Abusing the dead in Republican Rome: the testimony of Imperial Greek historians

What is it about?

Republican Rome saw several social and political crises during its transformation into an imperialist state and global power. During periods of particularly intense and vicious civil war, episodes of exposure and maltreatment of the corpses of killed or executed political opponents occurred – an extreme and particularly repulsive form of violence that social and political theorists today term ‘necropolitical violence’. In my chapter I discuss how and why the Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch and the Greek historians Appian and Cassius Dio, all writing narratives about the world of Republican Rome much later, during the period of the Roman Empire, look back to such episodes of necropolitical violence in the Roman Republic and reflect on their meaning for their own social existence, as subjects of imperial Rome. The most famous victim of necropolitical violence in Republican Rome was the Roman orator, philosopher and politician Cicero. Cicero was murdered in 43 BC, during the turbulent period of the Roman Civil Wars that followed the assassination of Julius Caesar on 15 March 44 BC. A vehement opponent of Caesar’s supporter Mark Antony, Cicero met his end when Antony, Octavian (who later became Emperor Augustus) and Lepidus formed the Second Triumvirate. Ostensibly as part of its attempt to punish Caesar’s assassins, the Triumvirate issued proscriptions against its political opponents, and Cicero was one of the first victims of these proscriptions. Cicero, the ancient sources tell us, was beheaded as he was trying to escape his assassins. His severed head and his hand (or both hands, according to some sources) were, after his death, displayed in a prominent location in the Roman forum, as a powerful warning to the Roman public. As I show, Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio present or embellish the story of Cicero’s death and post-mortem abuse through carefully crafted narratives, which shed light on different aspects of its symbolic connotations. The three authors treat this event, and others like it that preceded it, as a starting point of reflection on the deep link between violence, imperialism and power, which can transform the moral fabric of societies.

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Photo by Nicole Reyes on Unsplash

Photo by Nicole Reyes on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The concept of ‘necropolitical violence’ that I employ in my chapter is a modern one. It was introduced by the political theorist Banu Bargu and describes acts of violence that specifically target the dead, such as leaving them unburied, displaying them in public, mutilating their corpses, or disturbing and desecrating their burial sites. Bargu's term is an extended usage of the concept of ‘necropolitics’ (referring to forms of social existence that reduce the living to the status of the dead), coined by historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe. My chapter shows not only that this particularly gruesome kind of violence existed in Republican Rome, but also how ancient authors of later periods reflected on its character, meaning, consequences and implications. Their testimony offers valuable insights into the social and political conditions under which such acts of violence appeared and the impact they had on ancient societies.

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