Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity
Abstract
In Masculinity and Dress in Roman Antiquity, Olson argues that clothing functioned as part of the process of communication by which elite male influence, masculinity, and sexuality were made known and acknowledged, and furthermore that these concepts interconnected in socially significant ways. This volume also sets out the details of masculine dress from literary and artistic evidence and the connection of clothing to rank, status, and ritual. This is the first monograph in English to draw together the myriad evidence for male dress in the Roman world, and examine it as evidence for men's self-presentation, status, and social convention.
... Other collections aim to explore varied aspects, presentations and functions of bodies through liminality and embodiment theory, and while the volumes as a whole do not focus specifi cally on gender, they include individual essays that do (for example, Petersen, Lateiner and Lee in Fögen and Lee 2009;King, Shapiro and Bremmer in Boschung et al. 2015). Still other works challenge gender expectations through the exploration of transgender, masculinity, female masculinity and gender ambiguity (Gleason 1995;Foxhall andSalmon 1998a, 1998b;Valentine 2007;Penrose 2016;Campanile et al. 2017;Olson 2017). This review of sources is not exhaustive, but aims to highlight the general trends and some of the major works in classics of the last several decades that explore gender. ...
... Çoğu kaynakta kölelerin genellikle eski, yamalı, ucuz kumaşlardan yapılan paçavra giysiler giydiklerinden ve bu giysilerin bir kısmının sahipleri tarafından onlara verilen kullanılmış ve döküntü giysiler olduğundan (Taschek, 2009:45-48); bazı kölelerin (Roma'da) giysilerini ikinci el yamacılardan veya Centoii denilen kıyafet satıcılarından alındığından söz edilir. Cato'nun "yeni bir tunik veya pelerin verdiğinizde üzerlerine yama yapılması için eski olanları geri alın" (Olson, 2017) ifadesi, Roma'daki kölelerin yırtık giysilerinin yamanarak kullanılacağı fikrine atıf yapar niteliktedir. ...
When we consider garments as communication tools, we realize that they reach from an idea or a thought to a representative form of existence. Garments that contain a specific notice or an expression in themselves, are re-shaped within a design phenomenon through various stylistic applications. Even though many styles of garments evoke traditional and usual styles, they don't refrain from telling other things by re-emerging at different times and extensions. It is possible to express about garments that our motive to create a common language within a social structure fuelling with cultural values, is one of the most basic purposes that serve to non-verbal communication. Periodic references belong to different styles, different shapes that are created on the material surfaces and any kind of formal images that serve to appearance, constitute iconic or symbolic indication styles that serve to garments' taking on a meaning process. Although the message wanted to be given by a garment varies from an era to era and from condition to condition, it becomes an integral part of a meaningful whole, as long as it is understandable from the viewpoint of the society. This is a descriptive research that is about analyzing every kind of alterations of garments’ ripped outlooks of traditional eras including postmodern era, and also this research is done in order to reveal which idea did these consciously or unconsciously created “ripped” outlooks on garments that distinguish wholistic coinciding with political, social and cultural values, based on. Moreover, this research is done to learn by the way of which outlooks did this fact is provided. In the research, stylistic and thematic specifications of “ripped” outlooks are made, garments' explanation styles and ripped outlooks' questionings related to cultural memory are tried to be explained with sufficient and equivalent examples during the process. It is concluded that ripped outlooks, which are pictographic representation devices of various cultural values of garments