The Latin temperament being practical, whereas the Grecian was highly imaginative, it was a long time before Roman oratory escaped from the hardness of competition and delivery that pervaded it for many centuries, and it was not until the conquest of Greece that the classic style of oratory made its deep impress upon the work of the Roman orators.
The elder Cato was austere in matter and manner, and the younger Cato, dying 103 years after the death of his great-grandfather, inherited many of his characteristics, and although his oratory displayed candor, truth, and courage, it lacked the finish, smoothness, and grace of the Grecian school, which qualities were, to a great extent, possessed by Cicero, Caesar, Crassus, and Marc Antony. Caius Gracchus and his brother Tiberius had a marked influence upon the Roman style of oratory by softening and smoothing it, but this influence was not strongly felt until the coming of Cicero, and that marvellous group of statesmen, politicians, and orators which embraced Pompey, Crassus, Caesar, Cato, Antonius (Marc Antony), and Hortensius. The Latin oratory had been candid but hard, and lacked all the grace that made the Grecian oratory so bewitching; but Cicero, by combining the candor of the Roman style with the beauty of the Grecian, produced a form of oratory that has not been surpassed by any other orator.
Crassus was undoubtedly an orator of the first rank. Plutarch said of him: “As for learning, he chiefly cared for rhetoric, and what would be serviceable with large numbers; he became one of the best speakers at Rome, and by his pains and industry outdid the best natural orators.” Little of his matter has come down to us.
Julius Caesar, among his other powers, possessed that of oratory, and were it not for his transcendent abilities as a solider, which overshadowed his other talents, his oratorical ability would have insured him a place in history.
Marc Antony was another great orator of the Ciceronian period, but nothing very authentic of his has come down to us. Shakespeare was indebted to Plutarch for his idea of the oration over the body of Caesar, and this matchless oration no doubt gives us a just conception of Antony’s style. History tells us that Antony possessed almost unnatural influence over his soldiers through his eloquence, and that when they were discouraged over long marches, hardships, and privations, he would go the rounds of his encampment, addressing his troops; that he would so enthuse them that they would forget their fears and miseries, and rush with him to victory. The speech delivered over the body of Caesar by Marc Antony is reported by Dion Cassius in his History of Rome, but how much of it was spoken by Antony is problematical.
The selections here given will convey a clear and comprehensive idea of the scope and style of Roman oratory in its palmiest days.
cato the censor
Marcus Porcius Cato, surnamed Censorius, or Major, Roman statesman, general, and orator, bas born at Tusculum, 234 b. c., and died in 149 b. c. He was scrupulously honest himself, and demanded honesty in all who would serve the state. He opposed the influence of Greek civilization over the Romans, and conceived it to be his duty to prevent new ideas being taught to the younger men of his generation. He was a maintainer of primitive discipline, and it was for this reason he gained the title of the Censor. The speech here given displays his character and style to perfection. It was delivered in the Roman Forum in 215 b. c.
Speech in Support of the Oppian Law. If, Romans, every individual among us had made it a rule to maintain the prerogative and authority of a hundred with respect to his own wife, we should have less trouble with the whole sex. But now our privileges, overpowered at home by female contumacy, are, even here in the Forum, spurned and trodden under foot; and because we are unable to withstand each separately, we now dread their collective body. I was accustomed to think it a fabulous and fictitious tale that in a certain island the whole race of males was utterly extirpated by a conspiracy of the women.
But the utmost danger may be apprehended equally from either sex if you suffer cabals and secret consultations to be held: scarcely indeed can I determine, in my own mind, whether the act itself, or the precedent that it affords, is of more pernicious tendency. The latter of these more particularly concerns us consuls and the other magistrates; the former, you, my fellow-citizens: for, whether the measure proposed to your consideration be profitable to the state or not, is to be determined by you, who are to vote on the occasion.