Interview: Dr. Wayne Ambler on Tacitus' Dialogue on Oratory | The New Thinkery Ep. 62

Welcome back to the new thinkery. I'm David Barr with me as always is my good friend Alex Prio. How are you Alex? I'm doing well David.

Very excited for this episode. Not so much. I'm actually a grandpa. I just spent a week with some.

I'm a little all gregged out. You know what I'm having to be back in Ashland? The world headquarters of Nice People where Alex Prio is welcome. That's right.

That's right. Where are you? I so a little birdie told me that the people at the Jack Miller Center not only invited you guys but paid to have you come and paid you Alex. They interview a little serious or what like coconut fell on their head.

They're pretty such bad judgment. So where were you guys? This way. Doing what?

Atlanta. Just hanging out talking about ideas, having conversations. Dropes swinging playing ropes wing. Yeah, Greg and I found a rope swing after we hijacked a canoe.

True story. Yeah. We pulled the wool over some unsuspecting roops eyes. They're not too smart out there in Georgia.

You know what I mean? You're going to do the coaching. I do know what we're talking about. Yeah.

So I had to leave. I was chased out. We interviewed a couple of folks while we're there too. That's right.

Steven Sniff. Friend of ludicrous. We asked him about that. Who else do we interview?

We also interviewed who did we interview? I can't believe you don't remember. We've ever got shame on you for not remembering. Oh, Ben Kleinerman.

Ben Kleinerman. That's right. Ben Kleinerman. And we have a couple more maybe coming afterwards actually.

A couple of folks who are there. Maybe a dinosaur and maybe another guy too. We'll see what we do. You know, really quick.

Before we go on, I wanted to share with you guys. I had coffee today with a classics professor at the University of Maryland. A guy named Eric Adler who's a friend of our shows of our show. He recently wrote a book about all the classics.

How a 19th century debate can save the humanities today. And I bring up the meeting with Eric. Eric, only because we met online. And so we could see the AD for this promotion.

No, no, no, not at all. It's just I had a nice time chatting with a professor from Alma Mater. But we met through Twitter. And so for our audience, who knows we engage so much on Twitter, you don't feel shy to drop us a line.

Alex has developed great academic linkages through Twitter. Greg has met up with people late at night. Thanks to Twitter. The dairy industry.

Yeah. And so you know, drop us a line. We love connecting with people. Who's our guest tonight?

David. Yeah. So who's our guest tonight? And the question I have is why are his translations of Zadafon so much more superior to yours, Greg?

They just are. Yeah. This is true. Sorry.

I don't know if you know this, Wayne. I read your translation of the education of Cyrus before it was published. Bartlett, it's signed into an undergraduate class. I was back in the day.

I think he was reading through it for you. Well, thank you. I'm some royalties. I understand this.

I'm Bartlett too. That's probably right. Hopefully I paid it back all the time. I was signed into class.

I must be responsible for hundreds of sales. Maybe they probably made some of the constructive suggestions that I owe you rather than you were. Oh, how gracious. So who's our guest?

Proper introduction. Yeah, we had a proper introduction. Sorry. We, an Amblar was an American professional baseball player whose career stands six seasons, including three in Major League Baseball with the Philadelphia Athletics.

I think, yeah. Yeah. Alex, I think you got the wrong way, and I'm going to have to. We have is a couple of mine.

All right. CU Boulder. He's was the former director of the Herps program and I read on that, but he's now retired. He's a member of the professor's college.

He's a merit. Yeah. He's a merit. He got your PhD from Boston College.

And you did your undergraduate at Cornell University. And between those at the beginning and his career now, you also talk for a long time at University of Dallas and more importantly, at the sort of satellite campus of the program over in Rome, which brings us to what Wayne is currently up to, which is his own podcast and website, Get Ready for Rome, which is a wonderful, these are 20 to 30 minutes snippets on some feature of Rome, a feature you can go and see that connects you to the history. And I'll let Wayne not tell you a bit about it, but I really recommend you all go out and listen to it. You know, if you have a short commute, even, especially if you're going to Rome, of course.

So if you have a short commute, it's a great insight into architecture, literature, history, the whole thing. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing what he has to say about Tassidus, which is our present subject today. But welcome, Wayne. And maybe you can tell us a thing or two, except now Greg wants to interrupt my beautiful introduction.

I just wanted to also say David's jokes aside. Wayne has translated, has translated, has done it for us masterfully in education sires, obviously the analysis and the air stop and his translations as well, the wealth, the peace and the birds, right? And a number of excellent articles also on Plato, Aristotle, and so on. Right.

By the way, the, the cover for the education is sliders. And I like all of the agora editions that Cornell, but that light blue, it's like a Tiffany blue. It's like that book is you can spot it from a mile away. It's great.

So I just wanted to say that Wayne, I've always said absolutely nothing to do with the choice of covers, but I'm glad you like it. I did have something to say about the choice of covers for the analysis, really. I wanted to put some American soldiers coming back from Vietnam on the cover and that seemed like a very bad idea. Yeah, it's a bad idea.

So I'm not from Vietnam. I'm sorry, I come back from Baghdad. It's a bad idea. It was a big wrong.

So I did have some interest there. But thank you for the warm introduction. And I need to honor my father by saying that baseball player who was not high since I could not hit. That was my father.

So I grew up. Wow, really? Yeah, that's very cool. A lot of sports and especially a lot of baseball.

I mean, I, I think he told me, keep your eye on the ball about a hundred thousand times before I came to Australia. So he was always offering me at least that advice, but he wasn't good baseball player. Very cool. Thank you also for the mention of the podcast, Get Ready For Wrong.

