C Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator Or, Accomplished Speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero

Ancient History PDF EPUB

Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator

Or, Accomplished Speaker

Downloads: Under 100
Pages: 159

Download

About this book

The preface presents the first of these rhetorical pieces as a dialogue composed during the author's retirement while the Civil War in Africa was still continuing. The preface says the dialogue contains a few short sketches of all speakers who had flourished with any reputation for eloquence in Greece or Rome, down to the author's own time.

The discussion describes Pericles as adorned with every kind of excellence but most admired for his talent of speaking, and calls Cleon a turbulent citizen allowed to be a tolerable orator. The account says C. Curio was chosen a tribune of the people but stopped speaking after his entire audience deserted him on one occasion. The treatment of ornament says that, after the invention of the periodical form, no writer of any account produced a discourse for mere display rather than service in the Forum without confining every sentence to strict laws of number.

About the author

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, advocate, orator, and philosophical writer whose Latin prose helped transmit Greek ethical debate to later readers. On the Good Life is a Penguin Classics selection, translated and introduced by Michael Grant, that gathers Cicero’s reflections on moral integrity, friendship, public duty, and happiness.