Author: Frazel, Thomas Dooley
Title: Furtum and the Description of Stolen Objects in Cicero, In Verrem 2.4
Review/Collection: American Journal of Philology - Volume 126, Number 3 (Whole Number 503)
Year edition: 2005
Pages: 363-376
Keywords: Droit - Diritto - Law, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: [Abstract] Cicero portrays Verres here in ways that are strikingly similar to those that would be used against a thief in a civil proceeding: he emphasizes that Verres carried off goods, characterizes Verres’ purchases as forced sales, and describes the stolen objects in a spare manner like the one used in theft accusations. Cicero’s matter-of-fact descriptive mode also plays a key role in his own self-presentation as an informed, but not enthusiastic, consumer of art, unlike Verres. The spare descriptions thus reinforce Cicero’s ethical strategies. In 70 B.C.E., Cicero undertook the criminal prosecution of C. Verres for repetundae. Cicero accused the former praetor, among other things, of stealing not only res sacrae from various temples in Sicily but also objects belonging to individual Sicilians. He recounts the majority of these thefts in the fourth oratio of the second actio. Cicero, I argue, portrays Verres here in ways that are strikingly similar to those that would be used against a thief in a civil proceeding.
Works:
Author initials: Frazel 2005
Title: Furtum and the Description of Stolen Objects in Cicero, In Verrem 2.4
Review/Collection: American Journal of Philology - Volume 126, Number 3 (Whole Number 503)
Year edition: 2005
Pages: 363-376
Keywords: Droit - Diritto - Law, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: [Abstract] Cicero portrays Verres here in ways that are strikingly similar to those that would be used against a thief in a civil proceeding: he emphasizes that Verres carried off goods, characterizes Verres’ purchases as forced sales, and describes the stolen objects in a spare manner like the one used in theft accusations. Cicero’s matter-of-fact descriptive mode also plays a key role in his own self-presentation as an informed, but not enthusiastic, consumer of art, unlike Verres. The spare descriptions thus reinforce Cicero’s ethical strategies. In 70 B.C.E., Cicero undertook the criminal prosecution of C. Verres for repetundae. Cicero accused the former praetor, among other things, of stealing not only res sacrae from various temples in Sicily but also objects belonging to individual Sicilians. He recounts the majority of these thefts in the fourth oratio of the second actio. Cicero, I argue, portrays Verres here in ways that are strikingly similar to those that would be used against a thief in a civil proceeding.
Works:
Author initials: Frazel 2005
