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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1879 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: NOTES. C. i. 1. conspectus, 'sight,' in the passive sense, i. e. here 'assembly before my eyes:' hence frequens vester not fre- quentiae vestrae. frequens, 'crowded.'] locus, the rostra: cp. 55 ad fin. 70: ad agendum: i. e. cum populo: a privilege of the higher magistrates: ad dicen- dum, on the other hand, refers to private citizens, whom a magistrate allowed to speak from the orators' platform. And so the adjectives correspond -- amplissimus, ' the most dignified, or important,' as the place from which the magistrate had his dealings with the people that ruled the world; ornatissimus, 'the most honourable,' for it was a high honour for any orator to be allowed to address a meeting from it. tamen belongs to the second clause only: the force is best brought out by translating by an equivalent expression in the passive voice; ' yet I have been excluded from this pathway to fame, not indeed by my wishes hitherto, but by etc.'] adltu laudis, 'pathway to fame,' an objective genitive: cp. earum rerum aditum, de Orat. i. 98.] optimo cuique, because it was open to the magistrates in the first place. vitae rationes, ' plans of life:' cp. in Cat. n. 13, ratio belli, 'plan of war,' pro Arch. 1, ratio studiorum. ab tneunte aetate, i. e. from my entrance upon the life of a citizen, after putting on the toga virilis: this is always the force of this phrase. Cic. came forward as an orator first when he was 26 years of age, but at first only in causae pri- vatae. The speech de imperio Cn. Pompei was the first of his public orations, so far as we know. Cicero probably avoided political speeches, tha...