CHAPTER III

RHETORIC IN THE _DE ORATORE_ AND _ORATOR_ OF CICERO[1]

Cicero remains after two thousand years the typical orator writing on oratory. The most eminent orator of Roman civilization, he wrote more than any other orator has ever written on rhetoric; and historically he has been more than any other an ideal and model. Conscious of his own range and of the narrowness and low esteem that seem from the beginning to have cursed teachers and especially manuals of rhetoric, he is anxious in his greater works, _De oratore_ and _Orator_, to appear not as a rhetorician, but as a philosopher. Though no treatment could well be more different from Aristotle’s, he is at pains to urge the Academic theory that rhetoric is a branch of philosophy, and to avoid the technical terms of the art while keeping its traditional categories. In this attitude he is but the more typically the artist discussing his own art. He writes as the man of letters in any age writes on literary composition. We may be annoyed at a certain condescension toward teachers—as if they might think themselves able to impart anything like his skill! We may be baffled in trying to reduce some of his elaborations to specific terms. But rather we should be grateful to find rhetoric presented, for once at least, pleasantly as well as suggestively, and still more to find the orator insisting that it must have the same large scope as is claimed for it by the philosopher. Where Aristotle and Cicero agree, we may feel sure.

Cicero has been disparaged as a maker of phrases. That he is certainly. “They write Latin,” says Newman[2] of other great authors; “Cicero writes Roman.” His own style is the final answer to his detractors. He is evidently, indeed, a very conscious man of letters, and filed his speeches for publication; but can we deny vigor of thought to the maker of such vigorous phrase without lapsing into the separation of style from substance? Mere style is incredible—unless, as no one pretends of Cicero, the style is bad. So much _a priori_; and in fact his works will bear analysis. But he is not creative. He clarifies the thoughts of others and brings them to bear. His habit and skill are not at all scientific. His achievement is of style to the extent that it is an achievement of presentation. What he says of rhetoric, for instance, others have said before him; he says it better, more clearly, more vividly. He says it so much better, indeed, that his phrase has a certain finality. It witnesses not only his extraordinary command of diction, but also his constant awareness of human implications. His very diffuseness springs from his constant sense of how people think and feel while they hear and read. In all this he is typically the orator.

_DE ORATORE_

The title _De oratore_ exactly expresses the subject. Cicero is discussing rhetoric, indeed; he is writing _de arte oratoria_; but always, as Aristotle in his first book, from the point of view of the speaker. It is worth insisting on that the practitioner here coincides with the philosopher, and both with the theory and practise of rhetoric in the best days of the ancient tradition. The training of the public speaker, this tradition consistently repeats, must focus the whole training of the man. The vice of the teaching of rhetoric in its decadence under the Empire[3] was so to pervert this principle as to make all training subordinate to technical skill in rhetoric; and indeed the principle has this danger of making the whole man serve rhetoric, instead of making rhetoric bring out the whole man. None the less the principle rightly conceived is fruitful; and no one has shown this more persuasively than Cicero.

The form is obviously the Platonic dialogue. The protagonists are the famous orators Crassus and Antonius, with Scævola, Cotta, Catulus, and Sulpicius as minor interlocutors. Whatever basis there may have been in the actual conversations of these historical persons,[4] the work, like its model, is fiction. It is dramatic in representing the speakers as _personæ_; but its imaginative realization goes no further. The literary device of the dialogue is used only to add concreteness to the discussion of what is always dry when it is abstract. The object is the discussion, not even incidentally the men who discuss. They talk always as orators and to promote oratory; and as orators they proceed from point to point. Plato’s _personæ_ are realized more dramatically. Though only Socrates is created fully, the others emerge as individuals. The movement of a Platonic dialogue is far more conversational. Not only does its form give the illusion of actual talk; its thought moves hither and yon, suggesting rather than concluding, seeking yet other approaches and departures, not marching but questing. Cicero raises questions, indeed, but as they are raised by the public speaker who has predetermined the answer and the stages by which we are to reach it. For all the ease and skill of its dialogue, _De oratore_ proceeds by paragraphs as definitely as _De lege Manilia_.

