THE PROSE OF THE ROMAN STATESMEN
“Ciceronian prose is practically the prose of the human race,” says
Mackail, a critic who is unusually sensitive to qualities of style. In
saying this, he doubtless had in mind not only the orotund periods of the
_Pro Milone_, the elaborately rhythmical movement of the _Pro Archia_,
the vehement force of the first Catilinarian or the easy colloquialism
of the familiar letters. It was rather the lucid and copious exposition
of essays like the _De Oratore_ in which, without revealed effort, a
versatile mind found appropriate and dignified expression for all its
concepts and moods. How did such prose come to be?
Cicero worked incessantly for years to acquire his command of the tools
of expression. When very young he memorized the standard rules of
rhetoric that emphasized the need for clarity, arrangement, conciseness,
luminosity, and all the rest. Do such rules make great writers? On that
point Cicero did not deceive himself. He knew that adults did not need
them, but he recognized that schoolboys would save time by having their
attention called to what practice would eventually reveal. Such rules
might prove guide posts to intelligent beginners, but one has only to
read the three books of the _De Oratore_[1] to discover that rhetoric was
for Cicero a schoolroom crutch to outgrow and forget. Another device
much recommended by the Roman teachers of his day was imitation, the
study of the masters of diverse styles. It is a method that has recently
been employed to good effect in the classroom for the awakening of taste
and sharpening of critical acumen. Cicero did not scorn its use, but
he knew too well that style is personal[2] to attempt to acquire in
this way a garb that would not fit his own mental processes. When he
sought out Apollonius of Rhodes as a critic it was not in order to adapt
himself to that teacher’s mode of expression. He first decided what his
own taste and capacity needed, and what the Roman Forum and Curia would
require of him; then he sought for the teacher who could best help him
by his criticism. His complete independence is shown by the fact that
he traveled long, trying one after the other of the famous teachers of
the east, abandoning them one by one as soon as he discovered that they
did not suit his purposes.[3] Cicero did not impose the Rhodian style
upon himself. He made his own curriculum to fit his temperament and
sought out the tutor who could help him attain what he demanded. This
procedure seems to me characteristic of the great Roman stylists. Cicero
and Caesar, Sallust and Livy, Seneca and Tacitus, betray themselves in
their sentence structure. The secret of their expression will never be
disclosed by a search for their models nor in the rhetorical rules then
current.
The aim of this chapter is limited. It cannot even attempt the important
task of illustrating from a study of Cicero the valid rule that style is
the man. It will attempt only to sketch the growth of Latin prose up to
Cicero’s day in order to suggest how that prose became adequate to clothe
the varied expression of so versatile a genius.
Roman, like English, prose developed its sonority, dignity, and rhythm
in persuasive speech. As in England during the religious reformation,
pulpit oratory molded speech, so in Rome, during the period of political
reformation from Cato to Cicero, forensic contests in the senate house
and at the tribunals transformed Roman expression. This parallel may seem
obvious, but one offers it with hesitation because Roman oratorical style
is generally supposed to have been shaped by the study of Greek rhetoric
in the schoolroom. Quite apart, however, from the fact that true art
is seldom amenable to the compulsion of precept, chronology militates
against this theory. Roman prose had traveled far before it resorted to
any guidance from Greece.
Like the English of Wycliffe, early Roman prose was formless. It merely
followed the habits of unshaped spontaneous conversation. If anything
was to be recorded with care, it employed the forms of art, that is, of
verse. Naevius and Ennius wrote their chronicles in meter. Even Chaucer,
who is so luminous in his verse narratives, becomes involved and at
times almost incoherent in his few attempts to write prose, unless in
fact he yields to the temptation of admitting rhythm into his sentences.
But Chaucer is one of the last of the great writers to flounder thus.
The Wyclifite Bible marked the beginning of a religious contest that
continued for two centuries with more or less intensity, and finally with
passionate vehemence. It was a contest that, to many, involved a question
of life and death and to even more the problem of eternal salvation. The
gravity of the theme called for the noblest possible expression, while
the deep concern of all classes, even the most ignorant, required clarity
and directness of utterance. The temptation of the learned to exaggerate
rhetoric into Euphuism was immediately checked by the need of being
intelligible to the congregation, while the tendency of plain persons
toward colloquial formlessness was checked both by the deep respect for
the sacred theme and by the high level of cultural taste among the clergy
of the time. We need not deny the great influence of Ciceronian and
Augustinian models upon these learned men, and in Lyly’s courtly group
we know how ancient rhetoric ran pell-mell into preciosity. But that was
an aberration that affected only those who had a thin message to convey.
When men are intensely engaged in saving their fellows, speech will grow
clear, and when these men are at the same time persons endowed with great
intellects, their speech will take on dignity of structure and of sound.
Before that contest English prose had babbled thus:[4]
And in that country is an old castle that stands upon a rock,
the which is cleped the Castle of the Sparrowhawk, that is
beyond the city of Layays, beside the town of Pharsipee, that
belongeth to the lordship of Cruk, that is a rich lord and a
good Christian man, where men find a sparrowhawk upon a perch
right fair and right well made, and a fair Lady of Fayrye that
keepeth it, etc.
This sentence rattles on unhaltingly through “and’s” and “that’s” for a
solid page before it falls down to a stop from sheer exhaustion.
After the battle was over we have the Authorized Version with its
magnificent directness:
The sun shall be no more thy light by day; neither for
brightness shall the moon give light unto thee; but the word
shall be to thee an everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.
Briefly, the parallel between early Latin and early English prose can
be indicated thus. The prose of Ennius, like that of Chaucer, was very
much inferior to his verse. Before Ennius died, however, the mighty
struggle of statesmen had begun in the polemics of Cato, a contest which
was destined to build up in time a dignified and versatile language.
Cato represented the native, middle-class, agrarian population of Italy
that feared the expensive and ambitious foreign entanglements which the
philhellenic party of Scipio had incurred and hated the foreign culture
which followed in the wake of philhellenism. Cato spoke incessantly.
A hundred and fifty of his speeches were available in Cicero’s day.
He attacked the Scipionic group in the senate, in public harangues,
and in court. And not only he but his lieutenants—and of course his
opponents—had constantly to be on their feet. This was the beginning of
the party divisions that led through the Gracchan reforms and through
the debating period of the civil wars to the final defeat of the Roman
Republic a hundred years later. The contest of words was as bitter as in
the England of Wycliffe, Tindall, Cranmer, Latimer, and Hooker. Here,
too, the best intellects of the nation were exercised in the debate;
here, too, the gravity of the theme and the demands of aristocratic
audiences required dignified expression, while the constant necessity of
winning the populace required entire clarity and lucidity of expression.
The struggle was not indeed for eternal salvation, but it often involved
the question of life and death, and always the future of the state. And
from men like Cato, the Gracchi, Cicero and Brutus, the state claimed and
won a devotion more intense than religion could. Thus there is a certain
similarity between the growth of Latin prose from Ennius to Cicero and
that of English from Chaucer to Hooker. And though Greek rhetorical
theory and models were factors in shaping Latin prose, as Roman theory
and models were factors in shaping English, it seems to me quite probable
that both languages would have taken the course they did without those
models, for both were determined by forensic expression, by great
causes, and by intense devotion to those causes on the part of the most
intelligent men of their day.
