Life in Rome was relentlessly public, and oratory was at its
heart. Orations were dramatic spectacles in which the speaker
deployed an arsenal of rhetorical tricks and strategies aimed at
arousing the emotions of the audience, and spectators responded
vigorously and vocally with massed chants of praise or
condemnation. Unfortunately, many aspects of these performances
have been lost. In the first in-depth study of oratorical gestures
and crowd acclamations as methods of communication at public
spectacles, Gregory Aldrete sets out to recreate these vital
missing components and to recapture the original context of ancient
spectacles as interactive, dramatic, and contentious public
performances.
At the most basic level, this work is a study of
communication--how Roman speakers communicated with their
audiences, and how audiences in turn were able to reply and convey
their reactions to the speakers. Aldrete begins by investigating
how orators employed an extraordinarily sophisticated system of
hand and body gestures in order to enhance the persuasive power of
their speeches. He then turns to the target of these orations--the
audience--and examines how they responded through the mechanism of
acclamations, that is, rhythmically shouted comments.
Aldrete finds much in these ancient spectacles that is relevant
to modern questions of political propaganda, manipulation of public
image, crowd behavior, and speechmaking. Readers with an interest
in rhetoric, urban culture, or communications in any period will
find the book informative, as will those working in art history,
archaeology, history, and philology.
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