Although numerous scholars have studied Late Republican humor, this is the first book to examine its social and political context. Anthony Corbeill maintains that political abuse exercised real ...powers of persuasion over Roman audiences and he demonstrates how public humor both creates and enforces a society's norms.
Previous scholarship has offered two explanations for why abusive language proliferated in Roman oratory. The first asserts that public rhetoric, filled with extravagant lies, was unconstrained by strictures of propriety. The second contends that invective represents an artifice borrowed from the Greeks. After a fresh reading of all extant literary works from the period, Corbeill concludes that the topics exploited in political invective arise from biases already present in Roman society. The author assesses evidence outside political discourse-from prayer ritual to philosophical speculation to physiognomic texts-in order to locate independently the biases in Roman society that enabled an orator's jokes to persuade. Within each instance of abusive humor-a name pun, for example, or the mockery of a physical deformity-resided values and preconceptions that were essential to the way a Roman citizen of the Late Republic defined himself in relation to his community.
Originally published in 1996.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Sexing the world Corbeill, Anthony
2015., 20150118, 2015, 2015-01-18
eBook
From the moment a child in ancient Rome began to speak Latin, the surrounding world became populated with objects possessing grammatical gender-masculine eyes (oculi), feminine trees (arbores), ...neuter bodies (corpora).Sexing the Worldsurveys the many ways in which grammatical gender enabled Latin speakers to organize aspects of their society into sexual categories, and how this identification of grammatical gender with biological sex affected Roman perceptions of Latin poetry, divine power, and the human hermaphrodite.
Beginning with the ancient grammarians, Anthony Corbeill examines how these scholars used the gender of nouns to identify the sex of the object being signified, regardless of whether that object was animate or inanimate. This informed the Roman poets who, for a time, changed at whim the grammatical gender for words as seemingly lifeless as "dust" (pulvis) or "tree bark" (cortex). Corbeill then applies the idea of fluid grammatical gender to the basic tenets of Roman religion and state politics. He looks at how the ancients tended to construct Rome's earliest divinities as related male and female pairs, a tendency that waned in later periods. An analogous change characterized the dual-sexed hermaphrodite, whose sacred and political significance declined as the republican government became an autocracy. Throughout, Corbeill shows that the fluid boundaries of sex and gender became increasingly fixed into opposing and exclusive categories.
Sexing the Worldcontributes to our understanding of the power of language to shape human perception.
This article examines the pseudo-Ciceronian Pridie quam in exilium iret oratio, a short work that appears at the head of our best witnesses for Cicero’s genuine post reditum speeches. Supplementing ...the work of previous scholars, I catalogue Ciceronian and non-Ciceronian works to which the author seems to refer and compare that list to those texts that were thought to be taught in the schools. The mismatch between the two lists leads to a discussion of other non-Ciceronian idiosyncrasies: prose rhythm; multiple addressees; the anonymity of Clodius; the references to Cicero in the third person; the use of hyperbaton. I close by suggesting that this exercise shows a student willfully, even perversely, creating an independent oration in reaction to the restrictions of declamatory practice in the school.
Nature embodied Corbeill, Anthony
2018., 20180605, 2018, 2003
eBook
Bodily gesture. A Roman worshipper spins in a circle in front of a temple. Faced with death, a Roman woman tears her hair and beats her breasts. Enthusiastic spectators at a gladiatorial event ...gesticulate with thumbs. Examining the tantalizing glimpses of ancient bodies offered by surviving Roman sculptures, paintings, and literary texts, Anthony Corbeill analyzes the role of gesture in medical and religious ritual, in the gladiatorial arena, in mourning practice, in aristocratic competition of the late Republic, and in the court of the emperor Tiberius. Adopting approaches from anthropology, gender studies, and ecological theory, Nature Embodied offers both a series of case studies and an overarching narrative of the role and meanings of gesture in ancient Rome. Arguing that bodily movement grew out of the relationship between Romans and their natural, social, and spiritual environment, the book explores the ways in which an originally harmonious relationship between nature and the body was manipulated as Rome became socially and politically complex. By the time that Tacitus was writing about the reign of Tiberius, the emergence of a new political order had prompted an increasingly inscrutable equation between truth and the body--and something vital in the once harmonizing relationship between bodies and the world beyond them had been lost. Nature Embodied makes an important contribution to an expanding field of research by offering a new theoretical model for the study of gesture in classical times.
