Brutus (ed. 2)
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~43,200 words · 205 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). Brutus (ed. 2). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/brutus
- MLACicero. "Brutus (ed. 2)." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/brutus.
- ChicagoCicero. Brutus (ed. 2). SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/brutus.
What it is about
The Latin original of the 'Brutus', of 46 BC: the history of Roman oratory told as a catalogue of orators.
Context and history
Cicero goes through two long centuries of Roman eloquence, orator by orator, until he reaches himself, and it is nearly everything we know of that history: without this book, most of those names would be only names. The form is a dialogue with Brutus and Atticus in the garden of his house, but the tone is set by the moment: Caesar is dictator, the courts no longer decide anything, and the book is at once a history and a mourning — the chronicle of an art written as the art runs out of air. Hence the pages on Hortensius, the lifelong rival, which close the book like a funeral elegy for the whole profession. With the 'Orator', written the same year and dedicated to the same Brutus, it forms a diptych: this one looks back, the other draws the ideal.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Cum e Cilicia decedens Rhodum venissem et eo mihi de Q. Hortensii morte esset allatum, opinione omnium majorem animo cepi dolorem. Nam et amico amisso cum consuetudine jucunda tum multorum officiorum conjunctione me privatum videbam, et interitu talis auguris dignitatem nostri collegii deminutam dolebam; qua in cogitatione et cooptatum me ab eo in collegium recordabar, in quo juratus judicium dignitatis meae fecerat, et inauguratum ab eodem; ex quo augurum institutis in parentis eum loco colere debebam. Augebat etiam molestiam quod magna sapientium civium bonorumque penuria vir egregius conjunctissimusque mecum consiliorum omnium societate alienissimo reipublicae tempore exstinctus et auctoritatis et prudentiae suae triste nobis desiderium reliquerat; dolebamque quod, non, ut plerique putabant, adversarium aut obtrectatorem laudum mearum, sed socium potius et consortem gloriosi laboris amiseram. Et enim si in leviorum artium studio memoriae proditum est, poetas nobiles poetarum aequalium morte doluisse, quo tandem animo ejus interitum ferre debui, cum quo certare erat gloriosius quam omnino adversarium non habere? cum praesertim non modo nunquam sit aut illius a me cursus impeditus aut ab illo meus, sed contra semper alter ab altero adjutus et communicando et monendo et favendo.