qualities which had dazzled and attracted so many of the youth of Rome.

"He had about him very many of, I can hardly say the visible tokens, but
the adumbrations of the highest qualities. There was in his character
that which tempted him to indulge the worst passions, but also that which
spurred him to energy and hard work. Licentious appetites burnt fiercely
within him, but there was also a strong love of active military service.
I believe that there never lived on earth such a monster of
inconsistency,--such a compound of opposite tastes and passions brought
into conflict with each other. Who at one time was a greater favourite
with our most illustrious men? Who was a closer intimate with our very
basest? Who could be more greedy of money than he was? Who could lavish it
more profusely? There were these marvellous qualities in the man,--he made
friends so universally, he retained them by his obliging ways, he was
ready to share what he had with them all, to help them at their need with
his money, his influence, his personal exertions--not stopping short of
the most audacious crime, if there was need of it. He could change his
very nature, and rule himself by circumstances, and turn and bend in any
direction. He lived soberly with the serious, he was a boon companion with
the gay; grave with the elders, merry with the young; reckless among the
desperate, profligate with the depraved. With a nature so complex
and many-sided, he not only collected round him wicked and desperate
characters from all quarters of the world, but he also attracted many
brave and good men by his simulation of virtue. It would have been
impossible for him to have organised that atrocious attack upon the
Commonwealth, unless that fierce outgrowth of depraved passions had rested
on some under-stratum of agreeable qualities and powers of endurance".

Born in the same year with Cicero, his unsuccessful rival for the
consulship, and hating him with the implacable hatred with which a bad,