Steel C.E.W. Сicero, Rhetoric, and Empire. Oxford Up
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
not difficult to see why Pompeius should have been so attracted
by it, even at the risk of seeming ridiculous: it emphasized
how young he was when he began to do great things, and it
suggested that his military successes were huge in scope. In
relation to the Manilian law, the promise through the identifi-
cation of Pompeius with Alexander of invincible conquest, in
the East, seems as though it should be irresistible.
It is, however, very difficult to find any reference to
Alexander in Cicero’s speech. The one possible candidate is in
67, when he says, of the widespread corruption in provincial
administration, ‘It is as though we did not see that Pompeius is
great (magnus) both because of his own virtues, and as a result
as well of the vices of others’.
120
But Weippert’s caution is
justified: the choice of magnus is pointed, and Cicero could have
chosen some other adjective, but it can be explained simply as a
reference to the cognomen, which had after all received only
reluctant acceptance among the elite.
121
Why does Cicero pass up the chance to evoke this attractive
comparison? The answer seems most plausibly to lie in the
ambiguity that could be evoked by the figure of Alexander,
since he represents not just stunning military success, but also
unchecked dictatorial power. It is potentially dangerous to
suggest that someone going to Asia Minor and taking charge of
a large army resembles Alexander: what, in that case, will stop
him from marching all the way to India and never coming
back? Given the anxieties about the constitutional propriety of
this law, Cicero does not want to risk suggesting that Pompeius
may follow his own ambition rather than the needs of the state.
3.3. CAESAR IN THE DE PROVINCIIS
CONSVLARIBUS
In the de prouinciis consularibus Caesar is explicitly given some
of the same qualities which Cicero ascribed ten years earlier to
Pompeius: uirtus, felicitas, and fides (35). But his character and
156 Controlling the uncontrollable
120
67. 5–6: ‘quasi uero Cn. Pompeium non cum suis uirtutibus tum etiam
alienis uitiis magnum esse uideamus’. See Weippert, Alexander-Imitatio, 67.
121
On punning references to Pompeius’ cognomen, see D. C. Feeney, ‘ “Stat
magni nominis umbra.” Lucan on the greatness of Pompeius Magnus’, CQ 36
(1986), 239–43.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 156
abilities are not the focus of an extended and systematic survey
such as Cicero devotes to Pompeius in the de imp.; instead infor-
mation about him emerges at various points in a speech whose
structure is not dominated by one individual.
122
Cicero is offer-
ing, to the Senate, his considered response to a policy issue.
There are other reasons why Caesar does not need to be
given as thorough a treatment as Pompeius. He had been in
Gaul for two years by this stage, and as a result his accomplish-
ments can take the place of qualities. And while he held his
command through a tribunician law, debating the allocation of
provinces under the lex Sempronia was a standard part of the
Senate’s activities, and thus the issue need not have seemed
quite as innovative and therefore dangerous as the lex Manilia
clearly did seem to at least some people.
Cicero reinforces in a number of ways the idea that there is
nothing untoward or unusual in the situation that the Senate is
debating. One way is by his extensive citation of examples from
Roman history.
123
In general these illustrate, and thus give
precedents for, the triumph of patriotism over private enmities
and so are a part of Cicero’s wider strategy of reformulating the
terms of the debate into a matter of his own likes and dislikes;
124
while the obvious ground for so doing is Cicero’s desire to
assert his independence while giving an opinion which would
seem to make his obedience to the first triumvirate unmistak-
able, this tactic serves very effectively the argument which he is
forced to present. It allows him to suggest that the only thing
clouding the debate and preventing Caesar’s reappointment is
private likes and dislikes, and thus he can trivialize the serious
constitutional arguments which were involved.
Another method of reassuring the Senate is making Caesar
come across as a good public servant, whose actions are dictated
by the needs of the state, rather than by his own desires. This is
an attitude which Cicero indicates that he too shares. Nothing
has determined his contribution to the debate other than the
‘situation of the war’ and the ‘advantage of the state’.
