The Attic style, then, made but a sparing use of verbal ornament, tropes, antitheses, and other rhetorical devices; it was restrained, dignified, severe, with a leaning toward (excessive) brevity rather than to copia. The Asiatic style was the antipodes of all this; it was exuberant, florid, given much to tropes and rhetorical display. Each style had its excellences. Each had its characteristic danger. The Attic style was likely to become too brief, bald, obscure; the Asiatic tended to become florid and bombastic.

What style did Cicero himself adopt? In the Brutus 304-19 he describes in detail the training by which he had sought to fit himself to win distinction as an orator. In 310 occurs a very significant passage:

Commentabar declamitanssic enim nunc locuntur- .

idque facie

bam multum etiam Latine, sed Graece saepius, vel quod Graeca oratio plura ornamenta suppeditans consuetudinem similiter dicendi Latine adferebat, vel quod a Graecis summis doctoribus, nisi Graece dicerem, neque corrigi possem neque doceri.

In 313ff. he explains why, after delivering his speech for S. Roscius, in 80, he went abroad, to remain away two years. Having studied at Athens and in Asia under various philosophers and rhetoricians he put himself a second time under Apollonius Molo, a man (316)

. . . in notandis animadvertendisque vitiis et in instituendo docendoque prudentissimum. Is dedit operam, si modo id consequi potuit, ut nimis redundantis nos et supra fluentis iuvenili quadam dicendi impunitate et licentia reprimeret et quasi extra ripas diffluentis coerceret. Ita recepi me biennio post non modo exercitatior, sed prope mutatus, nam et contentio nimia vocis resederat et quasi deferverat oratio.

With the last sentence or two we may compare the passage referred to above (p. 144) from the Orator, 107-8, in which Cicero gives examples of his iuvenilis redundantia.

Plainly, by natural inclination Cicero was an Asiatic in style. Recall his incessant references to copia as an indispensable element of good oratory. Copia, copiosus, copiose, when applied to style, are to him terms of highest praise.1

1 See copia, copiosus in Merguet's lexicons to Cicero. Cicero demanded copia of the philosopher too; cf. e.g., Tusc. i. 7. On Cicero's copia see Professor Showerman, CJ, VIII, 182–86.

We see now why Cicero praised Cato so highly in Brutus 63 ff., and in particular why he compared Cato with Lysias. This passage and Brutus 283-91, 292-95 show that Cicero is seeking to discomfort the Roman Atticists by suggesting that they do not know Attic oratory when they see it or hear it. If plainness, he argues, is of the essence of the Attic style, Cato is the most Attic of Roman Atticists; why, then, has he no following?

In practice, Cicero remained, all his life, to some extent an Asiatic. Yet, from his return to Rome in 78, he was in theory not an Asiatic at all, but the representative of the truest Atticism.1

For our purposes only two characteristics of Cicero's style need be considered. Of one, his copia, something has been said; more will be said here at once, and again below, in the account of Tacitus (pp. 152-53).

Just now I wish to dwell on one statement in Cicero's account of his own training-the sentence Commentabar declamitans doceri, cited above (p. 146). When I put this beside his account of the Atticists of his day, and when I think of his many allusions to copia as a most desirable element of style, I cannot escape the conclusion that to Cicero, early in his life, came the thought that Latin prose style could be perfected only by a departure from the brevity of the earlier times, and by the substitution for that brevity of a fuller, richer, more rotund, as well as more rhythmical, style. Latin suffered all too readily from the defects of its qualities. Brevity and plainness tend to become overbrief and overplain and to end in obscurity, in baldness, in a monotonous succession of short sentences, too staccato in their effect and so wearisome, and in utter absence of the finer effects, alike in logic, syntax, and rhythm. That we are not indulging here in mere a priori speculations will be clear enough to one who recalls the discussion above (pp. 139-44) of Cato's style,

