Cicero’s De Officiis, politeness and modern conduct manuals

Abstract This paper considers the guidelines for polite conversation and appropriate comportment presented in Cicero’s philosophical treatise De Officiis (44 bce ), examining them in the light of recent scholarship on modern conduct manuals (e.g., Terkourafi [2011] , Alfonzetti [2016] , Culpeper [2017] and Paternoster and Saltamacchia [2017] ). In particular, it considers: (1) Cicero’s attempt to impose order on conversational practices; (2) his guidelines on rebuking others appropriately (a top