"Oratio recta nel Bellum Africum: qualche osservazione, in Symbolae Panhormitanae. Scritti filologici in onore di Gianfranco Nuzzo"

The Bellum Africum presents a high number of direct speeches. We do not know if they are mere literary inventions for propaganda purposes or if they are re- elaborations of speeches really given. In spite of the attention that the language of the post-Cesarian corpus has had in recent years and in spite of very recent bibliography on direct speeches in historiographical works, there are no specific studies on the oral sections of this report which is not without historiographical ambitions. My contribution will analyze the language, the stylistic and rhetorical levels of these sections, pointing out constants and differences and pitting various hypotheses on their composition against each other.