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This chapter begins with a brief discussion of Cicero's political career. It discusses the frustration of Cicero's policy and his decision to turn to writing. The chapter then considers Cicero's own critical judgements of De Oratore.

This chapter focuses on the extent to which Cicero is concerned with non-rhetorical literature in the second and third books of De Oratore. It considers the relationship of this dialogue to the traditional rhetorical treatise. It then discusses Antonius' conception of the orator's generic range, and the uses of poetry and history.

This chapter examines Cicero’s adaptation of Aristotle in his rhetorical works. Cicero considered Aristotle a somewhat remote figure, and associated him with times of political withdrawal and intense study. Yet he also held Aristotle in high esteem as a classic, especially for his contributions to rhetoric: Cicero was taught by his instructor Philo of Larissa that Aristotle invented the debate on both sides of a general rhetorical or philosophical question that for Cicero represented the tangible union of philosophy and rhetoric necessary for the ideal orator. When Cicero faced the prospect of further political inactivity after Caesar’s assassination, he decided to fully embrace Aristotle’s didacticism by composing his Topica, a how-to manual for this sort of debate that would make his ideal orator (who, of course, resembled Cicero himself) into a classic model in Roman rhetorical instruction.

This chapter shows that from his extended outer preface in the third and final book of the De Oratore, deliberately recalling that of book 1 and pointing ahead to Crassus' enhancement of elocutio, Cicero steps back into the dramatic setting, as the friends wait for Crassus to reach the end of his long and deep deliberation, before gathering in the heart of his shady woodland. Crassus' opening sentence, recalling the bargain with Antonius, reiterates the inseparability of content and form. All speech is formed from words and matter, but words are unstable if you withdraw their subject matter, and matter is left dark if you take away the words. Crassus will vindicate this insistence by both a physical and an intellectual analogy, citing the cohesion of all physical nature, and the Platonic belief in the association of all disciplines in a nexus of causality. The many terms of cooperation and coherence combine words of human understanding (complexi, 3.20; comprehendi, 3.21), with parallel compound forms to describe natural phenomena (consensione naturae constricta…constare…conservare), and abstract knowledge itself (contineri…consensus…concentusque). Cumulatively each of these forms reinforces his message.

This chapter explores Cicero's relationship with Aristotle. Cicero perceived De Oratore as echoing both the form and the content of Aristotle's teaching on rhetoric. It is at the heart of Antonius' extended discourse on inventio that Cicero twice acknowledges his source in Aristotle.

As was noted in the previous chapter, Crassus is openly reluctant to gratify Sulpicius with an account of formal rhetorical instruction on style, since so many rhetoricians had converted their teaching into manuals: there is some irony, surely in his descriptions of these men as auctores et inventores…harum sane minutarum rerum (3.149), mocking their proud claim to be ‘originators’ of what was in fact a mass of trivial detail. But the fourth book of the anonymous teacher of Herennius, on elocutio, confirms the author's pride in originating even such detail, and his near indifference to underlying principles. This chapter addresses the following questions: Why does Cicero let Crassus oblige Sulpicius, and why should Catulus and his friends, or any modern readers, pay any attention to these hackneyed ‘elements of style’?

This chapter demonstrates how Cicero’s adaptation of Plato in his three dialogues De Oratore, De Re Publica, and De Legibus (as well as his translation of the Timaeus) reflects his desire to become a similar model of classical prose. An overview of Plato’s Hellenistic reception shows that he had become a weighty authority who could be used to support even discordant philosophical systems. Cicero learned this fact at first hand in the bitter quarrel between his two instructors (and members of Plato’s Academy) Philo of Larissa and Antiochus of Ascalon. But it was not just Academics who haggled over Plato: as classicism began to take hold in the Greek world, Plato became an important authority for Stoics and Peripatetics too. For Cicero, who desired to become a figure of similarly classical authority as the founder of Roman philosophy, Plato was the only logical choice of model.

This chapter considers Cicero's own practice and the evidence of his letters and other contemporary sources to illustrate the procedures and problems of senatorial debate. It examines Cicero's senatorial speech De Provinciis Consularibus, and presents examples of violence at public assemblies. It argues that in De Oratore, at least, Cicero could take refuge in the less troubled times of Crassus and Antonius before the political crisis brought on by the tribunate of Livius Drusus and the subsequent Italian revolt.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the extent to which Roman orators were expected to speak from memory. From the beginning of De Oratore Cicero stresses the urgent need for memory ‘since unless it is set to guard the ideas and language we have devised, all the orator's talents, however splendid, will be wasted’. And when Crassus discusses the selection of future orators, he includes among essential natural gifts ‘an accurate and lasting memory’. The chapter then discusses the orator's debut.

This chapter focuses on the role played by humour in Cicero's own success, which confirms its continuing importance in the courts and politics of Rome beyond the generation of Antonius and Caesar Strabo. It first analyzes and interprets Strabo's formal presentation: the discussion will deal only briefly with the vexed problem of possible Greek and Roman sources, which has recently been dealt with at length by Rabbie. Then (building on Rabbie 6.E 200–4), the chapter turns to Strabo's Roman examples to single out their different social and political circumstances. It then assesses the importance of wit and humour in Cicero's own performance as a speaker, and in its written record. For more than any other verbal category, humour was the weapon of choice in personal antagonism, and in the duelling of elite political life.