Profiles in Roman Rhetoric

This volume shifts perspective to the everyday aspects of ancient rhetoric—its teaching, exercises, and daily life—and concentrates on persons less visible in narratives of rhetoric’s history: teachers, slaves and freedmen, speech performers, political dissidents, mavericks, and dropouts.

Standard historical accounts typically identify rhetoric with events and figures of great moment, great men, prominent status, and narrowly defined uses of the art. The more quotidian practices of rhetoric and those persons who carried the discipline, especially as teachers, have received less attention, then and now. This book expands the history of Roman rhetoric by utilizing the less-studied material while, at the same time, exploring greater issues in the conceptualization and history of rhetoric. Among these: rhetoric as a discipline not only of verbal facility, but of invention and knowledge; the union of content and form; the use of models and types; the bodily dimensions of speaking and thinking; the morality of speech; the important roles of approximation and probability in knowing; and the plurality of truths. The opening chapter provides an overview of the history of Roman rhetoric. Three main persons are, then, brought into the spotlight (Plotius Gallus, Cassius Severus, Albucius Silus), while many others receive attention throughout the book.

Profiles in Roman Rhetoric enriches our understanding of intellectual life in Rome, and is suitable for students and scholars interested in rhetoric, both ancient and modern; classics; education; historical methodology; and biography.