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This chapter moves from the instances of self-consciously cultural oratorical practice to Cicero's first major work of rhetorical theory, De oratore, which Cicero frames as an archaeology of his self. It discusses that Cicero uses the aristocratic status of his interlocutors in this dialogue to lend authority to the aestheticizing form of oratory that has characterized his career. It examines Cicero's articulation of a theatrical aesthetic of controlled transgression in which he negotiates the problem of how to evoke feminine grace while maintaining a properly masculine self. It explains that this theatrical aesthetic crystallizes on the human body, both in Cicero's discussion of delivery and in his investigation of figures of speech, where the body and its adornment are the governing metaphors.

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 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.

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.

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’?

Cicero not only wrote dialogues (among other genres), but was one of the ancient authors most explicitly and consciously interested in the literary issues thrown up by use of the dialogue form. Moreover, his use of, and understanding of, the form developed throughout his literary career. This chapter focusses on the introductions to his dialogues, where Cicero speaks about the literary task of creating and re-creating his authorial voice (or voices). In the earlier works, Cicero presents his dialogues as if they were historical events, keeping his ostensible authorial voice wholly exterior to the ‘conversation’; but the later ones become more theatrical, with Cicero himself participating actively within them, inviting his readers to imagine what it must be like to eavesdrop on a discourse that is both ostensibly private and actively public.

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.

Early Japanese and Latin writers were “latecomers.” They built on the sophisticated repertoire of Chinese and Greek literary genres and diction, but also lay claim to their own literary merits. Debates about simplicity, ornateness, and decline, which could be blamed on foreign influence, became one of the arenas in which this ambiguous psychology unfolded. Japanese literature responded to the ornate poetry of the Six Dynasties Period (220-589) and most early Latin writers came from thoroughly Hellenized areas and were imbued with the mature sophistication of Hellenistic literature. This constellation, in which the literature of the younger cultures took off from the contemporaneous later traditions of their reference cultures, resulted in comparable laments in Japan and Rome that their predecessors’ uncontaminated simplicity had declined under the corrupting influence of their presumably “overrefined” reference cultures. By examining texts from Kaifûsô, Collection of Myriad Leaves (Man’yôshû), Fujiwara no Hamanari’s Code of Poetry (Uta no shiki) alongside with Cicero’s Brutus, On the Orator (De oratore), and Horace’s Satires this chapter argues that Latin writers had good reasons to be both more aggressive, more diplomatic, and more embarrassed vis-à-vis Greek precedents than their Japanese colleagues vis-à-vis the Chinese tradition.

Vitruvius prioritizes the ideal architectus over the ars architectonica and thus also restricts access to the body of architecture. The architectus embodies architecture, but he becomes complete only through a “well-rounded” course of training in various disciplines, which Vitruvius likens to a corpus. This encyclios disciplina has recalled the artes liberales for many readers, who imagine that Vitruvius invokes these disciplines to “elevate” architecture or indeed Vitruvius himself. Yet it is also clear that architecture was already viewed as intellectually meticulous. By creating an asymmetry between his training (multidisciplinary but moderate) and his influence (extending even to the products of all other arts), Vitruvius creates a gap reminiscent of a similar disparity that characterizes the ideal orator in Cicero’s De oratore. Vitruvius recreates the ebb and flow of De oratore in order to put architecture in competition with the oratory as the best sort of civic knowledge. Of special importance is that both Vitruvius and Cicero demur on whether their disciplines were true “arts,” recalling the principal objection leveled by Socrates against rhetoric in Gorgias. Cicero effectively sidesteps these issues by negating the possibility of a Roman ars oratoris and by insisting instead on oratory’s embodiment. Vitruvius’s architectus also becomes a distinctively Roman master of signs and representation, precisely because he embodies architecture. Vitruvius’s account ultimately differs from that of Cicero, however. Whereas the orator’s attention to decorum proved his suitability as an ambitious leader in the interest of the republican civitas, the training of the architectus ultimately ensures that he will faithfully (but not obsequiously) serve the princeps.