passage in the De officiis where Cicero grounds the rhetorical persona in philosophy by employing the Stoic Panaetius’s fourfold schema of our personae: our common rational nature; what is particular to each individual person’s bodies and spirits; what befalls us by chance and circumstance (including social, civic, and familial character traits); and how we define ourselves by choosing to live in certain roles.32
Ideally, oratorical delivery serves as a culminating moment for the alignment of these four roles in self-fashioning. Yet in rhetoric the tone of voice may charm, the hand gestures may reassure, the gait may inspire confidence, an exordium may establish the audience’s goodwill by recalling a positive ancestry, clothes may suit the decorum of the occasion or imitate the sartorial fashions of the powerful, the right style may seize the crowd’s attention, but a dart of the eyes and a furtive glance to a few intimates in the audience may equally reveal different motives, even while the speech aims at being effective and pleasing, persuading and moving the whole crowd. In Cicero’s rhetorical writings the theoretical discursive persona agrees exceptionally well with the old Latin auditory etymology for persona, as not only a mask that one puts on public display but also a megaphone, as it were, through which the various stylistic registers and modes of delivery of speech are performed (per-sonare).
Traditions examining rhetorical personae are without a doubt of central importance to Italian humanism as a whole. For instance, looking back to the origins of the movement in the mid-fifteenth century, Flavio Biondo (1392–1463) indicated the rediscovery of ancient oratory as a boundary line that marked generational differences in humanism’s history: “First of all, Francesco Petrarch, a man of great talent and great industry, began to awaken poetry and eloquence, but in that age in which we blame the dearth and lack of books more than of genius, he did not attain the flower of Ciceronian eloquence that adorns many we see in this century. For he himself, although he boasted of having found the letters of Cicero written to Lentulus at Vercelli, did not know the three books of Cicero’s De oratore and Quintilian’s (c. 35–c. after 96 CE) Institutiones except in fragmentary form, and likewise Orator maior and Brutus de oratoribus claris, books of Cicero, had not come to his knowledge.”33 Although one should not diminish the resonance of Quintilian and other writers of rhetorical theory (and the imitation of good auctores in general) in the quattrocento, it is clear that for Biondo—who is probably inspired by Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444) in this regard—Ciceronian oratory holds a preeminent place in the curriculum of the bonae artes.
In the generation after Petrarch (1304–74), the letters of the powerful Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati (1331–1406), who desired (perhaps with some overstatement) to be seen as Petrarch’s friend and disciple, found a small but appreciative and impressed audience for their stilus rhetoricus. Varying his style according to his audience, Salutati’s missives were at times written in a medieval ars dictaminis, at times even in the vernacular when his political business required him to write to smaller Italian communes, but at other times in a grand oratorical Latin, drawing on classical literature and history. Legitimized by his office as chancellor, Salutati’s letters, whether sent to allies or foes like the Visconti in Milan, also held a powerful place in the public discourse by expressing the juridical persona of the Florentine republic itself. Leonardo Bruni, his successor as chancellor of Florence, continued on the same path but had a greater command over Cicero’s stylistic teachings and found a much larger audience capable of appreciating it. By the end of the quattrocento Ciceronian imitation had become almost a defining initiatory rite for humanists. Most collected and circulated their letters, as Petrarch had done, on the model of Cicero’s Epistulae ad familiares. The humanists were consumed by attaining new heights in rhetoric and eloquence, and none seemed higher than Cicero.34 Now the dominant form of the burgeoning Respublica literaria, Ciceronianism (as it came to be called) would later become the style of public discourse throughout early modern Europe, but at the same time it also lost its appeal for those humanists wishing to test the boundaries of stylistic canons. These later humanists explored a variety of styles to imitate and emulate, including but not limited to models based on the writings of Sallust, Apuleius, Pliny, and the church fathers, or, returning to one of Petrarch’s old favorites, Seneca.
Cicero’s Persona: Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cortesi
Nowhere is the criticism of Ciceronianism in the late quattrocento more evidently and more powerfully expressed than in the short-lived exchange of letters between Angelo Poliziano (1454–94) and Paolo Cortesi (1465–1510).35 Cortesi, a scriptor at the Holy See, prompted the debate when he sent his collected letters to the poet and sharpest of Florentine philologists, who subsequently returned them with a brief letter. Having conceded that he did appreciate a few of Cortesi’s letters, Poliziano dismissed the rest as a waste of his time, admonishing his junior of nine years: “Still, there is a point regarding style that I disagree with you on. For you generally do not approve of anyone, as I understand it, unless he copies the features of Cicero (liniamenta Ciceronis). To me the face of a bull or a lion seems far more honourable than that of an ape, which nonetheless is more like a man than they are. The men who are believed to have held the pinnacle of eloquence are not similar to one another, as Seneca demonstrated. Quintilian laughs at those who considered themselves brothers of Cicero because they closed a period with the phrase, ‘it would seem so.’ ”36 Poliziano’s critique is directed at the fabrication of an imitative Ciceronian persona. The rhetorical mask of Cicero that Cortesi wears publicly, he tells him, resembles more the face of an ape. “Nothing there is true, nothing solid, nothing effective.”37 Poliziano in turn speaks of himself: “ ‘You do not write like Cicero,’ someone says. So what? I am not Cicero. Yet I do express myself, I think.”38 Poliziano’s brusque statement implies that for many of his contemporaries Cicero’s oratorical persona became confused with the person of the author.
This becomes especially clear when one notices that in this short letter Poliziano twice uses the Ciceronian term liniamentum (used by Cicero for geometric outlines, facial features, and stylistic form) to recall a specific passage from Cicero. In the dialogue Brutus, the character Cicero portrays the various traits of Roman orators for two other interlocutors, the work’s namesake and Atticus. The latter introduces the topic of rhetoric’s ability to mislead and accuses Cicero of irony in comparing the Roman Cato to the Attic Lysias. Cato might have been a great and extraordinary man, Atticus concedes, but not an orator and certainly not of the same caliber as Lysias, “with all his incomparable finish (pictius).”39 Virtue is not the same as eloquence. Atticus is even willing to praise the speeches of the virtuous citizen, senator, and general, but with one fatal qualification, stating that they were good “for their day.” Cato does not stand alone in this respect; the Brutus produces the examples of Galba, Lepidus, Africanus, Laelius, Carbo, and the Gracchi as ancient orators who should be praised as exemplary men who conducted their lives admirably but whose unpolished speeches lacked eloquence.40 Surely, Atticus reasons, Cicero does not want to compare these crude Tusculi to the Greek masters, nor does he think that Brutus ought to speak in their manner. Cicero responds that Latin models have changed since his youth: “We should have to turn over many books, especially of Cato as well as of others; you would see that his drawing (liniamentis) was sharp and that it lacked only some brightness and colours which had not yet been discovered.”41 As in Cicero’s example, in Poliziano’s day Latin had undergone historical changes, also in part due to the influence of Greek studies. Cicero’s point, however, is not that Brutus should imitate the features of one specific group of early orators, let alone one individual among them, but rather that he ought to read many books to learn from different styles. So Poliziano tells Cortesi, “Shift your eyes away from Cicero,” as though Cortesi were looking at Cicero as his only mirror to study his own features.42 In short, Poliziano draws on Cicero to critique a Ciceronian, in effect telling him that he does not understand the relationship between an authorial person and the discursive persona of the rhetorician.
Cortesi, however, is no fool when it comes to Cicero. He immediately picks up on Poliziano’s reference and replies with a letter
