CHAPTER SEVEN

Cicero

Cicero’s political challenge throughout his career, and thus the focus of much of his rhetoric, was how to preserve the Roman republic and the society in which he grew up from revolutionary threats fostered by the ambitions of demagogues, administrative corruption, foreign and civil war, and economic chaos. He was a political moderate, ambitious for personal honor and influence within the traditions of the Roman republic, but well aware of the many economic, social, and administrative problems of his time. There were no organized political parties in Rome; as in Athens, there was instead a fluid pattern of personal relationships among the leaders, influenced by class, ideology, and wealth. Cicero became the leading spokesman for the optimates, the conservatives who claimed to uphold what was “best” for the state,¹ and for what he called a concordia ordinum, responsible cooperation in the national interests by the aristocracy, the prosperous upper-middle class (the “knights”), and the urban and rural citizens of less social and economic standing. As a practical politician he often made compromises and temporary alliances with others with whom he differed, but overall his career shows a commitment to humane principles of justice, fairness, and tolerance of diversity. In the effort to save republican government he ultimately failed but gained the admiration of posterity. We know him better than any other person who lived in classical times, primarily because of the survival of hundreds of personal letters, which he wrote to friends and members of his family and which reveal his thoughts, reactions to contemporary events, discouragement, and hopes, sometimes on a daily basis. Although he had a high opinion of himself and could at times be pompous, he also had a splendid sense of humor, and above all he had a gift for eloquent spoken and written expression that has rarely been approached since. Among ancient statesmen, Cicero is most often compared to Demosthenes, and indeed he came to take Demosthenes as his chief model in his later work.² He excelled Demosthenes in the many facets of his knowledge and interests, in his urbanity and sense of humor, perhaps in his humanity. Speaking of their oratory, Quintilian has this to say about the two (10.1.106): “Demosthenes is more concentrated, Cicero more copious; the former draws his sentences together more briefly, the latter at greater length; Demosthenes always fights with the dagger, Cicero often also with the bludgeon; from Demosthenes’ speeches nothing can be taken away, to Cicero’s nothing can be added; in Demosthenes there is more careful attention to detail, in Cicero more natural ability.”³

Cicero wrote about rhetoric, and philosophy as well, chiefly in those periods of his life when he was prevented from taking full part in public affairs in Rome, for his public career as statesman and speaker in the law courts took priority in his own mind over other activities. It is thus appropriate to begin with his speeches and introduce his theoretical writings in the context in which they were written. Fifty-eight speeches survive in whole or in part.⁴ He himself usually published his speeches after delivery, often with some revision.⁵ There is space here to discuss only a few of the most significant of them.

Cicero’s Orations in the Years from 81 to 56 B.C.

Cicero’s earliest surviving speech is For Quinctius, delivered in 81 B.C. in a case involving a business partnership. He was twenty-five years old at the time. Although the speech illustrates many of the precepts of rhetoric that Cicero had learned from his teachers and had discussed in On Invention, he adapted the rules to the situation in a flexible way. For example, issues of fact, law, quality, and jurisdiction are all brought in to some extent, even though stasis theory as set out in On Invention does not provide for their combination into a single case. The speech also relies heavily on ethos, anticipating some of the techniques Cicero will later use to great effect.⁶ The style shows some of the characteristics of Asianism, to which the young Cicero was attracted: sentences are often long because of amplification of both ideas and language, including listings and doublings of words. In this early work the result at times seems cumbersome; he gradually developed more smoothness and suppleness, even in highly complex sentences.

The speech that first made Cicero famous in the law courts was his brilliant and exciting defense of Sextus Roscius of Ameriga on the chilling charge of parricide, probably delivered in 80 B.C.⁷ The case occurred during the rule of the dictator Sulla, soon after the proscriptions that had legalized murder and confiscation of the property of many opponents. According to Cicero, the accusation that Roscius had murdered his father was a plot to dispose of Roscius, concocted by the actual murderer and two others who shared in the loot. After the murder they put the name of Roscius’ father on the list of those proscribed by Sulla, though in fact he was a supporter of Sulla, and in this way made possible the sale of his property. This was arranged through the connivance of Sulla’s freedman Chrysogonus, who bought the property at a fraction of its value and ejected Roscius from it. No one was apt to run the risk of bidding against Chrysogonus, and it was perhaps hoped by the confederates that Roscius would not be able to find a defender when indicted for the murder. None of the better-known patroni would accept the defence. Cicero undertook it out of personal friendship for his client, with the hope that as a young man who had the nerve to cross swords with the corrupt, wicked tool of the dictator, he could make a popular name for himself, and perhaps with the knowledge that some of Sulla’s more powerful supporters would not be sorry to see Chrysogonus discredited. Chrysogonus was, however, unscrupulous and nasty and could be counted on to put up a good fight. The key to success was to take him by surprise. In this Cicero was entirely successful. His intention to defend Roscius and attack Chrysogonus was apparently kept secret until he rose and spoke.

Cicero’s defense of Roscius has three parts, combining stasis of fact with that form of stasis of quality that shifts responsibility for the action to another person and ultimate responsibility for guilt to still another: he argues that Roscius did not murder his father, that the murder was in fact the work of Magnus, one of the accusers, and that the whole proceeding was conducted with the help, and to the advantage, of Chrysogonus. In fixing the guilt (84) Cicero states a famous phrase, which he attributes to Cassius Longinus, cui bono, “Who stood to gain?” The unexpected personal attack on Chrysogonus opens with one of Cicero’s celebrated puns: “I come now to that golden name of Chrysogonus [in Greek: “the golden born”], under which name the whole gang hides”(124). He is exceedingly careful to make no criticism of Sulla: Sulla, he asserts, knew nothing about it at all, made no money by it, is so taken up with great affairs of state that he cannot possibly know what all his followers do, any more than Jupiter can know the wickedness of individual men (131).

A striking feature of the speech, and a prevailing characteristic of Cicero’s rhetoric, is its employment and extension of ethos.⁸ The emphasis on character is evident from the very beginning, where Cicero’s references to his own youth and lack of authority help to awaken the sympathy of the jury. Throughout the speech his own character and that of his client are developed in contrast to that of his opponents and other actors in the drama in ways not provided for in rhetorical handbooks, and toward the end of the speech (143) he takes a further step in the development of ethos by distinguishing between his client’s feelings and his own, something which was not ordinarily possible in classical Greek procedure where the principals spoke on their own behalf and thus not envisioned by Greek rhetoricians. Cicero here claims that Roscius has no personal ill will against Chrysogonus and company; he is not even trying to recover his property; all he wants is acquittal on the charge of killing his father. What has been said against Chrysogonus comes from the heart of Cicero himself, who is unafraid, who cannot keep silent. The speech ends with an attempt to convert the case from that of Q. Roscius to the universal grounds of law and order at Rome. This technique can be found in Greek oratory but is much used by Cicero and was especially suited to Roman procedure, since Roman law was based on precedent to a much greater extent than was Greek law; here the generalization of the issue and the stress on the case as establishing a precedent was especially effective, since it came at a time when many Romans were anxious to reestablish order in society.

Cicero won his case and seems not to have suffered for his attack on Chrysogonus. Plutarch (Cicero 3) says fear of Sulla was the reason Cicero chose to go to Greece in 79 B.C., but Cicero himself claims (Brutus 314) that his habit of speaking at the top of his voice and with tension in his whole body was ruining his health and that he wanted to study with Greek teachers. It was, after all, not unusual for a young Roman to spend some time studying in Greece, and what Cicero learned there made an important contribution to his later writings, including his dialogue On the Orators. He spent six months in Athens studying philosophy with Antiochus the Academic and practicing declamation under the direction of Demetrius the Syrian. Then he continued to Asia Minor, where he worked with the famous rhetoricians there. Finally, in the spring of 78, he arrived in Rhodes, where he joined the new Rhodian school of Apollonius of Alabanda. Here he learned how to control his voice and repress the excesses of his style (Brutus 315–16). Sulla had now died, and Cicero returned from the East to reenter political life in Rome. He was elected quaestor for the year 75 B.C. and assigned to duties as an assistant to the governor of Sicily, after which he returned to Rome, took the seat in the senate to which his quaestorship entitled him, and resumed his activities in the courts. The governor of Sicily from 73 to 71 B.C. was Gaius Verres. Even allowing for some exaggertion in Cicero’s description of him, it seems impossible to refute his reputation as the most notorious example of a rapacious Roman governor. Cicero’s prosecution of him in 70 was overwhelmingly successful and confirmed his position as the leading orator in Rome. He was forced, however, to adopt a strategy of introducing the evidence immediately at the beginning of the trial, thus losing the opportunity for an elaborate opening address. To make up for this, he then published what is known as the Second Action against Verres, a series of five undelivered speeches, rhetorically elaborated beyond any of his actual speeches. For one with a taste for flamboyance, they make excellent reading and show Cicero’s powers of dramatic narrative and lurid invective.⁹

