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ORATORY AS CICERO FOUND IT
trumped up charge because, according to Cicero, he declined the help of the most
eloquent advocates of the time: 'Why, none of his defenders even stamped his
foot, for fear, I suppose, that the Stoics might hear it.' On the other hand the
Italian character could be highly emotional, witness Cicero's own letters.
Aristotle had emphasized the importance of emotion in rhetoric; and Cicero was
clear that it was by moving, more than by pleasing or convincing, the jury that
verdicts were obtained. Flectere uictoriae est. Hence he preferred to speak last of
the several advocates who were retained. Servius Sulpicius Galba (consul 144),
when vigorously impeached by the elder Cato for cruelty and treachery to the
Lusitanians, obtained a monstrous acquittal by producing his weeping children
in court and commending them, with added tears of his own, to the protection of
the Roman people. The dullness of his speeches when read after publication was
in itself testimony to the emotional power of his performances. He was also the
first Latin orator consciously to employ the resources of rhetoric, seeking to
charm and to move his hearers and enlarging on his theme with exaggeration,
generalization and ornamental digressions.
But the pivotal figure was the elder Cato. He was the first to publish his
speeches, and Cicero unearthed more than 150 of them. Some displayed
schemata of rhetoric such as ' rhetorical question' and anaphora. The one ' On
his own expenditure' contained a most elaborate exploitation of the figure
praeteritio (mentioning things by saying you will not mention diem). He
certainly owed more in general to Greek influence than he pretended, but
whether or not in rhetoric is a moot point. 1 All rhetorical schemata are systematizations
of nature. Yet although anaphora (repetition of a word or words at the
beginning of successive clauses), for instance, might seem a spontaneous feature,
it is noteworthy that it is almost completely absent from Homer, the few
instances seeming intended for expressive effect. Its use in literature becomes
much more marked after die formulation of rhetorical schemata by Gorgias.
Though Cato's own encyclopaedia contained a section on rhetoric (Quint.
Inst. 3.1.19), if the famous dictum rem tene, uerba sequentur ('stick to the matter
and the words will follow') came from it, it may have been a sort of anti-
Rhetorica. What he lacked that he could have learned from the Greeks was
concinnitas — the elegance of clarity, smoothness, artistic weighting and disposition
of clauses (membra), and the quantitative rhydim conspicuous at
cadences, in fact the art of the rounded Isocratean 'period'. The first Roman to
display die Isocratean virtues, the 'stilus artifex', was M. Aemilius Lepidus
Porcina (consul 137); but the first to equal the Greeks, in Cicero's opinion,
were the leading orators of his youth, L. Crassus and M. Antonius. Crassus was
careful of euphony; and his periods, diough he preferred to break them into
smaller members, were rhythmical.
1 Norden (1S98) held the former view (i i6jf.), Leo (1913) the latter (1 286). Clarke (1953) 40--2.
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