Chapter 6 shows how Cicero establishes a normative framework for the writing of literary history. Across the dialogue and through the various speakers he offers a sustained critique of literary historiography. Several fundamental tensions and conflicts emerge: absolute versus relative criteria in assessing literature and building canons; presentism and antiquarianism; formalism and historicism; and the recognition that all literary histories are subject to their crafters’ emphases and agendas.

Chapter 4 turns to the pedagogical workings of the Brutus: it instills in the reader a new sense of how to organize and assess the literary past. Syncrisis is central to conceptualizing the past and to portraying individuals and groups across cultures and generations. The dialogue also spends a considerable amount of time reflecting on historical accuracy, for example in the discussions of Coriolanus and Themistocles (41–44), the laudatio funebris (62), the beginning of Latin literature with Livius Andronicus (72–73), and Curio’s dialogue about Caesar’s consulship (218–19). Taken together these reflections on rhetorical presentation of the past help us to understand the freedom with which Cicero handles the data of his literary history. Several claims, exaggerations, and fabrications can be explained by Cicero’s desire to craft meaningful parallels in his history of Latin oratory and literature, including his insistence on Naevius’ death in 204 BCE (60). Such parallels reveal in turn the close interconnection of his intellectual and ideological commitments.

A dreary overstuffed catalogue of bygone orators or a magnificent intellectual achievement? A swan song for public speech or an apology for the art of eloquence? A timid retreat into academic leisure or a brazen challenge to civil war and Caesar? Despite the divergent viewpoints of these questions, it is hard to come away from Cicero’s Brutus without seeing merit in each of them. There is some of almost everything in Cicero’s stunning dialogue, and for that reason its seeming hodgepodge of intellectual curiosity, political statement, and documentary diligence has spurred modern observers to widely differing interpretations.

Chapter 7 considers stylistic imitation and appropriation in the debate over Atticism and Asianism, with a special focus on how Cicero distorts the aims and positions of his detractors in the diatribe against the Atticists (285–91). He trades on various meanings of Atticus/Attici in order to make a rhetorical – rather than strictly logical – case. He downplays Atticism as outdated and relegates its stylistic virtues to the plain style (genus tenue). Rejecting Atticism does not entail rejecting the plain style. Instead he acknowledges it as one of many oratorical virtues to be subsumed under the capable orator’s broad stylistic repertoire. Cicero promotes a model of stylistic diversity, examples of which are found in the long histories of Greek and, especially, Roman oratory.

I trace the senatorial and military elite responses to the 472 civil war and the willingness of senatorial aristocrats to ally themselves with the powerful general Ricimer to restore the city. The efforts of some senatorial aristocrats from the leading families of Rome, the Anicii and the Decii in particular, attest to the continuing influence of a shrinking group of civic leaders. But senatorial aristocrats had developed ties to the Germanic generals and king Odoacer, ensuring their continued role in the recovery of Rome. The removal of a western emperor by the end of the fifth century gave increased political influence to senatorial aristocrats in an admittedly smaller city. The idea of an eastern emperor allowed for the continuation fo the ideals of empire, without undermining senatorial political ascendancy in Rome and Italy. Indeed, the growth of senatorial influence can also be seen in their involvement in religious conflicts of the day. With the absence of a western emperor and living under Germanic Kings, the popes of Rome relied increasingly on senatorial aristocrats as they asserted their independence from eastern imperial and patriarchal control.