Lælius is also compared by Cicero with his friend, the younger Scipio Africanus, in whose presence, this question concerning the Silian murder was debated. They were almost equally distinguished for their eloquence; and they resembled each other in this respect, that they both invariably delivered themselves in a smooth manner, and never, like Galba, exerted themselves with loudness of speech or violence of gesture(230); but their style of oratory was different,—Lælius affecting a much more ancient phraseology than that adopted by his friend. Cicero himself seems inclined most to admire the rhetoric of Scipio; but he says, that, being so renowned a captain, and mankind being unwilling to allow supremacy to one individual, in what are considered as the two greatest of arts, his contemporaries for the most part awarded to Lælius the palm of eloquence. The intercourse which was by this time opening up with Greece, and the encouragement now afforded to Greek teachers, who always possessed the undisputed privilege of dictating the precepts of the arts, produced the same improvement m oratory that it had effected in every branch of literature. Marcus Emilius Lepidus was a little younger than Galba or Scipio, and was Consul in 617. From his orations, which were extant in the time of Cicero, it appeared that he was the first who, in imitation of the Greeks, gave harmony and sweetness to his periods, or the graces of a style regularly polished and improved by art. Cicero mentions a number of other orators of the same age with Lepidus, and minutely paints their peculiar styles of rhetoric. We find among them the names of almost all the eminent men of the period, as Emilius Paulus, Scipio Nasica, and Mucius Scævola. The importance of eloquence for the purposes of political aggrandizement, is sufficiently evinced, from this work of Cicero, _De Claris Oratoribus_, since there is scarcely an orator mentioned, even of inferior note, who did not at this time rise to the highest offices in the state.