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by Alan Singer
by Stephen Bann
by Karen Pinkus
by Miran Boiovic
by Erik Gunderson
Staging
Masculinity
Erik Gunderson
Ann Arbor
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Gunderson, Erik.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Preface
EVERYONE KNOWS WHERE BABIES COME FROM. The same cannot be said
for men. Presumably they come from babies. The standard recipe is rather
vague: just add time. The theorists of ancient oratory were not content to
sit by idly and to wait for nature to take its course. They offered their own
formula for ensuring that a man became himself and attained to his mascu-
line station. One had to work at becoming a man, and, significantly, this
author not just reading oratory but also performing it? To some readers, all
hollow exercise. I would ask such a reader to consider that this study also
tation is a sham.
tions of what the ancients said about oratory. Indeed, antiquity itself is
filled with just such accounts of its own rhetorical practice. This is a neces-
of this sort of research. Ancient authors and some portion of the moderns
would mean: willful folly, crass deception, and worse. Breaking with the
seem: the body, gender, and authority show no signs of vanishing in the
the central issues of that narrative precisely as central. To the extent that
my reading seems radical or disruptive, I can only remind the reader that
Rome did not fall in a day. Indeed, one perhaps still awaits the collapse. I
such a move.
postmodern. The ancients are often asked to be off there in the past, a
stable point that contemporary modes of thought have advanced from and
fought against. Surely we have liberated ourselves from that all but forgot-
ten age. Yet antiquity itself has a theory of bodies, perhaps even a theory of
then subsequently ignore. It is worth asking, then, how modern are we?
some would hope. Nor, for that matter, is this process as automatic as
past filled with the theoretical jargon of the present. Put positively, this is a
tions, readers whose paths have perhaps diverged even as they continue
to run in parallel. First the student of antiquity will be asked to weigh and
does the classical world offer to their theories in its turn? This is a ques-
tion particularly worth considering for a second set of readers, those who
are perhaps all too familiar with the doings of the French even if they
have not engaged with Cicero and his countrymen for some years. I hope
ingenium. Rather than having the last word, though, I hope only to
encourage others to pursue their own studies down some of the same
paths outlined here: the road to Rhetoric is not an easy one, and I do not
and ended as a fish below would make for bad art. Horace's forbidden
monster resembles epic's Scylla. Horace was no fool. He knew that there was
something to be said for mixing one's media, and some of his more unusual
creations attest to this. I hope that I have offered a study whose own outland-
PREFACE ix
ish form will please rather than offend: the aesthetic of the exotic has an
I wish to thank a number of parties who made this work possible. Without
able to pursue my work and to see it to its completion. I owe a similar debt of
intellectually and practically in the labor of reworking and polishing this text.
lar a number of individuals who were especially generous with their time and
Butler oversaw this project from its inception. Each offered an inspiring
varied as they were uniformly excellent. Were panegyric not the most sus-
pect of all of rhetoric's forms I would gladly expatiate on the many details of
the kindness of each. I regret that I cannot thank by name the anonymous
hope that they note with pleasure the many improvements for which they are
responsible without feeling too pained at those errors that they were unable
ect over the span of so many years. I doubt that I shall ever adequately repay
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 3. Self-Mastery 87
NOTES 231
BIBLIOGRAPHY 251
WHAT DID ANCIENT ORATORY LOOK LIKE? This study started with this
reproducing the ancient orator. At least, I hope that I do not offer these
The majority of the most important passages that might be used to reveal
the truth of the ancient orator's gestures can be found in the pages of this
book. If one were to extract and assemble all of the ancient citations, one
might swiftly come to appreciate such finer points of the spectacle of rheto-
ric as the following: the left hand was used sparingly; the orator tends to
put his weight on his left foot, though raising up the right foot is bad form.1
As interesting as these tidbits might be, they cannot be simply collected and
assembled until a body stands before us, a body patched together from
quick from the dead, and the orators themselves would be the first to point
out the problems of using dead letters to breath life into their practice. But
end, was I.
When I began my own inquiries, I felt that though I had read my share
of ancient orations, I had long neglected one of the most obvious elements
of these speeches, namely, that they were delivered before a public. The
aesthetic appreciation of any given speech is not only possible but usually
2 STAGING MASCULINITY
can itself yield a variety of fruits.2 But oratory as practice and performance
rhetoric.
reading leaves entirely to one side the question of what Cicero actually did
with his voice and body during one of his Philippics. This reading also
dodges the question of the difference between the preserved written texts
means a simple script for an earlier performance. The most famous exam-
ple of this is Cicero's own Pro Milone, where the speaker failed in public,
only to return to his desk to pen a speech that later generations would
advance very far without falling into mere speculation. Instead of the specu-
lative, then, I have opted for the theoretical. To a certain extent such a
ars of the craft? A careful reading of the theorists of oratory will help to
ignorance cannot be wholly attributed to the accidents that can govern the
question any project that would read a speech and produce from that
reading the lived truth of the original performance. Rhetorical theory in-
stead forces the issue of the relationship between texts and bodies in mo-
tion or voices ringing through the air. Accordingly, it is not the particular
his or her eyes and ears owing to the centuries that separate us from the last
with a mourning for the loss of the presence of the living voice and body. In
INTRODUCTION 3
fact, loss of the body in the text is mourned as early as Plato, Phaedrus
276a8, where the living voice (Xoybg E ~pxog) is pitted against writing.3
One can compare the remarks of Freud on loss and mourning: "Now in
what consists the work which mourning performs? I do not think there is
reality, having shown that the loved object no longer exists, requires forth-
with that all the libido shall be withdrawn from its attachments to this
object" (1963a, 165-66). Since the libido never willingly abandons its ob-
jects, a struggle ensues, and the ego experiences suffering. To the extent
mere object, and hence the theoretical project also partakes of the melan-
cholic. That is, if melancholy is the unconscious loss of a love object experi-
enced in oneself (Freud 1963a, 166, 168), the theorist labors uncertainly
between recovery and relapse. He can never abandon the living voice
speech he seeks to recover is one that I will argue embodies virile self-
presence and authority.4 Hence this is a speech with which the theoretical
ego identifies even as speech comprises a lost object (Freud 1963a, 170).
The theoretical ego lives an ambivalent life under the shadow of this lost
This complex relationship between text and life, words and the body,
means that one cannot simply "bring to life" an ancient text: antiquity itself
rebels against the notion. But the struggle to speak of speech and to repre-
the history of rhetoric. Hence one pursues performance not just on a lark,
that must be carefully watched and measured: we can take for granted
neither the objectivity of the scholar nor, as we will see, the innocence of
the performer who has been asked to take up a theoretical position relative
4 STAGING MASCULINITY
that sustains the topographical distinction between ego and superego (But-
ler 1997b, 174), then one might imagine as well that rhetorical theory
assumes its role as a "critical agency" relative to the rhetorical ego after the
If there is an uneasy tension between the textual and the material, then
the problem of the lexicon, vocabulary, and syntax of the body as revealed
trust the text as transparent or revelatory, how can we ready the body
bodies? This problem holds true both for a speech of Cicero and for Cic-
ero's technical works on how to write speeches. The body within these texts
the body in the same gesture as it reveals the body. I will argue that the
literature acts to construct and to socialize a certain kind of body. Thus the
body, a discursive body and a body that is a product of its own description,
These implications, though, were awaiting it from the beginning. This was
and once again the "actual" body of performance remains lost to the extent
that it is never free from an interpretive apparatus that constrains its mean-
commentators and theorists are uncomfortable with their own position and
productions: they are displeased with their own act of inscription. And,
the body, this description itself has the force of an institution of a vision of
the body: the body they write is also a body they make and one whose truth
issues of optics and perspective: where does one stand relative to physical
performance when textuality mediates this relationship? And one may ask
a related question that does not arise for the ancient author: is there such a
where is the place for objectivity in this discourse that is always about the
the speaker himself and turned into a positive discipline. The orator be-
comes a theorist of himself and his own spectator. In this guise, his inspira-
Against this self-mastery and discipline the rhetorical theorists pit wan-
morality is closely adjoined to the theoretical issues that have come before:
ing an ancient morality within whose terms the performance would be intelli-
gible. Such moral issues are interesting in themselves: why should perfor-
expose and to comply with the ethics of oratory. Thus theory also plays a role
The immoral body is contrasted to the known body, the authentic body to the
mance or performances that only seem true? Is the orator just an actor?
Does he mean what he says, or is there a divide between the real man and
Into this breach the orator brings to bear his theoretical apparatus: the
truest body becomes the textualized, self-knowing body whose ideal perfor-
the initial position of theoretical impotence and loss, the "theory of the
self" now provides the most potent, authoritative, and self-possessed posi-
tion to its subjects. And here the theory even embraces the ironies of the
6 STAGING MASCULINITY
grammar of subjection: one becomes subject to, subject of, and the subject
for whom.
These, then, I take to be the key issues within the theoretical literature
and practice or text and deed? What is the body; how is it known; what are
the implications of this means of knowing the body? Where does the theo-
rist stand; and particularly, where does he stand in relationship to his own
practice? What are the ethics of practice; why is it ethical; and what are the
of these questions in the first five chapters of this study. Each section is
intended to give a coherent account of a key issue within its own terms. In
the sixth, however, I hope to show how all of these issues, elements, and
problems come together in Cicero's De oratore, a text that presents its own
likewise a record written so that Cicero's brother Quintus may know what
past Roman luminaries thought about how one is to speak.6 On the other
hand, this same goal of inculcating good speech can also be furthered by
Orator is written to Cicero's young disciple Brutus and paints for him a
portrait of the ideal speaker, one who has perhaps never been seen.7 The
Brutus is similarly an evaluation of the orator, but this time done by way of
itself as a work designed to train the ideal orator; and this time the ideal
Oratorem autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse nisi uir bonus
of him not only an exceptional speaking ability, but all of the moral
(Quintilian 1.pr.9)
Quintilian's formulation unites the man, his art, and his place in the world.
Quintilian tells us that, to his knowledge, Cato was the first Roman to write
on rhetorical theory (3.1.19), and Cato had himself defined the orator thus:
(orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus).9 The training of the orator
can never be dissociated from the ideas contained within the collocation vir
bonus, or "good man,"10 a fixed character who remains at the center of the
Who, or what, is a good man? Taken separately, the two sides of the
term bonus (good) and vir (man) can be analyzed by reference both to their
lexical entries and to the broader social discourse of Rome. Such a distinc-
tion is perhaps tendentious to the extent that words can never be segre-
gated from the society that uses them, but I would like to start from the
dictionary and proceed from there to demonstrate the social scope of this
phrase.
In Latin, a vir is an adult male. But the same word also signifies a man
real man, a manly man. The term also designates a position of authority and
responsibility: the adult is enfranchised, while the child (or slave) is not;12
the man rules his wife in the household; the soldier is the defender of the
safety of the state. In short, the term evokes more than mere gender.13 Maria
Wyke has discussed the imbrication of the physical enactment of gender and
the Roman social field, and she concludes of this relationship, "In the prac-
tices of the Roman world, the surface of the male body is thus fully impli-
On the other side of the phrase, bonus means "good." This goodness
good tool. More specifically, though, this goodness may indicate that a
adjective standing alone, boni, or "good (men)," also implies the wealth
that goes with station.16 Good, then, is not so much a bland qualifier as it is
man" is a man seen tout court in his full, dominant social capacity and one
who has proven himself valuable within this society. He is an asset to the
world, and in all likelihood has derived assets (bona) from the world. He is
the man on top of society, and the man most invested in it.
third term that has a prominent position within rhetorical discussions. This
nized domination. For the good man and good orator, then, auctoritas is
the term that ought to accompany both his station and the impression lent
When Cato and his successors speak of good men, then, they mean
something much more than a man who has done no wrong or a man who
men, they mean that rhetoric is the field of discourse in which good men
are the speakers. In the context of this study, rhetoric is the field in which
good men act and are enacted. Watching an orator, one ought to behold the
performance of the dominant, masculine subject and one ought to hear the
performance fails: the orator has not been a good man, and whatever
experience he has in speaking has gone for naught. His authority evanesces
and with it his claim to that authority. If this proposition seems circular, it
dyad. The two require practice and iteration. Neither is given: they are
These handbooks that purport to aid one to speak well are thus hand-
books to the elite male self. Maud Gleason has elegantly summarized this
situation: "In a value system that prized rhetorical skill as the quintessen-
could be achieved only by adult males, arbiters of rhetoric were also arbi-
ters of masculine deportment" (1995, 104). The man who speaks and per-
forms well is, by this very fact, also the good man. In these handbooks one
says, "Do this" or "Avoid that," he is always also teaching his reader about
the shape of the social space; and this teacher of rhetoric is likewise teach-
ing his student how to conform to this space. The man, his performance,
and the theory of this performance here form a triad that expands and
complicates the twofold relationship between being a good man and main-
book forms the point of explicit and expressed knowledge from which one
comes to see and to know both good men and their authoritative perfor-
mances. One the other hand, the authority of oratory as a practice of good
know how to speak well. Cicero offers to his brother portraits of famous
authorities and their ideas on rhetoric. Quintilian offers his books as an aid
INTRODUCTION 9
to a father who would educate his son, books that will see a future orator
from his diapers to the peak of his art (1.pr.6). Thus rhetorical theory is by
In her study of the Second Sophistic, Maud Gleason has not only admirably
analyzed some of the key details of ancient rhetorical training and perfor-
men that share this training and these performances as a common bond.
ing the student within this symbolic economy (1995, xx-xxiv). Within this
ing men into two camps: the legitimate and the illegitimate (xxviii). Hence
contests over the definition of rhetoric become contests over the imposition
uses for the most part later Greek material; I am most interested in rela-
gender. Indeed, our work shares as its founding premise the constructed
At the same time, though, Gleason's book has not asked the same
introductory questions as has this study. Her work does not take the prob-
admirably succeed in giving a vivid and lifelike portrait of the many curious
relationship between theory and practice. Gleason sees the second century
in this abundance a sign that "the wordless replication of the elite habitus
could no longer be counted upon."'18 On the other hand, before this, "The
ness. The young men who consciously studied his rhetorical exempla uncon-
sciously imitated the gestalt of his self-presentation. The result was, for
that pose an even greater divide: theory actively destroys the immanence of
outlook, I believe that we need not assume that all must "go without
weeps if it mimes grief. It does not represent what it performs, it does not
memorize the past, it enacts the past, bringing it back to life" (1990, 73).
important and durable social labor takes place in the act of explicitly
practice complements social norms and does not represent their decay. I
would say that such an uncomplicated practice does not and cannot exist
of symbiosis with its own theory. Rhetorical theory both observes and
changes rhetorical practice and the habitus of the elite male. But such a
role for theory means only that we cannot positively say what actually
happened and cannot read through these texts for true acts and gestures.
ist accounts of ancient rhetorical theory are all too easily produced: for
rhetoric shall have reproduced both the contents of the ancient text and a
structural relationship to the object of the study qua object that will govern
social laws" derived from rhetorical maxims (Bourdieu 1990, 41). Con-
choices were rational products of his willed intentions (Bourdieu 1990, 49-
While it is not clear that anyone actually reads ancient rhetoric exclu-
sively after either of these models,21 embracing the two approaches does
not solve the problems of either. Hence one can understand Bourdieu's call
precisely within the context of reading texts on practice that one should be
the present" (Bourdieu 1990, 53). An account of the lived ancient habitus,
functions" (Bourdieu 1990, 52), cannot be produced from treatises that can
an account of it?
mance that are the governing concerns of this book. Bourdieu strives for a
structures of the social world and a set of dispositions that allow for the
cient rhetorical theory that suggests that practice may not be autonomous,
one's bodily performances. The idea of the text needs to be returned to the
12 STAGING MASCULINITY
theory of performance in order for us to read our evidence for what it is,
textual evidence.
retical apprehension that is itself aligned with virile self-mastery: the idea
of the body and of the text cannot be removed from an account of rhetori-
such a move is fully justified to the extent that the ancients were themselves
obsessed with the insertion of theory into practice. The lived subjective
ist abstraction.
into an unnatural act that perverts authentic performance. In this sense, the
already shares the sense of loss of practice that Gleason herself claims to
feel. Yet this portrait of theory does not seem to correspond to the deploy-
words, the practice is never radically independent from the theory: Corax
and Tisias, the first teachers of rhetoric, are said to have been writers of
that theory begin where being fails. I would prefer to take up the idea of
problems are recognized from the outset. In other words, the elite male of
antiquity is never a given: the infant never passes into aristocratic manhood
INTRODUCTION 13
will be seen in a later chapter, the orator can never radically establish his
actor. Likewise, while the distinction between men and women within
gendered axis immediately invites other issues: what kind of pleasure does
one give or receive? As Foucault put it, what is the proper use of plea-
sure?26 And, naturally, since the "men" and "women" in question are all
Sedgwick 1985). What is one to feel vis-a-vis his fellow men? These ques-
tions and problems are less crises that arrive to trouble rhetorical masculin-
ity than they are the building blocks of the discourse of masculinity itself.
either her own work of the work of the anthropologists and sociologists
upon which it relies. Instead I would suggest that such methods need to be
tion paid to these additional questions will turn out to be, after its own
fashion, merely another way of tracking down the same set of issues raised
the text that records, transmits, regulates, and reproduces rhetorical perfor-
better understood with reference to Foucault and also to the work of Judith
Butler, who has made performativity and subject constitution her special
study. This pair of theorists will next help to explicate the self-relationship
of the orator to his body within rhetorical discourse. Yet this same self-
relation occurs not just at the level of a discursive apparatus, but also at the
level of the individual psyche, and hence appeal will be made to the work of
Freud and Lacan. The gains made by engaging with the ideas of these
various thinkers in earlier sections will, I believe, help to round out the
this study.
always raising questions of authority and the body as performed and experi-
enced, rhetorical theory aspires to the very objective status relative to these
questions that a simple sociological approach would itself seek to attain: its
general. Rhetorical theory thus straddles the question of the objective and
ing a practical role relative to the objective social relations for which the
rhetorical subject prepares himself. A reading of this theory must not itself
seek to deduce a habitus from a text on habitus. Instead it must ask ques-
level Bourdieu argues in order to ground his own theories. They occupy the
position of the invested sociologist, not his primitive subjects. Thus Bour-
knowledge, the theory effect, and problems of objectivity in the social sci-
ences rather than as the student of primitive societies and their habitual
not be given the last word. Instead, philosophical and psychological ques-
the writings of this group of authors are perhaps in order.27 Before getting
into specifics, however, I would like first to insist that I do not at all pretend
of ancient source material. This I regard as the most practical and honest
were taken - for example a "strict" Lacanian reading - the question would
still arise as to which Lacan I was using and why. Instead, it is more helpful
to see each thinker's corpus as comprising a set of questions and issues that
are still in the process of evolving. The light that such considerations shed
upon the ancient texts in question is the only criterion for the selection of
any given theory or part of a theory. And, as no one theory exhausts the
intricacies of the rhetorical situation - nor, for that matter, are the theories
oratory call into question the modernity of the postmodern. The antiquity
speech and writing that haunt rhetorical theory.28 Derrida champions writ-
the most apt description of the action of language as a whole, a system that
is radically lacking a point of origin and wherein all meanings are derived
speech over writing lean upon the notion of a transcendental signified and a
theodicity wherein the soul is to the body as the logos is to writing (Derrida
1976, 20, 35). Within such a conception, "the ethic of speech is the delusion
predicated. This speech is the speech of the authentic man, the vir bonus.
Yet the vir bonus is himself called into question by any critique of the
is immanent within the very texts that would reproduce the vir bonus, for as
texts they are necessarily affiliated with that writing which is the radical
other of speech and which designates nonpresence and diffirance for Der-
rida (1976, 56-57). Nevertheless, rhetorical texts act to give assurances that
writing can be brought under the sign of speech. Thus the rhetorical venue,
the stage upon which rhetorical theory gazes, acts as a scene of an impossi-
within these theoretical texts, forces that would vitiate the authority and
or harm it?
cial categories that are dependent upon a prior ontology and the successful
positing of the subject as such. In this regard one can invoke on several
(1976, 144). At the same time, the supplement also "adds only to replace"
a presence" (145). In this sense, then, the supplement is both savior and
undermines it from below. For Derrida, there is no being as such, only its
eternal imputation.
I would like to suggest that the triad of notions I have discussed above,
the performance, the student, and the theory, play with and against one
its supplement or aid, but hates the text as its own effacement. Perfor-
and authenticity. On the other hand, the student requires text as supple-
ment or as the assistant for his own self-mastery and self-presence. Yet this
plays one. For its part, the text requires the student as supplement or
effacement of its death- a making present in the world and in speech of the
into iterative and worldly time. In none of these cases, though, does the
supplemented. The task of this study, then, is not to pursue completion and
perfection, but to explore the shapes of these subjects, texts, and acts
such incompleteness.
seen shortly, the consequences of such a failure are manifold, and they also
labor of self-discovery that is enjoined upon the student. At the same time,
therapeutics. Nor, for that matter, does such a process ever offer a success-
ful psychoanalytic cure within Freud's own thinking. Instead, the student
has certain psychic elements dredged up and worked over and over in such
Before getting into the details of this process of failed rhetorical ther-
apy as it relates to the Freudian corpus, I would like to lay out a few points
infantile life is suffused with desires that are thoroughly lawless so far as the
polite society that awaits the child is concerned. Thus, every child is a Little
Hans, a "paragon of the vices," as Freud calls him (1976, 57). Every child
ality, and the rest. Likewise one notes that in part the production of such
vices is attendant upon the efforts of the same good people who are in some
measure scandalized by them, namely the family. For in Hans' case, his
parents were adherents of Freud and had destined their child for observa-
tion (Freud 1976, 48). Similarly, they themselves expressly utter the threats
INTRODUCTION 17
and injunctions that sexualize Little Hans' life.30 In other words, Hans does
not live in the state of nature, but is instead fully implicated in his culture.31
no, many more objects are invested by desire than any narrow heterosexual
paradigm can account for. While the inculcation and legislation of such
Further, one should accept the ideas of anaclitism and narcissism as intro-
same-sex desire is not itself ipso facto anathema; the age of the participants
and who did what to whom were far more pressing concerns (Parker 1997).
key moments of refusal, and one must examine the psychic consequences
homosocial ones is precisely the axis around which the rhetorical scenario
turns.33 Even if passive homosexuality is an anathema for the vir bonus, the
The therapy offered by the rhetorical handbook plays upon the libidinal
transfers onto the person of the analyst desires whose fundamental structure
and origin lie in infantile sexuality (1970a, 105-7). Thus the scene of therapy
capacity for love and desire. Freud insists that this structure is always repro-
ducing itself (1970a, 106), but that in the case of therapy, the analyst takes up
patient's] mind" (107). Here again, rhetorical theory should be seen as only
ing within the Roman psyche. This reading is clearly a Lacanian one wherein
But it is, of course, keenest in a scenario like analysis, where the patient is
the analyst there lies a relationship to meaning in general (see Lacan 1988a,
18 STAGING MASCULINITY
show him his own meanings within a broader context of signification. The
extracted from it. In the rhetoric of rhetorical theory, the body is said to
signify as to the truth of its own bearer. The body comes to act as an
irreducible index of the truth that one is, in fact, a "good man." The
modate himself to this body and this discourse in order to attain to this
ing to structures of desire that precede the advent of the therapist, "pro-
vides the strongest resistance to the cure."34 The attainment to full self-
knowledge - to put for a moment a very lopsided gloss upon Wo es war, soll
the alter ego with which he is presented and should he fail to move beyond
therapist, one finds the possibility of a static circuit wherein there will be no
over again to an image of virile authority and mastery, an image that is part of
delve into the symbolic implications of the very virile authority that is every-
cates the same sorts of desires whose emergence within analysis Freud high-
lights. But in the case of rhetoric, these desires are cultivated without any
overcoming or getting beyond. The resistance to the cure that Freud sees in
the transferential admiration for the image of the therapist here becomes,
ironically, the cure itself. The orator is promised that his successive approxi-
mations to the body the text offers will lead him to acquire the authority in
general. And, obviously, this same authority has to be invested in the text as
itself authoritative and efficacious before the orator can even begin aspiring
to realizing the text's promises. From the outset, then, we find a sublime
body already folded into the speech of the text, an absent author who prom-
beyond the material possibilities of any given performance. One reaches for
of a good man and the meanings that have been invested in such a body
but that also transcend it. The handbook modulates this desire, and it
and tactics of that desire. We will in fact find a desire reaching out from
the handbook and the rhetorical teacher toward the student: the transfer-
absolute master.
extent that it acts to produce a certain kind of subject - yet another Freud-
ian concept becomes relevant: repetition. Freud sees repetition as the ex-
fused and likewise bound ever to return anew. Oratory is saturated with
problems of pleasure and desire felt between males. The good performance
of the orator and the one toward which he is educated is the enactment of
the body of the good man as a socially desirable entity, an entity that gives
authorize these homosexual desires along more acceptable lines than the
doing steer that Eros into such channels as are socially respectable. In other
the object of solicitude and deliberate labor. And the traces of this labor of
thrives upon this process of concomitant incitement and refusal: for it is the
very desire that is prohibited that holds together the libidinal economy of
rhetoric in general.
Here one should compare Freud's essay on melancholia and the pro-
cess whereby one grieves over the loss of an object within oneself (1970b,
himself, and this is an activity of active refusal that produces a lost object.
At the same time, this care for the self and beratement of effeminacy,
also contains a critique of the social order for being too servile or effemi-
nate. In other words, there is a desire expressed in this gesture for a world
such a desire is a vain one precisely because the production of the ideal
male entails the production of illegitimate lost objects within the hege-
this site of loss to secure that the illegitimate is berated all over again. The
handbook's therapy fails once again, and pure masculinity remains an elu-
sive and ephemeral dream. But again the failure is a success to the extent
that the process itself has useful social consequences that are served even as
one is cheated of the ostensible goal. Thus there is a melancholy that clings
derived from Freud can be rounded out via the writings of Jacques Lacan,
and I would here like to make my debt to Lacan somewhat clearer. Lacan
with the psychology of Freud. Lacan's theories thus provide a clearer under-
fact, one may consider this to be Lacan's chief aim as a theorist. Lacan's
"mirror stage" explains the constitution of the ego in the realm of what he
calls "the imaginary."38 The subject's ego comes to compose itself from out
of the other that confronts him in the mirror. We will in fact see this very
and his meaning by reference to his own image. This is the moment of
"seeing oneself see oneself" (Lacan 1981, 83) that marks for Lacan the
point at which the subject elides the gaze whose preexistence structures his
world and his position within it (1981, 72). In the case of the orator, his
theoretical apparatus acts as the preexisting and structuring gaze that disap-
cated in the society that produces it, and hence it fully partakes of the
symbolic in Lacan's sense of the term: rhetorical theory offers a special and
complement this portrait of the ego by evoking as well the unconscious and
the symbolic order.39 The axis of the ego for Lacan lies along the plane of
what he calls the imaginary. On the other hand, the symbolic order persists
"discourse of the other" (e.g., 1988a, 85; 1988b, 89). The unconscious is
is the irruption of language into the world. Thus, "the human order is
"(the symbolic order) isn't constituted bit by bit. As soon as the symbol
within this order only as one more symbol within this order (1988b, 38).
Hence there is no special place set aside for the ego in Lacan's world.
Lacan profoundly decenters the ego, and demolishes the statement, "I'm
particularly potent fashion for the orator as ego. The rhetorical tradition
scious. Or, put more precisely, this theory participates in the structuration
of the orator's unconscious. In this sense, one needs to take even more
impose upon their students. It is through these very techniques that the
orator loses his ability to say that he is the one who knows who he is even as
For the orator and his theories, the symbolic order is always already
given and complete. But the orator's symbolic order is lived and repro-
duced by these same theories. The ego of the orator is given to theory's
the ego to the symbolic order. In the chronic labor of making the ego
all key aspects of the orator: virility, authorized speech, and social control.
purports to be the means to this end. The labor of establishing this authen-
ticity can naturally never be completed given that its consummation would
22 STAGING MASCULINITY
and imaginary orders. But it is this very identification that is sought within
rhetorical theory: where the unconscious of theory was, there the ego
should be.
give us some pause. It does not differ from the recipe for therapy offered
plays off of Freud's famous Wo es war, soll Ich werden. In Lacanian terms,
this involves the movement of the Ego (je, Ich) into the position of the Id
(Sujet, Es, or, unconscious) (Lacan 1988b, 243-47). Clearly a similar move-
ment is sought by rhetorical theory as well, but the viability of this project
seems suspect. In Lacan's and Freud's terms, there ought to be some virtue
in communing with the unconscious and the symbolic. But the orator ac-
quires his "health" at the cost of reinscribing the legitimacy of virile author-
ity. To what extent does analysis itself offer a cure only by way of a funda-
mental complicity with the very order whose dictates and prohibitions have
caused so much distress?41 The desires that structure the world of antiquity
bia. It is not clear that the modern world can argue a contrary case.
reading be affiliated with techniques of the self whose origins can be traced
but any notion that psychoanalysis is a "rhetorical" gambit should not leave
us blind to the notion that the psyche is itself rhetorical. And, within the
ideally accommodated to the project of acting both upon and within the
is a fertile failure.
with the discussion above, as Foucault was himself a vocal critic of psycho-
periods. I hope that the present project will bear out the conclusion that
to periods in which he did not himself see them as acting. Implicitly such an
classical period as being somewhat incomplete within his own terms: for
precisely the failure of a text like The Care of the Self to engage with the
ironies and ambiguities of its chosen topic that renders Foucault's argument
rather bland and descriptive, whereas his earlier work is remarkable for its
bold insights. Strangely, Foucault seems to have taken antiquity at its word,
whereas students of rhetorical theory ought to always worry that the an-
But let us return to the orators. Their fertile and failed theoretical
compelled to "speak verbally of its own silence" and is put into a triad of
power, knowledge, and pleasure,45 so also are pleasure, effeminacy, and all
illegitimacy brooded over within the rhetorical setting. The other parallels
citement" (1990a, 18) to speak about the forbidden and excluded side of
oratory; "an effort of elimination that was always destined to fail and
ars erotica and not a scientia sexualis (1990a, 57-90). I would assert, on the
other hand, that there is in fact a scientia sexualis enfolded into the study of
rhetoric.
knowledge and power that subtend this situation. Here Foucault explicitly
informs us that "the body is also directly involved in a political field; power
24 STAGING MASCULINITY
relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it,
torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs"
(1979, 25). The same might be said of the orator's body within the political
field that it occupies. The rhetorical handbook plays the part of active
power:46 the more explicit and detailed the study of a performer's body, the
more one can detail the tracings of power upon this body. The constitution
and extraction of knowledge of the body occur in the very process of the
examination of this body. 47 In the end, knowable man appears as the prod-
known and more subject to the power that knows him (Foucault 1979,
305). The man who emerges at the end of this process is the "true" man.
That is, the truth of the order of discourse structured by power has as its
the simple sense of reflecting what actually happened when a speaker arose
to deliver his words. Rather, rhetorical theory is true in the sense that it
uity. It is true to the extent that the knowledge that it produces, a knowl-
edge everywhere suffused with power, has the quality of constraining the
the hegemonic male produced by him and applied to himself. What differ-
same time, it is a point to which his thinking seems to aim. Foucault grap-
pled with the problem in both of the later volumes of The History of Sexual-
ity, even entitling the third volume The Care of the Self Yet self-reflexivity
because power has been inscribed within its bearers (201). This inscription,
ciple of his own subjection" (202-3). Given this last example, the scene of
rhetorical training resembles not only the practices and the care of the self
INTRODUCTION 25
outlined in The History of Sexuality, but also the panoptic scenario. The
and everywhere upon him. By way of meeting the demands of this gaze, the
about the elision of the gaze by the sense of seeing oneself seeing oneself
(1981, 83). This homology suggests that Foucault's own theories are not so
lel notion of power, both theories are enriched: Foucault is given a struc-
ture within which his optics may be related to the ego along the axes that
bind the symbolic to the imaginary; and Lacan has attached to his symbolic
rigid definition of the symbolic and the real as that which resists significa-
occur within the History of Sexuality. For example, in the Jouy we see
of power and knowledge permeating the rest of the text (Foucault 1990a,
31-32). During his account of the simpleton and his "bucolic pleasures"
who is transformed into child molester at the hands of the law Foucault
Similarly Jouy's naive innocence is purchased at the price of the girl's savvy
need to be critiqued within the order that refuses them. As Butler reminds
us, the subversive possibilities for sexuality and identity need to be thought
within the terms of power itself (1990a, 30). Such will be my own approach
Failed orators and other, untenable bodies may well represent opportu-
should not be taken as moments of authenticity falling outside the law and
26 STAGING MASCULINITY
waiting for a new, modern narrative to apply its alchemy, to transform their
discursive evaluation, and to exchange their base metal for one nobler. One
blest and best account of bodily truths, for such is the very end to which
rhetoric itself steers us. A mere inversion of terms is unlikely to affect the
conditions that require the interconnection of truth, the body, and virtue.
The orator participates in this whole debate of good and true bodies as
himself and his world. This role, though, is neither fixed nor rigid. Rather it
represents a fertile and creative moment. The orator's performance and his
training for performance offer points where power is staged and repro-
tively described by the theory that would encompass it. Thus the world of
within them a potential space for queer-in the fullest sense of the term-
have rhetoric's failed analysis and therapeutics, again its fertile failure, but
in this case we see more clearly the extent to which it could never have
succeeded.
ing moment for the subject, and also thinkers who act upon this belief to
pulsory materialization of the body through time (1993, 1-2, 9), the rhetori-
cal theorists take up a similar stance and rework it for their own ends. This
less self-subjection within the terms of the law. The orator and his theories
are implicated in a situation that invites the endless citation of the law in
order to reground both the authority of the law and its bearers.50 The law
cited in this case is the law of power or the symbolic. Yet this notion of
hence there is no law as such, only its own citations. One thinks again of
rhetorical theory has found a way to keep it always busy and out of trouble.
INTRODUCTION 27
At the same time, though, the law and the truth of rhetoric cannot be
this structure itself structures the world.51 I understand rhetoric, the theory
of rhetoric, and the bodies of the orators as all part of an ongoing project
designed to produce meaning even as the truth of that meaning and the
unlivable domain. Thus in the process of securing the legitimate order, the
the rhetorical subject are iterations that are constrained both to mark their
haunting the legitimate order. Butler reminds us that "since the law must
the possibility of its own failure" (1993, 108). Yet for the orator, his hand-
book proposes that the failure lies within the student. The student need
only accede more to the law by subjecting himself to the further study of it
115). In the case of rhetoric, though, we find that the cruelty is highly
and the theory of performance are vital aspects of the truth of masculine
identity at Rome.
This theoretical survey has been intended to offer not only a justifica-
tion for employing certain methods when reading ancient rhetorical texts,
within antiquity. In other words, the questions that arise within ancient
rhetorical theory and that are themselves partially addressed within this
mance of or for? What is the desire lived in performance? On the other hand,
ancient rhetorical theory offers the opportunity for a close and detailed
28 STAGING MASCULINITY
cal theory and practice and their interrelationship thus offer an overt ex-
study requisite to the proper study of the art. While some Greeks may have
memory so as to be able to say what he had decided upon when the time
nology: Latin authors use either actio or pronuntiatio, but prefer to use one
over the other. The first, actio, specifically evokes the movements of the
body during a speech, the second the modulation of the voice. Each term,
am most interested in the use of the body, but likewise will employ the term
in its broader sense. It must be kept in mind, then, that the rhetorical
tradition has, to its own eyes and especially to our own, curiously fused two
ogy: how can a book train the body and the voice by means of its written
dictates? One might argue that the handbook never stood alone, that there
was always accompanying it the schoolhouse, and that the books' failings
should not be forgotten. It does, though, tend to gloss over questions that
We should not let the notion of the schoolhouse obscure the fact of the
text: one of the reasons Quintilian writes is because he knows that people
29
30 STAGING MASCULINITY
are already learning from flawed "bootleg" copies of his lectures (1.pr.7).
There is a veritable hunger for texts on the part of the audience. Quintil-
ian's problem presents only the most striking case of a condition presup-
posed by the text: the author is absent; these words will have to do; one
handbook students who could not hear their teacher, students who wished
to have him ever to hand, full-grown orators who no longer needed lessons,
nent place, on equal footing with the other four divisions in the art of
oratory. He begins his discussion by saying, "Many have said that delivery
is the most useful thing for an orator and that it lends the most to persua-
sion. We, for our part, should not have readily said that a single element
from the five parts of oratory was particularly effective."6 The author is
antiquity. This moderate declaration and the subsequent reserve about the
oratore, 3.213).
The author offers the following justification for treating the topic in
his text:
posse putarunt de voce et vultu et gestu dilucide scribi, cum eae res
sideranda.
topic - for all thought that one could hardly write clearly concerning
our physical senses - and because we must carefully provide for this
too "real" for many to wish to compass it with mere words. Delivery, then,
offers to rhetorical theory a sort of limit-point that might possibly lie be-
yond its own capacities. Despite our author's line of thought, he neverthe-
READING AND WRITING 31
that is, to put delivery into words. A detailed discussion of various ele-
exprimere verbis et imitari scriptura conatus sim voces. Verum nec hoc
confisus sum posse fieri, ut de his rebus satis commode scribi posset,
nec, si id fieri non posset, hoc, quod feci, fore inutile putabam, prop-
express the movements of the body in words and to imitate the voice in
writing. But neither did I feel I could write of these things adequately,
nor, if in fact I couldn't, did I think that whatever I did achieve would
ate delivery; the rest I will leave to actual training. Nevertheless, one
ought to know this: good delivery achieves as its effect that everything
This text lacks confidence in itself, and it highlights the impossibility of its
provide us with a set of prescriptions even where these might actually prove
to be useless: delivery could not be passed over in silence; this will have to
book on oratory: in over six hundred pages of analysis, less than one page
pages of which just over two are dedicated to performance (1974, 353-55).
1075; Solmsen 1941, 45-46). On the Roman side, we know from Quintilian
that Plotius Gallus and Nigidius wrote about gestures.9 Suetonius cites a
passage from a lost letter of Cicero that says that Plotius was the first to
teach in Latin and that when Cicero was a boy all of the youths were
32 STAGING MASCULINITY
flocking to Plotius (De grammaticis et rhetoribus 26). Hence, the key word
will see in the next chapter whether or not such knowledge could ever be
made sufficient.
composition. A handbook, then, has failed the body and voice of its
makes clear, even where it is verbose, the handbook has not compassed
cannot adequately deal with questions of the senses. In fact, the prescrip-
tions of the Ad Herennium appear to have even been scaled down some-
what in order to offer some generally useful rules of thumb, since definite
precepts appear beyond this medium. This text may be careful, but it is
repeat with some amusement and impatience the fruits of the "pedantic
the author sees himself as restrained and general when it comes to deliv-
ery. That is, we may read and reread this section as often as we please,
but the author does not expect that we will actually become great orators
delivery, the author does not believe that such would be possible: the
book is better than nothing; it is necessary even; but it is not enough. One
ing a man with a real savoir faire out of a student who does not already
the question of fitting expression (elocutio), Victor says, "But I feel that
man who does not know how to speak, nor is it to be hoped that he who
cannot speak good Latin is going to speak ornately, nor that he who does
Bourdieu's terms one might say that the elite habitus and the finer points
nance."11 To what end are we given such detailed advice? Ultimately, the
supposed to feel that the orator has shown them his soul. The author of the
mance, and he ends with an invocation of the inner man. I would like to
writing, performance, and the soul as the troubled point to which rhetorical
theory repeatedly returns. It is the subject who is at stake in the lacuna that
second failure related to this first one: it fails to capture the good orator as
Sit igitur orator vir talis qualis vere sapiens appelari possit, nec
sunt qui dissentiant, satis non est), sed etiam scientia et omni facultate
dicendi; qualis fortasse nemo adhuc fuerit, sed non ideo minus nobis
[So let the orator be such a man as can truly be called wise, not only
those who disagree - is not enough), but also perfect in both his knowl-
edge and his capacity for every manner of speaking, a man such as
perhaps has yet to have lived. But we are not for this reason to aspire
prohibit that one arrive at it. And even if this does not come to
pass... ]
(Quintilian 1.pr.18-20)
nes nor Cicero, it would seem, can claim to have attained to the summit of
oratory (cf. Heldman 1980, 9). Still, the labor of oratorical training, like
rather than as extant (est). The rhetorical handbook that cannot capture
former. And Quintilian is hardly the first to use the trope of impossible
oratory. Cicero had made the same argument: the consummate orator
Thus, at the furthest level of remove, at the level of the status of the
34 STAGING MASCULINITY
tions that might strike us as points of crisis. For the handbooks, though,
such issues as oratory as an art, the possibility of the perfect orator, or the
texts seldom provide solid answers in one direction or another. There are
Herennium can tell us "neither. . . nor. .." without ever offering a posi-
tive precept. Likewise these works endlessly reproduce in lesser form simi-
compared; with impossible debates like the cantus obscurior (more subtle
pronuntiatio the right name for delivery?); and with other like points that
swiftly give way if pushed too hard for deep, fundamental truths that might
secure as to the very issue of their own existence in the midst of the
qualifications that they themselves raise and that they seem to have no
fundamental interest in resolving. That is, beyond the isolated crisis mo-
ment here and there, they go on their untroubled way, setting out the rules
details of all of the handbooks is in its own right a rewarding task, I would
like to begin instead with the problem of the fact of the text. What sort of
text can dispense with the various forms of validation jettisoned by the
being served here? What sort of reader does this text require? Better yet,
tory, much is written on the topic of good delivery. Verbosity in these cases
textual forms represents the putting into the world of new bodies to the
extent that the body and the text can be confused. Hence authorship of a
Whether it is in the case of the dialogue or the list, the Latin theoreti-
the goal is to inflect and guide the reader, to make meaningful the reader's
fashion. In this manner, then, one can see that the handbooks need not
promise their readers any real progress or attainment, since the indispens-
able logical core of the text is actually pitched at a different target: the
meaning that the reader will impute to his practice as orator and the prac-
bedded in the rhetorical handbook, and the manner in which one is asked to
read these works indicates the style of interpretation required of the student
complaints about the manner in which performance has been taken for
granted by other authors, the art of reading for bodies forms a second and
related skill that must also be imparted. The student of the body must read
for bodies, and he is even taught how to read for them. Furthermore, the
texts that themselves become political acts, texts that, even if they are not
overtly always and in every way practical rhetorical works, are nevertheless
always practical political ones: the bodies they produce and contain are the
If imposing actio on the body is the text's primary goal, a second major
generating bodies after its fashion and a world reading them of its own
accord, a world that keeps histories of gestures and that insists upon restor-
ing them to where they "must" have originally been. Quintilian's Institutio
oratoria is deeply engaged with other texts and makes vital assumptions
about them. That is, one can the more thoroughly explore the paradox of
ample of the proper punctuation of Latin, reading Vergil's epic such that one
may appreciate where to pause in speaking and for how long. Although first
36 STAGING MASCULINITY
secundum est, ut sit oratio distincta, id est: qui dicit, et incipiat ubi
start and stop at the appropriate place. You must also take note of the
the virum pertains to what follows, the sense being virum Troiae qui
(Quintilian 11.3.35-36)
uses one of the most famous lines of Latin literature to illustrate his point.
