My Time Machine

At the Virginia Junior Classical League Convention one year, a student performed a speech in Latin in front of an audience of hundreds. When I say performed, I mean performed. He emphasized certain Latin words so that the cadence of this ‘dead’ language, typically only seen in print, could be heard and made alive. He waved his hands emphatically. He ran forward at times and cowered at other moments. It was magical.

So, if I had a time machine, I would travel to Ancient Rome to witness Cicero’s Catiline Orations, a series of four speeches exposing the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina to overthrow the Roman Republic. I want to sit in the Roman Senate and hear Cicero deliver his speeches live. It would be surreal to experience rhetoric not as text on a page, but as something that could sway public opinion in real time.