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HERCVLIS RITV: CAESAR AS HERCULES IN CICERO'S PRO MARCELLO
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 June 2018
Extract
Cicero's praise of Caesar in the Pro Marcello of September 46 b.c.e. has been much discussed for its sincerity or otherwise. Here I would like to point out some unobserved literary colour which may make some contribution to the argument, namely Cicero's subtle evocation of Hercules in describing the achievements of the victorious Caesar. Such an analogy is not unlikely in the context of Roman military image-making: Sulla in 78 b.c.e. and Crassus and Pompey in 70 b.c.e. had earlier encouraged connections with Hercules in analogous victorious contexts, and similar comparisons are later made between the foreign conquests of Augustus and those of Hercules in both Virgil (Aen. 6.801) and Horace (Carm. 3.14.1–4).
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References
2 For the date, see Cic. Fam. 4.4.
3 See e.g. Dyer, R.R., ‘Rhetoric and intention in Cicero's Pro Marcello’, JRS 80 (1990), 17–30Google Scholar and the reply by Winterbottom, M., ‘Believing the Pro Marcello’, in Miller, J.F., Damon, C. and Myers, K.S. (edd.), Vertis in Vsum: Studies in Honor of Edward Courtney (Berlin, 2002), 24–38Google Scholar. For a more theoretical treatment, which regards the issue as pointless, see Connolly, J., The Life of Roman Republicanism (Princeton, 2015), 173–200Google Scholar, and for two further important recent accounts of the speech, which touch on this issue, see Cole, S., Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Gildenhard, I., Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches (Oxford, 2011), 358–63Google Scholar.
4 Cf. Stafford, E., Herakles (London, 2012), 151–2Google Scholar, Luke, T.S., Ushering in a New Republic: Theologies of Arrival at Rome in the First Century BCE (Ann Arbor, 2014), 80–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 See Galinsky, G.K., The Herakles Theme (Oxford, 1972), 132–49Google Scholar.
6 Some time between June and October 46 b.c.e.: cf. Degrassi, A., Inscriptiones Italiae XIII.I: Fasti consulares et triumphales (Rome, 1947), 567Google Scholar.
7 Translated by Oldfather, C.H., Diodorus Siculus: Volume III (Cambridge, MA, 1939)Google Scholar.
8 See Cole (n. 3), 144 (for Tusc. 1.32); in the same book, see the discussion of Pro Marcello in the context of ‘deferred deification’ (111–26), though not specifically evoking Hercules in this context, and the argument (101–10) that Hercules along with Romulus is a key mythical example for Cicero and others of the mortal who achieves immortality in heaven after death through benefits to mankind (though without allusion to the Pro Marcello). Gildenhard (n. 3), 358–64 presents a similar approach to Caesar's future divinity in his account of the Pro Marcello, though again he does not focus on the figure of Hercules.
9 Cf. Stafford (n. 4), 153–4, Gale, M.R., Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge, 1994), 34–6Google Scholar.
10 Cited and discussed by Gale (n. 9), 35–6. As the anonymous referee points out, this idea can be clearly linked to Prodicus’ treatment of the famous choice of Hercules of Virtue over Vice, as reported by Xenophon's Socrates in Mem. 2.1.21–33.