Note 28 — Chapter V · THE PROSE OF THE ROMAN STATESMEN

In the year 92 Crassus attempted with his colleague Domitius by censorial pronouncement to discourage the growth of Latin schools of rhetoric. It is difficult to take seriously the recent hypothesis that this was an aristocratic attack upon democratic schools. Cicero’s interpretation that the new Latin school was objectionable because it trained speakers without the cultural education in literature, philosophy, and history, which Greek rhetoricians usually required, seems adequate. Our own insistence that law schools require a college degree for entrance would then be analogous.