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Did Rome’s Greatest Orator Live Up to His Own Ideals?

Cicero denouncing Catiline in the Roman Senate
Quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?
How long, O Catiline, will you abuse our patience?

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Who was Cicero? Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 BCE) has been hailed as Rome’s greatest orator. Lawyer, statesman, philosopher, and master of prose, he shaped not only the Latin language but the ideals of rhetoric, public service, and civic education for centuries to come. More than any other Roman, he sought to unite wisdom with eloquence.

But can someone understand virtue without consistently practising it? Cicero wrote brilliantly about virtue, duty, and the public good, yet struggled with ambition, anxiety, and political compromise. Admired by saints, humanists, and the American Founding Fathers, he remains one of the most influential—and most contradictory—figures in Western intellectual history.

A Frail Body for a Formidable Mind

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in Arpinum, around 60 miles south of Rome, into a wealthy equestrian family. His cognomen, or personal surname, derives from the Latin for ‘chickpea’ (cicer), by which his ancestors may have prospered. He lived through a time of great civil unrest, famously decrying, O tempora, O mores (‘Oh the times, oh the customs’). Despite his frail and sickly constitution, he served in the army in 89–88 BCE, notably under Pompey’s father, Pompeius Strabo. But what he lacked in virility and nobility he more than made up in study and oratory. 

In 87 BCE, Philo of Larissa, the last undisputed scholarch of Plato’s Academy, arrived in Rome, and Cicero came to sit at his feet—later opining that, if Zeus were to speak, it would be in none other than the language of Plato. He studied law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who founded the study of law as a systematic discipline. Scaevola also served as Pontifex Maximus (High Priest of Rome) before falling victim to the power struggle between Marius and Sulla. In 82 BCE, he was murdered in the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. 

Cicero began practising the law in around 83–81 BCE and, in 80, made his reputation on the back of his brilliant defence of Sextus Roscius against a fabricated charge of patricide. In 79, partly on account of his health, he travelled to Greece, Asia, and Rhodes, meeting with several leading philosophers, including Antiochus of Ascalon in Athens. While in Greece, he asked the oracle at Delphi how he might attain the greatest glory. The pythoness (priestess of Apollo) replied, ‘By making your own genius and not the opinion of the people the guide of your life.’ 

Pater Patriae

In the next period, Cicero climbed the cursus honorum, or ‘ladder of offices’, holding each office at or near the youngest possible age: quaestor in 75 BCE, aedile in 69, praetor in 66, and consul in 63. He became consul at the age of just forty-two, making him the youngest non-patrician to serve in the office in the five-hundred-year history of the Republic. 

As quaestor in western Sicily, Cicero seemed so formidable that the locals asked him to prosecute Gaius Verres, who, as governor, had plundered the province. He fought the case with such aplomb that he came to be regarded as the greatest orator in Rome. While in Sicily, he took it upon himself to rediscover the forgotten tomb of Archimedes, which he described as surmounted by a sphere and cylinder. He then chided the Syracusans for leaving it to a man from Arpinum to remember their most illustrious citizen. 

As praetor, Cicero made his first great speech in the Senate, arguing that Pompey should be given the command of the campaign against Mithradates VI, King of Pontus. But the crowning glory of his political career came during his consulship, when, by the force of his four Catiline Orations, he exposed and crushed Catiline’s conspiracy to overthrow the Republic. He had five of the conspirators executed and announced their deaths to a cheering crowd with the single word, Vixerunt (‘They lived’). For ‘saving the Republic’, as he liked to boast, he received the honorific Pater Patriae (‘Father of the Fatherland’) from his ally Cato the Younger, but lived forever after in fear of reprisal for having put Roman citizens to death without trial.

Exile and Return

In 62 BCE, Cicero added a large townhouse on the Palatine Hill to his portfolio of properties. The house, which he described as ‘in sight of nearly the whole city’ (in conspectu prope totius urbis), had belonged to Rome’s richest citizen, Crassus, and cost him 3.5 million sesterces. 

When Julius Caesar pressed him to join his alliance with Pompey and Crassus—the First Triumvirate—Cicero refused, believing that their arrangement undermined the Republic. He also declined Caesar’s offer of a place on his staff in Gaul, leaving himself exposed to the many enemies that his sharp tongue had made. 

When Publius Clodius Pulcher became tribune in 58 BCE, he passed a law, with retroactive effect, to exile any official who had executed a Roman citizen without trial. The law was squarely aimed at Cicero. He fled to Greece while Clodius’ supporters ransacked his house on the Palatine and his villas at Formiae and Tusculum. 

Writing to his friend Atticus, he lamented:

I say this deliberately—that no one was ever afflicted with so heavy a calamity, that no one had ever greater cause to wish for death; while I have let slip the time when I might have sought it most creditably. Henceforth death can never heal, it can only end my sorrow.

