Dramatic Speech in the Roman Historians Author(s): N. P. Miller Source: Greece & Rome, Second Series, Vol.

22, No. 1 (Apr., 1975), pp. 45-57 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/642831 Accessed: 25/10/2008 22:52
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Cambridge University Press and The Classical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Greece & Rome.

http://www.jstor.org

DRAMATIC SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

By N. P. MILLER importance significance of the literary convention, there remains among some students of the Classics a persistent folk-memory which asserts that speeches in the ancient historians are rhetorically decorative, deliberately deceptive, and historically inessential. That a speech can be one (or all) of these things is inarguable: but to assume that all speech in historical writing can be so dismissed is dangerous, because such assumption inhibits a full understanding of what a serious ancient historian may be trying to do with it. I should therefore like to look again at the convention, and at some of the ways in which it is used by the major Roman historians. The origin and early development of the convention is fairly clear. Formal speech was a major fact of ancient life and therefore, reasonably, of its record: formal speech incorporated in narrative was familiar to the Greeks of the fifth century B.C., in the epic poems of Homer-and the writing of history, properly so called, began in the fifth century B.C., with the Homeric poems providing the nearest thing to a literary model then available; and the newly developed art of rhetoric was concurrently drawing men's attention to the possible uses of organized speech. Its incorporation into historical narrative was almost inevitable, its form and style hardly less so. For verbal transcripts were not commonly available at the fifth-century equivalent of a press conference, the Greek Assembly had no Hansard, and it is unlikely that Our Special Correspondent's shorthand account of a public speech by statesman or general ever existed, much less survived. Insertion of an original speech was, therefore, likely to be difficult. It would also be contrary to the ancient writer's conception of the unity of style required for a literary work. But (especially for contemporary history) fairly reliable accounts of the points made by a speaker would be available or discoverable, and the ?content of some speeches might well be necessary material for the historian. Constant use of reported speech (especially extensive reported speech) makes for tedious listening; and history should not, if possible, be tedious. And so even the careful Thucydides adopted the practice
See, for example, R. Syme, Sallust (Cambridge, I964), I85-6, I96-201; F. E. Adcock, Caesar as a Man of Letters (Cambridge, I956), 65-7; P. G. Walsh, Livy ~(Cambridge, I96I), 219-44; R. Syme, Tacitus (Oxford, I958), I91-3, 316-20, 700-8.

much sensible writing, by many scholars,' IN spite of and

on the real

46

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

introduced by Herodotus, and wrote his own direct versions of important speeches.' The practice has dangers, especially for a people fascinated by rhetorical skill and expertise; and the work of historians and critics of the fourth and third centuries did not always lessen these dangers. To provide variety of style, to depict character, to increase dramatic tension, to demonstrate one's own rhetorical skill-for all of these, direct speech was useful, even if it had to be invented for the purpose. Excess in practice produced criticism, both from serious historians like Polybius2 and (on more purely stylistic grounds) from writers like Diodorus and Dionysius.3 But Polybius too has his direct speeches, and they are &?Aieitav speeches which he himself has written. The substance is KOcr' prieEvTabut he &nrayyEsEtiit in his own words: which is precisely what Tacitus appears to mean by inuertere.4 The Roman historians, therefore, inherited a convention with a very mixed tradition of theory and practice. There was (fairly summary) reported speech; there was 'writing up' of genuine content in one's own version of the current rhetorical style, adapted for use in historical narrative; there was the use-if necessary, the invention-of speeches to illustrate dramatically character, motive, or situation; and there was, inevitably, an awareness of a literary/historical tool which might be used, by a skilful craftsman, to produce very interesting and complicated effects. Whatever effects its use produced, speech obviously appeared even in the earliest examples of Roman historical writing. For example, both Livy and Aulus Gellius tell us that Cato included his speech For the Rhodians in Book v of his Origines; and Aulus Gellius quotes, from Claudius Quadrigarius the annalist, a letter in oratio recta.5 And the process continued. For the purposes of this paper, I propose to disregard as 'Roman historians' Nepos and Suetonius, who as biographers use speech more sparingly and more straightforwardly than the historians proper; Trogus, who had an interesting theory about the use of speech,6 but whose work exists only in epitome; Velleius Paterculus, whose use of speech is fairly simple and not very significant; Valerius Maximus, who is not an historian proper; and Quintus Curtius, whose dramatic speech is largely rhetorical colouring in an adventure story. But Sallust, Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus are different; and interesting.
Thuc. i. 22. i. See also A. W. Gomme, Essays in Greek History and Literature (Oxford, 1937), 156-89. 2 Polyb. xii. 25a-25b; xxxvi. I. 3 Diod. Sic. xx. i; Dion. Hal., De Thuc. I6-I8, 34 f. 4 Ann. xv. 63: 'pleraque tradidit, quae in uulgus edita eius uerbis inuertere supersedeo.' 5 Livy xlv. 25. 3; Gell. vi. 3. 7; iii. 8. 8. 6 Justin. xxxviii. 3. x : 'quam obliquam Pompeius Trogus exposuit, quoniam in Liuio et Sallustio reprehendit, quod contiones directas pro sua oratione operi suo inserendo historiae modum excesserint.'