125
He goes
Controlling the uncontrollable 157
122
Unless, of course, we count Cicero.
123
Note in particular the long sequence in 18–22.
124
See Sect. 4.3.
125
29: ‘in hac me nihil aliud nisi ratio belli, nisi summa utilitas rei publicae
moueat’.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 157
on to ask (29), ‘what reason is there for Caesar himself to want
to stay longer in his province, except the desire to hand over to
the republic in a finished state that which he has begun?’
126
There follows an extraordinary passage in which Cicero sarcas-
tically lists a wide variety of reasons why Caesar might want to
stay in Gaul.
127
The first few items, the pleasure and civilization
which Gaul affords, seem straightforward, playing on the
Roman view of long-haired Gauls as barbarians.
128
The final
two involve a shift, since they are ‘the desire for victory’ and
‘advancing the borders of the empire’. This is odd because
these seem like two perfectly respectable ambitions for a
Roman commander to hold. Yet, as Cicero goes on to explain,
Caesar is now beyond these things: his victories so far are such
as to be unsurpassable, and he has already reached the edge of
the known world. Caesar has accomplished so much that there
is nothing that he, personally, can gain from staying in Gaul; all
that is keeping him there is the utilitas rei publicae. Indeed, the
obvious course for his enemies is not to recall him, but to keep
him in his province (29). In the face of such devotion to duty
Cicero’s own duty, as a senator, is clear: he must support
Caesar’s desire to stay (30).
There follows a brief history of Rome’s relations with Gaul,
in which Cicero describes the threat which Gaul has always
been, the limited nature of its military successes beyond the
Alps before Caesar, and the comprehensiveness of what Caesar
is accomplishing now (30–4). He concludes this part of his
speech by returning to the idea that there is no personal advan-
tage to Caesar in staying in Gaul, and that the needs of the state
require that he should. The Senate’s duty is therefore clear
(35): ‘since he has long since done justice to his own glory, but
not yet to the state, and since he prefers to come later to his own
reward than to leave unfinished the task he is undertaking for
the state, we ought not to recall a general who is aflame to serve
158 Controlling the uncontrollable
126
‘nam ipse Caesar quid est cur in prouincia commorari uelit, nisi ut ea
quae per eum adfecta sunt perfecta rei publicae tradat?’
127
29: ‘amoenitas eum, credo, locorum, urbium pulchritudo, hominum
nationumque illarum humanitas et lepos, uictoriae cupiditas, finium imperi
propagatio retinet. quid illis terris asperius, quid incultius oppidis, quid
nationibus immanius, quid porro tot uictoriis praestabilius, quid Oceano
longius inueniri potest?’
128
Cf. pro Fonteio; Woolf, Becoming Roman, 74–82.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 158
the state, nor should we throw into confusion and interrupt the
whole plan of the Gallic war, now almost complete.’
129
This
approach is a very good way of showing how magnificent
Caesar’s achievements are, and at the same time indicating that
it is to the advantage of the state that he should not be recalled.
It also enables Cicero to address anxieties about Caesar’s
personal ambitions, inasmuch as he tries to suggest that such
anxieties are completely unfounded. Caesar wants to stay in
Gaul, and should be kept there, simply because that is what is
best for the state. It is only after he has set up Caesar as this
devoted public servant that he turns to the awkward possibility
that Caesar may at some point not obey the Senate, and make
his own dispositions for the government of Gaul (38–9).
Moreover, the danger that this may happen is not due to Caesar
but to the Senate, inasmuch as their intransigence may alienate
him. Cicero concludes his argument as follows (39): ‘it is my
duty as a senator to ensure, as far as I can, that no distinguished
or powerful man seems to have justifiable grounds for anger
against this order.’
130
Cicero’s presentation of Caesar also takes into account the
relations between Caesar and Pompeius. One aspect of this is
how Cicero handles the unprecedentedly long period of suppli-
cation which had been granted in response to Caesar’s victories
in Gaul: fifteen days, as opposed to the ten which had been
granted to Pompeius at the news of Mithradates’ death (26–7).
