Parricidii sit actio: killing the father in Roman declamation

Mario Lentano (Siena) Parricidii sit actio: Killing the Father in Roman Declamation* Abstract: The present article offers a large-scale survey of the Latin declamations dealing with parricide. Because of the importance of the father/son relationship in Roman culture, the topic of parricide is widespread, being attested in both declamatory collections and rhetorical handbooks. Examination of the topic sheds light on the contradictions and pathologies of the Roman family and provides a glimpse into the dark side of a strongly patriarchal society. 1 The importance of the father/son relationship to Latin declamation is well known and should not surprise anyone, given the special position of the father in the structure – and imagination – of Roman society. This aspect of school rhetoric is probably better understood today than at any point in the past thanks to numerous scholars who have dealt with the subject, e. g.: Yan Thomas, Lewis Sussman, Elaine Fantham, Marc Vesley, Afredo Casamento, Bé Breij, and many others.1 As to the specific topic I will address in this paper – parricide – we also benefit from the expertise of Lucia Pasetti, whose excellent commentary on Ps.Quintilian’s * I read an early version of this paper before the 17th Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, held in Bologna in July 2011: I want to thank all of those who hosted us in that prestigious setting, and who discussed the content of my paper with me. My gratitude must also go to Maurizio Bettini and my colleagues Graziana Brescia, Lucia Pasetti, Marcello Salvadore, who read the manuscript and improved it by their suggestions – remaining, of course, innocent of any factual or conceptual errors that may remain. Finally, I am grateful to William Short for his masterful translation. The most frequently quoted texts are given in the English translation of Russell 2001 for Quintilian, of Shackleton Bailey 2006 for the Declamationes minores, of Sussman 1987 for the Declamationes maiores, of Winterbottom 1974 for Seneca the Elder, of Rolfe 1914 for Suetonius and of Freese 1930 for Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino. 1 Thomas 1983; Sussman 1995; Fantham 2004; Vesley 2003; Casamento 2002, 71–99; Breij 2006 and 2007. Broad-reaching, but in my opinion methodologically debatable, is the discussion of paternity in declamation by Gunderson 2003. Cf. also Imber 2008, whom I want to thank for giving me a draft copy of her contribution. Finally, I have dealt with fathers and sons in school rhetoric elsewhere, above all in Lentano 1998 and 2009 and in Brescia-Lentano 2009, 69–94, where further bibliography may be found. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 134 Mario Lentano Declamationes maiores, 17, involving a trial for attempted patricide, reflects her special knowledge of school rhetoric and of this declamation in particular.2 Nevertheless, I wish to contribute to this collection of studies by making certain integrative observations, as well as certain corrections, and by suggesting an overall assessment of the corpus of texts taken into consideration. 2 We can begin by surveying the available evidence in extant collections of controversiae. A brief lexical clarification is necessary, however. There has been much debate over the meaning of the terms parricida and parricidium in Latin declamation: Thomas’ hypothesis – that in the declamatory texts these terms denote principally the killing of the father – has been appropriately amended,3 since in all the collections at our disposal their range of meanings in fact turns out to be quite broad. For example, parricidium can designate the murder of one brother by another, and also – somewhat less dramatically – the behavior of someone who refuses to help his own brother fallen on hard times. The term crudelissimus parricida can even refer to a father who has allowed (according to his wife) one of his twin sons to die – notwithstanding his hopes of discovering thereby a way to save the other twin’s life – or who has tortured his son to death on suspicion of incest with his mother, or who has simply put a spell over his son’s tomb to put an end to his ghostly visitations to his mother’s dreams.4 A mother, who leads one of her sons to commit suicide after learning that this is the only way to save her husband from blindness, is also guilty of parricidium, as is the mother accused of poisoning her son to prevent him from testifying against her on the charge of adultery.5 A vir fortis can be called parricida if he kills his deserter son – though 2 Pasetti 2011. She has dealt with the Decl. maior. 17 also in previous works: cf. Pasetti 2007, 2008, esp. 137–47, and 2009–10. 3 The hypothesis I refer to is in Thomas 1981, and its most elaborate refutation is in Lassen 1992; cf. also Berti 2007, 323 n. 3 and above all Pasetti 2011, 16–18. 4 The specific passages are: for parricidium/parricida referring to killing the brother, Sen. Contr. 7.1.1, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23; Ps. Quint. Decl. min. 286.9; 321.6 and 11; Calp. Flacc. Decl. 21.7 (here as elsewhere, citations of Calpurnius Flaccus refer to Håkanson’s edition); for failing to give assistance to a brother in difficulty, cf. Sen. Contr. 1. 1. 23 (with the note ad loc. in Winterbottom 1974); fathers called “parricides”: Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 8.1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 14, 15, 19, 21; 10.17; 18.1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17. 5 Cf., respectively, Calp. Flacc. Decl. 10.8; Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 319.2, 3, 5. The declamation of Calpurnius Flaccus can be compared with the theme of Sopater, Quaestionum divisio, 59, in which, Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 135 this is precisely what is required of him by a law posed in the theme. There are also cases where parricidium refers to the killing of a patronus (e. g., the case of Popillius, Cicero’s assassin), or where it seems to be used in reference to treason or even to designate the plans of a young man who wishes to become tyrant.6 Furthermore, a systematic analysis of the declamatory texts controverts any claim that parricidium and parricida, in declamation, refer above all to the killing of a father. And yet this definition is to some degree correct, as it recognizes that extended uses of the concept of parricidium appear almost exclusively within the declaimers’ treatment of the controversiae. In the theme, on the other hand – or in the laws that regulate its formulation – the category of parricidium refers most frequently by far to the killing of a father, while other terms are used for these other crimes. Thus, in the case of the mother who is accused of killing her son as a potential witness against her, the term parricidium occurs at least three times in the text to indicate the woman’s crime, whereas in the theme it is said that the husband vult agere cum uxore veneficii.7 Similarly, treason is described as parricidium in the body of Declamationes minores, 371, but in the theme the term proditio is used.8 Even in cases of the greatest deviation from the juridical value of parricidium, when the term is used to designate a father who has killed his son, however, the mother does not appear, but it is the son who decides to commit suicide after having learned that the oracle has prophesied the father’s recovery from blindness on this condition alone. I note parenthetically that in the text of Ps.Quintilian, the rhetor who represents the position of the husband claims that the woman is inter prodigia numeranda (319.2), an assertion surely related to the “unnaturalness” of infanticide committed by a mother, typically seen in Greco-Roman culture as more loving of children than fathers; and yet the impression remains that the rhetor is applying a motif – comparing parricide to a monstrum or even to a prodigium – most famously attested by Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino, an inevitable point of reference for declaimers dealing with the theme of parricide and applied here to a crime that is in fact later described as parricidium. Cf. Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino, 38 and 63; cf. also, among others, Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 8.14 (quod tu monstri portentique genus es? [“what kind of monster or beast are you?”], immediately before parricidium); Emporius 566, 30 f. Halm (where the prodigium rests in the parricide having been committed by a virgo: I am grateful to Luigi Pirovano for kindly pointing out this passage). 6 The Senecan declamation on Cicero and Popillius is Contr. 7.2, on which I refer the reader to Lentano 2011a; for the other references, cf. Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 315.18; 371.3; 322.4. 7 Cf. 319, theme. Similarly, Sulpicius Victor, Institutiones oratoriae, 331.14–332.16 Halm, in which a wife is accused of veneficium in the theme, whereas in the rhetor’s analysis she is called rea parricidii (331.27 H.). 8 Cf. 371, theme: qui proditionis patrem reum habebat fortiter pugnavit [“a man whose father was charged with treason became a hero”]. Popillius, who in the treatment of Sen. Contr. 7.2 is repeatedly accused of parricidium and qualified as parricida for having killed the man who successfully defended him in court, is said to be guilty de moribus in the theme. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 136 Mario Lentano the theme focuses on the wife’s accusation of mala tractatio (cf. Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 8, 10, 18 and 19).9 Therefore, parricidium and parricida are strongly polarized around the meaning of “killing of the father” in the themes of Latin controversiae. In the controversiae themselves, however, the two terms exhibit a much wider and more varied range of senses. The purpose of extending this term to cover other (lesser, or at any rate different) crimes appears to be to discredit the opposition or to defend oneself from an accusation by imputing the responsibility for one’s behavior to a detestable crime – “parricide” in its broadest sense – of which the plaintiff himself would be found guilty. As occurs very often in Ciceronian oratory, the concept of “parricide” lends itself, in short, to being a kind of hyperonym for a series of criminal acts that have specific, limited juridical consequences, but that, when subsumed under this label, acquire a greater degree of despicableness, with undertones of extreme violence and impiety. 3 Having specified that what interests us here is the “parricide” sensu strictiore (i. e. “patricide”) of which Latin declamation speaks,10 we can return to the texts. An initial distinction must be made between those cases in which the death of the father is already established and those whose aim it is to ascertain the son’s 9 And in the rhetorical manuals, e. g., Consultus Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, 1.15, p. 87, 12–14 Calboli Montefusco (= Grillius, Commentum in Ciceronis Rhetorica, 1.15, p. 71, 17 f. Jakobi). Speaking of deviation from the juridical value of parricidium, I refer to the meaning that was given to this term in the Lex Pompeia de parricidiis, which the declaimers obviously know (cf. most recently Pasetti 2011, 16–20), but which did not include under “parricide” the killing of a child by the father, likely because this was one of the prerogatives granted by patria potestas (cf. the note of L. Calboli Montefusco to Consultus Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, 1.11, p. 298). 10 In Latin declamation, jurisdiction for attempted parricide is unclear: in some cases, it falls to the father to arbitrate by means of domestic trial (e. g., in the theme of Sen. Contr. 7.1, alterum ex adulescentibus domi parricidi damnavit [“he convicted one of the youths privately for parricide”]), in others the accused is taken before a public tribunal. The first case (which seems to be the rule in the real world, at least according to Thomas 1981, 703 f. and 2002, 30) is sometimes the subject of explicit comment on the part of declaimers, as at Sen. Contr. 7. 1. 22 ad expiandum scelus triumviris opus est, comitio, carnifice. tanti sceleris non magis privatum potest esse supplicium quam iudicium [“to expiate wicked deeds one requires triumvirs, the place of assembly, the executioner. For such a great crime the punishment can be no more private than the trial”]. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 137 presumed homicidal intentions.11 To the second group belong Seneca, Controversiae, 3.2, in which a father disowns his son after the latter has been acquitted by hung jury of attempted parricide; 5.4, in which an accusation of parricide is made by one son against another, who, having taken a journey with his father, returned alone – an accusation ultimately proved unfounded when the father returns;12 7.1, in which a father finds his son guilty of attempted parricide in a domestic trial and entrusts the execution to a second son – who, however, prefers to put his brother on a decommissioned ship that is set adrift.13 In Ps.Quintilian’s Declamationes maiores, those suspected of parricide are: first, the two blind men, protagonists of the declamations opening the collection, Paries palmatus and Caecus in limine. Technically, these are ἀντικατηγορίαι, reciprocal accusations between sons and stepmothers after a father/husband has been found murdered in his bed during the night.14 A special case is that of the fourth Maior, in which a son asks to be killed after he learns of a prophecy that he will first become a distinguished war hero, and then kill his own father. Among the Declamationes minores, 299 (Ossa eruta parricidae) deals with this theme. On his deathbed, a father confesses to his daughter that he has been poisoned by her two brothers. One of the two sons commits suicide, and the other is found guilty at trial and condemned to being abandoned without burial, according to the law Parricidae insepulti abiciantur (probably to be understood, as a variant of the classic “punishment of the sack”). However, when the daughter disinters the bones of the brother who has killed himself, she in turn is accused of violating his tomb.15 In 314, a parricide is again acquitted by hung jury – except that the accused, overcome by madness, begins to wander the city shouting “I killed you, father.” He is then brought to justice by a magistrate, on the grounds of a law stating that confessed criminals are to be condemned; but an accusation of homicide is then made against the judge. Decl. min. 322 plays on the interpretation of evidence: A young man proclaims that he has killed his father who was planning to become tyrant. However, on the dead man’s body is found a letter in which he threatens to disown his son if he “will not stop”: an elliptic expression, to be sure, but enough to make some suspect that it was actually 11 These latter are cases of inperpetratum parricidium, as defined in the Rhetorica attributed to Augustine (6, p. 140, 31 Halm). 12 I have dealt with this intricate declamatory plot in Brescia – Lentano 2009, 99 f. 13 Cf. Lentano 2012. 14 On Declamationes maiores, 1 and 2, cf. respectively Stramaglia 2008b and 2009. 15 Cf. Stramaglia 1999, 300–307 (see 302 f. n. 1 for discussion of the relationship between the law used in this controversy and poena cullei). Cf. also van Mal-Maeder 2007, 16–18; and Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 6.10, with the commentary of Zinsmaier 2009, esp. 208 f. n. 220. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 138 Mario Lentano the young man who wished to become tyrant, and the father who had enjoined him to give up such designs. Finally, in Calpurnius Flaccus’ fourth declamation, another (unparalleled) legal provision appears, stipulating that those guilty of (attempted) parricide be kept in custody for one year before being condemned. In this case, the issue arises when the son asks to spend this period in a public jailhouse, rather than in his own home, against his father’s objection. To these can be added a pair of themes attested only in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria and deriving in all likelihood from school declamation: first, the case of the young luxuriosus – something of a stock character in declamation – suspected of parricide for having pronounced against his father the threatening words “You won’t lecture me any more,” and, second, that of the son whose response to any inquiry of his father’s whereabouts was “Wherever he is, he is drinking,” the basis for an accusation of parricide when his father is found dead in a well.16 Finally, there are themes – sometimes quite meager, given their function of pure didactic exemplification – absent from the four corpora of Seneca, Ps.Quintilian, and Calpurnius Flaccus, and cited only in late antique rhetorical manuals: in Consultus Fortunatianus, a son has been disowned by his father for being drafted (cf. Sen. Contr. 