216 EOMAN PHILOSOPHY. 



Romans, who, busied as they were in political enterprises, and deficient 

 in philosophical acuteness, had neither time nor inclination for abstruse 

 investigations ; and who considered philosophy simply as one of the 

 many fashions introduced from Greece, " a sort of table furniture," as 

 Warburton well expresses it, a mere refinement in the arts of social 

 enjoyment. 1 This character it bore both among friends and enemies. 

 Hence the popularity which attended the three Athenian philosophers, 

 who had come to Rome on an embassy from their native city ; and 

 hence the inflexible determination with which Cato procured their 

 dismissal, through fear, as Plutarch tells us, 2 lest their arts of dispu- 

 tation should corrupt the Roman youth. And when at length, by the 

 authority of Scipio, 8 the literary treasures of Sylla, and the patronage 

 of Lucullus, philosophical studies had gradually received the counte- 

 nance of the higher classes of their countrymen, we still find them, in 

 consistency with the principle above laid down, determined in the 

 adoption of this or that system, not so much by the harmony of its 

 parts, or by the plausibility of its reasonings, as by its suitableness to 

 the profession and political station to which they respectively belonged, 

 introduction Thus because the Stoics were more minute than other sects in incul- 

 p1iiiSo ( P h e y ek eating the moral and social duties, we find the Jurisconsulti professing 

 to Eome. themselves followers of Zeno ; 4 the orators, on the contrary, adopted 

 the disputatious system of the later Academics ; 5 while Epicurus was 

 the master of the idle and the wealthy. Hence, too, they confined 

 the profession of philosophical science to Greek teachers ; considering 

 them the sole proprietors, as it were, of a foreign and expensive luxury, 

 which the vanquished might have the trouble of furnishing, but which 

 the conquerors could well afford to purchase. 



First appiica- Before the works of Cicero, no attempts worth considering had been 

 made for using the Latin tongue in philosophical subjects. The 

 natural stubbornness of the language conspired with Roman haughti- 

 ness to prevent this application. 6 The Epicureans, indeed, had made 

 the experiment, but their writings were even affectedly harsh and 

 slovenly ; 7 and we find Cicero himself, in spite of his inexhaustible flow 

 of rich and expressive diction, making continual apologies for his 

 learned occupations, and extolling philosophy as the parent of every- 

 ero tmn g g reat > virtuous, and amiable. 8 



philosophical Yet, with whatever discouragement his design was attended, he 

 writings. ultimately triumphed over the pride of an unlettered people, and the 



1 Lactantius, Inst. iii. 16. 



2 Plutarch, in Vita Caton. See also de Invent, i. 36. 



3 Paterculus, i. 12, &c. Plutarch, in Vit Lucull. et Syll. 



4 G ravin. Origin. Juriscivil. lib. i. c. 44. 



5 Quinct. xii. 2. Auct. Dialog, de Orator. 31. 



6 De Nat. Deor. i. 4; de Off. i. 1 ; de.fin. Acad. Qusest., &c. 



7 Tusc. Qusest. i. 3 ; ii. 3 ; Acad. Quaast. i. 2 ; de Nat. Deor. i. 21 ; de Fin. 

 i. 3, &c. ; de Clar. Orat. 35. 



8 Lucullus, 2 ; de Fin. i. 13 ; Tusc. Qusast. ii. 1, 2 ; iii. 2 ; v. 2 ; de Legg. 

 i. 2224 ; de Off. ii. 2 ; de Orat. 41, &c. 



