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INTERSECTIONALITY IN CICERONIAN INVECTIVE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 April 2023

Caroline Chong
Caroline Chong*
Affiliation:
The University of Melbourne
*
chongcj9@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article applies an intersectional approach to Roman invective (and praise) to elucidate how those at the centre of Roman power exploited discriminatory and laudatory ideologies relating to intersections of identity to sway a Roman jury. Analysing the depiction of an unnamed woman in the Pro Scauro shows how Cicero plays upon normalized prejudices to bias the jury against ista Sarda. These internalized prejudices could also be utilized to discredit women with privileged intersectional identities, as demonstrated by Cicero's portrayal of Clodia and Sassia in the Pro Caelio and the Pro Cluentio, a process that helps reify the marginalization of certain identities.

Keywords

intersectionalityCiceroinvectiverhetoricoratoryPro ScauroPro CaelioPro Cluentio

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Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , December 2022 , pp. 611 - 629
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

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Footnotes

The first two sections of this article are based on a paper originally presented at the conference on ‘Gender, Identity, and Intersectionality in Antiquity: Models of Oppression and Privilege’, which developed into Chapter 3 of C. Chong, ‘The ethnic “other” in Cicero's Pro Scauro’ (Diss., The University of Melbourne, 2016). This Masters Thesis was financially supported by the Australian Government through a Research Training Program Scholarship (formerly an Australian Postgraduate Award). Sections of this article also have been presented at other conferences. Thank you for invaluable feedback to Professor K.O. Chong-Gossard, Professor W. Martin Bloomer, Professor Frederik Vervaet, Dr. Maxine Lewis, Professor Parshia Lee-Stecum, Dr. Tristan Taylor, Dr. Kit Morrell, Professor Andrew Riggsby (in his examiner's report), Professor Bruce Gibson and the CQ anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are my own.

References

1 See also Quint. Inst. 5.10.23–36 (although Quintilian's work postdates Cicero's). Please note that the Latin quotations are cited from the relevant volume of the Loeb Classical Library series (Cambridge, MA and London) (but with consonantal spelling u printed throughout). All translations are my own.

2 A starting point on Cicero's use of character to augment his argument is May, J.M., Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos (Chapel Hill and London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also C. Guérin, Persona: L’élaboration d'une notion rhétorique au Ier siècle av. J.-C. Volume II: Théorisation cicéronienne de la persona oratoire (Paris, 2011).

3 Crenshaw, K.W., ‘Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics’, The University of Chicago Legal Forum 139 (1989), 139–67Google Scholar. See also Crenshaw, K.W., ‘Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review 43 (1991), 1241–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Crenshaw (n. 3 [1989]), 152–67 also acknowledges this, and Black feminism's contributions to feminist theory, citing Sojourner Truth and Anna Julia Cooper. Some earlier key texts include: Anzaldúa, G.E., Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (San Francisco, 1987); A.Y. Davis, Women, Race & Class (New York and Toronto, 1981)Google Scholar; b. hooks, Ain't I a Woman? Black Women and Feminism (Boston, 1981); Lorde, A., Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley, 1984)Google Scholar; C. Moraga and G.E. Anzaldúa (edd.), This Bridge Called my Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (Watertown, MA, 1981). For a starting point on the history and development of intersectionality, see Carastathis, A., Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons (Lincoln and London, 2016), 15–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 The Combahee River Collective, ‘A Black feminist statement’, in A. (G.T.) Hull, P. Bell-Scott and B. Smith (edd.), All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (New York, 1982), 13–22.

6 P.H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London, 20002), 18.

7 Collins (n. 6), 18.

8 See also May, V.M., Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries (New York and London, 2015), 22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Yuval-Davis, N., ‘Intersectionality and feminist politics’, European Journal of Women's Studies 13 (2006), 193–209CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 201–2. See also Crenshaw (n. 3 [1989]), 151.

10 See e.g. Carbado, D.W., ‘Colorblind intersectionality’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38 (2013), 811–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 812–16, who lists and refutes the standard criticisms levelled against intersectionality. See also Carastathis (n. 4), 125–61; May (n. 8), 98–140.

11 May (n. 8), 90.

12 See also B.L. Sjöberg, ‘More than just gender: the classical oikos as a site of intersectionality’, in R. Laurence and A. Strömberg (edd.), Families in the Greco-Roman World (London and New York, 2012), 48–59, at 49.

13 Intersectionality's increasingly frequent application in classical and ancient historical studies further demonstrates a belief in its applicability to ancient texts and material culture; see e.g. the creation of Edinburgh University Press’ recent series, Intersectionality in Classical Antiquity.