However, upon reflection, this seems a somewhat unusual task: should it not
lessons on making any sort of sense are probably less necessary than Quintil-
ian intimates, the more important feature of this passage is the effort at the
measured values; they must fall in the right locations. In short, mere intelligi-
spaced pauses would ensure this - but Quintilian is pushing for the proper
intelligibility. There is, apparently, a right and a wrong way to read Vergil;
and Vergil's poem has had inserted into it this right reading that it might be
brought out by Quintilian. Or, rather, the notion of the right reading of a text
inserts into the Aeneid the legitimate reading of the text in the same gesture
adspectus enim semper eodem vertitur quo gestus, exceptis quae aut
[One always looks in the same direction that one gestures. There are
drive something away from ourselves: we turn our face away and drive
(Quintilian 11.3.70)
message of the poem's verses.15 There is, though, a convenient play be-
message lying beneath Quintilian's usage is that there is, in fact, a proper
good Latin, which is always the object in rhetorical texts and is an idea
texts never just means "in Latin," is the constant concern of its legitimate
users. Speakers of Latin must reveal their legitimacy in the way they space
their words and clauses, and in the way they move their bodies. And, as
Victor said above, the choice of words, including even the proper deploy-
speaker.
gestures, the gestures that must be embedded in it that the social station of
the text may emerge as well in the performance of its reading, considered
ways also a vir bonus. He bestows a good man upon the text; and the text is
brought to life by this special social entity. Indeed, the text is given not only
Vergil, and I do believe that they also included gestures. One notes as well
these are themselves coded for class, place of birth, gender, and profes-
sion.16 Hence we should not be surprised that the orator would be such a
devoted student of Vergil. The orator will find in the epic's text the body
and the self that he would arrogate for himself: high art is the legitimate
that evokes the ideas of Derrida on the problems of reading and writing in
to logos and speech: the letter is dead and empty, whereas the voice is living
and full (see especially 1976, 11-14). In the case of Quintilian, writing and
the ontological threat that Derrida sees in writing are overcome by the giving
of a speaker to the text. This implied speaker vouches for the text and puts it
into the register of logos and speech. There is thus no text that does not have
echo of public speech and is built upon its laws" (1989, 21). He was no
doubt thinking of passages like the one in which Aristotle says that written
texts ought to be composed so that they are readily converted into speech.18
Svenbro notes that because the Greeks read aloud, "the reader is a vocal
instrument used by the written word. . . in order to give the text a body, a
fundamental division between speech and writing: rather the written style
forms a special subset of the speaking voice. Quintilian will even speak of
tion (sermo) and letters (epistulae): the page is never mute.20 As Habinek
by way of a paired set of analogies: the soul is to the body as the logos is to
writing (1976, 35). In the rhetorical version, writing is itself bodily. But this
time writing and the body are brought together to assist the authoritative
voice of the orator and to enable him to produce a speech that seems to
emanate from his soul: res ex animo videatur. Reading for Quintilian is an
to the logos, since it is subsumed within it. Or, rather, writing has an
instead expressed a concern that things might not turn out for the best after
all. For Quintilian there are also signs of hesitation, but such will not
prevent him from impressing the text into the service of speech, and the
good man for Quintilian refuses to read without already hearing and seeing
of this illusion as the text is made to serve the project of the speech of the
One can also note that this voice is a gendered one: the voice of the text is
male, as is the structure of worldly power in whose name this voice speaks.
Derrida would find such a use of writing to be rather ironic, since writing is
the point at which his deconstruction of Western ontology can begin. But
in the relationship between the two registers, destabilizing the mastery and
bodily writing. His own text thus inculcates the very dispositions that are
necessary to the positing of a writing that is tied to being. To this end he again
accedit enim vis et proprietas rebus tali adstipulatione, quae nisi adsit,
aliud vox, aliud animus ostendat. quid, quod eadem verba mutata
et cantando tu illum?
et ne morer, intra se quisque vel hoc vel aliud quod volet per omnis
ateness. Unless there is agreement, one's voice makes one point, one's
intention another. Isn't it true that the same words, with a change in
To make a long story short: turn for yourself any word you please
through the whole gamut of emotions, and you will see the truth of
what I say.]
(Quintilian 11.3.175-76)
saying "you." However, the implications of this point are manifold. First,
line should be without knowing the whole line, the context of the line, and
in order to decode the right reading of his own text. Reading has a commu-
communities that make reading into a natural act. Quintilian trains his read-
ers into the disposition required by his own text. In actual practice, Quintil-
ian's readers were almost certainly reading his work aloud to themselves or
having it read to them by one of their slaves. This structural homology that
subtly reinforces the theme of the speaking text. Thus, the whole project is
ian's readers are trying to recover his voice rendering Vergil's. This project
can only work given an underlying assumption that there really is a fixed,
correct reading, that one does not merely attribute this (oral) reading to a
text, but one rather is genuinely engaged in getting the reading right or
wrong. One assumes, then, that different readings of the same passage are
singular voice of the vir bonus is invoked as the touchstone of accuracy; and
all interpretation reinvokes this persona and consolidates its authority and
Vergil was itself a highly contested topic, and that Quintilian's confidence in
citing a performed text of Vergil actually glosses over serious practical prob-
Texts speak naturally to us; but then again they don't. There is a
chance that, without training, we will misread. Reading the page's dead
words thus is and is not a problem. In Quintilian's world texts are pre-
in place. Moreover, the first step toward success is knowing in advance the
sort of voice one will find within the text. Quintilian's own reader has been
is confident that such is possible and that his readers will learn from reading
him how they are to read. Quintilian thus makes reading possible in theory
but impossible in practice barring the support apparatus of his own text,
even though the text can obviously never perfectly achieve its own ends.
One needs to study it ever more closely to make sure that the lesson has in
fact been properly learned. This is in its own way just the problem of the
register. The handbook makes no grand promises to its reader: even were it
sufficient of itself, you might misread. It only promises that you will fail
without it.
This, then, is a world into which we are being trained, but into which we
ought already to have been trained, a world of readers and a world where
some readings are better than others. Quintilian speaks from a position that
tilian simultaneously calls upon his readers to know already the meanings,
the gestures, the sounds embedded in other texts in the world around them.
cultivating the total man. This text cannot provide you with the full requisite
cultural training, but it can and does call upon its students to make further
omy of the elite habitus will prove insufficient. Quintilian imposes new
burdens and new standards: reflection, self-reflection, and the whole aes-
ero's speeches, his theoretical works, and even letters.25 Cicero's speeches
become the models for Quintilian's precepts; and Cicero's theoretical writ-
prior and superior to himself. Herni Bardon makes it clear that Cicero
his praise of older orators (1952, vol. 1.58). Thus Cicero's relationship to
resembles Cicero as we find him today. But in the course of reading Cicero,
Quintilian produces the self-present voice of the orator for which his whole
course of education strives: the absent Cicero is the point toward which the
student labors, guided there by an author who himself is not there and an
author who never himself heard Cicero. Reading the lost Cicero and bring-
ing him back to life becomes a part of the process of subject formation, and
tures. A body is bestowed upon the page. When Quintilian describes how a
from the orations of Cicero. These examples are, for the most part, concen-
further, the toga to fall back, precise gestures, a vocal manner bor-
rowed from conversation, only a bit more earnest, and a uniform tone.
in-law"; pathos for "a spectacle painful and piteous to the whole prov-
Notice first how easily description has moved into prescription. A familiarity
with these segments of these speeches might convince one that, indeed, they
were narrations of a certain emotional register, but Quintilian has fixed these
registers for us. Next, Quintilian has added physical movements and vocal
modulations, elements that the texts of Cicero were not about to suggest of
themselves. At the same time, one may still distinguish here between a sense
of "this is how one ought to read this text" and "this is how the text was
READING AND WRITING 43
performed"; it is just that the space between these two ideas has been
collapsed such that one assumes that the two coincide for Quintilian.27
delivery:
est his diversa vox et paene extra organum, cui Graeci nomen amari-
tatis?" sed id, quod excedere modum dixi, in illa parte prima est: "quin
conpescitis."
[There is a tone different from these and almost exceeding the capaci-
ties of the human instrument, to which the Greeks have given the
nearly beyond the natural capacities of the human voice: "Why don't
tions to your isolation?" But that bit that I called "excessive" is in the
perduellionis reo 6.18. Quintilian seems not to have reproduced the exact
phrasing of the Cicero. The manuscripts of Cicero read, "Why don't you
restrain cries that testify to your stupidity. . . ?" (quin continetis vocem
roughly the same idea, giving "stifle" for "restrain." Quintilian also adds an
thus he is not indicating that Cicero probably spoke this passage in this
furnish witness to his points in their own voices, and require only that they
same word Quintilian has just used: "voice." Thus where Cicero shouts
down a foolish voice and a scant voice, Quintilian takes this same passage,
fills it with a new voice, and makes it speak to the plenitude and wisdom of
how to vary the tone of one's delivery within the compass of a single
cal sense (11.3.47-51). In this instance, as opposed to the "you" (tu) ex-
ample above, Quintilian has to make his argument via an appeal to the
the same face, isn't it as if the countenance had to be altered at nearly every
turn?"28 By "same face" Quintilian means the general emotional cast of the
level variations within this same general emotional register. Quintilian usu-
such double moves that Quintilian can create the impression of a natural
fusion or confusion of the two spheres. The orator, his oration, and his
body are always both linguistic and corporeal: each stands in a metaphoric
it has to be answered yes: monotony is a bad thing; Cicero was not monoto-
nous. Not only has monotony been banished from the orator, it has also
been exiled from Cicero's pages, and we inevitably find Cicero's voice to be
that Cicero stuck to a steady, vigorous delivery that packed a punch for its
very relentlessness. And then we could use the very techniques of Quintil-
ian against him by citing Cicero. Cicero says that he himself once employed
would doubtless respond, "But that was the young Cicero, as Cicero him-
self says. The Pro Milone was the product of his mature genius: it would
detail, it will no longer be able to readily sustain the illusion of simple and
to answer its stylistic questions, to train him to ask them of himself, and, in
effect, to normalize oratory and the semiotics of the orator while promising
Quintilian proceeds into the text of the Pro Milone going clause by
clause, evoking the emotions of the text and the circumstances of the
original "performance." Thus, we are told that the whole opening is re-
strained and subdued (contractum atque summissum), but that the words
"on behalf of a most honorable man" (pro fortissimo viro) require some-
thing fuller and bolder (fortius et erectius). The critical vocabulary here is
read Cicero, the text and the world must be brought into harmony: one
must speak in a manly fashion when uttering the words "on behalf of a
ments the world of oratory and the oratorical self-present subject in the
same gesture as it insinuates itself in the place of the subject and the world.
Quintilian's readings replace the lost world of Cicero with a new tex-
erectus) of the commentator vouches for and takes the place of the manly
delivery of Cicero. And Cicero himself was speaking on behalf of/in the
place of (pro) a most manly man (fortissimo viro); or, rather, Cicero wrote
on behalf of Milo, and then he tried to deliver his own text. The relation-
"Now the second breath ought to grow owing both to a certain natural
impulse, whereby we speak less timidly what follows, and because the great
up all the stops. . . . For the following is broad, even and diffuse." Quintil-
these are ideas from which technical advice on delivery could be derived:
pulling out the stops and letting the breath swell are useful upon some
to provoke malice and the tones by which hidden thoughts are expressed.
order to find the living word again. At the same time, Quintilian's own text
Quintilian from his master's relation to Cicero's text. The centered subject
inserts himself into the rhetorical handbook in order to make up for its
trope in the gambit of being. Neither orator nor rhetorical literature lives
the process both rhetorical discourse and orators are reproduced, but they
party can consolidate its being because of this dependence upon the other.
Quintilian concludes this section by saying, "I have pointed this out in
order to make it clear that not only in the phrases of the case, but even in
dark star indeed: any given word is a possible locus of trouble: should it be
varied? how? Delivery can founder at any moment. Any word, either read
this fashion Quintilian needs his student, and the student enables Quintil-
ian just as Quintilian produces his student. The handbook, by exposing the
between writing and the soul. The two are bound together in an un-
the Pro Milone as we know it was not actually delivered: Ausonius tells us
that Cicero became flustered and suffered a lapse when he delivered the
initial lines of his speech.31 Quintilian uses the idealized, retooled product
of Cicero's study, and thus he reveals a preference for a speech that of itself
Milone is a text that makes up for real failure of the voice of performance.
The text that has to speak well because it is Cicero's was never spoken
defect. Quintilian's own text latches onto another text that promises writ-
The confusion between the written word and the sounds that writing
of texts. That is, every text was almost certain to be turned back into
sounds before one was to experience it, and, from the very routineness of
this process, the latent assumption creeps in that this procedure is not itself
a problem, that one has heard a text correctly (where we would say it has
been read correctly). But Quintilian, while often resting on this casual
doxy of which he is both the font and the spokesman, the legislator and the
the standard of what Bourdieu would call the "doxic," or common sense.
has omitted without comment another trouble that he could never have
personally had anyway, namely, the delivery of his own text. Quintilian
needs to have the largely untroubled and untroubling world of other texts
so that he may reproduce for his heirs the same misplaced confidence that
support that explains and justifies this practice and shapes the evaluation of
the exercises.
mentioned, in his preface Quintilian claimed that he had to write his own
Institutio oratoria because two books composed of notes on his lectures had
already begun circulating under his name (1.pr.7). This unauthorized dis-
unreflectingly eloquent has been lost. The fantasy of the father effortlessly
passing to his son a legacy of eloquence does not correspond to the reality of
rhetoric as we find it (see Cicero, Brutus 210). And how could such a home-
such social structures as the family cannot be taken for granted once the
48 STAGING MASCULINITY
analytic gaze of theory has arrived upon the scene. This, though, does not
imply that theory itself will not enchant oratory or that it will not tend to
so also does Quintilian find bodies in "the rhetorical tradition." This phan-
that lies beyond Quintilian himself. In one instance Quintilian merely uses
Cicero to illustrate how the division of the clauses falls and how each might
passage with his "as in that passage . . ." (ut illud), while leaving implicit
an idea that the passage in question was in fact accompanied by the ges-
ian repeats his practice of 11.3.162 with its multiple citations of Ciceronian
[This gesture is most suited to reserved language: with the thumb and
toward the body and near either the mouth or the chest; and then it is
believe that it was in this manner that Demosthenes began that timid
Cicero's hand was thus formed when he said: "If I have any talent,
(Quintilian 11.3.96-97)
READING AND WRITING 49
After first pausing over the gesture itself, elaborate and awkward by con-
temporary standards, one ought next wonder as to who has been keeping
this history of gestures. What leads Quintilian to believe that he knows the
detail later, the entire rhetorical tradition appears to be riddled with odd
exemplary: Quintilian says that Cleon is believed to have been the first
by the time Quintilian relates them, we must regard them as tokens of the
alized, and second of the process of collecting and recounting the exem-
not necessary even to accuse Quintilian of inventing the use of this gesture
Quintilian. The repetition of the "I believe" (credo) here and "is believed"
(creditur) in the Cleon anecdote look like signs that Quintilian is repeating,
with a very slight hesitation, received knowledge. Rather than see new
fictions, it is preferable to imagine that the tradition insists upon having the
to performativity (1993, 12, 14), and both speaker and audience ought to
one is in tradition and the more detailed one's knowledge of all the points
of oratory, the more likely it is that one may eventually recover the rest of
the performance that anecdote has left out. The body is always amenable to
dehistoricizes gestures themselves and likewise adds to the sense that they
sense and movement. Quintilian even goes so far as to declare that "amid
such a diversity of language among all peoples and nations, gesture seems
50 STAGING MASCULINITY
one. The simple application of the laws of good oratory allows for the ready
thorlessness and in the prestige of the men of whom it treats. Here it is not
just the reader or the author as vir bonus who supplements the text, but the
whole universe of all the good men who have ever lived.
This, then, is the problem of the fact of the text on delivery, and one
particular solution to the crisis implicit in it: deny for the most part that the
problem even exists; make writing into presence and presence into writing.
The apotheosis of this theme awaits us in the final chapter of this study,
to make a survey of the variety of texts and textual stances available in the
body was made to and into matter. Bodies and souls are inscribed within
rhetorical theory. And, conversely, the body and soul are rendered legible
objects by this same theory. They are things to be read and read for.
political in that it represents bids of varied direction and intensity upon the
political subjects that comprise its audience. Styles of reading and writing
fundamental stylistic break lies between the dialogue form of Cicero and
branch is subdivided in its own right: the author of the Ad Herennium uses
bald definitions. A typical snippet of his text reads thus: "The 'invention' of
division of the subject matter, proofs, refutations, and the conclusion. The
exordium is the beginning of the oration, whereby the mind of the auditor
list of questions and their answers rather than just the bare list of ideas. For
together his definitions and lists somewhat more fluidly, but his occasional
READING AND WRITING 51
gether the same old raw statements. Quintilian presents a full-blown first
sides with Cicero and takes up arms against Seneca, while furnishing essen-
tially the same basic material as do all the other authors, sometimes present-
Let us begin with "the rest," the authors less read and less famous than
betrays a certain kind of interest and enforces a certain kind of reader. The
having the form "a = b" (est) fundamentally elides history and contestation.
Rhetoric is left timeless, the orator subject to a list of laws that, does he wish
to retain his title, he would do best to obey. The tropes of authority rely upon
On the contrary, these expressions forestall any such crisis. Patrick Sinclair
hold together the sort of speech that the author of the Ad Herennium advo-
that can be accorded 'tacit approval' among audiences who hold the Roman
thus dovetail with the structure of the rhetoric to which it trains its student.
Sinclair argues that the struggles over the right to deploy such maxims in a
speech and to have them win recognition are social struggles over who will
handbook itself, where the student is forced to accept without contest the
text's propositions about the truth of propositions. Thus the author himself
says, "a sententia is a statement drawn from life that concisely illustrates
either what is or what ought to be a fact of life."38 Yet one could say the same
of his own practice and put into his mouth a statement of the following shape:
"My advice is drawn from rhetoric, and it concisely illustrates either what is
referential relationships each rely upon the other, as we find both a rhetoric
and Sinclair argues of these exercitationes that they assist in the durable
69). The theoretical text that assists in these exercises thus also becomes a
sort of theory of society. The rhetorical self-presence of the orator that the
Quintilian's problem of the consummate orator does not form a part of this
accessible than one might have otherwise believed.39 There is, in fact, an
"art" (ars) to be imparted, but one that the Greeks have cluttered and
its necessary complement practice (exercitatio), and this idea comes up two
sentences later:
[Now, lest I enter upon a long oration, I will start addressing the
subject proper after first offering this warning: theory does little good
unless you speak all of the time; and thus you may understand that
The author fears that he might get carried away and make a long oration on
oratory. He draws himself back and instead imparts a single concise maxim:
one may measure oneself. The handbook prepares you for your practice,
supports it, guides it. The contents of the practice as well as practice's
precipitate in the form of bodily hexis can be accounted for only in terms of
the text. Thus, the text provides the conceptual apparatus in whose terms
tropes within the handbook itself, including the endless deployment of est.
Both practice and the book that guides practice are described in an idiom of
presence and being. The written text is confident in its own declarations of
what "is." Meanwhile the text implies of practice and performance that
they can and will fail, that one must train constantly in order to enact
only when it embodies the essential truth of the handbook. One finds in
such a vision of number of ironies of ontology and tense: the "real" body's
of oratory - for men were, after all, eloquent before the advent of the
oratorical handbook - these works have now rendered impossible any pas-
READING AND WRITING 53
falling in the woods without anyone there to hear it: if there is no technol-
science of speech. Rhetorical theory does not allow for nontechnical elo-
Quintilian illustrates his advice on how to behave just before speaking with
effunderet, dicit.
[Homer uses the example of Ulysses to teach this. Homer says that he
stood with his eyes fixed on the ground, holding the scepter motionless
(Quintilian 11.3.158)
For the world of the handbook and for the world the handbook would
ratio has been given. Homer teaches (praecipit): we just need to learn how
to listen to him.
the extent that it can succeed in convincing its readers to adopt the view
seers of the young orator's practice inculcate these standards, the whole
body of orators will share a scheme for self-evaluation and mutual evalua-
tion. The hermeneutic circle is tightly closed. Once Quintilian has told
you how to stand when you are about to speak, the aesthetics of pre-
ably was in its own right a tacit accommodation of the speaker to the
norms of the social body and the performative context. Now the tacit, the
orthodoxies and heterodoxies can now be imposed upon it. The handbook
forces the contents of its myriad subdivisions to become the spoken and
struggle over the legitimate units of oratory, over constituting the orator
either passed over in silence or gotten past. This is a dispute that seems to
have little affected the idea of the study of oratory, only the grounding of
one's precepts: Cicero, Quintilian, and other authors have not been si-
lenced by it. This is to say that the text expresses an effort to constitute the
oratory and the orator. The texts are in general very unified as to the
oratory; there is such a thing as the orator. The rhetorical handbook "is"
itself both a fact and the arbiter of facticity. The handbook's prosy exis-
center one finds the good man skilled at speaking with a voice that seems to
come from the soul. The handbook offers "the delusion of presence mas-
internal particulars: shadings are given to the individual units; divisions are
made and not made; sides are taken. These choices represent a struggle
over the vir bonus, the (socially) good man, that is conducted by way of an
group politics.
Quintilian, though, has gone far beyond preparing his student for a
day in the courts or a session of the senate. Quintilian has totalized his
pass the whole span of the individual's life. He wants to monitor, to shape,
and to train his pupils from cradle to grave, overseeing their education and
build his candidate from the ground up. He has coordinated all of the
scattered apparatuses of aristocratic life and training and set them all
under the banner of oratory. This represents the culmination of the tenden-
cies of a text like the Ad Herennium. Oratory becomes not just a trope
to the self in the fullest sense of the term, a handbook that bestows a
discourse of the self as well as that self to which this discourse aims. This
identity is made to live and to breathe by way of the dead word on the page
that nevertheless promises that life itself can and should cite the written
Little of what holds for the rest of the tradition is true of Cicero. The
form, the politics of form, and tactics employed to legitimize the form are
all significantly varied from those of the rest of the texts of the tradition. In
sion will link the form of the dialogue to the various themes of self-mastery,
acting, and pleasure that are discussed in the intervening chapters. For the
present, though, let us look in general at the politics of form in Cicero and
One need not fall into the familiar vice of assuming that other hand-
books are representatives of so-called Silver Latin (or even baser metals in
the case of some of the authors discussed). Nor is their often pedantic form
one may presume that Cicero's predecessors Antonius and Crassus wrote
hoc loco Brutus: quando quidem tu istos oratores, inquit, tanto opere
habemus cognitam.
[At this point Brutus said, "Since you praise so earnestly those ora-
tors, I wish that Antonius had wanted to write something beyond his
wanted to write more as well, as they would have left for all a memo-
rial of themselves, and for us lessons for speaking. For the elegance of
left in writing."]
Brutus reproduces the fallacy of the text that speaks for itself in the case of
Scaevola. But more than this, Brutus is also describing and stigmatizing the
rhetorical works of Antonius and Crassus. The real failing of these works is
not so much in their technical aspect - though it is suggested that this too
might have been elaborated - but in their failure to memorialize. That is,
being filled with the spirit of its author. The text must live.
Cicero, the author of Brutus' complaint, has ensured that he will not
this sense, it is memorialization with a point. The living text contains the
community of good men who call out to the reader who would become
grand memorial of Cicero himself. Within this work Cicero is being con-
structed as the greatest orator Rome ever knew. Moreover, Cicero comes
for good oratory is decided by Cicero. Cicero surveys all of the Roman
that crops up in the illustrations of several orators' virtues and vices. This
nitely won out as the Ciceronian theme of the day. Yet there is, I would
effect a set of legitimated practices that ought to be mastered that one may
who can use the accepted tools of the social body to address and influence
belong. Thus to double one's project after the fashion recommended in and
tive handbooks above, being here doubles for mastery: but this time "it is"
(est) is turned into "I am" (sum) or "I was" (fui). As Habinek and Svenbro
would remind us of this last case, the monument speaks that its maker might
not have always to be speaking. The real difference between a Cicero and a
the grammar of the first person: Who is the "I"? How is he foregrounded or
left implied?
ian's: how may the dead words of the page be turned into proper speech?
Quintilian implies that reading is not really a problem but at the same time
inflections. That is, Quintilian builds up the idea of the legitimate reading
in the process of his readings of others. But Cicero's text has no such
devices within it. The text must be performed, but the only cues that it
deployed to speak of any orator. Thus, when we are told that someone's
READING AND WRITING 57
speaking style was grave, pleasant, manly, or the like, we already have to
(oral) reading of the text-is a performance that does not evoke the con-
demnation of the reader in any of the terms deployed within the text. And
the text itself defines the relevant terms for an analysis of delivery. Again
nium are themselves useless in that they cannot and will not promise that
the consummate orator shall emerge as a product of their own texts, they at
the same time have overtly marked themselves as incomplete. The Cic-
eronian text can only educate those who would emulate it and those who
Cicero pursues a double goal, educating the already educated and memori-
training a new Cicero, while evoking Cicero after a wholly different and
of lore and using a mode that has a fundamentally different logic and
solving this very problem of the difficulty of the Ciceronian text. But, while
making Cicero accessible, he has also both lost and reconfigured much of
what we might consider to have been the essence of the "real" Cicero.
In both cases reading and writing help to ground the illusion of oratori-
cal presence and self-presence. But in Quintilian the voice brought to life
to supplement the text is the student's. In Cicero this voice is Cicero's, and
its recovery becomes the sign of the student's own coming to mastery of his
art. Cicero's voice as uttered by his reader is the guarantor of his own text,
a text that explicitly linked the person of the author and memorializing
cal literature makes up for the loss of its author's voice in the world. Cicero
means to cheat death with his textual monuments. But we have seen that
we must take this wish in its fullest sense: reading and writing cheat a death
cal position: the oratorical student becomes a student of himself, of his own
body and voice. Mastering this knowledge will make him master of his own
body and the truths of his own flesh. Knowledge of the body thus becomes
the orator subjects himself. Quintilian published his massive work some-
where around the nineties C.E. In his encyclopedic survey of the depart-
the consideration of the question of motives: what was failing in those other
texts? Why was there a poverty of knowledge about the body? How was it
that the body should need a longer and more detailed description? Quintil-
supplements these opinions where insufficient care to detail has been pro-
1.7.34-35: many great speakers have spent much labor on what would
man who dedicated whole books not just to individual words, but even to
single letters.4 In effect Quintilian would not mind being thought the
59
60 STAGING MASCULINITY
The social stakes of the body of the good man remain ever to the fore,
the body. As Foucault would remind us, "The exercise of power perpetu-
fects of power. . . . Knowledge and power are integrated with one another,
depend on power" (1980a, 52). When Quintilian looks ever more closely at
grand and splendid ought to appear before our eyes as we read these pages.
reveals a body that is more process than essence, more a soldier on cam-
paign than an idle aristocrat easing in his villa: this body is always and only
opens up a space for the possibility for the increased policing of the body,
yet the task of the more informed gendarme is never completed. Ironically,
then, while Quintilian has a vision of authentic male presence, his efforts to
find and fully know this essence only expose it as unstable and chimerical.
male body as a failure to properly apprehend some more basic truth of the
body, a failure to effectively describe the body that was "really there." Nor
smile bemusedly at the naivet6 of antiquity: "Of course he didn't find the
law of oratorical bodies. The cop needs the crook that he may win his own
daily bread. Foucault sensibly asks us why the infinite labor of prisons and
criminology is never completed and what the interests are that must be
served by this same failure.6 Or, as that Cassius was fond of asking, "Who
stood to gain?" (cui bono).7 In this case, the answer is orators themselves.
In order to appreciate the stakes in the game of the deployment of the body
that the orator is a good man, a vir bonus. As was discussed in the introduc-
tion, Cato lays down the definition that the orator is the good man skilled
DISCOVERING THE BODY 61
Latin literature. The positing of a prior and virtuous presence to the orator
has profound consequences for the orator's body: this body must represent
the virtue of the character who bears it. Appearances must always corre-
Not only the bodies of good men, but all bodies in general are subject
material upon which some fully present and conscious agent acts, giving
to the body, a body before the law or a body that enters into a relationship
with the symbolic order as an equal partner. The body is not raw biological
material that is given its particular meaning by the unique, individual per-
sonality of its bearer: instead the body is just another symbol in a world of
symbols over which the subject cannot be master (see Butler 1993, 32-55).
these reflections in a Roman idiom. The body of the orator must be the
body of the good man. This body is good to the extent that it betrays itself
to be a mere vessel, given its virtue and value by the soul of the good man
of which it is the bearer. Bodily excellence cites and performs the authority
of the good man: Quintilian does not want to train an actor, but a man who
is genuinely good; and the orator's body will be good precisely as it reveals
Quintilian would argue from this position. He does not wish to con-
sider the forces that constitute the good man as a legible social entity. He
does not wish to consider the body as a symbol whose radical possibilities
tion, though, there spring up new, unforeseen crises of the body. The
slave who refuses ready domination.9 The masterful soul of both theorist
bondage that the bondsman is not a good slave. The body is a wily subject,
of the exercise of more mastery on the master's part. The soul that would
govern the body discovers itself as masterful precisely in the context of such
made to adhere to it. Both the body and soul share a conjoint ficticity, both
62 STAGING MASCULINITY
produced elsewhere yet used to substantiate one another. Yet the body is
itself one of the key sites at which this inscription and this reading of the
soul takes place. And, significantly, one of the vital moments in the emer-
hierarchies of the dominant and subordinate, the inner and the outer, the
Quintilian make new and special appeals to and readings of the truth of the
body. The ancient theorists want to take the body of their student and
secure for it a distinct and exclusive reading. The rhetorical theorist secures
for the good man his goodness and his masculinity and protects the speaker
investment of the body and to make new and special appeals to and read-
ings of the truth of the body. In the process of doing so, though, the theorist
reveals the lines of power that trace the surface of the body, giving it its
legible contours.
While theory may wish to derive the meaning of its body from the ante-
rior principle of the good soul, by ourselves reading this reading of the body,
we can see instead a body that is shot through with the effects of the matrix of
onto bodily surfaces. And this same knowledge/power that delineates the
body also delineates a soul for the body, a bodily soul set off against other
possible and possibly corrupt souls. Theoretical speculation upon the body
as a whole, a subject read in both his physical and metaphysical aspects. The
jectivation, the moment of interpellation. The theory of the body thus be-
comes a hailing of both a body and a soul that inaugurates the two within a
"truths" are revealed about the body. Of course, these truths are vital
fictions, products that themselves produce a social reality with real material
consequences. This is the second sense in which discovery can be used: the
body that the theorist beholds is a body that has been constituted as legible,
a body made for reading. The shapes that have been discovered are arbi-
trary to the extent that other knowledges of the body could be imagined,0
DISCOVERING THE BODY 63
but they are specific and specifically efficacious to the extent that these
variety of efforts aimed at forcing the body to live up to all of its promise.
The body needs to be fused to the soul. Additionally, the messages of the
ject rather than arbitrary cultural artifacts. The consequences of the text
itself, though, need to be taken into account. Reading and writing are
the soul. The rules of this textualism produce a condition where descrip-
disciplining of bodies. At the same time they also regulate bad bodies,
Quintilian hopes to secure the validity of his enterprise by assuring that the
soul remains both the prison and the jailer of the body. Quintilian routinely
lam enim tempus est dicendi quae sit apta pronuntiatio: quae certe ea
part this is produced by the very movements of our souls; the voice
rings as it is struck.]
(Quintilian 11.3.61)
The voice is the musical instrument; the soul the player. A radical reading
of this advice would obviate the need for Quintilian's own text, as one
would need only to feel a thing in order to speak it. This is in fact the
their opinion. I hope they will pardon my efforts, though, as I think that
flective performance by asserting that some passions are genuine but need
art to shape them. Conversely, fictions suffer from the lack of passions to
inspire them. In the latter case, Quintilian's advice is to begin imagining for
onself thoughts that would inspire the passions one would feign and so to
64 STAGING MASCULINITY
be moved by one's own fictions.13 Thus even in the case of assumed pas-
sions, if they are to be done well, they should have a kernel of truth to
them. We should always weep heartfelt tears, crying for some other loss if
important consequence for his student: the contest between affectation and
belief can never be decided. Quintilian has preempted the reading of his
orator for affectation with has natura and cura formulation whereby he
Belief is now always also a matter of affectation rewritten as cura. That is,
one can really believe only after first learning, investigating, and knowing
his own body. This discipline supplements the nature it discovers and com-
plements it, but discipline also insinuates itself in the place of nature. Once
sary prop for subjectivity and a tool without which the orator is lost to
himself. The text insures that there will be no body without the text, and
accordingly, that there will be no soul without the theorization of the soul.
sion of textual precepts into bodily effects. Conversely, the physical world
qua visual text is itself nearly automatic. Quintilian argues to this effect in
11.3.65-67. In the case of paintings, sometimes the image says more than
words could. Brute beasts are readily understood because of their move-
ments alone. A dancer may tell a story without using a single word.'5
Quintilian is shoring up any gaps between the body and the soul.
Quintilan makes gestures coincide in spirit with the voice, and both move-
ment and sound are servants of the soul: "[A gesture] both itself harmo-
nizes with the voice and along with it yields to the soul (animus)."16 As a
soldier yields to his general, so do voice and gesture serve the bidding of
the soul that governs them. On the one side the orator's soul is evinced by
his delivery; but, on the other, this delivery will affect the audience in the
same vital organ, namely their inmost passions, their own souls. Quintilian
claims of paintings that their images "penetrate into our inmost passions
of language or the need for language, and both of these conceits tending
the game is played at the level of the soul, imitators or panderers are
Quintilian next extends still further the scope of the psychic mecha-
DISCOVERING THE BODY 65
not go with the words of a speech. Quintilian gives, then, a contrary case as
centered not around the soul, but the words. Thus, in the first part of the
effect of this slide in the argument is first to render the authentic bodily
performance one that is a performance of the soul, but then in the next part
of the argument the words of the speech are silently yoked into the service
of the soul, just as the voice and gestures had been before. Everything
about oratory, then, is always supposedly tending to the same end, the
both his text and his body.19 A gesture that dissents from the text of a
speech is in discord as well with the soul of the speaker. And we have seen
how Quintilian's own text mistakes itself for a bodily text. Where text,
the orator, Quintilian finds an authorized body and soul only where certain
given conditions are met. And the "giving" of these conditions is one of the
he only reproduces the sentiments of other and earlier authors, the signifi-
a whole lies in postulating the very object that one is discovering, the
other theories. This traditional body of the good man would "explain"
Quintilian's text away. That is, there would be a bodily truth subsisting
beneath his pages and validating their contents. Such an interpretive move
grants to Quintilian his key premise: even as it seems to render him deriva-
suspect.
(1971) notes that the reproduction of the relations of production are vital
for the securing of a social and political order and that the ideological state
apparatus is the key site for the securing of this reproduction in the person
of the subject inaugurated into this order by ideology. In hailing this good
soul and commanding it to present itself to the world, Quintilian first gets
66 STAGING MASCULINITY
his student to say, "Yes, it's me; that is my soul." In doing so the student
takes up the burden of this soul, its truths, its constituent exclusions, its
educative apparatus does not have the constative force of the law; it is not a
"You are Peter" that would miraculously sculpt an orator from the raw stone
of the material body. Quintilian does, though, speak from a position that
would arrogate for itself many of the powers and privileges of the divine
position. Thus the hail he sends out to his student participates in the same
structures as does the more general hailing of the law. But Quintilian's
citation of this law allows for our own reevaluation of him as doubly deriva-
tive. Quintilian would teach his student how to become the principle of his
Quintilian citing the law in the name of subjecting the bodily ego. The
student has been asked to live the moment of Althusserian subjection; the
stage has been set; the stakes have been laid out; and the rewards have been
made explicit. The orator is taught to perform his own subjection, to adopt a
certain soul and a specific body, and thereby to become a good man. The text
mediates this process, but in so doing it also serves as a metaphor for the
mediation the body itself provides relative to the truth of the soul.
Where the text does not match intention, Quintilian finds contradiction.
He could have spoken of lesser lapses, of happy men who looked too
happy, or the like. Instead the text represents discord only in the guise of
total failure: sorrow seems joy. These failures are presented as ridiculous.
But even were they less egregious, the orator would still have to watch out
for his authority and the confidence that he inspires. Indeed the very last
words of Quintilian's eleventh book are actually a threat laid against the
[But contemporary taste has adopted and demands a rather more ex-
cited delivery, and in some instances this is suitable. Still, it must be kept
in check lest while we seek the elegance of the actor, we lose the author-
(Quintilian 11.3.184)
In other words, the sanctity of the vir bonus is always at stake in every
performance. And the foundation for his authority rests in the relationship
of harmonized subordination that his voice, body, and text bear to his soul.
The motions of the body and the modulations of the voice serve as
their own sort of language, a sermo corporis.22 Accordingly the body itself
concerns and regulations that may have been directed at the orator's verbal
gous, and the fetishism of the language in which oratory participates thus
becomes a fetishism of bodies. As is the case with any fetish, this new
"linguistic" body is invested with mystical potency. Yet the source of this
les d6bats en apparence les plus futiles sur la langue mobilisent tant
the social truth of the body and the relations of domination that the orator's
looked at with such intensity and vigor: the stakes of a misdeployed eye-
cultural capital that is deposited in the orator's speech and body is always
on the brink of suffering a loss. Furthermore, for the ancient orator there is
no disjunction between his linguistic, his symbolic, and his bodily capitals.
The orator's high social standing arises from the mystification of his
cultural capital as a "gift" that naturally adheres to his person, to his inmost
self. And the technical manual participates in the bestowing of this gift
cura supplements: we are being taught how to become ourselves, not how
68 STAGING MASCULINITY
to pretend to be good men. It is by the text's cura that the student's body
becomes naturalized and acquires that prestige for which it was destined.
At the same time this cura or discipline revolves back on the question of the
gift as a whole, exposing the basic ficticity of the soul that animates the
capital-rich performer.
If the authority of the body devolves upon the soul, it must be remem-
bered that this soul is itself qualified, being necessarily a good and manly
soul. Against this soul and its body stand other and unwanted souls. The
illegitimate. The discovery of the body and the tale it tells is thus also a
discovery of the perils of the body, of potential truths about the body that
Bourdieu can help us see the method and stakes in this process of descrip-
The vision of the social world, and most especially the perception of
others, of their bodily hexis, the shape and size of their bodies, particu-
larly the face, and also the voice, pronunciation and vocabulary, is in
guage to classify others and to judge their quality, and in which the
Quintilian's texts codify those sets of exclusions that usually remain implicit
In the act of making explicit the implied logic of the world, Quintilian
model whereby the logic of domination and its operations can be imbibed
stand fully the implications of the specific antagonisms and hostile pairings.
tion has been offered, but not an account of its specificity in the orator's case.
Most importantly, we need to examine the question of the anxiety of the text:
the text shows that bodily hexis cannot be taken for granted. The body has to
to which this orthopedics has been applied then returns to the status of a
fetish and imperceptibly enacts the structures of domination that one seeks
as the body's possession. This orthopedic project thus aspires to the condi-
Even with the corrective assistance of the handbook the body is always
on the verge of failing; it needs a prop and training. The theoretician's gaze
catches within its scopic field a body that is always in need of reworking
within the terms of that same vision. In this sense, Quintilian is a producer
feeling any pangs of anxiety. They would seek a symbolic domination that
ultimate goal is the salvation of the authentic good man. The irony of
Quintilian's process, then, is that the endless process of training and threats
of failure make the category vir bonus fundamentally unstable. But Quintil-
ian's loss is also his gain: by making the body a problem, he can enjoin his
Judith Butler has explored the possible space for a subversive politics
performances. Quintilian trains the body to thwart its own queer possibili-
also exposes a latent crisis in the authoritative man: the vir bonus cannot
ian's aid. In this sense Quintilian would agree with Butler: drag queens
really do matter since the political stakes of bodily performances are always
high, and so too are they also a question of the manliness of men.