In following the evolution of Latin prose[5] we unfortunately have to
deal largely with fragments quoted by later writers, and we cannot always
be sure that these fragments are representative. For our purposes however
they may legitimately be considered so. Before Ennius’ time very few
speeches had actually been published. Cicero had at hand an old oration
of Appius Claudius of about 281 B.C. and some funerary laudations, but
he did not think either worth considering in a history of oratory. So
far as we know, written prose documents before these were confined to
laws, treaties, and meager official records. The fragments of the Twelve
Tables (450 B.C.) are too scanty to afford any basis for judging style.
Some of them are so wanting in lucidity, because of an ambiguous use
of pronominal subjects, that a modern lawyer might readily manipulate
them to prove any point. A few fourth- and third-century inscriptions
from headstones and votive tablets[6] contain only blunt sentences which
reveal chiefly an obvious desire to save the expense of stone-cutting.
They do however show the native Latin word order and its fondness for
the deferred verb. _Orcevia Numeri (uxor) nationu gratia, Fortuna Diovo
fileia primogenia donum dedi._ This is of course a tendency in all
inflected languages where the verb can be postponed till the subject and
object have been visualized, since the inflectional endings indicate the
direction of the verbal action. And in Latin, the hierarchy of _what
is important_ can be and was recognized by the word order. “Orcevia,
Numerius’ wife, for the gift of childbirth, to Fortuna, Jove’s daughter
the firstborn, this gift I give.” Strictly speaking Cicero’s best-shaped
sentence is not more periodic than that colloquial tablet of a humble
woman a century before any Roman scholar thought of studying style. It
was not the study of Greek that determined the form of Latin prose.
The Duilian inscription of 260 B.C.—doubtless authentic in the main
though found in an imperial copy[7]—is our only pre-Ennian fragment
of prose that contains several complete sentences. This inscription is
far more fulsome and boastful than the modest Scipionic epitaphs of two
generations later, a fact probably due to Duilius’ sojourn in Sicily
where he could see verbose honorary tablets at every hand. In spirit and
content it is Sicilian, but its phrasing and diction are normal Latin.
Its longest sentence is rambling, badly coordinated and illogically
constructed despite its periodic placement of the verbs. The man who
composed it had no feeling for lapidary style:
enque eodem mac [istratud bene]
[r]em navebos marid consol primos c[eset copiasque]
[c]lasesque navales primos ornavet pa[ravetque],
[c]umque eis navebos claseis Poenicas omn[is, item ma-]
[x]umas copias Cartaciniensis praesente[d Hanibaled]
[d]ictatored ol[or]om in altod marid pucn[andod vicet]
[v]ique nave[is cepe]t cum socieis septer[esmom unum quin—]
[queresm]osque triresmosque naveis X[XX, merset XIII] etc.
[—and in the same magistracy he was the first consul to fight
successfully upon the sea with ships, and he first equipped and
prepared a fleet, and by fighting on the high seas he with his
ships overcame the Punic fleet and the very great Carthaginian
forces commanded by their dictator Hannibal, and by force he
captured their ships with their marines, one septereme, and
thirty quinqueremes and triremes, and sank thirteen, etc.]
A man who composes thus is not only “hypnotized by the exuberance of his
own verbosity” but unpracticed in the art of logical expression.
Our first passage of continuous prose comes from Ennius’ _Euhemerus_,
quoted verbatim by Lactantius. A fair example is the following:[8]
Exim Saturnus uxorem duxit Opem. Titan qui maior natu erat
postulat ut ipse regnaret. ibi Vesta mater eorum et sorores
Ceres atque Ops suadent Saturno, uti de regno ne concedat
fratri. ibi Titan, qui facie deterior esset quam Saturnus,
idcirco et quod videbat matrem atque sorores suas operam dare
uti Saturnus regnaret, concessit ei ut is regnaret. itaque
pactus est cum Saturno, uti si quid liberum virile secus ei
natum esset, ne quid educaret. Id eius rei causa fecit, uti
ad suos gnatos regnum rediret. tum Saturno filius qui primus
natus est, eum necaverunt. deinde posterius nati sunt gemini,
Iuppiter atque Iuno. tum Iunonem Saturno in conspectum dedere
atque Iovem clam abscondunt dantque eum Vestae educandum
celantes Saturnum. item Neptunum clam Saturno Ops parit eumque
clanculum abscondit, etc.
For this passage I shall use Professor Rand’s translation though it
introduces a modicum of style into the expression:
“Then Saturn took Ops to wife. Titan, his elder brother, wished
to be king himself. Then their mother Vesta and their sisters
Ceres and Ops induced Saturn not to yield the throne to Titan.
Then Titan, who was not so handsome a man as Saturn, both on
that account and because he saw that his mother and sisters
were bent on having Saturn reign, allowed him so to do. He
therefore secured an agreement with Saturn, that if the latter
had any male offspring thereafter, he should not rear them.
This he did for the purpose that the kingdom might revert to
his own sons. Then a first son was born to Saturn, and they
killed him. Then later twins were born, Jupiter and Juno. Then
they openly showed Juno to Saturn, and hid Jove and gave him
to Vesta to bring up, concealing him from Saturn. Likewise Ops
bare Neptune unbeknownst to Saturn, and carefully hid him away.”
This Ennian passage is even more simple and devoid of stylistic qualities
than is the English of Wycliffe or Chaucer. The brief plodding sentences
are clear enough; in fact there is a dry legalistic explicitness in
phrases like _id ejus rei causa fecit uti_, and _deinde posterius_. But
the whole rattles to pieces like a mosaic set in clay. It is in the main
a string of coordinate clauses loosely hung on que, atque, ibi, tum, and
without any appreciation of the differences that we attempt to convey by
commas, semicolons and full stops. It has not even the normal feeling
for periodic structure which the epitaphs of the time reveal. It is
naïve, primitive prose, and the evidence that Ennius could drivel thus is
indeed illuminating to the student of literature. A nation which could be
satisfied with such a medium of expression had not been very verbose.
During the next few decades, however, there was much legislation, and
from the interesting Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 B.C.
we have considerable fragments which prove that the ambiguities found
in the Twelve Tables were being gradually removed and that there were
enough shysters at Rome to compel legislators to evolve the intricate
and all-inclusive “if-and-but style” which has ever since characterized
legal expression. To this source the great prose of Rome owed very little
except precision of diction. There was also not a little historical
writing, chiefly however in Greek, for the use of statesmen who needed
to know their precedents. But this type of prose, so far as we can judge
from the fragments preserved and from Cicero’s adverse judgments,[9] made
no appreciable advance upon the narrative manner of Ennius, illustrated
above. Nor did such commonplace textbooks as Cato’s _De Agri Cultura_.
