Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall, Catherine E W Steel - Reading Republican Oratory - Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions-Oxford University Press (2018)

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 1/12/2017, SPi
READING REPUBLICAN ORATORY

Reading Republican
Oratory
Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions
Edited by
C H R I S T A GR A Y , A N DR E A B A L B O ,
RICHARD M. A. MARSHALL,
and
C A T H E R I N E E. W. S T E E L
1
3
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Preface
This volume originated in a conference held at the University of Turin on

15–17 April 2015, organized by Catherine Steel and Andrea Balbo as part of the
Fragments of the Roman Republican Orators project based at the University of
Glasgow and funded by the European Research Council (2012–17). We are
grateful to the School of Humanities at the University of Glasgow and to the
Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici dell’Università di Torino for their assistance
in running the conference and to all the participants at the conference for their
contributions to our discussions. The conference organizers have been joined in
the process of editing by two of the Research Assistants on the FRRO project,
Christa Gray and Richard Marshall, and the task of putting the volume together
has been smoothed for us by the quick and responsive collaboration of all the
contributors. The editors are grateful to Zara Chadha, who assisted with putting
the typescript together and prepared the indexes with skill and accuracy.
Additional research costs were generously subsidised by the Alexander von
Humboldt Foundation. Finally, we must thank Oxford University Press for
their support and encouragement with this project from its outset.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables ix

List of Abbreviations xi
List of Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
PART A: TRANSMISSION
i. Republican Rome 17
1. Roman Orators between Greece and Rome: The Case of
Cato the Elder, L. Crassus, and M. Antonius 19
Alexandra Eckert
2. Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 33
Ian Goh
3. Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 49
Elena Torregaray Pagola
4. The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius
Aurelius Cotta in Cicero’s Brutus 59
Alfredo Casamento
ii. Imperial Rome 75
5. The Fragments of Republican Orators in Quintilian’s Institutio
oratoria 77
Amedeo Raschieri
6. Vis and Seruitus: The Dark Side of Republican Oratory
in Valerius Maximus 95
S. J. Lawrence
7. Reconstructing Republican Oratory in Cassius Dio’s
Roman History 111
Christopher Burden-Strevens
8. Netting the Wolf-Fish: Gaius Titius in Macrobius and Cicero 135
John Dugan
viii Contents
PART B: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FRAGMENTS

AND THEIR SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
CONTEXTS
i. Reconstructions in the Literal Sense 151
9. Gaius Titius, Orator and Poeta. (Cic. Brut. 167 and Macrob.
Sat. 3.16.4–16) 153
Alberto Cavarzere
10. Clodius’ Contio de haruspicum responsis 171
Anthony Corbeill
11. ‘Certain gentlemen say . . .’: Cicero, Cato, and the Debate
on the Validity of Clodius’ Laws 191
Kit Morrell
ii. Oratorical Performance 211
12. The Politics of Pronuntiatio: The Rhetorica ad Herennium
and Delivery in the Early First Century BC 213
Jennifer Hilder
13. Traces of Actio in Fragmentary Roman Orators 227
Andrea Balbo
14. I Said, He Said: Fragments of Informal Conversations and
the Grey Zones of Public Speech in the Late Roman Republic 247
Cristina Rosillo-López
iii. Gender in Fragmentary Oratory 261
15. Of Fragments and Feelings: Roman Funeral Oratory Revisited 263
Hans Beck
16. Fragments of Epideictic Oratory: The Exemplary Case of the
Laudatio Funebris for Women 281
Cristina Pepe
17. Women from the Rostra: Fulvia and the Pro Milone 297
Bill Gladhill
18. Oratorum Romanarum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae:
The Letter of Cornelia, Mater Gracchorum, and the
Speeches of Her Father and Son 309
Judith P. Hallett
Bibliography 319
Index Locorum 355
General Index 362
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1. Citations per orator 79
5.2. Citations per book 80
Tables
13.1. Voice 231
13.2. Gestures 231
13.3. Movements 231
13.4. Combined elements 231
List of Abbreviations
AE (1888–), L’Année épigraphique. Paris.

CIL (1862–), Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Berlin.
FGrHist F. Jacoby (ed.) (1923–), Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker. Berlin.
FIR7 C. G. Bruns, T. Mommsen, and O. Gradenwitz (eds) (1887), Fontes Iuris
Romani Antiqui. Tübingen.
FIRA2 S. Riccobono, (ed.) (1968‒9), Fontes Iuris Romani Antejustiniani. Florence.
FRH H. Beck and U. Walter (eds) (2001–), Die frühen römischen Historiker.
FRHist T. J. Cornell et al. (eds) (2013), Fragments of the Roman Historians, 3 vols.
Oxford.
GLK H. Keil (ed.) (1855–1923), Grammatici Latini, 8 vols., repr. 1961. Leipzig.
Halm K. Halm (1863), Rhetores Latini minores. Leipzig.
HRR H. Peter (ed.) (1870–1906), Historicorum Romanorum Reliquiae, 2 vols.
Leipzig.
IGRR R. Cagnat (1901–27), Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes,
4 vols. Paris.
ILS H. Dessau (ed.) (1892–1906), Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, 5 vols. Leipzig.
MRR T. R. S. Broughton (1951–2, 1986), The Magistrates of the Roman Republic,
3 vols. New York and Atlanta.
OLD P. G. W. Glare (ed.) (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed. Oxford.
4
ORF E. Malcovati (ed.) (1976), Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta Liberae Rei
Publicae, 2 vols. Turin.
PIR2 E. Groag et al. (eds) (1933–2015), Prosopographia imperii Romani saec.
I. II. III. 8 vols. Berlin.
RE G. Wissowa et al. (eds) (1893–1978), Paulys Realencyclopädie der
klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. Stuttgart.
TLL (1900–), Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. Leipzig.
TLRR M. C. Alexander (1990), Trials in the Late Roman Republic, 149 BC–50 BC.
Toronto and London.
List of Contributors
Andrea Balbo is Lecturer at the University of Turin and also teaches at the
University of Italian Switzerland in Lugano.
Hans Beck is Professor of Ancient History and John MacNaughton Chair of
Classics at McGill University.
Christopher Burden-Strevens is Lecturer in Ancient History at the Univer-
sity of Kent.
Alfredo Casamento is Associate Professor of Latin Language and Literature
at the University of Palermo.
Alberto Cavarzere is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the
University of Verona.
Anthony Corbeill is Basil L. Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at the Univer-
sity of Virginia.
John Dugan is Associate Professor in the Department of Classics at the State
University of New York at Buffalo.
Alexandra Eckert is Assistant Professor in Ancient History at the University
of Oldenburg.
Bill Gladhill is Associate Professor in History and Classical Studies at McGill
University.
Ian Goh is Lecturer in Classics at Swansea University.
Christa Gray is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading and
a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation at the
Humboldt University in Berlin.
Judith P. Hallett is Professor of Classics at the University of Maryland,
College Park.
Jennifer Hilder is Lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History
at Durham University.
S. J. Lawrence is Charles Tesoriero Lecturer in Latin at the University of New
England.
Richard M. A. Marshall is Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and
Research Associate on the ERC-funded project ‘Fragments of the Republican
Roman Orators’.
xiv List of Contributors
Kit Morrell is Research Associate in the Department of Classics and Ancient

History at the University of Sydney.
Elena Torregaray Pagola is Lecturer in Classics at the University of the
Basque Country.
Cristina Pepe is Research Associate in Classical Philology at the University of
Campania ‘L. Vanvitelli’.
Amedeo Raschieri is Research Associate in the Department of Literary
Studies, Philology, and Linguistics at the University of Milan.
Cristina Rosillo-López is Senior Lecturer in History at the Universidad Pablo
de Olavide, Seville.
Catherine E. W. Steel is Professor of Classics at the University of Glasgow
and Principal Investigator on the ERC-funded project ‘Fragments of the
Republican Roman Orators’.
Introduction
Recent decades have seen a vigorous discussion among scholars about the
significance of public speech in the workings of the Roman Republic.1
Although Rome had developed into a vast empire by the first century BC,
it retained the political structures of the city state from which it had
originated.2 These included citizen participation in political decision-making
and a concomitant role for political oratory. In a society without mechan-
ically reproduced mass media, oratory represented a uniquely effective way
to communicate with a large number of people, and the contio was the chief
means of disseminating information to the citizen body as a preliminary
to legislative activity. Such information could include reports of debates in
the Senate, and senators could also disseminate versions of their contribu-
tions to senatorial meetings.3 Alongside these occasions for speech were
others, less directly connected with specific decisions but not irrelevant to
the civic life of the community, such as speeches delivered at the funerals of
those prominent in public life, as well as a range of utterances which took
place in public and had the potential to contribute to the reputations and
perceptions of politicians.
A major challenge in the analysis of political oratory in the Roman Republic
is the partial nature of the surviving evidence. We are well supplied with
oratorical texts for the end of the Republic, but these are all by Cicero. The
purpose of this volume is to explore the ways in which we can recover oratory
by men (and, in exceptional cases, women) other than Cicero. It is concerned
with both the methods by which we can reconstruct non-Ciceronian oratory
and with the results of such reconstructions: what can we know about the
1
Some milestones are Millar 1998; Morstein-Marx 2004; Achard 2006; Blom 2016; Blom,
Gray, and Steel (forthcoming). This volume itself is part of the European Research Council
funded project ‘The Fragments of Republican Roman Oratory’ (FRRO), which seeks to identify
all the evidence for oratory by speakers other than Cicero during the Roman Republic.
2
The extent to which these mechanisms of participation made Republican Rome democratic
has been hotly debated; see, in addition to n. 1, Millar 1984; 1986; Jehne 1995.
3
Before Caesar’s legislation to publish the acta senatus in 59 BC, this was often the only way to
publicize such information.
2 Introduction
content, context, allusions, and delivery of such speeches? In part, the chal-
lenges involved in accessing fragmentary oratory are identical to the problems
of understanding the transmission processes of ancient Roman literature in
general. But, as we will argue below, oratory is a genre which is uniquely
difficult to pin down because it is an oral phenomenon which needs no writing
at all; even where writing and spoken oratory intersect, the written traces that
survive of this process are not, in the case of Republican Rome, straightfor-
ward transcripts of speeches as these were actually delivered.
One method of transmitting oratory was through texts which purported to
record in writing what had been said in speeches, and which were dissemin-
ated by those who delivered the speech. In this way the spoken word was
replaced by an authoritative written analogue that could enter the literary
tradition and be quoted, excerpted, or alluded to like any other work of
literature. The prime examples of this type are the speeches of Cicero, many
of which have come down to us in their entirety through the literary tradi-
tion. However, Cicero is in many ways a unique case. As an outsider to the
senatorial nobility, he was very conscious of the need to base his career on
substantive achievements, namely his prowess as an orator. As a result, the
emphasis in his theoretical works on the importance of oratory in Roman
politics may well be exaggerated; the scale of publication of his speeches, and
perhaps even their circulation as works of literature, also reflects his distinctive
profile. Other politicians found other ways of promoting themselves: Caesar,
for example, published his Commentarii on the Gallic and Civil Wars; Pom-
pey’s supporters produced terracotta busts in his image.4 Because Cicero
foregrounded oratory and many of his ‘speeches’ survive, his oratorical prac-
tice has generated huge amounts of scholarship in its own right.5 This volume
will focus instead on public speech which survives only in pieces, whether in
quotations, citations, theoretical discussions, or the creative reworkings of
historians and others. Of these snatches of oratorical expression, some had
their origins in speeches that were published on behalf of their authors—like
Cicero’s—but were later lost from the record. Others may have been remem-
bered as dicta or ‘winged words’, sayings that entered popular consciousness
and became emblematic of their speakers’ characters, such as the notorious
Carthago delenda est of the elder Cato.6 Yet more survive merely through
summaries of what was said on particular occasions. In other cases again, the
character of a performance is recorded implicitly through the reactions to it.
Here the notion of ‘character’ combines views of the speaker’s personality with
4
Rosillo-López in Blom, Gray and Steel (forthcoming).
5
Tempest 2011; Gildenhard 2011.
6
Incidentally, the earliest evidence for this saying appears to belong to the Imperial period:
Plin. NH 15.74, clamaret omni senatu Carthaginem delendam.
Introduction 3
his (hardly ever her)7 rhetorical technique—including the use of voice, facial
expression, and gesture—and the content of his words. Sometimes these
aspects are itemized in our sources, but more often the impression given is
an integrated one of the performance as a whole.8 Furthermore, not all public
speech took the shape of formal set pieces: spontaneous and even casual
remarks had the potential to become equally notorious.9 Our intention is to
supplement the complete (Ciceronian) works preserved in written transmis-
sion and to investigate, as far as is possible, the relationships between the
fragmentary and tangential evidence that is recorded and the oral contexts in
which it (only supposedly, in some cases) originated.
The methodological problems in getting to grips with Roman Republican
speech as it was spoken and heard are deep and varied. There are numerous
factors that influence the means by which a speech was recorded and the
content that was ultimately preserved. From the delivery of a speech on-
wards, the priorities of a variety of agents determined what was recorded
and remembered, and, of course, the criteria of relevance were constantly
being negotiated. Even if the intention in a specific case was to preserve a
verbatim account, the gap between what was actually said and what was
written down was, in technical terms, nearly unbridgeable. Even if an orator
is assumed to have spoken from a script that is extant, there is no guarantee
that he stuck exactly to this script; nor is it possible to reconstruct from a
script the orator’s delivery or the mood of the audience.10 In fact, the use of
scripts does not appear to correspond with what is known of oratorical
practice in this period,11 and no surviving text purports to be an absolutely
accurate transcript of a speech recorded for the speaker during the actual act
of delivery.
Nonetheless, it remains useful to treat an orator’s authorized written text as
a distinctive form of evidence: given the difficulties outlined above, it would be
unwise to treat this as a record of the exact words spoken on a particular
occasion, but it does preserve what an orator wished it to be remembered that
he had said, with consequent implications for the probability, if not the
veracity, of his words: it might be said that such a text preserves what an
orator believed he was plausibly capable of saying under the most favourable
7
The vast majority of public speakers we know of are male. See section B.iii in this volume
for a discussion of women in oratory.
8
Relevant papers in this volume: especially Balbo; Hilder; Casamento.
9 10
Rosillo-López in this volume. Cf. Balbo in this volume.
11
The emphasis on memoria within ancient rhetorical practice (cf. e.g. Rhet. Her. 3.28–40;
Cic. De or. 2.351–3; Quint. Inst. 11.2.11–16) points to an environment in which orators spoke
from memory, even if the text they memorized had been prepared using writing. In fact Cicero,
of whose practice we know most, seems to have combined detailed textual preparation of some
parts of speeches with a willingness to extemporize, increasing the difficulties in taking his
speeches as direct transcriptions.
4 Introduction
of performance circumstances.12 In all cases except that of Cicero, the only
remains of this kind of textual evidence are preserved in the excerpts of later
writers, and consequently we have only fragments. According to this line of
thinking, the definition of an oratorical fragment is a faithfully transmitted
excerpt copied from a text which was published by an orator and records the
exact words which he spoke (or rather, wished to be remembered as having
spoken) on the occasion.13 Such fragments are vulnerable to the vicissitudes
common to fragments of ancient texts in general: it is not always clear how
faithfully the excerpters copied their originals, and, additionally, their own
works were not exempt from copying errors, manuscript damage, and the
like. A further difficulty with oratorical fragments is that the information
about the quoted text is often partial or absent in the quoting authority. An
ancient author who purports to quote what an orator said without identify-
ing his source may have had in front of him (or stored in his memory) the
text of the speech as originally disseminated by the orator, but it is also
possible that the information comes from another kind of source, such as a
historiographical text, in which case the words cannot, on this definition, be
treated as a fragment of that orator.
It may be the case, therefore, that a fragment contains strong, verbatim
evidence about the content of a speech, but equally, owing to the problems of
recording and transmission that we have outlined above, a passage that
appears to be a fragment may in reality be something else. Further, not all
orators chose to publish their speeches in the first place: Cicero explicitly tells
us, for example, that Scipio Africanus did not engage in this practice.14 And
an excerpted passage can only reveal a limited amount of information if the
context is not recorded—never mind such details of a performance as venue,
audience, the speaker’s voice, appearance, gestures, and so on, absences
which even affect the value of Cicero’s transmitted speeches.15 For all these
reasons, testimonia, which summarize arguments, occasions, and delivery,
may be equally, if not more, informative, and even, in some respects, more
‘truthful’. By extension, even the reimagined speeches found in historical
writings may preserve genuine aspects of an original performance, even if
12
This point is well illustrated by the case of Cicero’s two speeches Pro Milone: Cass. Dio
40.54.3–4; Asc. Mil. 42C.
13
This is the definition of a fragment which the FRRO project uses; it classes all other
evidence as testimonia.
14
Cic. Off. 3.4: quamquam Africanus maiorem laudem meo iudicio adsequebatur. nulla enim
eius ingenii monumenta mandata litteris, nullum opus otii, nullum solitudinis munus exstat
(‘And yet Africanus, in my view, achieved the greater glory, as no records of his talent were
preserved in writing, no product of his free time, no work arising from his solitude exists’).
Translation: FRRO.
15
For extratextual aspects of public speech, see especially in this volume: Hilder; Balbo; Beck.
Introduction 5
they are additionally refracted through the practice of declamation and the
conventions of historiography.16
In whatever ways these utterances were recorded, read, quoted, or otherwise
remembered and passed on, they became part of a wider tradition which left
its stamp on all sorts of media.17 Literary, didactic, and political currents
constantly reframed and reshaped the expressions of Roman values and
identity that relate to public oratory. In many cases it is impossible to separate
a piece of evidence from its transmission context, let alone restore it to its
original, pristine state, with all the accretions of history removed.18 A sensitive
analysis of fragmentary oratory therefore requires not only knowledge of the
historical circumstances of the original speech, but a thorough awareness of
the literary, cultural, and ideological factors (among others) whose interaction
produced and preserved the material we have today. From our end of the
tradition, an ostensibly verbatim quotation of a speech may look more ‘au-
thentic’ or ‘original’ than a summary or an adaptation—but how certain can
we be in each case that the quotation reaches back unchanged to the vocal
apparatus of the speaker, or at least to a published version of a speech?
A summary or adaptation, on the other hand, may accurately record infor-
mation regarding the delivery of the speech, though not the ipsissima uerba of
the orator.
These various problems come with crucial implications for reconstructing
and analysing Roman public speech as a whole: it may be possible to classify
our evidence according to a hierarchy of authority with varying degrees of
confidence, but there is no criterion which guarantees absolute certainty. The
entire ‘experience’ of fragmentary oratory (i.e. oratory as we may seek to
reconstruct it from both fragments and testimonia) depends on a series of
interpretative screens imposed during antiquity and beyond: these are in many
ways more varied than we find with other fragmentary genres, because we are
not simply dealing with the willingness of later generations to read and copy
texts, but also with the variable processes of creating oratorical and quasi-
oratorical texts in the first place, and with the different interests—moralizing,
biographical, geopolitical, educational—upon which the recording of orator-
ical testimonia is predicated. The distinctive approach of this volume therefore
consists in foregrounding the issues that confront the modern critic in reach-
ing back to Roman Republican speech through the (mainly textual) evidence
that we rely upon today.
16
See Burden-Strevens in this volume for a defence of the usefulness of Dio Cassius in
this regard.
17
See Eckert 2016 for a case study of ancient memorialization of a prominent Republican
figure, L. Cornelius Sulla.
18
See Dugan in this volume.
6 Introduction
One central question concerns the impact of the end of the Republic: to
what extent did this condition Imperial authors to view oratory in their own
day as qualitatively or functionally different to oratory as practised before
Augustus? There are two main transformations which are likely to have
influenced their reception of Republican oratory: the loss of parrhesia or
‘free speech’ under the emperors (a topic foregrounded in Tacitus’ Dialogus),
and a fundamental change in the uses to which oratory was put. Deliberative
oratory survived, albeit restricted mainly to senatorial debates; judicial ora-
tory continued, sometimes in new spaces, and with more emphasis on the
centumviral courts; and epideictic oratory flourished thanks to the new import-
ance of praise speeches. Together, many contemporary sources perceived these
changes in terms of decadence (for example, the elder Seneca,19 Petronius,20
Velleius Paterculus,21 Quintilian,22 Pseudo-Longinus,23 and others). As Andrea
Balbo has shown in his edition of Tiberian oratorical fragments, however, the
concept of decadence, with its ethical connotations, is not a particularly app-
ropriate way of explaining these transformations: not only did many of the
older speeches continue to be read and copied as examples (as attested by
Quintilian,24 Suetonius,25 Tacitus,26 and others), but the practice of oratory
continued to be relevant. The oratory of the Imperial age was different, but not
necessarily less ‘valuable’ than that of the Republican period. Contemporaries,
however, perceived these functional changes as marking a qualitative decline
in oratory.
Their negative outlook was partly conditioned by the spaces in and occa-
sions upon which oratory was practised. The presence of the princeps placed a
constraint on the opportunities for political speech, and the increase in
maiestas-cases illustrated not only the limitations in free speech, but often
brought contemporary oratory into disrepute as the tool of tyranny. Changes
in the law removed Imperial practitioners and theoreticians (causidici and
iurisconsulti, according to the famous distinction at Sen. Apocol. 8.2) further
away from their Republican forebears: the system of cognitiones extra ordinem,
which allowed for the same official both to investigate and to judge a case,
forced orators to address predominantly an individual rather than a large jury.
This necessarily led to a complete transformation in oratorical strategies.27
19
Sen. Contr. 1 pr. 6–10.
20
Petron. Sat. 1–2: Encolpius’ declamation on the decline of oratory.
21
Vell. Pat. 1.17.3: Cicero’s time was the high point of oratory.
22
Quint. Inst. 10.1.125–31 blames the popularity of Seneca for the contemporary decline. His
earlier work (now lost) De causis corruptae eloquentiae evidently expanded on the subject.
23
On the Sublime 44 diagnoses a worldwide decline of eloquence and literature in general.
24
See Raschieri in this volume.
25
Suet. Rhet. 1 gives an account of students learning to analyse (exponere) speeches; Rhet. 2
quotes from the speech which M. Caelius gave in his own defence against Atratinus.
26
Tac. Dial., e.g. 21.1–2 on the twenty-one books of speeches left by Calvus.
27
See Bablitz 2007.
Introduction 7
Further, the transmission and representation of the Republican oratorical
record was liable to distortion from subsequent educational needs and prac-
tices within an increasingly methodical and structured teaching environment.
Within this teaching environment, proficiency in declamation—the compos-
ition and performance of oratorical set pieces—increasingly became a goal, not
merely a means, of instruction. A large proportion of the material that we have
defined above as fragments is transmitted through the declamations of Seneca
the Elder, Pseudo-Quintilian, and Calpurnius Flaccus, in Quintilian’s manual
of education, and the rhetorical and grammatical treatises of Late Antiquity.
Many references to fragmentary oratory are thus conditioned by the needs of
these different school texts. For example, grammatical works required short
portions of text with precise boundaries in order to highlight the point under
discussion, and tended, quite naturally, to gravitate to passages containing
lexical or grammatical oddities. The perceived authority of the speaker, in such
cases, was frequently more important than bibliographical or other contextual
information about the ultimate source of the material quoted. Quintilian,
though he tends to pay more attention to specifying the orator and the context,
confined his selection of material to a canon of orators he considered to be
suitable models for his pupils;28 the declaimers, on the other hand, liked to
quote passages for their pathos.
One must also factor in simple changes in interests and fashions: those
literary genres where we find references to speeches (apart from school texts)
have very different emphases. For example, in biographical works quotations
are determined by the need of the anecdote and an interest in the protag-
onists’ ethos; history is somewhat less selective than biography, but the need
to focus on the most important facts necessarily entails leaving out or
obscuring others. For example, Tacitus describes trials when they have a
function in his narrative construction; sometimes he recreates them, but
otherwise he omits them.29 The epitomes from the fourth and fifth cent-
uries AD were even more selective about the material they used, and were
often concerned to provide useful pieces of information for imperial bur-
eaucrats, who necessarily worked in a system far removed from that in place
during the Republic. Christian texts are more interested in a theological and
teleological conception of history and life. In addition, all the above were
often indebted to earlier compendia for their material, which might circum-
scribe the choice of material transmitted and influence the way this was
subsequently packaged.
28
29
See Damon 2003; Rogers 1952, 1959; Davies 2004: 143 (on Tacitus’ use of religious
elements in terms of ‘a coherent programme, shaped by selectivity, powerful timing and
presentation’); Mayer 2010. In Late Antiquity cf. Amm. 26.1.1: history must speak of the
negotiorum celsitudines.
8 Introduction
As a result, the selection and presentation of earlier speeches is contingent
on a range of subsequent factors, and we must be aware of the influence of
these developments on our understanding of Republican oratory. After all, it
was the Imperial period which shaped all subsequent access to this body of
material: authors like Quintilian, and even later writers, had access to speeches
which only dropped from the record much later.30
The contributions to this volume seek to take these methodological issues
into account as they come to terms with the questions that fragmentary
oratory can allow us to answer. Some offer a perspective on the sociological
aspects of Roman Republican oratory: how it was used in practice and with
what effect. On the prosopographical side, some papers seek to give a broader
answer to the question ‘who spoke in the Republic?’ Other papers explore
means for dealing with the filters affecting all stages of the transmission, and
reflect on aesthetic considerations that may enable the (re)writing of a stylistic
history of Roman Republican oratory independently of Cicero, on the basis of
fragmentary information about other speakers and speeches.31
* * *
V O L U M E S T R U C T U R E AND C ONTRI B U TI ONS
The structure of this volume moves from questions and analysis of transmis-
sion (Part A) to the reconstruction of speeches whose remains are transmitted
in fragmentary fashion, along with their social and political contexts (Part B).
This order is designed to emphasize the screening effects of those who selected
and passed on the material of oratory on the evidence we can use to interpret
oratorical events in the Roman Republic. Accordingly, Part A is divided into a
‘Republican’ and an ‘Imperial’ subsection to bring out the changes in status
and usefulness which oratory underwent during the transition to the Princi-
pate. The fact that oratory ceased to be a medium of political mass commu-
nication means that oratory was probably treated quite differently by authors
like Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, Cassius Dio, and Macrobius than by their
Republican predecessors, who discussed oratory as a living political practice.
The close interaction between scholarly analysis of the texts transmitting
fragmentary oratory and the reconstruction of the original context is dem-
onstrated by the transition from Part A to Part B: the last paper of the first
Part and the first of the second Part deal with the same fragment of the
orator Titius as recorded in Macrobius’ Saturnalia, Sat. 3.16.15–16 = ORF4
51 F2. Whereas John Dugan investigates the literary and cultural reasons
30
Including, for example, speeches by C. Sallustius Crispus Passienus and Cn. Domitius Afer
in Quint. Inst. 6.1.50 and 8.5.16.
31
See in this volume Goh; Torregaray; Casamento; Cavarzere; Dugan.
Introduction 9
which may have motivated Macrobius to include this citation, Alberto
Cavarzere situates Titius in his own rhetorical environment. This chapter
introduces the subsection which deals with reconstructions in the literal
sense (B.i); the two following subsections address broader thematic con-
cerns, specifically oratorical performance (B.ii) and the significance of gen-
der in fragmentary oratory (B.iii).
Part A
A.i
The first part of this volume is designed to address directly questions of
reception, selection, and transmission. The first subsection considers evidence
from the Republican period from the second century BC onwards. It focuses on
comments about Roman public speech not just by well-known practitioners of
oratory, such as Cato the Elder and Cicero, but also from satirical and dramatic
perspectives. Thus the section assesses the usefulness of analysing different
genres as sources for oratory and its background as they reflect a wider literary
and cultural discourse about oratorical practice in a time when public speaking
was an essential political tool, and when the question of how one became an
effective public speaker was of deep concern to the ruling senatorial elite.
Alexandra Eckert revisits the misgivings of a number of Roman aristocrats
when Rome was first faced with a dazzling display of oratorical brilliance
from Greek ambassadors visiting the city in the course of Rome’s Greek wars
in the mid second century. The popularity of these performances appeared to
some—Cato in particular—to tilt the balance between appropriate and excessive
familiarity with foreign culture, and consequently Cato made a point of arguing
in favour of a return to the ‘appropriate’ (dismissive) estimation of Greek
culture. Eckert then traces how a more general pressure to be seen as appropri-
ately critical of Greek learning led Roman orators to adapt their techniques to
conceal the extent to which they had learned from and were indebted to Greek
models. This chapter thus outlines the place of oratory in Roman culture as
a whole.
Following this discussion of propriety and the limits of intercultural influ-
ences, Ian Goh discusses the presentation of appropriate and inappropriate
(styles of) oratory in the satires of Lucilius. Awareness of the generic posi-
tioning of different verse formats and items of vocabulary in a poetic context
helps to throw light on the interpretation of the oratorical fragments reported
in Lucilius, however unreliably.
Of course satire can only be effective if there is some relationship between it
and the audience’s experience of ‘real world’ oratory, or at least with their tacit
assumptions concerning this practice. This is the approach taken by Elena
10 Introduction
Torregaray Pagola, who analyses a speech from Plautus’ comedy Amphitruo
that relates to the contexts of diplomatic oratory: the slave Sosia’s account of
his master Amphitruo’s victory over the Teleboeans. Torregaray shows how a
careful comparison of this speech with what is known about contemporary
diplomatic practice may enable us to extrapolate further insights into the ‘real
world’ phenomenon.
Finally, Alfredo Casamento addresses Cicero’s habit of evaluating orators in
pairs by looking at the presentation of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius
Aurelius Cotta in the Brutus. Although Cicero’s analysis resists straightfor-
ward interpretations because of his own self-positioning, Casamento argues
that it is still possible—especially if we pay attention to the features of the
orators in question that are not explicitly contrasted—to extract from Cicero’s
evidence a sense of the acceptable range of oratorical behaviour.
In concentrating on the evidence which Republican writers provide con-
cerning the oratory of their own time and the relatively recent past, these four
chapters establish the existence of what could be described as a normative
discourse, in which public speeches were evaluated in terms of their suitability
for their respective circumstances, their ideological implications, and by the
relationship of an orator’s self-positioning with his style.
A.ii
The second subsection of Part A discusses the reception of Republican oratory
in the Imperial period. The main question dealt with here concerns the effects
that later authors’ preoccupations and methods of working have on their
presentation of Republican oratory. Though a different story could be told
of this material, namely its (potentially) formative influence upon later quot-
ing authorities, the broad theme that unites these contributions is instead the
distortions imposed upon quoted material by citing authors; in other words,
the often insidious influence exercised by later authorities over our under-
standing of the fragments of Republican oratory.
This section opens with Amedeo Raschieri’s study of the fragments of
Republican oratory transmitted by Quintilian, which shows that his choice
of what to cite and whom to name was prompted by a range of considerations,
from a pedestrian requirement to find grammatical illustrations, to questions
of canonicity, moral exemplarity, and pedagogical utility. The aggregate of
Republican oratorical material in Quintilian is shown to be highly heteroge-
neous, and Quintilian’s immanent authorial concerns emerge as an important
factor in the patterns of citation observable in his work. Quintilian is argued to
have known much of the Republican oratory he cites at first hand, and thus,
rather than recycle judgements or passages from his predecessors, was fully
equipped to make a personal intervention in the critical traditions concerned
with Republican oratory.
Introduction 11
The contribution of Sarah Lawrence likewise illuminates the investment of
Valerius Maximus in the material he cites, arguing against traditional views
that see him as merely a mechanical compiler of exempla, devoid of creative
agency. Focusing on section 8.9 (‘How great is the force of eloquence’),
Lawrence shows that Valerius Maximus had a surprisingly negative opinion
of the power of oratory. Comparing the illustrative examples chosen by
Valerius Maximus with the traditions on which he was reliant, these examples
are seen to have been selected and manipulated to suit his particular agenda.
Drawing attention to the marked absence of Cicero from the roll call of the
past’s most powerful speakers, and the subtle redrawing of material taken
from Cicero’s own rhetorical treatises, Lawrence uncovers a strategy designed
to implicate oratory systematically in the corruption of liberty, argued to stem
from a post-Augustan pessimism. The material recycled in Valerius Maximus
cannot be treated as ‘uncontaminated’ historical evidence, but bears the
imprint of the time and personality of its quoting author.
A contrasting case is investigated by Christopher Burden-Strevens, who
shows that scholars have been too hasty in writing off as pure invention the
Republican speeches reported in Cassius Dio. A comparison with Cicero
shows that, if Dio’s account cannot claim to be faithful in reporting the facts
of a speech (who spoke, what were their precise words, and when exactly these
were uttered), and even if he is not above combining several discrete incidents
for the sake of simplifying the narrative, Dio nevertheless took care to give
what he thought to be an accurate impression of the arguments employed in
discussions of general problems, and did so by consulting relevant evidence.
Thus, although portions of Cicero’s speech in favour of the lex Manilia in
66 BC are placed in the mouth of Gabinius and transposed to the lex Gabinia
debate of 67 BC, Dio is found to preserve not only the content, but also the
rhetorical strategies of his source. While Dio cannot be used to reconstruct
the lost speeches of orators such as Gabinius, his work took pains to capture
the genuine character of Republican oratory to an extent not previously
suspected. Future work on this neglected resource may one day yield major
insights into lost oratorical traditions, notwithstanding the distortions intro-
duced by Dio himself.
In the final paper of this section (which can be read as a counterpoint to that
of Alberto Cavarzere at the beginning of the next), John Dugan subjects an
extensive fragment of Gaius Titius and its presentation in Macrobius to the
methods of New Historicism, showing the interrelatedness of quoted and
framing texts, and how the boundaries between these may be purposefully
elided to make a more meaningful whole. Dugan’s paper also draws attention
to programmatic statements made by Macrobius concerning the inter-
pretation and ‘digestion’ of fragmentary material, which in some respects
prefigure—and can be brought into productive dialogue with—recent trends
in cultural anthropology.
12 Introduction
Part B
B.i
The second part of the volume returns to the Republican period, presenting a
number of case studies that bring out the possibilities for reconstructing, con-
textualizing, and interpreting various types of public-speech acts in Republican
Rome, as well as a number of specific speeches. The first subsection offers three
examples of the results that can be achieved by detailed work with fragments and
testimonia to reconstruct specific oratorical performances and careers.
Alberto Cavarzere’s paper offers an exhaustive study of the orator Gaius
Titius, known from the passage of Macrobius quoting a fragment that has
been discussed by Dugan in the preceding chapter, and another in Cicero’s
Brutus summarizing his career. Through a careful study of this material and
analysis of earlier discussions, Cavarzere concludes that the surviving frag-
ment can be located with fair confidence in the period between 145 and 131 BC,
and that Titius was a distinctively memorable orator and poet.
Anthony Corbeill uses Cicero’s speech De haruspicum responsis alongside
other material to reconstruct a lost contional speech of Clodius that discussed
a decision of the haruspices. The exercise demonstrates the extent to which
informed imagination permits us to recreate the oratory of the late Republic,
as well as offering a philologically rigorous discussion of Clodius’ style and
linguistic usage. In treating reconstructions of Clodius’ speech as ‘fragments’,
Corbeill disagrees with the definition of an oratorical fragment as offered in
this introduction (see above, p. 4). The methodological discrepancy between
Corbeill’s approach and that of the editors highlights the difficulties in using
precise terminology about something as fundamentally irrecoverable as an-
cient speech. In this case, the dispute centres on the weight that should be put
on different kinds of evidence, and more specifically, pits the textual authority
of the speaker against the record of a witness, who was, it seems, working from
detailed evidence about the contio at which Clodius had spoken. It would be
interesting to see whether Corbeill’s convincing reconstruction can be paral-
leled using the same methods in other contexts.
Kit Morrell’s paper looks at oratory more broadly: not a single event or
orator, but a series of linked oratorical occasions are the focus of an inquiry
into whom Cicero may have meant when he talked about anonymous oppon-
ents in the period after his return from exile. Cicero’s attacks on these
unnamed opponents is part of a wider strategy of misrepresentation relating
to his legal and religious position and that of his property in this period.
B.ii
This section deals with questions of formal and informal speech, and espe-
cially with oratorical delivery. First, Jennifer Hilder develops the argument
Introduction 13
that the Rhetorica ad Herennium, written in the early first century BC,
engages with concrete practices of speakers from the conclusion of the
second century BC onwards. The didactic features of the handbook help
students to develop their skills in actio; in particular, the anonymous treatise
shows how gestures were taking a relevant role in the context of oratorical
performance.
Andrea Balbo approaches oratorical delivery from another perspective, with
a diachronic description of some general features of the testimonia about this
officium oratoris collected in Enrica Malcovati’s Oratorum Romanorum Frag-
menta (1976) and in FRRO. He then provides several case studies, concen-
trating on the contrast between speakers characterized by suauitas uocis and
those who, on the contrary, pronounced in an unpleasant way.
The third contribution raises the complex and intriguing question of the
boundaries of oratory and, by extension, the definition of fragmentary oratory:
Cristina Rosillo-López discusses whether fragments of informal speeches can
be considered part of public speech. As she demonstrates, informal speech of
this kind, while posing its own considerable interpretative challenges and
pushing the boundaries of any definition of oratory, was nonetheless of vital
importance in political debate and the formation of public opinion at Rome.
Rosillo-López’ paper is thus a challenge to the very idea of oratory as a distinct
kind of speech.
B.iii
The final section situates our evidence for oratory in wider communicative
and social settings. First, Hans Beck raises questions about the meaning of
oratory in ritual scenarios, exemplified by the Roman funeral, where the
laudatio funebris forms only a small part of the spectacle offered to the
audience. Here an awareness of the other aspects of an event, including
the extent to which one funeral might differ from the next, can help us interpret
the form and significance of funerary speeches and thus place the very modest
surviving direct attestations of funerary oratory into a broader context.
A key theme in this section is gender. Cristina Pepe shows that women
could frequently be the subjects of funerary eulogies after their death. Unlike
much of the other evidence which we have for oratory as an elite practice,
inscriptions like the Laudatio Turiae and the Laudatio Murdiae show that
funeral speeches could also be delivered by ordinary people in a private
context. Although these inscriptions belong to the early Imperial period,
there is no reason to doubt the existence of similar speeches in the time of
the Republic.
Women’s role as mourners in funerary contexts might even allow them to
stage a narrative which informs and complements any speeches that a man
might give, as Bill Gladhill argues with respect to Fulvia’s dramatization of
Clodius’ body. He shows that the gendered conventions of public ritual can be
14 Introduction
used to make a powerful impression on a crowd. This scenario shows that
actio and other aspects of spectacle have the potential to be effective even
without words.
This possibility sets the tone for the final contribution, in which Judith
Hallett argues that we should take seriously the oratorical achievements
of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, as she is revealed to be a mulier bona
dicendi perita. Although there is no evidence that she ever spoke in public, a
letter preserved by Cornelius Nepos reveals her to be an active link between
the oratorical prowess of her father, Scipio Africanus, and her radical sons
Tiberius and Gaius.
This section reveals that women’s public presence and oratorical agency—
although they were already relatively marginal in the Roman Republic
itself—have been further obscured in the course of the textual and scholarly
tradition. It is only by piecing together and thinking about the scant
fragments—transmitted almost incidentally—that we can challenge the
overwhelming prominence of the male voice preserved in the speeches that
gained textual authority.
Part A
Transmission
i
Republican Rome
Roman Orators between Greece and Rome

The Case of Cato the Elder, L. Crassus,
and M. Antonius
Alexandra Eckert
INTROD UCTION : ROM AN NOBI L ITY

AND G REEK CULTURE IN THE SECOND
AND E ARLY FIRST CENTURIES B C
During the second century BC, Rome became increasingly engaged in military
conflicts in the Greek East. Roman victories over Philip V, king of Macedonia
(197 BC), Antiochus III, king of Syria (188 BC), and Philip’s son Perseus, king
of Macedonia (168 BC), resulted in the establishment of the provinces of
Macedonia (148 BC) and Asia Minor (133–129 BC); as a result of this sustained
contact with the East, Roman commanders and magistrates became familiar
with the Greek language and with Greek culture more broadly.
In Rome itself, learned Greeks worked as personal tutors for young mem-
bers of the Roman elite and provided the main source of Greek paideia:
education in Greek language, literature, philosophy, and rhetoric.1 The sons
of Aemilius Paullus, victor in the Third Macedonian War, are prime examples
of Roman nobiles being educated by Greek teachers.2 As a young adult, Scipio
Aemilianus had regular contact with Polybius, and famous Greek orators and
philosophers—Diophanes of Mytilene, Blossius of Kyme, and Menelaus of
Marathos—taught Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus.3
1
Polyb. 32.10 testifies to the presence of Greek philosophers in Rome during the 160s BC. Cf.
Scholz 2011: 131.
2
Plut. Aem. 6.8–10; cf. Scholz 2011: 130 and 141–50.
3
For Scipio Aemilianus: Polyb. 31.23–25.1. For Diophanes of Mytilene: Rawson 1985: 76. For
the Greek tutors of the Gracchi: Scholz 2011: 132–3. For Menelaus of Marathos, see also Wisse
2013: 183.
20 Alexandra Eckert
After their first contact with Greek learning in Rome, many Romans chose
to continue their education during their time in the Greek East. Athens, with
its famous schools of philosophy, Rhodes, Alexandria, and several other Greek
cities attracted members of the elite, who made use of short stopovers in such
places while travelling to Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt in their capacity as
legates or promagistrates. The renowned orator Marcus Antonius, consul in
99 BC and grandfather of the triumvir of the same name, reportedly engaged in
sophisticated discussions with prominent Greek speakers and philosophers.
In 102 BC, he was assigned the command against the pirates in Cilicia as
praetor with proconsular power (praetor pro consule), and on his way to Asia
Minor he stayed in Athens and Rhodes to converse with learned Greeks of his
time.4 At the beginning of the first century BC, some Romans chose to visit the
Greek East for the sole purpose of completing their Greek paideia. In 88 BC,
C. Aurelius Cotta spent some months in Athens as a private citizen, having
been convinced by Philo of Larissa—then head of the Platonic Academy—that
it would be well worth hearing the famous Epicurean, Zeno of Sidon.5 Without
doubt, Cicero is the most prominent of these Romans: he privately travelled to
Athens, Rhodes, and other parts of the Greek East to further refine his already
excellent rhetorical skills.6
Such visits were not the only factor contributing to the growing popularity
of Greek paideia in Rome, however. As the emerging capital of the Mediter-
ranean, Rome also saw the arrival of distinguished Greek philosophers during
the second century BC, and their public speeches attracted large audiences. In
155 BC, the heads of the three most renowned philosophical schools in Athens—
the Academy, the Peripatos, and the Stoa—visited Rome on a diplomatic
mission. During the Athenian embassy’s stay, many Romans listened in awe
to their public performances and supreme eloquence.7 Between 144 and
129 BC, the famous philosopher Panaetius, later to become the head of the
Stoa, visited Rome several times and counted many young Romans among his
followers.8
Given this background, we may assume that Roman nobiles, and members
of the Roman Senate in particular, were well versed in the Greek language by
the second century BC, and that knowledge of Greek culture and learning was
an acceptable attribute for an elite Roman male to display.9 Nevertheless,
when the heads of the Athenian embassy brought their plea before the
4
For the command of M. Antonius in 102 BC, see Cic. De or. 1.82; Cic. De or. 2.3; Livy, Per. 68;
Scholz 1962: 22–4.
5
Cic. Nat. D. 1.59. Cf. Rawson 1985: 7 and Crawford 1978: 199.
6
Cic. Fin. 5.1–2 (Athens); Cic. Brut. 307 (Rhodes); Cic. Tusc. 3.53 (Corinth).
7
Plut. Cat. Mai. 22; Gell. NA 6.14.8–10. Cf. Heusch 2011: 290.
8
Cic. Brut. 114; Cic. Off. 3.10. Cf. Scholz 2011: 135.
9
The first Roman historian, Fabius Pictor, used Greek for at least some of his work: FRHist
1.160–78.
Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 21

Roman Senate in 155 BC, they were not allowed to directly address the senators in
their native tongue, but instead had to resort to an interpreter.10 The popularity
of their public speeches outside the Senate house also met with considerable
criticism. Cato the Elder lobbied for a quick decision on the Athenian pleas and a
speedy departure of the philosophers, as prolonging their stay would prevent
young Romans from obeying the laws and the will of the magistrates:
καὶ παρελθὼν εἰς τὴν σύγκλητον ἐμέμψατο τοῖς ἄρχουσιν, ὅτι πρεσβεία κάθηται
πολὺν χρόνον ἄπρακτος ἀνδρῶν, οἳ περὶ παντὸς οὗ βούλοιντο ῥᾳδίως πείθειν
δύνανται· δεῖν οὖν τὴν ταχίστην γνῶναί τι καὶ ψηφίσασθαι περὶ τῆς πρεσβείας,
ὅπως οὗτοι μὲν ἐπὶ τὰς σχολὰς τραπόμενοι διαλέγωνται παισὶν Ἑλλήνων, οἱ δὲ
Ῥωμαίων νέοι τῶν νόμων καὶ τῶν ἀρχόντων ὡς πρότερον ἀκούωσι.11
M. Porcius Cato F27 Cugusi and
Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 512–13
(= Plut. Cat. Mai. 22.5)
This speech by Cato demonstrates that Greek education could be perceived as a
threat to Roman values and Roman identity in the second century BC. At that
time, a large majority of the Roman elite was nearly fluent in the Greek language.
Forcing the embassy of the Athenian philosophers to speak through an inter-
preter was a general rule in Roman politics. Similarly, when Roman magistrates
conversed with Greeks about official administrative business, they addressed the
Greeks in Latin irrespective of their command of the Greek language.12
Other episodes in the career of Cato the Elder point in a similar direction.
When visiting Athens in 191 BC, he insisted on addressing the Athenian people
in Latin despite his well-known command of the Greek language. He left it to a
subordinate to translate his words for the benefit of the crowd listening to him.13
He criticized the historian (and consul) A. Postumius Albinus for his choice of
Greek for his work.14 Towards his son, Cato even expressed serious concerns
about the harmful influence of Greek learning on Rome. The Romans would
lose their supremacy if they immersed themselves in Greek learning:
dicam de istis Graecis suo loco, M. fili, quid Athenis exquisitum habeam et quod
bonum sit illorum litteras inspicere, non perdiscere, uincam. nequissimum et
10
Plut. Cat. Mai. 22.4. According to Plutarch, the speeches of the envoys were interpreted by
one Gaius Acilius.
11
‘So he came forward to speak in the Senate and criticized the senators for keeping an
embassy idly waiting for such a long time, men who could easily persuade anyone of anything
they wanted. “We should” he said, “quickly come to a judgement, and decide on the matter of the
embassy to allow these men to return to their schools and practise dialectics with the sons of
Greece, while young Romans shall obey the laws and magistrates, as before.” ’ This speech is not
recorded in Malcovati’s treatment of the fragments of Cato the Elder (ORF4 8), but it is discussed
by Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 512–13 (F27); see also Steel 2006: 67. Plin. HN 7.112
confirms that Cato lobbied in the Senate for the speedy departure of the Athenian philosophers.
12 13
Val. Max. 2.2.2. Plut. Cat. Mai. 12.4–5.
14
Polyb. 39.1.5–9; Plut. Cat. Mai. 12.6; Plut. Mor. 199e; Gell. NA. 11.8; see further FRHist 3.59–60.
22 Alexandra Eckert
indocile genus illorum, et hoc puta uatem dixisse: quandoque ista gens suas
litteras dabit, omnia conrumpet . . . 15
M. Porcius Cato Ad Marcum Filium F1,
Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 2001: 422–5
(= Plin. HN 29.14)
In Culture and National Identity in Republican Rome, Erich S. Gruen explains
these ambivalent attitudes by a single ‘discernible pattern’, namely a Roman
feeling of superiority and the ensuing desire to exploit Greek culture to serve
Roman interests.16 According to Gruen, Rome’s elite judged Greek culture to
be ‘welcome and serviceable’.17 Gruen’s book is an excellent study of the
influence of Greek learning in Republican Rome. He may, however, have
underestimated the tensions and conflicts that arose when Romans adopted
elements of Greek paideia and differences which arose between spoken and
written forms of oratory. This chapter proposes to take these Roman doubts
and conflicts seriously, and to investigate their underlying causes.
THE ROMAN O RA TORS L. CRASSUS

AND M. ANTONIUS
A closer look at the orators L. Crassus and M. Antonius complements the

picture provided by Cato the Elder’s attitude towards the growing influence of
Greek paideia and rhetoric in Rome. Most of the extant information for
L. Crassus and M. Antonius originates from Cicero’s De oratore, a fictional
dialogue between several prominent Romans of the early first century BC.18
Crassus and Antonius, the leading orators of their time, are the chief partici-
pants, and Cicero sets the dialogue in September 91 BC, shortly before the
death of Crassus and the beginning of the Social War.19 Although the
encounter is fictional, we know from Cicero’s letters that he aimed to ensure
that his interlocutors and their roles in the dialogue were as realistic as
possible, and that the words he ascribed to them were consistent with what
15
‘I should speak about those Greeks in their proper place, my son Marcus, and tell you what
I have found out at Athens, to persuade you of what can be gained from quickly reading through
their literature, instead of thoroughly studying it. They are quite dissolute and rude people, and
you should believe that I am giving a prophecy here: when these people give us their literature,
they will corrupt everything . . . ’
16 17
See Gruen 1992: 269. Jehne 1999: 118.
18
May and Wisse 2001: 14–15; cf. May and Wisse 2001: 17 for the conventions of the genre
which allow for dialogues that never took place in reality.
19
For the setting of the dialogue cf. Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 1.17–25 and Mankin
2011: 28–35.

each individual would have said.20 Cicero also points out in De oratore itself
how important he deemed it to present his interlocutors authentically.21
Maintaining a high degree of plausibility is in line with Cicero’s intention
that his dialogue should be a means of preserving the memory of Crassus and
Antonius.22
It would also have been imprudent for Cicero to displease members of the
Roman elite by portraying Crassus and Antonius in a way which conflicted
with the expectations of their friends and relatives or of anyone who had first-
hand information about their characters.23 In 55 BC, when Cicero published
his work, the triumvir M. Licinius Crassus, a relative of L. Crassus, was one of
the most powerful men in Rome, and the future triumvir M. Antonius,
grandson of the orator, was also taking his first steps into the military and
political arenas.
Cicero certainly had access to reliable information on both orators. We
know from epigraphical evidence that Cicero’s uncle, Lucius, had accompan-
ied M. Antonius on the latter’s proconsular command to Cilicia in 102 BC.24
So, Cicero probably knew from his uncle that Antonius had conferred with the
most learned Greek philosophers and teachers of rhetoric.25 Cicero also
mentions that he himself had asked Antonius many questions as a boy. Yet,
it cannot be deduced with certainty from the brief passage in De oratore
whether the ties between Cicero and Antonius were as close as those between
Cicero and Crassus.26 Crassus was Cicero’s mentor and oversaw his early
20
See Cic. Att. 13.16.1 ((SB 323) 26 June 45 BC) and Cic. Fam. 9.8.1 ((SB 254) 11/12 July
45 BC), regarding Varro being the perfect choice as an interlocutor in the Academica.
21
See Cic. De or. 2.9, where Cicero states that he is not inventing things at will and that the
memory of others should not conflict with his depiction. Cic. Fam. 7.32.2—a letter dating to the
end of 51 BC or the beginning of 50 BC—does not contradict Cicero’s aim for authenticity. In this
letter, Cicero describes how he crafted the style of a passage in the second book of De oratore to
give M. Antonius’ remarks on humour in oratory a witty and sophisticated appearance. Based on
his comments elsewhere, we may assume that Cicero—while changing the form—still strove for
plausibility and considered what the ‘real’ M. Antonius would have said on the matter. So, Cic.
Fam. 7.32.2 should not necessarily be seen as a testimony for the interlocutor M. Antonius more
or less expressing ‘Cicero’s own ideas’, as Wisse 2002b: 377 assumes.
22 23
Cic. De or. 2.7; Cic. De or. 3.13–15. Cic. De or. 2.9.
24
Cic. De or. 2.2. Cicero’s uncle, Lucius Tullius, is recorded in an inscription from the island of
Samothrace documenting a stopover by Lucius on his way back from Cilicia in September 100 BC.
See Dimitrova 2008: 152–3.
25
Cic. De or. 1.82 and 2.3. May and Wisse 2001:17–18 raise certain doubts about Cicero’s
statement that M. Antonius was a learned man (Cic. De or. 2.1–6) based on Cic. Brut. 214. Yet,
both scholars may have overlooked that a full picture of Cicero’s judgement on the education of
M. Antonius in Brutus has to take into account not only Cic. Brut. 214, but also Cic. Brut.
215–16. In the second passage, Cicero points out M. Antonius’ excellent oratorical skills and
depicts him as being on a par with L. Crassus in many areas and even surpassing him in some. In
the end, it is entirely possible that Cic. Brut. 214 alludes to only minor gaps in M. Antonius’
education in one of the many fields listed, namely poetry, studying the speeches of other orators,
and history, as well as public, private, and civil law.
26
Cic. De or. 2.3.
24 Alexandra Eckert
rhetorical education.27 Therefore, years of personal acquaintance, if not close
familiarity, inform Cicero’s statement that Crassus had been one of the most
learned Romans in the field of Greek paideia while Cicero himself was young.28
A telling passage in De oratore reveals that Antonius shared Crassus’ high
esteem for Greek rhetoric. Both men chose not to publicly disclose their true
opinion of Greek learning, but they employed different strategies to conceal
this. Crassus, despite being educated in Greek paideia, pretended to disap-
prove of Greek learning and insisted on the superiority of Roman wisdom.
Antonius maintained the illusion that he had no knowledge of Greek learning
at all when he was speaking in public. Cicero briefly summarizes their different
positions: ‘ . . . atque ita se uterque grauiorem fore, si alter contemnere, alter ne
nosse quidem Graecos uideretur.’29 The actions of both men reveal a deeply
rooted ambivalence towards Greek learning in Roman society, and suggest
that a Roman orator who wanted to win over his audience had to distance
himself from Greek paideia as far as possible.
Crassus and Antonius were by no means the only Romans who concealed
their Greek education in public. In the speeches against Verres, Cicero stated
that he had learned the names of renowned Greek artists just before the trial,
and this was probably an attempt to downplay his superior Greek learning.
While discussing a statue of Praxiteles as an example for Verres’ thefts of art,
Cicero even went so far as to feign uncertainty about other works by the same
artist, though he must have seen or at least heard of several of them during his
stay in the Greek East.30
Roman ambivalence towards Greek learning was still prevalent in 45 BC,
when Cicero was composing his De finibus bonorum et malorum. In the
preface to this work, Cicero justifies his decision to write a philosophical
treatise in Latin.31 It is striking to see Cicero anticipating harsh criticism for
his efforts. He expects negative reactions from different groups within his
audience, which consisted of educated Roman nobiles who were familiar with
the Greek language. Some would reject his book for the sole reason that it dealt
with Greek philosophy; others would look suspiciously at his work because
they deemed Greek philosophy to be unworthy of any great investment of
time. While some among Cicero’s fellow citizens would object that a man of
27
Cic. De or. 2.2.
28
On the general reliability of De oratore as source for L. Crassus and M. Antonius,
specifically for information on their performance in public orations, in the light of Cicero’s
tendency for self-fashioning, see Fantham 2004: 27.
29
Cic. De or. 2.4: ‘ . . . and so both thought to gain more prestige, the one by seemingly despising
the Greeks, the other by pretending to know nothing about them.’
30
Cic. Verr. 2.4.4. Cf. Crawford 1978: 198; Scholz 2011: 128. As Verres voluntarily went into
exile after the first hearing, Cicero did not present the five orations of the second hearing in
court. Yet, he decided to publish his speeches. See Axer 1995 (58) for the reliability of Cicero’s
published speeches against Verres.
31
Cic. Fin. 1.1–12.

his status should avoid investing time in a task of such little value, others
would ignore his De finibus because they preferred to read philosophical works
in their original language.
AVCTORITAS AT RISK
To gain a better understanding of the reasons for this ambivalence towards

Greek learning and towards Greek rhetoric in particular, we must take a closer
look at the crucial role of oratory in Roman political life. The ability to deliver
good speeches was a prerequisite for influencing decisions in the exclusive
circle of the Roman Senate. Moreover, gaining popularity with the Roman
people greatly depended on presenting oneself as a successful orator to larger
audiences in the courts or at contiones. So, if oratory was so important in
Roman politics, why did Cato the Elder react so fervently when young Romans
listened in awe to the speeches of the Athenian philosophers?
Martin Jehne has made an important contribution to our understanding of
Cato’s objections to the Athenian embassy by suggesting that we can under-
stand Cato’s position from the perspective of the mos maiorum, a cornerstone
of the Roman political system. According to Jehne, Cato perceived the oratory
of Carneades, who had delivered speeches for and against the idea of justice on
two subsequent days, as a danger to the hierarchical structure of Roman
society, in which young Romans had to accept that the elder magistrates and
their achievements on behalf of the res publica took primacy in political life.32
Jehne is certainly right that conservative Romans like Cato could not accept
the Greek concept that the more convincing argument should win in a debate,
as Carneades demonstrated through his speeches in Rome, because the Greek
philosophical tradition of speech and counter-speech presented a counter-
model to Rome’s hierarchical political system and firm belief in the mos
maiorum.33 To illustrate his point, Jehne refers to a passage in Cicero’s De
officiis, in which Cicero elaborates on the duties of young Roman nobiles, who
should honour senior members of the Roman elite and follow the best and
most experienced of these men, relying on their advice and authority.34
32
Jehne 1999: 120–1.
33
Jehne 1999: 121. Jehne holds the opinion that Carneades’ speeches pro and contra justice
were incompatible with the Roman understanding of ius. For Carneades’ speeches, see Quint.
Inst. 12.1.35. Carneades is supposed to have held these lectures on justice on the two days prior to
his speech in the Senate. Powell 2013: 240 argues that Carneades’ ‘Roman lectures’ on justice are
‘a deliberate fiction by Cicero’. Powell has undertaken a thorough analysis of the extant sources
on the matter, but his conclusion does not seem fully convincing.
34
Cic. Off. 1.122: est igitur adulescentis maiores natu uereri exque iis deligere optimos et
probatissimos, quorum consilio atque auctoritate nitatur.
26 Alexandra Eckert
While Cicero had previously mentioned the maiores en bloc,35 this passage
from De officiis also refers explicitly to auctoritas: quorum consilio atque
auctoritate nitatur. The concept of auctoritas was not only essential for the
relationship of young members of the Roman elite to their elders, but it also
governed the relationship between the Roman people and the nobility. In De
legibus, Cicero explains that the reliance of the populus Romanus on the
consilium and auctoritas of the nobility was fundamental for the functioning
of the res publica.36 Therefore, a closer look at the Roman notion of auctoritas
may further improve our understanding of Cato’s concerns regarding the
influence of Greek paideia in Rome, and of the ambivalent attitudes towards
Greek learning demonstrated by orators such as Crassus and Antonius.
In Roman thought, auctoritas was more than the level of prestige a citizen
had in Roman society. In the political arena, auctoritas was strongly tied to the
auctoritas patrum, the weight and influence of the Roman Senate.37 For a
member of the Roman elite, auctoritas represented the influence granted to
any individual on account of his rank, age, and achievements while serving the
res publica in executive military and administrative positions. From an
abstract perspective, auctoritas may be understood as a socially determined
capability to produce an allegiance among fellow citizens that can neither be
demanded nor enforced.38 Thus, in Rome, a socially superior citizen could
employ his auctoritas to have social subordinates adhere to his recommenda-
tions. A proposal made by an orator with sufficient auctoritas could even
outweigh logically compelling arguments made by an opposing party.39
When Roman nobiles made public speeches, auctoritas mattered. Speak-
ing in the Senate represented a markedly different oratorical setting than
speaking before an assembly of the Roman people in a contio. Yet, in both
contexts the effects of auctoritas can be observed. In the Senate, the order of
the speakers reflected their auctoritas. The presiding magistrate—generally
one of the consuls—first presented the issue to be decided. He then asked the
princeps senatus for his opinion before the former consuls (consulares) could
express their positions according to age.40 It was customary to conclude an
assembly of the Senate within a day, including the final vote on the matter at
hand.41 Although senators were generally expected to speak briefly, there
was no time limit on the speeches.42 Moreover, the size of the voting body in
the Senate was substantial—300 senators until 82 BC and 600 after Sulla’s
35 36
Cic. Off. 1.121: imitandos esse maiores. Cic. Leg. 2.30.
37
Cf. Graeber 2001, esp. 174–6 and 215–52.
38
For this definition of auctoritas, see Nippel 2007: 27.
39
Cf. Dugan 2009: 179–80; Pina Polo 2011a: 288.
40
See Cic. Att. 1.13.2 (25 January 61 BC) and Gell. NA 14.7.9, who refers to information
provided by Varro. Cf. Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 482, 490.
41 42
Gell. NA 14.7.8. Cic. Leg. 3.40.

reforms.43 Owing to these constraints in the decision-making process, a
senatorial debate generally closed after the speeches of the consulares (former
consuls) and the praetores (former praetors). So, younger senators of lesser
auctoritas almost never had a chance to demonstrate their rhetorical skills on
a particular subject. These ‘silent’ senators were called pedarii, because the only
way they could express their opinion was to walk to the senator who had first
outlined the position they chose to follow.44
Auctoritas also mattered in the contio. Though the contio was a venue in
which to transmit information rather than to persuade, speaking before the
Roman people was regarded as one of the most honourable tasks for a Roman
orator.45 Only magistrates with certain auctoritas could convene a contio and
only distinguished senators were deemed worthy to address the populus
Romanus in the Forum. In De lege Manilia, Cicero points out that he felt
that he lacked the auctoritas necessary to speak in a contio until his praetor-
ship.46 The significance of an orator’s auctoritas in the contio is also illustrated
in the second book of De oratore. Antonius voices his view that the contio is
the most important arena for orators: quia maxima quasi oratoris scaena
uideatur contionis esse.47 He continues by explaining that an orator with
sufficient auctoritas is even able to stop widespread interjections of displeasure
in a contio by admonishing the crowd.48
We see, then, that the concept of auctoritas played a fundamental role in
Roman society. It was not only the governing principle behind the order of
speech in the Senate, but it was also a key element of the relationship between
43
This argument still holds true, even if only 50 per cent or less attended the meetings. The
senators were expected to visit the meetings. However, this duty was not enforced in a strict
sense. In case too many senators were absent, decrees could not be passed. Cf. Livy 2.23.12–13
and Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 364. In case a high rate of attendance was required, the presiding
senator expressed his wish that a senatus frequens be summoned. Cf. Cic. Cat. 3.7; Cic. De or. 3.2;
Cic. Att. 9.17.1 (27 March 49 BC); Cic. Att. 16.7.1 (19 August 44 BC); Cic. Phil. 3.19 (20 December
44 BC); Bonnefond-Coudry 1989: 358–61.
44
The order of speech was determined by the censors’ list, the so-called lectio senatus. Before
the censors had enrolled magistrates into the list after their year in office, the latter were allowed
to attend meetings of the Senate and place their vote, but they did not have the right to give a
speech. See Gell. NA 14.7.9. For the order of speech in the Senate, see Kunkel and Wittmann
1995: 311–18; Lintott 1999a: 78; Steel 2006: 13. Kunkel and Wittmann 1995: 313–14 point out
that the order of speech changed in the late Republic: from this period onwards, the designated
consuls and praetors voiced their opinion before the consulares and praetores respectively.
45
For the informative character of the contiones cf. Mouritsen 2001: 38.
46
Cic. Leg. Man. 1. Cf. the remarks in Pina Polo 1996: 18 and Pina Polo 2011a: 287. See also
Jehne 2011: 112; Jehne 2013: 56–7; Jehne 2014: 126–32.
47
Cic. De or. 2.338. The conclusion reached in Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 4.55, that
this passage carries the connotation that an orator speaking in a contio behaved like an actor,
does not seem to be completely convincing. Hölkeskamp 1995: 27 interprets this passage more in
the sense of a contio being the largest and most important arena for an orator. See also Cic. Brut.
185–8 for how important it was for an orator to be recognized by the Roman people as the best.
48
Cic. De or. 2.339. Cf. Hölkeskamp 1995: 37 and Hölkeskamp 2013: 24 for the significance of
an orator’s auctoritas in the contio.
28 Alexandra Eckert
the nobility and the Roman people. In the contio, the role of the ordinary
citizen was to listen or to participate in collective utterings of consent or
refusal, but not to speak as an individual. The Roman notion of auctoritas
therefore conflicted with the ideas at the heart of Greek paideia as it was taught
in schools of philosophy: speech and counter-speech, as well as the primacy of
the logically compelling argument over a speaker’s social status.
When Cato the Elder stated that young Romans should obey the laws and
the magistrates instead of listening to the speeches of the Athenian philo-
sophers, he was expressing what he perceived to be a severe threat to the
hierarchical Roman political system: the possibility that young Roman nobiles
would employ Greek oratory to challenge the supremacy of auctoritas. Cato
wished that in Rome, in contrast to Athenian schools of philosophy, the
auctoritas of senior senators should remain the decisive factor in political
matters rather than oratorical skill or the weight of an argument.
A closer look at dicta which Cicero attributes to Crassus and Antonius in De
oratore can also show that auctoritas mattered when Romans discussed the
influence of Greek paideia. While these points have been constructed by
Cicero, his concern with realism and his desire not to misrepresent the
historical figures he includes in his dialogue allow us to interpret them as
views which would have been compatible with those held by the real Crassus
and Antonius. In the first book of De oratore, Crassus elaborates on the value
which studying the laws of the Twelve Tables had for a young Roman orator.
The Twelve Tables described both the structure and the fundamental values of
Roman society; contrary to Greek custom, the Romans did not learn from
endless, heated debates (et docemur non infinitis concertationumque plenis
disputationibus), but from these laws.49 Crassus rates the auctoritas and
the usefulness of these ancient statutes more highly than all of the libraries
of Greek philosophers: bibliothecas . . . omnium philosophorum unus mihi ui-
detur XII tabularum libellus . . . et auctoritatis pondere et utilitatis ubertate
superare.50 In the second book of De oratore, Antonius illustrates that
Roman orators who had familiarized themselves with Greek paideia had to
cope with a fundamental contradiction: while their rhetorical skills benefited
from Greek learning, they could not show any sign of it when speaking in
public without risking their auctoritas. An orator should, therefore, try to
acquire some knowledge of Greek learning, but only secretly: . . . et, si palam
audire eos non auderes, ne minueres apud tuos ciuis auctoritatem tuam, sub-
auscultando tamen excipere uoces eorum et procul quid narrarent attendere.51
49
Cic. De or. 1.193–4.
50
Cic. De or. 1.195: ‘it seems to me . . . that the little book of the Twelve Tables . . . excels the
libraries of all philosophers in both weight of authority and abundance of usefulness.’
51
Cic. De or. 2.153: ‘ . . . and, if you do not dare to listen to them openly, in order to not
diminish your auctoritas with your fellow citizens, yet, you should pick up what they say by
eavesdropping and absorb their teaching from afar.’ Subauscultare is also used in the comic

This verdict is reinforced a little later in the dialogue when Antonius explains
that feigning knowledge of Greek philosophy would impair an orator’s
authority and the credibility of his speech (imminuit enim et oratoris auctoriate
et orationis fidem).52
But why should demonstrating close familiarity with Greek paideia in
public speech threaten the auctoritas of members of the Roman elite? This
question remains unsolved in De oratore, but an answer may be found in the
close ties that existed between a Roman’s auctoritas and his achievements in
service of the Republic. Roman magistrates were expected to employ them-
selves for the benefit of the res publica. Openly displaying deeper knowledge
of Greek paideia in public oratory may have signalled to the wider audience
that this particular member of the Roman elite had chosen to prioritize the
time-consuming and laborious task of studying the many works of Greek
philosophers over service to the res publica.53 Consequently, his auctoritas
should suffer.
ROMAN I DENTITY AND ROMAN CITIZENSHIP
It becomes obvious how problematic it could be for an ambitious, or even

moderately ambitious, member of the Roman elite to immerse himself too
deeply in Greek culture when we take a closer look at an encounter between
two such Romans in Athens in 120 BC, which can provide some context for the
preceding discussion of our three orators.54 T. Albucius had chosen to live in
Athens for some time and to adopt a Greek lifestyle. He immersed himself so
thoroughly in Greek culture—he acquired Greek paideia and openly declared
that he preferred Greek over his native Latin—that he was called ‘almost
Greek’.55 When the praetor Mucius Scaevola visited Athens on a stopover
between Rome and his province, he came into contact with T. Albucius.
Scaevola called Albucius a man who preferred to be named a Greek rather
than a Roman and addressed him with the Greek greeting ‘chaere’. Scaevola
sphere. Cf. Plaut. Asin. 586 and Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 3.92. In this passage,
however, a comic or ironic undertone is unlikely. For a neutral usage of subauscultare in the
sense of ‘secretly listening’, see Cic. Att. 10.18.1 ((SB 210) 19 May 49 BC) and Cic. Top. 75.
52
Cic. De or. 2.156.
53
Cf. Wisse 2002a: 334: ‘ . . . intellectual activities were “Greek” and therefore not properly Roman.’
54
Albucius lived in Athens as a young man but later returned to Rome. His ambitions to
pursue the cursus honorum are demonstrated by his praetorship in 105 BC. After returning from
his propraetorship, he was convicted (Cic. Scaur. 40) and went to Athens into exile (Cic. Tusc.
108). For Albucius, see Habicht 1995: 294; Scholz 2011: 140.
55
Cic. Brut. 131: Doctus etiam Graecis T. Albucius uel potius plane Graecus. Cf. Cic. Fin.
1.8–9; Cic. Tusc. 5.108.
30 Alexandra Eckert
also encouraged his large entourage of Romans to follow his example. When
Scaevola greeted Albucius in Greek in the presence of other Romans, he not
only signalled his disapproval of Albucius’ Greek way of living, but even made
him an object of public ridicule, the strongest insult possible. Scaevola’s
decision to use a Greek word to express his dissatisfaction is probably a direct
consequence of Albucius’ publicly declared preference for the Greek language.
Albucius’ furious reaction illustrates that Scaevola had indeed made his point:
he called Scaevola his enemy and once back in Rome he even tried to sue him
for extortion of his province.56
Albucius’ strong reaction shows that even when a Roman immersed himself
in the Greek way of life, he still could not reconcile being addressed in Greek
by a Roman fellow-citizen with his—still Roman—identity. Albucius’ hostile
behaviour towards Scaevola indicates that using the Latin language was at
the heart of ‘being Roman’. The importance of the Latin language for
Roman identity is also illustrated by Roman magistrates insisting on using
the Latin language when on official missions in the Greek East, despite their
fluency in Greek.57
The Roman tendency to strongly distinguish their identity from other
cultures also becomes visible when the Roman notion of citizenship is
contrasted with Greek ideas on that matter. Through epigraphic evidence,
we know of some Romans who decided not only to live in Athens for
some time like Albucius, but even to involve themselves in the city’s civic
and political life. Around 138 BC, Athens began to permit foreigners to
serve as ephebes. Any foreigner who chose to become an ephebe automat-
ically acquired Athenian citizenship at the end of his service.58 In the
first century BC, we know of Romans who acquired Athenian citizenship
because they served as public officials and higher magistrates.59 However,
such activities had dire consequences for a Roman: according to Roman
law, he lost his Roman citizenship, because, contrary to the Athenian
custom, the Roman notion of citizenship was exclusive and did not allow
dual or multiple citizenships.60
Cicero provides further evidence for the exclusivity of Roman citizenship in
the Pro Caecina (69/68 BC).61 Cicero outlines that Roman citizens could only be
deprived of their citizenship under very rare and exceptional circumstances.62
He illustrates how Roman citizenship expired when an exile permanently
56
Lucil. 87–93 Warmington = 88–94 Marx, quoted in Cic. Fin. 1.9. See also the discussion of
Goh in this volume.
57 58
Val. Max. 2.2.2. See the discussion in section 2. Habicht 1995: 343.
59
Habicht 1995: 342–3.
60
Under the Roman Empire, dual citizenship became more and more accepted. See Sherwin-
White 19732: 295; Talamanca 1991: 725–33.
61 62
Cic. Caecin. 97–100. Cic. Caecin. 98–9.

established his place of residence in a foreign state.63 A famous passage in the
Pro Balbo (56 BC) complements this information: Cicero explains that, contrary
to the customs of Greek poleis, Roman citizens must not be citizens of another
community (ciuitas) at the same time.64 He adds that some Romans became
members of the Areopagus and Athenian citizens, not knowing that they lost
their Roman citizenship unless they later recovered it by returning to Rome.65 In
regard to the specific situation in Athens, we are fortunate that Cornelius Nepos
provides information about Cicero’s friend Titus Pomponius Atticus, whose
name reflects his affection for Athens, to complement the evidence from
Cicero’s speeches. According to a passage in Nepos’ biography of Atticus,
Cicero’s friend spent the greater part of his life in Athens but, on the advice of
Roman lawyers, refused to accept Athenian citizenship so that he should not
lose his Roman citizenship.66
CO NCLUSION
What can this discussion allow us to conclude about the strained relationship
between Greek and Roman cultures that we have seen in the cases of Cato the
Elder, L. Crassus, and M. Antonius? The story of Albucius and the fact that
Romans who decided to engage in civic life in Athens lost their Roman
citizenship seem to indicate that Romans of the second and first centuries
BC had a fairly strict idea of what it meant to be Roman, and that they
distinguished themselves strongly from other cultures. The exclusivity of
Roman citizenship clearly points in this direction. Anyone who trod the fine
line between being Roman and non-Roman had to be very careful. Albucius
provides a striking example of this phenomenon: he declared his preference
for a Greek lifestyle in such a pronounced way that other Romans considered
his behaviour to be dubious, if not plainly dishonourable. At the same time,
the Greek way of living and Greek paideia attracted many members of the
Roman elite in the second and first centuries BC, and, as outlined in the first
section of this paper, it is likely that many were well versed in the Greek
63
Cic. Caecin. 100: nam, cum ex nostro iure duarum ciuitatum nemo esse posset, tum
amittitur haec ciuitas denique, cum is qui profugit receptus est in exsilium, hoc est in aliam
ciuitatem. (‘According to our laws nobody can be citizen of two states and therefore Roman
citizenship terminates no sooner than the refugee has been received in his place of exile, that is to
say, in a foreign state.’)
64
Cic. Balb. 29. Cf. Nörr 1963: 555; Habicht 1995: 341–2. See also Lamberti 2010: 51. For the
lex Licinia Mucia (96 BC) and the lex Papia (65 BC) as legal frameworks for revoking Roman
citizenship and the relevance of these laws for Cicero’s Pro Balbo and Pro Archias, see Coşkun
2010: 54–9.
65 66
Cic. Balb. 30. Nep. Att. 3.1.
32 Alexandra Eckert
language and had a sound knowledge of Greek learning. Ambivalence appears
to have been at the heart of the Roman relationship towards Greek culture.
An underlying cause for this ambivalence seems to have been the conflict
between the Roman power of auctoritas and its central role in maintaining the
hierarchical structure of Roman society, and the notion in Greek philosophical
debate that the most compelling argument should prevail—a notion that, as
we have seen, was perceived as a potential threat to Roman respect for the mos
maiorum and so to Roman society as a whole. In Republican oratory, auctor-
itas was crucial not only when speaking in the Senate, but also when address-
ing the public in a contio, and a speaker’s auctoritas was based in large part
on his achievements on behalf of the res publica. Openly displaying knowl-
edge of and admiration for Greek education in public speeches would have
diminished the speaker’s auctoritas, calling their dedication to the state and
even their citizenship into question. Therefore, Roman orators—despite their
interest in Greek learning—decided to keep it secret.
Republican Satire in the Dock

Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius
Ian Goh
The student of the Roman law court should not necessarily confine their
research to the speeches which were delivered in this venue or to the orators
who did the delivering. Law-court scenarios have a symbiotic relationship with
Roman verse satire,1 because the works in that poetic genre often style
themselves as taking on the artifice and performative aspect of a lawsuit:
employing partisan invective and seeking redress for private purposes but in
a public environment. Satire also provides examples of an alternative historical
record of oratory in action, which mirror more formal accounts and the
fragmentary remains that are the subject of this volume. Most famously in
this vein, Horace narrates a vivid picture of a trial on the Asian circuit in Satire
1.7, over which the Brutus who later assassinated Caesar presided, a poem
which raucously culminates, as we shall see, in a deliberate raspberry of a bad
joke about regicide.2
Throughout his Satires 1, Horace owes a certain debt to his predecessor in,
and supposed inventor (at least, according to Horace) of, the genre, the eques
Gaius Lucilius (c.180–103/2 BC).3 Lucilius is invoked by name within the first
few lines of Satire 1.4, and is the subject of 1.10, which goes over the same
material. Satire 1.9 ends with an allusion to a Lucilian quotation of Homer,4
and has as its central character the so-called Pest, an antagonist for the poet,
who may be a representation of Lucilius.5 The denouement of this poem has
an explicitly legal flavour, in that the Pest’s opponent in a civil suit, after
1
See e.g. Keane 2006: 73–104. 2
‘Touché’: Gowers 2012: 261.
3
Translations of Lucilius, while my own, are based on those in Warmington 1938.
4
It has been recognized since Porphyrio that Horace, with sic me seruauit Apollo (‘in this way Apollo
saved me’, Sat. 1.9.78), offers a sly riposte to a Lucilian version: <nil> ut discrepet ac τὸν δ’ ἐξήρπαξεν
Ἀπόλλων | fiat (267–8 Warmington = 231 Marx).
5
Ferriss-Hill 2011 puts the case well.
34 Ian Goh
formally calling on Horace as a witness, hauls the Pest off to court, perhaps
with Horace in tow.6 So the Lucilian legacy is conceivably, for Horace, bound
up closely with the topic of legality. Even the first poem of Horace’s Satires 2,
which seems to be the only piece in the collection concerned with Lucilius, is a
conversation with a jurist, Trebatius. In Satire 2.1, Horace—or his persona—
gets the better of Trebatius in a quasi-legalistic argument about the political
impact of satire,7 and the employment of the topos of consulting an authority
could be a small-scale version of the famous ‘Council of the Gods’ in Lucilius
book 1. That scenario portrays a dead consular, Lentulus Lupus, as the
defendant of a (show) trial on Olympus.8 As I hope to write about that episode
elsewhere, my main concern in this chapter will be the contents of Lucilius’
second book. This book of poetry confusingly formed part of a second, multi-
volume collection, which contained exclusively hexameter verse.9
I focus on book 2 because it contains a law-court scene between Q. Mucius
Scaevola Augur, and an apparently Graecophile adversary, Titus Albucius.
This set piece is memorably invoked by Persius and Juvenal, Lucilius’ and
Horace’s successors in verse satire: secuit Lucilius urbem, | te Lupe, te Muci, et
genuinum fregit in illis (‘Lucilius ripped into Rome—you, Lupus, you, Mucius—
and broke his molar on them’, Pers. 1.114–15); quid refert dictis ignoscat
Mucius an non? (‘What does it matter whether Mucius [Scaevola] forgives me
or not?’, Juv. 1.154).10 The trial was probably the subject of most of Lucilius
book 2.11 That ‘probably’ is quite important, because we should always
remember that we are dealing here with slippery reconstructions of somewhat
garbled texts, stemming for the most part from the much later dictionary of
Republican Latin words by Nonius Marcellus, whence originate the fragments
under discussion here unless otherwise noted. But this is the curse of all who
work on fragmentary material, as evidenced throughout this volume: that rash
speculation is all too tempting and certainty never forthcoming. Nonetheless,
it is to be hoped that, with indulgence having been craved and (perhaps)
granted, the reading of the material presented here coheres and convinces.
The representation of forensic rhetoric in Lucilius book 2 seems to have a
basis in fact: a trial of 119 BC was an attempt to prosecute Scaevola on a
charge of repetundae under the lex Acilia (123/122 BC), and related to the
6
So Mazurek 1997, though Cairns 2005 has reservations; the meaning at issue is the import
of antestari (‘serve as a witness’, 1.9.76).
7
Lowrie 2005 is good on the poem’s exploitation of legal discourse.
8
See Mantovani 2009 for Lupus facing a capital charge; Manuwald 2001 is the best recent
treatment of Lucilius book 1.
9
Lucilius’ first collection of verse in mixed metres is traditionally numbered as books
26 to 30.
10
Braund 1996: 108 judges the latter quotation to be ‘almost certainly a reworking of lines of
Lucilius’.
11
See e.g. the summary of Krenkel 1970a: 1.64–5. Gruen 1992: 290 is wrong to say that
Krenkel makes P. Mucius Scaevola Lucilius’ target, even at 1970a: 1.22.
Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 35

defendant’s term as governor of Asia in 121 BC.12 It is thus of critical import-
ance as we attempt to use this record as a source that we understand the very
notion of portraying a trial in verse, and satiric verse at that: issues of fidelity
and accuracy are paramount. My argument is that Lucilius’ poetry is a
deliberate, if skewed, reflection of Republican oratorical practice, in particu-
lar in its performative nature and the authority of its invective. In the second
part of the chapter, I investigate how Lucilius could have been considered an
expert in questions of law, and why it is that he was treated as one by Cicero.
A literary genre that features heavily in the third section of my argument is
tragedy, in particular via Lucilian parody of Pacuvius’ intensity of expres-
sion, which can be compared to Gracchan oratory. The resemblance has an
important bearing on the question of Lucilian style, which Varro claimed
was ‘graceful’, and the opposite of the ‘richness’ of Pacuvius (see below).13 If
Lucilius’ representation of oratory can be considered as evidence for orator-
ical practice, its stylistic features can be scrutinized and criticized as prose
technique.
Part of the problem in reading Lucilius is that we cannot quite divine how
much later his account was written than the events it portrays:14 in other
words, is it old news?15 While the question may be unanswerable, the presence
of what seems to be direct speech, in what may be rhetorical questioning,
certainly may give the impression of immediacy, even if that is not the same as
‘recentness’: quid dicis? cur est factum quod coicis istuc? (‘What are you saying?
Why is it the case that you make that contention?’, Lucil. 77 Warmington = 87
Marx). This is preserved by Nonius, who contrives in typical style to get the
meaning of coicere wrong (he thinks it means ‘to steal’). I see this line as
related to another use of the verb co(n)icere in the Lucilian corpus, namely
conicere in uersus dictum praeconis uolebam | Grani (‘I wanted to throw into
verse a remark of the auctioneer Granius’, 448–9 Warmington = 411–12
Marx).16 Hurling is part of the process of versification and the preservation
of reported speech, though there is also a sense of ephemerality, emphasized
by the haste of the action. Granted, Granius in the second fragment is not
12
See e.g. Gruen 1968: 112–17; Bauman 1983: 321–9. TLRR no. 32 gives the bare bones. Apul.
Apol. 66 seems not to have understood who was prosecuting whom, despite presumably having
access to Lucilius’ full text.
13
Gell. NA 6.14.6. Svarlien 1994: 261–5 is eloquent on the implications.
14
A scholiast on Virgil’s Aeneid reports a line of Lucilius, advertising it as being from book 2:
fandam atque auditam iterabimus <famam> (‘we will reiterate a story fit to be told and already heard’,
Lucil. 53 Warmington = 55 Marx): Hass 2007: 70–1 decides on this basis that the satirist’s purpose
cannot be ‘Neues, Aufrüttelndes zur aktuellen Tagespolitik zu verkünden.’
15
If Lucilius was advertising his own innovation as a writer of satire, it may be significant that
this is the first instance we know of where the defendant is charged under a law for which he was
at least partly responsible: Bauman 1983: 321.
16
Morgan 2010: 312–13 is a superb treatment of the Lucilian conceit, although I do not
necessarily agree with his assessment that conicere represents ‘something of an effort’ (312).
36 Ian Goh
necessarily in the law court, but the idea of praise and blame, central to ancient
mores, that ‘throwing’ represents—after all, one throws something at
somebody—is also involved here because of the implied distinction between
prose and verse. Lucilius (or whoever the speaker is) ‘throws’ to turn prose to
verse.17 Yet another aspect of the discussion is the sense of approval which
Lucilius’ appropriation of Granius’ line suggests: praise is commingled with
blame. So, to return to 77 Warmington = 87 Marx, coicis is pointed and self-
involved: not only is the speaker ‘throwing’ out a statement, but Lucilius, by
recording this in verse, has also implicitly performed the same action (conicere
in uersus).
It is interesting that additional fragments assigned to Lucilius book 2 by
Nonius also contain forceful actions, mostly in the present tense:
iniuratum hunc in fauces inuasse animamque | elisisse illi . . .
‘That this wrongdoer made for his gullet, winded him and knocked him out’
Lucil. 54–5 Warmington = 57–8 Marx
quae ego nunc huic Aemilio prae- | canto atque exigo et excanto
‘Which I now fore-chant to Aemilius here, which I force out and chant out’
nunc Nomentani quae [nunc in nomen iam, quae Marx] ex testibus ipse rogando |
exculpo, haec dicam
‘And now you will hear from me all that I can gouge out of Nomentanus’
witnesses by questioning him myself ’
Lucil. 80–1 Warmington = 69–70 Marx18
All this violence could well reflect the cut and thrust of court repartee, and
simultaneously serve as a metatextual presentation of invective iambic, the
genre famous for its aggression and bite.19 The repetitive emphasis, in the
fragment which mentions Aemilius, on canto as part of a legal proceeding
could even intersect with the nature of the law as a kind of carmen.20 Here one
may be reminded of Cato’s procedure in inventing prose stylistics with a nod
to the true Italian carmen, through the use of ‘paratactical constructions,
lexical parallelisms, and phonetic repetitions’.21 In turn, we can highlight the
17
Horace involves Lucilius in a debate about whether their poetry can be counted as prose
(Sat. 1.4.38–62).
18
For Nomentanus, see Rudd 1981: 142, and now Gowers 2012: 80. Note that in this
fragment and 82 Warmington = 56 Marx, which appears below, Nomentanus’ presence is only
the result of conjecture by Scaliger. See Crawford 20012: 1.261 on the denarii issued by a Roman
mint of 141 BC which have NOM in the place of ROMA, and may therefore have been minted for
L. Atilius Nomentanus.
19
It may be noteworthy that Apuleius (Apol. 10) and Diomedes (GLK 1.485.11–17) call
Lucilius a writer of iambic.
20
Meyer 2004: 44; cf. ‘the Roman tendency . . . to call them all carmina, or sometimes both
carmina and leges at the same time’ (p. 71).
21
Sciarrino 2011: 124.

metrical presentation of the direct speech of the trial’s participants. They are
speaking hexameters, which may well be ponderous and portentous (uersus
longi, in Ennius’ phrase),22 but still might be thought to contrast with iambic
speech, supposedly the best for representing everyday discourse.23 In other
words, there is a disjunction between the prose original and the verse
portrayal, which might lead readers or audiences to question the accuracy
of the satiric account. I am reminded of the argument that the cause of
Catullus’ laughter in his Poem 53 is that the audience member at an
impressive legal display by Calvus impetuously utters a correct hendecasyl-
lable as a bon mot: di magni, salaputium disertum! (‘Great gods, the learned
little salt-cellar’, Catull. 53.5).24
Now, if the fragments already adduced depict, as I am assuming, one or
another of the participants speaking in the course of the trial, then the
operative principle is a potentially startling informality. Here are three more
phrases which are excerpted from book 2, according to Nonius, which all
contain salacious content:25 in bulgam penetrare pilosam (‘to penetrate into a
hairy bag’, Lucil. 61 Warmington = 73 Marx); si natibus natricem inpressit
crassam et capitatam (‘if he has marked his buttocks with a water-snake, thick
and bulge-headed’, 62 Warmington = 72 Marx); and pedicum . . . iam excoquit
omne (‘by then he burns out all lust for boys’, 63 Warmington = 74 Marx).
From these it is commonly assumed that Scaevola was also being attacked for
pederasty, though the first two of these three fragments may actually refer to
Scaevola being passively anally penetrated. But what does this have to do with
repetundae?26 A softer interpretation is perhaps relevant: it could be (and has
been) argued that natrix in 62 Warmington = 72 Marx is actually a whip,27
and there are also Catullan passages which use whips figuratively for the act of
pressing stylus to papyrus.28 That is exactly what Lucilius is doing in repre-
senting this trial. It is certainly unclear whether these fragments form an
editorial comment or coarse elaboration from a vantage point beyond the
22
As cited at Cic. Leg. 2.68, cf. Gowers 1993: 55.
23
Goh 2012–13, with references.
24
Heyworth 2001: 118. On the implication of ‘salt purity’ in the line’s Oscanism salaputium
for the programmatic status of Catullus 53, which could be related to the Lucilian claim to
fidelity, see now Hawkins 2012.
25
For discussion, pertinent to this whole paragraph, see Williams 1999: 315–16. On the
possibility of a pun on the name of Crassus, Scaevola’s son-in-law, in crassam (‘fat’), as I suggest
in forthcoming work, cf. Corbeill 1996: 141, who notes that Cicero never employs that wordplay
about a person named Crassus (with a counterexample at 143). Certainly, as Marx 1904–5:
2.36–7 recognizes, there is the possibility that another fragment seen as stemming from this trial
(Lucil. 67–9 Warmington = 78–80 Marx), which involves a phallic amulet, may be punning on
Scaevola’s name, which could mean just that: Varro Ling. 7.97.
26
See Bauman 1983: 323 on the possibility that Scaevola faced charges de sicariis as well as de
repetundis.
27
Adams 1982: 31.
28
See e.g. on Catull. 25.10–11, Fitzgerald 1995: 101–2; Richlin 1999: 197–8.
38 Ian Goh
actual trial. Perhaps the language here might be thought too crass for actual
utterance in court, though there do not seem to have been any formal
restrictions on what could be said, and oratorical performances could have
been relatively freewheeling.29
We can compare a brief passage near the ending of Horace’s short and
politically quite raw Satire 1.7:
tum Praenestinus salso multoque fluenti
expressa arbusto regerit conuicia, durus
uindemiator et inuictus, cui saepe uiator
cessisset magna compellans uoce cuculum.30
Hor. Sat. 1.7.28–31
Note the presence of expressus, again a word implying force as in the Lucilian
examples above. Horace, with cuculus—which perhaps hides some obscene or
even anti-Brutus jokes, given that the Liberator is sitting as umpire in this ‘rich
Asian’ (ditem Asiam, 1.7.19) setting31—essentially reproduces taunts of the
same kind as we saw in Lucilius. One of the protagonists, Rupilius Rex (hence
the poem’s closing joke on his name, ‘king’), is speaking here, and is called
durus (‘harsh’, 1.7.29), a description linked earlier in this poem to his oppon-
ent Persius (1.7.6), and earlier still in this book of Horace’s poetry to Lucilius,
who was durus componere uersus (‘rough in the composition of his verses’,
1.4.8). Hence it is correct to say that Horace ‘consigns to history’ old approaches
to invective, while simultaneously ‘displaying his own virtuosity as a writer of
mock-heroic courtroom satire’;32 I would surmise that part of Horace’s inten-
tion in Satire 1.7 is a pointed recollection of Lucilius book 2, the trial in which
questions about what happened in Asia were also considered. Now, it has
been observed that the charge of duritia shows Horace identifying Lucilius
with (later) Atticist theories of ‘rugged’ style.33 But perhaps it is not only
Lucilius but the protagonists of the book 2 trial whose style needs to be judged
in this way.
At one point in the trial, it seems that the history of the relationship between
Albucius and Scaevola was traced back to another foreign locale:34
29
See e.g. Bablitz 2007: 186–92: ‘Clearly the courts of Rome were, by most modern standards,
far less disciplined’ (190). That said, it was all too easy for orators to resemble actors: see e.g.
Edwards 1993: 118–19; Fantham 2002; Connolly 2007: 202–3.
30
‘Then, as his wit comes out in full flow, the man from Praeneste hurls abuse squeezed from
the vineyard in return, acting the tough, invincible vine-dresser, to whom the passer-by, taunting
him with resounding cries of “Cuckoo”, would often have given in.’ The most influential
treatments of this poem are listed at Gowers 2012: 252.
31
Gowers 2012: 260–1 for the jokes, 257–8 on Horace’s historical specificity (Brutus is named
at 1.7.18).
32 33
Gowers 2012: 250. Freudenburg 1993: 153–62.
34
I have treated the cultural identity dynamics of this fragment on a different occasion: Goh
2012–13.

Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum,
municipem Ponti, Tritani, centurionum,
praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque,
maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis,
id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedis, saluto:
‘chaere’, inquam, ‘Tite’. lictores, turma omnis chorusque
[cohorsque Manutius]:
‘chaere, Tite’. hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus.35
This is the longest fragment of Lucilius book 2 (preserved by Cicero’s de

Finibus 1.8). I just want to observe that the Greek greeting chaere,36 which
plays into the hands of Scaevola’s presumptive argument that his opponent
is not to be trusted because he is exotic and foreign, ironically introduces
the foreign language into the law-court scenario. Legal worries are of course
a staple of comic authors: one might think of Aristophanes claiming to
require defence against legal threats, and the result is an odd vindication of
Horace’s infamous statement (Sat. 1.4.1–5) that Lucilius owed everything
to the Old Comedians, in particular their tradition of ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν,
blaming by name.
In the fragments of Lucilius book 2 we certainly have direct address, and in
the above passage not only the explicatory ‘Albucius’ but also the deliberately
over-familiar ‘Titus’.37 The narrative is also rendered vivid by the present tense
of accedis and saluto (Lucil. 91 Warmington = 92 Marx). Scaevola’s channel-
ling of the voices of ‘the attendants, the whole troop and chorus’ into a
repetition of his own utterance is a nice rhetorical technique to lend additional
ballast to the all-against-one tenor of the passage. There is actually a good
reason for this: Scaevola, unusually, spoke on his own behalf. Cicero—who
knew the Augur personally, having been tutored in jurisprudence by him38—
judges ‘his oratory adequate for his own defence’ (pro se opus erat, Brut. 102),
even if ‘he was not among the number of orators’ (is oratorum in numero
non fuit). Clearly, then, this is quite an unusual case—befitting its highlighting
by Lucilius.
What of Lucilius’ posturing as a legal expert? We find an appraisal of what
Fiske called ‘the boastful epideixis of some Greek orator’ in a fragment attributed
35
‘Albucius, you have preferred to be called a Greek rather than a Roman and a Sabine, a
fellow-townsman of Pontius and Tritanus, of centurions, of famous and foremost men, and of
standard-bearers. Therefore I as praetor greet you at Athens in Greek, when you approach me, as
you preferred: “Ciao, Titus”, I said. The attendants, the whole troop and chorus, said “Ciao,
Titus”. Since then Albucius has been my foe, that’s why we’re enemies.’
36
See the discussion of Eckert in this volume.
37
Cf. Jones 1989 on a possible sexual slur here, with n. 25 above.
38
Cic. Amic. 1, one of the dialogues in which Scaevola appears as an interlocutor. Cf. also Cic.
Brut. 306.
40 Ian Goh
to Lucilius book 10 (Donatus, ad Ter. An. 324):39 ‘ne tu in arce bouem descripsti
magnifice’ inquit (‘“Oh, how magnificently”, said he, “did you describe the bull
on the citadel”’, Lucil. 412 Warmington = 388 Marx). This adulatory response
could have taken place in a courtroom, if Fiske is right. While the phrase
concerning the ox may be proverbial, we could make more of the incongruity
here: would bulls be what one expects to find in a citadel?40 The speaker of the
Lucilian line is, in any case, demonstrating their fine judgement. Book 2, for its
part, could contain a refusal to report everything that was said in the Scaevola
trial: ‘qui’ utinam est, ut Lucilius in II: ‘“qui te, Nomentane, malum di . . . ” ad
cetera pergit (‘ “qui” means “would that”, for example Lucilius in book 2:
“would that, Nomentanus, you the gods to hell . . . ” and he went on to the
rest of it’, Lucil. 82 Warmington = 56 Marx). It is unclear from Donatus
(ad Ter. Phorm. 123), who preserves this fragment, whether the three words
after the direct speech breaks off (ad cetera pergit) should be considered part
of the Lucilian quotation or not. If they do belong to the quotation, then the
character of the Lucilian account as a partial record of what was said
becomes even more obvious.
Given these gestures towards reportage, I suggest that Lucilius in book 2
could be thought of as a kind of stenographer, though admittedly, such a role
predates the supposed birth of Latin stenography by Tiro or someone else
closely associated with Cicero.41 Isidore with his ascription of the invention
to Ennius would beg to differ;42 one could also toy with the idea that
Xenophon’s recording of Socratic conversations required a form of short-
hand.43 Now, the implication of this assumption is that Lucilius knew about
the law, enough to represent it accurately, and technically, at speed: can this
be borne out?
A meagre three-word fragment, preserved by the grammarian Charisius
(GLK 1.82.5), could have been applied to the author himself merely by virtue
39
Fiske 1920: 110.
40
We can cite here a bull which Pliny the Elder claims was taken from Aegina to Rome (Plin.
HN 34.10), and—sticking with satire—a reference to sacrifice on the Capitoline in Juvenal
(10.66). Certainly Hass 2007: 218 thinks that Lucilius is stressing the need to ‘bei der Wahrheit
bleiben’.
41
Eusebius on Tiro, Cicero’s freedman, in his Chronicon; cf. Cic. Att. 13.32 (SB 305) (διὰ
σημείων scripseram, ‘I had written by means of code’), with Plut. Cat. Min. 23–5 (who thinks it
was Cicero’s doing, 5 December 63).
42
Isidore Orig. 1.22 claims that Ennius primus inuenit (‘first discovered’) the practice; Cass.
Dio 55.7, however, opts for Maecenas, though the list seems as though it is merely a roster of
famous people.
43
Diog. Laert. 2.48 uses the slightly ambiguous phrase ὑποσημειωσάμενος τὰ λεγόμενα,
‘interpreting his sayings’, on which see e.g. Enos 2002: 85. This may have a certain bearing on
the existence of ‘Socratic pages’: what Lucilius calls Socratici carti (788 Warmington = 709
Marx), and Horace will later call Socraticae chartae (Ars P. 310). See Brink 1971: 339; cf. also
Prop. 2.34b.27. Lévy 2012: 305 calls Horace’s usage ‘probably a generic word to designate
Academic, Peripatetic and Stoic practical philosophy’.

of being a phrase that appeared in his poetry, the so-called biographical
fallacy:44 Lucilius II: ut iure peritus (‘Lucilius in book 2: “like one skilled in
law”’, Lucil. 66 Warmington = 81 Marx). The sentiment is reflected in several
pronouncements in Cicero’s works to the effect that Lucilius possessed strong
opinions about the education of orators as well as correct oratorical practice.
For instance, the sound advice offered in the voice of Crassus in De oratore 1
certainly seems conventional enough:
sed, ut solebat C. Lucilius saepe dicere, homo tibi subiratus, mihi propter eam
ipsam causam minus quam uolebat familiaris, sed tamen et doctus et perurbanus,
sic sentio neminem esse in oratorum numero habendum, qui non sit omnibus eis
artibus, quae sunt libero dignae, perpolitus.45 Cic. De or. 1.72
Crassus was the accused Scaevola’s son-in-law, and Cicero gives him another
passage later in the dialogue with commentary on Lucilius’ methods:
in quo lepide soceri mei persona lusit is, qui elegantissime id facere potuit,
Lucilius: ‘quam lepide lexeis compostae! ut tesserulae omnes arte pauimento
atque emblemate uermiculato.’ (Lucil. 84–5 Warmington = 84–5 Marx) quae
cum dixisset in Albucium inludens, ne a me quidem abstinuit: Crassum habeo
generum, ne rhetoricoterus tu sis. (Lucil. 86 Warmington = 86 Marx) quid ergo?
iste Crassus, quoniam eius abuteris nomine, quid efficit? illud quidem; scilicet, ut
ille uult et ego uellem, melius aliquanto quam Albucius: uerum in me quidem
lusit ille, ut solet.46 Cic. De or. 3.171
Of some importance here is the reappearance of Greek, rhetoricoterus, pre-
sumably aimed against Albucius. One implication is that being overly rhet-
orical is unappealing. This complicates the picture of the satirist as orator or
court reporter, a picture aided by Horace’s tendentious pronouncement in
44
Cf. e.g. Crane 1993: 54: ‘humanist education concerns itself with the supplementation of
the speaking self by carefully chosen fragments of text’; Heller 1997: 40–1: ‘the conflation of this
speaking subject with the implicit author (the image of the author derived from the text at hand)
and the public image of the “real” author, is not [unusual]. In fact, in much poetry . . . the reader
is led to assume a quasi identity of these subjects.’
45
‘But, as Gaius Lucilius used frequently to say (a man not very friendly to you, and on that
account less familiar with me than he could wish, but a man of learning and good breeding), I am
of this opinion, that no one is to be numbered among orators who is not thoroughly accom-
plished in all branches of knowledge requisite for a man of good breeding.’
46
‘In reference to which qualities of style, the poet Lucilius, who could do so most elegantly,
has expressed himself wittily and sportively in the character of my father-in-law: “How elegantly
are his words arranged! All like square stones inserted skilfully in a mosaic pavement, with wavy
inlay!” And after saying this in ridicule of Albucius, he does not refrain from touching on
me: “I’ve Crassus for a son-in-law, lest you be too much l’orateur.” What then? This Crassus, of
whose name you, Lucilius, make such free use, what does he attempt? The very same thing
indeed as Scaevola wished, and as I would wish, but with somewhat better effect than Albucius.
But Lucilius spoke jestingly with regard to me, according to his custom.’
42 Ian Goh
Satire 1.4 that the poetry he and Lucilius wrote is ‘all prose’, sermo.47 But now
we can expand on the particular ironies of the trial being one involving a
philhellene and Epicurean, Albucius, who was therefore ‘ill-suited to public
speaking’ (minime aptum ad dicendum genus, Cic. Brut. 131): for Scaevola had
been in his youth an adherent of Panaetius (Cic. De or. 1.45), and his Stoicism
was famous, as Posidonius reported (Ath. 6.274c–e).48 When he was praetor at
Rhodes in 120, Scaevola had debated the teachings of Panaetius with
Apollonius—not all that long before the date of this trial.49 One of the other
‘only true Roman Stoics’ named by Posidonius is Rutilius Rufus, with a name
suspiciously similar to the Rupilius Rex of Horace’s Satire 1.7;50 Rufus lost an
extortion trial similar to the one depicted in Lucilius book 2, concerning his
time as a legate in Asia assisting a different Q. Mucius Scaevola.51 If Rufus’
Stoicism prevented him also from speaking well,52 then the same might have
been true of Scaevola Augur. Certainly, Cicero talks up Scaevola’s excellent
learning in civil law and every kind of wisdom (iuris ciuilis intellegentia atque
omni prudentiae genere praestitit, Cic. Brut. 102); however, it is telling that
Scaevola is made by Cicero to give at least one speech abjuring oratory, using
prominent Romans from Romulus down as examples, and thus disavowing, to
some extent, his own past.53
We might ask how it was that Lucilius received privileged access to the trial
of Scaevola, if he was playing the role of reportage. No politician or jobbing
advocate he, and no real friend of Scaevola’s either, if we believe Crassus in
Cicero. Certainly, Lucilius seems to mix in legal circles; the statement as
reported by Pliny that he wanted to be read by the jurist Junius Congus
would seem to suggest as much: nec doctissimis. Persiumue haec legere nolo,
Iunium Congum uolo. quod si hoc Lucilius, qui primus condidit stili nasum
(‘Not by the very learned—I do not want Persius to read these things, I want
Junius Congus to—that’s what Lucilius said, who first had a nose for style’,
47
Hor. Sat. 1.4.40–2: . . . neque enim concludere uersum | dixeris esse satis; neque si qui scribat uti
nos | sermioni propiora, putes hunc esse poetam (‘For you would not say that it is enough to round off
a verse; nor, if someone were to write, as I do, lines more befitting prose, would you think them to be
a poet’). See Oberhelman and Armstrong 1995 for some of the complexities here.
48
Hence Gruen 1992: 307 thinks of Lucilius book 2 as a ‘puncturing of pretension’.
49
Cic. De or. 1.75 (see also 3.68).
50
On Rutilius as also a pupil (like Scaevola Augur and Posidonius) of Panaetius, cf. Cic. Off. 3.10.
51
See TLRR no. 94; the law under which he was prosecuted was the lex Seruilia.
52
On Stoic oratory, see first Atherton 1988; cf. Krostenko 2001: 135–9, although I do not fully
agree with the subsequent discussion of Terence as influenced by Stoic rhetoric; Wildberger 2013
addresses the bias against their stylistics, and fingers Cicero as at least a partial culprit (271–5).
Cic. Brut. 113–15 is especially uncomplimentary about Rutilius’ speechmaking.
53
Cic. De or. 1.35–40, cf. 1.105. I limit this (‘to some extent’) because at 1.41–4 Scaevola is
made to go on by pressing the claims of philosophical rhetoric (note ‘our friends the Stoics’,
1.43). It is interesting that Cicero seems to want to qualify the harshness of the speech: ‘with
courtesy, as was his custom’ (comiter, ut solebat, 1.35)! Cf. Ferrary 1988: 399 n. 13, who casts
doubt on Scaevola’s closeness to Panaetius.

