Dinámica de fluidos en el diseño base

During the late Republic, the Roman approach to oratory experienced a profound transformation that was part of the Greek influence over Roman intellectual life in the second and first centuries B.C. According to the traditional Roman model,

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after receiving a private education in fundamentals, a young man would be apprenticed to an orator at the forum and learn his craft by imitating his elders.⁸⁰ Such a system, employing private tutors and forensic apprenticeship, was obviously reserved for the Roman elite. In this respect, such training provided for a distinct, elite culture in which eloquentia itself functioned as a status symbol; people would know a patrician not only by dress but also by diction. Just as importantly, such an education was intended to prepare young aristocrats for public service in the Republic; in theory, to be an accomplished orator was to be a statesman.

Starting with the Roman conquest of Greece during the second century B.C., the Roman educational system began to change. Initially, wealthy Romans employed Greek slaves to provide technical instruction in grammar and rhetoric for their young before they entered their apprenticeship in the forum.⁸¹ The emergence in Rome of Greeks skilled in rhetorical theory and technique thus post-dated the well-established role of an orator in Roman civic life.⁸² Whereas orators remained an entirely

aristocratic phenomenon, rhetors themselves enjoyed only a low status in society.⁸³ Of the thirty-nine documented grammarians and rhetors in the late Republic, thirty were slaves or freedmen of the most powerful families.⁸⁴ Anthony Corbeill interprets this as suggesting that the best tutors were difficult to find and were guarded from other interested parties as a mark of familial prestige.⁸⁵ Even after they obtained

80 Anthony Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman Republic: Creating Traditions’, in Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Yun Lee Too, ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 271.

81 Ingo Gildenhard, Paideia Romana. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. Cambridge Classical Journal. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society. Supplementary Volume 30.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29; Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 271.

82 In Cicero, Brutus 1, he speaks of the traditional Roman orators whose eloquence was natural and unaided by Greek rhetorical techniques.

83 Jakob Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, in James M. May (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 345.

84 Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 270.

85 Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 271.

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freedom, grammarians and rhetors were barred from establishing their own schools, and generally appear to have continued a client relationship with the families to whom they were formerly enslaved.⁸⁶

Thus from the start, an enormous social divide separated those who deliberated in assemblies or the senate from those who taught rhetoric. Orators generally disparaged rhetors and considered the teaching of rhetorical theory and techniques as a ‘debased’ Greek practice suited only for household slaves.⁸⁷ Some, such as Cicero, might deem rhetorical teaching an honourable activity among those

‘whose social position they are appropriate,⁸⁸ but by and large the emergence of rhetors was greeted with suspicion. The tenor of these misgivings was perhaps most forcefully expressed by Cato the Elder who railed against the use of Greek slaves in the education of aristocratic children because to have slaves reprimanding their betters and patricians indebted to slaves for their education overthrew the ‘natural’

social order.⁸⁹ Not surprisingly, in 161 B.C. the senate reacted strongly against the growing use of Greek slaves in Roman education by banishing all philosophers and rhetors from Rome.⁹⁰

But despite the best efforts of the senate, rhetors were in Rome to stay. A further development occurred in the late second century when grammar schools were founded.⁹¹ These were followed early in the first century by the first school of rhetoric aimed at low-born citizens and even slaves.⁹² The first of these independent faculties of rhetoric styled themselves rhetores Latini, suggesting awareness on their

86 Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 270.

87 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 345.

88 Cicero, Off. 1.151 (LCL 154): ‘...quorum ordini conveniunt’.

89 Gildenhard, Paideia Romana, 30.

90 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 345.

91 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 343.

92 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 343.

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part that they were providing something Greek in origin (rhetoric) now reoriented towards a Latin speaking world. Such a development horrified traditionalists in the Roman establishment and in 93 B.C. the censors Crassus and Ahenobarbus briefly suppressed the first school of rhetoric.⁹³ Part of the reason why the elite may have reacted against the creation of rhetorical schools is that they provided training hitherto only available to the elite through private tutors, and thus potentially provided access into the upper echelons of society by low-born citizens.⁹⁴ In De oratore, Cicero has his character Crassus explain that the reason behind this edict was

a concern that the Latin rhetors would make Roman youths too bold.⁹⁵ Also, Corbeill argues that rhetors operating as independent contractors were hardly likely to conduct themselves as the elite expected freedmen to behave, and this must have caused tensions in society.⁹⁶

So, during the formative period of Roman rhetoric, one finds a strong social distinction between the teaching and performance of oratory that resulted in the approval of the latter over against the former. The two activities of rhetors especially attacked were their inculcation of rhetorical theory through impractical exercises and the composition of rhetorical handbooks.⁹⁷ All of the most vocal critics of rhetorical

93 H. I., Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, tr. by George Lamb (New York: Mentor Books, 1956), 338; Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 345.

