Il gesto romano

 The Ancient Romans avoided Austin’s performative ‘I acclaim’ as unmanly and resorted to a well-known gesture to implicate it! Adfectus omnes languescant necesse est, nisi voce, vultu, totius prope habitu corporis inardescunt. The Roman forcefully manipulated his body in the act of persuading an addressee. The Roman utterer engages with his addressee. The Roman utterer *communicates* with his addressee. In turn the addressee is able to apply and convey his reaction back to the utterer. A Roman gesture becomes *prescribed* from the delivery of an initially one-off unconventional utterance. Since Roman rhetorical treatises repeatedly stress that the utterer should elicit with his body a specific emotional response from his addressee. A particularised gesture — pointing with the index finger — would from the one-off scenario, later bring home an initially particularised detail to his addressee. The public setting of the utterance provides ample opportunities for the utterer to point at various monuments and buildings in the vicinity. Another range of bodily gesturing involves mimicry. The particularised way in which Antoninus formed and moved his hand when beginning an argument. The emperor (or duce in general) and his responsive crowd behave quasi-contractually. An acclamation by an urban addressee, Antoninus notes, differs in kind from that used by a rustic addresssee. This observation coincides with the disparaging remarks that Antoninus makes about the delivery of provincials. The proper rhetoric, it would seem, is for Antoninus urban — i. e., Roman — rhetoric, as in the gesture of the right arm upheld and left concealed by Ottaviano at Prima Porta. For the utterer’s body to have emotional emotional on the addressee, the reasonable grounds of the one-off scenario suffice. Antonino is more effective when his addressee is *unaware* of the potential mysterious arsenal of rhetorical devices being used in persuasion. If the addressee recognises that certain gesture is aimed at persuasion, the addressee finds the utterer less persuasive. Apuleius cites Antonino when he adds to the overall characterization of his bungling Thelyphron by having him use a vulgar gesture that came naturally to him. The inept vulgar gesture by Thelyphron’s coincides with the expectation of any elite addressee who happened by chance to be in the crowd! Terence’s pointing, clenched fist, pudicitia gesture — are well-known fromreliable contexts, including illustrations. Antoninus recalls Frontone’s advice, don’t be a clown, alluding to the avoidance of the gesturing over-employed by comic actors and dancers in pantomime. The lack of voice amplification, a non-acoustical spaces, and milling crowds present special challenges to Antonino, who must rely on some intricate combination of fingers! On the other hand, by striking the chest with the clenched fist the utterer means grief or anger iin a natural and universal mode. Vitters told Sraffa that, for one, he does not recall ever having used this “natural” gesture himself, but then as Bulwer notes in Chirologia that what’s natural is natural to this or that upbringing. Christians, unlike Romans, do not perform this gesture properly, but are ‘wont mysteriously to mince this natural expression.’ So the gesture *is* ceteris paribus natural — for first-century Romans — but unnaturalised by the Christians! The rhetorical education provided by Fromyone to Antonino was put to use in well-known historical episodes. The counter-conversational move of the vocative acclamation — as in the euphemistic barbarism, ‘Euge’ — on behalf of the addressee exercises a powerful influence on the utterer.. As the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae notes, the performative use of ‘adclamare’ initially carries a sardonic implicature. The *site* for an acclamation ranges from the Forum or the Campus Martius to the circus, arena, or theater. The utterer’s response increases in frequency and becomes more positive in tone as its direct political implicature lessens — from a simple applause to a complex chanted phrase — as in Germanicus POxy. 25 2435r -. A give and take occurs whenever an utterer addressed a set of *Roman citizens* assembled as a mass. An emperor such as Tiberius — who changed the electorate rules — has a relationship with his crowd, determined by the crowd’s reaction which made it virtually obligatory for him to attend this or that game. The impact that public acclamations has on imperial policy is evidenced by the choice of which gladiator to display at a game to more crucial issues such as the price of grain and even his selection as emperor himself! The growing theatricalization of politics which reached its apex with Mussolini and Berlusconi, the flamboyance of gesture bemoaned by Cato the Censor and the increased importance of the acclamation are symptomatic of how the Roman utterer is perceived as a performer soliciting uptake — alla Austin — the roar of the paint, the smell of the crowd. Utterer and addressee are continually negotiating their interdependence. Especially interesting is the way in which the addresee’s reaction is endowed with a power to play a political role not only the utterer’s decision and but in the implementation of this or that policy. A. Vasaly, Representations: Images of the World in Ciceronian Oratory. R. Brilliant, Gesture and Rank in Roman Art. E. Gunderson, Discovering the Body in Roman Oratory,” in M. Wyke ed., Parchments of Gender. Deciphering the Bodies of Antiquity, Oxford, A. Corbeill, Thumbs in Ancient Rome: Pollex as Index, M. Atkinson, Our Masters’ Voices: the Language and Body Language of Politics; A. Funck, ” Accipiter, acclamatio, acclamo,” Archiv für lateinische Lexicographie und Grammatik. F. Millar, The Crowd in Rome in the Late Republic.