ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT (85-131)

§§ 85-131. ROMAN LITERATURE.

§§ 85-100. Roman Poetry.

§§85-92. Epic Poets.

Vergil must head the list, ranking nearer to Homer than any third poet does to him. For consistent and uniform excellence he may surpass even Homer, however little he may rival Homer’s best passages. Macer and Lucretius are worth reading, but not for style. Varro Atacinus has some merit as a translator, but will not add to an orator’s resources. Ennius is like some venerable grove, whose trees have more sanctity than beauty: there are others nearer our own day, and more useful for our special purpose. Ovid is uncontrolled even in his hexameters, and lets his fancy run away with him: yet admirable in parts. Cornelius Severus fell away from the standard of his first book. The youthful works of Serranus display great talent and a correct taste in style. We lately lost much in Valerius Flaccus. The inspiration of Saleius Bassus also failed to take on the mellowness of age. Rabirius and Pedo are worth reading in spare moments. Lucan has fire and point, and is a model for orators rather than for poets. Domitian I would name had not the care of the world prevented him from becoming our greatest poet. Even the compositions of his earlier days, after he had handed over the empire, are lofty, learned, and of surpassing excellence: ‘the poet’s ivy is entwined with the conquering bay.’

§§93-96. Elegy, Satire, iambic and lyric poetry.

In Elegy we can challenge the Greeks. The most polished and refined is, in my opinion, Tibullus; some prefer Propertius. Ovid is more uncontrolled than either, Gallus harsher. Satire is all our own. Lucilius is by some still preferred to all poets whatsoever. I deprecate such extravagant eulogy, as I disagree with the censure of Horace. Lucilius has learning, boldness, causticity, wit. Horace is the prince of satirists. Persius earned renown by a single book. Others still alive will have a name hereafter. Terentius Varro wrote saturae of the earlier kind. A profound scholar, antiquarian, and historian, he has made greater contributions to knowledge than to oratory. As a separate form of composition, iambic poetry is not much in vogue. Horace is our great lyric poet,—everywhere pleasing and graceful, and very happy in his language. Caesius Bassus too may be added: but there are living authors of greater merit.

§§97-100. Dramatic Poetry.

Of Tragedians, Attius and Pacuvius are most renowned for weight of thought and style, and for the dignity of their characters; but they lack finish. Attius has more strength, Pacuvius more learning. Varius’s Thyestes may be set beside any Greek play. Ovid’s Medea shows what he might have done if he could have kept within bounds. Pomponius Secundus is by far the greatest of all whom I have myself seen. Comedy is not our strong point. Notwithstanding Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we scarcely reproduce a faint shadow of our originals: perhaps our language is incapable of the grace and charm which, even in Greek, is peculiar to the Attic. Afranius is the best writer of togatae, but his is not a pure art.

§§101-104. Roman Historians.

In history we hold our own. Sallust may be pitted against Thucydides, Livy against Herodotus. Livy is remarkable for the charm and transparency of his narrative style, as well as for the eloquence and appropriateness of his speeches; and in the presentation of passion, especially on its softer side, he is unsurpassed. Sallust is different but not inferior. Servilius Nonianus wants conciseness. Aufidius Bassus did more to maintain the dignity of history. There is also the glory of our own age, the historian who is still with us, and whom I do not mention by name. Cremutius Cordus is appreciated for his independent spirit, which still survives in his works in spite of the revision and expurgation they have been subjected to. There are others, but I am only giving samples of classes, not ransacking libraries.

§§105-122. Roman Orators.

Cicero can stand against Demosthenes. I do not propose, however, to make a detailed comparison between them, and I admit that Demosthenes is worthy of being learnt by heart. In invention they resemble each other: in style they differ, Demosthenes being more concise, Cicero more diffuse; the one always pierces with the point of his weapon, the other often lets you feel the weight of it; the one has more art, the other a greater natural gift. In wit and pathos Cicero excels. Demosthenes was perhaps debarred from glowing perorations; but on the other hand the genius of the Latin language denies to us a full measure of the peculiar ‘Attic charm.’ Still Demosthenes came first, and Cicero owes much to him. He is however no mere imitator,—‘no cistern of rain-water, but a living source.’ Instructive, affecting, pleasing, he carries his audience away with him. He wins conviction not by the zeal of a partisan, but by the impartiality of a judge: everything he does is natural and easy. He was king of the bar in his own day, and with us his name is a synonym for eloquence: it is a mark of progress to have a high appreciation of Cicero. Pollio, with all his good points, is so far behind Cicero in charm and polish that it might be thought he lived a century earlier. Messalla is lucid and distinguished, but wants force. Caesar might have disputed the palm with Cicero; his speeches breathe his warlike ardour, and yet he is above all things ‘elegans.’ Caelius has genius and wit: he deserved a longer life. Calvus is by some preferred to all others; but Cicero thought that by too rigorous self-criticism he lost the very life-blood of style. He is moral, weighty, chastened, and often vigorous withal. He was a strict Atticist; and it is a pity that he died so young, if there was a likelihood of his enriching his style. Servius Sulpicius made a name by three speeches. Cassius Severus wants tone and dignity: he has genius, causticity, and wit; but his anger outruns his judgment. Of those whom I have seen, Afer and Africanus rank highest: the former might be classed with the orators of former days, the latter is more vigorous, but careless, wordy, and over-bold in metaphor. Trachalus has elevation; he had great personal advantages as well. Vibius Crispus is delightful, but more fitted for private than for public cases. Iulius Secundus did not live long enough to secure his due share of fame. He is too much of an artist and too little of a fighting-man: yet he has fluency, lucidity, and other good qualities. Our own era will furnish the future historian with many subjects of eulogy.

§§123-131. Roman Philosophers.

Though we are not strong in philosophy, yet here the universal Tully is a match for Plato. Brutus, too, is greater here than in oratory: he speaks from the heart. Celsus has written a considerable number of works. Among the Stoics, Plautus will be of service to the inquirer. Catius the Epicurean has no great weight, but is pleasant withal. I might have mentioned Seneca before, and in every department, but have purposely kept him waiting: I am accused of disliking him. The fact is that at a time when he alone was studied I strove to introduce a purer taste. He disparaged the ‘ancients,’ and his imitators aggravated his defects. He possessed wide learning, though on special subjects he was sometimes misled by others. His versatility is shown in oratory, poetry, letters, and dialogues. A stern moralist, but a vicious, yet seductive, stylist. His defects endear him to the young, but rob him of the praise of those of riper years. Yet these too may find profit in him, if they use their judgment. Would that he had had nobler aims! Yet he realised the aims he had.

§§85-100. Roman Poets.—Quintilian’s criticisms of Latin literature, though naturally more independent than his judgments of Greek authors, are hampered, as Professor Nettleship has shown (Journ. Phil. 18 p. 262 sq.) by ‘the idea of making canons of classical Latin authors to correspond as closely as possible with the Greek canons. Vergil leads the van among the poets as the Latin Homer; Macer and Lucretius follow as representing Hesiod and the didactic poets. The elegiac poets, Propertius and Tibullus, follow next, answering to Tyrtaeus; then the satirists who of course have no Greek counterparts; then the writers of lampoon, Catullus, Bibaculus, and Horace, to match Archilochus; the lyric poets, Horace corresponding to Pindar; the dramatists, comic and tragic, among whom Varius is singled out as equal to any Of the Greeks: the historians, Sallust being matched with Thucydides, and Livy with Herodotus; the orators, Cicero being of course compared in detail with Demosthenes; and the philosophers, among whom we are told that Cicero is aemulus Platonis.’

I:85 Idem nobis per Romanos quoque auctores ordo ducendus est. Itaque ut apud illos Homerus, sic apud nos Vergilius auspicatissimum dederit exordium, omnium eius generis poetarum Graecorum nostrorumque haud dubie proximus.

§ 85. Idem ... ordo ducendus. Cp. 5 §1 robustorum studiis ordinem dedimus: xii. 2, 10 ut ordinem retro agamus. There is a suggestion of military associations in the use of the phrase: tr. ‘in the same way we must marshal.’ Cp. Brut. §15 explicatis ordinibus temporum; and i. 4, 3 with Spalding’s note.—For ordinem ducere in the sense of ‘to be the leader of a company’ (sc. as centurion) cp. Cic. Phil. i. 8, 20: Caes. B. C. i. 13, 4: iii. 104, 3: Livy ii. 23, 4.

Vergilius: his claim to rank along with Homer is indicated in i. 8, 5 optime institutum est ut ab Homero atque Vergilio lectio inciperet.

auspicatissimum. Cp. Tac. Germ. 11 agendis rebus hoc anspicatissimum initium credunt: Plin. ad Traian, xvii. 3 cum mihi contigerit, quod erat auspicatissimum, natalem tuum in provincia celebrare. Cp. the opening words of Pliny’s Panegyricus: Bene ac sapienter, patres conscripti, maiores instituerunt ut rerum agendarum ita dicendi initium a precationibus capere, quod nihil rite, nihil providenter homines sine deorum immortalium ope consilio honore auspicarentur. Cicero, de Div. i. 16, 28 Nihil fere quondam maioris rei nisi auspicato ne privatim quidem gerebatur.

dederit: v. on §37.

haud dubie: see Crit. Notes.

I:86 Utar enim verbis isdem quae ex Afro Domitio iuvenis excepi: qui mihi interroganti quem Homero crederet maxime accedere, ‘secundus,’ inquit, ‘est Vergilius, propior tamen primo quam tertio.’ Et hercule ut illi naturae caelesti atque immortali cesserimus, ita curae et diligentiae vel ideo in hoc plus est, quod ei fuit magis laborandum; et quantum eminentibus vincimur fortasse aequalitate pensamus.

§ 86. Afro Domitio. The order is characteristic of the silver age, though examples are found also in Cicero’s letters (Introd. p. lv.): cp. Atacinus Varro, below, and §103. Domitius Afer (cp. §24) was a distinguished orator who flourished under Tiberius and his successors, and died in the reign of Nero, A.D. 59 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 19). He was a native of Nemausus (Nismes), and first rose to fame by the prosecution of Agrippina’s cousin Claudia Pulchra: Tiberius avowed that he was a ‘born orator’ (suo iure disertum, Tac. Ann. iv. 52). Being of an unscrupulous character (quoquo facinore properus clarescere, ibid.) he placed his rhetorical powers at the disposal of the government: mox capessendis accusationibus aut reos tutando prosperiore eloquentiae quam morum fama fuit, ibid. Quintilian’s connection with him (cp. v. 7, 7 quem adolescentulus senem colui) comes out in the story he told to Pliny about Afer: ‘adsectabar Domitium,’ Plin. Epist. ii. 14. Below (§118) he speaks of him, along with Iulius Africanus, (to whom he prefers him) as the best orator he had ever heard: though he tells us elsewhere that Afer lost much of his reputation by continuing to speak in public after he should have retired: vidi ego longe omnium quos mihi cognoscere contigit summum oratorem, Domitium Afrum, valde senem, cotidie aliquid ex ea quam meruerat auctoritate perdentem, cum agente illo quem principem fuisse quondam fori non erat dubium alii, quod indignum videatur, riderent, alii erubescerent; quae occasio fuit dicendi, malle eum deficere quam desinere. Cp. Tac. Ann. iv. 52 ad fin. aetas extrema multum etiam eloquentiae dempsit dum fessa mente retinet silentii impatientiam.

excepi. As distinguished from accipere, which, when used in this sense, means to get some information at second-hand, excipere always refers to what is said in one’s presence, whether one is meant to hear, as in this passage, or not; as Livy ii. 4 sermonem eorum ex servis unus excepit.

Homero. The same dative with accedere occurs §68 magis accedit oratorio generi (Euripides). With the name of a person Cicero also uses the dative,—e.g. Crasso et Antonio L. Philippus proximus accedebat, Brut. §173, and so ad Fam. xi. 21, 4 me huic tuae virtuti proxime accedere: otherwise more commonly ad c. acc. Cp. de Orat. 1 §262 (dubitare) utrius oratio propius ad veritatem videretur accedere with Quint. xii. 10, 9 ad veritatem Lysippum ac Praxitelem optime accessisse. So xii. 2, 2: 1, 20: 2, 25.

propior tamen primo. See note on §53 ut plane manifesto appareat quanto sit aliud proximum esse, aliud secundum. Here the interval between first and second is less than that between second and third: Vergil is a ‘good second.’

ut illi: see Crit. Notes.

naturae = ingenio, as §119 erant clara et nuper ingenia: cp. §122. Cic. in Verr. ii. 1 §40 non enim potest ea natura quae tantum facinus commiserit hoc uno scelere esse contenta.

caelesti: for the hyperbole cp. caelestis huius in dicendo viri (Ciceronis) 2 §18. So Cic. Phil. v. §28 caelestes divinasque legiones: Ps. Cic. ad Brutum ii. 7, 2 res a te gesta memorabilis et paene caelestis.

ut ... cesserimus ita. For ut ... ita (μὲν ... δέ) cp. 3, §§1 and 31. Ut is not concessive and does not affect the verb, which is in the subjunctive of modified assertion (for cedendum est): cp. dederit above §85: Cic. Brut. §25 sine ulla dubitatione confirmaverim. Quintilian is speaking throughout of the Romans in the person of their great poet: cp. vincimur, pensamus, below; also §93 provocamus, §99 consequimur, §107 vincimus. Kiderlin’s objection that, as fully admitting the superiority of Homer, he would not have been likely to choose, on patriotic grounds, a form that seems to modify the force of the concession, is met by the instance of the potential subj. quoted above alongside of sine ulla dubitatione.

eminentibus: neut. of adj. used substantively,—common enough in Quintilian even with adjj. of the third declension: cp. 3 §5 nec protinus offerentibus se gaudeamus. See Introduction, p. xlix (5). Such ‘outstanding’ passages as those alluded to Horace terms the ‘speciosa miracula’ (‘striking,’ ‘picturesque marvels’) of the Homeric poems, A. P. 144.

aequalitate, ‘uniform excellence’: cp. aequali quadam mediocritate §54. In §24 Quintilian has already referred to the quandoque dormitat, and his words are probably an echo of the Horatian criticism. For the use of aequalitas cp. xi. 3, §§43-44. In regard to style, Cicero has Orat. §198 omnis nec claudicans nec quasi fluctuans sed aequaliter constanterque ingrediens numerosa habetur oratio: and using aequabilitas ibid. §53 elaborant alii in lenitate et aequabilitate et puro quasi quodam et candido genere dicendi.

I:87 Ceteri omnes longe sequentur. Nam Macer et Lucretius legendi quidem, sed non ut φράσιν, id est corpus eloquentiae faciant, elegantes in sua quisque materia, sed alter humilis, alter difficilis. Atacinus Varro in iis per quae nomen est adsecutus interpres operis alieni, non spernendus quidem, verum ad augendam facultatem dicendi parum locuples.

§ 87. Macer: v. on §56.

Lucretius. The references made to Lucretius in Latin literature are collected by Teuffel, R. L. §201. The two are named together again xii. 11 §27.

φράσιν = elocutionem, v, §42. So ad augendam facultatem dicendi, below. For ‘corpus eloquentiae’ cp. Petronius, Satyr. ii. (of the imitators of Seneca) ‘effecistis ut corpus orationis enervaretur et caderet.’

humilis: ‘common-place,’

difficilis: cp. multis luminibus ingenii multae tamen artis,—Cicero’s criticism, dealt with by Munro, ii. p. 315 (3rd ed.).

Varro, P. Terentius (B.C. 82-37), called Atacinus from the river Atax in Gallia Narbonensis, his native province. Quintilian’s criticism here refers to the work by which he was best known—his translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (‘interpres operis alieni’). He also wrote what is described as a metrical system of astronomy and geography under the title Chorographia or Cosmographia: a heroic poem Bellum Sequanicum, in the style of Ennius and Naevias: and Saturae which, if we may trust Horace, were a failure: Satires i. 10, 46 Hoc erat experto frustra Varrone Atacino ... Melius quod scribere possem.

per quae: common in Quintilian to designate ‘means by which’: cp. v. 10, 32. So also per quod, per hoc: see on §10.

nomen: cp. §72, §120, 5, §18: xii. 6, 7: ii. 11, 1: Tac. Dial. 10 nomen inserere famae: ib. 36 plus notitiae ac nominis apud plebem parabat.

I:88 Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus grandia et antiqua robora iam non tantam habent speciem quantam religionem. Propiores alii, atque ad hoc de quo loquimur magis utiles. Lascivus quidem in herois quoque Ovidius et nimium amator ingenii sui, laudandus tamen in partibus.

§ 88. Ennius, the Chaucer of Latin literature (239-169 B.C.),—qui primus amoeno detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam (Lucr. i. 119). Lucretius in this passage calls him ‘Ennius noster,’ as does also Cicero, pro Archia §18, §22.

‘It will be observed,’ says Professor Nettleship, ‘that Quintilian is a Ciceronian, and that both as against the younger school of his own day and as against the pre-Ciceronian literature. Ennius he sets aside with a few respectful words: Pacuvius and Accius, one must almost suppose, he had never read (97): if he had read them, then, he did not think it worth while to pass an independent judgment upon them (but see note ad loc.) The comedians, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, he will hardly notice; so far, he thinks, do they fall below their Greek originals. Lucretius he totally misconceives, even granting his point of view, for can it be said that there are no fine passages of rhetoric in the De Rerum Natura? The criticisms on the post-Ciceronian orators are for the most part (remembering that Quintilian is thinking of the needs of an orator) sound and well expressed, notably that upon Ovid (88). But they are mostly too short, and leave the impression that the writer is anxious to get to the end of them. In speaking of Cicero, however, Quintilian rises to the height of real enthusiasm.’ Journ. of Phil. l.c.

sacros vetustate lucos. For the reverence attaching to groves cp. Seneca, Epist. Mor. IV, xii. (41) Si tibi occurrerit vetustis arboribus et solitam altitudinem egressis frequens lucus et conspectum caeli ramorum aliorum alios protegentium umbra submovens: illa proceritas silvae et secretum loci et admiratio umbrae in aperto tam densae atque continuae fidem tibi numinis facit.

speciem. So Ovid, Trist. ii. 424 Ennius ingenio maximus, arte rudis: Am. i. 15, 19 Ennius arte carens. Cp. Quint, i. 8, 8 plerique plus ingenio quam arte valuerunt (veteres Latini).

Propiores, not Vergilio, as Bonnell and Krüger (the latter, in 2nd ed., contrasting §86 ceteri omnes longe sequentur): but rather, by inference from ‘vetustate’ and ‘antiqua’ in the previous sentence = propiores nostrae aetati. But see Claussen, Quaest. Quintil. pp. 358-9.

ad hoc de quo loquimur = ad augendam facultatem dicendi: φράσιν.

lascivus: so below §93 Ovidius utroque (Tibullo et Propertio) lascivior, sicut durior Gallus. The word and its cognates are used by Quintilian of ‘running riot,’ whether in thought, language, or manner. The verb lascivire is used in regard to a certain mannerism of Ovid, iv. 1, 77 ut Ovidius lascivire in metamorphosesi solet,—wrongly classed in Bonnell’s lexicon under mores: cp. ix. 4, 28. So ii. 4, 3 neque ... arcessitis descriptionibus, in quas plerique imitatione poeticae licentiae ducuntur, lasciviat: xii. 10, 73 genus dicendi quod puerilibus sententiolis lascivit: ix. 4, 6: iv. 2, 39: xi. 1, 56. See above, recens haec lascivia §43: cp. ii. 5, 10 and 22: Tac. Dial. §26 lascivia verborum et levitate sententiarum et licentia compositionis. The adjective occurs along with hilare v. 3, 27, and with dicaces vi. 3, 41: cp. Tac. Dial. §29 parvulos assuefaciunt ... lasciviae et dicacitati. It means ‘exuberance’ of any kind, as against severe restraint: ix. 4, 142 duram potius atque asperam compositionem malim esse quam effeminatam et enervem, qualis apud multos, et cotidie magis, lascivissimis syntonorum modis saltat: Horace, A. P. 106 ludentem lasciva (verba decent) severum seria dictu: i.e. ‘sportive’ as opp. to ‘serious’: Ep. ii. 2, 216 lasciva decentius aetas, ‘that may more becomingly make merry.’ Wilkins says the word occurs ten times in Horace, and never in a distinctly bad sense: lascivi pueri Sat. i. 3, 134: lasciva puella Verg. Ecl. iii. 64.

in herois quoque: sc. versibus. Cp. ix. 4, 88 and 89. This characteristic of his elegiac compositions reappears even in his heroic verse, i.e. the Metamorphoses. At ix. 4, 88 (pes) herous = μέτρον ἡρῷον. So Martial iii. 20, 6 lascivus elegis an severus herois?

nimium amator ingenii sui: cp. §98 below, si ingenio suo imperare quam indulgere maluisset. M. Seneca, Controv. iv. 28, 17 (p. 281) Ovidius nescit quod bene cessit relinquere: ii. 10, 12 (of a declamatio by Ovid) verbis minime licenter usus est nisi in carminibus, in quibus non ignoravit vitia sua, sed amavit ... adparet summi ingenii viro non indicium defuisse ad compescendam licentiam carminum suorum, sed animum. Cp. Sen. Nat. Quaest. iii. 27, 13 poetarum ingeniosissimus ... nisi tantum impetum ingenii et materiae ad pueriles ineptias reduxisset. Of Seneca the philosopher Quintilian uses similar language below §130 si non omnia sua amasset. For the use of an adv. with verb-noun in -tor (as if it were a participle) cp. Hor. Sat. i. 10, 12 Quis tam Lucili fautor inepte est. See Introd. p. xlv.

in partibus, opp. to totum (‘in einzeln Partien’—Nägelsbach §76 p. 296). Cp. in parte 7 §25: also 2 §26 in partibus: vii. 2, 22 si quando in partibus laborabimus, universitate pugnandum est. The frequency with which in parte occurs in Quintilian (as well as ex parte, which is used by Cicero and Livy) makes the reading probable, though the MSS. omit in, while many give parcius for partibus. Cp. ii. 8, 6 quod ... mihi in parte verum videtur: iv. 5, 13: v. 7, 22: xi. 2, 34.

I:89 Cornelius autem Severus, etiamsi sit versificator quam poeta melior, si tamen, ut est dictum, ad exemplar primi libri bellum Siculum perscripsisset, vindicaret sibi iure secundum locum. Serranum consummari mors immatura non passa est, puerilia tamen eius opera et maximam indolem ostendunt et admirabilem praecipue in aetate illa recti generis voluntatem.