See George Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 90-95, for a good discussion of this period.

94 Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 272.

95 Cicero, De orat. 3.93-95. Crassus explains there that while he approved of young men’s minds being ‘sharpened’, these Greek schools ‘were capable of teaching nothing but boldness, certainly something that must be avoided in itself even when combined with good qualities’.

He explains further that once people of ‘great learning’ appear, he would be happy for the schools to reopen, noting only that should ‘they at some time appear, they will be superior even to the Greeks’. The term ‘shamelessness’ used in this section may refer to demagogy.

See Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 252, n. 115.

96 Corbeill, ‘Education in the Roman republic’, 272.

97 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 347. Wisse notes, however, that these rhetorical handbooks were so widely read that Cicero assumes his reader is familiar with their contents.

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teaching were themselves accomplished orators. In the words of Seneca the Elder, writing during the first century A.D., ‘the teaching of the most noble of subjects was restricted to freedmen, and by a quite unsatisfactory custom it was accounted disgraceful to teach what it was honourable to learn’.⁹⁸ It is worth noting that this distinction is not one that the Greek East shared. There, a rhetor could be a teacher, an orator, or both.⁹⁹

Handbooks on the rhetorical theory and techniques came in for particular criticism. For example, in De oratore, Cicero criticises the systematic rules of these handbooks as utterly impractical for an actual orator in the forum who needs to be able to adjust to the different difficulties cases might present.¹⁰⁰ Later, in his final work on rhetoric, Orator, he defends himself from the charge of sinking to the level of a rhetor who produces guides to rhetoric.¹⁰¹ He writes: ‘For the thought occurred to me that there might be found, not only envious men—but even admirers of my success, who will think it ill becomes one whose achievements have been praised more highly than those of any other man by the senate with the full approval of the Roman people to write so much about the technique (artificio) of oratory

(dicendi)’.¹⁰²

In their criticism of rhetorical handbooks, Roman orators such as Cicero entered a debate about the relative merits of rhetoric that stretched back at least to Plato. The debate centred on the question of how broad a scope could be allowed for rhetorical theory and practice. Beginning with Hermagoras of Temnos in the first

98 Seneca, Con. 2.pr.5 (LCL 202).

99 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 344.

100 Jakob Wisse, ‘De Oratore: Rhetoric, Philosophy, and the Making of the Ideal Orator’, in James M. May (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 378.

101 Cicero, Orator, 140-14.

102 Cicero, Orator, 140 (LCL 415). See also Cicero, De orat. 1.146.

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century B.C., rhetorical handbooks generally began by dividing rhetorical material into two categories: theses, or general questions, and hypotheses, or specific questions.¹⁰³ Hypotheses concerned the specific events, persons and circumstances that typically arose in judicial and political matters. Thus, an orator might need to know about how to address questions surrounding a murder or (to use a favourite subject of Second Sophistic rhetorical exercises) rape.¹⁰⁴ Usually, hypotheses were subdivided into three types of oratory: judicial, deliberative, and epideictic.¹⁰⁵ Theses, on the other hand, addressed questions of a philosophical or generally moral

nature such as ‘Should one marry?’ or ‘What is wisdom?’¹⁰⁶ By including theses within the range of rhetorical theory (even though such claims were never supported by any actual theory), such handbooks staked a claim to philosophical questions.¹⁰⁷ Philosophers argued stridently that general questions were beyond the ken of rhetors who lacked both the knowledge and training to address such subjects. Wisdom, they argued, was the profession of philosophers; rhetors and orators ought to keep to their own profession: eloquence.

In broad terms, the debate was between the relative merits of wisdom and eloquence, and it is here that the old argument was caught up in the Roman mistrust of Greek influence on their society. Because Republican oratory was inherently civic and practical—what one might term a political science—Roman theorists judged rhetoric superior to philosophy, which struck them as often impractical and, worse, overly prone to become the sort of private musings that failed to serve the needs of

103 James M. May and Jakob Wisse, ‘Introduction’, in Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, trans. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 27-28.

