In this paper, I argue that four Greek and Roman writers active under Nerva and Trajan think about rhetorical style in very different ways, despite their shared educational and socio-economic background, and the superficial similarities in their writing on the topic. I am interested in two discrepancies in particular, both of which touch on my current interest in Imperial anti-classicism: first, that between a tripartite stylistic model, followed by Quintilian, Plutarch, and Messalla in Tacitus’ Dialogus, in which the middle is favored over two extremes (what I call the ‘classicizing’ approach) and a bipartite variant, employed by Dio and Tacitus’ Aper, in which one is preferred to the detriment of the other (characteristic, I argue, of ‘modernist’ or ‘primitivist’ rejections of classicism). Second, that between atemporal conceptions of stylistic variation (held by the Greek authors) and the association (by the Latin writers) of stylistic qualities with periods of literary or rhetorical history—particularly that of a ‘rough’, ‘unpolished’ type of speaking with an ‘archaic’ period embodied by Cato the Elder and the Gracchi.

Lawrence Kim (Trinity University)  on “Style, Periodization, and Literary History: Quintilian and Tacitus, Dio and Plutarch”

March 6th at 5:00 pm

Room 3309

Light refreshments to follow in Room 3114

Sponsored by the M.A. and Ph.D. Program in Classics, co-sponsored by the PhD Program in History 

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