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Appreciating Aper: the defence of modernity in Tacitus’ Dialogus de oratoribus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2012

Sander M. Goldberg
Sander M. Goldberg
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, [email protected]
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Extract

Nearly a century ago, Friedrich Leo argued with his characteristic acumen that the neo-Ciceronian style of Tacitus' Dialogus de oratoribus was as much a function of its genre as its subject. ‘The genre’, he observed, ‘demands its style. One who deals with different genres must write in different styles.’ Alfred Gudeman, the target of Leo's review, had therefore missed a key step in the argument for Tacitean authorship when he invoked ‘the influence of subject-matter’ without considering the demands of genre. In hindsight, the point seems almost obvious, and the sophistication of recent work on the date and style of the Dialogus has left Gudeman's discussion far behind. The advance in method—if not necessarily in results—has been profound. Leo's success in linking genre and style, however, has also had a second, less happy result: it has encouraged belief in a corresponding link between genre and content, as if Tacitus necessarily embraced Ciceronian values along with his Ciceronian forms. The Dialogus is often thought to accept Cicero's aesthetic agenda and to examine why the orators of succeeding generations failed to maintain its ideals and standards. Perhaps inevitably, its analysis is then read as a rather depressing tale of oratory's literary, social, and moral decline. This view demands reconsideration. To explore, as the Dialogus certainly does, the collapse of Ciceronian values is not necessarily to regret that collapse. We have, I think, too often read our own prejudices into the Dialogus by presuming a post-Augustan decline in oratorical standards and, in the process, reducing our sensitivity to important variations in and departures from the generic conventions that Tacitus so deliberately recalls. The result is a significant distortion of the Dialogus' view of oratory under the empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , May 1999 , pp. 224 - 237
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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Footnotes

*

This essay owes much to audiences in California and Colorado, to CQ's editor and referees, to Charles Murgia, ever a keen but fair-minded critic of my views, and to Charles McNelis, who first pointed me toward the Dialogus.

References

1 Leo, F., Ausgewählte kleine Schriften, 2 (Rome, 1960), p. 285Google Scholar: ‘Die Gattung erfordert ihren Stil, wer verschiedene Gattungen behandelt, muss in verschiedenen Stilen schreiben.’ Gudeman's revised and expanded edition of the Dialogus (Berlin, 1914), pp. 21–3Google Scholar still missed the point of this observation. For the context of Leo's contribution to the study of the Dialogus, see Bo, D., Le principali problematiche del Dialogus de oratoribus (Zurich, 1993), pp. 250–63Google Scholar.

2 In particular, Güngerich, R., CP 46 (1951), 159–64Google Scholar; Murgia, C. E., HSCP 84 (1980), 99–125Google Scholar and HSCP 89 (1985), 171–206Google Scholar; Brink, C. O., CQ 39 (1989), 472–503CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See now the summary and critique in Brink, , HSCP 96 (1994), 251–80 at 253–75Google Scholar.

3 Williams, G., Change and Decline (Berkeley, 1978), p. 49Google Scholar. Cf. Barnes, T., HSCP 90 (1986), 225–44 at 232Google Scholar: ‘The Dialogus does not discuss the decline of oratory: it assumes it.’ Similar statements by, inter alios, Luce, T. J., ‘Reading and response in the Dialogus’, in Luce, T. J. and Woodman, A. J. (edd.), Tacitus and the Tacitean Tradition (Princeton, 1993), p. 19Google Scholar; Brink (n. 2, 1989), p. 490; Heldmann, K., Antike Theorien über Entwicklung und Verfall der Redekunst (Munich, 1982), p. 163Google Scholar.

4 Plin. Ep. 6.15. On Priscus' interruption, see Hiltbrunner, O., Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 96 (1979), 31–42Google Scholar. Iubere is a very weak imperative (cf. White, P., Promised Verse [Cambridge, MA, 1993], p. 266–8)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which doubtless facilitated the lexical and syntactic variants so common within this convention.

5 Janson, T., Latin Prose Prefaces. Studies in Literary Conventions (Stockholm, 1964), p. 62Google Scholar.

6 Especially clear at Or. 3: similar effects at Cic. Top. 4–5; Col. 2.1; Sen. Ep. 7. 1,22.1. The form recalls the neutrality of Roman comedy's expository questions, where one character simply calls upon another to explain his behaviour or his condition (e.g. Pl. Cur. 1–2).

