Tra verità e finzione: la dottrina dell'insinuatio dal de Inventione di Cicerone al Medioevo latino

This article readdresses the controversial issue of the relationship between morality and rhetoric in Roman oratory and focuses on the theory and practice of insinuatio in rhetorical treatises and commentaries from Cicero’s juvenile de Inventione to the Middle Ages. It aims to demonstrate that the ‘indirect opening’, the manipulatory exordium, triggers a complex network of ethical and rhetorical mechanisms impacting on the emotions of the audience, fascinated by the orator’s play on truth and fiction. By revisiting the theory of insinuatio from the late Republic to the medieval times it also sheds fresh light on the moralistic approach to Cicero’s art of ‘speaking well’ in rhetorical treatises and exercises as well as in pseudepigraphic texts in the educational system.