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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Is orator erit mea sententia hoc tam gravi dignus nomine, qui, quaecumque res inciderit, quae sit dictione explicanda, prudenter et composite et ornate et memoriter dicet cum quadam actionis etiam dignitate.
(Cicero, De orat. 1.64)
Though Cicero's authority helped elevate the ideal orator's dexterity and discipline to the status of cliche, the vital link between theory and practice that his dialogues advocate did not long survive him. As professional rhetoricians of the next century became increasingly preoccupied with declamation, practical oratory developed and rewarded other qualities. Eloquence of the old kind could be thought a vanishing art. This then is how the younger Pliny would describe one of the most successful speakers of the late first century, the notorious (and long-lived) delator M. Aquilius Regulus.
1 Crassus' definition at De orat. 1.64 is assumed by Cicero in his own voice at 2.5. Cf. Tacitus, , Dial. 30.5 [Messala speaking]: ‘is est orator qui de omni quaestione pulchre et ornate et ad persuadendum apte dicere pro dignitate rerum, ad utilitatem temporum, cum voluptate audientium possit.’ In the following study, works to be cited by author alone include: Bonner, S. F., Roman Declamation (Berkeley 1949), Fairweather, J., Seneca the Elder (Cambridge 1981), Kennedy, G., Quintilian (New York 1969), Russell, D. A., Criticism in Antiquity (Berkeley 1981), and Williams, G., Change and Decline (Berkeley 1978). Quintilian is cited from the Oxford text of M. Winterbottom, 2 vols. (Oxford 1970).Google Scholar
2 The old story is elegantly told by Caplan, H., ‘The Decay of Eloquence at Rome in the First Century,’ Studies in Speech and Drama in Honor of Alexander M. Drummond (Ithaca 1944) 295–325, repr. in Of Eloquence, edd. King, A. & North, H. (Ithaca 1970) 160–95; a more detailed account in Williams 6–51. Quintilian himself is not unduly troubled by the idea of general decline: ‘Verum ut transeundi spes non sit, magna tamen est dignitas subsequendi’ (12.11.28).Google Scholar
3 Plin., Ep. 1.20.14 [Regulus to Pliny]: ‘Tu omnia quae sunt in causa putas exsequenda; ego iugulum statim video, hunc premo.’ For Regulus' career, see Syme, R., Tacitus I (Oxford 1958) 100–102, 108–109.Google Scholar
4 ‘Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur vir bonus dicendi peritus,’ 12.1.1, cf. 1 Pr. 9. Fairweather 83 notes how frequently Cato's maxim is cited in rhetorical discussions. For the defensive quality of the Institutio, and especially the link with Regulus and his sort, see Winterbottom, M., ‘Quintilian and the Vir Bonus,’ JRS 54 (1964) 90–97.Google Scholar
5 Cf. Cic., De orat. 1.19 & 122–25; 3.83, 102, & 214. Further references in Bonner 21.Google Scholar
6 ‘quorum [veteres Latini] in tragoediis gravitas, in comoediis elegantia et quidam velut atticismos inveniri potest. Oeconomia quoque in iis diligentior quam in plerisque novorum erit, qui omnium operum solam virtutem sententias putaverunt’ (1.8.9). Students of Roman comedy who are steeped in the techniques of modern Kontaminationsforschung may find such praise a little odd; the rhetorician's standards tend to be different from our own.Google Scholar
7 Cohoon, J. W., ‘Rhetorical Studies in the Arbitration Scene of Menander's Epitrepontes,’ TAPA 45 (1914) 141–230 applies Quintilian's critical principles to Menander. Compare Quintilian's own rhetorical analysis of Homer at 10.1.51–54 and the comments of Russell 123–24.Google Scholar