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

47

The greater part of what is left to us of Sallust's Histories is in fact a collection of elaborate direct speeches. But they are speeches without their context, and so potentially less informative about Sallust's historical use of speech than are the completely extant historical monographs. The Jugurthine War, which is perhaps the closer to history, has about 23 per cent of its bulk in dramatic speech, and of that speech 72 per cent is direct, 28 per cent indirect. The indirect speech is short (never more than ten lines, and more frequently between one and five) and fairly summary, while most of the direct speech is contained in long, elaborate orations, constructed with obvious reference to the rules of rhetoric. The speeches are found, regularly but not monotonously, throughout the book (chs. 8- 12), and are delivered by individuals like Scipio (9), Adherbal (14), Marius (85), and Sulla (I02), or mirror the statements of legati (I5), the conversations of Roman officers (Io6), or attempted negotiations between opposing armies (83). They serve a variety of historical purposes, with perhaps the overriding one of presenting dramatically Sallust's interpretation of the state of the nation, and they accurately demonstrate the character of the work by their nature and distribution. The book is not a biography of Jugurtha: he is allotted only 9 per cent of the dramatic speech, none of it is direct speech, and his longest utterance is ten lines. The emphasis of the dramatic speech is on principles, not character. The Catilinarian Conspiracy presents some interesting variations. Its proportion of dramatic speech to narrative is higher (just over 31 per cent), and the importance of that dramatic speech may be greater even than the figures suggest: for the Jugurtha is twice as long as the Catiline, but has only 50 per cent more speech. The Catiline's speech, too, is yet more predominantly direct (85 per cent, as against 15 per cent indirect). These facts again reflect the nature of the material: the Catiline is fundamentally about politics, not war; it records a movement initiated by talk and debated by senators; it describes a conspiracy whose natural lines of communication are conversations and messages; and it presents a crisis, with concomitant concentration and drama. Hence more speech in bulk, and more direct speech in proportion. In the sixty-one chapters of the Catiline, dramatic speech occurs fairly evenly from chs. 17 to 59. The book has a long preface, where speech has no part. Ch. 17 lays the conspiracy's keel, with a summary account of Catiline's approaches and arguments, and ch. 20 launches it firmly with an oration in direct form which, by expounding causes and policy, contrives to characterize both the conspirators and the society from which they sprang. Catiline, as leader of the conspiracy, is important: he makes the first (20) and the last (58) speeches in the book (both long, and both oratio recta), and from chs. 17 to 35

