"Cic. Inv. 1.27 and Rhet. Her. 1.12 f.: the question of the tertium genus narrationis"

Since the birth of rhetorical handbooks narration has been considered an important part of the speech and therefore taken into account in detail. We find precepts about its virtues (narratio lucida, brevis, verisimilis), about its use and position inside the speech (narra-tion can be longer, shorter, cut into flashes or, when contrary to the speaker’s interest, even absent), about its different genres (main or accessory narration). Its difference from the digression is agreed. Nowhere, on the contrary, we find mentioned a tertium genus narrationis split into a kind of narration based in negotiis and a kind of narration based in personis as offered in Cicero’s De inven-tione and in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. The question is of the greatest interest because the source of this doctrine is unknown. Two details, however, bring us back to the dihvghma dealt with in the Progumnavsmata, the open allusion to the usefulness of this narratio for practice (quod delectationis causa non inutili cum exercitatione dicitur et scribitur) and the threefold nature of the negotia (fabula, historia, argumentum). Extremely unclear, however, is the reference to the personae. Against Barwick’s opinion that we have here to do with personae loquentes, i.e. with the well known formal criterion according to which a narration can be monologi-cal, dialogical or mixed, I want to argue in this paper that the personae referred to by the two authors are either agentes or patientes. In other words I do not think that the question of the distinction of this narratio into two kinds, in negotiis and in personis, can be solved interpreting negotia and personae as content and form of the narration itself. My argument will be therefore that this distinc-tion was born inside the doctrine of the peristavsei~ or stoicei`a of the narration, among which pravgmata (negotia) and provswpa (personae) were considered the most important. Hence the attention to the quality of the negotium (true, invented but probable, in-vented and impossible) and to the feelings or the speeches of the personae.