It is difficult to imagine Socrates—or indeed Cato—ever saying such a thing. In his Life of Cicero, Plutarch put his finger on the discrepancy between the man and his learning: 

He was become so poor-spirited, so humiliated and dejected by his misfortunes, as none could have expected in a man who had devoted so much of his life to study and learning… But the desire for glory has great power in washing the tinctures of philosophy out of the souls of men.

In the event, Cicero’s exile lasted little more than a year. In 57 BCE, he was recalled by the Senate, with Clodius casting the single vote against the motion. He was met by cheering crowds all the way from Brundisium (modern-day Brindisi) to the Capitol, and his destroyed properties were rebuilt at public expense.

Caesar and Civil War

He took to opposing Cæsar, but this only drove Cæsar closer to Pompey and Crassus. So he swallowed his principles and made a show of supporting the triumvirs, before quietly withdrawing into his library. In 53 BCE, the year that Crassus died, he freed Marcus Tullius Tiro ‘to be our friend instead of our slave’, and it is Tiro who, after his death, collected his letters and speeches for publication. In 51 BCE, Tiro, himself a prolific writer, accompanied him to Cilicia (in modern-day Turkey) after he reluctantly accepted the governorship of the province. He restored calm and order to the entire region, repulsing Parthian incursions, suppressing brigands, and stemming corruption. He stopped in Rhodes and Athens on the return to Rome, where the Senate granted him a supplicatio, or period of public thanksgiving—instead of the full-blown triumph that he had been hoping for.

Only six days after Cicero’s return to Rome, Cæsar crossed the Rubicon into Italy, thereby declaring war on the Senate. Cicero hesitated in picking between putative tyrants, but in the end crossed the Adriatic to join Pompey’s camp. After Pompey’s defeat to Cæsar at Pharsalus, Cato offered him the command of the Pompeian forces, but he preferred to return to the Eternal City to be pardoned by Cæsar. 

He had divorced Terentia in 51, and in 46 or 45 wedded a wealthy girl called Publilia, who had been his ward, and who jealoused the great love that he bore for his daughter Tullia. The marriage did not withstand Tullia’s sudden death in 45, with Cicero writing to Atticus that he had ‘lost the one thing that bound me to life’. For solace, Cicero went to Atticus, and in his library mined the Greek philosophers, especially Crantor, to write his Consolatio. Sadly, the Consolatio has largely been lost, as has Crantor’s On Grief, which, according to Panætius, deserved to be learnt by heart.

The Philippics and Death

Cicero was not a party to Cæsar’s assassination in 44, although Brutus did call out his name upon raising his blood-stained dagger, beseeching him to ‘restore the Republic’. He later wrote to one of the conspirators, ‘How I wish that you had invited me to that most glorious banquet on the Ides of March.’

Mark Antony, as consul, leader of the Caesarian faction, and unofficial executor of Cæsar’s public will, began throwing his weight around. Cicero, who had been hoping to restore the Republic, responded by playing the young Octavian, Cæsar’s grandnephew, adopted son, and heir, against Antony. More than that, he overtly and vehemently attacked Antony in a series of speeches which he referred to as the Philippics, after the speeches delivered by Demosthenes to rouse the Athenians into fighting Philip II of Macedon. But this strategy failed when Octavian and Antony reconciled and joined forces with Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate.

Estimating that Cæsar had been undone by his clemency, the Second Triumvirate brought back the ruthless proscription, the legally sanctioned murder of opponents and rivals. The proscription also served to fund the Triumvirate’s war, the so-called Liberators’ Civil War, against Brutus and Cassius, who were finally defeated at the Battle of Philippi in 42. When Antony put Cicero at the head of the proscription list, Octavian tried to have him removed, but did not insist or prevail. Also on the list were Cicero’s son, brother, and nephew. The Triumvirate, in the words of Plutarch, ‘let their anger and fury take from them the sense of humanity, and demonstrated that no beast is more savage than man, when possessed with power answerable to his rage.’ 

On 7 December 43, Cicero, betrayed by a freedman of his brother, was intercepted near his villa at Formiæ, travelling down to the coast in a bid to escape to Greece.

He literally bowed to his assassins, extending his neck out of his litter to ease their task.

After killing him, they hacked off his head and hands so that Antony could have them displayed on the Rostra in the fashion of Marius and Sulla. According to the historian Cassius Dio, Antony’s wife Fulvia took up Cicero’s severed head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin.

Cicero’s brother and nephew were also murdered, but his son, who was then in Greece, escaped unscathed.

Twelve years later, in 31, Cicero the Younger took part in the Battle of Actium, in which Octavian defeated Antony; and in 30, he had the satisfaction, as consul, of announcing Antony’s suicide to the Senate. 

Many years later, Octavian, now Augustus, chanced upon one of his grandsons reading a book by Cicero. The boy tried to hide the book in his gown, but the emperor took it from him and stood a long time leafing through its pages. Finally, he handed it back, saying, ‘My child, this was a learned man, and a lover of his country.’