It's been a really challenge, but also a joy to work on it. So joy to listen to, why don't you tell the folks at home what to expect or what your vision is with the podcast? Because I think it's quite interesting. Well, I really began with two different ideas in mind at the same time.

I lived in Rome for 10 and a half years, I guess. I mean, took CU students back to Rome for another 10 minutes. So I got to see a lot of tourism in Rome. And I spent a lot of time with students in Rome.

And I thought two things. One is that tourists unfortunately are at a real disadvantage if they want to learn something big about Rome and keep the larger issues in mind. But they're tremendous. They're wonderful guys.

The tendency was for them to be very fact filled with names and dates that are coming in a succession running after another. I always think of nature as advantages and disadvantages of history with this wonderful metaphors about the Anaconda that swallows the rabbitly lies in the sun, the camp. Just so many factoids creating this birdie in fact, or being kicked through a museum, which is the way it is because it's a typical person, only as a short period of time. So I thought from the point of view of ordinary visitors to Rome, I might like to learn more when I'm trying to just to present a framework that enables them to think about some of the larger ideas and larger issues that you can see as you look carefully in that Rome.

You see not an eternal city in terms of its monuments. You see co-beating cities with rival ideas about the best human life, the disabreech harpers, such are sometimes one age a smashed harmonious of its predecessor. And other times you just put the disagreeing monuments face to face. So that's one audience and hopeful that as tourism returns to Italy, there might be a little bit more interest from that group.

And I need to figure out some paper track that interest which I haven't done yet. And then the other is students and there are over 150 American programs in Italy. And I think again, they might be an interest in an audience for this. So I'm doing a podcast that I started just doing a website.

And now I've got a map on the website that has hot links. So but if you're walking through the city and you're confused, you might go out and see if there's a podcast available on that part of the city, you can also have a little hot link and a podcast pops up and we'll say something about the statue to cheer down or burn over the 15 shop or the Coliseum or something like that. So that's how I try. So as a student, as you're walking around Rome, you have your phone out, you can see where you are on the map.

You can click the hyperlink and it will link to the podcast on that specific geographic location in Rome. That's amazing. I was supposed to go. Wayne's podcasts aren't onerous.

They're digestible. It's not like a new thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, you know, he's not as arrogant and is sort of self-indulgent as we are.

It's a very well scripted and you can tell that if this is very, very scripted and it's like a mini digestible lecture. I'm not too lecturing, but it's an explanation and yeah, they're wonderful. I was supposed to take some students to Italy last summer and well, summer for last and then last summer and then maybe this finally this summer. So I've definitely pointed them to it.

And if we are able to actually go through with our trip, we'll make as we can. We'll be mostly in, I guess, Tuscany, but we'll spend a couple of days in Rome and try to make the most of it. Yeah. And what's it called again?

And where can we find it? Get ready for Rome. And you can find it at GetReadyForRoom.com. That's the main website.

You go to GetReadyForRoom.com for a word slash map. You'll get the interactive map. Nice. So it's all pretty strict for it.

And I think it's on most of the podcasting service. It's not an iTunes. That's our final. The heavy twitter.

And so you want to follow them as well. Yeah. That's right. You have Twitter.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I don't need to follow you a good example of that. But so far I've had experts that have been doing social media last about three days.

And then I get there. Well, we're never going to be sure. Our account's like Publius. It's the three of us taking turns writing under a single pseudonym.

I'll let you inside who's Madison, who's James. Let you decide who writes the fake endorsements from living philosophers. We'll never do the show. Martha Newsbaum, opening a bottle of ramen and a pack of menthols.

sitting back and enjoying our show. Well, it is a challenge for me to know exactly what the belief in terms of what you guys have to say. That's true. That's true.

That's something we're talking about. I believe this level about cheese. That's true. Yeah.

Yeah. That's true. But those are fake charges. I do like cheese.

Greg has a saying. Greg has a saying. He likes to know the mother's right. Cheese can't talk.

Hey, Wayne, I have a quick question. How much of Rome ancient Rome has been covered over? I mean, how much of the city is it? I read some percentage.

I can't recall now. Is it in this? Is it over 50% of Rome? Is it the top's ruin?

What are you doing there? Much more than 50% of Rome is being destroyed. It's unbelievable. And it's only gradually dawned on me.

I mean, I remember the first time I saw one of these overlay maps that showed you what Rome was supposed to look like under Constantine, the great, for example, and then you pull away the flyers. And I really come to believe that it really was fully developed, built up like that, from the forum to the imperial forum areas over to the Creole Hill down into the campus marshes, built up and at least in certain periods quite elegant. And now it's a mess. The Colosseum survives as an icon, but there's only 50% of the Colosseum.

It's there if you were to do it in terms of total mass, so to speak. It does go all the way around, but not with all of the three rings and not to the full height, but not with the same stamp inside. And it's an interesting question what happened to it also because part of the active destruction by people who didn't like what Rome stood for, part of it is a reflection of what happens when the population of the city drops to five percent of what it used to be so that it no longer has the need for what was there before. It no longer has the resources to repair it.

Part of it is the ambitions and hopes we wanted to use the materials that were easily available and already built structures, take them on mass and turn them into St. Peter's, for example. So there are multiple causes and it's not easy to track down exactly what fraction will each weigh. Another amazing cause, frankly, is just turning marble into lime.

