Cicero’s _De oratore_, though it covers all five parts of rhetoric, is most ample as to _inventio_. His _Orator_ is complementary in that it is largely devoted to _elocutio_.[79] Like the earlier work, _Orator_ is specifically limited to deliberative and forensic oratory. Occasional oratory, or panegyric, though he declines again to treat it as a separate field,[80] Cicero recognizes as the “nurse of that orator whom we wish to form,” especially in sentence skill.[81] _Inventio_[82] and _dispositio_,[83] as depending more on foresight than on eloquence, are barely summarized. _Elocutio_ occupies three-fourths of the discussion.[84] _Orator_ has been less attractive than _De oratore_ for the reason that it is more compact and more technical. None the less it has a cogency and a felicity even more characteristically Ciceronian. Few men writing on style have shown in their own styles so much precision and charm. _De oratore_ keeps the fluency of dialogue; _Orator_ shows more of Cicero’s own mastery of the oratorical period. The division of style into three kinds (_genus tenue_, _genus medium_, _genus grande_)[85] has been much discussed as to its origin.[86] Whatever its origin, it is dubious as philosophy and has been vicious as pedagogy. Cicero applies it later[87] to the three tasks, or objects, of oratory: to prove, to win sympathy, to move. He adds[88] that the orator should excel in all three directions. But this hardly warrants a division of style into three kinds; for actually the teacher too ready to classify, or the student too ready to think of style as separable and additional, may thereby deviate his whole study. Historically the trail of the three styles has been baneful. For inculcating style perhaps the least fruitful means is classification.[89] But Cicero’s discussion of style, though grouped at first by this classification, ranges beyond it. DIGEST OF _ORATOR_, 61-236, ON STYLE[90] Style (61) is the very mark of the orator. The diction of the philosophers (62-63) has neither the force nor the pungency of oratory; for the philosophers (64) are limited to abstract discussion, as the sophists (65) to decoration, and the historians (66) to a somewhat diffuse smoothness. The style of poetry (67) differs not in speed or vividness, but in boldness of diction (68) and in sometimes being pursued for sheer values of sound.