Cicero's dialogue is doubtless neither
the genuine interrogative dialectics of the best Greek artificial
dialogue nor the genuine conversational tone of Diderot or Lessing;
but the great groups of advocates gathering around Crassus
and Antonius and of the older and younger statesmen of the Scipionic
circle furnish a lively and effective framework, fitting channels
for the introduction of historical references and anecdotes,
and convenient resting-points for the scientific discussion.
The style is quite as elaborate and polished as in the best-written
orations, and so far more pleasing than these, since the author
does not often in this field make a vain attempt at pathos.

While these rhetorical and political writings of Cicero
with a philosophic colouring are not devoid of merit, the compiler
on the other hand completely failed, when in the involuntary leisure
of the last years of his life (709-710) he applied himself
to philosophy proper, and with equal peevishness and precipitation
composed in a couple of months a philosophical library. The receipt
was very simple. In rude imitation of the popular writings
of Aristotle, in which the form of dialogue was employed
chiefly for the setting forth and criticising of the different
older systems, Cicero stitched together the Epicurean, Stoic,
and Syncretist writings handling the same problem, as they came
or were given to his hand, into a so-called dialogue. And all
that he did on his own part was, to supply an introduction prefixed
to the new book from the ample collection of prefaces for future works
which he had beside him; to impart a certain popular character,
inasmuch as he interwove Roman examples and references, and sometimes
digressed to subjects irrelevant but more familiar to the writer
and the reader, such as the treatment of the deportment
of the orator in the -De Officiis-; and to exhibit that sort
of bungling, which a man of letters, who has not attained to philosophic
thinking or even to philosophic knowledge and who works rapidly
and boldly, shows in the reproduction of dialectic trains of thought.
In this way no doubt a multitude of thick tomes might very quickly
come into existence--"They are copies," wrote the author himself
to a friend who wondered at his fertility; "they give me little trouble,
for I supply only the words and these I have in abundance."
Against this nothing further could be said; but any one who seeks
classical productions in work