TIROCINIUM FORI AND THE MAKING OF MEN

At least as early as the final decades of the Republic, oratory was constructed as an androgenic phenomenon. Just as oratory originates from men, so too does it make them, and an essential part of this process was the so-called tirocinium fori: that ritual of forensic recruitment and training – we might think of an apprenticeship – that included the donning of the toga uirilis (the “toga of manhood”) and the transfer of upper-class young boys from the tutelage of one adult male guardian (usually the father) to another (usually a family friend or colleague), as Cicero describes in this passage of the pro Caelio: