he had but a short time to improve and display it. As to Carbo, his whole
life was spent in trials, and forensic debates. He is said by very
sensible men who heard him, and, among others, by our friend L. Gellius
who lived in his family in the time of his Consulship, to have been a
sonorous, a fluent, and a spirited Speaker, and likewise, upon occasion,
very pathetic, very engaging, and excessively humorous: Gellius used to
add, that he applied himself very closely to his studies, and bestowed
much of his time in writing and private declamation. He was, therefore,
esteemed the best pleader of his time; for no sooner had he began to
distinguish himself in the Forum, but the depravity of the age gave birth
to a number of law-suits; and it was first found necessary, in the time of
his youth, to settle the form of public trials, which had never been done
before. We accordingly find that L. Piso, then a Tribune of the people,
was the first who proposed a law against bribery; which he did when
Censorinus and Manilius were Consuls. This Piso too was a professed
pleader, and the proposer and opposer of a great number of laws: he left
some Orations behind him, which are now lost, and a Book of Annals very
indifferently written. But in the public trials, in which Carbo was
concerned, the assistance of an able advocate had become more necessary
than ever, in consequence of the law for voting by ballots, which was
proposed and carried by L. Cassius, in the Consulship of Lepidus and
Mancinus.

"I have likewise been often assured by the poet Attius, (an intimate
friend of his) that your ancestor D. Brutus, the son of M. was no
inelegant Speaker; and that for the time he lived in, he was well versed
both in the Greek and Roman literature. He ascribed the same
accomplishments to Q. Maximus, the grandson of L. Paulus: and added that,
a little prior to Maximus, the Scipio, by whose instigation (though only
in a private capacity) T. Gracchus was assassinated, was not only a man of