If we take seriously the proposition that the body has a language and that
its message is of vital social interest, then it should not be surprising to find
that the body becomes a site of so much interest and observation. Observa-
tion of the body will allow the student to modulate his own physical self-
presentation. But then the text that teaches this observation also teaches a
political truth. And the investment of this good body requires the simulta-
(Quintilian 5.10.23-25)
about a person's character. Each quality offers a foothold for the student of
character, a point from which a more profound truth may be opened up. It
ous or even desirable qualities, beauty and strength, are taken as evidence
for vices. In other words, this example of the reading of the body has latent
within itself hostility. The body can and will be read against its bearer. A
The orator needs to bear in mind that he is watched with more atten-
tion than are others. The orator's body is a public object, the object of
close public scrutiny. Care must be taken to make sure that appearances
are kept up. As far as his clothing is concerned, the orator should keep the
following in mind:
Cultus non est proprius oratoris aliquis, sed magis in oratore con-
uirilis: nam et toga et calceus et capillus tam nimia cura quam negle-
comes to one's toga and shoes and hair excessive care as well as negli-
(Quintilian 11.3.137)
grooming and its varied significations. But in this introduction to the topic
he points out a crucial dilemma. First, people watch the orator carefully,
examining him from head to toe. Accordingly, the orator ought to look
good. But in looking good, he should look like a good man: this is our vir
bonus again. He must look neither disheveled nor like a dandy. Splendidus,
less, even showy. This Latin adjective is therefore somewhat unsure ground
and the qualifying clause that follows that Quintilian's meaning can be
secured as unthreatening.
In this passage, the orator learns both that he is watched, and then
this attractive virility is an art that conceals itself and that must conceal
one that offers no purchase for the critical eye: how can one find fault
with reality?
fied. The proper performance and the character it presents, the vir bonus,
offered. So, at any rate, does Quintilian round out his discussion of perfor-
mance. After giving many and detailed pieces of advice, threats, and behav-
possibility of a truly positive efficacy for his text. His discussion apparently
decorum, saepe aliud alios decere. Est enim latens quaedam in hoc
ratio et inenarrabilis, et ut uere hoc dictum est, caput esse artis decere
quod facias, ita id neque sine arte esse neque totum arte tradi potest.
72 STAGING MASCULINITY
ible logic to performance; and, just as this maxim is true, namely that
may do, so also is it true that this cannot happen without study, nor can
(Quintilian 11.3.177)
He is observed for this quality. Indeed, his entire labor tends toward allow-
ing him to project such an air. At the same time, his labor does not secure
his goal. The oratorical project is always incomplete, and the orator's
consummate student will only have assured himself that he has a chance of
not failing, not that he has actually succeeded. What is becoming always
remains elusive.
decorum: the common man can never expect a formula or recipe that
nedy and Habinek have argued that the expulsion of the Latin rhetoricians
rhetorical training that was too accessible and too easy (Kennedy 1972, 90-
95; Habinek 1998, 60-61). Restricing access to rhetoric offers one means of
ensuring the noble art's nobility. Yet the state apparatuses are not only
limited to the repressive sort. So too can we find an ideology of the natural
path between illegitimate morphologies. Even in the cut of the toga, failure
with illegitimacy, and this link is about as old a one as we can find. In the
foul as his words (2.212-69). Thersites does not fare well at the hands of
the good men who surround him: the noble Odysseus scowls at him
(2.245), gives a speech of rebuke, and then beats Thersites to a bloody pulp
DISCOVERING THE BODY 73
with the speakers' staff (oxitxQov). So much for telling an aristocrat some-
thing he does not want to hear. Homer literalizes the metaphorical domina-
tion and violence of the orator and his oratory.27 In Quintilian and other
mised form. And given that Quintilian sees Homer's stagings of Odysseus
seriously:
space and social space and between movements (rising, falling, etc.)
in the two spaces and thereby roots the most fundamental structures
opposition between the straight and the bent, whose function in the
71-72)
The body is thus a lived experience of social truths, and in the bearing of the
body one can always descry meanings that are referable to incontrovertible
social meaning: "The body believes what it plays at: it weeps if it mimes grief.
It does not represent what it performs, it does not memorize the past, it
enacts the past, bringing it back to life. What is 'learned by the body' is not
something that one has, like knowledge that can be brandished, but some-
thing that one is" (Bourdieu 1990, 73). The orator brandishes his body in the
social field, convinced both of the validity and legitimacy of the hegemony of
In the same gesture that the dominant fractions learn of the sublime
status of their own decorum, they learn other lessons as well. First, this
decorum can be secured only by study and labor: it is not a truly arbitrary
trait. The mere fact of having been born does not make a person a good
speaker. But the orator has also learned a science of unauthorized bodies.
The student has been taught to look at the body for the indecorous and the
illegitimate, to force the body to answer up in all of its details and divisions
observed and made subject to a knowledge and power that watches ever
74 STAGING MASCULINITY
more carefully and critically. I would like, that is, to spend some time on
Quintilian's catalog of the body and the voice in order to show in detail that
the body as figured within his text is a body that has been made the object
will take up the question of the excisions and exclusions that this process
also entails, but here we will first examine the layers of analysis.
sort of logical extreme in the case of the analysis of the body. The prolifera-
tion of the body parts observed produces more knowledge of the speaking
body, but it also leaves that body the more liable to the same questions of
legitimacy and illegitimacy that have dogged it all along. That is, now the
brows must be observed, evaluated, and found acceptable. Thus the prolif-
ity for the student as he crosses off items on his to-do list. Instead, the more
his body is known in detail, the more it is liable to failures and in need of
extended passages. First he describes the face and its elements (11.3.72ff.),
these two sections, the proper use of the hands is a constant bodily theme.
It is this last portion of the anatomy that I would like to take up first. The
observation due the hands serves as a case study for the regard due all of
The hands are a locus of such keen interest owing to their amazing
expressive capacities. "One can hardly describe how many movements the
hands have. Without our hands delivery would be maimed and debilitated,
since they nearly equal the very wealth of our words."28 In other words, the
more invested a site is with meaning or potential meaning, the more knowl-
edge and discipline come to surround it. The supposed eloquence of the
hands necessitates special concern and attention to the hands. If the hands
can all but speak of themselves,29 then the rhetorical theorist is duty bound
cault 1979, 180). Take, for example, the use of the hand described at
one turns the hand lightly upward, folds in the fingers one after the other
unfolds them and turns the hand back over."31 This would be a case of both
DISCOVERING THE BODY 75
definition and regulation: the master tells us to note what the hand does
instructing both actor and audience. The language of the body is being
taught and reproduced for both parties alike. And while the language of
the body has been described as universal and easily intelligible in passages
like 11.3.65-67, the vocabulary of bodily speech actually finds its reproduc-
ian does not provide a systematic theory of gestures with the hands; he
instead offers a laundry list of gestures. Yet Quintilian has more to say of the
hands than just listing some of their gestures: the hands must be restrained
from illicit social allusions. The moral definition and legislation of these
specific and specified gestures can be seen in 11.3.103: "There is also that
gesture where the hand is held cupped and spread-fingered and lifted above
the height of the shoulder with a certain movement: this has a hortatory air.
and stagy."32 The hands may have their own language, but this language can
be "unspeakable" for a good man. This passage consolidates the notion that
foreigners, effeminates, and actors are parodic and despised agents whose
must also be carefully coordinated with the rest of the speech. Indeed all
elements of oratory are bound by a law of homology that insists that every
part be consonant with the whole. As the body had to be in accord with the
text (11.3.67), so also should the hands move along with the sense, accom-
panying the meaning of the verbal aspect of the performance. The regula-
tion of the hand also extends to having it perform differently in the differ-
ent logical sections of a speech. The hand begins an oration with one set of
ing rule: "The hand should begin and end its movements along with the
sound, both of which occurrences are unsightly."33 At the same time, the
hand should not be subject to the rigid rule of one gesture per three
the movements of the hands, and the gesture that follows the sense is
actually the one closest to nature. The orator sets himself to the study and
complement nature and fulfill a teleology latent within it. If the orator lives
need no longer be considered. Those who would impose decisive rules will
only impose an apparatus divorced from nature and one that will endlessly
clash with it. Thus Quintilian's project, while producing and reproducing
knowledge and self-knowledge at every turn, pushes the source of its own
words, good gestures have a natural authenticity and efficacy that is put out
The rest of the body receives a treatment much akin to that of the hands.
As no one element of the body is quite as invested with meaning as the hands
tions made to the rest of the body fully resemble those given to the hands.
Nonetheless, the logic that regulated the hands holds true for the rest of the
body, and this body is equally susceptible to ever finer degrees of analysis,
Quintilian's examination of the body starts with the head: "As with the
body, so with delivery: the head is most important; it plays a principal part
with respect both to that decorum I have discussed and also to the convey-
ance of meaning."36 From the head Quintilian moves to the face as the
head's dominant feature. The face is itself subdivided into the eyes, which
are its most important feature, the eyebrows, and lastly the lips and the
nostrils. Leaving the face and head, Quintilian continues downward, dis-
cussing the neck and then the shoulders. Moving out now rather than
continuing down, Quintilian passes on to the arms and then gets into the
hands in some detail as discussed above. The perusal of the body is thus
enough to describe its potency and its dangers. The face is almost as good
as words (11.3.72). The spirit shines forth from the eyes (11.3.75). Misus-
ing the eyes and showing them filled with pleasure is a failing that is
beneath even an idiot (11.3.76). The eyebrows must not become comic and
dissent from what is spoken (11.3.78). Hardly anything good can come of
the lips and nostrils; here restraint is the best course of action (11.3.80).
DISCOVERING THE BODY 77
The neck ought to be straight, and poor use of the neck lends an impression
of servility (11.3.82).
Each time Quintilian turns his eyes upon the body it is invested with
both significance and risk. The body is first defined as telling, and then it
threatens to misspeak and ruin its bearer. The more of the body that is
given to be seen, the more labor is required of the student. With each
division come new and increased obligations. Clearly the logic of analysis
could be taken further, and still more minute elements picked out. The
rary editions of the work the Ad Herennium requires only a few pages to
which is filled with the most minute bodily details. By the same token,
body parts has not given more security, but only opened up more pros-
pects for failure, more sites to examine and find wanting, more parts that
must be harmonized with a whole, and more telling elements whose tale
must be kept under watch. More nature (natura), that is, requires more la-
bor (cura). And not even Quintilian's massive tome is sufficient to live up
Not only is the body carefully articulated in its parts, it is also coordi-
nated and organized such that its elements will be orchestrated into a
harmonized whole. So the body is first broken into pieces, and then it is
have already seen that the hands must match up with the passage delivered.
This is the harmony of movement and text. But the body should also
correspond to itself, its parts moving together and harmoniously. For ex-
ample, one's flanks have this task imposed upon them: they ought to be in
concord with the other gesturing taking place (11.3.122). A more elaborate
the trunk from side to side while the eyes turn to face in the same direction
scenes have been staged,38 offering not only examples of good bodies but
good and serious man, but instead comes off as too severe and takes himself
too seriously. The stance and face become hardened and harsh. The care-
fully poised body becomes bent out of its proper shape. The well-placed feet
drift apart. These affectations are all intended to make the spectator take the
orator and his passions seriously, but they dispel the "easy" and "natural"
gravity that Quintilian recommends. The ideal oratorical body, a body that is
wherein the body is "something that one is." This presence should appear
neither artificial nor intemperate, neither sterile and contrived nor wild and
undisciplined.
nature and dispel the illusion of presence: the vir bonus disappears, and a
supplements, though, allow for the improvement of nature and the realiza-
tion of one's destiny. In this sense, more knowledge of the body is easily
joined to the goal of a more natural and true body. Since this true body is
always a socially true body, a body is true precisely to the extent that its
investment in the social space is and can be taken seriously. This knowl-
edge produces more effects of power in the same gesture that it effaces the
traces of power from the surface of the body. This effacement renders the
effects of power as part of the register of the natural and true. Put differ-
ently, this is the production of natura in the space of discipline's cura. This
time we have more labor producing more nature and the obverse of the
carefully regulated affair. His gestures should have boundaries; his steps
should be kept within certain limits; his left and right halves must be
voice and face or use the fingers on one hand skillfully. These expressive
Keeping in mind the notion that the space of the body is an enactment
of social categories, we can see that bounding and limiting the movement
ensuring that his use of the social space is in accordance with his social
station and gravity. We have already seen above the problems surrounding
the hands. The hand must keep within certain clearly defined spatial bound-
aries. Traversing these lines ruins good oratory. The same will be true of
other parts of the body. Everywhere the orator's body is bounded by lines
fully the master of both himself and the space in which he deploys his body,
A great deal of labor is expended on the task of seeing to it that the left
and right sides of the body behave appropriately. 39 The stakes accordingly
would appear that the left/right problem is one that participates in the
parallels imposed upon and between such paradigms and divisions as left/
right, up/down and male/female. In the medical tradition, the male child is
the product of the right side of the womb, and the female the product of the
left side. In one passage, several elements of the body are set against one
another along a rigid correspondence between left and female and right
and male:
1va Luv JtXELo'tv EXEL TLtObg, OpOacbg& 6iog, tavtcL tov xitw,
[The right breast and eye, and it is the same with the lower parts of
the body; moreover male children are sown in the right part of the
body.]
The association of the female with the left side fits in nicely with the careful
regulation of the left side by the orator. If the orator is consigned to always
The place of the left foot in one's posture is an important affair. Putting
one's weight on the wrong foot or putting the wrong foot forward is not
tolerated. The left foot may be put slightly forward, but parallel feet are
preferred (11.3.159). If you put your right foot forward, do not gesture with
your right hand (11.3.125). Of course, since gestures with the left hand
alone have been forbidden (11.3.114), anyone standing with his right foot
forward has boxed himself into something of a corner. Putting weight on the
(11.3.125). And if your weight is on your left foot, do not raise up your right
foot or stand on your toes (11.3.125). And once the feet have been properly
planted, it is important not to rock back and forth upon them, vacillating
posture such as the use of the adjective rectus has recommended. Most
ground are condemned: as with the vacillation described above, tossing the
80 STAGING MASCULINITY
shoulders around must be prevented at all costs, even at the price of self-
many judges and you wish to put some fire into each of them individually
(11.3.132). And it is precious to fall into the arms of attendants unless truly
these instances, though, it would appear that the proper body occupies for
the most part a carefully circumscribed space and follows a stable and
upright line. Deviations from this line can dispel the efficacy of the stage
presence of the orator as vir bonus.40 Only by knowing his body and its
parts and then carefully bounding them can the orator become and remain
what he must be. Within these lines he is a good man and beyond them he
is nothing or worse.
Many entries are excluded from the orator's bodily lexicon, or if they are
allowed, it is with the implied tag, vulg. or colloq. As Bourdieu says of so-
social world according to the categories of high and low" (1991, 93). In
other words, these vulgar or illegitimate gestures are admitted only so that
they may then be made to bear the trace of the principle and structure of
domination that excludes them from the register of the proper. One of the
cordingly abjected sounds and movements. For example, we learn that gait
whole should seem martial, not taken from the stage (1.11.18). The task of
Quintilian's student is to examine his own body after these same principles,
to cleanse from his person these unauthorized traces of other and illegiti-
mate selves. This situation produces an obsession with the meaning of the
own body as meaning what it must mean. The student of oratory, the
student who is assumed to be a vir bonus yet who is also always in the
process of laboring to produce and reproduce for himself and others this
being, looks into himself, discovers a body that is not necessarily either
DISCOVERING THE BODY 81
good or manly, and sets to work disciplining his body and excising from it
body such that the voice rings out with the tones of a vir bonus and no
others. If one plays on the passage cited above where the voice rings as it is
struck, then the training of the voice contributes to the socially recognized
illusion that there is a manly essence striking the vocal chords and lending
The care of the voice begins with good eating habits: observing and
watching one's diet is important, because one has need of a voice that is
virility and manliness. Fortis means healthy, strong, or brave. When ap-
the noun that means "war hero." The adjective, then, can be translated as
simply referring to the physical health or vigor of the voice, but this would
voice of a good and manly man. This voice is going to be the voice of a
rugged and hardy performer and not that of a prissy voice professional, a
phonascius. The phonascius has a soft and tender voice (molli teneraque),
while the orator is a man of hard study and hard labor, a man who toughs it
out and breaks a sweat (in sudata veste durandum). The voice is fortis once
to the situation.
have seen that the fortis voice was opposed to a soft and delicate one. This
man is intended to be as hostile and unflattering as the use of the term fairy
"accordingly we should not soften our voice with delicacies nor let it be-
come steeped in those habits it might desire. No, its training should be like
will to train the body: it would like to go soft; one must get it used to hard
labor. As with the parts, so does Quintilian argue of the whole: the adjec-
discussed: "One must flee like the plague a mollis delivery, such as Cicero
says Titius had. Because of it a certain sort of dance was even called the
Titius."43
This advice is practical for being first ethical. The delights that would
82 STAGING MASCULINITY
not be part of the public life of a vir bonus are forbidden his voice as well.
pleasure and the feminine. And this renunciation extends not just to his
personal habits and practices, but also to his treatment of individual ele-
The voice needs constant protection against the gender troubles that
assail it. The orator, in order to ensure the good care of his voice (vocis
bona cura) needs "a solid body lest our voice be attenuated down to the
meagerness of eunuchs, women, and the infirm."44 This solid body "is
words, frugality."45 If the voice strays from its manly ideal there ensues a
added, illness. Now we can see another trope of authority: the orators are
good men and good speakers because they are healthy, they are not defec-
tive like women or eunuchs. The path to securing this good health and
of the whole of one's life again has sexuality introduced into it: sexual
abstinence secures for the man a manly voice. By refusing carnal love, the
orator gains sublime pleasures from his fellow men: he has the satisfaction
nature. Without discipline, a man may lose even his gender. Quintilian
describes good pronunciation and the proper use of the voice in some detail
voice and the sociological dangers that adhere to it. All of the threats and
dangers are piled on at once, and we see that not only gender, but even
one's place within the city of Rome is always in jeopardy. Only discipline
tion and abstinence offer by way of pain and refusal the legitimate joys of
being a good man. Sexuality keeps recurring in this scene, but it is always
hustled offstage. Still, in the process the vir bonus has been sexualized even
Much as was the case for the orator's voice, Quintilian restricts his
terms that themselves closely parallel those of the voice. And we again find
that these terms are opposed to a set of socially exclusionary ones. The
semblance of autonomous aesthetic purity in the first case should not oc-
clude the fact that this independence is predicated upon a prior act of
deauthorization and silencing. There are legitimate bodies and then those
that fall short of the status required to receive a hearing in the political
the bodies they recommend. And the substance of the attack remains the
[Failed uses of the hands must also be given. These failures can even
befall practiced pleaders. For I have never even seen a bumpkin make
(Quintilian 11.3.117)
The orator is never free from the threat of bodily failure. Even practiced
other authors cannot be trusted: their gestures may be worse than gauche
and rustic; the technical literature teems with gestures of its own fancy;
don't believe everything you read. We ought to entertain some of the same
One likewise sees here an issue that will later be explored in more
vivid, miming the very thing that they represent. In other words, not even a
rube would pantomime his meaning with his gestures. This argument will
when he is discussing the relationship between the actor and the orator.
Set against these effetes and boors is the man of the city, the good
Roman. Yet urbanity is not merely a neutral nor even a positive quality. In
these same passages we have been discussing, the use of the term urbanus
and its derivatives occurs only in hostile contexts. Thus the good man in his
charmed circle is also always a man on the attack, actively protecting his
exclusive territory. Quintilian's text marks out the space of the urbane as a
place where one man assaults another, cutting at his opponents' perfor-
Flavos asks an opponent who is moving around too much, how many miles
he had declaimed that day. Here we find the punitive side of the regulation
of space from above: too much movement leaves you ridiculous. At the
same time, the man who punishes the transgressor and launches the barb
that reveals the offense for all to see wins his own title: he is urbane. He
wins his claims to recognition when someone else loses theirs. Similarly in
rule of not crossing over toward the opposing counsel's bench is being laid
Severus urbanely demands that boundary lines be put down on the ground
to ward off an opponent's advances. The barb makes the adversary's meta-
phorical assault on his space into a literal one. It also shows the fellow
boorish in that he needs a physical line to point out to him the proper
The man of the city is always hostile, sneering and jabbing at his
opponents. The vir bonus may be socially good, but this goodness is se-
cured via constant aggression. Likewise, Quintilian's own text with its
eternal attacks on failed bearing and movement constructs the vir bonus via
this same aggression. Quintilian assaults his readers' bodies, beating them
into manly shape and threatening transgressors with castration and exile: if
might appear soft. For the orator the aggression by which he forcibly
the next chapter will argue explicitly. The orator is enjoined to turn his
aggression outward in order to confront the rest of the world with it. For
example, in the preceding passage, the rules of space that the orator im-
poses upon himself must also be forced upon the rest of the world. Those
who cross the lines that are invisibly or visibly laid down thereby reveal
The more the body is discovered, the more footholds there are for this
kind of thinking and this kind of assault. The knowledge of the body that is
correction. Yet with this correction there comes pruning and excision. The
self is taken as the principle of its own domination. The body is invested
with a soul and populated with it. But only by strict and rigid disciplining of
this same body can the validity of the soul be secured. This body thus
becomes the prison of the soul, though this same soul is charged with
policing its own prison.48 We will never get to a first principle by following
these logical gyrations. Instead one should note the relationships in gen-
DISCOVERING THE BODY 85
So much, then, for the orator's body. The manual on training has no
simple or direct value. After reading Quintilian, one does not walk away a
is learned, but this new language is not one of simple analysis and descrip-
Instead the description and analysis of the body are at once and inseparably
fused with a social morality and invested with profound ontological conse-
quences. The social stakes invested in the body result in a body that is
what it may. Instead the body and its relationship to the self and world
Is he acting like one? Does he have the hands of a good man? Do his words
match his gestures? Does his voice or his stance reveal him to be a woman
or a rustic? One asks these aggressive questions not only of others but also
the good man, and Quintilian uses this soul as the agent that gives form to
the unruly mass of the body. Yet Quintilian's own arguments destabilize the
tion compromises the vision of a subject who is the author of his own
meanings. Nature requires labor and labor fulfills nature. This is straight
out of Aristotle: TExv helps 1patg achieve itself fully. But labor and
tor's own body. The problem of labor makes nature an open and un-
closeable category. The vir bonus can never fully consolidate his being
discussion, Quintilian is creating a body and legislating its bearing and mean-
ings. This technology of the self serves not to describe but to create and
offers serve to help construct the orator as a certain sort of social agent as set
against and above other members of society. The social place of the orator in
With the consolidation of his gender, so also does the orator find in the same
moment the sanctity of his station. Moreover, the truth of the gendered body
86 STAGING MASCULINITY
cannot be dissociated from these other truths, as the station of a man be-
comes conflated with the virility of station per se. The labor of this discovery
consequences of performative failure are the same for both Butler and
nothing to render impossible the bodies and souls he fears. His scopic
constantly reproduces the possibility of its failure and points out sites of
and for contestation. Quintilian's technology of the self and the truth
games of the body that he teaches are not decisive ones: there is not an end
to study and a good man who thereupon emerges. Instead this whole
process is successful only in reproducing itself and its anxieties. This analyt-
ics becomes the site of a labor designed to secure being, but a labor that is
always ready to fail, a labor that can never be completed, and a labor that
down which thought on the body travels. The orator's relationship to actors
sure and the excitement that the speaker's body provokes and arouses is in
its own way the retelling of the problem of unwanted sociology from the
society and good pleasures, the construction of the secure space into which
this contested body may at last and after infinite labor be fitted. The
There is no fact of the body. The body is always a body seen and evaluated,
a body performing profound truths. And this body cannot be left to per-
Self-Mastery
work does not aspire to novelty. Indeed, many of the finest minds of both
Greece and Rome have already treated oratory in great detail (1.pr.1).
ity, he does propose to offer his own judgment when various authors have
written variously on the same topic (1.pr.2).1 Where the basic contents are
concerned, then, Quintilian has made very restricted claims. Yet, so far as
ity: his predecessors too readily assume that their readers are already ac-
complished in every other variety of learning and are now only putting the
scorn the pursuit of these lesser studies as falling beneath the level of their
own pursuits, or, as Quintilian thinks is the more likely case, they shun
describing activities that, though necessary, are far removed from ostenta-
tion and the favor that they hope to win for themselves (1.pr.4). Quintilian
aims to lead the prospective orator from both his own swaddling clothes
and those of the art all the way to the summit of oratory (1.pr.7): nothing
will be omitted. The orator will not just need to have a mastery of rhetori-
cal techniques and tropes, he will also have to be a good man, or vir bonus,
made upon the orator, Quintilian concludes with the following somewhat
striking remark:
Sit igitur orator uir talis qualis uere sapiens appellari possit, nec mori-
qui dissentiant, satis non est), sed etiam scientia et omni facultate
dicendi; qualis fortasse nemo adhuc fuerit, sed non ideo minus nobis
87
88 STAGING MASCULINITY
ima substiterint.
[Thus, let the orator be such a man as can truly be called wise, not only
those who disagree - is not enough), but also perfect in both his knowl-
edge and his capacity for every manner of speaking, a man such as
perhaps has yet to have lived. But we are not for this reason to aspire
the less toward this summit. . . . For there is surely such a thing as
prohibit that one arrive at it. And even if this does not come to pass,
nevertheless they go higher who labor toward the summit than those
who, in despair of arriving where they wish, stop at once at the foot of
the mountain.]
(Quintilian 1.pr.18-20)
Two difficulties arise here. First, a rift between the relationship between
character (mores) and training has been exposed. Thus, even though Quin-
tilian makes the former a necessary but not sufficient quality, a quality that
the orator must possess in order that he may be a "perfect" orator, others
seem to think that a good character is itself the only important quality to
would demand of the orator. Second, though Quintilian will prescribe the
his earliest childhood all the way through to his dotage, none of these
ine how this text describes and prescribes a regime that will produce an
authentic and efficacious subject who will be able to lay exclusive claim to
and political roles to the orator, Quintilian ensures that this already prized
(see, e.g., Quintilian 12.1.25ff.). In other words, the good orator is merged
with the socially good man. At the same time, though, this positive content
one acts out this authentic essence, that one performs the vir bonus; here it
though, will require the most thorough attention to detail and the most
has both paranoid and masochistic qualities, yet a domination that is never-
not just personal "character" but also the mask that a character on the
good man implies learning to assume one's own face as a mask. We ought
to the world a soul, a fact of the person. Similarly, this soul needs to be
this audience as well that they are who they seem to be, that they are not
mere masks, but are instead "real," authentic people. The orator requires
being. The existential qualities of the "I" in any statement of the form "I
ations of "you."
The problem of the soul and its relation to presentations and per-
formances is a tangled one in Quintilian. Let us, then, examine some of the
Cum sit autem omnis actio, ut dixi, in duas diuisa partis, uocem
gestumque, quorum alter oculos, altera aures mouet, per quos duos
[All performance is, as I have said, divided into two parts, voice and
gesture: the one moves the eyes, while the other moves the ears; and it
is through these two senses that every affect (adfectus) penetrates into
the soul. It is our first task to speak of the voice, to which the gestures
(Quintilian 11.3.14)
emotional state or cast of mind where one could render the term in English
senses are the royal road down which travel mental conditions on their way
to the soul. Quintilian posits a progress into the psyche of external images:
the world of semblances animates our own mental life. The politics of
experience.
Whose affects are we talking about here? The performer's body stirs
the senses, and then this motion itself stirs up the journey of affect into the
soul. Clearly the sentiment the spectator feels is in a sense given to him by
but a fitting one will effect a sort of emotional mastery upon the auditor/
spectator:
uim ac potestatem: neque enim tam refert qualia sint quae intra
[Yet the matter itself (pronuntiatio) has a certain marvelous force and
selves matters little relative to the manner in which these things are
(Quintilian 11.3.2)
Proofs avail naught if they are not attended by vehement assertion on the
part of the speaker.4 A man composes thoughts within himself, but his per-
formance must also arouse the senses of his audience. The images that stir
into the heart and mind of another. Where the senses are unmoved, the
affects do not move toward the spectator's soul. The precise mechanism of
by this movement of meaning from one psyche to another are seldom much
delivery alone: "The voice, like an intermediary, will give to the souls of
SELF-MASTERY 91
judges that disposition it receives from us" (sic uelut media uox, quem
force of this passion on the part of the speaker, but he also withdraws a bit
adfectus omnes languescant necesse est, nisi uoce, uultu, totius prope
ablaze in the voice, the visage, in nearly the entire bearing of the body.
the judge takes up that fire of ours; and it's still less likely that we shall
move him if we are laid back and carefree, and our yawning will have a
(Quintilian 11.3.2-3)
Even if the judge may not be kindled by the same flame that burns within
not merely one of compelling arguments and proofs, but also of inner
here we see that these are a function of emotions felt first by the speaker
himself. The emotions need to blaze in his physical bearing and voice.5
When these adfectus are clearly seen and heard, then they can move the
judge. If we make this passage and 11.3.2 coincide, then we are to imagine
adfectus. This feeling is next communicated to his body and voice. The
the speaker impinges upon the senses of the auditor. The auditor's sensory
as conceived by the speaker. This adfectus then makes its way into the
spectator's soul.
Such, then, is the ideal version of the interaction between the orator
and his audience. But there are many complexities within this portrait.
where a speaker is earnest? And what are the various social inflections that
will find Quintilian asserting that the surest way to represent a quality is to
actually possess it. And, in its own way, this notion underlies the entire
ity makes for the strongest argument. Even though authenticity may be the
surest way to moving the audience, simulation is not for that reason to be
stage acting:
[If delivery has such an effect in matters that we know to be idle and
fictive that it provokes rage, tears, and anxiety, how much more must
its force be where we also believe? Indeed, I would assert that even a
more effect than a superlative one whose delivery has left it in the
lurch.]
(Quintilian 11.3.5)
ery" (pronuntiatio). He gave as well the second and third prizes to delivery,
until he was no longer asked to assign rankings, such that he seems to have
judged delivery to be, not the most important quality, but the only one.6
No sentiment and no speech, no matter how well crafted, can hope to travel
with the constitution of the human senses. Yet there is a twofold danger here.
First, an orator may fail to make the delivery of his speech equal to
the contents of his own soul. Second, and more significantly in its ultimate
consequences, the surface of the delivery may outstrip the contents of both
the sentiments and the character of the performer. It may fail to represent
what the orator is, presenting instead some unintended content that is like a
performative slip of the tongue, a peek into the unconscious. Such a reading
SELF-MASTERY 93
follows from the arguments of the preceding chapter, provided that we now
Quintilian's text will not grow too anxious over the question of vice
until the final book, where he vehemently, repeatedly, and hence uncon-
vincingly rejects the possibility of a bad man who is a good orator. Never-
mance engages questions of the soul, of the orator's and of his audience's.
certain regulated moral sphere that they may fill the audience with the
ately provoked only where the orator is manifesting himself as a vir bonus.7
others, the most effective fiction will proceed from first propagating within
ourselves the appropriate mental images and then producing them at the
lam enim tempus est dicendi quae sit apta pronuntiatio: quae certe ea
cum sint alii ueri adfectus, alii ficti et imitati, ueri naturaliter erum-
artem habent; sed hi carent natura, ideoque in iis primum est bene
[It is now time for me to say what a fitting delivery is: a fitting delivery is
For the most part this is produced by the very movements of our souls;
the voice rings as it is struck.8 But while some feelings are true and
others are fictive and imitated, the true ones burst forth naturally (for
art; and for this reason they need to be shaped by rational discipline and
training. On the other hand, the products of imitation, well, they have
art, but they lack nature; and for this reason in their case the first order
(Quintilian 11.3.61-62)
Notice that regardless of the direction from which one proceeds, starting
from either passion or indifference, artifice and sincerity must meet up for
pline" (disciplina) and "reason" (ratio) to his feelings, while the unengaged
94 STAGING MASCULINITY
must discover and shape them. One cannot merely be what one is; a study
Moreover, only a student of the mechanics of the soul can manipulate his
internal affects with the proper images such that he performs as he ought
to. And here one notes a clear affinity between the way the spectator is
orator stages an internal spectacle for himself that bestirs his soul: images
instruct the passions in both cases. A psychic spectacle precedes the exter-
nal one. It is perhaps not a good idea to ask precisely how the mental
useful one even where it is not convincing: calculation and sentiment can-
has mooted the question of authenticity. The "authentic" and perfect ora-
tor is a hybrid of nature and culture, or in his own words a hybrid of natura
and cura:
Sunt tamen qui rudem illam et qualem impetus cuiusque animi tulit
actionem iudicent fortiorem et solam uiris dignam, sed non alii fere
sione sua fruantur, qui hominibus ut sint oratores satis putant nasci:
nostro labori dent ueniam, qui nihil credimus esse perfectum nisi ubi
[Nevertheless, there are those who judge as more forceful and alone
worthy of a real man an artless delivery and one such as the impulse of
the individual's soul has produced. But these men are usually none
other than those who are wont to reproach in oratory care, art, splen-
dor, and whatever is procured via study, as being affected and not
natural enough; or else these fellows are the ones who strive to imitate
antiquity via the rusticity of their words and even of their very pronun-
(Quintilian 11.3.10-11)
SELF-MASTERY 95
their side the very confusion of natura and cura that is an enabling condi-
tion for his own argument. These others, introduced by Quintilian's for-
mula of anonymity that expresses only existence (sunt qui. . .), appear to
of the spirit as a guide to expression. Yet these same men can often be
tions toward the latter quality: the rustic is a hick, whereas the ancients
they will pardon my efforts." In the opposite camp we find such necessary
provides.
mances that dispel the gravity of the oratorical moment must be avoided at
[What is less likely to stir emotions than when sorrow, rage, indigna-
tion, or pity are called for, not only to retreat from these emotions into
which the judge must be led, but even to dissolve the very sanctity of
Like all of Quintilian's violent prohibitions that are laden with sarcasm and
socially charged terms, one can assume that there were many who prided
ian, though, while the place of speaking is a venue of emotion and passion,
The orator is therefore an actor who is enjoined to play one, and only one,
part. We will explore this specific proposition in more detail in the next
chapter. The forum, then, is the stage upon which the orator plays out his
role; but this stage admits of only one kind of theater. In the preceding
96 STAGING MASCULINITY
chapter we saw that the orator's body was constrained to always be itself, a
manly and authoritative corporeality. Here this body meets its proper
venue. But more importantly, this venue, the forum and its stage pieces,
will become also the point to which the body from that chapter is always
aiming. The specter of the forum constrains the orator, both body and
be who he truly is, if he is to live his authoritative and manly essence, then
he also lives it as a man of the forum even when he is away from it. Thus
while Roman oratory teems with slurs made against opponents' private
frequently mentions the necessity of living a serious and literary life when
away from the forum's public stage."11 The maxim that all the world is a
stage finds two crucial modifications in the case of the orator: for him this
stage is the forum, and so too is the very notion of this forum bound up
and the oratorical handbook. The gulf instituted between the soul of the
speaker and the soul of the audience, though traversable, can only be
himself a sort of inner guard that regulates the movement of the inner
although Quintilian will call this same relationship an alliance rather than
mastery.
one is not born a man, one becomes one. Nature is in need of supplementa-
tion that the gulf between a socially prescribed destiny and an inadequate
natural dispensation may be closed. Notice that this labor is crucial and
ous, masculine subject (vir) who need only speak in order to manifest
himself as being just what he was born. This sort of subject defends the
rejection of the sort of analysis that a critic like Quintilian brings to bear on
the body. Thus we once again find that the naive self-relation favored by
SELF-MASTERY 97
Bourdieu so that he may read the habitus for its unacknowledged structur-
ings does not represent the state of affairs at Rome: one can only be
the distinction between the position of these men and that offered by
secure the same ultimate subject. The dispute thus turns around the time
and the place of the names orator and man: is one always already a man,
sort of tragedy of the oratorical subject: he can only become who he must
class, privilege, and authority. So too must this orator explore himself in
order to perform himself. And the orator's fidelity to this self that he both
was discussed in the preceding chapter, the essence of the orator's status as
level of the body. The body matters and is made material, but the process
under constant attack from his peers; and the precise grounding of this
status, its cultivation, and its defense are therefore vital issues to which the
reader that he can expect at any moment mockery and abuse from the
ian to be the cruelest and most biting critic; and we will likewise find that
will the orator be able to emend sufficiently his performance of the self.
masculine authority.
the tradition of rhetorical handbooks that he might promote his own argu-
Seneca the Elder. Cassius Severus once told Seneca how he lost his pa-
tience with one Cestius, who was all the rage with the students of the day:
omnium ingens; scholastici intueri me, quis essem qui tam crassas
[I recall that I entered his school when he was going to make a reading
didn't restrain my gall, and I cried out, "If you were a sewer, you
students looked at me to find out who was this fellow who was such a
boor. Cestius, who was going to make a response to Cicero, did not
find an answer for me; he said he would not continue unless I left his
house. I said that I would not leave a public bathhouse unless I were
washed.]
This is all happening after Cicero's death. Cestius attracts followers with
his replies to the published speeches of Cicero. Severus has just com-
plained that students will not even read Cicero's speeches except those to
that Cestius will not continue with his performance; rather, he cannot
continue while the man who makes him into a laughable sewer is standing
in front of him. The slur dispels the illusion of manly, aristocratic, emo-
the ridiculous and subpolitical.13 Some in the audience may think the inter-
ruption somewhat thick-headed, but this does not keep it from being effec-
tive. Severus has ensured that there will be no oratory or orators in this
salon become bathhouse. The air of sanctity borrowed from the forum has
been dispelled.
dotes containing similar charges being leveled against various orators. But
in this case Quintilian is not a precocious young man who deflates a pomp-
SELF-MASTERY 99
ous windbag and his turgid rhetorical figures. Quintilian speaks as a master
to his students. He threatens and ridicules their bodies in the name of good
rarum incessum neque ita longum probat. Discursare uero et, quod
and fro because the audience's applause can produce lengthy delays,
even though Cicero says that one should do this rarely and not traverse
much space. But it is totally incompetent to run around and about or,
he had declaimed.]
(Quintilian 11.3.126)
The invocation of bustling by Domitius Afer changes the scene from the
political arena to the comic stage by using a verb (satagere) associated with
into a pompous hike, thus converting the delivery into a ridiculous spec-
[One must reproach as well that constant and agitated bobbing from
side to side that Julius derided in the elder Curio, asking who was
his side, and the man was bandaged up and smeared with a good
enough: if he weren't here, today the flies would have devoured you
(Quintilian 11.3.129)
The plight of Curio puts further twists on the problems Quintilian has
been addressing. Suppose an orator is ardent, and the images have kindled
up his own soul, but his performance errs. It need not even fail outright;
his ardor is not sufficient, and another blow has been struck against those
theorists who would have a man only be born to be an orator. Thus, if one's
manly essence, but to have been instead the comic ravings of some
mastery that one can succeed in being what one is. In order to consolidate
been one of the two greatest orators to have ever lived. In fact Demosthenes
himself was once afflicted with the agitated performative style of a Curio.
menacing himself with a spear while practicing, such that only by keeping his
While Cicero, his precepts, and his speeches all serve as an invaluable
store for Quintilian, Demosthenes is in his own way a more useful figure.
Quintilian only has Demosthenes' speeches and certain anecdotes that have
thenes. We are dealing not with a real Demosthenes but with an exemplary
discipline to be observed that one might equal and eventually surpass this
orator who is at one point called "the leader by far and almost the law of
Of course, one does not easily attain to the condition of the law. First,
mances and performances that appealed to the vulgar masses rather than
the better sort of citizen (Plutarch, Demosthenes 9.4, 11.3). Obviously the
though, does not wish to admit any of the ambiguous descriptions of De-
mosthenes into his own discussion. Instead he selects from the traditional
off in the wilderness. This solitary toil leaves the orator alone to himself
to maintain his composure and to stick to his text when speaking amid
the tumult of the assembly and the courts, Demosthenes practices before the
waves crashing into the shore (Quintilian 10.3.30). In order to expand the
capacity of his lungs and accordingly to augment his ability to deliver long
many verses as possible while running uphill (11.3.54). Always either train-
ing or performing, the orator cuts himself off from human society only that
that even nature can be impressed into the service of the orator's cura:
that age, drank only water and no wine. If one aligns drunkenness with a
loss of self-control, then the import of the practice becomes clear. Simi-
larly, if we suppose that Demosthenes sought to spare his voice the debilitat-
ing influence of alcohol, we again find a man ever and always thinking
about his oratory and his body as his oratorical instrument even at the
his craft to perfection. For this see Plutarch, Demosthenes 7.6 (cf. also
[For this reason they say that he built a subterranean study that has
been preserved up to our own day, and he descended there every day
to fashion his delivery and to labor over his voice. He often spent two
and three months straight down there, having shaved half of his head
Quintilian offers his take on this anecdote when discussing the necessity of
avoiding distractions.
oculi.
no voice could be heard and where nothing outside could be seen lest
his eyes should force his mind to busy itself with a different task.]
(Quintilian 10.3.25)
Note again how susceptible the mind is to external stimuli: beware what
you see if you wish to retain your thoughts as your own. Quintilian looks in
upon a Demosthenes restraining his senses and training his mind. Quintil-
ian then reveals this Demosthenes to our own senses: our proper discipline
the sort of regime that any rhetorical student has to impose upon himself.