Though rhetoric is necessary to every educated man for effective communication, and especially to every aspiring youth (_laudis cupidus_), how rare are good orators! The reason is the wide scope. Oratory demands knowledge not only as eruditio, but also in relation to human will (_animorum motus_). It demands expressiveness in a wide range of style and delivery. What more noble? The orator is a principal supporter of the State. So begins Crassus (I. i-viii); but Scævola demurs, unwilling to grant either that states have been established and maintained by orators or that the orator is accomplished in every sort of utterance and of culture.[5] Here the question is posed, Is oratory a special art or a comprehensive study? Though abstractly it may be both, though the one view does not exclude the other absolutely, practically the emphasis of the training will be determined by a choice between the two.

As if to forestall restriction, Crassus begins with the widest extension. He will not agree to exclude[6] from the scope of oratory public management, instruction, even research. Of the Greeks who urge this, he says, Plato is a refutation of his own doctrine, being himself an orator. Democritus, Aristotle, Theophrastus, Carneades, show the force of oratory; Chrysippus, the lack of it. Sound without substance is folly.[7] Even legal pleading demands more than is taught by the rhetoricians. The orator’s effectiveness depends on knowledge of human emotions; and they are a field of philosophy. Though he may leave it to the philosophers as _cognitio_, he must know it[8] as applied to presentation. To make philosophy effective, you must have rhetoric. [Does this finally leave the point, which is that rhetoric needs philosophy?] “What the philosophers dispute in their corners without any urgency of application, and so in thin and feeble talk, the orator will set forth in such a way as to please and move.”[9] Socrates used to say[10] ‘Everybody is eloquent enough on what he knows’; but the truth is rather that neither can any one be eloquent on what he does not know, nor can he be eloquent on what he does know unless he know also the art of rhetoric.

“Therefore,[11] if we seek to define and embrace the force of oratory as both general and special, he methinks is an orator, worthy of so responsible a title, who will say whatever falls to him for presentation with wise forecast of the whole, order, style, memory, and a certain dignity of delivery.”

It is disconcerting to arrive, after all, at the traditional parts of rhetoric. For the definition resolves itself into this:

1. _prudenter_, with wise forecast of the whole = _inventio_; 2. _composite_,[12] with skill in arrangement = _dispositio_; 3. _ornate_, with command of enhancing words = _elocutio_; 4. _memoriter_, with sure memory = _memoria_; 5. _cum actionis dignitate_, with dignity of delivery = _actio_.

But the traditional five parts of rhetoric are more than the table of contents of the manuals (_artes_). They constitute what we now call in college schedules a group of studies; and Crassus is contending for the group as a whole. What he has been insisting on is the importance and the scope of that first part which, in the long history of rhetoric, teachers have most often and most dangerously neglected, _inventio_, the investigation, analysis, and grasp of the subject-matter. He adds[13] that the orator, though in any given case he may gather his information from authorities, will express this information as no expert can express it; and he repeats that in one branch of knowledge he must himself be an expert, namely in human nature.

The practical difficulty of such a conception of oratory, rejoins Antonius,[14] is that we have not leisure to realize it. And if we had, should we not better spend our time on the practise of speaking? The manuals,[15] he adds somewhat evasively, have nothing to say about justice, temperance, etc.; they talk of introductions and perorations. The main thing[16] is that the orator should appear to his auditory to be the sort of man that he wishes to appear. That is the result of dignity of life, about which theories of rhetoric have no more to say than about the means by which men are moved [Crassus might have retorted by citing Aristotle’s whole second book]. No rhetorician[17] was ever even a tolerable orator; many orators have never studied rhetoric. The materials of rhetoric [in the large sense of material urged by Crassus] are too indeterminate[18] for an art.

“I call him a master[19] who can speak keenly and clearly to an average audience from the average point of view; but I call him eloquent[20] who more wondrously and largely can enhance and adorn what he will, and hold in mind and memory all the sources of all things that pertain to public speaking.”

But what pertains to public speaking? How widely should the training for it range? The definition of Antonius obviously stresses _elocutio_. Whether he means to make this the main concern of the orator depends on whether he includes among his “sources” the fund of knowledge urged by Crassus. The context seems to show that he does not. To put his definition beside that of Crassus above is to see that its intention is narrower. It specifies no more than style, first as the amplitude and vividness that enhance a particular passage, and secondly as the orator’s general virtuosity.

