{
    "schema": "prokopton42-public-passage-v1",
    "id": "cicero.orator",
    "canonical_url": "https://prokopton42.com/en/works/cicero/orator/reference-74/",
    "language": "en",
    "title": "Orator",
    "author": "Cicero",
    "date": "46 BCE",
    "summary": "Addressed to Brutus, Orator defines an eloquence able to adapt style, rhythm, and emotion to each case. Cicero defends variety against making a single austere manner the absolute rule.",
    "learning": "Recognize the three functions of speech, analyze how style fits subject, and place the theory within controversy over Atticism.",
    "long_summary": "The treatise distinguishes levels of style and gives the orator three tasks: to prove, delight, and move. It pays special attention to prose rhythm, register, and the ability to move from plain precision to passionate amplitude.\n\nThe ideal speaker remains a regulative construction no example fully realizes. Cicero also responds to contemporary disputes about Atticism, so aesthetic theory becomes a reasoned defence of his own practice.",
    "historical_context": "The corpus manifests do not yet establish the precise place and circumstances of composition. The images below document the author’s world or the text’s transmission. They do not claim to show the exact scene of writing.",
    "material_world_label": "Roman world, 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE",
    "material_world": {
        "technology": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood.",
        "science": "Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory.",
        "medicine": "Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist.",
        "transport": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky.",
        "agriculture": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour.",
        "communication": "Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand.",
        "clothing": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
    },
    "material_world_scenes": [
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-01.webp",
            "title": "Technology, science, and care",
            "description": "Paved roads, aqueducts, concrete, glassware, mills, and hypocaust heating equip some cities, but energy comes mainly from bodies, animals, water, and wood. Astronomy, geometry, natural history, and engineering compile Greek, Egyptian, and Roman knowledge. Measurement exists without a modern laboratory. Physicians, midwives, baths, plants, and rudimentary surgery can help; reliable anaesthesia, antisepsis, and antibiotics do not exist."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-02.webp",
            "title": "Travel and communication",
            "description": "On foot, horseback, cart, or ship, road and sea networks connect the Empire. Travel remains slow, costly, and risky. Imperial couriers, letters on papyrus or tablets, inscriptions, and oral proclamations spread information. Everything is copied by hand."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-03.webp",
            "title": "Farming and food",
            "description": "Grain, vines, olives, pulses, and livestock supply cities and armies; estates, slavery, and tenancy organize part of the labour."
        },
        {
            "asset": "/assets/timeline/landmarks/09-54-ce/world-04.webp",
            "title": "Clothing, women and men",
            "description": "Tunics and cloaks are common to both sexes; the stola, toga, footwear, colours, and jewellery mark citizenship, office, wealth, and origin."
        }
    ],
    "intellectual_tradition": {
        "id": "greek-roman-traditions",
        "label": "Greek and Roman traditions"
    },
    "period": {
        "id": "ancient",
        "label": "Antiquity"
    },
    "languages": [
        "lat",
        "en",
        "fr"
    ],
    "manifestations": [
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/cicero/orator/representations/lat.ndjson",
            "language": "lat",
            "records": 238,
            "role": "original",
            "sha256": "db51a09f7e3c57672a84fac62dd533b93b6e705cf6e186c154bd2c33d607736f",
            "source_id": "perseus-cicero-orator-lat"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/cicero/orator/representations/ai-generated/en-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-11",
            "language": "en",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 238,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "2d6f12e57252cb764a22fda608a3eea0b06ead6a3ada582934d6606fd5f0d87a",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        },
        {
            "coverage": "complete",
            "file": "data/corpus/normalized/cicero/orator/representations/ai-generated/fr-gpt-5-6-sol-corpus-passage-translation-v1.ndjson",
            "generated_on": "2026-09-11",
            "language": "fr",
            "model": "gpt-5.6-sol",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "prompt_version": "corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "provider": "codex_subscription",
            "records": 238,
            "role": "ai_generated_translation_non_official",
            "sha256": "003badbbea721f69ad365d5fd12c1f0d695b7eef0a088453232ff8200f9f6317",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation"
        }
