Cicero's Brutus and Orator constitute his final major statements on the history of Roman oratory and the nature of the ideal orator. In the Brutus he traces the development of political and judicial speech over the span of 150 years, from the early second century to 46 BCE, when both of these treatises were written. In an immensely detailed account of some 200 speakers from the past he dispenses an expert's praise and criticism, provides an unparalleled resource for the study of Roman rhetoric, and engages delicately with the fraught political circumstances of the day, when the dominance of Julius Caesar was assured and the future of Rome's political institutions was thrown into question. The Orator, written several months later, describes the form of oratory that Cicero most admired, even though he insists that neither he nor any other orator has been able to achieve it. At the same time, he defends his views against critics-the so-called Atticists-who found Cicero's style overwrought and favored a more restrained and plainer approach.

Cicero's dialogue on oratory responded to the political crisis of Julius Caesar but ultimately invented 'modern' literary history.

Cicero's Brutus (46 BCE), a tour-de-force of intellectual and political history, was written amidst political crisis: Caesar's defeat of the republican resistance at the battle of Thapsus. This magisterial example of the dialogue genre capaciously documents the intellectual vibrancy of the Roman Republic and its Greco-Roman traditions. This book studies the work from several distinct yet interrelated perspectives: Cicero's account of oratorical history, the confrontation with Caesar, and the exploration of what it means to write a history of an artistic practice. Close readings of this dialogue-including its apparent contradictions and tendentious fabrications-reveal a crucial and crucially productive moment in Greco-Roman thought. Cicero, this book argues, created the first nuanced, sophisticated, and ultimately 'modern' literary history, crafting both a compelling justification of Rome's oratorical traditions and also laying a foundation for literary historiography that abides to this day. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Cicero is considered to be Rome's greatest orator and prose writer. His writing is some of the best classical Latin still in existence. Cicero introduced Rome to Greek philosophy and created the Latin philosophical vocabulary. This book contains two selections. Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators was written during the end of the civil war in Africa. It discusses all the Roman and Greek speakers of any note at the time. The conference is supposed to have been held with Atticus, and their friend Brutus. The Orator was written shortly after and is a plan, or critical delineation, of what he esteemed the most finished eloquence, or style of Speaking.

Special problems are presented to prospographers and historians of the Roman Republic who attempt to determine the chronological structure of Cicero’s Brutus. Over two hundred orators who figured actively in Roman politics from the time of the Punic Wars to that of Civil War are cited in the dialogue. Professor Sumner presents their probable birth-dates and careers in the form of a register, followed by a commentary concentrating on the controversial points in the Brutus, to give a systematic basis to our understanding of the problems of the historical aspects of the dialogue and Cicero’s organization of it. Professor Sumner has worked primarily from the historian’s viewpoint. In his words: ‘the study of the chronological structure of the Brutus should be considered the vertebra of the monograph, but the body of the work is the prosopographical commentary, while the examination of Cicero’s prosoporgraphical and chronographic resources and methods is an essential adjunct.’ For scholars and students of early Rome this analysis is a valuable addition to current knowledge.

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