Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

INTRODUCTION

TO THE DIALOGUE ON ORATORY.

THIS Dialogue is intended as a discussion of the question whether the oratory of the imperial, and particularly the Flavian, age was inferior to that of the last days of the republic, and, if so, why so? It is, we believe, seldom read. Unfortunately the text is rather corrupt, and there are some serious lacunae. Its genuineness, too, has always been a matter of doubt and controversy. It is true, indeed, that the old MSS. assign it to Tacitus, and there really do not seem to be any very solid or definite grounds for deciding against his authorship. Most scholars, Orelli and Ritter among the number, incline to this view. Ingenious critics have attributed it to Quintilian, or to the younger Pliny, but, as far as we can see, without the semblance of anything that can be called evidence. It can hardly be argued that the style is at all pointedly unlike that of the Annals and History, and it may fairly be said that here and there may be traced resemblances. It is noted by Orelli that one of the letters of the younger Pliny, addressed to Tacitus, suggests the idea that Pliny was reminding his friend of an expression he had used in this

very Dialogue. "Poetry," he says, "is best written, you think, amid groves and woods" (inter nemora et lucos), and this particular phrase is found in chapter 9 of the Dialogue. The clever French critic, Jules Janin, pronounced the work in question a chef d'œuvre, "revealing the highest genius," and could not understand how it could be doubted that Tacitus was the author. If so, it may be presumed to have been one of his earliest works. We gather from a passage in chapter 17, that the year in which the Dialogue or conversation was actually held was the sixth year of the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, or A.D. 75. But it does not necessarily follow, as has been assumed, that it was written and published in the same year. It is at least quite possible that Tacitus, if he really was the author, may have taken notes of the conversation at the time, and have subsequently given them to the world, perhaps during the reigns of Nerva or Trajan, when he could have done so with safety. Domitian's age, as we know, was a very perilous one for certain kinds of literature.

The Dialogue is meant as an answer to a question which is put into the mouth of one Fabius Justus, a friend of the younger Pliny, and probably a professional rhetorician, a question which we may well suppose often occupied the thoughts of the speakers and men of letters of the day. "How is it," he asks, “that our own particular age is so destitute of the glory of eloquence, when former periods were so rich in it?” Tacitus replies that he should not care to give simply his own opinion on so great a subject, but that he is able to reproduce the substance of a discussion

which he had had the good fortune to hear between some eminent men on this very topic. Of the personages of the Dialogue we know next to nothing. Four were present-Curiatius Maternus, Marcus Aper, Vipstanus Messala, and Julius Secundus. The last, of whom Quintilian says (x. I, 120) that had he lived. longer he would have been one of the most famous orators in the world (he was Quintilian's personal friend), takes but a very slight part in the conversation. Maternus had given up the pursuit of oratory for that of poetry, and had become a writer of tragedies. He is full of the praises of his art, which is, he argues, infinitely grander than that of the orator and the pleader of causes. He is probably mentioned by Dion Cassius, who speaks (67, 12) of a sophist, that is, a rhetoric-professor, whom Domitian put to death for his outspokenness against tyrants. Of Marcus Aper we can say nothing, but that he, like Secundus, was one of the great lights of the Roman bar. He is for oratory as against poetry, and he maintains that the eloquence of their own age was in its way quite as good as that of former days. Vipstanus Messala is not present at the beginning of the discussion; he comes in just as Maternus has concluded an enthusiastic encomium on the poet's life and pursuits. He was a man of whom Tacitus thought highly, and it is said of him in the History (iii. 9), that he was "the only man who had brought into the conflict between Vitellius and Vespasian an honest purpose." He was one of the adherents of the latter emperor. He is again mentioned in the History (iv. 42) as in a great crisis pleading most eloquently on behalf of

his brother, Aquilius Regulus, the notorious delator, of whom the younger Pliny gives us a description in Epist. I., 5, one of his most amusing letters. It appears that he wrote memoirs of his time, which Tacitus used for his narrative of the civil wars in the History. In this Dialogue he is opposed to Aper, dwelling with admiration on the oratory of the old days of the republic, and vituperating that of his own age as a poor artificial product, the result of a depraved system of education, and of the extinction of all political ambition.

The subjects here discussed are of permanent interest. Aper pleads on behalf of his profession, its utility and substantial rewards, much as a barrister of our own day might do. He contrasts the great position and wealth won by a successful advocate, with the comparatively humble and obscure lot with which the poet must often rest content. The poet,

indeed, at best, can hardly hope for much fame and popularity, or, if he really aspires to greatness, he must surrender himself wholly to his work, and turn his back on society and go into the solitude of fields and woods. Maternus in reply contends that this is a happier life than that of an overworked pleader, with all its harassing anxieties. Messala then joins in the conversation, and praises the orators of the past at the expense of the present, about whose inferiority he thinks there can be no question. In this view Secundus and Maternus concur. Aper vehemently denounces it, and criticises unfavourably several of the most famous orators of the republic, Cicero not excepted. After all, he says, how are you to

« ZurückWeiter »