On the Orator: Book 3. On Fate. Stoic Paradoxes. On the Divisions of Oratory

by Marcus Tullius Cicero, Harris Rackham (Translator), E.W. Sutton (Translator)

Cicero (Marcus Tullius, 106-43 BCE), Roman lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, of whom we know more than of any other Roman, lived through the stirring era which saw the rise, dictatorship, and death of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic. In his political speeches especially and in his correspondence we see the excitement, tension and intrigue of politics and the part he played in the turmoil of the time. Of about 106 speeches, delivered before the Roman people or the Senate if they were political, before jurors if judicial, 58 survive (a few of them incompletely). In the fourteenth century Petrarch and other Italian humanists discovered manuscripts containing more than 900 letters of which more than 800 were written by Cicero and nearly 100 by others to him. These afford a revelation of the man all the more striking because most were not written for publication. Six rhetorical works survive and another in fragments. Philosophical works include seven extant major compositions and a number of others; and some lost. There is also poetry, some original, some as translations from the Greek.



The Loeb Classical Library edition of Cicero is in twenty-nine volumes.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction

436 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1942

About the author

Born 3 January 106 BC, Arpinum, Italy
Died 7 December 43 BC (aged 63), Formia, Italy

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.

Alternate profiles:
Cicéron
Marco Tullio Cicerone
Cicerone

Note: All editions should have Marcus Tullius Cicero as primary author. Editions with another name on the cover should have that name added as secondary author.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I only read On Fate and the Stoic Paradoxes. I wasn't really interested in Cicero's works on rhetoric and oratory at this time.
Although fragmentary, Cicero's On Fate is one of the earliest extant works dedicated to the question of freewill, fate and necessity. That makes it well worth reading. It also is an excellent survey of contemporaneous thought on those subjects. Apart from the historical anecdotes, Stoic Paradoxes wasn't all that interesting.

[Ana Beatriz Esteves · Rating 4 out of 5]

It continues to be kind of weird, but also surprising, to read such actual feeling but old books.
Please make sure you read the first too and have some sense of Roman and Greek culture before you read this.
Either way, it was an enjoyable read

[Ryan Denson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this volume for the final book of De Oratore and De Partitione Oratoria. Both are excellent texts that would be immensely useful to anyone interested in the craft of oratory or any form of public speaking. The translation here is just as fluid and readable as the previous volume on the first two books of De Oratore.

Since I already had the book, I decided to read the other two texts as well, De Fato and Paradoxa Stoicorum. These are philosophical texts in quite a different tone from Cicero’s works on oratory, but no less insightful. The fragmentary De Fato (On Fate) contains a brief discussion on the concept of fate, and relies heavily on Stoic principles to argue against a belief in strict determinism. Paradoxa Stoicorum (Stoic Paradoxes) is a series of six short exegetical essays on principles of Stoicism. This text is very enjoyable to read as it is far from the usual dry and abstract philosophical discussions. While he provides convincing arguments for Stoic ideas, we also get a glimpse of Cicero’s personality as he rails against his political foes and lauds his own lifestyle.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, occasional sexist moments aside, you got to love Cicero. Funny to think about how his concerns about fate fit in with the Erasmus/Luther debate I'm also reading about. Also funny (more literally, though) is his paradox about being exiled by a state that doesn't exist. Hmmm...what a conundrum.

[Zachary Rudolph · Rating 3 out of 5]

“To what purpose have I toiled? to what purpose have I acted? or on what have my cares and meditations been watchfully employed, if I have produced and arrived at no such results, as that neither the outrages of fortune nor the injuries of enemies can shatter me”

[Ross Cohen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cicero's facile mind and easy pen makes for enjoyable reading, if not an assurance of the certainty of his convictions.

[Gabriel Adamante · Rating 4 out of 5]

The translation I had didn't help much - the language was ancient and too verbose. The content of his works is very good.