Abstract As a child in Corduba, a Romanized city in southern Spain, the Elder Seneca was heavily influenced by Roman society and literary tastes. He left his home and his family, for long periods of time as an adult, to experience the talents of professional declaimers in Rome. From his memory of the controversiae and suasoriae of these declaimers, he wrote the Oratorum et rhetoruni sententiae, divisiones, colores. In his collection, along with various Roman and Greek declaimers, are several Spanish declaimers. Seneca claims he included them “not out of excess of enthusiasm for them, but on the basis of considered judgement” (Con. 10.pr.16). Here, I examine how Seneca presents these Spanish declaimers and their distinguishing characteristics, in comparison with Roman declamatory standards, and consider his purpose in doing so.

Abstract In eleventh century Italy, Anselm de Besate claimed rhetoric had become too technical and difficult to use. He wrote the Rhetorimachia as a controversia, applying declamatory form to a written composition, in order to illustrate rhetoric's usefulness. Nonetheless, Anselm complained that critics failed to understand this intent. Contemporary readers, unfamiliar with the declamatory tradition, have also misunderstood the intent of his controversia. Here, I compare Anselm's controversia with those found in Seneca the Elder and with the declamatory pedagogy of Quintilian, showing that Anselm was imitating a well-established tradition of educational practice as well as displaying his rhetorical artistry.