[c] The academic sect derived its origin from Socrates, and its name from a celebrated gymnasium, or place of exercise, in the suburbs of Athens, called the Academy, after Ecademus, who possessed it in the time of the Tyndaridae.  It was afterwards purchased, and dedicated to the public, for the convenience of walks and exercises for the citizens of Athens.  It was gradually improved with plantations, groves and porticos for the particular use of the professors or masters of the academic school; where several of them are said to have spent their lives, and to have resided so strictly, as scarce ever to have come within the city.  See Middleton’s Life of Cicero, 4to edit. vol. ii. p. 536.  Plato, and his followers, continued to reside in the porticos of the academy.  They chose

                   ——­The green retreats

Of Academus, and the thymy vale,
Where, oft inchanted with Socratic sounds,
Ilyssus pure devolv’d his tuneful stream
In gentle murmurs. 

                                  AKENSIDE, PLEAS.  OF IMAG.

For dexterity in argument, the orator is referred to this school, for the reason given by Quintilian, who says that the custom of supporting an argument on either side of the question, approaches nearest to the orator’s practice in forensic causes. Academiam quidam utilissimam credunt, quod mos in utramque partem disserendi ad exercitationem forensium causarum proxime accedat. Lib. xii. cap. 2 Quintilian assures us that we are indebted to the academic philosophy for the ablest orators, and it is to that school that Horace sends his poet for instruction: 

Rem tibi Socraticae poterunt ostendere chartae,
Verbaque provisam rem non invita sequentur. 
ARS POET. ver. 310.

Good sense, that fountain of the muse’s art,
Let the rich page of Socrates impart;
And if the mind with clear conception glow,
The willing words in just expressions flow. 

          
                                            FRANCIS’S HORACE.

[d] Epicurus made frequent use of the rhetorical figure called exclamation; and in his life, by Diogenes Laertius, we find a variety of instances.  It is for that manner of giving animation to a discourse that Epicurus is mentioned in the Dialogue.  For the rest, Quintilian tells us what to think of him.  Epicurus, he says, dismisses the orator from his school, since he advises his pupil to pay no regard to science or to method. Epicurus imprimis nos a se ipse dimittit, qui fugere omnem disciplinam navigatione quam velocissima jubet. Lib. xii. cap. 2.  Metrodorus was the favourite disciple of Epicurus.  Brotier says that a statue of the master and the scholar, with their heads joined together, was found at Rome in the year 1743.