Our knowledge of Roman oratory before Cicero depends upon two separate and yet interrelated bodies of evidence. The first includes citations from texts of speeches incorporated in the works of later commentators; the second consists of observations based on the reading of these texts by these same commentators. Among this second set of testimonies, the history of eloquence that Cicero unfolded in the Brutus is particularly crucial.
At the outset of his account Cicero contends that oratory in Rome was late in its origin and development. Although he infers from a number of episodes from the past that certain men had achieved brilliant results thanks to their speaking abilities, Cicero remarks that he had never read that any of them was considered an orator or that eloquence offered any prize (Brut. 56). With this allusion to reading, Cicero sets the stage for his claim that Roman oratory effectively emerged in the late third century bce, when the Roman elite learned to write their speeches and started to draw on the Greek rhetorical tradition. Moreover, through a number of convoluted comparisons and chronological assessments, Cicero defines oratory as an art and claims that, like other arts (sculpture and poetry), it had followed an evolutionary path toward stylistic perfection (Brut. 60-76). Later on in the dialogue Cicero suggests that this perfection was reached a generation before him (143), with Marcus Antonius and Lucius Licinius Crassus. But when Atticus, a friend of Cicero and one of the characters in the dialogue, finally intervenes, this suggestion is replaced by another: it is Cicero the orator who makes everybody else before him look obsolete and unrefined (292-6).
As recently remarked, the Brutus was very much the product of Cicero’s own circumstances (Stroup 2003). After Caesar’s victory at Thapsus in 46 bce, Cicero had obtained the pardon of the new leader, but his political position was very uncertain. Furthermore, his oratorical reputation had been challenged by the attacks of those who
Found his style fundamentally decadent. The dialogue itself takes as a point of departure Cicero’s eulogy for Quintus Hortensius Hortalus who died in 50 bce. This eulogy comes soon to include the republic, Roman oratory, and Cicero’s own voice. Accordingly Cicero turns to the past, or rather to texts of speeches left behind by his predecessors, with the object of canonizing their oratorical style and his own.
An important corollary of Cicero’s rehabilitative purpose was the decisive transformation of Roman oratory into a primarily written practice and into an object amenable to textual scrutiny (Narducci 1997: 157-73). Since in modern epistemologies writing and reading activities as well as cultural objects constructed in writing have been seen to yield a fuller and higher value, the Brutus has constituted more than a source of information. Indeed, reinforced by our own matrices of understanding, the conceptualization of oratory that Cicero propounded in this and his other rhetorical works has greatly affected our own ways of approaching textual evidence. As a result the oratorical achievements of Cicero’s predecessors are often viewed as mere experiments in oratory’s future form to be shaped under the decisive influence of Greek rhetoric. Likewise pre-Ciceronian oratorical texts are generally described in terms of what they lack in order to be well-wrought examples of Ciceronian periodic prose.
This chapter focuses on the elder Cato and Gaius Gracchus, and surveys the reputation that these figures enjoyed with Cicero and other ancient commentators. This survey will also encompass a reflection on the limits inherent in approaches toward pre-Ciceronian textual remains built upon the Ciceronian method of conceiving oratory and our own cultural practices. By looking into how second-century BCE orators drew on the preexisting culture of the Italic carmen and the new tradition of poetry, this chapter expands on the question concerning the adoption of Greek rhetoric and briefly considers the place occupied by writing in second-century bce Roman oratorical practices.
World History
