Chapter XXXVI: Section XXXV

[a] Lipsius, in his note on this passage, says, that he once thought the word _scena_ in the text ought to be changed to _schola_; but he afterwards saw his mistake. The place of fictitious declamation and spurious eloquence, where the teachers played a ridiculous part, was properly called a theatrical scene.

[b] Lucius Licinius Crassus and Domitius Ænobarbus were censors A.U.C. 662. Crassus himself informs us, that, for two years together, a new race of men, called Rhetoricians, or masters of eloquence, kept open schools at Rome, till he thought fit to exercise his censorian authority, and by an edict to banish the whole tribe from the city of Rome; and this, he says, he did, not, as some people suggested, to hinder the talents of youth from being cultivated, but to save their genius from being corrupted, and the young mind from being confirmed in shameless ignorance. Audacity was all the new masters could teach; and this being the only thing to be acquired on that stage of impudence, he thought it the duty of a Roman censor to crush the mischief in the bud. _Latini (sic diis placet) hoc biennio magistri dicendi extiterunt; quos ego censor edicto meo sustuleram; non quo (ut nescio quos dicere aiebant) acui ingenia adolescentium nollem, sed, contra, ingenia obtundi nolui, corroborari impudentiam. Hos vero novos magistros nihil intelligebam posse docere, nisi ut auderent. Hoc cum unum traderetur, et cum impudentiæ ludus esset, putavi esse censoris, ne longius id serperet, providere._ _De Orat._ lib. iii. s. 93 and 94. Aulus Gellius mentions a former expulsion of the rhetoricians, by a decree of the senate, in the consulship of Fannius Strabo and Valerius Messala, A.U.C. 593. He gives the words of the decree, and also of the edict, by which the teachers were banished by Crassus, several years after. See _A. Gellius, Noctes Atticæ_, lib. xv. cap. 2. See also Suetonius, _De Claris Rhet._ s. 1.

[c] Seneca has left a collection of declamations in the two kinds, viz. the persuasive, and controversial. See his SUASORIÆ, and CONTROVERSIÆ. In the first class, the questions are, Whether Alexander should attempt the Indian ocean? Whether he should enter Babylon, when the augurs denounced impending danger? Whether Cicero, to appease the wrath of Marc Antony, should burn all his works? The subjects in the second class are more complex. A priestess was taken prisoner by a band of pirates, and sold to slavery. The purchaser abandoned her to prostitution. Her person being rendered venal, a soldier made his offers of gallantry. She desired the price of her prostituted charms; but the military man resolved to use force and insolence, and she stabbed him in the attempt. For this she was prosecuted, and acquitted. She then desired to be restored to her rank of priestess: that point was decided against her. These instances may serve as a specimen of the trifling declamations, into which such a man as Seneca was betrayed by his own imagination. Petronius has described the literary farce of the schools. Young men, he says, were there trained up in folly, neither seeing nor hearing any thing that could be of use in the business of life. They were taught to think of nothing, but pirates loaded with fetters on the sea-shore; tyrants by their edicts commanding sons to murder their fathers; the responses of oracles demanding a sacrifice of three or more virgins, in order to abate an epidemic pestilence. All these discourses, void of common sense, are tricked out in the gaudy colours of exquisite eloquence, soft, sweet, and seasoned to the palate. In this ridiculous boy's-play the scholars trifle away their time; they are laughed at in the forum, and still worse, what they learn in their youth they do not forget at an advanced age. _Ego adolescentulos existimo in scholis stultissimos fieri, quia nihil ex iis, quæ in usu habemus, aut audiunt aut vident; sed piratas cum catenis in littore stantes, et tyrannos edicta scribentes, quibus imperent filiis, ut patrum suorum capita præcidant; sed responsa in pestilentiâ data, ut virgines tres aut plures immolentur; sed mellitos verborum globos, et omnia dicta factaque quasi papavere et sesamo sparsa. Nunc pueri in scholis ludunt; juvenes ridentur in foro; et, quod utroque turpius est, quod quisque perperam discit, in senectute confiteri non vult._ Petron. _in Satyrico_, cap. 3 and 4.

[d] Here unfortunately begins a chasm in the original. The words are, _Cum ad veros judices ventum est, * * * * rem cogitare * * * * nihil humile, nihil abjectum eloqui poterat._ This is unintelligible. What follows from the words _magna eloquentia sicut flamma_, palpably belongs to Maternus, who is the last speaker in the Dialogue. The whole of what Secundus said is lost. The expedient has been, to divide the sequel between Secundus and Maternus; but that is mere patch-work. We are told in the first section of the Dialogue, that the several persons present spoke their minds, each in his turn assigning different but probable causes, and at times agreeing on the same. There can, therefore, be no doubt but Secundus took his turn in the course of the enquiry. Of all the editors of Tacitus, Brotier is the only one who has adverted to this circumstance. To supply the loss, as well as it can now be done by conjecture, that ingenious commentator has added a Supplement, with so much taste, and such a degree of probability, that it has been judged proper to adopt what he has added. The thread of the discourse will be unbroken, and the reader, it is hoped, will prefer a regular continuity to a mere vacant space. The inverted comma in the margin of the text [transcriber's note: not used, but numbered with decimal rather than Roman numerals] will mark the supplemental part, as far as section 36, where the original proceeds to the end of the Dialogue. The sections of the Supplement will be marked, for the sake of distinction, with figures, instead of the Roman numeral letters.

SUPPLEMENT.