Chapter Four
Ethos and Locus : Ancient Perspectives

We have now seen how Cicero exploited specific monuments and topography in order to manipulate the thoughts, emotions, and perceptions of his audience. The examples cited have demonstrated how, both through allusion to what would have been visible to his audience and through description of what could not be seen by them, Cicero attempted to shape his listeners' images of concrete reality so as to allow him to graft to those images associations useful to his overall rhetorical goals. A more general aspect of Cicero's representation of reality remains to be explored: namely, the orator's depiction of certain geographical, ethnic, and cultural milieux. As will become clear in the chapters that follow, Cicero's representation of various places was a means of defining for his audience the character (ethos ) of individuals associated with those places.

In looking at the orator's exploitation of these more general representations of reality we should keep in mind that the image of the world that Cicero presented to his audience was, in essence, a verbal construct and that he was free to manipulate this construct in any way that suited him.^[1] To be successful he was bound by only two constraints: first, the

images he created of the world had to further his rhetorical goals; and, second, he needed to make it appear to his audience that these images were an accurate reflection of reality. In this latter requirement, the orator parts company from the poet, the novelist, and the dramatist, for audiences allow the writer of fiction to create a world they know to be unreal, if only this world be compelling and internally coherent. But the world created by an orator must possess both internal and external consistency. Whether or not it is actually true, it must always appear to be true in order to be rhetorically successful. Cicero endeavored, therefore, to speak about the world in such a way as to echo ideas about places that he knew his audience already held, whether consciously or unconsciously. The beliefs, prejudices, impressions, and perceptions of his audience—often confused, frequently mutually contradictory—formed the raw material out of which he fashioned his images of reality.^[2] Before looking at the way in which Cicero wedded images of place (locus ) with assumptions about character (ethos ) in various speeches, therefore, something should be said about this "raw material"—about the various conceptions about locus that would have influenced the content and reception of oratory on this subject in the late Republic. How did the Romans see themselves, their city, and its place in the Mediterranean world? What opinions would Romans of Cicero's day have had about why Greeks or Gauls or Sicilians were the way they were (or, more precisely, the way the Romans believed they were)? What might they have presumed the influence of geography or environment or race was on an individual's character? What was their stereotype of the mountain dweller or the lowland farmer? Did they suppose that good men could be produced in bad places, or bad men in good places? What, finally,

was the "horizon of expectations" that affected the ancient audience's interpretation of and reaction to Cicero's representation of reality in these speeches?^[3]

Cultural Mythology

Comparative mythology demonstrates that a common feature of the belief system of many primitive cultures is the assumption by each that it constitutes the physical and spiritual center of the world.^[4] For each culture, the world outside the home ground is viewed as a series of concentric rings in which one's own habitation occupies the center, while people and places lose reality (or, at least, everyday reality) as one travels outward from the center. Those areas on the outermost fringes become the setting of mythological and legendary events in which the normal rules governing life in the central community are suspended. Reflections of this point of view in ancient Greek mythology abound, including the designation of Delphi as the "navel of the world" and tales of monsters, magical events, and alien deities occupying the distant places to which only heroes ventured.^[5]

There is no doubt that the Romans of Cicero's day saw themselves as living in the center of the world. This centrality, however, was not expressed in terms of a traditional mythology, for the Greek-derived myth of Rome's founding put the city on the fringes of the world.^[6] Ethnocen-

tricity could nevertheless be reinforced in other ways. Italy was, after all, a temperate land that did not suffer from the extremes of temperature found in the frozen north or the sunburnt south. If it was not actually situated in the center of the inhabited world (thought to stretch from Portugal to the Indian Ganges), still Italy occupied the geographical center of the Mediterranean, and Rome stood at the center of the Italian peninsula.^[7] But it was political perception rather than climate or geography that most powerfully reinforced the idea of Roman centrality.^[8] By the first century B.C. the victories of Pompey in the East and, later, Caesar in the West gave birth to the fiction that "the whole world" had succumbed to Roman arms and that this domination had been divinely ordained.^[9] The political center of the subjugated world was the area contained within the pomerium, or sacred boundary, of the city of Rome.^[10]

