Cicero’s Antony: Or How to Other a Peer

The ‘identity’ of a person is a composite and multifaceted phenomenon — despite the etymology of the term (identitas = ‘the quality of being always the same’). Some aspects of who we are (or perceive ourselves to be) are generic (gender, ethnicity, nationality, legal status), others unique (family background, biography, or personal traits). Despite undeniable elements of continuity, our identity is under continual negotiation — both for ourselves and for others: indeed, identities are just as much a matter of self-perception as how we are perceived by others: and the two perspectives need not necessarily (indeed rarely do) fully coincide. Identities can be negotiated and challenged in discourse — and that is where invective rhetoric, and its potentially transformative power, comes in: it tries to strip the individual under attack of the positive aspects of their identity — of who they are in their own eyes and those of others.

The identity sapping of invective discourse can take various forms.

In the Philippics, Cicero opts for a combination of remorseless ridicule and drastic demonization. Antony is a fool — but a dangerous one: to be laughed at, savagely, but then to be terminated. As Hall (2002: 288) observes, perhaps downplaying the demonizing that is also part of Philippic 2:

Antony is portrayed through this rhetoric of crisis as a violent, dangerous man who must be vigorously resisted. On other occasions, however, Cicero sets out to undermine Antony’s moral and political authority through mockery. The most famous examples appear in the invective of Philippic 2, where the principal aim is to characterize Antony not as dangerous but as ridiculous; as a man of unparalleled levitas, quite unworthy of respect or admiration.

Antony is at the same time monstrous and malevolent, preposterous and pathetic. And at the heart of Cicero’s verbal assault on Antony is a systematic ‘othering’ of his adversary, a transformation of a member of Rome’s ruling elite, an aristocratic peer, into the veritable opposite:

Identity Facet Historical Facts Invective Fiction Family pedigree nobilitas degenerate offshoot of a

distinguished family Degree of

intelligence high IQ, gifted political

and military operator doltish dim-wit (stultus) Rhetorical ability distinguished orator a stammering failure (balbulus) Habitual disposition (by and large) sober (sobrius) alcoholic (vinolentus) with

emetic tendencies (vomitator)

Gender Male (vir) Effeminized / female (cinaedus;

meretrix, matrona)

Ethnic background Romanus barbarus

Religious

position / status augur perpetrator of impieties (sacrilegus)

Legal status Roman citizen (civis

Romanus) external enemy (hostis)

Socio-political roles patronus and consul tyrannus / rex Network of

acquaintances other members of Rome’s ruling elite; clients

latrones (‘brigands) and lenones (‘pimps’), mime actors and mime actresses > scum

Species homo subhuman monster (belua)

35 Introduction

Cicero questions Antony’s morals, masculinity, and maleness (vir, virtus) by imagining a lurid past as toy-boy (puer) and male prostitute (cinaedus, meretrix). In sharp contrast to his role as augur (a priestly office), he charges him with the perpetration of impieties. Rejecting his identity as a Roman (Romanus), he highlights his affiliation with barbarians (barbarus). Instead of a sober senator exercising the self-control expected of a member of Rome’s ruling elite, Antony comes across as a permanently intoxicated alcoholic (vinolentus), with strong emetic tendencies also in public (vomitator). Given the kind of person he is, the company he keeps is unsurprisingly equally depraved. He consorts with scum, ‘attends birthday parties of professional clowns’

(Hall 2002: 289 on Phil. 2.15), and has a love affair with the mime-actress Cytheris. Far from being a well-trained public speaker (orator), he is a linguistically challenged failure who stammers along (balbulus) and is stupid to boot (stultus). Yet, despite all of these personal failings, he is technically speaking consul, a high magistrate of the Roman people: in other words, he is an empowered pervert, whom Cicero identifies and outs not just as spitting counter-image of a member of Rome’s ruling elite, but its mortal enemy. His verbal annihilation of Antony is not an end in itself: Cicero turns the skewering of the would-be tyrant who beleaguers the city with his soldiers into a rousing cry for (senatorial) freedom.