As we have said, it was public speech that moulded prose style at Rome,
as in England. Among the first to make a marked impression was Cato,
whose great activity on the platform begins about the year of the decree
_de Bacchanalibus_. Nothing could be more innocent of form than Cato’s
_De Agri Cultura_. This however, is by no means true of his speeches,
several pages of which survive in the typical paragraphs quoted by later
writers. Cato had not taken any course in the art of eloquence, he had
not studied the Greeks to the point of appreciating stylistic qualities,
and there was no literary Latin prose published for him to study, but he
had, as a member of the senate, heard many elaborate arguments advanced
by the foremost statesmen of his day on such weighty questions as the
peace with Carthage, the proposed expedition into Macedonia in aid of
the Greek democracies, the terms of peace with Philip, and the proposed
war with Antiochus the Great. There can be no doubt that these debates
brought out many of the characteristic qualities of Latin style. The
men who argued these questions had to think soundly and to form their
arguments as clearly, as definitely, as incisively, and as persuasively
as they knew how. When scholastic students of style attribute Greek
learning to Cato[10] because he stops to make definitions, balance
arguments, and employ logical enthymemes, they astound us by their
naïvete. One might as well say that Confucius, Hesiod, and Isaiah had
studied Demosthenes. Indeed I doubt not the Aurignacian mother defined
words for her children and that the lord of the cave had often tried to
argue his wife into silence by conclusions _ex contrario_.
There has recently arisen another explanation for the occasional artistry
of the pre-hellenistic Roman writers which has been held to apply to
all of the early Latin authors including Plautus. This is that the
so-called “Gorgianic figures,” used by even the earliest Romans, are of
Sicilian origin, that the Romans must therefore have come into cultural
contact with the Sicilians through commerce two centuries before Plautus,
and that Latin prose may thus have taken on rhetorical devices in its
infancy.[11] I mention these entertaining conjectures only to guard
against any possible supposition that they may seem acceptable simply
because they have found their way successively into recent textbooks.
Cato was a man who, despite his faults, possessed a very keen and
versatile mind, a visualizing, picture-making imagination, a sharp
tongue, an agile as well as a retentive memory, and a penetrating power
of analysis. His style, to be sure, is not malleable; the clauses cohere
by logic rather than by the cement of conjunctions; he is repetitious,
chiefly because he likes to hammer his nails firm; his transitions are
blunt when he is impatient to be on with his argument; he does not take
time to modulate his phrasing and his style has little _chiaroscuro_,
because he is in deadly earnest all the way. His vocabulary is often of
the barn and field and his imagery is apt to draw from the farmstead,
as for instance when he shouts at Thermus: “You cut those ten worthy
men into strips of bacon.”[12] In his _Brutus_, Cicero somewhat slyly
likened Cato’s simple straightforward Latin to the style of Lysias.[13]
Cicero, of course, knew the difference, for he later permitted Atticus to
correct him on this point, but at the time he desired to recall Brutus
to the logical consequences of a contemporary doctrine which somewhat
naïvely overstressed the simplicity of the studied artlessness of Lysias.
Cato was, of course, conscious of his effects; he drove his arguments
home with intentional care, for he wrote out his speeches even though
he delivered them without notes. He published them of course not as
literary essays to be read by later students of oratory, but as documents
designed to carry on the battles that he had begun in the court or the
senate. Their art, such as it is, derives not from rhetoric but from his
temperament and his fiery conviction. His philosophy of style lay in four
words: _rem tene, verba sequentur_.
Cato’s prose was admirably suited to forensic attack. Its qualities,
however, were those that spring from a practical, quick-witted,
imaginative debater. Cato probably directed every word and every clause
toward the precise argumentative effect that he wished to obtain. He
did not pronounce them slowly in order to taste their harmony of sound
or to listen to their rhythm. If they had beauty, it was by chance or
by reason of the beauty inherent in the Latin of his day. He probably
deleted whatever created the impression of being far-sought. Spontaneous
imagery might stand if it made his meaning more clear. His antithesis,
anaphora, and balance therefore belong not to the schools but spring
from the instinct to strike quickly, often, and with both fists. During
his fifty years of strenuous speaking he did much for Latin prose,
by proving that it could be clear, pointed, and precise; that it was
adapted to senatorial deliberations over world politics, as well as to
legal battles in the courts and in the assembly. Cato did not have an
ear for the organ qualities of the language. Nor was the time yet ripe
for the elaboration of artistic effects. When Cato spoke with deepest
earnestness, he could hardly escape attaining to some of the dignity that
Latin speech so readily acquires, but his vocabulary was too fresh from
the soil to sustain that quality for long. However, it is likely that men
of taste and restraint even in his day were more concerned than he for
the proprieties of diction that belonged to themes of gravity. Nobles who
were learning to rule provinces the wide world over and to give commands
to kings did not have to go to Greek pettifoggers to acquire dignity of
address.
Toward the end of Cato’s period some nobles kept Greek teachers in their
homes to teach their sons the language and the literature that prevailed
in all the eastern half of the Empire. But the spirit of Rome was not
then very friendly toward such teachers. The interminable wrangling
of scores of Greek legations begging for favors, the disillusioning
visits of Roman statesmen to Greek cities, the demoralizing influence
of the country upon the soldiers stationed in Greece, the inane
display of logical antinomies in the philosophical disputations, and
the superficiality of a rhetorical doctrine concerned with adornments
superimposed upon vacuity, these very quickly disgusted Rome. Cato’s
friends succeeded in having the Greek teachers banished from Rome in 161
and again in 154.[14] It would be as great a mistake to attribute lasting
cultural effects to the ambassadorial visits of Crates and Carneades to
Rome as to assume that the American senate could have adopted continental
rhetoric and style from the exuberant prose spoken by the French and
Italian envoys, Viviani and Francesco Nitti, who were sent to Washington
in 1917 to present the cause of the allied nations.
After Cato’s death more Greek teachers came, and among these the stoic
Panaetius, who remained for some time and became a real cultural force in
the group that gathered about the younger Scipio. Some attempt has been
made to trace the Stoic rhetorical doctrine of the plain style to this
contact.[15] But it is difficult to see what lessons Rome needed after
Cato to illustrate the desirability of the qualities emphasized by stoic
teaching: (1) pure diction, (2) clarity, (3) precision, (4) conciseness,
(5) propriety. The first four of these qualities were the very spirit of
Cato’s practiced though untutored Latin. The last quality concerned Cato
very little in all probability, but other Roman statesmen knew the need
of sloughing off barnyard diction in speaking before the august senators
at Rome. Propriety of diction is after all a quality that could hardly
be foreign to a people who had for centuries respected the triumphal
garb, the fasces, and the august pontifical ceremonies, and it was not a
quality that could be acquired from foreign teachers who did not know the
tone of Latin words. We must also bear in mind that what Roman statesmen
were eager to learn from men like Panaetius and Polybius and what these
men desired to teach was not some clever trick of phrasing but the
essence of political philosophy and of ethics. Polybius’ sixth book and
Cicero’s _De Republica_ and _De Officiis_ are the real results of the
early Stoic teaching at Rome, and Polybius’ own unwieldy sentences should
warn us that contact with Stoic teaching could do little for stylistic
beauty.
As the Gracchan times approached, a new division of parties became
apparent at Rome. The senators were suspected of promoting expansion in
the provinces for the sake of their own profit and glory, and several
tribunes gained popularity by opposing the recruiting and by haling
nobles into court on the charge of maladministration. Piso devised the
first of the special courts, which Cicero considered of great importance
for the training of orators. Then for several years there was agitation
over ballot reform advocated by the populace who desired a secret ballot.
