Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An Ambiguous Republican
- 3 Channeling Conflict through Antagonistic Rhetoric in the War with Catiline
- 4 Exemplarity and Goodwill in Livy's From the Founding of Rome
- 5 Tacitus on Great Men, Bad Rulers, and Prudence
- 6 Tacitus' Moral Histories
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 An Ambiguous Republican
- 3 Channeling Conflict through Antagonistic Rhetoric in the War with Catiline
- 4 Exemplarity and Goodwill in Livy's From the Founding of Rome
- 5 Tacitus on Great Men, Bad Rulers, and Prudence
- 6 Tacitus' Moral Histories
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
SETTING THE STAGE
In his dialogue Brutus, written in 46 BCE, Cicero describes the deep pain he experienced at the death of Quintus Hortensius four years earlier. Hortensius was not only a friend, but like a father to Cicero: A distinguished man of like political sympathies when there was a “great dearth of wise and patriotic citizens,” he passed in a time of grave public danger. Hortensius was also “a comrade and fellow-worker in the same field of glorious endeavor” – namely, the endeavor of eloquent speaking. Hortensius had been one of Rome's leading orators; the young Cicero “had to outdo him, if he wished to take over this position” – and he did in the trial of Gaius Verres in 70 BCE. Yet despite his grief at the passing of his friend, Cicero suggests that he passed “opportunely”; had he lived longer, he would have been “able only to lament the fate of his country, not to help it.”
Had Hortensius lived to the time in which Cicero wrote Brutus, he, like other “good and loyal men” – bonis et fortibus civibus – would “mourn the loss of many things.” In particular, Hortensius would be saddened at “the spectacle of the Roman forum … robbed and bereft of that finished eloquence worthy of the ears of Rome or even of Greece,” emptied of eloquence by the rule of Caesar.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Republicanism, Rhetoric, and Roman Political ThoughtSallust, Livy, and Tacitus, pp. 1 - 26Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
References
, A Dialogue on Oratory, trans. W. Peterson and M. Winterbottom, Tacitus: Dialogus, Agricola, Germania (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), 40.2Google Scholar
, “The Roman Republic: Government of the People, by the People, for the People?,” Scripta Classica Israelica 19 (2000): 203–23Google Scholar
, Mass Oratory and Political Power in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “How Democratic Was the Roman Republic?,” New England Classical Journal 31, no. 2 (2004): 101–19Google Scholar
, De Lege Agraria, trans. John Henry Freese, Cicero: Pro Publio Quinctio, Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, Pro Quinto Roscio Comoedo, De Lege Agraria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 2.7Google Scholar
, “Sallust's Theorem: A Comment on ‘Fear’ in Western Political Thought,” History of Political Thought XVI, no. 2 (1995): 174–89Google Scholar
, “Livy and Montesquieu,” in Livy, ed. T.A. Dorey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971): 118–58Google Scholar
, “Machiavelli's Use of Livy,” in Livy, ed. T.A. Dorey (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971): 73–96Google Scholar
, “Machiavelli's Discorsi and the Pre-Humanist Origins of Republican Ideas,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisella Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 121–41Google Scholar
, “The Politics of Pretence: Tacitus and the Political Theory of Despotism,” History of Political Thought VIII, no. 2 (1987): 189–210Google Scholar
, “Sallust and the Politics of Machiavelli,” History of Political Thought XXIV, no. 1 (2003): 86–108Google Scholar
, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar
, “Tacitus' Dialogue on Oratory: Political Activity under a Tyrant,” Political Theory 3, no. 1 (1975): 53–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisella Bock, Quentin Skinner, and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990): 293–309Google Scholar
, “Between Contumacy and Obsequiousness: Tacitus on Moral Freedom and the Historian's Task,” European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 3 (2009): 293–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Sallust and Skinner on Civil Liberty,” European Journal of Political Theory 5, no. 3 (2006): 237–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Italian City-Republics,” in Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, 508 B.C. to A.D. 1993, ed. John Dunn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 57–69Google Scholar
, “On Justice, the Common Good and the Priority of Liberty,” in Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, ed. Chantal Mouffe (London: Verso, 1992): 211–24Google Scholar
, “Discourse Theory and Republican Freedom,” in Republicanism: History, Theory and Practice, ed. Daniel Weinstock and Christian Nadeau (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2004): 62–82Google Scholar
, “Keeping Republican Freedom Simple: On a Difference with Quentin Skinner,” Political Theory 30, no. 3 (2002): 339–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “Reworking Sandel's Republicanism,” in Debating Democracy's Discontent: Essays on American Politics, Law and Public Philosophy, ed. Anita L. Allen and Milton C. Regan, Jr. (New York: Oxford, 1998): 40–59Google Scholar
, A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar
, Of the Social Contract, ed. Victor Gourevitch, Rousseau: ‘The Social Contract’ and Other Later Political Writings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 45Google Scholar
, “Rousseau's General Will: Freedom of a Particular Kind,” Political Studies XXXIX, no. 1 (1991): 55–74Google Scholar
, “Rhetoric and Historiography,” in A Companion to Roman Rhetoric, ed. William J. Dominik and Jon Hall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007): 439–50Google Scholar
, Empire and Memory: The Representation of the Roman Republic in Imperial Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, “The Contexts and Occasions of Roman Public Rhetoric,” in Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric in Society and Literature, ed. William J. Dominik (London: Routledge, 1997): 111–28Google Scholar
, “On the Ancient Uses of Political Fear and Its Modern Implications,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69, no. 3 (2008): 353–73Google Scholar
, “Cato's Virtues and The Prince: Reading Sallust's War with Catiline with Machiavelli's The Prince,” History of Political Thought 28, no. 3 (2007): 433–448Google Scholar