decidedly an object of dread. The pride as well as the sound
common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that
the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt,
intelligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue
could be learned in the school by school-rules. To the solid
practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetoricians, so
totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the
beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture
and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed
shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views
did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally
developed rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue. Accordingly
the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hostility to the
rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were
tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek
rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or
into Latin oratorical instruction. But in the new Latin rhetorical
schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical themes; they accused Ulysses, who
was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's bloody sword,
of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they
charged Orestes with the murder of his mother, or undertook to
defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary
good advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply
with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in Carthage, or to take
flight. It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once
more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts
of words. The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and
parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man,
from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic
orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus. Of course the
Cassandra spoke in vain; declamatory exercises in Latin on the
current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient
in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players and to
stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.

As the aggregate result of this modern Roman education there sp