stimulant of an unruly people, a stranger to obedience CHAP. XL. and subjection, a defiant, reckless, presumptuous thing which does not show itself in a well-governed state. What orator have we ever heard of at Sparta or at Crete? A very strict discipline and very strict laws prevailed, tradition says, in both those states. Nor do we know of the existence of eloquence among the Macedonians or Persians, or in any people content with a settled government. There were some orators at Rhodes and a host of them at Athens, but there the people, there any ignorant follow, anybody, in short, could do anything. So too our own state, while it went astray and wore out its strength in factious strife and discord, with neither peace in the forum, unity in the senate, order in the courts, respect for merit, or seemly behaviour in the magistrates, produced beyond all question a more vigorous eloquence, just as an untilled field yields certain herbage in special plenty. Still the eloquence of the Gracchi was not an equivalent to Rome for having to endure their legislation, and Cicero's fame as an orator was a poor compensation for the death he died. And so now the forum, which is all that our speakers have left them of antiquity, is an evidence of a state not thoroughly reformed or as orderly as we could wish. Who but the guilty or unfortunate apply to us? What town puts itself under our protection but one harassed by its neighbours or by strife at home? When we plead for a province, is it not one that has been plundered and ill-treated? Surely it would be better not to complain than to have to seek СНАР. XLI. CHAP. XLI. redress. Could a community be found in which no one did wrong, an orator would be as superfluous among its innocent people as a physician among the healthy. As the healing art is of very little use and makes very little progress in nations which enjoy particularly robust constitutions and vigorous frames, so the orator gets an inferior and less splendid renown where a sound morality and willing obedience to authority prevail. What need there of long speeches in the senate, when the best men are soon of one mind, or of endless harangues to the people, when political questions are decided not by an ignorant multitude, but by one man of pre-eminent wisdom? What need of voluntary prosecutions, when crimes are so rare and slight, or of defences full of spiteful insinuation and exceeding proper bounds, when the clemency of the judge offers itself to the accused in his peril ? Be assured, my most excellent, and, as far as the age requires, most eloquent friends, that had you been born in the past, and the men we admire in our own day, had some god in fact suddenly changed your lives and your age, the highest fame and glory of eloquence would have been yours, and they too would not have lacked moderation and self-control. As it is, seeing that no one can at the same time enjoy great renown and great tranquillity, let everybody make the best of the blessings of his own age without disparaging other periods. Maternus had now finished. There were, replied Messala, some points I should controvert, some on which I should like to hear more, if the day were not almost spent. It shall be, said Maternus, as you wish, on a future occasion, and anything you have said, to accuse you before the poets, and so will CHAP. CHAP. V. CHAP. VII. NOTES TO THE DIALOGUE ON ORATORY. Saleius Bassus.-Mentioned again in 9 and 10. He was a poet of the Flavian age, of whom Quintilian (x. I. 90) speaks favourably, as possessed of a vehemens et poeticum ingenium. Juvenal (vii. 80) gives him the epithet tenuis, in allusion, it would seem, to his poverty. There is extant a panegyrical poem of 261 lines on a Calpurnius Piso, and this has been attributed to Rassus, it being also supposed that this Piso was one of the chief authors of the famous conspiracy against Nero, described in the Annals xv. 48 to end. The conjecture is a plausible one, but that is all that can be said of it. There were many other poets who may have written it, as, for example Statius or Lucan. Ministers of the crown (procuratores principum). -The procurator Cæsaris, as he was styled was commonly the emperor's confidential adviser as wel! as his steward. He could have a province if he wished it, as a matter of course. When impeached, it would usually be for extortion or maladministration. He was often a freedman, and his class with its peculiar influence was one of the most marked CHAP. VII. features of the imperial age. Mandate (codicillis).—Compare Agricola 40, where the same word codicilli is used of a dispatch or missive from the emperor to Agricola. This indeed seems to have become one of the special meanings of the word, which properly, of course, is simply a diminutive form of codex. Men with the tunic (tunicatus populus).—Compare Horace Epist. i. 7, 65, tunicato popello. A respectable Roman citizen always wore the toga in public; to be without this and have only the tunica implied that a man belonged to the poorest and lowest class. The tunica was worn under the toga. Eprius Marcellus.-First mentioned in Annals xii. 4. He rose from obscurity by the abuse of considerable natural eloquence to be one of the foremost delatores of Nero's time, during which he was particularly formidable. He lost influence after Nero's death, but reappears in Hist. ii. 53; iv. 6. and was an important personage under Vitellius and Vespasian. Vibius Crispus.-He is again mentioned in 13. He had successfully defended his brother in Nero's reign on a charge of provincial maladministration. See Annals xiv. 28. Quintilian (x. 1, 119) speaks of him as jucundus et delectationi natus. See also Hist. ii. 10; iv. 41, 43. СНАР. Programmes (libellos).-Perhaps, cards of invitation CHAP IX with a programme. Juvenal (vii. 35-97), describes at length the process of getting up a reading and drawing an audience. Vatinius.-See Annals xv. 34, from which it |