talem mixturam inmoderatam exaquiscunt, ita quae [quod] temperatura

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early-to-mid Republic, this rosy vision has begun to falter: distractione civium elanguescit bonum proprium civitatis atque aegrotare incipit et consenescit (“Because of the division of the citizenry, the common good of the political community languished and began to grow sick and aged,” Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 66 Riposati).17 Varro’s use of the relatively rare noun distractio, which was often used to describe a body being ripped apart, activates the trope of splitting introduced in the last chapter.18 It denotes the failure of the partnership (societas) underpinning a successful res publica.19 This division causes a civic decline that is subsequently figured as the onset of an illness. Because many ancient thinkers understood senescence as a type of disease, consenesco reinforces the figurative associations of elanguesco and aegroto.20 The next fragment blames this sickness on the pursuit of private interests over public ones: propter res secundas sublato metu non in conmune spectant, sed suum quisque diversi conmodum focilatur (“Because of favorable affairs and the removal of fear, they looked not towards the common good, but each separately nurtured his own advantage,” Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 67 Riposati). Varro joins Sallust in linking the loss of metus hostilis to the fraying of social bonds; as the chasm between personal ambitions and collective ends widens, factionalism takes root in the res publica. Defects in the passions, in other words, manifest as ill health in the body politic.21

17

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moderatur, in Romuli vita triplicis civitatis . Scholars disagree over the components of Varro’s tripartite mixture. La Penna 1976: 400 posits the three original tribes of Rome (the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres), an idea supported by Wiseman 2016: 113; Pittà 2015: 77–8 suggests that Varro might have had the moderation of political forms in mind. The present tense of these verbs has prompted different explanations; Pittà 2015: 266–8 speculates that they might be historical presents referencing the Conflict of the Orders, while Wiseman 2016: 117 argues that they are more likely to be part of a speech or an authorial intervention related to the end of the Pyrrhic War. Varro himself links distractio to corporeal rending at Ling. 7.60. Cicero uses societas as an antonym for distractio in the roughly contemporary De Officiis, where he argues against fellowship with tyrants (nulla est enim societas nobis cum tyrannis et potius summa distractio est, “For there is no fellowship for us with tyrants, and rather the greatest separation,” Cic. Off. 3.32). Like Varro, he mobilizes a metaphor of the body politic to make his point: sic ista in figura hominis feritas et immanitas beluae a communi tamquam humanitatis corpore segreganda est (“So that ferocity and monstrosity of a beast in the guise of a man must be separated from the common body, so to speak, of humanity,” Cic. Off. 3.32). The resonance between Cicero’s and Varro’s language is noted by Dyck 1996: ad loc. 3.32. See later for further discussion of this passage. e.g. senectus enim insanabilis morbus est (“For old age is an incurable disease,” Sen. Ep. 108.29). This idea finds early expression in Aristotle (τὸ δὲ γῆρας νόσον φυσικήν, Arist. Gen. An. 784b33), on which see Woodcox 2018. For its influence on Roman thought, see Cokayne 2003: 34–56. See Atkins 2018b: 94, who makes this argument in relation to Sallust. Recent work on Roman political thought stresses the importance of the emotions, which are often left out of contemporary theories of republicanism (e.g. Atkins 2018b: 91–111; Connolly 2015: 4; Hammer 2008: 9–10).

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The fourth and final book of De Vita Populi Romani becomes more specific in assigning fault for this crisis. We encountered the first of its organic metaphors in the last chapter, when Gaius Gracchus’ judicial reforms were criticized for creating a two-headed community (bicipitem civitatem fecit, discordiarum civilium fontem, Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 114 Riposati). Here, Varro’s analysis is oriented towards the distribution of power between two rival socioeconomic classes, both of which seek control of the courts. His deployment of disease imagery in subsequent fragments works to different ends. Evoking the specter of a spreading contagion with the verb invado, he indicts the whole governing class for its outsized ambition and greed: tanta porro invasit cupiditas honorum plerisque, ut vel caelum ruere, dummodo magistratum adipiscantur, exoptent (“Such a great a desire for offices infected most of them that they would hope even for the sky to fall, as long as they captured a magistracy,” Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 121 Riposati).22 T. P. Wiseman draws attention to Varro’s use of the adjective plerusque, which exempts few from blame.23 The next fragment ties the elite’s desire for power (propter amorem imperii) to the onset of bloodstained sedition (seditionibus sanguinulentis, Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 122 Riposati). Unrestrained passions, he suggests, produce a form of strife that undermines the wholeness of the body politic.24 Varro reinforces this idea through his repetition of the rare adjective sanguinulentus in the next fragment, which deploys imagery of gangrene to convey the scope of the problem: quo facilius animaduertatur per omnes articulos populi hanc mali gangraenam sanguinulentam permeasse (“By which it may be perceived more easily how this bloody rot of disease spread through all the limbs of the people,” Varro, De vita p. R. Fr. 123 Riposati).25 These fragments expose the public consequences of moral failure; the degradation of the soul individually translates into the corruption of the Republic collectively. This reading becomes even more likely when we recall that the senate was compared to 22

23 24

25

Varro’s language calls to mind Lucretius’ portrayal of greed and ambition in Book 3 of De Rerum Natura: denique avarities et honorum caeca cupido | quae miseros homines cogunt transcendere finis | iuris (“Finally, avarice and blind desire for offices, which compel miserable men to contravene the boundaries of law,” Lucr. 3.59–61). See Gardner 2019: 82 on Lucretius’ interest in “the pathologies afflicting a fiercely competitive aristocracy.” Wiseman 2016: 125. As Euben 1989: 223 writes, “In a corrupt society each part pretends to be the whole; each interest to be the common one; each faction to make its view and voice exclusive.” The presence of factions, he continues, “signifies a polity divided against itself, one that can no longer be recognized or act as a single body.” Varro’s use of gangraena, a medical term borrowed from Greek (on which see Poccetti 2018: 105), finds precedent in Lucilius: serpere uti gangraena mala atque herpestica posset (“So that the terrible and spreading gangrene could come creeping,” Lucil. Fr. 52 Warmington). Walters 2020: 21 locates this rot “on the political body.”

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Rome’s mens or animus.26 Disorder within the mind of the Republic, Varro suggests, had sickened its body as well. Varro was not the only one to suggest that the morals of Roman statesmen dictated the health of the political community over which they presided. Cicero makes the same argument in the third book of De Legibus, which posits a top-down model of civic health. Urging his fellow senators to set an example for others, he explains, ut enim cupiditatibus principum et vitiis infici solet tota civitas, sic emendari et corrigi continentia (“For as the whole political community is accustomed to be infected by the desires and vices of its leading men, so it is improved and corrected by their restraint,” Cic. Leg. 3.30).27 In the last chapter, we saw that Cicero located the origins of discord in the senate, whose internal split was mirrored in the citizenry at large. De Legibus clarifies the nature of this relationship, identifying emulation as the mechanism through which values circulate in society: quaecumque mutatio morum in principibus exstiterit, eandem in populo secuturam (“Whatever change in customs occurs among the leading men, it will be replicated among the people,” Cic. Leg. 3.31).28 Able to corrupt or correct civic morals through their behavior (vel corrumpere mores civitatis vel corrigere possunt, Cic. Leg. 3.32), a small group of men hold the health of the body politic in their hands.29 Whether this power manifests positively or negatively depends upon their character. Just as Varro envisions an infection spreading from top to bottom, Cicero acknowledges that vitiosi principes pour their vitia into the political community (ea infundunt in civitatem, Cic. Leg. 3.32). The solution to bad statesmanship, however, is good statesmanship, and it is here that he focuses his efforts at civic reform.30 Varro betrays far more skepticism towards the idea that Rome’s leading men will cure the corruption that their emotional dysregulation created in the first place. The organic decline that structures De Vita Populi Romani finds parallel in Sallust’s roughly contemporaneous monographs.31 We have already seen how the Bellum Iugurthinum uses imagery of a divided and lacerated res publica to 26 27 28 29

30 31

e.g. Cic. Mil. 90; Ad Caes. sen. 2.10.6. For inficio as “to taint, poison, infect,” see OLD s.v. 4. Morrell 2017: 265 sees Cicero’s argument as an effort to ground the concept of glory in virtue. As argued by Wallace-Hadrill 1997: 9. Atkins 2018b: 92 draws out the figurative implications of this idea, writing, “Cicero’s account of corruption assumes that political leaders are the key to causing and remedying the civic body’s infection.” “The only thing that can produce stability in a state, according to Cicero, is the quality of the people who run it,” Powell 1994: 24 writes in relation to De Republica. La Penna 1976: 402–3 notes the resonance between Sallust’s and Varro’s narratives, which were likely composed around the same time (Sallust’s reference to Caesar and Cato in the past tense at Cat. 53.6 provides a likely terminus post quem of 44 bce, though little else can be said with certainty).

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convey the loss of consensus after the downfall of Carthage. The Bellum Catilinae tells a similar story through imagery of disease rather than doubling. It portrays libido, immoderate desire that finds expression in the intertwined vices of ambitio and avaritia, as an infectious agent that corrupts Rome’s leading citizens in the aftermath of the Third Punic War.32 Metus hostilis had previously oriented the competitive energies of men towards the common goal of conquest; in its absence, the quest for civic virtue devolves into a baser lust for wealth and power (igitur primo pecuniae, deinde imperi cupido crevit, Sall. Cat. 10.3).33 Just as De Vita Populi Romani compares amor imperii to a sickness, so does the Bellum Catilinae. In the place of Varro’s gangrenous limbs is a deadly contagion: post ubi contagio quasi pestilentia invasit, civitas inmutata (“Later, when the contagion invaded as if a plague, the political community was transformed,” Sall. Cat. 10.6).34 Both thinkers use disease imagery to portray the desire for domination over others as a threat to the successful operation of Republican politics. At stake is the ideal of libertas, which is only realizable in a community that safeguards citizens from the arbitrary interference of others.35 With its loss comes the progressive decline of the body politic. Sallust treats the Catilinarian Conspiracy as one symptom of the civic disease diagnosed in the opening chapters of the text. He stages its progression through the bodies of the conspirators, whose physical deviance signifies the corruption of the res publica in microcosm. This deviance is conveyed most explicitly through the trope of effeminacy, which literalizes the loss of civic virtue (vir-tus) in the Republic.36 The emasculation of the conspirators derives from their indulgence in avarice, a poison capable of effecting remarkable gender inversions: ea quasi venenis malis inbuta corpus animumque virilem effeminat, semper infinita insatiabilis est (“As if imbued with a harmful poison, it [avaritia] effeminizes the manly body and spirit, always unbounded and insatiable,” Sall. Cat. 11.3). Sulla’s soldiers in Asia are the first to fall prey to its influence; Sallust reports that the luxurious locales in which they dwell soften their spirits (animos molliverant, Sall. Cat. 11.5).37 Their corruption gradually spreads to other 32 33 34 35 36 37

Earl 1961: 13–5 suggests that Sallust stages a chronological progression from ambitio to avaritia to luxuria, while Conley 1981 proposes that avaritia and luxuria go hand-in-hand. Kapust 2011: 47. Like Varro, Sallust relies on invado to denote the onset of vice (Sall. Cat. 2.5, 5.6, 10.6, 12.2, 36.5). See Krebs 2008: 233–4 on the overlapping metaphors of disease and war implicit in the verb. For liberty as non-domination in Sallust’s works, see Arena 2012: 69–75. See Boyd 1987 on virtus effeminata. Williams 2010: 149 notes that the cities of Asia Minor represent the peak of “softness and effeminacy” in the Roman imagination. On accusations of mollitia in Roman moralizing, see Edwards 1993: 63–97. On the complexities of its translation, see Williams 2013.

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members of the political community, who become enslaved to their appetites (lubido stupri ganeae) and begin playing the feminine role during sex (viri muliebria pati, Sall. Cat. 13.3).38 Foremost among them is Catiline himself, whose sexual misconduct begins as a young man, intensifies with his use of seduction as a recruitment tool, and culminates in the inclusion of women like Sempronia in his ranks.39 His uncontrollable desires find physical expression in his bloodless complexion, cloudy eyes, and unsteady gait, all of which Seneca later included in his symptomology of vice.40 The recurrence of similar ailments among his collaborators offers physical proof of the moral corruption lamented in the preface (corrupti civitatis mores, Sall. Cat. 5.8).41 The conspirators are not the only ones, however, whose unregulated appetites have dismantled the politics of virtue upon which a healthy Republic depends.42 Identifying a degradation of morals at nearly every level of Roman society, Sallust makes clear that the suppression of the conspiracy will do little to reverse the course upon which the body politic has been set. The Bellum Iugurthinum is more explicit in its identification of the Roman elite as the source of the moral decay that gives rise to the Catilinarian Conspiracy. Hewing closely to the interpretive framework employed by Varro, Sallust argues that ambitio and avaritia identified the nobilitas as their first targets. Generals soon began to lavish the spoils of war on their friends while driving the families of soldiers from their homes. Their prioritization of private interests over the common good 38 39

40

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For the belief that Sulla’s army brought a figurative contagion back to Rome, see Walters 2019: 958–9. Syme 1964: 66 notes that this character sketch renders Catiline “symptomatic of all that was evil at Rome.” On Catiline’s youthful indiscretions, Sallust writes, iam primum adulescens Catilina multa nefanda stupra fecerat (“First of all, as a youth, Catiline had already committed many acts of unspeakable debauchery,” Sall. Cat. 15.1). On his seduction of his followers, he writes, scio fuisse nonnullos qui ita existumarent, iuventutem quae domum Catilinae frequentabat parum honeste pudicitiam habuisse (“I know there were some who believed that the youths who were crowding Catiline’s house did not properly value their chastity,” Sall. Cat. 14.7). On the thematic significance of Sempronia (Sall. Cat. 25), see Boyd 1987. igitur colos exsanguis, foedi oculi, citus modo, modo tardus incessus: prorsus in facie voltuque vecordia inerat (“And so his complexion was bloodless, his eyes befouled, his gait sometimes quick, sometimes slow: truly madness was visible on his face and in his expression,” Sall. Cat. 15.5). Sallust refers specifically to the guilt that followed Catiline’s affair with Aurelia Orestilla but correlates the onset of these symptoms with the quickening of the conspiracy (maturandi, Sall. Cat. 15.3). See earlier on Seneca’s physical markers of vice. Sallust uses fire imagery to convey the fevered minds of the conspirators (e.g. ad facinora incendebant, Sall. Cat. 13.4; ut quoiusque studium ex aetate flagrabat, Sall. Cat. 14.6). On their enslavement to their bellies, he writes, vescendi causa terra marique omnia exquirere (“They scoured everything on land and sea for the sake of grazing,” Sall. Cat. 13.3). On the “politics of virtue” under threat in the Bellum Catilinae, see Kapust 2011: 53.

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marked the beginning of Rome’s decline: ita cum potentia avaritia sine modo modestiaque invadere, polluere et vastare omnia (“And so when power and avarice invaded without limits or restraints, they polluted and laid waste to everything,” Sall. Iug. 41.9). Foreign warfare had previously provided a reliable mechanism for channeling the competition for glory externally rather than internally. As the fruits of conquest became intertwined with the indulgence in vice, however, the battlefield became another avenue of corruption. Echoing the mutatio morum described by Cicero, Sallust stages the spread of avarice from the generals to the soldiers they command: tanta vis avaritiae in animos eorum veluti tabes invaserat (“Such a great force of avarice had invaded their spirits as if putrefaction,” Sall. Iug. 32.4).43 Festus identifies tabes as a favorite word of Sallust, who uses it to convey civic decline in each of his works.44 Here, it exposes the irony of the plea that the Numidians make at the beginning of the text, when they ask the senate to help them prevent the spread of rot in their kingdom: nolite pati regnum Numidiae . . . tabescere (“Do not allow the kingdom of Numidia . . . to decay,” Sall. Iug. 14.25). What the ambassadors do not realize is that the tabes they seek to forestall in Numidia has already infiltrated Rome. Staging its spread from the governing class to the people, Sallust joins Varro in suggesting that rot begins at the top. In this way, both thinkers expose the underbelly of the mind-body duality introduced in the last chapter. Imagery of organic decay was useful in conveying civic decline because it encapsulated a historical trajectory proceeding from an idealized past to a degenerate present. The contraction of a disease presumed the existence of a body that was once healthy, validating the Republic’s historical status as a thriving organism while also denying its claim to that status in the present. Writing in the aftermath of Caesar’s assassination, Sallust and Varro were well-positioned to analyze Roman history in these terms. Yet the tradition did not arise in response to the failure of politics in the 40s 43

44

Sallust employs nearly the same phrase in the Bellum Catilinae, writing, tanta vis morbi atque uti tabes plerosque civium animos invaserat (“So great was the strength of the disease and, as it were, putrefaction that had invaded the minds of many citizens,” Sall. Cat. 36.5). Batstone 2010: 56 draws attention to the ambiguity of his phrasing, which leaves the identity of the infected unclear and thereby produces a sense of insecurity in the reader. Fest. 490.31 (Lindsay). The Historiae locates tabes inside the city of Rome itself: qui quidem mos ut tabes in urbem coniectus (“In fact, this habit, as if putrefaction, was thrust into the city,” Sall. Hist. Fr. 4.36 Ramsey). Ramsey 2015: ad loc. speculates that the fragment might come from a speech against corruption delivered by Pompey, an intriguing possibility in light of Pompey’s representation as a civic healer (see later). For Sallust’s role in transforming tabes from a medical term into a moral metaphor, see Funari 1997.

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bce. Quintilian cites a vetus orator for the metaphor of lancing the boils of the res publica (persecuisti rei publicae vomicas, Quint. Inst. 8.6.15), while the Sullan historian Claudius Quadrigarius made an oblique reference to the spread of a cancer.45 Cicero disapprovingly reports that the death of Scipio Aemilianus was compared to a civic castration (morte Africani ‘castratam’ esse rem publicam) and that G. Servilius Glaucia was called the excrement of the Curia (stercus curiae, Cic. De Or. 3.164). Cicero himself began dabbling in the figurative connotations of disease in the 70s bce, when the unwell body politic made its first appearances in his oratory.46 Turning our attention to his speeches in the next section, we will see how he mobilized this imagery in the service of a political vision that diverged from Varro’s and Sallust’s. Rather than use it to hold the elite accountable for the failure of the Republic, he wielded it against rivals like Catiline and Clodius. Identifying them as pestilences in need of expulsion, he suggested that the restoration of civic health depended upon heeding the wisdom of the boni.47 When his language is viewed alongside that of his contemporaries, it becomes clear that the sick body politic served as a locus for competing explanations of political failure in the mid-first century bce.

Curing the Catilinarian Conspiracy The last section situated the metaphor of the sick body politic in relation to a moralizing tradition that often took the governing class as its target. Catiline adapted this tradition to his own interests when he described the people as a strong body and the senate as a feeble one, implying that the ill health of the latter was responsible for the Republic’s decline. Our knowledge of this speech comes primarily from Cicero’s reference to it in the Pro Murena.48 His public recollection of it allowed him to contrast Catiline’s 45

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ut viderent ne respueret verminaret †litteris addiualis†; quod verminatum ne ad cancer perveniret (“That they should see to it that it did not spew and ache . . . that what ached not progress to a cancer,” FRHist Fr. 49 Cornell 2013). Walters 2020: 23 suggests that the fragment might refer to a “‘political’ cancer.” Hanses 2011: 153 characterizes the historian as a representative of “Rome’s beleaguered nobility.” e.g. magnam et maxime aegram et prope depositam rei publicae partem (“the huge and gravely unwell and nearly dead part of the res publica,” Cic. Verr. 2.1.5); ex quibus rebus maxime res publica laborat, eis maxime mederi convenit (“It is fitting for them [wise men] to effectively heal the things from which the res publica gravely suffers,” Cic. Rosc. Am. 154); ut ego qui tela depellere et volneribus mederi debeam (“I who should expel the spears and heal the wounds [inflicted by the prosecution],” Cic. Quinct. 8). On the shifting meaning of boni, see Mouritsen 2023: 15–84; Gildenhard 2011: 74–80; Lacey 1970; Hellegouarc’h 1963: 484–95. Plutarch also mentions the speech in his Life of Cicero (Plut. Cic. 14.4–5).

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figuration of the body politic with his own, the elements of which were refined across his consular oratory.49 In the place of a two-bodied and twoheaded organism, the Pro Murena describes a deadly disease: latius patet illius sceleris contagio quam quisquam putat, ad pluris pertinet. Intus, intus, inquam, est equus Troianus (“The contagion of that crime spreads more widely than anyone thinks, it spreads to many. Within, I say, the Trojan horse is within,” Cic. Mur. 78). The specter of a contagion, which originates outside the body yet takes up residence within it, facilitates Cicero’s negotiation of two contradictory images: intrusion, which implies the existence of an external foe, and concealment, which suggests an internal one.50 The metaphor thereby enables Catiline’s transformation from a Roman citizen into a foreign enemy (hostis) worthy of conquest.51 The utility of such imagery helps explain its prominence in the first and second Catilinarians, where it is pivotal to Cicero’s construction of his consular authority.52 In the place of Catiline’s head of state is a civic healer whose wisdom enables the restoration of the Republic. Cicero’s descriptions of a sick civic organism take center stage in the first and second Catilinarians, which were delivered roughly two weeks after Catiline’s speech and two weeks before the Pro Murena.53 Drawing on imagery that would have been familiar to both senatorial and popular audiences, he alludes to the circulation of intestinal threats (intestinam aliquam cotidie perniciem rei publicae molientem, Cic. Cat. 1.5; bellum intestinum ac domesticum, Cic. Cat. 2.28) and issues grave warnings about the salus rei publicae (Cic. Cat. 1.8, 1.11) and salus urbis (Cic. Cat. 2.27).54 Whereas Sallust and Varro use such imagery to indict the governing class for its moral failures, Cicero narrows its application to the Catilinarian conspirators.55 Describing their debauched bodies – glistening with oil, 49

50 51

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Although Cicero later declined to include the Pro Murena among his consular orations, its rhetoric shares much in common with the Catilinarians. On its value as a source of Ciceronian political thought, see Stem 2006. On the structural tension between these themes, see Hodgson 2017: 126; Konstan 1993: 14; Vasaly 1993: 51. Straumann 2016: 95 argues that Cicero was the first thinker to theorize how a Roman citizen could become a hostis deprived of constitutional rights. Melchior 2010 illustrates Sallust’s critique of the misappropriation of this term in the Bellum Catilinae. Batstone 1994 argues for the construction of consular ethos as a primary purpose of the first Catilinarian. Catiline’s speech was delivered on September 23, the first Catilinarian on November 8, the second Catilinarian on November 9, and the Pro Murena in the weeks thereafter. For an overview of the circumstances surrounding the dating and delivery of these speeches, see Lintott 2008: 142–8. Walters 2020: 38–9 notes the centrality of the salus rei publicae to the Catilinarians. “Ironically,” Berry 2020: 111–2 writes, “Catiline would have agreed that the state was diseased, but he would not have accepted Cicero’s diagnosis of the cause.”

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resplendent in purple, and put in service of unspeakable sexual acts – at great length, he exploits the commonplace figuration of vice as disease to mark them as infectious agents.56 He thereby renders Catiline an invader rather than member of the body politic (hanc tam taetram, tam horribilem tamque infestam rei publicae pestem, Cic. Cat. 1.11; scelus anhelantem, pestem patriae nefarie molientem, Cic. Cat. 2.1).57 He employs the same approach with the rest of the conspirators, whose survival is portrayed as mutually exclusive with that of the res publica. The strands of this rhetorical framework come together in an extended analogy that marks the culmination of the first speech (Cic. Cat. 1.31): nunc si ex tanto latrocinio iste unus tolletur, videbimur fortasse ad breve quoddam tempus cura et metu esse relevati, periculum autem residebit et erit inclusum penitus in venis atque in visceribus rei publicae. Ut saepe homines aegri morbo gravi, cum aestu febrique iactantur, si aquam gelidam biberunt, primo relevari videntur, deinde multo gravius vehementiusque adflictantur, sic hic morbus qui est in re publica relevatus istius poena vehementius reliquis vivis ingravescet. Now, if from such a terrible band of robbers that man alone is removed, we will perhaps seem to be relieved from anxiety and fear for a certain brief period, but the danger will remain and will burrow deep in the veins and viscera of the res publica. Just as men ill with a severe disease, when they are tossed about with the heat of a fever, if they drink icy water, at first seem to heal, then are afflicted even more intensely and vehemently, so this disease, which is in the res publica, if alleviated by the punishment of that man, will violently worsen as long as the others remain alive.

Cicero warns his audience that Catiline is only one carrier of a disease that circulates more widely than anyone suspects. His punishment might briefly alleviate its symptoms, but it will not eradicate the underlying malignancy.58 True healing requires the more systemic treatment of all those sympathetic to the conspiracy. What this treatment might entail is not specified, though the participle vivis seems to imply execution. Which individual or institution is invested with the power to carry out such a punishment is equally unclear. The metaphor of the sick body politic 56

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hos quos video volitare in foro, quos stare ad curiam, quos etiam in senatum venire, qui nitent unguentis, qui fulgent purpura (“I see them flitting around the forum, standing in the Curia, even coming into the senate, men who glisten with oil and are resplendent with purple,” Cic. Cat. 2.5). See Corbeill 1996: 162 for Cicero’s emphasis on the visual markers of the conspirators’ vices. Liong 2016: 348–9 argues that scelus anhelans is a medical metaphor that associates Catiline’s “crimeridden breath” with the belabored wheezing of the ill. Beagon 2002: 130 describes Catiline as “a malignant growth, whose physical remnants may remain deep in the viscera of the mother state, even when the main tumour is expelled.”

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facilitates such ambiguity. It replaces questions of legality with those of survival, conveying an urgent sense of civic crisis but obscuring the actual steps proposed in response to it.59 Unsure of his senatorial support and unwilling to state his own position explicitly, Cicero relies on figurative speech to construct an alternative standard of political judgment and action. In the second Catilinarian, Cicero constructs his consular legitimacy in relation to the successful implementation of the remedy proposed in the first speech.60 Having previously demanded that Catiline purge the city through his departure (purga urbem, Cic. Cat. 1.10), he now announces the fulfillment of this request: abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit (“He has left, withdrawn, fled, burst forth,” Cic. Cat. 2.1). The medical resonance of these verbs is made explicit through the personification of Rome: quae quidem mihi laetari videtur, quod tantam pestem evomuerit forasque proiecerit (“She certainly seems to me to be rejoicing, since she has vomited forth such a horrible pestilence and expelled it outside the walls,” Cic. Cat. 2.2). It might be the city who carries out the purge, but it is Cicero who sets the healing process in motion. He advertises this fact by assigning curative powers to his consulship: quos si meus consulatus, quoniam sanare non potest, sustulerit, non breve nescio quod tempus sed multa saecula propagarit rei publicae (“If my consulship removes these men, since it cannot cure them, it will have extended the lifespan of the res publica not for a short period, but for many ages,” Cic. Cat. 2.11). His conditional combines metaphors of healing a body and propagating a vine. Just as the health of a plant often requires trimming and grafting, the health of a body demands the occasional amputation of unwell parts. He has the apparently exclusive right to perform such surgeries, provided that they are in the best interest of the res publica. In asserting his right to wield the scalpel against his fellow citizens, Cicero constructs an alternative reality in which his magisterial powers are unlimited. He is not only a consul, but also a dux and imperator on the battlefield created by Catiline.61 He reinforces this idea as he switches to the 59

60

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On the “rhetoric of crisis” in the Catilinarians, see Wooten 1983: 171, fn. 2. Straumann 2016: 51–2 identifies the Catilinarians as a locus of Ciceronian constitutionalism, but his crisis language also obscures questions of legality. The legitimacy of the statesman derives from his performance of actions that benefit the common advantage of the Roman people (see Atkins 2013a: 140–1). Restoring the body politic to health, an action undoubtedly in the best interest of all its members, therefore confirms his right to act on its behalf. On the problem of consular legitimacy in the Catilinarians, see Cape 2002: 143; Konstan 1993. For Cicero as the togatus dux et imperator (Cic. Cat. 2.28), see May 1988: 56–7 and Nicolet 1960: 240–3.

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first person and introduces a surgical metaphor that carries overtones of violence. Eliding the legal restraints upon his magistracy, the collaborative nature of decision-making in the Republic, and the precarity of his senatorial support, he lays claim to apparently absolute authority: quae sanari poterunt quacumque ratione sanabo, quae resecanda erunt non patiar ad perniciem civitatis manere (“Whatever can be healed, I will heal by any means, but what must be cut off, I will not allow to remain to the detriment of the political community,” Cic. Cat. 2.11). The mixed constitution and its balance of powers is nowhere to be found in this framework. Perhaps to avoid drawing too much attention to its absence, Cicero retreats from the notion of surgery almost as quickly as he introduces it. Revising his earlier proclamation that the conspirators are too corrupt to be healed, he now expresses faith in the prospect of their rehabilitation: quos quidem ego, si ullo modo fieri possit, non tam ulcisci studeo quam sanare sibi ipsos, placare rei publicae (“In fact, if it is in any way possible, I am not eager to punish them so much as heal them, to reconcile them with the res publica,” Cic. Cat. 2.17). Setting up healing as the opposite of punishing, he allows for the possibility of resolution without bloodshed. In the place of the consul’s scalpel is the orator’s medicine: deinde singulis medicinam consili atque orationis meae, si quam potero, adferam (“Then, I will apply the medicine of my advice and oratory to them individually, insofar as I am able,” Cic. Cat. 2.17). Yet even as he transitions to a gentler model of healing, he continues to foreground his own curative capacities. Consilium and oratio, after all, are the respective products of his personal civic judgment and rhetorical skill.62 As remedies that only he can administer, they place the health of the Republic in his hands alone. By tying his consular authority to his restoration of the body politic, Cicero assumes the role of a civic healer in the Catilinarians.63 His assumption of this role might seem surprising in light of the low social status of physicians, who were often of foreign origin and regarded with contempt.64 The Elder Pliny reports that Archagathus, the first Greek physician to practice in Rome, was called “the Butcher” (Carnifex) due 62 63 64

Steel 2006: 65 suggests that Cicero gives advice (consilium) rather than make demands so as not to expose his authority to the possibility of rejection. Dyck 2008: 134 identifies Cicero’s assumption of two roles: “as dux in a war or as a physician healing and, where necessary, performing surgery. Greek physicians made their first appearance in the Roman world in the late third century bce but occupied a position of lower social status than they did in the Hellenistic East. On the reception of Greek medicine in Rome, see Israelowich 2015: 11–30; Nutton 2004: 160–63; Von Staden 1996, who describes the rise of the medicus as “both exciting and threatening,” (384).

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to his penchant for cutting and cauterizing.65 The Elder Cato warned his son against Greek doctors, who were rumored to have taken an oath to kill foreigners.66 According to Plutarch, however, Cato also compared himself to a physician while running for the censorship. While other candidates promised to use gentle remedies, he argued that the city required a great purge (μεγάλου καθαρμοῦ). Urging his fellow Romans to pick the harshest of physicians (τὸν σφοδρότατον αἱρεῖσθαι τῶν ἰατρῶν), he promised to cut (τέμνων) and cauterize (ἀποκαίων) the lax morals of the era (Plut. Cat. Mai. 16.5). The same treatments that tarnished the reputation of Archagathus, Plutarch suggests, were exploited for rhetorical effect as part of Cato’s electoral platform. We might doubt the authenticity of his account, but it is telling that he did not regard the physician–patient analogy as outlandish for a Roman statesman to employ. Whereas Plutarch puts the word iatros in the mouth of Cato, Cicero never directly compares himself to a medicus in his oratory. Gildenhard suggests that he tries to distance himself from “Greek specialists” by recommending “a process in which everyone takes care to heal himself, to stem the spread of the disease.”67 This argument holds true for much of Cicero’s oratory, including the first speech that he delivered as consul.68 Sounding the alarm of civic disease in De Lege Agraria I, he warns, multa sunt occulta rei publicae volnera, multa nefariorum civium perniciosa consilia . . . inclusum malum, intestinum ac domesticum est (“There are many wounds hidden in the res publica, many destructive plots of wicked 65

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vulnerarium eum fuisse egregium, mireque gratum adventum eius initio, mox a saevitia secandi urendique transisse nomen in carnificem et in taedium artem omnesque medicos (“They say that he was a distinguished surgeon, and that at first his arrival was regarded with amazement and appreciation, but that soon, due to the severity of his cutting and cauterizing, his name became ‘the Butcher’ and his art and all physicians became loathsome,” Plin. HN 29.12–3). Pliny evidently shared this view, remarking shortly thereafter that physicians often get away with murder: discunt periculis nostris et experimenta per mortes agunt, medicoque tantum hominem occidisse inpunitas summa est (“They learn through our plights and conduct experiments by way of our deaths; physicians alone enjoy the greatest impunity in committing murder,” Plin. HN 29.18). ἔλεγε κοινὸν ὅρκον εἶναι τοῦτον ἰατρῶν ἁπάντων, καὶ παρεκελεύετο φυλάττεσθαι τῷ παιδὶ πάντας (“He said that this was a common oath among all [Greek] physicians and urged his son to be on guard against all of them,” Plut. Cat. Mai. 23.3–4). See Von Staden 1996: 382 on Cato’s efforts to construct a “positive Roman alternative to Greek medicine” and Nutton 2004: 165 for Cato’s paradoxical reliance on Greek medical sources. Gruen 1992: 80 has shown that Cato was in fact deeply engaged with Greek culture, approaching it “not as an enemy of Hellas but as an advocate of Rome.” See Gildenhard 2011: 130, who argues against “the metaphorical portrayal of the statesman as a medicus.” Walters 2020: 34 agrees that such a comparison “would compromise the authority (auctoritas) of the speaker and threaten to undercut the persuasiveness that medical imagery otherwise imparts.” May 1988: 50 notes that Cicero’s speeches against the agrarian law illustrate “in more than a nascent state the persona that would emerge into full light with the eruption of the Catilinarian conspiracy.”

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citizens . . . the sickness is within, intestinal and internal,” Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.26). This passage confirms that Cicero did not deploy disease imagery solely in response to Catiline; he began wielding it against populist proposals as soon as he assumed office. Here, however, he invites the whole senate to partake in administering a cure: huic pro se quisque nostrum mederi atque hoc omnes sanare velle debemus (“Each of us on his own account should want to remedy this and all of us should want to cure it,” Cic. Leg. Agr. 1.26).69 By the time he delivered the Catilinarians, this collaborative model of healing had yielded to one focused on his own curative capacities. A rhetorical framework that could be construed in relation to elite consensus was instead reoriented towards the construction of his consular authority. The inspiration for Cicero’s civic healer can be traced back to Plato, many of whose dialogues stress the compatibility of the political and medical arts.70 In the Statesman, the Eleatic Stranger develops an extended comparison between the statesman and physician to deny that the consent of the governed is necessary for just rule. A physician cures men whether they are willing or not (ἐάντε ἑκόντας ἐάντε ἄκοντας ἡμᾶς ἰῶνται), applying harsh treatments like surgery (τέμνοντες) and cautery (καίοντες) if they prove most efficacious (Pl. Plt. 293b). His legitimacy derives from his possession of true medical knowledge, not the permission of his patients.71 Likewise, the statesman equipped with true political knowledge has the right to use violent remedies like execution (ἀποκτεινύντες) and exile (ἐκβάλλοντες) so long as they improve the city (Pl. Plt. 293d). What matters in both cases is the technical expertise of the practitioner, which serves the sole criterion of legitimacy.72 Although this model could be applied to any form of rule, the Eleatic Stranger orients the conversation towards kingship. In doing so, he foregrounds the authoritarian implications of an analogy that denies the ruled any say over the actions of their ruler(s). Naturalizing an extreme hierarchy of command and obedience, 69

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Many other examples of this communal model of healing can be found in Cicero’s early oratory. In the Divinatio in Caecilium, he suggests that the only remedy for the sick and nearly dead res publica (hoc remedium est aegrotae ac prope desperatae rei publicae) is for the most honest, upright, and diligent men to defend the authority of the courts (Cic. Div. Caec. 70). On Cicero’s philosophical engagement in his oratory, see Steel 2022; Baraz 2012: 128–49; Gildenhard 2011: 3–6. On this passage, see White 2007: 104–5 and Stern 1997: 268. The physician analogy in the Statesman is not necessarily representative of its role in other Platonic dialogues, as noted by Weiss 1995: 219. On its function elsewhere, see Lane 2010: 188–91; Rosen 2005: 31–33; Moravcsik 2000; Cross and Woozley 1964: 46–49. As Schofield 2006b: 176 writes, “all that matters in a statesman is that he rules with expertise, whether or not those ruled accept his rule willingly or unwillingly, are rich or poor, and whether or not he governs in accordance with laws or otherwise.”

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medical metaphors play a central role in the construction of what Malcolm Schofield calls “an absolutist model of political rule” in the Statesman.73 The influence of the Platonic tradition upon Cicero is evident in De Republica, where Scipio assumes that the primary purpose of the physician–patient analogy is to justify sole rule.74 In fact, he declares that he will avoid using this example in his defense of monarchy because it is so commonplace: tum magis adsentiere, Laeli, si ut omittam similitudines – uni gubernatori, uni medico, si digni modo sint eis artibus, rectius esse alteri navem committere, aegrum alteri, quam multis – ad maiora pervenero (“You will agree even more, Laelius, if I may pass over analogies – namely, that it is better to entrust a ship to a single helmsman and a sick person to a single physician, rather than many, assuming they are skilled in their arts – in order to proceed to greater examples,” Cic. Rep. 1.62). The repetition of unus confirms the traditionally singular focus of these analogies.75 Both recur in the next section to illustrate the utility of sole rule during emergencies (Cic. Rep. 1.63):76 sed ut ille qui navigat, cum subito mare coepit horrescere, et ille aeger ingravescente morbo, unius opem implorat, sic noster populus in pace et domi imperat et ipsis magistratibus minatur recusat appellat provocat, in bello sic paret ut regi; valet enim salus plus quam libido. Gravioribus vero bellis, etiam sine collega omne imperium nostri penes singulos esse voluerunt . . . But just as a sailor, when the sea suddenly begins to roughen, and a sick man, when his disease worsens, implore the aid of one man, so our people wield power during peace and at home, threatening their magistrates, disobeying them, appealing to other officeholders and the popular assembly, but in wartime obey them as if a king; for safety prevails more than willfulness. In fact, in more serious wars our people have even been willing to concede all power to one man without a colleague . . .

Scipio cites the medicus and gubernator to validate the deference of the Roman people to their magistrates in wartime. Comparing their obedience to royal subservience (ut regi), he confirms the monarchical resonance of these analogies. Although they can operate in the context of collegial 73 74 75 76

Schofield 2006a: 325. Lane 2021: 214 modifies this claim by stressing the care of the ruled as the end towards which the ruler works, on which see further later. Zetzel 1995: ad loc. 1.62.1 identifies Plato as a philosophical precedent for Scipio’s medical analogies. For Cicero’s adaptation of the traditionally singular helmsman metaphor to the parameters of Republican politics, see Mebane 2022. Drawing on Schmitt 2005 [1922], Agamben 2005 and Agamben 1998 establishes emergency politics as a key theme in the study of contemporary republicanism. See also Honig 2009 and Kalyvas 2008, as well as Straumann 2016: 63–117 and Lowrie 2007 on emergency politics in the Roman Republic specifically.

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governance (ipsis magistratibus), they are better suited to the exceptional authority of the dictator.77 While the dictatorship had fallen out of usage by the Late Republic, however, the need for exemplary leadership during moments of crisis remained. Within De Republica, the ideal statesman provides a solution to this problem.78 Envisioned as a complement to and guarantor of the mixed constitution, the rector possesses authority rooted in civic knowledge rather than elected office.79 In this sense, he exemplifies the model of statesmanship proposed by the Eleatic Stranger. His role in political affairs is likewise justified through the physician–patient analogy: ut enim gubernatori cursus secundus, medico salus, imperatori victoria, sic huic moderatori rei publicae beata civium vita proposita est (“As a favorable journey is the goal of the helmsman, and health that of the physician, and victory that of the general, so the happy life of citizens has been laid out before this guide of the res publica,” Cic. Rep. 5.8).80 Scipio compares the ideal statesman to a helmsman, physician, and general, three models of authority that share the prioritization of a higher good: a safe journey, the restoration of health, and a victory. Although these roles are typically occupied by only one person at a time, the number of statesmen guiding the Republic is less important than their shared commitment to wisdom. Scipio makes this clear when he asks, si enim sapientia est quae gubernet rem publicam, quid tandem interest haec in unone sit an in pluribus? (“For if wisdom is truly what steers the res publica, why then does it matter whether it exists in one person or many?” Cic. Rep. 3.47).81 Approaching

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On the exceptional yet nebulously defined powers of the dictatorship, see Wilson 2021: 156–88. The bibliography on the ideal statesman is vast. Reitzenstein 1917 interpreted Cicero’s ideal statesman as a proto-princeps; Meyer 1918 suggests he signified Cicero’s sympathy towards the restoration of monarchy; Pöschl 1936: 117–9 sees him as a philosopher-king. Scholarly opinion subsequently turned away from this view and towards that of Heinze 1924 and Powell 1994, who describe the ideal statesman as a model practitioner of the political art akin to Plato’s πολιτικός. Asmis 2005: 410 argues that the ideal statesman is “a type that admits multiple tokens,” while Ferrary 1995: 53 suggests that “rector is a neutral term and can designate a statesman in any kind of régime.” That the rector should be linked to sole rule in some fashion, however, is an idea that has also seen recent revival. Stevenson 2005 argues for Cicero’s interest in reviving the dictatorship, while Lintott 2008: 236 describes “the concept of monarchy . . . being reconciled with republican values.” Zarecki 2014: 9–11 provides an overview of debate and himself stresses the practical motivations that lay behind Cicero’s construction of this ideal. See Asmis 2005: 409, who writes, “This statesman has no separate political office; his sole qualification is his political wisdom.” The same three metaphors recur in De Divinatione, where Cicero writes, medicus morbum ingravescentem ratione providet, insidias imperator, tempestates gubernator (“By means of reason, a physician foresees a worsening disease, a general an ambush, a helmsman storms,” Cic. Div. 2.16). Zarecki 2014: 89 suggests that Scipio’s metaphors of statesmanship “illustrate the benefits, indeed the necessity, of having a single recognized rector working to ameliorate a particular crisis.”

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political authority primarily as a question of virtue, Scipio suggests that the care of the body politic ought to be entrusted to whomever is best equipped to heal it. Whether one or several people meet this criterion depends upon the circumstances at hand. Cicero builds upon Scipio’s argument in the first book of De Officiis, which identifies Plato as the inspiration for his medical metaphors. He urges those who oversee the res publica to remember the following Platonic precept: ut totum corpus rei publicae curent, ne, dum partem aliquam tuentur, reliquas deserant (“That they should care for the whole body of the res publica, so that, while attending to one part, they do not neglect the others,” Cic. Off. 1.85). He refers to these civic caretakers in the plural (qui rei publicae praefuturi sunt), confirming that the physician–patient analogy remained useful in the context of collegial governance. A patient might only receive treatment from one physician at a time, but a body politic can have a multiplicity of healers. What mattered is not their number, but their shared commitment to a model of statesmanship rooted in the ideal of civic care. In linking the command of the statesman to his care of the citizenry, Cicero’s approach to Plato approximates that of Melissa Lane. She argues that the dunamis of the Platonic statesman “is directed solely to caring for – or one might fairly say serving – the good of those over whom he rules.”82 The legitimacy of his command depends upon its orientation towards the well-being of others, mitigating the authoritarian implications of the analogy. Jed Atkins makes a similar point in his reading of De Officiis; while the physician–patient relationship assumes “asymmetries of knowledge and authority,” it is also rooted in the pursuit of the shared goal of health.83 A physician who harms his patient violates the terms of this agreement and forfeits his claim to legitimacy. These considerations do not negate the absolutist ends towards which healing metaphors could be put, but they illuminate a meaningful constraint on their usage in Cicero’s political philosophy. Cicero’s philosophical approach to the physician–patient analogy sheds light on the rhetorical persona that he constructs in his consular oratory. De Republica and De Officiis might have been composed long after his consulship had come to an end, but they reprise many of the themes worked out in his speeches from 63 bce. Foremost among them is the belief that exemplary statesmanship provided a viable solution to the decline of the body politic. Just as De Republica envisions a rector presiding over the Republic like a physician over a patient, the Catilinarians portray Cicero as a civic healer able to diagnose, treat, and cure the corrupted 82

Lane 2021: 214.

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Atkins 2019: 478–9.

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elements of the res publica. Although this imagery cast Cicero as Catiline’s foil, it was motivated by a similar impulse to theorize the authority of the statesman within an organic tradition that granted him no special role. Cicero’s civic healer was less controversial than Catiline’s head of state because it had been adapted to the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. It connoted a model of authority that was grounded in civic wisdom, oriented towards the common good, and functional in the context of collegial governance. The ends towards which Cicero put the metaphor, however, illuminate its risks. Identifying certain members of the body politic as threats to its longevity, he made the extralegal execution of Roman citizens seem both necessary and urgent. Although it soon became clear that this treatment only intensified the civic ills that had given rise to the plot in the first place, Cicero’s belief in its propriety never wavered. In fact, it only intensified. Shortly after his consulship came to an end, Cicero delivered a speech in defense of P. Cornelius Sulla that afforded the opportunity to establish his “official” version of the events of 63 bce.84 Reactivating a now familiar set of images, he compares the Catilinarian conspirators to a disease that had to be forcibly expelled to save the body politic: ex magnis et diuturnis et iam desperatis rei publicae morbis ista repente vis erupit, ut ea collecta et eiecta convalescere aliquando et sanari civitas posset; neque enim est quisquam qui arbitretur illis inclusis in re publica pestibus diutius haec stare potuisse (“From those serious and chronic and already irremediable diseases in the res publica, there was an eruption of violence, and only after it was gathered and expelled was the political community finally able to heal and be cured; and in fact, there is no one who believes that it could have survived much longer with those pestilences enclosed in the res publica,” Cic. Sull. 76).85 Cicero constructs a neat narrative in which the Republic was sickened by the corrupted conspirators and revived by their deaths. His resounding proclamation of a cure might lead us to think that Rome no longer required medical intervention. Yet Cicero abandoned neither this symbolic system nor his authoritative role within it upon the completion of his consulship. Proceeding to identify a new collection of political enemies as 84 85

Pieper 2014: 52–8 illustrates the importance of the Pro Sulla in Cicero’s post-consular selffashioning, where he sought to influence collective memory of his time in office. I follow the text of Berry 1996, who emends confecta to collecta. Confecta is typically understood as a digestive metaphor, but this interpretation does not fit with the image of a “disease being concentrated together (collecta) and purged, a common means of treatment in the ancient world; once the suppuration (the Catilinarians) had been drawn off, the patient (the state) could return to health.”

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pestilences whose existence threatened the survival of the Republic, he argued that curative violence was more necessary than ever. The potentially damaging effects of this rhetoric came to the fore as civic strife brought politics to a halt in the 50s bce.

