Propertius uses the ghostly speech of Cynthia (4.7) to radically destabilize the values of Roman elegy and to offer a stinging rebuke to the claims of the lover-poet about love, fidelity, and poetic engagement.  This speech engages with the other ghosts of book IV, Acanthis the lena and Cornelia the matrona, to offer a broad critique of elegiac and Roman mores.  Cynthia demands recognition for her unusual level of engagement in Propertius’ elegiac project, and along with the other ghostly women, haunts his engagement with Roman gender roles and elegiac relationships.  Women’s words haunt Propertius’ elegies and insist on the recognition of what the lover-poet and his elegiac contemporaries leave unsaid and unexplored in the elegiac scenario.

This paper considers the ways in which Propertius both makes and undermines his lover-poet’s claims of elegiac fidelity in elegy 3.20. This poem depicts the elegiac relationship as simultaneously marriage-like and non-marital by using the language of fidelity, drawing on both its traditional associations with legal ceremonies and agreements and on its elegiac sense.  This paper argues that Propertius uses the lover-poet’s relationship to fides to have him occupy multiple and contradictory male roles in the poem.  Ultimately, he fails to conform to any of them, which destabilizes the gender roles of the characters in the poem.

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It is generally accepted that the focus of seruitium amoris is on the lover-poet’s experience of servitude, rather than on the mistress’ power over him, but for Cynthia this paradigm does not entirely fit.  Propertius may not exactly focus on her mastery, but she is a more dynamic character than most elegiac puellae, and displays some of the masterful behaviour of a true domina.  Cynthia’s mastery is a focal point for examining socio-political issues relating to freedom and slavery that are important in Propertius’ work, especially the elision of the boundary between the slave and client or lesser amicus.

When read together, Propertius 2.9 and 2.29 illustrate the treatment of fidelity in the Propertian corpus.  In 2.9, the lover-poet upbraids Cynthia for her infidelity and assures her of his continued fidelity.  In 2.29, Cynthia defends herself from accusations of infidelity while casting doubt upon the lover-poet’s faithfulness.  Propertius uses the language of fidelity and socially approved relationships to undermine traditional conceptions of both, destabilizing the gendered roles traditional both in love poetry and in mainstream Roman society.  The theoretical paradigm of disidentification is then used to examine this building of identity through rejection of both dominant and countercultural ideologies.

The gendered characterization of the Propertian lover-poet does not fit comfortably into either the role of a traditionally masculine elite male Roman or that of an effeminate elegiac lover.  This dissertation argues for a lover-poet whose gender role draws on and reacts to elements from both of these pre-existing roles with the end result of a character that disidentifies with Roman gender roles and exists outside of the binary oppositions that they provide.  The lover-poet’s characterization is intimately bound to that of his elegiac puella, usually identified in the poetry as Cynthia, and as such the focus of this dissertation is on the poems in which the lover-poet and Cynthia interact.   Propertius explores tensions inherent in the gendered roles and relationships of elegy through his exposure of the limits of elegiac fides and his interaction with non-elegiac fides as part of the language of Roman social relations.  These tensions are further exposed through his use of women’s speech, which

depicts women as critical of both the elegiac scenario and of mainstream Roman values.  Propertius uses the common elegiac trope seruitium amoris to consider issues of freedom, speech, and patronage both within and without the elegiac world and differs from the other Latin love poets in his presentation of his puella as possessing a measure of mastery.  He also uses the equally common trope militia amoris to portray the elegiac world as morally superior to that of traditional militia, including epic poetry and contemporary conquest and empire-building.  The existence of similar themes and critiques in the non-Cynthia poems, especially those that ostensibly praise Augustus, suggests the importance of further investigation into the connection between Propertius’ construction of masculinity and the social, cultural, and political change of the Augustan era.

