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The Ethics of Murder

T. P. Wiseman

in Remembering the Roman People: Essays on Late-Republican Politics and Literature

Before 133 BC, the Roman republic had solved political crises by compromise and without violence; after that year, murder was acceptable in Roman politics, and the civil wars followed. Was it what ... More

Before 133 BC, the Roman republic had solved political crises by compromise and without violence; after that year, murder was acceptable in Roman politics, and the civil wars followed. Was it what Tiberius Gracchus did that made the difference, or what was done to him? The former, according to the optimate tradition, was followed by Cicero — as if legislation in the People's interest were enough to justify killing the legislator. This chapter investigates the history of that idea, and its application by Cicero and Brutus to the murders of Clodius and Caesar. It is clear from the Pro Milone and from Cicero's correspondence that the optimates automatically equated successful popularis politicians as Greek tyrants, and applied Plato's analysis of the ‘tyrannical man’ as a self-evident justification for murder.Less

Robert Bellarmine and the Potestas Indirecta: Continental Repercussions

Stefania Tutino

in Empire of Souls: Robert Bellarmine and the Christian Commonwealth

This chapter focuses on France, where both James’s Oath of Allegiance and Bellarmine’s theory were vivaciously and dramatically debated, especially after the assassination of King Henri IV by a ... More

This chapter focuses on France, where both James’s Oath of Allegiance and Bellarmine’s theory were vivaciously and dramatically debated, especially after the assassination of King Henri IV by a Catholic fanatic and supporter of the Jesuits in 1610. The first section of this chapter offers an overview of the issues at stake by exploring the link between Papal authority, tyrannicide, and the doctrine of Papal deposition of heretical princes. A second section shows how Bellarmine’ theories were at the forefront of a crucial political debate involving Rome, London, and Paris by analyzing the reaction of the Parlement to Bellarmine’s theory. Another section of this chapter illustrates the significance of Bellarmine’s theory in another, parallel, debate, involving the role and nature of the Catholic Church in France, the relationship between the French Gallican tradition and the Roman centralizing tendencies, the political and ecclesiological force of Conciliarist theories. More specifically, this section will examine closely the theological debate within the Sorbonne between Edmond Richer and André Duval.Less

The Dynamics of the ‘Tyrannicide’

Luciano Canfora and Julian Stringer (eds)

in Julius Caesar: The People's Dictator

The evening before the assassination, Caesar was among the guests at supper at the house of Marcus Lepidus, his magister equitum, and the discussion turned to the question: what kind of death would ... More

The evening before the assassination, Caesar was among the guests at supper at the house of Marcus Lepidus, his magister equitum, and the discussion turned to the question: what kind of death would be best? While the rather strange conversation lingered on this question, Caesar, when his turn came to speak, said that he would by far prefer a sudden and unexpected death. The conversation on the eve of the assassination is somewhat enigmatic. There is nothing unusual, given the situation, about conversations consisting of allusive questions or innuendo, designed to pass a veiled message. Incidents like this make one think of a Caesar hounded by those who want to kill him, and, therefore, also ‘pestered’ by those bent on the opposite, who try, with more or less cryptic warnings, to save him.Less

The Risorgimento and the Origins of Anarchist Violence

Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli

in Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe

Chapter 1 highlights the continuity between the Risorgimento and Italian anarchist activities during the movement’s formative years. Specifically, it describes how anarchist violence based on ... More

Chapter 1 highlights the continuity between the Risorgimento and Italian anarchist activities during the movement’s formative years. Specifically, it describes how anarchist violence based on insurrections, guerrilla warfare and tyrannicide was an amalgam of two revolutionary ideologies and traditions inherited from the Risorgimento: the revolutionary democracy of Carlo Pisacane (specifically his articulation of “propaganda of the deed,”) Giuseppe Mazzini and Giuseppe Garibaldi along with lesser known republicans, and the anarchist socialism introduced into Italy by Mikhail Bakunin.Less

Malfattori: Government Repression and Anarchist Violence

Nunzio Pernicone and Fraser M. Ottanelli

in Assassins against the Old Order: Italian Anarchist Violence in Fin de Siècle Europe

Chapter 2 explains the role of government repression as the primary precipitant of Italian anarchist violence. Specifically it describes how, in a climate of growing economic hardship and social ... More