Cicero’s cleverness in a very complex case is evident in his defense of Cluentius, delivered in 66 B.C.¹⁰ He later chose it as an example of speech employing all varieties of style (Orator 103). It is his longest, and Pliny (Epistles 1.20.4) regarded it as his finest speech. The complexities result from the cast of characters, from the circumstances of previous trials that bear on the case, and from the legal procedure, since Cluentius was apparently being tried under two different provisions of the law on assassins and poisoners. The more straightforward charge was that Cluentius had tried to poison Oppianicus; the more complicated charge was that he had earlier tried to bring about Oppianicus’ judicial murder by bribing a jury to convict him on false charges of murder and attempted murder. This was the source of great prejudice against Cluentius, both in Rome generally and in the court, and Cicero’s primary rhetorical challenge was how to counteract the prejudice. This he does at such length that not until section 143 does he come to the immediate charges. The charge of judicial murder he wants to dismiss on the ground that it did not apply to knights, but quite cleverly he introduces a dispute between himself and his client in planning the defense, Cicero seeking to stress the legal technicality, Cluentius insisting on having his reputation cleared and not trying to escape by a technicality (144). This is one of Cicero’s many effective uses of contrast and comparison between patron and client. In the same part of the speech he employs another of his favorite topics, the generalization of the immediate issue into a threat to all law in the state. The discussion of the poisoning charge comes at the end of the speech (169–94) and seems to show that no good evidence had been offered against Cluentius. Cicero’s arguments that the allegations are improbable look perfectly adequate, and by this point one is willing to believe that Cluentius’ enemies would stoop to anything. The defense is in large part a matter of constructing a satisfactory ethos for the major characters: Cicero even manages to make it seem to Cluentius’ credit that his most persistent opponent has been his own mother! Cicero won the case and later boasted that he had pulled shades of darkness over the eyes of the jury (Quintilian 2.17.21). He perhaps meant specifically in connection with the bribery accusation, where his argument is a dilemma: either Oppianicus or Cluentius bribed the jury, and since Oppianicus can be shown to have made an attempt, Cluentius must be innocent. The near certainty that both parties had tried bribery is not considered,¹¹ but Cicero’s argument (62) that Cluentius’ case was too good to make bribery necessary is hardly convincing, considering the state of the Roman courts at the time. To meet Oppianicus’ bribery with bribery may have seemed the only prudent course. The case as a whole is a fine example of what ancient critics admired in an orator: not legal knowledge (though Cicero displays a good deal) or logical clarity, but the ability to charm the jury and sweep it off its feet by colorful narrative, vivid characterization, radiant confidence, skillful emphasis and deemphasis, and in general the creation of a work of art.

Cicero was elected praetor in 66 and for the first time addressed a deliberative speech to the Roman people at an assembly.¹² He says he purposely waited to speak until he was sure of his authority with the people and of his oratorical ability (Manilian Law 2). The subject he chose to support was a law proposed by the tribune Manilius, under which Pompey, successful beyond all expectation in a special command against pirates who had been a plague in the Mediterranean, would now be given command in the longdrawn-out war against Mithridates of Pontus. Julius Caesar also spoke in favor of the law (Dio 36.43.2). Both orators were eager to show themselves friends of the great Pompey, and the law was apparently certain of success with equestrian and proletarian voters, who idolized Pompey and were weary of the conduct of the war in the East. Cicero thus spoke as a popular public official before a friendly audience. The rhetorical problem he faced was not so much how to convince his audience as how to avoid antagonizing those in the senatorial party who opposed Pompey, and especially to avoid criticism of Lucullus, the previous commander against Mithradates. But this was not impossible; Lucullus, though unpopular with his troops, was a man of great ability and had had successes in the past that could be openly saluted. Cicero’s argument is essentially that Lucullus had been frustrated in his recent efforts and it was time to give a new man a chance, especially since such a man as Pompey was already in the East.

Though the expediency of Pompey’s appointment is brought out, as it should be in such a case, the speech has strong epideictic elements in its expression of political affiliations and ideals, in its attempt to unify opposing groups, and in its praise of Pompey. In dealing with the latter subject (27–28) Cicero proceeds through a list of topics as found in Greek epideictic oratory and discussed in Greek ethical philosophy but perhaps not previously applied by a Roman orator. Pompey is recommended on the basis of his knowledge, courage, authority, and luck. The practical virtues discussed include fortitude, industry, promptness, and wise policy; the ethical virtues are morality, temperance, trustworthiness, affability, intelligence, and humanity. Cicero idealizes Pompey beyond historical recognition into a picture of what every great Roman commander ought to be, much as Pericles’ Funeral Oration is a picture of what Athens ought to be rather than what it was. The speech has the complete regularity of form associated with a judicial rather than a deliberative speech; there is exordium, narration, partition, proof, refutation, and peroration. Cicero himself regarded the speech as the best example among his works of the “middle style” (Orator 102).

The high point of Cicero’s career was his consulship in 63 B.C. With it, he acquired a new rhetorical weapon, which he never failed to wield: consular prestige. We have nine speeches dating from that year: three speeches against the grain law of Rullus delivered early in the year; the defense of Rabirius on a charge of treason (a consul did not necessarily cease from activity as a patron in the courts); four speeches against Catiline, two in the senate and two before the assembly of the people; and the speech for Murena, charged with bribery in connection with the elections for the following year. The fragmentary speech for Rabirius is remarkable as the only extant judicial speech delivered before the assembly, since the case was brought by an antiquated procedure to the centuriate assembly. In the Orator (102) Cicero takes it as the best example of the “grand style” in contrast with the “plain style” of For Caecina and the “middle style” of his speech on the Manilian law. “In it,” he says, “I blazed forth with every kind of amplification.” No speech by Cicero has a more sober tone, adopted in part as Cicero’s protest at the almost comic-opera proceedings by which Rabirius was being made a victim.

The Catilinarians are doubtless the best known of all Latin speeches. They make good school texts, because they present stirring events of considerable historical significance,¹³ because they are rather short, and because they are not written in especially difficult Latin. The rhetorical anaysis of the Catilinarians is, however, complex. They do not conform well to the ordinary requirements of deliberative oratory, though the first and fourth were delivered in the senate and the other two before an assembly of the people. Only the fourth can be said to deliberate about a course of action, and actually that action is judicial, not political. Furthermore, the parts of the speeches do not necessarily perform their usual functions or relate very clearly to each other. This complicates any attempt to define the rhetorical problem that Cicero had posed for himself and to describe the techniques by which he has chosen to answer it.

One reason that the Catilinarians seem to aim at more than one objective is that Cicero did not publish them until 60 B.C., three years after delivery, when he issued them in an edition with eight other speeches dating from his consulship and compared them to Demosthenes’ Philippics (To Atticus 2.1.3). Cicero’s career was in serious difficulties during these years, stemming from his actions as consul. As early as the last day of 63 he had been prevented from delivering the customary speech of one going out of office, on the ground that he had put to death Roman citizens—the Catilinarian conspirators, though not Catiline himself, who was killed in battle—without a trial. Though some disliked Cicero personally, the real issue was senatorial direction of affairs, and the chief legal point in question was the senatus consultum ultimum, or general decree of emergency by which the senate authorized the consuls to see “that the state suffer no harm.” What a consul could do under this decree was largely a matter of his own prestige and the support he could get from the senate and public opinion. The senate had passed the decree in late October 63 and it was the basis of Cicero’s actions in putting down the conspiracy, though not apparently of his order to strangle the conspirators, since that had separately and specifically been authorized by the senate. In any event, Cicero was criticized for years and eventually driven into exile, on the ground that he had exceeded his authority. He naturally replied by trying to make clear his view of the situation in 63 and to glorify his rescue of the constitution. In the first Catilinarian some passages relating to Cicero’s fears and justifications (e.g., in 6, 9, 11, and 22) may be additions or revisions for later readers, and the fourth Catilinarian may be a conflation of two different speeches at the same session of the senate.

The first speech, delivered in the senate on November 8, has several different addressees. First, it is addressed to Catiline and aimed at getting him to leave Rome, without forcing official action against him. Breaking with all conventions of senatorial procedure and rhetorical rules for an exordium, Cicero opens with the famous words “How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” But the speech is also more properly addressed to the senate, aimed at arousing it to the danger and explaining why Cicero has taken the course he took, specifically why he did not take more stringent measures. Third, it is addressed to readers in 60 B.C. and tries to show them why he was justified in taking as stringent measures as he did.

It is likely that Cicero went into the senate not expecting to see Catiline, but intending to report some preparations he had made. Catiline’s effrontery in coming made him alter the form of his speech. Cicero not only breaks with precedent in addressing him directly but violates the injunction given in On the Orator (2.213–14) against an emotional beginning. The topics of the exordium are the present danger, the historical precedents, Cicero’s anxiety, and his plan. These are of interest to a varied audience. The present danger is for the senators, though expressed in indignation to Catiline. The historical precedents and legal weapon were well known to the senate, but were a warning to Catiline and of interest to future readers. Cicero’s anxiety is a negative factor in dealing with Catiline but important for his justification in the eyes of posterity. His plan interests the senate and Catiline.

There follows (7–10) a narration of Cicero’s knowledge of the conspiracy. Great suspense is created: Catiline presumably did not know how much Cicero knew, and he is not immediately told. The allusion is vague in section 1, warmer in section 6, but in section 8 breaks out in all clarity. The heart of the speech (11–27) is an argument aimed at persuading Catiline to leave Rome. Rhetorically, the high point of the section is a prospopoeia, the address of the Laws to Catiline, reminiscent of a similar personification in Plato’s Crito. This is followed by a short refutation of Catiline’s logical demand that the senate vote: possibly some debate had intervened, possibly Cicero was anticipating a demand, or possibly the section was put into the published speech to answer a demand made after the real speech. Cicero here seems on rather weak ground, and he may have received less support from the senate than he hoped for. The fourth part of the speech (27–32) is a refutation, addressed to the senate, of complaints that Cicero had not gone far enough in putting down the conspiracy. The complaint is put in the mouth of the Fatherland, which thus makes a contrast with the earlier address of the Laws to Catiline. Finally comes a brief peroration.

