Two polemics in want of a history: Sallust and Cicero

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Insight into the characteristics of Roman polemic can be revealed by contextualizing the two invectives transmitted among the works of Sallust alongside Cicero’s De optimo genere oratorum. The mutual attempts at character assassination of ‘Cicero’ and ‘Sallust’, usually considered of limited value by modern historians and biographers, show up the fault lines between genres (historiography and oratory), between education and entertainment, and between demolishing an opponent’s reputation and pairing oneself with him in perpetuity. These fictional defamatory attacks raise the participants to a level of fame analogous to, if not superior to, that of Aeschines and Demosthenes in the Greek rhetorical canon.