1.8) and is accused of parricide after he is found killed by the son’s sword. In the same text is cited the following theme: the father of a luxuriosus does not appear in the courtroom, where (it seems) the son was to make an appeal against abdicatio; he is accused of parricide.17 Even from this brief survey, it is evident that in controversiae of this kind parricide is narrative cover for speaking about other issues: the interpretation of ambiguous expressions as proof of innocence or guilt, the use of unclear evidence (as in the last two cases cited from Quintilian or in the two of Consultus Fortunatianus), and the significance of utterances made in a state of mental impairment (as in the case of the son who cries ego te, pater, occidi). Also at issue is the contradiction between a law that prohibits the violation of tombs and that which requires a parricide be left unburied, the treatment of prophecies (in Ps.Quintilian’s Maior entitled, not by chance, Mathematicus), and so on. These controversiae present certain elements of great interest to the theme of conflict between fathers and sons. But this conflict does not constitute the focus of the declama- 16 Cf. respectively 5. 10. 47 and 7. 2. 48 (regarding the latter, bibit is a correction by modern editors of transmitted vivit). The luxuriosus is one of the “usual suspects” of parricide, cf. Consultus Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, 1.12, p. 83, 1 Calb. Mont. (luxuriosi pater non conparuit; reus est filius parricidii), or within a Greek context, Hermogenes, De statibus 3, p. 44 and the anonymous Problemata in status 6, vol. 8, p. 403, 9–13 Walz. 17 Ars rhetorica, 1.12, p. 82, 7–9 and p. 83, 1 Calb. Mont. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 139 tory debate, which centers instead on other figures from within the family group (e.g., the noverca in the first two Maiores).18 4 The controversiae that focus above all on the conflict of father and son are those in which the former brings about an accusation of attempted parricide against the latter. It is in these texts that the key technical expressions parricidii actio or reus parricidii appear most frequently. Let us, then, look more carefully at these declamations. A homogeneous group is formed by the cases of a son who is caught preparing a poison or drug, following a rather vague formulation: the young man claims that he is preparing it to commit suicide, but the father suspects he is contemplating parricide – especially when the son, invited to drink the potion, instead pours the contents of the vessel on the ground. This is the theme of fusa venena, as defined by an expression of Juvenal (likely in fact related to declamation):19 in the anthologies, the theme is found in Sen. Contr. 7.3, Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 377 and Decl. maior. 17, mentioned in the opening of this paper.20 A more complex varia- 18 An interesting theme, clearly of Greek origin, is mentioned in Grillius’ commentary on Cicero’s De inventione, in which a parricide (not disputed) is again pretext to speak of something else, in this case the relationship between mos and lex (p. 71, 20–22 J.) erat apud Scythas mos, ut a filiis patres sexagenarii occiderentur. Scytha cum filio migravit Athenas. hic completis sexaginta annis a filio occisus est. reus fit parricidii [“Among the Scythians there was the custom that the children killed their sixty year old fathers. One such Scythian migrated to Athens with his son. When he turned sixty, he was promptly killed by his son. The son was accused of patricide”]. 19 Cf. Juv. 7.166–170 haec alii sex / vel plures uno conclamant ore sophistae / et veras agitant lites raptore relicto; / fusa venena silent, malus ingratusque maritus / et quae iam veteres sanant mortaria caecos [“That’s what six or more other professors yell with one voice and they abandon ‘The Rapist’ to engage in real lawsuits. ‘The Administering of Poison’ goes silent and so does ‘The Wicked, Ungrateful Husband’ and ‘The Cures for Chronic Blindness’”], with the commentary of Stramaglia 2008a, 198. 20 The respective themes of the three controversies are: Sen. Contr. 7.3 ter abdicatus, ter absolutus conprensus est a patre in secreta parte domus medicamentum terens; interrogatus, quid esset, dixit venenum et velle se mori, et effudit. accusatur parricidii [“A son who had been three times disinherited and three times reprieved was caught by his father pounding up drugs in a secluded part of the house. Asked what it was, he said it was a poison and that he wanted to die. Then he poured it away. He is accused of parricide”]; Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 377 parricidii sit actio. pater filium in militiam vocavit. ille ornatus donis ad patrem rediit. adhibitis amicis petit a patre ne se amplius mitteret; non impetravit. iterum fortissime pugnavit; rediit. terens venenum a patre deprehensus est. interrogatus dixit se mori velle. parricidii reus est patri [“Let action for parricide Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 140 Mario Lentano tion of the theme is found in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, where its scholastic origin is obvious and also explicitly stated: a disowned son studies medicine, and when the doctors despair of curing his sick father, he promises his father will recuperate provided he drink a potion. The father drinks some of it and cries out that it is a poison. The son drinks the rest of what is left in the cup. When the father dies and the son remains unharmed, the latter is accused of parricide.21 Quintilian also recounts a case in which three sons swear an oath and draw lots to decide the order in which they shall enter their father’s bedroom on a certain night to kill him. Each fails in this objective, and, when the father wakes up, they confess their plan. Accused of attempted parricide, they are then defended by their father.22 The list also includes Sen. Contr. 7.5, a complex case in which two men accuse one another of a man’s death (i. e., another ἀντικατηγορία): the eldest son of the deceased and the procurator with whom the victim’s second wife had evidently been in a relationship; and Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 281, in which a father lie. A father summoned his son to join the army. He returned to his father with decorations. Calling in friends, he asked his father not to send him out again; he was refused. A second time he fought heroically. He returned. He was caught by his father mixing poison. Questioned, he said he wanted to die. His father accuses him of parricide”]; Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 17 filium ter abdicare voluit pater, victus. invenit quodam tempore in secreta domus parte medicamentum terentem. interrogavit, quid esset, cui parasset. ille dixit venenum et se mori <velle>. iussit pater bibere. ille effudit medicamentum. accusatur a patre parricidii [“Three times a father wanted to disown and disinherit his son, but lost in court. One day the father found him compounding a drug in a secluded part of their house. Questioned as to what it was and for whom it was intended, the son said that it was poison and that he <wanted> to die. His father ordered him to drink it, but the son poured the drug on the ground. The father accuses him of (attempted) parricide”]. 21 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 7. 2. 