Dialog on Oratory: 1 [10]

The Works of Tacitus

tr. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb

[1864-1877]

Tacitus: Dialog on Oratory Book 1 [10]

10. Nor again do even reputation and fame, the only object of their devotion,
the sole reward of their labours, by their own confession, cling to the poet
as much as to the orator; for indifferent poets are known to none, and the good
but to a few. When does the rumour of the very choicest readings penetrate every
part of Rome, much less is talked of throughout our numerous provinces? How
few, when they visit the capital from Spain or Asia, to say nothing of our Gallic
neighbours, ask after Saleius Bassus! And indeed, if any one does ask after
him, having once seen him, he passes on, and is satisfied, as if he had seen
a picture or a statue. I do not wish my remarks to be taken as implying that
I would deter from poetry those to whom nature has denied the orator’s talent,
if only they can amuse their leisure and push themselves into fame by this branch
of culture. For my part I hold all eloquence in its every variety something
sacred and venerable, and I regard as preferable to all studies of other arts
not merely your tragedian’s buskin or the measures of heroic verse, but even
the sweetness of the lyric ode, the playfulness of the elegy, the satire of
the iambic, the wit of the epigram, and indeed any other form of eloquence.
But it is with you, Maternus, that I am dealing; for, when your genius might
carry you to the summit of eloquence, you prefer to wander from the path, and
though sure to win the highest prize you stop short at meaner things. Just as,
if you had been born in Greece, where it is an honour to practise even the arts
of the arena, and if the gods had given you the vigour and strength of Nicostratus,
I should not suffer those giant arms meant by nature for combat to waste themselves
on the light javelin or the throwing of the quoit, so now I summon you from
the lecture-room and the theatre to the law court with its pleadings and its
real battles. I do this the more because you cannot even fall back on the refuge
which shelters many, the plea that the poet’s pursuit is less liable to give
offence than that of the orator. In truth, with you the ardour of a peculiarly
noble nature bursts forth, and the offence you give is not for the sake of a
friend, but, what is more dangerous, for the sake of Cato. Nor is this offending
excused by the obligation of duty, or by the fidelity of an advocate, or by
the impulse of a casual and sudden speech. You have, it seems, prepared your
part in having chosen a character of note who would speak with authority. I
foresee your possible answer. Hence, you will say, came the decisive approval;
this is the style which the lecture-room chiefly praises, and which next becomes
the world’s talk. Away then with the excuse of quiet and safety, when you are
deliberately choosing a more doughty adversary. For myself, let it be enough
to take a side in the private disputes of our own time. In these, if at any
time necessity has compelled us on behalf of an imperilled friend to offend
the ears of the powerful, our loyalty must be approved, our liberty of speech
condoned.

11. Aper having said this with his usual spirit and with vehemence of utterance,
Maternus replied good-humouredly with something of a smile. I was preparing
to attack the orators at as great length as Aper had praised them, for I thought
that he would leave his praises of them and go on to demolish poets and the
pursuit of poetry, but he appeased me by a sort of stratagem, granting permission
to those who cannot plead causes, to make verses. For myself, though I am perhaps
able to accomplish and effect something in pleading causes, yet it was by the
public reading of tragedies that I first began to enter the path of fame, when
in Nero’s time I broke the wicked power of Vatinius by which even the sanctities
of culture were profaned, and if at this moment I possess any celebrity and
distinction I maintain that it has been acquired more by the renown of my poems
than of my speeches. And so now I have resolved to throw off the yoke of my
labours at the bar, and for trains of followers on my way to and from the court
and for crowded receptions I crave no more than for the bronzes and busts which
have invaded my house even against my will. For hitherto I have upheld my position
and my safety better by integrity than by eloquence, and I am not afraid of
having ever to say a word in the senate except to avert peril from another.

