Defending the indefensible and praising the unpraiseworthy were staples of Greek declamation in the Roman imperial period. Lucian’s Phalaris I and II have generally been considered as undemanding rhetorical exercises, inverting the standard tropes of anti-tyrant invective to produce a paradoxical encomium of the proverbially wicked tyrant Phalaris of Akragas. This paper argues that Phalaris I and II are in fact considerably more sophisticated and caustic texts then they appear at first sight. Phalaris’ letter to the Delphians in Phalaris I is carefully crafted to show that Phalaris is indeed, despite his protestations, a self-deluding psychopath; he now wishes to dedicate his notorious bronze bull to the Delphic Apollo in order to whitewash his terrible reputation. The speech of the anonymous Delphian in Phalaris II makes a radically cynical case for welcoming the gift of the bull with no questions asked, in full knowledge that Phalaris may be just as wicked as he is reputed to be. The texts are an ironic commentary on the murky ethics of Delphic patronage in the second century CE, and the venality of oracular shrines more generally; Lucian may specifically have in mind the lavish Delphic patronage of the Roman emperor Domitian.

The third chapter covers the span of Roman oratory, from its first (lost) beginnings to the importance of Greek models, to its full flourishing in the work of Cicero. It emphasises throughout how central to Roman aristocratic life the art of good speaking was, how competitive an art form it was, and that the people were sophisticated auditors. Cicero necessarily dominates the discussion, but we try to capture the style of a few others, including Cato the Elder.

In this chapter, I explore the aesthetic and cultural appeal of imperial Greek declamations that stage scenes of resistance, focussing on Polemo’s two declamations on the Battle of Marathon. I argue that in an era when ‘spectacular resistance’ (steadfast and ultimately in some sense triumphant resistance to oppression) was in vogue, as seen in the careers of figures such as Peregrinus the Cynic, Apollonius of Tyana, and early Christian martyrs, such declamations allowed elites to enjoy some of the glamour and rhetorical possibilities that spectacular resistance normally offered only to the powerless; there is a parallel here with the great play that Aelius Aristides and Polemo made of their struggles with illness. In particular, these declamations offered opportunities to indulge in the exuberant ‘Asian’ rhetorical style very fashionable at the time; moreover, artistic (rather than real) resistance allowed for the selection, full narration, and endless replay of the most attractive scenes. Finally, I suggest that the ‘controversial’ nature of the genre, in which counterarguments are always implied, and, in the case of Polemo’s duelling declamations, actually present, allowed Polemo simultaneously to present himself as in some degree superior to the trope of spectacular resistance.

In this chapter, I address the question of the relationship between the styles of the non-classicising sophistic prose of the imperial era and the so-called ‘Asianist’ oratory of the Hellenistic period; I also assess the connection of both to the style of Gorgias, with whom they have often been linked. I base my study on a comparison of a limited selection of texts: five of the longest excerpts quoted in Philostratus’ Lives of the Sophists, Gorgias’ Helen and Epitaphios Logos, the fragments of Hegesias of Magnesia (3rd c. BCE), and three late Hellenistic inscriptions. I conclude that, although the passages of Hellenistic and imperial ‘sophists’ undeniably share a broad stylistic similarity that sets them apart from ‘classical’ or ‘classicising’ oratory like that of Lysias, Demosthenes or Dio of Prusa, the differences between them, especially regarding their relation to Gorgianic prose and their preferences for rhythmical clausulae, are more significant.

Clara Schumann frequently deviates in her songs from the declamation that the rhythm of the poetry would suggest. The deviations are never haphazard; they can be understood in relation to the semantic and emotional content of the poetry. This chapter investigates the wide range of Schumann’s strategies of text-expressive declamation in songs from 1840 to 1853, focusing on the three songs from 1840 – ‘Am Strande’, ‘Ich stand in dunklen Träumen’ and ‘Volkslied’; on the Opp. 12 and 13 songs from 1841–43; and on the Rollett settings, Op. 23, from 1853. Schumann’s declamatory decisions in the songs from 1840 – particularly those affecting the elongation of particular syllables – already demonstrate her sensitive reading, profound understanding and effective musical rendering of poetic texts. In her later songs, she frequently crafts expressive declamatory processes that span entire songs, for example by adjusting the degree of unexpected declamation as the song progresses in accordance with the emotional trajectory of the poems. Her imaginative and expressive ‘way with words’ is one of the most distinctive aspects of her contributions to the lied repertoire.

Tsar Aleksei came to power on his father’s death without controversy. His first marriage, to Mariia Miloslavskaia, produced several sons, the first being Tsarevich Aleksei. His father designated him as his heir in a new public ceremony in the Kremlin in 1667, complete with brief speeches. The new ceremony was part of the new culture of the court, poetry and declamations authored by the Kiev-educated monk Simeon Polotkii. The model was the Baroque court culture of Poland and Central Europe. The death of tsarevich Aleksei and his mother led Tsar Aleksei to remarry in 1671. The second wife was Natal’ia Naryshkina, whose first son was the later Peter the Great. Tsar Aleksei designated as his heir Mariia’s second son Fyodor, who succeeded in 1676. His own two marriages produced no heirs. On his death the boyar elite and the church proclaimed the boy Peter as tsar, but the musketeers preferred Aleksei’s third son, the incapable Ivan Alekseevich. The result was two boy co-tsars under the regency of their older sister Sofiia. Peter overthrew her and her favorites in 1689, ruling in name with his brother.

The term ‘declamation’ shifted its meaning from a training and display exercise undertaken by orators to a mode of speech used by tragic actors. By the end of the seventeenth century, the logic of grammar had suppressed the vagaries of orality, and the term ‘declamation’ served to define that which separated dramatic speech from the speech of everyday life. Because speech is driven by the breath and produced by the body, the thought or idea expressed by the actor could not be dissociated from their feeling or passion. In the sixteenth century and for much of the seventeenth century the dramatic text was conceived as sonorous matter, a visual sign of corporeal actions. The second phase follows from words becoming the arbitrary signs of ideas. From the perspective of a modern taste for self-expression, the earlier conception of the text as a score places unwelcome constraints upon the actor’s freedom.

This chapter traces key moments in the rhetorical tradition in the context of which the problematic relationship of difference and similarity between rhetorical and poetic discourse is evoked and discussed. The competing claims of affinity and difference between poetic and rhetorical discourse in Gorgias’ Helen, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Kant and others are analyzed as aspects of rhetoric’s self-definition.

Seneca the Elder’s account of Ovid’s relationship to the declaimers has typically been used to construct an argument for the growing influence of rhetoric on poetic practice. A close reading of the work and of Seneca’s cultural agenda reveals that the author has a stake in using poetry and the poetic to foreground his own version of a more wholesome model of rhetorical education embodied by Latro’s Spanish school.