The Extraordinary Effeminate:

The Characterization of Marcus Antonius in Cicero’s Second Philippic.

David William Andersen

DATE OF SUBMISSION

7th June 2013

A Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Classics and Ancient History

at the University of Queensland.

School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics.

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Declaration

I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted in any other form for another

degree or diploma at any other university or institute of tertiary education. Information derived from

the published or unpublished work of others has been acknowledged in the text and a list of

references is given.

I also declare that I am familiar with the rules of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and

Classics and the University of Queensland relating to the submission of this thesis.

Signature:

Date:

Estimated word count:

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Acknowledgements

To the memory of Donald Andersen, my late father, whose inquisitiveness and passion for

history still inspires me today and my mother, Ruth Andersen, whose perseverance and support

provides me with a continuing source of strength. This thesis is for you.

To my family, you know who you are, for your interest in my studies and your confidence in my

abilities.

I would particularly like to acknowledge Daej Arab, whose patience with my doubt is endless, a

good listener, and an even better friend.

To everyone else who have provided me with encouragement, guidance and criticism where

required. Shelley Day and Susan Edmondson, who have travelled the Classics curriculum with me

from the beginning, and Peers Uhlmann who both challenged me and inspired me to approach

ancient evidence in new ways. A special thank you to my supervisor, Janette McWilliam, whose

guidance was invaluable. Without you this project would never have been completed.

To anyone I have missed, thank you.

The completion of this thesis is proof that when you believe in yourself you will achieve whatever it

is that you desire.

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Abstract

Cicero’s Second Philippic has been deemed both an exercise in defamation and a brilliant

piece of oratorical invective. In this speech Cicero aimed to denigrate the character of Marcus

Antonius completely. Cicero did this by creating the picture of a man who, because of his innate

effeminacy and inability to control his vices, was the greatest moral threat ever faced by the

Republic. Cicero achieved this through the use of the oratorical device of invective, that is, the use

of stock topoi to attack the background and character of an individual. Invective in Roman oratory

was a tangible source of evidence that was vital for the success of a judicial case or political policy.

To represent the scale of threat Antony posed, Cicero used invective that largely concentrated on

Antony’s unprecedented levels of effeminacy. Drawing his account of Antony’s misconduct in his

youth, Cicero paints a thoroughly damning picture of Antony’s lifestyle. This is a portrait of

unparalleled impudicitia, incontinentia and stuprum.

This thesis provides a survey of Cicero’s use of the moral themes of sexuality and sexual

deviancy, and the private and public abuse of luxuria. It demonstrates that the Second Philippic is

the product of Cicero’s most intense use of invective in his entire know corpus of literary works.

Antony was characterized as sexually degenerate from his early youth. He is accused of youthful

prostitution and passive homosexual sex acts, practices which he carried disgracefully into

adulthood where he engaged in adultery, committed oral sex, and destroyed the pudicitia of others.

Cicero cleverly melded this theme with his second major moral theme, that of the abuse of luxuria,

through the motif of the convivia. These vivid scenes allowed Cicero to paint a thoroughly damning

picture of Antony’s private activities. Antony’s convivia were the context for intense hedonism –

wine flowed and fortunes were lost to gambling – all the while acts of stuprum were being

committed by all manner of individuals; Roman matrons, citizen youths and those suffering from

the legal stigma of infamia. Finally, Cicero catalogued the public manifestations of Antony’s

impudicitia and incontinentia through the motif of public vomiting and his attendance at a lowly

tavern. When analyzed in totality the moral themes outlined form a more damning portrait of

Antony than any previous attack Cicero had made on his great enemies.

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Table of Contents

Introduction

Outline, Background to Political Events & the Philippics 6-10

The Importance of Oratory and the Place of Morality in Roman Society 10-13

Modern Interpretations of Invective and Its Use in the Ancient World 13-21

Studies of Sexuality in the Ancient World 21-26

Aims of the Thesis 26-27

Chapter One: Sexual Misdeeds

Introduction 28-30

Effeminacy in Roman Society 30-32

The Corruption of Youth 32-39

Decline into Adulthood: Sexual Deviancy 39-43

Chapter Two: Private Parties and Public Disgrace

Introduction 44-47

The Walls as Witness 47-51

Conspicuous Consumption and Gambling 51-53

Public Disgrace 53-57

The Consequences 57-60

Conclusion: 61-63 Bibliography: 64-67

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INTRODUCTION

By… [the] power of eloquence the deceitful among mankind are brought to destruction, and the righteous to deliverance. Who more passionately than the orator can encourage virtuous conduct… can more austerely censure the wicked… whose invective can more forcibly subdue the power of lawless desire?

Cicero. De Orat. 2.35.

Sir Ronald Syme, however did not agree, commenting that the Second

Philippic ‘though technically perfect… is an exercise in petty rancour and

impudent defamation.’ 1 This reflects Syme’s view that invective was

oftentimes baseless and hollow – nothing more than a ‘political fraud’2 which

should not be believed. However, as scholars have more recently demonstrated,

invective would be a pointless device if the audience were not persuaded by its

use.3 Invective, although containing elements of defamation, was about far

more. The Second Philippic represents Cicero’s persuasive art at its best.

Cicero utilized all of his oratorical skills in this speech to persuade his audience

that Antony was a man to be feared because his character could only be classed

as dangerously effeminate. This study, through a close analysis of the Second

Philippic, will demonstrate how Cicero paints a thoroughly damning picture of

Marcus Antonius in order to convince his contemporary audience that the

future of Rome was at stake in a way that it had never been before. Although

Cicero drew upon techniques and topoi that had been long used in forensic

oratory and were characteristic of invective, he went further than anyone before

in his use of charges of deviant sexual behaviour and its associated vices of

drunkenness, gambling and the abuse of luxuria. Cicero’s purpose, in

characterising Antony as he does in the Second Philippic, was to demonstrate

that Antony was not a man of virtus. He was therefore unworthy of senatorial

support and unfit to rule Rome.

                                                                                                               1 Syme 1960: 146. 2 See Stevenson and Wilson 2008: 1-13; Syme 1960: 154. 3 Arena 2007: 150; Craig 2010: 193; Von Albrecht 2008: 83.

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Comparison will be drawn with another of Cicero’s great invectives, In

Pisonem,4 which was delivered in 54 BC against the consular senators Piso and

Gabinius.5 Although Cicero clearly set out to denigrate the characters of both

Piso and Gabinius, and indeed he uses many of the topoi that he employs in the

Second Philippic, he did not use invective so extensively because his aim was

not to demonstrate that these men posed an unprecedented moral threat to the

Republic. Rather, they were ineffectual consuls due to the incapacitating effect

of their immoral behaviour and were thus deserving of ridicule. Antony,

however, in Cicero’s view was the greatest threat yet faced by the Republic and

thus his exploitation of what were once standard topoi was unprecedented. If

indeed ‘political invective was at its best in the first century BC,’6 then the

Second Philippic is perhaps the greatest of all such speeches surviving from

antiquity.

Shortly after Caesar’s assassination on the Ides of March 44 BC,

Marcus Antonius7 who had been Julius Caesar’s magister equitum (master of

the horse) quickly stepped into the power vacuum left by Caesar’s death.

Marcus Tullius Cicero,8 one of the few consular senators remaining after the

civil wars, refrained from attending the senate and decided to leave Rome for

Greece.9 However, he decided to return to Rome on hearing the promising

news that Antony seemed to be willing to compromise with the conspirators

Brutus and Cassius. Although Cicero found when he arrived in Rome that the

situation had not improved as he had hoped, he decided to remain and await

developments anyway.10 Antony called a meeting of the senate on the first of

September and requested Cicero’s presence there. Cicero, however, did not

attend. Antony then threatened him into attending a meeting on the following

                                                                                                               4 A justification for this comparison lies with Syme who in the above quote included ‘the invectives against Piso’ as examples of the rancour and impudence of Cicero. 5 In Pisonem is an epideictic/deliberative speech in form. However, Cicero does not debate policy within it as would be expected in a deliberative speech. Rather this speech was designed specifically to denigrate the character of Piso and Gabinius and enhance Cicero’s own standing in the post reditum phase of Cicero’s career, see May 1988: 88-9; Nisbet 1961. 6 Nisbet 1961: 193. 7 Referred to throughout this thesis as ‘Antony.’ 8 Referred to throughout this this thesis as ‘Cicero.’ 9 He left on the 17th of July; Syme 1960: 139. 10 Lacey 1986: 11-2: Cicero encountered bad weather which prevented his voyage; Syme 1960: 140.

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day. It was in this meeting of the senate that Cicero delivered the First

Philippic – signalling his possible future political hostility.11 As Cicero himself

indicated, this animosity was not certain even after Antony’s reply on the 19th

of September.12 Cicero was not present in the senate on the 19th of September,

indicating that Antony published his speech after its delivery.13 In the Second

Philippic Cicero would address many of the complaints Antony made against

him, such as his supposed violation of their friendship14 and Cicero’s conduct

in his earlier career.15 Cicero’s next public speech was the Third Philippic.

Cicero delivered his Third Philippic on the 20th of December; because

he feared for his life he had waited for Antony’s departure to Gaul. In this

speech Cicero’s hostility towards Antony (and his support for C. Octavian) was

publically declared. Henceforward Antony was his inimicissimus (worst

enemy). Although the Second Philippic contains material that suggests it was

delivered on September 19th, it was only published as a political pamphlet.16

Cicero completed a draft of the Second Philippic by the 25th of October. 17 His

inclusion of contextual details and statements directed to the listening audience

were perhaps designed to lend the Second Philippic authority or to make it

appear as if Cicero had made a brave stand while Antony was actually

present.18 A ‘publishing war’ quickly developed,19 and the Second Philippic

played a prominent part in this war of words. The Second Philippic contains

the greatest use of invective of any of the Philippics, indeed, more than any

speech in Cicero’s entire extant corpus. Circulating among elite circles whilst

Cicero delivered his other speeches, the Second Philippic provided him with

another means to denigrate Antony completely. Not concerned with the

immediate political circumstances, Cicero unleashed an unrestrained attack on

                                                                                                               11 Cic. Phil. 5.19; Ker 1926: 61; Lacey 1986: 15; Stevenson and Wilson 2008: 6. 12 Cic. Phil. 1.27; Hall 2002: 275: Antony did not misunderstand; he knew the significance of the First Philippic; Powell 2007: 3; Syme 1960: 141: the First Philippic was provocative but would not have caused an irreparable animosity between them. 13 Kelly 2008: 35-6.  14 Cic. Phil. 2.7-9. 15 Cic. Phil. 2.11-19. 16 Ramsey 2003: 157. 17 Hall 2002: 275; Lacey 1986: 16. 18 Cic. Phil. 2.10, 47. 19 Kelly 2008: 38.

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Antony’s character that complimented his political arguments in the speeches

to follow.

Between 44 and 43 BC, Cicero delivered thirteen speeches and wrote

one political pamphlet; Cicero called this group the Philippics after the series

of speeches delivered by Demosthenes, the Great Athenian Orator and Cicero’s

personal role model, against Philip of Macedon. Cicero himself made a direct

comparison between these speeches and Demosthenes’ Philippics, though he

only adopted this name after a letter from M. Junius Brutus, an assassin of

Julius Caesar, and the enemy of Antony:

I am now willing to let them be called by the proud name of “Philippics,” as you jestingly suggested in one of your letters.20

Evidently the name stuck.21 Demosthenes delivered his speeches in opposition

to the great threat of tyranny posed to Athens by Philip. By naming his

speeches ‘Philippics’ Cicero made an analogy between Demosthenes’ great

stand against Philip and his own stand against Antony, a man who Cicero

characterized as an equivalent threat to the freedom of the Romans.22 Included

in the corpus are two rare examples of speeches delivered to the contio

(assembly), the Fourth and Sixth Philippics.23 Hall speculates that these were

designed to give the impression that Cicero had the people’s support.24 The

Fourth to Fourteenth were primarily concerned with developing political

events, especially that of the siege at Mutina between Antony and Decimus

Brutus, the provisioning of senatorial armies to defeat Antony, and the

allocation of the province of Macedonia to Antony’s brother.25

The Second Philippic, like all ancient oratory, was split into four main

parts, each with differing styles and themes. The exordium (introduction),

chapters 1 and 2 in the Second Philippic, subtly introduces the speaker and his                                                                                                                20 Cic. Ad Brut. 2.3.4. 21 Cic. Ad Brut. 2.4.2. 22 Kerr 1926: 3; Von Albrecht 2003: 113-4: the ‘frenetic energy of the Philippics may be derived from the direct use of Demosthenes as his model. 23 Stevenson and Wilson 2008: 6-7. 24 Hall 2002: 277.    25 Hall 2002: 275-80.

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argument. Keeping invective to a minimum, the exordium was designed to

capture the audience’s attention. The body of the speech, the tractatio or

argumentatio, is where the orator may refute the arguments of his opponent

(the refutatio) and then outline the supporting evidence for his own case (the

confirmatio).26 In the refutatio of the Second Philippic (chapters 3 to 43)

Cicero refutes Antony’s allegations made in his speech against Cicero on the

19th of September. The confirmatio saw Cicero begin his attack on Antony’s

character in earnest. Beginning in chapter 44 (and continuing till chapter 144)

Cicero clearly marks the beginning of this section of the Second Philippic:

Now, since I have answered his charges our reformer and censor [Antony] calls for some few remarks. For I shall not squander my whole store, so that, if I have to contend with him frequently, as I shall, I may still come always with something fresh: the abundance of his vices and misdoings offers liberal opportunity.27

Cicero, completing the refutatio, immediately and unrestrainedly unleashed the

full force of his invective. Finally the peroratio, the conclusion of the Second

Philippic in chapters 115 to 119, mark Cicero’s final emotional appeal to both

Antony and to his audience.28

The Importance of Oratory and the Place of Morality in Roman Society

Before examining Cicero’s characterization of Antony in the Second

Philippic, it is important to understand both the role of oratory in Roman

society, and the power and importance of moral invective. Oratory played an

integral part of the public life of the Roman elite, thus it had a central place in

the education of young men. Rome had no formal education system. Beginning

in the home at approximately the age of seven, boys and girls were taught

letters in both Greek and Latin by their parents, or more likely by

grammatici.29 At this stage children also began their education in Greek

literature and morality through the anecdotal teaching of exempla (the example

                                                                                                               26 Ramsey 2003: 60; Von Albrecht 2003: 79-82. 27 Cic. Phil. 2.43. 28 Ramsey 2003: 160; Von Albrecht 2003: 82. 29 Bonner 1949: 10-1, 14, 20-4; Corbeill 2001: 269-70.

