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BERNSTEIN, N.W., Ethics, Identity, and Community in Later Roman Declamation. Oxford University Press, 2013. X,229p. Hardback. With dust wrps. 'Neil Bernstein aligns himself with scholars of recent decades who have successfully argued that, in this and other ways, declamation was more than a mere rhetorical exercise. Bernstein’s specific contribution to declamation studies is a close reading of sixteen of the nineteen Declamationes Majores of ps.-Quintilian, probably by a number of different authors from the late first to the early third centuries. He has expended great care on his declaimers, and he deftly brings to bear on his argument both other ancient declamations and key Latin texts on the various ethical and social codes and issues raised. (...) What we learn from his close reading of them, though, is that declamations did not merely offer young elite males exposure to reigning cultural norms, but also gave them an opportunity to think about these norms and their complexities before inheriting their fathers’ social positions, and to consider how to accommodate multiple perspectives (including those of social inferiors) and how they might behave if one day they found themselves in the plight of some of the denizens of declamation. (...) This book is required reading for anyone already seriously interested in ancient declamation and also a good entrée into the newly sympathetic field of declamation studies.' (ROBERT J. PENELLA in Classical World 2015, pp.306-07). € 71.50 (New) ISBN: 9780199964116