No More Learning

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.