Introduction

Braund, Susanna; Gold, Barbara K.

doi:10.1353/are.1998.0014

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“…The relationship between the speaker of panegyric and the emperor praised continues to be an important aspect of the dynamics of imperial epideictic. 80 Having delivered this speech Cicero chose also to disseminate a written version. And in the subsequent development of the genre of advice to emperors, oral delivery does not seem essential.…”

Section: The Orator In Roman Societymentioning

confidence: 99%

I The Orator in Roman Society

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Roman oratory consists of two distinct phenomena. One is the occasions when men – and, very seldom, women – spoke in public. The other is the body of written texts of speeches which survive from antiquity. These are distinct objects of study: not all speeches were written down, not all those which were written down have survived; and even if we had all the speeches ever delivered, the written text can only convey a part of the experience of hearing an orator, in a particular place and time and with all the non-verbal aspects of rhetoric which contributed to an oratorical performance. In this first chapter, I consider the various occasions on which individuals spoke at Rome, reserving until the second chapter the processes by which spoken performances were transferred into written texts.

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Section: The Orator In Roman Societymentioning

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I The Orator in Roman Society

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“…But the roots of the panegyric style go back well into the Republican period. 49 As I discussed in the previous chapter, the dead were praised in funeral speeches, part of the elaborate rituals of commemoration surrounding aristocratic burials that also fed into the competitive culture among the living. Aristocratic competition made invective rather than panegyric the more familiar mode amongst the living but Cicero's corpus includes examples of panegyric writing which are markers of the changing political methods that created the need for extravagant praise of the living.…”

Section: Channels Of Communicationmentioning

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II Channels of Communication

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The oral dimension to classical literature as a whole has, rightly, become an object of increasing interest to interpreters. The process of composition of any text usually involved a spoken element; public or private readings could be a medium by which a text was disseminated; and individual reading could involve audible speech, or having another person read aloud. All Roman literature involves some oral dimension. Within this broad framework, however, oratory occupies a distinctive space. A speech is prepared for a specific time and place, to be directed at a specific audience and, in the case of forensic and deliberative oratory, with the aim of securing a specific outcome. Moreover, this first performance is, logically, oral and does not imply the existence of a written text; indeed, there was a strong convention within ancient rhetoric that speeches were delivered from memory, and even though written texts might well feature in preparation, orators would often find themselves in situations where improvisation was necessary. The sense of being created for a particular time and place is a characteristic which oratory shares with drama but, unlike drama, subsequent performances in a similar manner are difficult to envisage. Plays in both Greece and Rome were revived after the festival for which they had been initially composed; but the circumstances in front of the Roman people, in the Senate, or in a court which demanded a speech would never be repeated.

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Introduction

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I The Orator in Roman Society

I The Orator in Roman Society

II Channels of Communication

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