- Res Publica and the Roman Republic. 'Without Body or Form.' by Louise Hodgson
The program of this book is certainly ambitious: it "tells the story of an idea"—indeed a central idea in the ideology of "Romanness" (1). In concrete terms, this means that the author sets out to explore the full range of meanings of res publica between the much-used slogan in the common parlance of public rhetoric on the one hand and the complex political-philosophical concept in "the lively, if rarely very clearly articulated, Republican debate about res publica" on the other (261). Hodgson's methodological approach is twofold: Her study is plainly "a philological one" and "belongs with general studies of Roman Republican political terminology," and she therefore makes "no apologies for basing it equally in no small part on a series of close readings of as varied a range of texts as possible" (1). In this context, she refers to J. Hellegouarc'h's magisterial Le vocabulaire Latin des relations et des partis politiques sous la République (1963, 2nd edition, revised and corrected 1972) as well as the plethora of studies on specific concepts such as those in the German tradition of conceptual history (e.g., H. Drexler on maiestas, honos, etc.). Hodgson knows quite well that there are already quite a few detailed studies on the concept of res publica in this tradition—such as by the aforementioned Drexler (Maia 9, 1957, 247–81; 10, 1958, 1–37) and in particular, the "semasiological analysis" by R. Stark (1937; reprinted with addenda in H. Oppermann [ed.], Römische Wertbegriffe, 1974, 42–119). She does not, however, take notice of the serious theoretical and methodological caveat concerning the traditional brand of "Begriffsgeschichte" (cf. the contributions by P. L. Schmidt and S. Rebenich in: A. Haltenhoff et al. [eds.], Römische Werte als Gegenstand der Altertumswissenschaft, 2005). But Hodgson also mentions more recent and modern works such as M. Hobb's book on the political language of the late Republic (Beyond Populares and Optimates, 2010) and above all V. Arena's penetrating analysis of libertas (Libertas and the Practice of Politics in the Late Roman Republic, 2012).
Moreover, however, just as Arena did, Hodgson wants to offer considerably more than "a strictly linguistic" or "philological study of a political concept," claiming that her "philology is cushioned with political history": She wants "to show what res publica meant and was made to mean during a particular historical [End Page 521] period, that of the late Roman Republic," in concrete terms, her aim is to provide a "close look at how res publica was perceived and manipulated," which should bring "into focus not just the political crises of the late Republic but also the various attempts to clean up these crises through dubiously legal (and often outright illegal) emergency measures" (2). This reviewer is not quite sure whether this particular kind of combination of rather divergent objectives is methodologically really feasible and empirically promising.
Alas, as usual, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Hodgson realizes her program in seven chapters. In the first chapter she sets out "to define terms" of her approach (1–20)—in particular, she provides a kind of preliminary "working definition" of the concept: while not referring to any "particular political organization," res publica denotes "both the civic property/affairs of a given civitas," that is in most cases obviously the populus Romanus, on the one hand, and the "the communal spaces within which those who administer the property and affairs of the civitas move," that is "the public sphere," "political space," or "metaphorical arena," in which the civic business, in Roman terms the res populi, is discussed, organized, administered and indeed "managed" by the magistrates (11, cf. 21; 114 etc.). Hodgson goes on to put forward a set of three "key questions" (15), which revolve around (1) the use of the term by Republican politicians; (2) an "increasing tendency" to appeal to the res publica, which Hodgson takes as an...