The Spirit of Place

While the material on ambiance gleaned from the rhetorical handbooks is limited, certain passages from Cicero's later philosophical and rhetorical works shed additional light on the subject. Although the De oratore does not refer explicitly to the use of the setting of a speech as a source of persuasion, it is significant that the setting of the dialogue itself is

[15] For further citations, see Lausberg, Handbuch, 1:133–35 (§§245.I; 247.1, 2) and 204–5 (§376.2, 3, 6, 7, 11).

[16] Cic. Inv. 2.32–37; Her. 2.3–5.

[17] See Pöschl, "Zur Einbeziehung anwesender Personen," 213–16, for the negligible role played in Greek oratory by persons and objects present during a speech.

made to play an important role in inspiring the conversation about oratory that takes place among Crassus, Antonius, and the others. At the beginning of the first book of the work (1.24–29), Cicero recounts how Q. Mucius Scaevola, Marcus Antonius, Gaius Cotta, and Publius Sulpicius assembled at Crassus's villa at Tusculum. On the second morning of the visit, the group is enjoying a pleasant walk when Scaevola suggests to Crassus that they "imitate Socrates as he appeared in the Phaedrus, " for a spreading plane tree on Crassus's estate had reminded him of the plane tree of Plato's dialogue. It was this dialogue, says Scaevola, that had caused the tree to become famous, rather than the "little rill" that flowed beside the tree. He then declares that the rest Socrates had enjoyed "with his tough feet" ought even more readily be allowed to his own feet. Crassus agrees to the proposition, whereupon the entire group reclines under the plane tree.

Cicero had several reasons for beginning the De oratore in this way. On a purely artistic level, the vivid description of the scene introduces the characters and engages the interest of the reader in what they will say. The image of the plane tree with its cool shade and spreading branches and the realistic representation of the elegant conversation suggest the scene strongly to the reader's mind. Secondly, by his allusion to the scene of the Platonic dialogue, Cicero clearly hoped to signal that his own work, like the Phaedrus, would be of a philosophical character, far removed from the sterile prescriptions of the rhetorical textbooks.^[18]

But one can go farther. The scene suggests as well that the experience of a locus can call to mind specific associations and that these associations, in turn, can move and inspire. The reader of the passage inevitably recalls the potent effect of the landscape on Socrates in the Phaedrus: how the fragrant plane tree, the clear, cold water, the breezes, the

[18] See Cic. Att. 13.19.4 and Fam. 1.9.23 on the philosophic character of De oratore . While the connections between the De oratore and the Phaedrus are not limited to superficial allusions (Cicero, like Plato, wished to connect rhetoric with a kind of knowledge), there is much that is un-Platonic, even anti-Platonic, in Cicero's description of the ideal orator. For general background to Greek philosophic sources of the work, see Michel, Rhétorique, 80–149; Leeman and Pinkster, De oratore, 65–67 (for Cicero's allusions to Plato and their meaning); Guthrie, Greek Philosophy, 4:412–17; Solmsen, "Aristotle and Cicero on the Orator's Playing upon the Feelings" (for the Platonic vs. the Ciceronian view of the ideal orator). See Wisse, Ethos and Pathos, 151–52, for the Aristotelian mise-en-scène at the beginning of book 2, complementing Platonic parallels at the beginning of book 1.

music of the cicadas, and the lush grass provoke Socrates to stop and rest; how he warns Phaedrus, after calling the spot a "divine place" (238d: theios . . . topos ), that he must not be surprised at the sort of speech he might deliver there; and how, after delivering a speech that he considers blasphemous, he feels himself prevented from leaving the place until he can substitute another, truer discourse. Plato had described Socrates, then, as drawing inspiration from the locus where he made his speech, reacting creatively and uncharacteristically—even mystically—to what he felt to be a sacred landscape.^[19] Cicero not only alludes to this scene but depicts the characters in his own dialogue reacting to the associations of a similar setting. Crassus, as well as Scaevola, is affected by this atmosphere, for he is persuaded by the younger members of the group to do what he had never been known to do previously—deliver an extended disquisition on the nature and practice of oratory.