7 Charles Murgia points out to me that this distancing would also insulate Tacitus from the political implications of the arguments advanced, a particularly valuable protection if, as Murgia has argued [HSCP 84 (1980) 99–125, endorsed with further arguments by Barnes, HSCP 90 (1986), 229–3], the Dialogus dates from the time of Nerva, when the promise of a restored libertas might easily have outstripped the reality. I find the argument of Brink (n. 2,1994), pp. 251–80 for an early Trajanic date, i.e. c. 99–101, much less compelling.

8 So, rightly, Reitzenstein, U. Haß-von, Beiträge zur gattungsgeschichtlichen Interpretation des Dialogus de oratoribus (Cologne, 1970), pp. 12–17Google Scholar. Contrast Cicero's straightforward declaration at Sen. 3: omnem autem sermonen tribuimus … Marco Catoni seni, quo maiorem auctoritatem haberet oratio. (Cf. de Or. 1.23, Rep. 1.12.) The historicity of Tacitus' speakers is widely assumed, though Aper and Maternus are known only from this work. They were probably real people, but Bartsch, S., Actors in the Audience. Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian (Cambridge, MA, 1994), p. 260, n. 68CrossRefGoogle Scholar is right to raise the possibility that Maternus may be a fictional composite.

9 Brink (n. 2,1994), pp. 276–7.

10 Con. 1 Prf. 6–7: quidquid Romana facundia habet… circa Ciceronem effloruit; omnia ingeni quae lucem studiis nostris attulerunt, tune nata sunt. in deterius deinde cotidie data est … Similar views in Sen. Ep. 114.1–2; Petron. 1ff., 88; Plin. N.H. 14.1.3–7. See Caplan, H., Of Eloquence (Ithaca, 1970), pp. 176–89Google Scholar; Kennedy, G., The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (Princeton, 1972), pp. 446–64Google Scholar; Heldman (n. 3), pp. 131–98. The very commonplace, however, might itself tell against Tacitus' interest in it. See Bo (n. 1), pp. 342–5.

11 Cf. Heldmann (n. 3), p. 170.

12 Williams (n. 3), p. 28.

13 Barnes (n. 3), p. 237.

14 This characterization, which makes the delators' style of speaking as unsavoury as their motives for doing so, was constructed by Syme, R., Tacitus, 2 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 331–3Google Scholar and is adopted by inter alios Winterbottom, M., JRS 54 (1964), 90–4Google Scholar and Kennedy (n. 10), pp. 440–2. The more balanced view of delation in A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny (Oxford, 1966), pp. 93–5Google ScholarPubMed deserves wider attention. Aper's biography must be deduced from the Dialogus itself. See Gudeman (n. 1), pp. 68–70 and Syme, pp. 799–800.

15 So Luce (n. 3), p. 34, n. 74 of Williams, Barnes, et al (n. 3): ‘The values by and large are those of the twentieth century, not first-century Rome.” Aper's anti-classical sensibility is a frequent source of discomfort. For the range of opinion, see Bo (n. 1), pp. 222–7.

16 Winterbottom (n. 14), p. 94.

17 Tac. Hist. 4.42; Plin. Ep. 4.7.3–5, 6.2; Mart. 6.38. Cf. Syme (n. 14), pp. 101–2 (recasting Pliny's personal opinion as historical fact) and (more circumspectly) Duret, L., ANRW II 32.5 (1986), 3268–70Google Scholar.

18 The published Panegyricus was in fact an expansion of the speech delivered in September 100. The captive audience on that occasion restrained Pliny's natural exuberance: animadverti enim severissima quaeque velmaxime satisfacere (Pl. Ep. 3.18.8–9 and Sherwin-White [n. 14]). For a taste of Regulus' aggressive style, in court and out, see Plin. Ep. 1.5, itself a deft exercise in character assassination.