1 See here J. E. Sandys' edition of the Orator, xliii-xlv; Norden, pp. 216-21. Note especially Tacitus Dialogus 18: "satis constat ne Ciceroni quidem obtrectatores defuisse, quibus inflatus et tumens nec satis pressus sed supra modum exsultans et superfluens et parum Atticus videretur." Tacitus goes on to say that from letters sent by Calvus and Brutus to Cicero it appears that, to Calvus, Cicero seemed tamquam solutus et enervis; to Brutus he appeared tamquam fractus atque elumbis. According to Quintilian xii. 10. 12-14 some dared to criticize Cicero as tumidiorem et Asianum et redundantem. In my day, he continues, some think him ieiunus atque aridus; his personal enemies criticized him for his nimii flores et ingenii affluentia. "Falsum utrumque, sed tamen illa [here="the latter view"] mentiendi propior occasio."

both in historical writing and oratory, who has not forgotten Cicero's references to the exilitas and tenuitas of Calvus (Brutus 64, 284 ff.) and other Atticists, who thinks of Sallust, and who has a clear conception of the style of Tacitus.

Cicero, then, saw one great defect of Latin prose style-its wrongly developed brevity-and set himself to eradicate this defect from his own style. It is not at all strange that in working out his design, the achievement of copia, he fell into the very error he charged against his predecessors, overindulgence in a quality in itself good, and that sometimes, especially in his earliest efforts, he himself displayed the defects of his qualities by being guilty at times of iuvenilis redundantia. Nor is it strange that, always, whether he realized it or not, he had a tenderness for the Asiatic style.

The other great characteristic of Cicero's style is the periodic structure. Here it will be enough to refer to Nettleship, pp. 105–9.

If, now, we try to recall the names of the great writers of Latin prose, apart from Caesar, Cicero, and Livy, we shall think of Sallust, of the two Senecas, of Quintilian, of Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, of Suetonius, and of Tacitus. Of these, Sallust and Tacitus will mean most to us at present. As we call to mind the style of these various authors, we shall be struck by at least two facts: (1) they all differ markedly from Cicero and Livy, and in much the same way, in that they are less copiosus, terser, in a word more like the prose writers that preceded Caesar and Cicero:1 (2) in them, the periodic structure, libration, and the like are far less conspicuous.

Sallust and Tacitus in particular stand out in sharp distinction to Cicero and Livy. Sallust's writings lie, apparently, between 44 and 36 B.C. They were all published before the first part of Livy's history appeared. In a word, in all probability but a short time after the publication of the Brutus and the Orator, we have prose writings in Latin widely different in style from Cicero's, in a style, too, which shows markedly the influence of the study of Cato Censor. Latin prose writing of the empire culminates, surely, in the developed style of Tacitus. That style shows the results of a profound study of Thucydides, of Cato, and of Sallust-all apostles, in one form or 1 To this one characteristic-brevity-I must confine the rest of this paper.

another, of brevity, all far removed from the copia of Cicero, all in harmony with the earlier brevity of Roman prose writing rather than with the development represented by Caesar, Cicero, and Livy.1

How are we to account for the triumph of the earlier style, in spite of the splendid results achieved by Cicero ?

Nettleship (pp. 110-11) found the answer in part in the loss of freedom, as the republic gave way to the empire. Oratory could no longer be free-spoken and sincere, in the forum, or in the courts, or in the senate. "And as the sphere of oratory became narrower, the cultivation of style became nicer and more minute." Another cause on which Nettleship (pp. 111ff.) lays great stress is a change in the character of Roman education, especially that of the future orator. Especially harmful was the declamatio, which dealt with fictitious themes. Compare Seneca (Contr. 9, Praef. p. 241, Bursian= Kiessling, p. 391):

qui declamationem parat, scribit non ut vincat sed ut placeat. Omnia itaque lenocinia conquirit: argumentationes, quia molestae sunt et minimum habent floris, relinquit: sententiis, explicationibus audientis deliniri contentus est. Cupit enim se approbare, non causam. Sequitur autem hoc usque in forum declamatores vitium, ut necessaria deserant dum speciosa sectantur. See also Petronius 1.

