Advanced Latin: Communication is Key. Cicero's De oratore

Why should we care about (the art of) speaking well? How do we perfect it, and towards what ideal? These are the questions Marcus Tullius Cicero explores in his rhetorical and philosophical masterpiece of 55BC. A fictional dialogue of historical characters, including the greatest speakers of Cicero's adolescence, Marcus Antonius and Lucius L. Crassus, it is set in 91 before a darkening background of civil unrest (and worse). Evoking Plato's Phaedrus, anticipating his own situation in the 50s, Cicero weaves together a beautiful discussion of what we should all care about. We'll read De oratore in selection, a few letters and excerpts from his other works, along with chapters from Fantham's The Roman World and Rawson's intellectual biography. Classics majors and minors must take for a letter grade and may repeat for credit with advance approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies.