Chapter 6 - Non minus orator quam poeta: Virgil the Orator in Late Antiquity

Summary

This chapter focuses on late-antique rhetorical analysis of Virgilian poetry: starting from the 2nd century AD, whether Virgil was to be considered an orator or a poet was one of the key issues in the reception of his work, as is attested by discussions in Florus, Macrobius, Servius and Tiberius Claudius Donatus. The chapter shows how Virgil’s text is “micro-rhetoricized” when elements of the poem are read as exemplifying a given rhetorical principle. As a close reading of Macrobius’ discussion of the issue in Saturnalia 5 reveals, this rhetorical analysis works also on the macro-level by constructing the poet himself as a rhetorical performer and reading as a form of rhetorical re-performance.