The second Catilinarian, delivered the next day to the people, does not have so clear a structure but is similarly composed of explanations of caution and justifications of action, while the third, also to the people, describes the capture of the conspirators in Rome and pleads with the people not to allow Cicero’s actions to injure him. The fourth speech purports to come from the debate in the senate on the punishment appropriate to the prisoners after the conspiracy was put down and reads like a speech in a trial before the senate. According to the historian Sallust (Catiline 50.3), the senate first judged the conspirators guilty of treason, then debated the appropriate punishment. Although Sallust in his account of the conspiracy praises the first Catilinarian (31.6), he passes over the other three and, in reporting the senatorial trial, composed his own version of speeches of Julius Caesar, arguing against the death penalty, and of Cato the Younger, arguing for it. These speeches well represent the alternatives and offer a striking political and personal contrast of the two speakers. Cicero himself later admitted (To Atticus 12.21.1) that Cato had summed up the matter in the clearest and fullest way. The senate’s decision was to execute the prisoners.

Cicero’s speech For Murena is closely connected with these same events. In the election in the summer of 63 the candidates for the consulship of 62 were Catiline, Servius Sulpicius, Decimus Silanus, and Lucius Murena. Catiline was already engaged in the plot to overthrow the senatorial government, which came to be known as the Catilinarian conspiracy. His defeat was essential in the eyes of the senatorial party, and bribery was used extensively to secure the election. This aroused the indignation of Cato the Younger, great-grandson of old Cato and an imitator of him as guardian of public morality. Though as anxious as anyone for Catiline’s defeat, he threatened prosecution for bribery of anyone who was elected. The winners turned out to be Silanus and Murena. Silanus was Cato’s brother-in-law and was left alone, but Murena was prosecuted for bribery by Cato, the defeated Sulpicius, and two others. The charge of bribery was not unwarranted nor unusual in Roman politics but was extremely inconvenient for orderly government: Murena’s conviction would mean that only one consul would be in office at the beginning of 62, when the plots of Catiline might well still hang over Rome, and he or one of his followers might hope for success at a special election. Cicero had campaigned for Sulpicius but found it possible to support Murena and decided that it was vital to defend him against the charges. The case was heard in November, sometime between the second and third Catilinarian, after Catiline had withdrawn to Etruria, but before he had been defeated. In Murena’s defense there appeared the most prestigious patrons to be found: Cicero’s old opponent, the silver-tongued Hortensius, now cooperating with him; the rich and influential Crassus; and the incumbent consul, Cicero. Cicero says (Brutus 190; Orator 130) that when speaking in collaboration with others he customarily spoke last, delivering as it were a peroration for which his abilities were well suited. For Murena appears to be an instance: he says (48) that he must sum up the case, repeating some of the arguments of Hortensius and Crassus, and (54) that Murena had particularly asked him to deal with the third and most specific part of the prosecution, though the others had already answered it. Cicero’s particular function, however, was to destroy the great moral authority of his friends Sulpicius and Cato as prosecutors in this particular case. Though he persists in denying the charge of bribery, it was apparently well founded and could not be effectively refuted. Nor could he very well directly attack the character of the prosecutors, who were in fact his own personal friends and highly respected in Rome. The answer he so effectively constructed was to admit their virtue but to present them as well-meaning, unrealistic dabblers in affairs whose significance they did not understand. Let them ride their hobbies of the legal scholarship in one case or Stoic virtue in the other, good enough in their way, but not of much value in the real world, especially when it was a question of saving the republic. As a tour de force in the construction of rhetorical ethos, For Murena is rivaled only by Cicero’s later speech For Caelius.¹⁴

The exordium (1–10) begins in a solemn and religious tone, not unlike Demosthenes’ On the Crown. Cicero explains why he has taken the case, though consul, though himself author of a bribery law, though a friend of Sulpicius and supporter of his candidacy. All of this lends weight to the defense of Murena, for there must be an overriding necessity to bring Cicero to Murena’s side. Then comes the partition into the three topics of the prosecution (11): the reprehensio vitae, or criticism of Murena’s life—this ought to be the most important, Cicero says, but the opposition had not found much to criticize—the relative claims of Murena and Sulpicius to the consulship (contentio dignitatis), and the charge of bribery (crimen ambitus). Under Roman procedure all were relevant issues. The account of Murena’s life and merits (11–53) is chronological and functions like a narration. Inserted in the middle of it is the attack on Sulpicius. Murena, whose military exploits were perhaps rather modest, is made into a symbol of the contribution to Roman life of the soldier; Sulpicius, into that of the jurisconsult, and the game is on in a charming synkrisis, or comparison. The law is represented at its hairsplitting, literalist worst and the archaic ritualism of legal formulas irreverently ridiculed. A lawyer is nothing in comparison to an orator (24), Cicero says, and he claims he could easily learn all civil law in three days (28). The answer to Cato comes in refutation of the bribery charge (54–85). Cato is described as a man with “a doctrine not moderated or gentle, but, it seems to me, a little too harsh and more austere than the truth or nature allows” (60). He believes all sins are equal: equally wrong, without cause, to wring the neck of a fowl or a father (61). Then comes a spirited imaginary dialogue.

The ridicule, thorough as it is, produced no bitterness. Cato went away from the trial remarking “What a witty consul we have,” a contradiction in Roman terms, but he became a friend and close adviser of Murena all the next year. More important, he came to modify his views slightly and, in what he regarded as the public interest, condoned bribery against the election of Julius Caesar in 60. To alter the view of a Cato may be fairly labeled a great triumph. Critics who do not understand the rhetorical problem of the case have sometimes found Cicero’s humor in November 63 puzzling. How could he be so flippant with Catiline in Etruria? The answer of course is that only by flippancy did he think he could keep Catiline from Rome. It was doubtless widely appreciated that Cicero had elsewhere eulogized the civil law in glowing terms and was personally quite interested in Stoicism; he was not, however, regarded as slippery or insincere, but as clever and quickwitted. The rational argument that moved the jury was the quite real necessity for having two consuls when the year opened. What the jury needed was some excuse, some pretext, to reject the complaints of such important accusers and to overlook the immediate issue of bribery. Cicero furnished them with such an excuse.

The years following Cicero’s consulship were among the most difficult in his life, as he saw his achievements and even personal security more and more seriously threatened until finally he was driven into exile in 58 B.C. His actions as consul had made him a symbol of senatorial government. Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, who joined together in the informal cabal called “the first triumvirate” to control the government in 59, solicited his support unsuccessfully and then turned against him. There are a number of speeches from the period before and after his exile that show different rhetorical approaches and different sides of his character. Among them is the short and charming speech for the poet Archias in 62, which contains a famous passage on the role of poetry in society (12–20),¹⁵ and the speech For Sestius of 57, which includes an important discussion of Cicero’s political philosophy and the goals of the optimates (96–143). But the speech of this period most popular with modern readers is the defense of Caelius Rufus on a charge of violence and poisoning, delivered in 56.

For Caelius is another example of Cicero’s success in defending a client by cleverness, wit, and style rather than by evidence or proof.¹⁶ He even boasts of relying on arguments rather than witnesses (22)! As a parade of characters in a titillating drama, the speech is splendid:¹⁷ there is the young pleader for the prosecution, Atratinus, treated with humiliating condescension in the opening of the speech; there is Clodia, sister and alleged mistress of Cicero’s enemy Clodius, “the Medea of the Palentine” as he calls her, not less interesting to posterity as the former lover of the poet Catullus; and there is Caelius himself, whose exploits are dismissed by the sophisticated orator as youthful wild oats. Indeed, Cicero makes considerable effort to present Caelius as potentially a young Cicero who may be expected to develop into a statesman like himself.

The primary rhetorical problem was doubtless the weakness of Cicero’s case, and the answer to it is the brilliant color, the entertaining irrelevancies, the vigor and self-assurance of the presentation, and the consular authority shed on Caelius by Cicero himself. The charge that Caelius took gold from Clodia to buy the assassination of the philosopher Dio, who had come on an embassy from Alexandria, is met by a sophistic dilemma reminiscent of that in For Cluentius: if Caelius was intimate with Clodia, he surely would have told her why he wanted the gold and she would have refused it; if he was not intimate with her, she would not have given it to him (53). The charge of poisoning is met by the claim that Cicero can see no motive (56), and the orator elaborates into a most improbable comic farce a scene in the baths, when the poison is supposed to have been delivered. There are two admirable prospopoeiae, first of old Appius Claudius rising from the grave to rebuke his profligate descendant, Clodia, then of her brother Clodius, Cicero’s most inveterate enemy, addressing his sister (33–36). Cicero’s embarrassment is most evident when he tries to play down Caelius’ association with Catiline. Caelius had originally been a protégé of Cicero, then became estranged. Cicero probably undertook the case because Caelius had been attacked by their common enemy rather than for great sympathy with his recent actions.

