Book 1

As I ponder this often, brother Quintus, and recall in memory the men of old, those seem to me to have been singularly blessed who, in the best days of the commonwealth, while they flourished in public honours and in the glory of their achievements, were able to hold to such a course of life that they could either engage in public business without danger or enjoy their leisure with dignity. And there was a time when I too thought it would be reasonable, and almost universally conceded, that I should at last begin to rest and to recall my mind to those noble studies dear to us both, once the endless toil of public affairs and the demands of ambition had come to a halt with the completion of my career of office and with the decline of my years as well.

But this hope of my plans and reflections was disappointed both by the grievous troubles of the times common to all and by the various misfortunes of my own. For in that very place which seemed likely to be most full of quiet and tranquillity, there arose the greatest masses of vexations and the most turbulent storms; nor, for all our longing and yearning, was the fruit of leisure granted us, to cultivate among ourselves and to revive those arts to which we have been devoted from boyhood.

For in my early years I fell upon the very overthrow of the old order, and in my consulship I came into the midst of every conflict and crisis, and all this time since my consulship I have set myself against those waves which, having through my efforts been driven back from the general ruin, recoiled upon me alone. Yet even amid these harsh circumstances and these straits of time I shall obey our studies, and whatever leisure the malice of my enemies, the causes of my friends, or the commonwealth shall allow me, I shall devote above all to writing. As for you, brother, I shall fail neither your encouragement nor your request; for no one can prevail with me more than you, either by authority or by goodwill.

And so I must recall to memory a certain old recollection, not indeed fully worked out, but, as I think, suited to what you require, that you may learn what the most eloquent and most distinguished men have thought concerning the whole theory of speaking.

For you wish—as you have often told me—since those things which fell from us as boys or mere youths, sketched and rough, out of our little notebooks, are scarcely worthy of this age of mine and of the experience I have gained from so many and so great cases such as I have described, that something more polished and more finished on these same subjects should be set forth by me. And you sometimes disagree with me on this matter in our discussions, because I hold that eloquence is bound up with the accomplishments of the most learned men, while you think it should be kept apart from the refinements of learning and placed in a certain kind of natural talent and practice. And indeed, as I have often considered the greatest men, those endowed with the highest gifts, it has seemed to me worth asking why it is that more men have been remarkable in all other pursuits than in speaking. For wherever you turn your mind and thought, you will see very many men outstanding in every kind of accomplishment, and that not in the lesser, but in well-nigh the greatest arts.

For who is there who, if he should choose to measure the renown of famous men by the usefulness or the greatness of their deeds, would not set the general above the orator?

And yet who can doubt that, from this one commonwealth, we could produce almost countless leaders of war of the highest distinction, but in speaking scarcely a few of the first rank?

Indeed, of those who by counsel and wisdom could govern and steer the commonwealth, there have been many in our own day, more in our fathers' memory, and still more among our ancestors; whereas of good orators there were none for a very long time, and scarcely one tolerable one was to be found in each generation. And lest anyone should suppose that this theory of speaking ought rather to be compared with other pursuits that are concerned with abstruse arts and a certain variety of learning, than with the renown of a general or the prudence of a good senator, let him turn his attention to those very kinds of arts and look around to see who have flourished in them and how many they are; thus he will most easily judge how small the number of orators is and always has been.

For you are not unaware that what the Greeks call philosophy is judged by the most learned men to be the progenitress, as it were, and parent of all the praised arts; and in it it is difficult to count how many men there have been, of how great learning and of how great variety and richness in their studies, men who have toiled not separately upon some single subject, but have embraced everything within their reach, either by the investigation of knowledge or by the method of reasoning.

Who does not know in what obscurity of matters, and in how recondite, manifold, and subtle an art those move who are called mathematicians? Yet in this very kind so many men have attained perfection that scarcely anyone seems to have applied himself vigorously to that science without attaining what he wished. Who has given himself wholeheartedly to music, or to that study of letters which those profess who are called grammarians, without grasping by knowledge and understanding the well-nigh boundless range and substance of those arts?

This much, I think, I may truly say: that of all who have engaged in the most liberal studies and disciplines of these arts, the smallest supply has been of outstanding poets and orators; and within this very number, among whom some excellent man arises but very rarely, if you will diligently make the comparison from the abundance both of our own people and of the Greeks, far fewer orators will be found than good poets.

And this ought to seem the more wonderful, because the studies of the other arts are generally drawn from recondite and hidden springs, whereas all the theory of speaking lies open before us, is occupied with common usage, and dwells in the mouths and conversation of men—so that, while in other arts that excels most which is furthest removed from the understanding and perception of the unlearned, in speaking it is the greatest fault of all to depart from the common manner of discourse and from the practice of common sense.

Nor indeed can it truly be said either that more men devote themselves to this art than to the rest, or that they are moved to master it thoroughly by greater pleasure, or by richer hope, or by more ample rewards. And, to pass over Greece, which always wished to be foremost in eloquence, and that Athens, the discoverer of all learning, in which the supreme power of speaking was both invented and brought to perfection—even in this very city no studies have ever flourished more vigorously than those of eloquence.

For after the dominion over all nations had been established, and a lasting peace had secured leisure, scarcely any young man eager for glory did not think that he must strive with all his zeal to speak well. And at first, ignorant of all method, since they thought there was no force in exercise and no precept of art, they attained only as much as they could by natural talent and reflection; but afterwards, having heard the Greek orators and become acquainted with their writings, and having employed teachers, our countrymen were inflamed with an incredible zeal for learning.

They were spurred on by the greatness, the variety, and the multitude of cases of every kind, so that to whatever learning each had attained by his own study there was added frequent practice, which surpassed the precepts of all teachers. And there were set before this study—as there are now too—the greatest rewards, whether for popularity, or for power, or for prestige; and indeed the talents of our countrymen, as we may judge from many things, have far surpassed those of all men of all nations.

For these reasons, who would not rightly wonder that, in all the record of ages, times, and states, so small a number of orators is found? But this thing is something greater than men suppose, and is gathered together from more arts and studies. For what else could one think to be the cause, amid the very great multitude of learners, the very great abundance of teachers, the most outstanding talents of men, the boundless variety of cases, and the most ample rewards set before eloquence, except a certain incredible greatness and difficulty of the thing itself?

For one must grasp a knowledge of very many matters, without which a fluency of words is empty and laughable; and the speech itself must be shaped not only by the choice but also by the arrangement of words; and all the movements of the mind which Nature has bestowed upon the race of men must be thoroughly understood, because the whole force and method of speaking must be exerted in soothing or in rousing the minds of those who listen. To this must be added a certain charm and wit and a culture worthy of a free man, and quickness and brevity both in reply and in attack, joined with a refined grace and urbanity. Moreover, one must hold the whole of antiquity and the store of precedents, nor should the knowledge of statutes and the civil law be neglected.

For why should I say more about delivery itself? It must be controlled by the movement of the body, by gesture, by the expression of the face, by the modulation and variety of the voice; and how great this alone is in itself, the trifling art and the stage of actors declare; for although in it all labour at the management of countenance, voice, and movement, who does not know how few there are and have been whom we could watch with patience? What shall I say of that treasury of all things, the memory? Unless it be set as guardian over the matters discovered and thought out and over the words, we understand that all things, even though they have been most excellent in the orator, will perish.

Wherefore let us cease to wonder what is the cause of the scarcity of eloquent men, since eloquence consists of all those things, in each one of which it is an immense labour to succeed; and let us rather exhort our children, and the others whose glory and dignity is dear to us, to embrace in their minds the greatness of the matter, and not to trust that they can attain what they seek by those precepts, teachers, or exercises which all employ, but by certain others.

And in my judgement no one will be able to be an orator perfect in every kind of praise unless he has acquired a knowledge of all great matters and arts; for the speech ought to flower forth and overflow from the knowledge of things. And unless the matter has been grasped and understood by the orator, this speech has a certain empty and almost childish manner of expression.

Yet I would not lay so great a burden upon orators, especially our own, amid the great press of business of the city and of life, as to think it permissible for them to be ignorant of nothing—although the very meaning and profession of the orator, of speaking well, seems to undertake and promise this: that upon whatever subject may be set before him, he will speak with elegance and abundance.

But because I do not doubt that to most men this seems immense and boundless, and because I see that the Greeks, men abounding not only in talent and learning but also in leisure and zeal, have already made a certain division of the arts, and that single men have not laboured at the whole field, but have set apart from the other branches of discourse that part of speaking which is concerned with the disputes of the courts and of deliberative bodies, and have left this one kind to the orator: I shall not embrace in these books more than what, after careful investigation and much debate, has been assigned to this kind by the well-nigh unanimous consent of the greatest men.

And I shall trace back, not from the cradle of our old childish learning, a certain sequence of precepts, but those things which I once heard were discussed in a debate among the most eloquent men of our nation, men first in every dignity—not that I despise what the Greek artists and teachers of speaking have left, but since those things lie open and are ready to hand for all, and cannot be set forth by any interpretation of mine either more elegantly or more plainly, you will grant me this indulgence, my brother, I think, that I should set the authority of those men, to whom the highest praise of speaking has been conceded by our countrymen, above the Greeks.

At the time, then, when the consul Philippus was inveighing very vehemently against the cause of the leading men, and the tribunate of Drusus, undertaken in defence of the authority of the senate, seemed already to be weakened and broken, I remember being told that during the days of the Roman Games Lucius Crassus betook himself, as it were to collect himself, to his estate at Tusculum. To the same place, it was said, came Quintus Mucius, who had been his father-in-law, and Marcus Antonius, a man both a partner in his political counsels and joined to Crassus in the closest intimacy.

There had gone out with Crassus himself the young men, intimate friends especially of Drusus, in whom their elders at that time placed great hope for the maintenance of their own rank—Gaius Cotta, who was a candidate for the tribunate of the plebs, and Publius Sulpicius, who was thought likely to seek that same office next.

On the first day these men talked much among themselves, right up to the close of day, about the times and about the whole state of the commonwealth, for the sake of which they had come; in which conversation Cotta used to relate that many things had been deplored and recalled, as if by prophecy, by those three men of consular rank, so that no evil afterwards befell the state which they had not, so long before, foreseen to be threatening.

And when this whole conversation was finished, there was such graciousness in Crassus that, when they had bathed and taken their places at table, all the gloom of the earlier conversation was dispelled, and there was such pleasantness in the man and so great a charm in his talk, that the day among them seemed to have been one of the senate-house, the dinner one of Tusculum.

But on the next day, when the elders had rested enough and a walk was proposed, then Scaevola, after they had taken two or three turns, said: "Why do we not imitate, Crassus, that Socrates who appears in Plato's Phaedrus? For this plane-tree of yours has put me in mind of him, spreading out with its broad branches to shade this spot no less than that one whose shade Socrates followed, which seems to me to have grown not so much from the little stream that is described as from Plato's discourse; and what he did with his very hard feet—throwing himself down upon the grass and so speaking those things which the philosophers say were uttered as if by inspiration—that may surely with more justice be granted to my feet."

Then Crassus said: "Nay rather, even more conveniently"; and he called for cushions, and they all sat down on those seats which were beneath the plane-tree. There, that the minds of all might be relaxed from the earlier conversation, Cotta used to relate that Crassus brought up a certain discussion about the study of speaking.

When he had thus begun—saying that Sulpicius and Cotta needed not exhortation but rather that both should be praised, since they had already attained such a faculty that they were not only set before their contemporaries but compared with their elders—"And indeed," he said, "nothing seems to me more excellent than to be able, by speaking, to hold the minds of men, to win over their wills, to drive them whither one will, and to lead them away whence one will. This one art has always flourished above all and always held sway in every free people, and most of all in peaceful and tranquil states.

For what is so wonderful as that, out of the boundless multitude of men, there should arise one who, either alone or with very few, can do that which Nature has granted to all? Or what so pleasant to know and to hear as a speech adorned and polished with wise thoughts and weighty words? Or what so powerful and so magnificent as that the movements of the people, the consciences of judges, and the gravity of the senate should be swayed by the speech of one man? What, furthermore, is so kingly, so liberal, so munificent, as to bring help to suppliants, to raise up the afflicted, to give safety, to free men from dangers, to keep men within the state?

And what is so necessary as to hold always those weapons by which you may either defend yourself, or challenge the wicked, or avenge yourself when provoked? Come now, that you may not always think of the forum, the benches, the rostra, and the senate-house, what can there be in leisure more pleasant, or more proper to humanity, than refined conversation, in no respect crude? For by this one thing we are pre-eminent above the very beasts, that we converse among ourselves and can express our thoughts in speech.

Wherefore who would not rightly wonder at this, and think that he must labour at it to the utmost—that in that one thing in which men are most pre-eminent over the beasts, he may surpass men themselves? And, to come now to those greatest matters, what other power could either gather scattered men into one place, or lead them from a wild and savage life to this human and civilized way of living, or, when states were already established, mark out laws, courts, and rights?

And, not to pursue more things, which are well-nigh countless, let me comprehend it briefly: thus do I lay it down—that upon the moderation and wisdom of the perfect orator depend most of all not only his own dignity, but also the welfare of very many private persons and of the whole commonwealth. Wherefore go on as you are doing, young men, and apply yourselves with all your strength to this study in which you are engaged, that you may be able to be a glory to yourselves, a benefit to your friends, and an advantage to the commonwealth."

Then Scaevola said courteously, as was his manner: "In other respects I agree with Crassus, lest I should detract either from the art or the glory of my father-in-law Gaius Laelius, or of his son-in-law here; but those two points, Crassus, I fear I cannot concede to you: the one, that you said that states were both originally established and often preserved by orators; the other, that—setting aside the forum, the assembly, the courts, and the senate—you laid it down that the orator is perfect in every kind of discourse and of culture.