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My current primary research project is a monograph on the “crisis of masculinity” that occurred when Rome’s political system changed from an oligarchic republic to a de facto monarchy in the late first century BCE.  I am investigating how this crisis manifests itself in and interacts with Latin literature.  This project emerged from further questions I had after completing my doctoral thesis.  In my thesis, I argue for a reading of the gendered role of the Propertian lover-poet as existing both between and outside of the binary opposition between traditionally masculine and effeminate.  As part of my thesis, I had to define what the models of traditional masculinity were, and I came to the conclusion that they were in flux during Propertius’ lifetime, and that this very fluidity was part of what enabled him to construct a character who challenged these earlier models.  My current project complements my doctoral work, in that it allows me to focus completely on the question of how the performance of masculinity was changing during the late Republic and early Principate and how the changes were expressed, wrestled with, and ultimately resolved.  Many have observed a change in the values and activities associated with performing elite masculinity once the imperial period solidifies after the death of Augustus, and the natural assumption is that the change occurred during the Augustan principate.  There has yet to be a monograph investigating this assumption, however, and so this book will address a significant gap in the scholarship on Roman masculinity.

The depiction of the elegiac love affair and mistress in the poetry of the first century BCE Roman poet Propertius was a more important influence on Veronica Franco than has previously been credited.  Scholarship tends to focus on her reception of Ovid’s works, particularly the Heroides (e.g. Philippy 1992).  But Propertius, unlike Ovid, features a speaking courtesan-type character, Cynthia.  Her speeches consistently undermine the elegiac worldview, especially the characterization of the lover as suffering and faithful and the beloved as fickle and cruel.  She is therefore an important forerunner for Franco’s speaking subject. Closer attention to Franco’s use of Propertius, especially in Capitoli 17 and 20, provides a richer understanding of the intertextual relationship between them.  At the same time, Franco’s work can add to our understanding of Propertius, as she is one of the earliest readers of Propertius to take his disruption of gender politics and fidelity seriously.

​Propertius’ Elegies show a variety of interactions with the didactic project of Virgil’s Georgics and Aeneid.  At different points, Propertius elevates his elegiac values above Virgil’s didactic-epic values, subverts the themes of the Georgics, or ignores Virgil completely as he forefronts his preferred lessons about love, war, and Rome.  This paper explores three separate but related issues linking Propertius’ elegy to Virgil’s didactic and heroic epic. Scholarship has established a number of intertextual connections between the Monobiblos and the Georgics (recently: Heslin 2010).  I build on the identification of these connections to consider what effect they have on Propertius’ poetic project and his own interest in “teaching” by example.  Propertius’ rejection of heroic epic for elegy (e.g. 2.1, 3.3, 3.9) is well-known, but there has been significantly less study of his relationship with didactic epic.  If the lover-poet is acting as a teacher, we could read the praeceptor amoris as a speaker of didactic elegy, thus I investigate how Propertius innovates with his teacher of love and how he interacts with didactic epic elsewhere. Finally, I consider Propertius as teacher of Rome, especially in book 4, in which issue Propertius sets himself against Augustus in the attempt to “teach” their vision of Rome (Welch 2005).  But especially when it comes to Propertius 4.9, on the aftermath of Hercules’ fight was Cacus, or 4.7, when Cynthia quotes the abandoned Dido of Aeneid 4, we can also consider Propertius as a rival to Virgil.  Propertius innovatively interacted with a number of genres when composing his poetry.  Given the contemporary publication of the Georgics and that of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura in the previous generation, as well as his interest in Alexandrian poetry, it only makes sense that he would have investigated what didactic could do for him.

Elegy 4.6, on the temple of Palatine Apollo and the Battle of Actium, has been seen as Propertius’ capitulation to pressure to praise Augustus and as the fulfillment of the promises he made in elegy 2.l0 to turn away from love poetry (Williams 1990, Cairns 2006).  But both in the framing passages and the description of the battle, intratextual allusions to passages in Propertius’ erotic elegy critiquing the princeps and Roman militia invite doubt about this seemingly patriotic poem.  In 4.6, Propertius offers a subtler critique than is on display in his recusationes (2.1, 3.3, 3.9) and repeated references to controversial events in Octavian’s triumviral days (e.g. 1.21, 1.22, 2.1).  But this more muted criticism should not be misread as unconditional praise.

