Author: Arena, Valentina
Title: Invocation to Liberty and Invective of Dominatus at the End of the Roman Republic
Review/Collection: "Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies", 50
Year edition: 2007
Pages: 49-74
Description: [VA] [Abstract] Against the widely held assumption that claims to liberty in the Philippicae were exclusively rooted in Roman traditional hatred for autocratic power, this paper aims to show how in 44 BC Cicero, through the adoption of Greek philosophy, elaborated a concept of liberty alien to Roman tradition. Cicero in the De Officiis transformed the juridical idea of libertas in a new Stoicized concept with a moral, universalistic, nature and based on the iudicium of individual men. By adopting this re-conceptualised idea of liberty in his contemporary orations, the Philippicae, Cicero was then able to frame his fight against Antony in novel conceptual terms. Informing the practice of politics, Greek philosophy altered the rules according to which the battle of the end of the Republic was fought, while, at the same time, modified Roman political language: not only did it give rise to a new idea of liberty, but also to a stronger derogatory descriptive force of its antonym dominatus. Thus the analysis of the use of rhetorical invective provides a window on the changing moral and political identity of the society of the late Republic.
Author initials: Arena 2007
Title: Invocation to Liberty and Invective of Dominatus at the End of the Roman Republic
Review/Collection: "Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies", 50
Year edition: 2007
Pages: 49-74
Description: [VA] [Abstract] Against the widely held assumption that claims to liberty in the Philippicae were exclusively rooted in Roman traditional hatred for autocratic power, this paper aims to show how in 44 BC Cicero, through the adoption of Greek philosophy, elaborated a concept of liberty alien to Roman tradition. Cicero in the De Officiis transformed the juridical idea of libertas in a new Stoicized concept with a moral, universalistic, nature and based on the iudicium of individual men. By adopting this re-conceptualised idea of liberty in his contemporary orations, the Philippicae, Cicero was then able to frame his fight against Antony in novel conceptual terms. Informing the practice of politics, Greek philosophy altered the rules according to which the battle of the end of the Republic was fought, while, at the same time, modified Roman political language: not only did it give rise to a new idea of liberty, but also to a stronger derogatory descriptive force of its antonym dominatus. Thus the analysis of the use of rhetorical invective provides a window on the changing moral and political identity of the society of the late Republic.
Author initials: Arena 2007