    ],
    "concepts": [
        {
            "id": "care_of_soul",
            "label": "Care of the soul"
        },
        {
            "id": "decorum",
            "label": "Moral decorum"
        },
        {
            "id": "family",
            "label": "Family"
        },
        {
            "id": "prayer",
            "label": "Prayer"
        },
        {
            "id": "reason",
            "label": "Reason"
        },
        {
            "id": "rhetoric",
            "label": "Rhetoric"
        },
        {
            "id": "sin",
            "label": "Sin"
        },
        {
            "id": "wisdom",
            "label": "Wisdom"
        }
    ],
    "source_work_ids": [
        "cicero.orator"
    ],
    "passages": 238,
    "word_count": 24828,
    "word_counts_by_language": {
        "en": 24828,
        "fr": 25733,
        "lat": 18499
    },
    "editorial_status": "gpt_5_6_semantic_draft_v1",
    "structure": {
        "citation_scheme": "cicero-work-hierarchy-v1",
        "kind": "native",
        "levels": [
            {
                "key": "hierarchical_ref",
                "label_fr": "Division",
                "label_en": "Division"
            }
        ],
        "leaf_fr": "Passage",
        "leaf_en": "Passage"
    },
    "canonical_passage_id": "passage:cicero.orator:74",
    "canonical_ref": "74",
    "canonical_parent_ref": null,
    "canonical_parent_id": null,
    "representations": [
        {
            "language": "lat",
            "text": "quo et semper utendum est et omnibus, decere quasi aptum esse consentaneumque tempori et personae; quod cum in factis saepissime tum in dictis valet, in vultu denique et gestu et incessu, contraque item dedecere; quod si poeta fugit ut maximum vitium, qui peccat etiam, cum probi orationem adfingit improbo stultove sapientis; si denique pictor ille vidit, cum in immolanda Iphigenia tristis Calchas esset, tristior Vlixes, maereret Menelaus, obvolvendum caput Agamemnonis esse, quoniam summum ilium luctum penicillo non posset imitari; si denique histrio quid deceat quaerit, quid faciendum oratori putemus?—sed cum hoc tantum sit, quid in causis earumque quasi membris faciat orator viderit: illud quidem perspicuum est, non modo partis orationis sed etiam causas totas alias alia forma dicendi esse tractandas.",
            "edition": "perseus-cicero-orator-lat",
            "source_id": "perseus-cicero-orator-lat",
            "translation_type": "historical_human_translation"
        },
        {
            "language": "en",
            "text": "which must always be observed by everyone, whereas fitness means what is appropriate and suited to time and person. This applies very often to actions and also to words, and finally to facial expression, gesture, and gait; the opposite likewise constitutes unfitness. If the poet avoids this as the greatest fault, and errs even when he assigns the speech of a good man to a wicked one or that of a wise man to a fool; if the famous painter, in depicting the sacrifice of Iphigenia, saw that Calchas should be sad, Ulysses sadder, and Menelaus grieving, but that Agamemnon's head must be veiled because his brush could not imitate that supreme grief; if even the actor asks what is fitting, what should we think the orator must do? Since this principle is so important, the orator must see what to do in each case and in what might be called its limbs. One thing at least is clear: not only separate parts of a speech, but entire cases of different kinds, must be handled in different styles.",
            "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol",
            "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-11",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol"
        },
        {
            "language": "fr",
            "text": "qui vaut toujours et pour tous; la convenance désigne ce qui est adapté et conforme au moment et à la personne. Elle s’applique très souvent aux actes, mais aussi aux paroles, et même au visage, au geste et à la démarche; l’inconvenance est leur contraire. Le poète la fuit comme le plus grand défaut: il faute même lorsqu’il attribue le discours d’un homme de bien à un méchant, ou celui d’un sage à un sot. Ce fameux peintre comprit que, dans le sacrifice d’Iphigénie, Calchas devait être triste, Ulysse plus triste encore et Ménélas accablé, mais qu’il fallait voiler la tête d’Agamemnon parce que son pinceau ne pouvait imiter cette douleur suprême. Enfin, si l’acteur recherche ce qui convient, que devons-nous penser que l’orateur doit faire? Puisque cette matière est si vaste, que l’orateur voie lui-même comment agir dans les causes et dans leurs différentes parties. Une chose est claire: les diverses parties d’un discours, mais aussi les causes entières, doivent être traitées par des formes d’expression différentes.",
            "translator": "Codex gpt-5.6-sol",
            "edition": "Prokopton42 non-official AI translation, 2026-09-11",
            "source_id": "prokopton42-codex-translation:gpt-5.6-sol:corpus-passage-translation-v1",
            "translation_type": "ai_generated_translation",
            "official_status": "non_official",
            "generation_model": "gpt-5.6-sol"
        }
    ],
    "content_checksum": "53ca1328fe57a94c9f50be4e570d0ac2fa8ad68939578d18649b7e5fc48c5b1d"
}