Read more
That the Roman republic died is a commonplace often repeated. This volume examines the body-political imagery used by Roman orators and authors of the first century BCE to express this notion, with particular emphasis on such imagery as a tool of persuasion and the impact which it exerted on Roman politics of the period.
List of contents
- Frontmatter
- List of Figures
- List of Abbreviations
- 0: Introduction: The Deaths of the Republic
- 1: The Republican Body Politic
- Harmony and Discord
- Mixture, Degeneration, Morals, and Men
- 'No Longer Provide Your Blood'
- 2: Healing the State with Violence
- Medical Imagery in Late-Republican Politics
- Roman Medicine and Roman Oratory
- Salus Rei Publicae
- Vis Omnium Remediorum
- Healing the State with Arms
- 3: Butchering the Body Politic
- Mutilating the Body Politic
- Meanings of Violent Imagery
- 'The Republic's Greatest Wound'
- Significant Wounds
- 4: Outliving the Republic
- Deaths, Executions, Funerals, and Murders
- Deaths and Consolations
- 'No Natural Death of the Republic'
- 'Perish Along with the Republic'
- 5: Murdering the Fatherland
- 'Parricide' in Earlier Invective
- Murdering (the Father of) the Fatherland
- Vitae Necisque Potestas
- Coda: Parricide and Caput Patriae
- Endmatter
- Bibliography
- Index of Passages
- General Index
About the author
Brian Walters is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has previously published a translation of Lucan's Civil War (Hackett, 2015), in addition to various poems, and articles on Cicero, Roman oratory, and metaphor.
Summary
That the Roman republic died is a commonplace often repeated. This volume examines the body-political imagery used by Roman orators and authors of the first century BCE to express this notion, with particular emphasis on such imagery as a tool of persuasion and the impact which it exerted on Roman politics of the period.
Additional text
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.
