Conceptualizing oratory as song forces us to pay attention to the body-in-performance as well. Because of their intrinsically reductive nature, the surviving texts do not allow us to directly pinpoint the bodily movements that in the second century bce sustained the speech act during an oratorical performance. Modern observers must turn to Cicero once again. In his rhetorical works Cicero does not discuss these aspects in relation to Cato, but he does mention them when looking at the oratorical import of Gaius Gracchus.
In the historical memory of the late republic the oratory of Gaius Gracchus is tightly bound up with his political career and that of his brother Tiberius. As plebeian tribunes (Tiberius in 133 bce and Gaius in 122-121 bce) the two proposed a series of reforms. These included an expanded political participation for the equestrian order (comprising primarily landowners and businessmen who did not traditionally engage in a political career), the distribution of public land to increase the number of citizens suited for military service, and the extension of Roman citizenship to the Italian allies. Their political strategies soon met the resistance of those senators who perceived the reforms as a threat to their well-established hegemony. The tensions caused by the proposals of the two brothers escalated to violence. In 133 bce Tiberius and 300 of his supporters were beaten to death during a popular assembly by a group of senators and their clients. In 121 bce Gaius killed himself and 3,000 of his followers were tried and executed. A century or so later these events were reimagined as the seeds of the discord that led to the civil wars and the death of the republic.
In the Brutus Cicero gives details about Gaius’ oratorical training when speaking about the eloquence of his brother Tiberius, of which no direct evidence survives. Their mother, cornelia, looked after their education and provided them with the most renowned rhetors of the time. Among these Cicero singles out Diophanes of Mytilene and Menelaus of Marathus (Brut. 100, 104, 211). When he finally comes to discuss Gaius individually cicero praises his excellent intellect and passionate political engagement, but he also denounces his relentless loyalty to the dead brother (125-6). With these words cicero alludes to the outcomes of Gaius’ political choices, but ten years or so before he had most clearly tied Gaius’ oratorical exuberance to the overall crisis of the republic.
In the De Oratore, a dialogue set in 91 bce, the character of Quintus Mucius Scaevola praises the natural and educated eloquence of the two Gracchi brothers. Yet he also stresses that with that same eloquence they managed to shatter the state that they had inherited and that their father’s advice and their grandfather’s valor had made prosperous (De Or. 1.38). Toward the end of the dialogue, when the character of crassus expounds on the proper use of gesture and voice, this issue emerges once again but more subtly. In this context Crassus cites a passage from a speech that Gaius delivered not long before his death:
Quo me miser conferam? quo vertam? in Capitoliumne? at fratris sanguine redundat. an domum? matremne ut miseram lamentantem videam et abiectam? (Cicero, De Oratore 3.214)
Where should I go, wretched as I am? Where should I turn? To the Capitol? But it is filled with my brother’s blood! Should I go home? To see my wretched mother wailing and distressed?
To this Crassus adds that Gaius made such a use of his eyes, vocal pitch, and gestures that even his enemies could not hold back their tears (De Or. 3.214). Later on Crassus underscores the dramatic dimension of Gaius’ oratory: first, he cites a passage from Ennius’ Medea, in which the formidable heroine likewise wonders: quo nunc me vortam? (‘‘where shall I turn now?’’, 3.217); afterwards, he recounts that when Gaius delivered his speeches he was wont to have a flute player standing behind him to help him keep in check the modulation of vocal pitch (see also Val. Max. 8.10.1; Quint. Inst. 1.10.27-8; Cass. Dio 25.85.2). Crassus approves the use of pitch modulation during oratorical performances, but he suggests that the flute player be left at home (Cic. De Or. 3.226-7). Within the economy of the De Oratore Crassus’ final intervention looks backwards to Scaevola and to his comments on the disruptive consequences of an exceedingly theatrical oratory, but also forward to the death of Crassus and the horrors of the Social war.
Post-Ciceronian commentators all focus on Gaius’ manipulation of the emotions; yet they produce two contrasting images by turning their attention to the body to the exclusion of the word and vice versa. Plutarch, for example, transforms Gaius into the ultimate paragon of a demagogic oratory that uses performance devices drawn from the theater in order to sway the emotions of the populace (see also Val. Max. 8.10.1; Tac. Dial. 26): he moved on the speaker’s platform excessively, had the habit of beating his thighs, and let his toga fall inappropriately from his left shoulder (Plut. Ti. Gracch. 2, C. Gracch. 4.1). Conversely, Gellius stresses that Gaius was vehement and forceful (NA 10.3.1), but by pursuing a more textually oriented reading he makes no concessions to the expression of emotions: Gaius’ way of speaking was characterized by the brevitas (‘‘conciseness’’), venustas (‘‘elegance’’), and mundities (‘‘purity’’) that one would find in comedy (10.3.4) and his lexical choices veered toward the colloquial (10.3.6; see also Quint. Inst. 12.10.10; Sen. Ep. 114.13). Gellius produced these comments after comparing the written version of the 122 bce speech De Legibus Promulgatis with Cato’s speech against Thermus, analyzed above, and Cicero’s Verrines 2.5.161-3. Here is one of the fragments that Gellius uses for comparison:
Nuper Teanum Sidicinum consul venit. uxor eius dixit se in balneis virilibus lavari velle. queaestori Sidicino M. Mario datum est negotium, uti balneis exigerentur qui lavaban-tur. uxor renuntiat viro parum cito sibi balneas traditas esse et parum lautas fuisse. idcirco palus destitutus est in foro eoque adductus suae civitatis nobilissimus homo M. Marius. vestimenta detracta sunt, virgis caesus est. Caleni, ubi id audierunt, edixerunt ne quis in balneis lavisse vellet cum magistratus Romanus ibi esset. Ferentini ob eandem causam praetor noster quaestores abripi iussit: alter se de muro deiecit, alter prensus et virgis caesus est. (Gaius Gracchus, Orationes 48; Malcovati 19764: 191-2)
Recently the consul came to Sidiciniam Teanum. His wife asserted that she wanted to bathe in the men’s baths. The Sidicinian quaestor Marcus Marius was ordered to have those bathing leave the baths. The wife reported to her husband that the baths had not been handed over to her quickly enough and that they were not very clean. At this, a pole was brought down and placed in the Forum and Marcus Marius the most distinguished man of his community was taken there. His clothes were stripped off and he was flogged with sticks. When they heard about this, the people of Cales promulgated an edict to the effect that no one was to be allowed to bathe in the baths when a Roman official was there. For this reason in Ferentinum our praetor had the quaestors dragged off. One threw himself from the wall, while the other was seized and flogged with sticks.