Cicero as Philosopher

Was Cicero a Stoic, as is sometimes claimed? The answer, as with all things Cicero, is complicated. He studied, at various times in his life, under philosophers from all four major schools: Academic Skeptic, Peripatetic, Stoic, and Epicurean. But he saw himself primarily as a statesman, and his philosophical output, prolific though it is, mostly owes to those periods in which he was unable to partake in the cut and thrust of politics.

Cicero subordinated philosophy to public life because he believed that the purpose of philosophy is to enlighten political action, not least by encouraging virtue in political actors and the population at large. (He even subordinated philosophy to rhetoric, arguing, in essence, that an orator is a philosopher with the benefit of style.) Thus, his overarching project outside of immediate politics was to bring Greek philosophy to a Roman audience by writing expository works in Latin and, to a lesser extent, translating Greek texts into Latin. By coining Latin equivalences for specialised Greek terms, he enriched the Latin language and endowed it with an abstract vocabulary which is at the root of modern English words such as appetite, essence, humanity, individual, infinity, image, instance, moral, notion, property, quality, quantity, science, species, temperance, and vacuum.

In epistemology (theory of knowledge), Cicero favoured the Academic Skeptics, which afforded him the fluidity and flexibility to practise law, and, in politics, to privilege conciliation and expediency over principle or dogma. In his writings, he often imitated Plato in adopting the dialogue form, in which each speaker represents a different philosophical outlook and the reader is left to make up his or her own mind. For example, in On the Nature of the Gods, he pits an Epicurean spokesman and a Stoic spokesman against the Academic Skeptic Gaius Aurelius Cotta. Similarly, in On Ends, he expounds and critiques, in dialogue form, the central tenets of Epicureanism, Stoicism, and the Platonism of Antiochus of Ascalon. (The ubiquitous Lorem ipsum placeholder text, used to demonstrate the visual form of a template or typeface without imputing meaning, is a corrupted extract of On Ends.)

But Cicero felt that such relativism and amoralism would not do for the Senate and People of Rome, so that when it came to the spheres of ethics and political philosophy, he turned instead to the Peripatetics and especially to the Stoics, who emphasized virtue and offered positive doctrines.

Stoic or not, books such as On the Nature of the Gods, On Ends, On Duties, and Stoic Paradoxes make Cicero one of our most important sources on ancient Stoicism.

Cicero as Rhetorician

At the age of just sixteen or seventeen, Cicero wrote a handbook of rhetoric entitled On Invention, which in later life he dismissed as youthful work. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, On Invention became the standard textbook of rhetoric, alongside the anonymous Rhetoric for Herennius, which also came to be attributed to Cicero.

Although practical in scope, On Invention opens with a preface in which Cicero reflects upon the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, concluding from the height of his teenage years that ‘wisdom without eloquence has been of little benefit to states, but eloquence without wisdom has for the most part been a great hindrance and never an advantage’. Until recently, everyone who was anyone would have read this.

Cicero’s mature works on rhetoric, On the Orator, Brutus, and Orator were little known until the Renaissance. Eloquence, he argued in these works, is not merely a gift of language but the culmination of a broad education. The ideal orator has a good grasp of philosophy, history, literature, and law, and speaks not merely to persuade but to guide the state.

His ideal of the educated citizen-orator shaped Western education for centuries. Rhetoric formed one of the three subjects of the trivium, alongside grammar and logic, and generations of students learnt to think, write, and speak by reading Cicero.

The rediscovery of his letters by Petrarch in 1345 sparked a search for other lost classical texts that helped kindle the Renaissance. Later, his writings profoundly influenced Enlightenment thinkers and the American Founding Fathers. John Locke, for instance, owned no fewer than nine editions of On Duties.

His influence endured well into the twentieth century, and it was not until the 1960s that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge dropped the matriculation (entry) requirement for an O level in Latin.

Did Cicero Live Up to His Own Ideals?

In an age that often prizes confidence over judgement and persuasion over truth, Cicero’s ideal of the orator as a philosopher and statesman remains as relevant as ever. But how well did he himself live up to that ideal?

Cicero had studied under and corresponded with the greatest minds of his day and written countless books on oratory and philosophy. Yet he seemed quite unable to control his passions, seeking always after fame and fortune, and coping poorly with adversity and hardship. Clearly, he did not need to have so many villas. His villa at Tusculum did not need to have two exercise areas. And these exercise areas did not need to be called the Academy and the Lyceum. Such grandeur, and his boastfulness, debased him, his learning, and his achievements.

The extraordinary oratory that had made him also unmade him. He loved to make an impression, so that he spoke more, and more forcefully, than he needed to, and often fell to attacking the person rather than the problem. As a result, he had not just adversaries but enemies.

