Page:Tacitus; (IA tacituswilliam00donnrich).pdf/185

Rh the plan often adopted by Cicero in similar treatises. In the first place, the subject of the conversation is said to have been heard in his youth by the author of it—and in that respect Cicero follows the example set him by Plato; next, there is a little preliminary discussion that soon branches out into the main argument; thirdly, a friend joins the company after the debate has made some progress; and lastly, Aper in Tacitus, and Antonius in Cicero, are nearly counterparts of each other in the character of their eloquence. It was said of Aper at the time that he owed his fame, not to art or literature, but to the natural powers of a vigorous understanding; and Antonius is made to say that "his fame would be the greater if he were regarded as a man wholly illiterate and void of education." In the chapter on his 'Life,' it was only possible to conjecture what was the training of Tacitus at the bar; but the dialogue now under examination may help us to perceive that he was a student of the oratorical works of the Ciceronian age, while his 'Annals' afford many tokens of his having been well versed in the poetry of Virgil, and perhaps also in that of many other writers of the Augustan period, Livy included.

"English Readers" cannot be expected to take any lively interest in the respective merits of the old or new Roman orators. But they may not object to a brief sketch of what was thought to constitute a liberal education in Tacitus's day. The future historian may often be traced in the opinions of the juvenile author of this 'Dialogue.' His allusions to the bygone time are frequently a covert satire on the age in which he wrote. Some of the following extracts will show that even if Juvenal and Tacitus never met each other