The Home and the Family: the Political and the Country

Laura Jetter, GSI: Kuan

            Paragraphs 10 through 16 of Cicero’s First Oration Against Cataline contain an extended metaphor of the domestic and familial sphere that climaxes in Cicero ventriloquizing the country in a prosopopoeia. By using the home and parentage to figure the political sphere and the country, respectively, Cicero illustrates how the privilege to participate in politics fosters the ideal human nature. Thus, he is ultimately claiming that Catiline’s public villainy has made him a persona non grata to the political hearth of the Roman Republic.

             After 10 paragraphs of detailing Catiline’s crimes, Cicero uses auxesis to climax the brevity of his villainy as a threat to “the temples of the immortal gods, the houses of the city, the lives of all the citizens, in short, all Italy” (11). In doing so, Cicero sublimates the importance of the domestic, the “houses” and “lives”, in relation to the wellbeing of the country as a whole, “all Italy”. Cicero then asks Catiline what kind of “pleasures” can be afforded to him in the city and “what kind of domestic baseness is not stamped upon [his] life?” (12). The juxtaposition of “pleasures” deriving from public participation in city life and “domestic baseness”, or lack of domestic moral principles, suggest that the two are mutually exclusive. The fact that Catiline’s domestic life is also saturated with immorality is evidence to the fact that public life can no longer afford him gratification either. Implicit in this juxtaposition is Cicero’s philosophical claim that the “pleasures” derived from a healthy home are similar to the life-giving pleasures afforded through rhetoric in political assembly. Those “pleasures” can thus be described as fostering of the ideal human nature just the way that a good upbringing at home fosters good children.

            Continuing with the topic of pleasure, Cicero asks, “can the light of this life, O Catiline, can the breath of this atmosphere be pleasant to you” when all the assembly is privy to his crimes against the Rome (14). The duality of “atmosphere” meaning both the air humans breathe for life and the pervading tone of a place in this parallelism and personification allows it to demonstrate how the rhetorical tone of the political sphere “breathes” and shines “light” onto “life”. Cicero is suggesting that because Catiline can no participate in the body politic due to his atrocities, he can no longer breathe the life-giving atmosphere of the public sphere. Up until this point, Cicero’s allusion to the domestic is implicit in how he describes the political assembly as a place that gives life and growth, like a home.

In paragraph 15, Cicero directly analogizes parents to the country by saying if someone’s “parents hated and feared” them, they would “depart” from their sight. Cicero uses a relatively universal human experience of wanting to escape the shame of their parents’ judgment to illustrate how Catiline should feel in response to his crimes against the city. He continues, “your country, which is the common parent of us all, hates and fears you…will you neither feel awe of her authority, nor deference for her judgment, nor fear of her power?” (15). Cicero directly personifies the country to resemble a human mother, someone who physically brings life into the world and ceaselessly provides care. The anaphora at the end of the analogy contrasts the nurturing side of maternity with a mother’s scorn and discipline. In order to receive life and sustenance from one’s mother, they must also obey her “authority, “judgment”, and “power”. Thus Cicero signifies that in order to engage in the political sphere that gives life to humanity, one must obey sthe country’s laws and protocols.

Finally, Cicero gives voice to the matriarchal country using a prosopopoeia form of personification. After reiterating Catiline’s crimes, the country, speaking through Cicero, begs him to “depart, then, and deliver me from this fear—that, if it be a just one, I may not be destroyed; if an imaginary one, that at least I may cease to fear” (16). This serves to give the ultimate perspective on the state of affairs, as the audience’s reactions are pre-disposed towards the maternal country rather than Cicero himself. It is important to note that this plea is a direct repetition of the one Cicero made to Catiline in paragraph 10, “leave the city at least; the gates are open; depart…deliver me from a great fear, where there is a wall between you and me” (10). In the context of the first plea, Cicero is begging Catiline to leave after multiple murder attempts made direct on his life. By repeating this exact phrase towards the end of the extended metaphor through the figured voice of the country, Cicero collapses his own fear of mortality to mortalize the republic. In illustrating a substantive threat, the prosopopoeia allows Cicero to show that his corporeal fear is the same as the fear the nation has in response to Catiline.

By using the domestic sphere, characterized by privacy and family, as a metaphor to demonstrate the public sphere, comprised of the political assembly and the country, Cicero effectively delineates how the latter provides a flourishing of humanitas. The impact of this metaphor in relation to Catiline is to show what results when a political leader fails to uphold the same laws and judgments everyone must obey, similar to household rules. Cicero is making an overall statement about the brevity of the danger the republic is subjected when corruption is not disciplined. Should the country fail to exile a direct threat to the life-giving public sphere, it will no longer cease to be a space that vouchsafes the pleasures of being human.