from past to present, undergo lexical changes depending on time and extension, moreover, these lexical changes are shaped associating with a lot of social, cultural, economic and/or psychologic communal characteristics. Extended English summary is in the end of Full Text PDF (TURKISH) file. Özet Giysileri bir iletişim aracı olarak düşündüğümüzde, bir fikir ya da düşünceden temsili bir varoluş biçimine uzandığını görürüz. Belirli bir bildiri ya da bir söylemi içinde barındıran giysiler, çeşitli biçimsel uygulamalarla tasarım olgusu içerisinde yeniden şekil alır. Bazı giysi biçimleri geleneksel anlamda alışılagelmiş stillere çağrışım yapsa da farklı zaman ve uzamlarda yeniden ortaya çıkarak başka şeyleri söylemekten geri kalmazlar. Giysilere ilişkin, kültürel değerlerden beslenerek toplumsal yapı içerisinde ortak bir dil yaratma güdümünün, sözsüz iletişime hizmet eden en temel amaçlarından biri olduğunu da ifade etmek mümkündür. Farklı stillere ait dönemsel göndermeler, malzeme yüzeylerinde oluşturulan farklı biçimler ile görünümüne hizmet eden her türlü şekilsel görüntüler, giysilerin anlamlandırılma sürecine hizmet eden görüntüsel ya da sembolik gösterge biçimlerini oluşturmaktadırlar. Giysi ile verilmek istenen mesaj, her dönemde ve koşulda değişkenlik gösterse de toplumsal açıdan aynı oranda anlaşılabilir olduğu sürece anlamlı bir bütünün parçası haline gelmektedir. Bu araştırma, giysilerdeki yırtık görünümlerin geleneksel dönemlerden postmodern dönemi de kapsayan sürece kadar geçirdiği her türden değişimleri incelenme konusunda, giysilerin yüzeylerinde bilinçli ya da bilinçsiz oluşturulan ve bütünseli ayıran “yırtık” görünümlerin siyasi, sosyal, kültürel vb. değerlerle örtüştürülerek hangi düşüncenin temeline yaslandığını ve hangi görünümlerle bunu sağladığını ortaya çıkarmak amacına ulaşılmak üzere yapılmış betimsel bir araştırmadır. Araştırmada günümüzde bir tasarım unsuru halini alan giysi yüzeylerindeki “yırtık” görünümlerin süreç içerisinde biçimsel ve izleksel tanımlamaları yapılmış, bu görünümlerle giysilerin anlamlandırılma biçimi ortaya konulmuş ve yırtık görünümlerin kültürel belleğe ilişkin sorgulamaları yeterince karşılık bulunan örneklerle açıklanmaya çalışılmıştır. Geçmişten bugüne giysilerde çeşitli kültürel değerlerin görüntüsel bir temsil aracı olarak ifade bulan yırtık görünümlerin zaman ve uzama göre türlü anlamsal değişimlere uğradığı, bu anlamsal değişimlerin sosyal, kültürel, ekonomik ve/ya psikolojik birçok toplumsal niteliklerle ilişkili olarak biçimlendiği sonucuna varılmıştır.
One of the central metaphorical themes of Ephesians is maturity, expressed most memorably in 4:13. In this verse, the goal of the church is portrayed as the attainment of the “mature man” (εἰς ἄνδρα τέλειον), the state of completion to which Christ’s corporate body is growing until it reaches “the measure of the stature of the fullness” of its head. Despite the clear origin of Paul’s metaphor in the realm of human development, minimal discussion has centered on how Paul’s contemporaries employed the phrase “mature man” (τέλειος ἀνήρ) in relation to other developmental milestones along the commonly conceived life course in Greco-Roman antiquity, and what implications this might have for understanding where in the maturation process Paul would have plotted his implied readers. This investigation explores these contextual matters and then uses the results to cast light on related developmental imagery in the surrounding passages of Ephesians, including not only the human growth terminology in 4:12–16 but also the pedagogical rhetoric in 4:20–21, the allusion to the Roman toga virilis ceremony in 4:22–24, and the military analogy in 6:10–18. Collectively, this metaphorical imagery helps to identify the church’s current stature as that befitting of a young man who has recently come of age and located within the liminal phase of early male adulthood. Explicating the fullness of the maturity metaphor in Ephesians helps to illuminate the thematic coherency of the letter as well as how Paul sought to make his realized eschatology intelligible to his ancient readers.
