The orator’s function then was not only to manipulate the audience’s values and prejudices, but also, by claiming ‘‘to have the inside-line on those values’’, to take up the role of their representative (Freudenburg 1997: 4). This created alternative ethical modes. Ifthe manuscript tradition had had a different fortune so as to preserve only the speeches by, say, Clodius or Catiline we would no doubt have quite a different picture. As Corbeill (1996: 4) notes: ‘‘Among men, rhetoric as taught and practiced further defines the narrow body of persons who constitute the elite: by demonstrating that an opponent behaves contrary to the well-being of the state, the orator can isolate that opponent as an individual who has no place in society.’’ The point then becomes: what is the well-being of the state? Who retains the right to establish its content and nature? The orator, whoever he is, is one part of the answer. The other, however, is the audience.
Invective would have been effective only when the audience (whether senate, popular assembly or judicial court) embraced the picture as described for it by the speaker. The moral description of specific acts constituted an essential element in winning the audience’s approval. This rhetorical device, referred to by Quintilian as distinctio (Inst. 9.3.65), involved casting a particular action in a moral light different from that claimed by one’s opponent (see, e. g., Rhet. Her. 4.35 and Skinner 1996: 138-80 for a full treatment). If the speaker succeeds in convincing his audience of this new moral description, he has to some extent also succeeded in modifying the social perceptions of that behavior. Given the recent scholarly trend toward studying the social prejudices that underpin invective, a further way forward perhaps is the analysis of how (and how far) this rhetorical manipulation succeeded in altering the values of Roman society.
An interesting example is provided by Cicero’s Pro Milone (52 bce), in which ad hominem attacks against his opponents (mutua accusatio, Quint. Inst. 3.10.4) feature prominently (see Craig 2004: 199-213). In his delivered version of the speech, Cicero claimed that Milo had acted in self-defense. He lost the case and Milo had to flee into exile. In the written version, Cicero decided to take a slightly different stance: even if Milo had killed Clodius, he should be acquitted because the killing of Clodius was an act pro re publica in support of the common good (Cic. Mil. 72-91). In order to support this view Cicero has frequent recourse to the locus of crudelitas, the predisposition toward murderous violence, which, together with the accusation of aiming at tyranny and plundering public and private properties, makes of Clodius a terrible monster whose death could only benefit the state. In doing so, Cicero is redefining the killing of a Roman citizen as a lawful and, above all, heroic act beneficial to the republic. Such a rhetorical redefinition attempts to legitimize this behavior and, as a result, if successful, might also modify Roman moral perceptions.
Did Cicero succeed in doing so? Did Roman attitudes and values change? As Skinner (2002: 1.149) notes: ‘‘It is in large part by the rhetorical manipulation of these terms that any society succeeds in establishing, upholding, questioning or altering its moral identity. It is by describing and thereby commending certain courses of action as (say) honest or friendly or courageous, while describing and thereby condemning others as treacherous or aggressive or cowardly, that we sustain our vision of the social behavior we wish to encourage or disavow. This being so, all innovating ideologists may be said to face a hard but obvious rhetorical task. Their goal is to legitimise questionable forms of social behaviour.’’ How the Romans reacted to such rhetorical functions of invective, if and how they modified their social beliefs, perceptions and values would be an interesting direction for future inquiry.
FURTHER READING
Nisbet (1961) provides a starting point in English for the study of oratorical invective, with an excellent commentary on Cicero’s In Pisonem and in the appendix a detailed analysis of the speech as invective; see also the study of Siiss (1975), in German. Treatments of the topic in German include Opelt (1965) and Koster (1980); the latter deals in detail with both Greek and Roman invective in their different literary forms and contains an interesting section on preCiceronian invective. See also Corbeill (2002b), which is entirely devoted to Cicero. For a complementary analysis of Cicero’s oratorical invective viewed also in relation to the rest of his oratorical production, see Achard (1981), in French. On Invectiva in Ciceronem and Invectiva in Sallustium and the problem of their authenticity, see the latest edition with introduction by Shackleton Bailey (2002). See also Nisbet (1958, 1961), Syme (1964), and Koster (1980: 177-210), which also includes a treatment of Calenus’ invective against Cicero (Cass. Dio 46.1-28).
For the relationship between other literary forms and rhetorical invective see as a mine of Ciceronian and Plautine sources Hammer (1906), in Latin. Richlin (19922) has illuminating pages on Cicero’s rhetorical invective and parallel literary phenomena in satire, lampoons, and graffiti. For a collection of inscribed verses see Courtney (1995). Geffcken (1973) examines Cicero’s invective in the Pro Caelio in the light of other genres, such as comedy. This work also discusses the fragmentary invective In Clodium et Curionem in an appendix (Geffcken 1973: 58-9), on which also see more recently Crawford (1994: 270-363). For the study of invective categories as presented in Cicero’s In Pisonem, Pro Milone, and Second Philippic, see Craig (2004). For the specific abuse of incest see Hitckson-Hahn (1998); of rustic behavior and conversely of excessive urbane mannerism see Connors (1997). For literary studies of passages from Cicero’s Second Philippic see Hughes (1992) and Sussman (1994b, 1998). On the related issue of freedom of speech see Momigliano (1971), in Italian; in English, see Smith (1951), Brunt (1988b), and the edited collection by Sluiter and Rosen (2004), especially the contributions by Raaflaub (2004) and Chrissanthos (2004).
A Companion to Roman Rhetoric Edited by William Dominik, Jon Hall Copyright © 2007 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd
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