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Updated: May 6, 2025
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.
When the educated masses meet with exaggerated dulness and dryness, when they are in the presence of really vapid commonplaces, they now seem to believe that such things are the signs of health; and in this respect the words of the author of the dialogus de oratoribus are very much to the point: "illam ipsam quam jactant sanitatem non firmitate sed jejunio consequuntur."
If we admit the Dialogue de Claris Oratoribus to be the work of Tacitus, his beau-ideal of the education proper for an orator was no less comprehensive, no less elevated, no less liberal, than that of Cicero himself; and if his theory of education was, like Cicero's, only a transcript of his own education, he must have been disciplined early in all the arts and sciences in all the departments of knowledge which were then cultivated at Rome; a conclusion in which we are confirmed also by the accurate and minute acquaintance which he shows, in his other works, with all the affairs, whether civil or military, public or private, literary or religious, both of Greece and Rome.
He then published the De claris Oratoribus and Orator; and a year later, when he was sixty-three, his Academicæ Quæstiones, in the retirement from public business to which he was driven by the dictatorship of Cæsar. This work had originally consisted of two dialogues, which he entitled Catulus and Lucullus, from the names of the respective speakers in each.
Statius, himself an author of far higher poetical gifts, speaks of him in terms of almost extravagant admiration; with a more balanced judgment Quintilian sums him up in words which may be taken as on the whole the final criticism adopted by the world; ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus, et, ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.
His treatise De claris Oratoribus was written after an interval of nine years, about the time of Cato's death, when he was sixty-one, and is thrown into the shape of a dialogue between Brutus, Atticus, and himself.
In his inquiries he will find that the Cicero, if he look to Quintilian or Tacitus or the Crassus, if he look to Cicero is so set before him as the true model; and with that he may be content. The De Oratore is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as I think, the pleasantest to read. It was followed, after ten years, by the Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, and then by the Orator.
The first work written in 46 was the Hortensius, or De Philosophia, now lost. It was founded on a lost dialogue of Aristotle, and set forth the advantages of studying Philosophy. During the same year Cicero completed several oratorical works, the Partitiones Oratoriae, the Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, and the Orator, all of which are extant.
The decisive battle of Thapsus put an end to this uncertainty; and meanwhile Cicero had resumed work on his De Legibus, and had once more returned to the study of oratory in one of the most interesting of his writings, the Brutus de claris Oratoribus, in which he gives a vivid and masterly sketch of the history of Roman oratory down to his own time, filled with historical matter and admirable sketches of character.
Sheridan observed, upon my mentioning it to him, 'He liked your compliment so well, he was willing to take it with pun sauce. For my own part, I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed; and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation. Had Johnson treated at large De Claris Oratoribus , he might have given us an admirable work.
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