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Updated: May 31, 2025
I must confess that I was most agreeably, and I hope that I shall be forgiven by the People if I say so unexpectedly, entertained and instructed by the regular, reasonable and sensible conduct and expression of the People there collected, that I should rather have entertained an idea of being transported to the British senate than to an adventurous and promiscuous assembly of People of a remote Colony, were I not convinced by the genuine and uncorrupted integrity and manly hardihood of the Rhetoricians of that assembly that they were not yet corrupted by venality or debauched by luxury.
And the same maxim may be translated into a wider meaning; in which it becomes true also for our historical experience. Caesar and Rome have flourished and expired together. It is false to say, that with Caesar came the destruction of Roman greatness. Peace, hollow rhetoricians! Until Caesar came, Rome was a minor; by him, she attained her majority, and fulfilled her destiny.
Hence we look to Athens for art, to Palestine for ethics; the one produces rhetoricians, the other, prophets. So, we see, the theologico-dramatic forms of the two nations and there were no other are different.
This is a transfer of the content of rhetoric to poetic, but poetic remains an art of imitation. Imaginative realization of the life of man would be incomplete if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not use the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets justly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often proved themselves excellent rhetoricians.
Then all philosophers and rhetoricians are timorous creatures together. You may generally see them carrying sticks on their walks; well, of course they would not go armed if they were not afraid. And they bar their doors elaborately, for fear of night attacks.
There are men also, who through that fault, which originated chiefly with Hegesias, by breaking up abruptly, and cutting short their rhythm, have fallen into an abject style of speaking, very much like that of the Sicilians. There is a third kind adopted by those brothers, the chiefs of the Asiatic rhetoricians, Hierocles and Maecles, men who are not at all to be despised, in my opinion at least.
Others less serious-minded found a sphere for their natural gift of speech in the halls of the rhetoricians. It is pitiable to see men like Pollio content to give up all higher aims, and for want of healthier exercise waste their powers in noisy declamation. History, if treated with dignity and candour, was almost as dangerous a field as eloquence.
There was a class of rhetoricians and orators at Rome in the time of Cicero, who were famous for having made the same mistake. They would do every thing by a fixed and almost mechanical rule, by calculation and measurement.
The poets, orators, and rhetoricians of antiquity, are continually enforcing this position, that all the arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in individual nature. As if they could not sufficiently express their admiration of his genius by what they knew, they have recourse to poetical enthusiasm. They call it inspiration; a gift from heaven.
He does not appear to have visited Rome more than twice, but he shows a thorough knowledge of the rhetoricians of the capital, whence we conclude that his residence extended over some time. The stern discipline of Caesar's wars had taught the Spaniards something of Roman severity, and Seneca seems to have adopted with a good will the maxims of Roman life.
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