Liner Notes
In this episode, Christos Kalli, I. B. Hopkins, and Patrick Sui (interviewers) talk with Robin Reames, Richard Enos, and Kathleen Lamp-Fortuno about Lamp-Fortuno’s recent book, A City of Marble (U of South Carolina Press, 2013). After brief introductions by the interviewers, Lamp-Fortuno introduces and summarizes her book (-3.50). Hopkins and Kalli then discuss the book’s structure, turning it over to Reames and Lamp-Fortuno to examine how the book’s organizational strategies help lay down its arguments and work against the Decline Theory (3.50-13.15). Kalli, Enos, and Sui then delve into the Augustan coinage program and its rhetorical implications (13.15-19.50). Kalli, Hopkins, Sui, and Lamp-Fortuno finish the episode by looking at the contemporary parallels and political intersections of the book (19.50-22.55). Conclusion and credits (22.55-24.06).
Transcript:
IBH - I.B. Hopkins
CK - Christos Kalli
PS - Patrick Sui
RR - Robin Reames
RE - Richard Enos
KLF - Kathleen Lamp-Fortuno
[Introduction]
[IBH] Welcome to Sonic Rhetoric Reviews, a series of podcasts where we discuss contemporary scholarly works in the field of rhetoric. In this series, we hope to remediate the genre of the scholarly book review while still accomplishing everything that a book review achieves.
[CK] Each review will summarize a recent book, situate it in contemporary scholarship, and offer thoughts about the future scholarship made possible by each work. Today, we’ll be talking about Kathleen Lamp-Fortuno’s A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome, published in 2013 by The University of South Carolina Press, as part of the Studies in Rhetoric/Communication Series, edited by Thomas W. Benson.
[PS] My name is Patrick Sui, and I’m a graduate student in English and Information Studies at UT Austin. My main research interests are posthumanist theory, digital humanities, and the intersection between Continental Philosophy and literary theory.
[CK] My name is Christos Kalli, and I am currently a first-year PhD student in English at UT Austin. My research focuses on contemporary American poetry and poetics, and I have a special interest in the contemporary epic.
[IBH] And my name is IB Hopkins. I’m a second-year PhD Student in English literature, also at UT Austin, where I focus on drama and performance in early America, as well as adaptation and new play dramaturgy.
[CK] So, as you can tell, we are not scholars of rhetoric by training, but we did not let that stop us. In fact, we have gathered insights from two experts in the field, Drs. Robin Reames and Richard Enos. Talking to them about A City of Marble has helped us better understand its disciplinary implications, and where it fits into the broader arc of how scholars think about ancient rhetoric.
[PS] Right, and there’s really no replacement for speaking to the author herself, so we are especially excited to share Dr. Lamp-Fortuno’s perspectives on what she hoped to accomplish with her book.
[IBH] Well, should we let her introduce the book, then?
[C] Yeah, let’s do it!:
[KLF] Basically, what A City of Marble is about are the Augustine cultural campaigns. Right, so I think that I'm engaging with a lot of different disciplinary narratives that we can talk about a little bit more, but, really, the argument that the book makes is that non-traditional rhetorical media—so things like art and architecture, monuments, coins—that these are functioning rhetorically, and that they have a great rhetorical significance. So we're dealing with a time, not necessarily of political chaos, but of great change. And so I look at how these artifacts are instructing the Roman people in what is expected of them as citizens. I think also part of the contribution that the book makes is that in looking at visual material artifacts I’m getting outside of the kind of narrow political elite that are addressed in the textual tradition. Even though I'm still in the heart of empire, I’m trying to look at how rhetoric works in the daily lives of Roman people who are often excluded.
[CK] That’s a very rich summary of what she’s doing in this book!
[PS] So, maybe I can elaborate on how Dr Lamp-Fortuno accomplishes that, how she uses these “visual material artifacts” to support the argument. In seven chapters, she discusses case studies from the period of Augustus’s reign from 27 BCE to 14 CE that demonstrate the rhetorical significance of public works beginning with a prominent altar dedicated to the peace Augustus brought to the Empire, the Ara Pacis. She then examines the Augustan Forum and state coinage programs and reads these alongside vernacular art like those created by formerly enslaved people, neighborhood organizations, and a mural parodying Augustus. She draws on this wide range of examples to establish the reciprocal rhetoric of the public to state cultural campaigns beyond the “narrow political elite.”
[IBH] So it seems to me that the progression of these case studies is arranged so they move from rhetorical objects that are subject to the tightest control by Augustus, there in the very center of Rome as the seat of power, to those that fall further and further outside his (and really his administration's) capacity to strictly regulate. To my mind, there is a range from controlled messaging at the Ara Pacis all the way to that same messaging being used against him in the graffiti that uses parody to push back against the state.