Crassus returns to the charge with a summary[21] of the actual training. The student should practise[22] not only extempore speaking from outline, but also writing. The writing that he advises here is not for the casting of a given speech in a particular form, but for education in range and control of expression. To this end he recommends also wide reading. The study of law, he adds,[23] should be both of technical detail and also of larger aspects and relations.

Antonius stands his ground. His second definition of the orator is substantially a repetition of his first, merely sharpening the contrast.

“But the orator[24]—and he is the subject of our inquiry—I do not define as does Crassus, who has seemed to me to include knowledge of all sciences and arts within the orator’s single function and name. I think him an orator who can use words agreeable to hear and thoughts (_sententiis_) adapted to prove in cases both forensic and deliberative; ... and I would have him also skilled in voice, gesture, and manner.”

Lest there should seem to be a begging of the question in the word _sententiis_, which means thoughts and therefore may seem to imply the studies urged by Crassus, _sententia_ should be understood rather of the brilliant expression of a single idea than of a line of thought or of intellectual grasp in general. That neither of the latter is intended here is shown by the context.

Because certain orators, Antonius resumes, have been masters of other things than oratory it does not follow that these other things belong to oratory. The most that can be said is that, to attain eminence in oratory, one must have heard, seen, and read much. Neither an orator’s knowledge of human nature nor his use of this knowledge in speaking is scientific. Nor must the orator be a lawyer any more than he must be an actor. Mastery of law, of acting, of history, of other things, is, indeed, an advantage; but it is not a necessity to oratory. If the orator is to be, as Crassus has described him,[25] one who can speak in ways adapted to persuade, he must sacrifice many other studies in order to master his own proper art.

One closes the first book with the idea that both Crassus and Antonius are right. The two men, even more than the two views, are complementary. The views are irreconcilable only when pushed to the extreme; and in extreme form either the extensiveness of Crassus or the intensiveness of Antonius may become a _reductio ad absurdum_. Normally rhetoric is both extensive and intensive, both a comprehensive study of life and a specific art, even as the means of persuasion are both extrinsic and intrinsic. Doubtless Cicero meant to leave this impression; for he gives full weight to the theory of Antonius here, makes him the mouthpiece in Book II for the specific lore of _inventio_, which corresponds to the knowledge urged in Book I by Crassus, and makes Crassus in Book III the spokesman for style. But certainly Cicero sympathizes, and wishes us to sympathize, with Crassus. It is Cicero, not merely Crassus, who pleads that the teaching of the orator be not the imparting of tricks, nor mainly of technic in a wider and worthier sense, but the gradual bringing to bear of the whole man. He saw in the focusing of rhetoric on style a typical danger for teaching. The danger was present, apparently, in the teaching of his own day; it was serious in the time of Tacitus; it was epidemic in the schools of _declamatio_ that spread along the Mediterranean and taught some of the fathers of the Church. The view of Antonius, uncorrected by the view of Crassus, is imperfect theoretically; practically it leads to the typical vices of the teaching of composition: historically it has branded a stigma on the word Rhetoric and all its derivatives.

The view of Crassus, too, has its dangers: the danger of vagueness and dissipation, the danger of pretentiousness and sometimes of sciolism. But apparently these dangers can more readily be met and counteracted, and must be risked; for the history of rhetoric seems to show that his is the right emphasis and the more fruitful idea. Speaking and writing are less a profession even for orators and men of letters, much less for educated mankind in general, than a life. Though the same may be said of engineering, though all technical education involves general education, yet in learning to speak and write the technic is smaller in proportion to the general training. The training of Roman youth in oratory was at its best education for leadership. In this education composition was both end and means. It has been so always, it is so to-day, in the hands of its best teachers. The specific application is to open in the teaching of composition manifold relations. It thrives on what we now call correlation; it dwindles in segregation. For we may learn from Cicero to give rhetoric the same abundant relations to human affairs as he urges his orator to seek in all his oratory.