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of illustrious historical figures). 30 Mathematics, in particular geometry,

astronomy and arithmetic were taught by Greek tutors.31 Greek tutors in

grammar, literature and mathematics first appeared in Rome in the third

century BC and by the late Republic tutors, usually of Greek origin, had

commonly replaced parents as the primary educators of young children.32 Of

particular importance to the future orator was the learning of correct Latin

grammar. As Cicero in De Oratore advised, ‘the precepts of correct Latinity…

are communicated in the education of children.’33 Training in oratory began in

earnest when young men were taught rhetoric either in the home by a rhetor or

in a rhetorical school.34

The first teachers in rhetoric became established in Rome in the late

second century BC.35 Teaching was conducted through the use of manuals,

such as the Rhetorica Ad Herrenium and Cicero’s own De Oratore. These

manuals became ‘stereotyped’ in form. They provided the rhetorical theory for

the construction of speeches and the creation of arguments. They taught the

three forms of oratory; forensic, deliberative and epideictic, and the five

components of oratory; the creation, and arrangement, of arguments, style,

memory and the actual delivery of the speech.36 These components of oratory

were practiced through declamation in the home, in rhetorical schools (in

Rome, or often in the great centres of learning in the east) and amongst friends.

In the late Republic declamation was designed to train the student in voice

modulation and elocution, and also for the creation and memorization of

arguments. Students declaimed on historical or fictional problems called

theses. They approached these from all possible perspectives, arguing for and

against the particular issue.37 The practice of declamation taught the student

oratorical ‘commonplaces’ (like invective topoi), morality and the mos

                                                                                                               30 Bonner 1977: 14, 47-55; Corbeill 2001: 269-70. 31 Bonner 1977: 77. 32 Bonner 1977: 22, 27; Corbeill 2001: 266-70. 33 Cic. De Orat. 3.13, 48. 34 Corbeill 2001: 271. 35 Bonner 1977: 68.  36 Bonner 1977: 68. 37 See Bonner 1949; 1977: 81-5.

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maiorum.38 The final stage in a student’s education was an apprenticeship of

sorts, called the tirocinium fori. The young man would join the entourage of a

prominent senator and attend the senate and the courts with him. Here they

would observe and learn by example the practice of oratory and the behaviour

expected of an elite Roman citizen.39

Cicero was the preeminent orator of the mid-first century BC and was

therefore himself a role model for students of oratory. His defence of Caelius in

Pro Caelio was partly based on the fact that Caelius had been a student of his.40

As will be seen below,41 this associated Caelius with Cicero’s positive ethos,

which allowed Cicero to claim that he indeed was both the preeminent orator

and statesman of Rome. Caelius’ ability to turn away from his youthful

immoral behaviour was due to the moral lessons that Cicero imparted to him.

Indeed, Cicero proudly claimed that youths busy with the study of oratory had

less time to pursue immoral activities. 42 This defence relies on the assumption

that good orators were good citizens. Their masculinity was confirmed through

their performance. Cicero argued that this was the reason why there were so

few good orators – a total abandonment of the good life was required to attain

mastery in oratory.43 Cicero attacked Piso for his poor oratory due to his

debilitated speech – a result of his drunkenness presumably.44 Antony perhaps

would not have become the sexual effeminate that he was if he had been

Cicero’s student.45 He was not the equal of his grandfather, the orator M.

Antonius, who was one of Cicero’s oratorical heroes and an interlocutor in the

De Oratore.46 Antony had not only failed to follow in the footsteps of a family

role model, he had failed to follow the guidance of a good teacher; so despite

his public role in the senate, he could not prove his good character through his

command of oratory.                                                                                                                38 See Corbeill 2007 for an interesting argument for the ‘replication’ of Roman morality through declamation. 39 Bonner 1977: 84; Corbeill 2007: 71. 40 Cic. Cael. 9. 41 See page 32. 42 Cic. Cael. 45-7.    43 Gunderson 2000: 6-8, 87: ‘good manliness and performative authority are a mutually reinforcing dyad.’ 44 Cic. Pis. 1. 45 Cic. Phil. 2.4-6. 46 Cic. Phil. 2.44, 111.

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The word ‘invective’ is derived from the verb invehi (‘to ride into the

attack’), which according to Powell was not used in reference to invective until

Ammianus Marcellinus in the fourth century AD.47 Rather, what today would

be called ‘invective’ was considered a part of the rhetoric of laus (praise) and

vituperatio (blame), from where the term ‘vituperation’ is derived.48 Both were

often used for contrast, enemies were to be condemned and friends, who acted

as positive foils, were praised. Laus and vituperatio featured in all forms of

oratory, thus the deliberative oratory of politics, forensic oratory of the law

court and panegyric. Cicero identified the importance of praise and blame in

his treatise on oratory, De Oratore:

A potent factor in success, then, is for the characters, principles, conduct and course of life, both of those who are to plead cases and of their clients, to be approved, and conversely those of their opponents condemned.49

The character of the opponent, therefore, was established through the use of

vituperatio, which drew on a range of stock topoi. These included but were not

restricted to: family background and origins, bankruptcy and the squandering

of patrimony, appearance, avarice, cowardice, sex and lust, drunkenness and

luxuria.50 Thus the ethos of elite individuals in Roman society could be

degraded through the use of moral criticism, and conversely, the speaker would

reinforce his own ethos through moral praise. Ethos provided authority to the

speaker. It acted as a sort of ‘proof’ for the orator’s claims against his

opponent. In the courts it was a ‘fact’ of the case.51

Ethos was one part of the persuasive edge provided by invective; the

other was that it played on the prejudices and fears of the audience. Morality,

as will be discussed below,52 ensured the continuity of the state through the

viability of its citizens. Moral virtues such as virtus, pudicitia and continentia

                                                                                                               47 Powell 2007: 2. 48 Arena 2007: 149; Corbeill 2002: 199-200. 49 Cic. De Orat. 2.182.    50 Craig 2010: 189-90; Nisbet 1961: 193-97. 51 Cic. De Orat. 2.178-85, 2.333: speakers delivering deliberative oratory have to have a strong character; Arena 2007: 153; May 1988: 1-11. 52 See page 28.

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enabled citizens to serve the state and ensured the pax deorum, the peace of the

gods.53 Therefore morality was central to the security of the state. Those who

did not follow this code of conduct were considered tangible threats. Oratorical

invective provided a means by which the elite reinforced these values and

ensured the compliance of its members. Those who deviated could be branded

as immoral; the consequences of immorality were humiliation and ostracism

from the community, at least ideally.54 What was important was not necessarily

that an individual followed the moral code in private, but that they ‘appeared’

to do so.55 Thus even the rumour of misconduct was enough to throw an

individual into doubt with his peers. This made it necessary to display moral

purity publically. A series of visual indicators existed by which an individual

may unintentionally express his or her immorality. This was an imperfect

system however, and was therefore open both to doubt and manipulation.56

Rome did not have laws governing libel,57 so an orator was free to use inventio

(invention) to elaborate vividly on events that members of the audience would

not have seen. Therefore Cicero could indulge in the ‘devising of matter, true

or plausible, that would make [his] case convincing.’58 Thus Cicero provides

details such as Antony’s youthful sexual exploits59 and the private dinner

parties that he held within his home.60 In both forensic and political oratory,

invective served the immediate purpose of persuasion.

Modern Interpretations of Invective and Its Use in the Ancient World

Invective was of vital importance in Roman oratory; it was a persuasive

device designed to manipulate the audience’s emotions positively towards the

speaker and his cause. This effect was called pathos.61 Pathos could be evoked

through dress, behaviour and manner of speaking. Cicero thus advises the

                                                                                                               53 Langlands 2006: 50. 54Arena 2007: 149; Corbeill 1996: 13-14, 19; 2002: 213; Pitcher 2008: 131.  55 Williams 2010: 18. 56 Langlands 2006: 38, 65-72. 57 Syme 1960: 149. 58 Rhet. Her. 1.3. 59 Cic. Phil. 2.44-7. 60 Cic. Phil. 2.65-9. 61 May 1988: 2.

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orator in training that he should ‘be wrathful, indignant and tearful.’62 For the

orator:

Excites and urges the feelings of the tribunal [or senate, or readership] towards hatred or love, ill-will or well-wishing, fear or hope, desire or aversion, joy or sorrow, compassion or the wish to punish.63

Likewise the anonymous author of Rhetorica Ad Herrenium lists four strategies

for persuading the audience: focus on the speaker through praise, on the

opponent through criticism of faults, on the audience through praise or on the

facts.64 Cicero’s strategy in the Second Philippic was primarily the second of

these four methods. However, Cicero had to be careful in his use of invective

as it could easily backfire on any orator, including himself. Cicero cautions his

opponent Arratinus in Pro Caelio not to use invective that may backfire on

himself or his case:

[Do not] bring charges against another which you would blush to hear brought falsely against yourself… who is there who cannot make some scandalous attack… even if with no ground for suspicion, yet not without some basis of accusation?65

Cicero would proceed to undermine his opponents in this case by rebounding

their invective against Clodia. The style of delivery and the invective topoi

utilized were therefore carefully tailored to suit the individual needs of each

case. Although the invective used was traditional, its effectiveness lay in its

adaptation to the needs of the particular case at hand.66

Syme noted famously in The Roman Revolution that ‘vice and

corruption in the last age of the Republic are embodied in types as perfect as

their kind… for the evil and the good are both the fabrication of skilled literary

artists.67’ As already stated above, Syme dismissed invective as nothing more

                                                                                                               62 Cic. De Orat. 2.196. 63 Cic. De Orat. 2.185. 64 Rhet. Her. 1.8 65 Cic. Cael. 8.  66 Langlands 2006: 298. 67 Syme 1960: 149.

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than hollow abuse, founded on stereotypes and often disbelieved. Syme’s

chapter on invective is called Political Catchwords, revealing Syme’s

dismissive attitude. To Syme, Cicero’s political about-faces revealed the

frivolous nature of invective – it oftentimes had no long-term effects nor

necessarily created permanent enmities. Nisbet, following from Syme in his

seminal commentary on In Pisonem, argued that literary standards and

expectations were the important factor which determined whether invective

should be included in oratory, not its veracity or plausibility. Invective had

other positive results; it entertained the audience and humiliated the target and

his supporters.68 Nisbet divided the topoi of invective into three categories:

external factors such as family background and appearance, morality, and the

use of abusive vocabulary.69 Adams in his Latin Sexual Vocabulary extensively

studied Nisbet’s third category, focusing specifically on the nuances of sexual

language in Latin language and literature.70

Corbeill, on the other hand, argued that the views of Syme and Nisbet

reflect Christian ethical biases towards such abuse.71 Although they were

correct in highlighting the literary nature of invective, they nonetheless reduced

its importance in political discourse. Crucially Corbeill identified that it would

have been absurd for Roman jurors and senators to make important judicial and

political decisions based on what they knew to be a lie. Invective, therefore,

had to be plausible to be effective.72 Elaborating on this argument in the Brill’s

Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, Corbeill points out that the elite

had a vested interest in representing itself as a virtuous body. Therefore it took

all accusations of immorality seriously. If an individual was deemed guilty, the

consequences could be dire.73 This argument, contra Syme, that invective

actually had tangible effects on the standing of politicians within the

community, is an important assumption in this study. Invective served to

exclude the target with the aim to make him an outsider within the senatorial

order. Arena arguing along the same lines as Corbeill, states that:                                                                                                                68 Nisbet 1961: 197. 69 Nisbet 1961: 194-6. 70 Adams 1982. 71 Corbeill 1996: 23-4.  72 Corbeill 1996: 5; 1997: 100. 73 Corbeill 2002: 203-4.

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Invective… is a literary genre whose goal is to denigrate publically a known individual against the background of ethical societal preconceptions, to the end of isolating him… from the community.74

Powell somewhat modified this view by arguing that, in fact, invective served

to make individuals ‘deviant members within the in-group.75’

Arena’s claim that ‘invective… is a literary genre’ is contested by

several modern scholars. She considers three speeches to be representative of

this ‘genre’ in the strictest sense, In Vatinium, In Pisonem and the Second

Philippic. However, she argues that the definition of invective should be

extended to consider any speech that features it.76 Booth’s collaborative series

of essays entitled Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the

Orations and Beyond provides many approaches to invective in Cicero. Powell

classified invective as a literary genre, although it was not identified as such in

ancient rhetorical theory.77 Based on his criteria, both the Second Philippic and

In Pisonem would be regarded as ‘invective speeches.’ Seager and Uria agree

with Arena on the expansion of the definition of invective but disagree with

both Arena and Powell’s assertion that invective is an identifiable genre.78

Rather, they argue that invective is ‘any element of a speech act which has the

aim of denigrating a named individual.’79 Nonetheless, some speeches, such as

In Pisonem, seem to be primarily vehicles of character assassination, as

opposed to what may otherwise be called ‘denunciation.’80 However this

argument is in essence a modern one; the Romans did not question whether

invective was a literary genre in its own right. Rather, they saw it as an

essential component of any persuasive speech. Thus according to Cicero:

… for purposes of persuasion the art of speaking relies wholly upon three things: the proof of our allegations, the winning of our

                                                                                                               74 Arena 2007: 149. 75 Powell 2007: 20. 76 Arena 2007: 150, 158.    77 Rather it was regarded as a persuasive tool to be utilized in the three branches of oratory: deliberative, epideictic and forensic oratory. 78 Seager 2007: 25; Uria 2007. 79 Uria 2007: 48. 80 Powell 2007: 2.

  18

hearers’ favour, and the rousing of their feelings to whatever impulse our case may require.81

All three could be achieved through invective making it a central component in

ancient oratory no matter what the form.