This article argues that Tacitus’ characterizations of female members of the Vitellii evoke literary representations of several prominent Roman women of the late Republic and Julio-Claudian era. Tacitus draws upon a range of figures for his Vitellian women, from Fulvia to Livia, Antonia the Younger to Octavia. Literary resonances contribute to Tacitus’ representation of Vitellius as a bad emperor who nevertheless cared about his family. In rejecting or reflecting literary models, Tacitus uses Vitellius’ mother Sextilia, wife Galeria, and sister-in-law Triaria to create echoes and distinctions between past and present civil conflicts.
The demographics of the Roman world suggest that it was a world full of children. Demographers argue that in order simply to maintain population levels in a period where life expectancy was very short by modern standards, and infant mortality high, a woman should, on average, have six children, on the assumption that not all would live to adulthood. Despite much research in the last fifty years, children still remain partly invisible in the Roman world. This is primarily because they leave little evidence produced by themselves and are seen through the prism of adult eyes. Inevitably, given the nature of the evidence, we know more about the children of the upper classes than the lower, and more about boys than girls. Looking at the clothing of children presents particular difficulties precisely because there were very few garments that were specifically made for them. A comment by a Roman jurist on the nature of clothing in testamentary bequests lists first the clothing for the paterfamilias (togas, tunics, cloaks), then defines children’s clothing as: “clothes used only for this purpose, such as togae praetextae, coats, chlamydes and cloaks which we provide for our sons” (Digest 34.2.23.2). The list for sons essentially replicated the list of their father’s garments, and this idea of the child dressed in standard adult garments sized down for them is evidenced in much of the surviving iconography. The Roman wardrobe reflected that of most pre-industrial societies, in that, for most people, possessing more than one change of clothes would be a luxury. Everyday dress consisted of a tunic, which could be covered by a cloak or mantle; this outfit was worn by everyone, wealthy or poor, free or unfree, adult or child. Ancient authors were not particularly interested in their children’s clothing practices. The one exception to this would be the laying aside of the toga praetexta (the toga of childhood) and the assumption of the toga virilis (toga of manhood) as part of the transition to adulthood for male Roman citizens. Artistic representations from the private sphere or from funerary contexts are more rewarding for examining children’s clothing. Ordinary children and images of childhood are not frequent motifs in Roman public art. It is more useful to turn to private memorials, where clothed children of different ages are depicted in a range of contexts. A child could be a symbol of status; a freeborn son, in particular, would be a prestigious addition to a family. The higher social worth of boys compared to girls had an impact on their upbringing, education, and wider life experience. Another sign of the gendered view of children is that in artistic representations, boys are more commonly depicted than girls. From the first century BC, when the habit of erecting memorials became more socially diffused, children were more often included in the visual vocabulary. At first, they are normally seen included in family groups, but by the first century AD, children became subjects in their own right: on reliefs, funerary altars, and sarcophagi. In spite of memorials being related to a deceased person or persons, children were depicted as alive and healthy, and such images constitute an important source for how Roman children of various ages and social classes would have been dressed.
The first three hundred years of the common era witnessed critical developments that would become foundational for Christianity itself, as well as for the societies and later history that emerged thereafter. The concept of 'ancient Christianity,' however, along with the content that the category represents, has raised much debate. This is, in part, because within this category lie multiple forms of devotion to Jesus Christ, multiple phenomena, and multiple permutations in the formative period of Christian history. Within those multiples lie numerous contests, as varieties of Christian identity laid claim to authority and authenticity in different ways. The Cambridge History of Ancient Christianity addresses these contested areas with both nuance and clarity by reviewing, synthesizing, and critically engaging recent scholarly developments. The 27 thematic chapters, specially commissioned for this volume from an international team of scholars, also offer constructive ways forward for future research.
