Lucius Seneca - Yale Required Reading - Collected Works (Vol. 2)

23See Plin. H. N. vii. 37. Celsus often refers to his authority as the founder of a new party. Ellendt.

24The son of the great Gaius Marius, seven times consul, had married Mucia, the daughter of the augur Scaevola. In Cicero's Oration for Balbus, also, c. 21, 49, where the merits of that eminent commander are celebrated, Crassus is called his affinis, relation by marriage. Henrichsen.

25The uncle of Gnaeus Pompey the Great, who had devoted excellent talents to the attainment of a thorough knowledge of civil law, geometry, and the doctrines of the Stoics. See Cic. Brut. 47; Philipp. xii. 11; Beier, ad Off. i. 6, 19. Ellendt.

26Nicander, a physician, grammarian, and poet, flourished in the time of Attalus, the second king of Pergamus, about (?) fifty years before Christ. His Theriaca and Alexipharmaca are extant; his Georgica, to which Cicero here alludes, has perished. Henrichsen.

27See c. x.

28It is Lucilius the Satirist that is meant. What cause there had been for unfriendliness between him and Scaevola is unknown; perhaps he might have spoken too freely, or made some satirical remark on the accusation of Scaevola by Albucius for bribery, on which there are some verses in b. iii. c. . 43. Ellendt.

29You granted me all that I desired when you said that all arts and sciences belong, as it were, respectively to those who have invented, or profess, or study them; . . . but when you said that those arts and sciences are necessary to the orator, and that he can speak upon them, if he wishes, with more elegance and effect than those who have made them their peculiar study, you seemed to take them all from me again, and to transfer them to the orator as his own property. Proust.

30Orellius reads Haec--irrisit, where the reader will observe that the pronoun is governed by the verb. Ellendt and some others read Quae instead of Haec. Several alterations have been proposed, but none of them bring the sentence into a satisfactory state.

31The Stoics called eloquence one of their virtues, See Quintilian, ii. 20.

32Charmadas.

33 Quasi dedita opera . As if Charmadas himself had collected all the writers on the art of rhetoric, that he might be in a condition to prove what he now asserted; or, as if the writers on the art of rhetoric themselves had purposely abstained from attempting to be eloquent. But Charmadas was very much in the wrong; for Gorgias, Isocrates, Protagoras, Theophrastus, and other teachers of rhetoric were eminent for eloquence. Proust.

34Two Sicilians, said to have been the most ancient writers on rhetoric. See Quintilian, iii. 1.

35See c. 47. Cicero speaks of it as exilis, poor and dry, Brut. 44; Orat. 5.

Here Sulpicius observed: "That has happened by accident, Crassus, which neither Cotta nor I expected, but which we both earnestly desired, I mean, that you should insensibly glide into a discourse of this kind. For, as we were coming hither, we thought it would be a pleasure, if, while you were talking on other matters, we might gather something worthy to be remembered from your conversation; but that you should go into a deep and full discussion on this very study, or art, or faculty, and penetrate into the heart of it, was what we could scarcely venture to hope. For I, who from my early youth, have felt a strong affection for you both, and even a love for Crassus, having never left his company, could never yet elicit a word from him on the method and art of speaking, though I not only solicited him myself, but endeavoured to move him through the agency of Drusus; on which subject you, Antonius, (I speak but the truth,) never failed to answer my requests and questioning, and have very often told me what you used to notice in speaking. And since each of you has opened a way to these subjects of our research, and since Crassus was the first to commence this discourse, do us the favour to acquaint us fully and exactly what you think about the various kinds of eloquence. If we obtain this indulgence from you, I shall feel the greatest obligation to this school of yours, Crassus, and to your Tusculan villa, and shall prefer your suburban place of study to the famous Academy and Lyceum."

