Note 12 — Chapter III · RHETORIC IN THE DE ORATORE AND ORATOR OF CICERO[1]

Wilkins (note ad loc.) evidently takes composite in a general sense as referring to composition (dispositio, collocatio); for he says: “The definition includes all the five main divisions of oratory,” and dispositio is not otherwise mentioned. But for the apparent intention to include all five parts, composite would more readily suggest compositio, which is the technical name for sentence movement, one of the subdivisions of elocutio. Compositio is consistently used in this special sense; but whether composite is so meant here or not, Cicero intended four of the five parts, if not five; and that suffices to establish his allusion to the traditional division. The issue between Crassus and Antonius has little to do with dispositio; it concerns the scope of inventio.

For the division of rhetoric see pages 21, 65, the table in foot-note 1a to Chapter V, and Wilkins’s introduction, page 57.