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Quintus Pomponius Atticus wrote:Oratory : Cicero (who else ?)
To them, it was simply drama. They did not ask for sound arguments but for beautiful phrases, razor-sharp verbal attacks etc..
Quintus Pomponius Atticus wrote:Oratory : Cicero (who else ?)
I wonder how much of this is true, I find it hard to imagine an entire people taking decisions based on style figures....
Quintus Pomponius Atticus wrote:Surely not, but oratory does not only cover figures of speech, which are a purely formal phenomenon, but also cleverly twisting bits of the truth, depicting your opponent as a rogue, inciting people's emotions, appealing to their convictions... all abundantly employed by Cicero in the Catilinarian speeches, to name but the most striking example.
Lucius Tyrrhenus Garrulus wrote:Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis
Marcus Scribonius Curio wrote:An utterly off-topic comment, but: The speeches about weapons of mass destruction? Factually speaking, I agree they had all the accuracy and plausiblity of Casanova's vows of fidelity, but there still seem to be quite a lot of people who believed and believe that there were WMDs, therefore there must be people who agree with these speeches! And given that Bush is hardly the greatest of orators, think of the impact that Cicero's factual inaccuracy must have had.
Well, that's where I think Cicero went wrong. He was not subtle enough in my opinion.
Now, scholars are detecting more and more signs of hidden criticism in the Aeneis, dubious lines that can be read in different ways and Vergilius is regarded even more highly than before.
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