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This composition and his abstracts of his own orations are his only rhetorical works not extant, and probably our loss is not very great. The Treatise on Rhetoric, addressed to Herennius, though edited with his works, and ascribed to him by several of the ancients, is now generally attributed to Cornificius, or some other writer of the day.
Papirius likewise, who had remained to prosecute the siege of Luceria, soon found the event agreeable to his hopes: for all the roads being blocked up through which provisions used to be conveyed from Samnium, the Samnites, who were in garrison, were reduced so low by famine, that they sent ambassadors to the Roman consul, proposing that he should raise the siege, on receiving the horsemen who were the cause of the war, to whom Papirius returned this answer, that "they ought to have consulted Pontius, son of Herennius, by whose advice they had sent the Romans under the yoke, what treatment he thought fitting for the conquered to undergo.
The corps of Gaius Herennius was destined to the immediate support of Perpenna; farther inland on the upper Ebro, Sertorius in person prosecuted meanwhile the subjugation of several districts friendly to Rome, and held himself at the same time ready to hasten according to circumstances to the aid of Perpenna or Hirtuleius.
"And that is the first word of truth I have heard from you, Varro, or from your Herennius here," cried Sergius, who had risen and now stood, pale and gaunt, beside his litter. "With you and such as you to command, we may well look to see the African fork-bearers winding through the Forum yes, and pillaging amid its ruins."
He fell with such fury upon the character of Herennius Senecio that Metius Carus said to him, one day, "What business have you with my dead? Did I ever interfere in the affair of Crassus' or Camerinus'? " Victims, you know, to Regulus, in Nero's time. For these reasons he imagined I was highly exasperated, and so at the recitation of his last piece, I got no invitation.
Herennius cut off his head, and, by Antony's command, his hands also, by which his Philippics were written; for so Cicero styled those orations he wrote against Antony, and so they are called to this day.
But the anonymous author of the Latin rhetorical treatise addressed to C. Herennius, long believed to be the work of Cicero, qualifies this by defining the purpose of rhetoric as "so to speak as to gain the assent of the audience as far as possible." And the sum of Cicero's opinion is that the office of the orator is to speak in a way adapted to win the assent of his audience.
The tribune, taking a few with him, ran to the place where he was to come out. And Cicero, perceiving Herennius running in the walks, commanded his servants to set down the litter; and stroking his chin, as he used to do, with his left hand, he looked steadfastly upon his murderers, his person covered with dust, his beard and hair untrimmed, and his face worn with his troubles.
And when the judges would have accepted of this plea, Marius himself opposed it, and told Herennius, that when he was first created magistrate he ceased to be his client; which was not altogether true. For it is not every office that frees clients and their posterity from the observance due to their patrons, but only those to which the law has assigned a curule chair.
But between each two periods of disturbance there was generally an interval in which philosophy, law, and rhetoric were carefully studied. As, however, no work of this period has come down to us except the treatise to Herennius, our notice of it will be proportionately general and brief. We shall touch on the principal studies in order.
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