We should note, however, the degree to which Cicero has civilized and rationalized his topographical model. The characters in the De oratore do not, like Socrates and Phaedrus, wander in the countryside; they stroll around the manicured walks of Crassus's estate. When they are inspired to recline on the grass under the shady tree, they immediately send their slaves for cushions to sit on. Most important, Scaevola is depicted as drawing inspiration from the intellectual associations of the place rather than from the natural setting itself: the plane tree that he sees reminds him of the plane tree described by Plato, and the thought of that Greek plane tree is moving not simply because the tree was beautiful but because the dialogue that occurred under it was "divine."^[20]

Cicero's emphasis here, at the beginning of his magnum opus con-

[19] See Parry, "Landscape," 17: "The ambiance [of the Phaedrus ] is one to suggest and reinforce that vision of natural truth with which Socrates wishes to counter Lysian rhetoric. Here the gods still live, who have no place in the sophistic milieu of the town"; and Walter, Placeways, 146–50.

[20] In general, the urbane setting of the De oratore seems to guarantee the civility and predictability of the locus, while the Greek setting in nature contains hints of violence (the Orithyia legend) and unpredictability (the mystic power ascribed to the place). On the Ciceronian plane tree as a symbol of rhetoric itself, see Piderit and Harnecker, De oratore 38–39 (§19). See also the discussion of the "Marian oak" in Leg. 1.1–4. Cicero evidently hoped that his epic poem on Marius would give the Arpinate oak the same sort of eternal symbolic existence as the Phaedrus had given the plane tree of the dialogue.

cerning the nature of oratory, on the emotional response to the associations of setting suggests his consciousness of its importance in persuasion. In addition to this passage, statements that testify strongly—if indirectly—to the importance of this source of persuasion can be found in two of Cicero's philosophical works, the De finibus and the De legibus . The former, a discussion of the ethical philosophy of Antiochus, is set in the Athens of 79 B.C. Cicero depicts himself and his friends on an afternoon stroll from the house of Marcus Piso to the Academy. When they reach the walls of the Academy, Piso remarks:

Naturane nobis hoc, inquit, datum dicam an errore quodam, ut, cum ea loca videamus, in quibus memoria dignos viros acceperimus multum esse versatos, magis moveamur, quam si quando eorum ipsorum aut facta audiamus aut scriptum aliquod legamus? . . . tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis; ut non sine causa ex iis memoriae ducta sit disciplina.

(5.2)

Is it inborn in us or produced by some trick that when we see the places in which we have heard that famous men performed great deeds, we are more moved than by hearing or reading of their exploits? . . . So great a power of suggestion resides in places that it is no wonder the Art of Memory is based on it.

The passage turns on the response each of the characters makes to various loci . When Piso looks on the grounds of the Academy he recalls Plato and his disciples, comparing the experience with the feelings he had when looking on the old Curia in Rome, a building that had always brought to his mind the great Romans of an earlier generation; Quintus's eye turns to the village of Colonos, recalling Sophocles and his depiction of Oedipus arriving at that place; Atticus predictably speaks of the many hours he has spent in the gardens of Epicurus; while Cicero tells of the impression left on him by his visit to the house of Pythagoras in Metapontum and refers to the hall in Athens in which Carneades used to sit. The youngest member of the group, Lucius Cicero, admits to walking along the beach where Demosthenes had practiced his speeches and to visiting the tomb of Pericles. Lucius ends by exclaiming that wherever they walked they encountered some reminder of the past (5.5: quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliqua historia vestigium ponimus ).^[21]

[21] The phrase is especially difficult to translate, as the meaning of historia not only included all the kinds of associations mentioned by the characters in the dialogue (literary, philosophical, historical), but the Roman concept of the past was quasi-religious as well. See Pöschl, "Die römische Auffassung der Geschichte." Note also that here vestigium refers to the marks of the present. In the passage from De legibus discussed below (pp. 31–33), it refers to the traces of the historical past; while in In Verrem II.4.107 the term refers to the signs of the ancient inhabitation of the gods of the Sicilian landscape.

This introductory scene ultimately abandons Piso's original question concerning the mysterious power of place and ends with Cicero's neat but unsatisfying statement that historical loci were useful in stirring young men like Lucius to emulate the great men of the past. We, however, may read another lesson in the text. The passage demonstrates the way in which places can stimulate the imagination, the memory, and the intellect. This power is not limited to Athens, for both the Curia Hostilia and the scenes of Pythagoras's activity in Italy are brought into the discussion. Clearly, both the places that possess this power and the particular associations called to mind by the places are as various as the temperaments and preoccupations of the individuals depicted.

