Abstract

In his creation of this narrative of friendship featuring the divitis filius and pauperis filius, the declaimer was clearly influenced by cultural and anthropological exemplars of undisputed validity. They range from Seneca’s philosophical paradigm of the sapiens to the military vir fortis and the prototype of the certus amicus. Oxymoronic stans periit specifically characterizes the poor man’s son’s aloofness from the ill-fame attached to gladiators. It also marks his death in battle: scorning the exit offered by the gladiatorial lex pugnandi, he chooses the law for bellica certamina, which offers the only opportunity to display virtus.