{"id":260,"date":"2024-07-02T18:19:43","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T22:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/?page_id=260"},"modified":"2024-12-20T17:42:08","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T22:42:08","slug":"bellyful-of-honour","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/news-and-events\/classical-association-panel\/bellyful-of-honour\/","title":{"rendered":"A bellyful of honour \u2013 the aesthetics of the ugly and the rhetoric of inversion in Pseudo-Quintilian\u2019s \u2018cannibal declamation\u2019 (Decl. mai. 12)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicola H\u00f6mke (Universit\u00e4t Rostock)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a terrible famine, a town has turned to cannibalism. It blames its defaulting\u00a0legatus<\/em>, who was ordered to buy grain, and sues him for high treason.<\/p>\n

This case is undoubtedly one of the most drastic of the 19 Declamationes maiores<\/em>, fictional court speeches wrongly attributed to Quintilian but more likely dating from the 3rd century AD. The description of cannibalistic excesses offers a multifaceted field of investigation for the ancient use of an aesthetics of ugliness. It culminates in a furious rhetoric of horror (or the grotesque) when the declamator calls the eaten relatives in his belly as witnesses to the accusation.<\/p>\n

Clearly, Seneca’s\u00a0Thyestes<\/em>\u00a0functions as a pretext, both motivically and linguistically. Nevertheless, as I will show, the author of Decl. mai.<\/em> 12 does not simply indulge in reminiscence and a rhetoric of mere exaggeration: by giving the cannibal citizens a voice in court, by reflecting on\u00a0pietas\u00a0and responsibility, guilt and betrayal from their point of view, and even by portraying them as sympathetic figures, he relieves them from the mythological precedent of breaking taboos and allows the question of condemnability to be renegotiated.<\/p>\n

This, in turn, contradicts a common interpretation of the social function of the practice of declamation in the imperial period: namely, that it was intended to convey a Roman system of values and a Roman situational ethic to young elite Romans by means of legal role-playing.<\/p>\n

Instead, declamations such as Decl. mai.<\/em> 10 and 12 offer a much more experimental and open-ended stage for the negotiation of Roman values and do not shy away from fundamentally questioning social norms and expectations through a rhetoric of irritation. This flexibility and openness is probably one of the main reasons for the centuries-long popularity of the art of declamation in the Roman imperial period.<\/p>\n

Selective bibliography:<\/p>\n

N. W. Bernstein (2013),\u00a0Ethics, Identity, and Community in Later Roman Declamation<\/em>, Oxford et al.<\/p>\n

O. Cappello (2016), Civitas beluarum: the politics of eating your neighbor. A semiological study of Ps.-Quintilian’s twelfth Major Declamation, in M. T. Dinter \u2013 Ch. Gu\u00e9rin \u2013 M. Martinho (eds.), Reading Roman Declamation. The Declamations Ascribed to Quintilian<\/em>, Berlin \u2013 Boston 2016, pp. 209\u2013236.<\/p>\n

N. H\u00f6mke (2002),\u00a0Gesetzt den Fall, ein Geist erscheint. Komposition und Motivik der ps-quintilianischen<\/em>\u00a0Declamationes maiores\u00a0X, XIV und XV<\/em>, Heidelberg.<\/p>\n

N. H\u00f6mke (2006),\u00a0Die Entgrenzung des Schreckens: Lucans Erichto-Episode aus Sicht moderner Phantastik-Konzeptionen, in N. H\u00f6mke \u2013 M. Baumbach (eds..),\u00a0Fremde Wirklichkeiten. Literarische Phantastik und antike Literatur<\/em>, Heidelberg, pp. 161\u2013185.<\/p>\n

N. H\u00f6mke (2010), Bit by bit towards death \u2013 Lucan’s Scaeva and the aestheticization of dying, in N. H\u00f6mke \u2013 Ch. Reitz (eds.), Lucan\u2019s\u00a0Bellum civile.\u00a0Between Epic Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation<\/em>, Berlin \u2013 New York, pp. 91\u2013104.<\/p>\n

N. H\u00f6mke (forthcoming), The declaimer’s dealing with the gruesome, dreadful and disgusting in Declamationes maiores<\/em> 10 and 12. In: A. Lovato \u2013 A. Stramaglia \u2013 G. Traina (eds.): Le \u203aDeclamazioni maggiori\u2039 pseudo-quintilianee nella Roma imperiale<\/em>. Berlin \u2013 Boston (BzA 394; date of publ.: 6 September 2021).<\/p>\n

N. H\u00f6mke (forthcoming),\u00a0In der Todeszone. Die Darstellung und Funktion des Schrecklichen, Grausigen und Ekligen in Lucans\u00a0Bellum civile<\/em>, Berlin \u2013 Boston (BzA).<\/p>\n

A. Stramaglia (2002),\u00a0[Quintiliano]. La citt\u00e0 che si cib\u00f2 dei suoi cadaveri\u00a0(Declamazioni maggiori,\u00a012)<\/em>, Cassino.<\/p>\n

A. Stramaglia \u2013 M. Winterbottom \u2013 B. Santorelli (eds., forthcoming),\u00a0[Quintilian]. The Major Declamations, I\u2013II<\/em>, Cambridge (Mass.) \u2013 London (Loeb; date of publ.: 1 December 2021).<\/p>\n

D. van Mal-Maeder (2004),\u00a0S\u00e9n\u00e8que le Tragique et les\u00a0Grandes D\u00e9clamations\u00a0du Pseudo-Quintilien. Po\u00e9tique d\u2019une m\u00e9tamorphose, in M. Zimmerman \u2013 R. van der Paardt (eds.),\u00a0Metamorphic Reflections. Essays Presented to Ben Hijmans at his 75th Birthday<\/em>, Leuven, pp. 189\u2013199.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicola H\u00f6mke (Universit\u00e4t Rostock) In a terrible famine, a town has turned to cannibalism. It blames its defaulting\u00a0legatus, who was ordered to buy grain, and sues him for high treason. This case is undoubtedly one of the most drastic of the 19 Declamationes maiores, fictional court speeches wrongly attributed to Quintilian but more likely dating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23724,"featured_media":0,"parent":137,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-templates\/no-sidebars.php","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":671,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/260\/revisions\/671"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/overlooked-network\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}