Cicero across Genres

This paper explores Cicero’s experimentation with satire, a genre with which Cicero is not generally associated, within another genre in which he is a central figure, namely, Roman prose letters. This paper will argue that Cicero’s introduction of satire into his familiar correspondence is not superficial or casual. Rather, it suggests that Cicero turned to satire for the relief it afforded him at a period when his freedom of speech and action was otherwise exceptionally constrained by the ascendancy of Caesar.

The purpose of the paper is to demonstrate the strong relationship between the theory of epistolary style explained by Cicero in fam. 9, 21, 1 and the rule of the tria genera oratoris clarified in de orat. 3, 210-212 and orat. 69-71. Although there are many Greek and Latin epistolary corpora still preserved (like that of Plato, Themistocles or Pliny), we don't have any ancient textbook about epistolary style, but only scattered theories or notes in many different texts.

Scholarship on Cicero’s pro Sestio (56 B.C.) tends to treat the speech in isolation from his philosophical works of the 50s in spite of their historical proximity and some shared themes.

Cicero's late works show frequent and concerted interest in what it means to reconceive of social genres and practices (oratory, politics, friendship) as solitary arts.

This paper examines Cicero’s Brutus (46 BCE), arguing that Cicero there presents the most elaborate and sophisticated version in his writings of a trans-generic conception of literature. Cicero’s Brutus (46 B.C.E.) has largely been understood thus far in terms of its most salient feature, that is, as an evolutionary catalogue of orators culminating in Cicero’s own accomplishments.