The Women of Excerpta Declamationum of Calpurnius Flaccus

Abstract

Declamations have proved to be a fruitful field of research within the scope of classical studies, be in rhetorical aspects intrinsic to the declamatory genre, or in intertextual and intergeneric issues. One aspect of these studies has been concerned with the task of understanding more of the declamatory universe created by the rhetoricians from the characters who star in the declamatory quarrels. Following this path, this article intends to elucidate the representation of female characters in the Excerpta Declamationum of Calpurnius Flaccus, composed between the first three centuries of the common era, in order to know more about these fifty-three controversies, which reveal to us that, in the fictional universe created by Calpurnius Flaccus, although women are not the protagonists of the declamatory quarrels, rather the supporting ones, certainly, they give greater depth to the conflicts created in the schools of rhetoric.