Many important speeches were delivered in the senate and before the
people on these measures, and if we may judge from the remarks of Cicero
regarding Galba,[16] Lepidus Porcina, and Scipio Aemilianus, all this
activity conduced to create a feeling for a smoother and more coherent
style. Aemilianus especially, who represented the finest aristocracy
in its dignity of birth and high accomplishment, spoke with that
_auctoritas_ and _gravitas_ that were the natural concomitants of great
empire.[17]
Then came the Gracchan proposals which shook the staid government to
its foundations. For a dozen years the keenest minds of Rome were
pitted against each other, and victory lay not in arms but in the power
of persuasion. There was much discussion in the senate, but Tiberius
Gracchus carried the battle directly to the popular assembly, and that is
where it was fought to the end. For the words of Tiberius we have to rely
chiefly upon the paraphrases of Plutarch, which are too general to permit
of accurate estimate. From the speeches of Gaius Gracchus, however, we
fortunately have some exact quotations.[18]
Gaius Gracchus did as much as any one man to increase the range of Latin
forensic prose. Reared in the center of the dominant aristocracy where
he imbibed the purest and most copious diction, trained by a mother
whose urbane language delighted even Cicero, he nevertheless espoused
the cause of democracy, and in the defense of this principle he acquired
a lucid directness that Cicero never tires of praising. Gracchus had
Greek teachers, who taught him to read and to speak Greek as well as not
a little about Greek political ethics, and doubtless also the textbook
rules of Greek style. Such stylistic rules, however, were not of much
worth in addressing Roman voters, and they are seldom in evidence in
the fragments which have survived. Cicero’s one criticism of Gracchus’
style is that he did not know how to modulate his prose so as to secure
rhythmical effects. Gracchus would not have attempted to secure them had
he known how. He was too concerned with the issues at stake, too fired
with zeal for the cause for which he was to suffer death, to worry about
the adornments of style. He published his speeches, and he doubtless
prepared them beforehand, because in the revolutionary reforms that he
proposed, errors of phrasing must be avoided, and the record must be kept
for the sake of impressing his arguments. He certainly did not issue his
speeches with a view to providing models of style.
In this period Latin prose acquired further versatility and range because
Gracchus was a man of genius, believed in a cause which gave full scope
to his great powers, and spoke before different audiences that required
of him widely varying types of appeal. His was the task of shattering
the power of the most stubborn aristocracy that the world has known, of
organizing a new democratic machinery of government, of extending the
suffrage throughout Italy, of saving the native stock by a vast scheme
of colonization. He was stirred by an unflinching devotion to his cause,
by bitterness at the murder of his brother, and by the knowledge that he
too was marked for death. It is blasphemy against the informing spirit of
great art to attribute his effects to rules, and not to acknowledge that
genius fighting in such a cause is an independent creative force. Cato
had already shaped his weapons for him. Gracchus, more richly endowed
with vision, with sympathy, with intellect and wit, filed and hammered
the weapons into a finished armory. There is no tool of persuasion that
he did not have to employ. He used a simple, rude, staccato narrative
when explaining before the rabble conditions that must be cured;[19] in
elaborate argument, where the light and shade must be exact, he employed
periods as well-packed, though not so musical, as those of Cicero.[20]
Before senators his diction was as grave and lordly as theirs, while in
the forum, though never coarse, he could be as colloquial as Cato. His
vituperation carried the deep thrust of the lance rather than the rapier
cut,[21] for he liked to play with lingering irony. His emotional appeal
reminds one of the language of Ennius’ tragedies.[22]
And yet Cicero was not quite satisfied with his speeches as works of art.
What was lacking was after all what Gracchus would have disregarded
even had he lived in Cicero’s day: a more careful modulation, a studied
use of rhythm, a concern for the collocation of sounds, a more elaborate
sentence structure, and a more apparent contrast of light and shade.
Those are qualities that do not belong to the expression of revolutionary
reformers who have but a year or two in which to perform a great
life-work. They must come with leisure and tranquility when men have time
to try the sound and taste of phrases in patient reiteration. Meanwhile
Latin prose had been fortunate in finding men like Cato and Gracchus to
make it vivid, clear, versatile, and vibrant. After these two men and
the scores of speakers that they drew into the arena,[23] no Roman could
again write Latin with the shambling gait of Ennius’ _Euhemerus_ without
serious apology. And it is safe to say that even writers of history and
autobiography, who became numerous in the Gracchan period and after,
comprehended now that sentences must have clarity, unity, logic, and
precision.
After the death of Gracchus there was a temporary lull in politics;
the victorious aristocracy, so nearly crushed, prudently decided to
compromise with the populace rather than to risk the awakening of another
Gracchus by exploiting their restored power. Young men who had heard
the brilliant reformer in their youth, men like Crassus, Antonius, and
Catulus, grew up to be distinguished orators. They inherited the results
of a great evolution of prose, they directly or indirectly received the
benefits of a deeper respect for elaborate style because of a new contact
with Greek teachers, and they were granted the leisure and tranquility to
consider the needs of a more artistic expression.
Licinius Crassus, in whose orations Cicero found the first mature Latin
prose,[24] began as a partisan of Gaius Gracchus and in his youth
doubtless imitated his hero’s fiery style. He also gave some attention to
the Greek rules though he held that rules did not create style but were
merely a collection of deductions drawn by analysts from the practices
of the eloquent.[25] He preferred observing Roman speakers to studying
the precepts of the Greeks,[26] and he thought Roman oratory sounder
than Greek because at Rome the pleaders were the foremost statesmen
whereas in Greece only hirelings practiced the art.[27] In these views
he was not far from representing orthodox opinions.[28] There were other
great men who gave even less credit to scholastic practice. Antonius his
rival—by many considered the more brilliant speaker of the two—claimed
that rhetoric was useless in that it only formulated the obvious;[29]
Scaevola pointed out that Roman statesmen who had brought Roman
government to the pinnacle of glory had nothing to learn in expression
from inexperienced Greek pedagogues;[30] and Cicero’s account of the
style of such great orators as Sulpicius, Caesar Strabo, and Cotta
reveals the fact that the oratory of these men was a home product.[31]
On the other hand there were men who tried to make up for the deficiency
in practical experience by drilling at doctrine, with the usual result
that their language became tangled in artifice. Men like Albucius[32] and
the first Curio remind us in type and experience of the courtly Tudor
wits who had little to do or say and ended in euphuism.
What was the admirable style of Crassus which Cicero now calls
mature? The samples that have been saved for us by the _Auctor ad
Herennium_ unfortunately were quoted to illustrate vivid and rapid-fire
argumentation, and Cicero’s longest quotation was made to indicate
Crassus’ power of spontaneous reaction to a surprising situation. While
these examples give proof of celerity of wit, of a forceful, picturesque,
and copious diction, of the pungent and concise phrasing for which
Crassus was noted, they are not normal forensic prose. They do not reveal
the dignity and harmony for which this orator was praised, and they give
no certain illustration of the prose rhythms that Cicero liked to find
in a “mature” style. From the passages that we have we should say that
Crassus spoke as a pupil of Gaius Gracchus, but with the mellowness of
age and in causes of less moment.