48 DRAMATIC SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS he makes frequent, if brief, appearances as the author of words in the Senate or statements to his friends. Most of these utterances are short (and summary) oratio obliqua, but the more vivid recta is used for the statement which closes ch. 31 ('quoniam quidem circumuentus ab inimicis praeceps agor, incendium meum ruina restinguam'), and marks his exit from the city, and the end of the Conspiracy, Part I. Catiline is more important to his conspiracy than Jugurtha was to his war: he is allotted 31 per cent of the dramatic speech in the monograph, and 80 per cent of his speech is direct. But the book is still not a biography, as is demonstrated by the dramatic speech in the twenty chapters separating Catiline's letter to the Senate (35) and his final address to his rebel army (58). These chapters contain conversations with the Allobroges (40) and between conspirators left in Rome (43-4); accounts of orders from the consul (4I) and of senatorial interrogations (47); and the great senatorial debate (50-3) which enshrines, in its two great speeches by Caesar and Cato, Sallust's analysis of the whole political situation surrounding the conspiracy. Sallust may be 'ignoring words which were actually said' (3 . 6, 52. i), and inventing others; he may be recasting some documents,' and very loosely reporting others (32. 3); he may be favouring Caesar (5I) or anachronistically dramatizing Catiline (20).2 But he is not peppering his narrative with dramatic speech for purely literary purposes, nor is he merely demonstrating his own control of the current rhetorical form. The distribution and form of the dramatic speech, the persons chosen to present it, and the topics chosen as its content, all show that Sallust is using an inherited tool of historical interpretation, and using it effectively. He is also using it traditionally: the proportion of speech to narrative, the preponderance of direct speech, the summary nature of the indirect speech, and the general tendency to use speech to present political issues place him firmly in the Thucydidean line. The contrast afforded by his contemporary, Caesar, is a startling one. Commentarii come somewhere between the raw material of history -the documents-and historical writing proper. They provided a preliminary factual account of events, from which an historian might be expected to produce3 the analytical study of politics, personalities, causes, and effects, in a deliberately literary presentation, which the Romans called historia. They were, therefore, a literary form admirably suited to a politician who wished to justify his activities and bolster his prestige. There is an air of 'plain, unvarnished truth' about commentarii, and Caesar was well aware of it. Speeches, as literary embellishment or interpretative tool, belong to
2 Cf. Syme, Sallust, 73.

1 Cf., for example, 44. 5 with Cic. Cat. iii. 5. x2. 3 Cf. Cic. Fam. v. I2.

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

49

would not surprise us. There historia, and their absence from commentarii is in fact no direct quotation in the Gallic War until the aquilifer of the Tenth Legion dramatically leads his comrades on to British soil at iv. 25; while Books v-vii show only some nine examples of direct quotation, none more than seven lines long, and one long oration (vii. 77), given to a Gaul and quoted 'propter eius singularem etnefariam crudelitatem'. But these facts do not explain why the 'straightforward' commentarii should have speeches at all: nor do they explain why 32 per cent of Book i should consist of dramatic obliqua, 43 per cent of which is spoken by Caesar. One can perhaps see how the speech gets into the commentarii. The content of certain speeches, conversations, discussions, and orders would be essential to any narrative of the Gallic War: if the gist is to be incorporated in oratio obliqua,it is both easy and effective to make it dramatic obliqua,that is, to produce not simply a precis of points in the accusative and infinitive construction, but a deliberately artistic statement which, though indirect, is yet rhetorical, and which has the impact and associations of the speech form. The temptation, too, to diversify his narrative with the occasional vivid, direct comment is one which any man of letters would find hard to resist; and Caesarwas a man with much skill in letters. He was also a notable orator and, once direct speech was admitted, would enjoy writing the occasional oration. The presence of speech is not after all so surprising: what is interesting is Caesar's use of it. There is never much direct speech, but it increases steadily both within the Gallic War, and from Gallic War to Civil War. There are two lines in BG iv, nine in v, ten in vi, seventy-three in vii (forty-seven of them in Critognatus' oration); BC ii has eighty-eight lines (eighty-one of them in two speeches by Curio), and iii has forty-two lines, spoken on seven occasions scattered throughout the book and including (ch. 85) three lines which comprise the only piece of direct speech allowed to Caesar in either work: it is a remarkably flat and non-rhetorical 'speech before action'. The Civil War thus has more direct speech than the Gallic War (I30 lines as against 93) and, in relation to its much shorter narrative, a higher proportion of it (3'7 per cent against I-2 per cent). Perhaps Caesar, having cautiously tried out some recta in the later books of the Gallic War, experimented further with its uses in the Civil War. The quotations are used to mark an important occasion,' to emphasize by contrast Roman control and Roman strength,2 to characterize an energetic officer of Caesar's,3 or to bring opposing attitudes to a focal point before a major battle.4
2

