Cicero and Political Trees

Henriette van der Blom

doi:10.13135/2532-5353/9340

Cicero and Political Trees

Henriette van der Blom University of Birmingham

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/9340

Abstract

Cicero used and represented trees for a variety of purposes, but this article focuses on Cicero’s attitudes to political usage of trees within a wider context of “botanising rulers”, triumphing trees, Roman euergetism and spectacle, and sacred trees. Starting with trees within a Roman political-military context (Lucullus, Pompey and Cicero), then within the political-religious context (including the ficus Ruminalis), and finally Cicero’s ideas of and engagement with Pompey’s triumph and theatre complex. I argue that Cicero’s arboreal attitude depended on his attitude to the notions and relationships the trees were made to symbolise, and how these related to his own notions of correct Roman elite behaviour.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham

Henriette van der Blom is Reader in Ancient History at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom), an expert on Cicero, political speech, rhetoric and Roman political culture. She has published Cicero’s Role Models: The Political Strategy of a Newcomer (Oxford University Press, 2010), Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2016) and a string of edited volumes, chapters and articles. She is the founding director of the Network for Oratory and Politics and currently co-editing the Fragments of the Roman Republican Orators and the Cambridge History of Rhetoric I: The Ancient World.

Published

2023-12-31

How to Cite

van der Blom, H. (2023). Cicero and Political Trees. Ciceroniana On Line, 7(2), 377-401. https://doi.org/10.13135/2532-5353/9340

Download Citation

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 2 (2023): “Cicéron et l’environnement” Proceedings edited by Adalberto MAGNAVACCA & Tommaso RICCHIERI

Section

Environment, Nature, and Politics in Cicero’s public and private life

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.