For Aulus Licinius Archia the poet

by Marcus Tullius Cicero

If there is any natural ability in me, O judges,--and I know how slight that is; or if I have any practice as a speaker,--and in that line I do not deny that I have some experience; or if I have any method in my oratory, drawn from my study of the liberal sciences, and from that careful training to which I admit that at no part of my life have I ever been disinclined; certainly, of all those qualities, this Aulus Licinius is entitled to be among the first to claim the benefit from me as his peculiar right. For as far as ever my mind can look back upon the space of time that is past, and recall the memory of its earliest youth, tracing my life from that starting-point, I see that Archias was the principal cause of my undertaking, and the principal means of my mastering, those studies. And if this voice of mine, formed by his encouragement and his precepts, has at times been the instrument of safety to others, undoubtedly we ought, as far as lies in our power, to help and save the very man from whom we have received that gift which has enabled us to bring help to many and salvation to some. And lest any one should, perchance, marvel at this being said by me, as the chief of his ability consists in something else, and not in this system and practice of eloquence, he must be told that even we ourselves have never been wholly devoted to this study. In truth, all the arts which concern the civilising and humanising of men, have some link which binds them together, and are, as it were, connected by some relationship to one another.