Along with this belief that Rome stood at the center of a world-embracing empire, there is evidence to suggest that by the first century B.C. the Romans had wedded a religious aspect to the notion of political domination. Perhaps the best illustration of the notion is found in a passage from Livy. In the speech of Camillus that ends the fifth book of the Ab urbe condita the Augustan historian portrays Camillus as arguing against the proposal to move the Roman people to Veii after the Gallic sack of Rome. The hero declares that there was no place in Rome that was not "filled with religious meaning and with gods" (5.52.2) and that the solemn rites of sacrifice were fixed in place no less than in time.^[11] He asks how the obligations of religion—the prayers, sacrifices, cults, and festivals in honor of the gods—could possibly be met in any place other than Rome. Were the priests to journey back from Veii to the ruined site of Rome in order to perform the sacred rituals? Or would they attempt to perform these rites in the new city? Neither, says Camillus, would be possible. The sacred banquet of Jupiter could not take place elsewhere than on the Capitolium, nor could Vesta's fire and the shields of Mars, holy objects as old and even older than the city itself, be worshipped in any other place. Camillus argues that explicitly religious ceremonies could not take place outside of Rome without sacrilege, and that the political activities of the state would be tainted as well. How, he asks, could the auspices be taken unless within the pomerium? And how could the comitia meet anywhere but in their customary places?

In this passage the sanctity connected in the public mind with the

most sacred places of the city is extended to include the city as a whole, and the physical environment of Rome is seen as an instantiation of its meaning, its mission, and its destiny. At the end of the speech Livy has Camillus declare that whereas it might be possible to transfer the virtue of the Roman people to Veii, the fortuna of the Romans was inextricably tied to the fortune of the place where Rome now stood (5.54.6). Camillus then reminds his audience that when the Capitoline was being cleared to prepare for the building of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, a human head had been found there. Further, it was discovered that two shrines, those of Juventas and of Terminus, could not be moved. These omens were interpreted as signs of the sanctity and immutability of the city and of its future greatness. For Livy, then, an inseparable bond existed between the meaning of the state, on one hand, and the city of Rome as a physical entity, on the other. Rome had been instituted and guided by the gods, and its growing power and astounding military success were believed to be derived not only from the virtue of its citizens or even from heavenly support for Roman arms but from a divinely ordained fate attached to the very site of the city.

Complementary to the Romans' belief that they inhabited "the center place" was their belief that those who lived on the fringes of the Roman world were different from themselves. Although sophisticated Romans of the first century B.C. no longer believed that the old tales learned from Greek mythology represented a true description of places on the fringes of the imperium Romanum, nevertheless the perception endured that there existed in these distant places a world disparate from that of their own experience. This sense was reinforced by the works of various travelers and ethnographers, whose accounts emphasized the most striking and unusual features of foreign places and the aspects of these places that differed most radically from the experience of their readers.^[12] As will be seen, political propaganda also had a role to play in making the geographically removed seem alien and often threatening. Nor should we forget that the actual experience of the Romans was a source of conceptions about the strangeness of people from distant places. By the late Republic, Rome was a city of perhaps a million inhabitants, a heterogeneous mix of nationalities from throughout the Empire. The unfamil-

iar appearance and strange habits of this great mass of foreigners—visitors, diplomats, teachers, merchants, litigants, charlatans, freedmen, and slaves—gave rise to vivid impressions of the character of various ethnic groups and the nature of the lands from which they came. Given the xenophobia of what was originally a conservative, agrarian society, the resentment of Romans and Italians who had to endure the bitter spectacle of foreign freedmen rising to positions of wealth and influence, and the Roman need to justify the enslavement of vast numbers of individuals from every corner of the Mediterranean world, it is little wonder that the literature recording the Romans' impressions of foreign inhabitants of the city was filled with hostility and prejudice.^[13]

Cultural ethnocentricity provided the orator of ancient Rome—as it has provided orators in every culture—with a familiar topos: "them and us." By exploiting the negative side of this topos, the Roman orator might easily convince his Roman audience that distant peoples were barbarous, monstrous, implacably hostile, or morally inferior. "Our" interests, crucial to the preservation of the whole imperium, must therefore take precedence over "theirs," which were by definition parochial

and marginal; and "our" assessment of justice, objective and rational, was superior to "theirs," which could be presented as idiosyncratic or the product of the flawed thinking of an inferior ethnic group.^[14] As will be shown, it is easy to point to a variety of examples in Cicero's rhetoric in which he exploits this tendency to dehumanize the foreign. In fact, the same strategy could be and was used even against places little removed from Rome. Sallust reports that the orator himself, native of a Latin town not sixty miles from Rome, was called by Catiline a "resident alien" of the city of Rome.^[15]