12. As to the woods and groves and that retirement which Aper denounced,
they bring such delight to me that I count among the chief enjoyments of poetry
the fact that it is composed not in the midst of bustle, or with a suitor sitting
before one’s door, or amid the wretchedness and tears of prisoners, but that
the soul withdraws herself to abodes of purity and innocence, and enjoys her
holy resting-place. Here eloquence had her earliest beginnings; here is her
inmost shrine. In such guise and beauty did she first charm mortals, and steal
into those virgin hearts which no vice had contaminated. Oracles spoke under
these conditions. As for the present money-getting and blood-stained eloquence,
its use is modern, its origin in corrupt manners, and, as you said, Aper, it
is a device to serve as a weapon. But the happy golden age, to speak in our
own poetic fashion, knew neither orators nor accusations, while it abounded
in poets and bards, men who could sing of good deeds, but not defend evil actions.
None enjoyed greater glory, or honours more august, first with the gods, whose
answers they published, and at whose feasts they were present, as was commonly
said, and then with the offspring of the gods and with sacred kings, among whom,
so we have understood, was not a single pleader of causes, but an Orpheus, a
Linus, and, if you care to dive into a remoter age, an Apollo himself. Or, if
you think all this too fabulous and imaginary, at least you grant me that Homer
has as much honour with posterity as Demosthenes, and that the fame of Euripides
or Sophocles is bounded by a limit not narrower than that of Lysias or Hyperides.
You will find in our own day more who disparage Cicero’s than Virgil’s glory.
Nor is any production of Asinius or Messala so famous as Ovid’s Medea or the
Thyestes of Varius.

13. Look again at the poet’s lot, with its delightful companionships. I should
not be afraid of comparing it with the harassing and anxious life of the orator.
Orators, it is true, have been raised to consulships by their contests and perils,
but I prefer Virgil’s serene, calm, and peaceful retirement, in which after
all he was not without the favour of the di-vine Augustus, and fame among the
people of Rome. We have the testimony of the letters of Augustus, the testimony
too of the people themselves, who, on hearing in the theatre some of Virgil’s
verses, rose in a body and did homage to the poet, who happened to be present
as a spectator, just as to Augustus himself. Even in our own day, Pomponius
Serundus need not yield to Domitius Aper on the score of a dignified life or
an enduring reputation. As for your Crispus and Marcellus, whom you hold up
to me as examples, what is there in their lot to be coveted? Is it that they
are in fear themselves, or are a fear to others? Is it that, while every day
something is asked from them, those to whom they grant it feel indignant? Is
it that, bound as they are by the chain of flattery, they are never thought
servile enough by those who rule, or free enough by us? What is their power
at its highest? Why, the freedmen usually have as much. For my self, as Virgil
says, let “the sweet muses” lead me to their sacred retreats, and to their fountains
far away from anxieties and cares, and the necessity of doing every day something
repugnant to my heart. Let me no longer tremblingly experience the madness and
perils of the forum, and the pallors of fame. Let me not be aroused by a tumult
of morning visitors, or a freedman’s panting haste, or, anxious about the future,
have to make a will to secure my wealth. Let me not possess more than what I
can leave to whom I please, whenever the day appointed by my own fates shall
come; and let the statue over my tomb be not gloomy and scowling, but bright
and laurel-crowned. As for my memory, let there be ho resolutions in the senate,
or petitions to the emperor.

14. Excited and, I say, full of enthusiasm, Maternus had hardly finished
when Vipstanus Messala entered his room, and, from the earnest expression on
each face, he conjectured that their conversation was unusually serious. Have
I, he asked, come among you unseasonably, while you are engaged in private deliberation,
or the preparation of some case?

By no means, by no means, said Secundus. Indeed I could wish you had come
sooner, for you would have been delighted with the very elaborate arguments
of our friend Aper, in which he urged Maternus to apply all his ability and
industry to the pleading of causes, and then too with Maternus’s apology for
his poems in a lively speech, which, as suited a poet’s defence, was uncommonly
spirited, and more like poetry than oratory.

For my part, he replied, I should have been infinitely charmed by the discourse,
and I am delighted to find that you excellent men, the orators of our age, instead
of exercising your talents simply on law-business and rhetorical studies, also
engage in discussions which not only strengthen the intellect but also draw
from learning and from letters a pleasure most exquisite both to you who discuss
such subjects and to those too whose ears your words may reach. Hence the world,
I see, is as much pleased with you, Secundus, for having by your life of Julius
Asiaticus given it the promise of more such books, as it is with Aper for having
not yet retired from the disputes of the schools, and for choosing to employ
his leisure after the fashion of modern rhetoricians rather than of the old
orators.

15. Upon this Aper replied, You still persist, Messala, in admiring only
what is old and antique and in sneering at and disparaging the culture of our
own day. I have often heard this sort of talk from you, when, forgetting the
eloquence of yourself and your brother, you argued that nobody in this age is
an orator. And you did this, I believe, with the more audacity because you were
not afraid of a reputation for ill-nature, seeing that the glory which others
concede to you, you deny to yourself. I feel no penitence, said Messala, for
such talk, nor do I believe that Secundus or Maternus or you yourself, Aper,
think differently, though now and then you argue for the opposite view. I could
wish that one of you were prevailed on to investigate and describe to us the
reasons of this vast difference. I often inquire into them by myself. That which
consoles some minds, to me increases the difficulty. For I perceive that even
with the Greeks it has happened that there is a greater distance between Aeschines
and Demosthenes on the one hand, and your friend Nicetes or any other orator
who shakes Ephesus or Mitylene with a chorus of rhetoricians and their noisy
applause, on the other, than that which separates Afer, Africanus, or yourselves
from Cicero or Asinius.

16. The question you have raised, said Secundus, is a great one and quite
worthy of discussion. But who has a better claim to unravel it than yourself,
you who to profound learning and transcendent ability have added reflection
and study?

I will open my mind to you, replied Messala, if first I can prevail on you
to give me your assistance in our discussion. I can answer for two of us, said
Maternus; Secundus and myself will take the part which we understand you have
not so much omitted as left to us. Aper usually dissents, as you have just said,
and he has clearly for some time been girding himself for the attack, and cannot
bear with patience our union on behalf of the merits of the ancients.

Assuredly, said Aper, I will not allow our age to be condemned, unheard and
undefended, by this conspiracy of yours. First, however, I will ask you whom
you call ancients, or what period of orators you limit by your definition? When
I hear of ancients, I understand men of the past, born ages ago; I have in my
eye Ulysses and Nestor, whose time is about thirteen hundred years before our
day. But you bring forward Demosthenes and Hyperides who flourished, as we know,
in the period of Philip and Alexander, a period, however, which they both outlived.
Hence we see that not much more than four hundred years has intervened between
our own era and that of Demosthenes. If you measure this space of time by the
frailty of human life, it perhaps seems long; if by the course of ages and by
the thought of this boundless universe, it is extremely short and is very near
us. For indeed, if, as Cicero says in his Hortensius, the great and the true
year is that in which the position of the heavens and of the stars at any particular
moment recurs, and if that year embraces twelve thousand nine hundred and ninety
four of what we call years, then your Demosthenes whom you represent as so old
and ancient, began his existence not only in the same year, but almost in the
same month as ourselves.

17. But I pass to the Latin orators. Among them, it is not, I imagine, Menenius
Agrippa, who may seem ancient, whom you usually prefer to the speakers of our
day, but Cicero, Caelius, Calvus, Brutus, Asinius, Messala. Why you assign them
to antiquity rather than to our own times, I do not see. With respect to Cicero
himself, it was in the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa, as his freedman Tiro
has stated, on the 5th of December, that he was slain. In that same year the
Divine Augustus elected himself and Quintus Pedius consuls in the room of Pansa
and Hirtius. Fix at fifty-six years the subsequent rule of the Divine Augustus
over the state; add Tiberius’s three-and-twenty years, the four years or less
of Caius, the twenty-eight years of Claudius and Nero, the one memorable long
year of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and the now six years of the present happy
reign, during which Vespasian has been fostering the public weal, and the result
is that from Cicero’s death to our day is a hundred and twenty years, one man’s
life-time. For I saw myself an old man in Britain who declared that he was present
at the battle in which they strove to drive and beat back from their shores
the arms of Car when he attacked their island. So, had this man who encountered
Car in the field, been brought to Rome either as a prisoner, or by his own
choice or by some destiny, he might have heard Car himself and Cicero, and
also have been present at our own speeches. At the last largess of the Emperor
you saw yourselves several old men who told you that they had actually shared
once and again in the gifts of the divine Augustus. Hence we infer that they
might have heard both Corvinus and Asinius. Corvinus indeed lived on to the
middle of the reign of Augustus, Asinius almost to its close. You must not then
divide the age, and habitually describe as old and ancient orators those with
whom the ears of the self-same men might have made acquaintance, and whom they
might, so to say, have linked and coupled together.

