This project examines what legal writings from ancient Rome reveal about the political ideology, social values, and power dynamics in Roman history. I focus on these concepts through analyzing selections from two sets of speeches given by Cicero, a politician, loyal proponent of the Roman Republic, and philosopher educated in both Latin and Greek. Additionally, I explore the scholarship on Roman legal history to provide supplementary cultural context. The sociopolitical climate of the late Roman Republic was tumultuous. Near the beginning of Cicero’s political career, he gave a set of orations, In Catalinam, to the Senate that accused Catiline of conspiring against the consuls. Much later, Cicero tried to keep the Republic alive after Caesar’s assassination and accused Mark Antony of being disloyal to Caesar by wanting to create an empire. This urge to defend the Republic prompted Cicero to write his Philippicae to attack Mark Antony. These orations ultimately resulted in Cicero’s death, as Mark Antony wanted, and the Republic ended. My research compares Cicero’s In Catilinam 1, 2, and 4 and Philippicae 4, 5, and 14: both sets involve murder plots, denunciations of powerful men, and the senatus consultum ultimum decree for Republican emergency. Specifically, I analyze how Cicero uses oratory to convince the Senate to declare Catiline and Mark Antony as public enemies. This process reveals elements of Roman sociopolitical culture, such as values, threats, and legal procedures, and follows these differences in this short, but crucial, time period in Roman legal and governmental history. Furthermore, it demonstrates the complexity between the government and the conflicting political ideologies during the late Roman Republic. Thus, through detailed analysis of these selected passages and their wider contexts, I explore how the Catilinarian and Philippic orations use references from Rome’s earlier history to adapt to, and reflect, their particular moments.

Astrology, the prediction of events from the movements of stars and planets, has grown from Mesopotamian omen-literature to the astrology of Hellenistic and Roman periods, and strangely enough it has endured even into the modern day. In this project, by drawing on scholarly analyses of the intellectual and religious context of astrology (Barton) and the worldviews of the non-elite (Toner) I examine how astrology was interwoven into the political, intellectual and social framework of the ancient world; and how the authority of astrologers was both supported and challenged by the polyvalence of their discipline, as well as their ability to connect to individual consultees. As for ancient sources, the Astronomica of Marcus Manilius, composed as a didactic poem in the early first century CE, shows how astrology was understood and used by the elite. It considers astrology in a broad theoretical context, encompassing a wide array of astrological concepts. He also illustrates the historical period in which he writes, under the new Principate of Augustus, by using astrology to legitimate Augustus's self-made status as princeps. On the other hand, other works such as that of Dorotheus of Sidon concern the more practical side of astrology. He is less concerned with theory and more with specific horoscopes, and better depicts the sorts of questions and concerns clients of a variety of social status would have had. Finally, skepticism toward astrology in antiquity is best rendered in Cicero's On Divination and Sextus Empiricus's Against Professors. These critiques and others, however, were directed less at astrological theory and more at its practitioners. By coming to understand how ancient peoples viewed astrology as both an intellectual discipline and a practical tool, we can better understand their cultural conception of the universe and in the process provide a useful comparison to similar institutions today.