Chapter 5
Rhetoric at Rome
Chapter Overview
Chapter Five considers rhetoric in the Roman world as a path to political power, personal success, and participation in civic life. Rhetorical training was a key to influence and personal advancement, but was also a means of advancing traditional Roman values. Rhetoric also came to be viewed as the means of achieving distinction and grace in writing. Roman theorists such as Cicero and Quintilian developed the loci of judicial pleading to a very high level of sophistication. Longinus also employed the insights of Greek rhetoric to transform the Latin language, considered rough and vulgar by the Greeks, into one of the great beauty, power, and subtlety of expression.
Review Questions
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Invention (inventio): The discovery of valid or seemingly valid arguments.
Arrangement (dispositio): The distribution of arguments in the proper order.
Expression (elocutio): Using the proper language for arguments.
Memory (memoria): Having a firm mental grasp on the words and matter of a speech.
Delivery (pronuntiatio): Control over voice and body in a manner fitting to the style and subject matter of the speech.
Cicero’s two general categories of loci for judicial pleading included: the attributes of the person and the attributes of the act. Roman culture valued personal character, so addressing the attributes of a person was persuasive in a courtroom. Secondly, the attributes of the act were aimed at addressing the nature of a particular act, its consequences, how it was performed, etc. The attributes of an act resemble issues that might be brought up in a modern courtroom.
Exordium: The introduction, designed to get the audience’s attention.
Narratio: This was a statement of the facts necessary to understanding the case.
Confirmatio: This section dealt with the evidence that would support claims proposed in the narratio.
Confutatio: The part of the speech that addressed counterarguments.
Peroratio: The conclusion, which presented the full strength of the case being made.
Longinus advanced the rhetorical tradition in several ways. First, he emphasized the emotional power of words. Second, Longinus marked a shift from rhetoric’s interest in the spoken word to that of the written word. Finally, Longinus extended the rhetorical tradition as the inventor of literary criticism. He began the systematic analysis of written texts and how they can affect an audience.
The Second Sophistic was characterized by the rise of “display rhetoric” in Rome that emphasized style over content. This occurred primarily in the Greek provinces of the Roman Empire and was guided by Greek rhetoricians. These Sophists were, like their earlier Greek counterparts, teachers and entertainers. With the decline of democracy, political public discourse was suppressed.
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Essay Questions
- Cicero was the most famous and influential orator of the Roman period. He was also an astute theorist of rhetoric from a very early age. Cicero’s conception of rhetoric centered on the union of two capacities or abilities. What were they, and why was this union important to Cicero? What did this joining of capacities have to do with the concept of the “complete orator”? What was the social significance of such a person to Cicero?
- Compare and contrast Cicero’s two major works on rhetoric, De Inventione and De Oratore. About when in Cicero’s lifetime was each written? With what kinds of issues is each concerned? In which does Cicero develop his canons of oratory? In which does he develop a theory of humor? How are these two works on rhetoric different?
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Recommended Readings
Want to learn more? Check out these bonus readings!
On Rhetoric in Rome
Graham Anderson. Sage, Saint, and Sophist: Holy Men and their Associates in the Early Roman Empire. London: Routledge, 1994.
G. W. Bowersock. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969.
Barry Brummett, Reading Rhetorical Theory (Harcourt College Publishers, Fort Worth, TX: 2000), 191.
Percival Cole. Later Roman Education in Ausonius, Capella, and the Theodosian Code. New York: Columbia University Press, 1909.
A Companion to Roman Rhetoric. Ed. William Dominik, Jon Hall. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
Joy Connolly. The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
George Kennedy. The Art of Rhetoric in Rome. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972.
Michael Leff. “The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius.” Rhetorica 1 (Spring 1983): 23–44.
Brian Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 28.
By Cicero
De Inventione. Trans. H. M. Hubbell. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1976.
De Oratore. Trans. E. W. Sutton, H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classical Library, 1967.
On Cicero
Christopher P. Craig. Form as Argument in Cicero’s Speeches: A Study of Dilemma. American Classical Studies #31. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1993.
Anthony Everitt. Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome’s Greatest Politician. New York: Random House, 2003.
Manfred Fuhrmann. Cicero and the Roman Republic. Trans. W. E. Yuill. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Harold C. Gotoff. Cicero’s Caesarian Speeches: A Stylistic Commentary. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
Christian Habicht. Cicero the Politician. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
James M. May. Trials of Character: The Eloquence of Ciceronian Ethos. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1988.
D. R. Shackleton Bailey. Cicero. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971.
Ann Vasaly. Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.
By Quintilian
Institutes of Oratory. Trans. H. E. Butler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959–1963.
Quintilian on the Early Education on the Citizen Orator. Ed. James J. Murphy. Trans. John S. Watson. Indianapolis, IN: Library of Liberal Arts, 1965.
By Longinus
On the Sublime. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Library of Liberal Arts, 1957.