Plin. HN pr.7, hence Lucil. 633–4 Warmington = 595–6 Marx).54 This, of
course, requires us to assume that Congus was selected as much for his legal
acumen or advice as for his social status.55 And yet Lucilian recourse to the law
seems distinctly fallible: infamously, where Accius succeeded, he was unable to
win a case against slander from the stage. Now, I do not necessarily agree that
Lucilius subsequently wrote book 2 to get his own back against P. Mucius
Scaevola, Scaevola Augur’s cousin,56 who as judge upheld Accius’ successful
prosecution of the actor who libelled him:57
item: <C.> Caelius iudex absoluit iniuriarum eum, qui Lucilium poetam in scaena
nominatim laeserat, P. Mucius eum, qui L. Accium poetam nominauerat, con-
demnauit.58 Rhet. Her. 2.19.5
But the story of the lost court case, for what it is worth, makes us pause before
we surmise that Lucilius was entirely comfortable in legal surroundings.
Yet there is a good reason for Lucilius the eques to have been at and to have
commented upon Scaevola’s trial. In yet another first, the event corresponds
chronologically with the first official appearances of Gaius Marius as tribune,59
with whom Scaevola Augur would remain relatively close. Marius and to a
certain extent the Metelli, jostling for influence at this time, were involved in a
coalition partnership with equites, and it is incontrovertible that ‘Scaevola
owed his acquittal to the equestrian jurors’.60 So it seems not unreasonable
that Lucilius is commenting upon—or even egging on?—the jurors, equites
like him, their behaviour during the trial, their deliberations, and their even-
tual decision. He may even have been among their number. Perhaps Lucilius
book 2 has didactic intent, offering oblique commentary on the hint of special
pleading in this case, which might be expected for an extortion trial dealing
54
Morgan 1992 observes how the quotation of Lucilius in Pliny, which I have simplified
here, was mangled by copyists, and proposes the sensible emendation stili nasuti uersum to
make sense of stili nasum, which has a bearing on my argument about Lucilius’ rhetorical style.
55
Let alone his antiquarian tendencies, as evidenced by his De potestatibus, on which see
Sehlmeyer 2003: 164–7 (with 160 and Moatti 1997: 137–41 on ‘die methodische Gemeinsamkeit
von Antiquaren und Juristen’). Hass 2007: 97 claims it is because Congus—and Decimus Laelius,
in another version of the fragment—are ‘durchschnittlich Gebildete[ . . . ]; Leute wie Lucilius
selbst’.
56
For this argument, see Barr 1965. Bauman 1983: 242–4 discusses the Accian trial and is
scornful (at 243 n. 128) about Barr.
57
Cf. Raschke 1987: 312 n. 50 using Astin 1967: 228 against the view of Cichorius 1908:
149 n. 1 that P. Mucius is the senatorial addressee of Lucil. 772 Warmington = 690 Marx.
58
‘Again, Gaius Caelius, sitting in judgement, acquitted of the charge of injury the man who
had by name attacked the poet Lucilius on the stage, while Publius Mucius condemned the man
who had specifically named the poet Lucius Accius.’
59
Bauman 1983: 327.
60
Bauman 1983: 328. Marius was likely from an equestrian family himself (see Vell. Pat.
2.11.1, Val. Max. 8.15.7), despite e.g. Tac. Hist. 2.38.
44 Ian Goh
with the possibility of dodgy financial interests in Asia, a province in which
equestrians were heavily involved.61
Servius (ad Aen. 9.573) for his part seems to think that at some point
Lucilius did play a more than incidental teaching role regarding oratory,
explaining the technical terms schema and climax (though this fragment is
not assigned by editors to book 2):62
ut ait Lucilius—bonum schema est quotiens sensus uariatur in iteratione uer-
borum, et in fine positus sequentis fit exordium; qui appellatur ‘climax’.63
Lucil. 416 Warmington = 1133 Marx
We do not know precisely what or how much Lucilius said about technical-
ities, and of course the intersection of literary criticism with oratorical educa-
tion rather muddies the waters.64 Still, it seems that the attention to word
positioning here is relatively specific. Another intriguing detail from Crassus
in De oratore is the quotation of Lucilius’ rhetoricoterus tu, where the s drops
out in apocope; Cicero elsewhere ‘considers this an archaism but finds [it]
acceptable in verse’,65 but where does the quotation of the verse in the context
of a paragraph considering oratory fit in? Does it count as an example for
rhetorical instruction or not?66
There is, I would argue, a competitive element here engaging with another,
even more stylized form of rhetorical performance: tragedy. In other books,
Lucilius mocks the florid style of Pacuvius, with his high-flown diction and
rhetorical set pieces. The one instance where the playwright is named implies
an emphasis on clarity: uerum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuuiano exordio
(‘but a gloomy fellow from some tangled prologue of Pacuvius’, Lucil. 879
Warmington = 875 Marx). It may be that what is most egregious about
Pacuvian practice is the lack of clear exegesis in the prologue of a play; after
61
Cf. the famous book 26 fragment of Lucilius which claims that he does not want to go to
Asia to be a tax-farmer (650–1 Warmington = 671–2 Marx). Rawson 1985: 90 notes (using Cic.
Balb. 45) that Scaevola Augur had good relations with another group of ‘persons lower down the
social scale with much legal knowledge’: the ‘praediatores, who bought up real estate sold by the
state after confiscation’—again it is land ownership at stake. Kallet-Marx 1995: 139 claims that
‘we have no evidence that his brush with the repetundae court was due to difficulties encountered
with the publicani.’
62
Cf. Rosen 2007: 222 on the ‘fundamental didactic and moral claims’ of satire; Hass 2007:
195 notes Lucilius’ emphasis on ‘Rhetorik, Stil und korrekter Grammatik’.
63
‘As Lucilius says, a “good figure” comes whenever any sense is altered in repetition of
words, and being put at the end of a clause is also the beginning of the next; this is called a
“climax”.’
64
On Lucilian oratorical education, see e.g. Fiske 1920: 109 on the passage quoted above at
n. 46.
65
Mankin 2011: 262.
66
Cf. Quint. Inst. 1.8.11, who includes Lucilius among the Latin authors quoted by late
Republican orators such as Cicero and Asinius Pollio in their speeches: ‘inserted not merely to
show the speaker’s learning, but to please his hearers as well, since the charms of poetry provide a
pleasant relief from the severity of forensic eloquence’.

all, another fragment of Lucilius, preserved by the scholiast on Juvenal 3.175
(on exodium), emphasizes critical judgement on structure: principio exitus
dignus | exodiumque sequatur (‘Let an ending and afterpiece follow worthy of
the beginning’, Lucil. 414–5 Warmington = 1264–5 Marx).67 But this relative
value placed on orderliness gives the lie to the apparent bricolage effect of
note-taking on the hoof, to which my earlier claims about stenography and
informality seemed to point. It is unclear whether the sadness associated with
Pacuvius stems from the character’s appearance in a tragedy per se or from
some other reason. But given Pacuvius’ notorious innovations in plot, espe-
cially his tendency to explore less familiar parts of myths,68 we can surmise
that these prologues contained explicatory sections.69 In other words, this
brings them close to their generic opposite, the prologues of Terence’s com-
edies, themselves highly rhetorical.70
Pacuvius’ fondness for melodrama and sentimentality may be relevant to
Lucilius book 2 because the charge against Scaevola was not limited to extortion.
One of the details, that two of the governor’s associates seem to have exhumed a
man buried alive in a feigned funeral in order to exonerate their boss, smacks of
the games of mistaken identity found in Pacuvius’ plots:71
quom illi uidissent Hortensius Postumiusque
ceteri item in capulo hunc non esse aliumque cubare,72
...
Such high jinks in Asia are germane to Pacuvius’ exuberant inventiveness

regarding mythological derring-do in exotic climes.73 And the co-opting of
underlings to get Scaevola acquitted may have continued in the trial, if we are
to believe Cicero: the account books of the quaestor Albius were brought as
evidence against Scaevola, but despite their discrepancies Albius, an adherent
of Scaevola, supposedly rejoiced at his acquittal.74 Granius the herald is said by
Cicero to have mocked (obiurgauit) Albius for this sycophancy—and, given
that it was this character whose sayings Lucilius ‘threw into verse’, it is quite
67
Hass 2007: 232 n. 302 is, it seems, ambivalent about the ironic value of this statement.
68
See Fantham 2003: 102–3.
69
Manuwald 2011: 213, with a fuller version at Manuwald 2001: 159–60.
70
See e.g. Sharrock 2009: 83–7 on Terence’s prologues styled as forensic oratory; cf. Goldberg
2005: 122–30 on the divergences between tragedy as ‘something seen and something read’ (128).
71
Cichorius 1908: 242–4 has an engaging reconstruction.
72
‘When they, Hortensius and Postumius, and the others similarly had seen that it was this man,
not another, who lay there in the coffin . . . ’. It is perhaps a stretch too far to suggest that Lucilius’
‘wavy inlay’ (85 Warmington = 85 Marx) refers to this scene, via its literal vocabulary (uermiculato,
literally ‘wormlike’), to imply decomposition and reflect the degradation of moral standards.
73
Boyle 2006: 87–100, esp. 91, and ‘exotic stage-settings’ (94).
74
Cic. De or. 2.281, with Gruen 1968: 115–16. Bauman 1983: 324 notes that, additionally, the
trial’s presiding praetor was probably ‘not unfriendly to the accused’.
46 Ian Goh
likely that the mockery was reported by Lucilius. I wonder whether Granius’
occupation of praeco was assimilated, in this putative account, to the herald’s
role in tragedy. Even if not, the grand Guignol element of Pacuvian stagecraft
often leads to a denouement which ends happily:75 this leads one to question
whether Lucilius deemed Scaevola’s trial to have ended appropriately.
The historical question may be bound up with a stylistic one. The term
dignus in Lucil. 414–5 Warmington = 1264–5 Marx, as quoted above, speaks
to the principle of accurate representation around which I have been circling.
That statement, whoever uttered it, suggests that there is something worth
living up to, an appropriate behaviour—and, bearing in mind that the original
context of the line may not have had anything to do with forensic rhetoric, the
literary-critical value judgement could be applied to Lucilius book 2, where the
satirist is, by reporting the trial, acting as judge, jury, and executioner (of
reputations; not that Scaevola’s necessarily suffered, given that he became
consul in 117 BC). There is a tension, too, in the very fact that Lucilian satire
is, by the time of Lucilius book 2, standardized as hexameter. The resulting
paradox is that the low genre which has twisted the hexameter to its own
purposes is not only more fitting and decorous—metrically speaking—than
tragedy,76 but also more decorous than emotional rhetoric, which of course
had a kinship with tragedy: witness the famous Medea-inspired lines of Gaius
Gracchus, as quoted by Cicero (De or. 3.214), quo me miser conferam? quo
uortam? in Capitoliumne? at fratris sanguine madet (‘Where shall I, miserable,
direct myself? Where shall I turn? To the Capitol? But it is soaked with the
blood of my brother’).77
Scaevola Augur’s trial was surely a less public occasion than the outburst of
Gracchus, which leads us back again to the question of Lucilius’ aim in
presenting his record of it. Is he playing a celebratory or popularizing role,
performing what he describes as the announcing function of the trumpets in
the one fragment (not in book 2) that mentions the very Roman institution of
the contio:78 rauco contionem sonitu et curuis cogant cornibus (‘Let them bring
together a public meeting with the hoarse blare of twisted horns’, Lucil. 732
75
One element of such endings is marriage, and this may well have come up in Lucilius book
2: Scaevola Augur’s daughter had recently married Crassus, as Lucil. 86 Warmington = 86 Marx
(above at n. 47) seems to imply: see Gruen 1964: 104, although Marx 1904–5: 2.40 is meant there.
76
On Cicero’s use and approval of Pacuvius as example of Roman tragedy’s dramatization of
emotional control at Tusc. 2.48–50, see Caston 2015: 135–9.
77
For the allusion pertaining to Euripides’ not Ennius’ Medea, see Albrecht 1989: 49.
Sciarrino 2007: 60–4 is a judicious discussion; note that the lines are quoted by Crassus, and
respond to his father-in-law Scaevola Augur’s condemnation of the Gracchan misuse of elo-
quence at De or. 1.38. Goldberg 2005: 135–6 plays down the theatricality of the recollection;
Ennius’ Medea will feature in a letter Cicero writes to Trebatius Testa (Fam. 7.6 (SB 27)), years
before he appears in the dramatic scenario of Horace’s Satire 2.1.
78
Plaut. Pseud. 126: pube praesenti in contione, omni poplo, ‘with the youths present in the
assembly, the whole populace’. Cf. Morstein-Marx 2004: 34: ‘The Republican contio or public

Warmington = 605 Marx)? The stress on curvature may have a Pacuvian
slant:79 another appearance of the playwright in Lucilius’ fragments occurs
when a celebrated description of dolphins, from the play Teucer,80 is rephrased
by the satirist, such that Nerei repandirostrum incuruiceruicum pecus (‘the
herd of Nereus with their splayed noses and curved necks’, Pacuv. 238 Schierl)
becomes lasciuire pecus nasi rostrique repandum (‘that the herd with the
splayed snout noses play around’, Lucil. 235 Warmington = 212 Marx).81 It
is perhaps not coincidental that at least one of the cast of minor characters in
the book 2 trial may be described as ‘bow-legged’ in a picture of abjection:
Hostilius contra | pestem permitiemque catax quam et Manlius nobis (‘on the
other hand, the disease and ruin which Hostilius and limping Manlius are
trying to bring upon us’, Lucil. 71–2 Warmington = 76–7 Marx).82
Lucilius’ account of the trial of Scaevola Augur is worth studying as an
example of now-fragmentary oratory in the tumultuous post-Gracchan
period.83 I have explored reasons for Lucilius’ presence in the courtroom,
and mulled over some apparent oddities of the trial, including its affinities
with drama. But my final point stems from the re-evaluation of the stylistic
questions that are at the fore in this forensic episode. The judgement of Varro
as preserved by Gellius, alluded to above, was that Pacuvius’ style could be
associated with amplitude—the grand style—whereas Lucilius’ is graceful
(gracilis)—the plain style (genus tenue). Now, it so happens that in the same
passage in Gellius, philosophers from the infamous embassy to Rome in
155 BC are linked with each of the styles, and the one associated with the
genus tenue is Diogenes the Stoic.84 What interests me here is the association
of Stoic rhetoric, however arbitrarily, with Lucilius. The satirist I have
presented throughout this chapter is lacking in partisan fervour, making
meeting had a well-defined place within a great complex of traditional political practices (Rome
had no written constitution) and further took place in specific central locations in the city of
Rome which, with their familiar monuments and historical associations, drew it into a symbolic
context as well as a distinctive urban milieu’ (italics in original).
79
The fragment is compared in effect to the spectacle of tragedy by Manuwald 2001: 157–8;
cf. Bagordo 2001: 27–9 on it as a piece of tragic parody (but not in the Callimachean vein).
80
Manuwald 2003: 120–2; Schierl 2006: 30.
81
I am following Marx’s text here. The seriousness of Lucilius’ parody is an open question,
and it could be affectionate in view of some of the neologisms elsewhere: Krenkel 1970b: 195 n.
155 seems to be leaning this way; so, too, Halla-aho and Kruschwitz 2010: 130–1.
82
Some scholars read catax as a proper noun, e.g. Cichorius 1908: 249–50. Bauman 1983:
325–6 does sterling detective work on the identity of Hostilius.
83
It is unlikely that Gruen 1968: 113–15 is right to be even mutedly enthusiastic about
Gracchan sympathies for Scaevola; see Bauman 1983: 314–20 (conclusion: ‘probably not a
Gracchan’), and the mea culpa of Gruen 1992: 291 n. 107. Olshausen 2001: 172 depends (like
Gruen 1968) too much on Scaevola Augur’s relative P. Mucius; Hass 2007: 70 swallows the claim,
though it is consigned to a footnote. That said, Junius Congus mentioned above was identifiable
as Gracchanus, ‘the Gracchan’ (Plin. HN 33.36): see Rankov 1987, following Cichorius 1908:
123–7.
84
See e.g. Wildberger 2013: 269–70 on the stereotyping here.
48 Ian Goh
jibes at both sides in the book 2 trial.85 Not only could this be thought of as
ieiunia (‘spareness’)—the fatal flaw of the Stoic orator in Varro and Gellius’
reading—but it associates Lucilius with at least one of his targets: Scaevola
Augur, the pupil of Panaetius. Scaevola only gained high office in the
Republic at an advanced age, and it is perhaps the case that a reminiscence
of this late arrival lingers in Horace’s judgement on Lucilius: that his jottings
disclose the life experiences of an old man (uita senis, Sat. 2.1.34).86 If
Lucilius is implicated in his own account, it would not be out of keeping
with the position of self-mockery habitually adopted by satiric writers.87 In
view of that stance, it is unsurprising that a fragment of book 2 contains the
intimation of a dire punishment:88 non dico ‘uincat licet’; et uagus exul et
erret exlex (‘I do not say “let him win his case”; no, let him be an exiled
vagabond and an outlawed wanderer’, Lucil. 64–5 Warmington = 82–3
Marx). Yet, interestingly, this was not a valid outcome of Scaevola’s trial
under the lex repetundarum, which carried only a financial penalty.89 The
wordplay involving the term exlex, interpreted by some as a marker (again)
of tragic parody,90 therefore highlights a reference to the poet’s own place on
the margins of the acceptable, the satirist’s curse of intense relevance to
current events matched by the possibility of personal danger. It is in this
way that legal rhetoric has been refracted through, if not warped by, the
rough and broken glass of Lucilian satire.
85
Gruen 1992: 291. I am glad to find support for the judgement of Lucilius as a poet more of
variety than anger in Keane 2015: 41.
86
Harrison 1987: 47 (cf. also 44 n. 30 on Hor. Sat. 2.1.30–4: ‘the whole passage has a Stoic
cast’). If Lucilius was born in 180 BC, as is generally accepted by scholars, then he would be older
than Scaevola Augur (born c.159 BC); even if the revised date of Mariotti et al. 1968 is accepted
(168/167 BC), then he is still old. Cameron 1995: 174–81 establishes that old age in antiquity
could still be relative youth by modern standards; see on this the careful discussion of Parkin
2003: 21–2. Herbert-Brown 1999: 142–3 persuasively analyses the Horatian reference as the
culmination of her case that Jerome was right about Lucilius being forty-five when he died, in
which case he was quite young at the time of the Augur’s trial.
87
Rosen 2007: 242: ‘itself a common gesture of comic abjection’, in discussing how in Juvenal
5 and 9 the satirist ‘must at some level become what he attacks’ (225, italics in original).
88
I adopt exul et erret, the reading of Leo 1906: 844–5, for the manuscript exulet erret.
89 90
Bauman 1983: 324. This time of Accius: Hass 2007: 219.
Plautus and the Tone of Roman

Diplomacy of Intervention
Elena Torregaray Pagola
quod numquam opinatus fui neque alius quisquam ciuium

sibi euenturum, id contigit, ut salui poteremur domi.
uictores uictis hostibus legiones reueniunt domum,
duello exstincto maximo atque internecatis hostibus.
quod multa Thebano poplo acerba obiecit funera, 190
id ui et uirtute militum uictum atque expugnatum oppidum est
imperio atque auspicio eri mei Amphitruonis maxime.
praeda atque agro adoriaque adfecit populares suos
regique Thebano Creoni regnum stabiliuit suom.
me a portu praemisit domum, ut haec nuntiem uxori suae, 195
ut gesserit rem publicam ductu imperio auspicio suo.
ea nunc meditabor quo modo illi dicam, cum illo aduenero.
si dixero mendacium, solens meo more fecero.
nam cum pugnabant maxume, ego tum fugiebam maxume;
uerum quasi adfuerim tamen simulabo atque audita eloquar. 200
sed quo modo et uerbis quibus me deceat fabularier,
prius ipse mecum etiam uolo hic meditari. sic hoc proloquar.
Principio ut illo aduenimus, ubi primum terram tetigimus,
continuo Amphitruo delegit uiros primorum principes;
eos legat, Telobois iubet sententiam ut dicant suam: 205
si sine ui et sine bello uelint rapta et raptores tradere,
si quae asportassent redderent, se exercitum extemplo domum
reducturum, abituros agro Argiuos, pacem atque otium
dare illis; sin aliter sient animati neque dent quae petat,
sese igitur summa ui uirisque eorum oppidum oppugnassere. 210
haec ubi Telobois ordine iterarunt quos praefecerat
Amphitruo, magnanimi uiri freti uirtute et uiribus
superbe nimis ferociter legatos nostros increpant,
respondent bello se et suos tutari posse, proinde uti
propere <irent>, de suis finibus exercitus deducerent. 215
50 Elena Torregaray Pagola

haec ubi legati pertulere, Amphitruo castris ilico
producit omnem exercitum. Teloboae contra ex oppido
legiones educunt suas nimis pulcris armis praeditas.1
Plaut. Amph. 186–261
In this paper I will examine a section of Plautus’ Amphitruo: Sosia’s mono-
logue concerning the general Amphitruo’s military expedition. Some elements
of this comedy can help us to form a clearer picture of the discourse utilized by
legati-ambassadors in the second century BC.2 In the following, I will treat
anyone sent on a legatio—a task that could consist of giving news, establishing
communications, or conducting negotiations—as a legatus-ambassador, a
proposed definition which is clearly much broader than the modern concept
of an ambassador.3 I will also defend the idea that Roman diplomatic speech in
this period did not always constitute an exercise in persuasion, but consisted of
coercive rhetoric rather than deliberative political oratory.4 Above all, I would
like to stress the idea that Roman diplomacy during the Republic was based
primarily on attitude, such that diplomatic speeches, unlike political speeches,
often place more emphasis on form than on substance, even on gestures
more than on words.5 In theory, although the palliata comedy of Plautus,
thanks to its Greek setting, has traditionally been dismissed as irrelevant
1
‘What neither I nor anyone else of our citizens ever believed would happen to us has taken
place: we’ve got home safely. The enemy’s been conquered and our legions return home as
conquerors, now that a mighty war’s been brought to an end and the enemy’s been exterminated.
The city that has inflicted many an unwelcome funeral on the Theban people has been
conquered and crushed through the strength and courage of our soldiers, and chiefly by the
generalship and under the auspices of my master Amphitruo. He’s furnished his countrymen
with booty, land, and fame and has secured the kingship for the Theban king, Creon. As for me,
he’s sent me ahead home from the harbour so that I could report to his wife how he managed
affairs of state through his leadership, generalship, and supreme authority. I’ll now think over
how I’m going to speak to her when I get there. If I tell a lie, I’ll be acting in my usual way, as is
my habit: when they were fighting as hard as they could, I was running away as hard as I could.
Anyway, I’ll pretend that I was there and I’ll tell what I’ve heard. But first I want to rehearse here
by myself in what way and with what words I ought to speak. I’ll tell her like this: “First, when we
arrived there, when we touched the shore, Amphitruo immediately chose the leading men
among those of high rank. He sent them as legates and ordered them to tell the Teloboans his
decision: should they wish to hand over the pillage and the pillagers without violence and
without war, if they returned what they had taken away, he would immediately take his army
back home, the Argives would leave their territory, and he would give them peace and quiet; but
should they be otherwise disposed and not comply with what he demanded, then he would attack
their city with all his might and men. When those whom Amphitruo had appointed as
ambassadors repeated this to the Teloboans word for word, those self-assured men, relying on
their valour and strength, rebuked our envoys very arrogantly and aggressively, and replied that
they could protect themselves and their own by war; so our men had better go quickly and
remove the troops from their borders. As soon as the envoys had conveyed this, Amphitruo
instantly led the entire army out of the camp. On the other side the Teloboans took their troops
out of the city, equipped with exceedingly beautiful arms.” ’ (Trans. Melo 2011, adapted).
2 3 4
Barsby 2007. Torregaray 2013. Pernot 2015: 1–28.
5
Chaniotis 2015.
Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 51

to reconstructions of Rome’s history, one can, I suggest, find traces of
Roman culture’s ways of being and thinking, especially by analysing the
language that Plautus used. In this sense, comedies are unique as language
documents that contain information on the mentality and customs of the
Roman people.6
In the Amphitruo, Sosia delivers a monologue regarding a military exped-
ition against the Teleboans conducted by the general Amphitruo (Plaut.
Amph. 186–261). This speech is considered by many scholars to be merely a
parody of Roman military campaigns in the opening third of the second
century BC.7 However, useful work has been done on the peculiar character-
istics of the Latin of the passage and its stylistic twists, including its originality
in the context of Plautine comedy. Thanks to its unusual features, the text has
drawn the attention of philologists as well as historians.8 One of the most
interesting contributions is that of G. Petrone, who recently analysed the
passage with a primary focus on diplomatic relations in Rome.9 As pointed
out by Enríquez González,10 the verses are part of dramatic passages known as
cantica, which must be interpreted musically and rhythmically. Their meaning
is complex because they are part of a text that is designed to provoke laughter,
and it has often been assumed that the monologue criticizes the pompous
procedures of contemporary generals and historians in recounting triumphs
and military deeds.11
The canticum of Sosia takes place at the beginning of the play.12 Within the
narrative, the slave has been given the task (mandatum) of bringing the news
of Amphitruo’s victorious campaign to the general’s wife, Alcmena, before the
general arrives in the city of Thebes. On another level, however, Sosia’s speech
stages a customary element of Roman military and political culture: prior to
the arrival of the imperator in the city, a legatus or nuntius was sent ahead to
announce the good news of a Roman victory. In this sense, Sosia’s monologue
recalls a specific rhetorical form of battle description that is supposed to
be familiar to the Roman audience, one that probably originated in an oral
tradition rather than in writing.13 On such occasions, the legatus or nuntius
uictoriae spoke not with the intention of persuading, but of convincing the
public (i.e. the Senate or the Roman assemblies). In our period, the speech
aimed to conjure an image of the battle before the eyes of the audience which
was based on the write-up in the litterae laureatae delivered to the Senate by
6
Gruen 1990; Wiseman 1998: 43–8; Owens 2000; Rosivach 1999–2000; Leigh 2004: 1–23;
Burton 2004; Benferhat 2009; Manuwald 2011: 293–300.
7
Janne 1933; Lelièvre 1958; Stewart 1958; Pascucci 1961–2; Pascucci 1978; Oniga 1985.
8
Ernout 1933; Marouzeau 1921; Marouzeau 1935; Marouzeau 1941; Marouzeau 1949; Hyart
1954: 136, 158; Braun 1970; Sedgwick 1967: 74 n. 206; Harvey 1986.
9 10
Petrone 2008–9. Enríquez González 1998.
11
Marouzeau 1935: 233; Manuwald 1999; Owens 2001.
12 13
Fraenkel 1922: 352. Oniga 1985.

the victorious general.14 The passage is thus an announcement: the announce-
ment that Sosia will tell the Roman audience the story of the battle won by
Amphitruo. Sosia’s whole speech is, in fact, modelled on a Roman military
tradition that announced the victory of an imperator prior to his arrival
in Rome.
In this case, Sosia acts as an envoy of the victorious general and must report
the victory to suit the interests of the latter, i.e. in the most favourable way. But
Sosia’s efforts to imagine the battle are inherently hilarious and probably
intended to mock the eager attitude of many Roman generals, who wanted
to celebrate a triumph.15 Sosia states that he needs to deliver a speech if he is to
report the victory; as it is a victory he has not seen, it has been supposed that
he invents the narration.16 In order to deliver his report, he must resort to the
usual clichés of the genre, causing hilarity amongst the Roman audience.
Despite its clearly comic features, Sosia’s monologue provides an opportunity
for us to understand how such diplomatic military discourses were crafted.
Since the speech had to follow conventions that both the author and the
audience knew, and did not need to be true, it is helpful to know what
storylines these speeches followed, or at least, which arguments were more
commonly repeated and widely known to the public. Likewise, an understand-
ing of what the audience expected to hear in a comparable speech is useful.
Such knowledge might indicate that Plautus mocks the lack of originality
in many public speeches, which based themselves on known models or
which followed the same plot lines over and over again. The whole passage
is particularly suggestive because it is a good representation of how this type of
speech—the announcement of victory, which differs essentially from political
speeches delivered in the Forum or other political contexts—was staged.17
The scene begins by introducing Sosia, just arrived from the port, preparing
to appear before Alcmena at her home in Thebes. It is she who will receive the
speech, thus taking on the role of the Senate or audience in Rome to whom
such speeches were addressed. The scene is broadly accurate, since legati from
abroad generally arrived by sea, and they were always accompanied by repre-
sentatives of the authorities as well as, sometimes, by a crowd who wanted to
see and hear them on their final arrival at their destination. In the case of the
announcement of a victory, the arrival of Roman legati generated great
anticipation, because they brought important, often vital, news, attracting an
audience for their verbal accounts and written reports of the battle. The
opening of Sosia’s monologue is a good reflection of this anticipation, as he
14
E.g. Livy 45.2.2–7. Auliard 2001: 32; Bastien 2007: 249–59.
15
The tendency of Plautus to ridicule the Roman military establishment is often remarked
upon, and the braggart soldier is one of the playwright’s favourite comic characters: Westaway
1917: 26–32; Perna 1955: 179–203; Cagniart 1999.
16
Halkin 1948.
17
Halkin 1948; Chalmers 1965; Hoffmann 1984; Pansiéri 1997: 539–43.

admits that he is nervous about uttering his words, first because he is a slave
and secondly because he has to invent his narrative as he did not witness the
battle. The problem is that he has to recreate a more or less official speech, as
he has to address the general’s wife. The attitude of Sosia must also reflect the
nervousness of public speakers themselves, which is not often attested but
which must have been common in Roman society.
It is worth pausing at this point to consider the question of exactly which
official role Sosia can be said to be playing here. It is not immediately clear
whether he is an aggelos, as is usual in Greek plays,18 a legatus (an official
envoy of the general), or a nuntius (a diplomatic agent often used by the Senate
to receive ambassadors and to bring news), or whether he is playing a role in
the context of the ‘diplomacy of intervention’—battlefield diplomacy—when a
general might send legati or nuntii to announce terms to an enemy prior to
war or to discuss certain issues relating to a conflict. In this case, it is more
appropriate to consider Sosia as a nuntius, since Plautus uses the verb nuntiare
in the text.19
At the beginning of the passage, before starting to report the battle, Sosia
says that he should first give thanks to the gods.20 He uses the words of the
thanksgiving supplicatio usually included in the triumphal ceremony, whereby
congratulations are given because the legions have returned, the citizens are
safe, the res publica is at peace, the spoils have been shared out, and the enemy
has been destroyed.21 Choosing to incorporate the classic formula of thanks-
giving in the monologue prompts the audience to recognize Sosia’s speech as
the announcement of a victory, and it also serves to emphasize the satirical line
taken by Plautus, which relies upon the fact that his Roman audience was
accustomed to certain plots and certain forms of speech: the repeated use of
the same expression—hostibus uictis—elsewhere in his comedies suggests that
Plautus was very familiar with official language, and that he transferred such
speeches to his comedies to provoke hilarity at the expense of material that
was well known to his audience.22 Plautus uses this technique in other plays
in contexts that are not specifically rhetorical but which reveal, nevertheless,
the rhetorical and ritual culture of the Roman audience: when the salvation of
the citizen legion or the defeated enemy appear as a storyline, the audience
recognizes what is being said.
Formulae such as the supplicatio are not solely confined to religious usage:
they appear in political and theatrical contexts as well—the salvation and
protection of the res publica are sound rhetorical devices.23 We can assume,
18
Amoroso 1981; Slater 1985: 188–90; Tadeu Gonçalves 2015: 17.
19 20
Enríquez González 1999: 89–91. Halkin 1953: 108–11.
21
Plaut. Persa 753–6. O’Neill 2003.
22
Plaut. Persa 753–7; Truc. 75. Hickson-Hahn 2004a: 37–46.
23
See later e.g. Livy 27.51.4; 27.51.8; 29.27.2–4; 38.48.14. Hickson-Hahn 2004b: 60–1.

therefore, that the formula was effortlessly transferred to other political or
diplomatic spheres, where it was devoid of any religious implications; I return
to this point and its implications for our reading of Sosia’s monologue below.
With this background in mind, I suggest that there are two angles from
which we can examine this text in terms of its potential contribution to our
understanding of Republican oratory. First, as outlined above, it can be read as
an example of how speeches announcing a victory were delivered at Rome,
and, by extension, of how speeches recounting battles before a diverse audi-
ence, and before diverse audiences, were crafted. Announcements and battle
stories were officially presented to the Roman authorities, but we also know
that they were delivered in other unofficial private or public contexts. The
protagonists of military campaigns also had to be ready to explain their
victories or to recount the battles in which they had participated whenever
they were requested to do so by the authorities: this happened, for example, in
the case of Gaius Laelius and the Battle of Carthago Nova.24 Latin literature
and historiography are full of such examples, in which nuntii and legati
announce victory in a public context. However, they do not simply announce
the bare outcome of the battle, but also recount the action of the battle itself,
helped, in many cases, by the reports written up in litterae laureatae. The
narration of battles, with appropriate additions or exaggerations, was a typical
device for the recounting of military deeds; C. Laelius is said to have reported
his victories with Scipio as many times as he was asked. They could be thought
of as a form of oral memorialization, doubtless made up of certain stock
rhetorical passages, and while they had no intention of persuading the audi-
ence in a forensic sense, their aim was certainly to captivate and enthral their
listeners.
Secondly, Sosia’s report of Amphitruo’s conduct in the battle includes
another form of diplomatic communication: he describes how the general
sent legati to the Teleboans before the start of the war, conveying specific
demands to be fulfilled by the enemy if they wanted to avoid battle. In this
case, the words of Amphitruo’s ‘ambassadors’ should furnish us with a stock
example of the way in which legati or nuntii addressed an enemy, as envoys
active in military diplomacy plainly do not have much opportunity for
exercising persuasive oratory.25 It is this point which I elaborate on in the
following section.
THE RHETORIC OF THE DIPLOMACY OF INTERVENTION: INTIMIDATION

When reporting the battle, Sosia describes what can be recognized as a
diplomatic act, and one which we can view as illustrative of a situation that
will have occurred in the context of Roman military activity. Amphitruo
24 25
Livy 27.7.1–4. Petrone 2008–9.

chooses his legati and orders them to convey his will to the enemy (i.e. to
repeat what he says), and then explains his demands: if all that was stolen is
returned, the army will withdraw in peace. If not, war will begin. One of the
most significant aspects for understanding how diplomatic oratory worked
can be found in verse 205. Amphitruo shapes the discourse of the legati,
conveying that the most important thing they can do is transmit what he
has said: eos legat, Telobois iubet sententiam ut dicant suam.26
The language here clearly differs from the tone of the rest of the comedy: it
resembles the description of an act of war and diplomacy, which, as highlight-
ed above, arguably reflects formal speeches concerning war and diplomacy in
the Roman state.27 G. Petrone relates this diplomatic scene to the fetial law,
whereby fetial priests were sent to probe the possibility of avoiding conflict
through repair, request, and ultimatum, but could declare war if within thirty-
three days the enemy had not repaired the damage or complaint. Petrone links
Sosia’s words to the fetial procedure also known in Livy and Dionysius of
Halicarnassus.28 Plautus has simply transposed the fetial rite from the battle-
field to the stage.
Just as, as we saw above, the supplicatio at the beginning of Sosia’s mono-
logue appears here removed from its exclusively religious context—not to
mention that the same formula also appears in other Plautine plays29—
indicating that it is not so much a religious prayer but a stock element of
oratory, so, I would argue, Plautus handles the diplomatic processes of Am-
phitruo in a similar fashion: Sosia’s depiction of the general’s military activities
is not solely an expression of the fetial rite. First, Amphitruo chooses the legati,
selecting them from his leading men, among the best in his army (primorum
principes).30 It was a prerogative of a Roman general to select his own
representatives—usually prominent men in his army—who were then sent
off with precise instructions (mandata) that had to be followed.31 The import-
ance of mandata is perfectly reflected in our passage, which underlines the need
26
Plaut. Amph. 186–261.
27
The monologue of Sosia establishes a clear correspondence with the tone of official
documents, according to Petrone 2008–9: 169. He gives the example of an inscription of
L. Mummius (CIL I2 626 = VI 331 = CLE 3 = ILS 20 = ILLRP 1222 add.), which begins with
the same sequence of imperium and auspicium. Also Marouzeau 1935: 233; Halkin 1948: 300–3;
Enríquez González1998: 108–9.
28
Petrone 2008–9: 171–8; Enríquez González 1998: 109–10. On fetiales see Non. 529.17L;
Livy 1.32.14. Cf. Livy 1.38.6: ‘deditisne uos populumque Collatinum, urbem, agros, aquam,
terminos, delubra, utensilia, diuina humanaque omnia, in meam populique Romani dicionem?’;
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.72.4–9; Serv. ad Aen. 9.52.
29
Halkin 1953.
30
Using the redundant formula with comic intent. Clearly Plautus thought of ambassadors as
people who were all too aware of their own importance, a characterization also to be seen in
Stichus (Stich. 490–500).
31
E.g. Livy 28.48.4 explains the importance of following the original instructions. Donahue
2010: 33–66.

for the ambassadors to repeat (iterarunt) what Amphitruo has ordered: haec ubi
Telebois ordine iterarunt quos praefecerat Amphitruo. This insistence on repe-
tition (res repetere) is what has led some scholars to consider this portion of the
text to reflect the fetial formula.32 But I would argue it is more important to
interpret this repetition in the context of the issuing of mandata, because this is
the only basis on which a general can impose his own conditions and establish a
real negotiation through legati.
Based on their instructions, then, the legati-ambassadors must formulate a
speech, but what kind of speech? The question is: will they simply repeat the
words of the general or can they produce something original? If we look
forward to the end of the embassy in Plautus, the legati convey (pertulere) to
Amphitruo the message of the Teleboans. Their role thus seems to require
only transmission, without the need for any real rhetorical capacity. But the
legati are not mere messengers, because at some point they must demonstrate
a particular kind of persuasiveness.
If one’s purpose is to subdue an enemy, then any diplomacy must, in
principle, be intended to be intimidating, as must the oratory employed.
This is the case in the Amphitruo. From this point of view, there is no
possibility of persuasion or of seduction, only of enforced submission. Speech
must be formulated, therefore, based on threat. One could question whether
one would really bother to articulate a full-dress speech in a context in which
force is more important than words; indeed, this would be the inverse of the
Ciceronian model. Nevertheless, this is a type of speech that is also part of
Roman oratory.
As noted above, the assertion that traces of the fetiales procedure are to be
found in Sosia’s monologue is based on the fact that one of the elements of the
fetial formula—the return of the plunder and plunderers—can be found in
the text.33 Just as, again, the use of the supplicatio sets the tone of the speech as
a victory announcement, in this case, rather than interpret the passage as
incorporating a fetial prayer, I think that it is more appropriate to read the
fetial procedure as adding to the tone of the speech, rather than defining it
solely in these terms.34 In terms of attitude, moreover, the language of the
priests is only used as a referent to establish the tone of the discourse: it
prepares the orator and the audience, and determines the form of speech to be
used. That is to say, the tone is appropriate to a threatening or intimidating
speech, one typically delivered forcefully—it conveys what the imperator has
decided, it is a closed argument where no negotiation is accepted. This is
because it is diplomacy in the context of war. The tone of this speech is
32 33
Petrone 2008–9: 170. Petrone 2008–9: 170–1.
34
How many among Plautus’ audience would have recognized Sosia’s allusions to the fetial
formula is a difficult question to answer, not least because, by the time of Plautus, the role of the
fetials in negotiation had long been supplanted by ambassadors (see the overview of Rich 2013).

unusually severe in its formulation, seeking confrontation. The adoption of
such a tone can be deduced from the type of assemblies in which such a speech
would be delivered, which, one might imagine, were usually noisy.35 The
interlocutor’s violent interruption occurs because the diplomacy of intimida-
tion usually has only two possible replies: fear or anger. The latter is usually
manifested in our ancient sources by the interruption of the listener, which
also happens here.36
The majority of the accounts of diplomatic acts in our sources revolve
around one of these situations: the imposition or application of a covenant,
supplication, recognition, or the declaration of an ultimatum.37 In all these
cases, it should be emphasized that a diplomatic relationship of inequality is
defined, with one side always located in a superior position to another,
significantly lower, opponent. The diplomatic acts of the dominant side are
represented in two main ways: first, as an example of generosity, showing
magnanimity to those who are disadvantaged and giving them what is asked
for (and thus eliciting their extreme gratitude); secondly, at the other end
of the spectrum, as a paradigm of intimidation because they instantiate
superiority—if what they demand is not forthcoming, certain conditions will
be imposed, mostly through the threat of war and physical annihilation. From
this point of view, taking into account that the diplomatic acts of the classical
world had a significantly symbolic as well as emotional component, we can say
that most of these actions are based on recognition and fear. This in turn leads
to a particular outlook in the diplomacy of the classical world, which pivots
around these two principles.38
Furthermore, the nature of diplomatic acts is largely founded upon request-
ing something, or just pleading a cause, which already places one of the two
contending parties in a subordinate position. This is why Rome chose to
avoid sending out embassies,39 but instead encouraged the sending of foreign
embassies to Rome. This was a conscious decision intended to affirm the
central position of the city as Mediterranean hegemon. During conflicts,
however, Romans could not avoid being placed in diplomatic situations
where the position of power had to be established immediately. This generated
high tension, and Romans were urged to control their aggressiveness and
measure their words so that they should not to be too offensive.40
Thus, in a world where war seems to be the product of failed negotiations
within a framework of various embassies, the possibility of conflict is described
in a very emotional way and intimidation will become a part of the diplomatic
game.41 Although this is not exclusive to Roman diplomatic culture, it can
be claimed that it was widely practised by them. One of the most striking
35 36 37
Torregaray 2012. François 2015. Eckstein 2009; Torregaray 2009a.
38 39
Rich 1993; Quillin 2004; Rosenstein 2007: 229–30. Salomonsson 2000–1.
40 41
Eckstein 2006; Burton 2011; Grass and Stouder 2015. Brennan 2009.

examples of this attitude is the embassy led by Gaius Popillius Laenas, who
famously presented Antiochus IV with the ultimatum to evacuate Egypt and
Cyprus in 168 BC.42 In the area of the diplomacy of intervention, however, it
is Caesar who best reproduces the formula used by Plautus: postulauit deinde
eadem quae legatis in mandatis dederat: ne aut Haeduis aut eorum sociis
bellum inferret, obsides redderet, si nullam partem Germanorum domum
remittere posset, at ne quos amplius Rhenum transire pateretur.43 The com-
parison is strengthened if we consider that Caesar repeats to Ariovistus the
same requests made by his legati, requests based on his previous mandata. All
of this is paralleled by the way that Amphitruo gives orders to his own legati.
The answer of Ariovistus is quite expressive, too: Ariouistus ad postulata
Caesaris pauca respondit, de suis uirtutibus multa praedicauit.44 He clearly
avoids acknowledging the requests of Caesar and chooses a way to confront
him through rhetoric. It is obvious that the interaction between ambas-
sadors and communities generates speeches. The Teleboans also responded
to Amphitruo, but we find no traces of such exchanges in the contem-
porary tablet of Alcántara, an epigraphic document describing a deditio of
the second century BC.45 In the text we find demands and their fulfilment, but
no rhetorical elaboration.
Within this game of intimidation, the legati of the diplomacy of interven-
tion must deliver their speeches, based on the transmission of orders, to stir
fear or anger in the interlocutor.46 From this point of view, Plautus’ text helps
us to understand, if not the form of diplomatic speech, certainly its tone and,
above all, what the disposition of the speaker might be when making it. The
unpredictable public reaction in the real world could even endanger the life of
the legatus, so the threatening tone of the fetial formula could not be appro-
priate in all situations, despite common assumptions to the contrary. More
elaboration in such speeches would be provided. From this point of view, the
text of Plautus can be considered as an example of the evolution of Roman
diplomatic speech, which retains the attitude of the fetiales, but needs new
skills to communicate with partners. New speeches would be elaborated in the
following years while maintaining the intimidating tone of the priests.
42
Polyb. 29.27; Val. Max. 6.4.3. Torregaray 2009b.
43 44
Caes. B Gall. 1.43.9; 1.35.1–4. Caes. B Gall. 1.45.1.
45
López Melero et al. 1984 (AE 1984: 495): C(aio) Mario Flauio [co(n)s(ulibus)] | L(ucio)
Caesio C(ai) f(ilio) imperatore populus Seanoc[*** se] | dedit L(ucius) Caesius C(ai) f(ilius)
imperator postquam [eos in deditionem] | accepit ad consilium retolit quid eis im[perandum] |
censerent de consili(i) sententia imperau[it ut omnes] | captiuos equos equas quas cepis(s)ent
[traderent haec] | omnis dederunt deinde eos L(ucius) Caesius C(ai) [f(ilius) imperator liberos] |
esse iussit agros et aedificia leges cete[ra omnia] | quae sua fuissent pridie quam se dedid[erunt
quae tum] | extarent eis redidit dum populus [senatusque] | Roomanus(!) uellet deque ea re eos
[qui aderunt ***] | eire iussit legatos Cren[us? ***] | Arco Cantoni f(ilius) legates.
46
Haffter 1940: 103–11; Petrone 2008–9: 173–5.
The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius

Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta
in Cicero’s Brutus
Alfredo Casamento
Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta were protagonists in Roman
political life both in their social roles and for their rhetorical qualities. But
while the historical aspect of their activities is adequately known and docu-
mented, for the quality of their eloquence we have to rely almost exclusively on
the judgement of Cicero. In addition to the fact that they play the role of minor
protagonists in the De oratore, prompting Antonius and Crassus, the principal
actors of the dialogue, to reveal the ‘secrets’ of their art, Cicero makes them in
turn the protagonists of an intense confrontation in the Brutus in order to
reflect on different styles of eloquence. The purpose of this chapter, therefore,
is to investigate these two personalities, illustrative of Roman eloquence at the
beginning of the first century BC, with particular regard to the Brutus of 46 BC.
A survey of the characteristics of their eloquence, conducted in the absence
of direct evidence that might provide objective feedback about their oratorical
qualities, will also force us to confront and analyse the centrality (and in some
cases the indispensability) of Cicero’s opinions. Cicero’s work, and particularly his
Brutus, is essential for those who wish to investigate the personality that sat in
judgement on the long process of Republican eloquence: even though we would
prefer to look beyond Cicero, the Brutus is one of the best (or only) guides we have.1
WHEN NVLLA MONVMENTA L OQVVNTVR
First, one must consider a long passage of the treatise in which Cicero steps
outside the path of the dialogue:
1
Scholars are well aware of this limit: see e.g. Steel 2007.
60 Alfredo Casamento
atque ego praeclare intellego me in eorum commemoratione uersari qui nec
habiti sint oratores neque fuerint, praeteririque a me aliquot ex ueteribus com-
memoratione aut laude dignos. sed hoc quidem ignoratione; quid enim est
superioris aetatis quod scribi possit de iis, de quibus nulla monumenta loquuntur
nec aliorum nec ipsorum? de his autem quos ipsi uidimus neminem fere prae-
termittimus eorum quos aliquando dicentis audiuimus.2 Cic. Brut. 181
This is a pivotal passage. Cicero ponders what to write about the representa-
tives of a past age,3 about whom there are no more witnesses. The author adds
that the subject of the dialogue itself brings up too many alternatives, because
it is difficult to work with incomplete data. So he admits that it is possible he
may have written about people who really ought not be acknowledged as real
orators, and at the same time neglected someone who is worthy of being
mentioned. But if this happens, it is only because he has too few witnesses to
be objective in his evaluation.
Reading this paragraph we are confronted with a double perspective: on the
one hand, there is the author’s intention to highlight the importance of rhetoric
in Rome, even if there are no capable orators;4 on the other hand, he wants to
emphasize his reliability as a judge. Moreover, Cicero confirms the link between
rhetoric and res publica: the latter, in fact, is implicit in the affirmation of the former;
this remains true even in times which lack great orators. The worst speakers,
in other words, merely make the best more prominent; the clamatores provide a
foil which allows him to distinguish fully those who have been real orators:
uolo enim sciri in tanta et tam uetere re publica maxumis praemiis eloquentiae
propositis omnes cupisse dicere, non plurumos ausos esse, potuisse paucos. ego
tamen ita de uno quoque dicam, ut intellegi possit quem existimem clamatorem,
quem oratorem fuisse.5 Cic. Brut. 182
The only possible principle on which to proceed is de uno, that is one by
one, with the aim of evaluating the contribution of each orator to the
growth of the res publica. Later on, Cicero lists all the orators who lived
2
‘I recognize very well that I have been occupied with the enumeration of many who never
were esteemed and in fact never were orators, and that some earlier names have been passed over
who deserved laudable mention. But if so, it was from ignorance; for what can one write of men
of an earlier time when no records of others or works of their own speak concerning them? But of
those whom I myself have seen I pass over scarcely anyone whom I ever heard speak.’ (Trans.
Hendrickson 1939).
3
‘Cicero has momentarily forgotten that he is writing dialogue’: Douglas 1966a: 138.
4
David 2014: 28: ‘L’éloquence était un art difficile. Ceux qui s’y consacraient s’investissaient
grâce à lui dans la vie de la cité et leur effort méritait d’être signalé, même quand il n’avait pas
permis d’atteindre les plus grandes réussites.’ On the bad orators, see also Wisse 2013.
5
‘For it is my wish to make it plain that in an old and great state like ours, where eloquence has
held out the greatest rewards, all men have desired to be speakers, no great number have ventured
to try, few have been successful. Concerning each one I shall speak so that you may know whom
I consider to have been a mere declaimer, and whom an orator.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
Cf. Brut. 180; also De or. 1.202; Orat. 47.
The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 61

between the end of the second century BC and the beginning of the first
century BC; in this period, in fact, the difference among mere speakers and
real orators became more evident (sed ab eis, qui tantum in dicentium
numero, non in oratorum fuerunt, iam ad oratores reuortamur, 176). This
is a large group of orators belonging to a generation younger than Iulius
Caesar Strabo, who is considered by Cicero the first notable representative
of a new aetas of Roman eloquence:
isdem fere temporibus aetate inferiores paulo quam Iulius sed aequales propemo-
dum fuerunt C. Cotta P. Sulpicius Q. Varius Cn. Pomponius C. Curio L. Fufius
M. Drusus P. Antistius; nec ulla aetate uberior oratorum fetus fuit. ex his Cotta et
Sulpicius cum meo iudicio tum omnium facile primas tulerunt.6 Cic. Brut. 182–3
Among these, the most notable names are the first two, Cotta and Sulpicius,7
about whom, Cicero says, everyone has the same opinion (cum meo iudicio
tum omnium facile primas tulerunt). This valuation, fairly unusual and ap-
parently polemical,8 seems more marked because it is not objective, given that
neither of them had left written texts: in the following paragraphs Cicero notes
that the oration entitled pro se lege Varia (C. Aurelius Cotta, ORF4 80 F10),
which circulated under the name of Cotta, was in fact written by Lucius
Aelius,9 while Sulpicius’ works were probably issued by Publius Cannutius
6
‘To about the same time, but somewhat younger than Julius, yet essentially contemporary,
belong Gaius Cotta, Publius Sulpicius, Quintus Varius, Gnaeus Pomponius, Gaius Curio, Lucius
Fufius, Marcus Drusus, Publius Antistitius; no period of our history ever produced a more
numerous progeny of orators. Of this number the first rank, in my judgment and the in
judgment of the public, was awarded to Cotta and Sulpicius.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939). The
introduction of every generation of orators through an analysis of the influence of the main
character of each age is a peculiarity of the work: cf. Sumner 1973: 3–10; Fantham 1979: 447;
Steel 2003: 209; David 2014.
7
Gaius Aurelius Cotta (Klebs 1896; C. Aurelius Cotta ORF4 80; Sumner 1973: 109–10;
David 1992: 742–3) was probably born around 124 BC. We know that as the nephew of
Publius Rutilius Rufus he undertook the defence of his uncle in a famous trial around 93 BC;
in the following years he was exiled because of help given to the Italians during the Civil
War. Once back, thanks to Sulla’s help, he became consul in 75 BC. He died a year later, just
before he was due to celebrate a triumph for his victories in Gaul. Cicero makes him
protagonist of the third book of the De natura deorum, giving him the task of explaining
the principles of the New Academy. As for Publius Sulpicius Rufus (Münzer 1931;
P. Sulpicius Rufus ORF4 76; Sumner 1973: 109–10; David 1992: 752–3), we know that he
was tribune and supporter of Gaius Marius, and for this reason was killed by Sulla in 88 BC.
He appeared in various trials, and in particular was the prosecutor in the trial de maiestate
against Gaius Norbanus in 95 BC. Antonius won this trial, although he was enthusiastic about
Sulpicius’ rhetorical skill (Cic. De or. 2.89).
8
‘On insiste sur le second terme . . . c’est précisément cette insistance qui étonne Atticus et
amène la digression’: Martha 19072: 133.
9
Cottam autem miror summum ipsum oratorem minimeque ineptum Aelianas leues oratiun-
culas uoluisse existimari suas (Cic. Brut. 207). The only evidence of Cotta’s eloquence is given by
a fragment of Charisius (p. 284B) referring to a trial pro Cn. Veturio, about which we unfortu-
nately know nothing. This is the fragment: tu solus hic cum optimis, tu de tua sponte hic cum
religione (ORF4 80 F17). On the absence of Cotta and Sulpicius’ speeches Cicero speaks also in
(Cic. Brut. 205 = P. Cannutius ORF4 114 F4), and Cicero himself states that he
had often heard Sulpicius say that he neither had, nor ever could, commit
anything of the kind to writing (saepeque ex eo audiui, cum se scribere neque
consuesse neque posse dicere, Cic. Brut. 205).
Despite these issues, the voice of Cicero is our most authoritative source:
it is only thanks to him that we can form any idea (however distorted) of the
eloquence of these two orators. Cicero had already spoken about them as
protagonists in the De oratore, where they played the role of young orators,
eager to know the secrets of eloquence from Crassus:10 exierant autem cum
ipso Crasso adulescentes et Drusi maxime familiares et in quibus magnam
tum spem maiores natu dignitatis suae conlocarent, C. Cotta qui tum tribu-
natum plebis petebat, et P. Sulpicius qui deinceps eum magistratum petiturus
putabatur (De or. 1.25); idque ex te quaerimus (this is Cotta) . . . quid prae-
terea esse adsumendum putes (De or. 1.133). As we can see already in the
initial paragraphs of this earlier dialogue, composed in 55 BC, Cicero presents
his two young orators as a pair.
In the Brutus, it is particularly important for Cicero to mention Sulpicius
Rufus and Cotta because, in opposition to Atticist positions, he intends to
affirm the superiority of popular judgement over that of so-called experts:11 by
using many metaphors Cicero insists that usually the opinion of people must
be the same as that of the experts, and adds provocatively that ‘whatever is
approved by the feelings of the people must be equally so by men of taste and
erudition (quod denim probat multitudo, hoc idem doctis probandum est, Brut.
188)’.12 Cicero is passionate in his defence of this position and often lingers on
the problem, sometimes ironically attacking the Atticists who, during the
elaboration of the Brutus, were becoming more and more popular (Cic.
Brut. 188):13 Tu artifex quid quaeris amplius? delectatur audiens multitudo et
ducitur oratione et quasi uoluptate quadam perfunditur: quid habes quod
disputes?14
Orat. 132: sed Crassi perpauca sunt nec ea iudiciorum, nihil Antoni, nihil Cottae, nihil Sulpici. We
also have an imaginary speech of Cotta in front of the Roman people in the year in which he was
consul in the Sallustian Historiae (2 F42 Maurenbrecher: see Paladini 19682 ad loc.; Malitz 1972;
Gärtner 2011; Rosenblitt 2011).
10
Culpepper Stroup 2010: 150: ‘De oratore is not just a conversation between men of
experience; it is a textual exercise in the private education of the inexperienced young.’
11
Cf. Schenkeveld 1988. For the great importance of popularis intelligentia (Orat. 36), see
Arena 2013a.
12
Trans. Jones 1776.
13
Regarding polemic against the Atticists, in addition to the old but still valid Hendrickson
1926: 242–5, see Delarue 1982: 178–80; Dugan 2001: 409–13; Narducci 2002: 408–12; Dugan
2005: 215–17; Guérin 2011: 339–49.
14
‘You, sir, critic and expert, what more do you ask? The listening throng is delighted, is
carried along by his words, is in a sense bathed deep in delight. What have you here to cavil
with?’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).

Whatever else this long section of the Brutus is doing, we must always be
aware that its starting point is the positive opinion of Cotta and Sulpicius
shared by Cicero and the rest of the community. This appears from the
beginning of Brut. 201, where Cicero continues with the following words:
quando igitur, inquam, a Cotta et Sulpicio haec omnis fluxit oratio, cum hos
maxume iudicio illorum hominum15 et illius aetatis dixissem probatos, reuortar
ad eos ipsos; tum reliquos, ut institui, deinceps persequar.16 Cic. Brut. 201
ORATORVM BO NORVM . . . DVO GENERA S VNT
The following two paragraphs deal with the presentation of the profiles of the
two orators:
quoniam ergo oratorum bonorum—hos enim quaerimus—duo genera sunt,
unum attenuate presseque, alterum sublate ampleque dicentium, etsi id melius
est quod splendidius et magnificentius, tamen in bonis omnia quae summa sunt
iure laudantur. sed cauenda est presso illi oratori inopia et ieiunitas, amplo autem
inflatum et corruptum orationis genus.17 Cic. Brut. 201–2
In this section, which has been extensively analysed,18 Cicero speaks about two
kinds of bonus orator: the former is distinguished by simple neatness and
brevity (attenuate et presse), the latter by copious dignity and elevation
(sublate ampleque). In so doing, Cicero, before presenting the two profiles,
gives his readers an interpretative key that allows them not only to arrive at a
quick judgement but also anticipate what this will be.
The reason why Cicero switched from the three-pattern model of the De
oratore to the two-pattern model of the Brutus, and back again to the three-
pattern model of the Orator, has long been debated.19 This chapter will not
15
The reference is to Brut. 183, where Cicero had spoken about the popular opinion and his
own. Cf. Douglas 1966a: 145: ‘there is no need to bring the text of this passage more closely into
line with what is said there.’
16
Well then, since all this talk started from Cotta and Sulpicius, who I said were the orators
most esteemed in the judgment of such experts and by the general judgment of their time, I will
come back to a consideration of those two men themselves, and then I shall proceed with the rest
in order, as I undertook to do.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
17
‘Since then there are two distinct types of good oratory -and that is the only kind we are
considering- one simple and concise, the other elevated and abundant, while naturally that is the
better which is more brilliant and impressive, yet everything which falls under the category of
good, and is supreme in its kind, wins a just praise. But the concise orator must be on his guard
against meagreness and emaciation, the abundant and elevated type against inflation and errors
of taste.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
18
See Guérin 2014 also for previous bibliography.
19
Cf. Fantham 1979: 448; Steel 2003: 209–10; Dugan 2005: 196–203; Guérin 2014.
linger on this point; nevertheless, it is obvious that the two-pattern model is
more appealing and incisive. As an effective way of considering evolution
through divergent trends, it is better able to express concepts, conveying a
complete picture of Roman eloquence:20 as John Dugan says, ‘eloquence
evolves over time as the result of an individual orator’s rivalry with other
orators.’21 There is no doubt that the two-pattern model offers Cicero an easy
solution for clearly representing his own preference for a certain kind of
eloquence, while at the same time giving a negative valuation of the opposite
kind, and thus maintaining a constantly critical, sometimes ironic tone to-
wards the Atticists and their ideas.
This is why we can always find pairs of orators in the Brutus,22 from the case
of Laelius and Galba, who were advocates in a trial concerning a massacre in
Sila, to the case of Scaevola and Crassus, known as the causa Curiana.23 From
Cicero’s synopsis, it is clear that Laelius and Scaevola were considered great
orators, and the judgements passed on them are always extremely positive: for
Cicero, Laelius spoke accurate . . . eleganterque, but he obtained only a delay of
the trial; even with his second chance he spoke multo diligentius meliusque
(Cic. Brut. 86), but still in vain. As for Scaevola, Cicero says that nobody could
expect quicquam politius aut elegantius aut omnino melius (Brut. 194). The
two personalities of the orators are never judged negatively, not even slightly.
Nevertheless, Laelius and Scaevola, models of the plain oratorical style, are
always defeated when compared with Galba and Crassus. They were practi-
tioners of a vibrant and passionate eloquence, which aims at rousing the
emotions as a fundamental element of winning collective approval. Remark-
able is the episode in the defence of the publicani, when Galba came from his
testudo, his private room, with daggers in his eyes and a triumphant expres-
sion typical of an orator who has just finished a trial, not one yet to begin
(Brut. 87). Another noteworthy passage concerns Scaevola, who had carefully
prepared the prosecution,24 but Crassus obtained the complete approval from
the audience by telling the curious tale of a boy who, having found a rowlock
as he was rambling along the shore, immediately took it into his head to build
a ship: at uero, ut contra Crassus ab adulescente delicato, qui in litore ambulans
scalmum repperisset ob eamque rem aedificare nauem concupiuisset, exorsus est,
20
‘L’opposition fournit un schème d’analyse permettant de subsumer les comportements
oratoires sous des grands modèles stables, et de dépasser ainsi le simple enregistrement de traits
individuels’: Guérin 2014, 173.
21
Cf. Dugan 2005: 196.
22
On the different pairs of orators in the Brutus, see Hendrickson 1905: 265; Narducci 2002:
404–5; Guérin 2014: 173–5.
23
Cf. Tellegen 1983; Vaughn 1985; Dugan 2012.
24
Cic. Brut. 195–7. Son of the famous legal expert Publius Mucius Scevola, he also took
advantage from his father’s authority (quam ille multa de auctoritate patris sui, qui semper ius
illud esse defenderat? quam omnino multa de conseruando iure ciuili?).

similiter Scaeuolam ex uno scalmo captionis centumuirale iudicium hereditatis
effecisse (Brut. 197). Moreover, Crassus was so able at handling emotions and
popular feelings, using any style of speaking, and enlivened his speeches with so
many turns of wit and pleasantries, that it was scarcely remembered that
anything had been said on the opposing side: haec cum grauiter tum ab exemplis
copiose, tum uarie, tum etiam ridicule et facete explicans eam admirationem
adsensionemque commouit, dixisse ut contra nemo uideretur (Brut. 198).
We find a completely different scenario when the two protagonists are
living and active: Marcus Calidius and Cicero himself.25 In these circum-
stances the comparison is less clear than the previous ones, maybe because
of Cicero’s habit of not writing much about his contemporaries.26 Neverthe-
less, it is not important, at this stage, whether Calidius could be considered one
of the Atticists avant la lettre or one of the Lysian Atticists.27 When Cicero
talks about Calidius’ eloquence he underlines his ‘soft’ and ‘refined’ quality.
Each word was in the right place as if it was part of a tessellated pavement (in
uermiculato emblemate).28 He was brilliant both in inuentio (‘qua de re agitur’
autem illud, quod multis locis in iuris consultorum includitur formulis, id ubi
esset uidebat, Brut. 275) and in dispositio (accedebat ordo rerum plenus artis);
his actio was defined as liberalis. Nevertheless, what Calidius lacked was the
third quality, that of exciting the emotions and involving the audience (aberat
tertia illa laus, qua permoueret atque incitaret animos, Brut. 276). This is
considered by Cicero the most important element: quam plurumum pollere
diximus. Cicero underlines this defect of Calidius’ eloquence, doubting with
irony whether it was a specific choice or a natural deficiency: hoc unum illi, si
nihil utilitatis habebat, afuit; si opus erat, defuit.
Among the comparisons just analysed, the one between Sulpicius and Cotta
is undoubtedly extraordinary. After the initial introduction, the reader would
expect an evaluation of the two orators with a consequential preference stated
for one or the other. On the contrary, Cicero instead first considers the typical
characteristics of Cotta’s eloquence and then takes into account Sulpicius’
oratorical skills. His assessment of the former is as follows:
inueniebat igitur acute Cotta, dicebat pure ac solute; et ut ad infirmitatem laterum
perscienter contentionem omnem remiserat, sic ad uirium imbecillitatem dicendi
accommodabat genus. nihil erat in eius oratione nisi sincerum, nihil nisi siccum
25
At least in the fictional setting of the essay, given that Marcus Calidius died in 48 BC in
Piacenza (Münzer 1897a).
26
Similarly, referring to Caesar and his eloquence, Atticus appreciates Cicero’s reticence by
not speaking about living orators: praeclare, inquit, tibi constas, ut de iis qui nunc sint nihil uelis
ipse dicere (Cic. Brut. 251).
27
See Douglas 1955, who does not believe that Calidius could be named among the Atticists,
and thinks instead that he could be considered a forerunner of the trend.
28
Lucilian lines (84–6 Warmington = 84 Marx) come from his account of Scaevola’s criticism
of Albucius. Same quotation in Cic. De or. 3.171; Orat. 149. See also Goh in this volume.
atque sanum; illudque maxumum quod, cum contentione orationis flectere animos
iudicum uix posset nec omnino eo genere diceret, tractando tamen impellebat, ut
idem facerent a se commoti quod a Sulpicio concitati.29 Cic. Brut. 202
Cotta was capable in inuentio, spoke in a plain and fluent way (pure ac solute),
and his style was sober and ‘healthy’. Although he refused to use any emo-
tional excess, he obtained the same results as Sulpicius. At the same time, he
involved the judges, but without resorting to aggressive speech (a se commoti
quod a Sulpicio concitati). Sulpicius was completely different:
fuit enim Sulpicius omnium uel maxume, quos quidem ego audiuerim, grandis
et, ut ita dicam, tragicus orator. uox cum magna tum suauis et splendida;
gestus et motus corporis ita uenustus, ut tamen ad forum, non ad scaenam
institutus uideretur; incitata et uolubilis nec ea redundans tamen nec circum-
fluens oratio.30 Cic. Brut. 203
Cicero’s judgement shows some respect for the ability of the orator to excite
the audience with a vibrant and dramatic style. Besides this, Sulpicius’ dra-
matic style was not considered excessive by Cicero, as his actio was elegant and
suited to the Forum rather than the theatre; in other words, his style was
passionate and fluent but never excessive and overwhelming. The term tragicus
confirms the positive judgement of Cicero.31
This enthusiastic valuation of Sulpicius’ eloquence is largely paralleled in
the De oratore.32 In the first book Crassus praises both young orators, but
29
‘As for Cotta, he was acute in invention, pure and facile in diction; lacking vigour of
lung and voice, he had very wisely learned to sacrifice vehemence, and to accommodate his
style of speaking to his physical weakness. In his language everything was genuine, everything
sane and healthy, and chiefest of all, since he could scarcely hope to move the judges by
vehemence (and indeed never used that resource at all), he swayed them the by artful
management, and by leading, accomplished the same result as Sulpicius by driving.’ (Trans.
Hendrickson 1939).
30
‘Sulpicius indeed was of all orators whom I have ever heard the most elevated in style, and,
so to speak, the most theatrical. His voice was strong and at the same time pleasing and of
brilliant timbre; his gesture and bodily movement extraordinarily graceful, but with a grace that
seemed made for the forum rather than for the stage; his language was swift and of easy flow
without being either redundant or verbose.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
31
In the De oratore, Cicero also uses the same term for the witty and dramatic remarks
used by Crassus while he defended Plancus, addressing the prosecutor Marcus Iunius Brutus
(the son of the famous iurisconsultus): quis est igitur qui non fateatur hoc lepore atque his
facetiis non minus refutatum esse Brutum quam illis tragoediis (De or. 2.225). This term is
again used for the intervention of Crassus during the trial: his words were tragica atque
diuina (De or. 2.227). Antonius himself states in De oratore 1.128 that a perfectus orator is
rare, since he must have many qualities, including uox tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum
actorum.
32
See also Har. resp. 41 (= P. Sulpicius Rufus ORF4 76 F8): nam quid ego de Sulpicio loquar?
cuius tanta in dicendo grauitas, tanta iucunditas, tanta breuitas fuit, ut posset uel ut prudentes
errarent, uel ut boni minus bene sentirent perficere dicendo.

singles out the natural gifts of Sulpicius, pointing out in particular the elegance
of his gestures, his posture and physical appearance, and his strong and
pleasant voice:
et quamquam in utroque uestrum summum esse ingenium studiumque perspexi,
tamen haec, quae sunt in specie posita, de quibus plura fortasse dixi, quam solent
Graeci dicere, in te, Sulpici, diuina sunt; ego enim neminem nec motu corporis
neque ipso habitu atque forma aptiorem nec uoce pleniorem aut suauiorem mihi
uideor audisse.33 Cic. De or. 1.131–2
Surprisingly, even Antonius uses the same terms in the second book of the De
oratore, where he comments on how he manages new or inexperienced
orators: if he notices extraordinary qualities, he pushes them to continue (si
intellegam posse ad summos peruenire, non solum hortabor ut elaboret, sed
etiam . . . obsecrabo, De or. 2.85).34 By contrast, if a junior speaker appears
likely, despite having done his utmost in every way, to be numbered only
among tolerable speakers, he allows him to act as he pleases (sin uidebitur,
cum omnia summe fecerit, tamen ad mediocris oratores esse uenturus, permit-
tam ipsi quid uelit, De or. 2.85). At this point, Antonius takes into consider-
ation the eloquence of Sulpicius, recalling his own surprise the first time he
heard him in causa paruola:
Sulpicium primum in causa paruola adulescentulum audiui uoce et forma et motu
corporis et reliquis rebus aptis ad hoc munus, de quo quaerimus, oratione autem
celeri et concitata, quod erat ingeni, et uerbis efferuescentibus et paulo nimium
redundantibus, quod erat aetatis. Non sum aspernatus; uolo enim se efferat in
adulescente fecunditas; nam facilius sicut in uitibus reuocantur ea, quae se nimium
profuderunt, quam, si nihil ualet materies, noua sarmenta cultura excitantur; item
uolo esse in adulescente, unde aliquid amputem; non enim potest in eo sucus esse
diuturnus, quod nimis celeriter est maturitatem exsecutum. Vidi statim indolem
neque dimisi tempus et eum sum cohortatus, ut forum sibi ludum putaret esse ad
discendum, magistrum autem, quem uellet, eligeret; me quidem si audiret,
L. Crassum.35 P. Sulpicius Rufus ORF4 76 F11 (= Cic. De or. 2.88–9).
33
‘And although I have noted in both of you talent and industry of the highest order, still as
regards these advantages which depend upon the outer man, concerning which I have perhaps said
more than the Greeks are wont to do, as manifested in yourself, Sulpicius, they are divine. For never,
I think, did I listen to a speaker better qualified in in respect of gesture, and by his very bearing and
presence, or to one with a voice more resonant and pleasing.’ (Trans. Sutton and Rackham 1942).
34
‘If I find him capable of reaching the highest class, I will not merely encourage him to work
out his purpose but will positively implore him so to do.’ (Trans. Sutton and Rackham 1942).
35
‘I first heard Sulpicius when he was almost a boy, in a petty case: as to intonation,
presence, bearing, and the other essentials he was well fitted for this function we are
investigating, but his delivery was rapid and impetuous—the result of his genius—, his diction
agitated and a little too exuberant, as was natural at his age. I did not underrate him, being
well content that luxuriance should exalt itself in the youthful, for, as with vines it is easier to
cut back the branches which have shot out too riotously than to produce new growths by
cultivation from a feeble stock, even so in a young man I want something to prune, because
With a striking horticultural image Antonius establishes that he was touched
by the actio of Sulpicius, although this was sometimes excessive (uerbis
efferuescentibus et paulo nimium redundantibus).36 Having acknowledged
his qualities, he suggests Crassus as a fitting teacher for him.37 The choice of
Crassus was the right one: this was subsequently confirmed when they met at
the trial of Gaius Norbanus, in which Sulpicius was the prosecutor.38 In this
later encounter, he noted that Sulpicius was totally changed, but for the better:
his natural gift of a magnificent and noble style was now enriched and
controlled by imitatio of Crassus.39
A QUESTION OF L UNGS
If Cotta’s eloquence seems to be worse than that of Sulpicius, this time Cicero
avoids showing any preference for one of the two orators, in contrast to his use
of previous pairings. In fact, in the final part of the syncrisis he affirms:
Crassum hic uolebat imitari. Cotta malebat Antonium; sed ab hoc uis aberat
Antoni, Crassi ab illo lepos (Brut. 203).40
Sulpicius and Cotta follow Crassus’ and Antonius’ path, but do not
approach these models because one was not as elegant as Crassus and the
other one was not as effective as Antonius. Brutus’ following remark is
particularly apt, using the example of Cotta and Sulpicius to talk with some
bitterness about the difficulties of the ars dicendi: O magnam, inquit, artem,
Brutus: si quidem istis, cum summi essent oratores, duae res maxumae altera
alteri defuit (Brut. 204). This consideration, born from the comparison of
Cotta and Sulpicius, allows Cicero to go deeper into the topic, confirming that
one is not superior to the other, but rather they can be considered equal even if
they are not similar.
Cicero points out that Cotta’s stylistic decisions were entirely justified: the
reason for his contentio is provided by the weakness of his lungs. Cotta was
the sap can never live long in anything which has ripened too early. I instantly perceived his
quality and did not miss the opportunity, but urged him to regard the law courts as his school
of instruction, choosing what master he pleased, but Lucius Crassus if he would take my
advice.’ (Trans. Sutton and Rackham 1942).
36
See Fantham 1972: 145.
37
Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 2.298: ‘Sulpicius wird als idealer Schüler dargestellt.’
38
About the trial, see Calboli 1972, TLRR no. 86. On Sulpicius’ eloquence about the
prosecution against Gaius Norbanus, see even P. Sulpicius Rufus ORF4 76 F14 (= Cic. Off.
2.49).
39
Cic. De or. 2.89.
40
‘He had fixed on Crassus as his model; Cotta had chosen rather Antonius. But Cotta lacked
the force of Antonius, Sulpicius the charm of Crassus.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).

clever enough to take advantage of his physical limits by avoiding exagger-
ation.41 He did not need to practise any contentio orationis; Cotta was able
to stimulate the judges by working on their souls with his gentle touch.
Cotta’s eloquence thus gained the same results as Sulpicius: the commotio
provoked by Cotta was as effective as the concitatio provoked by his ‘rival’,
thanks to his uis dicendi (ut idem facerent a se commoti quod a Sulpicio
concitati, Brut. 202).42
It is interesting to note that in this remarkable defence of Cotta there is an
echo of the words that Cato will utter in the De senectute. Here, the
progressive weakness of the body occupies the second place in the list of
the uitia senectutis (alteram [sc. causam] quod faciat infirmius, Sen. 15):
talking about this topic, Cato says that the orator also inevitably loses his
strength as time goes by: est enim munus eius non ingeni solum, sed laterum
etiam et uirium (Sen. 28). The activity of the orator is not only intellectual,
but is also a question of physical performance, which after many years
appears progressively ineffective, while the expressive skills are likewise
reduced. The solution given by Cato lies in the noble Roman practice of
tirocinium, according to which an old and experienced protagonist of the
Forum should serve as a tutor to the new generation. On the other hand, the
transformation of the orator into a tutor or master is not incompatible with
active practice. In fact, Cato affirms that he himself still has a strong and loud
voice, though he says that an old orator should use a calm and low tone for
elegant and sober speeches: ‘the style of speech that graces the old man is
subdued and gentle, and very often the sedate and mild speaking of an
eloquent old man wins itself a hearing’ (sed tamen est decorus senis sermo
quietus et remissus, facitque persaepe ipsa sibi audientiam diserti senis
compta et mitis oratio, Sen. 28).43
When we compare the Brutus and the De senectute, we immediately find a
significant difference. Cato suggests that an old orator should acquire a
rhythm and tone adequate to his age and consequent physical decline. On
the contrary, in the Brutus it is evident that Cotta realistically could not have
done anything different. So, Cicero’s positive estimation of Cotta depends
upon his appreciation of an orator who understands his limits and takes
advantage of his skills, as is frequently repeated in the De oratore.
41
A similar defence is built up for Calidius: he avoids vibrant eloquence, either by choice or
by instinct: siue consilio, quod eos quorum altior oratio actioque esset ardentior furere et bacchari
arbitraretur, siue quod natura non esset ita factus siue quod non consuesset siue quod non posset
(Cic. Brut. 276).
42
Dugan 2005: 197: ‘Within the dialogue Cicero asserts that the only sure and legitimate
standard by which an orator’s achievement is to be measured is his success in persuasion.’
43
Trans. Falconer 1923.
Moreover, the concept of weak lungs is also present in the last paragraphs of
the Brutus,44 where Cicero lingers on his own physical deficiencies in his
youth and at the very beginning of his career (Brut. 313–16). Here, we learn
that he was exceedingly weak and emaciated (his neck was long and slender),
and worried that any violent fatigue or labour of the lungs (si accedit labor et
laterum magna contentio) might endanger his life. Later on, describing the
period he spent in the East (Athens, Asia, and Rhodes) in order to improve his
eloquence, Cicero boasts that he came back to Rome transformed: the vehe-
mence of his voice was considerably abated; the excessive ardour of his
language was corrected; his lungs were strengthened; and his whole constitu-
tion confirmed and settled (contentio nimis uocis resederat et quasi deferuerat
oratio lateribusque uires et corpori mediocris habitus accesserat, Brut. 316).
Starting from this point, Cicero compares himself to the two orators, Horten-
sius and Cotta, who were leading protagonists in the Forum when he came
back to Rome.45 Cicero notes that, while the Forum was occupied by these two
excellent orators, Cotta remissus et lenis et propriis uerbis comprendens solute
et facile sententiam (Brut. 317); Hortensius, on the contrary, was ornatus et
acer. He was in no doubt that the one to be imitated was Hortensius: cum
Hortensio mihi magis arbitrabar rem esse. Hortensius presented the real
challenge, not only for reasons of age, but also his vibrant eloquence. Cicero’s
judgment on Cotta, about which he is reticent in the comparison with
Sulpicius, now becomes clear.
EVO KING THE DEAD
Cicero underlines his efforts to improve himself constantly; this is why he

blames Hortensius for losing himself to Asian excesses after a brilliant car-
eer.46 An apparently irrelevant detail, but one destined to play a fundamental
role, emerges at this point of the dialogue. In the final part of the work, Cicero,
with curious reticence,47 declares that he will not talk about himself, preferring
44
Dugan 2005: 212: ‘The first surviving example of extended autobiography in classical
literature.’ See also Blom 2010: 33; Prost 2014.
45
Cf. Steel 2003: 210: ‘Cicero himself was stirred up in desire to imitate Cotta and Hortensius
(317), the outstanding orators of his youth’; Dyck 2008. On the different depictions of Horten-
sius in the De oratore and Brutus, see Dugan 2005: 176: ‘to the De oratore’s sanguine anticipation
of Hortensius’ future greatness the Brutus responds with its investigation of precisely how he
failed to realize that potential.’ On Hortensius in the Brutus, see also Cavarzere 1998; Garcea-
Lomanto 2014.
46
Among the criticisms of Hortensius the most remarkable is that he is unable to refrain from
being histrionically excessive: his ars is considered out of control, stronger than necessary (etiam
plus artis habebat quam et oratori satis, Brut. 303). See Petrone 2004: 116.
47
Douglas 1966a: 228.

to confine his discourse to other orators (nihil de me dicam, dicam de ceteris,
quorum nemo erat qui . . . , Brut. 322). He lists all the qualities that emerged in
his career as orator: from philosophical studies to knowledge of civil law and
to his own talent at ‘playing’ with all the registers to move the emotions of the
judges. Among these qualities is the ability to evoke the dead as witnesses: ab
inferis locupletissimos testes excitaret. Douglas explains this statement, consid-
ering it to be a feature taken over from histories (nemo qui memoriam rerum
Romanarum teneret, ex qua, si quando opus esset . . . , Brut. 322),48 but Nar-
ducci shows that the context recalls a particular kind of personification, named
εἰδωλοποιία, which consists of evoking the dead.49
Cicero, describing the formal features typical of the plain style in the Orator,
will reaffirm that, in the case of weak lungs, it is not advisable to practise
complicated personifications:
non faciet rem publicam loquentem nec ab inferis mortuos excitabit nec acer-
uatim multa frequentans una complexione deuiciet. ualentiorum haec laterum
sunt nec ab hoc quem informamus aut exspectanda aut postulanda; erit enim ut
uoce sic etiam oratione suppressior.50 Cic. Orat. 85
The case of Crassus is completely different. The ‘tragedies’ that he used in
defence of C. Plancus against the prosecutor M. Junius Brutus have already
been mentioned.51 Taking advantage of the funeral of Junia, a member of the
latter’s family, Crassus reproached the prosecutor with the report that the dead
woman might carry to his ancestors, all the way back to the legendary hero
Lucius Brutus. This very peculiar evocation of a dead person, enriched with
the imagines that were currently displayed on the Rostra for the funeral of
Junia, should be considered an emblematic example of προσωποποιία:
‘Brute, quid sedes? quid illam anum patri nuntiare uis tuo? quid illis omnibus,
quorum imagines duci uides? quid maioribus tuis? quid L. Bruto, qui hunc
populum dominatu regio liberauit? quid te agere? cui rei, cui gloriae, cui uirtuti
studere? patrimonione augendo? at id non est nobilitatis. sed fac esse, nihil
superest; libidines totum dissipauerunt. an iuri ciuili? est paternum. sed dicet te,
cum aedis uenderes, ne in rutis quidem et caesis solium tibi paternum recepisse.
an rei militari? qui numquam castra uideris! an eloquentiae? quae neque est in te,
et, quicquid est uocis ac linguae, omne in istum turpissimum calumniae quaes-
tum contulisti! tu lucem aspicere audes? tu hos intueri? tu in foro, [tu in urbe,] tu
48
See Douglas 1966a: 228: ‘All use of historical precedent was in a sense “ab inferis testis
excitare”.’
49
I wonder if, according to Narducci 1995: 392, there might be a link to the presence
of Appius Claudius in the Pro Caelio.
50
‘He will not represent the State as speaking or call the dead from the lower world, nor will
he crowd a long series of iterations into a single period. This requires stronger lungs, and is not to
be expected of him whom we are describing or demanded from him. For he will be rather
subdued in voice as in style.’ (Trans. Hubbell 1939).
51
See above, n. 36.
in ciuium esse conspectu? tu illam mortuam, tu imagines ipsas non perhorrescis?
quibus non modo imitandis, sed ne conlocandis quidem tibi locum ullum
reliquisti.’52 Cic. De or. 2.225–6
This passage recalls the way in the famous apparition of Appius Claudius in
Cicero’s own Pro Caelio pronounces a negative judgement on the living
protagonists of the trial.53 In the De oratore, discussing the oratorical strategies
that might be useful in inheritance cases (rather than making the issue turn on
a point of law), Antonius playfully suggests that Crassus, if he were pleading
the cause of some soldier, would doubtless raise his father, with his usual
eloquence, from the dead: he would place him before the eyes of the audience,
the father would embrace his son, and recommend him to the centumuiri with
tears: si causam ageres militis, patrem eius, ut soles, dicendo a mortuis exci-
tasses; statuisses ante oculos; complexus esset filium flensque eum centumuiris
commendasset (De or. 1.245).
Cicero has worked on his own body, attenuating some defects and strength-
ening other characteristics; just like Crassus, he is able to evoke the dead. This
practice surely impressed the audience and is the most relevant peculiarity of
the greatest orators, who command a strong and vibrant eloquence. In other
words, they are able, when necessary, to ‘play tragedies’. The case of Cotta is
completely different: he is an example of plain oratory, to whom the words
written in Orat. 86 could refer, where, dealing with that plain style, an actio
neither tragic nor theatrical is described—one with few bodily movements but,
at the same time, with a rich variety of facial expressions: accedit actio non
tragica nec scaenae sed modica iactatione corporis, uoltu tamen multa con-
ficiens. Strong lungs and an ability to evoke the dead are in some ways very
close: they indicate natural ability and a refined and vigorous manner, one able
to attract positive opinion and to manipulate the audience.
52
‘Brutus, why seated? What news would you have that venerable dame carry to your sire? To
all those whose busts you behold borne along? To your ancestors? To Lucius Brutus, who freed
this community from the tyranny of the kings? What shall she tell them you are doing? What
affairs, what glorious deeds, what worthy ends are you busied with? It is increasing your heritage?
That is no occupation for the nobly-born, but—assuming it were so—you have nothing left to
increase; sensuality has squandered every shilling. Are you cultivating the common law, your
father’s field? Why, Junia will report that, on selling up your home, you did not even reserve his
armchair for yourself, along with the quarried minerals and felled timber! Are you following a
military career? You, who will never set eyes on a camp! Are you a devotee of eloquence? There is
no spark of it about you, and any power you had of intonation or language you applied to making
money by the foulest perversion of justice! Dare you behold the light of day? Or look upon
this assembly? Or show yourself in Court, or within the City, or before the eyes of your fellow-
citizens? Do not you tremble exceedingly at the spectacle of that dead lady? And of those
same busts, you who have left yourself no room even for setting them up, much less for
emulating their originals?’ (Trans. Sutton and Rackham 1942).
53
Austin 19603: 90: ‘a first-rate piece of acting’. See Dufallo 2001; Gamberale 2005a; Moretti
2007; Dyck 2013 ad loc.
SPURS AND CURBS
Following a long series of models, fair expectations, recollections, and precise

denials, we finally find Cotta and Antonius, his ideal model, on one side, and
Sulpicius, Crassus, and Cicero himself on the other. The syncrisis between
Cotta and Sulpicius thus arrives at a very remarkable conclusion:
atque in his oratoribus illud animaduertendum est, posse esse summos qui inter
se sint dissimiles. nihil enim tam dissimile quam Cotta Sulpicio, et uterque
aequalibus suis plurimum praestitit. quare hoc doctoris intellegentis est uidere,
quo ferat natura sua quemque, et ea duce utentem sic instituere, ut Isocratem in
acerrimo ingenio Theopompi et lenissimo Ephori dixisse traditum est, alteri se
calcaria adhibere alteri frenos.54 Cic. Brut. 204
Cicero frequently points out the exemplary conduct of Isocrates towards his
two disciples, Theopompus and Ephorus. After remarking the lively genius of
the former and the mild and timid bashfulness of the latter, he applied a spur
to one and a curb to the other. In this respect, the lengthy section of the third
book of the De oratore is particularly notable, in which Crassus confronts the
issue of different oratorical styles, each pleasant in their own ways (De or.
3.25–35). Prior to the example of Isocrates dealing with his students of
different temper (De or. 3.36),55 the text contains broad reflections on art,
from sculpture to painting, listing excellent artists such as Miro, Policletus,
Lysippus, Zeusis, and Apelles, each very different from one another.56 The
long list of Crassus even names Sulpicius and Cotta, who were then still young
orators: ecce praesentes duo prope aequales Sulpicius et Cotta. quid tam inter se
dissimile? quid tam in suo genere praestans? (De or. 3.31). Following this, he
returns to speaking about Antonius and himself.
CONCLUSIONS
In the De oratore and Brutus, Sulpicius and Cotta play a fundamental role as a
point of reference, used by Cicero to reconstruct the difficult, but fascinating,
54
‘Yes, and in both one thing is to be noticed, that orators may be supreme and yet unlike. No
one could have been so unlike Sulpicius as Cotta, and yet both were far and away beyond their
contemporaries. It is therefore the business of the discerning teacher to note the bent of each
one's nature, and with that as his guide to train his pupils, as Isocrates is reported to have said of
the high-spirited Theopompus and the gentle Ephorus, that with one he used the rein, to the
other applied the spur.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
55
See Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 4.173–5.
56
The topic is very well discussed in Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 4.150–4.
past of Latin eloquence. In the De oratore, the two orators are narrative voices
but also elements used to develop the main themes of the dialogue; in the
Brutus, instead, they are relevant characters and models. This particular pair of
orators, however, active only one generation before Cicero, are not only the
measure of this period’s achievement, but also the mark of its limitations.
Their eloquence, though remarkable, is not perfect. It is an evaluation that
Cicero considers pivotal and he remarks on it many times. In a most eloquent
conclusion, Cicero mentions the last important orators who appeared before
him: Antonius, Crassus, post Cotta, Sulpicius, Hortensius, nihil dico amplius,
tantum dico: si mihi accidisset, ut numerarer in multis*** (Brut. 333). A sixth
ideal protagonist is missing: it is Cicero himself. But Catherine Steel is
certainly right when she affirms that Cicero avoids adding himself to the list
so as not to appear among the ranks of dead Republican orators: ‘it would be
to acknowledge his activity as an orator has come to an end.’57 On the other
hand, it is as if Cicero wished he had not yet been obliged to say the last word,
even in this truncated form.
57
Steel 2003.
ii
Imperial Rome
The Fragments of Republican Orators

in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria
Amedeo Raschieri
The Spanish rhetorician Quintilian (c. AD 35–c.100) studied in Rome and, after
moving back home for a few years, returned to the capital in the wake of Galba
(AD 68). Here he taught Latin rhetoric for two decades, enjoying the financial
support of Vespasian. After his retirement from teaching, he wrote the twelve
books of the Institutio oratoria, a work that discusses all the technical aspects
of rhetoric but provides, above all, an image of the perfect orator in light of
Cicero’s teaching.1 Quintilian’s work makes wide use of the orators of the
Roman Republic: besides Cicero, the rhetorician mentions twenty-nine or-
ators, from Appius Claudius Caecus to M. Valerius Messala Corvinus, pro-
viding more than a hundred testimonia and fragments. Quintilian deals
extensively with such writers in his tenth book, in which he constructs our
most extensive example of a Latin literary canon (including both poetry and
prose), closely connecting this with corresponding Greek authors.2 The largest
numbers of mentions are reserved for more recent Republican orators, par-
ticularly M. Caelius Rufus, C. Asinius Pollio, and M. Valerius Messala Corvi-
nus, who will receive special attention in this study.
First, we must investigate some essential features of these quotations, the ways
they are made and the functions they perform in Quintilian’s work. Building
on this analysis, this chapter will explore whether the author’s knowledge of
the Republican orators is direct or indirect, that is to say, whether he has read the
1
See López 2007; Galand-Hallyn 2010; Kraus 2014.
2
In Latin literature, we find a similar list of Greek and Roman authors in Velleius Paterculus’
literary excursus (Vell. Pat. 1.5, 1.7, 1.16–18, 2. 9, 2.36), and in Greek literature, in the lists drawn up by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the De imitatione (Περὶ μιμήσεως) and Dion of Prusa in Oratio 18 (Περὶ
λόγου ἀσκήσεως). On the idea of the canon in ancient literature, see Schwindt 2000; Citroni 2003;
Hutchinson 2013. For Velleius Paterculus: Della Corte 1937; Gustin 1944; Santini 1970; Noé 1982;
Schmitzer 2000: 72–100. For Quintilian’s literary canon: Tavernini 1953; Cova 1990; Citroni 2004,
2005. For the connections between Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Quintilian: Varganova 2012.
78 Amedeo Raschieri
works cited or if these are known through intermediary sources. In some cases, it
is possible to identify the overriding grammatical, rhetorical, historical, or literary
concerns that underlie Quintilian’s choice of quotation. The reasons for the
different numbers of quotations for each author will also be investigated, as
will the extent to which, according to Quintilian, the reading of the Republican
orators was useful for the education of his contemporary ruling class. It is hoped
that this analysis will not only provide a better understanding of some key
features of the Institutio oratoria, but will also deepen our appreciation of the
ways in which, and reasons for which, the works of the Republican orators were
preserved, read, and reused in Rome during the Imperial period.3
From an extensive survey of the Institutio oratoria, it is noticeable that Quin-
tilian mentions twenty-eight orators of the Republican period for a total of
108 loci, either testimonia or fragments (see Figure 5.1). In eight cases, we find a
single quotation (Ap. Claudius Caecus, L. Licinius Crassus, L. Licinius Lucullus,
Hortensia, T. Labienus, C. Vibius Pansa, A. Hirtius, L. Sempronius Atratinus);
eight times, we have two references to each author (C. Laelius Sapiens, P. Cornelius
Scipio Aemilianus, M. Antonius, C. Iulius L. f. Caesar Strabo, C. Scribonius Curio
pater, Cn. Pompeius Magnus, M. Porcius Cato minor, P. Cornelius Dolabella); and
in four cases, we find three (Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, Q. Hortensius Hortalus,
C. Iulius Caesar, M. Calidius). In addition to the orators M. Caelius Rufus (cited
on thirteen occasions), C. Asinius Pollio (nineteen), and M. Valerius Messala
Corvinus (ten), who, as mentioned above, will be the object of detailed analysis,
other individuals cited with relative frequency are, in chronological order,
M. Porcius Cato (eight occasions), Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (four), M. Iunius Brutus
(six), Q. Aelius L. f. Tubero (four), and C. Licinius Macer Calvus (eight). In
general, therefore, we can see that the number of references does not depend on
the chronology of the orators, but remains fairly infrequent for most individuals,
with the exceptions of M. Porcius Cato and M. Iunius Brutus, and increases
significantly for some more recent authors. If we look at the distribution of these
citations among the twelve books of the Institutio oratoria, on the other hand, it is
possible to distinguish three levels (see Figure 5.2): a low level with 2–4 quotations
(books 7, 2, 3, 4, 5), a medium with 7–12 quotations (books 8, 6, 9), and a high level
with 15–22 quotations (books 1, 12, 10).
A N ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO THE BOOKS
It is worth beginning the analysis from this last point and conducting an in-
depth study of the ways in which orators are cited in the books that contain the
3
ORF 4 is used as a starting point for my analysis, though questions of selection and textual
delimitation of fragments cannot be investigated in detail here.
0
5
10
15
20
1
Ap. Claudius Caecus
8
M. Porcius Cato
C. Laelius Sapiens
2 2
P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus minor
3
Ti. Sempronius Gracchus
2
M. Antonius
1
L. Licinius Crassus
C. Iulius L. f. Caesar Strabo
2 2
C. Scribonius Curio pater
Figure 5.1. Citations per orator

L. Licinius Lucullus
3
Q. Hortensius Hortalus
1
Hortensia
2
Cn. Pompeius Magnus
4
Ser. Sulpicius Rufus
3
C. Iulius Caesar
2
M. Porcius Cato minor
1
T. Labienus
3
M. Calidius
M. Iunius Brutus 6
C. Vibius Pansa
1 1
A. Hirtius
M. Caelius Rufus
13
C. Licinius Macer Calvus
1
L. Sempronius Atratinus 2
P. Cornelius Donatella
C. Asinius Pollio
19
Q. Aelius L. f. Tubero
M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus

10
The Fragments of Republican Orators in Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria 79
80 Amedeo Raschieri
25
20 21
20
15
15
12
10
9
8
7
5
4 4 4 4
2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Figure 5.2. Citations per book
greatest number of quotations: the first, the tenth, and the twelfth. For
example, in the first book of the Institutio oratoria, Malcovati identifies fifteen
fragments of ten orators contained in eight sections. This book is dedicated to
the problem of elementary teaching; in particular, it deals with the first stages
of a child’s education, including the questions of whether private education or
the school is preferable, and of how to recognize and develop natural talent. In
this book, Quintilian also touches on the teaching of grammar, particularly the
tasks of the grammarian. Furthermore, he offers a solution to the question of
whether it is necessary for the orator to be educated in general culture,
especially in music and mathematics. Finally, Quintilian gives advice on
educating children in pronunciation and delivery, and wonders whether it is
possible to learn different disciplines during childhood.
In this book, the most frequently cited authors are M. Caecilius Rufus (ORF4
162 F28, 37, 38), C. Asinius Pollio (ORF4 174 F8, 42), and M. Valerius Messala
Corvinus (ORF4 176 F5, 22, 24). In section 1.1.6, the author stresses the
importance of a family’s culture in the education of children and gives prom-
inence to women as well as men. He mentions Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi
and famous for her collection of letters),4 Laelia (whose eloquence was com-
parable to that of her father C. Laelius), and Hortensia (daughter of Hortensius
4
See Hallett’s chapter in this volume.

Hortalus and well known for a speech that was still read in Quintilian’s time).5
The other quotations are related to language issues in a more or less direct
way. In section 1.5.12, regarding linguistic barbarisms, Quintilian mentions
the remarks of Hortensius against Tinga from Piacentia, who is also men-
tioned in Cicero’s Brutus (172). A little later in the same chapter (1.5.61), he
discusses morphological matters (Greek names in the masculine nomina-
tive), with examples tracked down (legimus) in Caelius, Messala, and Cicero.
In the following chapter (1.6.29), Quintilian mentions the use of etymology
by Caelius, who, to prove that he was a frugi man, said that frugalitas was
derived from fructuosus (‘fruitful’). In a slightly later section (1.6.42), Quin-
tilian reflects on the relationship between authority and linguistic use, and
gives some examples of words that would not be acceptable in his day but
were used by Cato, Pollio, Messala, Caelius, and Calvus. In this case, the
author shows his historical and linguistic sensibility, and concludes: quae nec
ipsi iam dicerent.6
In the following chapter(1.7.25), Quintilian explainssome phonetic transform-
ations; in particular, the change of uortices and uorsus (and similar forms)
into uertices and uersus, an innovation that, according to tradition (dicitur),
was introduced by Scipio Aemilianus. At the end of the chapter (1.7.34–5),
Quintilian states that grammatical topics are worthy of the great orators, as
demonstrated by the treatises of Cicero, Caesar, and Messala, although it is
necessary to have a certain balance when dealing with them (non obstant
hae disciplinae per illas euntibus, sed circa illas haerentibus).7 In the first
book, there is one last mention of the orators of the Republican period in
chapter eight (1.8.10–11), when, in addition to Cicero, Quintilian cites
Asinius ‘and others nearest to their times’ (et ceteros qui sunt proximi)
because they used the old poets (Ennius, Accius, Pacuvius, Lucilius, Ter-
ence, Cecilius, and others) ‘to support their cases or to adorn their elo-
quence’ (ad fidem causarum uel ad ornamentum eloquentiae).
In summary, in the first book, Quintilian highlights the importance of
family culture for children’s education and, in particular, the women’s role
in this context. Moreover, he points out some linguistic issues through examples
taken from orators. In these cases, he was, in all probability, able to base his
discussion on a consolidated grammatical tradition, since he reports isolated
passages and individual words. In any case, he follows the example of earlier
orators who paid attention to grammatical issues. However, he demonstrates a
5
Quint. Inst. 1.1.6: Hortensiae Q. filiae oratio apud triumuiros habita legitur non tantum in
sexus honorem (‘the speech delivered before the triumvirs by Hortensia, the daughter of Quintus
Hortensius, is still read—and not just because it is by a woman’). Quintilian’s text and translation
are by Russell 2001.
6
‘They would not use these words nowadays themselves.’
7
‘These studies are no obstacle if they are taken as a stage to pass through, but only if you get
stuck in them.’
82 Amedeo Raschieri
prudent and balanced attitude and moves away from the excesses of some of
his predecessors. Finally, since the grammarian’s work consists of reading,
explaining, and commenting on poetry, Quintilian emphasizes the link be-
tween the teaching of grammar and rhetoric when he says that the orators of
the past often cited verses by poets in their speeches.
A great number of fragments are extracted from the tenth book of the
Institutio oratoria, which presents a survey of literary genres and judgements
on the most important authors, along with a discussion of the role of imitation in
the formation of oratorical style. In the tenth book, Quintilian deals with
oratorical aptitude and presents a list of authors and works that the orator should
read to improve his competence. Then he discusses the problem of imitation and
explains how to write and correct works. He also presents writing exercises,
explores the topic of reflection, which is preliminary to inuentio, and closes the
book with advice on how to acquire and maintain improvisational skills.
In Malcovati’s edition, there are twenty-one fragments from ten orators,
which are found in eleven paragraphs of the tenth book. The most frequently
named are Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (ORF4 118 F3, 4, 7), C. Iulius Caesar (ORF4 121
F4, 5), M. Iunius Brutus (ORF4 158 F8, 19), M. Caelius Rufus (ORF4 162 F7, 8),
C. Licinius Macer Calvus (ORF4 165 F5, 6), C. Asinius Pollio (ORF4 174 F4, 5,
6, 36), and M. Valerius Messala Corvinus (ORF4 176 F7, 12, 21). The first set of
fragments (10.1.22–3) concerns the usefulness of reading, whenever possible,
‘the pleadings on both sides’ (quotiens continget, utrimque habitas legere
actiones), and as examples Quintilian presents Demosthenes and Aeschines,
Servius Sulpicius and Messala (for and against Aufidia), and Pollio and Cassius
(in the prosecution against Asprenas). Secondly, he mentions some works that
have a lesser rhetorical value than those of their opponents, such as Tubero’s
speech against Ligarius and Hortensius in defence of Verres, both unfavourably
compared to the speeches of Cicero. Thirdly, he cites some cases in which we
have different speeches in favour of the same party: Calidius who ‘spoke on
Cicero’s house’ (de domo Ciceronis dixit), Brutus who ‘wrote a practice speech
in defence of Milo’ (pro Milone orationem . . . exercitationis gratia scripsit), and
Pollio and Messala who ‘defended the same clients’ (defenderunt eosdem).
Within the section on judgements concerning Roman orators (10.1.105–22),
after a lengthy section devoted to Cicero, Quintilian focuses the discussion of the
central paragraphs on orators of the Republican period (10.1.113–16): Asinius
Pollio and Messala (113), Gaius Caesar (114), Caelius and Calvus (115), and
Servius Sulpicius (116). As usual in this literary excursus, Quintilian expresses
positive judgements on these orators and synthesizes their characteristics into
effective and concise descriptions.8 Then, in the section dedicated to Roman
8
Asinius Pollio: multa in Asinio Pollione inuentio, summa diligentia, adeo ut quibusdam
etiam nimia uideatur, et consilii et animi satis (‘Asinius Pollio had much power of Invention,
great precision—too much, as some think—, and adequate strategic sense and spirit’).

writers of philosophy (10.1.123), immediately after Cicero, Quintilian mentions
Brutus, who, from his point of view, was better at producing philosophical than
oratorical works (multoque quam in orationibus praestantior).
In the second chapter, the opinions expressed above are taken up in a
more concise way and are connected to the problem of imitation in a
discussion of bad emulative practices (10.2.17). Quintilian, for example,
cites Pollio (tristes ac ieiuni Pollionem aemulantur).9 A little later (10.2.25),
he recommends the imitation of a variety of models such as ‘Caesar’s force,
Caelius’ asperity, Pollio’s precision, or Calvus’ good judgement’.10 Concerning
the usefulness of translation from Greek into Latin for oratorical improve-
ment (10.5.2), in addition to naming Cicero, Quintilian mentions its frequent
use by Messala, a technique which reached its peak of excellence with
the Latin translation of Hyperides’ speech in defence of Phryne. We find
one last mention of the orators of the Republican period in this book when
Quintilian writes about the relationship between the written parts (especially
openings) and improvised parts of speeches (10.7.30). In this case, in addition
to Cicero, Quintilian’s attention is focused on a collection of works by Servius
Sulpicius: several volumes of notes and three speeches. The uniqueness of
his case leads the author to state that these notes ‘are so complete that they
seem to me to have been composed by the orator himself for the benefit of
posterity’.11
In this book, Quintilian also suggests reading counterposed speeches and
those for the same party. Thus, we have the proof that these works were still
preserved and read. Moreover, in some cases, the author places Roman orators
on the same level as the Greeks, who were, in general, more famous. Quintilian
Messala: at Messala nitidus et candidus et quadam modo praeferens in dicendo nobilitatem suam,
uiribus minor (‘Messala, on the other hand, is polished and transparent, and somehow displays
his aristocratic qualities in his speech; but he lacks strength’).
Julius Caesar: tanta in eo uis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse quo
bellauit appareat; exornat tamen haec omnia mira sermonis, cuius proprie studiosus fuit, elegan-
tia (‘He has the force, the shrewdness, the drive—you can see that he spoke with the same spirit
as he waged war—but he dressed all this up in a wonderful elegance of language, of which he
made a special study’).
Caelius: multum ingenii in Caelio et praecipue in accusando multa urbanitas, dignusque uir cui et
mens melior et uita longior contigisset (‘Caelius had much talent, and a notable wit, especially in
prosecuting; he deserved a wiser mind and a longer life’).
Calvus: est et sancta et grauis oratio et castigata et frequenter uehemens quoque. imitator autem
est Atticorum, fecitque illi properata mors iniuriam (‘His style was solemn, serious, and chaste,
often also energetic. He was an imitator of the Attic writers, and his untimely death did his
reputation an injury’).
Servius Sulpicius: insignem non inmerito famam tribus orationibus meruit (he ‘deservedly won
fame with his three speeches’).
9
‘The dreary and jejune are rivals of Pollio.’
10
uim Caesaris, asperitatem Caeli, diligentiam Pollionis, iudicium Calui.
11
ita sunt exacti ut ab ipso mihi in memoriam posteritatis uideantur esse compositi.
84 Amedeo Raschieri
probably relies on an established rhetorical tradition for the judgements
passed on Roman orators, which rely in their turn on similar opinions once
passed on Greek writers as a model. Finally, the link between the Roman
orators and the problem of imitation is important; to guide students of
rhetoric in this imitation/emulation process, Quintilian labels the authors
according to their stylistic characteristics. In this way, he pays close attention
to educational needs, as we can see from his discussion of translation exercises
from Greek into Latin and the debate concerning the relationship between
writing and improvisation.
The twelfth book contains the largest number of references to the orators of
the Republican period: Malcovati’s edition identifies twenty fragments related
to fifteen orators, taken from eight sections of this book. The book is devoted
to the characteristics of a good orator. First, Quintilian says that the orator
must be an honest man, know the main elements of morality, and be familiar
not only with civil law but also with history. Then he explains the principal
tools of the art of oratory and offers some advice on the appropriate time to
start acting in trials, on what the orator should observe before accepting a case,
and on preparing and delivering his speech. Finally, the book ends with a
consideration of speaking style.
In this book, the most cited orators are M. Porcius Cato the elder (ORF4 8
F 6, 7, 8), C. Iulius Caesar (ORF4 121 F5, 16), C. Licinius Macer Calvus (ORF4
165 F7, 14), and C. Asinius Pollio (ORF4 174 F7, 15). The first quotation of the
book refers to Cato (12.3.9), who is defined as an excellent orator and an
expert on the law (cum in dicendo praestantissimus, tum iuris idem fuit
peritissimus). Then, within the discussion of the most suitable age to begin
the practice of oratory, Quintilian mentions the cases of the young Calvus,
Caesar, and Pollio (12.6.1).12 Shortly afterwards, at 12.7.3–4, he mentions
Hortensius, the Luculli, Sulpicius, Cicero, Caesar, and Cato as examples of
young men of high social class (clari iuuenes) who accused wicked citizens
and, in this way, distinguished themselves for their devotion to the state and
moral rectitude.13
Quintilian devotes ample space to a historical and literary excursus on the
styles of oratory (12.10.10–11), which are divided into four parts. The first
group consists of the kinds of eloquence which are more archaic and crude
but which have great intellectual force (horridiora, alioqui magnam iam
ingenii uim prae se ferentia), represented by Gaius Laelius, Scipio Aemilianus,
12
Caluus, Caesar, Pollio multum ante quaestoriam omnes aetatem grauissima iudicia susce-
perint (‘Calvus, Caesar, and Pollio all undertook important cases before they were old enough to
hold the quaestorship’).
13
creditique sunt etiam clari iuuenes obsidem rei publicae dare malorum ciuium accusationem
(‘and young men of distinction have been held to give a pledge to society in the form of the
prosecution of bad citizens’).

