Abstract
The article considers contexts from Quintilian (Quint. 3.6.96– 103; 7.8.3–6), Tacitus (Tac. dial. 35), and Juvenal (Iuv. 7.150–151) in order to show some features of the genre of Ancient school recitation and the typical images found in these exercises. At the same time, a criticism is made of the opinion widespread in the editions that some of these images (tyrants and tyrannicide) could be perceived as anti-monarchical and threatening to imperial power; two alleged cases of repressive actions of Roman emperors against specific rhetors are suggested to be regarded as excesses (and one of the cases can be considered unreliable at all); oppositional sentiments in Tacitus’ “Dialogue on Orators” are associated not with the genre of recitation at all, but with drama; Quintilian, loyal to Domitian, repeatedly uses examples of tasks with tyrants and tyrannicide as absolutely neutral. It is supposed to see in the exotic nature of the plots and characters the everyday need of school teachers to invent sufficiently complex conditions of rhetorical tasks to develop students’ abilities to find arguments. Thereto Quintilian actively applies the theory of statuses, an example of the use of which is given in the translation of previously unpublished fragments from the third book of “Institutes of Oratory”
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