El <i>Dialogus de oratoribus</i> y la opinión de Tácito sobre las posibilidades de la oratoria en el régimen imperial

The complexity of the fictive dialog created by Tacitus in the Dialogus de oratoribus has generated a lively scholarly debate about the relationships between the arguments presented by the different characters and Tacitus’ own ideas about the development and possibilities of oratory under the imperial regime. In this paper a new approach to this problematic will be presented, different from other traditional approaches to the question. Beyond the different arguments presented by the characters of the work, attention will here be focused on some underlying points of consensus between them. This consensus, seen in relationship with all of the historian’s works, reveals interesting new aspects of Tacitus’ opinion about the central subject of the dialog