"Remedium amoris mulier inuenit: : o papel da meretrix e a magia nas Declamationes maiores atribuídas a Quintiliano"

Abstract

The practice of declamations has become popular during the beginning of the Roman Empire, as Seneca, the Elder, reiterates (Con. 1. pr. 12). Once considered just as school exercises, they have affirmed themselves as an essentially rhetoric genre, also being largely influenced by literary canons. This dissertation presents the translation of Declamationes maiores 14 and 15, ascribed to Quintilian, respectively accusation and defense of the controuersiae titled as “hate potion” (Odii potio). The argument introduces the case of a prostitute accused of poisoning the poor lover with a hate potion and its study aims to establish relations between the meretrix occupation and the practice of magic, investigating influences of literary tópoi that helped in the rhetoric construction of the characters which featured the case. The controuersiae could be defined as a subgenre of declamations, of juridical aspect, in which the orators should elaborate speeches based on the argument proposed by the master. Aside from approaching polemic themes, the dynamic consisted in exhibiting two litigant parties, and the declaimers could choose between them. It is intended to contextualize the historical period in which declamations became prominent, investigating re-adequations in the teaching, practice and study of rhetoric, which could be perceived since the transition to the Empire and, in a certain way, manifested effects of the political alterations. The declamations sessions, of which the public participated, constituted a space for debates about moral and social questions that many times challenged legislative code. From these tensions between moral and law, this work suggests the possibility of renegotiation of values and social boundaries, even if this movement came from the elite itself. Comedy and elegy are also identified as the two main genres that engage in dialogue with the hate potion case, demonstrating how the very same literary canons may contribute to subvert the expectations about stock characters. The prostitute’s defense, by denying the authorship of the crime by the defendant, presents a series of arguments that denotes the figure of the bona meretrix, but also justify, along the description of the material conditions, the prostitute’s contravention, pointing to the social vulnerability and financial dependence of meretrices upon their clients as a major motivation for the administration of the potion, sometimes considered as a remedium and others, as a uenenum. The potion is presented as the last resource to mitigate the poor man’s obsessive passion, that caused harmful effects for both of them. It is analyzed the social use that the meretrix makes of magic, in order to achieve a solution to an individual crisis that could not be solved by official means, as a judicial contend.