Conclusion

Quintilian refused to list the multi deserti (‘‘many eloquent men’’) of his day - it would take too long (Inst. 10.1.118). He only mentions five by name: Domitius Afer, lulius Africanus, Galerius Trachalus, Vibius Crispus, and lulius Secundus. Tacitus, too, noted the eloquence of all five. Quintilian, giving no specifics, would surely have added others (10.1.122). Based on remarks by Tacitus and Pliny, we may add, conservatively, Marcus Aquilius Regulus, Eprius Marcellus, and Tacitus himself; a more generous view would add those noted for their forensic skills in Pliny’s letters. There is a good reason oratory flourished. By the second century ce much had changed from the republic to the empire politically to reshape the dynamics of oratory, but much had remained the same as well. Tacitus in the Dialogus has Maternus lament that the magnitudo causarum (‘‘enormity of the cases’’) was lacking for oratory in his day - it was no longer de ambitu comitiorum, de expilatis sociis et civibus trucidatis (‘‘over corrupt electioneering, despoiled allies and citizens cut down in cold blood,’’ Dial. 37.4). That is not entirely true. To judge from Tacitus and Pliny both, oratory in the imperial period was still a valued skill and a high-stakes game. If the repartee between Eprius Marcellus and Helvidius Priscus in 70 CE (Tac. Hist. 4.4-9), the trial of Barea Soranus and his daughter Servilia (Ann. 16.30-3) or bitter exchange between Vibius Serenus and his son (4.28-30) are half as dramatic as Tacitus portrays them, then rhetoric and oratory were still the stuff of heady drama in the imperial senate. The motives that sometimes drove prosecution were similar both in the first and second century CE and in the ancient republic. Personal enmity, familial obligations and feuds, protecting the interests of clientelae, and career ambitions could all drive the orator to take up a prosecution. Factionalism, no longer between optimates and populares, but between the imperial court and various groups within the senate, and indeed sometimes between rival groups within the imperial house itself, was a dynamic also very much in play during the early principate. In the end what is perhaps most striking about Roman oratory is its staying power: amidst the sea change in the Roman politics of the principate, at least into Tacitus’ day, the orator (sometimes even qua statesman) which had first appeared on the scene in the republic, had not only survived, but was still apparently thriving.

FURTHER READING

The individual cases and speeches delivered in the senate and discussed by scholars are numerous. For a discussion of the style of contemporary orators see Rutledge (1999); on individual delatores Rutledge (2001); in addition, see Riviere (2002), in French. For a more general discussion of oratory and senatorial procedure during the principate see Talbert (1984); for the place of oratory and rhetoric in senatorial culture, see Fantham (1996, 1997), who treats the cultural and political contexts respectively in which senators learned and practiced rhetoric. Studies that examine the Dialogus as a source for oratory and its historical and cultural contexts include chapter 24 in this volume, Goldberg (1999), and Levene (2004). Goldberg argues that Aper represents a modernist perspective of oratory and considers rhetoric to be strong and flourishing, while Levene, who looks at the Dialogus as a literary history, explores the problems that the work presents as a historical source for contemporary scholars. Bartsch (1994) and Rudich (1985) consider the constraints set on rhetoric under the repressive power of the emperors and examine how the Roman elite use various rhetorical methodologies, including double-speak, ambiguity, and innuendo, to negotiate the power structures of imperial society; the former is useful for its close rhetorical analysis of Pliny’s Panegyricus. These works touch upon an issue that still awaits a general and up-to-date treatment - that of freedom of expression in the early empire. Williams (1978), a standard study on oratory of this period, is still valuable for the material it brings together and discusses from the early empire, although my chapter and chapter 24 challenge his views of decline.

A Companion to Roman Rhetoric Edited by William Dominik, Jon Hall Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd