372 Harry M. Hubbell, Ph.D., 



» 



support to his view as appears at first sight, for Sextus adds the 

 names of two Academics, Clitomachus and Charmadas. The 

 case for Critolaus is thus to some extent weakened. If the 

 argument from juxtaposition means anything, the thought we are 

 considering might derive from Charmadas as well as from 

 Critolaus. And this possibility receives support from the pas- 

 sage in the De Oratore alluded to above. The passage is the 

 long speech of Antonius beginning at the eighteenth section of 

 the first book. He narrates a debate which he had heard at 

 i\thens between the champions and opponents of rhetoric. The 

 incident may be true, or more likely, merely a fiction designed to 

 establish a personal connection between Cicero and Charmadas 

 from whose published works he is drawing the material for his 

 argument.^ Cicero represents Charmadas as making the prin- 

 cipal attack on rhetoric. His argument that we are so consti- 

 tuted by nature as to be able to be orators without the assistance 

 of "art" was supported by examples of successful orators who 

 had never studied in the schools of rhetoric. The argument is 

 the same that appears in Sextus, Philodemus, and Quintilian; 

 the only point we miss is the reference to Demades and Aeschines. 

 I suspect that the lack is due to a definite purpose of Cicero's 

 in adapting his sources. Antonius is represented as one who 

 looks with mild contempt on the learning of the Greeks. Hence 

 the scornful ncscio quo with which he dismisses Corax and 

 Tisias (91). It is in keeping with this assumed indifference that 

 he sums up the examples of Charmadas with innumerahilis 

 quosdam. In place of these Greek examples he makes Charmadas 

 substitute a Roman example, Antonius himself. This is Cicero's 

 trick of working over his Greek source so that it appears as if 

 it were really composed for a Roman audience. This method 

 may be illustrated, and our conjecture on this passage supported 

 by comparing a passage in the long digression in the third book 

 of the De Oratore. Cicero is developing the thought that before 

 the rise of the Socratic schools the term philosophy was not 

 confined to abstract speculation, but covered the whole field of 

 intellectual activity, so that the oratorical power of a Pericles, 



® This method is used more than once by Cicero ; for other instances 

 see Hendrickson, Literary Sources in Cicero's Brutus and the Technique 

 of Citation in Dialogue. Amer. Journ. Phil. XW'II (.1906) p. 184. 



