Late Antique Non-Christian Roman Oratory: Reflections and Perspectives with Particular Attention to Fragmentary Speeches

This essay discusses the situation of Late Antique Latin non-Christian oratory, with particular attention to fragmentary texts and testimonies. After a brief discussion of the present bibliography, in which I underline the lack of a scientific collection of fragments for the third–fifth centuries AD, I give some examples of the possibilities offered by new web scientific tools for automatic research such as digilibLT, Musisque deoque (Mqdq), and Tesserae. Furthermore, I emphasize the most important questions concerning times, occasions, situations, and contexts of Late Antique oratory. Using some case studies concerning judgments on Late Antique oratory and discussing the problem of imperial contiones militares (speeches to the army), I highlight new possible perspectives for research and global interpretation of the oratorical phenomena in later centuries. The results of this and other research will converge in a new edition of fragments of Roman oratory for Teubner–De Gruyter publishers.