Rome's Visceral Reactions: Politics and Poetics in Flesh and Blood

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Rome's Visceral Reactions: Politics and Poetics in Flesh and Blood

by Caitlin Hines

University of Michigan Press, 2026

ISBNs

Cloth: 978-0-472-13366-6

eISBN: 978-0-472-90539-3 (OA)

About the Book

In ancient Rome, the Latin word viscera denoted the inner parts of the body, where physical sensations related to fear and anger could be felt and whose injury meant certain death. Viscera were also entangled with religious, political, and reproductive imagery: the word could refer to cuts of sacrificial meat, the inner workings of a governing body, a mother’s fertile womb, and the offspring she has carried. It appears in scientific descriptions of human anatomy, in elaborations of violent deaths, accusations of political conspiracy, and the laments of parents who must watch their children die. The sudden expansions of viscera into vivid metaphors for the body politic, the violated womb, and the desecrated sacrifice materialized in parallel with watershed moments in Roman history, reflecting urgent contemporary anxieties about politics, reproduction, and succession. Rome’s Visceral Reactions traces and interprets the semantic history of viscera, whose progressive acquisition of new meanings offers a compelling case for the dynamic interaction between body metaphor, semantic change, and political crisis at Rome.

Caitlin Hines follows the history of viscera from its earliest attestations through the end of the Julio-Claudian period and considers the works of Lucretius, Cicero, Vergil, Livy, Ovid, Seneca, and Lucan. Applying theories of embodied cognition and semantic change, Hines demonstrates how Roman authors influenced the development of their language through the invention, reception, and affirmation of innovative meanings and how pressing political and cultural crises could shape, and be shaped in return, by the sophisticated linguistic games of the Roman literary elite.

About the Author

Caitlin Hines is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Cincinnati.

Reviews

“Rome’s Visceral Reactions offers nuanced and informed close readings of key Latin texts of interest to classical scholars and students. The writing and presentation are unusually clear and accessible notwithstanding the technical matters under discussion. This book’s content and methodology alike will inspire many who study Latin language and literature.”— Nandini Pandey, Johns Hopkins University

“Rome’s Visceral Reactions contributes to the study of several canonical Roman poets, by adding deep context for instances of the term viscera. It will appeal to students and researchers (and other aficionados) of Latin culture and poetry, especially those interested in body-related topics such as gender and reproduction, or violence and horror.”— Dunstan Lowe, University of Kent

“In this slender but challenging but intellectually capacious volume, Hines presents a well-documented, selective survey and philological analysis of the word ”viscera" (the inner organs of the body) within specific Roman texts, offering an original and provocative interpretation of how language, politics, and the human body converged in ancient Rome. Focusing on the three themes of politics, reproduction, and succession, the study combines literary-critical analysis with theories of cognition and semantic change. Summing up: Recommended. Graduate students and faculty only."

— J. S. Louzonis, Choice