Violent Remedies The last section framed Cicero’s consular oratory in response to a series of assumptions: that the Republic could be productively compared to a body, that this body had grown perilously ill, that the source of its illness was the Catilinarian conspirators, whose own bodies had been sickened by vice, and that the best remedy was their expulsion from the res publica by whatever means necessary. Offering a diagnosis and proposing a proper course of treatment, Cicero used medical terminology to establish his political legitimacy. The execution of the conspirators without trial, however, gestures towards the potential harm of actions validated in such a way. This problem becomes our focus in the final section of this chapter, which explores how medical metaphors could be used to justify acts of violence that weakened institutions like the courts and assemblies. When Cicero began identifying men like Clodius as malignancies upon whom surgery could be performed even by private citizens, he contributed to the destabilization of the Republic during the 50s bce. Two signs of this political dysfunction were Pompey’s sole consulship and Caesar’s dictatorship, both of which were justified as curative remedies. As the ideal of the civic healer became linked to their unprecedented positions in the res publica, the utility of disease imagery in validating sole rule began to emerge. Cicero crafted his post-consular persona in relation to his prolonged struggle with P. Clodius Pulcher, the radical tribune who masterminded his exile in 58 bce. Clodius bears much of the responsibility for the violence that came to dominate Rome’s urban and electoral landscape during these years.86 Although Romans had long granted violence a legitimate role in the settling of private and public disputes, Clodius’ adoption of physical force as “a standard weapon of the political armoury” marked something new.87 Using armed gangs to intimidate enemies, encourage mob actions, and influence voting, he exposed the fragility of a civic community no longer governed by consensus on the basic rules of 86 87

For Clodius’ role in the escalation of public violence during the 50s bce, see Tatum 1999: 146. Lintott 1999 (1968): 193. He notes that while Roman tradition had long tolerated the use of violence in the settling of public and private disputes, the late Republic saw a “surge of violence” that became difficult to control (4).

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the political game.88 Cicero confirmed his own awareness of the risks posed by politically motivated violence in De Legibus, the idealized law code of which mandates the total absence of vis from civic life: nihil est enim exitiosius civitatibus, nihil tam contrarium iuri ac legibus, nihil minus civile et immanius, quam composita et constituta re publica quicquam agi per vim (“Nothing is more destructive to political communities, nothing so contrary to justice and the law, nothing less civil and more barbaric, than the use of violence in an organized and established res publica,” Cic. Leg. 3.42).89 Theoretically, Cicero understood violence to be incompatible with the law and antithetical to justice.90 When it came to decisionmaking in Romulus’ dregs rather than Plato’s Republic, however, his approach proved more equivocal.91 Cicero began to shift the figurative framework that he had used against Catiline to Clodius as early as the Bona Dea scandal in 61 bce.92 Writing to Atticus, he explained his participation in the trial as an effort to cut back the license of Clodius and his followers (resecandae libidinis) and heal the political community (sanandae civitatis, Cic. Att. 1.18.2). His terminology signals the reprisal of the surgical metaphor used to such dramatic effect in the second Catilinarian (quae resecanda erunt, Cic. Cat. 2.11). Although no longer in possession of a magistracy, he still possesses the civic wisdom that allows him to perform treatments on the body politic. This motif becomes more explicit in later letters; reporting how Clodius’ gangs intimidated him on the Via Sacra, he comments, ipse occidi potuit, sed ego diaeta curare incipio, chirurgiae taedet (“That man [Clodius] could have been killed, but I am beginning to cure through diet, I am tired of surgery,” Cic. Att. 4.3.3). The relative privacy of correspondence created a space for him to acknowledge the limitations of violence as a political tool. Although he maintained his right to perform surgery, he also admitted the futility of armed conflict 88 89

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Hölkeskamp 2010: 40 argues that the rules of the political game dictated what could and could not become “‘politicizable’ issues in a given socioeconomic system.” Dyck 2004: ad loc. notes how Cicero’s tricolon conveys the negative effects of violence on three interrelated entities: the civitas, its laws, and the behavior of its citizens. Lintott 1999 (1968): 132 calls the sentiment “unexceptional,” yet also unable to be supported by any specific statute in the Twelve Tables or elsewhere. Cicero had begun articulating variations of this view by the late 70s bce (e.g. vis ea quae iuri maxime est adversaria, “Violence is that which is the complete opposite of the law,” Cic. Caecin. 5). Connolly 2015: 34 argues, “Violence, because of its imperviousness to resistibility, represents for Cicero the end of politics.” On Cicero’s perception of violence as legitimate when in service of the civic community or the status quo, however, see Duplá 2017: 185. As Cicero wrote of Cato, dicit enim tamquam in Platonis πολιτείᾳ, non tamquam in Romuli faece sententiam (“He gives his opinion as if in the Republic of Plato rather than the dregs of Romulus,” Cic. Att. 2.1.8). See Riggsby 2002: 165 on Cicero’s portrayal of Clodius as “metaphorically a second Catiline.”

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with his opponent. That his scalpel might prove not only ineffective, but even harmful, is a possibility also confronted in the earlier letter: in re publica vero, quamquam animus est praesens, tamen vulnus etiam atque etiam ipsa medicina efficit (“But regarding the res publica, although I am as ready as ever, the medicine itself nevertheless keeps inflicting a wound,” Cic. Att. 1.18.2). Cicero draws attention to the potentially fraught boundary between harming and healing. It was not only that a change in dosage might transform a medicine into a poison, but that the difference between surgery and butchery was a matter of personal rather than collective judgment.93 In the absence of an objective standard to decide between them, Cicero had to persuade his fellow citizens that his figuration of the body politic was the correct one. This task only became more urgent after he suffered the humiliation of exile, which signified the public rejection of his consular persona.94 Despite the reservations expressed in his letters, he returned to Rome with a renewed commitment to vilifying Clodius as a new carrier of Catiline’s contagion. In his post reditum oratory, Cicero explores the paradoxical idea that violence is both the disease from which Rome suffers and the cure for its ills. He foregrounds its harmful effects on the Republic in De Domo Sua, which opens with the portrayal of Clodius’ tribunate as a deadly plague (illum pestiferum et funestum tribunatum, Cic. Dom. 2). Clodius himself is repeatedly figured as a pestilence (funesta rei publicae pestis, Cic. Dom. 5; importuna pestis, Cic. Dom. 26, portentosa pestis, Cic. Dom. 72), as are his allies (rei publicae pestibus, Cic. Dom. 24).95 Despite lacking practical knowledge about the mechanisms by which diseases spread, Cicero describes Clodius infecting everyone he touches: qui aliqua se contagione praedae, societatis, emptionis contaminaverunt (“All those who have contaminated themselves in some way through the contagion of plunder, partnership, and purchase,” Cic. Dom. 108).96 One of the primary symptoms of this contagion is the unlawful use of physical force, which is 93

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The distinction between a remedy and a poison was often a matter of dosage rather than material, an idea famously integrated into the post-structural analysis of Derrida 1981. For hellebore as a “medicine-poison” that becomes a literary trope, see Bartsch 2015: 84–92. As van der Blom 2010: 301 points out, Cicero’s exile proved that his version of the events of 63 bce had failed to persuade. Clodius is also figured exacerbating an ulcer on the groin of the res publica (in hoc ulcere tamquam inguen existeres, Cic. Dom. 12). For inguen as a swelling on the groin, see OLD s.v. 1. Romans may not have been familiar with germ theory, but they did notice that illnesses were transmitted through social proximity. “This point is worth emphasizing,” Gardner 2019: 27 writes, “since it tacitly allows that disease might be communicable between kin and compatriots, and thus threaten the stability of relationships within the larger civic body.”

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portrayed as a form of madness: haec furiosa vis vaesani tribuni plebis (“This crazed violence of an insane tribune of the plebs,” Cic. Dom. 55). Its damaging effects on the political process are illustrated through imagery of a body that has been beaten and battered (civitatemque fractam malis, imminutam ac debilitatam, abiectam metu, “the political community, shattered by ills, impaired and debilitated, cast down by fear,” Cic. Dom. 25), its viscera plundered (pecuniam . . . ereptam ex visceribus aerari, “the money ripped from the intestines of the treasury,” Cic. Dom. 23) and blood drained by henchmen like Aulus Gabinius (helluatus tecum simul rei publicae sanguine, “Gorging along with you [Clodius] on the blood of the res publica,” Cic. Dom. 124). The bloodied corpse of Rome reinforces the normative idea that a healthy body politic is one in which violence plays no role. It was easy for Cicero to make this argument in De Domo Sua, where the violence at stake was that perpetrated by Clodius and his followers. He faced a more difficult situation in his defense of Publius Sestius, an ally who had been charged with vis after recruiting his own gang to facilitate Cicero’s recall from exile.97 Cicero justified Sestius’ use of armed supporters in the assembly on the grounds that it was the only remedy available to counteract the rapidly spreading Clodian pestilence. Far from perpetrating vis against the res publica, as the Lex Plautia required, Sestius used physical force on its behalf.98 Stressing the salutary effects of such force, Cicero tells his audience, reliquas illius anni pestis recordamini – sic enim facillime perspicietis quantam vim omnium remediorum a magistratibus proximis res publica desiderarit (“Remember the other pestilences of that year, for you will then perceive very easily how great a dose of all sorts of medicines the res publica sought from the next year’s magistrates,” Cic. Sest. 55). Walters draws attention to the dual meaning of vis omnium remediorum, which evokes both the potency of a prescribed medicine and the actual force that Sestius employed on Cicero’s behalf.99 Shifting the persona of the civic healer from himself to his ally, Cicero argues that Sestius used his tribunate to treat the res publica to the best of his abilities (ut adflictae et perditae rei publicae quantum posset mederetur, Cic. Sest. 31).100 Endorsing the use of violence to achieve this aim, he validates extralegal treatments performed in the best interest of the body 97 98

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On the street violence between Sestius and Clodius, see Tatum 1999: 180. Lintott 1999 (1968): 61 suggests that the events of 57 inured Cicero to the use of violence for the vindication of his interests. Because the Lex Plautia forbad the use of vis contra rem publicam, the legal issue at stake was not only whether Sestius had used violence but whether he had done so against the interests of the Republic. On the shifting concept of vis in the 50s bce, see Craig 2001: 114–6; Riggsby 1999: 79– 119; Lintott 1999 (1968): 107–24. Walters 2020: 45. Fantham 1972: 128 notes that adflictus enables overlapping metaphors of diseases and wounds.

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politic. The problem, of course, was the subjectivity of this standard of judgment on the political battlefield. Although Sestius occupied the tribunate when he confronted Clodius, his legitimacy as a healer does not derive from his elected office. Cicero argues that even private citizens have the right to perform surgeries when necessary to save the Republic. Claiming this prerogative for himself, he asks, contenderem contra tribunum plebis privatus armis? Vicissent improbos boni, fortes inertis; interfectus esset is qui hac una medicina sola potuit a rei publicae peste depelli (“Should I have fought against a tribune of the plebs with weapons, although a private citizen? The good would have conquered the wicked, the strong the weak; he would have been killed, who by this medicine alone could have been kept away from the destruction of the res publica,” Cic. Sest. 43).101 He implicitly invokes the salus populi to legitimize the murder of a sacrosanct tribune by a private citizen.102 He was not the first to do so; statesmen had been citing this principle to justify the abuse of tribunes since the Gracchan era.103 Whereas Tiberius Gracchus and Lucius Saturninus had been killed under the contested authority of the senatus consultum ultimum, however, Cicero was now arguing that anyone could take the law into his own hands to expel an infectious agent.104 Far from questioning the use of physical force, Trying to resolve the ambiguity of “he,” which refers to Cicero. He felt compelled to explain why he did not use it himself.105 He legitimized this more extreme form of vigilante justice through the vis–medicina analogy, which reframed a conflict between rival political visions as an existential 101 102

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Kaster 2006: ad loc. notes the fusion of two recurrent metaphors: the embodied commonwealth and political opponents as a plague. Winkler 1995: 30–5 stresses Cicero’s role in the construction of salus as a political concept, which was perhaps most famously articulated in the maxim ollis salus populi suprema lex esto (Cic. Leg. 3.8). Dyck 2004: ad loc. describes the phrase salus populi as “virtually Ciceronian property.” Cicero used this argument in his defense of G. Rabirius, who was brought to trial in 63 bce for his role in the death of the tribune L. Appuleius Saturninus nearly forty years earlier (see Cape 2002: 131–2). On the debated constitutional force of the senatus consultum ultimum, see Giovannini 2012; Lintott 1999: 89–93; Lintott 1999 (1968): 149–74; Mitchell 1971; Ungern-Sternberg 1970; Guarino 1970. The debate goes back to the Romans themselves, who fiercely disputed the legitimacy of actions performed under its sanction. Lintott 1999 (1968): 149 suggests that the conflicting values of the Roman constitution prevented a definitive solution to the problem. For its polarizing effect on public discourse, see Arena 2012: 204. Lintott 1999 (1968): 61. Cicero expreses concern over the escalation of strife if he were to act as a private citizen: cui denique erat dubium quin ille sanguis tribunicius, nullo praesertim publico consilio profusus, consules ultores et defensores esset habiturus? (“In short, did anyone doubt that tribunician blood, particularly if shed without public authority, would have consuls as its avengers and defenders?” Cic. Sest. 43).

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struggle over the fate of the body politic. After all, what good were the laws if they impeded the survival of the Republic? The utility and danger of medical imagery lay in the ease with which it could be coopted in the service of nearly any political end.106 Cicero and his adversaries could justify diametrically opposed actions as those necessary for Rome’s healing. This is exactly what happened at Sestius’ trial, which offers a rare glimpse into the rhetoric used by those on the other side. Cicero reports that the prosecutor P. Albinovanus urged the jurors to be severe in their course of treatment: et cohortari ausus est accusator in hac causa vos, iudices, ut aliquando essetis severi, aliquando medicinam adhiberetis rei publicae (“And the prosecutor dared to urge you in this case, judges, to finally be severe, to finally apply a medicine to the res publica,” Cic. Sest. 135). Portraying Sestius as the source of the Republic’s ills rather than the deliverer of its cure, Albinovanus identifies a guilty verdict as the proper remedy. Cicero refutes this claim by portraying Sestius as a healthy limb whose amputation would be akin to an act of butchery: non ea est medicina, cum sanae parti corporis scalpellum adhibetur atque integrae, carnificina est ista et crudelitas (“That is not medicine, when the scalpel is applied to a healthy and sound part of the body, that is butchery and cruelty,” Cic. Sest. 135). Both speakers agree on the basic premise that the body politic has fallen ill but offer contrasting diagnoses and courses of treatment. It is Clodius and his supporters, Cicero argues, who deserve to go under the knife: ei medentur rei publicae qui exsecant pestem aliquam tamquam strumam civitatis (“They heal the res publica who cut out some sort of pestilence, as if a growth on the political community,” Cic. Sest. 135). Struma refers to scrofula, an infection of the lymphatic glands from which P. Vatinius, a witness for the prosecution, was known to suffer. His physical deformity serves as evidence that Clodius’ allies are the real malignancies.107 The jurors evidently agreed in this case, acquitting Sestius on all charges. Nearly ten years after Cicero began comparing Clodius to a plague in his letters to Atticus, his enemy was finally killed in a skirmish with T. Annius Milo’s gang. Like Sestius, Milo was brought to trial on charges of vis. 106

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Catullus describes a speech that Sestius delivered against Antius as “full of poison and pestilence” (plenam veneni et pestilentiae, Catull. 44.12), confirming the ubiquity of this rhetoric in the electoral and judicial battles of the 50s bce. Skinner 1987: 232 suggests that Catullus slyly mocks Sestius for overworking this phraseology in his oratory. Corbeill 1996: 55 writes, “Vatinius himself becomes a parasitic growth, one that plagues the state . . . Such a condition requires obvious and immediate treatment: radical surgery.” See also La Bua 2019: 254–5; Bonsangue 2013: 62; Kaster 2006: ad loc.

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Speaking in his defense, Cicero argued that extralegal measures were sometimes necessary when the laws lacked strength.108 The failure of the legal system to curb Clodius’ gangs illustrates this principle: aliter perire pestis illa non potuit; numquam illum res publica suo iure esset ulta (“That plague [Clodius] could not have perished otherwise; the res publica would never have punished him by its own law,” Cic. Mil. 88). Although Cicero elsewhere identifies the courts as a cure for the corruption of the Republic, here they are part of its malaise. Their weakness requires civic health to operate as its own standard of judgment, one capable of legitimizing illegal actions by framing them as beneficial to the common good.109 In this way, medical terminology is used to circumvent the laws to which Cicero proclaimed allegiance in other contexts.110 The judicial failure of the Pro Milone, however, indicates the limitations of the imagistic framework that he constructed. Unable to persuade the jurors that Clodius’ murder was medicinal in nature, he was forced to confront the fact that his view of the body politic was not shared by all. The Pro Sestio and Pro Milone implicate Cicero’s rhetoric in a cycle of violence that peaked in the rioting following Clodius’ funeral. The unrest prompted the senate to grant Pompey an unprecedented sole consulship, a solution that acknowledged the weakening regulatory power of the Republican constitution.111 Because comparisons of exemplary statesmanship to healing were now a familiar fixture of public discourse, they could easily be applied to Pompey. The circulation of such rhetoric is suggested by its appearance in Appian, Plutarch, and Tacitus. Appian writes that the senate invested Pompey with this office because they recognized that the current crisis demanded some sort of cure (τοιᾶσδε θεραπείας, App. B Civ. 2.23). He attributes similar language to Pompey himself, who claimed that he had been called upon to heal the city (ἐς θεραπείαν τῆς πόλεως ἐπικληθεὶς, App. B Civ. 2.28).112 Plutarch suggests that Pompey’s critics 108

Cicero had already begun justifying Milo’s actions in these terms in the Pro Sestio, where he suggests that life and liberty had to be defended by force when the laws failed (si leges non valerent, Cic. Sest. 86). On the duty of the boni to employ violence in response to the disintegration of law and order, see Wood 1988: 189. 109 In this sense, Cicero employed a conceptual framework drawn from natural rather than public law, on which see Hawley 2022: 164–5; Straumann 2015: 140, 171. On the construction of legitimate violence in the Pro Milone, see Duplá 2010. 110 Wiseman 2012: 137 comments, “For him, the ‘body politic’ metaphor had evidently superseded the traditional idea that the laws were the guarantee of Roman liberty.” 111 The extent to which Pompey’s sole consulship marked a turning point is disputed. Flower 2010: 31 argues for a “breakdown of the political order,” while Gruen 1974: 154 denies “the failure of Republican institutions.” 112 Appian reports in his own voice that Pompey restored the sick city to health (νοσοῦσαν ὁ Πομπήιος τὴν πολιτείαν ὀξέως ἀναλάβοι, “Pompey quickly restored the diseased political community,” App. B Civ. 2.25).

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couched their disapproval in these terms as well: οἱ δὲ κομψότεροι τὸ τῆς πόλεως ἡγοῦντο παρεωρακέναι τὸν Πομπήϊον ἐν τύχαις οὔσης, ὧν ἐκεῖνον ἰατρὸν ᾕρηται καὶ μόνῳ παραδέδωκεν αὑτήν (“The cleverer critics thought that Pompey disregarded the condition of the imperiled city, in light of which it had selected him as its physician and had handed itself over to him alone,” Plut. Pomp. 55.3). Tacitus echoes this sentiment when he writes that Pompey’s remedies were worse than the transgressions they targeted: gravior remediis quam delicta erant (Tac. Ann. 3.28.1). While we should always exercise due caution in using Imperial sources as evidence of Republican political language, the recurrence of the same imagery across three authors drawing on different source material suggests its historicity.113 There is therefore good reason to believe that Pompey’s unprecedented magistracy was validated and contested in relation to the ideal of the civic healer. Cicero provides contemporary evidence for the circulation of this rhetoric in the Pro Milone, which locates Pompey in the curative role that he had once occupied himself. After describing Clodius’ alleged plot to kill Pompey, he asserts, cuius in vita nitebatur salus civitatis (“The well-being of the political community rested upon his life,” Cic. Mil. 19).114 Had Pompey died (occidisset), Rome and many other nations would have fallen alongside him (concidissent). Naturalizing the dependence of the Republic on its foremost statesman, he addresses Pompey as a surgeon and compares his troops to a scalpel: sed quis non intellegit omnis tibi rei publicae partis aegras et labantis, ut eas his armis sanares et confirmares, esse commissas? (“But does anyone not understand that all the sick and withered parts of the res publica have been entrusted to you so that you may heal and strengthen them with these arms?” Cic. Mil. 68).115 Just as Cicero figures the death of Clodius as a medicina, he suggests that Pompey must be willing to use arma against the corrupt parts of the Republic.116 His surgical metaphor 113 114

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See Wiseman 2012: 135. Cicero used the same phrasing in regard to Scipio Aemilianus’ planned dictatorship: tu eris unus in quo nitatur civitatis salus (“You will be the one upon whom the welfare of the political community depends,” Cic. Rep. 6.16). See Weinstock 1971: 169 on this trope in Cicero’s thought. Clark and Ruebel 1985: 68, fn. 30 suggest that Cicero might be alluding to the inscription on the statue of the Elder Cato in the Temple of Salus, which celebrated him for restoring (ἀποκατέστησε) a political community on the brink of collapse (τὴν Ῥωμαίων πολιτείαν ἐγκεκλιμένην καὶ ῥέπουσαν, Plut. Cat. 19.3). The possibility is intriguing in light of Cato’s association with healing in Plutarch’s Life (see earlier). Cicero began exploring Pompey’s curative abilities in the In Pisonem, where he portrays him removing spears lodged in Rome’s body by Piso: principe Cn. Pompeio referente et de corpore rei publicae tuorum scelerum tela revellente (“While Gn. Pompeius, our foremost citizen, was bringing forward this motion and ripping out the spears of your crimes from the body of the res publica,” Cic. Pis. 24).

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simultaneously justifies the investiture of a single statesman with extraordinary powers and validates his mobilization of the army against his fellow citizens. These interrelated themes illuminate how Cicero’s metaphorics contributed to the destabilization of politics in the 50s bce. They look ahead to the role that the sick body politic would play in Rome’s impending cycle of civil war and the novel constitutional arrangements that arose from it. Pompey’s own role as a civic healer ended abruptly in the civil war of 49– 8 bce, which saw his ignominious death on the Egyptian coast. Yet the rhetoric used to justify his position soon found a new home in the defense of Caesar and his unusual series of dictatorships and consulships.117 Despite Cicero’s personal distaste for Rome’s new leader, he still found it politically advantageous to depict him healing the wounds of civil strife in the Pro Marcello.118 Acknowledging that both sides in a war must perform actions that are outlawed in peace, he urges Caesar to restore the civic community to its prior condition: quae quidem tibi nunc omnia belli volnera sananda sunt, quibus praeter te mederi nemo potest (“In fact, it is all these wounds of war which now must be healed by you, which no one is able to cure except you,” Cic. Marcell. 24). Cicero tasks Caesar with healing the wounds that he himself recently inflicted.119 He thereby casts Caesar as both the harmer and healer of the body politic, a paradoxical status made possible by his victory in a civil war. Insofar as this role is occupied by one man and one man alone, Caesar’s autocratic position is laid bare to the audience.120 Like the rest of the Pro Marcello, this passage encapsulates an uneasy mix of praise, exhortation, and criticism that resists easy interpretation.121 What is clear, however, is that the model of the civic healer had begun to be mobilized towards more explicitly authoritarian ends.122 This trend 117

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Gardner 2009: 60 characterizes Caesar’s legal position during these years as haphazard and improvised rather than part of a premeditated plan. The implementation of the perpetual dictatorship marked a turning point (see Jehne 1987: 15–38), but was perhaps not the autocratic watershed often described (see Morstein-Marx 2021: 532–9). For the “awkwardly submissive position” in which Cicero found himself in 46 bce, see Hall 2009: 89. Tempest 2013: 274–5 draws a parallel between the healing imagery of the Pro Marcello and De Republica, suggesting that Caesar plays the role of a physician in the manner of the ideal statesman. However we think of his legal position, Caesar had clearly begun to be elevated “above and beyond the established structure of Roman governmental institutions,” (Morstein-Marx 2021: 537). Dyer 1990 sees the speech as an implicit exhortation to tyranny, while Winterbottom 2002 interprets its praise as genuine. Connolly 2011: 162 invites us to embrace the contradictions of the speech and view it as an exploration of “the delicate transition between resistance and submission to Caesar.” On the Pro Marcello as an important precedent for Imperial panegyric, see Manuwald 2011.

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would hold true as a new governing system in need of justification emerged from the wreckage of the Republic. There is good reason to think that Caesar’s role as a civic healer went beyond the confines of Cicero’s oratory. In the Epistulae ad Caesarem, Ps.-Sallust uses the same language as part of a direct address to Caesar, declaring, Namque aut tu mederi potes aut omittenda est cura omnibus (“For either you are able to find a cure or a cure must be abandoned by all,” Ad Caes. sen. 1.6.4). His phrasing is so close to Cicero’s that it might only confirm his familiarity with the Pro Marcello.123 Yet Stefan Weinstock collates suggestive evidence for Caesar’s association with salus, including a potential plan to erect his statue in the Temple of Salus and the eventual oath per Salutem Caesaris.124 A coin type was also circulated around 49 bce that displayed Salus on the obverse and Valetudo on the reverse, though scholars dispute whether it was created to commemorate Pompey’s recovery from illness or Caesar’s victory in the civil war.125 Either way, it confirms the association of a leading statesman with not just salus, but the more explicitly medicinal valetudo.126 Caesar was well-positioned to exploit this tradition due to a long-standing connection between the Julian gens and the cult of Apollo Medicus, whose temple in Rome was dedicated by an ancestor in 431 bce.127 He likely did so by holding the Ludi Apollinares at his own expense in 45 bce and perhaps facilitating the rumor that his grandnephew Octavian was the product of a liaison between Atia and Apollo.128 Within a generation, the political resonance of Apollo Medicus would come into fuller view. Whatever representational strategies might have been used to justify Caesar’s perpetual dictatorship, they were cut short by his assassination in 123 124 125

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For both texts as examples of suasoriae, see Santangelo 2012: 42–3. Weinstock 1971: 167–71. RRC 442/1a-b (Crawford 1974). Walters 2019: 962–3 notes that if the coin commemorates Pompey’s recovery from illness, it confirms an overlap between the body of the statesman and the body politic. If it commemorates Caesar’s victory, it figures his reforms as a restoration for the ailing res publica. For the medicalized sense of valetudo, see Boyce 1959. Livy reports that the cult of Apollo Medicus arose in 433 bce, when Romans responded to a plague by vowing a temple to him on behalf of the health of the Roman people (pro valetudine populi, Liv. 4.25.3). It was dedicated two years later by the consul Gn. Julius (Liv. 4.29.7). This temple – the only one dedicated to Apollo in Rome until the Augustan age – foregrounded his curative capacities. Dedications were made to him as a bearer of health (salutaris) and provider of medicine (medicinalis), while the Vestal Virgins addressed prayers to Apollo Medice, Apollo Paean (Macr. Sat. 1.17.15). See Miller 2009: 28 and Graf 2009: 73, who writes, “The Romans regarded the god basically as a healer.” Suet. Aug. 94.4. Weinstock 1971: 14 suggests that Caesar was behind the story of Octavian’s birth, writing, “It was the divine legitimation of his succession, and the divine ancestor was Apollo, the god of the Gens Iulia.” Gurval 1995: 100–2 argues that the story more likely originated after Actium.

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44 bce. Cicero promptly transitioned from describing him as a civic healer to a cancerous growth in need of amputation. De Officiis classifies tyrants like Caesar as a genus pestiferum that must be excised from the body politic to ensure its survival: etenim, ut membra quaedam amputantur si et ipsa sanguine et tamquam spiritu carere coeperunt et nocent reliquis partibus corporis, sic ista in figura hominis feritas et immanitas beluae a communi tamquam humanitatis corpore segreganda est (“For just as certain limbs are amputated if they themselves begin to lack blood and, as it were, life, and harm the remaining parts of the body, so that ferocity and monstrosity of a beast in the guise of a man must be separated from the common body, so to speak, of humanity,” Cic. Off. 3.32).129 Cicero argues that Caesar merited amputation from the body politic by pursuing a course of action that violated the common good.130 Implicit in his analysis is the assumption that a statesman must have acted against the interests of his community to qualify as an infectious agent. This principle imposes a meaningful constraint on his construction of medical metaphors in De Officiis and other treatises. In the oratorical realm, however, he rarely made the philosophical underpinnings of his imagery explicit. The absence of such context allowed the sick body politic to become a highly flexible symbolic system, one that could be put in the service of ends that he undoubtedly detested. The eighth Philippic provides a fitting point of conclusion for the story told in this chapter. Reprising the imagistic framework of the Catilinarians for the last time, Cicero designated Antony, the current consul, as a rotting limb in need of amputation: in corpore si quid eius modi est quod reliquo corpori noceat, id uri secarique patimur ut membrum aliquod potius quam totum corpus intereat. Sic in rei publicae corpore, ut totum salvum sit, quicquid est pestiferum, amputetur (“If in a body there is anything of a sort that is harmful to the rest of the body, we allow it to be burned or severed, so that one member might perish instead of the whole body. Accordingly, in the body of the res publica, in order that the whole is safe, whatever is pestilential must be cut out,” Cic. Phil. 8.15). Invoking the common good to justify violence against a magistrate invested with imperium, Cicero once again sought to circumvent public law through disease imagery in the name of political expediency. Although only a private citizen, his right to prescribe this course of treatment derived from his possession of the civic knowledge necessary to save the body politic. 129 130

Volkmann 1954: 470–1 persuasively argues for the emendation of humanitate corporis, which makes little sense, to humanitatis corpore, a solution followed by Dyck 1996: ad loc. I thank one of the Cambridge referees for raising this point. On the intersection of natural law and political philosophy in De Officiis, see Hawley 2022: 15–61.

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His tendency to prescribe surgeries that further destabilized the practice of politics, however, confirmed the risks of yielding collective judgment to the wisdom of a single statesman. For as the Republic plunged into another cycle of civil war from which its constitution would not recover, Cicero’s failure to heal the res publica became difficult to deny. The downfall of the Republic marked the realization of a fear that Roman thinkers had been expressing for many years. Warnings of civic disease, as we have seen, played a role in the earliest of Cicero’s speeches. By the time that the First Triumvirate was formed in 59 bce, he could write to Atticus, nunc quidem novo quodam morbo civitas moritur (“Now, in fact, the political community is dying from some sort of novel disease,” Cic. Att. 2.20.3). Five years later, he confirmed the prescience of his predictions in another letter: amisimus, mi Pomponi, omnem non modo sucum ac sanguinem sed etiam colorem et speciem pristinae civitatis (“Dear Atticus, we have lost not only the all the vigor and blood but even the color and appearance of our former political community,” Cic. Att. 4.18.2). He was joined in his gloomy prognostications by Varro and Sallust, both of whom compared Rome to an organism slowly succumbing to infection. Legend held that even Caesar participated in this conversation about civic mortality, declaring after his victory over Pompey, nihil esse rem publicam, appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie (“There is no res publica, only a name without body or form,” Suet. Iul. 77).131 Roman writers did not use the term res publica to signify a specific constitutional form, so this sentiment should not be viewed as a declaration of the end of the “Republic.”132 It does, however, suggest the death of the body politic in which Caesar and his peers had come of age. In acknowledging its demise, Caesar prompted his fellow citizens to consider what might arise in its place. Over the next century, Imperial writers reimagined Rome’s shape in response to this question. 131 132

The anecdote comes from T. Ampius, a Pompeian partisan whose enemies called him “the trumpet of civil war,” (tubam belli civilis, Cic. Fam. 6.12.3). See Hodgson 2017: 163–220 for Caesar’s engagement with the concept of res publica.

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chapter 3

The Augustan Transformation

The last two chapters explored how Roman thinkers used the metaphor of the body politic to respond to the increasing turbulence of Late Republican politics. Chapter 1 began with the Fable of the Belly, which figured the senate and people as interdependent parts of an autonomous organism. As civil strife exposed the difficulty of achieving consensus within this structural framework, however, imagery of a body that had lost its physical coherence began to proliferate. Chapter 2 traced a moralizing tradition that identified vices as contagions that had spread from the elite to the citizenry at large. Both chapters foregrounded the pivotal year of 63 bce, when Catiline and Cicero articulated two rival visions of the res publica on the senate floor. Catiline described the senate and people as two separate bodies that should be governed by different heads, challenging the ideal of civic unity and revealing his monarchical ambitions. Cicero rejected his proposal by comparing Rome to an organism sickened by statesmen acting against its interests. Identifying Catiline and his co-conspirators as malignancies in need of amputation, he portrayed himself as a civic healer dispensing remedies on behalf of the Republic. He maintained this persona even after his consulship came to an end, suggesting that exemplary statesmanship could serve as a solution to civil strife. He thereby joined Catiline in using organic imagery to rethink the relationship between the statesman and res publica. Between the Battle of Actium and the Year of the Four Emperors, Roman thinkers reimagined the shape of their political community in response to the implementation of sole rule. In a process that began under Augustus, became explicit under Tiberius, and peaked under Nero, the models of the healer and the head of state converged around the figure of the princeps. Their divergent Republican pasts, however, invested them with very different Imperial trajectories. Thanks in large part to Cicero, the ideal of the civic healer had already been integrated into normative political language. As a result, it could be used to describe the 95

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nascent Principate with relative ease. Horace and Vergil took the first steps in this direction, while Ovid more fully exploited the political resonance of medical metaphors. It was only under Tiberius, however, that such rhetoric began to be systematically tied to the end of the civil wars. The head of state metaphor, in contrast, had regal connotations that located it outside the boundaries of acceptable political language. To employ it in relation to Augustus would have been an admission of his seizure of power and a violation of the still dominant paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Yet for a discourse community steeped in organic imagery, the comparison was ripe for exploitation. The next two chapters show how those writing under the early Principate responded to this quandary. Unwilling to use capital symbolism in relation to the present, they instead incorporated it into their narratives of the Republican past. By investing the head of state metaphor with the ancestral pedigree that it historically lacked, they eventually made it available for contemporary usage. This story begins with Livy, whose first pentad identifies three phases in the life cycle of the Roman body politic: a regal corpus governed by a caput, an autonomous organism akin to that described in the Fable of the Belly, and a reconciliation of these two models under the exemplary leadership of Camillus. The carefully crafted imagistic arc culminates in the celebration of Camillus as the caput rei Romanae. Arguing that Rome has always relied on extraordinary statesmen for its success, Livy’s narrative resolves the apparent paradox of a Republican head of state. When the late Augustan poet Cornelius Severus praised Cicero as the patriae caput, he applied Livy’s historical lesson to more recent events. Around the same time, Ovid took the bold step of calling Augustus the caput orbis. Mining the ambiguity latent in this symbolism, his exilic poetry reveals an imagistic framework in the midst of transition. The fact of this transition confirms that Roman thinkers were under no illusions about the constitutional changes wrought after Actium. Figurative speech provided an avenue to explore them without transgressing the boundaries of a discourse community that remained committed to traditional modes of expression. In the place of a radical rupture in political language was a more gradual process of adaptation and accommodation over the span of half a century.

The Curative Powers of the Princeps Over the course of the Principate, Augustus became the prototypical healer of the body politic in Roman political discourse. According to Tacitus, the supporters who gathered at his funeral justified his seizure of power in these

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terms: non aliud discordantis patriae remedium fuisse quam ut ab uno regeretur (“There was no other remedy for the strife-ridden country than to be ruled by one man,” Tac. Ann. 1.9.4). Identifying sole rule as the only viable remedy for discord, Tacitus articulates a key tenet of the apologia for the Principate that became normative during the second century ce.1 Dio puts the same sentiment in the mouth of Tiberius, whose eulogy for his adoptive father compares him to a physician: ὥσπερ τις ἰατρὸς ἀγαθὸς σῶμα νενοσηκὸς παραλαβὼν καὶ ἐξιασάμενος, ἀπέδωκε πάντα ὑμῖν ὑγιᾶ ποιήσας (“Like a good doctor taking hold of and curing a body that has grown ill, he handed back everything to you after making it healthy,” Cass. Dio 56.39.2).2 Tacitus and Dio were not alone in tracing the origins of this rhetorical tradition back to the Augustan era, but contemporary evidence suggests that the portrayal of the first princeps in these terms only emerged under Tiberius.3 Those writing under Augustus were more circumspect about the long-term stakes of his position. They instead invoked the theme of healing in generalized terms, assigning curative powers to the princeps without explicitly tying them to the end of the civil wars. Even so, they facilitated the process by which Cicero’s ideal of the civic healer made its way into the burgeoning paradigm of Imperial panegyric. Their efforts exemplify the gradual reworking and renegotiation of Republican political language in a new constitutional context. We might begin by asking whether Augustus played a role in the circulation of medical imagery in relation to his rule.4 While there is little evidence that he actively encouraged his representation in these terms, he did cultivate a privileged relationship with Apollo, a deity linked to medicine, that might have pointed thinkers in this direction. As we saw in the last chapter, the relationship between the Julian gens and cult of Apollo went back to the fifth century bce. Caesar likely advertised the connection during his dictatorship, but it was Octavian who made it central to his public persona. By vowing the Temple of Apollo on the 1 2

3 4

See Syme 1986: 448 on “the medical metaphor.” Dio attributes the same rhetoric to Livia, who advises Augustus to use surgery and cautery sparingly: Ἢ οὐχ ὁρᾷς ὅτι καὶ οἱ ἰατροὶ τὰς μὲν τομὰς καὶ τὰς καύσεις σπανιώτατά τισι προσφέρουσιν, ἵνα μὴ ἐξαγριαίνωσιν αὐτῶν τὰ νοσήματα, τοῖς δὲ αἰονήμασι καὶ τοῖς ἠπίοις φαρμάκοις τὰ πλείω μαλθάσσοντες θεραπεύουσι; (“Do you not see that even physicians very rarely apply surgery and cautery to patients, so that they don’t worsen their diseases, but for the most part relieve and heal them with ointments and mild remedies?” Cass. Dio 55.17.1). Although Dio’s speeches are of little value as sources of Augustan history (Swan 2004: 27), it is perhaps worth noting the recurrence of the same metaphor in a similar context at Sen. Clem. 1.9.6 (on which see further discussion in Ch. 5). For Augustus as the salubris princeps, see also Suet. Aug. 42.1. In exploring this question, however, we should keep in mind that “‘Augustanism’ was not a dogma conceived by a small band and handed down to a receptive, passive audience,” (Feeney 1992: 3).

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Palatine in 36 bce, he tied his victory in the civil wars to the god’s protection.5 Apollo’s connection to healing became relevant when Gaius Sosius, an Antonian partisan, began restoration on the Temple of Apollo Medicus in 34 bce. T. P. Wiseman suggests that Sosius transformed the temple into “the monumentum of an enemy of the new regime.”6 Whether Roman viewers interpreted the resulting monument in relation to the antipathy of the triumviral era or the clemency of Octavian, who pardoned Sosius, it is clear that Apollo Medicus had taken on a degree of political import.7 Octavian’s connection to the temple was flagged through its dedication date, which was his birthday, and its pedimental sculptures, which featured an Amazonomachy applicable to his victory over Cleopatra.8 It was reinforced through the circulation of the story about Atia’s coupling with Apollo, which identified the temple as the site of his conception.9 The figurative significance of the relationship, however, was left to others to articulate.10 In the first book of the Odes, published in 23 bce, Horace ties the medicinal powers of Apollo to the civic renewal over which the new princeps presided.11 This project takes center stage in Od. 1.21, which addresses Apollo, Diana, and Latona, the triad featured on the Palatine Temple of Apollo. Encouraging a chorus of children to direct their prayers towards these deities, Horace suggests that they will persuade Apollo to expel disease from the people and princeps: hic bellum lacrimosum, hic miseram famem | pestemque a populo et principe Caesare in | Persas atque Britannos | vestra motus aget prece (“He, moved by your prayer, will drive mournful war, terrible famine, and disease away from the people and Caesar as princeps and towards the Persians and Britons,” Hor. Od. 1.21.13–6).12 The traditional SPQR is replaced by populus et princeps, 5

The importance of Apollo to Augustus’ self-presentation, especially in relation to the Temple of Apollo Palatine, has been extensively treated. See Lange 2009: 166–80; Miller 2009: 185–252; Zink 2008; Gurval 1995: 87–136; Zanker 1988: 50–3; Kellum 1985. 6 Wiseman 1984: 125. 7 Miller 2009: 176 agrees with Wiseman that Octavian and Sosius “contested for Apollo topographically during the 30s,” but argues that the former’s pardon of the latter allowed the Temple of Apollo Medicus to be interpreted in relation to the ideal of clemency. Gurval 1995: 119 doubts that the building projects of Sosius and Octavian were competitive or confrontational. 8 9 See Dowling 2006: 127–31 and Kellum 1997: 161–3. Suet. Aug. 94.4; Cass. Dio 45.1.2. 10 Zanker 1988: 50 argues that Octavian’s “sense of mission and his entire program for healing Rome’s wounds bore the stamp of Apollo.” Miller 2009: 28–9 describes this scenario as possible but never made explicit. 11 Tarrant 2020: 43 stresses the influence of the Odes’ composition date (30–23 bce) on the text. 12 Miller 2009: 268 compares Livy’s description of the vowing of the Temple of Apollo Medicus: multa duumviri . . . avertendaeque a populo pestis causa fecere (“The duumvirs did many things to avert pestilence from the people,” Liv. 4.25.3).

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a revision of Republican political language that collapses the distinction between Rome’s citizenry and its first citizen.13 The vitality of both is safeguarded by Apollo, who uses his healing powers to end violence at home and direct it towards enemies abroad.14 The future tense of the verb, in turn, conveys confidence in the realization of this wish. Alluding to the Temple of Apollo Palatinus through his choice of dedicatees yet evoking the Temple of Apollo Medicus through his prayer, Horace integrates both monuments into a celebration of civic restoration. He returns to Apollo’s curative capacities in Od. 1.31, which addresses a prayer for health to the god, and Od. 1.32, in which Apollo’s lyre acts as a salve. While these poems address healing on a more personal level than Od. 1.21, they also assert the relevance of public life to the private pursuit of poetry.15 They link Horace’s well-being with that of Rome, which is secured by the favor of Apollo. Insofar as the god’s beneficence stems from the honorific efforts of the princeps, the health of the res publica indirectly depends upon him. Horace further develops this theme in the Carmen Saeculare, commissioned by Augustus for performance at the Secular Games in 17 bce.16 The poem foregrounds imagery of a res publica that has been restored to its ancestral vitality.17 After celebrating the abundance of crops nourished by Jupiter’s salubrious showers and breezes, Horace urges Apollo to put down his spear and become a pacific god.18 Leaving “the Actian Apollo behind,” as Richard Thomas puts it, Horace recasts him as a god of peace.19 Among the roles that he will now play is that of a healer: qui salutari levat arte fessos | corporis artus (“He who alleviates the wearied limbs of the body with his healing art,” Hor. Carm. saec. 63–4). Tying his medicinal abilities to the longevity of Rome, Horace continues, si Palatinas videt aequus aras, | remque Romanam Latiumque felix | alterum in lustrum meliusque semper | 13 14 15

16 17

18 19

Nisbet and Hubbard 1970: 254 call Horace’s coupling of populus et princeps “frankly shocking.” On Horace’s equation of Augustus’ and the res publica’s well-being, see Lowrie 2016: 77–8. La Bua 2013: 269 argues that for Horace, “war at the edges of the empire acts as a purgation of civil bloodshed.” The dedication of the Palatine Temple is explicit at Hor. Od. 1.31.1 (dedicatum . . . Apollinem) and implicit in Od. 1.32, which sustains the thematic focus of the previous poem (see Babcock 1967). Miller 2009: 222 and Santirocco 1986: 71 stress the intersection of private and public in these poems. On the circumstances surrounding the Secular Games and Horace’s performance, see Galinsky 1996: 100–6. Barchiesi 2002: 108 stresses the importance of interpreting the poem in its ritual setting. While Zanker 1988: 167 interprets the Carmen Saeculare as a key element in the proclamation of a new Golden Age, Galinsky 1996: 102 argues that Horace stops short of this idea. Barker 1996 suggests that Horace in fact critiques the notion of a renascence, an argument extended by Zanker 2010. nutriant fetus et aquae salubres | et Iovis aurae. | condito mitis placidusque telo | supplices audi pueros, Apollo (Hor. Carm. saec. 31–4). Thomas 2011: ad loc.

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prorogat aevum (“If he looks favorably upon the Palatine altars, he extends Rome’s affairs and Latium’s fortune for another cycle and ever better age,” Hor. Carm. saec. 65–8). As the one who has secured the divine favor that will prolong the lifespan of the res publica, Augustus assumes implicit responsibility for the health of the body politic.20 This idea was reinforced by the prayer that the princeps delivered on the second night of the games, which enjoined the gods to increase the maiestas and imperium of the Roman people and secure their victoria and valetudo.21 His supplication worked alongside Horace’s poem to harness the curative powers of Apollo on behalf of a renewed res publica. At first glance, Vergil seems to complicate Horace’s effort to link the curative properties of Apollo to the figure of Augustus. A well-known passage from Aeneid 12 links the inefficacy of Apollonic medicine to the Julian gens. Describing how the physician Iapyx fails to heal Aeneas of the wound inflicted by Turnus, Vergil writes, multa manu medica Phoebique potentibus herbis | nequiquam trepidat (“With his healing hand and the potent herbs of Phoebus, he bustles about in vain,” Verg. Aen. 12.402–3). Implicating the god in the failure but providing no explanation for it, he simply comments, nihil auctor Apollo | subvenit (“Apollo’s counsel provides no help,” Verg. Aen. 12.405–6). Scholars have long puzzled over this scene, which seems to challenge the privileged relationship between Apollo Medicus and the ancestors of Augustus.22 Yet Julia Hawkins points out that by deemphasizing Apollo’s curative abilities, Vergil is able to reassign them to Aeneas’ own mother.23 Disturbed by her son’s pain, Venus journeys to Crete to retrieve the medicinal herb dittany. Steeping it in river water and applying it to his wound, she cures her son in secret: occulte medicans (Verg. Aen. 12.418). Vergil’s characterization of Venus as a healer well-versed in botanical lore finds no parallel in extant Latin literature, though Hawkins points out that the goddess was linked to medical botany

20 21 22

23

The poem does not praise the princeps directly, Putnam 2000: 5 notes, but rather the version of Rome realized under his rule. CIL 6.32323.93–99. See Schnegg 2020: 128–34 for text and commentary. On the prayer’s integration of the princeps, his family, and the Roman people, see Sumi 2005: 244. See Tarrant 2012: ad loc. 391–7 on the “difficult questions” raised by Apollo’s portrayal. Miller 2009: 179 argues that Apollo’s unwillingness to heal Aeneas “remains a very troubling moment, in terms of both the narrative and the god’s imperial significance.” Nicoll 2001: 193–4 lays the blame on Iapyx for falling short of heroic ideals, while Stok 1988: 65–181 emphasizes the disjuncture between the divine and human practice of medicine. Hawkins 2004: 79. Skinner 2007: 95–7 interprets Venus’ role more ambivalently; by curing Aeneas with dittany, a herb linked to Dido earlier in the text, Vergil suggests that the palliation of Aeneas’ suffering is only temporary.

