[a] There is in this place a trifling mistake, either in Messala, the
speaker, or in the copyists. Crassus was born A.U.C. 614. See s.
xviii. note [f]. Papirius Carbo, the person accused, was consul A.U.C.
634, and the prosecution was in the following year, when Crassus
expressly says, that he was then only one and twenty. _Quippe qui
omnium maturrime ad publicas causas accesserim, annosque natus UNUM ET
VIGINTI, nobilissimum hominem et eloquentissimum in judicium vocarim._
Cicero, _De Orat._ lib. iii. s. 74. Pliny the consul was another
instance of early pleading. He says himself, that he began his career
in the forum at the age of nineteen, and, after long practice, he
could only see the functions of an orator as it were in a mist.
_Undevicessimo aetatis anno dicere in foro coepi, et nunc demum, quid
praestare debeat orator, adhuc tamen per caliginem video._ Lib. v.
epist. 8. Quintilian relates of Caesar, Calvus, and Pollio, that they
all three appeared at the bar, long before they arrived at their
quaestorian age, which was seven and twenty. _Calvus, Caesar, Pollio,
multum ante quaestoriam omnes aetatem gravissima judicia susceperunt._
Quintilian, lib. xii. cap. 6.

Section XXXV.

[a] Lipsius, in his note on this passage, says, that he once thought
the word _scena_ in the text ought to be changed to _schola_; but he
afterwards saw his mistake. The place of fictitious declamation and
spurious eloquence, where the teachers played a ridiculous part, was
properly called a theatrical scene.

[b] Lucius Licinius Crassus and Domitius AEnobarbus were censors A.U.C.
662. Crassus himself informs us, that, for two years together, a new
race of men, called Rhetoricians, or masters of eloquence, kept open
schools at Rome, till he thought fit to exercise his censorian
authority, and by an edict to banish the whole tribe from the city of
Rome; and this, he says, he did, not, as some people suggested, to
hinder the talents of youth from being cultivated, but to save their
genius from being corrupted, and the young mind from being confirmed
in shameless ignorance. Audacity was all the new masters could teach;
and this being the only thing to be acquired on that stage of
impudence, he thought it the duty of a Roman censor to crush the
mischief in the bud. _Latini (sic diis placet) hoc biennio magistri
dicendi extiterunt; quos ego censor edicto meo sustuleram; non quo (ut
nescio quos dicere aiebant) acui ingenia adolescentium