Violence and violent language have long been associated with Classical invective. Archilochus for instance is said to have driven the Lycambids to suicide through the brutality of his iambics, and graphically abusive threats and epithets underpin countless attacks in the likes of Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Plautus, and Cicero. Yet Cicero extends this violence to descriptions of invective attacks themselves, boasting of oratorical victory over his foe Clodius by declaring, "I broke Clodius in person in the senate" (Clodium praesentem fregi in senatu, Att. 1.16.8). Previous scholarship has brushed aside this and similar instances, either locating the metaphor fregi within the standard political discourse of the late Republic or passing over the reference in silence. By employing detailed philological analysis, this dissertation reassesses the language used to indicate abusive speech or ad hominem attack in previous Greek and Roman traditions, and demonstrates that in departing from such language, Cicero donned an innovative posture of self-fashioning whereby violent metaphors such as fregi served to bolster Cicero's auctoritas in his post-consular career and elevate him above his political opponents. Chapter One examines the language of pre-Ciceronian Greece and Rome, surveying the verbs and syntax employed to represent harsh or abusive speech in sources most closely identified with invective, and identifying therein Roman comedy as the predominant source of antecedenets to Cicero's violent metaphors. Chapter Two investigates Cicero's pre-consular language, and it details the specific semantics characteristic of ad hominem metaphors in his early works, the larger imagery spheres to which such metaphors belong, and the syntax and phrasing typical of these references. Chapter Three continues at 63 BCE and traces the introduction and development of metaphors of 'wounding', 'breaking', and 'cutting' in Cicero's post-consular works, arguing that such verbs mark a direct, personal, and cross-generic posture. Finally, Chapter Four demonstrates that Cicero's use of these metaphors aligns with his larger efforts at identity fashioning, and moreover evokes an underdog mentality characteristic of Plautine slaves; consequently, in force these verbs resonated so strongly that they achieved emblematic status in later prose authors.
Rabe, Anne Meredith,
"Innovation and Invective in Cicero's Violent Metaphors"
(2015).
Classics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0639N41