17 (= Consultus Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica, 1.12, p. 82, 13–17 Calb. Mont.), strictly speaking part of the first group of our classification, given that in this case the father’s death has already happened and the issue turns on the identification of the culprit. It should be noted that also in another declamation of the first group, Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 299, on the burial of a parricide’s bones, the father declares on his deathbed that he has been poisoned by his two sons; and poisoning is one of the two usual forms of parricide evoked in Decl. min. 260, next to the hiring of a percussor; cf. 260.19 nulli horum obiectum est quod venenum patri parasset, nulli quod percussorem in fata parentis sui conduxisset [“none of them is charged with preparing poison for his father or hiring an assassin to take a parent’s life”]. Moreover, the idea that fathers have to keep watch for possible poisonings by sons anxious to get their hands on the family’s money is a motif that returns also in Juvenal, undoubtedly under the influence of declamation: cf. 14.250–255, with the commentary of Laudizi 1986, 106 f. (this interesting work is wrong, however, to dedicate such restricted attention to declamation, which is only mentioned in 104 f.). 22 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4. 2. 72–74. Behind the accusation of parricide, as has been observed (Spalding 1798, ad loc.), are presumably the gentiles of the pater familias, who wish to enter the line of inheritance once the sons have been condemned. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 141 disowns a son, but before the trial that will validate or invalidate the abdicatio, he encounters the young man armed with a sword and demanding the disinheritance be rescinded. The father complies, but immediately afterward accuses the son of attempted parricide.23 5 Counting the controversiae of both the first and the second groups, we find twenty-two in which attempted, suspected, or accomplished parricide is expressly mentioned in the theme.24 This is no small number – but neither is it very great when compared to the nearly three hundred declamations that have been preserved, and to which may be added those not attested in the regular corpora but mentioned in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria or in the late antique rhetorical manuals. All told, it might seem that the obsession with parricide normally attributed to Roman culture did not affect the schools of rhetoric to a significant degree. This impression would be wrong, however – at least in part. The twenty-two themes drawn up so far can be further supplemented by those cases in which a suspicion of parricide – desired or planned – is raised by a father as part of the declamation itself, even if this suspicion is not explicitly mentioned in the theme. Consider, for example, Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 258, where a vir fortis disowns his son, also a “brave man,” for refusing to yield a prize to him even though a refusal requires a contest of arms to decide among claimants – father and son. “Now I see why you did not yield,” says the father. “It meant more to you than the reward to duel with your father and commit parricide under the law.”25 In Decl. min. 317, recently analyzed by Graziana Brescia, the term perditissimus parricida is used to describe a son who, after defecting to the enemy, challenges his father – the general of his former city – to a duel.26 In Decl. min. 375, a vir fortis chooses to 23 The theme recurs in an episode recounted by Valerius Maximus (5.9.4, under the heading De parentum adversus suspectos liberos moderatione): an unidentified father, learning that his son was plotting against his life, took him to an isolated spot (in locum desertum) and put a sword in his hand, inviting him to carry through with his plan. At this point the son throws aside the weapon and asks his father’s pardon. 24 These twenty-two should supplement the lists compiled by Sussman 1994, 103, and Langer 2007, 87–90. 25 258.6 iam video quare non cesseris: hoc tibi praemio maius videbatur, committi cum patre et parricidium facere iure. In Lentano 1998, esp. 52 f., I have discussed the figure of the vir fortis, with special reference to the father/son relationship. 26 Cf. 317.9 and 14, with the commentary of Brescia 2006, 134–137. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 142 Mario Lentano use his reward to save the life of his brother, who has been accused of desertion, while he is content simply to attend the trial of his father, who faces the death penalty for proditio. The father insinuates that the son, in acting to save the life of his already-condemned brother while his father’s trial was still ongoing, was not moved by any feelings of pietas towards his brother but by the secret hope of seeing his father condemned or even killed: “As far as you were concerned, I was found guilty,” the father concludes.27 Decl. min. 373 presents an interesting case in which another recurring figure of declamation appears: the pirate. A father, captured by pirates, writes to his family to be ransomed. While his son hems and haws, his (second) wife procures the ransom money by selling jewels she has taken from the tomb of the first (now dead) wife. The son accuses his stepmother of burial violation, and sees her condemned – but not before being disowned by his father, who has been freed in the meanwhile. At the opening of the short proceeding, the father declares, rather dryly, that he faulted his son, even before his bout of indolence, for his poorly feigned parricidal desires: “You deserted your father in captivity: a heinous crime, or rather parricide. So far as lay in you, I was put to death and in terrible tortures at that.”28 Finally, we can cite the case of Sen. Contr. 6.1 (known only in excerpt), in which an agreement made vivo patre by two brothers to share their paternal inheritance is defined as a pact between parricides. In all these instances, as I have said, the accusation of parricide is not explicitly expressed in the declamatory theme: for the most part, the fathers in question limit themselves to disowning their sons through the usual procedure of abdicatio (in one case, that of Decl. min. 317, the son is killed – but in the context of a war in which he has deserted to the enemy). However, it is revealing of the “fear of fathers” – to use Yan Thomas’ formulation – how readily they suspect patricidal motivations behind their sons’ behaviors (even when these behaviors admit of other, much less nefarious explanations). Worse in fact. Fathers suspect their sons are motivated to commit parricide “legally,” so to speak – that is, by acting in such way that the father’s death is the result of legal condemnation and not 27 375.6 sed quid si non pietati servisti, sed ut me occideres? quantum in te fuit, damnatus sum [“But what if you were not doing it for family feeling but to kill me? As far you were concerned, I was found guilty”]. On the case covered in this controversia, cf. Brescia-Lentano 2009, 95–98. 28 373.1 f. antequam parricidium inertiam obicio […] patrem captum deseruisti: maximum crimen, immo parricidium. quantum in te fuit, occisus sum, et gravissimis quidem tormentis [“Before parricide, I charge you with inertia … you deserted your father in captivity: a heinous crime, or rather parricide. So far as lay in you, I was put to death and in terrible tortures at that”]. On the figure of the pirate in declamation, see Lentano 2010, with bibliography. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 143 attributable to the son, or by making use of declamation’s “villain” par excellence, the pirate. We can go further still. When the father in a Latin declamation describes his son as a “parricide,” he does not always have in mind patricide true and proper. Reduced to a generic term of injury, this accusation can be made against behaviors that fall far short of homicidal aggression. The youthful luxuriosus who has blinded his own father may be described as parricida in Calpurnius Flaccus’ ninth declamation, but this is a situation still quite close to “real” parricide. In Sen. Contr. 1.6, on the other hand, it is “parricide” for a son to disobey his father who has commanded him to abandon the daughter of the pirate who freed him from prison. It is also “parricide” for the pirate’s daughter to choose the young man over her father. In Contr. 