Introduction

Summary

Twenty-four declamations from the Greek imperial period, the work of six authors, survive today: a survey reveals that their authors were prominent in politics and culture on a local and often imperial level. Why did these elite men pour such energy into the classical role-play that was declamation? Further indices of the genre's importance are considered: the centrality of declamation to education in this period, the great outpouring of rhetorical theory, the sheer number of declaimers and declamations that we know of, and the distances that star performers travelled and the fees that they earned. Such an enquiry is urgent: declamation was very influential on other genres, and work here has fallen behind work elsewhere. But the most urgent reason is that the question of the relationship of classical past and imperial present is fundamental for all literature in this period, and indeed for this period’s wider culture. This book rejects traditional explanations of the genre in terms of nostalgia, and instead takes seriously the almost universal ancient belief that the past was useful for the present.