10 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. 



embassage to Rome, and that the young men of Rome began 

 to flock about him, being allured with the sweetness and 

 majesty of his eloquence and learning, gave counsel in 

 open senate, that they should give him his dispatch with 

 all speed, lest he should infect and enchant the minds 

 and affections of the youth, and at unawares bring in an 

 alteration of the manners and customs of the state. Out 

 of the same conceit, or humour, did Virgil, turning his 

 pen to the advantage of his country, and the disadvantage 



10 of his own profession, make a kind of separation between 

 policy and government, and between arts and sciences, in 

 the verses so much renowned, attributing and challenging 

 the one to the Romans, and leaving and yielding the other 

 to the Grecians : Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, 

 lice tibi erunt artes, etc.: [Be it thy task, Roman, to rule over 

 subject peoples.'] So likewise we see that Anytus, the 

 accuser of Socrates, laid it as an article of charge and 

 accusation against him, that he did, with the variety and 

 jx>wer of his discourses and disputations, withdraw young 



20 men from due reverence to the laws and customs of their 

 country ; and that, he did profess a dangerous and pernicious 

 science, which was to make the worse matter seem the 

 better, and to suppress truth by force of eloquence and 

 speech. 



But these, and the like imputations, have rather a 



countenance of gravity, than any ground of justice-; for 



experience doth warrant, that both in persons and in times, 



^ there hath been a meeting and concurrence in learning and 



fcrms, flourishing and excelling in the same men and the 



30 feame ages. For, as for men, there cannot be a better nor 

 the like instance, as of that pair, Alexander the Great and 

 Julius Ctesar the Dictator ; whereof the one was Aristotle's 

 scholar in philosophy, and the other was Cicero's rival in 

 eloquence : or if any man had rather call for scholars that 

 *ere great generals, than generals that were great scholars, 

 let him take Epaminondas the Theban or Xenophon the 