Craig argued convincingly that although Cicero’s audience would have

expected to hear invective in his speeches this did not impact upon its

plausibility. He identified seventeen invective topoi that he referred to as

‘practical loci.’82 Applying this model to In Pisonem and the Second Philippic

he determined that each utilized thirteen and fifteen ‘loci’ of invective

respectively. Indeed, the lack of invective in a speech could arouse suspicion as

Cicero pointed out in Pro Fonteio.83 Arena, however, prefers the three broad

categories of invective provided by ancient rhetorical theory: ‘external

circumstances,’ ‘physical attributes’ and ‘virtutes animi’ (character). Arena

argued that in Roman rhetorical theory invective was any persuasive attack

made on an opponent. Therefore any attempt to classify invective outside of

ancient rhetorical theory is anachronistic. The loci selected for invective say far

more about the prejudices of Roman society than it does about the actual

character, or activities, of an elite individual (that is not to say that the charge

itself was untrue). What seems undeniable today is that the use of stereotypical

and even predictable topoi did not mean that the rhetoric of praise and blame

was not believed. After all character per se was a fact of the case at hand.

James May investigated the importance of ethos in Cicero’s oratory in

Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos. Splitting Cicero’s

career (and his book) into four distinct periods, Cicero’s early career, consular

period, post reditum and his final years, May argues that Cicero’s oratory

consistently expresses his desire to establish an ethos of dignitas, auctoritas

and existimatio. This was a particularly difficult task for a novus homo with

little military ability.84 The orator’s ethos was vital to his persuasive power as it

                                                                                                               81 Cic. De Orat. 2.115. 82 Craig 2010: 190. 83 Craig 2010: 193.    84 May 1988: 7-10.

  19

too was a source of ‘proof,’ or authority. Of greatest importance to this study is

May’s argument that Cicero’s speeches from Post Reditum onwards were

characterized by his attempts to recreate his ethos after the exile in 58 BC.85

Both In Pisonem and the Second Philippic derive from this phase of Cicero’s

career. Focusing particularly on the Third and Twelfth Philippics, May shows

that ethos is most prevalent in the Philippics out of all his oratorical works.86

The Philippics were the stage for two great characters, Cicero and Antony:

A conflict between two characters writ large: Antony, who personifies the forces of despotism, madness, evil, darkness, hostility and inhumanity: and Cicero who represents constitutionality, the Republic, and the forces of tradition, goodness and right.87

Riggsby further develops May’s ideas on the importance of ethos, showing

how Cicero uses the rhetorical device called ‘resonance.’ Resonance is ‘the

repetition of a proposition, image, or argument, which makes each individual

occurrence more credible by virtue of familiarity.’88 This rhetorical device

allows Cicero to ‘compress’ history into four key episodes: the conspiracy of

Catiline in 63 BC, the Bona Dea scandal in 61, Cicero’s exile in 58 and

consequent return in 57.89 Although Riggsby focused on the Post Reditum

phase of Cicero’s career, his self-representation still relies on resonance in the

Philippics.

Von Albrecht in Cicero’s Style a Synopsis demonstrates that Cicero’s

aims fundamentally affected his style in each speech. He was not simply

responding to literary expectations. Through the study of selected Ciceronian

works, including the De Oratore, Von Albrecht demonstrates that Cicero

adhered to no particular oratorical style, rather he combined the two prevailing

oratorical styles prevalent at the time, the ‘Attic’ and ‘Asiatic’ styles. Cicero

was ‘an eclectic who [relied] on his sense of appropriateness rather than on

                                                                                                               85 May 1988: 89. 86 May 1988: 128-149. 87 May 1988: 149.    88 Riggsby 2002: 166. 89 Riggsby 2002: 165.

  20

doctrines.’90 Cicero’s style was influenced fundamentally by considerations of

his audience, persuasive goals, extent of elaboration and rhetorical theory.91

May similarly argues that Cicero’s oratory was influenced to a considerable

degree by the context of his speeches. His audience expected to be persuaded

through the utilization of both ethos and pathos, and they also expected the

speech to entertain.92 Thus May argues that, as oratory was persuasive then

naturally the orator utilizes persuasive strategies that would best persuade

them. The persuasive power of invective is confirmed by the frequency of its

use in ancient oratory.93

Hall studied the context of the Philippics, and the oratorical strategies

that Cicero employed within them, in his contribution to Brills Companion to

Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric. Hall identifies that the Philippics are an

example of the ‘disjunctive mode’ of rhetoric where Cicero presents two

choices, only one of which was possible. Either the Senate supported Cicero,

the Republic and the side of righteousness, or they supported Antony and thus

the destruction of the Republic and the enslavement of the Roman people.94

This is Cicero’s ‘rhetoric of crisis’ and was a vital part of his persuasive

strategy:

The situation was not one that called for nuanced argument. Civil war was a drastic step to take, and Cicero’s demonization of Antony was crucial to his persuasive strategy.95

Another important persuasive strategy used by Cicero is the use of ‘wit and

ridicule’ to demean Antony personally and politically. Hall identifies this as a

particular strategy of the Second Philippic, ‘the principle aim is to characterize

Antony not as dangerous but as ridiculous.’ 96 Through repeated attacks

                                                                                                               90 Von Albrecht 2008: 127. 91 Von Albrecht 2008: 161. 92 May 2002: 49-70. 93 May 2002: 64.    94 Hall 2002: 283-87. 95 Hall 2002: 287. 96 Hall 2002: 288.

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concerning Antony’s drunkenness, stupidity and sexual effeminacy, Cicero

created a ‘comic caricature.’97

Studies of Sexuality in the Ancient World

Foucault’s seminal work on sexuality: The History of Sexuality is vital

for any study of historical sexualities. One of his most important observations

was that sexuality is a social phenomenon; it is not static in time, nor is it

‘natural.’98 Foucault helped open the way for serious scholarship into historical

same sex attraction and societal attitudes towards it. Roman perceptions of sex

and sexuality were vastly different to modern sexual ideology, and

furthermore, due to the expanse of Roman history, these perceptions changed

over the course of time. Foucault identified that the idea of the Care of the Self

developed in the Imperial period. Consequently this is the name of his third

volume.99 However, it is striking that Foucault ignored both the Republic and

Roman sexuality in favour of a focus on the period of the Principate and Greek

literature and philosophy during this period. To Foucault, the Romans simply

were not concerned with sex, and therefore he turned to Greek literature. In

recent years scholars have discredited this idea, identifying that Foucault

simply failed ‘to engage with the ironies and ambiguities’ of Roman discourse

on sex.100 He looked at philosophy where he should have looked at oratory. Yet

Roman oratory provides fertile ground for the interpretation of sexual ethics.

Richlin, for example, disagrees with Foucault’s assertion that different sex acts

were not distinguished in Roman thought. Whereas Foucault argued against the

existence of a ‘homosexual’ sexual category in the ancient world, Richlin

attempts to identify the existence of a similarly prejudiced subculture in Rome.

She calls this culture a ‘passive homosexual subculture.’ 101 Individuals

associated with this subculture received moral censure and social

stigmatization like their modern counterparts. She associates the passive

                                                                                                               97 Hall 2002: 288-90. 98 See Foucault’s first book in the series The History of Sexuality Volume One in which Foucault traces modern notions of homo and heterosexuality to the Victorian period; Skinner 1997: 6. 99 Foucault 1981.  100 Gunderson 2000: 23; see also Langlands 2006: 1; Williams: 2010. 101 Richlin 1993: 543.

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partner in homosexual sexual acts with a modern ‘homosexual’ and the ancient

notion of the cinaedus. She does not confirm whether the cinaedus existed or

whether it was a literary construct – she does not have to, simply because the

cinaedus was the antithesis of everything a Roman citizen ought to be.102 The

Roman homosexual was the man who actively sought out dominant partners in

anal sex. Richlin’s hypothesis for the existence of a ‘passive homosexual

subculture,’ and Cantarella’s argument for the prevalence of bisexuality in

Bisexuality in the Ancient World are based on the underlying assumption that in

Roman sexual thought the citizen male’s ideal role in sex was to dominate, not

be dominated, to be the ‘active’ penetrator not the ‘passive’ penetrated

individual. Penetrated individuals in Roman society were supposed to be of a

lower status. The act was associated with femininity and servility.103

Craig Williams, in his book Roman Homosexuality, called this the

‘Priapic Model’ of Roman sexuality.104 This model is useful for this study as it

helps modern audiences to understand the Roman conceptual framework

concerning sex. Somewhat ironically, considering the title of his book,

Williams argued (with Foucault and contrary to Richlin and Canatarella) that

there was no homosexual subculture in Rome. Williams argues convincingly

that to the Romans the gender of the partner was not of primary concern, rather

it was the particular sexual act and the respective status of the partners that was

the focus of sexual moralizing.105 Williams argued (contra Richlin and to some

extent following Cantarella) that there was no ‘passive homosexual subculture’

as individuals were not stereotyped based upon their gender preference but

only for their role in sexual acts. The social and legal prejudice towards cinaedi

was in appearances similar to social and legal stigma experienced by the

modern ‘homosexual’ but for different reasons.106

Parker, in his contribution to Roman Sexualities, built on the ‘Priapic

Model’ of Roman sexuality through what he called the ‘Teratogenic Grid.’ His                                                                                                                102 Richlin 1993: 548-50. 103 Cantarella 1992: 97-103; Richlin 1993: 533-38; see Skinner 1997: 11; also Williams 2010: 7. 104 Williams 2010: 18.  105 Williams 2010: 13-32, 137, 145-56. 106 Williams 2010: 232-8.

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model is based on Latin vocabulary concerned with sexual acts. Parker

identified that all sexual activity was ultimately drawn back to action of the

penis.107 The sexual activity of women and men who engage passively in sex

was always in the passive mood. Thus patior was ‘to endure/suffer’ and is used

in the context of feminine sexual activity (that is, being penetrated).

Vocabulary concerned with oral sex identify that the recipient was considered

the active partner. Therefore Parker identifies that cunnilingus was the most

reviled of all sexual acts as the woman in this context was the active, and

therefore dominant partner.

Walters elaborated on the argument that masculine impenetrability was

about individual status. In fact, to Walters status was defined by violability or

inviolability of the body to sexual advances.108 The bodies of male citizens

were inviolate – therefore freeborn men were illegitimate sexual objects.

Women and children were legitimate sexual targets according to this ideology,

but were protected by law from sexual advances. Those of low status were

without bodily sacrosanctity. The ‘lack of autonomy on the corporeal level…

[the] availability of the body for invasive assaults… characterized the status of

slavery.’109 To the Romans, ‘sex… [was] a one way street, something one

person does to another.’110 The man penetrates, and the woman or slave is

penetrated. This meant that male children and youths were in a ‘liminal’ state

and were therefore particularly vulnerable to sexual advances of older men.111

Langlands’ seminal work, Sexual Morality in Ancient Rome, focuses

exclusively on the sexual virtue pudicitia. Langlands aimed to free the study of

Roman sexuality from the ‘phallicly centered’ studies of the like of Richlin and

Williams. This, according to Langlands, allows her to see nuances in Roman

sexual ideology that are obstructed by the Priapic Model. Langlands derived

the majority of her evidence from ‘social’ literature – that is comedy, elegy,

                                                                                                               107 Parker 1997: 48. 108 Walters 1997: 37-9. 109 Walters 1997: 39. 110 Walters 1997: 30.    111 Walters 1997: 33.

  24

satire and oratory.112 Her chapters are organized along the particular author or

type of source material used. Thus she devotes a chapter to Cicero in particular:

Chapter six, Sexual Virtue on Display II: Oratory and the speeches of Cicero.

Pudicitia plays a central role in the creation of ethos in Cicero’s literature. In

what Langlands calls his ‘rhetoric of virtue’ Cicero and his supporters or

clients were pudici – that is, their pudicitia was unblemished. His enemies

therefore regularly lack pudicitia.113 As Langlands observes, ‘the accusation

that a man did not possess pudicitia was therefore an assault on his very fitness

as a citizen and it was liberally thrown about in ancient roman oratory.’114 To

Cicero, pudicitia was an oratorical weapon that he wielded against all of his

enemies.

Pudicitia protected all members of the citizen body. However, it was

particularly concerned with the protection of those groups regarded vulnerable

to sexual assault – women, children and youths.115 Langlands argues that

pudicitia stands alone from the other moral virtues associated with self-control

(like continentia) as it was concerned exclusively with sex. Pudicitia was a

virtue that, somewhat ironically, had to be publically displayed through

behavioural signs like fashion and mannerism.116 It was a virtue that ensured

the stability of the state and the viability of the citizen body. It was, therefore,

one of the most important personal virtues. It was a ‘pseudo-commodity,’ one

that had to be cherished and protected. 117 Thus Cicero’s enemies were

characterized as lacking pudicitia and therefore presented as tangible threats to

the Republic. This, as shall be seen, was fundamental in Cicero’s

characterization of his enemies, be they Clodia, Gabinius, or Antony himself.

Edwards’ fundamental work The Politics of Immorality in Ancient

Rome provides an overview of the workings of moralizing in the Roman state

and thus has a broad view of many different moral themes. Edwards

demonstrates how in Roman moralizing thought all forms of immorality were                                                                                                                112 Langlands 2006: 1-7. 113 Langlands 2006: 281-3. 114 Langlands 2006: 284. 115 Langlands 2006: 23. 116 Langlands 2006: 37-8, 65-72.    117 Langlands 2006: 31-2.

  25

intimately associated, they were ‘cognate vices.’ If an individual lacked self-

control in one area, he or she was automatically assumed to lack self-control in

other ways. Ultimately vice in any one area was associated with unseen sexual

effeminacy.118 Furthermore desire in any area, be it sexual or material, often

resulted in desire for tyrannical power.119 As her title suggests, Edwards

demonstrates that morality was a politicized discourse – morality, through

oratorical invective, defined and reinforced the correct behaviour of the elite.

