Abstract
TACITUS' DIALOGUS DE ORATORIBUS, with its smooth neo-Ciceronian prose style and shifting ideological stances, has provoked a wide variety of modern interpretations. One scholar has referred to Dialogus as the most problematical of Tacitus' works and perhaps most important for understanding historian.1 A proper understanding of each of Dialogus' interlocutors is obviously essential to understanding work as a whole. It will be argued here that Marcus Aper, one of principal interlocutors, is in important ways among most problematical and misunderstood of Tacitean characters.2 Many scholars, recognizing Dialogus' complexity, have been reluctant to consider any of interlocutors as Tacitus' mouthpiece.3 Yet several modern scholars have persisted in seeing Aper as a straw man whose views are merely a foil for Tacitus' own opinions, as expressed by Curiatius Maternus.4 George Kennedy asserts that Aper's flourishing ora-
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