3.4 (the son who saves his father’s life in battle), the father dismisses the young man’s achievement, claiming that his “glory” (as he ironically describes it) amounts to not having committed parricide – which is to say, abandoning his father in battle. In Contr. 6.7 (an adaptation of the tale of Antiochus and Stratonice), parricidium describes the situation of a son who falls in love with his noverca and convinces his father to give him the woman – if only to prevent his son from dying of heartache. In Contr. 7.3 (a case of fusa venena), the father claims that even if his son really intended to use the potion to take his own life, he would nevertheless be committing parricidium, since preferring death to living with one’s father can only come from patricidal hatred. In Contr. 9.4, a son who has beaten his father is called parricida. This usage also occurs in Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 372, where an adopted son is called a “double parricide” (bis parricida), first for having beaten his father, second for taking him to court for cutting off his hands, in accordance with scholastic jurisprudence’s provision against assault and battery of a father.29 Finally, in Sen. Contr. 10.3, “parricide” is committed by a daughter who takes her husband’s (instead of her father and brother’s) side in a civil war, in a rare case inspired by recent events of Roman history.30 As may be seen, the concept of parricidium in such cases is a generic one, used to describe behaviors ranging from beating or blinding the father to simple disobedience or “ideological” disagreement. And yet the term is never completely 29 Cf. Calp. Flacc. Decl. 9.6; Sen. Contr. 1.6.1; 3.4.2; 6.7.2; 7.3.5; 9.4.6, 7, 12, 15, 17, 22; Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 372.1, 4, 7 (cf. now Bernstein 2009, 348–350). That beating the father constitutes a hardly less serious crime than parricide is repeated in an interesting passage of Emporius, p. 566, 24–26 H. iam in eum qui genuit, verberibus uti, proximum parricidio est: quod igitur crimen est occidere? [“to crack the whip against who begot you is very close to parricide; what kind of crime is then killing him?”]. 30 10.3.3 and 15. On this interesting controversia, cf. recently Milnor 2006, 232 and Touahri 2010, esp. 59. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 144 Mario Lentano devoid of its proper connotations: in uses like these, there seems to be an implicit understanding that a son capable of such behaviors is also capable of patricide. If he is not yet a parricida according to the law, the potential for him to become so nevertheless remains, at least in the suspicious minds of duri patres.31 6 The controversiae dealing with parricide frequently include similar elements of argumentation, particularly when the position defended by the declaimers is that of the son. These elements have already been emphasized, in part, by scholars: thus, we find the topos (first and most effectively elaborated in Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino) of the inconceivability of parricide, a crime so extreme that jurists at first neglected to define its punishment, believing it too heinous a crime for anyone to commit.32 Authors also frequently make use of the theme of parricide as the culmination of a long string of increasingly violent crimes that in some way lay the groundwork for, or even prefigure, it – a topos that supports my previous observation that parricida is used by declaimers to describe any wayward behavior of a son that suggests the future possibility of his murdering his own father.33 Also very frequent is the theme of the foreboding that the parricide feels in undertaking his criminal act, along with the evocation of a sort of “voice of the blood” that accosts him just as he is about to strike the fatal blow.34 31 Moreover, as Maurizio Bettini points out to me, beating the father in archaic Roman culture was already sufficient grounds for a son to be declared sacer to the dei parentes: on this question, see the discussion of Bettini 2009, 87–126. 32 This is the famous passage, 70. Much useful material on this and other topoi related to parricide is summarized in Lucrezi 1992, 161. 33 The two topoi together in Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 1.6.2 (the numbering of Stramaglia 2008b, whose n. 29 is indispensable, with the mention of parallel passages), innocentia per gradus certos ab homine discedit, et, ne in maximis trepidet audacia, diu vires in minoribus colligit. nemo inde coepit, quo incredibile est pervenisse [“A man loses his innocence in fixed stages and for a long time outrageus behaviour collects its strength in smaller crimes such that it will not waver in the greatest. Nobody has begun from that point of wickedness where it is hard to believe that one has finally reached”]. It is a common technique, even outside of cases of parricide, for an author to list a series of progressively more serious crimes leading up to a grave felony: cf., e. g., Libanius, Progymnasmata, 1.25. 34 Compare Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 1.10.7 (the numbering of Stramaglia, 2008b) with Cicero, Pro Roscio Amerino, 63 and above all 66. In Decl. min. 321.7 the same motif is used in reference to the killing of a brother, likewise designated as parricidium in this declamation, cf. Brescia–Lentano 2009, 102. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 145 To my knowledge, far less attention has been given, however, to what can be called the “spaces” and “times” of parricide in declamation. The characteristic places where parricide occurs in declamation are, above all, the father’s bedroom, or some secluded but unspecified part of the house, what the declaimers call simply secretum or secreta pars domus. The characteristic time at which parricide occurs is of course night, as in the two Decl. Maiores opening Ps.Quintilian’s collection (the father is killed in his sleep), or as in the declamation of the three sons who enter their father’s bedroom by turns, or again as in Sen. Contr. 7.5, in which a pater familias is found dead in his cubiculum.35 Yet even in this respect declamation does not invent out of whole cloth. In his defense of Sextus Roscius, Cicero cites a case report closely paralleling the themes of declamation: “Not many years ago, it is said, a certain Titus Caelius, a well-known citizen of Tarracina, went to bed after supper in the same room as his two grown-up sons, and was found dead in the morning with his throat cut. As no slave nor free man could be found, on whom suspicion might have fallen, while the two grown-up sons who slept near their father declared that they had not noticed anything, they were indicted for parricide.”36 Finally, there is the case of the son who threatens his father in an isolated place (in solitudine) – “A place well suited to treachery,” the father comments: “a place for parricide (locus opportunus insidiis, parricidii locus),” as if to dispel any doubt the judge may have of his son’s real intentions.37 Another circumstance very favorable to parricide is that of a father traveling abroad (peregre profectus), as so often happens in declamation. In Ps.Quint. 35 The secreta pars domus (on which, cf. Thomas 1981, 706; Pasetti 2008, 139 and 2011, 91 n. 3) is the place for parricidium even when this term refers to a father’s killing of his son, for example in Ps.Quintilian’s final two Maiores, where it is precisely in this remote and uncontrolled space that the son suspected of incest with his mother is tortured (filium […] pater in secreta parte domus torsit et in tormentis occidit [“a father tortured his son in a secluded part of the house and killed him on the rack”]). 36 Pro Roscio Amerino, 64, taken up again by Valerius Maximus, 8.1, absol. 13 (cf. my discussion in Lentano, 2011a). Dyck’s 2010 note ad loc. – that Valerius “adds the detail that the victim’s brothers conducted the prosecution” – is due to a hasty reading of the text: in fact the “brothers” spoken of by the orator are the two sons of Titus accused of parricide, as Cicero already remarked. 