Appreciating aper: The defence of modernity in tacitus' dialogus de oratoribus

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 49, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 224-237

  Goldberg, Sander M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 61049122302     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/49.1.224     Document Type: Review

References (35)

1. F. Leo, Ausgewählte kleine Schriften, 2 (Rome, 1960), p. 285: 'Die Gattung erfordert ihren Stil, wer verschiedene Gattungen behandelt, muss in verschiedenen Stilen schreiben.'
2. For the context of Leo's contribution to the study of the Dialogus, see D. Bo, Le principali problematiche del Dialogus de oratoribus (Zurich, 1993), pp. 250-63
3. In particular, R. Gūngerich, CP 46 (1951), 159-64
4. C. E. Murgia, HSCP 84 (1980), 99-125 and HSCP 89 (1985), 171-206
5. C. O. Brink, CQ 39 (1989), 472-503
6. See now the summary and critique in Brink, HSCP 96 (1994), 251-80 at 253-75
7. G. Williams, Change and Decline (Berkeley, 1978), p. 49
8. Cf. T. Barnes, HSCP 90 (1986), 225-44 at 232: 'The Dialogus does not discuss the decline of oratory: it assumes it.'
9. Similar statements by, inter alios, T. J. Luce, 'Reading and response in the Dialogus', in T. J. Luce and A. J. Woodman (edd.), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton, 1993), p. 19
10. K. Heldmann, Antike Theorien über Entwicklung und Verfall der Redekunst (Munich, 1982), p. 163
11. On Priscus' interruption, see O. Hiltbrunner, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 96 (1979), 31-42
12. Iubere is a very weak imperative (cf. P. White, Promised Verse [Cambridge, MA, 1993], p. 266-8), which doubtless facilitated the lexical and syntactic variants so common within this convention
13. T. Janson, Latin Prose Prefaces. Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964), p. 62
14. So, rightly, U. Haß-von Reitzenstein, Beitrāge zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Interpretation des Dialogus de oratoribus (Cologne, 1970), pp. 12-17. Contrast Cicero's straightforward declaration at Sen. 3: omnem autem sermonen tribuimus . . . Marco Catoni seni, quo maiorem auctoritatem haberet oratio
15. They were probably real people, but S. Bartsch, Actors in the Audience. Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, MA, 1994), p. 260, n. 68 is right to raise the possibility that Maternus may be a fictional composite
16. See H. Caplan, Of Eloquence (Ithaca, 1970), pp. 176-89
17. G. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton, 1972), pp. 446-64
18. This characterization, which makes the delators' style of speaking as unsavoury as their motives for doing so, was constructed by R. Syme, Tacitus, 2 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 331-3
19. and is adopted by inter alios M. Winterbottom, JRS 54 (1964), 90-4
20. The more balanced view of delation in A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1966), pp. 93-5 deserves wider attention. Aper's biography must be deduced from the Dialogus itself
21. and (more circumspectly) L. Duret, ANRW II 32.5 (1986), 3268-70
22. Thus, in defending Aper, C. Champion, Phoenix 48 (1994), 155 stresses the social context of his first argument: 'Aper's concern with the public recognition of status lay at the core of the Roman aristocratic mentality.'
23. Cf. E. S. Gruen, Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149-78 B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 1968), p. 6: 'The criminal prosecution as a political weapon . . . occurs with such frequency and regularity that it may legitimately be regarded almost as an institution. To a surprisingly, perhaps alarmingly, large extent, the business of politics was carried out not in the comitia or in the curia, but in the courts.' Politically motivated trials of course remained familiar to later generations as well
24. Cf. B. Frier, The Rise of the Roman Jurists (Princeton, 1985), p. 266
25. and for the deliberate obscurity of legal issues in a Ciceronian speech, P. A. Brunt, CQ 32 (1982), 136-47
26. For Cassius, see H. Bornecque, Les déclamations et les déclamateurs d'après Sénèque le Père (Lille, 1902), pp. 157-9
27. W. Deuse, GB 3 (1975), 51-68 rightly wonders how readers are meant to respond to Aper, but his answer to that question is unconvincing
28. and more generally, E. Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 201-14
29. See A. D. Leeman and H. Pinkster, De Oratore Libri III (Heidelberg 1985), vol. 2, pp. 187-8
30. and J. Hall, Phoenix 48 (1994), 211-16
31. As E. S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley, 1984), p. 247 observes in the diplomatic context, 'Specific credentials were unsought and unneeded. Indeed, they would go against the grain of an aristocratic society whose leaders asserted capacity in every aspect of public life.'
32. A. D. Leeman, 'The Structure of Cicero's De oratore l, in A. Michel and R. Verdière (edd.), Ciceroniana. Hommages à Kazimierz Kumaniecki (Leiden, 1975), p. 146
33. cf. C. O. Brink, Hermes 121 (1993), 348 and Dial. 1.3)
34. So, respectively, V. Rudich, Ancient World 11 (1985), 95-100 and Bartsch (n. 8). Bartsch (pp. 110-16) is especially good on the tensions within Maternus' last speech, but I remain sceptical of any argument that denies to Tacitus the ability to mean what the critic does not want him to mean
35. C. D. N. Costa, 'The Dialogus', in T. A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (New York, 1969), p. 31: 'May we not then see behind those parts of the treatise which defend contemporary oratory a wider defence of Silver Latin prose style, of which Tacitus himself was to become the most notable exponent?' Costa's distinction (pp. 27-31) between the 'ostensible subject' of the Dialogus and its wider ramifications deserves more serious consideration