It might seem obvious that speeches delivered in contiones played a major role in Roman political history. But, in fact, modern historians have resisted this proposition because they believed that Roman voters cast their ballots on instructions from their superiors, and that political outcomes therefore depended on machinations at the top, rather than political sentiment at the bottom. Two revisionist viewpoints have coincided to cast doubt on this point of view. Brunt (1988c) undermined the notion that Roman citizens were generally locked into a pyramid of clientship, showing that clients were a rather small and uninfluential element in the Roman political scene. This finding undercut the idea that patrons at the top could control voting behavior by directing their clients, who were in turn patrons of other clients, and thus could create a mass following by decree. And, in a series of articles and one book, Millar has argued that in fact contiones, and thus the speeches made in them, were vital to persuade the voters. Relying on Polybius’ (6.14) statement that the Roman constitution contained a democratic element (as well as aristocratic and monarchic elements), Millar concludes that ‘‘the central element in the political life of the late Republic, and the sources from which rumor and the formation of public opinion started, was the appearance of the orator before the populus in the Forum’’ (Millar 1998: 224). In Millar’s view, the individual members of an audience for deliberative oratory were capable of making up their own minds, or changing their minds, and thus the oratory could have made a difference (Millar 1984, 1986, 1989, 1995, 1998). Therefore, it is implausible that networks existed to control the voting of tens of thousands of Roman citizens assembled together (Paterson 1985: 27-8).
Millar’s view has resulted in controversy and fruitful reexamination of the nature of republican government. Mouritsen (2001: 46) stresses the presiding magistrate’s control over contiones, citing Cicero’s description of a contio in which no opposing opinion was heard (Pro Cluentio 130, a passage in which Cicero is acting in his client’s interest when he minimizes the extent to which the contio represented popular opinion). But Cassius Dio (39.35.1-2) claims that provision was typically made for the expression of opposing opinions (see Morstein-Marx 2004: 163-72, who emphasizes that the production of opponents could serve as a way to force them to drop their opposition). Morstein-Marx, while accepting the importance of contiones, argues that they constituted a means of elite control over the masses, more than the other way around: ‘‘the balance of power between the parties in that exchange was tilted heavily toward the senators who chose the agenda, timing, and even, to some extent, their ‘crowd,’ and who, finally, also did the speaking’’ (Morstein-Marx 2004: 283-4; cf. 11-12 for his critique of Mouritsen 2001). Perhaps a consensus will eventually emerge that speeches were effective tools for shaping public opinion, yet that public opinion was decisive, and could be shaped only within limits set by the people.
World History