"Nay rather, Sulpicius," replied Crassus, "let us ask Antonius, who is both capable of doing what you desire, and, as I hear you say, has been accustomed to do so. As to myself, I acknowledge that I have always avoided any such kind of discourse, and have often declined to comply with your requests and appeals, as you just now observed. This I did, not from pride or want of politeness, nor because I was unwilling to aid your just and commendable aspirations, especially as I knew you to be eminently and above others formed and qualified by nature to become a speaker, but, in truth, from being unaccustomed to such kind of discussions, and from being ignorant of those principles which are laid down as foundations of the art." "Then," said Cotta, "since we have got over what we thought the greatest difficulty, to induce you, Crassus, to speak at all upon these subjects, for the rest, it will be our own fault if we let you go before you have explained all that we have to ask." "I believe I must answer," says Crassus, "as is usually written in the formulae for entering on inheritances, 1concerning such points as I know and shall be able." "And which of us," responded Cotta, "can be so presuming as to desire to know or to be able to do anything that you do not know or cannot do?" "Well, then," replied Crassus, "on condition that I may say that I cannot do what I cannot do, and that I may own that I do not know what I do not know, you may put questions to me at your pleasure." "We shall, then, first ask of you," said Sulpicius, "what you think of what Antonius has proposed; whether you think that there is any art in speaking?" "What!" exclaimed Crassus, "do you put a trifling question to me, as to some idle and talkative, though perhaps studious and learned Greek, on which I may speak according to my humour? When do you imagine that I have ever regarded or thought upon such matters, or have not always rather ridiculed the impudence of those men who, seated in the schools, would demand if any one, in a numerous assembly of persons, wished to ask any question, and desire him to speak? This Gorgias of Leontini is said to have first done, who was thought to undertake and promise something vast, in pronouncing himself prepared to speak on all subjects on which any one should be inclined to hear him. But afterwards those men made it a common practice, and continue it to this day; so that there is no topic of such importance, or so unexpected, or so new, on which they do not profess that they will say all that can be said. But if I had thought that you, Cotta, or you, Sulpicius, were desirous to hear such matters, I would have brought hither some Greek to amuse you with their manner of disputation; for there is with M. Piso, 2(a youth already addicted to this intellectual exercise, and one of superior talents, and of great affection for me,) the Peripatetic Staseas, a man with whom I am well acquainted, and who, as I perceive is agreed amongst the learned, is of the greatest eminence in his profession."

"Why do you speak to me," says Scaevola, "of this Staseas, this Peripatetic? You must comply with the wishes of these young gentlemen, Crassus, who do not want the common, profitless talk of any Greek, or any empty declamation of the schools, but desire to know the opinions of a man in whose footsteps they long to tread, one who is the wisest and most eloquent of all men, who is not distinguished by petty books of precepts, but is the first, both in judgment and oratory, in cases of the greatest consequence, and in this seat of empire and glory. For my part, as I always thought you a god in eloquence, so I have never attributed to you greater praises for oratory than for politeness; which you ought to show on this occasion especially, and not to decline a discussion on which two young men of such excellent ability invite you to enter." "I am certainly," replied Crassus, "desirous to oblige them, nor shall I think it any trouble to speak briefly, as is my manner, what I think upon any point of the subject. And to their first question, (because I do not think it right for me to neglect your admonition, Scaevola,) I answer, that I think there is either no art of speaking at all, or but very little; but that all the disputation about it amongst the learned arises from a difference of opinion about the word. For if art is to be defined according to what Antonius just now asserted, 3as lying in things thoroughly understood and fully known, such as are separated from the caprice of opinion and comprehended in the limits of science, there seems to me to be no art at all in oratory; since all the types of our forensic diction are varied, and suited to the common understanding of the people. Yet if those things which have been observed in the practice and method of speaking, have been noted and chronicled by ingenious and skilful men, have been set forth in words, illustrated in their several kinds, and distributed into parts, (as I think may possibly be done,) I do not understand why speaking may not be deemed an art, if not according to the exact definition of Antonius, at least according to common opinion. But whether it be an art, or merely the resemblance of an art, it is not, indeed, to be neglected; yet we must understand that there are other things of more consequence for the attainment of eloquence."