In attempting to explain their response to particular milieux, however, several of the characters make use of the same verb: movere . Piso begins with the question of why people are more "moved" (moveamur ) by seeing a place associated with famous men than by merely hearing or reading of their deeds. He goes on to declare that he himself is "moved" (ego nunc moveor ). A few lines later, Quintus Cicero states that he is "greatly moved" (5.3: commovit ), and his brother Marcus uses the word as well (5.4: ego illa moveor exhedra ). The characters thus emphasize the emotional nature of their response to places. This, in turn, strongly suggests the importance of the phenomenon for Latin oratory, for in numerous passages from the rhetorical works Cicero asserts that the ability "to move" an audience was one of the three chief goals of rhetoric and that it was the possession of this ability that was the distinctive quality of the true orator.^[22]

The De legibus provides a parallel to the passage discussed above.

[22] On the pathetic appeal, see Solmsen, "Aristotle and Cicero on the Orator's Playing upon the Feelings," esp. 225–26; Schick, "Cicero and the Pathetic Appeal," 17–18; Michel, Rhétorique, 235–70; Wisse, Ethos and Pathos, 250–300; and De or. 1.17, 53, 60; 2.178, 215; Brut. 276, 279, 322; Or. 69, 128. For the three goals of oratory (delectare, docere, movere ) see De or. 2.115, 128, 310; 3.104; Or. 69; Brut. 185, 276; Opt. gen. or. 3. Piso's comment concerning the "Art of Memory" will be explored further below (pp. 100–102).

Here Cicero, his brother Quintus, and Atticus take a walk in the Arpinate countryside, admiring its beauties.^[23] At first it seems that Cicero's attachment to the place stems only from the natural charm of the landscape, but he soon reveals (almost confessionally) that he is especially moved by the associations called up by the place with his own family history.^[24] Atticus, in turn, declares that he would thenceforth be particularly attached to the villa and to the very earth of the place, for it was here Cicero had been born. He continues:

For we are in some strange way affected by the very places that carry the imprints (vestigia ) of those whom we love or admire. My beloved Athens delights me not so much by the stunning monuments or the exquisite works of antiquity found there, but rather by recalling to my mind great men—where each one lived, where he used to sit and carry on disputations; why, I even enjoy looking on their graves.

(2.4)

In depicting his own feelings about the scene of the dialogue, Cicero here testifies to the potent symbolism that had endowed, we might even say "inspirited," a locus with special meaning for him. In the case of Atticus, on the other hand, the passage demonstrates a process. At first, while admitting to the charms of the landscape (2.2: ad requietem animi delectationemque . . . natura dominatur ), Atticus experiences no profound feelings about it. Only when the same place becomes connected in his mind to thoughts of his friend does it become a source of strong emotional attachment "from then on" (2.4: posthac ). Further, he relates this process to his feelings about Athens, a city filled with constant reminders for him of the great men who once lived there.

Here again, as in the passages quoted from the De oratore and the De finibus, it is not chiefly "nature" that moves the participants in the dialogue but the association of particular landscapes with human history. There is a contrast implied between places that bear the spiritual imprint of the past, the "erlebte Welt" in Ernst Römisch's expressive

[23] Römisch, "Mensch und Raum," draws on this passage in his discussion of the Roman sense of place. On differences between a modern appreciation of nature and Cicero's, see Davies, "Was Cicero Aware of Natural Beauty?"

[24] 2.3: si verum dicimus, haec est mea et huius fratris mei germana patria. Hinc enim orti stirpe antiquissima sumus, hic sacra, hic genus, hic maiorum multa vestigia. . . . Qua re inest nescio quid et latet in animo ac sensu meo, quo me plus hic locus fortasse delectet.

phrase, and those that are devoid of human association, such as the wilderness.^[25] No philosophical distinction, then, is to be drawn between city and country in this respect, for both are milieux pregnant with meaning. Further, Atticus's remarks about Athens (as well as the passage from the De finibus ) make clear that a place outside the imperium Romanum was as likely as Arpinum to provoke emotional responses in the Romans depicted in the dialogues.^[26]

Cicero does, however, make an important distinction between the strength of feeling generated by his place of birth and that felt for Rome, the patria iuris .^[27] In section 2.5, after a rather dry explanation of the concept of dual citizenship, Cicero suddenly declares that the Republic must overshadow the land of one's birth in caritas; that to it we must consecrate our lives and for it we must even be willing to die. The orator concludes the passage with the statement that his native land was scarcely less pleasant to him (dulcis . . . non multo secus ) than that other, greater homeland.

In spite of this passionate language, Cicero makes the basis for his connection to Rome a good deal less comprehensible than the basis for his weaker attachment to Arpinum;^[28] but because he has used the same

[25] For the phrase, see Römisch, "Umwelt und Atmosphäre," 128. Note that when Atticus thought that the landscape was actually wild, he could not understand Cicero's attachment to it (2.2: nihil enim his in locis nisi saxa et montis cogitabam ). Cf. Lucas, Greatest Problem, 176–77: "The first time I saw the cloud-topped mountain ridges of Acroceraunia from the Adriatic, or the Leucadian Promontory white with sun and storm, or Hymettus, purpled with sunset, from the Saronic Sea, was something intenser even than poetry. But the same shapes and colours would not have seemed the same in New Zealand or the Rockies. Half their transfigured splendour came from the poetry of two thousand years before, or the memory of that other sunset on Hymettus when the hemlock was brought to Socrates." See also comments by Tuan, Topophilia, 93–95, 99–100.

[26] As in the passage from the De oratore quoted above (pp. 26–28), Cicero here wishes to call to mind the scene of the Phaedrus while at the same time suggesting symbolically the differences between the two: Socrates had waded in the cool waters of the Ilissus; Atticus alludes to this scene but pronounces the water of the Fibrenus too cold to test—reminiscent of the reluctance of characters in the De oratore to recline directly on the grass.

[27] See Salmon, "Cicero Romanus an Italicus anceps."

[28] The text is, unfortunately, corrupt at the point at which Cicero indicates the fundamental difference between the two patriae (2.5: Sed necesse est caritate eam praestare <e > qua rei publicae nomen universae civitati est . . .). See, however, the similar passage in De or. 1.196: Ac si nos, id quod maxime debet, nostra patria delectat, cuius rei tanta est vis ac tanta natura, ut Ithacam illam in asperrimis saxulis tamquam nidulam adfixam sapientissimus vir immortalitati anteponeret, quo amore tandem inflammati esse debemus in eius modi patriam, quae una in omnibus terris domus est virtutis, imperi, dignitatis? ("And if our own native land delights us, which it certainly should—a thought that contains such power and natural force that Odysseus in all his wisdom preferred to immortality that Ithaca of his, affixed like a small nest amidst the most precipitous crags—with what passionate love, then, ought we to be fired towards a fatherland of this sort, one that is the sole terrestrial abode of virtue, dominion, and respect?"). Römisch, "Mensch und Raum," 227, comparing the vocabulary of the text with other Ciceronian passages, defines caritas as "die von Natur gegebene, gefühlsbetonte Verbundenheit, es ist die Liebe der Verwandten untereinander, die zugleich Verpflichtung umfasst."

terms of his feelings for Arpinum and of those he cherished for the Republic (caritas/dulcis ), the distinction drawn is one of degree (maior ) rather than of kind. The reader, therefore, may deduce the grounds for the greater from the lesser, and Cicero's attachment to Rome—the physical embodiment of the res publica —may be understood by examining the reasons for his attachment to his place of birth. Of the latter he had said to Atticus: "For in this place we [i.e., Cicero and his brother Quintus] sprang from a most ancient line; here are our holy rites, here our kindred, here the many reminders of our ancestors" (2.3: Hinc enim orti stirpe antiquissima sumus, hic sacra, hic genus, hic maiorum multa vestigia ). These same concepts can be readily transferred from a familial to a communal context. The Romans, who traced their origin to the Latin founder Romulus and the Trojan Aeneas, also claimed to have sprung from ancient roots.^[29] As Arpinum was the site of the sacra privata of Cicero's family, Rome held the sacra publica of the Roman people. And as the places of his native land moved in Cicero memories of his forebears, in Rome there were countless reminders of the semidivine ancestors who had changed Rome from a small and struggling state into a great one. The description in the De legibus of Cicero's emotional attachment to the places that spoke to him of his own history and identity thus reflects the deeper connection of the Romans to places in Rome of communal symbolic significance—places that spoke to them of their history as a people and of the meaning of the Republic.^[30]

[29] E.g., Verg. Aen. 12.166: Aeneas, Romanae stirpis origo .