Cato the Censor, and the Gracchi. An intermediate position is occupied by
the works of L. Crassus and Q. Hortensius Hortalus, followed by the most
remarkable period of Roman oratory (efflorescat . . . oratorum ingens prouen-
tus). The orators of this period are listed along with the distinctive features
already described in the tenth book: the force of Caesar (uim), the natural
talent of Caelius Rufus (indolem), the fineness of Marcus Calidius (subtilita-
tem), the care of Asinius Pollio (diligentiam), the dignity of Messala Corvinus
(dignitatem), the purity of Calvus (sanctitatem), the severity of Brutus
(grauitatem), the acumen of Sulpicius Rufus (acumen), and the harshness
of Cassius Severus (acerbitatem). Then, Quintilian presents the orators that
he personally knew but who are outside the present discussion: Seneca,
Julius Africanus, Domitius Afer, Vibius Crispus, Galerius Trachalus, and
Julius Secundus.
Other judgements are also offered later (12.10.39), where the quality of
Cicero—the fact that he was ‘acute, precise, and not too lofty in his private
speeches’ (in priuatis et acutus et distinctus et non super modum elatus)—is
likewise attributed to Marcus Calidius. Scipio, Laelius, and Cato are called ‘the
Roman equivalent of the Attic orators’ (Attici Romanorum) because of their
style of rhetoric. In the final chapter of the book, in three sections, Quintilian
refers again to the Roman orators. In one case (12.11.6), in order to demon-
strate that teaching is an honourable activity, Cicero is mentioned as the
master of Caelius, Pansa, Hirtius, and Dolabella (sic ad se Caelium deductum
a patre Cicero profitetur, sic Pansam, Hirtium, Dolabellam ad morem prae-
ceptoris exercuit cotidie dicens audiensque). In a second case (12.11.23), Cato
the Censor is defined as a great general, philosopher, orator, historian, and
expert on law and agriculture (idem summus imperator, idem sapiens, idem
orator, idem historiae conditor, idem iuris, idem rerum rusticarum peritissimus
fuit). In the last case (12.11.28), along with the concluding exhortations to
future orators, Quintilian says that it is possible to achieve fame despite
the simultaneous presence of more distinguished personalities. To prove this
statement, he presents the examples of Pollio and Messala, who gained
prestige in life and glory with posterity, despite plying their forensic work
‘when Cicero occupied the commanding heights of eloquence’ (iam Cicerone
arcem eloquentiae tenente).
In the twelfth book, Quintilian uses the examples of ancient Roman orators,
from Cato on, to build up the image of the ideal orator, particularly in
knowledge of the law, youth, and moral rectitude. Furthermore, he again
summarizes the characteristics of individual orators, already outlined in the
tenth book, to define the different oratorical styles, arranged in chronological
order. In this case, his literary and historical focus has a strong educational
purpose, also demonstrated by the constant comparisons with Cicero’s works
and the Greek tradition. Finally, the examples of the orators of the past allow
him to define the main features of rhetorical teaching, which is an honourable
86 Amedeo Raschieri
and complex task and requires many skills. Reassurance is provided to the
young orator, who can achieve success despite other authoritative competitors.
A N ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO THE ORATORS
After developing the analysis according to the different books of the Institutio
oratoria, it is worthwhile to move on to the three orators of the Republican
period that, after Cicero, are given the most space in Quintilian’s work:
M. Caelius Rufus, C. Asinius Pollio, and M. Valerius Messala Corvinus.
Malcovati found thirteen reference-worthy passages relating to M. Caelius
Rufus in Quintilian, four of which (ORF4 162 F6–9) are inserted among the
testimonia and concern the characteristics of his rhetorical style.14 To express
the fact that Caelius ‘performed better in prosecution than in defence’ (melius
obicientem crimina quam defendentem), Cicero used a military allegory and
claimed that he had a good right hand (the one which held the sword) and a
bad left (the one which held the shield): bonam dextram, malam sinistram
habere dicebat (6.3.69).15 The following fragments have already been men-
tioned in connection with the tenth and twelfth books. In these books, Quintil-
ian mentions the positive characteristics of Caelius’ personality and rhetorical
style, in particular, his considerable talent and great grace—compensation for
his weakness of spirit and short life (10.1.115)—, his vehemence (10.2.25) and,
once again, his natural talent (12.10.11).
Moreover, Quintilian mentions two of Caelius’ speeches: In C. Antonium
(59 BC) and Pro se de ui contra L. Sempronium Atratinum (56 BC). From the
first speech, which is also known through Cicero’s Pro Caelio (15, 74, 78) and
which probably focused on an allegation of bribery or treason, we read a long
direct quotation (ORF4 162 F17) in the fourth book of the Institutio oratoria
(4.2.123–24).16 Quintilian praises this section for the effective description
14
On M. Caelius Rufus, see Madsen 1981.
15
Cicero’s judgement is comparable with Cic. Brut. 273: graues eius contiones aliquot fuerunt,
acres accusationes tres eaeque omnes ex rei publicae contentione susceptae; defensiones, etsi illa
erant in eo meliora quae dixi, non contemnendae tamen saneque tolerabiles (‘He made some
important public speeches and three merciless prosecutions, all of which arose out of political
ambition and rivalry. His court speeches in defence of himself and others, although inferior to
those which I have mentioned, were not negligible, indeed quite tolerable’). Cicero’s text and
translation are from Hendrickson 1939.
16
See also Hendry 1994. Quint. Inst. 4.2.123–4: namque ipsum offendunt temulento sopore
profligatum, totis praecordiis stertentem ructuosos spiritus geminare, praeclarasque contubernales
ab omnibus spondis transuersas incubare et reliquas circum iacere passim: quae tamen exanima-
tae terrore, hostium aduentu percepto, excitare Antonium conabantur, nomen inclamabant,
frustra a ceruicibus tollebant, blandius alia ad aurem inuocabat, uehementius etiam nonnulla
feriebat; quarum cum omnium uocem tactumque noscitaret, proximae cuiusque collum amplexu
petebat: neque dormire excitatus neque uigilare ebrius poterat, sed semisomno sopore inter manus

(incredibilis rerum imago) of the proconsul Gaius Antonius Hybrida, drunk
and surrounded by prostitutes, surprised by the arrival of the enemy. We find
a second short fragment (F18) taken from the same speech in Quintilian’s
ninth book (9.3.58) in a section concerned with ellipsis, a figure based on the
omission of a word that is easily understood from the context. In his attack on
Gaius Antonius, Caelius, for example, used the expression stupere gaudio
Graecus, implying the verb coepit.
From the speech Contra L. Sempronium Atratinum, also known through
Cicero’s Pro Caelio (45) and through Suetonius (Rhet. 2), Quintilian inserts in
the eleventh book (11.1.51) a large direct quotation (ORF4 162 F25) as an
example of congruence between the message and the context: Marcus Caelius’
facial expression, tone of voice, and gestures, marked by humility, match his
desperate situation.17 Two more fragments (F26–7) from this speech are
found in the same section of the eighth book (8.6.52–3). In these cases,
Quintilian blames Caelius for using obscure allegories and riddles (allegoria
quae est obscurior aenigma dicitur) and quotes two insulting expressions used
against Clodia: quadrantariam Clytaemestram (‘fourpenny Clytemnestra’) and
in triclinio coam, in cubiculo nolam (‘Coa at dinner, Nola in the bedroom’).18
centurionum concubinarumque iactabatur (‘They found the man himself stretched out in a
drunken stupor, snoring with all the force of his lungs, belching repeatedly, while the distin-
guished ladies who shared his quarters sprawled over every couch, and the other women were
lying on the floor all around. Half dead with terror, and aware now of the enemy’s approach, they
tried to rouse up Antonius; they shouted his name, and tried in vain to hoist him up by his neck;
some whispered blandishments in his ear, one or two gave him an energetic slap. He recognized
all their voices and their touch, and tried to put his arms round the neck of whoever was nearest
to him. He was too much aroused to sleep, and too drunk to stay awake; dazed and half asleep, he
was thrown around in the arms of his centurions and his concubines’).
Due to the extent of this fragment, it is possible to conduct a more detailed analysis. In particular,
its descriptive effectiveness depends on structural characteristics and stylistic components. It
includes three different points of view: that of those who surprise Antonius drunk and sur-
rounded by prostitutes; that of the women, with the description of their furious reaction to the
enemy’s arrival; and that of Antonius with his semiconscious behaviour. The meticulousness of
this report is clear, especially in the central section dedicated to the women: when sleeping, they
are divided into two groups, one on couches and one on the ground; then, when the opponents
arrive, the groups became five. From a stylistic point of view, the realistic lexicon is marked (totis
praecordis stertentem ructuosus spiritus geminare), as is the ironic tone (praeclarasque contu-
bernales), the use of expressions that combine parallel and contrast (neque dormire excitatus
neque uigilare ebrius), and the strong alliteration (alia ad aurem, sed semisomno sopore,
centurionum concubinarumque).
17
Quint. Inst. 11.1.51: ne cui uestrum atque etiam omnium qui ad rem agendam adsunt meus
aut uultus molestior aut uox inmoderatior aliqua aut denique, quod minimum est, iactantior
gestus fuisse uideatur (‘I hope none of you—or any of those who have come to see this business
done—will find too much offensiveness in my expression, undue violence in some word I utter,
or indeed, trifling as this is, flamboyance in my gestures’).
18
On these expressions, see Russell 2001: 3.456 n. 75: ‘spoken of Clodia, compared to
Clytemnestra and attacked for her adultery and alleged murder of her husband . . . ; she charges
her lovers a quadrans (Plutarch, Cicero 29). Coa presumably suggests coitus, and Nola unwill-
ingness.’ See also Verdière 1987; Stärk 2001.
88 Amedeo Raschieri
The last fragment (F28) of this speech concerns the use of etymological pro-
cedure with a rhetorical function (1.6.29).19 From the first book we also have
two fragments incertae sedis (F37, 38) that concern the use of the nominative
Pelia cincinnatus (‘a curly-haired Pelias’) instead of Pelias cincinnatus (1.5.61)
and the eccentric noun parricidatus (‘parricide’), ‘which is barely to be borne in
Caelius’ (1.6.42).20 From a speech otherwise unknown, we find mention of a
funny story (F39) told by Caelius about a competition between the quaestor
Decimus Laelius and his colleague to reach the province of Sicily (6.3.39, 41).21
For the stylistic features of Caelius Rufus, Quintilian uses material that was
probably pre-selected by the scholastic tradition. Moreover, the relationship
with Cicero’s work is important, in particular for the selection of speeches that
were considered the most important and worthy of being read, at least
selectively. However, Quintilian demonstrates his wider knowledge of Caelius’
work, as attested not only by the many fragments incertae sedis but also from the
extensive quotations, only preserved by him, of the speeches In C. Antonium
and Contra L. Sempronium Atratinum. Furthermore, the offhand reference to
the otherwise unknown episode of the competition among the quaestors proves
that Quintilian expected his reader to have some familiarity with Caelius’
speeches, and he certainly uses them as an important source for rhetorical
education, comparable even to those of Cicero.
Malcovati collects nineteen references to C. Asinius Pollio in Quintilian, the
most quoted orator in the Institutio oratoria.22 Five of these are listed
among the testimonia (ORF4 174 F4–8) and come from the first, tenth, and
twelfth books. In the tenth book, we find the judgements passed on his work,
which is characterized by ‘much power of invention, great precision’ and by
‘adequate strategic sense and spirit’, but which does not reach Cicero’s ‘polish
and elegance’, and so seems archaic (10.1.113).23 Despite the unfavourable
comparison with Cicero, Pollio reached, in any case, ‘honour enough in his
19
See above, p. 81.
20
quod in Caelio uix tolerabile uidetur.
21
narrare quae salsa sint in primis est subtile et oratorium, ut Cicero pro Cluentio narrat de
Caepasio atque Fabricio aut M. Caelius de illa D. Laeli collegaeque eius in prouinciam festinan-
tium contentione. . . . et Caelius cum omnia uenustissime finxit, tum illud ultimum: ‘hic subsecutus
quo modo transierit, utrum rati an piscatorio nauigio, nemo sciebat: Siculi quidem, ut sunt lasciui
et dicaces, aiebant in delphino sedisse et sic tanquam Ariona transuectum’ (‘To narrate humorous
stories is a particularly subtle rhetorical move; for example, Cicero’s narrative in Pro Cluentio
about Caepasius and Fabricius, or Caelius’ story of the quarrel between Decimus Laelius and his
colleague as they both hurried off to their province . . . . The whole of the picture that Caelius
gives is delightful, but especially the end: “He followed; but how he crossed over, by raft or by
fishing boat, nobody knew. The Sicilians, with their naughty sense of humour, said he rode on a
dolphin, and so made the crossing like Arion” ’). See Russell 2001: 3.82 n. 32.
22
On C. Asinius Pollio, see Zecchini 1982.
23
multa . . . inuentio, summa diligentia . . . et consilii et animi satis: a nitore et iucunditate
Ciceronis ita longe abest ut uideri possit saeculo prior.

lifetime’ and ‘fame with posterity’ (12.11.28).24 As said earlier, his oratorical
characteristics are interpreted with the requirements of potential imitators in
mind (10.2.17); these are, however, only ‘dreary and jejune’ (tristes ac ieiuni).
Quintilian instead exhorts his students to follow Pollio’s ‘precision’ (diligentia,
10.2.25) and commends the use of poetic fragments in his speeches (1.8.10).
Quintilian is also the main source for four of Pollio’s speeches. In the twelfth
book (12.6.1) we find a brief mention of the speech In C. Porcium Catonem,
which made the orator famous for his precocious forensic activity.25 Another
speech, the Pro M. Aemilio Scauro, is known with certainty only from the text
of Quintilian, who mentions it in the context of the main rhetorical strategy
used by Pollio: in the wake of Cicero, who twice defended the father of the
accused, he pointed out ‘his standing, his bravery, his battle scars, his birth,
and the services of his ancestors’ (6.1.21).26 In another passage (9.2.24) we
find the only direct quotation from this speech, included in a discussion of
the trope of communicatio.27 Quintilian is also our only source for Pollio’s
Pro Liburnia: this speech is used in the ninth book of the Institutio oratoria,
and was pronounced during a trial in which the orator worked with Messala
Corvinus. We can read two direct quotations from this speech: one about
the possibility of including fake written interventions in speeches (9.2.34),28
and the other on ways to question a witness in order to prevent him from
lying (9.2.9).29
24
See above, p. 85.
25
Tacitus (Dial. 34.7) shows that this speech, along with others by L. Crassus, Caesar, and
Calvus, was still read in his time: nono decimo aetatis anno L. Crassus C. Carbonem, uno et
uicensimo Caesar Dolabellam, altero et uicensimo Asinius Pollio C. Catonem, non multum aetate
antecedens Caluus Vatinium iis orationibus insecuti sunt quas hodieque cum admiratione legimus
(‘Lucius Crassus was in his nineteenth year when he impeached Gaius Carbo, Caesar in his
twenty-first when he undertook the prosecution of Dolabella, Asinius Pollio twenty-one when he
attacked Gaius Cato, and Calvus not much greater in age when he prosecuted Vatinius; to this
day we read with admiration the speeches they delivered on those occasions’). Tacitus’ text and
translation are by Hutton and Peterson 1914 (adapted).
26
dignitas et studia fortia et susceptae bello cicatrices et nobilitas et merita maiorum.
27
illis non accedo qui schema esse existimant etiam, si quid nobis ipsis dicamus inexspectatum
accidisse, ut Pollio: ‘nunquam fore credidi, iudices, ut reo Scauro ne quid in eius iudicio gratia
ualeret precarer’ (‘I do not agree with those who say there is a Figure also when we claim that
something unexpected has happened to ourselves: “Members of the jury” says Pollio, “I never
thought it would happen that, with Scaurus as the accused, I should find myself pleading that
influence should have no weight in his trial” ’).
28
ut dicta autem quaedam, ita scripta quoque fingi solent, quod facit Asinius pro Liburnia:
‘mater mea, quae mihi cum carissima tum dulcissima fuit, quaeque mihi uixit bisque eodem die
uitam dedit’ et reliqua, deinde ‘exheres esto’ (‘Writings as well as words are sometimes made up,
as by Asinius in his defence of Liburnia: “My mother, who was very dear and very close to me,
who lived for me and gave me life twice on the same day . . . ” and so on, and then: “shall have no
part in my estate” ’).
29
aut instandi et auferendae dissimulationis, ut Asinius: ‘audisne? furiosum, inquam, non
inofficiosum testamentum reprehendimus’ (‘putting on pressure and stopping our opponent from
pretending to misunderstand: “Do you hear me? The will we impugn is a mad will, not just an
inequitable one”, Asinius’).
90 Amedeo Raschieri
Quintilian is our main source for the Pro Vrbiniae heredibus:30 in the
Institutio oratoria, we read five fragments of this speech (ORF4 174 F29–33)
that are used to explain several rhetorical strategies. The first (4.1.11) concerns
the prooemium, in which Asinius Pollio inserted, offensively, Labienus, ‘the
other side’s advocate’ (partis aduersae patronus), using this strategy as ‘an
argument for the badness of their cause’ (inter argumenta causae malae). The
second fragment (7.2.4) is related to ‘conjecture’ (coniectura) and refers to
the possibility of investigating the real identity (quis sit) of one of the parties
involved in the trial (‘the question was whether the man who claimed the
property as a son was Figulus or Sosipater’).31 A little later (7.2.26) Quintilian
summarizes, with an abundance of detail, the opposing reconstructions that
were offered by the prosecutor (petitor) and by Asinius Pollio of the adven-
turous biography of Clusinius Figulus, son of Urbinia.32 The fourth fragment
consists of Pollio’s reproach to Labienus for the expression rebus agentibus,
which was in current use in Quintilian’s day (9.3.13). In the last fragment
(8.3.32), among a list of neologisms coined by derivation, Quintilian mentions
the word figulatum, invented by Asinius Pollio.
The last quoted speech is the Pro Nonio Asprenate (ORF4 174 F36), which,
as seen above, Quintilian mentions briefly in the tenth book (10.1.22) regard-
ing the usefulness of reading speeches delivered by opposing sides (in this case,
Pollio and Cassius). Lastly, we have three fragments incertae sedis (F42, 43,
44): the expression hi lodices (‘these blankets’), in masculine form, attested by
the orator but condemned by Quintilian (1.6.42); the direct quotation of an
address by Asinius Pollio to Caesar, which is, according to Celsus, the example
of ‘the best type of composition’ (optimam compositionem) for the prooemium
of a speech (9.4.132); and the word fimbriatum, which is paired with the
figulatum previously noted (8.3.32).
Even in the case of Asinius Pollio, Quintilian probably exploits scholastic
material for the judgements on his style. Furthermore, he explicitly states that
this orator is famous to posterity. In particular, Quintilian encourages his
30
This speech is also mentioned at Tac. Dial. 38.2.
31
is qui tamquam filius petebat bona Figulus esset an Sosipater.
32
vtraque enim pars suam expositionem habet atque eam tuetur, ut in lite Vrbiniana petitor
dicit Clusinium Figulum filium Vrbiniae acie uicta in qua steterat fugisse, iactatumque casibus
uariis, retentum etiam a rege, tandem in Italiam ac patriam suam †marginos† uenisse atque ibi
agnosci: Pollio contra seruisse eum Pisauri dominis duobus, medicinam factitasse, manu missum
alienae se familiae uenali inmiscuisse, a se rogantem ut ei seruiret, emptum (‘Both parties make
and maintain their own account of the events. Thus in the case of Urbinia, the claimant alleges
that Clusinius Figulus, Urbinia’s son, escaped after the defeat of the army in which he had fought,
underwent various adventures, was even kept prisoner by the king, and finally returned to Italy
and his home among the †Margini† and was recognized there. Pollio, on the other hand, asserted
that he had served two masters as a slave at Pisaurum, practised medicine, been manumitted,
joined another slave household which was for sale, and was bought as a slave, at his own request,
by Pollio’).

readers to follow the best features of Pollio’s style; because of Quintilian’s
appreciation for him, the Institutio oratoria is now the primary source for four
of Pollio’s speeches. In particular, according to Quintilian, reading these works
will be useful for improving the structure of one’s own orations and for a
better understanding of certain stylistic features, figures of speech, and lin-
guistic problems. Therefore, the large number of fragments is proportional to
Quintilian’s appreciation for the work of Pollio, who, again according to
Quintilian, suffered from standing in Cicero’s shade and, above all, for the
archaic nuance of his prose.
Quintilian mentions M. Valerius Messala Corvinus ten times. Five of these
are included among the testimonia in Malcovati’s edition (ORF4 176 F5–8).33
The first (1.7.35) is a reference to his books on grammar concerning individual
words and letters (libellos non uerbis modo singulis sed etiam litteris). The
second (4.1.8) concerns a special feature that characterizes ‘many of Messala’s
Prooemia’ (pleraque Messalae prohoemia): the search for ‘a certain tacit
approval’ (commendatio tacita) from the audience, achieved through a dec-
laration of weakness or lack of preparation, or being no match for the talents
of the opposing party (infirmos, inparatos, inpares). The third passage con-
cerns the stylistic characteristics of the orator (10.1.113); these features are
summarized in the last quotation, which focuses on Messala’s ‘dignity’
(12.10.11).34
Quintilian explicitly mentions two speeches by Messala, the Contra Aufidiam
(F12–13) and the Oratio Hyperidis pro Phryne in latinum uersa (F21–2), for
which the Institutio is our only source. The first, delivered in 44 or 43 BC, is
cited alongside the speech of his opponent Servius Sulpicius (10.1.22), and also
in a very corrupt section of the sixth book (6.1.20), which concerns an orator’s
potential to anticipate arguments that ‘later come to be repeated by the
defence’ (pro reo repetentur). As mentioned earlier, Quintilian praises Messa-
la’s ability to translate Greek speeches into Latin, to the extent that he can
compete with Hyperides in rewriting the defence for Phryne (10.5.2). The only
surviving fragment of this speech is contained in the first book, bene fecit
Euthia (1.5.61), cited for the form in -a of the nominative of the Greek
masculine name. Two other fragments incertae sedis are isolated words: the
neuter plural gladiola (‘small swords’), used by Messala and condemned by
Quintilian as obsolete (1.6.42), and the neologism reatus (‘accused person’),
introduced by the orator and now in common use in Quintilian’s day
(8.3.34).35
33
On M. Valerius Messala Corvinus, see Hanslik 1955.
34
See above, p. 85 For the stylistic judgement on Messala in comparison with Cicero, see Tac.
Dial. 18.2: Cicerone mitior Coruinus et dulcior et in uerbis magis elaboratus (‘Corvinus again is
mellower than Cicero, more engaging, and more careful in his choice of words’).
35
quaedam tamen perdurant. nam et quae uetera nunc sunt fuerunt olim noua, et quaedam sunt
in usu perquam recentia: [ut Messala primus ‘reatum’, ‘munerarium’ Augustus primus dixerunt]
92 Amedeo Raschieri
According to Quintilian, Messala Corvinus’ speeches are worthy of atten-
tion for grammatical reasons and certain stylistic characteristics, especially
those relating to introductions. Furthermore, the Institutio oratoria provides
relevant evidence regarding individual speeches, even if we do not find
extensive quotations from these in Quintilian’s work. Therefore, we do not
know if the rhetorician read these texts directly or knew them through the
mediation of the school tradition.
CONCLUSIO N
In conclusion, the analysis of quotations from orators of the Republican

period in the Institutio oratoria, both in individual books and of individual
authors, has highlighted several interesting features of their use in Quintilian.
These orators belong firmly to the literary canon of authors that a contem-
porary orator must know if he wishes to read and imitate the best models.
References to these authors are extremely varied, ranging from the mere
mention of an orator’s name or title of his work to judgements on lexical,
rhetorical, or stylistic features, some short literary quotations, and even quite
extensive passages, often transmitted only by the Institutio oratoria. While for
many orators, especially the older ones, Quintilian’s knowledge could be
derived from intermediate sources, our author shows a good first-hand know-
ledge of many speeches, especially those of more recent orators. Quintilian
often emphasizes that the quoted speeches were actually read (legitur, legi-
mus), as in the cases of Hortensia (1.1.6), Caelius, Messala, and Cicero (1.5.61).
On this subject, we also have the statement of Tacitus, which testifies to the
reading (legimus) of the works by L. Crassus, Asinius Pollio, Caesar, and
Calvus (Dial. 34.7). Moreover, Quintilian affirms in the tenth book (10.1)
that the students of rhetoric must read separate speeches, and sometimes all
the discourses related to the same case, even the least effective ones. The Latin
rhetorician is also aware of the diverse types of texts which transmitted ancient
oratorical performances: in the case of Servius Sulpicius (10.7.30) not only
complete speeches are preserved but also some parts of speeches along with
notes for the other sections. Despite Quintilian’s recommendations, however,
most of these works were soon forgotten, demonstrated by the fact that they
are no longer used or even mentioned by later authorities.
Regardless of the excellence of the example provided by Cicero, often
affirmed and emphasized by Quintilian (not without some criticism, at least
‘reatum’ nemo ante Messalam, ‘munerarium’ nemo ante Augustum dixerat (‘However, some words
do stick. Those which are old now were new once, and some very modern words have become
accepted: no one had said reatus before Messala, or munerarius before Augustus’).

at the level of rhetorical theory), these orators fit well into the larger educa-
tional project pursued in the Institutio oratoria. They are used as moral
examples,36 as lexical, rhetorical, and stylistic examples, often accepted but
sometimes forcefully rejected, but always included in more general literary,
historical, and cultural frameworks. Quintilian finds continuity in the Roman
oratory tradition (12.10.11): late Republican and early Imperial orators are
separated for individual characteristics and divided into two groups only for
chronological reasons according to the direct knowledge of Quintilian. There-
fore, Quintilian’s attitude toward the Roman orators is in continuity with that
of Cicero’s Brutus: they are the object of a stylistic and rhetorical judgment
and valuable for the construction of a cultural memory which has rhetorical
education as its primary purpose. Alongside the most important Greek
authors, Cicero, and more recent Latin authors, Roman orators of the Repub-
lican period are fundamental models not only for contemporary orators in
training, but also for those already active, part of Quintilian’s emulative and
anti-dogmatic vision, sensitive to new linguistic and social needs but eager to
find solid roots in the past.
36
See above (p. 80) for the importance of well-educated women in the pedagogical model
proposed in the first book.
Vis and Seruitus

The Dark Side of Republican Oratory
in Valerius Maximus
S. J. Lawrence
Valerius Maximus’ Facta et Dicta Memorabilia is a useful source of fragmen-

tary material for those who are hoping to access the works of lost orators. The
nearly one thousand exempla collected in the work provide a rich trove of
famous sayings and excerpts from, or information about, striking oratorical
performances. The work is all the more useful if, as has traditionally been the
case, we view Valerius as strictly a compiler of these fragments.1 This view is
well exemplified in George Kennedy’s The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World;
when searching for evidence of the earliest Roman orators he warns of the
need for caution when using Aulus Gellius’ account of the speech of Scipio
Africanus the Elder—arguing that the speech is almost certainly not the
original version—and then immediately quotes a fragment of Scipio Nasica’s
speech from Valerius (3.7.3) as unproblematic historical evidence.2 This
approach sells us short on two counts: firstly, it runs the risk of taking material
from Valerius on the assumption that the author has not been creative or
involved enough to alter it and, secondly, it undervalues the evidence that is
available in the text for the reception of Republican oratory in the early
Imperial period. While we are unable in most cases to check the accuracy of
Valerius’ citations from ancient orators, we need to be aware that these
1
This approach views the value of the text as resting almost exclusively on the evidence that
can be extracted from Valerius and frequently implies that Valerius has little original to add to
his material; see for example Hadas 1952: 238; Sinclair 1984: 146; Carney 1962: 292. In contrast,
Tara Welch (2013: 68) has recently argued that Valerius Maximus’ unique value lies in the way
that he strips away authorial markers from the texts he uses as sources in order to return the
material to the ‘record of tradition’.
2
Kennedy 1972: 6.
96 S. J. Lawrence
citations are being deployed by an author who not only preserves facta et dicta,
but also selects and shapes them to explore his own ideas. This chapter will
examine Valerius’ chapter Quanta uis sit eloquentiae (8.9) to demonstrate
both that Valerius’ evidence must be treated with the caution appropriate to
an author who has strong views of his own, and that these views have
something very interesting to contribute to our understanding of Roman
oratory and the ways in which the reception of this oratory could be used as
political commentary.
The Facta et Dicta has an obvious relationship with oratory at Rome because
it is a collection of exempla: the building blocks of argumentation and
persuasion.3 The traditional reading of the collection, in fact, has been to
see it as a source book for the use of students of rhetoric and declamation.4
Yet, as Teresa Morgan has noted: ‘there is no reason to suppose that
Valerius’ book was particularly aimed at orators.’5 W. M. Bloomer maintains
that the work has a didactic function in addition to its role for orators and
was designed to introduce new members of Roman society to the customs
and traditions of Rome.6 Andreas Weileder, likewise, sees the Facta et Dicta
as simultaneously providing a handbook for oratory and a wider vision of the
positive role of Roman imperialism, one that was designed to educate,
entertain, impress, and perhaps also to improve its readers.7 Ute Lucarelli
has most recently argued in favour of the sociopolitical purpose of the work,
stressing the way in which Valerius underlines the importance of social
relationships such as family, amicitia, and clientela for the cohesion of the
state.8 These scholars have demonstrated the text’s complexity beyond its
role as a handbook and have also been consistent in their reading of Valerius
as a true believer in the status quo. Bloomer in particular addresses Valerius’
support for the new political regime at Rome and his attempts to minimize
any Republican material that might suggest even a shadow of criticism for
the ancestors of the present ruler.9 However, as I will demonstrate, the Facta
3
This is notwithstanding the many other purposes to which exempla were put in the Roman
world; for instance, Teresa Morgan (2007: 122–59) has stressed their role in the construction of
popular morality generally. Clive Skidmore (1996) set out the moral function of the Facta et
Dicta itself for the first time in English, and Rebecca Langlands (2006: 123–91 and 2011) has
since argued persuasively for the ethical function of exempla both inside and outside of Valerius’
collection. Franz Römer (1990) has gone further and argued that the Facta et Dicta was
structured around the Stoic cardinal virtues; I have also recently argued that there is a discernible
philosophical ideology present in the work (Lawrence 2015).
4
Sinclair 1980: 11–12. Carney 1962: 291 also refers to the Facta et Dicta as primarily a
reference work. See Sinclair 1984: 146; Sinclair 1980: 12–14; Wardle 1998: 14, esp. n. 67 regarding
the connection between the Facta et Dicta and declamation.
5 6
Morgan 2007: 6, 12, 125. Bloomer 1992: 12–13, 16–17.
7 8
Weileder 1998: 20–1. Lucarelli 2007: 12.
9
Bloomer 1992: 185–229; David Wardle (1997) also argues that Julius Caesar, while by no
means a caricature of mere flattery or propaganda, is presented in the most complimentary tones
possible in the text and in a manner acutely sensitive to the ideology of the current ruler.
Vis and Seruitus: The Dark Side of Republican Oratory 97

et Dicta seems on occasion not only to include uncomfortable material, but
actually to frame political exempla deliberately in such a way as to bring out
their sinister undertones. The text is not only a repository of evidence, but is
itself evidence for the way that writers of the early Empire engaged with
oratory: one of the key components of the political life of the Republic.
Valerius groups his exempla into themed chapters, which are divided into
stories from Rome (the ‘internal’ sections) and those from elsewhere (the
‘external’ sections). The majority of chapters in book 8 relate to the practice
of oratory, especially forensic oratory. Valerius begins with chapters showcas-
ing famous and infamous verdicts and trials (8.1, 8.2, 8.3), follows this with
chapters detailing the processes around trials (8.4, 8.5), and breaks off for a
chapter dealing with prosecutorial hypocrisy (8.6), before two chapters on the
contrasting qualities of enthusiasm and leisure (studium and otium: 8.7, 8.8)
lead to chapter 8.9 on the force of eloquentia (eloquence). 8.7 is particularly
concerned with studium for literary and linguistic achievements; the opening
internal exemplum describes Cato the Elder’s activity as an advocate late into
old age (8.7.1); and the opening external exemplum details the famous dedi-
cation to oratory of Demosthenes (8.7.ext.1). Chapter 8.10 continues the focus
on eloquence by describing the importance of the auditory and visual qualities
of oratory.
Eloquentia as a term in Valerius, as in other authors, is frequently used to
represent oratory as a whole.10 In fact, in the wider work, Valerius uses the
term consistently to describe the discipline; thus he identifies eloquentia as the
special expertise of Hortensius (3.5.4, 5.9.2, 8.3.3, 8.10.2), Demosthenes (8.7.
ext.1, 8.10.ext.1), L. Crassus (3.7.6, 6.2.2, 8.5.3), and M. Antonius (7.3.5)—all
figures defined, to some extent, by their oratorical standing. It is, then, to this
chapter, dedicated to the force of eloquentia, that one must turn for a focused
sample of the role and practice of eloquence from which to examine Valerius’
own attitude towards oratory.11
Republican oratory is often depicted by Imperial authors as representing a
past peak: the opening statement of Tacitus’ Dialogus famously sets out as its
premise the decline of oratory since the end of the Republic (1.1), although the
validity of this view is tossed back and forth by the speakers in the work.12
10
Kennedy 1972: 7. It is notable, for instance, how frequently Cicero also uses eloquentia to
represent oratory (e.g. Brut. 23, 25, 39, 45; De or. 1.13; Inv. rhet. 1.2; among many others).
11
Oratio, although it does have a recognized meaning as oratory as a whole, is most
commonly used in the Facta et Dicta to describe an individual speech (e.g. 4.1.3, 5.9.2, 8.10.3);
oratoria is used only once in the work, to describe the source of Demosthenes’ fame (3.4.ext.2),
and rhetorica is not used at all.
12
Quintilian refers to his own (now lost) work on the topic de causis corruptae eloquentiae,
‘Concerning the reasons for the decay of eloquence’ (Inst. 6.pr.3 and 8.6.76); this work seems,
however, to have been focused on his objections to particular elements of declamatory style (Inst.
2.10.3), rather than to constitute an attempt on his part to condemn contemporary oratory as a
98 S. J. Lawrence
Cicero, however, is held up as the premier example of Republican oratory by
the character of Messala (Dial. 25), while Quintilian’s intensive use of Cicero’s
speeches for his exempla, as well as his explicit praise, testify to the continuing
influence of both Cicero and the Republican oratory that he was seen to
represent.13 This is also true in Seneca the Elder’s Controuersiae. Seneca’s
pessimism about the future of oratory at Rome is marked; as he puts it in
deterius deinde cotidie data res est: ‘day by day things have got worse and
worse’ (Controv. 1.pr.7). In stark contrast to the weak speakers of his own
period, Seneca, like Quintilian and Tacitus, sees the role of Cicero in Repub-
lican oratory as paramount. Cicero is the marker of the strongest period of
Roman oratory at the opening of the work (1.pr.6), and this initiates a trend in
which Cicero is the measure for the life and times of oratory.14 Personally,
Seneca mourns the fact that he was able to witness all the great speakers of his
age with the exception of Cicero:
ne Ciceronem quidem aetas mihi eripuerat sed bellorum ciuilium furor, qui tunc
orbem totum peruagabatur, intra coloniam meam me continuit; alioqui in illo
atriolo, in quo duos grandes praetextatos ait secum declamare, potui adesse
illudque ingenium, quod solum populus Romanus par imperio suo habuit,
cognoscere et . . . potui uiuam uocem audire.15 Sen. Controv. 1.pr.11
Given the close chronological relationship between Seneca and Valerius, as
well as the towering reputation of Cicero in the centuries after their time, it is
particularly strange that Valerius Maximus leaves Cicero out altogether from
his chapter Quanta uis sit eloquentiae (8.9), despite the fact that, as is clear to a
modern reader and must have been clearer still to an ancient reader, he is
using Cicero’s works, including the Brutus, as a source in the chapter.16 It is
whole (Inst. 10.1.122). See Brink 1989: 476–9. Also Kennedy 1972: 494–5; Gunderson 2003: 10 n.
43; Clarke 19963: 105–6.
13
Quint. Inst. 10.1.105–12 is entirely about Cicero’s pre-eminence as a Roman orator and the
fact that he was more than equal to the leading Greek examples of eloquence.
14
In the Controuersiae, Seneca the Elder fixes the appearance of the word declamatio to the
time of Cicero and Calvus (1.pr.12). In the preface to book 2, Seneca uses Cicero’s life as a marker
for another milestone of oratory with the introduction of the first Latin rhetorician (2.pr.5). It is
also noteworthy that Haterius in the preface to book 4 stands out from the crowd by using
antiqua words a Cicerone dicta (4.pr.9).
15
‘Indeed, age did not snatch Cicero from me but the madness of the civil wars—then
ravaging the entire world—kept me inside my colony; otherwise I would have been able to
have been present in that little anteroom, in which he says two grand togate men declaimed with
him, and I would have been able to experience that genius which alone the Roman people
considered as equal to its power and . . . I would have been able to hear the living voice.’
16
The resemblance of 8.9.1 to Cicero’s account at Brutus 54 is particularly marked; so, too,
the similarity between 8.9.ext.2 and Cic. De or. 3.138. Bloomer (1992: 60–1) has written
previously on Valerius’ use of Cicero as a source; so, too, Wardle 1998: 16–17; Langlands
2011: 103; Welch 2013: 67.

important to note that this does not correspond to Valerius’ general preference
in terms of exemplary figures; Cicero appears on twelve occasions in the Facta
et Dicta and in three of these instances Valerius comments on his eloquentia in
terms that make his supremacy in this field clear.17 Here, however, in a chapter
actually about the force of eloquentia, Cicero is absent. This, as it turns out, is
only the first sign of the curious independence of Valerius’ take on the rhetoric
of the Republic: his latest exemplum dates to 77 BC. Valerius seems, then, to be
voting with his stilus; while he does not explicitly criticize the oratory of his
own day as Seneca the Elder does, he situates the potentia of eloquence firmly
in the past. This does not, however, explain why Valerius decided to conclude
his exempla in 77 BC, excluding so many orators of the late Republic and,
especially, the majority of Cicero’s career.
When we come to consider who does feature in the chapter, the criteria for
selection are not at all obvious.18 8.9.1 describes the success of Marcus Valerius
(variously named in other sources) in persuading the plebeians to return to
Rome after their secession in 494 BC;19 this is particularly interesting given that
Cicero, the obvious source of this story thanks to his use of similar language
and the shared name he attributed to its hero, states openly that he had no
access to this orator’s works. While Valerius comments on the orator’s skill as
though uncontroversial, Cicero stressed that his judgement was based on
speculation, having inferred that Marcus Valerius must have been a skilled
speaker from the outcome he achieved.20 8.9.2 deals with the death of the
orator Marcus Antonius (cos. 99, cens. 97–6) at the hands of Marian and
Cinnan forces (87 BC); in this case the orator is well known but access to his
legacy was difficult given his reluctance to publish his speeches (Cic. Brut.
163). 8.9.3 shows a courtroom contest between Julius Caesar and Lucius Cotta
(77 BC) in a story not widely told and appearing as something of an anticlimax;
not only is Cicero’s performance in the courtroom missing, but also outstand-
ing figures like Lucius Crassus and Quintus Hortensius, who certainly feature
17
At 2.2.3 Valerius describes Cicero as the summa uis Romanae eloquentiae, at 5.3.4 Cicero’s
eloquentia as an advocate for the defence is remarked upon, and at 8.5.5 Valerius refers to courts
as Cicero’s castra eloquentiae.
18
19
The dictator is M. Valerius at Cic. Brut. 54, Plut. Cor. 5.2 (and presumably Pomp. 13.7
where he is only identified as Valerius), Oros. 2.5.5, and Val. Ant. Hist. F17; M’. Valerius at Dion.
Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.39.2; Menenius Agrippa at Livy 2.30.4–31.11.
20
Cic. Brut. 52–6. Cicero’s language almost obsessively underlines the hypothetical aspect of
his discussion: . . . nostros, de quibus difficilie est plus intellegere quam quantum ex monumentis
suspicari licet . . . quis enim putet . . . quod certe effici non potuisset, nisi esset oratione per-
suasum . . . possumus Appium Claudium suspicari disertum . . . ingenio ualuisse uideatur . . . licet
aliquid etiam de M. Poili ingenio suspicari . . . (‘our ancestors, concerning whom it is hard to
understand more than we can get from the records . . . For who would think . . . that surely could
not have been done except for the persuasive force of oratory . . . we can assume Appius Claudius
was eloquent . . . he (Titus Coruncanius) might seem well equipped with talent . . . it is permis-
sable to assume something also about the talent of M. Poilius . . . ’).
100 S. J. Lawrence
as examples of eloquence elsewhere in the work.21 Similarly, the external
material deals not with Demosthenes or Lysias but instead with Pisistratus’
rise to power (8.9.ext.1), Pericles’ ascent to total control at Athens (8.9.ext.2),
and finally the decision of King Ptolemy I Soter to ban speeches by Hegesias
the Cyrenaic philosopher (c. 290 BC). When we compare Valerius’ choice of
figures to represent eloquentia in this chapter with Tacitus’ selection of the
greatest Greek and Roman orators in the Dialogus, only one of the eleven
names that Tacitus has Messala list appears in Valerius: Julius Caesar, but
Julius Caesar at the very beginning of his career.22 A similar pattern to that
found in Tacitus appears in Quintilian: when the latter sets out the key orators
whose works students of eloquence should pursue, he lists twenty speakers
while commenting that many others might be included. Once again, the only
one of these speakers to feature in Valerius’ chapter is Julius Caesar.23 Despite
Livy’s advice (quoted by Quintilian) that it might well be enough simply to
study Demosthenes and Cicero, neither speaker is present in this chapter of
the Facta et Dicta.24 Instead, Valerius appears to pass over orators whose skill
in speaking was their central claim to fame, favouring instead speakers whose
eloquence in these exempla is intimately connected with the use and abuse of
power, either as perpetrators or victims.
It could be argued that the trend towards dark political shadows in this
chapter extends far beyond the simple choice of which representatives of
eloquence are appropriate exempla. In itself, it is noteworthy that Valerius
uses the term potentia for the power of eloquence.25 Potentia appears to be
used fairly consistently by Valerius in his work; of the fourteen occasions on
which the term is used outside of chapter 8.9, three relate to Sulla’s dicta-
torship, three to the excessive power of Pompey the Great, and one to
Tiberius Gracchus’ misuse of power.26 This should alert us from the outset
to the fact that the ‘force’ of eloquence presented here is potentially far from
neutral, let alone positive, as one might have been led to expect. In fact,
power, and more specifically the ways in which it can be misused, goes on to
21
L. Crassus’ outstanding eloquence in the courts is underlined at 3.7.6, 6.2.2, and 8.5.3;
Q. Hortensius’ eloquence features at 3.5.4, 5.9.2, 8.3.3, and 8.10.2.
22
Tac. Dial. 25; the complete list of speakers is: Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, Lysias,
Lycurgus, Cicero, Calvus, Asinius, Caesar, Caelius, Brutus.
23
Quint. Inst. 10.1.76–120: the complete list is: Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides, Lysias,
Isocrates, Demetrius of Phalerum, Cicero, Asinius Pollio, Messala, Caesar, Caelius, Calvus,
Servus Sulpicius, Cassius Severus, Domitius Afer, Julius Africanus, Trachalus, Vibius Crispus,
Julius Secundus. There are seven individuals shared between Tacitus and Quintilian.
24
Quint. Inst. 10.1.37.
25
The use of uis in the title is preserved in three of the major manuscripts despite the
prominence of potentia as the first word in the chapter: Kempf 1854: 637.
26
Sulla’s dictatorship: 1.6.4, 2.8.7, 7.5.5; Pompey the Great: 6.2.6, 6.2.7, 6.2.9; Tiberius
Gracchus: 4.7.1. Valerius also uses potentia to describe the dangerous extent of Pericles’ power
at Athens (7.2.ext.7).

feature prominently in the external material of chapter 8.9; I will turn to
these exempla first before examining the internal material in more depth.
At 8.9.ext.1, Valerius attributes Pisistratus’ ability to claim power and
impose his own rule on Athens (characterized as imperium regium) to oratory;
he stresses that it was by his disertitudo—more powerful even than that of
Solon—that Pisistratus convinced an otherwise very wise state to prefer
slavery (seruitus) to libertas. Immediately we find slavery and freedom con-
trasted and that the former condition is the result of eloquence. Yet, if we think
of the way that Pisistratus’ rise to power is depicted in the ancient sources,
oratory does not seem to be the most prominent factor—even allowing for the
fact that we tend to underestimate the performative aspects of ancient ora-
tory.27 Certainly Pisistratus does make a powerful case to the Athenian people
about his need for a bodyguard, most fully described in Justin’s epitome of
Pompeius Trogus.28 The key element in his strategy to seize power is, however,
theatrical—the sources unanimously report how he used fake wounds to
himself and his mules to make a wordlessly potent case for surrounding
himself with clubmen.29 Cicero, in De oratore, does draw attention to the
education and eloquence of Pisistratus (3.137), but his proof of this is the
tyrant’s role in reordering the works of Homer, rather than his successful bid
for power. Cicero does comment that Pisistratus’ eloquentia was not utilis for
his people but does not draw a connection between this skill and his ascent to
power; in fact, the force of his eloquence is immediately limited in scope by
Cicero’s assertion that it allowed him to surpass others in the literary arts.30
Valerius’ insistence that Pisistratus seized power dicendo—by speaking—and
his comment that Pisistratus’ counsels were disertiores than those of the
famously eloquent (and democratic) Solon seem quite distinctively Valerian.
27
Steel 2006: 1.
28
Just. Epit. 2.8: aduocata continone uulnera populo ostendi, de crudelitate principum, a
quibus haec se passum simulabat, queritur; adduntur uocibus lacrimae et inuidiosa oratione
multitudo credula accenditur (‘After he had summoned an assembly, he showed his wounds to
the people and complained about the cruelty of the leading men, by whom he pretended they had
been inflicted; tears were piled on his words and the credulous crowd were inflammed by his
odious oratory’).
29
Herodotus’ account (1.59) puts particular emphasis on Pisistratus’ physical capabilities;
noting that his reputation was largely based on his military activity against the Megarians.
Plutarch (Sol. 29–30) mentions that Pisistratus had an ingratiating manner of speaking and that
Solon, old and tired, no longer possessed the physical or mental strength to speak as he once had.
After Pisistratus achieves tyranny via the stunt of self-inflicted wounds, during the resulting
public meeting Solon, Ariston, and the crowd are explicitly shown speaking. Aelian (VH 8.16)
does report that the Athenian people were more attentive to Pisistratus’ words than those of
Solon (though he makes no comment on their comparative quality as speakers), but his route to
tyranny is clearly depicted as being via his bodyguard.
30
Cic. De or. 3.137: non fuit ille quidem ciuibus suis utilis, sed ita eloquentia floruit, ut litteris
doctrinaque praestaret (‘Indeed that man was not useful to his fellow citizens, but his eloquence
was so pronounced that he excelled all in literature and learning’).
102 S. J. Lawrence
Next, Pericles is explicitly compared to Pisistratus in terms of the connec-
tion between oratory and tyranny; not only does he impose the iugum
seruitutis on the free necks of his fellow citizens through a combination of
natural brilliance and oratorical education, but Valerius also records a story
(not found elsewhere) of an elderly Athenian who, on hearing Pericles speak
as a young man, attempted in vain to warn his fellow citizens that he had heard
a speaker like this before in his own youth: Pisistratus. Valerius concludes with
the striking rhetorical question: quid enim inter Pisistratum et Periclen inter-
fuit, nisi quod ille armatus, hic sine armis tyrannidem gessit? (‘For what is the
difference between Pisistratus and Pericles except that the former armed and
the latter without arms imposed tyranny?’).
Despite the prudentia of the Athenian polis, they fall victim to an eloquence
sweeter than honey and fail to see its sting. Once again, Valerius has taken an
unusual angle on Pericles; certainly other Roman sources record the power of
his oratory, though often in terms of its power rather than its sweetness,31 but
the accusation that Pericles imposed tyranny on Athens is quite striking in its
bluntness. Thucydides, by contrast, states that Pericles was in practice the man
in charge at Athens but that Athens was still a democracy in name; he also
states that Pericles did not use any inappropriate tactics to take this power.32
Plato is less certain of the benefits of Pericles’ power, but Valerius’ matter-of-
fact assertion of tyranny still stands out.33
We can once again look to Cicero’s De oratore for a point of comparison,
and a very close one at that. The similarity in language between Valerius’
exemplum at 8.9.ext.2 and Cicero at De oratore 3.138 is too close to be
coincidental; it seems more than probable that Cicero is Valerius’ source.34
Nevertheless, while they share details as to Pericles’ ability to make an
unpopular idea seem popularis and iucundus, as well as the aculei that Pericles
was able to embed in his listeners, the force of the accounts is quite different.35
31
Cic. Brut. 59 has Pericles as the ‘marrow’ of persuasion (suada) and recalls that Eupolis the
poet said that this marrow or essence dwelled on the lips of Pericles. Quintilian records that his
oratory was admired because it was like thunder and lightning: Inst. 12.10.24. Also at 12.10.65
Quintilian records that Eupolis admired Pericles’ uis and celeritas.
32
See Thuc. 2.65.8–10 for his comments on democracy, 2.65.8 regarding the foundations of
Pericles’ influence; Monoson 1998 actually sees Thucydides as suggesting that a more effective
version of democracy existed under Pericles’ rule.
33
Pl. Grg. 515: Socrates anchors the question of the improvement or degradation of the
Athenian people on their nature on first hearing Pericles’ speeches; it should be noted, however,
that Socrates’ objections here suggest that the people were excessively empowered rather than
disempowered (516), and he goes on to specifically target the oratorical abilities of those his
interlocutor Callicles regards as statesmen (517A).
34
It is notable also that Cicero deals with Pisistratus in the section immediately before
Pericles, as does Valerius: cf. De or. 3.137.
35
Val. Max. 8.9.ext.2: cumque aduersus uoluntatem populi loqueretur, iucunda nihilo minus
et popularis eius uox erat (‘And when he spoke against the will of the people, his voice was no less
pleasing and popular’). Cic. De or. 3.138: cum contra uoluntatem Atheniensium loqueretur pro

Cicero makes the careful qualification that Pericles spoke against the uoluntas
of the Athenian people pro salute patriae; Valerius admits no such justification
and begins and ends the exemplum with two assertions that Pericles imposed
tyranny, including references to the fear of those who recognized his tech-
nique.36 Cicero stresses the comparative liberality of Athens under Pericles—
where comic poets were permitted to speak male even of Pericles himself;
Valerius ignores this and comments on how badly Comedy wanted to per-
stringere Pericles’ potentia, transforming a remark that underlined freedom of
speech into one that instead stresses contemporary antagonism towards Peri-
cles. Finally, Valerius’ elderly truth-speaker drives home the message that
Pericles and Pisistratus were both equally engaged in tyranny. Cicero, on the
other hand, goes on to speak of Pericles’ teachers and training. In the Brutus,
Cicero also comments on the effect that Pericles’ oratory had on the people of
Athens, stating that Pericles’ suauitas cheered up or gladdened the Athenians
(hilaratae sunt, Brut. 44); this provides the frame for understanding the rest of
his description when he specifies that they wondered at (admiratae) the
ubertas and copia of his eloquence, and feared (timuerunt) the uis and terror
of his speech. Cicero’s use of terror (especially in company with timeo) does
stand out; Douglas comments on the rarity of the word in discussions of
rhetoric.37 Nevertheless, when Cicero uses it elsewhere (as in his description of
Antonius’ oratory: De or. 3.32), it is a positive quality and indicates the range
of emotions that a speaker is able to evoke.38 There is no hint of the sinister
oratorical manipulation, designed to impose tyranny, which we find in Valer-
ius. Consistently, we can see that Valerius is not merely faithfully repeating
well-known stories; he is shaping them to bring out distinctive themes.
salute patriae seuerius, tamen id ipsum, quod ille contra popularis homines diceret, populare
omnibus et iucundum uideretur (‘When he spoke rather severely against the will of the Athenians
in defence of the fatherland, nevertheless that very thing, which he said against the popular
figures, seemed popular and pleasing to all’). Cf. Val. Max. 8.9.ext.2: tamen in labris hominis
melle dulciorem leporem fatebatur habitare inque animis eorum, qui illum audierant, quasi
aculeos quosdam relinqui praedicabat (‘Nevertheless, (Old Comedy) confessed that there was
charm sweeter than honey on the lips of the man and declared that something was left behind in
the minds of those who heard him, like stings’). Cic. De or. 3.138: cuius in labris ueteres
comici . . . leporem habitasse dixerunt tantamque in eodem uim fuisse, ut in eorum mentbus,
qui audissent, quasi aculeos quosdam relinqueret (‘The old writers of comedy said that he had
charm on his lips and that such was the power in that man that he left behind something like
stings in the minds of those who had heard him’). My emphasis.
36
The distinction is even clearer if we accept Mankin’s interpretation of Cicero’s repetition of
popularis as antanaclasis—he argues that the first usage draws on negative associations of mob
rule while the second brings out the sense of something which is in the best interests of the
people: Mankin 2011: 224. Valerius, on the other hand, sets up Pericles’ speech as against the
uoluntatem Atheniensium, not simply the populares.
37
Douglas 1966a: 34.
38
So, too, Pseudo-Longinus 34.4 on Demosthenes’ ability to inspire fear in his listeners; this
effect is compared to a thunderbolt.
104 S. J. Lawrence
The final exemplum in the chapter sees a rather different misuse of the
power of eloquence; King Ptolemy is only forced to ban Hegesias from
speaking on one specific topic: the mala uitae. This is because Hegesias’
persuasive powers are having a dramatically detrimental effect on the popu-
lation of Ptolemy’s kingdom as his audience, fully convinced, choose to die
instead of living with such pain and unhappiness.39 Thus, assuming, pace
Hegesias, that life is, on balance, a good thing, the external exempla all show
speakers whose eloquence allows them to impose conditions on their audi-
ences that are not in their best interests. The Athenians lose libertas twice over
(Valerius uses the noun in 8.9.ext.1 and the adjective liber in 8.9.ext.2) while
Hegesias’ audience lose their lives; in this way Valerius portrays the potentia of
eloquence as an unremittingly negative quality.
Turning to the Roman (internal) material, it might appear at first glance
that Valerius has preserved quite a different picture of eloquence. The first
exemplum describes the reconciliation of the plebeians with the state via the
analogy of the role of the stomach in the body; this is a positive story in many
of the sources that deploy it.40 It is also superficially positive in Valerius’
version; the power of eloquentia helps to reunite the Roman state, dampening
down a pestifera seditio, restoring saniora consilia, and working against ira and
consternatio. Positive language characterizes Valerius the Dictator’s speech,
and the potential negative consequences of the secession of the plebs are clear
as Valerius Maximus winds the story famously told to the plebs by Menenius
Agrippa into his account. As previously mentioned, Cicero’s Brutus is clearly
the source of this exemplum;41 Cicero’s focus is similarly on the power of
oratory (Cic. Brut. 54), and to this end he comments that Valerius received
amplissimi honores for his actions and became the first to receive the cogno-
men Maximus. Valerius Maximus, however, has elected not to include this
39
Also in Cic. Tusc. 1.83. Cicero comments that Hegesias was specifically not allowed to
speak in the scholae. This story appears in the context of a discussion about regarding death as an
end to the unpleasantness of life generally, rather than a weapon to be feared in Fortuna’s
arsenal. The school of Hegesias is described by Diogenes Laertius (2.93–6), stressing a similar
outlook on death as an indifferent or good thing.
40
Cic. Brut. 53–4; Livy 2.32.8; Plut. Cor. 5–7; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.86.1–7.
41
Compare the opening of both accounts: Val. Max. 8.9.1: regibus exactis plebs dissidens a
patribus iuxta ripam fluminis Anienis in colle, qui sacer appellatur, armata consedit, eratque non
solum deformis, sed etiam miserrimus rei publicae status, a capite eius cetera parte corporis
pestifera seditione diuisa (‘After the kings had been removed, the plebs, separating from the
Senate, sat together, armed, on the hill (which is called “sacred”) near the bank of the river
Anio’). Cf. Cic. Brut. 54: uidemus item paucis annis post reges exactos, cum plebes prope ripam
Anionis ad tertium miliarium consedisset eumque montem, qui Sacer appellatus est, occupauisset,
M. Valerium dictatorem dicendo sedauisse discordias, eique ob eam rem honores amplissumos
habitos et eum primum ob eam ipsam causam Maxumum esse appellatum (‘Likewise we see that a
few years after the kings were removed, when the plebs had sat together near the bank of the
Anio at the third mile and occupied that mountain which is called “Sacer”, M. Valerius the
Dictator settled the discord by speaking, and on this account he held the most fulsome honours
and for this same reason he was the first to be called Maximus’). My emphasis.

detail despite the opportunity to claim some kind of connection to the
Dictator via the name he himself shares. The high degree of honour awarded
to the Dictator does feature in Plutarch’s account (Pomp. 13.7) and seems
to have also been a feature of Valerius Antias’ version (F17 Peter). Other
accounts stress the good relations between the Dictator and the people (Dion.
Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.39–40), and Livy actually records that the people feared
nihil . . . triste nec superbum (‘nothing . . . grim or arrogant’) from the Valerian
family (2.30.5). Whatever the dynamics of the conflict, no doubt is cast by
other authors on the fact that the end results of the Dictator’s actions were
necessary and good.42
The terms that Valerius Maximus uses to describe the persuasion of the
plebeians, on the other hand, seem designed to introduce a degree of doubt;
the people have been carried away by their joy in their insolita libertas but are
subjected (subiecit) to the Senate once again. Elsewhere in the Facta et Dicta,
libertas is associated with three major concepts in contexts where it refers to
politics:43 libertas as opposed to rule by tyranny or monarchy;44 libertas as
opposed to rule by a foreign state (usually Rome);45 or—less commonly—
libertas as opposed to the political agitation of unsavoury individuals.46 This is,
then, a word that Valerius associates strongly with the absence of political
oppression, rather than absence of subjection, even when that subjection
comes at the hands of Rome itself. The exact nature of the libertas to which
Valerius is referring in this exemplum is unclear, since he provides no details
whatsoever of the source of the people’s discontent; it cannot refer to the
establishment of the tribunate of the plebs since this was a result of negoti-
ations after the secession.47 According to other sources, the reason for this
secession was the oppression of the plebs by moneylenders and high-handed
magistrates, so the idea that they have been freed from the monarchy is equally
problematic.48 It seems that the only thing to which libertas can refer, in the
context of the exemplum, is the time outside the pomerium afforded by the
secession; if this is correct, libertas seems like a very strong word to choose.
42
Livy 2.30.4–31.11 goes on to focus on the vital role of the plebs in defending Rome from
invaders in his account; a similar emphasis is present in Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.42 and Oros. 2.5.5.
43
Libertas is also used to refer to personal, legal freedom in opposition to servile status (Val.
Max. 2.6.6, 2.7.9, 2.9.5, 3.2.12, 5.2.1, 5.2.5, 9.10.1) and to freedom of speech in chapter six (6.2.pr,
6.2.2, 6.2.3, 6.2.4, 6.2.5, 6.2.10, 6.2.ext.1, 6.2.ext.2). There is some crossover in the last case; at
6.2.5, for instance, Valerius represents Cato the Younger as the living embodiment of libertas:
libertas sine Catone? non magis quam Cato sine libertate (‘Freedom without Cato? No more than
Cato without freedom’).
44
Val. Max. 1.7.ext.6, 1.8.5, 3.3.ext.3, 4.1.ext.4, 5.3.2g, 5.6.1, 5.6.ext.2, 5.8.1, 6.3.1, 7.3.2.
45
Val. Max. 4.3.6, 4.8.5, 6.2.1, 6.3.1, 6.4.ext.1, 7.2.6.
46
Val. Max. 3.2.18 (the seizure of the Capitol by Saturninus, Glaucia, and Equitius in 100 BC),
6.3.2 (the tribune followers of Spurius Cassius Vecellinus c.502 BC), 6.3.3 (a general statement on
the role of seueritas in guarding Roman freedom).
47
Livy 2.33; Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 6.86.6–7; Plut. Cor. 7; App. B Civ. 1.1.
48
Livy 2.31; Plut. Cor. 5.
106 S. J. Lawrence
Whatever libertas means here, it appears to be a deliberate authorial choice;
Cicero does not use the term libertas in his account of 494. Valerius’ usage is
especially striking in view of Valentina Arena’s argument that libertas was
essentially conceived in Rome in opposition to servile status; under this model,
the plebeians’ exercise of free will in leaving the city could symbolize their
freedom from the otherwise dominant commands of a master.49 Valerius’ use
of subiecere to describe the re-established relationship between Senate and
plebs also seems significant given that when he uses the word in a political
context he generally refers to the complete submission of one body to another,
such as the subjugation of Phrygia to the rule of King Midas, or of Africa to
Rome.50 All of this becomes even more unsettling when Valerius opens the
external material with an exemplum in which a talented speaker convinces the
Athenian people to trade their libertas for seruitus. The account of Pisistratus
is an uncomfortable pendant for 8.9.1.
At 8.9.2 eloquence superficially assumes a more positive force as it effect-
ively delays the murder of Marcus Antonius by Marian and Cinnan soldiers.
In a rather wonderful image, the soldiers sent to kill him stand, obstupefacti at
his words, with their swords, initially humming with eagerness for the kill,
suddenly returned to their sheaths. That is until Publius Annius—wondering
at the delay—comes in and kills Antonius, expers Antonianae eloquentiae
(‘untouched by Antonius’ eloquence’). Valerius highlights Antonius’ almost
successful attempt to escape death, commenting that it was only one who had
not heard him speak who could kill him. However, as Bloomer has noted, the
fact remains that Antonius’ eloquentia does not work.51 It does not save his
life; it creates a momentary delay after which the crudele imperium still has its
effect.52 Cicero is not only absent from the chapter, but in it one of his role
models in the field of oratory meets a grisly end that eloquence can do nothing
to prevent.53
49
Arena 2013b: 14–16 and 26. In his reading of Valerius’ use of libertas elsewhere, Mueller’s
adoption of Preller’s definition of libertas in the early Imperial period as a quality opposed to
sheer despotism is also relevant: Mueller 1998: 246.
50
Val. Max. 1.6.ext.2 (Phrygia), and 3.7.1 and 8.14.1 (Africa). The verb also encompasses
subordination that Valerius views as unnatural, such as that of free people to slaves (9.1.ext.2), or
men to the authority of women (3.5.3).
51
Bloomer 1992: 158–9.
52
So, too, in the other, later accounts: Plut. Mar. 44; App. B Civ. 1.72, Vell. Pat. 2.22.3.
Cicero’s references to Antonius’ death refer simply to the cruelty of it (Brut. 307; De or. 3.10;
Tusc. 5.55; Phil. 1.34); another strand in the ancient sources focuses on the way in which rituals
of dining are defiled by the presentation of Antonius’ head to Marius and Marius’ inappropriate
glee: Val. Max. 9.2.2; Luc. 2.122; Plut. Ant. 1; Flor. 2.9.14.
53
See Blom 2010: 226–30 on the exemplary function of Antonius for Cicero as an orator.
While Blom underlines Cicero’s preferential sympathy for L. Licinius Crassus (cos. 95), Valerius’
choice to showcase Antonius in this instance may well be prompted by the manner of his death
and by the connection between this and Cicero’s own eventual demise at the order of Antonius’
grandson.

So far in the internal material, eloquentia has manifested its power by
making the Roman plebs do something that they do not want to do, possibly
to their own disadvantage, and has finally failed to save the life of a famous
orator simply because one man did not hear him speak, despite the fact that
Antonius is, in Bloomer’s words, ‘eloquence embodied’.54 Oratory seems both
ambiguous in its effects and limited in its scope. In 8.9.3 the situation becomes
even more interesting, as Julius Caesar, according to Valerius the demonstra-
tion of maxima eloquentia, complains that he is failing in his prosecution
of Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (cos. 81), despite his optima causa, because of
L. Aurelius Cotta’s (cos. 65) defence.55 The optima causa seems to signify that
Caesar was on the right side of the law; certainly Quintilian believed that
Dolabella was guilty as charged, notwithstanding his eventual acquittal (Inst.
12.7.3). So here in the final internal exemplum, we have eloquence apparently
leading to the wrong outcome in a court case as well. Even where Valerius has
selected noted orators in Antonius and Caesar, he has not chosen to showcase
their famous and successful orations but rather instances of failure. Neverthe-
less, Caesar’s role in his exemplum as the paramount exponent of oratory also
effectively overshadows any credit due to Cotta for his successful eloquence; it
is Caesar’s speech judging Cotta’s speech that is reported, not that of Cotta. In
fact, in chapter 8.9, the only exemplary figures that achieve undisputed success
via oratory are those who are out to manipulate their audiences for dark and
dangerous ends, such as Hegesias or Pisistratus.
This dark side of oratory was a possibility of which Valerius’ sources were
certainly well aware. Cicero opens the De inuentione by wondering whether
eloquentia has done more harm or good (bonine an mali plus) to individuals
and states (1.1.1). He argues that oratory must be combined with wisdom and
a knowledge of philosophy to ensure that it is a force for good, and goes on to
detail his judgement that oratory must have played a key role in the original
formation of civilized human communities and the rule of law (1.2.1–3).
However, when Cicero does discuss the malum created by oratory—especially
the way in which it enabled temerarii atque audaces men to seize control of the
state (1.3.4)—he situates this firmly in the past.56 Cato the Elder, Laelius, and
Scipio Africanus the Younger, together with the Gracchi, are cited as the role
models at Rome who recognized the dangerous power of oratory without
ethics and acted to combine eloquentia and uirtus (1.4.1). While the lesson still
54
Bloomer 1992: 176.
55
Patrocinium might mean a range of things here, but Valerius clarifies that oratory rather
than patronage is at issue by saying that it is the uis eloquentiae of Cotta that defeats Caesar.
56
Cicero uses a string of imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect verbs throughout his description
of the gradual corruption of society by unwise eloquence: consuescerent . . . induit . . . coge-
retur . . . uisus est . . . comparasset, fiebat . . . uideretur . . . accesserant . . . fiebant . . . suscepit . . .
traderent . . . uiolabat . . . fuit (Inv. rhet. 1.3.4–5).
108 S. J. Lawrence
needs to be taken on board, Cicero gives the impression that the era of the
destructive force of oratory has been replaced by another, better age.
Writing in another era, under the princeps Tiberius, Valerius makes no
distinction between different developmental periods in the past and, far from
mourning the death of a golden age of Greek and Roman oratory, his
presentation suggests that any era dominated by oratory is well ended. The
fact that the era of the political dominance of oratory has come to an end is
subtly demonstrated by Valerius’ choice of Roman exempla; of the three main
areas in which oratory flourished (the contio, the Senate, and the courts),
something key is missing.57 The first exemplum could be loosely regarded as a
contio and the courts are represented in 8.9.3, but the oratory of the Senate
house, and the political business conducted in it, is altogether absent. Instead,
there is a striking degree of informality; even the court case in 8.9.3 is so
personalized as to draw it away from the legal sphere and focus our attention
on individuals, rather than systems. It is notable that Valerius’ only exemplum
dating from after 77 BC that contains the word eloquentia is such a personal
story that we struggle to identify any of the actors: at 2.6.8, Valerius records
that he witnessed his patron, Sextus Pompeius, unsuccessfully attempting to
dissuade an elderly woman from Cea from pursuing a voluntary death.58
Eloquence, it seems, simply no longer has the role to play that it once had.
Chapter 8.9 is also curiously silent regarding the orators themselves, given that
one of Valerius’ stated aims is to preserve memorable sayings (1.pr). We hear
no part of any speech—no winning line or formula—, and the two people who
do speak do so only indirectly: Julius Caesar complaining of Cotta’s eloquence,
and the old man warning the Athenians of the danger inherent in Pericles’
oratory. These are both reported speeches, reporting on speeches.59 The focus
is entirely on the power and force of eloquence, but the speakers of the past
have lost their voices; only echoes of audience commentary remain.
Valerius has been interpreted, most notably by Bloomer and Wardle, as a
straightforward supporter of the world created by the Principate and particu-
larly of its moral dimensions.60 Should we accept this, then the inclusion of
Caesar as an example of the power of eloquence when the rest of the conven-
tional exempla are absent, and as the final, powerful Roman exemplum,
might be designed to showcase the glorious ancestry of the current princeps.61
57
Steel 2006: 1.
58
The femina of ultima senectus is not named, the identity of Sextus Pompeius is uncertain,
and (despite Skidmore’s attempts to trace his ancestry (1996: 113–17)) almost nothing can be
said with any certainty about Valerius himself: Wardle 1998: 1.
59
Val. Max. 8.9.3 and 8.9.ext.2.
60
Valerius’ praise of Tiberius in the preface to the work is unarguably effusive (Val. Max. 1.
pr). See Wardle 1997: 345 and 2000: 483; Bloomer 1992: 205.
61
Bloomer 1992: 207 argues that Julius Caesar (and other members of the Caesarian family)
are often used as the ‘culminating and capping figures’ in sequences of exempla, and that this

Leaving out Cicero and the Senate in a chapter on oratory could further this
aim by removing the most obvious proponents and context of Republican
eloquence from the question—rather like the polite custom of the consuls,
who avoided turning up for dinner when invited by a triumphator on the day
of his triumph, and thus ensured that no one would overshadow the guest of
honour.62 If this is Valerius’ intention, however, the chapter as a whole lacks
judgement. Certainly he refers to Caesar as diuus Iulius, the most perfect
manifestation of human genius and a rhetorical force to be reckoned with, but
he immediately follows this exemplum, which ultimately shows a young
Caesar being bested by someone else’s oratory, with two exempla that show
the most impressive orators of Athens using their powers to subject their wise
and free fellow citizens to seruitus and tyrannis. This does not seem to be the
most effective celebration of Caesar’s career.
One other possible explanation is that the chapter shows how the present
world under Tiberius, a great emperor, descendant of the divine Julius, is
infinitely preferable to a past in which citizens were at the mercy of a fallible
and fickle force like oratory, and a constitution that gave this skill so much
power and influence. Valerius is not the only Imperial author to associate
oratory in the Republican period with danger. Tacitus has Marcellus argue in
the Dialogus that civil discord and fierce competition were in fact the pre-
requisites of Republican rhetorical brilliance,63 and Seneca the Elder recog-
nizes the spiky edges of oratory to some extent when he has Votienus
Montanus argue that it is the absence of the danger and risk attendant upon
oratory in the courts that makes the students of the declamation schools so
pathetic.64 Valerius does seem to be unusual, however, in giving the impres-
sion that the potentia of Republican oratory is the source of danger, rather
than motivated by it. In Valerius’ chapter, eloquence corrupts and undermines
states; it does not feed on faults inherent in political systems. Valerius also
stands out by choosing to include just one exemplum of an individual using
their oratory for a simple (limited) good—Antonius trying to save himself in
the midst of brutal civil chaos—, and by highlighting so starkly in this
exemplum the limitations of oratory when faced by soldiers with swords. It
is difficult not to remember, at this point, that a similar fate befell Cicero—as
another Marcus Antonius found a way to finally stop him from speaking.65
Valerius stresses in the chapter that there is no Roman exemplum maius than
that of Caesar’s oratory, and it is true that there is literally nothing more.
technique is used particularly to counter the risk of referring to any historical enemies of Caesar
in positive terms.
62
Val. Max. 2.8.6.
63
Tac. Dial. 36: magna eloquentia, sicut flamma, materia alitur et motibus excitatur et urendo
clarescit (‘Great eloquence, just as fire, is fed by kindling and stirred up by movements and
shines bright by burning’).
64 65
Sen. Controv. 10.pr.5. A story told by Valerius at 5.3.4.
110 S. J. Lawrence
Roman oratory stops here with Caesar; Cotta is the last of Caesar’s opponents
that we see—though do not hear—speak. The strange selection of exempla,
excluding Cicero and with him all the other speakers of the late Republic,
effectively underlines their silencing.
Given the complex, shadowy picture that Valerius Maximus constructs of
the past influence and function of oratory, we must exercise caution when
using the Facta et Dicta as a source for fragments of Republican oratory; this is
an author with a mind of his own and a surprisingly bitter twist. Valerius’
citations may, or may not, be accurate, but they are certainly far from
disinterested; his selection and presentation of material feed into an authorial
agenda. The corollary of this argument is that there is much more to learn
from his depiction of themes like oratory than has been traditionally sup-
posed. Valerius’ own views are well worth considering when we look for the
nuances of Imperial responses to Republican orators. We see in Valerius’
reception of the oratory of the past not certainty or clarity but overwhelming
darkness and doubt; there is no doubt, though, about the very close connection
between oratory and politics, and the way that these two elements affect one
another. Oratory in chapter 8.9 of the Facta et Dicta Memorabilia has the
power, the potentia, to take away freedom and life, but not the power to
preserve them. Not even Solon, at 8.9.ext.1, can make the people listen to
salubriores contiones when Pisistratus wields his eloquence. In keeping with its
corrupting influence, the greatest figures of Athenian oratory use their power
to enslave citizens, and there is no distinction drawn between their talent and
that of Julius Caesar, who immediately precedes them in the chapter. In
Valerius, the present might be silent, but the past, like Periclean oratory,
contains both the honey and the sting, and the sting sticks in the listener
long after the last speech has been heard.
Reconstructing Republican Oratory

in Cassius Dio’s Roman History
Christopher Burden-Strevens
It is an under-recognized fact that, where the source material was sufficiently

rich or the occasion of a speech particularly renowned, ancient historians
often used written testimonies to particular oratorical events in the compos-
ition of their own set-piece speeches. There was always room for embellish-
ment, invention, and outright fabrication—prevalent more in the formal
orations than in any other aspect of ancient historiography. But some evi-
dently adhered to the Thucydidean principle of having their speakers catch
‘the gist’—the ξυμπάση γνώμη—of what was actually said in the historical
moment.1 Tacitus’ speech for the emperor Claudius, which advocates the
admission of Gauls to the Senate, is by far the most famous example of
this.2 We know from a lacunose transcript of the emperor’s speech etched in
bronze (the Lyons Tablet) that Claudius did indeed speak on this theme before
the Senate in AD 48, and we also know what he said.3 It is clear from the
parallels between Tacitus and the Lyons Tablet that the Annales preserved
the main elements of Claudius’ argument for the enfranchisement of Gauls
but packaged these in Tacitus’ own (inauthentic) style.4 Half a century or so
later, the Greek historian Arrian adopted a similar practice, but on a more
impressive scale: the many speeches and dialogues of Alexander and his
associates in the Indica and Anabasis seem to have ultimately derived from
the accounts of eyewitness contemporaries of Alexander’s campaigns
(Nearchus), or from slightly later writers using reports of these in the con-
temporary Royal Journal (Aristobulus, Ptolemy). Like Tacitus, Arrian appears
to have drawn the essential outline of what was said from an eyewitness or
1 2 3
Thuc. 1.22.1. Tac. Ann. 11.23–4. CIL 13.1668.
4
Cf. Miller 1956 for summaries of the older scholarship, and Griffin 1982 and 1990: 484–5 for
discussion of the content.
112 Christopher Burden-Strevens

contemporary source, and then refashioned this into a new oration with his
own rhetorical packaging.5
This kind of ‘reconstructed’ oratory, dependent upon hard evidence for an
original act of speech, is interesting in its own right in terms of historiograph-
ical praxis; but it also possesses great potential for Roman historians in search
of new sources of evidence for the public speech of the late Republic. One such
source is Cassius Dio’s eighty-book Roman History—one of our richest and
most important accounts of the period from 69 BC to the end of Augustus’ reign.
At first glance it seems an unlikely, if not unreliable witness to the oratory of
the late Republic. By the time of its composition in the third century AD,
genuine deliberative oratory had long ceased to exist, replaced by the declama-
tory meletē. Cassius Dio’s speeches, like his history as a whole, were composed
in a polished Attic indebted to the style of Demosthenes and Thucydides6—a
fact which has led scholars, quite wrongly, to assume that the formal orations
have more to do with Plato’s Athens than Cicero’s Rome.7 Moreover, the
Hellenic cultural landscape within which the historian worked, the so-called
Second Sophistic, distanced him from the Republic in intellectual as well as
temporal terms.8 Scholars have consequently been reluctant to accept that
Dio used Latin texts of the first century BC as source material for his own
speeches.9 Even Dio’s hostile handling of Cicero has been called a ‘complete
failure’, explained away by his (merely hypothetical) dependence upon anti-
Ciceronian Greek rhetors of the Imperial period,10 rather than by a genuine
familiarity with the orator’s work. These assumptions have exerted a paralytic
effect upon attempts to revisit the Roman History as a useful source of
information on Republican oratory. We have been led to assume that, when
a statesman speaks in Dio’s history, his words are pure invention and have
little relationship with the actual tenor of public debate in that period. This
scepticism persists today.11
In fact, such scepticism is over-conservative and closes off a potentially
fruitful source on late Republican oratory and its reception. Two sets of
debates in Dio’s text raise new and important questions not only concerning
its usefulness as a source for public speech, but also about the role played by
5
For the full discussion, see Hammond 1999. See also Brunt 1983: 529.
6
Received critically: Melber 1891: 290–7; Litsch 1893; Kyhnitsch 1894; Vlachos 1905; Millar
1964: 42; Manuwald 1979: 280–4; Aalders 1986: 294; Lintott 1997: 2499–500; Rodgers 2008:
313–18. For Dio’s (self-confessed) cultivation of Attic, cf. Cass. Dio 55.12.4–5; Swain 1996.
7
Greenhalgh 1980: 81; McKechnie 1981.
8
So Millar 1964: 174; Reardon 1971: 206; Reinhold 1988: 11; Gowing 1992: 290; Sidebottom
2007: 77.
9
For a few examples, cf. Heimbach 1878: 29; Haupt 1884: 689–93; Zieliński 19123: 280–8;
Millar 1961: 15; Millar 1964: 81; Fechner 1986: 44 n. 35; Gowing 1992: 227–8, 239; Rodgers
2008: 296.
10
Millar 1964: 55; initially Haupt 1884: 689–93 and Zieliński 19123: 280–8.
11
Most recently Rodgers 2008; Fomin 2015; Fomin 2016.
Reconstructing Republican Oratory in Cassius Dio’s Roman History 113

contemporary rhetorical material in historiographical speeches more gene-
rally. The first is the tripartite debate between Pompeius, A. Gabinius, and
Q. Lutatius Catulus on the lex Gabinia of 67 BC (36.25–36a). The second is the
‘Philippic’ and ‘anti-Philippic’ exchange of Cicero and Q. Fufius Calenus,
set in the dramatic context of the Senate meeting of 1–3 January 43 BC
(45.18–46.28). The similarity of these speeches in Dio to Cicero’s De imperio
Cn. Pompei and Philippics has long been recognized.12 But a bare list or table
of the parallels between these texts will not suffice. Rather, what is lacking is a
fuller rhetorical analysis of these discourses in relation to their sources (which
the De imperio and Philippics certainly were) and an assessment of the
implications of such an analysis for our potential use of Cassius Dio and
later Greek historians as legitimate sources of evidence for public speech in the
late Republic.
The aims of this chapter are threefold. First, it seeks to show that Cassius
Dio drew directly from Cicero in these debates, not only constructing the
‘Ciceronian’ case in each instance, but also reconstructing the opposing case
from quotations and testimonies found in his sources. We do not need to
suppose the use of lost intermediary texts (if so, which?) of Greek rhetors of
the Imperial period (if so, who?).13 The historian refashioned two Ciceronian
suasoriae—the De imperio and the Second Philippic—into two sets of con-
trouersiae, producing five speeches that were attempts at a faithful reproduc-
tion of the arguments used by both sides of the debate. This fact alone would
be striking, and would demonstrate more sophistication than we see in Tacitus
and Arrian. But a further aim is to demonstrate that Dio’s ‘versions’ of these
Ciceronian speeches reflect the overall rhetorical strategy of their models.
Cassius Dio preserved the rhetorical figures and turns of phrase used by Cicero
to make specific arguments, and retained these in situ, underlining the par-
ticular point that they emphasized in the original. He also seems to have
attempted to mirror the overall structure of his sources by replicating the
original sequence of their argumentation, and characterized his speakers in
these debates in a manner consonant with testimonies to their oratory found
in contemporary sources. This is particularly surprising for an ancient histor-
ian, and suggests that Dio endeavoured to capture the genuine character of
Republican debate to an extent not hitherto recognized. Finally, this chapter
will reflect—albeit only speculatively—on the implications of this material for
our use of Dio and other Imperial Greek historians as potential sources for
otherwise lost oratorical traditions from the late Republic.
12
Fischer 1870: 1–28; van Ooteghem 1954: 170 n. 1; Millar 1964: 54; Stekelenburg 1971: 80;
Fechner 1986: 64; Gowing 1992: 238 n. 34; Rodgers 2008: 308–12; Kemezis 2014: 113 n. 53;
Montecalvo 2014: 25–47; Coudry forthcoming.
13
So Haupt 1884: 689–93 and Zieliński 19123: 280–8.
THE I NTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
Before comparing these speeches in the Roman History with their source
material, it will be worthwhile to set out briefly what we know of the resources
on which the historian could draw. First and most importantly, it is clear that
Dio had the ability and the desire to read Cicero and other Latin texts without
intermediary assistance. Peculiarly omitted from an otherwise comprehensive
list of Greek authors who knew Latin compiled in one study,14 Dio neverthe-
less advertises his bilingualism repeatedly: by explaining Latin etymologies,15
by choosing to use Roman rather than Greek place names—which probably
emerged from his long career in the provincial administration—,16 and by
rationalizing Latin terms.17 Frequently, Dio simply transliterates Latin insti-
tutional vocabulary into Greek.18 Of course he was not the first to do so, but it
is hardly sensible to assume that this emerges from Dio’s ignorance of Roman
institutional vocabulary or his inability to understand it: the historian was the
son of a Roman senator and consul, drawn from a family who may have held
the citizenship since Nero’s time,19 and was himself a consul twice and a
senator for forty years.20 Dio belonged to a long tradition of Greek historians
of Rome who read and appreciated Latin;21 furthermore, he makes reference
to Roman literature in terms which suggest familiarity.22
Secondly, we have reasonable clues that the texts under discussion here
were in circulation around Dio’s time. The continuing popularity of the De
imperio is confirmed by a letter from the rhetorician Fronto to his pupil
Marcus Aurelius, which was originally sent with a copy of the oration,23 and
it was read long after the Severan period.24 Equally, other Ciceronian texts,
such as the letters, were available and popular in elite circles before and after
14 15
Rochette 1997: 229–48. Cass. Dio 41.49.3, 46.55.5, 48.12.5, 49.36.4–5.
16
See n. 10 above, with Swain 1996: 403 and Burden-Strevens 2015: 290–6.
17
Cass. Dio 53.18.1, 55.3.4–5. On Dio’s Latin, see further Millar 2005: 32–3; Burden-Strevens
2016: 39–44.
18
Vrind 1923: 22f.; also Millar 1964: 40–2. For Dio and Attic equivalents for such terms, see
Aalders 1986: 295–7; Freyburger-Galland 1997; Jones 2016.
19
Millar 1964: 8–9 with nn. for the discussion.
20
For Dio’s life and career, cf. Millar 1964: 5–27. Dio’s father was governor of Dalmatia (Cass.
Dio 69.1.3) as well as legatus of Cilicia (69.1.3, 73[72].7.2); he may also have obtained the
consulship (IGRR 3.654). Cassius Dio himself was probably praetor in AD 194 (74[73].12.2) and
held his second consulship in AD 229 (80[79].5.1). For a prosopography of both, cf. PIR2 C 413
and PIR2 C 492. The dates of Dio’s first consulship and other provincial commands are unclear:
for this debate cf. Schwartz 1899: 1684–6; Vrind 1923: 163–8; Gabba 1955: 289–301; Eisman
1977: 657–73; Reinhold 1988: 1–4; Swan 2004: 1–3.
21
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.4.2–3, 1.7.2–3; Plut. Dem. 2.2–4; Diod. Sic. 1.4.4.
22
Cass. Dio 43.9.3 (on Sallust), 44.35.3 (on the Res Gestae), 76[75].10.2 (on Virgil).
However, translations of Virgil and Sallust were of course available in the first and second
centuries AD respectively (cf. Suda Z 73), and the Res Gestae had always had a bilingual history.
23
MacCormack 2013: 252; Montecalvo 2014: 46.
24
MacCormack 2013: 264–5; Montecalvo 2014: 45.

Dio’s day. There will be more to say on the subject of the survival of such
material via historians later. Fundamentally, as curator of the eastern intellec-
tual hubs of Pergamum and Smyrna, and as an imperial amicus and comes in
Rome and Nicomedia, Dio was naturally well placed to capitalize upon the
opportunities offered to a bookish historian of Rome by the literary circles of
the imperial court.25
The circumstances under which Cassius Dio wrote ideally placed him to
acquire and read Latin rhetorical material from the late Republic. He never
states outright that he was aware of the De imperio, the Philippics, or the
letters as published artefacts, but this is implicit. Dio certainly knew that
Cicero delivered a speech in support of the lex Manilia of 66 BC (the De
imperio) and says so.26 It is not too speculative to suggest that he was aware
of the Philippics, since he depicts them in the polemic between Cicero and
Calenus in books 45–6. He also seems to have known of Cicero’s letters, as
casual references to them in that polemic show.27 A response of Marcus
Aurelius to Fronto confirms that the letters continued to be appreciated in
the second century,28 as indeed they had been by Quintilian and Seneca.29
Nor was the appreciation of Cicero’s letters restricted merely to rhetor-
icians or students of rhetoric as such: Ammianus Marcellinus quotes a
letter of Cicero to Nepos in his history which does not survive elsewhere.30
The above instances do not, however, confirm an effective knowledge of
these texts, but merely demonstrate its possibility. For evidence of the
influence which contemporary Republican sources had upon Cassius
Dio’s presentation of oratory in the first century BC, we must turn to the
speeches themselves.
RECONSTRUCTING P RAISE AND BL AME:

DIO AND CICERO’ S S PEECHES
We begin with the speeches of Pompeius, the tribune A. Gabinius, and the
consular Q. Lutatius Catulus on the lex Gabinia—the controversial innovation
of 67 BC, which granted Pompeius an extraordinary command over the
Mediterranean to combat piracy.31 Scholars have long recognized that much
of the content of these orations ultimately derives from the De imperio, but
they have been averse to positing direct use of Cicero on Dio’s part. Older
scholarship insisted that since the historian must have ‘followed’ book 5 of
25
For Dio and the intellectual life of the court, see most recently Jones 2016.
26 27 28
Cass. Dio 36.43.2. Cass. Dio 46.8.1, 46.18.4. Haines 1919–20: 1.100.
29 30
Gowing 2013: 239–50. Amm. Marc. 21.16.13.
31
For the scope of Pompeius’ imperium, cf. Jameson 1970; Ferrary 2007.

Sallust’s Historiae for the narrative of that year, he cannot have used Cicero
for the speeches but simply acquired them by way of Sallust’s own refashion-
ing of them.32 This is begging the question: only twenty short fragments from
Sallust’s account of 67 BC survive, and we can only guess the precise referents
of those which seem to pertain to the lex Gabinia debate (5.20–4M).33 More
recent work has been sceptical of the possibility that Dio used Cicero directly,34
and Montecalvo, who shows that there is a significant burden of proof
required to propose a source other than (ultimately) Cicero, avoids positing
a direct relationship.35 In general, current scholarship either merely notes that
the texts of Dio and Cicero are so similar as to suggest a source relationship
(with directness unaddressed),36 or provide only a list of parallels in content.37
What has been left unanswered is the extent to which the historian modelled,
rhetorically, this occasion of oratory around his readings in and understanding
of the contemporary Republican evidence, and used the De imperio as a source
not only for the ‘Ciceronian’ side of the argument, but also for the opposite
side, reconstructed from testimonies in his source text. In fact, Dio’s method
with the lex Gabinia speeches can be paralleled elsewhere in his history and in
other historians.
Before comparing the texts, a note on chronology must be dealt with. Cicero
delivered the De imperio not in 67 BC to advocate the lex Gabinia, but in 66 BC
to support the lex Manilia. Dio was probably aware of this, since he mentions
that Cicero, as well as Caesar, spoke in support of the latter law.38 The
historian thus transposed Cicero’s arguments to a different law, date, and
speakers. But the situations were analogous. In Dio, Gabinius and Pompeius
assume Cicero’s role in advocating Pompeius’ power, while his Catulus rep-
resents the ‘historical’ opposition. On the one hand, the similarity of the two
32
So Grasshof 1867: 39–41; Haupt 1882: 143; Gelzer 1943: 34.
33
Sall. Hist. 5.20–24M:
[20] quibus de causis Sullam dictatorem uni sibi descendere equo, assurgere sella, caput
aperire solitum (uncertain).
[21] [speciem et] celebritatem nominis intellego timentem (= Cass. Dio 36.27.1 or 36.33.3,
possibly Gabinius in praise of Pompeius’ ‘aversion’ to further positions of authority, or
Catulus on the unpopularity of a dictatorship to resolve the crisis).
[22] uideo ingentia dona quaesitum properantem (perhaps Catulus describing Pompeius’
ambition).
[23] sane bonus ea tempestate contra pericula et ambitionem (= Cass. Dio 36.30.5, describ-
ing Catulus?).
[24] nam si in Pompeio quid humani euenisset (= Cass. Dio 36.36a; also Vell. Pat. 2.32.1–3;
Val. Max. 8.15.9; Plut. Pomp. 25.10; surely a well-attested admonishment of Catulus against
the law).
34
Fechner 1986: 44 n. 35: ‘ob man deshalb auf eine direkte Benutzung Ciceros durch Dio für
diese Stelle schließen darf, ist fraglich.’
35 36
Montecalvo 2014: 25–47. Kemezis 2014: 113 n. 53; Coudry forthcoming.
37
van Ooteghem 1954: 170 n. 1; Rodgers 2008: 308–12; Montecalvo 2014: 25–47.
38
Cass. Dio 36.43.2.

contexts explains this choice. Both laws were controversial grants of power
proposed by Pompeian tribunes: thus, to Dio both Gabinius and Cicero played
parallel roles in the same period. On the other hand, the De imperio was
probably the only extensive material Dio could find that pertained to either
of the laws, and their temporal contiguity (67/66 BC) readily suggested their
conflation. Rather than treat both laws at length, Dio thus collapsed two
examples of the same problem into a single vignette, and explored this
problem when it first arose in the historical narrative. This explains the brevity
of Dio’s treatment of the lex Manilia, which he viewed (reductively) as a
simple parallel to the scenario of 67 BC (Cass. Dio 36.42–3).
This kind of distortion seems peculiar, but it can be found throughout
ancient historiography. In the Bellum Catilinae, to give only one example,
Sallust provides Catilina with a single speech in the Senate meeting of
8 November 63 BC, during which Catilina, after Sallust’s rendering of Cicero’s
First Catilinarian, makes his defence to vigorous senatorial opposition
(obstrepere omnes), and closes with the (in)famous threat, ‘incendium meum
ruina restinguam’ (Sall. Cat. 31.5–9). In fact, Catilina spoke at two separate
Senate meetings. According to the Pro Murena, the apology and the hostile
reaction (congemuit senatus) occurred on 8 November after Cicero’s speech;
but Catilina threatened ruina several days previously, in response to Cato’s
move to prosecute him (Cic. Mur. 51). Presumably this collapsing of Catilina’s
two speeches into one was the historian’s own work. Dio, as we shall see later,
took similar liberties elsewhere in his history, too: his ‘Philippic’ of Cicero
(45.18–47) is set in the context of the Fifth Philippic—the Senate meeting of
1–3 January 43 BC—but with the addressee of the Eighth Philippic, Calenus.
Like Sallust, Cassius Dio took certain liberties to compress the maximum
amount of information about the debates on an issue into the minimum
amount of space.
On to Dio’s lex Gabinia. Dio begins with Pompeius’ short recusatio imperii
(36.25–6), a calculated attempt to acquire the proposed honour of the lex
Gabinia by appearing to accept it only under compulsion. Pompeius’ oration
in the contio opens with a short and wholly commonplace captatio beneuo-
lentiae that has no relation to the De imperio. The central argument that
follows, however, is much indebted to Cicero’s own:
αὐτός τε γὰρ ἐκ παίδων κέκμηκα, καὶ ὑμᾶς δεῖ quid tam nouum quam adulescentulum
καὶ περὶ τοὺς ἄλλους σπουδάζειν. ἢ οὐ μέμνησθε priuatum exercitum difficili rei publicae
ὅσα μὲν ἐν τῷ πρὸς τὸν Κίνναν πολέμῳ tempore conficere? confecit. huic praeesse?
ἐταλαιπώρησα, καίτοι κομιδῇ νέος ὤν, ὅσα δὲ praefuit. rem optime ductu suo gerere? gessit.
ἔν τε τῇ Σικελίᾳ καὶ ἐν τῇ Ἀφρικῇ ἔκαμον, quid tam praeter consuetudinem quam homini
μηδέπω καθαρῶς ἐς ἐφήβους τελῶν, ὅσα δὲ ἐν peradulescenti cuius aetas a senatorio gradu
τῇ Ἰβηρίᾳ ἐκινδύνευσα, μηδὲ βουλεύων πω; ἐφ᾽ longe abesset imperium atque exercitum dari,
οἷς ἅπασιν οὐχ ὅτι ἀχάριστοι πρός με ἐγένεσθε Siciliam permitti atque Africam bellumque in
ἐρῶ. πόθεν; πολλοῦ γε καὶ δεῖ· πρὸς γὰρ τοῖς ea prouincia administrandum? fuit in his
ἄλλοις ὧν πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων παρ᾽ ὑμῶν prouinciis singulari innocentia, grauitate,
ἠξιώθην, καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ πιστευθῆναί με τὴν ἐπὶ uirtute, bellum in Africa maximum confecit,
τὸν Σερτώριον στρατηγίαν, μηδενὸς ἄλλου μήτ᾽ uictorem exercitum deportauit. quid uero
ἐθελήσαντος μήτε δυνηθέντος αὐτὴν ὑποστῆναι, tam inauditum quam equitem Romanum . . .
τό τε ἐπινίκια καὶ ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνῃ παρὰ τὸ triumphare? . . . quid tam inusitatum quam ut,
νενομισμένον πέμψαι μεγίστην μοι τιμὴν cum duo consules clarissimi fortissimique
ἤνεγκεν. ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι πολλὰς μὲν φροντίδας πολλοὺς essent, eques Romanus ad bellum maximum
δὲ κινδύνους ὑπέμεινα, κατατέτριμμαι μὲν τὸ formidolosissimumque pro consule mitteretur?
σῶμα . . . missus est.
Cass. Dio 36.25.1–4 Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 61–2
For I have toiled since my infancy, and you What could be so novel as for a little stripling
ought to be favouring others as well. Or do of a private citizen to enlist an army in a time
you not recall how much hardship I endured of difficulty for the Republic? He enlisted it.
in the war against Cinna even though I was To command it? He commanded it. To
just a youth? Or how I exerted myself in Sicily conduct the whole affair excellently under his
and in Africa, even though I had not yet come own leadership? He conducted it. What could
of age? Or how many risks I ran in Spain, be so uncustomary as to give imperium and an
although not yet a senator? I will not say that army to a mere lad, whose youth still kept him
you have been ungrateful to me for these far away from senatorial rank? To have Sicily
services. Why would I? Quite the opposite. For and Africa entrusted to him and the war to be
in addition to the many and great other carried out there, too? In these provinces he
benefits of which you have deemed me conducted himself with singular
worthy, the greatest distinction was conferred trustworthiness, distinction, and valour.
upon me by your choice to entrust me with the What, truly, could be so unheard of as for a
war against Sertorius—when there was no one Roman eques to triumph? . . . What was ever
else willing or able to undertake it—and by so unusual as a situation in which, when there
your choice to give me a triumph for that were already two highly distinguished and
campaign, contrary to custom. But as I have brave consuls, a Roman eques should be sent
endured many anxieties and many hardships, as proconsul to a most important and
I am worn away in body . . . formidable war? He was sent.
The similarities between these passages require examination in detail.39 It is

clear that Dio modelled his Pompeius around the De imperio not only in the
arguments used—which are successive, proceeding in the Ciceronian order—
but in much of the rhetorical strategy pursued. Both adopt a string of
anaphora in ὅσα and quid, particularly emphasized in the first half of their
speeches during the parallel exposition of Pompeius’ youthful exceptionality.
This leads to Pompeius’ unprecedented command in Hispania against Sertor-
ius, though not yet of senatorial rank, in the middle of both arguments. The
enumeration of Pompeius’ youthful commands is also provided chronologic-
ally in each. While this is hardly a telling similarity in itself, the additional
detail both provide certainly is: assuming that difficili rei publicae tempore
39
Pace van Ooteghem 1954: 170 n. 1; Rodgers 2008: 308–9; Montecalvo 2014: 34–5.

denotes the Sullan civil wars, both texts move from the early 80s to Sicily,
Africa, and then Sertorius, with an identical note in both at this stage on the
unprecedented equestrian triumph. Closing with Sertorius, each also refers
obliquely to the failure of Metellus Pius in Hispania when Pompeius was
awarded proconsular imperium there in 78 BC.40 There is a possibility that
Dio’s version mirrors Cicero’s use of brachylogy with the sudden interjection
πόθεν; πολλοῦ γε καὶ δεῖ in otherwise lengthy clauses (so confecit, gessit, etc.),
although this is less conclusive. Finally, Pompeius’ closing exhortation to the
Quirites to elect someone else, ‘since surely I am not the only man with
military experience . . . not to seem to favour anyone by naming names’,
mirrors Cicero’s phrasing earlier in the De imperio (ego autem nomino
neminem; qua re irasci mihi nemo poterit).41
Of equal interest for our purposes is the degree to which Dio captures
Pompeius’ persona as a Republican orator. Whether Pompeius actually spoke
in the contio before the vote on the lex Gabinia is unclear. Certainly Dio
thought so, although Plutarch writes that he only made a public address the
day after.42 Appian wrongly omits the debate altogether.43 Probably the dynast
spoke at some point in connection with the law. Be that as it may, much of
what we know about Pompeius’ oratory is represented here. The recusatio
imperii was a favoured Pompeian tactic,44 especially in the contio, where he
could compensate for his rather average oratorical ability by making direct
appeals to the people and advertising his military achievements.45 This ora-
torical profile—the dissimulatio, the popular appeal in the contio, the enumer-
ation of military services—are all present in Dio’s speech. What we appear
to have is a conscious choice on the historian’s part to align a speech of his
own composition, supporting Pompeius’ extraordinary power in the 60s, with
the contemporary evidence for the arguments used in a similar historical
situation, and with such testimonies of the speaker’s oratorical style as he
was able to find.46 As we shall see, this is not the only occasion on which Dio
seems to have aimed to capture a Republican orator’s idiolect.
The exhortation of Gabinius that follows this recusatio provides more
ample evidence of Dio’s direct use of the De imperio. The parallels in argu-
mentative and rhetorical strategy are more numerous, and Gabinius’ role in
67 BC is clearer: he certainly spoke in contione in support of his own law (Cic.
Red. sen. 11). The extent to which Cassius Dio captures the tribune’s oratorical
40
Sall. Hist. 1.77.22M; Plut. Pomp. 17. Cf. Cic. Phil. 11.18: quia consules recusabant.
41
Cass. Dio 36.26.4; Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 37; first observed by Montecalvo 2014: 32.
42
Plut. Pomp. 26. Dio and Plutarch also differ on the chronology: probably wrongly, Dio
collapses the debate and the vote into a single day—in Plutarch they take two—but see earlier for
the Sallustian precedent (Sall. Cat. 31.5–9).
43 44
App. Mith. 94. Vervaet 2010; also Rich 2010.
45
On this point, Blom 2011 is especially important.
46
Pace Millar 1961: 15 n. 46.

persona is more complex, since fewer testimonies survive. Cicero is biased,
although there may be some truth in his assertion that, like Pompeius,
Gabinius was not naturally quick on his feet as a speaker, nor adept in the
courts (Cic. Q Fr. 3.2.2–3 (SB 22), 3.4.3 (SB 24)). Cicero’s account of the
tribune’s performance in the contio in 58 BC, mocking his attempt to affect
grauitas to mask his drunkenness, is perhaps more exaggeration than bare-
faced lie (Cic. Red. sen. 13). None of this translates to the rogatio of Dio’s
Gabinius: it is a composed and artificial piece of eloquence.
What Dio does take from the ‘Ciceronian’ profile of Gabinius is his char-
acter. Cicero describes him as a turbulent tribune, who proposed commands
for Pompeius out of partisanship, and as a corrupt demagogue (Cic. Red. sen.
10, 12; Sest. 18, 28–9; also Plut. Pomp. 25.6–7; Val. Max. 8.1.abs.3). This is fully
replicated in Dio’s account: Gabinius is characterized as a reprobate who
colluded with Pompeius, advocating the lex Gabinia in the pursuit of selfish
interests over the public good. In keeping with that persona, Gabinius strikes a
falsely patriotic tone after his prooemium that is simply too similar to the De
imperio to be coincidental:
βουλοίμην μὲν γὰρ ἂν πολλοὺς ὑμῖν ἀγαθοὺς utinam, Quirites, uirorum fortium atque
ἄνδρας εἶναι, καὶ εἴγε καὶ εὔξασθαι δεῖ, innocentium copiam tantam haberetis ut haec
εὐξαίμην ἄν· ἐπεὶ δ᾽ οὔτ᾽ εὐχῆς τὸ πρᾶγμα τοῦτό uobis deliberatio difficilis esset quemnam
ἐστιν οὔτ᾽ αὐτόματόν τῳ παραγίγνεται, ἀλλὰ potissimum tantis rebus ac tanto bello
δεῖ καὶ φῦναί τινα πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐπιτηδείως, καὶ praeficiendum putaretis! nunc uero cum sit
μαθεῖν τὰ πρόσφορα, καὶ ἀσκῆσαι τὰ unus Cn. Pompeius qui non modo eorum
προσήκοντα, καὶ παρὰ πάντα ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ hominum qui nunc sunt gloriam sed etiam
χρῆσθαι, ἅπερ που σπανιώτατα ἂν τῷ αὐτῷ antiquitatis memoriam uirtute superarit, quae
ἀνδρὶ συμβαίη, χρὴ πάντας ὑμᾶς ὁμοθυμαδόν, res est quae cuiusquam animum in hac causa
ὅταν τις τοιοῦτος εὑρεθῇ, καὶ σπουδάζειν αὐτὸν dubium facere possit? ego enim sic existimo,
καὶ καταχρῆσθαι αὐτῷ, κἂν μὴ βούληται. in summo imperatore quattuor has res inesse
καλλίστη γὰρ ἡ τοιαύτη βία καὶ τῷ ποιήσαντι oportere, scientiam rei militaris, uirtutem,
καὶ τῷ παθόντι γίγνεται . . . auctoritatem, felicitatem.
Cass. Dio 36.27.5–6 Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 27–8
For I would wish that you had many good I wish, citizens, that you had such a great
men, and if it were necessary to pray for it, abundance of brave and honest men that the
then that is what I would do. But since that choice of who you thought most suitable to set
blessing is not a praying matter and does not at the head of such momentous affairs and so
come of its own accord to anyone, but rather great a war were a difficult one! But since at
requires that one be naturally inclined to it, this time there is this one Gnaeus Pompeius,
and learn what is relevant, and practise what is who has surpassed not only the glory of those
required, and above all must enjoy felicitas— men now living but even the recollection of
all of which I suppose very seldom occur in the our history, what is there that can make
same one man—you must, therefore, all cleave anyone’s mind doubtful in this case? For
to him with one accord, and make use of him, I think that the greatest general must have the
whenever such a man is found—even if he following four qualities: a knowledge of
himself does not wish it. For this form of military affairs, valour, authority, and felicitas.
compulsion is the finest that can occur to him
who employs it, and to him who suffers it . . .

Several points are of interest here. Both advertisements of Pompeius’ virtues
begin with aporia, expressed in βουλοίμην ἂν and utinam, and wish that Rome
had more men of Pompeius’ calibre. It is striking that both arguments open
with the same rhetorical figure before moving on to stress the exceptionality of
Pompeius alone, in roughly the middle of the thought. Moreover, the point
that follows in both Dio and Cicero concludes that no one should hesitate to
make use of such a character when he is available to the res publica. The
argument of Dio’s Gabinius, that all of the virtues of the ideal leader are
present in τῷ αὐτῷ ἀνδρί, is of course the main thrust of De imp. Cn. Pomp.
28–49 as a whole, but it is notable that ἀγαθῆ τύχη or felicitas features in both
passages: Pompeius’ felicitas, praised throughout Cicero’s speech (9, 28, 47,
48), rightly found its way into Dio’s oration. It may be a simple coincidence
that the qualities of the ideal general in Gabinius’ speech number four, in
polysyndeton (δεῖ καὶ φῦναί . . . καὶ μαθεῖν . . . καὶ ἀσκῆσαι . . . καὶ χρῆσθαι),
mirroring the asyndetic group of four virtues in Cicero (scientiam rei militaris,
uirtutem, auctoritatem, felicitatem). What is clear, in any case, is that the
arguments adduced by Dio’s Gabinius in 67 BC are a close match for those we
recognize from Cicero in the debate of the following year.
After a short bridging sentence, Gabinius’ rogatio proceeds to its next point.
As with the previous passage, what Dio produces appears again to be a
compression of Ciceronian arguments made in 66 BC, again preserving the
rhetorical strategies originally employed:
ἀλλ᾽ ὃν ἔφηβον ὄντα ἄρχειν εἵλεσθε, τοῦτον qui e ludo atque e pueritiae disciplinis bello
ἄνδρα γεγονότα ἀποδοκιμάσετε; καὶ ᾧ maximo atque acerrimis hostibus ad patris
ἱππεῖ ἔτ᾽ ὄντι τοὺς πολέμους ἐκείνους exercitum atque in militiae disciplinam
ἐνεχειρίσατε, τούτῳ βουλῆς γεγονότι τὴν profectus est, qui extrema pueritia miles in
στρατείαν ταύτην οὐ πιστεύσετε; καὶ οὗ καὶ exercitu summi fuit imperatoris, ineunte
πρὶν ἀκριβῶς πειραθῆναι, μόνου πρὸς τὰ τότε adulescentia maximi ipse exercitus imperator,
κατεπείξαντα ὑμᾶς ἐδεήθητε, τούτῳ νῦν, qui saepius cum hoste conflixit quam
ἱκανώτατα αὐτοῦ πεπειραμένοι, τὰ παρόντα quisquam cum inimico concertauit, plura
οὐδὲν ἧττον ἐκείνων ἀναγκαῖα ὄντα οὐκ bella gessit quam ceteri legerunt, pluris
ἐπιτρέψετε; καὶ ὃν οὐδὲ ἄρχειν ἔτι πω καὶ prouincias confecit quam alii concupiuerunt,
τότε δυνάμενον ἐπὶ τὸν Σερτώριον cuius adulescentia ad scientiam rei militaris
ἐχειροτονήσατε, τοῦτον ὑπατευκότα non alienis praeceptis sed suis imperiis, non
ἤδη ἐπὶ τοὺς καταποντιστὰς οὐκ offensionibus belli sed uictoriis, non stipendiis
ἐκπέμψετε; sed triumphis est erudita.
Cass. Dio 36.28.2–3 Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 28
But he, whom you chose to command as a Who set out from school and juvenile
youth, you will reject now that he’s a grown education for his father’s army and the
man? He, to whom as an eques you entrusted discipline of the camp in the midst of the
those wars, you will not entrust this campaign greatest war and fiercest foes; who became the
now that he’s a senator? Of him who alone you soldier of the greatest general when in the
had need for the emergencies back then before height of boyhood, then himself became the
putting him properly to the test, will you not general of a great army upon attaining
now entrust this, an emergency no smaller adolescence; who fought with the enemy more
than those ones, now that you have more than often than any other, waged more wars than
sufficiently tested him? And he, whom you others have even read about, subdued more
engaged against Sertorius when not yet able to provinces than others have dreamed of; whose
hold a magistracy, you will not now send youth was trained to military matters not by
against the pirates now that he’s a consular? another’s precepts, but by his own commands.
In both excerpts the rhetorical technique deployed is anaphora in the relative

pronouns ὃς and qui, in a tetracolon in both instances. The repetition of the
pronouns is also matched by some polyptoton (ὃν, ᾧ, οὗ, ὃν; qui, cuius). It
seems an unusual coincidence that in each case the repetition and case
variation of the pronoun should occur in the same argumentative thought,
where Gabinius and Cicero focus on the exceptionality of Pompeius’ career in
his youth—a development of the argument of Pompeius’ recusatio found also
in Cicero. The progression of the argument between these passages and those
that preceded it (quoted above) is also broadly consonant: just under half of
Dio’s rogatio of Gabinius (36.27.5–28.3) is modelled closely on sections 27–8
of Cicero’s speech, and adduces specific arguments and rhetorical figures in
the order in which they occurred there.
Cicero additionally appealed to Roman self-interest in his advocacy of the lex
Manilia, an appeal that Dio’s speech of Gabinius again repeats. Citing the
precedent of Pompeius’ earlier successes, Cicero assured the Quirites that
none could doubt ‘quam facile imperio atque exercitu socios et uectigalia
conseruaturus sit.’47 Similarly, Dio’s Gabinius lauds the general’s proven ability
‘τὰ ὑμέτερα αὔξειν καὶ τὰ τῶν συμμάχων σώζειν τά τε τῶν ἀνθισταμένων
προσκτᾶσθαι’ in previous commands.48 This focus on Pompeius’ capacity to
preserve and maintain Rome’s allies and revenues is the last of five points—
including the general’s felicitas, his uniqueness, the imperative to support him
unanimously, and the glory of his career even from youth—advanced in
Pompeius’ favour by Cicero in 66 BC. All five are reproduced by Cassius Dio
in the rogatio of 67 BC.
Of course there is an irony in having Gabinius, of all people, play the part of
Cicero: his distaste for the tribune was marked.49 Dio’s dislike of Cicero
himself was equally strong: in a long tirade he describes the orator as ‘the
greatest boaster of all men alive . . . boorish and hateful, and as such envied
and despised even by those he had once pleased’.50 Perhaps the historian was
playing with Cicero by placing his arguments and language into the mouth of
someone he vigorously opposed. Sallust has Catilina harangue his supporters
with the phrase ‘quae quo usque tandem patiemini, o fortissumi uiri?’—an
ironic refashioning of the opening of the First Catilinarian.51 Possibly Dio was
enjoying a similar jeu d’esprit. But the lengthy speech of Catulus against the lex
47 48
Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 45. Cass. Dio 36.28.1.
49 50
Cf. nn. 51–3. Cass. Dio 38.12.4–7.
51
Sall. Cat. 20.9 with Cic. Cat. 1.1: quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?

Gabinia that closes the debate suggests otherwise. It shows that Dio’s principal
concern was to give a snapshot of the actual character of the debate surround-
ing the issue of Pompeius’ power in the 60s: Gabinius as rogator could not be
eclipsed from the discussion, and Cicero simply provided the best evidence for
the sort of content that might be appropriate.
Whether the historical Catulus actually spoke is unclear. We know that
both Catulus and Hortensius publicly opposed the lex Manilia,52 and that
Hortenius spoke against Gabinius’ proposal a year earlier.53 But Barbara
Saylor Rodgers argues that all historians, including Dio, were wrong in
giving Catulus a public role in the debates of 67 BC.54 Although Cicero in
the De imperio mentions Hortensius’ activity in the discussion of that year,
he seems to make no reference to Catulus, apparently citing only his objec-
tions to the lex Manilia of the current year, 66 BC. As such, we might assume
that he did not speak. Rodger’s view has been rightly challenged (Coudry
forthcoming; also Morstein-Marx 2004: 181), based, as it is, upon the question-
able assumption that Cicero would have cited Catulus had he also been a
member of the opposition to the lex Gabinia, too. But Cicero’s explanation of
Hortensius’ role in 67 BC extends to no more than two fairly brief comments:
clearly he did not intend to give a comprehensive overview of the debate
surrounding Gabinius’ law. Rodgers’ second point, that when Cicero finally
quotes Catulus’ objections to Pompeius’ power he is ‘clearly describing a very
recent event’ (i.e. 66 BC on the lex Manilia), is also moot. There is nothing in the
quotation to suggest that Catulus had just spoken; if there is, Rodgers does not
specify what (Rodgers 2008: 289; Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 63–4). His opposition
could just as easily have been voiced in 67 BC, as all our sources attest.
Dio uses his Catulus as a catch-all opponent to Pompeius’ extraordinary
commands, representing through him the points made by Hortensius in 66 BC
and probably Q. Lutatius Catulus himself a year earlier. If either published
their speeches, we have no trace of them: Cicero neither mentions such texts in
the Brutus nor considered Catulus in numero oratorum (Cic. Brut. 133, 222).
In fact, Cassius Dio did not need them, since the De imperio contains ample
evidence of the case that they put. According to Cicero, Catulus and Horten-
sius made four arguments: 1) that great power ought not to be entrusted to one
man alone; 2) that this principle ought to apply even to the most exceptional
statesman; 3) that such extraordinary commands would contravene the mores
maiorum; and 4) that it was inappropriate to bestow power upon a priuatus
rather than an existing promagistrate.
Dio reconstructs all four for inclusion into the oration he gives to Catulus
against the lex Gabinia. It is important to note here that in the Roman His-
tory these arguments are packaged, rhetorically, in a manner entirely of the
52 53
Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 51. Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 52.
54
Rodgers 2008: 289–300. Cf. Cass. Dio 36.36; Plut. Pomp. 25.5–6; Val. Max. 8.15.9; Vell. Pat.
2.32.1–3; possibly Sall. Hist. 5.22–4M.

historian’s own devising. Understandably so; Dio did not have access to Catulus’
rhetorical strategy in Cicero’s text, but merely testimonies to the specific points
he had raised. Of these four points, the first occurs immediately after a short
proemium in which Catulus underlines his concern for the public welfare,
repeating this later in the speech as well:
ἐγὼ τοίνυν πρῶτον μὲν καὶ μάλιστά φημι δεῖν quid ait Hortensius? si uni omnia tribuenda
μηδενὶ ἑνὶ ἀνδρὶ τοσαύτας κατὰ τὸ ἑξῆς ἀρχὰς sint, dignissimum esse Pompeium, sed ad
ἐπιτρέπειν. τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἐν τοῖς νόμοις unum tamen omnia deferri non oportere.
ἀπηγόρευται . . . Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 52
τίς γὰρ οὐκ οἶδεν ὅτι οὔτ᾽ ἄλλως καλῶς ἔχει Q. Catuli . . . qui cum dissuadens legem in
οὔτε συμφέρει ἑνί τινι τὰ πράγματα contione dixisset esse quidem praeclarum
προστάσσεσθαι καὶ ἕνα τινὰ πάντων τῶν uirum Cn. Pompeium, sed nimium iam iberae
ὑπαρχόντων ἡμῖν ἀγαθῶν κύριον γίγνεσθαι, κἂν rei publicae, neque omnia in uno reponenda
τὰ μάλιστα ἄριστός τις ᾖ; adiecissetque.
Cass. Dio 36.31.3, 36.35.1 Vell.Pat. 2.32
First and foremost, then—and most What does Hortensius say? That if all things
importantly—I say that we should never should be entrusted to one man, Pompey
entrust such great commands to a single man, would be the most worthy of all, but
one after another. For this is forbidden under nevertheless, these should not be conferred
the law . . . upon a sole individual.
For who does not know that it is neither When speaking in opposition to the law,
appropriate nor beneficial to entrust these Catulus said in the contio that Gnaeus Pompey
affairs to one man, and for one person to was indeed a great man, but already too great
become master over all our current affairs— for a free Republic, and that all powers should
even if he be the finest man of all? not be placed in one man.
From Cicero we can be reasonably confident that in 66 BC, Hortensius objected

to the lex Manilia on the principle of avoiding concentrations of sole power, and
that he made a particular concession: that if this were appropriate, Pompeius
would be the most worthy of all, but it should be avoided nevertheless. Strikingly,
Dio’s Catulus not only reproduces the general principle, but the concession as
well: the proposed measure ought to be avoided even if Pompeius were the most
worthy to enjoy it. It is entirely possible that the historian drew inspiration from
Velleius Paterculus’ report of Catulus, who advocates the general principle of
power-sharing.55 But only Cicero, among several ancient accounts of the debate,
cites Hortensius’ concession (dignissimum esse Pompeium) as well as his general
principle, a pairing that only Dio reproduces.
There was then the problem of ancestral custom. Cicero does not state
explicitly that either Catulus or Hortensius objected to Pompeius’ commands
on the grounds of the mores maiorum. However, his defensiveness on
this point suggests that his opponents had raised precisely that contention.
55
Vell. Pat. 2.32: neque omnia in uno reponenda adiecissetque.

