The blog and social media continues to give. One colleague saw a post and sent it to another and that resulted in a thought provoking email in my inbox this AM that led to me to grab a few neglected books of my shelf and to finally really notice the following passages. So if you wonder why I am so open about my work it is because I get to learn more this way. It pays to be brave enough to be wrong, or just throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
In the below passage I’m most interested in the name [of power] rhetoric and how it is combined with the verb abalienare in the passive rather than some version of odi. That is Cicero is playing around with the idea of the hatred of the name of kings seems implied by how the passage continues with a reference to the explusion of the reges shortly there after. All of this is super relevant for the revising of the first chapter of book three. A project I need to take off the back burner soon. I said I’d wait until I was done being chair but a colleague called to task for this at the book fair at the SCS this year and it hit home. I’d rather see it out sooner rather than later.
I’d give a great deal to have the whole of Cicero’s account from this speech on the historical origins of the tribunes of plebs. I want to cross reference these surviving fragments of the speech with passages from the Republic and Laws of Cicero. I’d also like to think if these views are influencing Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ comments on the tribunate and its history. I suspect there may be some shared perspectives on the institution and its constitutional strengths, weaknesses, and (ab)uses.
Ok. This should be enough for me to find all this again.
Further key words for future me: Lex Porcia, libertas, Lex Cassia, decemvirate, Verginia, Asconius, In Corneliam,
Liv Mariah Yarrow 