One must not underestimate the theory effect of Quintilian's own text and
the long line of texts like his that lay behind it. As has been argued in prior
chapters, the body is a literary product and project, and the student of a
textualized body. The student sees himself training himself with the very
merged for Quintilian, so too can we argue for similar ambiguities of the
affects are moved. The text about the psyche acts upon the very psychic
The story of the eye, then, is not one of turning the organ of sight upon
the soul. As such, the rules of optics also become enmeshed in rhetorical
rules covering the self-relation when the "nature" of optics meets up with
the care any orator ought to evince relative to such an important question.
reflection: the truth of rhetoric and the rhetoric of truth require as much.
tilian occurs in 11.3.68, where the famous Greek orator is training before a
mirror:15
adeo, quamuis fulgor ille sinistras imagines reddat, suis demum oculis
nes used to compose his delivery while looking into a certain large
mirror; that's how much he trusted his own eyes alone on the question
backward.]
himself: no other (suis demum) eyes can be entrusted with the duty of
keeping watch. Demosthenes becomes for himself his own ideal audience;
would even the audience for which he prepares himself. The performance
that might otherwise have been seen as one destined only for others has
seem to be making a certain gesture with the left hand when the performer is
actually using his own right hand. Since there is strict regulation of the use of
the left hand, the mirror is always showing the orator as in error. Of course,
one can apply this theme much more broadly than this: the bodily image that
the text reflects back to the student is one to which he must accommodate
himself. It is his own body, and the text offers a reflection through which he
gains mastery over this body. Yet the body of the handbook's mirror is also
always a mistaken image of the body: it is not actually a body, just a repre-
sentation of a body. One does not even find an image of a perfect body,
text; and a good many of these pieces are elements reflecting bodily error,
104 STAGING MASCULINITY
not performative triumph. Nevertheless one must behold oneself, one must
use this mirror. And in so reading, one takes up the cruel eyes of a Demos-
subjects himself have many homologies and parallels in the modern litera-
reading.16 Like the Lacanian symbolic with its impossible law, oratory is
moment of crisis: a speaker is always a male and must always reveal himself
as male, yet the voice and its nature are so constituted that a speaker is
the themes of this chapter can be brought together. In his Second Semi-
nar, Lacan closes out his year's lectures in a chapter entitled "A, m, a, S"
earlier "Mirror Stage" essay (1977, 1-7) but done from the perspective of
the whole psychic structure with both the imaginary and the symbolic axes
the problem of the ego, the ostensible trajectory of the year's seminar.
In figure 1,17 the ego's relationship to the image of the other lies
along the axis passing between m and a, the "I" and the "other." The
before the mirror and the coordination of the body in pieces by reference
to the image of the reflected self (Lacan 1977, 4). In this seminar, Lacan
puts the situation thus: "Then, here you have m, the ego, and a, the other
which isn't an other at all, since it is essentially coupled with the ego, in a
(Es/Id)
img symb
m(oi) A(autre)
(Ich/ego)
SELF-MASTERY 105
Yet this body is in pieces because of the very discourse of bodily analysis to
which training subjects the student. The body is broken up by the technol-
ogy of the rhetorical handbook, and then a moment of rebirth and reinstal-
lation into the world of the ego is staged for the student. The image that
pieces and whose whole are formed within the discipline of oratorical
training. This body arises only within a specific disciplinary matrix. More-
over, this discipline even names itself as discipline. So too does the disci-
discipline argues that the only subject worth being is the well-disciplined
The image that one discovers and that serves as the bodily ego's guide
is the image of an autre, of another vir bonus. The ego can always switch
places with this other figure: I look to the image of the other to become a
good man; I look to my image to see that it is the image of a good man.
expects him to see himself. But, ideally, the rhetorical student will look into
the mirror and also see the body of a Demosthenes, the man who must be
his alter ego. Yet we have seen consistently that the image toward which
one aspires is impossible: Quintilian promises us that there was only one
Demosthenes, and that even he was not the perfect orator. Similarly, the
behold the spectacle of the body, it must be disciplined into its proper form.
remind us (1995, 59). Most significantly, though, for the student of oratory
the glass into which one looks is not a real silvered surface; instead it is the
rhetorical handbook.
tween the ego and the other persists but only as an aggressive and hostile
act. The tensions that subsist beneath this ego are mentioned by Lacan, but
perhaps in the following he does not go far enough into the problems of the
Lacan says, "Here you have S, which is simultaneously the subject, the
symbol, and also the Es. The symbolic realization of the subject, which is
symbolic axis we find language and the idea of signification itself. Thus the
106 STAGING MASCULINITY
symbolic in its fashion represents the ideal dimension toward which rhetori-
specific meanings are produced. Lacan himself argues that the generic
the imaginary: "[T]he human being has a special relation with his own
ity of the order of presence and absence, that is of the symbolic order
comes in. . . . For all existing human subjects, the relation between A and
S will always pass via the intermediary of these imaginary substrates, the
ego and the other, which constitute the imaginary foundation of the
Lacan's version shows us how the play between these other elements,
the Sujet and the Autre, work through the ego and its imaginary relation-
ship. At the same time, Lacan does not explore just how these other two
death leaves the situation in a position where he need not argue more than
the most generic relationship between being and nonbeing.18 Yet the Ro-
something like death, but whose front face is virility and manly authority.
the name of purely existential questions. Indeed, being in its own way
requires as its inevitable attendant a certain kind of being, a being for some
as against others. Here one thinks more of Kristeva and the abject, of
the labor of refusal that goes into the establishment of the symbolic.19 The
the symbolic.
At the same time, one cannot neglect the fact that these themes are
Lacan that engages questions such as ideology and the so-called dominant
and of subjection.21
to gender, but subjectivated by gender, the 'I' neither precedes nor follows
the process of this gendering, but emerges only within and as the matrix of
who enacts this process out of which the performatic ego emerges. His
nishes the matrix within which we ourselves observe this paradoxical mo-
ment of the production of "that which must have already been there." This
psychic mechanisms such that each party vouches for the validity of the
other: mental images are legible and textual; texts impinge upon psyches;
bodies are the media through which spiritual truths are conveyed and in
which they are lived. The text performs the truths of performance in a
manner homologous to that of a body that performs the truth of its own
rhetorical text. Watching over this process is the eye of the master: Quintil-
ian gazes upon Demosthenes and instructs his own student as to the neces-
This gaze that would look in at the body has important psychoanalytic
implications. The gaze exists from without the orator and constitutes him at
I must, to begin with, insist on the following: in the scopic field, the
This is the function that is found at the heart of the institution of the
level, in the visible, is the gaze that is outside. It is through the gaze
that I enter the light and it is from the gaze that I receive its effects.
(1981, 106)
The gaze produces a showing of the orator, a giving of him to be seen (le
ics of presence. One exists only because one is seen, and one exists only as a
thing to be seen. One of our earliest portraits of the orator is the most vivid
exists because the Muses saw his birth; and the king's eloquence is meant
for watching by his people. The politics and theology of hegemony in He-
function of the gaze and arrogates to itself its constative authority. This
divine efficacy bestowed upon masterful oratory acts to counter the death
is not derivative from the symbolic; the orator is not an effect of the gaze:
instead rhetorical theory stages both itself and its ideal student as masters of
Vision and visibility are everything, and the rhetorical theorist not
orator, though, does not complain about an existential crisis. He may worry
about his appearance, but we know already that a soul that governs these
appearances has been assumed from the start. Lacan, though, has already
sketched out the structure of such a resistance to the loss of the ego as a
point of origin. Lacan makes much of the statement, "I saw myself seeing
this sensation is that "the privilege of the subject seems established here
representations belong to me" (Lacan 1981, 81). The basis that founds this
of the gaze in favor of the self-reflexive (Lacan 1981, 83). In other words,
by watching himself the orator comes to believe that he owns those sinister
images that come back to him. Yet these images are themselves governed
by the logic of the theoretical gaze that has staged this self-staging within
the rhetorical handbook. Moreover, even the author of the handbook can-
not be said to own the gaze: it too merely mimics the position and function
of a gaze that precedes and exceeds the text's own mastery and authority.
yet he is a creature who is given to the senses. By seeing himself being seen,
the orator hopes to gain possession over himself and his meaning. He
within the gaze; the gaze is mine." In response to observation on the part of
the world, the orator reacts by observing himself, by being the first and
harshest critic of his own body. The truths that arise from this auto-
theorization are thereupon used to posit a subject who is in fact and after
all what he sees himself to be. Thus the relationship of self-observation that
the gaze as the abstracted origin of meaning can be reproduced with its
retical texts cite a law that they also bring into being (see Butler 1993, 12-
16). One should not imagine, though, a beyond or a before relative to the
know and understand it; the specific performances and their various contin-
gencies are the significant variables. Resistance to rhetorical theory and the
world of good men to which it belongs can only come by way of skewed
become a man.
The constitution of this essential orator, this man who reveals his manli-
ness, his passion, his authority, his good faith,25 is on the one hand a pursuit
speaking subject tout court and the sole political subject worthy of hege-
the speaker has to jettison a vast freight of cultural cargo, heaving it over-
board like a man desperate to save a sinking ship. But this ship, to distend the
image, is always sinking. Indeed, one could even say that it was built leaking,
built to be always in crisis and always in need of being saved. The cruelty of
system within which one desires to ascend and attain to mastery of others.
to hunt out and overcome within the body and the voice those very social
categories that one is assumed to have already overcome in the world: the
sick, the effeminate, et cetera. Before one can successfully perform for
others, before one can transmit masterfully the contents of one's own soul
garrison.
cial kind of wounding. This is not an enabling wound in the sense that the
110 STAGING MASCULINITY
politics. Rather, this wounding is more like that ritual scarification that
meant to heal over so easily, though. Instead, the orator needs to be always
bustling - no, rather he needs to be always pacing to and fro, busy with his
wound, staving off danger while never truly escaping the threat.
rewarded than himself and members of his class. Furthermore, his subjec-
and best himself and those like him. This self-subjection is also more spe-
cific: the orator has presented to him an elaborate hermeneutics of the self;
he, more than any other member of the society, is commanded to partici-
looking closer and deeper into itself in the hopes that further self-mastery
and for the internalized regime. And while the contents of the handbook
are not identical to the full contents of the self-beratements of the orator,
ian in order that they may begin to acquire for themselves a version of the
work partly because two books derived from notes taken by students dur-
ing his lectures have been hastily thrown together and are already making
the rounds (1.pr.7). In their own way, unauthorized books of Quintilian are
just as good as the full text: the handbook is never complete; it always
needs to be longer and more explicit. Or, to look at the question from the
other direction, the student always has to be complicit, and the first and
Actors
oculis, voce, gestu, inimici ut lacrimas tenere non possent. Haec ideo dico
pluribus, quod genus hoc totum oratores, qui sunt veritatis ipsius actores,
[What was it in Gracchus - you remember him better, Catulus - that was
so talked of in my youth? "Poor me, where will I go? Where will I turn?
Everyone agreed that he used his eyes, voice, and gestures to perform
these lines so movingly that his enemies could not restrain their tears. I
have abandoned this entire genre of speaking. Yet the imitators of truth,
doubling of the actor makes him a figure who is always brought next to the
orator and then cast away. Much as Romulus slew his twin brother Remus,
so is the actor assailed by the orator, dying that the latter may give his name
to an entire empire.3 The two crimes even share their motive: Remus
Rome. We will find the orator similarly unable to keep his brother the actor
away from his own realm; and we will find the orator resorting to equally
desperate measures.
the arguments that accompany it. Once this preliminary work has been
explicitly called an actor and weigh the full implications of this appellation.
That is, when the orator is explicitly recognized as an actor, he will still bear
with him the marks of the exclusionary practices that surround the person
of the actor, but they will have been somehow temporarily overcome.4 I
111
112 STAGING MASCULINITY
the orator is always in the process of transcending his histrionic aspect. This
body and its truth are caught up in an effort to fix and ground the authority
The orator is associated with truth and the spirit; the actor with fiction
and the body. The turning away from the merely corporeal reveals a
troubled moment in a search for essence. At this moment we will see that
epithet. This rejection refuses the troubles of gender and pleasure in the
figures. With the crisis of acting settled here and for the time being, we will
make our own provisional movement away from the theater and into ques-
tions of rhetorical gender and pleasure per se in the next chapter. The actor
offers only one image among many of a crisis of masculine authority. In the
a more suitable position to look into the "positive" presence whose constitu-
readily align performance with rhetoric under the sign of the false and
provocative directions. However, the work of Judith Butler stands out both
for its perceptiveness and for its clarity. Furthermore, her discussion of
out some of the particulars of my own interests, though, I will also make
focuses on the male subject and the specific problems surrounding its consti-
tution. And second, this text is acutely aware of the problems of vision and
ACTORS 113
the term instead designates performativity as the critical site for the as-
lar or deliberate 'act,' but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice
by which discourse produces the effects that it names" (1993, 2). These
performances are the materialization of discourse and the scenes of its lived
experience and expression. The material is the product of the power ex-
pressed in this discourse, and the effects of power are here not to be
mance is a citation of a law (Butler 1993, 12-16). The act is thus a dis-
simulated reference to a latent law. Yet this law cannot and must not be
thought of as radically prior and anterior to its own citations, nor the vis-
ible world a mere reflex of its rules. Butler opens up the Lacanian notion of
the law of sex by deploying her notion of citationality: "What Lacan calls
citing of the law, and so offers an opportunity to link the question of the
ality" (1993, 14). After making this critical move, she shortly continues,
"The law is no longer given in a fixed form prior to its citation, but is
produced through citation as that which precedes and exceeds the mortal
both cites the law in performance and is produced as a subject by that same
that the subject who would resist such norms is itself enabled, if not pro-
duced, by such norms. Although this constitutive constraint does not fore-
and to a law that they themselves always inscribe as the law of the father.
Naturally they understand their own position in terms far different from
the problems of the subject. In the rhetorical discussion, the crisis re-
volves around performances that are not performances of the self, perfor-
mances that are not done in one's own character, in propria persona. This
crisis encompasses those performances that fail to cite a law grounding the
authority of the masculine subject and those performances that are errone-
mate" status is suggested. One might note, then, that law and legitimacy
are related not just etymologically through the Latin lex, but so too are
The ideal rhetorical performance, then, cites a law that subtends the
rhetorical self and enables this self as normal and normative. Such a perfor-
mance produces the law even as it invokes it, and this citation participates
of the law. The law that guarantees the viability of the rhetorical subject
will do so at the expense of other possible selves. At the same time we will
also discover that in the process of uncovering these enabling and expres-
the law, and it even offers itself as a sort of materialized and codified
subject of the law. Even so, in the process of theoretical exegesis, other and
diations for the students of oratory. They purchase their subjectivity at the
cost of this refusal. In fact, this refusal serves as the domain of "unthink-
able, abject, unlivable bodies," a domain that is not the opposite of the
lived bodies, but instead "the excluded and illegitimate domain that haunts
the former domain as the specter of its own impossibility, the very limit to
Butler notes that "since the law must be repeated to remain an authori-
tative law, the law perpetually reinstitutes the possibility of its own failure"
(1993, 108). The texts we are about to examine can be seen as a sort of
These works attempt via their textual interventions to shore up the threat
for the hegemonic male subject that would necessarily ensue. Not surpris-
To the extent that this new and circumspect knowledge produces more
a successful project of supporting the law. And this law is lived precisely as
behests. With more knowledge inevitably comes more power and effects of
power when the two are seen in the Foucauldian dyad power/knowledge.
The rhetorical treatise offers a point of purchase from which to explore the
ity of a failure of being. If one sees the text as an intervention on the side of
a potentially fallible law, the scapegoating of the actor then becomes the
mere bodily citation of the law. For Butler the subject cites the law as if it
were something beyond and prior to his own performance. In the rhetorical
where the orator should provide the thing itself. Thus the orator needs to
be the actor of truth, to enact the truth of the law. The failure of the body
learns only of the necessity of authentic performance, and the text thus
cites the truth of bodily citation even as it recognizes the danger of "mere"
both body and soul. Performative failures are not limited in scope, being
bodily lapses where the spirit was willing but the flesh weak. Instead the
gated from the actor whose speciousness is assumed. The actor becomes
the site at which the orator deposits his lack.6 In other words, as woman is
can never be fully overcome by the vir bonus or simply fobbed off upon
another. The lack that defines the actors keeps returning back to the per-
son of the orators, and the imitators of truth (imitatores veritatis) cannot be
actores).7 This ambiguity lies at the heart of the noun actor and the verb
agere: is one playing a part, pleading a case, or doing a deed? The orator
116 STAGING MASCULINITY
"context" lets one decide the correct translation. And an appeal to context
aspect of the subject most at jeopardy, though, is the ego, or, as Kaja
"The moi is the psychic 'precipitate' of external images, ranging from the
subject's mirror image and the parental imagoes to the whole plethora of
subject takes to be its 'self' is thus both other and fictive" (1992, 3). Of
tion of the bodily ego. "Part of what it means to pursue the relation of
fantasy to the ego is to grasp that the subject's own bodily image is the first
and the most important of all the objects through which it attempts to
ego is always predicated upon lack and can never be described as complete
and fully present. The orators are at pains to control the meaning of the
body and its relation to the subject who both bears and is revealed by that
mance must be made to coincide with truths of the subject. In fact, the
labor designed to secure being for the ego even as the castrated actor
subsists as an uneasy double for orators who would find truth and being in
consciousness, but rather at that of fantasy and the ego or moi, and that it
consequently comes into play at the most profound sites of the subject's
formation" (1992, 16), she also shows us the stakes in controlling the mean-
ing of the body and ensuring the fusion of the body's meanings with the
tion of a secure belief in the unified and unitary speaking subject. The
be revealed, and that the body is the point at which to discover and reveal
this moi. And, lastly, the rhetorical theorist shares this belief in the body and
invests the body with the capacity for manifesting the truth of the subject. It
becomes mere text, an imitator of the truth rather than its performer, and as
ACTORS 117
was argued at the outset of this study, the text's relationship to the body
ship to power as played out via the body: "[I]f prohibitions in some sense
prohibition and pain, they can be understood as the forcible and material-
ized effects of regulatory power" (1993, 64). The rhetorical theorists stage
body and its appearance. In this sense they attempt to forestall the revolu-
fact, the whole genre of the handbook is designed to forestall errant itera-
tions. The handbooks arrive on the scene long after the birth of the art, and
even in the course of their description one can always see prescriptions.
Butler also uses the observation that the site of prohibition is open to
eroticization to start to open up a space that will eventually lead her to the
the law opens itself up to the installation of a desire that can represent its
locus. Yet the orator will be discovered to be the consummate actor and the
best actor a model of the orator. Thus, the theorists have forged a legiti-
the sense that it represents a desire for the father in his most punitive guise.
But this desire fails to be queer in any radical sense as it serves to consoli-
exclusions from the social body. The enemies of the revolution are no fools:
The stakes in any performance are very high, and the legitimacy of one's
rhetorical literature, there are many passing references to the art of the
118 STAGING MASCULINITY
actor as one that is both parallel to and a model for the orator's own
tore, Crassus begins with the words, "Now consider in a craft most trivial
and insubstantial . . ." (atqui vide inquit in artificio perquam tenui et levi)
(1.129). The thought and diction of De oratore 1.18 provide a close parallel:
"The stage and the insubstantial art of the actors declare the importance
delivery alone and of itself has" (quae [actio] sola per se ipsa quanta sit,
First, we are like actors but more important. Consequently, care that actors
show for performance should be our own care. Indeed we might even
consider being more attentive than they are. Clark summarizes the ancient
are given to referring to its similarity to acting. The public speaker should
observe and imitate the technic of a good actor but should avoid a delivery
In the first quote the status of acting is carefully restricted by the use of
thoroughly so. In the second quote the adjective "insubstantial" may seem
at first glance innocuous, but its kindred passage reveals that the frivolity of
tion to care and discipline that is found by reference to the actor is nearly
which the actor is branded. At the same time, if an orator does fail to be at
least the equal of the actor, he will have failed miserably: our consummate
The uneasy distance imposed between the actor and the orator in the
opposition between the insubstantial and the weighty kept the actor close
enough but still at arm's length, so also does the problem of beauty open
there are plenty of citations decrying the visual pleasures of the actor's art,
but we will first examine those references that seem untroubled by these
considered to have been virtually the only good actor. That is, if the proper
ACTORS 119
sured that the lesson to be drawn is a positive one. The example cited
Tum Crassus "atqui vide" inquit "in artificio perquam tenui et levi
quanto plus adhibeatur diligentiae, quam in hac re, quam constat esse
maximam: saepe enim soleo audire Roscium, cum ita dicat, se adhuc
quo non essent quidam probabiles, sed quia, si aliquid modo esset viti,
id ferre ipse non posset; nihil est enim tam insigne nec tam ad
summa venustate fiat, nisi ita, ut deceat et uti omnis moveat atque
delectet? Itaque hoc iam diu est consecutus, ut, in quo quisque
[Then Crassus said, "Now consider in a craft most trivial and insubstan-
tial how much more diligence is applied than in this matter (i.e.,
this is the way he puts it - claims that he has been as yet unable to find
certain capable prospects, but because if there were only the least
comparison with this actor to guide oratorical praise, do you see how
inappropriate and nothing that does not move and delight all? And so
in this way he has long since achieved the honor that anyone who
Roscius is the good actor in the moment in which he serves as the guarantor
moves and delights and that his performance is attractive, or even "fetch-
ing" (venustus). Notice how Crassus intervenes to put his own maxim into
his anecdote: Roscius claims that he cannot find a student. Crassus rounds
off this assertion with the rather chilling maxim that "nothing is so promi-
nent nor so sure a guarantor of lasting memory as are your blunders." Once
this truth has been uttered, Crassus can proceed in his praise of Roscius.
Roscius is praised for not transgressing, and this avoidance is itself the
120 STAGING MASCULINITY
memorable for doing nothing that would invoke the scourges of irritated
its impossibility, we see that Roscius is memorable for offending and caus-
ing injury to the doomed student who would follow his lead. In other
thenes is called the law of oratory, that pleasure can be attached to his
These same words are often uttered as slurs or reproaches, and we will get
to these uses shortly, but here they are positive virtues.13 They become so,
however, only after they have themselves become the products of a regime
of discipline and self-mastery. One gains pleasure only after finding infinite
students, but one that the aspiring orator is sure to find in himself, since we
all know that the perfect orator has never lived. Crassus speaks of him as
repeats this trope and assures us that neither Cicero nor Demosthenes was
Roscius provides the model of the good actor. His exemplary status
depends upon the lesson he taught, a lesson that privileged discipline over
plicit inspiration from an actor. In fact, if it were not for an actor, Demos-
thenes might never have descended into the subterranean study mentioned
8' na6og, "Xrieri X4yStg c Ar6ooOEveg" CavaL tov CLaTQov, " XX'-
ilyTloaoOat xal X'toC( i n evat Tlv Cox1otLV CLeXobvt Ltig uto pooag
[HI]o L [£XsT1TrQLOV, .. .
defeat and was returning home, troubled and chafing at his misfor-
tune. The actor Satyrus, a close friend of his, accompanied him back to
was the most diligent of the speakers and had nearly exhausted his
good health to this end, he had no favor with the public. Instead
"That's true, Demosthenes," said Satyrus, "but I will swiftly cure the
cause of this, if you will only be willing to deliver for me one of the
Satyrus took the same speech up and with apt characterization and
felt the piece had been wholly transformed. Demosthenes was now
convinced of how much order and grace delivery gives a speech, and
glected the pronunciation and delivery14 of what was said. For this
about the status of delivery and the efforts expended on it. First, if bad men
are favored, may not the audience itself be bad? This, of course, is nowhere
in the text, but it is a suspicion that the passage raises and then makes no
effort to address. Next, is oratory an affair that favors "bad men inexperi-
enced at speaking"? Are the sailors and idiots passing themselves off as
better men, or does their delivery recommend them in spite of their social
and intellectual worth? Is rhetoric mere specious sophism? Again, the text
will not answer this question, but it is important to note that it raises
suspicion that presence, essence, truth, or station may mean little when it
Sailors ought to represent the enfranchised Athenian lower classes and the
state. The prominence of the Athenian navy and its need for citizen sailors
had created a whole new class of person with claims to political rights and
giving him ear is a turning away from the hegemony of the traditional elite.
working of the text Demosthenes had delivered does nothing other than to
<pavqvat). Thus, the orator's new passion springs from nothing but this
Discipline is called into question when Demosthenes realizes that his other
rhetorical studies may have been vitiated by bad delivery. Similarly, the
ignorant have gained the upper hand. However, it is precisely study that
withdraws completely from society and ensures this exile by shaving his
head so that he cannot return to it. There he composes his delivery for
himself, not for the eyes of the masses. Study and learning are made the
arbiters and guarantors of delivery, and the self and self-inspection the
theatrical aspects of oratory that provoke this reasoning have been entirely
namely, is the sanctioned speaker a (socially) good man? - are made moot.
vocabulary for the analysis of this scene, we can say that Demosthenes
translates the spectacle (Ocia{a) of his performance from the public space
of the theater (OarQov) and into his cave. Here he watches himself for
himself, doubling the grammar of the middle voice of the Greek verb
OFaot. And this moment then itself becomes a classic scene for theoreti-
cal literature.
The scene offers a complete set of Greek puns on the verbal stem from
which the English word theory is derived, and it strongly recalls the discus-
from oratory as a social event conceived of in its broadest sense and a turn
instead toward the individual and his mastery of the elements of oratorical
theory, of the five branches of the art, the subbranches of these branches,
over, this rhetorical subject has been abstracted from the immanence of
practice of performance.
rr rovOa;" "vi) Aix" (pava, "vuv &xoi w p ywvv L86Lxov Evol xau
nretov06og." o{ wg 3Ero uEya Qog tLo6TLV eLvat TOv 6vov xactL iTv
n6OXQLoL v ktV XEyovtwv. Totg osEv oiVy nokkotg vr oxQ tvo Evog q9oXE
[It is said that once a man came to him seeking his advocacy, and he
"But you have suffered none of this." When he strained his voice and
"There, now I hear the voice of a man wronged and who has suf-
fered." This was how much Demosthenes thought the tone and deliv-
Here we will only examine the attack made on Demosthenes himself. While
124 STAGING MASCULINITY
the rhetorical tradition usually does its best to present Demosthenes as the
consummate speaker, the very fact of his success leaves him open to attack
from critics within this same tradition. In other words, you can always
unimpeacahable. When one looks to the heart of the speaker, that is, when
one catches him anxious and in training, disciplined and a scholar, there is
no problem. But when he makes his appearance and performs, if this perfor-
has used an unusual word for delivery that highlights this crisis: tkrr6a is a
and Scott 1968, s.v. X o tca 111.2). Otherwise the word can mean fiction or
itself the notion of inauthenticity. But one notes also the positive use of
plasticity and fabrication as means for finding good performance. What sort
suspicion, and the means used to evoke this pleasure are quickly branded
with socially debasing adjectives that taint the spectacle and turn totally
away from the issue of training. Attacks of this sort are insuperable: any
it anew and from a different angle. The critical and theoretical perspective
mance. The pleasure of the mass audience compromises the status of the
performer.
above. Many passages in rhetorical works make it clear that even a casual
Sed quodcumque ex his uitium magis tulerim quam, quo nunc maxime
[But I could put up with any of these vices sooner than I could endure
that one with which all the courts and schools are particularly afflicted,
ACTORS 125
orator's dignity as the debauch. Quintilian in his wrath is not lashing out
and peers. To trust his own testimony, it would even seem that he holds the
minority opinion in these matters. Thus, in the effort to exile theater from
oratory, we again find that the gesture comes too late. The orator is already
theatrical, even wantonly so. The theorists of oratory, though, take as one
of their strategies the conversion of all theater into vice, and then they
launch an attack upon their own number in order to clean out the Augean
be an actor.
On the other hand, the comparison between orator and actor seems
exaggerated performance and then brands them as worse even than actors:
Non enim aut in illa perihodo "stetit soleatus praetor populi Romani"
nata uoce pronuntiant: adeo in illis quoque est aliqua uitiosa imitatio
[You must watch out for (imitation) not just in your hands, but in
every gesture and in the voice. For one must not enact the posture of
rem 5.33.86); nor may one writhe as if lashed during the phrase "he
5.62.162); nor may one tear out a cry of pain. I think comic actors also
ruin things when they are playing a young man and they get to a
voice. That's how true it is that there also exists a certain vicious
(Quintilian 11.3.90-91)
then say that it was a common practice, as well as denounce explicit gestures
and then say that many actually used them. Furthermore, the illustration
Cicero has become a textbook, and in order to read him, one also has to
perform him. We have already examined during the first chapter how Quintil-
effeminate manner. When the speech recounts the beating in the forum,
the speaker starts writhing as if he were being beaten. The critique is then
doubled: failed actors and failed speakers are brought to task, while good
acting and good oratory are pitted against them. In both cases the principle
acter, staging a bit of theater for the audience. Perhaps the most famous
Claudius Caecus is summoned from the dead in order to scold his dissipated
descendant Clodia (Pro Caelio 33-34). Austin's note on this passage con-
ian where Cicero's dramaturgy and performance are praised (1960, 90-91).
A quick survey of this list reveals a pronounced tendency: the orator prefers
censorious old Caecus, or he can even put words in the mouth of the father-
land itself, speaking directly in the name of society and the law. The good
Explicitness and theater are not just d6class6 or gauche; the stage also
ACTORS 127
tor and his performance by bracketing him between two other forbidden
[Enough has been said of the character of the voice, and now it seems
performance. The orator is set between beauty and baseness in the aes-
thetic realm, while socially segregated from the actor and the laborer.
Pudor, the sense of shame, has a sexual connotation. Pudor in this sense is
While the orator may not be beautiful, neither may he be foul. Base-
ness in his appearance would cast him out of the arena of legitimacy in
another direction. Again we have the paradox: the orator cannot be superfi-
cial and a creature of appearances, but at the same time his appearance is
vital. He may not be beautiful, but he must not be ugly. Thus, he must in
fact possess some version of beauty, just not the wrong kind. This beauty is
body is only recognized and extolled via a praise for the virile, the martial,
and other tokens of masculine authority. Thus its beauty is the beauty of
Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticae. This time the sexual scandal is brought
to the fore.
eum, quasi in histrionem, in ipsis causis atque iudiciis dicta sunt. Sed
[It is said that Demosthenes in his dress and the rest of his care for his
body was too splendid, attractive, and polished. This brought him re-
proaches from his rivals and adversaries, who spoke of his "elegant little
cloaklets" and "soft frocks." This too meant that he was not spared foul
and unworthy names. Indeed he was even called too little a man and "of
sius. He was more illustrious than almost all of the orators of his day
except Cicero. He was a very elegant man who arranged his toga care-
fully and precisely, and his hands were quite explicit and full of gestures
offensive jeers; and during the very cases and judgments in which he
of the judges when the case of Sulla was being investigated, Lucius
Torquatus, a fellow of boorish and graceless wit, was harshly and bit-
terly telling the tribunal that Hortensius was not now an actor but a
mime performer, and he was calling Hortensius Dionysia after the name
of a notorious dancing girl. Then Hortensius said in a soft and low voice,
"I would certainly rather be Dionysia than what you are, Torquatus,
Two famous orators, and accordingly two orators whose virility ought to be
posterity. The focus of the contemporary attacks they suffered was their
that won him abuse but his manner of dressing. The splendor and charm of
other precepts we have seen: his hands are "explicit," and the argutae of
this passage should be referred to Quintilian's use of the same word above
with Latin terms that roughly match up to the Greek ones by which
attack upon it. Torquatus' assault on Hortensius consists, though, not just
of calling out at the latter and saying he was an actor; instead he changes
Hortensius' name during the conduct of a judicial inquiry and starts refer-
the very person he is charged with being. Choosing to answer in Greek, his
final word contains as a rejoinder the very syllables of the original charge:
dancing girl. At the same time he recovers a space for pleasure by assailing
his opponent for being boorish, harsh, and offensive. The ironic and self-
and pleasure can and has been calculated, that, in short, he is not the
this line that bounds the pleasures of performance, and then he crosses
over and back: he plays with it. Hortensius ensures that he is, after all, truly
the one qualified to speak, and that the discourse on and of pleasure will
Momentarily becoming the one whom he must not be, Hortensius says,
"I would certainly rather be Dionysia than what you are, Torquatus, unculti-
ing that Torquatus' insult can only work in a world where one had abandoned
culture and thus can only speak from a position that is itself not authorized to
130 STAGING MASCULINITY
Additionally, this society is not just a world of oratory, but a world of letters
language of culture par excellence, but also the language from which
Dionysia?
Hortensius takes up the mask in order to show both that it had yet to
be assumed and that once it was assumed it could also be put down.
Hortensius' act stages an actor. But Hortensius' retort assures us that the
orator is always an actor of sorts, a man who has traffic with the Muses,
and the tale to which they give witness moves fluidly between the corporeal
and the abstract: a critique about one informs the domain of the other. The
constitution of the field of criticism does serve to reify its terms as valid
truths even where individual cases are left open to doubt. One plays with
these relationships - indeed playing within them is necessary and itself the
sign of the culture and authority toward which one strives - but such catego-
ries are never radically overturned in the course of the sport, and the game
itself wins every time. The orator will always be held accountable for
seem to exceed the most literal reading of the text: one could just conclude
that Hortensius was a bit effeminate and leave it at that. He was just one of
many Roman orators, and so much the better for our purposes if he was
interested in drag. But the key issue here is the resistance expressed by his
Hortensius is first asserted to be the most studious youth of his age: "His
ardor was so great that I never saw a more blazing earnestness in anybody"
read as diligence.19 The source of his diligent study is ardor, or, more
specifically, desire (cupiditas). Reading back a bit in the text of the Brutus,
one can perhaps assert that the proper antecedent of this desire is fame
ACTORS 131
(gloria). But that link is weak, and desire stands rather nakedly here,
coupled most closely with study. In fact, for our purposes desire/mastery
emerge again as a fixed pair. One desires mastery and masters desire.
in a performance only when the mark of mastery is upon it. Life, then, is a
and illegitimacy, but an orator's acting produces virile pleasure and author-
ity. The orator plays a man better even than an actor does. The orator is
expressing a fundamental truth, while the actor merely dons a mask. The
though, must be noted. An orator is not simply himself. He acts and enacts
lacuna between truth and life and a dependence of the essence on its own
tory in technical terms, relating his mastery of the five major branches of
oratory, there is only the vaguest hint of the histrionic. Cicero's Hortensius
is free of the social and sexual crisis that surrounded him before.
vox canora et suavis, motus et gestus etiam plus artis habebat quam
[He offered the least vulgar variety of speaking . . . His brilliant vo-
voice was melodious and pleasant; his movement and gesture had even
case: aristocratic while being pleasing. His gestures exceeded the necessary
measure, but in this case the excess makes him seem only genteel and not
sexually wanton. The raw facts of Hortensius' delivery remain roughly the
same, but there is no Torquatus in sight to hurl a slur. Cicero indicates that
Torquatus might think it was excessive for an orator (nimis), Cicero instead
politely asserts that Hortensius had more art than one needed (plus quam
suspect that the orator should in fact perform like an actor, but Crassus
quickly cuts off this conclusion in his final remarks on physical performance
(actio):
Omnis autem hos motus subsequi debet gestus, non hic verba expri-
one should not use gestures that imitate the words and are theatrical,
but instead gestures illustrating the general issue and one's thought not
via demonstration but via indication. One should employ a bold and
manly bending of the trunk that has not been taken from the stage and
actors, but rather from the soldier or even the wrestling school. The
the fingers but not translate them. The arm should be well extended
beginnings or endings.]
When Crassus forbids the histrionic in motion after having just illus-
trated vocal delivery with almost exclusively theatrical examples, his inter-
vention comes a day late and a dollar short. In fact, these injunctions are
ACTORS 133
already clearly too late not just logically but historically: the hand is com-
explicitly speak of transgression or where they claim that only a mad man
would act other than they recommend, there were speakers who violated
ary by which to compass the authorized delivery. Just as the actor serves as
the constitutive outside for the person of the orator, the actor's art does
similar duty relative to the orator's own. One of the key distinctions be-
tween the two realms is the degree of explicitness: the rhetorical gesture is
"showy" in the two English senses of the words, as he can neither remind
The contents of the show, however, are left by no means neutral. In-
stead they are strongly gendered. The orator's "trunk" must move in a bold
and virilis, which are unambiguously masculine, are set up as virtual anto-
nyms to the stage and its actors. We can complement this dyad by setting
Latin the associations would be levis -scaenica, levis -mollis, and levis -
effeminatus. All of these pairs can then be opposed to "manly - hard" and
field of pairs and oppositions reinscribes the orator and his legitimate author-
ity within a particular body set against other, unauthorized bodies. Hard,
manly, and penetrating, the orator is not theatrical, soft, or feminine, even if
these terms eternally come back to haunt him. But this haunting serves as the
side, the actor. The actor inhabits the illegitimate body the handbook discov-
As if the insistence upon virility were not enough in his first formula-
direct contrast between the theater and the military setting or the wrestling
school. These regulations attached to the torso are perhaps less surprising
if one considers that the latera are a sexually invested site in Latin.22 Ac-
cordingly one strives to retain a critical site of the body within a carefully
associated with this corporeal locus. But such insistence can never effect a
sense be given in contradistinction to the others, that when one sees the
trunk one is in effect actively not seeing it with pleasure. The hand ceases
manly. The arm becomes a martial extension, oratory's spear. The move-
ment to the body parts thus coincides with the prescriptions about the
feminine, for the manly has this as its more usual antonym. Explictness can
be aligned with the feminine by the following set of associations: the ex-
nated to the man. But the threat expressed most generally would be that
when one is seen performing, the spectators feel pleasure. That is, the
In other words, the orator insists that his penis be mistaken for the
phallus. That the orator is supposed to be the master of other mens hearts
choanalysis that castration implicates both the masculine and the feminine
subject according to the logic of the gaze (1992, 155) where the gaze is "the
subject uses the notion of female castration to occlude his own castrated
condition (cf. Silverman 1992, 172). The actor is made to play woman to
the orator's man in this instance as well. By castrating the actor, the orator
The good men seek to identity their position with that of the condi-
tions of truth of the world, that is, they wish their look to be homologous
with the truth of the visible world. The good man wishes to claim as his own
contestable claim. The orator can never escape the fact that he too is an
element of the visible world over which he desires mastery. Thus he too
subject. The good men restage within the dramatic space of theoretical
gaze out at the actor, master him, and control the meanings of the spectacle
of bodies in general. Conversely, when one looks at the orator, the orator
ACTORS 135
claims that the audience's looking is passive. The eye of the beholder of
oratory is not accorded the same insight as the gaze of theory itself: instead
Such is theory's implied argument, but one cannot grant its claims.
Butler reminds us that "castration could not be feared if the phallus were
simply the specter that it will become lost that constitutes the obsessive
these other bodies and assuring the virility and potency of all cathexes to
his own body, the orator defends against that notion that the phallus has
already been lost. The orator uses the actor to dispel the specter of his own
castration. But the orator is not only already castrated, he is also unable to
free himself of his resemblance to the actor. Thus the figure that should
comfort him, the abject actor, always also puts the orator ill at ease. The
orator also simultaneously invests his own body as a potential site of eroti-
frames the crisis of identities in these terms, desire and pleasure necessarily
remain fixed at the heart of the crisis and adhere to the body even after the
I would like to take one last look at the orators watching the actors. This time
we will read more closely their readings of drama in order to explore the
true texts, true readings, and true performances are all valorized. Thus the
rhetorical handbook prizes theatrical moments that indicate the power of the
written word within its reader's spirit. Will theory's own script enable perfor-
mances of the same caliber? Even as the rhetorical master rejects the actors,
he frequently picks scenes that reveal the staginess and theatricality of rheto-
ric itself. Thus theater becomes a protean and many-faced subtext within his
To begin, then, let us take the very end of Quintilian's eleventh book.
In this extended excerpt all of the major themes are rehearsed. And in this
passage one can clearly see the fundamental principle that the orator is the
performer who is not an actor. That is, it is only by reference to the actor
that one can "define" the orator by way of a negation of the first term. And
define here takes on its etymological sense: the actor serves as the border-
land of the realm of oratory. Legitimate authority holds sway within this
tamen est nefas, ut aliquem uel omnia uel plura deceant. Huius quoque
loci clausula sit eadem necesse est quae ceterorum est, regnare maxime
modum: non enim comoedum esse, sed oratorem uolo. Quare neque in
nutus actor adhibebit. Aliud oratio sapit nec uult nimium esse condita:
Optime igitur idem qui omnia Cicero praeceperat quae supra ex Ora-
[Accordingly let each know himself. Let him take counsel on how to
even from his own nature. Nor is it forbidden that either all or most of
The close to this section should be the same as the one I have given
to others: the mean rules supreme. For I do not want a comic actor, I
every last expressive detail, nor in speaking will we make annoying use
Here the actor will make use of hesitant pauses, modulations of his
its gesticulation, and leaping about with shifting vocal effects. Ancient
ACTORS 137
authorities usefully took from the Greek that term which Popilius
ery.25 Here as usual the best advice was given by Cicero. I mentioned
this advice in my citation from the Orator, he says similar things in the
suitable. Still, it must be kept in check lest while we seek the elegance
of the actor we lose the authority of the good and serious man.]
