and has a more agreeable effect than any other. This, however, is not
peculiar to the Orators, but is equally common to every well-bred citizen.
I myself remember that T. Tineas, of Placentia, who was a very facetious
man, once engaged in a repartee skirmish with my old friend Q. Granius,
the public crier."--"Do you mean that Granius," said Brutus, "of whom
Lucilius has related such a number of stories?"--"The very same," said I:
"but though Tineas said as many smart things as the other, Granius at last
overpowered him by a certain vernacular _gout_, which gave an additional
relish to his humour: so that I am no longer surprised at what is said to
have happened to Theophrastus, when he enquired of an old woman who kept a
stall, what was the price of something which he wanted to purchase. After
telling him the value of it,--"Honest _stranger_," said she, "I cannot
afford it for less": "an answer which nettled him not a little, to think
that _he_ who had resided almost all his life at Athens, and spoke the
language very correctly, should be taken at last for a foreigner. In the
same manner, there is, in my opinion, a certain accent as peculiar to the
native citizens of Rome, as the other was to those of Athens. But it is
time for us to return home; I mean to the Orators of our own growth. Next,
therefore, to the two capital Speakers above-mentioned, (that is Crassus
and Antonius) came L. Philippus,--not indeed till a considerable time
afterwards; but still he must be reckoned the next. I do not mean,
however, though nobody appeared in the interim who could dispute the prize
with him, that he was entitled to the second, or even the third post of
honour. For, as in a Chariot-race I cannot properly consider _him_ as
either the second, or third winner, who has scarcely got clear of the
starting-post, before the first has reached the goal; so, among Orators, I
can scarcely honour him with the name of a competitor, who has been so far
distanced by the foremost as hardly to appear on the same ground with him.
But yet there were certainly some talents to be observed in Philippus,
which any person who considers them, without subjecting them to a