XVII.  But I am in haste to pass to our Roman orators.  Menenius Agrippa [a] may fairly be deemed an ancient.  I take it, however, that he is not the person, whom you mean to oppose to the professors of modern eloquence.  The aera, which you have in view, is that of [b] Cicero and Caesar; of Caelius [c] and Calvus; of Brutus [d], Asinius, and Messala.  Those are the men, whom you place in the front of hour line; but for what reason they are to be classed with the ancients, and not, as I think they ought to be, with the moderns, I am still to learn.  To begin with Cicero; he, according to the account of Tiro, his freedman, was put to death on the seventh of the ides of December, during the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa [e], who, we know, were both cut off in the course of the year, and left their office vacant for Augustus and Quintus Pedius.  Count from that time six and fifty years to complete the reign of Augustus; three and twenty for that of Tiberius, four for Caligula, eight and twenty for Claudius and Nero, one for Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, and finally six from the accession of Vespasian to the present year of our felicity, we shall have from the death of Cicero a period of about [f] one hundred and twenty years, which may be considered as the term allotted to the life of man.  I myself remember to have seen in Britain a soldier far advanced in years, who averred that he carried arms in that very battle [g] in which his countrymen sought to drive Julius Caesar back from their coast.  If this veteran, who served in the defence of his country against Caesar’s invasion, had been brought a prisoner to Rome; or, if his own inclination, or any other accident in the course of things, had conducted him thither, he might have heard, not only Caesar and Cicero, but even ourselves in some of our public speeches.

In the late public largess [h] you will acknowledge that you saw several old men, who assured us that they had received more than once, the like distribution from Augustus himself.  If that be so, might not those persons have heard Corvinus [i] and Asinius?  Corvinus, we all know, lived through half the reign of Augustus, and Asinius almost to the end.  How then are we to ascertain the just boundaries of a century?  They are not to be varied at pleasure, so as to place some orators in a remote, and others in a recent period, while people are still living, who heard them all, and may, therefore, with good reason rank them as contemporaries.

XVIII.  From what I have said, I assume it as a clear position, that the glory, whatever it be, that accrued to the age in which those orators lived, is not confined to that particular period, but reaches down to the present time, and may more properly be said to belong to us, than to Servius Galba [a], or to Carbo [b], and others of the same or more ancient date.  Of that whole race of orators, I may freely say, that their manner cannot now be relished.  Their language is coarse, and their composition rough,