Beginning a final section of his speech to deal with Catulus’ arguments, Cicero
opens with a defensive call to preserve established traditions (ne quid noui fiat
contra exempla atque instituta maiorum), and later suggests more clearly that
Catulus had objected to any further innovations (in ipso Cn. Pompeio in quo
noui constitui nihil uolt Q. Catulus).56 It seems likely that the mores maiorum
were, in historical reality, grounds for Catulus’ opposition. The problem does
not find its way into our other accounts of the Gabinian and Manilian laws—
Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, Velleius Paterculus, and Sallust—but is certainly
hinted at in Cicero’s treatment and developed more fully in Dio’s dissuasio. In
the Roman History, Catulus is made to argue that lengthy periods of command
erode generals’ respect for ancestral customs (τοῖς πατρίοις ἔθεσιν), and
represent a dissolution of traditional systems of office-holding (τὰς μὲν πατρ ίους
ἀρχὰς καταλύητε).57 One view holds that these sentiments in Dio were
‘standard optimate arguments’:58 implicitly, therefore, it would not be difficult
for an Imperial author to fabricate such material without a source. This may be
so, but the number of parallels between Dio and the De imperio suggests
otherwise; and if the historian did elaborate this argument from his own
knowledge of the era, then the fact that he got it right invites us to reconsider
our Imperial Greek historians’ awareness of the arguments to which late
Republican optimates could resort.
A further ‘optimate’ argument concerned respect for the elected magistrates
over priuati, and this appears to be a final point of contact between Dio’s
speech and the dissuasiones of 67 BC, at least in Cicero’s telling. In the section
of his oration devoted specifically to Catulus’ objections (59–63), Cicero
suggests that Pompeius’ position as a private citizen had been a point of
controversy at several points throughout his career:
quid tam nouum quam adulescentulum priuatum exercitum difficili rei publicae
tempore conficere? confecit . . . quid tam inusitatum quam ut, cum duo consules
clarissimi fortissimique essent, eques Romanus ad bellum maximum formidolo-
sissimumque pro consule mitteretur? missus est. quo quidem tempore cum esset
non nemo in senatu qui diceret ‘non oportere mitti hominem priuatum pro
consule,’ L. Philippus dixisse dicitur non se illum sua sententia pro consule sed
pro consulibus mittere.59 Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 61–2
56 57
Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 60. Cass. Dio 36.31.4, 36.33.3.
58
Leach 1978: 68.
59
‘What could be so novel as for a little stripling of a private citizen to enlist an army in a time
of difficulty for the Republic? He enlisted it . . . what was ever so unusual as a situation in which,
when there were already two highly distinguished and brave consuls, a Roman eques should be
sent as proconsul to a most important and formidable war? He was sent. And indeed, when at
that time there was a certain someone in the Senate who said ‘we should not send a priuatus as a
proconsul,’ it’s said that Lucius Philippus responded that, in his view, Pompeius should be sent
not for a proconsul but for both the consuls themselves.’

If Cicero can be trusted, two points emerge clearly from this passage. The most
obvious is that Pompeius’ status as a priuatus had concerned the more
conservative voices in the Senate during the debate surrounding his command
against Sertorius, when L. Philippus made his famous quip around 78 BC. But it
further suggests that similar objections had been voiced in 67 BC. Now, no one
can possibly have opposed the lex Manilia in 66 BC on the grounds that
Pompeius was a private citizen, since he was not one. If the objection was
raised by Catulus, it has to have been in the previous year, when the label
priuatus did apply. Why else should Cicero labour the point? Not only does he
raise it here, in a section of his speech specifically devoted to Catulus’ auctor-
itas et sententia, but he additionally argues earlier that Pompeius would be the
ideal commander against Mithridates ‘even if he were a priuatus’.60 Cicero
appears to have been discrediting Catulus’ authority—even by refuting argu-
ments he used a year previously—in order to win the case in 66 BC. In other
words, ‘he was wrong before, and he’s wrong now.’ We may well take this as
evidence that Catulus did speak against the lex Gabinia in 67 BC.61 In any case,
the line of argument against priuati attested by Cicero in the context of 78 and
probably 67 BC is again reproduced in Dio’s speech of Catulus. After his
defence of the mores, the consular goes on to warn against ‘entrusting nothing
to those elected by law, but instead assigning some strange and to this point
unheard-of command to a private individual (ἰδιώτῃ).’62 In this, as with
anxieties about the mores maiorum and the distribution of power, Dio
seems to have attempted to align his own dissuasio with the conservative
arguments marshalled against Pompeius’ power as reported (or distorted) in
Cicero’s De imperio.
The essential kernel of Catulus’ arguments, then, was faithfully reproduced
in Dio’s version of the speech. But rhetorical persona and strategy, which we
have seen Dio attempt to mimic in the cases of Pompeius and Gabinius, raise
further questions. To turn to persona, the conservative position taken by Dio’s
Catulus is less than surprising given Dio’s source material and the wider
literary tradition which depicted him as the ideal Republican.63 But it seems
that the historian, whether by coincidence or intent, also captured in his
dissuasio some of what we know about Q. Lutatius Catulus’ manner of
addressing the people. In the Pro Sestio, Cicero praises Catulus’ free and
open manner of criticizing the rashness of the people and the mistakes of
the Senate (libere reprehendere et accusare populi non numquam temeritatem
solebat aut errorem senatus).64 This is certainly reflected in the brief introduc-
tion to Catulus’ oration in Dio: unlike Pompeius and Gabinius, or indeed all of
60 61 62
Cic. De imp. Cn. Pomp. 50. Pace Rodgers (2008). Cass. Dio 36.33.4.
63
Cic. Brut. 133, 122, Phil. 2.21, De imp. Cn. Pomp. 51, Red. sen. 9; Vell. Pat. 2.31–2; Plut.
Pomp. 17.3; Cass. Dio 36.30.5, 37.46.3.
64
Cic. Sest. 122; also Verr. 1.44.

Dio’s other Republican orators, Catulus makes no attempt to ingratiate him-
self, but opens instead with a stern admonishment to the Quirites:
ἐμοὶ μὲν ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι πάντα ἁπλῶς, ἃ γιγνώσκω συμφέρειν τῇ πόλει, μετὰ
παρρησίας εἰπεῖν, καὶ ὑμῖν προσῆκον ἀκοῦσαί τε μεθ᾽ ἡσυχίας αὐτῶν καὶ μετὰ
τοῦτο βουλεύσασθαι: θορυβήσαντες μὲν γὰρ ἴσως τι καὶ χρήσιμον δυνηθέντες ἂν
μαθεῖν οὐχὶ λήψεσθε . . . 65 Cass. Dio 36.31.1
This is hardly an ingratiating captatio beneuolentiae, and indeed it was not
supposed to be one. That Dio’s Catulus should begin by opposing the temer-
itas populi with his own frank calm puts the finishing touch to Dio’s repro-
duction of the historical situation: Dio replicates not only the arguments used,
but the oratorical style of the speaker who delivered them. When Cassius Dio
researched the debates surrounding Pompeius’ power in 67 and 66 BC, he saw
three oratorical personalities: the dissembling beneficiary willing to rehearse
his military achievements for popular support, the corrupt tribune happy to
play the demagogue, and the staunch Republican willing to tell the people
what they did not wish to hear. These seem like stock characterizations, but
then these are characterizations of Pompeius, Gabinius, and Catulus which
began in late Republican literature. We are, of course, as reliant upon Cicero
for this picture as Dio probably was. But by combining this attention to
oratorical persona with the actual arguments for and against Pompeius’
commands used in the period, the historian aligns his version of the debate
surrounding the lex Gabinia closely with the contemporary evidence.
As for rhetorical strategies, the evidence probably was not available. In
Pompeius and Gabinius we have seen Dio using particular rhetorical tech-
niques—anaphora, polyptota, aporia, and possibly brachylogy and tetracola—
to emphasize the same arguments for which they were deployed by Cicero.
Again, the simple reason that this does not occur in Catulus’ speech is that the
historian did not have access to Catulus’ rhetorical strategy: all he had was
testimonies of his and Hortensius’ arguments, paraphrased by Cicero in the De
imperio. As such, while the speeches of Pompeius and Gabinius reflect the
points raised in support of the Manilian law and some of the rhetorical figures
used by Cicero to make those points, the dissuasio of Catulus is a reconstruc-
tion of Catulus’ and Hortensius’ case, rhetorically elaborated in its entirety by
the historian himself.
The historian’s practice elsewhere is strikingly similar. As I have already
mentioned, it has long been recognized that the polemic of Dio’s Cicero
65
‘For me it is necessary to say everything plainly and frankly all that which I know to be of
benefit to the state; and it is fitting for you to listen calmly to this advice and only then deliberate
afterward. For if you raise an uproar, I suspect that you will fail to hear useful information which
you could otherwise have learned.’

against M. Antonius at the end of book 45, addressed to Q. Fufius Calenus,
ultimately derives—directly or indirectly—from the Philippics. In the dramatic
context—the Senate meeting of 1–3 January 43—Antonius is away in Gaul,
and the historian’s version of Cicero’s invective sets off a chain of debate: first
Calenus’ long and acrimonious response, and then a summary of a further
altercatio between the two which wasted the remainder of the day. It is an
exaggeration to suggest that Dio was so faithful to his source that he gives
virtually a Greek translation of Cicero,66 and scholars may have overestimated
the intellectual effort Dio applied to the task by suggesting that he compressed
all fourteen of Cicero’s speeches against Antonius into a single set piece.67 But
what the historian certainly does provide is an elaboration of the arguments
used by Cicero in the Second Philippic, transposed to the context of the Fifth
Philippic in his narrative of the beginning of January 43 BC, and with the
addressee of the Eighth Philippic, Calenus.
As with the speeches of Pompeius and Gabinius on the lex Gabinia, Dio
clearly paid attention to the argumentative strategy pursued by Cicero, at least
in the Second Philippic, as well as to some of its rhetorical packaging. To turn
to the former, it is remarkable that Dio preserved not only the particular
arguments used by Cicero in the Second Philippic in his own invective, but also
the order in which these were made, indicating close reliance on the text:
Cassius Dio Second Philippic

Antonius is a πολέμιος (45.20.4) Antonius is a hostis patriae (2.2)
His banditry: χώραν λυμαινόμενος (45.20.4) His banditry: beneficium latronum (2.5)
Editing Caesar’s documents (45.23.6) Editing Caesar’s documents (2.8)
Prostitution in his youth (45.26.2) Prostitution in his youth (2.45)
Praeteritio of that detail (45.26.2) Praeteritio of that detail (2.47)
Romp in Italy with pimps (45.28.2) Romp in Italy with pimps (2.58)
Disgracing the lictors (45.28.2) Disgracing the lictors (2.58)
Vomiting in the tribunal (45.28.2) Vomiting in the tribunal (2.63)
Purchased Pompeius’ estate (45.28.3) Purchased Pompeius’ estate (2.64)
Public grief at the auction (45.28.3) Public grief at the auction (2.64)
Squandering Pompeius’ property (45.28.4) Squandering Pompeius’ property (2.66)
Antonius as Charybdis (45.28.4) Antonius as Charybdis (2.66)
Paraleipsis to the Civil War (45.29.1) Harangue Paraleipsis to the Civil War (2.70)
at Lupercalia (45.30.1) Naked harangue at Lupercalia (2.85)
His crowning of Caesar (45.31.3) His crowning of Caesar (2.86)
And without popular consent (45.32.1–2) And without popular consent (2.86)
Cic. wishes he were a tyrannicide (45.41.1) Cic. wishes he were a tyrannicide (2.25)
Antonius indirectly responsible (45.41.1) Antonius indirectly responsible (2.34)
Antonius’ cowardice (45.41.1) Antonius’ cowardice (2.35)
Did not inherit from his father (45.47.3) Did not inherit from his father (2.42)
But from those he barely knew (45.47.3) But from those he barely knew (2.41)
66 67
Fischer 1870: 27. Fischer 1870: 1–28; Gowing 1992: 238 n. 34.

The essential elements of Cicero’s polemic and the version created by Dio for
his Roman History are identical, and unfold in the same sequence. This is
particularly pronounced for the material up to Antonius’ coronation of Caesar
at the Lupercalia (45.31.3−45.32.2 = 2.86), at which point Dio appears to loop
back to an earlier point in the Second Philippic (2.25−42) for the material on
Caesar’s assassination and the question of inheritances.
Some of Cicero’s rhetorical style also found its way into Dio’s speech. After
mentioning the rumours surrounding Antonius’ youthful prostitution, for
example, Dio clearly retains Cicero’s use of praeteritio (τάς τε ἰδίας ἀσελγείας
καὶ πλεονεξίας ἑκὼν παραλείψω = sed iam stupra et flagitia omittamus) to
move on to Antonius’ carousing in the countryside with his fellow debauchees,
justifying the omission for reasons of modesty and shame (ὅτι αἰδοῦμαι νὴ τὸν
Ἡρακλέα ἀκριβῶς καθ᾽ ἕκαστον = sunt quaedam quae honeste non possum
dicere).68 Similarly, both orators use paraleipsis to transition from Antonius’
personal life to his public infractions during the Civil War (ταῦτα μὲν οὖν ἐάσω
= sed omitto ea peccata),69 and record with shock that Antonius ‘dared’ to
purchase Pompeius’ estate (ἀγοράσαι ἐτόλμησε = auderet accedere), describing
the ‘groan’ of the people at the sight (πάντες ἔτι καὶ τότε ἐθρηνοῦμεν = gemitus
tamen populi Romani liber fuit).70 For such parallels to be coincidental would
be remarkable indeed; Dio clearly modelled his invective of Cicero upon the
Second Philippic in argument, structure, and phrasing.
The way in which Dio composed his ‘Philippic’ is thus broadly comparable
to the speeches of Pompeius and Gabinius. Dio took an original Ciceronian
oration and used it to refashion the argumentative and rhetorical case put in
an analogous historical situation. But for the response of Q. Fufius Calenus to
Cicero—Dio’s ‘Anti-Philippic’—the historian appears to have followed a
different course. This was the task of reconstructing from testimonies and
paraphrases the opposing case, quoted by Cicero in his text—the method Dio
also pursued in the composition of his speech of Catulus, using the De imperio.
In the Second Philippic, Cicero paraphrases fourteen arguments marshalled
against him by Antonius in reply to his First Philippic on 19 September 44 BC:
i) that he had violated their friendship;71 ii) that he had been ungrateful
for Antonius’ retiring from the augurship contest in his favour;72 iii) that
he had taken advantage of Antonius’ beneficia;73 iv) that he had sent him
friendly letters and was now changing face;74 v) that he had demonstrated
misconduct in his consulship;75 vi) that the Capitoline had been full of
armed slaves on Cicero’s watch;76 vii) that he had mistreated Antonius’
68 69
Cass. Dio 45.26.2 = Cic. Phil. 2.47. Cass. Dio 45.29.1 = Cic. Phil. 2.70.
70 71
Cass. Dio 45.28.3 = Cic. Phil. 2.64. Cic. Phil. 2.3; not in Dio’s speech of Calenus.
72 73
Cic. Phil. 2.4 = Cass. Dio 46.22.5. Cic. Phil. 2.5 = Cass. Dio 46.22.6.
74
Cic. Phil. 2.8; not in Dio’s speech of Calenus.
75 76
Cic. Phil. 2.11–12 = Cass. Dio 46.2.3, 46.20.1. Cic. Phil. 2.16 = Cass. Dio 46.20.1.

uncle, Lentulus;77 viii) that Clodius was slain by his contrivance;78 ix) that he
advised and rejoiced at the death of Milo;79 x) that the alienation of Pompeius
and Caesar was Cicero’s fault, and by extension the Civil War, too;80 xi) that he
had spurred individuals on to Caesar’s assassination;81 xii) that he was an
accomplice in the plot;82 xiii) that he was disliked and as such received few
inheritances;83 xiv) and that Cicero returned from voluntary exile under cover
of darkness and in unRoman dress.84 Strikingly, of these fourteen only two do
not appear in Dio’s invective of Calenus against Cicero.
There were of course gaps in the material. Dio’s oration of Calenus, which
covers twenty-eight chapters (46.1–28), only corresponds closely with Cicero’s
paraphrases of Antonius’ criticisms in three concentrated clusters.85 Else-
where, the historian appears to fill the speech with general and unsubstanti-
ated criticisms of the orator’s character (46.7–10), or a vulgar and graphic
excursus on his unexalted background (46.4–7). But such criticisms were
hardly alien to the character of late Republican oratory: some of Asinius
Pollio’s comments on Cicero were so crude that even he decided not to
circulate them,86 and Antonius must have derided Cicero’s character.87 The
possible sources of the arguments deployed by Dio’s Calenus against Cicero
have been much debated. Gabba suggested that the historian drew the main
body from the lost anti-Ciceronian polemics of Asinius Pollio, or the pseudo-
Sallustian Inuectiua in Ciceronem.88 Older scholarship held that Dio drew
from the lost texts of anti-Ciceronian Greek rhetors of the Imperial period;
this view is guesswork.89 Plutarch indicates that Antonius had published
his response to the First Philippic on 19 September 44 BC, and seems to
suggest that he had read it: Plutarch cites Antonius’ criticism of Cicero’s
marital life, a detail lost to us elsewhere but for Dio’s speech of Calenus,
where it also appears.90
These are all possibilities, but the richest and most convenient source of
evidence for Antonius’ arguments against Cicero in the 44/43 BC period was of
course the text which Dio had open in front of him for his speech of Cicero:
the Second Philippic. As Hartvig Frisch has expertly shown, Antonius’ criti-
cisms are plain to see, quoted (or misquoted) as they are in Cicero’s text, and
the task of reconstructing Antonius’ points is less a matter of sophisticated
77 78
Cic. Phil. 2.17 = Cass. Dio 46.2.3, 46.20.3–5. Cic. Phil. 2.21 = Cass. Dio 46.2.3.
79 80
81
Cic. Phil. 2.27 = Cass. Dio 46.2.3, 46.3.3, 46.22.3.
82 83
84 85
Cic. Phil. 2.76 = Cass. Dio 46.3.2. Cass. Dio 46.2.2–46.4.2, 46.20, 46.22.3–5.
86 87
Sen. Suas. 6.17. Frisch 1946: 133.
88
Gabba 1955: 318–21; Gabba 1957: 167 n. 1.
89
Pace Haupt 1884: 689–93 and Zieliński 19123: 280–8.
90
Plut. Cic. 41.4. Compare with Cass. Dio 46.18.3.

observation than of stating the obvious.91 If Cassius Dio did read the Second
Philippic for his own speech of Cicero—as seems likely from the overlaps in
the argumentative and rhetorical strategy—then it will also have served, just as
the De imperio, as the most convenient source of information for the line taken
by the anti-Ciceronian case. Admittedly, the historian’s decision to place the
historical Antonius’ response to the First Philippic in the mouth of Calenus
rather than Antonius himself—who in the depicted context is away in Gaul—
or to ascribe arguments for the lex Manilia to different speakers in the
previous year, suggests that he did not view these speeches as privileged
political instruments. He used them to sketch out, rather than strictly define,
the character of political oratory in the late Republic—and for us, that is not
without its uses.
CO NCLUSION
Where the source material was sufficiently rich, the nature of the arguments
deployed in response to a particular issue in the late Republic appears to have
been of greater concern to Cassius Dio than the particular circumstances
of their historical delivery. This was as true for the debates surrounding
Pompeius’ power (and excessive personal power more generally) in the 60s
as it was for the problem of licentia or unrestrained παρρησία on the Senate
floor in the 40s.92 Dio directly consulted Cicero’s De imperio and Second
Philippic, drawing from these the essential argumentative outline and, where
useful or convenient for him, preserving also the structure. He mutilated the
precise historical situation of these speeches in a manner that poses peculiar
challenges for modern historians. But at the same time, Dio shows a surprising
alertness to the need to communicate, faithfully if not verbatim, what was
said—not only by exceptional cases such as Cicero, but also by Calenus,
Catulus, and Hortensius.
By using contemporary Republican evidence of oratory as a basis for the
ξυμπάση γνώμη of his speeches on the lex Gabinia or ‘Philippic’ exchange, Dio
was not necessarily doing anything radically new; that practice was already
being followed by Tacitus and Arrian, and probably much earlier by Sallust.
The historiographical practice of finding and re-elaborating arguments is
therefore easy to identify long before Cassius Dio, even if the scope and
prevalence of that practice in the corpus is opaque. Indeed, it is generally
difficult to undertake the mode of Quellenkritik pursued here. We of course
only know that Tacitus, Arrian, and Sallust re-elaborated contemporary
91 92
Frisch 1946: 133–5. On which, see most recently Mallan 2016.

testimonies of oratory into their own speeches because those testimonies have
happened to survive. But their method -and Dio’s- with speeches was assured-
ly more widespread than the exiguous evidence permits us to conclude. After
all, the exercise in chreia or re-elaborated quotation was a fundamental part of
rhetorical education in the Imperial period (the progymnasmata)—certainly
for Tacitus, Arrian, and Dio; probably also for Sallust and pre-Imperial
historians.93 The rhetorical ‘curriculum’ of this time thus trained authors to
redeploy the words and sayings of great men into different contexts. We
should not be surprised if this is what they then went on to do. The forth-
coming findings of the Fragments of the Republican Roman Orators (FRRO)
project will undoubtedly expand our access to the kinds of contemporary
testimony from which Imperial Greek historians could draw, and enable
further analysis of the credibility and verisimilitude of their presentation of
the world of Republican oratory. But in any case, if Cassius Dio’s decision to
incorporate genuine arguments from an actual occasion of speech is not
radically new (and indeed, possibly more widespread than thought) in terms
of historiographical praxis, then he is more distinctive elsewhere. Particu-
larly striking are his receptiveness to the way in which public oratory was
delivered—rhetorical figures, turns of phrase, oratorical persona—and his
use of a single text as a source of fragments and testimonia for reconstruct-
ing speeches that were inextant or unpublished. Dio was not transcribing
ipsissima uerba, and indeed no historian aimed to do so. Rather, he devel-
oped an image of public speech in the late res publica which adapted a
conventional use of sources to increasingly necessary methods of recon-
structing lost material, and a personal interest in not only what was said, but
how it was said.
Cassius Dio may not have been the only Imperial Greek historian of the
Republic to ‘reconstruct’ the essential kernel of a speech from documentary
evidence in any case. In the Bellum Ciuile, Appian’s Tiberius Gracchus is made
to give two orations in support of his agrarian law of 133 BC (B Civ. 1.9, 1.11).
Of course Gracchus will have spoken on the topic during his tribunate, and
some of his speeches were available in Cicero’s time.94 But we now have
frustratingly little evidence, beyond the speeches which Appian composed
for him, of the arguments Gracchus adduced for his law. Appian’s version of
the tribune’s performance in the contio has Gracchus put forward three
central justifications for agrarian reform: the depopulation and poverty of
the rural Italian communities;95 the increase in the slave population engaged
93
For a good introduction to the progymnasmata, see Webb 2001; Kennedy 2003; Gibson
2004, 2014. On the chreia in ancient rhetorical education, see especially Quint. Inst. Or. 1.9.2–4
and Hock and O’Neill 1986, alongside the chreiai of Aelius Theon, ps.-Hermogenes, Nicolaus, and
Aphthonius in Kennedy 2003. For a fuller discussion of Cassius Dio’s rhetorical education and its
influence upon his speeches, see Burden-Strevens (forthcoming, 2018), especially chapter 2.
94 95
Cic. Brut. 104. App. B Civ. 1.9.35; 1.11.46.

in agricultural production, causing under-employment and urbanization
among Italians;96 and the general principle that citizens, being preferable in
all respects to slaves, should share common property among themselves.97 As
such, Appian’s Gracchus sets citizens and slaves at variance, and has as his
principal motive ‘not wealth, but an increase of efficient population’ (οὐκ ἐς
εὐπορίαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐς εὐανδρίαν).98 Appian’s speech is obviously not a transcript.
But the main arguments it puts forward are remarkably similar to clues we see
in virtually eyewitness evidence. Plutarch mentions a pamphlet, written by
Gaius Gracchus (probably in the form of a letter to M. Pomponius),99 which
he has read, in which Gaius described the motivations which impelled his
older brother to propose agrarian reform. According to Gaius’ pamphlet,
‘when Tiberius saw the dearth of inhabitants of the countryside, and that
those engaged in farming or husbandry were all barbarian slaves, he first
conceived of his policy.’100 Whether Appian took his cue from Plutarch, or
even Gaius Gracchus’ tract directly, is unclear. But unless we are dealing with a
spectacular coincidence, it seems likely that Appian found written testimony
of the particular arguments put forward by Tiberius Gracchus for his agrarian
reform and used these as the starting point for his own composition. Further
examples of this kind of approximation between Appian’s practice and that of
Dio could no doubt be found, but cannot be pursued here.
There can be no doubt that Cassius Dio’s picture of late Republican oratory
was subject to his own (occasionally grave) distortions. Cicero, given his
particular cachet, may have been a special case that called for greater faithful-
ness. This alone should give us pause, since an oration before the Senate in
44 BC attributed to him by Dio, on an amnesty between the Caesarian and
tyrannicide factions, is otherwise wholly lost to us. Excluding the version
provided by Dio in the Roman History (44.23–33), an ‘amnesty-speech’ of
Cicero is nowhere to be found.101 That the orator did indeed deliver such an
oration, in a meeting of the Senate on 17 March, is clear.102 We can also be
reasonably certain that Cicero elaborated the exemplum of the Athenian
amnesty of 403 BC at some length—just as he is found to do in Dio’s version.103
Furthermore, the oration in Dio imitates a number of genuine Ciceronian
concerns, especially the fixation with concordia.104 In view of the historian’s
96 97 98
App. B Civ. 1.9.36. App. B Civ. 1.11.44. App. B Civ. 1.11.43.
99 100
Cic. Div. 29.62. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 8.7.
101
The assumption of Sihler 1914: 396 and Stekelenburg 1971: 63 that Livy included such a
speech has no supporting evidence whatsoever.
102
Cic. Att. 14.10.1 (SB 364), 14.14.2 (SB 368).
103
Cf. Cic. Phil. 1.1: ‘ieci fundamenta pacis Atheniensiumque renouaui1 uetus exemplum;
Graecum etiam uerbum usurpaui quo tum in sedandis discordiis usa erat ciuitas illa.’ Also Vell.
Pat. 2.58.4; Plut. Cic. 42.3; Cass. Dio 44.26.
104
Fechner 1986: 58f.

use of the De imperio and the Philippics, examined above, it may be worth-
while to rethink the long-abandoned suggestion of Schwartz that Dio was
reproducing, or reconstructing, a now-lost speech of Cicero from some written
testimony.105 If so, this would not be at variance with Dio’s general practice
with Cicero—and it would exemplify further the uses to which Imperial
historians may be put in reconstructing the lost oratorical traditions of the
late Roman Republic.
105
Schwartz 1899: 1719.
Netting the Wolf-Fish

Gaius Titius in Macrobius and Cicero
John Dugan
Macrobius’ Saturnalia preserves a much-admired fragment of the second-

century BC orator Gaius Titius which depicts a group of Roman jurors as
dice-addicted, perfume-drenched, whore-mobbed, drunken scoundrels who
shirk their judicial duties (Sat. 3.16.15–16 = ORF4 51 F2).1 The passage’s
vivid depiction of emptying bladders, hungry stomachs, and drooping eye-
lids has a bracingly messy corporeality that stands in stark contrast to much
fragmentary Republican Roman oratory, where the body and its (mis)func-
tions are scarcely to be found. The striking qualities of this precious glimpse
into an otherwise lost eloquence invite interpretation: how are we to under-
stand this arresting text? What contexts are available for us to position it in a
comprehensible literary-historical understanding? What frames can we use
to contain this unruly speech, a passage that eludes our typical perception
of Roman oratory just as the jurors within it refuse to be contained in the
Forum? How, ultimately, are we to digest this unusually savoury morsel of
Roman public speech?
The corporeality in this text is central to its interest as a fragment of Roman
oratory. Since at least Plato, the body has been a key trope for understanding
artistic unity: the body’s integrity stands as a model for the ideal relationship
between the parts and the whole of a work.2 The fragment of Titius’ text,
1
Rather than a panel of jurors, Cavarzere (in this volume) prefers to see a single judge and his
consilium.
2
Pl. Phaedr. 264c. Yet, even in antiquity, aesthetics based upon notions of corporeal unity
could be upended. See Hertz 1985: 1–20 for a classic analysis of Longinus’ aesthetic of fragmen-
tation, one seen both in his fascination with literary representations of fragmentation (such as
the breaking apart of Sappho’s body in her famous ode), and in his composition of his own
treatise through the quotation of literary fragments.
136 John Dugan

therefore, provides us with a paradox: inscribed within this broken work are
whole bodies presented in all their functional complexity and messiness. This
bodily wholeness complicates the question of unity: it is itself problematic,
because the jurors’ bodies are emphatically permeable and fluid—stuffed with
food and soused with drink, packed next to sexual partners, spilling into piss
pots, and inebriated to the point of having droopy eyelids. This physical
permeability is homologous with the generic instability of Titius’ text: it is a
speech with, in the bodies it depicts, pronounced comedic and—as I will
argue—satirical dimensions, which appears to spill out of a standard paradigm
for Republican oratory.
The bodies within the text also reflect the problems involved in the inter-
pretation of fragmentary literature—as such it serves up a choice example
through which to reflect on the general interpretive dynamics involved in this
process, and of the standard scholarly practices used in the collation of
fragments. Critical editions of such works typically pair the fragments of
an author with other ancient evidence about him—testimonia—which is
designed to supplement the decontextualized extracts of text and aid in their
interpretation.3 Paradoxically, however, this traditional philological method of
presenting and publishing fragmentary literature can circumscribe and limit
the interpretive approaches that scholars take to the material. The testimonia
can serve, to use the terminology of Gérard Genette, as paratexts—framing
elements that can prescribe the terms of enquiry into the texts in an edition.
Paratextual elements such as the format, layout, and typesetting of a book—
even such apparently trivial matters as the design on the dust jacket—can
subtly influence how the reader determines meaning in the material it
presents.4 The neat alignment of fragmentary texts with testimonia can give
readers an impression of scientific certainty and precision in questions where
such certainty is signally lacking. Testimonia, since they, like the fragments
they are meant to elucidate, rely on accidents of survival, can be equally
skewed and idiosyncratic. When approached without a critical awareness of
such issues, the supporting documentation provided by testimonia can run the
risk of concealing gaps in our knowledge of the text itself and of encouraging
the reading of a fragment within the specific historical or literary-historical
narratives suggested by the material gathered on the page.
The case of Titius illustrates the potential pitfalls of reading fragments in the
light of testimonia precisely because the information which Cicero furnishes
3
For an illuminating discussion of the difficulties involved in distinguishing between testi-
monia and fragments, see Balbo 20072: xi–xviii. On the slippage between these categories,
especially in the case of philosophical authors, see Kidd 1997 and Laks 1997.
4
Genette 1997 is a systematic account of how these various, apparently peripheral, features of
a published text can influence how a book is read and interpreted. Jansen 2014 offers a collection
of essays that explore paratexts within Latin literature.
Netting the Wolf-Fish: Gaius Titius in Macrobius and Cicero 137

regarding Titius’ career appears to dovetail so tightly with the example of his
speech quoted by Macrobius. What Cicero says about Titius in the Brutus, his
history of Roman oratory, contextualizes this fragment within a suspiciously
satisfying and complete literary-historical narrative which forecloses other
interpretive paths. In this paper I will first explore how this fragment and
Cicero’s testimonium can unite to provide a coherent picture, as well as
elucidating the pitfalls of this way of reading. The scarcity of surviving
evidence for Titius and his oratory should, however, make us suspicious of
any interpretation made on this tenuous basis.5 It is also essential to remember
that Cicero’s account of Titius is not unbiased reportage (if such a thing
exists). Instead, Titius serves larger thematic goals within the Brutus that
inevitably shape how he appears within that text. We should scrutinize Titius’
function in the Brutus before we attempt to use Cicero’s account as a key to
understanding Titius’ fragment.
Secondly, I will draw on the insights into the nature and function of
anecdotal narratives afforded by Clifford Geertz’ practice of ‘thick description’
and by Geertz’ New Historicist successors to suggest an alternative approach
to interpreting the fragment preserved by Macrobius which may help to break
free of the mechanical reading of this text against the backdrop of Cicero’s
testimonium.6 I will focus my analysis on the context in which Macrobius
quotes Titius’ oratory, rather than on the external testimony of Cicero which
is, in comparison, of questionable analytical value. We should not suppose that
Macrobius shared our aims and methods in collecting fragments: gathering
extracts of text for historical, archival, or literary-historical purposes. Such an
assumption would risk our interpretations simply reprising the paratextual
arrangements found in the editions of fragmentary texts. Instead, we must
recognize that ancient works follow their own compositional trajectories and
rhetorics. As we will expand on below, the texts that incorporate fragmentary
texts digest them, and we must take into account this process, which compli-
cates the relationship between fragments and their host texts, and blurs the
distinctions between them. To what extent can a quotation be said to be
different from the frames that contain it if this process of digestion makes it
a constituent part of the work as a whole? A corresponding uncertainty may be
found within the quoted fragments themselves: can we view the various parts
of a fragment as themselves fragments, digested morsels of text within a
surrounding passage? My ‘thick description’ of Titius’ speech will take into
consideration both of these dimensions: the incorporation of Titius’ fragment
into Macrobius’ work, and the symbolic significance of the cardinal element of
5
We have just one substantive testimonium and one fragment of any length. For discussion
of other surviving testimonia for Titius, see Cavarzere in this volume.
6
I elaborate on the concept of ‘thick description’ below.
138 John Dugan

the fragment: the wolf-fish, the dish that is the special focus of both the jurors’,
and Macrobius’, attention.7
The passage of Titius’ speech that Macrobius quotes was part of an other-
wise lost oration in support of sumptuary legislation, the lex Fannia of 161 BC.8
Macrobius, writing in the fifth century AD with the cultural nostalgia that is
characteristic of his work and times,9 offers the extract to illuminate a delicacy
from earlier Roman times, the wolf-fish:
ludunt alea studiose, delibuti unguentis, scortis stipati. ubi horae decem sunt,
iubent puerum uocari, ut comitium eat percontatum, quid in foro gestum sit, qui
suaserint, qui dissuaserint, quot tribus iusserint, quot uetuerint. inde ad comitium
uadunt, ne litem suam faciant. dum eunt, nulla est in angiporto amphora quam
non inpleant, quippe qui uesicam plenam uini habeant. ueniunt in comitium:
tristes iubent dicere. quorum negotium est narrant, iudex testes poscit, ipsus it
minctum. ubi redit, ait se omnia audiuisse, tabulas poscit, litteras inspicit; uix prae
uino sustinet palpebras. eunt in consilium. ibi haec oratio: ‘quid mihi negotii est
cum istis nugatoribus? quin potius potamus mulsum mixtum uino Graeco,
edimus turdum pinguem bonumque piscem, lupum germanum qui inter duos
pontes captus fuit?’10 Macrob. Sat. 3.16.15–16
Cicero’s snapshot of Titius in the Brutus can have a powerful effect upon our
interpretation of this fragment:
eiusdem fere temporis fuit eques Romanus C. Titius, qui meo iudicio eo perue-
nisse uidetur quo potuit fere Latinus orator sine Graecis litteris et sine multo usu
peruenire. huius orationes tantum argutiarum tantum exemplorum tantum
urbanitatis habent, ut paene Attico stilo scriptae esse uideantur. easdem argutias
7
In what follows I am not proposing a specific method of reading fragmentary texts designed
to supplant more traditional philological approaches. Different problems require different tools.
And yet, I suspect that the anthropologically-inflected interpretive strategies employed here
could have wider application to many broken and decontextualized works.
8
On this law, see Rosivach 2006; cf. Starr 1990. See also Cavarzere in this volume.
9
On Macrobius and his Saturnalia, see especially: Cameron 2011: 231–72; Chin 2008:
54–60; Kaster 2011 vol. 1: xi–liii; König 2012: 201–28.
10
‘They are committed to playing dice, smeared with scented oils, thronged by their whores.
Come four o’clock, they order that a slave be summoned to go to the Comitium and ask what
business was conducted in the Forum, who spoke in favour, who against, how many tribes were
pro, how many con. Then they make their way to the Comitium to avoid being held liable for
dereliction: on their way there’s not a single pot in an alleyway they don’t fill, their bladders are so
full of wine. They come to the Comitium, grumpy, and call for the arguments to be made: the two
sides state their cases, and the judge asks for the witnesses to be called, while he himself goes to
take a piss. When he comes back, he says he’s heard everything, calls for the accounts, peers at the
writing—scarcely able to keep his eyelids open for the wine he’s drunk. They withdraw for a
conference, where the talk runs like this: “What business do I have with those clowns? Why don’t
we go drink some mead mixed with Greek wine, eat a nice fat thrush, and a good piece of fish,
the genuine article, a wolf-fish caught between the two bridges?” ’ (Trans. Kaster 2011, slightly
modified).

in tragoedias satis ille quidem acute sed parum tragice transtulit. quem studebat
imitari L. Afranius poeta, homo perargutus, in fabulis quidem etiam, ut scitis,
disertus.11 Cic. Brut. 167
Cicero presents a Titius whose combination of stylistic attributes, though
unaided by Greek literature, achieved the appearance of near-Attic refinement.
He appears as a protean writer who shifted from oratory to drama, authoring
tragedies (though his verbal dexterities were ill-suited for tragic decorum) and
serving as a model for Afranius, the noted author of comediae togatae whom
Cicero credits with Titius’ stylistic liveliness (perargutus).12
Within the paratextual framework provided by Cicero and his emphasis on
Titius’ connections with drama, the jurors in Titius’ fragment can easily be
interpreted as characters that have wandered off the comic stage and into
oratory. Like Plautus’ Menaechmus, who laments the time he has wasted in
the Forum performing duties for his clients, thus spoiling the feast in the
company of his prostitute girlfriend, they yearn to swap the drudgery of the
Forum for corporeal delights elsewhere.13 Titius’ jurors have an aversion to
their responsibilities, keeping tabs on the Comitium through reports from a
slave emissary, and only showing up for duty at the risk of legal peril. This
Saturnalian inversion of the seriousness of the Forum is expressed with
structural clarity in the private words of this juror to his comrades: ‘what
business do I have with these clowns?’ The domains of otium and negotium are
overturned, and the hardworking officials responsible for the Roman legal
system are the jokers who are keeping these profligate jurors from their serious
commitment to their bellies. The juror who has slipped away from the court
proceedings to empty his bladder, though barely able to raise his droopy
eyelids, plays the role of the scrupulous and meticulous judge who scrutinizes
the court documents with sham seriousness; we have here a skilled comic
actor.14 The prominence of stomachs and bladders, the lower stratum corpor-
ality that Bakhtin has taught us is characteristic of the carnivalesque, further
11
‘The Roman equestrian Gaius Titius was roughly contemporaneous, a man who, in my
judgement, seems to have gone about as far as a Latin orator could without contact with Greek
literature and without much experience. His speeches possess so great a supply of verbal
liveliness, illustrative comparisons, and wit that they appear written in nearly an Attic style.
He transferred the same verbal liveliness into his tragedies, with sufficient point but not tragically
enough. The poet Lucius Afranius strove to imitate him, a man of verbal pyrotechnics, and
indeed even in his plays, as you know, eloquent.’ Cicero presents him as contemporaneous with
C. Claudius, consul of 92 BC. See Douglas 1966a ad loc.
12
See Manuwald 2011: 263–6 (with additional references).
13
Plaut. Men. 596–9. See Segal 1987: 50–1. Bardon 1952: 98 compares Plautus’ tirade against
Greeks in Curc. 288–98.
14
See Bardon 1952: 98. On these tablets and what sort of judicial action may be involved here,
see Cavarzere in this volume.
140 John Dugan

contributes to the theatricality of the passage.15 On the literary level, the text
presents a burlesque reversal of the usually flattering depiction of Roman
jurors as sober and attentive judges of the cases they are deliberating upon,
found in forensic oratory.
Read in tandem, Macrobius’ quotation of Titius’ speech and Cicero’s
snapshot of the orator’s career seem to strongly substantiate one another.
The stylistic vigour and carnivalesque inversion encapsulated in the fragment
seem to be a perfect fit for Cicero’s theatrical Titius and the argutiae with
which he attributes him. In other words, the fragment seems to offer a
precious glimpse of the comedic oratory that may have characterized Titius’
now-lost speeches.
Such a reading provides a comfortingly tidy narrative for how these two
texts—testimonium and fragment—complement one another, and this narra-
tive is reinforced by the paratextual connections encouraged by their inclusion
in a modern collection such as that of Malcovati.16 A. E. Douglas’ treatment of
Titius and his fragment in his commentary on the Brutus illustrates this
phenomenon. Douglas’ edition offers a paratextual arrangement by providing
an appendix of fragments of Roman orators (including Titius) as testimonia,
of sorts, for Cicero’s account of Roman oratory. Douglas’ verdict, on the basis
of this evidence, is to restate the implied conclusions of the Brutus itself: ‘In
terms of literary merit there is no escaping Cicero’s supremacy.’17 He does,
however, credit Titius’ speech with ‘a measure of rude vigour’, and refers to it
elsewhere in the work as a ‘powerful fragment’.18 Douglas’ conclusions, since
they reprise rather than qualify or challenge Cicero’s account, highlight the
perils of circularity in such paratextual arrangements. Given how tightly these
puzzle pieces fit together, then, we face the inevitable temptation to overvalue
Cicero’s testimony to construct a larger literary-historical narrative of a genre-
bending Titius.
Yet the tidiness of this process has methodological problems. Each of
the attributes that Cicero assigns to Titius bears the stamp of the distinctly
Ciceronian preoccupations which propel the Brutus’ narrative of Roman
oratory. And the teleological trajectory of the Brutus presents individual
orators within that tradition as stepping stones leading to Cicero himself
at the conclusion of the dialogue. Such overarching themes include the
problems of Atticism, the relationship between Latin oratorical accomplish-
ment and familiarity with Greek literature, and the permeability of the generic
boundaries between oratory and drama. All these concerns are central to
15
See Bakhtin 1984, esp. 21–9.
16
The close relationship between these texts is maintained even though the processes by
which they have each survived are virtually impossible to reconstruct; we do not know Macro-
bius’ intermediary source for Titius’ text, but Serenus Sammonicus and Ateius Capito are leading
candidates. See Cavarzere’s illuminating discussion in this volume.
17 18
Douglas 1966a: 235. Douglas 1966a: 128.

Cicero’s self-presentation, both in the Brutus and in his rhetorica as a whole.19
An uncritical use of the Brutus to reconstruct Titius therefore risks cloning the
orator from Ciceronian DNA, and fashioning a Titius according to Cicero’s
particular stylistic concerns. If studying the remains of Republican Roman
oratory can provide a corrective to the dominance of Cicero’s speeches and his
stylistic values, it would be a particularly cruel irony if we simply read Titius as
merely a step along the line to the arrival of Cicero.
Traditional editorial practices in the collection and analysis of fragments,
especially as practised in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, have
tended to isolate the fragmentary text from the source which preserved it in an
attempt to arrive at a text in its purest possible state. To reconstruct this ‘pure’
original, scholars have historically mined all available testimonia for these
fragments and their authors.20 The use of the term ‘testimonia’ requires
further unpacking, since it implies certain models of interpretation. The
Latin word from which it is derived is properly used of witnesses in a trial,
whose words offer evidence in support of a particular account of events. As
Quintilian notes, such testimonia, already a cause of supreme anxiety for
advocates, can be especially susceptible to being undermined when in written
form rather than oral delivery.21 Readers of modern collections of fragments,
like their Roman counterparts in the courts, must show particular discern-
ment in evaluating the veracity the texts presented as testimonia, and the
pertinence of that evidence for judging fragmentary texts and refining our
understanding of those texts according to some standard of certainty.
Scholars today are increasingly sceptical of the idea that such a process of
filtration can isolate fragmentary authors and their works in some unadulter-
ated form. As Glenn Most puts it (2010: 275):
In recent years scholars have repeatedly reminded us that many later ancient
authors are not just quarries of fragments in the pure state that can simply be
extracted from them, but have their own qualities and intentions as authors and
can creatively transform the fragments that they cite and transmit.22
19
The self-styled Atticists (and especially Licinius Calvus) are a major preoccupation within
the Brutus: see esp. 67–8, 283–91; cf. Dugan 2001. The dialogue charts the increased Roman
familiarity with Greek literature through phases, beginning in earnest in the early second century
(Cic. Brut. 77–81) and reaching its zenith with Cicero himself (Brut. 310). Julius Caesar Strabo
was, like Titius, both an orator and a playwright (Brut. 177). For a reading of Strabo’s role within
the De oratore which argues that he embodies themes of transgressive theatricality in this work,
see Dugan 2005: 117–37.
20
On these ‘basic methodological pillars’ of the collection of fragments, see Most 2010: 375.
21
Quint. Inst. 3.5.71–2. See also the discussion of testimonia in the Rhet. Her. 4.3.5: hoc
interest inter exemplum et testimonium: exemplo demonstratur, id quod dicimus cuiusmodi sit:
testimonio, esse illud ita, ut nos dicimus, confirmatur.
22
Most 2010: 275.
142 John Dugan

We should therefore engage in the study of fragments with an awareness of the
complexities involved in our attempts to extricate them from the matrices in
which they are contained. Likewise, we need to have an awareness of the
cultural specificity of our own view of fragments and their interpretation, and
the often unstated assumptions that frame our interpretive choices. We are
intellectual and aesthetic heirs to the modernist obsession with the fragment.
As Linda Nochlin has cogently argued, the fragment, and the cultural nostalgia
with which it is associated, can function as a metaphor for the modern
condition. We experience an aesthetic fascination with what is broken, such
as Rilke articulates in his early twentieth-century poem, ‘Archaic Torso of
Apollo’, where the source of the statue’s particular power lies in its fragmen-
tary condition: the mental supplements made by the viewers of the broken
statue give rise to its transformative power. The vivid and unusual depiction of
the corporeal appetites of Titius’ jurors, a fragmentary view of lost bodies like
that of Rilke’s broken torso, surely contributes to the fascination this text has
generated in its readers.23
A twofold approach is needed to move beyond traditional philological
methodologies: we must take full measure of the Macrobian context that
preserves our fragment, and we must recognize that our view of fragments
as objects of aesthetic satisfaction in themselves was not necessarily shared by
writers in antiquity. As Most cautions, people in antiquity ‘not only lacked the
word for a textual fragment, they seem to have lacked the very concept’.
Instead, the terms for fragment, in both Greek and Latin, refer not to text
but to broken pieces of physical objects, especially food.24
The alimentary metaphors associated with ancient notions of the fragmen-
tary are particularly applicable to Macrobius, whose work resembles other
treatises which unite food and fragments, such as Athenaeus’ Deipnosophists,
where the numerous passages quoted serve, to borrow a phrase from Emily
Gowers, as ‘philological fodder’.25 In ancient thought, food and fragments
were a natural pair, and Macrobius’ preface treats the process of digesting texts
within his work as akin to the digestion of food. He describes his method of
composing his work as bringing diverse material that he had gathered together
into a coherently articulated body.26 He then frames his work by treating
literature and its consumption in terms of food:
23
On the Rilke poem, see Most 2010: 372 and 375, where he also considers Ezra Pound’s
poem ‘Papyrus’ (1916), a work that deals explicitly with the aesthetic dimensions of fragmentary
classical literature and consists of only three words, each followed by an ellipsis. Tronzo 2009
explores the implications of Nochlin 1994. Most 1997 offers a wide-ranging collection of essays
on fragments and their collection.
24 25
See Most 2010: 373, 375. Gowers 1992: 162.
26
Macrobius Sat. 1.pr. 3: nec indigeste tamquam in aceruum congessimus digna memoratu:
sed uariarum rerum disparilitas, auctoribus diuersa confusa temporibus, ita in quoddam digesta

alimenta quae accipimus, quamdiu in sua qualitate perseuerant et solida innatant,
male stomacho oneri sunt: at cum ex eo quod erant mutata sunt, tum demum in
uires et sanguinem transeunt. idem in his quibus aluntur ingenia praestemus,
ut quaecumque hausimus non patiamur integra esse, ne aliena sint, sed in
quandam digeriem concoquantur: alioquin in memoriam ire possunt, non in
ingenium.27 Macrob. Sat. 1.pr.7
Macrobius is an author much preoccupied with the question of the body’s
process of digestion: he commits a substantial portion of the work’s seventh
book to questions of the digestion of food and drink (Sat. 7.4.1–8.6). To this
extent, his text both digests fragments and digests the process of digestion.
One may be tempted to take this programmatic statement as a stable point
in Macrobius’ text from which to construct a general theory of his use of the
various bits and pieces of text employed in his dialogue. Macrobius’ passage is,
however, a near verbatim borrowing from Seneca (Ep. 84.3–8; cf. Quint. Inst.
10.1.19). So just at the point where Macrobius asserts that one needs to digest
and integrate material found in other authors to achieve the maximum
cognitive impact of these ideas, we see Macrobius doing the precise opposite
and regurgitating Seneca’s language. The paradox that this hymn to the
importance of textual digestion, later expanded to embrace a comparison
with bees collecting nectar, has not been digested at all should caution us
against finding programmatic clarity within the textual gumbo that Macrobius
has cooked up.28 Even apparent framing devices emerge as a stew of citations
of earlier authors, reminding us of the fluidity of Macrobius’ own words and of
those that he borrows, explicitly or not.
In contrast to our conception of literary fragments and their collection—
which may be framed in terms of an archive, a treasury, or a museum
displaying broken artefacts—Macrobius thinks this in terms of food subjected
to differing degrees of digestion, a process which in antiquity was seen as a
form of cooking. He envisions his treatment of earlier texts as sustenance
digested into a textual body, a process of cooking down that in turn allows his
corpus est, ut quae indistincte atque promiscue ad subsidium memoriae annotaueramus in

ordinem instar membrorum cohaerentia conuenirent.
27
‘As long as the foods we take in remain just as they are, floating as solids in the stomach,
they are an unpleasant burden, but when they have been changed from what they were, then and
only then do they become sources of strength and blood. We should make the same provision in
the case of things that nourish our wits: we should not allow what we have taken in to remain
intact and alien but should digest and distribute it; otherwise it can pass into memory, but not
become part of our thought.’ (Trans. Kaster 2011).
28
For rich discussions of Macrobius’ practices of citing earlier texts and integrating them into
his own, see König 2012: 204–8 and Gunderson 2009: 255–67. On Macrobius’ borrowing from
Seneca specifically, see Pigman 1980 and De Rentiis 1998. On Marcobius’ preface, see Goldlust
2008. For a linguistic analysis of the use of alimentary metaphors for communication in Latin,
see Short 2013, esp. 270–2.
144 John Dugan

readers to break down and integrate that material into a more intimate
intellectual experience than simply memorizing them.
The fragment of Titius that Macrobius serves up for his readers is not just a
brief citation. Instead it is an extended account that has the status of an
anecdote, a free-standing nugget of narrative that Macrobius uses to fulfil a
particular role within his larger text. It has a textual logic that relates to the
larger frame of the work that has digested it, and it in turn digests elements in
this work. As such, it is suited to the New Historicist interpretive techniques
for analysing anecdotal narratives. In the words of Stephen Greenblatt and
Catherine Gallagher from their essay ‘Counterhistory and the Anecdote’:
[T]he anecdote could be conceived as a tool with which to run literary texts
against the grain of received notions about their determinants, revealing
the fingerprints of the accidental, suppressed, defeated, uncanny, abjected, or
exotic—in short, the nonsurviving, even if only fleetingly.29
By analysing such accidentally surviving textual remnants, we can construct
accounts that challenge established and dominant historical narratives: ‘coun-
terhistories’. The promise of such an analysis in the case of Titius is the
possibility of an account of this orator which stands independently of Cicero-
nian versions of Republican oratory. The New Historicist fascination with
anecdotes stems from Clifford Geertz’s concept of ‘thick description’, which
seeks to locate a particular cultural artefact within its broader cultural con-
texts. Geertz sees all culture as text and therefore as open to the techniques of
close literary analysis, revealing the cultural forces that shape it.30 This analysis
is not exclusive to the reading of canonical literary texts, but can also break
down the structures of signification within apparently marginal texts.31 Geertz
and his New Historicist followers make no distinction between high literary
texts and texts of a marginal sort, like anecdotes and fragments.
As a prelude to seeing how fruitful a New Historicist reading of Titius’
fragment might be, we should consider Macrobius’ introduction to this
anecdote:
cuius uerba ideo pono, quia non solum de lupo inter duos pontes capto erunt
testimonio, sed etiam mores quibus plerique tunc uiuebant facile publicabunt.
29
Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 52.
30
In his 1973 essay ‘Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture’, Geertz
offers an anecdote, drawn from his field notes, that relates a story of sheep-stealing in 1912
Morocco and which he subjects to a close cultural analysis. This reading shows that the anecdote,
a text that Geertz refers to as ‘quoted raw, a note in a bottle’, works out in its small drama
important aspects of Moroccan culture as a whole. To quote Geertz (1973: 19) again, ‘from this
simple incident one can widen out into enormous complexities of social experience’ (and cf.
Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 26). For the particular fascination that anecdotal narratives have
for the New Historicists, see Fineman 1989 and Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000, esp. 20–74.
31
Marginal texts such as Geertz’ sheep theft anecdote, one chosen at random from his field
notes; see n. 30 above.

describens enim homines prodigos in forum ad iudicandum ebrios commeantes,
quaeque soleant inter se sermocinari, sic ait…32 Macrob. Sat. 3.16.14
Macrobius’ interlocutor is not interested in Titius’ speech as a literary artefact;
rather, his motivation is presented as historical, even anthropological.33 While
many other texts could illustrate the gastronomic delicacy that is the wolf-fish,
he has chosen Titius’ passage since it illustrates the character, values, and
speech of people in Rome at that time: so in fact, the speech he wants to
present is not that of Titius, but that of Titius’ reprobate juror, itself pre-
sented as an oratio by Macrobius. We might see Macrobius here as a cultural
anthropologist, a proto-Geertz scrutinizing an anecdote drawn from a speech
precisely for its cultural meaning. Our notions of where this text begins and
ends are continually being challenged: can we read the quoted words as Titius’,
or are they now an extension of Macrobius’ text, cooked and digested within
that body? Even within the supposedly stable confines of the fragment we face
the challenge of deciphering which portions to privilege in any interpretation.
Reading, in general terms, is itself a process of fragmentation and of breaking
away portions of a larger text that can be held up for scrutiny and found to
have a symbolic significance within that entirety. Fragments problematize
this relationship between part and whole, whether we are dealing with the
fragment as part of a source text, or the various elements that make up the
fragment itself.
Despite their chronological and cultural distance from one another, Macro-
bius and Geertz share a concern for how texts become culturally meaningful
and they deploy related metaphors to explain those processes. For Geertz, it is
a text’s ‘raw’ particularity that allows it to reflect larger cultural forces. For
Macrobius, it is instead the ‘cooking’ of the text that allows it to become
integrated within a reader’s thought. This polarity of raw and cooked, I will
argue, has heuristic value for reading the cultural meanings contained in
Titius’ text. I will focus on the centrepiece of this fragment, the element that
triggers Macrobius’ quotation of Titius’ speech: the wolf-fish. This peculiar
creature has distinctive attributes derived from its unusual dietary habits. As
such, the wolf-fish is embedded in specific Roman cultural practices which led
Titius to choose it as the focal point of his portrait of the idle jurors and their
depravity; this in turn prompted Macrobius, and the intermediary tradition to
which he is indebted, to quote this passage. By scrutinizing the cultural
32
‘I’m quoting what he says not just because it will provide evidence about the wolf-fish
caught between the two bridges but also because it will vividly reveal the general character of
the people alive at that time. He describes wastrels wandering drunk into the Forum to serve
as judges and reports the sort of conversation they had, saying…’ (Trans. Kaster 2011).
33
On this historicist perspective upon literary texts, particularly with one in anecdotal or
fragmentary form, see Gallagher and Greenblatt 2000: 35–41.
146 John Dugan

resonances of the wolf-fish, we can discover deeper logics within this text that
open paths of analysis quite different from the traditional method of reading
this fragment in the context of Cicero’s testimonium.
The two bridges that frame the ideal catch-site for the wolf-fish, plausibly
identified as the Sublician and Aemilian, enclose the point at which the Cloaca
Maxima empties into the Tiber. The much-sought-after wolf-fish owes its
particular savoury delights to its unsavoury habit of feasting on the Cloaca’s
fetid flow.34 Immediately following his quotation from Titius’ speech, Macro-
bius offers details about the wolf-fish’s peculiar dining habits which are based
on evidence drawn from Rome’s first satirist, Lucilius:
sed et Lucilius, acer et uiolentus poeta, ostendit scire se hunc piscem egregii
saporis qui inter duos pontes captus esset, eumque quasi ligurritorem catillonem
appellat, scilicet qui proxime ripas stercus insectaretur. proprie autem catillones
dicebantur qui, ad polluctum Herculis ultimi cum uenirent, catillos ligurribant.
Lucilii uersus hi sunt:
fingere praeterea adferri quod quisque uolebat.
illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx:
hunc pontes Tiberinus duo inter captus catillo.35 Macrob. Sat. 3.17–18
This then is a fish which has particular resonances in Roman satire; its later
appearances in both Horace and Juvenal further attest to this fact.36 Juvenal
shows particular fascination with the fish growing fat feeding from the Cloaca,
imagining that it was in the habit of swimming up the sewer as far as the
Subura, the seedy section of Rome known for its cook shops and red-light
district. In Juvenal’s configuration, the wolf-fish penetrates far into the city’s
lived environment, following its gluttonous impulses to where Roman pleas-
ure seekers gather.37
Through this association, we can view the wolf-fish as an extension of the
symbolism of the Cloaca, an element of the Roman infrastructure that, as
34
For this identification, see Cavarzere in this volume. Cf. Kaster 2011 vol. 2: 114 n. 137
who proposes instead that the bridges were the Fabrician and Aemilian.
35
‘But Lucilius too, a sharp and forceful poet, shows that he knows that the sort caught
between the two bridges is exceptionally tasty, and calls it a “lapper”, from its habit of licking up
whatever it found since it would go after sewage found close by the riverbank. Strictly speaking,
“lappers” [catillones] is the term that used to be applied to people who licked the bowls [catilli]
clean when they were the last to arrive at the sacrificial meal in Hercules’ honour. Here are
Lucilius’ lines:…to produce, besides, what each one wanted to be served: | one was drawn to
sow’s udders and a platter of fattened fowl, | another to the lapper from the Tiber, caught
between the two bridges.’ (Trans. Kaster 2011, slightly adapted).
36
Hor. Sat. 2.2.29–33: carne tamen quamuis distat nil, hac magis illam | inparibus formis
deceptum te petere esto: | unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus an alto | captus hiet? pontisne
inter iactatus an amnis | ostia sub Tusci? Juv. Sat. 5.103–6: uos anguilla manet longae cognata
colubrae | aut †glacie aspersus† maculis Tiberinus et ipse | uernula riparum, pinguis torrente
cloaca | et solitus mediae cryptam penetrare Suburae.
37
See Gowers 1992: 215.

Emily Gowers’ fruitful analysis has demonstrated, functioned as a bodily
metaphor for the anatomy of the city—figured as its guts and digestive
tract—and was intimately associated with Rome’s own literary genre, satire.38
Just like satire, the wolf-fish is a creature sustained by the sewer’s flow, and
overdetermined by several strands of potent cultural meaning: gluttony,
excess, transgression of appropriate boundaries, as well as the genre of satire
itself. As an urban scavenger that lives off the dregs of the city, this fish’s
‘natural’ environment is a ‘cultural’ one.
For Macrobius, the digestion of texts in the mind ‘cooks’ them as the body’s
digestion ‘cooks’ food, while indigestion results from the food remaining
‘raw’.39 In this polarity, the wolf-fish is never ‘raw’, it is ‘cooked’ with cultural
meanings long before it is served at a diner’s table. The wolf-fish is both the
subject and the object of processes of digestion: it digests filth from the
Cloaca, and it is in turn digested by Titius’ jurors. The gluttonous jurors
feast on a fish already anthropomorphized as a voracious licker with a highly
specialized diet. These profligate gourmands are, in a deep sense, what they
eat. Further, Titius digests the wolf-fish within his speech, while Macrobius
cooks down the gobbet of Titius within his corpus, a text likely already
digested within an intermediary source. The wolf-fish therefore serves as a
mise en abyme within Macrobius, a fragment of a fragmentary text that
mirrors the various frames that contain it.40 Thus the wolf-fish’s metaphorical
significance can extend to multiple frames of reference, including, and espe-
cially, Titius.
A fish which is symbolic of the generic medley that is satire provides a vivid
emblem of Titius’ genre-bending, satire-infused text. As Titius’ juror specifies,
nothing but the genuine article will do when dealing with the wolf-fish: it must
be caught between the two bridges. There is, as it were, a cloacal terroir to the
fish—an authentic taste of the city that the discriminating palate can recog-
nize. We may compare this with Cicero’s claim that Titius’ exceptional
urbanitas led to a stylistic authenticity and purity—an ‘Atticism’—that Titius
38
Gowers 1995: 30: ‘In Rome there was a special relationship between the sewer and the
dirtiest literary genre, satire. If the sewer was anatomized as the gut of Rome, teeming with
rushing effluent, satire, too, took its metaphorical origins from guts. The name may be derived
from that of an ancient farcimen, or forcemeat, called satura, named by analogy with a stuffed
human gut, full of a savoury mixture of dubious food. Satire, like the sewer, was connected
with purging, yet at the same time it was inextricably contaminated with filth.’
39
See Macrob. Sat. 7.4.9: cruditates eueniunt aut qualitate suci in quem cibus uertitur, si non
sit aptus humori qui corpus optinuit, aut ipsius cibi multitudine, non sufficiente natura ad omnia
quae congesta sunt concoquenda (‘bouts of indigestion (lit. “rawness”) result either from the sort
of juice into which food is converted, if it does not suit the body’s dominant humour, or from the
amount of food itself, when the body’s nature is unequal to the task of digesting (lit. “cooking
down”) all that’s been heaped up.’) (Trans. Kaster 2011, slightly adapted). Cf. the discussion of
Macrob. Sat. pr.7 above.
40
On the concept of the mise en abyme and its use within literary criticism, see Dällenbach
1989.
148 John Dugan

achieved despite his lack of Greek influence or extensive experience. ‘Thick
description’ of the Titius fragment allows us to flip the standard interpretational
script. Instead of using Cicero as an authoritative and canonical guide for
interpreting the fragment, we are using a historically and canonically margin-
alized fragment to read Cicero. That is, the fragment can serve as commentary
on Cicero’s testimonium, rather than having the testimonium serve as com-
mentary on the fragment.
The wolf-fish provides us with an allegory for reading this and other
fragmentary texts. New Historicism emphasizes our own embeddedness
within the process of interpretation. We, as students of fragmentary Roman
oratory, are implicated in the juror’s search for exoticism, for the piscine
delicacy that is the fragment from Titius. We are being invited by Macrobius
to ‘savour’ a particular cultural moment in the Roman experience, one that
was even then disappearing from the cultural horizons of Macrobius and his
readership. We are hoping to catch the authentic Titius ‘between two bridges’,
between Cicero’s testimonia on one side and Macrobius’ fragment on the
other. Titius is a rare delicacy that promises a savoury experience that digests
literary registers, and gives an ‘off-menu’ taste of an authentic Roman oratory
apart from the usual Ciceronian fare.
Like the jurors, for us nothing but the real thing will do. We want authentic
experiences—ipsissima uerba of an otherwise lost author free from intrusions
and contamination. Yet, within the partial chunks of text found within host
texts, authenticity and purity are elusive and likely beyond recovery. The
contingencies that shape a fragment—the various digestions and modifica-
tions within the vagaries of its survival—are not interruptions of the story but,
from a reversal of perspective, they are the story. Barring some very happy
rediscovery, the only Titius we will read will be that which has been digested
and cooked within Macrobius’ corpus. What we can hope to do in such
circumstances is to avail ourselves of the full panoply of methodological
resources that can tease out the implications of the text that we have.
A shape-shifting author and a darting dirty fish require many sorts of net to
catch them. This paper is meant to be a step in that process.41
41
I would like to thank the editors of this volume for their criticisms and corrections of
this paper.
Part B
Reconstruction of the Fragments
and their Social and Political Contexts
i
Reconstructions in the Literal Sense
Gaius Titius, Orator and Poeta. (Cic. Brut.

167 and Macrob. Sat. 3.16.4–16)
Alberto Cavarzere
We do not know much about the orator Gaius Titius. What we can say about
him essentially stems from the brief portrait that Cicero devotes to him in his
Brutus. In chapter 138 of his historical survey of Latin oratory, Cicero cele-
brates Marcus Antonius and Lucius Licinius Crassus as ‘the first among the
Romans whose diffusive eloquence rivalled the glory of the Greeks’. This
notion of an epochal change is restated in chapter 161, when Cicero talks
about Crassus: with him Roman eloquence attained its first maturity (prima
maturitas), bringing to completion all the potentialities inherent in its nature
and making it impossible to develop it further on a technical level. Cicero even
fixes the exact date when this maturity was revealed: 106 BC, the year in which
Crassus’ oration in support of the Servilian law was edita and, more signifi-
cantly, Cicero’s year of birth. In the following chapters (164–6), he also
examines the orators who lived in the same aetas as those two truly laudabiles
oratores. At this point, in chapter 167, Cicero mentions Gaius Titius:
eiusdem fere temporis fuit eques Romanus C. Titius, qui meo iudicio eo peruenisse
uidetur quo potuit fere Latinus orator sine Graecis litteris et sine multu usu peruenire.
huius orationes tantum argutiarum tantum exemplorum tantum urbanitatis habent,
ut paene Attico stilo scriptae esse uideantur. easdem argutias in tragoedias satis ille
quidem acute sed parum tragice transtulit. quem studebat imitari L. Afranius poeta,
homo perargutus, in fabulis quidem etiam, ut scitis, disertus.1 Cic. Brut. 167
1
‘The Roman equestrian Gaius Titius was roughly contemporaneous, a man who, in my
judgement, seems to have gone about as far as a Latin orator could without contact with Greek
literature and without much experience. His speeches possess so great a supply of verbal
liveliness, illustrative comparisons, and wit that they appear written in nearly an Attic style.
He transferred the same verbal liveliness into his tragedies, with sufficient point but not tragically
enough. The poet Lucius Afranius strove to imitate him, a man of verbal pyrotechnics, and
indeed even in his plays, as you know, eloquent.’ (Trans. Dugan in this volume).
154 Alberto Cavarzere

Cicero underlines that Titius was an equestrian and thus, by implication,
stresses that he was not interested in a political career. He must also have
avoided the role of patronus, as the brief reference sine multo usu suggests. He
was sporadically active as an orator (certainly in the political arena, as his
surviving fragment attests), without mastering the rhetorical competencies
that later started to be considered fundamental for political commitment.
Despite this, his orations were appreciated for their argutiae, for the wealth
of inspiring examples and anecdotes that he was able to provide, and for his
elegant and polite style. Cicero ends the description with a paradox: Titius’
orations paene Attico stilo scriptae esse uideantur. We can expand on Cicero’s
words: Titius was able to deliver occasional political orations probably because
he could rely both on his good family relationships, about which Cicero
keeps silent, and on his reputation as the author of tragedies, an aspect of
Titius’ work that Cicero stresses. We will return to this second element
of Titius’ biography at the end of the chapter.
For now, let us return to Titius and the other sources concerning his life. For
several centuries, no further notice was taken of his orations. If we exclude a
brief mention in a quotation by Fronto, in which Titius poeta is compared to
Gaius Gracchus,2 no evidence remains even about his biography (when he
lived, where he was born, and so on).3 In order to learn about Titius as an
orator, we must wait until Macrobius’ Saturnalia, where there are two men-
tions of a suasio legis Fanniae pronounced by C. Titius, uir aetatis Lucilianae.
In the framework of the Saturnalia, the afternoon of the second day opens
(after a lacuna) with an intervention by Caecina Albinus regarding the
immoderate luxury of ancient Romans. Here, in chapter 3.13, Caecina
Albinus claims that this was mainly displayed in their sumptuous banquets.
Extravagant dishes were served, similar to those for which Titius reproached
his contemporaries:
nam Titius in suasione legis Fanniae obicit saeculo suo quod porcum Troianum
mensis inferant; quem illi ideo sic uocabant, quasi aliis inclusis animalibus
grauidum, ut ille Troianus ‘equus grauidus armatis’ fuit.4 Macrob. Sat. 3.13.13
These dishes resemble the delicacies cooked at Trimalchio’s inelegant dinner,5
or those described in some gastronomic jokes of the Anthologia Latina.6
2
Fronto 15.12–17vdH2. See below, p. 167.
3
Starr 1990 put forward the hypothesis that Pliny in Ep. 1.13.1–4 was making an indirect
reference to Titius’ oratory. However, he never refers explicitly to Titius.
4
‘Indeed, Titius, in his speech supporting the law of Fannius, reproaches his contemporaries
for serving Trojan pig, so-called because it is “pregnant” with other animals enclosed in it, just as
the famous Trojan horse was “pregnant with armed men” ’. (Trans. Kaster 2011). Equus grauidus
armatis is an only slightly modified quotation from Ennius’ Alexander (F72 Jocelyn) handed
down by the same Macrobius (Sat. 6.2.25), on which see now Timpanaro 1996: 56–7.
5 6
Petron. 40. Anth. Lat. 176 R. = 165–6 SB. = 87–8 Z. Cf. Cristante 2011.
Gaius Titius, Orator and Poeta 155

After Caecina, it is Rufius Albinus’ turn, a man non minus quam Caecina
peritus in his knowledge of Roman history.7 At the very beginning of his
speech, in chapter 14, he observes: ‘I had in fact thought to speak about the
luxury of that age when it came to varieties of seafood, but since one topic after
another comes to mind as worth mentioning, to demonstrate the moral
improvement of our era, I’ll postpone my intended topic and bring to your
attention another vice that we’ve rid ourselves of.’8 Rufius soon returns to the
theme of praedae marinae . . . luxum,9 beginning his discussion in chapter 15,
and asks in the following chapters:
quid stupemus captiuam illius saeculi gulam seruisse mari, cum in magno uel
dicam maximo apud prodigos honore fuerit etiam Tiberinus lupus et omnino
omnes ex hoc amni pisces? . . . inter eos, ut supra dixi, praecipuum locum lupus
tenuit, et quidem is qui inter duos pontes captus esset. id ostendunt cum multi
alii tum etiam C. Titius, uir aetatis Lucilianae, in oratione qua legem Fanniam
suasit. cuius uerba ideo pono quia non solum de lupo inter duos pontes capto
erunt testimonio, sed etiam mores quibus plerique tunc uiuebant facile pub-
licabunt. describens enim homines prodigos in forum ad iudicandum ebrios
commeantes, quaeque soleant inter se sermocinari, sic ait:10 ‘ludunt alea stu-
diose, delibuti unguentis, scortis stipati. ubi horae decem sunt, iubent puerum
uocari ut comitium eat percontatum quid in foro gestum sit, qui suaserint, qui
dissuaserint, quot tribus iusserint, quot uetuerint. inde ad comitium uadunt ne
litem suam faciant. dum eunt, nulla est in angiporto amphora quam non
impleant, quippe qui uesicam plenam uini habeant. ueniunt in comitium,
tristes iubent dicere. quorum negotium est narrant, iudex testes poscit, ipsus
it minctum. ubi redit, ait se omnia audiuisse, tabulas poscit, litteras inspicit: uix
prae uino sustinet palpebras. eunt in consilium. ibi haec oratio: “quid mihi
negotii est cum istis nugatoribus? quin potius potamus mulsum mixtum uino
Graeco, edimus turdum pinguem bonumque piscem, lupum germanum qui
inter duos pontes captus fuit?” ’ haec Titius. sed et Lucilius, acer et uiolentus
poeta, ostendit scire se hunc piscem egregii saporis qui inter duos pontes captus
esset, eumque quasi ligurritorem ‘catillonem’ appellat, scilicet qui proxime ripas
stercus insectaretur; proprie autem catillones dicebantur qui, ad polluctum
Herculis ultimi cum uenirent, catillos ligurribant. Lucilii uersus hi sunt (601–3
Warmington = 1174–6 Marx):
fingere praeterea adferri quod quisque uolebat:
illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx,
hunc pontes Tiberinus duo inter captus catillo.11 Macrob. Sat. 3.16.11–18
7 8
Macrob. Sat. 3.14.1. Macrob. Sat. 3.14.3. (Trans. Kaster 2011).
9
Macrob. Sat. 3.15.1.
10
C. Titius ORF4 51 F2. A funny episode attesting the ‘Fortleben’ of Titius’ fragment is quoted
by Gamberale 2005b: 139–40.
11
‘Why should we be amazed that the gluttony of that era was slavishly dependent on the sea,
when wastrels even paid great—or I should say, greatest—honour to the wolf-fish of the Tiber,
and indeed all the fish from this river? . . . Among them, as I said before, the wolf-fish had pride
of place, and in particular those caught between the two bridges. Among the many witnesses to

To sum up, Macrobius places Gaius Titius in the age of Lucilius and bears
witness to the existence of a suasio, in which Titius supported the lex Fannia.
In chapter 17, Rufius goes on to describe at length the sumptuary laws that
Romans approved up to the Imperial age in attempts to impose a modus
on such ‘culinary luxury’. The lex Fannia, promulgated in 161 BC, was one of
these laws.12
In showing the possible damage that an excessive love for exquisite food
might cause to Roman society, Titius’ oration—or rather, the fragment that
Macrobius provides—describes the behaviour of certain homines prodigi
who went into the Comitium to exercise the duties of judges. Through this
example, Macrobius details the way in which a civil tribunal functioned in the
second century BC, and throws some light on procedures and legal institutions
that would otherwise be unknown to us. Today’s legal historians have cast
doubts on this late source, which largely subverts their own theories. Even a
scholar such as De Martino dismissively undermines the reliability of Macro-
bius’ testimony, calling it ‘the imitation of a Catonian invective’,13 falsified on
purpose to underline the bad customs of past ages. Furthermore, De Martino
adds that Macrobius is a poor and suspect source for the history of the civil
liability of judges, because Titius’ fragment, and the expression litem suam
that fact I single out the speech that Gaius Titius, a contemporary of Lucilius, delivered in
support of the law of Fannius. I’m quoting what he says not just because it will provide evidence
about the wolf-fish caught between the two bridges but also because it will vividly reveal the
general character of the people alive at the time. He describes wastrels wandering drunk into the
Forum to serve as judges and reports the sorts of conversation they held, saying: “They are
committed to playing dice, smeared with scented oils, thronged by their whores. Come four
o’clock, they order that a slave be summoned to go to the Comitium and ask what business was
conducted in the Forum, who spoke in favour, who against, how many tribes were pro, how
many con. Then they make their way to the Comitium to avoid being held liable for dereliction:
on their way there’s not a single pot in an alleyway they don’t fill, their bladders are so full of
wine. They come to the Comitium, grumpy, and call for the arguments to be made: the two sides
state their cases, and the judge asks for the witnesses to be called, while he himself goes to take a
piss. When he comes back, he says he’s heard everything, calls for the accounts, peers at the
writing—scarcely able to keep his eyelids open for the wine he’s drunk. They withdraw for a
conference, where the talk runs like this: ‘What business do I have with those fools? Why don’t
we go drink some mead mixed with Greek wine, eat a nice fat thrush, and a good piece of fish, the
genuine article, a wolf-fish caught between the two bridges?’ ” So Titius. But Lucilius, too, a sharp
and forceful poet, shows that he knows that the sort caught between the two bridges is
exceptionally tasty, and calls it a “lapper”, from its habit of licking up whatever it found, since
it would go after the sewage found close by the riverbank. Strictly speaking, “lappers” [catillones]
is the term that used to be applied to people who licked the bowls [catilli] clean when they were
the last to arrive at the sacrificial meal in Hercules’ honour. Here are Lucilius’ lines: . . . to
produce, besides, what each one wanted to be served: | one was drawn to sow’s udders and a
platter of fattened fowl, | another to a lapper from the Tiber, caught between the two bridges.’
(Trans. Kaster 2011, slightly modified in accordance with Dugan in this volume).
12
On this law, cf. Coudry: 2014a.
13
De Martino 1988: 6.

facere, had probably passed through many intermediaries even before it came
to the attention of Macrobius.14
This strong opposition to the historicity of Titius’ fragment forces us to
verify its authenticity once again. In other words, we must see whether
Macrobius’ transcription of Titius’ oration contains features implausible for
an archaic trial held before a iudex priuatus. It is necessary to start with the
expression litem suam facere, which legal historians and De Martino himself
have considered to be strongly suspect.15 The phrase refers to an action that
the party can bring against the judge if he fails to observe certain basic
procedures required by his office. As a result of this action, the absent iudex
or a judge who defaults without excusatio became part of the case, and might
be prosecuted by the party who suffered the damage.16 The expression is here
attested for the first time, and this fact has induced the most sceptical
interpreters to suppose that Macrobius was adapting juridical schemes of his
own time to the age of Gaius Titius.17 In fact, the expression can be found in
Cicero’s De oratore, written in 55 BC but set in 91 BC. In this work, Cicero had
already started to adapt the technical meaning of the phrase for informal use,
thus giving us the most convincing evidence that this procedure had already
been in force for some years by Cicero’s time.18 Moreover, another detail
needs to be stressed: in Titius’ fragment the judges, who had spent the whole
day in debauchery, remember their professional duty and the danger of
incurring an action for litem suam facere only ubi horae decem sunt, that is
late in the evening, shortly before the solis occasus. This detail is not without
importance, because sunset was the time limit (suprema tempestas) that the
Law of the Twelve Tables imposed for the court ruling.
However, Titius’ description does not completely correspond to the provi-
sions given in the Twelve Tables,19 which in fact recommend:
ni pacunt, in comitio aut in foro ante meridiem causam coici<un>to, cum
peroranto ambo praesentes.
post meridiem praesenti litem addicito.
si ambo praesentes, sol occasus suprema tempestas esto.20
XII Tab. 1.7–9 Crawford
14
De Martino 1988: 7.
15
See the bibliography in Gagliardi 2007: 206–7 n. 37 = 2008: 251–2 n. 36.
16 17
Cf. Scevola 2004: 206. Cf. Lamberti 1990: 236.
18
Cf. Scevola 2004: 167. However, Scevola was a victim of the same prejudice as other
scholars: he ranked Titius among the pre-Gracchan orators (cf. p. 178–9 n. 33) and reached
the paradoxical conclusion that, in the mid second century BC, there was no trace of litem suam
facere.
19
Cf. Albanese 1992: 103 n. 22.
20
‘If they do not compromise, they are to present their case in the Comitium or the Forum
before midday. They are to finish bringing action together, both present. | After midday he is to
confirm the suit to the one present. | If both are present, sunset is to be the last time.’ (Trans.
Crawford 1996).

It is clear that this rule was not obeyed in our text, in which the causae
coniectio took place post meridiem. This inconsistency can be explained in
two ways: on the one hand, we could assume that the requirement was no
longer binding in Titius’ age; on the other hand, we could suppose that the
relevance of meridies as terminus ante quem for some procedural steps was
asserted only at a later stage, as Plin. HN 7.212 (XII tabulis ortus tantum et
occasus nominantur; post aliquot annos adiectus est meridies) would suggest.21
In any case, such an incongruity would not be present in a forgery, made by
Macrobius or some other forger, and is a strong evidence for the authenticity
of the text.
The only recent scholarship on Gaius Titius, by Rudolf Till, draws attention
to another problematic passage of Macrobius’ fragment:22 iubent puerum
uocari ut comitium eat percontatum quid in foro gestum sit, qui suaserint,
qui dissuaserint, quot tribus iusserint, quot uetuerint. inde ad comitium uadunt
ne litem suam faciant (Macrob. Sat. 3.16.15). Here the Forum, the space in
which the people voted at the tribal assembly, is distinguished from the
Comitium, the space where juridical hearings took place. This distinction
contradicts the Twelve Tables once again. According to Varro, the separation
between Forum and Comitium was established during the tribunate of Gaius
Licinius Crassus in 145 BC.23 Varro’s testimony thus casts doubt on Macrobius’
report, which seemingly has Titius’ fragment as a part of an oratio qua legem
Fanniam suasit, probably dating to 161 BC. If this suggests that the oration was
delivered somewhat later than 161 BC, however, the distinction Forum/Comi-
tium is archaic and cannot be ascribed to a forger or to Macrobius, who talks
in general terms about homines prodigos in forum ad iudicandum ebrios
commeantes. This passage is important for dating the fragment to 145 BC or
later, in other words, but it does not in itself invalidate its historicity.
A technical analysis of Titius’ fragment has already been carried out by
Fraccaro and Lemosse.24 Here I will summarize the most important results of
their investigation and will present one observation of my own. The hearing is
held in front of a iudex unicus: it is this judge who invites the parties to present
the plaintiff, who testes poposcit and carries out the main duties of a judge
(tabulas poscere and litteras inspicere). His comrades, whom Titius and
Macrobius never call iudices (an indistinct plural is used: eunt in consilium),
take part in his consilium, but it is the judge alone who leads the discussion for
the final verdict.25 Furthermore, his behaviour during the hearing of witnesses
21
Cf. Albanese 1992: 109–11.
22
Till 1967: 48. Before Till, only Haym 1832 had written an essay—little more than a brief
rhetorical exercise—on Titius.
23
Varro Rust. 1.2.9; cf. Cic. Amic. 96. On this innovation, see Coarelli 1983–5: 2.156–66;
David 1992: 14–18; Humm 1999: 640–1; Kremer 2006: 639–40.
24
Fraccaro 1913: 123–32; Lemosse 1944: 167–9.
25
Cf. Albanese 1992: 110. Note the contrasting presentation of Dugan in this volume.

(iudex testes poscit, ipsus it minctum. ubi redit, ait se omnia audiuisse), albeit
regrettable, probably did not entail liability in the archaic period on the
grounds that he had infringed some basic rule of procedure. This aspect has
already been made clear by Escher in his pioneering work on witnesses:
persuasum est nobis, testes in judiciis publicis et priuatis primum ab ipsis, qui uel
actores uel rei eos produxerant, interrogatos esse, deinde etiam ab iis, in quos
erant producti; quod autem testes ab utraque parte rogati respondissent, pro
eorum testimonio habitum esse. nullo uero pacto ii, qui judicabant aut judicio
praeerant, neque una cum litigatoribus neque soli testes interrogabant.26
In criminal and civil suits, judges played an entirely passive role at this stage of
the trial; their temporary absence does not constitute a substantial infringe-
ment of the procedure, especially in a restricted space such as the Comitium.
Furthermore, after Titius has described how the iudex behaved in front of
the testes, he goes on to say: tabulas poscit, litteras inspicit. These sentences
raise further questions: which kind of tabulae is he speaking about, and which
procedure is he describing? Per legis actiones or per formulas? The problem is a
real one: in fact, in Titius’ age, the formulary system still existed alongside more
ancient procedures. To solve these issues goes beyond my field of expertise. It
is possible, however, to give a plausible answer to the first question. At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Partsch spoke in favour of the trial per
formulas:27 in his view, tabulae are to be understood as the document con-
taining the formula, which the magistrate sent to the iudex. Lemosse opposed
this hypothesis, pointing out that the formula had to be requested at the very
beginning of the trial, while in Titius’ description the judge ‘calls for the
tabulas’ in the middle of the hearing: that is, after the parties had stated
their cases, the witnesses had been heard, and just before the judge withdrew
with his consilium in order to pass judgement.28 As a consequence, Lemosse
was convinced that the tabulae quoted by Titius were nothing more than
written documents, which might be presented as evidence at the end of the
hearing. Lemosse’s arguments seem solid and have not been questioned by
subsequent scholars.
I also have no objections to Lemosse’s thesis, although we must keep in
mind that his interpretation presupposes that Titius’ satirical description
actually corresponds to an accurate and realistic account of a judicial trial.29
Some correspondence certainly existed but accuracy was not Titius’ main aim,
which, on the contrary, was to depict the distortion of the procedures: the
judge comes late to the Comitium, he is drunk and not in the mood to open
26
Escher 1842: 100. I quote Escher’s passage extensively in order to correct the idea of
Albanese 1992: 100, who insists that Escher was referring to a criminal trial (he quoted the
case of Titius at p. 102).
27 28
Partsch 1905: 15. Lemosse 1944: 167–8.
29
Cf. Albanese 1992: 110.

the trial (he and his comrades were tristes),30 he leaves the trial while the
witnesses are called, and finally expresses his dislike for the litigants by
exhorting his comrades to return to their debauchery as soon as possible. In
this warped situation, the delayed request for the formula, right before the
judge passes his judgement, might be considered an emphatic feature added in
order to complete the picture of wilful negligence.
To sum up, in Titius’ text there is no evidence, no juridical peculiarity,
which justifies De Martino’s radical scepticism. Even from a stylistic stand-
point, De Martino’s observation, according to which the text does not present
‘stylistic features of . . . an archaic Latin’,31 turns out to be unfounded. The
lexicon (delibutus,32 scortum used in the context of a symposium,33 germanus
used to mean ‘genuine, true’),34 the morpheme ipsus,35 the combination eo +
supine,36 and the succession of plural and singular subjects, which Lemosse
interprets as a parody of the Twelve Tables,37 all fit well with a text written in
the middle of the second century BC. Furthermore, lupus as a fish name is
first attested in this text;38 and such a neologism for a ‘sea bass’ cannot
significantly antedate Titius: Plautus’ Rudens still used the Greek equivalent
Labrax, which is there employed as a name for a pimp.39 At the end of the
second century, however, Lucilius was already making use of lupus as a fish
name in the following wordplay: occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri.40
Here Lupus can be understood both as a personal name and as a type of fish.
As far as the style of Titius’ text is concerned, we can apply the judgement
that Crassus (a significant detail!) gives about the oratory of ueteres in
Cicero’s De oratore:
itaque illi ueteres, sicut hodie etiam nonnullos uidemus, cum circumitum et quasi
orbem uerborum conficere non possent—nam id quidem nuper uel posse uel
audere coepimus—, terna aut bina aut nonnulli singula etiam uerba dicebant; qui
in illa infantia naturale illud, quod aures hominum flagitabant, tenebant tamen, ut
et illa essent paria, quae dicerent, et aequalibus interspirationibus uterentur.41
Cic. De or. 3.198
30
On the meaning of the adjective, see Till 1967: 51 n. 17; contra, Albanese 1992: 99 n. 10,
who explains tristis as ‘austere, solemn’ and sees a polemical contrast between appearance and
reality (the frivolous debauchery of the judges).
31 32
De Martino 1988: 6 = 1995: 692. Cf. Fantham 1972: 49.
33 34
Cf. Adams 1983: 325. TLL VI,2 1919.64–8 (G. Meyer).
35 36
TLL VII,2 295.35–62 (F. Tietze). Cf. Hofmann and Szantyr 19722: 381.
37 38
Lemosse 1944: 167. Cf. Gomez Gane 2006.
39 40
Cf. Gomez Gane 2006: 308 n. 1. Lucil. 46 Warmington = 54 Marx.
41
‘Consequently those old orators, as we see to be the case with some speakers even
nowadays, being incapable of constructing a rounded period (which indeed we have only lately
begun to have the capacity or the courage to do) used to make their clauses consist of three or
two words, or in the case of some speakers, even a single word; though at that speechless period
they nevertheless kept to the natural practice, demanded by the human ear, of making their
clauses balance each other in pairs, and also of inserting regular pauses for taking breath.’ (Trans.
Rackham 1942). Cf. Fraenkel 1968: 157.

The conclusions that I have drawn from the analysis of Titius’ text correspond
to the results of Marianne Coudry’s recent research into Macrobius’ sources.42
Until recently the main source of these chapters of Macrobius’ Saturnalia was
identified as Serenus Sammonicus, an erudite man who was probably active
under Diocletian, much later than the Severan date once ascribed to him.43
This identification relies on Macrobius’ own testimony: in Sat. 3.17.4, which
deals once again with the lex Fannia, he refers directly to Sammonicus.
However, Coudry observes that the four chapters of Albinus’ speech form a
compact whole, dedicated to the unrestrained luxury of the table and the
variety and refinement of food in the most archaic period of Rome’s history; in
other words, Albinus aims to show that these customs are far removed from
more sober contemporary customs.44 At the end of his speech, he inserts a
chronological survey of sumptuary laws proposed in the Republican age, partly
following that of Gellius (NA 2.24). After a detailed analysis, Coudry concludes
that both authors rely on the same source, which she convincingly identifies as a
passage of the Coniectanea by Ateius Capito, a jurist of the early Imperial age.45
Gellius expressly quotes this work at the beginning and at the end of the
chapter.46 Moreover, Ateius Capito’s book not only contained the same list of
sumptuary laws, but also attested their ineffectiveness by quoting other texts.
One of them was our fragment of Titius’ oration, which Macrobius probably
derived from Ateius Capito’s Coniectanea. The practice of crypto-quoting is
well known in Macrobius’ works; he rarely mentions his own main sources. As
Marinone made clear,47 this behaviour does not rule out the possibility that
Macrobius could refer to other minor sources in these hidden quotations, as is
the case with Titius in chapter 16 and Serenus Sammonicus in chapter 17.48
In conclusion, if we take into account both the trustworthiness of Macro-
bius’ source and his reassuring statement that he wanted to report everything
ipsis saepe uerbis quibus ab ipsis auctoribus enarratae sunt,49 there are no
reasons to doubt the credibility of Titius’ fragment. This does not mean that
we have to believe every word of Macrobius’ account. For instance, when he
defines Titius as a uir aetatis Lucilianae, it is possible that he derives this
information from Capito, but it could also be a mistaken inference from the
subsequent quotation from Lucilius. In the same way, when he says that the
fragment was part of an oration qua legem Fanniam suasit, his testimony tells
us that the oration referred to the lex Fannia, but does not support any
conjecture about its actual date or the circumstance in which it was delivered.
It might have been written at the very moment in which the law was approved
(161 BC) but it might also have been written later, in order to defend it from a
42 43
Coudry 2004 and Coudry 2012. Cf. Mastandrea 2012.
44 45
Coudry 2004: 145. Coudry 2004: 148.
46 47
Gell. NA 2.24.2 and 15. Cf. Tuerk 1965: 394–8. Marinone 1967: 42–3.
48 49
Macrob. Sat. 3.17.4. Macrob. Sat. 1.pr. 4.

proposal of repeal, or on some other, unknown occasion. The most obvious
solution is, of course, that the oration was given in 161 BC: the passing of the
law is the only historical event connected with the lex Fannia that is attested by
reliable sources; moreover, it is clearly mentioned in chapter 17 of Macrobius’
account.50 Despite this, a historical detail leads us to conclude that the oration
was not delivered at that time. As has already been noted, the transfer of
legislative activities to the Forum did not occur until 145 BC.51
The testimony of Cicero’s Brutus that I quoted at the beginning seems to
suggest that Gaius Titius was contemporary with Marcus Antonius and Lucius
Licinius Crassus. But this is not completely true. Let us examine how Cicero
organized his work per aetates:
nonne cernimus uix singulis aetatibus binos oratores laudabilis constitisse? Galba
fuit inter tot aequalis unus excellens, cui, quem ad modum accepimus, et Cato
cedebat senior et qui temporibus illis aetate inferiores fuerunt; Lepidus postea,
deinde Carbo; nam Gracchi in contionibus multo faciliore et liberiore genere
dicendi, quorum tamen ipsorum ad aetatem laus eloquentiae perfecta nondum
fuit; Antonius, Crassus, post Cotta, Sulpicius, Hortensius. nihil dico amplius . . . 52
Cic. Brut. 333
Cicero starts from the consideration that every aetas produced no more than
two laudabiles oratores, and structures his presentation by pinpointing pairs of
contemporary orators: Cato and Galba, Lepidus and Carbone, Tiberius and
Gaius Gracchus, Antonius and Crassus, Cotta and Sulpicius.53 Hortensius is
left by himself but it is implicit that Cicero is the other orator of the pair.
Douglas’ and Sumner’s research has shown that Cicero was able to establish
the date of birth for each orator living from the generation of Antonius and
Crassus onwards.54 This information was drawn either from his personal
50
Macrob. Sat. 3.17.3.
51
The dating hypothesis supported by Till is less convincing (Till 1967: 48–9): he maintains that
the stone arches of the pons Aemilius were built in 142 BC and that the carriage of traffic only began
thereafter, hence Titius could only speak about a sea bass fished inter duos pontes (that is, as seems
probable, between the pons Sublicius and the pons Aemilius: see already Marx 1904–5: 2.372) after
the completion of these works. But we could humorously imagine that the traffic Titius (and
further Hor. Sat. 2.2.31–3; Plin. HN 9.168). was describing was not that of carriages and wagons,
but that of fishes, which freely swam in the river; moreover, before the stone arches of the pons
Aemilius were built, a wooden crossing was already in place in this central position by 179 BC (cf.
Livy 40.51.4). Finally, according to the authoritative opinion of Coarelli (1988: 139–47 and 1999), a
stone bridge existed from the third century BC, when the uia Aemilia uetus was first opened.
52
‘Do we not see that in each period scarcely so many as two orators have maintained a place
of distinction? Galba among so many contemporaries was the one pre-eminent, before whom,
we are told, Cato of the older generation gave way, and all of that time who were his juniors.
After him Lepidus, then Carbo. I need not remind you of the Gracchi, characterized in their
popular harangues by a much freer and more flexible style of speaking, though even down to
their time the art of eloquence still fell short of highest distinction; Antonius and Crassus,
afterwards Cotta and Sulpicius, Hortensius—I will say nothing further . . . ’
53 54
See Casamento in this volume. Douglas 1966b; Sumner 1973.

knowledge or from their political careers and reconstructed according to the
lex Villia annalis.55 At the beginning of the section about Antonius and
Crassus, we find (Cic. Brut. 127–37) consuls and politicians who were born
between 154 and 144 BC, then (138–66) characters who were born from 143,
the birth of Antonius, to 136 BC. In the last two chapters (165–6), Cicero
mentions as minor orators of that time Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus
(consul suo anno in 96 and therefore born in 139 BC), Gaius Coelius Caldus
(consul in 94 and born in 140 BC), Marcus Herennius (consul in 93), and Gaius
Claudius Pulcher (consul in 92 and maybe born in 141 BC). The list continues
in chapter 173, when Cicero recalls Lucius Marcius Philippus, consul in 91 and
probably born in 136 BC. Chapters 167–72, in which Titius appears, are
therefore a break, an excursus,56 without a specific temporal specification
(eiusdem fere temporis). In these chapters, people of inferior social rank are
listed, who did not belong to the senatorial class or who had municipal origins.
They were born between the beginning of second century, such as Lucius
Papirius Fregellanus, and the end of the century, such as Titus Tinga from
Piacenza, contemporary with Q. Hortensius and Cicero. As a result, the
reference to Titius in Cicero’s Brutus provides us with no evidence about his
date of birth. Considering that Cicero introduces the character of Papirius
Fregellanus with the chronological indication apud maiores . . . nostros,57 we
can only infer that Titius did not live in a much earlier age.
So, when should we place Titius’ life and activity? Cicero’s evidence and
Macrobius’ do not contradict each other, as they have often been accused of
doing. Some scholars, most recently Rosivach, have tried to solve the problem
by suggesting the existence of two different Gaii Titii. Rosivach also speculates
that Titius’ fragment recounts real facts and describes an incident that
occurred in 161 BC, which led to the approval of the lex Fannia.58 It is
improbable, however, that an orator of importance, such as the Titius immor-
talized by Cicero, could be so easily confused with another orator with the
same name; and it is even more improbable that Cicero, who aimed at
completeness in his overview of Roman orators,59 could have ignored such a
brilliant man as the character penned by Macrobius. Some scholars think that
Macrobius mixes up two different leges Fanniae;60 or have supposed that
Macrobius has given the wrong name to the law debated by Titius.61 None
of these assumptions take into account the fact that Macrobius’ text is based
on trustworthy sources; it is inserted into a coherent set of chapters, which
55
So Sumner 1973: 158, partially correcting Douglas.
56 57
Cf. David 1983a: 309. Cic. Brut. 170.
58
Rosivach 2006: 8 n. 33. The hypothesis is not new: it had already been formulated by Piderit
1862: 272; while Müller 1884: 96–7 proposes the existence of two different speakers and
considers homonymy at the root of a mistake made by Macrobius.
59 60
Cf. Citroni 2005: 23–5. Nicolet 1974: 1041 n. 3; David 1992: 700.
61 2
Martha 1907 : 123; Nicolet 1974: 1041 n. 3.

expressly deal with culinary luxury; and that it shows a thorough knowledge of
the sumptuary laws. Finally, in order to maintain 161 BC as the date of Titius’
oration, some historians have attributed an extraordinarily long life to Titius.62
However, as already noted, dating the oration to 161 BC is impossible on the
basis of comprehensive textual analysis.
The only reasonable solution is the one provided by Cichorius, who stresses
that a suasio in favour of a determined law does not have to be delivered at the
moment of its approval but can also be held on other occasions. He conjec-
tured, therefore, that Titius took the floor when a repeal proposal of the law
was presented.63 Cichorius’ supposition is still considered valid by most
interpreters. However, Cichorius’ formulation is not completely tenable: first
of all, he considers Cicero’s chronological review to be accurate. He also thinks
that Titius’ oration was given several years after 143 BC, that is, after the lex
Fannia was reinforced by the lex Didia; as a consequence, he draws the
conclusion that Titius’ suasio dates to a period close to the lex Licinia
sumptuaria (dated by him to 109 BC), between 130 and 110 BC.64 Till agrees
with Cichorius and goes a step further by proposing the idea that Titius,
coming from the equestrian order, was in fact criticizing the presence
of senators in the juries. From this conjecture he advances a more complex
theory: Titius’ oration might have been presented at the time of C. Gracchus,
when the latter sponsored a lex iudiciaria and inserted 300 Roman knights
into the album iudicum selectorum, which was until then filled only by
senators.65 To sum up, according to Till, Titius’ fragment should be placed
in 123 BC; Till’s reasoning was accepted by Suerbaum in the recent Handbuch
by Herzog-Schmidt.66
Problems arise, however, when we reconsider Cichorius’ and Till’s claims in
detail. Cicero’s chronology was not as precise as Cichorius took for granted;
secondly, historians today are inclined to date the lex Licinia to 134–131 BC,67
the years of the praetorship and consulship of the law’s rogator, P. Lucius
Crassus Dives Mucianus. Finally, Till’s hypothesis, which places Titius’ ora-
tion in the middle of the political conflict against the senatorial order,
although plausible and supported both by Fraccaro and Burdese,68 despite
being a suggestive speculation, is also an unnecessary one. Titius was probably
invited to hold his suasio by the proponent of the contio itself. Secondly,
researchers on the sumptuary laws have underlined that this legislation was
62
Ercole 1888; Schanz 1890: 79; Fraccaro 1913: 126 (who considers this hypothesis as ‘la sola
possibile’). Cf. Malcovati, who thinks that this solution is at least possible: C. Titius ORF4 51 (cf.
Albanese 1992: 96–7).
63 64 65
Cichorius 1908: 266. Cichorius 1908: 267. Till 1967: 49.
66
Suerbaum 2002: 476.
67
Starting from Aste 1941. Cf. Coudry 2014b. Contra, Baltrusch 1988: 88–93, particularly 92
n. 357, and Bottiglieri 2002: 155–60.
68
Fraccaro 1913: 128; Burdese 1998: 56.

primarily aimed at imposing a sort of self-control over the ruling classes:69
these laws were aimed at the members of those circles who questioned the
moral principles at the core of their own power.70 Another objection may be
brought against Cichorius’ assertion: although it is true that many sumptuary
laws were subject to several proposals of abrogation71—this happened to the
lex Orchia and the subsequent lex Licinia—, it is a mere conjecture that the lex
Fannia underwent a similar repeal. In this respect, De Martino rightly stresses
that we are informed about the abrogation of other sumptuary laws, while
nothing similar is attested for the lex Fannia; as a consequence, the lack of any
evidence regarding the repeal of this law seems rather to support the stance
against Cichorius.72 Coarelli states that the subsequent approval of other
sumptuary laws, such as the lex Didia in 143 and the lex Licinia, proves that
the lex Fannia was not abrogated but reinforced through other normative
measures.73 Coarelli’s thesis fits well with the chronological analysis we have
carried out: at this point, we can assert that Titius’ oration was held between
145 BC (when legislative activity was moved to the Forum) and 134 (or 131) BC,
when the lex Licinia was probably approved.
On closer inspection, Cichorius’ dating has been considered valid until now
because it was the only solution that could make sense of the messy chrono-
logical data concerning Titius’ fragment. Yet, it is possible to put forward an
alternative hypothesis. Titius’ oration might not be aimed at an (alleged)
repeal of the lex Fannia, but intended to argue in favour of its extension to
all the Roman citizens living in Italy. In other words, it might be an oration
held on occasion of the lex Didia, in 143 BC.74 As already seen, Titius’ fragment
is not placed in book 3, chapter 17 of the Saturnalia, in which the Republican
laws concerning Roman luxury are presented in detail, but in the preceding
chapters, which contain a broad critique of ancient customs and are therefore
devoid of any technical character. In such a general context, Macrobius could
refer to Titius’ suasio in favour of the lex Didia by naming it an oratio qua
legem Fanniam suasit. In fact, the lex Fannia was much more famous than the
lex Didia, which did not change the stipulations of the lex Fannia but simply
extended its application to uniuersa Italia and to the guests of banquets. Other
clues might support this idea. First of all, Macrobius, albeit trustworthy and
accurate, was not a legal historian: he does not go into detail when he speaks
about the lex Fannia, and his presentation of the judges is equally vague, as
already observed (he describes in very general terms the homines prodigos in
forum ad iudicandum ebrios commeantes). Secondly, the lex Didia was a very
minor law indeed: we only know about it thanks to Macrobius’ note in the
69
Clemente 1981: 10.
70 71
Cf. Gabba 1981: 554. Cf. Clemente 1981: 8 and Coudry 2004: 152–62.
72 73
De Martino 1988: 5 = 1995: 691. Coarelli 1983–5: 2.163.
74
On this law, see now Coudry 2014c.

chapter regarding Roman sumptuary laws (Macrob. Sat. 3.17.6). Finally, when
Macrobius talks about the lex Licinia in a subsequent part of his work, he does
not compare it with the lex Didia but once again with the earlier lex Fannia:
lex uero haec (sc. Licinia) paucis mutatis in plerisque cum Fannia congruit
(Macrob. Sat. 3.17.8).
This is only speculation. Let us return to the more secure conclusions that
we have reached. Titius’ oration was almost certainly held between 145 and
134 (or 131) BC; consequently, Titius’ birth occurred around 180–170 BC.
Incidentally, this conclusion appears to agree with Sauerwein’s arguments.75
But consistent divergences between my interpretation and that of Sauerwein
are easily found: Sauerwein thinks that the lex Didia is the terminus ante quem
for Titius’ oration and supposes that it was in fact held well before this year, at
the time of a proposed (or successful) abrogation of the lex Fannia; for my
part, I date the oration to a much later period, between 145 and 134 or, more
probably, around 143 BC.
Gaius Titius’ portrait, which one can outline from the analysis of his
activity as an author of tragedies, does not reveal substantive differences
from the one we have rapidly sketched in the previous pages. Everything we
know about his theatrical output derives from Cicero’s Brutus, which tells us
that the style of Titius’ tragedies closely resembled that employed in his
orations: it was elegant and genuine. This similarity made his dictio parum
tragica. Not surprisingly, Titius’ works were appreciated by Lucius Afranius,
the most important representative of the fabula togata, which were comedies
based on the model of a tragedy and intended to represent the political
vicissitudes of ancient Rome.76 As Seneca described them, the togatae were a
mixture of comedy and tragedy:
non attingam tragicos nec togatas nostras (habent enim hae quoque aliquid
seueritatis et sunt inter comoedias ac tragoedias mediae). Sen. Ep. 8.8
According to the recent edition of the Tragicorum Romanorum fragmenta by
Markus Schauer,77 there are only two other testimonies pertaining to Titius’
writings: during the age of Sulla, Novius briefly mentions Titius within a
fragment of iambic heptameters,78 the reading of which is still uncertain;79
and in the late Renaissance, Antonio Volsco mentions that both ‘Pacuvius et
Titinius’,80 the latter possibly a typographical error for Titius,81 wrote a
tragedy named Prothesilaus, which served as a source for Ovid, Heroides 13.
In other words, there is very little information: no fragments at all, and only
three testimonies, two of which are based on problematic texts. There is thus a
75 76 77
Sauerwein 1970: 85. Cf. Perutelli 2013: 79. Schauer 2012: 139.
78
Novius Atell. 67–8 Ribbeck3, nec umquam | uidit rostrum <in> tragoedia tantum Titi . . .
79
Cf. Buecheler 1868: 3–5 (= 1915: 626–8).
80
Volsco 1482 ad Her. 13. Cf. Mariano 1993.
81
Dilthey 1863: 59 n. 1.

general scepticism about Titius’ tragedies. This scepticism is so strong that
Afranius’ appreciation has sometimes been understood as referring to Titius’
orations and not his tragedies.82
This suspicious attitude towards the evidence surrounding Titius’ tragedies is
underlined by the fact that Schauer forgets to mention the most important
source about them: the one provided by Fronto, and the only one that may
contribute to our discussion of Titius’ chronology.83 The future emperor Mar-
cus Aurelius, one of Fronto’s students, transcribed part of an oration by Fronto
that he particularly liked in a letter to his master. Fronto was very pleased by the
honour that the young prince gave him and expresses his joy as follows:
enimuero quibus ego gaudium meum uerbis exprimere possim, quod orationem
istam meam tua manu descriptam misisti mihi? . . . quot litterae istic sunt, toti-
dem consulatus mihi, totidem laureas, triumphos, togas pictas arbitror contigisse.
quid tale M. Porcio aut Quinto Ennio, C. Graccho aut Titio poetae, quid Scipioni
aut Nomidico, quid M. Tullio tale usu uenit? quorum libri pretiosiores habentur
et summam gloriam retinent, si sunt Lampadionis aut Staberii, Plautii aut
D. Aurelii, Autriconis aut Aelii manu scripta e<xem>pla aut a Tirone emendata
aut a Domitio Balbo descripta aut ab Attico aut Nepote. mea oratio extabit
M. Caesaris manu scripta. qui orationem spreuerit, litteras concupiscet; qui
scripta contempserit, scriptorem reuerebitur.84 Fronto 15.4–16.1vdH2
This passage is one of the most famous and hotly debated in the study of Latin
philology in the Republican period.85 As far as the text is concerned, Titius’
name is surely attested in Fronto’s palimpsest. Despite this, philologists have
tried to correct it in many ways,86 on the basis that the obscurity of Titius’
fame could not match the renown of the other authors quoted; others have
82
Cf. Degl’Innocenti Pierini 1991: 243 n. 10.
83
Cicero’s remark about the parallels between Afranius and Titius is of little use, although it is
the most precise indication that we have about the chronology of this comic poet: cf. Daviault
1981: 38–9.
84
‘Indeed, with what words could I express my delight at your sending me that speech of
mine copied out with your own hand? . . . For every letter of your letter I count myself to have
gained a consulship, a victory, a triumph, a robe of honour. What fortune like this befell
M. Porcius or Quintus Ennius, Gaius Gracchus, or the poet Titius? What Scipio or Numidicus?
What M. Tullius, like this? Their books are valued more highly and have the greatest credit, if
they are from the hand of Lampadio or Staberius, of Plautius or D. Aurelius, Autrico or Aelius, or
have been revised by Tiro or transcribed by Domitius Balbus, or Atticus or Nepos. My speech
will be extant in the handwriting of M. Caesar. He that thinks little of the speech will be in love
with the very letters of it; he who disdains the thing written will reverence the writer.’ (Trans.
Haines 1919–20). Cf. Timpanaro 20022: 197.
85
Cf. the harsh criticism of Zetzel 1981: 14, according to whom Fronto’s letter provides ‘a list
of forgeries that were circulating in the second century’; the opposite arguments made by Pecere
1982: 101–3 are however persuasive. Finally, we may agree with Kaster 1995: 111–12, that the
letter demonstrates the prestige still enjoyed by Aurelius Opillus 250 years after his floruit and,
with him, by the poet Titius.
86
See list and discussion in Martina 1978: 19–20.

argued that Fronto refers to the orations and not the tragedies of Titius.87
However, in his recent commentary on Fronto’s correspondence, van den
Hout has rightly pointed out that Titius is here defined as a poeta and that
Fronto clearly distinguishes three groups: four writers and men of letters;
one general and man of state; and finally Cicero.88 The four writers are
divided into two couples, each composed of one orator and one author of
tragedies. They are ordered according to a strict chronological succession:
first, Cato and Ennius; then, Gracchus and Titius. This does not imply that
Titius and Gracchus are contemporary. The chronological order is only
indicative of the relationship between the two couples; there is no evidence
that it is valid even within each couple. In other words, we can say that
Cato was older than Gracchus and Ennius than Titius, but not that
Gracchus89 belonged to the same generation as Titius, although Cato and
Ennius were peers.
Other scholars have tried to create a link between the philologists and
grammarians quoted by Fronto (Lampadio, Staberius, Plautius, etc.), who
transcribed the works of these authors, and the authors themselves. Many of
these attempts were only hypotheses and the results have been unconvincing:
it is true that Aurelius Opillus,90 born in 130 BC, might have known Titius, if
Titius had lived for a very long time and reached the same age as Lucilius.91
But these speculations miss the real point: as Pecere underlines,92 the tran-
scriptions that Fronto celebrates in his letter are not manuscripts prepared by
scribes of slave origin, but literary works that imitated Hellenistic models.
They were not even transcriptions, but, more properly, rewritten and
re-elaborated versions of the original works. If Titius’ tragedies underwent
this process of adaptation in the second century BC and his name was still
remembered in such admiring tones 250 years later, they enjoyed an excellent
fortune for an astonishingly long period of time.
Following a comment made by Ribbeck,93 Dugan linked Titius’ career as
orator and author of tragedies to that of Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo,94 a much
better known figure in Roman life. Although certain parallels between the two
authors cannot be denied and were even sustained authoritatively by Cicero
himself in his Brutus, here it is more useful to emphasize some divergences
between Titius and Strabo: their different social status and the different
periods in which they lived, the former being fifty years older than the latter.
Titius lived in the middle of the second century BC when Latin literature was
flourishing and many lasting innovations were introduced. Even the social
87 88
Cf. Suerbaum 2002: 560. Hout 1999 ad loc.
89
Born in 154 or 153 BC: cf. Sumner 1973: 70.
90
Cf. Kaster 1995: 110–12 and Suerbaum 2002: 559–60.
91 92
On Lucilius’ date of birth, cf. Suerbaum 2002: 306. Cf. Pecere 2010: 9.
93 94
Ribbeck 1875: 612–14. Dugan 2005: 123–4.