e.g. the landing in Britain, BG iv. 25. 3 Curio, BC ii. 3I-2. Critognatus, BG vii. 77. Pompey and Labienus, BC iii. 86-7. Cf. Adcock, op. cit. 66-7. E

50 DRAMATIC SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS Of indirect speech there is no shortage at all: and for the first time we meet the extended obliquaspeech which Livy and Tacitus were to make so much their own. To their complex and sophisticated use of this device we shall return, but meantime it should be noted that Caesar's indirect speeches are by no means as simple as they appear. The opening book of the Gallic War has a high proportion of dramatic speech, and it is all oblique: there are some short statements, but most of them are ten lines and upwards, and three of them are over fifty lines long. Indirect speech of this length must be either dramatic or intolerable, and (e.g.) Caesar'sspeech at ch. 40 shows extensive use of rhetorical questions,

his dramatically anaphora,antithesis,and climax. It also demonstrates handling of a potentialrebellion, in a mannerfar more vivid and impressive than a narrativedescriptionwould be. And it does this by a device which, unlike the direct oration,is not an immediatelyobvious rhetorical embellishment. By his development of the contio obliqua, Caesarcontrivesto present characteror point with the rhetoricalemphasis which he wants to give them, and at the same time to preserve the impressionof a factual, restrained,and unembellishednarrative. The speeches, direct and indirect, in the Commentarii present to us, enemies his Gallic and Roman, his Caesar and friends, dramatically, and Roman soldiers. chiefs Gallic and officers, They characenvoys
terize persons, present a rationale of action, point situations, and emphasize Roman (or Caesar's) greatness. They vary in length and distribution according to the material or Caesar's requirements: I strongly suspect, for example, that the high proportion of speech in BG i' results not only from the book's emphasis on diplomatic activity and the speech which is its medium, but from Caesar's desire to present forcefully and memorably, at the outset, the issues and the people concerned with them; and especially himself. In fact, within the limits prescribed by his slightly different genre and his own specific aims, Caesar is using dramatic speech as other historians do. But he does it so subtly, and with such apparently obvious differences of technique, that we might easily miss it. The speech is there and the speech is dramatic, and it would be a great mistake to underrate Caesar's skill in using it, or its effect upon the reader. It makes a very interesting variation upon a theme. Formal, elaborate speeches are one of the most striking elements in the history of Livy, and they have impressed readers from Quintilian2 on. They are impressive, but they are not the whole story. Analysis of
1 Its 32 per cent of dramatic speech contrasts markedly with, e.g., the 7-7 per cent of BG vii or the I3 per cent of BC i. 2 Quint. x. I. 101: 'Titum Liuium. . . tum in contionibus supra quam enarrari potest eloquentem.'

