Book Description

"These translations of the Brutus and Orator were conceived as a sequel to the excellent translation of the De oratore by James May and Jaap Wisse, also published by Oxford University Press (Cicero: On the Ideal Orator, Oxford 2001). The book's raison d'être is easily stated. No new, complete, and readily available English versions of the two texts have appeared since the Loeb Classical Library edition was published in 1939, with translations by G. L. Hendrickson and H. M. Hubbell. Though both translations are accurate and still readable (Hendrickson's, in fact, is excellent), the introductions to the two works are brief and insufficient, and the annotation (in the manner of older Loebs) is still less adequate. Furthermore, our understanding of Cicero and the late Roman Republic has changed significantly in the eighty years since the Loeb appeared, and the resources available to students of the Brutus, in particular, are much more ample. I have reason to hope, therefore, that this book will be of some use. There is no need to discuss here the overall plan of the book, which the table of contents makes clear, or the approach taken to the translation and annotation, addressed in Introduction par. 5. The annotation very likely provides more detail than some readers will require, but I thought it best to err on the side of inclusion and leave it to readers to ignore-as readers can be relied on to do-material that does not speak to their needs or interests. I should add two notes. First, because Brutus and Orator are the most important sources for our understanding of Roman "Atticism" (Introduction par. 3), I have included in Appendix A a translation of the third Ciceronian text that bears on that subject, On the Best Kind of Orator (De optimo genere oratorum), a brief fragment that Cicero wrote but abandoned in the interval between the composition of Brutus and Orator in 46 BCE. Second, for the fragmentary remains of orators other than Cicero I have retained references to the fourth edition of Enrica Malcovati's Oratorum Romanorum Fragments (e.g., "ORF4 no. 8 fr. 149"), despite the fact that its successor, Fragments of the Roman Republican Orators (FRRO)-the work of a team led by Catherine Steel-will soon appear. The orators in FRRO will not be numbered and ordered chronologically, as they are in ORF4, but will be organized alphabetically by clan name for ready location, and a set of concordances will facilitate movment back and forth between the two editions"--