ty. The art, the apparent ease with
which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without
exertion, are admirable. It is as though, they were sitting by running
water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. They remove
themselves to a wood a little farther from the house, and there they
listen to the eloquence of Crassus. Cotta and Sulpicius only hear and
assent, or imply a modified dissent in doubting words.

It is Crassus who insists that the orator shall be omniscient, and
Antony who is supposed to contest the point with him. But they differ in
the sweetest language; and each, though he holds his own, does it with a
deference that is more convincing than any assertion. It may be as well,
perhaps, to let it be understood that Crassus and Caesar are only related
by distant family ties--or perhaps only by ties of adoption--to the two
of the First Triumvirate whose names they bear; whereas Antony was the
grandfather of that Cleopatra's lover against whom the Philippics were
hurled.

No one, as I have said before, will read these conversations for the
sake of the argument they contain; but they are, and will be, studied as
containing, in the most appropriate language, a thousand sayings
respecting the art of speech. "No power of speaking well can belong to
any but to him who knows the subjects on which he has to speak;"[244] a
fact which seems so clear that no one need be troubled with stating it,
were it not that men sin against it every day. "How great the
undertaking to put yourself forward among a crowd of men as being the
fittest of all there to be heard on some great subject!"[245] "Though
all men shall gnash their teeth, I will declare that the little book of
the twelve tables surpasses in authority and usefulness all the
treatises of all the philosophers."[246] Here speaks the Cicero of the
Forum, and not that Cicero who amused himself among the philosophers.
"Let him keep his books of philosophy for some Tusculum idleness such
as is this of ours, lest, when he shall have to speak of justice, he
must go to Plato and borrow from him, who, when he had to express him in
these things, created in his books some new Utopia."[247] For in truth,
though Cicero deals much, as we shall see by-and-by, with the
philosophers, and has written whole treatises for the sake of bringing
Greek modes of thought among the Romans, he loved the affairs of the
world too well to trust them to philosophy. There has be