37 Cf. 281.3 abdicatus in solitudine est: locus opportunus insidiis [“The disowned son is in a lonely spot, the spot is opportune for an ambush”]; 281.5 quid facit ad preces solitudo? ista instrumenta sunt parricidii, haec occasio, hic locus, hoc tempus [“How is solitude good for pleas? Those are the instruments of parricide, this the opportunity, this the place, this the time”]. A locus desertus (later defined as solitudo) appears also in the similar episode recounted by Valerius Maximus (cf. n. 23 above): the fact that it is the father himself that leads his son into an isolated spot to offer him the opportunity of completing his parricidal plans confirms that in the Roman imagination this scenario was perceived as the most fitting for such a crime. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 146 Mario Lentano Decl. min. 377, a son is defended against the charge that he ambushed his father while on a journey. The suspicion is not without reason: in Sen. Contr. 5.4, a son and a father depart together, but when the son returns home alone, this is enough reason for his brother to charge him with parricide (later revealed to be unfounded).38 Neither the enclosed space of the house nor the wide open space of “elsewhere,” offers sufficient protection against a son’s homicidal intentions. So extreme a crime, so savage and impious an act as parricide cannot be contemplated and undertaken except in spaces and at times that are isolated and dark, deserted, foreign, far away – in a word, marginal. A crime so unspeakable can take place only beyond the ordered environment of culture, in a world inhabited by bloodthirsty pirates and devious merchants, and in a sort of isolation and darkness that almost anticipates the poena cullei, often mentioned in declamation as the punishment that awaits the parricide.39 The declaimers’ discussion of the motives that lead to this maximum scelus or summum nefas also merits exploration. Here the choices of the declaimers tend to differ according to which side – the father’s or the son’s – they are defending. If the former, almost the only possible explanation for attempted parricide is the son’s hereditary ambitions: the son is portrayed as greedy, feverishly anticipating the moment when he will take his father’s place in control of the family wealth. “To inherit sooner,” explains the father of Ps.Quint. Decl. min. 258, “to seize upon my property, will so greedy a man as yourself not dare to commit parricide in secret?”40 And similarly elsewhere: in Decl. maior. 17, the son suspected of parricide expects his father to fault him for “hoping for something from your will.” In Decl. min. 281, the son refrained from murder only to await the conclusion of the trial relating to his abdicatio: if not for the worry of losing his inheritance, he would not have hesitated. In Decl. min. 377, the son is defended against a charge of plotting to kill his father hereditatis cupiditate. In Quintilian’s declamation of the three sons who plan to kill their father, the father, who survives the attempt, immediately divides the inheritance in equal parts in recognition of being patrimonii […] tenax custos, while in Sen. Contr. 6.1, the suspicion of parricide is made more plausible by a written contract in which the two sons of a living father have agreed to split their inheritance – but also by their considerable debts, which 38 Cf. 377.7 (the son speaking) quemadmodum occidere volo? conducam percussorem, insidiabor peregrinanti? [“How do I propose to kill you? Shall I hire an assassin, ambush you travelling abroad?”]. On Sen. Contr. 5.4, see above p. 137 and n. 12. 39 This aspect has already been rightly highlighted by Lanfranchi 1938, esp. 494 f. 40 258.9 ut heres citius fias, ut bona mea occupes, homo tam cupidus non audebis parricidium facere secretum? Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 147 they would never be able to pay without their father’s money. In Ps.Quintilian’s second Maior, the accusation is again that cupiditas drove the son to commit his crime.41 Moreover, love of luxury and debts are things Cicero immediately seeks to exclude in the case of his client Sextus Roscius, knowing very well that commonsense holds these to be the most plausible motivations for parricide.42 This makes it all the more necessary to take precautions against sons who are luxuriosi, or who out of love for a meretricula inmodica poscens have taken on heaps of debt.43 It all has the air of an old comedy of Plautus! And yet never does the boundary between declamatory fiction and reality come closer to vanishing than in this respect. Indeed, it is well known that at the beginning of the imperial period legislation was required to prevent credit being given to “sons of the family” on the guarantee of future inheritance, after certain cases in which this led to parricide.44 Here, the dysfunctionality of the Roman family, with its rigid 41 Cf. respectively Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 17.10.5 (the numbering of Pasetti 2011); Decl. min. 281.6 and 377.4; Quint. Institutio oratoria, 4. 2. 73; Sen. Contr. 6.1.1 (tantum aeris alieni habet quantum vivo patre non possit solvere [“He is so far in debt that he cannot discharge it while his father is alive”]): Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 2.10.5 (‘cupiditas’, inquit, ‘iuvenem egit in facinus’ [“She says that greed drove the young man to the crime”]). The motif of inheritance as pretium parricidii is hinted at also in Decl. maior. 2.3 (the numbering of Stramaglia 2009); in Decl. maior. 2.5.5 (the numbering of Stramaglia 2009) it is argued that the son had no interest in killing the father, once the latter had modified his will in favor of the noverca. 42 Pro Roscio Amerino, 39 (and cf. also 75) luxuries igitur hominem nimirum et aeris alieni magnitudo et indomitae animi cupiditates ad hoc scelus impulerunt? [“No doubt then, it was riotous living, enormous debts, and his unbridled desires that drove him to commit this crime?”]. The connection between luxuria, aes alienum and parricidium is still active in Justinian’s Institutiones (4.7.7, regarding the senatus consultum Macedonianum, see n. 44 below) quare ideo senatus perspexit, quia saepe onerati aere alieno creditarum pecuniarum quas in luxuriam consumebant, vitae parentium insidiabantur [“This enactment was made by the Senate, because it was found that persons in power, when dragged down by the burden of loans which they had squandered in profligacy, often plotted against the lives of their parents”]. 43 Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 1.6.8 (the numbering of Stramaglia 2008b) aliis tradidit in parentum sanguinem luxuria ferrum […]; aliis meretriculae amor inmodica poscentis [“In some cases, extravagant living has delivered up a sword dripping with parental blood …; in other cases it is a love affair with a greedy prostitute”]. On luxuria as a possible motive for parricide, cf. also Emporius, p. 566, 26–28 H. parricidium in viro quoque et in eodem iuvene intolerabile fuisset, quamquam illum et fervor aetatis et luxuriae appetentia et novissime fiducia virium in facinus coegisset [“The parricide would have been intolerable even in the case of a man, and particularly of a young man, who could have had as extenuating circumstances the fact to have been compelled to commit the crime by the ardour of age, by the desire for luxury and last of all by the confidence in his own strength”]. 44 This is the well-known case of the so-called senatus consultum Macedonianum, promulgated under Vespasian following the parricide committed by a certain Macedo in order to free himself Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 148 Mario Lentano and exclusive concentration of property in the hands of the father, appears from behind the curtain of seemingly arbitrary declamatory themes. Reasons of inheritance also form the basis of fratricide – another inconceivable transgression, again often defined in declamation as parricidium. Its only plausible motivation is seen in a son’s long-standing ambition to enjoy by himself his father’s wealth, from which he has been excluded.45 But what of the son’s defense against an accusation of parricide? Here we have the evidence of Sen. Contr. 