This paper explores the connections with Propertius’ earlier work and viewpoints in elegy 4.6.  First, the invocation of the muse of epic, Calliope (4.6.12) and the presence of Apollo both link the poem with earlier poems, 2.1 and 3.3, which feature Propertius’ rejection of epic and military values.  Apollo’s speech (4.6.41-44) also refers to the conflict between Romulus and Remus, thus situating the poem and battle in a context of the civil conflict that has plagued Rome since its beginning, especially since at the end of the poem Propertius has an anonymous banqueting poet link Augustus’ retrieval of Crassus’ standards with Remus.  Finally, I compare the characterization of Antony and Cleopatra in 4.6 with that in 3.11, where Antony serves as a positive exemplum for the lover-poet.  The lover-poet may appreciate the peace that came after the civil wars, but it does not follow that he wholeheartedly approves of the events of those civil wars (Nethercut 1961).  Propertius can praise some of Augustus’ actions without being entirely pro-Augustan, just as he can criticize without being entirely anti-Augustan.

The depiction of the elegiac love affair and mistress in the poetry of the first century BCE Roman poet Propertius was a more important influence on Veronica Franco than has previously been credited.  Scholarship tends to focus on her reception of Ovid’s works, particularly the Heroides (e.g. Philippy 1992).  But Propertius, unlike Ovid, features a speaking courtesan-type character, Cynthia.  Her speeches consistently undermine the elegiac worldview, especially the characterization of the lover as suffering and faithful and the beloved as fickle and cruel.  She is therefore an important forerunner for Franco’s speaking subject. Closer attention to Franco’s use of Propertius, especially in Capitoli 17 and 20, provides a richer understanding of the intertextual relationship between them.  At the same time, Franco’s work can add to our understanding of Propertius, as she is one of the earliest readers of Propertius to take his disruption of gender politics and fidelity seriously.

This paper investigates Cicero’s afterlife in a surprising place: online fan fiction.  Fan fiction generally takes the form of short stories which incorporate characters and situations from other media, usually television but also movies, novels, comic books and video games.  It is generally considered to have begun in the 1970s with homoerotic treatments of the relationship between the two main characters of the original Star Trek series, but has found a much wider audience and immense popularity online.  One might also see it as a literary descendant of works such as the pseudo-Ovidian and Virgilian poems, in that it attempts to re-work and capture the flavour of more famous works of art.  The quality of this fan fiction varies wildly, and it attracts authors and readers from all walks of life.

Given the television-centric nature of fan fiction, it is not entirely surprising to find Cicero in stories based on the HBO/BBC series Rome.  What are significantly more surprising, however, are the examples that do not appear to draw on this or any other modern fictional representation, but rather suggest a familiarity with Cicero’s own writings.  The majority of the stories include romantic or sexual relationships between Cicero and friends or enemies (including Atticus, Tiro, Marc Antony, and Catiline).  I argue that the homosocial world of late Republican Rome found in the Ciceronian corpus provides a fertile field for the homoeroticism that characterizes a significant subset of fan fiction.  Indeed, the relationships are contextualized in a historical social and political world that is familiarly Roman.  In this paper, I seek to formulate an understanding of what relevance these ancient characters have in a genre that is particularly modern, and how they reflect a continued interest in and dialogue with Roman literature and society outside of high culture and the academy.

In this paper, I argue that the Res Gestae Diui Augusti is a statement by Augustus informing the Romans, particularly the senatorial elite, that he has completely fulfilled the requirements of republican masculinity, and implying that there is no room for anyone else to continue competing or acting in any role other than a supporting one.

In this paper I show that Veronica Franco, a poet and courtesan working in Venice in the latter half of the sixteenth century CE, had access to the poetry of Propertius and that she was therefore directly influenced by Propertius, rather than only indirectly through Ovid; and that she draws on and illuminates Propertius’ characterization of the elegiac love affair and especially of his elegiac mistress, Cynthia, as she creates her own eponymous lover-poet character.