context of literature was radically changing at that time. La Penna has
described it as follows:95
I poeti latini prima di Lucilio, quando non sono, come Livio Andronico e
Terenzio, liberti, provengono da condizioni sociali modeste e restano lontani
dall’ingresso nell’élite politica tutta compresa nella nobilitas . . . ; anche quando
non provengono dagli strati più bassi della plebe, i poeti arcaici sono clienti di
grandi famiglie: ciò vale per Nevio, Ennio, Pacuvio, Accio, probabilmente anche
per i poeti comici, eccettuato, forse, Plauto . . . La nobilitas riserva per sé altri
compiti letterari, più connessi con l’attività politica: l’oratoria e la storiografia . . .
Questo assetto si dissolve nel periodo di Lucilio, che incomincia a scrivere le sue
satire negli anni dei Gracchi. Lucilio non è un poeta di condizione sociale
modesta: è un eques Romanus e appartiene ad una famiglia prestigiosa di Suessa
Aurunca, che sta entrando nell’élite politica . . . Il poeta trattava con familiarità
Scipione Emiliano e gli amici della sua cerchia: insomma si può affermare che con
Lucilio anche la nobilitas incomincia a scrivere poesia. La poesia teatrale è ancora
vitale e robusta: il periodo di Lucilio coincide in gran parte con quello di Accio, un
poeta di grande fecondità e prestigio; ma rispetto alla poesia precedente Lucilio è
un innovatore. Trae dall’ombra e coltiva con grande impegno un genere di poesia,
la satura letteraria, creato da Ennio, ma rimasto marginale.
However, twenty years before Lucilius, the change had already begun. Titius
was probably a member of the Roman ruling class:96 sufficient evidence for
this assertion is provided by the fact that Titius was called to deliver a speech
in favour of a law, whatever this law may be. He was an eques Romanus like
Lucilius and, albeit not a complete stranger to Roman political life, he chose
not to enter the cursus honorum but to stay away from the Senate. One may
hypothesize that Titius, again like Lucilius, belonged to the circle of Scipio
Aemilianus, who was elected censor the year after the promulgation of the lex
Didia and probably supported it during the debate in the Senate,97 because
95
La Penna 2012: 405: ‘Before Lucilius, Latin poets were either freedmen, like Livius Andro-
nicus and Terence, or came from modest social backgrounds. They lived at a great distance from
the political elite, which was comprised solely of the nobilitas . . . Even when they did not come
from the lowest strata of the plebs, the ancient poets were clients of the great families: this applies
to Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, and probably also to the comic poets, with the possible
exception of Plautus . . . The other literary functions, those that were more closely related to
political activity, the nobilitas reserved for themselves, that is, oratory and historiography . . .
This literary hierarchy dissolved in the time of Lucilius, who started writing his satires in the
years of the Gracchi. Lucilius was not a poet with a humble social background: he was a
Roman eques and belonged to a prestigious family of Suessa Aurunca which was in the process
of taking its place among the political elite . . . The poet was on familiar terms with Scipio
Aemilianus and the friends belonging to his circle. In short, we can assert that it was with
Lucilius that the nobilitas began to compose poetry. The dramatic genres were still vibrant and
productive: Lucilius’ lifetime coincides more or less with that of Accius, a very prolific and
prestigious poet. Even so, with regard to earlier poetry, Lucilius was an innovator. He drew out
from the shadows a type of poetry—the literary satura—which had been created by Ennius but
had remained marginal, and he cultivated it with great commitment.’
96 97
Cf. David 1992: 700. Cf. Astin 1967: 117–18; Sauerwein 1970: 91–4.

during his censorship he actively defended the mos maiorum, at least in the
oration against P. Sulpicius Galus (ORF4 21 F17). Although Scipio’s rhetoric
was much more mature and elaborate than that of Titius, this fragment recalls
to some extent the vividness of Titius’ fragment itself. Despite his upper-class
origin, Titius started to compose poetry and made it his main activity. He was
not as innovative as Lucilius but focused on tragedies, as Pacuvius and Accius
did around the same time. Unlike these two contemporaries, however, Titius
wrote parum tragice and privileged a less pathetic tone, thus anticipating
Lucilius’ attitude, which aimed at criticizing the lack of realism, the manner-
isms, and the improbability of Roman tragedies.98 Although there is a danger
of overinterpreting our sources, we could say that Titius’ tragedies marked a
break with the previous tradition. At the same time, those aspects that seemed
to be so characteristic of tragedy,99 and had already entered into Greek New
Comedy, were transposed into the Roman comedies,100 hence Terence’s
criticism of Luscius Lanuvinus in the prologue of Phormio.101
98
Cf. Mondin 2011–12: 38.
99
Cf. Rhet. Her. 1.13; Cic. Inv. rhet. 1.19; Quint. Inst. 2.4.2; Don. Ter. Ph. pr. 6.1 and 8.1.
100
Cf. Garton 1972: 135–9; Maltby 2012: 130.
101
Ter. Phorm. 4–8: qui ita dictitat, quas ante hic fecit fabulas | tenui esse oratione et scriptura
leui: | quia nusquam insanum scripsit adulescentulum | ceruam uidere fugere et sectari canes | et
eam plorare, orare ut subueniat sibi; cf. Lucil. 723 Warmington = 587 Marx: nisi portenta
anguisque uolucris ac pinnatos scribitis (I thank Licinia Ricottilli for pointing out this passage).
I would also like to thank Jennifer Hilder for proofreading this chapter.
10
Clodius’ Contio de haruspicum responsis

Anthony Corbeill
CLODIUS SPEAKS
‘Quirites: I will begin calmly, showing none of the fury and violence with
which my opponent so often characterizes me.1 And at this moment, in fact,
there is no need for me, your own humble curule aedile, to demonstrate my
feelings, since now it is the earth itself that is raging with fury. Yes, the very soil
of our state rages against its one-time consul, since it feels him sneaking back
into our city from a most shameful exile.2
‘You all know about the events of last month, the many portentous events
that have occurred, culminating with strange rumblings in the north of
Latium.3 In accordance with the custom of our ancestors, the Senate has
duly carried out the traditional procedure for treating these kinds of prodigies,
and has begun by asking the Etruscan priests, the haruspices, to determine
what these sounds may mean. Through consultation of their ancient books,
the libri Etrusci, these haruspices have produced a response, a response that is
a dire warning from the gods that the earth’s rumblings do indeed portend
difficulties for the Roman state.4
‘My apparitores have supplied you all with a copy of that response of the
haruspices. Tomorrow, Cicero will be presenting this same document in the
Curia, behind closed doors, in an attempt to persuade the senators what type
of expiation should take place. But not even in the Senate, away from the
watchful eyes of you, the Roman people, and not even by employing his
deceptive rhetoric, will Cicero be capable of misrepresenting the clarity with
1
Cic. Har. resp. 39: tu . . . furialis in contionibus uoces mittis; cf. Har. resp. 11, Dom. 3, Sest.
106; Lenaghan 1969: 155–6.
2
Cic. Dom. 72: hunc (sc. me) tu etiam . . . exsulem appellare ausus es?, with Nisbet 1939:
198–9.
3
For the date, see Lenaghan 1969: 27.
4
On eliding the words of the response with those of the gods, see Corbeill 2010: 151–3.
172 Anthony Corbeill

which this document indicts his very self for rupturing the pax deorum. You
hold in your hands the express authority of the gods, in writing, warning
clearly about the problems attendant upon keeping within our city walls this
yokum from Arpinum,5 this enemy of the Capitoline,6 this prodigy that
threatens your homes, the walls of the city, and the very peace of the gods.
‘Cicero will of course attempt to impugn my authority. But who possesses
better authority than I, as one of the quindecimuiri sacris faciundis, the college
that oversees the very haruspices who have produced this response?7 But even
were I not occupying this most sacred and religious of offices, the interpret-
ation in your hands would be no less pellucid—it is clear that Nature herself
has spoken directly into the ears of the haruspices. Read, Quirites, the
fourth clause of the response: LOCA SACRA ET RELIGIOSA PROFANA
HABERI—‘sacred and religious places are being treated as unholy.’8 You all
will remember that, during the year when I served as your tribune, a shrine
was dedicated to the one principle that you, o Quirites, hold most dear,
the divine goddess Liberty (Libertas). This shrine celebrated the most recent
time that liberty had been recovered for you, after we had expelled from our
city a municipal tyrant, a tyrant who had snatched away Liberty herself along
with the lex Porcia, that law that gives each Roman citizen control over his
own life.9 But exile was not enough; so long as that tyrant remained on the
earth, your possession of Liberty could last only so long. In September of last
year, the college of the pontifices judged that our consecration of the shrine of
Libertas had been improperly performed, even though that consecration had
been conducted in a most scrupulous manner by an honourable priest.10 At
no other time since the founding of our city has a dedication to the immortal
gods been reversed through human action.11 And yet each of you has always
remembered and always will remember that it was the people who granted me
the right to perform this ceremony and now Nature herself announces that she
too confirms your bestowal of that right.12 Is there any better way to refute
the decision of the pontifical college than through the very words of the gods?
No circumstance better fits the description of holy sites being profaned than
5
Cic. Att. 1.16.10 (SB 16): ‘quid . . . homini Arpinati cum aquis calidis?’; cf. Cic. Clod. F20.
6
Cic. Dom. 7: hic tu me etiam . . . ‘hostem Capitolinum’ appellare ausus es?
7
MRR 3.16, based on Har. resp. 26; cf. also 27: sacerdotium ipsum. For ambiguous evidence
that the quindecimuiri had a supervisory role over the haruspices, see Boyce 1938: 170; MacBain
1982: 57–9.
8
For a Latin reconstruction of the response, see Appendix to this chapter.
9
Stroh 2004: 335 for the popular rhetoric; Morstein-Marx 2004: 217 on libertas populi
Romani as the ‘central popularis slogan’; for the accusation in general see [Sal.] Cic. 5: sublata
lege Porcia, erepta libertate omnium nostrum uitae necisque potestatem ad te unum reuocaueras.
10
Cic. Har. resp. 9: in ea causa esse dixit domum meam a religiosissimo sacerdote, P. Clodio,
consecratam.
11
Stroh 2004: 323.
12
Cic. Dom. 106: ‘tuleram’, inquit, ‘ut mihi liceret.’
Clodius’ Contio de haruspicum responsis 173

this one, when Liberty’s shrine is desecrated to become the home not only of
someone just recently made a citizen of this city, but of someone who has been
convicted of the murder of our fellow Romans.13 No, Quirites—any unpreju-
diced analysis, untainted by either the filthy bribes of Atticus or the maddened
gangs of Milo, must conclude that my dedication to Liberty was necessary,
legal, and approved by the gods!14
‘On that most happy day in the March of my tribunate, during the consul-
ship of the most glorious consuls Lucius Calpurnius Piso and Aulus Gabinius,
by your most resounding vote, Quirites, you yourselves drove this man from
the site of the most foul murders in the history of our republic. And now,
without consulting your authority, not only have this man’s henchmen used
illegal legislation to restore Cicero to a city that is not his but they have
returned him to live in a house that had since been duly and properly
consecrated to the gods.15 o di immortales! Who can be so blind not to see
this? And yet I have no doubt that, when Cicero appears in the Senate
tomorrow, we will yet again see on display his old witty self.16 Rather than
treating his own illegalities, he will surely turn his attention to the seventh
section of the response, where the haruspices mention ‘hoary sacrificial rites’—
SACRIFICIA VETVSTA—that have been performed with insufficient care.
Although it hardly applies, I have no doubt that he will return to those fictive
events from over five years ago, when I was entirely acquitted of involvement
in inappropriate ceremonies by a jury of loyal Romans;17 indeed, the only
testimony against me was from slaves, non-citizens, women, and Cicero
himself—a fitting group. Yet, despite my innocence, since that time this
incident has caused me to be transfixed by countless senatorial decrees.18
And although even Marcus Porcius Cato, the most severe and virtuous
Roman of all, will attest that Cicero is never one to miss the opportunity for
a cheap joke, the alleged incident involving me has produced hundreds for
him.19 But what Cicero refuses to acknowledge is that this goddess whose rites
he continues to mock rightly deserves the epithet Bona Dea, the ‘kindly
goddess’, since that goddess has, with the cooperation of a duly appointed
13
[Sal.] Cic. 1: paulo ante insitus huic urbi ciuis.
14
As in fact demonstrated in detail by Stroh 2004: 323–32.
15
Following the remarks of Morstein-Marx 2004: 230–40 on the ‘ideological monotony’ by
which speakers in contiones rarely critique the Senate as an institution, I have Clodius attribute
the senatorial recall of Cicero to individual senators rather than to the body as a whole. On
Clodius’ claims in contiones that the recall was illegal, see Cass. Dio 39.21.4: τὴν κάθοδον αὐτοῦ ὡς
καὶ παρανόμως ἐψηφισμένην.
16
On the criticism that Cicero received for his famous wit, see Corbeill 1996: 7–8.
17
Cic. Att. 1.16.5 (SB 16).
18
Cic. Har. resp. 8: quo modo ipse gloriari solet, ‘ducentis confixum senati consultis’.
19
Plut. Cat. min. 21.9: ‘ὦ ἄνδρες, ὡς γελοῖον ὕπατον ἔχομεν.’ The characterization of Cato
alludes to Cic. Mur. 3: Catoni, grauissimo atque integerrimo uiro.

jury of Roman citizens, absolved me of any youthful mishap.20 She is a Bona
Dea indeed.
‘Quirites! Please read yet another clause that cannot possibly have any
bearing on me: LVDOS MINVS DILIGENTER FACTOS POLLVTOSQVE
(‘games have been performed with insufficient care and polluted’). Do any of
the games I’ve offered to you as aedile fall under this description? No! No
incident has ever disrupted any sacred games with which I’ve been associated.
In fact, Cicero himself should be able to recount for you my family’s record in
providing popular entertainment: both my father and uncle staged in their
own aedileships impressive games. So impressive, in fact, that even Cicero
himself has deigned to praise them.21
‘But there is no need to dwell on the past. Let us turn again to the response
before us, in particular to those sections that speak of no one but Cicero. For in
the fifth clause you can read how the gods condemn Cicero in their own clear
and unanimous voices: ORATORES CONTRA IVS FASQVE INTERFECTOS—
‘ambassadors have been killed against what is right and just.’ Could the gods
speak more clearly if they were in our very presence?22 Every child in the city
recalls the murderous events of only last year, when Egypt sent one hundred
ambassadors to Rome to plead with the Senate against the restoration of their
king. No, wait a minute, I am mistaken—of course you don’t recall this event,
since so few of these legates reached Italy, since even fewer came within the
city walls, and since not a single one of them succeeded in meeting with the
Senate; no, these ambassadors, sent to perform a duty sacred to Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, were either bought by this man’s bribes or slaughtered
by Marcus Caelius Rufus and other members of Cicero’s gang.23
‘And as if this isn’t damning enough, look at the second portion of the
response, which demands that rites of reparation be performed for the gods of
agriculture: POSTILIONES ESSE IOVI SATVRNO NEPTVNO TELLVRI DIS
CAELESTIBVS. I can summon all of you, Quirites, as my witness that for over
a year I have been calling attention in contiones to the grain shortage from
which we all have been suffering. And in each contio, I have continued to stress
that all responsibility lies with one man: Cicero.24 Now I have confirmation
from the haruspices that the apparent selfishness of Tellus and Saturnus has a
single source, and one far from divine; they react to the evils that our state has
allowed to be perpetuated by our newly resident exile.
20
Cic. Har. resp. 37: (sc. eam deam) iste idcirco Bonam dicit quod in tanto sibi scelere
ignouerit.
21
See discussion of Har. resp. 26 below.
22
Cic. Har. resp. 25: (Cicero speaking) pro di immortales! qui magis nobiscum loqui possetis, si
essetis uersareminique nobiscum?
23
Cic. Har. resp. 34: de Alexandrinis esse uideo sermonem. For Caelius’ possible involvement,
see the discussion of this fragment in the text below.
24
Cic. Att. 4.1.6 (SB 73), Plut. Pomp. 49.4–5 (cf. Cic. Dom. 14); Tatum 1999: 182–5.

‘One final, and surely the most dire, clause of the response, the eighth,
demands our attention. The priestly books note that death, destruction, and
the departure of the gods from our city will occur as a result of ‘discord and
disagreements among the optimates’ (PER OPTIMATIVM DISCORDIAM
DISSENSIONEMQVE). The charge of ‘discord’ cannot be made my respon-
sibility, for I certainly am at peace with all of my colleagues in the Senate. In
fact, I have even become reconciled with the great Pompey, my dearest friend,
and the one man in this city worthy of our glorious empire.25 In any case, the
‘disagreement’ that prevails among the optimates centres on one point: the ill-
fated decision to return Cicero to us. The most telling evidence that the patres
are unwilling to accept Cicero’s return lies in the fact that the Senate has
chosen to meet tomorrow about the haruspical response; clearly the senators
are convinced that the noises made in the north of Latium respond to the
return of an exile, a return that continues to provoke bitter and violent debate
among the elite!26
‘Can the case possibly be made more clear? I will request in the Senate
tomorrow that a cessation of public business be declared so that the senators,
undistracted by their many usual duties at the markets and in the courts, may
debate in peace the implications behind this divine response and come
unanimously to the decision that all of you here agree as inevitable.27 Ah . . .
wait a minute; I see over there, in the corner of the crowd here assembled, one
of Cicero’s many henchmen, one of his little tirones I might say, copying out
every word that I have been saying to you.28 I will slow down a bit so that he
doesn’t miss a word. I am anxious to see how the ‘stepmother of the father-
land’ twists my words in the Senate meeting tomorrow. I wish to see what
Cicero has ‘discovered’ this time.29
‘I know very well, Quirites, that you all must return to your duties, work that
keeps our city strong. So let me close with a story about a certain person who is
not from this city, whom the gods are now telling us works not for our strength
but for our destruction. Not long ago I asked this exile to what state he really
belonged; he replied, ‘I belong to that state which cannot exist without me.’
Yes, Quirites, I could only respond just as you are doing right now:
I groaned.30 How long can such boastfulness be endured? Yes, you shout ‘no
25
Cic. Har. resp. 51: certe (sc. Pompeium) laudat, et unum esse in hac ciuitate dignum huius imperi
gloria dicit et significat se illi esse amicissimum et reconciliationem esse gratiae factam.
26
Cic. Har. resp. 11: ex hoc haruspicum responso decreuit senatus ut de locis sacris religiosis ad
hunc ordinem referretis, with Tatum 1999: 217.
27
Cic. Har. resp. 55: quae sunt occultiora quam eius qui in contione ausus est dicere iustitium
edici oportere, iuris dictionem intermitti, claudi aerarium, iudicia tolli?
28
See, e.g., Plut. Cat. Min. 23.3.
29
Cic. Cat. 1.10, Fam. 5.5.2 (SB 5), Att. 1.14.5 (SB 14); cf. [Sal.] Cic. 3.
30
Cic. Har. resp. 17: uidi enim hesterno die quendam murmurantem, quem aiebant negare
ferri me posse, quia, cum ab hoc eodem impurissimo parricida rogarer cuius essem ciuitatis,

longer’ with one voice. Quousque tandem istum regem feremus?31 ‘No longer’
I hear from you yet again. And who is it that the gods wish to drive from this
city? ‘Cicero!’ I again hear you shout with one voice, and with a voice that
agrees with the response of the haruspices.32 Rome existed long before this
inquilinus came within our walls, it prospered gloriously while he was away,
and it can only grow more mighty after he is gone for good. Let him return to
whatever state it is that he truly belongs.33 Let us drive this prodigy from our
walls once and for all.’34
BACKGROUND TO C LODIUS ’ C O N T I O
I have chosen to begin this discussion of fragments by attempting a fuller

reconstruction of Clodius’ contio of spring 56. I do so not (just) because, as a
scholar of Cicero writing an anti-Ciceronian rant, I derived a surprisingly
satisfying pleasure from the exercise. My principal objective, rather, has been
to demonstrate that it is indeed possible to reconstitute much of Clodius’
argument on this occasion—and to recover a good bit of his text—even though
Malcovati makes no mention of the contio anywhere in ORF4. This attempt
follows analogous efforts to resurrect Clodius’ political views from Cicero’s
often distorted representations of them.35 In my own reconstruction of Clo-
dius’ speech, the sequence of argumentation arises largely from an informed
imagination, but each discrete section does rely on apparent facts that I have
derived from Cicero’s subsequent oration in the Senate on the same topic. As
indicated in the footnotes, I have based most of my English version on those
passages where Cicero either overtly quotes from, or obliquely alludes to,
Clodius’ contio. I have then sought to create an organic whole by supplement-
ing these bits with fragments from other speeches attributed to Clodius, from
respondi me, probantibus et uobis et equitibus Romanis, eius esse quae carere me non potuisset.
ille, ut opinor, ingemuit.
31
Cf. Cic. Att. 1.16.10 (SB 16) and Har. resp. 17.
32
Cf. Cic. Q Fr. 2.3.2 (SB 7) for an analogous call and shout by Clodius about Pompey in
February 56; Cass. Dio 39.19.1–2; Morstein-Marx 2004: 134–5; Tan 2013: 123–4.
33
Cf. Cic. Har. resp. 17.
34
Cic. Clod. F21 (addressed to Clodius): o singulare prodigium! o monstrum! nonne te huius
templi, non urbis, non uitae, non lucis pudet?; cf. Phil. 13.49 (on the Antonii): monstra quaedam
ista et portenta sunt et prodigia rei publicae. moueri sedibus huic urbi melius est . . . quam
illos . . . intra haec moenia uidere.
35
Tan 2013: 120: ‘it is rare that we have the evidence to reconstruct an individual's methods,
but in Clodius—the perils of Ciceronian bias notwithstanding—we have just that opportunity’;
cf. also the reconstructions by Tatum 1999: 190–1 and Stroh 2004: 332–8 of Clodius’ contio prior
to when Cicero delivered De domo sua.

those of other Ciceronian opponents, or occasionally from the works of Cicero
himself.
I have already indicated in Clodius’ own voice the historical situation that
confronted both speakers but I offer a more systematic account here. In 58 BC,
Clodius, as tribune, succeeded in passing legislation that resulted in Cicero’s
exile. In Cicero’s absence, his house on the Palatine was burned and his
property confiscated, with the result that Clodius erected on the site a shrine
to the goddess Libertas. The symbolism of the consecration is obvious. After a
little over a year in the East, Cicero was recalled by senatorial decree and
returned to Italy in August 57. Within a month of his return, in September of
57, the college of the pontifices voted that Clodius’ dedication of the shrine to
Libertas had been improperly conducted, thereby causing the restoration of
the site to Cicero; this situation occasioned Cicero’s speech De domo sua.
Within a few months of this pontifical decision, in early spring of 56, a series of
portents was observed, the most significant of which was, according to our
sources, a loud rumbling in the north of Latium. The Senate summons the
haruspices, who offer a response to the prodigies after consulting the libri
Etrusci. It was not a foregone conclusion that the Senate would choose to
consult the haruspices concerning these portents. The unnatural rum-
bling of the earth would have typically called for consultation of any one of
three priestly bodies: the pontifices, the quindecimuiri sacris faciundis, or the
haruspices. The sources do not explain how the choice among these three
groups was made in any particular instance, but it is possible to reconstruct a
plausible scenario for why the haruspices were chosen to ponder these Latian
rumblings of 56. First, geographical considerations may play a role: the region
of northern Latium would have had long historical associations with the
Etruscans and, since the third century BC, it seems to have been considered
natural, and at times even politically expedient, that the Romans should place
the haruspices in charge of phenomena that arise in regions of former
Etruscan dominance.36 Second, our extant record of prodigy types indicates
a slight preference for consulting the haruspices when the phenomenon
involves rumblings under the earth.37 There are also significant grounds for
not offering the matter to either of the two remaining priestly bodies. The
pontifices had already made a decision on the related matter of Cicero’s house,
so it may have seemed redundant to consult them a second time; it is also
possible that referring a related matter to this body would cause the recent
prodigies to be viewed as being the direct result of their decision over Cicero’s
property. As for the quindecimuiri, they likely were not considered sufficiently
36
MacBain 1982: esp. 60–79; only one other Republican prodigy is recorded from Etruria in
the period following the Social War (at Clusium in 83 BC). The haruspices were also consulted on
that occasion.
37
MacBain 1982: 119.

objective, since a member of that body was a key figure in the debate, that is,
Publius Clodius himself.38
It is the resultant response from these haruspices to which Clodius responds
in his contio, and to which Cicero responds in his extant speech, De haruspi-
cum responsis. The Appendix to this chapter provides a text of this response, as
reconstructed from the multiple quotations that Cicero makes from it. It is
unclear what, if anything, may be missing from the original document, but
since Cicero indicates in his speech that the Senate has had access to a text of
the haruspical response, and perhaps even holds a copy as he speaks, it seems
likely that the most controversial clauses are preserved and that they are
quoted accurately. Dio, at least, summarizes the contents of the response by
offering an uncontested interpretation; in his allusion to Clodius’ contio, he
describes its contents as a vigorous attack on Cicero ‘because the site of the
house he had built upon was dedicated to Liberty’.39
The most recent full discussion dates the delivery of Cicero’s speech on the
response to early May of 56.40 Cicero begins that speech in an oddly oblique
manner, by describing a disruption in the Senate on the previous day that had
involved a violent altercation between Clodius and himself.41 This seemingly
irrelevant beginning segues to an extended string of abuse directed at Clodius
(Har. resp. 3–7), after which Cicero notes that Clodius’ contio on the harus-
pical response had occurred ‘just a little before’ (paulo ante, 8). The most
reasonable reference of the phrase in this context is to the disruption in the
Senate the day before that Cicero had just described.42 In other words,
I assume that Clodius had called a contio early on the day before Cicero’s
speech, perhaps by dint of his office as curule aedile, and that he delivered it, as
would be expected, from the Rostra immediately in front of the Curia.43
Cicero provides some evidence of the basic structure of Clodius’ contio,
which of course must be assessed cautiously. Before beginning his own
interpretation of the response, he promises to relate Clodius’ ‘basic argument’
38
MRR 3.16 offers evidence for Clodius as quindecimuir, to which could be added Har. resp.
27: sacerdotium ipsum; see, too, Tatum 1999: 200–1.
39
Cass. Dio 39.20.3: τῷ . . . λόγῳ πολὺς ἐνέκειτο, ὅτι τὸ ἔδαφος τῆς οἰκίας ἱερωμένον τῆι
Ἐλευθερίαι κατωικοδόμησε.
40
Lenaghan 1969: 22–8; the date is accepted by Wuilleumier and Tupet 1966: 8–10 (following
Lenaghan’s 1962 dissertation); Seaver 1971: 245; Devijver 1972: 198; Shackleton Bailey 1991: 103,
but doubted by Bruwaene 1971: 445–6 and Stockton 1971: 454 (who prefer dates later in 56). The
precise date has no bearing on my discussion here.
41
Cic. Har. resp. 1: hesterno die.
42
Contra Wolf 1801: 376, who sees the phrase as referring to earlier in the same day as
Cicero’s speech.
43
On the ability of an aedile to call a contio, see Lenaghan 1969: 73–4 (on the basis of Gell. NA
13.16.1). Morstein-Marx 2004: 57–9 notes that the only examples of assemblies being held in any
location other than the Rostra before 44 BC are those that treat legislation or those that follow a
senatorial meeting in the Temple of Castor.

(argumentum sententiamque, 8) to the Senate; this promise seems intended
mostly to allow Cicero to make an opportunistic joke: ‘Publius Clodius
complained that sacred rites have been neglected, violated, and corrupted! . . .
Now I can't wait for his next contio, which is going to be about chastity.’44
Despite allowing the opportunity for an easy attack, Cicero’s basic character-
ization is nevertheless likely to be accurate. For when he then turns to
summarize what he calls ‘the entire contio’ of Clodius (de tota contione, 8),
he implies that Clodius, after reading aloud a text of the response, focused
principally on the fourth clause: ‘that sacred and religious places are being
treated as unholy’ (LOCA SACRA ET RELIGIOSA PROFANA HABERI).45
As represented in my reconstruction, given the recent destruction by Cicero
of Clodius’ shrine to Libertas, this would intuitively be the part of the
response that Clodius would focus on. As Cicero’s speech progresses, he
makes clear that Clodius did refer to other portions of the response, but
I assume that Cicero represents accurately that Clodius focused on this
clause—it is, after all, the most damning for Cicero’s case. In support of
this assumption, Cicero himself states that it was this portion of the harus-
pical response that prompted the Senate to ask the consuls to bring the
response forward for deliberation.46 Furthermore, Cicero devotes more than
one-fourth of his speech attempting to rebut this single clause.47 Finally, as
I noted earlier, Dio characterizes the response by referring to this portion
alone.48 The relevance of this clause to Cicero’s situation, in short, was far
more damning than he pretends.
Recent scholarship reasonably estimates that a contio such as Clodius’
would normally last only about twenty minutes to at most an hour—that is,
perhaps two or three times longer than my reconstruction.49 This figure is
based in part on the length of Cicero’s extant contiones, as well as on the
fact that no building or other architectural barrier is preventing the mem-
bers of Clodius’ audience, who, as you will recall, are standing the entire
time, from simply walking away. By contrast, Cicero has a captive audience
of senators seated in the Curia and, characteristically, Cicero has plenty to
say. For my purposes, Cicero’s prolixity is a fortunate circumstance, since
his love of language offers the only means of reconstructing some of
Clodius’ own words.
44
Cic. Har. resp. 8: Publius, inquam, Clodius sacra et religiones neglegi uiolari pollui questus
est! . . . itaque nunc proxima contio eius exspectatur de pudicitia.
45
Cic. Har. resp. 9: responsum haruspicum hoc recens de fremitu in contione recitauit.
46
Cic. Har. resp. 11: decreuit senatus ut de locis sacris religiosis ad hunc ordinem referretis;
Tatum 1999: 217.
47
Cicero treats the clause at Har. resp. 9–18, 30–3, 37–9.
48
Cass. Dio 39.20.2: ἱερῶν τινων ἢ χωρίων οὐχ ὁσίων ἐποικουμένων.
49
Morstein-Marx 2004: 37–8. Contional debates on legislation tended to last longer.
SELECTED FRAGMENTS AND TESTIMONIA
When Cicero first turns to treat the haruspical response, he remarks that
Clodius ‘held a contio that has been passed on to me in its entirety’.50 The most
likely interpretation of this statement is that Cicero has access to a written text
of Clodius’ contio rather than, say, an oral summary.51 This inference would
seem to be confirmed by his reference near the close of the speech to the optimi
uiri being able to read Clodius’ speech on their own.52 For the purposes of this
investigation, the availability of a written copy allows us to assume that when
Cicero pretends to ‘quote’ Clodius, he is most probably preserving the gist, and
perhaps even the exact words, of his source. I also assume that Clodius is
present in the Curia while Cicero delivers his own speech, a circumstance that
would also presumably act as some degree of a check on his accuracy.53 Let us
now turn, if not to Clodius’ ipsissima uerba, then at least to his simillima
uerba. I follow the order of Cicero’s text, and I do not pretend to be offering a
reconstruction of Clodius’ order of presentation.
Passage I. Har. resp. 8: hominem, quo modo ipse gloriari solet,

ducentis confixum senati consultis
The first fragment under discussion is, I shall argue, a direct quotation from
the contio. Cicero has just remarked that the bulk of Clodius’ speech treated
the proper observance of religious rites and ceremonies, a subject so inappro-
priate for the speaker that, Cicero jokes, even Clodius’ own assembled sup-
porters laughed at him. Cicero proceeds to describe this ridiculed Clodius as ‘a
man—as he is himself accustomed to boast—pierced by two hundred decrees
of the Senate’. Cicero certainly presents the Latin phrase underlined above—
‘pierced by two hundred decrees of the Senate’—as if it were a quotation, but
he does not specify whether it belongs to the recent contio or simply represents
50
Cic. Har. resp. 8: contionem habuit quae est ad me tota delata.
51
See Lenaghan 1969: 74. Note that the verb deferre, from Plautus onwards, is very com-
monly used to describe the transmission of written, copied texts (TLL V,1 314.21–76
[M. Lambertz]); see, too, Cic. Fam 11.13.3 (SB 388), describing a copy of a military contio that
Decimus Brutus had received (contio eius ad me est adlata). For other examples of the texts of
contiones being circulated soon after delivery, see Mouritsen 2013: 63, 78–82, and especially the
close parallel at Att. 7.8.5 (SB 131), where Cicero receives within a week a copy of a speech given
by Antony.
52
Cic. Har. resp. 51: (sc. optimi viri) legant hanc eius contionem de qua loquor. Mouritsen
2013: 67 takes this statement as unambiguously indicating that ‘Clodius’ speeches would . . . have
been widely available’; I assume, rather, that Cicero is referring to a copy that he had had made
for himself.
53
In addition to the fact that it would be in Clodius’ best interests to attend, see Har. resp.
26–33, 35–6, 38 (containing forms of tu, tuus, etc. in reference to Clodius).

a boast that Clodius had made on several occasions in the past. An indication
that the exclamation was made recently is offered by Cicero’s subsequent
discussion: he adds that the senatorial decrees to which Clodius refers all
treated instances when Clodius violated aspects of Roman religion, in particu-
lar those rites associated with the Bona Dea from six years earlier.54 Since
Cicero also goes on immediately afterwards to identify these same profaned
religious rites of the Bona Dea with those to which the haruspical response
refers, it would appear likely that Clodius anticipated in his own contio any
Ciceronian mention of the Bona Dea scandal. In fact, Cicero later seems to
state explicitly that Clodius mentioned the Bona Dea (Har. resp. 37, discussed
below). The accumulated evidence supports the hypothesis that the alleged
quotation was uttered in the contio on the preceding day.
There are, moreover, three indications that the phrase presented as a
quotation—ducentis confixum senati consultis—is uncharacteristic of Cicero’s
normal oratorical practice, thereby signalling that the phrase was initially
spoken by Clodius. The first characteristic to consider is the separation of
the adjective ducentis from the noun it modifies, consultis.55 Adams has
surveyed throughout the history of Latin prose the incidence of this specific
type of hyperbaton, in which a verb form—here, confixum—is the word
inserted between the separated elements, and concludes that the phenomenon
is ‘artistic rather than natural to ordinary speech’.56 I have found in De
haruspicum responsis fifteen other instances of such ‘verbal hyperbaton’,
most of these at moments of high emotion, but the example being considered
here is the only one where the inserted verb is a participle.57 In fact, the
dramatic meaning of the participle—‘pierced’—further distinguishes the par-
ticular type of hyperbaton that we see here, since ‘not only the enclosing noun
phrase [here, ducentis . . . consultis] but also the intervening constituent [con-
fixum] carries focus’; Powell designates such a construction as a case of the
rare ‘double-focus’ hyperbaton and notes that ‘it could well be that this
particular kind of hyperbaton was seen as characteristic of the grand, if not
over-grand, rhetorical style. Instances in Cicero himself are not easy to find.’58
54
That this is Cicero’s own assertion is shown by the indicative sunt . . . facta (Har. resp. 8).
55
I assume that hominem is not part of the quotation, but if it were then the interlocking pairs
(noun A–adjective B–adjective A, noun B) would further increase the oddness of the word order.
56
Adams 1971: 1; cf. Powell 2010: 179 (and 184), who stresses the phenomenon as more of an
oral feature, noting that the larger category of ‘short-range’ hyperbaton seems ‘to be natural to
the language as spoken in Cicero’s time’.
57
Examples occur at Har. resp. 4 (quanta impenderet procella), 11 (ne una quidem attigit
littera), 19 (de re minime loquar dubia), 24 (ne uerbo quidem appellantur Latino), 27 (hanc tueri
religionem), 31 (priuato dicunt uestibulo), 35 (medicum intromisit suum), 39 (multos subit casus),
41 (actor esset egregius), 45 (eo fecisse auctore), 46 (eas habet contiones), 59 (tantos exhaurire
gurgites), and three times in 61, in an impassioned peroratio (meliore simus loco; unus est inferior
gradus; mea fuerunt uerba).
58
Both quotations from Powell 2010: 177, who does not consider this passage from Har. resp.

The author of Rhetorica ad Herennium uses this comparatively unusual figure
three times in his discussion of the oratorical ‘grand style’; similarly, examples
from Cicero seem reserved for passages of elevated speech.59 The one example
from Ciceronian oratory that Powell cites for the construction supplies intri-
guing support for non-Ciceronian authorship of the phrase here in De har-
uspicum responsis: that is, a purported quotation of Marcus Antonius in the
Second Philippic, another former tribune and enemy of Cicero known for his
emotional delivery.60 Moreover, an additional parallel for the more general
case of verbal hyperbaton that employs an emphatic adjective occurs in a
verbatim fragment of Clodius from a contio delivered the year before De
haruspicum responsis—‘dedicatio magnam habet religionem’—which Stroh
characterizes as delivered ‘in the tone of a pompous lecturer’.61 On the
semantic level as well, the verbal hyperbaton calls for attention. In all but
two of the other fifteen examples from our speech the adjective beginning the
hyperbaton is relatively colourless, the majority consisting of ‘preferential
words’, such as demonstrative adjectives and quantifiers, that tend to be
attracted to this position (examples include quantus, unus, hic, multus, is,
tantus, unus; the exceptions are priuato and perhaps melior).62 Contrast
these instances with the use of ducentis, an adjective that often occurs, as
here, in expressions meant to express large numbers hyperbolically. Moreover,
this non-literal use of ducentis is normally restricted to poetic contexts,
with only one other instance appearing elsewhere in Ciceronian oratory, in
an apparently humorous context.63 These combined phenomena, then—an
uncharacteristically hyperbolic adjective that is commonly registered as poetic
being stressed both syntactically and semantically through a double-focus
hyperbaton—are all unusual for Cicero and so point to Clodian authorship.
A second apparently non-Ciceronian feature of the quotation resides in the
use of the verb configo. The Thesaurus Linguae Latinae locates the earliest uses
of this verb in a military context, to describe someone or something as
‘pierced’ by weapons. The metaphorical extension of configo found here—of
someone being figuratively pierced—occurs in only one other place in Cicero’s
oratory, namely in his Twelfth Philippic, and once again in the context of
59
Rhet. Her. 4.12, with Adams 1971: 4 and Powell 2010: 177, who notes that his observations
on ‘double-focus’ hyperbaton must be considered preliminary.
60
Cic. Phil. 2.28: statim cruentum alte extollens Brutus pugionem Ciceronem nominatim
exclamauit, with Powell 2010: 177–8. For ancient assessments of Antonius’ dramatic oratorical
style, see Plut. Ant. 2.8 with Pelling 1988: 119–20.
61
Cic. Dom. 127; quotation from Stroh 2004: 363. The closest parallel that I have found for
word order and the use of a numerical adjective is in Cicero’s own words (Clu. 68: Oppianicum . . .
duobus iugulatum praeiudiciis).
62
For ‘preferential words’, see Powell 2010: 174–5, and on their emphatic placement in the hyperba-
ton, see Devine and Stephens 2006: 542–8.
63
TLL V,1 2134.50–4 (F. Vollmer); Wölfflin 1896: 188 discusses the other instance (Cic.
Sest. 135).

Marcus Antonius: eius (sc. Seruilii) sententiis confixum Antonium (12.18). An
examination of the context shows, however, that this use derives from a
quotation: it is spoken by the impii ciues who are allies with Antonius and
had ‘recalled’ (meminerant) how he had once been ‘pierced’ by Servilius’
opinions. The third and final use of the verb configo in the speeches represents
its literal use and indicates even more clearly that the verb does not originate
with Cicero, since the formulation in which configo occurs is again not
Cicero’s, but a proverb that describes the piercing of the eyes of crows.64 In
other words, the existence of the verb configo elsewhere in the oratorical works
only in a proverb and a quotation lends additional support to the probability
that this passage of De haruspicum responsis does not represent Cicero’s own
choice of words.
My third and final argument concerns morphology. In all of Cicero’s
speeches, the second-declension form of the genitive senati, accompanied by
consultum, appears only here and at Har. resp. 15; elsewhere, including twice
in this same speech (Har. resp. 14 and 16), Cicero exclusively uses the fourth-
declension genitive form senatus.65 The remaining example of this morpho-
logical peculiarity at 15 (tot senati consultis) is a clear reference back to the
instance here at section 8. Clearly Cicero wished to characterize Clodius’
speech in both places through this genitive form, which may be an archaism,
and is certainly embedded in an intentionally dramatic phrase. In my recon-
struction of the contio, I indicate that a discussion of the Bona Dea scandal
would provide a fitting context for the Clodian quotation.66
Passage II. Har. resp. 9: in ea causa esse dixit domum meam

a religiosissimo sacerdote, P. Clodio, consecratam
In the section of De haruspicum responsis immediately following Passage I,

Cicero quotes from the haruspical response for the first time. He begins with
the key fourth clause that ‘sacred and holy places have been rendered profane’
(LOCA SACRA ET RELIGIOSA PROFANA HABERI). In order to demon-
strate that such a profanation could not apply to the recent restoration of his
64
Cic. Mur. 25: Cn. Flauius, qui cornicum oculos confixerit; for the proverb, see Otto 1890: 93.
65
According to TLL IV 587.42–9 (F. Burger), senati consultum occurs, e.g., in several
inscriptions, Sisenna, and six times in Cicero’s correspondence (including a quotation from a
senatus consultum and a letter of Caelius). For Cicero’s speeches, Neue 19023: 539 cites only Har.
resp. 8 and 15 and one MS of Phil. 3.38, where the OCT prints -us. For the two occurrences of the
more regular genitive form senatus in Har. resp., the codices agree (14 and 16), whereas, in the
two places in Har. resp. that the -i form occurs, the codices split, with better testimony for senati
(for all MS evidence I rely on Maslowski 1981).
66
Even though we do not know the precise context, this quotation would seem to qualify the
claim of Morstein-Marx 2004: 230–40 that speakers at contiones do not typically attack the
Senate as an institution.

own house, Cicero’s first line of defence consists of insulting Clodius under
the guise of what he represents as another quotation: ‘(sc. Clodius) said in
reference to this clause that my house had been consecrated by a most
scrupulous priest, Publius Clodius’.67 Despite the palpable irony of Cicero’s
application of the alleged quotation, it seems plausible, even likely, that
Clodius did in fact say something akin to this in his contio. The adjective
religiosus, whose superlative form drips with sarcasm in the Ciceronian
context, where he has just reminded his listeners of the Bona Dea scandal,
commonly occurs elsewhere to insult Clodius.68 And yet the word also occurs
with greater regularity in a positive sense, even in its superlative form, to
describe someone as ‘practised in religious matters’ or ‘faithful to the obser-
vances of religion’.69 Hence, the normally positive connotation of religiosus
would make it a perfectly reasonable adjective for Clodius to have used in his
contio to describe himself and his actions. This citation, then, makes it clear
that Clodius did talk about the consecration of Cicero’s house in his contio
and, given the centrality of this event to an interpretation of the response, it is
intuitively likely that his reference had a prominence and wording analogous
to that which it is given in Cicero’s speech.
Passage III. Har. resp. 26: is mihi etiam generis sui

mentionem facit
Another portion of the response that Clodius seems to have mentioned is the
one covering the improper management of public games. This is clause 3 in
the table: LVDOS MINVS DILIGENTER FACTOS POLLVTOSQVE. Under
this head, neither Clodius nor Cicero has a clear case to make against the
other.70 Nevertheless, in his discussion of the clause Cicero notes to the Senate
that ‘(sc. Clodius) even mentions to me his ancestry’ (is mihi etiam generis sui
mentionem facit). This apparently offhand remark allows Cicero to turn
against Clodius an apparent boast that the aedile had made about his ancestral
Claudii; Cicero responds by employing the familiar trope that Clodius has
67
It is worth noting, and perhaps provides even further evidence of Clodian authorship, that
Cicero cites Clodius as using the verb consecrare since he claimed in De domo sua that Clodius
had in fact performed a dedicatio and not a consecratio (for the distinction, see Stroh 2004:
328–30).
68
See Lenaghan 1969: 77 for this and other religious terms applied sarcastically to Clodius.
69
OLD s.v. ‘religiosus’ 3 and 7a (see esp. Fest. 366L: religiosi dicuntur, qui faciendarum
praetermittendarumque rerum diuinarum secundum morem ciuitatis dilectum habent); Cicero
uses the superlative with positive connotations in this same speech, at Har. resp. 4 (describing the
flames of the Vestals).
70
The alleged disruption of the Megalesia caused by Clodius and his gang is attested only in
Har. resp. (Lenaghan 1969: 117). For Clodius’ financial constraints during his aedileship, see
Tatum 1999: 198–9.

failed to live up to the standards of his ancient and hallowed family.71 Clodius’
reference to his own venerable lineage presumably originates as another
instance in a long tradition of anti-Ciceronian invective, degrading him as
the first person in his family to reach the office of consul.72 Given the
prominence of this motif in anti-Ciceronian invective, it is not unlikely that
such a mention took place in the contio as well. If it had, it would have been
eminently suitable for Clodius to use it in the same context in which Cicero
quotes him, since both Clodius’ father and his uncle had put on successful
games in their own aedileships. In fact, Cicero praises on two occasions in the
Verrines the games that had been performed in the 90s by Clodius’ uncle,
C. Claudius.73 Clodius, then, will have cited the actions of his ancestors to
support his own claims while simultaneously denigrating Cicero’s lack of
illustrious forefathers.
Passage IV. Har. resp. 34: de Alexandrinis esse uideo sermonem
I now turn to an allusion to the contio that at first seems highly uncertain.
Cicero is treating the fifth clause of the response, which mentions how
‘ambassadors have been killed contrary to human and divine law’ (ORATORES
CONTRA IVS FASQVE INTERFECTOS). Cicero begins his discussion of this
clause with a coyly vague remark: ‘I understand that people are talking about
the Alexandrians’ (de Alexandrinis esse uideo sermonem). Even from our more
limited historical viewpoint, the notorious incident of the Alexandrian am-
bassadors from the previous year, which resulted in the death of dozens of
Egyptian ambassadors, would be the obvious inference for an unbiased obser-
ver to make regarding the response’s words here. Two considerations, how-
ever, make me hesitant to attribute this vague remark to Clodius’ contio: first,
sermo is of course an ambiguous term, and there is no clear reason why Cicero
would not have attributed these ‘conversations’ directly to Clodius if he had
in fact been involved in spreading them; and, second, if Clodius had indeed
mentioned the death of the Alexandrian envoys, it could jeopardize his
renewed relationship with Pompey, who was deeply implicated in the affair.74
And yet these points are well met by an opposing consideration: how could
Clodius ignore a clause of the response that would have resonated with every
senator, and concerning which Clodius had a solid argument for implicating
his enemy, Cicero? As recently as the previous month, in his celebrated
defence of Marcus Caelius Rufus, Cicero had spoken on behalf of Romans
71 72
Corbeill 1996: 79–83. Berry 1996: 182.
73
Cic. Ver. 4.6 and 4.133; see further Lenaghan 1969: 125–6.
74
Lenaghan 1969: 148–9.

who had been involved in the murders.75 I offer in my reconstruction a
possible way in which Clodius could have presented this interpretation.
Nevertheless, despite these arguments, this is far from being a secure fragment.
Passage V. Har. resp. 37: iste idcirco Bonam dicit quod

in tanto sibi scelere ignouerit
The next quotation concerns a brief aside involving the Bona Dea. Cicero
attributes to Clodius the following witticism: ‘(sc. Clodius) says that the
goddess is “good” because she forgave him such a horrid crime.’ As I have
noted already, I presume that Clodius would have expected Cicero to mention
the incident of the Bona Dea in his own speech—as of course he did, in
detail—and so Clodius would have been wise to pre-empt any such accusa-
tions in advance. This is the context in which I have placed this joke in my
reconstruction. Given Cicero’s vehemence and long memory, it is easy to
forget that Clodius was, in the end, acquitted of all wrongdoing. Stressing
the goddess’ ‘goodness’ serves as a clever reminder of that acquittal.
Passage VI. Har. resp. 51: legant hanc eius contionem de qua loquor;
in qua Pompeium ornat—an potius deformat? certe laudat, et unum
esse in hac ciuitate dignum huius imperi gloria dicit et significat se illi
esse amicissimum et reconciliationem esse gratiae factam
For the longest apparently verbatim quotation there is little reason to doubt
that Cicero refers to the contio under consideration. He notes that his audience
had the ability to read the contio if they chose and, were they to do so, that they
would decide for themselves whether the following remark of Clodius showed
him praising or defaming Pompey:76 ‘(sc. Clodius) asserts that there is one
man in this state worthy of the glory of the empire and he indicates that he is
himself a very close friend to him (sc. Pompey), and has been reconciled to his
favour.’ I hypothesize in my reconstruction that Clodius offered these words of
reassurance when addressing the crowd concerning the eighth clause of the
response, the warning that disaster and death will occur in Rome’s elite as a
result of discord among the optimates. By insisting that his feud with Pompey
is over, Clodius wishes to show that, contrary to what some may believe
from his past politics, he no longer wishes to foment discord in the higher
ranks; his listeners would then be expected to believe that, as a result of this
75
Cic. Cael. 23–4, with Austin 19603: 152–3.
76
Cf. Har. resp. 50: mihi medius fidius tum de illius (sc. Pompeii) amplissima dignitate
detrahere cum illum maximis laudibus ecferebat uidebatur.

rapprochement, this portion of the response does not apply to him.77 Regard-
less of precise context, however, this is a secure fragment from the Clodian
contio.
Passage VII. Har. resp. 55: in contione ausus est dicere iustitium edici
oportere, iuris dictionem intermitti, claudi aerarium, iudicia tolli
The next citation provides an example of the extent to which we can trust a
passage that has been explicitly marked as the quotation of an opponent.
Cicero has turned to the ninth clause in the response, the concern that the
state may be harmed through hidden meetings. What can be more hidden,
Cicero avers, than the plan that Clodius recently unveiled at a public meeting?
‘He dared to say in a contio that a iustitium should be declared, that the
administration of justice should be interrupted, that the treasury should be
closed, and that the courts be adjourned.’ As Lenaghan notes, the final three
elements in Cicero’s list constitute simply an enumeration of what it entails to
declare a iustitium.78 Cicero presumably adds these redundant defining
clauses in order to make Clodius’ alleged suggestion sound more dramatic
than it need be. Despite the rhetorical abundantia, however, I see no reason to
follow Lenaghan further in thinking that, if Clodius did indeed make this
proposal for a cessation of public business, he could not have been serious, or
to maintain that Cicero simply fabricated the event. One may compare
Cicero’s remarks to the pontifices from the previous year, when he rebuked
Clodius for declaring during his tribunate similar edicts that ordered the shops
to be closed.79 Rather than dismiss this evidence, I propose in my reconstruc-
tion that Clodius made the suggestion to show his interest in ensuring speedy
resolution of the current prodigy process. That the iustitium seems never to
have been enacted by the Senate need not detract from the seriousness of the
proposal. In fact, in the following decade Cicero uses precisely the same
language as he attributes here to Clodius when making recommendations,
again not followed, about the threat of Marcus Antonius (Phil. 5.31: iustitium
edici . . . dico oportere). Clodius’ proposal would have had immediate rele-
vance: freeing the senators from their judicial duties and economic obligations
would enable them to devote sufficient time to considering the response.
Although the tendency during the Republic was for the higher magistrates
to restrict the iustitium to moments of dire military emergency, Greenidge
77
Cicero is also discussing clause 8 when he offers this citation.
78
Lenaghan 1969: 184; I see no reason to follow Lenaghan in doubting whether Cicero refers
to the contio of the previous day.
79
Cic. Dom. 54 (edictis tuis tabernas claudi iubebas) and 89–90; on Clodius’ possible
motivations for the proposals during his tribunate, as well as this (apparently legal) proposal
for a iustitium, see Russell 2016.

notes that one also ‘might be declared for the purpose of directing exclusive
attention to some special sphere of administration’.80 And in fact, not only do
there exist parallels of short periods of iustitium called for ad hoc business
during the Republican period, but Cicero himself supplies a close analogy
from a year and a half later for the type of cessation of business that
I hypothesize here, when a iustitium seems to have been proposed in Novem-
ber 54 to calm political events in the capital.81 I hypothesize that Clodius, as
the aedile for the year, was considering an analogous measure at his contio on
the haruspical response. The proposed iustitium demonstrates the seriousness
with which Clodius treats the recent prodigies.
Passage VIII (?). Fabricating a fragment
I close this list of fragments and testimonia by considering a single silence.

There were surely many places in the original contio in which Clodius
commented on a clause of the response, but about which Cicero chose, for
whatever reason, to make no direct mention. Since I began by manufacturing a
Clodian speech, it therefore seems fitting to close by fabricating the existence
of a fragment. Let us consider the tenth clause of the response: ‘that honos
(‘honour’ or perhaps ‘political office’) not be increased for those who are lesser
and have been driven out’ (NE DETERIORIBVS REPVLSISQVE HONOS
AVGEATVR). Cicero treats the actual language of this clause only briefly, to
point out that the participle repulsi refers not, as one might expect, to someone
who has suffered a repulsa, a defeat in an election. Rather, he asserts, the
adjective points to someone who has been ‘rejected’ by his neighbours and
fellow citizens, both those citizens residing in the city and those living in the
countryside (Har. resp. 56). He then proceeds to show, predictably, that by this
definition Clodius belongs not only to the deteriores—for this charge Cicero
offers only an assertion—but to the repulsi as well. But if we read the same
clause from Clodius’ point of view, a far more convincing context becomes
available. Clodius has here the opportunity to point out not only that he had
never lost an election in the past but that he is even currently serving a term as
elected curule aedile and that hence the notion of repulsa cannot possibly
apply to his career. Instead, ‘honour being increased for those that have been
driven out’ would seem, in the spring of 56, a perfectly apt description of none
other than Cicero, the restored exile. It is hard to imagine that Clodius would
not have recognized this opportunity and duly exploited it in his speech on the
previous day. A lexical issue prevents complete acceptance of this notion,
80
Greenidge 1901: 175; cf. Mommsen 1887–83: 1.263–4.
81
Cic. Att. 4.19.1 (SB 93). I follow Shackleton Bailey 1965–70: 2.92 and 225 for text and
details.

however. I have not found in Classical Latinity an unambiguous use of the
verb repello to refer precisely to the act of exile; Cicero does, however, use the
word to refer to analogous instances of driving someone out of political
authority, even applying the term exsul to the person so ejected.82 These
instances show that it would have been unproblematic for Clodius to expand
slightly the attested semantic range of the verb in order to apply it to Cicero’s
recent exile. And, depending on how much credence one puts into verbal slips,
Cicero’s speech may provide lexical evidence that Clodius did in fact make
such a reference. I find it intriguing that, in the very context of discussing this
clause of the response, Cicero uses not repello, but the related verb depello.
What is the context? Clodius driving Cicero into exile!83
CO NCLUSION
However convinced by this final argument one may be, its results exceed any
reasonable description of the kinds of evidence that should be available in a
new edition of the fragments of the Republican orators. But my principal aim
here has not been merely to niggle, claiming to find one or two fragments that
Malcovati had overlooked.84 Rather, I wish to show how a close reading of
Cicero—complemented, granted, by a kind of imaginative reconstruction of
which Malcovati could not avail herself—can recover the gist of an entire
speech, including its basic argument and even a few ipsissima uerba, that has
until now been lost to us.85
APPENDIX
Reconstruction of the full (?) text of the response in indirect statement (after Thulin
1906–19: 78 and Maslowski 1981). Numbers in square brackets correspond to section
numbers in Cic. Har. resp.
82
See especially Cic. Cat. 1.27: tantum profeci, cum te a consulatu reppuli, ut exsul potius
temptare quam consul uexare rem publicam posses; De or. 1.46: repelli oratorem a gubernaculis
ciuitatum . . . uidebam.
83
Cic. Har. resp. 58: (sc. Clodius) primum eum ciuem ui, ferro, periculis urbe, omnibus patriae
praesidiis depulit quem uos patriae conseruatorem esse saepissime iudicaritis.
84
It is worth mentioning that still other testimonia for Clodius occur in Cic. Har. resp., but
they do not clearly pertain to Clodius’ contio. For direct quotations, see Har. resp. 48: in ipsum
Cn. Pompeium, auctorem, ut praedicare est solitus, consiliorum suorum, inuehi coepit (from
59 BC?); 49: cum in contionibus diceret uelle se in Carinis aedificare alteram porticum, quae
Palatio responderet (summer 58 BC?).
85
I would like to thank Catherine Steel, Amy Russell, and Coulter George for their helpful
comments on this chapter.
Prodigy and expiation

1
QVOD IN AGRO LATINIENSI AVDITVS EST STREPITVS CVM
FREMITV, [20]
2
POSTILIONES ESSE IOVI SATVRNO NEPTVNO TELLVRI DIS
CAELESTIBVS; [20]
Sources of divine anger:
3
LVDOS MINVS DILIGENTER FACTOS POLLVTOSQVE, [21]
4
LOCA SACRA ET RELIGIOSA PROFANA HABERI, [9]
5
ORATORES CONTRA IVS FASQVE INTERFECTOS, [34]
6
FIDEM IVSQVE IVRANDVM NEGLECTVM, [36]
7
SACRIFICIA VETVSTA OCCVLTAQVE MINVS DILIGENTER FACTA
POLLVTAQVE; [37]
Potential dangers:
8
NE PER OPTIMATIVM DISCORDIAM DISSENSIONEMQVE PATRIBVS
PRINCIPIBVSQVE CAEDES PERICVLAQVE CREENTVR AVXILIOQVE
DIVINITVS DEFICIANTVR, QVA RE AD VNIVS IMPERIVM RES REDEAT
EXERCITVSQVE †APVLSVS DIMINVTIOQVE ACCEDAT†, [40]
9
NE OCCVLTIS CONSILIIS RES PVBLICA LAEDATVR, [55]
10
NE DETERIORIBVS REPVLSISQVE HONOS AVGEATVR, [56]
11
NE REIPVBLICAE STATVS COMMVTETVR. [60]
(Recommendations for expiation presumably followed in the original response)
1
Whereas a clash, accompanied by a rumbling, was heard in the ager Latiniensis,
2
rites are due in reparation to Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Tellus, and the
heavenly gods.
[The gods are angered]
3
that games have been performed with insufficient care and polluted;
4
that sacred and religious places are being treated as unholy;
5
that ambassadors have been killed contrary to human and divine law;
6
that promises and oaths have been ignored;
7
that ancient secret sacrifices have been performed with insufficient care and
polluted.
[One must take care]
8
that the elders and leaders not meet with murder and danger on account of
discordant quarrelling among the elite, and that there not be a lack of divine help,
with the result that the state may pass back into the rule of one man and the army
[text uncertain];
9
that the state not be harmed by secret meetings;
10
that lesser men, and those having suffered defeat, not receive honours;
11
that the form of the state not be subverted.
11
‘Certain gentlemen say . . . ’

Cicero, Cato, and the Debate on the Validity
of Clodius’ Laws
Kit Morrell
In 56 BC, perhaps some time in June, M. Cato returned from Cyprus and
proceeded to defend the validity of P. Clodius’ tribunician legislation, which
M. Cicero was proposing to annul.1 Put briefly, Cicero argued that Clodius’
adoption into the plebs had been contrary to the auspices and therefore that
his tribunate and all his laws were invalid; Cato replied that, while Clodius’
laws were bad, they were technically valid. The only explicit evidence for this
debate comes from Plutarch and Dio; however, traces can also be found in
Cicero’s speeches of 57 and 56, which refer repeatedly to what ‘certain
gentlemen’ said or did. From mid 56, I argue, Cato took his place among
these anonymous gentlemen.
This chapter combines Cicero’s evidence with that of the later sources to
reconstruct the origins, arguments, and significance of the debate between
Cicero and Cato. On one level, the affair was a storm in a teacup: Cicero’s legal
argument was rightly refuted by Cato and other leading senators, and his
proposal that Clodius’ laws should be annulled went no further than a heated
exchange in the Senate. Nonetheless, the debate had considerable political
significance. It was the cause of a major falling-out between Cicero and Cato
and, it seems, a factor in Cicero’s decision to align himself with Caesar. The
episode is also instructive for the study of Roman oratory. In particular, it
highlights the importance of reading Cicero as one voice in a dialogue with
other speakers—even when he suppresses their names.
1
All dates are BC and all translations my own, unless specified otherwise. I would like to thank
those who participated in the colloquium in Torino, as well as Sarah Lawrence, Hannah Mitchell,
Sascha Morrell, Kathryn Welch, and the editors of this volume for their helpful comments on
written versions.
192 Kit Morrell

The process of reconstruction is necessarily complex, engaging with prob-
lems of legal, chronological, and prosopographical detail in order to under-
stand the dispute between Cicero and Cato and its broader significance.
I begin by tracing the origins of the debate back to Caesar’s legislation and
M. Bibulus’ sky-watching in 59, and reconstructing the legal arguments on
each side—a task complicated not only by Cicero’s failure to name his
opponents, but by his distortions of legal and augural detail. I then argue
that Cato returned from Cyprus earlier in 56 than is generally thought and
that Cicero’s speech De prouinciis consularibus represents his reply to Cato’s
arguments, although the precise chronology remains uncertain. Next,
I consider the broader political and legal significance of the dispute, before
returning to De prouinciis consularibus to offer some tentative identifications
of Cicero’s other unnamed interlocutors, among whom I would number
Bibulus and Cicero’s oratorical rival, Q. Hortensius. In doing so, I hope not
only to recover lost voices but also to contribute new understanding of the
politics and chronology of the year 56.
CATO, OTHER ‘ GENTLEMEN’ ,

AND THE LEGAL DISPUTE
Cicero’s letters from 58 lament his betrayal by supposed friends who, out of
jealousy, had failed to prevent his exile—Q. Hortensius, in particular.2 Gen-
erally, however, the group is not named, but defined by language: terms like
scelus, inuidia, and simulatio. Cicero continued to criticize them after his
return,3 not only in private letters but also, it seems, in the Senate.4 By this
time they had compounded the offence by defending and even encouraging
2
Cic. Att. 3.9.2 (SB 54), 3.10.2 (SB 55), 3.13.2 (SB 59), 3.15.2, 7 (SB 60), 3.19.3 (SB 64); Q Fr.
1.3.5, 8 (SB 3), 1.4.1–2 (SB 4); Fam. 14.1.1 (SB 8). Att. 3.9.2 (SB 54) singles out Hortensius; Q Fr.
1.3.8 (SB 3) Hortensius and Q. Arrius. Atticus was not exempt either: see Att. 4.1.1 (SB 73) and Q
Fr. 1.4.1 (SB 4) with Welch 1996: 458–60.
3
E.g. Cic. Att. 4.5.1 (SB 80), 4.6.3 (SB 83) (naming Hortensius); Fam. 1.7.7 (SB 18), 1.9.10, 15,
20 (SB 20). Indeed, a letter to Lentulus Spinther refers to ‘those same men whom I often indicate
but do not name’ (Fam. 1.9.10 (SB 20): idem illi quos saepe signific[ati]o neque appello).
4
The certi homines criticized at Cic. Dom. 29–30 probably include these men. Elsewhere the
charge of inflaming Pompey’s suspicions is directed explicitly at Gabinius, Piso, and Vatinius
(see Sest. 133; Pis. 76; Kaster 2006: 215–16) but, if they alone were meant, we would expect Cicero
to name them (cf. Dom. 55). Instead Cicero says that it is in the public interest to conceal the
identity of those responsible (Dom. 30), and indeed he goes on to deny (Dom. 95) that the boni
had failed him. However, references to insidiosi amici, scelus, and criticism of Cicero’s renewed
friendship with Pompey (cf. e.g. Att. 4.5.2 (SB 80); Fam. 1.9.10, 20 (SB 20)) suggest identification
with the false friends of the letters from 58; cf. Fam. 1.9.10 (SB 20) for the designation of this
group as ‘certi homines’.
‘Certain gentlemen say . . . ’ Cicero, Cato and Clodius’ Laws 193

Clodius,5 and by upholding the validity of his laws while attacking Caesar’s.6
Thus we read in De domo sua, delivered shortly after Cicero’s return, that
‘certain clarissimi uiri, the principes ciuitatis, have opined on several occasions
that you (sc. Clodius) were able legally (iure) to bring legislation before the
plebs’, and a little further on, ‘because the measure you (sc. Clodius) passed
regarding me was directed at a citizen and one who had done the state great
service, they said that you had proclaimed the funeral of the state, but because
you acted in accordance with the auspices, they said you acted legally.’7 The
latter passage in particular seems to refer to a particular episode, and the
identities of the uiri in question were surely well known to Cicero’s senatorial
audience. Again, Hortensius was likely chief among them.8 Cicero suppresses
their names, however, presumably because these were men with whom he
wished to remain on good terms, despite his disagreement and disappoint-
ment with their conduct.9
These men were friends and political associates of Cato, but Cato was not
among them. Cicero wrote in 58 that he considered Cato entirely innocent,
and wished that he had valued Cato’s fides over the simulatio of others (Cic.
Att. 3.15.2 (SB 60)). In De domo sua, Cicero praised Cato (20–3, 65–6) while
denouncing the scelus of other optimates (28–30). It is not clear what Cato
had done to distinguish himself from the others, but possibly he had advised
Cicero to do what he himself did and leave Rome on a special commission.10
Plutarch (Cat. Min. 35.1) and Cassius Dio (38.17.4) both report that Cato
urged Cicero to leave Rome, and Cicero himself later justified Cato’s deci-
sion to obey Clodius’ law and accept a commission to liquidate the property
of the king of Cyprus (Sest. 61–3). Even if some modern scholarship has
detected a measure of backhandedness in Cicero’s words,11 it is significant
that Cicero publicly and generously praises Cato in De domo sua and Pro
Sestio and depicts him as a fellow victim.12 Moreover, Cato was absent from
5
Cic. Har. resp. 46, 48, 50, 52; Fam. 1.9.10, 15, 19 (SB 20).
6
See e.g. Cic. Dom. 42, Prov. cons. 45, and below.
7
Cic. Dom. 42: . . . quosdam clarissimos uiros, principes ciuitatis, aliquot locis iudicasse te cum
plebe iure agere potuisse . . . quod de me ciui ita de re publica merito tulisses, funus te indixisse rei
publicae, quod saluis auspiciis tulisses, iure egisse dicebant. Comparison with other passages
confirms the identification of these men with Hortensius et al.: see e.g. Har. resp. 48; Prov. cons.
45; Fam. 1.9.10 (SB 20).
8
See below, where I argue that the ‘funus rei publicae’ comment might be attributed to him.
9
Cf. Lenaghan 1969: 170. Cicero had all the more reason to be cautious while a decision on
his house was pending. By contrast, he never refrains from identifying outright enemies (such as
Clodius and A. Gabinius).
10
In April 59, Cicero had expected Cato’s criticism in particular if he accepted a commission
to Egypt (Att. 2.5.1 (SB 25)), but circumstances were very different in 58. Cf. Att. 2.19.5 (SB 39).
11
Stem 1999: 176–81; Nisbet 1964: 66.
12
Cic. Dom. 65; Sest. 60–3.
194 Kit Morrell

Rome for most of the period in which Cicero felt other optimates had
become too cosy with Clodius.13
The situation changed in 56, after Cato returned from Cyprus and proceed-
ed to defend the validity of Clodius’ laws. The episode, known only from
Plutarch and Dio, marked the climax of a renewed struggle between Cicero
and Clodius in 56. Clodius had attempted once again to destroy Cicero’s
house; Cicero retaliated, apparently, by ascending the Capitol and tearing
down the tablets recording Clodius’ acts as tribune.14 When the Senate met
to discuss the matter, Cicero seems to have proposed the formal annulment of
Clodius’ laws.15 According to Plutarch, his argument was ‘that Clodius had
passed unlawfully from the patricians into the tribunate, and that none of his
enactments were valid.’16 Cato, on the other hand, insisted that ‘Clodius had
not obtained the tribunate illegally, having transferred from the patricians into
a plebeian house as permitted by law.’17 If he had exercised his office badly,
said Cato, he should be brought to account through the regular channels,18
but ‘it would be terrible and violent for the Senate to vote the annulment of
so many decrees and transactions,’ including his own administration in
Cyprus and Byzantium.19 The result was a significant falling-out between
Cicero and Cato,20 and from this point Cato seems to join the ranks of
anonymous ‘gentlemen’.21
The debate, as we have it in Plutarch, is deceptively simple: Cicero declared
that Clodius’ adoption, and thus his election as tribune, had been illegal; Cato
that they had not. The status of the laws would seem to follow. But the basis on
which Cicero claimed Clodius’ adoption was illegal, and the mechanism by
which that illegality impugned subsequent acts, are left unexplained. For a
13
Cato had left Rome shortly after Cicero in 58 (Sest. 54–5) and did not return until 56
(see below).
14
Cass. Dio 39.20–2 gives the fullest account; cf. Plut. Cic. 34; Cat. Min. 40. Cic. Att. 4.7.2 (SB
77) attests the threat of violence against Cicero’s house in April 56.
15
Plut. Cic. 34.2; Cat. Min. 40.2: note the use of ἀναίρεσις/ἀναιρέω.
16
Plut. Cic. 34.2: ὡς παρανόμως ἐκ πατρικίων εἰς δημαρχίαν παρέλθοι, καὶ κύριον οὐδὲν εἴη τῶν
πεπραγμένων ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ. At Cat. Min. 40.2, Cicero’s complaint is that Clodius had become
tribune illegally. Cf. Cass. Dio 39.21.4. On the relationship between Plutarch’s Cicero and
Cato, see e.g. Geiger 1971: 294; Pelling 1979: 82.
17
Cic. Cat. Min. 40.2: παρανόμως μὲν οὖν <οὐ> δήμαρχον αἱρεθῆναι τὸν Κλώδιον, ἐκ πατρικίων
μεταστάντα νόμου διδόντος εἰς δημοτικὸν οἶκον.
18
Plut. Cat. Min. 40.2. Cato himself professed disapproval of Clodius’ tribunate (cf. Cic. 34.2).
19
Plut. Cic. 34.2: δεινὸν δὲ καὶ βίαιον ἀποφαίνων ἀναίρεσιν ψηφίσασθαι δογμάτων καὶ πράξεων
τοσούτων τὴν σύγκλητον. At Cat. Min. 40.2, Cato presents Cicero’s proposal as an attack on the
office of tribune. In Cass. Dio 39.22.1–2, Cato is simply concerned to defend his acts in Cyprus.
20
Plut. Cic. 34.3; Cat. Min. 40.2; Cass. Dio 39.22.1.
21
Cato’s name does not occur again in Cicero’s extant works until February 55 (Q Fr. 2.8.3
(SB 13)); however, I argue below that he is alluded to in Prov. cons. and in letters of 56–55. He is
clearly among the ‘quidam homines’ of Fam. 1.8.4 (SB 19) (c.February–March 55: Shackleton
Bailey 1977: 1.306).

more nuanced view we must turn to Cicero’s evidence, and to Caesar’s
legislation in 59.
In 59 BC the consul M. Bibulus famously retreated to his house and ‘watched
the skies’ for most of the year with the intention of vitiating all laws passed by
his colleague and enemy Julius Caesar.22 This seruatio (‘watching’) must be
distinguished from obnuntiatio,23 the actual announcement, in person, of a
contrary sign, which obliged the presiding magistrate to dismiss an assembly
or else run the risk of having his legislation annulled by the Senate on the
grounds that it had been passed contrary to the auspices. It is at best doubtful
whether seruatio alone was sufficient to vitiate legislation.24 What matters,
however, is that, in the 50s BC, a significant body of senatorial opinion was
prepared to accept that laws passed while the skies were being watched were
uitio latae (procedurally flawed on augural grounds).25 Cicero could claim the
support of the augural books and some individual augurs for this view,26 and it
may be that Bibulus went beyond simple seruatio by announcing not only his
intention of watching the skies but also that he had actually observed adverse
omens—a kind of ‘obnuntiatio by edict’.27 In any case, in 58 a real possibility
existed that the Senate would in fact annul Caesar’s legislation.28
Among the affected laws was the lex curiata authorizing Clodius’ adoption
into the plebs.29 For this reason (among others)30 Cicero argued in De domo
sua that Clodius was never a plebeian and never legally a tribune, and
22
References in MRR 2.59.
23
On the distinction, see Linderski 1995: 193.
24
Bleicken (1975: 455–6) and Libero (1992: 57–9, 62–3) argue that it was; however, Linderski
(1965: 425–6; 1985: 224–5; 1995: 193) makes a strong case that announcement in person was
required (cf. Lintott 19992: 144–5). The question was evidently controversial at the time; one of
Clodius’ laws of 58 may have been designed to clarify the situation (see Mitchell 1986; Tatum
1999: 132).
25
Cf. Tatum 1999: 128–30 and 2008: 73–4; Burckhardt 1988: 198–9; Beard, North, and Price
1998: 1.127–8.
26
Cic. Dom. 39–40; Har. resp. 48; cf. Linderski 1985: 224; 1986: 2209–10.
27
Suet. Iul. 20.1 suggests this (per edicta obnuntiaret). Cf. Bleicken 1975: 455–6; Burckhardt
1988: 197–8; Heikkilä 1993: 140; Tatum 1999: 129; Grillo 2015: 287. It may have been relevant
that Bibulus was prevented by violence from making any announcement in person.
28
In 58 the praetors C. Memmius and L. Domitius Ahenobarbus launched an inquiry into
Caesar’s acta on the grounds that they had been carried out contrary to the auspices and the
laws (Suet. Iul. 23; Ner. 2.2; cf. Cic. Sest. 40), Cicero seems to have made moves in the same
direction (Cic. Pis. 79; Fam. 1.9.9 (SB 20)), and Clodius had turned on Caesar, arguing that all
his laws should be annulled by the Senate as contrary to the auspices (Cic. Dom. 40). Cicero
(Sest. 40) later attributed the failure of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus to protect him in 58 to
their terror that all the measures of the previous year would be annulled (cf. Sest. 135; Prov.
cons. 43).
29
Cic. Dom. 34, 39–40; Har. resp. 48. On the technicalities of Clodius’ transitio, see Tatum
1999: 104.
30
Cic. Dom. 34–42. The argument based on Bibulus’ actions was probably the strongest
(Tatum 1999: 104–5).
196 Kit Morrell

therefore that all his measures were illegal.31 He seems to have taken the same
line in his dispute with Cato: that Clodius’ laws should be annulled because of
the augural flaw affecting his adoption in 59.32
Cicero may well have expected Cato to agree. Cato shared the view of other
leading senators that Caesar’s laws were uitio latae (Cic. Sest. 61) and his
associates had led the attack on Caesar’s legislation in 59 and afterwards.33
More specifically, it was the actions of Cato’s son-in-law and political ally
Bibulus that had impugned the lex curiata,34 and Bibulus had declared
publicly that Clodius was not a tribune at all (tribunum non fuisse), because
he had been adopted contra auspicia (Cic. Dom. 40). But instead, to Cicero’s
disgust, Cato upheld the validity of Clodius’ tribunate. Indeed, Plutarch’s Cato
states explicitly that Clodius’ transfer to the plebs had been legal (‘νόμου’, Cat.
Min. 40.2).
On the face of it, this is hard to reconcile with Cato’s attitude to Caesar’s
laws. But it was quite possible for Cato to maintain both that the lex curiata
was uitio lata and that Clodius’ adoption had been legal. A lex uitio lata was
not a nullity, as Cicero implied,35 but remained in effect unless and until it was
abrogated by the people or annulled by decree of the Senate36—that is, to
adopt the language of modern contract law, it was not void ab initio but
voidable. Thus, for example, Caesar’s laws remained in force, despite the
question mark over their status, and the agrarian laws of M. Livius Drusus
(tr. pl. 91) and M. Antonius (cos. 44, 34), which were in fact annulled,
functioned long enough to see commissioners elected and (in the latter case,
31
Cic. Dom. 34, 39–42. Cicero does not press the argument, since the clarissimi uiri disagreed
(Dom. 42), and the question of Cicero’s house was settled under pontifical rather than augural
law, but note the praeteritio at Dom. 34: uidesne me non radicitus euellere omnis actiones tuas
neque illud agere, quod apertum est, te omnino nihil gessisse iure, non fuisse tribunum plebis,
hodie esse patricium? (‘Do you (sc. Clodius) see that I am not tearing up all your proceedings by
the roots, nor pursuing what is clear: that you did nothing at all legally; that you were not a
tribune of the plebs; that you are today a patrician?’). Cf. Cass. Dio 39.11.2.
32
It seems likely (however tenuous from a technical perspective) that Cicero claimed Clodius’
laws were uitio latae on this basis. This is strongly implied by Prov. cons. 45, where Cicero is
contending with the view of certain uiri that Clodius’ laws were passed saluis auspiciis (see
below). Moreover, in most (and perhaps all) known cases of annulment by the Senate, the laws in
question were judged to have infringed the auspices (see Heikkilä 1993).
33
See e.g. Plut. Cat. Min. 31–2; Suet. Iul. 23–24.1. Cato himself later threatened to prosecute
Caesar for his acts as consul (Suet. Iul. 30.3).
34
Indeed, it is conceivable that Cato, another proponent of the ‘Archilochean’ style (Plut. Cat.
Min. 7.2), had a hand in the composition of Bibulus’ edicts in 59 (Att. 2.20.6 (SB 40), 2.21.3–4
(SB 41); cf. Taylor 1949: 136).
35
Cf. e.g. Cic. Sest. 135: C. Caesaris, legem de pecuniis repetundis non putat esse legem? (‘Does
he (sc. Vatinius) think that Caesar’s law on extortion was not a law?’); Dom. 53: si per uim tulisti,
tamenne lex est? (‘If you carried it by violence, is it nevertheless a law?’). L. Cotta and Pompey did
express the opinion that Clodius’ law exiling Cicero was not a law at all, but on different grounds
(see below).
36
Linderski 1986: 2165 n. 54; cf. Nocera 1940: 194–7; Heikkilä 1993: 133. On abrogatio, see
e.g. Crawford 1996: 2.12–13.

at least) active in assigning land.37 Moreover, even if the lex curiata had been
annulled, it is unlikely that the annulment would have (automatically) invali-
dated an adoption made while the law was in force, let alone laws passed the
following year.38 The form of decree by which the Senate ‘annulled’ laws
suggests this: it did not go so far as to declare that the law in question had
never existed, but rather decreed that the people were not bound by it
(populum non teneri).39 The present tense of the infinitive should mean that
the law ceased to be binding only from the date of the decree, which is what we
would expect anyway. Retroactivity was generally condemned and seems to
have required explicit formulation.40 Thus, when Cicero proposed the annul-
ment of all of M. Antonius’ laws in 43 (Phil. 5.10), he also proposed the
separate and specific annulment of the acts of the land commissioners under
the lex agraria (5.21). Admittedly Cicero claims that their actions could not be
valid anyway (rata esse non possunt) once Antonius’ laws were annulled, but,
even if we take this as a genuine statement of legal opinion rather than a
rhetorical fudge, the very fact of Cicero’s proposal, and of the Senate’s decree
on L. Caesar’s motion,41 shows that the point was far from settled. Further-
more, the actions of the land commissioners were not analogous to Clodius’
laws, which had been sanctioned in their own right by a vote of the plebs. On
balance, then, I think it most unlikely that the Senate in 56 would have
accepted as automatic what in 43 required a specific decree, even if Cicero
had also proposed annulling Caesar’s laws.
The nature of auspicia is probably also relevant here. Even if a procedural
flaw could ‘infect’ subsequent enactments in the way Cicero alleged, we should
37
On the annulment of Drusus’ laws, see e.g. Asc. Corn. 68–69C; Cic. Dom. 41; Leg. 2.14, 31;
Diod. Sic. 37.10.3; Libero 1992: 96–7. For the election of commissioners, see CIL 6.1312, 10.44;
Dart 2014: 83–4. On Antonius’ law, see MRR 2.44 and below.
38
This may also explain Clodius’ willingness to attack Caesar’s laws when (according to
Cicero) his own legislation would fall along with them (Dom. 40; Har. resp. 48). Scholars have
tended to accept Cicero’s interpretation and seek the explanation in Clodius’ character and
politics (e.g. Lintott 1967: 166; Tatum 1999: 173–4; Tan 2013: 126); interestingly, even Linderski
(1985: 223–5), who denies that Bibulus’ seruatio had any effect, accepts that, if it had, Clodius’
laws would have fallen along with Caesar’s. In my view the reason was technical: Caesar’s laws
could be annulled without affecting Clodius’.
39
See e.g. Cicero’s sententia at Phil. 5.10: eas leges quas M. Antonius tulisse dicitur omnis
censeo per uim et contra auspicia latas eisque legibus populum non teneri (‘I judge that the laws
which M. Antonius is said to have carried were all carried by violence and contrary to the
auspices and that the people are not bound by these laws’). Cf. Asc. Corn. 68–9C; Dom. 41;
Linderski 1986: 2165 n. 54.
40
See e.g. App. B Civ. 2.23 on Pompey’s lex de ambitu of 52. Even Caesar and Cato were at
one in opposing retroactivity (Cass. Dio 38.17.1–2; Plut. Cat. Min. 48.3). The lack of any
reference to past time in the decree of annulment is the more significant in view of the usual
precision of Roman drafting (compare, e.g., the epigraphic lex agraria, where the specification of
‘est eritue’, ‘obuenit obueneritue’, etc. is standard).
41
Cic. Phil. 6.14. The decree annulled the acts of the septemuiri; we do not know whether it
also denied the existence of the commission, as Cicero had proposed (Phil. 5.21).
198 Kit Morrell

not assume that the same applied to an augural flaw. The auspices were, in
essence, divine signs which pertained to a particular day and did not express
any judgement on the content of proposed laws or other undertakings.42
Magistrates faced with contrary signs could and did simply reconvene the
assembly on another day, when Jupiter might have quite a different opinion.43
It should follow that the auspices of 59 had no bearing on the laws of 58, since
the gods had another opportunity to show their will. That, presumably, was
the point made by the clarissimi uiri when they insisted that, because Clodius
himself had respected the auspices, his laws, unlike Caesar’s, had been passed
iure (Cic. Dom. 42). Cato probably shared their views.44
It follows that, since the lex curiata had not been annulled, Clodius’ adoption
could legitimately be described as legal, as could his tribunate and his tribun-
ician laws. This, I suggest, was Cato’s response to Cicero, coupled with a more
pragmatic argument: even if the Senate could annul Clodius’ legislation, for the
sake of stable government it should not.45 Cicero himself provides confirmation
that Cato considered a lex uitio lata binding unless annulled: in Pro Sestio,
justifying Cato’s decision to accept the Cyprus commission, Cicero reminded
the audience that Cato had ‘sworn an oath to obey other laws, which he
considered to have been iniuste rogatae’46—that is, uitio latae.47 Thus, while it
might seem that Cato acted hypocritically, in fact Cicero was guilty of spurious
reasoning which treated as void acts which were, at best, voidable.
A potential obstacle to this reconstruction is that, in Plutarch, Cato appears
to accept that annulling Clodius’ laws would also have the effect of annulling
his own administration of Cyprus.48 This statement invokes the same ques-
tionable logic that Cicero employed in impugning Clodius’ laws, namely that
annulling one law would somehow automatically and retroactively invalidate
acts performed while that law was in force. But ‘Cato’s’ comment probably
should not be taken at face value: either source or subject could be speaking
imprecisely, as Cicero certainly did in putting his side; the matter was as much
42
See Linderski 1986: 2205, 2295.
43
Note the augural formula alio die, ‘to another day’ (e.g. Cic. Phil. 2.83; Leg. 2.31), and
Cicero’s description of days (not proposals) cancelled by obnuntiatio (Att. 4.17.4 (SB 91)).
44
I argue below that Cic. Prov. cons. 45 is replying to this argument, and to Cato.
45
See Plut. Cic. 34.2 and below on Cato’s unfolding of the logical consequences of Cicero’s
proposal. It may be relevant that the Senate’s power to annul legislation was a relatively recent
acquisition and probably still controversial (see below).
46
Cic. Sest. 61: quasi uero ille non in alias quoque leges, quas iniuste rogatas putaret, iam ante
iurarit! Cicero is alluding particularly to Caesar’s agrarian law (cf. Plut. Cat. Min. 32; Cass. Dio
38.7.1–2). Cf. Cass. Dio 38.7.6 on Cato and Caesar’s extortion law.
47
See Linderski 1986: 2204–5; Heikkilä 1993: 121.
48
Plut. Cat. Min. 40.2: εἰ δ’ ἀναιρεῖ τις ὅσα δημαρχῶν ἔπραξεν, ἀναιρεῖσθαι πᾶσαν αὐτοῦ τὴν
περὶ Κύπρον πραγματείαν, καὶ μὴ γεγονέναι τὴν ἀποστολὴν νόμιμον ἄρχοντος παρανόμου
ψηφισαμένου (‘If everything he (sc. Clodius) had effected as tribune was abolished, all his own
(sc. Cato’s) arrangements regarding Cyprus would be abolished, and his expedition would not
have been legal, an illegal magistrate having voted it to him’).

one of dignitas as of technicalities, as we shall see. It is also possible that Cato’s
intention was to point out the logical consequence of Cicero’s argument,
namely to vitiate all acts that ultimately derived their authority from a flawed
law, at however many degrees of remove—a scenario which would quickly
become unworkable. Moreover, Cato’s position was materially different to
Clodius’ because he was still awaiting the confirmation of his acts in Cyprus:49
although, on my reading of the evidence, annulling Clodius’ laws would not in
itself have rendered Cato’s mission illegal, it might well have afforded grounds
for obstructing the ratification of his acta.50 On balance, then, it seems most
likely that Cato argued as I have suggested—that Clodius’ laws were valid
because Caesar’s laws had not been annulled—and we will shortly find some
support for this view in Cicero’s De prouinciis consularibus.
Another apparent contradiction is that between Cato’s argument and
Bibulus’ statement that Clodius had never been a tribune.51 This might reflect
a significant point of difference between the two, which is certainly possible.52
Interestingly, as governor of Syria in 50, Bibulus pointedly disregarded the
account-keeping provisions of Caesar’s lex repetundarum (Cic. Fam. 2.17.2
(SB 117)), whereas Cato, as praetor, had observed the law (Cass. Dio 38.7.6).
But Bibulus’ point may have been political rather than legal; likewise his views
on Clodius’ laws, declared informally at a contio, need have been no more
accurate than Cicero’s various pronouncements. In fact Bibulus too seems to
have acknowledged the need for formal annulment, hence his attempt to
secure a senatus consultum cancelling Caesar’s lex agraria.53
CATO’S RETURN F ROM CYPRUS AND CICERO’S

S P E E C H DE PROVINCIIS CONSVLARIBVS
The outcome of the Senate meeting, if any, is not known, besides the personal
consequences for Cicero and Cato, though, as Clodius’ laws remained in
49
Cass. Dio 39.22.1–2 reports that Cato took Clodius’ side because he was proud of his
achievements ‘and above all was seeking their confirmation’ (καὶ περὶ παντὸς τὸ βεβαιωθῆναι
αὐτὰ ἐποιεῖτο).
50
Note that Clodius challenged at least some aspects of Cato’s administration, with support
from Caesar: Cass. Dio 39.23.
51
Cic. Dom. 40. Note also Prov. cons. 36, if Butler and Cary (1924: 69) and Grillo (2015:
245–6) are right in identifying Bibulus as the senator who denied that the lex Vatinia was a law
(esse legem neget), but that statement, too, probably should not be taken literally, especially as the
proposal in question did not disturb Caesar’s command under Vatinius’ law.
52
While Cato and Bibulus generally cooperated (see e.g. Suet. Iul. 19.1; Plut. Cat. Min. 31.5,
32.2, 47.3), neither their political alliance nor their marriage connection precluded occasional
disagreements (cf. Brunt 1988: ch. 7).
53
Cass. Dio 38.6.4. Bibulus had attempted to obstruct Caesar’s first agrarian law by obnun-
tiatio proper but was prevented by violence (Suet. Iul. 20.1).
200 Kit Morrell

force,54 it seems safe to assume that Cato’s view prevailed, if it even came to a
vote. But Cicero does seem to have allowed himself a public retort, which is
preserved in De prouinciis consularibus. In my view, Cicero’s comments in
that speech can be read as a response to Cato, along with other unnamed
‘gentlemen’. Naturally, that entails dating the clash between Cicero and Cato
prior to the debate on the consular provinces,55 which almost certainly took
place in late June or early July.56 However, most scholars hold that Cato did
not return to Rome from Cyprus until later in the year. Before proceeding
further, therefore, it is necessary to consider the date of Cato’s return.
Stein and Kumaniecki argued that Cato returned in ‘late Summer’, perhaps
September, while Mommsen and Meyer thought Cato returned only at the end
of 56.57 The arguments in each case are not compelling: Mommsen supposed
that, since Cato experienced cold weather (Plut. Cat. Min. 38.3), he must have
travelled in winter, while Stein made the faulty assumption that, when Cicero
called P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther governor of Cilicia and Cyprus in July
56, Cato’s return must have been imminent, but still in the future.58 None-
theless, the late-summer date has found wide acceptance.59 An exception is
Oost, who suggests May or June, noting that, in March 56, Cicero said he
hoped that Cato would return ‘soon’ (breui tempore).60
Unfortunately there is no direct evidence. The Greek sources are muddled
and contradictory,61 while Cato’s name does not appear in Cicero’s extant
54
This is clear from Cic. Prov. cons. 46, if I am correct in dating the speech after the debate
between Cato and Cicero (cf. Mitchell 1986: 172), and it can be proved at least for the law on the
censorship, which was in force in 54 (Cic. Att. 4.16.8 (SB 89)) and eventually abrogated in 52
(Cass. Dio 40.57.1); cf. Tatum 1999: 135.
55
Or, at least, prior to the publication of Prov. cons. (probably shortly afterwards: Grillo
2015: 17).
56
Kaster 2006: 405 with n. 42 summarises the arguments: the speech must have been
delivered before the consular elections were due to be held, and probably six weeks or so after
the Senate meeting on 15 May (Cic. Q Fr. 2.7.1 (SB 11)), since Cicero (Prov. cons. 15) says that,
within ‘a few days’ (paucis diebus) Gabinius would receive the news that his supplicatio had been
refused. 16–29 June are all comitial days, but 1–9 July are non-comitial, so ‘a date in early July
seems secure.’ Grillo 2015: 12–13 argues for ‘(the second half of) June’, since the presiding consul
addressed in Prov. cons. 18 seems to be L. Marcius Philippus, who appears to have held the fasces
in the even months, and it was possible for the Senate to meet on comitial days. Cf. Marinone and
Malspina 20042, s.v. De prouinciis consularibus (end of May or June).
57
Stein 1930: 97–100; Kumaniecki 1959: 137; Mommsen 1894: 129 n. 1; Meyer 19223:
152 n. 1.
58
Cic. Fam. 1.7.4 (SB 18); Stein 1930: 99. In fact the letter provides at best a terminus ante
quem for Cato’s departure from Cyprus. On the date of the letter, see Shackleton Bailey 1977:
1.302.
59
E.g. Lenaghan 1969: 23–5; Fehrle 1983: 153; Tatum 1999: 321 n. 35.
60
Cic. Sest. 60; Oost 1955: 108. Sestius’ trial ended on 14 March: Cic. Q Fr. 2.4.1 (SB 8). Geiger
1971: 287–8 accepts Oost’s dating.
61
E.g. Plutarch relates Cato’s return before the ‘Conference of Luca’ at Cat. Min. 40–1 and
after it at Caes. 21, Dio does not mention Luca at all, and Appian is completely confused, placing
Cato’s departure for Cyprus in 52 (B Civ. 2.23).

writings between March 56 and February 55. What data we do have, however,
suggests that Oost’s date is about right. To the evidence of Pro Sestio, admit-
tedly vague in itself, we may add that of De domo sua (23), where Cicero
praises the manner in which Cato carried out (gessit) his mission. The perfect
tense suggests that Cato had more or less completed his task by 29 September
57, the date of the speech (Cic. Att. 4.2.2 (SB 74)), and long enough beforehand
for Cicero to have heard the news.62 Cato did not return immediately, as he
was still not in Rome in March 56 (Sest. 60), nor (if Plutarch is to be believed)
when the Senate granted pay to Caesar’s troops in May or June.63 Assuming,
however, that Cato was ready to sail when the seas opened in April (or perhaps
a few weeks later),64 and allowing a conservative estimate of two months for
the journey,65 Cato could be expected to reach Rome at some point in June.
Certainly he must have intended to return by the end of June, in time to stand
suo anno for the praetorship of 55.66 That seems to be what Cicero expected,
too.67 It may be, though, that Cato was somewhat delayed: perhaps the best
explanation of the strange story that he was offered an ‘extraordinary prae-
torship’ on his return from Cyprus is that he was offered late entry in the
praetorian elections.68 In any case a date in June seems reasonable for Cato’s
62
See n. 65 below on travel times between Cyprus and Rome. Cicero may have heard earlier
reports of Cato’s progress while he was in Thessalonica and Dyrrachium.
63
Cic. Prov. cons. 28; Plut. Caes. 21.8. On the date of the grant, see e.g. Gelzer 1968: 123;
Kaster 2006: 404 n. 41.
64
Veg. Mil. 4.39 gives the conventional opening of the sailing season as 10 March (April by
the pre-Julian calendar), with the safest period beginning only on 15 May. While sailing was
possible at other times (see Beresford 2013), Cato’s caution (Plut. Cat. Min. 38.1) suggests that he
will have waited for the beginning of the conventional season and probably somewhat longer.
65
The journey from Cyprus to Rome was considered a long voyage (Plut. Cat. Min. 38.1);
precision is impossible, but comparison with travel times for the imperial grain fleets between
Alexandria and Rome (a minimum of one month, and between fifty and seventy days on average:
Casson 1951: 145; 1995: 297–8) suggests two months is a reasonable estimate. Plutarch shows
that Cato took a less direct route than the grain fleets, with stops at Cenchreae and Corcyra (Cat.
Min. 38.2) before rounding the boot of Italy and entering the Tiber at Ostia (39.1–2). Stanford’s
ORBIS geospatial network model (http://orbis.stanford.edu) suggests that Cato’s journey could
have been completed in approximately forty days.
66
The praetorian elections were normally held shortly after the consular elections, in July: see
e.g. Pina Polo 2011b: 284–5. Candidates were required to submit themselves in person a
trinundinum beforehand (three market days, or perhaps two to three weeks: see Lintott 1965).
As it happened, the elections were not held until 55, but there was no delay until Pompey and
Crassus attempted to stand (Cass. Dio 39.27.3). Cato did contest the delayed elections, but was
defeated (see e.g. Plut. Cat. Min. 42; Dio 39.32.1–2).
67
Cic. Sest. 60; cf. Fam. 1.9.19 (SB 20) where Cicero says he attacked Vatinius’ praetorian
candidacy by way of support for Cato, evidently around the time of Sestius’ trial (Fam. 1.9.8
(SB 20)).
68
See Val. Max. 4.1.14 with Mommsen 1887–83: 1.570 n. 2; Brennan 2000: 2.429. If correct,
this interpretation would suggest that Cato reached Rome in late June or early July, i.e. within a
trinundinum of the (planned) comitia. Another possibility is that Cato was offered praetorian
ornamenta (see Plut. Cat. Min. 39.3; Fehrle 1983: 159–61).
202 Kit Morrell

return and his clash with Cicero,69 which can therefore precede the debate on
the consular provinces.
By the time he delivered De prouinciis consularibus, Cicero had bidden
farewell to political independence and had undertaken to support the interests
of Pompey and Caesar, who (with Crassus) had renewed their alliance at Luca
earlier that year. The speech itself is sometimes identified as Cicero’s ‘palinode’
(Att. 4.5.1 (SB 80));70 in any case it declared his new allegiance by explaining
and justifying his friendship with Caesar (Prov. cons. 40–4) and by opposing
Caesar’s supersession in any of his provinces. At the close of the speech Cicero
addresses himself to Caesar’s enemies, who had attacked his laws and were
now advocating his recall.71 The core of Cicero’s argument is that, since
these men insisted on upholding Clodius’ laws, they should cease to oppose
Caesar.72 It is in this context that we find what looks like a reply to Cato:
nam summi ciuitatis uiri, quorum ego consilio rem publicam conseruaui, et
quorum auctoritate illam coniunctionem Caesaris defugi, Iulias leges et ceteras
illo consule rogatas iure latas negant: idem illam proscriptionem capitis mei
contra salutem rei publicae, sed saluis auspiciis rogatam esse dicebant . . . nam si
illud iure rogatum dicere ausi sunt quod nullo exemplo fieri potuit, nulla lege
licuit, quia nemo de caelo seruarat, oblitine erant tum cum ille qui id egerat
plebeius est lege curiata factus dici de caelo esse seruatum? qui si plebeius omnino
esse non potuit, qui tribunus plebis potuit esse?73 Cic. Prov. cons. 45
Either, Cicero continues, his opponents must decide that all Clodius’ laws are
invalid, ‘or else they must concede me the right not to seek in good measures
(i.e. in Caesar’s laws) the strict justice which they themselves do not seek in
69
Dio’s account (39.22–3) indicates that the dispute took place almost immediately upon
Cato’s return from Cyprus.
70
See Grillo 2015: 14–16, with further references. He rejects the identification.
71
Cicero describes three separate proposals for superseding Caesar (Prov. cons. 3, 17, 36). He
does not name the proposers.
72
Cic. Prov. cons. 44–6. Grillo 2015: 282 argues that these men tried to have Caesar recalled
on the grounds that the lex Vatinia (which had created Caesar’s command in Cisalpine Gaul and
Illyricum) ‘had no legal force in the first place’ (cf. p. 165). In my view, they will have treated it as
binding unless and until it was annulled, though the fact that it was uitio lata may have added
weight to their arguments for recalling Caesar; et ceteras illo consule rogatas (Prov. cons. 45) may
hint at this.
73
‘For some of the summi uiri, on whose advice I saved the state, and on whose auctoritas
I shunned that connection with Caesar, deny that the Julian laws and others proposed while he
was consul were validly passed; they also say that my banishment, while contrary to the well-
being of the res publica, was proposed in accordance with the auspices . . . For, if they have
ventured to say that a measure was validly passed, which was not able to be made by any
precedent and not permitted by any law, because no one had watched the skies, had they
forgotten that, when he who proposed the law was made plebeian by a lex curiata, it was said
that the sky had been watched? How, if it was not possible for him to be a plebeian at all, was it
possible for him to be a tribune of the plebs?’

ruinous ones . . . especially since, in Clodius’ case, the same regard was taken
for the auspices, but all his laws mean the overthrow and ruin of the state.’74
Finally, Cicero closes by saying that he will not be dismayed if he fails to
persuade ‘those who protected my enemy (sc. Clodius) against your authority’,
or ‘those who will censure my reconciliation with your enemy (sc. Caesar),
though they have not hesitated to be reconciled with one (sc. Clodius) who is
both my enemy and theirs’.75
Here we have a neat but distorted summary of the arguments on each side
of the debate. It is the last section that, I think, points to Cato. ‘Those who
oppose Caesar but have been reconciled with Clodius’ (in gratiam . . . redire,
Cic. Prov. cons. 47) could easily describe Cato’s behaviour on his return from
Cyprus.76 In addition, the passage really only makes sense as a contribution to
an ongoing debate, replying to things said very recently, with much assumed
knowledge of the participants and their views. Moreover, the status of Clodius’
laws was not germane to the question of the consular provinces, so the fact
that Cicero discusses it at length here, but not, for example, in the Pro Sestio of
March or De haruspicum responsis of (probably) May, suggests that something
had happened recently to reinvigorate the issue.77
All of this is consistent with the chronology I have proposed, which would
place Cato’s return to Rome and his clash with Cicero shortly before the
debate on the consular provinces. Whether or not Cato was present, however,
Cicero is replying to the line of argument Cato employed,78 and he offers a
final clue in settling the debate. Prov. cons. 45–6 confirms that the problem was
essentially one of augural law. More particularly, since Cicero’s opponents
could hardly have ‘forgotten’ Bibulus’ sky-watching, Prov. cons. 45 is best
interpreted as responding to an argument that what Bibulus did in 59 was not
relevant to what Clodius did in 58. Cicero bolsters his case, as elsewhere, by
74
Cic. Prov. cons. 46: aut mihi concedant homines oportet in rebus bonis non exquirere ea iura
quae ipsi in perditis non exquirant, praesertim cum . . . in Clodio auspiciorum ratio sit eadem, leges
omnes sint euersae ac perditae ciuitatis.
75
Cic. Prov. cons. 47: sed leuissime feram si forte aut iis minus probaro qui meum inimicum
repugnante uestra auctoritate texerunt, aut iis, si qui meum cum inimico suo reditum in
gratiam uituperabunt, cum ipsi et cum meo et cum suo inimico in gratiam non dubitarint redire.
76
Notwithstanding Cato’s criticism of Clodius’ tribunate (Plut. Cat. Min. 40.2; Cic. 34.2) and
Clodius’ attacks on Cato shortly after the debate with Cicero (Cass. Dio 39.23.2–4; cf. Sen.
Controv. 10.1.8).
77
Bibulus’ actions in 59 are not among Cicero’s objections to Clodius’ law at Sest. 65 (cf.
Sest. 73). In Har. resp., a reply to Clodius where we might expect to find an argument similar
to that in Prov. cons., Cicero simply notes that Clodius seems not to have realized, when
attacking Caesar’s laws, that he was attacking the lex curiata, ‘which supported his entire
tribunate’ (curiata illa lex quae totum eius tribunatum continebat, Har. resp. 48). The speech
was probably delivered in May, before Cato’s return from Cyprus: see Lenaghan 1969: 22–8,
followed by, e.g., Tatum 1999: 320–1; Kaster 2006: 404. Cf. Marinone and Malaspina 20042,
s.v. De haruspicum responso.
78
Cf. Grillo 2015: 288–9.
204 Kit Morrell

associating Clodius’ laws with Caesar’s and grossly exaggerating their effect,79
while long dilemmata provide ‘the appearance of rigor’.80 But ultimately
Cicero cannot get around the fact that Caesar’s laws and Clodius’ did not,
after all, ‘stand in the same relation to the auspices’.81 Indeed, Cicero now
seems to concede that Clodius could have been tribune, despite the augural
flaw.82 The thrust of his argument, it appears, is no longer legal but political:
by defending the validity of Clodius’ laws, Cato and the others had in effect
strengthened Caesar’s position.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?
The reality of the legal situation was probably not lost on Cicero when he
proposed the annulment of Clodius’ laws and invoked Cato’s impassioned, but
technically accurate, rebuttal. He had been well aware of the opinions of
leading men in September 57 (Dom. 42). What, then, did he hope to achieve?
I suspect that what Cicero wanted was a public statement from Cato and the
other illustrious gentlemen that Clodius had acted illegally. Such a statement
would have had no legal force, but it would have had considerable moral
weight and so value to Cicero and his dignitas. In De domo sua and Pro Sestio,
Cicero made much of the fact that Pompey and L. Aurelius Cotta had publicly
declared that Clodius’ law exiling Cicero was not a law.83 Lentulus Spinther
had effectively done the same, says Cicero, as had the entire Senate, merely by
discussing him at all.84 And Bibulus, he says, had defied Clodius’ law by
proposing that the pontiffs should pronounce on the question of Cicero’s
house.85 Probably Cato’s statement would have been particularly valuable to
Cicero, because of Cato’s role in the Catilinarian debate, and because, by
79
Alleging, for example, that Clodius had abrogated the leges Aelia et Fufia and abolished the
censorship; for correction, see Sumner 1963 and Tatum 1990, respectively.
80
Grillo 2015: 292 on Prov. cons. 45.
81
Trans. Gardner 1958a.
82
Cic. Prov. cons. 46: si patricius tribunus plebis fuerit, contra leges sacratas, si plebeius, contra
auspicia fuisse (‘if a patrician was tribune of the plebs, it was contrary to the leges sacratae, if a
plebeian, contrary to the auspices’); see Grillo 2015: 297–8 on this passage. Cf. Prov. cons. 45,
where Cicero claims to accept his opponents’ reasoning and to turn it to his own purposes,
namely to show that if Clodius’ tribunate is recognized, none of Caesar’s acts can be held invalid.
Neither does Cicero use the supposed invalidity of Clodius’ laws as an argument for recalling
Piso and Gabinius (cf. Prov. cons. 3).
83
Cic. Dom. 68–9 (legem illam esse nullam, etc.); Sest. 73–4. Cotta’s chief argument, and
perhaps Pompey’s, was that the law was a priuilegium.
84
Cic. Dom. 70–1. Clodius’ law forbade any such discussion (Dom. 68).
85
Cic. Dom. 69. Eodemque consilio implies that Bibulus took the same view as Cotta and
Pompey.

accepting the Cyprus commission, Cato could be seen not only to have
benefited from but even to have legitimized Clodius’ legislation.86
But Cato refused to humour Cicero. I have suggested that he was technically
correct, and from that perspective his response was entirely in character.87
However, in taking this line Cato was also defending his own dignitas. Dio
(39.22.2) specifies that Cato took Clodius’ side since he was proud of his
achievements and wanted them confirmed—in part as an example of upright
governance (Plut. Cat. Min. 38.3), but also in aid of his own political career.
According to Plutarch, Cato claimed to have brought more money from
Cyprus than Pompey from all his eastern victories,88 and he made a show of
it: Cato’s return—his process up the Tiber and the carrying of the treasure
through the Forum—are described in later sources in terms resembling the
homecoming of Aemilius Paullus.89 This very public advertisement of Cato’s
beneficia to the Roman people was no doubt part of his campaign for the
praetorship, for which he intended to stand on his return. It was natural,
therefore, that Cato would not want any doubt—reasonable or otherwise—
surrounding the legal basis of his Cyprus command.
In short, in seeking sop for his own dignitas, Cicero had (inadvertently)
assailed Cato’s. But this episode should not be seen simply as a spat between
two senators. In De prouinciis consularibus (44–5), Cicero claims his oppon-
ents’ defence of Clodius’ laws as his licence to defend Caesar. Writing to
Atticus, he makes the perfidia of the principes his excuse for his palinode.90
And a letter to Lentulus Spinther (Fam. 1.7.10 (SB 18)), written shortly after
the debate on the consular provinces, blames the domination of Pompey and
Caesar on the folly and fickleness (stultitia et inconstantia) of their opponents—
including, probably, inconstantia towards himself, since it was their behaviour
that had moved him to support Caesar.91 Cicero’s complaints are sometimes
seen as a ‘smoke screen’ for the true explanation, namely pressure from
Pompey and Caesar,92 but it is plausible that the behaviour of the usual
gentlemen, and perhaps particularly of Cato, if he had returned by this time,
was a real factor in Cicero’s decision to commit himself to Pompey and Caesar,
86
See e.g. Cic. Sest. 62; Plut. Cat. Min. 34.2–3; Morrell 2017: 117.
87
Compare Cato’s later refusal to support Cicero’s suit for a supplicatio (Cic. Fam. 15.5.1 (SB
111); cf. Morrell 2017: 197–200).
88
Plut. Cat. Min. 45.2. The episode is placed in 53, when Cato will already have been thinking
of his campaign for the consulship.
89
Compare Plut. Cat. Min. 39.1–3 and Vell. Pat. 2.45.5 on Cato with Livy 45.35.3 and Plut.
Aem. 30.2–3 on Paullus.
90
Cic. Att. 4.5.1 (SB 80). The date of the letter is unfortunately very uncertain (see Kaster
2006: 405 n. 42), but it can certainly follow the debate on the consular provinces and thus, in my
view, Cato’s return.
91
And, specifically, to oppose Caesar’s recall (cf. Prov. cons. 44), though Cicero does not
mention his own role in the letter to Lentulus.
92
E.g. Shackleton Bailey 1965–70: 2.184.
206 Kit Morrell

with all its ramifications.93 The letter to Atticus summarizes Cicero’s relations
with these gentlemen over the past year: he felt he had been wronged by them;
nonetheless he sought to cooperate with them,94 but something had happened
to sour the relationship again—as Shackleton Bailey puts it, ‘They proved to be
what they always had been.’95 Cicero seems to be thinking partly about the
matter of his house (Cic. Att. 4.5.2 (SB 80)), but Cato’s public defence of
Clodius’ laws would also fit well here. Similarly, when Cicero tells Lentulus
that these men could have kept him in the common cause fauendo (Fam. 1.7.7
(SB 18)), the dispute over Clodius’ laws comes to mind as one situation where
Cicero hoped for a favour.
That Cicero was thinking of Cato in particular is suggested by a letter from
early 55. Cicero tells Lentulus that the whole nature of politics has changed:
there is nothing left to hope for but tranquillity (otium), which Pompey and
Crassus seem likely to provide, ‘if certain persons can endure their domination
more patiently’.96 Quidam homines points to Cato and his friends who had
forced Pompey and Crassus to resort to violence in the elections for 55.97
Cicero goes on to say that the very ideal of the courageous and consistent
senator has been lost ‘through the fault of those who alienated from the Senate
a most friendly class and a most eminent individual’.98 This, too, refers above
all to Cato, whom Cicero blames for alienating Pompey and the equestrian
order in his letters of 60–59.99 It seems that—in retrospect, at least—it was
Cato whom Cicero held most responsible not only for his own loss of
independence but for the loss of political freedom.
There were other questions at stake, too, which tend to be obscured by
Cicero’s preoccupation with his own position. The debate over Clodius’
laws offers a glimpse of the negotiation involved in the evolution of
Rome’s unwritten constitution. The Senate’s power to annul laws seems to
have been created, or usurped, only around 100 BC and evidently remained
93
Cicero had almost certainly withdrawn his opposition to Caesar prior to Cato’s return.
As late as 5 April he had attacked Caesar’s interests in the Senate (Cic. Q Fr. 2.6.1 (SB 10)), but
on 15 May he avoided a debate on the Campanian land (Q Fr. 2.7.2 (SB 11)) and in May or
June he supported the grant of legati and pay for Caesar’s troops (see n. 63). However, Cicero’s
commitment to Pompey and Caesar was not a matter of a single moment or speech but an
ongoing pattern of behaviour which the clash with Cato, whatever its date, will have helped to
reinforce. Cf. Grillo 2015: 15, who notes that Cicero did not ‘burn ships’ with the optimates
even in Prov. cons.
94
Signalled, inter alia, by his generous praise of Cato in De domo and Pro Sestio; cf. Kaster
2006: 253–4.
95
Cic. Att. 4.5.1 (SB 80): iidem erant qui fuerant.
96
Cic. Fam. 1.8.4 (SB 19): si quidam homines patientius eorum potentiam ferre potuerint.
97
See e.g. Plut. Cat. Min. 41–2; Cass. Dio 39.31–2. Cf. Shackleton Bailey 1977: 1.306.
98
Cic. Fam. 1.8.4 (SB 19): . . . amissa culpa est eorum qui a senatu et ordinem coniunctissimum
et hominem clarissimum abalienarunt. Of course, this is another excuse for Cicero’s own loss of
independence.
99
E.g. Cic. Att. 1.18.7 (SB 18), 2.1.8 (SB 21), 2.9.1–2 (SB 29).