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in the cult practices of the Greek East.24 Perhaps evoking this association, Vergil grants the Julian gens its own ancestral healing knowledge.25 He thereby joins Horace in connecting the princeps to the medical arts via a divine intermediary.26 Characteristic of a tradition that is just beginning to develop rather than one that is fully fledged, their shared project laid the conceptual groundwork for later engagements with this theme. The earliest extant author to explicitly attribute healing powers to the princeps was G. Valgius Rufus, a member of Maecenas’ literary circle and suffect consul in 12 bce.27 The Elder Pliny reports that he left behind an unfinished treatise on medicinal herbs that was dedicated to Augustus. Summarizing its contents, Pliny writes, inchoata etiam praefatione religiosa, ut omnibus malis humanis illius potissimum principis semper mederetur maiestas (“His devout preface began with the hope that the maiestas of that princeps especially would always heal all human ills,” Plin. Nat. Hist. 25.4). Whereas Vergil and Horace implicitly connect Augustus to healing through Venus and Apollo, Valgius Rufus posits a more direct relationship. He promises to convey literal medical knowledge to the princeps, who already possesses figurative knowledge about healing mankind. In a particularly revealing formulation, he attributes these curative capacities to Augustus’ maiestas rather than his personage. A key constitutional innovation of the Principate was the evolution of maiestas from an attribute of the Roman people to one of the princeps. This transfer indicated the practical relocation of governing authority from the collective to the individual.28 Valgius Rufus reflects and reinforces the conceptual shift through the verb medeor, which frames the maiestas of Augustus as a boon to the res publica.29 24

25 26 27

28

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Hawkins 2004: 90–1. She notes that Pompey brought Mithridates’ botanical treatises back to Rome as spolia and displayed them in the Porticus Pompeiana, over which Venus presided as patron. On the illustrated books of Mithridates’ “plant library,” see Kuttner 1999: 345. She stresses Augustus’ rededication of the complex in 32 bce, which is interpreted as a “symbolic statement of his own stewardship of Republican gloria,” (350). Hawkins 2004: 79. Armstrong 2019: 167 stresses the coexistence of “good botanical certainties” with “the supernatural and miraculous” in Vergil’s construction of this scene. See Dahlmann 1983: 34–47 for the collected fragments of Valgius Rufus, who is primarily associated with elegy but also composed epigrams, bucolic poetry, and rhetorical works. Farrell 2004: 52 sees him as exemplary of the shift in literary authorship towards lower-ranking professionals with ties to the domus Augusta. Kronenberg 2018 proposes that Macer, a mysterious poet mentioned by Tibullus and Ovid, is a pseudonym for Valgius Rufus. Bauman 1967 addresses the evolution of maiestas from a legal perspective, while Ando 2011b: 105 argues that the attribution of maiestas to the princeps rather than populus Romanus was “part of a conceptual and social revolution that received only gradual articulation in contemporary political theoretical discourse, which culminated . . . in Ulpian’s lex regia.” Fantham 2006: 406 considers the appearance of this concept in Augustan poetry. Cicero often uses this verb in relation to the body politic (e.g. Cic. Agr. 1.27; Cic. Sest. 31).

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Invoking the ills of humanity rather than those of Rome, however, he still stops short of portraying Augustus as an explicitly civic healer. Ovid provides the most direct, yet also most ambivalent, evidence for Augustus’ curative capacities. Repeatedly figuring his expulsion from Rome as a wound (vulnus), his exilic poetry revolves around the search for a cure.30 The programmatic importance of this quest emerges in the opening poem of the Tristia, which asserts, namque ea vel nemo, vel qui mihi vulnera fecit | solus Achilleo tollere more potest (“For either no one is able to heal these wounds, or, in the fashion of Achilles, only the one who gave them to me can,” Ov. Tr. 1.1.99–100).31 Ovid uses the tale of Telephus, who was wounded and healed by the spear of Achilles, as a mythological model for his quest to be absolved by the one who hurt him.32 Identifying Augustus as both the source of and remedy for his wounds, he exposes the porous boundary between healing and harming. He returns to this idea in Book 5, explaining, Telephus aeterna consumptus tabe perisset, | si non, quae nocuit, dextra tulisset opem (“Telephus would have perished, consumed by an eternal infection, had not the hand that harmed him brought him aid,” Ov. Tr. 5.2.15–6). Making the analogous powers of Achilles and Augustus explicit, he continues, et mea, si facinus nullum commisimus, opto, | vulnera qui fecit, facta levare velit (“And my wounds, if I have committed no crime, I beg that he who made them be willing to heal them,” Ov. Tr. 5.2.17–8). In granting Augustus the ability to alleviate his injuries, Ovid portrays him as a healer in more explicit fashion than Horace or Vergil. Yet he also suggests that his medicinal powers derive from the same authority that allowed him to cause harm in the first place.33 Which path the princeps selects seems less important than the fact that he alone gets to decide.34 Whereas the Tristia chips away at the salience of the boundary of healing and harming, the Epistulae ex Ponto expresses skepticism towards the efficacy of medicine and its practitioners. This theme comes to the fore in Pont. 1.3, a poem addressed to G. Vibius Rufinus that stands out for its

30

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e.g. Ov. Trist. 1.1.99–100; 3.6.29; 3.11.19; 4.1.36; 4.1.97; 4.4.41–2; 5.1.52; 5.2.9–10; 5.7.34. Ovid’s engagement with this theme responded to the elegiac tradition, which frequently mined the intersection between love and ill health. See Hejduk 2011; Fish 2004; Nagle 1980: 61–70. For Ovid’s “overt use of mythic victimology,” see Hinds 2007: 198. Claassen 2001: 26 identifies the Telephus episode as one of many myths rendered self-referential through their retelling in the exilic poetry. See also Ov. Tr. 2.1.19–20. McGowan 2009: 14 illustrates how Ovid’s apparent submissiveness is undercut “by the lingering image of a capricious autocrat.” I paraphrase Lowrie 2009: 364–5.

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sustained medical imagery.35 Ovid opens the poem with the prospect of healing, thanking his addressee for restoring strength to a body wounded by a terrible blow (acerbo saucius ictu, Ov. Pont. 1.3.7).36 As quickly as he introduces the prospect of recovery, however, he withdraws it again: non tamen exhibuit tantas facundia vires, | ut mea sint dictis pectora sana tuis (“Nevertheless, your eloquence is not so strong that my heart is healed by your words,” Ov. Pont. 1.3.11–2).37 Rejecting the notion that time might act as a salve, he continues, tempore ducetur longo fortasse cicatrix: | horrent admotas vulnera cruda manus (“Perhaps one day a scar will form; the bloody wound shies from the application of a hand,” Ov. Pont. 1.3.15–6).38 Ovid crafts a striking personification of his wound, which shrinks away from the surgeon’s scalpel.39 Its hesitation stems from the limitations of medicine in curing inveterate diseases: non est in medico semper relevetur ut aeger: | interdum docta plus valet arte malum (“It is not always in the power of a physician to alleviate the sick: sometimes a disease is stronger than a learned art,” Ov. Pont. 1.3.17–8). Ovid’s earlier portrayal of Augustus as a healer inflects the pessimism of this poem with political significance. It raises the possibility that the damage inflicted by the princeps exceeds the therapy that he is able – or willing – to provide. His healing hand, the subject of so much attention in the Tristia, largely recedes from view in the Epistulae ex Ponto. It is replaced by imagery of a wound left to fester: vulneris id genus est quod, cum sanabile non sit, | non contrectari tutius esse puto (“The wound is of such a sort that, since it cannot be cured, I think it safer not to be touched” Ov. Pont. 2.2.57–8).40 Although the symbolism is oriented towards Ovid’s personal experience of the political world, it carries troubling ramifications for all those whose well-being depends upon the beneficence of the princeps. Ovid’s medical metaphors complicate the panegyrical overtones of earlier Augustan poetry, mining the ambiguities latent in a rhetorical tradition that proliferated amid the conflicts of the Late Republic. Those writing under Tiberius did not sustain his line of critique, though it would emerge once more under Claudius and Nero. They instead began to make 35

36 37 38 39 40

Ovid might have crafted this imagery in response to C. Vibius Rufinus’ expertise in the medicinal use of plants, but it was also common in consolatory literature (see Morgan 2020: 97; Tissol 2014: 92; Davisson 1983: 176–8). Setting aside the example of Telephus, he compares himself to Philoctetes in these lines. Gaertner 2005: ad loc. discusses Ovid’s reversal of the standard therapeutic language of consolatory treatises. Davisson 1983: 176 stresses the pessimism of these lines. On the Younger Pliny’s imitation of this image (Plin. Ep. 5.16.11), see Tissol 2014: 26. See Ov. Pont. 3.7.25–6 for a similar sentiment.

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explicit that at which the Augustan poets only hinted: that the establishment of the Principate had cured a body politic ravaged by civil strife. Yet it was only in hindsight that they could perceive Rome’s regeneration so clearly. Those who lived through the civil wars were enthusiastic at the prospect of Augustan healing but uncertain of its long-term ramifications. Their reticence makes an important point about political discourse during this era. Many of the linguistic and conceptual innovations that strike us as “Augustan” in fact crystallized under Tiberius. Only after Rome had been at peace for half a century did its thinkers begin to see sole rule as the remedy for civil war. In the formative years of the Principate, this lesson was far from self-evident.

Historicizing the Head of State In the preface to his monumental history, Livy advertises his interest in reprising and reworking the theme of moral and civic decline considered in the last chapter.41 He combines organic and structural metaphors to contrast Rome’s illustrious past with its degenerate present, writing, labante deinde paulatim disciplina velut dissidentes primo mores sequatur animo, deinde ut magis magisque lapsi sint, tum ire coeperint praecipites, donec ad haec tempora quibus nec vitia nostra nec remedia pati possumus perventum est (“Then let [the reader] note how, with discipline slipping bit by bit, at first morals crumbled, as it were, then declined more and more, then began to accelerate headlong, until we arrived at the present times, when we can bear neither our vices nor their cure,” Liv. Praef. 9).42 Like Sallust and Varro, Livy figures moral corruption as a disease that has infected the Roman citizenry at large.43 Whereas they remain silent on the question of a cure, he confirms the existence of remedia that might restore Rome to health. The treatments to which he alludes have long been debated; Augustus’ failed marriage legislation was once viewed as a likely

41

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Scholarly consensus once held that Livy began composition on the first pentad between 27 and 25 bce, based primarily on his use of the name Augustus at 1.19.3 and 4.20.7. Yet Luce 1965, drawing on Soltau 1894, argued that these passages were later insertions and dated the first pentad around the time of Actium. His argument, reinforced by Burton 2000, has since gained fairly wide acceptance. On the uncertainty that the historian would have had to confront at this time, see Vasaly 2015: 3. Jaeger 1997: 6 discusses “the architectural metaphor of the construction and collapse of a massive edifice.” On “the Sallustian analysis of Rome’s decline” in the preface, see Moles 1993: 159–60. Yet Syme 1959: 54 argues that in both his style and politics, “Sallust was repellent to Livy.”

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referent, but one-man rule has since gained interpretive favor.44 In my view, however, the ambiguity is productive. It reflects the uncertainty of the era, in which neither the long-term rule of Augustus nor the establishment of a new constitutional form were clear.45 Unwilling to take an explicit stance on these questions, Livy leaves it to his readers to fill in the blanks. His use of the plural works to similar ends, allowing for the possibility of multiple remedies that operate at different levels in the text.46 Foremost among them in the preface is the practice of historiography, the therapeutic power of which is conveyed through adjectives of good health (salubre ac frugiferum, Liv. Praef. 10). By examining the customs and policies that enabled the ancestral vitality of the body politic, he suggests, readers might be able to chart a course back to its contemporary regeneration. In the first pentad of his history, Livy depicts a civic organism that changes its shape in response to constitutional developments. This arc begins with Romulus, who is identified as the king and father of the city in Book 1 (regem parentemque urbis Romanae, Liv. 1.16.3).47 Equating his establishment of the law with the creation of a body politic, Livy writes, rebus divinis rite perpetratis vocataque ad concilium multitudine quae coalescere in populi unius corpus nulla re praeterquam legibus poterat, iura dedit (“After divine matters were properly established and the crowd was called to the assembly, he gave it a system of law, for it was not able to coalesce into the body of a single people by any means except through laws,” Liv. 1.8.1). Like Cicero’s Scipio, Livy makes a clear distinction between a crowd (multitudo) and a people (populus); the former might reside in the same place, but the latter share the same values.48 The codification of these

44

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46

47

48

Dessau 1903 initially proposed the Augustan marriage legislation as the referent of remedium, but the argument has lost favor since Badian 1985 questioned the existence of this legislation in the first place. For one-man rule as more fitting, see Syme 1959: 42; Woodman 1988: 132–4; von Haehling 1989: 19, 213–5. Drawing on Walsh 1955: 370, Burton 2008: 83–5 suggests instead that Livy’s remedies are “of a specifically moral kind.” Woodman 1988: 134 asserts that Livy and his contemporaries knew that autocracy would result from the civil wars, but Burton 2000: 446 stresses the uncertainty of a world “tottering on the edge of destruction.” Moles 1993: 153 describes remedia as a “true plural, alluding both to one-man rule and to the moral value of AUC history.” Hammer 2014: 229–70 approaches Livy’s political thought as a form of remedium. Romulus’ role as the father of Rome was well-established by the time Livy wrote (e.g. huius urbis parens Romulus, Cic. Div. 1.3). For the lessons that Livy embeds in the figure of Romulus, see Stem 2007. For Cicero’s famous distinction between a multitudo and a populus, see Rep. 1.39.

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values into a legal system enables the realization of a civic community.49 The key term corpus, reinforced through the verb coalesco, signifies the shift. This cohesive organism serves an ideal that the Roman citizenry will struggle to sustain over the course of the first pentad.50 The unity of the body politic established by Romulus is first called into question in the power vacuum created by his death.51 Faced with choosing a new king, the Romans and Sabines begin to sort themselves along ethnic lines. The problem, Livy explains, is that each side wants the new king to be drawn from its own body: sui corporis creari regem volebant (Liv. 1.17.2). The emergence of these separate bodies looks back to the Rape of the Sabine Women, a crisis only recently resolved through the merging of two rival political communities into one: civitatem unam ex duabus faciunt (Liv. 1.13.4).52 Although this legend rendered Rome a city doubled from its earliest years (geminata urbe, Liv. 1.13.5), it was still able to achieve concord under the command of Romulus. In his absence, however, division threatens to devolve into factionalism (factionibus inter ordines certabatur, Liv. 1.17.1). Drawing on the language of Late Republican politics, Livy locates the Romans and Sabines in the roles later played by the senate and people. He describes a body politic predicated upon social divisions but able to overcome them under specific historical conditions. With the removal of these conditions, however, civic cohesion is called into question. The potential conflict between the Romans and Sabines soon finds resolution through their mutual commitment to kingship as the best form of government. Their consensus on this question allows them to overcome the divergence of their private interests: in variis voluntatibus regnari tamen omnes volebant (“Amid their various wishes, all nevertheless wanted to be ruled,” Liv. 1.17.3). Livy rearticulates this wish figuratively as the shared desire for a head: et esse igitur aliquod caput placebat (“And it was therefore pleasing that there be some sort of head,” Liv. 1.17.4). The leading citizens settle upon Numa Pompilius, who takes on the constitutional role of king and the figurative role of head of state. Livy stresses these dual roles at his inauguration, where the augur prays, ‘Iuppiter pater, si est fas hunc 49 50 51 52

According to Milnor 2007: 21, “it was the fact of law rather than any particular legal stipulation that was supposed to bind the fledgling community together.” On the difficulty of “the coalescing of distinct populations into a single people,” see Konstan 1986: 204. For interregna as “the exceptions that prove the rule” of strife’s rarity under monarchy, see Sailor 2006: 347–8. See Brown 1995: 292 on Livy’s construction of the Sabine Women myth as “an original and powerful expression of the ideal of concordia.”

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Numam Pompilium cuius ego caput teneo regem Romae esse . . . ’ (“Father Jupiter, if it is right that this Numa Pompilius, whose head I hold, be king of Rome . . . ” Liv. 1.18.9).53 Setting up a parallel between Numa, caput, and rex, Livy confirms the initially regal resonance of capital imagery in his narrative. By tying it to an exemplary founder of the res publica, however, he strips it of the negative associations familiar from Late Republican discourse. Monarchy and its attendant symbolism serve as the initial solution to discord, which becomes a recurrent theme in subsequent books.54 The association of the head with kingly command reappears in the relationship that Livy constructs between Rome and the territory under its control. He first figures Rome as the head of the world upon the apotheosis of Romulus, who appears in a vision to Proculus Julius and commands, ‘Abi, nuntia’ inquit ‘Romanis, caelestes ita velle ut mea Roma caput orbis terrarum sit’ (“‘Go now,’ he said, ‘announce to the Romans, that the heavens wish my Rome to be the head of the whole world,’” Liv. 1.16.7).55 As Claude Nicolet points out, these words mark the first instance of the caput orbis figure in Latin literature.56 They are used to naturalize Rome’s imperial prerogative, an idea that becomes even more explicit in a later scene of Latin surrender: ea erat confessio caput rerum Romam esse (“This constituted a confession that Rome was the head of everything,” Liv. 1.45.3).57 Rome’s occupation of this role is traced back to the discovery of a human head in the soil of the Capitoline Hill.58 While Late Republican writers were familiar with this legend, as we saw in Chapter 1, they oriented it towards the etymology of Capitolium rather than the project of empire. Livy, in contrast, declares, quae visa species haud per ambages arcem eam 53 54

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For Livy’s emphasis upon the touching of Numa’s head, a gesture that reappears in the accession of Servius Tullius, see Feldherr 1998: 215. Dionysius likewise draws attention to the reestablishment of concord through a musical metaphor: ἁρμοσάμενος δὲ τὸ πλῆθος ἅπαν ὥσπερ ὄργανον (“He fit together the whole multitude as if an instrument,” Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.62.5). Cicero tells the same story (Rep. 2.20) but without the caput orbis figure and Livy’s emphasis on imperial conquest (see Bréguet 1978: 264–7). “The metaphor of caput/corpus, for Rome and her empire appears precisely in the period of Augustus,” Nicolet 1991: 192, fn. 9 comments. For the concept of center and periphery crystallizing under Augustus, see Richardson 2008: 117–45. Ovid is the only other Latin writer to use this figure under the first princeps (e.g. Ov. Am. 1.15.26; Met. 15.435; Fast. 5.93; Tr. 3.5.46), on which see further later. This naturalization of imperial prerogative goes hand-in-hand with the quelling of discord at home, which Weeber 1984: 342–3 identifies as a key function of the prophecy. As Borgeaud 1987: 91 notes, the discovery of the head locates the imperial destiny of Rome in the religious topography of the city. Such an idea could only have arisen, of course, after the expansion of the empire.

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imperii caputque rerum fore portendebat (“Such a sight not at all ambiguously portended that it would be the citadel of empire and the head of the world,” Liv. 1.55.6).59 His words establish the programmatic importance of the caput as a signifier of Roman hegemony in the text, one that recurs at the ends of Books 1, 5, and 30.60 It operates both externally and internally in the first pentad, denoting the absolute authority that Rome exercises over its empire and that the rex exercises over the res publica.61 As long as the body politic remains under regal rule, this symbolism can operate unproblematically in both contexts. Because Livy links the head of state metaphor to the rule of kings, the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus prompts a shift in the shape of the body politic. Livy encourages this reading by framing the foundation of the Republic as a process of organic maturation. If liberty had been achieved too soon (libertatis immaturae, Liv. 2.1.3), he explains, the young res publica would have succumbed to civil strife. Like a wheat field, it had to ripen before it could harvest the fruits of liberty: dissipatae res nondum adultae discordia forent, quas fovit tranquilla moderatio imperii eoque nutriendo perduxit ut bonam frugem libertatis maturis iam viribus ferre posset (“The res publica – not yet grown – would have been destroyed by discord; yet the peaceful moderation of command fostered and nurtured it to such a point that it was able to bear the fruits of liberty with its strength already matured,” Liv. 2.1.6).62 Livy’s description of the kings rearing the young res publica merges a metaphor of farming with one of human development.63 A similar metaphor appears in Cicero, who portrayed Romulus raising a novus populus from the crib (in cunabulis) to young adulthood (adultum iam et paene puberem, Cic. Rep. 2.21). Both thinkers compare monarchy to parental supervision to posit the necessity of sole rule to the constitutional development of Rome. Yet whereas Cicero envisions a community that nears maturity by the end of Romulus’ reign, Livy proposes a longer period of development. In doing so, he 59 60

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Dionysius likewise connects the discovery of the head to the expansion of Rome, though limits his metaphor to the Italian peninsula (κεφαλὴν . . . συμπάσης Ἰταλίας, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 4.61.2). Jaeger 2015: 68 argues that the recurrence of the symbolism reinforces the architecture of the text. When Hannibal later refers to Rome the caput orbis (Liv. 21.30.10), he “encourages his men to anticipate as their final goal the schematized Rome of Books 1–5.” While the concept of absolute power arose in relation to that of sovereignty in the early modern period (on which see Lee 2021: 21–7), I use the term “absolute authority” more generally to denote a form of power that recognized no higher authority. For the locus of this idea in the concept of imperium, see Drogula 2015: 82. For Rome as “a ripening crop whose yield is freedom,” see Phillips 1978: 87. See Vasaly 2015: 54 on the educatio of the Roman people under kingly rule.

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establishes civic strength (vires) as a precondition for Republican governance. Only a body politic that has achieved the former, he suggests, can reap the rewards of the latter. Livy identifies discord as the primary threat that the Republic faces in its early years. Nearly as soon as self-governance is implemented, factionalism takes root between the patricians and plebeians. It is initially tied to the problem of debt bondage, which produces a form of class-based resentment akin to a disease: civitas secum ipsa discors intestino inter patres plebemque flagrabat odio (“The political community was at war with itself and burning with intestinal hatred between the senate and people,” Liv. 2.23.1).64 The fever metaphor implicit in flagro becomes more pronounced as popular resentment festers (invidiamque eam sua sponte gliscentem) and bursts into flame (accendit) via the body of an old man covered in scars (Liv. 2.23.2). His decrepit frame, marked by filth (squalore), paleness (pallore), and emaciation (macie), signifies the plight of the plebeians in microcosm (Liv. 2.23.3). Comparing usurers to a gangrenous infection (velut tabem), the old man offers his own injuries as proof of their rapacity (Liv. 2.23.6). Only after unrest spreads through the city (passim totam urbem pervadit, Liv. 2.23.7) does the senate meet to discuss a potential cure (remediis, Liv. 2.23.15). Yet their debate is interrupted by news of an impending Volscian attack, an external threat that finally prompts the senate and people to recognize that discord has divided their community into two (duas ex una civitate discordia fecerat, Liv. 2.24.1).65 Importing a familiar signifier of civil strife into his portrait of the fifth century bce, Livy confirms that the structural conflict between the senate and people was woven into the fabric of the Republic from its origins. While some Roman writers stressed its generative nature, Livy more often represents it as an obstacle to the realization of civic health.66 Writing in the aftermath of the civil wars, he was highly attuned to the vulnerability of a political community whose internal differences prevented the realization of common ends.

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Arena 2019 addresses the role of debt bondage in the conceptualization of Roman liberty as nondomination, paying special attention to this passage of Livy. On the coalescence of the patres and plebes in response to external threats, see Kapust 2011: 93–5. On the contrast between Livy and Sallust’s use of the metus hostilis trope, see additionally Pedullà 2018: 104; Miles 1995: 77–9. Recent work on Roman Republicanism stresses its conflictual nature, perhaps best represented in the works of Sallust. This reading is available in Livy’s first pentad but goes against the grain of the historian’s own analysis. It is more pronounced in Machiavelli’s reception of the text, as discussed by Pedullà 2018 and McCormick 2011.

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It is within this context that Menenius Agrippa delivers the Fable of the Belly in Book 2.67 Although the myth existed independently of Livy’s narration, it gains interpretive significance from the thematic framework in which it is situated.68 Menenius crafts his speech in response to the problem of the doubled res publica, which finds practical expression in the withdrawal of the plebeians to the Sacred Mount. Seeking to naturalize concord in a political community inclined towards its opposite, he cites the example of the human body. The body might seem like the perfect illustration of cooperation and harmony, he explains, but it was not always this way: tempore quo in homine non ut nunc omnia in unum consentiant, sed singulis membris suum cuique consilium, suus sermo fuerit (“There was a time when all the parts in a person did not agree as one, as they do now, but individual members had their own judgment and their own speech,” Liv. 2.32.9). The members fell into disagreement because they lacked a shared sense of the greater whole to which they contributed. Each could only see itself, a point underscored through the repetition of suus throughout the fable. Their blinkered perspective led them to suspect injustice in the distribution of responsibilities between the belly, which seemed to eat all the food, and the members, which seemed to do all the work in procuring it: indignatas reliquas partes sua cura, suo labore ac ministerio ventri omnia quaeri, ventrem in medio quietum nihil aliud quam datis voluptatibus frui (“The other parts were aggravated that everything was obtained for the belly by their care, by their effort and aid, and that the belly, resting in the middle, did nothing but enjoy the pleasures it was given,” Liv. 2.32.9). Rather than detailing the contributions of each of the aggrieved members, as Dionysius does (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.86.2), Livy sacrifices specificity to construct a simple dichotomy that maps onto the patrician–plebeian divide. Embarking on an ill-fated plot to starve the belly, the members demonstrate the unviability of a political community that prioritizes individual interests over collective needs.69

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See Ch.1 for the fable’s origins, role in Late Republican discourse, and relevant scholarly treatments. According to Connolly 2015: 63, “we should not make the mistake of identifying Menenius’ parable with Livy’s vision, still less with Roman self-understanding.” Vasaly 2015: 98 concurs, arguing that the fable does not “convey a distinctly Livian conception of the archaic plebs.” Although Livy advertises the eventual failure of Menenius’ model, as we will see later, Books 1–5 suggests his persistent commitment to an ideal of organic wholeness. conspirasse inde ne manus ad os cibum ferrent, nec os acciperet datum, nec dentes quae acciperent conficerent (“They conspired then that the hands would not bring food to the mouth, and that the mouth would not accept what was given, and that the teeth would not chew what was received,” Liv. 2.32.10).

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In explaining the rebellion of the members as the result of an error in judgment rather than a response to inequity, Menenius confirms the senatorial orientation of his analogy.70 He suggests that the aim of the members’ strike was not to redistribute resources within the body, but to subjugate the belly: hac ira, dum ventrem fame domare vellent, ipsa una membra totumque corpus ad extremam tabem venisse (“Because of this anger, while they wanted to subdue the belly with hunger, every one of the members and the whole body wasted away,” Liv. 2.32.10).71 The key word tabes puts Menenius in dialogue with the scarred old man, who used the same metaphor to describe patrician greed.72 Menenius counters his claim by suggesting that plebeian discontent is a disease too. It is not only exploitative creditors, but also ungrateful borrowers, who threaten the vitality of the Republic. Less important than the assignation of blame, however, is the mutual recognition of interdependence.73 As parts of one organism, he suggests, neither the belly nor members could exist on their own. As soon as the members came to appreciate that fact, they abandoned their revolt and yielded their individual autonomy to the collective good. According to Livy, the plebeians soon followed suit: comparando hinc quam intestina corporis seditio similis esset irae plebis in patres, flexisse mentes hominum (“By comparing in this way how the intestinal sedition of the body was similar to the anger of the plebeians towards the patricians, he changed the minds of men,” Liv. 2.32.12). Reinvesting themselves in a political order predicated upon their subordination, they descended from the Sacred Mount and reestablished the civic unity towards which the speech aims.74 The subsequent creation of the tribunate validates their decision, confirming their ability to achieve legal protections without challenging senatorial prerogative.75 In this way, Menenius Agrippa’s retelling of the Fable of the Belly justifies a paternalistic model of politics

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Mineo 2015b: 126 stresses the priority assigned to the senate in the fable, though his characterization of this institution as “the head of State” diverges from its imagistic framework. The frequent usage of domo in relation to the taming of animals conveys its force (OLD s.v. 1). Gardner 2019: 50, fn. 11 connects the use of tabes in the two passages. Dutoit 1948: 117–8 addresses the semantic scope of the word in Livy’s text. As Feldherr 1998: 121 puts it, “the inherent comparability of the state to the family or the body provides a constant resource for generation of collective loyalty.” Lincoln 1989: 146 argues that the fable exemplifies “a discourse that mystifies exploitative social relations while stimulating strong sentiments of affinity among those who might otherwise find themselves enemies.” Livy characterizes the tribunate and its powers as the bastion of Roman liberty (e.g. tribunicium auxilium et provocationem plebi Romanae, duas arces libertatis tuendae, Liv. 3.45.8; consularem legem de provocatione, unicum praesidium libertatis, Liv. 3.55.4). On this idea, see Arena 2012: 48.

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in which the rights of the people are secured through their deference to the senate.76 Livy positions the Fable of the Belly as a new model of the body politic that represents the transition from monarchical to Republican governance.77 He stresses the stakes of the transition by omitting the caput from Menenius’ analogy, despite its inclusion in other versions of the myth.78 No longer able to rely on a king to secure concord, the patricians and plebeians must now achieve this ideal on their own. Livy initially expresses faith in their ability to do so, declaring the problem of discord to have been “cured” in the aftermath of the First Secession (domi sanata discordia, Liv. 2.34.1). Observing the Romans from afar, however, their Etruscan enemies are less convinced. They are among the first to identify discordia intestina (Liv. 2.44.7) as an obstacle standing between Rome and the realization of its imperial ambitions: principesque in omnium Etruriae populorum conciliis fremebant aeternas opes esse Romanas nisi inter semet ipsi seditionibus saeviant (“And the leading men in the councils of all the Etrurian peoples were grumbling that Rome’s power would be permanent unless they turned against each other through dissensions,” Liv. 2.44.8). They elaborate upon this idea within the imagistic parameters set by the text, identifying discord as a poison uniquely capable of killing empires: id unum venenum, eam labem civitatibus opulentis repertam ut magna imperia mortalia essent (“This was the one poison, the one instability found in wealthy civic communities that could make great empires mortal,” Liv. 2.44.8).79 In their evocation of a sick body with venenum and an unstable building with labes, the Etruscans employ the same metaphors of decline that structure Livy’s preface. The resonance confirms the contemporary stakes of the questions with which the first pentad engages. Foremost among them is whether the realization of civic cohesion is feasible in a political community that lacks the unifying command of a head of state. Livy uses the speech of the Etruscans to engage in a familiar debate in Greek and Roman philosophy over the susceptibility of political communities to the cycles of growth and decay that afflict other organisms.80 In his 76

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Kapust 2004 illustrates the compatibility of republican liberty and paternalism in Livy’s first ten books. In his view, the patricians exemplify an order that can “disempower the citizenry while leaving them free,” (401). This reading has important consequences for the proponents of neorepublicanism today. As noted by Connolly 2007: 63. 78 e.g. Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.86.2; Val. Max. 8.9.1. For the agrarian legislation of the tribunes as a typical venenum in the first pentad, see Liv. 2.52.2. For an overview of this tradition, see Trompf 1979: 60–115.

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influential theory of anacyclosis, Polybius employs a biological analogy to explain the constitutional trajectories of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, all of which experience cycles of growth, acme, and decline in accordance with natural law.81 The advantage of Rome’s mixed constitution lay in its ability to slow, but not avert, the cycle.82 Polybius makes this clear when he promises to provide his readers with knowledge not only of Rome’s birth (τῆς συστάσεως), growth (τῆς αὐξήσεως), and peak (τῆς ἀκμῆς), but also of its future degeneration (τῆς εἰς τοὔμπαλιν ἐσομένης ἐκ τούτων μεταβολῆς, Polyb. 6.9.12–13). Just as this πολιτεία arose naturally, he asserts, so too will it decline naturally: κατὰ φύσιν ἕξειν καὶ τὴν εἰς τἀναντία μεταβολήν (“It will also have its contrary decline according to nature,” Polyb. 6.9.13).83 Polybius goes on to identify two vices that contribute to the decline of the mixed constitution: the love of office and the extravagant display of wealth (Polyb. 6.57.6).84 He thereby anticipates, and perhaps serves as the inspiration for, Sallust’s portrayal of ambitio and avaritia as the primary diseases responsible for the degeneration of the Roman body politic.85 Cicero revised Polybius’ theory of anacyclosis to allow for the possibility, if not probability, of an immortal res publica. In the Pro Rabirio Perduellionis, he urged his fellow citizens to be on guard against intestinal ills (intestinis malis) if they desire an immortal political community (immortalem hanc civitatem) and permanent empire (aeternum hoc imperium, Cic. Rab. Perd. 33).86 In the Pro Marcello, he cast the immortal res publica as an ideal put at risk by its dependence upon the mortal Caesar: doleoque, cum res publica immortalis esse debeat, eam in unius mortalis anima consistere (“I am saddened that the res publica depends upon the life of one man, since it should be immortal,” Cic. Marcell. 22). Both speeches suggest that Romans should work towards the goal of civic immortality but warn

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See Hahm 1995; Trompf 1979: 4–59; Cole 1964; Roveri 1964: 181–5, 194–7; Brink and Walbank 1954; Ryffel 1949. For Polybius’ parallel application of this theory to the Roman and Achaeans, see Champion 2004: 100–69. On the difficulty of reconciling the stability of the mixed constitution with the inevitability of decay in Polybius’ thought, see Brink and Walbank 1954: 102–7. Walbank 2002: 193 suggests that Polybius was in fact “not particularly interested in the concept of decline.” See Hahm 1995: 44 on these vices. Shaw 2022: 168 argues that Sallust’s pessimism signals his rejection of Polybius’ model of constitutional development. Yet we might also see his texts as an investigation into the civic mortality that Polybius posits. Moatti 2011: 474 argues that aeternitas connotes permanence rather than eternity in debates over the longevity of political regimes.

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of significant obstacles to its realization.87 Cicero makes a similar point in the third book of De Republica, where Laelius says, tamen de posteris nostris et de illa immortalitate rei publicae sollicitor, quae poterat esse perpetua si patriis viveretur institutis et moribus (“Yet I worry about our descendants and about that immortality of the res publica, which could be eternal, if life were conducted according to ancestral habits and customs,” Cic. Rep. 3.41). James Zetzel argues that Laelius’ counterfactual denies the realizability of civic immortality in the present; Rome “could be, but is no longer, eternal.”88 His pessimistic reading of the passage is echoed by Atkins, who stresses the disjuncture between Laelius’ words and his insistence upon the contingency, temporality, and change that govern human affairs. “In assigning the attribute of eternality to political affairs,” he writes, “Laelius is reduced to grasping at straws.”89 Even as Cicero pursues a more optimistic line of analysis than Polybius, then, he too confronts the unlikelihood of a res publica immortalis. Livy’s Etruscans draw on this tradition in their identification of discord as the poison that will make Rome mortal. As long as class-based antagonisms continue to fester, the Republican body politic will eventually begin to decline. At the conclusion of Book 2, Livy confirms the prescience of the Etruscans’ analysis. Reporting the return of discord to a body politic only recently reunified through the Fable of the Belly, he details a conflict between the patricians and plebeians that nearly reaches the point of bloodshed. In an effort to calm the anger of the consul Appius Claudius and restore order, his fellow senators urge him to recognize the fractured state of their community: dum consules tribunique ad se quisque omnia trahant, nihil relictum esse virium in medio; distractam laceratamque rem publicam (“While the consuls and tribunes were all taking everything for themselves, no strength was left to be shared; the res publica had been ripped apart and mangled,” Liv. 2.57.3). Livy crafts their words in unmistakable dialogue with Sallust, who describes factionalism in the Late Republic in the same terms: res publica, quae media fuerat, dilacerata (Sall. Iug. 41.5). Yet the similarity of their language belies a difference in their political perspectives. As we saw in Chapter 1, Sallust correlates the res publica dilacerata with a period of decline caused by the downfall of Carthage. Prior to this point, he represents the struggle between the senate and people as conducive to civic vitality. Livy, in contrast, describes discord as a weakness rather than 87

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Marquez 2011: 423 argues that Cicero views a virtuous governing class as a precondition for civic eternity that no longer exists in Rome. Ferrary 1995: 71 instead identifies the absence of true law in the res publica as the barrier to its immortality. Zetzel 1996: 316. 89 Atkins 2013a: 41.

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strength of the Republic from its foundation. He consistently identifies it as a malum, morbus, contagio, and venenum that prevents the realization of consensus upon which a healthy body politic is based.90 It is for this reason that Kapust classifies Livy as a “consensualist” rather than “antagonistic” Republican.91 The organic imagery of the first pentad supports this view; it frames the patrician–plebeian divide as an obstacle to, rather than component of, Rome’s success. Book 3 uses the descent of a plague to literalize the failure of the organic ideal laid out by Menenius Agrippa.92 Livy heralds the arrival of an annus pestilens (Liv. 3.6.2) that sees the spread of a morbus through the countryside and city. Counted among the dead are both consuls, as well as most of the senators and men of military age. Summing up the scope of the catastrophe, he writes, deserta omnia, sine capite, sine viribus (“Everything was abandoned, without a head and without strength,” Liv. 3.7.1). The caput, appearing for the first time since Book 1, denotes the absence of political leadership in Rome, which has been deprived of its magistrates and leading citizens. As discord brews within this power vacuum, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus proposes the appointment of a dictator, explaining, non ita civitatem aegram esse ut consuetis remediis sisti possit; dictatore opus esse rei publicae (“The sickness in the civic community was not one that could be cured with typical remedies; the res publica needed a dictator,” Liv. 3.20.8). He does not call for a head of state, suggesting the unavailability of this regally inflected symbol in Republican political discourse. He instead invokes the Ciceronian ideal of a civic healer able to remediate ills both literal and figurative. His fellow citizens are initially unwilling to consider his proposal, fearful of concentrating so much power into the hands of one man. As the threat of enemy armies grows too large to ignore, however, they realize their mistake. Persuading him to leave his farm and return to Rome, they appoint him to the dictatorship (Liv. 3.26–9). His subsequent success within this role confirms the efficacy of individual authority, as opposed to patrician–plebeian cooperation, in remediating the problem of civil strife.93 90

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An idea summed up in a consular speech at the end of Book 3 (discordia ordinum et venenum urbis huius, patrum ac plebis certamina, “the discord of the orders and the poison of this city, strife between the patricians and plebeians,” Liv. 3.67.6). Kapust 2011: 22. Gardner 2019: 45–78 persuasively illustrates Livy’s use of literal pestilences as metaphors for ideological contagion. She argues that Rome’s susceptibility to plague “retrospectively infuses Menenius’ paradigm of the corpus as civic body with all the structural entropy and renovation that pestilence would come to mean in the evolving project of Livy’s history,” (51). See Ogilvie 1965: 436 on Cincinnatus as “the Roman ideal” whose career occupies the center of the first pentad, a point elaborated by Vasaly 2015: 85–6. Atkins 2018b: 74–5 argues that his exemplarity

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In Book 3, the Roman citizenry experiments with another solution to the conflict between the patricians and plebeians: the second decemvirate.94 Livy portrays this constitutional innovation as another stage in the life cycle of the body politic, writing, anno trecentesimo altero quam condita Roma erat iterum mutatur forma civitatis, ab consulibus ad decemviros (“In the three hundred and second year after the foundation of Rome, the shape of the political community changed again, from consuls to decemvirs,” Liv. 3.33.1). Although he notes that the significance of the change (mutatio) was lessened by its brevity (non diuturna), he devotes a significant portion of Book 3 to illustrating its corrosive effects.95 Looking back to the metaphor of the wheat field that announced the foundation of the Republic, he compares the decemvirate to a fruit that matured too quickly and began to rot: Laeta enim principia magistratus eius nimis luxuriavere; eo citius lapsa res est (“For the prosperous beginnings of this office ripened too quickly; it therefore quickly perished,” Liv. 3.33.2). The verb luxurio, used to describe both the excessive ripening of a plant and the swelling of a body, foregrounds the organic stakes of the decemvirate, which risks accelerating the life cycle of the res publica.96 The tyranny of the decemvirs culminates in the death of Verginia, which has long been interpreted as a figurative assault on the body politic.97 The deleterious effects of this constitutional innovation confirm its failure as a solution to the perennial problem of patrician–plebeian strife. The corruption of the second decemvirate and the temporary nature of the dictatorship point to the need for a more permanent remedy for the perpetually beleaguered body politic. A speech delivered by the staunch patrician Appius Claudius in Book 5 confirms that it will not be found in the model of the civic healer. Comparing tribunes to physicians who profit by keeping their patients sick, he says, sic hercule, tamquam artifices improbi, opus quaerunt et semper aegri aliquid esse in re publica volunt, ut sit ad cuius curationem a vobis adhibeantur (“By Hercules, like quack physicians, they seek employment and always want there to be a disease in the res publica, so that there is something for you to invite them to cure,” Liv. 5.3.6).98 Exploiting Roman skepticism towards Greek medicine and its

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derives from his willing resignation of the dictatorship, which signals his respect for the boundaries of Republican governance. Ungern-Sternberg 1986 argues for the second decemvirate as an invention of the Roman annalists. On the exceptional length of Livy’s account, as well as its careful placement in the center of the first pentad, see Vasaly 2015: 73–6. See OLD s.v. 1. 97 Claassen 1998: 92–4; Joshel 1991; Joplin 1990. See OLD s.v. 2 for artifex as an expert practitioner of any art.

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practitioners, Appius Claudius encourages his audience to view the tribunes with suspicion. Later in his speech, he addresses the tribunes directly and accuses them of treating the symptoms while worsening the disease: haec sunt, tribuni, consilia vestra, non hercule dissimilia ac si quis aegro qui curari se fortiter passus extemplo convalescere possit, cibi gratia praesentis aut potionis longinquum et forsitan insanabilem morbum efficiat (“These are your plans, tribunes, not at all different, by Hercules, than if someone should make a sick man’s disease lasting and perhaps incurable by granting his wish for food and drink, when he could have recovered immediately by allowing himself to be treated vigorously,” Liv. 5.5.12).99 His analogy recalls the conclusion of the First Catilinarian, when Cicero argues that expelling Catiline alone is akin to giving cold water to a feverish patient (Cic. Cat. 1.31). A treatment for the symptom rather than disease, the remedy will only worsen the condition of the body politic over time. The allusion allows Livy to import the factionalism of the Late Republic into his portrayal of Archaic politics once more. The inefficacy of the tribunician healers whom Appius Claudius castigates looks ahead to the failure of the senatorial healers upon whom Cicero calls. Whether representatives of the senate or people, the physicians to the body politic seem to exacerbate the social antagonisms they intend to remedy. This model of statesmanship therefore does not provide a viable way out of civil strife. In Book 5, Livy explores a final possibility for remediating the patrician– plebeian divide: the physical separation of the Roman citizenry into two cities. Accomplished through a mass migration to Veii, the proposal is put forward by the tribunes amid multiplex seditio (Liv. 5.24.4). They argue that a political community can be divided into two parts without losing its unity: duasque urbes communi re publica incoli a populo Romano posse (“Two cities could be inhabited by the Roman people while the res publica remained shared,” Liv. 5.24.8). Yet the patricians recognize the impossibility of such a bargain, asking, quippe nunc in una urbe tantum dissensionum esse: quid in duabus urbibus fore? (“Seeing as there was so much dissension in one city, how much would there be in two cities?” Liv. 5.24.10). In their view, the literal division of the city would only magnify the symbolic dissolution of the res publica.100 On the day of the vote, they approach each of the tribes and beg them not to turn the Roman people into an exile 99 100

See also Liv. 5.6.1; 5.12.7. “The motion at best threatens civil strife,” Kraus 1994b: 280 remarks, “at worst it would cause the unfounding of Rome.”

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bereft of its native soil: ne exsulem, extorrem populum Romanum ab solo patrio (Liv. 5.30.6). The comparison grants the plebeians a body of their own but one that is no longer Roman and therefore unworthy of inhabitance. The move to Veii is subsequently abandoned, proving that the senate and people have not lost their faith in the ideal of organic wholeness, but are simply unable to find a path to its realization. Rather than exiling themselves, the tribunes instead inflict this punishment on M. Furius Camillus, a statesman whose prominence in the city derives from both his military exploits and his conciliatory politics.101 Voluntarily leaving the city rather than participating in a sham trial, Camillus is last seen delivering a prayer that his ungrateful community recognize the error in its ways. Anticipating the events to come, Livy blames the Gallic Sack on the banishment of the one citizen who could have averted the disaster: expulso cive quo manente, si quicquam humanorum certi est, capi Roma non potuerat, adventante fatali urbi clade legati ab Clusinis veniunt auxilium adversus Gallos petentes (“After the expulsion of that citizen whose presence could have prevented the capture of Rome, if anything of human affairs is certain, deadly destruction approached the city and ambassadors arrived from Clusium seeking help against the Gauls,” Liv. 5.33.1). Without Camillus’ guidance, the Roman citizenry becomes paralyzed by discord yet again. Unable to agree upon the appointment of a dictator to respond to the marauding Gauls, it has only itself to blame for what comes next. In this way, Livy frames the destruction of the city as an act of figurative self-harm rooted in civil strife.102 The Sack of Rome marks the climax of Livy’s first pentad and the death of the civic organism operative in Books 2–5. Because Romans analogized their city to a physical body, with the Capitoline as its head, the gates as its senses, the treasury as its intestines, and the Cloaca Maxima as its bowels, they were primed to interpret its destruction in corporeal terms.103 Livy invites this reading by comparing those who witnessed the invasion from the Capitoline Hill to mourners at a funeral: quocumque clamor hostium, mulierum puerorumque ploratus, sonitus flammae et fragor ruentium tectorum avertisset, paventes ad omnia animos oraque et oculos flectebant, velut ad spectaculum a fortuna positi occidentis patriae (“Wherever the shouts of the enemies, the wails of women and children, the thundering of the flames, and the crashing of falling buildings had captured their attention, 101 102 103

On Camillus’ connection to the ideal of concord, see Momigliano 1942. See Mineo 2015a: 141 on the Gallic sack as “the end result of political evolution fostering discordia” that began with Tarquinius Superbus. See Gowers 1995 alongside discussion in Ch. 1.

