his powers, and with all the marvellous facility he had acquired as a trained and practised orator, would have dared to add,

ῥηϊδίη τ ̓ ἄρ ̓ ἔπειτα πέλει χαλεπή περ ἐοῦσα.

The Orator was written in B.C. 46, in the same year as the Brutus, when Cicero had attained the age of sixty. It was an eventful time in the history of Rome. The civil war, which had already lasted for four years, had virtually closed at Thapsus with the victory of Caesar over the remnant of the Pompeians in Africa. The old order had come

to an end when, after that decisive battle, the stern republican, Cato, died by his own hand. Cicero, who had already submitted himself to Caesar, and, in the month of June B.C. 47, had returned to Rome', was dividing his time between his house on the Palatine and his villa at Tusculum, burying himself in his books, and awaiting the issue of the war. On the arrival of the news of Cato's death, he was asked by Atticus and others to compose a panegyric upon him. Cato's nephew, Brutus, attempted the difficult duty, in what Cicero regarded as an inadequate manner; and we find Cicero writing to his friend Atticus in evident embarrassment at the perplexing problem which now presented itself for his own solution3. He could hardly be true to Cato without giving offence to Caesar. Nevertheless, he accomplished his perilous task; and, at the time when he wrote the Orator, was looking forward to the result with no slight apprehension. The sequel shewed that his fears were needless. In the following year Caesar himself replied in a pamphlet entitled Anti-Cato, in which he generously commended Cicero's eloquence, and praised his public career, comparing him to Pericles and Theramenes'. Writing to Balbus from Spain, he observed that Cicero's Cato, which he had often read, had taught him a lesson in fulness of style; but when he read the Cato of Brutus, he fancied himself a good speaker, in comparison.

The publication of the Orator is definitely referred to in another letter to Atticus, where, borrowing a line from Terence, he congratulates his old friend on having sufficient leisure to read the Orator; and says that it will add to his pleasure if Atticus will kindly correct in his own copies, and cause his copyists to correct in those intended for others, the slip that the author had made in assigning to Eupolis a quotation from Aristophanes". He afterwards wrote to another friend to tell him how delighted he was with his approval of the work, adding that it

the suggestion that it may have been, partially at least, composed in verse. This conclusion is founded on a passage referring to Cato, in Tusc. Disp. v 1 § 4, where, by the insertion of a word from the immediate context, the writer in question, cuius nomen honoris causa praetereo, obtains the following phrase: [omnia] despiciens casus contemnit humanos,' adding that 'the verse so obtained is perhaps not without a literary interest'. It is apparently perfectly possible for a scholar of considerable learning and ability, to forget the quantity of the first word of the Ars Poetica of Horace.

6 ad Att. xii 6 § 3 (quoted in note on § 29).

CIRCUM

CIRCUMSTANCES OF ITS COMPOSITION.

liii

contained whatever criticism he had a right to offer on the subject of oratory, and that he was content to stake his reputation upon it'.

In the year of its publication, although he had ceased for a while to take any part in public affairs, his love of oratory was still as ardent as ever. Writing to Brutus in the early part of the year, he describes it as 'hoc studio nostro, quo etiam nunc maxime delectamur' (ad Fam. xiii 10 § 2). Part of his time was devoted to giving rhetorical instruction to orators of less experience than himself. Among the grown-up pupils, the grandes praetextati, whom he was now instructing, were his son-inlaw, Dolabella, and three others who, in different degrees owed allegiance to Caesar, Cassius who, two years later, conspired against him, and Hirtius and Pansa, who were to fall in 43, fighting against Antonius, on the same side as Caesar's heir. In one of the amusing letters to Paetus written about this time from Tusculum, after news had arrived of the death of Cato, to which he makes a brief but feeling reference in another part of the letter, he pleasantly compares himself to the younger Dionysius, who, after being banished from the throne of Syracuse, is said to have opened a school at Corinth. After adding that the practice of declamation conduces to the recovery of his health, and that, but for such exercise, his oratorical powers, such as they were would have wasted away, he tells his friend in conclusion that if he comes himself, he shall have in Cicero's school of rhetoric an undermaster's chair, with a comfortable cushion, next to the chair of the master himself (ad Fam. ix 18). Soon after, he writes again, this time from Rome, describing his daily life as follows: 'mane salutamus domi et bonos viros multos, sed tristes, et hos laetos victores, qui me quidem perofficiose et peramanter observant: ubi salutatio defluxit, litteris me involvo, aut scribo aut lego; veniunt etiam qui me audiunt quasi doctum hominem, quia paulo sum quam ipsi doctior. inde corpori omne tempus datur' (ad Fam. ix 20 § 3).

The title Orator is given to the treatise by Cicero himself. In May 44, he writes to Trebonius: 'Oratorem meum-sic enim inscripsi— Sabino tuo commendavi' (ad Fam. xv 20 § 1). In the same year, in the preface to the second book of the de Divinatione § 4, he enumerates his libri oratorii in the following order: 'ita tres erunt de Oratore, quartus Brutus, quintus Orator'. Elsewhere, however, when referring to

1 ad Fam. vi 18 § 4 Oratorem meum tanto opere a te probari vehementer gaudeo. mihi quidem sic persuadeo, me quidquid habuerim iudici de dicendo in illum librum contulisse. qui si est talis,

qualem tibi videri scribis, ego quoque aliquid sum; sin aliter, non recuso quin quantum de illo libro, tantumdem de mei iudici fama detrahatur'.

