Rhetoric, anyone?

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it. - Cicero.

I’d heard that one of the greatest fears that people have, isn’t the fear of dying but the fear of public speaking. And the first time I went up on a stage to speak, I realised that could quite possibly be true! So, I decided that it was high time I met with one of the greatest orators that history tells us about — Marcus Tullius Cicero. 

Ah, there he was, in the purple bordered toga, which was his right as a Roman ex consul to wear. He held his head high and strode towards me. “Thank you, sir, for meeting with me,” I stammered out. “Good day,” he responded.

“I hear you have some questions regarding rhetoric. I’ve already written a book ‘On the ideal orator’, you know,” he said. I frowned… “Um, yes… though we seldom call it rhetoric these days. ‘Rhetoric’ is somehow considered a bit pretentious in modern language…” I trailed off as a frown now appeared on the great man’s face. “Nonsense! Rhetoric simply means the ability to speak in a way that persuades and convinces your listeners. Isn’t that what any speaker wants to do?” “Yes, oh yes!” I hastily said. “That is exactly what I’d like to learn from you. You convinced the fickle Roman senate and the mob so many times, didn’t you.” Slightly mollified, Cicero sat down. 

“Tell me first”, he said, “after 2,000 years, is my oratory what people remember about me?” “Well… yes?” I said hesitantly. Cicero sighed. “I’m glad I did something right. I actually wanted to be a great politician, the upholder of Republican ideals and Roman freedom. Though I did take a lot of trouble to build my speaking skills, that was, for me, only a means to an end — first as a lawyer and then as a politician.” 

“But good speaking skills are important in any profession today. There’s no point in being good at anything, if you can’t speak about it convincingly.” “Yes, I suppose so,” the great man agreed. “And we do remember how you spoke about the fundamental ideas of liberty. In your time, it was even dangerous to speak freely and yet you had the courage and the conviction to condemn tyranny.”

Looking much happier, Cicero started off, “Speaking well is about being persuasive. My personal heroes were Plato and Aristotle and they had to convince ordinary people who couldn’t read or write through their speech all the time. ‘To teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.’”

“Another necessity for an effective speech is to have integrity. If you cannot believe in what you’re saying, you can never hope to persuade another person of the truth of what you say.” Barely looking up from the notes I was busy scribbling, I nodded. “But how can you make people believe that you’re sincere?” Cicero gave me a shrewd look. “I hear you people talk a lot about body language these days.” I nodded again. “Well, it’s a question of looking sincere with gestures and sounding sincere with your voice. If you stand stiffly and speak without voice modulation or clarity, your audience is going to lose interest fast. One of my mentors made me speak through a mouthful of pebbles to see if I could speak clearly! Voice is most important. You convince people through emotions even more sometimes, than you do with logic. Make your audience laugh! We’re all humans after all! Or are you all robots now-a-days?” He shot me a look. “No, no…” I said quickly. “People are just people.” “I should hope so,” he nodded. 

“Although I do think emotional appeals often work better than logic, it is important to prepare your arguments well. However many speeches you’ve made, you still need to prepare for each one. I’ve spent whole nights sitting up researching and preparing for a day in the senate. You can’t just say the first thing that comes to your tongue. The words and the flow of thought has to be right or you’ll invariably say the wrong thing.” I thought ruefully about the start of this interview and my attempt to teach the great orator ‘modern English’.

“What else is important?” I asked. “I could go on and on but I’ll make one more point: Read! ‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’ How can you talk about anything meaningfully, if you have nothing meaningful to say?! The words of great thinkers inspire thought.” “Thank you,” I called after the philosopher / lawyer / speaker / writer / politician, as he walked away. I really should read a few of his many books, I told myself.