In her chapter ‘Mollitia: Reading the Body,’ Edwards explores how mollitia

was regarded as the primary outcome of sexual effeminacy, and that mollitia

was ‘read’ through a sequence of visual cues. These cues were, for example,

over consciousness of fashion, excessive depilation and the use of perfumes,

and mannerism. Visual cues such as those that allowed the orator to accuse

opponents of sexual effeminacy, underlined the importance of the physical

representation of pudicitia.120

Corbeill demonstrates how these ‘cognate vices’ were brought together

in moralizing discourse in the context of the banquet. In these scenes the

opponent engaged in excessive drinking, gambling and other forms of luxury at

the same time. Acts of sexual degeneracy occurred in these parties, be it the

effeminate occupation of dancing, or the sexual corruption of others. 121

Crucially to this study, Corbeill emphasizes how oratorical accounts of

banquets were a particularly fertile motif for invective, encouraging the

audience to imagine that what was suggested could indeed take place at these

banquets.122 Wallace-Hadrill devoted two chapters to the study of luxuria in

Rome’s Cultural Revolution. Wallace-Hadrill argues that luxury was such a

moral concern to Roman writers because of the socially destabilizing effect it

was seen to have. The ‘purchase of luxuries was seen as aspiration to social

status in a hierarchically ordered society, and the objections to the phenomenon

lay in the perceived challenge to the hierarchy.’123 The primary focus of

moralizing discourse concerning luxury was the banquet, particularly that of                                                                                                                118 Edwards 1993: 5. 119 Edwards 1993: 92. 120 Langlands 2006. 121 Corbeill 1997: 100-103.    122 Corbeill 1997: 123. 123 Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 323.

  26

the dinner table. Wallace Hadrill agrees with Corbeill that the main attraction

to the orator in these scenes was bound up in the narrative possibilities offered

by the motif of the banquet.124 Edwards, on the other hand, analyses the status

of those branded with the social and legal disability of infamia.125 She observes

that in Roman thought the ‘selling’ of the body on the stage or in the arena was

associated with the act of selling the body for sexual purposes.126 As shall be

seen in the following chapters, these individuals were frequent attendees at

these oratorical banquets.

Aims of the thesis

This study will demonstrate how Cicero characterized Antony as the

worst possible form of effeminate man imaginable. Through his use of

invective focussing on the moral themes of sex, drunkenness and other forms

of luxury, Cicero demeaned Antony completely. Chapter One, ‘Sexual

Misdeeds’, analyses Cicero’s sexual characterization of Antony. Four key

themes stand out: his youthful exploits as a prostitute, his youthful relationship

with C. Scribonius Curio, his adulterous affairs in adulthood and charges of

oral sex. Comparison will be drawn with Pro Caelio, where Cicero

successfully defended charges against Caelius’ apparent sexual immorality by

claiming that ‘boys will be boys.’ The real blame lay with Clodia who was

little better than a prostitute. Comparison will also be drawn with In Pisonem,

where Gabinius is characterized as a sexually effeminate man. What is

immediately clear from this comparison is that the invective in In Pisonem

does not come close to matching the intensity of that found in the Second

Philippic. An entirely negative portrayal of Antony’s sexual history from the

very beginning is revealed. Antony was an unprecedentedly effeminate man

and was therefore entirely unfit to rule Rome.

Chapter two, ‘Private Parties and Public Disgrace,’ explores Cicero’s

narrative art is at its best. Bringing together the worst of Roman vices in the

                                                                                                               124 Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 337-8. 125 Edwards 1997. 126 Edwards 1997: 85.  

  27

context of drinking parties, Cicero paints particularly lurid scenes of

overflowing wine, gambling losses, looting and the sexual corruption of the

most vulnerable in Roman society – matrons and youths. Antony’s inability to

perform his duties as magister equitum due to insobriety provided visual proof

of Cicero’s claims. These themes were central to Cicero’s persuasive strategy;

they acted as proof of his assertions that Antony was unfit to rule Rome. The

parties held within the homes of illustrious men, Antony’s retinue of infames

(particularly pimps and actors) and Antony vomiting in public were key themes

in the Second Philippic. What emerges is an intricate web of accusations, each

of which reinforce the other. Antony’s sexual corruption from youth set him on

an immoral course that worsened with the passing of every year. Cicero’s

portrayal of Antony is both intricate and shocking, and therein lays its

power.127

                                                                                                               127  Previously the Second Philippic has been used as evidence in more general studies of the use of invective in ancient oratory. The lack of a good biography on Antony (and his vices) and also of a detailed analysis of Cicero’s use of invective as a means of characterization in this speech is justification for the present study.    

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CHAPTER ONE

Sexual Misdeeds

In Roman thought, men and women who were upstanding citizens

followed a socially and culturally determined moral code of behaviour.128

Good citizens were expected to exhibit individual virtus, pudicitia and

continentia. Men and women who failed to exhibit these virtues were often

accused, particularly in moralizing literature, of engaging in deviant sexual

behaviour. Such individuals were likely to be repeat offenders, and their

behaviour also potentially corrupted those around them. Although this genre of

topoi was not novel, particularly in forensic oratory and invective, this chapter

will demonstrate that, in the Second Philippic in particular,129 it was used by

Cicero in a way he had never done before because his aim was to denigrate the

character of Antony completely. He was thus accused of, for example, a

youthful romance with C. Scribonius Curio, incest, multiple counts of adultery,

and even oral sex. This chapter examines the specific Latin terminology, the

oratorical techniques, and the particular topoi used by Cicero in the Second

Philippic to demonstrate that Antony was the most deplorable type of sexual

deviant because his behaviour was unprecedented. Comparisons will be drawn

with Cicero’s characterization of Piso and Gabinius in In Pisonem. Although

Cicero created a very hostile portrait of the two men, he only utilized the topos

of sexual effeminacy infrequently, and most directly, against Gabinius.

Charges of sexual effeminacy were fundamental to Cicero’s attack in the

Second Philippic, an attack designed to present Antony as the greatest threat

imaginable to the Republic. The intensity of this invective matches his aim.

Antony, therefore, was totally unsuitable for a position of power in the Roman

state.

Roman sexual morality was exemplified by two particular and powerful

terms, pudicitia and stuprum. Both were moral terms that are difficult to

translate accurately into English because of the wide range of applications each

                                                                                                               128 Edwards 1993: 5. 129 Comparisons will be drawn from Cicero’s earlier invective In Pisonem, the forensic speech Pro Caelio and The Thirteenth Philippic.

  29

word had in Roman society. Langlands identifies that any translation of

pudicitia captures a part of the meaning of the word only. Pudicitia was the

Roman sexual virtue referring broadly to both sexual ‘modesty’ and also sexual

‘integrity’.130 Pudicitia was the core civic virtue concerned entirely with sexual

purity. Stuprum, on the other hand, refers to a variety of sexually inappropriate

acts and is defined by Lewis and Short as ‘defilement, dishonor, disgrace’.131

Oftentimes it is simply translated ‘debauchery. 132 ‘Stuprum… blur[s] the

distinction between the legal and the moral. [It] falls somewhere in between

“illicit intercourse” and “fornication.”’ 133 Cicero concluded his narrative

concerning Antony’s youthful sexual misdeeds by collectively referring to

them as stupra within an instance of praeteritio ‘passing over’:

Let us pass over his debaucheries (stupra) and outrages; those things which I am not able to say decently. 134

In this way Cicero vividly summed up his narrative in chapters 44 to 46 with

the implication that he has only narrated a fraction (the least distasteful part) of

the story. The driving force behind stuprum was libido (lust). Although libido

was the driving force behind most vices, it retained particularly sexual

overtones.135 So pudicitia was assaulted by libido through acts of stuprum.

Stuprum put the individual into the state of impudicitia (without pudicitia). An

individual whose pudicitia has been destroyed by stuprum was an impudicus -

Antony is so described in the Second Philippic from the outset.136 Sexual

inviolability, that is pudicitia, was a core moral value and a basic right of the

Roman citizen.

                                                                                                               130 Langlands 2006: 21; Cantarella 1992: 16 translates pudicitia as ‘virginity.’ This is a misleading translation; in many contexts pudicitia refers to sexually appropriate behaviour not abstinence from sex altogether, see Langlands 2006: 30-32 for her extended definition of the concept; Williams 2010: 191-212. 131 The Oxford Classical Dictionary translates stuprum as ‘dishonour, shame; illicit sexual intercourse, rape.’ 132 See Ker’s (1926) translation, for example Cic. Phil. 3.15; Williams 2010: 103-5. 133 Williams 2010: 104. 134 Cic. Phil. 2.47. 135 Adams 1982: 188. 136 Cic. Phil 2.70, cf. 3.12.

  30

Stuprum and pudicitia were matters of status – slaves and the freed

were excluded from the protection of this moral code. A master could use the

body of a slave in any way he desired without fear of consequence, unless the

activity he engaged in with his own body was a taboo.137 The impudicitia of

slaves provided a useful metaphor that Cicero exploits in the Second Philippic.

He thus takes great pleasure in describing Antony’s life, which ‘from a boy

showed [that he] would submit to anything, and would easily be a slave.’138

Citizen youths and men who were penetrated sexually lost their pudicitia.139

For citizen women, any sexual activity outside of marriage was considered

adulterium (adultery), be that with citizen, slave or the freed person. Therefore

any sexual activity outside of marriage for a woman was considered a form of

stuprum.140 Pudicitia distinguished those who were Roman citizens from those

who were not. It was tied inherently to social stability and the security of the

state, even with the pax deorum. 141 Thus those officially recognized as

impudici suffered from infamia, the highest form of dishonour possible, which

also entailed the loss of their citizen rights.142 By alleging that Antony was an

inpudicus from boyhood, Cicero throws into doubt Antony’s status as a citizen

and a vir (man).

Effeminacy in Roman Society

In Roman society, gender and sexuality were not simply biologically

constructed; to be a vir in Roman society meant far more than the possession of

appropriate genitalia. A vir, especially one worthy of senatorial status, had to

possess virtus. Virtus, another broad moral quality, covered everything from

military virtue and courage and was dependent on what Foucault called ‘the

care of the self,’143 that is continentia, self-control or restraint. Continentia

                                                                                                               137 Cantarella 1992: 99; Langlands 2006: 22 argues that this is not certain; Walters 1997: 39; Williams 2010: 31-2, 107. 138 Cic. Phil. 2.86: qui ita a puero vixeras, ut omnia paterere, ut facile servires. 139 Williams 2010: 191. 140  Richlin 1993: 533; Williams 2010: 103-22, 123.  141 Langlands 2006: 50. Pudicitia was a concern for many divinities and was a personified goddess in its own right. 142 See page 52; Langlands 2006: 18-21. 143 Foucault 1981; Gunderson 2000: 7; Syme 1960: 157: ‘Virtus itself stands at the peak of the hierarchy’ of virtue; Williams 2010: 137, 145-53.

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governed all aspects of personal behaviour and deportment including sexual

behaviour, consumptive habits and personal grooming.144 In terms of sex, men

were expected to conduct themselves in accordance with a moral code that has

caused much debate amongst scholars because it is one that often sits

uncomfortably with modern ideologies and beliefs. This moral code has been

described through a model called the ‘Priapic Model’ of Roman sexuality by

some scholars.145 The Priapic Model is useful because it helps modern

audiences contextualise and understand how Roman sexual behaviour was

presented in Roman literature, forensic speeches, and in specially crafted works

for ‘public’ consumption such as the Second Philippic. According to the

Priapic model, the ideological role of the vir was to assert his sexual virtus by

always assuming a position of dominance. Metaphorically, a respectable vir

was therefore presented as a figure expected to penetrate those around him.

Appearances were of utmost importance – the vir had to appear like an

‘impenetrable penetrator’ irrespective of the truth. 146 Those who participated in

anal sex (and also oral sex) ‘passively’ (those who were penetrated by their

partners) risked being labelled effeminate. Effeminate men were effeminata

(effeminate), mulierbris (womanish) or molles (soft).147 The result of this was

mollitia (softness of the soul or of the body) - the man became inertia (inert),

enervis (enervated), and delicatus (soft). Effeminate men did not possess virtus

and therefore were unfit to serve Rome. Cicero, as will be discussed below,

hammers this point home about Antony particularly in the sections of the

Second Philippic that accused him of unmanly behaviour.

For a man to be deemed an ideal vir in the Late Republic he needed to

demonstrate overall self-control; charges of effeminacy, which more often than

not were always linked to unmanly sexual acts resulting in the loss of pudicitia,

could be made against individuals who succumbed to the temptations of

luxuria. This included excessive consumption of food and wine, gambling,

whoring and bodily grooming. The loss of patrimony to these vices received

                                                                                                               144 These categories form the core of much of the invective topoi identified by Craig and others, e.g. Craig 2010: 190; Nisbet 1961: 193-7. 145 Williams 2010: 18; Langlands 2006: 6. 146 Walters 1997: Williams 2010: 18.  147 Edwards 1993: 76-7; Williams 2010: 137-144.

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strong moral censure, as did the convivium (dinner party) at which many of

these vices were deemed to occur.148 The goings on behind closed doors at

these parties provided a fertile source for rumour and rhetorical inventio. The

effeminate man might exhibit too much care for his personal appearance, he

may make gestures deemed effeminate or he might walk softly. An individual

who exhibited a lack of self-control in one of these areas was often assumed to

do so in other ways.149 This is an important part of the reasoning behind

Cicero’s moral invective – on occasion he used a sort of ‘slippery slope’

argument where one immoral trait was deemed to lead naturally into the others.

Men who lacked self-control were often flagrant adulterers, outrageous

gamblers and heavy drinkers. More often than not, weakness in any of these

areas led to sexual deviancy and penetration. Thus the effeminate man, like

Antony, because he chose to destroy his virtus, was a figure not to be trusted.

Cicero’s claim that Antony was sexually effeminate was crucial to his

argument that Antony was unfit to be a leader of the Roman people.

The Corruption of Youth

Early in the refutatio of the Second Philippic Cicero denied a claim

evidently made by Antony that he had in fact been a protégé of Cicero’s during

his youth.150 Indeed if he had been, Antony would certainly not have become a

young impudicus. Antony said this in order to capitalize on Cicero’s ethos, a

persuasive technique that Cicero himself often used as a positive foil for his

enemies.151 Antony may also have been attempting to discredit Cicero, as he

would have been expected to impart a moral example on the youthful Antony if

he had indeed been his mentor.152 Cicero used a similar strategy in the Pro

Caelio when he tells the jury that M. Caelius Rufus had been his protégé.