At Naturalis Historia 35.147, Pliny offers precious information on female artists of Greece and Rome. This article emends Pliny’s text, thereby attributing a more precise subject to a painting by a ...Greek woman. Linderski has discussed the difficulties associated with text and interpretation of the first sentence of 35.147 (ZPE 2003.83-87). Pliny lists female painters from antiquity, including Irene, daughter of Cratinus (text of Mayhoff 1897): Irene, Cratini pictoris filia et discipula, puellam, quae est Eleusine, Calypso, senem et praestigiatorem Theodorum, Alcisthenen saltatorem (sc. pinxit). Since the nineteenth century, scholars have debated whether Calypso is here in the accusative or nominative case; in other words, was she one of the known works of Irene or does Pliny include an unattested painter named Calypso? Linderski ingeniously reconstructed how ancient uncertainty over the form Calypso had corrupted the text. An overly meticulous scribe glossed Calypso with the more common accusative in late antiquity, Calypsonem. This form was subsequently incorporated into the text and miscorrected to Calypso senem. Linderski therefore proposed deleting senem and reading Calypso as accusative, the accusative form that we know Pliny preferred (Char. gramm. p. 162.6-11). While agreeing that Calypso is a painting, I propose here an emendation that is more plausible paleographically and accords well with known representations of the nymph. These fall into two main types: standing beside Odysseus at his raft (three examples) or seated alone (two examples, one of which is attested at Plin. nat. 35.132). I read Calypso sedentem for the transmitted text (Calypso senem et) and then discuss five points that favor this emendation. I close by conjecturing how Irene’s “new” subject – a Calypso seated, presumably after the departure of Odysseus – can supplement our appreciation of women artists of Greece and Rome.
Although numerous scholars have studied Late Republican humor, this is the first book to examine its social and political context. Anthony Corbeill maintains that political abuse exercised real ...powers of persuasion over Roman audiences and he demonstrates how public humor both creates and enforces a society's norms.
Previous scholarship has offered two explanations for why abusive language proliferated in Roman oratory. The first asserts that public rhetoric, filled with extravagant lies, was unconstrained by strictures of propriety. The second contends that invective represents an artifice borrowed from the Greeks. After a fresh reading of all extant literary works from the period, Corbeill concludes that the topics exploited in political invective arise from biases already present in Roman society. The author assesses evidence outside political discourse—from prayer ritual to philosophical speculation to physiognomic texts—in order to locate independently the biases in Roman society that enabled an orator's jokes to persuade. Within each instance of abusive humor—a name pun, for example, or the mockery of a physical deformity—resided values and preconceptions that were essential to the way a Roman citizen of the Late Republic defined himself in relation to his community.
Originally published in 1996.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
TACITUS’ DIALOGUS Corbeill, Anthony
The Classical Review,
10/2004, Volume:
54, Issue:
2
Journal Article, Book Review
Peer reviewed
The "Dialogus" receives, in R. Mayer's edition of "Tacitus: Dialogus de oratoribus", its first significant commentary in English since Gudeman's lengthy edition of 1894. Along with most modern ...scholars, Mayer sees the "Dialogus" as Tacitus' justification for abandoning oratory in favour of the writing of history. This may be so, but there is no clear evidence for such a change of heart on Tacitus' part.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FFLJ, INZLJ, NMLJ, NUK, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK, ZRSKP
9.
INDEX LOCORUM Corbeill, Anthony
Nature Embodied,
06/2018
Book Chapter
Introduction Corbeill, Anthony
Nature Embodied,
06/2018
Book Chapter
When Gregory Bateson was conducting fieldwork in New Guinea, his friends among the native Iatmul could not understand why he had to work so hard to learn their language: “But our language is easy to ...understand” they told him, “we just talk.”¹ I wonder how Romans would react to an American studying their gestures from a distance of two millennia. A predictable response would be that their body language is easy to understand; they just move. It is in this common lack of self-reflection that both the complications and rewards of studying ancient gesture lie. Since gesture normally does seem
