De inventione
De optimo genere oratorum ; Topica
by Cicero · first published 1546
2mentions
0recommended by
2HN commenters
2024–2025first – last mentioned
100% neutral
We know more of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE), lawyer, orator, politician and philosopher, than of any other Roman. Besides much else, his work conveys the turmoil of his time, and the part he played in a period that saw the rise and fall of Julius Caesar in a tottering republic.
Affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
…than whole body, but they might have some clues. Roman orators had a set of stock poses (the memes of the day?), so maybe Cicero actually said something about shoulder shrugging in the "delivery" part of De Inventione? It's certainly a gesture that would have read well in the back rows, had they used it. EDIT: maybe also somewhere in Quintilian? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutio_Oratoria
on “Under Attila's Gaze” ↗…Again, later Christian Greek texts (probably codices rather than scrolls) could have called "kephalaion" the thing Latin marked as "caput" (not in the article, but very common in Latin; Cicero uses it in _De Inventione_) or "capitulum," and in fact Greek texts did so in imitation of the Latin, but "kephalaia" is plural, and the author, despite writing about the history of terms, doesn't seem to know that. It's also…
on “Why did books start being divided into chapters? A new history” ↗