Throughout the history of the Republic, two kinds of political proceedings regularly called for speeches on the part of those involved: the assemblies of the People and meetings of the Senate. Then, from the middle of the second century, a third appeared: trials before the standing criminal courts (quaestiones perpetuae), which took on increasing importance as their number grew and they played a progressively more political role. As these trials were chiefly intended to judge crimes committed by members of the aristocracy, they often led to the condemnation and ruin of important men. They therefore gave rise to a decisive change in the history of political oratory. Indeed, in contrast to the first two types of assemblies where speaking was restricted to well-known civic figures, judicial proceedings were in principle open to any citizen and permitted those who risked them to deliver a speech that could exert an influence on politics. In all three cases, material and institutional circumstances determined the context in which the speakers had to express themselves and imposed a corresponding variety of rules for working up their speeches.
All the decisions of the Roman People were preceded by speeches, whether they were elections, legislative votes, or popular trials. Orators delivered their speeches during the public meetings (contiones) held at the very place where the voting assemblies were to gather: on the Campus Martius near the ‘‘enclosure’’ (Saepta) when the decision involved the centuriate assembly; when it involved the tribal assembly, at the same place on the Campus Martius, at the Circus Flaminius, in the open space on the Capitol (the Area Capitolina) or in the Forum. Whenever the sources allow us to envision the arrangement of the space we find the same situation. Speakers addressed the People from the height of a platform: the rostra in the Forum, the podium of the temple of Castor in the Forum, that of the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol or still others on the Campus Martius. These structures gave those who stood on them the ability to project their voices to a considerable distance. But this was only a consequence of a more general function: due to their elevation they gave the magistrate who held the assembly the necessary distance to exercise his power. They set between the speaker and the People that same magisterial distance that the lictors or other attendants (viatores) imposed on passers-by. And, since the decisions taken there often demanded the approval of the gods, the tribunals themselves, including the rostra, were templa, inaugurated places (see also Chapter 10).1
It is evident therefore that not just anyone could mount the podium and address the People. Only those whom the magistrate presiding over the meeting had invited could do so. We accordingly discover, when we read the lists that we have compiled of those attested by our sources as speakers in such meetings, that most were leading figures: priests, magistrates, or former magistrates.
In order to make a speech in a contio, one therefore had to possess sufficient authority. Cicero expresses this very well in speaking of himself when, after being elected praetor, he dared for the first time to make a speech before a popular assembly. Until then, he says, he had only pleaded in the law courts, and it was only at the rank he had at last reached that the auctoritas his magistracy conferred upon him and the oratorical competence he had gained through numerous courtroom speeches finally permitted him to hope to persuade the Roman citizenry.2 Conversely, he was indignant when, in 59, the tribune of the plebs Vatinius allowed Lucius Vettius to speak - a sort of ‘‘agent provocateur’’ who sought to implicate the opponents of the triumvirate in a plot to murder Pompey: ‘‘when...you brought L. Vettius before the assembly, when you set an informer on the rostra - that place consecrated by the augurs, where other tribunes regularly brought forth the leaders of the city to ascertain their opinion.’’3 Membership among the elite who governed the city was thus a necessary condition for addressing the People, inasmuch as the decisions taken here shaped the future.4 Thus it seemed improper for anyone other than those whose calling was to lead the People to be given the opportunity to enlighten them with their advice.
The form of interaction that emerged was not one of debate (see also Chapters 12 and 18). The magistrate who summoned the assembly and presided over it had responsibility for determining the order of speeches. He might choose to invite certain speakers to mount the platform, or on the contrary might constrain others to express their views below the rostra and thus in a completely ineffectual way (Cic. Att. 2.24.3). He gave the right to speak, took it away, and put an end to discussion by dissolving the meeting. In conducting the assembly, the presiding magistrate put himself on stage and thus sought to win approval for his own political stance. More often than not he succeeded.5 The People, for their part, had to be content to listen. If they approved or disapproved of the views presented to them, they could do so only with their silence, shouts, or other collective demonstrations. In the contio, the relationship established between orators and audience preserved the same unequal quality as the one that linked the magistrate possessing imperium or tribunician power to the Roman People whom he had to inform and convince, but who in principle remained under the authority of their leaders.
This gave a particular form to speeches delivered before the People. First, the physical setting, its symbolic meaning, and the very distance that the voice had to cover necessitated a powerful oratorical performance. Orators tended to adopt a style that gave the greater weight to emotion6 and to emphasize in their choice of arguments their personal connection with their audience.7 They stressed their status in the city, their devotion, and their zeal in defending its interests. And they had to recognize as well the role and majesty of the Roman People, in whom they acknowledged the power to decide. The exchange imposed a necessity on the part of the orator on one hand to emphasize his legitimacy and thus to rely on his auctoritas, and on the other to win the confidence of his audience and thus to find the arguments that would win its support. Consequently the oratorical styles available to him oscillated between affirmation of his own authority, ofhis competence, and ofhis devotion to the citizenry, and recognition of the rights and aspirations of his fellow-citizens.
