FOOT-NOTES:
[1] Besides many incidental references, Cicero left seven works dealing mainly or entirely with rhetoric: De inventione (about 86 B.C.), De oratore (55 B.C.), Partitiones oratoriæ (about 54 B.C.), Brutus (46 B.C.), Orator (46 B.C.), De optimo genere oratorum (about 46 B.C.), Topica (44 B.C.). Of these the most explicit and suggestive are De oratore and Orator, which are used as the basis of the following chapter.
The most convenient bibliographical guide to Cicero’s rhetorical doctrine is Laurand, L., De M. Tulli Ciceronis studiis rhetoricis (University of Paris thesis, 1907), which also summarizes lucidly its derivation and progress.
The best editions in English are: Wilkins, A. S., M. Tulli Ciceronis De Oratore, Oxford, 1893 (3d ed.), 3 volumes (introduction, including a sketch of the history of rhetoric and a tabular analysis of the treatise Ad Herennium formerly ascribed to Cicero; analyses, notes, index); Sandys, J. E., M. Tulli Ciceronis Orator ... Cambridge, 1885 (introduction, including a sketch of the history of rhetoric, a brief analysis of Cicero’s rhetorical works, a study and an abstract of Orator, and a list of editions, commentaries, and translations; notes, indices).
English translations of De oratore: Guthrie, W., London, 1808 & 1840; Watson, J. S., London (Bohn), 1855 & 1896; Calvert, F. B., Edinburgh, 1870; Moor, E. N. P., (Book I only), London, 1904. Of Orator Sandys (page xcvii) cites three English translations, of which only Yonge’s seems to be available in this country. The French translation by Colin (Traduction du traité de l’orateur de Cicéron, avec des notes, par M. l’Abbé Colin, Paris, 1737), though somewhat paraphrastic, is accurate so far as I have used it. Another accompanies Bornecque’s edition, Paris, 1921.
Among recent critical studies the following will be found suggestive in their several directions: Hendrickson, G. L., The Peripatetic mean of style and the three stylistic characters, Amer. Jo. Philol. xxv. 125 (1904); Ancient characters of style, Amer. Jo. Philol. xxvi. 249 (1905); Cicero’s Brutus and the technique of citation in dialogue, Amer. Jo. Philol. xxvii, 184 (1906); Hubbell, H. M., The influence of Isocrates on Cicero, Dionysius and Aristides (Yale thesis, 1914); Nassal, F., Æsthetisch-rhetorische Beziehungen zwischen Dionysius von Halikarnass und Cicero (Tübingen thesis, 1910). For study of rhetorical terms see Causeret, C., Étude sur la langue de la rhétorique et de la critique dans Cicéron, Paris, 1886, which is classified by the fivefold division, inventio, collocatio, etc. The influence of Cicero in the middle age and the Renaissance will be discussed in a later volume.
[2] Literature, the second lecture on University Subjects in the Idea of a University.
[3] See below, Chapter IV. II.
[4] W. B. Owen in the introduction to his edition of Book I (Boston, 1895) makes more of this than its importance seems to warrant.
[5] In omni genere sermonis et humanitatis perfectum, I. ix. 35
[6] I. xi.
[7] I. xii. 51.
[8] I. xiii. 55.
[9] 56.
[10] 63.
[11] I. xv. 64. Quam ob rem, si quis universam et propriam oratoris vim definire complectique vult, is orator erit mea sententia, hoc tamen gravi dignus nomine, qui, quæcumque res inciderit quæ sit dictione explicanda, prudenter et composite et ornate et memoriter dicet cum quadam actionis etiam dignitate.
[12] Wilkins (note ad loc.) evidently takes composite in a general sense as referring to composition (dispositio, collocatio); for he says: “The definition includes all the five main divisions of oratory,” and dispositio is not otherwise mentioned. But for the apparent intention to include all five parts, composite would more readily suggest compositio, which is the technical name for sentence movement, one of the subdivisions of elocutio. Compositio is consistently used in this special sense; but whether composite is so meant here or not, Cicero intended four of the five parts, if not five; and that suffices to establish his allusion to the traditional division. The issue between Crassus and Antonius has little to do with dispositio; it concerns the scope of inventio.
For the division of rhetoric see pages 21, 65, the table in foot-note 1a to Chapter V, and Wilkins’s introduction, page 57.
[13] I. xvi.
[14] xviii.
[15] xix. 86.
[16] 87.
[17] xx. 91.
[18] 92.
[19] disertus. I. xxi. 94.
[20] Eloquentem vero qui mirabilius et magnificentius augere posset atque ornare quæ vellet, omnisque omnium rerum, quæ ad dicendum pertinerent fontis animo ac memoria contineret.
[21] I. xxv-xxxv.
[22] xxxiii. 149 seq.
[23] xxxvi-xlvii.
