Longinus  consider so essential for good oratory, was fast 
     disappearing from Roman public life.

          And so oratory betook itself to the safer arena of 
     the schools, where a man might air his Republicanism 
     without fear of consequences, and where one might be 
     recompensed for the loss of political prestige by the 
     plaudits of one’s fellow-citizens. The term scholastica  
     came into vogue—a ‘school-oration’ as opposed to the 
     genuine public speech, and the exponents of these 
     display-speeches became known as ‘schoolmen’—
     scholastici .

     The break between political oratory and scholastic or 
academic disputation, then, took place long before the Middle 
Ages. Bonner refers to the Controversiae  of the elder Seneca