Philippi Beroaldi declamatio An Orator fit philosopho et medico anteponendus. Declamation of Philippus Beroaldus: Whether an Orator should be preferred to a philosopher and a physician.

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Eloquence is a great and venerable thing, most distinguished men. There is nothing more excellent than its good; by its benefit, it happens that the eloquent surpass other men just as much as men surpass other living creatures. This is clear enough to all; this is most celebrated by the praise and consensus of all; this has also been testified to by our own oration, published some time ago. Nevertheless, today, as I begin the Antonian Orations of M. Tullius original: "M. Tulli", I thought I would be doing a worthwhile task if I practiced rhetoric a little in the scholastic style, and played with a declamatory diction. So that this may be done more conveniently, I will treat one controversy from the school of the ancient declaimers. And I will take care that the seasonings and prepared dishes of our composition satisfy the stomach, so that what is said by me may both cherish the minds and soothe the ears of the audience. But so that we may cut short long prefaces, we will enter into the matter itself. You, who are present, attend diligently and willingly to what is said.

Argumentum. Argument

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A father who had three children—a philosopher, a physician, and an orator—dying, made the one who was most useful to the city his heir in his will. After the death of the father, the three brothers contend as to whom the paternal inheritance should fall. The first, the philosopher, pleads his case before the judges, from whom these things, among others, are said.

Declamatio. Declamation

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I am astonished, judges, that it should seem doubtful to any mortal to which of the three brothers the paternal goods should rather be adjudicated, since philosophy is the queen of all disciplines, which M. Tullius says is the invention of the gods, and Plato hands down is a gift of the gods. For as a good—to use the words of Plato himself—nothing greater has ever been given to mortals by the gods, nor will it ever be given. This is the law of life, the investigator of virtues, the expeller of vices, the light of laws, the teacher of morals, the explorer of the elemental things, and the contemplator of the heaven and the world. Nay, through the study of its height, it even tracks down things higher than heaven itself. And as the Platonist Apuleius says, it dwells on the farthest back of the world. By this messenger, men are made kin and neighbors to God—nay, to speak more truly, they are made earthly gods. What is more excellent than that most sacred philosophy, which, exceeding this gloom in which we are rolled, teaches what is done in heaven? And deservedly, Seneca, the most sincere and holy of philosophers—to whom it is fitting to give credence—gives thanks to the nature of things, while he learns its secret paths: what the material of the universe is, what God is, whether he turns entirely into himself, whether he looks back at us sometimes, whether he does something daily, whether he made it once, whether he is part of the world or the world, whether he is the soul of the world or rather its maker and fashioner, whether it is permitted to him to derogate anything from the law of the Fates, or whether it is a diminution of majesty and a confession of error to have changed what was made. Praise of philosophy: Natural and Theological.