The same thinking that viewed the periphery or the distant as a place of negative extremes, however, could also see such places as the location of positive environments, for both dystopian and utopian communities were thought to exist in places that were far removed. In Greek mythology, the Isles of the Blessed were believed to be located in the far west, and in the lands of the distant south the gods took their pleasure, passing their days feasting with the Aethiopians. Although some Romans of Cicero's day may have questioned the existence of a paradise beyond the Pillars of Hercules, still it was possible for a Roman orator not only to demonize the alien but to idealize it as well. When it suited his purpose, he could create an image of the world outside of his audience's everyday experience as a better one, in which the negative aspects of

Roman life had no place. Caesar and Tacitus, for instance, found in the Germans virtues that the Romans had long since lost.^[16] Positive stereotypes of inhabitants of the unsophisticated outposts of empire could also support an orator's attempt to rouse the sympathy of his audience (so long as they could indulge in this emotion without compromising their own interests), since litigants from such places could readily be cast in the role of simple and humble supplicants, naive about the ways of the world and pitiably dependent on Roman protection and good faith.

Closely related to positive and negative images of the spatially removed were those that related to chronological distance, an idea that can best be understood in reference to ancient conceptions of anthropology. Stated simply, the Greco-Roman world was capable of viewing human history both as an ascent and as a decline. On the one hand, human life on earth was envisioned as a progress in which the gradual creation of law, politics, and the other arts of urban civilization (including rhetoric) had raised human beings from the bestiality of the animals to a level that reflected the divine spark of rationality that separated them from the lower orders.^[17] On the other hand, the span of history was interpreted, at least in a moral sense, as a great slide downward. This view was often articulated metaphorically through the Myth of the Ages, in which an original Golden Age had degenerated into one of Silver, the Age of Silver had passed to Bronze, and, at last, the Age of Bronze had given way to the present, a debased Age of Iron. According to this conception, the primitive past was an Edenic period in which natural justice prevailed and the earth poured forth her bounty without the need for plowing or planting. Material "progress" in the form of technological advance was seen not as progress at all but as corruption

and degeneration.^[18] A compromise between these two opposing views depicted the intermediate stage of the life of the small agricultural community as an ideal, a brief hiatus of human contentment between a savage past and a decadent future.^[19]

A powerful link could be forged between conceptions tied to separation in time and the positive and negative ideas we have shown to have been associated with spatial separation. Far-removed regions inhabited by primitive societies similar to those believed to have existed in the distant past could be viewed negatively: these were places that were frozen in time, the barbaric abode of people still less than fully human. Or these same places could also be presented as constituting ideal locations, happily untouched by the degeneration of a modern age. The attractiveness of the latter conception was enhanced by the prevailing Roman view of their own history as a decline from simple individual virtue and social harmony. The Romans saw their preimperial past as an ideal in which the great upheavals that convulsed their world had yet to occur. While Roman historians and poets saw fit to praise the fact of empire—the victory of Roman arms was, after all, evidence of heaven's approval of the Roman people—these same writers could not but see the destructive changes wrought by military success. The destabilizing effect of such features of Roman expansion as the influx of wealth and its accumulation in the hands of a few, the change from small subsistence to

large-scale, slave-based agriculture, the transformation of Italian small holders into professional soldiers or dispossessed urban dwellers, and especially, the agonizing cycle of civil wars of the last century of the Republic were recurring themes in Roman literature. Such problems reinforced the Roman tendency to idealize the past, especially that time in the middle Republic when the city had not yet succumbed to foreign influences and the typical Roman citizen-soldier was, at least in popular belief, an honest, hardworking farmer. At the same time, current problems also disposed the Romans to idealize those people and places that they believed most closely approximated that period in their past.^[20]