51 Livy's use of dramatic speech' has shown that he uses not only contiones, but also short, dramatic statements in recta and in obliqua, and a very interesting development of Caesar's sustained obliquaspeech. Livy, with a subject of greater scope and more literary source material, writing under far less political pressure, and with a highly developed artistry of his own, made subtle use of stylized, rhetorical obliqua to present the thoughts, feelings, or motives of individuals or groups, in a concentrated but personal, and therefore memorable, form.2 His speeches, whose contents cover politics, military matters, and personalities, are spoken by characters ranging from generals (xxi. io) to ordinary soldiers (xxii. 50), from envoys (xxii. 59) to the Pontifex Maximus (xxii. io); they are delivered in Rome and Carthage, in the Senate, or on the battlefield; and they are presented as public speeches, private feelings, or conversations. The type and frequency of all this speech is demonstrably3 regulated by the content of any given book and by the intent of the writer. Livy's speeches certainly show his rhetorical skill, and he obviously enjoyed writing them: but they are there primarily to distil and dramatize a situation's essence (xxii. 59-60), to demonstrate a character (xxx. 30) or contrasting characters (xxi. 40-4), or to mark and emphasize a critical point in the narrative (ibid.). There is less speech in the first decad (about 20 per cent, when the over-all average is 27 per cent), though whether from initial diffidence or lack of material, it is difficult to say. The last books show a high proportion (35 per cent) of speech, but this is sometimes little more than a rewriting into Latin of a speech in Polybius. The high point for creative and interpretative speech in Livy is in Books xxi-xxx, his account of the Hannibalic war. It was a critical period in Rome's history, from which she emerged triumphant; it abounded in exciting events and interesting personalities; and it existed in admirable source material in the history of Polybius. Fortunately for us, most of it still exists in that form, so that we can see what Livy has done with his source. The expansion or contraction, elaboration, and reorganization, is here not merely a turning of Polybian Greek into Livian Latin, but an integral part of Livy's presentation of the history of the period. Perhaps this can best be demonstrated by an examination of two characteristically Livian rhetorical occasions-the speeches delivered by Scipio the Elder and Hannibal before the Ticinus (xxi. 40-4), and by Hannibal and Scipio Africanus before Zama (xxx. 30-I). Polybius' account of the Ticinus episode (iii. 63-4) is basically narrative, reporting Hannibal's speech before the battle in forty-five lines
See Konrad Gries, 'Livy's Use of Dramatic Speech', AJP lxx (1949), 118-4I. There are hints of this use in Caesar (e.g. BC i. 72), but it is not fully developed until Livy. 3 See Gries, art. cit. I33, I37.
I 2

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

52 DRAMATIC SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS of oratio obliqua, while Scipio's remarks are presented in a mixture of direct speech, dramatic and non-dramatic obliqua, and narrative summary-thirty-eight lines in all. From this, among other sources, Livy produces almost twice as much speech, in the form of almost exactly balanced direct orations (eighty-five and eighty-three lines respectively); he reverses the Polybian order, leaving the soon-to-be-victorious Hannibal's speech ringing in our ears; and so he presents us with a dramatic picture of two well-matched but different personalities, at a critical point in their own and their countries' history. The importance of the situation is pointed by the concentration, organization, and impact of the formal Roman rhetoric. Would a critical analysis be any more effective? The speeches before Zama present an interesting contrast. Here, too, Polybius has speeches (Hannibal fifty-one lines, of which five are obliqua, forty-six recta: Scipio forty-two lines, seven obliquaand thirty-five recta); here Livy obviously bases his speeches on Polybius, but his treatment is very different (see Table I). There is elaboration and formal rhetoric, certainly: but it goes mainly to Hannibal. Livy has more speech in bulk than Polybius, but his Scipio's speech is in fact considerably shorter than the Greek one. This is Hannibal's last important entry on the stage of the Carthaginian War, and he is allowed an impressive and dignified speech to mark it. The points made by Polybius' Hannibal are reproduced, in order but with elaboration, by Livy's; the differences and additions are significant. Polybius says (xv. 5. 8) that Hannibal, from admiration of Scipio's ,eyaNoyJuXia and r6oqia, desired to meet him; according to the practical Roman, he wanted better terms (xxx. 29. 5). But Livy uses this recorded admiration of Hannibal's to provide a graceful introduction to his Hannibal's speech. What is notably added to the Latin speech is the acknowledgment of Carthaginian aggression and Carthaginian treachery:' surely this is Roman interpretation of history ?Additional, too, aremore elaborate Roman exempla.2 This speech is a prelude to a famous victory, and Livy is emphasizing that victory by association and detail. It was a victory, too, over no mean opponent, and Hannibal is given full rhetorical rein. A quiet and dignified exordiumbegins to rise in emotional pitch and rhetorical figures (?? 6-9): balance (6 and 8), anaphora and climax (7), chiasmus (8), and an effective closing statement whose calm mirrors its meaning. This elaborate rhetorical presentation is sustained throughout. There is, too, an emphasis on the expedient.3 The speech ends with an
30. 30 (the closing statement). Regulus (irresistible in the context), ? 23; Trasimene added, ? 12, and Carthage's present plight emphasized by repetition, ?? 2 and I7; references to the Elder Scipio, ? 5, and to the glory and exploits of Africanus, ?? 4 and 12-I5. 3 Magis necessaria quam honesta, ? 18; melior tutiorque, ? 19; utilem, utilitatem, ? 29.
I 2