In mitigation of the man, he lived through troubled times. The Roman Republic was collapsing around him, and political moderation had become almost impossible. His repeated reversals, compromises, and hesitations were not always signs of weakness, but sometimes the price of trying to preserve a constitutional order that others had already abandoned.

As a novus homo, or self-made man, he might also have harboured a deep-seated inferiority complex, explaining his need for achievement and affirmation.

Seneca once observed that Cato seemed more virtuous than wise. The converse might be said of Cicero: he could seem more wise than virtuous.

Unlike Cato, Cicero may not have met the standard of a Stoic sage. But for all his failings, the people loved him, because they knew him, at heart, to be a good man.

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19th century cartoon of Cicero denouncing Catiline

When and how to use them, and how to defend against them.

In rhetoric, an ad hominem (“to the man”) is an attack, not on the argument itself, but on the person making it. It is, in simpler words, an attempt to shoot the messenger.

When Winston Churchill called Mahatma Gandhi “a seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir,” he was attempting to undermine Gandhi’s character, or ethos.

Ad hominem, which is essentially an attack on a speaker’s ethos, is older than the books. It was not beneath Churchill, or even the Roman orator Cicero, who used it often, and went so far as to call Piso, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law, a “most foul and inhuman monster” (inhumanissimum ac foedissimum monstrum).

The first and most famous line of the most famous speech in all of Latin literature, Cicero’s First Catilinarian, is no more than an extended ad hominem:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

When and how to use ad hominem

In academic circles, the ad hominem is regarded as a logical fallacy and frowned upon. It is uncivil, it stifles debate, and it is a tacit admission that you are losing the argument. It is forbidden in formal debates, and there has been a petition to ban it from the U.K.’s House of Commons.

But in rhetoric, anything goes, and an ad hominem can be legitimate if it serves to undermine the ethos, or pro hominem claims, of your opponents.

Even so, when attacking an opponent, it is better to put one’s words into the mouth of some third person, or to use paralipsis (mentioning something by saying that you will not mention it), as Cicero did in his speech Pro Caelio:

Clodia, I am not thinking now of the wrongs you have done me. I am putting to one side the memory of my humiliation. I pass over your cruel treatment of my family when I was away. Consider that nothing I have said has been said against you.

While debating Ron DeSantis, former Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum succeeded in doing both at the same time, to great effect:

I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist; I’m simply saying the racists believe he is a racist.

Such is the power of rhetoric that, had it not been for this single sentence, I may never have heard of Andrew Gillum. Often, when all is said and done, all that remains of a life is one or two sententiae, if even that.

How to defend against ad hominem

If you find yourself on the receiving end of an ad hominem, you can respond in one of four ways:

  1. Ignore it.
  2. Call it out as an ad hominem, e.g. “Instead of attacking me, could you please return to the argument, which you seem afraid of losing.”
  3. Own it.
  4. Bite back with an ad hominem of your own.

Which strategy to use depends on the context and the available material (so always do your research). But in the absence of a killer riposte, it is best and easiest to ignore the insult while looking slightly dismayed.

Finally, if returning an ad hominem, consider accompanying or accenting it with some gesture—the rhetorical device known as mycterismus. If the audience laughs, which it probably will, your opponent will not recover from it.

Neel Burton is author of the newly published How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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If You Love Words, Read On

The sophist Gorgias speaking before an audience and casting his spell.
Gorgias mesmerising his audience.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

The ancient Greek sophist Gorgias compared the power of words to the power of drugs. More than two thousand years later, his insight is as compelling as ever. Words can persuade and deceive, comfort and inspire, alter the course of a life—or even the march of history.

Gorgias (483—375 BCE) hailed from Leontini in Sicily. He studied the art of persuasion—or rhetoric—under Corax and Tisias in nearby Syracuse and was also acquainted with the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles. In 427, he led an embassy to Athens to forge a defensive alliance against an overbearing Syracuse.

If Athens gave birth to philosophy, Sicily gave birth to rhetoric. Gorgias inherited the techniques of Corax and Tisias, the nominal founders of rhetoric, but transformed them into something that could dazzle audiences.

Indeed, Gorgias was something of a showman. He delighted in making unconventional, counterintuitive, or absurd arguments appear the stronger, and spoke in a florid, rhyming style that hypnotised all those who heard him. When in the theatre at Athens, he would say, “Come, propose me a theme!” He took great pride in his ability to defend any position, on any subject, and founded the art of extempore (‘off the cuff’) oratory.

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle characterises Gorgias’ style of oratory as ‘ironic’—and Gorgias’ opinions, if he had any at all, are hard to decipher. Rather than any positive philosophy, he offered an agnostic art of persuasion which he held to be of the utmost value.

In Plato’s Philebus, the sophist Protarchus tells Socrates: “I have often heard Gorgias maintain, Socrates, that the art of persuasion far surpassed every other; this, as he says, is by far the best of them all, for to it all things submit, not by compulsion, but of their own free will.”

