James MAY Ciceronian Scholarship in the Latin Classroom  

At the beginning of a new century (and a new millennium), the name, the accomplishments, the works of Marcus Tullius Cicero still endure. In addition to the scholars and experts who are writing about him, yet another generation of Latin students follows in the footsteps of countless others who have studied his speeches and his other works as models of elegant Latin prose and effective verbal persuasion. Indeed, if long tradition--not to mention Cicero's mastery of Latin prose style and expression--is not enough to secure him a place in the classroom of the 21st century, the fairly recent inclusion of his Pro Caelio in the AP Curriculum will likely ensure that most students enrolled in advanced Latin courses in America will, for the foreseeable future, have at least some contact with Cicero during their years of studying the language.

Although we who teach in the high school or undergraduate Latin classroom realize that a vast majority of our time and efforts is devoted to helping our students merely to read and understand what Cicero has to say and how he says it in the original Latin text, we are also well aware of the fact that a Ciceronian oration cannot be fully understood and appreciated without at least some knowledge of its social and historical context, not to mention recognition and discussion of particular strategies that the orator employs in order to persuade his audience. In this respect, current scholarly approaches to Ciceronian oratory can be of interest to both teacher and student, and can help greatly in analyzing and in learning to appreciate Cicero's oratorical art.

Christopher Craig, in a forthcoming article discussing recent scholarly work on Cicero's rhetorica and speeches, has identified several topics and approaches that have characterized Ciceronian scholarship during the past twenty-five years; these include the continuing debate about the relationship between spoken and published versions of the orations, the analysis of a speech as an act of progressive manipulation of the audience by the orator in order to win support for his case (so-called "persuasive process criticism"), Cicero's application of argument based on character as part of the persuasive process, and the analysis of the contents of a speech from culturally specific Roman points of view.1 This presentation will begin by briefly surveying these approaches and the major scholarly discussions that characterize them, but will then narrow its focus by concentrating on those that have been most dominant and are most easily applicable in the classroom. In this connection, passages from Cicero's In Catilinam and Pro Caelio will be employed to demonstrate how scholars apply their theories to these orations, and how such application can be used to enhance students' knowledge and appreciation of Ciceronian oratory.

A handout containing the passages in question along with a selected (and annotated) bibliography will be distributed. The bibliography will be confined to items that bear specifically on the texts in question, and will be useful in helping teachers to introduce scholarly theories and approaches to their students.  

1 "A Survey of Selected Recent Work on Cicero's Rhetorica and Speeches," in A Companion to the Study of Cicero: Oratory and Rhetoric, edited by James M. May (Leiden: E. J. Brill 2002).