The Art of Insulting

Harsh Words, Harsh Consequences: Traditional Roman Values and the Art of Insultin

 “‘You are a drink-sodden, sex-ridden wreck.’ – Cicero, Second Philippics, pg. 105 

On September 1st, 44 BCE, Cicero, a staunch defender of the Roman Republic, was absent from the Senate. Mark Antony, a proprietor of the change in the political structure of Rome, took advantage of the absence to sully the name of Cicero, who had been his main criticizer for quite some time. On September 2nd, 44 BCE, Cicero retaliated in the Senate with First Philippic, the first in a line of 14 speeches titled the same. Again, on October 24th, 44 BCE, Cicero penned the Second Philippic, which was notable for being the most popular and effective political pamphlet. While this speech was never actually given in front of the Senate, it was still written with the utmost attention to rhetoric. The Second Philippic serves as a great example of invective, or character assassination through verbal abuse. Using the rhetorical device of invective, Cicero, in his Second Philippic, identifies the traditional Roman values of prudentia, frugalitas, gravitas, virtus, and pudicitia and their importance through Mark Antony’s seeming lack of these values.”

Full Essay Here

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With a title like that, it is no wonder this was one of my favorite papers I have ever written. While I certainly do not think it is the best piece of work in my portfolio as it was from the early days of my Classics career., it did mark the first time I ever used the Writing Center, and I will forever be grateful for that. We were tasked with writing a paper on Cicero’s Second Philippic for an introductory Classics class. As I read the text for the first time, I noticed Cicero’s ability to insult Mark Antony. It was amusing to me, and it made me really feel Cicero’s rage at Mark Antony. Furthermore, I discovered that looking at rhetoric concepts through the use of invective made the learning process a lot simpler for me. While the use of insults is by no means a modern convention, I was very surprised to notice so many insults that I was familiar with in a speech from over a thousand years ago. In a way, this paper was one of the first times that I thought of Ancient people as people. Before they seemed so far removed, but seeing such familiar (and in my head “modern”) insults in an ancient text really helped me open my mind. This expansion of my thinking has allowed me to approach topics in a Mediterranean context with an anthropological mind set, which is both something I love and I am comfortable with. I loved this paper. 

This paper exemplifies the following learning goals of the Skidmore College Classics Department: