# Doing Violence to the Roman Idea of Liberty? Freedom as Bodily Integrity in Roman Political Thought

Michelle T. Clarke. Journal article, 2014.
History of Political Thought 35, no. 2 (2014): 211–233.
Publisher: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/hpt/2014/00000035/00000002/art00001
Author's site: https://michelletclarke.com/

## Summary

Questions the neo-republican claim, associated with Quentin Skinner and Philip Pettit, that Romans understood liberty as freedom from arbitrary power. Drawing on Roman histories and orations, it argues that libertas meant something narrower and more physical: security from unpredictable, unjustified violence, won through the collective power of the civitas and enjoyed as a legal entitlement. This idea is closer to Judith Shklar’s liberalism of fear, and through her to genuinely neo-Roman writers such as Montaigne and Montesquieu.

## Topics

- Roman liberty
- Neo-republicanism
- Quentin Skinner
- Philip Pettit
- Judith Shklar
- Bodily integrity

## How to cite

Clarke, Michelle T. “Doing Violence to the Roman Idea of Liberty? Freedom as Bodily Integrity in Roman Political Thought.” *History of Political Thought* 35, no. 2 (2014): 211–233.

```bibtex
@article{clarke2014liberty,
  author    = {Clarke, Michelle T.},
  title     = {{Doing Violence to the Roman Idea of Liberty? Freedom as Bodily Integrity in Roman Political Thought}},
  year      = {2014},
  journal   = {History of Political Thought},
  volume    = {35},
  number    = {2},
  pages     = {211--233},
  url       = {https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/hpt/2014/00000035/00000002/art00001}
}
```

## Related work by the author

- Liberty, the People, and Republican Constitutionalism in Cicero’s Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo (Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek and Roman Political Thought, 2025): https://michelletclarke.com/articles/cicero-pro-rabirio-liberty.md
- Machiavelli and the Imagined Rome of Renaissance Humanism (History of Political Thought, 2015): https://michelletclarke.com/articles/machiavelli-imagined-rome-humanism.md
- The Mythologies of Contextualism: Method and Judgment in Skinner’s Visions of Politics (Political Studies, 2013): https://michelletclarke.com/articles/mythologies-of-contextualism-skinner.md