Abstract
It has long been suspected that Roman moralizing and the slander of political enemies lay behind the story of Sulla's horrific death by vermin. This study traces the evocative logic of Sulla's affliction to a constellation of Roman attitudes about corruption, self-mastery, and the body politic. It also argues that Sulla's own rhetoric about the health of the state played a formative role in shaping narratives about his gruesome end.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 949-971 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | Mnemosyne |
Volume | 72 |
Issue number | 6 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- Latin literature
- Republican Rome
- Sulla
- body
- disease
- metaphor
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Classics
- Archaeology
- Language and Linguistics
- History
- Linguistics and Language
- Literature and Literary Theory