The laudatio Iuliae amitae is a well-known funeral oration that Julius Caesar

Julius Caesar

Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

 delivered in 68 BC to honor his deceased aunt Julia

Julia Caesaris (wife of Marius)

Julia Caesaris was a daughter of Gaius Julius Caesar II and Marcia . She was a sister of Gaius Julius Caesar III and Sextus Julius Caesar III....

, the widow of Marius

Gaius Marius

Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...

. The introduction of this laudatio funebris is reproduced in the work Divus Iulius by the Roman historian

Roman historiography

Roman Historiography is indebted to the Greeks, who invented the form. The Romans had great models to base their works upon, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. Roman historiographical forms are different from the Greek ones however, and voice very Roman concerns. Unlike the Greeks, Roman...

 Suetonius

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....

:

"When quaestor, he pronounced the customary orations from the rostra in praise of his aunt Julia and his wife Cornelia, who had both died, and in the eulogy of his aunt he spoke in the following terms of her paternal and maternal ancestry and that of his own father: The family of my aunt Julia is descended by her mother from the kings and on her father's side is akin to the immortal gods. For the Marcii Reges go back to Ancus Marcius, and the Iulii, the family of which ours is a branch, to Venus. Our stock therefore has at once the sanctity of kings, whose power is supreme among mortal men, and the claim to reverence which attaches to the gods, who hold sway over kings themselves."

Analysis

The oration is a good example of how Caesar creates a speech in the genus demonstrativum as hymnic prose throughout, but with a decisive Caesarian character: His piece is of immaculate elocution and never loses its clarity and dispassion, even though the magniloquence of the topic could have easily enticed him to render it more exuberantly.

Caesar contrasts the two complexes—gods and kings—with almost mathematical precision, neither losing the systemic construct in the sentential context nor in the chosen word order, even framing his introduction with a skilled περίοδος by combining the regia and the divina gens in the last sentence and reprising the initial regibus as reges, thereby bringing the introduction to an organic conclusion.

The pneumatic and monarchic aspects are carefully emphasized by the closing metrics, which naturally induce a heroic feeling, when Caesar refers to ancient regality, and by vocal elongation, commonly associated with the sacral sphere (diis), which he seldom contrasts with short syllables. For this reason his speech develops a monumental grandeur at times without being too presumptuous.

Caesar himself abstains from using the moment to make pretentious or even vicious demands, but the oration will surely have angered many of the Roman nobility, because—as so often with Caesar—the devil is in the details: On the surface he seems to respect the division of kings and gods as well as the difference between the human and the divine sphere. But he clearly refers to Ancus Marcius

Ancus Marcius

Ancus Marcius was the legendary fourth of the Kings of Rome.He was the son of Marcius and Pompilia...

, an ancient Roman king, who was said to have revived and completed the religious institutions of Numa

Numa

Numa may refer to:* Numa Pompilius, legendary second king of Rome* Numa Morikazu, Meiji era Japanese politician* Numa, Iowa, U.S. town* The Numa Numa Internet meme* The Northern Paiute people...

 after succeeding Tullus Hostilius

Tullus Hostilius

Tullus Hostilius was the legendary third of the Kings of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius, and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius...

. Caesar skillfully harmonizes the two complexes by emphasizing the sanctitas of the kings, making them a vis-à-vis of the gods with their caerimonia. Furthermore Caesar functions not only as an orator but as the terminus of the two gentilician branches, introducing the attributes not only as family matters but as something that Caesar is entitled to by birthright. This incorporation of monarchic and divine attributes is therefore seen as an early proclamation of Caesar's aspiration for political and religious power in Rome.