Sportive Thoughts

There is a wonderful passage in On the Orator where Cicero, the author of this dialogue, writes an apology for his own stage fright into the mouth of the main character, Crassus. Crassus is asked to quit avoiding his younger guests' main question -- what makes a great orator? -- and simply give his most honest opinion on speech-making.

"And now, if you really want to know my opinion, I will tell you-- since we are all close friends here-- just what I think about one matter on which I have always hitherto kept silent because this seemed the wisest policy. In my view it is proper for even the best of orators, the men who speak really fluently and eloquently, to display some diffidence at the beginning of a speech, and some discomposure when they bring their discourse to a close. Otherwise they will tend to be regarded as shameless. However, for good speakers the problem does not, in fact, arise. For the better he is at his job, the more frightened he feels about the difficulty of making a speech, and about its uncertain fate, and about what the audience expects of him.

"But what the most shameless person of all, in my opinion, is the speech-maker who shows in the clearest possible way that he falls completely short of his subject, and the title of orator, and the expectations of his audience. For the way to avoid being shameless is not by being ashamed of something one has done wrong but by not making the mistake in the first place! Most speakers, I notice, have no feelings of shame at all. In which case, I maintain that they deserve to be not merely rebuked but heavily penalized.

"Personally, I react to making a speech in the same way I know you both do. That is to say, when I start, I find myself turning deadly pale and trembling in every limb and to the very depths of my soul. In fact once in my earliest days, when I was just beginning a prosecution, I got into such a complete panic that I felt deeply grateful to Quintus Maximus when he adjourned the case promptly because he saw I was overwhelmed and incapacitated by nerves."

At this point Crassus' listeners all showed by nods and murmurs of approval how they agreed with what he had been saying.

Spectacularly, not only do his companions unanimously agree, they are reduced to silence! Amazing for a group of intellectual, argumentative Roman politicians!

In real life, Cicero was famous for both speeches he delivered and failed to deliver. He suffered greatly from stage fright even though he was easily the most influential orator of his day, if not all time. It comes as no surprise that he would defend his profession by having weaknesses be presented as virtues.

Yet the one point that could be contested, and is not, is the implicit belief that shame or symptoms of shame is a mark of integrity. We tend to still believe this in Western culture; why?