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08562_Field_TCGG T327.txt
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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