xxx. 30. 3 (the opening statement); 30. 27-9;

TABLE I
POLYBIUS, Hannibal: 5 lines obliqua+46 recta=5I BOOK XV Hannibal: oi lines recta Scipio: 7 lines obliqua+

LI

35 recta-42

(93)

ch. 5, 8 (narr.) H. admires S.'s character and desires to meet him

6, 4-5 (ob.) Carth. and Roman empires should have kept to own spheres 6 (r.) Sicily and Spain cause of war Both Roman and Carth. soil endangered 7 They should try to agree now 8 H.'s own experience of fickle fortune S. young and successful 7, x Exx. of fickle fortune-Cannae, Rome, Carthage 2-4 5-6 7-9 Why risk defeat by fighting? Terms proposed-Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and islands to Rome Carth. responsible for the war, not Rome The righteous are winning S. quite aware of fickle fortune Conditions would have been acceptable in Italy, not now Terms (more stringent ones) already agreed and violated by C. Cannot reward or encourage treachery induced by H.'s return Could add conditions Surrender or fight

8, i (ob.)

3 4-5 (r.) 6-9 10-13 14

ch. 29. 5 (narr.) H. desires t render H. admits a 30. 3 (r.) H. admires Reference t 4-5 6 Carth. and spheres 7 Sicily and S 8 Both Roma Could settle 9 Own experi o1 S. young an 1 Exx. of fick 12 Details of S 12-15 Further exx 16-17 I8-23 Why risk d Terms pr 24-26 islands to Admits Car 27-29 Admits agg 30 Rome not r 3I. 4 (r.) The righteo 5 6 S. quite aw Conditions 7-8 now Terms (mo 2, I violated b Cannot rew 3-4 9