So lime turns out to be a very useful substance if you want to make concrete or even fertilizer. And the way you make lime is you build a kiln and you build a fire and you throw in a hunk of marble. And that might be a beautiful statue of a pagan deity that you no longer think is properly despoitable, where it could be just any ordinary random piece of marble that would be tremendous. There were in fact kilns in downtown Rome with no near locations.

And these things were cooking away for hundreds of a couple hundred years, two hundred years. Another thing you can see, reuse the pagan monuments in terms of flooring and particular beautiful marble floors often given the name cosmetes after the family of the design of the beautiful inlayed marbles. Where did those marbles come from? The something got smashed and makes it this marble sort of column.

When you see a circle, it's a column that gets placed in a disc, it gets placed in a floor. You've got a beautiful floor, but there's less of an ancient room. So there's a quick response. No, I appreciate it.

I've always been curious. That's incredible. So should we get into that? Well, really quick, there's one, the I apologize.

I shouldn't have asked that question from archeology. But Wayne, we do ask this, we are again, part of what the show endeavors to do is kind of keep an oral history of teachers. We like mentors of ours, but also they're great teachers. And so you can take us back as far as you wish with respect to when you were first charmed by political philosophy or the great books.

But in particular, we're curious about teachers along the way and your experience to stay at Cornell with a certain someone or Boston College or wherever, even colleagues or contemporaries. Could you talk a little bit about that? I mean, I'm one of a surprisingly large number of students who fell under the story of Alan Bloom. I was completely taken by him.

And it's interesting. I think Richard Buckley, you've had Michael Davis, Michael Zukert, Katherine Zukert, you haven't had their husband. They're all students of Bloom. And I anticipated this question.

I gave a moment spot to it. And I came up with 20 pretty impressive people from the time that Bloom was at Cornell that went on to teach or work in Washington, do good things. It's in there impressive people. I'm sure there was that I don't know of.

I mean, like it has to, I didn't know he was a Bloom student for a long time. It turns out he wasn't. I didn't know Michael Davis was either. So I didn't know all of these people.

When I was there, the group that I'm thinking of stands for was seven years. I think it's seven years that Bloom was there. But it's quite remarkable. When I was there, I just saw this very impressive group of students, many of them living together and tell your eyes and for a whole other college.

They're amazing. So it was part of the students that attracted me to Bloom, I think. I saw now another, and that some of them. But I was like Michael Zukert.

I was an engineering student. And according to what Michael told you, he got out of engineering, I think after his first semester because he wanted to study Bastoyevsky. I stayed in engineering for four semesters. In my fourth semester, some friend of mine took me to a Bloom lecture.

I mean, it goes two, three, two hundred fifty three hundred kids on Madame Bovary. And I just come from a class with some professor who was, you know, he was completely on the grip of the subject. It was concrete, you know, and he was thrilled by it. Because it literally concrete.

What kind of angry gets you going to use the fabric? I'm now a little bit more interested in the subject than I was before because I was going to say it was wrong. But at the time, the contrast between this man's passion for concrete and Alan Bloom's exposition of Bovary was just a staggering contrast for him. So I never came to be as attracted to Emmies as I was supposed to be.

I don't think, but I did come to Quickly Share content for Charles and for O'Mee and for whatever the name of that guy was, it was always in his witchcraft. And I remember a line about Charles Bovary was his conversation was this plot as the sidewalk. And I thought, oh my gosh, concrete! That's me.

What was two or three that he's teaching at Madame Bovary? Is this introduction of Little Flossing? Yeah, that's an introduction that led into Tocqueville and the risk of flatness in the modern democratic world. And these characters show that bourgeois effects of the bourgeois life and the characters of the bourgeois life.

And I thought, oh, this is amazing. So I had a class couldn't have done it all by itself, but that class together with other Bloom-Rolling shit things. I'm amazed how many of us we repeat this regularly, but how many of us just sort of happened upon this by accident and were sort of bold over by somebody or some bold person text or just sort of like, holy smokes, this is like, the other classes are literally compared to that. So I was thinking about that.

I was thinking about that. I was by accident. Yeah, yeah. You were too ill.

I was in the accident, but David, I forged David and it wasn't actually it was force. It was violence. It was very violent. I said, you got out of this history story.

I was like, stop playing with those silly classes and kind of blah, blah, blah, blah. But then again, it has to be by accident. It's not exactly something. Well, some people are the children of sort of, you know, academic families, but it has to be occasional.

There are a few of those, Alex and we don't all have French aristocrats and Iranian high tolls. So Wayne did so did Bloom encourage you on to Boston College or how did that? As a matter of fact, I only had two classes with Bloom because I was so late and transferring out of engineering and then he went on, I guess it was a sabbatical. So I didn't get the note Bloom very well at all.

I mean, I certainly knew who he was and was deeply impressed. And I didn't want to add that. One of the things that I think made Bloom very attractive was the people that he surrounded himself with. So it wasn't just Bloom who got a package.

And I was struck that Michael Davis had mentioned, you know, Richard Kennington and how important Kennington was for his education. Again, because I was only briefly in the government department. I didn't have the chance to study with Kennington, but I did study with Dan Hauser for two courses, not one course of Dan Hauser, only one. Bloom brought Dan Hauser in and that was wonderful.

So Bloom had these great graduate students. He had good friend Walter Burns. He had good friend Richard Kennington. He had good friend Werner Dan Hauser.

He was really quite an impressive, you know, shorter attraction for me. And I'm just very happy that it happened. I did not know that I was going to go on after Cornell in political theory. In fact, I was wondering whether there's a connection a little bit about Bloom's influence and the fact that it was the times that the Vietnam War and the social protests and civil rights movement, which is related to the point that the term makes at the end of the dialogue on the auditory, the tribute auditory, you need big issues that come up in times of crisis.

And Bloom had big issues. And he took advantage of those big issues. But when I left, when I didn't know what I was going to do with myself, I went off to my school because I studied a lot of math and science. I went off into a high school math and science.

And I ended up getting a very low draft number, so I joined the room to deserve. And then a couple of other chances, I went to visit an old friend of mine, and we just drove beer drinking buddies. And I had time on my hands because I didn't know when the writing was going to take me. And so I went to visit him.

He happened to be in the first week of graduate school at Boston College. So he said, why don't you come to a couple of classes? So I went to a couple of classes at Boston College. This is a true story.

Walking out of the classes, September 15th, last day to change classes, the September 15th. No, so last day to change classes made a state of study class. So this was before Boston College came with a change to be. It was just a M A program.

So I went to see the chairman of the department of the department, and David Loenthal. And he said, can I join this program? I know I'm a little late getting started on the semester, but I can pay the tuition, which was very low back then. And he said, well, it seems unlikely.

Let me call the graduate dean. He called the graduate dean. And in the middle of the conversation, put his hand over the mouthpiece of the throne. He said, Wayne, you're great.

You're pretty good, weren't you? I said, well, not all of them. And any of them, I ended up staying at Boston College that year. I guess it was just that semester.

I didn't leave. I slept on my friend's couch. We drank beer. I went to classes on Plato.

And that's what got me started, really. Wow. Sounds like I'm... Who is this friend?

Is he supposed to go around? Oh, yeah. He's not an academic. Now his name is John Wagner.

He happens to have a meme, France. I'd love to get over there to see him again. Wait, Wayne, so where did you do your doctorate? He's there.

Oh, so they added the program while you were there? That was actually one of the jobs that Lo and Mal got us to do. Or after we had the program, is he said I have to come out this to the trustees or whatever. So Lo and Mal is supposed to be on the show, right?

Is he doing the 1984? No, he said yes. Yeah, he said yes. So the rest of the year.

Yeah, yeah. Wayne, he's a gem. I'm excited to have him. I'm happy to hear your praise.

I've admired Lo and Thol... Lo and Thol and Shakespeare, a lot of people don't know about it. I love him on Shakespeare. And of course, anybody that reads Montesquieu is treated to his short translation.

But he's one of these guys who should be better known. And he's a great book on Lincoln's speeches. So we should probably get to the test. Yeah, sorry.

In a while. Yeah, so why the test is this? Why the dialogue on the oratory? I mean, I love the test is every time I sort of nude it.

Every time I pick something up, I might look at the history or the annals or you did the episode on the Agricola. I'm just always bold over by how wonderfully is to read out, how rewarding he is when you probe a little further. But why test this and why this? Well, why test it is for me is easy because I'm trying to educate myself on Rome.

And I have never read test this before. So this has been my, you know, 2021 or so far, my test this year. And I've now read all of test this, which doesn't mean that I understand all of test this or have it. That instant recall is very difficult.

And, you know, even the names I'll confess their challenge for me. I used to name like persimmises and callicalis and vlogon. But all of a sudden when he's talking about masala and sakrim mousin and albides prisq is like, whoa, these guys are a challenge for me. But I wanted to know, especially in connection with my podcast, it turns out there's quite a few monuments in Rome that are built by the Julio-Cholodian and Flavian dynasties and those first two dynasties in Rome are the dynasties that Tacitus talks about.

So, you know, the policy and the former Piazza Navona, the theater of Machillis, the August day and all of these things are built by characters that he discusses. And so, you know, I thought he would be helpful for me in that regard. I also, just am very taken by the gravity of his work and the events that he describes, he's really in disregard a bit like, you know, Thucydides, who has this seriousness about him. It's very impressive.

Let me read two short passages from the beginning of the histories to try to make the sponsor. The history is the shorter of his two main works. It's long, which the shorter of the two. And it focuses, especially on the civil wars that ensue after Nero is driven to commit suicide.

And it begins like this. After the battle of Actium in which the young Octavian defeated Marc Antonya and Cleopatra, when the interests of peace were served by the centralization of all authority in the hands of one man, literary genius, fellow idle. At the same time, truth was shattered under a variety of blows. Initially, it was ignorance of politics which were no longer a citizen's concern.

Later came the taste for flattery or conversely, the hatred of the ruling house. So, between now and on one side and stability on the other, the interests of prosperity were neglected. I mean, that is beautiful and that is serious stuff. I mean, and just a little bit tells too, the interests of peace were served by Augusta Staking All Control.

That doesn't mean all interests were served by Augusta Staking All Control, peace was served but literature and the thinking that is necessary for literature quite possibly was not. And it's not all in favor of those who are attacking the regime of Augusta. There's malice on one side and stability on the other. These are queen dangers that you have to sail between.

And then very quickly, a second passage, same page. The story I now commence is rich in the cicitudes grim with warfare, pore in my civil strife, a tale of horror even during the times of peace. Four emperors slain by the sword, three civil wars, often entwined with these, an even larger number of foreign wars, successes in the East, disaster in the West, disturbance in a lyric of disaffection and gall, the conquest of Britain then immediately given up. Weighting material, sorry, my tasidists.

I think the gravity of it where this great civilization undergoes a major transformation and one that comes with terrible pearls. Yeah, that's really, that's really good. I have a quick question. Sorry, Alex.