[30] The feeling of this passage is so close to that found in the speech of Camillus on the meaning of the site of Rome in Livy 5.51–54 that direct Ciceronian influence on Livy seems probable. For stylistic parallels between Camillus's speech and Cicero, see Ogilvie, Livy, 743.

In one of the last speeches he delivered, the Pro rege Deiotaro, Cicero spoke of the oratorical inspiration he drew from such places of shared symbolic meaning. The oration was delivered in camera in 44 B.C. before Caesar, who had arrogated to himself as dictator all judicial power. In the speech Cicero complains of the difficulty of speaking within a private house, isolated from the people and scenes that had inspired him in the past (5). He then imagines the oration he would be capable of if he were allowed to speak in the Forum: "If only, Gaius Caesar, I were defending this case in the Forum, with you looking on and judging, what excitement I would draw from the assembled throng of the Roman people! . . . I would look on the Senate house; I would gaze upon the Forum; finally, I would call on heaven itself" (6).

The passage is strangely moving. In rhetorical terms it can be classed as a predictable ingredient in the successful prooemium: the plea for goodwill and sympathy based on the persona of the orator himself.^[31] And yet it reads not so much as an appeal as a reminiscence. Cicero reminds Caesar—the other great public speaker of the age—of the oratorical power he had wielded in the past and complains that the changes the dictator has wrought have denied him two important sources of rhetorical effectiveness: first, the interaction between the orator and a vast popular audience, and, second, the setting in which that interaction took place. The passage illustrates Cicero's realization that great oratory, like great drama, demands both an audience and a stage.^[32]

Ambiance appears to have played a key role in Ciceronian rhetoric.^[33]

[31] For appeal from the persona of the orator, see, for example, Cic. Inv. 1.22; Her. 1.8; Quint. 4.1.6–10.

[32] Cf. the complaint of Secundus in Tacitus's Dialogus de oratoribus that contemporary oratory was vitiated by the fact that, unlike in an earlier generation, it had no great public stage on which it was practiced (39: "For the orator needs noise and applause, just like in a kind of theater. This was always the case for the ancient orators, when at the same time so many and such noble individuals crowded the Forum; when clients, as well, and fellow tribesmen and embassies sent from the towns and Italian representatives appeared in support of those on trial; and when in many trials the Roman people believed that their own interests were at stake").

[33] In fact, a passage from the Pro Plancio suggests that Cicero was well known for his recourse to this strategy, for in the speech he refers to the prosecutor's fear that if the trial of Plancius were to coincide with the ludi Romani, Cicero would make a pathetic appeal for the defendant based on the sight of the sacred couches of the gods carried in procession through the Forum, just as he had on previous occasions (Planc. 83). Cf. Crassus's use of a Gallic shield hanging in front of a shop to ridicule his opponent (in De or. 2.266) and analysis of this passage in Perl, "Der Redner Helvius Mancia."

The subject has received slight attention from modern commentators, although two scholars have at least pointed the way to further study. Victor Pöschl has examined Cicero's references to individuals present during his speeches. His work reveals a striking contrast between Cicero's practice and that of ancient Greek oratory, a contrast he attributes both to the emotional and flexible temperament of the Romans and to the idea that "consensus," or the perceptually expressed will of the majority, was understood by the Romans to be a barometer of truth.^[34] Complementing Pöschl's analysis is a series of articles by Römisch that explore various aspects of the meaning of Cicero's references to place. In the first of these, the passage from the De legibus referred to above (2.1–8) provides a starting point for a meditation on the unique political-emotional-spiritual connection that bound the Romans to their environment. In later articles Römisch has cited a variety of passages from the speeches, the letters, and the philosophical and rhetorical essays as part of his examination of Ciceronian thought concerning places of symbolic (i.e., political, social, religious, or historical) significance.^[35] The most recent of these articles has shown how Cicero's description of the scene outside the Temple of Concord in the fourth Catilinarian was transformed into a demonstration of the consensus omnium supporting the boni .^[36]

