Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

The speeches of the third period were delivered for the most part in private cases, though one of them, On the Consular Provinces (B. C. 56), urging that Cæsar retain his proconsulship of Gaul and that Gabinius and Piso be recalled from Syria and Macedonia, is political, while political considerations have an important place in several others. In the year 55 B. C. the dialogue On the Orator ( De Oratore ) was written, in which the two great orators of the generation before Cicero, Lucius Crassus and Marcus Antonius, discuss the proper qualities of an orator. The dialogue is supposed to have taken place shortly before the death of Crassus (91 B. C.). The lesser parts are taken by some of the younger statesmen of the day, and in the beginning Cicero’s teacher, the augur Scævola, appears. This is one of the most attractive of Cicero’s works. The technical discussions are enlivened by anecdotes and conversation, and the whole dialogue has a grace and sprightliness not often found in Latin prose. The dialogue On the State ( De Re Publica ), in six books, was published before 51 B. C. Only about one third of this is preserved in a fragmentary condition, and for many centuries the entire work was lost with the exception of the Dream of Scipio ( Somnium Scipionis ), from the sixth book. The discussion of the state was followed by a dialogue On Laws ( De Legibus ), which was begun apparently in 52 B. C., but was never finished. In this period we find Cicero turning his attention to technical works on rhetoric and also to philosophy.

The last period was for the most part a time of quiet literary work for Cicero. Only after Cæsar’s death did he return to public life. In 46 B. C. he thanked Cæsar, in the oration For Marcellus , for allowing Marcellus, who had been consul in 51 B. C., to return to Rome; later in the same year he pleaded the case of Quintus Ligarius in the speech For Ligarius , and in 45 B. C. he spoke in behalf of Deiotarus, tetrarch of Galicia, who had been accused of treachery to Cæsar ( For King Deiotarus ), but these are the only speeches of this period except the fourteen Philippics , directed against Antony, all of which belong to the short time between the second of September, 44 B. C., and the twenty-second of April, 43 B. C. In these Cicero shows his old energy and fire, but not quite his earlier power. The name Philippics was given to these speeches almost from the very first, and was in fact authorized by Cicero himself, who welcomed the parallel between himself, arousing and encouraging the Romans against Antony, and Demosthenes urging the Athenians to oppose Philip. But these orations were the work of a few months; by far the greater part of the years after 50 B. C. was occupied with other things. In the three years 46-44 B. C. appeared the rhetorical writings Brutus , the Orator , the Divisions of Oratory , the essay On the Best Kind of Orators , and the long series of philosophical dialogues and treatises, the most important of which are the De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum , a discussion of the different theories respecting the highest good, in five books; the Academics , two books of which are preserved; the Tusculan Disputations , in five books, treating of the chief essentials for happiness; the treatise On the Nature of the Gods , in three books; and the three books On Duties ( De Officiis ); to which should be added, on account of their beauty of style and sentiment, the Cato Maior ( On Old Age ) and the Lælius ( On Friendship ).

Cicero’s extant works comprise fifty-seven orations and fragments of twenty more, seven rhetorical treatises, thirteen philosophical treatises, including those On the State and On Laws , and about eight hundred and sixty letters, among which are ninety addressed to him by his correspondents. Among the lost works are a few historical writings and several translations from the Greek.

Cicero’s chief ambition was to be a great orator, and he spared no pains to attain his end. Richly endowed by nature, he was not content to employ his natural gifts without careful cultivation. He studied the orators of earlier times, especially the great masters of Greek eloquence, made many translations from the Greek for the sake of perfecting his style, and was a diligent student of rhetorical theories. His conception of the proper qualities of the orator was high and noble. In the essay De Oratore , he makes Crassus say:

Wherefore, if one wishes to define and embrace the proper power of an orator in all its extent, that man will be, in my opinion, an orator worthy of this great name, who can speak wisely, in an orderly and polished manner, from memory, and even with some dignity of action, upon whatever subject arises that needs to be set forth in speech. 39

And again:

I assert that by the moderation and wisdom of the perfect orator not only his own dignity, but the welfare of very many persons and of the entire commonwealth is preserved. 40

In short, the orator should be, in Cicero’s opinion, not only a great and practised speaker, but a man of varied learning, and at the same time a man of the highest character. This was the ideal he set before himself and strove throughout his life to attain. Certainly it was no low ideal, nor was the man who strove to attain it a character to be despised.

Cicero’s oratorical style is always careful and finished, but is far from that monotonous smoothness which study often gives to the speech of those who are not by nature gifted orators. In the narrative parts of his speeches he is clear, straightforward, and lucid; in his arguments he is logical, incisive, and full of force; in his appeals to the feelings of his hearers he is vivid, quick and powerful, sometimes, according to the demands of the occasion, violent or pathetic. The elaborate periodic structure of his sentences is varied by many short questions or exclamations, and the habitual dignity of his utterance is softened and enlivened by frequent touches of wit, humor, and irony. So in his defence of Quintus Ligarius, who had served in the senatorial army in Africa, although he knew that Cæsar, before whom the case was argued, was perfectly acquainted with the facts, he began his speech as follows:

A new charge, Gaius Cæsar, and one never heard of before this day, my relative, Quintus Tubero, has brought before you: that Quintus Ligarius was in Africa; and Gaius Pansa, a man of excellent character, trusting, perhaps, in his friendship with you, has dared to confess that it is true. Therefore I know not where to turn. For I had come prepared, since you could not know it by yourself, and could not have heard it from any one else, to take advantage of your ignorance for the salvation of the unfortunate man. 41

After this ironical introduction, which serves to make his opponents seem ridiculous, Cicero appeals to Cæsar’s well-known clemency before proceeding to his argument.

In his own political life Cicero constantly showed his reverence for the dignity of the Roman people, the established forms of government, and the traditions and great deeds of the earlier days of Rome. The same feeling is evident in nearly all his orations. References to the Roman people, the majesty of the Roman people, the Roman empire, the dignity of the senate, the customs or institutions of the ancestors, are found on almost every page. The oration On the Manilian Law is not merely a panegyric of Pompey and an argument for giving him new and greater powers, but at the same time a hymn of praise to the glory of the Roman republic and the virtues of the men of old:

Our ancestors often engaged in wars because our merchants or ship-owners had been somewhat unjustly treated; what, pray, should be your feelings when so many thousands of Roman citizens have been slaughtered by one edict and at one time? Because our envoys had been too haughtily addressed it pleased your fathers that Corinth, the light of all Greece, be blotted out; will you let that king go unpunished who has slain an ex-consul and envoy of the Roman people, after subjecting him to imprisonment, and scourging, and all kinds of torture? They did not endure it when the liberty of Roman citizens was curtailed; will you be negligent when their lives have been taken? They followed up the verbal violation of the right of embassies; will you desert the cause of an ambassador slain with all torments? Be on your guard, lest, just as it was most honorable for them to hand down to you so great and glorious an empire, so it be most disgraceful for you to fail to guard and preserve what you have received. 42