Caecilia Metella for Senate?
Entry posted by M. Porcius Cato
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Apparently the daughter of John F. Kennedy wants to be a senator. Having held no previous political office, which seems to have been both a necessary and a sufficient condition to be a senator in the Roman republic, her ambition is remarkable for a number of reasons. But what is says about political culture in the US and Rome is what has me fascinated.
One of the trickier Latin political terms is nobile. The root of our word, "noble," it connotes royalty and aristocracy. But the Latin term was initially much more humble than that. It simply meant "known". And in a city the size of Rome, where all magistrates were chosen by the people, name recognition was (then as now) an invaluable political asset. Just the name Cornelius or Metellus was a political asset, a sign that the candidate was no fly-by-night-nobody, but would have something to live up to -- viz., centuries of other Cornelii or Metelli that had used their own name recognition for the good of the republic.
It's all terribly unfair, of course. Cato the Elder, a New Man, used to upbraid the people for getting bamboozled by well-known names and for failing to recognize well-administered offices. Nobility--in the sense of an aristocracy--was what he warned would happen if the people continued to be dazzled by nobilitas, in the sense of name recognition. (Indeed, another New Man later used the old name of Julius for his own benefit, and the rest is history.)
I always wondered if this dumb reliance on name recognition came from the fact that politics in Rome was face-to-face. With no mass media, one had precious little to go on when voting for a dozen or so lower magistrates, except the names: X. Caecilius Metellus versus X. Nomen Nescius, etc. Adding to this impression is the fact that dynastic political families have been the exception, rather than the norm, in the American republic. Our own nobiles -- Adams, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Taft, Bush, and so on -- are vastly outnumbered by New Men with no family legacy: Polk, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Obama, and so on.
But now I'm not so sure. With (caroline) KENNEDY running against (andrew) CUOMO, it certainly feels like Metellus versus Cornelius all over again. Personally, I'm hoping for more candidates with funny-sounding names.
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