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- Title
The Portrait of the Actor in Cicero's Pro Roscio comoedo.
- Authors
ČULÍK-BAIRD, HANNAH
- Abstract
In the Pro Roscio comoedo, Cicero depicts Roscius as an individual empowered with civic identity, a power made even more palpable by the presence in the speech of an enslaved actor who was owned and trained by Roscius. In this article, I reexamine Cicero's portrayal of Roscius's relationality to enslaved performers in the Pro Roscio comoedo in order to present a "portrait" of the actor in republican Rome which encompasses heterogeneity of status. I here use two interconnected interpretative maneuvers: first, I examine Cicero's portrayal of Roscius as endowed with both civic identity and symbolic paternal authority; second, I examine the relational difference between Roscius's status and the negated social power of enslaved actors within his influence, a relationality which casts the essential fact of Roscius's social authority in higher relief and bears witness to the hierarchy of difference contained within the identity of the Roman actor.
- Publication
TAPA, 2022, Vol 152, Issue 1, p183
- ISSN
2575-7180
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/apa.2022.0010