Chapter XXXV: Section XXXIV

[a] There is in this place a trifling mistake, either in Messala, the speaker, or in the copyists. Crassus was born A.U.C. 614. See s. xviii. note [f]. Papirius Carbo, the person accused, was consul A.U.C. 634, and the prosecution was in the following year, when Crassus expressly says, that he was then only one and twenty. _Quippe qui omnium maturrimè ad publicas causas accesserim, annosque natus UNUM ET VIGINTI, nobilissimum hominem et eloquentissimum in judicium vocârim._ Cicero, _De Orat._ lib. iii. s. 74. Pliny the consul was another instance of early pleading. He says himself, that he began his career in the forum at the age of nineteen, and, after long practice, he could only see the functions of an orator as it were in a mist. _Undevicessimo ætatis anno dicere in foro coepi, et nunc demum, quid præstare debeat orator, adhuc tamen per caliginem video._ Lib. v. epist. 8. Quintilian relates of Cæsar, Calvus, and Pollio, that they all three appeared at the bar, long before they arrived at their quæstorian age, which was seven and twenty. _Calvus, Cæsar, Pollio, multum ante quæstoriam omnes ætatem gravissima judicia susceperunt._ Quintilian, lib. xii. cap. 6.