Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Imperial Theater of War: Republican Virtues under Siege in Cervantes's Numancia

2005; Routledge; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14636200500142624

1469-9818

Michael Armstrong-Roche,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes I adopt the title proposed in Alfredo Hermenegildo's 1976 edition (Cervantes, La destruición). All citations to this edition, marked in the text by verse number or–when I cite a stage direction without verse number–in a note by page number. Hereafter, I refer to the play as Numancia. For Numancia's likely dates of composition, see Canavaggio Canavaggio Jean Cervantès dramaturge: Un théâtre à naître Paris Presses Universitaires de France 1977 [Google Scholar], Cervantès dramaturge 20. This is the same Scipio (Scipio Numantinus or Scipio Africanus the younger) responsible for destroying Carthage in 146B.C. See Astin Astin AE Scipio Aemilianus Oxford Oxford UP 1967 [Google Scholar]. On republican discourse in 16th-century Spain, frequently associated with the traditional liberties of towns and once-sovereign dominions such as Aragón, see Gil "Aragonese Constitutionalism" and "Republican Politics in Early Modern Spain." The critical distinctions between ancient and modern forms of republicanism–direct rather than representative democracy; the separation of powers defined by estates and not by executive, legislative, and judicial functions; and the principle that the Constitution is a fundamental law not subject to alterations by a simple legislative act–are discussed by Fontana and Nippel. Cervantes's uses of "república" align with contemporary political and lexicographic authorities. A representative example is the meaning attached to it by Transila in Persiles (1617), heroic bride and self-exile for an act of martial disobedience against custom-sanctioned rape by her in-laws. She declares her compatriots' "bárbaras costumbres" unworthy of a "bien ordenada república". See Cervantes Los trabajos 210. Interestingly, the lexicographer Covarrubias (Covarrubias 906) leaves in Latin the sense of a respublica or political community marked especially by its liberty (Latine respublica, libera civitas, status, liberae civitatis). Otherwise he defines a "repúblico" as a public servant ("el hombre que trata del bien común"). The Diccionario de Autoridades (Diccionario 586), published in 1737, attests a wider range of meanings. Following Diego Saavedra Fajardo in his Idea de un Príncipe Político Christiano Representada en cien empresas (1640), "república" is said to refer simply to government (as Saavedra Fajardo has it, there are three kinds of "republics" or governments, namely, monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy). Other senses noted include the public good and broadly defined communities bound by shared interests and rules, such as "the republic of letters." "Repúblicos" (or Republicans) are described as public servants who act for the common good or those with an aptitude for political service. For the sense of "república" equivalent to our "society" in Don Quijote and contemporary witnesses, see Carreras y Artau Carreras y Artau Tomás La filosofía del derecho en el Quijote: Ensayos de psicología Colectiva Gerona Carreras y Mas 1903 [Google Scholar] 126–135. For the sense of "república" equivalent to our "state," see Maravall 94–111. In Spain, Juan Luis Vives published a version of Cicero's Latin text together with his own commentary (Praefatio et Vigilia in Somnium Scipionis Ciceroniani; 1520). See Noreña 307. A Spanish translation in Vives. The 16th-century diffusion of the four cardinal virtues–one of the great commonplaces–is attested, among other ways, by royal iconography on public display for such ceremonial occasions as the death of the emperor Charles V. See Sebastián 308–315. Despite the Church's prohibition of suicide, it is viewed favorably in Numancia by several characters–including the personification of Spain–who associate it with liberty from Roman slavery in defeat or subjection to unjustly imposed Roman power (Numancia 385–388, 1314–1317, 1346–1353, 2076–2083, 2092–2097). In Roman historiography and Stoic ethics and even in later Christian poets such as Dante, Lucretia and Cato were linked with the theme of