men, when I came to Atheas as quaator from Macedonia,' Bud 'when the Academy was in a flourishing state, as it was represented in those days, for Charmadaa, and Clitomachus, and iEschines were in posseSBJon of it. There was also Me- trodorufl, who, with the others, had been a diligent hearer of the famous Cameades himself, a man beyond all others, as they told me, a most spirited and copious speaker, Muesar- clius. too, was in great esteem, a hearer of your friend Pautetius, and Diodorua, a Bcholar of Critolans the Peri- patetic; and there were many other famous men besides, highly diatinguiBhed in philosophy, by all of whom, with one voice aa it were, I observed that the orator was repelled from the government of states, excluded from all learning and knowledge of great a^ire, and degraded and thrust down- into the courts of justice and. petty assembhes, as into a workshop. But I neither assented to those men, nor to the originator of these disputations, and by for the most eloquent of them all, the eminently grave and oratorical Plato; whoae Gorgios 1 then diligently read over at Athens with Char- modaa; from which book I conceived the highest admiration of Plato, as he seemed to me to prove himself an eminent ■ orator, even in ridiculing orators. A controverBy indeed on the word oeatob has long disturbed the minute Grecians, .^ who are fonder of argument than of truth. For if any one pronoiuiceH him to be ao orator who can speak fluently only on law in general, or on judicial questions, or before the people, or in the senate, he must yet necessarily grant and allow him a variety of talents; for he cannot treat even of these matters with suf^cient skill and accuracy without great attention to all puhho afiairs, nor without a knowledge of laws, customs, and equity, nor without understanding the n&ture and manners of mimkind; and to him who knows these things, without which uo one can maintain even the most minute pointa in judicial pleadings, bow much is wanting of the knowledge even of the moat important affiiira! But if you allow nothing to belong to the orator but to speak aptly, ornately, and copiously, how can he even attain these qualities without that knowledge which you do not allow him! for there can be no true merit in speaking, unless what is said is ^ IB quECEtor i 1, patmed through Macedon thoroughly understood by him who says it. If, therefore,' the natural philoHopber Democritus spoke with elegance, as he is - reported to have spoken, and aa it appears to me that he did epeak, the matter on which he spoke helonged to the philosopher, but the graceful array of wori& is to be ascribed to the orator. And if Plato spoke divinely upon Bubjecta most remote from civil controversies, as I grant that he did; if also Aristotle, and Theophrastua, and Cameades, were eloquent, and spoke with sweetness and grace on those matters which they dis- cussed; let the subjects nn %rliich they spoke belong to other studies, but their speech itself surely, is the peculiar offiipring of that art of which we are now discoursing and inquiring. For we see that some have reasoned on the same subjects jejunely aud drily, aa Chrjsippua, whom they celebrate as the acutest of philosophers; nor is he on this accouot to be thought to have been deficient in philosophy, because ha did not gain the talent of speaking &om an art which is foroiga to philosophy.
XII. " Where then lies the diilerence? Or by what term will you discriminate the fertility and copiousuess of speech in those whom I have named, irom the barrenaesa of those who use not thiBjvarietj. aud elegaaoe of plirase t Oue thing there will certainly be, which those who speak well will eihibit as their owa; a graceful and elegant style, dis- tinguished by a peculiar artifice and poliab. But this kind of diction, if there be not matter beneath it clear and inteUigible to the speaker, must either amount to nothing, or be received with rithcule by all who hear it. For what savours so much of madness, as the empty sound of words, even the choicest and most cl^ant, when there is no sense or knowledge contained in them! Whatever be the subject of a speeoh, therefore, in whatever art or branch of scieuco, the orator, if be has made himself master of it, as of his client's cause, ^ ■will speak on it better and more elegantly than even thB_ very originator and author of it can.' If indeed any one shall say that there are certain trains of thought and reasoning properly belon^ng to orators, and a knowledge of certtua things |circurasGribed within the limits of the forum, I will confess that our common speech is employed about these matters chiefiy; but yet tbei'e are many things, in _' See Quiutiliiui, il 21.
ON THE CHARACTER OF THE OBiTOR. 157 these very topics, which those aiEistere of rhetoric, aa they are called, neither teach nor iinderstanA For who ia ignorant thftt the highest power of an orator consists in esciting the minds of mea to anger, or to hatred, or to grief, or in recall- ing them from these more violent emotions to gentlenees and oompasBion 1 which power will uever be able to effect its ob- ject by eloqnence, unless in him who has obtained a thorough inagbt into the nature of manliiDd, and all the passions of humanity, and those cauEes by which our minds are either impelled or restrained. But ail these are thought to belong to the philosophers, nor will the orator, at least with my con- sent, ever deny that such is the case; but when he has conceded to them the knowledge of things, since they are ■willing to exhaust their labours on that alone, he will assume to himself the treatment of oratoiy, which without that knowledge is nothing. For the proper concern of an orator, as I have already oflen said, is language of power and elegance accommodated to the feelings and understandings o£ mankind, XIII. " On these matters I confess that Aristotle and Theo- phrastus have written.^ But consider, Scfcvola, whether this ia not wholly in my favour. For I do not borrow from them what the orator possesses in common with them; hut they allow that what they say on these subjects belongs to oratory. Their other treatises, accordingly, they distinguish by the name of the floienoe on which each ia written; their treatises on oratory they entitle and designate aa books of rhetoric. For when, in their discussions, (as often happens,) such topics present themselves as require them to speak of the immortal gods, of piety, of concord, of friendship, of the common rights of their fellow-citizens, or those of all mankind, of the law of nations, of equity, of temperance, of greatness of mind, of every kind of virtue, all the academies and schools of philosophy, I imagine, will cry out that all these subjects are their property, and that no particle of them belongs to the orator. But when I have given them liberty to reason on all these subjects in corners to amuse their leisure, I shall ^ve and assign to the orator his part, which is, to set forth irith full power and attraction the very same topics which , Abey discuss in such tame and bloodless phraseology. These hough tlicy are pliilosophers, and not orators cr rbctoriciuiB.
1 points I tbea discussed with the philoaophers in person at Adieus, for Marcus Marcellus, our couutryman, wlio is now curule nedile, obliged me to do so, tiud he would certainly have taken part in our present conTcrsation, were he not now celebrating the pubhc games; for he was then a youth mar- vellously given to these studies.
"Of the institution of laws, of war, of peace, of alliani of tributes, of the ciyil law aa relating to various ranks ogee respectively,' let the Greeka say, if they will, that curgus or Solon (although I think that these should enrolled ia the number of the eloqueut) had more knowledge than Hypereidea or Demosthenes, men of the highest aeoont- plishments and refinement in oratory; or let our couatrymea prefer, in this sort of knowledge, the Decemviri who wrote the Twelve Tables, and who must have beea wise men, to ServiuB Galba, and your lather-in-law Ltelius, who are al- lowed to have excelled in tlie glorious art of speaking. I, indeed, shall never deny that tliere are some sciences pecu- liarly well understood by those who have applied their whole study to the knowledge and consideration of them; but the accomplished and complete orator I shall call liim v^o can speak on all Bubjects with variety and copiousness. XIV. For often in tliose causes which all acknowledge properly to belong to orators, there is something to be drawn forth and adopted, not from the routine of the Forum, which ia the only knowledge that you grant to the orator, but from some of the more obscuro sciences. I ask whether a speech can be made for or agaiust a generai, without an acquaintance witb militaiy afiairs, or often tvithout a knowledge of oertsia inland aud maritime countries ] whether a speech can b^ | made to the people about passing or rejecting laws, or in ^»M senate on any kind of public transactions, without the greatatfl knowledge and judgment in political matters 1 whether « speech can be adapted to excite or calm the thoughts and ' i>e jurt tMli gauraiim in ordiites cetatetjM detcriptn. Jasiead of ewm, ihe old reading vme civHoa, in accordance with whiab X-ambinos Hltered deaeripto into d^icripbtraat. Oiviii wnfl an innoTaUDn of Eroesti, wMch Eltendt condemns, end retains ctsimii; observing tbat Cicero means jura cminn publica lingvlis orrfiniSiw et atatibae OMiffTtalffl. " By onJiiKu," sajra Erossti, " are meant patricians and plebeiaDB, Benators, knights, uid olaBBSB in the oeiuiu; bj aiatu, yojiugsi ud older A m OF THE ORATOR. 