The Rhetorica ad Herennium pairs praise and blame, and rightly so: the same loci provide material for each, and both developed within a subtype of oratory, epideictic and invective, which together characterize the genus demonstrativum (Her. 1.2.2; cf. Ar., Rhet. 1368a.33–7). Modern treatments, however, have so often considered them separately that the very title of the volume under review promises a welcome contribution. In particular, after the pioneering work of Süss on Greek ethos (1910) and the book by Koster (1980), who catalogued the main motifs of Greco-Roman invective, modern scholarship has taken two important turns. ‘Praise’ is also receiving some attention, though a monograph remains a desideratum at least since 1975 (cf. MacCormack); and Roman invective has been studied separately from the Greek, in an attempt to discover its peculiarities within its literary and cultural contexts. This effort has produced helpful contributions: for instance, after Nisbet, in his commentary to Cicero's In Pisonem, demonstrated how Roman invective ‘often shows more regard for literary convention than for historical truth’ (1961: 193), Corbeill concentrated on the social dynamics of the members of the élite (1999), arguing that mostly Romans believed the content of invective and seeing invective attacks as a series of examples of what a Roman is not (2002: 199); while Riggsby (1997) considered invective as a zero-sum game, in which Romans, whether or not they believed the specific contents of blame, aggressively negotiated their prestige.
The twelve essays in this volume (collected from a conference held at the University of St Andrews in 2006) differ from one another in scope, some being focused on specific speeches and some on broader themes. To the former group belong five contributions. Harries analyses Cicero's blame of Naevius in Pro Quinctio and of Fannius in Pro Roscio Comoedo, showing how the legal context accounts for the techniques of invective; Tempest takes a fresh look at the Divinatio in Caecilium, demonstrating that Cicero’s reinvention of topoi from Attic oratory displays confidence and challenges Hortensius’ authority; a similar use of Greek models animates Rosillo López’s reconstruction of Cicero's (lost) epideictic Epistula ad Caesarem; Tatum considers Cicero's exceptionally diverse means of invective in Pro Caelio, both to neutralize the invective of the prosecution and to vilify Clodia; while praise and blame in the political development illustrated by the fourteen Philippics is the subject of Manuwald's paper, which compares Cicero's blunt dramatis personae with more nuanced portrayals of the same characters from his contemporaneous letters.
The other seven essays focus on themes. Covino moves beyond Cicero and shows how laudationes funebres, regardless their falsifications, helped to support the ruling class, while Rees conducts a useful survey of the evidence about laudationes iudiciales, explaining how the adversarial nature of Roman courts and rhetorical practices favoured false witnesses; Hölkeskamp's contribution moves beyond Cicero and surveys the Republican orators’ strategies of self-construction. His argument, which makes a good addendum to Corbeill's explanation of invective, is twofold: the distance between orators and the people was embedded in an endemically Roman system of merit and reward; and the traffic of praise and blame continuously renegotiated the boundaries of this system within the political and cultural hierarchies of Roman society. Steel reads Pro Plancio and In toga candida against the Commentariolum petitionis to document how Cicero adapted the conventions of electoral campaigns to his own needs; van der Blom analyses both Cicero's choices and use of family exempla for praise and blame and his ways of substituting for his own lack of illustrious ancestors. Less related to the title of the volume is Saeger's contribution on Cicero's use of false dilemma in Pro Roscio Amerino, Pro Cluentio, Pro Caelio and Pro Milone, but his sensitive readings complement Craig's 1993 work on dilemma. The best essay in the volume is by Jehne, who asks two questions: ‘What kind of blame were Roman contiones willing to bear?’ and, ‘How did orators try to make their points if they wanted to argue against the people's opinion?’ Jehne demonstrates that orators could succeed by dividing the audience, as Cicero did in De lege agraria, or by accusing the audience of apathy, as in some speeches reported by Sallust, or by displaying joviality and innocence, like Caesar and unlike Bibulus and Scipio Nascica; but he also shows that misplaced attempts to blame the audience could be fatal and counter-productive.
As a whole, the volume collects some useful essays, which will be required reading for scholars working on those themes or speeches they analyse; but the engagement with the ‘praise and blame’ of the volume's title and the contribution to the larger debate varies. Three indexes (passages, general and names) follow the bibliography and help to navigate the volume. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is the introduction. It tends to flatten rather than to enliven the conversation between essays; but especially, it fails both to tie the single contributions to the larger debate and to bring out the originality of the collected papers (the summaries at pp. 3–6 are often unhelpful and at times misleading).