Perhaps the real reason why Cicero found Crassus’ style mature was that
the Latin language was now mature. Latin diction had now become fuller
and richer. Not only had the large bulk of Accian tragedy and of hundreds
of comedies enriched the language, but hundreds of speeches delivered by
men who had worked hard at the task of enlarging the resources of Latin
phrase and diction had now been published. The special court instituted
by Piso, the frequent cases before the plebeian assembly after the
Gracchan period, the new custom of attacking political opponents by means
of legal prosecutions had immensely increased the scope of oratory. The
factional strife introduced by the Gracchans had divided the senate
into debating groups, and brought fire into electioneering oratory and
into legislative discussions. Every phase of political philosophy and
expediency as well as of legal and moral principles was discussed day
after day. Accordingly, the Latin language matured quickly and its prose
was a finished product by the time that Cicero was born, although its
verse had to wait another century before attaining adequate expression.
This prose was fortunately a fairly musical thing by nature. In comparing
the earliest Latin word-forms with those of the Gracchan days we find
that they had improved very much in musical quality, due in part, no
doubt, to the fact that the Etruscans and Sabines, who had temporarily
dominated Rome, had slurred over harsh collocations of consonants till
they fell away, and partly to the fact that the plebeians, who were of
course less conservative in speech than the patricians, had won great
positions in the fourth century. _Jouxmenta_ of the Stele inscription had
now softened to _jumenta_; _stlis_ had become _lis_; _stlocus_, locus;
_forctis_, fortis; _scandsla_, scala; and so on, in hundreds of words.
In many positions the harsh sibilants had been eliminated: _cosmis_ had
become comis; _dusmos_, dumus; and intervocalic _s_ had become _r_:
_eram_ was better than _esam_. This elimination of harsh sounds had
wrought so effectively between 500 B.C. and 100 B.C. that a language
that was once as rough as Gothic had acquired the mellifluous quality of
Italian. Though it still contained too many sibilants for ideal speech
and the final _m_ occurred so frequently as to invite monotony, it had
few sounds that could jar upon the most delicate ear. The vowels were
relatively pure, and because of the abundance in inflections of the
sonorous vowels _a_, _o_, and _u_ (=_oo_), they gave the language an
orotund quality. The Indo-European _i_ is on the whole apt to be shrill,
and the great vowel shift of sixteenth-century England which altered
it to the much more musical _i_ (=_aye_) undid its benefit by raising
English _e_ to the thinner sound of the old _i_. Latin retained the old
sound, but in _i_-stems it frequently went over by analogy to _e_, and
the _a̅i̅_, _a̅ĭ_ diphthongs fortunately softened to the mellow _æ_. In
all this, mechanistic forces of the speech organs were at work, but one
cannot help thinking that a delicate auditory guidance helped select the
desirable sounds.
Another great advantage inherent in the Latin language from the beginning
was that quantities were carefully observed by it and were in fact the
determining factor in its rhythm; and since time rather than stress is
the guiding principle of music in human song, as in the flute and organ,
Roman speech was to an unusual degree suited to modulated utterance. To
be sure, in the century before Plautus, stress had threatened for a while
to gain dominance in vulgar speech—enough in fact to question the rights
of measured verse—, nevertheless the timely spread of the conservative,
aristocratic pronunciation through political and forensic oratory, as
it was heard almost daily in the open forum during the second century,
gradually checked the process and standardized a precise observance of
longs and shorts.
The emphatic dominance of quantity over speech went so far in controlling
word-accent that about two centuries before Cicero it had drawn the
accent to the penultimate vowel if that was long. Hence, in the sentence
endings which so often consisted of weighty words, word-accent to a
remarkable degree coincided with a natural quantitative utterance.
Latin, therefore, lent itself to a rhythmical close of sentences, often
combining word-stress and length of utterance in a way that Greek
prose rhythm did not. Cicero had studied Greek and had observed that
various writers advocated the use of iambs, dactyls, and paeans[33] for
clause-endings, and he labored somewhat confusedly to justify those
rhythms since Greek theory seemed to demand them, but modern analysis has
proved that his ear had shaped a truer Latin rhythm than his scholarship
or his logic. His favorite clausulae, though he was not fully aware of
it, were cretics and trochaics, producing a rhythm that adapted itself
excellently to the dominance of longs, to the penultimate law, and to a
strong close. As usual, a true appreciation of the genius of the Latin
language saved the art from the effect of rules that were made for
another medium. Here again Latin shows its independence.
But this is not all. Cicero’s books of rhetoric emphasize periodic
sentence structure with careful attention to a mobile arrangement of
clauses within the period. The Greek orators had of course practiced this
art, and the teachers had drawn up the rules of the game afterwards.
Cicero, for instance, often patterns his clauses with care in order to
reach a periodic climax. In the _Orator_[34] he quotes an example from a
speech of his own in which he follows two pairs of balanced phrases and a
pair of clauses with a tranquil dignified close.
Domus tibi deerat? At habebas; pecunia superabat? At egebas;
incurristi amens in columnas; in alienos insanus insanisti:
depressam caecam jacentem domum pluris quam te et quam fortunas tuas
aestimasti.
In such studied prose as in much of our free verse, the modulation
depends not only upon the measured clausulae but also upon the
parallelisms of phrase.[35] It is the two-fold rhythm that we so often
find in the Authorized Version, in Hooker and in Browne, before English
writers knew very much about the classical theories of prose rhythm.
Now the point that needs to be emphasized is that Cicero would probably
have written thus had he never known rules, had he only used with his
infallible ear the prose that came to him shaped by a hundred great
speakers. For, in the first place, the periodic structure was native
to Latin, as we have seen, from the time of the earliest inscriptions.
That structure is natural in highly inflected languages where the verb
can be deferred in order to make room early for the important words and
concepts, while unimportant phrases can be appropriately subordinated
because their inflectional forms keep them tethered in thought to their
owners even though separated by space. All this invites the service of
taste to provide the contrast and balance, to give light and shade, to
lift and to subdue, and then to bind the whole between introductory
subject and concluding verb. No speaker of taste, given leisure and rich
diction, could resist the temptation of thus elaborating such a language
as Latin. The sentence of the untutored Cato, quoted above, though
lacking in modulation, reveals a structural form not unlike the sentence
of Cicero just cited.
Cicero repeatedly calls attention to what he designates as the adornment
of good prose, adornments associated in Greek learning with the name
of Gorgias. These are the tropes, i.e., the figures of speech, and the
schemata, i.e., the patterned expressions of sentences. But he also tells
us, fortunately, that there were none of these adornments which could not
be found in the works of untutored old Cato,[36] and that even unschooled
rustics employed metaphor. We have already remarked how modern scholars
have sought to explain their presence. Explanations are of course not
necessary. Men used metaphor and simile in the caves of the Dordogne
20,000 years ago; language began in metaphor when the primitive savage
first called a dog “bowwow.” Half the words of any language are still
metaphorical. When a Roman tried to find some expression for thinking,
whether he used _puto_ or _intelligo_ or _concipio_ or _cogito_ or
_arbitror_ or _existimo_ or _opinor_ or _censeo_, or _sentio_, he had to
use a figure of speech. Men like Cato, Scipio, Gracchus, Cicero became
powerful because they had imagination, saw visions, and put their visions
into their words.