In the first case, he would give himself an air of authority that corresponded well to the position ofleadership that he occupied. The best example ofthis stance is doubtless the remark that the consul P. Scipio Nasica directed one day at the People after they had interrupted his speech with a shout of disapproval: ‘‘Be silent, please, citizens, for I understand better than you what is best for the Republic.’’ If we are to believe our source, this produced a respectful silence among his audience.8 An oratorical ethos of this kind therefore corresponded to a traditional type: the image of the magistrate possessing imperium, whose function was to give orders.9 This answered to an expectation on the part of the citizenry and earned the trust of his fellow-citizens for one who knew how to show himself worthy of it.
The second, and opposite, style - the one most frequently employed at the end of the Republic - led the orator to underscore his dedication to the cause of the People, to take account of their difficulties and to make proposals that pleased them. This kind of oratorical posture is sometimes called ‘‘popular eloquence’’ (eloquentia popularis). One could take as an example this passage that Cicero quotes from a speech given by L. Licinius Crassus in 106 to support the proposed law of Servilius Caepio, which sought to reduce the power of the prosecutors in the criminal courts: ‘‘Rescue us from our troubles, rescue us from the jaws of men whose savagery cannot be sated with our blood! Don’t allow us to be slaves to anyone but all of you together, whose slaves we can and should be’’ (Cic. De. Or. 1.225). This type of oratory had been extensively developed by certain politicians - the Gracchi in particular - who made use of the tribunate of the plebs to promote a policy of reform that won them popular support. This contributed to the definition of another type of political leader, one attentive to the needs of the People and capable of braving conservative interests, but whose oratorical stance rested more on a style exploiting pathos and emotion.
In the Senate the atmosphere was different. Meetings of the Senate brought together a relatively small number of people in an enclosed space. True, the senators numbered 300 until Sulla and 600 afterward. But this roster never represented the real number of those in attendance, and the figure of 400 senators actually in attendance seems to have been reached only on the most important occasions. We can therefore presume that most meetings must have brought together no more than half of this potential audience. The places where they assembled also had to be ‘‘inaugurated,’’ i. e., consecrated by an augur. Most of the time senators met in the Curia, located in the Forum, or in one ofthe temples situated on the Campus Martius (Apollo or Bellona), on the Capitol (Jupiter Optimus Maximus) or in the Forum (Concord or Castor). 0 There they took their seats on benches and spoke from where they sat.11 The speeches they delivered did not therefore involve the same unequal relationship that connected the magistrates to the Roman People. Here, debates were joined between men who were peers.
An exception to this rule, however, was that the magistrate who presided over the meeting followed a precise order of speaking when decisions were being made. Until the early first century, the presiding magistrate gave the opportunity to speak first to the one whom the last censors, when establishing the senatorial roster, had designated ‘‘First Senator’’ (princeps senatus), that is to say the oldest or (from 209) the most distinguished of the patrician former censors (see also Chapter 17). Thereafter, the first speaker was the former consul whom the presider particularly wished to honor (preceded by the two consuls-elect if the annual election had taken place). Once this eminent person had delivered his views the magistrate would then pass to the rest of the senators present, following a descending hierarchy of rank defined by the highest office each had held. Each gave his opinion (sententia), sometimes in the form of a lengthy argument, sometimes briefly expressing agreement with an opinion already set forth. Thus only the most important figures of the city had the opportunity to make an extended speech; certainly, the names that our sources have preserved of senators who spoke on one occasion or another demonstrate a clear prevalence of former dictators, censors, and consuls. This does not indicate that the younger senators were excluded from debates, but their turn to speak did not come until after the more esteemed senators had spoken, so that they could more often adhere to an opinion already expressed than dare to articulate a new one.12
This connection between the order of speaking and a senator’s rank, that is, his dignitas, had great influence on the mode of communication and the style of oratory adopted in the Senate. Speeches in the Senate did not involve addressing a group of ordinary citizens from on high but involved speaking in an enclosed space, on the same level, to equals or superiors. Each senator therefore had to choose the words and arguments that corresponded to his position, striking a balance among assurance, audacity, and conformity to adapt his proposal precisely to the auctoritas that he was acknowledged to hold. Pliny the Younger, under the Empire, recalled the distant past when the education of a young senator passed in an apprenticeship in senatorial convention:
This is why those who would later be candidates for office used to stand by the doors of the Curia and be observers of public deliberation of the city before taking part in them. . . What powers those consulting the body, what rights those delivering their opinions had; how forceful magistrates could be, how free the rest; when one should yield, when stand firm; when to be silent and how long to speak; when to separate contradictory motions and how to add a rider to an earlier one; in short, senatorial procedure in its entirety was taught by the most reliable method of instruction: by example. (Pliny Ep. 8.14.5-6)
Political debate between aristocrats thus depended upon an acute awareness of the status that each held - status that set the conditions for challenges and tests of relative strength. It was not so much by grand flourishes of gesture and speech as by proposals aptly harmonized with the orator’s circumstances that he was able to maintain or acquire the necessary political influence.
