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Less strongly expressed, the same view is also found in the exordium of another and more mature treatise on rhetoric, by an author whose name is unknown, written a year or two before that of Cicero: "Non enim parum in se fructus habet copia dicendi et commoditas orationis, si recta intelligentia et definita animi moderatione gubernetur."
The series of his rhetorical works has been preserved nearly complete, and consists of the De Inventione, De Oratore, Brutus sive de claris Oratoribus, Orator sive de optimo genere Dicendi, De partitione Oratoriâ, Topica, and de optimo genere Oratorum.
This is that copia dicendi which gained Cicero the high testimony of Cæsar to his inventive powers, and which, we may add, constitutes him the greatest master of composition that the world has seen.
Totidem, sc. quot Romani, cf. idem, 4, note. Tacitus often omits one member of a comparison, as he does also one of two comparative particles. Species. Parts. Sometimes the logical divisions of a genus; so used by Cic. and Quin. Intellectum. A word of the silver age, cf. note on voluntariam, 24. Intellectum habent==are understood and named. "Quam distortum dicendi genus!" Guen.
Greek rhetoricians, in spite of Cato's opposition, had been steadily making way, and increasing the number of their pupils; but it was not until about 93 B.C. that PLOTIUS GALLUS taught the principles of Rhetoric in Latin. Quintilian says, "Latinos dicendi praeceptores extremis L. Crassi temporibus coepisse Cicero auctor est: quorum insignis maxime Plotius fuit."
Thus if a man, abandoning the study of reason and duty, which is always perfectly straight and honourable, spends his whole time in the practice of speaking, he is being brought up to be a hindrance to his own development, and a dangerous citizen." This reminds us of Cato's saying that an orator is "vir bonus dicendi peritus."
M. Reybaud, in my opinion, belongs rather to the category of dupes, which includes in its bosom so many honest people and people of so much brains. M. Reybaud will remain, then, in my eyes, the vir probus dicendi peritus, the conscientious and skilful writer, who may easily be caught napping, but who never expresses anything that he does not see or feel.
Then will he rule their minds and turn their hearts. Then will he do with them as he would wish." But in the teeth of all this it did not please Brutus himself. "When I wrote to him," he said to Atticus, "in obedience to his wishes, 'De Optimo Genere Dicendi, he sent word, both to you and me, that that which pleased me did not satisfy him."
These works, written mostly in 45 and 44, are, except the De Cons., still extant. To the list may be added also other works of a rhetorical nature, such as the Topica and De Optima Genere Dicendi, and some lost philosophical books, such as De Gloria.
Cato indeed had well said to his son, "Orator est, Marce fili, vir bonus dicendi peritus," thus putting the ethical stamp of the man in the first place; and his "rem tene, verba sequentur" is a valuable bit of advice for all learners and teachers of literature.
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