Marcus Tullius Cicero, the undisputed master of oratory in ancient Rome, was perhaps more successful and more abidingly influential as a practitioner of his art than any other orator in any other age. The man whose name quickly became synonymous with eloquence itself (non hominis nomen, sed eloquentiae, Quintilian 10.1.112) left to his fellow Romans and to posterity a corpus of speeches that are models not only of effective courtroom persuasion but also of brilliantly lucid prose style; yet, to categorize him as merely an orator would do a grave injustice to this consummate man of letters.

As a rhetorical theorist, he was not content to pass on precepts that might result in empty eloquence; Cicero demanded that his ideal orator be equipped with all the noble arts, calling for a marriage between eloquence and wisdom (rhetoric and philosophy), providing a pattern even to this day of the "liberally...