![]() And I think you need to ask yourself, who do we remember and who do we respect? The transient compilation of information of a text book or the holistic study of a book like Moneyball or Liar’s Poker that makes you feel like you lived it? It is what separates a newspaper reporter who plugs quotes into the story format and the author who has dedicated years to the material at hand. The former knows language and the latter knows the truth. ![]() This is what separates a rhetorician from an orator according to Cicero. And he did the interrogations himself so he could absorb not just the victim’s words but their feelings, emotions and tone. Vincent Bugliosi as he tried Charlie Manson would approach witnesses with literally dozens of legal pads filled with questions. They must be acutely aware of the nuances of the material, the theory and its precedents. Cicero likens the study of a subject to a lawyer taking on a case for a client. In Rome the finest speakers were at an age that today we consider elderly–because they’d spent a lifetime acquiring knowledge. He writes that unless a speaker truly “grasps and understands what he is talking about, his speech will be worthless.” That is clever word play or eloquence never trumps the material. So here are 6 (of the many) Things that Cicero Can Teach You About Writing and hopefully, life too: You can take the passion and eloquence that carried him from humble origins to two millenniums of posterity and tweak them to apply them to your writing. From that I jotted down his principles for becoming the perfect speaker from his discussion “ On the Orator” and translated them into the principles for becoming the perfect writer. So eloquent that Caesar–often the victim of the man’s words and redresses–considered Cicero‘s achievements to be greater than his own once remarking that it was nobler to “extend the frontiers of the mind” than it was to the “boundaries of the empire.” As I read his work over the weekend I was struck by the clarity of his teachings–that moral goodness is the only source of happiness and that can happiness prevail even as you’re being drawn and quartered. Cicero is believed to be the greatest speaker that ever lived.
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