Cicero's Speeches: Overviews and Themes
- LAST MODIFIED: 07 January 2025
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0423
- LAST MODIFIED: 07 January 2025
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0423
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. A total of 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brief fragments, and Cicero delivered at least eighty further speeches (see Crawford’s M. Tullius Cicero, the lost and unpublished orations, 1994, pp. 3–4); a total of 153 speeches.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 article does not include scholarship that 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 that focuses mainly on other genres employed by Cicero, such as his many treatises on rhetoric and philosophy or his corpus of letters. See the separate Oxford Bibliographies in Classics articles Cicero, Cicero’s Philosophical Works, Cicero’s Rhetorical Works, and Roman Literary Letters. Rather, the bibliography includes works which discuss Cicero’s speeches explicitly as speeches or as sources for 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, the Oxford Bibliographies in Classics article Cicero’s Speeches: Individual Speeches.
General Overviews
Cicero’s speeches as a whole can be approached from different angles: Kennedy 1972 and Pernot 2000 include Cicero in a historical overview of rhetoric in the Roman world and in Greco-Roman perspective, whereas Dominik and Hall 2007 offers a series of introductory studies to Roman rhetoric, including Cicero. Marinone 2004 offers a helpful chronological overview. The collections of chapters in May 2002 and Steel 2013 focus on Cicero and include discussions of Cicero’s speeches, while Steel 2005 stress Cicero’s written works (including speeches) to support his career. Mitchell 1979, Mitchell 1991 and Tempest 2011 provide biographical contexts to Cicero’s speeches.
Dominik, William J., and Jon C. R. Hall, eds. 2007. A companion to Roman rhetoric. Oxford: Blackwell.
A total thirty-two chapters on all aspects of rhetoric and oratory in Rome, including a dedicated chapter on Cicero as orator.
Kennedy, George A. 1972. The art of rhetoric in the Roman world, 300 BC–AD 300. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
Places Cicero’s speeches and rhetorical works within the longer history of rhetoric and oratory in the Roman world and offers concise discussion of many of his most influential speeches.
Marinone, Nino. 2004. Cronologia ciceroniana. 2d ed. Bologna, Italy: Pàtron Editore.
Cicero’s life and works in chronological order, providing excellent overview and evidence for dating Cicero’s extant and known speeches.
May, James M., ed. 2002. Brill’s companion to Cicero: Oratory and rhetoric. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
Dedicated to Cicero’s speeches and rhetorical works, leading experts provide both overview and detailed discussions of most of the speeches as well as an extensive bibliography of scholarship (up to 2002).
Mitchell, Thomas N. 1979. Cicero: The ascending years. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
Comprehensive biography of Cicero from birth to the consulship, including his speeches in the context of his career. The source references are particularly full and helpful.
Mitchell, Thomas N. 1991. Cicero: The senior statesman. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt1xp3tcd
The second volume of Mitchell’s biography, covering Cicero’s consulship in 63 BCE to his death.
Pernot, Laurent. 2000. La rhétorique dans l’Antiquité. Paris: Librairie Générale Française.
Introduction to rhetoric in Greco-Roman antiquity, including substantial discussion of Cicero’s speeches. English translation by W. E. Higgins, Rhetoric in Antiquity (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005).
Steel, Catherine. 2005. Reading Cicero: Genre and performance in late Republican Rome. London: Duckworth.
Discusses Cicero’s writings as a means to further his career and offers insightful observations on the role of speeches circulated in written version.
Steel, Catherine, ed. 2013. The Cambridge companion to Cicero. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
A series of chapters on all aspects of Cicero, including his speeches, their political impact, his prose style, and the reception of his person and works.
Tempest, Kathryn. 2011. Cicero: Politics and persuasion in ancient Rome. London: Bloomsbury.
