De Oratore (On Oratory and Orators)
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- J. S. Watson
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~280,000 words · 1,341 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). De Oratore (On Oratory and Orators) (J. S. Watson, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-oratore-on-oratory-and-orators
- MLACicero. De Oratore (On Oratory and Orators). Translated by J. S. Watson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-oratore-on-oratory-and-orators.
- ChicagoCicero. De Oratore (On Oratory and Orators). Translated by J. S. Watson. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/de-oratore-on-oratory-and-orators.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
A dialogue on what an orator must know. Cicero's answer is demanding: technique is not enough — law, history and philosophy are required, because a man who does not know his subject cannot speak well on anything.
Context and history
Written in 55 BC and set in 91 BC, in the mouths of Crassus and Antonius, two orators of the previous generation whom Cicero had heard in his youth. He composed it while shut out of politics, and it is in part a correction of the rhetorical handbooks — including his own youthful De inventione, which he came to regard as green and insufficient.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
goyernors, &lae accasation, has bccii repelled ia its attacks the fame and fortune and ease of the wealthy; that the espenses aud tributes levied on the different cities are borne vfith equanimity by all who inhabit the territoriea of those cities; that acceBS to you is most easy; that your ears are open to the complainta of all men ; that no man's poverty or desolatenesa ia osoluded by you, not merely from access to you in pubhc and on the tribunftl, hut even from your house, and your private chamber; that, in short, throughout your whole government, there is nothing severe, nothing cruel; but that everything ia fiiU of clemency, and gentleness, and humanity, IX. 26. Again, how great a benefit is it on your port, that you have delivered Asia from that iniquitous and heavy tax imposed upon it by the acdiles,^ though at the expense of great enmity to us. In truth, if one man of noble birth makes a eomplaiut openly that you, by issuing an edict " that money should not bo voted for the games at Eome," caused him a loss of two hundred sestertia; how great a sum of money must have been paid, if, as had become the custom, it was eiacted in the name of all, whoever they were, that exhibited games at Eomel Although we checked these complunts of our citizens with this design, (which is estolled in Asia, I know not to what extent, and at Bome with no ordinary admiration,) inasmuch as when the cities had voted sums of money to erect a temple and monument in our honour, and when they had done so of their own OKfa-eme good-will, in return for my great services, aud for your eiceaaive kindnesses, and when the law made an exception in our favour by name, providing that " it might be permitted to receive money for a temple and a monumenti" and that which was then given was not likely to perish, but to remain among the ornaments of the temple, so as to appear to have been given, not more for my sake than that of the Roman people and tha inunorla!…