§ 89. Cornelius Severus, contemporary and friend of Ovid, who addresses to him Epist. ex Ponto iv. 2 (1 O vates magnorum maxime regum: 11 sq. fertile pectus habes interque Helicona colentes Uberius nulli provenit ista seges): cp. carmen regale iv. 16, 9. In spite of the apology in iv. 2 (eius adhuc nomen nostros tacuisse libellos), it is probable that Epist. i. 8 is also addressed to him: v. 2 pars animae magna, Severe, meae: 25, o iucunde sodalis. M. Seneca (Suas. vi. 26) quotes twenty-five hexameters of his, with the introductory remark, which seems well deserved, ‘nemo ex tot disertissimis viris melius Ciceronis mortem deflevit quam Severus Cornelius.’

etiamsi sit. The use of the subj. would seem to indicate that Quintilian leaves the truth of the criticism an open question (Roby §1560). Osann is wrong in taking it as indicating Quintilian’s own opinion. See Crit. Notes

versificator. This word occurs also in Justin. vi. 9, 4: versificatores meliores quam duces: Vopisc. Saturn. i. 7, 4: Terent. Maur. 1012: Bede 2354 P. If taken in a depreciatory sense it seems rather inconsistent with the high praise given him in what follows: but we gather from notices in the grammarians and from the extant fragments that Severus was ‘inclined to artificiality of expression and to the affectation of elegance, even where the thought is quite simple,’ as in the quotation in Charisius, p. 83 Huc ades Aonia crinem circumdata serta. For the antithesis versificator ... poeta cp. Hor. Sat. i. 4, 39 neque enim concludere versum dixeris esse satis ... (ut) putes hunc esse poetam.

si tamen. Tamen really goes with vindicaret, but the inversion tamen si (Hild) is quite unnecessary; elsewhere in Quintilian tamen is found attached to the subordinate and not to the principal sentence: xi. 3, 56 etiam si non utique vocis sunt vitia, quia tamen propter vocem accidunt, potissimum huic loco subiciantur: ii. 17, 24-25: cp. cum tamen xi. 3, 91. (In ix. 2, 55 si tamen = si modo, si quidem: in quo est et illa si tamen inter schemata numerari debet ... digressio: cp. ii. 15, 4.)

ut est dictum. Becher agrees with Halm in considering this to be a gloss on etiam si (sit) melior, and it is omitted in Krüger’s 3rd ed. But it is obvious that (unless he is quoting from himself) Quintilian is here giving a criticism at secondhand (dictum sc. ab aliis), and conveying the opinion of contemporary critics: cp. §60 adeo ut videatur quibusdam, of Archilochus. No great difficulty need be occasioned by the position of the words, though they would have been at least as well placed in the main sentence. Kiderlin (in Hermes) proposes to read ‘etiamsi versificator quam poeta melior sit, tamen, ut est dictum, si ad exemplar,’ &c.

bellum Siculum: i.e. the war with Sext. Pompeius B.C. 38-36 (Siculae classica bella fugae Propert. ii. 1, 28). Scaliger suggested bellum civile, with which Severus’s poems seem to have dealt, either in whole or in part. The primus liber is unknown. Bernhardy refers to the extract in Seneca, Suas. vii. (Burm. A. L. ii. 155) as justifying Quintilian’s criticism, and seems inclined to hazard the conjecture (based on a quotation from Valerius Probus in the Wiener Analecta Gramm. p. 216—Cornelius Severus rerum Romanarum l. 1) that the title of the whole work was Res Romanae, the Bellum Siculum being only a section.—(Can bellum Siculum have crept into the text as a gloss on ‘primi libri,’ the more general title bellum civile dropping out? The whole poem cannot have dealt with the bellum Siculum).

perscripsisset: common enough in the sense of ‘write a full account of’: here ‘from beginning to end’: cp. perlegere, pervenire.

secundum locum—among epic poets, after Vergil.

Serranum is the conjectural emendation generally adopted in place of the readings of the MSS. It rests on the passage in Juvenal vii. 79 Contentus fama iaceat Lucanus in hortis Marmoreis; at Serrano tenuique Saleio Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est? Some have ascribed to him the Eclogues which have come down to us under the name of Calpurnius Siculus. Martial (iv. 37, 2) speaks of a Serranus who was deep in debt. Most old edd. read Sed eum, still referring to Severus.

consummari: cp. §122: 2 §28: 5 §14 and frequently in Quintilian (v. Bonnell’s Lex.). Seneca, Ep. 88, 28, una re consummatur animus, scientia bonorum ac malorum immutabili, quae soli philosophiae competit.

in aetate illa: ‘for one so young.’

recti generis: cp. §44 rectum dicendi genus: ix. 3, §3: ii. 5, §11. The objective genitive after ‘voluntas’ is noteworthy: cp. libertatis novae gaudium Flor. i. 9, 3.

I:90 Multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus. Vehemens et poeticum ingenium Salei Bassi fuit, nec ipsum senectute maturuit. Rabirius ac Pedo non in digni cognitione, si vacet. Lucanus ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus, et, ut dicam quod sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus.

§ 90. Valerio Flacco. Martial addresses him in i. 77, exhorting him, with some irony, to give up verse-writing as unprofitable and turn lawyer. From another epigram (i. 61) we gather that he was a native of Padua (‘Apona tellus’). He flourished in the reign of Vespasian, to whom he dedicated his Argonautica, c. A.D. 70, and died about 88. Juvenal may be referring to this poem i. 8-10: where see Mayor’s notes. There is a touch of personal sorrow about the use of amisimus. For the expression cp. Florus iv. 7, 14 Brutus cum in Cassio suum animum perdidisset.

nuper: Flaccus died about 88 A.D. Quintilian wrote his work between 93 and 95.

Salei Bassi. Cp. tenuique Saleio, Iuv. vii. 80, quoted above. His name occurs several times in the Dial. de Orat.: Saleium Bassum, cum optimum virum tum absolutissimum poetam §5: egregium poetam vel si hoc honorificentius est praeclarissimum vatem §9, where it is stated that he got a gift of 500 sestertia from Vespasian: cp. also §10. The Bassus ridiculed by Martial (iii. 47, 58: v. 23: viii. 10: vii. 96) is a different person, though he also wrote tragedies: v. 53, 1-2 Colchida quid scribis, quid scribis, amice, Thyesten? Quo tibi vel Nioben, Basse, vel Andromachen?

nec ipsum senectute maturuit: ‘but it was not mellowed by age’: nec ipsum = his genius no more than that of Serranus, above. On the other reading (senectus maturavit) ipsum would be accus. masc.: but the construction is harsh, and maturo in this transitive use is only found in Pliny, of the processes of nature.

Rabirius, a contemporary of Ovid, Ep. ex Ponto iv. 16, 5 magnique Rabirius oris. Velleius Paterculus mentions him along with Vergil, omitting Horace: inter quae (ingenia) maxime nostri aevi eminent princeps carminum Vergilius Rabiriusque ii. 36, 3: Seneca de Benef. vi. 3, 1 egregie mihi videtur M. Antonius apud Rabirium poetam ... exclamare, hoc habeo quodcunque dedi. He is generally supposed to be the author of a fragment on the battle of Actium and the death of Cleopatra, discovered in the rolls of Herculaneum.

Pedo, C. Albinovanus, friend of Ovid, who styles him sidereus ex Pont. iv. 16, 6, carissime iv. 10, 3. Martial refers to him as a scholarly poet (doctique Pedonis ii. 77) and epigrammatist (i. praef.)—in both places along with Domitius Marsus: Paley and Stone are wrong in identifying him with the Celsus Albinovanus of Horace, Epist. i. 3, 15 and 8, 1. Seneca tells a story he had heard from him in Ep. 122, 13, and compliments him as being ‘fabulator elegantissimus.’ M. Seneca (Suas. i. 14) gives us 23 hexameters of his which formed part of a poem celebrating the famous voyage of Germanicus (cp. Tac. Ann. ii. 23). The ‘Consolatio ad Liviam Augustam de morte Drusi Neronis,’ first attributed to him by Scaliger, is now believed to be a production of the fifteenth century (Bernhardy, pp. 486-7). He also wrote a Theseis (Ovid, ex Pont. iv. 10, 71 sq.).

Lucanus, M. Annaeus, the author of the ‘Pharsalia,’ A.D. 38-65. The criticism of Quintilian puts before us Lucan’s merits and defects,—the predominance of the declamatory element being prominent among the latter. In the Dial. de Orat. §20 he is classed along with Vergil and Horace, exigitur ... ab oratore etiam poeticus decor ... ex Horatii et Vergilii et Lucani sacrario prolatus. On the other hand Serv. ad Aen. i. 382 Lucanus ideo in numero poetarum esse non meruit quia videtur historiam composuisse non poema: cp. Petron. Sat. 118. So, too, Martial xiv. 194 Lucanus, Sunt quidam qui me dicant non esse poetam, Sed qui me vendit bibliopola putat. The ut dicam quod sentio seems to indicate that Quintilian is combating the prevailing sentiment about Lucan.—Cp. Heitland’s Introd. to Lucan’s Pharsalia (Haskins), p. lxx.

sententiisγνώμαις, v. §§50, 61, ‘such general utterances as have a bearing upon human life and action,’ Heitland, pp. lxv-lxvii.

I:91 Hos nominavimus, quia Germanicum Augustum ab institutis studiis deflexit cura terrarum, parumque dis visum est esse eum maximum poetarum. Quid tamen his ipsis eius operibus, in quae donato imperio iuvenis secesserat, sublimius, doctius, omnibus denique numeris praestantius? Quis enim caneret bella melius quam qui sic gerit? Quem praesidentes studiis deae propius audirent? Cui magis suas artes aperiret familiare numen Minervae?

§ 91. Hos, sub. tantum: as 5 §7 uno genere. See Nägelsbach §84 on the omission of adverbs: p. 331 sq.

Germanicum. Domitian took this title after his expedition against the Chatti, A.D. 84: Frontinus, Strateg. ii. 11, 7 Imperator Caesar Augustus Germanicus eo bello quo victis hostibus cognomen Germanici meruit. Of this triumph Tacitus says (Agric. 39) that Domitian was conscious ‘derisui fuisse falsum e Germania triumphum.’ For the tone of adulation cp. Proem. Book IV, 2 sq., where Domitian is spoken of as ‘sanctissimus censor,’ and ‘principem ut in omnibus ita in eloquentia eminentissimum,’ and is even invoked as a divinity,—nunc omnes in auxilium deos ipsumque in primis quo neque praesentius aliud nec studiis magis propitium numen est, invocem. Hild compares the following passages as showing the spirit of the age:—Statius, Silvae i. 1 and 4: iii. 3: iv. 1 and 2: Silius Italicus iii. 618 sq.: Valerius Flaccus i. 12: and Martial, Epist. Ded. of vii.: cp. 65, 82 et passim. See Introd. p. xi.

ab institutes studiis: Suet. Dom. 2 simulavit et ipse mire modestiam imprimisque poeticae studium, tam insuetum antea sibi quam postea spretum et abiectum, recitavitque etiam publice. From Val. Flacc. i. 12 it would appear that he contemplated an epic poem on the war with the Jews. Tac. Hist. iv. 86 Domitianus sperni a senioribus iuventam suam cernens, modice quoque et usurpata antea munia imperii omittebat, simplicitatis ac modestiae imagine, in altitudinem conditus studiumque litterarum et amorem carminum simulans, quo velaret animum et fratris aemulationi subduceretur, cuius disparem mitioremque naturam contra interpretabatur. Cp. Pliny, Introd. to Nat. Hist. But Suetonius §20 gives the reverse side: nunquam ... aut historiae carminibusve noscendis operam ullam, aut stilo vel necessario dedit. Praeter commentarios et acta Tiberii Caesaris nihil lectitabat; epistolas orationesque et edicta alieno formabat ingenio.

cura terrarum: cp. Mart. viii. 82 Posse deum rebus pariter Musisque vacare Scimus, et haec etiam serta placere tibi.

donato imperio, i.e. to his father Vespasian, as he pretended, and his brother Titus: cp. Suet. Dom. §13 principatum adeptus neque in senatu iactare dubitavit ‘et patri se et fratri imperium dedisse.’

numeris: §70.

qui sic gerit: cp. §114 of Julius Caesar, ‘eodem animo dixisse quo bellavit.’ Statius has a similar compliment to Domitian, Achil. i. 15, 16 cui geminae florent vatumque ducumque certatim laurus: olim dolet altera vinci.

praesidentes deae: §48 invocatione dearum quas praesidere vatibus creditum est.

propius audirent: cp. Aen. i. 526 parce pio generi et propius res aspice nostras. The phrase is used of interest as well as nearness, and refers either to the presence and sympathy of the Muses when the poet reads his compositions (recitavitque etiam publice Suet. Dom. 2), or (less probably) to their gracious answer to his prayer for inspiration. Becher cites also Ovid, Trist. i. 2, 7 oderat Aenean propior Saturnia Turno.—See Crit. Notes.

familiare numen Minervae: Domitian was desirous of passing for a son of Minerva (Philostratus, Vit. Apoll. vii. 24), and punished with death a priest of Tarentum who had failed to address him by this title in offering sacrifice. He also instituted the Quinquatria Minervae (Suet. 4), with contests in poetry and rhetoric. At the quinquennial festival of Jupiter Capitolinus he himself presided, ‘capite gestans coronam auream cum effigie Iovis ac Iunonis Minervaeque.’ Merivale vii. 391-394.—Krüger cites Aen. i. 447 (templum) donis opulentum et numine divae.

I:92 Dicent haec plenius futura saecula, nunc enim ceterarum fulgore virtutum laus ista praestringitur. Nos tamen sacra litterarum colentes feres, Caesar, si non tacitum hoc praeterimus et Vergiliano certe versu testamur:

inter victrices hederam tibi serpere laurus.

§ 92. praestringitur: §30.

feres, see Crit. Notes. The subj. (feras) is given in many edd. as more appropriate to the subservient tone of the whole passage.

Vergiliano: Ecl. viii, 13, addressed to Pollio. Cp. Mart. viii. 82, 7 Non quercus te sola decet, nec laurea Phoebi: fiat et ex hedera civica nostra tibi.

I:93 Elegea quoque Graecos provocamus, cuius mihi tersus atque elegans maxime videtur auctor Tibullus: sunt qui Propertium malint. Ovidius utroque lascivior, sicut durior Gallus. Satura quidem tota nostra est, in qua primus insignem laudem adeptus Lucilius quosdam ita deditos sibi adhuc habet amatores ut eum non eiusdem modo operis auctoribus sed omnibus poetis praeferre non dubitent.

§ 93. Elegea. The form elegea is received into the text by Halm in i. 8, 6, but not by Meister. Ovid has elegeïa,—flebilis indignos elegeia solve capillos, Am. iii. 9, 3: cp. cultis aut elegia comis Martial v. 30, 4. Elegi is more common: Hor. Car. i. 33, 2 miserabiles, A. P. 77 exiguos: Tib. ii. 4, 13: Prop. v. 1, 135: Iuv. i. 4.—The same names are enumerated in chronological order by Ovid: Successor fuit hic (Tibullus) tibi, Galle, Propertius illi. Quartus ab his serie temporis ipse fui, Trist. iv. 10, 63: Teuffel §29.

provocamus: post-Aug. in this figurative sense: Plin. Ep. ii. 7, 4 senes illos provocare virtute: (cp. ea pictura naturam ipsam provocavit Plin. N. H. xxxv. 10, 36 §94.) So of things immensum Iatus circi templorom pulchritudinem provocat, Panegyr. §51.—Hild quotes Diomed. iii. 60, p. 484 Quod genus carminis praecipue scripserunt apud Romanos Propertius et Tibullus et Gallus, imitati graecos Callimachum et Euphoriona. Catullus also had used the elegiac metre, though, as Mr. Munro says (Catullus, p. 231), his elegies are by no means up to the level of his lyrics. In his hands the elegy retained the ease and freedom of its original form, though often wanting in technical finish: Tibullus and his successors Latinized it, and adapted it to new conditions.

tersus, ‘smooth and finished’: xii. 10, 50 quod libris dedicatur ... tersum ac limatum ... esse oportere. So below §94.

Tibullus, c. 54-18 B.C. Hor. Epist. i. 4: Ovid, Am. iii. 9. As distinguished from Propertius (c. 50-15 B.C.), he is the poet of warm, tender, natural feeling, which he expresses in neat and finished verse. He confines himself to such themes and such scenes as suited the limitations of his genius. Propertius has more force and strength; but he is more involved, often in fact obscure; and his indirectness and artificiality have greatly interfered with the adequate recognition of his undoubted powers. Cp. Muretus, Schol. in Propert.: illum (Tibullum) iudices simplicius scripsisse quae cogitaret: hunc (Propertium) diligentius cogitasse quae scriberet. In illo plus naturae, in hoc plus curae atque industriae perspicias. For a modern estimate cp. Postgate’s Select Elegies lvii. sqq., esp. lxvii: “No real judge of poetry will hesitate for a moment to place Propertius high above them both (Tibullus and Ovid). It is true that in some respects they may both claim the advantage over him; Tibullus for refined simplicity, for natural grace and exquisiteness of touch; Ovid for the technical merits of execution, for transparency of construction, for smoothness and polish of expression. But in all the higher qualities of a poet he is as much their superior.”

lascivior: v. on §88. The antithesis is here given in durior (‘more masculine’), which seems to show that the reference is primarily to Ovid’s style: (cp. ix. 4, 142, quoted at §88). Ovid’s exuberant vivacity and sportive imagination, as well as his indifference to deep conviction and high ideals, might however well be included in the criticism. Tac. Dial. 10 elegorum lascivias et iamborum amaritudinem. Martial has of Propertius ‘Cynthia te vatem fecit, lascive Properti’ viii. 73, 5: which, like Ovid’s tener (A. A. iii. 333), Postgate thinks refers rather to his subject than to his treatment of it. “With Tibullus and Propertius love was at any rate a passion. With Ovid it was une affaire de cœur.”

Gallus, Cornelius, of Forum Iulii (69-26), was the first praefectus Aegypti under Augustus, but on a report of some rash speeches was banished, and committed suicide in his forty-third year. Vergil is said to have originally finished the Georgics with a tribute to Gallus, and on being ordered to erase it, substituted the Aristaeus episode which now occupies the latter half of Book IV. Vergil’s regard for him, however, comes out in Eclogue vi. 64 sqq., and in the dedication of Eclogue x. (sollicitos Galli dicamus amores), in which he seeks to console him for the loss of his love Lycoris (Cytheris). On it Servius observes: et Euphorionem ... transtulit in latinum sermonem (l. 50) et amorum suorum de Cytheride scripsit libros quatuor. Cp. Ovid, Trist. ii. 445 Nec fuit opprobrio celebrasse Lycorida Gallo, Amor. i. 15, 30: Trist. iv. 10, 53: Remed. 765 Quis potuit lecto durus discedere Gallo?

Satura. As to the derivation, v. Diomed. iii. p. 485 (Palmer, Introd. to Hor. Sat. p. vii) Satira autem dicta sive a Satyris, quod similiter in hoc carmine ridiculae res pudendaeque dicuntur, quae velut a Satyris proferuntur et fiunt; sive satura a lance, quae referta variis multisque primitiis in sacro apud priscos dis inferebatur...; sive a quodam genere farciminis, quod multis rebus refertum saturam dicit Varro vocitatum. The second derivation (lanx satura—the platter filled with first fruits of various sorts which was an annual thank-offering to Ceres and Bacchus: and so a ‘medley’ or ‘hodge-podge’) was long preferred; but Mommsen holds (cp. Ribbeck, Röm. Trag. 21) that the word means the ‘masque of the full men’ (σάτυροι),—the song enacted at a popular carnival, when repletion in the performers leads to a certain ‘fulness’ about the performance. Cp. Tibullus ii. 1, 23 saturi ... coloni: 53 satur arenti primum est modulatus avena carmen (agricola).

tota nostra. This claim must be understood of satire in its Roman form. The spirit of personal invective had already found expression in the lampoons of Greek satire, e.g. in the iambics of Archilochus and Hipponax, to say nothing of the Old Comedy at Athens; but Satire at Rome grew to be a distinct art, a serious practical aim being imposed on the literary form that was developed out of the original Satura (for which see below, §95). “It followed the Old Comedy of Athens in its plain-speaking, and the method of Archilochus in its bitter hostility to those who provoked attack. But it differed from the former in its non-political bias, as well as its non-dramatic form; and from the latter in its motive, which is not personal enmity, but public spirit. Thus the assertion of Horace (S. i. 4, 1-6) that Lucilius is indebted to the old comedians, must be taken in a general sense only, and not be held to invalidate the generally received opinion that, in its final and perfective form, Satire was a genuine product of Rome” (Cruttwell, R. L. p. 76). Contrast the ‘hinc omnis pendet Lucilius hosce secutus’ (est) of the passage referred to with ‘Lucilius ausus (est) primus in hunc operis componere carmina morem’ (ii. 1, 62), and the recognition of Ennius as ‘Graecis intacti carminis auctor’ (i. 10, 66). The claim made by Quintilian springs from the consciousness that Satire was pre-eminently the national organ of public opinion at Rome. Whatever the topic treated might be,—politics, literature, philosophy, or social life and manners,—the tone was always genuinely national and popular. Moreover, it was the only form of literature that enjoyed a continuous development at Rome, extending as it did from the most flourishing era of the Commonwealth into the second century of the Empire. See for the whole subject Professor Nettleship’s Essay on the Roman Satura—its original form in connection with its literary development, Clarendon Press, 1878: Palmer’s Satires of Horace, Intr. p. ix.

Lucilius, C. (B.C. 168(?)-103), was a member of an equestrian family of Suessa, and belonged to the circle of the younger Scipio, under whom he had served during the Numantine War. He left behind him thirty books of Satires, of which the first twenty and the thirtieth were in hexameter verse, the others being in different metres; and of these only some 1100 lines are now extant. He gave Satire its true popular tone at Rome, speaking out openly and with a courageous frankness against the iniquity and incompetence of the nobles, the sordid, avaricious and pleasure-seeking aims of the middle-class, and the venality of the mob. Horace passes a rather mixed judgment on him, censuring his discursiveness, roughness, careless rapidity, and verbosity; but commending him for his original force and frank outspokenness. See Sat. i. 4, 6-12, 57: 10, 1-5, 20-24, 48-71: ii. 1, 17, 29-34, 62-75. In the time of Tacitus some preferred Lucilius to Horace: Dial. 23 vobis utique versantur ante oculos qui Lucilium pro Horatio et Lucretium pro Vergilio legunt.

I:94 Ego quantum ab illis, tantum ab Horatio dissentio, qui Lucilium fluere lutulentum et esse aliquid quod tollere possis, putat. Nam eruditio in eo mira et libertas atque inde acerbitas et abunde salis. Multum est tersior ac purus magis Horatius et, non labor eius amore, praecipuus. Multum et verae gloriae quamvis uno libro Persius meruit. Sunt clari hodieque et qui olim nominabuntur.

