ABSTRACT
In meeting the challenge of vice Valerius’ rhetoric often makes use of a more generalized ritual rhetoric to castigate the guilty. In his examples of cruelty, Valerius turns with relief from Roman to foreign examples: “We shall turn to those examples, in which, although equal suffering is present, no shame is involved for our state” (transgrediemur nunc ad illa, quibus ut par dolor, ita nullus nostrae ciuitatis rubor inest; Valerius 9.2.ext.1). The crime that causes such shame is couched in terms of uncleanness and ritual violation, as if, for example, an animate sea could be violated by those unjustly killed. Valerius writes that Carthaginians who used their ships to run down Roman soldiers after a naval engagement were “going to violate the sea itself with a fleet polluted by foul crime” (taetro facinore pollutis classibus ipsum mare uiolaturi; 9.2.ext.1). What causes shame? Why should the sea find offense in slaughter? Unless, of course, the sea is treated as a divinity that favors just conduct more than it does criminal. Implicit in such a conception must be the knowledge that the sea, if enraged, can wreak no little havoc on those who would ply its waters.