Nature and Nurture: Hippocratic Medicine

Growing knowledge of the diversity of cultures and mores in the wider world had provided a strong stimulus to ancient Greek philosophical speculation concerning the nature of humankind, for it was travelers' accounts of places in which customs differed radically from those familiar to the Greeks that had led thinkers to question the existence of moral absolutes and to attempt to define the relative roles of custom and nature (nomos and physis ) in human societies. Although it is beyond the scope of this work to enter in detail into the complex subject of philosophical positions concerning the Greek attitude to the "barbaroi, " we may note that, on the one hand, absolutists like Plato and Aristotle had subscribed to the idea that an ethnic group could by nature be inferior or superior to others and had argued on this basis that the enslavement of the inferior (barbarians) by the superior (Greeks) could be justified;^[21] on the other hand, a variety of philosophers believed that human nature was essentially one and attributed the diversity of ethical norms observed among different peoples to factors such as culture and education

rather than nature. This latter view, in turn, encouraged doubts about whether slavery of foreign populations could be justified.^[22]

Among the first group of thinkers to attempt to formulate empirical responses to the same issues that stimulated debate among the philosophers was the fifth-century school of medicine that grew up around Hippocrates of Cos. On Airs, Waters, Places, one of the works that has come down to us under the name (if not the pen) of the great founder of rational medicine, attempted to advise the peripatetic medical practitioners of its day on the physical and psychological effects of environment. Climate, water supply, and topography were each considered by the author with a view to allowing the doctor to predict the weaknesses and strengths of groups who lived in a variety of physical settings.

While this effort to establish a rational basis for endemic disease is laudable and worthy of Hippocrates himself, the execution as found in On Airs, Waters, Places leaves much for the modern to criticize. Although generalizing theories are presented as if based on direct observation of diverse populations, what passes for factual observations is actually composed of confused and often contradictory remarks drawn from a variety of sources. But the very diversity of the kind of materials found in this medical tract of the fifth century B.C. provides a useful example of some of the factors influencing description of lands and places not only at this early date but persisting even in Cicero's time.^[23]

In several passages the author appears to have been strongly influenced by a combination of mythology and the accounts of wonders retailed by travelers and ethnographers. His description of the women belonging to the Scythian tribe of the Sauromatae (17) seems to be derived from tales of the Amazons (although the term is never used).^[24] Before marriage these women are said to ride, hunt, and engage in battle just like men. Further, the author's statement that mothers cauterized the right breast of their daughters so that all the strength of that side of their bodies would flow into their muscles corresponds to the etymology usually given for the term Amazon (that is, "without breast"). Similarly, the work's extensive description of Asia doubtlessly drew on descriptions of the Golden Age, for the author paints it as a quasi-mythical land in which flora, fauna, and humans grow larger and more beautiful than elsewhere, and boundless fecundity characterizes both wild and cultivated land. The assertion that this region is "closest to spring" in character (12) is a clear echo of the "eternal spring" of the Golden Age. Although the inhabitants are said to be well nourished, handsome, large, and gentle, there exists one drawback to this quasi-perfect environment: the unchanging mildness of the environment causes the Asians to lack courage, endurance, industry, and high spirit, for "pleasure governs all" (12).

In the summary of the comparison of Europeans and Asians the hypothesis of environmental determinism thinly veils a traditional ethnic stereotype distinguishing the Greeks from the peoples who inhabited the lands farther east. The author claims that change and extremes of climate account for the courage and spirit of the Europeans, while the lack of violent climatic change in Asia leads to stagnation and weakness. He then bolsters his argument by making use of the kind of political propaganda that must have been common during the period of the Persian wars and would later be identified with the idea of Panhellenism, a movement that combined calls for Greek unity with hostility to the non-Greeks of the eastern Mediterranean.^[25] The autocratic political systems of the Asians, he states, reinforced their native tendencies to

weakness and cowardice, while the autonomous systems of the Greeks reinforced their natural courage and independence (cf. 16; 23).

Some of the above material seems to derive not only from ethnic stereotypes of Greeks and Asians but also from the author's desire to contribute to the nomos-physis controversy. He is interested, for instance, in describing how custom can serve either to reinforce or to overcome natural tendencies in the case of Asian political institutions: he notes that the autocratic governments under which the Asians lived contributed to their weakness (16); that bravery and endurance could, however, be produced through law, even in those in whom these qualities did not exist by nature (24); and that free Asians, whether Greek or non-Greek, were courageous and warlike (16). Furthermore, in describing a race known as the "Longheads," he gives his readers an example of how nature can be changed by custom. This tribe, according to the author, had developed the habit of wrapping the heads of their babies in order to elongate the skull while still malleable. He goes on to affirm that, after a period of time, nature itself reinforced custom by producing babies that were long-headed from birth.