Soon after the victory for Caelius, Cicero’s career reached a turning point. He thought that the triumvirs—Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus—were drifting apart, and he attempted to get the senate to undo some of the actions of Caesar’s consulship (59 B.C.). Cicero’s efforts, however, contributed to the renewal of the triumvirate for another five years and to a tightening of control of the government by the triumvirs. The alternatives open to Cicero narrowed to cooperation or retirement, and he chose to cooperate. He had already discovered the horrors of exile. Cooperation took the form of supporting in the senate policies of the triumvirs and, worse, undertaking on request the defense of their friends in the law courts. In a long letter to Lentulus written in 54 (To His Friends 1.9), Cicero discusses his motives, the changed condition of the state, the limited opportunities for public service now open, and the way some of the senatorial party had failed to support him. His basic justification was that he did sincerely respect Pompey, to whom he owed a debt of gratitude for past actions, and that Caesar had been his friend in the past and had preserved the appearances of friendship in recent times. Personal friendship was always important to Cicero, and personal relationships in Rome often played a stronger role than ideology. Although at the request of the triumvirs he defended in court some men he did not like and had fought in the past, Vatinius and Gabinius for example, consistent with his usual policy, he did not undertake prosecutions. The virulent invective Against Piso is not a prosecution; it was given in the senate in 55 and is primarily an expression of his frustrations and pent-up emotion. An interesting feature is the attempt to use Piso’s interest in Epicureanism to discredit him, just as Cato’s Stoicism had been used in For Murena. In public life Cicero could play on Roman suspicion of Greek philosophy as a rhetorical tool, though he himself was deeply interested in it and later published a series of works to make it available to Roman readers.

On the Orator

Cicero found another outlet for his rhetorical energy during the course of the year 55. While contemplating his own checked career and the limitations imposed on an orator under the triumvirate, he composed a dialogue discussing what a perfect speaker could and should be, the three books that comprise On the Orator. It is one of his most admired works and stands only slightly behind Aristotle’s On Rhetoric and Quintilian’s Education of the Orator as a rhetorical classic.¹⁸

Each of the three books has a prologue with comments by Cicero and a brief description of the scene of the ensuing dialogue, which is represented as having taken place at various spots on the estate of Crassus at Tusculum in September 91 B.C. As noted in the previous chapter, Crassus was Cicero’s mentor in those years. The characters are the great orators of the time, all of whom Cicero had known: Crassus, Antonius, Scaevola, Sulpicius, Cotta, Catulus, and Julius Caesar Strabo. Cicero claims to have heard about the discussion from Cotta; probably it never actually took place, but he has assigned each of the characters a role in the discussion consistent with what he knew of their views of rhetoric and their personalities (cf. 3.16). Crassus died a few days after the dramatic date of the dialogue; the others all subsequently found their freedom of speech checked by enemies, and Antonius, Sulpicius, Catulus, and Strabo lost even their lives. In the prologue to the third book Cicero draws a comparison to his own experience.

In a letter to Lentulus (To His Friends 1.9.23) Cicero tells something about the form and contents of the work: “Since I am dissociating myself from orations and turning to gentler muses which appeal to me now very greatly, as they have since youth, I have written in the manner of Aristotle, in so far as I wanted to conform to that, three books of discussion and dialogue On the Orator, which I think may be helpful to your son Lentulus. They avoid the trite rules and embrace the oratorical theory of all the ancients, both the Aristotelian and Isocratean.” “In the manner of Aristotle” refers not to On Rhetoric, but to Aristotle’s now-lost dialogues, such as Gryllus. These seem to have differed from Platonic dialogues in that the author claimed to have been present at the discussion and allowed the characters to expound their views at length rather than to search for truth by question and answer in the Socratic manner. In another letter (To Atticus 13.19.4) Cicero speaks of the work as resembling the dialogues of Heraclides Ponticus, in which the characters are people of a previous generation and the writer plays no part in the discussion. The last sentence quoted above from the letter to Lentulus is borne out in that On the Orator is not a technical treatise: it avoids technical terminology and focuses on major issues that go back to Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus and Aristotle’s Gryllus: whether rhetoric is an “art”; the relative importance of natural ability, theory, and training in fostering eloquence; and the kinds of knowledge required for successful public speaking. Cicero has tried to bring the Isocratean tradition (that of professional teachers of rhetoric in Greece) and the Aristotelian (the philosophical approach) as well as the functions of the traditional Roman orator together in a new synthesis of the ideal statesman and leader under constitutional government, the role he himself had sought to fulfill.

The structure of On the Orator shows careful planning, but there is also considerable repetition, especially of the speakers’ views on the major issue of the knowledge required by the orator. This is probably a deliberate tactic on Cicero’s part, for it gives greater emphasis to the ideas he wanted to stress while at the same time preserving the style of an informal conversation, in which repetition could be expected. The discussion of the first book takes place in a garden under a plane tree, reminiscent of Plato’s Phaedrus, and sets out differing views of the knowledge required of a successful orator and the relative roles of natural ability, rhetorical theory, and practical exercises. Crassus, who is clearly Cicero’s major spokeman, is made to argue for broad knowledge of philosophy, politics, history, and law, and to emphasize the importance of natural ability. Scaevola thinks this ideal unattainable in practice and stresses the need for a technical knowledge of law. Antonius rejects Crassus’ claim that an orator is one who can speak on any subject; to him an orator is one who can use language and argument effectively in the law courts and in public meetings. This requires some specific knowledge of the subject, but in practice not much knowledge of philosophy or law is needed.¹⁹

The long second book is largely given over to Antonius, who is made to have moderated his views over the intervening night. He no longer pushes his restricted view of the orator, but as the company strolls about a portico, reminiscent of Aristotle’s “Peripatetic” school, he discusses the orator on the basis of his own experience. His remarks include speculation on the possibility of rhetorical historiography and in the case of oratory range over invention, arrangement, and memory, described in nontechnical terms. Most important is the discussion of the three functions of the orator, later known as the officia oratoris: to win over the audience’s sympathy; to prove what is true; and to stir the emotions to the desired action (2.115). This is Cicero’s version of the three Aristotelian modes of persuasion: ethos, logos, and pathos. In dealing with the emotions the use of humor is mentioned, and an extensive account of that subject is given by Caesar (2.217–90).

The third book takes place in the afternoon of the same day, when the company meets in a shady spot, again reminiscent of the Phaedrus. Crassus is the chief speaker and primarily concerns himself with style and delivery, but he is twice led into an excursus on the orator’s need for a liberal education and especially knowledge of philosophy. He reviews ancient intellectual history and blames Socrates for separating rhetoric and philosophy (3.60– 61). He considers the view of rhetoric of the various Hellenistic philosophical schools (3.62–68) and finds that of the Academy most satisfactory. A second excursus (3.104–43) is suggested by the importance of amplification in great oratory. To be able to amplify, the orator must have knowledge of a variety of subjects. The discussion of style is structured around the four virtues, derived from Theophrastus, of Latinity, clarity, ornamentation, and propriety. The extended account of ornamentation treats diction (3.148– 70) and composition (3.171–208) and includes the first discussion in Latin of prose rhythm, which the speaker regards as a part of the emotional element in oratory. The book ends with a tribute to Hortensius, in 91 a rising young orator, which is an imitation of the reference to Isocrates at the end of Plato’s Phaedrus.

On the Orator is dedicated to Cicero’s brother Quintus as a result of discussions between them about rhetoric and oratory (1.5). Cicero gives a brief account of his own position in the prologue to the first book (1.16–33). It is this that he presumably expected to be confirmed by the dialogue as a whole. Rhetoric, he says, is a vast subject. Without knowledge of many things it is empty verbiage. Style should be developed by practice and the emotions studied, “because all the force and theory of speaking must be applied in calming or exciting the minds of those who constitute the audience” (1.17). There is need for humor, knowledge of history, and knowledge of law, all of which are fully exemplified in Cicero’s own speeches. Delivery must be understood and memory must be sound. Neither rules nor teachers nor exercises can make a person an orator, but only knowledge of all great subjects and all arts. In practice, however, knowledge of everything is too much to demand, and like others Cicero concerns himself with the knowledge required for judicial and deliberative oratory.

Crassus and Antonius are made to speak of their studies of rhetoric and philosophy in Athens in the late second century.²⁰ Although they may have told Cicero in his youth something of the views of teachers they met, writing in 55 he was probably largely dependent on what he learned himself during his visit to Athens in 79 and on written sources for the debates between rhetoricians and philosophers.²¹ One such work was a handbook of rhetoric by Charmadas the Academic, mentioned in 1.93–94, which seems to have anticipated some of Cicero’s views (see 1.88). On the Orator is, however, the first datable discussion of rhetoric since the time of Theophrastus that shows a direct knowledge of Aristotle’s On Rhetoric. As explained in chapter 5, some works of Aristotle, probably including On Rhetoric, were not accessible to scholars after the death of Theophrastus. Early in the first century the books were recovered, brought to Athens, and then around 83 seized by Sulla and brought to Rome. In a letter written about the time he composed On the Orator (To Atticus 4.10), Cicero says that he has been studying in the library of Sulla’s son and mentions Aristotle. This may well be the direct source for the Aristotelian elements that reappear in On the Orator and are not found in Hellenistic discussions of rhetoric. Specifically, the discussion of invention in 2.114–306 is Aristotelian in that it does not deal with the parts of the oration, as did Cicero’s On Invention or Rhetoric for Herennius; these are left to be mentioned under arrangement (2.307–332). As in Aristotle, Cicero’s account of invention identifies three means of persuasion: logical proof that what we claim is true, the effective presentation of moral character (ethos), and appeal to the emotions (pathos) (2.115, cf. 121 and 128). The first kind of persuasion is based either on presentation of evidence or on rational argument, and each of these is discussed, as in Aristotle. The account of rational argument consists primarily of a list of topics usable in many cases (2.162–73), the sort of thing Aristotle had discussed in the Topics and adapted for On Rhetoric. Antonius acknowledges (2.152–53) that the material is Aristotelian and claims to have read both On Rhetoric and the Synagg (2.160), but this may be Cicero’s way of indicating his own indebtedness to Aristotle. That indebtedness is not, however, complete. He has not included discussion of the enthymeme and the example. His account of ethos does not follow Aristotle; it is more influenced by Roman conditions and considers both the character of the patron and that of the client (2.182). Cicero regards ethos as consisting in presentation of the gentler emotions (2.183): it conciliates and charms the audience and is essentially good natured, a lower level of dramatic intensity than the raging fire of pathos, which is the real triumph of the speaker’s art. The discussion of pathos (2.185–215) seems to have been based on observation of the actual practice of Antonius and Crassus. Like Aristotle, however, Cicero does discuss how to arouse or allay some specific passions: jealousy, for example (2.209–10).