3.2 (if only in the form of excerptum), in which a father disowns his son after a hung jury acquits the latter of attempted parricide: “The obvious strategy (color) for the youth is that he should say he was a victim of his father’s power (patris auctoritate oppressum).”46 Auctoritas: the intangible fund of authority, prestige, influence, power, and status that defines the complexity of the paternal figure, and can all too easily morph into callousness, avoidance, and even cruelty. In the controversiae of the second group – that is, those in which parricide is not “imported” into the debate, but is itself the central issue – the pathologies of paternal auctoritas have already had occasion to work their effects. In some cases, for example, a father has already repeatedly attempted to disown his son, only to be defeated in court: this greatly exasperates these severe fathers, who never completely accept the fact that the prerogatives they normally enjoy in disciplining their sons have been taken from them and entrusted to a third party’s judgment.47 In another case, a father has twice already attempted to force his son to enlist in the army, never yielding to his son’s entreaties for exemption. The urge to see one’s son demonstrate his mettle on the battlefield is of course part of an entrenched, and highly valorized, cultural model that extends from the Homeric heroes up to Cato the Censor’s eulogy of his son’s military prowess. Here, however, a father’s intransigence, in ignoring the wishes and disposition of his son, is capable of becoming sufficient justification for parricide.48 of the debts he had incurred: the provision “prohibited that loans to sons could be declared repayable post mortem patris” (Thomas 1983, 115). Very broad discussion of this measure is given in Lucrezi 1992, who appropriately frames it within a more comprehensive examination of the father/son relationship in Roman culture. 45 Cf. the conclusions of Brescia-Lentano 2009, 125–132. 46 3.2.1 manifestum adulescentis color est ut se dicat patris auctoritate oppressum (Winterbottom’s translation slightly modified). 47 On this specific and important aspect of Latin declamation, see Lentano 2011b. 48 In the opposite case, that of Sen. Contr. 1.8, where a father tries to keep at home his son who wishes to enlist although the law grants him (as ter fortis) vacatio from military service, the father is blamed by some declaimers for showing excessive indulgence which compromises his dignitas: I have dealt with this in Lentano 1998, 79–103. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 149 In the case of the young man vocatus in militiam, the father’s treatment of his son may have a basis in a long-standing cultural model. In other declamations, however, no rationalization at all may be given for a father’s cruelty. In Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 17, the father is described as crudelis, impius, malus, inmitissimus, asper, imperiosus, avidus, adrogans; in fact, the substantive odium or the verb odisse is used to describe his feelings toward his son a full seven times, without any explanation whatsoever.49 So a son possesses, in the form of his own hereditary aspirations, a culpable but nonetheless explicable motive for wishing his father dead. The father’s aggression toward his son represents, on the other hand, the pathological degeneration of legitimate auctoritas, a perverted interpretation of the role that law and custom assign to him. These are fathers hypercharacterized, overdetermined by a univocal, radical interpretation of the prerogatives that are granted to them by society and that define their role and position in that society. In these controversiae, therefore, generational conflict takes its purest and also most dramatic form: that of two forces arrayed against each other and aimed only at mutual annihilation, to the point that a son accused of parricide can draw the jury’s attention to the parricidalis ardor in his father’s eyes.50 As clichés of the arbitrary powermonger and the greedy heir, father and son thus play out their fatal game. Through these clichés, declamation explores the limits of a relationship that is always tense, almost always conflictual, and that entails an endless negotiation of the boundaries of its members’ respective roles. Declamation takes this relationship out of the private dimension and compels it to be aired before a public tribunal – albeit a fictitious one – where the two parties can test their reasoning in the ritualized form of prosecution and defense, in a context of balanced evaluation of right and wrong, of prerogatives and rights. At times, this relationship erupts in acts that no longer have a place in the declamatory process: they return to that secreta pars domus from which declamation tried to extricate them in the first place. After three attempted but unsuccessful abdicationes, after father and son have agreed to have their motives weighed in the mutually accepted rite of a public trial, there is now only room for deceitful 49 On the characterization of the father in this declamation, I refer to the introduction and commentary of Pasetti 2011; cf. also Sussman 1995, 187, “The son portrays his father throughout as a wrathful, vengeful, and cruel man who deeply hates him […] although the specific grounds for this are never directly revealed.” The motif of the father’s hate appears also in Cicero’s Pro Roscio Amerino, 40–45, where it is considered a feeling equally unnatural as the one that allegedly drove Roscius to kill his father. 50 Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 17.18 vultus parricidali ardore suffusos [“a facial expression filled with murderous passion”]. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 150 Mario Lentano poisoning, for the dark of night, for the shadowy recesses and hidden corners of the house. 7 To conclude, I draw inspiration again from Lucia Pasetti’s commentary on Ps.Quint. Decl. maior. 17, in which the keen observation is made that for a controversia of this kind perhaps “we can have recourse to the oxymoronic definition of ‘realistic declamation.’”51 Suetonius recounts in his biography of Vitellius that the emperor married a certain Petronia, who later gave birth to a son. The child was made heir to his mother’s family fortune, on condition that he also be removed from his father’s authority (patria potestas): so Vitellius first “manumitted him, but shortly afterwards killed him, according to the general belief, charging him besides with attempted parricide, and alleging that his guilty conscience had led him to drink the poison which he had mixed for his intended crime,”52 evidently with the purpose of becoming his father’s heir. The explanation may belong to Vitellius’ perverse imagination, but it is not difficult to see analogies between this case of a son accused of plotting to poison his father and those of sons accused of the same crime in the school declamations – even if in the latter the poison often goes unused, whereas the young Petronianus actually imbibed the lethal beverage. Whether this is what truly happened, or whether Vitellius made up this explanation to justify eliminating his son, Pasetti’s assessment seems confirmed: the declamation is in fact “realistic,” in the sense that it suggested to a Roman emperor a credible justification for his own “parricide.” Vitellius may have been a bad emperor and a worse father, but he would have made an excellent teacher of rhetoric. 51 Pasetti 2011, 20. The question of declamation’s “realism” is one that needs to be placed on an entirely new footing. Next to (meritorious) attempts to show how the themes and situations of scholastic rhetoric are closer to real life than previously thought, the realism of the controversiae must be sought more in the anthropological questions they play on than in the narrative mechanisms that permit their problematization. 52 Suetonius, Vitellius, 6 hunc […] manu emisit brevique, ut creditum est, interemit, insimulatum insuper parricidii et quasi paratum ad scelus venenum ex conscientia hausisset. