Restraint and Emotion in Cicero's De Oratore

Abstract

In De Oratore Cicero has the revered orator Crassus ask, Who then is the man who gives people a thrill? whom do they stare at in amazement when he speaks? who is interrupted by applause? who is thought to be so to say a god among men? (1942a, III.53). Crassus, who is asking his companions to think about emotional energy in speech, goes on, It is those whose speeches are clear, explicit, and full, perspicuous in matter and language, and who in actual delivery achieve a sort of rhythm and cadence that is, whose style I call 'ornate'. Several things are striking about the passage. First, it resolves its inquiry by invoking the concept of ornatus, a word widely used to translate the Greek idea of kosmos (DiLorenzo 1978). Cicero thus refers to a quality that joins the ideas of cosmic order, physical beauty, and earthly power. Second, the passage is delivered in the midst of Crassus's discussion of the fourth rhetorical canon, that referring to the elaboration of ideas in language, of selecting levels of style and modes of verbal embellishment. Third, the passage ranges across the entire field of rhetorical art, at least as indexed by the scope of the canons. The performative quality directly under discussion, that which gives people a thrill initially associated with the Theophrastian virtues of style that Crassus has been enumerating, that is, clarity and explicitness quickly is expanded to include copiousness of invention, perspicuity of language, and energetic beauty in delivery. Cicero's Crassus thus discusses a performative dynamic that appears to govern rhetoric as a whole. As the other characters in the dialogue discuss this quality of speech, which engages listeners emotionally and transforms their experience of the present, they bound beyond the preliminary categories of their analysis and describe a power of speech that is aesthetic and philosophical. As the