This article explores the literary context of three types of hair modification in Second Temple Jewish literature: disarranging, unveiling, and cutting, when they occur and the social categories they embody. All of these behaviors mark women as mourners, with the tearing/cutting and disheveling of hair further identifying them as suppliants. While some depictions are based on biblical models, the supplication scenes clearly reflect Greek and Roman motifs ‒ women wearing their hair wild and addressing the troops and defendants wearing mourning dress and engaging in keening gestures. Outside these contexts, female figures rarely cut/dishevel their hair of their own accord, the majority of those who do so being slaves/captives/prisoners subject to the whims of authority figures ‒ masters/mistresses or priests.
Zusammenfassung
Der Tod des Ptolemaios von Mauretanien im frühen 1. Jahrhundert n. Chr. erscheint auch heute noch rätselhaft. In dieser Untersuchung soll daher neues Licht auf ein vieldiskutiertes Thema geworfen werden. Dabei wird insbesondere eine Passage in Suetons Schrift über den römischen Kaiser Caligula in den Blick genommen, der für den Tod des Ptolomaios verantwortlich gewesen sein soll. Dort wird berichtet, dass Caligula den mauretanischen König habe ermorden lassen, da dieser in einer purpurnen abolla in Rom erschienen sein und somit den Kaiser öffentlich brüskiert haben soll. In der Analyse der schriftlichen Quellen wird deutlich, dass es sich bei der abolla um eine typische Tracht hellenistisch geprägter Herrscher handelte, die von der römischen Gesellschaft als fremd konnotiert wurde. Die prestigeträchtige Farbe des Purpurs stellte eine zusätzliche Komponente einer traditionellen monarchischen Selbstdarstellung dar, die von Ptolemaios als König von Mauretanien auch so zu erwarten gewesen sein muss. Doch zeigt es sich, dass das Auftreten des Ptolemaios von Caligula vor dem Hintergrund der Spannungen der Gaetulicus-Lepidus-Verschwörung und der selbst gewählten Herrschaftskonzeption des princeps – einer expressiven Repräsentation des eigenen Ranges – missverstanden wurde. Dies führte schließlich zur drastischen Reaktion des Kaisers.
From beginning to end, the De rerum natura upsets expectations. This book's premise is that Lucretius intentionally provokes his imagined male audience, playfully and forcefully proving to them that they are not the men they suppose themselves to be. From astral bodies to the magnetic draw of human sexuality to the social bonds linking parents to children, Lucretius shows that everything is compounded material, both a source of atomic issue and receptacle of atomic ingress. The universe, as Lucretius presents it, is a never-ending cycle of material interpenetration, connectivity, and dissolution. Roman men, in the vastness of it all, are only exceptional in their self-defeating fantasies. Close analysis of Lucretius' poetics reveals an unremitting assault upon the fictions that comprise Roman masculinity, from seminal conception in utero to existential decomposition in the grave. Nevertheless, Lucretius offers an Epicurean vision of masculinity that just might save the Republic.
This book explores the many strategies by which elite Greeks and Romans resisted the cultural and political hegemony of the Roman Empire in ways that avoided direct confrontation or simple warfare. By resistance is meant a range of responses including 'opposition', 'subversion', 'antagonism', 'dissent', and 'criticism' within a multiplicity of cultural forms from identity-assertion to polemic. Although largely focused on literary culture, its implications can be extended to the world of visual and material culture. Within the volume a distinguished group of scholars explores topics such as the affirmation of identity via language choice in epigraphy; the use of genre (dialogue, declamation, biography, the novel) to express resistant positions; identity negotiation in the scintillating and often satirical Greek essays of Lucian; and the place of religion in resisting hegemonic power.
This article seeks to find attitudes and judgments elite Romans made based on a person’s bed. It culls written sources from a diverse range of genres to argue that elite Roman men saw beds as transformative and reflective items. Through long-lasting and frequent contact, a bed’s qualities seeped into bodies and characters. Consequently, as a powerful part of the built environment, beds could strengthen or weaken soldiers as well as help or harm a person’s health. Furthermore, beds’ transformative power meant elite Romans thought where a man slept revealed who he was: his social status, moral fiber, and civilization. In short, beds marked a person’s identity. Examining how Roman elites conceptualized beds informs us on the larger issue of the history of the body, in general, and the sense of touch, in particular. Scholarship on the history of touch tends not analyze the effects of sustained and repetitive contact with a mundane object.