In a number of speeches delivered in 57 and 56 BCE (Post Reditum in Quirites, Post Reditum in Senatu, De Domo Sua, De Haruspicum Responsis, De Provinciis Consularibus, and Pro Sestio) in the aftermath of his exile of 58/57 BCE, Cicero carefully re-constructs his public persona.  Cicero’s intensive and intentional self-fashioning (Dugan 2005 and Steele 2001) and his central importance for understanding the nature of social and political relations in the late republic (Krostenko 2001 and Stroup 2010) have received thorough study in recent years, and this paper situates itself in those areas of Ciceronian scholarship.  I examine how such an important, but recently disgraced, public figure undertook to recover his position and his self-image after the exile, one of the greatest setback of his career and one from which he would never fully recover.  I argue that Cicero’s speeches from this period are aimed at reconciling his particular assets (rhetorical skill and togate service to the Republic) and deficits (cowardice and depression, according to his enemies and even some friends) with the traditional martial masculinity valued in republican Rome, with a view to justifying his actions around his exile and regaining his prominence and the respect of his peers.

In the speeches under analysis in this paper, Cicero is at pains to present himself as a good, just, and even courageous man, yet other evidence from the same time period shows him privately admitting to fear and despair (e.g. Att. III.2, 3, 5 and 10 and Fam. XIV 1, 2, 3, and 4; cf. Hemelrijk 2004 and Gunderson 2007).  Cicero’s numerous attempts to justify, minimize, and recast his private feelings and the actions they drove him to shed light on his shame about these feelings and his fear that others knew of them.  His post-exile speeches focus on his specific virtues: his moderation; his selflessness and courage in protecting the republic from harm; his devotion to his family and friends; and his worthiness to receive beneficia from all ranks of Romans.  He uses these positive traits to construct a framework to explain his own actions before and during his exile, particularly when responding to criticism from his detractors.

In this paper, I analyze what Cicero’s speeches suggest about the successful public performance of masculinity, how he worked to fit himself and his actions into that type of performance, and how he attempted to recast his failures of normative masculinity as successes.  Throughout his career, Cicero worked to re-locate uirtus from military/political bases to oratorical and literary ones (Dugan 2005; also McDonnell 2006 on the unusualness of a nouus homo achieving the consulship primarily on the strength of his oratorical career; cf. Gunderson 2000), but his post-exile speeches show a particular urgency in this project that reveals the fragility of this particular masculine self.  Such fragility in a man who had reached the heights of the political system further displays the tenuousness of even an exemplary Roman man’s hold on masculinity.  Cicero was not seeking to overturn or undermine the standards of the Roman elite, but an unforeseen side effect of his self-fashioning is that he inadvertently exposes the limitations and points of weakness of traditional masculinity.

This paper examines the transformation of the tropes and imagery of the Priapea in the Priapus poems of Horace (Satires 1.8) and Tibullus (1.4).  I shall argue that both poets deflect attention from the more unpalatably graphic aspects of the Priapean corpus (in both senses of the word), but for different ends.  I will consider how Horace uses the Priapea in this poem as part of his larger attempt to construct a masculinity that is innate and based in the physical possession of the phallus.  This conception of an innate masculinity could have circumvented the crisis of masculinity assumed to have taken place in the Augustan period, by making it appear that there never was or could be such a crisis.  By shifting the site of masculinity from performance to the body, Horace negates the possibility of crisis.

Tibullus, on the other hand, can be seen to subvert the aggressive masculine sexuality of the Priapea in favour of the persuasive longing of the elegiac lover, while at the same time drawing upon the possibilities of an elegiac lack of success in romance and sexuality that also lie in the Priapean corpus.

Priapus poems seem to have enjoyed popularity throughout the various levels of society and literary culture in the Augustan era and are indicative of a specific type of aggressive, phallic, and rustic Roman masculinity.  By exploring the ways in which Horace and Tibullus use Priapic imagery to respond to the Augustan crisis of masculinity, I provide insight into the broader symptoms of and response to the crisis.

