Biography:
I am continuing my study of Ciceronian stylistics, trying to understand the relationship between composition and nuance, primarily in the periodic style of his oratory. I began, in my commentary on Pro Archia Poeta, trying to analyse and describe the variety of Ciceronian periods. In Cicero's Caesarian Speeches I attempted to relate the effect of various kinds of composition on rhetorical strategies. My text now is De Lege Agaria and my emphasis is on the forms and flow of Cicero's presentation beyond the limits of the syntactic period, and, within such periods, on the use of complex and ornate phrases. The speeches that make up the collection have rarely received extensive commentary; in English there is no such complete book. I am working on a historic, rhetorical, and stylistic commentary on the three speeches. Because the rarity of critical editions of the text, I am in the process of re-recollating a number of the manuscripts, particularly Vat. Lat 11458, Poggio's apograph, only used once since Campana discovered it half a century ago.