Chapter 2 explains the role of government repression as the primary precipitant of Italian anarchist violence. Specifically it describes how, in a climate of growing economic hardship and social unrest among the peasantry and factory workers, in 1878 Giovanni Passanante’s failed “tyrannicide” of King Umberto I provided Italian authorities with a justification to attempt to deliver a mortal blow to socialism and the International. Repression took various forms. Socialists and anarchists groups were dissolved, their newspapers suppressed, rank-and-file members classified as “malefactors” and subjected to ammonizione (admonishment) and domicilio coatto (internal exile). Important anarchists were arrested and those who escaped detention, as in the case of Errico Malatesta and Carlo Cafiero, forced into exile. These developments led many anarchists to embrace anti-organizational forms of revolutionary ideology and practices that rejected all forms of organization and exalted terrorist violence.Less

Lincoln's Assassination and John Wilkes Booth's Confederate Connection

John Y. Simon, Harold Holzer, and Dawn Vogel

in Lincoln Revisited: New Insights from the Lincoln Forum

The tragedy of Abraham Lincoln's death gripped the North like no other event in the nation's young history. Southerners had lost their only hope for a just and magnanimous peace. However, like so ... More

The tragedy of Abraham Lincoln's death gripped the North like no other event in the nation's young history. Southerners had lost their only hope for a just and magnanimous peace. However, like so much of the story of Lincoln's assassination, this view of his death is a myth — a myth that has been manufactured. In reality, the great majority of people throughout the South rejoiced at the news of Lincoln's assassination. Contrary to the popular myth that Lincoln's death was a national tragedy, Southerners saw Lincoln's death as tyrannicide — the killing of a great tyrant. What this chapter claims is that Confederate officials were closely involved with John Wilkes Booth from the outset of his plot to remove Lincoln as president and commander in chief of the military. Confederate agents who worked for Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State, provided key contacts to Booth along with financial assistance to help carry out his operation.Less

Divided Loyalties

Judith N. Shklar

Samantha Ashenden and Andreas Hess (eds)

in On Political Obligation

This chapter continues the debate about different interpretations of what it means to remain loyal to God, and the conflict such loyalty can establish and sustain between believers’ religious ... More

This chapter continues the debate about different interpretations of what it means to remain loyal to God, and the conflict such loyalty can establish and sustain between believers’ religious commitments and earthly powers. It looks particularly into the New Testament’s doctrine of obedience, exemplified in the case of Archbishop Becket and his conflict with King Henry II. The chapter ends with a comparison between Becket and Martin Luther King’s inner struggles over rival loyalties.Less

Law’s Nature: Philosophy as a Legal Argument in Cicero’s Writings

Benedikt Forschner

in Cicero's Law: Rethinking Roman Law of the Late Republic

The paper deals with the use of philosophical arguments in Cicero's legal writings, in particular his forensic speeches. It tries to demonstrate that Cicero developed a unique, holistic theory of ... More

The paper deals with the use of philosophical arguments in Cicero's legal writings, in particular his forensic speeches. It tries to demonstrate that Cicero developed a unique, holistic theory of law, which is not based on a juxtaposition of natural law and positive law, but tries to deduce the nature of law from the nature of men. Even though this theory probably did not influence the writings of the later classical jurists in a direct way, Roman law was open enough for philosophical arguments to allow Cicero to make use of this theory within the legal discourse. Using examples from Cicero's forensic speeches, the paper demonstrates how Cicero refers to his philosophical concept in order to develop specifically legal arguments.Less

Filmer's patriarchalism versus Jesuit political ideas

Cesare Cuttica

in Sir Robert Filmer (1588-1653) and the Patriotic Monarch: Patriarchalism in seventeenth-century political thought

Besides patriots, Filmer targeted the theories of papal temporal power advanced by the Jesuits Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617). Thus, chapter 3 unravels ... More

Besides patriots, Filmer targeted the theories of papal temporal power advanced by the Jesuits Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617). Thus, chapter 3 unravels Filmer's principles as part of a wider European framework of political theories. This had to do with monarchist (both Catholic and Protestant) rejections of the Jesuits’ tenet of papal deposing power and opposition to their justification of tyrannicide. In writing Patriarcha Filmer did not miss the chance to have his say in this important debate.Less