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they fearfully turned their minds and faces and eyes to all these things, as if placed by Fortune at the spectacle of their dying homeland,” Liv. 5.42.4). Evoking the sounds of funereal lamentations and the crackling flames of a pyre, Livy suggests that the corpse on display is that of Rome itself. Its death plays an integral role in the cycle of history governing the text. Only a political community that has died, after all, can experience the rebirth that scholars have long identified at the beginning of Book 6 (secunda origo, Liv. 6.1.1).104 With this revival comes a new model of the body politic to replace that of the Fable of the Belly. In the concluding chapters of Book 5, Livy looks ahead to the shape that this new body politic will take. While the Gauls are occupied with pillage and plunder, residents from the countryside begin to gather with allied Latins in Veii and hatch a plan to recapture Rome. Describing the gradual growth of their strength (viresque crescebant, Liv. 5.46.4), Livy compares the group to a maturing body: maturum iam videbatur repeti patriam eripique ex hostium manibus; sed corpori valido caput deerat (“It seemed that the time was now ripe for the country to be taken back and snatched from enemy hands; but a head was lacking to the strong body,” Liv. 5.46.5). His phrasing recalls the opening of Book 2, where the new Republic is described in similar terms (maturis iam viribus, Liv. 2.1.6). Whereas the Republican body politic is shaped without reference to a head of state, however, those assembled in Veii realize they need one to survive. Their openness to this model of authority suggests that the res publica is entering a new stage in its evolution. The ramifications of their decision are nevertheless limited by the military context in which it is made. Because the sphere of war admitted stronger forms of individual authority than that of peace, it was less jarring to refer to a caput in this context.105 Whether capital symbolism will make its way into the domestic sphere is a question that Livy initially leaves unanswered. Seeking a statesman to take on the head of state role, those gathered in Veii think of the banished Camillus: locus ipse admonebat Camilli (“The place itself reminded them of Camillus,” Liv. 5.46.6). Now in need of the sort of strong leader they once feared, they decide to recall him from his exile in Ardea and appoint him to the dictatorship. The application of 104

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Kraus 1994a: 25 argues that the first two pentads have three important divisions: the beginning of Rome, the beginning of the Republic, and the secunda origo that follows the Gallic Sack. Each juncture is not only formally marked, but also thematized to show how “a past destruction gives way to future growth.” See also Oakley 1997: 301–6; Miles 1986: 19–21. For the sharp distinction between the authority of the military commander and that of the civilian magistrate in Roman thought, see Drogula 2015: 55.

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capital symbolism to this office, a possibility raised but not realized in Book 3, suggests the adaptation of a once regal metaphor to the parameters of Republican magistracy. Livy emphasizes that this adaptation takes place in response to public consensus and in accordance with constitutional norms: consensu omnium placuit ab Ardea Camillum acciri, sed antea consulto senatu qui Romae esset: adeo regebat omnia pudor discriminaque rerum prope perditis rebus servabant (“By the consensus of all it was decided to recall Camillus from Ardea, but only after the senate was consulted in Rome: to such an extent was propriety ruling everything, and were they protecting the distinctions of matters, even though things were nearly ruined,” Liv. 5.46.7). The insistence of those in Veii upon following legal procedures confirms that they see themselves as legal representatives of the res publica.106 That the senate accepts their status as such is suggested by its response: it agrees to recall Camillus from exile through the comitia curiata and appoint him dictator in absentia. Acknowledging that it is unclear whether Camillus departed from Ardea before or after the appointment was completed, Livy writes that it is preferable to believe (quod magis credere libet) that he waited for the law to be passed so that he did not violate the will of the people (iniussu populi, Liv. 5.46.11). Livy thereby betrays his own investment in a narrative in which the authority of Camillus is constitutionally sanctioned. Republican customs set the boundaries within which Camillus becomes the head of state, allowing the metaphor to shed its regal heritage. As Book 5 comes to an end, Livy confirms the vitality of the new body politic over which Camillus presides. Its health is thrown into sharp relief by the descent of a plague on the Gauls (Gallos pestilentia, Liv. 5.48.1). Their illness mirrors that suffered earlier by the Romans and renders them equally vulnerable to attack. They are subsequently expelled from the city by the Veiian collective, a victory that prompts Camillus to be heralded as the savior of Rome: Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis haud vanis laudibus appellabatur (“He was praised in not at all empty terms as Romulus and father of the country and another founder of the city,” Liv. 5.49.7). Through these titles, Livy introduces the intertwined themes of rebirth and refoundation, which will extend into and peak in the opening

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Kraus 1994b: 278–82 illustrates that the creation of alterae Romae is a major theme of Book 5; Haimson Lushkov 2015: 122 argues that the Veiian collective represents one such altera Roma instantiated through legalism.

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of Book 6.107 He reinforces the parallel between the two founding fathers at the conclusion of Book 5, when Camillus delivers a speech to discourage another proposed move to Veii. Reminding his fellow citizens of the prophesy that Romulus delivered in Book 1, he asserts, hic Capitolium est, ubi quondam capite humano invento responsum est eo loco caput rerum summamque imperii fore (“Here is the Capitoline, where it was once said upon the discovery of a human head that this spot would be the head of the world and peak of empire,” Liv. 5.54.7).108 In assigning the same speech to both founders, Livy ties Rome’s imperial ambitions to its exemplary statesmen. The success of expansion abroad, he suggests, depends upon having a viable head of state at home. Because Camillus becomes the head of state through the office of the dictatorship and in the context of a military crisis, it is initially uncertain whether this model of authority will remain operative in peacetime. The opening chapter of Book 6, however, suggests that his extraordinary position in the body politic extends beyond the Gallic crisis. It begins with an extended organic metaphor that makes the rebirth of Rome explicit in the narrative: clariora deinceps certioraque ab secunda origine velut ab stirpibus laetius feraciusque renatae urbis gesta domi militiaeque exponentur (“Hereafter the civil and martial deeds of the reborn city will be set forth more clearly and certainly from its second origin, as if springing again from its roots more abundantly and fruitfully,” Liv. 6.1.3). Having experimented with metaphors of fields and fruits upon the foundation of the Republic and Second Decemvirate, respectively, Livy now turns to the vine. The shift allows him to incorporate the exemplary statesman into an organic model of constitutional development: ceterum primo quo adminiculo erecta erat eodem innixa M. Furio principe stetit (“But it [the city] stood by leaning on the same support by which it had been first raised, on Camillus, the first citizen,” Liv. 6.1.4).109 Livy’s portrayal of the res publica leaning on a stake accentuates rather than avoids the idea of collective reliance upon one man. Viticulture, after all, was frequently used as a model of dependence in Roman thought. Cicero’s De Finibus suggests 107

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On the significance of Camillus’ titles, see Ungern-Sternberg 2001: 291–2 and Miles 1986: 24–5, who describes them as “deliberate anachronisms” that reflect Livy’s own view of Rome’s foundation and refoundation. Jaeger 1997: 90–1 draws attention to this parallel. Kraus 1994b: 281 describes Camillus’ evocation of “the twin powers of head and boundary” as “a perfect means of persuasion in a time of crisis,” while Jaeger 1997: 90–1 stresses Romulus’ and Camillus’ “comprehensive vision” of Rome and its place in the world. The primary definition of an adminiculum is a stake on which vines lean, but it could also be used to describe anything serving as a prop (OLD s.v. 1).

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that vines can only thrive under the care of a vinedresser equipped with the knowledge to trim (circumcidat), prune (amputet), straighten (erigat), lift (extollat), and prop (adminiculet) them. Summing up the reliance of the vine on external aids, he writes, in ipsa enim parum magna vis inest, ut quam optime se habere possit, si nulla cultura adhibeatur (“For it has insufficient strength in itself to reach its highest form unless it is aided by cultivation,” Cic. Fin. 5.39). In applying the same metaphor to Rome, Livy suggests that its citizens have sacrificed a degree of autonomy in the pursuit of political stability. The language of rebirth and regeneration implicitly validates their decision. Clarifying the implications of his agricultural imagery for the metaphor of the body politic, Livy finally calls Camillus a head of state. He opens the third chapter of Book 6 by declaring, caput rei Romanae Camillus erat (Liv. 6.3.1). As Christina Kraus points out, the “striking epithet” combines Rome’s hegemonic role as the caput rerum and Ennius’ famous line, moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque (Enn. Ann. Fr. 156 Skutsch).110 Stamping the head of state metaphor with Ennius’ imprimatur, Livy grants it the ancestral legitimacy it lacked in the political discourse of the Late Republic. This section has illustrated how the imagistic arc of the first pentad makes such a rehabilitation possible. In Book 1, Livy describes a regal res publica that enjoys stability but eventually succumbs to tyranny and loses its liberty. The Republican res publica operative in Books 2–5 faces the opposite problem. It enjoys independence but cannot regulate civil strife, leading to prolonged periods of instability that culminate in the Gallic Sack. The solution is not a return to monarchy, but a new governing model that makes space for the exemplary statesman to guide the res publica towards concord. Camillus’ transformation into the caput rei Romanae represents the fulfillment of this vision. As a Republican head of state, he embodies the reconciliation of two conflicting models of the body politic. The figurative framework that I have traced is specific to Livy’s Archaic history; though organic imagery continues to appear in the rest of the text, it does not demarcate distinct phases in the life cycle of the res publica. Two other instances of capital symbolism, however, merit brief mention. The first comes in Book 6, when the rise and fall of M. Manlius Capitolinus is used to illustrate the danger posed by statesmen who exploit the head of state metaphor for personal gain. Manlius, who earns the cognomen Capitolinus due to his protection of the Capitoline Hill during the Gallic 110

Kraus 1994a: ad loc.

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invasion, initially acts as a complement to Camillus, defending the city from the inside while Camillus rescues it from the outside.111 In Book 6, however, he becomes a plebeian rabble rouser who reopens the recently healed wounds of civil strife: recrudescente Manliana seditione (Liv. 6.18.1).112 The rare verb recrudesco confirms that the body politic is once again in peril, so much so that the senate tries to avoid foreign wars lest it be distracted from healing domestic ills: ab sanandis domesticis malis (Liv. 6.18.2).113 Appropriating capital symbolism to gain popular favor, Manlius declares, solo aequandae sunt dictaturae consulatusque, ut caput attollere Romana plebes possit (“Dictatorships and consulships must be leveled to the ground so that the Roman plebs are able to lift their head,” Liv. 6.18.14). His proposal constitutes a rejection of the belly–members and head–body dualities; while the former validates the authority of the senate and the latter that of the statesman, both presume popular obedience as the natural order of things. Manlius instead steps into the mold of Catiline, who sought to grant the people their own head and gain personal power along the way.114 The senate consequently responds to Manlius as it later would to Catiline, implementing the senatus consultum ultimum to prevent an intestinum bellum (Liv. 6.19.2) against a plague-bearing citizen (pestiferum civem, Liv. 6.19.6). Thrown off the Tarpeian Rock, the man named Capitolinus plunges to his death from the caput mundi. The overdetermined capital symbolism hints at the risk posed by this figuration of statesmanship.115 Falling into the hands of a populist demagogue rather than exemplary founder, it could be used to subvert rather than support the ancestral constitution. The same set of concerns reemerges later in relation to Scipio Africanus. Although Livy denies that Scipio ever represented a threat to the Republic, his outsized influence earns him the ire of radical tribunes who make false charges to secure his exile. Among their accusations is that Scipio acted more like a dictator than a legate during his recent trip to Greece, showing 111 112 113

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Jaeger 1997: 58. On Camillus and Manlius as doubles, see also Neel 2015: 207–20. On Manlius as a proto-popularis figure in the Roman tradition, see Kaplow 2012; Seager 1977: 378–82. For recrudesco as the reopening of a wound, see OLD s.v. 1. The only Late Republican use of the verb comes from a letter in which Cicero laments that the death of his daughter has reopened (recrudescunt) wounds suffered in the public sphere (Cic. Fam. 4.6.2). Oakley 1997: 483 notes the echoes of Catiline in Livy’s portrayal of Manlius Capitolinus, foremost among which is Manlius’ borrowing of the phrase quousque tandem (Liv. 6.18.5) from Cicero’s First Catilinarian (Cic. Cat. 1.1) and Sallust’s Bellum Catilinae (Sall. Cat. 20.9). Neel 2015: 220 argues that the conflict between Manlius Capitolinus and Camillus is used “to problematize the question of political power after the Gallic sack.”

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those in the East what those in the West had long known: unum hominem caput columenque imperii Romani esse, sub umbra Scipionis civitatem dominam orbis terrarum latere (“That one man was the head and column of the Roman empire, and that a political community that was mistress of the world lay under the shadow of Scipio,” Liv. 38.51.4).116 The tribunes revive the head of state metaphor, dormant in Livy’s history since Book 6, to accuse Scipio of exercising authority that exceeds the bounds of Republican statesmanship.117 At the same time, they also acknowledge Rome’s dependence on him by comparing him – like Camillus – to a prop upon which the empire relies for support.118 They articulate a tension at the heart of Roman politics, namely that the same statesmen upon whom the Republic depended for its acquisition of empire threatened its longevity through their accumulation of outsized influence. As Rome recedes under his shadow, Scipio subsumes the body politic into himself.119 The speech of the tribunes confirms that the head of state metaphor could still be used to police the boundaries of Republican statesmanship, sounding a note of caution for those interested in laying claim to this role.120 Over the course of Ab Urbe Condita, Livy himself applies capital symbolism to only two men: Numa and Camillus. It is well known that both played key roles in the self-fashioning of Augustus, who framed his role in the res publica in relation to those played by exemplary ancestors.121 Livy contributes to this project by comparing the religious and civic refoundations over which Numa and Camillus presided to acts later performed by Augustus.122 When Numa closes the Temple of Janus, for 116

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Briscoe 2008: ad loc. notes that caput columenque appears nowhere else in Latin literature. The only other usage of columen in Livy is found at 6.36.10, perhaps suggesting a link between the symbolism of Books 6 and 38. Livy perhaps reproduces an actual accusation wielded against Scipio; as we saw in Ch. 1, his contemporary P. Licinius Varus joked that his head was growing too big (Cic. de Or. 2.250). Livy explicitly compares Scipio to Camillus due to their shared experience of exile (Liv. 45.38.7), on which see Chaplin 2015: 107. See Tipping 2010: 127, who notes further parallels between Camillus and Scipio, including the identification of each as a fatalis dux (Camillus at Liv. 5.19.2; Scipio at Liv. 22.53.6; 30.28.11). On Scipio Africanus as a prototype for Julius Caesar, see Rawson 1975: 149. Numa and Camillus were popular exempla before the Augustan era; Gaertner 2008 demonstrates Camillus’ importance as a political paradigm in the Late Republic, while Gruen 1990: 158–92 shows how Numa’s rumored studies with Pythagoras were used to explore the relationship between Rome and Greece. See Chaplin 2000 on exemplarity in Livy’s history and Langlands 2018 and Roller 2018 on its role in Roman discourse more broadly. As Edwards 1996: 50 argues, we should not try to plot a direct relationship between Augustus’ program of restoration and Livy’s first pentad. Both should instead “be seen as emerging from the same cluster of concerns and as serving to reinforce one another.” Miles 1995: 109 similarly stresses their shared interest in integrating concerns about decline with the emergence of powerful political leaders.

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example, Livy looks ahead to Augustus’ completion of the same act: iterum . . . post bellum Actiacum ab imperatore Caesare Augusto pace terra marique parta (“Again . . . after the Actian war, when peace over land and sea was secured by Caesar Augustus as imperator,” Liv. 1.19.3).123 The parallel invites readers to link capital symbolism to both men. The same idea found iconographical expression in a series of asses likely minted in 23 bce that depict Augustus’ head on one side and Numa’s on the other, establishing the latter as an exemplum for the former.124 Andrew WallaceHadrill suggests that the ideological power of double-headed coins stems from the sense of confusion that they produce in their users as to which side is the obverse and which the reverse.125 There is no easy way to distinguish between them, so that the two heads become interchangeable symbols of authority. In this way, the coin type visually expressed a message that could also be extrapolated from Livy’s text: as a second Numa, Augustus was another head of state. Livy draws even more pronounced parallels between Augustus and Camillus, who share the task of refoundation in the aftermath of civic destruction. By calling Camillus Romulus ac parens patriae conditorque alter urbis (Liv. 5.49.7) and referring to him as the first citizen (princeps, Liv. 6.1.3), he evokes the language with which Augustus was praised.126 He himself characterizes Augustus as a conditor at 4.20.7, suggesting the purposefulness of the resonance. And though the title pater patriae was not officially bestowed on Augustus until 2 bce, he was already being addressed as pater atque princeps in Horace’s roughly contemporary 123

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We can compare Augustus’ reference to the same event: Ianum Quirinum, quem claussum esse maiores nostri voluerunt, cum per totum imperium populi Romani terra marique esset parta victoriis pax (“The Temple of Janus Quirinus, which our ancestors wished to be closed when peace over land and sea had been secured by victory through the whole empire of the Roman people,” Aug. RG 13). The similarity between the two passages can be viewed in relation to “the social and discursive practices of which each is a node,” Kennedy 1992: 44 argues. For the renewed significance of the Temple of Janus during this period, see DeBrohun 2007. Evans 1992: 142–3 discusses the coin type and its interpretive difficulties, including its ambiguous date of issue (hypotheses have ranged from 23–15 bce). She follows Mattingly in arguing for a date of 23 bce and interprets its iconography in relation to the closing of the Temple of Janus, a view that has become somewhat standard. Grant 1953: 105–6 argues for an “implied analogy” between Numa and Augustus, writing that Augustus was now playing the role of “a second Numa.” Yet it is worth noting that the Numa asses were issued by Gn. Calpurnius Piso, whose gens traced its heritage back to Rome’s second king. Even as the coin type signified Augustus’ authority, then, Piso’s role in minting it speaks to traditional expressions of aristocratic competition. “In true Augustan style,” Galinsky 1996: 34 remarks, “the framework of references is more than one-dimensional.” Wallace-Hadrill 1986: 71–2. “That sense of confusion,” he writes, “is precisely the ‘message’ the coin conveys.” See Miles 1995: 98–108 for Livy’s reception and reworking of the titles parens patriae and conditor.

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Odes.127 These allusions point towards deeper thematic parallels that operate throughout Book 5 and have been the subject of much scholarly discussion.128 For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that the statesman whom Livy calls the caput rei Romanae is the same one to whom he most directly compares Augustus. He thereby primes his readers to interpret his metaphors of the body politic in relation to contemporary affairs. The lessons that they take away from his narrative, however, are not necessarily straightforward. While Camillus rescues the res publica from the brink of death, his ambitions also earn him the distrust and displeasure of his peers.129 The tale of Scipio Africanus, to whom Horace compares Augustus in his ninth Epode, reflects similar ambiguity.130 Although it is a tribune, not Livy, who accuses Scipio of acting like a head of state, his words confirm that this symbolism could still be used to criticize excessively powerful statesmen. Rather than offer unqualified support for any one model of the body politic, Livy crafts a more complicated picture of their various risks and rewards. His willingness to broach such questions, however, marks him as a thinker of a new age.

Augustus as the caput orbis While Livy’s rehabilitation of the head of state metaphor took place in the 20s bce, the identification of the princeps as the caput rei publicae did not occur until the reign of Tiberius. The late Augustan era, however, illustrates two significant steps in this direction. The first came in the eulogy that Cornelius Severus composed for Cicero in his Res Romanae. As we saw 127

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e.g. Hor. Od. 1.2.50. Roller 2001: 253–4 stresses the dialogue between the Roman people and Augustus in the construction of the father paradigm. For the Late Republican contest over the titles parens patriae and pater patriae, see Stevenson 2000. Miles 1986: 19–20 draws attention to Livy’s dating of Rome’s three foundations – by Romulus, Camillus, and Augustus – exactly 365 years apart, which casts the present moment as a reenactment of Camillus’ refoundation. Edwards 1996: 48–51 stresses the religious aspect of Camillus’ role, which is echoed in Augustus’ characterization as the “restorer and founder of all the temples” (templorum omnium restitutorem ac conditorem, Liv. 4.20.7). Additional parallels include Camillus and Augustus’ shared commitment to the physical space of Rome (Syme 1959: 47–8), celebration of a triple triumph (e.g. triplicem triumphum, Liv. 6.7.4; triplici . . . triumpho, Verg. Aen. 8.714), and connection to the Temple of Concord (Orlin 2007: 87). Coudry 2001 illustrates the ambivalent aspects of the tradition surrounding Camillus. io Triumphe, nec Iugurthino parem | bello reportasti ducem, | neque Africanum, cui super Carthaginem | virtus sepulcrum condidit (“Hail, Triumphus! You have not brought back a general like the one in the Jugurthine War, nor one like Africanus, whose valor built a grave over Carthage,” Hor. Ep. 9.23–6). Cairns 2012: 139–40 and Gurval 1995: 154 note the likely intentional ambiguity of “Africanus”, which could refer to the Elder or Younger Scipio. Both, however, see the Elder Scipio as the primary referent of the passage.

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in the Introduction, the eulogy advertises Severus’ fluency in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Glorifying Cicero as the champion of the senate, forum, courts, ritual practice, and civilian life (ille senatus | vindex, ille fori, legum ritusque togaeque, Sen. Suas. 6.26), the poet enumerates the key pillars of public life and political legitimacy in the Late Republic. Yet he also calls Cicero an eternally outstanding head of state: egregium semper patriae caput. Cicero himself would never have described his statesmanship in these terms. Like his contemporaries, he used the head to denote nonRepublican governance. Severus reverses the signifying force of the symbol, so that it becomes emblematic of traditional political ideals. In this way, his historical epic participates in the same revisionary project as Livy’s first pentad. Rather than search for heads of state in the Archaic past, however, he finds at least one in the last generation of the Republic. That the current body politic might also have a head was an idea quickly losing its transgressive force. The second step towards the portrayal of the princeps as the caput rei publicae appears in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Tristia, both of which identify Augustus as the caput orbis.131 Ovid had begun exploring this figure as early as the Amores, where he promises that Vergil will be read Roma triumphati dum caput orbis erit (“As long as Rome will be the head of the world over which she has triumphed,” Ov. Am. 1.15.26).132 Linking the longevity of Latin poetry to the success of the Roman empire, he joins other thinkers in using the head–body comparison to validate imperial hegemony.133 He stresses the absolute nature of this authority in the Fasti, which links world domination to the importation of the goddess Cybele to Rome in 204 bce: post, ut Roma potens opibus iam saecula quinque | vidit et edomito sustulit orbe caput (“Later, after Rome – powerful in wealth – had already seen five centuries and lifted her head over a thoroughly subjugated world,” Ov. Fast. 4.255–6). Like Livy, he portrays this dominion as preordained in the Archaic past. As Evander tours the future site of Rome in Book 5, Ovid writes, hic, ubi nunc Roma est, orbis caput, arbor et herbae | et paucae pecudes et casa rara fuit (“Here, where Rome is now, the head of the world, were once trees and fields and scanty flocks and scattered homes,” Ov. Fast. 5.93–4). The contemporary stakes of this symbolism emerge in 131

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The Metamorphoses are typically thought to have been written and circulated in Rome prior to Ovid’s exile in 8 ce (Anderson 1997: 4–5), though their revision in exile complicates matters (as thematized in Hinds 1985). The Amores were likely completed around 15 bce, but the date of the extant “second edition” is unclear (on their revision, see Martelli 2013: 35–67). On “Ovid’s position as both subject and object of the imperial gaze,” see Habinek 2002: 46–7.

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the Tristia, a text that Thomas Habinek has shown to be deeply engaged “in the project of Roman imperialism.”134 Rome’s status as the head of the world stands in contrast to the submission of the Germans, who lower their own head beneath Tiberius’ feet: teque, rebellatrix, tandem, Germania, magni | triste caput pedibus supposuisse ducis (“And you, rebellious Germany, have finally lowered your sad head under the feet of our great ruler,” Ov. Tr. 3.12.47–8).135 Ovid evokes the literal body of a prisoner prostrated before a Roman general and the metaphorical body of Germania, who must submit to Rome to survive. Mediating between these two levels of meaning is the princeps, who undertakes the military campaigns necessary for the formation and survival of an imperial body politic.136 The gradually developing perception that Augustus embodied the authority of Rome allowed him to step into its role as the head of the world. Ovid foregrounds such slippage between the res publica and its princeps in Book 15 of the Metamorphoses. When the caput orbis figure first appears, it operates in the terms we have come to expect. Like Livy’s Romulus, Pythagoras delivers a prophesy predicting and naturalizing Roman rule: nunc quoque Dardaniam fama est consurgere Romam | . . . haec igitur formam crescendo mutat et olim | immensi caput orbis erit (“And now rumor has it that Dardanian Rome is rising . . . then by growing it changes form and one day will become the head of the whole world,” Ov. Met. 15.431–5).137 Ovid foregrounds the shifting shape of the Roman body politic, which is characterized by its mutability rather than constancy. As history moves towards the apotheosis of Caesar and the deification of Augustus, he hints at its acquisition of a head: tarda sit illa dies et nostro serior aevo, | qua caput Augustum, quem temperat, orbe relicto | accedat caelo (“May that day be far off and later than our era, when Augustus’ head, after abandoning the world which it rules, approaches the sky,” Ov. Met. 15.868–70). It is now Augustus’ rather than Rome’s head that presides 134 135 136

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Habinek 1998: 152. A similar image recurs at Ov. Tr. 4.2.43–6. Ramsby and Severy-Hoven 2007: 69 suggest that Ovid identifies himself with Germania in a meditation on the cost of imperial power. We might compare Nicolaus of Damascus’ celebration of Julius Caesar as the man who brought the world under one head (εἰς μίαν ἀρχὴν κεφαλαιωθείη γῆς πάσης καὶ θαλάττης τὰ κράτη, “so the power of the whole earth and sea would be brought under his head into one empire,” Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 Fr. 130). The date of the biography is debated; Jacoby assigned it to the late 20s bce, but Toher 1985 has since argued that it was unlikely to have been published before Augustus’ death. The accuracy of his vision is confirmed upon the arrival of Asclepius’ ship: iamque, caput rerum, Romanam intraverat urbem (“and now it had entered the Roman city, the head of everything,” Ov. Met. 15.736).

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over the world. The potentially transgressive nature of this admission is nevertheless limited in two ways. First, the verb tempero suggests moderation and restraint rather than the absolute rule conveyed in Ovid’s earlier use of this imagery. Second, Ovid’s gaze is directed outwards towards the empire rather than inwards towards the res publica. The text thereby avoids disrupting the fiction that the power Augustus exercised abroad had little to do with the norms that prevailed at home.138 The symbolism introduced in the Metamorphoses becomes more explicit in Tristia 3, which repeatedly stresses the poet’s displacement from Rome.139 It is perhaps the unique perspective granted by this distance that allows him to transform the head of the princeps into the head of the world. Returning to the question of his fault, he asserts, non mihi quaerenti pessumdare cuncta petitum | Caesareum caput est, quod caput orbis erat (“Caesar’s head, the head of the world, was not attacked by me in an attempt to destroy everything,” Ov. Tr. 3.5.45–6). The repetition of caput draws attention to the parallel positions occupied by Augustus and Rome, so that the former becomes the embodiment of the latter. In connecting this theme to his exile, however, Ovid gestures towards the risks posed by a man whose fickle favor determines membership in the body politic. Even a citizen who has done nothing wrong might find himself expelled from the organism of which he was once a part. In this way, Ovid’s engagement with capital symbolism echoes his use of healing tropes to destabilize the distinction between benevolent and autocratic rule. His poetry suggests that the metaphor of the body politic could be used to criticize or validate the power of the princeps. In the hands of a thinker highly attuned to the paradoxes of the Principate, it could do both at the same time.140 This chapter has explored how Roman thinkers used the metaphor of the body politic to respond to the constitutional changes of the late first century bce. Participants in a discourse community that favored continuity over change, they used figurative speech to address the arrival of sole rule without naming it as such. The metaphor of the healer, already validated through its prominence in Ciceronian oratory, was quickly if tentatively taken up by Horace, Vergil, and Valgius Rufus to describe the 138 139 140

See Ando 2011b: 81–114 on this fiction and its legacy. Curtis 2015: 412 argues that Tristia 3 confronts “Ovid’s rupture from Rome from the perspective of long-term displacement.” Identifying subversion in Ovid’s poetry remains notoriously difficult. As Hinds 1987: 25 writes, “Every passage ever written by Ovid about Augustus admits of a non-subversive reading: but that is not in itself a refutation of Ovidian subversion.” Barchiesi 1997: 30 comments, “Everything the poet says of and to the prince lends itself to a double interpretation, depending on the angle from which it is looked at.”

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salutary effects of Augustus’ rule. The head of state metaphor faced a more arduous path to acceptance due to its regal heritage. Only after it had been rehabilitated as a positive signifier of statesmanship, a project that began in historical narratives, could it be used in relation to contemporary affairs. This process exemplifies how the paradigm of Roman Republicanism evolved in response to the establishment of the Principate. It was not only that Republican political language changed to meet the needs of autocracy, but that autocracy transformed what Romans perceived to be Republican political language in the first place. Yet even as Romans grew accustomed to the models of the civic healer and head of state, ambivalence remained. The ambiguity of Ovid’s poetry serves as a reminder that subversion lurks where panegyric proliferates. The trajectory of JulioClaudian political discourse, the subject of the next two chapters, confirms as much. I would like to conclude by considering the broader conceptual import of the imagistic evolution traced thus far. Scholars have long debated how – or if – those living under Augustus understood the significance of the revolution that they witnessed. In the absence of any direct admission of the arrival of autocracy, this question will surely continue to provoke debate. The transformation of the body politic metaphor, however, indicates collective awareness of a shift in governing form. Roman thinkers might have lacked the historical perspective that allows us to identify the establishment of “the Principate,” but they reworked a foundational model of social organization to account for the command of an extraordinary statesman over the res publica. The decades that separate Livy’s first pentad from Ovid’s Tristia illustrate how gradually this process took place. That it happened at all, however, confirms that no political language can resist addressing the lived reality of power for too long. What cannot be expressed literally finds expression figuratively. The Augustan age represents only one moment in this story, which had its origins in the Late Republic and reached its conclusion in the aftermath of Nero’s downfall. Turning to the period from Tiberius to Claudius in the next chapter, we will see how a new generation of thinkers catalyzed the next phase in the life cycle of the Roman body politic.

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chapter 4

Julio-Claudian Consensus and Civil War

The last chapter asked how the shape of the res publica changed in response to the arrival of sole rule in the late first century bce. Building upon shifts in political language that were already under way in the Late Republic, Augustan writers integrated an exemplary ruler into their figurations of the res publica. Vergil and Horace implicitly linked the princeps to the curative properties of Venus and Apollo, while Valgius Rufus connected his maiestas to the healing of humanity. Around the same time, Livy began to rehabilitate the head of state metaphor as a model of good statesmanship. Staging distinct phases in the life cycle of the body politic, his Archaic history ultimately endorses a res publica topped by a caput as a solution to discord. Telling this story through exemplary founders like Romulus, Numa, and Camillus, he hinted at the contemporary stakes of his analysis. When Cornelius Severus praised Cicero as the patriae caput in his eulogy, he confirmed that this symbol had reversed its signifying force. The ramifications of Rome’s new shape began to emerge in Ovid’s exilic poetry, where the princeps is granted the authority of a caput orbis and the responsibility of a healer. Illustrating Augustus’ ability to use his role to positive and negative ends, however, Ovid gestured towards the risks posed by collective dependence on and obedience to one man. He thereby laid the groundwork for the continuing evolution of this metaphor in Julio-Claudian political thought. The connections that the Augustan poets forged between the rule of the princeps and the health of Rome were elaborated upon by Tiberian writers, who began to portray the Principate as the remedy for a body politic sickened and wounded by civil war. Adapting traditional political language to new ends, they used familiar figurations of civic decline to justify autocracy. Their efforts were informed by the hindsight that nearly half a century of peace had bestowed.1 It was largely because 1

For the distorting effects of hindsight on modern approaches to the Augustan era, see Mitchell et al. 2019: 2.

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discord – or at least public expressions of it – had been banished in the present that Tiberian writers were comfortable exploring its recurrence in the past. And explore it they did; in terms of volume, more accounts of the civil wars were produced under Tiberius than any other emperor.2 Although almost none of this literature is extant, its central themes are legible in Manilius, Velleius Paterculus, and Valerius Maximus.3 This chapter shows how they worked together to construct a normative narrative of Julio-Claudian consensus, one that held the Principate responsible for the regeneration of the body politic.4 Celebrating the princeps as the unifier of Rome’s discordant limbs, they offered a new solution to a problem that had long vexed their intellectual forebearers. Even as they crafted this triumphant narrative, however, they also struggled to incorporate the transfer of power into it. The implementation of a dynastic succession soon provoked imagery of a two-headed and two-eyed body politic. Although these portrayals of dual rule were meant to be panegyrical, they reactivated a trope closely associated with discord in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. They thereby exposed the conceptual tension that lay between the House of the Caesars and the Republican façade of the Principate. The precarity of the dynastic succession was subsequently thrown into sharp relief by the tyrannical rule and violent assassination of Caligula. Those who witnessed his downfall, including Philo, the Elder Seneca, and Curtius Rufus, revived imagery of a sick, aged, and headless body politic in response. Incorporating the theme of organic decline into their portrayals of the Imperial present rather than the Republican past, they confirmed that the Augustan restoration was not necessarily a permanent solution. With each transfer of power came a new princeps who could harm or heal the body politic under his care. The vulnerability of such a system became a central concern of the Neronian writers to whom we will turn our attention in the final chapter.

2

3

4

See Gowing 2010: 250–1, who describes the civil wars as “a very, very hot topic” under Tiberius. He points to the works of Cremutius Cordus, the Elder Seneca, Aufidius Bassus, Fenestella, Bruttedius Niger, and Servilius Nonianus. For the popularity of historiography more broadly during this period, see Cornell 2020: 27–8. Wiegand 2013: 14 discusses the interpretive challenges posed by Tiberian literature, which is generically diverse, largely fragmentary, and often held in low literary regard. Many of the same issues are magnified when it comes to the eras of Caligula and Claudius. See Lobur 2008: 94–127, 170–207 on the role of consensus as a normative ideal in Velleius and Valerius Maximus.

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Augustus and the End of Civil War One of the earliest texts to equate the foundation of the Principate with the regeneration of the body politic is Manilius’ Astronomica, a didactic poem in five books that promises to instruct readers in the astrological arts.5 Although scholars agree that it was composed during the final years of Augustus’ reign or the first years of Tiberius’, the Caesar to whom Manilius refers at key moments remains unclear.6 For our purposes, however, his identity is less important than his authoritative role in the universe. This role emerges as part of a broader analogy between the cosmos and res publica that operates throughout the text.7 Manilius makes the parallel explicit at the conclusion of Book 5, where he analogizes the stellar magnitudes, or the visibility of stars from the brightest to dimmest, to the social divisions within Rome.8 After comparing the hierarchy of the stars to that of the senators, equestrians, and people, he writes, sic etiam magno quaedam res publica mundo est | quam natura facit, quae caelo condidit urbem (“So there is a sort of res publica in the vast universe, which nature – who built a city in the sky – has established,” Man. 5.738–9).9 Rather than describe a political community modeled upon the stars, as we might expect, Manilius suggests that the celestial sphere mimics the terrestrial one.10 Katharina Volk draws attention to the disquieting implications of the idea.11 If the universe mirrors a res publica that recently saw total collapse, it too seems the product of a fragile peace rather than any intrinsic harmony. Such fragility invests the poem with a sense of precarious urgency. The language that Manilius uses to describe the res publica in the sky directs readers towards contemporary political affairs. Using the phrase condidit urbem to figure nature as a founder, he invites readers to look 5 6 7

8

9 10 11

On the popularity of astrology in the early Principate, see Green 2014; Volk 2009; Barton 1994: 27–70. A reference to the Teutoburg Forest establishes a firm terminus post quem of 9 ce. Volk 2009: 137–61 provides an overview of dating issues. In his fusion of these spheres, Manilius extends the Aeneid’s “fascination with the cosmic implications of Roman history,” which was itself reflective of broader trends in ancient thought (Hardie 1986: 2). See also Bajoni 2004. utque per ingentis populus discribitur urbes, | principiumque patres retinent et proximum equester | ordo locum, populumque equiti populoque subire | vulgus iners videas et iam sine nomine turbam (“And as in large cities the people are divided, and the senators have the first place and the equestrian order has the second, and you see the people follow the equestrians and the incompetent crowd following the people and now the crowd with no name,” Man. 5.734–37). Wiseman 2017: 107 notes Manilius’ “clear sense of the minutiae of social stratification” in his distinction between the populus, vulgus, and turba. Text of Manilius follows Goold 1977. It is worth noting, however, that the princeps does not appear in the simile (see Ramelli 2014: 180–1). Volk 2009: 114.

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back to an earlier passage in Book 4 that described the princeps in the same way: qua genitus Caesar melius nunc condidit urbem | et propriis frenat pendentem nutibus orbem (“Born under whose sign [Libra], Caesar has now established a better city and bridles a world hanging on his own nod,” Man. 4.776–7).12 Scholars disagree as to whether Augustus or Tiberius is the intended referent; while Tiberius was born under the Moon sign of Libra, Augustus was born under the Sun sign of Libra.13 More relevant than the identity of the Caesar, however, is the way in which his role mirrors that of nature. The princeps and natura are both represented as the founders of their respective communities; within the Stoic logic of the poem, the former derives political legitimacy from his conceptual proximity to the latter.14 The adverb melius hints that Caesar’s foundation is really an act of refoundation, one made possible by his ability to bridle (frenat) the world. Evoking Vergil’s famous analogy between civil strife and an out-ofcontrol chariot (neque audit currus habenas, Verg. Georg. 1.514), Manilius introduces the problem of discord into his narrative.15 His identification of the princeps as its solution invites readers to consider the political lessons implicit in the poem. The metaphor of the body politic is integral to this structural framework. One of the guiding principles of the Astronomica is that the cosmos resembles a living organism, an idea central to ancient astrology and indebted to the Stoic tradition.16 The proem announces this theme by inviting readers to learn about the innards of the great universe: scire iuvat magni penitus praecordia mundi (Man. 1.17).17 In the books that follow, Manilius depicts everything from the natural elements to the zodiac signs through corporeal imagery. In a characteristic passage from Book 1, he writes, hoc opus immensi constructum corpore mundi | membraque naturae diversa condita forma | aeris atque ignis, terrae pelagique iacentis, | vis animae divina regit (“The divine 12 13

14 15 16

17

Bajoni 2004: 104 addresses Manilius’ own role as a conditor. Housman 1903–30: ad loc. 4.776 asserts that Manilius is referring to the Moon sign and that Tiberius is the referent, an argument extended in Housman 1913: 112–3. Volk 2009: 157–60 outlines the problems with this view and argues for the Sun sign and hence Augustus as the referent of the passage. On the interpretive complexities surrounding Augustus’ horoscope, see Lewis 2008 and Barton 1995. Manilius’ worldview is typically characterized as Stoic (see Volk 2009: 226–34; Lapidge 1989: 1393–7), though MacGregor 2005 is not convinced. See Nelis 2008: 505–10; Nappa 2005: 65–7; Lyne 2007 (1974): 57 on the chariot and its missing auriga. On “the wholly corporeal cosmos” that informs Manilius’ poem, see Volk 2013: 114 alongside Taub 2012; Lapidge 1989: 1392–97. Lowe 2014: 46 points out that this idea had troubling implications: “Indeed, a physiological cosmos might well be as flawed as any organism.” On Manilius use of the term praecordia, see Schwarz 1972. Habinek 2007: 231–2 reads this verse in relation to the practice of haruspicy.

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force of a spirit governs this edifice, which is constructed from the body of the vast universe, and its limbs, built from the diverse elements of nature: air and fire, land and supine sea,” Man. 1.247–50). Legible in his rather convoluted image is the basic dichotomy of a commanding mind and obedient limbs. Which elements of the universe operate within this framework, however, vary in relation to Manilius’ subject matter. As he turns his attention to the zodiac, he asserts that the constellations resemble a body in which each sign plays a unique role: accipe divisas hominis per sidera partes | singulaque imperiis propriis parentia membra, | in quis praecipuas toto de corpore vires | exercent (“Understand that the different parts of man are distributed through the constellations, and that individual members are subject to distinct authorities; of the whole body, they [the signs] exercise particular influence over the members,” Man. 2.453–6). He identifies Aries as the head (caput) because it is foremost (princeps) among the constellations; Taurus acts as the neck, Gemini as the arms and shoulders, and so on through Pisces as the feet (Man. 2.456–65). Manilius’ lessons about the stars are in this way rooted in his readers’ familiarity with the functioning of their own bodies.18 The interconnection of these seemingly distinct spheres structures the work as a whole. The organic analogies of the Astronomica assume that nature commands the universe in the same way that reason commands the body. The parallel is immediately apparent in Manilius’ terminology; mundus, deus, natura, and fatum, on the one hand, and ratio, mens, anima, and spiritus, on the other, are used more or less interchangeably throughout all five books.19 The opening of Book 2 blends much of this language together: namque canam tacita naturae mente potentem | infusumque deum caelo terrisque fretoque | ingentem aequali moderantem foedere molem (“For I will sing of the god who presides over nature with a silent mind, pervasive through the sky, lands, and sea, and manages the huge structure with an equitable pact,” Man. 2.60–2). Manilius once again invites readers to compare the cosmos and res publica; molis was often used to describe the scope of Rome’s empire,20 while foedus evokes the contractual language of Roman conquest.21 He then incorporates the ideologically inflected ideal of consensus into this framework: totumque alterno consensu vivere mundum | et rationis agi motu, cum spiritus unus | per cunctas habitet partes atque irriget 18 19 20 21

For the Astronomica as a didactic poem, see Volk 2002: 196–245. Volk 2009: 61, fn. 8 argues that these terms “to some extent function as synonyms” in the text. e.g. tanti imperii molem (Liv. 1.55.3); tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem (Verg. Aen. 1.33); hanc Romani imperii molem (Vell. 2.131.1). See Béranger 1953: 175–8. See Gladhill 2016: 97–118 on the role of foedera in the Astronomica.

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orbem | omnia pervolitans corpusque animale figuret (“How the whole universe lives by mutual consensus and is driven by the movement of reason, since one spirit dwells in all its parts and inundates the world, flying over everything, and shapes it like a living body,” Man. 2.63–6). Manilius argues that the governance of unus spiritus allows the diverse parts of the universe to coalesce into a living, breathing organism. Sole rule, in other words, enables cosmic concord. His politically resonant terminology hints at the earthly relevance of this lesson. The mind of the universe must devote such attention to the realization of harmony because its disparate limbs are predisposed towards conflict. This idea is encapsulated in the paradoxical phrase discordia concors (Man. 1.142), which serves as shorthand for the complex alliances and enmities underlying the cosmos.22 Manilius depicts the planets, for example, engaging in a perpetual war against the zodiac signs: aeternum et stellis adversus sidera bellum (Man. 2.119).23 Yet the signs of the zodiac also wage war against each other in private feuds: et privata gerunt secretis hostibus arma (Man. 2.540).24 Their conflicts are mirrored in those of nature, which are likewise described in martial language: sic bellum natura gerit, discordat et annus, | ne mirere in ea pugnantia sidera parte (“As nature wages war, and the year is discordant, do not be surprised that the stars are at war in their positions,” Man. 2.422–3).25 Repeatedly representing the universe as the product of strife and instability, Manilius introduces the possibility of systemic and unavoidable violence.26 Even as the world veers towards chaos, however, it is made orderly again through the commanding force of reason. Were this divine spirit to be lost, cosmic collapse would soon follow.27 Seeking concrete evidence of this 22

23 24

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26 27

Gladhill 2016: 102 argues that discordia concors “represents the equilibrium of contrary forces within Manilius’ poem,” while Glauthier 2017: 282, fn. 48 notes Manilius’ inversion of the discors concordia of Ovid’s “post-deluge world” (Ov. Met. 1.433). See Goold 1977: ad loc. on the terminology here. After detailing these conflicts (Man. 2.541–78), Manilius concludes, per tot signorum species contraria surgunt | corpora totque modis totiens inimica creantur (“Due to so many forms of signs, opposing bodies take shape and enmities arise so often and in so many ways,” Man. 2.579–80). Porter 2016: 496 notes, “The clash of opposites is one of the hallmarks of Manilius’ alleged hymn to cosmic harmony and cosmic sympathy.” This description of cosmic discord borrows from Lucretius, who also describes the members of the universe at war with each other (e.g.: denique tantopere inter se cum maxima mundi | pugnent membra, pio nequaquam concita bello, “And so, since the great limbs of the world fight so hard against each other, stirred up by a not at all pious war,” Lucr. 5.380–1). See Porter 2016: 488–95 on Manilius’ “Lucretian sublime.” Gee 2013: 122 notes Manilius application of political terminology to the planets, which “would have looked comprehensible in civil-war terms to a Roman audience.” See Lapidge 1979: 357 on the cosmic dissolution that would follow any “loosening of the cosmic binding” in Manilius’ text.

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principle, Manilius turns his attention to the civil wars that recently destroyed the res publica. Just as the limbs of the universe tend towards conflict, so do the members of the Roman body politic. Rather than explore the generative nature of this predisposition, however, Manilius focuses instead on its destructive consequences. In the excursus on Roman history that opens Book 4, he identifies the Social War as the beginning of self-slaughter: adde etiam Latias acies Romamque suismet | pugnantem membris, adice et civilia bella (“Add also the Latin battles and Rome at war with her own limbs; include too the civil wars,” Man. 4.43–4). He then narrates key moments in Rome’s long saga of civil strife, including the flight of Marius (Man. 4.45– 9) and death of Pompey (Man. 4.50–5). While these examples illustrate the fickleness of fortune generally, they also designate discord as the fate to which generations of Romans have been doomed. Even the divine Julius Caesar could not escape its grasp: ille etiam caelo genitus caeloque receptus, | cum bene compositis victor civilibus armis | iura togae regeret, totiens praedicta cavere | vulnera non potuit (“Even he, who was born from the sky and received by the sky, when he emerged as the victor after civilian arms were gladly put down and was implementing the laws of peacetime, could not avoid the wounds so often predicted,” Man. 4.57–60).28 The destiny of Caesar speaks to that of Rome, which has repeatedly witnessed brothers driven into arms against each other (mutuaque armati coeunt in vulnera fratres, Man. 4.83). Just because strife cannot be eradicated, however, does not mean it cannot be contained. The lessons embedded in the stars suggest that concord can be achieved by subordinating the warring members of the body politic to a single governing mind. Elsewhere in the text, the victory of Augustus in the civil wars emerges in proof of this point. At the conclusion of Book 1, Manilius addresses the role of comets in predicting civic upheaval (civilis motus) and intra-familial warfare (cognata bella, Man. 1.906–7). The comets that presaged Philippi grant him the opportunity to contribute to the rapidly developing tropology of Roman civil war (Man. 1.907–11): . . . nec plura alias incendia mundus sustinuit, quam cum ducibus iurata cruentis arma Philippeos implerunt agmine campos, vixque etiam sicca miles Romanus harena ossa virum lacerosque prius super astitit artus . . . 28

Toher 2009a: 230 identifies Manilius as the first Latin writer to use the will of fate to explain how Caesar could fall victim to a conspiracy.

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4 Julio-Claudian Consensus and Civil War . . . and the world never endured greater conflagrations than when arms sworn to bloodstained generals filled the fields of Philippi with their ranks. And on sand scarcely even dry, the Roman soldier stood atop the bones of men and limbs earlier lacerated . . .