While Pöschl and Römisch have thus identified a previously ignored aspect of Ciceronian persuasion, much concerning the orator's use of this technique remains unexplored. Even a brief survey demonstrates, first of all, that references to the visual milieu are of varying complexity. Certain passages are clearly of limited impact on the overall strategy of the speeches in which they occur. Allusions to familiar places, for instance, sometimes function as a kind of shorthand of characterization. The technique is familiar from a much-quoted passage in Plautus's Curculio (461–86) in which the choragus instructs the audience regarding the places where they may find a variety of individuals: perjurers can be

[34] For comments and bibliography on the idea of Roman "collective morality," see Pöschl, "Zur Einbeziehung anwesender Personen," 216–18, 218 n. 21; Oehler, "Der consensus omnium."

[35] See Römisch, "Umwelt und Atmosphäre"; "Mensch und Raum"; "Cicero."

[36] Römisch, "Satis Praesidii."

found in the Comitium, liars and braggarts at the shrine of Venus Cloacina, rich spendthrifts and prostitutes sub basilica . The list goes on, mentioning many of the landmarks of the Republican Forum.^[37] Cicero uses a similar technique in calling a certain Aebutius in the Pro Caecina "a fellow who hangs around the Regia" (14); or in the Divinatio in Caecilium in asking why Caecilius does not seek a defendant of his own class "near the Maenian column" (50); or in speaking of Naevius and his associates in the Pro Quinctio as individuals who can be found in "the Licinian [auction] halls" and at the entrance to the market (12; 25).

Other allusions to the visible milieu were intended simply to add vividness to abstract formulations. In the Pro Roscio Amerino, for instance, Cicero's claim that an unjust decision by the judges will unleash violence and anarchy is supported by his declaration that it is now up to the judges to prevent murders from being committed "here in the Forum, before the tribunal, . . . before your feet, judges, among the very benches of the court" (12). In the Pro Quinctio the orator attempts to impress his audience with the idea that the future of Roman justice hangs on the acquittal of Quinctius by declaring that either Truth will prevail or, driven from "this place," it will never again find anywhere to rest (5). Again, in the Pro Sestio, describing the destitution of public life after he had been forced into exile, Cicero asks: "Whom has the Curia missed more? Whom has the Forum more lamented? Whom have the very tribunals longed for as much? At my departure all became deserted, bitter, silent, full of tears and grief" (128). Through the use of this quasi-poetic anthropomorphism (a comparison with Daphnis's absence from the woodland comes inevitably to mind), Cicero no doubt hoped to heighten the pathos attached to the memory of his departure.

In many speeches, we find that Cicero makes powerful but relatively straightforward appeals to the religious and patriotic associations of the chief monuments visible from the Forum. Thus the fourth Catilinarian refers to the Curia, termed "the greatest haven of refuge for all peoples" (2: summum auxilium omnium gentium ); the De lege agraria 1 speaks of the Arx, the "citadel of all peoples" (18: arcem omnium gentium ); and, again in the fourth Catilinarian, Cicero declares that the Republic commends to the protection of the assembled senators "herself, the lives of all the citizens, the Arx and the Capitolium, the altars of the Penates,

[37] Cf. subbasilicanos (Plaut. Capt. 815); subrostrani (Cic. Fam. 8.1.4); canalicolae (Fest. 40 L.); forenses (Livy 9.46.13).

that eternal fire of Vesta," and the temples and shrines of the gods, the walls and buildings of the city (18). Such passages are of great value in revealing to us the chief intellectual and emotional associations of the major monuments of the Capitoline and the Forum, and they can stand beside the great speech of Camillus in the fifth book of Livy's history or the depiction of Aeneas on the site of Rome in the eighth book of the Aeneid as evocations of the symbolic meanings attached to such places in the first century B.C.

