﻿70 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



sion applicable to both, kinds of public speaking, in the Forum and in halls, if the 

 latter was then already an established custom, instead of " venire in forum," which can 

 only apply to the former. "Whatever weight there is in this consideration, it goes to 

 prove that Petronius wrote before Domitian, — before the use of halls for judicial pro- 

 ceedings had almost become the general usage. 



It is not inappropriate to refer, in connection with this particular point, to the 

 general resemblance of opinions and views between Petronius and the author of the 

 Dialogus. Compare, for instance, the opinion of Encolpius, who ascribes the decline 

 of eloquence to the erroneous system of instruction, and that of Agamemnon, who 

 assigns the same result to the impatience of the parents, with the following passage 

 in the Dialogus (c. 28) : " Quis enim ignorat et eloqueutiam ct ceteras artes desci^isse 

 ab ilia vctere gloria non iuopia hominum, sed desidia juventutis et negligentia pa- 

 rentuni et mscientia praecipientium et oblivione moris antiqui?" It is true that the 

 interlocutors, Messala and !Maternus, — men of experience and reflection, as well as 

 education, — the former from his leaning to republicanism, the latter from his pre- 

 dilection for monarchism, assign yet another and very important cause of the decline 

 of eloquence, the political condition of Eome, — a cause which would scarcely attract 

 the attention of our volatUc, pleasure-loAing, though cultivated rake, Encolpius, and 

 which, if the book Avas AATitten at an earlier time than the Dialogus, had not yet 

 revealed itself so plainly as at a later period. The very omission of mentioning the 

 political condition of the Roman empire and its influence upon the development of 

 eloquence, if not a conclusive argument in faAor of assigning a very early origin to 

 the Satyricon, is yet a circumstance which should not be overlooked. 



2. C. 2. 7 : " Xuper veutosa isthaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia com- 

 migravit, animosque juvenum ad magna surgentcs veluti pestilenti quodam sidere ad- 

 fla^it, simulque corrupta cloqiientiae regula stetit et obmutuit." The influence of 

 Asiatic eloquence, of which this passage speaks, began to be felt in Rome about the 

 beginning of the first centiuy before Christ, when Hortensius and Cicero were young 

 men. The former adopted it as his standard, and thus, in the opinion of Cicero, 

 prejudiced the permanence of his oratorical reputation. Cicero, in Brut. 95. 325, says: 

 Sed si quaerimus, cur adolescens magis floruerit dicendo quam senior Hortensius, 

 causas reperiemus duas. Piimum, quod genus erat orationis Asiaticum adolescentiae 



magis concessum quam senectuti. Genera autem Asiaticae dictionis duo sunt 



[326] Haec autem, ut dixi, genera dicendi aptiora sunt adolescentibus ; in senibus 

 gravitatem non habent. Itaque Hortensius utroque genere florens clamores faciebat 

 adolescens." It cannot be doubted that Petronius in the above passage refers to the 



