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2 results

  • Chapter 1 - The Divided Body Politic

  • Julia Mebane, Indiana University, Bloomington
  • Book:
    The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
    Published online:
    01 February 2024
    Print publication:
    08 February 2024, pp 29-60

  • 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.

The Body Politic in Roman Political Thought
  • Julia Mebane
  • Published online:
    01 February 2024
    Print publication:
    08 February 2024
  • How did Roman writers use the metaphor of the body politic to respond to the downfall of the Republic? In this book, Julia Mebane begins with the Catilinarian Conspiracy in 63 BCE, when Cicero and Catiline proposed two rival models of statesmanship on the senate floor: the civic healer and the head of state. Over the next century, these two paradigms of authority were used to confront the establishment of sole rule in the Roman world. Tracing their Imperial afterlives allows us to see how Romans came to terms with autocracy without ever naming it as such. In identifying metaphor as an important avenue of political thought, the book makes a significant contribution to the history of ideas. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.