For who would grant you this, either that at the beginning the race of men, scattered over mountains and forests, hedged itself within towns and walls because it was driven thereto rather by the counsels of wise men than because it was charmed by the speech of eloquent men? Or, indeed, that the other advantages, whether in founding or in preserving states, were established not by wise and brave men, but by men eloquent and adorned in speech?

Or do you really think that the famous Romulus assembled his shepherds and refugees, or arranged the marriages with the Sabines, or repressed the violence of his neighbours, by eloquence, and not by counsel and by his singular wisdom? What of Numa Pompilius? What of Servius Tullius? What of the other kings, by whom many excellent things were done for the establishment of the commonwealth—does there appear any trace of eloquence? And when the kings had been driven out—although we perceive that the very expulsion was accomplished by the mind, not the tongue, of Lucius Brutus—do we not see that all that followed was full of counsels, empty of words?

For my part, if I wished to use the examples both of our own state and of others, I could bring forward more harm done to public affairs by most eloquent men than help; but, to pass over the rest, it seems to me that the most eloquent men I ever heard, excepting you two, Crassus, were Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius, whose father, a prudent and weighty man, by no means eloquent, was at many times, and especially as censor, a saviour of the commonwealth. And he, not by any studied abundance of speech, but by a nod and a word, transferred the freedmen into the city tribes; and had he not done so, we should long since have had no commonwealth, which now we scarcely hold together. But his sons, eloquent and furnished with all the resources both of nature and of training for speaking, when they had received the state most flourishing both by their father's counsel and by the arms of their forefathers, by that noble pilot of states, as you call it, eloquence, brought the commonwealth to ruin.

What of the ancient laws and the customs of our ancestors? What of the auspices, over which you and I, Crassus, preside, to the great safety of the commonwealth? What of the rites and ceremonies? What of this civil law, which has long been cultivated in our family without any glory of eloquence—were any of these invented, or learned, or in any way handled by the class of orators?

For my part I remember both Servius Galba, a man divinely gifted in speaking, and Marcus Aemilius Porcina, and Gaius Carbo himself, whom you struck down while still a youth—all of them ignorant of the laws, hesitant in the institutions of our ancestors, untrained in the civil law. And this generation of yours—except for you, Crassus, who, more by your own zeal than by any proper duty of orators, learned the civil law from us—is ignorant of the law, which is sometimes a cause for shame.

But as for that which at the close of your speech you assumed as if by your own right—that the orator can deal most copiously with every kind of discourse—this, were we not here in your own kingdom, I would not have allowed, and I would take the side of the many who would either contend with you by interdict or summon you to lay hands upon the property of others, since you have so rashly rushed into possessions that are not your own.

For first, the Pythagoreans, all of them, and the followers of Democritus, and the other natural philosophers, would proceed against you by law and lay claim to their own in court, with whom you could not contend by a lawful wager; moreover, the troops of philosophers would press upon you, from that very fountain-head Socrates himself, and would convict you of having learned nothing, in your whole life, about good things, nothing about evils, nothing about the emotions of the mind, nothing about the characters of men, nothing about the conduct of life, of having inquired into nothing at all, of knowing nothing. And when they had all together made their onslaught upon you, then the several schools would bring suit against you: the Academy would press you, which, whatever you had said, would compel you to deny that very thing;

our Stoics, indeed, would hold you entangled in the snares of their disputations and questionings; the Peripatetics, again, would prove that even these very aids and ornaments of speaking, which you think proper to the orators, must be sought from them, and would show that Aristotle and Theophrastus had written not only better but also much more upon these subjects than all the teachers of rhetoric.

I pass over the mathematicians, the grammarians, the musicians, with whose arts that power of speaking of yours is not joined even in the slightest fellowship. Wherefore, Crassus, I do not think you should profess things so great and so many. Great enough is that which you can guarantee: that in trials whatever cause you plead may seem the better and the more probable; that in public assemblies and in the giving of opinions your speech may have the greatest weight to persuade; and, in short, that to the wise you may seem to speak eloquently, and to the foolish even truly. If you can do anything beyond this, it will seem to me to be not the orator, but Crassus, doing it by some power proper to himself, not common to orators."

Then he replied: "I am not unaware, Scaevola, that these things are wont to be discussed and disputed among the Greeks; for I heard the greatest men, when I had come as quaestor from Macedonia to Athens, the Academy being then flourishing, as it was reputed in those days, when Charmadas and Clitomachus and Aeschines held it. There was also Metrodorus, who together with them had listened more carefully to that very Carneades, a man, as they said, the keenest and most copious of all in speaking. And there flourished Mnesarchus, a pupil of that Panaetius of yours, and Diodorus, a pupil of the Peripatetic Critolaus;

there were besides many men famous and noble in philosophy, by all of whom, almost with one voice, I saw the orator driven from the helm of states, shut out from all learning and knowledge of greater things, and thrust down and crammed merely into trials and petty assemblies as into some mill;

but I neither agreed with them, nor with the inventor and chief of these discussions, by far the weightiest and most eloquent of all in speaking—Plato, whose Gorgias I read more carefully at Athens with Charmadas at that time; in which book I most admired Plato in this, that, while ridiculing the orators, he himself seemed to me the supreme orator. For a dispute about a word has long tormented those little Greeks, more desirous of contention than of truth.

For if anyone lays it down that he is an orator who can speak copiously only in court or in trials, or before the people, or in the senate, yet to this very man he must grant and concede many things; for without much handling of all public affairs, without a knowledge of the laws, customs, and law, and without an acquaintance with the nature and character of men, he cannot deal even with these very matters with sufficient skill and expertness. But he who has learned these things, without which no one can rightly maintain even the least point in a case, what could be lacking to such a man of the knowledge of the greatest matters? But if you would have the orator be nothing except one who speaks in an orderly, elegant, and copious manner, I ask, how can he attain even this without that knowledge which you do not grant him? For the excellence of speaking cannot exist unless he who speaks has grasped the things of which he speaks.

Wherefore, if that natural philosopher Democritus spoke elegantly, as both is reported and seems to me to be the case, the matter of which he spoke belonged to the natural philosopher, but the very adornment of words must be reckoned the orator's; and if Plato spoke divinely on matters far removed from civil disputes—which I grant—and if likewise Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Carneades were eloquent and in their speaking agreeable and ornate upon the matters they discussed, let those matters of which they treat belong to certain other studies, but the speech itself is proper to this one art of which we are speaking and inquiring.

For we see that on these same subjects certain men have disputed in a dry and meagre way, as Chrysippus, whom they call the most acute, and yet have not on that account failed to satisfy philosophy, because they did not possess this faculty of speaking, which belongs to another art. What then is the difference, or how will you distinguish the richness and abundance in speaking of those whom I have named, from the meagreness of those who do not employ this variety and elegance of speaking? There will surely be one thing which they who speak well bring as their own—a speech composed and ornate and marked by a certain artistry and finish; but this speech, if there be no substance beneath it grasped and understood by the orator, must either be nothing at all, or be the laughing-stock of all.

For what is so mad as the empty sound of words, even the best and most ornate, with no thought or knowledge underlying them? Whatever, then, from whatever art, of whatever kind, the orator—if he has learned it as one learns a client's cause—will say it better and more elegantly than that very man who invented and devised it.

For if there shall be anyone who says that there are certain thoughts and cases proper to orators, and a knowledge confined within the bounds of the forum to certain matters, I shall indeed confess that our speaking is more constantly occupied with these; yet even in these very matters there are very many things which the teachers themselves, who are called rhetoricians, neither hand down nor understand.

For who does not know that the greatest power of the orator lies in stirring the minds of men either to anger, or to hatred, or to grief, or in recalling them from these same emotions to mildness and pity? And unless one has thoroughly examined the natures of men, and the whole force of human nature, and those causes by which the minds of men are roused or turned aside, he will not be able by speaking to accomplish what he wishes. And this whole field seems proper to the philosophers, and the orator, with my consent, will never contend against them;

but, when he has conceded to them the knowledge of things, since they wished to labour at that alone, he will take to himself the handling of the speech, which without that knowledge is nothing; for this is the orator's proper province, which I have now often said—a speech weighty and ornate and adapted to the feelings and minds of men.

On these subjects I confess that Aristotle and Theophrastus have written; but see, Scaevola, whether this be not wholly in my favour: for I do not borrow from them what is common to the orator with them, while they admit that what they discuss on these matters belongs to the orators; and so they entitle and call their other books by the name of their art, but these books rhetorical.

For when, in speaking, they fall upon those topics—as very often happens—on which something must be said about the immortal gods, about piety, about concord, about friendship, about the common law of citizens, of men, of nations, about equity, about temperance, about greatness of soul, about every kind of virtue, then all the schools and all the philosophers' lecture-halls will cry out, I suppose, that all these things are their own property, that nothing whatever pertains to the orator;

and when I have conceded to them that they may discuss these matters in corners to pass their leisure, yet I shall assign and give to the orator this—that the same things, of which they discourse in a certain thin and bloodless style, he should set forth with all pleasantness and weight. These things I used to discuss with the philosophers themselves at Athens; for our friend Marcus Marcellus here compelled me, who certainly, were he not now giving the games, would be present at this conversation of ours; and even then he was a young man wonderfully devoted to these studies.

As for the establishing of laws, of war, of peace, of allies, of revenues, of the law of citizens distributed by classes and ages—let the Greeks say, if they will, that Lycurgus or Solon (although we count even these men among the eloquent) knew these things better than Hyperides or Demosthenes, men already perfect and most polished in speaking; or let them set our own decemvirs, who drew up the Twelve Tables, who must have been prudent men, above Servius Galba and your father-in-law Gaius Laelius in this kind of knowledge, men who are agreed to have excelled in the glory of speaking.

For I shall never deny that there are certain parts proper to those who have placed all their study in learning and handling these subjects; but I say that the orator full and perfect is he who can speak copiously and variously upon all subjects. For often, in those very cases which all admit to be proper to orators, there is something to be brought forth and assumed not from the practice of the forum, which alone you concede to orators, but from some more obscure branch of knowledge.

For I ask whether anyone can speak either against a general or in defence of a general without experience of military affairs, or often even without a knowledge of regions by land or sea; whether anyone can speak before the people about the passing or rejecting of laws, or in the senate about every kind of public affair, without the highest knowledge and prudence in civil matters; whether a speech can be directed to the feelings and movements of men's minds, to inflaming them or even extinguishing them—which alone is supreme in the orator—without the most diligent investigation of all those theories which the philosophers set forth concerning the natures and characters of the human race.

And here perhaps I shall persuade you the less; yet I shall not hesitate to say what I think: those very subjects of natural science and mathematics, and the others which you set down a little while ago as proper to the other arts, are the knowledge of those who profess them; but if anyone wished to illustrate those very arts by speech, he must take refuge in the orator's faculty.

For if it is agreed that Philo the architect, who built the arsenal for the Athenians, gave the people a most eloquent account of his work, it is not to be thought that he was eloquent rather by the architect's skill than by the orator's; nor, if this Marcus Antonius had had to speak about the construction of ships on behalf of Hermodorus, would he, when he had learned the case from him, have failed to speak elegantly and copiously about another man's art; nor did Asclepiades, the physician and friend whom we employed, in that very thing—that he spoke elegantly and surpassed the other physicians—use the faculty of medicine, but of eloquence.

And that saying of Socrates is more probable, yet not true—that all men are eloquent enough in that which they know; this is truer—that no one can be eloquent in that which he does not know, and that, even if he knows it most thoroughly but is ignorant of how to compose and polish a speech, he cannot speak eloquently even about that of which he has knowledge.

Wherefore, if anyone wishes to define and embrace the universal and proper power of the orator, in my opinion that man will be an orator worthy of this so weighty a name who, on whatever subject may arise that must be unfolded in speech, shall speak prudently, in good order, elegantly, and from memory, with a certain dignity also of delivery.

But if to anyone it seems too unlimited that I have put it thus, "on whatever subject," let him cut away and prune from this as much as shall seem good to each; yet I shall hold to this—that, even if the orator be ignorant of those things which lie in the other arts and studies, and hold only what concerns disputes and the practice of the forum, yet, if he must speak on these very matters, when he has learned from those who are masters what belongs to each subject, the orator will speak much better even than those very men whose arts they are.

Thus, if Sulpicius here must speak on military affairs, he will inquire of our kinsman Gaius Marius, and, when he has been informed, will deliver it so that he himself seems to know it almost better than Gaius Marius himself; if on the civil law, he will confer with you, and, a man most prudent and most skilled though you are, he will surpass you, in the art of speaking, in those very matters which he has learned from you.

But if there shall arise some matter in which he must speak about the nature, about the vices of men, about desires, about moderation, about self-restraint, about pain, about death, perhaps—if it shall seem good to him (although the orator ought to know these things)—he will confer with Sextus Pompeius, a man learned in philosophy; and this surely he will accomplish: that whatever subject he has learned from anyone, on that he will speak much more elegantly than that very man from whom he learned it.

But if he will listen to me, since philosophy is divided into three parts—into the obscurity of nature, into the subtlety of reasoning, and into life and conduct—let us leave those first two and grant them to our indolence; but the third, which has always been the orator's, unless we hold to it, we shall leave the orator nothing in which he can be great.

Wherefore this topic of life and conduct must be wholly mastered by the orator; the rest, even if he has not learned them, he will nevertheless be able, if ever there be need, to adorn in speech, provided they have been brought to him and delivered to him. For if it is agreed among the learned that a man ignorant of astronomy, Aratus, spoke of the heavens and the stars in most ornate and excellent verses; if a man wholly removed from the country, Nicander of Colophon, wrote excellently about rustic matters by a certain poetic, not rustic, faculty, why should not the orator speak most eloquently about those things which he has learned for a particular cause and occasion?