Because it has most of the Ciceronian message Book I has been the most studied and probably the most fruitful. The division of Book II is conventional. After glancing at the fields of oratory and the component parts of a speech and urging imitation, it treats _inventio_[26] and _dispositio_[27] under the usual heads and briefly summarizes _memoria_.[28]

Oratory, says Antonius, is essentially either deliberative or forensic; for Aristotle’s third division, occasional oratory, is not so much a separate field as a particular direction and a fundamental habit of thought. Cicero is quite unconvincing here. Perhaps his own habit of introducing into forensic the ways of occasional oratory, as in his _Archias_, blinded him to the significance of Aristotle’s third category.

The traditional _exordium_, _narratio_, etc., Antonius finds to be rather elements than parts, since the particular function of each is not confined to one place. From this perfunctory rehearsal we are awakened by suggestive advice to teachers.[29]

Those who really teach rhetoric are engaged less in drill than in promotion of the spirit that wins success.[30] “Therefore I will train, if I can, so as first to discern what the pupil can do. Let him be imbued with literature; let him have read and heard something; let him have learned the rules; I will provoke him so far as is feasible to his utmost in voice, force, spirit. If I perceive that he can reach the heights, I will beg him, and if he seems also a good man, I will conjure him, to revise; so much social value do I attach to this technical skill for both the outstanding orator and the good man. But if, do what he will, he is going to remain mediocre, I will let him do what he will, and especially not nag him; if he is going to be positively offensive or ridiculous, I will tell him to close his lips or try something else. For neither can we ever desert the student of exceptional ability nor deter the one who has at least some ability....

“To begin at home,[31] Catulus, I first heard Sulpicius here in an unimportant case when he was a stripling. Though he showed physical equipment of voice, presence, gesture, his speech was rapid, hurried—a matter of temperament—and somewhat effervescent and superabundant—a matter of youth. I did not scorn him. I am glad to see youth exuberant. As with vines, it is easier to prune than to cultivate. You should have seen the change in him when next I heard him after he had studied Crassus.”

The first specific counsel, then, is for the teacher promotion; for the student it is imitation, such as Sulpicius’s of Crassus, not mere copying of mannerisms, but such as produces[32] schools of eloquence from the example of great orators.[33]

Under _inventio_ the first task is the investigation of the facts.

“But finally[34] to bring the orator whom we are forming to actual cases ... we will teach him first—laugh if you will—to know them thoroughly and deeply. This is not taught in school; for the cases assigned to boys are easy. For example: ‘The statute forbids a stranger (_peregrinus_) to climb a wall; [this man] climbed; he repulsed the enemy; he is brought to trial.’ No labor to know a case of this sort; for rightly nothing is taught [in school] about studying a case. But in the forum one has to know documents, contracts and agreements, decrees, the lives of the parties. Through carelessness in getting such knowledge men who in their anxiety to appear much in demand undertake too many cases often lose.[35] Not only so, but they may be suspected of bad faith or of incompetence.

“For my part,[36] I take pains to learn the case from the client himself, alone, that he may talk more freely, and to debate against him, that he may defend himself and advance whatever arguments he has thought out. When I have dismissed him, I quite dispassionately take three parts: my own, my opponent’s, the judge’s. Whatever arguments promise more help than embarrassment I settle on, rejecting others in the same way. By this plan I manage to think at one time and speak at another.[37] Some speakers have the confidence to do both at once; but I am sure that they too would speak somewhat better if they recognized the advisability of setting aside one time for thought, another for speech.”

Though this is a conventional topic, and though its application here is legal, it is none the less instructive generally; and it might directly improve the teaching of argument and the practise of debate in our colleges.

The second heading under _inventio_ is also conventional, the _status_, or determination of the main character of the case and the main issues. The _status_ was determined in the classical system by applying certain traditional questions. The _status legalis_ may be set aside as applicable only to legal pleading. The _status rationalis_, or _status_ considered in the general aspects of reason as an affair of common argument, was determined by asking oneself how far the debate hinged (1) on fact, on whether such-and-such things had happened, or (2) on definition, the facts being generally admitted, or (3) more broadly, on the interpretation of admitted facts and definitions. Though most cases need to be looked at from all these three points of view, in most there will be found a decided predominance of one; and forecast of this will direct the emphasis of the whole argument, will tell where to throw one’s weight. This one is the _status_ of that case.

In the Latin terms:

(1) if the main question is _an sit_, the _status_ is _coniectura_, or _status coniecturalis_;

(2) if it is _quid sit_, the _status_ is _finis_, or _status definitivus_;

(3) if it is _quale sit_, the _status_ is _qualitas_, or _status generalis_.