[CK] Of course, there are alternative interpretations of the book’s configuration. To me, for instance, it seems that Dr. Lamp-Fortuno’s structure follows the evolution of the Augustan visual-rhetorical strategy, as it mutates from artifacts as grand as the Ara Pacis and the Forum of Augustus to something as miniscule as the Roman coins. Dr. Reames, a scholar of classical rhetoric and co-editor of The Rhetorical Tradition, found the book’s structure particularly compelling.
[RR]: I thought it was a solid organization. I thought the way she allows herself to dance between public art and private art—public physical spaces and private physical spaces—and yet see similar types of rhetorical structures and moves happening. I think that that way of thinking about the different venues and the different places where the same sort of phenomenon is occurring again and again is a really good way of bolstering her argument. It’s just like example after example. It was like, by the end, I was like, “Okay, yeah, she's right. She's absolutely right.” Right? But it created a really panoramic sense of how thoroughly infused this material world would have been with artifacts and structures that interface with and play off of the rhetorical forums and structures that really make it no longer feasible to think about rhetoric as isolated to speaker and hearer, oratory and eloquence.
[PS] Dr. Reames suggested we talk to the author about the strategic organization of the book for further insights, and we took her up on that suggestion:
[KLF] The way that I organized this was to start with, like, the clearest, boldest, best example I could give of that, right? So the Ara Pacis, it is an epideictic text. The kind of features of the genre that are there, and I think it's very hard to argue that they're not, right? And so I wanted to start with something that just would be very accepted as a rhetorical artifact in terms of genre and then in terms of form. The Ara Pacis is a touchstone to understanding the rest of Augustan rhetoric.
[CK] In fact, in her book, Dr. Lamp-Fortuno refers to the Ara Pacis as “the most complete illustration of the Augustan political myth in verbal or visual form” (39), connecting Augustus’s reign to Rome’s mythological past and idealized virtues like piety and bravery. Through the carvings on the outer and inner altar space, Augustus augments the actions of heroic icons, like Aeneas and Romulus, and then puts himself on par with them.
[IBH] So, basically, he’s spelling it out in the clearest terms possible: Augustus = Peace = Prosperity. That’s the message.
[CK] And. I think it is interesting that the author “wanted to start with something that just would be very accepted as a rhetorical artifact,” and not something that could be easily contested as one. Perhaps one of the reasons why Dr. Lamp-Fortuno choses to do this is because she is working against the once-popular idea of the “decline theory.”
[P] Yea, one of the main undertakings of Dr. Lamp-Fortuno’s project is to push back on what most rhetoric scholars call the “decline theory,” which posits that rhetoric has been fundamentally removed from political relevance since the foundation of the empire. Tracing its origins back to Tacitus, it remained dominant in many disciplines until the late 20th century. We asked Dr. Reames about the origins and early dynamics of decline theory, and she gave us some useful context for understanding that paradigm.
[RR] What she's calling the decline theory, though, is a more kind of specific historiographical manifestation, and it’s a really—she's summed it up in a really good and effective way. There is a sort of boilerplate take on imperial rhetoric in the Roman era: Free speech was in decay, free speech was in decline. Why? Well, because it was imperial, so it wasn't free. It's imperial, so it's not democratic. So, therefore, it must have been in decline. So you can already kind of tell where some of those arguments would have come from just by thinking in those kinds of binary terms. about democracy = good; empire = bad; democracy = good; monarchy = bad. Free speech = good (and also possible), and not free speech = bad. Right? That way of thinking kind of arises from Western metaphysics. But it's kind of a false lead to start searching for the origins of that [because] searching for the origin of that is a way of reinforcing that same structure of thought that gives rise to it in the first place. And I think one of the real strengths of this work is the way that she does that. She offers a really solid historiography for just stretching the boundaries of that—and enough to make it seem less plausible, enough to make it seem less solid. I can't really give you a solid answer for, like, where it started, who came up with it, why they came up with it, or what they stand to benefit from it. That kind of, like, cabalist thinking—that, like, somehow there are people in a hidden room coming up with a historiography that's going to perpetuate the structures of oppression and perpetuate empire, perpetuate the structures of Western rationality and Western metaphysics—doesn't exist. It's encoded in the way we speak. It's encoded in the way we think. Those things have enormous staying power.
[CK] In addition to Dr. Reames’s explanation of the complicated origins of the decline theory, Dr. Lamp-Fortuno elaborates on the even more complicated dynamics of its influence.
