Overview

"The Voices of the Consul is the first book-length study of the rhetoric of ""On the Agrarian Law"" I and II, the first two speeches that the great Roman orator Cicero gave on his ascension to the leadership of the Roman state-the first to the senate, the second to the people. Through a close and novel linguistic analysis, Brian A. Krostenko draws out Cicero's idealistic visions and shows how Cicero's apparently diffuse attacks on various clauses of an agrarian bill are informed by a consistent and idealistic vision of the functioning of the Roman state in which the people are to take their sovereignty seriously and the senate is to regard its high position responsibly. Cicero's speeches turned a critique of a single law into a politico manifesto-a worthy objective for a new consul. By a close comparison of corresponding passages from the speeches, the book clarifies Cicero's masterful adaptations of his audiences' knowledge of political concepts, civic spaces, legal procedures, and other cultural practices. By revealing Cicero's rhetorical technique and the ideology implicit in these speeches, The Voices of the Consul provides a more complete picture of his understanding of Roman politics and his own role within it at the beginning of his consular career."

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9780199734207

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A nuanced appreciation of Cicero's oratory requires a rare constellation of competences: in philology, in sociolinguistics, in Roman history and jurisprudence, and, of course, in classical rhetorical theory. Cicero's own expertise in all these realms was unsurpassed; few scholars really have the skill to do them all justice. Happily for us, Brian Krostenko does, and his richly subtle analysis of De lege agraria I and II will open up these underappreciated speeches to a new era of study and understanding. * John T. Kirby, University of Miami * Both expansive and focused, The Voices of the Consul offers a radically new way of understanding Cicero, late Republican rhetoric, and Roman prose as a whole. Krostenko's applications of neo-philology and a functional approach to language-coupled with his profound sensitivity to the opportunities and dangers inherent in the final decades of the Republic-have changed the discourse over how we should read Latin if we wish to read it well. * Sarah Culpepper Stroup, University of Washington *

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Brian A. Krostenko is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Notre Dame and author of Cicero, Catullus, and the Language of Social Performance.

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