en some talk of
old age, and Antony, before the evening has come, declares his view. "So
far do I differ from you," he says, "that not only do I not think that
any relief in age is to be found in the crowd of them who may come to me
for advice, but I look to its solitude as a harbor. You indeed may fear
it, but to me it will be most welcome."[248]

Then Cicero begins the second book with a renewal of the assertion as to
oratory generally, not putting the words into the mouth of any of his
party, but declaring it as his own belief: "This is the purpose of this
present treatise, and of the present time, to declare that no one has
been able to excel in eloquence, not merely without capacity for
speaking, but also without acquired knowledge of all kinds."[249] But
Antony professes himself of another opinion: "How can that be when
Crassus and I often plead opposite causes, and when one of us can only
say the truth? Or how can it be possible, when each of us must take the
cause as it comes to him?"[250] Then, again, he bursts into praise of
the historian, as though in opposition to Crassus: "How worthy of an
orator's eulogy is the writing of history, whether greatest in the flood
of its narrative or in its variety! I do not know that we have ever
treated it separately, but it is there always before our eyes. For who
does not know that the first law of the historian is that he must not
dare to say what is false: the next, that he must not dare to suppress
what is true."[251] We wonder, when Cicero was writing this, whether he
remembered his request to Lucceius, made now two years ago. He gives a
piece of advice to young advocates, apologizing, indeed, for thinking it
necessary; but he has found it to be necessary, and he gives it: "Let me
teach this to them all; when they intend to plead, let them first study
their causes."[252] It is not only here that we find that the advice
which is useful now was wanted then. "Read your cases!" The admonition
was wanted in Rome as it has been since in London.

But the great mistake of the whole doctrine creeps out at every page as
we go on, and disproves the idea on which the De Oratore is founded. All
Cicero's treatises on the subject, and Quintilian's, and those of the
pseudo-Tacitus, and of the first Greek from which they have come, fall
to the ground as soon as we are told that it must be the purport of the
orator to turn the mind of those who hear him either to the right or to
the le