[KLF] I think that the decline narrative creeps back in, in judgments about the quality of rhetorical practice, if that makes sense. So people will be, like, “there was still, you know, rhetorical practice in the empire, it just wasn't very good.” Right? And so it's like, well, that's still the decline
[IBH] This description of her historiography got me thinking about the book's broader scholarly relevance. Lamp-Fortuno is drawing a clear connection between rhetorical theory composed for spoken orations and visual rhetoric created for popular display. What fascinates me about this intervention is where she places the role of scholarship in historicizing the Augustan period. Chapter One focuses on the historical/political context that marks Augustus’s ascent to power. And then, in Chapter Two, she covers some theoretical foundation for thinking about visual culture in Rome, tracing the influences of Quintilian, Cicero, and back to Aristotle, and finding in them a current that makes it possible to theorize the city of marble—Rome itself—as a rhetorical text (36). And then it’s from that theoretical argument she makes this turn at the end of Chapter Two, writing:
[IBH, quoting] “Scholars are in a unique position to uncover the interplay of dominant and popular rhetorics … and to show how the end result of Ausustus’s reign narrative. So I wanted to make an intervention there and say: Look, there's still a lot of rhetoric happening. And it’s really important.
systematizes public memory… [W]hat at first appears uniform is actually a subtle give and take, even an exchange, between a rhetorical program on the part of Augustus’s administration and the people that contributes to systematize responses, including those of scholars” (37).
[IBH] So for me this is one her argument’s most provocative contentions: it’s not just what scholars can see differently when historicizing the ancient world, she’s propounding a scholarly self-reflection that says Augustus’s rhetorical campaigns were actually so dominant that they continue to shape our conceptions of that period. And, in part, that’s because he was transmitting this messaging through every medium available to him. It’s this multivalent approach that’s just so pervasive, so ubiquitous that it could eventually become undetectable.
[CK] Yeah, and one such medium that Dr. Lamp-Fortuno paid particular attention to was coinage. As part of his cultural campaigns, coins provided Augustus the opportunity to reach the broadest possible audience. Dr. Enos, who has written extensively on ancient rhetoric, architecture, and material culture, shared some rich context on state coinage programs with us:
[RE] The Romans, especially of the Republic, minted their own coins. Some wealthy ones had their own coins. You would be wealthy enough, and you would put on the coins (both sides) symbolic representations of what you wanted associated with your coins. Now, for example, Athens, as a community, when they did the famous Athenian owl with the half moon and the olive branch, thought it was important to remember, like, for example, references to the Battle of Marathon in the moon, where the Spartans couldn't come and help because of religious reasons. So, in the symbols of the coins themselves, there is the opportunity for rhetorical messages. And the value—and I mean this literally—the value of the coin, increases the authority (or the auctoritas) of the owner. So the fact that somebody who is fabulously wealthy, such as Croesus, could (and I believe, I'd have to look this up, but I believe he minted his own coins) would have a constant association of authority and power because of the value of his coins. That authority went also to cities where some of the most spectacular coins also literally shed light on the polis of having those. In fact, one of the reasons why Athens became so powerful was after their conquest, because they were one of the leaders against the Persian Empire, they had the Delian Confederacy. The wealth in part was in Athens; there was also great wealth in Delphi. And the currency controlled so much of the policy. So when you talk about hegemony, and you talk about thalassocracy (like, rule by sea), all of that relates to the Athenian economy, and that economy on a daily basis is reminded every day by the power of the currency.
[CK] In the chapter, Dr Lamp-Fortuno examines these state coinage programs, she focuses very keenly on the visual element of the coins, and this focus, I think, makes possible future research on the implications of other types of sensory contact in the reception of rhetoric. For instance, the tactile dimension of the coins—the fact that they are physical, tangible items that were held—seems like a particularly potent area of future inquiry because that tangibility has a relationship with the formation of public memory. New Materialists and scholars of visual rhetoric might find these insights especially useful. Holding the coins must have done something rhetorically. Having a small portion of the principate in their pockets must have made the public feel like they were participating in the government. Dr Enos has a lot to say on this topic:
[RE] - It has a functional use, of course, and that's valuable, but I have some of these as replicas, which are just works of art, and they're large! They're very large. Probably even cumbersome in some ways. But they’re such a presentational statement. Just like we can say art is presentational, like you just look at it, and you get an image all at once, as opposed to discursive which is like strings on a bead where you argue and you lay out things. Coins can have presentational rhetoric in that they just—look at it, and they just look magnificent.
