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- Title
NON SINE CAUSA SED SINE FINE: CICERO'S COMPULSION TO REPEAT HIS CONSULATE.
- Authors
DUGAN, JOHN
- Abstract
Freud's theory of the compulsion to repeat in response to a traumatic experience can help explain Cicero's repeated attempts to praise, or have others praise, his consulate. This article argues that Cicero's humiliating exile, and his consequent loss of status, constituted a trauma that Cicero sought to work through by means of narratives that integrate his consulate, exile, and return into a unified story that encapsulates his banishment within an overarching narrative of triumph. Cicero's pitching of his story to the historian Lucceius (Fam. 5.12) demonstrates the psychological dimensions of Cicero's notorious self-praise.
- Subjects
CICERO, Marcus Tullius, 106 B.C.-43 B.C.; POLITICIANS -- Psychology; ROMAN consuls; COMPULSIVE behavior; PRAISE; ROMAN politics &; government; ROMAN history, 265-30 B.C.; PSYCHOLOGY
- Publication
Classical Journal, 2014, Vol 110, Issue 1, p9
- ISSN
0009-8353
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5184/classicalj.110.1.0009