Cicero's de Oratore and Horace's Ars Poetica

In this long comparative study of Cicero De Oratore and Horace Ars Poetica we have discussed eight different rhetorical πόποι common to both works and have examined many illustrative passages, which, though individually proving no direct influence of Cicero upon Horace, yet cumulatively point to such an influence, and which at least indubitably show that Cicero and Horace drew from the same stock of rhetorical ideas. These πόποι fell easily into the simple partitio, ars-artifex.

1. First we have seen that both Cicero and Horace regarded philosophy, especially the philosophy of the Academic and Peripatetic schools, as a foundational art, indispensable in the training of the orator and poet. The importance of the topic in the De Oratore may be seen not only from the space given to the long discussion in the third book on the early divorce between philosophy and rhetoric, but more positively in Crassus' praise of philosophy and in his picture of his ideal, the doctus orator. Crassus' attitude rather than that of Antonius may be taken to represent Cicero's, though Antonius, even in opposing Crassus' advocacy of broad training for the orator, does so on practical rather than on theoretical grounds.

The central doctrine of the De Oratore, that the perfect orator must be a sort of "supercitizen," trained in philosophy, jurisprudence, and rhetoric, is perhaps to be traced to the attempted synthesis of rhetoric and philosophy made by Cicero's teacher, Antiochus.

In the Ars Poetica the most important passage is that referring to the Socraticae chartae (309-311) as the source of good writing, together with the lines immediately following, in which Horace declares that by studying philosophy one is fit for the varying officia of life.

2. As a corollary to the three artes maiores of philosophy, rhetoric, and poetics, we examined the use of analogies from

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