Portrait of the orator as a great man: Cicero on Cicero

Abstract IN the previous three chapters I have looked at the three different kinds of speeches that Cicero delivered about empire and offered interpretations which relate his strategies of persuasion to the attitudes and opinions of his audience. That is, I have considered how the speeches attempt to persuade their audience to do whatever Cicero is advocating: which might seem to be the most important function of a speech. But whenever Cicero speaks he is also engaged in creating or maintaining his own persona as an orator and as a public figure. It is of course impossible to separate these two aims completely. The character which a Roman orator projected was an important factor in his success. Cicero himself laid great emphasis on the importance of ethos in his mature rhetorical theory. But for any orator with political ambitions, there are wider implications for his career as a whole, which make his image a matter for continuous attention.