The importance of a work such as On Airs, Waters, Places to the development of later rhetorical topoi can be seen in a number of its features. Above all, the author establishes the crucial connection between ethos and locus, that is, between the way people look, think, and act and their physical environment. Here, then, was a powerful strategy by which the orator could establish probability (to eikos ) in arguing for the behavior or character of various persons in a case. By describing the place where an individual came from, he could at the same time claim to be establishing the character of that individual.

The treatise not only establishes this principle, but, thanks to the confused logic of its author, it provides both specific positive and specific negative probabilities for a variety of locations. At the outset (12), lack of climatic change is presented as ideal in terms of creation of physical well-being, for the unchanging temperateness of their land had made the people of Asia handsome, well nourished, and free from excessive passion (although this climate is also responsible for their unwarlike temperament). In later passages in the treatise, however, lack of climatic change is asserted to be the reason for physical as well as mental debilitation, and the author states that those whose land is rich, soft, well watered, and blessed by a favorable climate are themselves fleshy, ill-articulated, and overly "moist" (24). Description of the Europeans, who live in an environment of frequent climatic change and fierce extremes

of cold and heat, is generally favorable and emphasizes the positive attributes of courage and independence of spirit. Other passages, however, speak of the violence, wildness, and unsociability to which this environment also gives rise. An orator, searching here for characteristics of various regions, might well find ample material either for praise or for blame. It is to be noted in particular that in this work one sees one of the first extant articulations of the stereotypical ethnic and political differences between East and West (cast in the form of comparisons of Asia and Europe), a usefully fluid and imprecise topos as far as the objects of praise and censure are concerned.^[26] Although the author of On Airs, Waters, Places was primarily intent on emphasizing the differences between Greeks and Asians, the ideas within the work could easily be adapted to castigate Asian Greeks at the expense of mainlanders or, later, to explain the negative qualities of the Greeks themselves, who were often viewed through Roman eyes as sharing the corruption attributed to peoples of the East.

Ethnography, Politics, and Philosophy

As mentioned above, ethnographical writing was an important source of Roman images of places and peoples, at least among the educated classes. The genre dates back at least to the sixth century B.C. , by which time the rapid expansion of Greek trade and colonization had made the wider world a subject of keen interest.^[27] The earliest Greek descriptions of "foreign places" ranged from the purely informational accounts of early navigators (periploi ) and the credulous reporting of wonders associated with distant lands, to the more searching ethnographical material in the work of Ionian logographers and the ethnographical "digressions" (if such they may be termed) in the works of historians

such as Herodotus. The eastern campaigns of Alexander gave rise to a second wave of interest in geography and ethnography, and, as A. Dihle points out, this Hellenistic material was strongly influenced by the inclination to ascertain the rational causes of observed phenomena. Dihle notes that those who wrote of foreign places in these times—officers, diplomats, and travelers—couched their observations within the context of general aetiological theories. Further, he asserts that "the public for whom these men composed their observations demanded an anthropological, geophysical, moral or historical arrangement of new information."^[28]

The aetiologies advanced by Hellenistic authors to explain their data are difficult to recover from the later works in which they are incorporated. They may in general, however, be divided into two groups: those theories (like that of the author of On Airs, Waters, Places ) that emphasized the direct effect on the human constitution of "climate"—by which the ancients meant such things as distance from the sun, moistness or dryness in a location, or the characteristics of a particular band of latitude; and, on the other hand, those theories that assumed that the psychological and physical characteristics of individuals, as well as the level of civilization achieved by particular ethnic groups, could be explained by the combined effect of customs, traditions, and practices. These customs, traditions, and practices, in turn, were thought to be determined by a variety of environmental factors—including geography, climate, exposure to other cultures, and, especially, the means available in a certain location for sustaining life.^[29] This latter viewpoint is well represented in the pages of Diodorus Siculus, who begins his universal history with a rationalizing anthropology that attributes human progress to a process of trial and error, spurred by the necessity of maintaining life and facilitated by humans' possession of "hands, speech, and acuity of mind."^[30] For Diodorus (and certain of his Hellenistic sources), the explanation for the astounding diversity of human mores

could be found in the natural drive of humans to use whatever means exist in a particular location in order to sustain life.^[31]

Earlier Hellenistic ethnography, an exclusively Greek science, was reflected in both Greek and Latin literature of Cicero's day. By the late Republic, the categories, if not the contents, of ethnographical discussions were fixed: the authors of such excursuses invariably alluded to aspects of the physical environment of a particular ethnic group (including physical geography, climate, crops, raw materials) as well as to their social institutions (including political, religious, and military groupings). A review of ethnographical passages in several works of the period reveals the kinds of assumptions about the connection between ethnic groups and their habitation that would have been widespread at the time.

