to excite the laughter and the ridicule of his hearers. His gesture was
really such as C. Julius represented it, in a severe sarcasm, that will
never be forgotten; for as he was swaying and reeling his whole body from
side to side, Julius enquired very merrily, _who it was that was speaking
from a boat_. To the same purpose was the jest of Cn. Sicinius, a very
vulgar sort of man, but exceedingly humourous, which was the only
qualification he had to recommend him as an Orator. When this man, as
Tribune of the people, had summoned Curio and Octavius, who were then
Consuls, into the Forum, and Curio had delivered a tedious harangue, while
Octavius sat silently by him, wrapt up in flannels, and besmeared with
ointments, to ease the pain of the gout;"--"_Octavius," said he, "you are
infinitely obliged to your colleague; for if he had not tossed and flung
himself about to-day, in the manner he did, you would have certainly have
been devoured by the flies._"--"As to his memory, it was so extremely
treacherous, that after he had divided his subject into three general
heads, he would sometimes, in the course of speaking, either add a fourth,
or omit the third. In a capital trial, in which I had pleaded for Titinia,
the daughter of Cotta, when he attempted to reply to me in defence of
Serv. Naevius, he suddenly forgot every thing he had intended to say, and
attributed it to the pretended witchcraft, and magic artifices of Titinia.
These were undoubted proofs of the weakness of his memory. But, what is
still more inexcusable, he sometimes forgot, even in his written
treatises, what he had mentioned but a little before. Thus, in a book of
his, in which he introduces himself as entering into conversation with our
friend Pansa, and his son Curio, when he was walking home from the Senate-
house; the Senate is supposed to have been summoned by Caesar in his first
Consulship; and the whole conversation arises from the son's enquiry what
the House had resolved upon. Curio launches out into a long invective
against the conduct of Caesar, and, as is generally the custom in
dialogues, the parties are engaged in a close dispute on the subject: but