Manilius collapses the geographical distance between Philippi and Pharsalus to portray the former as a repetition of the latter. He thereby signals his poetic debt to Vergil, whose Georgics likewise depict cosmic conflagrations on the twice befouled fields of Philippi (Verg. Georg. 1.487– 92).29 Just as Vergil imagines future farmers uncovering bones with their plows (Verg. Georg. 1.493–7), Manilius describes the armies of 42 bce standing upon the buried corpses of the combatants at Pharsalus.30 Selfconsciously replicating the imagery of his predecessor, he suggests that both internal conflicts and the language used to describe them are reduplications in a seemingly endless cycle of self-destruction.31 Astrology is positioned as a form of knowledge able to shed light on, and perhaps offer a solution to, this problem. In a divergence from the uncertainty and pessimism that pervades earlier civil war literature, Manilius suggests that Augustus’ rule has put an end to Rome’s ancestral curse.32 His bleak portrait of the Thessalian landscape is interrupted by the triumphant arrival of the princeps: imperiumque suis conflixit viribus ipsum, | perque patris pater Augustus vestigia vicit (“The empire itself fought against its own strength and father Augustus conquered in the footsteps of his father,” Man. 1.912–3). Anticipating Augustus’ role as pater patriae through his word order, Manilius identifies him as the successor to Julius Caesar. He then skips over the more problematic moments of triumviral history to narrate the Battle of Actium, which is framed as a cataclysmic struggle against an Egyptian Other.33 He uses a familiar set of tropes to grant the princeps a victory unpolluted by fraternal violence (Man. 1.914–8): 29

30 31 32 33

Vergil’s conflation of Pharsalus and Philippi became standard in post-Augustan literature (e.g. Ov. Met. 15.823–4; Luc. 1.694; Stat. Silv. 2.7.65–6). See Ambühl 2016: 300 on the transformation of Thessaly “into a literary landscape of civil war” in Latin poetry. Vergil’s treatment of the comets that preceded Caesar’s assassination likewise became a rich site of allusivity, on which see Ginsberg 2020. Breed, Damon, and Rossi 2010: 5 draw attention to “the historical intertextuality of conflicts that geminate and mirror each other.” Joseph 2012a: 162. Ginsberg 2017: 100 identifies Manilius’ poem as the most celebratory account of Augustus’ rise to power. For the role of Cleopatra as the Egyptian Other in Roman civil war discourse, see Lowrie 2015a; Feldherr 2010; Gurval 1995: 189–208.

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necdum finis erat: restabant Actia bella dotali commissa acie, repetitaque rerum alea et in ponto quaesitus rector Olympi, femineum sortita iugum cum Roma pependit atque ipsa Isiaco certarunt fulmina sistro. This was not yet the end: the Actian war remained, fought against an army pledged in dowry. The fate of everything was at stake and the ruler of Olympus was sought on the sea, when Rome, at risk of falling under a womanly yoke, hung in the balance and thunderbolts themselves clashed with the sistrum of Isis.

Augustus triumphs over the threat of civil strife by subduing a foreign enemy, a paradox that absolves him of blame for the events through which he secured sole rule. The propriety of that rule is confirmed through the title rector Olympi, which assimilates Augustus to Jupiter and puts the thunderbolts of the god in service of his autocratic ambitions.34 His implied divinity looks back to the proem, where the princeps is addressed as a living god: tu, Caesar, patriae princepsque paterque, | qui regis augustis parentem legibus orbem | concessumque patri mundum deus ipse mereris (“You, Caesar, princeps and pater patriae, who rules a world obedient to your august law, yourself a god, you deserve the heaven bestowed on your father,” Man. 1.7–9).35 The two passages, marked by the intertwined themes of paternity, divinity, and civic order, demand to be read in tandem. By connecting the divine heritage of Augustus to the end of civil strife, Manilius suggests that his rule on earth approximates that of the deus et ratio in the sky. Both use their preordained command to maintain order in a discordant world. Manilius’ digression culminates in a celebratory vision of discord in chains, an image that further correlates the beginning of the Principate with the end of civil war. Expressing a fervent wish for peace, he writes, sed satis hoc fatis fuerit: iam bella quiescant | atque adamanteis discordia vincta catenis | aeternos habeat frenos in carcere clausa (“But let this be enough for the fates: let wars now be quiet and let discord – bound by steel chains – be 34

35

Comparisons between Augustus and Jupiter were commonplace by this time. Thomas 2004–5 establishes the parallels between Jupiter and Augustus in the Aeneid; Hejduk 2020: 246–7 addresses “Augustus as Jupiter” in Ovid’s Fasti; Feeney 1991: 222 notes the pervasive “Jovian wrath” assigned to Augustus in Ovid’s exile poetry; Zanker 1988: 230–8 traces this theme in visual culture. The princeps is invested with remarkable power over the universe, so much so that even the stars must yield to his authority: uno vincuntur in astro, | Augusto, sidus nostro qui contigit orbi, | legum nunc terris post caelo maximus auctor (“They are conquered in relation to one luminary, Augustus, who has fallen upon our world like a star, now the greatest guarantor of law over the land, later over the sky,” Man. 1.384–6).

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reined in forevermore, enclosed in jail,” Man. 1.922–4). Manilius’ description of the reins (frenos) that constrain discord looks ahead to Book 4, where the princeps is praised for bridling (frenat, Man. 4.777) a world subservient to his will. Both images respond to the out-of-control chariot at the end of Georgics I, reassuring readers that the res publica has been put back on its proper course.36 Discord might be an inherent feature of both the terrestrial and cosmic spheres, but this fact does not doom Rome to an endless cycle of self-destruction. Just as the discordant limbs of the universe can be kept in harmony under a single governing mind, those of the res publica are able to achieve concord under the rational authority of the princeps.37 An idea that operates tentatively and implicitly in earlier Augustan literature is thereby transformed into an organizing principle of Manilius’ poetry.38 Within a few years, Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus began articulating similar perspectives from their respective historical and antiquarian perches. Their mid-Tiberian dates, however, suggest that it was only after Augustus’ rule had come to an end that his restoration of the res publica became fully legible in political discourse.

Tiberius and the Transfer of Power Written under the height of the Tiberian Principate, Velleius Paterculus’ Historiae and Valerius Maximus’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia share in and build upon the political perspective of Manilius’ Astronomica.39 Despite professing a disinterest in talking about the wounds of civil war, both authors juxtapose the self-destructive body politic of the Republic with the 36 37 38

39

In addition to the bridling metaphor, carceribus (Man. 1.512) evokes the starting gates of Vergil’s chariot, on which see Bramble 1982: 185. For concord as an ideal “that anchored the transition from republic to empire,” see Lobur 2008: 208–9. Vitruvius’ preface, for example, anticipates this idea by tying the divine mind of the princeps to the pacification of the empire: cum divina tua mens et numen, imperator Caesar, imperio potiretur orbis terrarum (“When your divine mind and spirit, imperator Caesar, established an empire over the world,” Vitr. 1.1). McEwen 2003: 55 identifies a parallel between ratio and Augustus in De Architectura. Green 2014: 109 points out that this text features the first significant treatment of astrology in the Augustan era. Velleius dedicated the Historiae in honor of M. Vinicius’ consulship in 30 ce; Sumner 1970: 284–8 suggests that he began writing upon the election of Vinicius in the summer of 29 ce and finished by the time Vinicius assumed office on January 1. Woodman 1975: 275–82 expresses skepticism towards such a short composition period, which would have Velleius writing at twice the speed of Livy. He argues that the historian had likely been crafting the text since the mid-20s ce. The date of Valerius’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia depends in large part on a reference to a plot against the princeps (9.11. ext4), which is typically taken to refer to the downfall of Sejanus in 31 ce. For the communis opinio of late 31 ce as a terminus post quem for Book 9, see Briscoe 2019: 2–4. Although Bellemore 1989 has proposed the conspiracy of Libo Drusus in 16 ce as an alternative, allowing for an earlier composition date, her view has not achieved consensus.

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civic regeneration made possible by the Caesars. In doing so, they reinforce historically what Manilius conveys astrologically. They stand out, however, in their efforts to incorporate the transfer of power into this figurative framework.40 This section explores the difficulty that lay in reconciling the metaphor of the body politic with the complexities of a dynastic succession that resisted formalization.41 Faced with not just one Caesar, but a House of Caesars, Velleius and Valerius Maximus were forced to innovate.42 Velleius tried to incorporate a two-headed body politic into the developing language of Imperial panegyric, while also depicting Augustus and Tiberius as the two eyes of the res publica. Valerius Maximus took a similar path, comparing the princeps and his successors to divine eyes watching over Rome. In reactivating the trope of doubling, however, they unintentionally imported a hint of discord into their portrayals of the Imperial household.43 Their imagery anticipated concerns that the transfer of power might undermine the promise of Julio-Claudian consensus, an idea that became central to the representation of the first succession in Tacitus’ Annales. At first glance, both Velleius and Valerius seem deeply invested in avoiding the topic of civil war in their narratives.44 Velleius claims that his short history does not allow him to detail the catastrophe at Pharsalus (non recipit enarranda hic scripturae modus, Vell. Pat. 2.52.3),45 while Valerius shies away from the question of civil war triumphs with the comment, Piget taedetque per volnera rei publicae ulterius procedere (“It is both revolting and tiresome to proceed further through the wounds of the res publica,” Val. Max. 2.8.7).46 He later criticizes those who bring up 40 41

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44 45

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Manilius mentions the transfer of power only once, referring to Rhodes as hospitium recturi principis orbem (4.764). See Scarcia, Flores, and Feraboli 1996–2001: ad loc. on the tense of recturi. Without any formal emperorship, there could be no formal path to legitimacy for potential successors. Whether or not we follow Flaig 1992: 174–207 in seeing the absence of a dynastic principle under the Principate, the succession was undeniably “a dynastic matter” (Hekster 2015: 12). The domus Augusta appears for the first time in Ovid’s Epistulae ex Ponto (2.2.74), on which see Millar 1993. Fertik 2019: 39–59 explores competing conceptions of the domus Augusta in the JulioClaudian period. Although Bloomer 1992: 216 argues against the “ubiquitous, dominating presence” of the domus Augusta in the Facta et Dicta, Wardle 2000 shows how “direct or indirect panegyric of the imperial house appears at key structural points in the work, which gives it greater prominence.” Welch 2011: 309 frames Velleius’ portrait of Livia in relation to “the reality of an emerging domus Augusta,” while Hekster 2015: 183 suggests that his history was one of many inquiries into the past prompted by the first succession. “About both authors,” Gowing 2010: 253 writes, “one thing is clear: they do not like writing about civil war.” Bloomer 2011: 105 explores the tension Velleius constructs between the demands of his subject and format of his treatment; Lobur 2007: 227 argues that Velleius’ brevity is meant to signal his masterful control over his material. See Lange 2016: 95–8 on the impropriety of civil war triumphs as construed by Valerius in this passage.

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traumatic events from Rome’s strife-ridden past, citing the example of a speech that the aged Helvius Mancia delivered against Pompey. His description of the murders performed by Sulla’s “boy butcher” (adulescentulus carnifex), Valerius argues, reopened obducta iam vetustis cicatricibus bellorum civilium vastissima volnera (“the deepest wounds of the civil wars, which were now covered by old scars,” Val. Max. 6.2.8).47 In his view, detailing the crimes of civil war undoes the process of healing, an idea vividly conveyed through imagery of scarring. Yet neither he nor Velleius manages to avoid a subject that dominated nearly a century of Roman history. Both use imagery of a sick and mutilated body politic at key points in their narratives: the death of Tiberius Gracchus,48 the struggle between Sulla and Marius,49 the war between Caesar and Pompey,50 and the domination of Antony.51 The continuity of such imagery across time and space creates the impression of an organism trapped in a single cycle of selfdestruction.52 Its abrupt end after the Battle of Actium, in turn, implicitly frames the Principate as a remedy. Both Valerius and Velleius draw attention to the curative properties of the Principate. Like many thinkers before him, Valerius correlates the health of the res publica with the moral rectitude of its foremost statesman. The preface to Book 1 of Facta et Dicta addresses Tiberius as certissima salus patriae, a status earned through the cultivation of virtue (virtutes . . . benignissime foventur) and punishment of vice (vitia severissime vindicantur, Val. Max. praef.).53 Referred 47

48

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50 51 52

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Steel 2013: 153 suggests that Valerius uses this anecdote as “a morally ambiguous example of free speech,” while Dufallo 2001: 137 argues that Mancia figuratively revives the corpses of the dead before his audience. Velleius identifies the death of Tiberius Gracchus as the beginning of civil bloodshed (hoc initium in urbe Roma civilis sanguinis, Vell. Pat. 2.3.3), explaining, discordiaeque civium, antea condicionibus sanari solitae, ferro diiudicatae (“Discord between citizens, which before was accustomed to be healed by agreements, was now adjudicated by the sword,” Vell. Pat. 2.3.3). Valerius Maximus praises Scipio Nasica for not letting the tribune strangle Rome: qui pestifera Ti. Gracchi manu faucibus oppressam rem publicam strangulari passus non est (“He did not allow the overthrown res publica to be strangled by the pestilential hand of Tiberius Gracchus at its throat,” Val. Max. 5.3.2e). Velleius portrays C. Servilius Glaucia and L. Appuleius Saturninus mutilating the overthrown res publica (rem publicam lacerantium, Vell. Pat. 2.12.6) and compares Marius’ return to a pestilence (pestifero civibus suis reditu, Vell. Pat. 2.22.1). Valerius describes the actions of C. Flavius Fimbria and Marius with a reference to the groans of a sick res publica (aegrae rei publicae gemitu, Val. Max. 9.11.2). Velleius describes the Battle of Pharsalus as a struggle between two heads of the res publica (collisa inter se duo rei publicae capita, Vell. Pat. 2.52.3), discussed further later. torpebat oppressa dominatione Antonii civitas (“The political community was languishing, oppressed by the tyranny of Antony,” Vell. Pat. 2.61.1). Building on Woodman 1983: ad loc. 2.48.3, Cowan 2019: 250 argues that Velleius constructs “the civil wars” as a single twenty-year period culminating in sole rule, though this era could be (and often was) viewed as a series of individual conflicts. Gowing 2005: 51 contrasts Valerius’ preface with Livy’s, where “Augustus is conspicuous by his absence.”

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to as the salutaris princeps elsewhere in the text (Val. Max. 2.9.6; 8.13.praef.), Tiberius possesses the soundness of character necessary for the maintenance of civic vitality. Ascribing similar roles to Augustus and Julius Caesar before him, he constructs a “seamless teleological progression” from the Republican past to the domus Augusta.54 Healing imagery works in the service of this vision insofar as it posits the revival of an old body politic rather than creation of a new one. As the bloodstained exempla of the first century bce yield to the tranquility of the Tiberian present, sole rule emerges as an unspoken solution to the problem of civil strife. Velleius is more direct in his equation of the foundation of the Principate with the end of internecine warfare.55 He joins Valerius in linking the soundness of the contemporary res publica to the restoration of its ancestral morals under the Caesars.56 With the end of the bella civilia, peace was reestablished (revocata pax), the laws regained their force (restituta vis legibus), and the power of the magistrates was reduced to its former limits (imperium magistratuum ad pristinum redactum modum, Vell. Pat. 2.89.3). The repetition of the prefix re- rejects the linear progression typical of historical narration; as Alain Gowing notes, “Rome has moved not from Republic to Principate, but from Republic to a better Republic.”57 Clarifying the organic implications of this idea, he proclaims the restoration of Rome’s previous shape: prisca illa et antiqua rei publicae forma revocata (“that old and ancestral form of the res publica was recovered,” Vell. Pat. 2.89.4). The next section invests this metaphor of the body politic with greater detail: sepultis, ut praediximus, bellis civilibus coalescentibusque rei publicae membris, †etiam coaluere† quae tam longa armorum series laceraverat (“As I have already explained, when the civil wars were buried and the limbs of the res publica were healing, the [provinces], which such a long series of wars had lacerated, were also coming together,” Vell. Pat. 2.90.1).58 Like Livy’s Romulus, Augustus enables the coalescence of the body politic.59 The circumstances surrounding its reunification are made clear by lacero, a favorite verb in Cicero and Sallust’s portrayal of discord. 54 55 56 57 58 59

Wardle 2000: 483. Cowan 2019: 240 stresses Velleius’ role in the formation of this idea, which went on to become axiomatic. Balmaceda 2014: 344 argues that Velleius uses the concept of virtus to build a bridge between the Republic and Principate. Gowing 2005: 43. See also Pelling 2011: 171–2 on Velleius’ rejection of linearity in favor of reversal. See Woodman 1983: ad loc. on the corruption of the passage; based on the references to Dalmatia, the Alps, and Spain that follow, Velleius must make reference to the provinces here. coalescere in populi unius corpus (Liv. 1.8.1). Master 2014: 131 suggests that coalescere denotes the unification of seemingly incompatible peoples or groups in Latin historiography.

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Positioning his analysis as a response to a long line of Roman thinkers, Velleius textually buries the civil wars that Augustus ended in more literal fashion. Despite Velleius’ insistence that the res publica has returned to its traditional shape, he goes on to offer a model of the body politic that is radically different than any considered thus far. Confirming the rehabilitation of the head of state metaphor in public discourse, he calls Tiberius the alterum rei publicae lumen et caput (“the second light and head of the res publica,” Vell. Pat. 2.99.1). These words mark the first time in extant Latin literature that the head–body analogy is applied to the relationship between the princeps and res publica. Augustan writers, as we have seen, paved the way for this development; Livy described Camillus as the caput rei Romanae, while Ovid called Augustus the caput orbis. Velleius merges these two strands of discourse in an obsequious celebration of Tiberius, who is represented as Augustus’ equal (aequatus Augusto) yet also selected for special emphasis through a series of superlatives: the most eminent of citizens after his adoptive father (civium post unum . . . eminentissimus), greatest of generals (ducum maximus), and most distinguished of men in reputation and fortune (fama fortunaque celeberrimus, Vell. Pat. 2.99.1).60 His tone carries no hint of the subversion lurking in Ovid, suggesting that the head of state metaphor had shed the last of its transgressive vestiges. It could now be fully incorporated into the burgeoning language of Imperial panegyric, where it was framed as a return to tradition rather than innovation of autocracy.61 Seamlessly blending the old and the new, Velleius’ prose exemplifies the norms of Tiberian discourse.62 Even as Velleius constructs this celebratory metaphor, however, he also complicates it through the application of the adjective alter to caput and lumen. Suggesting that Augustus and Tiberius serve as twin heads and lights of the res publica, he crafts an image that is both conceptually confusing and ideologically problematic.63 His reference to duo capita reactivates one of the key symbols of civil strife in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Associated with Gaius Gracchus, Catiline, and 60 61 62 63

Cowan 2009: 478 argues that the Historiae presents Tiberius “engaged with, but also moving on from, the Augustan past, making his own distinctive contribution to the principate.” Dewar 1996: xxii notes that “the history of panegyric is inseparable from the history of many other genres.” Rees 2012: 5 suggests that the Histories exemplifies this point. As Schmitzer 2000: 29–36 and Rowe 2002: 44 point out, Velleius’ utility lies in the mediocrity and sycophancy for which he has been derided (e.g. Syme 1978). As Woodman 1977: ad loc. remarks, “to say that one of two men is both a single eye and a single head of the state is, at the least, imagistically confusing.”

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the First Triumvirate, the two-headed res publica marked the perversion of the political order. Velleius himself reflects this tradition in his narration of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, who are depicted as rival heads of state (Vell. Pat. 2.52.3): Aciem Pharsalicam et illum cruentissimum Romano nomini diem tantumque utriusque exercitus profusum sanguinis et collisa inter se duo rei publicae capita effossumque alterum Romani imperii lumen, tot talesque Pompeianarum partium caesos viros non recipit enarranda hic scripturae modus. This style of writing does not allow me to narrate the Battle of Pharsalus and that day so bloody for the Roman name; how much blood was spilled by both armies, how the two heads of the res publica contended against each other, how one light of the Roman empire was put out, and how so many and such great men on the Pompeian side were slaughtered.

Velleius describes Caesar and Pompey in the same terms as Augustus and Tiberius: dual heads (duo rei publicae capita) and luminaries (alterum Romani imperii lumen) of Rome.64 It is difficult to avoid the implication that the transfer of power mirrors the conflict that tore the Republic apart. We need not interpret such resonance as purposeful; there are few texts more loyal to the House of the Caesars than the Historiae. Rather, Velleius’ imagery reflects the insufficiency of contemporary organic analogies in describing a system of shared rule. In using the terminology available to him, he inadvertently disrupts his own thematic boundary between the strife of the past and consensus of the present. Astute readers might therefore begin to wonder whether the problem of civil strife had truly been solved. Perhaps realizing that there was no easy way to incorporate multiple heads onto the body politic, Velleius quickly transitions from the symbol of the caput to that of the lumen. This metaphor was not only more amenable to multiplication, but also had a long history in Roman figurations of statesmanship.65 It plays a prominent role in Ciceronian oratory, where it appears in both the singular and plural to validate statesmen like Q. Hortensius and Scipio Aemilianus.66 Its utility in naturalizing the 64

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Velleius later represents Augustus’ grandson Gaius in similar terms in a meeting with the young Parthian king, reinforcing the sense of proliferating heads of state: cum duo inter se eminentissima imperiorum et hominum coirent capita (“When the two most eminent heads of empires and men came together,” Vell. Pat. 2.101.2). The parallel position of the two men also hints at a regal element within the Principate. It likely entered Roman discourse through Ennius, who refers to Hector as lux Troiae (attested at Macr. Sat. 6.2.18). Cicero refers to Q. Hortensius as lumen et ornamentum rei publicae (Cic. Mil. 37) and Scipio Aemilianus as the second luminary after the Elder Scipio (alterum illud exstitisset lumen civitatis, Cic. De Sen. 35). The viri consulares are figured as haec ornamenta ac lumina rei publicae in the Pro Sulla (Cic. Sull. 5), while the governing elite more broadly plays this role in the Philippics (Cic. Phil. 2.37).

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Principate emerges in Valerius Maximus, who portrays the Caesars as the culmination of famed Republican families: inde oriebantur Camilli Scipiones Fabricii Marcelli Fabii, ac ne singula imperii nostri lumina simul percurrendo sim longior, inde, inquam, caeli clarissima pars, divi fulserunt Caesares (“Then arose the Camilli, Scipiones, Fabricii, Marcelli, Fabii, and – so that I do not spend too long running through the individual luminaries of our empire – then, I say, the most brilliant part of the sky, the divine Caesars, shone,” Val. Max. 2.1.10). Kathryn Welch argues that the lumen was one among many metaphors of statesmanship whose point of reference was narrowed to the Imperial household after the transition to sole rule.67 In its movement from Republican gentes generally to the Caesars specifically, Valerius’ list embodies the new teleology operative under the Principate. Light imagery proved useful in its construction because it functioned similarly in the singular or plural. A domus Augusta that shone with many lights posed little problem for political language. When viewed in relation to the metaphor of the body politic, however, the lumen introduced the more specific symbol of the eye, which literalized the ideal of the emperor’s vigilance.68 Valerius explores this figuration of the Caesars’ authority more explicitly in a rather convoluted passage in praise of the lofty morals of the Elder Drusus. Identifying Augustus and Tiberius as oculi, he writes, Drusum etiam Germanicum, eximiam Claudiae familiae gloriam patriaeque rarum ornamentum, et, quod super omnia est, operum suorum pro habitu aetatis magnitudine vitrico pariter ac fratri, duobus rei publicae divinis oculis mirifice respondentem (“Drusus Germanicus – the distinguished glory of the Claudian family and the remarkable ornament of his country and, most important of all, by the greatness of his actions in consideration of his youth, one who amazingly matched his stepfather and brother, the two divine eyes of the res publica,” Val. Max. 4.3.3). In his quest for an imagistic framework that persuasively describes a system of shared rule, Valerius sets aside the head in favor of its most striking feature. The res publica, he suggests, benefits from two Caesars in the same way that a person does from two eyes. The divinity of these oculi assimilates Augustus and Tiberius to the gods, who are later portrayed watching over Rome in similar fashion: vigilarunt oculi deorum (Val. Max. 9.11.ext.4).69 Yet what role the Elder Drusus, the nominal subject of this passage, plays in the body politic is 67 68 69

Welch 2005: 329–30. On the role of “la vigilance impériale” in the ideology of the Principate, see Béranger 1953: 185–6. For the resonance between the two passages, see Weileder 1998: 64, who argues that the oculi deorum designate Augustus and Tiberius, and Wardle 2000: 491, who writes, “Tiberius appears syntactically on the same level as the gods, oculi deorum.” Valerius’ reference to the oculi deorum appears in his

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left unspecified.70 For while the eyes represented a useful adaptation of corporeal imagery to co-rule, the complexity of relationships within the domus Augusta proved difficult to reconcile with the simple math of the human body. The imagery employed by Valerius Maximus and Velleius confirms that the transfer of power was not easily integrable into the normative body politic tradition. The ill fit between the two was later brought into sharper focus by Tacitus, who opened the Annales by asking how the res publica could survive without a caput during an interregnum.71 While we should not assume this text accurately reflects Julio-Claudian political language, it remains useful in distilling themes that operate implicitly in earlier literature. Among them was the apparent headlessness of Rome while Tiberius dithered over the assumption of power in 14 ce.72 Tacitus reports that the senator G. Asinius Gallus tried to persuade Tiberius to step into the role of princeps by asking him which part of Rome he would like to rule. Offending Tiberius with the question, he explained that he had not asked ut divideret quae separari nequirent sed ut sua confessione argueretur unum esse rei publicae corpus atque unius animo regendum (“In order to divide what should not be separated, but so that it would be clear from his answer that the body of the res publica was singular and should be governed by one mind,” Tac. Ann. 1.12.3). His language echoes that of Manilius; both compare the princeps to a mind that allows the disparate parts of the res publica to coalesce as one.73 Asinius Gallus, however, exposes the logical consequences of this idea. Were Rome to be deprived of its governing mind, its body would soon revert to division.74 Insofar as the interregnum signified an official period of headlessness, it exposed a key vulnerability of the new model of the body politic operative in Rome. Tacitus sustains this theme as Tiberius’ debate with the senate continues. Q. Haterius goes even further than Gallus in articulating the

70 71 72

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diatribe against the conspiracy of Sejanus, which is represented as an attempt to bring civil war back to Rome. Valerius Maximus idealizes the relationship between the Elder Drusus and Tiberius, who are characterized by their fraternum iugum and compared to Castor and Pollux (Val. Max. 5.5.3). On the importance of this problem in medieval political thought, see Kantorowicz 1957: 317–35. Griffin 1995: 36 argues that Tacitus constructs this scene around the themes of insincerity and duplicity, so that the “falsity of the Principate could become incarnate in the hypocrisy of the new Princeps.” Fertik 2019: 156 and Béranger 1953: 218–9 discuss the orientation of the debate towards the ideal of organic unity. See Keitel 1984: 325 on Tacitus’ exposure of “the essential instability” of the Principate, “which is constantly in danger of perishing by the same violent means through which it rose to power.” On the “collapse of the boundary between principate and civil war,” see also O’Gorman 2000: 23.

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impossibility of Rome’s survival without a head of state. Comparing the res publica to a decapitated organism, he asks, quo usque patieris, Caesar, non adesse caput rei publicae? (“Up to what point will you allow, Caesar, the res publica to have no head?” Tac. Ann. 1.13.4).75 His question alludes to the famous opening line of the first Catilinarian, where Cicero asks his adversary, quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? (“How long, then, will you try our patience, Catiline?” Cic. Cat. 1.1).76 The logic of the allusion locates Haterius in the role of Cicero and Tiberius in that of Catiline, who achieved notoriety by trying to become the caput populi Romani. In urging Tiberius to assume the same role that marked Catiline as a tyrant, Haterius dismantles the Republican façade of the Principate and reveals the princeps as an autocrat. Paradoxically, however, he uses the words of Cicero to argue in favor of rather than against this arrangement. His speech thereby exemplifies the perversion of Republican political language under sole rule, a theme central to the Annales.77 Equipped with the hindsight granted by his Antonine perch, Tacitus identifies the Tiberian interregnum as a key moment when the Principate was exposed as a monarchy yet also accepted as a necessity. He uses the metaphor of the body politic to flag the implementation of the succession as a pivot point in Rome’s constitutional trajectory.78 Despite the chronological distance of the Annales from the events it narrates, the senatorial debate that Tacitus stages clarifies a conceptual shift that was in fact taking place under Tiberius. From the mid-first century ce onward, a res publica topped by a caput became the normative figuration of the Imperial body politic. Once Rome had acquired a head, the conditions under which it had survived without one began to recede from view. Headlessness became an absence rather than an omission, so that even the Fable of the Belly lost its original logic. The shift becomes clear in Valerius Maximus’ retelling of the story, which identifies the head rather than the belly as the locus of governing authority. Calling the senate the head of Rome, he writes, regibus exactis, plebs dissidens a patribus iuxta 75 76 77

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“The head existed, organic, and it could not be dissevered,” Syme 1986: 449 writes. See Krebs 2021 on the popularity of allusions to Cat. 1.1 in Latin literature. The disjuncture between language and reality is summed up in his well-known statement that the names of magistracies remained the same after Actium (eadem magistratuum vocabula, Tac. Ann. 1.3.7). For his reception of this tradition, which began with Thucydides and was reprised by Sallust, see O’Gorman 2000: 14–22. Syme 1958b: 369 argues that Tacitus began the Annales with the ascension of Tiberius because it confirmed the Principate “as a permanent form of government.” In a similar vein, Timpe 1962: 17–9 suggests that Tacitus sought to convey the importance of the first succession as a test for the Augustan system.

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ripam fluminis Anienis in colle qui sacer appellatur armata consedit, eratque non solum deformis sed etiam miserrimus rei publicae status, a capite eius cetera parte corporis pestifera seditione divisa (“After the expulsion of the kings, the plebs, who were disagreeing with the patricians, took up arms and settled near the bank of the River Anio on the hill which is called Sacer; the shape of the res publica was not only deformed but also very unwell, since the rest of the body had been separated from its head through pestilential discord,” Val. Max. 8.9.1).79 Retrojecting the Tiberian head of state metaphor back onto the Republican past, Valerius assumes the senate must have played the role now being fulfilled by the princeps. His point is not that the senate should be the head of the body politic; elsewhere, he calls it the heart (rei publicae pectus curia, Val. Max. 2.2.1). Rather, he has become so accustomed to the new shape of the body politic that he can no longer imagine its prior form. Tacitus’ senators reflect a similar perspective; they treat the caput rei publicae as a normative ideal from which divergence has ceased to be possible. The ill fit between the metaphor of the body politic and the transfer of power, which emerges in different ways in Velleius, Valerius, and Tacitus, reflects the broader conceptual challenge that lay in reconciling a dynastic succession with ancestral norms.80 Because Augustus’ position was not construed in institutional terms, but rather closely tied to his person, it could not be easily transferred to a successor. “After all, Olivier Hekster writes, “only monarchy by absolute right can be unequivocally dynastic, and the principate was explicitly formulated not to seem to be simply an absolute monarchy.”81 Augustus’ solution to this problem was characteristic of his approach to politics more generally. He publicly refrained from acknowledging any dynastic ambitions while also investing male members of his family with powers and privileges that paralleled his own, thereby ensuring that they outranked all other Romans in terms of honor and status. He framed these efforts in relation to the dynastic logic of the Late Republic, where it was expected for political capital to be passed from fathers to sons.82 Although his solution was successful in the short term, it raised a number of 79 80 81 82

Briscoe 2019: ad loc. identifies Cic. Brut. 54 as Valerius’ primary source. Because Cicero does not specify the contents of the speech, Valerius must supply his own model of the body politic. As Gruen 2005: 36 asks, “How to perpetuate a principate without admitting that there was a principate?” Hekster 2015: 4–5. See Capogrossi Colognesi 2014: 283–5 on these dynastic strategies. “The complexity of the factors involved,” he writes, “explains why the problem of succession remained latent, but at certain times could explode very violently,” (285). Rowe 2002 traces representations of the succession in Tiberian senatorial decrees, while Kuttner 1995 considers their visual expression on the Boscoreale cups. For portrayals of potential successors across a variety of media, see Seager 2013.

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thorny issues.83 What allowed the res publica to survive the death of its caput? What happened when a good princeps was replaced by a bad one? Were the struggles for power within the domus Augusta different than those which precipitated the civil wars? As the Principate veered towards crisis under Caligula, Roman writers used organic imagery to respond to such questions.

Caligula and the Return of Discord While those living under Caligula and Claudius continued to endorse normative ideals of concord and consensus, they also started acknowledging that Augustus’ successors had not lived up to his example. This concern led to renewed interest in the decline of the body politic, a theme that played a central role in the political discourse of the Late Republic before receding from view in the early first century ce.84 Its revival emerges in a fragment of the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, typically dated to the early reign of Caligula.85 Preserved in Lactantius, the passage portrays the Principate as both a regression to infancy and progression to old age (Lactant. Inst. Div. 7.15.14). Those writing under Claudius picked up where the Elder Seneca left off; Philo of Alexandria portrayed Caligula sickening the body of humanity, Curtius Rufus compared his assassination to a collective beheading, and the Younger Seneca beseeched Claudius to heal the wounds inflicted by his predecessor. Although the force of their critiques was muted by their praise of the current princeps, these writers began to examine the limitations of a political community dependent on a single man for its survival. In doing so, they transformed organic analogies into tools of critique rather than praise. This shift in political language first appears in the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, which reworks an organic model of civic growth and decay from the perspective of the 30s ce.86 According to a lost biography composed by his son, the 83

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On the failure of hereditary monarchy to cohere as a principle of politics under the Principate, see Börm 2015: 242. Flaig 1992: 184 ties this failure to the absence of a single source of political legitimacy in the res publica. While decline remained a constant theme of Latin literature, its application to the trajectory of the res publica fluctuated in relation to political developments. See Williams 1978: 6 on the speed with which Julio-Claudian writers returned to the theme of decline after the optimism of the Augustan age. Sussman 1978: 143–4 frames this composition date in relation to “a brief period of free speech” in the early days of Caligula’s reign, an idea endorsed by Canfora 2015: 139–44. Sussman 1978: 23–4 also lays out evidence for the Elder Seneca’s death around 39 ce. Interest in this text has been revived by Piano 2017, who identifies the Elder Seneca as the author of a highly fragmentary papyrus from Herculaneum previously attributed to L. Manlius Torquatus (PHerc. 1067). Although the papyrus is too damaged to say much about the contents of the work, it confirms that the Historiae was circulated after its composition (an assumption questioned by Griffin 1972: 10–11 and Klotz 1901: 441–2). The ramifications of the discovery for our understanding of Julio-Claudian historiography are addressed in Scappaticcio 2020.

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text opened with the onset of the civil wars (ab initio bellorum civilium), identified as the moment when truthfulness first declined (unde primum veritas retro abiit), and continued until nearly the day of his father’s death around 39 ce (paene usque ad mortis suae diem).87 Before turning to its contents, it is necessary to address two obstacles to its interpretation. The first is the ambiguity of its author; the identical names of the Elder and Younger Seneca have led some to attribute the fragment to a lost work of the son rather than the Historiae of the father.88 Because its biological analogy is compatible with historiography, a genre in which the Younger Seneca had little interest, and its model of decline hews closely to that of the Controversiae, I am inclined towards the authorship of the Elder Seneca.89 Nevertheless, my argument does not hinge on this point.90 The second issue is the extent to which Lactantius has influenced the form in which the fragment is preserved.91 It is possible, perhaps even probable, that some of its language should be viewed as Lactantian rather than Senecan.92 Even so, it seems highly likely that Lactantius provides evidence (directly or indirectly) for revived interest in the theme of organic decline in the mid-first century ce. This shift indicates a new phase in the continued evolution of the Roman body politic. Lactantius introduces his quotation of Seneca in a discussion of the rise and fall of empires, a theme that culminates with the example of Rome. He suggests that Seneca narrated Roman history through the Ages of Man tradition, which compared stages of civic development to those of human development: non inscite Seneca Romanae urbis tempora distribuit in aetates (“Not unwisely did Seneca distribute the eras of the Roman city into ages,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2).93 Although texts like Varro’s De Vita Populi Romani had 87

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Sen. De Vita Patris Fr. 1 (Peter). The starting point for these bella civilia has provoked much scholarly debate; arguments have been made primarily for the Gracchan era (Canfora 2015: 138–213; Sussman 1978: 142; Hahn 1964: 177–80) or Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon (Zecchini 2016: 152–3; Levick in FRHist I: 506; Griffin 1972: 9–10). On the confusion generated by the identical names of the Elder and Younger Seneca, as well as its consequences for the interpretation of the Historiae, see Mazzoli 2020: 87–92. To our knowledge, the Younger Seneca never wrote historiography and in fact expressed disdain for the genre (e.g. Sen. QNat. 3 praef. 5–6). The model of decline employed in the fragment evokes the Elder Seneca’s comments on the decline of eloquence at the beginning of the Controversiae (Sen. Contr. 1 praef. 6–7, 12). Organic metaphors of growth and decay also appear here, on which see Berti 2020: 109–13 and Sussman 2020 (1972): 145–6. The identification of the Younger Seneca as the author would simply delay the composition date. Sussman 2020 (1972): 146 characterizes the style of the passage as “primarily Lactantian.” Archambault 1966: 196–8 persuasively refutes the idea that Lactantius erroneously ascribed Florus’ preface to Seneca. That the Historiae served as a source for Florus, however, remains possible (see Renda 2020). On the Ages of Man tradition, see Galdi 2009; Bessone 2008; Sears 1986; Archambault 1966; Häussler 1964.

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already gestured in this direction, Seneca provides our first evidence for the fully fledged form of the tradition.94 He placed Rome’s infancy (infantia) under Romulus, childhood (pueritia) during the regal period, adolescence (adulescentia) between the foundation of the Republic and conclusion of the Second Punic War, physical prime (iuvenescere) during Rome’s conquest of the Mediterranean, and decline upon the onset of the civil wars (viribus suis male uteretur, quibus se ipsa confecit, “Rome used her own strength poorly and attacked herself with it,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). From Rome’s Romulean birth to its self-destructive demise, Seneca closely follows the body politic tradition that we have been tracing thus far. He diverges from this normative model, however, in his effort to extend Rome’s life cycle beyond the Augustan Settlement. As a witness to the civil wars and rule of three principes, he was uniquely positioned to tell this story.95 Contained within it is a direct confrontation with the constitutional transformation through which he lived. As Seneca turns his attention to the state of the contemporary body politic, he initially appears to endorse a standard narrative of Augustan restoration. Like those writing under Tiberius, he identifies a renascence after the conclusion of the civil wars: haec fuit prima eius senectus, cum bellis lacerata civilibus atque intestino malo pressa rursus ad regimen singularis imperii recidit quasi ad alteram infantiam revoluta (“This was Rome’s first old age, when torn apart by civil wars and oppressed by intestinal ills she receded again to the guidance of sole rule as if returning to a second infancy,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). Seneca follows Velleius in using the concept of a return (rursus, recidit, revoluta) to proclaim the rebirth of a community at war with itself. Whereas Velleius employed such imagery to elide the constitutional changes wrought by Augustus, however, Seneca uses it to draw attention to them. In a striking divergence from the norms of Julio-Claudian discourse, he refers to the implementation of sole rule with the phrase singulare imperium, which Late Republican writers used to denote the absolute authority of kings.96 94 95

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See Galdi 2009: 407–10. For Seneca’s inheritance of Varro’s diagnosis of civil strife, see Bessone 2008: 67. Griffin 1972: 5 argues for Seneca’s birth in around 50 bce and death around 39 ce. His remarkably long lifespan, which some have suggested began even earlier, means that he must have been one of the few living witnesses to the triumviral era when he composed the Historiae. e.g. cur enim regem appellem, Iovis optimi nomine, hominem dominandi cupidum aut imperi singularis, populo oppresso dominantem, non tyrannum potius? (“Why, then, should I call a man who is desirous of domination or sole rule, who reigns over an oppressed people, ‘king,’ the title of Jupiter Optimus, rather than ‘tyrant?’” Cic. Rep. 1.50); Nepos uses the phrase in relation to the Elder Dionysius of Sicily: rei cupidus nisi singularis perpetuique imperii (“He desired nothing except sole and perpetual rule,” Nep. Vit. Reg. 2.2).

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In applying this language to the Principate, Seneca confirms its autocratic foundations.97 He underscores the point through his description of the Augustan age as a second infancy (altera infantia), which prompts readers to look back to Rome’s first infancy (prima . . . infantia) under rex Romulus. Although such an allusion need not be negative, it activates an exemplum that Augustus himself used cautiously.98 After predicating foundation upon kingship in this manner, Seneca turns his attention to the ramifications of the rebirth uncritically celebrated by others. Seneca’s “giudizio polemico,” as Chiara Renda puts it, becomes clear as he proceeds to cast liberty as an ancestral ideal unrealizable in contemporary Rome.99 Andrew Gallia has persuasively demonstrated how Romans used lamentations over the loss of liberty to contrast the Imperial present with the Republican past.100 Lactantius suggests that Seneca contributed to this topos through his invocation of Brutus: amissa enim libertate, quam Bruto duce et auctore defenderat, ita consenuit tamquam sustentare se ipsa non valeret, nisi adminiculo regentium niteretur (“For liberty, which Brutus had defended as a leader and progenitor, was lost, and in this way, Rome grew old, as if she were not strong enough to hold herself up except by depending on the prop of rulers,” FRHist Sen. Fr. 2). The reference to Brutus without a praenomen blurs the distinction between Lucius Junius Brutus, the founder of the Republic, and Marcus Junius Brutus, the famed assassin of Caesar.101 The logic of the passage suggests that Seneca means the former, whose expulsion of the Tarquins marked the end of Rome’s childhood. The ambiguity between Archaic and contemporary history is nevertheless productive. It reminds readers of a more recent Brutus who defended the cause of liberty before being vanquished by Augustus.102 Seneca encourages this reading by calling Brutus an auctor, an inversion of the term’s traditional association with the princeps. Directing readers 97

Griffin 1972: 19 interprets regimen singularis imperii in relation to Caesar’s dictatorship, but it marks the conclusion of the civil wars in a manner better suited to Augustus. 98 For Augustus’ refusal of the name “Romulus,” see Suet. Aug. 7.2 alongside Wardle 2014: ad loc., who notes that “direct assumption of his name was injudicious” due to its regal associations and Caesarian legacy. 99 Renda 2020: 322. 100 See Gallia 2012: 9, who writes, “Indeed, whenever writers of the Imperial period required a retronym with which to describe the nature of the Roman constitution before the imposition of the emperors’ supreme authority, libertas was the inevitable choice.” He pushes back against Roller 2001: 232, who argues against libertas as a “political idea.” See also van der Blom 2020 and Strunk 2017: 1–38. 101 Castiglioni 1928: 460 proposed Marcus, but most have followed Griffin 1972: 19 in seeing Lucius as more likely. 102 Renda 2020: 322 argues for Seneca’s construction of a purposeful parallel between past and future Bruti.

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towards the sacrifices rather than rewards of the pax Augusta, he suggests that the reestablishment of peace required the surrender of liberty. Seneca puts the loss of civic autonomy into biological terms by collapsing the life stages of infancy and old age, which appear to occur simultaneously under the Principate (ad alteram infantiam . . . consenuit). It was commonplace in ancient literature that old age could be understood as a second childhood due to the dependence entailed by physical and mental decline.103 The idea was pithily expressed in the proverb bis pueri sumus.104 Seneca exploits the comparison to represent a civic organism that has regressed in two different ways at once. The negative inflection of his imagery is confirmed through his reference to an adminiculum upon which Rome relies. As we saw in Chapter 3, Livy used the same word to convey the rebirth of the body politic under Camillus (Liv. 6.1.4). Yet while he compared Camillus to the stake upon which a flourishing vine grows, Seneca instead describes the cane upon which an old man leans. He thereby orients his symbolism towards senescence rather than nascence, complicating a normative narrative of Julio-Claudian restoration. His divergence from Livy comes into sharper focus with his modification of adminiculum by the plural regentium, which implies a series of rulers rather than one exemplary statesman. His language suggests his recognition of the Principate as a governing form that supersedes any single representative. It flags the vulnerability of a civic community dependent on a dynastic succession over which it exercises no control. Seneca’s reservations about Rome’s constitutional transformation found realization in the problematic rule of Caligula, whose descent into tyranny he did not live to see. Those writing under Claudius, however, responded to the failure of the Caligulan Principate in a manner reminiscent of the Historiae. Although the norms of discourse mandated their panegyrical portrayal of the current princeps, they began to depict the reign of Caligula as a period of organic decline. In doing so, they suggested that the vitality of the body politic depended on the identity of its ruler rather than the fact of his rule. Among these thinkers was Philo of Alexandria, whose Legatio ad Gaium recounts his experience as the head of an embassy sent to Rome in 103 104

See Parkin 2003: 209. Lactantius reports the Younger Seneca’s revision of the proverb in a lost philosophical work: ‘non,’ inquit, ‘bis pueri sumus, ut vulgo dicitur, sed semper’ (“He [Seneca] says that we are not children twice, as is commonly said, but always,” Lactant. Div. Inst. 2.4.14; Haase Fr. 121). Juvenal later invested the idea with memorable detail: una senum facies, cum voce trementia membra | et iam leve caput madidique infantia nasi; | frangendus misero gingiva panis inermi (“Every old man has the same appearance; his limbs trembling along with his voice, his head now bald, and his nose dripping like a baby; miserably attacking bread with unarmed gums,” Juv. 10.198–200).

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39 ce.105 While Philo’s perspective is rooted in Jewish theology and oriented towards a Jewish audience, it is also deeply engaged with the nature and operation of the emperor’s authority.106 Like many before him, he illustrates the ideals of rulership through his portrayal of Augustus, whose ending of the civil wars is compared to the eradication of a pestilence (Philo Leg. 145, trans. Smallwood): οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Καῖσαρ, ὁ τοὺς καταρράξαντας πανταχόθι χειμῶνας εὐδιάσας, ὁ τὰς κοινὰς νόσους Ἑλλήνων καὶ βαρβάρων ἰασάμενος, αἳ κατέβησαν μὲν ἀπὸ τῶν μεσημβρινῶν καὶ ἑῴων, ἔδραμον δὲ καὶ μέχρι δύσεως καὶ πρὸς ἄρκτον, τὰ μεθόρια χωρία καὶ πελάγη κατασπείρασαι τῶν ἀβουλήτων· This is the Caesar who lulled the storms which were crashing everywhere, who healed the sicknesses common to Greeks and barbarians alike, which descended from the South and East and swept across to the West and North, sowing misery in the lands and seas in between.

