25 Messala replied, I will take
the line you have prescribed for me. Certainly I need not argue long against
Aper, who began by raising what I think a controversy about a name, implying
that it is not correct to call ancients those whom we all know to have lived a
hundred years ago. I am not fighting about a word. Let him call them ancients
or elders or any other name he prefers, provided only we have the admission
that the eloquence of that age exceeded ours. If again he freely admits that
even in the same, much more in different periods, there were many varieties of
oratory, against this part too of his argument I say nothing. I maintain,
however, that just as among Attic orators we give the first place to
Demosthenes and assign the next to Aeschines, Hyperides, Lysias and Lycurgus,
while all agree in regarding this as pre-eminently the age of speakers, so
among ourselves Cicero indeed was superior to all the eloquent men of his day,
though Calvus, Asinius, Caesar, Caelius, and Brutus may claim the right of
being preferred to those who preceded and who followed them. It matters nothing
that they differ in special points, seeing that they are generically alike.
Calvus is the more terse, Asinius has the finer rhythm, Caesar greater brilliancy,
Caelius is the more caustic, Brutus the more earnest, Cicero the more
impassioned, the richer and more forcible. Still about them all there is the
same healthy tone of eloquence. Take into your hand the works of all alike and
you see that amid wide differences of genius, there is a resemblance and
affinity of intellect and moral purpose. Grant that they disparaged each other
(and certainly there are some passages in their letters which show mutual
ill-will), still this is the failing, not of the orator, but of the man.
Calvus, Asinius, Cicero himself, I presume, were apt to be envious and
ill-natured, and to have the other faults of human infirmity. Brutus alone of
the number in my opinion laid open the convictions of his heart frankly and
ingenuously, without ill-will or envy. Is it possible that he envied Cicero, when he seems not
to have envied even Caesar? As to Servius Galba, and Caius Laelius, and others
of the ancients whom Aper has persistently assailed, he must not expect me to
defend them, for I admit that their eloquence, being yet in its infancy and
imperfectly developed, had certain defects.
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