Cicero remains after two thousand years the typical orator writing on oratory. The most eminent orator of Roman civilization, he wrote more than any other orator has ever written on rhetoric; and historically he has been more than any other an ideal and model. Conscious of his own range and of the narrowness and low esteem that seem from the beginning to have cursed teachers and especially manuals of rhetoric, he is anxious in his greater works, _De oratore_ and _Orator_, to appear not as a rhetorician, but as a philosopher. Though no treatment could well be more different from Aristotle’s, he is at pains to urge the Academic theory that rhetoric is a branch of philosophy, and to avoid the technical terms of the art while keeping its traditional categories. In this attitude he is but the more typically the artist discussing his own art. He writes as the man of letters in any age writes on literary composition. We may be annoyed at a certain condescension toward teachers—as if they might think themselves able to impart anything like his skill! We may be baffled in trying to reduce some of his elaborations to specific terms. But rather we should be grateful to find rhetoric presented, for once at least, pleasantly as well as suggestively, and still more to find the orator insisting that it must have the same large scope as is claimed for it by the philosopher. Where Aristotle and Cicero agree, we may feel sure. Cicero has been disparaged as a maker of phrases. That he is certainly. “They write Latin,” says Newman[2] of other great authors; “Cicero writes Roman.” His own style is the final answer to his detractors. He is evidently, indeed, a very conscious man of letters, and filed his speeches for publication; but can we deny vigor of thought to the maker of such vigorous phrase without lapsing into the separation of style from substance? Mere style is incredible—unless, as no one pretends of Cicero, the style is bad. So much _a priori_; and in fact his works will bear analysis. But he is not creative. He clarifies the thoughts of others and brings them to bear. His habit and skill are not at all scientific. His achievement is of style to the extent that it is an achievement of presentation. What he says of rhetoric, for instance, others have said before him; he says it better, more clearly, more vividly. He says it so much better, indeed, that his phrase has a certain finality. It witnesses not only his extraordinary command of diction, but also his constant awareness of human implications. His very diffuseness springs from his constant sense of how people think and feel while they hear and read. In all this he is typically the orator. _DE ORATORE_