Pain and pleasure : oration delivered at the 2018 graduation ceremony

Abstract

One might expect oratory pouring out from a classicist at any moment’s notice. This is certainly not so in my case. I racked my brain over the choice of subject matter for a speech worthy of this momentous occasion. Writing a doctoral thesis was easier. I turned to the ancients for their assistance, but my invocations and invective to Cicero and Demosthenes were ineffective. The classic Roman description of an orator, which entails a pair of qualifications, vir bonus, dicendi peritus, ‘a good man, skilled in speaking’, intimidated me: my deficiency of the latter condition cannot be compensated by excess in the former one.