Add to con

54

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

elaborately balanced comparison, with elaborately interwoven p's and q's, and a simple association of Hannibal and the peace he desires.' After which, Scipio's speech falls like a shower of cold water. It is cold and factual, dealing in details and not generalities, giving an impression of facts and not rhetoric. It uses precisely the points made in the Polybian speech, but its rearrangement of them is radical. It has its rhetorical colour: balance in ??4-5, vivid legal imagery in ? 8, and a cynical echo of Hannibal's p's and q's in its closing sentence.2 It employs (naturally) the language of principle, not expediency.3 But its total impression is of briskness and brusqueness. Hannibal's speech as presented by Livy is rhetorical, elaborate, and emotional: it is low on the facts of the immediate situation, but a splendid survey of the Second Punic War and Hannibal's part in it; it evokes a great general on the point of defeat by Rome. Scipio, on the other hand, has a speech to fit the occasion: he is perhapes not so much hard as immediate and practical. He is obviously going to win this battle: but note that his really hard hitting is at Carthage and not at Hannibal (the plurals in ??4, 5, and 9 are significant). His speech is pared to essentials: the conditions first accepted and then violated by Carthage, which Polybius included in Scipio's speech, are presented by Livy in his narrative at ch. 16. 9 f. The two speeches are not balanced, because the situation is no longer balanced: the rhetoric goes to Hannibal in a last dramatization of character, the weight and force to the workmanlike Scipio, whose success is assured. This, though not necessarily our way, seems a justifiable way to employ a convention. Livy is adapting it to his needs and the needs of his material, and showing a range and sublety which is new in Roman history. Further subtleties were yet to come. We are aware, as we read the historical works of Tacitus, of a good deal of speech, direct and indirect, long and short, conversational and formal, on a variety of topics and made by a variety of speakers. This proves to be not the mixture as before, but a very individual variation on the theme.4 The average Tacitean oration is notably shorter than those of Livy and Sallust, and the proportion of speech to narrative is notably less: i6 per cent is the average and the norm, although the extremes range from 7 per cent to 22 per cent, always in relation to the content. The 22 per cent of Ann. xiv, for example, presents Nero at the turning-point of his reign, and presents him dramatically, through
I xxx. 30. 30: 'et quemadrnodum, quia a me bellum coeptum est, ne quem eius paeniteret, quoad id ipsi inuidere dei, praestiti, ita adnitar, ne quem pacis per me partae paeniteat.' 2 XXX. 3I. 9: 'sin illa quoque grauia uidentur, bellum parate, quoniam pacem pati non potuistis.' 3 indigni, pia, iusta, ? 4; iusfasque ? 5; uerecundia ? 8. 4 See my paper, 'Dramatic Speech in Tacitus', AJP Ixxxv (I964), 279-96.

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

55

speeches by and conversations between interested persons; whereas Hist. ii has a mere 7 per cent, and Ann. ii only i per cent, because their interest is primarily in military action. The connection between speech and content can also be seen in Ann. i-vi, where one-third of all the dramatic speech is spoken by Tiberius;I and in the fact that by far the greater number of Tacitean speeches are made about the internal politics of Rome. So far, Tacitus' speeches could be considered to be a concentrated and intensified variation on a pattern established by Livy. But his use of oratio obliqua is peculiarly his own: not only does he use a greater proportion of it (55 per cent against 45 per cent recta), but he has developed to a fine art its function of presenting dramatically a man's thoughts or motives,2 and also its use to indicate group feeling or judgement. This last is more immediate and impressive than a critical analysis, because it is done through the medium of a highly articulate speech form, and so connected with people and not abstractions. A good example of its use by Tacitus can be found in the reported 'verdicts' on Augustus at Ann. i. 9-Io.3 I should like to end by considering briefly the dramatic speech in a single book of Tacitus, and some of the ways in which the speech can illuminate the book's contents, and Tacitus' presentation of them. Ann. xv has a lower-than-average (II 8 per cent) amount of speech, and of that amount just over 30 per cent is direct, just under 70 per cent indirect. The proportions are interesting, and so is the way they are made up. The direct speech appears (a) in ch. 2, where Vologeses' speech at the coronation of Tiridates dramatically reviews the situation, articulates the Parthian war aims, helps to characterize Corbulo's opponents, and points the start of the section of narrative which is to end with Tiridates' surrender of his crown in ch. 29. It appears (b) in chs. 2o-I, where Thrasea's senatorial speech on a matter of political principle gives us a dramatic picture of the man who is soon to be one of Nero's victims, a striking exposition of qualities which Romans liked to consider traditionally their own, and an implicit comment on a Senate which applauded the sentiment but could not act apon it. These two speeches (twelve and twenty-five lines long respectively) make up most of the direct speech in the book; the rest consists of three short statements made during the unravelling of the Pisonian Conspiracy. In ch. 63, Seneca speaks before cutting his own and his wife's veins, thus heightening the drama and the pathos, and rounding off the portrait; for it is fitting that the Tacitean Seneca should, ut sic dixerim, die talking: his eloquence, Tacitus tells us in the same chapter, persisted through a slow and painful
2 3

