Cicero's speeches

"During his hours of leisure from the law-courts and from politics, Cicerco found time to theorize about oratory and rhetoric, and from these studies there emerged the image of the ideal orator. This paragon was no mere rabble-rouser or mouther of words: he was man of wide culture who had been trained in the finer arts of rhetoric, through which he aimed to give his speeches a moral dimension as well as the power to persuade. But does Cicero's own oratory always display the qualities that he demands from his model? This is a fundamentally important question, and which he must frequently have asked himself. Yet he never answers it fully, and it has never been examined systemically throughout the whole corpus of his speeches. Such an examination is attempted in this present study. In the course of it, in addition to style, the forensic and historical background to each of the speeches is discussed, as are the legal and philosophical questions raised by the refinements themselves, which are found to be unevenly distributed, thereby giving a new insight into Cicero's interests and priorities."--Jacket.