The State of Speech: Rhetoric and Political Thought in Ancient Rome

by Connolly, Joy

• ISBN13: 9781400827947
• ISBN10: 1400827949
• Copyright: 2008-09-02
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Rhetorical theory, the core of Roman education, taught rules of public speaking that are still influential today. But Roman rhetoric has long been regarded as having little important to say about political ideas.The State of Speechpresents a forceful challenge to this view. The first book to read Roman rhetorical writing as a mode of political thought, it focuses on Rome's greatest practitioner and theorist of public speech, Cicero. Through new readings of his dialogues and treatises, Joy Connolly shows how Cicero's treatment of the Greek rhetorical tradition's central questions is shaped by his ideal of the republic and the citizen. Rhetoric, Connolly argues, sheds new light on Cicero's deepest political preoccupations: the formation of individual and communal identity, the communicative role of the body, and the "unmanly" aspects of politics, especially civility and compromise. Transcending traditional lines between rhetorical and political theory,The State of Speechis a major contribution to the current debate over the role of public speech in Roman politics. Instead of a conventional, top-down model of power, it sketches a dynamic model of authority and consent enacted through oratorical performance and examines how oratory modeled an ethics of citizenship for the masses as well as the elite. It explains how imperial Roman rhetoricians reshaped Cicero's ideal republican citizen to meet the new political conditions of autocracy, and defends Ciceronian thought as a resource for contemporary democracy.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Abbreviations used	p. xiii
Introduction: Rhetoric and political thought	p. 1
Founding the state of speech	p. 23
Politics in public	p. 30
Ideology and power	p. 38
Expressions of traditional authority	p. 47
The rhetoric of equality	p. 56
The rationalized republic	p. 65
Naturalized citizens	p. 77
The nature of republics	p. 82
Introducing the problem: The Ciceronian preface	p. 89
Rome, naturally	p. 104
Hybridity	p. 113
The body politic	p. 118
The problem with philosophers	p. 121
The corporeal citizen	p. 130
A theory of political communication	p. 137
An alternative history of the self	p. 148
Fragility	p. 151
The aesthetics of virtue	p. 158
The problem of liberty	p. 158
The republic of passions	p. 163
Decorum: Enactment of civic love	p. 169
Catullus's republican rhetoric	p. 175
Oratory and liberty, decorum and consent	p. 185
Falling in love with the law	p. 191
Republican theater	p. 198
Being and seeming	p. 200
The civic stage	p. 211
Women and speech	p. 214
The best orator	p. 223
The terrors of collectivity	p. 231
Imperial reenactments	p. 237
Replay and parody	p. 239
Reading resistance in Augustan declamation	p. 242
Quintilian: A republican education for autocracy	p. 254
Conclusion: The Ciceronian citizen in a global world	p. 262
Bibliography	p. 275
Ancient sources	p. 293
Index	p. 295
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