§ 94. fluere lutulentum, a quotation from memory of Sat. i. 4, 11 cum flueret lutulentus erat quod tollere velles. Cp. i. 10, 50-1 ferentem plura quidem tollenda relinquendis.

eruditio mira: i. 6, 8 hominis eruditissimi (Lucili).

libertas: Hor. Sat. i. 4, 5 multa cum libertate notabant. Trebonius in Cic. Fam. xii. 16, §3 deinde qui magis hoc Lucilio licuerit assumere libertatis quam nobis? quum, etiamsi odio pari fuerit in eos quos laesit, tamen certe non magis dignos habuerit, in quos tanta libertate verborum incurreret: Macr. iii. 16, §17 Lucilius acer et violentus poeta.

inde: it was his personal independence (libertas) that gave so keen an edge to his satire (acerbitas): Hor. Sat. ii. 1, 62. inde is in fact causal here. Becher notes pro Mur. §26 as the only parallel instance in Cicero, and there it occurs in a law formula: inde ibi ego te ex iure manu consertum voco.

abunde salis: Verg. Aen. vii. 552 terrorum et fraudis abunde est: Suet. Caes. 86 potentiae gloriaeque abunde, but not in earlier prose. According to Hand. Turs. i. 71 abunde was originally neut. of abundis, used substantially (cp. pote and necesse) and so becoming an adverb, from which was formed in time, by a false analogy, an adj. abundus. Other uses are (1) like ‘satis esse,’ as in Tac. Hist. ii. 95, §5 ipse abunde ratus si praesentibus frueretur: (2) as simple adv. qualifying verbs adjectives and other adverbs (cp. on §25): Cic. Div. ii. 1, 3 erit abunde satisfactum toti huic quaestioni. Sall. Iug. 14, 18 abunde magna praesidia. Wharton takes it from *habundus, ‘possessing,’ the gerundive of habeo.—See Crit. Notes.

multum: for multum before a comparative, like πολὺ μεῖζον etc., see Introd. p. li.: cp. Stat. Theb. ix. 559, Iuv. x. 197. In spite of ‘multum maius’ (de Or. iii. §92), Cicero very rarely has multum for multo. For the reading, see Crit. Notes.

purus magis gives the antithesis to lutulentus.

non labor: cp. vi. 3, 3 sive amore immodico praecipui in eloquentia viri (Ciceronis) labor: Cic. Brut. 244 ambitione labi. In spite of the stricture passed in i. 8, 6 (Horatium nolim in quibusdam interpretari), Quint. had a high admiration for Horace: see below §96. Many codd. give nisi for non: see Crit. Notes. For praecipuus used absolutely cp. §§68, 81, 116.

Multum et verae = multum gloriae et quidem verae gloriae. Cp. Cic. ad Fam. iv. 6, 1 filium consularem, claram virum et magnis rebus gestis, amisit. So the Greek καὶ ταῦτα. For acc. w. mereo cp. §116.

quamvis: cp. §74. Even in classical Latin quamvis is used with adjectives and adverbs, and without any verb: but this is a more remarkable instance than e.g. Cic. Nat. Deor. ii. 1, 1 rhetorem quamvis eloquentem: Tusc. iii. §73 stultitiam accusare quamvis copiose licet.

Persius (34-62 A.D.) The best account of his satires is that prefixed to Conington’s edition. Cp. Mart. iv. 29, 7 Saepius in libro numeratur Persius uno Quam levis in tota Marsus Amazonide.

Sunt clari hodieque et: ‘there are brilliant satirists at the present day,—men whose names will hereafter be on the roll of fame.’ Cp. for the general sense iii. 1, 21 sunt et hodie clari eiusdem operis auctores, qui si omnia complexi forent, consuluissent labori meo, sed parco nominibus viventium: veniet eorum laudi suum tempus: ad posteros enim virtus durabit, non perveniet invidia. So too §104 below qui olim nominabitur nunc intellegitur.—This use of hodieque (‘noch heutzutage’) is quite different from such simple instances as e.g. Cic. de Orat. i. 103 hoc facere coeperunt hodieque faciunt, where -que is merely copulative. The Dictt. quote several instances in post-Augustan prose, though the word occurs in Quint. only here: Vell. Paterc. i. 4, 3 quae hodieque appellate Ionia: ii. 8, 3 porticus quae hodieque celebres sunt: 27, 3 Utcunque cecidit, hodieque tanta patris imagine non obscuratur eius memoria: Seneca, Epist. 90, 16 non hodieque magna Scytharum pars tergis vulpium induitur? Plin. ii. 58, 59 §150 in Abydi gymnasio colitur hodieque: viii. 45, 70 §176 et hodieque reliquiae durant: Tac. Germ. iii. quod in ripa Rheni situm hodieque incolitur: Dial. 34 ad fin., quas hodieque cum admiratione legimus: Suet. Claud. 17: Tit. 2. Krüger (3rd. ed.) thinks that que is thrown in to correspond with et in what follows (τε ... καί, ‘sowohl als auch’): ‘posthumous renown is introduced, as the more precious, not simply by et olim but in a special relative clause.’ Certainly it is the same writers who are clari now and who will hereafter receive proper recognition (nominabuntur cp. §104 below), though at present he refrains from giving names. The position of et, and indeed its presence at all in the sentence, seem to be motived by the choice of the form hodieque. But see Crit. Notes.

Juvenal can hardly be referred to here, as his first Satire is later than the reign of Domitian, under whom Quint. composed his work. The reference is more probably to some minor Satirists, like the authors of the ‘scripta famosa, vulgoque edita, quibus primores viri ac feminae notabantur,’—mentioned by Suet. (Dom. 8) as current in Domitian’s reign. Cp. Nero 42: Tac. Ann. i. 72.—For olim see on §104.

I:95 Alterum illud etiam prius saturae genus, sed non sola carminum varietate mixtum condidit Terentius Varro, vir Romanorum eruditissimus. Plurimos hic libros et doctissimos composuit, peritissimus linguae Latinae et omnis antiquitatis et rerum Graecarum nostrarumque, plus tamen scientiae collaturus quam eloquentiae.

§ 95. Alterum illud, &c. This takes us back to the earliest forms of the Roman Satura. Alongside of the Fescennine verses (Hor. Epist. ii. 139, sq.), which had originated in the rustic raillery and coarse mirth of vintage and harvest homes, there grew up a sort of dramatic medley or farce, probably containing an element of dialogue, to give opportunity for the sportive exchange of repartees, and soon coming to have a regular musical accompaniment and corresponding gestures. These ‘Saturae’ differed from the Fescennine verses in having more of a set form and not being extemporised; while, again, they were distinct from the developed drama in having no connected plot. They seem from the first to have contained a dramatic element, consisting as they did of comic songs or stories recited with gesticulation and flute accompaniment. In addition to the censorious freedom which they derived from the Fescennine verses, the Saturae received an impulse from the mimetic dances that had been imported from Etruria. They had been acted on the stage for more than a century before Livius Andronicus gave his first dramatic representation (B.C. 240), and after the development of the regular drama they passed into a distinct form of literature, which retained to some extent its dramatic cast, but was not intended now for public representation. In the hands of Ennius the Satura became a medley of metrical pieces—a metrical miscellany—in which the poet gave utterance, not without the element of dialogue, to his views on things in general, in a tone that began to be more serious than would have suited the stage and the theatre-going public, who were now to look to Latin Comedy for undiluted amusement. With Lucilius, Satire passed from miscellaneous metrical composition to that aggressive and censorious criticism of persons, manners, literature, and politics, which the word has ever since been employed to denote. It was a form of literary activity that would seem to have been called for by the social and political conditions of Roman life in the latter part of the second century.—The transition is indicated in the following passage from Diomedes, Art. Gram. iii. p. 485 K Satira dicitur carmen apud Romanos nunc quidem maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia archaeae comoediae charactere compositum, quale scripserunt Lucilius et Horatius et Persius; at olim carmen quod ex variis poematibus constabat satira vocabatur, quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius.

etiam prius, i.e. even before the satura of Lucilius: cp. olim carmen quod, &c. in the passage just quoted. The satura of Varro (like that of Menippus, whom he imitated), besides being composed in all sorts of metres, admitted prose also: hence ‘non sola carminum varietate mixtum’ (for the implied antithesis cp. 7 §19 in prosa ... in carmine). It was also, in respect of material, a sort of pot-pourri or ‘hodge-podge’: cp. multis rebus refertum, Diomedes, l.c. See Crit. Notes.

condidit: see §56. There is no need for Jahn’s conj. condivit. The word means ‘wrote,’ ‘composed’ (not ‘founded,’ as Mayor in his analysis): cp. iii. 1, 19 primus condidit aliqua (in arte rhetorica) M. Cato: xii. II, 23 Cato ... idem historiae conditor.

Terentius Varro, M. (B.C. 116-27). Of his many works (said to number about 600) we have only three books of the De Re Rustica, parts of the De Lingua Latina (in 25 books), and fragments of the Menippean Satires. For the last v. esp. Mommsen, iv. pt. 2, p. 594. A good account of Varro’s life and writings is given in Cruttwell’s Rom. Lit. pp. 141-156. In regard to the Saturae, v. esp. pp. 144-145: ‘There was one class of semi-poetical composition which Varro made peculiarly his own, the Satura Menippea, a medley of prose and verse, treating of all kinds of subjects just as they came to hand in the plebeian style, often with much grossness, but with sparkling point. Of these Saturae he wrote no less than 150 books, of which fragments have been preserved amounting to near 600 lines. Menippus of Gadara, the originator of this style of composition, lived about 280 B.C.; he interspersed jocular and commonplace topics with moral maxims and philosophical doctrines, and may have added contemporary pictures, though this is uncertain. Varro followed him; we find him in the Academicae Quaestiones of Cicero (i. 2, 8) saying that he adopted this method in the hope of enticing the unlearned to read something that might profit them. In these saturae topics were handled with the greatest freedom. They were not satires in the modern sense. They are rather to be considered as lineal descendants of the old saturae which existed before (cp. etiam prius) any regular literature.’

Romanorum eruditissimus: cp. Cicero ad Att. xiii. 18 where, with some pique, he writes homo πολυγραφώτατος nunquam me lacessivit (by dedicating a work to him): August. C. D. vi. 2 homo omnium facile acutissimus et sine ulla dubitatione doctissimus. Dion. Hal. ii. 21 ἀνὴρ ... πολυπειρότατος: and Plut. Rom. 12 ἄνδρα Ῥωμαίων ἐν ἱστορίᾳ βιβλιακώτατον.

omnis antiquitatis. He wrote Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum, in forty-one books. Cp. Cic. Brut. 15, 60 diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis. For his general activity v. Acad. Post. i. 3, 9 nos in nostra urbe peregrinantes ... tui libri quasi domum reduxerunt ... tu aetatem patriae, tu descriptiones temporum, tu sacrorum iura, tu sacerdotum, tu domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedem regionum, locorum, tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera, officia, causas aperuisti plurimumque idem poetis nostris omninoque latinis et litteris luminis et verbis attulisti, atque ipse varium et elegans omni fere numero poema fecisti philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti, ad inpellendum satis, ad edocendum parum. Cp. Phil. ii. 41, 105, where distinct reference is made (as Halm points out) to treatises de Iure Civili, in fifteen books: de Vita Populi Romani, in four books: Annales in three books: Antiquitates in forty-one books: de Fama Philosophiae: and nine books Disciplinarum: Quint. xii. 11, 24, Quam multa, paene omnia, tradidit Varro.—For this use of antiquitas cp. Tac. Ann. ii. 59 cognoscendae antiquitatis: and other exx. in Nettleship’s Lat. Lex. s.v. 3.

scientiae ... eloquentiae: cp. August. C. D. vi. 2 M. Varro ... tametsi minus est suavis eloquio, doctrina tamen atque sententiis ita refertus est ut in omni eruditione ... studiosum rerum tantum iste doceat quantum studiosum verborum Cicero delectat. For the datives cp. §27, §63, §71: conferre with in c. acc. occurs 7 §26, q.v.

I:96 Iambus non sane a Romanis celebratus est ut proprium opus, sed aliis quibusdam interpositus; cuius acerbitas in Catullo, Bibaculo, Horatio, quamquam illi epodos intervenit, reperietur. At lyricorum idem Horatius fere solus legi dignus; nam et insurgit aliquando et plenus est iucunditatis et gratiae et varius figuris et verbis felicissime audax. Si quem adicere velis, is erit Caesius Bassus, quem nuper vidimus; sed eum longe praecedunt ingenia viventium.

§ 96. Iambus = carmina iambica: cp. §9, §59.

celebratus est: cp. ix. 2, 92 celebrata apud Graecos schemata: i. 9, 6 narratiunculas a poetis celebratas. Cp. frequentare.

ut proprium opus, i.e. as a separate form of composition, such as it was in the hands of Archilochus, Hipponax, and Simonides.

aliis quibusdam (sc. carminibus) interpositus. Hild takes this as referring both to the alternation of the iambic with other metres and the substitution of other feet for the iambus itself (as commonly in Horace). It is probable that it only includes the former, being repeated, as regards Horace, in the words quamquam illi epodos intervenit.’ See Crit. Notes.

Catullo. Cp. Fragm. i. At non effugies meos iambos. The most famous examples of his acerbitas are the lampoons on Julius Caesar, especially that contained in the twenty-ninth poem (where see Munro for an appreciation of the meaning of ancient defamation and invective). Here Catullus appears as the genuine successor of the early Greek iambic writers. (Cp. the more offensive hendecasyllabics of lvii.) These are the two poems which Suetonius (Caesar 73) regarded as having attached an ‘everlasting stigma’ to the name of Caesar: cp. liii. ad fin. Irascere iterum meis iambis Immerentibus unice imperator. Sellar’s Roman Poets, p. 431 sq.

Bibaculo. M. Furius Bibaculus (b. at Cremona B.C. 99), like Catullus, the author of lampoons directed especially against the monarchists: Tac. Ann. iv. 34 carmina Bibaculi et Catulli referta contumeliis Caesarum leguntur: sed ipse divus Iulius, ipse divus Augustus et tulere ista et reliquere. Some apply to him the words of Horace, Satires ii. 5, 40, sq. seu pingui tentus omaso Furius hibernas cana nive conspuet Alpes (where the scholiast credits him with having written an account of the Gallic War): also i. 10, 36 Turgidus Alpinus iugulat dum Memnona,—the nickname Alpinus having been given to him on account of this ludicrous description of Jupiter sputtering snow over the Alps: v. Quint. viii. 6, 17, where the original line is quoted as an instance of a forced metaphor. The reference in i. 10, 36 is however doubtful; and Bernhardy (R. L. p. 566) supposes that in both passages some unknown poet is meant, whose name may have been Furius Alpinus. See Teuffel, R. L. i. 313.

illi, sc. iambo = iambicis versibus.

epodos: ὁ ἐπῳδός, sc. στίχος = a shorter (iambic) verse, alternating with a longer. Epodi dicuntur versus quolibet modo scripti et sequentes clausulas habentes particularum quales sunt epodi Horatii: in quibus singulis versibus singulae clausulae adiciuntur.... Dicti autem epodi συνεκδοχικῶς a partibus versuum, quae legitimis et integris versibus ἐπᾴδονται, i.e. accinuntur: Diomedes. Though the term epode includes all kinds of metre (except elegiac) in which a long and a short line are combined, it is used especially of the alternation of the iambic trimeter and dimeter (Hor. Epod. 1-10). Horace himself (who has only one poem—Epod. 17—in iambic trimeter by itself) includes all his Epodes under the head of iambi: Epod. 14, 7: Ep. i. 19, 23-25 Parios ego primus iambos ostendi Latio numeros animosque secutus Archilochi: cp. Car. i. 16, 3, and esp. 23-25 me quoque pectoris Tentavit in dulci iuventa Fervor et in celeres iambos Misit furentem. In Ep. ii. 2, 59 he divides his poetry into carmina—Odes: iambi—Epodes: and ‘Bionei sermones’—Satires. Of course it was not Horace who introduced the epode into the Archilochean iambics: the form was invented and used by Archilochus himself. See Bernhardy, p. 601.

legi dignus: a poetical constr., which passed into the prose of the Silver Age: cp. Plin. Paneg. vii. 4 dignus alter eligi alter eligere. See Crit. Notes.

varius figuris: cp. §68 sententiis densus.

verbis felicissime audax: cp. Hor. A. P. 46 sq.: In verbis etiam tenuis cautusque serendis, hoc amet, hoc spernat promissi carminis auctor. Dixeris egregie notum si callida verbum Reddiderit iunctura novum,—where Orelli gives, as instances of callida iunctura in Horace himself, the well-known phrases ‘splendide mendax,’ ‘insanientis sapientiae consultus,’ ‘animae magnae prodigus.’ Cp. Petron. Sat. 118 Horatii curiosa felicitas. Ovid pronounces his eulogy in Trist. iv. 10, 49 Tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures, Dum ferit Ausonia carmina culta lyra.

Caesius Bassus: mentioned by Ovid in the lines immediately preceding the passage just quoted, ll. 47-8: Ponticus Heroo, Bassus quoque clarus Iambo, Dulcia convictus membra fuere mei. He was the friend of Persius, who addresses his sixth Satire to him: and at the request of Cornutus he edited the whole six, after they had been prepared for publication by the latter. He is said to have perished in the eruption of Vesuvius (A.D. 79), which was fatal also to the elder Pliny. He is probably the Bassus who wrote a treatise on metres, which still exists in an interpolated epitome: Keil. Gram. Lat. vi. 305 sq.—For vidimus, ‘amisimus’ and ‘perdidimus’ have been needlessly suggested.

ingenia viventium: cp. sunt clari hodieque §94 above. It is only in favour of Domitian §91 that Quint. breaks his rule not to mention living writers. Hild suspects Quint. of a little ‘log-rolling’ in these compliments.

I:97 Tragoediae scriptores veterum Attius atque Pacuvius clarissimi gravitate sententiarum, verborum pondere, auctoritate personarum. Ceterum nitor et summa in excolendis operibus manus magis videri potest temporibus quam ipsis defuisse; virium tamen Attio plus tribuitur, Pacuvium videri doctiorem qui esse docti adfectant volunt.

§ 97. Tragoediae scriptores. Quint. did not consider it necessary for his purpose to take any account of the first beginnings of tragedy, otherwise he would have mentioned Livius Andronicus (284-204), Naevius (235), and Ennius himself, who was probably almost as great in tragedy as in narrative poetry. It was Ennius who first impressed on Roman tragedy the deeply moral and highly didactic character which it bore down to the age of Cicero. He made it his endeavour to hold up patterns of heroic virtue to his audience and to inspire them with right ideas of life. Even his adaptations from the Greek (nearly half of the extant names of his tragedies suggest subjects taken from the Trojan cycle) are fired with the truly national spirit which he succeeded in handing on to his successors, Attius and Pacuvius. Ennius also wrote some praetextatae (i.e. national tragedies on historic subjects of poetic interest, e.g. the Rape of the Sabine Women); and in view of this fact it may appear strange that his example was not more widely followed, so that these national dramas should have outlived the hackneyed subjects drawn from Greek legend. The reason probably is that there was too much party life in Rome to make the dramatic treatment of the national history equally acceptable to all. Few incidents could have been dramatised that would not have excited various feelings in the hearts of an audience, say, in the times of the Gracchi. Under the Empire the free treatment of the national history for dramatic purposes was positively discouraged, and under the Republic the Senate had exercised almost as severe a political censorship as the Emperor did in later times.

From many points of view it might have been expected that tragedy would have found a congenial home at Rome. There was much in the national character, history, and institutions that was favourable to its growth. The speculative element and the deep spiritual interest which pervades Greek tragedy must no doubt have been absent; though Schlegel thought that the place of Nemesis could naturally have been taken by the idea of Religio, in so far as it comprehended the subordination of the individual to the State, and his supreme self-surrender. But tragedy flourished at Rome only during a comparatively short period: the populace probably failed to rise to the demands made on them by its lofty and serious purpose. Their tastes became more and more estranged from it, as gladiatorial and spectacular shows grew in favour; and appreciation of the drama came to be the proof of the culture of a small and exclusive class. But the popularity which it enjoyed for a time must have been due to the fact that, though the subjects were generally adapted from the Greek, Roman tragedy came to have a character of its own. It appealed to the ethical and political sympathies of the audience, and satisfied that taste for rhetoric which led afterwards to the development of Latin oratory. There may have been about it no subtle analysis of character, no lofty delineation of the action and passion of men entangled in the meshes of a destiny which they could neither understand nor unravel; but it seems to have embodied all the manly feeling and moral dignity of which the nation was capable. By its vigorous rhetoric it may be said at least to have helped to develop the language for use in those departments in which it achieved so great success, i.e. oratory, history, and philosophical composition. And when under the Empire literature had become altogether divorced from practical life, the composition of tragedies was still a favourite practice with many (e.g. Seneca) who recognised in that pursuit an appropriate sphere for the rhetorical style which was then so much in vogue.

Attius L., (170-about 90 B.C.) should have come after Pacuvius, as being fifteen years younger. He produced his first play in conjunction with Pacuvius, cir. 140. We have the titles of about fifty of his dramas, and the fragments extant contain some 700 verses. He seems to have had pretty much the same qualities as Ennius and Pacuvius, manly seriousness of style combined with fervour of spirit. Cicero, who is said to have conversed with him in his boyhood, and others, bear witness to his oratorical force, his gravity, and passionate energy: pro Plancio, §59 gravis et ingeniosus poeta: pro Sest. §120 summus poeta: Ovid, Am. i. 15, 19 animosi Attius oris: Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 55-6 Ambigitur quotiens uter utro sit prior, aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti. Sellar’s Rom. Poets, pp. 146-7. Quintilian gives a shrewd answer of his (v. 13, 43): aiunt Attium interrogatum cur causas non ageret, cum apud eum in tragoediis tanta vis esset optime respondendi, hanc reddidisse rationem: quod illic ea dicerentur quae ipse vellet, in foro dicturi adversarii essent quae minime vellet.

Pacuvius, M. (220-132), the son of Ennius’s sister. Of provincial birth (his birth-place was Brundisium), he could not, according to Cicero, boast the pure Latinity which was the pride of Naevius and Plautus: Brut. §258 Caecilium et Pacuvium male locutos videmus. But in Orat. §36 an imaginary opinion is given as follows:—omnes apud hunc ornati elaboratique versus, multa apud alterum (Ennium) neglegentius. Martial (xi. 90), addressing a wrong-headed admirer of the old poets, jeers at him for delighting in archaisms,—Attonitusque legis terrai frugiferai Attius et quidquid Pacuviusque vomunt. We have about 400 lines extant, which are discussed in Sellar’s Roman Poets, and also by Ribbeck (Römische Tragödie, pp. 216-339). The epithet doctus, in the use of which Horace and Quintilian agree, probably refers to his wide acquaintance with Greek literature: see below.

clarissimi: see Crit. Notes.

nitor: v. on §79: and cp. §§33, 83, 98, 113: §124 cultus ac nitor.

summa manus: Cic. Brut. §126 manus extrema (the ‘finishing touch’) non accessit operibus eius: Cp. i. pr. §4 quasi perfectis omni alio genere doctrinae summam inde eloquentiae manum imponerent. See on §21.

magis ... temporibus: but see Cicero, Brut. l.c. Aetatis illius ista fuit laus, tamquam innocentiae, sic latine loquendi ... omnes tum fere ... recte loquebantur.

virium Attio: cp. Ovid’s ‘animosi oris,’ quoted above: Vell. Paterc. ii. §9 adeo quidem ut in illis limae in hoc paene plus videatur fuisse sanguinis. Persius is less complimentary, Brisaei ... venosus liber Acci (1, 76), the ‘shrivelled volume of the old Bacchanal Accius.’—Quintilian is here only recording current literary opinion: but such references as those at i. 5, 67: 7, 14: 8, 11: v. 10, 84: 13, 43 go far to prove independent knowledge.

doctiorem: cp. Horace’s ‘docti famam senis,’ quoted above.

esse docti adfectant: for the constr. cp. §72 meruit credi secundus: Introd. p. lvi. Cp. Hor. Sat. i. 9, 7 noris nos, inquit, docti sumus, where Professor Wilkins remarks: “The epithet of doctus was especially assumed by those who were versed in Greek literature and mythology, especially the products of the Alexandrine school.” It aptly characterises the artificial tendencies of the literature of the Empire.

