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That Tyrant, Persuasion: How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World

That Tyrant, Persuasion: How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World

Paperback

General ReferenceAncient RomeGeneral World History

ISBN10: 0691221014
ISBN13: 9780691221014
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: Dec 17 2024
Pages: 328
Weight: 1.11
Height: 0.73 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

How rhetorical training influenced deeds as well as words in the Roman Empire

The assassins of Julius Caesar cried out that they had killed a tyrant, and days later their colleagues in the Senate proposed rewards for this act of tyrannicide. The killers and their supporters spoke as if they were following a well-known script. They were. Their education was chiefly in rhetoric and as boys they would all have heard and given speeches on a ubiquitous set of themes--including one asserting that he who kills a tyrant shall receive a reward from the city. In That Tyrant, Persuasion, J. E. Lendon explores how rhetorical education in the Roman world influenced not only the words of literature but also momentous deeds: the killing of Julius Caesar, what civic buildings and monuments were built, what laws were made, and, ultimately, how the empire itself should be run.

Presenting a new account of Roman rhetorical education and its surprising practical consequences, That Tyrant, Persuasion shows how rhetoric created a grandiose imaginary world for the Roman ruling elite--and how they struggled to force the real world to conform to it. Without rhetorical education, the Roman world would have been unimaginably different.

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Lendon, J. E.

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Ancient Rome