De Oratore

First book

The first of the 3 books is addressed to Quintus Tullius Cicero, brother of Cicéron.

Introduction

Cicéron begins its book with a conversation with his/her brother. He speaks to him about his situation in the life while thinking of the life of other people of the Romain Empire.

Education of the speaker

Cicéron explains why he wants to write something of more mature and refined that what he wrote in his younger days. He says to his brother that, on the basis of conversation preceding with him, they differed from opinion on the importance of the eloquence: it was it a natural capacity or had to be learned?

Large speakers

The best on all the fields

To study rhetoric is interesting but difficult

5 obligatory stages of the construction of a speech

inventio : search for ideas

dispositio : ordering, search for a plan, construction of parts

elocutio : to make a speech eloquent (research of the stylistic devices to touch the audience)

memoria : to learn its speech by heart

actio : effects related on the voice and the gestures (research of the best intonation and gestural most adapted).

Responsibility for the speaker

Date, place, people

Thesis: importance of rhetoric in the company and the State

Rhetoric is a science

Crassus says that it did not borrow the theories of Aristote and of Théophraste concerning the speaker. While the schools of Philosophy require that rhetoric and other arts belong to them, the science of the speaker who added the " style" , becomes a science with share. Each school has its own speciality (e.g.: the law and the religion) but it is the speaker who must as well as have the knowledge of all these arts the way to be able to speak on these subjects.

The speaker must know the facts

The speaker can set up techniques oratories but it must be set in political sciences and morals

The speaker, like the poet, must have a vast education

chapters XVII and XVIII: position questioned and defended

Report of the debates in Athens

The true eloquence is unknown

Is there a science of rhetoric?

Requirements to be a speaker

The speaker is judged in a way less lenient than the actors

Natural gifts of Sulpicius and Cotta

Courses of school about rhetoric

Rules for the preparatory drive

Point of view of Antonius, acquired by its experiment

Vast essential culture for the speaker

But philosophy can disapprove effective ways to plead

The gestures and the intonation do not require particular studies

The old ones do not need the knowledge of the laws to practice this trade

The general culture is sufficient

The most important thing is the practice.

Adjournment of the debate

External and internal bonds

bonds ( in ) and ( Fr )

Random links: