Tacitus: Dialogus de oratoribus

An edition of Tacitus' work on oratory, with a substantial introduction and commentary.

Tacitus (Author), Roland Mayer (Edited by)

9780521470407, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 May 2001

238 pages
19.4 x 13 x 2.2 cm, 0.328 kg

'… the commentary is a most elegant piece of work …'. Journal of Roman Studies

Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus is his most neglected work - there has not been an English-language commentary in over a century - and yet it is arguably his most original. Although among his earliest writings it shows complete mastery of the dialogue from and of Ciceronian idiom. It makes an original contribution to the continuing first-century AD debate about the role of oratory in Rome under the Principate, and raises the question of what a man can do to secure lasting renown. This edition contains a substantial introduction discussing such matters as the place of the work in the author's oeuvre, its style and layout. The commentary is designed to explain not only the language, and its subtle reformation of the Ciceronian idiom, but also the large issues mentioned about the decline of oratory, and the best career for a man to follow.

Introduction: 1. The background
2. Tacitus' career
3. The Agricola
4. Fame
5. The state of oratory
6. The Dialogus
7. Authenticity
8. Date of composition
9. The style of the work
10. The lay-out of the Dialogus
11. Characters and characterization
12. The transmission of the text
CORNELI TACITI DIALOGVS DE ORATORIBVS
Commentary.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG]