AN ORATORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON CICERO'S SPEECH ON THE CONSULAR PROVINCES - (L.) Grillo Cicero's De Provinciis Consularibus Oratio. Pp. xxii + 345, maps. New York: Oxford University Press, for the American Philological Association, 2015. Paper, £19.99, US$29.95 (Cased, £64, US$99). ISBN: 978-0-19-022459-2 (978-0-19-022458-5 hbk).

Abstract

From a methodological point of view, this book is exceptional and well-structured around a theme (the clitic nature of esse) which unifies the various findings of each chapter. P.'s argument is presented persuasively, paying attention to the relationship between spelling and speech. His tendency to explain every complex phenomenon through examples drawn from modern languages is valuable. Even though the focus is primarily on the plays of Terence (p. 189), the findings can be judiciously applied to reflect a wider picture of Latin. Three useful appendices and a detailed bibliography provide fertile ground for future linguistic studies on the behaviour of esse. Nonetheless, a little too much speculation as well as a 'risk of imprecision' (p. 6) are the book's drawbacks. Moreover, the study of the stylistic value of contraction would have benefited from expansion to the distribution of contractions by character type in Terence's comedy (for example, for the senex), for a genre that is fruitful for such an investigation due to its imitation of colloquial features (pp. 143, 157-9). One would expect to learn P.'s view on how the contracted and uncontracted forms of esse contribute to comic characterisation, despite the fact that these figures are 'statistically insignificant' (p. 158); the analysis could have included the linguistic characterisation of female speech, by low-status women (for example, the meretrix). Such research would guide Latin translators to locate contracted forms in their respective translation. Finally, there are some typographical errors, but they should not detract from the overall quality of P.'s book. This book covers an important subject and would make a recommended addition to any bookshelf of Classical Studies. The richness of analysis is of great value for scholars and advanced students, who will acknowledge the necessity to incorporate the contracted forms of esse in the paradigm of the present indicative as lexical variants of es and est. The verb esse is the core knowledge for students first learning Latin; this same verb is now being further investigated as the core to opening up hidden and unreachable aspects of the Latin language.