Language Log

« previous post | next post »

Ancient Rome played a prominent role, in two different ways, in the comments on yesterday's post "Progress and its enemies". This was unexpected, since the post was about the rhetoric of names in political philosophy. In any case, my comments on the comments are too long to fit gracefully in a comment, so I'm posting them here separately.

Rome came up first in some back-and-forth about the use and meaning of the fasces in Roman times. Were they symbols of strength-in-unity, or were they a "portable execution kit"? In support of the second interpretation, Dan Lufkin quoted a passage from a recent book by Cullen Murphy, who in turn cites a 1984 paper by Anthony J. Marshall. Dan observed that the journal's web site "is still under construction for that issue", and suggests that we can probably find it in the stacks of our campus library.

In off-site storage, more likely, but in any case, there's no need to do anything as drastic as actually dealing with a physical object, since Anthony J. Marshall, "Symbols and Showmanship in Roman Public Life: The Fasces", Phoenix 38(2): 120-141,1984, is available from JSTOR. And Marshall does try to establish the points that Dan Lufkin cites Cullen Murphy as citing it to prove; and his argument seems persuasive to me. Here are a few quotes:

If we turn from public ceremony to the related topic of state regalia, we find that here also there predominates a tradition of scholarship dedicated to discovering the earliest strata of constitutional history. This limited inquiry may again tempt the unwary to infer that public institutions were static and that consequently their most archaic function continues for all periods to provide the key to the real, abiding significance of regalia such as the fasces. But it would be implausible to equate the primitive origin with the constant "meaning" if the Romans' own perception of their emblems of office remained lively and evolved in response to changing social and political conditions. Nor would it be reasonable to assume that Romans of the later Republic remained generally aware of the earliest, sacral origins of their magisterial regalia. […]

As constant concomitants of high office both in and outside Rome, the fasces in particular were the most striking visual feature of magisterial authority "on parade," and it is hardly surprising that our sources do not treat them as modern writers would treat a mere ceremonial mace of office. But this vital element cannot be the concern of studies which approach the evidence with the set purpose of extrapolating abstract constitutional norms. Unless we can establish that a significant number of Romans knew the historic reason for ceremonies such as the removal of axes from fasces at the pomoerium and clearly understood whether the primary significance of the securis was punitive, military, or religious, the traditional discussion of these topics in terms of constitutional technicalities cannot by itself elucidate the complete function of such insignia in post-regal periods. […]

We may take our start from the basic fact that the fasces were not merely decorative or symbolic devices carried before magistrates in a parade of idle formalism. Rather, they constituted a portable kit for flogging and decapitation. Since they were so brutally functional, they not only served as ceremonial symbols of office but also carried the potential of violent repression and execution. If these emblems of office paraded before Roman eyes retained their practical function in the infliction of severe corporal punishment, then despite the advent of provocatio their punitive associations never became as historically "distanced" for the average citizen as have those of ceremonial maces and swords in modern societies. Even after provocatio had been won to shield citizens from their summary use, mass executions of deserters or prisoners of war involving virgae and secures could still be viewed on occasion in the forum. Roman society was therefore unusual in that its central magisterial regalia remained directly functional; the fasces continued as both symbol and instrument of executive power. Thus powerful emotions of pride and fear could focus on them, and their symbolic political significance was accordingly intensified by their aura of latent violence. […]

"Provocatio (ad populum)" was the right of Roman citizens to appeal "to the people" magistrates' decisions in capital cases (also discussed here.) According to legend, this right was established by a law passed in the first year of the republic, 509 B.C., after the expulsion of Tarquinius Superbus, the last king of Rome.

