The Deaths of the Republic
Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Published:3rd Mar '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
That the Roman republic died is a commonplace often repeated. In extant literature, the notion is first given form in the works of the orator Cicero (106-43 BCE) and his contemporaries, though the scattered fragments of orators and historians from the earlier republic suggest that the idea was hardly new. In speeches, letters, philosophical tracts, poems, and histories, Cicero and his peers obsessed over the illnesses, disfigurements, and deaths that were imagined to have beset their body politic, portraying rivals as horrific diseases or accusing opponents of butchering and even murdering the state. Body-political imagery had long enjoyed popularity among Greek authors, but these earlier images appear muted in comparison and it is only in the republic that the body first becomes fully articulated as a means for imagining the political community. In the works of republican authors is found a state endowed with nervi, blood, breath, limbs, and organs; a body beaten, wounded, disfigured, and infected; one with scars, hopes, desires, and fears; that can die, be killed, or kill in turn. Such images have often been discussed in isolation, yet this is the first book to offer a sustained examination of republican imagery of the body politic, with particular emphasis on the use of bodily-political images as tools of persuasion and the impact they exerted on the politics of Rome in the first century BCE.
This book aims to gather the surviving evidence for republican discourse on the body politic, to uncover its shared ideological underpinnings and resonances, and to understand Cicero's idiosyncratic usages and goals. * NT WORLD *
... anyone wishing to pursue any significant study of imagery in Republican literature-in particular oratory-will first consult Walters as a necessary and convenient starting point. * James M. May, St. Olaf College, Religious Studies Review *
In this slim, but by no means lightweight, volume, Walters dissects Roman republican imagery of the body politic, carving out how, why, and with what potential effects Cicero and his contemporaries, in particular, employed bodily potential effects Cicero and his contemporaries, in particular, employed bodily metaphors, similes, and analogies to describe their state, its institutions, and its wellbeing. * Henriette van der Blom, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History, Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology, University of Birmingham, Polis *
In just 120 pages it is complete and accurate as a catalogue, and breaks new ground in a busy literature... this is an excellent, engaging book of high scholarship of the republican period... It will be of interest to anyone interested in Cicero's rhetoric, philosophy, or politics; scholars and students of the late republican era; and early modernists and comparativists interested in the use of body-political imagery in Latin speeches, poems, philosophica, and history of the 1st century BCE. * Evan Dutmer, Culver Academies, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *
ISBN: 9780198839576
Dimensions: 223mm x 147mm x 16mm
Weight: 350g
176 pages