Ability in oratory undoubtedly often enhanced public reputation and advancement in the cursus honorum. The most striking example of such a benefit is Cicero himself, someone with no senatorial ancestors who rose to the consulate of 63 bce from the obscurity of Arpinum, a town situated far from the center of Roman power, although only 110 kilometers away on the map. His distinguished career as a public speaker started in 81 bce, and he was recognized as Rome’s leading orator by the early sixties {Brut. 320-1). Oratory ranked second only to generalship as an accomplishment that could advance a career to the consulate {see, e. g., Mur. 22, where, admittedly, it is to the advantage of Cicero’s client for generalship to be ranked before oratory). It was very rare however, to undergo the double promotion of Cicero, first into Rome’s political class, and then to the pinnacle of success within it, and the author of the Commentariolum Petitionis argues that Cicero’s defense of consulars in the law courts demonstrates his suitability for the consulate {Quintus Cicero?, Comment. Pet. 2). The importance of oratory is reinforced by Cicero’s Brutus, his history of Roman orators {not including those still alive in 46 BCE, the date of its composition). This work presents a rich and varied range of personalities, including quite a few of lower social standing than we regularly encounter in our republican historical sources. As Cicero moves chronologically through generations of Roman orators, we can detect the positive influence that their craft had on their advancement in society. Of the 221 orators included by Cicero in the Brutus {Sumner 1973), about twenty-one appear to be of nonRoman Italian origin, and another ten appear to have been Romans who rose from obscurity to some renown. However, we cannot assume that all the orators mentioned in the Brutus were household names in antiquity, since it is one of Cicero’s most erudite works, listing many individuals that were obscure at that time {244, 251, 299). It is worth noting too that the many more typical Roman politicians mentioned by Cicero may themselves have owed their political success as much to their oratory as to their family background. Whatever the case, it is clear that oratory became a significant pathway for Italians to consolidate and develop their role in the vastly expanded Roman state that took shape after the Social war (PISS bce), in which the Romans first crushed their rebellious Italian allies and then gave them Roman citizenship.
World History
