On Invention. The Best Kind of Orator. Topics.

by Marcus Tullius Cicero, E.H. Warmington (Editor), H.M. Hubbell (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: Classics, Philosophy, History

466 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1949

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

[Jon Norimann · Rating 2 out of 5]

"On Invention" is an outdated book by Senator Cicero of the Roman Empire about how to give speeches. Cicero foucses on two types, general speeches and legal speeches. The author splits the issue of speaking into several rather random sub-issues, calling them categories. Unfortunately the writing stops there so the reader doesnt learn practical speaking. In Cicero's defence about half the book was lost and never got recovered so possibly that contents would have made the book more complete.

Spending the 8-10 hours it takes to read this book leaves you with nothing except Cicero's irrelevant categorizations of speeches. Apparently even Cicero himself realized later in life this book was rubbish. Cicero is still famous 2000 years later despite never being an exceptional man in his time. "On Invention" gives some insight into a person whose fame has exceptional stamina. That alone lifts it from 1 to 2 stars.

[Mehmet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cicero later disowned De Inventione as a juvenile work, which it is, and considered it superseded by his later dialogue works on Rhetoric, but there is still great merit to this work, as was very well noticed and utilised by Medieval and Early Modern audiences. It is after all a handbook, and a rather good one at that that organises and distills its subject matter quite succinctly and helpfully (It probably had origins as something of a notebook Cicero composed from the lectures of a Greek Rhetorician whose name remains unclear to this day). As such, it is a great introduction in a way Cicero's later work absolutely isn't, and one in which the information is provided much more directly. I still personally prefer Rhetorica Ad Herrenium, erroneously attributed to Cicero (not without reason, both works are mutually so incestious that establishing the connection between them remains elusive) because it does actually cover the entire range of Rhetoric as promised (De Inventione only covers Invention and Arrangement), but this is not a very long work so one loses nothing by going through both! The best kind of Orator was a small essay Cicero wrote as an introduction for a contemporary edition of Demosthenes and not a particularly significant work. Topics has been superseded with a much better Oxford critical edition and translation, and any discussion of that work is probably better handled under that label.

[Brent Pinkall · Rating 5 out of 5]

De Inventione and Topica were both very influential in medieval and Renaissance rhetoric. De Inventione was written in Cicero's early years, and he later denounced it in his more mature work De Oratore. Still, it contains much helpful advice, and his topics of "person" and "act" are helpful heuristics for invention (although not as helpful as the common topics in Topica). His explanation of stasis theory and the corresponding heads closely resembles that of Rhetorica Ad Herennium, but I prefer the latter because Ad Herennium not only discusses invention and arrangement but also style, memory, and delivery. This volume also contains Cicero's short essay "The Best Kind of Orator," which basically praises Demosthenes as the ultimate exemplar of oratory.

[Leonardo]

Los Tópicos de Cicerón son una imitación memorística de los aristotélicos, sumamente superficiales
y pobres: Cicerón no tiene en absoluto un concepto claro de qué es y qué finalidad tiene un topus,
por lo que entremezcla ex ingenio todo tipo de ocurrencias, adornándolas ricamente con ejemplos jurídicos. Uno de sus peores escritos.

El arte de tener razón Pág.26

[Zachary Rudolph · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Nevertheless it is necessary for the orator whom we are inquiring about, to explain forensic disputes by a style of speaking calculated at once to teach, to delight, and to excite.”

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second Loeb edition of Cicero is his early treatise on rhetoric, De Inventione, as well as a couple of minor works. Cicero disclaimed the value of the book as immature and unworthy of himself. He later wrote On the Ideal Orator as a replacement for his theory of rhetoric. Still, De Inventione is a work worth reading, especially if you plan on comparing to other rhetoric textbooks of the Greek and Roman period.