104 On the use of rape in late Roman rhetorical exercises, see Robert A. Kaster, ‘Controlling Reason: Declamation in Rhetorical Education at Rome’, Education in Greek and Roman Antiquity, Yun Lee Too, ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 317-337.

105 May and Wisse, ‘Introduction’, 28.

106 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 359.

107 Wisse, ‘The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 359.

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the commonwealth.¹⁰⁸ No serious re-evaluation of philosophy occurred in the West until religious practices there, affected first by the collapse of the Republic and then by the gradual disintegration of Imperial civilisation, took a metaphysical turn through the influence of Neoplatonism, Christianity and the emergence of mystery cults.¹⁰⁹ By then the civic role of rhetoric had long since diminished while at the same time withdrawal into a comfortable world of leisure (otium) had become the ideal of Roman aristocracy.

‘...quidam eloquens’: Cicero

The person who above all others sought both to defend the central role of oratory in civic life and to fuse wisdom and eloquence was Marcus Tullius Cicero.

That he was largely unsuccessful in these attempts did nothing to diminish his reputation.¹¹¹ Indeed, Quintilian mentions that in his own day, Cicero was more associated with the notion of eloquence than with the historical person.¹¹² Throughout the western Empire, Cicero’s works remained the core curriculum of rhetorical schools until well after the fall of Rome, though he would have shuddered to know that his earliest work, De inventione, would become his most popular legacy.¹¹³ One of the great ironies of late classical rhetoric is that even while it had abandoned the

108 Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 153.

109 On the nature of Roman religion, see Jörg Rüpke (ed.), A Companion to Roman Religion (Oxford: Blakcwell Publishing, 2007); Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001); J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1979).

110 doc. chr. 4.12.27 (CCL 32.135).

111 Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, 382, points out that despite Cicero’s best efforts to ‘wean’ the youth from a ‘naive, utilitarian’ idea of rhetoric and encourage them towards a higher notion of oratory, ultimately he convinced few people. The irony of Cicero’s life is that he sought to defend the role of oratory within a Republic that was collapsing around him.

112 Quintilian, Inst. 10.1.112 (LCL 64): ‘...ut Cicero iam non hominis nomen, sed eloquentiae habeatur’.

113 In Cicero, De orat. 1.5 (LCL 4), he dismisses his earlier work, written when he was around seventeen, as ‘sketchy and unsophisticated’ (incohata ac rudia).

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forensic focus of Ciceronian oratory, it continued to base its rhetorical training on his theory.¹¹⁴

At first glance, Cicero might not seem well-disposed towards the rhetorical developments of his own day. In De oratore, he rejects the rigidity of rhetorical rules for parts of a speech.¹¹⁵ Instead, he argues that oratory must be exceptionally difficult to master since so few have done so despite the ‘the utterly magnificent rewards held out for eloquence’.¹¹⁶ Such is the difficulty of becoming a true orator that Cicero warns:

They [‘our children’] should not rely on the precepts or the teachers or the methods of practice in general use, but be confident that they can achieve their goals by means that are of a quite different order. It is at least my opinion that it will be impossible for anyone to be an orator endowed with all praiseworthy qualities, unless he has gained knowledge of all the important subjects and arts. For it is certainly from knowledge that a speech should blossom and acquire fullness: unless the orator has firmly grasped the underlying subject matter, his speech will remain an utterly empty, yes, almost childish verbal exercise.¹¹⁷

Later, he has one of his interlocutors, Crassus, slightly modify this judgement on rhetorical art by suggesting that formal rhetorical theory might serve to ‘remind the orator of the points of reference for each occasion’ so that he does not stray too far from his goal.¹¹⁸ But then Crassus adds that no one has become a great orator by following these rules; rather the rules try to capture the essence of great orators. He concludes that although ‘eloquence is not the offspring of art, but art of

eloquence....becoming acquainted with it [rhetorical theory] is not unsuitable for a

114 Rhetorica ad Herennium, which was thought to have been written by Cicero, and De inventione formed the core of rhetorical curriculum until well into the Middle Ages by which time they had been supplemented by Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana.

