Il pauper disertus e l’actio ingrati. Ideologia e diritto in una declamazione pseudoquintilianea

In the context of the renewed interest in the minores pseudo-Quintilian declamations, a literary genre fundamental to understand the ‘Bildung’ of the Roman élite, which can bear good fruits, also for the knowledge of the legal practice of the early principality, the a. analyzes declamation 333, entitled (according to the custom of attributing to each declamatio an epigraph representative of the content) Pauper inpensis divitis disertus: a poor man who becomes an excellent orator at the expense of a rich man. The rich/poor relationship is a widespread theme in Greek and Latin declamatory literature, based on social tensions known from the everyday reality of all times, which develops above all from envy. Indeed, in the declamation under consideration here, this characterisation is not explicit and the economic position of the two protagonists apparently serves solely to justify the beneficium of the rich in favour of the poor, which is the starting point of the story. The title, in fact, represents only one aspect of the issue debated in the text, indeed, the premise. In the narrative plot, the case arises from a criminal law trial (already played out, but fundamental to the understanding of the plot) and then seems to develop into a (rather mysterious) actio ingrati