Though Cicero’s discussion[38] is necessarily conventional, he has keen practical suggestions. As to (2), which in his order is third, Antonius says:

“We are often advised to define the crucial term briefly;[39] but that is puerile. What we need is not a brief or abstract definition, as of terms like _law_ or _state_ defined according to the rule of neither too little nor too much. In the case I have mentioned neither Sulpicius nor I attempted definition of that sort. Rather each of us dilated on treason with every means of amplification. For mere definition, in the first place, is often snatched out of your hands if a single word be objected to or added or omitted; in the second place, by its very nature it smacks of teaching (_doctrina_) and almost childish practise; and finally, it cannot enter the perception and mind of the judge, for before it is grasped it slips past.”

But the case must be surveyed also as to its ἦθος and its πάθος.

“Then I most carefully consider[40] both the appeal _of_ my client’s character and my own and the appeal _to_ the feelings of those whom I address. So every theory of speaking seeks persuasion[41] through (1) establishing the facts, (2) winning the sympathy of the audience, and (3) arousing those of whom the case demands action....”

“Teachers,[42] indeed, have divided cases into several kinds and have provided a fund of arguments for each kind. This is adapted to the education of the young; for as soon as a case is posed, they know where to find arguments for it. Nevertheless not only is it slow-witted to pursue rivulets, not discerning the fount, but it is becoming to our age and habit to summon what we wish from the source whence all things flow.”

The lore of preliminary analysis is concluded with a brilliant summary under three questions of Cicero’s own:[43] (1) what kind of case is it in general (_naturam causæ_), i.e., of fact or of interpretation? (2) on what does it turn, i.e., what is the point but for which there would be no debate? _(quid faciat causam; id est, quo sublato controversia stare non possit)?_ (3) why is it disputed? how does the dispute arise (_quid veniat in iudicium_)?

The transition from argument to the other means of persuasion, from _probare_ or _docere_ to _conciliare_ and _movere_, is the caveat of Antonius against the current division of cases into general and particular[44] as a capital error. Theoretically every particular case must have general relations; practically, if oratory is not to lapse into mere accumulation of details, the orator must have the habit of bringing these general relations to bear. Antonius adds the further caveat that the whole system of the _status_ is merely analytical. It is logical; and logic shows only how to judge arguments, not how to find them.[45] The sources of arguments (_sedes argumentorum_)[46] are therefore more important.

As to _conciliare_ and _movere_[47] Cicero says only the usual things, perhaps because _inventio_ in these aspects is rather to be promoted by exhortation than imparted by new categories.

Men take a decision oftener through feeling than through fact or law.[48] They are moved by evidences of character in the speaker and in his client.[49] Orators must have a scent for an audience, for what people are feeling, thinking, waiting for, wishing. To arouse feeling, the orator must have it himself.[50] He need not feign it; it arises naturally from his imaginative sympathy, as on the stage.[51] Emotional appeal is not to be made suddenly; it is to be led up to and down from;[52] and it demands full force of delivery.[53] The only way to rebut feeling is by feeling. Cicero adds the usual sections on wit and humor.[54]

The treatment of _dispositio_[55] gives little specific counsel toward the achievement of that sequence in which Cicero himself excelled.

In general, _dispositio_ has to consider: how to make the most of the stronger points without seeming to slur the weaker; whether the case will prevail more readily through argument or through appeal, through direct proof or through refutation; how to cover retreat at need by making sure that the case, if it cannot be won, shall at least not be damaged. [To translate this doctrine into the terms of modern manuals, the first general consideration of _dispositio_ is emphasis, both as proportion of space and as progressive iteration of main points.]

The traditional order[56] (_exordium_, _narratio_, etc.,) is natural; but the real problem is the arrangement, or sequence, of the proof and the weighing of arguments rather than the counting of them. [This is a practical caveat against the tyro’s idea that he can prevail by sheer force of numbers. To be effective, an argument must be more than a series; it must be a line. Its progression is more than arithmetical; it is rather geometrical.] Appeal to feeling[57] should be rather pervasive than located in particular divisions. The strongest arguments should be put first and last; the exordium composed after the rest of the speech, in order to be the more carefully adapted[58] and more essentially related to the plaintiff,[59] the defendant, the case, or the judges. The _narratio_,[60] though concise, must be ample not only for vividness, but even for clearness. Constructive argument and refutation are to be considered together as a whole [i.e., debate is always at once destructive and constructive].