The use of humor for rhetorical purposes is a tactic that Cicero frequently employed in his speeches and to a much greater extent than is found in other extant Greek and Latin oratory.²² He mentions a number of ways in which humor is important to an orator (2.236):

because it secures good will for him by whom it is aroused, or because all admire the sharpness inherent often in a single word, especially in replying to criticism and sometimes in attacking, or because it breaks the adversary or hinders or makes light of or discourages or refutes him, or because it shows the orator himself is a man of culture, learned, sophisticated; and most of all because it softens and relaxes seriousness and tension and by laughter often dissolves troublesome matters which could not easily be disposed of by arguments.

Cicero belittles Greek treatises on humor (2.217) but proceeds to divide up the subject along lines that resemble Greek theory as known from other sources.²³ In general, two kinds of humor were recognized by ancient theorists, one good natured and pervasive, the other caustic and intermittent. Cicero calls them cavillatio and dicacitas respectively (2.218). Humor was thought to be based on the unseemly or deformed, but within limits. Great wickedness or great misery were not appropriate subjects (2.236–37). The key to the use of humor was “propriety,” which suggests a Peripatetic source. A more formal division was that into humor based on words and humor based on a fact, an action, or a thought. This distinction was easy for rhetoricians, since it paralleled their commonly made distinction between verba (“words, style”) and res (“things, subject matter”) and between figures of diction and figures of thought. Among later rhetoricians, only Quintilian (6.3) gives much attention to humor in rhetoric; his account is indebted to what Cicero says in On the Orator.

On the Orator is an important account of the ideal of the citizen-orator that dominated the culture of the Greco-Roman period, in contrast to the theological and scientific ideals of medieval and modern culture in the West, and was also an important statement of the need for a liberal education.²⁴ In the introduction to On Invention Cicero had made great claims for the orator, but the precepts of rhetoric that follow in that work largely obscured any grand concept. In On the Orator the inadequacy of rules is constantly stressed, almost too much so, perhaps, considering the debt of many portions of the work to rhetorical theory. Cicero was convinced from personal experience of the power and richness of oratory. It was to him a true art form, not in the sense of a science reducible to rule with predictable results, but in the sense of a product of the creative imagination, working with defined forms and materials. Cicero had a certain kind of imagination in a very strong form; he was never highly original in thought, always heavily indebted to his predecessors, but he had an ability to see a larger picture and to maximize materials and opportunities. But On the Orator is not entirely satisfying. The dialogue form has some charm but covers up imprecision, for despite the extended speeches it resembles a real conversation in which people forget what they have said or change their views for the sake of argument or politeness and in which general agreement does not represent conviction so much as weariness or good manners. Moreover, the dramatic situation and the characterization are not really good enough to make the work stand as a purely literary achievement. One of the best speeches is that of Antonius in book 1, arguing that the orator needs only a rather superficial knowledge of philosophy or law. This is never adequately answered. In fact, Antonius only somewhat overstates what Crassus and most other Romans believed. Philosophy, Crassus says (3.79), does not take much knowledge; it is not like geometry or music but can be understood by any intelligent person, and he then makes the rather outrageous claim (3.79) that unless a person can learn a subject quickly he can never learn it at all. We see here that characteristic view of many Romans that it is good to know something about philosophy, and many other subjects, but not to become too deeply involved in its study or, like Cato the Younger, to become too extreme in applying its doctrines. Roman society encouraged a kind of deliberate, gentlemanly, superficiality of learning, or at least its affectation. On the Orator begins as a work intended, at least in part, to counteract superficiality and pedantry in rhetoric, but it ends by accepting such a view. Cicero also fails to consider the active and contemplative life as two aspects of the same person; it is, after all, the total man that needs liberal education. Another subject largely untouched in On the Orator is that of the moral responsibilities of a speaker, whether to himself or society. We know from his letters that Cicero agonized over these issues, and his later work On Duties takes them up, but he does not introduce them into the discussion in On the Orator.

Subsequently, perhaps between 54 and 52 B.C., Cicero wrote a very different, much shorter work on rhetoric, Partitiones Oratoriae, or Classifications of Oratory.²⁵ It is a rhetorical catechism, unrelieved by characterization, digression, or adornment, intended to provide his son with a Latin statement of the rhetorical theories of invention and arrangement he had been studying in Greek. Modern students have sometimes found it a convenient short introduction to the parts of the oration and stasis theory as understood in the first century B.C. In section 139 Cicero says that the oratorical “partitions” he has described derive from the teaching of the Academic philosophical school, to which he himself adhered. What he appears to mean is that an understanding of the process of logical definition and division as taught in Academic dialectic is fundamental to the method he has followed. There is little or nothing in the work that classifies it as a unique Academic view of rhetoric.

For Milo and Cicero’s Later Speeches

Because of the prevailing political conditions and his opposition to those in power, Cicero only occasionally spoke in the law courts during the last ten years of his life. The triumvirate of Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus had been renewed in 54 B.C.; this was then followed from 49 to 45 by civil war between Caesar and Pompey, who unsuccessfully took up the cause of the senate; Caesar became dictator during the war and ruled until his assassination in March 44; Caesar’s political heir, Mark Antony, and his personal heir, Octavian, who later became the emperor Augustus, then defeated the republican leaders Brutus and Cassius in a second civil war and together with Lepidus formed a second triumvirate, which proscribed Cicero and authorized his murder in December 43.

The most famous defense Cicero undertook during these years was that of Milo in 52. The dramatic and complex circumstances are described in a commentary on Cicero’s speech For Milo written by Asconius a hundred years later.²⁶ Almost complete chaos reigned in Rome in the fall and winter of 53–52, and elections were repeatedly put off, so that the year 52 opened with no consuls in office. One candidate was T. Annius Milo, who had helped to bring Cicero back from exile in 57 and had become the leader of an armed band of thugs opposed to the triumvirs. Cicero’s enemy Clodius was a candidate for praetor and the leader of another gang. Early in 52 Milo and company met Clodius and company more or less by accident on the Appian Way about ten miles southeast of Rome, a fight took place, and Clodius was killed. His followers treated him as a fallen martyr and cremated him in and with the senate house. The senate passed a consultum ultimum and called upon Pompey to restore order. Pompey had supported Clodius in the past and was now standing on the sidelines watching the collapse of constitutional authority with some satisfaction. He quickly accepted the position of sole consul offered him by the senate, an unprecedented position almost analogous to that of the later emperors, secured passage of new laws on violence and bribery, and set up a special court with streamlined procedures to deal with the recent lawlessness, including the action of Milo.

Cicero had to defend Milo under very limiting conditions. Instead of the usual opening speeches with their opportunity for generalization and amplification, the trial began with three days of evidence from witnesses, carefully recorded in the presence of a jury. Then on the fourth day a new jury of eighty-one members was summoned; they had not necessarily heard the evidence but presumably had access to it in written form. On the fifth day came the trial with speeches on each side, completed in one day.²⁷ The prosecution was allotted two hours, the defense three. Just before the vote, each side had the right to challenge fifteen jurors, leaving a total of fifty-one. In order to use the time to the best advantage, Cicero was the only speaker for Milo. Not only did he have only a short time to counteract specific sworn testimony, but he had to speak in the forum surrounded by armed men and with Pompey anxiously looking down from the steps of the temple of Saturn. Cicero was brought to the trial in a covered litter, was very nervous, and was repeatedly interrupted while speaking. Milo was convicted by a vote of thirty-eight to thirteen and sent into exile.

The speech Cicero delivered was never published. Instead, Cicero published a revised version—what he might have said under different conditions—which rhetoricians and modern critics have regarded as an almost perfect judicial speech.²⁸ According to Dio Cassius (40.54.3), when Milo received a copy he remarked with irony that it was just as well Cicero had not delivered it or he would never have had a chance to enjoy the seafood of Marseilles. The basic argument of the two speeches was probably much the same, but the arrangement and style were improved in the published version. Cicero’s major challenge was to avoid offending Pompey and to persuade the jury, weary of civil unrest, that there was some possible justification for Milo’s actions.

