Dressing to Kill:

Abstract

Not all means of persuasion exploited in Cicero's speeches were codified and dissected in ancient rhetorical handbooks. Ann Vasaly (1993) has re- cently called attention to one example, namely Cicero's use of place in his speeches: both the scene of delivery and the distant places he conjures up. But Cicero was also keen to observe and exploit other phenomena of the world around him. In particular, he made a most judicious use of details of clothing to reinforce his case in court, whether in defense or prosecution, or to undergird his position in senatorial debate, with details of dress usually serving to reinforce the orator's characterizations of people. Recent interest in the body and its construction has fed into the study of antiquity and has sparked examination of attitudes toward both the nude body and the body clothed for presentation in public. 2 In particular, Julia Heskel has undertaken an interesting attempt to reconstruct late republican dress codes from Cicero's speeches. 3 Such codes, however, were not hard and fast, but were open to much manipulation and interpretation by the orator. Clothing still remains to be considered as a component of Cicero's rhetorical toolkit.