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Keeping silent in the political and public arena is seldom viewed positively in Rome during the Republic, and when unable to speak as expected, the orator is always harshly criticized. This article analyzes the two opposing ways of interpreting silence in oratorical practice, as they appear in the classical corpus. The first one is practical, and offers an efficient polemical and forensic tool: it turns silence into a proof of guilt or corruption. The second one views this silence either as the result of a physical or intellectual flaw, or as the consequence of a technical defect to be analyzed as a rhetorical phenomenon. This rhetorical approach entails a set of technical precepts designed to help the orator fight this defect, and, alongside, the building of an ethical rule forbidding the orator to stay silent