For the poet is closely akin to the orator, a little more bound by metre, but freer in the licence of words, and in many kinds of adornment a partner and well-nigh his equal; and in this at least almost the same, that he circumscribes and defines his right within no boundaries, so that he is free to range with that same faculty and abundance wherever he will.

For as to your saying, Scaevola, that you would not have endured it, except that you are in my kingdom, that I said the orator ought to be perfect in every kind of discourse and in every department of culture—by Hercules, I would never say this if I thought that the man I am imagining were myself.

But, as Gaius Lucilius used often to say—a man somewhat angry with you, and on that very account less my friend than he wished, yet learned and most urbane—so I think: that no one is to be reckoned in the number of orators who is not polished in all those arts which are worthy of a free man; which, even if we do not employ them in speaking, yet it appears and stands out whether we are ignorant of them or have learned them. As those who play at ball do not in the very game use the proper skill of the wrestling-school, but their very movement shows whether they have learned the palaestra or are ignorant of it; and as those who model anything, even though at the moment they make no use of painting, yet it is not obscure whether they know how to paint or not;

so in these very speeches of the courts, the assemblies, the senate, even though the other arts are not specifically employed, yet it is easily made plain whether he who speaks has merely been tossed about in this declamatory exercise, or has come to speaking equipped with all the liberal arts."

Then Scaevola, smiling, said: "I will struggle no further with you, Crassus; for that very thing which you have said against me you have accomplished by a certain artifice, so that both you have conceded to me what I wished not to be the orator's, and you have somehow twisted those very things back again and made them over to the orator as his own.

When I came as praetor to Rhodes and conferred with that great teacher of this discipline, Apollonius, those things which I had received from Panaetius, he indeed laughed, as was his manner, at philosophy and despised it, and said many things not so weightily as wittily; but your speech was of such a kind that you despised no art or learning, but said that all are the companions and handmaids of the orator.

And if anyone has embraced all of these, and likewise has joined to them that faculty of most ornate speech, I cannot deny that he will be a man eminent and admirable; but if any such man existed, or ever did exist, or indeed could exist, you alone, assuredly, would be he, who, both in my judgement and in that of all men, have left scarcely any praise—I would say it with the leave of these gentlemen—to the other orators.

But if, while you yourself lack nothing of what concerns forensic and civil affairs that you do not know, you have nevertheless not embraced that knowledge which you join to the orator, let us see whether we be not assigning to him more than the truth and reality of the matter allows.'

Hereupon Crassus said: 'Remember that I spoke not of my own, but of the orator's faculty; for what have we either learned, or been able to know, who came to action before we came to learning—whom the very business of affairs in the forum, in canvassing, in the commonwealth, in the affairs of friends, finished off before we could form any notion of such great matters?

But if you think there is so much in us, who, even if we were not greatly lacking in talent, as you suppose, yet certainly lacked learning and leisure and, by Hercules, that keenest zeal for learning, what do you suppose, if to someone's talent, even greater, there should be added those things which I have not touched—what an orator he would be, and how great?'

Then Antonius said: 'You prove to me, Crassus, what you say, nor do I doubt that a man will be much richer in speaking if he has comprehended the theory and nature of all things and arts;

but, in the first place, that is difficult to do, especially in this life of ours and amid our occupations; and, in the second place, there is this also to be feared, that we may be drawn away from this practice and habit of popular and forensic speaking. For it seems to me that there is a certain other kind of speech belonging to those men of whom you spoke a little while ago, however elegantly and weightily they may speak either about the nature of things or about human affairs: it is a certain polished and luxuriant kind of words, suited more to the wrestling-school and the oil than to this civil throng and the forum.

For I myself, who had touched Greek letters late and lightly, yet when, setting out as proconsul into Cilicia, I had come to Athens, stayed there several days then because of the difficulty of sailing; but, since I had daily with me the most learned men, almost those very same who were just now named by you, when somehow this had become noised abroad among them, that I, like you, was wont to engage in the greater cases, each as best he could discoursed about the duty and method of the orator.

Of these, some, like that very Mnesarchus, said that those whom we call orators are nothing but a kind of hired labourers with a quick and practised tongue; that no one was an orator unless he were wise, and that eloquence itself, since it consists in the science of speaking well, is one single virtue, and that he who has one virtue has all, and that these are equal and on a par with one another; and so he who is eloquent has all the virtues and is wise. But this was a kind of thorny and meagre discourse, and far removed from our way of thinking.

But Charmadas spoke much more richly on these same matters, not that he disclosed his own opinion—for this was the ancestral custom of the Academy, always to oppose all in disputation—but yet he chiefly signified this: that those who are called rhetoricians, and who hand down precepts of speaking, understand nothing at all, and that no one can attain the faculty of speaking unless he has learned the discoveries of the philosophers.

Against this disputed eloquent Athenians, men versed in public affairs and in cases, among whom was also that man who was lately at Rome, Menedemus, my guest. When he said that there was a certain prudence which was concerned with discerning the methods of establishing and governing commonwealths, there was roused that ready man, abounding in all learning and in a certain incredible variety and abundance of matter; he taught that all the parts of that very prudence must be sought from philosophy, and that those things which were established in the commonwealth concerning the immortal gods, concerning the discipline of youth, concerning justice, patience, temperance, and moderation in all things, and the rest, without which states could neither exist nor be well ordered, were nowhere to be found in the books of the rhetoricians;

and that if those rhetorical teachers embraced so great a power of the greatest matters in their art, he asked why their books were stuffed full of proems and epilogues and trifles of this sort—for so he called them—while not a letter was found in their books about founding states, about writing laws, about equity, about justice, about good faith, about breaking desires, about shaping the characters of men.

The precepts themselves he was wont so to mock, that he showed that those men were not only without that prudence which they claimed for themselves, but did not even understand this very method and way of speaking: for he thought that the chief thing for the orator was that he himself should appear to those before whom he pleaded such as he wished to be; that this was brought about by dignity of life, concerning which those rhetorical teachers had left nothing in their precepts; and that those who listened should be so affected in mind as the orator wished them to be affected; which likewise could in no way be done unless he who spoke had learned in how many ways, by what means, and by what kind of speech the minds of men are moved in each direction; but that these things were hidden away deep in the very midst of philosophy, which those rhetoricians had not touched even with the tips of their lips.

These things Menedemus tried to refute by examples rather than by arguments; for, reciting from memory many passages excellently written from the speeches of Demosthenes, he showed that that man was not ignorant, in moving the minds of judges or of the people in any direction by speaking, of the means by which he attained those things which the other denied that anyone could know without philosophy.

To him Charmadas replied that he did not deny that Demosthenes had the highest prudence and the highest power of speaking, but that whether he had been able to do this by his own talent, or—what was agreed—had been a zealous hearer of Plato, the question was not what that man had been able to do, but what those rhetoricians taught.

Often, too, he was carried in his discourse to the point of arguing that there was no art of speaking at all; and when he had taught this by arguments—that we were so born that we could both flatter subtly those from whom anything had to be sought, and threateningly terrify our adversaries, and set forth a deed, and confirm what we maintained, and refute what was said against us, and, at the last, deprecate something and complain—in which things all the orator's faculty was concerned—and that practice and exercise sharpened the prudence of understanding and quickened the readiness of speech;

then, too, he relied upon a store of examples. For first, as if of set purpose, he used to say that no writer of an art had ever been even moderately eloquent, going back as far as some Corax and Tisias, who were agreed to have been the inventors and founders of that art; but he named certain countless men, most eloquent, who had neither learned those things nor cared at all to know them; among whom—whether mocking, or because he thought so and had so heard—he brought forward me, as one of that number, who had not learned those things and yet, as he himself said, could do something in speaking; in one of which I readily agreed with him, that I had learned nothing, but in the other I thought I was being mocked by him, or that he himself was mistaken.

He denied, indeed, that there was any art except such as is contained in things thoroughly known and clearly perceived, tending to one issue, and never deceiving; but all those things which are handled by orators are doubtful and uncertain, since they are both spoken by men who do not fully grasp them all, and heard by men to whom knowledge is not to be imparted, but only a brief, false, or at least obscure opinion.

In short, he then seemed to persuade me that there was no art of speaking at all, and that no one could speak either cleverly or copiously unless he had learned those things which were said in philosophy by the most learned men; in which Charmadas used vehemently to admire your talent, Crassus: that I seemed to him very easy in listening, you very combative in disputing.

And so I myself, led by this same opinion, wrote even that in a certain little book which, unawares and against my will, slipped out and came into the hands of men—that I had known some men who were able speakers, but as yet no one eloquent; for I judged him an able speaker who could speak with sufficient acuteness and clarity before ordinary men according to the common opinion of mankind, but the eloquent man to be one who could in a more wonderful and magnificent way amplify and adorn whatever he wished, and could hold in his mind and memory all the sources of all things that pertain to speaking. And if this be difficult for us, who, before we entered upon learning, are overwhelmed by canvassing and the forum, yet let it be set down as resting in the nature of things:

for I, so far as I divine by conjecture, and seeing how great talents there are among our countrymen, do not despair that there will some day be someone who, with a keener zeal than we are or have been, and with greater and earlier leisure and capacity for learning, and with greater toil and industry, when he has given himself to hearing, reading, and writing, will come forth as such an orator as we seek, who may rightly be called not only an able speaker but also eloquent; who yet, in my opinion, either is here already, namely Crassus, or, if anyone of equal talent shall both have heard and read and written more than this man here, will be able to add some little to him.'

At this point Sulpicius said: 'It has fallen out, Crassus, beyond my hope and Cotta's, but greatly to the wish of us both, that you should glide into this discussion; for to us, coming hither, it seemed pleasant enough if, while you talked of other matters, we might nevertheless catch from your conversation something worth remembering; but that you should come into the very inmost discussion of this whole study, or art, or faculty, seemed scarcely to be hoped for by us.

For I, who from my earliest years have been fired with zeal for you both, and indeed with love for Crassus, since I never departed from him, was never able to draw a word from him about the power and method of speaking, although I had tried both through myself and often through Drusus; in which matter you, Antonius—I will speak truly—never failed me when I asked or inquired anything, and very often taught me what you were wont to observe in speaking.

Now, since each of you has opened up the approach to those very things which we seek, and since Crassus was the first to begin this conversation, grant us this favour, that you set forth in detail what you think concerning every kind of speaking; which, if it be obtained from you, I shall give great thanks, Crassus, to this wrestling-ground and your Tusculan villa, and I shall far prefer your suburban gymnasium here to that famous Academy and Lyceum.'

Then Crassus said: 'Nay rather, Sulpicius, let us ask Antonius, who both can do what you require and is wont to do it, as I hear you say; for that I have shrunk from this whole kind of discourse, and have very often refused you when you wished and pressed it, you yourself said a little while ago—which I did not do from pride or inhumanity, nor because I did not wish to comply with your most right and excellent zeal, especially since I had recognized you above all men as most born and fitted for speaking, but, by Hercules, from my unfamiliarity with that kind of disputation and my ignorance of those things which are handed down as if in an art.'

Then Cotta said: 'Since we have obtained what seemed to us most difficult—that you should speak at all about these matters, Crassus—from now on it will be our own fault if we let you go before you have explained all that we shall ask.'

'Concerning those things, I suppose,' said Crassus, 'as is wont to be written in formal declarations of acceptance: "such as I shall know and shall be able." ' Then Cotta said: 'For as to what you shall not be able or shall not know, who of us is so impudent as to demand that he should know or be able?' 'On that condition, then,' said Crassus, 'provided I be allowed to deny that I can do what I shall not be able, and to confess that I do not know what I shall not know, you may inquire at your own pleasure.'

'And so,' said Sulpicius, 'this is what we ask of you, on which Antonius just now set forth his view: do you think there is any art of speaking?' 'What?' said Crassus, 'do you now set before me, as before some idle and chattering little Greek, perhaps even learned and erudite, a little question on which I am to speak at my own pleasure? For when do you suppose I have cared for or thought about these things, and have not rather always laughed at the impudence of those men who, when they had sat down in a school, in a great crowd of men, bade anyone ask a question, if any wished to inquire anything?

This they say Gorgias of Leontini first did, who seemed to undertake and profess something very great, when he announced that he was ready for everything about which anyone wished to hear; but afterwards they commonly began to do this, and do it to this day, so that there is no matter so great, so unforeseen, so new, about which they do not profess that they will say everything that can be said.

But if I thought, Cotta, that you, or you, Sulpicius, wished to hear about these things, I would have brought hither some Greek to delight us with disputations of this sort; which is not difficult to do even now: for in the house of the young Marcus Piso, devoted to this study, a man of the highest talent and most desirous of us, there is the Peripatetic Staseas, a man quite intimate with us, and, as I see is agreed among men of experience, the first of all in that kind of his.'

'What is this Staseas of yours, this Peripatetic, that you speak of to me?' said Mucius. 'You must humour these young men, Crassus, who do not want the daily Greek chatter without practice, nor the schoolmaster's sing-song, but desire to hear from the wisest and most eloquent of all men, and from one who is foremost in counsel and in tongue, not in little books, but in the greatest cases and in this seat of empire and glory, whose footsteps they long to follow—they inquire his opinion.

For my part, I have always thought you a god in speaking, but I never assigned you greater praise for eloquence than for humanity; which it most becomes you to display now, and not to flee from this discussion to which two young men of excellent talent long to approach.'

'I, indeed,' he said, 'am eager to comply with these gentlemen, nor shall I be reluctant to say briefly, in my own way, what I think on each point. And first—since I think it is not right for me to disregard your authority, Scaevola—I answer that the art of speaking seems to me either no art at all, or a very slight one, but that the whole dispute among learned men lies in a controversy about a word.

