Life of Cicero eBook

      “Wile baffled wile, and strength encountered strength,
       Thus long, but unprevailing—­the event
       Of that portentous fight appeared at length. 
       Until the lamp of day was almost spent
       It had endured, when lifeless, stark, and rent,
       Hung high that mighty serpent, and at last
       Fell to the sea, while o’er the continent,
       With clang of wings and scream, the eagle past,
    Heavily borne away on the exhausted blast.”

I have repudiated the adverse criticism on Cicero’s poetry which has been attributed to Juvenal; but, having done so, am bound in fairness to state that which is to be found elsewhere in any later author of renown as a classic.  In the treatise De Oratoribus, attributed to Tacitus, and generally published with his works by him—­a treatise commenced, probably, in the last year of Vespasian’s reign, and completed only in that of Domitian—­Cicero as a poet is spoken of with a severity of censure which the writer presumes to have been his recognized desert.  “For Caesar,” he says, “and Brutus made verses, and sent them to the public libraries; not better, indeed, than Cicero, but with less of general misfortune, because only a few people knew that they had done so.”  This must be taken for what it is worth.  The treatise, let it have been written by whom it might, is full of wit, and is charming in language and feeling.  It is a dialogue after the manner of Cicero himself, and is the work of an author well conversant with the subjects in hand.  But it is, no doubt, the case that those two unfortunate lines which have been quoted became notorious in Rome when there was a party anxious to put down Cicero.

APPENDIX B.

(See ch.IV, note [84])

FROM THE BRUTUS—­CA.  XCII., XCIII.

“There were at that time two orators, Cotta and Hortensius, who towered above all others, and incited me to rival them.  The first spoke with self-restraint and moderation, clearly and easily, expressing his ideas in appropriate language.  The other was magnificent and fierce; not such as you remember him, Brutus, when he was already failing, but full of life both in his words and actions.  I then resolved that Hortensius should, of the two, be my model, because I felt myself like to him in his energy, and nearer to him in his age.  I observed that when they were in the same causes, those for Canuleius and for our consular Dolabella, though Cotta was the senior counsel, Hortensius took the lead.  A large gathering of men and the noise of the Forum require that a speaker shall be quick, on fire, active, and loud.  The year after my return from Asia I undertook the charge of causes that were honorable, and in that year I was seeking to be Quaestor, Cotta to be Consul, and Hortensius to be Praetor.  Then for a year I served as Quaestor in Sicily.  Cotta, after his Consulship, went as governor into Gaul, and then Hortensius