Much of Cicero’s invective operates at the level of personal insults:

Antony, he argues, is plain stupid and devoid of (oratorical) talent, but the focal point of his attack is an overall lack of self-control, which manifests itself in all areas where appetites are involved, in particular food, drink, and sex. Antony is a creature of base instinct, leading a life devoted to gluttony, gambling, drinking, and debauchery. A paradox emerges: a Roman man and magistrate ought to exercise legitimate power over others (the potestas of a paterfamilias and consul); but Antony is not even able to exercise power over himself. Cicero renders the paradox explicit at Phil. 6.4, where he mocks the notion that someone like Antony would listen to a senatorial embassy:

Facile vero huic denuntiationi parebit, ut in patrum conscriptorum atque in vestra potestate sit, qui in sua numquam fuerit! quid enim ille umquam arbitrio suo fecit? semper eo tractus est, quo libido rapuit, quo levitas, quo furor, quo vinulentia; semper eum duo dissimilia genera

tenuerunt, lenonum et latronum; ita domesticis stupris, forensibus parricidiis delectatur, ut mulieri citius avarissimae paruerit quam senatui populoque Romano.

[He will no doubt readily obey this intimation, so as to submit to the conscript fathers and your power — a man who has never had himself in his power! For what has that man ever done on his own initiative? He has always been dragged where lust, where levity, where frenzy, where intoxication, has dragged him; two different classes of men have always held him in their grip, pimps and brigands. He so enjoys lecheries at home and murders in the forum that he would sooner obey a most avaricious woman than the senate and the Roman people.]

As this and other similar passages (not least from Philippic 2) are designed to illustrate, any ability Antony may have had to assert himself is severely compromised by base appetites, emotions, or character faults (sexual desire, fickleness, insanity, alcohol-addiction) and the ill-reputed company he keeps (pimps, brigands, a depraved wife). Since Antony is unable to exercise the requisite power (potestas) over his instincts and associates, he is unwilling to accept the legitimate power (potestas) of the senate and the people of Rome — instead, he remains beholden to the wrong people, a weak-kneed slave of his desires. Moreover, the depravity of Antony manifests itself in equal measure in the domestic sphere (in the form of acts of sexual transgressions: stupra) and the civic realm (murders in the forum: parricidia).

In Cicero’s view, to have someone like Antony as consul (and, soon, pro-consul) poses an existential threat to the senatorial tradition of republican government. According to him, Antony has forfeited his right to be a member of Rome’s ruling elite, indeed to be a part of Roman society or even the human species. The attack on the mainstays of Antony’s identity — his status as vir, nobilis, orator, augur, consul, civis Romanus — culminates in Cicero’s denial of his humanity. As Santoro L’Hoir (1992: 26) observes:

Cicero fires his ultimate blast of vitriol in his glorious last stand against Antony. Like his predecessors Verres and Clodius, Antony is a homo amentissimus (Phil. 2.42; 5.37; cf. 3.2), and a homo audacissimus (2.78; 5.13;

6.2). He is, furthermore: h. acutus (2.28); h. adflictus et perditus (3.25);

h. detestabilis (2.110); h. impotentissimus (5.42); h. ingratissimus (13.41);

h. nequam and nequissimus (2.56; 61; 70; 78); h. numquam sobrius (2.81);

h. perditissimus (5.13); h. profligatus (3.1); h. sceleratus (4.12); h. simplex

37 Introduction

(2.111); h. stupidus (3.22); h. turpissimus (2.105); h. vehemens et violentus (5.19), among others. At one point, Antony ranks even lower than a homo:

Non est vobis res, Quirites, cum scelerato homine ac nefario, sed cum immani taetraque belua! (Phil. 4.12: ‘You have not now to deal, Romans, with a man merely guilty and villainous, but with a monstrous and savage beast’).

Like his other adversaries (Verres, Catiline, Clodius, Piso and Gabinius, occasionally also Caesar) Cicero thus dehumanizes Antony. He casts him as a monstrous, amoral pervert, hell-bent on subverting Rome’s social institutions and its political culture. He turns Antony into a repellent beast to instigate and rationalize drastic political action against him, turning him into an outlaw, foreigner, enemy, subhuman, who has lost the protection afforded by law, by his status as a Roman citizen, and by being human.

3. Why Read Cicero’s