Iam—a formula of transition. Kr.3 suggests Nam: see on §12.

I:98 Iam Vari Thyestes cuilibet Graecarum comparari potest. Ovidi Medea videtur mihi ostendere quantum ille vir praestare potuerit si ingenio suo imperare quam indulgere maluisset. Eorum quos viderim longe princeps Pomponius Secundus, quem senes quidem parum tragicum putabant, eruditione ac nitore praestare confitebantur.

§ 98. L. Varius Rufus (64 B.C.-9 A.D.), the friend of Vergil and Horace (Hor. Sat. i. 5, 40: 6, 55), enjoyed a high reputation as an epic poet before he took up tragedy. Macrobius (vi. 1, 39 sq.: i. 2, 19 sq.) gives twelve hexameters of his from an epic poem on Caesar’s death: hence Hor. Sat. i. 10, 51 forte epos acer ut nemo Varius ducit. From a Panegyricus Augusti Horace is said to have borrowed the verses which occur Ep. i. 16, 27-29. Cp. the ode addressed to Agrippa (i. 6) Scriberis Vario ... Maeonii carminis alite. He is mentioned as an epic poet together with Vergil, Ep. ii. 1, 147: A. P. 55. His tragedy Thyestes was performed at the games after the battle of Actium (B.C. 29). Cp. Tac. Dial. 12 Nec ullus Asinii aut Messallae liber tam illustris est quam Medea Ovidii aut Varii Thyestes: Philargyr. on Verg. Ecl. viii. 10 Varium cuius exstat Thyestes tragoedia, omnibus tragicis praeferenda. A quotation from it is given iii. 8, 45. He edited the Aeneid after Vergil’s death, along with Plotius and Tucca: probably prefixing the biographical sketch from which Quintilian quotes x. 3, 8.

Graecarum, sc. fabularum.

Medea: a quotation from it is given viii. 5, 6 servare potui: perdere an possim rogas?

quantum potuerit ... si maluisset: cp. §62. The use of the perf. subj. in such a sentence corresponds to the use of the pf. ind. in oratio recta with verbs implying possibility, duty, right, &c., as if to express the idea more unconditionally: e.g. deleri totus exercitus potuit si fugientes persecuti victores essent (Livy xxxii. 12), So Ventum erat eo ut si hostem similem antiquis Macedonum regibus habuisset consul magna clades accipi potuerit (Livy xliv. 4). Roby, 1568.

ingenio imperare: cp. nimium amator ingenii sui §88.

quos viderim, §118. The subj. seems to be used here on the analogy of the qui of restriction and limitation (Roby 1692): omnium quidem oratorum, quos quidem ego cognoverim, acutissimum iudico Q. Sertorium Brut. §48: cp. §65. The indic. is also used: in iis etiam quos ipsi vidimus xii. 10, 11.

Pomponius Secundus underwent an imprisonment of several years’ duration on account of his friendship with Aelius Gallus, son of Sejanus: Tac. Ann. v. 8 multa morum elegantia et ingenio illustri: ibid. xi. 13: xii. 28, where we are told that he obtained a triumph under Claudius,—modica pars famae eius apud postero, in quis carminum gloria praecellit: Dial. xiii, ne nostris quidem temporibus Secundus Pomponius Afro Domitio vel dignitate vitae vel perpetuitate famae cesserit. One of his plays was called ‘Aeneas.’ He died 60 A.D.

parum tragicum: contrast Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 166 Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet. See Crit. Notes.

I:99 In comoedia maxime claudicamus. Licet Varro Musas, Aeli Stilonis sententia, Plautino dicat sermone locuturas fuisse, si Latine loqui vellent, licet Caecilium veteres laudibus ferant, licet Terenti scripta ad Scipionem Africanum referantur (quae tamen sunt in hoc genere elegantissima, et plus adhuc habitura gratiae si intra versus trimetros stetissent),

§ 99. maxime claudicamus. No doubt this dictum must be taken as implying that ‘the educated taste of Romans under the Empire did not find much that was congenial in the works of Plautus, Caecilius, or Terence’ (Sellar, R. P. p. 154). But Quintilian must also have been biassed by a comparison with Greek Comedy, of the superiority of which we can have only an imperfect appreciation, owing to the scantiness of the survivals; while in depreciating Roman Comedy, as compared with Tragedy, he also had the advantage over us of a full acquaintance with the whole range of the latter. Moreover, it was Satire, not Comedy, that represented at Rome much of the spirit of the old Comedy of Athens. Horace, too, is more severe on Plautus than on Ennius and the tragic poets (Ep. ii. 1, 170: A. P. 270 sq.). Again, in Quintilian’s day the Mimus had so completely re-asserted its position that the production of comedies seems to have almost entirely ceased. “Comedy was not congenial to the educated or the uneducated taste of Romans in the last years of the Republic, and in the early Empire. But, on the other hand, the popularity enjoyed by the old comedy between the time of Naevius and of Terence, and even down to the earlier half of the Ciceronian age, when some of the great parts in Plautus continued to be performed by the ‘accomplished Roscius,’ and the admiration expressed for its authors by grammarians and critics, from Aelius Stilo down to Varro and Cicero, shows its adaptation to an earlier and not less vigorous, if less refined stage of intellectual development; while the actual survival of many Roman comedies can only be accounted for by a more real adaptation to human nature, both in style and substance, than was attained by Roman tragedy in its straining after a higher ideal of sentiment and expression.” Sellar, Roman Poets l.c.

Musas. To this Muretus added ‘Ne illae saepe, si Plautino more loquerentur, meretricio magis quam virginali more loquerentur.’ For the epigram cp. Plato on Aristophanes Αἱ χάριτες τέμενός τι λαβεῖν ὅπερ οὐχὶ πεσεῖται Διζόμεναι ψυχὴν εὗρον Ἀριστοφάνους.

Aeli Stilonis, the first Roman philologist (144-70 B.C.). His name was L. Aelius Praeconinus: he received the additional cognomen Stilo on the ground of his literary eminence. Suet, de Gramm. 2 Aelius cognomine duplici fuit; nam et Praeconinus, quod pater eius praeconium fecerat, vocabatur, et Stilo, quod orationes nobilissimo cuique scribere solebat. Cp. Cic. Brut. §205 scribebat tamen orationes quas alii dicerent: and above, fuit is omnino vir egregius et eques Romanus cum primis honestus idemque eruditissimus et Graecis litteris et Latinis, antiquitatisque nostrae et in inventis rebus et in actis scriptorumque veterum litterate peritus. Quam scientiam Varro noster acceptam ab illo auctamque per sese ... pluribus et illustrioribus litteris explicavit. Varro ap. Gell. N. A. i. 18, 2 L. Aelius noster, litteris ornatissimus memoria nostra: and L. L. vii. 2 homo in primis in litteris latinis exercitatus. Varro was his pupil; and we are told by Gellius (iii. 3, 1) that both master and pupil made lists of the plays of Plautus, Varro distinguishing his classes according to his personal feeling and judgment as to whether a play was worthy of Plautus or not. Cicero tells us (l.c.) that in his youth he was a very diligent student under Aelius; and as Lucilius addressed some of his satires to him he may be looked on as a bond of connection between the two epochs.

sententia: abl. by itself, after the analogy of mea, tua, sententia. Varro took the criticism from his master.

vellent: the possibility is looked upon as still present.

Plautino sermone. Plautus (254-184) fills a very distinct place in the development of Latin comedy. He engrafted the festive traditions of the Italian farce on the literary form which he borrowed from Greece, producing a picture of Roman life and manners which secured for his dramas a degree of popularity that caused them to be represented almost uninterruptedly down even to the fourth century of our era. Modern comedy is under deep obligations to him if only for his spirit of unrestrained fun. See Bernhardy, p. 452 sq.: Teuffel §§84-88: Cruttwell’s Rom. Lit. pp. 43-48: and Sellar’s Roman Poets, p. 189 sq.

Caecilius, Statius (219-166), an Insubrian Gaul by birth, and contemporary with Ennius. Fragments of his plays are preserved by Gellius, who tells us (xv. 24) that Volcatius Sedigitus (a critic who probably belonged to the earlier part of the first century,—Ritschl, Parerga, p. 240 sq.) placed him at the head of all the Roman comic poets: Caecilio palmam statuo dandam comico, Plautus secundus facile exsuperat ceteros. The three next are Naevius, Licinius, and Atilius; Terence comes only sixth on the list. Cicero inclines to the same verdict: de Opt. Gen. Orat. §1 itaque licet dicere et Ennium summum epicum poetam, si cui ita videtur: et Pacuvium tragicum: et Caecilium fortasse comicum. But elsewhere he censures his provincial style: Brutus, §258 Caecilium et Pacuvium male locutos videmus: ad. Att. vii. 3, 10 malus enim auctor Latinitatis est. For other quotations v. de Orat. ii §40: Lael. 99: de Sen. 96: de Fin. i. 4. Nonius (p. 374) quotes Varro as saying In argumentis Caecilius poscit palmam, in ethesi Terentius, in sermonibus Plautus. Horace’s criticism (Ep. ii. 1, 57) is still more familiar: Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro, Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi, Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte. By gravitas Horace probably means the sententious maxims for which he was distinguished (Sellar, p. 202). See Mommsen, ii. 441. Caecilius imitated Menander mainly, to whom Gellius compares him (ii. 23), while admitting the superiority of his Greek model. He is said neither to have amused his audience, like Plautus, by confounding Greek and Roman terms, manners, and customs, &c., nor like Terence, on the other hand, to have carefully excised everything that did not accord with Roman usage. He is said also to have recognised the division of tastes and interests that was now springing up at Rome, and to have begun to address only the higher classes, to whom Plautus had appealed along with ‘the gallery.’

laudibus ferant, for the Ciceronian efferant: Tac. Ann. ii. 13. Cp. Introd. p. l.

Terentii scripta ... elegantissima. The gap between the classes at Rome, alluded to above, had widened in the interval that separates Plautus from Terence (cir. 194-159 B.C.). The educated class was growing more refined and fastidious under the leavening influence of Greek culture, while the uneducated section of the people was gradually becoming coarser and more debased. A leading member of the Scipionic circle, he may be said to have begun the movement by which the creations of the genius of Rome became more perfect as works of art addressed to a smaller circle of men of rank and education, but lost also something of directness of purpose as having less bearing on the passions and interests of the time. The growing appreciation of Greek literature had produced a sense of dissatisfaction with the uncouth efforts of a previous age; and elegance of style, the cultivation of refinement and taste in thought and language, were the objects now aimed at. There is distinctly less of the drollery of the tavern about Terence than about Plautus. The ‘art’ with which Horace credits him (v. above) is seen in the careful finish of his style. Cp. Caesar’s lines, quoted by Sueton. Vit. Terent., in which he calls him puri sermonis amator, and dimidiate Menander. See Sellar, p. 208 sq.: Mommsen, vol. iii. p. 449 sq.

ad Scipionem Africanum. Cp. Sueton. Vit. Ter. (Roth. p. 293) non obscura fama est adiutum Terentium in scriptis a Laelio et Scipione, eamque ipse auxit nunquam nisi leviter refutare conatus, ut in prologo Adelphorum: Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Hunc adiutare adsidueque una scribere, &c. The rumour may have arisen from the fact of his Carthaginian origin, which renders all the more remarkable the success with which he cultivated a refined and elegant style.

plus adhuc = etiam plus: see on §71.

habitura. For this use of the fut. part, in a conditional sentence cp. xi. 1, 74 detracturus alioqui plurimum auctoritatis sibi si eum se esse qui temere nocentes reos susciperet fateretur. So too §119 below (without a si clause): pronuntiatio vel scaenis suffectura.

intra versus trimetros. This is a curious criticism, but it can be paralleled from Priscian, de Metris Terentii: quosdam vel abnegare esse in Terentii comoediis metra, vel ea quasi arcana quaedam et ab omnibus doctis semota sibi solis esse cognita confirmare. The vagaries of comic prosody were certainly not appreciated by ancient critics: they could not excuse what to them seemed carelessness and undue freedom from constraint: cp. Cicero, Orat. §184 at comicorum senarii propter similitudinem sermonis sic saepe sunt abiecti ut nonnunquam vix in eis numerus et versus intellegi possit. Quintilian and others would no doubt have preferred a stricter imitation of Menander’s versification. Horace himself took the same point of view in writing about Plautus, Ep. ii. 1, 272 si modo ego et vos ... legitimumque sonum digitis callemus et aure. Cp. Bernhardy, 325 n. and 350 n.

I:100 vix levem consequimur umbram: adeo ut mihi sermo ipse Romanus non recipere videatur illam solis concessam Atticis venerem, cum eam ne Graeci quidem in alio genere linguae suae obtinuerint. Togatis excellit Afranius: utinam non inquinasset argumenta puerorum foedis amoribus mores suos fassus.

§ 100. vix levem ... umbram: a proverbial expression, from the same disparaging point of view as claudicamus, above.

alio genere linguae suae, i.e. another dialect. The charm referred to is the peculiar property of Attic writers generally,—not the comic poets alone. Latin is too formal and rhetorical to fall into the simple naturalness and directness of Attic Greek. For suae see Crit. Notes.

Togatis, sc. fabulis. The Comoediae Togatae (though founded on Greek models) aspired to be thoroughly national in dress, manners, and tone: quae scriptae sunt secundum ritus et habitum togatorum, i.e. Romanorum (Diom. iii. p. 489). On the other hand, in the Palliatae of Plautus, Caecilius and Terence (so called from pallium, the Greek actor’s cloak, xi. 3, 143), all the surroundings are meant to be Greek, though much of the fun of the Plautine comedy is the result of the inconsistencies that sprang from the introduction into Greek circumstances of Roman names, scenes, manners, and characters.

Afranius, fl. cir. 150 B.C. He was the chief writer of togatae, and began to aim at getting rid altogether of Greek surroundings: and so comedy, descending into the low humours of Italian country life, and specially the debaucheries of the Italian towns, rapidly degenerated into farce. He borrowed freely from Menander: dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro, Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 57,—‘Menander’s speeches came very well from the characters of Afranius.’ Cic. de Fin. i. 3, 7. But he did not confine his attentions to Menander only: Macrob. Sat. vi. 1, 4 Afranius togatarum scriptor ... non inverecunde respondens arguentibus quod plura sumpsisset a Menandro, ‘Fateor,’ inquit, ‘sumpsi non ab illo modo sed ut quisque habuit conveniret quod mihi, quodque me non melius facere credidi, etiam a Latino.’ Cicero, Brut. §167 L. Afranius poeta, homo perargutus, in fabulis quidem etiam, ut scitis, disertus.

utinam non, i. 2, 6: ix. 3, 1: more usually utinam ne: Cic. ad Fam. 5, 17 illud utinam ne vere scriberem: Catull. 64, 171. Krüger (3rd ed.) cites however Cic. ad Att. xi. 9, 3 haec ad te die natali meo scripsi: quo utinam susceptus non essem aut ne quid ex eadem matre postea natum esset.

foedis amoribus: cp. Auson. Epigr. 71 vitiosa libido ... quam toga facundi scenis agitavit Afrani.

I:101 At non historia cesserit Graecis. Nec opponere Thucydidi Sallustium verear, nec indignetur sibi Herodotus aequari Titum Livium, cum in narrando mirae iucunditatis clarissimique candoris, tum in contionibus supra quam enarrari potest eloquentem: ita quae dicuntur omnia cum rebus, tum personis accommodata sunt: adfectus quidem praecipueque eos qui sunt dulciores, ut parcissime dicam, nemo historicorum commendavit magis.

§ 101. cesserit. So §85 auspicatissimum dederit exordium: cp. cesserimus §86. There is no need for Halm’s suggestion in historia cesserimus: or Spalding’s cesserim with historia in abl. Cp. Cicero, de Legg. i. 2, 5 ut in hoc etiam genere Graeciae nihil cedamus, and the whole passage.

Sallustium. This is a bold statement. Sallust evidently accepted Thucydides as his literary model, imitating his style, and following him in his speeches and the general arrangement of his work. (Capes’ Sallust: Introd. p. 13 sq.). Brevity (cp. illa Sallustiana brevitas §32) is a conspicuous feature in both: but the brevity of Thucydides is greatly the result of inability to keep pace with the rush of thought, whereas that of Sallust is often laboured and artificial, and is attained by conscious processes of excision and compression. Cp. iv. 2, 45 vitanda est etiam illa Sallustiana (quamquam in ipso virtutis obtinet locum) brevitas et abruptum sermonis genus: Seneca, Ep. 114, 17 Sallustio vigente amputatae sententiae et verba ante exspectatum cadentia et obscura brevitas fuere pro cultu: Aul. Gell. iii. 1, 6 Sallustium subtilissimum brevitatis artificem. His Grecisms are referred to by Quint. ix. 3, 17 ex Graeco vero translata vel Sallustii plurima. According to Suetonius (Gramm. 10 extr.) Ateius exhorted Asinius Pollio (ut) vitet maxime obscuritatem Sallustii et audaciam in translationibus. For the high esteem in which he was held in antiquity cp. Velleius ii. 36, 2 aemulum Thucydidi Sallustium: Tacitus, Ann. iii. 30 rerum Romanarum florentissimus auctor: Martial xiv. 191 primus Romana Crispus in historia. See Teuffel §§203-205. In modern times Milton exalted him above Tacitus, saying of the latter that ‘his highest praise consists in his having imitated Sallust with all his might.’ On the other hand Scaliger spoke of Sallust’s style as ‘anxium atque insiticium dicendi genus.’

Titum Livium. Quintilian’s estimate of Livy is very happily expressed so far as it goes. He ignores of course the defects which are obvious to modern students of Livy,—his want of that historic sense which shows itself in ability to trace the gradual development of institutions and to take a philosophic view of general political and social conditions, his indifference to the scrupulous collation and weighing of evidence, and his neglect of chronological and geographical precision. Munro in his ‘Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus’ speaks of Livy’s style as the greatest prose style that has ever been written in any age or language, and certainly it has all the beauties which Quintilian mentions here: besides, the happy adaptation of the language to the ever-varying phases of the subject is one of its greatest charms. Teuffel, §251 sq. The best proof of Livy’s popularity in ancient times may be found in the story of the man from Gades, Pliny, Ep. ii. 3, 8 Nunquamne legisti Gaditanum quendam Titi Livi nomine gloriaque commotum ad visendum eum ab ultimo terrarum orbe venisse statimque ut viderat abisse?

narrando ... contionibus. This antithesis is common in Dionysius: διηγήσεσιν ... δημηγορίαις (ad Pomp. p. 776 R, Us. pp. 58-9) τὸ διηγηματικὸν μέρος ... τὸ δημηγορικόν (Iud. de Thucyd.) p. 952 R.

candoris, ‘transparency’: ii. 5, 19 candidissimum quemque et maxime expositum velim, ut Livium a pueris magis quam Sallustium: etsi hic historiae maior est auctor, ad quem tamen intellegendum iam profectu opus sit: §32 lactea ubertas. Cp. dulcis et candidus et fusus Herodotus §73, where see note: §113 nitidus et candidus.—In a different sense, Seneca, Suas. vi. 22, ut est natura candidissimus omnium magnorum ingeniorum aestimator T. Livius.

contionibus. The speeches are introduced in order to give a portrait of some one (xlv. 25, 3), or to indicate motives (viii. 7: iii. 47, 5). Though they make no claim to historical truth (in hanc sententiam locutum accipio iii. 67, 1), they generally give a trustworthy picture of the circumstances and character of the speaker: cp. e.g. vii. 34. In some instances we can see how Livy rhetorically enlarges on the brief hints of a predecessor: cp. Polyb. iii. 64 with Liv. xxi. 40 sq. Teuffel §252, 12.

supra quam: cp. Sall. Cat. 5, 3 supra quam cuiquam credibile est: Iug. 24, 5: Cicero, Orator §139 saepe supra feret quam fieri posset (cp. de Nat. Deor. ii. §136). Quintilian has inenarrabilis xi. 3, 177, which occurs also in Livy xliv. 5, 1: xli. 15, 2.

eloquentem: viii. 1, 3 Tito Livio, mirae facundiae viro: Tac. Agr. 10 Livius veterum Fabius Rusticus recentium eloquentissimi auctores: Ann. iv. 34 T. Livius eloquentiae ac fidei praeclarus in primis: Seneca, de Ira i. 20, 6 apud disertissimum virum Livium.

adfectus: §48 adfectus quidem, vel illos mites vel hos concitatos: ‘the softer passions.’

parcissime: cp. below, 4 §4 qui parcissime: xi. 1, 66: 3, 100.

commendavit magis: ‘has set in a fairer light,’ ‘represented more perfectly’ (‘hat angemessen und eindringlich dargestellt.’—Bonnell-Meister). Spalding felt a difficulty about this word, but rightly suggested that it means ‘approbavit suis lectoribus,’—a meaning to which ut parcissime dicam is quite appropriate. The nearest parallel is iv. 1, 13 Nam tum dignitas eius (litigatoris) adlegatur, tum commendatur infirmitas (‘set in a strong light,’ ‘made much of’),—where too the verb is used absolutely, without a dative. The usual construction is found v. 11, 38 misericordiam commendabo iudici. In the sense of ‘set off’ (ornare), without a dat., we have quae memoria complecteretur actio commendaret viii. Prooem. 6: quaedam ... virtus haec sola commendat ix. 4, 13: hoc oratio recta, illud figura declinata commendat x. 5, 8.—For the reading commodavit see Crit. Notes.

I:102 Ideoque immortalem Sallusti velocitatem diversis virtutibus consecutus est. Nam mihi egregie dixisse videtur Servilius Nonianus, pares eos magis quam similes; qui et ipse a nobis auditus est clarus vi ingenii et sententiis creber, sed minus pressus quam historiae auctoritas postulat.

§ 102. immortalem: so §86, where it is more appropriate.

velocitatem: ‘rapid brevity.’ It is the quality which Dionysius denotes by τὸ τάχος τῆς ἀπαγγελίας p. 870 R. Cp. Hor. Sat i. 10, 9 Est brevitate opus ut currat sententia,—quoted on §73 brevis et semper instans sibi Thucydides, where see note. Arist. Rhet. iii. 16, 4 ταχεῖαν διήγησιν. So celeritas xii. 10, 65 hanc vim et celeritatem in Pericle miratur Eupolis: Eupolis having said of Pericles ταχὺς λέγειν μέν, πρὸς δέ γ᾽ αὐτῷ τῷ τάχει πειθώ τις (Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 535).

consecutus est, lit. = ‘equalled in point of fame’: the real object is not velocitatem, so that the idea is awkwardly expressed. Quintilian means that by other good points (cp. §73 diversis virtutibus) Livy obtained a degree of fame not inferior to what Sallust gained by his ‘velocitas.’ It is in fact a brachyology for ‘immortalitatem illius Sallustianae velocitatis.’ Cp. Cic. Phil. xiv. 35 parem virtutis gloriam consecuta est (legio): Quint. iii. 7, 9 quod immortalitatem virtute sint consecuti. See Crit. Notes.

