US election: how Trump’s speeches echo Roman rhetoric and style from 2,000 years ago

Published: August 16, 2024 7:57am EDT
Tyler Broome

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Trump’s strategy throughout the 2024 campaign revolves around stoking voters’ anger, fears and insecurities. By all accounts, the strategy works: voters are expressing strong emotional reactions to Trump’s potential re-election, and, until the announcement of vice-president Kamala Harris’ candidacy, Trump led several national polls. Although Harris is now pulling ahead in some states.

These techniques would be all too familiar to those living under Roman control who regularly heard speeches from their leaders. Much of Trump’s rhetorical style is recommended in treatises written by the Roman statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, over 2,000 years ago. In his treatise On The Ideal Orator, written in 55 BC, Cicero wrote that emotional arguments were especially effective for winning over a crowd, saying:

Mankind makes far more decisions through hatred, or love, or desire, or anger, or grief, or joy, or hope, or fear, or error, or some other affection of mind, than from regard to truth, or any settled maxim, or principle of right, or judicial reform, or adherence to the laws.

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But, we should remember that while Roman theory discusses the manipulation of audiences’ emotions, it also warns us about just how dangerous this can be. Cicero’s On the Ideal Orator is not just a handbook for how to win over an audience, but a discussion of the morals a leader should possess: a leader with the skill to sway an audience but without the morals to guide them in the right direction is a dangerous prospect for any nation.

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