Christian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from
Latin literature."[102] Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well
constructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste
than the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca.



4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric


As style gained this preponderence in rhetoric, it continued to increase
its hold on poetic. While the rhetoricians were exemplifying from the
poets their schemes and tropes, their well joined words, "smooth, soft as
a maiden's face,"[103] the poets on their part were assiduously practicing
all the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age
is rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged
clever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not
received their education in the only popular institutions of higher
instruction--the declamation schools. The fustian which passed for poetry
and equally well for history is well illustrated by the contempt of the
hard-headed Lucian for those historians who were unable to distinguish
history from poetry. "What!" he exclaims, "bedizen history like her
sister? As well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up
with purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his
cheeks; faugh, what an object one would make of him with such
defilements!"[105] But meretricious ornament was popular, and poets,
historians, and orators alike scrambled to see who could most adorn his
speech. Quintilian's pleas for the purer taste of a former age fell on
deaf ears, and despite his warnings orators imitated the style of the
poets, and the poets imitated the style of the orators.[106] Gorgias may