In On the Ideal Orator, (De oratore), Cicero, the greatest Roman orator and prosewriter of his day, gives his mature views on rhetoric, oratory, and philosophy. Cast in the lively, literary form of a dialogue, this classic work presents a daring view of the orator as the master of all language communication while still emphasizing his role at the heart of Roman society and politics. Cicero's conception of the ideal orator represents his own original synthesis of the positions of the philosophers and the rhetoricians in the age-old quarrel between these disciplines.
The...