his emotion rendered his tones unmusical.

The same impetuosity made him leave unfinished much that he had well begun. His language was noble, his sentiments wise and grave, but his work often lacked the last finishing touch. There were many grand beginnings which were not brought to perfection. Still he got rid of the harshness of the old school and won the reputation of being the father of Roman prose. Cicero says that he was an orator of the loftiest talent, of burning enthusiasm, of rich and exuberant diction.

Together the Gracchi mark the rise of a freer and easier mode of speaking than that of their predecessors, and together they also represent the two antithetical methods of reserved and impetuous speech, in one or the other of which the greatest orators have found their strength to lie. Between these extremes, or combining something resembling calmness and vehemence, less distinguished speakers have followed such leaders afar off, at the same time doing much to move the world in their time.

The interval between the Gracchi and Cicero boasted of many distinguished names which would have shone brighter if stars of the first magnitude had not been so near. Curio, Fimbria, Scævola, and Publius Sulpicius began to practice oratory as an art and to invest it with a polished garb. More illustrious names than these were Marcus Antonius, Licinius Crassus, and Cicero's immediate predecessor and most formidable rival, Hortensius. Antony and Crassus, according to Cicero, were the first Romans who elevated eloquence to the heights to which it had been raised by Greek genius. This re

mark is an indication that the leading orators had ceased to take the specimens of old Roman eloquence as their models. Both Antony and Crassus owed their eminence to Greek models, Antony attending lectures at Athens and Rhodes, and Crassus speaking Greek as if it had been his mother-tongue. It shows the unpopularity of everything Greek at Rome at this time, that the one showed open contempt for the Greeks and the other affected not to know them at all. This, however, must be taken as an indirect testimony to the element of perpetuity in Attic eloquence which survived the deterioration of Athenian character. It was Greek letters that Romans reverenced while they despised Greek manners. The modern parallel is the traditionary attitude of the English toward French literary fashions, which is unfortunately growing less pronounced.

MARK ANTONY, the orator, grandfather of the triumvir, entered public life as an advocate. Indefatigable in preparing his cases he made every point tell, and being a master of pathos he found his way to the hearts of the judges. Although not free from the prevailing fault of advocates in being somewhat unscrupulous in assertion he left expressions and passages that remained indelibly impressed on the memory of his hearers. His eloquence in the forum was such that it gave him the reputation of making Italy a rival of Greece in the persuasive art.

CRASSUS, his junior by four years, also began his career in the Roman courts. Trained in the rhetorical schools of Asia and Athens he attained an early eminence as a pleader, and established his reputation by a powerful and triumphant oration in which he espoused the

cause of the senate over that of the equestrian order in the matter of the judiciary. His style is careful and yet not labored, elegant, accurate, and perspicuous. He possessed great powers of clearness in explaining, defining, and illustrating. His delivery was calm and self-possessed, his action vehement but not excessive. He took especial pains with the commencement of his speech, the first words which he uttered arresting attention and proving him worthy of it. He understood the rare art of uniting elegance with brevity. Cicero esteemed him so highly and sympathized with him so completely that he chose Crassus to be the representative of his own sentiments in his imaginary conversation in the De Oratore. Like Chatham he died almost in the act of supporting, by his eloquent counsel, measures of wisdom.

The last of the orators who preceded Cicero was HORTENSIUS. Scarcely eight years Cicero's senior, his contemporary and rival, he nevertheless belongs to an earlier literary period and to an age of which he himself is the last representative of the middle period of Roman oratory. Born in 114 B. C. he began his career as pleader at nineteen, with applause and success. Unfortunately his eloquence lacked the element of sobriety and therefore of lasting popularity. He was an orator pleasing to the youth of his time, but did not wear well. Brilliant and lively, he was admired for his high spirits and poetic fancy rather than for dignity and gravity. Moreover he was Asiatic in the luxuriance of his ornament and manner rather than Greek in the chastened simplicity and severity of style, and his juvenility, with a foppish and theatrical delivery, counterbalanced the

finish, polish, and animation which were real excellencies in his oratory.

In the century and a quarter from Cato to Hortensius a gradual drift is observable from the ruggedness of speech illustrated by the one to the refinements exhibited by the other. More and more the influence of Greek models, sometimes in spite of outspoken protests, softened the angularity of early Latin speech, as the Norman-French tempered the Anglo-Saxon twelve centuries later, adding imported grace to native vigor. The combination of these two elements furnished an admirable foundation on which to build the crowning superstructure of Roman eloquence in the creative and critical achievements of Marcus Tullius Cicero.

VIII.

RHETORICAL SCHOOLS-CICERO, THE

RHETORICIAN.

URING the three centuries from Alexander to

DU

Augustus the fortunes of oratory were determined by the new condition of affairs in Hellenic domains. Aristotle's science of rhetoric lived on for a while in the Peripatetic school; the fashion of florid declamation prevailed in the Rhodian school of Asiatics amid mixed populations; the pure traditions of the best Greek taste had been diverted from the use of the Greek language. Hermagoras does something for the art by reviving a higher conception of it, using both the practical rhetoric of the times before Aristotle, and also the philosophical theories of this great scientist; and working the two elements into a new system, the Scholastic, as distinguished from the Practical and the Philosophical, he thus counteracted the view of Asianism, which made oratory a mere knack founded upon constant practice in speaking, instead of the severer basis of Atticism, which made eloquence the last product of the profoundest study and the most painstaking toil.

One of the greatest controversies that ever stirred the world of letters was that concerning the relative value of the Attic and the Asiatic style, the Attic being regarded as compressed and energetic, the Asiatic as florid and