Giving advice in Latin: evidence from Roman comedy

What is it about?

The paper uses the dialogues of Roman comedy (by Plautus and Terence) to analyse various ways of telling others what is best for them to do (i.e. suggesting, advising, admonishing, and instructing). The action of giving advice (etc.) is particularly concerned with the characters' self-representation and their social bonds during critical moments of the plot. While orders and threats are mechanisms of exerting power and dominance, good advice in comedy serves to portray father-son and amical relations on stage. On the other hand, seeking, giving, and receiving advice—planned over many utterances—comprises entire scenes, in which interlocutors manage rapport and negotiate the other party's understanding of their intentions. In this paper, I set out to address the complexity of the phenomenon of advising in Latin (as represented in the comedy texts), its realisation in the discourse (utterance by utterance), and its contribution to the Roman system of politeness.

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Why is it important?

While describing various advisory acts, I have found that apart from the bindingness, which distinguishes instructions from (more optional) suggestions, Latin speakers stress also the distribution of knowledge and competence. Thanks to this last factor, the characters of Plautus and Terence make a distinction between the acts attributed only to the adviser’s intellectual resources (PRAECEPTUM, CONSILIUM, and SENTENTIAE) and the knowledge already stored in the advisee’s mind (MONERE). The modifications of the claimed and perceived source of competence, moreover, seem to run parallel to the negotiations of authority in the advice-giving scene. The paper offers examples in which the relationship between the interlocutors changes according to whether the advisee agrees to follow the proposed course of action (e.g. TUO CONSILIO FACIAM) or is willing to admittedly rectify their behaviour out of their own intellectual resources (BENE MONES, etc.).