controversial.100 If the Senate had annulled Caesar’s laws, it would effectively
have recognized the validity of obnuntiatio per edictum and so arrogated to
itself a further means of attacking legislation; to have annulled Clodius’ laws as
well would have been a still more dramatic extension of senatorial power.
Instead Clodius’ legislation was allowed to stand, and the law requiring
obnuntiatio in person was even welcomed as a sensible reform in a contested
area.101 It seems possible, therefore, that even those who used Bibulus’ actions
to attack Caesar’s laws had genuine qualms about further extending senatorial
prerogatives.
SOME GENTLEMEN I N DE PROVINCIIS

CONSVLARIBVS
The foregoing exercise in reconstruction illustrates the importance of reading

Cicero as one voice and one viewpoint in a dialogue with other speakers, even
if Cicero sometimes makes it hard to recover their arguments, or indeed their
names. I have suggested, however, that De prouinciis consularibus preserves
Cicero’s reply to Cato in a debate otherwise known only from Plutarch and
Dio. In closing, I offer tentative identifications of some other unnamed
‘gentlemen’ encountered in Cicero’s speech.102
Summi ciuitatis uiri (Prov. cons. 45) refers to the senators who had advised
Cicero in 63. Summi uiri most naturally suggests consulars, such as
M. Lucullus,103 but might also stretch to Cato, whom Cicero elsewhere calls
100
Note Antony’s complaint (Cic. Phil. 13.31) that colonies established by law had been
abolished by decree of the Senate. Annulment by the Senate is not attested before c.100 (see e.g.
Bleicken 1975: 464; Libero 1992: 87–8); Lintott 19992: 140 argues that it was created by the lex
Caecilia Didia of 98. For the Senate’s usurpation of the power to annul laws, see Bleicken 1975:
467. We might compare the Senate’s usurped power to grant dispensation from the laws (Asc.
Corn. 58C); indeed, the decree of annulment can be seen as an exemption extending to the whole
populus (cf. Willems 1878–83: 2.112).
101
Tatum 1999: 131–3.
102
Cf. Butler and Cary 1924: 75 and Grillo 2015: 278, 284, 288, with partly overlapping
suggestions.
103
Cf. Cic. Dom. 132, where Cicero says he saved the state on the consilium and auctoritas of
M. Lucullus and P. Servilius Isauricus, and Att. 12.21.1 (SB 260), apparently a full list of consulars
present at the debate on the Catilinarian conspirators. Hortensius was not among them, but
Cicero may nonetheless be thinking of him in Prov. cons. 45 (cf. Phil. 2.12); he is called summus
uir at Cic. Leg. Man. 66. Servilius, on the other hand, may be excluded, as he shared Cicero’s
position on the consular provinces (Prov. cons. 1–2). The present tense of negant should also
exclude deceased persons, such as L. Lucullus. P. Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, suggested by
Butler and Cary 1924: 75 and Grillo 2015: 284, seems an unlikely candidate, as he was not in
Rome at this time and is treated in Cicero’s letters as a fellow victim of the usual ‘gentlemen’
(references in n. 3 above).
208 Kit Morrell

auctor of the decision to execute the Catilinarian conspirators (Sest. 61).104
Next, ‘Those on whose authority I rejected that connection with Caesar’
could be the same individuals, but probably also includes Hortensius,
Q. Arrius, and others who had advised Cicero against friendship with
Pompey in 59 and whom Cicero blamed for his exile.105 Bibulus would fit
here as well, since it was he who was most conspicuous in challenging the
validity of Caesar’s laws.106
The uir summa auctoritate, summa eloquentia might well be Hortensius
himself, as Gelzer thought (1969a: 172). Eloquens/eloquentia is a term Cicero
attributes to Hortensius elsewhere,107 and summa eloquentia is a natural way
to denote Rome’s ‘number two’ orator. Others have suggested Cato.108 This
seems less likely for two reasons, however. First, eloquentia is not the most
obvious quality with which to evoke Cato, though Cicero does credit him with
it elsewhere, and Cato had limited opportunity to make such a statement, since
he left Rome in 58 shortly after Cicero (Sest. 64–5).109 Furthermore, Cicero’s
reference to the same incident in De domo sua 42 identifies the uir in question
as one of the clarissimi uiri, which normally signifies consulars.110 It is also
worth noting that Cicero refers to Hortensius anonymously elsewhere in the
same work, whereas Cato is named.111 If we do identify the uir summa
eloquentia as Hortensius, then it was he who called Cicero’s exile the ‘funeral
of the state’ (Cic. Dom. 42; Prov. cons. 45).
Finally, ‘aut iis . . . aut iis . . . ’ in Prov. cons. 47 points to two separate groups,
though both seem to belong to the broader class of persons Cicero is discuss-
ing here, namely those ‘gentlemen’ he felt had betrayed him by attacking
Caesar’s laws but upholding Clodius’. As I suggested earlier, those who were
104
Named summi uiri in Cicero are consulars and often generals. Cato would therefore be an
exception to the usual usage, just as he is elsewhere called princeps (Cic. Phil. 13.30) and
clarissimus uir (Cic. Flacc. 98), both terms technically reserved for consulars (Gelzer 1969b:
45–6; Whitehead 2005: 163, 179–80).
105
Evidently they had discouraged Cicero from pursuing friendship with Pompey, let alone
Caesar, partly through Atticus: see Welch 1996: 461–2. Certainly Cicero had the opinions of
Hortensius, Cato, and the like in mind when he declined an association with Caesar and Pompey
in 59 (Att. 2.3.3–4 (SB 23); cf. e.g. 2.1.6 (SB 21), 2.5.1 (SB 25); Prov. cons. 41–2; Fam. 1.7.7 (SB
18)). Cf. Dom. 28–9 with n. 4, above.
106
So also Butler and Cary 1924: 75; Grillo 2015: 278.
107
E.g. Cic. Sest. 3 (Q. Hortensio, clarissimo uiro atque eloquentissimo); Quinct. 1.
108
So Geiger 1971: 295 (adopting Manutius’ suggestion) and Grillo 2015: 288–9. Grillo’s
other candidates are Bibulus and M. Claudius Marcellus, but he offers no argument in support of
Marcellus (who, in 56, had not yet held the praetorship), while Bibulus seems unlikely in view of
his public stance on Clodius’ tribunate (Cic. Dom. 40) and Cicero’s damning estimate of his
oratory (Brut. 267: non esset orator).
109
For Cato’s eloquentia in Cicero: Cic. Fin. 4.61; Brut. 118–19, albeit in neither place in
propria persona; cf. Parad. pr.1. On Cato’s oratory, see e.g. McDermott 1970; Stem 2005; Blom
2012.
110
Whitehead 2005, but see n. 104.
111
For Hortensius referred to anonymously: Cic. Dom. 19 with Leg. Man. 52.

reconciled with Clodius might include Cato, whose defence of Clodius’ laws,
in Cicero’s eyes, represented a reversal of his earlier attitude (as their falling-
out shows). Bibulus is another likely candidate, as he had openly impugned
Clodius’ tribunate in 58 (Cic. Dom. 40) but supported Clodius’ attacks on
Pompey in February 56.112 I have also suggested that he was not ultimately
prepared to declare Clodius’ laws invalid. It is striking that Bibulus is not
named in De prouinciis consularibus even as the man by whom ‘it was said that
the skies had been watched’,113 whereas in earlier speeches he is not only
named but (like Cato) apparently exempted from Cicero’s criticism of other
optimates.114 It is conceivable that Cicero has repressed Bibulus’ name on
account of his falling-out with Bibulus’ father-in-law, though Bibulus may well
have offended Cicero in his own right, perhaps in connection with the
valuation of Cicero’s property.115 Indeed, we can trace Cicero’s cooling to-
wards Bibulus in the published In Vatinium, where the noble victim Cicero
portrayed at the time of Sestius’ trial (Cic. Fam. 1.9.8 (SB 20)) has become an
ineffectual recluse (Vat. 21–2, 24), yet Cicero’s critical treatment of Caesar
points to a date of publication prior to Cato’s return. ‘Those who protected my
enemy’, on the other hand, suggests a more consistent attitude—‘protected’ as
opposed to ‘were reconciled’. In this first group I am inclined to include
Hortensius, whom Cicero criticized most of all in 58, and who seems to
have helped Clodius to evade trial at the end of 57.116
CONCLUSIONS
Cicero’s feelings of betrayal by ‘certain gentlemen’ persisted after his return

from exile and were exacerbated in 56 when Cato defended the validity of
Clodius’ tribunician legislation, to the point where Cicero claimed Cato’s
actions as justification for supporting Caesar. We cannot know if or how
112
Cic. Q Fr. 2.3.2, 4 (SB 7). Bibulus was very likely among the optimi uiri who justified their
support for Clodius on the grounds that he was useful in attacking Pompey; indeed, Bibulus may
have been the summus uir who remarked, ‘I want there to be someone to denigrate Pompey in
public meetings’ (Cic. Har. resp. 50: uolo . . . esse qui in contione detrahat de Pompeio).
113
Cic. Prov. cons. 45: dici de caelo esse seruatum. Note the impersonal passive.
114
See esp. Cic. Dom. 39–40 and 69.
115
It was on Bibulus’ motion that the Senate asked the pontiffs to consider the matter of
Cicero’s house (Cic. Dom. 69), and there is a good chance he was part of the consilium that
advised the consuls in determining the financial settlement, which Cicero considered miserly
(Cic. Att. 4.2.5 (SB 74)). In any case relations between Cicero and Bibulus were often strained
(see e.g. Cic. Att. 2.15.2 (SB 35), 2.21.4 (SB 41), 5.20.4 (SB 113), 6.8.5 (SB 122), 7.2.6 (SB 125)).
116
Cic. Att. 4.3.3 (SB 75) with Shackleton Bailey 1965–70: 1.176; Har. resp. 50; Fam. 1.9.15
(SB 20). In addition, Cicero believed that Hortensius had (inadvertently) allowed Clodius to
escape conviction at the Bona Dea trial in 61 (Att. 1.16.2–4 (SB 16)).
210 Kit Morrell

events might have transpired differently had Cato chosen instead to side with
Cicero. However, reconstructing the debate between them—its background,
dating, and the personalities involved—does allow valuable insights into both
the politics of 56 and senatorial oratory, in a period where we often have only
Cicero’s voice. I have argued that Cicero called for the annulment of Clodius’
laws, contending that the augural flaw affecting Clodius’ adoption vitiated his
acts as tribune, and that Cato rightly defended their validity, on the grounds
that the augural flaw in 59 did not affect Clodius’ laws in 58, as well as in the
interests of constitutional stability. This debate took place shortly after Cato’s
return from Cyprus, which I would date to June, and before Cicero’s speech De
prouinciis consularibus, where Cicero seems to respond to Cato’s argument
before effectively conceding the technical point. It is at this stage that Cato takes
his place among the unnamed gentlemen, alongside the likes of Q. Hortensius
and M. Bibulus.
ii
Oratorical Performance
12
The Politics of Pronuntiatio

The Rhetorica ad Herennium and Delivery
in the Early First Century BC
Jennifer Hilder
The Rhetorica ad Herennium, an anonymous rhetorical handbook dating to

the 80s BC,1 claims that no one has written carefully about the pronuntiatio
(delivery) of an orator before.2 According to the anonymous Auctor, others
previously thought that it was impossible to describe the voice, expression, and
gesture adequately in writing because they relate to our own senses or in-
stincts.3 While stopping short of making pronuntiatio the most important of
the five qualities an orator should have,4 Auctor describes it as having an
1
The text is intended to teach readers about public speaking (de ratione dicendi, Rhet. Her.
1.1.1) and was written in Rome in the early first century BC. Scholars have debated the authorship
and dating of the text, but the traditional dating of 86–82 BC is the most likely on the basis of the
internal evidence. The terminus post quem of 86 BC comes from the latest datable reference in the
work, which is to Marius’ seventh consulship and death (Rhet. Her. 4.52.68). The terminus ante
quem is less concrete, and arguments have been made that the text could have been written a
decade or more later (see Henderson 1951: 73 and n.18; Douglas 1960: 77; Douglas 1973; Winkel
1979). However, the concentration of references around the early 80s BC makes it far more likely
that the work was written in that decade. Similarities with Cicero’s De inuentione, more securely
dated to the early to mid 80s BC, are also persuasive (see: Achard 1989: ix–x; Achard 1994: 9–10;
followed by Negri 2007: 186–7). Summaries of the relationship between the two texts can be
found in Marx 1894: 129; Herbolzheimer 1926; Adamietz 1960; Caplan 1954: xxvi n. b; Achard
1989: xvi–vii; Achard 1994: 21–3; Gaines 2007: 174–7. The debate about the authorship is also
open to question: Calboli in particular argues in favour of Cornificius, a rhetorician who is
mentioned by Quintilian and whose work has distinct overlaps with the Rhetorica ad Here-
nnium: Calboli 1965: 1–57; Calboli 1969: 3–11. But there are still uncertainties about this
identification, as Quintilian’s account of Cornificius also diverges in places from the surviving
work: Caplan 1954; Achard 1989. For the history of the debate about authorship in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Alessio 2000. With this in mind, I treat the work as
anonymous here and call the author ‘Auctor’ throughout.
2 3
Rhet. Her. 3.11.19. Rhet. Her. 3.11.19.
4
Unlike Cicero in his repeated anecdote about Demosthenes: see Brut. 142, although
Cavarzere 2011: 20 n. 20 argues that the views are analogous.
214 Jennifer Hilder

‘especially great usefulness’ (egregie magna utilitas) and being the part that
should ‘in particular’ (magnopere) be prepared. But if no one has written such
an account before, and Auctor candidly admits he is not confident that he is
able to take on such a task,5 why does he do so?
At the beginning of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Auctor first defines pro-
nuntiatio as ‘the moderation (or control) of the voice (uox), expression (uultus),
and gesture (gestus) with elegance’.6 A parallel definition is also found in the
beginning of Cicero’s contemporary De inuentione, where it is phrased slightly
differently: ‘the moderation of the voice and body through dignity in words and
actions’.7 In both of these definitions, the term moderatio appears, reflecting the
necessity for appropriate control and awareness (uenustas, dignitas) surround-
ing pronuntiatio. The concern for voice as separate to the physical performance
continues in Auctor’s main discussion of pronuntiatio (book 3), where he (like
Cicero) divides his discussion of pronuntiatio into two parts instead of three:
voice quality (uocis figura) and physical movement (corporis motus).8 The slight
shift between the different sections of the Rhetorica ad Herennium may hint at
Auctor’s conscious attempt to adapt his theory to make it more suitable for his
audience, which I will discuss further below.
The overall similarity between Cicero’s and Auctor’s definitions suggests
that the ideas behind the latter’s theory may not be his own, even if the details
of his formulation or motivations are. The division persists; Cicero uses the
same structure in his much later description of the tribune Publius Sulpicius’
delivery in the Brutus:9
fuit enim Sulpicius omnium uel maxume, quos quidem ego audiuerim, grandis et,
ut ita dicam, tragicus orator. uox cum magna tum suauis et splendida; gestus et
motus corporis ita uenustus, ut tamen ad forum, non ad scaenam institutus
uideretur; incitata et uolubilis nec ea redundans tamen nec circumfluens oratio.10
Cic. Brut. 203–4
Here, Cicero seems almost to be ticking off the sections of pronuntiatio that are
found in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, describing first voice and then gesture.
The continued use of this distinction, and the fact that Cicero also finds it a useful
model for analysis, suggests that it was a successful educational tool with a
practical grounding.
5
Rhet. Her. 3.15.27.
6
Rhet. Her. 1.3: pronuntiatio est uocis, uultus, gestus moderatio cum uenustate. Cf. Quint.
Inst. 11.3.1. See Balbo in this volume.
7
Cic. Inv. 1.7.9: pronuntiatio est ex rerum et uerborum dignitate uocis et corporis moderatio.
8
See also Rhet. Her. 4.47.60 where voice (uox) and physical movement (corporis motus) are
key for the lyre player, a different kind of performer.
9
Cicero emphasizes the influence that Crassus has on Sulpicius: De or. 3.47.
10
‘For Sulpicius was the greatest of all those who I have heard speak, a powerful and, I would
say, tragic orator. His voice was both strong as well as pleasant and clear; his gestures and the
movement of his body were so charming that he seemed trained for the Forum, not for the stage.
His speech was swift and fluent but not excessive or overwhelming.’
The Politics of Pronuntiatio 215

But was Auctor really doing something new? Unfortunately, it is very
difficult to test Auctor’s claim against earlier theories independently and
work out what he might be doing differently. Delivery (hypokrisis) does not
appear as a separate strand of Aristotle’s rhetorical theory, although he does
give occasional advice about how to perform a speech.11 His pupil and
successor Theophrastus is said to have worked on delivery more systematic-
ally, but his work is lost and very little information on it survives.12 The
rhetorical theory as we find it in the Latin authors derives most directly
from the Greek writer Hermagoras, working in the mid second century, but
as his work is also lost it is difficult to know how he presented the subject. There
is a danger of circular argument here, too, as Hermagoras’ theory (and Theo-
phrastus’, in fact) is reconstructed on the basis of references and similarities
in later texts such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Cicero’s De inuentione and
De oratore, and Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria.13
A possible Latin influence on discussions of delivery may have been
L. Plotius Gallus, better known for starting a school of Latin rhetors in the
late 90s BC that the censors ordered be closed.14 Quintilian mentions a work
written by Plotius Gallus about gestures (de gestu),15 but nothing else is known
about it. In fact, as Plotius Gallus was active into the 50s BC, this work may not
have been written before the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and thus would not
have been a source available to Auctor.16
One remaining option is to study the evidence for delivery in practice before
and around the time of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. This evidence relies
largely on Cicero’s writings, either directly or indirectly. These works, such as
De oratore and Brutus, were written over forty years after the events and the
writing of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Although Cicero was present in the
Forum from the late 90s onwards, his descriptions of the movement and
gesture of the earlier orators cannot, in some cases, have come from first-
hand experience, and even the delivery of orators whom he may have seen in
person may have been misremembered after such a length of time. There is a
risk that some of the features attributed to these orators are generic, or
what Cicero thought they would have done in the circumstances—just as,
for example, the later writer Quintilian comments on the tone and gestures
11
E.g. Arist. Rh. 3.1; Poet. 19–20, 26.
12
Fortenbaugh 1985; Vanderspoel 2007 with further bibliography. Some scholars have
argued that the division between uox and corporis motus derives from Theophrastus, as suggest-
ed by the much later author Athanasius (Theophr. F712 Fortenbaugh et al.); see discussion and
further references in Cavarzere 2011: 28–31.
13 14
Barwick 1965: 213–18; Matthes 1958. Suet. Rhet. 25.2.
15
Quint. Inst. 11.3.143. See also Balbo in this volume.
16
Suetonius says that M. Caelius accused his opponent Atratinus of having had his speech
written for him by Plotius Gallus (56 BC): Suet. Rhet. 26.2. Hall 2007: 220 ‘presumably after the
Auctor’s treaty had been written’.
216 Jennifer Hilder

(he thought) Cicero made at certain points in certain speeches.17 Nevertheless,
with these potential pitfalls in mind, I will use Cicero’s evidence for the
broader themes of delivery in this period.
In this paper, then, I argue that Auctor’s decision to write about pronuntia-
tio, and the way that he wrote about it, were influenced by contemporary
orators and the contemporary context. In the first section I discuss three key
aspects of his discussion and the extent to which they have parallels in other
evidence for delivery in this period. There are also notable omissions and
differences, however, and in the second section I use these to examine the
possible influences on Auctor, showing that the combination of Auctor’s
audience and the failure of popularis orators in previous years created a
situation that may explain his approach to delivery.
DELIV ERY IN RECENT DECADES
If Plutarch is to be believed, Gaius Gracchus was the first to release his right
arm from his toga and move around the Rostra in the 120s BC.18 Although
delivery must, unavoidably, have been part of earlier oratorical performances,
this does seem to be a memorable moment in Roman oratory. In the Brutus,
Cicero refers in passing to the delivery of orators before Gaius Gracchus,19 but
it is often in terms of their style of speech, tone of voice, or choice of words,
rather than their gestures or expressions. For later authors, Gracchus appears
to mark the point at which delivery became a conscious act.20 As J. Wisse
observes, this style of delivery became increasingly common over the following
decades and in this section I will show how the marked features of delivery
used by influential contemporary orators tie in closely with Auctor’s discus-
sion of pronuntiatio.21 There are also some features that do not appear in
Auctor’s discussion, however, and I will discuss this in the following section.
Consistency of form and content
Throughout Auctor’s discussion of pronuntiatio, the question of consistency

comes up again and again: the tone of voice used to deliver the speech should
be consistent with, and appropriate for, the context, and the gestures used
should be carefully chosen to fit with a particular tone of voice. The result is
the schematic (and slightly repetitive) discussion where Auctor first describes
17 18
Quint. Inst. 11.3.47, 97. Plut. Ti. Gracch. 2.2.
19
E.g. Publius Rutilius Rufus and Galba mentioned at Cic. Brut. 88.
20 21
See, for example, Cic. Har. resp. 41. Wisse 2013: 177–8.

the tones of voice and their subdivisions, and then goes through the subdivi-
sions once again to match them with his recommended gestures.
Taking the first of his two major categories, Auctor begins by talking
about voice quality, and divides it into two parts: volume (magnitudo) and
flexibility (mollitudo). Volume cannot be taught but vocal flexibility is slightly
different because, as Auctor says, ‘it all relates to rhetorical precepts’ (rhetoris
praeceptio).22 The divisions that he then makes for vocal flexibility relate
entirely to context, as he advises his readers, whether they are using a
conversational tone, a tone of debate, or a tone of amplification, to adapt
their voices accordingly. The implication is that these three tones relate to the
different parts of speech; for example, a subdivision of the conversational tone
is the narrative tone, while Auctor specifies that the tone of debate is useful
in proof and refutation. The tone of amplification can create anger or pity in a
listener, in a similar way to the amplification used elsewhere for a conclusion
(conclusio) in Auctor’s rhetorical theory.23
The underlying implication here is that a speech, and the tone of voice used
at different parts within the speech, should be well adapted to its context and
audience. The importance of this is clearly shown in Cicero’s comment on the
trial of Publius Rutilius Rufus de repetundis in 92 BC, where both Rutilius
Rufus himself and Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the Pontifex Maximus, spoke in
his defence.24 The two men were famous jurists at the time, but neither was
famed for their delivery. In fact, Cicero says quite explicitly that Rutilius Rufus
lacked oratorical talent (oratorium ingenium) and implies that his style of
speaking was not sufficiently enhanced by voice, face, and gesture to gain a
victory.25 Mucius Scaevola, according to Cicero, also spoke elegantly, ‘but by
no means with the strength and power which that kind of court and the
importance of the case demanded’.26 It could be argued that in this case
Rutilius Rufus would have lost whatever he did, but Cicero’s description
nevertheless associates his condemnation with his performance in retrospect,
which is significant. Looking back, at least, it was possible to say that the case
was lost partly because Mucius Scaevola failed to adapt his speech to the context.
In the next part of Auctor’s discussion he offers further choices for an
orator, to allow their delivery to be as finely cast as possible. The three tones of
voice divide into eight subdivisions, which allow the orator to modify their
speech according to the particular effect or emotion they want to create, such
22
Rhet. Her. 3.13.23: quoniam omnis ad rhetoris praeceptionem pertinet.
23 24 25
Rhet. Her. 2.30.47. TLRR no. 94 with further references. Cic. Brut. 110.
26
Cic. Brut. 115: Q. Mucius enucleate ille quidem et polite, ut solebat, nequaquam autem ea ui
atque copia, quam genus illud iudici et magnitudo causae postulabat. For the different styles
required in criminal and civil trials, see, for example, Cic. Opt. gen. 9–10; Quint. Inst. 4.2.177,
9.4.21, 11.1.44–5, 12.9.7, 12.10.70; Tac. Dial. 20, 37. For comparison, Solmsen 1938 analyses
Cicero’s early, civil law speeches.
218 Jennifer Hilder

as anger or pity. The orator should also think not just about the intended effect
but how best to convey the content of the speech itself. For example, Auctor
also advises that the orator should speed up when describing vigorous move-
ment in a narration or statement of facts, and slow down for something that
was done at a leisurely pace.27 An example from book 4 of the Rhetorica ad
Herennium emphasizes the idea that there are right and wrong ways to
approach certain aspects of a speech, when it says audaciter territas, humiliter
placas: ‘you frighten confidently, you quieten meekly.’28 The example here is
chosen for homoeoteleuton, highlighting the jingle of the like-sounding word
endings, but the force of the pairing comes from the arguable mismatch of the
style and effect; an orator should not appear confident when they intend to
terrify, nor try to appease the audience with humble words.
As mentioned, this concern for consistency continues when Auctor dis-
cusses his second main category, physical movement. Each gesture and
expression that he describes is tailored to one of the subdivisions he has already
defined. For Auctor, then, it is very important that all aspects of pronuntiatio
are carefully interwoven. By presenting the subdivisions and the suitable
movements in this way, his discussion could be seen as being more efficient,
but also possibly more confusing. Auctor gives the reader everything at once,
rather than concentrating on one thing at a time, but this is an accurate
reflection of the demands placed on an orator.
These aspects are similarly brought together by Cicero in his discussion of
Marcus Antonius in the Brutus, an orator who Cicero strongly associates with
the importance of delivery in several places. For example, it is in the context
of his discussion of Antonius’ delivery that he repeats the anecdote about
Demosthenes in the Brutus.29 As noted above in his discussion of Publius
Sulpicius Rufus, the language and structure of Cicero’s description here seem
to be strongly influenced by rhetorical theory:
sed cum haec magna in Antonio tum actio singularis; quae si partienda est in
gestum atque uocem, gestus erat non uerba exprimens, sed cum sententiis con-
gruens: manus humeri latera supplosio pedis status incessus omnisque motus
cum uerbis sententiisque consentiens; uox permanens, uerum subrauca natura.
sed hoc uitium huic uni in bonum conuertebat.30 Cic. Brut. 139–42
27 28
Rhet. Her. 3.14.24. Rhet. Her. 4.20.28.
29
Cic. Brut. 142. Antonius’ rhetorical theory is also thought to have influenced the Rhetorica
ad Herennium, see Calboli 1972.
30
‘But Antonius was both excellent in this (use of figures) and in his outstanding delivery. If
we divide delivery into gesture and voice, his gesture did not represent his words, but fitted his
ideas. His hands, arms, lungs, the stamping of his foot, his stature, his walk, his every movement
were consistent with his words and ideas. His voice was long-lasting, though rather hoarse by
nature. But he alone turned this disadvantage into an advantage.’

It is true that not everyone may have agreed with Cicero’s analysis here, but he
demonstrates how delivery could be an essential, cohesive force, providing a
necessary complement to the content of the speech. In the figure of Antonius,
Cicero gives an excellent example of the kind of orator Auctor seems to be
describing and aiming for—one who can seamlessly and effectively combine
the major aspects of pronuntiatio to produce an ‘outstanding’ performance.
Gestures
The gestures that Auctor recommends in his discussion can also be compared
to the gestures mentioned in the sources. He refers to a number of different
possible gestures involving different parts of the body: moving the right hand,
tilting the head and body forwards, changing the expression of the face,
moving the arm quickly, using the glance, walking up and down, stamping
the right foot, slapping one’s thigh, and beating one’s head.31 His advice to
move the right hand is a reminder of the movement Gaius Gracchus first made
to release his arm from his toga. Indeed, the importance of the use of the hand
or arm is reflected in Auctor’s advice to the reader to move one or the other in
almost all situations, as in the first subdivision of the conversational tone,
which should be accompanied ‘by a gentle movement of the right hand’ (leui
dexterae motu).32 Auctor seems to suggest that this gesture should be main-
tained in each subdivision of the conversational tone, but for the tone of
debate the arm should be quick (celer), and for amplification even quicker
(perceler). Another contemporary orator, Lucius Licinius Crassus, is praised
for the power of this kind of gesture. As the character of Antonius says to
Crassus in De oratore: ‘such strength of mind, such passion, such anger are
always conveyed by your eyes, expression, gesture, even that finger of yours.’33
Cicero praises this style in the Brutus, and says that it could be just as powerful
as any other.34
But this ‘very fast’ arm and the slap of the thigh are as dramatic as Auctor’s
recommendations get, which is a contrast to the practice of some other orators
of the time. In other trials, Antonius is described by Cicero as using rather
31
On gestures in ancient Rome, see Aldrete 1999. Quintilian goes into much greater detail
about gestures in his discussion at Inst. 11.3.65–136, with a particular focus on hand gestures
(further discussion in Dutsch 2002; Hall 2004). For ritual gestures used in Roman law, see
Corbeill 2005; on movement and ideology, see Corbeill 2002; on the ‘spectacle’ of Roman oratory
in general, see Bell 1997. For a theoretical approach to non-verbal communication in ancient
treatises, see Fögen 2001.
32
Rhet. Her. 4.15.26.
33
Cic. De or. 2.118 (also referenced by Quint. Inst. 11.3.94): tanta uis animi, tantus impetus,
tantus dolor oculis, uultu, gestu, digito denique isto tuo significari solet.
34
Cic. Brut. 158–60.
220 Jennifer Hilder

grander gestures to express emotions,35 providing another memorable
moment during the trial of Manius Aquillius de repetundis, dated to around
97 BC. Towards the end of the speech, Antonius ripped open Manius’ tunic to
reveal the scars that he had received fighting for the Republic.36 The character
of Antonius in De oratore explains that this gesture sprang from his own
emotions and tells how Manius’ supporter Marius, the famous general, was
also in tears. Again, at Antonius’ own trial under the lex Varia in 90 BC,37
Antonius was forced to defend himself against the charge of betraying the
Republic by encouraging Rome’s Italian allies to rebel, causing the Social War.
Writing in his Tusculan Disputations, Cicero remembers that he heard the
speech himself and ‘saw, my goodness, Marcus Antonius touch the ground
with his knee when he was speaking passionately’.38 The fact that Cicero is still
discussing this gesture over forty years later gives an idea of the impression it
must have made on those at the time. It may be important to note, though,
that both of these trials took place in the larger quaestiones, the public or
criminal courts in Rome that included a large number of men in the jury, as
opposed to a single judge in a private case; hence a bigger performance may
have been more appropriate in this situation.
Theatricality
On the theme of ‘dramatic’ gestures, and again possibly for reasons of context,
Auctor also twice warns that an orator’s gestures should not be conspicuous
for elegance or grossness, because this could make them seem, respectively,
like actors or labourers.39 He notes that an overly subdued tone could make
an orator sound like a tragedian, which is also to be avoided.40 This warning
also appears elsewhere in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, in Auctor’s example of
the simple style of speech at the beginning of book 4. Here the speaker (an
advocate in a law case) criticizes the tone (uox) of another participant for
being petulans and acerba, which is not the kind of tone, he says, you would
hear at the sundial (ad solarium), but backstage (pone scaenam) or somewhere
like that.41 The sundial refers to a place in the Forum, and in this context may
35
For the role of emotions in delivery, see Hall 2007; Cavarzere 2011: 117–41.
36
Cic. Verr. 2.5.3, De or. 2.194–9; Quint. Inst. 2.15.7. TLRR no. 84. See also Balbo in this
volume.
37
TLRR no. 108.
38
Cic. Tusc. 2.57: genu mehercule M. Antonium uidi, cum contente . . . diceret, terram tangere;
cf. Brut. 304.
39
Rhet. Her. 3.15.26 (histriones/operarii), also cf. 3.14.24 (oratorica/tragica). See Connolly
2007, 2009; Gunderson 2000: 59–86, 111–48; Richlin 1997; Cavarzere 2011: 61–4 in relation to
uox. For the overlaps in gestures of orators and actors, see Graf 1991.
40 41
Rhet. Her. 3.14.25. Rhet. Her. 4.10.14.

actually be a gloss for the Forum as a whole, as it seems to be in Cicero’s Pro
Quinctio.42 In this case, the distinction drawn here is the same as the one
in Auctor’s discussion of pronuntiatio between actors (backstage) and orators
(in the Forum).
The concern about theatricality certainly has parallels in Cicero’s evidence
for this period.43 In the description of Sulpicius’ delivery above, Cicero seemed
to use ‘tragic’ (tragicus) in a positive sense, but the concern not to appear too
much like an actor or tragedian is still clear as Cicero emphasizes that
Sulpicius’ gestures were made for the Forum, not the stage. An effeminate
delivery could cause problems for the orator and, as Auctor suggests, under-
mine his role. Sextus Titius (tr. pl. 99) is one of those orators who was ‘so free
and mild in his gestures that a dance was invented which was named the
“Titius”’.44 Cicero uses this example to warn his readers against doing any-
thing that can be mimicked or mocked.45
The famous orator Hortensius was also criticized by Cicero for having
gestures that were ‘more skilful than is useful for an orator’.46 Hortensius’
oratorical career began in 95 BC and he was one of the few orators who stayed
in Rome after 86 BC when Auctor was writing the Rhetorica ad Herennium.47
Elsewhere, Cicero calls Hortensius’ style at this time ‘exciting’ (commotior)
and emphasizes that an orator needs to be loud and active in order to make
themselves seen and heard above the noise and bustle of the Forum.48 So in
Hortensius’ case, as with Sulpicius’, his theatrical delivery did not detract from
his success as an orator despite Cicero’s own equivocating. Yet Auctor’s
insistence on the need to avoid this style suggests that he too has qualms
about the appropriateness of this manner of pronuntiatio, at least for his
particular audience.
AUDIENCE AND CONTEMPORARY CONTEXT
These parallels show that Auctor’s discussion is closely embedded in his

contemporary context. In many ways he can be associated with wider trends
in delivery and oratory, but the discussion above has already highlighted some
42
Cic. Quinct. 18.59.
43
For further discussion of Cicero’s and Quintilian’s treatment, see Fantham 2004.
44
Cic. Brut. 225: tam solutus et mollis in gestu ut saltatio quaedam nasceretur cui saltationi
Titius nomen esset. See Wisse 2013: 172–4.
45
Cf. Quint. Inst. 11.3.128.
46
Cic. Brut. 303: motus et gestus etiam plus artis habebat quam erat oratori satis. See Wisse
2013: 174–5.
47
See Cic. Brut. 308; De or. 3.61.229 for Hortensius’ speeches in 95/92 BC.
48
Cic. Brut. 317.
222 Jennifer Hilder

aspects of contemporary delivery that Auctor does not necessary endorse for
his own audience. Building on this, in the following section I will examine
more closely how his discussion is framed and why, to argue that Auctor
responds specifically to the audience and the contemporary situation of the
Rhetorica ad Herennium.
As he writes after the Social War, and with a deep awareness of the
ramifications of that conflict,49 the newly enfranchised citizens from across
Italy are one potential audience for Auctor. Despite their new citizenship,
these men would still face the challenge of being non-Roman, without the day-
to-day familiarity of seeing a Roman court or a Roman orator in action. It is
the lack of visual record that is particularly important in the context of
pronuntiatio, and which might also make any examples rather meaningless.
Indeed, it is notable that this section on pronuntiatio contains no examples,
unlike the other sections of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, and unlike the
discussions of pronuntiatio in works by Cicero and Quintilian.
The needs of this particular audience may well be reflected in the way
Auctor has written this section on pronuntiatio. It can be argued that the
format of the Rhetorica ad Herennium as a whole is purposefully designed to
be accessible for such an audience. They are people who would benefit from a
quick, relatively simple introduction to speaking in court (as exemplified
by the catalogue-like format of book 4), but at the same time were aware of
the longer-term political and historical trends surrounding the Roman Forum
(as reflected in Auctor’s choice of examples). To this end, Auctor’s tendency in
his discussion of pronuntiatio is also to simplify the systematization of rhetoric,
moving from three main categories (voice, expression, gesture) to two (voice
quality and physical movement). In keeping with this, too, are the negative
examples that Auctor uses, such as the actor, day labourer, or tragedian men-
tioned above. These are generic examples that a non-Roman audience could
relate to, without naming any names or drawing on any particular features.
Another sign of the accessibility of his teaching is apparent in his focus on
the conversational tone (sermo), which is divided into four subdivisions and
receives the most attention, as opposed to the debating tone (contentio) and
amplification (amplificatio), which both have two subdivisions. The conver-
sational tone, as the name suggests, is closest to everyday speech and is
described as ‘casual’ (remissa) by Auctor; therefore, it would be the easiest for
newer orators to master. Orators would need to use the other two tones as well,
as they are useful for different parts of speech, but the greater amount of time
spent on the conversational tone makes the task as a whole more achievable.
Finally, Auctor ends with the encouragement to practise. From the intro-
duction of the Rhetorica ad Herennium to its final word, practice (exercitatio)
49
See examples at Rhet. Her. 2.28.45, 3.2.2, 4.22.31; cf. 2.28.45, 4.9.13, 4.35.46.

is an important complement to the rhetorical theory being described, but here
it takes on a more important role than elsewhere. As Auctor admits at the end
of this section, even if he did not succeed in his description of pronuntiatio,
still he has given some advice (admonere) about what ought to be done. The
rest, he says, is down to practice. In this case, then, rhetorical theory may
not work, but he is certain that practising will. This also fits with an audience
who do not have an immediate visual reference point for what he describes,
and will need further physical training in person. This suggests yet another
adaptation to the potentially non-Roman audience that may have consciously
shaped Auctor’s discussion.
Closely connected to this audience of newly enfranchised Italians are the
politicians who had been fighting and dying ostensibly on their behalf in the
previous decades. The Rhetorica ad Herennium is a text that has been associ-
ated with the populares, the politicians from Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus
onwards who used ‘rabble-rousing’ techniques to win over audiences and pass
controversial legislation, often concerning the ‘Italian question’ of land and
citizenship.50 The association of Auctor with these orators derives from the
particular interest that he shows in the series of murdered tribunes stretching
from the Gracchi down to Saturninus and Sulpicius.51 These popularis politi-
cians, often tribunes,52 seem to have used a distinctive style of oratory
that more conservative politicians found unappealing. An example might be
Cicero’s description of Saturninus (tr. pl. 103, 101 BC) in the Brutus as ‘so
unrestrained and almost mad that he was an excellent performer and very
effective at rousing and exciting the minds of the inexperienced’.53 Cicero
claims that Saturninus’ appearance and movement were more important than
his oratory in capturing the attention of the people.54 As J.-M. David has
argued, Cicero in Brutus repeatedly uses terms such as uehemens, acer, and
50
For the Rhetorica ad Herennium and the populares, see: Marx 1894: 141–53; Caplan 1954:
xxii–iv; Gelzer 1962; Calboli 1965: 57–102; Calboli 1969: 35–42; Ungern-Sternberg 1973; Achard
1989: xxviii. Galbraith 2004: 120–74 (with wider context). See also the analysis of Sinclair 1993,
who suggests that the Auctor teaches his students how to appeal to the elite and thereby access
political power. Wiseman 2009: 10 describes the Rhet. Her. as ‘the earliest contemporary
evidence for the People’s point of view’; see also Kaplow 2012 on popularis history. For the
use, discussion, and debate of the terms popularis and optimas in scholarship more generally, see
Robb 2010: 15–33, along with 69–93 (on Ciceronian evidence), 145–6 (a summary of other
authors’ usages).
51
As seen most clearly in the example at Rhet. Her. 4.22.31, where the deaths of the Gracchi,
Saturninus, Drusus, and Sulpicius are described in turn.
52
On the political allegiances of tribunes, see Russell 2013.
53
Cic. Har. resp. 41: ipse Saturninus ita fuit effrenatus et paene demens ut actor esset egregius
et ad animos imperitorum excitandos inflammandosque perfectus. Saturninus also performed
stunts to make an impression on the crowd (as Antonius did), including an attempt to make the
mother of the Gracchi kiss the man claiming to be Tiberius Gracchus’ son at a public assembly in
100 BC: Val. Max. 3.8.6.
54
Cic. Brut. 224.
224 Jennifer Hilder

acerbus, as opposed to suauis and elegans, to describe popularis orators.55
David has also linked this attitude to Cicero’s descriptions of municipal
orators, who are non-Romans but nevertheless come to speak in the Roman
Forum; if correct, this would have been particularly relevant for the newly
enfranchised citizens who may have been prejudged on this basis.56
Auctor does not always choose to use positive examples from these tribunes,
however, a fact that calls into question the popularis nature of the text as a
whole. Many examples do not straightforwardly praise such men. Instead,
Auctor’s examples focus on the aftermath of their careers, expressing regret for
their callous treatment at the hands of the people and their cruel murder by
the opposition.57 One example accuses Gaius Gracchus directly: ‘Riots, Gaius
Gracchus, you are planning civil and internal riots!’58 While Auctor does not
condemn the political aims and actions of these men, it seems that their
methods are under scrutiny.
Hence, rather than continuing to debate whether the Rhetorica ad Here-
nnium is a popularis text or not, it can be better understood as a response to
the failures of these men—more specifically, perhaps, as an attempt to avoid
the repetition of these recent scenes and to educate the next generation of
orators in a different way. As another example in the Rhetorica ad Herennium
reminds the Roman people: ‘remember, if I may speak truthfully, that all those
men were massacred before your eyes by your own lack of care, or rather, lack
of spirit.’59 The recent turmoil of the Social War (triggered in part by another
tribune, Livius Drusus) and the continuing loss of life cannot have been an
advert for the success of this kind of oratory or delivery.
A new direction for these new orators is thus required, and a style of
delivery with less dangerous connotations. In the previous section, it was
noted that Auctor did not encourage grand gestures or theatricality, and this
reticence is reflected in his advice on voice quality. In particular, Auctor’s
instructions for the introduction of a speech emphasize the need for a calm,
relaxed voice (sedata et depressa uox)—quite different from that which might
be associated with a popularis orator. Instead of a sharp shout (acer clamor),
the orator should start softly so that they do not hurt themselves; an added
benefit is that this is also pleasing to the audience. These two aspects are
55
David 1980, esp. 176–80. David also argues for the connection to actio (pp.183–6).
56
David 1979, esp. 156; David 1983a. But note Wisse’s caution about the strength of David’s
conclusions: 2013: 177–8 with n. 52.
57
See examples at Rhet. Her. 1.15.25, 4.22.31, 4.28.38 (quoted below), 4.36.48 (quoted below),
4.54.67, 4.55.68.
58
Rhet. Her. 4.28.38: tumultus, Gai Gracce, tumultus domesticos et intestinos conparas! I agree
with Caplan’s reading of conparas here (after the vocative) as opposed to Achard, who reads
conparat. See also the discussion in Martin 2000: 29.
59
Rhet. Her. 4.36.48: tum uobis ueniat in mentem, ut uere dicam, neglegentia uestra siue
ignauia potius, illos omnes ante oculos uestros trucidatos esse.

combined throughout the description, and the audience’s preference is given
great weight. After making this point, rather strangely, Auctor begins to say
the whole thing again: what is more unpleasant than shouting at the start of a
speech? This does appear to be something of a mistake, but the repetition has
the effect of imprinting this instruction into the minds of the reader. It is so
important, one might think, that Auctor had to write it twice. The language
adds to the sense of urgency, with violent verbs such as uolnero and laedo
describing the harm done to the speaker and listener, and adjectives such as
acer, acutus, attenuatus, insuauis contrasted with sedatus and the splendor
uocis. It is significant that acer and (in)suauis, identified by David as key terms
in Cicero’s negative descriptions of popularis orators, are also used powerfully
here; acer in particular is repeated several times. Rather than an introduction
to popularis delivery, Auctor’s discussion focuses on calm, quiet introductions,
and relegates forcefulness to the conclusion. This is a reminder to the reader
and future orator to think about their own audience, who would perhaps
most commonly be the single judge of a civil trial (see above) and may not
appreciate these particular approaches.
The timeliness of this reminder is supported by other evidence. Shortly after
the Rhetorica ad Herennium was written, the young Cicero came to a similar
realization about his own style of speech. As Cicero records in Brutus, friends
and doctors warned him about the physical exertion of his youthfully exuber-
ant way of speaking in legal cases,60 and he spent two years away from Rome at
the end of the 80s BC studying to find a better method. The improvements were
not just physical: Cicero says that what he learned helped to take the struggle
out of the speech (quasi deferuerat oratio),61 making him exercitatior, ‘more
disciplined’.62 It may be that Cicero was responding to a trend favouring a
quieter mode of delivery after the Social War and the deaths of powerful
political orators, a desire for change which may have been exacerbated by the
one-man regimes that dominated the decade. Cicero learned to restrain
himself, just as Auctor had recommended.
CO NCLUSION
Despite writing at a time of great change, much of the foundation of the

Rhetorica ad Herennium is traditional in form and content, as can be seen
from the underlying parallels with Cicero’s De inuentione. So, when Auctor
60
Cic. Brut. 313–14.
61
Cic. Brut. 316: nam et contentio nimia uocis resederat et quasi deferuerat oratio lateribusque
uires et corpori mediocris habitus accesserat.
62
Cic. Brut. 316.
226 Jennifer Hilder

claims to be doing something different, there is all the more reason to consider
whether he is or not, and what other influences might be acting on his
decision. I argue that the contemporary context should be taken into account,
as for other parts of the text, and I hope to have shown that this is a productive
approach to the Rhetorica ad Herennium. In this instance, wider contempor-
ary attitudes about delivery and popularis orators appear particularly relevant
to the language and approach used by Auctor, and gain further weight when
his own potential audience of new citizens and non-Romans are considered.
Although Auctor appears to sympathize with the populares in many examples,
his advice for pronuntiatio is, by contrast, cautious and conservative, with no
examples or references to contemporary figures. This appears to be an attempt
to return some control to a practice that had begun to escalate, and to find a
middle ground suitable for his audience, who were neither members of the
elite nor likely to speak in high-profile cases. Taken together, this prompts a
reconsideration of the effects of the Social War on oratory, and delivery in
particular, in the 80s BC and beyond.
13
Traces of Actio in Fragmentary Roman

Orators
Andrea Balbo
‘It is frustrating how little evidence we have about Cicero’s own practices of
oratorical delivery.’1 With this statement, Jon Hall encapsulates the feeling of
scholars towards the lack of information we have for Ciceronian actio, the
aspect of oratory that includes both the speaker’s vocal delivery—effected
through sounds, tones of voice, and pronunciation—and his body language—
his facial expressions, gestures, tears, clothing, signs, and interaction with his
audience—; his eloquentia corporis (Cic. Orat. 55). If we shift the focus away
from Cicero and onto fragmentary orators, we experience the same sense of
frustration, and any investigation into the actio of these speakers is exacer-
bated by the methodological problems involved in working with fragments.
My paper aims to trace aspects of oratorical delivery that we can find among
the orators collected in ORF4 and FRRO, to elucidate some features of
individual speakers, and to demonstrate that the body of evidence for these
fragmentary orators has much to offer the student of public speech in Repub-
lican Rome.2 I begin with an overview of the three main methodological
1
Hall 2004: 143. Recent scholarship on oratorical delivery in Latin authors has produced
some interesting results. The problem has been fully investigated by Cavarzere 2011, who relies
on Bologna 20002, Watzlawick et al. 1967, and, above all, on P. Ekman and W. V. Friesen’s
numerous studies on non-verbal communication, beginning with Ekman and Friesen 1969. To
Cavarzere’s bibliography I add Ekman 1999. Very important contributions are also made by
Hall 2004, Wisse, Winterbottom, and Fantham 2008, Wisse 2013, and Hall 2014a, which I make
full use of in the following pages. The journal Gesture, which is devoted to the study of body
language in different cultures, is also very useful (http://www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour
nals/15699773). The main works on ancient gestures are Aldrete 1999 and Dutsch 2002. Unless
otherwise indicated, I use the translations of the FRRO project. I wish to thank the other editors
and Michael Winterbottom for their kindly suggestions on this paper.
2
I am grateful to Jon Hall, whose latest work on actio has prepared a rich and useful
examination of the attitude towards delivery that Cicero presents in his Brutus, a work that
preserves many important details about this practice: Hall 2014a: 57.
228 Andrea Balbo

questions associated with such research and a general discussion of the
material to be gathered from the orators listed in the FRRO project, before
focusing more narrowly on specific elements of actio.
First of all, with the exception of a very limited number of texts written by
grammarians or by scholars such as Aulus Gellius, the sources that offer
testimonia to orators other than Cicero reflect the precise tastes and preferences
of their authors. Cicero, for example, whom Quintilian uses as a model for his
own discussion of this topic, attempts to construct his ‘aesthetic of delivery’3 on
the balance that a speaker achieves between dignitas and uenustas, and on an
opposition between orators and actors.4 Consequently, he establishes an ideal
standard for actio, of which ‘many orators fell some way short . . . although at
times Cicero diplomatically chooses to leave the point unstated’.5 When Cicero
defines their delivery as problematic, therefore, we may sometimes suspect him
of deliberate misrepresentation.
Secondly, as many authors remind us, we do not have contemporary
Roman theoretical treatises about actio at our disposal. Quintilian notes that
there were different opinions about vocal delivery, permitting at least the
possibility that such alternative views derived from works now unknown to
us (Quint. Inst. 11.3.10).6 In another passage (Inst. 11.3.143),7 Quintilian
3
To quote an effective formula of Jon Hall.
4
Hall 2014b: 48: ‘Cicero’s remarks on delivery are not confined to specific technical aspects of
voice and gesture. They are also informed by a broader aesthetic ideal formulated by the
rhetorical handbooks: a good speaker was able to combine in his performance the virtues of
dignitas (“impressiveness”) and uenustas (“grace” or “charm”). This ideal was in fact quite a
challenging one. Dignitas and uenustas were in many respects contrasting qualities. The first,
with its connotations of social rank and authority, was generally associated with the typically
masculine sphere of politics and public service. The second derived from concerns with aesthetic
refinement and sophistication.’
5
Hall 2014b: 48.
6
sunt tamen qui rudem illam et qualem impetus cuiusque animi tulit actionem iudicent
fortiorem et solam uiris dignam, sed non alii fere quam qui etiam in dicendo curam et artem et
nitorem et quidquid studio paratur ut adfectata et parum naturalia solent improbare, uel qui
uerborum atque ipsius etiam soni rusticitate, ut L. Cottam dicit Cicero fecisse, imitationem
antiquitatis adfectant (‘However, there are those who think that raw delivery, such as is produced
by the impulse of a person’s feelings, is stronger, and is in fact the only kind worthy of a real man.
These are in general the same people who habitually disapprove of care, art, polish and any
product of study in oratory, as being affected and unnatural, or who claim to imitate antiquity by
a rustic vocabulary or even pronunciation, as Cicero says Lucius Cotta did’). (Trans. Russell
2001). It is also possible that Quintilian is talking here about speakers he himself has seen and
heard, as Winterbottom 1995 suggests.
7
togam ueteres ad calceos usque demittebant, ut Graeci pallium: idque ut fiat, qui de gestu
scripserunt circa tempora illa, Plotius Nigidiusque, praecipiunt (‘The ancients used to let the toga
fall to the heels, as the Greeks are in the habit of doing with the cloak: Plotius and Nigidius both
recommend this in the books which they wrote about gesture as practised in their own day’). See
Rhet. Her. 3.19: pronuntiationem multi maxime utilem oratori dixerunt esse et ad persuadendum
plurimum ualere. nos quidem unum de quinque rebus plurimum posse non facile dixerimus;
egregie magnam esse utilitatem in pronuntiatione audacter confirmauerimus (‘Many have said
that the faculty of greatest use to the speaker and the most valuable for persuasion is Delivery.
For my part, I should not readily say that any one of the five faculties is the most important; that
Traces of Actio in Fragmentary Roman Orators 229

mentions treatises de gestu prepared by P. Nigidius Figulus, a Roman Pythag-
orean,8 and one Plotius, who is probably to be identified with Lucius Plotius
Gallus, one of the rhetores Latini of the first century BC.9 With the exception of
the information on the toga taken by Quintilian from these two works,
however, their contents are a mystery. It is possible that a now-lost libellus
of Antonius—disseminated and read against the wishes of its author10—
included a discussion of delivery, but corroborating evidence is lacking.11
The Rhetorica ad Herennium prefaces its own treatment of actio by empha-
sizing that: nemo de ea re diligenter scripsit—nam omnes uix posse putarunt de
uoce et uultu et gestu dilucide scribi, cum eae res ad sensus nostros pertinerent
(3.19).12 This comment accounts for the lack of influence of such manuals in
Latin, perhaps even the non-existence; in Greek, by contrast, we know of a
treatise Peri hypokriseos by Theophrastus.13
Thirdly, actio itself resists uniform definition, as the attempts to divide and
classify it according to different aspects of rhetorical practice illustrate. As
Cavarzere has clearly shown in his discussion of the possible influence of
Theophrastus’ model of delivery on the Auctor ad Herennium and on Cicero’s
writings,14 the inconsistencies which our sources display in subdividing actio
enhance this difficulty: for example, we find actio variously divided into two
separate elements (uox and gestus/motus)15 or into three (uox/sonus, uultus,
and gestus/motus).16 The division into two parts emphasizes an opposition
between body and voice; the division into three highlights the importance of
uultus and gives the speaker’s facial expressions an independent significance,
though this distinction is less common (or fairly unusual), perhaps because it
was too closely associated with acting.17
an exceptionally great usefulness resides in the delivery I should boldly affirm’). (Trans. Caplan
1954). See Hilder in this volume.
8
On Nigidius, see above all Liuzzi 1983 and D’Anna 2008.
9
See Ziegler 1951; Lana 1998; Luzzatto 2002; Manzoni 2007; for a different perspective, see
Manfredini 1976.
10
See Cic. De or. 1.94.
11
Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 1.186 suggest that the book ‘nicht auf doctrina, sondern
auf rerum usu causisque beruhte’.
12
‘ . . . no one has written carefully on this subject—all have thought it scarcely possible for
voice, mien, and gesture to be lucidly described, as appertaining to our sense-experience . . . ’
(Trans. Caplan 1954). See Hilder in this volume. Nocchi 2013: 8 n. 4 raises the possibility that no
author, Greek or Roman, had previously dealt with the art of delivery in an organic treatise, but
rather treated the different elements of actio individually. See also Nocchi 2013: 117–19.
13 14
See Cavarzere 2011: 27–35 with further bibliography. Cavarzere 2011: 24–35.
15
Hall 2014b: 47 refers to voice and gesture as the ‘two components of delivery typically
recognized by the rhetorical theory as the most important’. See Hilder in this volume.
16
We find two-part divisions in Rhet. Her. 3.19 (uocis figura and corporis motus); Cic. De inv.
1.9 (dignitas uocis and moderatio corporis); De or. 1.252; De or. 3.220–3; Brut. 141–2 (gestus and
uox); Quint. 11.3.1 (referring to Cicero’s view). Tripartite divisions are found in Rhet. Her. 1.3
(uox, uultus, gestus); Cic. De or. 3.216 (uultus, sonus, gestus); passim in the last section of De
oratore (Cavarzere 2011: 33–5 notes the different versions of Cicero’s statements here).
17
See Nocchi 2013: 95–115.
230 Andrea Balbo
GENERAL E LEMENTS OF DELIVERY

IN FRRO ORATORS
In the section of the Institutio oratoria devoted to actio, Quintilian provides

information about several Roman orators:
hac (sc. actione) Cn. Lentulum plus opinionis consecutum quam eloquentia tradit
(sc. Cicero), eadem C. Gracchum in deflenda fratris nece totius populi Romani
lacrimas concitasse, Antonium et Crassum multum ualuisse, plurimum uero
Q. Hortensium. cuius rei fides est, quod eius scripta tantum infra famam sunt,
qua diu princeps orator, aliquando aemulus Ciceronis existimatus est, nouissime,
quoad uixit, secundus, ut appareat placuisse aliquid eo dicente quod legentes non
inuenimus. et hercule cum ualeant multum uerba per se et uox propriam uim
adiciat rebus et gestus motusque significet aliquid, profecto perfectum quiddam
fieri cum omnia coierunt necesse est.18 Quint. Inst. 11.3.8–9
Quintilian here refers to examples already cited by Cicero in his works on

oratory,19 but his statements deserve attention for two reasons. First, these
are the first Roman examples he cites in this section (earlier he refers to
Demosthenes). Secondly, he chooses five individuals, who, together, represent
three of the main aetates oratoriae: Gaius Gracchus (first); Antonius and
Crassus (second); Hortensius and Cn. Lentulus (third, with their names
arranged in a ring composition). Some prominent characters of Republican
oratory are thus placed in the leading position in Quintilian’s argument about
delivery, and this highlights their relevance as examples of this craft, both
independently and through the mediation of Cicero. While Quintilian’s ref-
erence to the speakers’ words, voice, movements, and gestures is conventional,
and tears are a traditional means of displaying emotion, his statement that the
combination of these elements produces more effective oratory than each
aspect of delivery in isolation is worthy of attention.
18
‘He tells that Gnaeus Lentulus got more reputation from this than from his eloquence,
that Gaius Gracchus moved the whole Roman people to tears by this means, when he wept
for his brother’s death, and that Antonius and Crassus were very strong in this way, but
Quintus Hortensius strongest of all. This is supported by the fact that Hortensius’ written
works are far from justifying the reputation that caused him to be long regarded as the
leading orator, then for a time as Cicero’s rival and finally, for the rest of his life, as second
only to Cicero. There must obviously have been some attractions in his speaking that we do
not find when we read him. Indeed, since the words are very powerful by themselves and
the voice adds its own contribution to the content, and gestures and movements have a
meaning, then, when they all come together, the result must be perfection.’ (Trans.
Russell 2001).
19
Cic. Brut. 234 (Lentulus); De or. 3.214 (Gracchus); Brut. 141, 158, 303 (Antonius and
Crassus); Brut. 317 (Hortensius).

Perusal of the testimonia included in ORF 4 and in FRRO furnishes us with
further information about the use of each element of actio and of all three
elements in combination, as Tables 13.1–4 show.
Table 13.1. Voice

Orator Testimonia
M. Porcius Cato (Maior) RE 9 lingua, Livy 39.40.7 and 10

P. Antistius RE 19 Cic. Brut. 226–7 (see below)
L. Aurelius Cotta RE 100 grauitas, sonus, rusticitas, Cic. De or. 3.42
subrusticus sonus, Cic. Brut. 137
M. Antonius RE 28 uox fusca, Quint. Inst. 11.3.171
Q. Hortensius Hortalus RE 13 celeritas, Cic. Brut.
uox incitata et uibrans, Cic. Brut. 325–27
Cn. Pompeius Magnus RE 31 gemitus, Suet. Iul. 50
P. Autronius Paetus RE 7 uox peracuta et magna, Cic. Brut. 241
M. Licinius Crassus RE 68 uox et oratio, Cic. De or. 3.6
Table 13.2. Gestures

Orator Testimonium
M. Licinius Crassus RE 68 digitus, Quint. Inst. 11.3.94.20
Table 13.3. Movements

Orator Testimonia
C. Scribonius Curio RE 10 frequens et concitata, Quint. Inst. 11.3.129

Sextus Titius RE 23 mollis actio, Quint. Inst. 11.3.128
M. Antonius RE 28 Cic. De or. 2.124 (Antonius pro Aquilio; see below)
Table 13.4. Combined elements

Orator Testimonia
C. Sempronius Gracchus RE 47 oculi, uox, gestus, lacrimae, Cic. De or. 3.214

Q. Hortensius Hortalus RE 13 uox . . . motus et gestus, Cic. Brut. 303 (see below)
Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus Val. Max. 4.1.12 (see below)
RE 94
M. Licinius Crassus RE 68 iactatio corporis, inclinatio uocis, inambulatio, supplosio
pedis, Cic. Brut. 158–60
oculi, gestus, uerba, Cic. De or. 2.225
(continued )
20
In Brut. 278, Cicero lists the gestures that Calidius did not use in the trial against Q. Gallius
in 66 or 64 BC (see description and bibliography in Malaspina 2004: s.v. ‘Pro Gallio’): he touched
neither the front nor the leg, and he did not tap the foot. These gestures were in use in Cicero’s
time, as he declares that the latter was the first step to show excitement (quod minimum est).
232 Andrea Balbo
Table 13.4. Continued

Orator Testimonia
P. Sulpicius Rufus RE 92 animi impetus, uox, contentio corporis, dignitas motus

uerborumque, grauitas et copia dicendi, Cic. De or. 3.31
C. Iulius Caesar RE 131 uox, motus, forma, Cic. Brut. 261
uox acuta, ardens motus gestusque, Suet. Iul. 55.1–3
uis, acumen, concitatio, Quint. Inst. 10.1.114
M. Aemilius Scaurus RE 1140 uox, uultus, motus, Cic. Brut. 110
P. Rutilius Rufus RE 34 uox, uultus, motus, Cic. Brut. 110
Cn. Pompeius Magnus RE 31 uox, motus, Cic. Brut. 23921
P. Servilius Rullus RE 80 uultus, sonus uocis, incessus, uestitus, corpus, capilli,
barba, oculi, Cic. Leg. agr. 2.13
L. Sergius Catilina RE 23 uultus, uox, Sall. Cat. 31.7
M. Porcius Cato (Minor) RE 16 austere et Stoice, Cic. Mur. 74
M. Calidius RE 4 uox, uultus, solutum genus orationis, Val. Max. 8.10.3
M. Caelius Rufus RE 35 uultus, uox, gestus, Quint. Inst. 11.1.51
I do not claim that the sources gathered above provide a complete survey of
the available material; such an undertaking would require more space and a
more detailed analysis than can presently be provided. Nevertheless, the
abundance of testimonia to physical and vocal elements working in tandem
confirms the suggestions of Cicero and Quintilian discussed above, and
underlines the fundamental interrelationship of these elements for producing
an effective actio. It also demonstrates the likelihood that this trend towards
conceiving of oratorical delivery as a unit was part of everyday practice and
not confined to theoretical treatises. Taking these premises into account, we
can now highlight some characteristic features of delivery in fragmentary
Roman orators, focusing particularly on problems arising from the speaker’s
voice and on a case study of M. Aquilius, a paradigm for the combination of
different elements of delivery.
SVAVITAS VOCIS A N D BE A S TL Y V O I C E S
Cicero gives an indication of his aesthetics of delivery in the De officiis: sed cum
orationis indicem uocem habeamus, in uoce autem duo sequamur, ut clara sit,
ut suauis, utrumque omnino a natura petundum est, uerum alterum exercitatio
augebit, alterum imitatio presse loquentium et leniter (1.133).22 Clarity (clara)
and pleasantness (suauis) are the two basic criteria for an effective voice.
21
See Blom 2011.
22
‘But since we use the voice as the vehicle for speech, we should pursue two aims in terms of
our voice: to be clear, and to be pleasing. Both are fundamentally to be sought from nature, but
practice will enhance the former, and imitating those who speak gently but firmly the latter.’

Clara uox implies fluency, good pronunciation, and the ability to articulate
words without creating misunderstandings. Even though the voice may vary
and change, as Crassus explains towards the end of the De oratore, ars and
moderatio can work together to control it and make it effective in every situation,
determining the levels of its strength and effects (De or. 3.215–29).23 The idea
of suauitas is clearly emphasized when Crassus observes that nothing is better
for the suauitas actionis than change and variation of tones (uicissitudo et uarietas
et commutatio), illustrating this concept with the example of C. Gracchus, who
was assisted in finding the right tone of voice between weakness and excessive force
by a man who sounded a note from an ivory pitch–pipe (De or. 3.225).24 This
episode shows both the importance of controlling the voice and the emotional
strength of its tones, and the necessity of both for creating a general impression of
pleasantness. It is worth examining these same concepts in some earlier speakers.
In Brutus 52, after a section dedicated to Greek oratory, Cicero turns to
discuss Roman orators, even if the information concerning the earliest years of
their activity is poor and the space given to interpretation is limited (optime,
inquam, sed ueniamus ad nostros, de quibus difficile est plus intellegere quam
quantum ex monumentis suspicari licet). For the first orators listed in this
section, the text offers only a few hints of their oratorical style, and nothing
about their delivery (Brut. 52–72).25 The first individual treated at length is
M. Cornelius Cethegus, consul of 204 BC:
quem uero exstet et de quo sit memoriae proditum eloquentem fuisse et ita esse
habitum, primus est M. Cornelius Cethegus, cuius eloquentiae est auctor et
idoneus quidem mea sententia Q. Ennius, praesertim cum et ipse eum audiuerit
et scribat de mortuo; ex quo nulla suspicio est amicitiae causa esse mentitum. est
igitur sic apud illum in nono, ut opinor, annali:
‘additur orator Cornelius suauiloquenti
ore Cethegus Marcus Tuditano conlega
Marci filius’:
et oratorem appellat et suauiloquentiam tribuit, quae nunc quidem non tam est in
plerisque: latrant enim iam quidam oratores, non loquuntur; sed est ea laus
eloquentiae certe maxuma:
‘is dictust ollis popularibus olim,
qui tum uiuebant homines atque aeuum agitabant,
flos delibatus populi’:
probe uero; ut enim hominis decus ingenium, sic ingeni ipsius lumen est eloquen-
tia, qua uirum excellentem praeclare tum illi homines florem populi esse dixerunt:
‘suadai medulla’.
23
See, for example, Cic. De or. 3.216: nam uoces ut chordae sunt intentae, quae ad quemque
tactum respondeant, acuta grauis, cita tarda, magna parua. On this section, see Wisse,
Winterbottom, and Fantham 2008: 342–84, with further bibliography.
24
On this episode, see David 1983b; Cavarzere 2000: 84–5 and 98; Narducci 2004. Aulus
Gellius also knows the anecdote (NA 1.11.10–15): see Squillante 2009.
25
About Appius Claudius, for example, Cicero says only that he was disertus (Brut. 55: Appio
Caeco diserto).
234 Andrea Balbo

Peitho quam uocant Graeci, cuius effector est orator, hanc Suadam appellauit
Ennius; eius autem Cethegum medullam fuisse uult, ut, quam deam in Pericli
labris scripsit Eupolis sessitauisse, huius hic medullam nostrum oratorem fuisse
dixerit.26
M. Cornelius Cethegus ORF4 7 T1 (= Cic. Brut. 57–9)
Cethegus is the first person whom Ennius—and consequently Cicero, who
trusts Ennius’ statement27—characterizes as eloquens,28 praising him as being
a great orator (laus eloquentiae maxuma). Suauiloquentia is a property of few
orators, one which connects both refinement of expression and skill in deliv-
ery, as other uses of this rare word by Cicero and Lucretius seem to suggest.29
Lucretius particularly emphasizes the connection of expression (exponere)
with poetic performance (carmen), indicating that the word contains a poetic
nuance; the Ennian quotation Suadai medulla, which connects suauiloquentia
and persuasion, confirms this suggestion. Above all, Cicero highlights the
contrast with the latrantes, showing that, just as he indicates in the passage
of De officiis quoted above, the suauiloquens speaker can persuade through the
appropriate and pleasant use of his voice. It is significant that an animal
metaphor, in this case involving dogs, is used to illustrate the opposite of a
pleasant and appropriate voice.30 The ‘human–beast’ antithesis seems to be a
26
‘The first person who is recorded and about whom there is a memory of eloquence and who
was known to be eloquent is Marcus Cornelius Cethegus, the authority for his eloquence, and a
well-qualified one in my opinion, being Quintus Ennius, especially since he both heard him
speak and wrote about him after his death: therefore no suspicion of falsehood exists on the basis
of their friendship. He appears in the ninth book, I think, of the Annals: “the sweet-tongued
orator Marcus Cornelius Cethegus, son of Marcus, was added to his colleague Tuditanus” and he
calls him “orator” and attributes sweetness to his oratory, which today is not to be found in most
(for some orators are rather barking than speaking), but this is certainly the highest praise in
terms of eloquence: “he was then called by the populares, the men who then lived and spent their
time, the flower enjoyed by the people”, certainly appropriately. For just as intellect is the glory of
men, the light of this intellect is eloquence in respect of which those men then rightly called that
excellent man the flower of the people and “the marrow of persuasion”. Peithò the Greeks call it,
which the orator effects, that is what Ennius called Suada of which he claimed Cethegus was the
marrow, so that he said that our orator was the marrow of that goddess whom Eupolis wrote sat
at the lips of Pericles.’
27
On the Ennian verses and their interpretation, see Flores et al. 2006: 68–83.
28
Cic. Brut. 57.
29
Cic. De rep. 5.11 F1 (= Gell. NA 12.2.6–7): ut Menelao Laconi quaedam fuit suauiloquens
iucunditas (cf. Orat. 58–59, where Cicero considers suauitas of the voice a worthy goal to
pursue); Lucr. 1.945–6 (= 4.20–1): uolui tibi suauiloquenti | carmine Pierio rationem exponere
nostram. The term is probably to be connected with the Greek μελίγηρυς, underlining the idea of
sweetness; see also Flores et al. 2006: 72.
30
Cousin 1979: 359 observes: ‘Quant aux orateurs qui “aboient” ils sont en effet stigmatisés
par Cicéron, Br. 58: latrant enim iam quidam oratores, non loquuntur (Quintilien a légèrement
modifié le texte) et De or. III, 138 à propos de Périclès: At hunc (il s’agit de Périclès) non
declamator aliquis ad clepsydram latrare docuerat ‒ Pour exprimer les cris de colère, les stoiciens
employaient aussi le verb latrare (Horace, Sat. I, 3, 136) et il n’est pas impossible d’ailleurs qu’en
ce cas, latrare désignant d’abord l’aboiement du chien, il y ait un jeu de mots implicite avec le
nom de cyniques.’

powerful element for describing the difference between good and bad oratory,
as we shall see below.
What were the features of Cethegus’ ‘sweetness’? We may suppose that
suauiloquentia corresponds to Quintilian’s ratio pronuntiationis, for which he
adduces Cethegus himself as an example, repeating Cicero’s judgement and
reinforcing the opposition between agere and latrare:
nam ut illa (sc. oratio) emendata dilucida ornata apta esse debet, ita haec quoque.
emendata erit, id est uitio carebit, si fuerit os facile explanatum iucundum
urbanum, id est in quo nulla neque rusticitas neque peregrinitas resonet. non
enim sine causa dicitur ‘barbarum Graecumue’: nam sonis homines ut aera tinnitu
dinoscimus. ita fiet illud quod Ennius probat cum dicit ‘suauiloquenti ore’
Cethegum fuisse, non quod Cicero in iis reprehendit quos ait latrare, non agere.31
Quint. Inst. 11.3.31
We find the idea of suauitas applied to the delivery of other orators; for example,
Lutatius Catulus (cos. 102). Cicero relates that Catulus gained success as a
speaker through his sweet and charming voice and pronunciation:
fuit igitur in Catulo sermo Latinus; quae laus dicendi non mediocris ab oratoribus
plerisque neglecta est. nam de sono uocis et suauitate appellandarum litterarum,
quoniam filium cognouisti, noli exspectare quid dicam.32
Q. Lutatius Catulus ORF 4
63 T1 (= Cic. Brut. 134)
The same features reappear later in the Brutus, where they provide a contrast
for Cotta’s style of delivery:
Catulus erat ille quidem minime indoctus, ut a te paulo est ante dictum, sed tamen
suauitas uocis et lenis appellatio litterarum bene loquendi famam confecerat.
Cotta, qui se ualde dilatandis litteris a similitudine Graecae locutionis abstraxerat
sonabatque contrarium Catulo, subagreste quiddam planeque subrusticum, alia
quidem quasi inculta et siluestri uia ad eandem laudem peruenerat.33
Cic. Brut. 259
31
‘For, as our language must be correct, clear, ornate, and appropriate, so with our delivery; it
will be correct, that is, free from fault, if our utterance be fluent, clear, pleasant, and “urbane”,
that is to say, free from all traces of a rustic or a foreign accent. For there is good reason for the
saying we so often hear, “He must be a barbarian or a Greek”: since we may discern a man’s
nationality from the sound of his voice as easily as we test a coin by its ring. If these qualities be
present, we shall have those harmonious accents of which Ennius expresses his approval when he
describes Cethegus as one whose “words rang sweetly”, and avoid the opposite effect, of which
Cicero expresses his disapproval by saying, “They bark, not plead” ’ (Trans. Russell 2001).
32
‘Catulus, then, possessed a good Latin pronunciation, a not unimportant laudable aspect of
oratory overlooked by most orators. As for the sound of his voice and the charm of his
pronunciation, don’t expect me to speak about them, because you knew his son.’
33
‘Catulus was not at all uneducated, as you said just before, but it was the sweetness of his
voice and the nice pronunciation which brought him fame for speaking . . . . Cotta, who dragged
himself strongly away from any similarity with Greek pronunciation through his broad vowels
and who sounded entirely different from Catulus, entertained a certain rural and entirely rustic
style yet arrived by a kind of uncultured and woodland road to the same praise.’
236 Andrea Balbo

Suauitas remains a guiding principle for evaluating the role of the voice in
delivery. In the generation before Cicero, it helped an orator to be effective, as
we see in the case of Cn. Lentulus Clodianus (cos. 72),34 whom Cicero and
Sallust judged to be inferior to Hortensius—considering him to be stolidior
and uanior 35—and in the case of Hortensius himself (cos. 69), who had a uox
canora et suauis:36
Cn. autem Lentulus multo maiorem opinionem dicendi actione faciebat quam
quanta in eo facultas erat; qui cum esset nec peracutus, quamquam et ex facie et
ex uoltu uidebatur, nec abundans uerbis, etsi fallebat in eo ipso, sic interuallis,
exclamationibus, uoce suaui et canora, admirando †inridebat†,37 calebat in
agendo, ut ea quae derant non desiderarentur. ita tamquam Curio copia nonnulla
uerborum, nullo alio bono, tenuit oratorum locum: sic Lentulus ceterarum
uirtutum dicendi mediocritatem actione occultauit, in qua excellens fuit.38
Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus
ORF 4 99 T3 (= Cic. Brut. 234)
The voices of both men were suaues et canorae, a sign of their accomplishment
and melodiousness. This similarity is not surprising, since they probably
shared common Asianic characteristics.39 The adjective canorus is notable
here: this is a word that, as its use in Lucretius and Virgil indicates, has
particular associations with the song of the swan.40 Our sources also suggest
the reverse association: cycnea is the adjective that describes the voice of
34
The suauitas uocis seems a feature of Lentuli. See Cornelius Lentulus Sura (ORF4 100, cos.
71), Cic. Brut. 59: . . . P. Lentulus, cuius et excogitandi et loquendi tarditatem tegebat formae
dignitas, corporis motus plenus et artis et uenustatis, uocis et suauitas et magnitudo (‘ . . . Publius
Lentulus, whose dignity of appearance covered up his slowness in thinking and speaking, was full
of movement and art and elegance, and his voice was sweet and powerful. So in this way he had
nothing apart from delivery, for all the other aspects were less good than in the preceding orator’).
35
Sall. Hist. 4.1.
36
Q. Hortensius Hortalus ORF4 92 T2 (= Cic. Brut. 303): uox canora et suauis, motus et gestus
etiam plus artis habebat, quam erat oratori satis (‘Lastly, he had a sweet and sonorous voice; and
his gesture had rather more art in it, and was more exactly managed, than is requisite for an
orator’).
37
The text is difficult and the obelus is necessary because of the reduplication of the verbs
inridebat and calebat, one of which seems to be a marginal gloss; I offer an apparatus criticus
here: admirando inridebat calebat L: admirando ore Friedrich: irretiebat Schuetz: admirandus
incedebat [cedebat] Martha: admirando irridendo latebat Lambinus: ad mirandum illicitabat ita
calebat Madvig, alii alia.
38
‘Gnaeus Lentulus, too, created for himself a greater reputation in oratory than he had skill.
For he was neither acute, although he seemed so from his appearance and facial expression, nor
was he ornate in language, although he tricked people to see that in him: therefore through pauses,
exclamations, a soft and singing voice, †he laughed at things to be admired†, he warmed up in his
delivery so that those aspects which he lacked seemed not to be missing. In this way, just as Curio
held a place among the orators through the wealth of his vocabulary and no other qualities,
Lentulus obscured with his excellent delivery the mediocre level of his other oratorical qualities.’
39
See Cavarzere 2000: 131–2.
40
Lucr. 4.181 and 910: cycni melior canor; Verg. Aen. 7.669–701: cycni . . . canoros . . . modos.

Crassus in one of his last speeches.41 Porphyrio notes that Horace called
Pindar ‘swan’ for the sweetness of his poems (a suauitate carminum), because
swans are considered melodious (quia et cycni canori esse dicuntur).42
According to Servius, Pliny’s Natural History reported that swans sing with
more sweetness (suauius canere) thanks to the length and the curve of their
necks, offering the explanation that their voice becomes harmonious and
modulated through the passage of the air in a long tube.43 We can see, then,
that canorus is closely connected with the idea of suauitas and that, by using
an adjective associated with a bird particularly celebrated in the poetic trad-
ition,44 Cicero expresses substantial admiration for the voice of the orators he
cites here. Through the contrast drawn between the canora uox of the swan
and the barking of dogs, we can also see that the speech of good orators is
characterized in terms of the graceful, soaring creatures of the air, while bad
speakers are likened to raucous creatures of the earth.
There is a further point to make regarding the association of sweetness with
the voice of the swan. Given the significance of the swan in the poetic
tradition, the expression uox suauis et canora seems to correspond to the
poetic character of the voice that we have seen in the description given to
Cethegus’ delivery by Ennius and Cicero. The orator who speaks suauiter and
canore, like a poet, is very effective in oral performance and in persuasion. It
seems probable that suauis and canorus also allude to modulated tones of
voice, as suggested by Cicero’s description of Lentulus’ ability to use pauses
(interualla) to offer (or to ‘command’) a wide variety of tones, even shouting
(exclamationes), and as being ardent and full of fervour (calebat in agendo).45
The uox canora continued to be a sign of a good orator. In the following
generation, another Lentulus, Lentulus Marcellinus (cos. 56), receives a similar
judgement from Cicero: Cn. autem Lentulus Marcellinus nec umquam
41
In senatu aduersus L. Marcium Philippum (91 BC), L. Licinius Crassus ORF4 66 T9 (= Cic.
De or. 3.6.1): illa tamquam cycnea fuit diuini hominis uox et oratio (‘This, however, was the last
swan-like note and speech of that divine orator’). The metaphor has a different meaning, but the
use of cycnea uox is interesting.
42
Porph. ad Hor. Carm. 4.2.25.
43
Serv. ad Aen. 7.700. This passage is not transmitted in the text of the Natural History as we
have it.
44
It is enough for our purposes to recall the references (direct or indirect) to the swan in
Horace Odes 2.20 and 4.2 (n. 42 above); on Horace Odes 2.20, see Bonfante 1992, Thévenaz 2002,
and Erasmo 2006.
45
Inter alia, I find this idea of calor interesting, because it connects with the idea of impetus in
speech, well studied by Winterbottom 1995. In another passage of the Brutus, Cicero says that
ardor animi . . . cum consedit, omnis illa uis et quasi flamma oratoris exstinguitur (Brut. 93). Here
Cicero speaks of the difficulty of conveying in writing what the orator said with his voice. It
seems to me that we can also find here a trace of a distinction between pronounced and written
eloquence, as stated by Cavarzere 2000 for Galba and Laelius. Lentulus is probably an orator
more capable of pronouncing than of revising and writing a speech, an activity in which he was
perhaps mediocris, as Quintilian also suggests (Inst. 11.3.8).
238 Andrea Balbo

indisertus et in consulatu pereloquens uisus est, non tardus sententiis, non inops
uerbis, uoce canora, facetus satis (Brut. 247).46 An orator is not, however,
always able to maintain the uox canora throughout his life. Its effectiveness
requires a speaker to have physical strength and powerful lungs, as Cato the
Elder highlights in Cicero’s De senectute, when he recalls that he was still able
to speak well at the age of sixty-five.47
The description of orators with animal-like voices seems to be rarely found
after Cethegus. Nonetheless, we can find traces of this mode of characteriza-
tion through indirect references to a speaker’s actio. Cicero, for example,
describes Cato the Elder as acerbior in uituperando, in sententiis argutior, in
docendo edisserendoque subtilior (Cic. Brut. 65). Even if such statements can
only offer indirect evidence for the orator’s delivery, they may yet suggest that
Cato’s use of his voice was strong and particularly effective, as Fronto, teacher
of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, implies:
meministi autem tu plurimas lectiones, quibus usque adhuc uersatus es, comoe-
dias, Atellan<a>s, oratores ueteres, quorum aut pauci aut praeter Catonem et
Gracchum nemo tubam inflat; omnes autem mugiunt uel stridunt potius.48
M. Porcius Cato, ORF 4 8 T12
(= Fronto 49.18–21vdH2)
Cato is exceptional: he, like Gracchus, has a strong, resonant style of delivery,
which stands out among other speakers. Other early orators are rough and their
speech resembles the noise of animals, a characterization which, in the eyes of
Fronto, indicates a great flaw in their delivery.49 Fronto’s language in this extract
follows the same opposition between good and bad orators outlined above.
While it is possible that Fronto is passing judgement on an orator’s style as a
whole rather than on their voice or delivery individually, the terms in which he
phrases his comment nevertheless seem to derive from much earlier attitudes.
46
‘Also Gnaeus Lentulus Marcellinus was seen as a not incompetent orator and in his
consulship an even eloquent one; he was not slow in expressing his opinion, not inept in his
vocabulary; he had a sonorous voice and enough humour.’
47
Cic. Sen. 14: ille autem Caepione et Philippo iterum consulibus mortuus est, cum ego
quinque et sexaginta annos natus legem Voconiam magna uoce et bonis lateribus suasi (‘He (sc.
Ennius) died in the consulship of Caepio and, for the second time, Philippus, when I, at the age of
sixty-five, spoke in favour of the lex Voconia, with strong voice and unimpaired physical fitness’).
Cato also underlines, with some pride, the importance of the speaker’s health for effective
oratory at Cic. Sen. 28: orator metuo ne languescat senectute; est enim munus eius non ingeni
solum, sed laterum etiam et uirium. omnino canorum illud in uoce splendescit etiam nescioquo
pacto in senectute; quod equidem adhuc non amisi, et uidetis annos (‘A speaker does, I am afraid,
weaken with age: the task requires physique and strength as well as talent. But even in old age
somehow a certain resonant quality of voice shines through; I have still not lost it, and you see
how old I am’). On weak lungs, see Casamento in this volume.
48
‘But you remember the numbers of books, of which you have up to the present made the
acquaintance, comedies, farces, old-time orators, few of whom, perhaps none save Cato and
Gracchus, blow a trumpet, but all bellow, or, rather, shriek.’ (Trans. Haines 1919–20).
49
Schol. Iuv. 6.468 uses mugio for the bull (inclusorum hominum gemitu mugiebat Taurus)
and Apuleius for the oxen.
WHEN THE VOICE CAUSES P ROBLEMS:

T W O E X A M P LE S
The voice may not always be the best instrument for ensuring good delivery.
Our sources furnish two examples in which a speaker’s voice has a negative
impact on his actio, either because he speaks at too great a volume and with an
uneven tone, or because his tone inspires fear.
Speaking too loud and awkwardly
Crassus, speaking with Scaevola in the first book of Cicero’s De oratore,

remembers M. Plautius Hypsaeus (RE 21) and Cn. Octavius (RE 18), two
orators who were eloquent (non defuit illis patronis . . . eloquentia neque di-
cendi ratio nec copia, De or. 1.167), but who knew nothing about ius ciuile.
Both men spoke in a trial held in 127 or 126 BC:50
‘potes igitur,’ inquit Crassus ‘ut alia omittam innumerabilia et immensa et ad
ipsum tuum ius ciuile ueniam, oratores putare eos, quos multas horas exspectauit,
cum in campum properaret, et ridens et stomachans P. Scaeuola, cum Hypsaeus
maxima uoce, plurimis uerbis a M. Crasso praetore contenderet, ut ei, quem
defendebat, causa cadere liceret, Cn. autem Octauius, homo consularis, non minus
longa oratione recusaret, ne aduersarius causa caderet ac ne is, pro quo ipse diceret,
turpi tutelae iudicio atque omni molestia stultitia aduersarii liberaretur?’51
Cic. De or. 1.166
Why did they not deserve to be called orators, even though they were praised
as being eloquent? Their scant knowledge of ius ciuile played a main role in
this judgement, of course, but the reference to their voices also suggests their
actio should be held in low regard: their speeches had neither measure nor
balance in tone (maxima uoce) and they were much too long (plurimis uerbis).
Their delivery exceeded its limits, producing disagreeable effects.52
50
See Li Causi et al. 2015: 426–7.
51
‘ “Can you”, said Crassus, “truthfully—so that I may omit all of these countless and
immeasurably important matters and arrive at your favourite, common law—consider to be
orators those men for whom Publius Scaevola waited for many hours, half laughing and half
simmering with rage, when he wanted to be in the Campus Martius, while Hypsaeus, at the top of
his voice and speaking at great length, was striving to make the praetor Marcus Crassus
forfeit the case of his client, but Gnaeus Octavius, a man of consular rank, argued against this
with an equally lengthy speech so that the opposing advocate should not succeed in having the
case abandoned, and so that the man for whom he was personally speaking should not be
delivered from a verdict on his shameful guardianship and from all the trouble on account of
his opponent’s stupidity?” ’
52
Another example of a very high tone of voice (maxima) is provided in the Pro Caelio (56 BC),
where Cicero remembers a certain P. Clodius (not in RE). Cic. Cael. 27: nam P. Clodius, amicus
meus, cum se grauissime uehementissimeque iactaret et omnia inflammatus ageret tristissimis
uerbis, uoce maxima, tametsi probabam eius eloquentiam, tamen non pertimescebam; aliquot
240 Andrea Balbo

In Sulpicius’ generation there emerged Publius Antistius (ORF4 78), an
advocate of reasonable skill, who, after an inauspicious start to his career,
successfully prosecuted Gaius Iulius Caesar Strabo for illegal candidacy in the
consular elections.53 It is worth quoting Cicero’s reference to Antistius in full:
coniunctus igitur Sulpici aetati P. Antistius fuit, rabula sane probabilis, qui multos
cum tacuisset annos neque contemni solum sed inrideri etiam solitus esset, in
tribunatu primum contra C. Iuli illam consulatus petitionem extraordinariam
ueram causam agens est probatus; et eo magis quod eandem causam cum ageret
eius conlega ille ipse Sulpicius, hic plura et acutiora dicebat. itaque post tribunatum
primo multae ad eum causae, deinde omnes maxumae quaecumque erant defer-
ebantur. rem uidebat acute, componebat diligenter, memoria ualebat; uerbis non ille
quidem ornatis utebatur, sed tamen non abiectis; expedita autem erat et perfacile
currens oratio; et erat eius quidam tamquam habitus non inurbanus; actio paulum
cum uitio uocis tum etiam ineptiis claudicabat.54 Cic. Brut. 226–7
Antistius spoke with abundance and incisiveness, and his success helped him
to become a fashionable advocate, characterized by good skills in inuentio,
dispositio, and memoria, and by an acceptable elocutio. Among the uitia
actionis, defects of the voice are foremost, and this is where Publius Antistius
has some problems. Ineptiae seem to be minor faults. The verb claudicare
demands attention: Cicero, who uses it in De oratore as well as in other
works,55 employs it in a metaphorical sense here: to be lame or limp in
speaking, debiles and infirmi, as the TLL suggests.56 The TLL article underlines
enim in causis eum uideram frustra litigantem (‘Then, my friend Publius Clodius, when he moved
about most gravely and violently and performed all as inflamed with the most serious words, at
the top of his voice, although I acknowledged his eloquence, I did not fear it. For I had seen him
already in many trials as the unsuccessful litigant’). Among Cicero’s enemies, Verres also cries
maxima uoce: Cic. Verr. 2.3.55. In general, see Mencacci 2012.
53
Anstitius prosecuted Strabo in 88 BC, the same year as he held his tribunate. See also
P. Sulpicius Rufus, ORF4 76 F17–18; Badian 1974.
54
‘Associated with the time of Sulpicius was Publius Antistius, a pettifogger not without
merit, who after many years of obscurity, during which he was treated with contempt and even
ridicule, won favour finally in his tribuneship by carrying to success a just indictment against the
irregular candidacy of Gaius Julius for the consulship. This was the more noteworthy because,
while his colleague, the famous Sulpicius, participated in the same case, Antistius made a fuller
and more penetrating argument. In consequence after his tribuneship many cases began to be
brought to him and eventually all the most important of whatever sort. He found the point at
issue acutely, arranged his argument carefully, and possessed a sure memory. His vocabulary was
not elaborate nor yet commonplace; his style was unembarrassed and fluent and its whole tone
was not without a certain urbanity; his action both from defect of voice and especially from some
tasteless mannerism was rather awkward.’ (Trans. Hendrickson 1939).
55
Five times concentrated in two loci: De or. 2.249 and 3.198, and Orat. 173 and 198. De or.
2.249 includes a quotation from Servilius Glaucia’s speech against Calvinus (ORF4 58b [Add. A]
F1, clodicat) in which there is a joke based on politics, but one which it is not easy to explain.
Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 3.262 regard it as ‘dunkel’, adding that ‘die Zahl der
Erklärungen (ist eine) Legion.’ See also Adkin 2010.
56
TLL III 1299.7–47 (O. Hey).

that the verb refers, in particular, to the rhythm of speech and to faults of
syllable sequences. Consequently, the defect seems to be an imbalance of the
voice and poor use of word order, which damage the rhythm and create an
unpleasant sonus.
The vox furialis
A speaker’s voice can also cultivate a terrifying atmosphere, one which is

characterized by disharmonic shrieks and feral screams. It is in such terms that
Cicero characterizes Clodius’ voice, as three examples will serve to illustrate:
cum furialis in contionibus uoces mittis.57 Cic. Har. resp. 39
quae contio fuit per hos annos, quae quidem esset non conducta sed uera, in
qua populi Romani consensus non perspici posset? habitae sunt multae de me a
gladiatore sceleratissimo, ad quas nemo adibat incorruptus, nemo integer; nemo
illum foedum uultum aspicere, nemo furialem uocem bonus audire poterat. erant
illae contiones perditorum hominum necessario turbulentae.58 Cic. Sest. 106
furialis illa uox nefariis stupris, religiosis altaribus effeminata.59 Cic. Planc. 86
The formula furialis uox refers to a voice which is violent, lacks balance, and is
excessively high in tone, to the point of shouting; a voice such as might conjure
up the image of the Furies (and of furious men, far from the correctness of
the optimates).60 Moreover, Clodius’ voice is deliberately hostile, probably
suggesting that the tone was harsh and designed to attack. The tone also
seems to be feminine, acute, shrill, and even sacrilegious (religiosis altaribus
effeminata, Cic. Planc. 86),61 far from the measured tones laid down in the
De oratore and De officiis. Finally, Clodius’ appearance is so horrifying that
no one can look at him (foedum uultum aspicere, Cic. Sest. 106). The
57
‘When you emit your furious words in the contio meetings.’
58
‘What meeting has been held within these years—I mean one that has not been packed
with hirelings, but a real one worthy of the name—in which the unanimous agreement of the
Roman people could not be clearly seen? Many were summoned about myself by a most
scoundrelly swordster, which were attended by no one who was not bribed nor by any honest
citizen; no good man could look upon that repulsive face, nor listen to that raving voice.
Those meetings of scoundrels could not be other than stormy.’ (Trans. Gardner 1958b).
Cicero here describes contiones in former years, dominated by the populares and the evil
figure of Clodius.
59
‘That voice, rendered insane by its infamous debaucheries, made effeminate by its attend-
ance on holy altars.’ (Trans. Yonge 1851–86).
60
The unpleasantness of the Furies’ voice is very clear also in Dante’s Inferno 9.46: ‘Megera
dal sinistro canto.’
61
The allusion to the Bona Dea here seems clear.
242 Andrea Balbo

identification Clodius/Furia is thus reinforced by the combination of his
physical qualities and the terrible effect of his voice.62
THE CASE OF M ’. AQUI L IUS
In the first section of this chapter, I highlighted the connections between the
different elements of a speaker’s delivery. As Cicero shows in the last chapters
of the De oratore (3.219–24), while the voice played a fundamental role in
actio, physical gestures and facial expressions were equally important: it is the
careful combination of all of these elements which make a speech effective. In
what follows, we will concentrate on an example in which the visual element of
delivery is pivotal, and appears to be more vital to the speaker’s success than
his voice.63
In 97 BC, Manius Aquilius, consul in 101 and proconsul of Sicily in 100–99,
was tried on a charge de repetundis (or peculatus) according to the lex
Seruilia.64 The prosecutor was L. Fufius, probably tribune of the plebs in either
91 or 90 BC (ORF4 75 F4–6); the advocate was M. Antonius, consul in 99 and
censor in 97 (ORF4 65 F19–21). Aquillius was acquitted thanks to Antonius’
great energy and oratorical skill. The ancient sources present this trial in a very
colourful and exciting way, and it is worth quoting the relevant passages side
by side in order to provide a full overview of Antonius’ performance:
uenit enim in mentem in iudicio M’. Aquili quantum auctoritatis, quantum
momenti oratio M. Antoni habuisse existimata sit; qui, ut erat in dicendo non
solum sapiens sed etiam fortis, causa prope perorata ipse arripuit M’. Aquilium
constituitque in conspectu omnium tunicaque eius a pectore abscidit, ut cicatrices
populus Romanus iudicesque aspicerent aduerso corpore exceptas; simul et de
illo uulnere quod ille in capite ab hostium duce acceperat multa dixit, eoque
adduxit eos qui erant iudicaturi uehementer ut uererentur ne, quem uirum
fortuna ex hostium telis eripuisset, cum sibi ipse non pepercisset, hic non ad
populi Romani laudem sed ad iudicum crudelitatem uideretur esse seruatus.65
Cic. Verr. 5.3
62
The connection between furor and excess underlined by a magna uox is also clear in Flavius
Fimbria’s activity (ORF4 55); see Cic. Brut. 233.
63
See Beck in this volume.
64
97 BC is the more probable date for Aquilius’ trial; see TLRR no. 84, which also lists all of the
sources for the trial: Cic. Verr. 5.3; Flac. 98; De or. 2.124, 188, 194–6; Off. 2.50; Brut. 222; Livy,
Per. 70; Quint. Inst. 2.15.7; Apul. Apol. 66. In the following discussion, I treat only those which
concern delivery. For other information, see Badian 1964: 45–7; Gruen 1968: 194–5; Leeman,
Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 3.64–5.
65
‘For I remember, in the trial against Manius Aquilius, how much authority and how much
influence it was considered there was in the speech of Marcus Antonius. He was not only wise
but also strong in speaking, and once the case was almost delivered he grabbed hold of Manius

quod enim ornamentum, quae uis, qui animus, quae dignitas illi oratori (sc.
Antonius) defuit, qui in causa peroranda non dubitauit excitare reum consularem
et eius diloricare tunicam et iudicibus cicatrices aduersas senis imperatoris
ostendere?66 Cic. De or. 2.124
. . . cum mihi M’. Aquilius in ciuitate retinendus esset, quae in illa causa peroranda
fecerim, sine magno dolore fecisse: quem enim ego consulem fuisse, imperatorem
ornatum a senatu, ouantem in Capitolium ascendisse meminissem, hunc cum
adflictum, debilitatum, maerentem, in summum discrimen adductum uiderem,
non prius sum conatus misericordiam aliis commouere quam misericordia
sum ipse captus. sensi equidem tum magno opere moueri iudices, cum excitaui
maestum ac sordidatum senem et cum ista feci, quae tu, Crasse, laudas, non arte,
de qua quid loquar nescio, sed motu magno animi ac dolore, ut discinderem
tunicam, cicatrices ostenderem. cum C. Marius maerorem orationis meae prae-
sens ac sedens multum lacrimis suis adiuuaret cumque ego illum crebro appellans
conlegam ei suum commendarem atque ipsum aduocatum ad communem im-
peratorum fortunam defendendam inuocarem, non fuit haec sine meis lacrimis,
non sine dolore (magno) miseratio omniumque deorum et hominum et ciuium et
sociorum imploratio; quibus omnibus uerbis, quae a me tum sunt habita, si dolor
afuisset meus, non modo non miserabilis, sed etiam inridenda fuisset oratio mea.
quam ob rem hoc uos doceo, Sulpici, bonus ego uidelicet atque eruditus magister,
ut in dicendo irasci, ut dolere, ut flere possitis.67 Cic. De or. 2.194–5
Aquilius and placed him where everybody could see him and he tore away his tunic from his
breast, so that the people of Rome and the judges could see the scars exposed on the front of his
body; at the same time he said much about the wound which he had received in his head from the
leader of the enemy, and he reduced those who were going to judge in a violent fashion so that
they were afraid that it should be seen that this man, whom fortune had taken away from the
enemy’s arrows, when he had not saved himself, had been saved not for the praise of the Roman
people but for the cruelty of the court.’
66
‘For what ornamentation, what power, what spirit, what dignity did that orator lack, who in
his peroration in the trial did not hesitate to bring forward his consular client and to rip open his
tunic and to show to the judges the scars on the breast of that old general?’
67
‘ . . . when Manius Aquillius was kept a Roman citizen through my efforts, when I delivered
my peroration in that trial, doing it without grand emotion: for I remembered that he had been
consul, a general decorated by the Senate and ascending the Capitol for an ouatio, when I saw
him afflicted, crippled, in grief, led to the greatest disaster, I did not attempt to move others
before I myself had been overwhelmed with compassion. Indeed, I felt the judges especially
moved when I brought forward the mourning old man and did that which you, Crassus, praise,
not through theory, about which I can say nothing, but through great passion and pain, namely
I tore open his tunic and displayed his scars. When Gaius Marius, who was present as a
supporter, helped my sorrowful speech with his tears and when I, constantly calling him,
recommended his colleague to him and appealed to the same advocate to defend the common
fate of the generals, it was not without my own tears, not without pain and compassion and
invocation of all gods, humans, citizens, and allies; if I had not felt pain myself in all these words,
which were then delivered by me, my speech would not only not have created compassion but
even have been laughable. Therefore I tell you two this, Sulpicius, I who seem such a good and
learned teacher, that you must be able to feel anger when speaking, feel pain, shed tears.’
244 Andrea Balbo

cum M’. Aquilius de pecuniis repetundis causam diceret, ipse iudices rogare
noluit; M. Antonius, qui pro eo perorabat, tunicam a pectore eius discidit, ut
honestas cicatrices ostenderet. indubitate absolutus est.68 Livy, Per. 70
nam et Manium Aquilium defendens Antonius, cum scissa ueste cicatrices quas is
pro patria pectore aduerso suscepisset ostendit, non orationis habuit fiduciam,
sed oculis populi Romani uim attulit: quem illo ipso aspectu maxime motum in
hoc, ut absolueret reum, creditum est.69 Quint. Inst. 2.5.17
The oratio of Antonius was fortis and sapiens—effective and productive—
but his voice alone was not enough to persuade the jurors. All of the sources
which treat his delivery emphasize the element of sight (uidere, aspicere) and
underline the critical role played by gestures (arripere, abscindere, diloricare,
excitare), props (tunica), and Aquilius’ scars (cicatrices), and the responses
that these elicited from the jurors (uereri, lacrimae, dolor).70 The pathos was
created by the genuine emotional interaction between speaker and audience,
by the contrast between the present fate of Aquilius and the memory of
his past glories, reinforced by the locus communis de fortuna, and by
the evocative power of the physical objects, which recalled Aquilius’ acts
of valour. Antonius’ delivery in this trial appears to have been highly
impressive and, perhaps, remarkable for exceeding the normal standards
of oratory, as its presence in Quintilian and in Livy’s periochae testifies. The
sources given above clearly demonstrate that lacrimae, dolor, maeror, and a
genuine emotional investment in the proceedings are the main elements of
Antonius’ actio, which, as Cicero indicates at Brutus 141, was constituted by
gestus and uox.71
Nonetheless, it seems to me that Antonius adds a peculiar—and spectacular—
feature to this framework, one which became famous and needs to be
studied alongside the case of Hyperides and Phryne (Ath. 13. 590d–e), as
68
‘When Manius Aquilius was standing trial for extortion, he was unwilling to make an
appeal to the jury, but Marcus Antonius, who was concluding his speech in defence of Aquilius,
tore the shirt from his chest in order to display his honorable scars. Aquilius was acquitted with
no hesitation.’ (Trans. Schlesinger 1959).
69
‘For Antonius, too, when he defended Manius Aquilius and tore open his shirt to reveal the
scars which that man had received in front, on his chest, in the cause of the fatherland, did not
place his trust in his speech but did violence to the eyes of the Roman people; and it is believed
that they were moved by that sight most of all to acquit the defendant.’
70
The distance of Aquilius from the audience was not necessarily an obstacle that prevented
people from seeing the scars. Note a similar case concerning Julius Caesar: in Suet. Iul. 33, Caesar
is haranguing the troops and makes gestures that give rise to a misunderstanding, but that his
audience can also see many metres away.
71
For Antonius’ oratorical style, see Scholz 1962. An effective actio requires the orator to
personally experience the feelings he wishes to provoke from his audience, otherwise it seems
ridiculous. See Cic. De or. 2.195: non prius sum conatus misericordiam aliis commouere quam
misericordia sum ipse captus (‘I no sooner attempted to excite compassion in others, than I was
myself moved with compassion’).

