Abstract
The last points already refer to an aspect that goes beyond the staging of the body: visual experience of violence becomes possible through the visualization of violence. It is thus of a concrete character and belongs to the world of physical things, be it the staging of corporal punishment or the identification of slaves through branding.
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Notes
- 1.
For historical discourse, this is a commonplace; for film, it is always a question of what can and will be expected of the viewer aesthetically. The discrepancy between cinematic reality, historical Rome and the closeness to life is ultimately revealed in the aesthetic realisation, which affects the viewer in the staging of violence, sex and power: “Rome was a very brutal world. That prosperous successful society was built entirely on warfare. Romans were not successful merchants, philosophers, or engineers. A society with such ideals is naturally more brutal than others. So Romans, while brutal, are also free, and that’s what makes them so appealing to us.” (Producer Bruno Heller 2008) And it is in such an understanding then that the academic advisor to the Rome series, Jonathan Stamp, is able to characterize the essential baseline of Roman action: “For them, compassion, mercy and love were not virtues. Since they were anything but weak, in their world strength triumphs and power has the last word.” Cf. Wilke 2017.
- 2.
Leaving aside the discourse with its strongly reductive focus on violence and media, cf. among others from a social science perspective with the connection between violence and modernity Imbusch 2005, philosophically Žižek 2011 and Han 2012, phenomenologically Staudigl 2015 and with reference to antiquity Zimmermann 2013. Likewise taking a look at the connection between law and violence: Agamben 2004 and Menke 20183.
- 3.
On the critical debate through a potential levelling of different forms and relations of violence, cf. Imbusch with reference to Jürgen Habermas 2005.
- 4.
Sensibly, Imbusch (2005, 25) here adds Bourdieu’s notion of ‘symbolic violence’ to the understanding of cultural violence, as “gentle, invisible violence, misrecognized as such, equally chosen and suffered violence of trust, obligation, personal fidelity, hospitality, gift, debt, gratitude, piety, in a word, the violence of all the virtues to which the morality of honor adheres, as the most parsimonious mode of domination because most appropriate to the economy of the system.” Director Guy Ritchie gets to the heart of this in his historical epic “King Arthur” (2017, 01:57:00), when Arthur ends negotiations with the Vikings with his maxim for action: “Why make enemies when you can have friends.”
- 5.
In ancient Roman law, patronage was the term for the position of a lord as patron in the sense of a patron and representative towards freedmen and subjects, the so-called clientele. This resulted in a mutual relationship of loyalty and representation of the patron’s interests, for example before the court. In return, the clients had to greet their patron regularly (sometimes every morning) at his house, run errands for him or support him at public appearances. If the patron aspired to public office, the clientele was obliged to vote for him in the popular assemblies (the so-called comitia). On patronage see, for an overview, Mączak, Antoni (2005): Unequal Friendship. Patronage relations from antiquity to the present. Fibre-Verlag, Osnabrück.
- 6.
At this point, a certain laxity of the series in dealing with historical accuracy becomes apparent, for it aims on the one hand at relationships and influence in social advancement and on the other hand at the existing possibilities of advancement through unscrupulous self-empowerment. The prescribed routes to the Senate via previously held political office play no role.
- 7.
Cf. on this the thematic issue “Violence” APuZ, 67th Jg., Issue 4/2017 with corresponding research overview of violence research and various interdisciplinary explanatory approaches.
- 8.
Cf. Menke 2018: 37 f. This interrelation of justice and revenge as well as justice and law and the transformations as well as the necessary conditions for it are impressively discussed by Christoph Menke in Das Schicksal des Rechts (The Fate of Law) on the basis of Agamemnon.
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Wilke, T. (2023). Everyday Use of Violence and Experience of Violence. In: Living and Dying in the Roman Republic . Palgrave Macmillan, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38870-6_7
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