Far from allowing this to be a source of rivalry or ill-feeling
between the two, he pays tribute to Pompeius’ uirtus and animi
magnitudo in desiring a greater honour for another man than
he himself had received. And, it appears, Caesar’s military
achievements complement those of Pompeius. Pompeius has
brought peace to all other parts of the world; Caesar is doing
the same for the last unconquered part of the world, that is
Gaul (31). Just as they are allies in the political sphere, so in the
Controlling the uncontrollable 159
129
‘cum uero ille suae gloriae iam pridem rei publicae nondum satis fecerit,
et malit tamen tardius ad suorum laborum fructus peruenire quam non
explere susceptum rei publicae munus, nec imperatorem incensum ad rem
publicam bene gerendam reuocare nec totam Gallici belli rationem prope iam
explicatam perturbare atque impedire debemus.’
130
‘praestare hoc senator debeo, quantum possum, ne quis uir clarus aut
potens huic ordini iure irasci posse uideatur.’
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 159
military: Cicero is quite well aware of his duties to the first
triumvirate.
Cicero’s presentation of Caesar is designed to show him as a
potentially dutiful servant of the Senate and to the state: he
acknowledges the possibility of disagreement, while placing the
responsibility for provoking a breach, if one were to occur, with
the Senate.
131
Cicero manages to acknowledge the unprece-
dented nature of Caesar’s military achievements while avoiding
discussion of the unorthodox route by which he came to be in a
position to act in this way.
3.4. ILLUSIONS OF CONTROL
Pompeius and Caesar come across in these two speeches as very
different figures: Pompeius is an isolated figure whereas Caesar
is shown as a self-sacrificing public servant. But the same ideo-
logical impulse lies behind these divergent rhetorical strategies.
In both cases Cicero is arguing for the creation or continued
existence of military commands which were new, extremely
powerful, and outside the normal methods of senatorial
control. His response is to set up Pompeius and Caesar as men
who will not exploit the dangerous potential inherent in their
positions. This enables him to suggest that constitutional
anxieties are irrelevant. One might even want to argue that
the very fact of Cicero’s oratory on these subjects offers a
reassurance which is groundless. The debates in which he is
participating give a specious impression that the centre is in
control, yet it is unclear whether there was absolute confidence
that Pompeius at the conclusion of the campaign against the
pirates, and Caesar in Gaul in 56, would return quietly to
private life should their commands not be renewed. Cicero’s
speeches, in these two cases, give a questionable view of the
empire not simply in their rhetorical strategies but in their very
existence.
Personal probity as the answer to the problems of empire is
becoming a familiar ploy in Cicero’s oratory. So far I have
suggested explanations for this phenomenon in terms of
anxieties about empire: that the cases Cicero is dealing with
160 Controlling the uncontrollable
131
37–8. Cf. Caesar’s self-justifying account of the outbreak of the civil war
at the beginning of his de bello ciuili.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 160
present problems which were insoluble, and so best avoided by
an orator seeking to be persuasive. Hence the emphasis on
individuals to create attractive and comprehensible solutions.
In the forensic cases I considered in Chapters 1 and 2, Cicero’s
reasons for wanting to be persuasive are clear: he had clients
to defend or attack. But why did he find himself supporting
radical initiatives such as the Manilian law or (in effect) the
extension of Caesar’s command—a decision particularly sur-
prising given his generally conservative stance in political
matters? At this point it is necessary to address Cicero’s
imperial oratory as a facet of his own career as a politician and
orator.
Controlling the uncontrollable 161
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 161
4
Portrait of the orator as a
great man: Cicero on Cicero
I the previous three chapters I have looked at the three
different kinds of speeches that Cicero delivered about empire
and offered interpretations which relate his strategies of
persuasion to the attitudes and opinions of his audience. That
is, I have considered how the speeches attempt to persuade
their audience to do whatever Cicero is advocating: which
might seem to be the most important function of a speech. But
whenever Cicero speaks he is also engaged in creating or main-
taining his own persona as an orator and as a public figure. It is
of course impossible to separate these two aims completely.
The character which a Roman orator projected was an impor-
tant factor in his success.
1
Cicero himself laid great emphasis on
the importance of ethos in his mature rhetorical theory.
2
But for
any orator with political ambitions, there are wider implica-
tions for his career as a whole, which make his image a matter
for continuous attention.
In this chapter I shall turn to the relationship between the
speeches I have been looking at and Cicero’s own career. His
heavy dependence on oratory for his political success means
that every time he spoke in public, he could not but draw atten-
tion to the basis of his political success and thus justify it or not.
To provide a context for his self-presentation in the speeches
dealing with empire, I begin by looking at the figure of Cicero
in the Catilinarian speeches. The situation from which these
speeches arose might seem to have provided an opportunity for
Cicero to transcend the civilian bias of his career, because he
was defending the state from what turned into an external peril:
1
May, Trials of Character.
2
J. Wisse, Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero (Amsterdam: Hakkert,
1989).
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 162
but even here, in fact, he does not escape from his reliance on
oratory, because he presents his actions in suppressing it as
those of an orator, in explicit contrast with military activity.
This self-presentation is to be seen as an attempt to justify his
lack of military experience, but paradoxically it confirms the
civilian and rhetorical foundation of his career and increases his
political dependence on his own oratory.
Against this background of Cicero’s inevitable self-
consciousness every time he speaks in public, the persuasive
strategies of the two deliberative speeches relevant to this
inquiry gain in effectiveness. In both speeches, it is possible to
relate the constraints which his own career places at that point
on what he can say to his failure to engage directly with
what we might consider to be the fundamental issues in the
republican government of its empire.
4.1. FIGHTING WORDS: REACHING
THE CONSULSHIP
Although it is not clear what precisely constituted being a new
man in Roman politics, there is no doubt as to Cicero’s status as
such.
3
Not only did he have no consular ancestry; none of his
ancestors had ever held office in the city, and he did not come
from Rome. As a result, he had no access to what seems to have
been one of the most important factors in electoral success,
belonging to a family which had already been distinguished at
Rome.
4
Moreover, Cicero chose not to use many of the
methods of gaining popularity and electoral success which
could compensate for the absence of distinguished ancestors.
His military experience was extraordinarily limited for a
Roman, consisting only of brief service during the Social War
before his campaigns while governor of Cilicia; and though he
Portrait of the orator as a great man 163
3
M. Gelzer, Die Nobilität der römischen Republik (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912);
T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate 139 B.C.–A.D. 14 (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1971); P. A. Brunt, ‘Nobilitas and Novitas’, JRS 72
(1982), 1–17; L. Burckhardt, ‘The Political Elite of the Roman Republic:
Comments on Recent Discussion of the Concepts nobilitas and homo novus’,
Historia, 39 (1990), 77–99, surveys the progress of the debate.
4
But see K. Hopkins and G. Burton, ‘Political Success in the Late
Republic’, in K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1983), 31–119.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 163
did hold the office of aedile his games were in no way remark-
able for their splendour.
5
These gaps may in part have been due
to a lack of talent for things military, and the absence of the
financial resources necessary for hugely impressive games.
6
But
to a certain extent they were the result of choices: not to seek
further military service after the Social War, not to take a
province after his praetorship, not to borrow heavily, as others
did, to provide an impressive public spectacle and hope to
recoup the costs through an exploitative provincial governor-
ship. It is also interesting to note that Cicero seems not to have
made any particular use of his connections, both geographical
and through marriage, with Marius.
7
He relied for his electoral
success, as well as for the means to maintain his influence after
he had reached the consulship, almost exclusively upon his
abilities as an orator.