8 For the function of the comoedus see Bonner, S. F., Education in Ancient Rome (Berkeley 1977) 224–25 and Fantham, E., ‘Roman Experience of Menander in the Late Republic and Early Empire,’ TAPA 114 (1984) 299–309 esp. 304–307. Dramatic texts could be difficult for even mature readers to interpret correctly. Dio Chrysostom 18.6 therefore recommends having them acted out; modern readers of P. Sorbonne 2272 and 2273 (Menander's Sikyonios) will sympathize.Google Scholar
9
That is, the actor's analysis of character, not necessarily his manner on the stage: ‘non enim comoedum esse, sed oratorem volo’ (11.3.181–83), a point illustrated with the famous opening of Terence's Eunuchus. For the idea of 
(visiones) see Russell, 108–10 and, for the model actors provide, Fantham, E., ‘Quintilian on Performance,’ Phoenix 36 (1982) 243–63 esp. 259–61.Google Scholar
10 Quintilian consistently regards declamation as preparation for courtroom oratory, never as an end in itself. Thus his comments at 2.10.4 and 4.2.25. See Greer, W. J., ‘Quintilian and the Declamation,’ CW 19 (1925/26) 27–31. For the development of declamation in this period see Bonner, 71–83 and Fairweather, 132–48.Google Scholar
11 Goldberg, S. M., The Making of Menander's Comedy (Berkeley 1980) 112–21. Varwig, F. R., Der rhetorische Naturbegriff bei Quintilian (Heidelberg 1976) 43–51 weakens his discussion by missing the relevance of the comic model to Quintilian's argument.Google Scholar
12 Quintilian's critical vocabulary tends to be practical rather than precise, designed to recall familiar characteristics rather than to define them or to identify new ones. Thus elegans must refer to the deft handling of difficult material when applied to Macer and Lucretius (10.1.87), but to the use of language by Tibullus (10.1.93) and Terence (10.1.99). Back at 1.8.8–9, elegantia was used of style, oeconomia of the handling of material. See Kennedy, 109.Google Scholar
13 Precise figures can mislead, since they depend too much on subjective definitions. For what it is worth, Denzler, B., Der Monolog bei Terenz (Zürich 1968) 5 offers the following figures for the distribution of monologues: 120 (ca. 1000 verses) in Terence, 330 (ca. 4400 verses) in Plautus, and 60 (ca. 700 verses) in the Dyskolos, Epitrepontes, Perikeiromene, and Samia of Menander. Many of the Plautine monologues are cantica unsuited to the rhetorician's purpose. Perhaps more suggestive is the distribution of monologues among character types in Plautus and Terence as given by Duckworth, G., The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton 1952) 106: in Plautus 44% to slaves, 25% to senes, 11 % to adulescentes; corresponding figures for Terence are 23%, 27%, and 33%, which are in harmony with the extant Menander.Google Scholar
14 MacCary, W. T., ‘Menander's Characters: Their Names, Roles, and Masks,’ TAPA 101 (1970) 277–90 discusses Menander's handling of stock types. For his use of language to delineate character, see Sandbach, F. H., ‘Menander's Manipulation of Language for Dramatic Purposes,’ Entretiens Hardt XVI: Ménandre (Geneva 1970) 113–36.Google Scholar
15 Contrast Sandbach (above, n. 14) with the limited and more dubious findings of Maltby, R., ‘Linguistic Characterization of Old Men in Terence,’ CP 74 (1979) 136–47.Google Scholar
16 As in the quotation from Adelphoe at Cael. 38 and the reference to Phormio at Caec. 27. Cicero warns that a speaker is more pleasing ‘qui primum quam minimam artifici alicuius, deinde nullam Graecarum rerum significationem daret’ (De orat. 2.155). See Fantham, , (above, n. 8) 300–301, and Blänsdorf, J., ‘Das Bild der Komödie in der späten Republik,’ Musa Iocosa, edd. Reinhardt, U. & Sallmann, K. (Hildesheim 1974) 141–57.Google Scholar
