68. For a brilliant description of the evils of the Roman system of education see Tac. Dial. 30-5. See also p. 127 for the very similar criticism of Petronius.
69. ce. 28-30. Cp. also Quint, i. 2 1-8.
70. The schoolmaster was not infrequently, it is to be feared, of doubtful character. Cp. the case of the famous rhetorician Remmius Palaemon. Cp. also Quint, i. 3. 13.
71. c. 35.
72. Tac. Dial. 26.
73. The influence of rhetoric was of course large in the Augustan age. Vergil and still more Ovid testify to this fact. But the tone of rhetoric was saner in the days of Vergil. Ovid, himself no inconsiderable influence on the poetry of the Silver Age, begins to show the effects of the new and meretricious type of rhetoric that flourished under the anti-Ciceronian reaction, when the healthy influence of the great orators of a saner age began to give way before the inroads of the brilliant but insincere epigrammatic style. This latter style was fostered largely by the importance assigned to the controversia and suasoria as opposed to the more realistic methods of oratorical training during the last century of the republic.
74. See Mayor on Juv. iii. 9.
75. Cp. Juv. i. 1 sqq., iii. 9. For the enormous part played in social life by recitations cp. Plin. Ep. i. 13, ii. 19, iv. 5, 27, v. 12, vi. 2, 17, 21, viii. 21.
76. Cp. especially the speeches of Lucan.
77. For some very just criticism on this head cp. Quint, viii. 5. 25 sqq.