Born to Speak: Ingenium and Natura in Tacitus’s Dialogue on Orators

The speakers in Tacitus’s Dialogus de Oratoribus exploit the language of birth—natura and ingenium (innate talent)—in order to seek a collective identity for their generation. Tacitus entangles his position as the author of a dialogue in this configuration of ingenium and natura by pointedly withdrawing his own ingenium and depicting his task as commemoration, not creation. In doing so, he makes the work’s dialogic structure central to the investigation that he presents—less a debate over the causes of oratorical decline than an exploration of how eloquence may be authorized at any particular moment in history.