The speech begins with an exordium (1–6) dealing with the unprecedented conditions under which Cicero had to plead. The virtues of Pompey, as well as those of Milo and the madness of Clodius, are stressed. Then comes a refutation of three charges made by the opposition, which had aimed to show that Milo was so clearly guilty that a trial was hardly necessary (7–23). One charge was that Milo was an admitted murderer and thus deserved to die. Milo had not denied that Clodius was killed by his slave acting under his authority; Cicero seeks to establish the stasis as one of law rather than one of fact, claiming that Milo acted in self-defense. The other two charges were that the senate had judged Milo to have acted against the interests of the state and that Pompey had already judged the case by his law and procedures. Neither of these was legally valid, since the senate and Pompey were investigating a situation, not making judicial judgments. Next comes a brief narration (24–30), in which Cicero tries to show that Milo had not premeditated the encounter with Clodius: up to the point of their meeting each other, it was an ordinary, relaxed day in Milo’s life. Most famous is the picture of Milo going home from the senate, changing his clothes, and sitting waiting for his wife, “as happens to us all” (28). Then comes Cicero’s statement of the crucial question “Which laid a plot for which?” (30–31) and the “proof” (32–91) that it was not in Milo’s interests to do so and that the circumstances of time and place made it improbable that he had actually done so. All of this is admirably worked out along the lines taught in the rhetorical schools. The emotional element in the speech becomes increasingly strong, culminating in the peroration (92–105).

Quintilian (6.5.10) did not know what to praise most about Cicero’s speech For Milo. He mentions specifically the placement of refutation before narration, the way Clodius is shown to have been the aggressor, the combination of the plea that Milo did not intend murder with Cicero’s approval of Clodius’ death, and the use of an emotional plea by Cicero in place of any demonstration of pathos by Milo himself. The stasis of the speech always interested rhetoricians. Cicero could not deny the fact that Clodius was killed by Milo’s slave, for which Milo was responsible. He had, however, the choice of two arguments: the legal one that the action was justifiable homicide in self-defense, or the qualitative one that the action, even if deliberate, was in the national interest. Brutus, always attracted by grand gestures, favored using the latter and wrote a speech to show how it should have been done (Quintilian 3.6.93). The argument would not have been legally valid; it would have had hope of success only in circumstances in which Cicero could have dominated the court with emotional power, and this he could not do. He makes it clear that he regards Clodius’ death as a good thing, but he does not try to save Milo with that argument. Cicero was selective in his choice of material for the speech. He says as little as possible about Pompey’s new law against violence; it was occasioned by Milo’s actions and could only prejudice his case. There was, apparently, no specific provision for killing in self-defense in Roman law, and Cicero has to deduce it from the right to bear arms in self-defense. There is also a good deal of selecting and coloring in the picture of Milo, whose patriotism and other virtues have not been so evident to historians.

Cicero was initially ambivalent during the early stages of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey. He felt that Caesar’s actions were clearly unconstitutional but had less than complete confidence in Pompey as a defender of the constitution and the senate. In March 49 he wrote his friend Atticus a letter (9.4) that gives a glimpse of one role declamation could play in Roman life:

In order not to give in entirely to depression, I have taken up certain so-called “theses,” which are both of a political nature and appropriate to the times, that I may keep my mind from complaints and practice myself in the subject proposed. They are of this sort [he gives the list in Greek]: whether you should remain in your country when it is ruled by a tyrant; whether you should by every means bring down a tyranny, even if the state will be generally endangered; whether you should be on guard against letting one [e.g., Pompey] who abolishes tyranny rise too high himself; whether you should try to help the state under a tyrant by the right word at the right time rather than by war; whether retiring somewhere and keeping quiet is politically justifiable under a tyranny or whether you should go through every danger for the sake of liberty; whether war should be waged against a place and siege laid when a tyranny rules it; whether, even if you do not approve of overthowing tyranny by war, you ought yet to enroll yourself among the constitutionalists; whether in politics you should share the danger of benefactors and friends even if their overall policy does not seem right; whether a man who has served his country greatly [e.g., Cicero himself], but because of this has suffered irremediably and been envied, should face danger willingly for his country or should at some point think of himself and his family and abandon political action against those in power.

Practicing myself on these propositions and speaking on both sides of the question, now in Greek, now in Latin, I both divert my mind for a bit from my troubles and deliberate about a relevant problem.

Cicero eventually decided to join Pompey. After the latter’s defeat at Pharsalus in 48 B.C., Cicero returned to Italy; he eventually received pardon from Caesar and returned to Rome. He did not take much part in public affairs, but we do have three speeches he addressed to Caesar.²⁹ They had been friends in the past and were never personal enemies; Cicero consistently opposed Caesar’s politics and policies, but consistently admired his intelligence, shared many of his personal interests, and came to respect his humanity and clemency toward opponents. For Marcellus was delivered in the senate to thank Caesar for pardoning a stubborn old aristocrat. It is not a defense of Marcellus but a panegyric of Caesar, and thus of all Cicero’s speeches the closest to epideictic oratory. Like many good panegyrics it tries to influence the future by selected praise of the past. Caesar, Cicero says, must give the state stability, which requires a constitutional basis. Among the most striking passages is one (29) in which Cicero calls on Caesar to consider the verdict of history. A much cleverer speech is For Ligarius; Ligarius was another member of the senatorial party still in exile whose case was brought before Caesar as sole judge. In Plutarch’s life of Cicero (39) there is a memorable description of the trial, in which Caesar asks his friends, “What harm in hearing Cicero speak after so long a time, since the accused has long ago been judged a wicked man and an enemy?” But Caesar was in for a surprise and was thoroughly moved by the speech, turning pale, shaking at mention of Pharsalus, dropping his papers while Cicero spoke. At the end, “He was forced to acquit the man of the charge.” The speech thus came to be viewed as a signal triumph of pure eloquence. It is exceedingly clever, a delight to read, though there remain questions about the extent to which the occasion may have been staged with Caesar’s cooperation.³⁰ A third speech to Caesar is For King Deiotarus. The case was tried in Caesar’s own house, a custom many of the emperors later followed, to the disadvantage of orators. Apparently Caesar never got around to making a decision before his death. After Caesar’s death and before Antony, Octavian, and Lepidus had firmly secured power came the series of deliberative orations known as the Philippics, consciously modeled on Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip of Macedon. The Second Philippic, with its violent invective against Antony, is the most famous.³¹

Brutus and Orator

It is ironic but not entirely surprising that the first major treatises on Roman rhetoric, On the Orator, Brutus, and Orator, were written at a time when Roman public address was being checked. In the 50s and 40s B.C. there was enforced leisure among orators in Rome and with it a concern about the potential role of the orator.

Cicero’s vision of the statesman-orator in On the Orator is presented as controversial, and reaction to it might be expected. The kind of oratory Cicero approved and practiced—amplified in content, rich in style, open to ethical and pathetical appeals—belonged to a tradition to which Galba, Crassus, and Hortensius may earlier be assigned. There was, however, also a continuing tradition of preference for a simple or plain style, seen in what we know of speeches by Cato the Elder, Rutilius Rufus, Brutus, Calvus, and Julius Caesar. Roman awareness of the study of language by Greek grammarians and Stoic philosophers gradually converted this older tradition from a blunt straightforwardness in treatment of the subject to a search for purity of diction (Latinitas). The orator of the plain style was not necessarily unemotional, but he expressed his emotion by choice of forceful words and vigorous delivery, not by the number of words, the piling up of clauses, or other kinds of amplification. The orator of the plain style regarded verbosity as diluting rather than intensifying communication; the orator of the grand style thought emotion should be fed a rich diet to develop its strength to the full.

Connected with the interest in pure Latinity was the grammatical movement called “analogy,” mentioned in chapter 5. This is the preference for regularity in grammatical forms, taught by the Stoic school at Pergamum and brought to Rome in the mid–first century. Its opposite was “anomaly,” the acceptance of irregularity as developed in common use, the doctrine taught in Alexandria. Julius Caesar wrote a treatise entitled On Analogy, applying Greek doctrine to Latin. It seems likely that the work was at least in part a reaction to the rather slighting treatment of purity and clarity in Cicero’s On the Orator (3.48–49). We do not know the exact time of composition, but Caesar wrote it during one of his passages over the Alps on return to Gaul from Italy (Suetonius, Julius 56.5). It was dedicated to Cicero and dealt broadly with the principles of speaking Latin accurately. In the introduction Caesar addressed Cicero in the following words: “If some men have labored with study and practice to be able to express their thoughts with distinction—and here we must recognize your contribution to the fame and dignity of the Roman people as a kind of leader and inventor of richness—should we as a result regard knowledge of simple and familiar language as something to be left aside?” (Brutus 253). The pure, clear style Caesar favored is seen in his commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars and appeared also in his oratory (Brutus 252).

Another movement with which Latinity and anology became involved was “Atticism,” the pursuit of allegedly Attic Greek standards of purity and grace. Among the Greeks of the first century this was a reaction against stylistic developments of the Hellenistic period, Asianism at one extreme and the simplified Koine, or vernacular, at the other. We hear about Greek Atticism first from Dionysius of Halicarnassus,³² whose rhetorical works were written in the generation after Cicero’s death, but Dionysius, in the introduction to his study On the Ancient Orators, claims that the reform in style, especially in diction, had begun somewhat earlier and was by his time almost victorious. He attributes this reform to Roman influence. Modern attempts to identify a Greek source in the second or early first century have proved unsuccessful. Cicero had not heard of Atticism when he wrote On the Orator in 55 and never alludes to any Greek source for the movement. Thus it seems possible to regard Atticism as something developed first in Rome in the period around 50 B.C. with increased study of classical Greek models of prose in rhetorical schools. If so, it is one of the relatively few instances of Roman influence on Greek rhetoric and literature.

