Ancient Roman Rhetoric

While some recent studies have begun to engage the letters of Ignatius of Antioch within the social and rhetorical contexts of the Roman Empire, at this point there is little engagement regarding the influence of Roman imperialist rhetoric of subjugation within the theological arguments and terminology of Ignatius’ letters. This paper then wishes to explore and observe how the author of Ignatius’ Letter to the Ephesians uses two separate but important rhetorical ploys within his central exhortation to the audience’s unity and subordination to the local bishop and church leaders: first, the imperial rhetoric and terminology of Rome, and, secondly, the example and theology of Paul, particularly his letter alleged letter to the Ephesians.
This paper will demonstrate in two parts how the author of Ignatius’ letter to the Ephesians crafts and ideal identity for the audience of second century Christians as successors of Paul’s early community in Ephesus who received from the apostle the knowledge of Christ that made them complete and mature in faith, and who were successfully subordinated and united as one community under the leadership of the apostle; so too, then, should Ignatius’ audience be subordinate to the bishop and presbyters in their own time who continue to form them into a united church and temple for Christ so as to fulfill God’s plan for salvation.

This chapter discusses the place of metaphor in ancient and modern political rhetoric. It starts with the idea of metaphor in classical rhetorical and stylistic theories and juxtaposes it with modern cognitive theories, to note that the differences between Greek theorists’ and modern linguists’ views have often been misconstrued and overemphasised. It argues that the cognitive aspect of metaphor, well represented in Greek theorising, was sidelined in Roman and later tradition. It also analyses examples of some prominent types of metaphors in classical Athenian and recent rhetorical practice, including Cold War rhetoric, and discusses their real-life impact (including metaphors of states as structures and containers, personifications and body politic, and war as a sporting competition).

Guérin’s monograph is thoroughly researched, clearly argued, and offers insights into all aspects of witness testimony in the Republic courts. It will be a valuable contribution to the literature on the Republican courts, on oratory, and Roman rhetoric.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Ancient Rhetoric Series: Brill's Companions to Classical Reception, Volume: 23 Volume Editors: Sophia Papaioannou, Andreas Serafim, and Michael Edwards This volume, examining the reception of ancient rhetoric, aims to demonstrate that the past is always part of the present: in the ways in which decisions about crucial political, social and economic matters have been made historically; or in organic interaction with literature, philosophy and culture at the core of the foundation principles of Western thought and values. Analysis is meant to cover the broadest possible spectrum of considerations that focus on the totality of rhetorical species (i.e. forensic, deliberative and epideictic) as they are applied to diversified topics (including, but not limited to, language, science, religion, literature, theatre and other cultural processes (e.g. athletics), politics and leadership, pedagogy and gender studies) and cross-cultural, geographica...

L’importance du dialogue entre rhétorique et religion émerge de façon flagrante de la lecture des textes anciens. Dans l’étude de cette interaction, nos sources les plus évidentes sont certainement les textes de nature proprement rhétorique ou liturgique. Mais d’autres textes littéraires, traitant de thématiques religieuses à l’aide d’outils rhétoriques, se révèlent tout aussi fertiles pour analyser ces échanges. Par une approche diachronique, faisant la part belle au dialogue entre littérature grecque et littérature latine, entre Properce et les Jésuites, Tite-Live, Lucien et Homère, cette journée d’études se propose d’investiguer les forces et les limites persuasives du religieux et de la représentation du divin dans la construction de discours littéraires, afin de rendre compte de l’importance d’aborder conjointement rhétorique et religion dans leurs interactions réciproques.

Edited and Translated into English by Brian Duvick.
25. But when the sons of Priam entered, Panthus implored Hector, for among the young princes he was considered good in both virtue and counsel, and exhorted him that especially now, since the Greeks had come as suppliants for this reason, Helena might be returned with a treaty of friendship; and that it was not enough to come to an agreement to satisfy the love of Alexander, if he had ever had any for Helena. They should therefore discuss before the eyes of all the presence of the Greek kings, their brave deeds, and the glory they recently won when they overturned the states most friendly to Troy. This is why Polymestor, though he abhorred the type of crime he committed, had handed Polydorus over to the Greeks. Because they must fear that regions feigning close relations make pernicious plans against Troy, he said nothing was certain or trustworthy, that they would be in imminent danger against all things treacherous and hostile. If they all reflected on the business, did not permit the legates to delay any longer, and sent Helena back with satisfaction, a greater and closer bond of peace would be joined between the two realms. When Hector heard this, the recollection of his brother's crime made

This paper explores some issues raised by Seneca’s Letter 52. The main semantic field of the letter is that of praising. The list of different laudatory attitudes, from which you can understand each one’s personality and so identify bad teachers of any sort (52,12), is derived from physiognomics; this connection was already in ancient rhetoric; so, the letter offers us a representation of philosophical lessons in the form of epideictic rhetoric. From this point of view, the ideal teacher is Papirius Fabianus, who is explicitly quoted only once, but a careful insight can show that each trait of the good teacher described in letter 52 is indeed an allusion to him. The comparison made in letter 52 between a bad way of teaching philosophy, which searches for praise and earning and is thus comparable to prostitution, and a good way, which recalls a religious initiation, is a commonplace between the Ist and IInd century CE: we find significant examples of that in Epict. Diss. 3,21 and Lucian. 51,11. Seneca’s letter may thus represent an early discussion on this topic.

According to Spicer and Alvesson, the commander-metaphors belong to the “‘darker’ metaphors of leadership”, as such leadership “requires steely coldness and hardness. It requires the leader to take the hard decisions and enforce social order. In short, it requires command.” In view of this perspective, it is of interest to examine a prevalent facet of the presentation of the Apostle Paul’s understanding of leadership. For though the gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of peace, Paul – as the proclaimer of Jesus’ gospel – had no hesitation in presenting himself and his ministry in language that mirrors that of military commanders, in a kind of “metaphorical self- enactment”. Therefore, the questions to examine are: 1) What could have been Paul’s motivation to use such motifs and similarly what could have been the purpose and the anticipated benefit for Paul in using the chosen language? 2) What are the implications for Paul’s understanding of the church as the people Paul wanted to lead? 3) Which ethical and practical implications from the use of military metaphors can be found in the churches led by the apostle? 4) Should (or may) those metaphors still be used in leadership discourse today?

Nowadays, when scholars speak about ancient philosophical or scientific core texts, writers like Plato, Aristotle or, to a lesser extent, Pliny the Elder always come first to mind. But we must not underestimate the importance of other texts, maybe less known today, but fundamental in the history of human knowledge. For example, Édouard Jeauneau, in one of his article, stressed the crucial role in medieval times of four Latin books written in the late Antiquity : the Commentaries on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, the Commentaries on Plato’s Timeus by Calcidius, the Marriage of Philology and Mercury by Martianus Capella and, finally, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boetius. These two last works were the bulding blocks of what we later called the seven liberal arts : few people know in fact that the encyclopedia of Martianus Capella is the first example that survived up to this day of the reunion of the sciences called triuium (grammar, dialectic and rhetoric) with the quadriuium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music). In this paper, I intend to focus my attention on two of these texts, Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury and Macrobius’ Commentaries, to explore the relation between science (more exactly astronomy) and literature in analyzing the literary figures depicting truth.

The opinion that Roman jurists were giants in the field of private law and dwarfs in criminal law is nowadays a little bit out of date. However, upon a closer analysis of the use of the term ‘accident’ (casus), such a statement seems to be justified. Casus for Roman jurists was not only, as in the sphere of private law, a pure random fact, but also a culpable human act. It is not hard to guess that their writings and opinions were inconsistent in that field and sometimes suggested quite surprising legal classifications of deeds committed in such a way. In order to un- derstand this paradox it might be helpful to take a closer look at historical regulations of crimes committed unintentionally, including above all homicide, but also rhetorical sources, especial- ly works of Cicero. His writings were a canon for learning rhetoric in later times, as well as in- spiration for next generations of Roman jurists. His remarks and specific character of the meta- phorical phrase si telum manu fugit quam iecit, constituting a kind of definitional topos of crimes committed unintentionally, can lift the veil of secrecy and enable penetration of Roman jurists’ philosophy of life and their intellectual formation.

