Book contents
- The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
- The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Divided Body Politic
- Chapter 2 The Sick Body Politic
- Chapter 3 The Augustan Transformation
- Chapter 4 Julio-Claudian Consensus and Civil War
- Chapter 5 Addressing Autocracy under Nero
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index Locorum
- Index
Chapter 1 - The Divided Body Politic
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2024
- The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
- The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The Divided Body Politic
- Chapter 2 The Sick Body Politic
- Chapter 3 The Augustan Transformation
- Chapter 4 Julio-Claudian Consensus and Civil War
- Chapter 5 Addressing Autocracy under Nero
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
- Index Locorum
- Index
Summary
Chapter 1 begins with the Fable of the Belly, a foundational myth of civic organization that Roman thinkers dated to the Conflict of the Orders. Naturalizing the hierarchical distribution of power between the senate and people, the fable identified concord as the basis of civic health. Late Republican thinkers used this metaphor to explain the problem of discord, which seemed akin to the splitting or doubling of the res publica. While writers like Cicero, Sallust, and Varro crafted such imagery to lament the loss of civic unity, Catiline used it to justify the acquisition of personal power. Describing the senate and people as separate bodies with little in common, he proposed reworking the Republican constitution to better reflect their divide. He then laid claim to the role of the caput populi, which confirmed his aspirations to tyranny. His conspiracy would be put down in a matter of months, but the language he used to articulate his ambitions proved more difficult to extinguish.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought , pp. 29 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024