Author: Ricchieri, Tommaso
Title: Looking for a Conditor. Munatius Plancus and the Cultural History of Basel from Cicero to the 20th Century
Review/Collection: In : Scheidegger Laemmle, Cédric (ed.), Cicero in Basel, Locating Classical Reception in a Humanist City, De Gruyter, 2024, 374 p.
Place edition: Berlin, Boston
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2024
Pages: 21-36
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: The foundation story of Basel assigns a prominent, if not unproblematic, place to Cicero: Augusta Raurica was founded by L. Munatius Plancus, a friend and correspondent of Cicero’s, who was, however, far from unwavering in his support of the Roman republic which Cicero so ardently defended. Indeed, Plancus is an unlikely founding hero altogether; he is best remembered, and often reviled, for his shifting allegiances during the Civil Wars. As Tommaso Ricchieri shows, it was not least Plancus’ connection with Cicero that allowed Plancus to be rehabilitated – and thus Basel to lay claim to venerable antiquity. When in 1528 the city first erected an honorary image of her founder – pointedly offering a secular alternative to the religious images which had been re moved from the cityscape after the Reformation – an epigram was inscribed on the statue’s base. Written by the humanist scholar Beatus Rhenanus, it remembered Plancus as a “Roman citizen, man of consular and praetorian rank, orator and pupil of Marcus Cicero” (civi Romano, viro consulari et praetorio, oratorique ac M. Ciceronis discipulo), thus affording the city an origin myth in keeping with her pretensions to humanist learning [Scheidegger Laemmle 2024, 11].
Works:
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111454641-002/pdf
Author initials: Ricchieri 2024
Title: Looking for a Conditor. Munatius Plancus and the Cultural History of Basel from Cicero to the 20th Century
Review/Collection: In : Scheidegger Laemmle, Cédric (ed.), Cicero in Basel, Locating Classical Reception in a Humanist City, De Gruyter, 2024, 374 p.
Place edition: Berlin, Boston
Editor: De Gruyter
Year edition: 2024
Pages: 21-36
Keywords: Biographie - Biografia - Biography, Histoire - Storia - History
Description: The foundation story of Basel assigns a prominent, if not unproblematic, place to Cicero: Augusta Raurica was founded by L. Munatius Plancus, a friend and correspondent of Cicero’s, who was, however, far from unwavering in his support of the Roman republic which Cicero so ardently defended. Indeed, Plancus is an unlikely founding hero altogether; he is best remembered, and often reviled, for his shifting allegiances during the Civil Wars. As Tommaso Ricchieri shows, it was not least Plancus’ connection with Cicero that allowed Plancus to be rehabilitated – and thus Basel to lay claim to venerable antiquity. When in 1528 the city first erected an honorary image of her founder – pointedly offering a secular alternative to the religious images which had been re moved from the cityscape after the Reformation – an epigram was inscribed on the statue’s base. Written by the humanist scholar Beatus Rhenanus, it remembered Plancus as a “Roman citizen, man of consular and praetorian rank, orator and pupil of Marcus Cicero” (civi Romano, viro consulari et praetorio, oratorique ac M. Ciceronis discipulo), thus affording the city an origin myth in keeping with her pretensions to humanist learning [Scheidegger Laemmle 2024, 11].
Works:
Link: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783111454641-002/pdf
Author initials: Ricchieri 2024
