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Oct. 10th, 2008 09:06 pmI'm reading Tacitus' Dialogus de Oratoribus (I should be reading Livy, but what the heck, I'm sick: I'll read whomever I want!), and it's making me fall in love with Tacitus all over again. My understanding of it had been confined to two points (apart from the "abnormal style"/"early work" etc. stuff): (1) The "oratory can only exist with the free republic political turmoil" (crossouts in the original, of course) thing, and (2) The business with Maternus and his subversive play.
(2) comes right at the beginning, and it is so much better than I could have believed:
But then, Aper comes in from a completely different angle, and it turns into oratory vs. poetry, and modernity vs. antiquity, and somehow the responsibility of the individual in unpleasant time is completely wound up in all of it. Which is so Tacitean -- even with the style rather different, how could the Renaissance have got it so wrong?
I'm reading out of a reprint 1890's edition, and in the interests of recording the hilarious things old-fashioned commentators had to say, I present this beautiful theory about the development of Tacitus' style, courtesy of Charles Edwin Bennett, who once taught at Cornell University (NB. he uses an obsolete dating where the Dialogus is considered the earliest work by a lot.):
Not to minimize the baneful character of the senatorial experience under Domitian, but "Tacitus was so traumatized by Domitian's reign that he began to write incomprehensibly." The mind boggles, and giggles.
(2) comes right at the beginning, and it is so much better than I could have believed:
-"Aren't you worried, Maternus, about these malicious rumors, so that you're less in love with the offensiveness of your Cato. Or -- I know -- you've just taken it up again to re-edit, and, once everything that might be liable to prejudiced interpretation is removed, you'll release it again, a better play and a safer one."
-"Oh, you'll read what Maternus owed to himself, and you'll recognize it. And if Cato has left anything out, my Thyestes will say it in an upcoming performance..."
But then, Aper comes in from a completely different angle, and it turns into oratory vs. poetry, and modernity vs. antiquity, and somehow the responsibility of the individual in unpleasant time is completely wound up in all of it. Which is so Tacitean -- even with the style rather different, how could the Renaissance have got it so wrong?
I'm reading out of a reprint 1890's edition, and in the interests of recording the hilarious things old-fashioned commentators had to say, I present this beautiful theory about the development of Tacitus' style, courtesy of Charles Edwin Bennett, who once taught at Cornell University (NB. he uses an obsolete dating where the Dialogus is considered the earliest work by a lot.):
Moreover the period intervening between the composition of the two works (sc. Dialogus and Agricola was occupied by the reign of Domitian, the baneful character of which had made the deepest impression on Tacitus... Under these circumstances, and after so great a lapse of time, his style might well have taken on a different character.
Not to minimize the baneful character of the senatorial experience under Domitian, but "Tacitus was so traumatized by Domitian's reign that he began to write incomprehensibly." The mind boggles, and giggles.
