Quintilian’s first principle is that the orator must be a good man in the highest and widest sense, and, although he will not refuse to borrow from the philosophical schools, he yet boldly asserts the independence of the oratorical art in moulding the character of the man who, as statesman or advocate, will have constantly to appeal to moral principles.(856) This tone, combined with his own high example of seriousness, honour, and the purest domestic attachment,(857) must have had a powerful effect on the flower of the Roman youth, who were his pupils for nearly a generation. There are none of his circle whose virtues Pliny extols more highly than the men who had sat with him on the same benches, and who accompanied or followed one another in the career of public office. One of the dearest of these youthful friends was Voconius Romanus, who, besides being a learned pleader, with a keen and subtle intellect, was gifted with a singular social charm and sweetness of manner.(858) Another was Cornutus Tertullus, who was bound to Pliny by closer ties of sympathy than any of his friends, and for whose purity of character he had a boundless admiration. They were also united in the love and friendship of the best people of the time.(859) They were official colleagues in the consulship, and in the prefecture of the treasury of Saturn. For another academic friend, Julius Naso, who had been his loyal supporter in all his work and literary ambitions, he earnestly begs the aid of Fundanus, to secure him official advancement.(860) Calestrius Tiro, who rose to be proconsul of the province of Baetica, must be included in this select company. He had served with Pliny in the army of Syria, and had been his colleague in the quaestorship; they constantly visited one another at their country seats.(861) Such men, linked to one another by memories of boyhood and by the cares of the same official career, must have been a powerful and salutary element in social and political life at the opening of the Antonine age.