Sppeches

It is certainly true that the value of great speeches is that they continue to speak to us. They are admired by responders over many years and have an ability to speak to us, hence stimulating many different responses as time goes by. This value is present in speeches such as “Among us you can dwell no longer” delivered by Cicero in 63 BC in the presence of a Roman Senate, Lincoln’s 186 “Gettysburg Address” orated during the Civil War and Keating’s 1993 “Funeral Service of the Unknown Soldier” given at the Australian War Memorial. Along with universal values of patriotism and loyalty despite difference in time and context, all three speeches are timeless and allow us responders to interpret them according to our context and ways of thinking.  

In Cicero’s oration he exposes Catiline to the Roman Senate and attacks him for attending the Senate’s meeting after being declared a public enemy. By doing this he calls the Senate to take action against Catiline’s conspiracy to murder Senators and destroy Rome. He portrays threat of Catiline to the Senators in an indignant tone presenting Catiline as an agent of evil. The plethora of rhetorical questions from the very start of the speech made Catiline appear inferior and started the speech off with a resentful tone. He alienates Catiline from everyone else further by using inclusive language and referring to Rome and himself as “we” or “us”, where as Catiline was referred to as “enemy to the public”, Cicero aims to unify the Senate to make them appear stronger against Catiline’s threat in order to persuade the Senate to believe him. He used repetition in referring to Catiline as wicked, the public enemy, a fear and the need of having Catiline executed, which assisted to re-iterate Cicero’s message about Catiline. Cicero also used specific details such as dates and the hostility to the republic and so on as a device to taunt and intimidate Catiline, as they are seen as evidence for Cicero’s claim. The speech was thus...