Diálogo Dos Oradores: a retórica da decadência

Abstract

In this work we present a translation of Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus which seeks to be fluent, respectful of the pitch and figures of the Latin text, attentive to rhetorical jargon, and that contains some comments and a certain minimal critical apparatus, so as to allow the Portuguese-speaking reader to enjoy it not only in its neo-Ciceronian dialogical form, but also in the historical and theoretical background it is inserted in, regarding the rhetorical and political debates of the first century Principate. The translation of the Dialogus is preceded by an introduction to the work's context of publication and its transmission, as well as a review of its critical fortune and the conceptual toolkit it mobilizes. At the end, we analyze the dramatic setting and the speeches presented, and conclude that Tacitus uses intertextual strategies in order to create meaning, so as to debate the exercise of rhetoric within the political regimes experienced by Rome. He does so by contrasting the moral-programmatic content of Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria and Cicero's De Oratore with the Socratic example in the Platonic dialogues, especially in the Phaedrus.