Caelius Rufus was therefore untainted by vice until released from his

mentorship.153 His education provided him with the means to abandon his

                                                                                                               148 See chapter three; Corbeill 1997; Edwards 1993: 188. 149 Edwards 1993: 4-5.  150 Cic. Phil. 2.4. 151 May 1988: 129. 152 Langlands 2006: 306. 153 Cic. Cael. 45-6;72. Invective concerning youthful misdeeds was a common strategy used in oratory; youthful misadventures were always plausible and difficult to prove or disprove

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youthful transgressions and to adopt the proper habits of a Roman man.154

Instead Antony chose to destroy his pudicitia by spending his time with Curio.

Rather than be guided by Cicero’s tutelage, Antony spent his youth in

the company of one C. Scribonius Curio. Antony was at an age to start

engaging in public business in the Sixties BC, and Cicero suggests that Curio

jealously prevented Antony from engaging in an apprenticeship under

Cicero.155 The narrative of the refutatio continues until chapter 43, where

Cicero refuted Antony’s accusations from his speech delivered to the senate on

the 19th of September,156 he now launches his own attack, the argumentatio,

without reservation. Cicero made a clear break with the refutatio by claiming

that what he is about to recount in his argumentatio is only a part of the story.

Cicero catalogues Antony’s vices and misdeeds from his youth through to the

time of writing, taking up seventy-one chapters in total.

Cicero argues that Antony turned to prostitution to support himself after

he failed to inherit due to his father’s bankruptcy:157

You [Antony] put on a man’s toga, which you immediately made womanly [mulierbrem]. At first you advertised yourself as a whore [scortum], the fee of your shame was fixed and it was not small.158

This was a grave charge. Roman men who prostituted themselves were not

allowed to stand for public service under the lex Iulia municipalis of 45 BC.159

Prostitutes were infames and were regarded with as much, often more contempt

than entertainers.160 The prostitution of citizens was a horrifying concept to the

Roman moralist, and it was discussed repeatedly in Roman moral discourse.161

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   definitively. Successful orators were able to make their audiences believe their version of events, See Cic. Cael. 6, 9, 28, 42, 72-6; Craig 2010: 190. 154 Cic. Cael. 72-5; Corbeill 2007: 70-1: that is, the moral means. 155 Cic. Phil. 2.4; see Ramsey 2003: 166. 156 Ramsey 2003: 156; Kelly 2008: 34-6; Pitcher 2008: 131: Cicero reveals he was not present to hear this speech in Phil. 5. 157 Cic. Phil. 2.44; see Rhet Her. 3.13; Craig 2010: 190: The squandering of patrimony and abuse of the family are common topoi of invective; Ramsey 2003: 226. 158 Cic. Phil. 2.44. 159 Williams 2010: 41. 160 See page 54. 161  See Cic. Cael. 49: Cicero’s defence lay in his characterization of Clodia as a prostitute.    

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Undoubtedly this, and the account of Antony and Curio’s relationship to

follow, was in large part the result of Cicero’s inventio.162 It was a particularly

plausible charge, especially due to Antony’s bankruptcy and Cicero’s

characterization of the relationship between Curio and Antony as equivalent to

the relationship between a citizen and his mistress.

Antony was saved from his life of prostitution by Curio, who makes

him his rent boy in return:

Curio quickly intervened, who took you away from the occupation of prostitution [meretricium], and, as though he had given you a gown [stola], he had really arranged a steady marriage (in matrimonio stabili).163

The above example and Cicero’s reference to Antony’s womanly toga164 are

both euphemistic charges of effeminacy. Cicero uses words of feminine gender

like mulierbris, or words with feminine associations like stola (referring to a

woman’s garments). Meretricius is an adjective that derives from meretrix (a

female prostitute). The use of this language was deliberate and designed to

work on several different levels. Committing acts of stuprum, like prostituting

oneself, was the mark of an effeminate man. More indirectly, these are

innuendoes for the sexual role that Antony played. Innuendo is an oratorical

strategy where an argument of an inappropriate nature may be suggested

without resorting to the obscene. This is in accordance with the rules of oratory

even though this particular Philippic was not delivered.165 What Cicero is

really saying here is that Antony submitted sexually to men – he was

penetrated.

Antony, in submitting sexually to other men, adopted the sexual role of

women. Cicero metaphorically refers to Antony as Curio’s husband.166 Thus

Curio saved Antony from prostitution only to enter into a marriage with him.

                                                                                                               162 Edwards 1993: 10-12.    163 Cic. Phil. 2.45. 164 Cic. Phil. 2.44 165 Cic. De Or. 2.237: an orator must avoid vulgarity; Uria 2007: 59. 166 Cic. Phil. 2.45.

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Matrimonium was a common metaphor denoting sex in Latin literature.167

Cicero’s characterization of Antony also makes use of the metaphor of slavery.

Slaves did not possess pudicitia; their bodies were entirely for their master’s

use.168 Beautiful male (and female) slaves were bought for this purpose, and

keeping such slaves in the house for dinner parties was a typical sign of

excessive luxury.169 Cicero, addressing Antony directly, states ‘[your] life from

a boy showed that you would submit (paterere) to anything, and would be a

slave easily.’170 The use of a verb form of patior (to suffer, endure) was a

direct statement concerning Antony’s sexual role. To pati is to ‘endure’

penetration anally.171 Finally, not only was Antony a slave by choice (in fact

Cicero gives the impression that Antony sought anal penetration), 172 he is

unparalleled in his submission to other men:

no boy bought for the reason of lust [puer emptus libidinis causa] has ever been in the power of his master [in domini potestate] as you are in Curio’s.173

This is an example of Seager’s ‘unique’ badness theme in Cicero’s rhetoric,

that is, nobody is nearly as bad as Cicero’s target. The motif of sexual slavery

recurs in the Philippics, for example, the Thirteenth Philippic, where Antony’s

sexual partners were tyrants to whose lusts he has submitted.174

In response to Antony’s allegation that Cicero had appeared in court

against him, Cicero justifies his judicial opposition to Antony by arguing that

he was:

                                                                                                               167 Adams 1982: 159-60. 168 Williams 2010: 31-2, 107. 169 Edwards 1993: 72. 170 Cic. Phil 2.86: qui ita a puero vixeras, ut Omnia paterere, ut facile servires. 171 Adams 189-90: patior was the ‘proper term' for an individual who engages in anal sex passively, it was not vulgar like pedico; Williams 2010: 193. 172 Edwards 1993: 65: Antony sought out the older Curio, inverting the typical role of each individual as defined by their relative ages.  173 Cic. Phil. 2.45; Pitcher 2008: 135-6: ‘status is as much a question of masculine identity as sexuality.’ 174 Cic. Phil. 13.17.

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bound to oppose influence gained by the sweet bloom of youth rather than by the expectation of solid worth... bound to oppose a miscarriage of justice which Antonius engineered.175

Lacey determined that the ‘miscarriage of justice’ refers to a court case

involving an individual named Sicca, whom Cicero represented.176 Lacey

believes that the case concerned the manumission of a slave, and that Cicero

was therefore suggesting that Antony’s motive in manumitting the slave was a

sexual relationship. It was the slave’s youthful bloom, rather than his virtus,

which prompted Antony’s attempt to free him.177

Youthful sexual deviancy was a particularly potent claim because it was

plausible, remote in time, and it took advantage of the prejudices and fears of

the audience for which it was intended. It relied on the belief in antiquity that

male adolescence and young adulthood was a particularly vulnerable time.

Young men were impressionable and easily corrupted. They were less capable

of resisting their inner urges than a full vir was.178 It was the younger

generation who were descending further into vice than the older in an

intractable decline from the good old days of the ancestors. In the Second

Philippic Cicero used this belief about youth to support his charge that Antony

was effeminate. Cicero does not make the same claim about his targets in the

In Pisonem. Rather, he seems to focus on a specific period – Piso and

Gabinius’ consulship in 58 BC and their proconsulships. Cicero’s invective

was temporally restricted because he had the precise aim in this speech of

discrediting their administration. In doing so he aimed to create a negative foil

for the disaster that was his exile in 58 BC. He characterized this event as an

episode of heroic self-sacrifice, a voluntary exile that was undertaken to

prevent bloodshed. It was Piso and Gabinius’ inertness (their failure to act on

his behalf) against the ‘wishes of the entire state’ that was the political failure.

This failure to act on his behalf was partly due to the enervating effect of their

effeminacy. In the Pro Caelio, however, Cicero was not dealing with failures                                                                                                                175 Cic. Phil. 2.3. 176 Lacey 1986: 158. 177 Lacey 1986: 158. 178 See Cic. Cael. 10-4: Caelius may be excused for having supported Catiline. The real fault lay with Catiline in corrupting the youth, 28, 42, 76; Cantarella 1992: 107-16; Williams 2010: 19, 24-31, 203.

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of political office and so it was fitting that he appeal to the follies of youth.

This, at first glance, would seem a risky strategy – such an approach could

easily reinforce the argument of his opponents. He was able to do this because

of the belief that young men will act somewhat immorally by nature unless

they are guided, and learn from, a positive example.

Cicero179 begins his argumentatio as follows:

By common consent a young man is allowed some dalliance, and nature herself is prodigal of youthful passions; and if they do not find a vent so as not to shatter anyone’s life, not to ruin anyone’s home, they are generally regarded as easy to put up with.

So Cicero, in his defence, accepts that Caelius, being a young man at the time,

lived immorally. This argument responded to the invective delivered by one of

the prosecution – Lucius Herennius – concerning Caelius’ love affairs and

parties both at home and at the pleasure resort of Baiae.180 This was a risky

tactic as Cicero acknowledged that Herennius’ invective was effective.181 He

argued that Caelius should be excused from his youthful indiscretions. The real

blame lay with the individual who corrupted him, Clodia, ‘a woman not only of

noble birth, but also notoriety.’182 Similarly, if Caelius had supported Catiline

this was because Catiline himself was a great dissimulator and corruptor of the

youth not due to Caelius’ congenital vice.183

Utilizing Clodia as a target for his own invective, Cicero manipulates

the prejudice of the jury. Cicero asks the jury to not allow the ‘topics’ of vice

to be transfixed on Caelius (as he would usually try and do in his own

speeches). Rather, he argues that the case is ‘concerned entirely with

Clodia.’184 Women in particular were believed to lack self-control. On the

other hand, men were expected to have youthful romances. Furthermore,

women were naturally seductive and young men were vulnerable to their

                                                                                                               179 Cic. Cael. 28. 180 Cic. Cael. 25, 35. 181 Cic. Cael. 25. 182 Cic. Cael. 31. 183 Cic. Cael. 10-4.  184 Cic. Cael. 29-31.

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advances. A seductress meeting a young man led to the inevitable result,

particularly as they were neighbours on the ‘notorious’ Palatine.185 Cicero

employed a metaphor to prejudice the jury’s view of Clodia:

If a woman without a husband opens her house to all men’s desires, and publically leads the life of a courtesan; if she is in the habit of attending dinner parties with men who are perfect strangers, if she does this in the city, in her park, amid all those crowds at Baiae... her embraces and caresses, her beach-parties, her water-parties, her dinner-parties proclaim her to be not only a courtesan, but a shameless and wanton one; if a young man should happen to be found with this woman… [who] would consider him an adulterer or a lover?

Thus Caelius’ behaviour was legitimated by the fact that Clodia’s behaviour

was so bad that she was virtually a prostitute in all but name. After all, it was

not immoral for a Roman man, married or unmarried, to engage the services of

a prostitute.

In defending Caelius’ youthful indiscretion, Cicero lists some provisos.

A young man was allowed some indiscretion as long as he was ‘mindful of his

own repute [pudicitia] and not a despoiler of another’s; let him not squander

his patrimony, nor be crippled by usury; nor attack the home and reputation of

another.’186 And so the list goes on. Caelius did not squander his patrimony,

nor did he attack the home and reputation of another. In fact, Clodia has done

this to Caelius by attempting to charge him in court. Furthermore, or so Cicero

implies, Caelius has not removed Clodia’s pudicitia – it was already long gone.

However, the alleged sexual behaviour of Antony does not meet these

requirements. Antony was not only bankrupt himself but he almost bankrupted

Curio too. He was almost overcome by enormous debts.187 Finally, as has been

demonstrated, Cicero argued that Antony negated his pudicitia when he

engaged passively in sexual intercourse with Curio. Finally, where Caelius’

youthful misdeeds ceased with maturity (thanks to Cicero’s good instruction),

                                                                                                               185 Cic. Cael. 47. 186 Cic. Cael. 42.  187 Cic. Phil. 2.35, 44-6: Antony defaulted on his loans almost ruining Curio, his guarantor.

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Antony’s vices only became worse with age (thanks to the lack of Cicero’s

good instruction).

Decline into Adulthood: Sexual Deviancy

Unlike Caelius, Antony’s sexual misdeeds continued well into

adulthood; indeed they never ceased. Cicero alluded to an adulterous affair

between Antony and Fulvia while she was married to P. Clodius Pulcher and

that it occurred in Clodius’ own home.188 In a clever passage, Cicero accused

Antony of adultery, hypocrisy and incest:

Your cousin [soror] you turned out of doors when you had first sought and provided for another match [Fulvia]. That is not enough; you accused of misconduct a woman of the greatest purity… At a crowded sitting of the Senate… in the presence of your uncle, you dared to allege… your discovery of his [Dollabella’s] attempted adultery with your cousin [soror] and wife. 189

Cicero implied that Antony had already engaged in an adulterous affair with

Fulvia while still married to Antonia, as Antony had already ‘sought’ another

match. Therefore his reason for divorcing Antonia was hypocritical – he

divorced her for suspected adultery when all along it was he who was

adulterous. Antony is revealed as a dissembler, one who does not care for the

reputation of his wife although she is a virtuous woman.190 If this were not bad

enough, Cicero characterized the relationship as an incestuous one. Antony and

Antonia were cousins through his uncle Antonius Hybrida (the same one that

Antony failed to recall from exile). However, Cicero called her his sister

(soror), translated above as ‘cousin.’ Incest was particularly taboo in Roman

moral thought.

