Comment, dist Ponocrates, vos iurez, frere Jean? Ce n’est, dist le moyne, que pour orner mon language. Ce sont couleurs de rhetoricque ciceroniane.
Rabelais, Gargantua ch. 39
OF CICERO’S extant works a considerable number are devoted to rhetoric. There is De Inventione, dating from his youth, De Oratore and Partitiones Oratoriae from the period of his maturity, and the Brutus, the Orator, De Optimo Genere Oratorum and Topica from his later years when his main activity, political and oratorical, was over. These works may be divided into two classes, technical and non-technical. In the first class come De Inventione, Partitiones Oratoriae, a treatise written for the benefit of Cicero’s son, in the form of a catechism in reverse, with the pupil asking questions and the master answering them, and Topica, an exposition of the theory attributed to Aristotle, written from memory during a sea voyage, to enlighten Cicero’s friend Trebatius, who had read a Greek work on the subject, but was unable to understand it, and had applied in vain for help to a professional rhetorician.1
In the second class come the rest of the rhetorical works. Foremost among them is De Oratore, a discursive dialogue on oratory in general, based on the scholastic doctrine, but treating it in the elegant humane manner of a cultured and experienced man of letters and man of affairs. The Brutus is a history of Roman oratory in dialogue form, while the Orator attempts to describe the characteristics of the complete and perfect orator. The latter work is in effect a justification of Cicero’s own style of oratory and an answer to the critics who emerged in his later years, and the same desire for self-justification inspires the brief De Optimo Genere Oratorum, written as a preface to a translation of the speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines on the Crown. These works of Cicero’s later life contain some new points which will be considered in a later chapter; here we will confine ourselves to De Oratore and those parts of the Orator which repeat the ideas of the earlier work.
How far can we consider these ideas as Cicero’s own? He himself said of De Oratore that it embodied the principles of Aristotle and Isocrates and of the ancients generally.2 Modern scholars have been inclined to look for the source of his ideas rather in the New Academy.3 Cicero himself pointed the way to this view when he claimed to be an orator sprung from the groves of the Academy,4 and there is a fairly clear indication in De Oratore that the main ideas of that work were associated with the Academic school.5 But it would be a mistake to assume that Cicero was following at all closely an Academic source. We know what Academic rhetoric was like from Partitiones Oratoriae, and we have no certain evidence that any philosopher of the Academy treated the subject on the broad lines of De Oratore.6 And even if Cicero owed not a little to the contemporary Academy, he also derived much from his reading in the whole field of rhetorical study.7 The rhetoric of the schools, the theories of the philosophers, Roman traditions and Cicero’s own experience are combined in a synthesis which has a sufficiently individual quality to allow us to recognise its author as an independent thinker on such matters. And even if none of the ideas or precepts in De Oratore is new—and it was difficult to be original in such a well worked field—the choice and combination remain Cicero’s, as do the force and conviction and the elegance and charm with which they are presented.
Having said this, we must admit that for all his lively receptiveness, his competence and his charm of manner Cicero often disappoints us. He tends to fall between two stools. He does not throw to the winds the classifications of school rhetoric and the academic theories of the philosophers and give us the fruits of his experience as advocate and statesman. On the other hand he does not provide us with the intellectual delights of a profound theoretical analysis. He lacks the power or will to pursue an argument to its conclusions, and is too prone to compromise. In De Oratore he presents us with the contrast between Crassus the advocate of a universal culture and Antonius the representative of practical common sense, but he runs away from the problem he has posed, and at the beginning of the second book resorts to the lame device of making Antonius announce that his previous remarks did not represent his real opinion.8 Again, the old quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy is laid to rest by the assertion that there is really no quarrel at all,9 and the disturbing arguments of Plato are obscured by the comforting platitudes of his successors.
