Towards the conclusion of the dialogue, Cicero mentions so many of his predeceased contemporaries, that Atticus remarks, that he is drawing up the dregs of oratory. Calidius, indeed, seems the only other speaker who merits distinguished notice. He is characterized as different from all other orators,--such was the soft and polished language in which he arrayed his exquisitely delicate sentiments. Nothing could be more easy, pliable, and ductile, than the turn of his periods; his words flowed like a pure and limpid stream, without anything hard or muddy to impede or pollute their course; his action was genteel, his mode of address sober and calm, his arrangement the perfection of art. "The three great objects of an orator," says Cicero, while discussing the merits of Calidius, "are to instruct, delight, and move. Two of these he admirably accomplished. He rendered the most abstruse subject clear by illustration, and enchained the minds of his hearers with delight. But the third praise of moving and exciting the soul must be denied him; he had no force, pathos, or animation(292)." Such, indeed, was his want of emotion, where it was most appropriate, and most to be expected, that, while pleading his own cause against Q. Gallius for an attempt to poison him, though he stated his case with elegance and perspicuity, yet it was so smoothly and listlessly detailed, that Cicero, who spoke for the person accused, argued, that the charge must be false and an invention of his own, as no one could talk so calmly, and with such indifference, of a recent attempt which threatened his own existence(293).
These were the most renowned orators who preceded the age of Cicero, or were contemporaries with him; and before proceeding to consider the oratorical merits of him by whom they have been all eclipsed, at least in the eye of posterity, it may be proper, for a single moment, to remind the reader of the state of the Roman law,--of the judicial procedure, and of the ordinary practice of the Forum, at the time when he commenced and pursued his brilliant career of eloquence.