The short ethnographical account of Africa in Sallust's Bellum Jugurthinum (17–19) is, unfortunately, of limited use here, as the author hardly goes beyond the bare facts that he has received from his Carthaginian source and does not encourage the reader to analyze the reasons for the character traits and institutions he ascribes to the Africans. He presents a picture of a North Africa inhabited by mixed races: according to Sallust, the nomadic and savage Gaetulians, a people without customs, laws, or rulers, had intermarried with the Medes, a race who had come to western Europe with the army of Hercules, to produce the "Numidians" of his own day.^[32]

Ethnographical passages in the Geography of Strabo, however, are more revealing and merit consideration because although this work was not available to Roman readers during his lifetime, it drew on many other earlier and contemporary sources that would have been well known to the educated classes of Cicero's day. A review of the ethnographical material in the Geography leads the reader to conclude that for Strabo differences between ethnic groups were primarily the result of cultural, economic, and geographical circumstances rather than due to the inborn traits of various peoples.^[33] When Strabo speaks of the Turdetani of Baetica (Cordoba), for instance, he notes that they were the cleverest and most civilized of the Iberians in his own time but were formerly the most brutish (3.1.6, 3.2.4–15). Likewise, the wildness of the mountain-dwelling Lusitanians is not, according to the author, due to any inherent defect but is explained by their "remoteness" (ektopismon ), which has prevented the growth of communal organization (to koinonikon ) and civilization (to philanthropon ) (3.3.8). Although it is true that Strabo often has recourse to stereotypical descriptions of ethnic groups—the Iberians, for example, are dour and malicious; the Celts, passionate and fickle; and the Western barbarians in general are cruel—he implies that the passage from savagery to civilization may be made by all. This passage is initiated through contact with Greco-Roman city-states and leads, in places where geography has been suitable, to the creation of stable agriculture, private property, law, and, the ultimate sign of civilized life, large urban centers. Where land was not suitable for settled agriculture, however, the inhabitants were apparently doomed to a life of savagery.^[34]

The employment of ethnography in the writings of Julius Caesar is a more complex matter than in Strabo's Geography, for with the Bellum Gallicum we encounter the exploitation of seemingly objective ethnographical material in support of a cleverly disguised but nonetheless tendentious account of history—the first Latin example of what might be

called a consciously "rhetorical" ethnography. It is chiefly in those sections of the work in which the author hoped to justify a controversial military policy that he has recourse to stereotypes of the barbarians as cruel, arrogant, faithless, or given to passionate anger. For instance, in the first book of the Bellum Gallicum Caesar creates a picture of the German Ariovistus and his followers as cruel and savage barbarians in order to cast his campaign against them in the form of a moral tale in which Roman arms are used "to spare the conquered and vanquish the proud" (Verg. Aen. 6.853).^[35] Such sections stand in marked contrast to the author's overall portrayal of the barbarian struggle against Roman arms as motivated primarily by a noble desire for libertas .^[36]

For the most part, Caesar's explanation for the differences in customs and temperaments among barbarians recalls that of Strabo. The least civilized and most savage tribes are those farthest from Greco-Roman trade and settlements. The Gauls were formerly fiercer and more savage than the Germans, but the nearness of the Roman provinces and their exposure to the amenities of civilization had made them soft (6.24).^[37] Caesar's admiration for the fortitude of his enemies is clear, and he notes several times that the tribes who were least civilized were also his bravest and most formidable foes. In addition to simple geographical isolation as an explanation for the relative degree of civilization or savagery among ethnic groups, Caesar points to the desire of the barbarians themselves to preserve their way of life. The Germans are the hardiest and bravest of peoples not only because they are farthest removed from the luxury goods of the civilized world but also because they actively reject them as emasculating (4.2).