Let us first ask what was Cicero’s attitude to the formal rhetoric of the schools. He had expounded this, or a part of it, in his earliest work, De Inventione. This he later regarded as immature, and in De Oratore he set out to produce something more worthy of his age and experience.10 In this work he does his best to avoid the manner of the textbook; he shuns technical terms, substituting an elegant paraphrase, hurries over what is unimportant or too familiar, and digresses at length. He makes his characters several times give expression to that impatience with the Greek rhetoricians which had already been expressed by the author of Ad Herennium. These Graeculi, endlessly repeating their rules without ever having been near a law court, are compared to the philosopher Phormio, who treated Hannibal to a disquisition on the art of war.11 They are like nurses feeding babies on little morsels of food.12 Moreover it is claimed that the professors do not even know their job; in spite of their abundant leisure they do not succeed in classifying properly or expounding accurately.13
These expressions of impatience and contempt are no doubt dramatically appropriate in the mouth of the characters who are made to utter them.14 Cicero himself perhaps would not have committed himself to them. For he had a certain respect for the rules of the Graeculi. At any rate he thought it necessary to bring up his son on the full rigour of the scholastic discipline, and the classifications of the schools can easily be detected in the flowing elegant prose of De Oratore. Indeed Cicero allowed himself the luxury of at once sneering at the Greeks and making use of them. He laughs at the idea of there being an Art of Humour; yet a little later we find him proceeding exactly in the manner of the textbook: Duo genera sunt facetiarum and De risu quinque sunt quae quaerantur.15 He tells us, in connection with panegyric, that everything need not be referred to rules, and that everyone knows what to praise in a man, but he goes on to give a conventional list, derived from school rhetoric, of the sources from which panegyric can be drawn.16 Even in the Orator, where Cicero is expressly avoiding an exposition of precepts,17 and where he relies rather more than in De Oratore on his own experience, the traditional rules tend to intrude themselves.
Cicero knew that eloquence did not derive from rhetoric, but rather rhetoric from eloquence, and he makes Antonius remark that natural genius and diligence between them leave little room for the rules.18 But he makes it clear that he thought there was some value in these rules. They do not create something new in our minds; they draw out what is already there. They serve to remind the orator to what each point should be referred and where he should look to prevent himself straying from the question at hand.19 There are no doubt great men who can attain to eloquence without any knowledge of theory: but art is a more reliable guide than nature.20
Cicero, then, believed that one should know the school rules and that they were of some, though limited, use. But more was needed than a knowledge of the school theory. He himself was an orator sprung not from the rhetoricians’ workshops but from the groves of the Academy,21 and the oratory he describes in De Oratore and Orator was based on a broader and deeper culture than what was provided by the rhetorical schools.
In approaching his subject Cicero felt obliged first of all to justify oratory. Even the severely technical De Inventione begins with a preface on this theme. ‘I have thought long and often’, he begins, with all the solemnity of a man of twenty, ‘over the problem whether the power of speaking and the study of eloquence have brought more good or harm to men and cities.’22 He decides that eloquence should be combined with wisdom, and that the good and wise should not leave political life to the clever and bad, but should acquire enough eloquence to make themselves effective. His ideal is the man who possesses the highest virtue and authority, and eloquence to adorn these qualities and protect the state.23 He supports his views by a piece of philosophising which must have formed part of the introductory lecture to many courses on rhetoric since the days of the sophists. The theme is that at one time men lived an uncivilised brutish existence, ignorant of right and wrong, of law and religion. It was oratory, in the hands of some wise leader, which led them to a civilised life.24 The same idea reappears in De Oratore, as does the assertion that eloquence must be combined with wisdom.25 Indeed that work adds little or nothing to the conventional justification of oratory given in De Inventione. Cicero is content with high-sounding assertions of the power of oratory to adorn virtue and dissuade from vice, to curb the violent and protect the oppressed.26
