"Forecast Eyes: Rhythm, Vision, and Philosophy in Cicero’s Orator"

This talk considers to what extent Cicero succeeded in crafting a philosophically informed account of rhetoric in his Orator (46 BCE). It focuses on the roles that Platonic doctrine and visual culture (statuary, painting, visual language and metaphors) played in the work’s examination of prose rhythm. The Orator may be Cicero’s most successful (and misunderstood) attempt to reconcile philosophy and rhetoric, paving the way for his subsequent philosophical encyclopedia under Caesar’s rule (46-44 BCE).