Without making panegyric[61] as a separate kind of oratory, we can see that deliberative speeches offer more scope in that direction than forensic. Cicero adds general topics for panegyric.

The chapters on _memoria_[62] begin with the familiar story of Simonides, to make the obvious point that what furthers memory is order. Visual associations, Cicero thinks, are strongest, and can be used to recall even sentences. But verbal memory is less important. The orator’s memory is of things.[63]

In Book III Crassus discusses style (_elocutio_). About a third of the book[64] amplifies the theme that rhetoric is inseparable from philosophy. What follows is a conventional treatment of the choice of words (_electio_)[65] and the movement of sentences (_compositio_),[66] with a few chapters on delivery.[67] These latter topics are handled so much more explicitly in _Orator_ that only the first part claims analysis.

By style we mean generally diction that is idiomatic, clear, vivid, and apt.[68] Idiom and clearness we may take for granted. “All elegance of speaking, though it is polished by the study of grammar, is promoted by reading aloud orators and poets.[69]... If there be a certain Roman and urban tone, in which there is nothing to offend, to displease, or even to attract notice, nothing to sound or smell foreign, let us follow this and learn to flee not only country roughness but also foreign bravado.[70] ... women more easily keep the pure tradition.”

“That scheme of thought and expression and force of speaking the ancient Greeks used to call philosophy.[71]... For that ancient teaching appears to have been the preceptress alike of living rightly and of speaking well. Nor were the teachers separate; the same masters formed morals and speech.”[72] From the scorn of Socrates for rhetoric arose the unnatural separation of rhetoric from philosophy ... “that divorce as it were of the tongue from the heart ... that one class of persons should teach us to think, another to speak, rightly.”[73]

Philosophy has suffered by this separation. The Cyrenaic philosophy remains incomplete by dissuading from public life. The Stoic philosophy, though it declares eloquence to be virtue and wisdom, makes wisdom practically unattainable; and the dry abstractness of address cultivated by the Stoics is quite ineffective. Rhetoric, on the other hand, has suffered by being reduced to maxims of pleading. In a word, training in rhetoric, to be adequate, must include philosophy; and philosophy remains ineffective without rhetoric. This, of course, is the ideal; but it is not practically impossible; for we are not saying that the orator must be a philosopher, only that he must know philosophy.[74]

Therefore style must not be conceived either as the controversial acrimony of the forum or as conventional adornment borrowed by ignorance. The style must become the thought, not weary the audience by display; and the very idea of enhancing implies a store of thought.[75]

The futile distinction made by rhetoricians between a particular case and a general has this bearing on style, that eloquence consists in bringing to bear on every question those fundamental human aspects which can be exhibited only through large knowledge; for copiousness of style comes only from copiousness of thought. The Greeks gave oratory to philosophy, philosophy to oratory. Our Roman ancestors aspired to knowledge in all fields that touch civil life. The greatness of the arts has been diminished by division and separation.[76]

These twenty chapters are a brilliant instance of what the ancients meant by amplification. Logically they do little more than iterate the truism that style is inseparable from substance; but actually they make the truism live. Cicero is an admirable example of his own definition of the eloquent as those “who speak with clear distinctions, lucid order, amplitude, brilliance of matter and manner, and in prose weave something of the spell of verse—in a word, who enhance.”[77] “Immortal gods! said Catulus, what a variety of things, Crassus, you have embraced! what force, what abundance! and from what poverty have you dared to lead the orator forth and establish him in the kingdom of his fathers!”[78]

_ORATOR_

Cicero’s _De oratore_, though it covers all five parts of rhetoric, is most ample as to _inventio_. His _Orator_ is complementary in that it is largely devoted to _elocutio_.[79] Like the earlier work, _Orator_ is specifically limited to deliberative and forensic oratory. Occasional oratory, or panegyric, though he declines again to treat it as a separate field,[80] Cicero recognizes as the “nurse of that orator whom we wish to form,” especially in sentence skill.[81] _Inventio_[82] and _dispositio_,[83] as depending more on foresight than on eloquence, are barely summarized. _Elocutio_ occupies three-fourths of the discussion.[84]

_Orator_ has been less attractive than _De oratore_ for the reason that it is more compact and more technical. None the less it has a cogency and a felicity even more characteristically Ciceronian. Few men writing on style have shown in their own styles so much precision and charm. _De oratore_ keeps the fluency of dialogue; _Orator_ shows more of Cicero’s own mastery of the oratorical period.

