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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 370 of 1200

  • Chapter 11 - Private Knowledge and Public Image in Roman Elections

  • from Part III - Institutions in Theory and Practice
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 222-235

  • Summary

    This paper explores the intersection between the institutional form of Roman elections and the way in which participants and other interested parties spoke about and within the electoral process; or, in other words, the relationship between elections as an abstract phenomenon and the lived experience of those who were really part of those electoral processes. Using Cicero’s pro Murena as a case-study, I argue that the speech dramatises a tension between Cicero’s privileged electoral knowledge and the audiences’ expectations, a rhetorical strategy that applies also to the pressing issue of the day, the Catilinarian conspiracy. These two strands comprise between them several heuristics that resemble the practices of modern politicians: respectively, the deployment of generic templates (which might also be termed clichés or stereotypes), and of ‘valence issues’, that is to say, issues of general and equally generic importance to the majority of the audience. The deployment of these gambits is revealing not only of the political strategies used by Romans in electoral campaigns, but also the lack of real transparency in Roman elections, for modern viewers as well as for the original audiences, who did not always enjoy access to Cicero’s privileged behind-the-scenes access.

  • Chapter 9 - Falsifying the Auspices in Republican Politics

  • from Part III - Institutions in Theory and Practice
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 183-202

  • Summary

    This paper explores what it meant to ‘falsify the auspices’ (auspicia ementiri) in Republican Rome, probing the importance of allegations of auspicial falsification in Roman politics and oratory. I argue that the act and the charge of ‘falsifying the auspices’ were effective and dangerous in Rome because they evoked and involved genuine anxieties about the gods’ attitude towards the Roman state. I focus on the debate about auspices between M. Licinius Crassus, C. Ateius Capito, and Ap. Claudius Pulcher in the 50s BC, seeking to understand and explain the behaviour of all parties. Republican politicians’ maneuvering and reasoning in this case demonstrates that attempts to invoke the gods in public discourse and to involve them in public affairs were seen as risky and potentially dangerous. If we are fully to understand how politics worked in the Republic, we must consider not just humans’ machinations against each other, but also their attempts to involve the gods themselves as agents in Roman life.

  • Chapter 3 - Political Participation and the Identification of Politicians in the Late Roman Republic

  • from Part I - Modes of Political Communication
  • Edited by Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, Christa Gray, University of Reading, Catherine Steel, University of Glasgow
  • Book:
    Institutions and Ideology in Republican Rome
    Published online:
    08 May 2018
    Print publication:
    17 May 2018, pp 69-87

  • Summary

    The engagement of Roman citizens in politics has been a much debated issue. Scholars have tried to measure it by calculating the number of people who voted, or who attended the contiones. However, with the state of the sources, quantification can be unreliable or, in some cases, an educated guess. This paper proposes a possible alternative way of identifying popular interest in Late Republican politics. Did Roman people usually recognise politicians physically or by name? Cicero was shocked when, back from what he thought a glorious quaestorship in Sicily, his name was not recognised. A citizen who attended assemblies or who went to the Forum would in theory be able to identify some politicians, especially the most prominent ones. After his consulship, did Cicero walk around the city without being identified? Or Caesar? What about second- or third-rate politicians? Cases of misidentification of politicians also clarify this issue. Popular verses criticising first-rate or even second-rate politicians helped to spread their names across the city. In sum, recognition of politicians, either by their features or by their names, represents a way to understand and gauge non-elite implication into politics.

Page 370 of 1200