In B. C. 106, L. Servilius Cæpio brought in a bill for the restoration of the judicial office to the senators. In support of this measure (the first Lex Servilia,) Crassus delivered a powerful and triumphant oration, in which he warmly espoused the cause of the senate, whom he had before as strenuously opposed on the question of the colony to Narbo. This speech was his _chef-d’œuvre_.[398] After serving the office of consul,[399] in which he seems to have mistaken his vocation by exchanging the toga for the sword, he was raised to the censorship.[400] His year of office is celebrated for the closing the schools of the Latin rhetoricians by an edict of himself and his colleague. The foundations of these schools had been laid in the ruins of the Greek schools, when the philosophers and rhetoricians were banished from Rome.[401] Although the censorial power could suppress the schools, it could not put a stop to the education given there. The professors found a refuge in private mansions; and thus, protected and fostered by intelligent patrons, continued to fulfil their duties as instructors of youth. How often did literature at Rome have to seek an asylum from private patronage against the rude attacks of public prejudice! The reasons for the measure of Crassus are stated in the preamble.[402] These schools were a novelty; they were contrary to ancient institutions; they encouraged idle habits among the Roman youth. Cicero defended this arbitrary act on the ground that the professors pretended to teach subjects of which they were themselves ignorant; but Cicero could scarcely find a fault in Crassus. He thought him a model of perfection—the first of orators and jurists.[403] He saw no inconsistency in his conduct in the cases of the Narbonne colony and the Servilian law.[404] He is lavish in his praises of his wit and facetiousness, (lepor et facetiæ,[405]) and applies to his malignant and ill-natured jokes the term urbanity. The bon-mots of Crassus were by no means superior to the generality of Roman witticisms, which were deficient in point, although they were personal, caustic, and severe.[406] The grave Romans were content with a very little wit; the quality for which they looked in an oration was not playfulness, but skill in the art of ingenious tormenting. Crassus never uttered a jest equal to that of old Cato, when he said of Q. Helvidius, the glutton, whose house was on fire, “What he could not eat he has burned.”[407]