Cicero, in his youth, also wrote the Rhetorica, seu de Inventione Rhetorica, of which there are still extant two books, treating of the part of rhetoric that relates to invention. This is the work mentioned by Cicero, in the commencement of the treatise De Oratore, as having been published by him in his youth. It is generally believed to have been written in 666, when Cicero was only twenty years of age, and to have originally contained four books. Schütz, however, the German editor of Cicero, is of opinion, that he never wrote, or at least, never published, more than the two books we still possess.
A number of sentences in these two books of the Rhetorica, seu de Inventione, coincide with passages in the Rhetoricum ad Herennium, which is usually published along with the works of Cicero, but is not of his composition. Purgold thinks [pg 203]that the Rhetor. ad Herennium was published first, and that Cicero copied from it those corresponding passages[353]. It appears, however, a little singular, that Cicero should have borrowed so largely, and without acknowledgment, from a recent publication of one of his contemporaries. To account for this difficulty some critics have supposed, that the anonymous author of the Rhetor. ad Herennium was a rhetorician, whose lectures Cicero had attended, and had inserted in his own work notes taken by him from these prelections, before they were edited by their author[354]. Some, again, have imagined, that Cicero and the anonymous author were fellow-students under the same rhetorician, and that both had thus adopted his ideas and expressions; while others believe, that both copied from a common Greek original. But then, in opposition to this last theory, it has been remarked, that the Latin words employed by both are frequently the same; and there are the same references to the history of Rome, and of its ancient native poets, with which no Greek writer can be supposed to have had much acquaintance.
Who the anonymous author of the Rhetor. ad Herennium actually was, has been the subject of much learned controversy, and the point remains still undetermined. Priscian repeatedly cites it as the work of Cicero; whence it was believed to be the production of Cicero by Laurentius Valla, George of Trebizond, Politian, and other great restorers of learning in the fifteenth century; and this opinion was from time to time, though feebly, revived by less considerable writers in succeeding periods. It seems now, however, entirely abandoned; but, while all critics and commentators agree in abjudicating the work from Cicero, they differ widely as to the person to whom the production should be assigned. Aldus Manutius, Sigonius, Muretus, and Riccobonus, were of opinion, that it was written by Q. Cornificius the elder, who was Cæsar’s Quæstor during the civil war, and subsequently his lieutenant in Africa, of which province, after the Dictator’s death, he kept possession for the republican party, till he was slain in an engagement with one of the generals of Octavius. The judgment of these scholars is chiefly founded on some passages in Quintilian, who attributes to Cornificius several critical and philological definitions which coincide with those introduced in the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Gerard Vossius, however, has adopted an opinion, that if at all written by a [pg 204]person of that name, it must have been by the younger Cornificius[355], who was born in 662, and, having followed the party of Octavius, was appointed Consul by favour of the Triumvirate in 718. Raphael Regius also seems inclined to attribute the work to Cornificius the son[356]. But if the style be considered too remote from that of the age of Cicero, to be ascribed to any of his contemporaries, he conceives it may be plausibly conjectured to have been the production of Timolaus, one of the thirty tyrants in the reign of Gallienus. Timolaus had a brother called Herenianus, to whom his work may have been dedicated, and he thinks that Timolaus ad Herenianum may have been corrupted into Tullius ad Herennium. J. C. Scaliger attributes the work to Gallio, a rhetorician in the time of Nero[357]—an opinion which obtained currency in consequence of the discovery of a MS. copy of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, with the name of Gallio prefixed to it[358].
Sufficient scope being thus left for new conjectures, Schütz, the German editor of Cicero, has formed a new hypothesis on the subject. Cicero’s tract De Inventione having been written in his early youth, the period of its composition may be placed about 672. From various circumstances, which he discusses at great length, Schütz concludes that the Rhetorica ad Herennium was the work which was first written, and consequently previous to 672. Farther, the Rhetorica ad Herennium must have been written subsequently to 665, as it mentions the death of Sulpicius, which happened in that year. The time thus limited corresponds very exactly with the age of M. Ant. Gnipho, who was born in the year 640; and him Schütz considers as the real author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. This he attempts to prove, by showing, that many things which Suetonius relates of Gnipho, in his work De Claris Rhetoribus, agree with what the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium delivers concerning himself in the course of that production. It is pretty well established, that both Gnipho and the anonymous author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium were free-born, had good memories, understood Greek, and were voluminous authors. It is unfortunate, however, that these characteristics, except the first, were probably common to almost all rhetoricians; and Schütz does not allude to any of the more particular circumstances mentioned by Suetonius, as that Gnipho was a Gaul by birth, that he studied at Alexandria, [pg 205]and that he taught rhetoric in the house of the father of Julius Cæsar.
Cicero, who was unquestionably the first orator, was as decidedly the most learned philosopher of Rome; and while he eclipsed all his contemporaries in eloquence, he acquired, towards the close of his life, no small share of reputation as a writer on ethics and metaphysics. His wisdom, however, was founded entirely on that of the Greeks, and his philosophic writings were chiefly occupied with the discussion of questions which had been agitated in the Athenian schools, and from them had been transmitted to Italy. The disquisition respecting the certainty or uncertainty of human knowledge, with that concerning the supreme good and evil, were the inquiries which he chiefly pursued; and the notions which he entertained of these subjects, were all derived from the Portico, Academy, or Lyceum.
The leading principles of the chief philosophic sects of Greece flowed originally from Socrates—
—— “From whose mouth issued forth
Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of Academics, Old and New[359];”
and who has been termed by Cicero[360] the perennial source of philosophy, much more justly than Homer has been styled the fountain of all poetry. Though somewhat addicted to them from education and early habit, Socrates withdrew philosophy from those obscure and intricate physical inquiries, in which she had been involved by the founders and followers of the Ionic school, and from the subtle paradoxical hypotheses of the sophists who established themselves at Athens in the time of Pericles. It being his chief aim to improve the condition of mankind, and to incline them to discharge the several duties of the stations in which they had been placed, this moral teacher directed his examinations to the nature of vice and virtue, of good and evil. To accomplish the great object he had in view, his practice was to hazard no opinion of his own, but to refute prevalent errors and prejudices, by involving the pretenders to knowledge in manifest absurdity, while he himself, as if in contrast to the presumption of the sophists, always professed that he knew nothing. This confession of ignorance, which amounted to no more than a general acknowledgment [pg 206]of the imbecility of the human understanding, and was merely designed to convince his followers of the futility of those speculations which do not rest on the firm basis of experience, or to teach them modesty in their inquiries, and diffidence in their assertions, having been interpreted in a different sense from that in which it was originally intended, gave rise to the celebrated dispute concerning the certainty of knowledge.