g here to
be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of
the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly
the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the
need for them, partly on account of vanity and money. Such a
manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's
dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion
then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and
Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely
for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above
all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.
Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet
distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which
the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science
might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is
bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics--that "loquacious science
of inability to speak"--whose finished master, for sheer fear of
expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to
pronounce his own name. The Greek school-terminology is throughout
and intentionally avoided. Very earnestly the author points out
the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that
the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help
himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the
school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in
his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those
forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice
in the Roman advocate-world. It deserves attention, that the
opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly
sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37)
continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured
to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence
of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity
and a greater usefulness.

Philosophy

Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature,
since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman philosophy
nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin philosophical
authorship. It cannot even be shown with certainty that there
were Latin translations of popular summaries of philosophy
belonging to this period; those who pursued philosophy read
and disputed in Gree