Books by Anthony Corbeill
Papers by Anthony Corbeill
In spring of 56 BC Cicero delivered a speech before the senate in which he attempted to prove tha... more In spring of 56 BC Cicero delivered a speech before the senate in which he attempted to prove that a recent earthquake prodigy arose as a result of the actions of his political opponent, Publius Clodius. Cicero employs evidence that resembles Varro's three different ways of treating the divine: the mythic, the civic, and the philosophical. This essay examines the intersections between Cicero's tactics and the so-called 'tripartite theology' of Varro.
I would like to begin in a Roman schoolroom at some time during the first few centuries of the em... more I would like to begin in a Roman schoolroom at some time during the first few centuries of the empire. Today the magister has asked us to deliver a prosopopoeia, a speech in the voice of Cicero. You stifle a yawn: this is hardly an original assignment 1. In accordance with normal pedagogical practice, the theme assigned involves a topic that the historical Cicero never addressed but that fits the events of his life-a fifth oration concerning Catiline, for example, or a response to Marcus Antonius's offer to spare his life if Cicero should agree to the destruction of all his writings 2. The topic of today's declamation is relatively straightforward: deliver the speech that Cicero could have composed, but did not, in the spring of 58 BC before he was driven into exile by the tribune Publius Clodius as punishment for executing the Catilinarian conspirators 3. A serious student should have little problem with structure and motifs. He simply needed to cull bits from the speeches that Cicero had delivered following his return from exile, a corpus that is likely to have been available to him as a student 4. * I would like to thank Antony Augoustakis and Brian Walters for the invitation to consider pseudo-Cicero for the conference "Contested Authorships in Latin Literature and Beyond" at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and to Prof. Ermanno Malaspina and Dr. Orazio Cappello for shepherding the results on through to Ciceroniana. 1 Examples of «Cicero» pleading with Antonius occur in Sen. suas. 7; for the so-called Fifth Catilinarian see De Marco 1991, 31-49. Keeline 2018, 148-151 discusses extant declamations delivered in Cicero's voice, as well as others in the guise of his opponents; see too La Bua 2001, 174 n. 1. 2 Compare Peirano 2012, 10 on «fakes» as «"creative supplements", aimed at expanding canonical texts and filling in their gaps» (among other examples, she points to how the pseudo-Vergilian Ciris responds to Verg. ecl. 6, 74-77). 3 Keeline 2018, 150 notes that this speech «manifestly cannot have been written by Cicero. (To leave aside style and language, the historical Cicero simply never had the occasion to deliver such a speech)». While this last point is true in a literal sense, Keeline does not consider that the text could have comprised a pamphlet as was the case with, for example, the actio secunda of the Verrines or Second Philippic. 4 La Bua 2019, 81-84 (though I am skeptical about the relevance of Quint. decl. 348); for the descent of the post reditum collection since approximately the eighth century see Rouse-Reeve 1983, 57-61.
Reading Republican Oratory: Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions, 2018
This chapter has two parts. The first offers an imaginative reconstruction, in English, of a no l... more This chapter has two parts. The first offers an imaginative reconstruction, in English, of a no longer extant contional speech by Publius Clodius Pulcher, delivered prior to Cicero's own surviving speech De haruspicum responsis ('On the responses of the haruspices,' Spring 56 BC). This reconstruction is based on fragments derived from the Ciceronian oration, supplemented by examples of anti-Ciceronian invective drawn from other ancient sources. The second part offers a detailed analysis of the language and rhetoric of the Clodian fragments of the speech, situating each into a hypothetical line of reasoning based on Cicero's own argument and on recent political and religious events. At least seven fragments from Clodius's contio are identified, none of which appears in Malcovati's Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae.
In Book 35, chapters 147-148 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder offers valuable information ... more In Book 35, chapters 147-148 of his Natural History, Pliny the Elder offers valuable information on female painters from the Greek and Roman worlds 2. I reproduce below the Teubner text of Mayhoff 1897, followed by my own translation: 1 — This short note was inspired by the piece cited in the bibliography by Jerzy Linderski, who presented a characteristically acute critique of my ideas in nuce while simultaneously offering encouragement. His support of this paper says more about his qualities as a scholar and colleague than the fact that I respectfully dedicate it to him. I also thank Gil Renberg for sharing material in advance of publication and Jacqueline Fabre-Serris for suggesting publication in Eugesta. Finally, the notes below acknowledge my debt to the careful and thorough reports of the journal's two referees. 2 — For bibliography on all these figures but Iaia see Kansteiner 2014: 4.767-768 = #3571, which dates them to the period between 300 and 150 BC; for Iaia, see Kansteiner 2014: 5.445-446 = #4054. Known female painters not in Pliny include Helena, who depicted the battle of Issos (Kansteiner 2014: 4.245 = #3052), and Anaxandra, daughter of Nealkes (Kansteiner 2014: 4.727-728 = #3518). Renberg (forthcoming) adds Hermione, a self-identified painter from a second century AD epigram (Geagan 2011: 309 = V591); cf. too Anthologia Palatina 6.355 [Leonidas]. Two frescoes from Pompeii and now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Naples depict women painting on tabulae (PPM 4: 75 [V. Sampaolo] = Helbig 1868: 341, #1443; PPM 5: 414 [I. Bragantini] = Helbig 1868: 342, #1444).
Among the numerous prodigies recorded in our sources from ancient Rome occur a few examples of th... more Among the numerous prodigies recorded in our sources from ancient Rome occur a few examples of the statue of a god shedding tears. The traditional apparatus for treating prodigies during the Republic viewed these occurrences as ruptures in the pax deorum, ruptures that signal an indeterminate problem in the relationship between human society and the gods. The sources that discuss these crying images assume that the statues are expressing grief over human mortality. Two phenomena related to this assumption will be considered: first, a literary tradition that maintains that gods are not subject to tears, and second, the critique of Augustine regarding weeping statues in pre-Christian Rome and the relationship between that judgement and the tears that Jesus Christ sheds in the gospels.
Uploads
Books by Anthony Corbeill
Papers by Anthony Corbeill