What happened in the aftermath of Caligula's assassination in January A.d. 41 in relation to the client kings of the period has been the subject of a stimulating note by A. A. Barrett. He has argued that a rescission of Caligula's acta invalidated the legal position of the client kings appointed by Caligula, and that Claudius’ regularising of their position has been misunderstood by the ancient literary sources and has given rise to several apparent inconsistencies in their (...) accounts. (shrink)

One of the most famous allegations made against the emperor Caligula was that he had intended to appoint his favourite horse, Incitatus, as consul. While Suetonius and Cassius Dio both preserve this allegation, neither explains the basis for it, what exactly Caligula had said or done to lead those about him to believe that this is what he had intended to do.

In Dio we first encounter Caligula in connection with the crimen maiestatis in the course of 59.1–5. This forms an introduction to Caligula and, at the same time, looks forward to some of the changes which occurred in his character and behaviour as the reign progressed.

L’enjeu de cet article est de défendre l’internalisme de Bernard Williams à propos de la raison pratique, en adoptant un point de vue différent de ce qui se fait habituellement dans la littérature. Les expériences de pensée impliquant des « excentriques idéalement cohérents » sont généralement présentées dans ce débat comme un argument majeur contre l’internalisme. Je conteste ce point et montre que nos intuitions concernant de telles figures impliquent en réalité une compréhension internaliste de la notion de raisons d’agir. (...) À cette fin, je suggère d’étendre la conception de Williams par une conception internaliste orientée sur le locuteur relativement à la signification des ascriptions de raisons externes. (shrink)

Without the idea of God, and the moral values and law that derive from divine authority, how does Man determine the limits of his actions? Are moral values and principles of justice simply human constructs created to protect society that do not realistically reflect the truth about human nature? Without the concept of the sacred, where does authority reside and what constitutes the boundaries that humans must not transgress? In Caligula, Albert Camus confronts these questions and takes them to (...) their ultimate logical conclusions. The character he creates in order to do this, as I will seek to show, is the figurative equivalent of a system of thought most eminently articulated by the Marquis de Sade in his .. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: From Mersault (A Happy Death) to Meursault (The Stranger) Meursault: Outsider or Stranger? Meursault's “Selflessness” Meursault's “Bad Faith” Meursault's Rebirth and Death From Meursault to Caligula notes further reading.

In one of his notebooks, Albert Camus describes, The stranger, The myth of Sisyphus, Caligula and The misunderstanding as pertaining to a series; a schema that suggests that if one were to write about one of these literary works, one would be writing about parts of a whole unless one also engaged with the others. Whether one does this or not, may or may not reflect the nature of the relationship one sees these texts as sharing. The stranger and (...) The myth of Sisyphus share something unique: they are both as Camus describes them, zero points; a zero point here being understood as the zero point at which one thinks about one’s existence. This article begins with a reflection upon the relative philosophical value of understanding The myth of Sisyphus as a work of art and then occupies itself with how this understanding might provide an opportunity for self-reflection when reading The stranger. The reading of The myth of Sisyphus is not used so much to better understand Meursault and his story but to invert our interpretative methodology such that it is possible to speak to the reader as a significant actor. The novel is thought of in terms of the gifting of a philosophical problem, a problem which the author of this article attempts to understand from the point of view of how one might see oneself as paradoxically implicated in the drama of its articulation. It is this paradox that will lead us to speak of the narrative of The stranger as referring to a problem in how philosophy speaks to our experience of education. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: “Jean‐Baptiste Clamence” Clamence's Fall The Roots of Clamence's Resentment Clamence's Revaluation of the Revaluation of Values Clamence's Bad Faith notes further reading.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 2 Seiten: 586-628.