Commenting on this fragment, modern critics (Albrecht 1989: 33-53; Courtney 1999: 124-33; Cavarzere 2000: 85-7) have highlighted the following features: a seemingly careless use of word repetition (those referring to the baths and to the bathing) that does not achieve any particular sound effect; the asyndetical stringing of sentences (except for the one beginning with idcirco), and the more general reiteration of demonstratives (eius..., idcirco..., ubi id audierunt..., ob eandem causam). Moreover, critics have noted that the narration is characterized by binary structures. These are marked by repetitions of the same word (as in uxor-uxor) or proper nouns (as in Caleni-Ferentini) in initial position and by alliterating pairs within the same period (vestimenta-virgis, alter-alter).
In years past the lack of subordination and the alignment of short sentences noted in the passage above were interpreted as signs of primitive simplicity. More recently, however, it has been emphasized that such an interpretation was based on a purely textual appreciation of the passage and denied the performative dimension that made Gaius’ oratory memorable (e. g., Cavarzere 2000: 86-7; Albrecht 1989: 48). Moreover, the validity of this interpretation is called into question by Gaius’ adoption of elaborate metrical parallelisms, which emerge most remarkably in the remains of another speech:
Quare vos cupide per hosce annos adpetistis atque voluistis, ea si temere repudiaritis abesse non potest quin aut olim cupide adpetisse aut nunc temere repudiasse dicamini. (Gaius Gracchus, Orationes 32; Malcovati 19764: 184)
If you inadvertently were to repudiate what you have passionately desired and wanted, there is no way that you can avoid it being said that either you once passionately desired these things or that you now have inadvertently repudiated them.
As has been noted (Norden 1958: 172), the passage is mapped on an antithesis marked by two rhythmical units containing the same number of syllables (thirty-one each) and characterized by two subunits of ten syllables within the second, punctuated by aut-aut. Furthermore, in the passage the end of the longer rhythmical units (repudiasse dicaminli) is framed within two cretics (~ ~), one of Cicero’s
Favorite clausulae. The emergence of this clausula here and in other places (see above, e. g., in mlt misltr cOnferim, De Or. 3.214; Malcovati 19764: 196) is often read as a tentative step toward Ciceronian norms. What generally goes unremarked is that Cicero’s choice of metrical structures at the end of periods over others was prompted by a later contest organized around a rhetorically defined opposition between ‘‘Asian-ism’’ and ‘‘Atticism.’’ Gaius’ selection of clausulae by contrast was dictated by an attempt to fully exploit cultural materials rendered available by non-elite professionals.
As it stands, the two-faced portrait of Gaius painted in antiquity, the fiery demagogue ready to manipulate the emotions of the mob and the rational intellectual who made good use of rhetorical techniques recommended by his Greek teachers, continues to dominate the scholarly discussion. Some are still tempted to classify Gaius as an Asianist in the making because of his attentive eye to metrical patterns and movements of the body (e. g., Cavarzere 2000: 87-8). Others acknowledge Gaius’ metrical sophistication and bodily bravura, but refrain from defining Gaius as an Asianist altogether (e. g., Courtney 1999: 132-3). In one way or the other, however, the discussion remains somewhat trapped in the perspective of Cicero and his successors. In the attempt to rescue Gaius from the accusation of primitive simplicity, for example, his allusion to drama in the speech cited by the Ciceronian Crassus has been linked to Euripides’ Medea (502-5) rather than to Ennius’ (Albrecht 1989: 49) or to
Demosthenes’ second speech against Aphobus (Leeman 1963: 56-7). By the same token Gaius’ gestures to poetry in words and imagery have been viewed as a clear indication of his rhetorical training because rhetors used to cite poetic passages to exemplify their teachings (Albrecht 1989: 49). As a result the direct effects of poetry on early oratory are still underexplored and the performance dimension of early oratory is still understood within later parameters.
Ancient commentators emphasize Gaius’ exploitation of bodily and musical means; this fact, however, should not lead us to think that Cato did not do the same. Gaius made the most of bodily movements akin to the theater and, at least on one occasion, he went as far as to cite the words of a play that his audience must have seen performed on stage. But Cato drew on the theater as well, since throughout his orations he uses metrical patterns that typify the most musical parts of Plautus’ comedies. On the other hand, Gaius’ use of a flute player during his performances does not appear particularly theatrical if extrapolated from Cicero’s discussion in the De Oratore and once it is recognized that a song culture existed in Rome well before the advent of poetry. After all, the tradition of the Italic carmen, often advocated in discussions of second-century BCE oratory, most clearly entailed a musical and a bodily dimension that were lost the very moment any sample of this tradition came to be written.
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