PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES

The skin, after all, is extremely personal, is it not? The temptation is to believe that the ills and the poisons of the mind or the personality have somehow or other erupted straight out on to the skin. "Unclean! Unclean!" you shout, ringing the bell, warning us to keep off, to keep clear. The leper in the Bible, yes? But that is nonsense, you know. Do you know? Well — one part of you does, I'm sure. — D. Potter, The Singing Detective 56

sit ... inscription in fronte unius cuiusque quid de re publica sentiat.

(Let it be inscribed on each individual's forehead what that person thinks about the republic.) — Cicero, First Speech against Catiline 32

The dichotomy of "nature" and "culture" has long oriented discussions about the origins of ethical behavior. This division represents a conflict over the extent to which human action is determined either by natural causes or by socially constructed norms. From its ancient Greek formulation of phusis versus nomos ("nature" vs. "custom"), the opposition finds its modern expression in the notions of essentialism and constructionism. As in most dichotomies, however, the distinctions between the two halves are more formal than real. Few so-called essentialists would say that they believe social context exerts no influence on human behavior. Similarly, it would be difficult (although perhaps less so) to find a constructionist who would be willing to deny that there exist among human beings certain constants that are not culture specific. In this book I adopt an approach clearly sympathetic with constructionism. At least since Nietzsche it has been commonly argued that ethical systems consist not of stable entities but of socially constructed notions that the changing needs of society are constantly shaping. My object then is to explore how the dominant, elite culture at Rome during the period of the late Republic created and reinforced its own concept of "Romanness" through the use of public invective. I shall begin in this first chapter with a phenomenon common in humorous abuse, one often noted but seldom confronted by later admirers of Roman oratory: the public mockery of physical peculiarities. It would seem easy to cite this mode of humor as simply another example of constructed notions of the physical self: for example, that the Romans had valorized Greek aesthetics of form and proportion to such an extent that violation of these strictures became a permissible subject of abuse. Yet labeling this practice as simply cruel or unenlightened would be misguided. The Romans certainly recognized in this case a distinction between nature and custom, between natural law and human practice. It was, in fact, precisely this dichotomy that they attempt to mediate in their discussion of physical appearance.

Natura — "nature" — was a slippery term. In a public context, it could denote the character peculiar to an individual, a character that determines one's actions ("that's in his nature"). According to this conception of nature, human behavior is not fixed- Hence any person's inborn qualities, when represented in the courtroom, could vary from positive to negative, depending on whether a speaker wished to attach praise or blame to his subject. In the closing sentences of his defense of Sextus Roscius, for example, Cicero asserts how he and his audience are "naturally very gentle" (natura mitissimi; S. Rose. 154); a passage from a speech against Verres, in contrast, finds the word natura bearing responsibility for continual wrongdoing ("this natura, which has committed so great a crime" — ea natura quae tantum facinus commiserit; Verr. 2.1.40). In public depictions of personal responsibility, natura is fickle and capricious, its activities ranging from humanitarian sympathy to wicked crime.

When occurring in a philosophical and moral context, however, natura usually denotes a divine agent. This version of nature as fixed and constant creates standards of appearance and behavior —" for what is natura other than god and divine reason?" As a result of nature's preeminence, there arises the common practice of appealing to nature to make moral distinctions. Any deviation from the rules of nature is "unnatural" in the strictest sense of the word. From a moral standpoint, then, the Roman conception of physical appearance can be viewed as very much a conscious construction, predicated on the desire to fuse natural law and cultural practice. Nature, endowed by philosophers with complete perfection, becomes the touchstone for determining deviance. In the case of the Roman practice against physical peculiarities, therefore, one can recognize the workings of a "constructed essentialism." To justify the attendant ethical construct — that physical appearance provided indications of moral character — appeals were made to essentializing notions of the theoretical perfection of nature. A naturally beautiful physique bespoke a morally sound interior. This fusion of nature and custom, of physical beauty and ethical norms, provides a necessary foundation for rhetorical invective. For the existence of a human community, as constructed by public figures at Rome, depended on the identification of soul with body, on the ability to recognize the workings of nature in the very face of the citizen.

The Nature of Roman Oratorical Invective

Before I examine the particular case of the mockery of physical peculiarities, it will be useful to outline how speakers at Rome defined for themselves the basic character of humorous invective. There is no question that the audience's admiration of a clever turn of phrase or of a particularly witty comeback constituted a part of the orator's success. I shall not, however, be concerned with the strictly rhetorical aspect of these moves, maneuvers to which rhetoricians and scholars have directed their attention from Greek antiquity to the present. Rather, I shall concentrate on the assumptions that the extant texts never explicitly address, the unstated biases to which invective makes its appeal and by which it is justified. Even those attacks that seem most cruel and unprovoked find their origin in the ethical considerations that a skillful speaker was able to compel his Roman audience to recognize.

The modern reader of Roman oratory cannot fail to be struck by both the omnipresence and caustic character of Roman invective. In his rhetorical treatises, Cicero does not equivocate in recommending attacks on character. In On the Orator, the abuse of an opponent ranks equally with the favorable representation of a speaker and his client:

valet igitur multum ad vincendum probari mores et instituta et facta et vitam eorum, qui agent causas, et eorum, pro quibus, et item improbari adversariorum. (De...