Author: Ginelli, Francesco
Title: Il cibo come metafora politica nelle ad familiares di Cicerone
Review/Collection: In : J. Pinheiro & C. Soares (coords.), Patrimónios Alimentares de Aquém e Além-Mar, Série DIAITA Scripta & Realia, Imprensa de Universidade de Coimbra, 2016
Place edition: Annablume
Editor: Coimbra University Press
Year edition: 2016
Pages: 173-187
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History, Stylistique et genres littéraires - Stilistica e generi letterari - Stylistics and literary genre
Description: Food references are scattered in all Cicero’s works. This paper will analyze one particular meaning in the ad familiares: the political metaphor. The connection of a specific food with a particular person is employed to make a joke against him. In Fam. 7, 26, Cicero describes heavy digestion problems caused by a dinner with chard and mallow, in accordance with Caesar’s recent sumptuary law: the episode offers the opportunity to critique this rule that, instead of regulating meat intake, would cause only stomachache. Fam. 9, 18 plays with the ambiguity of pavo, a very precious animal but also a symbol of vanity, and ius, “law”, but also “broth”: the two Caesarians, Hirtius and Dolabella, would be two unaware peacocks that wallows in the soup cooked by Cicero, their rhetoric master. The frugality of Peto’s table in Fam. 9, 16 and 9, 18 is a way to disapprove Caesar’s solution of debts. Fam. 9, 24 represents a particular case: the haruspex Spurinna, who warned Caesar not to go in senate on the Ides of March, would exhort Peto, with a bitter irony, to go outside for having dinner with a friend as in the past [Author]
Works:
Author initials: Ginelli 2016
Title: Il cibo come metafora politica nelle ad familiares di Cicerone
Review/Collection: In : J. Pinheiro & C. Soares (coords.), Patrimónios Alimentares de Aquém e Além-Mar, Série DIAITA Scripta & Realia, Imprensa de Universidade de Coimbra, 2016
Place edition: Annablume
Editor: Coimbra University Press
Year edition: 2016
Pages: 173-187
Keywords: Histoire - Storia - History, Stylistique et genres littéraires - Stilistica e generi letterari - Stylistics and literary genre
Description: Food references are scattered in all Cicero’s works. This paper will analyze one particular meaning in the ad familiares: the political metaphor. The connection of a specific food with a particular person is employed to make a joke against him. In Fam. 7, 26, Cicero describes heavy digestion problems caused by a dinner with chard and mallow, in accordance with Caesar’s recent sumptuary law: the episode offers the opportunity to critique this rule that, instead of regulating meat intake, would cause only stomachache. Fam. 9, 18 plays with the ambiguity of pavo, a very precious animal but also a symbol of vanity, and ius, “law”, but also “broth”: the two Caesarians, Hirtius and Dolabella, would be two unaware peacocks that wallows in the soup cooked by Cicero, their rhetoric master. The frugality of Peto’s table in Fam. 9, 16 and 9, 18 is a way to disapprove Caesar’s solution of debts. Fam. 9, 24 represents a particular case: the haruspex Spurinna, who warned Caesar not to go in senate on the Ides of March, would exhort Peto, with a bitter irony, to go outside for having dinner with a friend as in the past [Author]
Works:
Author initials: Ginelli 2016
