Procopius records ‘he [Gelimer] neither wept nor cried but ceased not saying over the words of the Hebrew Scripture: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”’. Procopius commentates nothing; alas, there is no more to be said. Though in his lifetime the Mediterranean was once again a Romanum Lacum, Justinian’s empire was economically prostrate, beset on all frontiers, and spiralling into a shadow that were to cast over it for centuries. Gelimer’s words were but one of the daggers Procopius pointed at Justinian. True, his speech was short, but as oratio recta, can Procopius’ subtle criticisms be more effective? Rather than contracting his own statement – highly unlikely due to inevitable censorship – the ultimate king of the Vandals and Alans, Gelimer himself was made to remark and predict the transitory fate of Justinian’s empire, just as he and his kingdom have risen and ended from a similar fickleness of fortune. Here, Gelimer’s words serve as Procopius’ voice. Yet, to use oratio recta to paint a narrative is one but many ways Western, ancient historians like Procopius incorporated speeches into their works. Together, with its counterpart oratio obliqua,speeches – since its popularisation by the ancient Greeks – have served to dramatise and embellish narratives, to project, as shown above, a historical narrative, or to in fact more closely reflect a truth. There is no doubt that the majority of ancient speeches are fictions of their author’s imagination. Without modern audio-recorders or cameras,they are destined to be incapable of recording the truth – and they knew so themselves. The core focus thus, was not to capture the absolute truth – for there was none – but to manifest their subjects’ character and rationale, painting an impressionistic picture, but not capturing a photograph. Livy paints his picture with artistic prowess to dazzle his readers, Sallust seeks to reinforce and better reflect his narratives, and Caesar aims to justify his actions and glorify his legacy. That Procopius incorporates speeches to serve his own narrative six-centuries later therefore portray speech as a quintessential signature of ancient historical works; it acknowledges that as an inherent trait of humanity, it is able to evoke senses of nostalgia and familiarity that plain writing cannot.

Procopius displays speech as a critical tool that can be weaved into a particular narrative. For Procopius, Justinian’s reign was one saturated with deficiencies. However, the fear of reprisal from the Justinian dynasty prevented him from ever directly voicing his criticisms. It was only done so in his work Secret History, a text designed to be published after Justinian’s death and saturated with comedy and invectives against Justinian, Empress Theodora, Belisarius, and his wife Antonina, not only supposedly exposing their scandals, but also seeking to highlight their sordid and despicable nature. Nevertheless, Procopius’ hints of his disillusionment within his historical composition published at the time, History of the Wars, which covers almost the entirety of Justinian’s rule. Procopius weaves his criticisms into his narrative much like with Gelimer; more concretely, in his usage of the speech of an Armenian embassy in 540AD which provided the Sasanid King Khusrow I the pretext to break the Perpetual Peace between the Sasanian and Roman empires. Procopius’ recordings of the Armenian oratio recta display the Armenians as exaggerating Roman successes and oppression in both military and diplomacy in the East to convince Khosrow to invade. The Armenians claims that having become ‘slaves and fugitives’, Justinian had ‘ordain[ed] the payment of a tax which did not exist before, enslaved our [their] neighbours, the Tzani, who were autonomous… made a defensive alliance with the Aethiopian kingdoms… and the Red Sea his possession’ and that ‘he [Justinian] is even looking about the heavens and is searching for the retreats beyond the oceans’. The embassy forewarns that Justinian intends to encircle Khusrow’s empire. Yet, compared with Procopius’ earlier accounts, the evidence and circumstance suggests the contrary. That Justinian had made them ‘slaves and fugitives’ fully downplays the fragility of Roman hold in the east. Not only has the Armenians successfully overthrew the local governor but has also resisted Roman invasion and ‘for the two generals who were the best they [the Romans] had, we come here having slain the one, Sittas’. Moreover, Justinian’s military and legal-centric reforms in Armenia show no indication of a newly imposed tax, and neither has the Tzani been ‘enslaved’. Indeed pacified, but constant revolts in the region has led to only a fragile Roman presence over the Tzani. Finally, the so-called Aethiopian alliance was nothing more than Justinian attempting to bypass the Persian monopoly on silk through Ethiopian trading routes, which too ended in failure. There appears to be a developing pattern. For each claim of the Armenians, Procopius highlights its exaggeration. Yet, by exposing such exaggeration, Procopius points out the failures of Justinian’s rule and policies in effectively governing his empire. The speech of the Armenian embassy thus perfectly complements and fuels Procopius’ historical narrative by contradiction to subtly interweave his criticisms into what is ostensibly impartial.

