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De Inventione is a handbook for orators that Cicero composed when he was still a young man. Quintilian tells us that Cicero considered the work rendered obsolete by his later writings. Originally four books in all, only two have survived into modern times.
Cicero De Inventione Notes. Every subject which contains in itself a controversy to be resolved by speech and debate involves a question about a fact, or about a definition, or about the nature of an act, or about. . . the processes of deciding it. --Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Invention.
And this is how eloquence appears to have originated at first, and to have advanced to greater perfection; and also, afterwards, to have become concerned in the most important transactions of peace and war, to the greatest advantage of mankind.
M. TVLLI CICERONIS DE INVENTIONE. Liber Primus. Liber Secundus. Cicero The Latin Library The Classics Page.
Rhetorici libri duo qui vocantur de inventione. M. Tullius Cicero. Eduard Stroebel. In Aedibus B.G. Teubneri. Lipsiae. 1915. Keyboarding. The Mellon Foundation provided support for entering this text.
Demonstrativum est, quod tribuitur in alicuius certae personae laudem aut vituperationem; deliberativum, quod positum in disceptatione civili habet in se sententiae dictionem; iudiciale, quod positum in iudicio habet in se accusationem et defensionem aut petitionem et recusationem.
It is essentially equivalent to ars (cf. de Oratore II, 232: natura, studio, exercitatione). Cicero may have had in mind such a definition as that given in Rhet. Graec. VII, 49, ῥητορική ἐστιν ἄσκησις λόγου ἐν ἰσοσθένεσι τὸν ῥήτορα γυμνάζουσα λόγοις.