159 paaaiona (which alone is a great huainesa of the orator) without a most diligent examiuation of all those doctrineB which are set forth on the nature and manners of men by the philosophers T I do not know whether I may not be less Bucceasful in maintaining what I am going to say; but I Hhall not hesitate to speak that vhich I think. Physics, nnd mathematics, and those other things which you just now decided to belong to other sciences, belong to the peculiar knowledge of those who profess themj but if any one would Ulnstrnte those arte by doquence, he must have recourso to tiie power of oratory. Kor, i^ as is said, Philo,^ the fiimouB architect, who built an arsetuit for the Athenians, gaye that people an eloquent account of his work, is it to be imagined that his eloqueace proceeded from the art of the architect, but from that of the orator. Or, if our friend Marcus Antonius had had to speak for Hermodorua- on the subject of dock- buiJding, he would have spoken, when he had learned the «aae from Hermodoms, with eleganca and copiousness, drawn fi^m an art quite unconnected with dock-building. And Asdepiades,^ whom we knew a& a pbjBiciaa and a friend, did not, when he excelled others of his profession in eloquence, employ, in his^gracefiil elocution, the art of physio, but that —ot oratory. What Socrates used to say, that all men are ~\, aufieientlj/ eloquent in that vihich Ihey understand, is very | I jiJaiiEible, but not true. It would have been nearer truth to sty, that no man can be eloquent on a subject that he does not understand; and that, if he understands a subject ever so well, but is ignorant how to form and polifih his speech, be cannot express himself eloquently eveu about what he docs understand.
XV. " If, therafore, any one desires to define and compre- hend the whole aod jieculiar power of an orator, that man, in my opinion, will be an orator, worthy of so gi'cat a name, who, whatever subject cornea before him, and requires rheto- rical elucidation, can speak on it judiciously, in set form, ' He is frequectly mentiQnod bv tlie ancienta; the passtges relating to him Imve been coUeoted by Junius de Picturil in Catal. Artif. &Tietli. See Plin. K N. vii, S8; Piab. Syll. e. li; VaL Mai. vii. 12.
* A EomaE BMpbnildor. Sea Tumeb. Advere. li. 2.
* See Plin. U. N. yii. ST. CeUus often refeis to Ma auUiort^ as tlia "" ' ' w party. Elteadl.
1 I DE OBATORE; OB, elegantly, and from memory, and witli a certain dignity of action. But if the phrase which I havo used, ' on whatever subject,' is thought by any one too comprehensive, let him retrench and curtail &» much of it as he pleases; but this I will maintain, that though the orator be ignorant of what belongs to other arts and pursuits, and uoderstandB only what concerns the discussions and practice of the Forum, yat i if he has to speak on those arts, he will, when he has learned a what pertains to any of them from persons who nnderstaBAa I them, discourse upon them much better than the very persoMi^ of whom those arts form the peculiar province. Thus, if our THend Sulpicius have to Epeak on military aflairs, he will inquire about them of my kinsman Caius Marius,' and when he has received information, will speak upon them in such a manner, that he shall seem to Marius to understand them better than himself. Or if he has to speak on the civil law, h6 will consult with you, and will excel you, though eminently wise and learned in it, in speaking on those very points wbioh he shall have learned from yourself. Or if any subject pre- sents itself, requiring him to apeak on the nature and vices of men, on desire, on moderation, on continence, on grief, on death, perhaps, if he thinks proper, (though the orator on^t to have a knowledge of these things,} he will consult with Sextos Pompeius," a man learned in philosophy. But this he will certainly accomplish, that, of whatever matter he gains a knowledge, or from whomsoever, he will speak upon it much more elegantly than the very person from whom ho gained the knowledge. Eul, since philosophy is distinguished into three parts, inquiries into the obscurities of physics, the Bubtilties of logic, and the knowledge of life and manners, let us, if Sulpiciua will listen to me, leave the two former, and consult our ease; biit unless we have a knowledge of the third, which has always been the province of the orator, we ' The son of the great Caiua Mariufl," aavan timaa eonaul, had married Mucia, the daughter of the auguc SkovoIh. In Cicaro's Oration for Balbus, also, c. 21, 49, where tha msrita of thai emiiieDt oonunandar are celebrated, Cmssus ia called hiB ajiaia, rehiition b; maridase. JlertrvAien.
' Tha uncle of CaaiuB Potnpey the Great, who had devoted eiod- Iflnt t^enta to the attammeot of a thorough. Icnowledge of civil law, geometry, and the doctrinoa of the Stoics. See Cic.Bmt. «; PMlipp.
