Power’s Words

I want to start tonight not with Tacitus and his descriptions of the reign of Nero, son of Agrippina the Younger and adopted son of her husband the emperor Claudius, but with Seneca the Elder, the father of Nero’s tutor and advisor.

With the changed political situation under the empire, deliberative rhetoric waned in importance: the senate was of little relevance and political decisions were made by the emperor, so there was scant use (and considerable danger) in speaking out in favor of one course of action or another. Forensic rhetoric was still of some importance for minor judicial cases, but the primary form of rhetorical expression was in the exercises (for that is all they were) of declamation. The controversiae and suasoriae of Seneca the Elder represent the most important form of declamation, and were composed from memory for his sons around AD 37 as an example of some of the aspects of declaiming that he recalled from his rhetorical education. They are, essentially, a collection of different epigrammatic ways of addressing an oration, in their barest form. Much like the topical exercises and loci communes of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the controversiae and suasoriae were intended to help students come up with all the possible variations on a topic or theme, and to help them encapsulate their ideas and express them in as pithy a form as possible.

For their persuasive power, the controversiae rely more on felicity of style and epigrammatic force than on any argumentative rigor, and the hypothetical situations they involve (escapes from pirates, twice-adopted sons, and such) often border on the ridiculous. Though the suasoriae deal with somewhat more realistic situations, such as Cicero’s deliberating whether to beg Antony’s pardon, much the same holds true for them, as well. The controversiae were the more advanced exercises, and the suasoriae, dealing with deliberative rhetoric rather than with the judicial or forensic rhetoric of the controversiae, were reserved for students at earlier stages in their educations, and we might assume that this was due in part to the fact that there simply was less of a space for deliberative rhetoric in Seneca’s Rome: rhetoric has become not the necessary instruction for future citizens of a free republic, but simply a series of exercises with strange or controversial topics for the performance of lectures. In his excellent Rhetoric at Rome: A Historical Survey, M. L. Clarke notes that “Quintilian bears witness to the rage for sententiae among the imperial rhetoricians,” and suggests that “It was encouraged by the conditions of the declamation schools,” where “The speaker having no other purpose than to entertain and impress would seek for applause as a comedian for laughs” (95).

When the powerful do as they please, what — if any — are the uses of rhetoric? Consider the situation at the time: with the controversiae and suasoriae, Seneca the Elder was looking back to the rhetorical education of his youth. In AD 23, Sejanus poisons Drusus; Agrippina the Younger, Nero’s mother and a sister of Drusus, has Junius Silanus (a rival to Nero) and Passienus (her second husband) poisoned; Nero has Britannicus, the son of the emperor Claudius, poisoned; and in AD 55, Nero and Agrippina the Younger poison the emperor Claudius.

But rhetoric does, perhaps, have at least ceremonial uses. The panegyric that Nero delivers for Claudius, “which was composed by Seneca [the Younger], exhibited much elegance, as indeed that famous man had an attractive genius which suited the ear of the time. Elderly men who amuse their leisure with comparing the past and the present,” of whom Tacitus is certainly one, “observed that Nero was the first emperor who needed another man’s eloquence. The dictator Caesar rivalled the greatest orators, and Augustus had an easy and fluent way of speaking, such as became a sovereign. Tiberius too thoroughly understood the art of balancing words, and was sometimes forcible in the expression of his thoughts, or else intentionally obscure. Even Caius Caesar’s [Caligula’s] disordered intellect did not wholly mar his faculty of speech. Nor did Claudius, when he spoke with preparation, lack elegance. Nero from early boyhood turned his lively genius in other directions” (246). As is customary in Tacitus, we see an attention to dissembling with the description of Nero’s “mimicries of sorrow” (247) during this funeral service, and throughout the description of the reign of Nero, there are references to and descritions of the perpetual flattery of the senators. One supposes that flattery, like the ceremonies of the funeral, is a form of epideictic rhetoric, concerned more with praise or blame than with considering future action or determining past action.

I don’t know what sort of rhetoric was delivered at the public celebrations held by the emperors; whether it was the toothless suasoriae and controversiae of Seneca the Elder, or the panegyrics and vituperations of epideictic rhetoric. But in one of Nero’s celebrations, where there were games and contests and displays of skill, “No one gained the first prize for eloquence, but it was publicly announced that the emperor was victorious” (286). And the flattery does not cease: matters decay to the point where Nero has his domineering and politically dangerous mother Agrippina the Younger put to death. (As the Wikipedia entry on her points out, “She was sister of Caligula, sister-in-law of Tiberius, niece and wife of Claudius, and the mother of Nero.”) When the assassins came, Tacitus tells us that she pointed to her womb and bade the centurion, “Strike here.” After this, he returns to Rome, where “the centurions and tribunes [. . .] again and again pressed his hand and congratulated him on his having escaped an unforeseen danger” (280). So encouraged, Nero drafts a letter to the Senate, justifying his deed and condemning his mother.

Under empire, rhetoric cannot look to the future, and can exist in the present only as hypothesis and speculation. Its most significant role is in rewriting the past to suit the whims of power — but in this, it need convince no one, because of the very fact of power. It is nothing but an ornament, a diversion, a way for personal pride to pass the time.