Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

the Latin language, which are said to be written inaccurately. They were composed by excellent men, but men who lacked sufficient learning. Indeed, it is possible for a man to think well and yet not be able to express his thoughts elegantly. However, for anyone to publish thoughts that he can neither arrange skillfully nor illustrate in a way that entertains his reader is an unpardonable abuse of writing and of one's own leisure. Consequently, such authors only read their books to one another, and no one ever takes them up except those who wish to claim the same license for careless writing for themselves. Therefore, if oratory has gained any reputation through my industry, I shall take the more pains to open the fountains of philosophy, from which all my eloquence has taken its rise.

IV. But just as Aristotle A famous Greek philosopher (384–322 B.C.)., a man of the greatest genius and the most varied knowledge, was excited by the glory of the rhetorician Isocrates An Athenian orator and teacher of rhetoric (436–338 B.C.). and began teaching young men to speak, joining philosophy with eloquence, so it is my design not to lay aside my former study of oratory, but to employ myself at the same time in this greater and more fruitful art. I have always thought that to be able to speak copiously and elegantly on the most important questions was the most perfect philosophy. I have applied myself to this pursuit so diligently that I have already ventured to hold a school like the Greeks. Lately, when you left us, having many of my friends around me, I attempted at my Tusculan villa Cicero's country house in Tusculum. to see what I could do in that way. Just as I formerly used to practice declaiming—which nobody continued longer than I did—this is now to be the declamation of my old age. I invited anyone to propose a question he wished to have discussed, and then I argued that point, either sitting or walking. Thus, I have compiled the scholæ (as the Greeks call these lectures) of five days into as many books. We proceeded in this manner: when he who had proposed the subject for discussion had said what he thought proper, I