Classics Cicero's Speeches: Individual Speeches
by
Henriette van der Blom
  • LAST MODIFIED: 07 January 2025
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0422

Introduction

Cicero was and is considered the greatest Roman orator of all time. His speeches offer invaluable information about Latin oratory and rhetoric, and—together with his letters and his rhetorical and political treatises—offer the most substantial source material for the Roman republican period by any single person. Fifty-eight speeches are extant in (almost) complete form, fifteen exist only in brief fragments, and Cicero delivered at least eighty further speeches (see Crawford, M. Tullius Cicero: The Lost and Unpublished Orations, 1994, pp. 3–4; a total of 153 speeches). He may have delivered more speeches unknown today, while a few of the extant speeches purport delivery but were never actually delivered, only circulated in written form (e.g., In Pisonem, Pro Milone, Philippic II). Traditionally divided into forensic (court case) speeches and deliberative (political) speeches delivered in the popular assemblies or the senate, Cicero’s speeches span his entire career from a budding advocate in the private law courts (first extant speech in 81 BCE) to senior senator addressing the senate in spring 43 BCE. The speeches were transmitted as examples of excellent oratory and excellent Latin for the benefit of Cicero’s contemporary and posthumous reputation and for educational purposes, and they are still used to teach students of Latin, rhetoric, history, and political thought. Much current knowledge about the Roman republic, especially the first century BCE, derives from Cicero—and much of this from Cicero’s speeches. This bibliography does not include scholarship which makes use of Cicero’s speeches to elucidate aspects of republican Rome, unless a substantial and clearly demarcated part of it is focused on Cicero’s speeches. Nor does it include scholarship which focuses mainly on other genres employed by Cicero, such as his many treatises on rhetoric and philosophy or his corpus of letters. Rather, the bibliography includes works which discuss Cicero’s speeches explicitly as speeches or as sources for our understanding of Roman oratorical and rhetorical practice, by which “oratory” means the practice of speech while “rhetoric” means the theory of preparing and delivering persuasive speech. This bibliography cross-references to its “sister”-bibliography in Oxford Bibliographies in Classics, “Cicero’s Speeches: Overviews and Themes.”

Time Periods

Studying Cicero’s speeches across all genres and by time period or otherwise chronologically allows the tracing of development over time, and many works take this approach: Stroh 1975, Enos 1988, May 1988, Alexander 2002, Powell and Paterson 2004, Craig 1993, Vasaly 1993, May 2002, Dugan 2005, Usher 2008, Lintott 2008, van der Blom 2010, Gildenhard 2011, Hammar 2013 (all in “Cicero’s Speeches: Overviews and Themes”), and Kenty 2020, sometimes based on a selection of Ciceronian speeches within each time period, and with a different perspective on the material. All of these works could profitably be checked for discussions of individual speeches. As mentioned in the separate Oxford Bibliographies article “Cicero’s Speeches: Overviews and Themes” under the heading Editions: Texts, Translations, Commentaries, this article does not specify whereas specific translations and commentaries are mentioned under the discussion of specific speeches, apart from Loeb translations or other standard translation series. The fragments and testimonies of further Ciceronian speeches are collected and commented on in Crawford 1984 and Crawford 1994 (in “Cicero’s Speeches: Overviews and Themes”). More detailed bibliographies on individual works of Cicero are provided in Craig 2002, pp. 591–599 (in “Cicero’s Speeches: Overviews and Themes”), which can profitably be consulted for individual works alongside the lists here.

  • van der Blom, Henriette. 2010. Cicero’s role models: The political strategy of a newcomer. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582938.001.0001

    Analyzes and discusses Cicero’s use of exempla across his career, in chronological order, and argues that Cicero used references to personal exempla to create and maintain social and political status and power.

  • Craig, Christopher P. 1993. Form as argument in Ciceroʼs speeches: A study of dilemma. Atlanta: Scholars Press.

    Discusses how the rhetorical device of dilemma argument (presenting two options both of which will hurt the person choosing) functions in seven of Cicero’s, mostly forensic, speeches.

  • Dugan, John. 2005. Making a new man: Ciceronian self-fashioning in the rhetorical works. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267804.001.0001

    Although focusing on Cicero’s rhetorical works De oratore, Brutus, and Orator, the work is essential for the theoretical background to Cicero’s speeches.

  • Gildenhard, Ingo. 2011. Creative eloquence: The construction of reality in Cicero’s speeches. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    Cutting across all of Cicero’s speeches, Gildenhard analyzes Cicero’s construction of a wide range of aspects, human and divine, organized under the headings of anthropological, sociological, and theological perspectives; an inspirational analysis.

  • Kenty, Joanna. 2020. Cicero’s political personae. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1017/9781108878098

    Taking the ancient concept of persona (“mask,” “self-presentation”), this study analyzes Cicero’s changing self-representations across his oratorical and political career.

  • Lintott, Andrew. 2008. Cicero as evidence: A historian’s companion. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199216444.001.0001

    Focuses on the historical value of Cicero’s works and engages deeply and chronologically with Cicero’s speeches.

  • Steel, Catherine E. W. 2001. Cicero, rhetoric, and empire. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.

    Analyzes the Ciceronian speeches dealing with empire (especially the Verrines, Pro Flacco, Pro Archia, Pro Balbo, De imperio Cn. Pompei, and De provinciis consularibus) and shows that the Roman perspective of empire was not so much one of territory as of (individual) power.

  • Usher, Stephen. 2008. Cicero’s speeches: The critic in action. Oxford: Aris & Phillips.

    Compares Cicero’s speeches, across his entire career, with Cicero’s representation of rhetorical theory.

  • Vasaly, Ann. 1993. Representations: Images of the world in Ciceronian oratory. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

    DOI: 10.1525/9780520916715

    Discussion of Cicero’s use of and references to the physical world across his speeches.

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