The happy ending of a new comic play generally requires the successful marriage of a young man to a citizen girl.  This may hold true for Menander and even Terrence, but is far from universally the case in Plautus.  Youths in Athens and in Rome occupied a liminal state between childhood and manhood.  Romans considered masculinity an achievement that had to be guarded and constantly recreated, rather than an innate state attached to those who were physically male.  Liminal states are often states of potential danger; there is a risk that the transition will not be successfully made, leaving the individual permanently in the half-state of youth, and this is reflected in the endings of several Plautine plays. The Asinaria and the Bacchides end with the young heroes forming relatively long-term liaisons with meretrices; the Truculentus ends with a young man about to marry but intending to continue his relationship with a meretrix after his marriage; and the Menaechmi features an ending that has a man leave both his wife and his mistress.  If marriage represents the coming to adulthood of the comic adulescens, youths in Plautus seem significantly more likely to remain youths at the end of the play.

I will suggest that the root of this arrested development lies in the difference between the definition of adult manhood in Menander’s Greece and Plautus’ Rome.  Athenian men in the time of Menander had to adjust how they defined themselves as men.  The rule of Alexander and his successors restricted their ability to act as democratic citizen-hoplites, so the enactment of manhood shifted to the sphere of marriage, family, and community.  Lape (2004, 9-21) argues convincingly that the duties of citizenship became centred on the proper reproduction of citizens according to the Periclean citizenship laws.  And so, the process of turning young men into adults involves forming a suitable marriage which will lead to citizen children who will perpetuate the polis.  The situation in Rome at the time of New Comedy’s popularity was very different.  While at Athens the household was more divorced from the state, and therefore a safe place for masculinity to retreat, at Rome the household was in many ways the basis of the state.  The power of a Roman paterfamilias was greater than that of an Athenian father, since it lasted as long as he lived, regardless of the age, marital status, or achievements of his sons.  This led to a more delicate negotiation of the transition to adulthood for Roman sons whose fathers were still alive, since technically they were not full head of households or even fully adult until their fathers died.  As a result, there were fewer cultural reasons for Plautus to focus the end of his plays on a respectable citizen marriage or even on the successful transition of youth to man.

Cynthia’s speech in 4.7 is part of Propertius’ sustained use of women’s speech, especially Cynthia’s, to problematize the characterization of puella, lover, and elegiac love affair that the poet creates.  The position of the lover-poet, with some consistency (although see 2.22, 2.23, and 4.8), is that he is the one who is wronged: he is the faithful lover who waits and is betrayed by his mistress’ inconstancy and greed (e.g. 1.8, 1.15, 2.5, 2.9, 2.16, 3.21, and even in his supposed dismissal of her at 3.24-25.). By giving a voice to the other member of the amatory dyad, however, the poet endows the character of the lover with considerable ambiguity.  For by devoting an unusual amount of space to Cynthia’s speeches (all or part of one hundred and thirty-seven lines, vastly more than any other elegiac mistress), and making them almost universally undermine the poet’s depiction of the lover’s relations with Cynthia, Propertius destabilizes the highly gendered roles of lover and mistress, with the result that his elegiac poetry undermines pre-existing gender categories and opens a space for exploring other ways of being a gendered subject.

