Scholarly book review of Ann Vasaly's Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory.

REPRESENTATIONS: IMAGES OF THE WORLD IN CICERONIAN ORATORY. By Ann Vasaly. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993; pp. ix + 301. $30.00.

This book was written to introduce representation theory into the study of Ciceronian persuasion. Vasaly views Latin literature as an expression of a particular time and place, and argues that an understanding of setting—social, political, topographical—is crucial to understanding Ciceronian oratory. In order to understand ancient oratory, overall function must be considered as carefully as form. Thus, Vasaly effectively defends the idea that oratory, once dominated by the desire to establish the application of theory to practice, has now turned to the “rhetoric of rhetoric”—that is, to the analysis of how speeches would actually have convinced their audiences.
The book begins with an introduction in which the author outlines the purpose of undertaking the detailed analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical...