Military Rhetoric in the Description of Women’s Behavior on the Basis of Cicero’s and Livy’s Selected Texts
Abstract
The Polish version of the article was published in Roczniki Humanistyczne vol. 60, issue 3 (2012).
The article analyzes the original and rare Roman military phraseology found in surviving works of literature, which is part of the convention of invectives against women. As testified by the surviving fragments of the Law of the Twelve Tables, the Roman civilization divided the sphere of men’s activities (politics and war) from the sphere of women’s activities (home and family) quite early. Literature imbued with didacticism supported this division by creating archetypal figures of ideal representatives of both genders. In the course of development it worked out a stereotyped phraseology that served the purpose of describing virtutes feminae and, separately, men’s virtues, corresponding to the spheres ascribed to them. Any breach of the order established by tradition (mores maiorum) and law encountered severe reprimands, which nevertheless remained within the rhetorical convention of vituperatio. The two texts by outstanding rhetors that are analyzed here—Cato the Elder’s speech against the repeal of the Oppian law (AUC 34, 2-4) by Livy and Marcus Tullius Cicero’s speech Pro Caelio—supply examples of the use of military phraseology, usually used to describe typically male activities, in descriptions of women’s behavior. In the case of Marcus Porcius Cato’s speech, vocabulary belonging to the field of military science (agmen, expugnare, obsidere, coniuratio, seditio) serves the purpose of inducing fear in the men listening to him. In this way, by using the threat of power being seized in the republic by women, the consul motivated patres familias to act and not to yield to women. In the case of Cicero’s speech, military rhetoric was used to ridicule and embarrass Clodia Metelli as a credible witness for the prosecution in the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus. Aggressive and at times obscene humor was supposed to divert the listeners’ attention from the defense’s lack of arguments concerning the substance of the trial.
The original military phraseology used by both authors serves definite practical aims. What is more, its artistic dimension is decidedly pushed into the background. Cicero’s and Livy’s surprising idea allows us, on the one hand, to appreciate their ingeniousness in the field of rhetoric and their conscious rejection of conventions; on the other, it helps the contemporary reader of ancient texts realize the fact that men of the period of the Republic found it difficult to keep women within the limits imposed by tradition. They were forced to resort to sophisticated verbal argumentation in order to convince the judges and politicians (in both these groups patres familias prevailed) about the real threat posed by the ones in their charge.
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