The creation and development of the standing courts (quaestiones perpetuae) from the middle of the second century opened up a new field for political oratory. These new procedures were added to, and then in practice substituted for, the trials which up to this point members of the aristocracy had conducted before the assemblies (iudicia populi). The main courts that appeared or gained importance during this period were: the quaestio de repetundis, which concerned extortion of funds at the expense of provincials; the quaestio de peculatu, concerning embezzlement of the property of the city; the quaestio de ambitu, for electoral fraud; the quaestio de maiestate, which concerned crimes against the majesty of the Roman People; the quaestio de sicariis et veneficiis, which involved armed gangs and poisonings; and the quaestio de vi for public violence. These courts essentially involved members of the senatorial order and obliged them to defend themselves before juries composed (depending on the period) of senators, equites, or a combination of the two (see also Chapter 11). The penalty could be a fine, or it could be capital, resulting in exile and confiscation of property. The stakes were thus very high and weighed heavily on the careers and the lives of members of the aristocracy who had always to fear prosecution by their adversaries.
The conditions that governed speakers’ participation and delivery in the law courts were, however, notably distinct from those that prevailed in meetings of the People and of the Senate. Pleaders fell into two categories: those appearing for the prosecution and those for the defense. They addressed a jury of 50 to 75 members seated on a platform and presided over by a magistrate. These orators were surrounded by the principals, their witnesses, and their supporters who occupied benches that faced the jury on the pavement of the Forum. The 250 to 350 people who participated in the trial in this way roughly constituted a circle which was itself surrounded by a numerous and attentive crowd ready to express itself noisily (see also Chapter 18).13
This, then, was the orators’ situation: they had to convince an audience composed of important members of the aristocracy regarding the guilt or innocence of a senator. They thereby assumed certain weighty responsibilities which placed them at the heart of the friendly and hostile relations that spread across the upper strata of society. But at the same time, they called upon all the spectators to witness not only the facts of the case, but also the courage and eloquence that they demonstrated in pursuit of their task (see also Chapter 17). The quaestiones thus became a crucial part of Roman civic life toward the end of the Republic. They opened a space for political expression to orators who were not senators and who without this opportunity would not have been able to give their opinion in a public forum. They also gave the Roman People the opportunity to reach their own conclusions and to express their emotions in less solemn circumstances than in contiones (see also Chapter 18).
But the situation of prosecutors differed from that of defense counsel. The prosecuting speakers had to prove their charges. They were thus encouraged to develop an offensive oratorical strategy that in the name of the superior interests of the city led them to attack well-known figures such as former magistrates, rich in connections and sometimes in prestige. Since the process gave any citizen the right to haul a senator before a court, those who ventured to undertake this role were most often ‘‘new men’’ or young nobles seeking to start their careers. In each case, they found themselves in a position of inferior status relative to their opponent. They therefore often followed the path of ‘‘popular eloquence’’ and took up on their own account that rhetorical ethos of the defender of the People’s interests which deployed an aggressive, violent, and emotional kind of oratory against the conservatives’ arguments.
On the other side, speakers for the defense were most often senators who had reached the highest echelon of society. The main reason for this was that a defendant of senatorial rank would find it difficult to abase himself by appealing to a person of inferior status for protection and thus risk putting himself in this person’s debt for a service as important as acquittal on a capital charge (see also Chapter 19). Furthermore, the defense had to be reinforced by persons with the greatest authority possible. These men played the role of protectors (patroni) and adopted oratorical styles that conformed to their position: defending with dignity and sobriety when possible, but at the same time not hesitating to resort to emotion and appeals to pity if the situation warranted it. The stakes were so high that they had to make use of every resource offered by oratorical art; so in this way the most talented forensic speakers achieved disproportionate influence and reputation in Rome.
All the orators who pleaded before the courts acted therefore according to their place in the hierarchy of status and position. Those who were best known took advantage of their past and the confidence their fellow-citizens had accorded them. Those who could hardly boast this kind of background sought to be judged on their skill and their devotion to the city or to their friends. They thus anticipated the role of defender and leader of the civic community to which they aspired, and whose image they assumed.
Whatever opportunities were presented to Roman orators for speaking on the three main stages of Roman political life, they all had to take up attitudes, choose arguments, and construct an image adapted to the status they held in the city. Oratory could not be separated either from prestige (dignitas) or auctoritas. It expressed the first while deriving from and reinforcing the second. Each specific status induced a corresponding mode of behavior and an oratorical ethos founded in fact on the ethos of governance that defined the leader of the city, which the orator was or sought to be.
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