Auteur: Drum, Martin
Titre: Cicero’s Tenth and Eleventh Philippics: The Republican Advance in the East
Revue/Collection: In : Stevenson,Tom & Wilson, Marcus (Eds.), Cicero's Philippics: History, rhetoric and ideology, Polygraphia, coll. "Prudentia", Auckland, 2008, 374 p.
Annèe edition: 2008
Pages: 82-94
Mots-clès: Éloquence - Eloquenza - Eloquence, Histoire - Storia - History, Politique - Politica - Politics
Description: The paper by Martin Drum advances this point about behind-the-scenes moves in a rather different way. Cicero clearly speaks and writes with an eye to the attitudes of Brutus and Cassius; they dominate his consciousness and planning. This is not a new observation but it might be given renewed emphasis because many historians still tend to see them as weak, indecisive, and unprepared for what lay ahead. Hence their inevitable defeat. Is this line of thinking accurate? Is it fair? Drum examines the withdrawal of Brutus and Cassius to the East after the Ides. He notes that it quickly resulted in their control of powerful provinces, armies, and wealth. Cicero in Philippics 10 and 11 makes this success a product of their moral superiority and the superiority of their cause, and he maintains the illusion that it all came about as a massive surprise at Rome. Those who aided the Liberators were supposedly motivated by a sense of their legitimacy which accorded in uncanny fashion with that of Cicero himself. Drum shows through prosopographical analysis, however, that they had exercised extraordinary foresight in installing their friends, relatives, and sympathisers in powerful positions of command in the East, so that their success was in fact the result of meticulous planning in the period before Caesar’s assassination. Far indeed were the Liberators from being clueless and torpid, or idealistic and lacking a sense of political realities. They had carefully planned ahead. This paper gives a good pointer to Cicero's method in the Philippics and to some of the limits of the corpus as historical evidence. [Stevenson & Wilson 2008, 12]
Oeuvres:
Sigle auteur: Drum 2008
Titre: Cicero’s Tenth and Eleventh Philippics: The Republican Advance in the East
Revue/Collection: In : Stevenson,Tom & Wilson, Marcus (Eds.), Cicero's Philippics: History, rhetoric and ideology, Polygraphia, coll. "Prudentia", Auckland, 2008, 374 p.
Annèe edition: 2008
Pages: 82-94
Mots-clès: Éloquence - Eloquenza - Eloquence, Histoire - Storia - History, Politique - Politica - Politics
Description: The paper by Martin Drum advances this point about behind-the-scenes moves in a rather different way. Cicero clearly speaks and writes with an eye to the attitudes of Brutus and Cassius; they dominate his consciousness and planning. This is not a new observation but it might be given renewed emphasis because many historians still tend to see them as weak, indecisive, and unprepared for what lay ahead. Hence their inevitable defeat. Is this line of thinking accurate? Is it fair? Drum examines the withdrawal of Brutus and Cassius to the East after the Ides. He notes that it quickly resulted in their control of powerful provinces, armies, and wealth. Cicero in Philippics 10 and 11 makes this success a product of their moral superiority and the superiority of their cause, and he maintains the illusion that it all came about as a massive surprise at Rome. Those who aided the Liberators were supposedly motivated by a sense of their legitimacy which accorded in uncanny fashion with that of Cicero himself. Drum shows through prosopographical analysis, however, that they had exercised extraordinary foresight in installing their friends, relatives, and sympathisers in powerful positions of command in the East, so that their success was in fact the result of meticulous planning in the period before Caesar’s assassination. Far indeed were the Liberators from being clueless and torpid, or idealistic and lacking a sense of political realities. They had carefully planned ahead. This paper gives a good pointer to Cicero's method in the Philippics and to some of the limits of the corpus as historical evidence. [Stevenson & Wilson 2008, 12]
Oeuvres:
Sigle auteur: Drum 2008
