The public space of res publica is a tangible,
geographic zone of daily life. It corresponds
to the free flow of persons traversing the
city on their ordinary business, stopping to
‘chew the cud’ or solicit favours or attention.
Demagoguery and political tyranny
can be measured, physically, by the extent
to which the demagogues restrict this free
flow of persons with their bodyguards,
private armies or thugs. Thus Cicero’s greatest
moment – the memory of which he never
tires of recounting – comes where he rescues
the Roman streets from the threat of the
conspirator Cataline’s goons. Given the pervasiveness
of our post-Enlightenment political
fantasies concerning an abstract ‘public
sphere’ and the ‘civil society’ which supposedly
dwells in it, it should be emphasised that
there is nothing remotely democratic or even
egalitarian about this kind of public liberty.
The Roman streets are not public thoroughfares,
nor is there a self-evident human right
to equal space or an equal share of human
dignity on their cobblestones. Dignitas, as the
Romans called it, is an explicitly status- and
gender-specific attribute.8