115 Cicero, De orat. 2.78-84.

116 Cicero, De orat. 1.16.

117 Cicero, De orat. 1.19-20.

118 Cicero, De orat. 1.145.

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gentleman’.¹¹⁹ So, all in all, Cicero takes a dim view of the teaching of rhetors; good oratory depends less on their art than on natural ability combined with the knowledge of appropriate word choice, arrangement, emotions, history, civil law and statutes and how to regulate one’s own body and use humour.¹²⁰ Considering this contempt for formal rhetorical instruction, it is no wonder that, as we have seen, he goes to great lengths in Orator to distinguish his own tutorials in rhetoric from the menial task of Greek rhetors.¹²¹

So, instead of providing instruction on how one can become an accomplished orator, Cicero paints a picture of an impossibly ideal orator for students to imitate. In a sense, he is providing an old model for rhetorical training in a new form; instead having them imitate an actual orator (which he doubts exist anymore) he provides a fictional one of his own, whose idealised portrait he hopes will inspire students to become great orators themselves. Although this ideal is the focus of both De oratore and Orator, one first encounters it in what would become his enormously influential prologue to De inventione. Cicero begins the work with a dilemma: ‘I have often seriously debated with myself whether men and communities have received more good or evil from oratory and a consuming devotion to eloquence’.¹²² After considering how historically orators have both caused harm and brought benefit to

119 Cicero, De orat. 1.145-146. See Wisse, ‘De Oratore: Rhetoric, Philosophy, and the Making of the Ideal Orator’, 384 for a good discussion of this.

120 Cicero, De orat. 1.17-18. This knowledge must also be combined with ‘an ability to be quick and concise in rebuttal as well as attack, combined with refinement, grace, and urbanity’. On Cicero’s theory of decorum in oratory, see Emanuele Narducci, ‘Orator and the Definition of the Ideal Orator’, in James M. May (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric (Leiden: Brill, 2002),, 432.

121 Cicero, Orator 144. For a discussion of Cicero’s uneasiness with teaching see John Dugan, Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005),, 258-260. Wisse, The Intellectual Background of Cicero’s Rhetorical Works’, 346 also points out that Cicero’s contempt for rhetors is manifested in the fact that despite treating rhetorical handbooks at some length, not once does Cicero ever refer to a rhetor by name.

122 Cicero, De inv. 1.1 (LCL 2): ‘Saepe et multum hoc mecum cogitavi, bonine an mali plus attulerit hominibus et civitatibus copia dicendi ac summum eloquentiae studium’.

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‘mighty cities’, Cicero concludes: ‘For my own part, after long thought, I have been led by reason itself to hold this opinion first and foremost, that wisdom without eloquence does little for the good of states, but that eloquence without wisdom is generally highly disadvantageous and is never helpful’.¹²³ Thus, eloquence must be founded on the ‘study of philosophy and moral conduct’ so that the orator will not be

‘useless to himself and harmful to his country’.

Not satisfied with this exalted consideration of oratory’s civic role, Cicero proceeds by evoking a myth of the proto-orator. He begins by imagining an original state in which people lived little better than animals, lacking wisdom, religion or civil laws:¹²⁴

At this juncture a man—great and wise I am sure—became aware of the power latent in man and the wide field offered by his mind for great

achievements if one could develop this power and improve it by instruction.

Men were scattered in the fields and hidden in sylvan retreats when he assembled and gathered them in accordance with a plan; he introduced them to every useful and honourable occupation, though they cried out against it because of its novelty, and then when through reason and eloquence they had listened with greater attention, he transformed them from wild savages into a kind and gentle folk.¹²⁵

Cicero concludes: ‘To me, at least, it does not seem possible that a mute and voiceless wisdom could have turned men suddenly from their habits and introduced them to different patterns of life....unless men had been able by eloquence to persuade their fellows of the truth of what they had discovered by reason’.¹²⁶ As Dugan points out this proto-orator is an almost messianic agent of civilisation; only by uniting philosophy and oratory in a single person was humanity able to climb out of

Cicero concludes: ‘To me, at least, it does not seem possible that a mute and voiceless wisdom could have turned men suddenly from their habits and introduced them to different patterns of life....unless men had been able by eloquence to persuade their fellows of the truth of what they had discovered by reason’.¹²⁶ As Dugan points out this proto-orator is an almost messianic agent of civilisation; only by uniting philosophy and oratory in a single person was humanity able to climb out of