For if an art is so defined, as Antonius set forth a little while ago, as consisting of things thoroughly perceived and clearly known, separated from the caprice of opinion and comprehended by knowledge, there seems to me to be no art of the orator at all; for all the kinds of this our forensic speaking are various and adapted to the common and popular sense.

But if those things which have been observed in the practice and conduct of speaking have been noted and marked by clever and skilful men, defined by words, illustrated by classes, and distributed into parts—as I see could have been done—I do not understand why, if not by that subtle definition, yet by this common opinion, it should not seem to be an art. But whether it be an art, or a certain likeness of an art, it is not indeed to be neglected; yet we must understand that there are certain other and greater things for the attaining of eloquence.'

Then Antonius said that he heartily agreed with Crassus, in that he neither embraced the art so as those are wont who place all the power of speaking in art, nor again rejected the whole of it, as most philosophers do. 'But I think,' he said, 'Crassus, that you will do these gentlemen a favour, if you will set forth those things which you think can avail more for speaking than the art itself.'

'I will indeed speak, since I have begun,' he said, 'and I beg of you not to spread abroad these follies of mine; though I myself will use moderation, lest, like some master and artist, I should seem to have promised something of myself; but rather, as one of the gowned throng and from forensic practice, a man of moderate ability and not altogether untrained, I will seem not to have promised anything of myself, but to have fallen by chance into your conversation.

For my part, when I was canvassing for office, I used to send Scaevola away from me when canvassing, saying to him that I wished to be foolish—that is, to canvass in too coaxing a way, which, unless it were done somewhat foolishly, could not be well done; but that he was the one man of all in whose presence I should least wish to be foolish—whom fortune has now appointed as witness and spectator of my follies: for what is more foolish than to speak about speaking, since to speak is itself never not foolish, except when it is necessary?'

'Go on, then, Crassus,' said Mucius; 'for that fault which you fear, I will answer for it.' 'Thus, then, I think,' said Crassus: 'that nature, first, and talent contribute the greatest power to speaking; and indeed it was not the method and way of speaking, but nature, that was lacking to those writers of an art of whom Antonius spoke a little while ago; for there ought to be certain swift movements of the mind and talent, which are both keen in devising and rich in setting forth and adorning, and firm and lasting for memory;

and if there is anyone who thinks these can be acquired by art—which is false; for it would be excellent if these things could be kindled or stirred by art; but to be implanted and bestowed by art they cannot be; for all those are gifts of nature—what shall I say of those things which are certainly born with the man himself, the freedom of the tongue, the sound of the voice, the lungs, the strength, a certain conformation and shape of the whole face and body?

For I do not say this in such a way as if art could not polish some men—for I am not ignorant that what is good can be made better by training, and what is not best can in some way be sharpened and corrected—but there are some who either so stammer with the tongue, or are so harsh in voice, or so uncouth and rustic in countenance and in the movement of the body, that, even if they are strong in talent and art, yet they cannot come into the number of orators; but there are others so apt in these same things, so adorned with the gifts of nature, that they seem not to have been born, but to have been fashioned by some god.

It is a great burden and a great office to undertake and to profess that one is the one man, while all are silent, who is to be heard upon the greatest matters in a great assembly of men; for there is scarcely anyone present who does not see the faults in the speaker more keenly and sharply than the merits; and so whatever there is in which he gives offence, that overwhelms even those things which are praiseworthy.

Nor do I argue thus in order to deter young men altogether from the study of speaking, if perchance they lack something natural: for who does not see that to Gaius Coelius, my contemporary, a new man, that very mediocrity in speaking, whatever he could attain, was a great honour? Who does not understand that your contemporary, Quintus Varius, a huge and ugly man, by that very faculty, whatever it was that he had, won great favour in the state?

But since we are inquiring about the orator, we must fashion by our discourse an orator stripped of all faults and crowned with every praise. For if the multitude of suits, if the variety of cases, if this crowd and barbarism of the forum gives room even to the most faulty orators, we shall not on that account abandon this which we are seeking. And so, in those arts in which not necessary usefulness is sought, but a certain free delight of the mind, how diligently and how almost fastidiously do we judge! For there are no suits or controversies which compel men to endure bad actors in the theatre, as they endure bad orators in the forum.

The orator, therefore, must diligently provide, not to satisfy those whom he must, but to seem admirable to those who are free to judge; and, if you ask, I will plainly declare what I think among my most intimate friends, what I have hitherto always been silent about and thought I ought to be silent about: that to me even those who speak best, and who can do it most easily and most elegantly, unless they approach speaking with timidity and are agitated at the beginning of the speech, seem almost shameless—although that cannot happen;

for the better each man speaks, the more he dreads the difficulty of speaking, the various outcomes of the speech, and the expectation of men; but he who can produce nothing worthy of the matter, worthy of the name of orator, worthy of the ears of men, seems to me, even if he is moved in speaking, yet shameless; for it is not by being ashamed, but by not doing that which is unbecoming, that we ought to escape the name of shamelessness;

but him who is not ashamed—which I see in most men—him I think worthy not only of reproach but even of punishment. For my part, I am wont to observe both in you and very often to experience in myself, that I both turn pale at the beginnings of speaking and tremble in my whole mind and in all my limbs; and indeed, as a young man, I was once so unnerved at the outset of an accusation, that I owed it as the greatest favour to Quintus Maximus, that he at once dismissed the court, as soon as he saw me broken and weakened with fear.'

Hereupon all expressed assent and began to confer among themselves; for there was in Crassus a certain wonderful modesty, which yet not only was no hindrance to his speaking, but even helped him by the commendation of uprightness. Then Antonius said: 'Often, as you say, Crassus, I have observed both in you and in the other greatest orators—although in my opinion no one was ever your equal—that you are moved at the beginning of speaking;

and when I sought the cause of this, why it was that the more there was in each orator, the more he dreaded, I found these two causes: one, that those whom experience and nature had taught understood that sometimes the outcome of speaking does not proceed sufficiently according to wish even for the greatest orators; and so, not without reason, as often as they spoke, they feared lest that which might sometimes happen

should happen at that very time; the other is this, of which I am often wont to complain: that men of the other arts, when they are proved and approved, if they have ever done something less well than they are wont, are thought either to have been unwilling, or, hindered by ill health, to have been unable to attain what they knew: 'Roscius did not wish to act today,' they say, or 'he was indisposed'; but the orator's fault, if any is noticed, seems a fault of folly;

and folly has no excuse, because no one seems to have been foolish either because he was indisposed or because he so preferred; wherefore we undergo a heavier judgement in speaking: for as often as we speak, so often is judgement passed upon us; and he who has once erred in gesture is not straightway thought ignorant of gesture, but of him in whose speaking anything has been censured, an opinion of dullness prevails, either everlasting or at least long-lasting.

But as to that which was said by you, that there are very many things which, unless the orator has them from nature, he would not be much helped by a master, I greatly agree with you, and in this respect I have approved most highly that supreme teacher, Apollonius of Alabanda, who, though he taught for pay, yet would not allow those whom he judged unable to turn out orators to waste their labour with him, but dismissed them, and was wont to urge and exhort each to that art for which he thought him fitted.

For it is enough, in mastering the other arts, only to be like a man, and to be able to grasp in the mind and keep in the memory that which is handed down or even drummed in, even if one is somewhat slow; there is no requirement of nimbleness of tongue, of swiftness of words, in short, of those things which we cannot fashion for ourselves—face, expression, voice;

but in the orator the acuteness of the dialecticians, the thoughts of the philosophers, the words almost of the poets, the memory of the jurisconsults, the voice of the tragedians, the gesture well-nigh of the greatest actors, must be sought; wherefore nothing rarer can be found in the race of men than a perfect orator; for those things which, if the artists of single arts have moderately attained them singly, are approved, unless they are all present in the highest degree in the orator, cannot be approved.'

Then Crassus said: 'And yet see, in a very slight and trifling art, how much more diligence is bestowed than in this matter which is agreed to be the greatest: for often I am wont to hear Roscius say that he has so far been able to find no pupil whom he could approve—not because there were not some who were tolerable, but because, if there were only some little fault, he himself could not bear it; for nothing is so conspicuous, nor so lasting in the memory, as that in which you have given offence.

And so, that we may direct the orator's praise to this likeness of this actor, do you see how nothing is done by him except perfectly, nothing except with the highest grace, nothing except so as is becoming and such as moves and delights all? And so he has long since attained this—that whoever excels in any art is called the Roscius of his kind. This perfection and completeness, which I desire in the orator, and from which I myself am far removed, I demand impudently; for I wish indulgence for myself, but I do not myself grant it to others; for him who cannot, who does faultily, who, in short, is unbecoming, I think must be thrust down, as Apollonius bade, to that which he can do.'

'Do you, then,' said Sulpicius, 'bid me, or this Cotta here, learn the civil law or military affairs? For who can attain to those supreme things, perfect in every kind?' Then he said: 'I have indeed set forth all these things because I have recognized in you a certain excellent and remarkable natural aptitude for speaking; and I have fitted my discourse not so much to deter those who could not, as to whet you, who could; and although I have perceived in each of you the highest talent and zeal, yet those things which are placed in outward appearance, of which I have perhaps said more than the Greeks are wont to say, in you, Sulpicius, are divine;

for I think I have heard no one more fit either in the movement of the body or in the very carriage and form, nor of fuller or sweeter voice; and those to whom these things have been given less by nature can yet attain this—to use what they have moderately and skilfully, and so as not to be unbecoming. For this is most of all to be avoided, and on this one point it is least easy to give precepts, not only for me, who speak of these matters like a single head of a household, but even for that very Roscius, whom I often hear say that the chief point of the art is to be becoming, which yet is the one thing that cannot be handed down by art.

But, if you please, let us turn the conversation elsewhere, and talk for once in our own manner, not the rhetorical.' 'By no means,' said Cotta; 'for now we must entreat you, since you keep us in this study and do not dismiss us to another art, to explain to us, whatever it is, that power you have in speaking—for we are not too greedy; we are content with that moderate eloquence of yours—and we ask this of you (that we may attain no more than that little which you have attained in speaking), since you say that those things which are to be sought from nature are not too much lacking to us, what besides you think must be acquired.'

Then Crassus, smiling, said: 'What do you suppose, Cotta, except zeal and a certain ardour of love? Without which, as nothing distinguished in life can be achieved by anyone, so certainly this which you seek will never be attained by any. And indeed I do not see that you need be exhorted to this, you who, since you are troublesome even to me, I understand to be already burning too much with desire.

But assuredly studies avail nothing toward reaching any goal, unless you have learned that which will carry and lead you to that which you aim at. Wherefore, since you lay upon me a somewhat lighter burden, and inquire of me not about the orator's art, but about this faculty of mine, however small it be, I will set forth to you a certain method of my own practice, not very recondite, nor very difficult, nor magnificent, nor weighty, which I once was wont to use, when, as a young man, it was permitted me to engage in that study.'

Then Sulpicius said: 'O day longed for by us, Cotta! For that which I could never attain by entreaties, nor by waylaying, nor by spying—to see, or even to suspect from his copyist and reader Diphilus, what Crassus did for the sake of meditating or speaking—that I hope we have attained, and shall now learn all from himself which we have long desired.'

Then Crassus said: 'And yet I think, Sulpicius, when you have heard, you will not so much admire these things which I shall say, as judge then, when you desired to hear them, that there was no reason why you desired them; for I shall say nothing recondite, nothing worthy of your expectation, nothing either unheard by you or new to anyone. For, to begin with—a thing worthy of a man freeborn and liberally educated—I shall not deny that I have learned those common and well-worn precepts: first, that it is the duty of the orator to speak in a manner adapted to persuading;

next, that all speech is either about an inquiry into a matter unlimited, without designation of persons and times, or about a matter placed in fixed persons and times;

and that in both cases, whatever comes into controversy, in it the question is wont to be either whether a thing was done, or, if it was done, of what kind it is, or even by what name it is called, or, what some add, whether it seems to have been rightly done;

that controversies arise also from the interpretation of a writing, in which either something is written ambiguously, or contradictorily, or so that the writing dissents from the intention; and that to all these parts there are subjoined certain proper arguments.

But of cases which are separated from the general inquiry, that some are concerned with trials, some with deliberations; that there is also a third kind, which is placed in praising or blaming men; and that there are certain topics which we use in trials, in which equity is sought; others in deliberations, which are all directed to the advantage of those to whom we give counsel; others likewise in panegyrics, in which all things are referred to the dignity of the persons;

and that, since all the power and faculty of the orator is distributed into five parts—that he ought first to find what he should say; then to dispose and arrange what he has found, not only in order but also with a certain weight and judgement; then to clothe and adorn these things with speech; afterward to guard them with memory; and finally to deliver them with dignity and grace.

I had learned and received this also: that, before we speak of the matter, we should at the outset conciliate the minds of those who listen; then set forth the matter; afterward establish the controversy; then confirm that which we maintain; afterward refute what was said against us; and at the end of the speech amplify and exalt those things which were in our favour, and weaken and break those which were on the side of our adversaries.

I had also heard those things which are handed down about the ornaments of the speech itself, in which it is enjoined: first, that we speak purely and in good Latin; then plainly and clearly; then with elegance; afterward fittingly and, as it were, becomingly to the dignity of the subject; and I had learned the precepts of each particular.

Nay, even those things which were most proper to nature, yet I had seen that art was applied to these very things; for of delivery and of memory I had tasted certain brief precepts, but with much exercise. For in these matters, generally, all the teaching of those artists is concerned; and if I should say that this gives me no help, I should lie; for it has certain things, as it were, for reminding the orator to what he should refer each thing, and looking to which he may stray less from whatever he has set before himself.