While Procopius extracts his narrative from speeches, Caesar, Livy, and Sallust instead use the mechanisms of speech to propel their own narratives; and they do so in fascinatingly different ways. Sallust, in particular, proportions oratio obliqua to oratio recta to reflect a clear double narrative in his works Jugurthine War and the War of Catiline. For both works, there is an underlying emphasis on the moral decline and degeneration of the late Roman Republic. However, the circumstances and meaning of the events which he describes are in no ways overshadowed. The Jugurthine War by nature describes the gruelling Roman campaign against Jugurtha, king of the Numidians; a campaign saturated with brutal guerilla warfare and heavy losses on both sides. Yet Sallust does not fail to highlight that the Jugurthine War began and ended due to the corruption of the Roman bureaucracy and their ignorance of Roman traditions. To reflect both these two narratives, Sallust consequently chooses to include more oratio recta than oratio obliqua: in fact 72 per-cent to 28 per-cent. While he uses oratio obliqua for summary purposes, the focus is placed on the oratio recta which is assigned to individuals like Scipio, Adherbal, Marius, and Sulla. Sulla, in an effort to assure King Bocchus of his defection, speaks:

‘It gives us great pleasure, King Bocchus, that the gods have at length induced a man, so eminent as yourself, to prefer peace to war, and no longer to stain your own excellent character by an alliance with Jugurtha, the most infamous of mankind; and to relieve us, at the same time, from the disagreeable necessity of visiting with the same punishment your errors and his crimes’

Sallust seeks to capture the circumstances of the war by outlining the moral and ethical principles by which it was encompassed. His emphasis on oratio recta in the War of Catiline more so captures the nature of the material. After all, the Catalinarian conspiracy was one of political intrigue and treachery, senatorial debates, and secret communications and messages. The specific forms of speech can therefore be seen as a useful instrument for ancient historians to reflect their narratives.

Livy, in his accounts of the Hannibalistic wars, takes oratio recta a step further by stamping it with his own artistic flair to create an engaging and dramatic narrative.  His stylised oratio recta focuses more on the emotions, thoughts, and decisions of individuals which comprises the greater narrative. Just before the battle of Ticinus, Livy provides Scipio and Hannibal with a speech each. Although well-matched in personality and skill, Scipio’s speech adds a tint of solemness to the surprise that Hannibal, ‘the wandering Hercules’ had crossed the alps. Hannibal, on the hand, is excited, enthusiastic, and optimistic, and rightfully so believing that ‘fortune has fixed the final goal of your [his army’s] labours’. However, more importantly is the order which Livy arranges these speeches. It is no secret that Livy adapts much of his accounts of the Hannibalistic wars from the Greek historian Polybius, yet he certainly alters it to be more dimensional than Polybius’ simple narrative. For these two speeches, he inverts Polybius’ accounts so that the soon-to-be victorious Hannibal’s speech is left last just before the battle. Such subtlety subconsciously encourages the reader to predict the outcome of the battle as favourable to Hannibal. This same technique is also applied to just before the battle of Zama, with greater detail. The battle of Zama provides the ultimate conclusion to the saga of Hannibal, and he is thus offered a glorious speech to conclude it. Scipio too is provided a speech, but it once again starkly contrasts that of Hannibal’s. It is evident that Hannibal will be defeated, and Scipio will emerge victorious, however, Livy conveys this differently to that of Ticinus’. Hannibal’s speech, on the verge of defeat, is emotional and rhetorically elaborate: he had ‘return[ed] as an old man to my [his] native city, from which I [he] had set out as a boy’. Scipio, however, shows none of the enthusiasm of a victor, and his speech is cold and factual, pinpointing the aggression displayed and the violation of treaties by Carthage. The frigidness of Scipio thus reflects the devastating losses and 17 years which Rome, and to an extent Carthage had endured. There is little to rejoice for. Livy explores and employs the mechanisms of speech to add nuance and literarily diversify what would otherwise be plain narrative.

For Caesar’s political ambitions and statesmanship, his historical accounts is by no means as non-partisan as Livy’s or Sallust’s works. Livy and Sallust may paint a scene, but Caesar highlights a vision. Even so, as the master of rhetoric as he is, Caesar experiments with speeches in the Commentarii confidentially and masterfully. For his initial accounts of the Gallic War, little speech is used; in fact only first used during the dramatic invasion of the Tenth Legion of Britannia. This omission of speech was deliberate; it provided a seemingly ‘plain, unvarnished truth’ to a highly politically motivated account. Caesar only begins to steadily incorporate more speeches into his works in the Civil War, perhaps the historical impartialness being no longer as necessary. His speeches highlight opposing attitudes before major conflicts and particularly propagandise the Roman virtues of his officers as was done to Gaius Scribonius Curio. Although he were to perish in a last stand against the Pompeiian Numudians, this was not before Caesar recorded his valiance: he rejected his counsel’s appeal to retreat from Varus’ approaching army, believing ‘a change of camp would amount to [nothing] other than an ignominious flight and giving up all hope and the alienation of the army’. His brave words were to remain an inspiration to the Roman populace for which Rome required of them in times of need. There is not doubt that Caesar attempts to promote his – and his faction’s – moral and political distinction, but it is his rhetorical familiarity and prowess that makes it so successful and interesting.

Speeches, by nature, are an invigorating form of rhetoric. For both the ancient and modern readers, its use in historical works was and is the closest to that of a video of the past; its impressions engage our imagination to be the camera. While I do not truly know the scene in which Gelimer knelt below Justinian, his words certainly stimulate my mind to picture the triumph, the celebratory atmosphere, and his despair, and saddens my heart to how true it would ring – and this I believe to be Procopius’ intended effects in its inclusion, just as is Livy’s, Sallust’s, and Caesar’s in their own works.