Imperium

“To sit in the shade with the other slaves,” I replied, “unless there is some further service you require.”
“Most certainly there is,” he said. “I wish you to perform a very strenuous labor. I want you to come in here with me and learn a little philosophy, in order that I may have someone to talk to on our long travels.”
So I followed him in and was privileged to hear Antiochus of Ascalon himself assert the three basic principles of Stoicism-that virtue is sufficient for happiness, that nothing except virtue is good, and that the emotions are not to be trusted-three simple rules which, if only men could follow them, would solve all the problems of the world. Thereafter, Cicero and I would often debate such questions, and in this realm of the intellect the difference in our stations was always forgotten. We stayed six months with Antiochus and then moved on to the real purpose of our journey.
The dominant school of rhetoric at that time was the so-called Asiatic method. Elaborate and flowery, full of pompous phrases and tinkling rhythms, its delivery was accompanied by a lot of swaying about and striding up and down. In Rome its leading exponent was Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, universally considered the foremost orator of the day, whose fancy footwork had earned him the nickname “the Dancing Master.” Cicero, with an eye to discovering his tricks, made a point of seeking out all Hortensius’s mentors: Menippus of Stratonicea, Dionysius of Magnesia, Aeschylus of Cnidus, Xenocles of Adramyttium-the names alone give a flavor of their style. Cicero spent weeks with each, patiently studying their methods, until at last he felt he had their measure.
“Tiro,” he said to me one evening, picking at his customary plate of boiled vegetables, “I have had quite enough of these perfumed prancers. You will arrange a boat from Loryma to Rhodes. We shall try a different tack, and enroll in the school of Apollonius Molon.”
And so it came about that, one spring morning just after dawn, when the straits of the Carpathian Sea were as smooth and milky as a pearl (you must forgive these occasional flourishes: I have read too much Greek poetry to maintain an austere Latin style), we were rowed across from the mainland to that ancient, rugged island, where the stocky figure of Molon himself awaited us on the quayside.
This Molon was a lawyer, originally from Alabanda, who had pleaded in the Roman courts brilliantly, and had even been invited to address the Senate in Greek-an unheard-of honor-after which he had retired to Rhodes and opened his rhetorical school. His theory of oratory, the exact opposite of the Asiatics’, was simple: don’t move about too much, hold your head straight, stick to the point, make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, and when you’ve won their sympathy, sit down quickly-“for nothing,” said Molon, “dries more quickly than a tear.” This was far more to Cicero ’s taste, and he placed himself in Molon’s hands entirely.
Molon’s first action was to feed him that evening a bowl of hard-boiled eggs with anchovy sauce, and, when Cicero had finished that-not without some complaining, I can tell you-to follow it with a lump of red meat, seared over charcoal, accompanied by a cup of goat’s milk. “You need bulk, young man,” Molon told him, patting his own barrel chest. “No mighty note was ever sounded by a feeble reed.” Cicero glared at him but dutifully chewed until his plate was empty, and that night, for the first time in months, slept soundly. (I know this because I used to sleep on the floor outside his door.)
At dawn, the physical exercises began. “Speaking in the Forum,” said Molon, “is comparable to running in a race. It requires stamina and strength.” He threw a fake punch at Cicero, who let out a loud oof! and staggered backward, almost falling over. Molon had him stand with his legs apart, his knees rigid, then bend from the waist twenty times to touch the ground on either side of his feet. After that, he made him lie on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and repeatedly sit up without shifting his legs. He made him lie on his front and raise himself solely by the strength of his arms, again twenty times, again without bending his knees. That was the regimen on the first day, and each day afterwards more exercises were added and their duration increased. Cicero again slept soundly, and now had no trouble eating, either.
For the actual declamatory training, Molon took his eager pupil out of the shaded courtyard and into the heat of midday, and had him recite his exercise pieces-usually a trial scene or a soliloquy from Menander-while walking up a steep hill without pausing. In this fashion, with the lizards scattering underfoot and only the scratching of the cicadas in the olive trees for an audience, Cicero strengthened his lungs and learned how to gain the maximum output of words from a single breath. “Pitch you delivery in the middle range,” instructed Molon. “That is where the power is. Nothing high or low.” In the afternoons, for speech projection, Molon took him down to the shingle beach, paced out eighty yards (the maximum range of the human voice), and made him declaim against the boom and hiss of the sea-the nearest thing, he said, to the murmur of three thousand people in the open air, or the background mutter of several hundred men in conversation in the Senate. These were distractions Cicero would have to get used to.
“But what about the content of what I say?” Cicero asked. “Surely I will compel attention chiefly by the force of my arguments?”
Molon shrugged. “Content does not concern me. Remember Demosthenes: ‘Only three things count in oratory. Delivery, delivery, and again: delivery.’”
“And my stutter?”
“The st-st-utter does not b-b-bother me, either,” replied Molon with a grin and a wink. “Seriously, it adds interest and a useful impression of honesty. Demosthenes himself had a slight lisp. The audience identifies with these flaws. It is only perfection which is dull. Now, move farther down the beach and still try to make me hear.”
Thus was I privileged, from the very start, to see the tricks of oratory passed from one master to another. “There should be no effeminate bending of the neck, no twiddling of the fingers. Don’t move your shoulders. If you must use your fingers for a gesture, try bending the middle finger against the thumb and extending the other three-that’s it, that’s good. The eyes of course are always turned in the direction of the gesture, except when we have to reject: ‘O gods, avert such plague!’ or ‘I do not think that I deserve such honor.’”
Nothing was allowed to be written down, for no orator worthy of the name would dream of reading out a text or consulting a sheaf of notes. Molon favored the standard method of memorizing a speech: that of an imaginary journey around the speaker’s house. “Place the first point you want to make in the entrance hall, and picture it lying there, then the second in the atrium, and so on, walking around the house in the way you would naturally tour it, assigning a section of your speech not just to each room but to every alcove and statue. Make sure each site is well lit, clearly defined, and distinctive. Otherwise you’ll go groping around like a drunk trying to find his bed after a party.”
Cicero was not the only pupil at Molon’s academy that spring and summer. In time we were joined by Cicero’s younger brother, Quintus, and his cousin, Lucius, and also by two friends of his: Servius, a fussy lawyer who wished to become a judge, and Atticus-the dapper, charming Atticus-who had no interest in oratory, for he lived in Athens, and certainly had no intention of making a career in politics, but who loved spending time with Cicero. All marveled at the change which had been wrought in his health and appearance, and on their final evening together-for now it was autumn, and the time had come to return to Rome -they gathered to hear the effects which Molon had produced on his oratory.