But I understand this power to be in all the precepts, not that orators, by following them, have attained the praise of eloquence, but that certain men have observed and collected those things which eloquent men did of their own accord; so that eloquence has not arisen from art, but art from eloquence; which yet, as I said before, I do not cast out; for it is, even if less necessary for speaking well, yet not ungentlemanly for knowing;

and a certain exercise must be undertaken by you—although you indeed have long been in the course: but for those who are entering the lists, and who can even now, by a kind of play exercise, learn beforehand and practise those things which must be done in the forum as in the battle-line.'

'This very thing,' said Sulpicius, 'we wish to know; and yet those things which you have briefly run through about the art, we long to hear, although they are not unheard by us either; but those things presently; now we ask what you think about the exercise itself.'

'For my part I approve those things,' said Crassus, 'which you are wont to do—that, some cause being set down very like those cases which are brought into the forum, you should speak as nearly as possible adapted to the truth; but most men in this only exercise the voice—and that not skilfully—and their lungs, and quicken the swiftness of the tongue, and delight in the abundance of words; in which they are deceived by that which they have heard, that men, by speaking, are wont to make themselves able to speak;

for that is also truly said, that men most easily attain, by speaking badly, to speak badly. Wherefore in those very exercises, although it is useful also to speak often on the sudden, yet it is more useful, when time has been taken for thinking, to speak in a more prepared and careful way. But the chief thing is that which—to speak truly—we do least (for it is a matter of great labour, which most of us shun), to write as much as possible. The pen is the best and most excellent former and master of speaking; and not without reason; for if meditation and reflection easily surpass a sudden and chance speech, this very speech will assuredly be surpassed by diligent and careful writing.

For all the topics, whether of art or of a certain talent and prudence, which only inhere in the matter about which we write, present themselves and meet us as we search and contemplate with the whole edge of our talent; and all the thoughts and all the words which are most brilliant of each kind must of necessity come under and succeed beneath the point of the pen; then the very arrangement and shaping of words is perfected in writing, in a certain oratorical, not poetic, rhythm and measure.

These are the things which produce applause and admiration for good orators; and no one will attain them unless he has written much and long, even if he has exercised himself most vehemently in those sudden speeches; and he who comes to speaking from the habit of writing brings this faculty, that, even if he speaks on the sudden, yet those things which are said seem like things written; and even, if at any time in speaking he has brought something written, when he has departed from it, the rest of the speech will follow in like manner;

as in a swiftly moving ship, when the rowers have backed water, the ship herself nevertheless keeps her motion and course, though the impulse and the stroke of the oars have ceased, so in a continuous speech, when the written matter fails, the rest of the speech nevertheless keeps an equal course, set in motion by the likeness and force of what was written.

But in my daily exercises I, as a young man, used especially to set before myself that exercise which I knew our famous enemy Gaius Carbo was wont to use—that either, certain verses being set before me, the weightiest possible, or some speech being read, to such an end as I could grasp by memory, I should recite that very matter which I had read in other words, chosen as best I could; but afterward I noticed that there was this fault in this practice, that those words which were most proper to each thing, and most ornate and best, had been forestalled either by Ennius, if I exercised myself on his verses, or by Gracchus, if I had set before myself his speech: so that, if I used the same words, it was no profit; if others, it was even a hindrance, since I was accustoming myself to use less suitable ones.

Afterward it pleased me, and I used this method as a young man, to expound the Greek speeches of the greatest orators; and by reading these I attained this—that, when I rendered into Latin those things which I had read in Greek, I not only used the best words, and yet such as were usual, but also expressed by imitation certain words which were new to us, provided only they were suitable.

Now the movements and exercises of the voice and the breath and the whole body and of the very tongue need not so much art as labour; in which matters one must take careful account whom we imitate, whom we wish to be like. Not only orators must be regarded by us, but also actors, lest by bad habit we come to some deformity and depravity.

The memory, too, must be exercised by learning by heart, word for word, as many as possible both of our own writings and of others'; and in that exercise it does not altogether displease me to employ, if you have grown accustomed to it, that system of places and images which is handed down in the art. Then the speaking must be led forth from this domestic and shadowy exercise into the midst of the line of battle, into the dust, into the clamour, into the camp and the forensic array; the gaze of men must be faced and the powers of talent put to the test, and that secluded preparation must be brought forth into the light of truth.

The poets, too, must be read, the histories learned, the teachers and writers of all good arts chosen and turned over, and, for the sake of exercise, praised, interpreted, corrected, censured; and one must dispute about every matter on both sides, and whatever in each matter can seem probable must be drawn out and brought to light;

the civil law must be thoroughly learned, the statutes known, all antiquity understood, the usage of the senate, the discipline of the commonwealth, the rights of allies, the treaties, the agreements, the policy of empire must be known; and a certain charm of wit must also be sipped from every kind of urbanity, with which, as with salt, all the speech may be sprinkled. I have poured out to you all that I felt, which perhaps, whatever head of a household you had seized from any company, would have answered the same to you, who were asking it.'

When Crassus had said this, silence followed; but although it seemed to those who were present that enough had been said for what was proposed, yet they felt that he had brought it to a close much more quickly than they themselves wished. Then Scaevola said: 'What is it, Cotta? Why are you silent? Does nothing come into your mind that you might further ask of Crassus?'

'That very thing, by Hercules,' he said, 'I am attending to: for so great was the rush of words and so did the speech fly forth, that I caught sight of its force and impulse, but scarcely saw its footsteps and approach; and, as if I had come into some rich and well-stocked house, where the tapestry was not unrolled nor the plate set out, nor the pictures and statues openly placed, but all these many and magnificent things were heaped up and stored away; so just now, in the speech of Crassus, I perceived the riches and the ornaments of his talent through certain wrappings and coverings, but, when I desired to contemplate them, I scarcely had the power of looking; and so I can neither say that I am wholly ignorant of what he possesses, nor that I plainly know and have seen it.'

'Why, then, do you not do the same,' said Scaevola, 'as you would do if you had come into some house or villa full of ornaments? If these were set aside, as you say, you, being very desirous of seeing them, would not hesitate to ask the master to order them brought out, especially if he were a friend: likewise now you will ask of Crassus to bring into the light that abundance of his ornaments, which, heaped up in one place, we have glimpsed only in passing, as through a lattice, and to set each thing in its own place.'

'I, indeed,' said Cotta, 'ask this of you, Scaevola—for shame restrains me and this Sulpicius here from inquiring of a man the most weighty of all, who has always despised this kind of discussion, these things which to him perhaps seem the elements of boys—but do you grant us this favour, Scaevola, and bring it about that Crassus should expand and unfold for us those things which he has compressed and very narrowly crammed into his speech.'

'I, by Hercules,' said Mucius, 'wished this before more for your sake than for my own; for I did not so greatly desire this discussion from Crassus as I delight in his speaking in cases; but now, Crassus, I too ask you, for my own sake also, that, since we have so much leisure as has not fallen to us for a long time, you would not be reluctant to build up that work which you have begun: for I see the form of the whole undertaking to be better and greater than I had supposed, which I greatly approve.'

'Truly,' said Crassus, 'I cannot sufficiently wonder that you too, Scaevola, desire these things, which I neither hold so well as those who teach them, nor are they of such a kind that, if I held them perfectly, they would be worthy of your wisdom and your ears.' 'Do you say so?' said he: 'if you think that these common and well-worn matters are scarcely to be heard at my age, can we even neglect those things which you said the orator ought to know—about the natures of men, about characters, about those methods by which the minds of men are both roused and restrained, about history, about antiquity, about the administration of the commonwealth, in short, about our very own civil law? For I knew that all this knowledge and store of matters was in your prudence; but in the orator's equipment I had never seen such elegant furniture.'

'Can you, then,' said Crassus, 'to pass over other things countless and immense, and to come to your very civil law, call those men orators whom Publius Scaevola waited for many hours, both laughing and chafing, when he was hastening to the Campus, while Hypsaeus, with the loudest voice and in very many words, contended with the praetor Marcus Crassus that the man he was defending might be allowed to lose his case, and Gnaeus Octavius, a man of consular rank, in a speech no less long refused that the adversary should lose his case, and that the man for whom he himself was speaking should be freed from the disgraceful verdict of an action of guardianship and from all annoyance by the folly of his adversary?'

'I, indeed,' said he—'for I remember that Mucius told me of it'—'should scarcely think those men worthy not only of the name of orator, but even of the forum.' 'And yet,' said Crassus, 'those advocates lacked neither eloquence, nor method, nor abundance of speaking, but knowledge of the civil law: for the one, by suing under the law, claimed more than the law in the Twelve Tables permitted, and, when he had obtained it, would lose his case; the other thought it unfair that more should be claimed against him than was in the action, and did not understand that, if it were so conducted, his adversary would lose the suit.

What of this? In these few days, while we were sitting on the tribunal of Quintus Pompeius, the city praetor, our friend, did not a man of the number of the eloquent demand that to the defendant, from whom the claim was made, that old and customary exception should be granted: "of which money the day had come"?—not understanding that this was devised for the sake of the plaintiff, so that, if that denier had proved to the judge that the money had been claimed before it had begun to be owed, the plaintiff, suing again, might not be shut out by the exception, "because that matter had already come into court"?

What, then, can be more disgraceful to do or to say, than that a man who has taken upon himself this character—to protect the controversies and causes of his friends, to succour the labouring, to heal the sick, to raise up the afflicted—should so stumble in the smallest and slightest matters that he seems to some a thing to be pitied, to others a thing to be laughed at?

For my part, I think our kinsman Publius Crassus, among many other things an elegant and accomplished man, should be especially extolled and praised in this—that, since he was the brother of Publius Scaevola, he was wont very often to say to him that neither could he satisfy the civil law without taking on the abundance of speaking—which, indeed, this son of his, who was consul with me, attained—nor had he begun to handle and conduct the causes of his friends before he had learned the civil law.

And what of that famous Cato? Was he not both of so great eloquence as those times and that age could bear, the greatest in this state, and most skilled of all in the civil law? I speak the more modestly on this matter, since there is present a man supreme in speaking, whom alone I most admire as an orator; but yet this same man has always despised the civil law.

But, since you wished to be sharers of my opinion and judgement, I will conceal nothing, and, as far as I am able, I will set forth to you what I think on each point. The incredible and almost singular and divine force of Antonius's talent seems to me, even if it were stripped of this knowledge of law, to be able easily to defend and maintain itself by the other arms of prudence; wherefore let him be excepted by us; but the rest I shall not hesitate to condemn first of indolence, by my opinion, and then also of impudence;

for to flit about in the forum, to hang about the courts and the tribunals of the praetors, to undertake private suits of great matters, in which often the dispute is not about the fact, but about equity and law, to show oneself off in the centumviral cases, in which the rights of usucapions, of guardianships, of clanships, of agnations, of alluvions, of circumluvions, of bonds, of mancipations, of party-walls, of lights, of eaves-drippings, of wills broken or upheld, and of countless other matters are handled, when one is utterly ignorant of what is one's own, what another's, and, in short, by what right anyone is a citizen or a foreigner, a slave or a free man—this is a mark of conspicuous impudence.

But that is a ridiculous arrogance, to confess oneself unskilled in smaller vessels, but to have learned to steer quinqueremes or even larger ships. You, who are deceived in the gathering by your adversary's little stipulation, and who, when you seal the tablets of your client, on which tablets is written that by which he is caught—should I think any greater cause must be entrusted to you? Sooner, by Hercules, would he who has overturned a little two-oared boat in harbour steer the ship of the Argonauts on the Euxine sea.

What? If the causes are not even small, but often the greatest, in which there is contention about the civil law, what then is the effrontery of that advocate who dares to approach those causes without any knowledge of the law? What greater cause, then, could there have been than that of that soldier? Concerning whose death, when a false report had come home from the army, and his father, believing the report, had changed his will and made whomever he pleased his heir, and had himself died, the matter was brought before the centumviri, when the soldier had returned home and sued by law for his paternal inheritance, the son being disinherited by the will. In that case a question was raised about the civil law: whether a son could be disinherited from his father's property whom the father had in his will neither named heir nor expressly disinherited.

What? In the matter on which the centumviri gave judgement between the patrician Marcelli and Claudii—when the Marcelli said that the inheritance of the same man had come back to them from the son of a freedman by descent, the patrician Claudii by clan-right—was it not necessary in that cause for the orators to speak about the whole law of descent and clanship?

What of that which we have likewise heard was contended in a centumviral trial—when a man had come to Rome into exile, a man who had the right of exile at Rome if he had attached himself to someone as a kind of patron, and had died intestate—was not in that cause the right of attachment, certainly obscure and unknown, opened up and illustrated in the trial by the patron?

What? Lately, when I was defending the cause of Gaius Sergius Orata in a private trial against this our Antonius, was not all our defence concerned with the law? For when Marcus Marius Gratidianus had sold a house to Orata, and had not declared in the deed of sale that a certain part of those buildings was subject to a servitude, we maintained that whatever defect there had been in the property, if the seller had known it and had not declared it, he was bound to make it good.

In which kind of matter our friend Marcus Buculeius—a man neither in my judgement foolish, and in his own very wise, and not averse from the study of law—lately erred in a somewhat similar way: for when he was selling a house to Lucius Fufius, he in the deed of sale reserved the lights as they then were; but Fufius, as soon as building was begun in a certain part of the city which could be seen, however slightly, from those buildings, at once brought suit against Buculeius, because he thought that, whatever little portion of the sky was obstructed, however far off, the lights were altered.

