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Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought The Measure of All Things: Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Nickerson, Erika Lawren. 2015. The Measure of All Things: Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467310 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Measure of All Things: Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought A dissertation presented by Erika Lawren Nickerson to The Department of the Classics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Classical Philology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2015 © 2015 Erika Lawren Nickerson All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Kathleen Coleman Erika Lawren Nickerson The Measure of All Things: Natural Hierarchy in Roman Republican Thought Abstract This work explores how writers of the late Roman Republic use the concept of nature rhetorically, in order to talk about and either reinforce or challenge social inequality. Comparisons between humans and animals receive special attention, since writers of that time often equate social status with natural status by assimilating certain classes of person to certain classes of animal. It is the aim of this study to clarify the ideology which supported the conflation of natural and social hierarchy, by explicating the role that nature was thought to play in creating and maintaining the inequality both between man and man, and between man and animal. In investigating this issue, this study also addresses the question of whether the Romans took a teleological view of human society, as they did of nature, and ultimately concludes that they did not. It proposes, rather, that the conceptual mechanism which naturalized social inequality, and which drove the assimilation of human to animal, was the belief that there is one, natural measure of worth and status for all creatures: utility to the human community. Chapter 1 identifies some pertinent beliefs, commonly found in Republican texts, about nature, animals, humans, and the relationship of all three to each other. Chapter 2 considers whether these beliefs have a philosophical provenance, by discussing Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery and Stoic views on the institution of slavery, and their possible relation to the ideas expressed in Roman sources. Chapter 3 returns to Republican texts, including popular oratory, and examines comparisons between domestic animals and humans in the treatment of slavery and wage-earning. Chapter 4 examines comparisons between wild animals and humans in discussions about violence and primitive peoples, and in political invective. iii Table of Contents CHAPTER 1 Introduction 1 Nature is teleological 8 It is natural for people and animals alike to promote human society 19 Human society and human social relationships are part of nature 33 Reason gives humans the power to act unnaturally 36 Because they lack reason, animals cannot act unnaturally 43 There are two major categories of animal, domestic and wild 53 Conclusions 62 CHAPTER 2 Natural Slaves: Aristotle and the Stoics on the Nature of Slavery 75 The Theory 77 The Problems 103 Function-Based Comparisons 104 Conflict With Reality 121 Stoic Opposition 126 Conclusions 138 CHAPTER 3 Animal Slaves and Slave Animals: Republican Authors on the Nature of Slavery 142 The Association of Slave and Herd Animal in Varro’s Res Rustica 146 Nature as the Measure of Social Status 168 The Ideological Assimilation of Free Wage-Earners to Slaves 184 Fighting for Freedom and Humanity in Popular Oratory 200 Conclusions 225 CHAPTER 4 The Human Beast: Man’s Savage Nature 234 Violent Deeds and Bestial Minds in Cicero’s De Officiis 236 Primitive Ferocity and Civilized Humanity in Cicero’s Pro Sestio 254 Wild Animal Comparisons in Political Invective 272 Violators of Social Bonds 282 Enemies of the State 289 Tyrants 297 Summary 307 Conclusions 308 Works Cited 318 iv CHAPTER 1 Introduction This work is about natura. I will not try to define natura, as the Romans understood it, nor will I focus exclusively on natura as a philosophical concept. I plan to explore the use of natura as a working idea, available for rhetorical manipulation, as potent and pervasive as any idea in Latin literature. My interest in nature began when I undertook a study of comparisons between humans and animals in Roman oratory. I noticed that many such comparisons explicitly evoke the concept of nature, and I could not readily explain the role of nature in the likening of man to beast. In order to pursue this line of inquiry, I expanded the scope of my search, collecting similar comparisons in genres other than oratory. Since the various genres deal with different topics and concerns, they also employ different kinds of comparison. Gaining this larger perspective therefore led to another major observation: comparisons between man and animal are often class specific. Certain socio-economic classes tend to be equated with certain classes of animal. Slaves and plebs, for example, are assimilated to domestic animals. Criminals and tyrannical elites become wild animals. These two aspects of the relevant texts – nature and class specificity – seemed to me to serve as unifying themes, as features shared by a number of passages that otherwise appear essentially different and unconnected. However, they were precisely the two features that I could not fully account for. I therefore made it the goal of this project to answer the following questions. What does human social status have to do with animals? And how is nature implicated in that association? 1 I initially focused my research on late Republican texts, simply because I had started out with the intention of studying certain phenomena in Ciceronian oratory, and wished to gather contemporary comparanda. Even after the scale of my study had expanded greatly, I eventually decided to maintain that focus. My survey will confine itself mostly to sources written within, or very shortly after, Cicero’s lifetime. This is partly a matter of convenience. A dissertation does not provide sufficient space to trace the history of the pertinent concepts through all of Latin literature. By setting temporal, rather than generic, limits, I will be able to see how nature and man-animal comparisons are treated in different types of literature – an approach I believe is necessary for gaining a proper understanding of the matter. I have also concluded that, on this subject, the literature of the late Republic forms a logical unit for two reasons. It was a period rife with class tensions, and therefore produced literature that discussed those tensions; the resulting body of work is especially helpful for illuminating the discourse which is the object of this study. Moreover, although the various works use nature and animal comparisons in various ways to argue various points, they show a certain coherence in their underlying assumptions. It is my plan to identify and elucidate those assumptions: this book will be organized with a view to reconstructing a pattern of thought, never explicitly stated, but everywhere implied. In order to clarify that pattern of thought, I have found it necessary to delve into philosophical works – particularly, but not exclusively, Cicero’s philosophical works. This methodology may seem inconsistent with my professed goal, since I am not interested in theories of nature per se, but in the way that writers employ animals and nature to discuss human class distinctions. Such discussions inevitably serve the author’s literary or persuasive ends, and must therefore be considered rhetorical, not philosophical, in character. Like any medium that aims at broad dissemination and mass persuasion, these texts rely on premises so deeply ingrained, so 2 taken for granted, that no author troubles to explain them in full. Moreover, the authors apparently felt that their respective audiences would be swayed by appeals to these tacitly understood beliefs. Thus, my primary objects of study are commonly held views, such as might be labeled “popular” rather than “intellectual” or “philosophical”. However, I have had to resort to philosophical texts precisely because the pertinent concepts are so widespread and entrenched that writers do not explicitly expound or defend them. Philosophy is the genre in which underlying ideas are identified, articulated, weighed, and either rejected or justified. While the conclusions of philosophers might not align with common cultural prejudices, there is always overlap and engagement between the two. I therefore looked into certain philosophical works, with all due respect for the difficulties involved, and was rewarded. Although the ideological framework which supports class-specific man-animal comparisons is not, in fact, a specifically philosophical one, my reading in philosophy provided insights which proved vital for elucidating that framework. I am not the first to have utilized philosophical texts in conjunction with texts of other genres in order to reconstruct deep-seated cultural presuppositions. Nor am I even the first to take such an approach in reconstructing Roman views on nature. The following works are just such studies, and were especially helpful to me in my own endeavors. I owe each of the authors a debt both for their conclusions and for providing methodological models. Arthur Lovejoy and George Boas, in their classic book, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity,1 explore the history of a trope that was prevalent in both Greek and Latin literature: that of describing the prehistory and cultural development of mankind, often as a way to make a point about the present.
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