The work of the American ancient historian Jon E. Lendon deals with the socio-cultural significance and effectiveness of rhetoric in the Roman Empire. The author first looks at their importance in the context of education and training, before turning to the assassination of Caesar, certain types of public buildings and Roman law, concrete examples from which, according to him, the influence of rhetoric can be assessed. Its basic idea can be summarized as follows: Through their rhetoric-heavy training, Roman aristocrats since the late Republican period developed a rhetorical perspective on the world and themselves, whereby past actions were classified accordingly, but future actions were also approached accordingly. If, for example, ancient reports about the murder of Caesar read like effective productions, this is, according to Lendon, less because their authors rhetorically staged what happened afterwards, but because the actors thought and planned in such categories from the outset.
This can be seen as innovative, even revolutionary, or at least stimulating – but of course you will not find Lendon’s approach equally convincing in every possible example. If taken to its logical conclusion, this prioritization of staging would mean little less than denying the ancient protagonists the ability to pragmatically reflect and plan action. In contrast, the question is also justified as to whether public action and politics in the broadest sense are even conceivable without staging. From such a perspective, the sometimes high degree of “rhetorization” of the case studies analyzed by Lendon would only be somewhat surprising and rhetoric would ultimately only be a particularly significant contemporary frame of reference.
But it would be pointless to criticize Lendon’s book on the basis of such considerations – because it is not for nothing that he emphasizes in the introduction that “the argumentation of this book is speculative” (page 11), given the influence of education on people’s worldview and actions ultimately cannot be measured and a direct connection can only be made plausible but not proven. Accordingly, he concludes his last chapter in a very relativistic way (page 185): “But the leading minds of society lived in the [rhetorischen] Cloud, and this cloud swirled around their lives and thoughts – but not all of them and not all of the time.” In such a limited form, Lendon’s approach would seem quite plausible to most readers. Either way, it can be said that Lendon takes a refreshing look at the role that rhetoric played in social reality in the Roman Empire, rightly rejecting older views that viewed oratory as a vain, empty trinket with no significant historical significance wanted to dismiss, throws it overboard.
Review: Dr. Jonas Scherr
Jon Edward Lendon
Rhetoric Power Rome
The power of oratory in the Roman Empire
wbg Theiss, Darmstadt 2023, 352 pages, € 32.–