The same may be said of patterned phrases. Native Latin verse, shaped
long before Greek was known at Rome, was particularly fond of balance and
antithesis because it was a verse that rested on parallelism marked by
the strong caesura and bound together by alliteration. Such was the form
of the early prayers and proverbs of the Romans:
Postremus dicas, primus taceas.
Pastores, pecua, salve servassis.
Eorum sectam secuntur, multi mortales (Livius).
Immortales mortales, si foret fas flere (of Naevius).
This old, alliterative verse operated with antitheses, balance, contrast,
anaphora, and word-play. Cicero needed no more to go to the Greeks for
such simple devices than Cato, and I do not think that he did. If he
employs them with more delicacy and restraint, it is partly because he
learned with practice that his own youthful style had been prone to
over-use the obvious tricks of speech.
Cicero also calls attention to the Greek rules for the proper
organization of speeches, which must have (1) their introduction, (2)
their exposition of the case, (3) their panoply of proof, (4) their
refutation of the opponent, and (5) their conclusion. To Cicero this
is of course schoolboy stuff.[37] It might save time for a freshman to
have these obvious rules of composition called to his attention when
he begins, but Cicero did not for a moment suppose that an adult who
has had some practice needs instruction like this, or that men like
Cato and Gracchus and the hundreds of other statesmen battling with the
shrewdest minds of Rome needed to be told that the peroration belonged
at the end and not at the beginning of a speech. Roman oratory during
its hundred years of progress had never learned anything essential from
these precepts. Their purpose was simply to train the Roman schoolboy
to observe the processes involved in shaping speeches. The mistake of
our modern critics has been to suppose that such rules as these created
Roman prose. Nothing in Cicero’s writings or practices justifies that
assumption. Roman prose grew to full maturity from native roots, in
native soil, and with native nurture.
Ornate Latin speech reached its complete development in the orations
of Cicero. To modern Anglo-Saxon taste the more elaborate paragraphs
seem overwrought. Our busy courts and legislatures desire facts clearly
and compactly presented. This has made us impatient of the style of
persuasion in speech. When we have leisure for vacation reading we may
resort to polyphonic or imagist prose in essays and occasionally in
fiction. We still have a place for protreptic sound in well-written
paragraphs, but not during business hours. That is the chief reason why
some of the Ciceronian periods now seem misplaced. Another seems to lie
in a difference of temperament in the respective peoples. If the Latins
were in any respect like the modern Italians in their sensitivity to
dramatic utterance, they may have enjoyed emotional persuasion more than
some of the ultramontane peoples. The very fact that Cicero’s manner
so frequently carried conviction in the courts, in the senate, and on
the public platform removes him to that extent from modern ultramontane
criticism. But Cicero himself was in his day considered a moderate and
urged strongly that elaborate prose must never be used except for themes
that could carry its burden. He also knew that the study of rhetoric was
for young students only and not for mature statesmen. When in the _De
Oratore_ he represented Crassus and Antonius as giving such elementary
instruction to the young students, Sulpicius and Cotta, he carefully
dismissed the venerable Scaevola as being too dignified to participate in
such a conversation. His sense of propriety here reveals the true Roman
attitude toward Greek rhetoric.
To be sure Cicero was himself somewhat imposed upon by the claims
of rhetoric which Greek teachers had elaborated, or he would not
have written the _De Oratore_—even with apologies. The erroneous
belief was still current that some one some day might work out a real
science of style. Hence he wished to make his contribution to that
science by setting down his own precepts regarding prose rhythm,
composition, and figures of speech. But that he had doubts concerning
their validity appears in his insistence that the “grand manner”
is a gift of nature (_Or._ 99) and that Roman oratory owed more to
_ingenium_ than to _doctrina_ (_Or._ 143). However, in criticizing his
contemporaries—Calvus, Caelius, and Calidius—he always proceeds from the
point of view of their effect on him rather than from any reference to
rules of rhetoric.
Cicero in fact employed few of the figures of speech, the names of which
he felt that convention required him to list, and his modulations are
so intricate and varied that, despite a score of dissertations on the
subject, no one has yet succeeded in analyzing them according to the
standard scheme which he transmitted from the accepted authorities. For
Cicero himself, living prose had a native movement and a wealth of sound
that lay beyond analysis. His rules were for dull minds that required
the aid of rules. His own ear required none. The teacher who compels his
students to count the specific clausulae of an oration of Cicero commits
an unpardonable crime against the holy spirit of a great art. The student
must, of course, learn to read that prose with an accurate pronunciation
of the sounds and quantities, but after that the rhythm will take care of
itself.
Cicero speaks[38] of his own oration _Pro Caecina_ as an example of
the “plain style,” employed in explicative demonstration, and the _Pro
Rabirio_ as an illustration of the grave and lofty style employed in
compelling persuasion, while he cites the _De Imperio Pompei_ as an
instance of the “middle style.” He who has read these three speeches
conscientiously feels the difference between them, yet he will not be
able to convey that feeling by means of the traditional statistics of the
stylistic doctorand. There are quite as many examples of the favorite
rhythms (clausulae) in the _Pro Caecina_ as in the _Pro Rabirio_, a fact
that shows that Cicero’s ear was remarkably sensitive to this effect and
guided his vocal expression even when he was not consciously striving for
it. Even in metaphors and in such devices as the rhetorical question, the
_Pro Caecina_ does not differ materially from the _Pro Rabirio_.[39] And
this again shows that this orator was by nature luminous and aggressive
as a successful speaker must be.
In the final analysis, if we may take the cue from these speeches, it is
not the degree of consciously imposed rhetoric that differentiates their
styles for Cicero, but the nature of the issues and audiences involved
and the resultant quality of the speaker’s inspiration.[40] In the _Pro
Caecina_, an ordinary civil suit called for close argumentation before
a small jury of legal specialists. These facts determined the style, as
Cicero says. In the _Pro Rabirio_, which Cicero places at the opposite
end of the scale, the critic will not find many more of the standard
devices of rhetoric than in the other. But here it becomes apparent from
the first sentence that Cicero is tense, that standing at full height he
is battling with all his might for what seems to him a great principle.
The issue was as serious as any he had ever championed. That accounts for
the intensity of his utterance. But there are various ways of fighting,
and the audience as well as the theme must determine the manner. Cicero
had before him not only the voting public—which standing alone might
have tempted him into mere vituperation—but he had also before him the
aristocracy of the senate waiting to see whether the _auctoritas senatus_
would be betrayed by that day’s vote because of a possible failure on the
orator’s part. Cicero did not fail. The speech in its gravity and dignity
of word and period is worthy of the theme and adapted to the audience.
And these are the factors which Cicero felt had made that speech.
Scholars have catalogued externals in such oratory too assiduously, and
Cicero did so himself, because it had not yet been discovered in his day
that art is beyond the reach of science.
