Shows how Greek declamation's staging of the Classical past was of vital importance for the Greek imperial present.

Ancient declamation—the practice of delivering speeches on the basis of fictitious scenarios—defies easy categorization. It stands at the crossroads of several modern disciplines. It is only within the past few decades that the full complexity of declamation, and the promise inherent in its study, have come to be recognized. This volume, which contains thirteen essays from an international team of scholars, engages with the multidisciplinary nature of declamation, focusing in particular on the various interactions in declamation between rhetoric, literature, law, and ethics. Contributions pursue a range of topics, but also complement each other. Separate essays by Brescia, Lentano, and Lupi explore social roles—their tensions and expectations—as defined through declamation. With similar emphasis on historical circumstances, Quiroga Puertas and Tomassi consider the adaptation of rhetorical material to frame contemporary realities. Schwartz draws attention to the sometimes hazy borderline between declamation and the courtroom. The relationship between laws and declamation, a topic of abiding importance, is examined in studies by Berti, Breij, and Johansson. Also with an eye to the complex interaction between laws and declamation, Pasetti offers a narratological analysis of cases of poisoning. Citti discovers the concept of natural law represented in declamatory material. While looking at a case of extreme cruelty, Huelsenbeck evaluates the nature of declamatory language, emphasizing its use as an integral instrument of performance events. Zinsmaier looks at discourse on the topic of torture in rhetorical and legal contexts.

This book sets the practice of declamation in its historical context and discusses the declaimers' public performances and use of classical literature and history.

The reconstruction of the prosody of a dead language is, on the face of it, an almost impossible undertaking. However, once a general theory of prosody has been developed from eliable data in living languages, it is possible to exploit texts as sources of answers to questions that would normally be answered in the laboratory. In this work, the authors interpret the evidence of Greek verse texts and musical settings in the framework of a theory of prosody based on crosslinguistic evidence and experimental phonetic and psycholinguistic data, and reconstruct the syllable structure, rhythm, accent, phrasing, and intonation of classical Greek speech. Sophisticated statistical analyses are employed to support an impressive range of new findings which relate not only to phonetics and phonology, but also to pragmatics and the syntax-phonology interface.

Situated at the crossroads of rhetoric and fiction, the genre of declamatio offers its practitioners the freedom to experiment with new forms of discourse. This volume places the literariness of Roman declamation into the spotlight by showcasing its theoretical influences, stylistic devices, and generic conventions as related by Seneca the Elder, the author of the Controversiae and Suasoriae, which jointly make up the largest surviving collection of declamatory speeches from antiquity. Authored by an international group of leading scholars of Latin literature and rhetoric, the chapters explore not only the historical roles of individual declaimers, but also the physical and linguistic techniques upon which they collectively drew. In addition, the 'dark side of declamation' is illuminated by contributions on the competitiveness of the arena and the manipulative potential of declamatory skill and, in keeping with the overall treatment of declamation as a literary phenomenon, a section has also been dedicated to intertextuality. Drawing on thought-provoking analyses of Seneca the Elder's works, the volume highlights the complexity of these texts and maps out, for the first time, the socio-cultural context for their composition, delivery, and reception, as well as providing a comprehensive, innovative, and up-to-date treatment of Roman declamation that will be essential for both students and scholars in the fields of Latin literature, Republican Roman history, and rhetoric.

Declamation - the practice of training young men to speak in public by setting them to compose and deliver speeches on fictional legal cases - was central to the Greek and Roman educational systems over many centuries and has been the subject of a recent explosion of scholarly interest. The work of Michael Winterbottom has been seminal in this regard, and the present volume brings together a broad selection of his scholarly articles and reviews published since 1964, creating an authoritative and accessible resource for this burgeoning field of study. The assembled papers focus on two related topics: the rhetorician Quintilian and ancient declamation in practice. Quintilian, who taught rhetoric at Rome in the second half of the first century AD, was the author of the Institutio Oratoria, a key text for Roman educational practice, rhetoric, and literary criticism. Subjects explored in the present collection range widely over not only the establishment and interpretation of the text and its literary and historical context, but also Quintilian's views on inspiration, morality, philosophy, and declamation, of which he was a practitioner. While the volume also offers detailed examinations of the texts and interpretations of a wide range of Latin and Greek authors of declamations, such as Seneca the Elder, Sopatros, and Ennodius, there is a particular focus on two collections wrongly attributed to Quintilian, the so-called 'Minor' and 'Major Declamations'. A major re-assessment of the manuscript tradition of the latter collection is published here for the first time.

Late Antiquity has attracted a significant amount of attention in recent years. As a historical period it has thus far been defined by the transformation of Roman institutions, the emergence of distinct religious cultures (Jewish, Christian, Islamic), and the transmission of ancient knowledge to medieval and early modern Europe. Despite all this, the study of late antique literary culture is still in its infancy, especially for the Greek and other eastern texts examined in this volume. The contributions here presented make new inroads into a rich literature notable above all for its flexibility and unparalleled creativity in combining multiple languages and literary traditions. The authors and texts discussed include Philostratus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Nonnos of Panopolis, the important St Polyeuktos epigram, and numerous others. The volume makes use of a variety of interdisciplinary approaches in an attempt to provoke discussion on change (Dynamism), literary education (Didacticism), and reception studies (Classicism). The result is a study which highlights the erudition and literary sophistication characteristic of the period and brings questions of contextualization, linguistic association, and artistic imagination to bear on little-known or undervalued texts, without neglecting important evidence from material culture and social practices. With contributions by both established scholars and young innovators in the field of late antique studies, there is no work of comparable authority or scope currently available. This volume will stimulate further interest in a range of untapped texts from Late Antiquity.

This is a study of ekphrasis, the art of making listeners and readers 'see' in their imagination through words alone, as taught in ancient rhetorical schools and as used by Greek writers of the Imperial period (2nd-6th centuries CE). The author places the practice of ekphrasis within its cultural context, emphasising the importance of the visual imagination in ancient responses to rhetoric, poetry and historiography. By linking the theoretical writings on ekphrasis with ancient theories of imagination and emotion and language, she brings out the persuasive and emotive function of vivid language in the literature of the period. In order to explain the ancient understanding of ekphrasis and its place within the larger system of rhetorical training, the study includes a full analysis of the ancient technical sources (rhetorical handbooks, commentaries) which aims to make these accessible to non-specialists.

This book explores the much maligned and misunderstood genre of declamation. Instead of a bastard rhetoric, declamation should be seen as a venue within which the rhetoric of the legitimate self is constructed. These fictions of the self are uncannily real, and these stagey dramas are in fact rehearsals for the serious play of Roman identity. Critics of declamation find themselves recapitulating the very logic of the genre they are refusing. When declamation is read in the light of the contemporary theory of the subject a wholly different picture emerges: this is a canny game played with and within the rhetoric of the self. This book makes broad claims for what is often seen as a narrow topic. An appendix includes a fresh translation and brief discussion of a sample of surviving examples of declamation.

This is the first full-length study of the stepmother in antiquity. Making use of Graeco-Roman sources as well as modern studies of the stepfamily, it demonstrates how the literary stereotype of the stepmother reflects both real-life circumstances and misogynistic prejudice.