republican liberty. Lucretia's rape and suicide were followed by Roman overthrow and expulsion of the Etruscan tyrants (the Tarquins), which enabled the foundation of the republic. For a discussion of the story of Lucretia as "a founding myth of liberty" in Florentine humanism, of a sacrificial victim whose willingly accepted death ushers in a new order (the Roman and later Florentine republics), see Jed. Cato's suicide punctuated the end of the Roman republic, a gesture for liberty against Julius Caesar's dictatorship. In book 4 of the Inferno, Dante places Lucretia in Limbo together with other virtuous pagans; Cato Uticensis is Dante's guide in Purgatory. For a discussion of Dante's rehabilitation of Cato, see Mazzotta 48–65. For medieval and early-modern Republicanism, civic humanism, and the revival of classical virtue-based political discourse I have relied especially on Baron Baron Hans The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny Princeton Princeton UP 1966 [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] 20–21, 34–37, 54–57, 71, 74, 106, 112–116, 443–462; Pocock 3–330; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought 1–189 and Visions of Politics 10–159; and Millar 55–79. For the imperialism of the Roman republic, see Harris. A review of humanist and scholastic justifications for war in Tuck 16–77. Theodore Beardsley Beardsley Theodore Hispano-Classical Translations Printed Between 1482 and 1699 Pittsburgh Duquesne UP 1970 [Google Scholar] (40–41 no. 55) describes four reprints (dated 1549, 1550, and 1582) of Juan de Jarava's Spanish translation of Cicero's Somnium. See Johnson, "La Numancia and the Structure of Cervantine Ambiguity." On the historical and legendary sources for the siege of Numancia available to Cervantes, see Cervantes, Comedias y entremeses 34–62 and Canavaggio, Cervantès dramaturge 40–46 and "Le dénouement." Both the Flemish and the New World parallels have been seconded more recently by Barbara Simerka (78, 97, and 193), who sees Numancia as reflecting a court divided in the 1570s between a hawkish, Castillianist Alba faction and a more conciliatory, federalist Eboli faction. Xavier Gil ("Republican Politics in Early Modern Spain" 266–271) notes that royalist opponents of comunero aspirations were liable to tar them with the broad brush of republicanism. In modern scholarship the claim is amplified by José Antonio Maravall (who presents the comunero revolt as a kind of proto-modern bourgeois revolution) and contested by Joseph Pérez. Gil also cites more than one contemporary observer in Spain liable to decry the dangerous "liberties" of the Venetian and Genoese republics and to link them with constitutionalist traditions in the Habsburg realms, notably the Aragon's with its fueros. Elsewhere (Armstrong-Roche Armstrong-Roche Michael "(The) Patria Besieged: Border-Crossing Paradoxes of National Identity in Cervantes's Numancia." Border Interrogations: Crossing and Questioning the Spanish Frontier from the Middle Ages to the Present Eds. Simon Doubleday and Benita Sampedro Oxford Berghahn Books 2005 [Google Scholar]) I argue that Numancia defeats any single-minded effort to identify Habsburg Spain with Numancia (promoted by such contemporary historians as Morales) or Rome (promoted by Habsburg royal iconography) because both are presented as morally suspect. I also suggest that the play treats national identity as a question rather than a foreordained answer predetermined by ethnicity, religion, or the law and that the question it raises implicitly is whether the patria embodies key virtues or betrays them. A detailed reconstruction of the model of Roman imperialism in the New World controversies by Lupher 43–188. I have restored the final clause "denique quam Simiae prope dixerim ab hominibus" from the first redaction. See Sepúlveda 33, note 28. Frederick A. de Armas (Armas Armas Frederick Ade Cervantes, Raphael, and the Classics Cambridge Cambridge UP 1998 [Google Scholar] 174–190) also argues that Numancia challenges the vision of Scipio in Cicero, Macrobius, and Vives, but sees Scipio as an inherently noble character tragically brought low by hybris. Cervantes La destruición de Numancia 60. A comparative survey of classical and early modern reflection on fama can be found in Lida de Malkiel.