Of Gorgias’ works, two short display speeches survive, the Encomium of Helen and the Defence of Palamedes, along with a fragment of a funeral oration and two paraphrases of a lost treatise, On Non-Being.

Words as Magic

In the Encomium of Helen, Gorgias sets himself the unlikely task of praising Helen and exculpating her for leaving Sparta with Paris and sparking the Trojan War. Gorgias argues that Helen could have been persuaded to leave in one of four ways: by the gods; by physical force; by the power of love; by the power of speech. But whichever way it was, she herself would have been blameless.

In defending Helen, Gorgias compares the effect of speech on the soul to the effect of drugs on the body: ‘Just as different drugs draw forth different humours from the body—some putting a stop to disease, others to life—so too with words: some cause pain, others joy, some strike fear, some stir the audience to boldness, some benumb and bewitch the soul with evil persuasion.’

A doctor’s diagnosis, a judge’s verdict, a declaration of love, a political speech, a prayer, or a promise may consist of nothing more than words, yet each can change the course of a life—even the course of nations and the march of history.

Perhaps this is why so many ancient cultures regarded words as sacred. In the Vedas, speech is revered as a divine power, and even personified as the goddess Vac. A similar idea can be found in the Bible, at John 1:1: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ In Genesis, God does not create the world with his hands, but by speech: ‘And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.’

As a psychiatrist, I am often reminded of Gorgias’ insight. Faced with a suicidal patient, everything may depend upon finding the right words at the right moment. A single sentence, if it is the right one, can alter a person’s entire outlook. Equally, a single sentence can break—or make—a career or a relationship.

The linguist may insist that ‘casting spells’ and ‘spelling words’ have different etymologies; the psychologist suspects that they spring from the same ancient intuition. If they had told us at school that we were learning magic, we would have paid a lot more attention.

Nothing Exists

In On Non-Being, Gorgias pushes his fascination with language to its absolute limit. Responding to the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides, who held that reality is one and accessible to reason, he parodies his arguments by turning each of them on its head: (1) nothing exists; (2) even if something did exist, nothing could be known about it; (3) even if something could be known, this knowledge could not be communicated to others; and (4) even if it could be communicated, it could not be understood. But as ever with Gorgias, it is far from clear whether these stood among his genuine opinions.

Gorgias spent much of his long life in Thessaly where he enjoyed the patronage of Aristippus of Larissa and Jason of Pherae. He taught Aristippus’ one-time beloved, the Meno who lent his name to Plato’s Meno, as well as the orator Isocrates, who came to rank among the Ten Attic Orators.

In his autobiographical Antidosis, Isocrates tells us that Gorgias:

…spent his time in Thessaly when the Thessalians were the most prosperous people in Hellas; he lived a long life and devoted himself to the making of money; he had no fixed domicile in any city and therefore paid out nothing for public weal nor was he subject to any tax; moreover, he did not marry and beget children, but was free from this, the most unremitting and expensive of burdens…

Having no wife or children, Gorgias died at the grand old age of 108.

Plato’s attacks ensured that the Sophists would long be remembered as clever tricksters rather than serious thinkers. Yet Gorgias deserves a more generous hearing. More than two thousand years ago, he recognised something we are still apt to forget: words do not merely describe the world. They shape how we experience it.

Every day we persuade, comfort, deceive, negotiate, inspire, forgive, and fall in love with nothing more substantial than sounds carried through the air. That is the nearest thing to magic that human beings have ever possessed.

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Learn the Six Classical Parts of Discourse Used by Cicero

Cicero speaking in the Roman Senate
Cicero (106–43 BCE), Rome’s greatest orator and one of the principal architects of classical rhetoric.

By Dr Neel Burton — Psychiatrist, philosopher, and wine writer; Fellow of Green Templeton College, University of Oxford; author of over twenty books.

Every good speech and essay has a structure. Yet few students are ever taught one.

For more than two thousand years, great speakers have relied on a simple six-part structure—a framework that stretches from Cicero to Churchill and remains just as useful today. Many Oxford students have told me that no one had ever taught them these six parts of discourse, despite years of essay writing. Yet, until surprisingly recently, they formed part of every educated person’s rhetorical training. Today, few people have even heard of them.

The six parts of discourse are, of course, just as useful for structuring essays as they are for composing speeches.

Table of the Six Parts of Discourse

Introduction (Exordium)

The exordium introduces your subject and purpose. It may also establish your authority for speaking or writing.

Above all, it should capture your audience’s attention. You might begin with a striking fact, an intriguing question, or a sense of urgency—but whatever your approach, make your audience want to hear more.

Keep it brief and clear. Never bore, confuse, or test your audience, and certainly not in the opening lines.

Winston Churchill’s first speech as Prime Minister begins:

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

In just twelve words, he captures attention, establishes the gravity of the moment, and prepares his audience for what is to come.

