Question

Antony was a great orator. Explain.

Answer 1

Antony was an excellent orator, able to command a crowd's attention and convince them to believe his sentiments. We see this most significantly in his masterful funeral oration for Caesar.

In this speech to the public, he manages to make the crowd believe he is one of them, while also rallying them against the conspirators. In spite of Romans being dissatisfied with Caesar, Antony manages to get them be outraged at his assassination.

His first line of the speech is: "Friends, Roman, Countrymen, I come to bury Caesar not to praise him." By saying he has not come to praise Caesar, he is careful not to defend him and any of his actions they may still have a problem with. Instead, he goes on to say that if Caesar was too ambitious, he has now certainly paid for that, with his life. In other words, we should not longer continue to hate him or punish his memory. Antony reminds them that Caesar did do good things as well, pointing out that the coffers of Rome benefited with each very conquering that Caesar did.

He goes on to say that he is confused that the Romans could love him and then turn so quickly to hating him. He seems genuinely grief stricken, and then tells the crowd that he is not a very good orator. He does this so as to earn more credibility as a grieving friend and sympathy from the crowd. In fact, he is an extremely good orator. His speech manages to get the commoners, his "countrymen," worked up into a rage that their Caesar has been murdered.

Although his speech appears, at times, to be a passionate outcry from a grieving friend, it is really a masterfully crafted speech intended to get the crowd enraged at the conspirators and remind them of their loyalty to Rome. It does exactly this and the crowd turns to a mob who goes after each of the assassins, including the much beloved and repeated Brutus.

Answer 2

pls search on the web or see book