Cynthia’s speech in 4.7 focuses on the lover-poet’s faithlessness.  She calls him perfide (13) as the first word of her speech, and then accuses him of deceitful speech (fallacia uerba, 21) in an allusion to Ariadne’s complaints at Catullus c.64.139-142 and to Callimachus Epigrams 25.4-6.  She accuses the lover-poet of abandoning her in death (23-34) and of taking up with another woman who dishonours her memory and torments her faithful slaves (35-48), all of which counters his claims in 1.19, 2.8, 2.13, and 2.26 that he would be faithful to her until his own death.  In her description of the underworld she includes herself with the faithful wives (sine fraude marita, 63) and refers to the lover-poet’s perfidiae crimina multa (70).  Cynthia’s claims and accusations in 4.7 have been dismissed by some as the strident complaints of an hysterical woman (Hutchinson, 178, disapproves of this approach), but they are consistent with her other speeches in the corpus, and there is no indication given by the poet that we should take the speeches of this creation of his any less seriously than those of the lover-poet.  I will show that the breaches of faith presented here undermine the constantia on which the lover-poet’s masculinity is based (Edwards, 25) and are therefore an important component of the complex construction in Propertian elegy of elite Roman masculinity, which avoids strict adherence to either the effeminized character of the elegiac lover (Miller, 137) or to mainstream (republican or Augustan) aristocratic masculinity (Greene and James).

Propertius 2.9 and 2.29 each contain accusations of infidelity and protestations of fidelity, made by the lover-poet in 2.9 and by or on behalf of Cynthia in 2.29.  In this paper, I shall argue that Cynthia’s speech in Propertius 2.29 is a response to the accusations made by the lover-poet in 2.9 and a refutation of his claims of fidelity.  I shall first show the connection between the two poems, then look closely at Cynthia’s speech in 2.29, paying particular attention to the ways that it intersects with 2.9.

Fidelity is one of the main themes of the relationship between Propertius and Cynthia, appearing in many of the poems that feature Cynthia or the elegiac relationship.  Although Cynthia’s complaints and assertions about fidelity are often dismissed as untrustworthy, hysterical, or self-serving, Propertius does not present them as any less believable than those of the lover-poet; if anything, her self-presentation and depiction of the love affair are more consistent than the lover-poet’s.

I shall argue that in Cynthia, Propertius created a character who displays a complex relationship to fidelity and who undermines the claims of fidelity of his ego and of the elegiac lover in general.  Since the elegiac speaker’s gender role is putatively based on constantia (Edwards 1993, Joshel 1992), Propertius, by destabilizing the lover-poet’s claims of fidelity, also destabilizes his gender role.

Antigone has often been identified as a figure of pietas in a world of overturned values.  This identification comes first from her participation in attempts to block the final duel between her brothers, most directly in her appeal from the walls of Thebes to Polynices.  Equally important is her defiance of Creon’s order that Polynices remain unburied.  A third factor in Antigone’s display of pietas is the literal and figurative support she provides to her father, particularly in the aftermath of the death of her brothers.  Discussion about Antigone’s pietas has tended to focus on the results of her acts, with recent opinion leaning towards viewing her as, in the end, a failure.  Despite her actions, the duel still happens and her father still suffers partial exile.  Even her burial of Polynices is in some sense a failure, as the hatred between him and Eteocles is renewed on their funeral pyre.

While I agree that Antigone ultimately fails, this paper considers the problems inherent in her pietas and how they necessitate her failure.  Through a consideration of the specific acts that Antigone carries out, including her involvement in a number of delays to the duel between Eteocles and Polynices, her defiance of Creon’s edict, and the assistance she provides to Oedipus, and through a comparison of these with the pietas of Hypsipyle in the same poem, I will demonstrate that Antigone’s actions are unsuccessful because the people towards whom her pietas is directed, especially Oedipus and Polynices, are impious, making her actions misguided and in support of impiety and nefas.

Sections of Propertius 3.20 and 4.8 have distinct similarities both to Greco-Roman marriage contracts and to contracts between hetaerae and their lovers in Greek new comedy.    In the turmoil of the late Republic and early Principate, there was room for experimentation with new roles as the old ones were disappearing or changing.  In the course of both of these poems, the poet inhabits the different roles of the contractors as part of his programmatic attempt to break down the barriers between genders and to construct a new identity for himself, neither traditionally masculine nor effeminate, but a blend of male and female traits.