14 On the socialization of male students through Roman declamation, see e.g. Bloomer, W.M., ‘Schooling in persona: imagination and subordination in Roman education’, ClAnt 16 (1997), 57–78Google Scholar; R.A. Kaster, ‘Controlling reason: declamation in rhetorical education at Rome’, in Y.L. Too (ed.), Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity (Leiden / Boston / Cologne, 2001), 317–37.

15 Bostar's mother is unnamed in the extant sections.

16 The use of ethnicity is not to deny the critical place race holds in intersectionality or that racism still pervades modern society; cf. Bilge, S., ‘Intersectionality undone: saving intersectionality from feminist intersectionality studies’, Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 10 (2013), 405–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 413–14. Rather, it acknowledges the differences between Roman and modern perceptions of other peoples. Owing to the similarities between Roman and contemporary ethnic and racial ideologies, and Roman influence on modern racial thought, the term ‘race’ is used to describe the type of prejudice Romans directed towards non-Romans, which also recentres race as a central category of analysis. D.E. McCoskey, Race: Antiquity and its Legacy (Oxford and New York, 2012) provides a starting point for the complex question of race in antiquity. However, the work is problematic at times: see e.g. Kennedy, R.F., ‘Race in antiquity’, CR 63 (2013), 260–2Google Scholar.

17 For recent studies on Greek and/or Roman perceptions of the Phoenicians and/or Carthaginians, see e.g. Devallet, G., ‘Perfidia plus quam Punica: l'image des Carthaginois dans la littérature Latine, de la fin de la république à l’époque des Flaviens’, Lalies 16 (1996), 17–28Google Scholar; Gruen, E.S., Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (Princeton and Oxford, 2011), 115–40Google Scholar; Isaac, B., The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton and Oxford, 2004), 324–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Using derogatory ethnic stereotypes was a common rhetorical tactic: see e.g. Cic. Flac. 6, 9–12, 24; Font. 30–3, 64–6; Riggsby, A.M., Crime and Community in Ciceronian Rome (Austin, 1999), 129–36Google Scholar; Schmitz, D., Zeugen des Prozeßgegners in Gerichtsreden Ciceros (Frankfurt / Bern / New York, 1985), 148–57Google Scholar. It appears that it was not just the Punic Sardinians whom Cicero mentions in the Pro Scauro. Pompeius notes: Sardus et Sardiniensis. quamquam in Cicerone in Scauriana inuenimus istam discretionem de Sardis et Sardiniensibus, ut illos incolas, illos aduenas doceat (Keil, Gramm. Lat. 5.144.28–30). Owing to the speech's fragmentary nature, we cannot establish with certainty why Cicero makes this distinction (although see Riggsby [this note], 132).

18 E. Olechowska (ed.), Pro M. Aemilio Scauro oratio (Leipzig, 1984), 19 deletes pestilentiae just before plena.

19 Prag, J.R.W., ‘Poenus plane est – but who were the “Punickes”?’, PBSR 74 (2006), 1–37Google Scholar, at 12–17 notes that Poenus could be used to mean Carthaginian. Here Cicero is most likely using Poeni to refer to the Carthaginians.

20 See also A.R. Dyck (transl. and comm.), Marcus Tullius Cicero: Speeches on Behalf of Marcus Fonteius and Marcus Aemilius Scaurus (Oxford, 2012), 153.

21 Cicero also relies upon known ethnic stereotypical tropes of unreliability or mendacious nature in the Pro Flacco (5[M], 6). However, Cicero could praise the credibility of foreign witnesses when it suited him, as in the In Verrem.

22 Langlands, R., Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome (Cambridge and New York, 2006), 297–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Alexander, M.C., The Case for the Prosecution in the Ciceronian Era (Ann Arbor, 2002), 108Google Scholar.

23 For the problematic nature of Themistocles as an example, see Williams, G.D., ‘Cleombrotus of Ambracia: interpretations of a suicide from Callimachus to Agathias’, CQ 45 (1995), 154–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 164.

24 For brief discussion of these men, see Dyck (n. 20), 123–4.

25 For discussion of death in a military context, see Edwards, C., Death in Ancient Rome (New Haven and London, 2007), 19–45Google Scholar. For suicide in antiquity, see e.g. Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, Cato, and Roman suicide: I’, G&R 33 (1986), 64–77Google Scholar; Griffin, M., ‘Philosophy, Cato, and Roman Suicide: II’, G&R 33 (1986), 192–202Google Scholar; Grisé, Y., Le suicide dans la Rome antique (Montréal and Paris, 1982)Google Scholar; T.D. Hill, Ambitiosa Mors: Suicide and Self in Roman Thought and Literature (New York and London, 2004); Hooff, A.J.L. van, From Autothanasia to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity (London and New York, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 See also Alexander (n. 22), 289 n. 39.

