Cicero on the Attack: Invective and subversion in the orations and beyond

229 Pages·2007·3.089 MB·English

by  Joan Booth

CiCero

on the AttACk
Invective and Subversion in
the Orations and beyond
edited by
Joan Booth
CiCero
oN THe ATTACk
Invective and subversion
in the orations and beyond
Editor
Joan Booth
Contributors
ingo Gildenhard, Byron harries, keith hopwood,
J.G.F. Powell, robin Seager, Catherine Steel,
Javier Uría, rogier L. van der Wal
The Classical Press of Wales
First published in 2007 by
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iSBn 978-1-910589-49-6
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ContentS
Page
Preface vii
introduction: man and matter Joan Booth (Universiteit Leiden) ix
1. invective and the orator: Ciceronian theory and practice 1
J.G.F. Powell (royal holloway, University of London)
2. Ciceronian invective: themes and variations 25
Robin Seager (University of Liverpool)
3. the semantics and pragmatics of Ciceronian invective 47
Javier Uría (Universidad de Zaragoza; University of Wales Swansea)
4. Smear and spin: Ciceronian tactics in De Lege Agraria II 71
†Keith Hopwood (University of Wales Lampeter)
5. name and shame? invective against Clodius and others in the
post-exile speeches 105
Catherine Steel (University of Glasgow)
6. acting the part: techniques of the comic stage in Cicero’s early
speeches 129
Byron Harries (University of Wales Swansea)
7. Greek auxiliaries: tragedy and philosophy in Ciceronian invective 149
Ingo Gildenhard (University of Durham)
8. ‘What a funny consul we have!’ Cicero’s dealings with
Cato Uticensis and prominent friends in opposition 183
Rogier L. van der Wal (Vrije Universiteit, amsterdam)
index i: the life and works of Marcus tullius Cicero 207
ii: Personal names 208
iii: Main passages discussed 211
iV: Latin and Greek terms 213
V: Subjects 215
v
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PreFaCe
The germ of this volume was a two-day colloquium on ‘The language of
Ciceronian invective’ organized at the University of Wales Swansea in May
2001. its aim was to mark the focus of the Leverhulme Visiting research
Fellowship held during that year in Swansea by Dr Javier Uría Varela of the
University of Zaragoza, Spain. it was my own great privilege and pleasure to
guide and promote Javier Uría’s research in Swansea; without his stimulating
scholarly presence and unfailing good nature, it is unlikely that this project
would ever have been begun. Without the patience of the contributors, both
with each other and with me (a somewhat interventionist editor, i fear), it
may never have been finished. My warm thanks to them all.
i should also like to record a number of other debts of gratitude: to the
enterprise and energy of Stephen Mitchell, who managed the original collo-
quium; to the expertise of ernest Buckley in typesetting the volume, and of
Cornelis van tilburg in producing an electronic version of the index; to the
collegial friendship of Manfred horstmanshoff, which made many things
easier; and, above all, to the support, professionalism and vision of anton
Powell of the Classical Press of Wales.
invective, as frequently stated or implied in these pages, is by its very nature
divisive: i am delighted to say, however, that it has for once proved a powerful
force for cohesion.
J.B.
Leiden 2007
vii
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introDUCtion:
Man anD Matter
Joan Booth
A lifetime’s occupation
Smooth-tongued; razor-witted; foul-mouthed: M. tullius Cicero (106–
43 bc) on the verbal warpath is not difficult to recognize as any or all of these.
as combative as a Churchill in his own time, his association with energetic
battles of words inevitably centres on his extant speeches aimed, wholly or
in part, at discrediting both private individuals (often the opponents of his
legal clients) and persons he saw as public enemies, the two in some cases
being united in a single target.1 Celebrated specimens of Cicero’s broadsides
run through the whole of his own roller-coaster career in the Late roman
republic. it began with a high-risk onslaught on Sulla’s freedman Chrys-
ogonus in his defence of roscius of ameria, the forensic2 oration (80 bc)
that made his name as an advocate.3 With his emergence as a politician,
came comprehensive demolition of C. Verres, governor of Sicily, in a series
of speeches related to Verres’ trial for extortion (70 bc).4 his consular year
produced the four denunciations of the conspirator Catiline (63 bc).5 after
his recall from exile for unconstitutional execution of the Catilinarian
conspirators there followed the bullying cross-examination of Vatinius,
a hostile witness against Cicero’s own client P. Sestius (56 bc);6 a ruthless, if
indirect, character-assassination of Clodia Metelli as part of his defence of her
lover M. Caelius rufus (also 56 bc);7 and violently abrasive personal abuse of
L. Calpurnius Piso, ex-governor of Macedonia, in the senate (55 bc).8 Finally,
in his oratorical swansong, came relentless vilification of Mark antony in
the blistering series of Philippics (44–43 bc).9 in all of these speeches – and
numerous others – Cicero’s strategies of verbal attack on individuals, whether
direct or indirect, can be seen in action. Consequently they invite evaluation
in terms of what they achieve in their immediate context, and of how they
do so. But Cicero’s theoretical and other writing throughout his career is
also highly relevant to an assessment of why, more generally, he attacked as
he did, and with what effect. his treatises, both early and late, on the theory
and history of rhetorical technique,10 his mature expositions of political and
moral philosophy11 and his many moments of self-revelation, not least in
his massive and lifelong private correspondence,12 offer some insight into an