Detailed yet engaging biography, based mainly on Cicero’s speeches and letters. It provides excellent historical and political context to the speeches, while remaining alert to rhetorical features.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Academy, The
- Acropolis of Athens, The
- Aeschylus
- Aeschylus’s Oresteia
- Aesthetics, Greek and Roman
- Africa, Roman
- Agathias
- Agriculture in the Classical World
- Agriculture, Roman
- Alcibiades
- Alexander of Aphrodisias
- Alexander the Great
- Amicitia
- Ammianus Marcellinus
- Amyklaion
- Anatolian, Greek and
- Anaxagoras
- Ancient Classical Scholarship
- Ancient Greek and Latin Grammarians
- Ancient Greek Terracotta Sculpture
- Ancient Mediterranean Baths and Bathing
- Ancient Olympia
- Ancient Skepticism
- Ancient Thebes
- Antisthenes
- Antonines, The
- Aphrodite
- Apollodorus
- Apollonius of Rhodes
- Appendix Vergiliana
- Apuleius
- Apuleius's Platonism
- Ara Pacis Augustae
- Arabic “Theology of Aristotle”, The
- Aratus
- Archaeology, Greek
- Archaeology, Roman
- Archaic Latin
- Architecture, Etruscan
- Architecture, Greek
- Architecture, Roman
- Arena Spectacles
- Aristophanes
- Aristophanes’ Clouds
- Aristophanes’ Lysistrata
- Aristotle
- Aristotle, Ancient Commentators on
- Aristotle's Categories
- Aristotle's Ethics
- Aristotle's Metaphysics
- Aristotle's Philosophy of Mind
- Aristotle’s Physics
- Aristotle's Politics
- Art and Archaeology, Research Resources for Classical
- Art, Etruscan
- Art, Greek
- Art, Late Antique
- Artemis
- Asconius
- Athena
- Athenaeus of Naucratis
- Athenian Agora
- Athenian Economy
- Attic Middle Comic Fragments
- Augustine
- Augustus
- Aulularia, Plautus’s
- Aulus Gellius
- Ausonius
- Bacchylides
- Banking in the Roman World
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism in the Roman World
- Biography, Greek and Latin
- Birds, Aristophanes'
- Boethius
- Britain, Roman
- Bronze Age Aegean, Death and Burial in the
- Caecilius Statius
- Caere/Cerveteri
- Callimachus of Cyrene
- Carthage, Punic
- Casina, Plautus’s
- Cato the Censor
- Cato the Younger
- Catullus
- Christianity, Early
- Chronicles
- Cicero
- Cicero's Catilinarian Orations
- Cicero’s Philosophical Works
- Cicero's Pro Archia
- Cicero's Rhetorical Works
- Cicero's Speeches: Individual Speeches
- Cicero's Speeches: Overviews and Themes
- Cities in the Roman World
- Classical Architecture in Europe and North America since 1...
- Classical Architecture in Renaissance and Early Modern Eur...
- Classical Art History, History of Scholarship of
- Classics and Cinema
- Classics and Dance
- Classics and Opera
- Classics and Shakespeare
- Classics and the Victorians
- Claudian (Claudius Claudianus)
- Cleisthenes
- Cleopatra
- Codicology/Paleography, Greek
- Collegia, Roman
- Colonization in the Roman Empire
- Colonization in the Roman Republic
- Columella
- Constantine
- Corippus
- Corpus Tibullianum Book Three
- Countryside, Roman
- Crete, Ancient
- Critias of Athens
- Death
- Death and Burial in the Roman Age
- Declamation
- Democritus
- Demography, Ancient
- Demosthenes
- Dio, Cassius
- Diodorus Siculus
- Diogenes Laertius
- Dionysus
- Donatus
- Doxography, Ancient
- Drama, Latin
- Economy, Roman
- Education
- Egypt, Hellenistic and Roman
- Emotions
- Empedocles
- Ennius
- Epictetus
- Epicurean Ethics
- Epicureanism
- Epigram, Greek Inscribed
- Epigrams, Greek Poetry
- Epigraphy, Greek
- Epigraphy, Latin
- Eratosthenes of Cyrene
- Etruscans
- Etymology, Greek Lexicon and
- Euripides
- Euripides' Alcestis
- Euripides’ Bacchae
- Euripides’ Electra
- Euripides' Orestes
- Euripides’ Trojan Women
- Fabius Pictor
- Family, Roman
- Federal States, Greek
- Festus
- Fishing and Aquaculture, Roman
- Flavian Literature
- Fragments, Greek Old Comic
- Frontiers of the Roman Empire
- Galen
- Gardens, Greek and Roman
- Gaul, Roman
- Geography
- Gracchi Brothers, The
- Greek and Roman Logic
- Greek Colonization
- Greek Domestic Architecture c. 800 bce to c. 100 bce
- Greek Epic, The Language of the
- Greek New Comic Fragments
- Greek Originals and Roman Copies
- Greek Prehistory Through the Bronze Age
- Greek Vase Painting
- Hellenistic Tragedy
- Heracles
- Heraclitus
- Herculaneum (Modern Ercolano)
- Herculaneum Papyri
- Heritage Management
- Hermes
- Herodas
- Herodotus
- Hesiod
- Historia Augusta
- Historiography, Greek
- Historiography, Latin
- History, Greek: Archaic to Classical Age
- History, Greek: Hellenistic
- History of Modern Classical Scholarship (Since 1750), The
- History, Roman: Early to the Republic
- History, Roman: Imperial, 31 BCE–284 CE
- History, Roman: Late Antiquity
- Homer
- Homeric Hymns
- Homo novus/New man
- Horace
- Horace's Epistles and Ars Poetica
- Horace’s Epodes
- Horace’s Odes
- Horace's Satires
- Imperialism, Roman
- Indo-European, Greek and
- Indo-European, Latin and
- Intertextuality in Latin Poetry
- Isocrates
- Isthmia
- Jews and Judaism
- Juvenal
- Knossos, Prehistoric
- Koine, The
- Lactantius
- Land-Surveyors
- Language, Ancient Greek
- Languages, Italic
- Latin, Medieval
- Latin Paleography, Editing, and the Transmission of Classi...
