Under the Republic, oratory had been essential for 
     success in public life, and the whole subject was alive and 
     keenly debated; but under the principate it had lost much 
     of its political value. It was not so much that the courts 
     had lost a great deal of their power; there were still civil 
     and criminal cases to attract the advocate. It was rather 
     the lack of assured success in public life, which the good 
     orator in Republican days could naturally expect. Under 
     the principate, so much depended upon Imperial and 
     Court patronage; and it became necessary to choose 
     one’s words rather too carefully when speaking in public 
     for the practice to be a popular one. Writing under 
     Tiberius (if not Caligula) the elder Seneca could look back 
     upon the Augustan Age as a time when there was ‘so 
     much liberty of speech’; but even then that freedom 
     which the author of the Dialogues  and the philosopher in