ix
Joan Booth
agenda, conscious or unconscious, behind the adoption of particular stances,
linguistic formulations and recurrent imagery.
Local issues, wider perspectives
The chapters in this volume attempt contextualized analysis and evaluation
of particular Ciceronian verbal offensives. They also engage, separately and
collectively, with a cross-textual range of interpretative and methodological
questions raised by the body of material outlined above and by previous
scholarly work. The work that repeatedly claims attention includes items
or collections in three main categories: (i) on specific parts of the corpus
– nisbet’s 1961 commentary on the In Pisonem especially has proved an
enduring stimulus to debate; (ii) on the techniques and preoccupations of
Cicero’s oratory and rhetoric in general – particularly notable are Macken-
drick’s Speeches of Cicero (1995), May’s Trials of Character (1988), the same
author’s edited Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (2002), and
Powell and Paterson’s edited volume Cicero the Advocate (2004); (iii) on more
broad-spectrum, yet still fundamental, topics and issues – into this category
fall the seminal though in no way definitive studies of invective and abuse by
opelt (1965) and koster (1980), important reappraisals of the realities of
roman courtroom aims and procedure by riggsby (1997, 1999, 2002) and
Craig (2004), and recent analyses of humour as a weapon of political and
rhetorical persuasion by Corbeill (1996) and Fantham (2004). against this
background, some of the questions addressed by individual contributors may
now usefully be outlined.
how much of Cicero’s war of words can justifiably be said to be, or
to belong to, a distinct ‘genre’ of invective? Jonathan Powell (ch. 1)
attempts strict definition of ‘invective’ and argues that generalizing from the
Ciceronian corpus about literary or rhetorical conventions of verbal attack
lacks sound basis. he proposes that cultural considerations are more likely
to account for Cicero’s use or avoidance in various contexts of what could be
termed ‘invective proper’.
Does Cicero’s practice of verbal assault show any overall coherence or
sustained characteristics? robin Seager (ch. 2) identifies and compre-
hensively illustrates three recurrent techniques: contention (i) that the
behaviour of the individual pilloried is unprecedented, (ii) that his badness
is unique and (iii) that comparison with a more virtuous or at least less
strikingly wicked counterpart (in other words, the use of a ‘foil’) highlights
his iniquity.
are there dimensions in Cicero’s strategies of attack that analyses rooted
in traditional philology or rhetorical theory leave unexposed? Javier
Uría (ch. 3), defining ‘invective’ more inclusively than does Powell
x
Introduction: man and matter
(though sharing Powell’s contention that invectival devices are funda-
mentally designed to affect the audience rather than the target of abuse),13
offers a case-study of Cicero’s verbal assaults on a single individual, Sextus
Cloelius,14 to demonstrate the possibilities of ‘semantics and pragmatics’,
the method of discourse-analysis pioneered in relation to classical texts
primarily by Dutch and Spanish scholars. The possibility to emerge most
spectacularly is that Cicero’s liking for dirty jokes may be more extensive
than has been supposed.
Do Cicero’s strategies of verbal offensive show any line of develop-
ment that appears to reflect the turn of events in his own life or shifts in
his own thought and interests? keith hopwood (ch. 4), rather than
approaching the speeches On The Agrarian Law in the conventional manner
as a historical source, re-reads the second speech as Cicero’s self-interested
attempt, out of pro-Pompeian commitment at the time of his own consul-
ship, to disable by any means available to him the tribune Servilius rullus
and his land-distribution bill. Catherine Steel (ch. 5), considering what
motivates Cicero’s decision to name or not to name P. Clodius (brother
of Clodia Metelli) at specific points in his post-exile speeches of 57–56
bc,15 tests her hypothesis that these speeches may be seen ‘as responses to
a particular problem, namely, that Cicero could not assume that his return
from exile was also a return to the status quo ante in terms of his position and
authority within roman politics’.16 her contention is that a change in his
naming strategy marks a change in his political position. Byron harries
(ch. 6) sees the mature Cicero’s condescension in the Orator towards some
of the theatrical material that he had evidently exploited with enthusiasm in
his early courtroom offensives as indicative of evolution of his aesthetic taste
in keeping with that of the contemporary roman cultural elite.17
From what sphere(s) does ‘Cicero on the attack’ draw his imagery and
illustrative material? harries (ch. 6) considers the evidence for supposing that
his personal acquaintance with (especially comic) actors and familiarity with
their craft and material influenced his manner of verbal attack and shaped
his arguments. ingo Gildenhard (ch. 7), another who would define
‘invective’ more elastically than Powell, shows how Cicero turns to quotation
from tragic drama and reference to its themes and characters not just to ‘give
his defamatory writings a sustained and sophisticated literary spin’ (p. 149),
but also to construct a ‘theology of punishment’ (p. 163) and to allow him
to lambaste the conduct of his adversaries within a frame of reference that his
audience will recognize, while being encouraged to read a message morally
more refined than the one that the theatrical medium afforded. Philosophical
precept similarly, argues Gildenhard, permits Cicero to relate his offensives
to ‘eternal verities’ unaffected by political storms.
xi