But these claims did not go unchallenged. Cicero makes one of his characters, the lawyer Scaevola, dispute the claim of oratory to have civilised mankind. Was it not rather men of practical good sense, without any special gifts for oratory, who performed this function? Eloquence had in fact been actually harmful at times, as in the case of the Gracchi.27 Moreover it might be said that oratory was merely an instrument to serve certain purposes, ‘to make the case you are pleading in the law courts appear to be the better and more plausible, and to make your speeches to the people and the senate as effective as possible, in fact to make the wise think your speech eloquent and fools even think it true’.28 This cynical realistic view deserved to be considered and answered; but Cicero does not in fact answer it. In his practice he might use the arts and crafts of rhetoric to make the worse cause appear the better, and might boast of having thrown dust in the eyes of the jury,29 but in his theory oratory was purely a power for good. Cicero did not think too much about the morality of rhetoric; the scruples of Quintilian were alien to the Republican period, when oratory was an all important weapon in the struggle for political power. Cicero would no doubt have been pained if any doubts had been raised as to the uses to which he put his own oratorical gifts. He never accused an innocent man, and if he sometimes defended a guilty man, was not this allowed by custom, by the principles of humanity and by the authority of Panaetius?30
Instead of answering the pertinent objections of the practical man Cicero involves himself in the theoretical dispute between the philosophers and the rhetoricians. This dispute, as we find it treated in Cicero’s pages, does not go deep into the heart of the matter. Cicero knew Plato’s Gorgias, but he is content to dismiss it with an epigram: ‘In mocking the orators he showed that he was himself a supreme orator.’31 Naturally enough he concerns himself less with Plato’s criticisms than with the problem as it presented itself to his generation, and the controversies of the first century B.C., important though they no doubt seemed at the time, are of minor interest today. They arose, as we have seen, out of the mutually exclusive claims of the rhetoricians and the philosophers to be the educators of the young, and the point on which they centred was whether the general questions of a philosophical or quasi-philosophical nature which the orator might often have occasion to handle belonged to the province of rhetoric or were rather the property of philosophy.
Cicero claims such matters for the orator. In his view the orator possesses his philosophic lore in his own right and not as a loan from the philosophers. Or rather it had once been his possession, but been filched from him by the philosophers.32 Oratory and philosophy had once been identical, and their divorce, for which Socrates is made responsible, was a regrettable development. Socrates had usurped the name of philosopher hitherto common to both sides, and since his time the philosophers had despised oratory and the orators philosophy.33 So far as he takes sides Cicero is for oratory against philosophy. But he prefers to make up the quarrel. ‘If anyone likes, he may, so far as I am concerned, give the name of orator to that philosopher who supplies us with a rich fund of matter and expression, or if he prefers to apply the name of philosopher to this orator of ours whom I declare to possess wisdom combined with eloquence, I have nothing against it; provided that it is agreed that no praise is due to the speechlessness of the man who has knowledge without being able to express it, or to the ignorance of him who has a supply of words without matter. If one must choose, I should prefer tongue-tied wisdom to loquacious folly; but if we are looking for the ideal, the palm must be given to the learned orator. And if the philosophers admit him to their number, there is an end of the controversy; if on the other hand they maintain the distinction, they must be judged inferior for this reason, that all their knowledge is to be found in the perfect orator, whereas philosophic knowledge does not necessarily imply eloquence, and eloquence, however much they may despise it, surely adds a sort of crowning grace to their science.’34
So then Cicero’s ideal is the philosopher-statesman-orator. But it is in fact something less than this. For philosophy here means little more than having something to say, while oratory means being able to say it well. It will be noted that it is the learned orator (doctus orator) to whom Cicero gives the palm. We find in fact that what Cicero advocates is a wide general culture. The philosophy of his orator consists in knowing about philosophy, and philosophy is only one of the things he must know about.
