Durham E-Theses 'Without Body or Form': Res Publica and the Roman Republic HODGSON, LOUISE,LOVELACE How to cite: HODGSON, LOUISE,LOVELACE (2013) 'Without Body or Form': Res Publica and the Roman Republic, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/8506/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk DURHAM UNIVERSITY ‘Without Body or Form’ Res Publica and the Roman Republic LOUISE LOVELACE HODGSON 2013 A thesis submitted to the Department of Classics and Ancient History of Durham University in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the author's prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................... 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................................... 3 1. DEFINING TERMS ................................................................................................................................ 4 2. REM PUBLICAM ADMINISTRARE ....................................................................................................... 23 2.1 THE GARBAGE AND THE FLOWERS ........................................................................ 23 2.2 HEROES .................................................................................................................. 30 2.3 HIS LONELY WOODEN TOWER ............................................................................... 38 2.4 THE MIRROR ........................................................................................................... 44 3. RES PUBLICA SALVA ........................................................................................................................... 55 3.1 THE PANIC .............................................................................................................. 56 3.2 THE LIMITS ............................................................................................................. 68 3.3 THE WITNESSES ...................................................................................................... 77 4. RES PUBLICA IPSA .............................................................................................................................. 91 4.1 WARS AGAINST DISORDER ..................................................................................... 91 4.2 THE BRAVE, THE BOLD, THE BATTERED ............................................................... 103 4.3 THE FUTURE ......................................................................................................... 115 4.4 THE WIDOWHOOD OF EVERY GOVERNMENT ..................................................... 121 4.5 THE BELLS THAT STILL CAN RING ......................................................................... 135 5. RES PUBLICA RECIPERATA ............................................................................................................... 144 5.1 COMMAND OF WHAT .......................................................................................... 145 5.2 A DECENT PLACE TO STAND ................................................................................. 151 5.3 COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN ........................................................................................ 168 5.4 AGAINST THE SIDE OF HEAVEN ............................................................................ 174 5.5 THE CAPTAIN ........................................................................................................ 189 6. PRO RE PUBLICA .............................................................................................................................. 199 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 6.1 AN ANTHEM OF FORGIVING ................................................................................ 200 6.2 LIVING WITH DEFEAT ........................................................................................... 222 6.3 A MAN OF VISION ................................................................................................ 226 6.4 THE FREEDOM TO REFUSE ................................................................................... 235 7. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 247 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................... 251 TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS CITED ................................................................................... 251 SECONDARY LITERATURE ................................................................................................. 258 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, thanks are due to my supervisor, Ingo Gildenhard, without whose guidance, unfailing generosity and remarkable patience this would be a very different (and much worse) thesis. I am grateful also for the advice and encouragement of my second supervisor, Ted Kaizer, and to all those who have listened more or less patiently to my complaints about Cicero over the last four years. In particular, Lauren Knifton heroically proofread the entire thesis, a labour unheard of in the annals of Ovidian scholarship. The willingness of Miklós Könczöl to discuss Greek political thought, of Luke Evans to discuss Greek in general, of Paola Bassino to discuss textual criticism, of Sebastian Nichols to proofread two chapters, and of all these and many others to share doughnuts and gossip in the grad room, has enriched both my thesis and my time at Durham. My debt to those who first introduced me to Latin and the late Republic, especially Clemence Schultze, Justine Wolfenden and Luke Pitcher, is considerable. Finally, I must thank my parents for their support throughout my studies, not least as expressed through their unflagging enthusiasm in the cause of getting the thesis finished. Both my doctorate and my MA were financially supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Additionally, I benefited from a bursary from the Roman Society, which enabled me to spend a very productive fortnight at the Fondation Hardt in July 2011. For these and other kindnesses, I am grateful. 4 1. DEFINING TERMS 1. DEFINING TERMS I do not intend here to weary you with more than a small portion of even my present knowledge, for I have great collections of facts that I keep only to compare with those of other hunters of the wild idea, and which in their present state are valueless to the cabinet ethnologist. Some of these may be rank lies, some of them mere individual mind-freaks, others have underlying them some idea I am not at present in touch with. Mary H. Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (2003: 430). In 1893, Mary Kingsley went to West Africa to hunt the wild idea. In contrast, this thesis is the work of a cabinet historian who went only to various libraries to recover a fossilised idea: the res publica of the Roman Republic. It explores the increasing politicisation of a key concept in the Roman political vocabulary, that of the political sphere itself. Since this concept was politically ubiquitous, often used emotively, and is consequently very hard to define, the temptation to take it as a universally understood and relatively uncontroversial given is rarely resisted. A closer look at how res publica was perceived and manipulated helps to clarify not just the crisis of legitimacy that occurred in the late Republic but also various attempts to clean it up through dubiously legal (and often outright illegal) emergency measures. It should be noted that this is not a contribution to the debate over just what sort of political system the Republic was, i.e. whether it can or should be classed as a democracy, a debate that might be characterised in the broadest terms as a disagreement between those who argue that the Republic was formally democratic and those who argue that it functionally was not.1 I am not concerned with the mechanics of how Republican politics worked, nor am I trying to locate the sources of ‘true’ legitimacy or examining whether people were actually justified in doing the things they did. Rather, 1 On the democratic side, cf. especially Millar 1984, 1986, 1998, also Williamson 1990: 274-5, Yakobson 1992, 2006, Morstein-Marx 1998; contra: North 1990, Burckhardt 1990: 89-98, Jehne 1995, Flaig 1995, Mouritsen 2001: 128ff, Hölkeskamp 1995, 2010: 1-52. The current scholarly debate is a largely semantic one over whether the formal role of the populus in political decision-making