De haruspicum responso

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De haruspicum responso (also: De haruspicum responsis ; German "About the report of the victims showers") is a speech by the Roman politician and speaker M. Tullius Cicero . The speech was given in the summer of 56 BC. Held before the Senate during the 1st Triumvirate . It is one of the speeches post reditum , that is, one of the speeches given by Cicero shortly after his exile in Greece (58–57 BC).

A natural phenomenon had been interpreted by Roman priests ( haruspices ) as a divine reference to the desecration of a temple. While Clodius , an opponent of Cicero, had referred the priestly report ( responsum ) to Cicero's building of a villa in the area of ​​the Libertas Temple , Cicero defended himself in the speech De haruspicum responso and interpreted the report against Clodius.

prehistory

As a tribune of the people of the year 58 BC BC Clodius took action against Cicero to have the Catilinarians, Roman citizens, executed during his consulate in 63 BC. Chr. Because it came about without due legal process. As Cicero 58 BC Because of this he went into exile after Thessalonike and Dyrrhachium in Greece, Clodius ordered his house on the Palatine to be confiscated and torn down. He dedicated part of the property ( dedicare ) to the Roman goddess of freedom Libertas (as a symbol of the liberation of the Republic of Cicero - an ironic move by Clodius) and built a monument and a temple in her honor. After his return from exile in 57 BC. In his speech De domo sua ("From his house") , Cicero asked the college of pontifices to annul the ordination; he argued that Clodius' tribunate was illegitimate, his law that banished Cicero was unconstitutional, and that ordination was unjust and ungodly. The college of priests decided in favor of Cicero. Then Cicero rebuilt his villa on the Palatine Hill.

After a few months, haruspices had mysterious noises, probably caused by tremors in central Italy, attributed to the wrath of the gods, which should have been aroused by the profanation of sacred sites. In addition, their report received a warning to settle disputes among the Optimates . Clodius saw the profanation in the rebuilding of Cicero's house in its original place, which Clodius had dedicated to the Libertas. This consecration was actually an irreversible process under sacred law.

speech

Cicero defended himself before the Senate with the speech De haruspicum responso against Clodius' allegations. In a speech alternating between sarcasm and threats, he accused Clodius of the godly crime: for once, as aedile, he had disrupted the course of the Megalensia with a rally . His furor , his deluded anger, drove Clodius to such deeds. Cicero sees the origin of this furor "as in tragedy" as a divine punishment for the former desecration of the Bona Dea festival by Clodius. Cicero sees himself as an "enlightened" Roman, but expresses his respect for the religion of the fathers. He rejects any suspicion that he might doubt their validity. On this occasion Cicero expresses his aversion to the "atheistic" teaching of Epicurus .

At the same time, however, Cicero makes fun of the naivete of the people by demonstrating how the expert opinion of the Roman interpreters can be arbitrarily interpreted in all directions. In what follows, Cicero coined the discord among the Optimates on Clodius. He was also responsible for them, because only recently he made common cause against the Senate with the triumvirs when Cicero was exiled, and shortly afterwards he scolded the triumvirs in order to make himself popular with the Optimates. According to Cicero, the "dispute among the optimates" could mean nothing else than the tensions between the Senate and the triumvirs, which Cicero counts as one of the optimates, exacerbated by Clodius. He interprets the haruspices ' exhortation to end this disagreement in terms of the policy of the triumvirs, his new protectors; in addition, Cicero intends to establish a front line against Clodius in order to prevent a connection, according to Cicero, unnatural between plebs , to which Clodius belonged, and nobility against the triumvirs.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Emanuele Narducci: Cicero: An introduction . 1st edition. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-018818-7 , pp. 169 .
  2. ↑ cf. MC Howatson: Reclam's Lexicon of Antiquity. supplemented edition Stuttgart: Reclam, 2006. ISBN 978-3-15-010583-2 , article: Cicero (see [1] 4); De domo sua ; De haruspicum responso
  3. ↑ Emanuele Narducci: Cicero: An introduction . 1st edition. Philipp Reclam jun., Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-018818-7 , pp. 169-170 .