"If Truth were Self-Evident, Eloquence would be Unnecessary"

In both of his publications, Cicero facilitates fascinating insight on persuasion. Firstly, in his book, De Inventione, Cicero develops the powerful idea of eloquence. He asserts that epideictic ability alone does not have sufficient strength to persuade. One cannot simply state a series of facts and find satisfactory results. Instead, eloquence must enhance the epidictic dialogue. Cicero even states, “The function of eloquence is to speak in order to persuade an audience; its goal is persuasion by speech.”  The inverse must also be true. If a speech is deprived of eloquence it will not persuade, and thus the purpose behind the speech will not be realized.

It seemed to me that the idea of eloquence was also developed in the discussion on oration in De Oratore.  The idea expressed by Crassus that, “An orator must know how to rouse or quell men’s emotions [and] words alone are insufficient” seems to indicate that if eloquence and epideictic are two sides of the same coin, then the name of that coin is oration. One must be both proficient in the manner in which the content is delivered but also the content itself. The later was a discussed thoroughly in a very manner reminiscent of the sophist ideology. The quoted dialogue of Crassus, Antonius, Scaevola, and Sulpicious heavily debated the idea of whether or not it was possible to attain the theoretically requisite amount of knowledge to be able to effectively argue on any topic.

I think Brooke does an excellent job relating the above principles to the ideas presented by Aristotle in discourses on rhetoric. Cicero breaks down the above idea into their most fundamental form so the reader can best understand how to develop the skills discussed. After all, “How incredible it is that few men, using the abilities given to most men, have the power to interest, motivate, and persuade their fellow men.”