19 Pace Winterbottom (n. 14), who, like Syme, makes Tacitus' bias against them his own. The great difficulty in assessing such figures lies in distinguishing matters of fact in the record from matters of taste. As Duret (n. 17), p. 3270 observes of Tacitus and Pliny, ‘En fait, l'unité de ce “style de la délation” risque d'avoir existé surtout dans l'esprit des auteurs classicisants.’

20 Hist. 4.43.2: ambo infensi, voltu diverso, Marcellus minacibus oculis, Crispus renidens … The description is a masterpiece of innuendo but also true to their separate natures as Tacitus records them. Winterbottom (n. 14), p. 93 accepts the narrative at face value.

21 Note the invidious balance of inops … abundabat and the clichéd redundancy of poetis et vatibus. Sanguinans in 12.2 is a very unusual word. Even sanguineus would be unexpected: the normal word in prose is cruentus, e.g. Cic. Har. 3, imperio cruento illo; Phil. 1.17. pecunia cruenta ilia. Cf. Sal. Cat. 58.21, cruentam ac luctuosam victoriam. Maternus' cretic rhythm is also striking.

22 Plin. Pan. 76.1–2. The prosecution was complex and probably extended from a first indictment in 98 to final judgment in 100. See Syme (n. 14), pp. 70–1; Sherwin-White (n. 14), pp. 56–8; Brink (n. 2,1994), pp. 277–8.

23 Thus, in defending Aper, Champion, C., Phoenix 48 (1994), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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.’

24 Neither Thrasea Paetus' withdrawal under pressure from public affairs in 65 nor Tacitus' own apparent retirement after the prosecution of Marius Priscus is quite comparable. Cf. Luce (n. 3), p. 17, n. 20: ‘Maternus’ decision to abandon public life seems particularly at odds with Tacitus' praise for those who serve the state well, despite the dangers and difficulties: Agr. 42.4, Ann. 4.20.2.’

25 Cf. Gruen, E. S., Roman Politics and the Criminal Courts, 149–78 B.C. (Cambridge, MA, 1968), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘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.

26 So, rightly, Luce (n. 3), p. 23, n. 40. This was probably why Quintilian had to point out that prosecution in the expectation of gain was a kind of larceny: itaque ut accusatoriam vitam vivere et ad deferendos reos praemio duci proximum latrocinio est, ita pestem intestinam propulsare cum propugnatoribus patriae comparandam (Inst. 12.7.3). Cf. Plin. Pan. 34 on the delatorum agmen … quasi grassatorum quasi latronum rooted out by Trajan. Yet as Sherwin-White (n. 14), p. 95 observes: ‘… the professional delator could not be eliminated, because the Roman state had no other means of enforcing its laws’.

27 Dial. 19.3–20.4 with Gudeman's comments (n. 1), pp. 323–34. Contrast such passages as Cic. de Or. 2.178: ipse [qui audiet] sic moveatur, ut impetu quodam animi et perburbatione magis quam iudicio aut consilio regatur and de Rep. 59: apud me, ut apud bonum iudicem argumenta plus quam testes valent. This was the style of presentation that could lead a jurist like G. Aquilius Gallus to remark (with some impatience?), nihil hoc ad ius; ad Ciceronem (Top. 51). The dilemma presented at Quinct. 78–83, a case heard by Aquilius as iudex, is a nice example of a proof that Aper would doubtless find both longus and otiosus.

28 Cf. Frier, B., The Rise of the Roman Jurists (Princeton, 1985), p. 266Google Scholar, and for the deliberate obscurity of legal issues in a Ciceronian speech, Brunt, P. A., CQ 32 (1982), 136–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Given these advances in the judicial system, it is difficult to know what Pliny meant in professing his cum Cicerone aemulatio (Ep. 1.5.12) or how Cicero would have been a good model for advocates before the Centumviral Court of the mid-90s.

29 Dial. 26.4; Quint. 10.1.116–17, 12.10.11. Brink (n. 2, 1989), pp. 484–94 detects in Messala's speech strong echoes of Quintilian's lost De causis corruptae eloquentiae. For Cassius, see Bornecque, H., Les déclamations et les déclamateurs d'après Sénèque le Père (Lille, 1902), pp. 157–9Google Scholar; Winterbottom (n. 14), pp. 90–2; Heldmann (n. 3), pp. 163–98.

