parts of the world, the Latin is confined to the bounds of its own country which are narrow by comparison."
In pleading this cause Cicero begs to be allowed to deviate from the beaten track of forensic practice, and to speak freely of the glories and delights of literature, and of the benefits which he himself owes it. He expounds here at the bar of a law-court the doctrine which we find so frequently laid down in his treatises on the Art of Rhetoric, that the orator must be not only a "ready man" but a "full man," and that wide reading and deep study are necessary for his perfection. "You ask me, why I take such an extraordinary delight in this man? It is because he supplies me with a refuge where my mind can recruit its powers after the din of the Forum, and where my ears tired out with controversy may take some repose. Do you think, that a man could find the thoughts to express day after day on such a variety of topics, unless he cultivated his mind by study? or that the mind could bear the strain, unless these same studies supplied him with relaxation ?"[1] Cicero was clearly in no great anxiety about the verdict. The jury listened with pleasure to his literary disquisition, and confirmed the citizenship of Archias.
Cicero's own writings at this time were chiefly directed to the history of his consulship. He composed a memoir of it in Latin and another in Greek, and he promises Atticus a poem on the same subject, "that
- ↑ Pro Arch., 6, 12.
