Informal Diplomacy in Late Republican Rome: An Analysis of Role Attribution in Cicero's Letters

This multidisciplinary project combines a close reading of ancient Latin letters with modern sociological role theory to analyse informal political communication in the Late Roman Republic (1st century BCE). This study demonstrates the function of roles - sets of patterned behaviours which are commonly recognised within a society - as resources for use in political communication, as certain roles engender expectations about an individual's behaviour or capacity for influencing others which could be used to mobilise support for a given political goal. This project seeks to incorporate a wave of recent research into various aspects of Roman informal diplomacy such as social convention (Hall 2009), mediation (Tatum 2017) and conversation (Rosillo-López 2021) by interrogating how the roles a person attributes to themselves or others facilitate their ability to engage in acts of informal political communication. Particular focus is given to the ways in which a narrative perpetuates roles, the function of roles within the sociological framework of "facework", and the impact representations of the relationship between certain roles has for the understanding of power dynamics in a political interaction. Our best insights into Roman informal political communication come from the letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero, a prominent statesman from 80-43 BCE. Some 900 letters and 90 replies survive, written to many of the Late Republic's most prominent political figures. These letters also span several crisis points for both Cicero's career and the wellbeing of the Roman state. Moreover, historical records provide a point of corroboration with these letters, allowing for a degree of connection between the attribution of roles in informal political communication and their effects on the political outcomes of the Roman state.

The main aim of this project is to demonstrate how role theory can be applied to a reading of Cicero's letters from 58-43 BCE to develop our understanding of informal political communication in the late Roman Republic. To achieve this, I address three secondary questions:

1. To what extent does role theory account for the behaviour of Cicero and others interacting with him in his letters?

2. What unique aspects of epistolary correspondence as a medium of communication emerge through a role theory-based reading of Cicero's letters?

3. What patterns of political activity or strategies of persuasive communication can be discerned through a role-based approach to ancient informal political communication?

I will adopt a qualitative case study methodology, drawing on a close reading of a selection of Cicero's letters informed by role theory. I will identify and discuss key aspects of Roman informal political communication, demonstrating how the attribution of roles contributes to the development of these aspects of communication. This research aims to broaden our understanding of Roman politics, as well as demonstrating the broad applicability of role theory as an approach for analysing and interpreting ancient communication as a whole.