Note 1 — Chapter III · RHETORIC IN THE DE ORATORE AND ORATOR OF CICERO[1]
Reading edition
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.