Le fonti greche e latine ci hanno tramandato molte centinaia di temi di declamazione estremamente disparati. Un’indagine ravvicinata evidenzia però un dato di fondo: di un numero relativamente limitato di temi possediamo più sviluppi, trattazioni specialistiche, menzioni; di infiniti altri ci restano solo attestazioni singole (o comunque sparute), spesso limitate a citazioni più o meno cursorie e incidentali. Il che suggerisce a sua volta che moltissimi ulteriori temi siano scomparsi senza lasciare traccia. La Tyche ha fatto certamente la sua parte: ma non si può pensare che tutto si riduca a ‘fortuna’ e ‘sfortuna’, cioè a mera casualità. Quali fattori, allora, hanno concorso a ‘sommergere’ tanta parte dei temi declamatorî antichi, a fronte di una limitata schiera di temi ‘emergenti’ che pure, prima facie, non si differenziano significativamente dagli altri?
Il presente contributo individua ed esamina un certo numero di fattori che mostrano di aver concorso alla ‘fortuna’ di pochi temi e alla scomparsa di moltissimi altri:
1) vizi tecnici;
2) riserve etico-morali;
3) rischi politici;
4) mode.
Questi fattori vengono infine messi a confronto con l’evidenza papirologica, traendone conclusioni che non hanno solo implicazioni tecnico-retoriche, ma interessano la storia dei testi antichi tout court. Se ne desume un quadro assai più chiaro di ragioni e dinamiche del naufragio di un patrimonio testuale, come appunto quello della declamazione greco-latina, che tendiamo oggi a etichettare come ‘specialistico’, ma che godé di un gradimento con pochi eguali nel panorama culturale dei primi secoli della nostra èra.

The longest of Cicero’s post exile speeches, the Pro Sestio occasioned a return for the orator from disgrace, yet his anxieties regarding the memoria of his consulship, his present auctoritas and in particular, his relationship with the res publica is interwoven throughout the text through the manipulation and complex interconnection of time and space. Recent scholarship on time and space in Cicero alludes to such aspects of his self-fashioning and anxieties, most notably Vasaly (1993) and Ker (2007), but the creation of parallel time-scapes via Cicero’s linguistic manipulation of events has been little explored to date.

This paper considers three elements of time-space manipulation within the text and how this reflects Cicero’s anxieties and his attempts at self-fashioning a more triumphal narrative at a time of uncertainty. Firstly, how the relationship between his enemies’ inappropriate nocturnal use of domestic and civic spaces combined with vivid movement (volito) created a sharp delineation between their actions and those of the Republic’s stalwarts.

Secondly, I’ll examine how he constructs a relationship between his own deeds, Rome’s civic architecture and virtuous exempla from the past; in particular how this use of space interconnects with time to both manipulate and create memory within the text. Now, such contrasting time-scapes on their own were neither novel or unusual, but the way in which he employed such dichotomies actually created an abstract space within the text in which he located his fundamental strategy; that his exemplary self (and thus the man before the audience) was in fact a doppleganger of the republic itself. Of greater interest here, as with his use of light and darkness is not only how Cicero drew on existing preconceptions of civic spaces but how certain memories were emphasised over the expense of other, perhaps more obvious ones to create new associations that revolved around his own persona and memoria.
The misdirection that results from his construction of his memoria is an important aspect of Cicero’s persuasive strategy, for not only does his linguistic manipulation of time and space solidify his own version of events, such analysis also sheds further light on his post-exile anxieties regarding his fractured relationship with the city and the republic.

Au IVe siècle ap. J C., plusieurs mouvements intellectuels se tournèrent vers la lecture des grands textes de la littérature grecque et latine. Ainsi, le système d’éducation, qui comprenait le grammaticus et le rhéteur, était basé sur la lecture de ces textes. Les philosophes, quant à eux, se plongèrent également dans les textes des philosophes anciens comme ceux de Platon, d’Aristote, etc. De plus, dans le monde religieux s’amorce une montée en popularité de la religion chrétienne qui contribua, à sa façon, à cette nouvelle réalité. En effet, cette dernière puisait son propos à même ses textes fondateurs : l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament. On remarque dès lors des changements importants dans le monde intellectuel. L’enseignement de la rhétorique, qui se trouvait au niveau supérieur du système d’éducation, s’est beaucoup transformé. On note un engouement pour l’étude de l’inuentio et pour certaines œuvres dont le De l’invention de Cicéron. On trouve des traces de cette nouvelle tendance dans les manuels de rhétorique des rhetores latini minores, c’est à dire le Pseudo Augustin, Chirius Fortunatianus, Julius Victor et Sulpitius Victor. Or, ces textes anciens sont difficilement accessibles puisqu’ils ne sont pas traduits en langue moderne. Par conséquent, la critique contemporaine s’est très peu intéressée à ces textes de l’Antiquité tardive ce qui eut comme fâcheux résultat de négliger la théorie de la rhétorique chez ces rhéteurs. Or, ce corpus de texte présente des notions qui tendent à confirmer ce glissement de la rhétorique vers l’exégèse. Il est possible que le rôle prédominant de l’inuentio ait contribué à cette transformation.