Hobbes, Slavery, and Despotical Rule

Mary Nyquist

in Arbitrary Rule: Slavery, Tyranny, and the Power of Life and Death

This chapter begins by considering the interdependency of the theoretical and rhetorical aims mobilized by Hobbes's opposition to antityrannicism. Both tyranny and its complement, political slavery, ... More

This chapter begins by considering the interdependency of the theoretical and rhetorical aims mobilized by Hobbes's opposition to antityrannicism. Both tyranny and its complement, political slavery, feature in Leviathan's diatribe against Greek and Roman authors for their idealization of liberty and tyrannicide. Though he does not pull any rhetorical punches when characterizing antityrannicism's harmful effects, Hobbes is aware that analytic self-consciousness alone will not do much to dampen enthusiastic belief in the value of liberty. Numerous features of his absolutism are painstakingly concocted as an antidote to the madness that results from imbibing popular notions of freedom as political slavery's noble antonym or tyranny's antagonist. Designed to counteract the passions aroused by antityrannicism, Hobbes's absolutism stirs up a set of anxieties that it reassuringly promises to allay.Less

(S)wept from power: two versions of tyrannicide in Richard III

Ann Kaegi

in The Renaissance of emotion: Understanding affect in Shakespeare and his contemporaries

Shakespeare’s English history plays are customarily referred to as chronicle histories, yet several could also be termed complaint histories, none more so than Richard III. Although the events ... More

Shakespeare’s English history plays are customarily referred to as chronicle histories, yet several could also be termed complaint histories, none more so than Richard III. Although the events depicted in Richard III predate the English Reformation by half a century, its impact on the relationship between the living and the dead, the expression of grief and the representation of mourning is palpable and politically charged in Shakespeare’s play. At a time, late in Elizabeth’s reign, when public displays of loud mourning were denounced by reformed clergy as faithless and excessive and branded ‘heathenish’ and ‘popish’, Shakespeare provocatively populates his play with grieving women whose sharp plaints and bitter curses disrupt the customary masculine soundscape of chronicle history. Rather stifling the sound and suppressing the spectacle of immoderate mourning, Shakespeare exploits maternal lamentation to broach the dangerous subject of tyrannicide. That he does so in a play depicting the rise to power and brief reign of the king on whose violent overthrow the Tudor regime was founded makes the conjunction of political matter and affective speech in Richard III of particular interest in the history of emotion.Less

Troublesome priests: responses to clerical support for republicanism

Brian Heffernan

in Freedom and the Fifth Commandment: Catholic priests and political violence in Ireland, 1919-21

Support for the IRA took place as far away from the limelight as possible. Nevertheless republican priests had to account for themselves often enough, to their bishop or religious superior for ... More

Support for the IRA took place as far away from the limelight as possible. Nevertheless republican priests had to account for themselves often enough, to their bishop or religious superior for example, or, if they were curates, to their parish priest. This was also true for priests who publicly supported Sinn Féin. The current chapter examines the interaction between these priests and their social surroundings, ecclesiastical and lay. Bishops, religious superiors and parish priests had agendas of their own that determined their responses. It was important to the bishops not to alienate the republican camp, but they also had to respond to the criticisms of scandalised conservatives, while ensuring that lines of communication with the government in Dublin Castle remained open. Moreover, they were concerned for the Irish church’s reputation abroad, especially in the Vatican. Religious superiors wanted to avoid internal conflict within their communities, and parish priests often simply wished to keep trouble away from their church doors. How did these ecclesiastical authorities respond to the activities of republican priests? Which forms of support were acceptable to them and which were not? And how did the priests in question defend their actions to their superiors?Less

The Topography and Phenomenology of the Public Cemetery

Nathan T. Arrington

in Ashes, Images, and Memories: The Presence of the War Dead in Fifth-Century Athens

This chapter explores how the space for public burial shaped the ways mourners interacted with the graves and remembered the dead. Drawing on a comprehensive survey of the archaeological evidence, ... More

This chapter explores how the space for public burial shaped the ways mourners interacted with the graves and remembered the dead. Drawing on a comprehensive survey of the archaeological evidence, including rescue excavations, it demonstrates where the cemetery was located and reconstructs its layout, organization, and appearance. It shows that the cemetery was a nonexclusive place in which graves scattered across the landscape and clustered around the tombs of the Marathon dead and the Tyrannicides. It assesses the phenomenology and experience of the cemetery.Less