, xiL 11; Beier, ad OE L 6, la, £Umtll.
[ ^.Xn.J OS THE OHiltACTEB OP THE OEA.TOR.
shall leave him nothing in which he can distinguish himself. The part of philosophy, therefore, regardicg life ftnd manners, I must be thoroughly maatered by the orator; other subjeotB, even if he has not learned them, he will be able, whenever there is occasion, to adorn byhia eloquence, if they are brought ^ before him and made known to him.
XVI. "Forif it i8 allowed amongst the learned that AratuH, a man ignorant of astronomy, has treated of heaven and the oonstellations in extremely polished and excellent verses; if Hioander,' of Colophon, a man totally unconnected with the country, has written well on rural affairs, with the aid of poetical taleot, and not from understanding husbandry, what reason ia there why an orator should not speak most elo- quently on those matters of which he shall have gained a knowledge for a certain purpose and occaaioni For the ,'poet is nearly allied to the ora-tor; being somewhat more restrioted in numbers, but less restrained in the choice of words, yet in many kinds of emhellishment his rival and almost equal; in one respect, assuredly, nearly the same, I thaX he circumscribea or bounds his jurisdiction by no limits, but reserveB to himself full right to range wherever he pleases with the same ease and liberty. For why did you say, ScjEvola,^ that you would not endure, milesa you were in my domain, my assertion, that the orator ought to be accom- phshed in every stylo of speakiog, and in every part of polite learning 1 I should certainly not have said this if I bad thought myself to be the orator whom I conceive in ray imagination, Bi?t, as Caiua Lucilius used frequently to say (a man not very friendly to you,^ and on that account less &miliar with me than he could wish, but a man of learning and good breeding), I am of this opinion, that no one is to be numbered among orators who is not thoroughly accom- ' Ificander, a. phyaiciaji, gmmmariaj], and poet, flouriahod in tbs time of Attalna, the second Mag of Pergamua, ahnut fiftj jeora befora Christ. HU TheriacBi and Aleiiplinriaaca are eKtant; lua Oeorgica, to which. Cicero hers alludes, haa perished. Menrichien.
» Seeo. K.
» Seeo. K.
' It is LuciliiiB the Satirist that is meaat What cause there hod beea for uu&ieiidlineaa botweau him and Saievola ia unsown; perhaps be might hava spoken too freely, or made some satirical remnrk on the ■ a of Sorevola by Albuoius for brihery, on which there are plished in all branches of knowledge requisite for a man of good breeding; and though wo may not put forward such knowledge in conversation, yet it is apparent, and iudeed evident, whether we are destitute of it, or have acquired it; as those who play at tennis do not exhibit, in playing, the gestures of the pahestra, but their movements indicate whe- ther they have teamed thoae exerctses or are uuaaqtuunted with them; and as those who shape out anything, though they do not then exercise the art of painting, yet make it clear whether they can paint or not; bo in orations to courts of justice, before the people, and iu the senate, althougji other sciences have no peculiar place iu them, yet is it eaaily proved whether he who speaks has only been exercised in the parade of declamation, or has devoted himself to oratory After having been instructed in all hboral knowledge."
XVII. Then Soievola, smiling, said: "I will not struggle with you any longer, Crassus; for you have, by some artifice, made good what you Bsserted against me, so as to grant me whatever I refused to allow to the orator, and yet so as to wrest from me those very things again I know not how, and to transfer them to the orator as his property.^ When I went as pnetor to Rhodes, and communicate to Apol- lonius, that famous instruGtor in this profession, what I had learned from Pantetius, ApolloniuB, aa was his manner, ridi- culed these matters,'' threw contempt upon philosophy, and made many other observations with less wisdom than wit; but your remarks were of such a kind as not to express con- tempt for any arts or sciences, but to admit that they are all attendants and handmaids of the orator; and if ever any one should comprehend them all, and the same peraon should add to that knowledge the powers of supremely elegant oratory, I cannot but say that he would be a man of high distinction * Ydu grantod me all tliat I deslreJ when 70U Bftid tliat all aita anil BcienceB belong, aa it were, respectivelji to those who haTe invented, or profisse, or study tbem;...but when;au Baid that thoee orta and Bdenoea ore Deceaeary to the orator, nnd that he can speak Dpon them, if he wiflhea, with more elegance and effeot than those who have oiade ^■.._. j.i._-,:...a eecied to tjiio them all from me again, Dr as hia own property. ProKtI.
