Brutus: Patrician or Plebian?

[Nephele]

Point taken. Then, I can't agree with M

[M. Porcius Cato]

Just to drop more uncertainty and doubt into an area where we're already struggling to find firm ground: the whole date of Brutus' expulsion of the Tarquins (510 BCE) is pretty fishy as it is, notoriously occurring (by an amazing coincidence) in the same year that the tyrant Hippias was expelled from Athens. The birth of democracy in Athens co-occurring with the birth of the republic in Rome is possible, but it's also an awfully neat coincidence.

 

Something important probably did occur around that time--the foundation of the Capitoline temple--but it's a bit difficult for me to believe the new government managed to pull off the building of this temple at the same time the Tarquins were supposedly gathering to strike back at the fledgling republic.

[ASCLEPIADES]

It would hardly have been a sly thrust, if Cicero had come right out and accused his friend directly.

Do you mean that MT Cicero was thrusting his friend (and Antonius' enemy) in his obviously anti-Antonius Philippica in such a sly way that the Roman senate and mob would get it but the too cultivated MJ Brutus wouldn't?

Why would Cicero have done something like that?

Is there really such kind of sly thrusts at all?

 

Are you referring to your quote from Cicero's Philippica? I believe Cicero was making a comparison between Marcus and Lucius there: "Even had he been that great Lucius Brutus..." As I stated previously, Marcus Junius Brutus was obviously inspired by Lucius Junius Brutus, and was similarly styled as a "liberator" (like the earlier Brutus the Liberator) after having participated in the assassination of Caesar.

 

-- Nephele

That quote indeed.

We agree; in fact, all CJ Caesar's assassins were regularly and collectively styled as the Liberatores.

[Nephele]

Do you mean that MT Cicero was thrusting his friend (and Antonius' enemy) in his obviously anti-Antonius Philippica in such a sly way that the Roman senate and mob would get it but the too cultivated MJ Brutus wouldn't?

Why would Cicero have done something like that?

 

The quote I supplied which contained the sly thrust at Brutus was taken from Cicero's Brutus, not his Philippica, and there is no reason to think that Brutus didn't "get" it. Why would Cicero have done something like that? As I stated previously, Cicero was noted for his sharp tongue and sly jabs -- at both friend and foe. Cicero was also a novus homo, having obtained the office of the consulate through merit and without benefit of descent from noble or patrician family. As evidenced by that quote, Cicero took a dim view of others' pretensions of nobility, regardless of who they were.

 

Is there really such kind of sly thrusts at all?

 

Yes. Cicero was notorious for this. I refer you to an excellent article written by Francis W. Kelsey for The Classical Journal (November 1907), titled "Cicero as a Wit", in which Kelsey gives numerous examples of Cicero's little zingers -- more barbed for the truth in them.

 

-- Nephele

[ASCLEPIADES]

The quote I supplied which contained the sly thrust at Brutus was taken from Cicero's Brutus, not his Philippica, and there is no reason to think that Brutus didn't "get" it. Why would Cicero have done something like that? As I stated previously, Cicero was noted for his sharp tongue and sly jabs -- at both friend and foe. Cicero was also a novus homo, having obtained the office of the consulate through merit and without benefit of descent from noble or patrician family. As evidenced by that quote, Cicero took a dim view of others' pretensions of nobility, regardless of who they were.

Sorry, my mystake.

I didn't get you were talking about your quotation on Brutus cp. LXII because I didn't find then (nor I do find now) any hint of why M

Edited August 23, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[ASCLEPIADES]

Finally, we can get even from the same book an explicit passage acknowledging MJ Brutus descent from LJ Brutus.

Here comes Marcus Tullius Cicero, Brutus, cp. LIII:

 

Quis enim putet aut celeritatem ingeni L. Bruto illi nobilitatis vestrae principi defuisse? qui de matre savianda ex oraculo Apollinis tam acute arguteque coniecerit; qui summam prudentiam simulatione stultitiae texerit; qui potentissimum regem clarissumi regis filium expulerit civitatemque perpetuo dominatu liberatam magistratibus annuis legibus iudiciisque devinxerit; qui collegae suo imperium abrogaverit, ut e civitate regalis nominis memoriam tolleret: quod certe effici non potuisset, nisi esset oratione persuasum.

 

"For who can question the address, and the capacity of Brutus, the illustrious founder of your family? That Brutus, who so readily discovered the meaning of the Oracle, which promised the supremacy to him who should first salute his mother? That Brutus, who concealed the most consummate abilities under the appearance of a natural defect of understanding? Who dethroned and banished a powerful monarch, the son of an illustrious sovereign? Who settled the State, which he had rescued from arbitrary power, by the appointment of an annual magistracy, a regular system of laws, and a free and open course of justice? And who abrogated the authority of his colleague, that he might rid the city of the smallest vestige of the regal name? Events, which could never have been produced without exerting the powers of Persuasion!"