Positioning Augustus as the healer of a world sickened by civil strife, Philo reflects and reinforces the norms of Julio-Claudian discourse.107 When viewed in relation to the broader aims of the text, however, his imagery takes on a subversive edge. It sets up a contrast between the first princeps and the third, who is cast as the opposite of his great grandfather in nearly every way.108 The dichotomy of sickness and health, which recurs throughout the text, emerges as a tool used to judge rather than simply endorse the authority of the princeps. In the political discourse of the Late Republic, it was commonplace to assign the governing class responsibility for the vitality of the civic community over which it presided. In the works of Cicero, Sallust, and Varro, moral corruption is repeatedly figured as an ill that spreads from the top to bottom of Roman society. By the first century ce, we have seen, this principle narrowed from the leading citizens (principes) generally to the princeps specifically. Philo suggests that the shift posed no problem under the salutary rule of Augustus, but became a matter of public concern under 105 106

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The embassy was undertaken in response to violence against Judaeans in Alexandria, on which see Bremmer 2020: 52–6 and Atkinson 2006. See Christoforou 2021 and Leon 2016, who explore Philo’s participation in an ongoing conversation about the duties and obligations of the emperor. Niehoff 2018: 68 calls him “a central author in the discourse on power, exile, and religion in first-century Rome.” Such work pushes back against Colson 1962: ix, who suggests the treatise is of negligible value as a political source. Smallwood 1961: ad loc. compares Philo’s disease imagery to Cicero’s, while Delling 1972: 181 cites Dio’s paradigmatic portrayal of Augustus as the healer of the body politic at 56.39.2. On the encomium of Augustus is an exercise in “contrasting characterization,” see Borgen 1997: 185; Leon 2016: 47; Christoforou 2021: 106.

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Caligula, whose literal illness in 37 ce figuratively sickened the entire world: τὰ γὰρ μέρη πάντα τῆς οἰκουμένης αὐτῷ συνενόσησε, βαρυτέρᾳ νόσῳ χρησάμενα τῆς κατασχούσης Γάιον· ἐκείνη μὲν γὰρ σώματος ἦν αὐτὸ μόνον, ἡ δὲ τῶν πανταχοῦ πάντων (“All parts of the habitable world were ill with Gaius; but they were suffering from a more serious illness than that which had seized him. For his illness was merely physical, whereas theirs was universal,” Philo Leg. 16, trans. Smallwood).109 Just as Varro depicted gangrene creeping from the senate to people, Philo describes a pestilence traveling from ruler to ruled. He later assigns Caligula agency in its spread, asserting, ὁ δὲ ἔμπαλιν νόσους μὲν τοῖς ὑγιαίνουσι, πηρώσεις δὲ τοῖς ὁλοκλήροις, καὶ συνόλως θανάτους τοῖς ζῶσι (“Gaius, on the other hand, brought disease upon the healthy, mutilation upon the sound, and in general unnatural, premature, and cruel deaths upon the living,” Philo Leg. 107, trans. Smallwood). The contrast that Philo constructs is with Apollo Medicus, who is praised for developing the art of medicine and promoting the health of mankind (Philo Leg. 106). This deity was also linked to Augustus, who invested his curative powers with political significance in the triumviral era. Through Caligula’s subversion of the Apollonic example set by his predecessor, Philo suggests, the civic diseases of the past have returned to the present. Philo elaborates upon this idea by calling Caligula a dēmoboros (“devourer of his people,” Philo Leg. 108), an accusation famously wielded by Achilles against Agamemnon in the Iliad (Hom. Il. 1.231).110 In Roman political discourse, the trope of the cannibalizing despot was closely connected to the civil war generals of the 80s bce. Valerius Maximus portrays Cinna and Marius greedily drinking civic blood (L. Cinna et C. Marius hauserant quidem avidi civilem sanguinem, Val. Max. 2.8.7) and Sulla figuratively feasting on the heads of his victim: (abscisa miserorum capita . . . manderet, Val. Max. 9.2.1).111 Under the Principate, however, this charge also began to be wielded against the princeps.112 Suetonius reports the circulation of invective verses that depicted Tiberius drinking Rome’s blood as if it were wine: fastidit vinum, quia iam sitit iste cruorem: | tam bibit hunc avide, quam bibit ante merum (“That man shudders at wine 109

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Sidwell 2010 argues against Caligula’s supposed madness as a tool of political explanation, while Winterling 2009: 103–19 frames charges of insanity in relation to Caligula’s violation of political norms. See Capettini 2020: 635 on “the entwinement of the figures of the beast and the ruler” in relation to Nero. Brock 2013: 90 argues that the trope was specifically associated with tyranny in Archaic Greek poetry (e.g. δημοφάγον δὲ τύραννον, Theog. Fr. 1181 West). Eckert 2014: 270 argues that Valerius uses Sullan cruelty as “a counter-example to Roman cultural identity.” I address this phenomenon at Mebane 2020: 177–8.

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because he now thirsts for blood; he drinks it as greedily as he used to drink undiluted wine,” Suet. Tib. 59.1). The verses go on to compare Tiberius to Sulla, Marius, and Antony, suggesting that the horrors of civil war have found a new home in the House of the Caesars. Philo’s characterization of Caligula as a dēmoboros makes the same point through Homeric allusion. Through his consumption of the body under his care, the princeps has perverted his role as the head and healer of the Roman world. Exposing the dark side of civic interdependence, Philo depicts an Imperial body politic no less vulnerable than the Republican organism that preceded it. Both are ultimately subject to the variable morals of those who command them. The Younger Seneca offers a similar perspective in the Consolatio ad Polybium, a treatise composed during the philosopher’s exile in Corsica that portrays Claudius as the healer of wounds inflicted by his predecessor.113 Seneca first establishes Claudius’ curative powers at the level of public welfare, then illustrates their personal relevance to his addressee. He enjoins Fortuna, patere illum generi humano iam diu aegro et adfecto mederi, patere quicquid prioris principis furor concussit in suum locum restituere ac reponere (“Allow him to heal the human race, sickened and weakened for so long now; allow him to restore and put back in its place whatever the madness of the previous princeps disrupted,” Sen. Polyb. 13.1). Seneca joins Philo in blaming the madness of Caligula for the proliferation of figurative illnesses in the body politic. The implication is that Rome’s health fluctuates in relation to the virtue of its current ruler, an idea to which we will see Seneca return under Nero. For now, he is happy to live under a princeps who has cured the grief of his freedman in the same way that he has healed the body of Rome: hic itaque princeps, qui publicum omnium hominum solacium est, aut me omnia fallunt aut iam recreavit animum tuum et tam magno vulneri maiora adhibuit remedia (“And so this princeps, who is a common salve for all men, unless I am mistaken, has already restored your spirit and applied greater remedies to a wound so grave,” Sen. Polyb. 14.1). Seneca expresses optimism about the regeneration of Rome, but the need for such regeneration raises troubling questions about the institutional viability of the Principate. The failure of Claudius to live up to the ideals laid out in the text only made such questions more urgent in the years to come.114 113

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Gloyn 2014: 451 stresses the “conflicting demands” of the treatise, which consoles Polybius while panegyrizing Claudius. For the importance of wounding metaphors in the corollary Consolatio ad Helviam, see Rimell 2020. On Claudius’ failure to live up to Seneca’s ideals of rulership, see Osgood 2007. He addresses the Apocolocyntosis, a text in which the monstrosity of Claudius’ own body has “ethical and political significance,” (Braund and James 1998: 285).

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Whereas Philo and Seneca show the dangers that a bad princeps poses for the res publica, Q. Curtius Rufus addresses the risks posed by his removal. In a famous passage from Book 10 of De Gestis Alexandri Magni, he depicts Rome as a body that has been beheaded through the loss of its princeps. Yet as is the case with the Elder Seneca’s Historiae, the uncertain composition date of the text has hampered the interpretation of its imagery. External evidence for the identity of its author is sparse, while internal evidence is lacking due to its missing preface and Hellenistic subject matter.115 Debate therefore hinges upon the identity of the emperor to whose death he refers. Most of those who have taken up the question argue for either Caligula or Nero, though opinion remains somewhat divided between them.116 Whether Curtius Rufus describes a crisis that the new princeps has successfully averted or rather recently ended is a key point of contention. My own reading of the passage follows J. E. Atkinson’s influential argument for a Claudian date. Both options, nevertheless, allow us to see how a Roman writer responded to the violent deposition of a princeps in the mid-to-late first century ce. Curtius Rufus shifts his gaze to contemporary affairs in response to the conflicts that arose between Alexander’s generals in the aftermath of his death. Stressing the precarity of a monarchy over which multiple men fight, he writes, sed iam fatis admovebantur Macedonum genti bella civilia; nam et insociabile est regnum et a pluribus expetebatur (“But already civil wars were being pushed onto the Macedonians by the Fates; for monarchy is unsociable and was being sought by many,” Curt. 10.9.1).117 He not only correlates multiple aspirants to the Macedonian throne with the outbreak of civil war, but also uses the present tense to frame this development as expected and inevitable. His generalizing claim about the unsociability of monarchy hints at the struggle for power within the House of the Caesars, which saw the removal of a prominent rival with every succession.118 Tiberius (or someone 115

116 117

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The Younger Pliny (Plin. Ep. 7.27.2) and Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 11.21) mention a Curtius Rufus who died prior to the reign of Nero, but their descriptions of his character seem an ill fit with the text (see McQueen 1967: 25–6). Yet Atkinson and Yardley 2009: 11 call it “an attractive possibility” that this man is our author. A Curtius Rufus also appears in the index of Suetonius’ Grammarians and Rhetoricians; Power 2013 argues that this man, who appears chronologically among Julio-Claudian authors, wrote the text but is not the same one Tacitus mentions. The bibliography is vast; Atkinson and Yardley 2009: 2–14 offer an overview of arguments favoring a Claudian date, while Baynham 1998: 201–20 makes the case for a Vespasianic one. In using Alexander to think about civil war and sole rule, Curtius Rufus follows the example of Livy, whose Alexander digression concludes with a telling jussive: civilia bella sileant (Liv. 9.19.15). See Pelling 2013: 12 and Morello 2002: 85, who notes that Livy’s counterfactual history has “direct and uncomfortable implications for contemporary events.” Kornemann 1930 long ago described the seemingly deliberate pairing of young men within the Imperial family as potential successors as the Doppelprinzipat. “It is not sufficiently remarked,” Rowe 2002: 17 notes, “that the drawback of the arrangement was more than theoretical. Three times

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close to him) eliminated Agrippa Postumus, Caligula eliminated Tiberius Gemellus, Nero eliminated Britannicus, and countless lesser threats were removed along the way. Imperial writers characterized these murders as necessary evils; Philo cites the unsociability of monarchy to explain Caligula’s murder of Tiberius Gemellus (ἀκοινώνητον ἀρχή, θεσμὸς φύσεως ἀκίνητος, “Absolute power cannot be shared. Nature’s ordinance on this point is unchangeable,” Philo Leg. 68, trans. Smallwood, lightly adapted), while Tacitus suggests that many condoned Nero’s murder of Britannicus for the same reason: antiquas fratrum discordias et insociabile regnum aestimantes (“Taking into account ancestral discord of the brothers and the unsociability of monarchy,” Tac. Ann. 13.17.1, translation of Philo is lightly adapted from Smallwood 1961).119 As Curtius’ analysis continues, it becomes clear that he recognizes the relevance of this idea to the Principate as well. Curtius cites the collapse of Alexander’s empire as evidence that a body politic cannot survive without the unifying command of a head of state. In a passage that could just as easily describe the historical trajectory of Rome, he explains, primum ergo conlisere vires, deinde disperserunt; et cum pluribus corpus, quam capiebat, onerassent, cetera membra deficere coeperunt, quodque imperium sub uno stare potuisset, dum a pluribus sustinetur, ruit (“First therefore forces collided, then scattered; and when they had burdened the body with more than it could handle, all the limbs began to grow tired, and an empire which could have survived under one man, fell while it was being held by many,” Curt. 10.9.2).120 Roman writers often portrayed the collapse of the Republic in these terms; Livy’s preface describes Rome laboring under her own weight (iam magnitudine laboret sua) and turning her strength against herself (vires se ipsae conficiunt, Liv. Praef. 4), while Horace’s Epodes feature the famous proclamation, altera iam teritur bellis civilibus aetas, | suis et ipsa Roma viribus ruit (“Another age is now consumed by civil wars, and Rome herself collapses under her own strength,” Hor. Ep. 16.1–2).121 Unlike Livy and Horace, Curtius explicitly ties the problem of civic collapse to the dispersal of power among multiple

119 120 121

during the first century of the Principate, an emperor died and left two potential successors, one of whom murdered the other.” Tacitus later summarized the problem with the ominous remark, plena Caesarum domus (Tac. Ann. 4.3.1). Curtius’ and Tacitus’ shared use of insociabile regnum speaks to broader verbal similarities between their works, on which see Bosworth 2004. The insertion of capitibus is followed in the most recent edition of the text (Lucarini 2009), though my argument stands without it. See also Prop. 3.13.60; Liv. 30.44.8; Luc. 1.70–2; Sen. Clem. 1.3.5; Flor. 1.47.6 alongside Dutoit 1936. Syme 1986: 449–50 includes “the magnitude of the Roman empire” as a key tenet of the apologia for the principate.

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men. He joins Manilius in suggesting that discord can only be checked by the unifying command of a single ruler. While Alexander’s empire provides historical evidence for this principle, recent events in Rome confirm its contemporary relevance. Curtius praises Rome’s new princeps for averting a crisis like that which followed the death of Alexander. He writes, proinde iure meritoque populus Romanus salutem se principi suo debere profitetur, qui noctis, quam paene supremam habuimus, novum sidus inluxit (“In the same way, the Roman people justly and deservedly professes that it owes its health to its princeps, who gleamed like a new star in the night which we nearly considered our last,” Curt. 10.9.3). Although scholars have tried to identify a specific princeps as Curtius’ novum sidus, the popularity of such symbolism in Imperial political discourse precludes certainty. The comets that proliferated during Nero’s reign could have induced it, but so could have Claudius’ efforts to represent his rule as the beginning of a new saeculum.122 We might compare a passage from the Younger Seneca that figures Claudius as a star who restored light to a darkened world: sidus hoc, quod praecipitato in profundum et demerso in tenebras orbi refulsit, semper luceat (“Let this star, which restored light to a world plunged headlong into darkness and submerged in shadows, always shine,” Sen. Polyb. 13.1). While Seneca describes the whole reign of Caligula as a period of darkness, Curtius envisions a single cataclysmic night. His analysis suggests that it is the loss of the princeps rather than the tyranny of his rule that brought Rome to the brink of ruin. Drawing out the violence implicit in Tacitus’ portrayal of the Tiberian interregnum, Curtius figures the death of the princeps as the beheading of the body politic.123 With the loss of the head comes the disagreement of the limbs: huius, hercule, non solis ortus lucem caliganti reddidit mundo, cum sine suo capite discordia membra trepidarent (“His rise, not that of the sun, by Hercules, returned light to a darkened world, since the limbs without their head were agitated by discord,” Curt. 10.9.4). Curtius describes the realization of the fear implicit in Manilius’ Astronomica, where a divine governing mind is necessary to keep discord in chains. Depicting Rome’s limbs on the same precipice of civil war that doomed the Macedonian empire, he stresses the impossibility of empire-building in the absence of an emperor. 122 123

See Ginsberg 2020: 231–2 on the surprising frequency with which comets were reported under Nero; Pastor 2018 connects Claudius to the novum sidus. The Elder Pliny connects the murders of Caligula and Claudius to the discovery of headless livers (caput . . . defuit . . . Gaio principi . . . Claudio successori, Plin. HN 11.189). While the omen had a long history in Roman culture, the reconfiguration of the body politic metaphor likely enriched its interpretive significance under the Principate.

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The stakes are equally high for the domestic sphere, where the threat of civil war seems to reemerge with every transfer of power. Although Curtius would like to posit the ascension of the next emperor as the solution to this problem, his text identifies a structural weakness that cannot be resolved through good governance. As long as the survival of the body depends upon that of the head, Rome will remain vulnerable to the same conflicts that doomed Alexander’s kingdom. Rather than delving into the consequences of this problem, Curtius retreats to the safer territory of panegyric. Positioning Claudius’ (or Vespasian’s) virtue as a solution to the constitutional precarity exposed by the death of his predecessor, he employs three familiar tropes to announce the restoration of peace: quot ille tum extinxit faces! quot condidit gladios! quantam tempestatem subita serenitate discussit! (“How many firebrands did he then extinguish! How many swords did he sheath! How great a storm did he disperse with suddenly clear weather!” Curt. 10.9.5). He models the new princeps on Augustus, with whom the language of civic restoration remained closely associated throughout the Julio-Claudian era. Making recourse to the idea of rebirth, he suggests that another act of refoundation has now taken place: Non ergo revirescit solum sed etiam floret imperium (“And so the empire has not only revived, but is even flourishing,” Curt. 10.9.5). Yet insofar as this refoundation is necessary, it indicates that the Principate did not provide a definitive solution to the problems of the Late Republic. Internal conflict remains an ever-present threat, one that modulates the optimism with which Curtius concludes his digression: absit modo invidia, excipiet huius saeculi tempora eiusdem domus utinam perpetua, certe diuturna posteritas (“Provided only that envy is absent, the posterity of his house will prolong the days of this age, I hope forever, but at least for a very long time,” Curt. 10.9.6). His oblique reference to ill will seems to gesture towards future struggles for power, which are positioned as the primary obstacle to the perpetuity of the current House of the Caesars. The themes of discord and succession, which first appeared in Tiberian literature, are thereby merged into a single analytic framework. This chapter has explored the intersection of two themes central to Julio-Claudian political thought: civil strife and the dynastic succession. It began with the writers of the Late Augustan and Tiberian eras, whose works celebrate the Principate for putting an end to discord among the warring limbs of the res publica. Manilius found this lesson lurking in the stars, while Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus applied it to Rome’s recent past. Their portrayals of Tiberius as another healer and head of state illustrate how the Republican body politic tradition continued to evolve in

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a new constitutional context. The success of their conceptual project was nevertheless complicated by the transfer of power, which resisted persuasive portrayal in organic terms. This problem of representation hinted at the ill fit between the Republican fiction of the Principate and the monarchical nature of the succession. Tacitus later foregrounded the same tension in his portrayal of the Tiberian interregnum, where the transfer of power simultaneously unmasks and naturalizes the autocratic underpinnings of Rome’s new form. The vulnerability of a body politic reliant on a head of state became increasingly clear under Caligula, whose tyrannical rule and violent assassination confirmed that the Principate was not necessarily the panacea for which Romans had hoped. Across the works of Seneca the Elder and Younger, Philo of Alexandria, and Curtius Rufus, a familiar narrative of organic decline reappeared. While Tiberian writers had relegated images of illness, wounding, and senescence to the past, Claudian writers applied them to the present. Their impulse to blame Caligula for harming the organism under his care undermined a normative narrative of JulioClaudian consensus. The force of their critiques was nevertheless muted by their celebration of Claudius as a new Augustus. When confronted with a bad princeps, they offered a new and better princeps as the solution. The norms of discourse encouraged such panegyrizing, but they do not tell the whole story. Increasingly willing to criticize the character of a princeps but not the institution of the Principate, Claudian thinkers reflected the growing entrenchment of autocracy in the Roman political imagination. Those writing under Nero soon picked up where they left off, portraying the Principate as a deeply flawed yet profoundly necessary constitutional form. Their perception of the Republic as a relic of the past led them to envision a body politic often wounded by its Caesars but unable to survive without them.

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chapter 5

Addressing Autocracy under Nero

When Nero became princeps in 54 ce, Roman thinkers had been adapting the metaphor of the body politic to the parameters of sole rule for nearly a century. Although this project began under Augustus, it only came into full view under his successors. While Tiberian writers celebrated the Principate as a civic rebirth, those who witnessed the reign of Caligula proved more measured in their assessments. Their portrayals of the third princeps harming rather than healing the body politic under his care implied that the Principate had not necessarily solved the intertwined problems of discord and decline. Although the encomiastic inflection of their texts often mitigated the force of their critiques, they still triggered a shift in the norms of discourse. This shift became more pronounced in the Neronian era, which is often identified as a watershed in the construction of a rupture between the Republican past and Imperial present.1 Less invested in the paradigm of Roman Republicanism than their predecessors, the Younger Seneca and Lucan proved willing to explore the vulnerability of a political community dependent on a ruler whose selection lay beyond their control and whose power was only contestable through violence. Interrogating the nature of sole rule through the metaphor of the body politic, they represented a rhetorical tradition that was now looking forward to the Imperial future as much as back to the Republican past. This chapter begins with a reading of Seneca’s De Clementia, which is the first text to subject the Imperial model of the body politic to explicit theorization.2 It portrays Nero and the Roman people as interdependent parts of a single organism; the former acts as an animus, mens, caput, 1

2

See Gowing 2005: 68 on the “diminishing appeal of the Republican past” under Nero, which coincided with a regime that did not portray itself as a continuation of the Republic. Littlewood 2017: 83 argues that the construction of a rupture between past and present was a “live issue” in Neronian Rome. The late date of this theorization speaks to Romans’ disinterest in the abstraction familiar from the Greek world, as noted by Hammer 2014: 7.

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spiritus, and vinculum, while the latter takes on the role of a corpus. Yet even as Seneca naturalizes a persuasive hierarchy of ruler and ruled, he also reminds Nero that interdependence goes both ways. He argues that the vitality of the head depends upon the strength of the body that supports it, so that clemency becomes a matter of self-interest. He reinforces his case through the familiar model of physician and patient, to which we will turn our attention in the second section. Because the princeps is a part of the corpus he treats, he is ultimately the recipient of the punishments he prescribes. Depicting the execution of citizens as the amputation of Nero’s own limbs, Seneca tries to restrain his use of the scalpel. Insofar as he blames previous principes for excessive bloodletting, however, he also acknowledges their capacity to do harm. Attuned to both the weaknesses of the Imperial body politic and the threat of civil war, Seneca portrays the Principate as a necessary if not ideal governing form.3 Seneca’s engagement with these questions set the stage for his nephew Lucan, whose Bellum Civile is the subject of the final section. The epic opens with Rome plunging her hand into her own intestines, a programmatic image that foregrounds the self-destruction entailed by civil war. In the books that follow, Lucan uses the conflict between Caesar and Pompey to engage in a broader meditation on the life cycle of the res publica. The vulnerability of an organism dependent on one man emerges in Book 2, when Sulla performs gruesome civic surgeries that disrupt the boundary between harming and healing. Alluding to Seneca’s portrait of Nero in his own portrait of Sulla, Lucan suggests that the princeps has taken up the scalpel his tutor urged him to avoid. The limitations of the head of state model, in turn, are exposed in Book 8, when Lucan uses the death of Pompey to stage a figurative mutiny of the body politic. Set in the aftermath of Pharsalus, Lucan describes how Pompey’s forces, frustrated by his inadequacy as a leader, foment a rebellion that culminates in his decapitation on the Egyptian coast. Rather than lead to the refoundation of the old res publica, however, the separation of head and body traps Rome in a seemingly endless repetition of civil war. When the consequences of the scene are extrapolated to the present, they convey the futility of trying to return to an idealized Republican past and prompt readers to confront the reality of the Principate. This foreclosure of constitutional alternatives marks the end of the conceptual project we have been tracing thus far. 3

Wallace-Hadrill 1981: 318 writes, “The élite were little concerned with the justification of the system of autocracy. It was accepted as a fact of political life that this was the only condition under which stability was possible.”

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The Ideal of Imperial Interdependence In the last chapter, we saw how those writing under Caligula and Claudius began to complicate a normative narrative of ancestral refoundation under sole rule. Foremost among them was the Elder Seneca, whose Historiae periodized Roman history around the arrival of autocracy. The diverse works of the Younger Seneca share in and build upon the historical perspective of his father.4 In a famous passage praising the Stoic fortitude of Cato, for example, Seneca asks, quidni ille mutationem rei publicae forti et aequo pateretur animo? (“Why should he [Cato] not have tolerated the transformation of the res publica with a brave and level spirit?” Sen. Ep. 71.12). His reference to the mutatio rei publicae is often taken as the first explicit acknowledgment of the transition to sole rule in Latin literature.5 It hints at a metaphor of the body politic that is invested with intricate detail in De Clementia, a treatise on rulership written to commemorate Nero’s inauguration.6 Throughout the text, Nero is identified as the breath, binding link, mind, and head of his subjects, who are only able to achieve corporeal coherence under his command. This section explores how these images naturalize the hierarchical interdependence of ruler and ruled, an idea that underpins Seneca’s portrayal of clemency as a matter of Nero’s own self-interest.7 The organic metaphors of De Clementia have typically been viewed in relation to the Stoic theory of the wise king, which played a central role in the naturalization of monarchy in the ancient world.8 Stoicism was amenable to monarchy insofar as it saw sole rule as an ordering principle of nature; the relationship between a king and his subject could be productively compared to that of a trainer and horse, for example, or a hunter and 4 5

6 7 8

On the Younger Seneca’s admiration for his father’s old-fashioned morals (maiorum consuetudini deditus, Sen. Helv. 17.4), see Sussman 1978: 26. See Sion-Jenkis 2000: 23 and Gowing 2005: 69, who writes, “Seneca is the first imperial writer to concede explicitly that the Augustan Principate marked a real change in the character of the res publica.” For mutatio as “a political or constitutional change,” see OLD s.v. 5(b). Degl’Innocenti Pierini 2014: 171 draws attention to the construction of Cato as a Republican sage at Sen. Const. 2.2, where he dies alongside liberty (neque enim Cato post libertatem vixit nec libertas post Catonem). I follow the conventional dating of De Clementia to Nero’s eighteenth year (15 Dec. 55–14 Dec. 56 bce), on which see Braund 2009: 16–7. Dowling 2006: 196 notes, “The pragmatic argument for clemency dominates the De Clementia.” For De Clementia as “a conduit for Greek kingship theory into Roman imperial ideology,” see Stacey 2007: 32 alongside Adam 1970. Murray 2007: 19–21 addresses the role of Stoic thinkers in the development of Hellenistic kingship treatises, the study of which was sparked by Goodenough 1928. The Roman reception of this tradition goes back to at least the Late Republic, on which see Braund 2009: 17–9; Rawson 1975: 154; Murray 1965: 178–82. Wallace-Hadrill 1982: 35 stresses Roman ambivalence towards it under the Principate.

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dog (Sen. Clem. 1.16.4–5).9 Such analogies locate the philosopher in the role of an advisor who guides the king in readings and engages him in conversations that illuminate the path of wisdom. To the extent that the king attains such wisdom, his rule can be considered just.10 In the preface to De Clementia, Seneca signals his assumption of this role by comparing himself to a mirror that reflects an idealized Nero back to himself: scribere de clementia, Nero Caesar, institui, ut quodam modo speculi vice fungerer et te tibi ostenderem perventurum ad voluptatem maximam omnium (“I have undertaken to write about clemency, Nero Caesar, so that I might, in some way, perform the duty of a mirror and show you to yourself as you are about to reach the greatest pleasure of all,” Sen. Clem. 1.1.1).11 The metaphor of the mirror sets up the essential fiction of the text: the wise princeps whom Seneca goes on to depict is nothing more than a description of Nero as he already is.12 Moral exhortation is cloaked under the guise of praise, so that prescriptive mandates on rulership can operate simultaneously as idioms of panegyric.13 This combination of “praise and programme,” as Susanna Braund terms it, is foundational to the imagistic framework of the text.14 Seneca’s unapologetic incorporation of Hellenistic kingship theory into De Clementia confirms his own willingness to move beyond the Republican façade of the Principate. He sanctions this potentially controversial idea through the voice of Nero himself, who delivers a speech at the beginning of the treatise that lays claim to absolute power: ego vitae necisque gentibus arbiter; qualem quisque sortem statumque habeat, in mea manu positum est (“I am the arbiter of life and death for mankind; it has been put in my hand what sort of lot and standing each person has,” Sen. Clem. 1.1.2).15 The speech grants Nero agency in setting aside the fiction of Republican continuity; Seneca simply adapts his language to that already 9 10

11 12

13 15

See Noreña 2009: 276 for further examples. Although Stoicism held that only the wise man was king and that no truly wise man had ever existed, Murray 2007: 19 writes, this doctrine posed little practical problem for those advising monarchs. Shaw 1985: 49 approaches Stoicism as “a common ideological field, a common language of political thought and behavior” that could be used to express a range of perspectives on sole rule. This idea helps resolve what Brunt 1975: 9 calls the “apparent inconsistency” of Stoic opposition to and support for the Principate. Text of De Clementia follows Braund 2009. On the mirror’s elision of the gap between theory and practice, see Stacey 2007: 36. Bartsch 2006: 184 points out that Seneca’s mirror does not promise to reveal self-knowledge but rather pleasure (voluptas), a surprisingly sensual term for a treatise on ethical rulership. She calls the terminology of the treatise’s opening paragraph “deeply problematic.” Kaster and Nussbaum 2010: 134. 14 Braund 1998: 72. Star 2012: 31 notes that Seneca does not only want Nero to look at himself in the mirror; he also wants Nero to talk to himself and thereby begin the process of self-fashioning. Fears 1975: 489 argues that

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being used by his addressee. This rhetorical move gives him the freedom to ignore the traditional distinction between rex and princeps: nullum tamen clementia ex omnibus magis quam regem aut principem decet (“Yet of all men clemency befits no one more than a king or first citizen,” Sen. Clem. 1.3.3).16 He reinforces the interchangeability of these terms in the next section, referring to principes regesque et quocumque alio nomine (“First citizens and kings and whatever other names they go by,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.3). The ethical stakes of the treatise depend upon this direct acknowledgment of autocracy. In the absence of constitutional constraints on Nero’s behavior, Seneca suggests, his moral standing becomes a determinative political force.17 It is therefore imperative to persuade him that clemency is a virtue whose expression facilitates his own interests. Among its many benefits is the reinforcement of his own power, an idea sure to produce the pleasure promised in the preface.18 Seneca argues that the stability of Nero’s position in the res publica depends upon his pursuit of a merciful rather than cruel form of power. Characterizing the former as salutary and the latter as pestilential, he introduces an organic analogy that will become increasingly explicit over the course of Book 1: ita enim magnae vires decori gloriaeque sunt, si illis salutaris potentia est; nam pestifera vis est valere ad nocendum (“In fact, great strength is only a source of honor and glory if its power is salutary; for the ability to do harm is a pestilential sort of strength,” Clem. 1.3.3). While salutaris potentia will increase Nero’s prestige, pestifera vis will decrease it: illius demum magnitudo stabilis fundataque est, quem omnes tam supra se esse quam pro se sciunt, cuius curam excubare pro salute singulorum atque universorum cottidie experiuntur (“Greatness is stable and well-established only for the one whom everyone knows commands them as much as he supports them, whose vigilance on behalf of the health of both individuals and the collective they discover daily,” Sen. Clem. 1.3.3). Seneca interweaves medical and structural metaphors to correlate the security of the ruler

16

17

18

Seneca represents the gods, not any human institution, as the source of Nero’s status as vitae necisque gentibus arbiter. Martindale 1984: 72 stresses Seneca’s use of rex and princeps as “virtual synonyms,” a rhetorical move that Griffin 2000: 542 suggests is meant to urge his readers “to concentrate on the reality of the Principate, not the euphemistic title.” She and Schofield 2015: 70 nevertheless note that Seneca never explicitly calls Nero a rex. “In the absence of any countervailing force or constraint of law, then, it is only these internal states of mind that determine when and how he applies violent, status-altering force to those under his sway,” Roller 2001: 240 writes. Noreña 2009: 267 considers the “ethics of autocracy” that arose in relation to this reality. Bartsch 2006: 186.

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with the well-being of the ruled. He thereby reveals pestilential strength, which undermines the power it is meant to buttress, as a contradiction in terms. Harmful to both Nero and his subjects, its indulgence risks undermining the foundations of the Principate. Seneca’s argument hinges on the ideal of reciprocity, which is encapsulated in the parallel between supra se and pro se.19 Whatever care a ruler takes on behalf of his subjects is returned to him in kind, so that he becomes the recipient of his own beneficence. An elaborate series of verbal and thematic parallels show how the actions of the ruled mirror those of the ruler: obicere se pro illo mucronibus insidiantium paratissimi et substernere corpora sua, si per stragem illi humanam iter ad salutem struendum sit. somnum eius nocturnis excubiis muniunt, latera obiecti circumfusique defendunt, incurrentibus periculis se opponunt (“They are completely prepared to throw themselves in front of assassins’ swords on his behalf and to lay down their own bodies, if his path to safety must be built through human slaughter. They guard his sleep with nocturnal watches, defend his flanks by surrounding and blocking him, and put themselves in front of approaching dangers,” Sen. Clem. 1.3.3). Because the people understand that their ruler governs on their behalf (pro se), they are willing to die on his behalf (pro illo).20 Because he concerns himself with their welfare (pro salute), they concern themselves with his (illi . . . ad salutem). Because he is vigilant in his protection of them (excubare), they are vigilant in their protection of him (nocturnis excubiis). Even the jarring description of their dead bodies building (struendum) a path to safety recalls the structural imagery with which the passage began (stabilis fundataque est).21 This symmetry reproduces textually what Seneca argues for thematically: it is in Nero’s self-interest to care for those under his command. Seneca reinforces this point by identifying Nero and the Roman people as interdependent parts of a hierarchically structured organism.22 The analogy allows him to explain the logic of collective sacrifice on behalf of a single head (pro uno capite, Sen. Clem. 1.3.4). Although it might seem 19

20 21 22

As Dowling 2006: 201 points out, “Clemency implies not only hierarchy but also reciprocity.” As Saller 1982: 7–40 illustrates, the relationship between the emperor and his subjects was mediated through the ideal of reciprocity. Leach 1989: 222 draws attention to the vividness of the dangers facing the princeps in a treatise purportedly about a res publica at peace. “Seneca deploys virtually every resource in Latin to indicate how his people create a barrier,” Braund 2009: ad loc. notes, “between him and any threat,” whether internal or external. See Stacey 2014: 134 on Seneca’s “systematic reworking of the image of the body politic” in the treatise. Griffin 1976: 205 contextualizes the metaphor in relation to the Stoic conception of an organic cosmos.

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irrational to prioritize the life of one over many, the same principle enables the functioning of the human body: quemadmodum totum corpus animo deservit et, cum hoc tanto maius tantoque speciosius sit, ille in occulto maneat tenuis et in qua sede latitet incertus, tamen manus, pedes, oculi negotium illi gerunt, illum haec cutis munit, illius iussu iacemus aut inquieti discurrimus (“Just as the whole body serves the mind and, although the former is much larger and showier than the latter, and the mind is hidden and delicate and the area in which it lurks is uncertain, nevertheless the hands, feet, and eyes do its bidding; this skin defends it, at its command we lie down or run restlessly,” Sen. Clem. 1.3.5). Seneca professes uncertainty as to where the animus resides in the body, but he later identifies the head as its home (Sen. Clem. 2.2.1). Its unity stands in contrast to the multiplicity of parts under its command, which diverge in their functions but converge in their subordination to a higher power. As Seneca switches to the first person, he implicates not only Nero and himself, but also the reader, in this universalizing principle of nature. He then acknowledges that its consequences can be good or bad. If the mind is a greedy master (avarus dominus), it makes us scour the sea for wealth; if it is hungry for glory (ambitiosus), it makes us plunge our hand into fire (dextram flammis obiecimus, Sen. Clem. 1.3.5). It is therefore imperative that the mind governing the body politic is morally sound. The best way to achieve this aim, Seneca implies, is through the tutelage provided by the treatise. Lest his readers miss the political implications of the mind–body duality, Seneca uses the second half of the simile to bring the Principate to the forefront of his analysis. He continues, sic haec immensa multitudo unius animae circumdata illius spiritu regitur, illius ratione flectitur pressura se ac fractura viribus suis, nisi consilio sustineretur (“In the same way, this huge crowd, encircling the life of one man, is ruled by his spirit, directed by his reason, and would overwhelm and destroy itself with its own strength, if it were not held up by his counsel,” Sen. Clem. 1.3.5).23 Multitudo denies the Roman people a civic identity independent of their ruler.24 Like the hands, feet, skin, and eyes, they can only achieve wholeness under the command of the princeps. Nero’s fulfillment of this role is conveyed through the overlapping metaphors of anima, spiritus, ratio, and consilium, the 23 24

See Schofield 2015: 72 on Seneca’s “monarchist adaptation of the already common metaphor of the body politic.” Seneca first introduces this idea in the preface (tum immitere oculos in hanc immensam multitudinem discordem, seditiosam, impotentem, in perniciem alienam suamque pariter exultaturam si hoc iugum fregerit, “Then to cast your gaze upon this huge crowd, discordant, unruly, out of control, equally enthused for the destruction of itself and others, if it should break its yoke,” Sen. Clem. 1.1.1).

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imagistic redundancy of which reinforces his privileged position. Seneca illustrates the necessity of the arrangement by introducing the familiar trope of Rome’s strength turned against itself.25 His phrasing evokes that which Lactantius attributed to his father, who described a body politic unable to support itself without leaning upon the support of its rulers. Whereas the Elder Seneca criticized the princeps as a cane, however, the Younger Seneca celebrates him as an animus. He thereby positions him as an integral component of rather than external aid to the body politic. Central to his duties is the prevention of civil war, the specter of which is evoked without being named as such. While Nero relies on his subjects for the security of his own power, his subjects also depend upon him to prevent civic collapse. The impossibility of their survival in his absence is conveyed through his figuration as a bond: ille est enim vinculum per quod res publica cohaeret (“That man, in fact, is the bond through which the res publica coheres,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.1).26 A century prior, Cicero had argued that the existence of a civitas depended upon the vincula of ius and aequitas (Cic. Parad. 28). Seneca concentrates these and other ideals into the personage of a single man whose life is coeval with that of the res publica.27 If he were lost, the demise of the Roman citizenry would soon follow: ille spiritus vitalis quem haec tot milia trahunt nihil ipsa per se futura nisi onus et praeda, si mens illa imperii subtrahatur (“He is the vital breath, which so many thousands draw, who would be nothing except burden and plunder on their own, if that mind of the empire were taken away,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.1). A body that has lost the ability to breath and think is little more than a battlefield corpse ready to be looted. The prospect of war is thereby used to argue against the viability of any alternative constitutional arrangements. Whether Nero truly approximates the ideal of a benevolent king is a question largely beside the point; when the choice is between his command and self-destruction, there is no real deliberation to be had. Much of the persuasive force of De Clementia lies in its construction of this false bargain.

25 26

27

See discussion of this trope in Ch. 4. Braund 2009: ad loc. speculates that Seneca’s figuration of a person as a vinculum is “possibly unparalleled.” In the Consolatio ad Polybium, he uses similar language to lament how the death of Julia dissolved the peace between Caesar and Pompey (cuius morte optime cohaerentis Romanae pacis vincula resoluta sunt, “Because of her death the well-integrated bonds of Roman peace were dissolved,” Sen. Polyb. 15.1). The same bonds of peace are at stake in De Clementia but their preservation now depends upon the well-being of the princeps. Stacey 2014: 147 argues that the Roman citizenry is “unambiguously subject to the ius” of the princeps.

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Seneca introduces the analogy of the king bee and hive to reinforce the model of civic dependence constructed through the dichotomy of mind and body.28 Quoting a famous pair of Vergilian lines (Georg. 4.212–3), he writes, ‘rege incolumi mens omnibus una, | amisso rupere fidem’ (“As long as the king is safe, all share one mind; if he is lost, they break faith,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.1). Vergil had already invested these lines with political resonance by comparing his devoted bees to the subjects of Eastern kings.29 As Eleanor Leach points out, however, Vergil’s beehive is not presented “as a model for emulation by Roman government . . . the connotations of the image for the Roman world are ambivalent, if not outright negative.”30 In coopting these lines to naturalize the Principate, Seneca underscores the extent to which monarchical symbolism had become an acceptable element of political discourse by this time. Just as Vergil’s crazed worker bees rip apart their honeycombs in response to the loss of their king (Verg. Georg. 5.213–4), so too will the loss of the princeps entail the end of Roman peace: hic casus Romanae pacis exitium erit (Sen. Clem. 1.4.2).31 With the loss of the pax Romana comes the loss of the empire, which is figured through imagery of an unraveling tapestry: haec unitas et hic maximi imperii contextus in partes multas dissiliet (“This unity and this fabric of the greatest empire will dissolve into many parts,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.2). Partes looks back to the plundered limbs of the previous section, suggesting that the realization of the corpus imperii is only possible under sole rule.32 Subservience at home paradoxically enables subjugation abroad: idemque huic urbi finis dominandi erit qui parendi fuerit (“The end of this city’s obedience will also be the end of its domination,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.2). Seneca uses Rome’s dominion over her empire to make the experience of subordination at home more palatable for his elite readers. They might be worker bees in relation to the princeps, but they are king bees in relation to the territory they help govern.

28

29 30 31

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Apian metaphors went back to Classical Greek political discourse, on which see Brock 2013: 159–60 and Overmeire 2011. This theme is developed at greater length at Sen. Clem. 1.19, where the king bee is described as necessarily merciful due to his lack of a stinger. Nero, unlike the king bee, has the capacity to do harm, on which see Star 2012: 121 and Roller 2001: 242. Papaioannou 2020: 117–21 addresses Seneca’s engagement with Vergil’s bees elsewhere in his philosophy. See Lowrie 2015b: 322 on Vergil’s “classic gesture of orientalism” in these lines, “which project an obsession with kingship onto others” in response to recent political events in Rome. Leach 1989: 221. Dahlmann 1954, in contrast, sees Vergil’s bees as a positive model for the Principate. Morley 2007: 467 argues that Vergil’s “bee state is, like Rome, seen to be permanently vulnerable to dissension and self-destruction unless kept under close control.” The same can be said of Seneca’s metaphor. Cornwell 2017: 195 notes Seneca’s explicit connection between the existence of the pax Romana and the person of the emperor, who embodies Roman imperium.

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They are thereby granted at least some of the political autonomy that threatens to recede from view in De Clementia. While Seneca’s extended metaphor of the body politic stresses the reliance of the populus Romanus on its princeps, it concludes by reminding Nero that interdependence goes both ways. A body might not be able to survive without a head, but neither can a head without a body: olim enim ita se induit rei publicae Caesar ut seduci alterum non posset sine utriusque pernicie; nam et illi viribus opus est et huic capite (“In the past, in fact, the princeps intertwined himself with the res publica in such a way that one is not able to be removed without damage to the other; for the former needs strength and the latter needs a head,” Sen. Clem. 1.4.3).33 Seneca’s use of the verb induo, which Braund describes as “highly unusual,” invites readers to envision Nero not so much donning the res publica like a piece of clothing but rather incorporating it into himself.34 Unlike a toga, it cannot be separated from him without inflicting irreparable damage on both. The inextricability of ruler and ruled is made legible through the dichotomy of head and body, a comparison that feels familiar by this point in the text despite its appearance for the first and only time. Having already laid the groundwork for the idea through his association of Nero with the reasoning faculties, Seneca offers the first extant theorization of a body politic topped by a head of state in Latin literature. Undoing the careful work of the Augustan and Tiberian writers who preceded him, he restores the head’s original function as a signifier of monarchy. In this sense, he illustrates a metaphor that had come full circle in Roman political thought.

The Problem of Bad Rule The last section considered Seneca’s use of organic analogies to naturalize a model of civic interdependence that carried consequences for both ruler and ruled. Because the longevity of Nero’s reign depended upon the wellbeing of his subjects, it was in his best interest to pursue clemency over cruelty. Because the Roman people’s survival required the existence of a princeps, it was in their best interest to obey his commands. Although Seneca frames this arrangement as natural, he also acknowledges its precarity. At issue is not only the collapse that would follow the loss of a good princeps, but also the damage that could be wrought by a bad one. 33 34

As Syme 1986: 449 puts it, “The head existed, organic, and it could not be dissevered.” Braund 2009: ad loc. It is worth noting that Cicero used the same verb to describe the suspicion that fell upon Catiline in the aftermath of his caput populi speech (non se purgavit sed indicavit atque induit, Cic. Mur. 51).

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This section focuses our attention on the latter concern. I argue that Seneca combines the dualities of mind–body and physician–patient to address the problem of bad rule. By portraying Nero as the healer of a body politic of which he is also a member, he suggests that the princeps must endure the treatments he prescribes to others. In this way, he merges two imagistic traditions to restrain the use of violence in the House of the Caesars. Yet insofar as he points to Nero’s predecessors as examples of bad physicians and disordered minds, he also confirms that the Principate has not always lived up to the treatise’s ideals. Elaborating upon this problem in Epistulae Morales 114, Seneca ultimately conveys ambivalence towards the prospects of a political community that is unable to regulate the virtue of its rulers. Although Roman writers had long figured the princeps as the healer and head of the body politic, De Clementia is the first extant text to integrate them into a single imagistic framework. Seneca merges them to facilitate his portrayal of clemency as an ideal to which Nero should aspire for his own benefit. Immediately after figuring him as the caput rei publicae, Seneca clarifies the relevance of this role to the topic at hand: nam si, quod adhuc colligitur, tu animus rei publicae [tuae] es, illa corpus tuum, vides, ut puto, quam necessaria sit clementia; tibi enim parcis cum videris alteri parcere (“For if, and this is what has been suggested thus far, you are the mind of the res publica and it is your body, you see, I think, how necessary mercy is; for you spare yourself when you seem to spare another,” Sen. Clem. 1.5.1). Nero might occupy a privileged position in the body politic, but he is still a member of it. The mercy that he shows to others is therefore also that which he shows to himself, an idea underscored through the parallel between tibi and alteri.35 The interests of ruler and ruled are once again in perfect alignment, suggesting that there is little to be gained but much to be lost from the infliction of bodily harm. The frequent comparison of mercy to a remedy, which Seneca himself employs (e.g. Sen. Clem. 1.2.1), hints at a physician–patient analogy that becomes explicit as the passage continues. Unlike the Julio-Claudian writers who preceded him, who employ generalizing language of civic restoration and revival, Seneca uses surgery to portray Nero’s relationship to the body politic. Calling to mind the bloody metaphors of Cicero’s oratory rather than the celebratory paeans of Augustan poetry, he encourages the princeps to use the blade sparingly in his treatments: parcendum itaque est etiam improbandis civibus non aliter 35

The identification of the princeps and res publica, Braund 2009: ad loc. points out, necessarily erodes the distinction between self and other.

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quam membris languentibus, et, si quando misso sanguine opus est, sustinenda est ne ultra quam necesse sit incidat (“And so there must be mercy even for corrupt citizens, as if they were languishing limbs, and, if bloodletting is ever necessary, the blade must be held back, so that it does not cut more deeply than necessary,” Sen. Clem. 1.5.1).36 Although comparisons between statesmen and surgeons had a long history in Roman political discourse, Cicero and his contemporaries did not use them in relation to the ideal of clemency. Seneca defines clementia, after all, as the leniency that a superior shows to an inferior in the application of a punishment (lenitas superioris adversus inferiorem in constituendis poenis, Sen. Clem. 2.3.1).37 This power dynamic was one that Cicero carefully avoided in his own model of civic healing, which was rooted in privileged oversight rather than absolute command. Restoring the analogy to its authoritarian roots in Platonic philosophy, Seneca confirms the depth with which Nero’s scalpel can plunge into the res publica. The disquieting implications of the idea are nevertheless mitigated through the princeps’ membership in the body politic he treats. The surgery he performs is ultimately on his own limbs, allowing the excessive punishment of Roman citizens to be cast as an irrational act of self-harm. Seneca returns to this theme to differentiate between the disordered mind of the bloodthirsty tyrant and the mild disposition of the merciful king.38 He defines the latter in terms of his awareness of and appreciation for the model of organic interdependence theorized earlier in the treatise: e contrario is cui curae sunt universa, qui alia magis, alia minus tuetur, nullam non rei publicae partem tamquam sui nutrit (“He stands in contrast, whose care encompasses everything, who watches over both great and small matters, who nourishes every part of the res publica as if a part of himself,” Sen. Clem. 1.13.4).39 As Braund points out, his language is quite close to that which Cicero used to describe the duties of Roman statesmen in De Officiis (ut totum corpus reipublicae curent, Cic. Off. 1.85). Cicero, as we saw 36

37

38

39

Braund 2009: ad loc. supplies acies as the noun missing in the manuscript; others have proposed manus or dextra. Despite the uncertainty, the surgical metaphor is clear. See later on Lucan’s allusion to this passage. Konstan 2005: 339 warns against reading Seneca’s definition of clemency back into Late Republican sources, but the power to exact a penalty would not have been viewed as a straightforward prerogative of Republican statesmen. Seneca activates many familiar paradigms of authority to illustrate the difference between a king and tyrant. “In each case,” Roller 2001: 243 writes, “Seneca considers whether the empowered figure gains better results by using violence against those under his sway, or by using other means.” See Béranger 1953: 186–217 on the role of cura in Imperial ideology and Lowrie 2020 on the concept of securitas that arose in relation to it.

