Conclusion 281

its agonistic aspects, to reinforce deference to that élite as a whole rather

than to challenge it. If the shouts in the contio and subsequent votes in
the comitia gave the People their “Voice,” members of the élite, as orators,
gave them their words. While such words, if they are to have persuasive
or motivating force, will always involve complex negotiation between per-
spectives of speaker and of audience, the negotiating power of these two
parties to the exchange depends on numerous variables (access to knowl-
edge and information, social prestige, institutional biases such as the direct
control of participation by the presiding official in the contio), and we have
seen that a number of factors tilted the balance of power in these crucial
acts of communication toward the élite orator instead of the shouting, or
silent, audience whom he sought to impel. These were not audiences of
“ignoramuses,” and the idea that they could simply be browbeaten or over-
awed by their social superiors seems to be drawn more from élite fantasy or
nostalgic projection than observation of reality. But many factors that have
been isolated and examined made the communicative exchange between
speaker and audience a distinctly unequal one.
Although certain practices and norms make clear that the Roman People
were expected to be informed in public meetings about a bill before they
exerted their sovereign right of making it law, it is also clear that a “debate”
model of the contio’s function does not well fit the facts. Rather, public
meetings were, in practice, the means by which members of the élite sought
to generate the impression of overwhelming popular consensus behind
their projects that would rout their opponents from the Forum or force
acquiescence within the Senate, or both. The relatively equal presentation
of alternative views that is fundamental to the idea of “debate” – and crucial
to an audience for making an informed decision about its own interests –
was only minimally respected, on the day of the vote itself, when there was
little hope or expectation of changing minds among those who had been
successfully mobilized to vote. Up to that point, the power of the presiding
magistrate to set the agenda, to determine who would speak, to influence the
very composition of his audience, and to shape perceptions of its response
by means of various manipulative techniques was apt to be exploited to the
full in order to silence any opposing view, either by exposing it invidiously
to a hostile crowd (or threatening to do so) or by mobilizing sufficiently
wide sectors of the urban population that it could no longer effectively be
heard.
The contio, then, is best seen in “instrumental” rather than “deliberative”
terms. And this instrument was largely in the hands of the élite orators who,
after all, summoned it into existence. True, its very instrumentality obliged