In attaching weight to these factors, Nettleship is beyond question right. But another factor and a very important one he leaves entirely out of his account-the development of the archaizing spirit, a spirit which reached fullest development in the second Christian century, the days of Hadrian, Fronto, Gellius, and Apuleius. The history of this archaizing development I shall now trace, briefly.2

To the conservatism of the Romans allusion has often been made. That conservatism shows itself as markedly in the field of education

1 Convenient discussions of the style of Sallust may be found in Norden, pp. 200204; Teuffel, $206. 5-9; Dimsdale, pp. 221-22 (a brief, but very good account). In the matter of brevity, Sallust's style is essentially an instance of "reversion to type," a resurrection, in far finer form, to be sure, of the brevity of Cato. On Sallust's archaisms see the dissertation of P. Schulze, De Archaismis Sallustianis (Halle, 1871). For an ancient reference to those archaisms see Suetonius Augustus 86. Gellius, a professed archaist, had a high admiration for Sallust. See below, pp. 150-51.

I discussed this matter in a paper entitled "Archaism in Aulus Gellius," published in Classical Studies in Honour of Henry Drisler, pp. 126-71 (New York, 1894). See especially pp. 126-41. See also Norden, pp. 258-63, 348 ff.

and literature as it does elsewhere. The Laws of the Twelve Tables formed part of the curriculum of Roman schools in Cicero's time; plagosus Orbilius helped Horace to study the carmina Livi Andronici. Cicero was criticized by those who favored earlier writers: compare Tacitus Dialogus 22: "Ad Ciceronem venio, cui eadem pugna cum aequalibus suis fuit quae mihi vobiscum est. Illi enim antiquos mirabantur, ipse suorum eloquentiam anteponebat." We have clear echoes of this conflict in Orator 169-71. In 168, Cicero begins his discussion of the oratorical arrangement of words according to the rules of artistic rhythm. The value of such arrangement is to him self-evident: his ears tell him this. He continues thus: "Quid dico meas aures? contiones saepe exclamare vidi, cum apte verba cecidissent. Id enim expectant aures, ut verbis colligetur sententia. Non erat hoc apud antiquos." Clearly there were standpatters, in matters oratorical. Of Asinius Pollio, Tacitus Dialogus 21, says, "Asinius quoque, quamquam propioribus temporibus natus sit, videtur mihi inter Menenios et Appios studuisse. Pacuvium certe et Accium non solum tragoediis sed etiam orationibus suis expressit: adeo durus et siccus est." Due allowance must, of course, be made for the bias of the speaker: yet Quintilian x. 1. 113 says of Pollio, “a nitore et iucunditate Ciceronis ita longe abest ut videri possit saeculo prior." Horace, in Epistles ii. 1, defends the new school of Latin poetry, the school to which Vergil, Varius, and Horace himself belonged, and assails those who decried all contemporary poets in their admiration, real or professed, of the ancients. The whole Epistle is addressed to this defense. But mark especially vss. 18-88. Compare also Persius i. 76–78, with Conington's admirable translation; Martial viii. 69; v. 10; xi. 90, with the comments of the editors. Tacitus, Dialogus 18 makes a speaker say, ". . . . vitio . malignitatis humanae vetera semper in laude, praesentia in fastidio Num dubitamus inventos qui prae Catone Appium Caecum magis mirarentur ?" Seneca (Epistles 114. 13) declares that "Multi ex alieno saeculo verba petunt, duodecim tabulas locuntur; Gracchus illis et Crassus et Curio nimis culti et recentes sunt; ad Appium usque et ad Coruncanium redeunt. . . . .

esse.

. .

1 This sentence gives an objection to Cicero's preceding statement: "rhythm was unknown among the ancients." Antiquos covers all Roman orators prior to Cicero himself.