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

"I see plainly, and understand indeed," replied Antonius, "that I am caught, not only because those things are required from me in which I am ignorant and unpractised, but because these young men do not permit me to avoid, on the present occasion, what I always carefully avoid in my public pleadings, namely, not to speak after you, Crassus. But I will enter upon what you desire the more boldly, as I hope the same thing will happen to me in this discussion as usually happens to me at the bar, that no flowers of rhetoric will be expected from me. For I am not going to speak about art, which I never learned, but about my own practice; and those very particulars which I have entered in my common-place book are of this kind, 11not expressed with anything like learning, but just as they are treated in business and pleadings; and if they do not meet with approbation from men of your extensive knowledge, you must blame your own unreasonableness, in requiring from me what I do not know; and you must praise my affability, since I make no difficulty in answering your questions, being induced, not by my own judgment, but your earnest desire." "Go on, Antonius," answered Crassus, "for there is no danger that you will say anything otherwise than so prudently that no one here will repent of having prompted you to speak."

"I will go on, then," said Antonius, "and will do what I think ought to be done in all discussions at the commencement; I mean, that the subject, whatever it may be, on which the discussion is held, should be defined; so that the discourse may not be forced to wander and stray from its course, from the disputants not having the same notion of the matter under debate. If, for instance, it were inquired, 'What is the art of a general?' I should think that we ought to settle, at the outset, what a general is; and when he was defined to be a commander for conducting a war, we might then proceed to speak of troops, of encampments, of marching in battle array, of engagements, of besieging towns, of provisions, of laying and avoiding ambushes, and other matters relative to the management of a war; and those who had the capacity and knowledge to direct such affairs I should call generals; and should adduce the examples of the Africani and Maximi, and speak of Epaminondas, and Hannibal, and men of such character. But if we should inquire what sort of character he is, who should contribute his experience, and knowledge, and zeal to the management of the state, I should give this sort of definition, that he who understands by what means the interests of the republic are secured and promoted, and employs those means, is worthy to be esteemed a director in affairs of government, and a leader in public councils; and I should mention Publius Lentulus, that princeps senatus, 12and Tiberius Gracchus the father, and Quintus Metellus, and Publius Africanus, and Gaius Laelius, and others without number, as well of our own city as of foreign states. But if it should be asked, 'Who truly deserved the name of a lawyer?' I should say that he deserves it who is learned in the laws, and that general usage 13which private persons observe in their intercourse in the community, who can give an answer on any point, can plead, and can take precautions for the interests of his client; and I should name Sextus Aelius, Manius Manilius, Publius Mucius, as distinguished in those respects. In like manner, to notice sciences of a less important character, if a musician, if a grammarian, if a poet were the subject of consideration, I could state that which each of them possesses, and than which nothing more is to be expected from each. Even of the philosopher himself, who alone, from his abilities and wisdom, professes almost everything, there is a sort of definition, signifying, that he who studies to learn the powers, nature, and causes of all things, divine and human, and to understand and explain the whole science of living virtuously, may justly deserve this title.

"The orator, however, since it is about him that we are considering, I do not conceive to be exactly the same character that Crassus makes him, who seemed to me to include all knowledge of all matters and sciences, under the single profession and name of an orator; but I regard him as one who can use words agreeable to hear, and thoughts adapted to prove, not only in cases that are pleaded in the forum, but in cases in general. Him I call an orator, and would have him besides accomplished in delivery and action, and with a certain degree of wit. But our friend Crassus seemed to me to define the faculty of an orator, not by the proper limits of his art, but by the almost immense limits of his own genius; for, by his definition, he delivered the helm of civil government into the hands of his orator; a point, which it appeared very strange to me, Scaevola, that you should grant him; when the senate has often given its assent on affairs of the utmost consequence to yourself, though you have spoken briefly and without ornament. And M. Scaurus, who I hear is in the country, at his villa not far off, a man eminently skilled in affairs of government, if he should hear that the authority which his gravity and counsels hear with them, is claimed by you, Crassus, as you say that it is the property of the orator, he would, I believe, come hither without delay, and frighten us out of our talk by his very countenance and aspect; who, though he is no contemptible speaker, yet depends more upon his judgment in affairs of consequence, than upon his ability in speaking; and, if any one has abilities in both these ways, he who is of authority in the public councils, and a good senator, is not on those accounts an orator; and if he that is an eloquent and powerful speaker be also eminent in civil administration, he did not acquire his political knowledge 14through oratory. Those talents differ very much in their nature, and are quite separate and distinct from each other; nor did Marcus Cato, Publius Africanus, Quintus Metellus, Gaius Laelius, who were all eloquent, give lustre to their own speeches, and to the dignity of the republic, by the same art and method.

"It is not enjoined, let me observe, by the nature of things, or by any law or custom, that one man must not know more than one art; and therefore, though Pericles was the best orator in Athens, and was also for many years director of the public counsels in that city, the talent for both those characters must not be thought to belong to the same art because it existed in the same man; nor if Publius Crassus was both an orator and a lawyer, is the knowledge of the civil law for that reason included in the power of speaking. For if every man who, while excelling in any art or science, has acquired another art or science in addition, shall represent that his additional knowledge is a part of that in which he previously excelled, 15we may, by such a mode of argument, pretend that to play well at ball or duodecim scripta, 16is a part of the knowledge of civil law, because Publius Mucius was skilled in both; and, by similar reasoning, those whom the Greeks call physikoi , 'natural philosophers,' may be regarded as poets, because Empedocles the natural philosopher wrote an excellent poem. But not even the philosophers themselves, who would have everything, as their own right, to be theirs, and in their possession, have the confidence to say that geometry or music is a part of philosophy, because all acknowledge Plato to have been eminently excellent in those sciences. And if it be still your pleasure to attribute all sciences to the orator, it will be better for us, rather, to express ourselves to this effect, that since eloquence must not be bald and unadorned, but marked and distinguished by a certain pleasing variety of manifold qualities, it is necessary for a good orator to have heard and seen much, to have gone over many subjects in thought and reflection, and many also in reading; though not so as to have taken possession of them as his own property, but to have tasted of them as things belonging to others. For I confess that the orator should be a knowing man, not quite a beginner or novice in any subject, not utterly ignorant or inexperienced in any business of life.