For centuries, Roman emperors ruled a vast empire. Yet, at least officially, the emperor did not exist. No one knew exactly what titles he possessed, how he could be portrayed, what exactly he had to do, or how the succession was organised. Everyone knew, however, that the emperor held ultimate power over the empire. There were also expectations about what he should do and be, although these varied throughout the empire and also evolved over time. How did these expectations develop and change? To what degree could an emperor deviate from prevailing norms? And what role did major developments in Roman society – such as the rise of Christianity or the choice of Constantinople as the new capital – play in the ways in which emperors could exercise their rule? This ambitious and engaging book describes the surprising stability of the Roman Empire over more than six centuries of history.
Instead of analysing political, legal, economic or demographic matters, this research comes down to earth and explores the behind-the-scenes of the Romano-Barbarian world. Its objective is to understand how and in which aspects the fact that the world of the Roman Empire was not only Roman, but also Barbarian, influenced the daily lives of Romans. A fascinating insight on this issue provided by the epigrammatist Marcus Valerius Martialis, a Roman citizen tracing his lineage from Celts and Iberians, was a living example of the interweaving of the Roman and Barbarian worlds.
At the centre of the Roman empire stood the emperor and the court surrounding him. The systematic investigation of this court in its own right, however, has been a relatively late development in the field of Roman history, and previous studies have focused on narrowly defined aspects or on particular periods of Roman history. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the history of the Roman imperial court. The first volume presents nineteen original essays covering all the major dimensions of the court from the age of Augustus to the threshold of Late Antiquity. The second volume is a collection of the ancient sources that are central to studying that court. The collection includes: translations of literary sources, inscriptions, and papyri; plans and computer visualizations of archaeological remains; and photographs of archaeologic sites and artworks depicting the emperor and his court.
At the centre of the Roman empire stood the emperor and the court surrounding him. The systematic investigation of this court in its own right, however, has been a relatively late development in the field of Roman history, and previous studies have focused on narrowly defined aspects or on particular periods of Roman history. This book makes a major contribution to understanding the history of the Roman imperial court. The first volume presents nineteen original essays covering all the major dimensions of the court from the age of Augustus to the threshold of Late Antiquity. The second volume is a collection of the ancient sources that are central to studying that court. The collection includes: translations of literary sources, inscriptions, and papyri; plans and computer visualizations of archaeological remains; and photographs of archaeologic sites and artworks depicting the emperor and his court.
The extant life of Julius Caesar by Suetonius begins with the dictator Sulla predicting that Caesar will destroy the Optimates, i.e., undo all that Sulla himself had achieved. In presenting Sulla’s forecast Suetonius uniquely in examples of divinatory material in the Lives appears to be ambiguous as to its divinatory status. This paper examines how Suetonius secures credibility for this piece of ‘prophecy’ and considers the role of Sulla’s words in the economy of the Life.
This volume provides an ambitious synopsis of the complex, colourful world of textiles in ancient Mediterranean iconography. A wealth of information on ancient textiles is available from depictions such as sculpture, vase painting, figurines, reliefs and mosaics. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and through the processes of textile production. The challenge for anyone analysing ancient iconography is determining how we interpret what we see. As preserved textiles rarely survive in comparable forms, we must consider the extent to which representations of textiles reflect reality, and critically evaluate the sources. Images are not simple replicas or photographs of reality. Instead, iconography draws on select elements from the surrounding world that were recognisable to the ancient audience, and reveal the perceptions, ideologies, and ideas of the society in which they were produced. Through examining the durable evidence, this anthology reveals the ephemeral world of textiles and their integral role in the daily life, cult and economy of the ancient Mediterranean.
