Note 275 — PRELIMINARY DISCOURSE. (continued 3)

I have always looked upon the “Epistolæ Græcanicæ” as being a species of literary composition allied to the Declamationes of the Romans, that is to say, that they were mere exercises in composition. On the latter, see Quintilian, Instit. Orator., iv., 2. We possess a volume of these Declamations under the name of Quintilian, but they are not generally admitted to be genuine. They are exercises on themes prescribed in the schools of rhetoric. The subjects were sometimes historical events, connected with the lives of distinguished personages. The poet Juvenal alludes to Declamations in several places, as in Satir. i., 16; x., 167; vi., 169; vii., 161. The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter opens with a powerful invective against the declaimers of the day, whom the author holds to have been the corrupters of all true eloquence.