Servilius Nonianus. In mentioning his death (A.D. 60) along with that of Domitius Afer (§86), Tacitus says that he rivalled the latter’s abilities and surpassed his morals:—summis honoribus et multa eloquentia viguerant, ille orando causas, Servilius diu foro, mox tradendis rebus Romanis celebris et elegantia vitae, quam clariorem effecit, ut par ingenio, ita morum diversus. Cp. Dial. ch. 23 eloquentia ... Servilii Noniani. Like most of the Roman historians, except Livy, he was a man of affairs. Pliny, N. H. xxviii. 2, 5 princeps civitatis. He was the friend—possibly at one time the teacher—of the satirist Persius, who is said to have reverenced him as a father (coluit ut patrem). Pliny tells us (Ep. i. 13, 3) how Claudius, on hearing the thunders of applause that greeted his recitations, entered the building and seated himself unobserved among the audience: memoria parentura Claudium Caesarem ferunt, cum in palatio spatiaretur andissetque clamorem, causam requisisse, cumque dictum esset recitare Nonianum, subitum recitanti inopinantique venisse.

et ipse. Quintilian had not only read his works, but had heard him: he would be between twenty and twenty-five when Servilius died.—For et ipse see on §31.

clarus vi ingenii: see Crit. Notes.

sententiis creber; cp. §68 sententiis densus. For sententiis (γνώμαις) cp. §60 §61: 2 §17. He was full of point and matter, but not concise enongh for the dignity of history. For pressus v. §44.

I:103 Quam paulum aetate praecedens eum Bassus Aufidius egregie, utique in libris belli Germanici, praestitit genere ipso, probabilis in omnibus, sed in quibusdam suis ipse viribus minor.

§ 103. Bassus Aufidius. Tacitus mentions him along with Servilius Nonianus, Dial. 23, where he speaks of antiquarians ‘quibus eloquentia Aufidii Bassi aut Servilii Noniani ex comparatione Sisennae aut Varronis sordet.’ Seneca gives some account of him in his thirtieth letter: §1 Bassum Aufidium, virum optimum, vidi quassum, aetati obluctantem: §3 Bassus tamen noster alacer animo est. hoc philosophia praestat. Cp. §§5, 10, 14. His history probably ended with the reign of Claudius, at which point Pliny the elder took it up: N. H. praef. 20 diximus ... temporum nostrorum historiam, orsi a fine Aufidii Bassi. The ‘libri Belli Germanici’ may have been an independent work.—The practice of placing the cognomen before the gentile name grew under the Empire: many instances are found even in Cicero’s letters, but not in the ordinary prose of the Republic; cp. §86, and Introd. p. lv.

genere ipso = ‘gerade durch den Stil’ (Kiderlin)—as being suitable to historiae auctoritas. Quintilian often uses genus in this sense (without dicendi): often with an adj. like rectum, but often also without, e.g. x. 2, 18 noveram quosdam &c.: 2 §23 uni alicui generi. For the reading, see Crit. Notes.—From the specimens (on the death of Cicero) given by Seneca the rhetorician (Suas. vi. 18 and 23), we should infer that the style of Bassus was rather affected and pretentious.

I:104 Superest adhuc et exornat aetatis nostrae gloriam vir saeculorum memoria dignus, qui olim nominabitur, nunc intellegitur. Habet amatores nec immerito Cremuti libertas, quamquam circumcisis quae dixisse ei nocuerat; sed elatum abunde spiritum et audaces sententias deprehendas etiam in his quae manent. Sunt et alii scriptores boni, sed nos genera degustamus, non bibliothecas excutimus.

§ 104. Superest. The fact that Cremutius put an end to his life in A.D. 25 is sufficient to disprove the theory that he is referred to here: superest when taken along with exornat aetatis nostrae gloriam cannot mean anything but superstes est (cp. supersunt 2 §28).—The Bonnell-Meister edition (1882) understands the reference to be to Tacitus: but though admirers of Tacitus would like to appropriate for him the phrase vir saeculorum memoria dignus, this can hardly be accepted. In the first place the words superest adhuc are, in their natural sense, inapplicable to one who had not published anything when Quintilian wrote (about 93 A.D.). He has just spoken of Servilius, who is known to have died in A.D. 60, and of Aufidius, who was old and frail in Seneca’s life-time, i.e. before A.D. 65: and though it may be proposed to take superest adhuc as meaning simply ‘I have still to refer to (a living writer),’ (cp. supersunt §123), in which sense the words might apply to Tacitus, it seems extremely improbable that after speaking of a youthful contemporary, Quintilian would in the next sentence return to Cremutius, who died as far back as A.D. 25. It might be argued that the point of the passage is that, after this indirect eulogy of Tacitus, the writer means to imply that the spirit of Cremutius still survives in him: ‘there is with us now one who will afterwards be famous but of whom we may not speak at present. The independence of Cremutius is still appreciated.’ But habet amatores will hardly cover this interpretation: it introduces a critique of Cremutius which has no relation to what goes before. And moreover it is doubtful whether Quintilian, who never mentions any living writer, except Domitian, would have hazarded a reference to one whose anti-imperial tendencies must have been so well known in Rome. Krüger’s supposition (3rd ed. p. 97) that after adhuc the name Tacitus has fallen out, or that we should write ‘superest Tacitus et ornat,’ is altogether out of the question: it would quite destroy the point of the sentence (nominabitur ... intellegitur). It seems safest, therefore, to follow those who with Nipperdey (Philol. vi. p. 193) understand the historian here meant to be Fabius Rusticus. It would have been strange if Quintilian had omitted to mention him, considering his eminence: Livius veterum, Fabius Rusticus recentium eloquentissimi auctores, Tac. Agr. 10. And what he says fits Fabius very well; he was an intimate friend of Seneca (Tac. Ann. xiii. 20 sane Fabius inclinat ad laudes Senecae cuius amicitia floruit), and from the fact that he was made co-heir with Tacitus and Pliny in the will of Dasumius we know that he was still alive 108 or 109 A.D. Mommsen thinks that to him also is addressed Pliny, Ep. ix. 29.

vir saeculorum memoria dignus: Cp. §80: iii. 7, 18 ingeniorum monumenta, quae saeculis probarentur: xi. 1, 13 perpetua saeculorum admiratione celebrantur.

olim, of future time, as §94. The writer referred to will come actually to enjoy the renown of which Quint. here declares him worthy.

nunc intellegitur. For Quint.’s rule not to mention living writers cp. iii. 1, 21, quoted at §95; and for the antithesis between nominabitur and intellegitur, xi. 1, 10 maluit emim vir sapientissimus (Socrates) quod superesset ex vita sibi perire quam quod praeterisset. Et quando ab hominibus sui temporis parum intellegebatur, posterorum se iudiciis reservavit brevi detrimento iam ultimae senectutis aevum saeculorum omnium consecutus.

Cremuti libertas: παρρησία, §65, §94. Cremutius Cordus published a history of the Civil Wars and of the reign of Augustus—unius saeculi facta, Sen. Cons. ad Marc. 26, 5. Augustus is said to have read the work, or to have heard it read, without disapproval (Dion. 57, 24, 2; Sueton. Tib. 61). He afterwards incurred the displeasure of Sejanus by some bold remarks, as, for example, when he said in regard to the statue of Sejanus which he was told the Senate had resolved to erect in Pompey’s theatre, restored by Tiberius after a fire, ‘tunc vere theatrum perire’—Sen. Cons. ad Marc. 22, 4. In A.D. 25 he was brought to trial ‘novo ac tunc primum audito crimine, quod editis annalibus laudatoque M. Bruto C. Cassium Romanorum ultimum dixisset’ (Tac. Ann. iv. 34 sq.). Finding his case prejudged, after a spirited defence he went home and starved himself to death. The Senate ordered his books to be burned: ‘sed manserunt,’ says Tacitus, ‘occultati et editi.’ Dion. tells us that ‘afterwards (i.e. under Caligula) they were published again, for they had been preserved by various people, and particularly by his daughter Marcia; and they were esteemed much more highly on account of the fate of Cordus’ (lvii. 24). For Marcia v. Senecae Consolatio ad Marciam c. 1. Suet. Calig. 16 tells us that the suppressed writings of others also (Titus Labienus and Cassius Severus) were allowed by Caligula to come again into circulation, after a process of editing similar to that referred to by Quint. (circumcisis, &c.). Tacitus’s reflections on the ineffectual attempt to destroy Cremutius’s works are interesting in connection with our passage: quo magis socordiam eorum inridere licet, qui praesenti potentia credunt extingui posse etiam sequentis aevi memoriam. Nam contra, punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, neque aliud externi reges aut qui eadem saevitia usi sunt, nisi dedecus sibi atque illis gloriam peperere, Ann. iv. 35 ad fin.

abunde: used here to emphasise elatum: v. on §94.

spiritus, §§44, 61; 3 §22. The excisions and emendations in regard to matters of detail had evidently not interfered with the independent tone of Cremutius’s writings.

alii scriptores, συγγραφεῖς: the word being used specially of historians. He has not mentioned Caesar, or Nepos, or Velleius, or Quintus Curtius.

degustamus: ‘dipping into’: 5 §23 inchoatae et quasi degustatae. The opposite is persequi: §45 genera ipsa lectionum ... persequar.

I:105 Oratores vero vel praecipue Latinam eloquentiam parem facere Graecae possunt; nam Ciceronem cuicumque eorum fortiter opposuerim. Nec ignoro quantam mihi concitem pugnam, cum praesertim non id sit propositi ut eum Demostheni comparem hoc tempore; neque enim attinet, cum Demosthenen in primis legendum vel ediscendum potius putem.

§ 105. parem facere. Cicero uses aequare in a passage of the Brutus (§138), in which, speaking of Antonius and Crassus, he says: nam ego sic existimo, hos oratores fuisse maximos et in his primum cum Graecorum gloria Latine dicendi copiam aequatam. In the Silver Age, the phrase paria facere commonly occurs for ‘settling up’: e.g. nihil differamus. cotidie cum vita paria faciamus Sen. Ep. 101, 7. A near parallel to the passage in the text is ii. 8, 13 ea cura paria faciet iis in quibus eminebat.—Other reff. to Cicero’s pre-eminence are vi. 3, 1 Latinae eloquentiae princeps: xii. 1, 20 stetisse ipsum (Ciceronem) in fastigio eloquentiae fateor.

cuicumque, §12. The use of quicumque (which in classical Latin is joined with a verb) for quivis or quilibet (which are used absolutely) may be noted as a sign of the decay of the language. Cp. note on §12: Roby §2289.—For eorum Andresen and Jeep propose Graecorum.

fortiter opposuerim. The adv. is not merely one of manner: it conveys the expression of a judgment, ‘nicht die Art und Weise, sondern ein Urteil über die Handlung,’ Becher. So ‘inique Castorem cum Domitio comparo,’ Cicero, pro Deiot. §31. Cp. i, 5, 72 fortiter diceremus: v. 10, 78 fortiter ... iunxerim.—Roby (1540) gives numerous examples of this use of subj. (involving a suppressed condition such as ‘if occasion arose’) with such adverbs as merito, facile, lubenter, citius.

quantam ... pugnam: owing to the existing prejudice against the style of Cicero. Cp. Tac. Dial. 12 Plures hodie reperies qui Ciceronis gloriam quam qui Vergilii detrectent: ibid. 18 Satis constat ne Ciceroni quidem obtrectatores defuisse, quibus inflatus et tumens nec satis pressus, sed supra modum exsultans et superfluens et parum Atticus videretur. Legistis utique et Calvi et Bruti ad Ciceronem missas epistulas ex quibus facile est deprehendere Calvum quidem Ciceroni visum exsanguem et aridum, Brutum autem otiosum atque diiunctum, rursus Ciceronem a Calvo quidem male audisse tamquam solutum et enervem, a Bruto autem, ut ipsius verbis utar, tamquam fractum atque elumbem.—Hortensius had been from B.C. 95 the Latin representative of Asianism. Under the influence of his teachers, the Rhodian eclectics, Cicero emancipated himself from this school without, on the other hand, binding himself by the most rigorous canons of Atticism. His critics, who adhered to severer models, considered the fulness and richness of his style turgidity and bombast, and pointed to his elaborately periodic structure and rhythmical amplitude as proving that he was really an Asianist in disguise. Besides Brutus and Calvus, mentioned above (cp. Quint, xii. 1, 22), there were the Asinii, father and son (etiam inimice, ibid.), and Caelius. Asinius Gallus wrote a work de comparatione patris et Ciceronis, which was controverted by the emperor Claudius: Plin. Epist. vii. 4 §6 libros Galli ... quibus ille parenti ausus de Cicerone dare est palmamque decusque: Sueton. Claud. 41. Cicero, on the other hand, thought that his Atticising critics were too apt to forget (what he asks Atticus to remember) that the ‘thunders of Demosthenes show that the Attic style is quite consistent with the highest degree of grandeur’—si recordabere Δημοσθένους fulmina, tum intelliges posse et ἀττικώτατα gravissime dici, ad Att. xv. 1, ad fin. Quintilian denounces them in strong language, xii. 10, §§12-14 A. At L. M. Tullium non illum habemus Euphranorem circa plures artium species praestantem, sed in omnibus quae in quoque laudantur eminentissimum. Quem tamen et suorum homines temporum incessere audebant ut tumidiorem et Asianum et redundantem et in repetitionibus nimium et in salibus aliquando frigidum et in compositione fractum, exultantem ac paene, quod procul absit, viro molliorem: postea vero quam triumvirati proscriptione consumptus est, passim qui oderant, qui invidebant, qui aemulabantur, adulatores etiam praesentis potentiae non responsurum invaserunt. Ille tamen, qui ieiunus a quibusdam et aridus habetur, non aliter ab ipsis inimicis male audire quam nimiis floribus et ingenii adfluentia potuit. Falsum utrumque, sed tamen illa mentiendi propior occasio. Praecipue vero presserunt eum qui videri Atticorum imitatores concupierant. Haec manus quasi quibusdam sacris initiata ut alienigenam et parum superstitiosum devinctumque illis legibus insequebatur, unde nunc quoque aridi et exsuci et exsangues. Hi sunt enim qui suae imbecillitati sanitatis appellationem, quae est maxime contraria, obtendant: qui quia clariorem vim eloquentiae velut solem ferre non possunt, umbra magni nominis (i.e. Athens) delitescunt. In Quintilian’s own day (cp. nunc quoque above) a certain Largius Licinus wrote a work which he called Ciceromastix, repeating the criticisms of Asinius Gallus: cp. Aul. Gell. xvii. 1, 1 nonnulli tam prodigiosi tamque vaecordes exstiterunt in quibus sunt Gallus Asinius et Largius Licinus, cuius liber etiam fertur infando titulo ‘Ciceromastix,’ ut scribere ausi sint M. Ciceronem parum integre atque improprie atque inconsiderate locutum. These rigid Atticists appear to have ignored, as Sandys has pointed out (Introd. to Orator, p. lxii), the ‘difference between the two languages, between the power and breadth and compass of Greek as compared with the more limited resources of Latin.’ Mr. Sandys appends an apt quotation from J. H. Newman (in H. Thompson’s Rom. Lit.—Encyc. Metrop. p. 307, ed. 1852):—‘Greek is celebrated for copiousness in its vocabulary and perspicuity in its phrases; and the consequent facility of expressing the most novel or abstruse ideas with precision and elegance. Hence the Attic style of eloquence was plain and simple, because simplicity and plainness were not incompatible with clearness, energy, and harmony. But it was a singular want of judgment, an ignorance of the very principles of composition, which induced Brutus, Calvus, Sallust, and others to imitate this terse and severe beauty in their own defective language, and even to pronounce the opposite kind of diction deficient in taste and purity. In Greek, indeed, the words fall, as it were, naturally, into a distinct and harmonious order; and from the exuberant richness of the materials, less is left to the ingenuity of the artist. But the Latin language is comparatively weak, scanty, and unmusical; and requires considerable skill and management to render it expressive and graceful. Simplicity in Latin is scarcely separable from baldness; and justly as Terence is celebrated for chaste and unadorned diction, yet even he, compared with Attic writers, is flat and heavy (Quint. x. 1, §100).’ Cp. for a similar contrast Quint. xii. 10, §§27-39.

cum praesertim: Krüger (3rd ed.) gives the sense as follows, ‘especially since I do not intend to prove my statement by a detailed comparison’: following Becher (but see Crit. Notes), who thinks that Quint. means to say that the pugna will be all the more violent because he does not intend to go into a detailed comparison. Such a comparison would be out of place (neque enim attinet), as he is not denying the supreme excellence of Demosthenes. Cum praesertim means that there is all the less reason for controversy as he does not intend to compare the two: it gives an additional ground for what is really, if not formally, the main idea in the writer’s mind, viz. the needlessness of a pugna at this point. Hence it comes to have the force of quamvis, or idque cum tamen: tr. ‘and that though,’ ‘though indeed,’ ‘which is all the less necessary because,’ etc. Cp. Cic. de Fin. ii. 8, 25 cum praesertim in eo omne studium poneret,—where see Madvig’s note: in Verr. ii. 113 ut ex oppido Thermis nihil ex sacro, nihil de publico attingeres, cum praesertim essent multa praeclara, &c., i.e. ‘which is all the more wonderful because’—very much as in our text: Philipp. viii. 2, 5 C. quidem Caesar non expectavit vestra decreta, praesertim cum illud aetatis erat—i.e. as he might well have done at his age: ibid. ii. 64 inventus est nemo praeter Antonium, praesertim cum tot essent, &c.: i.e. which was all the more remarkable as, &c.: Brutus, §267 M. Bibulus qui et scriptitavit adcurate, cum praesertim non esset orator, et, &c., i.e. ‘and that too though’: de Off. ii. 56: Orator §32 nec vero si historiam non scripsisset (Thucydides) nomen eius exstaret, cum praesertim fuisset honoratus et nobilis. Roby §1732: Nägelsbach8, pp. 695-6.

propositi: for the gen. cp. iv. 2, 21 quid acti sit: quid tui consilii sit (Cic. ad Att. xii. 29, 2: Caes. B. G. i. 21, 2): quid offici sui sit Cic. Acad. Pr. ii. §25, with Dr. Reid’s note.

hoc tempore: Demosthenes and Cicero are eulogised together, xii. 1, §§14-22.

neque enim attinet, i.e. nor would there be any point in such a controversy. They have no need to draw the sword against me, for I too give Demosthenes the highest place. In exalting Cicero I do not mean to depreciate Demosthenes. Cp. Tac. Dial. 25 quo modo inter Atticos primae Demostheni tribuuntur ... sic apud nos Cicero quidem ceteros eorundem temporum disertos antecessit.

I:106 Quorum ego virtutes plerasque arbitror similes, consilium, ordinem, dividendi, praeparandi, probandi rationem, [omnia] denique quae sunt inventionis. In eloquendo est aliqua diversitas: densior ille hic copiosior, ille concludit adstrictius hic latius, pugnat ille acumine semper hic frequenter et pondere, illi nihil detrahi potest huic nihil adici, curae plus in illo in hoc naturae.

§ 106. consilium: vi. 5 §3 consilium vero ratio est quaedam alte petita et plerumque plura perpendens et comparans habensque in se et inventionem et iudicationem: §11 illud dicere satis habeo, nihil esse non modo in orando, sed in omni vita prius consilio, and the whole passage from §9 to end: ii. 13, 2 res in oratore praecipua consilium est, quia varie et ad rerum momenta convertitur. This ‘tact’ or ‘judgment’ would be specially shown in inventio and in dispositio, here made a part of inventio: elocutio is a higher gift. Cp. viii, Pr. §14 M. Tullius inventionem quidem ac dispositionem prudentis hominis putat, eloquentiam oratoris: Cicero, de Orat. ii. 120 cum haec duo nobis quaerenda sint in causis, primum quid [inventio], deinde quomodo [elocutio] dicamus, alterum ... prudentiae est paene mediocris [quid dicendum sit videre]: alterum est, in quo oratoris vis illa divina virtusque cernitur, ea quae dicenda sunt ornate copiose varieque dicere; Orator §44 nam et invenire et iudicare quid dicas magna illa quidem sunt et tamquam animi instar in corpore, sed propria magis prudentiae quam eloquentiae.

ordinem (τάξιν): ordo corresponds to dispositio iii. 3, 8. In vii. 1, 1 the two are separately defined: ordo recta quaedam collocatio prioribus sequentia adnectens: dispositio utilis rerum ac partium in locos distributio.

dividendi. Divisio is defined, along with partitio, in vii. 1, 1: divisio rerum plurium in singulas, partitio singularum in partes discretio. Here dividendi ratio is used in a more general sense, as equivalent to partitio in iv. 5: i.e. nostrarum aut adversarii propositionum aut utrarumque ordine collocata enumeratio. Of this useful process Quintilian says (iv. 5, 22): neque enim solum id efficit ut clariora fiant quae dicuntur, rebus velut ex turba extractis et in conspectu iudicum positis, sed reficit quoque audientem certo singularum partium fine, non aliter quam facientibus iter multum detrahunt fatigationis notata inscriptis lapidibus spatia.—Kiderlin (Hermes 23, p. 176) thinks it remarkable that divisio should here be ranked alongside of praeparandi, probandi rationem, whereas in iii. 3, 1 it stands independently alongside of inventio itself. He sees no difference between ordinem and dividendi rationem (iii. 3, 8), and suggests that in the MSS. readings (videndi and indicendi) there may be concealed some noun to correspond with ordinem: e.g. viam dicendi (‘der Gang der Reden’): cp. iv. 5, 3: x. 7, 5. But in x. 7, 9 we have both ordo and dispositio, in spite of iii. 3, 8, and so it is here.

praeparandi: iii. 9, 7 expositio enim probationum est praeparatio, nec esse utilis potest nisi prius constiterit, quid debeat de probatione promittere. A less formal use occurs x. 1 §21: cp. iv. 2 §55.

probandi rationem = confirmationem, the establishment of the case. Understanding the passage to contain an enumeration of the five parts of an oration (exordium, narratio, probatio, refutatio, and peroratio), Kiderlin takes probandi here as covering the third and fourth, which were often considered one part. Praeparandi = exordium, and the peroratio is omitted, because here Demosthenes and Cicero were unlike, for the reason given below (§107). In order to include narratio, he proposes to insert narrandi after praeparandi: it may easily, he thinks, have fallen out after -arandi. It is always included in similar enumerations: ii. 5, 7-8: ii. 13, 1: iv. pr. 6: x. 2, 27.