During the civil wars and Antony’s rule in Italy, Antony maintained a

relationship with a concubine and mime actress named Cytheris. Cicero again

                                                                                                               188 Cic. Phil. 2.48; Ramsey 2003: 231. 189 Cic. Phil. 2.99. 190 He damaged her reputation publically all in order to conceal his own adultery, see also Cic. Phil. 2.99, here Antony also fails to act on behalf of his friends, and even on behalf of his uncle Antonius Hybrida.    

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used the metaphor of marriage to refer to their relationship.191 Cicero implied

that this relationship went on for some time. While married, Antony

shamelessly paraded her before the people, and she features prominently in

Cicero’s description of Antony’s administration in Italy during the civil wars.

A major focus of this theme is the shameless way that Antony paraded

throughout Italy with her although he was married.192 Everyone from Italian

dignitaries to soldiers saw her:

You came into Brundisium, that is to say, into the lap and into the embraces of your dear mime…. What soldier was there that did not see her at Brundisium?193

Finally, Antony broke off relations with Cytheris and returned to Fulvia.

Cicero anticipated that Antony would defend himself against this charge by

stating that he no longer sees Cytheris, which Cicero metaphorically refers to

as a divorce.194

Cicero implied that this was a condition for him to return to Fulvia in

Rome, whereas Ramsey suggests that Antony required Fulvia’s financial

support.195 Cicero describes the way that Antony returns to Rome – by

darkness and disguised as if to emphasize the shameful nature of his

relationship with Cytheris.196 Due to his effeminacy he is unrestrained in his

emotional appeals to her, writing a letter in ‘amatory style’ and being the ‘soft-

hearted fellow’ that he was, gave up his disguise almost immediately upon

returning to her.197 His subordination to Fulvia was made clear by Cicero’s use

of the vulgar term catamitus:

Was it… in order that the woman [Fulvia] might enjoy the surprise of seeing a catamite [catamitus] like you, when you had shown yourself unexpectedly.198

                                                                                                               191 Cic. Phil. 2.20. 192 Cic. Phil. 2.20, 2.58, 61-2. 193 Cic. Phil. 2.61. 194 Cic. Phil. 2.69. 195 Cic. Phil. 2.69, 77; Ramsey 2003: 273. 196 Cf. Cic. Pis. 53: Piso returns to Rome from his proconsulship by night and in secret, highlighting his disgrace. 197 Cic. Phil. 2.76. 198 Cic. Phil. 2.77.  

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Catamitus is a proper noun, the Latinized Ganymede. This word had come to

stand in place of pedicare (‘to be penetrated’) with the same level of vulgarity.

In fact several Latin words concerning anal sex between men were derived

from Greek, including cinaedus and pedico (from ‘paidika’).199 Cicero’s aim

was to characterize Fulvia as the dominant member of their marriage.200

Antony’s effeminacy was so great that he was subordinate (or subordinates

himself) even to a woman.

Antony subordinated himself to women in more ways than one,

however. This is seen most clearly in the Thirteenth Philippic. Cicero’s

allusions to oral sex are more overt in the In Pisonem, and the Thirteenth

Philippic. References to oral sex are typically the most euphemistic of sexual

invective in oratory due to the obscene nature of such a charge.201 Penetration

was the concern here, as it was in anal or vaginal sex. Fellatio was equated

with penetration, thus the receiver of oral sex was penetrating the ‘passive’

giver202 - an inverse of modern sexual perception. Oral sex, particularly

cunnilingus, was regarded as perhaps the vilest sexual act, an act that polluted

the mouth.203 Thus Gabinius was accused of having contaminatus spiritus

(tainted breath).204 There may be a similar reference to oral sex in the Second

Philippic. Antony’s mouth was impure (os impurum). As this reference comes

after the vivid description of Antony’s occupation of Pompey’s villa, it may

therefore refer to the other oral vices – eating and drinking.205 Although these

allusions seem vague today, undoubtedly Cicero’s true meaning would not

have been lost on his audience.

Cicero vaguely refers to oral sex in the Thirteenth Philippic. He stated

‘you entrusted your chin and your feelings in the lap (gremium) of mimes

                                                                                                               199 Adams 1982: 123. 200 Ramsey 2003: 272. 201 Uria 2007: 50. 202 Parker 1997: 50-2; Williams 2010: 179, 218-24. 203 Parker 1997: 51-2; Williams 2010: 218-23. 204 Cic. Pis. 20; Williams 2010: 219. 205 Cic. Phil. 2.68; Arena 2007: 156: states that this charge was only made against the minions of Cicero’s enemies with the exception of this passage, missing the allusion to oral sex in Phil. 13.24.

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(mimae).206’ Kerr translated gremium as ‘bosom.’ However, it also means ‘lap,’

as translated here.207 Cicero suggests that Antony commits cunnilingus with

multiple female mimes (specified by the feminine plural mimae). The sexual

act of cunnilingus was reviled in elite literature more than any other sexual act.

Cunnilingus perhaps caused an ideological problem in a society that was

focused on penetration, who penetrated whom in the case of cunnilingus? As

the giver in oral sex was the ‘passive’ partner, according to the Priapic Model,

the act of cunnilingus essentially sublimated the man to a status lower than the

female recipient.208 Antony was thus dominated by women, and even worse, by

performers and therefore infames.209

Cicero employed a range of invective topoi and sexual vocabulary to

characterize Antony as a sexually degenerate, effeminate man. His themes are

not untypical in Roman, indeed, in Ciceronian invective. However, it is the

scale and intensity to which he does so, in a single speech, which sets his

characterization of Antony apart. Beginning in the period of Antony’s youth,

Cicero painted a vivid picture of a bankrupt Antony engaging in prostitution to

support himself, an Antony that is ‘bought’ by Curio to be his ‘passive’ partner

– his metaphorical wife. He was also a metaphorical slave, not only to his

vices, but also through his sexual role. Too busy with Curio, Antony failed to

learn oratory sufficiently. His poor oratory stands as proof of his youthful

misdeeds, just as Caelius’ oratorical ability was proof of his true virtue in Pro

Caelio. Antony almost ruins Curio, his financial guarantor, through failure to

pay his debts. He divorced his virtuous wife Antonia (although ironically this

was an incestuous relationship because she was his ‘sister’) on the basis of

adultery, although it was in fact he who was the adulterer. He damages her

reputation by announcing his reason for divorce publically, and he promptly

marries Fulvia. While married to Fulvia Antony kept a mistress, the mime

actress Cytheris. Where discreteness was required, Antony instead flaunted his

mistress throughout Italy. Cicero demonstrated Antony’s subordination to

                                                                                                               206 Cic. Phil. 13.24. 207 See Uria 2007: 50; Williams 2010: 220. 208 Parker 1997: 50-4; Williams 2010: 221-4. 209 See page 54.  

  43

Fulvia through his ‘divorce’ from Cytheris and discreet return to Fulvia in

Rome.

Cicero has set up a very powerful portrait of decline – corruption set in

from Antony’s youth and, as will become clear in the next chapter, climaxes in

his wildly debauched parties.210 His passivity, especially in oral sex, marked

him out as thoroughly un-Roman. Like all immorality, Antony’s was infectious

– it represented a cancer that, if allowed to continue, threatened the very

Republic itself. Antony, because he was so extreme in his effeminacy,

represented an unprecedented threat to the Republic. Cicero’s use of invective

to reveal Antony’s moral and sexual flaws was extreme, but it needed to be so;

Cicero truly believed that it was his duty to save the res publica. As such, he

had to convince the Senate that Antony would be responsible for its destruction

if left unchecked.

                                                                                                               210 See page 47.

  44

CHAPTER TWO

Private Parties and Public Disgrace

In Roman moral thought, a person who sought anal penetration,

engaged in prostitution, incest or adultery, was unlikely to exhibit continentia

(self-control) when faced with other forms of temptation. Antony committed

all of the above and, as such, was so dominated by his incontinentia that he

often satisfied these desires at the same time as indulging in drinking, gambling

and other forms of luxuria. These topoi come together in the convivium, the

vivid accounts of ‘dinner parties’ that Cicero used to startling effect.211 As

Corbeill has argued, ‘all these charges characteristic of political invective –

gluttony, financial mismanagement, political ineptitude and sexual profligacy

(especially between men) – intersect in the dark and mysterious arena of the

banquet’.212 Convivia were private parties which occurred behind closed doors,

either in the house in Rome formerly owned by Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus,213

or in the villa once inhabited by Marcus Terrentius Varro.214 Thus these

activities were witnessed by the very walls of the dwellings once owned and

occupied by men of honour and respect. This is a clever motif that Cicero used

in the Second Philippic, and also the Pro Caelio. This chapter examines how

Cicero focused on Antony’s love of convivia and luxuria to paint a picture of a

man who was thoroughly immoral and un-Roman because he was controlled

by his incontinentia. Comparisons will also be drawn with the In Pisonem,

where Cicero provided particularly vivid accounts of the convivia of Piso and

Gabinius. Such lurid scenes complemented Cicero’s effeminate portraits of

these men, as discussed previously.215 In this chapter, Cicero’s use of other

forms of incontinentia will also be explored; Antony was accused not only of

owning a highly visible retinue of infames, but vomiting in public and visiting

taverns. These ‘public’ forms of misbehaviour provide Cicero with a

convenient means to reinforce the plausibility of his accusations.216 Although

                                                                                                               211 Corbeill 1997: 103; Edwards 1993: 188. 212 Corbeill 1997: 103. 213 Referred to throughout this thesis as Pompey. 214 Referred to throughout this thesis as Varro. 215 See page 41. 216 Corbeill 1997: 112.  

  45

these vices were exercised in private, Cicero brought them into the public eye

and under the scrutiny of the Roman people, providing further ‘proof’ of his

claim that Antony was sexually effeminate and therefore unfit to participate in

government. Cicero used these topoi to a greater extent than he had done

against his enemies before, so much so that they become great moral themes

rather than casual references to a few indiscretions. Antony was the most

sexually effeminate of men and his sexual proclivities manifested in these other

forms of vice equally severely. Most importantly, they undermined his ability

to perform his duties as magister equitum.217

Cicero took advantage of his audience’s belief that impudicitia was

made visible by excess.218 Thus Antony’s parties were the scenes of excessive

drinking, eating and gambling. Yet they were at the same time the context for

acts of stuprum,219 so there is a particular focus on the destruction of the

pudicitia of others in these scenes.220 As Langlands observes:

Pudicitia was a particularly attractive concept for the skilled orator to play with in his characterization of the protagonists; it was elusive, impossible to prove definitely either way, pertaining to scenes that any audience and speaker would almost certainly not have seen, but which could be the subject of vivid, even lurid description.221

As Antony’s convivia were held in places no one in the audience had attended,

they could easily be convinced of the most fanciful and outrageous of

allegations. Cicero used his narrative to great effect, creating plausible scenes of

debauchery on a grand scale.222 Antony’s status as impudicus was manifested in

his use of luxuria.

                                                                                                               217 It was assumed that those lacking in continentia in one area were unlikely to exhibit continentia in others, especially where their pudicitia was concerned; Williams 2010: 156. 218 Edwards 1993; Langlands 2006: 37-9. 219 Cic. Phil. 2.65-70. 220 See Cic. Phil. 2.104-5. 221 Langlands 2006: 286. 222 This was evidently an effective persuasive strategy as attested by its frequent use in invective; Corbeill 1997: 100-1.    

  46

Luxuria was a major focus of Roman moralizing discourse. Of

particular concern was luxury concerned with convivia – in particular eating,

drinking and gambling. The entertainers present at these parties also caught the

attention of Roman moralists, as did the number (and appearance) of slaves and

servants, nudity, dancing and furniture.223 Banquets could be attended by all

manner of disreputable people - actors, pimps, prostitutes and other individuals

branded with infamia. 224 All of these elements of luxuria appear within

Cicero’s invective. Also of great concern was the squandering of patrimonies

as a result of luxuria. Patrimony was linguistically related to patria

(fatherland), belying the relationship drawn in Roman thought between the

stability of the familia and the stability of the state. How could an individual be

expected to lead the state effectively if he could not control his household due

to his lack of self-control? 225 Therefore loss of patrimony, usually through

prostitutes, parties, gambling and other forms of luxuria, was identified in

Rome as a major factor in the decline of the Roman state. In the Second

Philippic Antony’s sexual deviancy stems in part from the (probable) effects of

luxuria – being bankrupted by his father Antony was forced to become a

prostitute in his youth.226 Antony squanders the inheritances of others. As will

be demonstrated below, his occupation of Pompey’s house was characterized

by Cicero as the wrongful theft of the inheritance of Pompey’s sons.227 Cicero

even charges Antony with leaving Pompey’s sons disinherited by receiving

legacies from men he hardly knew.228 Antony thus further destabilizes the state

by disinheriting legitimate sons to fund his vice.

Excess in any form, when associated with luxuria, was considered

effeminate. As demonstrated earlier, a sexually effeminate man was unlikely to

express continentia in other areas. Indeed, these other vices were regarded as

indicators of a hidden sexuality. As such luxuria resulted in the same

debilitating effects as sexual effeminacy (like enervis and mollitia).229 Luxuria

                                                                                                               223 Edwards 1993: 188-91; see Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 315-54. 224 Edwards 1993: 188-91. 225 Corbeill 1997: 103; Edwards 1993: 175-8. 226 Cic. Phil. 2.44. 227 Cic. Phil. 2.65, 73. 228 Cic. Phil. 2.41, 103. 229 See page 30.

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inhibited an individual’s ability to participate adequately in public business.

Thus a major motif utilized by Cicero in the Second Philippic was Antony

misbehaving while magister equitum (Master of the Horse). He staged lavish

convivia,230 kept company with infames,231 and could not act in his official

capacity due to his insobriety.232 Likewise, Piso and Gabinius frequented lowly

taverns rather than perform their duties as consuls.233 The excessive drinking of

these individuals prevented them from acting appropriately in their capacity as

magistrates of the Republic.

