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Aulus Gellius, x, 15: Matrimonium flaminis nisi morte dirimi ius non est. Tacitus, Annals, iv, 16. Ulpian, vi, 6; id. in Dig., 24, 3, 2. Pauli fragmentam in Boethii commentario ad Topica, 2, 4, 19. Paulus in Dig. ii,3, 41. Ulpian, vi, 13. Ulpian, vi, 9-17, and vii, 2-3. Pauli frag, in Boethii comm. ad Top., ii, 4, 19.
There are five books on music, two on arithmetic, one on geometry, translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, with commentaries; of Porphyry's "Isagoge," with commentaries, and a commentary on Cicero's "Topica." Besides, he wrote several treatises in logic and rhetoric himself, one on the use of the syllogism, and one on topics, and in addition a series of theological works.
Still it is an entertaining, nay, useful work; remarkable, even among Cicero's writings, for its uniform good sense, and less familiar to the scholar only because the greater part has been superseded by the compositions of his riper years. His Topica, or treatise on commonplaces, has less extent and variety of plan, being little else than a compendium of Aristotle's work on the same subject.
It is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire with matters which are perplexing us to-day. We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica. Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes difficult to assign their exact places to each.
These works, written mostly in 45 and 44, are, except the De Cons., still extant. To the list may be added also other works of a rhetorical nature, such as the Topica and De Optima Genere Dicendi, and some lost philosophical books, such as De Gloria.
Concurrently with these, he continues to throw off further manuals of the theory and practice of oratory, intended in the first instance for the use of the son who proved so thankless a pupil, the Partitiones Oratoriae, the Topica, the De Optimo Genere Oratorum. Meanwhile, the Roman world had again been plunged into civil war by the assassination of Caesar.
His Topica, containing Aristotelian instructions as to a lawyer's work, he put together on board ship, immediately after this, for the benefit of Trebatius, to whom it had been promised. July had come, and at last he resolved to sail from Pompeii and to coast round to Sicily. He lands for a night at Velia, where he finds Brutus, with whom he has an interview.
We see this in the Topica, the De Finibus, and the Tusculanae Disputationes, in all of which he was greatly assisted by the Academic point of view which strove to reconcile philosophy with the dictates of common sense.
He begins with Solon, and after briefly mentioning the orators of Greece, proceeds to those of his own country, so as to take in the whole period from the time of Junius Brutus down to himself. About the same time he wrote his Orator; in which he directs his attention principally to diction and delivery, as in his De Inventione and Topica he considers the matter of an oration.
His treatises De Inventione and Topica, the first and nearly the last of his compositions, are both on the invention of arguments, which he regards, with Aristotle, as the very foundation of the art; though he elsewhere confines the term eloquence, according to its derivation, to denote excellence of diction and delivery, to the exclusion of argumentative skill.
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