hearer. No: it is my point to show that such sentiments are properly your own; that they were the sentiments of my country long before my days. I claim but my share of merit in having acted on such principles in every part of my administration. He, then, who condemns every part of my administration - he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who hath involved the State in terrors and dangers - while he labors to deprive me of present honors, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For, if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned, it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen, it cannot be that you have acted wrong in encountering danger bravely for the liberty and safety of all Greece. No! I swear it by the spirits of our sires, who rushed upon destruction at Marathon! - by those who stood arrayed at Plataea! - by those who fought the sea-fight at Salamis! - by the men of Artemisium!-by the others, so many and so brave, who now rest in our public sepulchres! — all of whom their country judged worthy of the same honor; all, I say, Eschines; not those only who prevailed, not those only who were victorious.

And with reason.

What was the part of gallant men, they all performed. Their success was such as the Supreme Ruler of the world dispensed to each.

GREAT ORATORS AND THEIR TRAINING

FROM

THE DIALOGUE ON ORATORY

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO

Marcus Tullius Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators, was born at Arpinum, 106 B. C., and died at his Formian villa, at the close of the year 43 B. C. He studied under Greek and Roman teachers, and commenced in early life to prepare himself as an advocate. He studied declamation under the best masters, and travelled much in order to store his mind with information. He was qualified both by nature and by training for the high position he attained as an orator, a statesman, and a man of letters.

FOR

who can suppose tude of students, the utmost abundance of masters, the most eminent geniuses among men, the infinite variety of causes, the most ample rewards offered to eloquence, there is any other reason to be found for the small number of orators than the incredible magnitude and difficulty of the art? A knowledge of a vast number of things is necessary, without which volubility of words is empty and ridiculous; speech itself is to be formed, not merely

that amid the great multi

by choice, but by careful construction of words; and all the emotions of the mind which nature has given to man, must be intimately known; for all the force and art of speaking must be employed in allaying or exciting the feelings of those who listen. To this must be added a certain portion of grace and wit, learning worthy of a well-bred man, and quickness and brevity in replying as well as attacking, accompanied with refined decorum and urbanity. Besides, the whole of antiquity and a multitude of examples is to be kept in the memory; nor is the knowledge of laws in general, or of the civil law in particular, to be neglected. And why need I add any remarks of delivery itself, which is to be ordered by action of body, by gesture, by look, and by modulation and variation of the voice, the great power of which, alone and in itself, the comparatively trivial art of actors and the stage proves; on which though all bestow their utmost labor to form their look, voice, and gesture, who knows not how few there are, and have ever been, to whom we can attend with patience? What can I say of that repository for all things, the memory; which, unless it be made the keeper of the matter and words that are the fruits of thought and invention, all the talents of the orator, we see, though they be of the highest degree of excellence,

will be of no avail? Let us then cease to wonder what is the cause of the scarcity of good speakers, since eloquence results from all those qualifications, in each of which singly it is a great merit to labor successfully; and let us rather exhort our children, and others whose glory and honor is dear to us, to contemplate in their minds the full magnitude of the object, and not to trust that they can reach the height at which they aim by the aid of the precepts, masters, and exercises that they are all now following, but to understand that they must adopt others of a different character.

In my opinion, indeed, no man can be an orator possessed of every praiseworthy accomplishment unless he has attained the knowledge of everything important, and of all liberal arts; for his language must be ornate and copious from knowledge, since unless there be beneath the surface matter understood and felt by the speaker, oratory becomes an empty and almost puerile flow of words.

"I am then of opinion," said Crassus, "that nature and genius in the first place contribute most aid to speaking; and that to those writers on the art to whom Antonius just now alluded, it was not skill and method in speaking, but natural talent that was wanting; for there ought to be

certain lively powers in the mind and understanding, which may be acute to invent, fertile to explain and adorn, and strong and retentive to remember; and if any one imagines that these powers may be acquired by art (which is false, for it is very well if they can be animated and excited by art; but they certainly cannot by art be ingrafted or instilled, since they are all the gifts of nature), what will he say of those qualities which are certainly born with the man himself

volubility of tongue, tone of voice, strength of lungs, and a peculiar conformation and aspect of the whole countenance and body? I do not say that art cannot improve in these particulars (for I am not ignorant that what is good may be made better by education, and what is not very good may be in some degree polished and amended); but there are some persons so hesitating in their speech, so inharmonious in their tone of voice, or so unwieldy and rude in the air and movements of their bodies, that whatever power they possess either from genius or art, they can never be reckoned in the number of accomplished speakers; while there are others so happily qualified in these respects, so eminently adorned with the gifts of nature, that they seem not to have been born like other men, but moulded by some divinity. It is