Introduction

Extract

The focus of this survey is on oratory as a spoken phenomenon, intimately related to politics and government at Rome. Its chronological scope is roughly from the beginning of the second century B.C. until the end of the first century A.D.; it has no pretensions to offer a guide to oratory in the later Empire. Its geographical focus is firmly on Rome, reflecting the overwhelming bias in our source material. I start with the occasions for oratory in Rome and turn then to the issues which arise from the process of turning a speech, delivered in front of an audience on a particular occasion, into a written text which can be accessed and enjoyed in private and at any time. I then consider some of the means by which orators of the imperial period explored different means of preserving their oratorical activities for posterity. In the final two chapters I concentrate on orators themselves: how they carried out their task, and reflected upon it, as adult practitioners, and then how boys became the next generation of orators.