[omnia] denique quae sunt inventionis: see Crit. Notes. ‘Inventio,’ the orator’s first requisite, may of course be shown in all the various parts of a speech, e.g. narratio, divisio, confirmatio, as here. But in the antithesis between inventionis and in eloquendo Quintilian is thinking of that fundamental distinction between substance and form on which he based his treatment of his subject. Applying a rough division to his work, we may say that Books iii. to vii. deal with inventio including dispositio, i.e. εὕρεσις and τάξις: while Books viii-xi. treat of elocutio (λέξις), including actio or pronuntiatio, ‘delivery’ (ὑπόκρισις). So Cicero in the Orator §43 introduces a description of the ideal orator in the three relations of (1) inventio—quid dicat (εὕρεσις): (2) collocatio or dispositio—quo quidque loco (τάξις), and (3) actio or pronuntiatio (ὑπόκρισις): and elocutio (λέξις)—quo modo. Quintilian in iii. 3 gives in more detail the traditional parts of rhetoric: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, pronuntiatio (or actio). See §§1-9. For the division here cp. also xii. 10, 27 Latina mihi facundia, ut inventione, dispositione, consilio, ceteris huius generis artibus similis Graecae ac prorsus discipula eius videtur, ita circa rationem eloquendi vix habere imitationis locum.

aliqua diversitas: Morawski (Quaest. p. 33) thinks that this passage may be founded on a tractate by Caecilius (contemporary with Dion. Hal.), which is mentioned by Plutarch, Dem. 3 σύγκρισις τοῦ Δημοσθένους καὶ Κικέρωνος. A parallel passage is found in the περὶ ὕψους (Sp. i. p. 261), the author of which may also have borrowed from Caecilius:—ὁ μὲν γὰρ (Δημοσθένης) ἐν ὕψει τὸ πλέον ἀποτόμῳ, ὁ δὲ Κικέρων ἐν χύσει, καὶ ὁ μὲν ἡμέτερος διὰ τὸ μετὰ βίας ἕκαστα, ἔτι δὲ τάχους, ῥώμης, δεινότητος οἷον καίειν τε ἅμα καὶ διαρπάζειν, σκηπτῷ τινι παρεικάζοιτ᾽ ἂν ἢ κεραυνῷ, ὁ δὲ Κικέρων ὡς ἀμφιλαφής τις ἐμπρησμὸς οἶμαι πάντη νέμεται καὶ ἀνειλεῖται.... Cp. Introd. p. xxxviii.

densior: §76 tam densa omnia: so of Thucydides §73 densus et brevis.

concludit, not, as Bonnell = ratiocinatur (xii. 2, 25), but of the ‘rounding off’ of a period: ix. 4, 22, περίοδον quae est vel ambitus vel circumductum vel continuatio vel conclusio. Cp. Cic. Brutus §33 verborum ... quaedam ad numerum conclusio: cp. §34 below, concluditque sententiam: Orator §20 conclusa oratio: §177 concluse apteque dicere: §§200, 220, 230, 231: de Orat. ii. §34 quod carmen artificiosa verborum conclusione (‘artistic period’) aptius? Hor. Sat. i. 4, 40 concludere versum. The opposite is membratim caesimque dicere, Quint. ix. 4, 126: cp. Cic. Orat. §212 incise membratimve: de Orat. iii. 49, 190 carpere membris minutioribus orationem. For a contrast cp. Brutus §120 ut Stoicorum adstrictior est oratio aliquantoque contractior quam aures populi requirunt, sic illorum (Peripateticorum Academicorumque) liberior et latior quam patitur consuetudo iudiciorum et fori: §162 quin etiam comprehensio et ambitus ille verborum, si sic περίοδον appellari placet, erat apud illum (i.e. Crassum) contractus et brevis, et in membra quaedam, quae κῶλα Graeci vocant, dispertiebat orationem libentius.

astrictius ... latius: there is more compactness about the periodic structure in Demosthenes, greater breadth in that of Cicero. This could hardly be said of Demosthenes’s periods as a whole: it rather refers to the care which Cicero and Roman orators generally bestowed on the closing syllables of a period (Blass, Att. Ber. iii. 117). It was this liking for a sonorous and copious diction that seemed to Cicero’s critics to justify the epithets (inflatus, tumens, &c.) applied to him in Dial. de Orat. 18 (quoted above, §105); he himself tells us in the Orator, §104, that his ears craved for something more full and sonorous even than Demosthenes: ‘non semper implet aures meas: ita sunt avidae et capaces et semper aliquid immensum infinitumque desiderant.’

pugnat: used figuratively for dicit: cp. §4.

acumine: the word is used in §§81 and 83 of ‘power of thought,’ ‘intellectual penetration’: viii. 2, 21: x. 1, §81 and §83. See on acutus §77. So Cic. de Orat. i. §128 acumen dialecticorum. Here it includes the idea of ‘point’ in expression: following up the metaphor contained in ‘pugnat,’ we might render, ‘Demosthenes always thrusts with the rapier, Cicero often uses the bludgeon too.’ (Landor, speaking of Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke, as compared with Lord Brougham, said that they had ‘more of the rapier than the bludgeon.’) Cp. de Orat. ii. §158 ipsi se compungunt suis acuminibus. The contrast is something like that implied in xii. 10, 36 subtilitate vincimur (a Graecis): valeamus pondere: cp. ibid. §11 gravitatem Bruti acumen Sulpici.

nihil detrahi: cp. §76 is dicendi modus ut nec quod desit in eo nec quod redundet invenias.

curae ... naturae: v. Jebb’s Attic Orators, i. Introd. p. cvi, where it is remarked that this paradox is true in this sense alone, ‘that Cicero is an inferior artist, and indulges more freely the taste of the natural man for ornament.’ Quintilian may also refer to the laborious training which Demosthenes imposed on himself, and in consequence of which, says Plutarch, δόξαν εἶχεν ὡς οὐκ εὐφυὴς ὤν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐκ πόνου συγκειμένῃ δεινότητι καὶ δυνάμει χρώμενος (Vit. Demosth. viii.). Cp. the taunt of Pytheas, that his work ‘smelled of the lamp’: ἐλλυχνίων ὄζειν, ibid.; also Parallel. ch. i. It was the rule with Demosthenes never to speak without preparation: Cicero may have relied at times on the faculty of extemporising at need.

I:107 Salibus certe et commiseratione, quae duo plurimum in adfectibus valent, vincimus. Et fortasse epilogos illi mos civitatis abstulerit, sed et nobis illa, quae Attici mirantur, diversa Latini sermonis ratio minus permiserit. In epistulis quidem, quamquam sunt utriusque, dialogisve, quibus nihil ille, nulla contentio est.

§ 107. salibus: cp. vi. 3, 2 plerique Demostheni facultatem defuisse huic rei credunt, Ciceroni modum, nec videri potest noluisse Demosthenes, cuius pauca admodum dicta nec sane ceteris eius virtutibus respondentia palam ostendunt non displicuisse illi iocos sed non contigisse ... mihi quidem ... mira quaedam in eo (Cicerone) videtur fuisse urbanitas. So §21 Demosthenem urbanum fuisse dicunt, dicacem negant: Cic. Orat. §90 non tam dicax quam facetus: Dion. Hal. Dem. c. 54 πάσας ἔχουσα τὰς ἀρετὰς ἡ Δημοσθένους λέξις ... λείπεται εὐτραπελίας. Cp. περὶ ὕψους, 34, where the judgment is unduly severe, ἔνθα μέντοι γελοῖος εἶναι βιάζεται καὶ ἀστεῖος οὐ γέλωτα κινεῖ μᾶλλον ἢ καταγελᾶται. Cp. Sandys’ note on Orat. §90, “Though not obtrusively witty, Demosthenes nevertheless is not wanting in humour, as is proved by the speech on the Chersonesus §§5, 11 ff. and esp. 23 (characterized by Brougham as ‘full of refined and almost playful wit’): Plut. iii. §66: de Cor. §§198, 234 (Blass, Att. Ber. iii. 163-6).” For a criticism of Cicero’s wit, on the other hand, v. Plut. Parallel. §1 Κικέρων δὲ πολλαχοῦ τῷ σκωπτικῷ πρὸς τὸ βωμολόχον ἐκφερόμενος καὶ πράγματα σπουδῆς ἄξια γέλωτι καὶ παιδιᾷ κατειρωνευόμενος ἐν ταῖς δίκαις εἰς τὸ χρειῶδες ἠφείδει τοῦ πρέποντος, and below, Cato’s ὡς γελοῖον, ὦ ἄνδρες, ἔχομεν ὕπατον. Δοκεῖ δὲ καὶ γέλωτος οἰκεῖος ὁ Κικέρων γεγονέναι καὶ φιλοσκώπτης κ.τ.λ.

commiseratione, ‘pathos.’ See Orator §130 in quo ut viderer excellere non ingenio, sed dolore adsequebar; i.e. it was real sympathy more than any special talent that enabled him to excel in this respect.

in adfectibus, ‘where the feelings are concerned.’ Under adfectus (vi. 2) is included everything that makes an impression on the judges: §1 opus ... movendi iudicum animos: among other things laughter itself, virtus quae risum iudicis movendo et illos tristes solvit adfectus et animum ab intentione rerum frequenter avertit et aliquando etiam reficit et a satietate vel a fatigatione renovat.

vincimus: for the present cp. §§93, 101, 105.

epilogos, ‘perorations.’ The peroration was looked on as giving a great opportunity for moving the feelings: Arist. Rhet. iii. 19 says one of its parts is εἰς τὰ πάθη τὸν ἀκροατὴν καταστῆσαι. So Quint. iv. 1, 28 quod in ingressu parcius et modestius praetemptanda sit iudicis misericordia: in epilogo vero liceat totos effundere adfectus. The word is common in this sense in Quintilian: vi. 1, 37, sq. esp. §52 at hic, si usquam, totos eloquentiae aperire fontes licet. Nam et, si bene diximus reliqua, possidebimus iam iudicum animos, et e confragosis atque asperis evecti tota pandere possumus vela, et, cum sit maxima pars epilogi amplificatio, verbis atque sententiis uti licet magnificis et ornatis. Tunc est commovendum theatrum cum ventum est ad ipsum illud, quo veteres tragoediae comoediaeque cluduntur, plodite: cp. also Cicero, Brutus §33 exstat eius peroratio, qui epilogus dicitur: de Orat. ii. §278: ad Att. iv. 15, 4.

mos civitatis: ii. 16 §4 Athenis ubi actor movere adfectus vetabatur velut recisam orandi potestatem: vi. 1, 7, where he says that with the Attic orators the epilogus generally took the form of recapitulation (ἀνακεφαλαίωσις = enumeratio) ‘quia Athenis adfectus movere etiam per praeconem prohibebatur orator.’ Cp. xii. 10, 26. This would be especially the case in trials before the Areopagus. But it was the Hellenic instinct for moderation that imposed its own law. Lord Brougham, in his Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients (p. 25), remarks on the calmness of the Greek peroration: cp. his Essay on Demosthenes (p. 184): ‘It seems to have been a rule enjoined by the severe taste of those times, that after being wrought up to a great pitch of emotion, the speaker should, in quitting his audience, leave an impression of dignity, which cannot be maintained without composure.’ Cp. Jebb, i. ciii-civ: ‘Cicero has now and then an Attic peroration, as in the Second Philippic and the Pro Milone; more often he breaks off in a burst of eloquence—as in the First Catilinarian, the Pro Flacco, and the Pro Cluentio.’

illa quae Attici mirantur: cp. §65, §100 illam solis concessam Atticis venerem: xii. 10 §35 illam gratiam sermonis Attici.

epistulis. If it were not for the ineptitude of the comparison which follows (in quibus nihil ille) we might be inclined to imagine that Quintilian knew of more letters of Demosthenes than the six which are still extant, and which are generally considered apocryphal.

dialogis: comprising most of Cicero’s philosophical works, and the Brutus and De Oratore among his rhetorical.

nihil ille, sc. effecit, consecutus est: cp. §§56, 123: 2 §§6, 24: 3 §25: 7 §§7, 23.

I:108 Cedendum vero in hoc, quod et prior fuit et ex magna parte Ciceronem quantus est fecit. Nam mihi videtur M. Tullius, cum se totum ad imitationem Graecorum contulisset, effinxisse vim Demosthenis, copiam Platonis, iucunditatem Isocratis.

§ 108. effinxisse, ‘artistically reproduced.’

iucunditatem. ‘The idea which Cicero got from Isocrates was that of number. See esp. de Orat. iii. 44 §173.’ Jebb. So ‘suavitatem Isocrates ... vim Demosthenes habuit’ de Orat. iii. §28.

I:109 Nec vero quod in quoque optimum fuit studio consecutus est tantum, sed plurimas vel potius omnes ex se ipso virtutes extulit immortalis ingenii beatissima ubertate. Non enim ‘pluvias,’ ut ait Pindarus, ‘aquas colligit, sed vivo gurgite exundat,’ dono quodam providentiae genitus, in quo totas vires suas eloquentia experiretur.

§ 109. ex se ipso ... extulit: cp. Cic. Acad. ii. 8, 23 artem vivendi quae ipsa ex sese habeat constantiam, where Dr. Reid cites this passage, along with many others, e.g. Sen. Ep. 52, 3 hos quibus ex se impetus fuit: Cic. N. D. iii. 88 a se sumere.

beatissima: cp. §61 beatissima rerum verborumque copia: 3, §22 beatiorem spiritum. Cp. the eulogy by Caesar, in his Analogia (written as he was crossing the Alps, and dedicated to Cicero himself): ac si ut cogitata praeclare eloqui possent non nulli studio et usu elaboraverunt, cuius te paene principem copiae atque inventorem bene de nomine ac dignitate populi Romani meritum esse existimare debemus, &c.—quoted in Brutus §253. Hild adds Pliny H. N. vii. 30 Facundiae Latiarumque litterarum parens atque ... omnium triumphorum gloria maior, quanto plus est ingenii Romani terminos in tantum promovisse quam imperii,—where the language has a close resemblance to that of Cicero himself in Brutus §255.

ut ait Pindarus. We get the pluvias aquas in the οὐρανίων ὑδάτων ὀμβρίων of Olymp. xi, but there is nothing in Pindar’s extant works that corresponds to the quotation.

exundat: cp. Tac. Dial. 30 ex multa eruditione et plurimis artibus et omnium rerum scientia exundat et exuberat illa admirabilis eloquentia.

providentia is used very frequently by itself in Quintilian, e.g. i. 10, 7 oratio qua nihil praestantius homini dedit providentia (v. Bonn. Lex.); also in xi. i, 23 with deorum immortalium.

eloquentia: cp. Sen. Ep. 40, 11 Cicero quoque noster, a quo Romana eloquentia exsiluit.

I:110 Nam quis docere diligentius, movere vehementius potest? Cui tanta umquam iucunditas adfuit? ut ipsa illa quae extorquet impetrare eum credas, et cum transversum vi sua iudicem ferat, tamen ille non rapi videatur, sed sequi.

§ 110. docere ... movere. Cp. iii. 5 §2 tria sunt item quae praestare debeat orator, ut doceat, moveat, delectet (quoted on §80). Iucunditas here expresses the third. So Cicero, Brutus §185 tria sunt enim, ut quidem ego sentio, quae sint efficienda dicendo: ut doceatur is apud quem dicetur, ut delectetur, ut moveatur vehementius.

extorquet: cp. v. 7, 17 at in eo qui invitus dicturus est prima felicitas interrogantis extorquere quod is noluerit: ib. §27. Cic. de Or. ii. §74 qui nunquam sententias de manibus iudicum vi quadam orationis extorsimus ac potius placatis eorum animis tantum quantum ipsi patiebantur accepimus.

transversus = ‘turned across,’ i.e. at right angles to the original line. So transversis itineribus Sall. Iug. 45, 2. For the figure contained in transversum ferat cp. ibid. 6, 3 opportunitas quae etiam mediocres viros ... transversos agit: 14, 20. The iudex is ‘turned athwart’—away from the path of his own judgment. So Sen. Ep. 8, 3 cum coepit transversos agere felicitas: Cic. Brutus 331 cuius in adulescentiam ... transversa incurrit misera fortuna rei publicae.

I:111 Iam in omnibus quae dicit tanta auctoritas inest ut dissentire pudeat, nec advocati studium sed testis aut iudicis adferat fidem; cum interim haec omnia, quae vix singula quisquam intentissima cura consequi posset, fluunt inlaborata et illa, qua nihil pulchrius auditum est, oratio prae se fert tamen felicissimam facilitatem.

§ 111. advocati, ‘pleader,’ as generally in Quintilian, syn. with ‘actor causae,’ ‘causidicus,’ ‘patronus.’ In Cicero the word is reserved for those who lent their countenance and personal support to a friend, especially in legal matters: e.g. Brutus §289: pro Clu. §110 quis eum unquam non modo in patroni, sed in laudatoris aut advocati loco viderat? See Fausset’s note on advocabat pro Clu. §54.

fidem: ‘trustworthiness,’ ‘credibility.’ So quantam afferat fidem iv. 2, 125.

cum interim: Roby §1732. Cp. note on §18.

posset: the use of the imperf. subj. points to a suppressed protasis, sc. si vellet. Cp. i. 1, 22 cur improbetur si quis ea quae domi suae recte faceret in publicum promit? So too below, 2 §25 qui noceret, where see note.

tamen is a reminiscence of tamen ille non rapi videatur, in the previous sentence, and must be taken with cum interim: = ‘for all that.’

facilitatem: cp. §1.

I:112 Quare non immerito ab hominibus aetatis suae regnare in iudiciis dictus est, apud posteros vero id consecutus, ut Cicero iam non hominis nomen sed eloquentiae habeatur. Hunc igitur spectemus, hoc propositum nobis sit exemplum, ille se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit.

§ 112. regnare: cp. Cic. ad Fam. vii. 24, 1 olim quum regnare existimabamur: ad Att. i. 1 illud suum regnum iudiciale,—his ‘sovereignty of the bar’: in Verr. i. 12, 35 (of Hortensius) omnis dominatio regnumque iudiciorum: ad Fam. ix. 18, 1 amisso regno forensi: cp. pro Sulla §7.

non hominis ... sed eloquentiae. There is no thought here of holding the balance with Demosthenes, §105. Cp. what Brutus says after Caesar’s eulogy quoted above (§109 note): quo enim uno vincebamur a victa Graecia, id aut ereptum illis est aut certe nobis cum illis communicatum: Brut. §254. Hild quotes from Plutarch (Cicero, §4) the story of Molo, one of Cicero’s teachers, who, on hearing him declaim, said that he had to pity the hard fate of Greece, from whom the palm of eloquence, her sole surviving glory, was now to pass away.

exemplum, predicative, hoc being neuter by a common form of attraction: cp. 3 §17.

profecisse: Hild quotes Boileau, Art. Poet. iii. 308, speaking of Homer: c’est avoir profité que de savoir s’y plaire.

I:113 Multa in Asinio Pollione inventio, summa diligentia, adeo ut quibusdam etiam nimia videatur, et consilii et animi satis: a nitore et iucunditate Ciceronis ita longe abest ut videri possit saeculo prior. At Messalla nitidus et candidus et quodam modo praeferens in dicendo nobilitatem suam, viribus minor.

§ 113. Quintilian makes no mention of orators previous to Cicero: for them see Brutus §53 sqq. Velleius disposes of them in the following sentence (i. 17, 3): At oratio ac vis forensis perfectumque prosae eloquentiae decus, ut idem separetur Cato, pace P. Crassi Scipionisque et Laeli et Gracchorum et Fanni et Servi Galbae dixerim, ita universa sub principe operis sui erupit Tullio, ut delectari ante eum paucissimis, mirari vero neminem possis, nisi aut ab illo visum aut qui illum viderit. Cp. Tac. Dial. 25. Hild cites also Seneca, Controv. i. praef.: quidquid Romana facundia habet, quod insolenti Graeciae aut opponat aut praeferat, circa Ciceronem effloruit; omnia ingenia quae lucem studiis nostris attulerunt, tunc nata sunt.

Asinio Pollione. C. Asinius Pollio (75 B.C.–4 A.D.) was consul in 40, when he helped Maecenas to arrange the Peace of Brundisium: afterwards becoming estranged from Antony he retired into private life and devoted himself to letters. Vergil dedicates the Fourth Eclogue to him, and in the first Ode of Book ii Horace recounts his various titles to distinction. He was a poet as well as an orator: Verg. Ecl. viii. 10 Sola Sophocleo tua carmina digna cothurno: iii. 86 Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina: Hor. S. i. 10, 42. He was also distinguished as a historian, having written a history of the Civil Wars from the first triumvirate (Motum ex Metello consule Hor. Car. ii. 1, 1). In the same Ode (II. 13, 14) Horace alludes to his fame as an orator, both at the bar and in the senate. Quintilian’s judgment on him in this capacity may be compared with that of Seneca, Ep. 100, 7 Lege Ciceronem: compositio eius una est, pedem servat lenta et sine infamia mollis. At contra Pollionis Asinii salebrosa et exsiliens et ubi minime expectes relictura. Denique omnia apud Ciceronem desinunt, apud Pollionem cadunt exceptis paucissimis, quae ad certum modum et ad unum exemplar adstricta sunt. Cp. 2 §17 below tristes ac ieiuni Pollionem aemulantur.

diligentia: 2 §25 vim Caesaris, asperitatem Caelii, diligentiam Pollionis. The word does not refer to the historian’s painstaking care (which could hardly ever be ‘nimia’), but to the ‘precision’ or ‘exactitude’ of his language: v. the fragment quoted in ix. 4, 132.

consilii, ‘judgment,’ §106.

animi, ‘spirit,’ ‘vivacity.’

nitore: v. on §97.

saeculo prior. ‘As an orator and writer he affected antique severity in opposition to Ciceronian smoothness,’—Teuffel. Cp. Tac. Dial. 21 Asinius quoque quamquam propioribus temporibus natus sit, videtur mihi inter Menenios et Appios studuisse; Pacuvium certe et Accium non solum tragoediis sed etiam orationibus suis expressit: adeo durus et siccus est: Sen. Controv. iv. praef. 3 illud strictum eius et aspersum et nimis iratum in censendo iudicium adeo cessabat ut in multis illi venia opus esset quae ab ipso vix impetrabatur. See Schmalz ‘Ueber den Sprachgebrauch des Asinius Pollio,’ p. 289; München, 1890. Pollio’s antipathy to Cicero and his dislike of Cicero’s style may be seen from the story in Seneca, Suas. vi. extr., quoted by Bernhardy (q.v.), R. L. p. 268 (note 182).

Messalla, M. Valerius Corvinus (64 B.C.-8 A.D.), the friend of Tibullus, who dedicates to him i. 7: cp. the panegyric iv. 1. Cp. Tac. Dial. 18 Cicerone mitior Corvinus et dulcior et in verbis magis elaboratus,—with the latter part of which cp. Sen. Controv. ii. 12, 8 Latini utique sermonis observator diligentissimus. Cicero’s own opinion of him may be seen in Epist. ad Brutum i. 15, 1 cave putes probitate, constantia, cura, studio reipublicae quidquam illi esse simile; ut eloquentia, qua mirabiliter excellit, vix in eo locum ad laudandum habere videatur: quamquam in hac ipsa sapientia plus apparet: ita gravi iudicio multaque arte se exercuit in verissimo genere dicendi, tanta autem industria est tantumque evigilat in studio ut non maxima ingenio (quod in eo summum est) gratia habenda videatur. By verissimum genus dicendi Cicero seems to indicate that Messalla was neither an Asianist like Hortensius, nor an extreme Atticist like Calvus. See also Brutus §246, where the judgment is less favourable: nullo modo inops, sed non nimis ornatus genere verborum.

nitidus: cp. i. 7, 35 ideo minus Messalla nitidus quia, &c.

candidus: v. on §73.

quodam modo: cp. Cic. Brut. §30 (where Kellogg wrongly renders ‘with a certain style’): ib. §149: de Orat. iii. §37: §184.

praeferens = prae se ferens: cp. vi. 3, 17: 2, 14.

viribus minor: cp. §103.

