Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works
John Dugan
Abstract
This study investigates how Cicero (106-43 BCE) uses his major treatises on rhetorical theory (De oratore, Brutus, and Orator) in order to construct himself as a new entity within Roman cultural life: a leader who based his authority upon intellectual, oratorical, and literary accomplishments instead of the traditional avenues for prestige such as a distinguished familial pedigree or political or military feats. Eschewing conventional Roman notions of manliness, Cicero constructed a distinctly aesthetized identity that flirts with the questionable domains of the theatre and the feminine, and t ... More
Keywords: Cicero, rhetorical theory, De oratore, Brutus, Orator, Roman cultural life, aesthetized identity, theatre, femininity, new man
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 | Print ISBN-13: 9780199267804 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 | DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267804.001.0001 |
