Preface

Two passages that appear in the introductory pages of recent works on Cicero illustrate very well how differently the career of the orator appears to an ancient and to a modern historian. Thomas N. Mitchell, a distinguished commentator on the political landscape of the late Republic, opens his account of the early part of the orator's career with the statement that "the importance of the study of Cicero's political life and thought needs little illustration" (Cicero: The Ascending Years, vii). Neal Wood, on the other hand, whose interest in Cicero springs from his study of the history of political theory, begins his own interpretation of Cicero's political thought by posing the following questions: "Why should anyone today be concerned with the social and political ideas of the late Roman republican thinker and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero? . . . Cicero's merit as philosopher has been so deflated and his popularity as sage and stylist has so declined that the endeavor would appear to be without intellectual or practical merit. Who today troubles to read Cicero, save a handful of Latinists and ancient historians, and an ever-diminishing number of students?" (Cicero's Social and Political Thought, 1). As I am among the "handful of Latinists" who read Cicero constantly and with pleasure, I am inclined to view the importance of Ciceronian oratory as self-evident. This book, however, is addressed to a wider public—to those who are not students of ancient rhetoric as well as to those who are. Therefore, the proposition that an understanding of Ciceronian persuasion is a piece of intellectual furniture well worth having requires some support.

The study of Cicero's social and political thought has often been justified, even among those who dismiss him as a thinker of slight depth and a politician of little weight, by the enormous influence his writings on these subjects had in antiquity and in later centuries. Less widely recognized, however, is the fact that Cicero's oratory was also extraordinarily influential not only in later ages but in the seminal period immediately following his death. The fall from favor of Ciceronian periodic style, even during the latter part of the orator's career, has misled many into presuming that the impact of Ciceronian oratory in the early years of the principate was negligible. But this is surely not the case. Like the philosophical works, the speeches of Cicero constituted an important part of the intellectual inheritance of the Roman elite in the first century B.C. One has only to glance at the pages of Livy to see how thoroughly the speeches were assimilated in the writings of an Augustan historian born several years after Cicero's consulship. It seems clear, then, that if we are to understand accurately the mass appeals on which Augustus and his supporters relied, we must explore the sources of those appeals in the late Republic and in the work of the acknowledged master of popular discourse during that period.

But it is not only the influence of Cicero's oratory on past ages that makes it worthy of our attention; Cicero's speeches have something to teach us about the art of persuasion in our own time. The rapid fall of totalitarian systems and their replacement by governments dependent on mass approval has, of late, cast a fierce light on the processes by which leaders create popular consensus and win widespread support. This has meant that rhetoric has once more become a subject of serious interest. Because Ciceronian oratory, like much of the most riveting speech making of the past decade, was an oratory of crisis and change, practiced under the ever-present threat of governmental and private violence, it provides, to use Livy's phrase, exempli documenta: that is, instructive instances of how rhetoric actually functions under such circumstances—its style, its modes of appeal, its strengths and weaknesses.

In the long-established democracies the progress of technologies of mass communication has led politicians to rely on new strategies in their efforts to influence their constituencies. The complex task of evaluating the verbal and nonverbal components of this new political rhetoric now occupies many of us: citizens, hoping to sort out truth from untruth and half-truth amidst a barrage of competing appeals; the mass media, alternately critical and uncritical purveyors of these messages; as

well as political scientists and social historians. And in this enterprise, too, Ciceronian oratory has something to teach us. Ironically, the very difficulty of communication in the late Republic has given it much in common with the popular rhetoric of our own day. Cicero's need to sway a large, heterogeneous, and mostly unlettered and uneducated audience led him to exploit certain modes of persuasion that bear a striking similarity to those familiar in the present era. Chief among these is the orator's frequent recourse to rhetorical strategies that depend on integrating words with visual images—strategies, that is, that "represent" the real world to his audience in such a way as to seem to provide objective proof for the stated and unstated contentions of his speech.

Perhaps the ultimate value to the nonspecialist of studying Cicero's speeches lies in the fact that they provide a view of techniques common to rhetoric of all times and places being employed by a virtuoso performer. This does not mean that the reader ought to cast an uncritical eye on Ciceronian oratory, for even while admiring the skill with which the orator exploits commonplaces, creates semifictional personae, and balances logical and emotional appeals, the very act of analysis will sometimes lead us to condemn on an ethical basis what we applaud for its technical mastery. But even when it is recognized that Ciceronian rhetoric is, like all rhetoric, deeply flawed, we may yet see in it something humane and hopeful, for there we find as well the implicit assumptions that meaningful communication can take place between widely separated classes of society, that shared values and goals exist and may be articulated even within a deeply divided polity, and that the functions of government can be conducted through public debate rather than through violence.

The ideas for this book first took shape while I was engaged in writing a doctoral thesis exploring references to places in the early speeches of Cicero. As important as the freedom from other duties provided by concurrent fellowships from the American Academy in Rome and the Fulbright Foundation was the insight I gained into the interaction of text and ambiance by the opportunity I had to visit the Roman Forum frequently and study it intensively. I also profited from many conversations at the Academy with art historians, landscape architects, and architects, as well as with other classicists, and from the expertise of the senior scholars present during the year of my residence, especially Roger Hornsby, Lawrence Richardson, and William Harris. The book was completed during two leaves of absence from Boston University: the

first, a one-semester leave for Junior Fellows provided by the Boston University Humanities Foundation, and the second, a year-long fellowship awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. I am most grateful to Hildegard Temporini of Tübingen, who sponsored my work in Germany, as well as to Wolfgang and Martha Haase, whose kindness and friendship made my stay in Tübingen an especially pleasant one.

A number of my associates and friends have generously read and commented upon this work at various stages in its production. I extend my thanks to all of them, and especially to Elaine Fantham, Eleanor Leach, James May, John McManamon, and E. S. Ramage. I am also happy to acknowledge my debt to all of my colleagues at Boston University, particularly Donald Carne-Ross, Jeffrey Henderson, Meyer Reinhold, Michele Salzman, Stephen Scully, and Valerie Warrior, with whom I have had many stimulating discussions on various topics I have written about in these pages. I would like to acknowledge as well the publishers who have given me permission to make use of passages and ideas from three articles that have appeared in recent years: "Transforming the Visible," Res 6 (1983): 65–71; "The Masks of Rhetoric: Cicero's Pro Roscio Amerino, " Rhetorica 3 (1985): 1–20; and "Ars Dispositionis: Cicero's Second Agrarian Speech," Hermes 116 (1988): 409–27. I have incorporated these earlier treatments in this book, albeit in substantially revised form.

The maps and plans in the book were drawn by James Timberlake and Jack Sullivan. Their contribution to this book goes beyond the illustrations alone, and I am very grateful to them both for their encouragement and interest, as well as for their fine drawings.

Finally, I would like to thank my husband, Rich, who has been a source of endless patience, support, and, perhaps most important, good humor during the writing of this book and during the two decades of our marriage. Cui dono lepidum novum libellum? Tibi.