[PS] The aesthetic dimension of coins certainly interests Classicists like Enos, but her attention to this aspect of ancient material culture also invites Marxist scholars like me to reflect on the mass production of aesthetic artifacts. In his influential essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin identifies coins as one of the few artworks that was reproducible in the ancient world. From this standpoint, the mass mintage of coins challenges the aesthetic integrity of public-works projects like the Ara Pacis and the Forum Augustum. By replicating the images of Augustus as a rhetorical message, mass mintage also dissipates their aura of uniqueness. Contrary to Benjamin, Dr. Lamp-Fortuno doesn’t think that anything has been lost through the coins. She argues that they reinforced the public works by making them more accessible. For Augustus, the aesthetic value of these artworks takes a backseat to how well they support his political myth. This makes his endeavor a case of aestheticizing politics, the very cultural phenomenon that Benjamin associates with Fascism. Dr. Lamp-Fortuno herself reflected on the connection between ancient coinage and modern fascism by drawing the distinction between what we call “propaganda” and what she calls “rhetoric.” She marks this distinction especially when talking about the Lares and monuments built by Roman citizens in response to Augustan imperial rhetoric:
[KLF] And I just felt that was incredibly anachronistic. If you think of it that way, then you're really losing what I think was popular support, right? So where was that popular support coming from is a different question. Was it fear or sycophancy, or, you know, like what were the origins of it? And that's—That's a little bit of a different question. But I think there was a popular repetition of Augustan imagery, and I don't think that that can be conflated with propaganda. There has to at least feel like there is open communication between ruler and ruled, whether that's democracy, or whether it’s not. I think the point that I was trying to make is there's more going on here than we think, and we can't just dismiss it.
[PS] Though I definitely agree that we shouldn’t dismiss the nuance of Augustan cultural campaigns by bracketing it off as mere propaganda, it doesn’t mean we can’t say they aren’t qualitatively similar. Propaganda can be very nuanced, too—broadcast and reception are rarely unidirectional in real-world political situations since authoritarian regimes are not monolithic machines that are automatically in control. It’d be interesting to see what future studies can do if they apply these principles on the material rhetorical artifacts and practices, and their corresponding popular responses, to examine authoritarian regimes like fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and modern China.
[CK] Yeah, but don’t forget that what’s really fascinating in Dr. Lamp-Fortuno’s book is what she calls the “open communication between ruler and ruled.” In fact, the final two main chapters shift the focus from state-produced, rhetorically infused artifacts to those produced by the Roman people. During our conversation, she related this concept to our current political moment in the US.
[KLF] Our political elite are so inaccessible, and that's what's creating a lot of the frustration right now. Kristin Sinema is my Senator. She has turned the answering machine back on in her office. A human being still will not answer the phone. She didn't even have the answering machine turned on there for a while. You just got disconnected when you called. I think that's something that resonates with me, just this feeling that, whether it's genuine or not, just the feeling that you can express your concerns to somebody in political power is, I think, important. It’s something I think Augustus had a good grasp on in many ways.
[CK] And in the final two chapters, perhaps more than elsewhere in the book, the author’s examples suggest illuminating contemporary parallels with street art like graffiti and performance art pieces that are currently being used to write back to the state and the empire, in a very public manner. For instance, we might relate this framework to the proliferation of murals of George Floyd to protest police violence seen from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Idlib, Syria, to right here in Austin, Texas.
[IBH] I like that connection, Christos. Even though Minneapolis-based artist Peyton Scott Russell didn’t paint his original mural as a part of a state-sanctioned cultural campaign, we can see how popular reappropriations of the image amplify and refract the call to reform anti-Black and other discriminatory policing practices. People around the world aren’t being compelled to depict George Floyd on the sides of buildings. They did so and do so to voice their outrage and demonstrate their sympathy with the political philosophy it evokes.
[PS] Right, and we might say that city officials who left these murals in place likely did so in part because they knew—like Dr. Lamp-Fortuno says—“that, whether it's genuine or not, just the feeling that you can express your concerns to somebody in power is important.”
[CK] At least for me, seeing the quiet but powerful possibilities of these contemporary parallels in this book highlighted how awfully relevant this work is, and how much it speaks to the persistent nature of the political and rhetorical issues she examines. So, in addition to its relevance to the study of classical rhetoric and its capacity to inform our understanding of modern propaganda, A City of Marble can help scholars to investigate contemporary attempts to speak back to power in a variety of media. All these possibilities mark a great place to pause the conversation for now!
[Outro]
[PS] We want to offer our sincere thanks to Drs. Robin Reames, Richard Enos, Kathleen Lamp-Fortuno for their insights and generosity in contributing to this review. We also owe our thanks to the Digital Writing and Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin for supporting this project, as well as to Eric Detweiler and Caddie Alford for sharing their expertise.
[IBH] This podcast would not be what it is without Prof. Mark Longaker and our colleagues in Ancient Rhetoric and Politics. Finally, we want to dedicate this series of sonic rhetoric reviews to University of Texas at Austin Professor Emeritus and rhetoric luminary in his own right, Jeffrey Walker.
[CK] To everyone who made this possible, including you listening, thank you.