Sanguine non modo se non contaminarunt, sed etiam honestarunt
The Religious Deviance of Furor and the Death of the Gracchi in Cicero’s Works
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 23482529 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Janico Albrecht (University of Bonn, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Pages | 85-109 |
| Publication date | 2022-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Transgression and Deviance in the Ancient World (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | J.B. Metzler (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/978-3-476-05873-7_6 |
| OpenAlex | W4297310168 |
| ISBN | 9783476058737 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
Scholars of Roman Republican religion have to face the fact that Cicero is an overwhelming presence in the extant record. Consequently, it is often easier to deduct Ciceronian views on religion than to understand the underlying normative discourse. This essay employs a constructionist approach to deviance in order to analyse, in a first step, Cicero's decade-long work on the definition of furor as a religious label that combined juridical, pathological and other degrees of culpability. In a second step, it considers the historical case of the murders of the tribunes Ti. and C. Gracchus, an often recurring topic in Cicero's works. Despite his extensive efforts to portray the tribunes according to his own political agenda, he never applied the concept of furor tribunicius to their controversial behaviour. This essay proposes that in the case of the Gracchi Cicero's opponents held the interpretative high ground, and that it was consequently he who had to attempt to deconstruct the religious dimension of the affair.
Art · Cicero · Deviance (statistics) · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Literature · Normative · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Augustinian Studies and Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Computer Science · Law · Philosophy
| Highly cited | No |
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