Cognata Viscera: Cannibalism and Kinship in Pseudo-Quintilian’s Major Declamation 12

This paper argues that Pseudo-Quintilian’s Major Declamation 12 uses cannibalism to explore how disaster might destroy familial relations and permanently affect survivors. In this fictional oration, the speaker prosecutes a legate who failed to return to his famine-struck city with grain in time to prevent the inhabitants from resorting to survival cannibalism, which the speaker describes in gory detail.

Previous scholarship has discussed declamation’s utility for providing ethical education (Bloomer), inculcating shared values (Kaster), and exploring cases of situational ethics (Breij). Declamations can also be read as literature, however (Connolly), and recent scholarship on Major Declamation 12 has focused on the use of cannibalism to define a state (Cappello) or as gruesome entertainment (Hömke 2009 and 2021). Building on this scholarship and examining this declamation as a work of literature, I argue that the familial relationships between cannibals and cannibalized are central to our understanding of the declamation. I further argue, utilizing scholarship on the apocalyptic effects of plague (Gardner, Gomel), that the effects of the famine are lasting even though relief has arrived and aspects of normalcy, such as a trial, have returned.

I focus first on intrafamilial cannibalism in Major Declamation 12. The speaker mentions having eaten his own family members (12.2.2), and then states that the remnants of consumed corpses remain within the bodies of the cannibals, calling them cognata viscera (12.2.3). Throughout the declamation, the relationships between bodies (by consumption, by familial ties, or perhaps by sexual intercourse) are central to the speaker’s version of events. Eventually, parents reach the point of eating their children, including a mother who eats her newborn (12.27.4). The action of eating a newborn is reminiscent of Saturn, which, I argue, serves as a reference to the Saturnian Golden Age, especially in conjunction with events such as the inhabitants unsuccessfully attempting to forage for acorns (12.25.2), which are associated with the Golden Age (Levine).

Then, I turn towards similarities between Major Declamation 12 and ancient plague narratives, which offer a potential way to interpret both the effects of the famine and the hypothetical future of the city. The famine itself is called a lues (12.4.6) and a pestilentia (12.9.6), words which can denote plague, and the city is compared to a sick body (12.13.8). Here, several of Gardner’s observations on Golden Age and apocalyptic imagery help interpret what has happened to the city. Gomel, writing on modern plague narratives, notes that neither plagues nor plague narratives can have a clear ending, and this is true of the famine as well. While the legate has arrived with grain, the city’s troubles are not over—the city has no livestock to plough the fields for next year, it is in ruins, and many people have died. The declamation ends with a description of the spirits of the dead rising from those who ate them (12.28.5), providing a reminder of the relationships between cannibal and cannibalized, invoking the Olympian gods emerging from Saturn, and perhaps suggesting the inescapable nature of the famine’s lasting effects.