In 3.20, Propertius writes of drawing up a contract to be sealed and witnessed before a new love affair with a girl he has enticed from a rival is consummated.  He proceeds to threaten the male partner with pain and sorrows should he betray the affair, thereby identifying himself with the wronged woman.  This in turn brings one back to the beginning of the poem, when he emphasizes the betrayal of his beloved’s former lover in an effort to win her himself.

In 4.8, the amator is at first presented as a betrayed lover who plans to be disloyal in return.  His attempt is foiled first by his own impotence, then by his mistress, who descends upon him with the wrath of a wronged husband.  This section of the poem has previously been interpreted as a military metaphor, in which terms are imposed on the vanquished.  I believe that it is more reminiscent of a marriage contract from Oxyrhynchos which appears to have been made up to renegotiate the marriage after some sort of betrayal, likely adulterous, on the wife’s part.  It also contains similarities to the paranoid specificity of the contract between a courtesan and her lover in Plautus’ Asinaria. The terms of the contract are where the similarities to the Egyptian contract and the Asinaria are particularly evident, with Cynthia as the jealous, wronged vir and the lover-poet as the straying woman.

In this paper, I argue that the Res Gestae Diui Augusti is a statement by Augustus informing the Romans, particularly the senatorial elite, that he has completely fulfilled the requirements of republican masculinity, and implying that there is no room for anyone else to continue competing or acting in any role other than a supporting one.

In a number of speeches delivered in 57 and 56 BCE (Post Reditum in Quirites, Post Reditum in Senatu, De Domo Sua, De Haruspicum Responsis, De Provinciis Consularibus , and Pro Sestio) in the aftermath of his exile of 58/57 BCE, Cicero carefully re-constructs his public persona.  Cicero’s intensive and intentional self-fashioning (Dugan 2005 and Steele 2001) and his central importance for understanding the nature of social and political relations in the late republic (Krostenko 2001 and Stroup 2010) have received thorough study in recent years, and this paper situates itself in those areas of Ciceronian scholarship.  I examine how such an important, but recently disgraced, public figure undertook to recover his position and his self-image after the exile, one of the greatest setback of his career and one from which he would never fully recover.  I argue that Cicero’s speeches from this period are aimed at reconciling his particular assets (rhetorical skill and togate service to the Republic) and deficits (cowardice and depression, according to his enemies and even some friends) with the traditional martial masculinity valued in republican Rome, with a view to justifying his actions around his exile and regaining his prominence and the respect of his peers.

In the speeches under analysis in this paper, Cicero is at pains to present himself as a good, just, and even courageous man, yet other evidence from the same time period shows him privately admitting to fear and despair (e.g. Att. III.2, 3, 5 and 10 and Fam. XIV 1, 2, 3, and 4; cf. Hemelrijk 2004 and Gunderson 2007).  Cicero’s numerous attempts to justify, minimize, and recast his private feelings and the actions they drove him to shed light on his shame about these feelings and his fear that others knew of them.  His post-exile speeches focus on his specific virtues: his moderation; his selflessness and courage in protecting the republic from harm; his devotion to his family and friends; and his worthiness to receive beneficia from all ranks of Romans.  He uses these positive traits to construct a framework to explain his own actions before and during his exile, particularly when responding to criticism from his detractors.

In this paper, I analyze what Cicero’s speeches suggest about the successful public performance of masculinity, how he worked to fit himself and his actions into that type of performance, and how he attempted to recast his failures of normative masculinity as successes.  Throughout his career, Cicero worked to re-locate uirtus from military/political bases to oratorical and literary ones (Dugan 2005; also McDonnell 2006 on the unusualness of a nouus homo achieving the consulship primarily on the strength of his oratorical career; cf. Gunderson 2000), but his post-exile speeches show a particular urgency in this project that reveals the fragility of this particular masculine self.  Such fragility in a man who had reached the heights of the political system further displays the tenuousness of even an exemplary Roman man’s hold on masculinity.  Cicero was not seeking to overturn or undermine the standards of the Roman elite, but an unforeseen side effect of his self-fashioning is that he inadvertently exposes the limitations and points of weakness of traditional masculinity.