The most interesting aspect of Atticism is its tendency toward classicism. As adopted in Greek, Atticism rejected two hundred years of language and literature and saw the standard of language, composition, and rhetoric in the achievements of the fourth century B.C., especially in the speeches of the Attic orators.³³ “Imitation” became the road to literary excellence. The result was often rather sterile; there is, in fact, little first-rate literature in Greek for several centuries, though there are works of learning important for their contents. The imitation of Greek models in Latin was for some time a more creative process, since it brought into the literature new ideas and a new standard of excellence. Virgil, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and others imitate Greek originals, but in doing so experiment with the possibilities of Latin and incorporate Roman themes in a new synthesis and with new perspectives. Latin writers, of course, could not utilize Attic Greek; they sought to create a counterpart to classical styles in their own language. A few, however, the historian Sallust among them, took the Latin of the second century as a linguistic counterpart to Attic Greek and thus introduced an archaic flavor into their writing.

Cicero’s principal literary antagonists, in addition to Caesar, were Calvus and Brutus. He carried on a correspondence, now lost, with Calvus and Brutus on the subject of style. Tacitus (Dialogus 18) later sums it up as showing that to Cicero, Calvus seemed “bloodless and dry,” Brutus “tedious and disjointed,” while Calvus called Cicero’s style “formless and flabby” and Brutus found it “pulpy and out of joint.” Note the use of physiological metaphors in describing style, a characteristic of ancient criticism.

Cicero’s dialogue Brutus, written in 48 B.C. when he was largely withdrawn from public life, is a discussion of the history of Greek and Roman oratory in a dialogue among Cicero, Brutus, and Cicero’s friend Atticus, culminating in a consideration of contemporary conditions and the Atticism movement. The style of Calvus, Cicero says (Brutus 283–84), was carefully worked; he spoke with elegance, but was excessively self-critical, and the result was a loss of vitality. Brutus responds that Calvus liked to be called “Attic,” and that was why he purposely aimed at this thin or meager style. The remark suggests that Brutus would not call himself an Atticist, but elsewhere (To Atticus 15.1a.2) Cicero treats Brutus as an Atticist. Here he goes on to represent Calvus as misled by his own theories and as not appreciating the variety of the Attic orators. Cicero’s response to Roman Atticism was to redefine the term: “Attic” should not be taken to mean imitation only of the plain style of Lysias; it equally includes the smooth style of Isocrates, the varied style of Hyperides, and the forceful style of Demosthenes (289), which by this time had become Cicero’s favored model among the Greeks.³⁴ “All who speak well speak in the Attic style” (291). A result of Cicero’s tactics is that “Attic” was often used by later writers in a rather general sense to describe any admired, disciplined prose style, while “Asian” often means any style perceived as inflated and faulty.³⁵

Brutus³⁶ opens with a a prologue in memory of Hortensius, whose style had been closer to what Cicero admired than was that of the Atticists. It is not, however, his eloquence that is stressed here so much as his good fortune in dying in 50 B.C., before opportunities for great oratory were checked under the rule of Caesar. He is repeatedly referred to throughout the dialogue, and his oratory is discussed in some detail at the end, where he is called an Asianist (325) and where Cicero explains the meaning of that term, as quoted in chapter 5. Hortensius thus becomes a unifying rhetorical and political symbol throughout the work.

After the introduction comes (10–24) a description of the circumstances of the dialogue, which represents a conversation among Cicero, Brutus, and Atticus while waiting for news about Caesar’s war in Africa early in 46 B.C. Cicero dedicates the work to Brutus in return for Brutus’ literary epistle On Virtue, which had been dedicated to Cicero. Dedication of another work to Atticus is promised in return for his treatise on Roman chronology, inspired in turn by Cicero’s work On the Republic. Atticus’ treatise suggested and facilitated Cicero’s study of the history of Roman oratory.

There follows a brief review of the history of Greek oratory (25–52), rather like a narration in a speech. Eloquence is said to have reached full development in Greece later than the other arts. Its history is marked by stages of development: Pericles was the first really great orator and the earliest to have been influenced by theory, for which relative peace was necessary. The high point of Greek oratory came in the fourth century with Isocrates, who was the first to pay attention to rhythm, and especially with Demosthenes (35). In the Hellenistic period, eloquence sailed to Asia, where its style was corrupted, and then to Rhodes. The main body of the work, discussing Roman orators, proceeds by generations, discussing consular orators first in each section, then lesser figures. The first Roman definitely known to have been eloquent, Cicero says (57), was M. Cornelius Cethegus, consul in 204 B.C. The first orator whose speeches are worth reading is Cato the Elder, but his style is not sufficiently polished (69). A richer style begins with Sulpicius Gallus, but the first Roman to wield the legitimate tools of the orator, to digress, to delight, to move, to amplify, to employ pathos and commonplaces, was Galba (82). A new high point came with Gaius Gracchus, outstanding for native ability, dedication, and learning (125). At last, in Antonius and Crassus, Latin oratory attained something approaching the level of Demosthenes and Hyperides (138). There are, Cicero admits (201), two kinds of good orators, “those speaking simply and succinctly, and those grandly and amply,” but “that is better which is more splendid and magnificent.” Purity of diction is a negative virtue: “it is not such a wonderful thing to know good Latin as it is shameful not to know it” (213–14). In section 279 Cicero turns to consideration of Hortensius as the leading orator of the period after Crassus and Antonius, and this allows him to work in the account of his own rhetorical studies and development (304–19), on which the summary at the beginning of this chapter is largely based. Cicero himself thus emerges by implication as the highest point yet reached in the history of oratory at Rome. Though his ambition is clear from the beginning, what he says about himself recognizes that he could not have done what he did if others had not gone before him, acknowledges his early faults and problems, and stops with the trial of Verres, in which he defeated Hortensius.

The chronological sequence of Brutus is varied by carefully placed digressions that relate to the Atticism controversy. One digression (183–200) is placed at the midpoint of the book and deals with how oratory should be judged, whether by esoteric literary standards, as the Atticists were doing, or by popular effectiveness, as Cicero reasonably demands. The three functions of the orator, identified earlier in On the Orator (2.115), are here (185) taken up in the form “that the hearer be taught, be delighted, and be strongly moved.” Two other digressions are closely connected and balanced. The first (70–76) comes early in the account of Roman oratory and after reference to its first great practitioner, the elder Cato. Cicero here compares the historical development of oratory to that of sculpture and painting, with reference also to the history of poetry. The objective of the digression is to suggest that Cato should be viewed as a Roman counterpart to Lysias, though the Atticists ignore him. Balancing this is a third digression (292– 300), in which Atticus is allowed to ridicule Cicero’s glorification of early Roman orators, including the assertion that Cato was a Roman Lysias. Cicero sticks to his guns, but the digression adds liveliness to the dialogue and shows that he did not mean his claim to be taken too literally. Brutus is one of Cicero’s more carefully written works; he seems to have sought a prose style that would be approved by his opponents.

A second work dedicated to Brutus is the treatise known as the Orator,³⁷ written soon after Brutus. Cicero here abandons the dialogue form to give an account of the style of oratory he most admires. Although there is considerable repetition in the work, an overall plan is easily recognized. An introductory section (1–36) deals with the purpose of the work: to describe an ideal orator beyond any who has ever lived. Cicero uses the Platonic forms to help explain what he has in mind. He goes on to expound the doctrine, met earlier in Rhetoric for Herennius, that there are three good styles, not one. The perfect orator should master all (20); no Roman has done so, and among the Greeks only Demosthenes comes close (23). Then the errors of the Atticists are revealed (28–32). Their definition of Attic is too narrow, and those who adopt Thucydides or Xenophon as models do not even imitate orators.³⁸

The second part of the work (37–139) is a rather uneven survey of rhetorical theory, not unlike that given by Antonius and Crassus in the second and third books of On the Orator. The usual categories and topics are there: the kinds of oratory and the parts of rhetoric with some discussion of each, but Cicero elaborates only what is relevant for the picture of the orator he wishes to construct, defined (69) as “one who can speak in the forum [i.e., in courts of law] or on public questions in such a way that he proves, delights, and stirs his audience.” We meet here again the three functions of the orator. In the picture of this man it is style that is most fully discussed, using the Theophrastan categores of the virtues of style (79). Propriety will determine what style to use: the plain style (75–90) avoids rhythm and periodicity and has no objection to hiatus. Its ornamentation should not be noticeable. A distinctive feature should be use of wit. The middle style as described (91–96) is really that of Isocrates, though he is not named and Demetrius of Phaleron is made the example. It has little vigor but much smoothness and ornamentation. The grand style (97–99) is full, rich, stately, elaborate and powerful, but it needs to be varied with the other styles, and unless skillfully managed it can fall flat. Though Cicero insists on the necessity of combining styles in a single speech (74), he confusingly persists in speaking of the middle or grand orator (e.g., 98–99). He cites examples of each style and of varied styles from his own speeches (102–8). Then, as in On the Orator, the knowledge needed by the speaker is discussed (113–20), including logic and other parts of philosophy, law, and history. Here is inserted (121–39) a dry summary of rhetorical rules for invention, partition, and style, which goes over some of the ground already covered.

