Changing Audiences, Changing Emotions? Cicero’s Philippics 3-4

Abstract

From the bulk of scholarship on Cicero his popular speeches have gained less attention than other parts of the corpus. The two most influential works on the subject are those written by Mack (1937) and Thompson (1978), who have compared Cicero’s popular speeches with speeches addressed to other audiences. The aim of this paper is to chalenge the generally accepted view formulated by Mack (1937) that differences between Cicero’s popular and senatorial speeches are based primarily on the different social position and, consequently, educational level of the audience. Furthermore, this paper argues against Mack’s view that the tone of Cicero’s popular speeches is far more emotional than his senatorial speeches, using Philippics 3 and 4 as an illustration.