Stanley E. HOFFER Catilinarian Motifs in Cicero's Philippics
This paper will demonstrate the frequency and centrality of Catilinarian allusions in Cicero's Philippics, both in historical allusions to the Catilinarian affair and in specific verbal and thematic allusions to Cicero's Catilinarian orations. The most important parallel is the general rhetorical situation, that of recruiting political support against alleged enemies of the res publica in a time of civil war (violent civic strife). In examining the parallels, I will sketch two lines of investigation: first, to show the similar rhetorical means by which Cicero twice represents the situation of civic strife, and second, to show how he uses the Catilinarian situation to shape the audience's understanding of civic strife in a strikingly different context.
Here are some examples of the Catilinarian motifs that I will discuss. Aside from the common staples of Ciceronian invective (e.g. accusations of criminality, cruelty, violence, luxury, and sexual misbehavior), the two sets of speeches abound in invective specific to deliberative oratory in a time of civic strife. Like Catiline's, Antony's departure from Rome is defined as a ìflightî from his own city (e.g. Phil. 3.2, 24, 5.24, 30, 13.20) and he has shown himself to be a public enemy. The anti-government of the anti-citizen is a parodic government, a non-government, and his army is a non-army (e.g. Cat. 2.13, 24-25, Phil. 4.14-15, 5.27, 13.26-28). The implacable bitterness of civil war with its blurred distinction between fellow-citizen and enemy makes a lasting peace impossible, since the enemy who has been planning to kill you will be within the city walls (e.g. Cat. 3.27, 4.22, Phil. 12.19-20, 13.4-5, 49). Parallel tropes warn against untimely mercy by reminding that harshness to the ìcitizen-enemyî is actually mercy to one's ìfellow-citizensî that one is saving thereby (Phil. 8.16); the trope is fundamental to the fourth Catilinarian oration as a refutation of Caesar's disingenuous claim that imprisonment is the harsher punishment. Moreover, the theme of impatient urgency that begins with the Third Philippic owes more to the Catilinarian background than to Demosthenes' Philippics, as the repeated echoes of the Catilinarian formula quo usque show (3.3, 8.17-18, 11.38, 14.6; otherwise rare in Cicero's speeches).
A sign of Cicero's presentation of civil war can be seen in the fact that in both sets of speeches he actually avoids calling it ìcivilî war (bellum civile). A clear explanation appears at Phil. 14.22: one does not celebrate a Supplication for victory in civil war, but since Antony has (implicitly) been declared a public enemy and no longer a citizen, the war can be redefined as an external war against foreign enemies. Thus Cicero variously calls the conflicts bellum nefarium, impium, inexpiabile, even domesticum, intestinum, internecivum, and patriae (or contra patriam) illatum, whereas he freely refers to the Sullan or Caesarian civil wars as bella civilia (though not at its outbreak, Att. 7.13.1). Cicero needs to emphasize the special horror of warfare against fellow-citizens without falling into the symmetry of mere factional strife between equally legitimate factions, whereas Antony repeatedly defines the situation as a mere conflict between ìpartiesî (5.32, 13.38-39, 42, 47; cf. Cat. 4.13). A significant difference between the two sets of speeches, on the other hand, is that in the Philippics the crisis of legitimacy is much more severe, since it was by no means clear that Antony's provincial command was less legitimate than that of Decimus and Marcus Brutus, Cassius, or Octavian. Hence the exchanges of delegitimizing accusations (e.g. 13.26), the continuous efforts at retroactive legitimization, and the appeals to the spirit rather than the letter of the law (10.12, 11.28).
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