Narration (Narratio)

The narratio provides the background your audience needs to understand the issue.

How did the problem arise? Why does it matter? What has already been tried? What does the evidence suggest? Have similar situations arisen before?

Important: Although the narration appears objective, it is also your first opportunity to frame the debate. The facts you include—and the order in which you present them—shape everything that follows.

Consider the difference between saying, “Taxes have risen by 2%” and “Investment in schools and hospitals has increased by 2%”. The facts may be identical, but the way you present them shapes how your audience understands them.

Division (Divisio)

The divisio is the turning point in your speech.

In effect, the division says:

This is the issue. This is why it matters. And this is how I intend to address it.

Like the introduction, the division should be brief. If it becomes too elaborate, it begins to feel contrived.

The rhetorical handbook Ad Herennium (c. 80 BCE) illustrates division with this dilemma from Greek mythology:

Orestes killed his mother, Clytemnestra; on that everyone agrees. But was he justified in doing so? That is the real point in dispute.

Proof (Confirmatio)

The proof is the heart of your speech. Here you present your arguments and support them with examples and evidence.

Aristotle distinguished between technical proofs, such as logical arguments (logos), and non-technical proofs, such as laws, contracts, witnesses, and authoritative testimony.

In the Rhetoric, he observes that ‘witnesses’ need not be living people. Homer, Hesiod, Solon, proverbs, and received wisdom can all serve as ‘ancient witnesses’. Today, we do much the same whenever we quote recognised experts or respected authorities.

Ancient witnesses can be appealed to indirectly, as when Barack Obama echoed Martin Luther King, who in turn echoed Abraham Lincoln, who echoed the King James Bible in the opening line of the Gettysburg Address of 1863:

Four score and seven years ago [i.e. 87 years ago] our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Refutation (Confutatio)

A persuasive speech anticipates objections.

The confutatio acknowledges opposing arguments before answering them. Ideally, it does so fairly and convincingly, though in practice speakers often exaggerate or caricature an opponent’s position.

Modern political campaigns often do exactly this. Terms such as ‘death tax’ or ‘dementia tax’ deliberately reframe an opponent’s proposal before it can be considered on its merits.

One particularly effective technique is concession (concessio). By conceding a limited point, you appear reasonable and fair while strengthening your larger argument:

Yes, that’s true. But the real question is…

Far from weakening your case, a well-judged concession often makes it more persuasive.

If your proof is weak, you might instead begin with a forceful refutation in the hope that no one notices the lack of argument. It is a trick as old as rhetoric itself—and one that is still surprisingly common.

Conclusion (Peroratio)

The peroratio brings your speech or essay to a memorable close.

It usually summarises your main arguments before ending with an emotional appeal or call to action.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous Day of Infamy speech, delivered the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, ends with precisely such a peroration:

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph—so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

When to Break the Rules

Many great speeches follow this six-part structure, whether consciously or intuitively. But the framework should never become a formula.

Once you’ve mastered its principles, they can also be broken.

Cicero himself ignored his own advice in the opening of the First Catilinarian, launching immediately into a passionate attack:

When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end to that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

Nor must every speech contain every part. Aristotle regarded only two as essential: statement (narratio) and argument (confirmatio). Everything else is optional.

The six parts of discourse are not rules but tools. They provide a framework within which clarity and originality can flourish.

The aim is not to sound methodical but natural. Techniques such as using simple language, expressing uncertainty (dubitatio), or correcting yourself aloud (epergesis) can all help create the impression of sincerity and spontaneity.

Craft is something that you learn; art, that you unlearn.

Continue Exploring

For a fuller exploration of classical rhetoric, including how to structure an argument and deliver a persuasive speech, see my book How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.

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Cicero Denounces Catiline, by Cesare Maccari.

A Short History of Rhetoric in Rome

The first Roman orator of whom we can form a distinct impression is Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BCE), also known as Cato the Elder or Cato the Censor—known, ironically, for his austere conservatism and staunch opposition to Hellenization [Greek influence]. Despite his high senatorial rank, Cato rode a packhorse laden with saddlebags. He made a point of writing his history of Rome and his treatise on agriculture in Latin instead of the more usual and scholarly Greek. ‘The words of the Greeks’ he said, ‘are born on their lips, but those of the Romans in their hearts.’ Today, his De agri cultura [On the Cultivation of the Fields] is the oldest extant work of Latin prose.

Cato wrote a kind of encyclopaedia for his son, which includes a part on rhetoric. In it, he says, ‘An orator, son Marcus, is a good man skilled at speaking.’ Cato is reputed to have ended every speech in the Senate with the words, Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam [‘Moreover, I think Carthage should be destroyed]—often abbreviated or simplified to Carthago delenda est. His speech, On His Own Expenses, is remembered for mentioning the topics that he will not mention, a figure of speech known as apophasis, paralipsis, or praeteritio—a classic example being, ‘No point saying that I told you so.’ Or Monica from Friends: ‘Chandler, you know, the old Monica would remind you to scrub that Teflon pan with a plastic brush. But I’m not going to do that.’

