The work _De Partitione Rhetorica_, is written in the form of a dialogue between Cicero and his son; the former replying to the questions of the latter concerning the principles and doctrine of eloquence. The tract now entitled _De Optimo genere Oratorum_, was originally intended as a preface to a translation which Cicero had made from the orations of Æschines and Demosthenes in the case of Ctesipho, in which an absurd and trifling matter of ceremony has become the basis of an immortal controversy. In this preface he reverts to the topic on which he had touched in the _Orator_—the mistake which prevailed in Rome, that Attic eloquence was limited to that accurate, dry, and subtle manner of expression, adopted in the orations of Lysias. It was to correct this error, that Cicero undertook a free translation of the two master-pieces of Athenian eloquence; the one being an example of vehement and energetic, the other of pathetic and ornamental oratory. It is probable that Cicero was prompted to these repeated inquiries concerning the genuine character of Attic eloquence, from the reproach frequently cast on his own discourses by Brutus, Calvus, and other sterile, but, as they supposed themselves, truely Attic orators, that his harangues were not in the Greek, but rather in the Asiatic taste,—that is, nerveless, florid, and redundant. It appears, that in Rome, as well as in Greece, oratory was generally considered as divided into three different styles—the Attic, Asiatic, and Rhodian. Quintilian, at least, so classes the various sorts of oratory in a passage, in which he also shortly characterizes them by those attributes from which they were chiefly distinguishable. “Mihi autem,” says he, “orationis differentiam fecisse et dicentium et audientium naturæ videntur, quod _Attici_ limati quidem et emuncti nihil inane aut redundans ferebant. _Asiana_ gens, tumidior alioquin et jactantior, vaniore etiam dicendi gloria inflata est. Tertium mox qui hæc dividebant adjecerunt genus _Rhodium_, quod velut medium esse, atque ex utroque mixtum volunt(351).” Brutus and Licinius Calvus, as we have seen, affected the slender, polished, and somewhat barren conciseness of Attic eloquence. The speeches of Hortensius, and a few of Cicero’s earlier harangues, as that for Sextus Roscius, afforded examples of the copious, florid, and sometimes tumid style of Asiatic oratory. The latter orations of Cicero, refined by his study and experience, were, I presume, nearly in the Rhodian taste. That celebrated school of eloquence had been founded by Æschines, the rival of Demosthenes, when, being banished from his native city by the influence of his competitor, he had retired to the island of Rhodes. Inferior to Demosthenes in power of argument and force of expression, he surpassed him in copiousness and ornament. The school which he founded, and which subsisted for centuries after his death, admitted not the luxuries of Asiatic diction; and although the most ornamental of