where the reader will ohserie that tha Ellendt and some othara read QiM lona hare been proponed, but none pt atisfaotory Btsts, I f THB GHABAOTBB OF THE ORATOR.
and worthy of the greatest admiration. But if there Bhould be Buch a one, or indeed has eyer been, or can possibly be, you alone would be the person; who, not only in my judg- ment, but in that of all men, have hardly left to other orators (I Bpeak it with deference to this company) any glory to be acquired. If, however, there is in yourself no deficiency of knowledge pertaining to judicial and political afiairs, and yet you have not mastered aU that additional learning vliich you assign to the complete orator, let us consider whe- ther you do not attribute to him more than possibility and tmth itself will allow." Here Craaaus rejoined: " Eecoember that I have not been speaking of my own talents, but of those of the true orator. For what have I either learned or bad a possibility of knowing, who entered upon pleading before I bad any instruotioa; whom the pressure of business overteskedamidsttheoccupationaof the forum, of canvassing, of public affiiirs, and the management of the causes of trieuds, before I could form any true notion of the imp'ortanoe of such great employments? But if there seem to you to be so much in me, to whom, though capacity, as you think, may not greatly have been wanting, yet to whom learning, leisure, and that keen application to study which is so necessary, have certainly been wanting, what do you think would be the case if those acquirements, which I have not gained, should be united to some greater genius than mine! How able, how great an orator, do you think, would he provel" XTIII. Antonius then observed: " You prove to mg; Crassua, what you advance; nor do I doubt that he will have a iikr greater fund of eloquence who siiall have learned tho reason and nature of everything and of aU sciences. But, in the first place, this is difficult to be achieved, especially in suoh a life ns ours and such occupations; and next, it is to be feared that we may, by each studies, be drawn away &om our exercise and practice of speaking before the peopla and in the forum. The eloquence of those men whom you mentioned a tittle before, seems to me to be of a qvdte dif- ferent sort, though they speak with grace and dignity, as well oa the nature of things as on human life. Theirs is a neat uid florid kind of language, but more adapted for parade and exercise in the schools, them for these tumults of the dty and forum. For when I, who late in life, aad tWu VA h3 I I DH OSATOKE; OR, lightly, touched upon Greet learning, was going as proconsnl into Cilicia, and had arrived at Athena, I waited there eeveral days on account of the difficulty of sailing; and as I had every day with me the most learned men, nearly the same that you have just now named, and a report, I know not how, had spread amongst them that I, like you, was vorecd in causes of great importance, every one, according to his abilities, took occasion to disoonrse upon the office aud art of at) orator. Some of them, as Unesorchus himself, said, that those whom we call orators were uothing but a set of me- chanics with ghb and well -practised tongues, but that no one could be an orator but a man of true wisdom j and that eloquence itself, as it consisted in the art of speaking well, was a kind of virtue,'- and that he who possessed one virtue possessed all, and that virtues were in themselves equal and alike; and thus ho who was eloquent possesaed all virtues, and was a man of true wisdom. But their piiraaeology was in- tricate and dry, and quite unsuited to my taste. Charmadss indeed spoke much more diffusely on those topics; not that he delivered his own opinion (for it is the hereditary custom, of every one in the Academy to take the part of opponents to all in their disputations), but what he chiedy signllied was, that those who were called rhetoricians, and laid down rules for the art of speaking, understood nothing; and that no man could attain any command of eloquence who had not mastered the doctrines of tbe philosophers.
XIX. "Certain mea of eloquence at Athens, versed in public afiaira and judicial pleadings, disputed on the other side; among whom was Menedemus, lately my guest at Bome; but when he bad observed that there is a sort of wisdom vrhich is employed in inquiring into the methods of serthng and managing governments, he, though a ready speaker, was promptly attacked by the other,^ a man of abundant learning, and of an almost incredible variety and copiousness of ail- ment; who maintained that every portion of such wisdom must be derived from piiiloaophy, and that wiiatever was established in a state concerning the immortal gods, the dis- cipline of youth, justice, patience, temperance, moderation in cveiything, and other matters, without which states would ' The StoicB called eloquence o: ON THE CHARACTER OF THE OBATOK. 16S