230 



ROMAX PHILOSOPHY. 



' Orator.' 



partitione 

 Oratoria.' 



Moral and 



Physical 



writings. 



< He 

 Republic^.' 



Recent 

 discovery of 

 additional 

 fragments of 

 his Treatises. 



dialogue between Brutus, Atticus, and himself. He begins with 

 Solon, and after briefly mentioning the orators of Greece, proceeds to 

 those of his own country, so as to take in the whole period from the 

 time of Junius Brutus down to himself. About the same time he 

 wrote his * Orator ;' in which he directs his attention principally to 

 diction and delivery, as in his * De Inventione ' and ' Topica ' he 

 considers the matter of an oration. 1 This treatise is of a less prac- 

 tical nature than the rest. 2 It adopts the principles of Plato, and 

 delineates the perfect orator according to the abstract conceptions of 

 the intellect, rather than the deductions of observation and experience. 

 Hence he sets out with a definition of the perfectly eloquent man, 

 whose characteristic it is to express himself with propriety on all 

 subjects, whether humble, great, or of an intermediate character ; 3 and 

 here he has an opportunity of paying some indirect compliments to 

 himself. With this work he was so well satisfied, that he does not 

 scruple to declare, in a letter to a friend, that he was ready to risk his 

 reputation for judgment in oratory on its merits. 4 



The treatise ' De partitione Oratoria,' or on the three parts of 

 rhetoric, is a kind of catechism between Cicero and his son, drawn 

 up for the use of the latter at the same time with the two preceding. 

 It is the most systematic and perspicuous of his rhetorical works, 

 but seems to be but the rough draught of what he originally in- 

 tended. 5 



The connexion which we have been able to preserve between the 

 rhetorical writings of Cicero will be quite unattainable in his moral 

 and physical treatises ; partly from the extent of the subject, partly 

 from the losses occasioned by time, partly from the inconsistency 

 which we have warned the reader to expect in his sentiments. In 

 our enumeration, therefore, we shall observe no other order than that 

 which the date of their composition furnishes. 



The earliest now extant is part of his treatise * De Legibus,' in 

 three books ; being a sequel to his work on Politics. Both were 

 written in imitation of Plato's treatises on the same subjects. 6 The 

 latter of these (* De Republics! ') was composed a year after the ' De 

 Oratore,' 7 and seems to have vied with it in the majesty and interest 

 of the dialogue. It consisted of a series of discussions, in six books, 

 on the origin and principles of government, Scipio being the principal 

 speaker ; but Laelius, Philus, Manilius, and other personages of like 

 gravity taking part in the conversation. Till lately, but a fragment of 

 the fifth book was understood to be in existence, in which Scipio, 

 under the fiction of a dream, inculcates the doctrine of the immor- 

 tality of the soul. But in the year 1822, Monsignor Mai, librarian 

 of the Vatican, published considerable portions of the first and second 

 books, from a palimpsest manuscript of St. Austin's ' Commentary on 



1 Orat. 16. 2 Ibid. 14, 31. 3 Ibid. 21, 29. 



4 Ad Fam. vi. 18. 5 See Middleton, vol. ii. p. 147, 4to. 



6 De Legg. i. 5. 7 Ang. Mai, prsef. in Kemp. Middleton, vol. i. p. 486. 