What we need to do in reading Cicero is first to comprehend the rich
endowment of the man: the vast human sympathy that brought him into
immediate contact with his audiences, be they ever so diverse, the
celerity of his thought, the constructive power of his imagination, the
close correspondence between his delicate sense of rhythm and sound and
his copious vocabulary, and above all his very sensitive response to the
issues of right and justice. Then we must bear in mind the breadth of his
studies in philosophy, dramatic literature, history, law, and politics
that enriched his mind with principles, illustrations, and points of
view.[41] Finally, we must picture to ourselves in each case the nature
of his audience, the issue at stake, and the intensity of its appeal
to him. When we have done this we shall feel, if we have the gift of
insight, and even if we cannot analyze it, the consummate art of Cicero’s
Latin prose. To attempt to express the secret of it in statistics of
tropes and meters is to miss it wholly.
Before his death Cicero saw the fate of his favorite literary creed
that prose should be a work of art. It is well to remember that as he
had adopted this creed from his teachers so had his literary opponents
adopted from their teachers at least the verbal expression of their own
creed, i.e., that it was the business of the speaker to do the task
before him simply and honestly without resorting to artifice. However,
I do not believe that the literary contest that cost Cicero so much
distress in his last days was essentially one of theory; it was rather
one that grew out of the milieu in which he lived. Long before Caesar’s
day, Cato had expressed his natural aversion to the artifices of Crates
and Carneadas when he said with his characteristic impatience: “Get hold
of your theme and the words will take care of themselves.” Cicero in his
youth had found the same antithesis expressed in Antonius and Crassus.
And he lived to see men like Caesar, Brutus, and Calvus win the young
men away from his own ideals to those of the matter-of-fact style. The
antithesis lies deep in human nature and crops up in the revolt that each
generation feels toward its predecessor. It is hardly sound to attribute
the dominance of such elementary creeds to schoolroom precepts. The
preceptor is usually a man who notes the requirements of his day and
tries to prepare his pupils for its needs. He follows more often than
he leads, as any one may observe who will examine any twenty standard
books on composition produced by teachers during the last fifty years in
America. They follow usage, they do not beget it.
Asianic rhetoric, with its advocacy of adornment, had come to Rome in
Cicero’s youth. It is true that its rules engaged his attention. But a
man as sensitive to artistic expression as Cicero, and as sure of the
spirit of his audiences, had little to learn from Anatolian pedagogues
who taught _Graeculi_ how to declaim to four walls. Those teachers would
hardly have recognized the _Pro Rabirio_ as a product of their precepts.
Similarly, Apollodorus came from Pergamum to teach the doctrines of a
Lysianic or Attic style. Youths like Calidius, Calvus, and Pollio favored
his method. But Apollodorus would have met with little success if so many
Romans had not been practical and if the senate, with its traditions of
dignity, had not already lost its prestige before the emerging democracy
led by Caesar. Apollodorus may have introduced the new style, but had
the times not been ripe for him he would not have been heard; moreover,
the part of his doctrine that Rome accepted, Rome had possessed already
in the 150 speeches of old Cato. It was Caesar’s sword that antiquated
senatorial oratory as it antiquated senatorial pretensions to govern
Rome. Foreign schoolteachers did not do it. The Greek observer, Dionysius
of Halicarnassus, who was an enthusiastic supporter of Atticism in the
Augustan day, realized that it was not the Greek schoolteachers but the
practical statesmen of Rome who in the last analysis required the new
prose to take the form it did. “It is my belief,” he says, “that this
great revolution [in stylistic matters] was originated by Rome, the
mistress of the world, who compelled entire nations to look to her: Rome,
I say, and her nobles, men of high character, excellent administrators,
highly cultivated, and of high critical intelligence.” Here we have a
keen insight into the fact that a powerful state generates a dominant
culture which easily drowns the feeble whispers of the cloistered
theorist.
The generation which followed Cicero, represented by Asinius Pollio
and Messala, revolted completely against Cicero’s ornate prose and
adopted the plain, matter-of-fact speech which was called Atticistic.
Again it seems to me not only incorrect but contrary to the penetrating
observations of Tacitus[42] to attribute this revolt to the victory of a
stylistic theory. Calvus, to be sure, represented the new style in a few
speeches as early as 58 B.C. when he was but twenty-four years of age;
Calidius began to speak earlier, but whether or not in the new manner
is unknown. Brutus, controlled by a temperamental bluntness, supported
the same tendency a few years later. But these men would not have been
able to undermine the power of Ciceronian style had not events worked
in their favor. It was the dominating political influence of Caesar
that did the work. The first blow was Caesar’s quiet introduction of
stenographers into the senate in 59. By publishing the minutes of the
senatorial proceedings he compelled the speakers to consider the outside
public, to drop the orotund periods addressed to their colleagues alone,
and to confine themselves to pertinent details. Caesar himself had no
time to waste on model orations. When opposed by the senate he carried
his bills to the assembly to which he put his arguments in plain and
pithy sentences. Cicero had scented the meaning of these effects enough
to feel the need of stating his doctrine in full in the _De Oratore_
published in 55, and Calvus and Calidius were quietly profiting by the
new trend. Presently, in 52, the triumvirs closed the second nursery
of ornate prose, by passing a bill which severely limited the time of
pleas in court. The purpose was, of course, to expedite the business
of the overburdened courts, but the act reveals once more that the new
politics were concerned with getting results, not with encouraging a
time-consuming oratory. Two years later Caesar crossed the Rubicon,
and thereafter, so long as Caesar lived, addresses in the senate all
partook of the nature of business-like reports in committees that met
before a curt presiding officer; and in the courts, whose judges were now
appointed by Caesar, persuasive oratory gave way to a rapid estimation of
facts.
Cicero was well aware of all this.[43] During the first few years of
Caesar’s dictatorship he complained frequently that there was no longer
a place in the state for his gifts, and that his influence had wholly
gone. However, hoping for a restoration of senatorial rule, he decided
not to yield without some effort. He invited the most promising young
politicians of Caesar’s circle to take practical exercises in political
oratory with him; in 47 or 46 he wrote a letter of gentle remonstrance
to Calvus, the most influential theorist of the “Atticistic school;” and
for Brutus, who rejected the means of artistic expression for reasons of
taste, he composed (in 46) a full history of Latin oratory in which he
tried to show that Caesarian administration threatened to suffocate a
great art, that the development of that art during more than a century
had demonstrated the correctness of his own doctrine, and that the
opposing theorists, men like Calvus and Calidius who had profited from
events, could not by their methods create an effective style. Brutus,
who of course comprehended the animus of the volume, responded with
little enthusiasm and avoided the burden of arguing by asking for a more
explicit statement of Cicero’s position. Cicero responded at once with
the brilliant brochure called the _Orator_. But though Cicero sent out
many presentation copies the book met with general silence. No one was
interested in tropes and prose rhythm at a time when Cato was taking his
own life as an offering to the dying Republic. For the next two years the
business of state rested on the brief staccato orders of a tyrant. At
Caesar’s death the senate came to life again for a brief period and the
fourteen Philippics reveal the enduring power of Cicero’s oratory, an art
that had been well-nigh silent for ten years. Then Cicero, too, fell by
the assassin’s sword.
