Till this literary genre entered the public sphere alongside recitations of literary works – and it was during the completion of the so-called Second Sophistic that declamation developed into a certain genre not meant to be delivered in court practices but to be read ( Lesereden ) 1 – and after that, the grounding of students in the art of public speaking formed among other technical presuppositions these elaborately ornamented and rehearsed speeches on a fictional situation or hypothetical lawsuit ( Übungsreden, in Greek μελέται ) 2, whilst Greek προγυμνάσματα were smaller-scale exercises of the same sort. amidst the workshop of its teachers and learning audience, as the students entering the final course on rhetoric should compose the more difficult exercises, commonly termed declamationes, by treating mostly fictitious model cases with the aim of preparing themselves for the pugna forensis (Quintilian, Institutio oratoria ). 8 Gibson 2004, p. 105, remarks that “while historical declamation never (to my knowledge) purported t (.)ġ Since declamationes were practice speeches representing the ultimate stage of education in rhetoric, their study and rhetorical application are of great importance to those interested in focusing on the internal part of ancient rhetorics, i.6 See Turner 1972 and Van der Poel 1987.4 Respective editions by Håkanson 1982 and by Winterbottom 1984 and Shackleton Bailey 1989.3 See Kennedy 2003, p. XIII for the order in other treatises.Thus, Sopatros’ contribution to the genre could provide rhetorical bibliography with a twofold desideratum, concerning: 1) the special philological characteristics of Greek declamatio, which unlikely those by Seneca the Elder are not idiosyncratic but they lay bare the intimate connection between declamatio and the rhetorical precept forming an enduring theme in the story of the genre – indeed, a profound stylistic instruction about dispositio and inventio – and, accordingly 2) a possibility to tackle the question of the formation of an “Attic genre of declamatio ”, whereby, together with the consistent use of rhythm and the keeping of emotion in its place, style should support argument (the last being the crucial factor of winning the case).

Since declamationes entered the public sphere alongside recitations of literary works, the case of the Greek rhetorician Sopatros of the 4th century AD, who treated his subjects in the surviving collection of 82 fictional controversiae ( Diairesis Zētēmatōn ), seems highly important for the attestation of declamatio in rhetorical devices and practice as well as for the heyday of the Greek model in Late Antiquity after Apsines, Libanius and Himerius.

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