And what of that most famous cause of Manius Curius and Marcus Coponius, lately defended before the centumviri, with what a concourse of men, with what expectation? When Quintus Scaevola, my contemporary and colleague, a man both most learned of all in the discipline of the civil law, and of the keenest talent and prudence, and most polished and subtle in speech, and, as I am wont to say, the most eloquent of the jurisconsults, the most skilled in law of the eloquent, defended from the written word the rights of wills, and denied that he could be heir who had been appointed heir after a posthumous son both born and dead, unless a posthumous child had both been born and, before he came into his own guardianship, had died; while I, on the other hand, maintained that he who made the will had at the time this intention—that, if there should be no son who would come into his own guardianship, Manius Curius should be heir—did either of us cease, in that cause, to dwell upon authorities, examples, the formulae of wills—that is, upon the very heart of the civil law?

I now pass over many examples of the most important causes, which are countless: it can often happen that causes concerning our very life turn upon the law. For when Gaius Mancinus, a most noble and excellent man and of consular rank, had been surrendered by the pater patratus, by a decree of the senate, to the Numantines, on account of the odium of the Numantine treaty, and they had not received him, and afterward Mancinus had returned home and had not hesitated to enter the senate, Publius Rutilius, son of Marcus, tribune of the plebs, ordered him to be led out, because he denied that he was a citizen, since it was thus handed down by tradition that he whom his own father, or the people, had sold, or the pater patratus had surrendered, had no right of return; what cause or contention can we find, out of all civil matters, greater than this about the rank, the citizenship, the liberty, the very life of a man of consular rank, especially since this rested not upon some charge which he could deny, but upon the civil law?

And in a similar kind, of a lower order: if anyone had been a slave among us from a confederate people, and had freed himself, and afterward had returned home, the question was raised among our ancestors whether he had returned to his own people by the right of return and had lost this citizenship.

What? Concerning liberty, than which no trial can be more weighty, cannot there be contention from the civil law, when it is asked whether one who has been registered with his master's consent is immediately free, or only when the lustrum has been completed? What of that which happened in our fathers' memory—that a head of a family who had come from Spain to Rome, having left a pregnant wife in the province, had married another at Rome, and had not sent notice of divorce to the former, and had died intestate, and a son had been born of each—was it a slight matter that was brought into contention, when the question was about the civil status of two men, both about the boy who had been born of the latter and about his mother, who, if it were judged that a divorce from the former wife is effected by new marriage only by certain definite words and not by new nuptials, would be reckoned in the place of a concubine?

To be ignorant, then, of these and similar laws of one's own state, and to wander, upright and lofty, with a lively and ready countenance and expression, looking this way and that, with a great train, over the whole forum, holding out and offering to clients a defence, to friends aid, and well-nigh to all citizens the light of his talent and counsel—is not this to be thought among the foremost of disgraces?

And since I have spoken of impudence, let us also chastise the sloth and indolence of men; for if this knowledge of law were great and difficult, yet the greatness of its usefulness ought to impel men to undertake the labour of learning it: but, O immortal gods, I would not say this, with Scaevola listening, unless he himself were wont to say that no art seemed to him of easier knowledge.

Which indeed, for certain reasons, is judged otherwise by most: first, because those men of old, who presided over this knowledge, for the sake of maintaining and increasing their own power, were unwilling that their art should be made common; then, after it had been published—the legal actions being first set forth by Gnaeus Flavius—there were none who would arrange those matters, artfully digested, by classes; for there is nothing which can be reduced to an art, unless he who holds those matters, of which he wishes to establish the art, first has that knowledge by which he can make an art out of those things of which there is as yet no art.

This, I see, while I wished to speak briefly, has been said by me somewhat obscurely; but I will try and say it, if I can, more plainly. Almost all things which are now comprised in arts were once scattered and dispersed: as in music, numbers and tones and modes; in geometry, lines, figures, intervals, magnitudes; in astronomy, the revolution of the heavens, the rising, setting, and motion of the stars; in grammar, the study of the poets, the knowledge of histories, the interpretation of words, a certain manner of pronunciation; in this very theory of speaking, finally, to invent, to adorn, to arrange, to remember, to deliver—once seemed unknown to all and spread far and wide.

An art, therefore, was applied from without, from a certain other kind, which the philosophers claim wholly for themselves, to glue together the loosened and disjointed matter and to bind it by a certain method. Let this, then, be the end in the civil law: the preservation of the lawful and customary equity in the affairs and causes of citizens.

Then the classes must be marked off and reduced to a fixed number and fewness. But a class is that which, by a certain community of likeness to itself, but differing in species, embraces two or more parts; and parts are those which are subordinated to those classes from which they spring; and of all things which are the names either of classes or of parts, what force they have must be expressed by definitions; for a definition is a brief and circumscribed explanation of those things which are proper to that thing which we wish to define.

To these matters I would add examples, did I not perceive before whom this discourse is held; now I will comprehend briefly what I have proposed: for if either it shall be permitted me to do that which I have long been thinking of, or, if I am hindered, some other shall either anticipate me, or, when I am dead, accomplish it—that he should first digest all the civil law into classes, which are very few, then distribute the limbs, as it were, of those classes, and then declare the proper force of each by definition, you will have a perfect art of the civil law, great and rich rather than difficult and obscure.

And meanwhile, however, while these scattered things are being gathered, one may, even by snatching and collecting here and there from every side, be filled with a sound knowledge of the civil law. Do you not see that the Roman knight, a man of the keenest talent of all, but least learned in the other arts, Gaius Aculeo, who lives with me and always has lived, so holds the civil law that, when you have departed from this Scaevola, no one of those who are most skilled is preferred to him?

For all things are placed before our eyes, set in daily use, in the intercourse of men and in the forum; nor are they contained in so very many writings or in great volumes; for the same things have been set forth first by many, then, a few words being changed, have been written again and again even by the same writers.

There is added, moreover, by which the civil law may be the more easily grasped and learned, what most men least suppose, a certain wonderful sweetness and delight in learning it; for, whether these Aelian studies delight anyone, there is a most copious image of antiquity both in the whole civil law and in the books of the pontiffs and in the Twelve Tables, since both the ancient old age of words is learned, and certain kinds of legal actions declare the custom and life of our ancestors; or whether civil knowledge delights anyone—which Scaevola does not think proper to the orator, but to a certain other kind of prudence—he will see that the whole of this, all the advantages and parts of the state being set forth, is contained in the Twelve Tables; or whether that all-powerful and glorious philosophy delights anyone—I shall say it more boldly—he has these as the fountains of all his disputations, which are contained in the civil law and in the statutes: for from these we see both that dignity is most of all to be sought, since true virtue and honourable labour are adorned with honours, rewards, and splendour, while the vices and frauds of men are punished with losses, disgraces, chains, scourgings, exiles, and death;

and we are taught, not by disputations unlimited and full of wranglings, but by the authority and command of the laws, to keep our lusts tamed, to restrain all our desires, to guard our own, and to keep our minds, eyes, and hands from what belongs to others.

Let all grumble as they please, I will say what I think: the little book of the Twelve Tables alone seems to me, by Hercules, both in the weight of its authority and in the richness of its usefulness, to surpass the libraries of all the philosophers, if anyone will look at the fountains and sources of the laws.

And if our country delights us—as it most of all ought—the force and nature of which is so great that the wisest of men preferred his Ithaca, fixed like a little nest upon the roughest little rocks, to immortality, with what love, then, ought we to be inflamed toward such a country, which alone among all lands is the home of virtue, of empire, of dignity? Whose mind, custom, and discipline ought first to be known to us, both because she is the parent of us all, and because so great wisdom is to be supposed to have been in establishing law as there was in acquiring these so great resources of empire.

You will receive, too, from the knowledge of the law, that joy and pleasure, that you will then most easily understand how far our ancestors surpassed other nations in prudence, if you will compare our laws with their Lycurgus and Draco and Solon; for it is incredible how all the civil law, except this our own, is unformed and almost ridiculous; about which I am wont to say much in daily conversations, when I set the prudence of our countrymen above all others, and especially above the Greeks. For these reasons I had said, Scaevola, that for those who wish to be perfect orators a knowledge of the civil law is necessary.

Now indeed, how much honour, favour, and dignity it of itself brings to those who preside over it, who does not know? And so, as among the Greeks the lowest of men, induced by a little pay, offer themselves as assistants to orators in trials—those who among them are called pragmatici—so in our state, on the contrary, every man of the highest distinction and renown does so, like that man who, on account of this knowledge of the civil law, was thus addressed by the greatest of poets: 'a man of singular good sense, the shrewd Aelius Sextus,' and many besides, who, when by their talent, with itself as their authority, they had won dignity, brought it to pass that in giving legal opinions they prevailed even more by their authority than by their talent itself.

For old age, to be honoured and adorned, what more honourable refuge can there be than the interpretation of law? For my part, from my very youth I have provided myself this support, not only for the use of forensic causes, but also for the ornament and glory of old age, so that, when my powers should begin to fail me—as the time now well-nigh approaches—I might rescue my house from solitude. For what is more glorious than that an old man who has discharged the honours and offices of the commonwealth should be able by his own right to say the same as that Pythian Apollo says in Ennius—that he is the one from whom, if not peoples and kings, yet all his fellow-citizens seek counsel, uncertain in their greatest affairs: 'whom I, by my aid, from uncertain make certain and masters of counsel, send away, that they may not rashly handle troubled matters':

for without doubt the house of the jurisconsult is the oracle of the whole state; witness is the door and vestibule of this Quintus Mucius, which, in his very feeble health and in his now broken age, is thronged daily by the greatest crowd of citizens and by the splendour of men of the highest rank.

Those matters now require no long speech, why I think that public law also, which is proper to the state and to empire, and the records of achievements and the examples of antiquity, ought to be known to the orator; for, as in causes and trials of private matters the speech must often be drawn from the civil law, and therefore, as we said before, a knowledge of the civil law is necessary to the orator, so in public causes of trials, assemblies, and the senate, all this both memory of antiquity and the authority of public law and the method and knowledge of governing the commonwealth must be laid down, as a kind of material, before those orators who are engaged in public affairs.

For we are not in this conversation of ours seeking some pettifogger or bawler or wrangler, but that man who, first, is the high-priest of this art, to which, although nature herself gave great capacity to man, yet a god is thought to be the author, so that that very thing which was proper to man might seem not begotten by ourselves, but brought to us divinely; then, one who can move unharmed amid the very weapons of enemies, adorned not so much by the herald's staff as by the name of orator; then, one who can by speaking subject the wickedness and fraud of the guilty to the hatred of the citizens, and bind it by punishment; and likewise, by the protection of his talent, free innocence from the penalty of the courts; and likewise rouse a languishing and tottering people either to honour, or lead it away from error, or inflame it against the wicked, or, when it is roused against the good, mollify it; who, finally, can by speaking either rouse or calm whatever movement in the minds of men the matter and cause may demand.

If anyone thinks that this power has either been set forth by those who have written about the method of speaking, or can be set forth by me in so brief a space, he greatly errs, and perceives not only my ignorance but not even the greatness of the matter: for my part, since you so wished, I have thought that the fountains, whence you might draw, and the very paths must be pointed out to you—not that I myself should be the guide, which is both endless and unnecessary, but only that I should show the way and, as is wont to be done, point my finger toward the springs.'

'To me, indeed,' said Mucius, 'it seems that enough and more than enough has been done by you for the studies of these young men, if only they are zealous; for, as they say that famous Socrates was wont to say that his work was finished if anyone was sufficiently roused by his exhortation to the study of knowing and grasping virtue—for to those who were persuaded that they wished nothing more than to be good men, the rest of the teaching was easy—so I understand that, if you will enter into these things which Crassus has opened up by his speech, you will most easily attain those things which you desire, this approach and door being opened.'

'To us, indeed,' said Sulpicius, 'these things are most grateful and most pleasant; but we still ask a few things, and chiefly those which were very briefly run through by you, Crassus, about the art itself, when you confessed both that you did not despise it and that you had learned it: if you will say these a little more fully, you will fulfil all the expectation of our long-standing desire; for now we have learned what things must be studied, which itself is yet a great thing; but we desire to learn the ways and method of those things.'

'What if,' said Crassus, 'since I, that I might the more easily keep you with me, have rather complied with your wish than with my own habit or nature, we ask of Antonius that he should set forth and declare to us those mysteries of speaking which he keeps to himself and has not yet brought forth, out of which he just now complained that a little book had slipped from him?' 'As you think best,' said Sulpicius; 'for from Antonius's speaking we shall perceive also what you understand.'

'I ask of you, then, Antonius,' said Crassus, 'since this burden is laid upon us, men of this age, by the studies of these young men, that you set forth what you think on those matters which you see are asked of you.' 'I plainly see and feel that I am caught,' said Antonius, 'not only because those things are asked of me of which I am ignorant and unaccustomed, but because that which in causes I am very wont to avoid—lest I should follow you, Crassus—these gentlemen now do not allow me to avoid;

but I will enter upon those things which you wish the more boldly, because I hope the same will happen to me in this discussion as is wont in speaking, that no ornate speech be expected: for I am not going to speak about an art which I never learned, but about my own habit; and those very things which I set down in my notebook are of such a kind, not handed down to me by any teaching, but practised in the use of affairs and in causes; which, if they shall not be approved by you, most learned men, accuse your own unfairness, who have asked of me those things which I do not know; praise my readiness, since, led not by my own judgement but by your zeal, I shall answer not unwillingly.'

Then Crassus said: 'Only go on, Antonius; for there is no danger that you should say anything except so prudently that none of us would repent of having urged you to this conversation.' 'I will indeed go on,' he said, 'and will do that which I think ought to be done at the beginning of all discussions—that it should be explained what that is about which the discussion is held, lest the speech be compelled to wander and stray, if those who disagree with one another do not understand that same thing about which it is treated.

