Imitation in Roman Culture

Imitation was central to Roman culture, and a staple of Latin poetry. But it was also fundamental to prose.

The Book's Focus

This book brings together two monuments of the High Empire, Quintilian's Institutio oratoria ("Training of the orator") and Pliny's Epistles, to reveal a spectacular project of textual and ethical imitation.

Historical Context

As a young man, Pliny had studied with Quintilian. In the Epistles, he meticulously transforms and subsumes his teacher's masterpiece, together with poetry and prose ranging from Homer to Tacitus' Dialogus de oratoribus.

Interpretative Approach

In teasing apart Pliny's rich intertextual weave, this book reinterprets Quintilian through the eyes of one of his sharpest readers, radically reassesses the Epistles as a work of minute textual artistry, and makes a major intervention in scholarly debates on intertextuality, imitation, and rhetorical culture at Rome.

Significance

The result is a landmark study with far-reaching implications for how we read Latin literature.