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 151 Bibliography Bernstein, Neil, “Adoptees and Exposed Children in Roman Declamation: Commodification, Luxury, and the Threat of Violence,” Classical Philology 104 (2009): 331–353. Berti, Emanuele, Scholasticorum Studia. Seneca il Vecchio e la cultura retorica e letteraria della prima età imperiale (Pisa: Giardini, 2007). Bettini, Maurizio, Affari di famiglia. La parentela nella letteratura e nella cultura antica (Bologna: il Mulino, 2009). Breij, Bé, “Vitae necisque potestas in Roman Declamation,” Advances in the History of Rhetoric 9 (2006): 55–81. Breij, Bé (ed./transl./comm.), The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Major Declamation Ascribed to Quintilian: A Commentary (Wageningen: Ponsen & Looijen, 2007). Brescia, Graziana (ed./transl./comm.), La sfida impossibile. Ps. Quint. Declamazioni minori 317 (Bari: Edipuglia, 2006). Brescia, Graziana – Lentano, Mario, Le ragioni del sangue. Storie di incesto e fratricidio nella declamazione latina (Napoli: Loffredo, 2009). Casamento, Alfredo, Finitimus oratori poeta. Declamazioni retoriche e tragedie senecane (Palermo: Flaccovio, 2002). Dyck, Andrew R. (ed./comm.), Cicero. Pro Sexto Roscio (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010). Fantham, Elaine, “Disowning and Dysfunction in the Declamatory Family,” Materiali e discussioni per l’analisi dei testi classici 53 (2004): 65–82, repr. in Roman Readings. Roman Response to Greek Literature from Plautus to Statius and Quintilian (Berlin–New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 302–319. Freese, John Henry, Cicero. The Speeches, (Pro Publio Quinctio, Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino, Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo, De lege agraria 1. 2. 3), (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard UP– Heinemann, 1930). Gunderson, Erik, Declamation, Paternity, and Roman Identity. Authority and the Rhetorical Self (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003). Imber, Margaret, “Life without Father: Declamation and the Construction of Paternity in the Roman Empire” in Role Models in the Roman World. Identity and Assimilation, edd. Sinclair Bell, Inge Lyse Hansen (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2008), 161–170. Lanfranchi, Fabio, Il diritto nei retori romani (Milano: Giuffrè, 1938). Langer, Vera Isabella, Declamatio Romanorum. Dokument juristischer Argumentationstechnik, Fenster in die Gesellschaft ihrer Zeit und Quelle des Rechts? (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007). Lassen, Eva Maria, “The Ultimate Crime. Parricidium and the Concept of Family in the Late Roman Republic and Early Empire,” Classica et Mediaevalia 43 (1992): 147–161. Laudizi, Giovanni, “Il tema del veneficio nella letteratura latina dalle origini al II sec. d. C.” in Studi di filologia e letteratura (Galatina: Congedo, 1986), 65–112. Lentano, Mario, L’eroe va a scuola. La figura del vir fortis nella declamazione latina (Napoli: Loffredo, 1998). Lentano, Mario, “Padri alla sbarra” in Id., Signa culturae. Saggi di antropologia e letteratura latina (Bologna: Pàtron, 2009), 44–79. Lentano, Mario, “La figlia del pirata. Idee per un commento a Seneca, Controversiae I 6,” Annali online di Lettere – Ferrara 1 (2010): 89–106. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM 152 Mario Lentano Lentano, Mario, “Concessum est rhetoribus ementiri. Quattro esempi di come nasce un tema declamatorio,” Annali online di Lettere – Ferrara 1–2 (2011): 133–152 [= Lentano 2011a]. Lentano, Mario, “Die Stadt der Gerichte. Das Öffentliche und das Private in der römischen Deklamation” in Römische Werte und römische Literatur im frühen Prinzipat, edd. Andreas Haltenhoff, Andreas Heil, Fritz-Heiner Mutschler (Berlin–New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 209–232 [= Lentano 2011b]. Lentano, Mario, “Il vascello del parricida. Un tema declamatorio tra mito e retorica (Seneca, Controversiae, 7, 1),” Bollettino di studi latini 42 (2012): 1–14. Lucrezi, Francesco, Senatusconsultum Macedonianum (Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1992). Milnor, Kristina, Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus. Inventing Private Life (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006). Pasetti, Lucia, “Un suicidio fallito. La topica dell’ars moriendi nella XVII declamazione maggiore pseudo-quintilianea” in Papers on Rhetoric, vol. VIII, Declamation. Proceedings of the Seminars held at the Scuola superiore di studi umanistici, Bologna (February–March 2006), ed. Lucia Calboli Montefusco (Roma: Herder, 2007), 181–207. Pasetti, Lucia, “Filosofia e retorica di scuola nelle Declamazioni Maggiori pseudoquintilianee” in Retorica ed educazione delle élites nell’antica Roma. Atti della VI Giornata ghisleriana di filologia classica (Pavia, 4–5 aprile 2006), edd. Fabio Gasti, Elisa Romano (Pavia: Collegio Ghislieri, 2008), 113–147. Pasetti, Lucia, “Gli antichi e la fiction. Realtà e immaginazione nella Declamazione maggiore 17,” Griseldaonline 9 (2009–2010), <http://www.griseldaonline.it/percorsi/verita-eimmaginazione/pasetti.htm>. Pasetti, Lucia (ed./trans./comm.), [Quintiliano]. Il veleno versato (Declamazioni Maggiori, 17) (Cassino: Edizioni Università di Cassino, 2011). Rolfe, John Carew, Suetonius (The Lives of the Caesars), 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard UP–Heinemann, 1914). Russell, Donald Andrew, Quintilian. The Orator’s Education, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard UP–Heinemann, 2001). Shackleton Bailey, David Roy (ed./transl.), [Quintilian]. The Lesser Declamations, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard UP, 2006). Spalding, Georg Ludwig (ed.), M. Fabius Quintilianus De institutione oratoria, vol. 1 (Leipzig: Lebrecht, 1798). Stramaglia, Antonio, Res inauditae, incredulae. Storie di fantasmi nel mondo greco-romano (Bari: Levante, 1999). Stramaglia, Antonio (ed./comm.), Giovenale. Satire 1, 7, 12, 16. Storia di un poeta (Bologna: Pàtron, 2008) [= Stramaglia 2008a]. Stramaglia, Antonio, “Pseudo-Quintilianus, Declamationes maiores, 1: Paries palmatus,” Invigilata lucernis 30 (2008): 195–233 [= Stramaglia 2008b]. Stramaglia, Antonio, “Pseudo-Quintilianus, Declamationes maiores, 2: Caecus in limine,” Invigilata lucernis 31 (2009): 193–240. Sussman, Lewis Arthur, The Major Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian. A Translation (Frankfurt am Main–Bern–New York: Lang, 1987). Sussman, Lewis Arthur (ed./transl./comm.), The Declamations of Calpurnius Flaccus (Leiden– New York–Köln: Brill, 1994). Sussman, Lewis Arthur, “Sons and Fathers in the Major Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian,” Rhetorica 13 (1995): 179–192. Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Killing the Father in Roman Declamation 153 Thomas, Yan, “Parricidium I. Le père, la famille, la cité,” Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome-Antiquité 93 (1981): 643–713. Thomas, Yan, “Paura dei padri e violenza dei figli: immagini retoriche e norme di diritto” in La paura dei padri nel mondo antico e medievale, edd. Ezio Pellizer, Nevio Zorzetti (Roma– Bari: Laterza, 1983), 113–140. Thomas, Yan, “Il padre, la famiglia e la città. Figli e figlie davanti alla giurisdizione domestica a Roma” in Pater familias, ed. Angiolina Arru (Roma: biblink, 2002), 23–57. Touahri, Ouardia, “Le phénomène de la guerre civile d’après Sénèque le Rhéteur” in Clio sous le regard d’Hermès. L’utilisation de l’histoire dans la rhétorique ancienne de l’époque hellénistique à l’Antiquité tardive. Actes du colloque international de Montpellier (18–20 octobre 2007), edd. Pierre-Louis Malosse, Marie-Pierre Noël, Bernard Schouler (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2010), 55–64. van Mal-Maeder, Danielle, La fiction des déclamations (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2007). Vesley, Marc E., “Father-Son Relations in Roman Declamation,” The Ancient History Bulletin 17 (2003): 159–180. Winterbottom, Michael (ed./transl.), The Elder Seneca, Declamations, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard UP–Heinemann, 1974). Zinsmaier, Thomas (ed./transl./comm.), [Quintilian]. Die Hände der blinden Mutter (Grössere Deklamationen, 6) (Cassino: Edizioni Università di Cassino, 2009). Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM Brought to you by | De Gruyter / TCS Authenticated Download Date | 10/6/15 9:05 PM