Persuasive History: Roman Rhetoric And Historiography

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This question, put in the mouth of the great orator Marcus Antonius, has come to represent the Roman--and, to some extent, ancient--attitude toward the relationship between historiography and rhetoric
Written in 1997 by Robert W. Cape, Jr., “Persuasive History: Roman Rhetoric and Historiography” thoroughly examines and analyzes Cicero’s written work, De Oratore, and the arguments he provides for the connection between rhetoric and historiography. An ultimate connection is made throughout the piece that the orator is the only man with the right capability to write and present history properly. In the article, there seems to be a struggle to understand what type of rhetoric should be used to keep history alive, and Cicero’s main point is that the ordinary man has been trained in rhetoric in a court case kind of setting and history shouldn’t be taught that way. He states that while the Greeks gave rhetoric some rules to follow, he also believes the rhetoric for use of history does not have to have rules, but rather a way to pull the reader in emotionally and dramatically. Cape discusses the ancient thought process through the character of Marcus Antonius, better known as Mark Antony, who represents Cicero himself. We have tantalizingly few statements by ancient theorists about the relationship between historiography and rhetoric, so it is easy to take Cicero 's comments as representing either an orthodoxy or the idiosyncratic theory of a rhetorician who never wrote history.4 Both positions are extreme.
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Cicero realized that some of his views on the relationship between oratory and history were not necessarily shared by others (cf. Leg. 1.5). Yet some of those views, such as the didactic function of history, were also held by earlier and later practising historians. Unmistakably Ciceronian are his comments on style, which are pivotal for the direction of Roman historiography. But in order to recognize what is new about Cicero 's position it is necessary to understand what is traditional. In addition, we must ask why Cicero made statements about historiography in a rhetorical treatise. It was not obvious that he should have done so (cf. De Or. 2.62, 64). At issue for historians and literary critics alike is a better understanding of how Cicero 's comments on historiography in De Oratore fit within the larger argument of book 2, where they occur. Recent work by T. P. Wiseman and A. J. Woodman has improved our understanding of Cicero 's view of history and specifically his statements about historiography in De Oratore.5 Woodman has rightly stressed that Cicero 's statements on the separation of truth from falsehood do not correspond to modern ideas of the same, but to the relative impartiality of the historian toward the treatment of his material.6 Another way Cicero 's view of history differs from modern theory, as Woodman shows, is that Cicero understood the facts of history to be as much a part of the rhetorical superstructure (exaedificatio) as their stylistic treatment. Why and how Cicero comes to make the bold claim that historiography should be governed by the rules of rhetoric is an issue treated by Wiseman, who suggests that the appearance of the rhetores Latini in the 90s brought to the fore questions of style and the historian 's social standing as part of his qualification to write history.7 More recently, Wiseman has suggested that Cicero distorted his treatment of earlier historians ' style, misrepresenting early Roman historiography.8 Yet, Wiseman 's reconstruction of the earlier historians ' practice in the use of sources actually supports Cicero 's claims about the stylistic levels of their representations. Since Cicero keeps his comments focused on the proper content (res) and stylistic treatment (verba) of history, not the historian 's social status, we need a new explanation for why the relationship between historiography and rhetoric should have been a recent issue in the 90s. To do this, it is necessary not only to reexamine Cicero 's statements in De Oratore but also to put them in the context of the larger arguments of the book and the whole work. The semantics continue with Cape’s use of quotations specifically from De Oratore. A thorough reading of the book itself, or in Cape’s case a translation, would be necessary in order to properly analyze and

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