Brian Walter's concise work examines imagery of the body politic in late republican Roman literature, in particular the rhetorical uses to which such imagery was put by political actors. As W. notes, ‘[i]mages of the embodied state possessed an evocative logic that reduced complex ideas about power, status, and obligation to a readily intuitive corpus of corporeal knowledge. The emotive simplicity and immediacy of such imagery ensured its rhetorical utility across factional lines, while competing arguments about the body's composition and health supplied a ready means for framing disputes’ (1). While the book is modest in scope (and length: 120 pages, paratexts excluded) and follows well-trodden paths in terms of authors and texts, its commendably narrow focus on images of the body politic allows the author to make several novel observations. In W.'s hands, imagery of the embodied state becomes a fruitful entry point into the political thought and politics of the final years of the republic. The book does not profess allegiance to any specific theory of imagery, a term which W. employs ‘as a shorthand for a range of figures, including metaphor, simile, analogy, and the like’ (3). While the book is clearly centred on Cicero, there are also nuanced discussions of Lucilius, Varro, Catullus, and Sallust.

The book is divided thematically, by imagery, into five chapters. Ch. 1, ‘The Republican Body Politic’ traces the Roman origins of such imagery, beginning with a discussion of the story of the first plebeian secession, in which the plebs are persuaded to return to the city by a parable about the interdependence of the limbs. In addition to setting the stage for subsequent discussions of how bodily harmony might be perceived to be at risk, this chapter does a good job of uncovering the ideological implications of specific images. Ch. 2, ‘Healing the State with Violence’, turns the spotlight on imagery of healing and disease. Appeals to the health of the state could provide cover for legally and morally questionable acts, including the killing of political opponents. W. points out that medical imagery was particularly powerful, since ‘[h]arsh measures, after all, were frequently required to make an ailing body well’ (43). In this bloody rhetorical game, designations were fluid, as the same person could be portrayed as either purifier or butcher of the state. Ch. 3, ‘Butchering the Body Politic’, turns to imagery of violence, ‘attacking, disfiguring, and mutilating the body politic’ (55). Although the boundaries between metaphorical realms are often blurred, W. argues that ‘accusations of violence against the state played especially on anxieties about tyrannical overreach and disregard for communal and institutional constraints to make their point. As such, violence to the body politic was degrading in ways that disease was not’ (56). This discussion might have benefitted from interaction with Matthew Roller's work on the socio-political implications of slavery metaphors in imperial literature (Constructing Autocracy (2001)).

With Ch. 4, ‘Outliving the Republic’, W. moves on to death itself, whose finality imbued it with a powerful rhetorical force. What strikes a modern reader most strongly about the use of such imagery, however, is how liberally it is employed. The republic seems to be continuously dying and receiving deathblows, before being revived and resuscitated with similar ease. W. demonstrates that imagery of death is at home not just in oratory but also in philosophical texts and private letters, where it served as a springboard for discussing the ideal commonwealth and as a consolatory motif expressing how individual pain disappeared in the communal sense of loss. As noted by W., this move from the political to the personal was a consequence of Caesar's victory in the civil wars and subsequent dictatorship, which put limitations on freedom of speech in the public sphere. Finally, W. argues that since a well-governed state could live eternally, no consolation could be found in its natural demise. While his mastery of the late Republican material is impeccable, a reference to the ‘Ages of Man’ metaphor in imperial literature (cf. ten Berge in Lange and Vervaet (eds), The Historiography of Late Republican Civil War (2019), 411–38) might here have added some illustrative comparanda. The final chapter, ‘Murdering the Fatherland’, examines the rhetorical struggle – for which W. adduces both texts and coinage as evidence – over the definition of parricide in the aftermath of Caesar's murder. While Mark Antony promoted the late dictator's designation as parens patriae to portray the self-styled liberatores as parricides, Cicero argued that Caesar and Mark Antony should be considered parricides, since they strove (or had striven) to murder the state, the father of all citizens.

W.'s well-structured work presents a clear (if perhaps not especially ambitious) argument: the ‘body politic’ provided a diverse set of images which Romans of the late republic employed as rhetorical ammunition in the courtroom and from the rostra, and with which they negotiated the fall of their republic. Although written under the shadow of the Trumpian presidency and its attempted dismemberment of US political system (as noted in the preface), the book stays clear of comparisons with the contemporary world. While the absence of explicit metaphor theory is largely unproblematic (and indeed makes for lucid writing), this reviewer would have liked to see some interaction with conceptual metaphor theory, that is, how the way we write (and speak) reveals how we understand the world (cf. Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980)). But W. is at his strongest when he dives into close analysis of specific (especially Ciceronian) texts and passages. This book will be welcomed by anyone working on late republican Roman literature or on the fall of the republic. The writing is jargon-free and often captivating, all Latin and Greek quotations are translated, and W. situates his analyses excellently within the historical context, all of which makes the book accessible for undergraduate students. While the book merits a full read-through, those interested in specific texts and passages may consult the extensive index of passages. There is also a useful subject index and a rich bibliography.