Rhetoric Re-View: Cicero’s De Senectute, or On Old Age

Abstract

Rhetoric Re-View was established under the founding editorship of Theresa J. Enos and has been a feature of Rhetoric Review for over twenty-five years. The objective of Rhetoric Re-View is to offer review essays about prominent works that have made an impact on rhetoric. Reviewers evaluate the merits of established works, discussing their past and present contributions. The intent is to provide a long-term evaluation of significant research while also introducing important, established scholarship to those entering the field. This Rhetoric Re-View essay examines Cicero’s De Senectute, or On Old Age, as a work of “gentle” rhetoric.

Notes

1 I am using parts of what I wrote in that newsletter essay to the retirees of my university in order to establish my point and provide readers of Rhetoric Review with another aspect of Ciceronian rhetoric, one that blends Cicero’s literary skills in composition with his rhetorical skills in epideictic rhetoric.

2 An authoritative edition of De Senectute, in the original Latin with an opposite-page English translation by William Armistead Falconer, is available in the Loeb Classical Library series of the Harvard University Press. There are, moreover, many other readily available editions that also provide lucid translations.