It's really good. It comes out and some of these themes just with the listeners come up in the dialogue really powerfully, right? Especially in the last speech where you get a sense that, oh yeah, you think it's a good old date. So everybody's just debating there's all these fights and everything and all these disputes.

But today there's peace and quiet, why? Because we have one emperor, right? And so or it's always needed. You see a kind of pseudo peace, I guess, it's more sort of suppressive.

But you realize that in escaping the normal fights of a republic, the normal disputes and factions of republic, you also lose the necessity of training the mind and training the intellect to speak well. And that seems to be what Tess is really laments. I'm very glad you mentioned that. I think it's essential for understanding the character and the term is so great by that on the floor.

Really quick before we start the dialogue, how would you typify his manner of writing, his approach to history or writing simply? Is he in open book? Is he kaiji? As opposed to, maybe you can contrast this with a different Roman historian or if that's helpful or what would you say?

Well, I'm struck especially by the gravity as I mentioned, everything seems serious. Liddy, for example, there's more comic moments and more moments where he forces you to think about certain subjects. I think Tess has to use that up to you a little bit more. I think I've noticed a few points of humor, time permitting.

We'll see a couple in the dialogue, I think, but they're rare and few and four between. I'll see an open book, I'll see you on that part of your question because I think it's very relevant for the theme of the Agrigula and the theme of the dialogue where Tess that is makes it perfectly clear that there's an enormous risk of saying the wrong thing. Especially the annals is filled with stories of people who are whole before an emperor, put on some kind of sham trial and lose their life because of what we, the French call of lei magis de sei, with some sort of perceived insult to the ruling authority. Sometimes that insult is present and other times just the financial motive of gaining the inheritance of the person who's put to death is the reason for it.

So he's very sensitive to the difficulty of saying what one thinks under these circumstances. He says that he's going to be beginning of the Agrigula. I'm just Alex and David and I have talked about this before. I'm sort of suspicious that some of the drama historians presented themselves as historians when in fact they were doing more kind of philosophy.

He calls Aristotle an historian, for example, in the Agrigula, which is sort of strange. It's the sensitivity and the philosophy of the outlaw, but proof to the, not proof, but sort of evidence for this might be the text we're talking about today is called the dialogue on narration. And I was struck by this night. I thought it was odd and maybe you can tell me why it's not odd.

I mean, it seems like under my sort of approach these things from an medieval Arabic or even on the other hand, or Greek, on the other, the dialectic and rhetoric are different kinds of things. So I find it strange that he would write a dialogue about rhetoric. But then I guess I thought about it again and I thought, well, you know what Aristotle is on rhetoric? I don't find that odd.

So maybe it's not so odd to write a dialogue on rhetoric. But I guess I was just, so I don't think I was saying, well, maybe it's more philosophy because I'm not a dialogue, but you want to tell us anything about the title and form of this text? Like why a dialogue and what does the dialogue is this part of that awareness of potentially running afoul of the authorities? Is it something else entirely?

Well, I definitely think it has something to do with the potential of running afoul of the authorities. But as you imply, I think it also has to do with this knowledge that there's a long and important tradition of dialogue writing. And Plato gets a mention in the dialogue and there are characters in his other works that remind of Plato or Socrates. So he's definitely sensitive to this whole philosophical tradition.

Thresseya Pates is the name of the story that is put to death on grounds that he's, and so well, I think Strazes Nero said that he wanted to extirpate virtue itself and so he turns to the execution of this man and his death seems to be modelled on that of Socrates, for example. So I think he's very much aware of the false doctrine tradition. Dialogue makes sense. I would, if I understand the title of it, I'd like to look into this in my little trusty Latin edition is the title is the dialogue on or a tors and not the dialogue on or a torsary Oh, I think that matters because that brings out the question or introduces the question of what kind of life do the orators live.

And that is the explicit question that divides the first two speeches of the dialogue between out there and the turnus. So we get a concept between two different lives, the poet and the orator. And I think that is a question. Once my point is the Alex is interested in jumping into it.

It's called a dialogue, but it really is, I mean, it's not conversational. It's a series of speeches, which I mean, like they speak to one another points to some degree, but really they sort of seem to be more like the speeches given in Plato's imposing right not really dialogue, but just a series of people given their account. So Alex is trying to me now. He does remember one dialogue.

I think very that has long speeches other than suppose, which is the apology, right? He's accosted at his home, right? He's forced to give a kind of oratorical defense of poetry, right? That's sort of what we get at the end.

Up here sounds a lot like calically said times, right? With his, his name don't waste your time on philosophy. You have other talents go off and be agreement. He seems sort of disappointed, right?

He's not fulfilling his nature by getting involved in politics. And there are these subtle illusions, right? To Plato, both in the characters, they explicitly illusion. I think even later on when he starts idealizing imperial realm.

Yeah, thank you. I think that's right. That's good. It's, I mean, to me, it's a little bit frustrating that the speeches are just side by side and how to resolve the controversies is left to the reader without a scientist to mediate the difference.

And it seems to me, anyway, I don't know whether you would agree with this, that there's no aporhea that is developed by probing Socrates, for example, to show where the problem is exactly a lot. You get speech, even, even, even, even, even, even, and how they are related or where their defects are is left very much to the reader. We're supposed to get a judgment of the first two, but the characters, the criminalist, but that judgment never occurs because an Asala comes in and breaks it up like Alcibiades in the symposium, for example. So I was just gonna say, I was blind, although I'm not, I don't tell on this really to sort of identify the hero, the main speaker as the last speaker, but I'm not sure if that says, but you guys, I just, I want to, you can give us an overview, but before you give an overview, you guys have all mentioned that Plato keeps getting mentioned.