This volume provides an ambitious synopsis of the complex, colourful world of textiles in ancient Mediterranean iconography. A wealth of information on ancient textiles is available from depictions such as sculpture, vase painting, figurines, reliefs and mosaics. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and through the processes of textile production. The challenge for anyone analysing ancient iconography is determining how we interpret what we see. As preserved textiles rarely survive in comparable forms, we must consider the extent to which representations of textiles reflect reality, and critically evaluate the sources. Images are not simple replicas or photographs of reality. Instead, iconography draws on select elements from the surrounding world that were recognisable to the ancient audience, and reveal the perceptions, ideologies, and ideas of the society in which they were produced. Through examining the durable evidence, this anthology reveals the ephemeral world of textiles and their integral role in the daily life, cult and economy of the ancient Mediterranean.
This essay contains a philosophical and literary letter on peace. The author has tried her best to support her points through argumentation by using analogies from philosophy, education, literature, mathematics, and so on. At the same time, to make the letter appealing, she has made up a fictional philosophical anecdote. The author has made an effort to make it interdisciplinary and, at the same time, easy to follow. Its main message is depoliticizing academic circles and decision making in such circles. The author has discussed how we can establish peace by adopting this approach. This issue is discussed through a literary letter, including a fictional philosophical anecdote, conveying love, empathy, and step-by-step interdisciplinary argumentation. The lexicon has been chosen meticulously to fit the Aristotle era. The term enemy, as directly mentioned at the end of the essay, does not have a geographical reference; rather, it refers to all biased decision-making figures. The author also provides a solution for unbiased decision making by academic circles by encouraging researchers to conduct a new line of research.
This paper explores textile production-related iconography on seals from Bronze Age Greece. Thirteen motifs related to textile production are recognised in the imagery. These range from the flax plant and the woolly animals to fibre combing, purple dyeing, spinning and weaving using loom weights, and perhaps the comb and rigid heddle, to finished textiles and bands. All these processes and tools are symbolically interwoven in the figure of the spider, a frequent motif in the Aegean glyptic. New motif identifications are proposed which suggest that textile production and the material culture related to it, constituted an important semantic reference reflected in the imagery of seals, especially on Crete in the Middle Bronze Age.
This article explores Roman freedmen’s masculine positions expressed as virtues, qualities, and ideals in the recommendation letters of Cicero and Pliny the Younger. It discusses whether there were specific freedman virtues, qualities, and ideals and what consequences their existence or absence had for freedmen’s constructions of masculinity. A critical close reading of the texts is applied, combined with theories of masculinity, where hegemonic masculinity is a key concept. It is concluded that there were no virtues or qualities that were specific or exclusive to freedmen. A distinct set of virtues for freedmen did not exist in Late Republican and Early Imperial Rome, since much the same behaviour and qualities are seen as manly and desirable for freedmen as for freeborn male citizens of high birth. However, freedmen cannot comply with the hegemonic masculinity in full, since they cannot embody the Roman masculine ideal of the vir bonus and cannot be associated with the Roman cardinal virtue virtus, which was central in the construction of masculinity in the Roman world. This illustrates the complex Roman gender discourse and, on the whole, the social complexity of Roman society.
Polyvalent meanings behind naval ram displays were prevalent and ingrained in the Roman world, especially at Octavian’s Campsite Memorial for the Actian War. Naval rams and their display alluded to gender and power discourses within Roman society. These discourses included Roman notions of sex, penetration, domination, phallus size, and ideas of achieved hierarchies of masculinity. Analyzing ram displays through Roman perceptions of gender and sexuality, specifically concerning ancient masculinity, reveals that rams functioned not only as weapons of war but also as metaphorical phalloi that embodied and projected immense power. Octavian’s ram display at Actium was used to effeminize Marc Antony through the successful defeat and figurative castration of his fleet, which was done by cutting off the rams from the bows of the warships. By exhibiting the rams as such, Octavian asserted his own impenetrability and masculine virtue, which simultaneously promoted Antony’s penetrability and lack of masculinity. In choosing the largest rams, Octavian implied that his masculine prowess was invincible. The ram display unveiled Octavian’s phallic dominion over all other Greeks and Romans. As Octavian’s naval ram display was the largest and most impressive of the ancient world, he effectively rendered all previous ram dedications subordinate to his own.
