37 Perhaps you have had in your
hands the old records, still to be found in the libraries of antiquaries, which
Mucianus is just now collecting, and which have already been brought together
and published in, I think, eleven books of Transactions, and three of Letters.
From these we may gather that Cneius Pompeius and Marcus Crassus rose to power
as much by force of intellect and by speaking as by their might in arms; that
the Lentuli, Metelli, Luculli, and Curios, and the rest of our nobles, bestowed
great labour and pains on these studies, and that, in fact, no one in those
days acquired much influence without some eloquence. We must consider too the
eminence of the men accused, and the vast issues involved. These of themselves
do very much for eloquence. There is, indeed, a wide difference between having
to speak on a theft, a technical point, a judicial decision, and on bribery at
elections, the plundering of the allies, and the massacre of citizens. Though
it is better that these evils should not befall us, and the best condition of
the state is that in which we are spared such sufferings, still, when they did
occur, they supplied a grand material for the orator. His mental powers rise
with the dignity of his subject, and no one can produce a noble and brilliant
speech unless he has got an adequate case. Demosthenes, I take it, does not owe
his fame to his speeches against his guardians, and it is not his defence of
Publius Quintius, or of Licinius Archias, which make Cicero a great orator; it
is his Catiline, his Milo, his Verres, and Antonius, which have shed over him
this lustre. Not indeed that it was worth the state’s while to endure bad
citizens that orators might have plenty of matter for their speeches, but, as I
now and then remind you, we must remember the point, and understand that we are
speaking of an art which arose more easily in stormy and unquiet times. Who
knows not that it is better and more profitable to enjoy peace than to be
harassed by war? Yet war produces more good soldiers than peace. Eloquence is
on the same footing. The oftener she has stood, so to say, in the battle-field,
the more wounds she has inflicted and received, the mightier her antagonist,
the sharper the conflicts she has freely chosen, the higher and more splendid
has been her rise, and ennobled by these contests she lives in the praises of
mankind.
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