Thesis (doctoral)--Academia Georgia Augusta, 1914.

This thesis will add to the debate on the nature of popular politics at Rome from the time of the Gracchi to Sulla. It examines contemporary evidence in order to reconstruct the terms in which political discourse was conducted. The period marks a time of political dynamism in the Republic, prior the fateful precedents set by Sulla, and falls before the period dominated the Ciceronian corpus. The first aim of the thesis will be to evaluate and utilize the fragmentary evidence of contemporary oratory in order to consider the terms in which politicians described themselves and their opponents. This will allow for a critique of the model of Roman politics derived from Cicero's works which has been often ascribed to the period. Rather than substantiating the traditional picture of politics, conducted in terms of the opposition between popularis and optimas, it reveals that this period is characterized by competition to appropriate the same rhetorical concepts and identification with the traditional role of the Senate in the res publica. The second aim is to contribute to the question of the role of ideology in Roman politics by further demonstrating the existence of a versatile and varied vocabulary capable of articulating a discourse between different ideological standpoints.

This dissertation examines the function and relevance of invective in late 4th century oratory. I bring together recent approaches to performance, humor, and legal studies in order to reevaluate the role of character depiction, and especially character assassination, in forensic rhetoric. Both on the comic stage and in the courts, evoking derisive laughter from the audience was an important mechanism for effecting social control. I demonstrate how the orators draw from Old and Middle Comedy to depict opponents as character types, like braggarts (alazones), flatterers (kolakes), and comic prostitutes (male hetairai/pornoi). I argue further that speakers do not use invective to skirt legal issues; rather, they tailor their arguments about character to the legal charge. In the Athenian system, the concept of legal relevance was broad and subject to manipulation. The only mechanism of restraint on a speaker was the threat of being shouted down (thorubos) by the jury. Invective, therefore, was not automatically “out of bounds”. Moreover, issues of character and morality were of increasing public concern in 4th-century Athens (as evidenced by Xenophon, Middle Comedy, and oratory alike). To the minds of Athenian jurors, information about character provided important evidence for reaching a just verdict. / text

Nineteenth-century classical scholar Friedrich Wilhelm Blass wrote over 300 densely annotated pages on Isocrates, an ancient Athenian schoolmaster and political essayist. A lengthy section of Blass' Die attische Beredsamkeit (1898) has been excerpted here and translated into English for the first time. The excerpt involves Blass' inventory of the Isocratic canon, an argument for the existence of a lost Isocratic rhetoric (techne), and an illustration of what that lost rhetoric likely contained. A translator's prologue discusses the value of both Isocrates and Blass to the study of classical rhetoric. Blass' work is also contrasted with the work of his British contemporary, R. C. Jebb.Blass' commentary on Isocrates requires of its readers a fluency in the technical terminology of classical rhetoric and a patience, perhaps a passion, for difficult rhetorical style. Blass frequently exercises in his writing the Isocratic principles and schemata he discusses. The English translation here, in order to preserve that trait in Blass' personal style, often approaches rhetorical replication of the original German text. Hence it becomes, to a certain extent, as much a simulacrum rhetoricum as a translation.In his text, Blass exposes a traditional misunderstanding of Isocrates that has resulted in a lack of appreciation for his overall contribution. We too often judge the Isocratic canon's value based either upon orations Isocrates constructed early in his career, before he matured in his art, or upon ones he composed late in his life, when he was in his eighties and nineties and becoming a bit senile. As a result, the merit of Isocrates' work during his most influential period, his middle age, is often ignored.The quality of the entire Isocratic canon must be carefully examined, Blass maintains, before its author or his work can be accurately judged. Accordingly, Isocrates' rhetoric is illustrated here as it evolved throughout his career. Blass' examination includes more detailed rhetorical explications than any other treatise currently available in English. / Department of English

Thesis (doctoral)--University of the Orange Free State, 1984. / Glossary in Greek; summary in German. Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-285) and index.

