Cicero's philippics and Their Demosthenic Model: The Rhetoric of Crisis

Abstract

Although Cicero's Phillipics are his most mature speeches, they have received little attention as works of oratory. On other hand, scholars in this century have considered Cicero's attitudes toward and dependence on Demosthenes to be an issue of importance. Cecil Wooten brings together these two concerns, linking Cicero's use of Demosthenes as a model in Phillipics to precise analyses of style, rhetorical modulation, and narrative technique. In doing so he defines and demonstrates effectiveness of a type of oratory that he terms the rhetoric of crisis. Characteristic of such rhetoric polarization of a conflict into a dichotomy between good and evil, right and wrong. The orator adopts a stance in which he obsessed with struggle, with victory, and with preservation of a tradition. He defines his present crisis in terms of patterns that have appeared in past, which means that he likely to choose from past a model for his own response to crisis.In Demosthenes, Cicero found a statesman that had faced a similar political situation. Demosthenes' speeches were directed against Philip of Macedon, whose expanding empire threatened survival of Greek city-states. Antony posed an equally severe threat to Roman republic, and Cicero therefore turned to Demosthenes' speeches as a model for his own. The oratory of both was forged during a period of supreme crisis, at a critical turning point in civilization.Tremendous talent, Wooten writes of this oratory, is coupled with instinct for survival, most basic of human impulses, to produce a form of oratory that characterized by extreme clarity of vision, purposefulness, vividness, and rapidity of presentation, an oratory that clean and direct and decisive, in which organic synthesis of content, arrangement, and style remarkable and striking.Originally published 1983.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.