Cicero vs. Cicero or Training Wheels vs. A 10-Speed

            De Inventione was written when Cicero was 20.  Just emerging past a student of rhetoric into a true rhetorician, De Inventione seems to become less of a new and exciting treatise into the heart and art of rhetoric than a recitation of his learning.  Not that it is not well-written, informative, and, yes, persuasive enough to make me think that De Inventione could easily be the Bible of rhetoric, but it fails as a true treatise compared to his De Oratore.  De Oratore is rife with experience and knowledge of true rhetoric, not just theory.  De Inventione can thus be seen as a bike with the training wheels on.  It will still get you where you need to go, certainly, but it just isn’t as mature looking.  De Inventione contains all the correct principles of rhetoric, just not as fully fleshed out.  De Oratore is the full bike, containing all the more subtle nuances of rhetoric.

This is De Inventione.  It's still a bike, but less
mature and functional.

De Inventione mentions most of the rudimentary, necessary parts of rhetoric.  It cites the importance of eloquence and proper arrangement.  It defines and elaborates on stasis, especially conjectural stasis.  It speaks of the branches of oratory (epideictic, judicial, deliberative).  It lists all 5 parts of arrangement and expands on them.  Yet all of the ideas he discusses seem extremely textbook-like.  He moves simply from idea to idea with analysis, but weak analysis.  For example, the idea that “a person's name can be used as an indication of his temperament” is intriguing but he does not truly delve into it.  Furthermore, he does not truly understand yet the deep need for learning, wisdom, decorum, or cultural understanding.  He mentions none of these extremely vital, but perhaps less “textbook” ideas in De Inventione, but does in De Oratore.

            

This is De Oratore.  It's pretty formidable.

De Oratore, though another treatise on rhetoric by the same man, could hardly be any more different from De Inventione.  For one thing, it is a fictional dialogue.  Having it in dialogue format allows Cicero, now an extremely important statesman, to take the focus of the paper off of himself and firmly onto rhetoric.  Furthermore, having characters like Crassus and Antonius discuss different ideas of rhetoric allows Cicero to address both sides of the rhetoric argument and flesh out both.  Although I would argue that because Cicero thinks that knowledge of law and culture is needed for oratory as well as eloquence, Cicero agrees more with Crassus than Antonius, Cicero allows his readers to think about rhetoric for themselves.  Furthermore, Oratore delves far deeper than Inventione into the nature of rhetoric rather than just the technical aspects.  He discusses the type of people needed to become rhetoricians (natural ability vs. practice is theme throughout), the education needed for orators, style, decorum, rhythm, and delivery.  Thus, Cicero casts off his textbook knowledge, his training wheels, and understands truly the human and cultural aspects of rhetoric, not just the technical aspects.