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So also Book III. furnishes many practical instruc tions under the chapters on the Choice of Words, of Similitudes, of Purity of Language, of its Amplitude, of Things that Grace an Oration and, most salutary of all, of the Things that Make an Oration Flat.

On the whole there is no better groundwork for the philosophy of rhetoric than that which the great phi losopher of antiquity laid, broad and deep as the foundations of the temples which he looked upon as he walked and talked, and some of whose massive blocks may have served as his writing table while penning this immortal treatise. At all events the book has survived the edifices, and while their fair proportions can only be guessed from remaining fragments, the perishable scroll which fluttered at their base has been treasured and reproduced by admiring generations until it has to-day the promise of a renewed immortality.

VII.

EARLY ROMAN ORATORS.

HE classical literature of Greece closes with Aris

THE

totle, who in his own attention to literary style in his youth and in his inattention to it in his mature age symbolizes the transition from the better to the worse in Greek oratory which followed his time. After an age of original production always comes one of criticism, and after Athens came Alexandria. Unapproachable models in the works of the older masters furnished abundant materials for second-rate orators, historians, and dramatists, but the age of originating anything new and grand had passed, making way for critical and scientific tendencies, which found a congenial atmosphere for their growth beyond the limits of Greece.

Unlike Athens Rome came slowly and late to a literary attainment that can be called classic. It had been founded five hundred years without exhibiting anything more than the rudest germs of composition, or producing a single author in poetry or prose. About two hundred and fifty years before Christ conquest made the Romans acquainted for the first time with Greek art and literature, and first directed to the pursuit of intellectual cultivation a people who had been more ambitious of military renown than of mental improvement. Roman literature was therefore an imitation of the Greek, and

while the copy is excellent, the inspiration of the living original is often wanting.

The language, too, like the people, was sturdy, solid, and energetic, expressing the thoughts of an active and practical, but not an imaginative people; while the Greek speech in its flexibility readily adapted itself to every form, and remained comparatively unchanged from age to age. Demosthenes and his friends were at home with Homer, and the early Christian fathers wrote and spoke the language of Plato. Early Roman historians even were compelled to write in Greek, because their own language could not so well express their thoughts. As late as the times of Cicero Greek was the foundation of a liberal education, and Athens was the university-town to which Roman youth resorted to study literature and philosophy. Like modern French the language was well-nigh universal in Europe and the East, the favorite dialect of literary men and the vehicle in which the doctrines of a religion destined to spread over the earth were given to the world. So late as the middle of the fifteenth century the language of Plato and Aristotle was spoken at the court of Constantinople with a dignity and elegance which characterize the purest writers of the classical ages. It is said that to-day a well-educated modern Greek finds less difficulty in understanding the writings of Xenophon than an Englishman would experience in reading Chaucer, or perhaps Spenser. But what Latin lost in grace and delicacy it made up by a certain weight and persistence in fastening itself upon conquered nations, leaving its impress and stamp ineffaceable upon barbarous and provincial dialects. The

Gracchi fastened it upon the Iberian of Spain, Cæsar upon the Gaul of France, and Trajan upon the jargon of the Scythian tribes. Accordingly if Greek still lives in its own narrow peninsula with somewhat of purity, Latin exists in the grain and fibre of the many Romance dialects all over Europe, and in our own English and American speech. And yet the best Latin scholar would not understand Dante or Tasso, nor would a knowledge of Italian enable one to read Horace and Virgil.

But prose was far more in accordance with the genius of Romans than poetry. "The literature which tended to statesmanship" had a charm for them which no other literature possessed. History, jurisprudence, and oratory engaged their attention, and were studied with a view to their utility, in a scientific rather than an artistic spirit. The graces of composition came late and, with the exception of Caius Gracchus, the earliest orators spoke with a rude and vigorous eloquence. Erudition rather than originality and invention characterized their style, which always had a look backward in historical retrospect. Jurisprudence and statesmanship also entered into the oratory of the Romans, to make the man more efficient as a legislator and a citizen. Even the great captain of soldiers could not do without a rude and shrewd oratory. Still the early features of Roman eloquence were vigorous common sense, honest truthfulness, and indignant emotion. The Latin race was hard, practical, and unimaginative, with good sense rather than a luxuriant fancy. War, politics, legal and political rights were their ruling ideas, without much reflection or introspection. The intellectual life of Greece had been reflected in its poetry

first, and afterward in an oratory almost as graceful and rhythmical. The robust and practical Roman demanded common sense enforced with vehemence. Where Athens looked for glory or freedom, Rome sought for increase of domain and the majestic sway of the laws.

It is not so true, therefore, that Rome was late in coming to an appreciation of oratory as that its eloquence was of a ruder sort than that of Greece at a corresponding stage of its literary life. Public speaking prevailed from the first in the legislative assembly, on the battle field, and on the return from a campaign, when the victorious general found eloquence a path to civil honors, as many a military man has learned since the days of Cæsar. Before the introduction of Greek literature the Romans struck out a strong vein of native oratory. Whatever they accomplished in the earlier centuries was solely by dint of practice rather than by any rules of art. Oratory was, in fact, the unwritten literature of active life, and recommended itself by its spirit to a warlike and utilitarian people. Long, therefore, before the historian was sufficiently advanced to record a speech, as Herodotus and Thucydides did for the Greeks, the forum, the senate, the battle field, and the courts had been nurseries of Roman eloquence. There is the tradition of a speech recorded even before the poetry of Nævius was written, the first poet who really deserves the name of Roman. It was delivered by Appius Claudius, the blind man of strong will, against the eloquent ambassador, Cineas, whom Pyrrhus had sent to negotiate peace. But he was no match for the blind orator, and was obliged to quit Rome in defeat. In gen

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