aetatis anno dicere in foro coepi, et nunc demum, quid praestare debeat orator, adhuc tamen per caliginem video. Lib. v. epist. 8.  Quintilian relates of Caesar, Calvus, and Pollio, that they all three appeared at the bar, long before they arrived at their quaestorian age, which was seven and twenty. Calvus, Caesar, Pollio, multum ante quaestoriam omnes aetatem gravissima judicia susceperunt. Quintilian, lib. xii. cap. 6.

Section XXXV.

[a] Lipsius, in his note on this passage, says, that he once thought the word scena in the text ought to be changed to schola; but he afterwards saw his mistake.  The place of fictitious declamation and spurious eloquence, where the teachers played a ridiculous part, was properly called a theatrical scene.

[b] Lucius Licinius Crassus and Domitius AEnobarbus were censors A.U.C. 662.  Crassus himself informs us, that, for two years together, a new race of men, called Rhetoricians, or masters of eloquence, kept open schools at Rome, till he thought fit to exercise his censorian authority, and by an edict to banish the whole tribe from the city of Rome; and this, he says, he did, not, as some people suggested, to hinder the talents of youth from being cultivated, but to save their genius from being corrupted, and the young mind from being confirmed in shameless ignorance.  Audacity was all the new masters could teach; and this being the only thing to be acquired on that stage of impudence, he thought it the duty of a Roman censor to crush the mischief in the bud. Latini (sic diis placet) hoc biennio magistri dicendi extiterunt; quos ego censor edicto meo sustuleram; non quo (ut nescio quos dicere aiebant) acui ingenia adolescentium nollem, sed, contra, ingenia obtundi nolui, corroborari impudentiam.  Hos vero novos magistros nihil intelligebam posse docere, nisi ut auderent.  Hoc cum unum traderetur, et cum impudentiae ludus esset, putavi esse censoris, ne longius id serperet, providere. De Orat. lib. iii. s. 93 and 94.  Aulus Gellius mentions a former expulsion of the rhetoricians, by a decree of the senate, in the consulship of Fannius Strabo and Valerius Messala, A.U.C. 593.  He gives the words of the decree, and also of the edict, by which the teachers were banished by Crassus, several years after.  See A.  Gellius, Noctes Atticae, lib. xv. cap. 2.  See also Suetonius, De Claris Rhet. s. 1.

[c] Seneca has left a collection of declamations in the two kinds, viz. the persuasive, and controversial.  See his SUASORIAE, and CONTROVERSIAE.  In the first class, the questions are, Whether Alexander should attempt the Indian ocean?  Whether he should enter Babylon, when the augurs denounced impending danger?  Whether Cicero, to appease the wrath of Marc Antony, should burn all his works?  The subjects in the second class are more complex.  A priestess was taken prisoner by a band of pirates, and sold to slavery.  The purchaser abandoned her