Orator
- Language:
- Latin
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~32,200 words · 153 passages
Cite this work
- APACicero. (n.d.). Orator. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/orator
- MLACicero. "Orator." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/orator.
- ChicagoCicero. Orator. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/cicero/orator.
What it is about
The Latin original of the 'Orator', of 46 BC: the portrait of the perfect orator, who Cicero admits has never existed.
Context and history
Brutus had asked him which style is best, and Cicero answers by drawing an ideal: the complete orator is the one who commands all three styles — the plain to prove, the middle to please, the grand to move — and knows when each is called for. This is a theory and a self-defence at once: the young Atticists accused Cicero of inflation, and the book is his answer — that austerity is not the only virtue, and that a man who can only speak low is not pure but incomplete. The final part, on the rhythm of prose, is the most detailed discussion antiquity has left us of how a sentence sounds. With the 'Brutus' of the same year it forms a diptych, and in the Renaissance it was a bedside book: the quarrel over Ciceronianism is in good part a quarrel over this text.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Vtrum difficilius aut maius esset negare tibi saepius idem roganti an efficere id quod rogares diu multumque, Brute, dubitavi. Nam et negare ei quem unice diligerem cuique me carissimum esse sentirem, praesertim et iusta petenti et praeclara cupienti, durum admodum mihi videbatur, et suscipere tantam rem, quantam non modo facultate consequi difficile esset sed etiam cogitatione complecti, vix arbitrabar esse eius qui vereretur reprehensionem doctorum atque prudentium. Quid enim est maius quam, cum tanta sit inter oratores bonos dissimilitudo, iudicare quae sit optima species et quasi figura dicendi? Quod quoniam me saepius rogas, aggrediar non tam perficiendi spe quam experiendi voluntate; malo enim, cum studio tuo sim obsecutus, desiderari a te prudentiam meam quam, si id non fecerim, benevolentiam. Quaeris igitur idque iam saepius quod eloquentiae genus probem maxime et quale mihi videatur illud, quo nihil addi possit, quod ego summum et perfectissimum iudicem. In quo vereor ne, si id quod vis effecero eumque oratorem quem quaeris expressero, tardem studia multorum, qui desperatione debilitati experiri id nolent quod se assequi posse diffidant. Sed par est omnis omnia experiri, qui res magnas et magno opere expetendas concupiverunt. Quod si quem aut natura sua [aut] illa praestantis ingeni vis forte deficiet aut minus instructus erit magnarum artium disciplinis, teneat tamen eum cursum quem poterit; prima enim sequentem honestum est in secundis tertiisque consistere. Nam in poetis non Homero soli locus est, ut de Graecis loquar, aut Archilocho aut Sophocli aut Pindaro, sed horum vel secundis vel etiam infra secundos; nec vero Aristotelem in philosophia deterruit a scribendo amplitudo Platonis, nec ipse Aristoteles admirabili quadam scientia et copia ceterorum studia restinxit. II.← Back to Cicero