For if it were perchance asked what is the art of the general, I should think it must first be settled who the general is; and when he had been established as a certain manager of the conduct of war, then we should add about the army, about the camp, about marches, about the joining of battle, about the storming of towns, about supplies, about laying and avoiding ambushes, about the other matters which are proper to the conducting of war; and those who were masters in mind and knowledge of these things, those I should call generals, and I should use the examples of the Africani and the Maximi, and I should name Epaminondas and Hannibal and men of that kind.

But if we were inquiring who he is who has brought his experience and knowledge and zeal to the governing of the commonwealth, I should define it thus: that he who held and used those things by which the advantage of the commonwealth is procured and increased should be reckoned the director of the commonwealth and the author of public counsel; and I should proclaim that famous Publius Lentulus the leader, and Tiberius Gracchus the father, and Quintus Metellus, and Publius Africanus, and Gaius Laelius, and countless others both from our own state and from others.

But if it were asked who is truly named a jurisconsult, I should say he who is skilled in the laws and in that custom which private men use in the state, both for giving opinions, and for conducting cases, and for taking precaution; and from that class I should name Sextus Aelius, Manius Manilius, Publius Mucius. And, to come now to the lighter studies of the arts, if the musician, the grammarian, the poet be sought, I could similarly explain what each of them professes and what no more is to be demanded of each. Of the philosopher himself, finally, who alone professes well-nigh everything about his own power and wisdom, there is yet a certain description—that he who studies to know the force, nature, and causes of all things divine and human, and to hold and follow the whole method of living well, should be called by this name.

But the orator, since we are inquiring about him, I for my part do not make the same as Crassus, who seemed to me to comprehend all knowledge of all things and arts in the one office and name of orator; but I think him to be one who can use words pleasant to hear and thoughts adapted to proving in forensic and common causes: this man I call an orator, and I wish him besides to be furnished with voice and delivery and a certain charm.

But our friend Crassus seemed to me to describe the orator's faculty not by the bounds of that art, but by the well-nigh boundless limits of his own talent; for he handed over to the orator, by his opinion, the helm of governing states, in which it seemed very wonderful to me, Scaevola, that you conceded this to him, since the senate has very often assented to you when speaking briefly and unpolishedly on the greatest matters. But Marcus Scaurus—whom I hear to be not far off in the country at his own place—a man most skilled in governing the commonwealth, if he shall hear this authority of weight and counsel claimed by you, Crassus, because you say it is proper to the orator, will, I believe, come hither at once and terrify this loquacity of ours by his very look and aspect; who, although in speaking he is by no means to be despised, yet relies upon prudence in great matters rather than upon the art of speaking.

Nor indeed, if anyone can do both, is either that author of public counsel and good senator on that very account an orator, or is this fluent and eloquent man, if he is likewise excellent in the management of the state, on that account possessed of that knowledge of speaking through abundance of speech: those faculties are far distant from one another, and are widely diverse and distinct; nor by the same method and way did Marcus Cato, Publius Africanus, Quintus Metellus, Gaius Laelius, who were all eloquent, adorn their own speech and the dignity of the commonwealth. For it is not forbidden either by the nature of things or by any law or custom that single men should not be allowed to know more than single arts.

Wherefore not, if Pericles was most eloquent at Athens, and the same man was for very many years the leader of public counsel in that state, are both faculties on that account to be thought to belong to the same man and the same art; nor, if Publius Crassus was at once eloquent and skilled in law, is on that account a knowledge of the civil law inherent in the faculty of speaking.

For if, as each man, excelling in some art and faculty, has also taken to himself another art, he will bring it about that what he knows besides should seem to be a certain part of that in which he excels, then by that reasoning we may say that to play well at ball and at the twelve-line game is proper to the civil law, since Publius Mucius did both excellently; and by the same reasoning those whom the Greeks call natural philosophers might be called poets, because the natural philosopher Empedocles made an excellent poem. But not even the philosophers themselves, who wish all things to be their own as if their own property and to be possessed by themselves, dare to say that geometry or music belongs to the philosopher, because all confess that Plato was most outstanding in those arts.

And if it now pleases us to subject all the arts to the orator, it is more tolerable to say it rather thus: that, since the faculty of speaking ought not to be meagre and bare, but sprinkled and varied with a certain pleasant variety of many things, it belongs to a good orator to have heard much, to have seen much, to have run over much in mind and thought, much also in reading, yet not to have possessed these as his own but to have tasted them as another's; for I confess that he must be a man clever and in no respect a novice or untrained, nor a stranger and guest in pleading.

Nor indeed, Crassus, am I disturbed by those tragedies of yours, which the philosophers are especially wont to use, in that you said that no one can either inflame the minds of those who listen by speaking, or extinguish them when inflamed—wherein the force and greatness of the orator is most discerned—unless he has thoroughly examined the nature and characters and reasonings of men, in which philosophy must necessarily be grasped by the orator; in which study we see whole lives of men most talented and most leisured worn away. The abundance and greatness of whose knowledge and art I not only do not despise, but even vehemently admire; yet for us, who are engaged in this populace and forum, it is enough to know and to say about the movements of the mind those things which are not at variance with the characters of men.

For what great and weighty orator, when he wished to make the judge angry with his adversary, ever hesitated for this reason, that he did not know what anger was—whether a heat of the mind or a desire of avenging pain? Who, when he wished to stir up and excite the other movements of the mind in the judges or the people by speaking, said those things which are wont to be said by the philosophers? Some of whom deny that there ought to be any movements at all in the mind, and say that those who stir them up in the minds of judges commit a nefarious crime; others, who wish to be more tolerable and to approach nearer to the truth of life, say that the movements ought to be very moderate and rather slight.

But the orator makes all these things, which are thought in the common course of life evil and troublesome and to be avoided, by his words much greater and more bitter; and likewise those things which commonly seem desirable and to be wished for, he amplifies and adorns by speaking; nor does he wish to seem so wise among the foolish that those who listen should either think him silly and a little Greek, or, even if they greatly approve his talent, admire the orator's wisdom but be vexed that they themselves are fools;

but he so ranges through their minds, so handles the feelings and minds of men, that he does not need the descriptions of the philosophers, nor inquire in his speech whether that highest good is in the mind or in the body, whether it is defined by virtue or by pleasure, whether these can be joined and coupled together; or indeed whether, as it has seemed to some, nothing certain can be known, nothing clearly comprehended and perceived; of which matters I confess that there is a great and manifold discipline, and many copious and various theories.

But something else, far different, Crassus, do we seek: we need a keen man, clever both by nature and by practice, who shrewdly investigates what his fellow-citizens, and those men whom he wishes to persuade of something by speaking, think, feel, suppose, expect; he ought to hold the pulse of every kind, age, and order, and to taste the minds and feelings of those before whom he is pleading or will plead;

but let him reserve the books of the philosophers for himself, for the rest and leisure of a Tusculan villa such as this, lest, if ever he must speak about justice and good faith, he borrow from Plato; who, when he thought these things must be expressed in words, fashioned a certain new state in his books; so far did those things which he thought must be said about justice depart from the custom of life and the manners of states.

But if these things were approved among peoples and in states, who would have conceded to you, Crassus, a most distinguished and eminent man and the leader of the state, to say in the greatest assembly of your fellow-citizens those things which you said? 'Rescue us from our miseries, rescue us from the jaws of those whose cruelty cannot be sated except by our blood; do not suffer us to be slaves to anyone except to you all together, to whom we both can and ought to be.' I pass over the miseries, in which, as they say, a brave man cannot be; I pass over the jaws from which you wish to be rescued, lest your blood be drained by an unjust trial, which they deny can happen to a wise man: but to be a slave—did you dare to say that not only you, but the whole senate, whose cause you were then pleading?

Can virtue, Crassus, be a slave, according to those authorities whose precepts you embrace by the orator's faculty? Which is both always and alone free, and which, even if bodies be captured by arms or bound by chains, yet ought to keep its own right and the unpunished liberty of all things. But as to what you added—that the senate not only can but even ought to be a slave to the people—what philosopher so soft, so languid, so enervated, so referring all things to the pleasure and pain of the body, could approve this, that the senate should be a slave to the people, to whom the people itself had handed over the power of moderating and governing itself, like a kind of reins?

And so, although I thought these things had been said by you divinely, Publius Rutilius Rufus, a learned man and devoted to philosophy, said that they had been spoken not only ill-suitedly, but even basely and disgracefully; and the same man was wont very gravely to censure Servius Galba—a man whom he said he well remembered—because he, when Lucius Scribonius was bringing an inquiry against him, had roused the pity of the people, although Marcus Cato, the grave and bitter enemy of Galba, had spoken harshly and vehemently before the Roman people, which speech he himself set forth in his Origins.

Rutilius, then, censured Galba, because he had himself lifted up well-nigh upon his shoulders the ward son of his kinsman Gaius Sulpicius Galus, that he might by the recollection and memory of his most distinguished father move the people to weeping; and had commended his own two little sons to the guardianship of the people, and had said that, as if making a will in readiness for battle without scales and tablets, he appointed the Roman people guardian for the orphanhood of those boys. And so, although Galba was then pressed both by the envy and the hatred of the people, Rutilius said he was freed by these tragedies; which I see is likewise written in Cato, that, unless he had used boys and tears, he would have suffered punishment. These things Rutilius greatly censured, and said that exile or even death was to be preferred to this humiliation.

Nor indeed did he only say this, but he himself both felt and did it: for, though that man was, as you know, an example of innocence, and there was no one in the state either more upright or more holy than he, he not only was unwilling to be a suppliant to the judges, but would not have his cause pleaded even more ornately or freely than the simple plan of truth bore. He assigned a small part of the pleading to this Cotta, a most eloquent young man, the son of his sister; Quintus Mucius also pleaded that cause in some part, in his own manner, without any ornament, purely and clearly.

But if you had then spoken, Crassus—you who a little while ago said that the orator must seek aid for his abundance of speaking from those disputations which the philosophers use—and if it had been permitted you to speak on behalf of Publius Rutilius not after the manner of the philosophers, but in your own, however wicked those men had been—as in fact they were pestilent citizens and worthy of punishment—yet the force of your speech would have torn out all their wickedness from the very depths of men's minds. Now such a man has been lost, while the cause is pleaded as if the matter were being conducted in that fictitious state of Plato. No one of the advocates groaned, no one cried out, nothing grieved anyone, no one complained, no one implored the commonwealth, no one supplicated; in short, no one stamped his foot in that trial, I suppose, lest it should be reported to the Stoics.

A Roman man and of consular rank imitated that old Socrates, who, when he was the wisest of all and had lived most holily, so spoke for himself in a capital trial that he seemed not a suppliant or a defendant, but the master or lord of the judges. Nay even, when the most eloquent orator Lysias had brought him a written speech, which, if it seemed good to him, he might learn by heart, that he might use it for himself in the trial, he read it not unwillingly and said it was suitably written; 'but,' he said, 'as, if you had brought me Sicyonian shoes, I would not use them, although they were handy and fitted to the foot, because they were not manly,' so that speech seemed to him eloquent and oratorical, but not brave and manly. Therefore he too was condemned; and not only by the first votes, by which the judges only decided whether to condemn or acquit, but also by those which they had to give a second time according to the laws;

for at Athens, when a defendant had been condemned, if the offence were not capital, there was, as it were, an assessment of the penalty; and when the verdict was being given to the judges, the defendant was asked what penalty he confessed he had most deserved. When Socrates was asked this, he answered that he had deserved to be honoured with the most ample honours and rewards, and that daily sustenance should be provided for him at public expense in the Prytaneum, which is held the greatest honour among the Greeks.

By this answer the judges were so inflamed that they condemned to death the most innocent of men; who, indeed, if he had been acquitted—which, by Hercules, even if it concerns us not at all, yet on account of the greatness of his talent I should wish—in what way could we endure those philosophers who now, when that man was condemned for no other fault except his ignorance of speaking, nevertheless say that the precepts of speaking ought to be sought from them? With whom I do not contend which is better or truer: I only say that this is one thing and that another, and that this can be supreme without that.

For as to your having so vehemently embraced the civil law, Crassus, I see what you have done; even when you were speaking, I saw it: first, you devoted yourself to Scaevola, whom we all ought most deservedly to love for his singular sweetness; whose art, when you saw it was undowered and unadorned, you enriched and adorned it with the dowry of words; then, because you had spent more labour and toil upon it, since you had at home both the encourager and the master of that study, you feared, unless you exalted that art by your speech, lest you should have wasted your pains.

But I do not contend even with that art. Let it be as great as you wish it to be—for without controversy it is both great and widely extends and concerns many and has always been in the highest honour, and the most distinguished citizens even today preside over its study—but see, Crassus, lest, while you wish to adorn the knowledge of the civil law with a new and foreign ornament, you also despoil and strip it of its own granted and acknowledged ornament.

For if you said that he who is a jurisconsult is therefore an orator, and likewise that he who is an orator is the same a jurisconsult, you would establish two noble arts, equal to one another and partners of the same dignity. But now you confess that the jurisconsult can exist without this eloquence about which we are inquiring, and that there have been very many such; but you deny that the orator can exist unless he has taken on that knowledge. Thus to you the jurisconsult is in himself nothing but a kind of cautious and shrewd quibbler, a crier of actions, a chanter of formulae, a catcher of syllables; but because the orator often uses the aid of law in causes, you have therefore joined that knowledge of law to eloquence as a little handmaid and attendant.

But as for your having wondered at the impudence of those advocates who either, when they were ignorant of small things, professed great ones, or dared to handle in causes those things which were greatest in the civil law, when they did not know them and had never learned them—of both things the defence is easy and ready. For neither is it to be wondered at that he who does not know by what words a coemption is made should be able to defend the cause of that woman who has made a coemption; nor, if the science of steering a small ship and a great one is the same, can it be that he who does not know by what words an inheritance ought to be divided cannot conduct a cause for the dividing of an estate.