The division of style into three kinds (_genus tenue_, _genus medium_, _genus grande_)[85] has been much discussed as to its origin.[86] Whatever its origin, it is dubious as philosophy and has been vicious as pedagogy. Cicero applies it later[87] to the three tasks, or objects, of oratory: to prove, to win sympathy, to move. He adds[88] that the orator should excel in all three directions. But this hardly warrants a division of style into three kinds; for actually the teacher too ready to classify, or the student too ready to think of style as separable and additional, may thereby deviate his whole study. Historically the trail of the three styles has been baneful. For inculcating style perhaps the least fruitful means is classification.[89]

But Cicero’s discussion of style, though grouped at first by this classification, ranges beyond it.

DIGEST OF _ORATOR_, 61-236, ON STYLE[90]

Style (61) is the very mark of the orator. The diction of the philosophers (62-63) has neither the force nor the pungency of oratory; for the philosophers (64) are limited to abstract discussion, as the sophists (65) to decoration, and the historians (66) to a somewhat diffuse smoothness. The style of poetry (67) differs not in speed or vividness, but in boldness of diction (68) and in sometimes being pursued for sheer values of sound.

The three styles of speaking[91] arise from the orator’s three objects: (69) to prove, to please, to move. Aptness, then, demands adjustment not only to the speaker (71) and the audience (72), but also to the object. What is proper to the plain style (_genus tenue_, 75)? This sounds so ordinary that it seems easier than it is; for, though not strong, it must be sound. It is untrammeled by cadences (77), is free without rambling, and neither fits word to word nor avoids the pleasant negligence of one elaborating matter rather than manner. It avoids periodic structure (85) and dramatic delivery (86); but admits a careful use of wit (87-90). The median style (_genus medium_, 92), adjusted to the winning of sympathy (_conciliare_), aimed at the ἦθος of the audience, has as its chief character _suavitas_; as its chief exponent, Demetrius of Phalerum. The high style (_genus grande_, 97), aiming at πάθος, though it is the acme, is not to be pursued exclusively; for the perfect orator must be master of all three (100); the three may be modified (103), combined, and varied; and variety is necessary (109) both in any given speech and as a habit.

After a summary, 113-139, of the orator’s necessary knowledge, especially of the other parts of rhetoric, Cicero passes to his main topic, harmony. Explaining (140-148) the importance of this, he defines it in its simplest aspect of euphony (149); negatively as the avoidance of hiatus, stops, and other awkward combinations, positively as balance, symmetry, the rounding out of the phrase by correspondence (165).

The rest of _Orator_, about one third (l-lxxi, 168-236) is devoted to prose rhythm under four heads: (a) origin, (b) cause, (c) nature, (d) use. Under the first Cicero develops a rhetorical doctrine of rhythm from Thrasymachus, Isocrates, and Gorgias. As to the second, its cause (177-8), he says: “The ear, or the mind through the ear, contains in itself a certain natural measure[92] of all spoken sounds.” The third heading, the nature of rhythm, is treated at greater length (liii-lx, 179-203). Analyzing rhythm to show that it has an effect distinct from that of mere euphony, Cicero goes on to examine what this effect is (183). Since there is a distinct rhythmical effect in prose, it can be explained, though it appeals to sense, not to reason, and though it is less obvious and less essential than in verse. It is lacking (186) in earlier writers, Herodotus for example.[93] It has to be sought as a final grace of prose (186). “If there is (187) prose stinted and concise and other prose dilated and fluent, the difference must arise not from the nature of letters (_litterarum_), but from the variety of intervals, long and short; and since prose is now steady, now shifting, according as it is woven and blended with these intervals, the nature of the difference (or of this variety) must reside in the rhythm (_numeris_, 187).”[94]

Prose being unmetrical, however, are its rhythms (188) still the same as those of verse? The feet must be the same; but what rhythms are available in prose? That any foot is possible appears in that we often fall carelessly into meter. Prose consists largely of iambs; but we often lapse into less familiar meters. It is plain, then, that prose feet are the same as poetic.

