Any rudeness of style and language which appears either in the orations of Cato, or in his agricultural and historical works, cannot be attributed to total carelessness or neglect of the graces of composition, as he was the first person in Rome who treated of oratory as an art(32), in a tract entitled _De Oratore ad Filium_. Cato was also the first of his countrymen who wrote on the subject of medicine(33). Rome had existed for 500 years without professional physicians(34). A people who as yet were strangers to luxury, and consisted of farmers and soldiers, (though surgical operations might be frequently necessary,) would be exempt from the inroads of the “grisly troop,” so much encouraged by indolence and debauchery. Like all semi-barbarous people, they believed that maladies were to be cured by the special interposition of superior beings, and that religious ceremonies were more efficacious for the recovery of health than remedies of medical skill. Deriving, as they did, much of their worship from the Etruscans, they probably derived from them also the practice of attempting to overcome disease by magic and incantation. The Augurs and Aruspices were thus the most ancient physicians of Rome. In epidemic distempers the Sibylline books were consulted, and the cures they prescribed were superstitious ceremonies. We have seen that it was to free the city from an attack of this sort that scenic representations were first introduced at Rome. During the progress of another epidemic infliction a temple was built to Apollo(35); and as each periodic pestilence naturally abated in course of time, faith was confirmed in the efficacy of the rites which were resorted to. Every one has heard of the pomp wherewith Esculapius was transported under the form of a serpent, from Epidaurus to an islet in the Tiber, which was thereafter consecrated to that divine physician. The apprehension of diseases raised temples to Febris and Tussis, and other imaginary beings belonging to the painful family of death in order to avert the disorders which they were supposed to inflict. It was perceived, however, that religious professions and lustrations and _lectisterniums_ were ineffectual for the cure of those complaints, which, in the 6th century, luxury began to exasperate and render more frequent at Rome. At length, in 534, Archagatus, a free-born Greek, arrived in Italy, where he practised medicine professionally as an art, and received in return for his cures the endearing appellation of _Carnifex_(36). But though Archagatus was the first who practised medicine, Cato was the first who wrote of diseases and their treatment as a science, in his work entitled _Commentarius quo Medetur Filio, Servis, Familiaribus_. In this book of domestic medicine—duck, pigeons, and hare, were the foods he chiefly recommended to the sick(37). His remedies were principally extracted from herbs; and colewort, or cabbage, was his favourite cure(38). The recipes,