These are the closing paragraphs of the long section on delivery. Quintilian
finishes off his advice on performance with a final return to the actor, who
of the body, and this knowledge meets its limit point in a rejection of
actors. To the question "Who am I?" one answers, "I am not an actor."
product of the actions of Quintilian's own text. This knowledge of the oratori-
cal self will allow for the recognition of one's "nature." One consults one's
own nature over and above the rhetorical handbook: the book on oratory
tells us to forget books and to turn to nature. Nature thus offers a truth
tu'8v ycav we have here in Quintilian the two famous Delphic injunc-
of the self is a knowledge of a secure and stable center from which the
actors have been banished. I learn what I am, what is appropriate to me,
and also, where to draw the line. The questions that once guided man the
philosopher have been made into questions of performing the good man.
satisfied: he has his orator, not an actor. Naturally, this desire is predicated
upon an eternal lack: Quintilian has already assured us that the perfect
orator and hence the perfect not-actor has not existed. In fact, Quintilian
will shortly repeat this notion in book 12. What exactly does Quintilian
Quintilian immediately moves on from this advice and returns to the stage
Eunuch, complete with stage directions. The lines he quotes are the first to
be spoken after the prologue; and, ironically, the end of the prologue itself
logue finishes with the speaker saying, "Pay attention and listen quietly so
that you can know what the Eunuch means" (date operam, cum silentio
Latin is filled with fertile ambiguities: date operam is an idiom for "pay
attention," but, more literally, it means "expend labor." We are not just
listening quietly but rather "directing our minds." And the question we
seek to answer is, indeed, "What the Eunuch means," but a ruthlessly
literal version of the phrase might go, "What the Eunuch wants for him-
steer our minds, and that we even learn something of the mind's opera-
tions. Good students will discover both the meaning of the Eunuch and
what the Eunuch wants. The student of oratory learns about castration and
the theater. One learns both meaning and the signification of castration as
his meaning, his truth. The Eunuch, he who does not mean anything real or
true, is thus "The Eunuch" or The Eunuch: a fictional character, the text of
a fiction, or, more radically, a fiction of a fiction. That is, Quintilian himself
desires something for himself (volo) and signifies. To the extent that Quin-
reader. On the other hand, Quintilian is also always just a narrative voice
embedded in a text that aspires to speak of speech from its silent pages.
The performance extracted from the text of The Eunuch informs the
thus; an orator would avoid doing anything of the sort. Never mind, then,
then cast a line of erasure through it. In other words, we must forget that
We must forget that the orator knows what the Eunuch means because he
Yet even as a purely negative example the example is not so simple as all
that; one notes similarities even where Quintilian is arguing for differences.
The dramatic scene parallels the scenario for the prospective orator. Should
ACTORS 139
to Quintilian, he goes over to the camp of the good Roman past, the veteres.
He will take a stand against modernity and its excessive histrionics wherein
translation I rendered this passage as saying that the orator's art is derived
from action and not imitation, but this was a somewhat desperate course.
Actio has hitherto signified performance. The word is, of course, one of the
Quintilian sets these two terms against one another, his contrast cannot be
thing itself rather than a representation thereof. That is, the orator's art is
one really is. This same line of thought is paralleled at the opening of the
idle and fictive, performance can go so far as to produce rage, tears, and
anxiety, how much greater must its power be where we believe as well"
(quod si in rebus quas fictas esse scimus et inanes tantum pronuntiatio potest
ut iram lacrimas sollicitudinem adferat, quanto plus ualeat necesse est ubi et
matically the actor who believes his part. Furthermore, the orator is the
actor with one and only one part: himself. And this self is the vir bonus et
does not reflect his essence, he is suddenly subjected to the criticism that he
is effeminate, too little a man, histrionic, and vulgar. These qualities are
respect spells instant ruin and exile to the realm of the illegitimate. How-
ever, it must be stressed again that the rhetorical texts that generate such
tory passage whose lesson is the punishment and the price of a failure to be
The text may produce subjectivity, but it first requires subjection and
a trembling before the law. This image is borrowed from Butler's account
of the sexed body and the law: "The symbolic marks the body by sex
the masculine body that will lose the member it refuses to submit to the
law that produces the trembling body prepared for its inscription, a law that
marks the body first with fear only then to mark it again with the symbolic
stamp of sex" (1993, 101). The pleasure the handbook offers is the pleasure
of acceding to the name of the law and the pleasure of entry into the
an injunction to the negative Oedipus complex and its impossible desire for
ideal and the super-ego, wanting both to love the father and to be the
father, but prevented from doing either."28 The same might be said of the
Like the comic youth, the orator asks himself, "So what am I to do?"
(quid igiturfaciam?). The question and its answer, though, are most serious
but as prostitutes. The orator's love is a performative one; and his desire is
for the vir bonus. The orator wants to love and to be a good man. In order
woman or you will become one. Act like a man. Be and become a vir
desires.
Actors meet with approval when they voice the virtues of discipline,
or, in other words, when they voice the virtues of the same discipline as
inhabits rhetorical training. Similarly, where the orator is praised for being
praised as exemplary. For example, Aulus Gellius records one such exem-
plary performance:
Histrio in terra Graecia fuit fama celebri, qui gestus et uocis claritudine
amatum filium morte amisit. Eum luctum quoniam satis uisus (est)
Sophoclis acturus gestare urnam quasi cum Oresti ossibus debebat. Ita
tur Polus lugubri habitu Electrae indutus ossa atque urnam e sepulcro
ACTORS 141
tulit filii et quasi Oresti amplexus oppleuit omnia non simulacris neque
[There was a famous actor in Greece who stood out from the rest for
the distinction and beauty of his voice and gestures. They say his name
was Polus and that he performed the tragedies of the great poets with
skill and passion. This Polus lost to death a son whom he singularly
as if it were for the bones of Orestes. The plot of the play is contrived
such that Electra carries what are allegedly the remains of her brother
while she laments and bewails his supposed death. Accordingly Polus
put on the mournful garments of Electra and carried the bones and urn
of his son from their tomb. Embracing them as if they were those of
Orestes, he suffused the theater not with likenesses and imitations, but
with true and living grief and lamentation. Thus, though it seemed a
Notice that Polus is beautiful and charming in both voice and movement.
This is precisely the sort of talk that can lead to reproaches in this sort of
literature. Yet Polus' tale has a much happier ending than this. His perfor-
mance of the truth of his sorrow has rendered him exemplary. Polus has
death and the urn is not empty. At the same time, the verbal stem that is at
oratory at the verbal level as well. And so also do we have the recuperated
here where the performance is a true one. It is not a performance for the
of truth.
delivery, he strays momentarily off course and into the story of another
tragic actor.
cLVEXELV.
[It is said that (Cicero) in his delivery was no less afflicted than was
actor and Aesopus the tragic actor. They say that this Aesopus when
ing his vengeance on Thyestes struck and killed with his staff one of
the servants who suddenly rushed across the scene. Aesopus had lost
The use of the metaphor of disease is rather striking: the two great orators
were once "afflicted," their delivery "languished." Actors were the cure.
The same metaphor of disease and cure is used above in the passage from
Plutarch's Life of Demosthenes (7.1-6). There Satyrus says, "I will cure
you" (kLooptat). Notice that the name of the actor-physician has changed,
but that the morbid physical metaphor remains the same. In the case of
Antonius, we have already seen what sort of diagnosis and cure Roscius
can be said to have provided: he is the man who cannot bear transgression
and the one for whom transgression is fatal. Aesopus' salutary method is
his total absorption into the character he plays. He suffers the passions of
man sought out as a therapist. As Polus was a model for his suffering, so is
killer, it is as a killer remembered with the fondness a student feels for his
teacher.
The actors reappear in another passage about reading texts, and one
very much concerned with the manner in which the spirit of an author and
of his text may inhabit his student. In Cicero's De oratore, the abjected
figure of the actor is once again drawn back into the circle of light just long
enough to tell another truth to the orator. In this instance the actor is used
have a sort of borrowed virtue. Antonius is discussing the emotions that the
orator feels. He first assures his auditors that his own speech is authentic:
nunc ego, quid tibi, Crasse, quid ceteris accidat, nescio; de me autem
misericordiam aut invidiam aut odium dicendo excitare volui quin ipse
vellem, permoverer.
[Now I don't know what happens to you, Crassus, or to the others, but
such sage men and dear friends. I certainly never in court wanted to
course of rousing the judges I were myself utterly moved by those very
The obsessive use of the first person stands out: in addition to the verbs,
note ego, de me autem, me hercule, and ipse. Notice as well that this
elaborately marked ego has to promise his peers that this statement is a
true one, and that its truth is the guarantor of the veracity of a whole host
promise of his own sincerity before the present company, a sincerity that
comes suddenly and for the first time into question simply because of its
here being asserted. This slip, the intervention of Antonius in the perfor-
mance of his own advice, undercuts the argument at its inception and is in
its own way an ideal introduction to the question of the orator's authentic
ised, and affirmed. This is partly owing to the necessarily duplicitous possi-
in the movement of always closing this gap between performer, text, and
ect of cleaning up the orator, keeping him from falling into the histrionic,
After his promissory statements that stand as surety for his theories of
the sentiments, Antonius shortly invokes the example of the actors in order
quid potest esse tam fictum quam versus, quam scaena, quam fabulae?
Tamen in hoc genere saepe ipse vidi, ut ex persona mihi ardere oculi
flens ac lugens dicere videbatur; quae si ille histrio, cotidie cum ageret,
tamen [recte] agere sine dolore non poterat, quid Pacuvium putatis in
scribendo leni animo ac remisso fuisse? Fieri nullo modo potuit. Saepe
in these I have often myself observed how the eyes of the man acting
seem to me to blaze forth from behind his mask when he delivers the
lines:
Did you dare part from him or without him enter Salamis?
raved as a madman with the grief of his son; but the same man would
bend his voice to an affecting tone, and then he seemed to weep and
Now if that actor, though he performed these lines daily, still could not
perform them without sorrow, how can you believe that Pacuvius as he
was writing was calm and carefree in his heart? There was no way this
could happen. Indeed I have often heard that nobody can be a good
and Plato - without being aflame with passion and without some
The guarantor of the actor's tears, then, is the passion of the original
author, Pacuvius. Pacuvius absolutely must have felt this passion: Anto-
mihi videretur, and videbatur, with one instance falling in each of the three
segments of the observations that bracket his citations. Between the poles
of Antonius' certitude and his impressions one can trace a singular course:
as Pacuvius inspired his play with his passion, so did this passion of the
original author shine forth from behind the actor. This moment is homolo-
gous with and coincidental to Antonius' seeing the actor's eyes behind the
mask, a mask that one might note was already tragic and hence already
fashioned as weeping on its surface without need of the actor's own dewy
eyes lying behind it. One could here plausibly hypothesize three different
logical or psychic registers. First there would be the thoughts of the author
him to make an important claim about the orator. The good and weeping
actor is made into our model orator. The same compression of registers
that fuses author, performer, and performance in the former case becomes
exemplary in the latter. In fact, it is always easier to make the claim for the
performance, with his own face serving as the mask. We find here a labor of
remystification whereby the gap between the performer and his text that
lived practice of the orator. The presence of the author, of the words
antee the validity of the presence of the performer and the meaning of his
bodily text. These two putative presences serve to guarantee one another.
Pacuvius' text as Antonius looks on. But Antonius also himself produces
the spectacle of this actor for his own audience. This theatrical enterprise,
though, is meant to be a theoretical one, and puns upon the Greek verb
OcaoOat can be invoked once again. The spectacle stages a truth of authen-
tic authors, true texts, and sincere bodies. It even stages a knowing audi-
Lacan asks, "Is there no satisfaction in being under that gaze of which,
following Merleau-Ponty, I spoke just now, that gaze that circumscribes us,
and which in the first instance makes us beings who are looked at, but
without showing this?" (1981, 75). At this moment Antonius is looking into
the actor's eyes behind the hollow eyes of the mask. These eyes with their
look act as guarantors of the gaze, much as the penis offers the promise of
146 STAGING MASCULINITY
the phallus. The actor speaks the words "paternal gaze," and Antonius'
that gazes upon the character, then the actor, and finally Antonius himself,
guaranteeing not just that they are all seen but also how they are seen. In
the performance, the performer shows the pleasure of being in the gaze and
being of the gaze, the pleasure of being articulated by the gaze. In the
following Lacan, would call mimicry, mimicry that "signifies not assimila-
(1992, 149). And looking into these eyes that light up with the borrowed
passion of the paternal gaze, Antonius finds the promise of adequate and
In the original, authoritative text, in the text to which the actor gives
voice and body, there is a structuring truth. This originary truth charges the
word "gaze" and shines forth for Antonius. Antonius in turn makes it
visible all over again for his auditors. The spectacle Antonius stages looks
back at him: the "paternal gaze" of Pacuvius acts like a Lacanian gaze. This
gaze articulates the theoretical space. The truth discovered in this theoreti-
cal spectacle does not just inform our knowledge of actors, but also reveals
the orators who watch them. By imputing textual truth and a living author
to ideal performances, the orator's own texts and life are invested with
gaze that he sees looking back out at him from behind the actor's mask.
the sensation of seeing itself seeing itself: the gaze and a true text lie on the
other side of the mask; a true text, a true author, and true observations lie
When we gather together Roscius, Polus, Aesopus, and the man who
played Telamon, we find that our good actors are punishingly hypercritical,
suffering bitter sorrows and going homicidally mad. Even the unusual
not only are the actors frightening, but so too are their scripts. The theo-
troubled I mean that these references to theater are the positive ones:
madness and sorrow are our favorite scenes. When the actor offers plea-
hegemonic male, the actor is scorned, abused, and reviled. The actor is cast
the assumption of the good and virile persona becomes an event toward
which one expresses fondness or attachment. What has been lost is excori-
ated and the cost of the sacrifice transmuted into a sort of gain. The
presence that is thus constituted by these losses, though, is one that is also
routinely haunted by them. This is not the first time we have noted the
Again the negative Oedipus complex can be invoked. The orator turns
away from all that is not paternal and basks in the paternal gaze. The orator
locus, while at the same time recognizing that the orator is in a sense always
the younger male and hence always only a lesser version of the original of
look at a screen wherein he can see a world ordered by the paternal gaze.
The student's look is propped up by both the function of the gaze and
the operation of ordering effected by the cultural screen onto which the
discourse of oratory presents the image of the self and the world. Presence as
losses. These losses are betokened by the endless iterations of the moment of
the father and being punished by it the orator will be able to assume for
himself some of its potency. The others are all castrated, and their wounds
are used to harrow the rhetoricians. The orator takes another and parodic
version of himself and uses it to consolidate his own origin and subjection.
rhetoric, the orator not only sees his own reflection but also fancies that he
sees the image of an actor standing now in his own place and now away
from his place. In this image there is invested all of the desire that is
refused in the case of pleasure, or, alternately, one sees in the image a
The actor's image thus acts as the double for the orator's own in a
doubled sense: the actor is the orator/not-orator and embodies the legiti-
enfolds the orator himself. He is himself always also the not-orator and
rid himself of them. He is obsessed with mere appearances and the plea-
sure they give even if this is only to ensure that the appearance coincides
being seen as being in fact that which one seems. Rhetorical theory allows
This is our orator. Rhetorical theory takes this creature and stages it,
own spectacle, they attempt to construct their own version of scopic author-
ity. This authority attempts to bring into being that which it sees and to
exile from being that which it would make unseen. In this theater, the
orator plays himself and is hence always also an actor. But it is hoped that
in being seen by the theorist he will gain the chance at presence and self-
identity that his partner on the stage, the actor "proper" has only on loan.
And even so, the ever improper actor is always about to depart the scene,
Pleasure
himself via an aggressive relationship to his own body and soul and to the
bodies and souls of others. This relationship allows him to establish himself
squarely confronted this issue can we proceed to the final chapter of this
mance. This final abreaction against the flesh will help to set out more
Lucian offers a ready view onto the lay of oratory's psychic landscape.
Where other texts participate in the dialogue of bodies, souls, and plea-
Lucian makes real, lived bodies out of rhetorical styles and likewise makes
the choice of one's educational pursuits into the literal pursuit of a concrete
path down a physical road. Lucian's wit is thus like Aristophanes' in the
Clouds: there too educational styles are personified and made corporeal.
ing of the noble project of education. His racy essay has an impeccable
intellectual pedigree. For more than seven hundred years the metaphors of
I will begin, then, at a point that is for us somewhat near the end.
Lucian was born around 120 C.E. in Samosata,2 and hence he occupies the
extremes in both space and time of this study. Lucian's native tongue was
perhaps Aramaic rather than Greek. In any case, the Attic Greek of his
own literary prose is far removed from the common usage of the average
149
150 STAGING MASCULINITY
the provinces who successfully won for himself a prominent social position
sics" of high culture.4 In many ways, then, Lucian could be seen as an ideal
student of the essay that we shall shortly examine; and hence the essay
itself is a sort of comic rehearsal of the inaugural scene for Lucian's own
(1989, 29), I would like to identify the narrator and the author more
cautiously. I would say instead that the narrative voice makes claims for
the author of those same statements. But this scene depicting the foun-
cates that a profound choice is made as one sets out to assume the title of an
educated man. Lucian also makes it clear that this choice is made at the
rounding the speaker's body. The issues, though, are confused and confus-
ing: each element routinely impinges upon, alludes to, or complicates all of
the others. Briefly, I want to examine the following: what kind of pleasure
is found in the orator's body? what are the possible sources from which this
the pleasure that is inscribed in his body, and the sources of this pleasure?
what is the relationship between the pleasure found in the body and the
pleasure that originates from the orator's language?5 The answers to these
questions will become clearer if we carefully pick our way through Lucian's
According to the passage that opens the Praeceptor rhetorum, the field
tovto xaI Jtav ovTov Ovola o(p Lto g ELvcat 8oaLg' & a 3WTya&Q Elva'l
vvta' XaCL 61 Tag EJT t Torto tyoloagL 66oig attIveg note e LoLv 0eotg
xp LOeiv.
[You ask, my young friend, how you might become a rhtOr and seem
you say that your life is not worth living unless you should embrace so
and admired and looked upon by all, seemingly the Greeks' hottest
(Lucian, Praeceptor 1)
Lucian's rhetor corresponds to the Latin orator, that is, the professional
that one speaks as part of his job, while the other's job is wholly concerned
give enough credit to the self-awareness of the orator. In any case, the
narrator has merged the two sorts of speakers into a single idea: "So, you
want to be a star?"
The young man's desire originates from without this text. Or, at any
rate, the desire of this youthful character, who is never seen but always
addressed, is figured as anterior to our pages. The (older) man here ad-
short, this is not the place to ask the question as to whether one should
become an orator at all. That question has already been answered for the
youth, and perhaps for us as well. Or, to phrase the issue differently, one
has already passed the moment of hailing of the youth that Althusser would
The time has come for doing something specific toward becoming the
becomes the name sophistes and not the thing itself. But, in the preceding
clause, one becomes the person named rhetor. The subject is thus not
always also someone adequated to his own name. To the question "Am I
The honor of the name of sophistes from the first sentence is picked up
and explained in this description of the results: all will behold him with
oOat). The relationship of mastery over one's opponents within the oratori-
cal realm is expected to translate into a mastery over the sentiments of the
ing an exalted position; and the text of the passage has eclipsed any mo-
language, both in the spoken word (Fv toLg X6yotg) and in the mystified
oopto lrg). Indeed, the final result of a mastery of language is one's own
sublimation into language: the orator turns into the subject of whispers,
gossip, and everyday talk. Most literally, he becomes that which one hears
name or 6vota.
While the text will shortly make styles into bodies, here the person
becomes language. The order of language and the order of the body inter-
state dependent upon language. Since Saussure, language has for us signi-
fied only lack: lack of origin, lack of presence. Here, honor, power, and
being vouch for language even as it vouches for them. Lucian knows that
more than mere words is at stake. But it is only by questioning both the
word and presence that we his readers can hope to avoid the bodily politics
tences, and the whole opening is genteel, general, and abstract. The narra-
tor gives freely of his store of knowledge; the youth is striving for "the
best"; this is all advice, a holy sort of thing. Still, the program will be
rigorous: the student must stick to his lessons; he must love the toil atten-
dant upon keeping to them; he must be eager to see his journey to its end.
the whole of the next sentence is laden with similar vocabulary: the quarry
for which one would rightly put up with many toils, lose sleep, and endure
anything whatsoever.10
Lucian, though, has some surprises in store for us. Oratory and the
596tov xa't 586)og teLlv wlto it g ' ov, g x ExpoEg abril va-
otQE aLt xaovTa, EJCE obfv bE v &EpEQoLEV TWv akk V 0oot d]V
To toXk n tyvwo~tivv.
[Well, consider how many men who were once nobodies seemed repu-
Have no fear, nor quit from impatience before the grand figure of your
you did, I would be no different than those many others who lead one
along that familiar route, long, arduous, toilsome, and, for the most
ria with its metaphor of the impossible summit: "And even if this does not
come to pass, nevertheless they go higher who labor toward the summit
than those who, in despair of arriving where they wish, stop at once at the
foot of the mountain."1 This narrator, then, is playing off of the same
notions that have been with us from the beginning of this study. The social
truth in oratory, namely the wonder and admiration it evokes, here cuts
against other social verities: birth and wealth. For the first time we can see
that the Praeceptor will be no ordinary tale: nobodies are transformed into
the labor involved in becoming a good orator. Lucian has made a humorous
mess of the question of toil: the narrator commands his young auditor to
diligence over his precepts, but then shows that this zeal will consist of the
attentive pursuit of the easy. In fact, the catalog of ease that follows this
Oratory as the end or goal will remain our own steadfast concern in this
into play in relation to the contested domain of the orator's physical pres-
ence. Similarly, the orator's body will be made to stand in relation to a host
of other truths and statuses that extend beyond gender or oratory in the
abstract. The broader scope of hegemony and legitimacy will be called into
play.
Let us explore the outlines of this pleasure and its corresponding desire as it
ing and a hardy, virile style. But this second alternative, the virile one,
requires a sexual politics of its own, a sexual politics in which the very
pound the problem by reading the text backward. But first let us lay out a
addressee along the following lines: "So you want to be an orator? Well,
listen to me as I speak from experience." The tone of the whole essay is one
advocates another. In the end, though, the portrait of the road not taken is
so horrific that we know just where our energies ought really be directed.
narrator then points out for his student two paths to reaching her. At the
end of the student's journey, he will marry Rhetoric and win her rich dowry
The first road is arduous and little traveled. One can see the old and
faint traces of footsteps like those of Plato and Demosthenes here. Unfortu-
nately it is unlikely that the student who travels down this road will ever see
its end. In fact, the rough and burly guide who stands at the foot of this
path promises to lead the student traveler on a journey that will bring toils
that will last for years; and even then, this guide offers little hope of
ultimate success. With the second path comes a second guide. This one is
turn him into an orator in no time at all and without any trouble.
Since this guide himself assures us that his is the easy route, let us take
a look at him first as a point of entry into our own reading. This guide has a
bad body. To this body corresponds a bad pleasure and a bad politics. This
easy road, then, is one that must not be taken. By looking more carefully at
this nexus of a forbidden style, sexuality, and politics we will better appreci-
ate the normative pleasure and politics that scorn this oratory.
The second guide emerges thus from the teeming crowd camped at the
y 0 Tot rook6)v ETOtL TL, to "YrYtrttov Exeivo &voag oto 6a, xact
yriv ovrl O1o pwvv EL, aOotg &v 6g o ' TWv xa0' flcag fOrtV, oT
PLEASURE 155
TQEpoLevov.
Going toward the other road, you will find many others, and among
his walk, a bend in his neck, a womanly look in his eye, sweet of voice,
exuding the scent of perfume, scratching his head with the tip of his
finger, setting to good effect his now scant but still curly and hya-
self, that lovely poet who wrote tragedy. I am telling you this so that
you can know him from these signs and so that you won't fail to note
such a divine creature and one so dear to Aphrodite and the Graces.
But what am I saying? Even if your eyes were closed and he were to
come up and talk to you, opening up that honeyed mouth and letting
loose his usual voice, you would learn that he is not one of our sort, we
who eat the harvest of the field, but he is some new apparition, reared
on dew or ambrosia.]
The narrative jumps straight to the physicality of the guide. The easy road's
people, one of whom needs to be picked out from the rest. Yet the visual
tokens that distinguish this guide are abundant. He is all-wise and all-
beautiful. The adjective formations are as precious in the Greek as they are
awkward in English. We will also find that the all of the all-beautiful has to
that the dictionary does not translate &tacoQ XEv c evov thus. Citing this
passage as their only example, Liddell and Scott say "negligent, easy" even
though the primary meaning for this word and indeed its meaning in other
extended senses is based upon the notion of agitation. Yet the lexicogra-
phers almost certainly do understand what this guide is all about. In that
case, they have turned him into an Oscar Wilde, the invert of their own
day. This mincing walk is the gait of a cinaedus, as the Romans might call
him. Such a man shakes his genitals and buttocks, drawing attention to
aedi (Richlin 1993; Parker 1997). They brand their enemies with this tag,
and the Latin language itself has not even graced this figure a name formed
The man's neck is bent. I would like to digress and expatiate on this
156 STAGING MASCULINITY
point so that it might be seen how even the slightest details of this body are
implicated in the matrix of pleasure and authority that both produces and
discredits it. Our usual authority Quintilian has much to say about the
neck. In 11.3.82, during his discussion of the body during delivery, he says
simply: the neck ought to be straight, not stiff or upturned (ceruicem rectam
resumption of the ideas given much earlier about the head as a whole:
[One will also have to see the following: the speaker must face his
audience; and one must not twist the lips back, gape immoderately
when opening the mouth, turn the face up, cast the eyes down, or
bend the neck in either direction. For many are the varieties in which
(Quintilian 1.11.9)
The face should be directed forward; it should be kept straight; only then
word means "straight," but here it has also taken on its metaphorical
tion of the term: the body transgresses, it sins (peccat) when it is bent.
body is all of these things at one and the same time. Most importantly for
present purposes, though, this illegitimacy has as one of its vital aspects
pleasure.
[Instead, like men who have come upon a sports-field, here particularly
in their exposition (i.e. in the narratio) they distort their voice, throw
back their necks, hurl their arms to their side, and run riot in their
material, vocabulary, and style. Then - and it's a monstrous thing - the
(Quintilian 4.2.39)
PLEASURE 157
The voice is bent, not straight, not right. The same is true of the neck. The
arms are thrown to the latus, the "side." This part of the body is often a
sexually invested site. Here I take it the primary gesture is to the "wild-
ness" of the delivery. But we will see that this want of control actually
matter of their speech, these speakers run riot (lasciviunt). But they do
more, for this word, from which our own lascivious is derived, already can
3b). The terse final clause acknowledges the pleasure of this performance
and then rejects it. This is the way people speak now; in the past when men
otherwise.
Quintilian has been polite. Here he has not sexually discredited these
words like rectus, supinus, latus, lascivius, and even placet has to be read
the whole, rather genteel. But then again, so is the sexuality of the legiti-
mate speaker. This is not the case with Lucian and the description of this
new guide. We know that this guide is sexualized, that his illegitimate
oratory is written all over his body. Now we know, by way of appeal to
Quintilian, more about the trouble with his neck. And, on the other side,
guide scratches his head with his finger: to do so is womanish and wanton.
against Pompey. Clodius arranged that Pompey be jeered with chants that
included this insult when the latter entered the courthouse for Milo's trial.
that subtends the whole of our chosen text. The effeminate and the uncon-
trolled are the antithesis of the manly discipline we seek. When this guide is
Lucian is one who already has the legitimate and well-grounded education
with whose principles this essay plays. A true student of the bad guide
throughout the Praeceptor: Cinuras was the mythical Cretan king who
of Assyria, killed out of contempt when a solder saw him carding wool
site text for our purposes, especially verses 130-45, where Mnesilochus tries
to figure out whom he has just seen. The final lines of this inquiry read thus:
What do you say? Why're you silent? Then from your verse
The body and the contents of the verse again coincide. The cloak is just
another version of the prick, and the style is just another referent to that
guide. In his case we will see that he has assumed and incorporated the
feminine, rather than compassed and excluded it, like the first guide and
our narrator, his pupil. And much as Agathon must declare his own gen-
der, choose tits or a prick, so must the orator either confess a gender or
have it read out of him: his words will be scoured for their gendered truth.
Of course, the relationship is circular, and words give you your gender
characteristic.
The voice of this second guide is honeyed in the double sense: the
sound is honey-sweet (LEXLpXQov to pwvt ta), but the speaker's own mouth
exudes the scent of honey. This is more than the "he smells of perfume"
o6Ita), where Mt. Hymettus is an Athenian mountain famed for its honey.
The metaphorical pleasure that the guide's voice gives is converted into
literal honey. The qualities used to describe the body become actual attri-
butes of that body. And in this case the attribute is picked up and turned
into a snide comment: he is some other sort of being who is fed on dew and
ambrosia.
a guide who is relentlessly bodily. This guide even appears to embrace such
to his own body. He is a student of the body and pleasure whose goal is
The narrator of the text tells the young man that as the student of this
guide, he will at once and effortlessly become a conspicuous orator or " 'a
king of discourse,' as the guide himself would say" (1g Ovotet fa6og,
remark about this guide's program of study, the narrator breaks off:
vW3tov xaL o 3tog Q0apol, xca aoLo iQoog. qpiloJELt 8' ov Avv
[These first items - no, let the man himself address you. For it is
alike, I worry lest I should even fall somewhere and smash to bits the
after he first draws back what remains of his hair, flashes that polished
and delicate little smile he uses, and then imitates with the mildness of
For manliness is rustic and has no place in the delicate and desirable
himself...]
The narrator refuses to go on in his own voice. He might smash this "hero."
But the Greek is more pointed and paradoxical than this: it is the hero
himself who is in danger. Of course, despite this protestation, the bad guide
actually is performed, and he is destroyed along with all of his heroic quali-
ties. While it might at first appear that the depraved master is really brought
forward and that the narrator withdraws by way of a literary fiction, this is
not the case. Instead, the narrator really does don the mask of the guide. As
prosopopoeia; and the name for the figure contains the dramaturgical mask-
ing metaphor. The voice of authority knows how to camp it up when he needs
to make a mockery of his opponents. The bad guide does not speak here:
the potential optative "he would say" (ptai) and indefinite phrasing of the
introduction to the second paragraph (b6 nrg) make it clear that the
narrator has disavowed his mimetic capacities only at once to invoke them
Despite his pretense of refusal, the narrator speaks in the voice of the
effeminate guide. In other words, the feminine is fully colonized, and the
has already subsumed the female. Men need this feminine masquerade and
ber that our narrator took the other road, that he is himself the product of
the masculine guide's discipline. Yet in the course of this discipline, one
able pleasure to which one nevertheless can always give a voice. In fact,
being made to his body by our narrator. Each time one looks to this guide's
body, it is revealed as parodic or a failure. But this failed body is also made
into the substance of the guide's style. In fact, his body and style are always
condemned to failure even in his own superficial terms. The guide draws
back his hair, which is again described as thinning, and gives a fetching
smile. Thus he cannot resist gesturing to his own body even when such a
gesture serves only to point out the ridiculousness and shortcomings of his
him from constantly offering ridiculous performances that accent their own
deficiencies. The guide then casts his voice into a feminine register. By
making this voice also be one from a woman of the comic stage, he again
delivery. One avoids the comic actor, though, precisely because of the
erotic hailing, appropriate to lyric poetry and not to rhetorical prose. The
narrator hailed this subject as "my young fellow" (d eLtaqxLov). In that case
we were given a catalog of desire on the youth's part that consisted in being
beheld with awe by all and in having unsurpassable power. In this instance
the guide is already playing the passive, effeminate lover to his charge. And
the promises he makes are calibrated to the field of power as (giving) plea-
Even though this erotic guide again calls upon the prospective student
to show determination and resolve in carrying out his behest, we find that
the pupil needs no preliminary education and need not even know his
letters: "for an orator is something other than this" (XXkko y&Q T JaQa
tavra 6 iq Q) (Praeceptor 14). What then, does the orator need to bring
with him?
f3 tota o ov To t6ov. TWaVTa & AvayxCta ntV av xat ovaC EotyLV 6tE
a blush, leave these at home. They are useless and contrary to the
melody and walk like me: these things are quite necessary and some-
seen through it. You should have either the woman's Attic boot, the
kind with lots of straps, or wear a Sicyonian shoe set off with white
The student needs to assimilate himself to a woman, but not to just any
when the spectators become aroused at the sight of the speaker's body. The
diaphanous clothing is chosen to expose the body, not to hide it or set it off
or selectively reveal it. This is the gross version of Quintilian and the
ualized; and the voice draws attention to itself in coarse and forbidden
ways: Quintilian and Cicero forbid singing and mere shouting.18 This kind
this kind of oratory is only appearances and perceptions. This sort of orator
produces a mere image, an image designed with no other end than the
ness, and a host of other vices. All of this is a far cry from the canonical
rhetorical project that presents itself as education, winning over, and stir-
Xktg) of this kind of orator. One is commanded to pick out from some-
where fifteen - twenty at the most - Attic words (Praeceptor 16). These
Forget it if they are inappropriately used; just make sure that the purple
stripe on one's garment is fair and bright, even if it's a coarse goat-hair
indicates the political authority of its wearer substitutes for the authorita-
tive use of language. And even this purple, provided that it is speciously
cloak. Much as one needs only fifteen Attic words to sound like a classi-
cally trained and authorized speaker, so one needs only the stripe: no one
will notice the scandalous condition of the rest. Language and appearances
are usually fused into an authentic whole; here they are paired in their
This argument does more than collapse under its own ridiculous
weight, though. It also brings down with it the legitimate orator. To what
extent is he not just a man with fifteen hundred or even fifteen thousand
Attic words, a man with a purple stripe and a good cloak too? Taking the
hard road to oratory means never having to ask such questions: there is a
The tale of the good guide is much the same as that of the bad one. In his
case all of the terms of appraisal are inverted toward the positive. But this
PLEASURE 163
bodies and styles. They are yoked as necessary structural antipodes upon
which a knowledge of oratory and the oratorical subject depends. Yet this
parallelism between the two poles undermines our ability to declare that
there is a radical dissimilarity here as well, that one orator is true, the other
false. The perfect body is no more real and untroubled than was the illusion
As was the case before with the bad guide, the text immediately gives
Palvovreg.
[At once a sturdy man will approach you. He is a rather hard fellow,
masculine in his gait, deeply tanned, with a manly look to his eye, and
alert. He is the guide along that harsh route; and the fool will recount
for you some sort of nonsense. For he will bid you to follow him,
pointing out the tracks of Demosthenes and Plato and certain others,
big tracks, indeed, and beyond those of present day men, but in-
distinct now and mostly unclear owing to the passage of time. He will
say that you will be blessed and you will lawfully marry Rhetoric if you
(Lucian, Praeceptor 9)
The guide's body is made to accord to the path down which he leads the
student: each is harsh, and, likewise, each is virile. As Anderson has ar-
gued, the imagery here is associated with philosophy for Lucian, and thus
corresponds to the style of rhetoric for which the student will be trained.
The text presents the goal of the journey, Lady Rhetoric, as monolithic.
But this is in fact a sleight of hand that defers the stylistic question of
debate - into a question of the nature of the guides and their training, not
the Atticists are pure, conservative, and manly. In other words, spatiali-
tion, and other binarisms follow in the train of this play between the here/
not here. The figure of the Asiatic is always used as the margin haunting
the legitimate order. Cicero, though, recognizes that even "Attic" is itself a
Asianism as subtheoretical (1972, 98): for Kennedy this style falls entirely
outside of the realm of science and the handbook. An argument that aligns
ancient thinkers would invite us; but this is also an invitation we ought to
decline.21
Rhetoric is a fixed term; the only real question is what sort of man will
legitimacy of his person, the quality of his claim to occupy his role. In the
ancient version of marriage, the husband takes his wife from one xÃQtog so
a person in authority. In this sense the new spouse becomes the old father.
So also does a text like Lucian's make sense according to the logic of
This virile guide is a good Atticist, and hence just the sort of father
figure with whom one might hope to have dealings. The telling token of his
sentences we will also find an allusion to the very starchy Aeschines: the
guide "thinks that you should emulate the son of a sword-maker (Demos-
(Aeschines)."22 Obscure birth does not necessarily prevent one from elitist
own biography: hardworking young men can "marry" above their station.
style, a hard, manly body that is its emblem. It must be noted that the
question of style and the body is reiterated in the musty examples that
this leader proposes as models for imitation. The Greek that introduces
this section is sarcastic, and the narrator pretends to mock traditional elite
PLEASURE 165
bEycaca naa3tQLEL'tg iov 6ycv). The guide was also described when
he was first introduced as a fool (p irtiog) who raved (ilgoovg Ltvag). The
narrator's "advocacy" of the easy path gives the negative terms for the
leader ought also to be quietly making him attractive to us; we will be asked
The chief objection against the examples that this guide proposes lies
in the phrase o 5ict iataoeloat: they are "not easy to imitate." The
thing of a buzzword for Lucian's own practice, but it also recalls acting and
actors. It recalls men who merely imitate. Thus there arises the whole
problem of being and seeming again, but this time in a passing gesture.
selves invested with bodies in the simile that follows: "Such are the prod-
ucts of the ancient handiwork, of Hegesias and the students of Critius and
Nesiotes, close-packed and sinewy, hard with precise and taut lines."23 This
manly teacher of rhetoric was put into flesh by the narrative, and next the
kind of body, a bodily relation and hexis, and the products of one's oratory
original. The teacher, a style made into a body, offers other bodily styles
and stylistic bodies to his student. In the assumption of either body or style,
though, the student does not so much become himself or live his own body
whose exemplar is another product of careful craft and not raw corporeal-
gine des m6taphores entre le corps humain et le style, et, en meme temps,
de meme l'orateur sera d'autant plus proche de la perfection que son style
naturalization of both is a vital fiction. Once again the space between cura
and natura closes up, a bridging movement that lies at the foundation of
the oratorical tradition. Such a trope falsifies the issue of falsity, of "mere
itself.
This simile that likens words to statues is troubling not just for the
are better suited to literary criticism. Moreover, one can actually find three
relatively old Asiatic orators with the same names: Critius and Nesiotes were
the simile can fail to be about the visual arts at all. Even the last words
"in their lines" (trag yQa aLg) are vaguely ambiguous: "lines" could also be
itself. It also would compare the good guide's good style-body with the
wrong sort of speakers. This is the sort of return of the repressed and collapse
times. And, as will be discussed shortly, the riddle of the bad guide's name is
date the golden-age sculptor Phidias, who flourished during the days of
tion. These two figures of idealized homosexual desire and of elitist mas-
The third sculptor, Hegesias, was famed for statues of the Dioskouroi,
Castor and Pollux. Yet this very pair are the answer to the riddle of the
name of the other guide, the disgusting Pollux. We keep finding surprising
stands in permanent erasure throughout this essay. The bad guide gives his
name only in oblique form: "I am no longer called Potheinus, but have
ovotoat, iXX' fib1 TOtg Atog xa Ailag nUtoLQv 6ttxvtiog yyv tcat)
PLEASURE 167
(Praeceptor 24). The original name, Potheinus, remains quite legible de-
spite its effacement. This old name is actually more legible than the new
one. Potheinus, which could almost be translated as Mr. Sexy, once again
draws attention to the corrupt sexual essence of this brand of oratory. Not
only is it a name derived from the notion of desire, but it is also formed
from a passive root, "desired, desirable." Thus, the bad guide was already
about to be himself before the assumption of oratory and his new name.
