r, and no
one ever takes them up but those who wish to have the same license for
careless writing allowed to themselves. Wherefore, if oratory has
acquired any reputation from 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, as Aristotle,[4] a man of the greatest genius, and of the most
various knowledge, being excited by the glory of the rhetorician
Isocrates,[5] commenced teaching young men to speak, and joined
philosophy with eloquence: so it is my design not to lay aside my
former study of oratory, and yet to employ myself at the same time in
this greater and more fruitful art; for I have always thought that to
be able to speak copiously and elegantly on the most important
questions was the most perfect philosophy. And I have so diligently
applied myself to this pursuit, that I have already ventured to have a
school like the Greeks. And lately when you left us, having many of my
friends about me, I attempted at my Tusculan villa what I could do in
that way; for as I formerly used to practise declaiming, which nobody
continued longer than myself, so this is now to be the declamation of
my old age. I desired any one to propose a question which he wished to
have discussed, and then I argued that point either sitting or walking;
and so I have compiled the scholae, as the Greeks call them, of five
days, in as many books. We proceeded in this manner: when he who had
proposed the subject for discussion had said what he thought proper, I
spoke against him; for this is, you know, the old and Socratic method
of arguing against another's opinion; for Socrates thought that thus
the truth would more easily be arrived at. But to give you a better
notion of our disputations, I will not barely send you an account of
them, but represent them to you as they were carried on; therefore let
the introduction be thus:

V. _A._ To me death seems to be an evil.

_M._ What, to those who are already dead? or to those who must die?

_A._ To both.

_M._ It is a misery, then, because an evil?

_A._ Certainly.

_M._ Then those who have already died, and those who have still got to
die, are both miserable?

_A._ So it appears to me.

_M._ Then all are miserable?

_A._ Every one.

_M._ And, indeed, if you wish to be consistent, all that are already
born, or ever shall be, are not only miserable, but always will be so;
for should you maintain those