18. I have made these preliminary remarks to show that any credit reflected
on the age by the fame and renown of these orators is common property, and is
in fact more closely connected with us than with Servius Galba or Caius Carbo,
and others whom we may rightly call “ancients.” These indeed are rough, unpolished,
awkward, and ungainly, and I wish that your favourite Calvus or Caelius or even
Cicero had in no respect imitated them. I really mean now to deal with the subject
more boldly and confidently, but I must first observe that the types and varieties
of eloquence change with the age. Thus Caius Gracchus compared with the elder
Cato is full and copious; Crassus compared with Gracchus is polished and ornate;
Cicero compared with either is lucid, graceful, and lofty; Corvinus again is
softer and sweeter and more finished in his phrases than Cicero. I do not ask
who is the best speaker. Meantime I am content to have proved that eloquence
has more than one face, and even in those whom you Call ancients several varieties
are to be discovered. Nor does it at once follow that difference implies inferiority.
It is the fault of envious human nature that the old is always the object of
praise, the present of contempt. Can we doubt that there were found critics
who admired Appius Caecus more than Cato? We know that even Cicero was not without
his disparagers, who thought him inflated, turgid, not concise enough, but unduly
diffuse and luxuriant, in short anything but Attic. You have read of course
the letters of Calvus and Brutus to Cicero, and from these it is easy to perceive
that in Cicero’s opinion Calvus was bloodless and attenuated, Brutus slovenly
and lax. Cicero again was slightingly spoken of by Calvus as loose and nerveless,
and by Brutus, to use his own words, as “languid and effeminate.” If you ask
me, I think they all said what was true. But I shall come to them separately
after a while; now I have to deal with them collectively.

19. While indeed the admirers of the ancients fix as the boundary, so to
say, of antiquity, the period up to Cassius Severus who was the first, they
assert, to deviate from the old and plain path of the speaker, I maintain that
it was not from poverty of genius or ignorance of letters that he adopted his
well known style, but from preference and intellectual conviction. He saw, in
fact, that, as I was just now saying, the character and type of oratory must
change with the circumstances of the age and an altered taste in the popular
ear. The people of the past, ignorant and uncultured as they were, patiently
endured the length of a very confused speech, and it was actually to the speaker’s
credit, if he took up one of their days by his speech-making. Then too they
highly esteemed long preparatory introductions, narratives told from a remote
beginning, a multitude of divisions ostentatiously paraded, proofs in a thousand
links, and all the other directions prescribed in those driest of treatises
by Hermagoras and Apollodorus. Any one who was supposed to have caught a scent
of philosophy, and who introduced some philosophical commonplace into his speech,
was praised up to the skies. And no wonder; for this was new and unfamiliar,
and even of the orators but very few had studied the rules of rhetoricians or
the dogmas of philosophers. But now that all these are common property and that
there is scarce a bystander in the throng who, if not fully instructed, has
not at least been initiated into the rudiments of culture, eloquence must resort
to new and skilfully chosen paths, in order that the orator may avoid offence
to the fastidious ear, at any rate before judges who decide by power and authority,
not by law and precedent, who fix the speak-er’s time, instead of leaving it
to himself, and, so far from thinking that they ought to wait till he chooses
to speak on the matter in question, continually remind him of it and recall
him to it when he wanders, protesting that they are in a hurry.

Next: Book 1 [20]