27 Dyck (n. 20), 125.

28 Cf. Cic. Scaur. 6, where Cicero suggests that she was salsa, indicating a certain level of education.

29 For a complementary reading of Cicero's utilization of Theombrotus to belittle the death of ista Sarda as unjustifiable, see Williams (n. 23), 163–6.

30 Cicero also appears to use education to enhance the negativity of one's or a group's identity in the Pro Flacco (see e.g. Flac. 9, 11).

31 At Clu. 156, Cicero specifies that Cluentius is a Roman eques, suggesting that Cluentia too is Roman. Further, Larinum appears to have received Roman citizenship prior to the speech: E. Robinson and T. Sironen, ‘A new inscription in Oscan from Larinum: decisive evidence in favor of a local cult of Mars and Mater (Deum?)’, ZPE 185 (2013), 251–61, at 259. Whether Cluentius, Cluentia or Sassia identified themselves as culturally or ethnically Roman is not mentioned and, for Cicero, was irrelevant in his oratorical narrative.

32 For discussion of hanging in antiquity, see Edwards (n. 25), 107–9; E. Fraenkel, ‘Selbstmordwege’, Philologus 87 (1932), 470–3; van Hooff (n. 25), 64–72.

33 Langlands (n. 22), 184–6.

34 For discussion of Lucretia, see S.R. Joshel, ‘The body female and the body politic: Livy's Lucretia and Verginia’, in A. Richlin (ed.), Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York and Oxford, 1992), 112–30; Joplin, P. Klindienst, ‘“Ritual work on human flesh”: Livy's Lucretia and the rape of the body politic’, Helios 17 (1990), 51–70Google Scholar.

35 See van Hooff (n. 25), 71, 105.

36 See also Dickey, E., Latin Forms of Address: From Plautus to Apuleius (Oxford and New York, 2002), 200–1Google Scholar. Watson, P., ‘Puella and virgo’, Glotta 61 (1983), 119–43Google Scholar discusses the term uirgo.

37 See e.g. Hill (n. 25).

38 V. Rosivach, ‘Anus: some older women in Latin literature’, CW 88 (1994), 107–17, at 107. See also T.G. Parkin, Old Age in the Roman World: A Cultural and Social History (Baltimore, 2003), 86–7.

39 Rosivach (n. 38), 110.

40 The portrayal of ista Sarda conforms with some chief elements of invective against old women identified by A. Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (rev. edn, New York and Oxford, 1992), 109.

41 See also Langlands (n. 22), 298.

42 The dangers of beauty are discussed in Langlands (n. 22).

43 See also A. Keith, ‘Cicero's Verres, Verres’ women’, in J. Fabre-Serris, A. Keith and F. Klein (edd.), Identities, Ethnicities and Gender in Antiquity (Berlin and Boston, 2021), 69–92, at 71, 73.

44 For discussion of the women in Cicero's In Verrem, see Keith (n. 43). See also R.G.M. Nisbet, ‘The orator and the reader: manipulation and response in Cicero's Fifth Verrine’, in T. Woodman and J. Powell (edd.), Author and Audience in Latin Literature (Cambridge / New York / Oakleigh, VIC, 1992), 1–17, at 6–8, 11–12; L'Hoir, F. Santoro, The Rhetoric of Gender Terms: ‘Man’, ‘Woman’, and the Portrayal of Character in Latin Prose (Leiden / New York / Cologne, 1992), 38–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 See also Cic. Verr. 2.4.136, 2.5.81.

46 For Nice's beauty, see also Cic. Verr. 2.5.82.

47 See also Cic. Verr. 2.5.81.

48 Riggsby, A.M., ‘Did the Romans believe in their verdicts?’, Rhetorica 15 (1997), 235–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Riggsby (n. 17), 3.

50 See also Rhet. Her. 1.16.

51 Carbado (n. 10), 817.

52 Carbado (n. 10), 818.

53 For examination of ‘colourblind’ and ‘genderblind intersectionality’ in modern forensic cases, see Carbado (n. 10).

54 Cf. A.C. Clark (ed.), M. Tulli Ciceronis orationes: Pro Sex. Roscio, De imperio Cn. Pompei, Pro Cluentio, In Catilinam, Pro Murena, Pro Caelio (Oxford, 1905), who prefers Larino over Larinatem.