Even as the return of the illicit name Potheinus effaces the name
Pollux, the riddle of the sons of Zeus and Leda is itself a point of fertile
dren of Zeus and hence two equally valid names to choose from: Castor
and Pollux. Traditionally one assumes that the narrator means to indicate
someone named Pollux.29 But Castor is also a good specter to retain in the
allusion: the twin of Pollux has the same name as the beaver, an animal
famed for self-castration (see Juvenal 12.34). Sexual passivity and emascula-
the masculine Atticist orthodoxy. The bad guide's body, style, and name
infect the mythical allusion. The good guide's precepts are meant to be like
Hegesias' Pollux. But this name that goes unnamed even here is a crux of a
persistent crisis for our texts: the good guide's precepts will never be able to
radically separate themselves from that other Pollux in the offing. We get, if
we are lucky, the lovely bodies of Harmodius and Aristogiton, but the text is
faltering at the very moment where it seeks to consolidate the surety of the
stalking about the margins. His name is always a name with which legitimate
Reading again momentarily with the text instead of against it, we find
unusual relationship to time. First, the most painful of all the requirements
time. The many years he demands of his student are far more objectionable
than the toil, wakefulness, abstention from wine, and earnestness that he
also commands. These last unwelcome injunctions can all be found in other
And, as we well know, one can labor endlessly and nevertheless only ap-
This guide is not just out to waste our time, though; he is himself a man
from another time. He is a braggart, truly archaic, a mortal from the time of
ceptor 10). His temporal displacement leaves him in ignorance of the new
and easy route that has been cut to oratory. The days of Kronos represent a
radically different time against which our own age has been constituted. That
is, the age of Kronos is segregated from the time of Zeus, our own era, by a
gulf of revolution: the son revolted against and imprisoned the father in the
nether world. For the gods, the time of Kronos may have been troubled, but
it was the time of the golden race of men, men who lived like gods, far from
toil and strife, ageless. These men did not have to reap or sow, but the earth
supplied of its own all their wants. Such, at any rate, is the portrait of this age
ciation will be with the freedom from toil of the easier route. But let us
force him to have a second meaning: namely, imagine that the orator toils;
had to be. In this state, the student takes the place of his teacher, the man
from the days of Kronos. Then, with his fecund and Nilotic bride at his
side, the successful orator will experience a life filled with pleasure. This
This pleasure is derived from mastery and set against carnality. Thus, by
pushing the text in the right directions, one can say that in order to have it
as good as things were under Kronos (nt tov KQ6vov) (Praeceptor 8) one
iv0QuCnog) (10).
ease, and authority. "Taking up a few leaves from Mt. Helicon, [Hesiod]
text of Hesiod, we see that the poet is invested with a scepter and a leafy
crown by the Muses, who are explicitly said to have taught him (&i&la5cv)
(Hesiod, Works and Days 22). Thus, in the original passage, legitimate
vested with a quasi-regal authority, and the powers that confer the honor
Days 24). And when Hesiod promises to sing to them first and last (34), he
PLEASURE 169
is guaranteeing to always bracket his own discourse with the markers of its
gesture toward learning and legitimate authority. Indeed, the sort of mystic
But let us make a final return to time. The position of the guide as a
student himself. That is, the student of this path differs from its guide only
in question of time. This is the same distinction that pertains between the
narrator and the young man. One can compare a parallel constellation
between erastes and eromenos follows the same generational pattern. The
meant to educate: the young man satisfies the older man's physical desire;
the older man offers his wisdom and teaching in exchange. The erastes as a
our present project. First, the erastes is an erotic figure in whom sexuality is
edged without being desired. In order to desire him, one becomes him. He
is not ever himself an object of desire: even Greek grammar forecloses this
problem of the sexuality inscribed in the guide. Indeed, this same schema
will help us when we take our final look at the relationship between the
What is the end toward which the student strives? The answer to this
the orator. The narrator's opening words to his student at once addressed
oratory as an object of desire. When the narrator gets into his own account
that original desire imputed to the student. Indeed, we could scarcely hope
170 STAGING MASCULINITY
for a more vivid supplement to those original images. In the end, though,
this version of the desire for rhetoric is even more compromised than was
LTnno TVo noOraLoV, otoL nokoXXoL v avi, tLXQO &6 TLva ntECLbLa
Let her sit on high, very lovely and fair to behold, holding in her right
hand the horn of plenty brimming over with every sort of fruit. I think I
see Wealth standing at her other side, all gold and desirable. Good
swarm all around her like so many Cupids. If perhaps you have seen the
Nile represented in a painting where the river itself lies upon one of the
youths frolic about him-the Egyptians call them rrixELg32- such, in-
(Lucian, Praeceptor 6)
Much as the Nile is painted as surrounded and supported by its own prod-
her own fruits: opulence, wealth, fame, power, and praise. She is en-
shrouded in desire, for such is the required translation of praises that are
unstable footing. The orator's desire is always necessarily the desire of the
other in this formulation. Praises are external to the subject, and they
emerge from a space wherein one finds a nonspecific godlike voice that is
heard praising, as a faceless mass utters praise with one voice. The desire
that props up the subject labeled orator originates from without, and it is
only by acquiring Rhetoric that his needs are secured. This can be seen as
One meets with and accedes to a desire suffusing the social field specifically
like an object" (1977, 86). Kaja Silverman's gloss on this passage not only
facilitates the acoustic rereading of Lacan, but also shows that language is
here not the agent of plenitude for the subject: it castrates, ensures that
What the orator lacks, though, he will get from his bride:
Tov yEyaiTxoto;.
[You, the lover, will approach her desiring, of course, to get to the
summit as soon as possible so that once you are up there you will
marry her and have all of those things, the wealth, the reputation, the
(Lucian, Praeceptor 6)
like to open up a troubled space at this juncture. The emphatic first expres-
a pinch, but it must be noted that this word means one who is desirous,
desirous of something. It is not, though, a word for "suitor," not the sort of
word that would well describe the young man who shows up at a father's
house and contracts with him to secure a marriage with his daughter. Polite
society usually segregates wooing (to tvaooat) from lusting (To 'Qav): one
woman, not just to get laid. The ancients had prostitutes and dancing girls
a bride. The scene of evaluation and approval of the youth has been elided.
a slut who takes all comers, or at least the one who gets there first. Thus
of her we find that Rhetoric has no x1Ltog with her, no man in charge of
mate" (atcig v6oov) for a real woman at the very moment before she is to
be acquired and her goods yielded over to the man "by law" (vo6gp).
let us only say that there is something unsavory lurking in the scenography,
but that these shady dealings never become apparent since the text shifts at
once into the joys of this miracle marriage: the youth gets all of his bride's
convenience and not one of passion: the passion lies elsewhere, to the side
acquire for himself as part of her dowry even her personal epithets, her
beauty and fair visage. That is, the groom wins aspects of the bride's body
the praise - these could all have been fit into the description of the bad
guide were they expressed a little more snidely. One may desire the female
The politics of pleasurable performance then turn upon this key deferral
into the third party. One desires the woman passed between men, the
abstraction on the hilltop and not the body lying in wait for you at the foot
of the road.
have been using. Earlier, the relationship to the good guide was described
himself an erastus. Student and guide now relate to one another as peers, as
erast&s to erastes, as active lover to active lover. Through Rhetoric they may
exchange pleasure with one another without compromising their virile au-
losing sight of legitimate performance. Good oratory and bad oratory are
beginning to seem rather too alike, and our pleasures have started to get
compromised. The bad teacher is too much like a man who has changed his
name to Rhetoric, and Rhetoric is not distinct enough from this vile figure.
One last observation helps to unpack this crisis: why is Rhetoric like
the Nile? That is, why is the image of the culturally central, established,
strange animals and odd little "cubits"? The Nile is a foreign element in a
context that advocates Atticism.34 Moreover the only other mention of the
Nile in this essay comes as part of a slur against the birth and station of the
bad teacher. But there are some key parallels between the Asiatic Nile and
the Asianist Pollux. Even if the unnameable Pollux of the subsequent text
case, the female as the not-male is usefully aligned with the foreign.35
Both woman and the foreign are figures that resist signification within
the legitimate order, yet they are likewise figures whose exclusion enables
the same order that constitutes them as, and at, their margins.36 The female
and the foreign require appropriation and colonization to the extent that
they serve as loci of potential inruption into the order that uses them as
In the case of the female in particular, it will be seen that phallicized forms
medium (Butler 1993, 53-55). That is, legitimate oratory is done under the
How it is that this Asiatic bride is the Atticist's ideal wife? The image
time, the desire of the orator for oratory always participates in a dialogue
with this repressed, owned, and mastered foreign femininity. In the ancient
metaphors of marriage we even find more parallels here. The wife remains
a sort of stranger in the husband's house, a person from whom one begets
legitimate children yet one who is not kin. Instead she is always the daugh-
ter of another man. Furthermore, when one takes a wife, one masters or
breaks her, one tames her like a horse. The Greek verb is aa~1tlyv. In
each scene from a marriage we find an echo of the structure of the orator's
betrothal to oratory.
As is the body, so are the man and his oratory. Let us resume this thread and
pursue it to the end. The repulsive oratory of the bad guide is typified by the
inappropriate and the out of place, defects that are not at all inadvertent, but
are instead sought out. And, accordingly, they are even proclaimed virtues
rather than vices. One is to disregard what should be said first, second and
third: instead one speaks just as the words come (18). One should make
and other famous historical episodes (18). Speeches should begin with the
events of the Iliad or with events of even earlier times, and descend to the
present day (20). The only rule is to not be silent, to press onward (18).
thickly applied along with a layer of those fifteen or so Attic words, even if
there is no need for them: "for they are fair even when spoken at random"
(xcaX& 'yaQt otL xca lcx Xey6 tva). One is told that if it seems opportune to
sing, sing (19). Of course, the classical handbooks tell us that one never
Thus, the rhythms of the legitimate orator are there, yes, but they are hidden
and tease the ear. They are not gross, garish, and obvious affectations.
tion between the authorized and the illegitimate, or, as we saw in the last
chapter, to separate the orator from the actor. Here we find in the injunc-
"Accompany the song with tragic outbursts" (Tob 6 oELtot Tyv xaxLcv
is not only wrong, but is even revolting, and accordingly is not even part of
the dainty and eroticized program of Pollux. The mask of our narrator is
slipping a bit that he might more directly trample upon his hero rather than
allow the persona to discredit itself. "Walk shaking your ass to and fro"
translate it, "Make your ass a metaphor for your oratory." "If praise is not
forthcoming, make a stink and abuse your auditors." Thus the orator is
The politics of bad style here comes to the fore: the reign of bad
speech is a reign of terror. If people rise and are on the verge of leaving,
order them to sit. The final words of this section are well chosen: "And
make an utter tyranny of the thing" (xad k0wg wtoavvSg To aQaya EaYTw).
The effeminate orator plays the tyrant where he must. The tyrant is of
course the cipher for illegitimate authority; but it also represents a sort of
situation where the democratic state "praises and honors, privately and
publicly, rulers who are like subjects and subjects who are like rulers."37 This
is our vulgar oratory. In fact, if we substitute lover and beloved for the ruler
bad oratory and its guide. The (inevitable) failure of democracy in Plato, just
as for our effeminate orator, produces as its successor tyranny. The demo-
cratic pandering of this oratory is always on the verge of falling into tyr-
anny.38 Perhaps, then, on the other side our narrator should be seen as an
The political crisis is not just the bad speaker's fault. Instead there is
something suspect about the public that responds to his base appeal. The
gisms, phrases eschewed by the speakers of old (17). Firing these off at the
crowd, they will marvel at the speaker's education that surpasses their own.
and precedents for any chance solecism or barbarism. This is not to say that
one reads old authors, for this is prohibited. Rather, the authors of choice
mastery" motif. The new education causes the same marveling that was our
goal at the opening of this text, but here there is no foundation for the
sentiment. The "learning" that people admire is premised upon a prior and
contempt. The audience responds to authority: they see the virtue of educa-
tion; they respond to appeals to the names of historians and poets. Yet
these people are to be fed the names of nonexistent authorities, or else one
draws from the store of recent orators and eschews the works of the canoni-
Thus, while the audience does know how to respond to claims of legiti-
macy, they are unable to distinguish the true legitimacy of the old disci-
oratory, married her, and got her goods, the praises and amazement that
surrounded her. Thus, self-mastery led to mastery of the art, which in turn
scenario has been lost. Instead a space has opened up where the audience
of the day is waiting and eager to be mastered, but cannot recognize its
proper lord.
176 STAGING MASCULINITY
The audience of the orator consists of men who are, in the main,
cretins. The contempt of the guide for his auditors serves as the starting
point for his cynical calculations. The wonder and amazed onlooking that
our text is constantly invoking as the orator's proper goals here come from
The play of surfaces that obsesses the guide is motivated and justified by
are the ones who look at the clothing, the shoes, and the walk. They are the
ones who are fooled by an Attic &Tta thrown in anywhere. At the same
time, they subscribe to the same basic structure of oratorical power that
we have seen all along: the agonistic, competitive metaphor put in the
ayWvtoTlV of section 20. The spectators greet a specious spectacle with the
amazement that is the orator's desire. The people are taken in by many
guard (21). A conspicuous entry as the last speaker is also necessary (22).
Thus, the whole life of the orator is annexable to his project: his time spent
thermore, the people are venal. The guide instructs us to see to it that our
friends are always rushing about distributing food money to the spectators
when they see us about to fail, thereby giving us the chance to find some-
thing to say in the space afforded by the audience's praises.40 The orator is
a nasty one: he must sabotage any advances made by other speakers. One
thing nice, see to it that it appears the work of someone else. Thus, the
attends to his store of public favor, with any means justifying this end. The
impressions of others for the most part, smile faintly, and be clearly dissatis-
fied with what is said.41 In this passage Pollux also inserts a couple of
traditional handbook injunctions: "Don't shake your hand often, for that is
ation of the style and phrasing of traditional learning can be used to trouble
tions like these are traditionally made to oratorical students. Maybe the
good men are just scam artists as well, charlatans, masters of a collection of
instead we are meant to believe that in the case of the good man, there is a
PLEASURE 177
"there" there. As far as everyone else goes, they merely seem while male
authority "is."
lie, an oath always on the tip of the lips, spite toward all, hatred,
One wins favor both by provoking naive and superficial pleasure and by
stirring up discontent and hate. Such are the orator's public acts.42 His
private ones are kindred to them and certainly no better. The scorn shown
the people has as its counterpart a shameless and wanton private life. In
in the political field is related to a truth of his person. Lucian's bad guide
insists on relating the public to the private man as well. The bad orator is bad
through and through, bad both indoors and out in the public space.
ETE E doOu L oxo;, xcd TcVUTcL EvEI, it "Tl ijxai v' 1 ADLpcL caxQ6
rjor 4v. ctXX' EauoW L OL LEJTL TTp c O1JVOVTEg ijv of i~1 dXJiv,
OLXETc L XUVOL. JTOXXcL ycLQ xctEx TOll TOLO1JTO1 t1g0 T]V Q1TOQLxflV
XQT10L~~L JncQcyLyVEica1.
you don't; and be ready to tell it before all and to show letters purport-
edly written by women. Aspire to beauty and make it seem like the
ladies chase you. The public will attribute this too to your oratory,
figuring that it guarantees your popularity all the way to the women's
178 STAGING MASCULINITY
be loved in turn even by men, even though you already have your
beard or are even by God already going bald. But let men who are
there for this reason accompany you. If there aren't any of these, your
domestics will do. For many useful things accrue to oratory from such
activity.]
literature seem more like inevitable gestures than scandalous bits of gossip.
For example, we have seen Aulus Gellius report that Demosthenes' attrac-
tive and studied dress became the occasion for slurs by his rivals and
into sex. In the end, the body's organs are necessarily both sexual and
rhetorical: language and the body are inseparable, and each territorializes
the other.
xci flV XML JTtTolo0J XQ1 [, W 0X10Ta IEv TQ z xJcLVTc, E6 111, 3TtcvTW
rroca Av bvat. Tvaat E oE ooo otx tEv t6vov xat a3acQI3aQ tEv
o0at, XaX xaLt vUXTCoQ t (1LXo JoteXELv, xaL tiXLtota v o tQg ot1)
at least those parts. And your very mouth, let it gape after all things
alike. Let your tongue serve for speeches and for everything else it
can. It can not only solecize and barbarize; it can do more than rave or
in everything and let it be more fertile and let it turn away from
nothing.]
The oratorical project has completely collapsed into a sexual one. The
ignorant masses know that oratory is sexualized, that the orator's language,
response in the face of the power and amazement that surround an orator,
much as praises fluttered about his bride, fair Oratory. The cynical student
of oratory, though, will seek to reverse the equation, use the effects to win
tory. In his relations to other men, the orator plays the passive partner
( QcioOat) even if his age means that he is no longer the youth who is the
fitting that the command was phrased, "Don't feel any shame about your
thing." The "thing" is, of course, his penis. Here it stands for his sexual
behavior as a whole since the sentence makes it clear that we should expect
passivity of the speaker, not any literal "use" of his member. Where actual
shameful relations are wanting, the guide recommends yet again that we
vigorously pursue our own disgrace: we should let our domestics pretend to
social inversion: the slaves are staged as would-be penetrators of the mas-
ter. Still, "Many useful things accrue to oratory from such activity."
So far, all we have is histrionics. The orator need not even actually
perform any of the recommended acts, but he must certainly declare that
he does and also act as if he does. Not surprisingly, however, the narrator
proceeds into a sexually explicit finale. His final injunctions to the student
are that he use a pitch plaster and depilate himself. The orator thus be-
comes soft, hairless, and effeminate. The Latin for soft, mollis, is always a
Gellius and the attack on Demosthenes. His soft and dainty garments
(~tkaxo 1 trwv'oxoLt) become tokens of sexual passivity for his foes. The
adult male should be hard, durus, just as should be the course of life he
pursues, the discipline he submits himself to, and the authority he wields
over others. The speaker is told to pluck everything, and if not everything,
at least those parts - namely his anus - that are expected to be soft for the
thing alike. This is more than a little suggestive. The wordplay is redone in
the next clause: it should do its duty vis-h-vis speeches and as much else as
however, is in the third version. This starts negatively: one can not only
vices that we have been told to see as virtues, but the tongue can also make
up for the body's own shortcomings. That is, if your anus gives out from so
180 STAGING MASCULINITY
much penetration, oral sex should be employed to make up the deficit. This
The tongue should know all and turn from nothing. Only when it is
than it now does; it should not just produce the pleasure of words but
this striking word choice is suggestive of still more. This "more produc-
tive" tongue can be made to stand for the penetrated mouth as a whole.
In this case the orifice begins to double for the female womb, and we
have yet another transferal of this body into the female register. The
penetrated mouth and anus of this kind of orator are graphic and explicit
macy. When you fail to look out for your "thing," passive female organs
begin to suffuse your anatomy.44 Or, in other words, you might as well not
have a penis at all. These are precisely the sort of specters that are used to
ground the Lacanian psyche via the play of loss and possession of the
phallus.
good kind. An eroticism of oratory has been forced into the bodies of both
its idealized representative, Pollux, and the nameless manly figure who
embodies the education once undertaken by our own narrator. We are now
Praeceptor.45 The narrator declares in section 8 that the poet was right to
say that "out of toils the good grows forth" (ex TWVv To6vv (pleoOLt Ti
in Xenophon, we can find a reference to Hesiod and the road to virtue: the
same reference we saw earlier in Lucian's own work. And, to cap things
tes about a story told by Prodicus about the young Heracles, who is about
PLEASURE 181
to choose the kind of future life he wants to lead: two women, Virtue
('AQc-n~) and a second figure, approach him and solicit his attentions, each
praising her own course. The name of the second woman is in doubt: she is
each guide in a manner that clearly serves as a precedent for Lucian's own
tropes:
[(Heracles) thought he saw two tall women approach him, the one
dressed in white, fair to behold and free born in her nature, her body
adorned with purity, her eyes with modesty, her bearing with self-
control. The second was fleshy and soft, done up with cosmetics to
make her appear artificially whiter and more blushing. She held her-
self straighter than she really was. She had roving eyes. She dressed to
show off her body to best effect. She looked frequently at herself; she
looked about to see if anyone else was gazing at her; she often even
These are familiar bodies, and they obey a familiar morality. The first is
lovely, pure, and modest. Good oratory can be described with similar
vocabulary. And the first guide could even be thus described, with only
though, are virtual twins. Softness and artifice, shamelessness and superfici-
Virtue later castigates Vice with a telling list of her perversions that
closes thus:
MIL y1VUaL~l TOL; cav6QOAJI XQO4EVfl OUTW ya(Q r3TaL&1EL; T01J OEWJT1]
tions and using men as women. For thus do you educate your own
friends, at night violating them and putting them to bed for the best
though, has explicitly eschewed pleasure, setting in its place truth. She
begins her description of her path thus: "I will not deceive you with pre-
ambles about pleasure, but in which way the gods did actually dispense,
this will I recount for you with truth."47 Her next words come straight from
the manly guide's hymnal: nothing good comes without toil (rt6vog). The
long list of fair ends she recounts all have toil as their chief means. And
when one gets to the body, one learns that the way to get anything out of it
is to make it serve the will (yvdth1) and to train it with toils and sweat
The erotic attachment to the first and truly beautiful guide can and
must be purchased with a submission to toil. Her body, just like the manly
guide's body, is inscribed with a set of virtues that are remote and hard-
won. Indeed, their whole message is to win the student into engaging in
their project rather than immediately assuming their kind of body. They
lovely without being the object of base desire. One admires it for its being;
it does not condescend to reach out and please its audience. On the con-
last look at the youthful addressee of the Praeceptor rhetorum. There are
two good approximate names we might give him: Hercules and Lucian. As
and choosing paths of life. He decides in what manner to use his prodigious
Heracles. And let us add to this literary list Lucian reading Xenophon and
of the Praeceptor. The narrator can thus be seen as the object of his own
validity of his own being and likewise gives tokens to himself of the process
of his own constitution. The young man is a sort of hero about to embark
on a fateful course. At the same time, he represents the past of the narrator
part of the adviser. The tale he tells to the youth is part a tale told to
the title of orator and accepting the hailing of the discipline and punish-
direction from the one represented by Pollux. The authorized and authorial
voice of the manly sort of oratory decries the overt pleasure-giving rhetoric
bodily creature. His pleasures, though, consist in taking. His is the pleasure
the masses.
(Dream), which has as its alternate title The Life of Lucian, has a strikingly
essay unpack the bodily politics of the Praeceptor. The virility of oratory is
once again established, but it is also more clearly predicated upon an initial
violence.
I do not like the alternate title offered for the Somnium since it seems to
require a strict identification of Lucian with the narrator of the text. Even if
Lucian were to speak in propria persona, nevertheless this would still be just
dealing in the Somnium and in the Praeceptor with rhetorical fantasies of the
presented not with real people but rather with rhetorical claims as to the
reality and validity of various subjects. Given that one can read identity as
repetitions of the same stamp should be retained as rhetorical and not bio-
graphical. We should not set a rigid boundary fixing a boarder between life
In the Somnium, a young boy has just finished learning his ABCs.49
His father and some friends deliberate on what course of life would be best
for the boy to pursue. Toil, time, and cost are weighed against consider-
ations of speed and ease. The boy is sent to be a statue carver, because
some of his youthful wax models had shown promise. For these nonschol-
arly works his teachers had beaten him, but his father had conceived some
184 STAGING MASCULINITY
uncle; the family has prior generations of sculptors. The sculptor uncle
hands the boy a chisel and bids him to start in on a piece. From inexperi-
ence the boy's strike is very poor. The uncle picks up a club and beats the
child. The youth flees the workshop, sobbing and weeping, covered with
bruises. At home he falls asleep, still in tears and thinking of the club.51
The dream the narrator recounts was remarkably vivid (owT oacpTl
JTnavT l v) (Somnium 5). Two women took his hands and started hauling at
their zealous struggle. The two women turn out to be Craft and Education,
ThXv1 and HcatLeLa. They are, naturally, both put into different bodies and
Education contains nothing effete in it: she is "very fair of face and becom-
ing in her bearing, and orderly in her dress."52 While there are many
the full scope of the terms of this debate between the two pursuits. Instead
craftsman is scorned for "having his head bent down to his work, being a
lover of the lowly, a devotee of the lowly, in every manner low, never lifting
case it is used to sanction the mastery of the orator, who again is looked at
and marveled at from all quarters. The orator is manly, free, and in charge.
lexically almost identical to the passages of the Praeceptor that discuss the
social awe with which the orator expects to be greeted. The orator occupies
the position of the true man and the central position of social desire: don't
him with the narrator of the Praeceptor, and if we accept his claims that he
chose the hard path to rhetoric, then our composite narrative voice fled one
replaced by psychic abuse. The resentment that drips from the Somnium
against the brutal uncle and the violence of his trade is replaced by the mock
resentment of the Praeceptor against the folly of taking the hard road to
rhetoric. And even when easy, sensual oratory has been discredited, the
sorrows of discipline have not so much evanesced as they have been justified
PLEASURE 185
as inevitable. One must submit. The young man of the Somnium is beaten
for botching his sculpted body. But when one turns to the Praeceptor,
dressed not to a stony imitation of the body but to a social and psychological
The sovereignty of legitimate speech is won along a trail that begins and
ends with pain and hatred. The pain one avoided in the world has become
sure keeps being admitted to the scene and seems indeed necessary to its
very maintenance. The manly orator is husband to and master of the female
The persistence of the Asianism and Atticism debate in all of its permu-
the debate, not some arid positivistic question of style. As Reardon suc-
que des mots" (1971, 94). Much as the orator is always prone to confusion
the shoe fits, but the orators refuse to wear it. Even though there may be a
sort of melancholy remembrance of the road not taken and the blows
subjectiviation insist that other bodies and other selves would be nightmar-
ish (cf. Butler 1997b, 132-50). The more fundamental gesture in this talk
of bodies and gestures is this very act of renunciation itself. In this ostenta-
tious refusal there is a claim to power that covers both the self and the
subjectivating act. One returns again and again to the scene of the crime
being by exiling an "alienness" that has been constituted within and by the
very order that one seeks to consolidate. The inevitable misnaming re-
mainder with which the orator is consigned to grapple endlessly. This is the
stalking the pages of the Praeceptor from first to last. Indeed Pollux can
rest of our rhetorical theorists. Pollux, his body, and his pleasure serve as
that secures the viability of the self-mastering master for whom pleasure is
mastery. Have the politics of legitimating this pleasure declined and fallen
Love
textuality that we took up in the first chapter. At the same time, this will be
the occasion for seeing the good body and good corporeality set against a
broader social and intellectual backdrop. The occasion for this conceptual
in closer to the problem of the text, we will also be moving back a bit from
the close scrutiny of the orator's body in action to examine instead the text
Quintilian, here we will find the text to be an enactment of its own prin-
ciples. Accordingly the good and legitimate pleasures that have been re-
served for the present chapter are not only defined but also enacted by
Cicero's work qua text, even as this text decries the idea of the rhetorical
its specific precepts, perform the text's own principles of good rhetorical
theory by way of both rule and example. Furthermore, this vision of rheto-
ric, more than just refusing pleasure and pedanticism, also presents itself as
a bond that holds together civil society. And so De oratore becomes a tract
the first chapter - we will descry the disciplined movements and tones, the
become models of and for the very precepts they would disparage in a rule-
laden handbook. Hence we have a text that performs for us the very manly
presence of the vir bonus that our studies have long sought, and in so
oratore and the technique it employs. This long and elaborate text admits of
and one very much concerned with the details of social life.3 MacKendrick
187
188 STAGING MASCULINITY
readings examines one or more key threads of the text: Cicero, ever ambi-
would like to use this work to gather together many of the themes that have
previously arisen and to show that Cicero's dialogue canonizes its version
of pleasure and textuality in such a way as to legitimate not just Cicero and
his rhetoric, but the whole social order that language is meant to help bind
together.4
This reading will, I hope, both round out and advance the work of
whose existence has been predicated on the exclusion of the histrionic, the
bered among these problems that are announced and then overcome,
purged and then reinstated. Textuality will thus offer another nexus at
which the problems of authority and authenticity that plague acting and
Courbaud, the editor of the Bud6 edition, says of it, "Le De Oratore est un
thinking, the acme of its genre, what, then, has been lost or occluded in this
process of sublimation? The answer is that the genre of the handbook itself
has been lost, as well as the possibility of direct didacticism. The written
depiction of this society of elite peers, their authority and distinction, and of
authority as emerging from within its own dialogic form and from its imita-
be always and only words on a page, but with its written society of good men
wilderness fighting against pedantry and that Quintilian represents the re-
"Qu'enseigne-t-on dans l'6cole? Des regles, rien que des regles; et on croit
Courbaud the good scholar on Cicero himself defines, classifies, and distin-
ironic aspiration toward the sublimity of a Cicero even as the scholar finds
aptitudes naturelles." This praise of the individual will return in the end of
the present chapter in the discussion of Cicero's great individuals and his
republic of manly, authentic peers. Courbaud, then, has gotten his Cicero
petty rules and regulations, it is, by nature, freedom" (1984, 24). To what
extent, then, is the critique of rules that Courbaud lauds in the De oratore
abbreviated form a set of questions and provisional answers that will guide
sort of pleasure might this be? Of what would it consist? What sort of social
issues ally themselves to this pleasure? Here we will be picking up decor and
similar genteel aesthetic terms from the chapter on discovering the body,
complementing them with the image of the manly guide, and affixing these
and roles of these men of good pleasure will all cluster around a cult of
individuality and authority that fetishizes the image and roles of the hege-
monic Roman male. Next we will ask about the form in which these mes-
men and their version of pleasure? What sort of text encompasses such a
theory? What kind of textuality has been lost or excluded? Here we will find
that the dialogue of peers and authorities displaces the book of precepts.
190 STAGING MASCULINITY
This sort of book is the only kind allowed the mature vir bonus, and other
varieties are suited only to foreigners, the young, and the inept. And finally,
given these men and this text, what sort of world are they intended to
occupy? With this last question we will find Cicero using oratory and rhetori-
a dialogue about oratory and the orator. Cicero completed this work in 55
product of the period following upon Cicero's exile in 58 and his restitution
in 57, a period during which Cicero withdraws from the courts and public
ing) has shown, though, Cicero's cultural projects are by no means a form
The dramatic date of the discussion that the young Cicero supposedly
The dialogue occupies two days of colloquy and discussion during the Ludi
remind us of the obscurity of this political crisis that involved the extension
of the franchise to the Italian allies. But Wilkins ought also to note that De
oratore itself sheds almost no light on this subject. In fact, the opening of
book 3 offers the clearest depiction in the dialogue of the events of 91, yet
oratore 3.3). Thus the crisis is depicted in terms of a threat to the privilege
LOVE 191
of the Roman ruling class as originating within that class, a threat posed by
and two of the biggest threats to the Roman Senate, were the consuls. I do
parallel sense of political upheaval felt within the dialogue and without it
should be borne in mind when the characters within the De oratore are
class.8
below are in order. The two principal speakers are L. Licinius Crassus
(140-91 B.C.E.) and M. Antonius (140-87 B.C.E.).10 Both men had held
Antonius in 99. These men were not only at the forefront of the political
class of their era, but they were also considered to be the leading orators of
(auctoritas), the quality that Cicero singles out when he claims he prefers to
record their discussion rather than to repeat readily available Greek pre-
cepts (De oratore 1.23). Antonius and Crassus are thus authorities in the
fullest sense of the term, and this authority adheres to their persons, not to
These two elder speakers and statesmen are asked for their opinions
B.C.E.) and M. Aurelius Cotta (born 124; consul 74 B.C.E.). The first is
more a student of Crassus, and the second inclines to Antonius. The other
two figures who will be mentioned below are Q. Lutatius Catulus (consul
102; dies 87 B.C.E.), a senior politician who knew Scipio and Laelius when
he was young, and C. Iulius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus (c. 130-87 B.C.E.), a
One should note how few of the participants in the dialogue survived
this turbulent political period. Any Roman reader would recall that it was
not just Crassus who would be dead within a few years of this discussion. In
any case, all of these men were prominent politicians in their day, good
Before exploring the text of the De oratore as text, I would like to set out a
quality of the man to the quality of his pleasures will serve to bridge the gulf
between the society of oratory and the sensuality that has hitherto been
found clinging to oratory. Thus the good pleasures of good men become
Pleasure and society in the realm of rhetoric operate via a set of paired
station as truth. In tracing this associative course, truth will first be taken
for beauty, then beauty for pleasure, and lastly pleasure for social standing.
and pleasing truth.11 The genteel pleasures of this social mastery are the
extirpate.
beauty set against decadence and on the side of truth. In the De oratore the
word decor as such does not appear. Nevertheless, the more abstract moral
Cicero's use of these two reveals a close affinity between manifest elegance
and social esteem, and the lexicographer's distinction between the moral
and physical translations of the term decus falls apart when the two regis-
ters are merged within the De oratore. In fact, it is not clear that we should
ever assume a radical division between the two spheres, but rather suspect
Latin is the result of the very tropes of social mastery and homosocial
examining.
Decus, which is formed from the same verbal stem as is decor, means
when physically manifest. Late in the history of the language, Latin gram-
marians rigidly distinguish the two words. One reads that decus is character-
decor formae est).12 One of these beauties is sublime, the other earthly. But
this schema is rather forced and does not correspond to the early history of
ing itself by its own decor (suo decore se ipsa sustentat) (De re publica 3.40).
The physical and the abstract collapse as the spiritual relies upon the physi-
virtue ought to entice a man to true decus with its seductive charms (suis te
oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus) (De re publica 6.25).
The verbal parallel between these two passages is striking: the "beauty" of
the first passage rewritten as "charms" in the second, and Cicero's images
Masculine excellence spans elegance and honor, the concrete and the ab-
the De oratore, it will be helpful to pause briefly over the morality of decus.
At De oratore 1.199, the study of law is destined for use as a distinction and
such a program and study, we see that, as was the case with the ornament
(ornamentum) with which decus is first yoked, here too decus finds itself
part of the legitimate ostentation and showiness of the vir bonus, and it
portrait of Horace's position that could apply equally to our orators: "Deco-
The orator is a god among men, a scourge to his enemies, the producer
Non enim causidicum nescio quem neque clamatorem aut rabulam hoc
sermone nostro conquirimus, sed eum virum, qui primum sit eius artis
proprium, non partum per nos, sed divinitus ad nos delatum videretur;
deinde, qui possit non tam caduceo quam nomine oratoris ornatus
incolumis vel inter hostium tela versari; tum, qui scelus fraudemque
thumper, but instead that man who is a high priest of the art. While
man who can make his way unharmed even amid the missiles of the
man who can with his speech subject to public odium the crime and
treachery of the guilty and secure their punishment, a man who can
man who can stir a listless and failing public to glory, lead them from
error, enrage them against the wicked, or assuage their wrath toward
good men, a man, finally, whose speech can arouse or calm in the
hearts of men whatever passion the situation or the case may require.]
This passage reads like a sermon upon the mysteries of oratory. The good
orator is a thing almost divine and rigidly segregated from a mere shouter
the orator's enemies fail before his very title. And, lastly, the orator does
"failing" (labentem) are cutting. Briefly, then, the orator's person is beauti-
ful and honorable. It evinces decor. At the same time, his pursuits and his
The hand of this godlike being is to be seen at every turn. The social order
both radiates and is everywhere permeated by the effects of the orator. The
truth of this sociality, though derived from the consequences of the orator's
practice, has the higher sanction of nature itself. It seems even to be the
dispensation of a divinity.
While the body's beauty from earlier chapters fits well with the
broader role of decor/decus in the De oratore, beauty and truth also find a
nunc hoc propono, quod mihi persuasi, quamvis ars non sit, tamen nihil
rerum cumulata oratio? Neque ulla non propria oratoris res est, quae
[Now I will give you my sincere belief: although it's not an "art," there is
utility of speech and its sovereignty in all peaceful and free states,
there is such delight in the very capacity for speaking that nothing more
fully finished phrase? What actor more agreeable for imitating the truth
than an orator for championing it? And then what more precise than a
high with material of every sort? Nor is there any subject inappropriate
Notice that the radiance, honor, and glory of praeclarius appears once
again, only this time attached to the speaker himself and not to one of his
dulcior, and nihil iucundius). This transfer of attention from the man to his
profession suffuses the former with pleasure and delight in the euphemized
register of the latter. There is no Pollux here, no fair body inciting and
the orator via his art and not his body. This flashy and sensual vocabulary is
directed toward inner and essential qualities of the good male speaker,
Cato's vir bonus dicendi peritus, and his calling: remember, the perfect
orator (perfecto oratore) was the opening image of this passage, even if his
oratory is the subsequent focus of the passage (see Kihnert 1994, 63-68,
again). The sensualism and spectacle rendered here thus safely dodge both
the superficial actor and bad pleasure by transforming the praise of the
splendor for a moment longer, let me examine it in one last example: the
rhetorum, the role he plays vis-h-vis Sulpicius and Cotta. In fact, this
teaching will turn out to also be a sort of seduction of these young men, as
will be seen below. Within the setting of the dialogue, Antonius' praise of
us see that all of the beauty and pleasure of eloquence do in fact redound
back upon the person of the speaker. In this way, Antonius' speech is a
self-praise, and the laurels we would put on the brow of oratory are ones
he manages to win for his own. The praise and beauty of an abstraction
are once again intimately bound up with a real body and character. A
carnal delights are deflected into the aesthetic register even as this realm is
This same scene in the De oratore, though, will move us from the
analysis of beauty and pleasure and into the discussion of pleasure and
help but cry out" (non possum quin exclamem), is explicitly taken from
citation, the slave Stasimon cries out these words and the following at a
You easily take the prize: he's beat; your comedy wins.
Here the text of the De oratore opens itself up as the text of a performance,
tween Antonius and Crassus is pushed into the agonistic scene from the
Trinummus, and the orators' auditors are here suddenly aligned with the
most passive possible Romans, slaves. At the same time, Antonius and
Crassus become masters and, in a doubled sense, actors. They are actors
putting on a play within a play, staging their own scenes within Cicero's
again by refusing closure and self-identity to the orator and his perfor-
politely patting one another on the back, but at another level these same
performances of gentility are associated with baser stuff: slaves, mere act-
so rigidly insist upon the theatrical in it, Crassus' own interruption at 2.40
hangs over the text. And these responses also heighten the air of euphemized
seems more aristocratic and genteel, and he marvels at how today's Anto-
nius has been transformed in the space of a night: he has been polished and
Let us then pause for a second at homo, the species word for man, as
opposed to the gender term for man. In either case, of course, the word is
best understood by the set of constitutive exclusions that sustain the con-
cept.15 To be a man (homo) in this instance is the same but different from
Ciceronian parallel from the letters to Atticus that offers a similarly genteel
moment: "If you want to be a man (homo), come back to us."16 In the
letter human means "one of us" and is part of our euphemized homosocial
Cicero's request, and Cicero also includes a discussion of the slave's new
This name is compared with the name of another slave who became
This letter continues, though, with a fear that Atticus will not return
Clodius and the learning of Pituanius. Lepos is usually a positive word, but
this is only another way of saying that it is genteel and unerotic, a euphe-
mism for beauty rather than patent and suspect beauty. While we are
supposed to take lepos as a pleasant social grace and not a physical charm,
"Return, Atticus, to our little family, my lepos, and my learning." The talk
of the bond Cicero and Atticus share via their freedmen-children is pitted
against the scene of learned charms imagined abroad, and one homo-
sociality is set against another that Cicero as well can furnish: will Atticus
choose good lovers or Cicero, a good husband with charms of his own?
ment is insincere since Clodius and Pituanius would have been thought of
as boors by both Cicero and Atticus. This detail does not disrupt the
structure of Cicero's sentiment, it only makes the protest less earnest: "Of
where this pleasure derives from the good Eros, which is a sexuality put
under erasure, though still legible. This is the Eros of good men (homines/
viri boni) and their good society. It is an Eros found not just between Cicero
and Atticus, but one that characterizes the society of the De oratore.
pony (unius cuiusdam operis), an orator who was like some oarsman or
humanitatis), the quality that separates men from beasts, citizens from sav-
Crassus as a line from a comedy, in this case a line from a now-lost play of
198 STAGING MASCULINITY
phoric register of the comic stage that Catulus first evoked. Crassus' re-
and porter versus the refined and urbane orator. Polished and humane
Antonius begs comparison with the civilized and urbane orator. In other
words, the depiction of the orator and the speaker who does the depicting
are again conflated. This time, though, the issue is not manifestly pleasure,
but instead urbanity - though this quality has already been put into some
doubt above- and social station, or, more broadly, humanity tout court. Of
course in this last case humanity stands in as a token that signifies all of the
hardly left 2.33 and its delights behind. Indeed this whole excursus is
tions of both Catulus and Crassus is itself erotic after its fashion. Strikingly,
man" by responding that yesterday he had set himself the task of refuting
Crassus and thereby "abducting" his students.18 This loaded reply puts a
was the contest, while today Antonius is sincere. Now we are forced to
revise our opinion of Antonius and instead see him as merely a performer
the orator is always an actor, but Antonius does not only play one part.
Antonius says that yesterday he was playing a role, but Catulus says that he
mance. Antonius says that the goal was an "abduction" (abducerem). The
Latin word is as broad in its meaning as the English and generally includes
the simple notion of leading someone off in another direction, but it also
can imply the sinister import that abduction has in English: Antonius may
mean that he merely sought to lead Sulpicius and Cotta away or astray, but
reading of abducerem, we should not allow Antonius to put the cat back in
the bag so easily, especially since in Latin literary rapes a potential seducer
this question: Today Catulus and Caesar are present, older men than the
knows that he varies his act with varied situations. But the playful seduc-
tions offered the youths yesterday do not vanish with the arrival of these
so also does this love that is never really love reveal itself in a variety of
forms. In fact, if we change around the proper names of this scene and
make them into Atticus, Clodius, and Pituanius, the scene of the De ora-
tore becomes the same one Cicero imagines for himself in the letter to
learned men. Who will best entice and captivate the others?
ety of its own performance. In fact, book 2 started in 2.17 with a discussion
before the De oratore can get started with Antonius' own performance. A
speaks? when does he? for whom? This opening of book 2 contains a good
appropriate for them to hold the very discussion that comprises the text of
the De oratore. The text thus sets out rules for a rhetorical community and
In this context, then, I would like to focus on one term that has
repeatedly crept into this whole section: "free" (liber). From Catulus'
interruption and the discussion of the passage from the letter to Atticus, it
is already clear that we are watching a play by and about free men, men
who are not slaves. Yet, it is not just the men who are free, but their city as
well. Back in 2.33, the orator is lord in every peaceful and free state (qui in
omni pacata et libera civitate dominatur). Where the state is free (libera),
sion in this place: he insists that Cicero - confusing as usual the author
with the speakers in dialogue - is speaking of how things should be. Given
and generalizing in this clause, but Wilkins wants to convert the vivid
allowed, but it detracts from the vigor of the passage and tends to obscure
the degree to which this is a very real and lively fantasy of oratory. As will
be discussed below, both the Rome of the dramatic date of the dialogue
and the Rome of the date of the dialogue's composition are imagined as
ment of fact conflicts with the anxieties about political realities shared by
As with the state, though, so with the man. For both parties liberty
and pleasure are united. The orator's speech brings delight (oblectatio) to
the state whose master is the orator; or rather, speech in general brings
orator-master. But the orator too is himself engaged more directly with
delight and freedom: he must himself produce for his audience a "liberal"
1.118). While freedom and delight may accrue to the city from the mastery
of the orator in 2.33, here the producer of this delight requires scrupulous
care and is the occasion of both anxiety and snide exclusions familiar from
earlier chapters:
[But since we are asking about the orator, we need to imagine in our
own speech a flawless orator and one crowned with praise. Even if the
mass of disputes, the variety of cases, or the rabble and forensic barbar-
ity afford a place for even the worst orators, we shall not abandon our
project because of this. In those arts in which one seeks not some
practical use but some liberal intellectual pleasure, note how careful
LOVE 201
and almost finicky we are when we pass our judgments! For there are
no cases or quarrels that can force men to endure bad orators in the
forum any more than they would put up with bad actors in the
theater.]
