Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom by Leanne Bablitz

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 455 Hopwood observes, Cicero has managed to convince the populus that a nominallypopularis bill will, if passed, result in the loss of everything they hold dear. What's in a name? Catherine Steel asks this question in "Name and Shame? Invective against Clodius and Others in the Post-Exile Speeches" (105-128); more accurately, she scrutinizes the patterns and meaning of Cicero's naming practices in the series of speeches by which Cicero marked his return to public life; the results are interesting and surprising. Clodius is the primary target in these attacks, but Cicero also unleashes vituperation against Piso and Gabinius, the consuls who failed to save him from political ruin. Steel's analysis reveals, however, that although they are readily identifiable, Cicero's enemies in these speeches are rarely mentioned by name. As he recovers his own political reputation—his nomen, as it were—Cicero's awareness of the power invested in naming, or not naming, his opponent is shown to good effect. The reality of the Roman legal and political systems meant that one could count on at some point facing a friend or respected colleague on the other side of the case. In this situation, Rogier L. van der Wal argues in " "What a Funny Consul We Have!' Cicero's Dealings with Cato Uticensis and Prominent Friends in Opposition" (183-206), the orator must successfully discredit his opponent without doing irreparable harm to the friendship. Van der Wal's discussion of Cicero's appearance against Cato in Pro Murena shows just how deftly this negotiation could be accomplished: Cato's crucial support for Cicero in the senate on December 5, only a few weeks after the trial, shows that there were no hard feelings. Finally, the contribution of Byron Harries, "Acting the Part: Techniques of the Comic Stage in Cicero's Early Speeches" (129-148), is more difficult to assess. Harries's essay is only loosely connected to the theme of invective; it focuses rather on Cicero's engagement with actors and the theatre in his early oratorical career. Following the main body of the text there appear five appendices, treating (I) Cicero's life and works; (II) personal names; (III) a list of main passages discussed; (IV) Latin and Greek terms; (V) and subjects. Like Ciceronian oratory itself, the volume is well crafted and persuasive. University of Western Ontario Debra L. Nousek Actors and Audience in the Roman Courtroom. By Leanne Bablitz. London and New York: Routledge. 2007. Pp. ix, 290. Looking back on her 1927 obscenity trial before a grand jury in New York, Mae West—who had dressed demurely in black satin throughout the court sessions, the very embodiment of modest propriety—concluded that: "I enjoyed the courtroom as just another stage but not so amusing as Broadway." As Leanne Bablitz demonstrates in this engaging, bold, and erudite book, Roman trial participants were also acutely aware of the theatricality of courtroom proceedings and rituals, from female defendants in public cases who deliberately donned dark clothing and removed all of their jewellery (84), to male advocates who draped themselves in "transparent chiffon" and painted their faces with make up, on occasion renting a sardonyx ring "in order to appear more successful and attract clients" (191). Bablitz does an excellent job of exploring Roman "dramas in the theatre of Justice," as she puts it. This impressive monograph, however, is about more than just performing bodies and extended courtroom-as-spectacle metaphors. Bablitz's stated goal is "to bring to life the environment of the courts of early imperial Rome, in 456 PHOENIX all their variety, both by reconstructing the physical features of the courts as far as the evidence allows, and by breathing life into the personal dimensions of those participating within" (199). One of the strongest and most distinctive features of the book is her stress on the importance of place: whether attempting to locate trial hearings within the known topography of imperial Rome, situating trial participants within the reconstructed physical environment of a Roman courtroom, or trying to understand how socio-political hierarchy, and the place of individual actors within it, played out in legal contexts. Her portrait of

Art · Cicero · Invective · Literature · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Classics · History · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Legal principles and applications · Philosophy