From Athens to Tusculum: Gleaning the Background of Cicero's De oratore.

Abstract

'WUhelm Kiaulehn, Se scaenico dialogorum apparatu, Diss. Halle, 1913 (Dissertationes Philologicae Halenses 23, 2, pp. I-VII, 147-244), pp. 175-76; Ernst Becker, 'TechnLk und Szenerie des ciceronischen Dialogs, Diss. Munster, 1938, p. 26; Michel Ruch, Le preambule dans les oeuvres philosophiques de Ciceron, Paris, 1958 (Publications de la Faculte des Lettres de I'Universite de Strasbourg, 136), pp. 197-202; Anton Daniel Leeman/Harm Pinkster, M. TuUius Cicero. De oratore libri III. Kommentar, vol. 1, Heidelberg, 1981, pp. 76-77; vol. 2, Heidelberg, 1985, pp. 202203, 213. ^Particular attention has been paid to a number of Platonic features, ranging from outright imitation to hidden allusions: Rudolf Hirzel, Der Dialog, vol. 1, (Leipzig, 1895), pp. 486-488; Max Pohlenz, Cicero De re publica als Kunstwerk, in: Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein, (Leipzig and Berlin 1931), p. 71; Callus Zoll, Cicero Platonis aemulus, (Diss. Zurich, 1962), pp. 98-105; Leeman/Pinkster, vol. 1, pp. 6567. These are the principal findings: a. In De or. 1 the scenery of Plato's Phaedrus is explicitly evoked, but Cicero's talk is set in a carefully chosen contrast: see our section I. There are some verbatim quotations: Phdr. 229b vSdrtoi^ = De or. 1.28 acuta; 229c dv rj Tpia (rraSia = 1.28 duobus spatiis tribusve (first noticed by Leeman/Pinkster 1, pp. 99-100). b. As in Phaedrus, in De or. a main character recants what he had said before (palinodia): see our section 1, towards the end. c. Catulus' and Crassus' praise of Hortensius (De or. 3.228f.) is modelled after Socrates' prophetical praise of Isocrates (Phdr. 279a). d. As Plato's Phaedo, De or. immediately precedes the main