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CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE
eventually have to face in the courts. Such attacks should not be taken too
literally: it is certainly erroneous to regard the declamations as valueless in
preparing youths for practical advocacy. 1 On the other hand, the subject matter
of the suasoriae was more prone to be fantastic (and hence susceptible to
stylistic floridity) than that of the controversiae: and it was the former which
often had direct points of contact with the material treated by poets, historians
and philosophers. The commonplaces and 'purple patches' beloved by the
declaimers are often recognizable in first-century literature — as also the forms,
structures and methods of deliberative orations. But it may be said that if
rhetoric affected poetry the reverse process was also true. Ovid's style was
much admired by the declaimers. Quintilian, hardly with approval, said that
Lucan was 'fit rather to be imitated by orators than by poets' (Inst. 10.1.90).
Sententiousness and panni purpurei were, after all, more obviously a legacy of
poetry than prose: and the adoption of a poetic style by prose writers (which is
as true of Livy as of the 'silver* historians) inevitably led to the inclusion of
poetic/declamatory topoi and attitudes in their work. Historiography had, in
any case, traditionally been viewed as a genre akin to poetry, and especially to
tragedy and epic.
So far as poetry was concerned the rising popularity of public readings
(recitationes) at this time — in many ways parallel to the burgeoning of declamatio
in the schools — may have provided an impetus for the assumption of more
overtly declamatory techniques. Marcus Aper in the Dialogus (9) speaks slightingly
of poets who, after all their labours, are constrained to plead with people
to attend their recitations — and to pay for hiring a hall and chairs and for
producing programmes (JibelW) into the bargain. Satirists like Persius, Petronius
and Juvenal are no less scathing in their allusions to recitatio. Nonetheless, it
had a real function. It was a form of cultural recreation as well as a means by
which poets could establish a reputation. Audiences might well have to face
effusions of bad verse (as Juvenal grumbles at the beginning of his first satire),
but they also had the chance of hearing more skilful writers. Pliny saw in
recitatio a way for authors to subject their work to independent assessment
(£pist. 7.17.13). For a professional poet in need of patronage the recitation
must have been of some assistance. Statius, for instance, at one point refers to
the fact that senators were in the habit of attending his readings (Silv. 5.2.160—
3) — and Juvenal, in sarcastic vein, confirms their success, though denying that
they brought Statius any financial benefit {Sat. j.&zff.). 2 For poets like Statius
and Martial, the problem of finding patrons was urgent and pressing. The days
of such coteries as those presided over by Maecenas and Messalla Corvinus
1
Cf., esp., Parks (1945) 6iff.
2
On Juvenal's allusion to Statius, cf. Tandoi (1969) 103—22. The satirist's remarks on Statius'
financial status should not be taken at face value.
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