[a] We are told by Quintilian, that Demosthenes, the great orator of Greece, was an assiduous hearer of Plato: _Constat Demosthenem, principem omnium Græciæ oratorum, dedisse operam Platoni._ Lib. xii. cap. 2. And Cicero expressly says, that, if he might venture to call himself an orator, he was made so, not by the manufacture of the schools of rhetoric, but in the walks of the Academy. _Fateor me oratorem, si modo sim, aut etiam quicumque sim, non ex rhetorum officinis, sed ex Academiæ spatiis extitisse. Ad Brutum Orator_, s. 12. Section XXXIII. [a] The ancient critics made a wide distinction, between a mere facility of speech, and what they called the oratorical faculty. This is fully explained by Asinius Pollio, who said of himself, that by pleading at first with propriety, he succeeded so far as to be often called upon; by pleading frequently, he began to lose the propriety with which he set out; and the reason was, by constant practice he acquired rashness, not a just confidence in himself; a fluent facility, not the true faculty of an orator. _Commodè agenda factum est, ut sæpe agerem; sæpe agenda, ut minus commodè; quia scilicet nimia facilitas magis quam facultas, nec fiducia, sed temeritas, paratur._ Quintil. lib. xii. Section XXXIV. [a] There is in this place a trifling mistake, either in Messala, the speaker, or in the copyists. Crassus was born A.U.C. 614. See s. xviii. note [f]. Papirius Carbo, the person accused, was consul A.U.C. 634, and the prosecution was in the following year, when Crassus expressly says, that he was then only one and twenty. _Quippe qui omnium maturrimè ad publicas causas accesserim, annosque natus UNUM ET VIGINTI, nobilissimum hominem et eloquentissimum in judicium vocârim._ Cicero, _De Orat._ lib. iii. s. 74. Pliny the consul was another instance of early pleading. He says himself, that he began his career in the forum at the age of nineteen, and, after long practice, he could only see the functions of an orator as it were in a mist. _Undevicessimo ætatis anno dicere in foro cœpi, et nunc demum, quid præstare debeat orator, adhuc tamen per caliginem video._ Lib. v. epist. 8. Quintilian relates of Cæsar, Calvus, and Pollio, that they all three appeared at the bar, long before they arrived at their quæstorian age, which was seven and twenty. _Calvus, Cæsar, Pollio, multum ante quæstoriam omnes ætatem gravissima judicia susceperunt._ Quintilian, lib. xii. cap. 6. Section XXXV. [a] Lipsius, in his note on this passage, says, that he once thought the word _scena_ in the text ought to be changed to _schola_; but he afterwards saw his mistake. The place of fictitious declamation and spurious eloquence, where the teachers played a ridiculous part, was properly called a theatrical scene.