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Creative Eloquence : The Construction of Reality in Cicero's

Speeches
Ingo Gildenhard

Published in print: 2010 Published Online:

Publisher: Oxford University Press
January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199291557 eISBN: 9780191594885 acprof:oso/9780199291557.001.0001
Item type: book

This book argues that a distinctive hallmark of Cicero's oratory is a

conceptual creativity that one may loosely characterize as philosophical.
A range of case studies show how this creativity manifests itself in
striking and original views on human beings and being human, politics,
society, and culture, and the sphere of the supernatural. After an
introduction that defines the outlook of Cicero's philosophical oratory
and addresses methodological issues, the volume contains three parts
with four chapters each, devoted, respectively, to the anthropology, the
sociology, and the theology contained within his speeches. Each of the
three parts begins with a substantial introduction that situates Cicero's
thought within its wider historical and intellectual context, not least by
identifying where and how he departed from the established habits of
thought in the laterepublican field of power. The nature of the argument
requires close philological study of key terms or concepts including
natura, humanitas, tyrannus, and conscientia as well as attention to
larger figures of thought, such as agency and accountability, the ethics
of happiness, laws vs. justice, the enemy within, civilization vs. barbarity,
the problem of theodicy, and life after death. Examples are drawn from
the entire corpus of Ciceronian oratory, from the pro Quinctio to the
Philippics, with indepth analysis of a representative crosssection of
particularly relevant speeches. Overall, the book offers a fundamental
reappraisal of a canonical body of texts and should appeal not just to
scholars of Cicero and Latin literature, but also Roman historians, and
students of the history of rhetoric.

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Introduction: Cicero's Philosophical Oratory

Ingo Gildenhard

in Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches

Published in print: 2010 Published Online:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199291557 eISBN: 9780191594885 acprof:oso/9780199291557.003.0001
Item type: chapter

The introduction sets out the main thesis of the book, i.e. that one
hallmark of Cicero's oratory is a conceptual creativity that one may
loosely qualify as philosophical. It informs unconventional constructions
of realities at the level of the human being and the human condition,
politics, society and culture, and the sphere of the supernatural. These
levels can be called Cicero's anthropology, sociology, and theology.
Several preliminary issues receive discussion: the seemingly awkward
marriage of oratory and philosophy that is here presupposed for Cicero's
speeches; what, precisely, the creative dimension of his orations is
taken to consist in; methodological problems in identifying this dimension
in the texts; and the decidedly theorydriven presentation of the findings.

Human Beings
Ingo Gildenhard

in Creative Eloquence: The Construction of Reality in Cicero's Speeches

Published in print: 2010 Published Online:
Publisher: Oxford University Press
January 2011
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199291557 eISBN: 9780191594885 acprof:oso/9780199291557.003.0003
Item type: chapter

This chapter focuses on how Cicero constructs specific human beings

and human types, to which individuals are assigned. It first discusses
the factors that underwrote the constitution and reproduction of Rome's
ruling elite, with particular emphasis on how Cicero combated what he
stigmatizes as the class racism of the nobility. Further sections consider
how the category nature was used in late republican rhetorical thought,
as foil for an exploration of how Cicero deployed the lexemes natura and
homo to construe persons as, first and foremost, human beings, quite
irrespective of their historical identities. The chapter further illustrates
Cicero's penchant for thinking in anthropological categories, and his
reasons for doing so.

Page 2 of 3

Kinship in Thucydides : Intercommunal Ties and Historical

Narrative
Maria Fragoulaki

Published in print: 2013 Published Online:

Publisher: Oxford University Press
January 2014
DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780199697779 eISBN: 9780191758386 acprof:oso/9780199697779.001.0001
Item type: book

This book explores the relationship between Thucydides and

ancient Greek historiography, society, and culture. Presenting a new
interpretation of the Peloponnesian War and its historian, it focuses
on the role of emotions, ethics, collective memory, and intangible
factors more generally, in the context of political history and ethnic
conflicts. Drawing on modern anthropological enquiries on kinship
and the sociology of ethnicity and emotions, and on scholarly work on
kinship diplomacy and Greek ethnicity, it argues that intercommunal
kinship has a far more pervasive importance in Thucydides than has so
far been acknowledged. Through close readings and contextualization
of a variety of sources, the book discusses the various ways in which
ancient Greek communities could be related to each other (colonization,
genealogies, belonging to the same ethnic group, socio-cultural
symbols, political mechanisms, and institutions) and the largely cultural,
emotional, and ethical expression of these ties. Through new readings
of the History, Thucydides narrative technique, such topics as his
astonishing exhaustiveness, alongside implicitness and understatement,
his challenging silences, his interaction with other genres, and his
intense engagement with Herodotus are dissected and discussed, this
book offers a new appreciation of his authorial personality and unique
contribution to historiography.

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