30 3 Pr. 5. Cassius almost invariably prosecuted, though not often successfully. Cf. his revenge on Cestius, the Cloaca Maxima of declamation, as reported at 3 Pr. 17 and the storv in Macr. S. 2.4.9.

31 3 Pr. 3. Cf. 4: deinde ipsa quae dicebat meliora erant quam quae scribebat.

32 This is itself no mere quibble over ‘the literary’ since the point at issue between Aper and Maternus is less the quality of modern oratory than whether to be an orator at all under modern conditions.

33 The formal debt to de Oratore is very well analysed by Haß-von Reitzenstein (n. 8), pp. 131–43 Deuse, W., GB 3 (1975), 51–68Google Scholar rightly wonders how readers are meant to respond to Aper, but his answer to that question is unconvincing. See Luce (n. 3), pp. 19–20. Similar claims for Aper as devil's advocate are made at 16.3 by Maternus and at 15.2 and 28.1 by Messala, but as Williams (n. 3), p. 43 observes, ‘Aper never gives the slightest hint that the views he expresses are not his own.”

34 Frier (n. 28), pp. 252–4, and more generally, Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Baltimore, 1985), pp. 201–14Google Scholar.

35 Cic. Off. 2.43; Brut. 155. Whether the historical Antonius hid his learning or was in fact comparatively unschooled remains unclear. Cic. de Or. 2.4 and 2.153 suggest a pose; Brut. 139–42 is deliberately vague on the point. See Leeman, A. D. and Pinkster, H., De Oratore Libri III (Heidelberg 1985), vol. 2, pp. 187–8Google Scholar and Hall, J, Phoenix 48 (1994), 211–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Mur. 28. For Cicero's strategy, see Kennedy (n. 10), pp. 181–6. Note that, although the praetor urbanus was the Republic's chief legal officer, no urban praetor of the late Republic is known to have had more than a layman's knowledge of law (Frier [n. 28], pp. 47–8). At Mur. 54–85 Cicero metes out similar treatment to the second prosecutor, Cato, casting him as an impractical philosopher. Cato was not amused (‘What a witty consul, we have!’, Plut. Cat. min. 21.5–6), but the strategy clearly paid off. As Gruen, E. S., The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley, 1984), p. 247Google Scholar 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.’

37 Leeman, A. D., ‘The Structure of Cicero's De oratore I’, in Michel, A. and Verdière, R. (edd.), Ciceroniana. Hommages à Kazimierz Kumaniecki (Leiden, 1975), p. 146Google Scholar. For the importance of the Academic style of argument to Cicero, see Hall (n. 35), pp. 222–3. Here too Tacitus follows Ciceronian precedent: ‘The real Tacitus is not to be found in any one character's ipsissima verba, but must be deduced from them all' (Murgia [n. 7], p. 111, cf. Brink, C. O., Hermes 121 (1993), 348Google Scholar and Dial. 1.3). HaB-von Reitzenstein (n. 8), p. 34 is therefore not quite correct to call the Dialogus the first Roman dialogue to be something more than a textbook in disguise. For the famous Carneades episode, see Plin. N.H. 7.112; Plut. Cat. mai. 22.2–5; Cic. Rep. 3.8–12.

38 For the bipartite structure of de Oratore, see Cic. Att. 4.16.3.

39 Dial. 41.5. Matemus thus puts in a favourable light the topos also found in the roughly contemporary de Sublim. that great writers flourished with democracy and died with it (44.2–12).

40 So, respectively, Rudich, V., Ancient World 11 (1985), 95–100Google Scholar and Bartsch (n. 8). Bartsch (pp. 110–16) is especially good on the tensions within Matemus' 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.

41 Pan. 72.1. Cf. Plin. Ep. 3.20.12 (sunt quidem cuncta sub unius arbitrio), leading Sherwin-White (n. 14), p. 262 to observe, The position must have been generally recognized for Pliny to state it so frankly.’ Brink (n. 37), p. 347 stresses the relevance of all these passages to Maternus' speech.

42 Costa, C. D. N., ‘The Dialogus’, in Dorey, T. A. (ed.), Tacitus (New York, 1969), p. 31Google Scholar: ‘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.

43 Williams (n. 3), p. 43.