Im Roman „Der Fremde“, dem Drama „Caligula“ und insbesondere dem Essay „Der Mythos des Sisyphos“ entwickelt Albert Camus eine erste Fassung einer „Logik des Absurden“. Die menschliche Existenz sei geprägt durch ein Spannungsverhältnis zwischen unserem Streben nach Sinn und einer dieses Streben fortwährend enttäuschenden Welt. Auf die Erkenntnis dieser Tatsache darf man Camus zufolge weder mit Selbstmord noch mit dem Aufgeben des Strebens nach Sinn reagieren. Vielmehr fordert er eine Haltung der beständigen Auflehnung. In meinem Artikel gehe ich der (...) Frage nach, wie schlüssig diese frühe „Logik des Absurden“ ist. Es wird sich zeigen, dass Camus’ Thesen in dem von ihm intendierten für alle Menschen gültigen und objektiven Sinn kaum haltbar sind. Ihr großes Potential entfalten sie erst, wenn man sie psychologisch wendet. Camus skizziert einen plausiblen Weg, wie wir trotz der beständigen Unerfülltheit unseres Strebens nach Sinn ein Leben in Glück und Würde führen können. (shrink)

Philons Biographie Abrahams ist eine Werbeschrift fur das Judentum. Sie entstand vermutlich als literarisches Begleitprojekt zu Philons politischer Mission in Rom: In Alexandria waren Ausschreitungen gegen die judische Bevolkerung erfolgt, die Philon bei Kaiser Caligula zur Sprache bringen sollte. Der vorliegende Band fuhrt in diesen zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext ein und bietet den mit Anmerkungen versehenen Text der Schrift samt einer Neuubersetzung. Erlauternde Essays aus unterschiedlichen Fachperspektiven wurdigen Philon als Biograph und als Philosoph, ergrunden sein Tugendverstandnis und sein Frauenbild und beleuchten (...) sein Schriftverstandnis aus der Perspektive des antiken Orakelwesens. Abgerundet wird der Band durch einen Ausblick auf die Rezeption Abrahams im Islam, bei der sich bemerkenswerte Parallelen zu Philons allegorischen Auslegungen wiederfinden lassen. (shrink)

Names of Romans in Josephus are notoriously liable to corruption. Two minor characters in his account of the assassination of Caligula have so far defied plausible emendation, ‘Timidius’ in A.J. 19.33–4 and ‘Bathybius’ in 19.91. The sources of Josephus’ account of this dramatic episode were unquestionably high class—two, rather than one, Latin historians, as Wiseman has demonstrated, the main one being Cluvius Rufus, the other possibly Fabius Rusticus.

On 24 January 41 the emperor Caligula was murdered. Modern scholarly interpretations mainly focus on the alleged attempt by the senate to restore the republic. Taking a different point of view, this paper focuses on the act of murder itself. Caligula’s assassination was, after all, an act of violence against an emperor - unprecedented in the principate so far. It is argued that, by portraying the killing as justified, the narratives of the conspiracy fulfilled two main functions. On (...) the one hand, they can be viewed as immediate responses to views which questioned the violence against Caligula. On the other hand, they develop mechanisms on how to deal with an emperor who was no longer deemed acceptable. (shrink)

