Cicero's De Oratore: Gaining Skills to Become an Orator

Cicero, similarly to Plato and Aristotle, concerned himself with the art of rhetoric and what it means to be a good orator. In the dialogues of De Oratore, Cicero uses the voice of L. Licinius Crassus to demonstrate his broad view on what oratory should stand for and what orators must strive to achieve. According to Cicero, a good orator must possess knowledge of other sciences as well as natural talent, eloquence and grace in his style of speech. Because this is difficult to achieve by ordinary people, Cicero reasons that there are not many men who can be thought of as orators. In the first two books of De Oratore, he demonstrates that to master oratory one must reach a cultural ideal set forth by the demand of both knowledge and style.

The concept of oratory as a cultural ideal emerges at the beginning of Book I of De Oratore. Here, Cicero discusses what he believes to be the abilities of a good orator. To deserve a title of an orator, one must demonstrate an ability to speak "with knowledge, method, charm, and retentive memory, combining with these qualifications a certain distinctive bearing" (49). In order to reach this ideal, one must have natural talent, as well as passion and ability to study many subjects. In addition, an orator who possesses these qualities will be able to learn the facts of any science and speak on it better then those man who have developed it. Since this is the case, both science and philosophy look to rhetoric for help in expressing their claims (47-53). This clearly demonstrates the importance that Cicero believed rhetoric has on the Roman culture. It follows that only the person who is "accomplished in all those arts that benefit the well-bred" can be called an orator (53). Cicero describes this notion as an ideal, portraying Crassus as someone who comes close to possessing the qualities of a finished orator, but also as someone who admits that he still has a lot to learn about the art of rhetoric (57).