‘Congiure contro a uno principe’: Machiavelli and Humanist Literature

Marta Celati

in Conspiracy Literature in Early Renaissance Italy: Historiography and Princely Ideology

The final chapter examines the relationship between Machiavelli’s work and fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies. The analysis highlights the role that this humanist literature played in the ... More

The final chapter examines the relationship between Machiavelli’s work and fifteenth-century literature on conspiracies. The analysis highlights the role that this humanist literature played in the development of Machiavelli’s complex theorization of conspiracies as a political phenomenon, but it also underlines how, although he was influenced by this background, he also radically departed from it. Machiavelli dealt with this political subject in several sections of his works: in particular in his long chapter Delle congiure in the Discorsi (III, 6), which can be considered a comprehensive treatise on plots; in chapter XIX of Il principe; and in some significant chapters of the Istorie fiorentine, where Machiavelli narrates the conspiracies that took place in Italy in the previous centuries. He was the first author to develop a substantial theorization of political plots and he based it on concrete historical examples drawn from previous narratives and from ancient history. Machiavelli’s analysis of conspiracies shares some key elements with the political perspective underlying fifteenth-century literature on plots: his focus on the figure of the prince as the main target of the conspiracy; the importance assigned to the role of the common people and to the issue of building political consensus; the attention paid to internal enemies and internal matters within the state, rather than to the relationship with foreign political forces; the evolution in the analytical approach regarding tyranny and tyrannicide; the centrality of the notion of crimen laesae maiestatis; the emphasis on the negative political outcome of plots.Less

Daggers and Dangers (Brutus 1.5, 16.4, 52.1–4, 7–8; 19–20)

G. O. Hutchinson

in Plutarch's Rhythmic Prose

The consideration of one specific Life—see ch. 9—is expanded by a look at passages which show density but more briefly than the criteria require, and at a substantial passage which exemplifies ... More

The consideration of one specific Life—see ch. 9—is expanded by a look at passages which show density but more briefly than the criteria require, and at a substantial passage which exemplifies writing in a lower key. The passages more briefly or intermittently dense are more engaged with violent action—tyrannicide by an ancestor of Brutus’, a false alarm before the killing of Caesar, and Brutus’ last hours and suicide. The lesser extent of the density throws light on the Life, which portrays Brutus—with some straining of the evidence—as a gentle soul, guided by his philosophy. The rhythmically looser passage, like that from the Timoleon in ch. 5, shows loosening and tightening of rhythm to fit the content—particularly that of Antony’s incendiary speech. Passages from Appian and from Plutarch’s own Life of Caesar throw light on the specific treatments in these extracts.Less

Picturing History: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Tyrannicide in the Art of Classical Athens and Early Imperial China

Jeremy Tanner

in How to Do Things with History: New Approaches to Ancient Greece

In this chapter, Jeremy Tanner examines two series of images—one from Classical Athens and one from Han China—of political assassinations, more specifically “tyrannicides.” These images were ... More

In this chapter, Jeremy Tanner examines two series of images—one from Classical Athens and one from Han China—of political assassinations, more specifically “tyrannicides.” These images were replicated, with interesting variations, time and time again, and must have been among the more popular and recognizable iconographies of their eras. Both are concerned with figuring the limits of legitimate power and the ethical basis for and significance of violent resistance to arbitrary power and its overthrow. In order to interpret these images in a comparative frame, Tanner finds that he must also explore the concept of the “tyrant” in order to construct a conceptual catwalk between these two contexts. The very project of comparison, then, helps bring to the surface some of the intricacies of the lives of concepts in particular places.Less

The Spectre of Civil War: Literary Reactions to the Death of Oldenbarnevelt

Freya Sierhuis

in The Literature of the Arminian Controversy: Religion, Politics and the Stage in the Dutch Republic

Chapter 4 examines the torrent of pamphlets that accompanied the fall from power of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Most of the pamphlets produced immediately before and after the Prince of Orange’s coup ... More

