Misremembering Ciceronian Rome in Ben Jonson’s Catiline
Ben Jonson’s 1611 Catiline His Conspiracy draws closely on classical sources for the events of the conspiracy and Cicero’s reaction to it. And yet, this essay argues, Jonson’s play twists what his contemporaries would have known about late Republican Rome by putting these familiar events in a differ...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Société d'Etudes Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles
2024-12-01
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| Series: | XVII-XVIII |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/1718/13086 |
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| Summary: | Ben Jonson’s 1611 Catiline His Conspiracy draws closely on classical sources for the events of the conspiracy and Cicero’s reaction to it. And yet, this essay argues, Jonson’s play twists what his contemporaries would have known about late Republican Rome by putting these familiar events in a different political context. By centralizing Rome around a single powerful figure (Cicero), both practically and rhetorically, Jonson’s Cicero is a forerunner of Renaissance monarchy, rather than remaining rooted in the contemporary factional conflicts that both Roman and early modern historians saw as central to his time. In portraying him this way, I argue, the play uses its Rome, and particularly its Cicero and Catiline, to comment on then-contemporary concerns about the efficacy and usefulness of empire. Jonson’s portrayal of Ciceronian Rome thus serves as a case study of how the process of remembering the past is not politically neutral, but always actively in use by the present. |
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| ISSN: | 0291-3798 2117-590X |