Raphael Sanzio, The School of Athens, 1509–11, Stanza della Segnatura
Reading an essay from 1941 and decrying it to be revolutionary is perhaps not what current academic trends and gatekeepers have in mind when they proclaim the ‘cutting edge’ of art history, its avant-garde, to be prescient and essential. Gutman’s essay 1 is remarkable — and shows how far a good idea, one that can stake claim to the truth of Raphael’s famous fresco cycle in the Stanza della Segnatura in the New Papal Apartments, is in fact outside the bounds of time.
James Boyd White, best known for his imaginative readings of law in The Legal Imagination, makes a spate of interesting observations through close readings of the texts as varied as Thucydides’ History and Jane Austen’s Emma in his book, When Words Lose Their Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). In his analysis of Plato’s Gorgias1 , he draws two conclusions which have a particular interest for me: the first on what differentiates philosophy from history and poetry, and the second on what he calls the ‘Platonic Premise’ 2.
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Francois-Andre Vincent, Alcibiades Being Taught by Socrates, 1776.
’The Reconstitution of Language and Self in a Community of Two: Plato’s Gorgias’ in James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 93–113. ↩
All quotes from Plato are from: Plato, Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D.S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). ↩
Cesare Maracci, Cicerone denuncia Catalina, 1882–88. Mural in the Salone d’Onore, Palazzo Madama, Rome.
[All translations from Loeb Classical Library editions unless specified.]
For a blog whose name is borrowed from Cicero, it is only fitting that its first entry be dedicated to the memory of Marcus Tullius Cicero, and to the phrase in particular that was trotted out in exasperation and incredulity at those who commit wanton sedition. The instance I want to focus on is the Catiline conspiracy, one of the rare occasions where Cicero was prosecuting and not part of the defence. 1 Lucius Sergius Catilina, whose sympathies lay with the populares, was actively seditious; Mary Beard describes him as “a disgruntled, bankrupt aristocrat and the architect of a plot … to assassinate Rome’s elected officials and burn the place down.” 2 Cicero, as consul, ordered the arrest of Catiline, and then his summary execution — without a trial — on those fateful days in 64 B.C. In In Catilinam (hereinafter IC), he forcefully argues against sedition — sedition prompted by Catiline’s disregard for property rights, as shown by his proposal to forgive debts of both the rich and the poor if he did succeed in his rebellion.
“Throughout his career Cicero usually represented the defence; this was one of the rare occasions when he prosecuted.” Anthony Everitt, Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2003), 77. ↩
Mary Beard, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (London: Profile Books, 2016), 21. ↩
