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 in] PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE 36 and the faculty of turning off rhetorically proper Latin phrases. But under the Empire, oratory, whether prac- tised at Rome or in the provinces, was emptied of its genuine purpose, which is to express opinions held upon public matters in order to influence the action of free fellow-citizens. Outside the business of the law, oratory became empty and insincere. It had its apt preparation in the schools of rhetoric, where the rounding of gram- matical periods in prose or verse was everything, while pertinency to anything real in life was nothing. Sub- jects of study and discourse rhetorically selected in order to cultivate cleverness of expression, do not bind the writer or speaker to pertinency to the matter in hand. Education by such means may become an education in irrelevancy for the youth of a society which is becoming more and more dilettante as it loses power to shape its destinies. The result of this rhetorical fostering of irrelevancy is seen in compositions written for an occasion, as a panegyric on an emperor. These are flatteries, if not lies. They may, however, be pertinent. But in de- clining times the deeds of the great man dwindle, and the orator is tempted to fill out his speech with pretty matters not quite pertinent. At last these panegyrics became models of irrelevancy. The man praised is fulsomely addressed and flattered, and great deeds are heaped on him. Then the orator may pass to regions of mythology — safe topic ! — nor return. This is one mark of intellectual decline ; for pertinency of treat- ment is as indicative of intellect as is the character of the subject treated and the reality of its relationship to life. It marks one phase of Komau decline that