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Cynicism Translated Into Roman Life
The cynics had a kind of rhetoric of their own, a kind of eloquence. And this was very much a satirical eloquence. The romans always thought of satire as their appropriate genre for expressing things. So they were very attracted by that. There is a very long roman tradition in which you take the ancestral example as a model for virtue. They ouln't copulate in the street and do things of that kind. Even verbally, ar there are some signs of more restraint in the roman cynics.