Crassus's oration on the orator requires of its auditors that they suspend
their notions of how things often are in favor of a vision of the sublime
ideal. Crassus advocates that the orator become master of himself and
for himself and the world. Oratory can be an ugly affair, and it is our job to
labor to ensure that we hold fast to the straight and narrow: we will find
thereby the public good and liberal pleasure united in one and the same
this and similar passages have already been described at length in earlier
chapters. In this passage one is merely assured that, despite the oft-realized
potential for bad oratory, men (homines) detest it. The world longs for a
good orator.
has perhaps not been perfectly justified by the arguments that immediately
precede it. First, though, I would like to assemble at long last the full
collection of notions this section set out to explore. Truth and beauty had
added to them beauty and pleasure. To beauty and pleasure were added
terms play off and against one another: truth is associated with station,
station with beauty, and so forth. This field of terms is the garden of earthly
delights for which oratory is intended. But note that this paradise of ora-
Edenic portrait could not proceed without reference to actors, slaves, and
formative physical decor and quickly found ourselves amid a textual perfor-
mance that gave us a vision of good pleasure by locating this pleasure either
ric as some bride to cement their own mutual relations. But where did we
Antonius the gnarly bodied praeceptor gives way to Demosthenes the eter-
The good love of the De oratore, the amor bonus of the vir bonus, never
fully suffuses the community of men so as to allow the text to stand fully as
an example of its own teaching; but instead this love is ultimately trans-
remains a text that has to be transformed by its readers into utterances that
erotic vocabulary that surrounds the orator elsewhere in the De oratore has
to be associated less with simple beauty and pleasure than with self-
will next deal with two special cases drawn explicitly from the lexicon of
Eros: love (amor) and shame (pudor). In the case of amor, we already
meaning "to love" (amo).19 And so when the orator's love finally does dare
speak its name, it still speaks obliquely, and we find again the special case
chapters. When Cotta the student asks Crassus the praeceptor what is
Crassus answers with a smile (adridens), "What do you think, Cotta, ex-
this that you are after, nobody will ever attain to anything exceptional
without it."20 An excellent and less literal translation of the crux of this
answer is given by the Bud6 edition: to be an orator one needs "la zele, la
flamme, la passion." This zeal and passion of love is a love felt for the
learning of oratory, the student's love of his task. This special kind of love
is required to segregate oneself from the common herd of men, for such is
was seen above, this distinction from other men is the mastery of them.
Again, mastery and self-mastery are yoked, this time under the sign of the
complicate it with shame. Cicero twice uses forms of the verb adamare in
the De oratore. The Oxford Latin Dictionary tells us to translate this word
as "to love or admire greatly," "to conceive a sexual passion for, fall in love
noting that the word is not found before Cicero, shows more reserve in
(amore rei [postea hominis] affici). The Oxford lexicographers should take
the palm in this case despite the German reluctance to make this word as
strongly sensual and worldly as they might. For example, note that Verres,
rima) and is impelled by his cupidity (cupiditate - a fiscal and erotic word
LOVE 203
here) to acquire them at In Verrem 2.85. Thus, even when adamare indi-
cates a passion for a thing, it is a strong passion for it, a passion readily
compared to an erotic one. At De oratore 3.62 and 3.71 two such powerful
passions are conceived, the first a love for philosophy and the second a love
for some philosophical orators. Yet these passages not surprisingly mention
pher Antisthenes' relation to Socrates. While this clause is just one fragment
"fell in love with the endurance and hardiness in Socrates' discourse (pa-
Socrates for Alcibiades and contribute to the young man's love for the older
or at least an ironic confession, that lets the mask slip from a truth otherwise
ship of Socrates, wherein Alcibiades plays the active part of the erastus and
a younger male. Antisthenes, then, falls for Socrates all over again, and he is
truly smitten (maxime). Where Alcibiades had both the body and the philoso-
But what does this excursus have to do with our orators? As has
already been hinted, this vocabulary fits perfectly into the rhetorical con-
text. These terms could easily describe Lucian's rough praeceptor who is
courtship of his audience can be seen as a sexual gambit that invests the
discourse on rhetoric with a desire never segregable from the author of that
discourse. Men thus feel a "philosophical" love for one another while
instead specifically attached to the man who speaks it. The place of the
"regles, rien que des regles" will be explored below. First, though, let us
make the rhetorical parallel explicit by adducing another passage from just
Sin veterem illum Periclen aut hunc etiam, qui familior nobis propter
adamastis, aut vobis haec Carneadia aut illa Aristotelia vis compre-
hendenda est.
for that glorious and exalted splendor and beauty of being a consum-
Aristotle.]
in love with an exquisite image and beauty. Going down the harsh guide's
path means falling in love with him and seeing his very harshness as fair.
One then gladly embraces philosophy and its discipline, embracing its
violence, even.21 The Latin after all nowhere says philosophy but instead
gives us vis, "force," or, stronger still, "violence." I understand that this
compare 3.143, where the learned orator (doctus orator) is identified with
contrast between the vulgar orator and the philosophical orator. Philoso-
phy is thus elitist in a social sense: the common herd has its oratory, and
Furthermore, there is literally no space in the social body for the vulgar
we can say that Crassus rids society of Pollux and his breed. Of course the
expulsion of the Latin Rhetores is not described as an erotic event. Yet the
nant with the erotic investment and exclusion we have routinely encountered
in the field of oratory. Thus this expulsion of the teachers of rhetoric partici-
pates fully in the rhetoric of rhetoric's own constitution; and as this "impu-
utterance that performs a more profound psychic truth of the form, "We
must not have our homosexuality in order to have our homosexuality" (But-
from locating any "real" sexual content in the expelled rhetoric, this rhetoric
the censorious dominant rhetoric that expelled the queer rhetoric of a man
like Pollux.
Getting back to 3.71 and its vis, though: another "perfect orator" is
impossible name of perfection has been uttered that the eroticism of a word
like adamare breaks out onto the scene: that is, this true love has no real,
If love is explicit only when denied or when deferred onto a love for
some attributes possessed by a man rather than expressed as a love for the
repression, a sexuality that is itself denied. This shame suffuses the scene of
a speaker performing. After all, it is in performance that one will have the
most trouble avoiding falling for the speaker himself as opposed to what he
that the good is never radically distinct from the bad whose exclusion
enables its sublime virtues. We have already seen the unchaste version of
the performative scene with Pollux, the shameless panderer. On the other
hand, good oratory will provide good pleasure: it is just that there must be
out of the De oratore. Yet like anything put under erasure, the legibility of
the effaced sign subverts the intention that would eradicate it: "So let our
he shall have a firm and austere charm, not one that is sweet and over-
terms. The pleasure of his pleasantness, though, must be hard and rugged,
the word that governs the characterization of the moment when Crassus is
highly moralized Latin term and very often has a sexual aspect to it. It is
206 STAGING MASCULINITY
not at all clear at first glance why Crassus chose this term rather than
said something more like fear, and he grounds his own concurring explana-
fears.27 While fear may play a vital role in Crassus' conception of his
difficulty at the beginning of a speech, it will be more useful to ask first why
Crassus chose such a morally and sexually provocative way to express his
fear. The answer must be that Crassus fears both that he will be desired and
give pleasure, and that he will not. This shame is appropriate to the chaste
tory and not one's body. So also does this shame correspond to a fear of
displeasing them and being cast out of their number for having thwarted
their desire.
oratore 1.121), this is not where he began. Crassus begins with a command-
ment that the orator provoke admiration (admirabilis esse). The orator
then will avoid being the bad orator rejected by a critical audience as was
to the breaking of a silence that perhaps ought not be broken (quod adhuc
though, it is not clear why Crassus' criticism should require silence when so
many other reproaches and praises of a similar general cast have been
freely spoken. What makes him hesitate before speaking? And why does
he seem almost ashamed to speak of shame? It will turn out that this silence
and shame are indicative of a performance of the very themes under discus-
sion. Both silence and shame suffuse and subtend this dialogue and its
speaking with trepidation (timide) and if they are not perturbed as they
Crassus disavows that a truly good speaker could ever not be perturbed.
Thus Crassus apparently obviates the need for his whole preceding state-
and this is one such passage where the association is reiterated and consoli-
dated. Beauty and its enticements require shame, while for its part shame
preserves beauty.
Crassus next gives the opposite and negative formulation of his first
positive version:
vero nihil potest dignum re, dignum nomine oratoris, dignum hominum
tamen impudens videtur; non enim pudendo, sed non faciendo id, quod
[The better a man speaks, so much more does he fear the difficulty of
tial expectations. But if a man can produce nothing worthy of the case,
of the title orator, or of the ears of men, even if he gets upset when
with the label shameless not by feeling shame but by not doing any-
lot of people - I think that he doesn't deserve just reproach, but even
punishment.]
rous performance. And here decet should remind us of decor and decus as
and a sexual failure where performance fails. The shame of such an impro-
priety, though, counts for nothing if ignoble deeds have already been done:
one's decor and splendor have been lost and the crowd's desire has been
failing the audience, and this shame turns into fear.28 The best orator
should and must always feel fear even if he never fails, while the failed
orator should feel fear as he fails: his failure is equated with shamelessness
and the good Eros of good performance is forever lost. The fear of per-
formative failure is thus also a fear of a sexual failure: will he have too
much of one kind of sex or too little of the other? Will he suffer from
to sex, and I do not insist upon real arousals or a specific eroticism that is
"really" at the bottom of oratory. The orator is not simply some version of
the sense of revealing the ways in which gender, pleasure, and social status
activities.
various outcomes (varios eventus) because one knows that the performance
know what will become of him when he meets their desire: will he live up to
it? Will he satisfy other men in the wrong manner? And most generally, it is
sociality. When this shame merges into fear we have a moment of paranoia:
the rejection of the expression "I love him" transmutes it into the thought
"He hates me."29 For the orator, this is a fear of rejection by one's peers. It
is also a shame felt even at the notion of homosocial love, a disgusting, vile
love like Pollux'. Thus the fusion of pudor and timor is entirely appropri-
ate: the two notions participate fully in the process of the eroticization and
ensures the repetition of this scene of sexual threat and resolution. One
chaste, even as he is about to enter the field of love: "Crassus had a truly
break in the narrative for an evaluative aside moves Crassus' precepts from
the universal and into the particular: again the generic idea finds its highest
truth when applied to the body of the individual who delivers it. The
that has a twofold valence: probitas can mean either general uprightness
break his silence and tell his truth. Even though he did perform for his
peers, they agree with one another that his shame has always been a
chaste shame, that his performances are not shameless. Remember that
deed the anti-Pollux, a hardy and manly orator, one fully implicated in an
does not just preach such manly virtues, it enacts them, using the drama
dent desires have been cast out and for which sublime ones are crafted.
abstraction like the lady Rhetoric from Lucian. Only this is a Rhetoric
can one write about oratory without going astray if the body is an implied
The good love of the good man is a love in action, an Eros performed after
good actio, the acting of the part of the good man, the role one is born to
The portrait of Crassus has consequences that extend out to the prob-
draws parallels with Cicero's own biography and Cicero's professed diffi-
pare this passage to the Pro Rege Deiotaro, to Divinatio in Caecilium 41,
Pro cluentio 57, Academica 2.64, and to the famous failure of the first
version of the Pro Milone, in each instance indicating some sort of personal
tators seems eager to take the opening of the Pro Rege Deiotaro as a
usual for me to be greatly moved at the start of all weighty cases ..."31
tary text that expounds what Cicero actually thought, and not as a hand-
precepts he gives for speaking in his theoretical works since these latter are
this truth of the text in turn validates the authenticity of Cicero's orations.
As is clear from the first chapter, this decoding of Cicero, which is also a
identifies Cicero with Crassus, or 10.5.2, which allows for the confusion of
their personae. With the commentators' help, Cicero thus slides unim-
peded into the role of actor of truth and writer of truth while the perils of
line. Rather than grant the identity of the voice of the text and the truth of
Cicero the man, it is time to look instead into the problems of textuality
If the text is more a theater piece than a rulebook, what then is the
authenticity of the vir bonus, and the visibility of his social world? After
approached via two other questions. First, according to the De oratore, what
an aspiring orator may hope to improve his oratory in general and practice
Crassus sets as the chief requisite for a student's progress writing as much
as possible:
caput autem est, quod, ut vere dicam, minime facimus (est enim magni
[The most important task and one that, truth be told, we hardly do -
as much as possible. The pen is the best, the preeminent producer and
teacher of speaking.]
While here the pen is the best teacher of speaking (magister dicendi), in the
will be derided. The title denied the man is bestowed upon the student's
pen. The hidden agency, or nonagency, of writing and its mode of educa-
over mere reflection and especially over extemporaneous speech: you can't
anything, more true than speech. Like many a truth before this, the present
and not radically distinct from it. One speaks oneself more truly and best
learns to give voice to oneself via the pen, not via spontaneous expression
nor by subjection to rhetorical precepts. The man who speaks, then, speaks
best to the extent that his speaking is informed, shaped, and trained by
writing. Even where a prewritten script is wanting, the practice and labor
(exercitatio and labor) of writing should have left their stamp on the ora-
(acumen):
Omnes enim, sive artis sunt loci sive ingeni cuiusdam ac prudentiae, qui
[All the opportunities for arguments, whether they arise from art or
and all the most brilliant ideas and words of every sort necessarily
and a prudent speech knows fully and intimately its subject. It masters its
subject by knowing it. Likewise, this is a full and complete knowledge that
offers itself in its entirety to the writer and his pen-point as intelligence and
the subject of writing, the subject who appears via writing and who guides
the pen, is a more elaborate creature than one might at first guess.
writing presents itself. If writing is power and mastery, one may justly
worry about illegitimate forms of writing. Bad writing would imply illegiti-
endless and tedious rules and regulations, would promote and embody
illegitimate power.
power, it is not at the same time the principle of its own authority. Writing
anterior to writing. This is clearly the case at the opening of book 3, when
acts of his own drama, the De oratore. Cicero hopes to give Crassus his
due even as Cicero is sure that this record will fall short of the intelligence
spite the superlative writing of Plato, "nevertheless, one suspects that there
was more to (Socrates) than what was written (tamen maius quiddam de
illo, de quo scripta sunt, suspicatur)."35 Cicero hopes, then, that his own
readers will harbor similar suspicions of Crassus after reading the De ora-
tore. Neither the point of Cicero's pen (acumen stili) nor the insight of his
(ingenium). The writing that could both master and explore all now fails to
capture the principle of its own origin, the ingenium. According to Cicero's
of the self as vir bonus. But when Cicero himself writes up his community
of good men, writing cannot master and cannot comprehend them: some-
Beauty and pleasure sneak back into this mystified point of origin
works, the Brutus. Cicero the narrator tells his addressee, Brutus, "for as a
character itself (ut enim hominis decus ingenium, sic ingeni ipsius lumen est
eloquence, but the eloquent text of Cicero can only hope to reflect dimly
the beauty and beautiful characters (decor atque decus)36 of its participants
ineffable and inexplicable quality. Eloquence brings to light the beauty that
is the character of the good man, but it does not thereby explain it.
assumes at its center the very principal of self that a performative theory of
identity would place always elsewhere, a subject built via mediation, dis-
course, abjection, and iteration. While any theory predicated on the death of
the subject would suffice for a critique of the good man's genius, an emphasis
the core of rhetoric itself as well as within a text on rhetoric, and most
whereby writing fails Cicero the author of the De oratore, even as the text's
first case, writing stages a performance that one feels has a supplement left
opposite movement is effected: writing forges the very genius that eludes
discipline so that he may sustain his own privileged identity. This image of
the ingenium assumes the existence of that point to which the orator strives,
will ever reach or comprehend. Once again failure produces iterative perfor-
tion of the ingenium thrives on its own failure. That is, Cicero posits a sense
ing good men: "Yes, they were great men, greater than their writing or my
writing can ever fully indicate." This rhetorical trope of inadequacy itself
oratore seeks to establish at every turn. In the second case, that of Crassus'
tive speech allows for a discourse that is more masterful and more real.
one's thoughts. For both Cicero the author and Crassus the embedded
tion of interiority and presence. Thus the De oratore may be a failed drama
in the sense that its good men are not "really there" in the text; but once
again we have a fertile failure. As the De oratore itself would put it, the right
A student of the text now knows where to turn and how to act, even if
he will never exactly have what he seeks. Cicero has written an account of
a self discovered within his own rhetorical handbook even as this handbook
refuses to see itself as akin to others. The subject of writing and the hand-
book loses its predicate and becomes simply the subject: there is a true
character and genius at work here. Writing forges this genius even as writ-
ing itself fails to compass it. This is a subject always in progress: the
occasions for performances are innumerable, and in each case a pause for
reflection and hence for written reflection will be the best course.
venues for the authentic performance of the self as good man, so too is this
point the "true" Cicero. He illuminates his own eloquent genius even as we
and a written claim of self-production: the self has been posited as a sub-
genius just as genius furnishes that which is clever about writing. Cicero's
formativity as citationality. In his case, the law cited is that of his own
ingenium.
than giving the thing itself. Yet the De oratore pleads the case of the virtues
replaces rhetorical rulebooks and completes the task they can never finish.
In fact, imitation and practice are the first two rules of Antonius' advice to
his students: "My first rule is to point out a model, then the student applies
well, not to imitate failings, and to imitate more than superficially (De
age tends to produce more or less a single style of speaking (De oratore
2.92). Thus there are masters and schools, but there are no textbooks or
tion entails practice performing and writing like one's model (De oratore
faces a sociological one: who were the fathers? who the sons?
which to explain an orator's style. There are great individuals who imitate
no model and follow their own natures.39 Similarly the idea of imitation
from this portion of the text apparently does not conflict with 3.34-36,
where it is argued that there are as many styles as there are orators. The
effectively all orators are unique. Taken to its extreme, this idea of nature
gory nature: these two models are complementary to the extent that one's
individual within the confines of the social laws of the subject. In this
Bompaire 1958, Reardon uses a telling phrase in this regard. Discussing the
moine litt6raire' repr6sent6 par les grandes chefs d'ouvre" (1971). Pater-
nity and patrimony, identity and the textbook coincide in the mimetic
reproduction of good men as good men via "great books." In fact, Crassus
as Cicero writes him expressly likens his own instruction to that of a father,
even to that of any father: "I have told you everything I thought. If you had
gone up to any head of a house and drawn him aside from some conversa-
tion, he probably would have given you the same answers."41 Neither mode
has room for handbooks or detailed precepts like Quintilian's. One is not
told how to fold the toga as in Quintilian, one imitates the fold of another's
toga.42 This desire expressed through mimesis can be read as part of a more
profound psychic economy: imitation allows one to desire the father and to
the mysteries of oratory on several levels. First, rules allow for impersonal
paternity forges. Similarly, any diligent schoolboy might claim the right to
the title orator and entry into the top and exclusive ranks of hegemonic
Roman society without first making the right connections and working his
way up the social and political ladder. Thus the structure of the community
presence and authenticity upon which the doctrine of the good man is
yoked to natura can rules be integrated into the project of legitimate repro-
teacher whose instructions were few, abundantly clear, and easy to follow.
The threat of nonmimetic reproduction thus threatens the orator and his
Nowhere is there space for the parvenu. Or, if a new man (novus
homo) does appear, his legitimate right to occupy a position amid such
really is a good man and that he has not stumbled upon a trick of seeming
one. Cicero himself was a new man or novus homo and not a person born
into the elite ranks of Roman politicians and speakers. Cicero was merely
son of an elite family of the city of Arpinum. Thus his attachment to the
tion homologous to his original one, but this time on a grander scale.
Naturally, not all Romans were eager to embrace Cicero the arriviste into
their ranks. If he is to have any hope of being taken seriously, the new man
finding a father to whose law he has fully acceded: he must become a good
mimicry. Copying the fold of a toga is a slight thing, and a student may
justly fear that this is all he has done. Thus the young Sulpicius interrupts
Crassus to lament that he may not have imitated Crassus well enough:
Tum ille "tu vero, quod monuit idem, ut ea, quae in quoque maxima
[Then he said, "Yes, you can (find fault with me) because he advised
that I have imitated nothing of you except the stamp of your foot,
Sulpicius worries that he offers mere mimicry of delivery and word choice.
own persona, Sulpicius fears that he is merely histrionic and that his per-
formed self is not at its core enough a Sulpicius derived from Crassus.
Crassus responds to this fear by advising Sulpicius that the younger man
has gone beyond superficial imitation. Crassus says that provided he has
the time he will tell Sulpicius later what his student has taken from himself
and what from other places. Crassus thus accepts Sulpicius but withholds
from him the keys to self-knowledge. Perhaps this is not too surprising.
his own ingenium as well as that of Sulpicius: the text would have to be too
wholly encompasses his self. This performance already has something writ-
ten to it because the pen and genius are never radically disjoint: good
speech has a written quality to it. And, obviously, this is also a written
though, he charts a course that ought to both unsettle and reassure his
of speaking "good Latin" (Latine) (De oratore 3.48). The idiomatic usage
of Latine conflates speaking the language well with speaking it at all; "in
Latin" gets confused with "in good Latin." The sense of this word then
Crassus himself offers a similar sort of gloss upon the word. Crassus
describes how failure to speak Latine leads to derision (De oratore 3.52).
Crassus himself commands that his auditors deride (deridite) those students
who have only embraced oratorical "force" (oratoriam vim) -- and here a
the true orator's (vero enim oratori) vast and exhaustive human experience
(De oratore 3.54). Crassus says, "On my authority deride and disparage"
(me acutore deridite atque contemnite), and we find here instruction on how
ity, we learn how to react with scorn for the cheap and easy. Apparently
218 STAGING MASCULINITY
On the other hand, the experiences of the legitimate orator drift into
Crassus next yokes philosophy and rhetoric and eventually gets to the
sic, and he tells of the banishment of the Latin rhetoricians when he was
censor. In each of these cases as well, Sulpicius learns not to trust explicit
training and to instead rely on his initiation into the higher mysteries of
oratory via his association with men like Crassus and his participation in the
telling. Once again, the oratory we are speaking of is not a simple func-
tional affair. Antonius may have given this impression in book 1, but we
know from the opening of the second book and his disavowal of his prior
Oratory and the orator are philosophical and metaphysical objects, not
practical ones. Good oratory here transcends the narrow confines of the
forum. Good oratory is everywhere where there are good men (viri boni).
reveals their rhetoric on the goodness of rhetoric; it enacts their own en-
and love. Intimate familiarity with the life and workings of elite Roman
cially older peers, produce the good man experienced at speaking. Sulpi-
cius must become a Crassus, but he has no sure route to this goal left to
Sulpicius as well. Cicero's Orator, a book written about nine years after the
younger Brutus who plays Sulpicius to his Crassus: "When I say 'me,'
LOVE 219
Brutus, I am saying 'you': for whatever was going to happen in my case has
long since come to pass; you, though . . "45 This moment identifies master
with student. They are differentiated only along the axis of time. Rhetori-
whole social order is hereby implicated in this model of oratory: the older
man takes the younger man as a version of himself just as the younger man
orator. Thus one should note again the problem of the confusion of Crassus
with Cicero as discussed above. Taking Crassus for Cicero implies accept-
ing the son as the father: Cicero the author now begets the man whose
relationship of fathers and sons who each vouch for the legitimacy of the
oratory and legitimate society here find texts in the Orator and the De
ero's text reminds us that this is not a handbook, this is a book of love, a
book of the love felt between men and between fathers and sons.
rhetorical theory, but these same principles constitute the key elements of
the practice of social life. Moreover we have seen that pleasure, beauty,
love, mastery, and violence everywhere permeate the social world of ora-
tory. The text intervenes to supplement this social life - this life held to-
gether by imitation and identification, and a life that transcends its own
say that the text offers a portrait of habitus rather than habitus itself. The
that sense itself indicates a vital distance from the purely sociological mode
of a Bourdieu.
of the self, the world, and the self in the world even as it denies closure and
220 STAGING MASCULINITY
completeness to any of these and even to itself. This denial, though, is itself
desire and a certain kind of text. Furthermore this social order, while never
and souls exiled from it as if it would thereby become complete. Such texts
then call upon the machinery of abjection as one of the corollary instru-
Against such a text as the De oratore and its techniques, rules and
rulebooks can never aspire even to the presentation of this textual failure
Those books cannot cite some authentic and authoritative good man like a
Crassus who both resides within and beyond their pages. The De oratore
texts: it excludes the sort of folks who are alleged to need these texts.
any codified and transcribed dictates. Examples of such would be the Rheto-
tutio oratoria, even if Quintilian does see himself as Cicero's heir. Such
and imitation, are scorned as beneath Cicero's orator. Who needs a hand-
book? Anyone who is lacking in authority in some manner. Nor will the
handbook make up for these crippling defects, as such a text cannot guaran-
tee authority. Even the best text, the De oratore, which contains the person-
ality of the good man rather than mere instructions, has something greater
The De oratore is filled with binarisms that put its characters and their
society on one side while maligning the opposite pedantic pole. Antonius
contrasts his words to those a teacher gives to boys (2.180). The material of
the De oratore is subtle and not obvious like others' teachings (2.84). A
similar pairing of difficulty and ease makes for a frequent point of contrast
that occurs variously in 2.69, 3.38, and 3.98. This notion of ease and
mans are set against Greeks commonplaces. The text reads illa pateant in
promptuque sint omnibus. One can translate pateant variously, but I would
take the sentence as saying that the Greek material is both intellectually
LOVE 221
your hands on one of these books and pateant signifies that the precepts are
picted in the De oratore does not admit any and all. We may not arrive at
their table unbidden, nor may we readily read and comprehend the sublim-
As far as the Greeks go, their ineptitude and gaucheries are high-
literally ill-fitted to Roman rhetorical society. The savoir faire of the Ro-
mans finds a kindred contrast in 2.247, where the good orator's control is
pany of good men cannot allow. Good men are moderate, judicious, and
self-controlled. Good taste and judgment are offered the highest praises:
(De oratore 1.202); he is a god among men (3.53). And so we can now add
is the man, so his text and doctrines. The latter half of this formula is nearly
a commonplace: "You hear it on the streets, and for the Greeks it's prover-
License, foreignness, ease: the exiled terms are familiar. The abjections
that enable this variety of text parallel the refusals from earlier chapters. The
text that performs models for imitation does not give precepts without a
praeceptor firmly placed within the elite social field. In fact, the apotheosis of
the orator is itself predicated on these same rejections. Any and all of these
and the constitution of the body. The whole discourse of the body in the
world converges with the discourse of the text in the world. This process is
facilitated by Cicero's merging of writing and the authentic voice. The au-
oratore. The presence recorded by this text is likewise the presence of the
Put differently, the De oratore is itself both imitation, being the imita-
facilitated by the assertion that speech is written and that writing is speech.
For Quintilian in particular this second proposition proved vital to his own
textual performance. Cicero's text performs the good body and the good-
ness of discipline while purging the world of bad bodies and bad texts. The
ironies of Cicero's own political and practical difficulties at this period only
underscore the notion that what the world needs is to be more like good
222 STAGING MASCULINITY
literature. The readers of Cicero's text have by and large agreed with this
proposition.
oratory as part of their own reflection on the political and social crisis of
their day. The techniques of the De oratore, though are far more sophisti-
tion in its full splendor. The De oratore encapsulates all of the prior themes
and interests of this study while going beyond them as well. In Cicero the
inscribes, enacts, and brings to life the insufficient body constructed via
tains all of the constitutive exclusions that acting and hedonistic precepts
hid elicited, but it counters these with its self-present text and speakers
with their sublime joys displaced into the social field and onto their shared
cratic self. This self is always almost grounded by its own performance, but
always also stuck in the process of becoming, a process that also entails the
This has been the study of a particular mode of being. This being is
tic mode of being, one filled with pleasure, shame, and fear while bought at
the expense of both the orator and the rest of the world. Uneasy lies the
head that wears a crown. I hope to have offered a study of the structure and
We Other Romans
mode that others often only imperfectly execute. The work is charming,
the style seductive, the scholar an authority in his field. In other words, I
mony. The air of tactlessness that hangs about my own reading itself
indicates the extent to which one still writes within a certain rhetorical
corresponding bid for my own fame - a young Roman's first public foren-
sic act was traditionally a prosecution - but rather this critique is intended
did ancient oratory look like?" Gotoff's piece also necessarily confronts
several of the key themes of the present study. Gotoff realizes the problems
ment, the text, and the textual performance, though, reproduce in a strik-
ing manner many of the very problems of oratory that have preoccupied
showman and rightly complains that too few readers of Cicero think of his
cratic readings of Cicero whereby the text of a speech is fed through the
that every aspect of the speech is instead a function of the exigencies of the
performance, and that the performance's only real end is victory, not
223
224 STAGING MASCULINITY
"The fact is," he concludes, "that the orator of a judicial speech is con-
cerned entirely with the momentary effect."2 Gotoff then reads a number
of speeches for their effects. The ensuing discussion resembles in form and
cal metaphor. Gotoff imagines a Cicero asking himself, "Will he use his
authority of the good man and plays within a carefully circumscribed and
sanctified stage. Admittedly, Gotoff himself does insist that Cicero "has
312), that an oration is also very much about the orator. In fact, Gotoff sees
personae invented and portrayed by Cicero the orator" (312). Gotoff ends
For when a man gets up to speak, his intention is clear and simple: to
than truth; and the critic would be well advised never to trust the
the author inviting his readers to savor a juicy irony. This text, we learn in
the footnote that actually concludes the essay, was once itself a speech. The
note naturally does not indicate the changes required to move from the
Gotoff did not read his own footnotes to his original audience: he doubtless
self as a highly reasonable man: and his authority, it augments the argu-
This speech become text and text that gestures toward speech per-
WE OTHER ROMANS 225
butes. His opinions are based upon solid readings of his texts: he furnishes
writing.
ian he reads the speeches of Cicero and mines them in order to produce an
cut through the illusions. Unlike Quintilian, though, Gotoff adds in two
himself with the words, 'I've got to go polish my ad libs' " (1993, 304). The
"When I was younger, I remember the great Antonius once said . .."
tion of Latin scholarship. The specification of the lecture and the university
only reinforces the effect. The ancient version might go something like this,
their relative ages I suspect that Mynors' lecture may even have been given
Gotoff's finale contains another such moment. The note that closes
the last paragraph reads: "A version of this paper was delivered as a James
313 n. 66). Harvard again: this was once a performance of scholarly author-
ity given not in some provincial backwater but in Rome itself. Gotoff was
invited to speak. Furthermore Gotoff has become Mynors; and the scholar
lectures and provides urbane fare to that same learned community different
only in its actual composition. Once again, parallels could be drawn to the
emphasize the extent to which classical scholarship tends not just to inter-
pret but also to reproduce the spirit of its objects of study. When it comes
to writing and lecturing one performs a by-now familiar variant upon the
Latin, and careful interpretation readily insinuate themselves into the an-
attended to; so too, naturally, does one notice who speaks when and
where, as well what university has trained and what employed the scholar
This brings us to the question of style. The style in which my own text
is written is difficult: the reader has been asked to endure dead languages
and modern neologisms placed side by side. Worst of all, each discourse is
bent to accommodate the other: the postmoderns lie next to authors with
whom one might have thought they had made a break. And poor Quintil-
and Lacan. There are numerous obvious tropes, and rhetoric is generally in
impressed into the service of theory for its own sake? Is it neither fish nor
fowl, but just, as Gorgias might rhyme in, offal? Perhaps one would be
wiser to try to avoid facile antithesis and to ascend to a point beyond good
and bad.
Take, for example, the case of Nietzsche. Derrida begins his own
cludes the remark that the publication of The Birth of Tragedy had made
him "the most scabrous philologist of the present day."3 The remark was
made in November 1872. Nietzsche was at the time teaching his seminar on
their fidelity to the Greeks and the Romans. There is little here that would
not or could not be found in a conservative course of the same title were it
offered today. For example, the account of delivery occupies less than one
Where is the scabrousness? Or, better still, why had Nietzsche been
scabrous in his book if, as his lectures reveal, he clearly knew better? This
has become something of a Remus: most who hold similar degrees and
Nietzsche did not just know how to translate Greek and Latin, he
knew how to mistranslate it. He did not merely understand ancient rheto-
ric, but he knew how to give a rhetorical account of his own thinking. In
not "wrong" about tragedy: he was not just summarizing what antiquity
explicitly said of the genre, but he also went well beyond the representation
given the pride of place Aristotle's Rhetoric held within antiquity in general
ric or even a taxonomy of rhetoric can only go so far and no further. Such
They are necessary tasks, but not exhaustive ones. The Aristotelian tradi-
tion has difficulty grappling with more protean questions: what of the
against the discourse of truth to which philosophy aspires the orators offer
anything that will please, any argument that will win the day. Clearly,
truth and meaning: Cicero and Quintilian both aspire to train an orator
who can be what he seems, who can speak what is, and whose words will
not just be true but also have the power to produce truth in the world. In
and, disturbingly, he too argues for a discourse that is virile and masterful.
reproducing the good man within our own critique of masculinity.9 Never-
true oratory? A question such as this hovers about the pages of the rhetori-
cal literature we have been reading. In order to find himself good and true,
the orator produced a universe of unlivable bodies and souls. These bad
orator both in the world and in himself. The orator's psyche becomes a
microcosm for the logic of the world: as goes the mode of self-knowledge
for the hegemonic man, so too flows the authoritative logos of the world.
And this logos may perhaps be decried as mere rhetoric, a hypostasis with
theorist, and even by the critic of oratory. But such a resistance already
acknowledges a point this study has long maintained: the text of the world
claims are not ontological ones; utterances are not divinely performative.
The orators themselves knew this. Their entire self-imposed regime is predi-
cated upon such a realization. Their discourse may not be the truth of the
world, but it comprises a vital would-be truth, a fiction with the power to
some sort of alternative and subterranean life apart from the orators, we
have not only sketched the outlines of virtue, but they have constrained
the sort of space that vice itself can occupy: crazy emperors like Nero offer
one version of a subversive parody enacted from within the confines of the
rubric of the good man. One would have to be madder even than they to
pretend that the world of the good man vanishes so soon as one loses
interest in it.
women have long struggled with the difficulties of depicting their experi-
from historical truth? Yet the discourse of Rome keeps reproducing the
fects. Furthermore the rhetorical texts themselves train their readers in the
means whereby the reader too might imbibe excellence, speak authorita-
tively, and perform the excellence and decorum of their learning. As was
ancient rhetoric that they reproduce even the relations of appropriation for
which an elitist text like the De oratore argues. In fact, to the extent that
the Ad Herennium and the work of C. Julius Victor are seen as "base"
tantly, the great Cicero, critics reveal their own desire to prove the blueness
exclusive texts within a genre invested with the highest social capital. In
short, the need to prove that one's Latin really was as good as Cicero's can
Cicero becomes a Bloomian strong poet, and the weak fall before his pen,
so much mightier than his sword (cf. Bloom 1973, 11). Rhetorical criticism
can itself then become a sort of prose poetry written by a "deep reader"
where the scholar offers not just exegesis but also an argument in favor of
his own claim to filiation with the master (Bloom 1973, 95-96).
goes well, he will cast aside his Asiatic youth and grow into Attic maturity
reading are already contained in the preceding pages: all the jargon damages
and even conceals the honeyed truths of Attic simplicity; this is Asiatic
excess, effeminate fluff, with a mere ten Attic words sprinkled atop a pile of
ignorance; the author was too lazy to climb the hard road; this is the gaudy
even that Latin might be relevant to a theorist. Let's not even talk about the
implications for the author's "thing" even if phallicism is very much the thing
to ponder when reflecting upon my own report upon the condition of knowl-
read Cicero. The claims of the commentator are ever bold. I would ask,
though, that the reader read more carefully rhetoric, theory, and the theory
sort of performance in its own right. I wish to argue against the happy
excess but rather a new Atticism. Now one must be master of more dis-
course, must know more bodies than ever before, must perform an even
230 STAGING MASCULINITY
logical one. Furthermore such a recursive labor would itself perform the
very subjection to theory and abstraction that I would resist in the final
is already all too material. Instead I would argue for more and better
and not with the ontological consequences of reading, writing, and enact-
ing. Finally, I hope that my own play has been the thing to catch the
Introduction
2. For the sociology of rhetoric, one can see, for example, Habinek 1995;
Sinclair 1995a, 1995b. Examples of a more historical approach might be the reading
of Cicero's Pro Archia in Narducci 1997 or the readings of the fragmentary speeches
3. See Derrida 1981 and Ferrari 1987, 208-10. Charles 1992 provides a
thought as a whole. Irigaray revisits Plato's cave and describes the problems of
fuit. non enim quaero quis fuerit, sed quid sit illud quo nihil possit esse praestantius.
Orator 7.
1.pr.9.
Cato's formulation in Roman thought see Kennedy 1972, 56-57. Michel 1960, 15-
16 highlights the social usefulness of the good man. Winterbottom 1964 argues that
Quintilian's use of the vir bonus is a reaction to delatores, men who turned a profit
phrase by way of a general moral reaction against his age. Michel 1960, 19-38
covers the morality of oratory in general. Laughton 1961, 28 insists upon the
231
232 NOTES TO PAGES 7-14
11. For a much fuller account of morality and education that encompasses
12. In both Greek and Latin, the terms for child, rutig and puer, can also
mean slave. Hence the opposition between man and "boy" revolves around the
issue of either being in power and authority or being subject to someone else's
13. Walters 1997 offers a detailed analysis of the semantic and social field
covered by the Roman term vir. See also Santoro L'Hoir 1992.
14. See Hellegouarc'h 1963, 489-90 on the mercurial use of the term boni.
15. For the political reading of bonus and the Latin words with which it is
associated, see Hellegouarc'h 1963, 184-95. Sinclair 1993 covers the social status of
16. The Oxford Latin Dictionary cites Plautus, Captivi 583: "It's characteristic
of the down-and-out to be spiteful and to envy good [i.e. affluent] men" (est
Butler 1990b, 270-71. Her arguments concerning gender and performance will be
18. Gleason 1995, xxv. For habitus, see Bourdieu 1990, 52-65, and, as Bour-
19. A critique of psychoanalysis is put in these terms. See Bourdieu 1990, 77.
22. "Reflexive sociology" is Bourdieu's name for his project as a whole. See
23. See Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.16.19ff. The text asserts that delivery is an
24. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1403b20ff. Compare 1413b9, where the so-called writ-
ten style and the spoken style of composition are contrasted relative to their amena-
25. Corax and Tisias as handbook writers: Quintilian 3.1.8.; Cicero, De inven-
tione 2.2.6, De oratore 1.20.91, and Brutus 12.46. Compare Kennedy 1963, 58-59,
and see also Wilkins' introduction to his edition of Cicero's Orator: it becomes clear
sion (ioxriotg and yxQT aELta). See Foucault 1990b, 33-78. Foucault's focus in
this work is, broadly speaking, the philosophy of fourth- and fifth-century Athens.
That his work should be so readily transferable to later Greek thought and to
Roman thought is further indicative of the stability of the set of problems in which
27. Jarratt (1991) also gives a reading of contemporary theory with and against
ancient rhetoric. Her focus, though, is upon the Sophists, thinkers who appear
before the canonical version of ancient rhetoric is instituted and men whose
thoughts may even be said to have provoked a conservative reaction in that very act
NOTES TO PAGES 15-21 233
rhetoric invites its own radical rereading in the course of offering its bodily tenets.
See also Poulakos 1994 for a poststructuralist reading of Gorgias' Helen in a manner
28. Leo 1913, 21-46, offers a traditional account of the historical develop-
the study of Rome; but Brown is more interested in pointing out areas of impor-
tance than in following up either on Freud or the Latin. Janan's work on Catullus
applied to Latin literature. The first chapter of that book has been noted as a
30. See, for example, his mother's castration threats (Freud 1976, 49) and the
constant examination of the boy for his sexual theories by his father.
whole.
32. See Freud 1963b. Compare Lacan 1988a, 129-42, where pathogenesis is
removed from the foreground of the discussion. See Butler 1990a, 35-78, for a
and within the terms of the psychic apparatus. Butler 1997b revisits these questions
in greater detail.
33. On the homosexual aspect of everyday life and social virtues, see for
example Freud 1970a, 112; 1963c, 113, 162-65. The last passage, in particular, is
ity and the mechanism of paranoia. The ancient orator himself often evinces signs
ity even where it posits a primary bisexuality, see Butler 1990a, 61.
34. Freud 1970a, 107. Compare Freud 1970b, 167-71, which covers much of
36. Compare Lacan 1988a, 237-46, where the transference is put into the field
of speech.
37. Freud 1970a, 162. Compare Lacan 1988b, 89-90, the exact relevance of
38. See Lacan 1977, 1-8. But note that Lacan 1988a, 74, offers a substitute for
the mirror stage with a new illustration and that Lacan 1988b, 102, expressly states
that the original essay is getting long in the tooth. In fact, the discussion to be found
in Lacan 1981 offers even further elaboration and development of this same theme.
All of these subsequent accounts revolve around optics and cameras and leave to
one side the baby before the mirror of the original formulation. See especially
Lacan 1988a, 73-88; 1988b, 235-36; and 1981, 67-119. Rose 1986 provides a
valuable gloss on many of these issues. See also Silverman 1992 for commentary
the gaze in Lacan 1981, 105, where the process of the gaze is appropriated by the
symbolic.