The Gracchi

The most notable orators of the late second century are the aristocratic grandsons of Scipio Africanus, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, also known as the Gracchi brothers.

In 133 BCE, as tribune of the plebs, Tiberius introduced a land reform to benefit the poor. When he met with opposition, he persisted with his reform and was beaten to death.

Some ten years later, Gaius in turn became tribune of the plebs and took up the mantle of his late brother—and ended up either being killed, or committing suicide to avoid being killed.

His most famous words, spoken on the last day of his life and recorded by Cicero as an epitome of delivery, brought even his enemies to tears:

Whither shall I, unhappy wretch, betake myself? Whither shall I turn? To the Capitol? But that is drenched with the blood of my brother! Or to my home, that I may see my afflicted mother in all the agony of lamentation?

Cicero

The greatest of all Roman orators is, of course, Cicero himself.

The name of Cicero is regarded not as the name of a man, but of eloquence itself. Let us, therefore, fix our eyes upon him, take him as our pattern, and let the student realize that he has made real progress if he is a passionate admirer of Cicero. —Quintilian X, 2.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) was born in Arpinium, around 60 miles south of Rome, into a wealthy equestrian family. He began practising the law in around 83-81, and, in 80, made his name on the back of his brilliant defence of Sextus Roscius against a fabricated charge of patricide. He climbed the cursus honorum, or ‘ladder of offices’, holding each office at or near the youngest possible age: quaestor in 75, aedile in 69, praetor in 66, and consul in 63. He became consul at the age of just 42, making him the youngest non-patrician to serve as a consul in the five-hundred-year history of the Republic.

As quaestor in Western Sicily, Cicero seemed so formidable that the locals asked him to prosecute Gaius Verres, who, as governor, had plundered the province. He fought the case with such aplomb that he came to be regarded as the greatest orator in Rome. As praetor, he made his first big speech in the senate, in favour of conferring upon Pompey the command of the campaign against Mithradates VI, King of Pontus. But the crowning glory of his career came in his consulship, when, by the force of his four Catiline Orations, he put down the Catiline conspiracy to overthrow the Republic. He had five of the conspirators executed and announced their deaths to a cheering crowd with the single word, Vixerunt [‘They lived’]. For ‘saving the Republic’ (as he liked to boast), he received the honorific Pater Patriae [‘Father of the Fatherland’] from his ally Cato the Younger (the Stoic great-grandson of Cato the Elder), but lived forever after in fear of reprisal for having put Roman citizens to death without trial.

Cicero was not a party to Caesar’s assassination in 44, although Brutus did call out his name upon raising his blood-soaked dagger, beseeching him to ‘restore the Republic’. Cicero later wrote to one of the conspirators, ‘How I wish that you had invited me to that most glorious banquet on the Ides of March.’

Mark Antony, as consul, leader of the Caesarian faction, and unofficial executor of Caesar’s public will, began throwing his weight around. Cicero, who had been hoping to restore the Republic, responded by playing the young Octavian, Caesar’s grandnephew, adopted son, and heir, against Antony. More than that, he overtly and vehemently attacked Antony in a series of speeches which he referred to as the Philippics, after the speeches delivered by Demosthenes to rouse the Athenians into fighting Philip II of Macedon. But this strategy backfired when Octavian and Antony reconciled and joined forces with Lepidus to form the Second Triumvirate.

Estimating that Caesar had been undone by his clemency, the Second Triumvirate brought back the ruthless proscription [the legally sanctioned murder of opponents and rivals], not seen in Rome since the time of Sulla. When Antony put Cicero at the head of the proscription list, Octavian tried to have him removed but, it would seem, did not insist or prevail. On 7 December 43, Cicero, betrayed by a freedman [former slave] of his brother, was intercepted near his villa at Formiae, travelling down to the coast in a bid to escape to his son in Greece. He literally bowed to his assassins, extending his neck out of his litter to ease their task. After killing him, they hacked off his head and hands so that Antony could have them displayed on the Rostra in the manner of Marius and Sulla. According to the historian Cassius Dio (d. 235 CE), Antony’s wife Fulvia took up Cicero’s severed head, pulled out his tongue, and jabbed at it with her hairpin.

Many years later, Octavian, now Augustus, chanced upon one of his grandsons reading a book by Cicero. The boy tried to hide the book in his gown, but the emperor took it from him and stood a long time leafing through its pages. Finally, he handed it back, saying, ‘My child, this was a learned man, and a lover of his country.’

Atticism vs Asianism

In his 12-volume Institutes of Oratory, Quintilian contrasts the style of Cicero to that of the Athenian orator Demosthenes, whom both Cicero and Quintilian held in the highest esteem:

Demosthenes is more concentrated, Cicero more copious… from Demosthenes’ speeches nothing can be taken away, to Cicero’s nothing can be added…

In the Orator, one of his latest works, Cicero paints a picture of the ideal orator, and responds to criticisms, from Brutus and other so-called Atticists, of his abundance and elaboration of style.

The Atticists, so called because they took for models the Attic writers of the fifth and early fourth centuries BCE (Lysias, Demosthenes, Hyperides…), argued that the spread of Greek into Asia in the wake of Alexander had led to a degeneracy of style, and called for a return ad fontes [to the sources]. This unadorned plain speaking chimed with the Stoicism or Stoic leanings of many Atticists, including Brutus himself.

Hortensius

The orator Quintus Hortensius Hortalus (114-50 BCE), second only to his friend Cicero, and more florid, had the good fortune of dying a year before Caesar crossed the Rubicon—of dying, if you will, with the Republic that had afforded him the freedom to speak. A noted piscinarius [‘fish-fancier’], Hortensius bred fish (possibly lampreys, eels, or mullet) in pools, and may have introduced the peacock to the Roman table. As an orator, he so perfected the swish of the toga that actors came to watch and learn from him. Cicero entitled his invitation to philosophy, the Hortensius, after him, and dedicated his history of Roman oratory, the Brutus, to his memory.

Rhetoric After the Republic

Fortunately, rhetoric, unlike Hortensius, did not die with the Republic. Au contraire, as if to compensate for its newfound impotence, it rose into the pinnacle of education.

In the Hellenistic period, a distinction had been drawn between the elementary teaching of the grammarian and the more advanced instruction of the rhetorician, which boys of a certain background might begin between the ages of 12 to 14. Even before Cicero, who listed them, rhetorical instruction consisted of five parts, or canons: invention (what to say), arrangement (how to lay it out), style (how to say it), memory (how to commit it to memory), and delivery (how to convey it with more than just words).

For centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, rhetoric remained the cornerstone of Western education. Five of the major Latin fathers of the Church had been teachers of rhetoric prior to their conversion: Tertullian (d. 240 CE), Cyprian (d. 258), Lactantius (d. c. 325), Arnobius (d. c. 330), and Augustine (d. 430). In 425, to train administrators, the Eastern Roman emperor Theodosius II founded the Pandidacterium, the first incarnation of the University of Constantinople, with 31 chairs—of which ten in Greek grammar, five in Greek rhetoric, ten in Latin grammar, three in Latin rhetoric, two in law, and one in philosophy.

During the Middle Ages down to Shakespeare’s time at school, boys began with the study of grammar, dialectic (or ‘logic’), and rhetoric. Having completed this so-called trivium, they could progress to the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. These seven ‘liberal arts’ were regarded as ‘thinking skills’, and distinguished from practical arts such as medicine and architecture.

Cicero’s On Invention

At the age of just 16 or 17, Cicero had written a handbook of rhetoric, On Invention, which contains the first recorded use of the term ‘liberal arts’. During the Middle Ages through to the Renaissance, On Invention became the standard text for the teaching of rhetoric, alongside the anonymous Rhetoric for Herennius, which benefited from being attributed (or rather, misattributed) to the great Cicero. Cicero himself regarded On Invention as superseded by his mature works on rhetoric, On the Orator, Brutus, and Orator, but these were little known after the classical period, until the Renaissance.

Although practical in scope, On Invention opens with a preface in which Cicero reflects upon the relationship between dialectic and rhetoric, concluding from the height of his teenage years that

wisdom without eloquence has been of little benefit to states, but eloquence without wisdom has for the most part been a great hindrance and never an advantage’.

Until recently, everyone who was anyone would have read this.

Rhetoric Today

Cicero’s influence perdured well into the twentieth century, and it is not until the 1960s that the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge dropped the matriculation [entry] requirement for an O level in Latin.

Speaking at her old school in 1982, Margaret Thatcher, by then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, recounted her struggle to learn Latin to apply for chemistry at Oxford:

Well, there you are, I was taught Latin and I must tell you—anyone who wishes to do an O level in Latin can do it in ten weeks flat.

A decade later, in a 1991 KERA interview, the journalist Lee Cullum challenged Thatcher on the benefits and relevance of a classical education:

I read several years ago in the Sunday Times that a classical education, for which Oxford and Cambridge are so famous, is fine for running an empire, but not so good for running an economy. Do you think there is any truth in that?

No, I don’t. If you excel at a classical education, Latin and Greek, not only at the language but at learning the literature, you will have learnt a great deal about the philosophy of life, about democracy, about fundamental principles, and you will have a very good mind … Heaven knows, these days, we are still up against human nature rather more than anything else.

Neel Burton is author of How to Think Like Plato and Speak Like Cicero.