2 Suet. de rhet. I ; cf. note on § 142.

the subject rather than the title, he twice describes it in phrases such as: 'scripsi de optimo genere dicendi'.

The person to whom it is dedicated is M. Junius Brutus, the son of the tribunus plebis of that name in 83 B.C., and Servilia, the half-sister It was under Cato's training that he had been brought up, and he had accompanied him on his mission to Cyprus in 58, the year of Cicero's exile. It was probably during this journey that he saw at Rhodes one of the master-pieces of the painter Protogenes. He was 21 years younger than Cicero, and he had come under the orator's notice in connexion with the trial of Milo for the murder of Clodius, when Brutus composed, as a rhetorical exercise, a defence of Milo, in which he took the perilous line of arguing that Milo had proved himself a benefactor to the State by killing Clodius'. When his fatherin-law, Appius Claudius Pulcher, the brother of Cicero's enemy Clodius, became proconsul of Cilicia (in 53 and 52 B.C.), he went abroad with him, and when the proconsul at the close of his term of office was accused of maiestas and ambitus, Brutus, with Hortensius, spoke in his defence and secured his acquittal'. Upon Cicero's succeeding to the province in 51, Brutus was recommended to his good offices by Atticus, who assured his friend that 'if he brought back from his province nothing but the good-will of Brutus, that alone would be enough'; and strongly urged him to help Brutus in securing the payment of the sums due to him from the unfortunate king of Cappadocia, as well as from certain Salaminians in Cyprus to whom he had lent money at an exorbitant rate of interest.

Cicero's growing friendship for Brutus was sorely tried by these two transactions, and especially by the latter. It is curious to trace in his letters the gradually increasing coldness of his references to him. At first he writes of him to Atticus in the warmest language: 'Brutum, quem non minus amo quam tu, paene dixi quam te' (v 20, § 6). There is a colder tone in the words: Brutum tuum, immo

1 ad Fam. xii 17 § 2 to Cornificius (sub finem 708=46 B.C.), 'proxime scripsi de optimo genere dicendi, in quo saepe suspicatus sum te a iudicio nostro, sic scilicet, ut doctum hominem ab non indocto, paulum dissidere: huic tu libro maxime velim ex animo, si minus, gratiae causa suffragere'; cf. ad Att. xiv 20 § 3 quoted on p. lix. (The work referred to in both cases is doubtless the Orator and not the preface to the lost translations from Dem. and Aesch. which bears a very similar name: de optimo genere oratorum praefatio.)

nostrum, sic enim mavis' (vi 2 § 7); and again, 'minime in isto negotio Brutum amasti; nos vereor ne parum' (ib. § 9); and we find that meanwhile he has had reason to complain that Brutus, though using the most courteous phrases about Cicero to Atticus, is in the habit of addressing Cicero himself, etiam cum rogat aliquid, contumaciter, arroganter, άkowwτýTws' (vi 1 § 7). Lastly, in referring to the way in which he had dealt with the transaction at Salamis, which he had timidly allowed to devolve on his successor, he writes: 'habes meam causam, quae si Bruto non probatur, nescio cur illum amemus; sed avunculo eius certe probabitur' (v 21 § 13). Nevertheless, shortly afterwards he speaks of him in the highest terms, in congratulating Appius Claudius as follows on the support of Pompeius and Brutus in his trial: 'laetor virtute et officio cum tuorum necessariorum, meorum amicissimorum, tum alterius omnium saeculorum et gentium principis, alterius iam pridem iuventutis, celeriter, ut spero, civitatis' (ad Fam. iii II § 3). Some allowance must of course be made for the fact that Cicero was writing to the father-in-law of Brutus, a man for whom he had no real sympathy, but with whom he was at the time particularly anxious to be on the best terms possible.

In the civil war that broke out in 50, Brutus took the side of Pompeius (Plut. Brutus 4). In May 48, when the decisive battle of Pharsalia was approaching, Cicero writes from the camp of Pompeius: 'Brutus amicus; in causa versatur acriter '(ad Att. xi 4 § 2); and, in the battle itself, at which Cicero was not present, having already started for Italy, Brutus fought on the side opposed to Caesar, who before the fight gave orders to his officers to spare the son of Servilia, and after the victory, generously forgave him. Towards the close of the following year the leader against whom he had fought, entrusted him with the government of Gallia Cisalpina (ad Fam. vi 6 § 10), the very district in which the father of Brutus had, thirty years before, been put to death by the orders of the general on whose side the son had felt himself called upon to serve against Caesar.

Caesar himself was wont to say of Brutus: 'magni refert hic quid velit, sed quicquid vult, valde vult' (ad Att. xiv 1 § 2). Brutus was a man who, in public action, was slow to move, but, as the Ides of March were destined two years afterwards to prove in a terrible manner, stern and inflexible when his resolve was taken. As a friend, he was too coldly logical to be entirely loveable; and, to a sensitive and impulsive. being like Cicero, the hard and rigid personality of Brutus must at times have been peculiarly 'oppressive". As a student, he had not

1 Cf. Joseph Mayor's ed. of Cic. de Nat. Deorum, i p. xlii.