The Roman orator, philosopher, and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero was a man of many words—too many, it could be said. Also capable of many words are the Large Language Models that increasingly pervade twenty-first-century life. When we are not talking to them, we seem to be talking about them. The producers and proponents of this kind of agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) laud the “efficiency” and “optimization” that it delivers to our world—words our culture highly values. Some even argue that it is a fundamentally democratic technology, bringing not only information, but also the means of expression and invention to many without the wherewithal to acquire them through education. Even those who are well accustomed to thinking and writing for themselves will now find AI embedded in the word processing programs that they use. The author of this article has had to ensure that he alone remains so by disabling the “improved” text prediction and auto-complete features that seem to have an ever-stronger opinion about what he should be saying. At the same time as more and more of our words are being forcibly handed to us, many words themselves seem to have lost their meaning in the realm of civil discourse. We may be able to make more sense of these contemporary crises in language and politics by entering into a kind of virtual conversation not with a modern chatbot but with an ancient chatterbox; not Claude™, but Cicero.

We can begin with politics. On the one hand, the American President Donald Trump is called a skilled communicator, a skill he honed as impresario of a television reality show. On the other hand, he is condemned for “mere rhetoric” when he defends various policies with words that have no connection to reality. Cicero can help us clarify that seeming contradiction. The condemnation of rhetoric as equivocal, deceitful, and manipulative has a long history. For Plato (that is, Plato’s Socrates), in the dialogue Gorgias, rhētorikē (ῥητορικὴ) was no more than a clever art (technē; τέχνη) to make one appear knowledgeable to the ignorant.Footnote ¹ In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), John Locke claimed that all the “artificial and figurative” devices of rhetoric “are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong Ideas, move the Passions, and thereby mislead the Judgement; and so indeed are perfect cheat.”Footnote ² Cicero understood such uses of rhetoric. He complained in his own dialogue On the Orator about those who write “a few little handbooks and give them the title of Rhetoric.”Footnote ³ He also asked, “What is so maddening as the empty thundering of words—even the best and most ornate ones—without any underlying sense or knowledge?”Footnote ⁴ Empty rhetoric, according to Cicero, is that which is devoid of knowledge or any relationship to reality. But, for Cicero, there is a deep reciprocity between words and things; good style illuminates substances as they are, making them visible to speaker and listener. As Cicero has it in the treatise Orator, “there is no thought that will bear fruit for the orator, unless it is fitting and perfectly expressed.”Footnote ⁵ In On the Orator, he offers a horticultural metaphor: we graft and prune our speech so that it might conform to that which the nature of things will permit.Footnote ⁶

It might seem that, in this respect, AI actually helps us. We plant our own thoughts with a prompt; the machine brings it to fruition by giving it better expression than we ever could. Cicero held that “a copious supply of facts begets a copious supply of words, and, if there is honorableness in the things themselves of which we speak, there results a natural splendor in the words.”Footnote ⁷ Are AI models not supplied with more “facts” than anyone might reasonably be expected to know? Are they not trained precisely to determine the most effective way of articulating a given idea? Perhaps they are. Yet, for Cicero, eloquence is not just a matter of choosing the “best and most ornate words” (i.e., the most optimal ones). Eloquence, he asserts in On the Orator, is the most “fully-formed” (formosa) and “illustrious” (illustris) of the virtues, a comprehensive power of the mind “which, having embraced the knowledge of things, so unfolds the thoughts and designs of the mind in words that it can impel those who hear it in whatever direction it has applied its weight.”Footnote ⁸ For Cicero, eloquence is a method, a habit, a modus operandi by which we come to terms with the world and other people. How so?

