I'm currently reading Thomas M. Conley's
Rhetoric in the European Tradition--where Conley states that De Oratore is "far more than a treatise on the art of rhetoric alone" (37).
Conley adds that De Oratore:
"...is a work in which oratory, philosophy, and statesmanship are bound together as a single whole and in which the true dimensions of the notion of 'the good man skilled in speaking' (vir bonus dicendi peritus) are, as it were, mapped and measured. In it, Cicero reveals himself as an engagd writer and thinker who, even when it was dangerous for him to appear in the Forum, did not hesitate to broadcast his ideas to his contemporaries. Eventually, those ideas would appear so dangerous to his rivals that they sought to cut them off at the source by killing him. The dangers that Cicero's eloquence represented to them is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the account of his assassination in Dio's Roman History. After they had slain him, Dio tells us (47.8.3f.), his murderers brought his head to Marcus Antonius, who ordered it to be displayed in the Forum, where Cicero had so often spoken against him" (37).
Conley then provides a quote that describes how Fulvia, wife of Octavian, who was Antonius' ally, mutilated Cicero's head and removed the tongue while insulting the head (Conley 37-8).
Interesting, right?
I keep insisting on asking: "Considering the hatred toward Cicero, why was the head mutilated instead of the whole body?" At this point, I am thinking about how the head can be figuratively understood as one tool of rhetoric, just as it can be understood as the temple and source of memory--which can, without a doubt, prove political.
Conley's choice in presenting this information to his readers allows us to remember De Oratore as a marker of memory in which rhetoric fuses the psychological and the political function (the mutilation is itself a political act in addition to the beheading).
Conley allows us to keep re-membering Cicero in contrast to (literally) dis-membering Cicero.
