The elder Seneca declamations

by Seneca the Elder

Roman secondary education aimed principally at training future lawyers and politicians. Under the late Republic and the Empire, the main instrument was an import from Greece -- declamation, the making of practice-speeches on imaginary subjects. There were two types of such speeches: controversiae on law-court themes, suasoriae on delibertaive topics. On both types a prime source of our knowledge is the work of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, a Spaniard from Cordoba, father of the distinguished philosopher and stylist. Towards the end of his long life (?55 B.C. -? A.D. 40) he collected together under the title (it would seem) Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, divisiones, colores, ten books devoted to controversiae (some only preserved in excerpt) and at least one (surviving) to suasoriae. These books contained his memories of the famous rhetorical teachers and practitioners of his day: their lines of argument, their methods of approach, their idiosyncracies, and above all their epigrams. The extr