_Messiahs and Machiavellians_ is an innovative exploration of “modern evil” in works of early- and late-modern theatre, raising issues about ethics, politics, religion, and aesthetics that speak to our present condition. Paul Corey examines how theatre—which expressed a key political dynamic both in the Renaissance and the twentieth century—lays open the impulses that instigated modernity and, ultimately, unparalleled levels of violence and destruction. Starting with Albert Camus’ _Caligula_ and Samuel Beckett’s _Waiting for Godot_, then turning to Machiavelli’s _Mandragola_ and Shakespeare’s (...) _Measure for Measure_, Corey traces the emergence of two dominant, intertwining features of modern evil: an unrestrained pursuit of power and the utopian desire for perfection. Corey’s imaginative and convincing readings of these plays, based on detailed textual analysis, move beyond the accounts usually offered by literary critics. Drawing on political, theological, and philosophical sources—a combination as fertile as it is unusual—Corey’s methodology allows him to make keen and subtle arguments about the eschatological nature of modern politics. “Corey’s lucid, compelling treatise argues for a radical reconsideration of the role of tragedy in dealing with the shifting metaphysical and metatheatrical sands of the contemporary era. While the study begins with an examination of mid-20th Century French existentialism—and the dramatic work of Beckett and Camus in particular—the book soon takes the reader on a fascinating voyage back into the ‘problem’ comedies of the Italian and English Renaissance theatre, and beyond that, into Greek tragedy to understand the evolving concept of ‘evil’ in the Western philosophical, theological, and dramatic tradition. Ending with a reflection on the new ‘theatre’ of terrorism entering the 21st Century, Corey poses the intriguing suggestion, that far from being irrelevant to the post-modern era, a ‘new tragic sensibility’ may become key to our gaining a ‘lucid awareness of our current situation […] the limits of politics, the indelible nature of violence, our inescapable mortality, and a need for prudence’ ” —_Moira Day, University of Saskatchewan_ “A sensitive examination of the problem of evil in Renaissance and 20th century drama. Corey provides fascinating analyses of individual plays, and makes a compelling argument for restoring a tragic vision of good and evil in the face of modern expediency and utopianism.” —_Mary P. Nichols, Baylor University_ _ _ “In _Messiahs and Machiavellians_, Paul Corey delivers insights both numerous and profound. His work is a serious and important contribution to contemporary political science while also offering analyses of interest to scholars in literature, religious studies, theology, and ethics.” —_Barry Cooper, University of Calgary_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to HadrianJohn T. KirbyShadi Bartsch. Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1994. x + 310 pp. Cloth, $37.50. (Revealing Antiquity 6)The unsuspecting reader, if such exists in the 1990s, will probably not know what to make of the title of this book. Even deeply suspicious ones will (...) not be able to predict its contents. Nor does the subtitle produce full disclosure. The reason, I think, is that classical philologists will, by virtue of their training, expect something rather different from a book so titled: they might suppose it to be a work on technical aspects of Roman theater, or perhaps an assessment of oratory in the imperial Senate. The author is deliberately coy in the preface:I have not written an introduction to this book, preferring to let the reader travel through its twists and turns unequipped with the lamp of foreknowledge. All I will say at the outset is that it is a book about representation, not reality, although much of its content serves to undermine that distinction (a trait in which I follow the tendency of my ancient sources); a book about the ways in which antithetical categories such as spectator and spectacle, intention and interpretation, and praise and blame were variously conflated and exploited by writers and historians of the first century a.d. as a reaction to the transformation of Rome from republic to empire; a book about what happens to language’s ability to mean when all communication is distorted by the pull of a centralized and autocratic authority.(vi)But these compressed remarks in fact offer a serviceable précis of what is to come. Put another way, this is a book about rhetoric, about Rezeptionsästhetik, about the reciprocal reflexes of language and power.What are the effects of political power upon the free and fearless use of language? The question is not new. Hesiod and Demosthenes both posed it, answering in quite different ways. Tacitus revisited the issue explicitly in his Dialogus de oratoribus, and more subtly in the historical writings. Indeed the problem continues to be a pressing one today, as the whole scholarly project of Michel Foucault demonstrates. This is a main theme of Actors in the Audience.A contrapuntal issue is that of how texts of all kinds problematize the distinction between reality and illusion (“fiction”?). Here again we may reach back as far as Hesiod and—though he might balk at a subpoena to such testimony—Plato. This latter theme is at least as persistently (post-)modern as the first; one thinks of Pirandello’s Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore and Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo.Bartsch’s project begins to come into focus by page 2. After a brief meditation on the savagery of Caligula, she moves to a vivid evocation of Nero as scaenicus and of his scrutiny of the audiences at his thespian and musical performances, “as if the spectators were the performers here” (5); for Tacitus, Dio, and Suetonius, “Nero’s rule is the occasion for a transformation of the theater into the site of a reversal of actor-audience relations, and as an emperor onstage, [End Page 155] Nero literally constrained his audience to be actors” (10). Moreover, according to Bartsch, Tacitus sees this phenomenon extending beyond the theater itself to encompass the Neronian political scene in general.The first three of the book’s five chapters—“The Emperor’s Audience: Nero and the Theatrical Paradigm,” “The Invasion of the Stage: Nero Tragoedus,” and “Oppositional Innuendo: Performance, Allusion, and the Audience”—all have to do with Nero in some respect. Chapter 2 turns to the issue of reality versus illusion. Bartsch demonstrates that, in the realm of politics, this is already of explicit interest to Philostratus. She then goes on to consider its implications for the reign of Nero. We read of popular graffiti, sparked by Nero’s murder of his mother Agrippina, that classed him with the legendary matricides Orestes and Alcmeon. These, plus the numerous theatrical roles (such as Oedipus and... (shrink)

