Loeb Classical Library General Editor Jeffrey Henderson introduces four new volumes on oratory and rhetoric.
In spring 2019 the Loeb Classical Library significantly expands its coverage in an area central to public life in both Greece and Rome: the theory and practice of formal speech. Already in Homer’s Iliad, heroism required prowess in public speaking as well as in battle—Achilles’ fiery speech in Iliad Book 9 always ranked high among classic examples—and by the fourth century BC, oratory, along with its formal study, rhetoric, had overcome principled suspicion by the likes of Aristophanes and Plato as being fundamentally dishonest and manipulative and took their place at the heart of law, politics, education, and literature.
The Loeb Classical Library series Fragmentary Republican Latin continues with oratory, new to the Library since it was not represented in Warmington’s Remains of Old Latin. As in Greece, oratory was an important element of Roman life from the earliest times, essential for conducting public affairs and for advancing individual careers long before it acquired literary dimensions, which happened once orators decided to write up and circulate written versions of their speeches after delivery. The Romans recalled how in 494 BC Agrippa Menenius Lanatus, a former consul with the common touch, persuaded the plebs to end their secession with a speech “in the quaint and uncouth style of that age” that stressed the importance of the belly to the body politic as a whole (Livy 2.32). Fabius Maximus, given the cognomen Cunctator (“The Delayer”) for having defeated the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War by declining to engage Hannibal, delivered an impressive funeral oration for his son Quintus in 207 BC that was still “generally available” in Cicero’s time, as was a deliberative speech by Appius Claudius Caecus from 280 BC. Over time, oratory became professionalized, and by the second century BC (the time of the Scipios and the Gracchi, all represented here), formal training under the influence of Greek rhetoric had taken hold despite some resistance, and later developed into the practice of declamation.
The three-volume FRL Oratory (LCL 540, 541, and 542) begins with Appius Claudius Caecus (340–273 BC) and covers the full range of speech-making—political, juridical, and epideictic (display)—including all individuals for whom speech-making is attested and for whose speeches quotations, descriptive testimonies, or historiographic recreations survive. Household names such as Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and Marc Antony are all included. (Although the more substantial fragments of Cato and Cicero are not, they will eventually be added to the Loeb Classical Library editions of their complete works.) Such an overview provides insight into the typical forms and themes of Roman oratory as well as its wide variety of occasions and styles. By including orators from different phases within the Republican period as well as men given high or low rankings by contemporaries and later ancient critics, the collection offers a fuller panorama of Roman Republican oratory than a selection guided simply by an orator’s alleged or canonical quality or by the amount of evidence available. Thus, it also provides a kind of empirical complement or control for the study of formal rhetoric and rhetorical theory.
On the Greek side is an edition of three rhetorical treatises new to the Loeb Classical Library (LCL 539), with fresh translations, ample annotation, and texts based on the best critical editions. They date probably from the reign of Diocletian (AD 285–312) and derive from the schools of rhetoric that flourished in the Roman Empire from the 2nd through 4th centuries AD in the Greek East. Two of them are attributed to one Menander Rhetor of Laodicea (in southwestern Turkey); the other, known as the Ars Rhetorica, is incorrectly attributed to the earlier historian and literary critic, Dionysius of Halicarnassus. All three provide instruction on how to compose epideictic (display) speeches for a wide variety of occasions, both public and private. What were the best ways for the aspiring orator to praise a god? A city? A victorious athlete? Menander and pseudo-Dionysius offer answers, thus providing students of the ancient world with valuable insight into the religious, civic, and social realities of their times, and well illustrating the position of Greek rhetoric under Rome. But much of their advice also remains engagingly perennial: contemporary readers seeking guidance on everything from wedding toasts to welcoming government officials will likewise derive considerable value from these works, reminding us once again that in the rhythms of human life, some things never change.
Still, those connoisseurs of eloquence who suffer through our era of memes, sound bites, and tweets will perhaps find this season’s generous sampling of old-time speechifying a most welcome antidote.
