nd such
speeches as were published were political pamphlets. During the
revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in
extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions
there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and
the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in
literature from the important position of their authors or from
their own weight. Such were the political speeches of Gaius
Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin
as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of
Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the
time--his description of the senatorial juryman has been given
already(31)--the national comedy borrowed various points; such
above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose
fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned
earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny
of that lofty nature.

Sciences

In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by
Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents
a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among
the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue,
and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a
machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place
were distinctly specified. But the later men of science, such
as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside
this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences
of general culture and in the special professional sciences.
The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance
of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this
rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form. We have already
spoken(32) in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture,
grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far
as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training
and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional
sciences properly so called.

Philology

In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in
close association with the philological treatment--long ago placed
on a sure basis--of Greek literature. It was already mentioned
that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found
their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text;(33) it was also
n