Of greater interest in this work, however, is the process by which Cicero not only drew on the more accessible preexisting associations of monuments and topography but attempted to emphasize certain less obvious associations at the expense of others, as well as to create new meanings that would interact with preexisting associations to further his rhetorical aims.^[38] The Pro Scauro provides a particularly clear example of this technique. In the speech, Cicero states that wherever he looked he found material for his defense of Scaurus (46: quocumque non modo mens verum etiam oculi inciderunt ). He then connects each of a series of the most prominent monuments of the Forum with an event or idea redounding to the credit of the Scauri. The Curia calls to

[38] The study I propose responds to the need to understand literature in the context of its historical reception. As Jauss argues, the effect of a new work of literature is felt by a reader "not only within the narrow horizons of his literary expectations but also within the wider horizon of his experience of life" ("Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," 18). Of this interaction between the experience of literature and that of real life, Jauss writes: "The orientation of our experience by the creative capability of literature rests not only on its artistic character, which by virtue of a new form helps us surmount the mechanical process of everyday perception. . . . But the new form . . . can also make possible a new perception of things by forming the content of an experience which first appears in the form of literature. The relationship of literature and reader can be realized in the sensuous realm as stimulus to aesthetic perception as well as in the ethical realm as a stimulation to moral reflection" (37–38). (Cf. Jauss's Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, 41: "The horizon of expectations of literature distinguishes itself before the horizon of expectations of historical lived praxis in that it not only preserves actual experiences but also anticipates unrealized possibility, broadens the limited space of social behavior for new desires, claims, and goals, and thereby opens patterns of future experience.") Jauss speaks of two separate experiences: the experience of literature changes the subsequent perception of reality. In respect to the manipulation of visual stimuli, however, rhetoric is able to create a simultaneous process: the orator alters his listeners' sensual and moral perception while they are in the very act of perceiving.

mind the illustrious senatorial career of Scaurus's father (46); by his restoration of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, Scaurus's grandfather seemed to have "established" (46: constituisse ) the gods in the sight of the jurors so that these deities might be able to intercede with them to win the acquittal of his grandson; the Capitoline temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno Regina, and Minerva called to mind the generosity of Scaurus's father and of Scaurus himself, who had made generous gifts for its adornment (47); and the shrine of Vesta reminded the jurors of the heroism of Lucius Caecilius Metellus, an ancestor of Scaurus's mother, Caecilia Metella. As Pontifex Maximus, he had rescued the Palladium—symbol of the well-being of the state—from the flames that had threatened to destroy it when the shrine had caught fire in 241 B.C. (48).

In this section of the Pro Scauro, the manner in which Cicero uses the visual milieu to manipulate the feelings of the audience towards his client is relatively unambiguous.^[39] In the case of two of Cicero's most celebrated orations, the first and third Catilinarians, however, his use of the associations of place is not so obvious; my analysis of the exploitation of setting in these works will therefore be the subject of the next chapter.^[40] This analysis must, of course, rely upon the received texts of the speeches, and, as scholars have pointed out for generations, these texts are not transcriptions but reflections—sometimes clear, sometimes muddied—of the words actually spoken when the speeches were delivered.^[41] It has often been argued that the Catilinarians in particular show evidence of Cicero's desire in 60 B.C. to turn the speeches into apologiae for his actions at the time of the conspiracy.^[42] While it is probably cor-

[39] For further discussion of this passage, see below, pp. 102–3 n. 25.

[40] In spite of the existence of an extensive bibliography responding to the manifold literary and rhetorical aspects of these speeches, no work has hitherto attempted a systematic study of how appeal to ambiance actually functioned in the overall strategy of each oration.

[41] The speeches that we know to have been delivered form a continuum between the Oratio post reditum in senatu, which was said to have been taken down word for word, and the Pro Milone, which differed markedly from the speech Cicero actually made in defense of Milo. On the relationship between the received texts and the original orations, see Humbert, Les plaidoyers écrits; Laurand, Etudes, 1:1–23; Stroh, Taxis und Taktik, 31–54; and above, pp. 8–9.

[42] See, among others, Draheim, "Die ursprüngliche Form der katilinarischen Reden Ciceros"; Bornecque, Les Catilinaires, 145; Fuchs, "Eine Doppel-fassung in Ciceros catilinarischen Reden"; Kennedy, Art of Rhetoric, 176–81.

rect to assume that certain lines might well have been added in redaction, those who have claimed to be able to identify numerous specific passages in each of the speeches that were not part of the originals have tended to ignore the importance of the excised portions to the thematic development of the whole. Nevertheless, I must here reiterate that any analysis of actio –that is, the speech as delivered–is to some extent theoretical. Thus the question that will be answered in the next chapter is, How do the transmitted texts of the first and third Catilinarians demonstrate the ways in which Cicero might have made use of the setting of the speeches to achieve his ends?