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earlier, used the plural to adapt the traditionally singular physician–patient analogy to the context of collegial governance. Seneca’s ideal of civic care is instead linked to an individual who has incorporated the body politic into himself. As an integral component of rather than external actor on the res publica, the princeps is invited to see gentle remedies as a matter of selfinterest as much as wise policy: inclinatus ad mitiora, etiam si ex usu est animadvertere, ostendens quam invitus aspero remedio manus admoveat (“He is inclined towards gentle treatments, even if it is useful to censure, showing how unwillingly he applies his hand to a harsh treatment,” Sen. Clem. 1.13.4). The orientation of the metaphor towards self-interest, which plays no role in the Ciceronian passage to which it alludes, hints at the limitations of the political vision laid out in De Clementia. Although Seneca expresses faith in virtue as a regulatory mechanism under the Principate, his organic analogies are oriented towards the baser instincts of the princeps. Only by equating Nero and Rome can the philosopher ensure the propriety of his pupil’s punishments. Approaching the theme of self-interest from a different direction, Seneca goes on to tell Nero that his reputation depends upon the efficacy of his treatments on the body politic. Only an incompetent physician, he explains, would give up on the hope of a cure (mali medici est desperare ne curet, Sen. Clem. 1.17.2). Lest similarly negative judgments fall upon Nero, he must treat even those who seem incurable: idem in iis quorum animus affectus est facere debebit is cui tradita salus omnium est, non cito spem proicere nec mortifera signa pronuntiare (“He to whom the health of all has been entrusted should apply the same principle to those whose minds are impaired: to not give up quickly and pronounce the symptoms fatal,” Sen. Clem. 1.17.2). Civic healing is not framed as an intrinsic good, but rather a path to the protection of Nero’s legacy. Seneca gestures towards this legacy through a reference to the scar that the princeps leaves behind: agat princeps curam non tantum salutis sed etiam honestae cicatricis (“Let the princeps aim not only for the restoration of health but also an honorable scar,” Sen. Clem. 1.17.2). The ambiguity of the image prompts Braund to ask whether the scar belongs to the body politic or its ruler.40 The answer seems to be both; the condition of the former, after all, determines that of the latter. The honorability of the scar, in turn, depends upon the circumstances of its infliction. Only after exhausting all other options does a good ruler pick up the scalpel. And only then can he earn the maxima gloria that comes from the restraint of his power (vim suam continet, Sen. Clem. 1.17.3). Seneca thereby establishes a standard of 40

Braund 2009: ad loc.

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judgment for the legitimate use of violence that is grounded in Nero’s desire for public validation. That Rome will be left with scars, however, is a reality he does not try to deny. The less than honorable scars inflicted by Nero’s predecessors lurk throughout De Clementia. Seneca reports that even Augustus, the prototypical healer of the body politic, achieved and maintained his power through bloodshed. Only after he reached his fortieth birthday did he heed the advice of his wife, who asserted the inefficacy of executions in preventing conspiracies: fac quod medici solent, qui ubi usitata remedia non procedunt temptant contraria. severitate nihil adhuc profecisti (“Do what the physicians do: when the typical remedies are not successful, they try the opposite. You have not accomplished anything up to this point through severity,” Sen. Clem. 1.9.6). Livia cites five men put to death on charges of conspiring against the princeps. The same five men recur in a passage from De Brevitate Vitae that adds Augustus’ daughter to the list of his scalpel’s targets: haec ulcera cum ipsis membris absciderat: alia subnascebantur; velut grave multo sanguine corpus parte semper aliqua rumpebatur (“He had excised these ulcers with the limbs themselves, but others kept springing up; like a body burdened with too much blood, there was always a rupture in some part,” Sen. Brev. 4.6).41 Augustus’ amputation of his daughter from the body politic contradicts Seneca’s vision of the ideal princeps, who is figured as a father who sees his children as parts of himself and would therefore hesitate to inflict cruel punishments upon them: tarde sibi pater membra sua abscidat (“A father would be slow to cut off his own limbs,” Sen. Clem. 1.14.3).42 Likely composed within a few years of De Clementia, the treatise complicates Augustus’ ability to serve as a straightforward model for Nero.43 Searching for a model of civic healing in the JulioClaudian family tree, Seneca seems unable to find any princeps who resisted the temptations of surgery. The prospects for Neronian medicine seem inescapably bleak. This problem only becomes more acute in relation to Claudius, the man from whom Nero has inherited his role as a civic healer. Seneca uses Claudius’ proclivity for putting parricides in the sack to illustrate the 41 42

43

Williams 2003: ad loc. notes “the slow but relentless growth” conveyed by subnascor. Although Seneca suggests that Augustus illustrated his clemency by exiling rather than executing his daughter (Sen. Clem. 1.10.3), as noted by Roller 2001: 244, the surgical imagery of De Brevitate Vitae complicates this idea. The date of the work hinges on the identity of Seneca’s addressee, Pompeius Paulinus, who is generally believed to have been Seneca’s father-in-law and praefectus annonae from around 49–55 ce. Williams 2003: 19–20 assigns the treatise to this period, while Griffin 1962 argues for the more specific date of 55 ce.

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inefficacy of bloody surgeries on the body politic. The more men Claudius punished, he reports, the less authority he had. His misguided approach to moral reform is used to illustrate the following precept: non minus principi turpia sunt multa supplicia quam medico multa funera; remissius imperanti melius paretur (“Many punishments are no less shameful for a princeps than many deaths are for a physician; the more leniently he rules, the more easily he is obeyed,” Sen. Clem. 1.24.1). This version of the bloodthirsty Claudius serves as a corrective to the Consolatio ad Polybium, where he was praised for healing a body politic that had grown ill under Caligula. The devolution of his character between the two treatises underscores the ease with which Rome’s healer can become its harmer instead. Cruelty drives the shift; just as it infected the mind of Caligula, so too did it descend upon Claudius.44 In this way, the Caesars that preceded Nero undermine rather than support the organic analogies in which Seneca’s readers are urged to put their faith. Claudius’ failure to live up to the role of the civic healer complicates Seneca’s return to the mind–body duality in Book 2 of De Clementia. It opens with a reminder that the state of Nero’s mind determines the condition of Rome’s body: tradetur ista animi tui mansuetudo diffundeturque paulatim per omne imperii corpus, et cuncta in similitudinem tuam formabuntur (“That gentleness of your mind will be transmitted and dispersed bit by bit through the whole body of the empire, and everything will be shaped in your likeness,” Sen. Clem. 2.2.1). The central conceit of the text holds that Nero already possesses the merciful disposition required for a healthy empire. This top-down model of civic vitality can therefore be cast as an unqualified good. Yet the disordered animi of his predecessors reveal how high the stakes of Neronian virtue are. If the princeps should succumb to cruelty, the res publica would suffer the consequences. Seneca offers the following precept in proof of this point: a capite bona valetudo: inde omnia vegeta sunt atque erecta aut languore demissa prout animus eorum viget aut marcet (“Good health comes from the head: everything then is lively and erect or sunken with feebleness to the same extent that their mind thrives or withers,” Sen. Clem. 2.2.1).45 Although Roman moralizers had been articulating versions of this idea for two centuries, Seneca is the first to distill its implications for a body 44

45

See Dowling 2006: 200 on cruelty as the corruptor of the emperor’s mind. “Catastrophic consequences await the political body if its ruler’s psyche becomes emotionally disordered,” Stacey 2014: 147 notes. Braund 2009: ad loc. notes the proverbial resonance of a capite bona valetudo, though it is not attested elsewhere.

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politic topped by a head of state. He perceives the Principate as an institution that is inseparable from its Caesar as an ethical subject. The longevity of Rome therefore depends on the success of the philosophical project laid out in De Clementia. By the time Seneca retreated from public life in 62 ce, there could be little doubt of his failure to persuade Nero to follow the path of the wise king.46 Rather than confront this problem directly, his later works largely avoid mentioning the princeps or the governing system over which he presided.47 Their reticence on the House of the Caesars, however, does not indicate the absence of political thought within them. The Epistulae Morales, in particular, is preoccupied with the same hierarchies of command and obedience operative in De Clementia.48 This section concludes with a consideration of Ep. 114.23–5, where Seneca constructs a mind–body duality in conscious dialogue with the earlier treatise.49 He makes the connection explicit by citing the same lines from Vergil’s Georgics discussed earlier. In De Clementia, these lines are used to model the dependence of the res publica on its princeps. Their recurrence in Ep. 114 suggests that Nero lurks just outside of view. As Seneca goes on to explore the impact of a disordered mind on the body it governs, he prompts readers to consider the political stakes of his analysis. Ep. 114 introduces Vergil’s apian analogy to persuade readers who aspire to eloquence to care for their minds, which dictate everything from word choices to facial expressions.50 If the animus is sound, so is one’s speech. If it falters, however, everything comes crashing down (si ille procubuit, et cetera ruinam sequuntur, Sen. Ep. 114.22). Using Vergil’s lines to create a sense of impending catastrophe (‘rege incolumi mens omnibus una est: | amisso rupere fidem’), Seneca draws out their relevance to the topic at hand: Rex noster est animus; hoc incolumi cetera manent in officio, parent, optemperant (“Our king is the mind. Provided that he is safe, other functions remain on duty, obeying and complying,” Sen. Ep. 114.23). Seneca reverses the direction of the comparison in De Clementia, positioning monarchy as 46 47

48 49 50

On Seneca’s failure to effectively merge philosophical learning with political influence, see Schafer 2011: 51. Graver and Long 2015: 7 note that Seneca’s reticence towards the activities of the Caesars is paired with enthusiasm for the ancestral Republic. Edwards 2019: 289 calls Nero a “gaping absence” in the letters. The Epistuale Morales were composed between 62 and 64 ce (see Griffin 1976: 400 on dating issues). See Edwards 2019: 179 on the parallels between the political analogies of De Clementia and Epistulae Morales. Seneca uses Maecenas, Augustus’ righthand man, to exemplify bad style, which only reinforces the political resonance of the passage (Edwards 2019: 285–7; Sklenář 2017: 14).

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the lens through which bodily mechanisms become legible. The consequences for both self and community, as Robert Sklenář notes in his reading of the passage, are troubling.51 Seneca’s citation of Vergil puts two types of kings in the minds of readers: the Oriental despots with whom the bees of the Georgics are associated and the principes with whom the bees of De Clementia are. Neither serves as a regal ideal worthy of replication in the body. It is therefore far from certain that the cultivation of the animus will yield the rewards Seneca promises.52 The pessimism implicit in Seneca’s allusive language becomes explicit as he turns his attention to the consequences of an animus that descends from a rex – an already problematic term in the context of the passage – to a tyrannus.53 Pleasure serves as the pivot point from good to bad governance: cum vero cessit voluptati, artes quoque eius actusque marcent (“But when it [the animus] has yielded to pleasure, its skills and functions also wither away,” Sen. Ep. 114.23). Astute readers might recall that Seneca began De Clementia by promising to help Nero attain voluptas, a word choice that commentators have long puzzled over. He now restores its traditionally negative Stoic connotations and illustrates the destructive consequences of a mind that falls under its sway. One way of reading the lines that follow, then, is as an elaboration of De Clementia’s warning that the body politic will languish if its mind withers (animus . . . marcet, Sen. Clem. 2.2.1). Such linguistic echoes merge the animus under discussion with the princeps back in Rome. Because the letter is oriented towards moral rather than political philosophy, however, Seneca retains plausible deniability in his subsequent discussion of a mind that becomes a tyrant. Seneca urges readers to pay even closer attention to his figures of speech by flagging their sustained operation in the next section: quoniam hac similitudine usus sum, perseverabo. Animus noster modo rex est, modo tyrannus (“Since I have employed this comparison, I will persist: our mind is sometimes a king, sometimes a tyrant,” Sen. Ep. 114.24). Like the good king, the regal animus is defined by its concern for the body under its care (salutem commissi sibi corporis curat, Sen. Ep. 114.24). The tyrannical animus, in contrast, is not the commander of the body but rather a slave 51 52

53

See Sklenář 2017: 14–5. As Sklenář 2017: 15 argues, “if monarchy is the only political metaphor suitable to describe the human constitution, and monarchy is an inherently unsound form of government, then it follows that the human constitution is itself inherently unsound. To cultivate the animus is simply to make the best of a bad job . . . ” “Given the extensive use of the contrast in De clementia,” Edwards 2019: ad loc. 114.24 writes, “it may not be far-fetched to detect here an allusion to Nero’s own notoriously uncontrolled and pleasure-oriented behavior . . . ”

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to its appetites. It is consequently more like a crowd that can never be satisfied (ut solet populus . . . frustra plenus, Sen. Ep. 114.24). The simile inverts the expected dichotomies of rex–populus and animus–corpus, underscoring the perversion of the natural and political order. As the disease of moral corruption makes its way through the body, the animus loses control over what it once ruled: cum vero magis ac magis vires morbus exedit et in medullas nervosque descendere deliciae, conspectu eorum quibus se nimia aviditate inutilem reddidit, laetus (“And when the disease has consumed more and more strength and indulgences have descended into the marrow and sinews, it [the animus] delights at the sight of those to which it has rendered itself useless due to excessive greed,” Sen. Ep. 114.25). Having already primed readers to interpret his analysis in relation to the Principate, Seneca now reveals the impact of a tyrannical mind on the body politic.54 The more that the Caesars succumb to vice, the sicker the res publica will grow. And while philosophical study might restore a disordered mind to health, it requires a patient willing to be treated. Faced with a princeps who has rejected the tutelage of the philosopher, Rome has little choice but to wait for what comes next. The Epistulae Morales gave Seneca the opportunity to explore a topic that would have been inappropriate in the panegyrizing De Clementia: the precarity of a body politic topped by a bad head of state. The linguistic and thematic echoes between the two works suggest that the dangers of a tyrannical princeps were at the forefront of his mind in the early 60s ce. Even as he confronted the limitations of a political form that was so dependent on personal virtue, however, he left little room for an alternative. The organic metaphors that structure his philosophy repeatedly equate the loss of the princeps with the collapse of the res publica. In doing so, they present a contingent governing arrangement as inevitable and unchangeable. Whatever Seneca’s own reservations about sole rule, then, his works facilitated its conceptual entrenchment in Roman discourse. In the next section, we will approach the corporeal imagery of Lucan’s Bellum Civile as a response to Seneca’s political thought. Insofar as Lucan depicted the res publica over which Caesar and Pompey fought as a relic of the past rather than point of connection to the present, he joined his uncle in setting aside the fiction of Republican continuity. Using Roman history to interrogate the models of political authority operative

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Edwards 2019: 289 notes that “the analogy, underlining the dreadful consequences of disordered autocratic rule, recalls S’s earlier treatise on clemency, whose addressee is the young emperor.”

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under Nero, he too portrayed a body politic that suffered under but could not survive without its Caesars.

The Fate of the Body Politic In many ways, Seneca’s De Clementia and Lucan’s Bellum Civile are a study in contrasts. While the former engages with the circumstances of the present, the latter looks back to the conflicts of the past. One stresses the benefits of the pax Augusta for the Roman world, the other revels in the violence that brought the Julian gens to power. Despite, or perhaps because of, the differences between them, there is much to be gained by putting them in conversation. In the final section of this chapter, I consider how the Bellum Civile responds to the imagery of De Clementia.55 I argue that Lucan uses the models of both the healer and the head of state to subvert key tenets of Julio-Claudian political language. In Book 2, the porous boundary between harming and healing emerges through the figure of Sulla, whose bloody surgeries on the body politic allude to more recent punishments prescribed by the Caesars. In Book 8, the death of Pompey reveals the catastrophic consequences of a body politic that rebels against an ineffectual head of state. Retrojecting Imperial figurations of political authority back onto Republican history, Lucan uses the statesmen of the past to think about the Principate in the present. His methodology recalls that of Livy but yields starkly different results. Rather than validate the necessity of sole rule, it traps the res publica in a civil war traversing time and space. Lucan’s engagement with the metaphor of the body politic takes place within a broader framework of self-destruction.56 The opening lines of the poem introduce the theme: bella per Emathios plus quam civilia campos | iusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potentem | in sua victrici conversum viscera dextra (“I sing of wars more than civil through Emathian fields and legality conferred on crime and a powerful population turned against its own innards by its conquering right hand,” Luc. 1.2–3).57 The image of a personified Rome turning her hand against herself recurs twice

55 56

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This section draws on, and in some cases reworks, material published as Mebane 2020 and Mebane 2016. See McClellan 2019: 115–69 on the poem’s abused bodies; Gardner 2019: 189–206 on its engagement with the theme of pestilence; Dinter 2012 on its usage of the body as a textual and thematic metaphor; Bartsch 1997: 10–47 on its insistent violation of the body’s boundaries. Text of Lucan follows Housman 1926.

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in the next thirty lines and pervades the epic as a whole.58 Its self-mutilation reaches a fever pitch at the Battle of Pharsalus, where the poet surveys the impending devastation of Roman forces and remarks, odiis solus civilibus ensis | sufficit, et dextras Romana in viscera ducit (“Only the sword satisfies civil hatred and draws right hands into Roman innards,” Luc. 7.490–91). This symbolism is compounded by imagery of a body under attack, as when Caesar orders his troops (manus) against the senate, where the cruor imperii and viscera rerum can be found (Luc. 7.578–9).59 Further examples could be drawn from nearly every scene of the epic, prompting David Quint to call “the divided body politic” the master image of the poem.60 Lucan’s imagery of corporeal collapse is one of the most memorable features of his epic, so much so that it tends to obscure his more systematic engagement with the models of the civic healer and head of state, which had become closely associated with the Caesars by the 60s ce. This section begins by considering how Lucan undermines the first of these models in his depiction of Sullan Rome in Book 2.61 Assuming the voice of an old man who witnessed the horrors perpetrated under Sulla, he compares the enactment of proscriptions to an act of collective bloodletting: Sulla quoque inmensis accessit cladibus ultor. | ille quod exiguum restabat sanguinis urbi | hausit (“Then Sulla the avenger approached with endless slaughter. He drained what little remained of the city’s blood,” Luc. 2.139–41).62 Already brutalized under the tyranny of Cinna and Marius, however, the body politic has hardly any blood left to shed.63 Sulla must therefore make recourse to the harsher treatment of amputation: dumque nimis iam putria 58

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si tantus amor belli tibi, Roma, nefandi . . . in te verte manus (“If you love unspeakable war so much, Rome, turn your hand against yourself,” Luc. 1.21–23); alta sedent civilis volnera dextrae (“the deep wounds of the civic hand,” Luc. 1.32). Martindale 1993: 48 calls the Bellum Civile “a poem which might well be read under the sign of self-slaughter, both individual and collective.” While Caesar often takes the lead in attacks on the body politic (e.g. qui duro membra senatus | calcarat voltu, “He [Caesar] tramples the senate’s limbs with his harsh face,” Luc. 9.1043–4), even the gods participate: Latium sic scindere corpus | dis placitum (“So it is pleasing to the gods to sever Latium’s body,” Luc. 10.416–7). Quint 1993: 141. “Under figures such as ‘Sulla’, ruin of the Republic, Romans had been exchanging models for political thought,” Henderson 1995: 125 writes. For historical memory of Sullan trauma under the Principate, see Eckert 2016: 139–73. Joseph 2022: 57 argues that the old man “is a textual doublet of the poet himself.” Lowrie and Vinken 2023: 138 suggest that his speech “provides a didactic introduction to a host of civil war’s tropes” in the poem. The collective bloodletting prescribed by Sulla echoes a punishment exacted ten lines prior upon Scaevola, who is sacrificed at the shrine of Vesta: parvom sed fessa senectus | sanguinis effudit iugulo flammisque pepercit (“But tired old age poured out a scanty amount of blood from the neck and spared the flames,” Luc. 2.128–9). Fantham 1992: ad loc. 140 suggests that the echo “assimilates the destruction of the community to that of the individual.”

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membra recidit | excessit medicina modum, nimiumque secuta est, | qua morbi duxere, manus (“And while he cut away the now too putrid limbs, the medicine exceeded its limit, and his hand pursued too far where the diseases drew it, ” Luc. 2.141–3). The trope of a cure worse than the disease went back to Sulla himself, who justified his dictatorship as a curative remedy.64 Those less enamored with his rule responded by declaring his treatments worse than the ills that preceded them.65 Lucan’s reception of and elaboration upon this theme confirms his own interest in blurring the boundary between harming and healing in the context of civil war. The torture of Marius Gratidianus, which had long served an exemplary function in Latin literature, gives concrete expression to the horrors of Sullan medicine in the tale of the old man.66 A witness to the crime, he reports that no part of his body escaped his executioners’ touch: laceros artus aequataque volnera membris | vidimus (“We saw his severed joints and the wounds made equal to his limbs,” Luc. 2.177–8). He describes how Marius’ arms were wrenched from his shoulders (avolsae cecidere manus), his tongue cut out (exsectaque lingua), ears and nose chopped off (hic aures, alius spiramina naris aduncae | amputat), and eyes plucked from their sockets (ille cavis evoluit sedibus orbes, Luc. 2.181–4). The methodical precision with which his body is dismantled is suggestive of a surgical procedure. Lucan encourages this reading through his use of the verb amputare, which Cicero used to justify the removal of Caesar and Antony from the body politic.67 Martin Dinter argues that Cicero, a relative of the ill-fated man by adoption, lurks throughout the scene; he interprets the removal of Marius’ tongue as a prefiguration of the silencing of Cicero, so that both men participate in a “‘family tradition’ of (self)sacrifice.”68 Through his assimilation of Cicero’s body to Marius’, Lucan suggests that the famed orator has become the victim of the same surgeries that he prescribed for his own enemies.69 64

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See Walters 2019: 961–5, who approaches Sulla’s rumored death by phthiriasis in relation to the body politic tradition. Plutarch suggests that Sulla used the rhetoric of civic cleansing in his Memoirs (καθήρας, Plut. Mor. 786e). e.g. κακῷ τὸ κακὸν ἰώμενος (“He healed evil with evil,” App. B Civ. 1.3). The application of the same rhetoric to Pompey, widely figured as Sulla’s pupil, is likewise suggestive. See Walters 2013: 116–8 and Marshall 1985 on the literary tradition. Quint 1993: 143 argues that Marius Gratidianus’ death “announces and anticipates a whole series of bodily mutilations in the Pharsalia.” ut membra quaedam amputantur (Cic. Off. 3.32); in rei publicae corpore . . . quicquid est pestiferum amputetur (Cic. Phil. 8.15). See OLD s.v. 1a for amputare in relation to the severing of a limb. Dinter 2012: 47. This reading accords with Baraz 2021: 731, who argues that Lucan constructs Cicero’s character to critique his use of violence against Catiline.

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As the distinction between the physician and patient fades away, so does that between the surgeon’s scalpel and butcher’s knife, which have the same effect on the body of Marius Gratidianus. Amid the paradoxes of civil war, such neat dualities lose their conceptual coherence. Lucan’s depiction of Sulla as a “mad surgeon,” as Andrew McClellan calls him, takes on contemporary significance when viewed in relation to Senecan philosophy.70 Scholars have long noted the compatibility between the Sulla of the Bellum Civile and that of De Beneficiis, where Seneca refers to ingratus L. Sulla, qui patriam durioribus remediis quam pericula erant sanavit (“Ungrateful Lucius Sulla, who cured the country by remedies harsher than the dangers were,” Sen. Ben. 5.16.3).71 Equally relevant is Seneca’s portrayal of Marius Gratidianus’ torture in De Ira, which is used to signify an attack on the body politic in microcosm.72 Seneca describes how Marius’ legs were broken (praefingi crura), eyes ripped out (erui oculos), tongue amputated (amputari linguam), and limbs lacerated (per singulos artus laceravit, Sen. Ira 3.18.1–2).73 He then clarifies the symbolic import of the violence, explaining that while it was fitting for Marius to suffer these things, Sulla to order them, and Catiline to do them, indigna res publica quae in corpus suum pariter et hostium et vindicum gladios reciperet (“The res publica did not deserve to receive the swords of both enemies and protectors equally into its body,” Ira 3.18.2). Seneca collapses the distinction between the body of a single citizen and that of the res publica, so that an attack on the former conveys the demise of the latter. Taking inspiration from his uncle, Lucan transforms this theme into a structuring principle of not just Book 2, but the whole epic. Lucan’s intertexts with Seneca construct a parallel between the civic violence perpetrated by Sulla and the tortures more recently prescribed by the Caesars. For Seneca breaks off his discussion of Marius Gratidianus by asking, quid antiqua perscrutor? (“Why do I investigate ancient examples?” Sen. Ira 3.18.3). He then turns his attention to Caligula, who easily exceeded Sullan cruelty in the number of men he tortured and the pleasure he took in their deaths (Sen. Ira 3.18.3). The comparison confirms that the bloodshed of the 80s bce was not a relic of the past, but was rather in

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McClellan 2020: 233. 71 See Fantham 1992: ad loc. For the influence of De Ira on Lucan’s portrait of not only Sulla, but also Caesar, see Leigh 1997: 289–90. Seneca’s description closely follows that of Sallust (Sall. Hist. Fr. 36 Ramsey), a likely source for Lucan as well (see Rawson 1987).

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perpetual threat of renewal.74 Seneca tries to forestall the troubling consequences of this idea in De Clementia, where he portrays Neronian clemency as the antithesis of Sullan cruelty.75 Figuring Sulla as a bloodthirsty tyrant (quis tamen umquam tyrannus tam avide humanum sanguinem bibit quam ille, “Yet what tyrant has ever drunk human blood as greedily as he?” Sen. Clem. 1.12.2), Seneca sets him up as a negative exemplum for the young princeps. With every act of mercy that Nero is imagined performing, his distance from the Republican dictator grows. Seneca uses their asserted divergence to reassure readers that the current princeps has expelled the specter of Sulla from the House of the Caesars. Lucan subverts the boundary that Seneca constructs between Sulla and Nero by drawing attention to their shared capacity to do harm. He portrays the Republican dictator systematically performing the same treatments from which Seneca tries to dissuade Nero in De Clementia. Nero is urged to avoid bloodletting at all costs (sustinenda est ne ultra quam necesse sit incidat, Sen. Clem. 1.5.1); Sulla drains every last drop (ille quod exiguum restabat sanguinis urbi | hausit, Luc. 2.140–1). Nero is reminded not to cut off his own limbs (tarde sibi pater membra sua abscidat, Sen. Clem. 1.14.3); Sulla does so with glee (nimis iam putria membra recidit, Luc. 2.141). Nero holds back his hand (ostendens quam invitus aspero remedio manus admoveat, Sen. Clem. 1.13.4); Sulla plunges his too far (nimiumque secuta est, | qua morbi duxere, manus, Luc. 2.141–2). These verbal echoes remind readers that Sulla will not be the last to exercise the power of life and death over his fellow citizens; the Caesars too will assess how much bloodletting benefits their rule. What matters is not the regimen that Nero chooses, but the fact that he alone gets to decide. His unchallenged possession of the prerogative to punish renders him the inheritor of Sulla’s problematic legacy. Lucan makes this reading explicit in the concluding lines of Book 4, where he suggests that Curio’s susceptibility to bribery prompted him to auction off the res publica. Preceding this claim is a startling assertion of Sulla’s presence within the House of the Caesars: ius licet in iugulos nostros sibi fecerit ensis | Sulla potens Mariusque ferox et Cinna cruentus | Caesareaeque domus series, cui tanta potestas | concessa est? emere omnes, hic 74

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Seneca makes the same point by linking Sulla to the saying oderint, dum metuant, which Suetonius reports was a favorite of Tiberius and Caligula (Suet. Tib. 59.2; Calig. 30.1). Associations between the Caesars and Sulla went back to the triumviral era, when Octavian and his fellow triumvirs earned the nickname Sullae discipuli tres (Juv. 2.28). Of course, Sulla had tried to lay claim to the language of clemency himself, complicating the neat opposition Seneca constructs. On this topic, see Dowling 2000 and Thein 2014.

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vendidit urbem (“Although powerful Sulla and fierce Marius and bloodthirsty Cinna and the line of the Caesarian house earned the right to use the sword against our throats, to whom was such a great privilege granted? For they all bought the city, while he [Curio] sold it,” Luc. 4.821–4). Lucan constructs a historical trajectory of violence that begins with the generals of the 80s bce and culminates in the Principate. Although he implicates Cinna, Marius, and Sulla in his reference to the ius ensis, he reverses the chronology of the era so that Sulla comes first in the line of those who wield the sword.76 He thereby foregrounds the legacy of the dictator as that which lives on under the Caesars. Prompting readers to think back to his portrayal of Sulla in Book 2, he suggests that Nero is equally ready to apply his scalpel to the body politic. He exposes not only Nero’s failure to adhere to the lessons contained within De Clementia, but also Seneca’s failure to regulate the operation of autocracy through philosophical inquiry. The parallel Lucan constructs between Sulla and Nero confirms the contemporary import of the warning issued by the old man in Book 2. As he concludes his ruminations on past strife, he says, haec rursus patienda manent, hoc ordine belli | ibitur, hic stabit civilibus exitus armis (“These things remain to be suffered again, through this sequence of war we will pass, this will be the outcome of civil war,” Luc. 2.223–4).77 His words apply not only to those who will experience the conflict between Caesar and Pompey, but also to those who will read Lucan under Nero.78 As long as the princeps has the power to excise malignant limbs from the res publica, Rome will remain susceptible to the self-slaughter thematized in the epic. Lucan’s intertexts with Seneca consequently reinforce Timothy Joseph’s argument that “the principate itself emerges from the poem as a sort of repetition or perpetuation of civil war.”79 Exposing violence as the true foundation of Julio-Claudian concord and consensus, Lucan illustrates how medical imagery could be used in opposition to rather than in service of autocracy. As he turns his attention to the symbol of the caput in Book 8, his divergence from the panegyrizing norms of Julio-Claudian discourse comes into even sharper view. With the beheading of Pompey comes an opportunity to undermine the ideal of Imperial interdependence that structures Seneca’s De Clementia. 76 77 78 79

Asso 2010: ad loc. 4.822. On this passage, Henderson 1987: 130 remarks, “More Lucanian ‘Deathstiny’. But the permanent ‘Sullution’ will be: No solution, permanently.” As Lowrie and Vinken 2023: 138 write, “The old man’s speech in book 2 spells out civil war’s eternal return.” Joseph 2012b: 8.

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The importance of capital symbolism to the interpretation of the Bellum Civile is established in Book 1, which sets up the conflict between Caesar and Pompey as a competition between rival heads of the body politic.80 When the Etruscan seer Arruns examines the entrails of a bull in Book 1, he discovers not only diseased and putrid organs, but also a liver that has sprouted two heads: ecce, videt capiti fibrarum increscere molem | alterius capitis. pars aegra et marcida pendet | pars micat et celeri venas movet inproba pulsu (“Look, he sees another head’s mass of fibers growing on its head. One part hangs sick and withered, the other quivers and stirs the veins with a quick, immoderate pulse,” Luc. 1.627–9).81 As Paul Roche notes, the ominous nature of the two-headed liver is put into explicitly political terms in Seneca’s Oedipus: ac (semper omen unico imperio grave) | en capita paribus bina consurgunt toris (“And see there! Two heads rise with equal bulges (always a grievous omen for undivided power),” Sen. Oed. 359–60).82 The two heads, one characterized by its decaying vitality and the other by its hurried speed, recall the programmatic similes that Lucan uses to introduce Pompey and Caesar, the former a nearly rootless oak tree and the latter a flashing lightning bolt (Luc. 1.135–57).83 In this way, Arruns’ discovery invites readers to link the symbol of the caput with the political fortunes of the epic’s protagonists.84 This theme is rearticulated at key points in the narrative. When the two armies converge at Dyrrachium, Caesar describes their struggle as a game of chance played between two heads: placet alea fati | alterutrum mersura caput (“He yearns for a game of chance that will sink one head or the other,” Luc. 6.7–8). Partisans on both sides invoke the imagery when their leaders face mortal peril. As Caesar embarks on his risky sea voyage in Book 5, his soldiers remind him, tantus caput hoc sibi fecerit orbis (“Such a great world has made you its head,” Luc. 5.686).85 Inquiring about the fate of his father, Pompey’s son asks, stat summa caputque | orbis, an occidimus (“Is the peak and head of the world standing, or have we fallen?” Luc. 9.123–4). Lucan reinforces this contest of heads by favoring words etymologically derived

80 81 82 83 84 85

For Caesar and Pompey as rival heads, see Dinter 2012: 19–21 and Masters 1992: 133–4. Rambaud 1985: 292–3 suggests that Lucan transposes the ill-omened liver preceding Caesar’s assassination (caesumque caput reperitur in extis, Ov. Met. 15.795) to this scene. Roche 2009: ad loc. See Narducci 2002: 56–8. On the oak tree and lightning bolt, see Rosner-Siegel 1983; Masters 1992: 9–10; Feeney 1986; Leigh 2010. Easton 2011: 360 draws attention to Arruns’ refusal to narrate the discovery of civil war lurking in the liver, which leaves the task to the poet. On the equation of Caesar’s life and those of his soldiers, see Matthews 2008: ad loc.

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from caput.86 Anceps, literally “doubleheadedness,” recurs throughout the epic to characterize the conflict.87 At the start of the epic, both Rome (Luc. 1.266) and the towns of Latium (Luc. 2.448) are called anceps, split in their loyalties to Caesar and Pompey. Their two-headed cities mirror the malformation of the larger body politic, which also sees the doubling of the Roman senate at Epirus.88 After the victory of Caesarian forces at the Battle of Massilia, the narrator characterizes the shift in political fortunes in the same terms: inclinant iam fata ducum, nec iam amplius anceps | belli casus erat (“Now the fates of the generals were turning, and the outcome of war was no longer two-headed,” Luc. 3.752–3). Caesar’s frequent epithet praeceps (prae-caput) emphasizes the point further.89 The consistent applicability of head imagery to his character throws Pompey’s slipping grasp on power into sharp relief. The struggle for the title of caput rei publicae is thereby replicated on a linguistic level. Pompey’s and Caesar’s competing claims to fulfill the role of Rome’s head are decisively settled in Book 8, when the former is savagely decapitated. Rather than simply marking the conclusion of the contest described in earlier books, however, Lucan stages this scene as a mutiny of the body politic against its head of state. The book begins after Pompey has been defeated at Pharsalus and become a man whose life has outlived his power (vita superstes | imperio, Luc. 8.28–9). As his generals meet in Cilicia to decide on the best course of action, Lucan raises the question of Pompey’s physical integrity. The general defends his continued right to lead by arguing for his physical resilience. Denying that defeat has affected his head or body, he asserts, non omnis in arvis | Emathiis cecidi, nec sic mea fata premuntur | ut nequeam relevare caput cladesque receptas | excutere (“I did not fall completely on Emathian fields and my fates are not so downtrodden that I am unable to raise my head and shake off the misfortunes I received,” Luc. 8.266–9). Roland Mayer points out the parallel between this metaphor and one used earlier to describe an attack on a Libyan elephant: sic Libycus densis elephans oppressus ab armis | omne repercussum squalenti missile tergo | frangit et haerentis mota cute discutit hastas: | viscera tuta latent penitus (“So a Libyan elephant, overwhelmed by dense troops, 86 87 88 89

For the ancient etymologies of anceps and praeceps, see Maltby 1991: 33, 490. Masters 1992: 133–4 notes the suitability of anceps in a contest between two heads that will end with a princeps. Lentulus describes the formation of a second senate in bodily terms: omnia rursus| membra loco redeunt (Luc. 5.36–7). Lucan famously calls Caesar in omnia praeceps (Luc. 2.656), which Fantham 1992: ad loc. describes as the keynote of his introductory portrait as a lightning bolt. See also Dinter 2012: 19 and Braund 1992: xlvi, who interprets this word in relation to the panic that pervades the poem.

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breaks every spear rebounding off its rough back and by twitching its skin shakes off the clinging spears: its organs are concealed safely within,” Luc. 6.208–11).90 Like the elephant, Pompey implies that his own skin has not been penetrated and is still able to protect the Republic’s vitals. Even more importantly, his head remains intact and capable. By defending his body in this way, however, he also acknowledges that it has come under attack. The response of the Pompeian commander Lentulus operates within the rhetorical parameters set by the general. He criticizes the suggestion of sailing to Parthia by questioning Pompey’s physical integrity, asking, sicine Thessalicae mentem fregere ruinae? | . . . iacet omne cruenti | volneris auxilium? (“So have the ruins of Thessaly shattered your mind? . . . Is the bleeding wound beyond all help?” Luc. 8.331–4). Lentulus uses imagery of physical deterioration to challenge Pompey’s legitimacy as a leader, suggesting that he might rather be a slave: si servire potes? (Luc. 8.341). Drawing out the physical implications of his effort, Frederick Ahl remarks, “Lentulus dismembers his arguments point by point.”91 By rhetorically rendering Pompey subordinate to those supposed to be under his rule, Lentulus convinces the other commanders to supersede his judgment. In doing so, Pompey’s own commanders inadvertently send him to his death in Egypt. Lucan’s purposefulness in representing the Cilician assembly as a mutiny is suggested by his divergence from Appian’s account. While the historian confirms disagreement about where to sail, he writes that Pompey resolved the conflict by promoting Egypt as a second option (ἐς δὲ τὴν Αἴγυπτον αὐτῷ συνεφρόνουν, App. B Civ. 2.83). In Lucan’s hands, this minor disagreement serves to stage an internal split in the general’s forces. Lucan magnifies such division by mirroring it in the court of King Ptolemy. Although Ptolemy’s treachery might be interpreted as an act of foreign hostility, the poet instead insists on treating it within the paradigm of civil war.92 He emphasizes not only Egypt’s status as a friendly client kingdom and part of the orbis Romanus, but also Ptolemy’s personal dependence on Pompey: sceptra puer Ptolemaeus habet tibi debita, Magne (“The boy Ptolemy holds his scepter thanks to you, Magnus,” Luc. 8.448).93 The image invests the Roman general with authority and 90 92

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91 Mayer 1981: ad loc. 8.268–9. Ahl 1976: 172. Like his Augustan predecessors, Lucan takes up the trope of “the Egyptian within,” on which see Lowrie 2015a. Spencer 2005: 60–4 shows how Pompey’s grave transforms Egypt into a Roman landscape, while Tracy 2014: 10 foregrounds continuity between the Ptolemies and the Caesars in his study of Egypt’s role in the epic. The narrator makes a similar point as he directly addresses Ptolemy: cecidit civilibus armis | qui tibi regna dedit (“The one who gave the kingdom to you has fallen by civil arms,” Luc. 8.559–60).

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privileges his agency; yet when he arrives in Egypt, his army worries about the reversal of their power relations: metuens non arma nefasque | sed ne summissis precibus Pompeius adoret | sceptra sua donata manu (“Fearing not arms and treachery, but that with submissive prayers Pompey would beseech the scepter given by his own hand,” Luc. 8.593–5). Ptolemy’s advisor Pothinus puts this vulnerability into explicitly bodily terms: feriam tua viscera, Magne (“I will attack your innards, Magnus,” Luc. 8.521).94 In framing viscera with tua and Magne, he suggests that these are not the collective organs of Rome, just those of a single man. His rejection of Pompey’s bodily authority signals that the mutiny will progress onto Egyptian land. The faithlessness of Egypt and its role as a civil war landscape is underlined through the presence of the Roman military tribune Septimius, who fought alongside Pompey against the pirates before joining Ptolemy’s retinue. The narrator laments that Fortune has extended civil crimes even to this land: disponis gladios, nequo non fiat in orbe, | heu, facinus civile tibi (“You scatter swords so that – alas! – a civil crime might happen anywhere in the world for you,” Luc. 8.603–4). The key term facinus civile confirms the stakes of the action at hand. He then reveals the depths of Septimius’ impending treachery: Romanus regi sic paruit ensis, | Pellaeusque puer gladio tibi colla recidit, | Magne, tuo (“And so a Roman sword obeyed a king, and the Pellaean boy cut your neck with your own sword, Magnus,” Luc. 8.606–8). The traitorous soldier not only enacts Ptolemy’s perfidy but also reproduces it, so that Pompey is betrayed by both his client king and his own soldier. The mutiny of the body politic is thereby made explicit in the narrative. Tuo gladio takes the meaning even further: Pompey’s neck is figuratively attacked by his own sword. His decapitation proves to be an act of metaphoric self-mutilation. The execution of Pompey should be conclusive – if not the end of the Republic’s civil wars, at least the expiration of the general’s life. Instead, the scene renders closure impossible by portraying increasingly brutal yet ineffective violence against a head that appears incapable of dying. For when Septimius uncovers Pompey’s face, he is revealed to be half-alive: ac retegit sacros scisso velamine voltus | semianimis Magni spirantiaque occupat ora | collaque in obliquo ponit languentia transtro (“And after the toga is cut away, he uncovers the sacred visage of half-alive Magnus and seizes his still breathing face, and puts the languishing neck on a slanted crossbeam,” 94

Tracy 2014: 71–4 draws suggestive parallels between Pothinus and Caesar, which only reinforce the civil war context of the passage.

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Luc. 8.669–71). The liminal state of his head is reinforced by his still breathing face and languishing neck. Septimius then begins to chop away, seeking a final separation of head and body: tunc nervos venasque secat nodosaque frangit | ossa diu (“Then he hacks at the sinews and veins, and fractures the knotty bones for a long time,” Luc. 8.672–3). Lucan emphasizes the excruciating length of the endeavor with an emphatic diu. Even after the trunk falls away from the neck, his face lives, with his mouth pulsating, breath gasping, and eyes stiffening: Pharioque veruto | dum vivunt voltus atque os in murmura pulsant | singultus animae, dum lumina nuda rigescunt | suffixum caput est (“On a Pharian spear, while his face is still living and sobs of breath pulse his mouth in murmurs, while his uncovered eyes stiffen, the head is fixed,” Luc. 8.681–4).95 Pompey appears bizarrely incapable of dying, and while he must stop breathing at some point, the narrator privileges his semi-animate state by never specifying a moment of expiration. This is one of many places in the epic that Lucan, through rhetorical delay, refuses to narrate significant events.96 This refusal cannot change the course of Roman history, but it can deny a satisfying resolution to the mutiny of the body politic. The absence of finality in Pompey’s beheading suggests that Rome’s selfdestruction can never be complete, necessitating an inevitable escalation of violence in pursuit of an unrealizable goal. This theme is further elaborated through the embalming of his head, which Lucan describes in gory detail: tunc arte nefanda | summota est capiti tabes, raptoque cerebro | adsiccata cutis, putrisque effluxit ab alto | umor (“Then decay was drained from the head by their heinous practice, and after the brain has been taken out, the skin was dried, and a putrid fluid poured out from the deep,” Luc. 8.688–91).97 The body part that has been the subject of so much attention in the poem is finally disassembled. The once vital head is little more than a decaying mess of fluids, putting the corrosive effects of civil war on stark display. Yet the real horror of the embalming is not the revelation of Pompey’s internal deterioration but rather the implication of permanence. The head, distorted and disturbed, is fixed for eternity through the insertion of poison: et 95

96

97

McClellan 2019: 70 notes how the syntactical separation of the spear from its function mirrors the division and dissolution of Pompey’s body. Baraz 2021: 735 suggests that Lucan’s description of Pompey’s spirantia ora is an allusion to Cornelius Severus’ eulogy for the similarly decapitated Cicero. Henderson 1987: 133–4 stresses Lucan’s refusal to narrate his story of Caesarian triumph, which casts Pompey as “the resisting, delaying, yielding, deferring object of the narrative quest for satisfaction,” (149). See also Roche 2019: 3 and Masters 1992: 1–10. Malamud 2003: 36–7 interprets the embalming of Pompey’s head in relation to the Medusa episode in Book 9, which serves as yet another repetitious doubling.

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infuso facies solidata veneno est (“And his face was hardened by the infusion of a poison,” Luc. 8.691). Doomed to exist in a state of strife forever, the general is denied any possibility for either death or regeneration. A similar fate, Lucan suggests, awaits Rome. While Pompey’s severed head does much of the work in conveying the consequences of civil war to Lucan’s audience, the fate of his trunk – unceremoniously thrown into the sea midway through Book 8 – works to similar effect.98 His battered truncus looks back to the oak simile of Book 1, suggesting that the tottering tree has finally completed its fall.99 Now at the mercy of forces beyond its control, it is defined by its lack of agency: litora Pompeium feriunt, truncusque vadosis | huc illuc iactatur aquis . . . pulsatur harenis, | carpitur in scopulis hausto per volnera fluctu (“The shores batter Pompey, and his trunk is tossed about here and there in the shallow waters . . . He is beaten on the sands, torn on the rocks while the sea is sucked in through his wounds,” Luc. 8.698–709).100 Lucan’s passive language – iactatur, pulsatur, carpitur – culminates in the designation of Pompey’s body as a ludibrium pelagi (Luc. 8.710), a plaything at the whim of the water.101 By cutting off its own head, the body politic has lost the reasoning faculties that enabled its functioning. Trapped in an inescapable cycle of violence made literal through the pounding waves, it offers disturbing confirmation of the warnings issued by Seneca. Lucan’s refusal to invest Pompey’s murder with a sense of closure is only further magnified in the failed cremation of the general.102 The quaestor Cordus eventually rescues his commander from the sea and manages to light his remains after stealing wood from a nearby pyre. A gruesome image of decay follows: carpitur et lentum Magnus destillat in ignem | tabe fovens bustum (“Magnus is grabbed and drips into the slow fire, warming the pyre with his waste,” 8.777–8). Echoing the mummification of the head (tabe) and the drowning of the body (carpitur), the corpse reminds readers of the means through which it died. Dawn interrupts the proceedings shortly after Cordus lights the pyre, forcing him to remove Pompey’s singed body, 98

Lucan foreshadows this scene in Book 1, where a Roman matron prophesies, hunc ego, fluminea deformis truncus harena | qui iacet, agnosco (“I recognize that man, the misshapen trunk that lies on river sands,” Luc. 1.685–6). Narducci 1973 illustrates the intertext with Vergil’s Priam, which was already taken to be an allusion to Pompey. Hinds 1998: 8–10 elaborates this theme further. 99 As Ahl 1976: 185 writes, “The rotting oak is now no more than a piece of battered driftwood; in the dim light it almost merges with the water in which it floats, unable even to cast a shadow.” 100 Bartsch 1997: 46 correlates civil war to the collapse of agency in the epic. 101 Martin 2005: 153 identifies this imagery as a product of Lucan’s imagination rather than the historical tradition. 102 Galtier 2010: 193 suggests that Pompey’s remains are evoked as a leitmotif throughout the epic.

