Cicero the Snarky Scholar

   While I missed Friday to chase ghosts in Bannack, you were all discussing Cicero. I haven't got the notes from Ian yet (Ian -- you did tell me you would take notes for me!), but based on the blog posts I've read so far, you all adored Cicero. I didn't necessarily dislike Cicero, but I did notice something that I haven't seen anyone make note of yet:

Cicero was a freaking asshole!

   I understand that this was a method of him exerting his ethos as an orator. He made others look bad so that he looked good (at least, that's what I got out of it.) I found myself giggling at his disses. Seriously! This guy was all:

Except, to the other dudes in De Oratore. I don't think Jon Snow was present.

Okay. Now that we've gotten that out of the way -- Let's take a look of some of my favorite burns:

   "For my part, if just now I were to want a complete novice trained up to oratory, I should rather entrust him to these untiring people, who hammer ay and night on the same anvil at their one and only task, for them to put into his mouth none but the most delicate morsels -- everything chewed and exceedingly small -- in the manner of wet nurses feeding baby-boys." (326).

Because, how could we possibly be entrusted to be intellectual beings if we are not a) boys, b) fed small amounts of information so as to be considered capable of understanding it, and c) Cicero is so far above where we lie on the academic spectrum.

 "Again, we see that the discovery of what to say is wholly insufficient, unless you can handle it when found." (328). 

"Socrates himself not having left a single scrap of writing. This is the source from which has sprung the undoubtedly absurd and unprofitable and reprehensible severance between the tongue and the brain, leading to our having one set of professors to teach us to think and another to teach us to speak." (335-6)

I'm going to go ahead and assume that Cicero was not a fan of Socrates.

"Moreover, the Stoics, of whom I by no means disapprove, I nevertheless dismiss..." (336). 

While he seemed to like the Stoics more, he wouldn't consider himself a "fan."

"...and by having brought into public life an amount of talent of which I am myself conscious..." (338).

But, God (A.K.A. Cicero) knows that Cicero knew the value of himself and his own work. This dude really knew what he was all about.


   The thing that kills me about these burns is that, in the context of when they were said, I'm sure few people were shocked other than the ones who were unfortunate enough to land on the other side of Cicero's opinion. If we were to say stuff like this in oratories, papers, etc, we would be immediately written off. What fascinates me is Cicero's lack of humility in his establishment of ethos, though he seems to rely heavily on appealing to pathos in his audience. In modern times, I feel like a much more delicate balancing act of humility in pride is put into play. Cicero was all about the pride. Make no mistake about that. Just take a look at the last paragraph of De Oratore:

"Consequently let us for our part allow your old Mr. Raven to hatch out his own chicks in the nest, so that they may fly abroad as annoying and tiresome bawlers, and permit some Pamphilus or other to sketch out a subject of this importance on his tapes, like a nursery game, and let us for our part within the narrow limits of the debate of yesterday and today unfold the function of the orator in its entirety, provided it be granted that the subject is so extensive that it might be supposed to fill all the volumes of the philosophers, books which non of those gentlemen have ever had in their hands." (339).

Well, done, Cicero. Well done.