The Walls as Witness

A prominent theme in the Second Philippic was Antony’s defilement of

the homes of virtuous individuals, in particular those of Pompey and Varro. In

the exordium Cicero emphasized that Antony’s house (the city residence of

Pompey, acquired through Caesar’s auction in 47 BC) 234 was the scene of his

debauchery:

When at your house by the foulest traffic all things were on sale… when exhausted with wine and debauchery [lustrum] you were practicing in your licentious house [pudica/inpudica in domo] all forms of impurity.235

Lustrum literally means ‘place of debauchery’ and was used here

metonymically to mean debauchery itself.236 The phrase inpudica in domo is

controversial – Langlands states that the original manuscript has pudica in

domo, and that modern translators have edited the text in the belief that

Antony’s house could not be pudica in the second Philippic. Instead Langlands

suggests that this is a reference to Cicero’s explicit comparison in chapter 69

between Pompey and Antony, two owners of the property.237 Both Kerr and

                                                                                                               230 Cic. Phil. 2.65-7, 103-5.    231 Cic. Phil. 2.58, 67, 101. 232 Cic. Phil. 2.63, 76. 233 Cic. Pis. 13, 18. 234 Ramsey 2003: 170.    235 Cic. Phil. 2.6. 236 Ramsey 2003: 170. 237 Langlands 2006: 308.

  48

Ramsey use inpudica. 238 Lacey provides an alternative: ‘you [Antony]

practised every perversion in an undefiled home [impuritates pudica in

domo].’239 This suggests that the version provided by Kerr and Ramsey is a

contraction between the two words. The distinction is in some ways

insignificant because Cicero used pudica or inpudica metonymically – pudica

stands for either the unblemished pudicitia of Pompey or inpudica for

Antony’s lack of pudicitia. The house has come under the ownership of an

impudicus. Hence metaphorically it is a house that has lost its pudicitia. This

would indicate that Langlands is correct regardless of the text – if the house is

in a state of inpudica then it had once been in a state of pudica – it is unlikely

that the reference would have been lost on Cicero’s audience.

The two examples of Antony’s convivia – those at Pompey’s house and

Varro’s villa– reveal the connection between the vices of drinking (and

convivia generally) and stuprum. As discussed above, Cicero implied that

Antony destroyed the pudicitia of the homes of these great men - he more or

less explicitly accuses Antony of destroying the pudicitia of others during his

parties within them. In Pompey’s house ‘brothels take the place of bedrooms,

taprooms of dining-rooms.’240 Cicero vividly described Antony’s parties which

occurred in Varro’s villa. These continued for days, started hours earlier than

was customary,241 and were the scenes of great debauchery:

The whole place rang with the voices of drunken men; the pavements swam with wine; the walls were wet; boys of free birth [ingenui pueri] were consorting with those let for hire [meritorii]; harlots [scorta] with mothers of families [matres familias].242

Antony deliberately harms the pudicitia of ingenui pueri and matres familiae,

two groups in Roman society whose pudicitia was most at risk from

stuprum.243 Cicero’s use of the vocabulary ‘ingenui pueri’ suggests their likely

                                                                                                               238 Kerr 1926: 71; Ramsey 2003: 170. 239 Cic. Phil. 2.6; Lacey 1986: 46. 240 Cic. Phil. 2.69. 241 Cic. Phil. 2.104.  242 Cic. Phil. 2.105. 243 Langlands 2006: 23, 41, 46.

  49

sexual role;244 likewise the association of the matres familias with scorta

suggests their participation in the trade. Antony has corrupted these

individuals, rendering them unfit to serve the state- the youths for public

service and the matrons for legitimate childbearing. This occurred while the

floors were literally drenched by spilt wine from the revellers.

Vivid narrative concerning debauched convivia was an oratorical device

that Cicero utilized against Piso and Gabinius in In Pisonem just as effectively.

According to Cicero, Piso and Gabinius held an extravagant party at Gabinius’

house, a party comparable only to that of the Lapiths and Centaurs of Greek

myth. Cicero vividly described the scene:

The house of your college [Gabinius] rang with song and cymbals, and when he himself danced naked at a feast… executing those whirling gyrations of his.245

Cicero called Gabinius a saltatrix (dancer) on several occasions throughout In

Pisonem.246 Dancing was regarded as a particularly effeminate activity and was

associated directly with sexual passivity. This is perhaps unsurprising

considering the general Roman prejudice towards performers. 247 Likewise,

nudity was particularly shocking to Roman sensibilities.248 The other attendees

witnessing the performance were all drunk, including Piso. It is not at all

difficult to imagine where Gabinius’ naked dancing may have led to next. Thus

charges of sexual effeminacy and excessive luxuria were here brought together

powerfully in the context of the banquet. An obvious difference between the

convivium described in In Pisonem and the Second Philippic is the number of

moral charges utilized – in a single narrative scene Antony was a sexual

effeminate who preyed on the pudicitia of the most vulnerable, he squandered

fortunes on luxuria, he consumed, and promoted the consumption of excessive

amounts of wine, and kept company with the most disreputable members of

                                                                                                               244 Richlin 1993: 536-8. 245 Cic. Pis. 22. 246 Cic. Pis. 18: Gabinius is a ‘shaven dancing girl,’ 20: ‘it is not from… your college’s castanets that I fled.’ 247 Corbeill 1997: 105-7; Williams 2010: 153: the performing arts as a whole were regarded as effeminate occupations; 196. 248 Corbeill 1997: 107; Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 52, 54.

  50

society, actors, pimps, gamblers and slaves. Compared to all of Cicero’s former

enemies, Antony is the most lacking in self-control, and thus the most

effeminate; put most bluntly, he was uniquely bad. 249 Everything occurred in

private, with only the walls as witness.

Like sex, convivia took place behind closed doors and were only

witnessed by the participants themselves. Cicero makes a comparison between

the former resident, Pompey, and Antony in chapter 69. The walls of Pompey’s

city residence formerly witnessed the illustrious achievement of Pompey, now

all they witness are the vices of Antony.250 Antony should be ashamed, at the

very least, to enter the dwelling of such a man:

 He also occupied the house and the gardens. What monstrous audacity! Did you so much as dare to put foot into that house; you to pass over that most sacred threshold; you to show your most profligate face to the household gods of that dwelling?251

 

Antony’s legitimate ownership of the house was denied through Cicero’s use

of the term invado (to invade or seize), usually found in military contexts.252

Likewise, Antony, up to his old tricks, occupied the Campanian villa of Varro

the antiquarian scholar. Cicero describes Varro’s use of the villa as a place of

retreat for his own studies, not for lust. What discussions formerly took place in that villa, what meditations! What thoughts committed to writing!253

Cicero, later in the chapter, refers to the villa as an ‘unhappy dwelling.254 Both

buildings were the scenes for outrageous parties where the worst of Antony’s

desires were fulfilled. Cicero thus, by comparing Antony to these great men,

drives home just how effeminate Antony was, how unfit he was for

participation in public life. Pompey’s property fell victim to Antony’s lack of

self-control, forming a pitiable sight for Cicero and the people of Rome.                                                                                                                249 Seager 2007: 26-7. 250 Cic. Phil. 2.69; See Cic. Pro Cael. 60: Clodia’s house was the witness to her debauchery; Ramsey 2003: 259. 251 Cic. Phil. 2.68. 252 Cic. Phil. 2.65, see also 2.73. 253 Cic. Phil. 2.104-5. 254 Cic. Phil. 2.104.  

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Antony auctioned off Pompey’s property to pay off his loans. This was

characterized as the unlawful seizure of the inheritance of Pompey’s sons:

There was nothing the man who was putting them [Pompey’s property] up for auction could call his own.255

 What was left fell victim to Antony’s vices, squandered simply to provide for

his parties, gambling losses and gifts for his disreputable retinue. Antony

rapidly squandered whatever he did not sell in auction:

It is incredible and almost portentous how in so few days – I do not say months – he squandered so much property. There was an immense store of wine, a very great weight of the finest silver, a costly wardrobe, much elegant and magnificent furniture in many places.256

Cicero once again demonstrates how Antony was unable to maintain his

property due to his lack of self-control. Antony had always been indebted

previously, embezzling funds from the temple of Ops, 257 almost ruining

Curio258 and consuming the inheritances of others to pay off his debts.259 Now,

having seized the inheritance of Pompey’s sons, he squanders this considerable

property in an unprecedented manner. No amount of wealth was enough to

satiate his desires.

Conspicuous Consumption and Gambling

Cicero also paid special attention to Antony’s gluttony; he piles one

exaggeration on top of another rapidly and effectively. Firstly Cicero compared

Antony’s gluttony to that of a gladiator’s at the banquet of a man named

Hippias.260 In consuming Pompey’s vast property Antony’s gluttony was even

                                                                                                               255 Cic. Phil. 2.73. 256 Cic. Phil. 2.66. 257 Cic. Phil. 2.35-6: Antony even benefited from Caesar’s death by providing him with another inheritance to squander. 258 Cic. Phil. 2.45-6. 259 Cic. Phil. 2.41. 260 See page 55; gladiators were infames; Cic. Phil. 2.63.  

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greater, comparable to Charybdis the sea monster that consumes ships off the

Sicilian strait.261 Finally, even the wealth of entire kingdoms would not be

enough to satiate his lust.262Amongst these allegations, Cicero reveals that

Antony squandered much of the property through gifts to his retinue of pimps,

actors and gamblers who attended his parties. Slaves reclined in beds covered

with purple cloth in total disregard of their status.263 Wallace-Hadrill observes

that a great fear in Roman moralizing thought was the socially destabilizing

influence of the consumption of luxuria. Luxuria threatened the very ‘fabric of

Roman social order.’264 Moral discourse concerning luxuria focused on the

upward mobility of the lower social classes through conspicuous consumption.

As Edwards observed:

The Roman social order is itself washed away with the spilt wines, perfumes and bodily effusions – and of course, the dissipated fortunes – of its incontinent upper classes.265

Thus Cicero here was evoking this traditional fear amongst the elite. Antony’s

actions were a threat to the social order; he was thus a source of disorder that

threatened the very stability of the state.

The last major form of vice that was commonly present at convivia (at

least in oratory) was gambling. Gamblers formed part of Antony’s regular

retinue of disreputable characters. Pompey’s house was ‘crammed with

gamblers’ and much of his property was squandered through Antony’s frequent

gambling losses.266 As Edwards points out, gambling was often identified in

moralizing discourse with ‘prodigality.’ Particularly worrisome was the rapid

rate at which gamblers could squander fortunes and therefore disinherit young

men. This prevented them from participating in public life.267 In 49 BC Antony

passed a law recalling exiles, the lex Antonia de restituendis damnatis,268

                                                                                                               261 Cic. Phil. 2.65; Ramsey 2003: 256. 262 Cic. Phil. 2.68.  263 Cic. Phil. 2.63. 264 Wallace-Hadrill 2008: 318. 265 Edwards 1993: 175.  266 Cic. Phil. 2.67. 267 Edwards 1993: 180.    268 Ramsey 2003: 242.

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which Cicero implied was implemented in order to reinstate his gambling

friend Licinius Denticulus:

Licinius Denticulus, his fellow-gambler, a man convicted of dicing, he reinstated him – on the plea no doubt that it was illegal to gamble with a convict.269

Denticulus had probably been legally charged with infamia under the lex

Pompeia de ambitu.270 The fact that Antony pardoned an individual who was

convicted for gambling reveals Antony’s own inclinations. Furthermore,

although happy to recall his gambling friend, Antony failed to recall his uncle

Antonius Hybrida from exile, revealing his lack of familial piety in favour of

an infamis. 271

Public Disgrace

Pudicitia in Roman thought was a tangible quality, one that had to be

‘displayed’ in public through physically recognizable signs of sexual purity

including indicators such as fashion and mannerism. 272 Behaviour that

confirmed pudicitia ensured fama (good reputation). Those who were lacking

in pudicitia (officially) were lacking in fama, and were one part of a group of

individuals called infames. Infames were those who had been branded by the

legal status of infamia (lack of good reputation/disgrace). Infames suffered a

range of penalties all concerned with political and legal rights, for example

they could not stand for magistracies, were restricted in their rights of

advocacy in court, could not produce legitimate children through marriage.273

They could also be corporally punished.274 Lacking in many of the basic rights

of the citizen, their status closely resembles that of slaves (who also lacked the

basic right of pudicitia). Individuals were branded with infamia due to their

passive participation in sex acts,275 and through conviction under certain laws,

                                                                                                               269 Cic. Phil. 2.57. 270 Ramsey 2003: 242. 271 Cic. Phil. 2.57. 272 Langlands 2006: 18, 37-9: pudicitia had to be conspicua (conspicuous); Williams 2010: 18. 273 Langlands 2006: 18; McGinn 1998: 21-2, 27-65. 274 Edwards 1997: 76. 275 Gardner 2008: 146: under the lex Iulia Municipalis of 45 BC; see also, Williams 2010: 41.

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especially those which prosecuted individuals for adultery, gambling276 and

armed robbery. There was also a range of individuals who, by their occupation,

were permanently branded with infamia.

Prostitutes (meretrices) and pimps (lenones) were perhaps the most

severely prejudiced in law for obvious reasons – their trade was entirely

sexual.277 Performers, particularly actors and gladiators, were also branded

with infamia. Edwards convincingly demonstrates how a connection was

drawn in Roman moralizing thought between the selling of the body in the

arena, or on the stage, and the selling of the body sexually:

Those who sell their bodies for public exhibition… [were] assumed to be sexually available… these infamous persons… [were] assimilated to the feminine and the servile. 278

Cicero utilized this association in his invective, referring to Antony

metaphorically as a gladiator.279 He also used this theme against Antony

through his frequent company with a retinue of various infames. These

individuals are present throughout much of Cicero’s narrative of Antony’s later

career – at his convivial, and on public display throughout Italy. Cicero does

this in order to associate Antony with their dishonour.

A retinue of pimps, actors and gamblers regularly attended Antony.

These individuals, through their own association with effeminacy, reinforced

Cicero’s characterization of Antony as effeminate. In the convivia discussed

above, Antony allowed his disreputable companions to take the property of

Pompey, and presumably these same individuals attended Antony’s revels in

Varro’s villa. An important motif in Cicero’s use of this topos was the pubic

visibility of Antony’s shameful retinue. This provided a ‘visible means of

verification’ that Antony was effeminate through his association with these

                                                                                                               276 Like Licinius Denticulus.  277 McGinn 1998: 65-9: prostitutes and pimps were not allowed iustum matrimonium (legal marriage). 278 Edwards 1997: 76, 80.  279 Cic. Phil. 2.7, 63.

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types.280 In the previous chapter, the public nature of Antony’s affair with

Cytheris the mime actress was elucidated.281 He travelled about Italy whilst

magister equitum (master of the horse) openly displaying her to the army and

to local magistrates as he went.282 On these travels he also took with him a

retinue of pimps, actresses and gamblers.283 With his retinue of infames in tow,

he held luxurious events where he freely gave them public land:

What a noble progress of yours followed [at quam nobilis est tua illa peregrinato]! Why should I reveal the sumptuousness of those lunches, the madness of your wine-bibbing... The Campanian land… you were for dividing among your boon-companions and fellow-gamblers. Male and female mimes… were planted on the Campanian land. After that why should I complain of the Leontine land? 284

Cicero sarcastically referred to Antony’s usual disreputable company as his

‘noble progress’. Antony’s attempt to establish a colony at Capua was

presented as another example of Antony’s remarkable ability to squander the

property of others. Here Antony has gone beyond his prior crimes against

Pompey’s family (and by extension the Roman state) and is now dividing up

the property of Rome herself amongst his retinue of disgraced individuals.

Antony’s immorality was manifested in two other ‘public’ ways. These

were vomiting in public whilst performing official duties, and his visits to

lowly taverns. Cicero used these motifs to demonstrate how Antony’s

effeminacy directly inhibited his ability to perform as a magistrate of the

Republic through a plausible, possibly even verifiable, consequence of

Antony’s excessive drinking. This, like Antony’s retinue of infames, provided

a ‘visible means of verification,’285 for all of Cicero’s more private claims

about Antony’s immorality. These episodes of vomiting occurred while Antony

was acting in an official capacity, as did his attendance at lowly taverns.

Likewise, Piso and Gabinius were ineffectual consuls during 58 BC due to the

                                                                                                               280  Corbeill 1997: 112.  281 See page 42. 282 Cic. Phil. 2.58, 61. 283 Cic. Phil. 2.61, 101. 284 Cic. Phil. 2.101.  285 Corbeill 1997: 112.

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enervating effects of their own lack of self-control as publically exhibited by

their attendance at similar establishments. Cicero’s narrative concerning

taverns is similar in both works; both of his targets disguise themselves in an

attempt to hide their shame, and both attend these places whilst magistrates of

Rome. Drinking resulted in enervis and inertia for all individuals, inhibiting

their ability as magistrates.

Cicero identifies a wedding on the previous day as a cause for Antony’s

hang over. Antony, when master of the horse, attended the wedding of one

‘Hippias.’ Considering that Hippias was a Greek name meaning ‘horsey,’ one

wonders whether this wedding ever took place at all. Ramsey identifies that the

Greek name for Antony’s office was hipparchos, thus recalling the Athenian

tyrannicides Hippias and Hipparchus.286 This was thus an ironic joke based on

Cicero’s characterization of Antony as a tyrant. 287 Cicero described the

wedding banquet in the following way:

You with that gorge of yours, with those lungs, with that gladiatorial strength of your whole body, had swallowed so much wine at Hippias’ wedding that you were forced to vomit in the sight of the Roman people the next day.288

Cicero takes two swipes at Antony here. Firstly he used a metaphor to refer to

Antony’s ‘strength,’ which is ironically a lack of self-control and therefore a

weakness, as ‘gladiatorial.’ Thus Antony ‘the gladiator’ who suffers from

infamia does not even find strength in his public displays. Secondly he

introduces his motif of vomiting, recounting this episode of public vomiting

immediately afterwards:

Oh the hideousness of it… If during the banquet, in the very midst of those enormous potations of yours, this happened to you, who would not think if disgraceful? But at an assembly of the Roman people, while in the conduct of public business, a master of the horse, for whom it would be disgraceful to belch, vomited and

                                                                                                               286 Ramsey 2003: 250-1. 287 See Cic. Phil. 2.85; 115-9; these chapters form Cicero’s peroration in which he warns Antony that he may share Caesar’s fate if he aims for tyranny.    288 Cic. Phil. 2.63.

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filled his own lap and the whole tribunal with fragments of food reeking of wine.289

It was one thing to vomit at a banquet (which was still disgraceful) but entirely

another to vomit in full sight of the Roman people whilst acting in official

capacity. Antony’s drinking physically inhibited his performance on this

occasion as magister equitum. That Cicero recounted such a verifiable and

public event speaks for its historical factuality (irrespective of his

interpretation of why Antony vomited). 290 As will be discussed below,

Antony’s insobriety prevented him from acting appropriately in other

contexts.

The Consequences

The proper Roman vir participated actively and effectively in

governance and were courageous in battle. Effeminate men, on the other hand,

were mollis, inertia and enervis. Excessive drinking was one of the assumed

occupations of the effeminate man, the recognizable effects of which

prevented participation in government and caused cowardice in war. Thus

Antony did not join Caesar’s forces in Spain during 45 BC; rather, he was

busy ‘vomiting all over the tables of… [his] hosts’ in Narbo.291 Antony’s

preoccupation with his vices was the real reason he did not join Caesar’s

forces, rather than his explanation that bad weather prevented him from

sailing.292 Antony’s insobriety also prevented him from acting in his capacity

as augur correctly. Antony, attempting to prevent Dollabella from being

elected consul, declared that he intended to take the auspices and delay the

election. Cicero comments here that only senior magistrates may observe the

heavens and that augurs only reported when called upon to do so. Cicero

explained Antony’s lack of understanding as an effect of his insobriety.293

                                                                                                               289 Cic. Phil. 2.63. 290 Ramsey 2003: 252 provides an explanation which allows him to be innocent, pointing out that Antony may have fallen victim to a sudden illness. 291 Cic. Phil. 2.76.  292 Cic. Phil. 2.75. 293 Cic. Phil. 2.81-2.

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When Antony did attempt to delay the election by an obnuntiatio (report of a

negative omen) he must not have been sober either.294

Piso and Gabinius’ ineffectual governance in 58 BC was explained

through similar means. Like Antony who was never sober, Piso was drunk

throughout his consulship;295 he drank his wine undiluted at parties296 and he

frequented taverns and brothels. 297 His consulship inevitably suffered as a

result through the enervating effects of effeminacy (and the intoxicating

effects of wine). He performed his duty as consul only when he was forcibly

removed from the tavern. 298 Cicero claims that he himself caught Piso exiting

from a tavern:

Do you remember, you filth, when I visited you at about the fifth hour with Gaius Piso, how you were emerging from some mean hovel with a hood upon your head and slippers upon your feet? And how, when from your malodorous lips you had exhaled upon us the fumes of that disgusting tavern.299

Like Antony who began his parties in Varro’s villa hours earlier than

customary, so Piso attended the tavern earlier than was proper.300 Antony also

attended a tavern when he snuck into Rome to see Fulvia. Like Piso, Antony

was dressed effeminately in slippers and a mantle. 301 One particularly

important physical sign of effeminacy was fashion. Men were expected to

have a certain ‘uncultivated roughness’ and to wear gender specific clothing

that guarded them against doubt concerning their pudicitia and continentia.302

There also may have been the added implication that both Piso and Antony, by

disguising themselves under hoods, were aware of their shameful behaviour

and therefore attempting to conceal it. Their public attendance at such venues,

their fashion, just like Antony’s vomiting, providing a ‘visible means of

                                                                                                               294 Cic. Phil. 2.84. 295 Cic. Pis. 22. 296 Cic. Pis. 67-8. 297 Cic. Pis. 42. 298 Cic. Pis. 18. 299 Cic. Pis. 13. 300 Nisbet 161: 72: ‘To drink in the morning, or early afternoon was reprehensible.’  301 Cic. Phil. 2.76-7. 302 Gardner 2008: 147; Langlands 2006: 66-70; Williams 2010: 141-3.  

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verification’ for Cicero’s claims that these men were entirely lacking in self-

control.303

Cicero’s characterization of Antony through the associated vices of

luxuria, that is drinking, gambling, the squandering of fortunes and

associating with individuals disgraced with infamia, were in all respects just as

severe as was his attack on Antony through the use of sexual topoi. The

subjects that Cicero was preoccupied with in his narrative were neither unique

nor new. Cicero’s innovation here lay in the breadth and severity of his attack.

In the public sphere Antony shamelessly paraded about Italy with Cytheris

and his retinue of other infames. In doing so he disgraced the office of

magister equitum that he held. Rather than serve in Spain against Pompey’s

sons, those whose property he had seized, he remained in Italy due to the

enervating effect of his effeminacy. Likewise, his inability to function in the

office of magister equitum was represented through the use of the theme of

vomiting. This physical manifestation of Antony’s excessive drinking not only

served as a form of proof of Cicero’s claims, it revealed how Antony was

simply incapable of ruling the state. Cicero hoped, through the use of these

themes, to persuade Antony’s supporters that he was beneath their support.

Cicero’s narrative in the Second Philippic concerning Antony’s

convivia stands apart for its vividness and severity as revealed through

comparison with Cicero’s In Pisonem. Both Antony and Piso held shady

convivia in which their lusts were satiated. Pompey’s city house and Varro’s

villa were the contexts for these parties, in which enormous quantities of drink

flowed, large amounts of money was lost in gambling, the property of others

was given away to the lowest classes of society or looted and where the

pudicitia of the most vulnerable from the citizen body was destroyed. Antony

was at once sexually effeminate, always drunk, gluttonous and a gambler.

These were the scenes where matters of citizenship and status were ignored.

Cicero wanted his audience to believe that Antony was morally corrupt.

                                                                                                               303 Corbeill 1997: 112.

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Antony’s actions, which were shrouded in mystery, threatened to destabilize

the whole state.

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CONCLUSION

Cicero characterized Antony as a man whose extreme effeminacy was

unmatched by any other man in Roman society. His very nature therefore made

him an unprecedented threat to the Republic. This claim was pursued in the

following Philippics. Cicero, in the Third Philippic, recalled two of his primary

arguments from the Second Philippic, describing Antony as impudico,

effeminatus, and as a man who was never sober.304 Antony’s memory of Julius

Caesar was tainted by the memory of his own impudicitia and acts of

stuprum. 305 Antony was entirely lacking in both pudens (modesty) and

pudicitia.306 When concluding the Third Philippic, Cicero challenged the

Senate to declare war on Antony by making a devastating summary of his

character:

To be enslaved under those who are lustful [libido], impudent, impure [impuro], shameless [impudicus] and gambling drunks, those things make the height of misery and disgrace.307

Antony’s character in the Third Philippic mirrors that of the Second – he was

sexually effeminate, a gambler and a drunk. In the Fifth Philippic Antony was

‘always drunk’,308 and in the Eight and Tenth Philippics, Cicero recalled

Antony’s retinue of infames – mimes, pimps and gamblers.309 These references

would have reminded the audience of the more specific and severe accusations

made in the Second Philippic, thereby reinforcing Cicero’s argument in

context.

Cicero made more direct references to his arguments from the Second

Philippic in the Thirteenth. Antony was willing to accept slavery as he had

endured sexual passivity to men in his youth,310 and the invective Antony

                                                                                                               304 Cic. Phil. 3.12. 305 Cic. Phil. 3.15. 306 Cic. Phil. 3.28-9. 307 Cic. Phil. 3.35. 308 Cic. Phil. 5.24. 309 Cic. Phil. 8.26; 10.22.  310 Cic. Phil. 13.17

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delivered in return stems from the ‘memory of his own childhood.’311 Cicero,

with little ambiguity, refers here to Antony’s youthful prostitution and his

relationship with Curio. Antony’s vices were so costly that he would not have

been able to maintain himself if it were not for Caesar’s generosity. Antony

spent, ‘all the time of [his] life in brothels and eateries, by gambling, and in

wine,’312 all the while engaging in oral sex with mimes, that is, with individuals

who were branded with infamia. Thus Cicero created a picture of Antony’s

character throughout the Philippics which was constant. Antony was an

unprecedented impudicus who entirely lacked continentia. However, while

Cicero’s invective topoi were shared amongst the speeches, and were in some

cases used quite stridently (particularly the Third and Thirteenth Philippics) the

speeches that follow do not match the scale or severity of the Second Philippic.

The Second Philippic provides a damning picture of Antony’s private and

public life from his youth until 44 BC, attacking him on many moral fronts,

often and repeatedly.

This study has demonstrated that the charges made by Cicero against

Antony in the Second Philippic were designed to shock all good Romans; his

sexual and moral deviancy, drunkenness and gambling, and his abuse of

luxuria were unprecedented. At the very beginning of the Second Philippic

Cicero stated that Antony aimed ‘to prove [him]self more audacious than

Catiline, more frenzied than Clodius.’313 Cicero’s portrayal of Antony relied on

two main themes: sexual effeminacy and the abuse of luxuria. These themes

reinforced each other. The sexual characterization of Antony bolstered the

plausibility of Cicero’s other claims, and vice versa. To represent Antony as an

unprecedented threat to the Roman state, Cicero used his invective to a degree

that was also unprecedented in the genre. Antony exceeded all the great

enemies of the Republic in his vices: he lost his pudicitia at a young age and

continued to commit unacceptable acts of stuprum in adulthood. He was never

sober and he gambled excessively. He held debauched parties in which his

worst vices were perpetuated, not only by himself, but also by his associates.

                                                                                                               311 Cic. Phil. 13.19. 312 Cic. Phil. 13.24.  313 Cic. Phil. 2.1.

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The activities of Piso and Gabinius were minor in comparison to Antony’s

which threatened to destabilize the entire social order. They provided proof that

Antony aimed, ultimately, to destroy the Republic and establish himself as

tyrant in Rome. Perhaps the greatest testament to the power of the Second

Philippic, and also to the other Philippics, was Cicero’s eventual fate at the

hands of Antony’s executioners in 43 BC.

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