It is a common observation that Latin literature of the imperial period is highly rhetorical. Usually this claim is made with reference to the elaborate and overwrought nature of the language (a function of elocutio) or to the recurrence of certain conventional themes, images, and topoi (a subdivision of inventio). But to the Romans, rhetoric was something larger and deeper. It involved an approach to any situation, not just the composition of literature, that paid attention to the needs and biases of one's interlocutor, the constraints of tradition and form, and, of course, the aims and purposes of the speaker. ‘The art of rhetoric would be an easy and paltry affair if it could be contained in one brief set of rules,’ writes Quintilian. ‘But with cases and circumstances, opportunity and necessity, all is changed about; and so the crucial qualification for an orator is judgement (consilium), because he directs himself in various ways, and in accordance with the circumstances of the situation (ad rerum momenta)’ (I.O. 2.13.2). This rhetorical, or situation-oriented approach to literature and to life was seen by the Romans as distinguishing themselves from the Greeks, who had their own obsessions with esoteric truths and hair-splitting sophistry. Alongside the satirist's contrast between the Graeculus esuriens (‘hungry Greekling’) and the upright Roman, there is an equally common, if less frequently observed contrast between the quick-witted Greek, good at dialectic and analysis, and the sensible Roman, concerned with the moral and practical dimensions of any situation. When Fannius and Scaevola ask Laelius at the outset of the Ciceronian dialogue named after him, if he can please discourse on friendship, he replies that he is no Greek, capable of debating pro and contra on the spur of the moment, but a Roman who can and will give them sound and efficacious exhortation on the significance of loyalty in human affairs.