The controversy was in this state, and was considered as involved in much doubt and obscurity, when Aug. Jacob, in an academical exercise, printed at Halle and Berlin, in 1813, and entitled _De Oratione quæ inscribitur pro Marcello, Ciceroni vel abjudicata vel adjudicata, Quæstio novaque conjectura_, adopted a middle course. Finding such dissimilarity in the different passages of the oration, some being most powerful, elegant, and beautiful, while others were totally futile and frigid, he was led to believe that part had actually flowed from the lips of Cicero, but that much had been subsequently interpolated by some rhetorician or declaimer. He divides his whole treatise into four heads, which comprehend all the various points agitated on the subject of this oration: 1. The testimony of different authors tending to prove the authenticity or spuriousness of the production: 2. The history of the period, with which every genuine oration must necessarily concur: 3. The genius and manner of Cicero, from which no one of his orations could be entirely remote: 4. The style and phraseology, which must be correct and classical. In the prosecution of his inquiry in these different aspects of the subject, the author successively reviews the opinions and judgments of his predecessors, sometimes agreeing with Wolf and his followers, at other times, and more frequently, with their opposers. He thinks that the much-contested phrase _pluribus verbis_, may mean a long oration, as Cicero elsewhere talks of having pleaded for Cluentius, _pluribus verbis_, though the speech in his defence consists of 58 chapters. Besides, Cicero only says that he had _returned thanks_ to Cæsar, _pluribus verbis_. Now, the whole speech does not consist of thanks to Cæsar, being partly occupied in removing the suspicions which he entertained of Marcellus. With regard to encomiums on Cæsar, which Spalding has characterized as abject and fulsome, and totally different from the delicate compliments addressed to him in the oration for Deiotarus or Ligarius, Jacob reminds his readers that the harangues could have no resemblance to each other, the latter being pleadings in behalf of the accused, and the former a professed panegyric. Nor can any one esteem the eulogies on Cæsar too extravagant for Cicero, when he remembers the terms in which the orator had formerly spoken of Roscius, Archias, and Pompey. Schütz, the late German editor of Cicero, has subscribed to the opinion of Wolf, and has published the speech for Marcellus, along with the other four doubtful harangues at the end of the genuine orations.