Every day the streets of Rome resound with noise from the rhetoric schools--some youth is laboriously inciting the Athenian patriots, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, to screw up their courage and to free their country by slaying the foul Hipparchus. Still more threadbare are the ceaseless orations urging Hannibal to advance (or not to advance) on Rome after his victory at Cannæ. There are a number of stock subjects of a more private kind. Mimic prosecutors work themselves into a passion against “The Ravisher,” “The Poisoner,” or “The Wicked and Thankless Husband.” Often a couple of pupils a little more advanced can be pitted against one another in an imaginary lawsuit. Suppose a father orders a son to kill the youth’s brother, whom the father suspects of intending to turn parricide. The boy pretends to have obeyed the order, but the second lad really escapes. The father at length discovers the facts and prosecutes his first son for “The Crime of Disobedience,”[109]--what endless opportunities now for “eloquence” either proving that a parent must be obeyed at any cost, or that no one can be compelled to commit fratricide! Again it is supposed that a young girl has been kidnapped, but rescued and her ravisher later arrested. Imagine now that the law gives her the choice--either the kidnapper must marry her and give her the status of an honorable wife or she can require that he be put to death. The rhetor will put two of his best pupils to prepare counter exhortations to the perplexed girl: “Marry the fellow to assure your social future!” or “Let justice be done--summon the executioner!” It is all very ingenious, but equally unreal, and it is often hopelessly artificial. Angrily wrote Seneca of such debates that by them “we are learning not for life but for school.” =178. Enormous Popularity of Rhetoric Studies.=---However impractical this study, the upper classes at Rome assuredly dote upon it. When each youth in turn mounts the orator’s stand in the school and begins his _suasoria_ (set oration) or his _controversia_ (pretended legal argument) all his fellows are duty bound to cry in Greek, “_Euge!_” or “_Sophos!_” at every booming sentiment or well-rounded climax. At least once during the oration it is good form for them to rise from their seats and join in a salvo of applause--they will all get like courtesies when their own turns come.