Osservazioni sui pseudepigrapha ciceroniani e la ‘tradizione catilinaria’: la Responsio Catilinae

Starting from the notion of pseudepigraphon as an act of ‘creative imitation’ and the ultimate manifestation of a complex process of reception/emulation/competition, that ends in the composition of a ‘new’, canonical text, replacing or supplementing the model, this paper concentrates on the Ciceronian pseudepigrapha and focuses on the Responsio Catilinae, an invective in reply to the so-called Fifth Catilinarian, both of them prosopopoeiae originated in the declamation schools (presumably to be dated to the Early Middle Ages). After a brief survey of spurious Ciceronian texts and forgeries, it examines the rhetorical structure, content, and language of both the Fifth Catilinarian and the Responsio, a fictional recreation of the dialectical contrast between Cicero consul and Catiline in the meeting held in the temple of Juppiter Stator on November 7th-8th, 63 B.C. (First Catilinarian). It demonstrates that the Responsio serves as a necessary supplement in the political biography of Cicero, as it fills a gap in the Catilinarian tradition, that is, the absence of Catiline’s voice in the debate surrounding the attempted conspiracy. In addition, the Responsio advocates the idea of oratory as an ars founded on ethics and aequitas and depicts Catiline as the Ciceronian vir bonus dicendi peritus. From this perspective, the invective paves the way for a re-evaluation of the personage of Catiline, a literary-political phenomenon that will result in the so-called ‘Catilinarism’, the cult of Catiline, in the Italian Humanism and Renaissance.