 

In this presumably fictional dialogue, after enumerating to MJ Brutus the most notorious Greek orators, MT Cicero proceeds now with the Romans, beginning with his interlocutor's ancestor.

 

Please forgive me, but I can detect no thrust against MJ Brutus here (nor anywhere else within this book).

Edited August 22, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Nephele]

Please forgive me, but I can detect no thrust against MJ Brutus here (nor anywhere else within this book).

 

Indeed, you can't.

 

-- Nephele

[ASCLEPIADES]

Please forgive me, but I can detect no thrust against MJ Brutus here (nor anywhere else within this book).

 

Indeed, you can't.

 

-- Nephele

Can you?

[ASCLEPIADES]

Regarding the social status of Lucius Junius Brutus, here comes the Epitome of BG Niebuhr History of Rome, cp. XXXIII, pg. 132-133:

 

"That Brutus belonged to the plebs may be inferred from this. He was considered the fouinder of the nobility of the Junian house, and they, especially the Bruti, were plebeians; they were tribunes of the people down to the end of the republic; whilst not a single Brutus occurs in the Consular Fasti before the Licinian Law, and after this law more than one Junius Brutus appears in them, as the plebeian colleague. Unless the consulate was shared between the two orders, all the liberties of the plebeians were left without a safeguard; and as the Licinian Agrarian law merely revived in fact that of Cassius, which ought to have been in force during the preceding 120 years, and which itself had only given effect to an ordinance of Servius, in the same manner the Licinian law respecting the consulate seems only to have given a tardy effect to a very ancient principle of the constitution. The objection of Brutus being a plebeian rests mostly on his holding of the office of tribune of the Celeres; yet either this might have been conferred upon him arbitrarily by the tyrant for jealousy of the patricians, or it was open to a plebeian".

Edited August 23, 2008 by ASCLEPIADES

[Nephele]

Regarding the social status of Lucius Junius Brutus, here comes the Epitome of BG Niebuhr History of Rome, cp. XXXIII, pg. 132-133:

 

Ah, nicely found. I was aware that Niebuhr was among those who support the belief that Lucius Junius Brutus may have been plebeian, but I don't have access to his works in my library. Did you find an online version of Niebuhr?

 

-- Nephele

[ASCLEPIADES]

Regarding the social status of Lucius Junius Brutus, here comes the Epitome of BG Niebuhr History of Rome, cp. XXXIII, pg. 132-133:

 

Ah, nicely found. I was aware that Niebuhr was among those who support the belief that Lucius Junius Brutus may have been plebeian, but I don't have access to his works in my library. Did you find an online version of Niebuhr?

 

-- Nephele

Just an Epitome by Travers Twiss.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Regarding the social status of Lucius Junius Brutus, here comes the Epitome of BG Niebuhr History of Rome, cp. XXXIII, pg. 132-133

 

Very nice find, Asclepiades. Hadn't considered Niebuhr's points previously, but they do seem to rest on the assumption that the Bruti who were tribunes of the plebs were in fact kinsmen of LJB. I don't think that's a far-fetched assumption, but it's the assumption that gives his case its force.

[ASCLEPIADES]

Very nice find, Asclepiades. Hadn't considered Niebuhr's points previously, but they do seem to rest on the assumption that the Bruti who were tribunes of the plebs were in fact kinsmen of LJB. I don't think that's a far-fetched assumption, but it's the assumption that gives his case its force.

Actually, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Mestrius Plutarchus, one of the very first tribunes of the plebs (and one of the leaders of the plebeians in their secession to the Sacred Mount too) was a certain Lucius Junius Brutus (CCLX AUC / 494 BC).

 

Elementary Maths tells us this happened just circa 15 years after the accession of the first consul.

[M. Porcius Cato]

Actually, according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Mestrius Plutarchus, one of the very first tribunes of the plebs (and one of the leaders of the plebeians in their secession to the Sacred Mount too) was a certain Lucius Junius Brutus (CCLX AUC / 494 BC).

Elementary Maths tells us this happened just circa 15 years after the accession of the first consul.

 

The math is of no help because it doesn't tell us whether it even makes sense to subtract the date of the second LJB from the first. If Maty is right and the patrician Junii died out with his sons, then the swift appearance of another LJB merely suggests that there was a plebeian branch of the Junii. (Not that I buy this argument: why violate Occam's razor and assume two branches to the Junii?)