The Voices of the Consul: The Rhetorics of Cicero's de lege agraria I and II

ISBN-13: 9780199734207 / Angielski

Brian A. Krostenko

Opis

The Voices of the Consul is the first book-length study of the rhetoric of "On the Agrarian Law" I and II, the first two speeches that the great Roman orator Cicero gave on his ascension to the leadership of the Roman state-the first to the senate, the second to the people. Through a close and novel linguistic analysis, Brian A. Krostenko draws out Cicero's idealistic visions and shows how Cicero's apparently diffuse attacks on various clauses of an agrarian bill are informed by a consistent and idealistic vision of the functioning of the Roman state in which the people are to take their sovereignty seriously and the senate is to regard its high position responsibly. Cicero's speeches turned a critique of a single law into a politico manifesto-a worthy objective for a new consul. By a close comparison of corresponding passages from the speeches, the book clarifies Cicero's masterful adaptations of his audiences' knowledge of political concepts, civic spaces, legal procedures, and other cultural practices. By revealing Cicero's rhetorical technique and the ideology implicit in these speeches, The Voices of the Consul provides a more complete picture of his understanding of Roman politics and his own role within it at the beginning of his consular career.

Recenzje

Both expansive and focused, The Voices of the Consul offers a radically new way of understanding Cicero, late Republican rhetoric, and Roman prose as a whole. Krostenko's applications of neo-philology and a functional approach to language-coupled with his profound sensitivity to the opportunities and dangers inherent in the final decades of the Republic-have changed the discourse over how we should read Latin if we wish to read it well.

O autorze

Brian A. Krostenko is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame and author of Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance.