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I have looked on the Internet about books with no punctuation marks and found a post by Thomas Musselman at Quora:

Punctuation is a post-3rd Century invention so when you read older texts you are reading them with someone sticking in punctuation that didn’t exist when the writer wrote it or his first readers read it. Cicero, e.g., hated marks showing paragraph changes. Purists thought you just should know when to break (from practice reading the text and reading aloud).

Does anybody know where to read the respective passage by Cicero?

jsx97
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    No idea. However, there is a Latin SE, and those folks eat Latin texts for breakfast. You might also post there. – J D Jun 11 '23 at 02:13
  • Which "respective passage"? Cicero did not use punctuation anywhere. So take any of his source texts, e.g. from [Latinlibrary](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/cat.shtml), erase the punctuation marks, and you'll get his [*scriptio continua*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua). – Conifold Jun 11 '23 at 07:17
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    I agree. Philosophers won't be able to answer this. Though I have to say that it seems very implausible that Cicero expressed dislike for something that was invented long after his time. – Ludwig V Jun 11 '23 at 10:05
  • Cicero's work is truly voluminous - I'd say you will need a precise quote at minimum to track it down. It's interesting to note as part of his pervasive & lasting influence, that the famous filler-passage used in web design that begins 'Lorem ipsum..' was only discovered later to be a passage from Cicero that had been being used for learning Latin for over a millennia: https://www.openculture.com/2015/03/the-story-of-lorem-ipsum.html – CriglCragl Jun 11 '23 at 11:36
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    @LudwigV: Paragraph marks were already in use by some Latin authors in 300 BC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilcrow#Use_in_Latin Cicero's secretary is thought to have introduced shorthand, & the amphersand, as well as writing extensively on Latin writing & grammar, so arguably Cicero was part of the 'old guard' about punctuation, at a time of change. – CriglCragl Jun 11 '23 at 11:44
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    @CriglCrag Thanks for the information. You are quite right - Cicero might have been in an old guard. (Subject to finding the text that proves it!) Next time I think I'm sure about something, I'll check first. I was relying on "Punctuation is a post-3rd Century invention" in the question. Maybe paragraph marks don't count as punctuation. – Ludwig V Jun 11 '23 at 17:24
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    @CriglCragl [Houston in Shady Characters, p.6](https://books.google.com/books?id=3fbWAAAAQBAJ&printsec=copyright#v=onepage&q&f=false) quotes him as saying that the end of the sentence "*ought to be de­term­ined not by the speak­er’s paus­ing for breath, or by a stroke in­ter­posed by a copy­ist, but by the con­straint of the rhythm.*" – Conifold Jun 11 '23 at 21:20
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    It seems strange that Cicero (106–43 BC) should have hated "a post-3rd Century invention." – Sebastian Koppehel Jun 13 '23 at 19:30
  • [The Latin post and reply are here](https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/21056/cicero-about-paragraph-marks) – lly Jun 15 '23 at 20:25

2 Answers2

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The passage in question is from M. Tulli Ciceronis ad M. Brutum Orator LXVIII.228:

Hanc igitur, sive compositionem sive perfectionem sive numerum vocari placet, [et] adhibere necesse est, si ornate velis dicere, non solum, quod ait Aristoteles et Theophrastus, ne infinite feratur ut flumen oratio, quae non aut spiritu pronuntiantis aut interductu librari, sed numero coacta debet insistere, verum etiam quod multo maiorem habent apta vim quam soluta.

This work of Cicero is known simply as Orator.

The Latin vocabulary used is intricate; one can refer to John E. Sandys' critical and explanatory notes in his edition. I do not have an authoritative English translation, but here is Bernhard Kytzler's German translation (Artemis und Winkler, 1998, p. 207):

Mag man das nun Komposition nennen oder vollkommene Ordnung oder Rhythmus: man mu£ es jedenfalls anwenden, will man wohlgeformt reden, nicht nur, wie Aristoteles und Theophrast sagen, damit der Redefluß nicht ohne Begrenzung dahinströme - , er soll ja nicht aufgrund der Atemlänge des Sprechers oder der Interpunktion des Schreibers, sondern aufgrund der Regelung durch den Rhythmus seine entsprechende Begrenzung finden - , sondern weil eine rhythmisierte Rede einen viel stärkeren Effekt erzielt als eine ungeregelte.

Tankut Beygu
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    This may very well be the source that, through a long game of telephone, ended up as the claim that "Cicero hated marks showing paragraph changes," but it is noteworthy that this passage says nothing of the sort. The OP makes a bold assumption when asking for "the respective passage by Cicero" anyway, as the information might just as well come from a different source, e.g. Cassius Dio. – Sebastian Koppehel Jun 13 '23 at 19:28
  • No, it might not. The OP notes a frequent interpretation of Cicero's paragraph in the historical context of punctuation. See, for example, [The Mysterious Origins of Punctuation](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20150902-the-mysterious-origins-of-punctuation). – Tankut Beygu Jun 13 '23 at 20:50
  • As repeatedly pointed out in the comments above, the OP's source was completely mistaken. If that has been 'a frequent interpretation' it's been a poor one. It's not like modernity has a monopoly on poor readers. That passage says nothing dismissive of punctuation at all, only something hortatory to writers. [The Latinists did an English translation](https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/21056/cicero-about-paragraph-marks) that might be helpfully added here. – lly Jun 15 '23 at 20:23
  • We do not assess the interpretation here; the OP merely asks which passage it is. Here's another article: [The reading eye from scriptura continua to modernism: orality and punctuation between Beckett’s L’image and Comment c’est/How It is](https://journals.openedition.org/jsse/800) by Anthony Cordingley ("1xviii" should read "lxviii"). – Tankut Beygu Jun 15 '23 at 21:43
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Addendum

Here is an authoritative English translation (Loeb Classical Library № 342) of the passage in question:

enter image description here

Tankut Beygu
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