This is a study of the emergence, development, and florescence of a distinctly 'late Republican' socio-textual culture as recorded in the writings of this period's two most influential authors, ...Catullus and Cicero. It reveals a multi-faceted textual - rather than more traditionally defined 'literary' - world that both defines the intellectual life of the late Republic, and lays the foundations for those authors of the Principate and Empire who identified this period as their literary source and inspiration. By first questioning, and then rejecting, the traditional polarisation of Catullus and Cicero, and by broadening the scope of late Republican socio-literary studies to include intersections of language, social practice, and textual materiality, this book presents a fresh picture of both the socio-textual world of the late Republic and the primary authors through whom this world would gain renown.
In this paper I argue that the sexually active wives of Aristophanes' Lysistrata are progressively "hetairized"—transformed into comic hetairai—by means of distinctly sympotic visual imagery and ...linguistic innuendo. After a brief discussion of the late fifth-century dramatic "problem" inherent in the sex-trading wife, I turn to the pan-Hellenic oath (193-237). The language of this oath, evocative of the imagery of red-figure sympotic vessels, initiates the women into the sphere of sympotic and hetairic activity. Next, I review the transaction scene between Myrrhine and her husband, Kinesias (847-64, 929-34). I argue that this scene, long recognized as "reminiscent" of brothel negotiations, picks up on the innuendo of the oath and puts it to the test with the bawdy language that likely marked a more typical representation of the comic hetaira. Finally, I suggest that both the "hetairization" and the theme of extra-domestic female activity are brought to an end with the coarse physical division of the silent (and "non-wifely") Diallage (1108-21). In a manipulation of the slippage between wife and non-wife—between sex and politics—the sharable Diallage incites her "customers" to transfer their sexual appetites toward a civic goal.
The first half of Aiskhylos' "Agamemnon" presents three crimes of the House of Atreus: the sacrifice of Iphigeneia (184-247), the wasting of young Argive lives at Ilion (355-487) and the treading of ...the materials as the victorious king reenters his palace (810-974). We argue that the sequential presentation of the crimes of the House, which are connected thematically, stylistically, and causally, radically redefines the nature of transgression within contemporary models of the polis community. Crime as defined in relationship to oikos alone is displaced by crime as defined in relationship to both oikos and the broader polis community; transgression moves from an aristocratic (oikos alone) to an isonomic (oikos within polis) context. This redefinition culminates in the "Carpet-Scene." We reread Agamemnon's nostos as a contest of epinikia. The king represents himself as victorious idiôtês, and Klutaimestra strives to figure him as returning tyrant. She succeeds in the stichomythia, where Agamemnon fails to recognize the crucial distinction between φθόνος and ζῆλος. Aristotle differentiates the terms at Rhet. 1387-88, where φθόνος is envy toward a social superior and ζῆλος the emotion one experiences in rivalry between equals; we document the development of the terms from the archaic period onwards, demonstrate that Aristotle's distinction is valid for the late archaic and classical periods, and suggest that it arose in an attempt to outline relationships of appropriate and inappropriate competition among fellow-citizens. Agamemnon's failure to recognize this important distinction betrays his misunderstanding of the dynamics of, and his agreement to walk on the materials is an offense against, isonomic community. The rearticulation of the nature of transgression completed by this crime of Agamemnon against the polis does fundamental ideological work for the rest of the Oresteia, offering an aetiology of the claims of the polis against the aristocratic oikos.
Flavian Poetry Nauta, Ruud R; Smolenaars, Johannes J. L; van Dam, Harm-Jan
2005, Letnik:
270
eBook
This book offers a selection of the papers delivered at the international conference on Flavian poetry held at Groningen in 2003, which brought together leading experts in the field. The poets ...discussed include Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, Statius and Martial.
Cicero not only wrote dialogues (among other genres), but was one of the ancient authors most explicitly and consciously interested in the literary issues thrown up by use of the dialogue form. ...Moreover, his use of, and understanding of, the form developed throughout his literary career. This chapter focusses on the introductions to his dialogues, where Cicero speaks about the literary task of creating and re-creating his authorial voice (or voices). In the earlier works, Cicero presents his dialogues as if they were historical events, keeping his ostensible authorial voice wholly exterior to the ‘conversation’; but the later ones become more theatrical, with Cicero himself participating actively within them, inviting his readers to imagine what it must be like to eavesdrop on a discourse that is both ostensibly private and actively public.
In the first half of Aiskhylos' "Agamemnon," the sequential presentation of the crimes of the House of Atreas radically redefines the nature of transgression within contemporary models of the polis ...community.
CICERO, WRITE SOMETHINGAs I discussed in Chapter 6, Cicero inserts the unmistakable echoes of elite performance into de Oratore in order to introduce into the isonomic exchanges of his elite readers ...a new type of text that served as a venue of secondary and private display. In this chapter, I argue that Brutus too embodies a kind of social display, a recognizable textual echo of elite and private ritual. However, instead of a ritual concerned with the education of Roman youth and the sharing of erudite wit, Brutus presents an array of interlocking rituals that speak both to Cicero's own pressing political circumstances and the ultimate inevitability of his textual endeavors. In crafting a strangely gendered image of both the “death” of Republican oratory and the subsequent “life” of private textual circulation and collection – what de Bury would describe in the fourteenth century as the “community of books” or librorum municipium – Cicero fashions in Brutus a boldly procreative model for the writing of rhetorical histories and historical dramas in prose.Composed and published in 46 BCE, the dialogue is set in the immediate present. Pompey's humiliating defeat at Pharsalus in 48 is a fresh wound on Cicero's mind, and although he had gained pardon by Caesar in the autumn of 47, Caesar's recent victory at Thapsus in April of 46 had left the orator's position anything but secure.
OBLIGED TO SPEAK: WHY AN ORATOR CAN'T HELP HIMSELFIn order to impose a strong sense of obligation and reciprocity on his written political voice, Cicero needed to adapt the unwritten system of rules, ...duties, and presumptions of the forum into the new medium of the exchanged literary text. There is no perfect term to describe this system, this understanding of expected social performance in the forum and between recognized orators, but we might designate it as a kind of “forensic obligation.” It is forensic (as opposed to domestic, for instance, or martial) both in terms of geographical orientation – it is the obligation of the forum – and in terms of context – it is the principle that governs forensic practice. It is an obligation (as opposed to a habit or an expectation) because the actions required by this system were taken to be compulsory and binding (neither optional, nor a matter of preference); when an orator claims that he speaks only because he is under a forensic obligation to do so, he means that his voice is not passively expected – it is actively required.It can pass without remark that Cicero and those with whom he habitually exchanges his texts were well conversant in the language and subtleties of forensic obligations; and indeed, this is the subject of many of Cicero's technica.