8
Verres’ career provides an interesting contrast with Cicero’s,
since his family too had little political history at Rome, even
if, with a senatorial father, he does not meet the strictest
criteria for a new man. Verres built his career on extensive
military service followed by an extended period as governor of
Sicily, leading, according to Cicero, to his bon mot that he
needed a third of his spoils to bribe the jury, a third to pay
his lawyers, and a third for himself.
9
In effect, Verres built
his career by exploiting the opportunities which the empire
presented. Cicero, by contrast, kept his attention firmly on
Rome, and his decision not to seek unauthorized profits meant
that he regarded the one period outside Italy on official busi-
ness before Cilicia, when he was a quaestor in Sicily, as wasted
164 Portrait of the orator as a great man
5
For the importance to electoral success both of military achievements and
of lavish games, see the speech pro Murena; Wiseman, New Men, 116–22; for
the scale of investment required by the games, see Shatzman, Wealth, 84–7.
Cf. also Cicero’s self-justifying remark on the holding of games in de off. 2. 58:
‘faciendum est, modo pro facultatibus, nos ipsi ut fecimus’. It is also sugges-
tive, regardless of who was the author, that there is no mention of games as a
source of popularity in the Commentariolum petitionis.
6
Shatzman, Wealth, 403–25, surveys Cicero’s financial position.
7
E. D. Rawson, ‘Lucius Crassus and Cicero: The Formation of a States-
man’, PCPhS, 17 (1971), 75–88, repr. in Rawson, Culture and Society,
16–33.
8
Cf. A. J. E. Bell, ‘Cicero and the Spectacle of Power’, JRS 87 (1997),
1–22.
9
Cicero, first actio in Verrem, 40.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 164
time.
10
Indeed, one of the reasons for the peculiar venom and
persistence which Cicero displayed in attacking Verres may be
the consciousness of the different sets of values their respective
careers embodied.
11
Cicero was of course not the first Roman to be a good speaker
and make use of that skill.
12
The ability to speak effectively in
public was a traditional part of the Roman prescription for a
good man. In the famous epitaph on L. Metellus, being a good
speaker is one of the ten characteristics which are listed, and the
elder Cato was well aware of the value of oratory to a politician
and had written versions of some at least of his speeches
disseminated.
13
And, with changing modern views of the role
that the popular assemblies played in Roman politics, there is
increasing acknowledgement that oratory was an important
skill for a politician to possess.
14
But Cicero is exceptional in the
prominence which he gave to oratory in his career. Publication
of the de inuentione is a particularly interesting case. Its lack of
originality has led to its being ignored in favour of its more
intellectually challenging successors, the rhetorical treatises of
Cicero’s maturity: but the composition of the de inuentione was,
at its time of writing, an innovative and ambitious piece. The
writing of artes was still in its developing stages at this point,
and Cicero’s is surely meant, in the light of its reflective
prefaces, as a serious contribution to this field.
15
His remarks
much later in the de oratore about its lack of sophistication
should not be taken too seriously as denigration; they remind
the reader that Cicero has been contributing to the technical
literature since a young man, and his statement that they are
Portrait of the orator as a great man 165
10
See Introduction, above.
11
Cf. Sect. 1.1 above.
12
For a survey of oratory’s place in Roman society, see E. Fantham, ‘The
Contexts and Occasions of Roman Public Rhetoric’, in W. J. Dominik (ed.),
Roman Eloquence: Rhetoric in Society and Literature (London: Routledge,
1997), 111–28.
13
Metellus: Pliny, NH 7, 139–40. Cato: A. E. Astin, Cato the Censor
(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), 131–56.
14
Millar, ‘The Political Character of the Classical Roman Republic’, 1–19,
‘Politics, Persuasion and the People before the Social War’, 1–11, and Crowd;
Brunt, ‘The Fall of the Roman Republic’, 45–9.
15
On the development of artes, see E. D. Rawson, ‘The Introduction of
Logical Organization in Roman Prose Literature’, PBSR 46 (1978), 12–34,
repr. in Rawson, Culture and Society, 324–51.
01_Steel chapters 19/12/2001 11:43 am Page 165