Patos i jego realizacja stylistyczna w mowie Cycerona Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino

Abstrakt

According to Aulus Gellius, Cicero when twenty-seven years of age, in 80 B.C., during the second consulship of the dictator Sulla and the year after he had pleaded the cause of Publius Quinctius, defended Sextus Roscius from Ameria, accused of parricide. Yet, the Roscius' trial was not a criminal, but a political one because of the great conflict between Sulla and Roman aristocracy's party − Roman nobilitas, in camp of which the young Cicero also was. Thus, defending Roscius − the son of a famous Amerian aristocrat − he used so called mutua accusatio and spoke not on behalf of his client, but against the author of this − undoubtedly − false accusation, Lucius Cornelius Chryzogonus, a powerful freeman and a favourite of Sulla.

However, this is neither history, nor politics of the times of Sulla's governements what makes the main subject of the article presented above, where we have attempted only to describe one of the aspects of rhetorical argumentation engaged by Cicero in his early speech. This very aspect is pathos that is understood here as a persuasive factor and that is forming − together with ethos and rational arguments − the triad of technical pisteis. This kind of persuasion had always been highly appreciated by the writer from Arpinum called sometimes a Roman master of pathos. His defence of Roscius reveals, it seems, the truth of these words.

For, as we have noticed in the chapter on the existence of pathos in the plot's sphere of the speech, Cicero builds many pathetic structures in the most exposed places of his rhetorical show, especially in introduction, peroration, and in the central part of argumentation, because he tends to evoke by them the fear or courage of judges − on the one hand, and that of forensic publics − on the other. Similarly, as we have tried to demonstrate in the second chapter entitled "The pathetic picturing in the realm of work's argumentation", the author builds with words some vivid, sometimes very dynamic and always highly expressive pictures that − in themselves − play upon the listeners' feelings and emotions, moving the audience to interest, anxiety, horror or to that kind of laughter which predicates nothing but bad to the defender's opponents.

It should also be stressed that there is no disharmony between the plot's stylistic realm and the semantic one in Pro Sexto Roscio Amerino. While analyzing the text one can easily see that Cicero employs the language as a pathos' sub-factor and shocks his listeners by the language itself. He is able to do this because of a specific semantic ambiguity of some Latin terms. There are two "word-groups", we have noticed, he engages in his speech. One of them we have named a sport-group and the other theatrical one. Such terms as, for example, gladiator, tiro, palma, belong certainly to the lexical field of robbery and murdering: calling his opponents gladiatores the orator can not only present them ironically, but also cause the audience's hatred towards them and the fear of them. The other ambiguous meaning group is constituted of some substantive − terms, as machinator, pars, confictio. Though it is lees frequent then that latter, it has a great importance as far as Cicero's persuasive − pathetic plan is concerned. For, speaking metaphorically about "castings parts" between the main accuser, the witnesses and the "director" of Roscius' trial, his patron suggests that the whole cause was simply fabricated.

After such a re-reading of Cicero's work this is not difficult for us to imagine the reaction of the orator's publics of the eighteenth B.C. For sure, those listeners could not believe in the words of accusers shown by Roscius' defender as cruel murders and bad actors, and could not be reconciled to Chryzogonus, not Roman's dominance, what exactly was the Cicero's conscious plan.

To sum up, we can assert that Cicero assuming the cultural competence of his audience was able to make use of pathos and play upon the feelings of the listeners to such a great extant. This public's strong tension was the exact reaction he postulated. The analysis of the speech's text − as well as history − indicates he managed to achieve his purpose. Having subordinated his rhetorical argumentation to pathos he won Roscius' cause and − at the same time − his own fame.