Cicero vs Plato

It’s honestly nothing new when I say that the differences are very distinct between the literary elements and rhetoric of Cicero’s De oratore and Plato’s Gorgias. Plato does a pristine job of utilizing dialogue to completely destroy rhetoric and make Socrates look completely different than what he really was. Cicero utilized his speech to exploit different aspects of the rhetorical ideas and I would agree with Hailee’s post that it was very insightful. 

The main point that initially came to my mind was similar to the same points that Joseph made in his post. He discusses the differences in morality between Cicero and Plato. We can clearly see that Plato’s ethics and morals aren’t very sound. I feel like he doesn’t give others the opportunity to make rebuttals nor speak in general. We can see that Cicero does a much better job at adding a moral value to his own oratory. He is more open minded and is willing to scrutinize various points of a given topic.

I also really liked Brooke’s point about De Oratore’s arrangement. For whatever reason, I felt like it was set up in a peculiar way and it was different than the other readings that we have been assigned. It absolutely was in a very clear, organized way so that the reader can see clearly that the points Cicero makes are demonstrated in his own writings. Irony.