17 Fin. 1.4: ‘Synephebos ego, inquit, potius Caecilii aut Andriam Terenti quam utramque Menandri legam.’ Cicero thinks the Latin plays can stand by themselves.Google Scholar
18 Cic. ap. Don., De comoedia 1.22.19–20w = XXVI in Koster, W. J. W., Scholia in Aristophanem Ia, Prolegomena de comoedia (Groningen 1975). For the description, cf. Koster's XIb 43–44, XVIIIb 4 and Sex. Rosc. 47: ‘expressam … imaginem vitae cotidianae videremus.’ Contrast Quintilian, who duly notes the vitae imago in Menander, but passes immediately to his inventio, eloquentia, and color (10.1.69).Google Scholar
19 Kennedy, 113–18; Fantham, E., ‘Imitation and Decline: Rhetorical Theory and Practice in the First Century after Christ,’ CP 73 (1978) 102–16.Google Scholar
20 Bonner, 137–38; Fairweather, 311–12. The elder Seneca never refers to Plautus and Terence, not even when the subject declaimed echoes the themes of New Comedy.Google Scholar
21 As, respectively, the four tragedies Quintus Cicero wrote while campaigning in Gaul, the Thyestes Octavian commissioned from Varius for the triumphal games of 29 b.c., and the plays of Curiatius Maternus. Fantham, E., Seneca's Troades (Princeton 1982) 3–9 reviews the evidence.Google Scholar
22 Fantham, (above, n. 21) 5 and 9. Like Tacitus (Dial. 3) I ignore the grammarians' distinction between tragedies on Greek themes and praetextae; the division was never a crucial element of Roman literary thought. See Ussani, V. Jr., ‘Per la storia del teatro latino,’ RCCM 10 (1968) 141–68.Google Scholar
23 Thus most of what we know of such Ennian tragedies as Alexander, Andromacha, and Thyestes derives from Cicero's allusions and quotations. While comedy generally provides the literary illustrations for techniques of argument, examples of diction and figures are normally drawn from tragedy, e.g., De orat. 3.153ff. Horace, , Ep. 2.1.208–13 speaks respectfully of tragedy's imaginative power.Google Scholar
24 Goldberg, S. M., Understanding Terence (Princeton 1986), 203–20.Google Scholar
25 CIL 9.1164 (in senarii): ‘ne more pecoris otio transfungerer, Menandri paucas vorti scitas fabulas, et ipsus etiam sedula finxi novas.’ Discussion in Bardon, H., La Littérature latine inconnue II (Paris 1956) 217.Google Scholar
26 Plin., Ep. 6.21.4: ‘Scripsit comoedias Menandrum aliosque aetatis eiusdem aemulatus; licet has inter Plautinas Terentianasque numeres.’ The only other hint of comic writing under the principate is Horace's reference to a certain Fundanius at Sat. 1.10.40–42.Google Scholar
27 Inst. 8.3.24, cf. De orat. 3.38.153. Quintilian uses many of Cicero's examples. For archaism as a declaimer's trick, see Bonner, 64.Google Scholar
28 See the testimonia, largely drawn from Cicero, in Malcovati, E., Oratorum romanorum fragmenta (3 ed.; Turin 1967) 123–24. Quintilian does not speak with such admiration of Scipio.Google Scholar
29 Marache, R., La Critique littéraire de la langue latine (Rennes 1952) 157–59, 162–66 analyzes this phenomenon. Also see Williams, 306–12.Google Scholar
30 Zetzel, J. E. G., ‘Statilius Maximus and Ciceronian Studies in the Antonine Age,’ BICS 21 (1974) 107–23 reminds us that Fronto's privileged circle represents the best literary endeavors of the time. Archaistic tendencies were more formulaic among those with fewer resources at their disposal.Google Scholar
31
M. Ant., Med. 1.17.4: 
…. For Quintilian's aversion to contemporary philosophy, see Kennedy, 126–27 and 132–33.Google Scholar