This article examines the appearances of Augustus in Suetonius’Lives of the Caesarsoutside Augustus' ownLife. It shows how Suetonius contrasts the positive image of Augustus drawn in theLife of Augustuswith the distortion of this image by Augustus’ successors, depicted in the laterLives. In their reception, he is still presented as an ideal to follow, yet as a role model for cruelty (Tiberius), adultery and military failure (Caligula), or lyre-playing (Nero)—roles which Suetonius’ real Augustus never or only marginally assumed. Thus in (...) a series of close and intratextual readings, this article invites a more general reassessment of Suetonius’ work: it suggests that theLives of the Caesarsdraw a more critical image of the Principate than has often been said, that they are more consciously part of an image-making process and, above all, that they should more commonly be understood as one whole work, rather than read individually and in isolation. (shrink)

De alguna u otra manera, los viajes han cautivado a los filósofos clásicos y medievales. Entre ellos, en la siguiente reseña se discutirá la posición de Lucio Anneo Séneca, filósofo romano-español contemporáneo de los emperadores Cayo César Germánico (Calígula) y Claudio Nerón César, de quien llegó a ser consejero personal.

Suetonius says that court jesters put slippers on Claudius’ hands while he napped during Caligula's dinner parties so that he would rub his face with them when he awoke. Since touching someone with the sole of a shoe was an insult, the joke is that Claudius insulted himself when he unwittingly rubbed his own face with the slippers.

The reference to a novum sidus in Quintus Curtius’ book 10, commonly applied to the comet seen at the end of Nero’s reign, could be related to Claudius as well. Both Claudius and Caligula were named “star”, and they sought to appear as the beginners of a new cycle in the history of Rome. Claudius’ ludi saeculares allegedly meant the starting point of a new time for Rome. Other facets of Claudius’ censorship, as the enlargement of the pomerium or (...) the Emperor’s assumption of the title pater patriae, could be interpreted in a similar sense. Likewise, Caligula’s death may have been understood as the end of a period in the history of Rome. Thus, Curtius’ “new star” could be applied to Claudius, and not necessarily to Vespasian. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Seneca, Ethics, and the Body: The Treatment of Cruelty in Medieval ThoughtDaniel BarazIn an impassioned article written in 1941 Lucien Febvre urges the writing of a history of human sensibility and suggests in particular writing a history of cruelty. 1 The general direction indicated by Febvre has been followed, but as far as cruelty is concerned his plea is still as relevant today as it was five decades ago. (...) And since cruelty is one of the attributes commonly associated with the Middle Ages, 2 it is particularly interesting to examine what and how medieval thinkers wrote on the subject.An examination of sources dealing with cruelty from late antiquity to the early modern period yields surprising results. Whereas the writings of the thinkers of late classical antiquity and of the early modern period do include discussions of the issue, the writings of medieval thinkers before the thirteenth century contain only brief remarks. The first and only exception until the end of the Middle Ages is a short question on cruelty in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. Other types of medieval sources, such as legal texts, chronicles, and literary texts, reveal the same scarcity of references to the subject during most of the Middle Ages. Thus this period seems to represent a gap between antiquity and the early modern period, with a reawakening of interest in the issue of cruelty towards the end of the Middle Ages.The relative silence of medieval sources calls for identifying the factors which affected the treatment of cruelty by medieval thinkers. What are the [End Page 195] reasons for the neglect of the subject as well as for the late revival of interest in it? And when the issue is discussed, what factors shape the discussion? Two issues seem crucial to me in answering these questions: the conception of the relation between body and soul and the relative weight given to actions vs. intentions in the dominant ethical framework. A third issue, of equal importance, provides a focus for the investigation of the treatment of cruelty in the Middle Ages and the factors affecting it; and this is the reception of Seneca. As interest in Seneca’s writings grew, so did the preoccupation with cruelty. There is a close thematic interaction between these two processes, beyond the chrono-logical coincidence.Most obviously, discussions of cruelty as a subject per se referred explicitly to Seneca’s writings on the subject. Less directly, when cruelty was treated only in passing in the context of the Christian tradition, the manner in which the subject was addressed reflected a lack of Senecan influence, so that Seneca’s influence was felt through its absence. Nevertheless, the Christian tradition continued to influence references to cruelty even after the revival of Senecan influence during the high Middle Ages and to a certain degree even served as a filter, determining which aspects of Seneca’s writings on cruelty were used.Thomas Aquinas and SenecaThe first medieval discussion of cruelty as a subject per se is the question De crudelitate (2-2-159) in the section on temperance in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae. Aquinas bases his discussion almost exclusively on classical sources, primarily Seneca’s De clementia. 3 Seneca referred to cruelty in detail both in this work and in another moral essay, De ira. His De clementia was written at the beginning of Nero’s reign, and it is addressed to the young emperor, his former pupil. Its stated aim is to praise Nero for possessing the quality of clementia, and to show how important this quality is for rulers. 4 The concept of clementia describes a quality of political men, the term having acquired political significance since the times of Caesar and Augustus. 5De clementia was written before most of the actions which earned Nero his reputation were perpetrated; the only concrete action which may have inspired Seneca to write it was the murder of Britannicus, of which Nero was suspected. Regardless, the emperors preceding Nero were certainly not renowned for their [End Page 196] clemency. Suetonius tells that one of Caligula’s amusements was to attend sessions of torture and execution; that he insisted on slow... (shrink)

