Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Inventione

Sara Rubinelli (University of Lucerne)

Ed. by Sophia Papaioannou, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.2: Ancient Roman Writing and Culture (Republic and Empire), -750-476.
Vol. editors: William John Dominik (University of Otago), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Thomas Habinek (University of Southern California), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Sophia Papaioannou (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), Jula Wildberger (American University of Paris)

Dates

First circulation or publication -84

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Ancient Rome (Republic & Empire) (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Essays/ Lectures (any)

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Cicero (106-43 B.C.) wrote

De Inventione

when he was still a young student, and it is marked by his intent to build a work of rhetoric out of what impressed him most in his years of education with the best Roman orators and the most famous Greek rhetoricians. While Cicero never completed the treatise, and he himself spoke of it in a later book as a work of his adolescence (

De Oratore

I, 5) (May and Wisse, 2001), in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

De Inventione

was considered as a main work on rhetoric. According to Kennedy (1972, pp. 107-110), the treatise is dated between 91 and 88 B.C. and is thus close to the other anonymous treatise that also received widespread recognition as a main textbook on rhetoric, namely,

Rhetorica ad Herennium

(Caplan, 1954).

The idea of writing a treatise

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2176 words

Citation: Rubinelli, Sara. "De Inventione". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 May 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13353, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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