Nobody mentioned that he also speaks of Zenefan, by the way, that he's also mentioned here. And so maybe you can tell us. I was early, don't be nervous. You would have mentioned him.

All right. You know how I feel. You just make sure. But could you give us just an overview of this dialogue?

We've already mentioned that there are different parts, but maybe you could just give us a quick summary of the main parts or the main speeches, the main characters who are they? Sure. I can do it, especially if we emphasize the critic. So it's six speeches with introductions and transitions, and those can, in some cases, I can be very interesting and very important.

The six speeches are divided into three pairs of two, and they take up different subjects. This is a little surprising because in the very beginning, this subject is, looks like it's going to be, why has modern oratory declined? But if you look at the speeches, the first set of two is, which is the better life? The one who's capable of both to be a poet or to be an orator in the courtroom.

And the second is the official question that is announced in chapter one, is ancient or a superior to modern? Oh, I'm sorry. That's not the official question. It's the factual question, is ancient superior or a toy superior?

And then the third is the one who's announced in the very beginning, why is ancient or a toy superior? So that's the one we're supposed to focus on, according to the initial question, and that gets relegated to the third spot. Tacitus himself is present for the dialogue. It is a narrated dialogue.

Tacitus is a young man that presents himself maybe 20 years old, said in the sixth year of the Spanish's reign. So that's about 74 or 75. And Tacitus gives us an account of this account to this friend who asked the question about why ancient turd is so better. So yeah, there's a quick summary.

I think it's interesting that when the dialogue is over said transitions are interesting and important. When the dialogue is over, they try to show that they're all friendly one to another because there have been some harsh disagreements and in Tacitus's last words are, when they had smiled, we, the partridge, so Tacitus leads himself out of the concluding smile, which I think is an interesting detail and maybe a sign that he thinks that there's a serious issue that hasn't been resolved. One thing I'll just add, and this is an unfortunate fact about the dialogue, is that the end of the fifth speech in the beginning of the sixth are cut off, which is I found this, I found this a really engaging piece and I was following the characters and what seemed to be happening sort of the subtext of the dialogue. And then to get a chunk missing is just, oh, that was my design.

Alex, is that what Greg was arguing? That's what Greg usually likes to argue. Yeah. Yeah.

And he claims it was just filled with xenophon references. So it is a corrupted transcript, I guess. Well, it's, you know, it's, it's I think the manuscript tradition is complicated and not perfect. To me, it's interesting because this guy happened to be reading about for other reasons, but he was not true, leaning, who worked, was an Italian humanist who worked for the Popes and he was going all over Europe, not having whether he was traveling, but he was getting the word out of a big top dollar for any manuscript you find.

And this is the one who found the one manuscript of Lucretius on the Nature of Things, a copy that circulated through Europe and made a big splash. And then he also is one who, I guess, eventually helped bring the light, the manuscript, the one super surviving manuscript of this dialogue. But complicating this case is it was then copied in the Renaissance, but the original from which it was copied was lost. So there are still some differences and some striking differences in translations.

By the way, if you should plug your your sponsor with regard to reading Tacitus, I mean, I, my experience trying to read Tacitus without good Latin is very challenging. You look at three different English translations and they're very, some of them can be striking in inconsistencies and important words. So I may have lost a very good friend because I keep writing him all the time. How would you translate this?

How would you translate this? What, what cases is this? He says Latin is good, minus not, but anyway, yeah, it's the manuscript is difficult and translations are not good. So I noticed the inconsistencies went to the Agricalomat too.

I mean, it just doesn't seem to be faithful consistent translations. It just doesn't seem to the case. All right, everybody, before we go any further, I think we should take a minute to step aside and think our sponsor, the ancient language Institute. Now I owe the ancient language Institute and our listeners a deep apology after last week's ad I got a lot of emails saying, I don't want to learn my languages from some ancient Institute.

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So if you want to get your ancient language on, go to ancientlanguage.com and now back to the show. Can you mention the characters? You mentioned there's what four main characters, I think the count tests, this is one too. Well, there's a young man who asks, it is the opening question and his name is Fabius Musus and we never learned anything more about him.

He is a historical character and is embarking on a significant political career sometime around the year 100. And so some scholars take that to suggest that this is about the time that passes was writing this dialogue. After him, the main characters are Maternes, who's home, the conversation takes place. Aper, who is Alex pointed out, sort of a Helixlian type character, a very aggressive defender of the life of oratory and the pleasures and utility it can get.

Then a fellow named Cecundus who was very concerned in the beginning about Maternes' security because Maternes has been tempting the authorities to come after him by writing plays that are laudatory of Cater in this particular case in the Republican Republic rather than the defender of the empire. Then Masala breaks into the dialogue and he ends up getting two speeches. And I think that's covered all of the main participants. But he came in and got very hungry, I can understand.

But so one thing... It's a tiki masala joke for those folks and homies out. You keep on the crowd? All right, I'll keep them on their toes.

So his entry is really, I think, decisive for the dialogue because what Maternes says about the empire and writing in the empire before he's there and what he says afterwards, or like night and day, right? Look, I want to go hang out in my garden just right by poetry. I don't want any flatteras and sort of annoying people bothering me. I already get too much accolades that have been such a great poet as it is.

I don't want to get more involved in the thick of it and get involved with the flattery and etcetera. By the end of it, he makes it sound like it's great living under the empire. You get to have all these benefits and so on. So maybe one way to start talking about the six speeches is to say, how do we get from this focus?

