Cicero Haruspex: Political Prognostication And The Viscera Of A Deceased Body Politic

This monograph explores Marcus Rumus Cicero's awareness and interpretation of contemporary political events as reflected in his private correspondence during the last years of both the Roman republic and his own life. Cicero's correspondence gives a detailed view of current political events in Rome and constitutes, together with Caesar's writings, our major contemporary evidence for the circumstances of the civil war of 49 B.C.
Cicero 'Haruspex' takes as Leitmotiv Cicero's own judgment of the state as 'sacrificial victim' to the ambitions of individual politicians, with as metaphor his examination of a 'deceased' body politic in the manner of a haruspex inspecting the entrails of a sacrificial animal. It raises the question as to whether Cicero understood the message of political decline signaled by the 'entrails' of the 'carcass' of the res publica, and whether this ability enabled him to anticipate future political development in Rome.
The theoretical input of Cicero's predecessors, their perceptions of constitutional development, in particular of Roman politics, as well as Cicero's perception of their political theories are scrutinized to determine the extent of Cicero's awareness of a larger pattern of political events. Further, this study investigates how consistent Cicero was in his analyses of such patterns, so as to determine to what extent he may be taken serious as a political observer.