In rare instances Caesar departs from the idea that the chief ethnic differences between barbarian tribes are to be explained by their isola-

tion from or contact with civilizing influences.^[38] In his account of the revolt of all Gaul under the leadership of Vercingetorix, the author describes how the Aedui, formerly closely allied with the Romans, were drawn into the rebellion. He states that some were influenced by avarice, others by anger and "by the rashness that is especially engendered in the [Gallic] race" (7.42: impellit alios avaritia alios iracundia et temeritas, quae maxime illi hominum generi est innata ). The fickleness and mental mobility of the Gauls—seen in their most insidious dimensions in the depiction of the Gauls' perfidy and faithlessness to their commitments, in a less threatening guise in their tendency to hopelessness and loss of spirit when faced with adversity—are frequently alluded to and are treated by the author as inherent traits rather than products of culture.^[39]

We might take note as well of a curious statement in Caesar's account of the Suebi, the largest and most bellicose of the German tribes. Describing the group's rough and uncivilized life, which is chiefly devoted to hunting and warfare, Caesar remarks that the reasons for the Suebians' great physical strength and huge stature (4.1: vires . . . et immani corporum magnitudine ) were to be found in their food (consisting of milk, cheese, cattle, and the flesh of hunted animals), their daily exercise in hunting or warfare, and the "freedom of their life" (4.1: libertate vitae ). In explanation of this last Caesar notes that from boyhood the Suebians are not schooled in duty or discipline and do nothing at all that they do not wish to do (4.1: nullo officio aut disciplina adsuefacti nihil omnino contra voluntatem faciant ). It is clear to any reader of the Bellum Gallicum that Caesar ascribed the triumph of Roman arms in Gaul not only to his own good fortune and ability but in large part to the discipline and fidelity to duty of those who served under him. The work illustrates time and again how the gravest of perils could be over-

come by an army schooled in the belief that the individual must be willing to sacrifice his own desires and interests to those of the group as a whole. It is striking, therefore, to note that in this passage Caesar argues that it is the absence of this very disciplina and sense of officium that allowed the individual to grow most powerful, at least in a physical sense.

Caesar's accounts of the Gauls and the Germans, his analysis of their motives and intentions, and his interpretation of the character of the tribes in the areas in which he operated must have reached a large popular audience, for the Bellum Gallicum, even if its contents were not identical with the dispatches sent back to the Senate from Gaul, surely reflected the tone and content of those dispatches. And Caesar was well aware that it would be his account of events in such dispatches that would ultimately form the basis for reports to the populace about the course of events in the war, for speeches by his adherents celebrating his deeds, and for proclamations of public thanksgivings to be celebrated in honor of his victories. His exploitation of ethnographical material, then, was directed to both Senate and people and was meant not simply to inform but to persuade as well.^[40] This observation leads us to consider, at least briefly, the role that characterization of non-Roman groups played in Roman politics in general.

When Roman orators appeared before the people to speak on behalf of declaring war against a foreign state or granting a military command to an individual they would have combined considerations of expediency with those of justice, since fetial law demanded that the Roman state act only in a just cause.^[41] Those who favored a declaration of war, therefore, would have needed to prove that the state in question was guilty of wrongdoing against Rome or her allies, while those opposed could argue that Roman honor or fides to an ally did not require military intervention. Both those attacking and those defending a declaration of war against a foreign state would have supported their interpretation of events by fitting particular incidents into a pattern of past actions—a pattern that, in turn, would have been explained through

assumptions about the character and temperament of the people in question. The underlying motives for urging declarations of war were many and in most cases must have outnumbered those inclining speakers towards advocating restraint. Actual fear of a perceived threat, the insatiable desire of the upper classes for military command and glory, and the efficacy of a campaign against an external enemy in suppressing internal faction are but a few of the former. Given the constant engagement of Roman armies throughout the Mediterranean, the citizens of Republican Rome doubtlessly proved a receptive audience for a barrage of indictments lodged against foreign peoples for their supposed duplicity, ferocity, barbarism, and impiety.^[42]

Arguments concerning the character and intentions of Rome's allies, provinces, friends, and enemies not only figured in the conduct of foreign policy but at the same time played an essential role in internal political struggles, also fought out before the eyes of Roman voters. Vilification of a foreign people could serve as part of an overall strategy in which one's political opponents were themselves identified with an external enemy. Octavian's propaganda against Antony's governance of the eastern provinces provides the most conspicuous example of such a strategy, the precedent for which was surely the claims of Alexander's enemies that he had become more Asian than Greek.^[43] On the other hand, internal political considerations might also prompt a man to defend the character of a foreign people. Roman politicians would frequently have attempted to increase their own prestige by acting on behalf of their foreign clientela, and the power of a leader was greatly enhanced if, as patron, he were able to procure citizenship for a subjugated or allied people. Political enmity might also influence a politician's

support of foreign peoples. We learn, for instance, that Cato accused Caesar of outraging the rights of innocent Germans and argued that he should be bound and handed over to them for his violations of fetial law.^[44] Of the role of characterization of non-Romans in the arena of the law courts more will be said in the next chapter.