When Cicero told us that there must be “honorableness” in the things themselves of which we speak—honestas in rebus ipsis—he was gesturing toward a deeper philosophical principle that he makes explicit in his later and last written work, On Duties. There, Cicero tells us that all human beings can perceive (sentire) “what order there is, what fitness, what limit to words and deeds” and that honorableness (honestas) itself “is created and accomplished by these things.”Footnote ⁹ The “fitness” of which Cicero speaks, he gives a name. “Let us call it decorum. The essence of this is that it cannot be separated from what is honorable: for what is fitting is honorable, and what is honorable is fitting.”Footnote ¹⁰ Cicero admits that decorum and honestum are not quite synonyms, but he confesses that the difference between them “can be more easily felt [intellegi] than explained [explanari].”Footnote ¹¹ Regardless, the two are always co-present: what is honorable, right, good is always simultaneously fitting, becoming, appropriate.Footnote ¹² Notice that Cicero associates decorum with more than just that which can be “explained.” It must be “perceived” and “felt.” The latter are cognitive activities not so easily outsourced to other people, even less to algorithms. Indeed, Cicero suggests that we see decorum most clearly by “holding fast” to what is “one’s own”; that is, to our individual natures, which are given to us as a “role” (persona) to play.Footnote ¹³ If there is to be decorum in speech, we must first know ourselves. Already in his day, Cicero inveighed against the ancient forerunners of modern “ghostwriters,” recalling with approval how Socrates had rejected a speech written for him by the Athenian rhetor Lysias that, while exquisitely crafted, was ill-suited to his own virtue.Footnote ¹⁴ When contemporary citizens begin to play the roles senselessly scripted for them by AI, they even more severely forgo the introspection that goes along with disclosing one’s identity in speech.

But the demands of decorum do not end with ourselves. While “thought turns in upon itself, eloquence embraces those with whom we are joined in a community.”Footnote ¹⁵ What eloquence teaches is a faculty of invention (inventio), a way of discovering what to do and say based on what is demanded of us in a certain place, and a certain time, and when engaged with certain people. It trains us to assess rigorously what others expect of us, and what we owe to them. Likewise, Cicero describes moral reasoning as a method of “finding out” (inveniendi) which action is the most appropriate to take in a given set of circumstances.Footnote ¹⁶ In Orator, Cicero makes this point clear: “In an oration, as in life, nothing is more difficult than to determine what is appropriate…Let us call it decorum.”Footnote ¹⁷ Decorum is difficult to achieve because ascertaining what is appropriate in different circumstances and on different occasions is no easy task. This is the same difficulty that the orator faces when speaking at different times to different audiences. Thus, we are told in On the Orator, “the whole art of oratory lies open to, and is to some extent concerned with the common practice, custom, and speech of humankind.”Footnote ¹⁸ In this way, Cicero holds that speech must measure itself by the “sense of the community” (communis sensus), and it must be calibrated accordingly.Footnote ¹⁹

Good oratory serves the audience, not the orator. Only on this account can the “moderation and wisdom of the complete orator chiefly uphold not only his own dignity [dignitas], but also the safety of countless individuals and the welfare of the entire republic.”Footnote ²⁰ AI may be capable of generating artful, even persuasive speech. Cicero, however, shows us that there is more to eloquence than just words. In fact, there are never just words. To borrow from Wittgenstein: “words are also deeds.”Footnote ²¹ In some contexts, we may legitimately authorize others to speak and act on our behalf—legal and political representation are only the most obvious examples. But we needn’t recoil in Rousseauvian horror from all acts of representation in order to recognize that regularly authorizing the speech that AI foists on us is distinctly alienating. Whether or not using AI ultimately estranges us from ourselves by impeding self-realization, it surely estranges us from each other. Relying on AI to optimize our speech debases rhetoric into the “perfect cheat” that Locke derided. Cicero knew well that skilled speakers move their audiences by influencing their judgements and sentiments. But he also understood that eloquence worthy of the name does not simply consist in manipulating listeners by delivering what they want to hear. Speaking well involves making consistent judgements about how to moderate oneself to others, thereby “creating and accomplishing” one’s own dignity and respecting the dignity of others.

With AI, we are not just speaking to machines; we are speaking through them. Allowing a chatbot to speak on one’s behalf permits it to suspend the moral and social reasoning that, on Cicero’s account, must always be imbricated within the practice of eloquence. What is valuable about eloquence, he tells us, is not “rewards and renown that it confers, but the study and training itself.”Footnote ²² It is itself a training in prudence.Footnote ²³ No one can speak well who does not think with good sense (prudenter intellegit), and thus whoever “gives effort to true eloquence gives effort to good sense [prudentia].”Footnote ²⁴ Eloquence teaches us to ask not superficial questions about how to make something seem right, but rather supple questions about what is right. The expedience of AI deceives us into presuming that decorum is simply a matter of capturing the attention and coercing the assent of an audience. It transforms rhetorical communication into an exercise of power rather than a reciprocal, dignified exchange between civil interlocutors. Cicero, however, reminds us that rhetoric that incorporates decorum is rhetoric that recognizes the esteem of our co-citizens. On this account, only human eloquence can bring political communities together while enhancing rather than destroying their civility.