Malcovati and others have already seen.72 Hyperides’ speech was famous in
Rome—M. Valerius Messala Corvinus prepared a translation of it (ORF4 176
F21–22)—and the disrobing episode was surely influential, even if we may
have justifiable doubts about its veracity.73 In the case of Antonius, we have a
Romanization of this episode: the jurors do not see a beautiful girl without her
robes, but a mature Roman general with his cicatrices, a perfect exemplum of
Roman values. These visual elements can develop pathos and influence the
jurors: in particular, ‘the scar can be expected to attract an admiring gaze and
in times of trouble it should be displayed.’74 They also work together with
the speaker’s delivery to make him more persuasive: ‘the indignation he
(sc. Antonius) reveals through his action made the audience side with his
view.’75 According to Cavarzere, ‘l'oratore non solo è emotivamente coinvolto
nella sorte del suo cliente, ma mette realmente in gioco la propria persona, il
suo ruolo di patronus e di uomo pubblico’:76 this makes him very different
from the actor, who tries to simulate reality, without being involved. In a good
actio, the speaker should live his gestures, rather than affecting them.
N OT A CONCLUSION, BUT A STARTING POINT
I would like to conclude this enquiry into the actio of fragmentary Roman
orators by summarizing the main points to take away from our discussion,
and by suggesting some directions for future work in this field. As the
evidence collected above demonstrates, traces of actio can be found through-
out our sources and they deserve attention; however, they require significant
effort to be appreciated and understood correctly, as well as familiarity with
the relevant methodological problems. The speaker’s voice seems to be the
topic of greatest interest to our sources. The lack of a precise theoretical
framework for actio seems to allow ancient authors—and speakers—space
and freedom for variety in representing the elements of delivery as distinct
from voice. Future studies of this topic should provide a precise catalogue
of all the elements that could be brought together to construct a general
72
See ORF 4 p. 227 n. V. Phryne, a Greek hetaera of the fourth century BC, was prosecuted in
Athens, perhaps for impiety, and was defended by the famous Athenian orator Hyperides. She
had almost lost the trial when Hyperides disrobed Phryne, presenting her naked breasts to the
jurors, who were so overcome with pity that they acquitted her.
73
The evidence for this action ultimately depends on Idomeneus of Lampsacus (FGrHist 338
F14) or Hermippus of Smyrna (FGrHist 1026 F46): Cooper 1995. O’Connell 2013 has recently
proposed that an unacknowledged fragment of the Defence of Phryne is to be found within the
cases involving the Eleusinian Mysteries in section 8.123–4 of Pollux’s Onomasticon.
74
Leigh 1995: 205. For a general evaluation of the oratorical visual tools in this trial, see also
Moretti 2004: 65–9, with further bibliography.
75 76
Winterbottom-Reinhardt 2006: 241. Cavarzere 2011: 106.
246 Andrea Balbo

framework for rhetorical actio.77 It will also be necessary to develop our
current understanding of the relationship of oratorical delivery with the
world of the theatre and the models presented by Greek orators. Last but
not least, evidence for the fragmentary Roman orators could be productively
used to develop work on the connection between gender and the strategies in a
speaker’s delivery begun by, for example, Erik Gunderson’s Staging Masculin-
ity and Tony Corbeill’s Nature Embodied.78 It is clear that the fragmentary
Republican orators—and perhaps, in the future, the Imperial speakers—have
some interesting surprises in store.
77
I am thinking of the revised version of Ekman’s taxonomy (Ekman 1999, revising the work
of Ekman and Friesen 1969), which divides non-verbal signals into five categories: 1. Emblems:
bodily movements understood by all members of a culture or subculture (e.g. a raised eyebrow or
middle finger); these can repeat a word or replace it, but, according to Cavarzere 2011, cannot be
taken into consideration in Roman oratory, by reason of its codified nature. 2. Illustrators, which
include: a. ‘batons’, actions which ‘accent or emphasize a particular word or phrase’; b. ‘ideo-
graphs’, actions which track ‘the itinerary of a logical journey’; c. ‘deictics’, pointing gestures.
3. Manipulators, in which ‘one part of the body or face manipulates in some fashion—stroking,
pressing, scratching, licking, biting, sucking, etc.—another part of the body or face’. 4. Regu-
lators: ‘actions which maintain and regulate the back-and-forth nature of speaking and listening
between two or more interactants’ (for the call‒response oratorical model, see Aldrete 1999 and
Balbo 2007). 5. Emotional expressions: ‘involuntary signals which provide important informa-
tion to others’.
78
Gunderson 2000; Corbeill 2004.
14
I Said, He Said
Fragments of Informal Conversations
and the Grey Zones of Public Speech
in the Late Roman Republic
Cristina Rosillo-López
Informal conversations were central to Roman political life and formed an

indispensable part of political communication. Roman politics, as both Meier
and Brunt proposed in the 1980s, were not controlled by unshakable alliances
or by a group of families, but organized instead around short-lived alliances
forged for specific purposes.1 Thus, the allies who supported you yesterday
might become your political enemies if another issue was being debated. As a
corollary, senators frequently needed to test the waters in order to be aware of
the opinions of other senators about a certain topic or to find new supporters
for a measure. For all of them, meeting other senators and trying to sound
them out for hypothetical alliances over precise items on the political agenda
was a necessity. Through such conversations, news was transmitted and
circulated, opinions learned or tentatively questioned, and ideas and political
arguments tested.2
The letters of Cicero are full of references to people with whom he conversed.3
These informal interactions were carried out between senators, frequently
involving third parties such as friends, family, women, freedmen, or slaves.
The decision to include a third party could depend, for example, on an individual’s
1
Meier 19802: 174–90; Brunt 1988: 36–45.
This chapter’s research has been financed by the project ‘Opinión pública y comunicación
política en la República romana (siglos II–I a. de C).’ (2013‒43496‒P) through the Ministerio
de Economía y Competitividad, Spain, and the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced
Researchers of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.
2 3
Rosillo-López 2017a. Rosillo-López 2017a and b.
248 Cristina Rosillo-López

presence in or absence from Rome—Cicero, for instance, relied on his friend
Atticus or others when he was away from the city—or on having friends with
stronger links with other persons. On some occasions Cicero complained that
he did not have enough knowledge about Pompey’s activities, charging Atticus
with fishing for information from the general’s close entourage, especially
from Pompey’s friend, Theophanes of Mytilene.4 In another case, Cicero
grumbled that he was kept in the dark about the intentions of Pompey and
Crassus, because Atticus was away from the city and unable to find out about
them through Clodia.5 Cicero was not on good terms with Clodia and could
not have access to her as a source of political information, while Atticus
could and did. This kind of conversation was so prominent in the life of a
senator that, on several occasions, in the absence of his interlocutors, Cicero
even imagined discussions with them. Thus, at the beginning of the war, Cicero
held a simulated chat with Pompey, fragments of which he sent to Atticus in
a letter, discussing the decision to abandon Rome, a strategy which Cicero
himself rejected.6
While official communication between senators took place during exchanges
in the Senate or in contiones, exchanges of a more casual nature occurred in a
wide variety of locations. The elite could engage in informal conversations
during private meetings such as dinners; during chance encounters in the
road or in the city streets; or during other opportunities for everyday social
interactions, whether private, such as in the baths or the shops, or public, as
while escorting a candidate.7 The location of the conversation is key for
determining whether it can be classed as formal or informal. The sources
are not always helpful in this, however: in many cases, they mention the
conversation but not exactly where it took place. For instance, in 60 BC, Favonius
saw that Pompey was wearing a white bandage on his leg and reproached him
that, no matter where he wore it, it was still a diadem, bluntly criticizing his
ambitions.8 This fragment of direct conversation is not located; it could have
taken place during a session of the Senate, in a contio, or in an informal
exchange in the Forum or in the streets.
These informal exchanges, usually named sermones in the sources, exist for
us only in fragments and have traditionally sat at the boundaries of Roman
4 5
Cic. Att. 1.13.4 (SB 13); 2.17 (SB 37). Cic. Att. 2.22 (SB 42).
6
Cic. Att. 7.11.3 (SB 134).
7
Cf. Rosillo-López 2017b, wherein I distinguish fully between formal or official and informal
communication. Pace Achard 1991: 119, who considers that there is a third type of conversation
between speeches and sermo, that is, semi-public: between persons of different status and in
almost official circumstances (salutationes, cortèges, electoral campaigns).
8
Val. Max. 6.2.7. Amm. 17.11.4 states that the purpose of the bandage was to cover an ulcer.
Cf. Corbeill 1996: 181. This passage is linked to Cic. Att. 2.3.1 (SB 23), in which Cicero describes
an occasion when Pompey was wearing military boots and white bandages. White bandages were
associated with kings; cf. Suet. Iul. 79.1. All subsequent dates are BC unless otherwise stated.
I Said, He Said: Fragments of Informal Conversations 249

public speech. Although the transmission of sermones and the locations in
which they took place set them apart from speeches made in the Senate or in
contiones, the fragments of these exchanges have much in common with
formal oratory (contentio), particularly altercationes, and were frequently
utilized in works dedicated to rhetorical training. This paper will argue that
sermones should be considered an essential form of public speech in the late
Roman Republic, albeit one which inhabits a grey zone between formal
oratory and everyday conversation. Taking sermones into account as evidence
for Roman public speech not only widens our picture of the style, rhetorical
strategies, and topics discussed by individual orators, but can also have the
important consequence of expanding current definitions of public speech in
the late Roman Republic.
ISSUES OF TRANSMISSION AND ACCURACY
Informal conversations have mainly been preserved in the sources in indirect

speech, though some fragments of direct speech are also extant.9 They allow us
a glimpse of something that was quite common in daily political life. The
transmission of these fragments is an important question, since it sheds light
on the survival of fragments of public speech outside of the oratorical
handbooks.
Fragments of informal conversations were transmitted in several ways. The
first of these is through the rhetorical manuals, where such exchanges are
discussed especially in sections treating wit and humour. In his De oratore,
Cicero theorized about the use of wit in oratory, marking a path that would be
followed by later rhetoricians in their treatises.10 Interestingly, in contrast with
other examples in De oratore or other manuals of rhetoric, the fragments
provided by Cicero through the persona of Gaius Iulius Caesar Strabo feature
both public speech in tribunals and the courts and informal conversations.
Quintilian also mentioned the urbana dicta, which did not raise a laugh, but
which were nevertheless appropriate for speeches.11
The fragments of conversations in Quintilian’s work and in the works
of other rhetoricians or biographers survived because they were collected in
anthologies of witticisms and bons mots. Such compilations circulated in
Rome: Tiro and Trebonius, for example, collected Cicero’s jokes, and Caesar’s
9
Cf. Hutchinson 1998: 131 on how the use of oratio recta in Cicero’s correspondence is not
standard.
10
A long excursus on wit: Cic. De or. 2.216–29; Rabbie 2007: 208–12; Fantham 2004:
186–208. Quintilian Inst. 6.3 essentially follows Cicero’s analysis. On ancient theories of wit
and the laughable, cf. Arndt 1904; Celentano 1995; Gil Fernández 1997.
11
Quint. Inst. 6.3.102.

bons mots were also published.12 Macrobius preserves many witty retorts by
Cicero, which probably originated in collections such as these. Two examples
from Macrobius feature Cicero in Pompey’s camp at Pharsalus, expressing his
disagreement with how Pompey was managing the war against Caesar and
criticizing his policies.13 Cicero’s understated criticism against Caesar after the
latter’s victory was also part of such works and was transmitted by Macrobius
and Plutarch.14
The De oratore offers an alternative means of transmission: in this work,
Cicero collects informal conversations by many people who had died before he
was born.15 For example, he records a highly favourable comment made by
Publius Licinius Varus to Scipio Africanus while the latter was trying to don
an undersized garland at a banquet, and the hostile answer of Gaius Fabricius
to P. Cornelius Rufinus after the latter was elected consul in 277.16 Other
fragments of conversations involve notable individuals of the early first cen-
tury BC, such as C. Iulius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus (who died in 87) and Helvius
Mancia.17 In contrast with later handbooks, Cicero was likely able to gather
witty sayings that were in the air or were traditionally retold and which, on
account of their casual nature, could not appear in collections of dicta, as well
as those that he may have heard personally. This kind of transmission
contrasts with the fragments of published speeches collected by rhetoricians.
There is also a third, separate, and quite exceptional, first-hand means of
transmission for fragments of informal conversations. In his letters, Cicero
summarizes, often in direct speech, conversations that he had taken part in or
that he had heard, thus circulating them and, from our point of view, ensuring
transmission independently of the interlocutor’s wishes. Cicero did not, for
example, ask Clodius whether he wanted posterity to recall his altercatio in the
Senate or his words to Cicero in an informal conversation in the street.18
Such informal dialogue between Clodius and Cicero was in theory a private
conversation. It took place, however, in a public setting—the streets leading to
the Forum—and Clodius and Cicero were not alone but surrounded by
people, who probably heard the conversation and who might have repeated
it to others. Furthermore, Cicero recounted their exchange openly to Atticus,
12
Cicero: Quint. Inst. 6.3.5 (by Tiro); Cic. Fam. 15.21 (SB 207; by Trebonius). Caesar: Suet.
Iul. 56.7.
13
Macrob. Sat. 2.3.7–8. Cf. Cic. Phil. 2.39–40 for the hostility towards Cicero that such jokes
provoked in Pompey’s camp.
14
Macrob. Sat. 2.3.11–12; Plut. Caes. 59.6. Interpretation of the joke in Macrob. Sat. 2.3.11 in
Schwartz 1948: 265–6.
15
Cf. Leeman, Pinkster, et al. 1981–2008: 3.200–2 for the origin of each witticism mentioned
in the De oratore.
16
Licinius Varus: Cic. De or. 2.250. C. Fabricius: Cic. De or. 2.268.
17
Iulius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus: Cic. De or. 2.275–6. Mancia: Cic. De or. 2.274. On Mancia,
see Steel 2013.
18
Altercatio: Cic. Att. 1.16.10 (SB 16). Conversation in the street: Cic. Att. 2.1.5 (SB 21).

without swearing him to secrecy. Clodius may have done likewise to other
people. Less public conversations were also retold after the event. In April 59,
Cicero had a chance meeting with his friend C. Scribonius Curio in Tres
Tabernae, on the road to Antium.19 Their conversation took place in a road,
though it is likely that only their respective entourages (of unknown size and
nature) were witnesses. However, it is the content of the exchange and the fact
that Cicero repeated it to Atticus—it is unknown whether Curio also related it
to his friends—which are the crucial factors.
Nobody could decide what was repeatable or not. Leaks formed the litmus
test for informal conversation, and their existence and character suggest that
there were no formal rules or even etiquette regarding such a delicate matter.20
In October 54, Cicero pointed out that he did not trust even his clerks with the
sensitive letters that he sent to Atticus, for fear of a leak.21 On some occasions,
senators tried to restrict certain pieces of news or a rumour to a small group,
with varying degrees of success, by talking in reduced circles to limit the extent
to which the information was divulged. Caelius reported in 51 that a great
number of rumours about Caesar were limited to certain small groups (inter
paucos) that Cicero knew; though their circulation was more or less secret
(palam secreto), they were soon to be divulged outside of those groups, because
Domitius cum manus ad os apposuit. This gesture could either mean that he
was spreading the rumours, mimicking a trumpet, or hinting at but not
disclosing the information.22 In any case, it seems that Roman politicians
were aware that their informal conversations or letters, though sometimes
private, could become public even when they did not want them to be. In the
case of informal conversations, most of them happened in public settings or
they were made public by their participants. They were situated in a grey area
between public and private, and could be kept on one side or easily flipped to
the other. It was a risk that every Roman senator had to face.
How close to the spoken words can we judge these fragments to be? If, as
Corbeill has proposed in this volume, Clodius’ own words and arguments can
be inferred from Cicero’s De haruspicum responsis, it is reasonable to rate the
accuracy of the fragments in Cicero’s letters very highly. Atticus, the recipient
of the letters, knew Clodius well and conversed with him from time to time;
Cicero would not have written words that Atticus would recognize as being
alien to Clodius’ speech. The same could be argued about the fragments of
informal conversations between Cicero and Pompey, Caesar, Matius, and
Lucius Caesar, and of the transcriptions of Cicero’s long conversations with
19 20
Cic. Att. 2.12 (SB 30). Rosillo-López 2017a.
21
Cic. Att. 4.17.1 (SB 91). The risk of his letters being intercepted usually worried Cicero (e.g.
Att. 1.13.2 (SB 13)).
22
Cic. Fam. 8.1.4 (SB 77): ‘put his hands around his mouth.’ Cavarzere 1983: 207–8 discusses
the exact meaning of this gesture. See also Pina Polo 2010: 79; Osgood 2014: 90 n. 327.

C. Scribonius Curio.23 The capacity of human beings to recollect exactly the
words of a conversation is limited but, in these cases, the writer may
have considered that they were close enough to what had been said and how
it was expressed.
In comparison with published speeches, these fragments of informal con-
versations suffered less obvious reworking and elaboration after the event. The
degree to which Cicero or a later editor may have revised the letters for
publication can be debated, but these fragments were closer to informal,
everyday speech than the redrafted public speech which was published for
the benefit of students of rhetoric.24 As these fragments were closer to actual
events and were not, for example, reworked with hindsight following the result
of a trial, they have a more spontaneous character. Moreover, they are fully
contextualized, since Cicero always provides a summary of a good part of the
conversation, while the fragments of public speech preserved in rhetorical
handbooks constitute only extracts from a much longer argument that has
since been lost to us.
Can we then treat fragments of public speech from rhetorical handbooks
and of the conversations from Cicero’s letters on an equal footing? Taking into
account the previous arguments, the answer should be no. Cicero’s letters
provide us with fragments which were preserved independently of the inter-
locutor’s wishes, collected first-hand, less reworked, and fully contextualized,
and whose transmission did not depend on an active effort of publication.
Altogether, these factors provide a higher degree of reliability in the transmis-
sion of the speech. They present fragments of speech by individuals such as
Pompey, Clodius, or Scribonius Curio, who did not publish their own
speeches, and they thereby broaden our knowledge of the style, subjects, and
rhetorical strategies of these politicians.
ALTERCATIONES AND INFORMAL CONVERSATIONS
The contents and methods of informal conversations in the private realm

appear similar to the altercationes in the Senate or in the courts. Public speech
in the Senate and contiones did not constitute uninterrupted speech, although
it may be edited later to make it appear so when published. Interruptions were
23
Pompey and Cicero: Cic. Att. 7.8.5 (SB 131); on the relationship between Cicero and
Pompey, Holliday 1969; Rawson 1978; Williams 2013; Rosillo-López 2017a. Caesar: Cic. Att.
9.18 (SB 178); on Cicero and Caesar, cf. Lossmann 1962. Matius: Cic. Att. 14.1.1–2 (SB 355); on
Matius and Cicero, cf. Combès 1958. Lucius Caesar: Cic. Att. 14.17a.1–3 (SB 371). Scribonius
Curio: Cic. Att. 2.12 (SB 30); 10.4.7–12 (SB 195).
24
On the later elaboration and editing of Cicero’s letters, cf. Beard 2002 with further
bibliography.

frequent. As Ramsey has pointed out, ancient rhetorical textbooks did not
focus much on senatorial rhetoric, although both Cicero, in the De inuentione,
and the contemporary author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium offered some
suggestions for senatorial oratory based on the kind of arguments an orator
should employ.25 According to Cicero, the audience in the Senate was more
educated, so the speeches had to be less elaborate and more condensed in
order to allow others time to speak. Interventions should be ‘short and without
ornament’.26
Altercationes in the Senate or in the courts frequently involved heated
exchanges and short outbursts.27 These featured rhetorical and dialectic strug-
gles between usually two participants, in a battle of wits and blame. This
aggressive exchange of messages was probably not as straightforward as
the sources relate. The flow of communication continued until one of the
opponents decided to stop or until the conversation moved on to other
subjects. Improvisation was a defining characteristic of both senatorial alter-
cationes and informal political communication. In theory, a speech before the
people, before the Senate, or in a trial could be prepared in advance. However,
rhetoricians warned that the speaker should respond swiftly to any spontan-
eous remarks, comments, cries, or other occurrences. Improvisation could
be considered a defining trait of any public speech, not just of informal
conversation.
Altercationes thus shared many rhetorical features with informal exchanges.
Let us take the example we discussed above of the informal conversation
between Cicero and Clodius which Cicero related to Atticus. In 60, both
men were accompanying a candidate as part of the throngs of people who
accompanied him in order to show their support. Clodius engaged in a
conversation with Cicero about their common Sicilian clients:
quin etiam cum candidatum deduceremus, quaerit ex me num consuessem
Siculis locum gladiatoribus dare. negaui. ‘at ego’ inquit ‘nouus patronus insti-
tuam; sed soror, quae tantum habeat consularis loci, unum mihi solum pedem
dat.’ ‘noli’ inquam ‘de uno pede sororis queri; licet etiam alterum tollas.’28
Cic. Att. 2.1.5 (SB 21)
25
Ramsey 2007: 122–3. Cic. Inv. rhet. 2.155–76; Rhet. Her. 3.2–9.
26
Cic. De or. 1.214: breuiter impoliteque dicenti.
27
On altercationes in the Senate, cf. Mommsen 1887–83: 3.947, 975–6, 985; Szemler 1976:
55–6. On oratory in the Senate, see Ramsey 2007. Many of a senior senator’s speeches and
interventions in the Senate were of course not considered worthy of publication, since they were
ephemeral pieces. Tac. Dial. 34.2 considered them part of the oratory that a young man had
to learn.
28
‘…for instance, when we were escorting a candidate, he asked me whether I used to give the
Sicilians seats at the gladiatorial shows. I said no. “Well” said he, “now I am their new patron,
I intend to begin the practice: though my sister, who, as the consul’s wife, has such a lot of room,
will not give me more than standing room.” “Oh, don’t grumble about standing room with your
sister” I answered. “You can always lie with her.” ’

Cicero acknowledged that his quip was not worthy of his own status, but he
excused himself by stating that he hated Clodia.29 Clodius had just returned
from his quaestorship in Sicily (61–60), where he had travelled after being
acquitted of sacrilege in the infamous Bona Dea affair.30 In order to build up
his image in Rome, Clodius planned to parade the Sicilians during the
games.31 Cicero’s retort and the bitterness of his retelling to Atticus show
that Clodius’ comment struck home and was deeply felt. Skinner interprets
Clodius’ comment as an aristocratic boast against a homo nouus: Clodius
had a sister married to a consular, and had wide resources at his disposal.
Furthermore, Skinner has remarked that Cicero was ‘possessive’ of his clients
in Sicily, as attested by his fury at Mark Antony’s proposal to grant them
citizenship.32
The public character of the exchange between Cicero and Clodius was
evident. It seemed to be simply a continuation in another setting of the
altercationes that both of them had engaged in the Senate. On one occasion,
Cicero transcribed for Atticus, in direct speech, his debate with Clodius in the
Senate in 61:
surgit pulchellus puer, obicit mihi me ad Baias fuisse; falsum sed tamen. ‘quid?
hoc simile est’ inquam ‘quasi in operto dicas fuisse?’ ‘quid’ inquit ‘homini
Arpinati cum aquis calidis.’ ‘narra’ inquam ‘patroni tuo, qui Arpinatis aquas
concupiuit;’ nosti enim Marianas. ‘quousque’ inquit ‘hunc regem feremus?’
‘regem appellas’ inquam ‘cum Rex tui mentionem nullam fecerit?’ ille autem Regis
hereditatem spe deuorarat. ‘domum’ inquit ‘emisti.’ ‘putes’ inquam ‘dicere “iudices
emisti”.’ ‘iuranti’ inquit ‘tibi non crediderunt.’ ‘mihi uero’ inquam ‘XXV iudices
crediderunt, XXXI, quoniam nummos ante acceperunt, tibi nihil crediderunt.’
magnis clamoribus adflictus conticuit et concidit.33 Cic. Att 1.16.10 (SB 16)
29
Cic. Att. 2.1.5 (SB 21).
30
Cic. Clod. F15–16; Asc. Mil. 52–3C; Schol. Bob. 86, 89St.
31
On Clodius between 60–59, cf. Gruen 1966: 122–3. On the display of clients in Rome by
senators as a way to communicate to others the existence of their clients, see Rosillo-López 2015.
32
Skinner 1983: 278–9. Mark Antony’s proposal: Cic. Att. 14.12.1 (SB 366).
33
‘Up gets the pretty boy, and throws in my teeth my having been at Baiae. It wasn’t true, but
what did that matter to him? “It is as though you were to say,” replied I, “that I had been in
disguise!” “What business,” said he, “has an Arpinate with hot baths?” “Say that to your patron,”
I said, “who coveted the watering-place of an Arpinate. For you know about the villa of Marius.”
“How long,” said he, “are we to put up with this king?” “Do you mention a king,” I said, “when
Rex made no mention of you?” He, you know, had swallowed the inheritance of Rex in
anticipation. “You have bought a house,” says he. “You would think that he said,” I said, “you
have bought a jury.” “They didn't trust you on your oath,” said he. “Yes, twenty-five jurors did
trust me, thirty-one didn’t trust you, for they took care to get their money beforehand.” Here he
was overpowered by a burst of applause and broke down without a word to say.’ On this specific
altercatio, see Schneider 2000: 499–501; Trankner 2013: 51–5.

A comparison between this exchange and the dialogue between Cicero and
Clodius which took place in the street reveals many similarities, especially the
short sentences, the sarcastic tone, and the furious criticism. If we leave aside
the location, the tone, and the content of the two exchanges, an altercatio in
the Senate could not be differentiated from a conversation in the streets, and
this is a crucial factor for categorizing informal conversations as a variety of
public speech.
INFORMAL CONVERSA TIONS AND RHETORIC
Leaving practice aside, would ancient rhetoricians have considered informal

conversations, or sermones, as occasions for rhetoric and public speech?
References to sermo in Roman rhetorical handbooks are scanty; in most of
these cases, informal conversations are mentioned en passant. Only the
fourth-century AD rhetor Iulius Victor included a study of sermo in his
treatise.34 In a discussion of the flexibility of the voice (mollitudo uocis), the
Rhetorica ad Herennium defined the tones of sermo, contentio, and amplifica-
tio. Conversation (sermo) was defined as remissa et finitima cotidianae
locutioni.35 Interestingly, according to its author, the flexibility of the voice
in those cases depended entirely ad rhetoris praeceptio, that is, on the rules
set by the rhetors.36 Cicero included such informal and spontaneous conver-
sations in his dialogue about the ideal orator, thus making them part, if not of
oratory, at least of public speech. In the De oratore, during a long excursus on
wit, the speaker Caesar Strabo Vopiscus defines irony as a choice kind of
humour blended with seriousness, cumque oratoriis dictionibus tum urbanis
sermonibus accomodatum.37 This sentence contrasts oratorical delivery and
conversation between citizens. Engaged in a discussion about freedom of
speech and of dicacitas (wit and banter), the participants in Cicero’s dialogue
remember several examples of exchanges in the Senate, in the courts, in houses,
and in the street without distinguishing between conversations on formal or
informal occasions.38 Wit, Cicero’s speciality, could be used in many contexts.
As mentioned beforehand, the absence of a dedicated treatment of informal
conversations is linked to how these fragments have come down to us.
Rhetorical handbooks collected examples from collections of dicta, such as
34
Iul. Vict. 446–7H; Celentano 1994.
35
Rhet. Her. 3.23: ‘relaxed, gentle, and closest to daily speech’. 36
Rhet. Her. 3.23.
37
Cic. De or. 2.270: ‘suited to oratoris dictio as well as to the urbanis sermo’. Rhetoricians
developed techniques to deal with extemporaneous wit, especially in the courts, but also in
informal conversations. For instance, they valued wit uttered against humorous abuse (humour
in respondendo: Corbeill 1996).
38
Cic. De or. 2.240–90.

those of the elder Cato, Cicero, or Caesar, where witticisms, jokes, bons mots,
and fragments of conversations were included.39 Using them naturally as a
source in their teaching, ancient rhetors did not seem to have considered them
as a special category per se.
If not to manuals of rhetoric, where could an ancient politician turn for
some thoughts and reflections on sermo? Interestingly, the most in-depth
discussions of this topic feature in Cicero’s De officiis, and, later, in Plutarch’s
On Talkativeness (De garrulitate), that is, in treatises aimed at giving advice
about how to shape a political career and a public image—almost guides to
etiquette.
Cicero divides the discussion about the importance of public speech, or
oratio, in the De officiis into two parts: sermo, conversational speech, and
contentio, formal speech and debate; in sum, eloquence, which leads to
gloria.40 Cicero considered that conversation and friendliness could, on occa-
sion, be useful to win over men’s hearts (animos conciliare).41 The work of the
Rhodian Stoic philosopher Panaetius was the inspiration that prompted
Cicero to write his De officiis.42 It has been debated how much of this work
is an adaptation of Panaetius and how much is original. Dyck has proposed
that the passages about sermo may come partly from Panaetius, who may
have felt that rhetorical works had treated contentio at length but that there
were no similar precepts for sermo.43 Panaetius was focused on philosophical
conversation, but later writers went beyond that to include informal social
conversations and even political chit-chat.44 Cicero tried to fill that gap with a
discussion of relaxed sermo in small circles of friends, advising that one should
make a good impression, stick to certain topics and be pleasant, and respect
those with whom we converse face-to-face.45
Sermo and contentio differed in two aspects, however. First, in the occasions
and the locations in which they took place. Sermo occurred in more infor-
mal situations: sermo in circulis disputationibus congressionibus familiarium
39
Elder Cato: Cic. De or. 2.271; Off. 1. 104; Quint. Inst. 6.3.105. Cicero: Quint. Inst. 6.3.5; Cic.
Fam. 7.32.1 (SB 113). Caesar: Suet. Iul. 56.7. The De oratore included a long excursus on jokes
(Cic. De or. 2.216–90): Rabbie 2007.
40
Moussy 1996 on the semantic difference between contentio and sermo.
41
Dyck 1996: 430–1, who points out that the following discussion about the difference types
of oratio in an address to the people and in an address to the troops is pedantic, a characteristic
repeated many times in this work. On sermo in De officiis, see Heilmann 1982: 119–21.
42 43
Pohlenz 1934 on Panaetius and Cicero. Dyck 1996: 309–10.
44
Due to the wide semantic range of sermo, some authors have restricted it to philosophical
conversations or speeches before the people: see e.g. Kennerly 2010. However, in this context,
Cicero made several references to informal conversations such as those which took place in
circuli or in dinners: Cic. Off. 1.132. On the meanings of sermo, cf. Díaz y Díaz 1960; Moussy
1996: 38–41. Codoñer Merino 2001–2 on the adjectives linked to sermo. Sermo familiaris would
be the nearest to an ‘intimate conversation between friends’ (Codoñer Merino 2001–2: 23).
45
Cic. Off. 1.136–7. On the De officiis as a guide to etiquette, cf. Dugan 2005: 130–1.

uersetur, sequatur etiam conuiuia.46 In this, it contrasted with oratory, whose
settings were tribunals, contiones, and the Senate, the formal locations of
Roman politics.47 This idea is corroborated by another mention of sermo in
an excerpt about urbanity quoted by Quintilian.48 The orator described this
concept as a general and cultural refinement, possessed by someone with a
cultured wit and, furthermore, with a certain tone of voice and a careful urban
pronunciation.49 He developed his skills in both formal and informal settings:
sermo, circuli, conuiuia, and contiones.
The second difference is linked to the non-existence of teachers of sermo.
Cicero complained that rhetoricians taught oratory but that no instructors for
conversation existed. He hopefully suggested that devoted pupils could always
find such instructors.50 This lack of professionalization in the teaching of
informal conversations explains the absence of in-depth discussions about
them in the rhetorical manuals: simply, sermo did not feature on their syllabus.
During the Republic, it was learned informally or practised through imitation,
just as politics was in Rome.51
Plutarch attempted to address the lack of a proper manual and training on
informal conversations. He wrote an entire treatise On Talkativeness to warn
about the dangers of talking too much or becoming a social bore. Aware of
the lack of teachers for such an essential skill, he devised a training programme
in order to avoid social and political disaster, stressing the importance of
such instruction. When in company, the pupil should decline to speak until
everybody has answered the question, and should compliment and agree with
any adequate remark from someone else. Of course, he should fill the gap if the
rest do not know the answer, but he should never jump as soon as the question
is asked and take the answer out of someone else’s mouth. The desire to talk
should always be controlled and attention should be paid to others. And,
above all, one should avoid the reputation of being a chatterbox.52 Other
suggestions for exercises addressed the necessity of making a pause between
the question and the answer, in order to let the interlocutor think.53 Plutarch’s
recommendations are eminently practical, in order to give an impression of
46
Cic. Off. 1.132: ‘Conversation (sermo) could be found in groups (circuli), in philosophical
discussions, and among groups of friends, it may even attend dinners! (conuiuia).’
47
Cic. Off. 1.132: contentio disceptationibus tribuatur iudiciorum contionum senatus.
48
Quint. Inst. 6.3.105. Quintilian attributed this passage to Cato the Elder. Domitius Marsus,
a poet of the Augustan period, also quoted it in his De urbanitate; Hendrickson 1917: 90–1 has
suggested that Domitius Marsus may have referred to his contemporary Valerius Cato instead of
Cato the Elder. In any case, the problem of attribution is not convincingly settled. Cf. Ramage
1959; Ramage 1960: 70.
49 50
Ramage 1960: 63ff.; see Ramage 1963. Cic. Off. 1.132.
51
Cic. Off. 1.126–49. Hall 2009: 23–4; Narducci 1989 on learning such language by imitation.
Scholz 2011 on education by imitation in Republican Rome. In later Imperial times, though,
sermo was taught by the rhetors.
52 53
Plut. De garr. 511F–512A. Hoof 2010: 165–73. Plut. De garr. 512C–E.

gentlemanlike behaviour; they were close to conventions of etiquette but also
to ethical rules, as an art of living in society.54 Of course, second-century AD
Delphi was not first-century BC Rome. However, Plutarch, as Cicero did, felt
the need for some guidance on informal conversations, a useful political and
social skill for which no formal teachers could be found.
In sum, with the exception of some passing mentions, the absence of sermo
from the works of rhetoricians is striking. It could lead to the preliminary
conclusion that they did not consider informal conversations to be a part of
public speech. However, Cicero was clear in the De officiis: both formal speech
(contentio) and sermo were considered public speech. The reason for the
absence of sermo from rhetorical teaching lies elsewhere: rhetoric was con-
cerned with the art of speaking in public in official settings, such as the courts,
the Senate, or the assemblies, occasions where speeches could be prepared
beforehand, or at least in part. Sermo, on the other hand, belonged to more
informal areas of political life, and there were no fixed rules or strategies that
could be learned by heart. As such, sermo was related to altercationes in the
Senate or in the courts, another topic the rhetoricians did not address at
length. In such exchanges, improvisation was the rule and preparation was
virtually impossible. Learning by doing or by watching was the norm. The lack
of specialized teachers necessitated that the Roman elite learned about sermo
just by practising it. For this reason, discussions about sermo feature in works
such as the De officiis or Plutarch’s treatise, which were concerned with the
best way to live, behave, and thrive as a citizen and as a member of the elite.
CONCLUSIO N
For Cicero, conversation was a vital component of life.55 What are the
characteristic features of direct informal conversations? First of all, comments
and remarks that engaged in politics. Their objective was to communicate and
to exchange an opinion about a fact, event, or person, mostly to praise it or to
blame it. Secondly, they were located in informal settings or took place at
informal events, frequently related to elite socialization, such as, for example,
dinners or meetings on the road or in the Forum, in houses, or in the streets.
Thirdly, available fragments suggest that the tone and content of such
exchanges does not differ much from altercationes or discussions in the
Senate: figures of speech were rare, responses were short, and furious criticism
and wit were both valued. Fourthly, even though many of these conversat-
ions were private in origin, those that have been transmitted to us were
54 55
Hoof 2010: 166. Cic. Fam. 9.24.3 (SB 362).

made public in some way, whether by being written down—in memoirs, for
example—or by being repeated to one or more people. Fifthly, the fragments
in oratio recta are just a sample in direct speech of a wider phenomenon of
informal conversations, for which there are numerous cases in oratio obliqua
or indirect speech in the sources. Sixthly, Cicero’s De officiis treated them as
part of the public speech of an orator. The fragments of conversations
collected in Cicero’s letters present an alternative means of transmission for
fragments, one which is more direct, fully contextualized, and completely
independent from the choices and tastes of later rhetoricians.
There were many different ways to speak about politics in Rome. Informal
conversations allowed senators to communicate between themselves, to learn
about news, to try to seek information from others, or to test the opinions of
other senators. Their informal nature did not make them less effective or
necessary for the functioning of Roman political life. Rather, they constituted
an essential part of public speech and of political communication, although
they sat in a grey area just at the limits of this discourse.
iii
Gender in Fragmentary Oratory
15
Of Fragments and Feelings

Roman Funeral Oratory Revisited
Hans Beck
Time travel to ancient Rome would be an unwelcome olfactory experience.

Surveying the smellscape of urban centres in the Roman Empire, and of the
city of Rome in particular, David Potter declared that there can be no question
that the urban air of the Roman Empire stank.1 This verdict rests on the
examination of all sorts of odorous businesses that were situated in the dense
urban environment: slaughterhouses as well as meat and fish markets; tan-
neries that prepared animal skins; laundries that used urine for bleaching
purposes; and of course the issue of human waste from pots and sewers which
was identified by Martial (6.93) as the most emblematic of all bad smells. Yet
the notion of a stinking Rome cuts deeper than the reference to these odours
suggests. As was recently pointed out by Neville Morley, smell always works
through ‘a combination of the physiological and the psychological or cultural’.2
On the one hand, it is a sensory experience that is triggered by the presence
of certain scents, and the ability of individuals to detect these with their
sensory organ. On the other hand, the human recognition of smell largely
depends on interpretative choices that steer individuals to a certain reading
and classification of scent. This process is by and large the product of cultural
traditions. While some odours provoke a universally negative response, also
because of the diseases that are associated with them, others are culturally
encoded. It is no surprise that the Romans never complained about the smell
1
Potter 1999: 169. I would like to express my gratitude to the conference organizers for creating
an extremely enriching environment in Torino. Thank you also to the editors and to Henriette van
der Blom for their comments on an earlier draft. The latter also kindly shared the results of her
forthcoming book on Oratory and Political Career in the Late Roman Republic with me, which will
be a landmark contribution on many aspects that are covered in the final sections of this paper. As so
many times before, Karl-J. Hölkeskamp has been a source of inspiration and advice.
2
Morley 2015: 113.
264 Hans Beck

of their savoury fish paste, garum. They liked it—so much so that many had it
on their bread for a midday snack.3
EMOTIONS: PHYSIOLOGICAL AND CULTURA L

ENCODINGS
These preliminary observations are but one example of how the phalanx of
perceptive senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch) has entered the world of
historical scholarship. The ‘emotional’ or ‘affective turn’ has generated new
interest in the cultural dimension of sensory perception. This interest lies
beyond the neurobiological chain reactions that senses trigger across the
nervous system, and the emotional domino effect that results from it. While
the physiological aspects of processing sensory information adhere to the long
trajectory of human evolution—although the extent of this is open to debate—
the interpretation of this information does not. Rather, it is exposed to the
dynamic of cultural change. As a result, the definition of emotions and the
constitution of entire economies of emotions differ widely among societies.
The basic linguistic problem, that is to say, the challenge of translating terms
that denote feelings and emotions into different languages, has been noted by
many.4 Beyond the semantic gap that emerges from the communication of
emotions in different languages, emotions entail processes of adaptation,
change, and appraisal; they are subject to interventions from social agents
and influences beyond human control; the responses to them are once again
socially and culturally conditioned. In sum, the emotional economy of the past
is never as obvious as scholarship sometimes implies. The social encoding and
cultural idiosyncrasy of the sensory world make it clear that the emotional
vectors of past societies followed their own, distinct trajectory.5
This is particularly true for the performance of public speech before assem-
bled crowds and the emotional reaction it triggers among the audience. In a
magisterial contribution on ‘Unveiling Emotions’, Angelos Chaniotis (2012a)
reminded us that emotions are not only ‘in people’ but ‘between people’.
Emotions have an interpersonal dimension inasmuch as they are shared, and
in turn expressed, by a group of people who experience them as a collective,
often in a demarcated space and on a formalized occasion. The significance of
emotions in the arena of, for instance, public communication and its exposure
3
Cf. Bradley 2015a with the conceptual introduction of Bradley 2015b, who offers an up-
to-date guide to the cultural study of smell. For garum snacks, see Koloski-Ostrow 2015: 104.
4
MacMullen 2003: 66–80; cf. Kaster 2006.
5
For instance, the emotional appeal of Athenian forensic speech appears over the top and at
times ludicrous only when measured against present-day conceptualizations of compassion. The
Athenians had their own take on this: Konstan 2006: 4–5, 27–8, 259–61; cf. Wohl 2010: 2–9. On
the emotional turn, see also Harris 2010.
Of Fragments and Feelings: Roman Funeral Oratory Revisited 265

to crowd psychology is obvious. Just exactly how crowd psychology wields this
impact, and what kind of emotion(s) it triggers, is a different matter. Building
on Elias Canetti’s pioneering work on Crowds and Power (first edition 1960, in
German), social psychologists have demonstrated that mass behaviour is
influenced by the loss of responsibility of the individual and its submergence
to a group that empowers its members (something that increases with the size
of the crowd). At the same time, it reduces the realm for individual action
through factors such as anonymity and group arousal, which weaken personal
controls (‘deindividuation’). The underpinnings come again from physiologic-
al assumptions. Neuroscience has disclosed that group psychologies are part of
the physiological development of our species; that they dominate behaviour
already in children; and that adults differ from children in their response to
collective emotions by regulating them through values and norms as they
prevail in society.6 Incidentally, this aperçu of neuroscience reinforces the idea
that emotions are culturally charged. Once again, they appear as a combin-
ation of the physiological and the cultural.7
EMOTIONAL MAGNIFICATION: THE CASE

OF THE ROMAN ARISTOCRATIC FUNERAL
Roman funeral oratory was subject to a highly formalized setting. Delivered in

the Forum, the speeches were usually held by an aristocratic speaker from the
speaker’s platform, the Rostra, before an assembled crowd. The set-up was
preconditioned by multiple markers of social hierarchy and inclusion, staged
before the backdrop of an existential human crisis. Polybius, in the locus
classicus on the Roman funeral, describes the basic mechanics of crowd
psychology and its exposure to both universal and cultural encodings. In his
depiction in book 6, Polybius famously asserts that:
Whenever an illustrious man dies, he is carried at his funeral into the Forum to
the Rostra, sometimes conspicuous in an upright posture and more rarely
reclined. Here, with all the people standing around, a grown-up son . . . mounts
the Rostra and talks (λέγει) about the virtues and successful achievement of the
dead. As a consequence the multitude (τοὺς πολλοὺς) and not only those who had
part in these achievements, but also those who had none, when the facts are
recalled to their minds (ἀναμιμνησκομένους) and brought before their eyes (ὑπὸ
6
MacMullen 2003: 73.
7
The terrain of crowd psychology is a treacherous one in social psychology research, starting
with Le Bon 1895. The issue is now further complicated by deindividuation processes in social
media communication: Lee 2007. See Chaniotis 2012b for a useful discussion of the many
proxies of crowd psychology, and their exploration in historical research; cf. also Cavarzere 2011.
266 Hans Beck

τὴν ὄψιν), are moved to such sympathy that the loss seems to be not confined to
the mourners, but a public one affecting the whole people (κοινὸν τοῦ δήμου).
Polyb. 53.1–3
Polybius captures here the exciting moment when individual grief, or the grief
of a family, extended to the assembled crowd of people and translated into a
mass experience; Polybius most likely will have been present at an aristocratic
funeral during his stay in Rome and hence will have offered this description
from personal experience. The word that is used to articulate this emotional
magnification is that of two groups of individuals—the aristocratic family and
the crowd—becoming συμπαθεῖς, literally ‘they feel together’: the common
people grow sympathetic with the elite as embodied by the speaker.8 This
shared emotion is so strong that it stimulates the formation of a new group
identity. The emotional tide strikes them as a κοινὸν τοῦ δήμου, that is, as a
community of people. As the mourners become deindividualized and sub-
merged into a larger collective, this new abstract body of ‘the whole people’ is
carried away by a distinguishable collective emotion, that of sympathy. In
consequence, the joint grief of the aristocratic family and common people
magnifies the emotional experience. And, by extension, the sympathy between
both groups refills them with the general sense of reciprocity, mutual obliga-
tions and loyalty, and unity.
It is striking to see how this feeling of reciprocity and mutual dependency
was explicitly articulated at the aristocratic funeral. In the oration delivered for
one of his departed sons, L. Aemilius Paullus (cos. II 168) declared:
cum in maximo prouentu felicitatis nostrae, Quirites, timerem ne quid mali Fortuna
moliretur, Iouem Optimum Maximum Iunonemque Reginam et Mineruam pre-
catus sum ut si quid aduersi populo Romano immineret, totum in meam domum
conuerteretur. quapropter bene habet: adnuendo enim uotis meis id egerunt ut uos
potius meo casu doleatis quam ego uestro ingemescerem.9 Val. Max. 5.10.2
In other words, Aemilius Paullus, anticipating that a disaster which struck his
family would be met with greatest sympathy by the people, had prayed to the
gods that, if misfortune were to strike, it should indeed fall onto his family rather
than he as an individual feeling sympatheis with the Roman people over
calamities that had hit the Republic as a whole. The fates of his aristocratic
family and that of the people were intertwined; in the case of devastation, each
group felt for the other, making them one in their mourning of defeat and death.
8
Cf. Collatz et al. 2002: 248 for further references.
9
‘ . . . “Fearing lest in the great harvest of our felicity, citizens, Fortune might have something
bad in store for us, I prayed to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva that if any adversity
threatened the Roman people it might all be directed against my house. Therefore all is well. By
granting my prayers they saw to it that you rather grieve for my misfortune than that I groan
over yours.” ’ According to Valerius Maximus, Aemilius Paullus lost two sons within only a few
days before and after his triumph over Perseus in 168 BC.

The immediate context in which this sense of feeling sympatheis was
articulated was the section of the aristocratic funeral that was clustered around
the funeral oration, held before the people in the Forum. As is well known, the
ritual as such also entailed other phases: a procession from the house of the
deceased to the Forum, the funeral oration, and the subsequent burial in
the family tomb outside the city. Each of these was flagged with the unique
experience of sound and smell. Along the way through the city, the pompa was
accompanied by musicians—the famous tubicines or tibicines, the former
playing large brass instruments, the latter sets of shorter flutes. Their songs
announced the momentary state of extraordinariness, a sound signal that
suspended the rhythm of quotidian life. As was noted recently, the tibicen in
particular ‘remplit alors de sa musique sacrificielle tout l’espace ritual’. Song
played an important role in the performance of procession rituals and their
reception among the audience, shrouding the ritual community in a common
soundscape.10 This extraordinary experience extended to smell also. The home
of the deceased, the domus funesta (Ov. Met. 7.575), was garlanded with
cut-off branches of cypress trees, which were widely considered to be a symbol
of mourning. The durable, fragrant wood was known to fill the air with a
particular scent, making the state of mourning instantly, and insistently,
recognizable to anyone who visited the domus. The scent of cypresses also
dominated the scene of the subsequent burial of the deceased before the family
tomb outside the city. According to a later source, cypress logs were used to
fumigate the air at cremations, to cover the smell of the burning flesh (Isid.
Etym. 17.7.34). Given this particular prominence of the cypress at the begin-
ning and the end of the death ritual, it is not unlikely that the branches and
cones were also burnt in censers along the route of the funeral procession from
the domus funesta to the Forum. Such use of aromatic resins is amply attested
for other types of processions (see below). If this was the case, the funeral ritual
was subject to a lingering scent throughout that swathed the air, magnifying
the emotional experience for all participants.11
The speech in the Forum clearly marked a decisive moment in the ritual
(cf. Flower 1996: 129), encapsulating a distinct moment of human crisis: the
eulogy before the people marked the moment when the deceased transitioned
from the community of the living to that of his dead forefathers; we will return
to this shortly. Maybe here, too, the performance of music by the tibinices
magnified the experience of crisis; we can only conjecture this much. Either
10
Cf. Vincent 2016: 119–54, who discusses the role of music and musicians in Roman ritual
practice.
11
Serv. ad Aen. 3.680; cf. also 6.216: ante cupressos constituunt] cupressus adhibetur ad
funera, uel quod caesa non repullulat, uel quod per eam funestata ostenditur domus, sicut laetam
frondes indicant festae. Varro tamen dicit pyras ideo cupresso circumdari propter grauem ustrinae
odorem, ne eo offendatur populi circumstantis corona, quae tamdiu stabat respondens fletibus
praeficae, id est principi planctu. Cf. also Gladhill in this volume.
268 Hans Beck

way, Polybius says that the funerary oration delivered by a family member
provided the audience with a frame of reference; but Polybius’ choice of words
amounts, as it were, to an understatement in this case: he simply says that the
speaker talks about the virtues of the departed. The immediate connotation is
that the people were moved first and foremost by the speech as such: by its
content, style, and delivery.
Content analysis is indeed the orthodox approach to (funeral) orations
before the Roman people. This vein of inquiry has put the interaction between
speakers and their audience under scrutiny. Among other assessments, this
exchange has been labelled ‘the rhetoric of reciprocity of merit and reward’.12
This means a mode of communication in which the aristocratic orators
pointed out not only their own achievements before the people, but also the
long lineage of their illustrious forefathers. The goal of such extensive rhet-
orical displays of family esteem was to corroborate the claim to aristocratic
leadership. Enriched with reference to the exempla maiorum—the exemplary
ancestors of earlier periods who had laid the foundations of Rome’s grandeur
through their displays of uirtus, honos, and gloria—the rhetoric of merit
highlighted the aristocracy’s record of success as leaders of the community.13
What made the exercise so persuasive, if not compelling, was its repetitive
nature: the audience was virtually bombarded with, and implicitly reminded to
adhere to, a select series of Roman values and achievements that funeral
orations reiterated so profusely.14 In turn, the boastful claim for the social
authority of the elite was geared towards the promotion of the speaker’s
family in particular—its prestige and fame as accumulated by all of its
members in the past and present. The two governing functions of public
speech—in the Forum, in the comitia held in the Campus, or in the informal
contio—were therefore to instil mutual bonds of loyalty between the ruling
elite and the common people, and to recommend the speaker and his family to
the citizens.15
The contents approach to public speech supports the attempt to conceptu-
alize the power relations between the people and the ruling elite. But there are
also caveats. Recent research on the soundscapes of public speech in the
premodern era—that is, before the invention of the loudspeaker—has alerted
scholars to the fact that the auditory interaction between speaker and listeners
was subject to various limitations. For instance, oratorical technique, archi-
tectural acoustics, and ambient noise levels greatly impacted the number of
people who could clearly hear a public speech. Fascination with the (Greek)
12 13 14
Hölkeskamp 2011a: 21. Bücher 2006. Covino 2011: 75.
15
The topic of Roman funerary oratory is not under-researched. Among the high volume of
contributions, I find the following particularly helpful, also with regard to further reading:
Kierdorf 1980; Flaig 1995; Hölkeskamp 1995; Flower 1996: 128–58; Covino 2011; Habinek
2005a and 2005b: 17–19, 36–7; Pina Polo 2009.

amphitheatre and its sonic capacity to reach an audience of 15,000 or more
evokes the picture of at-large audibility. But note that this was achieved
through applied spatial acoustics that were tied to the theatre as such: the
large front wall of the skene to reflect sounds in one direction, the angle of rise
in the seating area, the mouth openings of theatre masks functioning as
miniature megaphones. In addition to this, singers were able to project their
voices farther than the plain speaker.16
None of these attempts to utilize spatial acoustics applied to the funeral
oration in the Forum, or to speeches in the Comitium, for that matter.17
According to most reconstructions, the Comitium was a circular area in the
north-west corner of the Forum. The structure was stepped with a cauea, and
had a diameter of c.30 metres across. Accordingly, it accommodated a max-
imum of 3,600 to 4,800 people, but each of these calculations is based on
maximum figures. Depending on the occasion, attendance was most likely
lower.18 The actual Forum space, which extended horizontally to the south-
east of the Comitium, cut across this diameter. The diagonal axis from the
Rostra to the Tribunal and the temple of Castor measured c.80 metres. Ramsay
MacMullen has calculated a maximum capacity of up to 15,000 people.19 But
the place was interspersed with statues, honorary monuments, which not
only took up space but which were also harmful to the acoustics. The orator
spoke to the audience from the speaker’s podium, the Rostra, which put the
speaker in an elevated position. In such a setting there were various degrees of
audibility, where the impact of the spoken word evidently decreased with the
distance from the speaker; for audiences in the middle of the Forum, some
40 metres from the Rostra, hearing must have become a significant challenge. In
standing spaces beyond, inaudibility will have prevailed for the greatest part.20
All this leads us to conclude that the collective sympathy at a public funeral
was not fuelled by the laudatio funebris alone. The speech provided narrative
cohesion, but it was not the only trigger. Indeed, in Polybius’ account the
impact of the speech is supported by the element of sight. For one, Polybius
16
Cf. Blesser and Slater 2007: 94–7.
17
Note how walled venues such as the great Echo Hall at Olympia once again created a
different soundscape.
18
Cf. Mouritsen 2001: 18–19, whose reconstruction is based on Coarelli 1983–5: 1.119–226;
2.11–59, 87–166. Note that the round structure has been called into question, among others, by
Carafa 1998.
19
MacMullen 1980: 456.
20
Cf. Aldrete 1999: 73–84. In popular adaptations of public speech in the Forum the visual
set-up is usually one of a large crowd spellbound by the words of a mighty speaker. But in reality,
the soundscape was not dissimilar to the one captured so vividly in the movie Forrest Gump.
When Forrest addresses the assembled crowd of hippies before the Lincoln Memorial and the
microphone fails, even the immediate bystanders have trouble understanding him; he speaks
down a flight of stairs. In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the Sermon on the Mount is also
delivered downwards. Audibility issues among the more remote attendants thus invite various
creative misunderstandings.
270 Hans Beck

declares that the reaction of the common people was intensified when the
achievements of the deceased were ‘brought before their eyes’. This might be
understood figuratively, as a reference to the narrative that is brought before
the inner eye of the listener. As Polybius moves on to describe the procession
of the so-called imagines and the actors who impersonated the forefathers of
the deceased, however, he switches the focus from speech to sight:
There could not easily be a more ennobling spectacle for a young man who
aspires to fame and virtue. For who would not be inspired by the sight of the
imagines of men renowned for their excellence, all together and as if alive and
breathing? What spectacle could be more glorious than this? Polyb. 53.9–10
In Polybius’ account, the delivery of the funeral speech relies largely on visual
signs and devices that amplify its impact. While the speech as such, its lines
and sentences, was ephemeral, the awe-inspiring imagines were visible for as
long as the funeral lasted, which enhanced their symbolic and emotional
force.21 The imagines had been carried to the Forum in the preceding funeral
procession, in which they were worn by men who were also dressed in the
ornamenta of the deceased’s ancestors of rank and carried other status sym-
bols. The deceased was usually shown on a bier: on a feretrum or on a capulus.
When the procession arrived in the Forum, the dead man was propped in an
upright posture at the Rostra; it was suggested by some that there might have
been an effigy used to enhance the visual representation.22 Moreover, it seems
that the dead man was also represented among these esteemed ancestors,
which symbolized his induction into the ranks of his illustrious forefathers.
What Polybius does not mention, but what will nonetheless have added to the
emotional script, was that the orator displayed his own feelings through
gesture, facial expressions, and modulation of his voice, and that these expres-
sions were no doubt made in close conversation with the visual evidence of
imagines and actors. The sympathy of the common people was therefore the
result of a multisensory experience of sound and sight, embedded in the highly
charged context of a confrontation with their own mortality.23
In a passage that is often overlooked, Cicero complains that ‘the ears of the
Roman people were somewhat obtuse (aures hebetiores), while their eyes keen
and alert’ (Cic. Planc. 66). He makes this observation to explain why he had
21
Visibility of the imagines might have also been blurred by distance and monuments on the
Forum. The main difference here was the lasting display of effigies, vis-à-vis the ephemeral
character of the spoken word.
22
See Flower 1996: 130 n. 7.
23
On gestures and facial expressions, Aldrete 1999 is key. For the Roman funeral in general
and the complicated issue of imagines during the pompa, in addition to the references in n. 5
above, see Flaig 1993 and 2003; Blome 2001; Blösel 2003; Beck 2005b: 84–90; Walter 2003:
260–8; Pina Polo 2004; Dufallo 2007: 117–19; Blasi 2012. See also Favro and Johanson 2010 for
digitally crafted reconstructions of the positioning of audiences during the funeral procession.

chosen to live a life ‘in the public eye’ (in oculis)—to be seen in the Forum at all
times, and to grant anyone an audience at any time. Besides the personal
hyperbole, the point is well taken. In Rome’s ‘open air culture’, the notion of
direct exchange applied to all levels of public communication. But the registers
of communication were nonetheless distinct. Visibility and audibility, or the
senses of hearing and sight, wielded discernible influences over an audience:
while speech was fraught with acoustical limitations, the force of sight resulted
from its potential to trigger all sorts of references, interpretations, and asso-
ciations that made visual information so convincing.24 In fact, public speech
utilized this potential of sight through reliance on visual signs and symbolic
dimensions such as gestures, displays, and ostentations, all of which deter-
mined its efficiency beyond the actual force of the spoken word.25
In such a holistic approach towards Roman oratory, the recognition of
emotional economies is not only inevitable; it becomes a key moment in the
assessment of public speech. As the most eminent medium of mass commu-
nication in ancient Greece and Rome, public speech was an act of performance
that stimulated a variety of perceptive senses among its participants. In light of
acoustic limitations and reduced sound quality, such a multisensory charge
was inevitable. With this, Roman Republican oratory, and Roman funeral
oratory in particular, comprised a complex ensemble of speech, sight, and
other senses, which constituted a thick emotional script between the speaker
and the audience.26
Aristocratic speakers were masters in navigating the sea of audience emotions.
They knew all too well how to hit the strides of a ‘rhetoric of inclusion’.27 More
than what was actually said, they knew how to say it: how to generate compas-
sion; how to catch the audience through humour or joviality; how to flatter,
excite, or horrify the people; how to exhort their listeners and put them in their
place if a show of authority was required.28 Much of this was generated through
modulations of the voice, facial expressions, and gestures; C. Gracchus was
remembered as taking these devices to an entirely new level, through walking
around the speaker’s platform and shaking off his toga when it suited the
dramaturgy of the moment.29 The Rhetorica ad Herennium provides the oldest
24
For an extensive survey of the various ‘turns’ in scholarship that are aligned with this,
including the spatial and the performative, cf. Hölkeskamp 2006a and 2015, with a vast
bibliography.
25
Cf. also Hall 2014b, although mostly on forensic speech. Note how the notion of visibility of
speech also translated into the depiction of speech scenes in Republican representative com-
memorative art—monuments, frescos, depictions of spectacles, and statues: Hölkeskamp 2011a:
28–9.
26 27
I will return to the issue of smell below. Hölkeskamp 2013.
28
Cf. Laser 1997: 138–55. According to later tradition, the first speaker to fully embrace these
qualities was M. Cornelius Cethegus (cos. 204): ORF4 7 T1 (= Cic. Brut. 57–60). But see Wisse
2013 on the ‘bad orator’.
29
Plut. Tib. Gracch. 2; cf. also C. Gracch. 5. Cf. David 1983b: 107–8.
272 Hans Beck

extant discussion of gestures (under corporis motus, movement of the body),
which is based on the same taxonomical scheme that the Auctor applied to
his study of the voice.30 In the rhetorical manuals of Cicero and Quintilian, this
extends to the discussion of oratorical delivery as such (actio, pronuntiatio),
perfection of which was soon considered to be among the essential skills of the
accomplished orator. Discussions such as these surrounding oratorical skills
and techniques document an alert sense among Roman speakers of the need
to follow the emotional script, but as we noted earlier, they do not automati-
cally disclose the cultural encoding of that script. Is it possible, after all, to unravel
the cultural distinctions of feelings and emotions of a period as remote as
the Roman Republic? Will we ever be able to grasp the chills experienced by a
Republican crowd?31
THE S ITUATIONAL S ET-UP: THREE CASE S TUDIES
The sources make it a challenge to approach Roman oratory from such a

holistic perspective. If there is one genre in the canon of sources that seems
particularly underqualified to do so, then it is the body of fragments of Roman
oratory. Fragments are reduced to a narrative core, often stripped down to the
bare bones of a few words; they are without context; and in the few cases where
the context is related, the fragment regularly fuses with its citing authority,
often so much so that its initial shape can hardly be restored.
Among the earliest fragments and testimonies of Roman oratory figures the
prominent speech by Q. Caecilius Metellus (RE 81) who had delivered the
laudatio funebris for his father Lucius (RE 72) in 221 BC; this is the earliest
extant piece of Latin oratory.32 A summary conclusion survives in Pliny who is
otherwise well-informed about the illustrious family career of the Caecilii
Metelli. The speech has received much attention for its praise of superlative
achievements as well as for its implicit system of aristocratic values. It is
usually viewed as an exemplary piece of panegyric and a landmark funeral
oration in the development of the genre. According to Pliny, Quintus Metellus
set out to praise the cursus honorum of his father, who was consul twice (251,
247), dictator, master of the knights, and land commissioner; during his
triumph in 250 BC he led very many elephants. These pieces most likely reflect
the shape of the earlier sections of the oration. Quintus Metellus then
30
Cf. Hall 2007. See also Hilder in this volume.
31
The same is true for the voice of the crowd as such, to which most scholarship is ‘deaf ’, as
Millar 1984: 3 famously put it. One of the notable exceptions is Morstein-Marx 2004: 119–59
(‘The Voice of the People’).
32
Plin. HN 7.139–41 (= ORF4 6 F2).

moves on to boast about his father’s ‘ten greatest and best objectives in the
pursuit of which wise men spend their lives’. What follows is a cascade of
superlatives. For Lucius ‘had aspired to be a first-class warrior, the best orator,
the bravest commander, to handle the most important matters under his
auspices, to hold the greatest honour, to be supremely wise, to be regarded
an outstanding senator, to obtain great wealth in an honourable way, to leave
behind many children and to be the most distinguished in the state’.33
Pliny muses whether (Lucius?) Metellus ought to be a happy or an unhappy
man, in light of the fortunes and misfortunes that befell him in his old age, but
this is not the point here.34 More interestingly, it would be interesting to know
how such rhetorical hyperbole—or overkill?—was received by the audience.
The prevailing verdict in scholarship is that it would have made a deep
impression. Struck with a veritable firework display of superlatives, the audi-
ence could not help but marvel at the über-achievements of the deceased
aristocratic leader. It is genuinely impossible to verify this view or to assess
the impact of the speech through context analysis. A more comprehensive
approach urges us to caution. The ten superlatives, as related by Pliny in a
somewhat bullet-point manner, will most likely have served as ‘the framework
for further elaboration which is no longer extant’.35 So Quintus Metellus will
have talked about these points in one way or the other, most likely with
different emphasis and at different length. But even if the list of ten virtues
was elaborated on rather than simply enumerated, it is doubtful whether the
audience would have been able to memorize them after the event. To be sure,
the list must have been impressive. But it was also very dense, and the details
will have escaped many. For instance, the cursus honorum evidently instilled
the audience with a sense of the greatness of the deceased: he was twice consul
and dictator, and praise for his service as land commissioner was most likely
remarkable. Yet this latter reference might also have served as a rhetorical
smokescreen that diverted from the fact that there was no aedileship in Lucius’
career. Furthermore, and more importantly, it appears that Lucius was never
elected censor. The oration praises him as summus senator—incidentally, a
hapax legomenon in the surviving corpus of Latin literature which seems to be
so odd that it could have been authentic.36 As member of a plebeian gens,
33
Plin. HN 7.139–40: Q. Metellus in ea oratione, quam habuit supremis laudibus patris
sui L. Metelli pontificis, bis consulis, dictatoris, magistri equitum, XV uiri agris dandis, qui
p<llu>rim<os> elephantos ex primo Punico bello duxit in triumpho, scriptum reliquit decem
maximas res optimasque, in quibus quaerendis sapientes aetatem exigerent, consummasse eum:
uoluisse enim primarium bellatorem esse, optimum oratorem, fortissimum imperatorem, auspicio
suo maximas res geri, maximo honore uti, summa sapientia esse, summum senatorem haberi,
pecuniam magnam bono modo inuenire, multos liberos relinquere et clarissimum in ciuitate esse;
haec contigisse ei nec ulli alii post Romam conditam.
34
He lost his eyesight in a fire when he seized the statue of Pallas Athena from the temple of
Vesta: Plin. HN 7.140.
35 36
Covino 2011: 72. Cf. Flower 1996: 140.
274 Hans Beck

Lucius did not qualify for the honour of princeps senatus at the time, so the
label of summus senator might have been an elegant compensation to make up
for circumstances that were beyond Lucius’ control. With no censorship under
his belt, Lucius’ main obstacle was not descent from a plebeian family but
rather this failure to be elected censor (a further prerequisite for the honour of
princeps senatus at the time) despite several occasions for a successful cam-
paign.37 Could such a man univocally be declared the summus senator?
The orator Quintus, probably in his late teens at the time of his father’s
death, seems to have staked everything on individual achievement and success
in all areas of merit. The only reference to Lucius’ family appears to have been
that he had ‘many children’.38 But then again, there is no extant reference to
ancestors. Maybe this is for a reason. The Caecilii Metelli had entered the
plebeian nobility only in the generation of Lucius’ father, Lucius Caecilius
Denter (RE 92), himself a social climber who was consul in 284 and praetor in
283.39 The pompa funebris will have shown only one imago then, if any,
although there might have been other family members of praetorian rank
who are not attested. Again, in light of the many esteemed men of the day, was
it really credible to declare Lucius Metellus to be the most successful of all?
No doubt, there will have been many veterans from Metellus’ campaigns in
Sicily (251 cos., 250 procos., 249 mag. equ., 247 cos.). From their personal
interactions with him they would have been able to contextualize Quintus’
references, and many will have agreed with the speaker, based on how they
remembered Lucius. Meanwhile, the greater part of the audience was in no
position to check Quintus’ claims against their personal experience. Maybe
authenticity did not matter after all. If this is the case, then the effectiveness of
the speech indeed depended not so much on the veracity of its contents, but on
its hyperbolic superlatives. Quintus distracted his audience from the lack of
copious imagines and a cursus honorum that was by no means stellar and he
steamrolled the crowd with abstract values and virtues—civic, religious, and
military—all of which his father had embodied in means that were, according
to Quintus, unmatched. The sheer quantity added to the quality of his claims.
37
Lucius Caecilius was consul 251 and again in 247. So for 247 he seems to have preferred a
second consulate over the possibility of a censorship that was held that year. For the censorship
of 241, the plebeian spot went to C. Aurelius Cotta, cos I 252 and II 248, i.e. in the years before
Caecilius’ consulates. The future censorships in his lifetime were held in 241, 236, 234, 231, 230,
and 225 (cf. the fasti censorii as compiled by Beck 2005a: 81–3, from the fasti Capitolini and after
MRR). If the tradition about his blindness is correct (Livy, Per. 19, and see above n. 33), this
might have impacted his ability to run for the censorship. But he appears again as dictator
comitiorum habendorum causa in 224 (fasti Capitolini, name entire), which challenges this view.
In his RE entry, Münzer concludes that the story of Caecilius’ blindness ‘gehört daher wohl
der Legende an’ (Münzer 1897b: 1204).
38
He had three sons and presumably several daughters. Cf. Flower 1996: 137 and 141.
39
On Denter and the Caecilii Metelli, see Hölkeskamp forthcoming and 20112: 180; Brennan
1994: 432–7; Beck 2005a: 65–6, 117–18.

There was no pompa funebris with effective props, no breathtaking display of
the family’s symbolic capital. Nor did the speech hold up against a reality
check of what Lucius had actually achieved in his lifetime. If the audience was
caught by a sense of sympathy with Quintus Caecilius and his family, and
there is no reason to assume that it was not, then this emotion was most
probably fuelled by the picture of excellence Quintus had projected for them,
with all its hyperbolic exaggeration.
In the final years of the Hannibalic War, between 207 and 203 BC, Q. Fabius
Maximus ‘Cunctator’ delivered the funeral speech in the Forum for his
deceased son Q. Fabius (cos. 213). One fragment survives—if indeed it is to
be assigned to this Q. Fabius Maximus—because, as so often, of a grammatical
peculiarity: amitti quam apisci (‘to be lost rather than to be acquired’, Prisc.
Inst. 1.380.9–10).40 The testimonies in Cicero and Plutarch, both of whom say
that the speech was extant to them, praise Fabius’ philosophical depth as well
as his collectedness as attested in the speech.41 Cicero speaks of the admirable
countenance with which he bore the death of his son (Sen. 12). Plutarch
seconds this assessment, claiming that the speech lacked all rhetorical flutter.
Rather, it was intellectually deep and linguistically demanding (Plut. Fab. 1.6;
cf. 24.6). As is to be expected, it is impossible to recreate the emotional charge
of Fabius’ laudatio funebris; most likely, the philosophical discourse will have
weighed heavier in the scripted version of the speech, which offered more
room for nuance and intellectual subtlety. But with this, the notion of collect-
edness and careful, well-versed reflection does not disappear altogether from
the oral presentation of the speech. It might not be insensitive to assume that
Fabius’ delivery before the people was indeed full of countenance, with
overtones of intellectual integrity and moral authority as embodied by the
speaker.
Note the striking contrast to Caecilius Metellus’ speech. Quintus Caecilius
had delivered the speech as a young man who spoke in recognition of a father
who had died at an advanced age, whereas in Fabius’ case the father, himself at
a very advanced age, buried the son. This certainly gave the speech a different
tone and generated a distinct emotional bond between the speaker and his
audience. The sympatheia they jointly experienced put Fabius in a unique
position, and this position in turn will have configured the entire event. For
while in other funeral orations it had become common practice to display the
illustrious ancestors of the departed—and hence to highlight the collective
glory of his aristocratic family—in the present display of imagines there was no
representation of the father: he was still alive. But Fabius was also the most
esteemed family member of the Fabii Maximi since the days of five-time
40
ORF4 3 F5. 41
Cic. Sen. 12; Plut. Fab. Max. 1.7, 24.6 (= ORF4 3 F2–4).
276 Hans Beck

consul Fabius Maximus Rullianus. Following in the footsteps of Rullianus’
eldest son, who held two consulships, the father of the orator held only one
consulship and there was no doubt that the present speaker, the great Cunc-
tator, far outshone his ancestors as well as his departed son.42 The window of
time in which the speech could have been delivered (after 207, the son’s
attested appointment as legatus, and before 203, Fabius’ death) falls in the
final years of the Second Punic War, when Hannibal’s position in southern
Italy was becoming increasingly critical, if not hopeless. Even more so, this was
the period in which Fabius’ military strategy from the earlier years of this
conflict must have appeared key in the firm defeat of the Carthaginians. While
Fabius was fiercely criticized for his strategy of delay before Cannae, it became
the governing military maxim in the aftermath of 216 BC. In the final years of
the Hannibalic War, it could have been viewed as wise providence that had
saved the state (cf. Enn. Ann. 12.363–5). When Fabius, now in his early 70s,
climbed the Rostra to speak about his devastating loss, this must have been an
occasion to reflect on long-term strategies, steadfastness, and endurance, both
of collective hardships and of personal calamities. The published speech will
have dwelled on these topics in even greater detail and with more thoughtful-
ness. Was Fabius’ funeral oration then one of the key documents that shaped
the image of the great exemplum of Fabius Maximus in later periods?43
At around the same time that Fabius delivered the speech for his son,
M. Claudius Marcellus composed a funeral oration for his father, famous
war hero and maverick of the Hannibalic War (208 BC). The speech was
published but no single fragment survives.44 Coelius Antipater noted that, in
it, Marcellus the son gave a distinct account of the death of his father, who was
killed in combat (FRH 11 F36 = FRHist 15 F27). In 208, Marcellus (the father),
in his fifth consulate, was ambushed by Hannibal’s troops near the town of
Venusia. The following encounter was hardly more than a skirmish with no
more than a hundred horsemen in Marcellus’ cortège, but the fighting was
severe enough to see the consul killed. Marcellus the son was himself part of
the Roman unit yet he somehow managed to escape and return to Rome.45
Addressing the Roman audience, he spoke with the authority of an eyewitness
of the events that had led to the death of his father. Coelius reports that the
young Marcellus presented a version that differed significantly from other
oral traditions and from what Coelius himself was able to research—all
42
Cf. Beck 2005a: 269–301 (on the difficult family tree, see 273 with n. 19). The cognomen
‘Cunctator’ comes only from a later period.
43
The exemplum of Fabius Maximus is discussed by Beck 2000 and Roller 2011 (with
bibliography). The impact of the speech on the later exemplification also shines through in
Cic. Sen. 12, who comments that the script was in general circulation.
44
Cf. ORF4 5 F1.
45
On Marcellus’ life, cf. Flower 2003; Beck 2005a: 302–27 (with bibliography).

versions agreed that Marcellus fell victim to Carthaginian insidiae (‘ambush’
and ‘insidiousness’).46
It is not impossible that Marcellus the son actually delivered an oration in
the Forum on the occasion of his father’s death, but it is unclear if this speech
was part of a fully-fledged funeral ceremony. The display of imagines would
have been peculiar. Marcellus’ ancestors were only modestly celebrated. The
family was part of the plebeian nobility but Marcellus’ father had not held
high office; his grandfather was consul in 287.47 The deceased was the true
champion of the family: bearer of the corona ciuica and renowned single
combatant, five-time consul, conqueror of Syracuse; there was a very exten-
sive array of distinctions which Marcellus will have evoked in his speech.48
But nothing of this will have diverted the attention of the audience from the
fact that the body of Marcellus was missing. When the consul was killed,
Hannibal got hold of it. According to Livy, he buried Marcellus on the hill
where he was killed and returned the ashes in an urn to the son. According to
other sources, the urn had gone astray altogether.49 Either way, there would
have been little to be seen during the speech in the Forum. Maybe the family
had arranged for an effigy of Marcellus to be put up on the Rostra. Is it
surprising, then, that the orator made it his principal task to counter the
charge of negligence, let alone gross recklessness, and to offer a distinct
version of why his father carried out his manoeuvre, despite the immense
risks this entailed? Livy claims that the plan, effectively, was so imprudent
that it killed not only Marcellus but also his colleague T. Quinctius Crispi-
nus; and with them, it destroyed almost the entire res publica (prope totam
rem publicam in praeceps dederat, 27.27.11). Livy’s judgement evidently
hyperbolizes the narrative. But the death of both consuls in battle was indeed
a rare occasion (Crispinus died from his injuries shortly after this event), and
the allegation of carelessness evidently made the rounds. Faced with this
charge, Marcellus will have admonished the crowd and weighed in on the
fact that, no matter what anybody else said, he, Marcellus, was present there
and participated in the fighting. The sense of sympathy thus combined with a
fair dose of charge and justification to endorse the course of events as
portrayed by the son.
46
FRH 11 F36 = FRHist 15 F27. Ambush: Livy 27.27.14. The divergent historiographical
traditions have been studied by Caltabiano 1975; Carawan 1984; Flower 2003. Augustus appears
to have drawn from the published speech in his funeral oration for his son-in-law Marcellus, see
Plut. Marc. 30.6 and Comp. Pel. Marc. 1.5 with Kierdorf 1980: 137–8.
47
Beck 2005a: 305 (stemma).
48
I have fictitiously reconstructed the speech elsewhere, piecing it together and following the
model of superlatives as laid out in Caecilius Metellus’ speech from 221 BC, see Beck 2005a:
325–6.
49
Livy 27.28.1; Plut. Marc. 30. Flower 1996: 146 finds it thus unlikely that a funeral was held
in Rome at all; cf. also Bernstein 2000: 160.
278 Hans Beck
F R O M E V E N T TO HI S T O R Y : ME A S U R I N G
THE S UCCESS OF ORATORY
Anthony Corbeill has reminded us that public speaking was an exercise in

which young aristocrats could fashion a distinct profile for themselves.50 The
funeral oration in particular is often regarded as one of the earliest opportun-
ities to make an appearance before the Roman people in a formalized setting,
and hence as the first instance of formal exposure to a crowd that would later
on bestow its honours on them and support their candidacies for public office.
In their assessment of this test of a young man’s ability, scholars usually rely
on the published texts of speeches as they survive in summary references and
fragments (never in full), and we measure those extant remains against the
later career of the speaker. Since, in virtually all of the attested cases, those
careers were steep, the funeral speeches must have been successful, too.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, son of the warhorse
Marcellus, the young Gaius Julius Caesar—all of these men had great careers
after they had delivered funeral orations in their youth, so their speeches must
have been great by all accounts. And, to come around full circle, their future
careers highlight the importance of the exercise of public speaking.
It would be hazardous to deny the importance of Roman funeral oratory, or
of the performative act of public speaking in general. This said, it is worth
recalling that the measuring of oratorical success followed a different logic in
Roman antiquity than it does in modern scholarship. Caesar’s case might
arguably be considered to be exceptional rather than paradigmatic, simply
because of the later course of events. But there are also intricacies that urge us
to exercise caution with the assessment of the speech. Caesar’s funeral oration
of 69 BC for his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, is referenced time and again
for its claim of the gens Iulia’s divine ancestry from Venus and the Roman
kings.51 For Christian Meier, the funeral oration for Julia, along with the one
for his deceased wife Cornelia of around the same time, indicate that ‘Caesar
now began to attract attention in a different way . . . He became known as an
extravagant, bold and disrespectful young man, certainly not without arro-
gance, though of a rather charming kind.’52 According to Meier, the speeches
thus mark a turning point in the young Caesar’s career, a moment where he
first displayed ‘the skill and artistry of his rhetoric’.53 This might indeed have
been the case, but what really aroused the audience reaction to both funeral
orations went beyond what Caesar had actually said. Extolling his family’s
descent from Venus may or may not have been extraordinary; other noble
50
Corbeill 2004: 107–39.
51
Sources: Suet. Caes. 6.1; Plut. Caes. 5.2; ORF4 121 F28–9. See Blom 2016: 146–80 on this as
well as the other Caesarian speeches discussed subsequently.
52
Meier 19802: 134–5. 53
Meier 19802: 136.

families had toyed with similar claims. But what really got the audience going
was that the imago of Marius was displayed in the cortège. The visual repre-
sentation of Marius triggered a wave of excitement. This was the first occasion
on which the public had seen Marius since his funeral seventeen years earlier, in
86 BC.54 While some responded to this with displeasure, others were less
offended, hurling abuse at Sulla’s supporters criticizing Caesar. In doing so,
Caesar broadcast emotions and affections that drew the assembled crowd back
to the days of the conflict between Marius and Sulla.55 In such a climate, the
claim for divine ancestry might not have been of the most eminent concern.
Things were different with the speech for his departed wife Cornelia,
Cinna’s daughter. The event was remarkable as such because it was contrary
to Roman custom, which allowed funeral orations in the Forum only for
matrons rather than for young, childless wives. Nothing is known about the
contents of the speech but the audience was said to have been deeply touched
by the passionate grief displayed by the speaker. The impact of Caesar’s words
thus depended on the very moment of human crisis as we saw it assigned to
funeral speeches above, along with the decision to breach prevailing traditions
and to honour his wife in public. It is unknown if Caesar resorted to praise for
his father-in-law or had his effigy put up in plain sight. The very context of the
speech might have been counter-intuitive to such polarization.56 In a different
context, the issues of success and successful delivery were determined by other
factors. In around 77 and 76 BC, Caesar delivered two prosecution speeches in
two separate trials against Cn. Cornelius Dolabella (cos. 81) and C. Antonius
Hybrida (cos. 63), both de repetundis. In both cases the prosecution failed.
Whether this was due to the prevailing political circumstances or Caesar’s flat
delivery (or both) is unknown.57
It is a truism to acknowledge that our information today is mostly retrieved
from texts that underwent careful revision for publication after delivery,
although the extent of this revision is debated.58 Be that as it may, most
Romans never reread the text of a funeral oration—and certainly no average
voter did. Instead, public speech was judged against the backdrop of the
charged atmosphere of the moment. Roman audiences measured the success
of oral delivery according to the challenges and opportunities of a live per-
formance, the thrills and chills it triggered, the sensations and surprises it held
for them. All of this became formative of how they remembered the event in
the aftermath, cognitively and emotionally, and how the speech translated
from event to history. The efficiency of speech thus depended on the spoken
54
As a hostis of the Republic, his imagery had been removed from the public sphere. Cf. also
Flower 2006: 105 on the excitement of the déjà vu.
55
Plut. Caes. 5.2; see Tan 2013: 119 on this interpretation of the audience reaction.
56
Suet. Caes. 6.1; Plut. Caes. 5.4–5; ORF4 121 F30–1.
57
ORF4 121 F15–25. Cf. now Blom 2016 for a full discussion of these speeches.
58
Cf. Flower 1996: 129.
280 Hans Beck

word, but since, as we have seen, there were so many limitations to this,
speakers were asked to enhance the persuasive effect through all sorts of
rhetorical strategies. Beyond the issue of discursive contents, these strategies
really determined the success of a speech. Weaving the emotional fabric of the
event, they fuelled the sense of sympathy or, to be more precise, they fuelled a
culturally encoded notion of feeling of συμπαθεῖς. In the particular variant of
Roman culture, this sense was closely intertwined with ideas of loyalty,
belonging, and leadership. It was through these emotional economies that
speech made the greatest impact, if the speaker hit the keys well, realigning his
personal loss with that of the res publica and the various modes of communal
cohesion and belonging this entailed. If the orator did not hit these keys, his
speech fell flat.
The pompa funebris was an intermittent ritual, as was the pompa trium-
phalis. More cyclical and frequent were the pompae circenses, which drove the
whole city into a state of excitement. Fabius Pictor offers the earliest depiction
of the spectacle; the referenced timeline is more or less the same as the one of
the funeral orations we discussed earlier. In his lengthy description, Fabius
explains that the urban space was filled with the sound of music from choirs
and bands of flute-players. Their songs accentuated the extraordinariness of
the moment, amplifying the experience and sensation. Then, at a critical
moment in the procession, right before the images of the gods were paraded,
came ‘those carrying censers, upon which aromatic herbs and frankincense
were burnt along the whole route’.59 What kind of aromatic resin did the
Romans apply? Was this frankincense also flared during funeral processions,
or were the latter distinct for their use of cypress pyres, because of their
forceful connection with mourning and death? Either way, Fabius makes it
obvious that the city of Rome was tinted in scents that highlighted the special
character of the event, glossing it over with a unique olfactory experience.
Soon enough, Roman memories of circus processions will have triggered
associations with the particular scent that altered the smellscape of the city
during those days. Most likely, we will never be able to uncover the scent. But
it reminds us that the impact of the ritual went beyond the traces it left in the
literary tradition, be it in historiography or in published speeches. Recent
interest in the cultural dimension of sensory perception inspires us to read the
fragments of Roman oratory in a more comprehensive way. If at all possible,
we are invited to venture through the emotional depths of oratory and to feel
for the fragments, in a literal sense.
59
FRH 1 F20 = FRHist 1 F15; cf. Beck 2005b: 90–6.
16
Fragments of Epideictic Oratory

The Exemplary Case of the Laudatio Funebris for Women
Cristina Pepe
I N T R O D U C TI O N
The funeral oration (laudatio funebris) was the culminating moment of the
Roman funus.1 The Greek historian Polybius provides a vivid description of
this ritual: after departing from the house and winding its way through the city
streets, the funeral procession (pompa funebris), with the bier and the imagines
maiorum, turned into the Forum and came to a halt before the Rostra. Here, a
family member, preferably a son of the deceased, delivered a eulogy before the
assembled Roman people.2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Plutarch claim
that this custom dates back to the earliest days of the Republic, citing the
speech given by the consul Valerius Publicola over the remains of his colleague
Brutus (509 BC) as the first example of the laudatio funebris.3 Cicero tells us
that many of the oldest examples of Latin oratory available in his own day
were laudationes funebres, and he includes them with other time-honoured
trappings of the funerals.4
1
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer and editors of this volume for their insightful
suggestions which improved the first version of this chapter. All remaining errors are my own
After the pioneering study of Vollmer 1892, the laudatio funebris has received much attention from
scholars in recent years. Key works are Durry 19922 and Kierdorf 1980; see also Arce 2000.
2
Polyb. 6.53–4. Bibliography on the Roman funeral is vast: among the major contributions,
after Vollmer 1892, see Wesch-Klein 1993; Flaig 1995 and 2003; Flower 1996; Pina Polo 2004
and 2009; Hölkeskamp 1995 and 2006b (esp. 347–51); Blasi 2012.
3
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.17.1–3; Plut. Publ. 9.10–11; cf. [Aur. Vict.] De vir. ill. 10.7; Lydus,
Mag. 1.33. Additionally, Dionysius asserts that the Roman laudatio was older than the Athenian
epitaphios logos (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 5.17.3). On the origins of the Roman funeral eulogy, see
Vollmer 1892: 450–3; Crawford 1941: 20–1; Kierdorf, 1980: 94–5; Arce 2000: 44–5.
4
See Cic. Brut. 62, Leg. 2.61–2; cf. Tac. Ann. 3.5.
282 Cristina Pepe

This ancient practice, which was observed throughout the Republican
period, continued through the Principate and became part of the Imperial
funeral rites: at the end of the third century AD, Emperor Septimius Severus
pronounced the oration at the death of his predecessor, Pertinax.5 Epigraphic
evidence indicates that the laudatio funebris was also practised outside
Rome: a series of inscriptions from Western provinces, especially Baetica
and Mauretania Tingitana, dated to the first and second centuries AD, list a
public laudatio among the funeral honours granted by local senates to the
members of the local elite.6
The remarkable persistence of this custom and its significant geographical
distribution enable us to view the laudatio funebris as a cornerstone in the
history of Roman oratory. Nevertheless, we have little evidence about it since
only a few meagre remains survive.7 Historiographers such as Livy, Pliny,
Plutarch, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Cassius Dio, along with rhetoricians and
grammarians including Cicero, Quintilian, and Diomedes, offer many brief
notices of laudationes funebres which record the speakers who delivered them
(testimonia). These sources may occasionally contain quotations from the
speeches (fragments), but these are usually little more than isolated sentences.8
More representative fragments come from the epigraphic and papyrological
evidence.9 We are plainly in the presence of a paradigmatic case of ‘oratory
in pieces’.
One of the most distinctive features of the Roman laudatio funebris, and
one which seems to have no parallel in the Greek world, was the fact that these
eulogies were delivered to commemorate the lives of women as well as of men.
Plutarch states:
ἄριστα δ’ ὁ Ῥωμαίων δοκεῖ νόμος ἔχειν, ὥσπερ ἀνδράσι καὶ γυναιξὶ δημοσίᾳ μετὰ
τὴν τελευτὴν τοὺς προσήκοντας ἀποδιδοὺς ἐπαίνους.10 Plut. Mul. 242e–f
5
Cass. Dio 74.5.1; SHA Pert. 15.1.
6
On these epigraphic documents, see Wesch-Klein 1993: esp. 62–82; Arce 2000: 111–14;
Melchor Gil 2006 and 2007.
7
Originally collected by Vollmer 1892. For a few additions since then, see Kierdorf 1980:
137–49.
8
The only reports of any completeness are in the work of Cassius Dio and concern the
eulogies delivered by Antony for Caesar (Cass. Dio 44.36–49) and by Tiberius for Augustus
(Cass. Dio 56.34–41). But modern scholars agree that Cassius Dio created new, well-structured
speeches, fleshing out and rhetorically organizing the information he gleaned from his sources;
see Kierdorf 1980: 150–8 and Pepe 2011; cf. also Burden-Strevens in this volume.
9
Laudatio Turiae (CIL 6.1527 = 31670 = 37053 = CIL 62.41062 = ILS 8393 = FIRA2 3.69),
Laudatio Murdiae (CIL 6.10230 = ILS 8394 = FIRA2 3.70 = Suppl. It. Imagines. Roma (CIL, VI)
5 n. 4852), and Laudatio Matidiae (CIL 14.3579). A long fragment of Augustus’ Laudatio
Agrippae has been discovered on a papyrus (P. Köln I 10 Inv. 4701 and 4702), edited by
Koenen 1970 and Gronewald 1983.
10
‘Best of all seems the Roman custom, which publicly renders to women, as to men, fitting
praises after the end of their life.’ (Trans. Babbitt 1931, modified).
Fragments of Epideictic Oratory 283

The role of women in Roman oratory was marginal. Women did not speak
from the Rostra and examples of female voices in the Roman Forum are few
and far between.11 The acts and achievements of women were only rarely
represented in public speeches, which were focused on the civic and military
duties from which they were customarily excluded. The laudatio funebris was
an extraordinary event in which women, who were ordinarily forced to
conduct a silent life within the domestic space, became the centre of an
oratorical performance. In this paper I propose to analyse the fragments and
testimonia of female laudationes funebres, with particular reference to the
following three aspects of this type of oration: the context in which the
speeches were delivered and the figures of the orators and of the women
eulogized; the content and aim of the speeches; and the style of the speeches
and their aesthetic value.
CONTEXT OF THE SPEECH, THE ORATORS,

AND THE WOMEN E ULOGIZED
Ancient sources record different traditions for the origin of the funeral oration
for women. According to Livy, when the Romans were faced with paying an
indemnity during the Gallic siege of the city (390 BC), the matrons gave
up their gold ornaments and jewellery so that the sacred gold would not
have to be touched. In appreciation of their generosity, the Senate granted
them the honour, which had previously been reserved for men, of having
eulogies spoken at their funerals.12 In a similar narrative, attested by Plutarch,
the Roman women received the right to a public eulogy as recompense for
their offering to the sanctuary at Delphi after the destruction of Veii (395 BC).13
But in the De oratore—through the character of Marcus Antonius, one of
the main participants in the dialogue—Cicero claims that the first beneficiary
of a laudatio was Popilia, praised by her son Lutatius Catulus in about 100 BC:
et in eo quidem genere scio et me et omnis, qui adfuerunt, delectatos esse
uehementer, cum a te est Popilia, mater uestra, laudata, cui primum mulieri
hunc honorem in nostra ciuitate tributum puto.14 Cic. De or. 2.44
11
Cf. the contributions of Hallet and Gladhill in this volume.
12 13
Livy 5.50.7. Plut. Cam. 8.
14
‘And with regard to this type of oratory, I know that I myself, and all who were present,
were highly delighted when your mother Popilia was eulogized in this fashion by yourself; she
being, I think, the first woman to whom such honour was ever rendered in our own community.’
(Trans. Sutton and Rackham 1942).
284 Cristina Pepe

While the origins and the initial development of the eulogy for women are
veiled in uncertainty,15 there is ample evidence that the practice was custom-
ary from the first century BC onwards. In 67 BC, at the age of thirty-three and
while he was quaestor, Caesar commemorated two deceased women from his
family: his aunt Julia, the widow of Marius, and his wife Cornelia, the daughter
of Cornelius Cinna. Suetonius and Plutarch relate that Caesar delivered both
speeches in the Forum in front of a large crowd of ciues.16 In 51 BC the Forum
was the stage for the funeral of another Julia, the sister of Caesar, who was
eulogized by her grandson Octavian.17 The ancient authors who record the
episode—Suetonius, Quintilian, and Nicolaus of Damascus—are careful to
specify that it was held from the Rostra before the assembled populace.18
They also emphasize the very young age of Octavian as the laudator.19 The
oration is presented as the first appearance on the public scene of the future
emperor Augustus.20
These literary accounts of female laudationes funebres share some common
elements. First, the eulogized women all belong to prominent aristocratic
families: not only Cornelia and the two Juliae, who were the aunt and the
sister of Caesar,21 but also Popilia, the first woman historically known to
have been awarded the laudatio.22 Secondly, the orators charged with deliver-
ing the speeches are relatives of the deceased and also current or future leading
15
Most scholars have considered the tradition related by Livy and Plutarch to be suspect and
have dismissed it either as lacking historical validity or as recording a privilege which lapsed or
did not come into immediate effect. The veracity of Livy and Plutarch’s record has been defended
by Hillard 2001. For more recent discussion, see Valentini 2012: 158–78 and Pepe 2015: 21–30.
16
Suet. Iul. 6.1 (= ORF4 121 F29–30); Plut. Caes. 5.1–5 (= ORF4 121 F28 and 31).
17
This Julia was the younger sister of Caesar, married to Marcus Atius Balbus. See Malcovati
19695 F30; Blasi 2012: 61–3 and 181–5.
18
Octavian’s speech is recorded at Suet. Aug. 8.1; Quint. Inst. 12.6.1; Nic. Dam. 4 (= FGrHist
90 F127). For the Rostra, see Quint. Inst. 12.6.1: pro rostris; Suet. Aug. 8.1: pro contione; Nic.
Dam. 4 (= FGrHist 90 F127) ἐν πολλῷ ὁμίλῳ δημηγοροῦντι.
19
Twelve is the age recorded by Suetonius and Quintilian (cf. above, n. 18). They seem to be
right because Octavian was born in 63 BC. According to Nicolaus, Octavian was nine years old
when he delivered this oration. This information has been interpreted in different ways. See Pepe
2015: 34, with discussion of previous bibliography.
20
The funeral oration is often regarded as the occasion in which a leading man in Rome made
his first public appearance as an orator (cf. Flower 1996: 137 and Beck in this volume). Polybius
(6.53.2) says that it was usual for a son to deliver the oration if there was one who had already put
on his toga of manhood (ἐν ἡλικίᾳ). The pueritia of Octavian seems to inaugurate a practice that
would then have been repeated for other adolescents fated to become emperors: Tiberius
eulogized his father, Claudius Nero, at the age of nine (Suet. Tib. 6.4, cf. Balbo 20072 F11);
Caligula spoke at the funeral of his great-grandmother, Livia Augusta, at the age of sixteen (Tac.
Ann. 5.1.4).
21
Cass. Dio 39.64 records a third Julia, daughter of Caesar and wife of Pompey, as the
recipient of a funeral oration. The identity of the orator is not specified but Pompey, as husband
of the deceased, could have been in charge of delivering the speech: Tylawsky 2001: 288.
22
Popilia was a member of a flourishing family in the second century BC, the Popilii Laenates;
cf. Tylawsky 2001: 286–7. One Porcia, a member of the illustrious gens Porcia, was eulogized by
Cicero: Cic. Att. 13.37.3 (SB 346) and 13.48.2 (SB 345), discussed below.

men in the state. Thirdly, the oratorical performance takes place in the Forum,
the public space par excellence, and is delivered from the Rostra, the platform
from which Roman politicians usually spoke and contended for political
power. In all of these respects, the laudationes for women fully correspond
to the eulogies for notable men described in our sources.
A different scenario is suggested by two laudationes which survive in
epigraphic form: the so-called Laudatio Turiae, the most extensive piece of
Roman funeral eulogy preserved (about 121 lines on two columns), which is
addressed by a husband to his deceased wife, and the Laudatio Murdiae, a
speech given for a mother by her son from her first marriage.23 Following their
delivery during the funeral, these laudationes were transcribed on stone,
replacing the epitaphs in prose or in verse more commonly found on the
funerary monument.24 Internal evidence indicates that both of these inscrip-
tions reproduce a spoken oratio:25 the author of the Laudatio Turiae twice
calls his work an oratio (II.22 parcamus orationi; II.67 ultimum huius orationis
erit), while the author of the Laudatio Murdiae refers to his text with the term
laudatio (l. 21), which—as Seneca explains—differs from laus ‘for its function
depends upon speech’ (cuius officium oratione constat).26 Other formal rhet-
orical elements in the texts confirm this interpretation.27
Both the inscriptions can be dated to the Augustan period,28 but the lives of
the dead women eulogized—certainly that of ‘Turia’—overlap with the last
years of the Republic.29 As a result, they are arguably representative of a
continuity in the practice of funeral eulogy between the Republican and the
23
See above n. 9. The Laudatio Turiae has received much scholarly attention. Reference
editions are: Durry 19922; Wistrand 1976; Flach 1991; cf. also Storoni Mazzolani 1982. On the
Laudatio Murdiae, see Lindsay 2004; Pepe 2015: 113–45; Ferro 2011 and 2016.
24
As first noticed by La Regina 1968, the famous epitaphs associated with the tombs of the
Scipios show the content of the laudatio funebris in miniature: they contained information on
the career and virtues of the deceased, and on his position within the family group. Cf. also
Flower 1996: 159–84; Morelli 2000: 11–64 (esp. 16–17). Nevertheless, the relationship between
laudatio funebris and epitaphs still warrants closer scrutiny.
25
Vollmer 1892: 495; Durry 19922: xc; Kierdorf 1980: 34; Horsfall 1983: 89. It is harder to
state if the inscription reproduced the spoken oratio exactly or if the publication on stone
entailed some alteration of the version of the speech delivered orally: see Pepe 2015: 48.
26
Sen. Ep. 102.15.
27
Some traces of the original oral delivery can be found in the uncommon use of capita and
signs of punctuation characterizing the layout of the inscribed text in both the Laudatio Turiae
and the Laudatio Murdiae. This seems to be related to the rhythms and pauses in the pronun-
ciation of the text. See Wistrand 1976: 14–15; Pepe 2015: 47–8, 117–20.
28
The Laudatio Turiae is securely dated to the Augustan period, see Mommsen 1864
(= 1905); Durry 19922: liv–v; Kierdorf 1980: 42; Osgood 2014: 153. The Laudatio Murdiae is
dated to the age of Augustus by Vollmer 1892: 484; Horsfall 1982: 29; Pepe 2015: 121–2. Contra
Rudorff 1869: 231–4, who argued for the Flavian age.
29
The life of the couple in the Laudatio Turiae is strictly intertwined with political events at
the end of the Republic: references are made to the triumvirate between Octavian, Antony, and
Lepidus; to the list of proscriptions; and to the violence and disorder of the Civil War. For a
detailed reconstruction, see Osgood 2014.
286 Cristina Pepe

early Imperial age,30 though it must be remembered that we have no way of
knowing how representative the contents of these inscriptions are of such
eulogies, given our lack of comparative material. The experiences of ‘Turia’
were clearly exceptional, while the inscription of Murdia notes (though no
doubt partly for rhetorical effect) that laudationes for women are usually made
up of stock praises.31
Likewise, in reading these texts, their unsuitability for delivery pro rostris
plainly emerges. Their content differs strikingly from the conventions of
laudationes held in the Forum.32 In the Laudatio Turiae, which is entirely
addressed to the deceased woman, a confessional mode and an intimate tone
are adopted. As M. Durry first suggested, laudationes of this nature should
have been pronounced in a private context such as the gravesite, the pyre, or
the funeral banquet (silicernium),33 and before an intimate audience consist-
ing of the family and friends of the deceased.34
If the Roman women awarded with a laudatio pro contione were, as noted
above, all noble ladies of the most eminent families of Rome and of cities in the
provinces,35 it is likely that the addressees of private funeral eulogies could be
30
Under Augustus the aristocratic laudatio became one of the pivotal elements in the funeral
for the members of the domus Augusta; see Pepe 2015: 45–6. The habit of inscribing laudationes
delivered at the funeral may date back to the Augustan age; cf. Osgood 2014: 136.
31
Laudatio Murdiae (CIL 6.10230), lines 20–5: quibus de causeis, {q}quom omnium bonarum
feminarum simplex similisque esse laudatio soleat, quod naturalia bona propria custodia seruata
uarietates uerborum non desiderent, satisque sit eadem omnes bona fama digna fecisse et quia
adquirere nouas laudes mulieri sit arduom quom minoribus uarietatibus uita iactetur, necessario
communia esse colenda, ne quod amissum ex iustis praecepteis cetera turpet (‘For these reasons,
because the laudatio of all good women is usually simple and similar, because their innate
qualities, preserved under their own care, needs no variation of words, and it is sufficient that
they have all done the same good deeds, worthy of a good reputation, and because it is hard to
find new praises for a woman, as her life is disturbed by more trifling vicissitudes, one must
honour her common virtues out of necessity, so that something omitted from the customary
precepts do not stain the rest’). Turia would seem to be the exception that proves the rule.
32
See below p. 292.
33
On the ritual practices of burial, cremation, and silicernium, see Toynbee 1971.
34
Durry 1942: 106 defines this laudatio ‘entre intimes’ (Durry 19922: lxxvi–ix). Most scholars
have followed Durry: among others, Kierdorf 1980: 35; Horsfall 1983: 89; Ramage 1994: 369;
Flower 1996: 131–2; and Arce 2000: 8. Whether the laudatio funebris originated as a private
speech, which was transferred to the public context of the Forum by an incumbent magistrate,
must remain a matter of speculation. This theory is advocated by Vollmer 1892: 452–3; Durry
19922: 18; and Kierdorf 1980: 95–6. For an alternative argument, first advanced by Mommsen,
that originally only magistrates ever received such funerals, see Barbieri 1978: 472.
35
We have the same evidence for the Imperial age. In most cases laudationes celebrate the
memory of grandes dames of the imperial family and are delivered by the emperor himself:
Octavia the Younger was eulogized by Augustus (Cass. Dio 54.35.4), Livia Drusilla by Caligula
(Suet. Cal. 10.1), Poppaea Sabina by Nero (Tac. Ann. 16.6.2), Matidia the Elder by Hadrian (CIL
14.3579). Philostr. VA 4.45 alludes to a public funeral and a laudatio for a young woman,
daughter of a consul. The inscriptions from Baetica and Mauretania Tingitana mentioned
above attest laudationes in honour of women belonging to the provincial elite: see Bielman
and Frei-Stolba 1998 and Hemelrijk 2015: esp. 320–9.

women of less elevated status,36 who had no right either to the full pompa
funebris or to the public celebration at the Rostra, which were the defining
features of the aristocratic funus.37 As recent studies have argued, the couple in
the Laudatio Turiae was probably of equestrian background,38 as were the
mother and the son of the Laudatio Murdiae.39 The laudatio that the wealthy
and cultivated Atticus, friend of Cicero, delivered for his mother Caecilia in
42 BC was also in the context of an equestrian funeral.40 This speech, a short
extract of which is recorded by Cornelius Nepos in his Life of Atticus, can be
counted among the examples of private eulogies.41
It is noteworthy that these extant instances of laudationes ‘entre intimes’ are
all addressed to women. Such evidence, however, may not necessarily reflect a
concern over gender; it is more likely to be due to mere chance in the
preservation and transmission of these texts. It may, therefore, be possible to
suggest that the same distinction based on social status applied to eulogies
delivered on behalf of men.42
C O N T E N T AN D A I M OF THE S P E E C H
From the discussion in the previous section, we can identify two distinctive
features of the Roman laudatio funebris as a type of oratory: it was performed
in different venues, and before different audiences. These aspects, which are
related to the social standing of the speaker and of the deceased, strongly
affected the content and the aim of the speech.
36
Flower 1996: 131; Hemelrijk 2004: 187.
37
Bodel 1999: 263 argues that there were essential similarities between the aristocratic
pageant, as described in literary sources, and the more modest processions, as represented by
the well-known funerary relief from Amiternum. The latter could not, however, take place in the
civic area of the Forum and lacked the parade displaying the masks of the ancestors which were
exclusively available to the aristocracy: see Flower 1996: 32.
38
Among others, Horsfall 1983: 91–2; Flach 1991: 1–8; Osgood 2014: 123–4. The identifica-
tion of the speaker and his deceased wife, never named within the text, as the senator Quintus
Lucretius Vespillo (cos. 19 BC) and Turia, first proposed by Mommsen 1864: 466 and 477–8, has
been questioned following the discovery of a new fragment (fragmentum Portuense) of the
inscription in 1898.
39
Horsfall 1982: 29 and Keegan 2014: 52, the former qualifying Murdia’s commemorator as
an ‘equestrian of modest means and no strong political allegiance’, the latter as an equestrian
who belonged to the highest property class.
40
Nep. Att. 17.1–2.
41
See below. That Cornelius Nepos is citing Atticus’ laudatio for his mother has been
assumed by Vollmer 1892: 483, followed by Flower 1996: 131. Nepos was a friend of Atticus:
as such it is very likely that he would have taken part in the funeral of Atticus’ mother and heard
the eulogy Atticus delivered (audierim).
42
A glimpse into the Graeco-Roman practice of delivering eulogies, both for men and for
women, at the tomb is provided by the Syrian satirist Lucian (Luct. 23), who ridicules it.
288 Cristina Pepe

In his account of the laudatio which Caesar delivered for his aunt Julia,
Suetonius quotes a fairly long passage of the speech:
amitae meae Iuliae maternum genus ab regibus ortum, paternum cum diis
inmortalibus coniunctum est. nam ab Anco Marcio sunt Marcii Reges, quo
nomine fuit mater; a Venere Iulii, cuius gentis familia est nostra. est ergo in
genere et sanctitas regum, qui plurimum inter homines pollent, et caerimonia
deorum, quorum ipsi in potestate sunt reges.43 ORF4 121 F29 (= Suet. Iul. 6.1)
This fragment shows Caesar giving a description of the lineage of the dead
woman, focusing on the age and venerable status of her paternal and maternal
families. These lines bring to mind the account of Polybius: in addition to the
praise of the deceased, the orator recounted the successes and exploits of their
ancestors, whose imagines, worn by men who resembled them and who
dressed according to their rank, had paraded through the city with the
pompa funebris and had taken their places on ivory chairs near the Rostra.44
By including a section celebrating the ancestors’ deeds and accomplishments,
the laudatio offered a sort of commentary on the agmen imaginum that had
preceded it.45 Caesar’s words quoted by Suetonius demonstrate that a section
of the eulogy for a dead woman—exactly as in a speech for a man—was
devoted to the praise of her ancestors.46 The content of the quotation also
fits neatly with the report made by Polybius. The Greek historian says that the
laudator recalled the fame of the deceased’s maiores ‘starting from the oldest’
(ἀπὸ τοῦ προγενεστάτου), the founder of the gens:47 this is exactly what Caesar
does when he declares that Julia’s maternal line (Marcii Reges) comes from
Ancus Marcius, and her paternal line (Iulii) from Venus. The end of the first
sentence is also remarkable: Caesar concludes by saying that this divine
pedigree belongs to his own family (cuius gentis familia nostra). With the
adjective nostra he shifts the attention to himself. As Ramage remarks, ‘Caesar
43
‘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 (her mother’s family name) go back to
Ancus Marcius, and the Julii, the family of which ours is a branch, to Venus. Our family 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.’ (Trans. Rolfe 19512,
slightly modified).
44
Polyb. 6.53–4. On imagines maiorum, see Flower 1996; Badel 2005; Montanari 2009;
Bettini 2015.
45
On the combination of verbal and visual dimensions in the Roman funeral, see Moretti
2015. Johanson 2008: 101–73 provides a helpful reconstruction of the spatial configuration of the
event—the number of ancestors, the placement of the deceased, and the location of the orator in
the Forum. Beck in this volume stresses how Roman funeral oratory was a multisensory
experience comprising ‘a complex ensemble of speech, sight, and other senses, which constituted
a thick emotional script between the speaker and the audience’.
46
The presence of imagines maiorum at the funerals of Roman matrons is clearly attested in
Cic. De or. 2.225–6.
47
Polyb. 6.54.1.

is clearly using the laudatio funebris fairly early in his career to broadcast his
connection with the gods, an idea that was very important to his personal
ideology as he rose to power and established himself as the ruler.’48
Caesar’s strategy of turning the eulogy of his aunt into an opportunity for
‘self-advertisement’ also emerges from Plutarch’s Life of Caesar:
. . . τῆς Μαρίου γυναικὸς Ἰουλίας ἀποθανούσης, ἀδελφιδοῦς ὢν αὐτῆς, ἐγκώμιόν τε
λαμπρὸν ἐν ἀγορᾷ διῆλθε, καὶ περὶ τὴν ἐκφορὰν ἐτόλμησεν εἰκόνας Μαρίου
προθέσθαι, τότε πρῶτον ὀφθείσας μετὰ τὴν ἐπὶ Σύλλα πολιτείαν, πολεμίων τῶν
ἀνδρῶν κριθέντων.49 ORF4 121 F28 (= Plut. Caes. 5.1–2)
By reintroducing the imago of C. Marius into Julia’s funeral parade, Caesar
restored Marius’ right to be publicly remembered after the damnatio memor-
iae ordered for him by L. Sulla.50 It can be inferred from Plutarch’s passage
that the eulogy—which, as discussed above, was a verbal parallel for the
physical parade of images—included a mention of Marius.51 The motivation
for Caesar to perform these daring acts at Julia’s funus was evidently political:
speaking as a quaestor at the start of his senatorial career, he aimed to present
himself as heir to Marius’ political inheritance.52
Plutarch continues to underline the success of Caesar’s strategy: though
some of those present objected to his displaying of the images, the general
crowd, by contrast, shouted down the dissenters and greeted him with applause.53
Similarly, Plutarch underlines the approval that Caesar won when he deliv-
ered the laudatio for his wife Cornelia: the populace become fond of him as a
gentle person and one full of good feeling (τοὺς πολλοὺς ὡς ἥμερον ἄνδρα καὶ
περίμεστον ἤθους ἀγαπᾶν).54
As for his adoptive father, the eulogy for his grandmother was pivotal in
rallying public sympathy for the young Octavian.55 The effectiveness of
Octavian’s performance is stressed by Suetonius, Quintilian, and Nicolaus.
Nicolaus, in particular, describes the wonder—θαῦμα, a term corresponding to
the participle θαυμάσας employed by Plutarch—provoked by the oration in
48
Ramage 2006: 47; see also Lincoln 1993; Tylawsky 2001: 287; Sumi 2005: 45.
49
‘ . . . when Julia, the wife of Marius, died, he pronounced, as her nephew, a splendid
encomium upon her in the Forum, and in her funeral procession he ventured to display images
of Marius, which were then seen for the first time since the administration of Sulla, because
Marius and his friends had been pronounced public enemies.’ (Trans. Perrin 1919, slightly
modified).
50
The ban on parading the imago of the damnatus during the funeral of a family member was
among the restrictions related to the damnatio memoriae: see Flower 1996: 24–5.
51
Blasi 2012: 24–5.
52
Flower 2006: 105; Sumi 2005: 44; Ramage 2006: 47; Blasi 2012: 24.
53
Plut. Caes. 5.3 (= ORF4 121 F28).
54
Plut. Caes. 5.4 (= ORF4 121 F31).
55
The choice of Octavian as laudator was perhaps influenced by Caesar who saw the funeral
of Julia as a good occasion to bring him before the Roman populace for the first time.
Cf. Malcovati 19695 F30–31 and Blasi 2012: 68, 138.
290 Cristina Pepe

the Roman audience and the subsequent great acclamation (θόρυβος) Octavian
received.56
In our literary sources for Republican laudationes on behalf of noble ladies,
beyond the importance given to the familial connections of the deceased, we
find scant information about the subject matter of the speech. What is most
striking is the lack of any reference to the eulogistic portrait of the deceased
which, according to the rules of the epideictic genre, should form the essential
part of the speech.57 The epigraphic evidence of the private laudationes
for Turia and Murdia and the public laudatio of Emperor Hadrian for his
mother-in-law Matidia the Elder (CIL 14.3579) show that the focus of this
portrait was on moral virtues and domestica bona. In contrast with men who
were praised for the civic or religious offices and military achievements which
constituted their cursus honorum and for the personal qualities which enabled
them to excel in war and politics—physical strength, fortitude, bravery, and
self-control—,58 women were celebrated for their chastity, obedience to their
husbands, love for their children, modesty, wool work, and careful preserva-
tion of the family’s patrimonium.59 It cannot be simply accidental that in the
reports of ancient writers the laudanda is relegated to the background, the
attention being only or mainly focused on the orator and the effect of his
speech on the audience: in this way, they suggest that female eulogies were not
merely a speech in memoriam, delivered by a bereft relative, but first and
foremost a medium of political communication for the men delivering them.
In fact, they could celebrate the prestige of their own family, enrol themselves
in a successful and promising political tradition, and earn the favour of the
Roman populace, thereby legitimizing their current position or preparing for
their future leadership.60 This propagandistic flavour appears to be even
more prominent in female laudationes than in speeches on behalf of men,61
56
Nic. Dam. 4. Cf. Plut. Caes. 5.3.
57
Rhet. Her. 3.10 (cf. 2.1–15); Cic. De or. 2.45–6 and 2.341–2.; Part. or. 74–5; Quint. Inst.
3.7.12–13. Cf. Polyb. 6.53.2–3. On the epideictic genre in ancient rhetoric Pernot 1993 is key; see
also Pepe 2013.
58
The most significant evidence is found in the fragment of Q. Caecilius Metellus’ laudatio
for his father Lucius (221 BC) quoted by Pliny (Plin. HN 7.139–40 = ORF4 6 F2). See Kierdorf
1980: 10–21; Flower 1996: 136–42; Cavarzere 2000: 36–7; Beck 2005a: 325–6.
59
I have already discussed the female portrait in laudationes with its standard and recurrent
features in Pepe 2015: 87–99.
60
Even if the passage of Cicero (De or. 2.44) lacks any reference to the aim of the speech, it
can be assumed that the laudatio of Popilia was also employed by Catulus for political self-help
and promotion: see Tylawsky 2001: 286–7.
61
The connection between laudationes funebres and public affairs is already stated by ancient
theorists (Cic. De or. 2.341, Quint. Inst. 3.7.1), who also recognized how funeral eulogies were
used as tools of propaganda by aristocratic families (Cic. Brut. 62 and Livy 8.40–5, both
criticizing falsifications that were often added to them). On this basis, many modern scholars
have emphasized the political function that laudationes could assume within the wider field of
aristocratic competition in the Republican age. At the same time, they have pointed out the value
of the pompa funebris and the oration as a unit: through the speeches, recording the glorious acta

where the people could marvel while listening to the outstanding civic and
military successes of their deceased aristocratic leader.62
The acknowledgement of the power of female eulogies as vehicles of
propaganda also sheds light on Cicero’s decision to compose a laudatio
Porciae, to which he alludes in two letters to Atticus, both dated to 45 BC.
Cicero asks his friend to send the corrected copy of speech he has just provided
on to Brutus and Domitius Ahenobarbus:
laudationem Porciae tibi misi correctam. eo properaui ut, si forte aut Domitio
filio aut Bruto mitteretur, haec mitteretur. id, si tibi erit commodum, magno
opere cures uelim, et uelim M. Varronis et Olli mittas laudationem, Olli utique.
nam illam legi, uolo tamen regustare. quaedam enim uix [mihi] credo legisse
me.63 Cic. Att. 13.48.2 (SB 345)
Cicero speaks simply of laudatio, but from the context we can assume that a
funeral speech is meant. Nevertheless, it does not seem to be a script intended
to be pronounced at the funus, but one composed a posteriori to circulate only
in written form.64 Cicero also refers to other laudationes Porciae written by
M. Varro and an otherwise unknown Ollius:65 the fact that more than one
laudatio was disseminated suggests that oral delivery was optional. With the
laudatio for Porcia, Cicero returned to commemorate a member of the gens
Porcia one year after the composition of his now-lost Cato.66 We may suppose
of illustrious men of the past, the ‘national history’ of the city was also celebrated, and the
audience, as already suggested by Polybius’ account, was challenged to act in accordance with a
series of values, beliefs, and shared code of right conduct. See, in addition to the references in n. 2,
Beck 2005a: 14–21; Sumi 2005: 41–7, 100–13, 253–62; Covino 2011.
62
The greatness of the laudandus should be even more evident in the case of laudationes
delivered during a state funeral (funus publicum) accorded by the Senate to major figures of
Roman generals and statesmen and delivered by a magistrate (Quint. Inst. 3.7.1). On the funus
publicum, see Vollmer 1893; Wesch-Klein 1993; Blasi 2012.
63
‘I am sending you Porcia’s corrected eulogy. I have made haste so that, if it should be sent to
her son Domitius or to Brutus, it should be sent in this version. If it isn’t troublesome I should be
glad if you would pay special attention to this, and I should be glad too if you would send me
M. Varro’s and Ollius’ eulogies, Ollius’ anyhow. I read Varro’s but I should like to taste it again—
there are some parts which I think I hardly read’. (Trans. Shackleton Bailey 1965–70: 5.245,
slightly modified). Cf. Att. 13.37.3 (SB 346). The identity of the woman named Porcia is disputed,
but it seems preferable to identify her with Porcia the sister of Cato and aunt of Brutus, rather
than with Porcia the daughter of Cato and wife of Brutus; see Pepe 2015: 40.
64
A similar case was the eulogy of M. Junius Brutus for his father Appius Claudius Pulcher in
48 BC (ORF4158 F23 = Diom. GLK 1.367). The speech was not delivered since Appius died in
Euboea and no funeral was held for him in Rome. In the opinion of Flower 1996: 146 the habit of
composing eulogies to circulate only in written form could be traced back to the third century BC.
Vollmer 1892: 469 and Durry 19922: xxiv–v argue for a more recent origin (second half of the
first century).
65
Cic. Acad. 1.8 refers to laudationes written by Varro; see Morgan 1974.
66
The nature of Cicero’s Cato, of which only fragments survive, is disputed: see the discussion
in Ramage 1989. Literary sources attest a number of laudationes celebrating Cato, written by
Brutus (Cic. Att. 12.21.1 (SB 260); see Balbo 2013: 321–2), M. Fabius Gallus (Cic. Fam. 7.24.2 (SB
260); 7.25.1 (SB 261)), and Munatius Plancus (Plut. Cat. Min. 37.1).
292 Cristina Pepe

that the speech also worked as a kind of political pamphlet: by composing and
publishing it, Cicero expressed his loyalty to the Republican cause through a
tribute to a family constantly engaged in defence of that ideal.67
A closer look at the Laudatio Turiae and Laudatio Murdiae leaves us with a
different impression. In the Laudatio Turiae, the beginning of the speech
records the murder of the laudata’s parents and the unsuccessful attempt of
some ill-intentioned persons belonging to the same gens to claim tutela over
her (I.3–26). No family member is mentioned by name, however, and there is
not even a hint of pride expressed in the woman’s ancestors or relatives.68
Furthermore, the speaker is silent about his own offices, career, and political
ambitions.69 He is committed to presenting his wife as exceptional both in her
domestic ways and in her undertakings outside the home.70 The narrative
mainly concerns the private life of the couple: their mutual love and fidelity,
their long and harmonious marriage, and even their sad childlessness. The
final section is deeply moving: the husband, being overwhelmed with emotion,
expresses grief and extreme longing for his beloved wife (II.51–69). Thus, the
praise gives way to lament.71 The Laudatio Murdiae displays the same intim-
ate framework. From the thirty-line fragment that has survived, it looks as
though the laudator is interested neither in promoting the prestige of his
family (and ancestors) nor in political affairs. The first part (lines 3–14) deals
with personal issues of inheritance, the speaker being primarily concerned
with proving the equal division of patrimonium that his mother had made
between him and his brothers.72 In the second part, the speaker praises
Murdia as a wife and a mother by cataloguing the standard female virtues
(lines 14–17, 27–30).
A picture of family life, with an emphasis on feelings of devotion and
affection, can be glimpsed in the fragment of Atticus’ laudatio funebris for
his mother:
67
Beaujeu 1983: 328.
68
See Horsfall 1983: 91: ‘It is unimaginable that all references to such matters occurred in the
missing parts of col. 1 and left not even the faintest trace of their presence elsewhere.’
69
If the laudator had been consul in 19 BC, as implied by his identification with Lucretius Vespillo,
such a silence would be extraordinary.
70
The husband pays much attention to Turia’s public activities, and this contrasts with the
domestic virtues and the retiring life usually praised in eulogies for Roman women. Moreover, in
describing her public deeds, he uses words of action and virtue normally employed for men
(Hemelrijk 2004: 185). Cf. above p. 286 and n. 31. In this respect, it is tempting to suppose that
laudationes could reflect, at least in part, the increasing prominence of Roman women in the last
years of the Republic and the more relevant public and civic role they gained under the Empire;
see Pepe 2015: 96–9.
71
On the place of lament within laudationes, see Pepe 2015: 100–1. On lamentatio as a
distinctive practice in funerary ritual, generally performed by women, see Gladhill in this
volume. On the gendered divisions of tasks in Roman funerals, cf. Šterbenc Erker 2011.
72
See Lindsay 2004: 94–7.

cum hoc ipsum uere gloriantem audierim in funere matris suae . . . se numquam
cum matre in gratiam redisse, numquam cum sorore fuisse in simultate, quam
prope aequalem habebat.73 Nep. Att. 17.1–2
It is important to note at this point that a focus both on the deceased woman
and on the private life of the family does not imply the disappearance of the
speaker from the narrative of these texts. The perspective of the laudator—
the husband, son, or other relative of the laudanda—likewise pervades the
speech and the account of events.74 By presenting his wife as an exceptional
woman, superior to other women of her day, the husband of the Laudatio
Turiae not only heaped honour on his wife, but could also leave a good
impression of himself.75 For the son in the Laudatio Murdiae, the lengthy
explication of the course of his mother’s life could have as its object the
promotion of his own position among her heirs.76 Nevertheless, the rhet-
orical construction of the speech was determined above all by the emotional
state uniting the speaker and his audience: they all share appreciation and
grief for the departed, and they are all gathered at the tomb to mourn and to
bid her a final farewell.77
THE S TYLE OF FEMALE LAVDATIONES FVNEBRES
In the De oratore, through the character of Marcus Antonius, Cicero claims

that the funebris contio practised in the Forum is a poor opportunity for an
exhibition of oratorical flourish (ad orationis laudem minime accommodata
est).78 Cicero’s position is echoed by Quintilian who specifies that funeral
orations should be sad and subdued (tristes atque summissae), in contrast to
other epideictic forms, in which the delivery (actio) is to be happy, splendid,
and lofty (laeta et magnifica et sublimis).79 Relying on such declarations by
Cicero and Quintilian, the two major theorists of rhetoric in Rome, M. Durry
has described the laudatio funebris as an uninspiring type of speech which
followed archaic rhetorical conventions and changed little over time, even
labelling it as anti-Kunstprosa.80 There are, however, a number of clues in the
73
‘I heard him really boasting of just this at his mother’s funeral . . . that he was never
reconciled with his mother nor quarrelled with his sister, who was roughly his contemporary.’
(Trans. Horsfall 1989).
74
See esp. Keegan 2014: 47–53. According to Keegan, the Laudatio Murdiae is a represen-
tative illustration of ancient masculinist discursive strategies.
75 76 77
Hemelrijk 2004: 196. Tylawsky 2001: 289. Ramage 1994: 369.
78 79
Cic. De or. 2.341, cf. 2.43–6. Quint. Inst. 11.3.153.
80
Durry 1942; same view in Durry 19922: xxxv and xliii.
294 Cristina Pepe

surviving fragments of laudationes which challenge this conclusion.81 In what
follows, I will focus solely on female eulogies.
When Plutarch introduces the oration delivered by Caesar for Julia, he
qualifies it as ἐγκώμιόν τε λαμπρόν (‘brilliant eulogy’), a definition that
makes clear reference to the aesthetic value of the speech.82 This judgement
fits well with the high degree of refinement in the fragment of this speech
preserved by Suetonius: the description of the maternal and paternal lineage of
the woman is structured with a sequence of main and subordinate clauses
consisting of parallel cola, in which the words are lofty (sanctitas, pollent,
caerimonia) and carefully arranged; these lines also provide a valuable example
of rhythmic prose.83
The laudatio for Julia cannot be regarded as an exceptional case. Other brief
mentions of laudationes funebres for women allude either openly or subtly to
the effectiveness of the speech and its stylistic quality. Thus, the θαῦμα in
Octavian’s laudatio for his grandmother seems not solely to be a consequence
of the speaker’s youth: to gain the acclamation (θόρυβος) of the people, the
future princeps must have delivered a speech full of rhetorical flourish. Two
passages from Cicero’s works also deserve mention. In the De oratore, the
same Antonius who denies embellishment for Roman laudationes funebres
also speaks of the pleasure derived both by him and by a large audience from
Catulus’ eulogy of his mother Popilia (et me et omnes qui adfuerunt delectos
esse uehementer, cum a te est Popilia mater uestra laudata).84 In the letter to
Atticus mentioned above, Cicero, asking his friend to send him a copy of the
laudatio written by Varro in honour of Porcia, declares that he would like ‘to
taste it again’ (regustare).85 These statements allow us to conclude that lauda-
tiones for women—as well as those for men—which were delivered at the
Rostra in the Forum by leading men practised in public oratory such as
81
Kierdorf 1980 first reversed Durry’s opinion, arguing that laudatio funebris experienced an
evolution from the native, crude, and simple form to a more sophisticated genre, drawing on the
Greek rhetorical theory of encomium.
82
The same adjective λαμπρός is employed by Cassius Dio for the eulogy of Antony for
Caesar (Cass. Dio 44.35.4: λόγον . . . περικαλλῆ καὶ λαμπρόν). Cf. Pepe 2011: 142.
83
For a detailed stylistic analysis of the fragment, see Cavarzere 2000: 177–8.
84
Cic. De or. 2.44 (cf. above). In De or. 2.341, Antonius is attempting to explain why the
epideictic genre does not require theorization equivalent to that of the deliberative and judicial,
and to emphasize the distinction between the dignified Roman funeral oration and the mass of
panegyric produced by Greeks purely for entertainment. Similarly, in the Brutus, Cicero denies
that pleasure could result from reading laudationes funebres (Brut. 61), but this criticism occurs
in a context where he is generally dismissive of early Latin rhetoric and refers to the oldest
examples as representing the ‘pre-history’ of the genre (Cavarzere 2000: 35). Quintilian, for his
part, warns that extremely exuberant oratory is unsuitable for sorrowful events such as funerals.
But, as the use of technical term actio suggests, he is concerned with the gestures, tones, and
movements of the orator, which are to be submissive and resigned, as required by the situation.
This does not mean that the orator should neglect the ornatus of the speech.
85
Cic. Att. 13.48.2 (SB 345).

