Talk:De Oratore

Cicero and Plato
Cicero was not imitating Plato's dialogues, but Aristotle's, as he states explicitly Ad Fam. I. 9 - "scripsi igitur Aristotelio more, quemadmodum quidem volui, tres libros de oratore ... aborrent enim a communibus praeceptis et omnem antiquorum et Aristoteliam et Isocratiam rationem oratoriam complectuntur." - see the note in Watson's edition of the letters, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.54.125.242 (talk) 18:55, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

Comments page
The first para makes it sound as if Cicero returned from exile in 55 and as if his house was destroyed thereafter. He was exiled in 58, his houses (the one on the Palatine and other villas outside Rome) were destroyed, and then he returned from exile in 57. I am loathe to just delete the sentence, but it is at best misleading.Πενθεσίλεα (talk) 04:55, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Excuse me for top posting, but this is from the /Comments page for this article. It was older than these posts. "Cicero's De Oratore is not the first text to mention the art of memory. The first mention of mnemotechnics is in Ad Herennium, written by an unknown teacher of rhetoric in Rome circa 86-82 B.C." Left by on February 28, 2007. Killiondude (talk) 22:14, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry I don't know where to post this, but I just wanted to note that the English in this article is really uneven. You can tell it's written by a non-native speaker. It's awesome that a non-native speaker has tackled this huge entry in English, but it needs proofreading! 2/27/13 -- a student of rhetoric — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.156.211.10 (talk) 19:41, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Standing of the translation
I guess this article is the work of many hands, as is usually appropriate for wiki. But the translation and style are certainly uneven, and I wonder whether it would be better to import a scholarly translation & commentary from one of the many public domain sources.

I mean no disrespect to the authors of the article, but we have here a major work from the classical canon, and I wonder what the right approach is.John Wheater 17:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

23:05 CET 27 August 2009 Francesco Bonini: thanks for the comments of Mr. John Wheater. I took completely this article with my hands and decided to have a more precise approach. This article is not a mere translation nor a transcription: for these ones, I gave references for those who wish to read a translated edition or the original Latin one. Instead, I tried a different approach, that is to summary the dialogue by blocks of arguments and give a synthesis as much complete as possible. However, as I am not a native English, but Italian, I would be pleased and ask English Wikipedians to check and amend my English grammar and syntaxis, when needed. I will not be offended at all; I only ask gently not to cut part of phrases or expressions or alterate them in the substance, so that the synthesis of the "De Oratore" is respected. Thank you. Francesco Bonini, Vicenza, Italy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Francesco Bonini (talk • contribs) 21:15, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Intro
There needs to be an introducory sentence. Is this a book? Who wrote it? When? Why is it important? Pirate Argh!!1! 22:26, 31 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Pirate Argh!!1! !: I have corrected the misorder of the article. Is it all right now?.

By the way, as you are very attentive observer, may I ask your help? I wrote also the article on book II of "De Oratore"; the Wikipedia staff continues to keep the message to clean the article or improve it. I dit it; the message stands. I told them to be more precisely: what is wrong? which paragraphs have to be amended and why? I did not read thoroghly all the Wikipedia standards. Could you give me some hints, please? Thank you!--Francesco Bonini (talk) 15:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I tried to make the intro accesible. I haven't yet read the whole thing slowly so I'm no content expert.  Are the characters historical or fictional?  Can we better summarize the plot ( not list every philosophical question ) and the questions raised?   Pirate Argh!!1! 17:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your contribution to the article, dear Pirate Argh!!1! ! (please forgive my curiosity: why "argh!!!?). The characters are historical, but the dialogue is fictional, imagined by Cicero to expose his ideas about the qualities of the perfect orator. As per your second observation, I understand your proposal, but the dialogue itself has not a defined pattern and indeed the question are not always well organised. Sometimes the Latin text repeats concepts (probably due to a lack of revision by Cicero). This is particularly true for the first book; the second one has a more defined structure, as you can check by clicking on the link. I would propose to improve the second book first: indeed, as you can see, the complete reorganisation of the first book, that I made, deserved an appreciation by the Wikipedia staff. Of course it can be improved and all your contributions are welcome. On the contrary, I wrote down the content of the second book and I got the notice that "It has to be cleaned/revised/improved and the like". I suggest to work on the second book first, in order to meet the approval of Wikipedia and then enhancing the first book. Do you agree?

As per your mention about philosophical items, "De Oratore" is not merely a treaty of rhetoric, but philosophy has a great role, according to Cicero, in the education of the ideal orator. We cannot skip this very important part of it, otherwise our article would be misleading. When I revised the article already existing on the first book, I preferred to follow the content of it, in the order it is exposed in the original Latin text; sometimes I skipped unuseful details or repetitions, but I tried to be as faithfull as possible to the original. The older version of the article was very poorer, the content was partly summarised and partly totally invented (!) In the meantime, thanks for your contribution.--Francesco Bonini (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2009 (UTC)


 * "Arghh" is what pirates say. What you just wrote her should be the intro.  You totally explained the book and its importance, throw in a sentence on its impact and you're good.  I suggest rethinking your style about the body, see this.   Pirate Argh!!1! 11:39, 22 November 2009 (UTC)

Secondary sources needed
I think secondary sources will help put this dialogue in perspective for an encyclopedic article. See No_original_research Pirate Argh!!1! 17:14, 8 November 2009 (UTC)