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De Optimo Genere Oratorum, "On the Best Kind of Orators", is a work from Marcus Tullius Cicero written in 46 BCE between two of his other works, Brutus and the Orator ad M. Brutum. Cicero attempts to explain why his view of oratorical style reflects true Atticism and is better than that of the Roman Atticists "who would confine the orator to the simplicity and artlessness of the early Attic orators."[1]
This short treatise professes to be the introduction to a translation of a speech by Demosthenes called On the Crown, and a speech of his rival, Aeschines, called Against Ctesiphon. Cicero was an advocate of free translation: "The essence of successful oratory, he insists, is that it should 'instruct, delight, and move the minds of his audience', this being achievable in translation only by conserving the 'force and flavour of the passage', not by translating 'word for word'."[2] The actual translation of the two speeches was never published, and De Optimo Genere Oratorum was not published in Cicero's lifetime.
Many believe that the final treatise is a compilation of two drafts that Cicero wrote. In his critique of this piece, Hendrickson argues how the "brevity of mere jottings and suggestions, to omissions of words (which modern editors have supplied), to suppressed sequences of thought, to evidence of double treatment" all give evidence of the uncompleted state of De Optimo Genere Oratorum.[3]
- ^ Hendrickson, G. L. "Cicero De Optimo Genere Oratorum." The American Journal of Philology 47.2 (1926): 109–23. JSTOR. Web.
- ^ Hubbell, H. M., trans. "De Optimo Genere Oratorum." Cicero: De Inventione, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, Topica. London: William Heinemann Ltd, 1969. pp. 349–72.
- ^ Weissbort, Daniel. "Classical Latin and Early Christian Latin Translation." Translation: Theory and Practice A Historical Reader. Ed. Eysteinsson Astradur. New York:Oxford UP, USA, 2006. p. 22.