![]() ![]() Sed dum fuimus una, tu optimus es testis quam fuerim occupatus Etenim cum tu mihi meisque multa saepe scripsisses, veritus sum ne, si ego gravarer, aut ingratum id aut superbum videretur. Non potui igitur tibi saepius hoc roganti et tamen verenti ne mihi gravis esses-facile enim id cernebam-debere diutius, ne ipsi iuris interpreti fieri videretur iniuria. And such ignorance is the less excusable in them, because they not only ought to have been allured by those things which he has discovered and explained, but also by the incredible richness and sweetness of his eloquence. And this I was not so much surprised at, namely, that that philosopher was not known to the rhetorician, inasmuch as he is not much known even to philosophers, except to a very few. Quod quidem minime sum admiratus eum philosophum rhetori non esse cognitum, qui ab ipsis philosophis praeter admodum paucos ignoretur quibus eo minus ignoscendum est, quod non modo rebus eis quae ab illo dictae et inventae sunt allici debuerunt, sed dicendi quoque incredibili quadam cum copia tum etiam suavitate.īut the obscurity of the subject deterred you from the books and that illustrious rhetorician to whom you had applied answered you, I suppose, that he knew nothing of these rules of Aristotle. Sed a libris te obscuritas reiecit rhetor autem ille magnus haec, ut opinor, Aristotelia se ignorare respondit. And when I exhorted you, (not so much for the sake of saving myself trouble, as because I really thought it advantageous for you yourself,) either to read them yourself, or to get the whole system explained to you by some learned rhetorician, you told me that you had already tried both methods. Cum autem ego te non tam vitandi laboris mei causa quam quia tua id interesse arbitrarer, vel ut eos per te ipse legeres vel ut totam rationem a doctissimo quodam rhetore acciperes, hortatus essem, utrumque, ut ex te audiebam, es expertus.Īnd when I had explained them to you, and told you that the system for the discovery of arguments was contained in them, in order that we might arrive, without making any mistake, at the system on which they rested by the way discovered by Aristotle, you urged me, modestly indeed, as you do everything, but still in a way which let me plainly see your eagerness to be gratified, to make you master of the whole of Aristotle's method. quam cum tibi euissem, disciplinam inveniendorum argumentorum, ut sine ullo errore ad ea ratione et via perveniremus, ab Aristotele inventam illis libris contineri, verecunde tu quidem ut omnia, sed tamen facile ut cernerem te ardere studio, mecum ut tibi illa traderem egisti. ![]() For when you were with me in my Tusculan villa, and when each of us was separately in the library opening such books as were suited to our respective tastes and studies, you fell on a treatise of Aristotle's called the Topics which he has explained in many books and, excited by the title, you immediately asked me to explain to you the doctrines laid down in those books. We had begun to write, O Caius Trebatius, on subjects more important and more worthy of these books, of which we have published a sufficient number in a short time, when your request recalled me from my course. Qua inscriptione commotus continuo a me librorum eorum sententiam requisisti Cum enim mecum in Tusculano esses et in bibliotheca separatim uterque nostrum ad suum studium libellos quos vellet evolveret, incidisti in Aristotelis Topica quaedam, quae sunt ab illo pluribus libris explicata. Trebati, et his libris quos brevi tempore satis multos edidimus digniores, e cursu ipso revocavit voluntas tua. 19,) for its obscurity, which, however, he says, was unavoidably caused by the nature of the subject. He himself apologizes to Trebatius in the letter which accompanied it, (Ep. It is little more than an abstract of what had been written by Aristotle on the same subject, and which Trebatius had begged him to explain to him and Middleton says, that as he had not Aristotle's essay with him, he drew this up from memory, and he appears to have finished it in a week, as it was the nineteenth of July that he was at Velia, and he sent this work to Trebatius from Rhegium on the twenty-seventh. Cicero obtained an honorary lieutenancy, with the intention of visiting his son at Athens on his way towards Rhegium he spent an evening at Velia with Trebatius, where he began this treatise, which he finished at sea, before he arrived in Greece. This treatise was written a short time before the events which gave rise to the first Philippic. From The orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Oxford 1852. ![]()
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