This chapter concerns Lucian’s presentation of the contemporary display of literate knowledge and the practice of criticism and scholarship. That presentation is often obviously satirical, but Lucian’s tone and purpose also often remain elusive; Lucian’s voice is never easy to capture. Examples include Lucian’s account of the art of reading in On the Ignorant Book-Collector, and the posturing philosophers and ignorant grammarians of the Symposium; this latter case illustrates how Lucian’s concern with ‘the culture of criticism’ is always part of the ever-present negotiation with classical models which is a hallmark of his work, as of any major figure of the Second Sophistic. The same is true of the satire on Atticism in Lexiphanes. The final part of the chapter considers Lucian’s presentation of artistic technai, whether that be that art of writing history or the treatise on pantomime, On the Dance.

Chapter 7 considers stylistic imitation and appropriation in the debate over Atticism and Asianism, with a special focus on how Cicero distorts the aims and positions of his detractors in the diatribe against the Atticists (285–91). He trades on various meanings of Atticus/Attici in order to make a rhetorical – rather than strictly logical – case. He downplays Atticism as outdated and relegates its stylistic virtues to the plain style (genus tenue). Rejecting Atticism does not entail rejecting the plain style. Instead he acknowledges it as one of many oratorical virtues to be subsumed under the capable orator’s broad stylistic repertoire. Cicero promotes a model of stylistic diversity, examples of which are found in the long histories of Greek and, especially, Roman oratory.

The distribution of loanwords between papyri, inscriptions, and literature is investigated: more appear in literature than in other sources, but papyri have the highest density of Latinisms. Local and regional loanwords existed, and these can be seen not only in papyri and inscriptions, but also in literature, which preserves traces of loanwords specific to the city of Rome. Special attention is paid to the New Testament (especially Acts of the Apostles), Atticising writers (especially Athenaeus and Lucian), the Edict of Diocletian, Roman historians, medical writers (especially Galen), Hesychius, the antiquarian John Lydus, and texts on Roman law (especially Theophilus Antecessor, the Scholia Sinaitica, and Modestinus).

The main questions about Latin loanwords in Greek are raised, with the help of a passage from Athenaeus, and the evidence that will be used to answer them is explained.

Contemporary scholarship on fandom explores how communities are created through affinities of taste. Drawing on that work, this chapter argues that Cicero’s account in De Finibus and Pro Archia of his and his fellow Romans’ investment in and debt to Athenian literature experiments with the effects of passionately identifying with another culture – thus opening up ways of thinking and feeling about citizenship as an aesthetic property that transcends the limits of ethnic or linguistic identity. Hellenistic literature, organiSed in part around the trope of Athens as a universalist model of human excellence – a trope used first by Athenian writers and appropriated by writers in both Greek and Latin in the first century BCE – helps make the concept of universal citizenship thinkable, not only for Romans like Cicero but for readers over centuries (including scholars and students of 'classics' today) who shared and sustained his investment in the Athenian Greek past. This fantasy of cultural belonging obscures the violence of Roman imperial reality and helps explain the persistent appeal of 'classical' Greek literature.

Chapter 7 considers stylistic imitation and appropriation in the debate over Atticism and Asianism, with a special focus on how Cicero distorts the aims and positions of his detractors in the diatribe against the Atticists (285–91). He trades on various meanings of Atticus/Attici in order to make a rhetorical – rather than strictly logical – case. He downplays Atticism as outdated and relegates its stylistic virtues to the plain style (genus tenue). Rejecting Atticism does not entail rejecting the plain style. Instead he acknowledges it as one of many oratorical virtues to be subsumed under the capable orator’s broad stylistic repertoire. Cicero promotes a model of stylistic diversity, examples of which are found in the long histories of Greek and, especially, Roman oratory.

This chapter provides an examination of an ideal shared across languages and cultures in the second century: the ideal of the ‘deliberate speaker’, who aims to reflect time, thought, and study in his speech, and who draws attention to his words quawords. Articulate and educated speech becomes a vital tool for creating and defending in-groups in this period. By contrast, orators and authors in both Latin and Greek condemn their opponents as producing mere noise. The ideal of the deliberate speaker is explored through the works of two very different contemporaries: the African-born Roman orator Fronto and the Syrian Christian apologist Tatian. Despite moving in very different circles, Fronto and Tatian both express their identity and authority through an expertise in words, in strikingly similar ways. The chapter ends with a call for scholars of the Roman Empire to create categories of analysis that move across different cultural and linguistic groups. If we do not, we risk merely replicating the parochialism and insularity of our sources.