Handbuch Antike Rhetorik

Christoph G. Leidl

15Der ideale Redner Ciceros

Abstract: Cicero’s ideal orator cannot be exclusively defined as either a ‘philosophically educated orator’ or a ‘philosopher who is active as an orator in public life’. He is a citizen firmly situated within his society as an active participant in public life and embodies the teachings of theoretical rhetoric, philosophical (and juridical, historical, scientific) education, and of practical political experience in his activity as an orator. In his dialogue On the orator Cicero argues, also through literary techniques (dialogue form, historical setting, characterization of interlocutors), for a reinstatement of the old unity – supposedly lost the in post-Socratic philosophical tradition – of rhetoric ...