comparison with the superior merits of the two before-mentioned, must
allow to have been respectable. He had an uncommon freedom of address, a
large fund of humour, great facility in the invention of his sentiments,
and a ready and easy manner of expressing them. He was likewise, for the
time he lived in, a great adept in the literature of the Greeks; and, in
the heat of a debate, he could sting, and gash, as well as ridicule his
opponents. Almost cotemporary with these was L. Gellius, who was not so
much to be valued for his positive, as for his negative merits: for he was
neither destitute of learning, nor invention, nor unacquainted with the
history and the laws of his country; besides which, he had a tolerable
freedom of expression. But he happened to live at a time when many
excellent Orators made their appearance; and yet he served his friends
upon many occasions to good purpose: in short, his life was so long, that
he was successively cotemporary with a variety of Orators of different
dates, and had an extensive series of practice in judicial causes. Nearly
at the same time lived D. Brutus, who was fellow-consul with Mamercus;--
and was equally skilled both in the Grecian and Roman literature. L.
Scipio likewise was not an unskilful Speaker; and Cnaeus Pompeius, the son
of Sextus, had some reputation as an Orator; for his brother Sextus
applied the excellent genius he was possessed of, to acquire a thorough
knowledge of the Civil Law, and a complete acquaintance with geometry and
the doctrine of the Stoics. A little before these, M. Brutus, and very
soon after him, C. Bilienus, who was a man of great natural capacity, made
themselves, by nearly the same application, equally eminent in the
profession of the law;--the latter would have been chosen Consul, if he
had not been thwarted by the repeated promotion of Marius, and some other
collateral embarrassments which attended his suit. But the eloquence of
Cn. Octavius, which was wholly unknown before his elevation to the
Consulship, was effectually displayed, after his preferment to that
office, in a great variety of speeches. It is, however, time for us to