uncritical panegyrics of school-bred professors or courtly rhetoricians. The next period shows us the culmination, the short bloom, and the sudden fall of national eloquence, when with the death of Cicero the "Latin tongue was silent," [48] and as he himself says, _clamatores_ not _oratores_ were left to succeed him. CHAPTER XI. OTHER KINDS OF PROSE LITERATURE, GRAMMAR, RHETORIC, AND PHILOSOPHY (147-63 B.C.). Great literary activity of all kinds was, after the third Punic war, liable to continual interruption from political struggles or revolutions. But between each two periods of disturbance there was generally an interval in which philosophy, law, and rhetoric were carefully studied. As, however, no work of this period has come down to us except the treatise to Herennius, our notice of it will be proportionately general and brief. We shall touch on the principal studies in order. First in time as in importance comes Law, the earliest great representative of which is P. MUCIUS SCAEVOLA, consul in 133 B.C. but better known as Pontifex Maximus. In this latter office, which he held for several years, Mucius did good service to literature. He united a high technical training with a liberal mind, and superintended the publication of the _Annales Pontificum_ from the earliest period to his own date. This was a great boon to historians. He gave another to jurists. His _responsa_ were celebrated for their insight into the principles of Law, and for the minute knowledge they displayed. He was conscientious enough to study the law of every case before he undertook to plead it, a practice which, however commendable, was rare even with advocates of the highest fame, as, for example, M. Antonius.