The main body of this thesis is a commentary on sections 1.19b-33 and 1.97-109 of Cicero's De Inuentione. These sections treat partes orationis in general (1.19b), then exordium (1.20-26), narratio (1.27-30), partitio (1.31-33), digressio (1.97), and conclusio (1.98-109). Due to the imposed word limit, the sections on confirmatio (1.34-77) and reprehensio (1.78-96) could not be included in the thesis. The structure of the commentary on each of these sections will be: introduction to the section, references to parallel passages in other Latin and Greek rhetorical texts, the most important general literature on the subject of the section, comparison of the passage in Cic.Inu.1 with the corresponding one in Rhet.Her, individual lemmata. The lemmata will cover various kinds of information, such as textual, grammatical, and linguistic issues, background information on persons, objects etc. mentioned, the young Cicero's position within the rhetorical tradition for a particular point (i.e. influence on and by Cic.Inu.). To the commentary proper, a number of introduction chapters have been added. Due to the word limit, only a selection of these can be included in the thesis: the title 'De Inuentione' and Cicero's intention to write on all five partes artis; the structure of Cic.Inu.; subdividing the art; rhythm and clausulae; the young Cicero's knowledge of Aristotle's works; the relationship between Cic.Inu. and Rhet.Her. (abbreviated version); the proems of Cic.Inu. (abbreviated version); preliminary comments on Narratio; the Orestes case in the rhetorical tradition; examples in Cic.Inu. (abbreviated version). The structure of the commentary on each of these sections will be: introduction to the section, references to parallel passages in other Latin and Greek rhetorical texts, the most important general literature on the subject of the section, comparison of the passage in Cic.Inu.1 with the corresponding one in Rhet.Her, individual lemmata. The lemmata will cover various kinds of information, such as textual, grammatical, and linguistic issues, background information on persons, objects etc. mentioned, the young Cicero's position within the rhetorical tradition for a particular point (i.e. influence on and by Cic.Inu.). To the commentary proper, a number of introduction chapters have been added. Due to the word limit, only a selection of these can be included in the thesis: the title 'De Inuentione' and Cicero's intention to write on all five partes artis; the structure of Cic.Inu.; subdividing the art; rhythm and clausulae; the young Cicero's knowledge of Aristotle's works; the relationship between Cic.Inu. and Rhet.Her. (abbreviated version); the proems of Cic.Inu. (abbreviated version); preliminary comments on Narratio; the Orestes case in the rhetorical tradition; examples in Cic.Inu. (abbreviated version).

The revival of classical rhetoric has come to be seen as a defining feature of the Renaissance, one manifest in a vast body of educational literature and cultural commentary. This discourse borrows and reshapes principles of Greek and Roman rhetoricians for contemporary social purposes. Much of the early scholarship on this cultural trend emphasizes the connection between the revived classical rhetoric and the self-conscious civic humanism apparent in school curricula and learned culture. The figure of the orator played an especially important role in this movement. Scholars have pointed out that the orator was presented by many educators and social critics as a noble vir civilis, one learned in literature, articulate in speech, and active in civil society. While Renaissance reformulations of classical oratory and emphases on the figure of the orator have been studied quite extensively as they appear in written works of the period, much less attention has been given to civic orations actually delivered. This study attempts to redress that gap in our understanding of early modern civic discourse, especially by investigating the triangulated relationship between humanist rhetorical education, Renaissance concepts of the power of eloquence, and civic speech as an institutionalized rhetorical practice. Parliament, often compared by Tudor writers to the Greek Areopagus and Roman Senate, provides an ideal locus of investigation, since the speeches delivered there were categorically civic in nature and regularly addressed the traditional subjects of classical deliberative oratory. Yet close analyses of speeches from Elizabeth I's 1566 session reveal that the common Renaissance images of the orator are unsuitable for characterizing the expressions of civic voice exhibited in actual public speaking, just as the classical codification of civic speech provides an insufficient hermeneutic tool for understanding the rhetorical purposes of orations delivered in Tudor institutions. Parliamentary orators did not see the revived classical rhetoric as the only, or even the primary, tool for composing orations in civic venues, but rather drew significantly upon institutional customs, procedural gestures, and alternative language arts, such as dialectic and sermonic prophesying, in order to establish finely nuanced stances within the rhetorical situation. / text

In this thesis, I examine the nature and role of persuasion in Roman politics in the period immediately following the assassination of Caesar on the Ides of March 44 B.C. until the capture of the city of Rome by his heir Octavianus in August 43 B.C. The purpose of my thesis is to assess the extent to which persuasion played a critical role in political interactions and in the decision-making processes of those involved during this crucial period in Roman history. I do this by means of a careful discussion and analysis of a variety of different types of political interactions, both public and private. As regards the means of persuasion, I concentrate on the role and use of oratory in these political interactions. Consequently, my thesis owes much in terms of approach to the work of Millar (1998) and, more recently, Morstein-Marx (2004) on placing oratory at the centre of our understanding of how politics functioned in practice in the late Roman republic. Their studies, however, focus on the potential extent and significance of mass participation in the late Roman republican political system, and on the contio as the key locus of political interaction. In my thesis, I contribute to improving our new way of understanding late Roman republican politics by taking a broader approach that incorporates other types of political interactions in which oratory played a significant role. I also examine oratory as but one of a variety of means of persuasion in Roman political interactions. Finally, in analyzing politics and persuasion in the period immediately after Caesar’s assassination, I am examining not only a crucial period in Roman history, but one which is perhaps the best documented from the ancient world. The relative richness of contemporary evidence for this period calls out for the sort of close reading of sources and detailed analysis that I provide in my thesis that enables a better understanding of how politics actually played out in the late Roman republic.