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its bones still coated with muscle and smoldering marrow, and shallowly bury it. His half-burnt corpse, a common motif denoting an ambiguous status between life and death, parallels his half-alive state during the beheading.103 In this way, the burial further develops the themes of irresolution and repetition already established during the murder. The inadequacy of Pompey’s burial as a device for conclusion is made clear at the start of Book 9, when his spirit abandons its grave.104 The narrator reports, nec cinis exiguus tantam conpescuit umbram; | prosiluit busto semustaque membra relinquens | degeneremque rogum (“The paltry ash did not contain such a great shade; it leaped from its grave, leaving behind its half-burnt limbs and contemptible pyre,” Luc. 9.2–4). It then soars to Jupiter’s kingdom and watches the world, including its own trunk, from above. For the narrator, this startling scene of deification marks the culmination of Pompey’s transformation into an exemplary figure.105 But it ends on an ominous note, for the vengeful shade enters both Brutus and Cato: et scelerum vindex in sancto pectore Bruti | sedit et invicti posuit se mente Catonis (“The avenger of crimes settled in the pious breast of Brutus and put itself in the unconquerable mind of Cato,” Luc. 9.17–8).106 By splitting into two, Pompey’s spirit reestablishes the internal division that doomed his body. Its first target, Brutus, propels Rome into another round of civil war through his murder of Caesar and ultimately commits suicide. Its second target, Cato, continues the Republican fight until he, too, dies by his own hand.107 Lucan might celebrate their struggle for libertas, but he also exposes its devastating consequences for the soundness of the body politic. Like a virus, the self-destructive impulse within Pompey does not expire, but spreads to everyone it touches. Lucan’s insistence on representing Pompey’s murder within the paradigm of self-destruction allows him to address the consequences of a body politic that rebels against its head of state. His portrayal of the famed 103 104 105

106

107

See Noy 2000: 192–4 on the symbolic import of incomplete cremations. Gowing 2005: 87–8 proposes that Pompey’s actual tomb is replaced with a “virtual” one that will transcend time. On the “wild partisanship” that emerges in this scene, see Bartsch 1997: 91. For the narrator’s “extremes of pro-Pompeian partisanship” more broadly, see Masters 1992: 81. Behr 2007: 76–112 represents an alternative scholarly tradition that views the narrator’s sympathy for Pompey through a Stoic lens. Insofar Cato and Brutus represent defenders of libertas, their inheritance of Pompey’s shade can be read positively (e.g. Ahl 1976: 188–9; Esposito 1996: 116–7). But the underbelly of continuity is endlessness. Narducci 2002: 335–49 proposes that Pompey’s ascent to the heavens reinspires his commitment to civil war, which is then passed along to Brutus and Cato. Easton 2012: 221 argues for Pompey’s insinuation of himself into the still unfolding history of Roman civil war.

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general’s physical dissolution can be read as a fulfillment of the political vision laid out in De Clementia; without a caput rei publicae, the Roman people are nothing more than onus et praeda. While Seneca makes this point to encourage acquiescence to the Principate, Lucan uses it to convey the futility of politics in a society fated to civil war. Overeager surgeons and ineffectual heads of state might cause harm, but so does their removal. The res publica appears doomed to self-destruction either way. Lucan’s critique of the Principate should therefore not be interpreted as evidence of his Republican sympathies or revolutionary designs. In its portrayal of the ancestral Republic as an irrecoverable relic, his epic conveys the same foreclosure of institutional alternatives that pervades Seneca’s political philosophy. In different ways, both writers stripped away the fiction of ancestral refoundation and prompted readers to confront the reality of autocracy. Their efforts catalyzed a new era of political thought. Seneca’s De Clementia and Lucan’s Bellum Civile represent the culmination of the conceptual project that we have traced over the span of more than a century. Our investigation began in the Late Republic, when a res publica topped by a caput seemed like a contradiction in terms. The balance of power in the Roman Republic precluded such a simple dichotomy of command and obedience. By the time that Nero became princeps, however, a res publica without a caput had become largely unimaginable. The Principate was now so normative that it no longer demanded sustained justification. Roman writers were therefore able to turn their attention to the long-term consequences of sole rule. Yet even as Seneca and Lucan became increasingly willing to point out the flaws in the governing form under which they lived, they also remained deeply skeptical that it could be changed without catastrophic consequences. In the end, both fell victim to Neronian “medicine” before they could see the fulfillment of their fears. As they predicted, the overthrow of the Julio-Claudian dynasty precipitated a return to civil war while doing little to change the system that gave rise to such discontent in the first place. Paradoxically, then, the contest for power that followed Nero’s demise did not weaken the Principate so much as confirm its viability as an institution independent of its Augustan origins. With the rise of the Flavians came the formalization of both sole rule and the Imperial model of the body politic for the foreseeable future.108 108

The formalization of the Principate is typically tied to the Lex de imperio Vespasiani, on which see Brunt 1977 and Hurlet 1993 alongside the more recent work compiled in Capogrossi Colognesi and Scandone 2009.

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Conclusion

The Neronian era is often identified as a moment of transition in Roman political thought, one marked by increasing willingness to acknowledge the constitutional transformation of the late first century bce. Although narratives of ancestral refoundation remained influential in public discourse, Neronian writers began to portray and address the princeps as an autocrat. At the same time, they also started constructing a rupture between the res publica populated by statesmen like Cicero and Cato and that governed by the Caesars. My book has traced one of the conceptual avenues through which this shift in political language became possible. It argues for the importance of figurative speech generally, and the metaphor of the body politic specifically, in integrating the idea of sole rule into the paradigm of Roman Republicanism. Looking for ways to articulate the relationship between the princeps and res publica, Julio-Claudian writers did not need to invent new models of political authority. They found plenty that were already well-developed in Late Republican literature. Among them were the metaphors of the head of state and the civic healer, which were used in different ways to negotiate the role of the statesman in the mixed constitution. Gradually adapting them to the context of autocracy over the span of a century, a variety of Roman thinkers addressed the Principate without ever naming it as such. This story impacts our understanding of both Roman Republicanism and its Imperial reception. The fact that Julio-Claudian writers found Republican figurations of statesmanship amenable to the validation of sole rule should give pause to those interested in reviving classical republicanism today. Cicero and his contemporaries might have professed their hatred of kings and tyrants, but they also strongly believed in the ability of an exceptional statesman to guide the res publica on the basis of his civic wisdom rather than elected office. Indeed, one reason why they used metaphors of the body politic was to direct focus away from questions of legality and towards those of morality. That these metaphors could 195

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undermine the constitution they were invoked to protect became clear during the downfall of the Republic. Their revival in the context of autocracy is therefore revealing but not surprising. Equally important to this story, however, are the ways in which Imperial writers reworked the figurative language of the Late Republic to serve their own needs. By inventing a fictive Republican past for capital symbolism, in particular, they obscured the novelty of the Principate for themselves and those who later read their texts. Their efforts illustrate the difficulty of separating the political thought of the historical Roman Republic from the JulioClaudian reception of Roman Republicanism. Only by carefully distinguishing between these two categories can we arrive at an accurate understanding of either. By the mid-first century ce, an autonomous organism composed of interdependent parts had evolved into a collection of quarrelsome limbs reliant on a head of state for survival. The fact that this transformation took place confirms that Roman thinkers perceived the Principate to be a new political form in need of explanation, justification, and interrogation. They might have continued to use the term res publica in relation to it, but they developed other ways of distinguishing between self-governance and autocracy. Through their lamentations over the loss of libertas and related ideals, they confronted what was lost with the transition to sole rule. Through their celebrations of civil war’s end and the establishment of the pax Augusta, they illuminated what was gained. Expecting them to have distilled the complexity of their views into categories like “Republic” and “Principate” is to misunderstand the nature of their political thought, which resisted theoretical and terminological abstraction at nearly every turn. Entering the more diffuse world of storytelling and figurative speech allows us to see how Roman thinkers came to terms with a revolution to which they never assigned a name. Organic metaphors played a key role in the legitimation of the Principate as a natural and necessary form of political organization. Yet they also allowed Roman thinkers to explore the limitations of a system dependent on a single individual whose selection was haphazard, whose actions lay beyond the scope of censure, and whose rule could only be challenged through assassination.1 These weaknesses worked in combination to make the Principate highly susceptible to violence, a problem that Romans tended to understand as the repetition of an ancestral curse rather 1

As Flaig 2011: 77 notes, an emperor could never be deposed by institutional procedures, only by violence. This violence could take the form of either an assassination or usurpation, both of which produced conditions amenable to civil war. Pettinger 2012: 3 describes politically motivated violence as an instrument of power necessary to maintain the façade of Republican continuity.

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than a product of their constitutional form.2 Even as Julio-Claudian writers grew more direct in their criticisms of sole rule, however, they also expressed skepticism towards the possibility of an alternative. Seneca argued that the separation of head and body would lead to mutual destruction, while Lucan posited civil war as the inevitable consequence of rebellion. Even as they criticized individual Caesars, then, they articulated a more profound commitment to their rule as the only viable option. They did not need to celebrate the Principate as an ideal institution, in other words, because they had already come to see it as a necessary one. The events that took place after the deposition of Nero in 68 ce illustrated the prescience of Seneca’s and Lucan’s warnings about the reprisal of civil war, though neither survived long enough to witness them. Both were forced to commit suicide in the purge that followed a doomed effort to replace Nero with G. Calpurnius Piso.3 The extent to which either played a role in the Pisonian Conspiracy is unclear; Seneca probably did not, while Lucan likely did.4 Suetonius describes him as nearly the plot’s standard-bearer (paene signifer Pisonianae coniurationis) and claims that he called for Nero’s head (Caesaris caput, Suet. Vita Luc. 21–4).5 Although later writers emphasized the personal rather than political motivations for his involvement, they nevertheless located him at the forefront of a mutiny of the body politic.6 Tacitus portrays the conspiracy within this imagistic framework, introducing the familiar trope of a twoheaded organism to mark the return of civil strife.7 He reports the birth of two-headed fetuses and a calf with a head on its leg (bicipites hominum aliorumve animalium partus . . . natus viculus cui caput in crure esset, Tac. Ann. 15. 47.1–2), portents that signified the hatching of a new head of state: parari rerum humanarum aliud caput, sed non fore validum neque occultum (“Another head was being prepared for human affairs, but it would be neither strong nor secret,” Tac. Ann. 15.47.2). This symbolism conveys 2 3 4 5

6 7

Armitage 2017: 59–90 discusses the Romans’ fixation on the cyclicity of civil war, which he suggests they saw as “their civilization’s greatest curse,” (75). The primary narrative of the conspiracy is Tac. Ann. 15.48–74, on which see Ash 2018: ad loc.; Pagán 2004: 68–90; Woodman 1993. Tacitus only reports rumors of Seneca’s knowledge (Tac. Ann. 15.65.1) but assigns Lucan a leading role (Tac. Ann. 15.49.3). Griffin 1976: 367 emphasizes the divergence of Seneca’s and Lucan’s politics. Despite our limited knowledge of Lucan’s biography, Martindale 1984: 67 stresses three points of political significance: that Lucan composed a poem attacking Caesarism, was banned from reciting his poetry, and died in a conspiracy against Nero. Ahl 1971 uses Lucan’s literary record to trace a potential path towards his radicalization. For the depoliticization of his death in the biographical tradition, see Goldschmidt 2019: 90–1. Allusions to the Catilinarian Conspiracy abound in Tacitus’ narrative of the Pisonian Conspiracy, inviting readers to compare the bodily imagery associated with each (Ash 2018: 220).

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figuratively what his narrative soon confirms literally: the goal of the conspirators was to replace one head of state with another, not challenge the Imperial model of the body politic.8 Even as the fallibility of the Principate provoked dissent, it was strong enough to set the terms within which that dissent operated. Failing in its objective and leading to a bloody purge, the ill-fated plot highlighted the risks that lay in rebellion. Although the Pisonian Conspiracy was short-lived, dissatisfaction with Nero’s rule soon found expression on a much larger scale in the provincial rebellion fomented by G. Julius Vindex.9 As Neronian writers predicted, the revolt produced wide-scale civil slaughter yet did little to change the constitution by which the res publica was governed. Although those competing for power invoked Republican political language – most notably the ideal of libertas – to establish their legitimacy, they did not view its tenets as mutually exclusive with sole rule.10 The conceptual entrenchment of the Principate finds eloquent expression in Tacitus’ Histories, where S. Sulpicius Galba uses the metaphor of the body politic to assert the inevitability of autocracy.11 Speaking with Piso Licinianus, his chosen successor, he develops a counterfactual that locates Republican governance far in the past (Tac. Hist. 1.16.1):12 Si immensum imperii corpus stare ac librari sine rectore posset, dignus eram a quo res publica inciperet: nunc eo necessitatis iam pridem ventum est ut nec mea senectus conferre plus populo Romano possit quam bonum successorem, nec tua plus iuventa quam bonum principem. If the huge body of the empire were able to stand and maintain balance without a guide, I would be worthy to be the one from whom the res publica began. But we long ago now reached the point that my old age can offer the Roman people nothing more than a good successor, and your youth nothing more than a good princeps.

8

See Rudich 1993: 88 on the abandonment of “republicanist phraseology” by the conspirators, who sought a worthier princeps rather than a return to the res publica vetus. Leigh 1997: 3 suggests that the virtues of the Republican system continued to provide “a paradigm for the criticism of autocracy,” even when proposed reforms sought the moderation rather than abolition of the Principate. On the impracticality of Republicanism by this date, see Wirszubski 1950: 125. 9 On the circumstances surrounding the rebellion, see Morgan 2006: 11–30 and Urban 1999: 49–65. 10 See Gallia 2012: 12–46 on invocations of libertas in 69 CE. What “the coexistence of libertas and principatus was supposed to entail” evolved throughout the Imperial period (44). 11 The speech, of course, reflects Tacitean hindsight as much as Neronian political realities (Gowing 2005: 103). 12 Damon 2003: ad loc. 1.16.1 argues that res publica should be taken as a reference to the ancestral Republic here. Haynes 2003: 51 stresses Galba’s counterfactual, which renders the Republic a mirage.

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In using the scope of the empire to justify the prop of sole rule, Tacitus’ Galba invokes a by now familiar rhetorical tradition. Foregrounding the structural tension between liberty at home and conquest abroad, he suggests that Romans long ago sacrificed internal autonomy in favor of external conquest.13 Those living in the present have little choice but to accept a system of their predecessors’ making. Plutarch’s narration of the Year of the Four Emperors in the Life of Galba similarly frames the necessity of the Principate in relation to the logic of the body. The text opens with a generalizing comparison of an army to a strong body that must be subjected to the reasoning faculties of its commander: οἱ δὲ πλεῖστοι, καθάπερ ἐρρωμένον σῶμα, τὸ στρατιωτικὸν ἀξιοῦσιν ἰδίᾳ μηδέποτε χρώμενον ὁρμῇ συγκινεῖσθαι τῇ τοῦ στρατηγοῦ (“Most people think it right that an army, like a vigorous body, should never use its own initiative but rather follow that of their commander,” Plut. Galb. 1.1). While each provincial governor acts as the mind of his own troops, the princeps stands at the head of the armed forces collectively. Nero’s failure to keep control of this body leads to the rebellion of Julius Vindex: τὴν δὲ Ῥωμαίων ἡγεμονίαν . . . εἰς πολλὰ διασπωμένην ἅμα καὶ πολλαχόθεν αὖθις ἑαυτῇ συμπίπτουσαν (“The Roman empire . . . was ripped into many pieces and at the same time collapsed into itself again from every direction,” Plut. Galb. 1.4). Plutarch blames the self-destruction of the body politic on the license of the soldiery rather than the ambition of those seeking power. Endorsing a key tenet of Julio-Claudian political thought, he suggests that the warring limbs of the empire are only able to achieve concord under autocracy. The absence of a strong head consequently denotes the beginning of a civil war.14 Plutarch makes the toppling of Rome’s head of state explicit in the letter that Vindex sends to Galba to persuade him to rebel: ὁ Οὐίνδιξ ἔγραψε τῷ Γάλβᾳ παρακαλῶν ἀναδέξασθαι τὴν ἡγεμονίαν καὶ παρασχεῖν ἑαυτὸν ἰσχυρῷ σώματι ζητοῦντι κεφαλήν, ταῖς Γαλατίαις (“Vindex wrote to Galba, urging him to assume power and offer himself to a strong body seeking a head, namely the Gallic provinces,” Plut. Galb. 4.3).15 Directing readers’ attention to Galba’s head, Plutarch foreshadows the gruesome 13

14 15

On “the autocratic logic of imperial expansion,” which only fully emerged under the early Principate, see Arnason 2011: 9 . That the “slavishness” of senators at home in fact paralleled that of provincial subjects abroad is a theme that Tacitus elaborates in the Agricola (see Lavan 2011; Liebeschuetz 1966). See Stadter 2014: 61 on the Galba’s illustration of the damage wrought by irrational armies and weak generals. Ash 1997: 196–9 establishes the importance of this passage to the corporeal symbolism of the text.

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manner of his death later in the text. At the same time, he employs a metaphor strikingly similar to that which Catiline used on the senate floor in 63 bce.16 Locating the Gallic provinces in the role previously played by the populus Romanus, he illustrates the growing importance of the army as a determinative force in Imperial politics.17 Galba’s reaction to Vindex’s invitation, in turn, foregrounds the extent to which Roman political language had evolved over the preceding century. Whereas Catiline’s speech had provoked horror among his fellow senators, Vindex’s letter convinces Galba to revolt. A metaphor that connoted tyranny in the Late Republic could now be used – at least in Plutarch’s imagination – to flatter the political ambitions of a prominent general.18 As the Praetorian Guard and senate turn against the princeps, a contest of heads begins that is soon decided in Galba’s favor. This reading allows us to see Nero’s subsequent suicide as a prefiguration of the self-destruction of the body politic. Although Galba emerged as the victor in his contest of heads with Nero, he soon earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first Roman head of state to suffer literal decapitation.19 After he was killed in a mutiny of the Praetorian Guard, his head was chopped off, affixed to a pole, and paraded through the city. The event serves as the climax of Plutarch’s biography, which revels in the gory detail of Galba’s bald head proving too slippery to hold (Plut. Galb. 27.3). Borrowing from the tropes of theater to stage the scene, Plutarch describes Galba’s executioner as a crazed Bacchant: δρόμῳ χωρεῖν, ὥσπερ αἱ βάκχαι, πολλάκις μεταστρεφόμενον, καὶ κραδαίνοντα τὴν λόγχην αἵματι καταρρεομένην (“He ran on foot, as if a Bacchant, often twirling himself around and brandishing the spear dripping with blood,” Plut. Galb. 27.3).20 The comparison not only alludes to the beheading of Pentheus in Euripides’ Bacchae, but also to the death of Crassus, whose severed head was supposedly received by the Parthian king while he was watching a production of the play.21 The fate of Crassus, in turn, hints at 16 17

18 19 20 21

An incident recounted at Plut. Cic. 14.4–5. As Tacitus later put it, evulgato imperii arcano posse principem alibi quam Romae fieri (“The secret of empire was revealed: that the princeps could be created somewhere other than Rome,” Tac. Hist. 1.4.3). Master 2016: 77 suggests that the Historiae elevates the provincial armies to the role of kingmaker. Suetonius uses different phrasing (Suet. Galb. 9.2), suggesting that the language is Plutarch’s own, on which see Ash 1997: 196. The decapitation of emperors and usurpers would become standard practice by the third century ce, as discussed by Kristensen 2015 and Omissi 2014. See Keitel 1995 on Plutarch’s use of tragic tropes in the Galba and Otho. Plut. Crass. 33. Braund 1993 illustrates the extensive use that Plutarch makes of Euripides’ Bacchae in the Life of Crassus. On Bacchic allusions as a trope of later civil war literature, see Mebane 2019.

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that of his fellow triumvir Pompey, whose head was also paraded on a pike before a crowd of spectators in an Eastern land.22 Because Pompey’s death was often portrayed as a reprisal of Priam’s, scholars have seen references to the mythical Trojan king lurking in portrayals of Galba’s demise.23 This thicket of allusions locates the death of Galba in a cycle of beheadings that stretches back centuries. Although the first princeps to suffer decapitation, Galba is cast as another victim in a long line of statesmen felled by ancestrally rooted violence. The Life of Galba concludes without providing any sense of closure to the violence that structures the text.24 Plutarch instead foreshadows the integration of M. Salvius Otho, Galba’s successor, into the same pattern of civil war. He reports that when Otho was presented with Galba’s head, he immediately demanded that of Piso Licinianus too.25 Going above and beyond, his soldiers also bring him the heads of Titus Vinius, the current consul, and Cornelius Laco, the commander of the Praetorian Guard. In a particularly gruesome image, Otho assumes the role of princeps while standing amid their severed trunks: καὶ Καίσαρα καὶ Σεβαστὸν ἀνηγόρευον, ἔτι τῶν νεκρῶν ἀκεφάλων ἐν ταῖς ὑπατικαῖς ἐσθῆσιν ἐρριμμένων ἐπὶ τῆς ἀγορᾶς (“They proclaimed him both Caesar and Augustus while the decapitated corpses clad in their consular robes were still strewn throughout the Forum,” Plut. Galb. 28.1). In her reading of this scene, Rhiannon Ash notes the disjuncture between the titles Otho receives and the bloodied consular robes that surround him. “The trappings of power,” she writes, “prove to be no protection against brute force, and inevitably, the outlook for Otho, being awarded his lofty titles amidst the mutilated bodies, is not good.”26 Although Plutarch sees the selection of a strong princeps as the best defense against civil war, his own narrative seems to revel in its cyclical and iterative nature.27 Tacitus’ Histories explores the same themes of headlessness and irresolution through the burning of the Capitoline temple by Vitellius’ troops. 22 23

24

25 26 27

Dinter 2012: 48–9 suggests that Lucan exploits this parallel. Joseph 2012b: 85–8 notes allusions to both Priam’s “ur-death” in Aeneid 2 and the death of Pompey in Bellum Civile 8 in Tacitus’ Historiae. He builds upon earlier parallels identified by Benario 1972. Power 2014 is unconvinced of the Priam intertext in the Historiae, though he notes its operation in Suetonius’ Life of Galba (Power 2007). Ash 1997: 198 describes the Galba and Otho as “distinctly acephalous, with weak opening and closure.” On the lack of closure as foundational to Roman civil war literature, see Lowrie and Vinken 2023: 8. ‘Οὐδέν ἐστι τοῦτο, ὦ συστρατιῶται, τὴν Πείσωνός μοι κεφαλὴν δείξατε’ (“This counts for little, soldiers. Show me the head of Piso,” Plut. Galb. 27.3). Ash 1997: 199 See Ginsberg and Krasne 2018: 2, who make this point in relation to Flavian literature more broadly.

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This catastrophe, which serves as the climax of Book 3, has been widely recognized as a duplication of Galba’s beheading.28 As the caput orbis, the Capitoline occupied a place in the Roman imagination that mirrored that of the princeps. The parallel allowed readers to connect the figurative decapitation of the city to the literal decapitation of its ruler.29 Tacitus encourages this reading by crafting thematic symmetry between Galba and the Capitoline, both cast as old and noble eminences felled by their own citizens.30 Tacitus further personifies the hill by providing it with a eulogy and describing its loss as a physical disfigurement (saeva ac deformis urbe tota facies, Tac. Hist. 3.83.2).31 The ramifications of its destruction become even clearer when the Gauls interpret the disaster as a sign that the Roman Empire is coming to an end (finem imperio adesse crederent, Tac. Hist. 4.54.2). Their judgment, which calls to mind the Gallic Sack, confirms the existential threat posed by the indulgence in internal warfare. In this way, the mutilated city – headless in more ways than one – serves as “a graphic symbol of the suicide which is civil war.”32 In the short term, the crisis of 68–69 ce was resolved through the victory of Vespasian, who set out to cure the ills that had festered under the JulioClaudians and their usurpers.33 Insofar as Vespasian came to power through civil war and promised to heal its attendant wounds, he selfconsciously occupied a position that recalled that of the first princeps. Whereas Augustus’ connection to such imagery remained figurative, however, Vespasian was rumored to have actually performed healing miracles amid his rise to power. Legend held that he was approached by two men, one blind and the other lame, while visiting Alexandria.34 They informed him that Serapis had visited them in their sleep and advised them to seek a cure from his hands. Although skeptical, Vespasian agreed to spit into the eyes of the blind man and touch the paralyzed limb of the lame man. Both were miraculously healed, revealing the curative capacities of the man fated to rule Rome. This story likely arose in a local Alexandrian context in 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

See Joseph 2012b: 98–103, whose discussion I draw upon later, alongside Ash 2010: 90–1. “Thus the destruction of the Capitol denoted the destruction of the metaphorical head of the body politic,” Kraus and Woodman 1997: 96 note. Stressing this theme, Tacitus writes, ipso Capitolio civium manibus incenso (Tac. Hist. 1.2.2). Evans 2003: 270, fn. 39 remarks, “the citizen body literally destroys its own head.” MacL. Currie 1989: 352 suggests that Tacitus treats the Capitoline “as a living being.” The phrase deformis urbs also appears in Suetonius’ representation of the disaster (Suet. Vesp. 8.5). Kraus and Woodman 1997: 96. Edwards 2012: 256 argues that Tacitus casts Vespasian’s victory as a remedium for Rome’s wounds. Suet. Vesp. 7; Tac. Hist. 4.81; Cass. Dio 65.8.1–2. There are minor discrepancies in their accounts; Tacitus and Dio report that one man had a paralyzed hand, while Suetonius says he had a lame leg.

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relation to the cult of Serapis, but its subsequent incorporation into Roman historiography suggests that it took on a broader role in establishing Vespasian’s political legitimacy.35 Marking a new phase in the body politic tradition, it literalized the promise of sole rule as a remedy for civil strife. At the same time, it confirmed the continued reliance of the Flavians on the political language – and constitutional form – developed under their Julio-Claudian predecessors.36 A story often told about the arrival of sole rule in Rome is that Augustus offered his fellow citizens a bargain: peace in exchange for liberty. Looking back on the civil wars of the Late Republic, Florus is one of many authors to invoke “the fiction of historical necessity,” as K. Welwei terms it, to justify the establishment of the Principate.37 Like the Julio-Claudian writers who preceded him, he uses the duality of mind and body to make his case (Flor. 2.15.5–6): gratulandum tamen ut in tanta perturbatione est, quod potissimum ad Octavium Caesarem Augustum summa rerum redit, qui sapientia sua atque sollertia perculsum undique ac perturbatum ordinavit imperii corpus, quod haud dubie numquam coire et consentire potuisset, nisi unius praesidis nutu quasi anima et mente regeretur. Yet it must be considered cause for celebration that amid such great upheaval, the highest power fell chiefly to Octavian Caesar Augustus, who used his wisdom and cleverness to restore order to the body of the empire, which was stricken on all sides and in turmoil. Without a doubt, it would never have been possible for it to coalesce and harmonize were it not governed by the nod of a single protector as if a spirit and mind.38

Florus’ analysis serves a fitting point of conclusion to the story of the Roman body politic. Through his narration of the civil wars that brought the Caesars to power, he validates the prioritization of peace over liberty. Faced with the constant threat of civic collapse, who would not choose the same? 35

36 37 38

On the local circumstances of the visit, see Arena 2001: 307–11; Ziethen 1994: 181–3; Henrichs 1968; Morenz 1949–50. Papaioannou 2018: 99–108 interprets the tale in relation to the political medicus and describes miracles as “a means through which the care of the emperor for his people was manifested,” (108). Luke 2010: 77 argues for the promotion of the story under Domitian, whose reign saw renewed emphasis on the divinity of the emperor. On the tension between political continuity and change under the Flavians, see Zissos 2016: 2. Welwei 1996. Florus reprises this image shortly thereafter (civilibus, externis, servilibus, terrestribus ac navalibus bellis omne imperii corpus agitatum est, “The whole body of the empire was in turmoil due to wars civil, foreign, servile, terrestrial, and naval,” Flor. 2.15.8).

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What Florus fails to acknowledge, however, is that the implementation of sole rule did not solve the problem of civil war. Flaws in the constitutional fabric of the Principate ensured that it would remain a problem for centuries to come. Yet even as Augustus’ successors failed to uphold their end of the bargain, there was little talk of restoring the Republic. This book illuminates one reason why this was so. Imperial thinkers were so successful at incorporating heads and healers into their models of the res publica that they lost sight of the conditions under which they had ever survived without them. By retrojecting their own form of political organization onto the past, they created a Roman Republic that looked strikingly similar to the Principate. The construction of this continuity between past and present helped them come to terms with autocracy but also made it difficult to recover a historical constitution rooted in self-governance. Paradoxically, it was their commitment to the paradigm of Roman Republicanism that helped cement the Principate as Rome’s governing form for centuries to come.

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Index Locorum

Div. 1.121: 57 Dom. 2: 85 23: 36, 86 25: 86 55: 86 108: 85 124: 36, 86 Fin. 5.39: 122 Inv. 2.168: 34 Leg. 3.19: 18 3.28: 38 3.30–2: 68 3.42: 84 Marcell. 22: 113 24: 91 Mil. 19: 90 24: 44 68: 90 90: 36 Mur. 51: 29, 59 78: 73 Off. 1.85: 81, 174 3.22: 33 3.32: 93 Or. 2.250: 56 Parad. 28: 170

Appian B Civ. 2.9: 58 2.23: 89 2.28: 89 2.83: 189 Aristophanes Vesp. 650–1: 63 Aristotle Pol. 1253a: 33 Aulus Gellius NA 3.7: 50 Cassius Dio 56.39: 97 65.8: 202 Cicero Att. 1.16: 36 1.18: 84, 85 2.20: 94 4.18: 94 8.1: 51 Brut. 54: 33 Cat. 1.1: 148 1.5: 73 1.11: 74 1.31: 74 2.1: 74, 75 2.2: 75 2.11: 75, 76 2.17: 76 2.28: 73 Clu. 146: 35 De Or. 3.164: 72

Phil. 8.15: 1, 93 Rab. Perd. 33: 113

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Index Locorum Rep. 1.9: 44 1.31: 42 1.39: 39 1.60: 53, 54 1.62–3: 79 2.43: 16 2.52: 13 2.69: 40 3.41: 114 3.47: 80 5.8: 80 Sest. 24: 44 31: 86 43: 87 55: 86 96: 43 135: 88 Sull. 76: 82 Tusc. 1.21: 53 1.70: 53 2.47: 53 4.23–4: 64 Curtius Rufus 10.9: 158–61 Florus 2.15: 203 Herodotus 7.148: 48 Horace Carm. saec. 63–8: 99–100 Ep. 16.1–2: 159 Od. 1.21.13–16: 98 Livy Praef. 9–10: 104–5, 159 1.8: 105 1.13–18: 105–7 1.19: 125 1.45: 107 1.55: 44, 108 2.1: 108 2.23: 109 2.24: 109 2.32: 31, 110–11

2.34: 112 2.44: 112 2.57: 114 3.7: 115 3.20: 115 3.33: 116 5.3–5: 116–17 5.24: 117 5.30: 118 5.33: 118 5.42: 119 5.46: 119–20 5.49: 120 5.54: 121 6.1–3: 121–22 6.18–19: 123 28.11: 57 32.29: 57 38.51: 57, 124 41.21: 57 Lucan 1.2–3: 181 1.266: 188 1.627–9: 187 2.139–43: 182–83, 185 2.177–84: 183 2.448: 188 3.752–3: 188 4.821–4: 186 5.686: 187 6.7–8: 187 6.208–11: 189 7.490–1: 182 7.587–9: 182 8.28–9: 188 8.266–9: 188 8.331–41: 189 8.448: 189 8.521: 190 8.593–5: 190 8.603–8: 190 8.669–91: 190–92 8.698–710: 192 8.777–8: 192 9.2–4: 193 9.17–8: 193 9.123–4: 187 Lucilius Fr. 678–9: 65 Lucretius 3.138–40: 54 3.175: 65 5.1136–9: 55 5.1143–4: 55

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247

248

Index Locorum

Manilius 1.7–9: 139 1.17: 134 1.142: 136 1.247–50: 135 1.906–24: 137–40 2.60–6: 136 2.119: 136 2.422–3: 136 2.453–65: 135 2.540: 136 4.43–60: 137 4.83: 137 4.776–7: 134 5.738–9: 133

1.1–4: 199 4.3: 199 27.3–28.1: 200–1 Pomp. 55: 90 Polyaenus Strat. 3.9.22: 49 Polybius 6.9: 113 6.57: 113 Ps.-Sallust 1.6: 92 2.5: 41 2.10: 37, 42

Ovid Am. 1.15.26: 127 Fast. 4.255–6: 127 5.93–4: 127 Met. 15.431–5: 128 15.868–70: 128 Pont. 1.3.7–18: 103 2.2.57–8: 103 Tr. 1.1.99–100: 102 3.12.47–8: 128 3.5.45–6: 129 5.2.15–18: 102

Quintilian Inst. 8.6.15: 72

Philo of Alexandria Leg. 16: 156 68: 159 106–8: 156 145: 155 Plato Plt. 293b-d: 78 Tim. 69e-70b: 52 Pliny the Elder 25.4: 101 29.12–18: 77 Plutarch Cat. Mai. 8: 36 16: 77 23: 77 Galb.

Sallust Cat. 10.3–6: 69 11.3–5: 69 13.3: 70 Iug. 14.25: 71 32.4: 71 41.2–5: 45–46, 114 41.9: 71 Seneca the Elder Hist. Fr. 2: 151–54 Suas. 6.26: 2, 159 Seneca the Younger Ben. 5.16.3: 184 Brev. 4.6: 176 Clem. 1.1.1–2: 166 1.3.3–5: 167–69 1.4.1–3: 170–72 1.5.1: 173–74, 185 1.4.3: 167 1.9.6: 176 1.12.2: 185 1.13.4: 174–75, 185 1.14.3: 176, 185 1.17.2–3: 175 1.24.1: 177 2.2.1: 169, 177 2.3.1: 174

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Index Locorum De Vita Patris Fr. 1: 151 Ep. 71.12: 165 95.16–17: 65 114.3: 65 114.22–5: 178–80 Ira 3.18.1–3: 184 Oed. 359–60: 187 Polyb. 13–14: 157, 160 Suetonius Iul. 77: 6, 94 Tib. 59: 157 Vesp. 7: 202 Vita Luc. 21–4: 197 Tacitus Ann. 1.9: 97 1.12–13: 147–48 3.28: 90 13.17: 159 15.47: 57, 197 Hist. 1.16: 27, 198 3.83: 202

4.54: 202 4.81: 202 Valerius Maximus Praef.: 142 2.1.10: 146 2.2.1: 149 2.8.7: 141, 156 4.3.3: 146 6.2.8: 142 8.9.1: 149 9.2.1: 156 9.11.ext.4: 146 Varro De Vita p. R. Fr. 66–7: 66 Fr. 114: 58, 67 Fr. 121–3: 67 Ling. 9.6: 38 Sat. Men. Fr. 290: 50 Velleius Paterculus 2.52: 141, 145 2.89–90: 143 2.99: 144 Vergil Aen. 12.402–18: 100 Georg. 1.487–97: 138 1.514: 134 4.212–4: 171

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249

Index

adminiculum rei publicae, 121–22, 154 Ages of Man tradition, 151–52 Albinovanus, Publius, 88 anacyclosis, 112–13 animus. See mind–body duality Antony, Mark, 1–2, 93, 142, 157 Apollo Medicus, 92, 97–101 Asinius Gallus, Gaius, 147 Augustus Apollo Medicus, relationship to, 97–98 body politic, eye of, 145–47 body politic, head of, 127–29, 144 body politic, healer of, 96–104, 144, 155 body politic, surgeon to, 176 caput orbis, 127–29 second Camillus, 125–26 second Numa, 124–25 triumvir, 1 Battle of Actium, 3–4, 138–39, 142 Blumenberg, Hans, 22 Brutus, Lucius Junius, 153–54 Brutus, Marcus Junius, 153–54, 193 Caedicius, Quintus, 49–50 Caesar, Julius Apollo Medicus, relationship to, 92 assassination of, 137 body politic, head of, 187–88 body politic, healer of, 91–92 body politic, malignancy in, 92–93 body politic, representation of, 6, 94 Caligula body politic, consumption of, 156–57 body politic, infection of, 155–56 body politic, torture of, 184 Capitoline Hill, 50–51, 107–8, 201–2 Catilinarian Conspiracy, 29–31, 47–48, 59–60, 72–83 Catiline, Lucius Sergius

body politic, contagion within, 73–76, 82 body politic, head of, 29–31, 47–48, 59–60 Cato the Elder, 36, 49–50, 77 Cato the Younger, 165, 193 Cicero, Marcus Tullius Antony as malignancy, 1, 93–94 beheading of, 1–2 body politic, healer of, 75–83 body politic, splitting of, 42–45 Caesar as healer, 91–92 Caesar as malignancy, 92–93 Catilinarian Conspiracy, 72–83 Catiline as contagion, 72–75, 82–83 Clodius as contagion, 84–89 concord, 39–40 corpus civitatis, 34 curia as caput urbis, 35–36 diseases of the soul, 64 Fable of the Belly, 33–34 head as locus of reason, 52–53 head of state, 126–27 ideal statesman, 80–81 immortality of res publica, 113–14 Milo, Titus Annius, 88–89 mind–body duality, 34–35 monarchy, 55–56 optimates and populares, 42–45 Pompey as healer, 90–91 res publica, definition of, 39–40 Sestius, Publius, 86–88 societas, 39 utilitas, 34 violence as a remedy, 86–89 violence as antithetical to politics, 83–86 Cicero, works of Brutus, 33 Catilinarians, 73–75 De Divinatione, 57 De Domo Sua, 36, 85–86 De Finibus, 121–22

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Index De Inventione, 34 De Lege Agraria, 77 De Legibus, 38, 68, 84 De Officiis, 81, 93, 174 De Oratore, 56 De Republica, 13, 16, 39–40, 42–45, 53–54, 55–56, 79–81, 108, 114 Epistulae ad Atticum, 36, 84–85, 94 Paradoxa Stoicorum, 170 Philippics, 1, 93–94 Pro Cluentio, 35 Pro Marcello, 91, 113 Pro Milone, 36, 44, 51, 88–89, 90–91 Pro Murena, 29, 73 Pro Rabirio Perduellonis, 113 Pro Rege Deiotaro, 56 Pro Sestio, 43–45, 86–88 Pro Sulla, 82 Tusculanae Disputationes, 52–53, 64 Cinna, Lucius Cornelius, 156, 182, 185–86 civil war Caesar and Pompey, 142, 145 Liberators and triumvirs, 137–38 Octavian and Antony, 139 Social War, 137 Sulla and Marius, 142 Year of the Four Emperors, 198–202 Claudius body politic, healer of, 157 body politic, torturer of, 176–77 Clodius Pulcher, Publius, 83–89 body politic, contagion within, 84–86 death of, 88–89 violence, use of, 83–84 concord, 31–32, 39–40, 111–12, 135–36 concordia ordinum, 44 Cornelius Severus, 2, 126–27 Curia, 35–36, 149 Curtius Rufus, 158–61 body politic, beheading of, 160–61 body politic, regeneration of, 161 civil war, 158–60 identity of, 158 unsociability of monarchy, 158–59 discord, 18–20, 41–47, 109–18, 136–40, 144–45, 158–62 domus Augusta. See House of the Caesars Drusus the Elder, 146–47 Epistulae ad Caesarem, 36–37, 41–42, 92 Fable of the Belly, 31–34, 110–12 First Secession of the Plebs. See Fable of the Belly First Triumvirate, 58–59, 94

Galba, Servius Sulpicius, 199–201 Gracchus, Gaius, 58 Gracchus, Tiberius, 42, 87, 142 Haterius, Quintus, 147–48 Helvius Mancia, 141–42 Horace Apollonic healing, 98–100 Carmen Saeculare, 99–100 Epodes, 159 Odes, 98–99 weight of empire, 159 House of the Caesars, 140–50, 161, 185–86 interregnum, 147–48 Lactantius, 150–51 libertas, 16–18, 45–46, 69, 108, 153–54, 196, 198 Livy, 104–26 adminiculum, 121–22 Augustus, 124–26 body politic, head of, 106–8, 119–24 body politic, physicians to, 115, 116–17 body politic, sickness of, 109, 115 Camillus, 118–22, 125–26 Capitoline Hill, 51, 107–8, 121, 122–23 Cincinnatus, 115 concord, 105–7, 111–12 consensualism, 114–15 dictatorship, 115 discord, 109–18 Fable of the Belly, 110–12 Gallic Sack, 118–21 Manlius Capitolinus, Marcus, 122–23 Numa, 106–7, 124–25 Praefatio, 104–5 Republic, foundation of, 108–9 Romulus, 105–8 Scipio Africanus, 57, 123–24 second decemvirate, 116 Veii, body politic in, 119–21 Veii, move to, 117–18 Lucan, 181–94 body politic, at war with itself, 181–82 body politic, mutiny of, 193 body politic, two-headed, 187–88 Brutus, Marcus Junius, 193 Caesar, Julius, 187–88 Cato the Younger, 193 Lentulus Spinther, 189 Marius Gratidianus, 183–84 Pisonian Conspiracy, member of, 197 Pompey Magnus, death of, 187–93 Ptolemy, 189–90

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252 Lucan (cont.) Septimius, 190 Sulla as surgeon, 182–86 Lucilius, 64–65 Lucretius, 54–55, 65 maiestas, 9, 100, 101 Manilius, 133–40 Augustus, 138–40 Battle of Actium, 138–39 body politic, 134–37 Caesar, Julius, 137 civil war, 137–40 concord, 135–36 cosmos as body, 134–36 cosmos as strife-ridden, 136–37 cosmos figured as res publica, 133 cosmos, ruled by natura, 135–36 Marius, Gaius, 137 Pharsalus, 137–38 Philippi, 137 Pompey Magnus, 137 princeps as natura, 134 Manlius Capitolinus, Marcus, 122–23 Marius Gratidianus, 183–84 Marius, Gaius, 137, 156–57, 182, 185–86 Menenius Agrippa. See Fable of the Belly mens. See mind–body duality metus hostilis, 45–46, 66, 69 Milo, Titus Annius, 88–89 mind–body duality, 34–38 moral decline, 63–72 Nero body politic, head of, 172 body politic, healer of, 173–76 body politic, mind of, 168–70, 177–78 Sulla’s successor, 185–86 vinculum rei publicae, 170 Octavian. See Augustus optimates and populares, 42–45 Ovid Amores, 127 Augustus as caput orbis, 127–29 Augustus as healer, 102–3 Epistulae ex Ponto, 102–3 exile as a wound, 102–3 Fasti, 127 Metamorphoses, 128–29 Tristia, 102, 127–28, 129 Pettit, Philip, 16–18 Pharsalus, 137–38 Philippi, 137–38

Index Philo of Alexandria, 154–57 physicians in ancient world, 76–77 Pisonian Conspiracy, 197–98 Plato Cicero, influence on, 52–53, 79–81 head as locus of reason, 51–52 physician analogy, 78–79 Statesman, 78–79 Timaeus, 51–52 Plutarch Life of Cato Maior, 36, 77 Life of Galba, 199–201 Life of Pompey, 89–90 Year of the Four Emperors, 199–201 Pocock, J.G.A., 15–16 Polybius, 112–13 Pompey Magnus body politic, healer of, 89–91 boy butcher, 141–42 death of, 137, 187–93 Roman Republic, 4–13 constitution, 8 definition, 7–8 downfall, 12 popular sovereignty, 9–12 regal elements, 13 res publica, meaning, 4–7 Roman Republicanism, 13–20 conflictualism, 18–20 Imperial reception, 195–96 liberty as non-domination, 16–18 neo-republicanism, 16–18 Sallust antagonistic politics, 19, 45–47 Bellum Catilinae, 68–70 Bellum Iugurthinum, 45–47, 70–71 libertas, 45–46, 69 metus hostilis, 45, 69 virtus, loss of, 69–70 Seneca the Elder, 150–54 Ages of Man tradition, 151–52 body politic, regression to infancy, 151–54 composition of Historiae, 150–51 libertas, loss of, 153–54 Seneca the Younger Augustus, 176 autocracy, acknowledgment of, 166–67 beehive metaphor, 171–72, 178–79 Caligula, 184 Cato the Younger, 165 Claudius, 176–77 clemency as curative, 167–68, 173 Consolatio ad Polybium, 157, 160

https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009389334.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press

Index cruelty as pestilential, 167–68 De Beneficiis, 184 De Clementia, 172–78, 185 De Ira, 184 Epistulae Morales, 65, 165, 178–81 interdependence of ruler and ruled, 167–72 Marius Gratidianus, 184 mind–body duality, 168–70, 178–80 Nero as animus, 168–70, 177–78 Nero as civic healer, 173–76 Nero as head of state, 172 Nero as vinculum, 170 Pisonian Conspiracy, 197 Sulla, 185 wise king doctrine, 165–66 Sestius, Publius, 86–88 Skinner, Quentin, 14–15 societas, 34, 39, 66 stasis, 63 succession, problem of, 140–50 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius body politic, consumer of, 156–57, 184–85 body politic, surgeon to, 182–86 Tacitus Annales, 90, 96–97, 147–48, 197 Capitoline Hill, 201–2 Historiae, 198–99, 201–2 interregnum, 147–48 Pisonian Conspiracy, 197–98 Year of the Four Emperors, 198–99 Tiberius assumption of power, 147–48 body politic, consumer of, 156–57 body politic, eyes of, 145–47 body politic, head of, 144, 147–48 salutaris princeps, 142–43 transfer of power. See succession, problem of

unsociability of monarchy, 158–59 utilitas, 34 Valerius Maximus, 140–47, 156 body politic, eyes of, 146–47 body politic, healed, 142–43 body politic, wounded, 141–42 civil war, 141–42 Drusus the Elder, 146–47 Fable of the Belly, 148–49 Tiberius, 142–43 Valgius Rufus, Gaius, 101–2 Varro body politic, decline of, 65–68 body politic, multi-headed, 58–59 body politic, urban geography of, 50–51 De Lingua Latina, 38 De Vita Populi Romani, 57–58, 65–68 popular politics of, 37–38 Saturae Menippeae, 50 Trikaranos, 58–59 Vatinius, Publius, 88 Velleius Paterculus, 140–47 Augustus, 143–44 body politic, healed, 142–44 body politic, two-headed, 144–45 body politic, wounded, 141–42 civil war, 141–42 eyes of, 145–46 Tiberius, 144–46 Vergil Aeneid, 100–1 Georgics, 134, 171, 178–79 Vespasian, 202–3 viticulture as metaphor, 121–22 Year of the Four Emperors, 198–202

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https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009389334.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press