Commentary #8 (Fulvia)

How Fulvia Put the “B” in Witch

In Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, Cheryl Glenn addresses “Woman’s Place in Roman Society: Historical and Literary.” In this portion of the handout, we read about the disdain men held for women, especially those who might aspire to public service. A quote from Cicero seems to sum it up: “How great will be the misfortune of that city, in which women will assume the public duties of men. . .”

Cicero was also quick to criticize specific women who dared to assume “man’s work,” which included any kind of involvement in politics. One insubordinate woman whom her contemporaries had cast as pure evil is Fulvia, former wife of P. Clodius, C. Scribonius, and finally of Mark Antony. What had she done to deserve such contempt?

Well, it seems Fulvia ditched kitchen cookery for political crookery, thus alienating both the men and women of her day. After Caesar died in 44 B.C., Antony took power – with remarkable participation from his better half. Fulvia’s apparent devotion to her husband’s success could have been construed as excessive as she became the first wife of a Roman leader to be totally involved in her spouse’s business. (She was also the first Roman woman to have her likeness replicated on coins.)

While Antony was handling business in Egypt, Fulvia took it upon herself to protect his interests by entering into a civil war with Octavian. Antony, who at this time was smitten with Cleopatra, let it be known that he furious with his wife for causing a major rift between him and Octavian. Spurned by the man she loved, Fulvia retreated from life and died at age 40. Following Fulvia’s death, Octavian and Antony were reunited; and just to demonstrate there were no hard feelings, Antony married Octavian’s sister (Answers.com).

None of the above would really convince me that Fulvia was all that bad. After all, she was just trying to be of assistance to her beloved husband. However, there is one activity ascribed to Fulvia that goes beyond what is acceptable, and it occurred after Cicero was assassinated and his detached head and hands had been displayed on (possibly nailed to) the rostrum of the Roman Forum. Per Cassius Dio, and according to “The Roman World,” “Antony’s wife Fulvia took Cicero’s head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed the tongue repeatedly with her hairpin, taking a final revenge against Cicero’s power of speech.”

That, my friends, is when Fulvia crossed the line.
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Works cited

Answers.com: Online Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Dictionary and More. Oct. 14, 2007.

“The Roman World.” Ancient Worlds. 14 Oct. 2007.

Commentary #7 (Cicero)

Cicero: Much More than a Chickpea

Do you ever wonder what lies beyond the textbook descriptions of the ancient Greek and Roman personalities we study in English 525? I do. For instance, we have read that Cicero (106-43 B.C.) was an Italian legal orator whose eloquence gained him high political positions although he lacked a patrician background. He believed that an orator must be well educated in a wide variety of subjects, and he favored an elaborate or florid style of writing and speaking. Among his works is De Oratore, in which he expresses his own ideas about rhetoric.

But what about Cicero and his family? According to William Smith (994), Cicero married Terentia perhaps in 80 or 79 B.C. and had two children – Tullia (Tulliola) and Marcus Tullius Cicero Minor (Letters). Below, a transcript of an emotional letter Cicero wrote to is family while he was in political exile portrays him as a loving husband and father who desperately misses his loved ones. He says he wants Terentia to come to him but fears that travel would compromise her health.

Cicero’s tone seemed to change after his return to Rome. Although Terentia appeared to have managed the household as well as she could without her husband, he blamed her for the poor state of their finances. In 46 B.C., he divorced Terentia and ignited a scandal by marrying the young Publilia. Reportedly, Cicero had not married the girl for her youth but, rather, for her money, which he wanted to use to pay off his debt to Terentia. Apparently, Wife No. 1 never did receive restitution of funds from Cicero, and it is not clear whether or not she remarried. Some claim she married one of Cicero’s enemies, a historian named Sallust (Smith 994).

Tullia was the apple of her daddy’s eye, and she in turn was a devoted daughter who worked side-by-side with her first husband, Calpurnius Piso Frugi to gain safety for Cicero, then living in exile in Brundisium. By the time Cicero returned to Rome, Tullia was widowed; but she soon married and divorced Furius Crassipes. Next she married the wealthy, young patrician P. Cornelius Dolabella, a known but tolerated “bad boy” of the time. Not only did Cicero and his son-in-law disagree politically, but Dolabella turned out to be a womanizing scamp, who didn’t even console his wife when their baby died shortly after childbirth. When finances and her marriage faltered, Tullia visited her father at Brundisium in 47 B.C. (Smith 1181). She died in 45 B.C., and her father never recovered from the loss of his beloved “Tulliola.”

Oh, about the chickpea: One of Cicero’s male relatives had a cleft on his nose that resembled the indentation on a chickpea – or cicer in Latin, from which the name “Cicero” originates. Despite pea pleas from well-meaning people who feared his name would impede his chances for success in law, Cicero refused to change it. (“The Roman World”)
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Cicero wrote the following letter to his family while he was in exile in Brundisium:

To Terentia, Tulliola, and Young Cicero (at Rome)Brundisium, 29 April

Yes, I do write to you less often than I might, because, though I am always wretched, yet when I write to you or read a letter from you, I am in such floods of tears that I cannot endure it. Oh, that I had clung less to life! I should at least never have known real sorrow, or not much of it, in my life. Yet if fortune has reserved for me any hope of recovering at any time any position again, I was not utterly wrong to do so: if these miseries are to be permanent, I only wish, my dear, to see you as soon as possible and to die in your arms, since neither gods, whom you have worshipped with such pure devotion, nor men, whom I have ever served, have made us any return. I have been thirteen days at Brundisium in the house of M. Lænius Flaccus, a very excellent man, who has despised the risk to his fortunes and civil existence in comparison to keeping me safe, nor has been induced by the penalty of a most iniquitous law to refuse me the rights and good offices of hospitality and friendship. May I sometime have the opportunity of repaying him! Feel gratitude I always shall. I set out from Brundisium on the 29th of April, and intend going through Macedonia to Cyzicus. What a fall! What a disaster! What can I say? Should I ask you to come—a woman of weak health and broken spirit? Should I refrain from asking you? Am I to be without you, then? I think the best course is this: if there is any hope of my restoration, stay to promote it and push the thing on: but if, as I fear, it proves hopeless, pray come to me by any means in your power. Be sure of this, that if I have you I shall not think myself wholly lost. But what is to become of my darling Tullia? You must see to that now: I can think of nothing. But certainly, however things turn out, we must do everything to promote that poor little girl’s married happiness and reputation. Again, what is my boy Cicero to do? Let him, at any rate, be ever in my bosom and in my arms. I can’t write more. A fit of weeping hinders me. I don’t know how you have got on; whether you are left in possession of anything, or have been, as I fear, entirely plundered. Piso, as you say, I hope will always be our friend. As to the manumission of the slaves you need not be uneasy. To begin with, the promise made to yours was that you would treat them according as each severally deserved. So far Orpheus has behaved well, besides him no one very markedly so. With the rest of the slaves the arrangement is that, if my property is forfeited, they should become my freedmen, supposing them to be able to maintain at law that status. But if my property remained in my ownership, they were to continue slaves, with the exception of a very few. But these are trifles. To return to your advice, that I should keep up my courage and not give up hope of recovering my position, I only wish that there were any good grounds for entertaining such a hope. As it is, when, alas! shall I get a letter from you? Who will bring it me? I would have waited for it at Brundisium, but the sailors would not allow it, being unwilling to lose a favourable wind. For the rest, put as dignified a face on the matter as you can, my dear Terentia. Our life is over: we have had our day: it is not any fault of ours that has ruined us, but our virtue. I have made no false step, except in not losing my life when I lost my honours. But since our children preferred my living, let us bear everything else, however intolerable. And yet I, who encourage you, cannot encourage myself. I have sent that faithful fellow Clodius Philhetærus home, because he was hampered with weakness of the eyes. Sallustius seems likely to outdo everybody in his attentions. Pescennius is exceedingly kind to me; and I have hopes that he will always be attentive to you. Sicca had said that he would accompany me; but he has left Brundisium. Take the greatest care of your health, and believe me that I am more affected by your distress than my own. My dear Terentia, most faithful and best of wives, and my darling little daughter, and that last hope of my race, Cicero, good-bye!

29 April, from Brundisium (Letters)
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Works Cited

Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero. Trans. E.S. Shuckburgh. New York: P.F. Collier, 1909. The Online Library of Liberty. 13 Oct. 2007. .

Smith, William. Directory of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 3: 994. The Ancient Library. 14 Oct. 2007. .

Smith, William. Directory of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 3: 1181. The Ancient Library. 14 Oct. 2007. .

“The Roman World.” Ancient Worlds. 14 Oct. 2007. .

Commentary #6 (Aristotle's Rhetoric)

Just the Facts?

“The right thing in speaking really is that we should be satisfied not to annoy our hearers, without trying to delight them: we ought in fairness to fight our case with no help beyond the bare facts: nothing, therefore, should matter except the proof of those facts.”

Have to admit that these words from Aristotle (Book III, Chapter 1) had me nodding in agreement. Yes, how neat and tidy and easy it would be for all of us (speakers and listeners) to successfully pitch and receive, respectively, only the bare facts.

Aristotle continues: “Still, as has been already said, other things affect the result considerably . . .” Yes, that’s true. After all, raw facts are often bolstered and enhanced by other elements, as basketball teams are often buoyed to victory by the wildly cheering fans surrounding them.

Now comes the painful ending to Aristotle’s previous sentence: “. . . [other things affect the result considerably,] owing to the defects of our hearers.” Two paragraphs later he adds: “Even now most uneducated people think that poetical language makes the finest discourse. That is not true: the language of prose is distinct from that of poetry.” (237). Ouch! Aristotle is blaming the failure of the speaker’s bare-facts tactic on the inadequacies of the audience!

Here’s the thing: Many years ago, I had to take a course called English Literature from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century as part of an undergraduate degree in secondary education. At the startup, neither my classmates nor I were especially thrilled with the prospect of Beowulf, Everyman, An Apology for Poetry, and other perhaps dryish readings included in the syllabus. The cause of our ennui – whether it be preconceived notions about the contents of the course or just our immaturity – doesn’t matter. What matters is that the teacher presented an argument FOR the literature that included way more than facts. This curious-looking young prof, with one pronounced eye that wandered outwardly – plus a tangle of dark, untamed waves that often flopped over his brow – plunged into our texts with vigor. Unlike Aristotle, Dr. Gallagher was not satisfied “not to annoy” his hearers. In fact, he might have wanted to “delight” them, because during each class period, that man poetically exuded life and meaning from mere words and ideas that could have easily remained dormant. He made his students true believers in the talents and worth of the likes of Christopher Marlowe when, with total absence of self-consciousness, he jumped on top of his desk to explain the importance of a specific dialogue between Dr. Faustus and Mephistopheles. Dr. Gallagher’s enthusiasm, his genuine excitement in sharing facts he had already savored, and his bigger-than-life delivery were spectacular – not to mention effective in teaching the facts.

So, as brilliant as Aristotle may have been about the subject of rhetoric, I think he could have shown more respect to options of delivery. Of course, were he here, he might remind me that the success of speaker Gallagher’s inappropriate delivery was the fault of my classmates and me – the audience – the defective, uneducated hearers.