Sufficient scope being thus left for new conjectures, Schütz, the German editor of Cicero, has formed a new hypothesis on the subject. Cicero’s tract _De Inventione_ having been written in his early youth, the period of its composition may be placed about 672. From various circumstances, which he discusses at great length, Schütz concludes that the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ was the work which was first written, and consequently previous to 672. Farther, the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ must have been written subsequently to 665, as it mentions the death of Sulpicius, which happened in that year. The time thus limited corresponds very exactly with the age of M. Ant. Gnipho, who was born in the year 640; and him Schütz considers as the real author of the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_. This he attempts to prove, by showing, that many things which Suetonius relates of Gnipho, in his work _De Claris Rhetoribus_, agree with what the author of the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ delivers concerning himself in the course of that production. It is pretty well established, that both Gnipho and the anonymous author of the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ were free-born, had good memories, understood Greek, and were voluminous authors. It is unfortunate, however, that these characteristics, except the first, were probably common to almost all rhetoricians; and Schütz does not allude to any of the more particular circumstances mentioned by Suetonius, as that Gnipho was a Gaul by birth, that he studied at Alexandria, and that he taught rhetoric in the house of the father of Julius Cæsar. Cicero, who was unquestionably the first orator, was as decidedly the most learned philosopher of Rome; and while he eclipsed all his contemporaries in eloquence, he acquired, towards the close of his life, no small share of reputation as a writer on ethics and metaphysics. His wisdom, however, was founded entirely on that of the Greeks, and his philosophic writings were chiefly occupied with the discussion of questions which had been agitated in the Athenian schools, and from them had been transmitted to Italy. The disquisition respecting the certainty or uncertainty of human knowledge, with that concerning the supreme good and evil, were the inquiries which he chiefly pursued; and the notions which he entertained of these subjects, were all derived from the Portico, Academy, or Lyceum. The leading principles of the chief philosophic sects of Greece flowed originally from Socrates— —— “From whose mouth issued forth Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools Of Academics, Old and New(359);”