- Latin Particles and Word Order
- Latin Poetry, Epigrams and Satire in
- Law, Greek
- Law, Roman
- Lexicography, Greek
- Lexicography, Latin
- Linguistics, Indo-European
- Literary Criticism, Ancient
- Literary Languages of Greek, The
- Literary Letters, Greek
- Literary Letters, Roman
- Literature, Hellenistic
- Literature, Neo-Latin
- Livy
- Looting and the Antiquities Market
- Lucan
- Lucilius
- Lucretius
- Lysias
- Macedonia
- Macrobius
- Maecenas
- Magic in the Ancient Greco-Roman World
- Maps
- Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
- Marcus Cornelius Fronto
- Marcus Manilius
- Maritime Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean
- Marius and Sulla
- Martial
- Maximianus
- Mechanics
- Medea, Seneca's
- Menander of Athens
- Metaphysics, Greek and Roman
- Metrics, Greek
- Middle Platonism
- Military, Greek
- Military, Roman
- Miltiades of Cimon
- Minor Socratics
- Mosaics, Greek and Roman
- Mythography
- Mythology
- Narratology and the Classics
- Neoplatonism
- Neoteric Poets, The
- Nepos, Cornelius
- Nonius Marcellus
- Nonnus
- Novel, Roman
- Novel, The Greek
- Numismatics, Greek and Roman
- Onomastics
- Optimates/Populares
- Orosius
- Orpheus and Orphism
- Ovid
- Ovid’s Exile Poetry
- Ovid’s Love Poetry
- Ovid's Metamorphoses
- Painting, Greek
- Panaetius of Rhodes
- Panathenaic Festival, the
- Pantheon
- Papyrology: Literary and Documentary
- Parmenides
- Parthenon
- Parthian Empire, The
- Pausanias
- Performance Culture, Greek
- Perikles (Pericles)
- Petronius
- Philo of Alexandria
- Philodemus of Gadara
- Philoponus
- Philosophy, Dialectic in Ancient Greek and Roman
- Philosophy, Greek
- Philosophy of Language, Ancient
- Philosophy, Presocratic
- Philosophy, Roman
- Philostratus, Lucius Flavius
- Pindar
- Plato
- Plato’s Apology of Socrates
- Plato’s Crito
- Plato's Laws
- Plato’s Metaphysics
- Plato’s Phaedo
- Plato’s Philebus
- Plato’s Sophist
- Plato's Symposium
- Plato’s Theaetetus
- Plato's Timaeus
- Plautus
- Plautus’s Amphitruo
- Plautus’s Curculio
- Plautus’s Miles Gloriosus
- Pliny the Elder
- Pliny the Younger
- Plotinus
- Plutarch's Moralia
- Poetic Meter, Latin
- Poetry, Greek: Elegiac and Lyric
- Poetry, Greek: Iambos
- Poetry, Greek: Pre-Hellenistic
- Poetry, Latin: From the Beginnings through the End of the ...
- Poetry, Latin: Imperial
- Polis
- Political Philosophy, Greek and Roman
- Polybius
- Pompeii
- Porphyry
- Posidippus of Pella
- Posidonius
- Poverty in the Roman World
- Proclus
- Prometheus
- Prometheus, Aeschylus'
- Propertius
- Prosopography
- Protagoras
- Prudentius
- Pyrrho of Elis
- Pythagoreanism
- Quintilian
- Religion, Greek
- Religion, Roman
- Rhetoric, Greek
- Rhetoric, Latin
- Roman Agricultural Writers, The
- Roman Consulship, The
- Roman Italy, 4th Century bce to 3rd Century ce
- Roman Kingship
- Roman Patronage
- Roman Roads and Transport
- Sacrifice
- Sallust
- Samnites
- Samothrace
- Sappho
- Sardis, Ancient
- Scholia
- Science, Greek and Roman
- Sculpture, Etruscan
- Sculpture, Greek
- Sculpture, Roman
- Seneca the Elder
- Seneca the Younger's Philosophical Works
- Seneca’s Oedipus
- Seneca's Phaedra
- Seneca's Tragedies
- Severans, The
- Sexuality
- Silius Italicus
- Slavery, Greek
- Slavery, Roman
- Socrates
- Solon
- Sophocles
- Sophocles’ Ajax
- Sophocles’ Antigone
- Sophocles’ Electra
- Sophocles’ Fragments
- Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus
- Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
- Sophocles’ Philoctetes
- Sophocles’ Trachiniae
- Sosipatra
- Spain, Roman
- Sparta
- Sport
- Statius
- Stesichorus of Himera
- Stoicism
- Strabo
- Suetonius
- Symposion, Greek
- Tacitus
- Technology, Greek and Roman
- Terence
- Terence’s Adelphoe
- Terence’s Eunuchus
- Tertullian
- The Sophists
- The Tabula Peutingeriana (Peutinger Map)
- Theater Production, Greek
- Theocritus of Syracuse
- Theoderic the Great and Ostrogothic Italy
- Theophrastus of Eresus
- Thucydides
- Tibullus
- Topography of Athens
- Topography of Rome
- Tragic Chorus, The
- Translation and Classical Reception
- Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature
- Valerius Flaccus
- Valerius Maximus
- Varro, Marcus Terentius
- Veii
- Velleius Paterculus
- Virgil
- Vitruvius
- Wall Painting, Etruscan
- Xenophanes
- Xenophon
- Zeno of Elea
- Zeus