Cicero kämpfte sein Leben lang für die Erhaltung der römischen Republik, die ungehinderte Herrschaft des Senats und die Abwehr der Mächte, die Recht und Gerechtigkeit sowie die freie politische Auseinandersetzung im Senat und vor der Volksversammlung gefährdeten. Seine vierzehn Philippischen Reden sind so ein Angriff auf den Konsul Antonius und dessen zweifelhafte Amtsführung. Allerdings konnte er noch nicht ahnen, dass Antonius zum Urgroßvater der berüchtigten römischen Kaiser Caligula und Nero wurde. Auch die skandalöse Verbindung mit der ägyptischen Königin Kleopatra (...) erlebte er nicht mehr; er hätte diese Liaison sicherlich für seine Polemik gegen den Erzfeind zu nutzen gewusst, den er als ein kriminelles Element darstellt, das es nur auf Zerstörung und Untergang abgesehen hat und daher zu beseitigen ist. Die Ziele und Methoden der Akteure auf der politischen Bühne misst Cicero an den traditionellen römischen Wertvorstellungen. Darin stimmen die Reden gegen Antonius mit dem Werk,,Über die Pflichten" überein, mit dem Cicero auf die Gefahren eines hemmungslosen, egoistischen und skrupellosen Machtstrebens aufmerksam machen wollte. Wie er in seinen philosophischen Schriften den Kampf gegen Caesar geführt hatte, so setzt er ihn in den Reden gegen Antonius mit den Waffen des Geistes fort. Cicero war davon überzeugt, dass Philosophie und Redekunst eine Einheit bilden und dass Theorie und Praxis, Ethik und Politik, Denken und Sprechen, Bildung und öffentliche Rede nicht voneinander zu trennen sind. In den Reden gegen Antonius thematisiert Cicero das Leitbild des gebildeten, rhetorisch kompetenten und moralisch gefestigten Politikers, der alle seine Fähigkeiten in den Dienst der res publica stellt, zum letzten Mal, um ihm konsequent wie nie zuvor zu folgen. Die vorliegende Übersetzung wurde 1990 von der Deutschen Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, Darmstadt, ausgezeichnet. (shrink)