ABSTRACT
WITH THE end of the Republic a new chapter opens in the history of Roman rhetoric. If one turns from Cicero’s account of his early training in the Brutus to the Controversiae and Suasoriae of the elder Seneca, one is conscious of having moved into a different world. The forum and the senate house are forgotten and the centre of interest is now the school. And the school has thrown open its doors and become something like a theatre. The stage is held by the rhetorician, no longer a pedantic theorist and now rather a star performer. His performances are known as declamations.