That the orator should be master of a universal knowledge is indeed the main theme of De Oratore. As Cicero puts it in the preface to the first book, eloquence is comprised in the sciences of men of learning, and the theme is repeated in the dialogue itself. ‘There is no subject which demands dignified and serious treatment that is not proper to the orator.’35 ‘No one can hope to be an orator in the true sense of the word unless he has acquired a knowledge of all the sciences and all the great problems of life.’36 ‘There is a vast field in which the orator can wander freely and everywhere find himself in his own domain.’37
Of this general learning philosophy was only a part, but a very important part. ‘Let us first of all lay it down…’, says Cicero in the Orator, ‘that the perfect orator whom we are searching for cannot exist without philosophy…without philosophy no one can speak with breadth and fulness on great and varied themes…. Nor can one without philosophical training discern the genus and species of things, or define and analyse them, or judge between true and false, see logical contradictions and discern ambiguities. What shall I say of physics, which supplies much material to speeches, and of all the branches of moral philosophy, for the understanding and treatment of which a profound study of such matters is necessary?’38 This ignores the fact that a certain amount of logical and ethical material had become embodied in the school rhetoric; it also ignores the cogent remarks of Antonius, who performs the function of advocates diaboli in De Oratore. What need, he asks, for a theoretical knowledge of psychology? For an orator an empirical knowledge is enough. And as regards morals, he will follow common opinion; he will have no need to go into the philosophical problem of the summum bonum. What is wanted is that he should be ‘an acute and clever man, his natural wit sharpened by experience, a keen observer of the thoughts, feelings, opinions and expectations of his fellow-citizens and of those whom he wishes to win over to a particular point of view’.39
The fact is that Cicero was interested in and attracted by philosophy and thought one ought to know about it, and so he introduced it into his educational programme. But this programme was designed for the training of the orator. He therefore persuaded himself that philosophy was of far greater use to the orator than in fact it was. In the Orator he demands a knowledge of logic, though the subject, naturally dull, needed the application of a little polish,40 and of physics, the latter for the unconvincing reason that the contemplation of the heavenly bodies will result in his speaking in a more lofty and magnificent manner.41 In De Oratore he is more realistic. Logic and physics he says, can be left on one side;42 it is enough to have a thorough knowledge of moral philosophy. This branch too is justified on utilitarian grounds. It is required partly that the orator may know about the emotions of his audience which he wishes to play on, partly that he may be able to treat those themes which were always recurring, ‘religion, piety, concord, friendship, the rights of citizens and of mankind, the law of nations, justice, temperance, greatness of soul and every kind of virtue’.43
The other main constituents of the orator’s learning are law and history. An ignorance of law Cicero considers to be scandalous.44 Obvious though this point may seem, it needed making, for the rhetorical schools did not include the study of law, and many pleaders must have approached their task well equipped to argue, let us say, for or against the letter of the law, but ill informed about the actual details of Roman law and judicial procedure.45 After all, they could always follow Antonius’s advice and apply to the professional where their knowledge was deficient.46 So Cicero, indignant at the ignorance and impertinence of some of his fellow advocates and himself delighting in the study of Roman law and the revelation of old Roman manners it provided, permits himself the exaggerated claim that the Twelve Tables are of more value than all the libraries of the philosophers.47
History was chiefly of use in providing instances and examples to prove or emphasise a point. ‘The recalling of past history and the production of instances from the past gives great pleasure and at the same time adds authority and credibility to a speech.’48 But there is no doubt that Cicero had a real interest in history for its own sake apart from its oratorical application.49 Here as elsewhere his educational programme includes more than can be justified on purely utilitarian grounds.
It is unnecessary here to go into details of Cicero’s rhetorical precepts, for in most respects they are merely derived from the traditional doctrine of the schools. But there are one or two points which are peculiar to his theory or are given a particular emphasis by him, and these deserve special mention.
Firstly there is the treatment of general questions. We have seen how the rhetoricians and the philosophers had disputed over the theses, which Hermagoras had claimed as falling within the orator’s province. In his De Inventione Cicero had taken Hermagoras to task for assigning to the orator questions that had nothing to do with him and which belonged rather to the philosopher.50 He must later have regretted the confident tone with which he took sides on this matter, for he came to hold the view not only that these general questions were within the orator’s sphere, but that all questions could and should be related to them. ‘The perfect orator’, he says, ‘should always if he can remove the issue from particular persons and occasions; one can discuss the whole more freely than the part; and if something is proved in the general case, it must necessarily be proved in the particular.’51 For example in the case of the assassination of C.Gracchus by Opimius the orator need not consider the characters in the case; the question at issue is the general one, whether one who has killed a fellow citizen, contrary to the laws, but in accordance with a vote of the senate and in order to save his country, deserves punishment.52 But it was perhaps not so much the logical side of the matter that appealed to Cicero; it was rather the fact that general questions offered more scope for oratorical adornment than particular ones. Here the orator could really spread himself.53