Marshall continues:

In this context, it is significant that grants of the ius provocationis were so highly prized that for some recipients they were an acceptable alternative to full citizenship. Slaves or free men unprotected by citizenship or special privilege were subject without appeal to the full powers of the imperium administered via the lictor's strong right arm. This might run to a few blows to control crowds or enforce respect for the magistrate at an assize-hearing, or it might extend to flogging with or without decapitation to follow. Although the virgae themselves were not intended for capital punishment, the fasces are sometimes termed "bloody" in our sources because of the terrible beating which the heavy rods inflicted; they could, and sometimes did, prove lethal. Of birch or elmwood and some one-and-a- half meters in length, they were considerably weightier than the centurion's vitis or "swagger-stick," (which it was permissible to apply to citizens' backs). The virgae could of course be used on non-Roman military personnel. The single-headed securis, regularly carried in the fasces extra urbem and seen as a component of the regalia of office, was employed for executions under the Republic, later replaced in the Principate by the sword. Condemned prisoners were not kept waiting after sentencing, and execution was carried out in full public view. When the magistrate bade the praeco pronounce the dread words age lege, the lictors would unstrap the red thongs of the fasces on the spot (virgas expedire). […]

Physical dread of the fasces had abated for the Romans themselves after the cherished right of provocatio was won. While it remained effective, this right was prized with an ardour intensified by keen awareness of the menacing, practical side of the rods and axe as it continued a reality for the less privileged. Citizens themselves could still be beaten with the virgae if they did not register an appeal, and suspect elements of society such as rowdy actors could still suffer flogging before Roman eyes in the capital. Citizens began once more to dread summary punishment as their right of immunity wore thin from the second century A.D. onward, but in the heyday of their privilege any discovery that citizens' rights had been flouted by the lictors drew sharp reaction. Cicero's Verrines amply demonstrate how easily horrified emotion could be roused by tales of high-handedness. It is reasonable to assume that references to this grimmer side of the fasces and axes are the more emotionally charged because freedom from their application formed such a cherished and central component of civic rights; the more so since they did not fade into obsolescence as instruments of punishment, as have the block, the stocks, and finally the gallows for us. Liability to the fasces, in the chillingly physical image of axe poised over neck, rods over back, could therefore be used as a vivid, even relishable, symbol of subjection to Rome.

Marshall also suggests that the modern interpretation of the fasces as symbolizing strength-in-unity, rather than official-violence-provisionally-held-in-check, is an iconographic innovation of the French Revolution:

The Nachleben of the fasces in post-Classical history cannot be fully documented here but deserves mention as a tribute to their continuing vitality as symbols despite their antiquity. Their association with political strength was to be spectacularly exploited by the French revolutionaries, who interpreted them as a symbol of strength in unity, and, more dubiously, by the Italian Fascisti after 1926.

I had learned, or at least retained, only the strength-in-unity interpretation, so I'm grateful to Dan for furthering my education.

---

The second classical discussion began because I quoted Terence's "humani nihil a me alienum puto", in order to explain why I had read and blogged about Mark Halpern's Language and Human Nature. In response, Adrian Morgan quoted an echo in a work by Henri J M Nouwen. I was grateful to learn about Nouwen — I'd never heard of him before — and this confirmed the observations about serendipitous communication an earlier LL post on Terence's line ("Terence in the global lunchroom", 8/18/2004).

Terence's line has gotten a lot of attention over the years, as Richard Bauman explains in Human Rights in Ancient Rome:

'Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.'

'I am a man: I deem nothing pertaining to man foreign to me.' The words of the comic playwright P. Terentius Afer reverberated across the Roman world of the mid-second century BC and beyond. Terence, an African and a former slave, was well placed to preach the message of universalism, of the essential unity of the human race, that had come down in philosophical form from the Greeks, but needed the pragmatic muscles of Rome in order to become a practical reality. The influence of Terence's felicitous phrase on Roman thinking about human rights can hardly be overestimated. Two hundred years later the philosopher Seneca ended his seminal exposition of the unity of mankind with a clarion-call:

There is one short rule that should regulate human relationships. All that you see, both divine and human, is one. We are the parts of one great body. Nature created us from the same source and to the same end. She imbued us with mutual affection and sociability, she taught us to be fair and just, to suffer injury rather than to inflict it. She bids extend our hands to all in need of help. let that well-known line be in our hearts and on our lips: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto. [(myl) from Seneca the Younger (4 BC – 65 AD), Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium]

