Rhetoric in the Roman Republic

Event Details

The speaker addresses the subject of Roman oratory and the making of foreign policy with a discussion of Cato's rhetoric used to incite a war with Carthage. Further on, he discusses the rhetoric of other Roman statesmen, including Cicero. In the second half of the forum, Gruen discusses the Roman lack of foreign policy-making institutions and a consistent foreign policy, an inconsistent assignment of foreign envoys, the practice of discouraging professionalism in politics, and the consequences of this on the oratory. During the questioning time, he discusses the similarity of Roman foreign policy rhetoric to that of the contemporary U.S. and addresses Cicero's conception of foreign policy.