Naturalistic and expressive portraiture is considered one of the great achievements of Roman art. Yet such Roman honorific portraits as the Naples Claudius (fig. 1), its athletic nude body of heroic type surmounted by the jowly visage of the aging gourmand, will get a laugh from most audiences today. The comedy proceeds from an aesthetic disjunction, perceived since Winckelmann, between portrait head, conceived as Roman, and ideal body, conceived as Greek. Only this modern aesthetic, supported by the continuing prestige of Greek male nude statuary, allows assertions like that of R. R. R. Smith, that Roman nude portraits are a covert revenge of enslaved Greek sculptors on their barbarian masters. ¹ That Roman elite men could be commemorated to their own satisfaction in statues like the Claudius implies conceptions of ideal masculine bodies fundamentally different from our own. But later Body Beautiful ideologies are so naturalized in our aesthetic experience that most interpreters of the Roman heroic male nude take refuge in iconography. The nude body is merely an iconographic attribute of the individual really represented in the portrait head. It signifies a cultural position, such as espousal of Greek political or merely literary culture; or a role, such as Hellenistic ruler or divine autocrat; or it symbolizes a virtuous aspect of character. ² Such coherent and serious messages would preclude or supersede perception of aesthetic incoherence.
The “Aeneas” panel, a much-discussed element of the Ara Pacis, is usually interpreted as the Trojan hero's sacrifice of a brood sow on his landing in Latium, a story recounted in Virgil, Varro, and Dionysios of Halikarnassos. This study reexamines the relief and relevant texts and concludes that the scene instead probably portrays the second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, as the ideal of the peaceful ruler, in contrast to Romulus, the warlike ruler, on the balancing panel. This interpretation raises broader questions about the relationship of visual art, texts, and modern theory in the study of Roman sculpture.
Performance was one of the five canonical branches of oratory in the classical period, but it presents special problems that distinguish it from concerns such as composition and memory. The ancient performer was supposed to be a "good man" and his performance a manifestation of an authentic and authoritative manliness. But how can the orator be distinguished from a mere actor? And what is the proper role for the body, given that it is a potential object of desire? Erik Gunderson explores these and other questions in ancient rhetorical theory using a variety of theoretical approaches, drawing in particular on the works of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan. His study examines the status of rhetorical theory qua theory, the production of a specific version of body in the course of its theoretical description, oratory as a form of self-mastery, the actor as the orator's despised double, the dangers of homoerotic pleasure, and Cicero's De Oratore, as what good theory and practice ought to look like.
When Cilicia for a season was a province of consular rank, governed in succession by P. Lentulus Spinther, Ap. Claudius Pulcher and M. Tullius Cicero, what held it together was the high-road from Laodicea to the Syrian Gates. Those proconsuls never strayed very far from the road. Cicero, coming up from Tarsus early in February of 50 B.C., encountered an unexpected welcome. P. Vedius had journeyed out some way from Laodicea to meet him, that ‘magnus nebulo’, a friend of Pompeius Magnus. Vedius was escorted by a large and motley retinue. With him paraded a baboon in a chariot—no doubt congenial company, and perhaps a reminder of absent friends or a high dignitary like Ap. Pulcher, the recent proconsul, whom the outspoken Caelius Rufus likened to an ape. Vedius also had some wild asses (the bleak upland plains of Lycaonia and Cappadocia were their peculiar habitat). For what purpose no man can say, though the breeding of high-grade mules had become a lucrative pursuit in this age. The dubious credit of introducing the flesh of young onagri to Roman tables was reserved for the great Maecenas.