Kirsten S Parkin (University of Cambridge)
This paper will explore the imitatio of Cicero’s renowned Catilinarian Orations (63 BCE) in the little-known second century CE compilation of controversiae, pseudo-Quintilian’s Minor Declamations. The Latin rhetorical exercise of the controversiae were a mock legal exercise which became the dominant and final stage of a Roman student’s education as well as an elite cultural institution in Rome during the first century CE. Yet it has only been in the latter half of the twentieth century that the controversiae have begun to be critically engaged with in scholarship.
One of the more overlooked aspects of Latin controversiae is the way in which they engaged in imitatio (imitation) and aemulatio (emulation) of earlier Latin literature. A handful of important studies have focussed on imitatio in the Minor Declamations of Ciceronian stock types (Brescia & Lentano 2009; Pingoud 2016) and literary features (Winterbottom 2019; Pingoud 2018; Pingoud et al. 2020). This paper contributes to this developing body of scholarship by examining how similar kinds of imitatio are taking place with Cicero’s Catilinarian Orations and other later references to the events of 63 BCE.
Through a case study of Minor Declamation 348, entitled cum proditoribus carcer incensus, I argue that the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy lurk as a loose subtext behind the scenario of this controversia. I then propose that the evocation of the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy is what prompts the declaimer to echo Cicero (but interestingly, not Sallust). In the argument proper, the declaimer co-opts the rhetoric and employs several lexical imitations of a res publica in danger which Cicero himself used to describe the events of the Catilinarian conspiracy. I will first examine the employment of two prepositional phrases of the declaimer’s—ad salutem communen and pro salute communi—that imitate Cicero’s language to justify the execution of the conspirators. These phrases not only appear in Catilinarians themselves but also Cicero’s later reflections on the events of 63 BCE in the Pro Sestio and Pro Flacco. Second, I examine the declaimer’s use of a laundry list of the civic virtues and physical monuments of the city that are worth preserving and how this adapts Cicero’s use of similar lists throughout Catilinarians Orations. The paper will conclude by exploring what rhetorical purpose this imitatio of Cicero serves in the declamation. I assert that imitatio structures and gives deeper meaning to this controversia: the declaimer postures as Cicero and in so doing amplifies the claims of acting in the interests of public safety.