first made its appearance at Rome, and what reception it met with from
our ancestors.


XXX. Before I proceed, let us advert for a moment to the plan of
ancient discipline. The unwearied diligence of the ancient orators,
their habits of meditation, and their daily exercise in the whole
circle of arts and sciences, are amply displayed in the books which
they have transmitted to us. The treatise of Cicero, entitled Brutus
[a], is in all our hands. In that work, after commemorating the
orators of a former day, he closes the account with the particulars of
his own progress in science, and the method he took in educating
himself to the profession of oratory. He studied the civil law under
[b] Mucius Scævola; he was instructed in the various systems of
philosophy, by Philo [c] of the academic school, and by Diodorus the
stoic; and though Rome, at that time, abounded with the best
professors, he made a voyage to Greece [d], and thence to Asia, in
order to enrich his mind with every branch of learning. Hence that
store of knowledge which appears in all his writings. Geometry, music,
grammar, and every useful art, were familiar to him. He embraced the
whole science of logic [e] and ethics. He studied the operations of
nature. His diligence of enquiry opened to him the long chain of
causes and effects, and, in short, the whole system of physiology was
his own. From a mind thus replenished, it is no wonder, my good
friends, that we see in the compositions of that extraordinary man
that affluence of ideas, and that prodigious flow of eloquence. In
fact, it is not with oratory as with the other arts, which are
confined to certain objects, and circumscribed within their own
peculiar limits. He alone deserves the name of an orator, who can
speak in a copious style, with ease or dignity, as the subject