Finally, some mention should be made of attitudes identified with the philosophical schools dominant in late Republican Rome: Stoicism and Epicureanism. While it cannot be claimed that these schools would have had a direct influence on the opinions of the masses, they might well have had an indirect effect, for a combination of philosophical and advanced rhetorical training played a role in the education of the leading politicians of Cicero's day, and such men would surely have made use of philosophical tenets—albeit disguising them well—whenever these ideas were useful in furthering their positions.^[45] In spite of the gap that separated the two philosophies, there existed an underlying similarity of belief between them.^[46] Both schools were cosmopolitan in outlook and addressed themselves to the question of the happiness of the individual through assumptions about human nature at all times and in all cultures. Epicurean physiology recognized no essential differences between one person and another and assumed that culture, not nature, lay at the heart of perceived differences between peoples. Lucretius, chief Roman exponent of Epicureanism in the late Republic, does not acknowledge racial differences as a determining factor in the pursuit of happiness in De rerum natura . Similarly, Stoic philosophy taught that all people were alike, united by the divine spark of rationality that they shared. Although Stoicism countenanced the enslavement of individuals, it did not do so on the assumption that enslaved races were by na-

ture intended for such a fate. Rather, Stoics saw no reason to support the elimination of slavery, since they believed that only moral enslavement to vice could undermine the happiness of the truly wise person.

The foregoing, while not an exhaustive survey of the complex body of ideas about the relationship between ethos and locus prevalent in the late Republic, may serve as an introduction to ancient thinking on the subject. It is important to keep in mind that, in most cases, we can only speculate about the degree to which the concepts discussed above actually influenced popular belief, since this survey is, first, dependent on the vagaries of literary survival and, second, skewed by the fact that both the authors and the intended audience of most of the sources that have survived were restricted to a small, well-educated upper class. Gravestones, inscriptions, and dedications may tell us of the numbers of foreigners in Rome or of the popularity of foreign cults, but little survives to speak to us of the way in which the common man and woman looked at the world and the people in it. If Rome possessed drama comparable to Greek Old Comedy or tragedy, with its frequent allusions to barbarians, our task would be made easier.^[47] Roman comedy, however, derives from a period generations removed from that of Cicero and, furthermore, is adapted from Greek New Comedy. Its value in predicting the sentiments and beliefs of citizens in the late Republic is therefore limited.

A similar problem presents itself when we turn to rhetorical handbooks as a source of Roman ideas about other peoples and places, for these works, like Roman comedy, constituted a hybrid genre, as much dependent on Hellenistic Greek sources as on contributions from Roman writers.^[48] Latin rhetorical handbooks did indeed advise the orator

to use considerations of race, nationality, city-state, education, and habits of life to characterize individuals either positively or negatively. But when we turn from such general admonitions to the exceedingly rare specific examples, we find passages such as that in Cicero's De inventione noting that distinctions of race would lead one to consider whether a person "[was] a Greek or a barbarian," and distinctions of birthplace would raise the question of "whether one [was] an Athenian or a Spartan."^[49]

This state of affairs leaves us extraordinarily dependent on the extant speeches themselves as a reflection of everyday thought in the late Republic, for of all the literary works that we have inherited from this period rhetoric alone depended for its success on the belief of the many. Concerning this subject Cicero wrote that "both those who make legal judgments and those who make moral judgments are completely guided by [the opinion of the crowd]" (Top. 73: vulgi opinio mutari vix potest ad eamque omnia dirigunt et qui iudicant et qui existimant ).^[50] This is not to say that a one-to-one correspondence exists between the conceptions found in the speeches of Cicero and the opinions held by most Roman citizens. Cicero's oratorical success, however, allows us to assume that in the speeches we find a storehouse of ideas and beliefs that were both understandable and credible to the Roman public at the time at which they were delivered.