No More Learning

It is with pleasure, Messala, that I see
you selecting for imitation the liveliest models of the ancient
school. You too, Maternus, and you, my friend, Secundus [h], you both
possess the happy art of adding to weight of sentiment all the dignity
of language. To a copious invention you unite the judgement that knows
how to distinguish the specific qualities of different authors. The
beauty of order is yours. When the occasion demands it, you can expand
and amplify with strength and majesty; and you know when to be concise
with energy. Your periods flow with ease, and your composition has
every grace of style and sentiment. You command the passions with
resistless sway, while in yourselves you beget a temperance so truly
dignified, that, though, perhaps, envy and the malignity of the times
may be unwilling to proclaim your merit, posterity will do you ample
justice [i].


XXIV. As soon as Aper concluded, You see, said Maternus, the zeal and
ardour of our friend: in the cause of the moderns, what a torrent of
eloquence! against the ancients, what a fund of invective! With great
spirit, and a vast compass of learning, he has employed against his
masters the arts for which he is indebted to them. And yet all this
vehemence must not deter you, Messala, from the performance of your
promise. A formal defence of the ancients is by no means necessary. We
do not presume to vie with that illustrious race. We have been praised
by Aper, but we know our inferiority.
He himself is aware of it,
though, in imitation of the ancient manner [a], he has thought proper,
for the sake of a philosophical debate, to take the wrong side of the
question. In answer to his argument, we do not desire you to expatiate
in praise of the ancients: their fame wants no addition. What we
request is, an investigation of the causes which have produced so
rapid a decline from the flourishing state of genuine eloquence. I
call it rapid, since, according to Aper's own chronology, the period
from the death of Cicero does not exceed one hundred and twenty years
[b].


XXV. I am willing, said Messala, to pursue the plan which you have
recommended. The question, whether the men who flourished above one
hundred years ago, are to be accounted ancients, has been started by
my friend Aper, and, I believe, it is of the first impression. But it
is a mere dispute about words. The discussion of it is of no moment,
provided it be granted, whether we call them ancients, or our
predecessors, or give them any other appellation, that the eloquence
of those times was superior to that of the present age. When Aper
tells us, that different periods of time have produced new modes of
oratory, I see nothing to object; nor shall I deny, that in one and
the same period the style and manners have greatly varied. But this I
assume, that among the orators of Greece, Demosthenes holds the first
rank, and after him [a] Æschynes, Hyperides, Lysias, and Lycurgus, in
regular succession. That age, by common consent, is allowed to be the
flourishing period of Attic eloquence.

In like manner, Cicero stands at the head of our Roman orators, while
Calvus, Asinius, and Cæsar, Cælius and Brutus, follow him at a
distance; all of them superior, not only to every former age, but to
the whole race that came after them. Nor is it material that they
differ in the mode, since they all agree in the kind. Calvus is close
and nervous; Asinius more open and harmonious; Cæsar is distinguished
[b] by the splendour of his diction; Cælius by a caustic severity; and
gravity is the characteristic of Brutus. Cicero is more luxuriant in
amplification, and he has strength and vehemence.