38 CICERO. voice was loud and good, but so harsh and unmanaged that in vehemence and heat of speaking he always raised it to so high a tone, that there seemed to be reason to fear about his health. When he came to Athens, he was a hearer of Antio- chus of Ascalon, with whose fluency and elegance of dic- tion he was much taken, although he did not approve of his innovations in doctrine. For Antiochus had now fallen off from the New Academy, as they call it, and forsaken the sect of Carneades, whether that he was moved by the argument of manifestness * and the senses, or, as some say, had been led by feelings of rivalry and opposition to the followers of Clitomachus and Philo to change his opinions, and in most things to embrace the doctrine of the Stoics. But Cicero rather affected and adhered to the doctrines of the New Academy ; and purposed with himself, if he should be disappointed of any employment in the com- monwealth, to retire hither from pleading and political affairs, and to pass his life with quiet in the study of philosophy. But after he had received the news of Sylla's death, and his body, strengthened again by exercise, was come to a vigorous habit, his voice managed and rendered sweet and full to the ear and pretty well brought into keeping Avith his general constitution, his friends at Rome earnestly soliciting him by letters, and Antiochus also urging him to return to public affairs, he again prepared for use his orator's instrument of rhetoric, and summoned into action his political faculties, diligently exercising himself in declamations, and attending the most celebrated rhetori-
- According to a proposed cor- of the argument against the scepti-
rection, " by the manifestness of the cal views of the New Academy as senses." But the enargeia, or mani- to the possibility of certain knowl- festness of things seen and felt, edge. See Cicero's Academics, seems to be the recognized name II. 6.
