That Tyrant, Persuasion

How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World

J. E. Lendon

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780691221014
  9780691219998
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691221021
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: History

How rhetorical training influenced deeds as well as words in the Roman Empire

The assassins of Julius Caesar cried out that they had killed a tyrant, and days later their colleagues in the Senate proposed rewards for this act of tyrannicide. The killers and their supporters spoke as if they were following a well-known script. They were. Their education was chiefly in rhetoric and as boys they would all have heard and given speeches on a ubiquitous set of themes—including one asserting that “he who kills a tyrant shall receive a reward from the city.” In That Tyrant, Persuasion, J. E. Lendon explores how rhetorical education in the Roman world influenced not only the words of literature but also momentous deeds: the killing of Julius Caesar, what civic buildings and monuments were built, what laws were made, and, ultimately, how the empire itself should be run.

Presenting a new account of Roman rhetorical education and its surprising practical consequences, That Tyrant, Persuasion shows how rhetoric created a grandiose imaginary world for the Roman ruling elite—and how they struggled to force the real world to conform to it. Without rhetorical education, the Roman world would have been unimaginably different.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Section I. The Strange World of Education in the Roman Empire
• Section II. Killing Julius Caesar as the Tyrant of Rhetoric
• Section III. Rhetoric’s Curious Children: Building in the Cities of the Roman Empire
• Section IV. Lizarding, and Other Adventures in Declamation and Roman Law
• Notes
• Abbreviations of Some Modern Works
• Works Cited
• Index