Presently Augustus established the throne and once more offered freedom
of discussion in the senate. But freedom had disappeared. Augustus’
trusted friends reported his views in the senate and before the people
in business-like summaries. Cicero’s very name was anathema as that
of a rebel to the new régime. Pollio and Messala, who represented the
opposition to the unpopular style, who practiced the arts of brevity and
directness suited to the needs of the new régime, were accounted the
models of Augustan Latin prose. Ciceronian ideals returned in time to the
schoolroom but only after the schoolroom had lost touch with politics.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. _De Oratore_, I. 23; 52; 105; 146; 198; II. 50; 77; 100; 132;
III. 29-33; 48; 54; 93; 226; _Ad. Att._ iv. 16.3; _Brutus_, 263.
[2] _De Oratore_ iii. 29-33; _Brutus_ 202, 212, 276, 286, _Orator_ 99,
143.
[3] _Brutus_ 315, 316.
[4] Sir John Mandeville.
[5] Nettleship, _Essays Classical_, II, 93; Norden _Die antike
Kunstprosa_ (which seriously overestimates the influence of Greek
doctrine on Latin prose style). Cicero’s _Brutus_ is the indispensable
handbook.
[6] Cf. e.g. C.I.L. I. 60, 366, 561.
[7] The imperial copy is probably accurate except for a few words,
_Class. Phil._ 1919, 74.
[8] Ed. Vahlen. Professor Rand’s translation may be found in _Founders of
the Middle Ages_ (Harvard University Press, 1928), 56.
[9] _De Orat._ ii, 51, 59.
[10] As for instance Norden, _op. cit._ I, 164 ff.
[11] Leo, _Gesch. Röm. Lit._ 37 ff.
[12] _In Thermum._ Tuum nefarium facinus pejore facinore operire
postulas; succidias humanas facis, tantas trucidationes facis, decem
capita libera interficis, decem hominibus vitam eripis, indicta causa,
injudicatis, incondemnatis. The passage is packed with excellent examples
of anaphora, balance, metaphor, homoeoteleuton and alliteration. Had
this been written in 88 B.C. instead of in 188 we should take it as an
excellent illustration of the result of Greek rhetorical study. It is,
however, just native Latin speech afire with the most vehement Catonian
wrath.
[13] _Brutus_, 67 ff.; modified in 284-6. Cicero had noticed that Cato’s
orations were full of imagery; _Brutus_, 69.
[14] Suet. _Rhet._ I; _Athen._ XII, 547.
[15] Fiske, _Univ. Wis. Studies_, III, 62 ff.
[16] Cicero, _Brutus_, 82, credits Galba with a lofty style in speeches
which somehow failed to survive in the written copies, which reveals as
in several instances that Latin style was apt to be primarily pragmatic
rather than scholastic (_ibid._, 137, 138). To Aemilius Lepidus Porcina
(fl. about 140) he accords credit for smooth sentence structure (_ibid._,
131).
[17] Cic. _Lael._ 96; _Pro Murena_, 58.
[18] N. Häpke, _C. Semproni Gracchi Fragmenta_ (Munich, 1915). This
editor finds a few instances of prose rhythms in Gracchus. I do not think
that Gracchus was conscious of them, since they occur in about the same
ratio as in Sallust or Caesar, who could hardly be accused of encouraging
the rhythmic style.
[19] Meyer, _Orat. Rom. Frag._, 234.
[20] _Ibid._ 233.
[21] _Ibid._ 232.
[22] _Ibid._ 239.
[23] Cicero in his _Brutus_ mentions fifteen speakers of the Catonian
period, some twenty as being important between Cato and Tiberius
Gracchus, about thirty who belonged distinctly to the period of the
Gracchan reforms, and twenty more who gained distinction before the end
of the second century; that is, some eighty-five whose contributions
were worthy of mention before the fashion set in of studying rhetoric in
Greece.
[24] Cic., _Brutus_, 161.
[25] Cic., _De Orat._ i. 146.
[26] Cic., _De Orat._ ii. 4. The few orthodox clausulae found in his
fragments occur in about the ratio that one might expect in any normal
Latin prose.
[27] Cic., _De Orat._ i. 198.
[28] In the year 92 Crassus attempted with his colleague Domitius by
censorial pronouncement to discourage the growth of Latin schools of
rhetoric. It is difficult to take seriously the recent hypothesis that
this was an aristocratic attack upon democratic schools. Cicero’s
interpretation that the new Latin school was objectionable because
it trained speakers without the cultural education in literature,
philosophy, and history, which Greek rhetoricians usually required, seems
adequate. Our own insistence that law schools require a college degree
for entrance would then be analogous.
[29] Cic., _De Orat._ ii. 77 ff. Cicero, who dislikes to confess that
good oratory can arise out of native endowments, accords Antonius some
education, because he once conversed with the Athenian professors for a
few days on his way to the province! The _Brutus_, which attempts to give
genuine history, represents Antonius as a self-made man.
[30] _De Orat._ i. 105.
[31] _Ibid._, ii. 88, 97 ff. _Brutus_ 202, 276, 286, _Orat._ 99, 143, 214.
[32] _De Orat._ iii. 131 and 124.
[33] _Orator_, 191 ff. When in _Orat._ 213 Cicero attempts to analyze
the measures of Carbo his theory fails him. Again in 217, when he
enumerates the feet that Greek theory allowed he fails to notice that
his own feeling for Latin rhythms demanded a cretic before all of them.
Indeed his selection of passages from his own orations in 210 is faulty
(see Kroll’s commentary). In fact his usage is far truer to the genius
of Latin than his theory. It is probable that Tyrannio, with whom he
discussed Greek accents and rhythms during this period (_ad Att._ xii.
6, 2—about June 46) misled him. We need also to bear in mind Cicero’s
statements that the ear unconsciously operates in selecting good rhythms
(_Brutus_, 34) and that the tendency to seek balance—a very old quality
of native Latin verse—also produces rhythm (doubtless because of the
paenultimate law) (_Orator_, 167, 220). Needless to say, what compelled
Cicero to shape clausulae somewhat unlike those of Isocrates was the
stress-accent of Latin operating under the penultimate law.
[34] _Orator_, 224.
[35] This in turn tends to produce measured prose rhythm in Latin,
_Orat._ 167, 220.
[36] _Brutus_ 69. He adds that uneducated peasants often use metaphors,
_Orat._ 81.
[37] _De Orat._ i. 105 _non Graeci loquacitatem sine usu neque ex scholis
cantilenam requirunt_; ii. 77-84. Cicero made a summary of the rules in
his youth (the _De Inventione_) but none of his speeches follow these
rules closely.
[38] _Orat._ 102.
[39] Gotzes, _De Ciceronis tribus generibus dicendi_.
[40] _Orat._ 102 ff. and especially, _Orat._ 24, where he says
explicitly: _eloquentiae moderatrix fuit auditorum prudentia_.
[41] Hubbell, _The Influence of Isocrates on Cicero_, etc. (Yale, 1913).
[42] Tacitus, _Dialogus_ 19, 37, 38.
[43] Cicero is well aware of the fact that the suppression of the old
political freedom was endangering style: _Brutus_ 21, 324.