[24] xlix. 213. Oratorem autem, quoniam de eo quærimus, equidem non facio eundem quem Crassus, qui mihi visus est omnem omnium rerum atque artium scientiam comprehendere uno oratoris officio ac nomine; atque eum puto esse qui et verbis ad audiendum iucundis et sententiis ad probandum accommodatis uti possit in causis forensibus atque communibus: hunc ego appello oratorem eumque esse præterea instructum voce et actione et lepore quodam volo.
[25] lxi. 260.
[26] xxiv-lxxi.
[27] lxxii-lxxxv.
[28] lxxxvi-lxxxviii.
[29] xx. 84.
[30] Animus acer et præsens et acutus idem atque versutus invictos viros efficit.
[31] xxi. 88.
[32] xxii.
[33] Tacitus (Dial. 34) says that the older method (of Cicero’s time), supplanted in his own time by the schools of the declamatores, was apprenticeship.
[34] xxiv. 99.
[35] xxiv. 101.
[36] 102.
[37] 103.
[38] xxiv-xxvi, 104-110. For the more detailed presentation of Quintilian see Chapter iv, page 74.
[39] xxv. 108.
[40] xxvii. 114.
[41] Hendrickson (Amer. Journ. Philol. xxvi. 260) finds this threefold division first here. The usual terms are docere, conciliare, movere.
[42] xxvii. 117.
[43] xxx. 132.
[44] xxxi. 133.
[45] xxxviii. 157.
[46] xxxix. cf. above, xxvii. 117.
[47] xlii-lxxi.
[48] xlii. 178.
[49] xliii. 182.
[50] xlv. 190.
[51] xlvi. 191.
[52] xlix-liii. 213.
[53] liii. 214.
[54] liv-lxxi.
[55] lxxii-lxxxv.
[56] lxxvi.
[57] lxxvii.
[58] lxxviii.
[59] lxxix.
[60] lxxx.
[61] lxxxii-lxxxv.
[62] lxxxvi-lxxxviii.
[63] lxxxviii. 359. verborum memoria, quæ minus est nobis necessaria ... rerum memoria propria est oratoris.
[64] xv-xxxvi.
[65] xxxviii-xlii.
[66] xliii-liv.
[67] lvi-lxi.
[68] x. 37.
[69] 39.
[70] xii. 44.
[71] sapientiam. xv. 56.
[72] 57.
[73] xvi. 61.
[74] xvii-xxiii.
[75] xxiv-xxvii.
[76] xxviii-xxxv.
[77] xiv. 53.
[78] xxxii. 126.
[79] Sandys notes that the avowed object is “criticism, and not direct instruction.” This, however, is part of Cicero’s literary method and of his habit of scorning the manuals. As to his main topic, elocutio, he writes doctrina as definite as that of De oratore on the other parts; and though his headings are not all conventional, his outline and order are thoroughly systematic.
[80] 37, seq.
[81] 40, verba iunxisse; cf. 77, vinculis numerorum; 208.
[82] 44, seq.
[83] 50, seq.
[84] 61-236.
[85] 20-23.
[86] See the articles by Hendrickson cited in the first foot-note to this chapter.
[87] 69.
[88] 100.
[89] One could wish that Cicero had been content with his twofold division in Brutus, xxiii. 89: cum duæ summæ sint in oratore laudes, una subtiliter disputandi ad docendum, altera graviter agendi ad animos audientium permovendos.
[90] The digest of the whole Orator at pages lxxiv-lxxvi of the edition of Sandys need be neither repeated nor revised. Assuming this, I have added here certain significant rhetorical details, translation of some important passages, and the connection of the topics.
[91] See above.
[92] Mensionem, 177. The word in a similar passage at 67 is mensura.
[93] Because, says Sandys, their style is unperiodic, and there can hardly be rhythm without periods. He cites the famous passage from Aristotle discussed above at page 27, and notes Quintilian’s demur as to Herodotus. This is a fair inference from Cicero’s context; and, indeed, the ancients generally considered prose rhythm as oratorical rhythm. The narrative rhythms of imaginative prose were naturally not much discussed separately in a time when prose fiction was undeveloped. The nearest approach to these in oratory was in panegyric. But Dionysius with more discernment praises the compositio of Herodotus. (See below, Chapter v.)
[94] The translation is closer to that of Colin than to that of Sandys. The point—and if it is obvious, it is often forgotten—seems to be that variety in prose depends on rhythm.
[95] concinnitas (201). Cicero does not say explicitly what I have summarized in the last sentence above; but I think he implies it. He does not hint what Stevenson brings out in Some Technical Elements of Style in Literature, that subconscious rhythmical predilection may be a cause, or a determining factor, in adaptation.
[96] Dionysius of Halicarnassus exhibits this specifically with telling effect in the first part of De compositione verborum. See below, Chapter v.
[97] For scientific analysis, with a succinct review of previous investigations, see W. M. Patterson, The Rhythm of Prose, New York, Columbia University Press, 1916. For the clausula in particular see the summary of Zielinski in Sandys, Companion to Latin Studies, 655; Quintilian below, page 79; and M. W. Croll, The cadence of English oratorical prose. Studies in Philology, 16:1, University of North Carolina, January, 1919.