In the Speech for His House (de domo sua), Cicero needs to persuade his audience that the shrine erected by his adversary, Clodius, was not a public cult site or any cult site at all, in order for it to be removed and his house returned to him. One of the means in which he attempts to do this is by suggesting that no cult beyond a personal Clodian cult ever took place here. As focus of this cult, he suggests the image of courtesan stolen from a gravesite in Tanagra. The allusion is suggestive: Tanagra became famous in the 19th century when small clay figurines of women and goddesses were unearthed from Hellenistic graves. These figures showed richly dressed and painted women in a variety of poses, their dress clinging to their bodies, seated or dancing. As Maik Patzelt demonstrated, Clodius dedicated the shrine to Libertas by employing a three-step dancing figure, known from other cultic contexts. By connecting Clodius’ dancing dedication with the figure of a dancing deity, he connects the two in the minds of his listeners. Moreover, by suggesting that Clodius’ Libertas was not only “just” a personal deity, but her statue stolen from the grave of a prostitute, he diminishes the supposed deity in the mind of his listeners by making her unacceptable on multiple levels: social (as a prostitute), legal (as a stolen item) and religious (as coming from a grave, thus tainted with death).
Schlagwort: Cicero
Elisabeth Begemann gives a working paper on ‚Determinism, Fate, and Freedom‘
The present paper discusses two texts of the tripartite discussion of
theology in Cicero’s writings. The texts belong to the second period
of philosophical production and mirror Cicero’s desire to apply Greek
philosophy to the Roman context, thus establishing Roman
philosophy. The topic under discussion is one that is central to Roman
politics, addressing the practice of divination, the practice of divining
whether the gods consented to human decisions or actions or not.
The centrality of the practice in political terms makes it hard for
Cicero to reject the practice, though he is openly skeptical, earning
him the reproof of being a cynic, dishonest and opportunist in things
political and philosophical. However, what he addresses are rather
everyday practices (and beliefs) that should have no bearing on the
administration of the (ideal) res publica and which he sees as
expression of exceeding religiosity, of superstitio, that politics must
do without.