The first two parts of the Orator are preparatory for what follows. Cicero repeatedly indicates that what is most important and most difficult is still to come (e.g., 51, 61, 75, 100, 134). The third part (140–238) is a very full discussion of the aspect of style most neglected by the Atticists, composition. This is introduced by an apology aimed at counteracting contempt for teaching rhetoric: “Why is it shameful to learn what it is honorable to understand, or why is it not glorious to teach what is most becoming to know?” (142). The basis of what Cicero says is derived from Isocrates, Aristotle, and Theophrastus, but he has applied Greek theories to Latin and has much more to say about prose rhythm than any earlier author (174). Into the discussion of the collocation of words is inserted an attack on the analogists (155–62). The account of the periodic sentence recognizes two forms, that in which the grammatical structure gives the balanced rounding or completeness, for example an antithesis, and that in which, quite appart from the meaning, the rhythm of the words achieves a form that is complete because satisfying to the ear. The discussion of rhythm (168–216) is the most detailed part of the work. It begins with an introduction (168–73), followed by a division of the subject (174). The origin, cause, nature, and use of rhythm are successively handled, and examples of the effect of rearranging words and thus breaking up the rhythm are given (232–33). There should not be complete lines of verse nor usually a succession of similar feet, but combinations of different feet are needed. Cicero praises combinations of cretic, paeon, and spondee with iamb, tribrach, and dactyl, but some of these are not common features of his own style. A discussion of the utility of rhythm is then added (227–36). At the end of the work Cicero does not seem particularly optimistic about his success in convincing Brutus of the superiority of his conception of styles, and we know from a letter to Atticus (14.20.3) that he did not succeed. Cicero failed to convince Brutus because of Brutus’ personal tastes, not because he failed to make a good case. Surely Lysias, Thucydides, and Xenophon were not the best models for imitation at the Roman bar. Surely the best orator should be a master of all styles and know how to employ each. In stating his case Cicero has neatly, and apparently with originality, combined the three functions of the orator with the three kinds of style: the plain style is best for proof, the middle style for delighting, the vehement style for moving the passions (69).

In addition to the works already discussed there are other minor works by Cicero relating to aspects of rhetoric. On the Best Kind of Orators is an introduction to a projected, but apparently never completed, translation of Aeschines’ and Demosthenes’ speeches in the case of Ctesiphon. Topics, written in the summer of 44 B.C., is an exposition of the topics of argument (genus, species, similarity, and so forth) as taught in Peripatetic dialectic, to which are added notes on stasis theory and other aspects of rhetorical invention.

In the years 45 and 44 B.C. Cicero wrote a series of works, chiefly in dialogue form, that provided introductions to Hellenistic Greek philosophy for Roman readers. On abstruse subjects he tends to follow the Academic custom of letting others expound different sides of a question and avoiding much expression of his own views. Cicero is no less a rhetorician when he is a philosopher, and behind his pose of suspending judgment there lies a desire to persuade, and perhaps especially to persuade himself of the truth and consolation to be found in philosophy. Of all the philosophical works the one most closely related to rhetoric is the last, On Duties, which is a systematic exposition of ethics, not a dialogue, and largely based on a work by the Greek Stoic philosopher Panaetius.³⁹

Cicero’s career was spread over about forty years, and some changes and development in his theory and practice of rhetoric were to be expected. On Invention is purely a work of school learning. It was supplanted by On the Orator, the thoughtful outgrowth of his own experience and wider study. Changes from that work to Brutus and Orator are not fundamental ones. Indeed, Cicero never changed his basic view of the orator. His interest in styles, however, seems to have increased as his opportunities for persuasion were curtailed and as new issues were raised by the Atticists. Cicero put a distinctive personal stamp on classical rhetoric, and his orations and writings on rhetoric have remained classics ever since; it is not an overstatement to say that the history of rhetoric in western Europe from his time to at least the seventeenth century is the history of Ciceronianism.

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¹ He often refers to his political associates as the boni, “the good guys.”

² See Wooten, Cicero’s Philippics.

³ See also the comparison of the two in Longinus, On Sublimity 12.3–5.

⁴ For English versions, see Grant, Murder Trials and Selected Political Speeches in the Penguin series, and the volumes by a variety of translators in the Loeb Classical Library series.

⁵ For a fuller account of many of the speeches, see my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 138–48, 149–204, and 259–282.

⁶ See May, Trials of Character, 14–21.

⁷ See Craig, Form as Argument, 27–45

⁸ See May, Trials of Character, 21–31.

⁹ For discussion, see my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 156–65.

¹⁰ See Kirby, Rhetoric of Cicero’s Pro Cluentio.

¹¹ In For Caecina 29 Cicero indicates that Cluentius had used bribes.

¹² The primary function of praetors at this time was administration of the judicial system.

¹³ The conspiracy of Catiline was one of a series of attempts in Cicero’s lifetime to overthrow the republican constitution and wrest control of public policy from the senate, replacing it with a dictator or small oligarchy. Catiline himself was a dissolute aristocrat, motivated chiefly by a personal desire for money and power, but he attracted support from others like himself and from lower classes of society suffering from economic difficulties. Unlike other popular leaders who preceded or followed him—the Gracchi, Marius, Julius Caesar, and Octavian—he lacked personal integrity and offered no real program of administrative, social, and economic reform.

¹⁴ See May, Trials of Character, 58–69.

¹⁵ See Gotoff, Cicero’s Elegant Style, which contains discussion and commentary on the speech, with special attention to style.

¹⁶ See Craig, Form as Argument, 105–21.

¹⁷ See Geffcken, Comedy in the Pro Caelio.

¹⁸ The most imporant additions to the bibliography since publication of my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World are the volumes (five are planned) of an extensive commentary in German, edited by Leeman, Pinkster, et al. See also Wisse, Ethos and Pathos. A new English version with notes, drawing on this commentary, is in preparation by May, Wisse, and Leff. Until the latter is published readers need to rely on the Loeb Classical Library edition of Sutton and Rackham, whose translation is at times faulty and whose paragraphing and marginal notes can be misleading. The best version of the Latin text is that of Kumaniecki in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana.

¹⁹ Cf. Aristotle’s distinction in On Rhetoric 1.1.21 between the “specifics” of a case and the “topics” of dialectic and rhetoric.

²⁰ Crassus in 1.45–48 and Antonius in 1.84–89.

²¹ Hendrickson, in “Literary Sources,” argued that it is a regular technique of Ciceronian dialogue to attribute to an oral source doctrines and information that were in fact derived from written works.

²² Quintilian (6.3.4) mentions a collection of Cicero’s witticisms in three books, probably published by Cicero’s secretary Tiro after the orator’s death.

²³ In addition to the bibliography cited in my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World 223, see Janko, Aristotle on Comedy. Janko provides (19–41) text and translation of the Tractatus Coislinianus, which outlines a theory of comedy and humor and may derive from the lost second book of Aristotle’s Poetics. Theophrastus had also written a treatise on “the ludicrous”; see Fortenbaugh et al., Theophrastus, vol. 2, 557.

²⁴ See Bird, Cultures in Conflict, 11–24, and Kimball, Orators and Philosophers 12–42. On the Orator directly influenced Roman views until late antiquity but was not well known in the Middle Ages; the full text was rediscovered in the fifteenth century, it was the first book printed in Italy (1465), and its subsequent influence was considerable.

²⁵ English translation by Rackham in the second volume of the Loeb Classical Library edition of On the Orator.

²⁶ Translation by Squires, Orationium Ciceronis Quinque Enarratio.

²⁷ Tacitus (Dialogus 38) regarded Pompey’s law as permanently changing the conditions of pleading, but only the imposition of a time limit seems to have been retained; under the empire evidence of witnesses followed the speeches of the patrons, as earlier (see Quintilian 5.7.25).

²⁸ See Donnelly, Cicero’s Milo, and May, Trials of Character, 128–40.

²⁹ See Gotoff, Cicero’s Caesarian Speeches.

³⁰ See my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 260–64; May, Trials of Character, 140–48; Montague, “Paradox of Cicero’s Pro Ligario.”

³¹ See my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 268–82, and Wooten, Cicero’s Philippics.

³² Demetrius’ treatise On Style, perhaps a work of the early first century, shows the potential for Atticism among Greek teachers but uses the term “Attic” (e.g., sections 175 and 177) to refer to the Attic dialect rather than to a new movement in style, and it is not as strictly classicizing as is Dionysius.

³³ Classicism can be said to have begun with the work of the Alexandrian grammarians of the third century who edited and commented on archaic and classical Greek poetry and produced “canons” of classical texts to be studied as literary models. Their interests, however, were largely limited to poetry, and classicism in Greek prose does not appear before the first century.

³⁴ Cicero’s special admiration of Demosthenes is a feature only of his later writing and speaking, including his Philippic orations; see Wooten, Cicero’s Philippics, 46–57.

³⁵ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries “Attic” is used by Justus Lipsius and others of the reaction against Ciceronianism in style, for which Seneca and Tacitus are taken as Latin models. See Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 213–15.

³⁶ Latin text and English commentary by Douglas, Ciceronis Brutus; English translation by Hendrickson in the Loeb Classical Library series. On Brutus and Orator as works of literary criticism, see Fantham, “Growth of Literature and Criticism at Rome,” 235–41.

³⁷ English commentary by Sandys, Ad Brutum Orator; translation by Hubbell in the Loeb Classical Library volume with Hendrickson’s translation of Brutus.

³⁸ The Roman writers known to us of whom this might be said are the historians Sallust and Asinius Pollio, both writing somewhat later. See Leeman, Orationis Ratio, 136–67.

³⁹ See discussion in chapter 5 above and in my Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World, 264–68.