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LITERARY CRITICISM
own record as an advocate and his obligation to defend his former quaestor,
indignation by stirring old emotions in the equestrian jury against the cowardice
and ineptness of Caepio, whom Norbanus had had convicted. These emotional
arguments, used to back up a specious defence of civil strife as the mother of
constitutional improvement, carried the day against the odds. Antonius, who
has earlier in the dialogue been represented as distrustful of the wisdom of the
handbooks, says slyly:' You will, if you please, find some place in your theories
for my defence of Norbanus.' And indeed this is the sort of exemplum that, as
Quintilian remarks (10.1.15), is more effective than the textbooks. Together
with Sulpicius' wry comments on Antonius' simulated hesitation at the beginning
of the speech and his inexorable rise to the heights of emotional appeal,
these sections give us a perfect example of the criticism of oratory, cunningly
disguised behind the urbanities of Cicero's dialogue.
Cicero brought to the theory of oratory a width that it had never known
before and was rarely to know again. He thinks often of an ideal orator, who
shall have all the qualities of Cicero himself and more besides. The theories of
the handbooks are only a beginning, to be supplemented and modified by the
lessons of experience and the exigencies of particular circumstances. Furthermore,
the orator must have the widest of educations; not only is a detailed
knowledge of law an essential, but philosophy will give him the ability to
expound the general principles that lie behind individual cases. He will be master
of all the styles, grand, middle and plain, and capable thereby of fulfilling all
the duties, to move, to please and to instruct. He will be in the best sense
eclectic.
But all this, however admirable, is theory rather than criticism; and it is not
often to Cicero's point to pass judgement on orators. When he does so, it is
sometimes with a casualness that is reminiscent of the grammaticus: labelling 1
rather than analysis. Nor are his discussions of Greek literature improved by
their normal tendency to argue a general case. 2 Thus in De oratore 2.93—5 t ^ le
Greek orators are paraded by generations to demonstrate the doubtful proposition
that each age had a particular manner of speaking and that this similarity
was due to the habit of imitation of a single model. They are paraded again in
Orator 28—32 to show how different they all are, how various the Attic orators
whom modern 'Atticists' wished to force into a single pattern. And even the
fullest survey, in Brutus 25—51, is over-generalized. There is little feel of personal
assessment; instead, metaphors that give bloom and blood to the Attic
orators before Demetrius turned aside to cloying sweetness. A similar tendency
to label and catalogue is forced upon the Brutus as a whole by its vast aim —
1
A familiar feature of Roman critical -writing: see e.g. Quintilian 12.10.11, Tac. Dial. 25.4 (poking
grave fun?), and, most absurdly, Fronto pp. 113—14 Naber ( = 11 48 Haines).
2
The same is true of Ovid's eccentric demonstration in Trlst. 1.363—470 that all literature can be
regarded as erotic
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