The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete - The Original Classic Edition. Tranquillus Gaius

academies, though more intimately connected with reason than the two former, were of a nature too abstract to have any immediate or useful influence on life and manners. General discussions of truth and probability, with magnificent declamations on the to kalon, and the summum bonum, constituted the chief objects of attention amongst those who cultivated moral science in the shades of academical retirement. Cicero endeavoured to bring back philosophy from speculation to practice, and clearly evinced the social duties to be founded in the unalterable dictates of virtue; but it was easier to demonstrate the truth of the principles which he maintained, than to enforce their observance, while the morals of mankind were little actuated by

       the exercise of reason alone.

       The science chiefly cultivated at this period was rhetoric, which appears to have differed considerably from what now passes under the same name. The object of it was not so much justness of sentiment and propriety of expression, as the art of declaiming, or speaking copiously upon any subject. It is mentioned by Varro as the reverse of logic; and they are distinguished from each other by a simile, that the former resembles the palm of the hand expanded, and the latter, contracted into the fist. It is observable that logic, though a part of education in modern times, seems not to have been cultivated amongst the Romans. Perhaps they were apprehensive, lest a science which concentered the force of argument, might obstruct the cultivation of that which was meant to dilate it.