Some think iambic, as being most like real life (191), more suited to simple narrative; dactylic, to the dignity with which it is associated in heroic verse. Ephorus prefers the pæan or the dactyl to the spondee or the trochee because the latter are either too slow or too rapid. Aristotle, finding the heroic too grand for prose, the iambic too colloquial (192), and the trochaic too tripping, approves (193) the pæan. This is to be preferred as being less readily metrical (196); but it should be varied by other measures. Iambic is most frequent (197) in the plain style, the pæan in the grand style; but all should be mingled for variety. “Thus the hearers will hardly notice the snaring of their delight [in sound] and the pains to square the speech. These will be the less apparent if the words and thoughts are weighty; for those who are listening to these and liking them—the words, I mean, and the thoughts—while their attention and admiration are thus fixed do not notice the rhythm, though they would be less pleased without it.” (197). Prose is rhythmical not (198) by never varying—that would be verse—but by movement neither limping nor fluctuating, but even and constant. Prose rhythm, therefore, is more difficult than verse. The rhythm of the period (199), in order to make such a close as the ear desires, must be marshalled that way from the start. Prose rhythm may arise, without rhythmical intention, from the harmonizing[95] of the phrase.

The use (204) of rhythm is most extensive in panegyric (207); in the other fields it enters when panegyric enters, or when statement of facts demands rather dignity than poignancy, often also in amplification, and most frequently in the peroration (210). For variety change (211) from the statements grouped and rounded in periods to statements detached (_incisa_ and _membra_). Debate, more than exposition, needs speed. The cadence, or close (_clausula_, 215) may be in any one of several modes. The dichoreus, preferred in Asia (212), is admirable; but any one cadence palls. A full period (221) consists of four parts, or clauses (_membra_), i.e., is about the length of four hexameter verses; and is held together by _nodi continuationis_. When we wish to shift to detached short sentences (_membratim_), as we must often do in forensic, we pause, and break the rhythm that might suggest artifice. But even in such shorter reaches (223) we need rhythm, whether they be _incisa_, _membra_, or short periods; and these may be supported by a longer period, ending in a dichoreus or a spondee. The shorter reaches demand freer measures. They are of most force in forensic (225), especially in proof and refutation. Nor is any sort of speaking (226) stronger than to strike with two or three words, sometimes even with one, and then to interpose a rhythmical period.

Rhythm is not merely beautiful (227), but, like the beautiful motions of athletes, useful. Pursuit of it must avoid the appearance of artifice, padding (231) to round the cadence, the laming of the movement by too many short reaches, and monotony. Proof of the value of rhythm may be made by dislocating[96] the sentence movement of a good orator without changing the words, or conversely by rearranging the sentences of a careless orator (233). Those who affect to despise rhythm (234) are unable to master it. Calling themselves Attic, they ignore the rhythm of Demosthenes. If they prefer a loose style, let them follow it if they can show even in their parts the beauty that is lacking in the whole (235), or if they can compose in any other style; but the perfect orator (236) is master of all his art.

Cicero’s treatment of rhythm in oratory, though sometimes vague and as a whole unsatisfying, is important historically. Its very extent and care show that for the orator, no less than for the theorist, rhythm in the classical tradition was a main consideration. It was not something additional, a final grace of style, but an essential element of oratorical effectiveness. Moreover it was a primary and controlling consideration in all that revision which is spent on the shaping of sentences. The oral and auditory ancients taught sentences more largely as movements in time than do the writing and visual moderns. They are thus the more instructive to those whose ears writing and print have trained imperfectly. In every case, of course, ancient or modern, the unit is logical, the expression of a thought; but whereas modern manuals generally confine themselves to terms of syntax, the ancient rhetoric is constantly aware of the effects of rhythm. Its analysis of these, though it leaves much to be desired in scientific accuracy,[97] serves at least to direct attention and stimulate imitation; and more than the modern logic of the sentence it seems to promote fluency.[98]

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,