I:114 C. vero Caesar si foro tantum vacasset, non alius ex nostris contra Ciceronem nominaretur. Tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut illum eodem animo dixisse quo bellavit appareat; exornat tamen haec omnia mira sermonis, cuius proprie studiosus fuit, elegantia.

§ 114. Caesar. The purity and correctness of Caesar’s style are eulogised in the Brutus §§251-262: see esp. §261 non video cui debeat cedere. Cp. Phil. ii. 45 Fuit in illo ingenium, ratio, memoria, litterae, cura, cogitatio, diligentia: and with special reference to his oratorical talent, Suet. Caes. 55, where is cited a fragment from a letter of Cicero: ‘Quid? oratorum quem huic antepones eorum qui nihil aliud egerunt? Quis sententiis aut acutior aut crebrior? Quis verbis aut ornatior aut elegantior?’ Tac. Ann, xiii. 3 dictator Caesar summis oratoribus aemulus.

si foro tantum vacasset. So of Pompeius (Brut. 239), vir ad omnia summa natus, maiorem dicendi gloriam habuisset, nisi eum maioris gloriae cupiditas ad bellicas laudes abstraxisset: Tac. Dial. 21 concedamus sane C. Caesari, ut propter magnitudinem cogitationum et occupationes rerum in eloquentia non effecerit quae divinum eius ingenium postulabat.

contra, ‘by the side of,’ with the notion of being ‘pitted against’: cp. proximumque Ciceroni Caesarem, Vell. Pat. ii. 36, 2.

vis: xii. 10, 11 vim Caesaris.

acumen. See on §106: here probably of a pointed incisive style.

eodem animo: Livy xxxviii. 50 dicebantur enim ab eodem animo ingenioque a quo gesta erant.

proprie studiosus: cp. i. 7, 34 aut vim C. Caesaris fregerunt editi de analogia libri? Suet. Caes. 56: Gell. xix. 8, 3. See too Brutus §253, where we learn that the work was dedicated to Cicero: ‘qui etiam in maximis occupationibus ad te ipsum,’ inquit in me intuens, ‘de ratione Latine loquendi adcuratissime scripserit primoque in libro dixerit verborum delectum originem esse eloquentiae.’—Cp. Gell. xvi. 8 C. Caesar gravis auctor linguae latinae,—Proprie in this sense is post-Augustan: cp. Vell. Pat. ii. 9, 1.

elegantia: Brutus §252 ita iudico ... illum omnium fere oratorum Latine loqui elegantissime. In the Preface to B. G. viii. Hirtius says Erat autem in Caesare quum facultas atque elegantia summa scribendi tum, etc.

I:115 Multum ingenii in Caelio et praecipue in accusando multa urbanitas, dignusque vir, cui et mens melior et vita longior contigisset. Inveni qui Calvum praeferrent omnibus, inveni qui Ciceroni crederent eum nimia contra se calumnia verum sanguinem perdidisse; sed est et sancta et gravis oratio et castigata et frequenter vehemens quoque. Imitator autem est Atticorum, fecitque illi properata mors iniuriam, si quid adiecturus sibi non si quid detracturus fuit.

§ 115. Caelius, M. Rufus (82-48 B.C.), a man of loose morals and luxurious life, whom Cicero defended from some charges of sedition and attempted poisoning, 56 B.C. He had not much strength of character: during Cicero’s absence in Cilicia he was in friendly correspondence with him, but afterwards he joined Caesar, while urging Cicero to remain neutral. Becoming discontented, he intrigued with Milo to raise an insurrection against Caesar, and was put to death near Thurii by some foreign cavalry, 48 B.C. Cp. Brutus §273 splendida et grandis et eadem in primis faceta et perurbana oratio. Graves eius contiones aliquot fuerunt, acres accusationes tres (one against C. Antonius) ... defensiones ... sane tolerabiles. There was something bitter about him: 2 §25 asperitatem Caelii: cp. Tac. Dial. 25 amarior Caelius: Sen. de Ira iii. 8, 6 oratorem ... iracundissimum. A description of one of his speeches is given iv. 2, 123 sq.: for witticisms on Clodia v. viii. 6, 53. Cp. Tac. Dial. 21 and 25.

praecipue in accusando: vi. 3, 69 idem (Cicero) per allegoriam M. Caelium, melius obicientem crimina quam defendentem, bonam dextram malam sinistram habere dicebat.

urbanitas is defined vi. 3, 17 as sermonem praeferentem in verbis et sono et usu proprium quendam gustum urbis et sumptam ex conversatione doctorum tacitam eruditionem, denique cui contraria sit rusticitas. Here the idea of wit is uppermost, as in ii. 11, 2 and vi. 3, 105. Cp. vi. 3 §41 Caelius cum omnia venustissime finxit tum illud ultimum: i. 6, 29.

mens melior: Brut. §273 quaecunque eius in exitu vel fortuna vel mens fuit: Vell. Pat. ii. 68 vir eloquio animoque Curioni simillimus, sed in utroque perfectior nec minus ingeniose nequam.

Calvus, Gaius Licinius (B.C. 82-48), was the leading spirit among the stricter Atticists in Cicero’s day, and is censured by him in the Brutus (§§284-291) for taking so narrow a view of the full meaning of Attic oratory as to have introduced the attempt to imitate certain particular models among the Attic orators. A poet himself, he was the friend of Catullus, and, like Catullus, an opponent of Caesar. He prosecuted Vatinius on three separate occasions, and once showed such vehemence and energy that the defendant rose in court, saying ‘rogo vos, iudices, num si iste disertus est ideo me damnari oportet’ (Sen. Controv. vii. 6): Tac. Dial. 34 Vatinium eis orationibus insecutus est, quas hodieque cum admiratione legimus: cp. ib. 21. Cp. Catullus 53, where we get a lively idea of his energetic eloquence at the trial. The passage of Cicero referred to (Brutus §283 quoted below) was written after the death of Calvus: but already in Dec. 47 Cicero, in writing to his friend Trebonius, had stated his opinion that Calvus had made an error of judgment in the choice of his style, and that he was wanting in force: ad Fam. xv. 21 §4 genus quoddam sequebatur, in quo iudicio lapsus, quo valebat, tamen assequebatur quod probaret. Multae erant et reconditae litterae, vis non erat (Quint. x. 2, 25 ‘iudicium Calvi’). In the Dial. de Or. ch. 18 Tacitus refers to certain letters, now lost, from Calvus and Brutus to Cicero, showing that the latter regarded Calvus as exsanguis and attritus (v.l. aridus), while Calvus stigmatised Cicero as solutus and enervis. His position as leader of a school (which took Lysias mainly for its model and cultivated ‘plainness’ at the expense of other good qualities) is indicated by Cicero’s remark that he ‘not only went wrong himself, but also led others astray’ (Brut. §284).

Ciceroni crederent, &c. “In writing of his oratorical style in the Brutus, two years after his death, Cicero observes that, while he was more accomplished in literature than the younger Curio, he had also a more accurate and exquisite style; and although he handled it with skill and elegance, he was too minute and nice in his self-criticism; losing the very life-blood of style for fear of tainting its purity, and cultivating too scrupulous a taste to win the approval of the general public” (Sandys, Orator, Introd. xlvi.). The passage from the Brutus (283) is as follows:—adcuratius quoddam dicendi et exquisitius adferebat genus; quod quanquam scienter eleganterque tractabat, nimium tamen inquirens in se atque ipse sese observans metuensque ne vitiosum colligeret, etiam verum sanguinem deperdebat ... Atticum ... se dici oratorem volebat; inde erat ista exilitas, quam ille de industria consequebatur.

nimia ... calumnia, ‘by over-rigorous self-censure,’—a morbid habit of introspective criticism: the word being used to express nimium inquirens ... observans ... metuensque in the passage just quoted. Perhaps the nearest parallel to this use is to be found in Caec. ap. Cic. ad Fam. vi. 7, 4 in hac igitur calumnia, timoris et caecae suspicionis tormento,—of exaggerated fears inspired by the spirit of carping self-criticism, for which cp. 4 §3: 7 §14. The verb is found in the same sense in 3 §10 infelicem calumniandi se poenam: viii. prooem. 31 nullus est finis calumniandi se et cum singulis paene syllabis commoriendi. Cp. Plin. xxxiv. 8, 19 §92 calumniator sui, of one who is over-anxious in regard to his work. Cicero uses the verb absolutely: ad Fam. ix. 2, 3 mihi quidem venit in mentem bellum esse aliquo exire ... sed calumniabar ipse: putabam qui obviam mihi venisset ... suspicaturum aut dicturum, &c., where the meaning is ‘I indulged groundless fears’ (Nägelsbach, p. 54). The word calumnia is derived from the root calv found in calvor, to trick, quibble, through a participial form *calvomenos, calumnus (cp. autumnus, aerumna, columna). Its first meaning is a malicious charge or ‘cavil’: ad Fam. i. 1, 1, religionis calumniam, the ‘trumped-up plea of a religious difficulty.’ Hence it was applied in Roman law (Gaius 4, 178) to the vexatious abuse of legal forms, chicanery, legal quirks and quibbles, and generally to the pettifogging tendency which exalts the letter above the spirit.

verum sanguinem perdidisse: cp. 4 §3 exsanguia.

sancta et gravis: his style is ‘solemn and weighty,’ xii. 10, 11 ‘sanctitatem Calvi.’

castigata, ‘chastened,’ ‘severely finished’: cp. Hor. A. P. 292 carmen reprehendite quod non Multa dies et multa litura coercuit atque Praesectum decies non castigavit ad unguem, i.e. by pruning away everything that is useless and inappropriate: Tac. Dial. 25 adstrictior Calvus, numerosior Asinius.

frequenter: see on §17.

vehemens: cp. Sen. Controv. viii. 7 solebat praeterea excedere subsellia sua et impetu latus usque ad adversariorum partem transcurrere. Seneca adds that he resembled Demosthenes inasmuch as he was all struggle and excitement, though he sometimes employed a gentler style, ib. §8 nihil in illa (compositione) placidum, nihil lene est, omnia excitata et fluctuantia.

properata mors: cp. immatura mors. He died at the early age of 34. Cp. Brutus §279 facienda mentio est ... duorum adulescentium (Curio and Calvus) qui si diutius vixissent magnam essent eloquentiae laudem consecuti.

adiecturus, i.e. if it was likely that he would have added to the purity of his diction other and richer qualities. The cold dry manner of the strictest Atticists failed to hold the ear of Roman audiences: Brut. §289 subsellia grandiorem et pleniorem vocem desiderant, a larger and fuller utterance than that of the Atticists who spoke ‘anguste et exiliter.’ See Crit. Notes.

detracturus: sc. nimia contra se calumnia. He is exilis enough as it is.

I:116 Et Servius Sulpicius insignem non immerito famam tribus orationibus meruit. Multa, si cum iudicio legatur, dabit imitatione digna Cassius Severus, qui si ceteris virtutibus colorem et gravitatem orationis adiecisset, ponendus inter praecipuos foret.

§ 116. Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the most distinguished jurist of Cicero’s day, consul B.C. 51. See reff. in Brutus §150: §152: §153 (adiunxit etiam et litterarum scientiam et loquendi elegantiam). His letter of sympathy to Cicero on the death of Tullia is well known: ad Fam. iv. 5. Cp. 5 §4: 7 §30 and above §22.

meruit = consecutus est, as §94. See on §72.

Cassius Severus flourished under Augustus, and was banished on account of his libellous attacks (procacibus scriptis), first to Crete and then to Seriphos, where he is said to have died A.D. 34, in the twenty-fifth year of his exile; Tac. Ann. iv. 21: i. 72. He is spoken of as the introducer of the new school of declamatory eloquence, Tac. Dial. 19 Antiquorum admiratores ... Cassium Severum ... primum affirmant flexisse ab illa vetere atque directa dicendi via, &c.: ibid. 26 equidem non negaverim Cassium Severum ... si iis comparetur qui postea fuerunt, posse oratorem vocari, quamquam in magna parte librorum suorum plus bilis habeat quam sanguinis: primus enim contempto ordine rerum, omissa modestia ac pudore verborum, ipsis etiam quibus utitur armis incompositus et studio feriendi plerumque detectus, non pugnat sed rixatur; ceterum ... et varietate eruditionis et lepore urbanitatis et ipsaram virium robore multum ceteros superat.

colorem: cp. on §59. The word is not here used in the technical sense which it bears in rhetoric, i.e. the particular aspect given to a case by a skilful representation of the facts,—the ‘gloss’ or ‘varnish’ put on them by either the accused or the accuser. For this sense see iv. 2, 88: Inv. vi. 279 Dic aliquem, sodes, dic Quintiliane colorem: vii. 155 with Mayor’s note. Here it has a more general sense. Quintilian is charging Cassius with a want of proper ‘tone’: cp. omissa modestia ac pudore verborum, above: Cic. de Or. iii. 96 ornatur oratio genere primum et quasi colore quodam et suco suo.

gravitatem: Cassius was wanting in dignity, and his wit was apt to carry him too far. Quintilian gives an instance of this xi. 1, 57; Seneca, Controv. iii. praef. 2 says however ‘gravitas, quae deerat vitae, actioni supererat.’

I:117 Nam et ingenii plurimum est in eo et acerbitas mira et urbanitas et fervor, sed plus stomacho quam consilio dedit. Praeterea ut amari sales, ita frequenter amaritudo ipsa ridicula est.

§ 117. ingenii plurimum: Tacitus (Ann. iv. 21) allows that he was ‘orandi validus’: and Seneca (l.c.) says oratio eius erat valens culta ingentibus plena sententiis ... non est quod illum ex his quae edidit aestimetis ... eloquentia eius longe maior erat quam lectio.

acerbitas mira: cp. Tac. Ann. i. 72 commotus Cassii Severi libidine qua viros feminasque inlustres procacibus scriptis diffamaverat.

urbanitas, v. on §115. For examples see vi. 1, 43: viii. 3, 89: xi. 3, 133.

et fervor: see Crit. Notes, and cp. Seneca l.c. habebat ... genus dicendi ... ardens et concitatum.

stomacho: he was full of passionate impulse: cp. the passage quoted from Dial. 26 above.

praeterea ... ridicula est. Spalding’s interpretation of this passage is followed by Krüger (2nd ed.) and Hild: the other editors do not seem to have felt any difficulty. The sentence is taken in continuation of the praise of Cassius, attaching closely to ‘urbanitas’: the words from sed plus to dedit being then interjected as the only note of disparagement. The literal translation would then be ‘while his wit is bitter, the bitterness itself is often enough to make you laugh.’ ‘He has a caustic wit, but his causticity by itself will often make you laugh.’ For this sense of ridicula (Sp. ‘risum movet auditorum’) cp. vi. 3, 22 ridiculum ... haec tota disputatio a Graecis περὶ γελοίου inscribitur: 3 §6 ridiculum (‘funny,’ ‘droll’) dictum plerumque falsum est (ad hoc semper humile). Frieze compares vi. 3, 7: and adds ‘success in exciting the mirth of the court and the audience is not always a proof of the orator’s wit; but is often due to mere bitterness of invective, and coarse and rough or droll terms of abuse.’

One objection to this interpretation is the arrangement of the sentences: praeterea ... ridicula est connects even more naturally with sed plus ... dedit than with the eulogy contained in urbanitas et fervor. And it may be doubted if Quintilian or any other writer who had just been censuring Cassius for stomachus would immediately go on (using ridiculus in a good sense) to say that ‘often when he is merely bitter without being witty (this is the force of amaritudo ipsa, cp. note on §45) he makes you laugh.’ Drollery can hardly be claimed for unrelieved acrimoniousness.

A better sense can be obtained by taking amaritudo ipsa ridicula est as part not of the praise but of the censure of Cassius, and interpreting ridicula as ‘silly,’ ‘absurd,’ ‘ridiculous.’ Cicero uses the word in this sense, and there is abundant authority in Quintilian himself: cp. sint grandia et tumida, non stulta etiam et acrioribus oculis intuenti ridicula ii. 10, 6; ridiculum est v. 13, 7; fecit enim risum sed ridiculus fuit vi. 1, 48; quibus nos ... ridiculi videmur vii. 1, 43: ix. 3, 100; x. 3, 21; xi. 3, 128. The meaning then is ‘while his wit is bitter, yet bitterness by itself is silly,’ i.e. his wit has a bitter turn, but where he is (as often) bitter without being witty, the result is poor. There is undoubtedly something unsatisfactory about ut amari sales (sc. sunt), which might well have a general reference. See Crit. Notes.

I:118 Sunt alii multi diserti, quos persequi longum est. Eorum quos viderim Domitius Afer et Iulius Africanus longe praestantissimi. Verborum arte ille et toto genere dicendi praeferendus et quem in numero veterum habere non timeas: hic concitatior, sed in cura verborum nimius et compositione nonnumquam longior et translationibus parum modicus. Erant clara et nuper ingenia.

§ 118. diserti here, as in §68 and 3 §13, almost synonymous with eloquentes. In viii. pr. §13, however, Quintilian quotes a saying of M. Antonius, which was meant to establish a difference: nam et M. Antonius ... cum a se disertos visos esse multos ait, eloquentem neminem, diserto satis putat dicere quae oporteat, ornate autem dicere proprium esse eloquentis. Cp. i. 10, 8 ‘Fuit aliquis sine his disertus’: ‘at ego oratorem volo.’ Cicero gives the same quotation: Orat. §18: de Orat. i. §94, where the reason for the distinction between the ‘accomplished speaker’ and ‘the eloquent orator’ is given by Antonius himself,—quod ego eum statuebam disertum, qui posset satis acute atque dilucide apud mediocres homines ex communi quadam opinione hominum dicere, eloquentem vero, qui mirabilius et magnificentius augere posset atque ornare quae vellet, omnesque omnium rerum, quae ad dicendum pertinerent, fontes animo ac memoria contineret. Cp. Plin. Ep. v. 20 §5. For the derivation of disertus v. Sandys on Orat. §18.

longum est: the action is spoken of as still possible. Roby 1735. So Cic. pro Sest. 5: Longum est ea dicere: sed hoc breve dicam. Cp. 2 §§4, 7: 5 §7: 6 §2.

quos viderim: see on §98. In xii. 10, 11 he has ‘in iis etiam quos ipsi vidimus,’ mentioning both Afer and Africanus. Quintilian’s fondness for the perfect subjunctive is marked: cp. xii. 5, 5.

Domitius Afer: see on §86: cp. v. 7, 7 quem adolescentulus senem colui.

Iulius Africanus: a native of Gaul, who flourished under Nero. In xii. 10, 11 he is again named alongside of Afer,—vires Africani, maturitatem Afri. He is quoted as speaking to Nero in the name of Gaul viii. 5, 15 Insigniter Africanus apud Neronem de morte matris: rogant te, Caesar, Galliae tuae, ut felicitatem tuam fortiter feras. He divided the palm of eloquence with Afer: Tac. Dial. 15, He was a son of the Iulius Africanus of whom Tacitus speaks (Ann. vi. 7) as e Santonis Gallica civitate (Saintonge, to the N. of the lower Garonne): a grandson of his, also an orator, is mentioned by Pliny vii. 6, 11.

in numero veterum: cp. Tac. Dial. 15, ad fin.

compositione: v. on §79. If it has the same meaning here, it must = the euphonious collocation of words: see Cicero Orat. §147 de verbis enim componendis, &c., and §149 sq. Quintilian treats of compositio ix. 4, 1: Tr. ‘tedious in his phraseology’: viii. 3, 52: ix. 4, 144 neque longioribus quam oportet hyperbolis compositioni serviamus.

longior: i.e. he used ‘padding’ in the effort to round off his periods.

translationibus: viii. 6, 4 sq.: esp. 16 sed copia quoque modum egressa vitiosa est, praecipue in eadem specie.

I:119 Nam et Trachalus plerumque sublimis et satis apertus fuit et quem velle optima crederes, auditus tamen maior; nam et vocis, quantam in nullo cognovi, felicitas et pronuntiatio vel scaenis suffectura et decor, omnia denique ei, quae sunt extra, superfuerunt: et Vibius Crispus compositus et iucundus et delectationi natus, privatis tamen causis quam publicis melior.

§ 119. Trachalus, M. Galerius: consul A.D. 68 along with Silius Italicus. Tacitus (Hist. i. 90) tells us he was supposed to have written the speech delivered by Otho to an assembly of the people: in rebus urbanis Galerii Trachali ingenio Othonem uti credebatur. Et erant qui genus ipsum orandi noscerent, crebro fori usu celebre et ad inplendas populi aures latum et sonans. After Otho’s death he was fortunate in securing the protection of Galeria, wife of Vitellius (ibid. ii. 60), who may have been a relation of his. From viii. 5, 19 we learn that he had published an oration Contra Spatalem, in a case where Vibius Crispus appeared for the accused. Cp. vi. 3, 78.

velle optima, not ‘well-meaning,’ in a moral sense, but with reference to qualities of style: cp. below §122 ad optima tendentium: §131 meliora vellet.

auditus maior. In the passage often quoted already (xii. 10, 11) Quintilian singles out his sonus for special mention,—‘sonum Trachali.’—Gertz suggested melior for maior.

vocis ... felicitas: cp. xii. 5, 5, where, after enumerating vox, latus, and decor as the ‘naturalia instrumenta’ of the orator, he refers specially to the ‘external advantages’ (cp. omnia ... quae sunt extra, below) of Trachalus: Habuit oratores aetas nostra copiosiores, sed cum diceret eminere inter aequales Trachalus videbatur, Ea corporis sublimitas erat, is ardor oculorum, frontis auctoritas, gestus praestantia, vox quidem non, ut Cicero desiderat, paene tragoedorum sed super omnes, quos ego quidem audierim, tragoedos. Certe cum in basilica Iulia diceret primo tribunali, quattuor autem iudicia, ut moris est, cogerentur, atque omnia clamoribus fremerent, et auditum eum et intellectum et, quod agentibus ceteris contumeliosissimum fuit, laudatum quoque ex quattuor tribunalibus memini. Sed hoc votum est et rara felicitas.

suffectura, conditional, for quae suffectura fuisset, without the protasis si voluisset. Cp. note on habitura §99. So taciturus xi. 2, 16. Hor. Car. iv. 3, 20 donatura, si libeat: and ii. 6, 1 (where there is no protasis), Septimi Gades aditure mecum—For pronuntiatio see on §17.

superfuerunt, he had an abundant share of such advantages.

Vibius Crispus, a delator of the age of Nero, who amassed great wealth by the practice of his profession down to about A.D. 90. Tac. Hist. ii. 10 Vibius Crispus, pecunia potentia ingenio inter claros magis quam inter bonos ... Crispum easdem accusationes cum praemio exercuisse meminerant: ibid. iv. 41, 43. In the Dialogue Tacitus speaks of the fame of his eloquence, ch. 8 ausim contendere Marcellum Eprium et Crispum Vibium non minores esse in extremis partibus terrarum quam Capuae aut Vercellis, ubi nati dicuntur; hoc ... illis praestat ... ipsa eloquentia...; per multos iam annos potentissimi sunt civitatis ac, donec libuit, principes fori, nunc principes in Caesaris (i.e. Vespasiani) amicitia agunt feruntque cuncta, &c. And yet (ibid. 13) Adligati canum adulatione nec imperantibus unquam satis servi videntur nec nobis satis liberi. That he was still in favour with Domitian appears from Suet. 3 inter initia principatus quotidie secretum sibi horarium sumere solebat; nec quidquam amplius quam muscas captare ac stylo praeacuto configere: ut cuidam interroganti esset ne quis intus cum Caesare non absurde responsum sit a Vibio Crispo ‘Ne musca quidem.’ His wealth was proverbial: divitior Crispo Mart. iv. 54, 7: he was worth 200,000,000 sesterces, or even 300,000,000 according to Dial. 8. By its means he was enabled to shelter his brother Vibius Secundus, when accused of ‘repetundae’ in Mauretania: Tac. Ann. xiv. 28. Juvenal gives a sketch of his character iv. 81-93 Venit et Crispi iucunda senectus Cuius erant mores qualis facundia mite Ingenium ... nec civis erat qui libera posset Verba animi proferre et vitam impendere vero ... Sic multas hiemes atque octogesima vidit Solstitia his armis illa (of Domitian) quoque tutus in aula.

compositus: generally applied to style, ‘well-balanced,’ e.g. §44 lenis et nitidi et compositi generis: cp. Cicero Orat. §208 composita oratio. Here the epithet is transferred to the orator in the sense of ‘orderly,’ ‘finished’ in the choice and combination of words. Cp. Orat. §232 compositi oratoris bene structam collocationem dissolvere permutatione verborum: 2 §16 below fiunt ... pro ... compositis exultantes: §66 incompositus.

iucundus, ‘lively, agreeable, entertaining’: cp. Crispi iucunda senectus, Iuv., quoted above. In xii. 10, §11 Quintilian places iucunditatem Crispi alongside of the distinguishing characteristics of other orators: cp. v. 13, 48 Vibius Crispus vir ingenii iucundi et elegantis.

I:120 Iulio Secundo, si longior contigisset aetas, clarissimum profecto nomen oratoris apud posteros foret; adiecisset enim atque adiciebat ceteris virtutibus suis quod desiderari potest, id est autem ut esset multo magis pugnax et saepius ad curam rerum ab elocutione respiceret.

§ 120. Iulius Secundus is highly spoken of 3 §12 below: aequalem meum atque a me, ut notum est, familiariter amatum, mirae facundiae virum, infinitae tamen curae: and in xii. 10, 11 he is named as conspicuous for ‘elegantia.’ He is one of the interlocutors in the Dialogue of Tacitus, where he is made to pose as umpire between the representatives of Imperial and Republican eloquence: cp. esp. ch. 2 Aper et Iulius Secundus, celeberrima tum (under Vespasian) ingenia fori nostri ... Secundo purus et pressus et in quantum satis erat profluens sermo non defuit: chs. 4 and 14.

adiciebat: he had begun the improvement when death overtook him. He died about 88 A.D., not long before Quintilian began his Institutio.

curam rerum: he is to care for substance as well as form. Fabianus in Seneca (Epist. 100) had the opposite fault: visne illum assidere pusillae rei, verbis?

I:121 Ceterum interceptus quoque magnum sibi vindicat locum: ea est facundia, tanta in explicando quod velit gratia, tam candidum et lene et speciosum dicendi genus, tanta verborum etiam quae adsumpta sunt proprietas, tanta in quibusdam ex periculo petitis significantia.

§ 121. interceptus: so vi. pr. 1 si me ... fata intercepissent.

candidum: ‘lucid,’ v. on §73 (Herodotus), and cp. §113 Messalla ... candidus: §101 clarissimi candoris, of Livy.

lene opp. to forte et vehemens dicendi genus: §44. See Crit. Notes.

adsumpta = translata, ‘used figuratively.’ Cp. viii. 3, 43 adsumere ea, quibus inlustrem fieri orationem putat, delecta, translata, superlata, ad nomen adiuncta, duplicata et idem significantia atque ab ipsa actione atque imitatione rerum non abhorrentia. When the process is carried too far the verba adsumpta, become arcessita viii. 3. 56.

proprietas, v. on §46.

ex periculo: ii. 12, 5 quod est in elocutione ipsa periculum: viii. 6, 11 (verba) quae audaci et proxime periculum translatione tolluntur ... qualis est: pontem indignatus Araxes. Cp. paene periclitantia xi. 1, 32. For the phrase ex periculo petere cp. ii. 11, 3 sententiis grandibus, quarum optima quaeque a periculo petarur. Gr. παρακεκινδυνευμένα.

significantia: §49.

I:122 Habebunt qui post nos de oratoribus scribent magnam eos qui nunc vigent materiam vere laudandi; sunt enim summa hodie, quibus inlustratur forum, ingenia. Namque et consummati iam patroni veteribus aemulantur et eos iuvenum ad optima tendentium imitatur ac sequitur industria.

§ 122. eos qui nunc vigent. Who these were we can infer from the Dialogue of Tacitus and from Pliny’s Letters, e.g. Aper, Marcellus, Maternus, Aquilius Regulus, and others. Quintilian must of course have meant to include Tacitus and Pliny themselves.

consummati: often equivalent to perfectus in Quintilian: 5 §14. Cp. above §89. It is combined with perfectus v. 10, 119 ne se ... perfectos protinus atque consummates putent.

veteribus. Aemulari occurs elsewhere with the accusative, §62; 2 §17. So of envious emulation Cic. Tusc. i. §44: cp. iv. §17 with the dative of the person.

iuvenum ad optima tendentium. Hild refers to the speeches of Messalla and Maternus in the Dial. (28-30, 34-36) as indicating the oratorical aspirations of the youth of Rome when Quintilian wrote.

I:123 Supersunt qui de philosophia scripserint, quo in genere paucissimos adhuc eloquentes litterae Romanae tulerunt. Idem igitur M. Tullius, qui ubique, etiam in hoc opere Platonis aemulus extitit. Egregius vero multoque quam in orationibus praestantior Brutus suffecit ponderi rerum: scias eum sentire quae dicit.

§ 123. philosophia. For the attitude of the Romans to philosophy see Teuffel, §40 sq. Abstract speculation, leading to no practical end, was not held in honour by them: like Neoptolemus, in the play of Ennius, they said ‘philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis (i.e. ‘only a little’: Roby, §1237) nam omnino haud placet,’—Cicero de Orat. ii. §156: de Repub. i. 18, 30: Pacuvius too (in Gell. xiii. 8) had made one of his characters exclaim: ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia. The Romans disliked the unsettling tendencies which seemed to accompany the study of philosophy: hence e.g. their treatment of the Athenian ambassadors in the middle of the second century B.C. The prejudice against such studies had by no means entirely disappeared even in the time of Cicero, who constantly apologises for and seeks to justify his leanings to philosophy: de Off. ii. 1, 2 sqq.: de Fin. i. 1, 1. Tacitus, Agricola 4, tells us that Agricola used to say ‘se prima in iuventa studium philosophiae acrius, ultra quam concessum Romano ac senatori, hausisse, ni prudentia matris incensum ac flagrantem animum coercuisset.’ About the time when Quintilian was writing, Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome: ibid. ch. 2. For the help which philosophy can give to oratory see xii. 11, which contains (§7) an expression of the Roman ideal: atqui ego illum quem instituo Romanum quendam velim esse sapientem, qui non secretis disputationibus, sed rerum experimentis atque operibus vere civilem virum exhibeat. Cp. Cicero’s boast in regard to himself and Cato of Utica: nos philosophiam veram illam et antiquam, quae quibusdam otii esse ac desidiae videtur, in forum atque in rempublicam atque in ipsam aciem paene deduximus. See on §84.

paucissimos ... eloquentes. The addition of an adj. to another adj. used as a subst. is rare in Quintilian. Hirt (Subst. des Adj. p. 17) cites only five exx. besides this one: e.g. iii. 8, 31 antiquis nobilibus ortos.

qui ubique. The sense is clear: it is a repetition of the claim made in §108 mihi videtur M. Tullius ... effinxisse vim Demosthenis, copiam Platonis, iucunditatem Isocratis. But it was not ubique that Cicero rivalled Plato: it was only in Plato’s own domain (sc. in hoc opere). The expression was adopted for brevity’s sake: Spalding says it is equivalent to ‘ut ubique Graecorum praestantissimi cuiusque, ita in hoc opere Platonis.’ For Cicero’s philosophical writings cp. Teuffel, §173 sq.

Brutus: cp. §23. He is not included in Quintilian’s list of orators; and though Cicero uses towards him the language of extravagant eulogy (v. esp. Brut. §22) in many of his works, yet we know from a passage in the Dialogue already quoted that he sometimes found him ‘otiosum atque disiunctum’ ch. 18. Cp. ch. 21 Brutum philosophiae suae relinquamus. Nam in orationibus minorem esse, fama sua etiam admiratores eius fatentur. A reference follows to his speech ‘Pro rege Deiotaro,’ which the speaker (Aper) considers ‘dull and tedious’—lentitudo and tepor being the words used. A fragment of a declamation by him is quoted ix. 3 §95–. On his philosophical works see Cic. Acad. i. 3, 12 (with Reid’s note). He was an adherent of the Stoico-academic school, whose tenets he had studied under Aristus and Antiochus: cp. Tusc. v. 21: Brut. 120, 149, 332: de Fin. v. 8. There was a treatise de Virtute addressed to Cicero, one περὶ καθήκοντος, and one de Patientia: Teuffel, 209 §§2 and 3.

suffecit ponderi rerum: Quint. xii. 10, 11 names gravitas as his distinguishing quality: cp. gravior Brutus, Tac. Dial. ch. 25.

sentire quae dicit. The intensity and sincerity of his nature can be inferred from ad Att. xiv. 1, 2, where Caesar is quoted as saying of him magni refert hic quid velit, sed quicquid vult valde vult. For his devotion to study see 7 §27 below.

I:124 Scripsit non parum multa Cornelius Celsus, Sextios secutus, non sine cultu ac nitore. Plautus in Stoicis rerum cognitioni utilis. In Epicureis levis quidem, sed non iniucundus tamen auctor est Catius.

§ 124. non parum multa: litotes, as at vi. 2, 3 semper fuerunt non parum multi.—Becher compares also non parum multi Cic. in Verr. iii. 9, 22: Phil. vii. 6, 18: pro Quinctio 3, 11: in Verr. iv. 12, 29: parum saepe de Fin. ii. 4, 12. The opposite of non parum is non nimis: cp. Liv. xxii. 26, 4 haud parum callide with Cic. de Nat. Deor. i. 25, 70 nihil horum nimis callide.

Cornelius Celsus: a celebrated encyclopaedist under Augustus and Tiberius, who wrote on rhetoric, jurisprudence, farming, medicine, military art, and practical philosophy. Only eight books on medicine have come down to us. He survived into the reign of Nero. Cp. §23 above. Of his philosophy Augustine writes as follows (de Haeres. Prol.): opiniones omnium philosophorum qui sectas varias condiderunt usque ad tempora sua ... sex non parvis voluminibus ... absolvit; nec redarguit aliquem, sed tantum quid sentirent aperuit, ea brevitate sermonis ut tantum adhiberet eloquii quantum ... aperiendae iudicandaeque sententiae sufficeret. In xii. 11, 24 Quintilian refers to the universality of his knowledge, though he speaks of him as mediocri vir ingenio. “In other passages also Quintilian often expresses his disagreement from this predecessor of his, e.g. ii. 15, 22, 32: iii. 6, 13 sq.: viii. 3, 47: ix. 1, 18 ... Even when he agrees with him he does so with reserve, e.g. vii. 1, 10.—It may be that Quintilian was vexed that a subject to which he had devoted an entire life was merely cursorily treated by Celsus, and besides an encyclopaedia might easily be open to technical objections. At all events, Celsus’ rhetorical manual was obscured by that of Quintilian. It is mentioned only by Fortunat. iii. 2 (p. 121, 10 H)”—Teuffel, 275.

Sextios. The Sextii, father and son, were contemporary with Caesar and Augustus, and belonged to the Pythagorean school, though not without a leaning to the Stoics (Seneca, Ep. 64 §2–). Seneca speaks frequently of the elder Sextius in his letters: e.g. 59 §7– ‘virum acrem, Graecis verbis, Romanis moribus philosophantem.’ In the Nat. Quaest. vii. 32, 2 we are told how their following—‘Sextiorum nova et Romani roboris secta’—soon fell away: ‘inter initia sua extincta est,’ v. Teuffel 261.

cultu ac nitore: v. §79 and §83, with notes.

Plautus. The text is not certain (see Crit. Notes), but as Quintilian elsewhere (ii. 14, 2 and iii. 6, 23) refers to a philosopher of this name as employing the unusual words queentia and essentia, it may as well be retained. (In ii. 14, 2 however Meister reads Flavi: cp. Teuffel, 261, §9.)

levis: ‘of no weight.’

Catius, an Insubrian by birth, contemporary with Cicero, who speaks of his recent death ad Fam. xv. 16, 1; cp. 19, 2 Epicurus, a quo omnes Catii et Amafinii, mali verborum interpretes (referring to their faithful transcripts of Greek terminology) proficiscuntur. The scholiast on Hor. Sat. ii. 4 tells us that he wrote ‘quattuor libros de rerum natura et de summo bono.’

I:125 Ex industria Senecam in omni genere eloquentiae distuli propter vulgatam falso de me opinionem, qua damnare eum et invisum quoque habere sum creditus. Quod accidit mihi dum corruptum et omnibus vitiis fractum dicendi genus revocare ad severiora iudicia contendo; tum autem solus hic fere in manibus adulescentium fuit.

§ 125. Seneca: A.D. 2-65. For his life and works see Teuffel 282 sqq., Bernhardy p. 871 sq. Martha gives an estimate of the moral teaching of his well-known Letters in ‘Moralistes sous l’Empire Romain.’ Quintilian’s criticism of Seneca is subjected to a searching examination by M. Samuel Rocheblave in a pamphlet De M. Fabio Quintiliano L. Annaei Senecae Judice (Paris, 1890): see esp. chs. iii. and iv. Introduction, pp. xxiv. sqq.

opinionem. Quintilian worked hard to recall the Romans to a more temperate and classical style. He aimed too at a partial ‘return to Cicero,’ and considered Seneca a dangerous model for the youth of the day. See Introduction, pp. xxxix. sqq. Fronto and others used stronger language: e.g. p. 155 N eloquentiam ... Senecae mollibus et febriculosis prunuleis insitam subvertendam censeo radicitus ... neque ignoro copiosum sententiis et redundantem hominem esse, verum sententias eius tolutares video, quatere campum quadripedo concita cursu, tenere nusquam, pugnare nusquam ... dicteria potius eum quam dicta continere. Cp. Aul. Gell. xii. 2, 1 de Annaeo Seneca partim existimant ut de scriptore minime utili, cuius libros attingere nullum pretium operae sit, quod oratio eius vulgaris videatur et protrita, res atque sententiae aut inepto inanique impetu sint aut levi et quasi dicaci argutia, eruditio autem vernacula et plebeia nihilque ex veterum scriptis habens neque gratiae neque dignitatis. Alii vero elegantiae in verbis parum esse non infitias eunt, sed et rerum quas dicat scientiam doctrinamque ei non deesse dicunt et in vitiis morum obiurgandis severitatem gravitatemque non invenustam. So too Caligula (Suet. 53) had called Seneca’s productions arena sine calce, commissiones merae.

damnare ... invisum habere. There is nothing in this of a moral judgment, though some of Quintilian’s contemporaries, notably Tacitus, disliked Seneca, probably because they could not acquit him from blame in regard to his pupil Nero’s excesses, and other matters. The only parallel to et invisum quoque in classical Latin is said by Becher to be Cic. pro Domo §47 quoniam iam dialecticus es et haec quoque liguris. It does not occur in Caesar, seldom in Livy, but frequently in Quintilian. Cp. on §20.

corruption ... genus. He is not speaking of the false taste of Seneca’s style exclusively, but of the general deterioration that prevailed: cp. §43 recens haec lascivia.

dum contendo: ‘through the efforts I made’: the tum which follows shows that it refers to past time.

solus hic fere in manibus. Tac. Ann. xiii. 3 fuit illi viro ingenium amoenum et temporis eius auribus adcommodatum. In his endeavours to introduce a purer taste Quintilian naturally made so popular an author as Seneca the peg on which to hang his discourse.

I:126 Quem non equidem omnino conabar excutere, sed potioribus praeferri non sinebam, quos ille non destiterat incessere, cum diversi sibi conscius generis placere se in dicendo posse iis quibus illi placerent diffideret. Amabant autem eum magis quam imitabantur, tantumque ab illo defluebant quantum ille ab antiquis descenderat.

§ 126. excutere: sc. e manibus adulescentium.

incessere. At the close of the passage quoted above, Gellius goes on to quote, with much indignation, Seneca’s disparaging criticism of Ennius, Cicero, and Vergil, from Book xxii of the Letters to Lucilius (no longer extant). In Ep. 114 we find him censoring Sallust and those who imitated him. Sueton. Ner. 52 a cognitione veterum oratorum Seneca praeceptor, quo diutius in admiratione sui detineret (Neronem avertit). For iis, see Crit. Notes.

defluebant = degenerabant, i. 8, 9 quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque ratione defluximus.

I:127 Foret enim optandum pares ac saltem proximos illi viro fieri. Sed placebat propter sola vitia et ad ea se quisque dirigebat effingenda, quae poterat; deinde cum se iactaret eodem modo dicere, Senecam infamabat.

§ 127. Foret ... optandum, of a wish that is considered impossible,—which shows how high was Quintilian’s opinion of Seneca: cp. ac saltem proximus. So velles §130. For the infin. see Introd. p. lvi.

ad ea ... effingenda: cp. Cic. Orat. §9 ad illius similitudinem artem et manum dirigebat. For effingenda cp. §108.

quae poterat, sc. effingere: cp. Caesar, B.C. 37 quam celerrime potuit (comparare).

infamabat, ‘brought reproach on.’

I:128 Cuius et multae alioqui et magnae virtutes fuerunt, ingenium facile et copiosum, plurimum studii, multa rerum cognitio, in qua tamen aliquando ab his quibus inquirenda quaedam mandabat deceptus est.

§ 128. alioqui: see Introd. p. li.

quibus ... mandabat. Especially for physical science he must have been greatly indebted to external aid. His VII Books ‘Naturalium Quaestionum,’ with the addition of moral meditations, were used as a text-book in the Middle Ages.

I:129 Tractavit etiam omnem fere studiorum materiam; nam et orationes eius et poemata et epistulae et dialogi feruntur. In philosophia parum diligens, egregius tamen vitiorum insectator fuit. Multae in eo claraeque sententiae, multa etiam morum gratia legenda, sed in eloquendo corrupta pleraque atque eo perniciosissima, quod abundant dulcibus vitiis.

§ 129. orationes. None survive. Quintilian refers (viii. 5, 18) to the speech he made for Nero on the occasion of his mother’s funeral: Tac. Ann. xiii. 3, cp. 11. It is probable also that Seneca wrote the speeches mentioned by Suet. Ner. 7, the ‘gratiarum actio’ in the Senate, ‘pro Bononiensibus latine, pro Rhodiis atque Iliensibus graece.’ He also pleaded with success in the law-courts (Dion Cass. 59, 19, 7.).

poemata. That Seneca wrote poetry is evident from Tacitus Ann. xiv. 52, where his accusers, in order to prejudice him in the eyes of Nero (who was jealous of his reputation as a poet and an orator),—obiiciebant etiam eloquentiae laudem uni sibi adsciscere et carmina crebrius factitare postquam Neroni amor eorum venisset: cp. Suet. Ner. 52. He is said also to have written epigrams, and other forms of verse.—His tragedies are not referred to here, though Quintilian quotes from the Medea ix. 2, 8: see for them Teuffel 285; Bernhardy, note 322.

epistulae. The Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium, as we have them now (see 3rd vol. of Teubner edition), are 124 in number, arranged in twenty books. There were more however originally, and Priscian speaks of Book x of the letters to Novatus (in decimo epistularum ad Novatum), while Martial (vii. 45, 3) refers to letters to Caesonius Maximus, of which we know nothing more.

dialogi, i.e. the works called by this name in the Milan MS., not his tragedies, though these were written to be read rather than to be acted. There are twelve of them (v. Teuffel 284 §4–), and each is dedicated to some particular individual. There is besides the De Clementia ad Neronem, and a Dialogus de Superstitione (no longer extant except in the fragment given in Augustine’s C.D. vi. 10) directed against the anthropomorphism of popular superstition.

feruntur: §23.

parum diligens: ‘not very critical.’ He was a student of life rather than a student of thought.

vitiorum insectator: cp. Lactantius, Inst. Div. v. 9 morum vitiorumqne publicorum et descriptor verissimus et accusator acerrimus.

eo for ideo: cp. Hor. Sat. i. 6, 89 eoque non ... Quod non ingenuos habeat ... parentes.

I:130 Velles eum suo ingenio dixisse, alieno iudicio; nam si obliqua contempsisset, si parum recta non concupisset, si non omnia sua amasset, si rerum pondera minutissimis sententiis non fregisset, consensu potius eruditorum quam puerorum amore comprobaretur.

§ 130. iudicio, ‘taste,’ as §127 above: cp. M. Seneca (of Capito) ‘habebat in sua potestate ingenium, in aliena modum.’

obliqua. For this apt conjecture (in place of the traditional aliqua), see Crit. Notes.

si parum recta. On the assumption that a word has fallen out of the MSS. after parum, recta is preferable to Halm and Meister’s sana. For rectum as abstr. cp. ii. 13, 11: xii. 1, 12. See Crit. Notes.

omnia sua amasset, §88 of Ovid, nimium amator ingenii sui. Cp. below 3 §12 utros peccare validius putem, quibus omnia sua placent...

rerum pondera ... fregisset: contrast §123 suffecit ponderi rerum. Seneca ‘weakened the force of his matter by striving after epigrammatic brevity.’

amore, of an ill-considered attachment (§94: 2 §19), whereas studio would have indicated mature taste, vi. 2, 12 amor πάθος, caritas ἦθος.

I:131 Verum sic quoque iam robustis et severiore genere satis firmatis legendus vel ideo quod exercere potest utrimque iudicium. Multa enim, ut dixi, probanda in eo, multa etiam admiranda sunt; eligere modo curae sit, quod utinam ipse fecisset. Digna enim fuit illa natura, quae meliora vellet: quod voluit effecit.

§ 131. sic quoque = καὶ οὕτως.

robustis, opp. to pueris: cp. 5 §1 below. Cp. Tac. Dial. 35 ‘controversiae robustioribus adsignantur,’ while ‘suasoriae pueris delegantur.’

firmatis. So occupatos 3 §27: exercitatos 5 §17. Introd. pp. xlviii-ix.

vel ideo quod: §86: 5 §16.

utrimque, i.e. laudantium et vituperantium, ‘for and against him.’ So 5, 20: 6, 7: and cp. 1, 22. Introd. p. lii.

Multa enim ... digna enim, another instance of the want of care that has been already noted, 2 §23.

natura: cp. §86.