Or why is this one character so pivotal in taking us from this question of the good life to the question of the apparent decay in the quality of oratory, right? And the debate around that. Yeah, well, I mean, that's already a point that I need to think about more than I have. Is it Maternes?

I'm sorry, is it Masawa's entry that causes the change in Maternes? Point one, I'm delighted that you see a change in Maternes because I thought it was there and I'm eager to see that you do too. A question is exactly when it occurs and how do we understand that? So I guess I would just start a little bit further back and say, how do we characterize the change and what might account for it?

Maybe it's because of Masawa. Maybe there's some other reason. And I find it very perplexing. Perplexing questions.

I don't have an easy or simple answer for you. But I mean, one, this is a sort of thought that needs some preparation. But no, one thing is that I think Tassa says that these people are friends. You don't know that the Mario translation keeps referring to them as friends.

So in the beginning, they raised the question of whether Masawa, I'm sorry, he turned us is doing the right thing by writing plays like a Cato and ISD, which he's planning, which is presumably going to be an attack on Imperial autocrats, whether he's doing the right thing. And the turn says, I'm going to speak to my guns. I'm going to write something for myself. That's my audience.

In effect, he presents himself as somebody who's willing to risk his life for the sake of saying the right thing. And even if it's critical, the empire, that's a very noble position he takes. So I'm still trying to characterize what the changes at the end of the dialogue. I think Alex is right.

He's saying things that at least the first glance are favorable to the empire. And so somewhere along the line that's changed, it could be that he feels that there are threats present in the room that he is going to speak more cautiously about. And while he may be willing to risk his life for an anti-imperial statement that has a wide audience, he might not care to do that, whether that's sort of happier or masala. But that's why you think they leave off, Wayne?

Do you think that's a possible reason why they leave off the conversation? Because it's not like they owe a cock to a squeaky ass in the suns coming up or something. Like they just, this interesting conversation, they say, well, we'll pick it up at another time. Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know. It seems like the solid got tired and says you have to persuade me completely. I've got some questions for you and then they post a moment. The sensitivity of the issue could be that reason.

I don't know. I really don't have a bullet on that. But I do think it's a sensitive question and I don't think one should assume that even though the tournus is ready to publish a Cato, that he's ready to continue in this hard anti-imperial line in the presence of after-apularity shown himself as aggressive as he did. And after it's succumbed, and the tournus, by the way, is aware that masala, the guy who breaks down, so this might strengthen Alex because he's there, but masala is the key explanation.

Masala has defended his brother or brother-in-law who was a notorious informer or a de-lattler. It's one of these people who take people to court and charge them with laymen just today and then they get paid off big time. And I never would have guessed this from the dialogue as I read it, that masala was one of these, but he was. I'm sorry, but he was at least prepared to defend the notorious informer.

So a possibility is that the tournus has decided that this is not the moment to be quite as old as he might be on some later occasion. It also strikes me that with his entrance, because masala's character is really kind of getting so hungry, but masala's character is very much taken with philosophy in a very sort of exalted sense. He talks about how skillful the old orators were. Their education was great because it allowed them to speak in light of the eternal things.

There's this abstraction from politics, whereas when you look at Appaire, his focus is really on, in a way, the emperor and the regime. He sees the accolades that come the ascent and how good it is to be prominent in the eyes of the emperor. And this offers, I think, the return is a way out. He can talk about how they were more skilled because the politics were uglier, which masala doesn't seem to care much about the politics in and of themselves, whereas he can praise the regime today and it offers him a kind of meets defense, a sort of skilled or rhetorical defense against them.

So it might be that his entrance ends up being quite convenient because he can maintain his repose, right, and his desire to just sort of engage in poetry while also satisfying both interlocutors, though not entirely as we see from the ending. It does one way to think about it, though, it seems not to, it doesn't seem adequate at least insofar as we still have to have questions about the kind of this, right, we're still wondering what is what is a bear going to get up to after the dialogues over it's a friendly kind of jokey end, but there's some subtle undertones that I may come back and get you. Yeah, the dialogue ends with references to trials. And of course, it's supposed to be light-hearted references to trials, but it's not entirely clear to me that they are entirely light-hearted references.

And again, then it's filed, followed immediately by Tacitus indicating that he's not one of those who smiles at these presumably light-hearted remarks. Here's a question for you. Do you, I'm a related question to you, do you understand the terms as seeming praise of the Imperial regime for having brought peace even though it ends the conditions that are necessary to the development of developments? Do you see that praise is genuine, deep-seated since here?

It strikes me like driver's stories praise at Geneva, damming them with false praise, right? Greg, you wanted to jump in. No, no, I mean, you should talk. But I mean, I wrote Ironic in the margin here, like it's a section 41, and I sort of inferred that rhetoric was a mark of freedom, actually.

So it seems to turn the sort of classical blame of rhetoric on its head. I mean, you sort of get in Plato, for example, rhetoric is unsavory or something like this. But maybe I'm wrong, but I took this dialogue to be showing that actually this sort of fighting with words is a mark of healthy politics. And that sort of its absence shows that there is no room for people to have free exchange of thought.

I don't know, this can be connected to the education maybe as well. It certainly seems to me that the state of oratory is connected with politics. It's not a isolated question. Like you could read this dialogue superficially saying, well, what makes for a good speech?

A good speech has some ingredients, maybe, and a bunch of different professors. But this dialogue shows the close relationship between oratory and the kind of life that speakers live. And the regime, the political circumstances that surround the speeches that are given. And this is kind of taking up some sort of parallel discussion from places regarding oratory in the United States.

