‘The Space and Sound of Silence: Embodied Political Communication and the Roman Senatorial Elite’

Project Information

RS SILENCE

Grant agreement ID: 101067066

DOI

10.3030/101067066

Project terminated on 31 August 2024

EC signature date 18 July 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 206 887,68

Coordinated by

GOETEBORGS UNIVERSITET
Sweden

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RS SILENCE (‘The Space and Sound of Silence: Embodied Political Communication and the Roman Senatorial Elite’)

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Silence does not indicate an absence of communication, but is full of meaning. People interpret silences according to the cultural norms they have, or according to their expectations of a person, group, or situation. Thus, studying silences is very revealing for historians and other researchers who seek to understand the values and practices of a society and the complex ways in which these are expressed.
For people in the ancient Roman world, the interpretation of silence was especially important in the political field, as speech and silence were fundamental to the small group face-to-face interactions of politics. Because of the centrality of speech and silence, the Romans, and particularly the elite, had developed complicated ideas and practices regarding silence. One important aspect of this was the idea that silence could be used as a diagnostic tool for whether a political system was tyrannical. This idea was a large part of discussions during the transformation of the political culture from a participatory Republic to an autocratic Empire in the late first century BCE and early first century CE.
Silence as an aspect of Roman political culture has not been studied before, so filling this gap in our knowledge is important for developing our knowledge of Roman culture, as well as providing a comparison to other historical societies and our own contemporary world.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

A key aspect of the project was reading theoretical and methodlogical studies of silence in other scientific disciplines and determining which aspects and approaches would be applicable to the Roman context and the evidence we have for it. Important insights were gathered from sound studies, feminist theory, and comparative history, which allowed the researcher to develop a theory of silence which focused on the cultural situatedness of specific gestures, practices, and ideas. The understanding of silence as a means of resistance as well as a means of suppression was informed by recent feminist research.
The project collected, categorised, and analysed the primary evidence for silence in Roman political culture. The majority of the evidence studied came from the texts of Cicero, and these were analysed with close reading techniques applied to the Latin texts.
Through presentations at three conferences and three research seminars, the preliminary findings of the research were communicated to other specialists in Ancient World studies, and the project's questions and interpretations were further developed in detail and nuance. Several new collaborative research partnerships were initiated, with a focus on future work we can do in this area.
The main achievement of the research was demonstrating just how much evidence there was for silence(s) in Roman political culture, and how important these were for interpreting key texts and episodes in Roman history. Focusing on this aspect allowed for a new reading of Cicero's views on speech, silence, freedom, tyranny, and the Republic. His views were complex, and they were developed according to the requirements of particular situations, rather than as a general theory. Nevertheless, after his death, his ideas on silence were further developed by others as a generalised critique of the power structures of the Principate. Moreover, an important finding of the research was that even during Cicero's lifetime, he was not the only politician using these techniques and ideas; his contemporaries were adept at using and interpreting them too. Therefore, while Cicero emerges from the research as the most important figure in the development of a Roman rhetoric of silence, his contribution unfolded in dialogue with his peers.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The results of the project were the development of a theoretical framework for silence in Roman political culture, and the demonstration of how the study of silence leads to a new understanding of the theories and practices of Roman politics. Both the theoretical framework and the Roman case study have great potential for impact, not only for the field of Roman studies, but for comparative work with other societies.
Some of the results have already been communicated in research papers and conference presentations, and the remaining results will be communicated in a journal article and a monograph, which are in preparation.