Cf. AJP lxxxix (I968), i-i9. Cf. Tiberius at Ann. i. 69; Otho at Hist. i. 2I. Cf. T. A. Dorey (ed.), Tacitus (London, I969), 99-107.

56

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

death-agony, and at the last moment he was dictating material which Tacitus forbears to include, because it was already published and known (a comment which is illuminating for Tacitus' treatment of speech, and a technique reminiscent of Ciceronian occultatio; for it allows Tacitus to give information, make a somewhat snide comment, and still get the full dramatic benefit of 'dying words'). In ch. 67, the tribune Subrius Flavus contributes a pithy sketch of Nero, a sentence which Tacitus specifically assures us is genuine; this statement and its presentation contribute to the picture of Nero, to the presentation of Flavus as a 'sturdy soldier' very different from the effete senators and courtiers, and to a subtle insinuation about the value of Seneca's statements and style. Later in the same chapter, Flavus speaks again, showing himself as a man of courage and humour, and (with the last piece of dramatic speech in the book), leaving us with the alliterative 'ut tu tam fortiter ferias' which is a not unreasonable comment on the whole debacle of the Conspiracy. The indirect speech of Ann. xv pervades the book from ch. I to ch. 65, ranges from military (I2) or political (I) exchanges and addresses, through Nero's explanation (36) of the abandoning of his Eastern tour, to the conversations and dicta (51-65) which mark the discovery of the Pisonian Conspiracy. These passages, from one to nine lines long, and mostly in the region of five or six lines, help to highlight certain aspects of the book without interrupting its exciting narrative too obviously; they show a high proportion of private conversational speech (as opposed to formal oration), which accurately mirrors the manoeuvres in Parthia and the interrogation of the Pisonian conspirators; and they are interestingly and completely absent from the whole account of the Fire and its aftermath, where the splendid narrative style needs no rhetorical bush. The speech, direct and indirect, is attributed to fifteen' different speakers-generals, soldiers, politicians, Parthians, men famous and infamous, noble and obscure. The speakers indicate, by their range and topics, the contents of the book, and what Tacitus considers important in it. All speech (other than very summary obliqua) which a serious ancient historian uses is important. At its lowest, it introduces variety into narrative, and so helps to keep the reader's interest and attention on the text. More important, it can present vividly and memorably a character, a situation, or an opinion which the historian considers needs stressing, and it can present his own interpretation of these things. It has no more validity than the rest of the narrative, but it has certainly no less. The Roman historians inherited and developed a convention, and their various contributions to it are interesting, and helpful in our
I The Tacitean average is eleven.

57 assessment of them. A study of the types and content of an historian's dramatic speech, of the range of his speakers, and the contexts in which they speak, of the form and amount and distribution of the speech, can provide illumination both of his material and his attitude to it. The speeches are not an optional literary condiment in the historical casserole but an essential ingredient whose absence would alter the effect and flavour of the whole dish.

DRAMATIC

SPEECH IN THE ROMAN HISTORIANS

VERSION Martial xiv. 224I CA TINOCALDARIOLA Gratum munus ero vacuo nec inutile ventri si modo me cenae vis adhiberetuae. frigida non derunt: ne desint calda petenti, en, tuta est gremio parvalucerna meo.

A DISH-WARMER I hope I'll be a welcome gift and useful to the inner man, if you will place me by your lunch or by your dinner. Chilly meals are easy, but when you are watching telly the hot will cool, and so I keep
a candle in my inside.
I Epigramma nuper repertum (sive inventum). L. A. MORITZ