Chapter 4 examines the torrent of pamphlets that accompanied the fall from power of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt. Most of the pamphlets produced immediately before and after the Prince of Orange’s coup d’état and the execution of Oldenbarnevelt show an intensification of the earlier political and religious debate, as both parties (Remonstrants and Contra-Remonstrants) now regarded Holland’s liberties and privileges, as well as the nature of its Reformed Church, as being under direct threat. Examining the writings of the Remonstrant minister Hendrik Slatius, whose role in the attempt on the life of Prince of Orange would eventually bring him to the scaffold, it analyses how the political pressures of Maurits’s coup d’état led to the first articulation of an anti-Orangist argument, thus challenging the dominant consensus which views the development of a republican argument as a phenomenon of the 1650s.Less

The Common Law of Mankind, the Common Enemies of Mankind

Daniel Lee

in The Right of Sovereignty: Jean Bodin on the Sovereign State and the Law of Nations

Roman law described the law of nations [ius gentium] as that law common to all mankind based on natural reason and consensus. This law recognized war, conquest, and slavery as legally permissible, ... More

Roman law described the law of nations [ius gentium] as that law common to all mankind based on natural reason and consensus. This law recognized war, conquest, and slavery as legally permissible, even if morally offensive. Bodin added a twist to this classical analysis, by recognizing that a lawful war could, in principle, also activate a new title of sovereignty for the victor. Not all organized violence, however, counted legally as war. The violence of brigandage and piracy, for example, fell outside the permissible scope of the ius gentium and, thus, lacked the legal protection and advantages that combatants in a legal war enjoyed. Dubbed by Cicero as ‘the common enemies of mankind’, anybody could lawfully kill them. This chapter explores how Bodin strategically included tyrants among the list of the ‘enemies of mankind’, and consequently concluded that tyrannicide was permissible, even morally necessary, under the ius gentium.Less

Demosthenes’ Early Career: Against Leptines and Other Speeches

Guy Westwood

in The Rhetoric of the Past in Demosthenes and Aeschines: Oratory, History, and Politics in Classical Athens

Chapter 2 begins the case studies by examining Demosthenes’ four speeches from the 350s BC: one for personal delivery (Against Leptines) and three for delivery by others (Against Androtion, Against ... More

Chapter 2 begins the case studies by examining Demosthenes’ four speeches from the 350s BC: one for personal delivery (Against Leptines) and three for delivery by others (Against Androtion, Against Timocrates, and Against Aristocrates). The chapter argues that Demosthenes’ use of historical material in Against Leptines is part of a wide-ranging assault on what the orator constructs as an atrophied political consensus, whose members’ defective understanding of the Athenian past Demosthenes fashions as a cogent reason for the jurors to reject Leptines’ law. The project demonstrates that the young Demosthenes already had a sophisticated grasp of what the past could achieve when mobilized in a major public trial, and this is reflected in the other three speeches. Chapter 2.1 offers an introduction and an overview. Chapter 2.2 shows how Demosthenes deploys imagery of hypothetical takeover by tyrants or oligarchs (and the example of the Athenian tyrannicides) to expose the problems inherent in the opposition’s arguments and actions. Chapter 2.3 explores how Demosthenes’ arguments exploit the symbolic, rather than material significance of the aspects of the past under discussion. By the time of the Assembly speeches, this has become typical of his strategic conception of the world of the city’s past. Chapter 2.4 offers a conclusion.Less

Tyrannos basileus: Imperial Legitimacy and Usurpation in Early Byzantium

John Haldon and Nikos Panou

in Evil Lords: Theories and Representations of Tyranny from Antiquity to the Renaissance

This chapter shifts the focus to the Eastern empire, examining the evolution of perceptions of tyranny in Byzantium from the late Roman period to the eighth century. The chapter shows that these ... More

This chapter shifts the focus to the Eastern empire, examining the evolution of perceptions of tyranny in Byzantium from the late Roman period to the eighth century. The chapter shows that these constitute the inverse of crucial concepts in Byzantine imperial ideology, particularly with regard to issues of religious orthodoxy, moral integrity, military efficiency, and administrative competence. Furthermore, it argues that the nature and scope of these perceptions can be better understood when examined in conjunction with the discourse of tyrannicide and usurpation as deployed in a broad spectrum of historical, hagiographic, and propagandistic works. The discussions commonly surrounding cases of legally precarious coups d’état offer insights into when, how, and why political actors came to be considered as tyrants in the first centuries of the Byzantine millennium.Less