Catulus, Caesar, Octavian, or those which circulated in written versions in the
form of political booklets, as in the case of Cicero’s laudatio Porciae, while not
grandiloquent, were deeply moving and sophisticated speeches in keeping
with contemporary trends in oratory.86
The same description, however, cannot be applied to the two funeral
eulogies inscribed on stone, the Laudatio Turiae and Laudatio Murdiae.
Although these two texts reflect quite closely the rules and conventions for
epideictic oratory laid out in ancient handbooks,87 they could be hardly cited
as illustrations of successful rhetoric.88 In the Laudatio Turiae, with the excep-
tion of some passages where the speaker comes close to producing effective
language by inserting parallel elements, rhetorical questions, or other figures
such as chiasmus, hyperboles, and comparisons, the tone tends to be conver-
sational and the shortcomings are numerous: trite vocabulary, repetitions,
uninspired word order, frequent asyndeton.89 As far as the Laudatio Murdiae
is concerned, scholars have recognized the presence of some periodic elabor-
ation and heaping of parallel cola in the central section of the speech (lines
14–19), but for the most part the text shows a straightforward style with
little or no embellishment.90 However, this should not surprise us if we bear
in mind, once again, the speakers who delivered these speeches, the context in
which they were given, and the audience before which they were performed:
the literary quality of the eulogy unavoidably reflects the speaker’s social and
educational level. In both cases, they are relatively modest individuals who
have most likely studied rhetoric but are certainly not experienced orators.91
Moreover, the audience would consist mainly of family and friends who were
expecting a sincere expression of praise and grief for the deceased woman, and
who were not interested in judging the effectiveness or the magniloquence of
the speaker’s performance.92
CONCLUSIONS
In a remarkable reversal of the conventional belief that a woman’s name

should sound only within the walls of the domus, the laudatio funebris for
women offers a fascinating view into Roman culture and mentality: only in
86
Evidence concerning male laudationes is discussed in Pepe 2015: 79–82.
87
See Ramage 1994.
88
Durry 19922: xxxviii, lxxxvii; Ramage 1994: 364; Horsfall 1983: 90.
89
Horsfall 1983: 90; see the detailed analysis of Ramage 1994: 364–9.
90
Ramage 1994: 364–9.
91
Horsfall 1982: 29 and 1983: 91; Ramage 1994: 364–5. For the author of the Laudatio
Murdiae, Keegan 2014: 51 speaks of ‘considerable rhetorical education’.
92
Ramage 1994: 369–70.
296 Cristina Pepe

death did Roman matrons gain the right to public attention and celebration.
These laudationes can also open some significant and unusual perspectives on
Roman oratory. First, they show how a speaker managed the task of eulogizing
a woman in a society where the rules of rhetoric were laid out by men and
intended for the encomium of men. Even if not specified in rhetorical hand-
books, eulogies for women should follow a specific ‘grammar of praise’, a list
of commonplaces—referring primarily to moral virtues—to be used for draw-
ing an idealized portrait of a proba femina.93 Secondly, the analysis of the
fragments and testimonia for these speeches raises other issues which go
beyond the boundaries of gender differences. The content suitable for the
speech, the method used by the eulogist in treating this subject matter, and
the aim pursued in delivering the oration do not depend only on the gender of
the person commemorated but on other elements, too: the setting of the speech
and the type of audience before which it is delivered. From this perspective,
the remains of female laudationes known thanks to the indirect tradition can
be viewed alongside the small corpus of laudationes for men which were
delivered from the Rostra by leading political figures and brilliant speakers
at the climax of the aristocratic funeral. The Laudatio Turiae and Laudatio
Murdiae, on the other hand, are rare and welcome instances of a ‘non-official’
epideictic oratory performed far from the public space of the Forum by
speakers of lower social status who had studied rhetoric but were not neces-
sarily accustomed orators. Thus, in the footsteps of Ramage,94 we can con-
clude that these two female eulogies not only enrich our knowledge of Roman
laudatio funebris, but, more generally, provide a glimpse into the widespread
presence and application of epideictic rhetoric in Roman society.
93
For an overview of extant Greek and Roman eulogies for women, see Pepe 2017: 27–30.
94
Ramage 1994: 369–70.
17
Women from the Rostra

Fulvia and the Pro Milone
Bill Gladhill
‘What do women have to do with the public assembly? If ancestral custom

should be preserved, nothing.’1 So Valerius Maximus begins his description of
the events of 100 BC; Lucius Equitius and his faction attempted to take up the
mantle of the Gracchan reforms by aligning themselves with Tiberius Gracchus’
sister, Sempronia, whom the tribune of the plebs, Saturninus, demanded
should kiss Equitius (the rumoured son of Tiberius) like she would her own
brother, thereby authorizing his Gracchan ancestry.2 In the face of the greatest
confusion and the clamour of the ignorant mob, Sempronia showed her noble
pedigree (nihil a tuorum amplitudine degenerasti) by repelling this monster
(tenebris protractum portentum). Under normal conditions (patrius mos ser-
uetur), women did not speak from the Rostra. Valerius suggests, however, that
this platform may be opened to women when domestic peace (domestica
quies) is upset by civil strife (seditiones), when the authority of age-old custom
(prisca consuetudo) is shattered, and when violence has more force than
modesty.3 Under these conditions social and political space is realigned and
1
Val. Max. 3.8.6: quid feminae cum contione? si patrius mos seruetur, nihil.
2
See Milnor 2009 on this passage.
3
On women and gender in the Roman Forum, see Boatwright 2011. See also Gilleland 1980;
Marshall 1989, 1990a, and 1990b; Hillard 1992. Valerius’ anecdote demonstrates that, when
recording the rare occasions on which women did participate in public speech, Roman authors
spoke about them in terms of their relationships to their male relatives rather than focusing on
the content and delivery of their words. See Farrell 2001: 52–83 and also Boatwright 2011:
113–14. Sempronia is called the sister of the Gracchi and wife of Scipio Aemilianus. She is
brought to the Rostra by Saturninus and asked to kiss Tiberius Gracchus’ (supposed) son
Equitius. Even the tortured contortions of her face (toruus uultus) are filtered through the
principum ciuitatis frons. Val. Max. 8.3 discusses briefly the public speeches of Maesia, Afrania,
and Hortensia. See also Lunsford 1995 for a study of female rhetoric from Greece to Kristeva.
Roman female oratory is entirely absent from the volume (Aspasia and Diotima are included).
298 Bill Gladhill

the voices of women—usually contained in domestic and ritual spheres—enter
the public domain of the Forum. This paper examines another moment in
Roman history in which civil, political, and social crisis opened the Rostra to
women—in this case, to Fulvia, the widow of P. Clodius Pulcher, whose
husband had been killed by Milo’s gang on the Appian Way and his body
displayed in his home on the Palatine (18 January 52 BC), events that formed
the basis of Cicero’s Pro Milone (7 or 8 April 52 BC).4 This was a period of civic
unrest, factional violence, and chaotic contiones—when domestica quies was
rocked by seditiones and violence. These hundred days were bookended by
Fulvia’s effusa lamentatio on the night of Clodius’ murder, and the testimo-
nium that Fulvia and Sempronia delivered in the Forum on the day before
Cicero’s unsuccessful defence of Milo. While Sempronia quashes a rebellion
by her rejection of Equitius’ kiss, Fulvia performs a political lamentation
through which every other oratorical act is filtered, including the Pro Milone
itself. The combined effect of Fulvia’s initial lament and the women’s testi-
monium ought to be given a privileged position not only in understanding
how one interprets the historical events after Clodius’ murder, but also how
one assesses the oratorical context of the Pro Milone.
I take the starting point for this investigation from Morstein-Marx’s dis-
cussion of discourse. Morstein-Marx observes that discourse is shaped
through interrelated chains of communication and political rituals in specific
places and times, which allow meaningful civic interaction between orators
and their audiences.5 However, this highlights only the auditory aspects of
discourse. Rather, discourse is enmeshed in a dynamic, polyphonic, and
multisensory environment that shapes both what the orators say and what
the audience hears.6 In De domo sua 100–1, for example, Cicero continually
and emphatically utilizes the persuasive power of vision to evoke the presence
of his demolished house on the Palatine.7 In the (second) prologue to the
Hecyra, Terence, who is called an orator in the first word of the comedy, states
explicitly that the premiere of his play competed to its detriment with boxers,
rope-walkers, gladiators, and the clamour of the audience. It seems that
Cicero’s performance of the Pro Milone was similarly overwhelmed by the
audience.8 The shouts and sounds of the factional crowd, the idle chatter of the
4
On the precise dating of the events leading up to the Pro Milone, see Ruebel 1979. On the
Pro Milone more generally, see Settle 1963; Lintott 1974; Clark and Ruebel 1985; Dyck 1998;
Fotheringham 2006; Melchior 2008. Morstein-Marx 2004 begins his book with a thoughtful
retelling of the events leading up to the Pro Milone based largely on Asconius.
5
Morstein-Marx 2004: 15.
6
See Gotoff 1993 for Cicero’s oratorical strategies in responding to his discourse environment.
7
Roller 2010: 157–60.
8
Any analysis on the Pro Milone must confront the problem of its original performance and
the published version: see, for example, Settle 1963 and Melchior 2008. I follow Morstein-Marx
2004: 26–7’s general statement that ‘there is no good evidence that the published versions distort
the content or form of the original.’
Women from the Rostra: Fulvia and the Pro Milone 299
spectators, the smells of the taverns and temples, and the shoulders and heads
blocking sightlines—all of these factors (and more) shaped the immediate
discourse environment of Cicero’s speech.9 Memories of prior discourse
environments also become layered to construct a total performance context
in which the present act of one discourse can be framed and understood
through past acts. The numerous contiones, the speeches in the Senate and
those made by Milo’s prosecutors, and most significantly, I argue, the laments
and testimonium of Fulvia, cast a shadow over every word of the Pro Milone
and influence the effect the speech made on its audiences.
Our evidence for Fulvia’s speech comes from Asconius’ commentary on the
Pro Milone. Asconius may have encountered Fulvia’s testimony in the acta,
maybe even a near verbatim record of her speech.10 Asconius specifies that he
read the acta of this entire period in a passage wherein he also quotes a
fragment of Titus Munatius’ contio:11
But I, in order that I might more eagerly satisfy your era, I even followed the acta
of that entire time (acta etiam totius illius temporis persecutus sum); in them
I noticed that on the day before the Kalends of March a senatus consultum was
made, which stated that the death of Publius Clodius and the burning of the Curia
and the attack on the house of Marcus Lepidus were done against the public good.
Nothing more was related in the acta for that day; on the following day, that is the
Kalends of March, Titus Munatius in an assembly had set out before the people
what had been done on the day before in the Senate; in this assembly he said these
things verbatim (in qua contione haec dixit ad uerbum): ‘when Hortensius
had said that the Quaestor performed an investigation outside the proper pro-
cedure…’ Asc. Mil. 44C
It is impossible to know if the acta quoted Fulvia’s words, offered a loose
summation, or merely recorded their occurrence. What the acta must have
included, based on Asconius’ commentary, was the audience’s reaction to
Fulvia. As I shall suggest when we return to this below, her testimony, thanks
to its recollection of her initial lament over Clodius’ body, may actually have
been the most persuasive speech of Milo’s trial.
Asconius’ account of the night following Clodius’ murder illustrates how
Fulvia’s actions on this occasion began to influence the discourse environment
of the Pro Milone.12 In my discussion of Asconius’ narrative, I will focus on the
9
See Beck in the present volume and Lantham 2015 for the perceptual and sensory impact
on Roman consciousness during the pompa circensis. Also Habinek 2016 significantly shapes
future studies of the sensory in Roman culture and literature in his discussion of cremation.
10
On Asconius, see Marshall 1985; Lewis 2006. On acta, see Sumner 1965; Baldwin 1979;
Marshall 1987; White 1997; Morstein-Marx 2004: 115.
11
See Morstein-Marx 2004: 115–17 on Munatius’ speech.
12
I am not suggesting that Fulvia alone constructed this environment. There were many
actors and agents whose decisions impacted the performance context of the Pro Milone, but
Fulvia’s role is the keystone to the entire historical and social structure.
300 Bill Gladhill

elements that offer an impression of Fulvia’s speech and its effects, beginning
with the actions of the crowd, and the central theme of inuidia:
Clodius’ corpse was carried in before the first hour of night, the greatest crowd of
the dreg plebeians and slaves with great grief stood around the body which had
been placed in the atrium of the house (infimaeque plebis et seruorum maxima
multitudo magno luctu corpus in atrio domus positum circumstetit). Moreover,
the wife of Clodius, Fulvia, having shown off his wounds accompanied by effusive
lamentation, increased the hatred of the deed (augebat autem facti inuidiam uxor
Clodi Fuluia quae cum effusa lamentatione uulnera eius ostendebat). On the
following day, at first light, a larger crowd of this ilk gathered (multitudo eiusdem
generis confluxit), and many notable men were seen. Clodius’ house was pur-
chased a few months before from Marcus Scaurus on the Palatine; in the same
place Titus Munatius Plancus, brother of the orator Lucius Plancus, and Quintus
Pompeius Rufus, the grandson born from the daughter of the dictator Sulla, both
tribunes of the plebs, rushed forth: with the tribunes urging them on, the ignorant
rabble brought down the naked and trampled corpse to the Forum so that its
wounds could be seen, and they placed it on the Rostra (uulgus imperitum13
corpus nudum ac calcatum, sicut in lecto erat positum, ut uulnera uideri possent in
forum detulit et in rostris posuit). There, before the assembly (contio), Plancus and
Pompeius, who were supporting Milo’s competitors, incited animosity (inuidia)
against Milo. With the scribe Sextus Cloelius taking the lead, the people carried
P. Clodius’ corpse into the Senate house and cremated it using the court benches,
the judgement platform, tables, and the account books of the record keepers
(populus duce Sex. Cloelio scriba corpus P. Clodi in curiam intulit cremauitque
subselliis et tribunalibus et mensis et codicibus librariorum). Even the Senate
house itself was set aflame by this fire, and at the same time was burned the
Basilica Porcia which was joined to it. Also the houses of the interrex Marcus
Lepidus—for he had been made the curule magistrate—and of the absent Milo
the same Clodian throng besieged, but it was repulsed from there by arrows. Then
the fasces, seized from the grove of Libitina, they brought to the house of Scipio
and Hypsaeus, then to the gardens of Gnaeus Pompeius, calling him at one
moment ‘consul’, and at another moment ‘dictator’. Asc. Mil. 32–3C
The crowd surrounds Clodius’ corpse from the moment of its return to the
house: the maxima multitudo increases even further (maior) by the morning;
the mob, which burns Clodius in the Curia and besieges the houses of Lepidus
and Milo, is explicitly described as a Clodiana multitudo. However, the catalyst
for the action of the crowd is Fulvia’s effusa lamentatio and her display of
Clodius’ wounds in the atrium. Fulvia’s purpose was to increase inuidia
against Milo. This inuidia continues the next day through the contional
speeches of Plancus and Pompeius. In Asconius’ narrative, inuidia becomes
a leitmotif (Asc. Mil. 33C bis, 35C, 37C bis). It is also an important subtheme
13
See Morstein-Marx 2004: 68–118 on the amount of civic knowledge the ignorant mob
actually might have possessed.
of Cicero’s defence of Milo: ‘with hatred (inuidia), death (mors), and punish-
ment (poena) proposed, he must truly be thought a man (uir) who defends the
Republic without hesitation.’14 Cicero channels the built-up inuidia against
Milo through the rhetoric of masculinity and patriotism. Asconius implies that
Fulvia’s initial lament set in motion a wave of inuidia against Milo that
retained its momentum through contiones until Cicero attempted to stop it
with the Pro Milone. However, the recollection of this initial inuidia in the
testimony of Fulvia and Sempronia prior to Cicero’s speech continued to exert
a powerful influence over their audiences.
The inuidia stirred up by Fulvia was intensified by the topography of the
Forum. Within his narrative, Asconius notes (almost in passing) the location
of Clodius’ domus: ‘[T]he house of Clodius was purchased a few months
before from Marcus Scaurus on the Palatine; in the same place…’. Recent
scholarship has shown the degree to which elite Romans’ private space crafted
their public image and demonstrated their status and power within the
community.15 Monuments, including homes, were also valuable signs to be
utilized by orators.16 In order to assess the performance context of the Pro
Milone, it is essential to take the wider social and political environment into
account. Shelley Hales suggests that Clodius’ Palatine house faced the uia
sacra and was within sight of the Curia, the temple of Castor and Pollux, and
the temple of Vesta.17 It could probably be seen from the Rostra. Throughout
the hundred-day period from the death of Clodius to the exile of Milo, the
domus would have provided a prominent backdrop to events in the Forum.
From the night of Clodius’ murder, anyone entering the Forum from the
uia sacra would have encountered a domus funesta, which would have con-
tained all the sights, smells, and sounds proper to such a domicile. The concept
of the domus funesta is found in several authors; the presence of cypress trees
as a sign of mourning features prominently in all accounts.18 In the immediate
14
Cic. Mil. 82. See also Cic. Mil. 39, 75, 91, and 98.
15
See Cerutti 1998; Hales 2000 and 2003; Beck 2009; Roller 2010, with their bibliographies.
16
On oratory, monuments, and civic knowledge, see Morstein-Marx 2004: 42–118.
17
Hales 2003: 52.
18
Plin. HN 16.140; Catull. 64.246; [Sall.] Cic 2.11; Ov. Met. 7.572; Epic. Drusi 474; Sen. Vit.
Beat. 28.1.1; Serv. ad Aen. 3.64, 4.507, 6.216. Servius says that it was Roman custom to mark a
domus funesta with a cypress so that the pontifex might not pollute himself by entering the house
through ignorance (Serv. ad Aen. 3.64). In reference to the cypresses ringing Misenus’ pyre,
Servius states these trees were used at funerals either because they do not sprout again once they
have been cut, or because they show that a house is in mourning, just as festive boughs indicate a
house in celebration (uel quod per eam funestata ostenditur domus, sicut laetam frondes indicant
festae, Serv. ad Aen. 6.216). Paul the Deacon reports Festus’ claim that cypresses were set on the
houses of the dead because these trees do not regrow once they are cut, just like there is no hope
that a dead man might return to life (Paul. 56L). These late sources are probably relying on
Verrius Flaccus (if not Varro as well), although Pliny states that cypresses are sacred to Dis and
are placed in front of the house as a funebre signum (Plin. HN 16.40, 139). Most of these
references can be found in Kirchmann’s De Funeribus Romanorum 1697, chapter 25. It is most
302 Bill Gladhill

aftermath of Clodius’ death, the facade of his house would have been blan-
keted with black cypresses.19 The building would have provided a physical
symbol of Clodius’ murder that could be exploited (both consciously and
unconsciously) by speakers on the Rostra. Fulvia must have been the first to
exploit the domus in this way: following her initial lament, she would have
been clothed in uestis funesta, creating a clear visual link between her body and
the house that would have reinforced the emotional and intellectual associ-
ation between Clodius’ murder and the content of her words. Fulvia’s lament
on the first night became monumentalized.
In most instances, the domus funesta would have signified that the norma-
tive funerary rituals of the pompa funebris were being followed.20 In ordinary
circumstances, the corpse was cleaned and laid out in the atrium. After seven
days, family members assumed the death masks (imagines) of their ancestors,
while the deceased was dressed in clothes signifying the highest political rank
that he had held. The corpse represented the living man, just as the various
performers reanimated his deceased relatives. A procession accompanied the
corpse to the Rostra, during which laments and neniae were performed by
family members and perficae (professional mourners and singers of lament).
This was followed by the laudatio funebris, after which the corpse was taken
outside the boundaries of the city for cremation and burial. Funerary spectacle,
speeches, music, laments, and neniae were ubiquitous.21 From the body’s
display in the atrium to its departure from the city, the funeral ritual and its
attendant grief were scripted and controlled. The ritual and the lament
constrained and restricted the potentially chaotic overturning of societal
norms incited by the death of an individual belonging to the community.
Fulvia, by contrast, made a number of choices that replaced the traditional
pompa funebris with an event which amounts to a funerary contio held in a
private residence.22 Asconius states that a maxima multitudo stood in the
atrium as Fulvia lamented and pointed out Clodius’ wounds in order to stir up
inuidia against Milo; Appian relates that this crowd remained in the Forum
all night (B Civ. 2.21). The private lamentation of the domus extended into
likely that such a visual cue incites Theseus in Catullus 64.246 to become frenzied at the death of
his father (paterna morte ferox) as he approaches the funesta domus tecta; in the same way
infecti…lintea ueli signified his own death to his father at 64.243.
19
It is unknown how long a house would have remained funesta. One can imagine a number
of suitable periods, from the removal of the body from the domus (with perhaps the cypresses
used for the pyre itself) to the end of the ten-month period of mourning required of adults. In
any case, I would argue that Fulvia would have placed trees in front of the house after Clodius’
cremation and kept them there for the duration of the trial at least.
20
See Toynbee 1971.
21
On the pompa funebris, see Flower 1996.
22
On Fulvia, see Babcock 1965; Welch 1995; Delia 1999; Brennan 2012. Brennan captures
precisely the long-term consequences of Fulvia’s peculiar funeral of Clodius. On domestic
contiones, see Gladhill 2013.
the Forum and transitioned into an official contio on the following day in
which, according to Asconius’ narrative, Fulvia’s actions were replicated by the
tribunes.
Rather than a traditional act of mourning,23 Fulvia instigated a highly
emotive and complex deconstruction of the funerary ritual. Fulvia chose to
denude Clodius’ corpse and to leave it bloody, trampled, and unwashed,
undermining the customary procedures of the pompa.24 Instead of taking up
the prominent position of the widowed coniunx, walking behind her hus-
band’s body and accompanying the pompa funebris to the Rostra after the
standard interval,25 the pompa funebris was replaced by a volatile political rally
that prevented the psychological and social closure of ritualized, communal
mourning,26 and in which the cremation of Clodius’ corpse took place in the
heart of the Forum.
Roman society considered women’s laments to be dangerous.27 Since Fulvia’s
lament was detached from the ritual constraints usually enforced by the
pompa, it had the capacity to influence and intrude on other activities. The
contio of the following day re-enacted the events in the atrium on the night of
the murder. The crowd places Clodius’ corpse on the Rostra so that the
wounds could be seen (uulgus imperitum corpus nudum ac calcatum, sicut
in lecto erat positum, ut uulnera uideri possent in forum detulit et in rostris
posuit). The display of the wounds, in particular, links the contio with Fulvia’s
initial lament. Similarly, Plancus and Pompeius incite inuidia against Milo
during their public speeches (ibi pro contione Plancus et Pompeius…inuidiam
Miloni fecerunt). We cannot know exactly what Plancus and Pompeius said
in the contio, yet it is possible to suggest that their performance—with
the body of the naked, desecrated body of Clodius set between them on the
Rostra—mirrored Fulvia’s lament, especially if we follow Cassius Dio’s
description of the episode, which explicitly emphasizes their mourning.28
23
For some particularly marked acts of mourning which deviated from the standard proced-
ures, see Treggiari 1991: 493–8.
24
For normative burial procedures, see Toynbee 1971 and Prieur 1986. Verg. Aen. 9.486–7
offers a window through which to view the remarkable action of Fulvia. Euryalus’ mother—as
she recognizes the severed head of her son—laments that she cannot perform funeral rites
because the Rutulians have desecrated his corpse (nec te tua funere mater | produxi pressiue
oculos aut uulnera laui). She cannot lead his body out, close his eyes, or wash his wounds. The
force of her lament centres on the occlusion of normative burial rites.
25
On the placement of the widow in a funeral procession, see Treggiari 1991: 489. In
Treggiari’s list of dutiful women and their acts of mourning over their dead husbands, Fulvia’s
behaviour (which she does not discuss) stands alone. All the examples highlight their extreme
dolor through patterns of traditional mourning. Fulvia rejects and moves beyond this entire
tradition.
26
See Feldherr 2000: 211 and bibliography therein; Derderian 2001.
27
Holst-Warhaft 1992.
28
Cass. Dio 40.49: δημαρχοῦντες γὰρ ἔς τε τὴν ἀγορὰν τὸν νεκρὸν ὑπὸ τὴν ἕω ἐσεκόμισαν καὶ
ἐπὶ τὸ βῆμα ἐπέθεσαν πᾶσί τε ἐπεδείκνυσαν, καὶ ἐπέλεγον οἷα εἰκὸς ἦν ὀδυρόμενοι…
304 Bill Gladhill

The events in the atrium are reperformed on the Rostra, where the laudatio
funebris is replaced by the lament.
The exposure of the wounded corpse in the assembly is a marked diver-
gence from normal Roman burial practices. We might assume that Fulvia and
the tribunes wanted to advertise the criminality of Milo’s actions to the
multitudo in anticipation of legal proceedings: the entire community become
testes to the murder. Asconius, however, explicitly states that Clodius’ corpse
was displayed in the atrium to stimulate inuidia against Milo, not to offer
evidence of a wrong committed. The wounded body, I suggest, plays the same
role as the body of a living orator.29 A Roman audience would have been
familiar with orators using their bodies for rhetorical effect, essentially fash-
ioning their flesh into a system of discourse. Once Clodius’ mutilated corpse is
displayed on the Rostra, it has the potential to evoke other moments in Roman
history when wounds and scars were employed for the purpose of persuasion.
For example, Sallust has Marius say:
I am not able for the sake of loyalty (fides) to show ancestral masks or triumphs or
the consulships of my ancestors (imagines neque triumphos aut consulatus
maiorum meorum), but, if the matter demands it, I can show spears, standards,
ornaments, other military spoils, in addition to scars on the front of my body
(hastas, uexillum, phaleras, alia militaria dona, praeterea cicatrices aduerso cor-
pore). These here are my ancestral masks (hae sunt meae imagines)…
Sall. Iug. 85.29–30
Similarly, the impromptu speech and display of wounds in the Forum by a
particularly ragged centurion united the city in common cause against the
Volscians (Livy 2.23). Fulvia’s lament and the subsequent contio centred
on the visual spectacle of the physical violence that had been inflicted
on Clodius, and, like the flesh of the old soldier Marius, Clodius’ body was
used to incite the audience to action.30
Geoffery Sumi has rightly argued that Clodius’ burial distorts and reshapes
the traditional sequence of Roman funerary ritual.31 The body is cremated
twenty-four hours after death, which was the normal period of burial of non-
elite Romans, yet the cremation takes place at the heart of the city, an honour
that surpasses even that accorded to Sulla, who was allowed to be buried in
the Campus Martius.32 The crowd smashes the imagines found in Lepidus’
29
Similarly, see Roller 2010 for viewing ‘house demolition’ as a form of discourse.
30
Sall. Iug. 84 and 86: exagitandi contionem populi aduocauit…postquam plebis animos
arrectos uidet; Livy 2.23: cum circumfusa turba esset prope in contionis modum…inde ostentare
tergum foedum recentibus uestigiis uerberum. ad haec uisa auditaque clamor ingens oritur. non
iam foro se tumultus tenet, sed passim totam urbem peruadit.
31
Sumi 1997. Cicero argues that Clodius’ corpse was fully devoid of any pompa funebris: see
Cic. Mil. 33.15–20 and 86.10.
32
On Sulla’s burial in the Campus Martius and its influence, see Gisborne 2005: 120–1.
Clodius’ cremation would become the model for Caesar’s funeral nearly a decade later.
atrium, and, rather than using the cult of Libitina to organize the funeral, they
take the fasces from the sacred grove and attempt to compel members of the
elite to become either consul or dictator.33 Instead of the orderly transition of
the dead out of the community and the reintegration of the familia into
society, elements of the ritual become instruments of political violence and
anarchy, and its dismemberment and reconstitution reflect the broader break-
down in Roman social order.
What does Clodius’ disrupted funeral signify? An elite Roman male’s life was
construed as a series of offices. The Scipionic epitaphs are the most famous
examples, but we must be sensitive to the fact that epitaphs were an inscribed
reperformance of the funerary laudatio, as Andrew Feldherr suggests.34 The
epitaph marks a moment of finality, one that cemented for eternity the kinetic
and ephemeral activity of the mourning ritual that lamented and praised an
individual’s life. Fulvia’s choice to deny the normative pompa and its subsequent
inscriptionalization reflects the disruption of Clodius’ cursus honorum because
of his murder.35 Milo has denied him his fully realized pompa funebris. While
Marius and Livy’s centurions could point to their wounds as evidence of their
service to the state, Fulvia and the tribunes could have pointed to Clodius’
wounds as evidence of a political career brutally terminated.36 The laments,
processions, cremations, and imagines common to normal elite burial practice
all feature in Asconius’ retelling of events, but at every moment these elements
signify religious, ritualistic, and political anarchy.
So far, I have suggested that Fulvia’s effusa lamentatio—its amplification of
the inuidia against Milo, the showing of Clodius’ wounds, the crowd sur-
rounding the corpse—influenced the contio the following day. Lamentatio is a
particularly charged word, especially in this context when the absence of the
pompa funebris would have prevented the perficae from performing the
women’s emotional work of neniae.37 While Fulvia performed some sort of
33
From the evidence of Asconius I think it can be surmised that all the accoutrements for a
pompa funebris could be taken or rented from the cult of Libitina. There were probably official
political insignia and clothing kept there precisely for the pompa. This is the logical conclusion
drawn from the presence of the fasces there.
34
Feldherr 2000: 222.
35
The Pro Milone itself functions as a sort of ‘anti-epitaph’. Its publication relates Clodius’
career with invective rather than laudatio.
36
I am not suggesting that Fulvia had intended that her circumvention of the pompa would
result in the burning of the Curia. While we should not discount this possibility (see Marshall
1985: 167 for an argument in favour of strong political influence among the collegia in Rome
with deep influence amongst factions in the city), it is more reasonable to suggest that she played
a role in the performance of the contio the following day, but that Cloelius instigated Clodius’
cremation in the Curia. Such an act fits the ancient evidence on Cloelius (see Damon 1992:
236–8). On Clodius’ cremation, see Noy 2000: 191, and, on cremation more generally, see
Habinek 2016.
37
On the emotional work of mourning women in Roman society, see Richlin 2014. While
studies of Greek lamentation have received a great deal of scholarly attention, relatively little has
306 Bill Gladhill

lamentation (with the throng standing around the body in a state of luctus
magnus), she denied the ritual of the nenia as reconstructed by Dutsch.38
Neniae were designed to aid the transition of the spirit from the world of the
living to that of the dead; they are lullabies and funeral dirges. They are sung at
the beginning of life and at its end: they invite the soul from the spiritual world
into the body of a baby, and they drive the soul out of a corpse. The neniae
represent pre-Roman folk beliefs about the soul’s transition through non-
corporeal domains in birth and death, and this has important psychosocial
implications in terms of Roman belief in the efficacy of funeral songs upon
spirits.39 Neniae were anything but ‘trifles’. These were ancient songs whose
psychosocial value ought not to be underestimated.
Fulvia’s lament disrupted this ritual system. From the point of view of a
Roman audience, the omission of the neniae would have meant that the spirit
of Clodius never transitioned out of his body. The period surrounding the
performance of the Pro Milone was also a time of year in which, as Rüpke
emphasizes, ‘the ancient Romans were strikingly preoccupied with, and care-
ful in, their dealings with spirits and shadows’.40 Clodius’ cremation shortly
preceded the Parentalia in February, and the Lemuria was celebrated in May,
barely a month after Milo’s trial. During a three-month period in which much
of Roman religious consciousness was focused on placating the dead, there-
fore, the entire community experienced a public cremation in the Forum that
formed the climax to a significant violation of normative funerary rituals.41
The combination of Fulvia’s abandoned pompa and its spiritual consequences,
the burnt Curia and the domus funesta—both visual reminders of Clodius’
disrupted funeral—, and the festivals of the dead before and after the trial, all
shape the political climate and performance context of the Pro Milone.
been paid to Roman lament. On Greek lament, see Alexiou 20022 and Holst-Warhaft 1992 (with
much not included here). For Roman lament, see Treggiari 1991: 483–98; Corbeill 2004: 67–107;
Richlin 2014. Fulvia’s lament stands outside of the pompa, but, by introducing it into the
narrative and emphasizing its social and political consequences, Asconius raises a broader
issue about female lamentation and Roman society.
38
Dutsch 2008.
39
On the old folk traditions of the neniae, see Heller 1943. On the connection between
lullabies and the songs of perficae, see Dutsch 2008: 263. See also Corbeill 2004: 67–106 on
parallel rituals for birth and death.
40
Rüpke 2006: 276. At Fasti 2.547–56, Ovid describes ululating deformes animae wandering
farmlands and the streets of the city because the Romans had forgotten to perform the Parentalia.
See McDonough 2004: 360. On the Parentalia, see Dolansky 2011. It is likely that Fulvia would
have performed the rites of the Parentalia at the Curia itself. As Dolansky 2011: 131–41 shows,
ritual offerings were taken to the tomb of the dead, and the festival itself was a highly dynamic,
sensory experience designed to invoke the memory of the dead in the consciousness of the living.
See also Toynbee 1971: 63–7 and Prieur 1986: 13–19.
41
It is possible that Fulvia’s decision to forego standard funerary rituals figured Clodius’ spirit
as a lemur or larua, ‘ghosts of individuals who had died inappropriately and/or had not been
given proper funerary rites’ (Gessert 2004: 225 and n. 32). See also Thaniel 1973.
The day prior to Cicero’s speech, Fulvia and Sempronia, Clodius’ mother-
in-law, addressed the audience in the Forum: ultimae testimonium dixerunt
Sempronia, Tuditani filia, socrus P. Clodi, et uxor Fuluia, et fletu suo magno-
pere eos qui adsistebant commouerunt (‘Last they gave their testimony, Sem-
pronia, the daughter of Tuditanus, the mother-in-law of Clodius, and his wife
Fulvia, and by their lament they greatly impacted those who were present’,
Asc. Mil. 40C).42 Asconius is clear that the women spoke and, by their
weeping, moved (commouerunt) the audience, a detail which he must have
found in the acta. What could their testimony have been?43 They were not
present at Clodius’ murder. They must have narrated (dixerunt) the moment
at which Clodius’ corpse was brought into the atrium. It is likely that they
pointed to the wounds they witnessed on his flesh, and in the process their
speech transitioned into lament. We can imagine that this performance by
Fulvia and Sempronia would have recalled the funerary contio the day after
Clodius’ corpse was placed on the Rostra. Whatever they said, the intent
would have been to reinvigorate inuidia against Milo and misericordia for
themselves. The women would have reignited the audience’s memory of the
night of Clodius’ death. Unlike that occasion, when only their ululations and
mourning rituals would have been heard, they now spoke directly in the
Forum and on their own behalf, without men and the contio as intermediaries.44
Their words would have echoed against the visual monuments of the burnt
Curia and the domus funesta. It is notable that commouerunt is used only here
of all the speeches to which Asconius refers in his commentary. The women’s
testimonium was highly effective. It fulfilled the primary function of oratory:
to move and persuade the audience. It also corresponds with Quintilian’s
prescription for the epilogue of a speech:
If they must be moved by pity (misericordia commouendos), a bending of the
voice and a weeping sweetness (flexum uocis et flebilem suauitatem), which
especially breaks their spirits and is most natural: you might even see orphans
and widows in the funeral clothes themselves (in ipsis funeribus) calling out in a
particularly melodious way (canoro quodam modo). Quint. Inst. 11.3
42
The movement from speaking (dixerunt) to weeping (fletus) finds a parallel at the conclu-
sion of Cicero’s Pro Milone. At the end of this speech, Cicero’s oratory follows a similar
emotional movement (Cic. Mil. 92.5): quid restat nisi ut orem obtesterque uos, iudices, ut eam
misericordiam tribuatis fortissimo uiro quam ipse non implorat, ego etiam repugnante hoc et
imploro et exposco? nolite, si in nostro omnium fletu nullam lacrimam aspexistis Milonis, si
uoltum semper eundem, si uocem, si orationem stabilem ac non mutatam uidetis.
43
We might posit a speech similar to the speech of the mulier and anus at Apul. Met. 3.8. The
speech is short, but it gestures to broad themes: pity (misericordia), common law (commune ius),
humanity (humanitas), empathy (miseremini), the plight of widowhood (uiduitas), destitution
(solitudo), law (leges), and public discipline (disciplina publica). It is possible that Fulvia and
Sempronia peppered their testimonium with an appeal to human and civic rights.
44
On the sound dynamics between the Palatine and Forum, see Gladhill 2013.
308 Bill Gladhill

It is likely that Asconius focused on the emotional and persuasive impact of
the women’s testimony because he recognized that it was the most influential
piece of oratory during the entire trial. Yet, their oratory was a kind of broken
lamentation. It did not attend the corpse of a Roman male who had moved
through the cursus honorum and died after a long career devoted to the state.
Instead, it fused with the political activity in the Forum. It gave voice to the
domus funesta. It responded to the charred remains of the Curia. Their lament
authorized inuidia; it was the lament of invective and dolor. It moved the
audience. Their testimony could not have explicated what took place at
Bovillae; it mourned what happened upon the return of Clodius’ corpse to
Rome. The day before Cicero performed the Pro Milone, the women had
reactivated and reaffirmed the discourse environment initiated by Fulvia on
the night of Clodius’ murder, and the powerful effects of this overwhelmed
Cicero’s speech on behalf of Milo and rendered it ineffectual.
From this point of view we can read Cassius Dio’s description of Milo’s
response to the published Pro Milone while in exile in Massilia from a different
perspective:
Milo, having obtained the speech which had been sent to him by Cicero, wrote in
response while he lived in exile, saying that it was fortunate for him that the
speech was not delivered in this way in court: for he would not be eating so much
mullet in Massilia (where he was in exile), if so great a defence had been delivered.
He wrote this not because he was pleased with his present conditions, for he dared
much for his recall, but teasing Cicero, saying that there was nothing useful in the
fitness of the defence since he delivered and sent him barren words, as though
they had the power to aid him at that point. (Cass. Dio 40.54.3)
Milo is correct; the speech Cicero sent him is a great success, but not in the
way that is normally suggested by critics of the Pro Milone. The success of this
particular Pro Milone is owed to its performance context, being read alone
over a bowl of mullet, entirely detached from its original discourse environ-
ment, one which had been constructed and shaped by women from the
Rostra.45
45
See Fotheringham 2006.
18
Oratorum Romanarum Fragmenta Liberae

Rei Publicae
The Letter of Cornelia, Mater Gracchorum,
and the Speeches of Her Father and Son
Judith P. Hallett
According to Quintilian, the second-century BC Roman Republican oratorical

luminary and authority Marcus Porcius Cato defined an orator as a uir bonus
dicendi peritus, ‘a good’—that is, morally upstanding—‘male human skilled at
speaking’ (Quint. Inst. 12.1). Henrica Malcovati’s Oratorum Romanorum
Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae abounds in bits and pieces of speeches
delivered, during the Roman Republican era, by numerous, oratorically gifted
if not morally upstanding uiri boni. But only one femina bona dicendi perita
currently rates an entry in Malcovati’s magisterial edition of Republican
Roman oratorical fragments. This is Hortensia, daughter of the illustrious
orator Q. Hortensius Hortalus, consul in 69 BC. Her father’s entry, immedi-
ately prior to hers, includes fragments from twenty-five of his speeches plus
two excerpts from incertae sedes.1
As evidence for Hortensia’s oratory, Malcovati quotes two Latin passages
about a speech that Hortensia delivered in 42 BC: Val. Max. 8.3.3 and Quint.
Inst. 1.1.6. Valerius Maximus hails Hortensia for pleading successfully ‘on
behalf of women’ (causam feminarum) against financial burdens imposed by
the second triumvirate on the rank of ‘married women’ (ordo matronarum).
He claims that her speech displayed her late father’s eloquence, and that in it
her father ‘lived again through the female line’ (reuixit tum muliebri stirpe)
and ‘breathed in his daughter’s words’ (uerbisque filiae aspirauit). Quintilian,
1
Hortensia ORF4 93 F1 and F2 (= Val. Max. 8.3.3 and Quint. Inst. 1.16); Q. Hortensius
Hortalus ORF4 92 F1–25 and 53–4. As noted below, Malcovati also cites but does not quote the
Greek version of the speech, extant in Quintilian’s time, as App. B Civ. 4.32–3.
310 Judith P. Hallett

who merely notes that Hortensia delivered this speech apud triumuiros,
testifies that it was still read (legitur) in his day, over a century later. Yet not
a word has survived from Hortensia’s oratorical efforts in Latin, merely, as
Malcovati indicates in a footnote, a version that the later Greek historian
Appian assigns to her at 4.32–3 of his Bella Ciuilia, in his own native tongue.
This chapter argues that a second Republican Roman femina bona dicendi
perita, Cornelia, mater Gracchorum, merited inclusion in Malcovati, along with
actual Latin words from a letter attributed to her by the first-century BC
biographer and historian Cornelius Nepos. The letter deals with an event
datable to c.124 BC, when Cornelia would have been in her sixties: the decision
by her younger son Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs in 123 BC, to
seek the plebeian tribunate.2 Some manuscripts of Nepos contain two excerpts
from this letter, referring to them as Cornelia’s own writing, from Nepos’ now-
lost book on historians who wrote in Latin.3 The letter itself addresses Gaius
himself, testifies to the pain she suffered over the death of her elder son Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, tribune of the plebs in 133, and attempts to deter Gaius
from emulating Tiberius and causing her more pain. I quote it here in full:
uerba ex epistula Corneliae Gracchorum matris ex libro Corneli Nepotis de
Latinis Historicis Excerpta.
dices pulchrum esse inimicos ulcisci. id neque maius neque pulchrius cuiquam
atque mihi esse uidetur, sed si liceat re publica salua ea persequi. sed quatenus id
fieri non potest, multo tempore multisque partibus inimici nostri non peribunt,
atque uti nunc sunt erunt potius quam res publica profligetur atque pereat.
eadem alio loco. uerbis conceptis deierare ausim, praeterquam qui Tiberium
necarunt, neminem inimicum tantum molestiae tantumque laboris, quantum te
ob has res, mihi tradidisse; quem oportebat omnium eorum quos antehac habui
liberos partes tolerare atque curare ut quam minimum sollicitudinis in senecta
haberem, utique quaecumque ageres, ea uelles maxime mihi placere atque uti
nefas haberes rerum maiorum aduersum meam sententiam quicquam facere,
praesertim mihi cui parua pars uitae superest. ne id quidem tam breue spatium
potest opitulari, quin et mihi auersere et rem publicam profliges? denique quae
pausa erit? ecquando desinet familia nostra insanire? ecquando modus ei rei
haberi poterit? ecquando desinemus et habentes et praebentes molestiis insistere?
ecquando perpudescet miscenda atque perturbanda re publica? sed si omnino id
fieri non potest, ubi ego mortua ero, petito tribunatum; per me facito quod
lubebit, cum ego non sentiam. ubi mortua ero, parentabis mihi et inuocabis
deum parentem. in eo tempore non pudet te eorum deum preces expetere,
2
See Hallett 2002a: 15, as well as Hallett 2002b, 2004, 2006, 2009, and 2010; Hemelrijk 1999:
194–5; Horsfall 1989: 125–6.
3
See the discussion of Hemelrijk 1999: 349 n. 38, citing Marshall 1977, and noting that of all
Nepos’ manuscripts, only the earliest that survives—the late-twelfth-century Wolfenbuettel
Codex, also called the Codex Guelferbytanus, or A—and the fifteenth-century Italian codices
deriving from A contain the Cornelia fragments.
Oratorum Romanarum Fragmenta Liberae Rei Publicae 311

quos uiuos atque praesentes relictos atque desertos habueris? ne ille sirit Iuppiter
te ea perseuerare, nec tibi tantam dementiam uenire in animum. et si perseueras,
uereor ne in omnem uitam tantum laboris culpa tua recipias uti in nullo tempore
tute tibi placere possis.4
I would contend, too, that both Cornelia and her actual words merited
inclusion for one of the same reasons that Hortensia, without her actual
words, evidently did. Namely, that some of Cornelia’s Latin words bear
striking similarities to those cited by Malcovati in the entry for Cornelia’s
father, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus maior, consul in 205 and 194 BC.5
But, at the same time, Cornelia’s words resemble those cited by Malcovati in
the entry for the addressee of Cornelia’s letter, her younger son Gaius himself.6
It warrants additional note that Cornelia was kindred by blood or by marriage
or both to multiple other uiri whose oratorical fragments occupy multiple
pages in Malcovati’s volume. She was wed to Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus,
consul in 177 and 163 BC, who died in 154 BC, and fathered her two sons,
daughter Sempronia, and nine other children who did not survive to adult-
hood. Cornelia was, moreover, niece of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, consul in 182
4
‘These words are excerpted from a letter of Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, from the book
of Cornelius Nepos about Latin historians.
“You will say that it is a beautiful thing to take vengeance on enemies. To no one does this
seem either greater or more beautiful than it does to me, but only if it is possible to pursue these
aims without harming our country. But seeing as that cannot be done, our enemies will not
perish for a long time and for many reasons, and they will be as they are now rather than have
our country be destroyed and perish.”
‘The same letter in a different passage.
“I would dare to take an oath solemnly, swearing that, except for those who have murdered
Tiberius Gracchus, no enemy has foisted so much difficulty and so much distress upon me as you
have because of all these matters. You, who should have shouldered the responsibilities of all of
those children whom I had in the past and should have made sure that I might have the least
anxiety possible in my old age. And that, whatever you did, you would wish to please me most
greatly. And that you would consider it sacrilegious to do anything of great significance contrary
to my feelings, especially as I am someone with only a short portion of my life left. Cannot even
that time span, as brief as it is, be of help in keeping you from opposing me and destroying our
country?
“What end will there finally be? When will our family stop behaving insanely? When will we
cease insisting on troubles, both suffering and causing them? When will we begin to feel shame
about disrupting and disturbing our country? But if this is altogether unable to take place, seek
the office of tribune when I will be dead; as far as I am concerned, do what will please you, when
I shall not perceive what you are doing. When I have died, you will sacrifice to me as a parent and
call upon the god of your parent. At that time will it not shame you to seek prayers of those gods,
whom you had abandoned and deserted when they were alive and on hand? May Jupiter not for a
single instant allow you to continue in these actions nor permit such madness to come into your
mind. And if you persist, I fear that, by your own fault, you may incur such trouble for your
entire life that at no time would you be able to make yourself happy.” ’ (Trans. Hallett 2002a,
revised).
5
P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, ORF4 4 F3–5 (= Gell. NA 4.18.3; Livy 38.56.1 and 39.52.3).
6
C. Sempronius Gracchus, ORF4 48 F15–69, esp. 61 (= Cic. De or. 3.214 and Quint. Inst.
11.3.115), to be discussed below.

and 168, and first cousin and eventually mother-in-law of his son Publius
Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus minor, consul in 147 and 134.7
To be sure, the elder Cato, consul in 195 and censor in 184 BC, who
inextricably linked the Roman identity of orator with morally upright, verbally
talented manhood, would probably not approve of my viewing this woman as
meriting inclusion in Malcovati. It is certain that this Cato knew, or at least
knew of, this Cornelia: in part because of his public enmity toward Cornelia’s
father, Scipio Africanus; in part because of his affinal kinship with Cornelia’s
mother Aemilia, sister of Lucius Aemilius Paulus. After all, Cato wed his own
older, aristocratically mothered elder son, Marcus Porcius Cato ‘Licinianus’, to
Paulus’ own daughter, who was also Scipio Aemilianus’ sister, and Cornelia’s
first cousin. Although Malcovati did not give Cato’s son an entry of his own in
her volume, she did create one for his own similarly named son, Cato’s
grandson, consul in 118 BC.8
Furthermore, Cato’s exertions in 169 BC to pass the lex Voconia, which
prohibited a Roman male of the wealthiest citizen class from naming a woman
as his heir, may have targeted Cornelia herself, in the years immediately
following her marriage.9 Cornelia’s childless brother, however, avoided having
to place her and her sister in this legal position by adopting their first cousin,
Paulus’ son, as his heir.10 The possibility that her brother had contemplated
naming Cornelia and her sister as his heirs may explain why, as Polybius
reports at 31.27, Cornelia’s dowry and that of her sister were not given to their
husbands until after the death of their mother Aemilia in 162 BC.11 Indeed,
their mother herself may have been her own husband’s pre-Voconian heir
after his death in 183 BC: holding on to as much of the family estate as she
could until it was clear whether their son would produce or have to adopt an
heir; holding out the prospect that Cornelia and her sister would inherit it if
their brother and his progeny did not. Cornelia, barely, if even, out of her teens
in 169 BC, hardly posed a verbal threat to Cato at this time. Later, however, she
7
Ti. Sempronius Gracchus pater ORF4 10 F1 (= Cic. Brut. 79); L. Aemilius L. f. M. n. Paulus
ORF4 12 F2 (= Val. Max. 5.10.2); P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus minor ORF4 21
F13–35. See also Astin 1967: 13, 32, 36, 86, 190, and 241 as well as Dixon 2007: 6–32 for the
relationship between Cornelia and her son-in-law.
8
M. Porcius Cato ORF4 8 F17–254; M. Porcius M. f. M. n. Cato ORF4 41 F2–3. Astin’s
biography of Cato (1978) does not mention Cornelia; while Dixon’s biography of Cornelia (1977:
33–6) discusses Cato at some length, she does not deal with the affinal relationship between Cato
and the Aemilii Pauli, Cornelia’s maternal kin.
9
For the lex Voconia, see Astin 1978: 113–18; ORF4 8 F156–60 (= Cic. Sen. 14; Livy, Per. 41;
Gell. NA 17.6.1; Serv. ad Aen. 1.537; Gell. NA 6.13.3). Dixon 2007: 3 dates Cornelia’s birth to
approximately 190 BC and her marriage to approximately 175 BC, and that of Tiberius, her eldest
surviving child of twelve, to 163 BC.
10
For P. Cornelius Scipio’s adoption of Aemilianus, the son of his father’s sister, see Astin
1967: 12–14, who argues that he and his brother were adopted into their new families before 168
and probably after 179.
11
On Aemilia’s death and Cornelia’s dowry see Astin 1967: 32–3 and Dixon 2007: 36–7.

proved capable of uttering and inspiring words which, like those of Cato, had
major political impact.
This leads us to why I maintain that Cornelia’s words merit inclusion
among the fragments of Roman Republican orators. True, we have no record
that she ever engaged in the kind of public speaking displayed by Hortensia.
Again, Nepos refers to Cornelia’s words as two excerpts not from an oratorical
presentation, but a letter, preserved in a volume of writings by Latin historians.
But both Cicero (Brut. 211) and Quintilian (Inst. 1.1.6), immediately before
they each cite Hortensia’s speech addressed to the triumvirs, credit Cornelia
for imparting the skills at public speaking so remarkable in her sons Tiberius
and Gaius, charismatic political orators both. Cicero views her correspond-
ence as evidence that their style proves the Gracchi ‘to have been nurtured not
so much in her bosom as in her speech’ (non tam in gremio educatos quam in
sermone matris); Quintilian observes ‘we have heard that their mother, Cor-
nelia, had contributed greatly to the eloquence of the Gracchi, a woman whose
extremely learned speech also has been handed down to future generations’
(nam Gracchorum eloquentiae multum contulisse accepimus Corneliam ma-
trem, cuius doctissimus sermo in posteros quoque est epistolis traditus).12
Cornelia’s letter to Gaius, moreover, seeks to persuade him to abandon his
political pursuit of the plebeian tribunate, for political as well as personal
reasons.
So, too, I have previously argued that various words and themes in this letter
from Cornelia to her son echo in a speech that Livy assigns to Veturia, mother
of the legendary fifth-century BC Roman general Coriolanus.13 I quote the
relevant passages here:
Coriolanus prope ut amens consternatus ab sede sua cum ferret matri obuiae
complexum, mulier in iram ex precibus uersa,
‘sine, priusquam complexum accipio, sciam,’ inquit, ‘ad hostem an ad filium
uenerim, captiua materne in castris tuis sim. in hoc me longa uita et infelix
senecta traxit, ut exulem te, deinde hostem uiderem? potuisti populari hanc
terram, quae te genuit atque aluit? non tibi quamuis infesto animo et menaci
perueneras ingredienti fines ira cecidit? non, cum in conspectus Roma fuit,
succurrit “intra illa moenia domus ac penates mei sunt, mater coniunx liberique”?
ergo ego nisi peperissem, Roma non oppugnaretur; nisi filium haberem, libera in
libera patria mortua essem. sed ego nihil iam pati ne tibi turpius nec mihi
miserius possum nec, ut sum miserrima, diu futura sum: de his uideris, quos, si
pergis, aut immatura mors aut longa seruitus manet…’
12
Translations of Cicero and Quintilian are those of Hallett 2002a: 16. See also the discus-
sions of Dixon 2007: 27–8 and 51–2.
13
Hallett 2002a: 19–20 as well as 2002b; 2009: 184.

apud Fabium, longe antiquissimum auctorem, usque ad senectutem uixisse eun-
dem inuenio…non inuiderunt laude sua mulieribus uiri Romani…14 Livy 2.40
Like Cornelia, Veturia confronts her son through a series of rhetorical ques-
tions. She, too, refers to her own wretched old age with the noun senecta
(rather than the more common word senectus, which Livy uses later in the
passage).15 By employing the conjunctions nec…nec to negate a pair of
comparative adjectives that govern personal pronouns in the dative case,
Livy’s Veturia recalls Cornelia’s phrase neque maius neque pulchrius cuiquam
atque mihi. She, too, likens her own son to an enemy, albeit a hostis, enemy of
the state, rather than an inimicus, a personal, political foe. Most importantly,
Livy has Veturia link what is politically consequential for her with what is best
for a family and its feelings: by emphasizing the emotional pain her son’s
conduct has caused her personally, as well as by underscoring her son’s
emotional ties to herself and other family members. In this regard, too, her
speech resembles Cornelia’s letter.16
Admittedly, Cornelia’s letter to Gaius, unlike Veturia’s speech to her son,
failed to achieve its political purpose. Nevertheless, these intertextually sig-
nificant details indicate that Livy, an admirer of the prelapsarian Roman
Republic, interpreted Cornelia’s letter as a model for effective female, famili-
ally focused but nonetheless politically consequential communication. These
details imply as well that Cornelia’s letter was known and associated with
persuasive female Roman Republican oratory not long after the fall of the
Roman Republic.
Furthermore, while the words of Cornelia’s letter may have been written by
their author and read by their recipient silently, and behind closed doors in
14
‘Coriolanus, almost as if he were insane, consumed in his mind, having risen from his seat,
was holding out his arms in embrace for this mother as she came to meet him. The woman,
turned into anger from her entreaties, said:
“Allow me, before I receive an embrace, to know whether I have come to an enemy of the state or
to a son, whether I am a captive or a mother in your camp. Have a long life and a wretched old
age dragged me into this situation, that I looked upon you as an exile, and then an enemy of the
state? Have you been able to devastate this land, which bore and nurtured you? Didn’t anger
vanish from you—even though you had come with a hateful and threating attitude—as you
entered the boundaries of your country? Didn’t the thought come into your mind, when Rome
was in your sight, ‘Within those walls are my house and household gods, my mother, wife, and
children?’ Thus if I had not given birth, Rome would not be under siege; if I did not have a son,
I would have died a free woman in a free country. But I am able to endure nothing either more
shameful for you or more miserable for myself nor, as I am extremely miserable, am I about to be
so for long; you will see about these people for whom—if you proceed on your course—either an
untimely death or a long slavery remain…”
‘In the words of Fabius Pictor, by far the most ancient authority, I find that this man lived to old
age…Roman men did not begrudge women their own praise…’
15
See OLD s.v. ‘senecta’; ‘senectus’.
16
See also the discussions of Hallett 2004: 18–20 and 2006: 129–31 on the similarities
between Cornelia’s letter and Veturia’s speech.

private residences, their writing and reading could easily have involved oral
presentation. The series of anaphoric rhetorical questions in the second
excerpt alone suggest that the letter was composed with an eye (and ear) to
oral delivery. Cornelia’s affluent household numbered many slaves to whom
she could have dictated her words aloud. A trained, learned slave or ex-slave
reader, like the lectrix Sulpicia Petale commemorated a century later by the
Augustan elegist Sulpicia, could have declaimed these words to Gaius, and
others, when the letter was first received, and on later occasions.17
The authenticity of Cornelia’s words as quoted by Nepos has been chal-
lenged on various grounds, some involving her ‘personality’ as it emerges from
the two excerpts of this letter, others connected with Nepos’ reliability as a
source.18 As I have observed elsewhere, her words and tone are angry,
confrontational, demanding, intimidating, explicitly shame-inducing, and
implicitly guilt-inducing. No one would call these outspoken remarks or their
distraught tenor ‘ladylike’ in English: that is, exquisitely sensitive to matters of
propriety and decorum, refined and self-effacing, modest and reserved. If,
some scholars have inquired, Cornelia was—as her lofty social position,
considerable wealth, and reputation for maternal devotion would suggest—a
true ‘lady’ and caring mother, how could she have addressed her adult son
about his political decision-making in this way?19
Yet however unladylike, however unmaternal certain scholars have found
Cornelia’s language and tone in these excerpts, the portrait of Cornelia they
furnish is completely consistent with that attested by other ancient sources
such as Seneca, Plutarch, Valerius Maximus, and Appian. They depict her as a
single-minded single parent assuming paternal as well as maternal responsi-
bilities; as a highly educated, prepossessing political player sufficiently inde-
pendent to reject the marriage proposal of a Ptolemy king and valuable ally of
the Roman state; as an affluent matron prepared to flaunt her male offspring
as assets superior to another woman’s costly finery; as a mother and mother-
in-law capable of arranging to have her son-in-law (who was also her first
cousin and adoptive nephew) slain on the grounds of insufficient family
loyalty—and as so emotionally resilient that she bore the deaths of her sons
with quiet dignity.20
17
For Cornelia’s household, see Dixon 2007: 33–48; for scribes as facilitators of elite female
Roman correspondence, see Hemelrijk 1999: 188–91; for the lectrix Sulpicia Petale and her elegiac
epitaph (AE 1928.73.4), see, for example, Hallett 2009: 187–90.
18
For challenges to authenticity, see, for example, Hemelrijk 1999: 195–6; Hallett 2002a:
15–16, citing, e.g., Horsfall 1989: 41–2, 104, 125–6.
19
See, for example, Hallett 2002a: 15–20 and 2006: 127.
20
Sen. Marc.16.3; Sen. Helv. 16.6; Plut. Ti. Gracch. 1 and 8.5–6; Plut. C. Gracch. 4.3–4, 13, and
19; Val. Max. 4.4; App. B Civ. 1.20. On these ancient sources, and their depiction of Cornelia, see
also Hallett 2006: 127–8; Dixon 2007: 1–14. To be sure, these sources all postdate Cornelius
Nepos, and could have based their characterizations of Cornelia on this text: that, however, none
of them quotes from or cites this text would suggest their value as independent testimony.

Those who question Nepos’ reliability observe that he is the sole surviving
source to quote this letter directly, and doubt the statement that the letter
appeared in his lost book on Latin historians. But we have only one source for
most of Catullus’ poems, the first of them dedicated to Nepos himself: a single
manuscript, fortunately copied when it first surfaced in Verona soon after
1300, now lost. Since Nepos’ book about historians who wrote in Latin is now
lost as well, why question a statement that it quoted from Cornelia’s letter
rather than regard it as valuable ancient testimony as to what the lost book by
Nepos did contain?21 What is more, both Cicero, at the aforementioned
Brutus 211, and Quintilian, at the aforementioned 1.1.6, cite Cornelia’s letters
in support of their assertion that she influenced the eloquence of her own sons,
and claim that they themselves were able to consult these letters in their own
day. The letter twice excerpted in Nepos’ manuscript was, presumably, in that
number.
Among Cornelia’s words to Gaius that evoke those of her father Publius
Cornelius Scipio Africanus is the phrase deum parentem, ‘male parent god’ (if
deum is masculine accusative singular), or ‘parent of gods’ (if deum is mascu-
line genitive plural), used to describe the deity to whom her son will pray when
she is dead. This phrase may allude to Cornelia’s father himself, or to the
‘paternal’ god Jupiter Optimus Maximus, with whom her father claimed a
privileged relationship.22 For Cornelia’s remark ne ille sirit Iuppiter te ea
perseuerare (‘may Jupiter not for a single instance allow you to continue in
these actions’) resembles what Livy has her father state at 28. 28.1—a passage
included by Malcovati in her entry for Cornelia’s father—in a speech to his
mutinous soldiers in 206 BC, invoking Jupiter Optimus Maximus: ‘May Jupiter
Optimus Maximus not allow (ne istuc Iuppiter optimus maximus sirit) hence-
forth that the city of Rome—founded with due auspices and the favour of the
gods to endure forever—live no longer than my own weak, mortal body.’23 In
so doing, Livy portrays Cornelia’s father’s words as resembling those in her
letter, inasmuch as they voice his commitment to the welfare of the Roman
state by emphasizing that it must long outlast him and the politicians of his
own time.
What is more, at Noctes Atticae 4.18.3, a passage that Malcovati does not
include, Aulus Gellius quotes a speech by Scipio that similarly invokes
Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and employs the superlative of the adjective
inimicus, a word that figures prominently in Cornelia’s letter to Gaius.
21
On this now-lost manuscript, and its descendants, see Tarrant in Reynolds 1983: 43–5; for
the analogy with Nepos’ book about historians who wrote in Latin, see Hallett 2006: 127.
22
On deum as masculine accusative singular, see Farrell 2001: 58–65; Courtney 1999: 138; on
deum as masculine genitive plural, an observation I owe to Luigi DeLuca, see, for example,
Hallett 2006: 135 and 2009: 182.
23
See also the discussions of Hallett 2006: 135 and 2009: 183.

Strikingly, Scipio here refers to his own conquest of Hannibal with the
phrase, ‘I gave birth to a victory for all of you’ (uictoriam uobis peperi),
likening himself to a mother rather than a father.24 To be sure, Livy’s
account may only have a loose relationship with what Scipio actually said
nearly two centuries before Livy wrote. While Gellius may purport to be
quoting Scipio’s exact words, he does not quote very many words. Even so,
the similarities between what Cornelia says and what both authors claim that
her father said are noteworthy.
Of interest, too, is a passage from the first-century BC treatise Rhetorica ad
Herennium, 4.22. It illustrates the figure of speech known as ‘apostrophe’,
which it defines as ‘expressing sorrow or outrage by an address to some person
or city or place or thing’. This passage addresses Scipio Africanus, stating:
‘Now I address you, Scipio Africanus, the name of whom—though you are
dead—is also a source of lustre and glory to the state. With their own blood
your most famous grandsons have nourished the cruelty of their personal
enemies (crudelitatem inimicorum).’
Here, then, we have another sorrowful and angry effort to communicate
with a dead person who is clearly Cornelia’s father, and who is praised for his
achievements that immortalize the Roman state. Like Cornelia’s letter, too,
this instance of apostrophe criticizes his most famous grandsons, Tiberius and
Gaius Gracchus, and characterizes them as provoking their personal enemies,
called inimici, by their destructive, and self-destructive, conduct. I have argued
elsewhere, on the basis of these details, and of words and themes that figure
both here and in the speech assigned by Livy to Veturia, that this sorrowful
and angry effort may be another excerpt from Cornelia’s letter, and for this
reason worthy of listing among Cornelia’s words.25
Finally, the series of rhetorical questions with which Cornelia confronts
her younger son Gaius Gracchus in the second excerpt from the letter quoted
by Nepos may be evoked in a despairing speech delivered by Gaius in 121 BC,
during the final days of his own life. Malcovati’s entry on Gaius includes one
surviving fragment from this speech, quoted by Cicero (De or. 3.214) and,
less extensively, by Quintilian (Inst. 11.3.115).26 A succession of four rhet-
orical questions, it culminates in the inquiry: ‘Shall I flee home? So that I may
see my mother unhappy, lamenting, and downcast?’ (an domum? matremne
ut miseram lamentantem uideam et abiectam?). Not insignificantly, Gaius’
words resemble those of his grandfather, since they, too, feature a gender-
bending dimension: they recall the despairing words of a mythic Greek
24
On this passage, see also the discussion of Hallett 2009: 183.
25
See the discussions of Hallett 2006: 134–6 and 2009: 183–4.
26
ORF4 48 F23 (= Cic. De or. 3.214); Malcovati notes that Iul. Vict. 443.3–4H, as well as
Quintilian, cites these words.

female figure, the title character in Ennius’ tragedy Andromache, as quoted
by Cicero:
quid petam praesidi aut exsequar, quoue nunc
auxilio exili aut fuga freta sim?
arce et urbe orba sum. quo accidam, quo applicem,
cui nec area patriae domi stant, fractae et disiectae iacent,
fana flamma deflagrata, tosti alti stant parietes
deformati atque abiete crispa…27 Cic. Tusc. 3.19.44
As Plutarch’s life of Gaius, chapter four, reports, Cornelia’s younger son not
only highly esteemed his mother’s opinions but also defended her, from harsh
criticism and with crude language, in his public speeches. Her own resources
and opportunities for both validating and shaming him may not have included
speechifying in public. But they earned her the right to be remembered as a
femina bona dicendi perita: involving skilful words, aimed to political ends, in
the service of what she regarded as the good.
27
Enn. And. FF85–91 Vahlen, which I have translated: ‘What protection am I to seek or
pursue? What help in exile or escape am I now to rely upon? I am bereft of citadel and city.
Where am I to fall, where to direct myself, I for whom neither the altars of my country stand at
home, they lie broken and shattered, shrines burned down by fire, the high walls of buildings
stand scorched and misshapen, and with conflagrated pinewood…’
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Index Locorum
[Anonymous], Rhetorica ad Herennium Caesar

1.3 214, 229 Bellum Gallicum
2.19.5 43 1.35.1–4 58
2.28.45 222 1.43.9 58
2.30.47 217 1.45.1 58
3.2–9 253 Cassius Dio
3.2.2 222 36.25–36a 113, 116–27
3.10 290 36.42–3 116–17
3.11.19 213 37.46.3 126
3.13.23 217 38.7.6 199
3.14.24 218 38.12.4–7 122
3.14.25 220 38.17.4 193
3.15.26 220 39.20–2 194
3.15.27 214 39.20.2 179
3.19 228–9 39.20.3 178
3.23 255 39.22 205
4.10.14 220 40.54.3 308
4.12 182 40.49 303
4.15.26 219 44.23–33 133
4.20.28 218 45.18–47 113, 117, 128–31
4.22 317 55.7 40
4.22.31 222, 223 Catullus
4.28.38 224 53 37
4.36.48 224 64.246 301
Appian Charisius
Bellum Ciuile GLK 1.82.5 40–1
1.1 105 CIL
1.72 106 6.1527 282
1.9–11 132–3 6.1527.I.3–26 292
1.20 315 6.1527.II.51–69 292
2.21 302–3 6.1527.II.22 285–7
2.23 197 6.1527.II.67 285–7
4.32–3 309–10 6.10230 282
Mithridatic Wars 6.10230.3–17 292
94 199 6.10230.20–5 285–7
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 6.10230.27–30 292
3.8 307 n. 43 13.1668 111
Anthologia Latina 14.3579 282, 286, 290
176 R. =165–6 SB = 87–8 Z 154 Cicero
Asconius, Commentary on Cicero, Academicae quaestiones
Pro Milone 1.8 291
32–3C 300–5 Ad Atticum
35C 300 1.13.4 (SB 13) 248
37C 300 2.17 (SB 37) 248
40C 307 2.22 (SB 42) 248
44C 299 7.11.3 (SB 134) 248
Athenaeus 1.16.10 (SB 16) 250, 254–5
6.274c–e 42 2.1.5 (SB 21) 250, 253–4
13.590d–e 244–5 2.12 (SB 30) 251
356 Index Locorum

Cicero (cont.) 211 313, 316
3.15.2 (SB 60) 193 214 23
4.5.1 (SB 80) 205–6 222 123, 126
4.5.2 (SB 80) 206 224 223
4.19.1 (SB 93) 188 225 221
13.48.2 (SB 345) 291–2, 294 226–7 240–1
Ad familiares 234 236–7
1.7.7 (SB 18) 206 247 237–8
1.7.10 (SB 18) 205 259 235
1.8.4 (SB 19) 206 275 65
1.9 (SB 20) 209 276 65, 69
2.17.2 (SB 117) 199 303 221, 236
7.32.2 23 308 221
8.1.4 (SB 77) 251 317 70, 221
Ad Quintum fratrem 313–17 70
2.3.2, 4 (SB 7) 209 313–14 225
3.2.2–3 (SB 22) 120 316 225
3.4.3 (SB 24) 120 322 70–1
Brutus 333 74, 162–3
44 103 De diuinatione
52–6 99 29.62 133
54 104 De domo sua
52–72 233–4 20–3 193
61 294 n. 84 28–30 193
62 281 42 193, 198, 204, 208
65 238 65–6 193
86 64 23 201
87 64 34 195–6
102 39, 42 39–42 195–6
110 217 40 196
115 217 54 187
127–72 163 68–71 204
131 29, 42 89–90 187
133 123, 126 100–1 298
134 235 127 182
138 153 De finibus
139–42 218–19 1.1–12 24
141 244 De haruspicum responsis
158–60 219 1 178
161 153 3–7 178
164–6 153 8 178, 179, 180–3
167 138–41, 153–70 9 178, 179, 183–4
181 59–60 11 178, 179
182 60–1 14–16 183
182–3 61 26 184–5
188 62 39 241–2
194 64 34 185–6
195–7 64–5 37 181, 186
198 65 51 180, 186–7
201–2 63 55 187–8
202 65–6, 69 56 188
203–4 214 58 189
203 66, 68 De imperio Cn. Pompei
204 68, 73 27–8 120–2
205 61–2 28–49 121
207 61 37 119
Index Locorum 357

50 126 3.171 41
60 125 3.198 160
61–2 117–19, 125–6 3.214 46, 317
63–4 123 3.215–29 233
45 122 3.219–24 242
52 124 3.225 233
De inuentione De prouinciis consularibus
1.1.1–1.4.1 107 15 200
1.7.9 214 42 208
2.155–76 253 40–7 202–3, 205
De legibus 44–5 205
2.61–2 281 45 196, 207
De officiis 47 207
1.121–2 25–6 De re publica
1.132 256–7 5.11 F1 234
1.133 232 In Vatinium
1.136–7 256 21–2 209
3.4 4 24 209
De oratore Pro Caelio
1.25 62 23–4 185–6
1.72 41 Pro lege Manilia
1.128 66 1 27
1.131–2 67 Pro Milone
1.133 62 82 300–1
1.166–7 239 Pro Murena
1.193–5 28 51 117
1.214 253 Orator
1.245 72 55 227
2.4 24 85 71
2.44 283, 290, 294 86 72
2.188 219 Partitiones oratoriae
2.45–6 290 74–5 290
2.85 67 Philippics
2.124 242–3 2.2–86 128–30
2.153 28 2.28 182
2.156 29 5.10 197
2.194–5 243 5.21 197
2.225–66 71–2, 288 5.31 187
2.225 66 12.18 182–3
2.227 66 Pro Plancio
2.240–90 255 66 270–1
2.250 250 86 241–2
2.268 250 Pro Caecina
2.270 255 97–100 30–1
2.274 250 Pro Balbo
2.275–6 250 29–30 31
2.341 23, 194 Pro Quinctio
2.338 27 18.59 221
2.339 27 Pro Sestio
2.341–2 290 18 120
2.341 293, 294 28–9 120
3.6.1 237 60–3 193
3.25–36 73 60 201
3.32 103 61 198, 207–8
3.137 101 64–5 208
3.138 102–3 73–4 204
358 Index Locorum

Cicero (cont.) Isidore, Origines
106 241–2 1.22 40
122 126 Iulius Victor
Post reditum in senatu 446–7H 255
10–13 119–20
De senectute Juvenal
12 275, 276 1.154 34
14 238 5.103–6 146
15 69
28 69 Livy
Tusculanae disputationes Per. 70 244
2.57 220 2.23 304
3.19.44 318 2.30.5 105
Verrines 2.40 313–14
2.4.4 24 5.50.7 283
4.6 185 27.27.11 277
4.133 185 27.28.1 277
5.3 242–4 28.28.1 316–17
Coelius Antipater Lucilius
FRH 11 F36 = FRHist 15 F27 276, 277 46 Warmington = 54 Marx 160
54–5 Warmington =57–8 Marx 36
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates 61 Warmington = 73 Marx 37
Romanae 62 Warmington = 72 Marx 37
5.17.1–3 281 63 Warmington = 74 Marx 37
6.39–40 105 64–5 Warmington = 82–3 Marx 48
Donatus 66 Warmington = 81 Marx 41
Commentary on Terence, Andria 71–2 Warmington = 76–7 Marx 47
324 39–40 73–4 Warmington = 60–1 Marx 45
Commentary on Terence, Phormio 77 Warmington = 87 Marx 35, 36
123 40 78–9 Warmington = 62–3 Marx 36
Ennius, Andromache 80–1 Warmington = 69–70 Marx 36
85–91 Vahlen 318 82 Warmington = 56 Marx 40
Epicedion Drusi 84–6 Warmington = 84–6 Marx 41
474 301 87–93 Warmington = 88–94 Marx 30, 39
235 Warmington = 212 Marx 47
Fabius Pictor 412 Warmington = 388 Marx 40
FRH 1 F20 = FRHist 1 F15 280 414–5 Warmington = 1264–5 Marx 45, 46
Fronto, Epistulae 416 Warmington = 1133 Marx 44
15.4–16.1vdH2 167–8 448–9 Warmington = 411–12 Marx 35
15.12–17vdH2 154 633–4 Warmington = 595–6 Marx 42–3
49.18–21vdH2 239 732 Warmington = 605 Marx 46–7
Gellius, Noctes Atticae 879 Warmington = 875 Marx 44
2.24.2 161 Lucretius
2.24.15 161 1.945–6 234
4.18.3 316–17 Macrobius, Saturnalia
Horace, Satires 1.pr. 3 142
1.4.1–5 39 1.pr. 4 161
1.4.8 38 1.pr.7 142–3
1.4.40–2 41–2 2.3.7–8 250
1.7.6 38 2.3.11–12 250
1.7.19 38 3.13.13 154
1.7.28–31 38 3.14.1–3 155
1.9.78 33 3.15.1 155
1.10 33 3.16.4–18 135–48, 153–80
2.1 34 3.16.11–18 155
2.1.34 48 3.16.14 145
2.2.29–33 146 3.16.15 158
Index Locorum 359

3.16.15–16 138 Petronius
3.6.17–18 146 1–2 6
3.17.3 162 40 154
3.17.4 161 Philostratus, Vita Apollonii
3.17.6 165–6 4.45 286
3.17.8 166 Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis
7.4.1–8.6 143 pr.7 42–3
7.4.9 147 7.139 272–3
Nepos 7.212 158
Atticus 16.40 301
3.1 31 16.139 301
17.1–2 287, 292–3 16.140 301
Gracchus Plautus
Fr 59 Marshall (Letter of Cornelia) 310–18 Amphitruo
Nicolaus of Damascus 186–261 10, 49–58
4 284, 289–90 Menaechmi
Novius, Atellanae 596–9 139
67–8 Ribbeck3 167 Plutarch
Caesar
ORF4 5.1–5 284
114 (P. Cannutius) F4 61–2 5.3 289
4 (P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus) F3–5 311 5.4 289
8 (M. Porcius Cato Maior) F17–254 21.8 201
84, 312 59.6 250
21 (P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus) F17 170 Camillus
48 (C. Sempronius Gracchus) F15–69 311 8 283
51 (C. Titius) F2 155 Cato Minor
76 (P. Sulpicius Rufus) F11 67–8 35.1 193
80 (C. Aurelius Cotta) F10 61 38.1 201
118 (Ser. Sulpicius Rufus) F3 82; F4 82; 38.2 201
F7 82 38.3 200, 205
121 (C. Iulius Caesar) F4–5 82; F15–25 40.2 194, 196, 198
279; F28–9 278; F28 289; F29 288; 45.2 205
F30–1 279 Cicero
158 (M. Iunius Brutus) F8 82; F19 82; 34.2 194
F23 291 34.3 194
162 (M. Caelius Rufus) F6–9 86; F7–8 82; 41.4 130
F17 86; F25 87; F26–7 87; F28 80, 88; Comparison of Pelopidas
F37 80; F38 80; F39 88 and Marcellus
165 (C. Licinius Macer Calvus) F5–6 82; 1.5 277
F7, 14 84 De garrulitate
174 (C. Asinius Pollio), F4–8 82; F7 84; 511F–512A 257
F8 80; F15 84; F29–33 90; F36 82, 90; 512C–E 257
F42 80, 90; F43–4 90 Fabius Maximus
176 (M. Valerius Messala Corvinus) 1.6 275
F5–8 91; F5 80; F7 82; F12–13 91; F12 1.7 275
82; F21–2 91; F21 82; F22 80; F24 80 24.6 275
Ovid, Metamorphoses Marcellus
7.572 301 30.6 277
Mulier
Pacuvius, Teucer 242–3 282–3
238 Schierl 47 Pompeius
Paul the Deacon 13.17 105
56L 301 26 119
Persius Publicola
1.114–15 34 9.10–11 281
360 Index Locorum

Plutarch (cont.) 6.3.105 258
Gaius Gracchus 7.2.4 90
4.3–4 315 7.2.26 90
4.13 315 8.3.32 90
4.19 315 8.3.34 91
Tiberius Gracchus 8.6.52–3 87
2.2 216 9.2.9 89
1 315 9.2.24 89
8.5–6 315 9.2.34 89
8.7 133 9.3.13 90
Polybius 9.3.58 90
6.53.2 283 9.4.132 90
6.53–4 281, 288 10.1 92
6.54.1 288 10.1.22 90, 91
31.23–25.1 19 10.1.76–120 100
31.27 312 10.1.105–22 82, 98
53.1–3 265–6 10.1.113 88, 91
53.9–10 270 10.1.115 86
M. Porcius Cato 10.1.122–3 82–3
Orationes 10.1.125–31 6
F27 Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 21 10.2.17 83, 89
Ad Marcum Filium 10.2.25 83, 86, 89
F1 Cugusi and Sblendorio Cugusi 22 10.5.2 83, 91
Porphyrio, Commentary on Horace, 10.7.30 83, 92
Carmina 11.1.51 87
4.2.25 237 11.3 307
11.3.8–9 230
Priscian, Institutiones Grammaticae 11.3.10 228
1.380.9–10 275 11.3.31 235
Ps.–Longinus 11.3.115 317
44 6 11.3.143 228
11.3.153 293
Quintilian
12.1 309
Institutio oratoria
12.6.1 84, 89, 284
1.1.6 80–1, 92, 309–10, 313, 316
12.7.3–4 84
1.5.61 81, 88, 91, 92
12.7.3 107
1.6.29 81, 88
12.10.10–11 84–5
1.6.42 81, 88, 90, 91
12.10.11 86, 91, 93
1.7.25 81
12.10.39 85
1.7.34–5 81
12.11.6 85
1.7.35 91
12.11.23 85
1.8.10–11 81, 89
12.11.28 85, 88–9
2.5.17 244
3.5.71–2 141 [Sallust], Inuectiua in
3.7.1 290 Ciceronem
3.7.12–13 290 2.11 301
4.1.8 91 Sallust
4.1.11 90 Bellum Catilinae
4.2.123–4 86–7 20.9 122
6.1.20 91 31.5–9 117
6.1.21 89 Historiae
6.3.5 250 4.1 236
6.3.39 88 5.20–4 116
6.3.69 86 Bellum Iugurthinum
6.3.41 88 84 and 86 304
6.3.102 249 85.29–30 304
Index Locorum 361

Seneca the Elder, Controuersiae Twelve Tables
1.pr.6–10 6 1.7–9 157–8
1.pr.6 98
1.pr.7 98 Valerius Antias
1.pr.11 98 F17 Peter 105
10.pr.5 109 Valerius Maximus
Seneca the Younger 1.6.4 100
Epistulae 1.6.ext.2 106
8.8 166 2.2.3 99
84.3–8 143 2.6.8 108
102.15 285 2.8.7 100
Ad Heluiam 3.5.4 97
16.6 315 3.7.1 106
Ad Marciam 3.7.3 95
16.3 315 3.7.6 97
De Vita Beata 3.8.6 297
28.1.1 301 4.4 315
4.7.1 100
Servius, Commentary on Vergil, Aeneid 5.3.4 97, 99, 109
3.64 301 5.9.2 97
4.507 301 5.10.2 266
6.216 301 6.2.2 97
7.700 237 6.2.6 100
9.573 44 6.2.7 100
Suetonius 6.2.9 100
Diuus Augustus 7.3.5 97
8.1 284 7.5.5 100
Diuus Iulius 8.1–8 97
6.1 284, 288 8.3.3 309–10
56.7 250 8.5.5 99
De rhetoribus 8.9 11, 95–110
1 6 8.9.1 104, 106
2 6, 87 8.9.2 106
8.9.3 107, 108
Tacitus 8.9.ext.1 104, 110
Annales 8.9.ext.2 102, 103, 104, 108
11.23–4 111 8.10 97
Dialogus de oratoribus 8.14.1 106
1.1 97
Varro, Res rustica
25 98, 100
1.2.9 158
34.7 89, 92
36.1 109 Velleius Paterculus
Terence 1.17.3 6
Hecyra 2.32 124
1–49 298 Vergil, Aeneid
Phormio 7.669–701 236
4–8 170 9.486–7 303 n. 24
General Index
Aelius, L. 61 Aurelius Opillus 168

Aelius Tubero, Q. 78–9, 82 Autronius Paetus, P. (RE 7) 231
Aemilius Lepidus, M. (cos. 46) 300
Aemilius Paullus, L. (cos. 182, 168) 19, 266 Bibulus, M. (cos. 59)
Aemilius Scaurus, M. (cos. 115) 232 intention of annulling Caesar’s
Aemilius Scaurus, M. (pr. 56) 89, 300, 301 legislation 192, 195–7, 199, 203
Afranius, L. 139, 153, 166–7 relationship with Cicero 204, 207–10
Albius 45
Albucius, T. (pr. 53) 29–31, 34, 38–9, 41–2, 65 Caecilia, mother of T. Pomponius Atticus 287
Annius Milo, T. 130, 173 Caecilius Metellus Denter, L. (cos. 284) 274
target of inuidia following Clodius’ Caecilius Metellus, L. (cos. 251) 272–5
death 298–308 Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, Q. (cos.
Annius, P. (tr. 87) 106 143) 231
Antistius, P. (aed. 86) 61, 231, 240–1 Caecilius Metellus Pius, Q. (cos. 80) 119
Antonius, M. (cos. 99) 59, 61 n. 7, 66 n. 31, Caecilius Metellus, Q. (cos. 206) 272–5, 278
78–9, 153, 162–3, 283 Caelius Rufus, M. (pr. 48) 77–8
delivery of 218–20, 223 n. 53, 229–31, Calidius, M. (pr. 57) 69 n. 41, 231 n. 20, 232
242–5 eloquence represented in the Brutus 65
exemplum for the positive use of as exemplum in Quintilian 78, 79, 82, 85
oratory 97, 99, 103, 106–7, 109 Cannutius, P. 61–2
Greek learning 20, 22–5, 26, 27, 28–9, 31 Carbo, C. 162
in the De Oratore 67–8, 72–4, 293–4 Carneades 25
Antonius, M. (cos. 44, 34) 196 Claudius Caecus, App. (cens. 312) 71–2, 77–8
annulment of agrarian laws 196–7, 254 Claudius Marcellus, M. (cos. 196) 276–7, 278
evidence of his oratory in the Philippics Claudius Marcellus M. (cos. 208) 276–7
128–31, 182–3, 187 Claudius Pulcher, App. 291 n. 64
Antonius Hybrida, C. (cos. 63) 87, 279 Claudius Pulcher, C. (cos. 92) 163
Appuleius Saturninus, L. (tr. 100) 223, 297 Clodia Metelli 87, 248, 254
Aquillius, M’. (cos. 101) Clodius Pulcher, P. 12, 13–14, 130
trial 220, 232, 242–5 contio in 56 176–90
Arrius, Q. 208 debate over the validity of his legislation as
Asinius Pollio, C. 44 n. 66, 100 n. 23 tribune 191–210
as exemplum in Quintilian 77–86, 88–9, 92 funeral 298–308
invective against Cicero 130 informal conversation with Cicero 250–5
auctoritas speech in response to the
fundamental to social hierarchy 25–9 haruspices 171–90
importance in public speech 26–7 voice 241–2
ideological conflict with Greek Coelius Caldus, C. (cos. 94) 163
culture 28–31, 39, 42 Cornelia, wife of C. Iulius Caesar 278–80,
service to the res publica 26, 32 284, 289
Aurelius Cotta, C. (cos. 252, 248) 274 n. 37 Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi 28, 80,
Aurelius Cotta, C. (cos. 75) 10 309–18
eloquence represented in the Brutus 59, education of her sons 313, 316
61–3, 65–6, 68–70, 72–4, 162 political communication 314
Greek learning 20 relationships to Republican orators 311–12
Aurelius Cotta, L. (cos. 65) 196 n. 35, 204, similarities with the oratory of her father
231, 235 and son 311, 316–18
as exemplum in Valerius Maximus 99, 107, Cornelius Cethegus, M. (cos. 204)
108, 110 voice 233–8
General Index 363

Cornelius Dolabella, Cn. (cos. 81) Eloquence
107, 279 and abuse of power 97–108
Cornelius Dolabella, P. (cos. 44) 78, 85 and theatricality 70–2
Cornelius Lentulus Lupus, L. (cos. 156) 34 as threat to libertas 11, 100–10
Cornelius Lentulus Spinther, P. (cos. 57) 200, attribute of Hortensius 208
204–5, 207 n. 103 Brutus as a source for 59–65
Cornelius Rufinius, P. (cos. 277) 250 evolution of through rivalry 60–1
Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, style appropriate to age 69–70
P. (cos. 147, 134, cens. 142) 19, styles contrasted 64–8
169, 312 exempla
Cornelius Scipio Africanus, P. (cos. 205, creative selection of 95–110
174) 4, 14, 54, 95, 250 Republican orators as 77–93, 95–110
relationship with Cornelia, mother of the
Gracchi 311–12, 316–17 Fabius Maximus Rullianus, Q. 276
Cornelius Scipio Nasica, P. (cos. 191) 95 Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, Q. 275–6
as exemplum in Quintilian 78, 81, 84–5, 97 Fabius, Q. (cos. 213) 275
as exemplum in Valerius Maximus Fabricius, C. 250
107–8 forensic oratory
hypocrisy in 97
delivery informal speech in 37–40
actio 12–13, 14, 227–46 invective in 33, 35–8
in the Brutus 65–6, 68–70 satiric texts as a source for 34–5, 136,
in funeral oratory 293–4, 300 146–7, 159–60
gesture Fufius Calenus, Q.
and voice 214, 216, 227–32, 241–5 polemic against Cicero 113, 115, 117, 128,
appropriate control in 214, 219–20 129, 130, 131
emotional impact through 219–20, 271–2 Fufius, L. (tr. pl. 91 or 90) 242
significance in diplomatic oratory 50 Fulvia, wife of P. Clodius Pulcher 13
theatricality in 220–1 inuidia against Milo 297–308
pronuntatio 213–26 funeral oratory 1, 13, 71–2, 263–80, 302–5
emphasised in Rhetorica ad Herennium as vehicle for political
as response to Social War 222–6 communication 287–92
reconstruction of 1–5 as vehicle for self–promotion 287–93
voice delivery in 293–4
appropriate use of 214, 216–17, 224–5, diverse contexts for 283–7, 296
234–8 Fulvia’s lamentatio for Clodius 299–306
combined with physical gestures 214, laudationes for women 282–96
227–32, 241–5 reflecting trends in oratory 293–5
importance of suauitas 232–8
lack of moderation in 239–42 Gabinius, A. (cos. 58) 11, 173, 192 n. 4, 193
separate from gesture 214, 227–9 n. 9, 200 n. 56, 204 n. 82
suited to context 216–18 debate over the lex Gabinia 113–29
Demosthenes 97 Granius, Q. (RE 8) 45–6
diplomatic oratory
as coercive speech 51–2 Helvius Mancia 250
comedy as a source for 50–1, 58 Hirtius, A. (cos. 43) 78, 79, 85
delivered to diverse audiences 52, 54 Hortensia, daughter of Q. Hortensius
emotional component of 56–8 Hortalus
gesture in 50 as exemplum in Quintilian 78–81, 92
intimidation 54–8 speech apud triumuiros 309–11, 313
political self–promotion through, 52 Hortensius Hortalus, Q. (cos. 69) 70, 74,
staged in unofficial contexts 54 162–3, 221, 299, 309
discourse environment 298–9, 304, 308 as exemplum in Quintilian 78–85
Domitius Ahenobarbus, Cn. (cos. 96) 163 as exemplum in Valerius Maximus 97,
Domitius Ahenobarbus, L. (cos. 54) 99–100
195 n. 28, 291 delivery 230–1, 236
364 General Index

Hortensius Hortalus, Q. (cos. 69) (cont.) Licinius Macer Calvus, C. 37
opposition to the lex Manilia 123–4, as exemplum in Quintilian 78, 79, 81–5, 89, 92
127, 131 Licinius Varus, P. 250
relationship with Cicero 192–3, 207 n. 103, Livius Drusus, M. (tr. pl. 91) 196, 224
208–10 Lucilius, C. 33–48, 161
Herennius, M. (cos. 93) 163 Lucius Caesar (cos. 64) 197, 251
Lucullus Terentius Varro, M. 207
informal speech 12–13 Lutatius Catulus, Q. (cos. 102)
as political communication 247–5 debate over the lex gabinia 113–31
contexts for 248 delivery 126, 235, 283
distinguished from formal oratory 256–9 laudatio funebris 290 n. 60, 294–5
in forensic rhetoric 37
in treatises 255–9 Marcius Philippus, L. (cos. 91) 125–6, 163
overlap with formal oratory 247–9, Marius, C. 43
252–6 Marius, C. (cos. 107) 278–9, 289, 304–5
transmission of 249–52 Matius, C. (RE 1) 251
intercultural influences methodological questions 3–8, 12, 136–8,
and propriety in public speech 28–31, 140–3, 148, 227–9, 245–6, 272
39, 42 Mucius Scaevola Augur, Q. 29–30, 34–5, 37–9
as detrimental to social cohesion 29–32 trial de repetundiis 119 BC 41–8
impact on oratory 22–5, 28–9 Mucius Scaevola, P. (RE 17) 43
Roman ambivalence towards 19–32, 42 Mucius Scaevola Pontifex, Q. (cos. 95) 64, 217
threat to Roman identity 25–9 Munatius Plancus, Cn. 71
Iulius Caesar, C. 58, 78 Munatius Plancus, T. (tr. pl. 52) 300, 303–4
Iulius Caesar Octavianus, C. 284, 289–90
Iulius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, C. 61, 78, New Historicism 11, 137, 144–8
141 n. 19, 168, 240, 249, 250, 255 Nigidius Figulus, P. 229
Iunius Brutus, L. 71 Norbanus, C. (cos. 83) 61 n. 7, 68
Iunius Brutus, M. 78, 79, 82
Octavius, Cn. (cos. 87) 239
Julia, aunt of C. Iulius Caesar 278, 284,
288–9, 294 paratext 136–7, 139–42
Junia, relative of M. Iunius Brutus 71–2 Plautius Hypsaeus, M. (cos. 125) 239
Plotius Gallus, L. 215, 229
Labienus, T. (pr. 60 or 59) 78, 79, 90 Pompeius Magnus, Cn. (cos. 70, 55, 52) 78–9,
Laelia, daughter of C. Laelius 80 100, 231–2, 248, 250–2, 284 n. 21
Laelius, Decimus 85 debate over the lex Gabinia 67 BC 113–31
Laelius Sapiens, C. (cos. 140) 54, 64, 78, 79 relationship with Cicero 192 n. 4, 195 n. 28,
Lentulus Clodianus, Cn. (cos. 72) 236 196 n. 35, 201 n. 66, 202, 204–9
Lentulus, Cn. 230 relationship with Clodius 185, 186
Lentulus Marcellinus (cos. 56) 237–8 status as priuatus 123, 125–6
libertas Pompeius Rufus, Q. (tr. pl. 52) 300, 303–4
eloquence as a danger to 11, 101, 104–6 Pomponius Atticus, T. 173, 248
shrine of Libertas 177–9 attitude towards Greek learning 31
Licinius Crassus, C. (tr. 145) 158 correspondence with Cicero 205–6, 248–9,
Licinius Crassus Dives Mucianus, 250–1, 253–5
P. (cos. 131) 164 laudatio funebris 287, 292–3, 294
Licinius Crassus, L. (cos. 95) 41, 42, 44, 153, Pomponius, M. 133
160, 162–3, 202, 206, 248 Popilia 283–4, 294
as exemplum in Quintilian 78, 85, 92 Popillius Laenas, C. (cos. 172, 158) 58
as exemplum in Valerius Maximus 97, Porcius Cato, M. (cos. 195) 2, 9, 36, 69, 78,
99, 100 79, 84–5, 97, 107, 162, 168, 173, 256,
delivery 219, 230–3, 236–7, 239 257 n. 48
Greek learning 22–31 attitude towards Greek learning 19–31
in the De Oratore 59, 64, 66, 68, 71–4 delivery 231, 238
Licinius Lucullus, L. (cos. 74) 78, 79, 207 opposition to Cornelia 309, 312–13
General Index 365

Porcius Cato, M. (pr. 54) 78, 79, 81, 85, Severus, Cassius 85
117, 232 spectacle 13–14, 219 n. 31
debate with Cicero (56 BC) 191–210 impact on emotional experience of
oratory 267–8, 280
Quinctius Crispinus, T. (cos. 208) 277 of pompa funebris 269–70, 280, 302–6
Sulpicius Galba, Ser. (cos. 144) 64, 162
reception Sulpicius Gallus, P. 170
alimentary metaphors for 11, 137–8, Sulpicius Rufus, P. 10
142–4 eloquence represented in the Brutus 59,
continuity with Republican oratorical 61–3, 65–9, 73–4, 214, 218
tradition 78–93, 98 Sulpicius Rufus, Ser. 78, 79, 82
development of oratorical canon 78–92
educational aims 77–93 Tiro 40
political commentary through 96–7, Titius, C. 8–9, 11, 12, 135–48
109–10 author of tragedies 166–70
selectivity 6–7, 11, 88, 96, 99–100, 107, 110 chronology of 153–70
reconstruction 1–2, 8–9, 12 suasio in support of sumptuary
of the career of C. Titius 153–70 legislation 154–6, 164–6, 169–70
of Clodius’ contional speech 171–90 Titius, Sex. (tr. pl. 99) 221, 231
of the history of Latin eloquence by transmission
Cicero 59–74 and authenticity 156–7, 315–16
of Republican oratory in context and interpretation of fragments 5,
historiography 112–34 135–7, 141, 156–62
of senatorial debates 112–34, 194–203 crypto–quoting 161
of speakers’ identities 192–4, 202, 207–9 impact of education on 5, 7, 78–93
ritual context 13–14, 53 Tullius Cicero, M. (cos. 63) 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
impact on emotional experience of advocacy of the lex Manilia 116–17, 122–3,
oratory 267–8, 280, 298–308 125
Roman citizenship correspondence with Atticus 205–6, 248–9,
connection with Latin language 30 250–1, 253–5
exclusivity of 30–1 Greek learning 19–20, 24–5
Rutilius Rufus, P. (cos. 105) 42, 61 n. 7, informal conversation with
217, 232 Clodius 250–5
legal disputes with Clodius 171–89,
Scribonius Curio, C. (cos. 76) 78 191–210
Sempronia, sister of the Gracchi 297–8, on Antonius’ oratory 218–19, 242–5
301, 311 on auctoritas 25–8
Sempronia, mother–in–law of Clodius 307 on Cato’s oratory 238
Sempronius Atratinus, L. (cos. 34) 78 on Clodius’ oratory 241–2
Sempronius Gracchus, C. (tr. pl. 123) 46, 133, on Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus’
154, 162, 164 oratory 236
addressee of Cornelia 309–18 on Cn. Octavius’ oratory 239
delivery 216, 219, 223–4, 230, 271 on Cotta’s oratory 59, 61–3, 65–9, 73–4,
Sempronius Gracchus, Ti. (tr. pl. 133) 78, 79, 214, 218
100, 132–3, 297, 311 on Gabinius’ oratory 120–3
Sempronii Gracchi, Ti. and C. 19, 223, on Hortensius’ oratory 236
313, 317 on L. Appuleius Saturninus’ oratory 223
sensory experience 263–5 on Lentulus Marcellinus’ oratory 237
impact on emotional experience of on Lucilius’ legal expertise 30–1, 35, 41
oratory 270–1, 279–80, 298–9 on M. Plautius Hypsaeus’ oratory 239
Sergius Catilina, L. (pr. 68) 232 on Publius Antistius’ oratory 240–1
senatorial speeches as represented in reception
Sallust 117, 122–3 in Cassius Dio 112–34
Sertorius, Q. (pr. 83) 118–19, 122, 126 in Quintilian 80–6, 88, 98
Servilius Iscaurius, P. (cos. 41) 207 n. 103 in Valerius Maximus 98–100, 106, 109–10
Servilius Rullus, P. (tr. pl. 63) 232 relationship with Crassus 20–4
366 General Index

Tullius Cicero, M. (cos. 63) (cont.) Valerius Publicola, P. (cos. suff. 509) 281
as source for Republican oratory 1–4, Verres, C. 24, 82, 239 n. 52
227–8, 252 Veturia 313–14
on C. Titius’ career 136–41, 146–8, 153–4, Vibius Pansa Caetronianus, C. (cos. 43)
157, 166 78–9, 85
on P. Sulpicius Rufus’ oratory 59, 61–3,
65–9, 73–4, 214, 218, 221 women
on P. Rutilius Rufus’ oratory 217 laudatio funebris for 282–96
on Roman citizenship 28–31 marginal role in oratory 283, 297–8
on sermo 255–9 oratory by 78–81, 92, 283, 297–308,
on Sextus Titius’ oratory 221 309–10
on wit 249–50, 255 political communication by 298–302,
309–18
Valerius Messala Corvinus, M. role in oratorical education 81, 313,
(cos. suff. 31) 77–86, 89, 91–2 316

Christa Gray, Andrea Balbo, Richard M. A. Marshall, Catherine E W Steel - Reading Republican Oratory - Reconstructions, Contexts, Receptions-Oxford University Press (2018)

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 1/12/2017, SPi

READING REPUBLICAN ORATORY

This volume originated in a conference held at the University of Turin on

List of Figures and Tables ix

PART B: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE FRAGMENTS

List of Figures and Tables

AE (1888–), L’Année épigraphique. Paris.

xiv List of Contributors

Kit Morrell is Research Associate in the Department of Classics and Ancient

V O L U M E S T R U C T U R E AND C ONTRI B U TI ONS

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome

INTROD UCTION : ROM AN NOBI L ITY

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 21

THE ROMAN O RA TORS L. CRASSUS

A closer look at the orators L. Crassus and M. Antonius complements the

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 23

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 25

To gain a better understanding of the reasons for this ambivalence towards

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 27

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 29

ROMAN I DENTITY AND ROMAN CITIZENSHIP

It becomes obvious how problematic it could be for an ambitious, or even

Roman Orators between Greece and Rome 31

Republican Satire in the Dock

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 35

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 37

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 39

This is the longest fragment of Lucilius book 2 (preserved by Cicero’s de

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 41

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 43

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 45

Such high jinks in Asia are germane to Pacuvius’ exuberant inventiveness

Republican Satire in the Dock: Forensic Rhetoric in Lucilius 47

Plautus and the Tone of Roman

quod numquam opinatus fui neque alius quisquam ciuium

50 Elena Torregaray Pagola

Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 51

52 Elena Torregaray Pagola

Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 53

54 Elena Torregaray Pagola

THE RHETORIC OF THE DIPLOMACY OF INTERVENTION: INTIMIDATION

Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 55

56 Elena Torregaray Pagola

Plautus and the Tone of Roman Diplomacy of Intervention 57

58 Elena Torregaray Pagola

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius

WHEN NVLLA MONVMENTA L OQVVNTVR

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 61

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 63

ORATORVM BO NORVM . . . DVO GENERA S VNT

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 65

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 67

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 69

EVO KING THE DEAD

Cicero underlines his efforts to improve himself constantly; this is why he

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 71

The Eloquence of Publius Sulpicius Rufus and Gaius Aurelius Cotta 73

SPURS AND CURBS

Following a long series of models, fair expectations, recollections, and precise

The Fragments of Republican Orators

A N ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO THE BOOKS

Figure 5.1. Citations per orator

C. Licinius Macer Calvus