40. Lacan 1988b, 29. Notice, for example, that even in the chapter entitled
234 NOTES TO PAGES 22-29
"The Wolf! The Wolf!" where the infant's life initially seems to be aligned with the
real- the order that resists signification and is therefore radically exterior to the
symbolic - nevertheless this child's extremely limited vocabulary already puts him
within the symbolic. This child who has a two-word vocabulary allows for a view of
the symbolic in initio. See Lacan 1988a, 96-106 (especially 104). Hence, of course,
the infantile sexuality to which I refer above is already structured by the symbolic
and should not be seen as a fundamentally other or revolutionary state. Lacan 1994
discusses at length the child's movement into the world of language and of Oedipus.
41. Compare the case of Hans, who is asked to find health in a subjection to
father, Freud, and God. Lacan 1994 offers extensive commentary on this issue.
42. For "failure," see especially the so-called failure of the prison system and
43. Foucault 1990b, 1988a. Foucault 1988b makes it clear that antiquity was a
persistent concern for him throughout the last period of his career.
kler, and Zeitlin 1990 offers a seminal collection of essays influenced by Foucault.
even his qualifications. A key moment in this debate came with Richlin 1991. More
recently, see the articles collected in Larmour, Miller, and Platter 1998. Skinner
1996 surveys the Foucault debate within classics. Even though the relationship to
Foucault can be strained, it is clear that his questions have proven to be the ones
45. Foucault 1990a, 8, 11. The latter passage focuses on the "putting into
discourse of pleasure."
46. Foucault 1979, 138-40. Compare Foucault 1979, 197, where discourse's
47. Foucault 1979, 189. In Foucault 1988, 42, disclosure and renunciation are
fused in Christian confessional techniques. Here again, the orator can be evoked:
49. Butler 1997b reengages with Althusser in a move that seems designed to
Chapter 1
3.3.1; and C. Iulius Victor (Giomini and Celantano 1980, 1.16) all champion the
same five divisions. The first text is the earliest Latin rhetorical handbook we have,
while the last is among latest. Giomini and Celantano 1980, iv explain the evidence
in support of assigning Victor to the fourth century C.E. It should be noted that
there is no standard reference system for citing Victor. Future references to him will
come from this edition, which supersedes Halm 1863, though it does give Halm's
5. Nobody believes the work to be Cicero's. Its uncertain authorship has also
left its dating in doubt. Achard 1989, v-xxxiv gives an excellent summary of these
problems. It most likely dates from some time shortly before Cicero's own writings,
suadendum plurimum valere. Nos quidem unum de quinque rebus plurimum posse
7. It is, of course, impossible to give real "page numbers" for a text originally
written on a number of book rolls. I only seek to indicate the scale of the discussion
and of the text in terms familiar to a modern reader. The 192-page edition to which
10. sed de his nequaquam nobis existimo laborandum; neque enim docemus
illum qui loqui nesciat, nec sperandum est qui Latine non possit, hunc ornate esse
dicturum, neque qui non dicat quod intellegatur, hunc posse quod admirandum sit
11. sin contendemus per continuationem, bracchio celeri, mobili vultu, acri
12. See for example Cicero, De oratore 1.94 and 1.78, which include the
13. This thesis will be discussed at greater length in the next chapter.
14. Some editors follow Spalding and delete "or concede" (aut concedere).
15. The passages are Aeneid 3.620 in the first example and 1.335 in the second.
17. Derrida 1976 is the locus classicus, although Derrida engages with these
questions throughout his oeuvre. One might compare in particular the essays of
18. "It is necessary that something written be easy to read and easy to speak"
Rhetoric 1407b11.
19. Svenbro 1993, 3. Compare Svenbro 1993, 45. Svenbro 1993, 196-97 re-
veals how erotically charged the bodily politics of such texts could be. My own
20. Quintilian 9.4.19: "First, there are two kinds of style, one is taut and
tightly woven, the other is lax as in conversation and letters, except where they deal
with something of a higher nature such as philosophy, the state, and the like" (Est
igitur ante omnia oratio alia uincta atque contexta, soluta alia, qualis in sermone
<et> epistulis, nisi cum aliquid supra naturam suam tractant, ut de philosophia, de
genre, style, and literature and the diction of spoken language. Thus oratio means
both style and speech; and sermo means both a discussion and a literary dialogue.
21. The passages are from, respectively, Aeneid 1.78, Eclogues 3.25, Aeneid
22. See Martindale 1993 for a detailed analysis of this question both as it
relates to Romans reading Romans and our reading them. Martindale is also par-
23. Gotoff 1993 offers a reading of Cicero the performer by way of his texts.
Goldhill 1989 grapples in a very self-aware fashion with the variety of problems that
arise when reading Attic tragedy for its staging. The essay represents an advanced
25. For a general study of the relationship between Quintilian and Cicero, see
Guillemin 1959. Cousin 1936 is quite exhaustive on the same topic. Cousin 1936,
100-101, touches in passing on the issue of actio, and Cousin 1936, 618-31, covers
it more carefully. Yet both passages omit any discussion of the problem of inheriting
performance via a written text. Fantham 1982 offers a detailed study of Quintilian's
borrowings and originality vis-a-vis Cicero in the course of his discussion of perfor-
26. These phrases come from Cicero, Pro Ligario 1.2, Pro Cluenio. 5.11, Pro
without composing the speech of a character" (nam certe sermo fingi non potest, ut
non personae sermo fingatur). Behind all speech there lies a speaker.
28. nonne ad singulas paene distinctiones quamvis in eadem facie tamen quasi
29. omnia sine remissione sine varietate, vi summa vocis et totius corporis
contentione dicebam. Cicero, Brutus 313. In the same dialogue one can catch
glimpses of other orators, who are branded as uniformly slow, calm, excited, et
delivery.
30. quod notavi, ut appareret, non solum in membris causae, set etiam in
articulis esse aliquam pronuntiandi variatatem, sine qua nihil neque maius neque
31. Ausonius, in Miloniam 36. The published revised version of the speech
opens with an ironic reminder of this moment "Did I fear . . ." (etsi vereor...).
33. femur ferire, quod Athenis primus fecisse creditur Cleon. . . Quintilian
11.3.123.
34. ut in tanta per omnes gentes nationesque linguae diversitate hic mihi
36. quid est orator? vir bonus dicendi peritus. Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica
37. Sinclair 1993, 570-71. Sinclair 1995b offers even more extensive analysis
38. Sententia est oratio sumpta de vita, quae aut quid sit aut quid esse oporteat
39. Again, Sinclair 1993 offers a thorough study of the sociology of the Ad
Herennium (see especially 563). In general, Sinclair believes that the author is quite
rules much less elitist than other alternatives. Compare MacKendrick 1948. For a
which follows up on Marx 1894. Of course, "popular" in this context should only be
read as less elitist than the most extreme Roman positions: advocating certain
policies beneficial to the lower classes did not imply believing that anyone other
40. Kennedy 1972, 114-38, discusses this work in general. Grube 1962, 237-
38, and Bonner 1977, 79, talk about its pedantic style. Cicero disparages this work
at De oratore 1.5. The refusal of the simple prescriptive style is thus an opening
41. MacKendrick 1948 also reads Cicero's theoretical texts as written for "in-
siders." On the other hand, Ruch 1958 emphasizes the international quality of
Cicero's thought. Hence the elite of ability or culture need not be narrowly con-
thus makes room for relative arrivistes such as himself while also requiring com-
plete submission to the dominant cultural paradigm. The perils and pitfalls of such
Chapter 2
Boltanski 1971 offer useful sociological analyses of bodies and gestures. Mauss 1973
remains a classic within this realm. Graf 1991 investigates Quintilian from this
perspective. Tuite 1993 examines the semiotics of gestures. Butler 1989 and Lash
1984 examine the body from within critical theory. Jackson 1983 attempts to de-
scribe a body that is anterior to all signs and radically independent from language.
The present analysis focuses on the production of meanings of the body and the
mance can be found in Gleason 1995. Fantham 1982 examines Quintilian's relation-
4. See Bardon 1952, 2:111-12 for some discussion of these lost works.
sexuality not as a fact or substance but as a story that has to be repeatedly and
7. See Cicero, Pro S. Roscio Amerino 84, Pro Milone 32, and Philippicae
2.35.
Hegel 1977, 111-19, and I have borrowed the idiom of Hegel as well.
10. Such knowledges could be connected with Foucault's call for other econo-
11. Compare Isocrates' Antidosis and Against the Sophists. See also the discus-
12. Verum illi persuasione sua fruantur, qui hominibus ut sint oratores satis
238 NOTES TO PAGES 64-73
putant nasci: nostro labori dent ueniam, qui nihil credimus esse perfectum nisi ubi
natura cura iuuetur. Quintilian 11.3.11. This section will be discussed at greater
13. ideoque in iis primum est bene adfici et concipere imagines rerum et
14. See Derrida 1976 and my arguments in the preceding chapter and in the
introduction.
15. Compare Lucian, De saltatione 63. The arguments there, even if they
become hyperbolic, depend upon the legibility of dance. In an extreme case, a man
performing the madness of Ajax seems to go as crazy as his subject: he nearly kills
16. (gestus) qui et ipse uoci consentit et animo cum ea simul paret. 11.3.65.
19. Compare also Seneca, Epistulae morales 114 for a long fugue on body and
stylistic criticism. The spirit and the body's movements are made to coincide, and
then the dissolute life and speech of Maecenas are read through this thesis. A
philosophical regulation of the soul thus becomes necessary for any moral speaker.
One can think as well of Dionysius of Halicarnassus' On the Ancient Orators, where
20. See Foucault 1979, 184, for the conjoint constitution and extraction of
knowledge that takes place in examination. See also Foucault 1979, 305, where
retical analysis produces the object of its inquiry. Foucault calls this "domination-
observation."
21. This passage is discussed in more detail when the topic of actors in general
22. The Latin phrase appears in Quintilian 11.3.1, which is referring to Cic-
23. Against Quintilian's version see Fortunatianus, Ars rhetorica 2.1. This
author boldly claims to exhaust the topic of characterization with his twenty-one
such as Quintilian's. It may be said in Fortunatianus' favor, though, that his student
is assured of ready comprehension of other souls and indeed even of his own.
24. Further discussion of these terms can be found in the final chapter.
quality. This passage seems to restrict itself to the opposition between the Roman
and the provincial, but I would like to read the urbane more fully. Urbanity is the
quality possessed by the sophisticated and socially prominent man of the city. He is
a man of authority, and one recognizes his hegemony, but cannot exactly say from
26. See Quintilian 11.3.138-39, and compare 11.3.69 and 11.3.159 on the
body and head. Everywhere Quintilian requires propriety and straightness: there is
27. Thalmann 1988 and Rose 1988 argue that the sociology of this scene is
NOTES TO PAGES 74-84 239
complex and that the reactions that it would engender in its audience are by no
28. Manus uero, sine quibus trunca esset actio ac debilis, uix dici potest quot
illustrations.
31. Est admirationi conueniens ille gestus, quo manus modice supinata ac per
singulos a minimo collecta digitos redeunte flexu simul explicatur atque conuertitur.
32. Est et illa caua et rara et supra umeri altitudinem elata cum quodam motu
uelut hortatrix manus, a peregrinis scholis tamen prope recepta tremula scaenica.
Rara is to be taken in the sense offered by the Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. rarus
33. manus cum sensu et inciperet et deponeretur: alioqui enim aut ante uocem
erit gestus aut post uocem, quod est utrumque deforme. 11.3.106.
34. 11.3.107. Compare the discussion of Antonius' use of his hands in Cicero,
Brutus 141: "his hands kept to the general tenor of his speech, but they did not
express its ideas word-for-word" (gestus erat non verba exprimens, sed cum sen-
tentiis congruens).
35. These last are clearly the same beats as Cicero's "more subtle rhythm"
36. Praecipuum uero in actione sicut in corpore ipso caput est, cum ad illum de
37. Plerumque tamen et uox temperata et gestus modestus et sedens umero toga
11.3.161.
38. One can also compare 11.3.70, which tells how the head should follow the
gestures.
39. See Needham 1973, which brings together a number of classic essays on
the sociology of the left and right. His selection includes Lloyd 1962, which covers
classical philosophy.
40. Compare Graf 1991, 47, on bodily and spiritual self-control in Quintilian's
gestures.
41. Gleason 1995 gives an excellent discussion of the sociology of the voice
42. Quare uocem deliciis non molliamus, nec inbuatur ea consuetudine quam
desideratura sit, sed exercitatio eius talis sit qualis usus . . . sedfirmetur consuetudine.
43. Longissime fugienda mollis actio, qualem in Titio Cicero dicit fuisse, unde
etiam saltationis quoddam genus Titius sit appellatum. 11.3.128. Dancing was a
45. quod ambulatio, unctio, ueneris abstinentia, facilis ciborum digestio, id est
frugalitas, praestat.
46. Compare Butler 1997a, 28-38, for a reading of the "injurious action of
Ramage 1961 recognizes the exclusionary tactics inhering within urbanity. Ramage
240 NOTES TO PAGES 84-95
1963 traces the historical variations in the semantic field of urbanitas from the
1952, 170, for the connection between urbanitas and the elitist Attic style. The
aggressive side of urbanitas is also clear from Quintilian's use at 6.3.104 of the
believes that Cicero and Quintilian use the term in the same manner.
48. Foucault said the same of the prisoner caught in the panopticon (1979,
202-3).
Chapter 3
1. See Fantham 1982 for the issues of traditional and original material in
Quintilian 11.3.
2. Kiuhnert 1994, 163-68, discusses the relationship of the vir bonus to the
3. See Bourdieu 1991, 127-36, for the practical politics of the "theory effect"
But Aristotle's version is made more as a cutting aside than as a part of an exposi-
5. Michel 1981, 116, points out that for Cicero as well heart and tongue
should coincide. Michel situates this position within ancient philosophical disputes.
thenes, quid esset in toto dicendi opere primum interrogatus, pronuntiationi palmam
uideri posset non praecipuam sed solam iudicasse. This same anecdote as preserved
in Cicero's De oratore is the starting point for WOhrle's discussion of actio. See
Wohrle 1990.
ero's thoughts on character and oratory. He adds the observation that prior knowl-
edge of the orator by his audience was important in Cicero's thinking (1943, 474).
This idea turns the whole of a man's life into a performance. Grant's documenta-
8. The image is specifically musical; for example, the striking of the chords of
a lyre. The body is an instrument, the orator a virtuoso player. The good performer
cussed by Quintilian and other theorists. It is worth noting, though, that the distinc-
tion between Quintilian and his foes turns on the self-consciousness of this relation-
ship to the past. Against Quintilian, though, see Ramage 1961, 486, for Cotta's
ludorum is sound, then a "licentious" festal scene is being invoked and talarium,
NOTES TO PAGES 96-110 241
"of ankles" (?!), conceals the name for a specific festival. There have been a
variety of interesting guesses: Rademacher 1971 suggested but did not print
ludorum saltatoriorum. Cousin 1979 documents other efforts. Cousin himself ac-
cepts Lydorum et Carum licentia, "the licence of the Lydians and Carians," and he
notes the association of these peoples with the exotic rites of Cybele. Win-
11. See Gunderson 1997; Riggsby 1995; and Leach 1990 for more on Pliny's
12. This debate persists up to the present: see Butler's rereading of Althusser
(1997b, 106-31).
13. Sinclair 1995b, 124, also reads this scene for its aggressive contest over
14. Why, for example, is the De corona evoked so often, with the Philippics
appearing to come in second place? What are the consequences of this selected
15. McCarty 1989 surveys mirrors in antiquity but omits any Lacanian observa-
tions despite some efforts at explaining the psychoanalytic implications of his mate-
16. The wealth of other possibilities for a reading of a passage about truth and
vision can be appreciated by referring to the encyclopaedic Jay 1993. See Rose 1986
17. This is derived from Lacan 1988b, 243, and Lacan's subsequent commen-
19. See Kristeva 1982. Butler 1993 and 1989 are also useful here.
of Lacan's thought along the lines indicated by Althusser. Butler 1997b also engages
21. See Butler 1997b, 31-62 for a reading of Hegel's "unhappy conscious-
22. Lacan 1981, 79-90. This can be fruitfully compared to Jay 1993, 275-98,
and his discussion of Sartre, the mirror, and the gaze of the other. Jay (288) cites
23. Compare the prisoner who becomes the principle of his own subjection
within the optical apparatus of the panopticon. See Foucault 1979, 202-3.
24. An account of such transgressions and the policing of oratory against their
25. The Latin words surrounding these terms would be virilitas, adfectus,
auctoritas, and fides. The text of Quintilian is saturated with these words and their
cognates.
26. The following are merely examples. Provincials: latent in all uses of ur-
banitas such as at 11.3.30; barbarism: 11.3.69; animals: latrare non agere: "that's
27. An image more native to the antique scene might be brigandage or piracy.
horrible crime such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, et cetera. This pure fantasy of
an alien social order is perhaps more telling of the sort of symbolic violence at the
Chapter 4
1985 and Bartsch 1994. On the Roman theater in general, see D6nes 1977 and
Grimal 1973. Cousin 1973 and Dumont 1973 discuss the relationship of Quintilian
2. See Edwards 1993, 98-136, and Green 1933 on the morality of acting. On
Remus.
related to prostitutes, actors, and gladiators. The actor's legal and social position
performative self.
sents the site at which the male subject deposits his lack." Compare Rose 1982, 40-
a male sign.
7. Michel 1971; Butchner 1964, 212-13; and Schulte 1935 discuss the phrase
veritatis ipsius actores. Cicero's relationship to the intellectual traditions laid down
by Isocrates and Plato figures prominently in each of these accounts. On Cicero and
Isocrates, see Laughton 1961 and Smethurst 1953. See Douglas 1973, 95, for a
Likewise, Hobsbawm 1983 ought to make us wary of all traditions and careful to
always search out more proximate explanations for traditional arguments here and
elsewhere. Douglas 1973, 108-15, also offers a useful critique of any simple version
of truth in Cicero and Quintilian as it relates to the arts: truth (veritas) must include
beauty (pulchritudo). Truth, the imitation of truth, and the production of truth are
speeches. See 1993, 306, for an ironic instance of Cicero claiming that an actor was
9. The "easiest" words can provoke the most difficulty. Compare with the
problem of agere, "to do," the difficulties of amare, "to love" (Gunderson 1997).
10. Silverman 1992, 5. Butler also adopts the bodily ego for her project (1993,
58). Both Butler and Silverman are reflecting on the early pages of Freud's The Ego
11. Butler 1993, 110, speaks of the erotics of prohibition. The phrase "Criti-
cally Queer" provides the title to Butler's last chapter, a politicized finale to the
12. Bonner 1949, 20-21, reviews the passages in which stage training is said to
aid in declamation.
male is to female within the realm of beauty. The Latin terms are dignitas, venustas,
and pulchritudo. The pleasure of effeminate beauty attaches itself to the male body
only after being first sanctioned by mastery and pain. Gonfroy 1978 explicitly links
14. It is very unusual to see &&O eot as delivery. But Liddell and Scott 1968,
NOTES TO PAGES 126-46 243
s.v. taeotg I.2.b, cites this passage and gives Longinus, Ars rhetorica 104 (ed.
sition" and as indicative of the order of one's words. However, the point of this
passage is narrowly directed toward performance, and so too would rearranging the
word order of a piece of poetry render it unmetrical and hence less pleasing.
15. See Gotoff 1993, 312-13, for the variety of Cicero's dramatic personae;
but one must note as well the masks Cicero will not assume.
and opposed to brazenness (audacia). But these words have a sort of sexual ethics
to them in addition to their political aspect. On the political use of pudor and its
17. Krenkel 1981 surveys Roman slurs against fellatio. Parker 1997 offers a
structuralist account of Roman sexual norms as they relate to the distinction be-
18. For Hortensius the outlandish, "Asiatic" speaker, see Cicero, Brutus 325
19. And see Hellegouarc'h 1963, 174-75 for studium as political attachment.
It should be recalled that the study of letters is a political study after its own fashion.
20. Translators of this passage are well aware of the prejudices against acting.
Indeed they are so conscious of them that they can force Cicero to be critical rather
1962 offers, "his delivery and gesture even a little too studied for the orator."
Martha 1960 reads, "Dans sa tenue et dans son geste il y avait un art etude, trop
6tudie pour un orateur." Kytzler 1970 is far closer to the original phrasing: "in
22. The Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. latus 1.C. offers a variety of references.
Catullus 6.13 is not mentioned there, but it is quite explicit: with its latera ecfututa,
24. Compare Habinek 1998, 69-87. Habinek explains that because "the legiti-
macy of the state and its elites was always open to contestation" (69), the fantasy of
25. The text is corrupt at this point. Becher suggested swxwoav, from toxa-
o0at, an uncommon word that means "to mimic" and hence also "to jest or ridicule."
26. Cicero says that Antonius' delivery had gestures that fitted with the words
sttQov iQLtorov. Nevertheless, the idea and the epigrammatic phrasing are closely
Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages, was said to have been the author of this quot-
able quote.
28. Silverman 1992, 195. Compare Rose 1986, 181. See also Silverman 1992,
192, for the close affinity of conventional subjectivity and moral masochism.
29. Compare Silverman 1992, 142-43, on Fassbinder's film Ali: Fear Eats the
Soul: "The look foregrounds the desiring subjectivity of the figure from whom
it issues, a subjectivity which pivots upon lack, whether or not that lack is
244 NOTES TO PAGES 149-57
deny the void upon which it rests both through a sadistic identification with the
gaze, and through the projection of insufficiency onto Ali." The theoreticians of
rhetoric, as their name implies, would here be like the German coworkers who
look upon the Arab's body in fascination, and the actor corresponds to Ali.
Chapter 5
2. Jones 1986, 6-8, provides a brief biography of Lucian. Jones' work care-
fully documents Lucian and the world in which he lived, and it argues for an author
whose interests were as timely as they were literary. The literary aspect has tradi-
tionally dominated Lucian scholarship. Moreover, ever since Bompaire 1958 the
Lucian.
in Lucian.
4. Bowersock 1969 provides the seminal study of the social and political
context of intellectuals who were part of the so-called Second Sophistic. More
recently, Anderson 1985 and 1993 offer insights into this same milieu.
5. One can compare Fitzgerald 1989, which explores pleasure and literary
the master-slave relation in Horace's writings offers the most overlap with the
7. See Bardon 1940, 51, for a brief summary of the ambiguity surrounding
the degree of professional and practical activity indicated by the term rhetor in
tore, Brutus, and the Orator use it, as do Tacitus' Dialogus and Seneca the Elder's
9. One might object to this reading of the passage that it privileges the
association between 6vo ac and Elvat while ignoring the qualification of "seeming"
as implicit in bo aLg. But here one only needs to note that seeing is itself yoked to
Ecp' oTq) xa Tov1oaLt nTokkXXa xazt LyQUvocv t xa LTav 6OtoUv ToToetvat E (Lov.
Praeceptor 2.
11. Altius tamen ibunt qui ad summa nitentur quam qui praesumpta despera-
tione quo uelint euadendi protinus circa ima substiterint. Quintilian 1.pr.18-20.
12. Wyke 1994, 137, explains the illegitimate politics of male cosmetics. See
also Richlin 1995 on Roman cosmetics. Note especially Richlin 1995, 204-5 for
the example of an orator using cosmetics in Pliny, Epistulae 6.2. As was the case
with singing, the prohibition indicates that there were real practitioners of the
"abomination."
13. Plutarch advises us that we can learn from the abuses of our enemies if
they contain some note of truth, like the insult that reproached "Pompey for scratch-
NOTES TO PAGES 158-69 245
ing his head with one finger, though he was totally removed from effeminacy and
14. This example of xataqcpQ6ovrlol is taken from Aristotle, Politics 1312al. For
12.37-39.
15. See Jones 1986, 106: this was the title given Herodes by his pupils.
16. As was mentioned in the introduction, Foucault 1990b and 1988a have
shaped much of the subsequent discussion. Halperin 1990 underlies most discus-
sions within classics. Within Roman studies, see the essays collected in Hallett and
thought.
17. Lucian is not alone: Gonfroy 1978 sees femininity, passive homosexuality,
19. For an account of the polite ideal, see Schottlaender 1967. Compare
where he sees the Asiatic style as self-consciously populist. Laughton 1961, 32,
argues that certain habits of metaphor and clauses betokens Asianism. Hence it
23. o La t T Tg nakatLag SQ yaoLag otLv, 'HylooV xcd Towv 6a1p KoQLtov xaL
yo~tatg. Praeceptor 9.
24. Leen 1991 argues from the art and statues at Cicero's villa that sculpted
and is formed of lines. Each line is a yQ9aUl. The line and the letter are closely
related, but not properly confused where lines (yact al) represent something like
penmanship. See Plato, Protagoras 326d for this. Nevertheless, writing retains an
27. Yet see Romm 1990, 78, and the discussion of the irreverence with which
28. See Wohl 1996 for the ambiguities of these statues of elites as symbols of
Athenian democracy.
29. This Pollux may even be the Pollux whose Onomasticon still survives. See
30. Compare Richlin 1993 on outlaw sexualities at Rome and the problems
31. Dover 1978 remains a classic study. Dover's own hesitations in the face of
various erotic possibilities fall very much in line with the account of homosexuality
246 NOTES TO PAGES 170-83
to which most ancient literature invites its readers. See Veyne 1982 and MacMullen
1982 for brief overviews of homosexuality at Rome. Many of the essays contained
in Hallett and Skinner 1997 offer more detailed analyses of these questions as they
32. Liddell and Scott 1968, s.v. Jti ;g VI: these are the cubits of inundation
33. A comic sequel to the marriage to rhetoric can be found in Lucian's Bis
accusatus. Rhetoric complains that her Syrian husband has been unfaithful. The
groom's desertion is provoked by the wantonness of his wife, and he leaves her
in favor of a homosexual affair with Dialogue. See Bis accusatus 31. Branham
1989, 34-37, summarizes the moves in the case and relates them to Lucian's
biography.
34. Compare Petronius, Satyricon 2 for Egypt's role in the death of painting.
In Petronius the decline is directly compared to the death of rhetoric at the hands of
35. Wyke 1994, 141, examines feminine adornment, foreignness, and male
panic.
36. For race, see Fanon 1982 and Memmi 1965. For women, see Kristeva
1982; Irigaray 1985; and Butler 1993, 38-42, on Irigaray and Plato.
38. Compare Wohrle 1990, 43, on Aristotle and Cleon: "Die maBlose nox6QLt-
ot; ist Begleiter und damit zugleich Signum einer schlechten politischen Verfassung."
alone and blames it on the depravity (so O1Qla) of the masses. See also Fortenbaugh
1986 and Lossau 1971, 156-58, on this topic. This moral matrix of actors, audience,
39. Compare Lacan on the psychoanalytic force of "I see myself seeing my-
horror that is in its turn supposed to elicit a laugh from the play's audience.
44. Richlin 1984 explores the ancient anxieties relating to female genitals and
45. See Branham 1989, 38 and notes, for even more parallels than those that
follow.
46. This ambiguous naming occurs only at the end of the figure's own narra-
47. olx la7r low be oE J OOOtL[otg S bovig, aka' fJIeQ o LOEoi bL~0Eoav t
48. Compare Branham 1989, 28, for a more directly autobiographical reading
of this scene.
NOTES TO PAGES 183-91 247
50. Romm 1990, 95-98, examines Lucian's use of wax as a more potent
image than stone for his own artistry. Youthful play and plasticity figure more
Lucian than the one that follows. But whatever freedom we allow Lucian as
author, the sexual and social milieu within which he finds this liberty remains
uniformly harsh. His liberty is born of a sort of servitude whose traces are more
than still legible: they are reinscribed time and again in his work.
Somnium 4.
to5ov taueTLVOg, avaxt0v 6bE o6E3tote otb Av6Qw&eg o6bi XieOegov oi6v
E3TLVOCOV.
Chapter 6
1. Compare Frank 1930, 30-31. Also see Frank 1930, 160: "[R]ules were for
rary explicit instruction. And here explicitness recalls the ethical problems of actors
from earlier chapters. Of course, relative to Cicero, Quintilian seems most explicit.
3. Hall 1996. Hall owes a large debt to the work of Leeman, and more
literature.
love.
7. The problem of allegory and the conflation of Cicero with Crassus will be
discussed below. Here let it be said that accepting the invitation to identify the two
figures has important political consequences for reading Latin literature in general,
Leach 1993. Leach's use of Derrida and Lacan to examine the problem of absence
and desire in Cicero's De amicitia is not unlike the problem of political loss and
1875. Translations and editions: Courbaud 1967 and Rackham 1942. See also Ken-
nedy 1972, 80-90, on Antonius and Crassus in the history of Roman oratory.
10. Jones 1939, 317-29, assays the accuracy of characterization in the De ora-
tore. But Jones verifies this dialogue by repeated appeals to Cicero's Brutus: one text
vouches for another. Grimal 1995, 198, offers a view that is somewhat more subtle
than ones that require more accuracy of characterization. Grimal sees Cicero as
248 NOTES TO PAGES 192-208
philosophical inquiry. This view still limits the question of character to one of genre.
12. Gramm. 7.520.4. Compare Isidore, diff 1.163. Also see Gramm. 7.530.27
for the idea that decor itself is abstract relative to bodily beauty: decor is a quality of
one's bearing, beauty is a quality of individual parts (decor in habitu est, species in
membris).
13. Kroll 1903, 568-70, examines ornamentation in the De oratore and its
14. Oliensis 1991, 107. She then goes on to explore Horace's attacks on fe-
male sexuality as a means to shore up his own virile decorum. As we have seen, the
orators employ the same tactics relative to women, foreigners, and slaves.
15. Santoro L'Hoir 1992 offers a thorough study of vir and homo. Despite the
usefulness of her discussion, she seems to overstate matters: from what follows it
will be clear that I cannot agree that homo is primarily a negative term while vir is
positive. Instead I only agree that vir is highly positive and that homo is therefore
available for numerous other uses including uses that are frequently negative, pas-
lowly by using homo of him: the passage actually has the inverse meaning.
16. si vis homo esse, recipe te ad nos. Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum 4.15.2.
18. heri enim inquit hoc mihi proposueram, ut, si te refellissem, hos a te
19. Hellegouarc'h 1963, 142-51, covers the purely political use of amare and
20. quid censes, Cotta, nisi studium et ardorem quendam amoris? sine quo cum
in vita nihil quisquam egregium, tum certe hoc, quid tu expetis, nemo umquam
21. The learned speaker or doctus orator figures prominently in Kroll 1903
philosophy and rhetoric, restoring them to a prior unity attributed to them. See
23. See Habinek 1998, 60-61, on the social politics of the expulsion.
24. ita sit nobis igitur ornatus et suavis orator-nec tamen potest aliter esse-ut
3.103. Once again Courbaud's translation captures the spirit of the passage right
down to its sexuality: "Que l'orateur ait donc du brilliant et du charme (sans ces
qualit6s, il ne serait pas orateur), mais un charme viril et r6el, qui ne soit ni
douceatre ni fade."
25. See also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 3.41 for an attack on Epicurean
suavitas.
26. Fowler 1909, 177-78, imagines pudor as prominent in the old, hardly
28. The equation of shame and fear is also evident from agitation (com-
29. See Freud 1963 [1911], 162-64. Compare the "allegorical" reading of
30. fuit enim mirificus quidam in Crasso pudor, qui tamen non modo non
1.122.
useful exercise that reads the speeches through the technical literature. Gotoff 1993
33. De oratore 1.149ff. To this passage one should compare 2.96. In that place
34. For speech and writing as mutual supports in ancient rhetoric, see Bahmer
1991, 77-97.
35. De oratore 3.15. Compare 1.16, which concerns oratory as a whole: "As-
suredly this is something greater than men believe it to be" (sed nimirum maius est
hoc quiddam quam homines opinantur). The description of the art and the artist
again echo one another. This passage, though, is done in the author's own voice and
36. Michel 1981, 120, traces the movement in Cicero from to JQEeov/decet to
37. Ergo hoc sit primum in praeceptis meis, ut demonstremus, quem imitetur;
39. Atque esse tamen multos videmus, qui neminen imitentur et suapte natura,
Ancient Orators 4.2. Hidber 1996, 56-74, offers a commentary on the passage and a
modern bibliography on the topic. Bonner 1969, 39-58, offers a speculative recon-
by Dionysius.
41. Effudi vobis omnia quae sentiebam, quae fortasse, quemcumque patrem-
drick 1948, 344-45, highlights the elitism of the relationship of the De oratore to
explicit instructions.
43. This term is used in a complaint of Crassus' from 1.263. See also the
44. The problem of oratory's status as an art is actually one of the main
themes of the dialogue. See, for example, 1.107-10, 1.135, 1.205-8, 2.29-30, and
45. cum dico me, te, Brute, dico; nam in me quidem iam pridem effectum est
46. Compare the "allegorical" readings of the various essays of Lucian from
47. This treatise was written around 87 B.C.E. and is disparaged in De oratore
48. Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v. patere. Entries 3, 5, and 6 allow for such a
250 NOTES TO PAGES 221-28
reading, and the other passages from Cicero suggest that we should insert this
49. Hoc quod audire vulgo soles, quod apud Graecos in proverbium cessit:
talis hominibus fuit oratio qualis vita. Seneca, Epistulae morales 114.2.
Conclusion
1. For actio as only a part of his interests, see Gotoff 1993, 289 n. 1.
3. Derrida 1979, 35. Nietzsche's phrase was "der anstoBigste Philologe des
Trages."
on the facing page: hence this reference is to "less than one page."
whether Nietzsche ought to be employed at all. The text for him displays nothing
but the grossest ignorance. Wilamowitz complains that Nietzsche has eschewed the
ment and a call for more who would follow in the footsteps of Wilamowitz see
Groth 1950.
style.
7. See Nietzsche 1956, 3-15. These paragraphs are from part 4 of his Zara-
thustra and have been reprinted as material introductory to The Birth of Tragedy.
8. Goldhill 1995 calls for such a project and indicates the extent to which
though, that works like Kennedy 1994 and Gleason 1995 remain incomplete in this
regard. Wardy 1996 engages metarhetoric, but it avoids rhetorical handbooks and
lists both Jarratt 1991 and Poulakos 1994 among his examples of progressive reread-
ings of rhetoric.
10. See, for example, Hallett 1992 for a meditation of problems of method.
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Accius, 132
Aeschines, 164
Ajax, 64n. 15
Alcibiades, 203
Antisthenes, 203
191,191n.9,195-96,196n.15,197-
99,201,203,206,214-15,218n.43,
220
Atreus, 142
Augustine, 31n. 8
Ausonius, 46
188,210, 213
95,127, 131,228
183n. 48
Brown, P., 9
109,112-13,113n,114-15,116n.10,
117,117n,135,139-40,147,173,
Carneades, 204
Castor, 166-67
262 GENERAL INDEX
Cicero, Q., 6
Clarke, M., 32
Cleobulus, 137n. 27
Clodia, 126
Corax, 12
24
111n. 1
218n. 43
Crawford, J., 2n
Critias, 165-66
de Beauvoir, S., 96
213, 215
212-13,215
21
Democritus, 144
Dionysus, 128-30
211
Dupont, E, 111n. 1
174-75,179, 185,203,229
Electra, 140-41
Ennius, 132
Epicharmus, 180
GENERAL INDEX 263
178-79
nus
81n. 41,105,227n. 8
Gorgias, 14n
229
Griffith, M., ix
164n. 21,220n
222
Harmodius, 166-67
Helen, 171
202n. 19
Heracles, 180-82
Herzfeld, M., 9
205,208
140, 164n. 21
Iteration, 69,213
10
42
32
Martin, J., 31
Messala, 59-60
Milo, 157
Mourning, 3
Napoleon, 219
Narducci, E., 2n
Nature, vii
Nesiotes, 165-66
3, 4, 227,227nn. 5-7,228n
Nigidius, 31
Orestes, 140-41
Ovid, 198
Pacuvius, 144-46
Pericles, 204
Phidias, 166
163-64,173n.36,174-75,203,212
191-92, 200-201,208
Plutarch, 101,120-23,141-42
Polus, 140-41,146
Sardanapalus, 154-55,157-58
Saussure,E, 152
Scaevola, 55
Scylla, viii
Seneca, 51
52n, 98n
31
Sophocles, 121,140-41
Stasimon, 195
Suetonius, 31
Terence, 138
188-89, 223
Theophrastus, 31
Thersites, 72
Thyestes, 142
Tisias, 12
Titius, 81
Torquatus, 128-30
Verres, 126
228
Alexander
Aristophanes
Clouds: 149
Thesmophoriazousai: 179n
130-45:158
Aristotle
1403b34: 175n. 38
1407b11: 38n. 18
1408a23-25: 90n
1413b4:38
1413b9: 12n. 24
Athenaeus
Ausonius
Catullus
Cicero
Academica 2.64:209
Ad Atticum 4.13.2:190
4.15.1: 197
4.15.2: 196n. 16
46:12n.25
59:213
163:55
171:72n.25
210:47
302:130
302-3:131
313: 44n. 29
De amicitia: 191n. 8
1.9: 29n. 2
2.6: 12n. 25
1.6: 212n
1.23:191,220
1.78: 33n
1.91: 12n. 25
1.92::54
1.94: 33n
1.107-10: 218n. 44
1.118:200-201,206
1.119-20: 206
1.120-21:207
1.121:206
1.122: 208n. 30
1.123: 206n
1.126: 218n. 43
1.129:118
1.129-30:119
1.134: 202n. 20
1.135: 218n. 44
1.149: 210n
1.150:210
1.151:211
1.159:215
1.199:193
1.204:214
268 INDEX LOCORUM
Cicero (continued)
De oratore (continued)
2.17: 199
2.17-18:221
2.28::199
2.29:195
2.29-30: 218n. 44
2.30:54
2.33-34:194
2.69:220
2.84: 220
2.90-92:214
2.91: 215n. 42
2.96: 215
2.98: 215
2.150:214
2.180: 220
2.189: 143
2.193-94:143-44
2.201: 218n. 44
2.232:218
2.247:221
3.3: 190
3.14: 212
3.15:212
3.34-36: 215
3.38: 220
3.47: 217
3.48: 217
3.52:217
3.53:221
3.54:217,220
3.62:203
3.71:203-5,218
3.79-80:204
3.85: 120
3.91-95: 218
3.94:204
3.98: 220
3.103: 205n. 24
3.108-43: 204n. 22
3.213: 30
3.214:111
3.220:132
3.222: 67n
6.25:192
2.34.85: 203
5.33.86:125
5.62.162:125
7: 6n. 7
55: 67n
57: 76n. 35
110:219n.45
Philippicae: 2
2.14.35: 60n. 7
Pro Archia: 2n
1.1: 48n
8.19:48
5.14: 42n
20.57: 209
INDEX LOCORUM 269
Hesiod
Theogony 81-94:107
24:168
34:168
109-19:168
Hippocrates
Epidemics 2.6.15: 79
Homer
Iliad 174
2.212-69:72
3.217: 53
Isocrates
Antidosis: 63n. 11
Longinus
Lucian
64: 64n. 15
83: 64n. 15
2-3: 152-53
4:168
6: 170
8:168
9:163,165n.23
10:164n,168
12-13:159
14:161
15: 161
16:162
17:175
18:173
19: 174
20:174, 176
21: 176
23:178
24:167
Somnium 1:183
4:184
5:184
6:184
12: 184
13:184
Petronius
Satyricon 2: 173n. 34
Plato
Phaedrus, 276a8:3
Symposium: 203
Plautus
Pliny
Plutarch
142
9.4: 101
11.2-4: 123
11.3: 101
270 INDEX LOCORUM
Quintilian (continued)
10.3.30:101
10.5.2:210
11.3.1: 67n
11.3.2:90-91
11.3.10-11:94
11.3.14: 90
11.3.19: 82n. 44
11.3.23:81
11.3.24: 81
11.3.30: 109n. 26
11.3.30-32:82
11.3.31: 109n. 26
11.3.35-36:36
11.3.47-51:44
11.3.51: 46n. 30
11.3.54:101
11.3.57: 125,133n. 21
11.3.58: 95
11.3.58-60: 162n. 18
11.3.61:63
11.3.61-62: 93
11.3.62: 91
11.3.64: 81
11.3.65-67: 64, 75
11.3.65: 64n. 16
11.3.72: 74, 76
11.3.72-84:76
11.3.76:76
11.3.78: 76
11.3.80:76
11.3.83: 80
11.3.84:48
11.3.87: 50n. 34
11.3.92:74
11.3.96-97:48
11.3.100:74
11.3.103:75
11.3.104: 74
11.3.106: 75n. 33
11.3.107: 75n. 34
11.3.108:48
11.3.112:80
11.3.114: 79
11.3.115:48
11.3.117: 83
11.3.120:100
11.3.122:77
11.3.123: 49n
11.3.125: 79
11.3.126: 84, 99
11.3.129: 100
11.3.130-33:80
11.3.133:84
11.3.137: 71,215n. 42
11.3.138-39: 72n. 26
11.3.143: 31n. 9
INDEX LOCORUM 271
Ternece
Eunuch: 140
44-45: 138
Vergil
Aeneid: 35, 44
1.1-2: 36
1.78: 39n. 21
1.335: 37n. 15
1.617: 39n. 21
3.620: 37n. 15
11.383: 39n. 21
C. Iulius Victor
82.5-9: 32n. 10
Xenophon
2.1.22: 181
2.1.26: 181n
2.1.27: 182n
2.1.28: 182
2.1.30: 182