With access to an intellectual coterie in which culture, influence and realism all played a part, Terence's message epitomised the Roman conception of human rights. It was not a starry-eyed concept. Prompted by the need to define their relations with non-Romans, the new masters of the Mediterranean world sought to combine the tenets of Greek philanthropia with traditional Roman values. The resultant product, humanitas, was given theoretical form by thinkers like Cicero and Seneca, and practical expression by laws and trials.

Given what an old hypocrite Lucius Annaeus Seneca was, it's worth noting that in its original setting in Terence's Heautontimorumenos: The Self-Tormenter, the line is a contextually ironic justification of neighborly meddling, rather than an unambiguous affirmation of universal empathy.

Henry Thomas Riley's version of the play's "argument" begins like this:

Chremes commands his wife, when pregnant, if she is delivered of a girl immediately to kill the child. Having given birth to a girl, Sostrata delivers her to an old woman named Philtera to be exposed. Instead of doing this, Philtera calls her Antiphila, and brings her up as her own. Clinia, the son of Menedemus, falls in love with her, and treats her as though his wife. Menedemus, on learning this, is very angry, and by his harsh language drives away his son from home. Taking this to heart, and in order to punish himself for his ill-timed severity, Menedemus, though now an aged man, fatigues himself by laboring at agricultural pursuits from morning till night.

This sets the stage for Riley's translation of the start of Act 1, Scene 1:

Chremes: Although this acquaintanceship between us is of very recent date, from the time in fact of your purchasing an estate here in the neighborhood, yet either your good qualities, or our being neighbors (which I take to be a sort of friendship), induces me to inform you, frankly and familiarly, that you appear to me to labor beyond your years, and beyond what your affairs require. For, in the name of Gods and men, what would you have? What can be your aim? You are, as I conjecture, sixty years of age, or more. No man in these parts has a better or a more valuable estate, no one more servants; and yet you discharge their duties just as diligently as if there were none at all. However early in the morning I go out, and however late in the evening I return home, I see you either digging, or plowing, or doing something, in fact, in the fields. You take respite not an instant, and are quite regardless of yourself. I am very sure that this is not done for your amusement. But really I am vexed how little work is done here. If you were to employ the time you spend in laboring yourself, in keeping your servants at work, you would profit much more.

Menedemius: Have you so much leisure, Chremes, from your own affairs, that you can attend to those of others-those which don't concern you?

Chremes: I am a man, and nothing that concerns a man do I deem a matter of indifference to me.  Suppose that I wish either to advise you in this matter, or to be informed myself:  if what you do is right, that I may do the same; if it is not, then that I may dissuade you.

Menedemius: It's requisite for me to do so; do you as it is necessary for you to do.

Chremes: Is it requisite for any person to torment himself?

Menedemius: It is for me.

Chremes: If you have any affliction, I could wish it otherwise. But prithee, what sorrow is this of yours? How have you deserved so ill of yourself?

Menedemius: Alas! alas! (He begins to weep.)

The key section in the original Latin:

ME. Chreme, tantumne ab re tuast oti tibi
aliena ut cures ea quae nil ad te attinent?
CH. homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
vel me monere hoc vel percontari puta:
rectumst ego ut faciam; non est te ut deterream.
ME. mihi sic est usu'; tibi ut opu' factost face.
CH. an quoiquamst usus homini se ut cruciet? ME. mihi.
CH. si quid laborist nollem. sed quid istuc malist?
quaeso, quid de te tantum meruisti? ME. eheu!

[I should note that Terence's play, like most Roman comedies of its time, was a translation of a (lost) Greek original — so it's possible that the credit for the line, as well as the plot, ought to go to Menander rather than Terence.]

February 19, 2009 @ 6:13 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Language and politics

Permalink