55 It is uncertain whether either of them was in court, although Kirby, J.T., The Rhetoric of Cicero's Pro Cluentio (Amsterdam, 1990), 61Google Scholar mentions that Cicero depicts Sassia as present. Alexander (n. 22), 321 n. 32 notes that it is not known if Clodia appeared as a witness; cf. Kirby (this note), 61 n. 25.

56 See also Cic. Clu. 44.

57 For further discussion of Sassia as the antithesis of the good Roman mother, see Ige, S., ‘Rhetoric and the feminine character: Cicero's portrayal of Sassia, Clodia and Fulvia’, Akroterion 48 (2003), 45–57Google Scholar, at 47–50.

58 For discussion of Sassia, see Kirby (n. 55), 41–5, 60–2; Patimo, V.M., ‘Sassia: un'amante “elegiaca” ante litteram nella Pro Cluentio?’, EClás 135 (2009), 30–49Google Scholar; Santoro L'Hoir (n. 44), 41–3.

59 For further discussion of this aspect of Clodia's characterization, see Ige (n. 57), 50–3.

60 Cicero calls Clodia a meretrix and uses the adjective meretricia at Cael. 1, 37, 38, 48–9, 50, 57.

61 For discussion of Cicero likening Clodia to Medea and to Clytemnestra in order to masculinize her, see B. Xinyue, ‘Imperatrix and bellatrix: Cicero's Clodia and Vergil's Camilla’, in D. Campanile, F. Carlà-Uhink and M. Facella (edd.), TransAntiquity: Cross-Dressing and Transgender Dynamics in the Ancient World (London and New York, 2017), 164–77, at 167–8.

62 The scholarship on Clodia is extensive, and recent bibliographies can be found in J.D. Hejduk, Clodia: A Sourcebook (Norman, 2008); M.B. Skinner, Clodia Metelli: The Tribune's Sister (New York, 2011); Abril, J.J. Valverde, ‘Bibliografía Clodiana (I): Nota bibliográfica sobre la figura de Clodia-Lesbia’, FlorIlib 20 (2009), 309–43Google Scholar.

63 For a brief discussion of Aris as a Roman citizen, see Dyck (n. 20), 126, 127–8.

64 See also S. Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian (Oxford and New York, 1991), 330.

65 See e.g. Plaut. Merc. 755; Asin. 893–5; Schuhmann, E., ‘Der Typ der uxor dotata in den Komödien des Plautus’, Philologus 121 (1977), 45–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 59–60.

66 OLD s.v. molestus 1a.

67 S.L. James, ‘Mater, oratio, filia: listening to mothers in Roman comedy’, in D. Dutsch, S.L. James and D. Konstan (edd.), Women in Roman Republican Drama (Madison, WI, 2015), 108–27, at 109; Treggiari (n. 64), 330.

68 Treggiari (n. 64), 325–6.

69 Saller, R.P., ‘Roman dowry and the devolution of property in the Principate’, CQ 34 (1984), 195–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 196–7.

70 See also P. Culham, ‘Women in the Roman Republic’, in H.I. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), 139–59, at 150. S.M. Braund, ‘Marriage, adultery, and divorce in Roman comic drama’, in W.S. Smith (ed.), Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: From Plautus to Chaucer (Ann Arbor, 2005), 39–70, at 47–50 briefly discusses this psychological power in the Aulularia and other comic plays.

71 K. McCarthy, Slaves, Masters, and the Art of Authority in Plautine Comedy (Princeton and Oxford, 2000), 69.

72 See also Rei, A., ‘Villains, wives, and slaves in the comedies of Plautus’, in Joshel, S.R. and Murnaghan, S. (edd.), Women and Slaves in Greco-Roman Culture: Differential Equations (London and New York, 1998), 92–108Google Scholar, at 95–6; Stärk, E., ‘Plautus’ uxores dotatae im Spannungsfeld literarischer Fiktion und gesellschaftlicher Realität’, in Blänsdorf, J. with André, J.-M. and Fick, N. (edd.), Theater und Gesellschaft im Imperium Romanum / Théâtre et société dans l'empire romain (Tübingen, 1990), 69–79Google Scholar, at 71–2; Treggiari (n. 64), 330.

73 OLD s.v. ops 1a, 2b.

74 OLD s.v. locuples.

75 At times Cicero also draws distinctions in the same speech between different Greek peoples. For discussion, see Riggsby (n. 17), 132–4; Vasaly, A., Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory (Berkeley / Los Angeles / Oxford, 1993), 192–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.