But some remarks are not oratory has changed over time and why it has changed. And so I don't think it's not just a dialogue about political and state, about the connection between the study of public speech and political circumstances. So the first, just to supplement this, one of the reasons I was also suspicious is I just at the beginning to be highly condemning of the empire, or its worth. And then on your second point about the connection between politics and rhetoric, I just taught a course on rhetoric last fall.

I actually asked on just listening to Dineshab talk about Lincoln's Lyceum address. And it's so unimaginable to think about a current presidential aspirant using the kind of impressive rhetorical devices that Abraham Lincoln uses when he's not even 30 years old. I mean, this sort of seamless going back and forth, talking about nature and convention and possibly divine providence at the beginning of the Lyceum address. They're all of the reversals.

And not just clicking the right clay and Webster and all these other kinds of oratory seems to have been more of the various farewell addresses for that matter. And it's just it's just difficult to, I mean, I don't know, maybe there are speeches that are being spoken now and written now that in 20, 30 years, we'll look back and recognize they're beautiful. But by and large, certainly not just on the news, you're smiling. I just, I just, my naive optimism.

Some Greg McBrayer 150 years from now is going to argue that Trump's tweets are written according to a little graphic necessity. They are all 50,000 or whatever. You know, we find a central character. Here we'd one line from the end of maternal speech is a section 41, which I think gets at the heart of the irony.

Yeah, that's right. Because he says, what need is there for long expressions of opinion in the Senate, such as one finds a republic when the best men quickly come to an agreement, as it is in the empire? What is the need for many meetings before the people when the ignorant masses are not deciding a matter of public policy, but the one individual who is the wisest. That's the one who decides matters.

And it strikes me that, well, yeah, if the one individual is wisest is willing, what need is there for rhetoric, right? There's no rhetoricians in a Calypolis and Plato's Republic, right? It just comes down from on high. And so what's interesting is you get this nod towards sort of platonic political idealism, here, in light of which you just cannot accept Rome as the reality, right?

So it strikes me that on the one hand, it's a sober reflection. You can say on the conditions under which the status of eloquence and literary skill would be acceptable. And when thinking about it, it just becomes utterly manifested. They don't obtain an imperial world.

That was in a faculty meeting once, just a department meeting. And it was some sort of questions were raised. And I said, we should we debate it and maybe take a vote in the chair of the department that looks at me as we work by consensus here. We all agree.

And it was very clear what the message was. We will not debate and we will not vote. You will also do both the way I said. So I think as a member of Wonder if I have an alliance in paragraphs, chapter 38, 39, 40, I mean, just one phrase that I like is in the end of 38, the very great statesmanship of the emperor completely silenced eloquence as it had all other things.

So there's a gust this year. There's one translation that that's what it says. It's just wonderful. I think the question is why the question is why the term disguises his true opinions at all.

It's not that he's changed his mind. It's that he's not willing to speak. But he was really stated in the cater of rest that got into trouble in the beginning of the time. So let me ask you a question along these lines.

He also just long what you were just saying. He also compares it to having as wonderful a founding as Sparta and Crete. And then goes on to mention Persia and Macedonia. Yes, they're not so nice.

They're an ideal regime. Along those lines of, okay, why does he give this apparent praise of the empire? Obviously, it's not genuine given what he said or what it is. To what extent do you think this is a poet now doing what Opair wanted him to do?

He's engaging in Orator. He's not writing tragedies right now. To what extent should we take this speech as supplying maybe subtly his reasons for staying in the poet's life? So we have the question of the good life as kind of supplanted or set aside.

Instead, we get this question about which age is better. And it ends with this longer speech in which it seems like he is a subtle dismissal of what Orator looks like under an empire. Is that in a way his answer to the good life? Or how do you view this last speech as an way as an answer to that initial question that was supplanted?

Well, I mean, I would say, I think that this is not that Orator has never wanted it to be. He wants Orator to be in the court defending your friends and attacking your enemies. He wants there to be high stakes involved. This strikes me as a group to be a third or kind of speech or discourse, different from poetry on the one hand and different from Orator in the other.

A conversation among friends that is supposed to be frank and candid. And this is said twice in the dialogue, by the way, I think, I saw the ones that maybe stuck on this the other time. And but it's, but what I guess my reading evidence that even here, it seems that this conversation among friends is not frank and candid. And there are, there is a certain amount of restraint.

And I think that that's a sign of the heavy hand of the regimes, even in private conversations of the most, one of my favorite movies is the lives of others and sort of brings this out in how tyrannical these regimes can be when they insinuate themselves into private relationships. People can even trust their friends, spouses, children, this kind of thing. And so it's ruining these friendships. I was like, so they can even have genuine friendly conversation.

This isn't really a conversation. I was wondering if given that oratory can't be practiced as it was, poetry is a better way of life. It provides maybe greater protection or maybe you can speak to a different audience of a wider audience, a later audience. Like there's nothing in other words, in order, one of the premises of oration I suppose is that you can have an effect on politics now.

Poetry, I think, is I can have an effect on politics down the line. Maybe that's overstating the case, someone who's poetry, I was still in the case in the contemporary one, but ways for men to communicate their thoughts. I think that's definitely a serious line of argument. There's a, or a lean Saxon house wrote a paper on the dialogue quite a long time ago.

That's the direction that she goes. Interesting. So she's saying, maternalist is looking for a way in which she can have an effect, but it doesn't think you can have through the oratory that is rendered by apnea. Interesting.