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Cicero as an Orator.
Cicero's success as an orator was due more than anything else to his skill in effectively presenting the strong points of a case and cleverly covering the weak ones. For this he had extraordinary natural talents, increased by very diligent study and practice, and never, even in his greatest success, did he relax the most careful study of his cases to this end. Attention is called throughout the notes to his felicities in this branch of his art, which, because it is not strictly literary, is likely to be overlooked, and all the more because such art must always be carefully concealed. It is sufficient, however, to call attention to it here generally, referring the student to the notes for details.
On the literary side of oratory, Cicero's only rival is Demosthenes, to whom he is superior in everything except moral earnestness and the power that comes from it, a quality which belongs to the man rather than the orator. Teuffel (Gesch. der Röm. lit.) ascribes to him an extraordinary activity of intellect, a lively imagination, quickness and warmth of feeling, a marvellous sense of form, an inexhaustible fertility of expression, an incisive and diverting wit, with the best physical advantages. As to his "form," he speaks of it as "clear, choice, clean, copious, appropriate, attractive, tasteful, and harmonious." The whole range of tones from light jest even to tragic vehemence was at his command, and especially did he excel in an appearance of conviction and emotion, which he increased by an impassioned delivery. Of course he is not always at his best, but it is never safe to criticise his compositions without a careful study of the practical necessities of the occasion.
Thus Cicero's style is often criticised as redundant and tautological, a criticism which must proceed either from ignorance or inattention. One of the great arts of the public speaker is to keep before his audience a few points in such a way that they cannot be lost sight of. To accomplish this, these points must be repeated as many times as possible, but with such art that the fact of repetition shall not be noticed. Hence the same thing must often be said again and again, or else dwelt upon with a profusion of rhetoric, in order to allow time for the idea to gain a lodgement. It was to this art that the late Rufus Choate owed his success as an advocate, though the literary critic would fain reduce his speeches to one-half their length. Literary tautology is in fact a special oratorical virtue. A spoken word you hear but once unless it is repeated, and there are things which have to be heard many times before they can have their effect.
Again, apart from "repetitional" tautology, it must be remembered that the Latin language was in a sense a rude tongue, lacking in nice distinctions. Such distinctions must be wrought out by a long-continued effort to express delicate shades of thought. Hence it often becomes necessary in Latin to point the exact signification of a word or phrase capable of several meanings, either by contrasting it with its opposite, or else by adding another word which has an equally general meaning, but which, like a stereoscopic view, gives the other side of the same idea, and so rounds out and limits the vagueness of the first. Thus the two together often produce as refined distinctions as any language which has a larger and more precise vocabulary.
In the oration for the Manilian Law (1. 3), for instance, we have singulari eximiaque virtute. Here singulari might mean simply odd (not found in others). This of itself is not necessarily a compliment any more than peculiar is in English, but when Cicero adds eximia, the two words together convey the idea that the virtus is not only peculiar to Pompey, but exemplary and of surpassing merit. At the same time the two words allow the orator to dwell longer on a point that he wishes to emphasize.
In the same oration (5. 12) the words periculum et discrimen occur. In a treatise on synonyms it would be impossible to distinguish between these two, because each is very often used for the other with precisely the same meaning. But when the two are used together, as tn this passage, they are not tautological, as would at first appear to a microscopic critic. The first refers to the immediate moment of doubt, the question whether it (the salus) shall be preserved or not ; the second, to the ultimate decisive moment, which determines that doubt and finally decides. In English we should ordinarily put the whole into one (modified) idea, and say "most dangerous crisis," or the like. But the Latin has a habit of dividing the two parts of an idea and stating each separately. Hence we have the figure that we call hendiadys, which simply means that one language, or age, states separately and coordinately what another language, or age, unites into one complex.
In gloriam . . . tueri et conservare (the same oration, 5.12), tueri, the first word, refers to the action of the subject, the effort to maintain; conservare, the second, to the result [to be] attained, the preservation of the glory. To complete the idea both are necessary, because from the general turn of the thought both the effort and the result are alike important. In this way the same general idea can be artfully repeated from two different points of view without the hearer's suspecting a repetition.
To such causes as these is to be attributed the frequent use of words in a manner often called tautological.
