The political situation of Rome, and the internal inquietude which now succeeded its foreign wars, were the great promoters of eloquence. We hear of no orators in Sparta or Crete, where the severest discipline was exercised, and where the people were governed by the strictest laws. But Rhodes and Athens, places of popular rule, where all things were open to all men, swarmed with orators. In like manner, Rome, when most torn with civil dissensions, produced the brightest examples of eloquence. Cicero declares, that wisdom without eloquence was of little service to the state(231); and from the political circumstances of the times, that sort of oratory was most esteemed which had most sway over a restless and ungovernable multitude. The situation of public affairs occasioned those continual debates concerning the Agrarian Laws, and the consequent popularity acquired by the most factious demagogues. Hence, too, those frequent impeachments of the great—those ambitious designs of the patricians—those hereditary enmities in particular families—in fine, those incessant struggles between the Senate and plebeians, which, though all prejudicial to the commonwealth, contributed to swell and ramify that rich vein of eloquence, which now flowed so profusely through the agitated frame of the state. During the whole period previous to the actual breaking out of the civil wars, when the Romans turned the sword against each other, and the mastery of the world depended on its edge, oratory continued to open the most direct path to dignities. The farther a Roman citizen advanced in this career, so much nearer was he to preferment, so much the greater his reputation with the people; and when elevated to the dignified offices of the state, so much the higher his ascendancy over his colleagues.