Cicero is indeed less interested in the appeal to the head than in that to the heart. ‘Men’s judgments’, he tells us, ‘are more often formed under the influence of hatred, love, desire, anger, grief, joy, hope, fear, misconception or some other emotion, than by truth or ordinance, the principles of justice, the procedure of the courts or the laws.’54 Hence he gives special emphasis to the rhetorical appeal to the emotions, success in which, he holds, constitutes the chief excellence of the orator.55
The methods of playing on the feelings of the listener were enumerated in the textbooks, but only in connection with certain parts of the speech, the proem and, in particular, the peroration. This treatment, which Cicero had followed in De Inventione, did not satisfy him when he came to write De Oratore. In that work the subject is treated on its own, and not subordinated to particular parts of the speech.56 Moreover his whole manner of discussing the subject is freer and less pedantic than that of the textbooks. He has got away from the fifteen methods of arousing indignation and the sixteen of arousing pity that he had faithfully copied out in De Imentione. His main emphasis now is on the necessity for the orator to feel the emotions he tries to arouse. ‘It is impossible’, he says, ‘for the hearer to feel grief, hatred, prejudice, apprehension, to be reduced to tears and pity, unless all the emotions which the orator wishes to arouse in the juror are seen to be deeply impressed on the orator himself.’57 If anyone wondered how the orator could be constantly moved to anger, grief or other emotions in matters which did not concern him personally, the answer was that the sentiments and topics he made use of had such power to move that there was no need for simulation. The very nature of the speech whose object was to move the audience would be such as to move the speaker more than anyone else. Like the actor, the orator would live his part.58 Antonius, who in this part of De Oratore serves as Cicero’s mouthpiece, records his defence of M’.Aquilius, and claims that his pathetic peroration came from the heart, and that when he displayed his client’s wounds the action was not premeditated, but inspired by violent grief.59 Speaking in his own person in the Orator, Cicero says much the same; in all his pathetic passages it was not so much his talent as his capacity for experiencing the feelings he expressed that accounted for his success.60
One of the methods of working on the audience to which Cicero devotes particular attention is the use of wit and humour.61 Cicero prided himself on his mastery of this weapon and he gives in De Oratore a comprehensive account of its uses to the orator. Though the subject had been handled by Greek writers of the Peripatetic school,62 Cicero was probably the first to incorporate a full treatment of it in a general treatise on rhetoric. As so often, he uses the theoretical classifications of the Greeks, but he illustrates with numerous anecdotes and examples from his own store. He is well aware, too, that wit is a thing which comes by nature rather than art.63
From the appeal to the heart we turn to the appeal to the ear. The consideration of style occupies most of the third book of De Oratore, and though in the main the matter is traditional, it is worth noting where Cicero lays the emphasis. Of the four virtutes dicendi, the first two, to speak Latine and plane, are, he says, easy; the remaining two, ornate and apte congruenterque, are the important qualities. It is these that make men thrill with terror, gaze open-mouthed at the speaker, cry aloud and think him a god among men.64 Above all it is the ability to use ornatus that constitutes the crowning glory of eloquence.65 How is this adornment to be come by? The answer is that it will come of its own accord to the learned orator.66 ‘Rerum enim copia verborum copiam gignit’, says Cicero, giving a new turn to the old maxim of Cato, Rem tene, verba sequentur. If the matter is honourable, the words in which it is expressed will have a natural splendour. If the speaker is well educated, zealous to study and practised in arguing general questions, if he has chosen the most splendid models for imitation, he will not need any of the school precepts to teach him the graces of style. The abundance of his matter will lead him naturally and insensibly, with the aid of practice, to the adornments of style.67 But Cicero, it seems, only half believes this theory. Crassus, who enunciates it, is told that he has been carried too far out to sea, and is forced to return wearily to the familiar paths of the textbooks.68
Our study of Cicero’s rhetorical theory has perhaps emphasised its weakness rather than its strength. Yet when all that can be said in criticism has been said, we must acknowledge that he brought new life into a subject which had languished in the hands of pedants since the days of Aristotle. It was Cicero’s achievement to lift rhetoric above academic pedantry and narrow professionalism to the higher level of a genuine humanism. To appreciate his contribution justly one must see it against the background of contemporary rhetorical teaching. One will then recognise the pertinence of the main theme of De Oratore. In emphasising the importance of having something to say as well as knowing how to say it, and the desirability of combining the two main disciplines of the ancient world, rhetoric and philosophy, he was putting his finger on one of the weaknesses of ancient education. It was unfortunate that his message was so little heeded.