For as to your having brought forward the greatest centumviral causes as resting on law, which, pray, of those causes was there that could not have been most ornately pleaded by an eloquent man unskilled in law? In all which causes—as in that very cause of Manius Curius, which was lately pleaded by you, and in the dispute of Gaius Hostilius Mancinus, and in the case of that boy who had been born of another wife, no notice of divorce having been sent to the former—there was the highest disagreement about the law among the most skilled men: I ask, then, what knowledge of law helped the orator in these causes, when this jurisconsult here was about to come off the inferior, who was sustained not by his own art, but by another's—that is, not by knowledge of law, but by eloquence.

For my part, I have often heard this: that when Publius Crassus was a candidate for the aedileship, and the elder and now consular Servius Galba accompanied him, because he had betrothed Crassus's daughter to his son Gaius, a certain countryman came up to Crassus to consult him; and when he had drawn Crassus aside and laid his case before him, and had carried off an answer truer than suited to his own purpose, when Galba saw him downcast, he called him by name and asked on what matter he had consulted Crassus; and when he had heard it, and saw the man disturbed,

'with an anxious and preoccupied mind,' he said, 'I see Crassus answered you,' and then he himself took Crassus by the hand and said, 'Hark you, what came into your mind to answer thus?' Then that most skilled man confidently affirmed that the matter was as he had answered, and that there could be no doubt; but Galba, sporting variously and copiously, brought forward many comparisons and said many things for equity against law; and Crassus—though Crassus was in the number of the eloquent, but in no way Galba's equal—since he could not be his match in disputing, took refuge in authorities, and produced what he himself had said, written both in the books of his brother Publius Mucius and in the commentaries of Sextus Aelius, and yet conceded that Galba's argument seemed to him probable and well-nigh true.

And yet those causes which are of such a kind that there can be no doubt about their law are not at all wont to be brought into court. Does anyone claim an inheritance under that will which a head of a family made before a son was born to him? No one; because it is agreed that a will is broken by the subsequent birth of an heir; therefore in this kind of law there are no trials: the orator, then, may with impunity be ignorant of all this part of uncontroverted law, which part is without doubt by far the greatest;

but in that law which is disputed among the most skilled, it is not difficult for the orator to find some authority for whatever side he shall defend; from whom, when he has received the javelins fitted with thongs, he will himself hurl them with the arms and strength of an orator. Unless indeed—I would say it with the good leave of this excellent man—you, Crassus, defended the cause of Manius Curius by the little books or precepts of your father-in-law Scaevola, and did not snatch up the patronage of equity and the defence of wills and of the wishes of the dead.

And in my opinion—for I often heard you and was present—you won over much the greater part of the verdicts by your wit and charm and most polished pleasantries, when you both mocked that excessive subtlety and wondered at the talent of Scaevola, who had discovered that one must be born before one dies; and when you gathered many things both from the laws and from decrees of the senate and from life and common speech, not only acutely but also ridiculously and wittily, where, if we followed the words and not the substance, nothing could be made out: and so the trial was full of merriment and gladness; in which what your practice of the civil law profited you, I do not understand; your excellent power of speaking, joined with the highest gaiety and grace, profited you.

That very Mucius, the defender of his father's law and, as it were, the champion of his own patrimony, what did he bring forward in that cause, when he spoke against you, that seemed drawn from the civil law? What law did he recite? What did he open up by speaking that had been too hidden for the unskilled? Surely all his speech was concerned with this—to maintain that the written word ought to have the most weight; but in this kind all boys are exercised under their masters, when in causes of this sort they are taught to defend now the written word, now equity.

And, I suppose, in that cause of the soldier, if you had defended either the heir or the soldier, you would have had recourse to the Hostilian actions, not to your own force and oratorical faculty: but you, indeed, even if you were defending the will, would so plead that all the law of all wills would seem to rest upon that trial; or if you were pleading the soldier's cause, you would, as you are wont, by speaking have raised his father from the dead; you would have set him before our eyes; he would have embraced his son and, weeping, commended him to the centumviri; you would, by Hercules, have compelled the very stones to weep and lament, so that all that 'as the tongue shall have pronounced' would seem written not in the Twelve Tables, which you prefer to all libraries, but in a schoolmaster's lay.

For as to your accusing the indolence of young men, who do not first learn that art, the easiest of all—how easy it is, let those see who walk about so puffed up with the arrogance of that art, as if it were the most difficult of all; and then let yourself also see, who say that that art is easy, which you grant is not yet an art at all, but will some day, if anyone shall have learned another art, so that he can make this an art, then become an art; then, that it is full of delight—in which all remit to you that pleasure and suffer themselves to be deprived of it; nor is there anyone of them who, if something must now be learned by heart, would not prefer to learn the Teucer of Pacuvius than the Manilian laws of selling things for sale;

then, as to your thinking that out of love of country we ought to know the inventions of our ancestors, do you not see that the old laws have either grown old by their very antiquity, or have been abolished by new laws? But as to your thinking that men become good by the civil law, because by the laws both rewards are set before the virtues and punishments before the vices, for my part I used to think that virtue was imparted to men—if indeed it can be imparted by method—by instructing and persuading, not by threats and force and fear. For that very thing, indeed, how good it is to beware of evil, we can know even without the knowledge of law.

But of myself, to whom alone you concede that I can satisfy causes without any knowledge of law, I answer you this, Crassus: that I never learned the civil law, nor yet ever, in those causes which I could defend in court, missed that knowledge; for it is one thing to be the artist of a certain kind and art, another to be in the common life and ordinary intercourse of men neither dull nor untrained.

Which of us is free to go over our farms or to visit our country property either for the sake of profit or of delight? Yet no one lives so without eyes, so without mind, as to be wholly ignorant of what sowing and harvest are, what the pruning of trees and vines is, at what time of year or in what manner these things are done. If, then, some farm must be inspected, or something be entrusted to a steward about the cultivation of the land, or commanded to a bailiff, must the books of Mago the Carthaginian be thoroughly learned? Or can we be content with this common understanding? Why, then, can we not, in the civil law also—especially since we are worn out in causes and business and in the forum—be sufficiently instructed at least to this extent, that we do not seem to be foreigners and strangers in our own country?

And if now some obscurer cause be brought to us, it would, I suppose, be difficult to confer with Scaevola here; although those very persons whose business it is bring to us everything consulted and inquired into. Or indeed, if there is a controversy about the matter itself, about boundaries, when we have come upon the spot, about deeds and accounts, do we necessarily learn thoroughly intricate and often difficult matters; but if statutes or the responses of skilled men must be learned, do we fear that, if from our youth we have less studied the civil law, we cannot learn these things? Does, then, the knowledge of the civil law profit the orator nothing? I cannot deny that any knowledge profits, especially him whose eloquence ought to be adorned with abundance of matter; but those things which are necessary for the orator are many and great and difficult, so that I would not wish to distract his industry into more studies.

Who would deny that the orator needs, in this oratorical movement and posture, the gesture and grace of Roscius? Yet no one would advise young men zealous for speaking to labour in learning gesture after the manner of actors. What is so necessary to the orator as the voice? Yet, on my authority, no one zealous for speaking will, after the manner of the Greek tragedians, be a slave to the voice—men who both for several years declaim sitting, and daily, before they deliver, raise their voice gradually as they lie down, and the same, when they have pleaded, sitting, bring it back from the sharpest tone all the way to the deepest, and, as it were, gather it up. If we wished to do this, those whose causes we had undertaken would be condemned before we had recited, as often as is prescribed, the Paean or the hymn.

But if in gesture, which much helps the orator, and in voice, which alone most commends or sustains eloquence, we are not allowed to labour, and can only attain in each as much as the space of our daily task in this battle-line allows us, how much less must we descend to the occupation of thoroughly learning the civil law? Which can both be grasped in summary without instruction, and has this unlikeness to those other things, that voice and gesture cannot be taken up suddenly and snatched from elsewhere, while the usefulness of the law can be drawn out for any cause, however suddenly, either from the skilled or from books.

And so those most eloquent men have, as assistants in causes, men skilled in law, though they themselves are most unskilled—those who, as was said by you a little while ago, are called pragmatici; in which respect ours have done altogether much better, in that they wished the laws and the law to be protected by the authority of most distinguished men. But yet this would not have escaped the Greeks, if they had thought it so necessary, to instruct the orator himself in the civil law, and not to give him a pragmaticus as a helper.

For as to your saying that old age is rescued from solitude by the knowledge of the civil law, perhaps also by greatness of money; but we are inquiring not what is useful to us, but what is necessary for the orator. Although—since we take many things for our likeness of the orator from one artist—that same Roscius is wont to say that, the more years are added to him, the slower will he make the measures of the flute-player and the more relaxed the songs. But if he, bound by a certain fixed regulation of numbers and feet, yet devises something for the rest of old age, how much more easily can we, not relax our measures, but change them wholly?

For it does not escape you, Crassus, how many and how various are the kinds of speaking—a thing which I scarcely know whether you were not the first to show, who now for a long time speak much more remissly and gently than you used to; and yet this gentleness of your most weighty discourse is no less approved than that highest force and vehemence: and there have been many orators, as we hear of that Scipio and Laelius, who carried through everything in a discourse a little more intense, never, like Servius Galba, contending with lungs or clamour. But if you now cannot or will not do this, do you fear lest your house, that of such a man and citizen, if it be not courted by litigious men, should be deserted by the rest? For my part, I am so far from that opinion that I not only do not think the support of old age is to be placed in the multitude of those who come to consult, but I look forward to that solitude which you fear as to a kind of haven. For I think that leisure is the most beautiful support of old age.

As for the rest, even if they help—I mean history and the knowledge of public law and the memory of antiquity and the store of precedents—if ever there be need, I shall borrow them from a most excellent man and one most furnished with these things, my friend Congus; nor will I oppose what you just now exhorted, that they should read everything, hear everything, be engaged in every honourable study and culture; but, by Hercules, they do not seem to me to have so very much time, if only they shall be willing to do and pursue those things which were enjoined by you, Crassus, who seemed to me to lay almost too hard laws upon this age, but yet such as are well-nigh necessary for attaining what they desire.

For both the sudden exercises upon proposed causes, and the careful and meditated reflections, and that pen of yours, which you truly said is the perfecter and master of speaking, are a matter of much sweat; and that comparison of one's own speech with the writings of others, and that disputation about another's writing for the sake of praising, or censuring, or approving, or refuting it, is no slight effort either for memory or for imitation.

But that was a terrible thing, which, by Hercules, I fear may have had more force to deter than to encourage: for you wished each one of us to be, in his own kind, a kind of Roscius; and you said that those things which are right are not so much approved as that those which are faulty cleave to men's distastes; which I think is regarded not so fastidiously in us as in actors;

and so I see that we, even when hoarse, are often listened to most attentively; for the matter itself and the cause hold the hearer; but Aesopus, if he is even a little hoarse, is hissed off. For from those of whom nothing is sought except the pleasure of the ears, offence is taken as soon as anything is diminished from the pleasure; but in the eloquent man there are many things which hold the hearer; which, if they are not all supreme, and yet most are great, those very things which exist must of necessity seem wonderful.

Therefore, to return to that first point, let the orator be for us he who, as Crassus described, can speak in a manner adapted to persuading; but let him be confined to those things which are in the common and forensic use of states, and, the other studies being set aside, however ample and noble they be, let him be pressed, so to speak, night and day in this one work; and let him imitate that man to whom without doubt the highest force of speaking is conceded, the Athenian Demosthenes, in whom there is said to have been so great zeal and so great labour that first he overcame the impediments of nature by diligence and industry; and, since he was so stammering that he could not pronounce the first letter of that very art which he studied, he accomplished by practice that no one was thought to speak more plainly; then, since his breath was rather short, he attained by holding in his breath in speaking so much that—as his writings show—in one continuous stretch of words two risings and fallings of the voice were comprised;

who also, as it is handed down in tradition, was accustomed, with pebbles thrown into his mouth, to pronounce many verses in a loud voice with one breath; nor that standing in one place, but walking about and advancing up a steep ascent.

With these exhortations, Crassus, to rouse young men to zeal and to labour, I heartily agree; but the rest, which you have gathered from various and diverse studies and arts—although you yourself have attained them all—I think are nevertheless separate from the orator's proper office and function.' When Antonius had said this, Sulpicius and Cotta seemed altogether in doubt which of the two speeches seemed to come nearer to the truth.

Then Crassus said: 'You make of us a kind of mere journeyman orator, Antonius, and I scarcely know whether you do not think otherwise and use that wonderful habit of yours for refuting, in which no one ever surpassed you; the very practice of which faculty is proper to orators, but is now engaged in the habit of the philosophers, and most of all of those who are wont to speak most copiously on both sides of every proposed question.

But I thought, especially with these gentlemen listening, that I ought to portray what manner of man he could be who should dwell upon the benches and bring nothing more than the necessity of causes demanded; but I saw something greater, when I judged that the orator, especially in our commonwealth, ought to be without no ornament. You, however, since you have surrounded the whole office of the orator with certain narrow bounds, will the more easily set forth to us those things which have been asked of you about the duties and precepts of the orator; but, I think, on the day after this; for enough has been said by us today.

Now both Scaevola, since he has resolved to go to his Tusculan villa, will rest a little, until the heat breaks; and let us ourselves, since it is that time of day, give heed to our health.' It pleased all so. Then Scaevola said: 'Indeed I could wish I had not resolved to go today to Lucius Aelius; I would gladly hear Antonius'; and, as he rose, smiling at the same time, he said: 'for he was not so troublesome to me, because he plucked at our civil law, as pleasant, because he confessed that he did not know it.'