Cicero

So at this time Cicero had the greatest power in the state, but he made himself generally odious, not by any base action, but by continually praising and magnifying himself, which made him hateful to many. For there could be no session either of senate or assembly or court of justice in which one was not obliged to hear Catiline and Lentulus endlessly talked about.

Nay, he even went so far as to fill his books and writings with these praises of himself; and he made his oratory, which was naturally very pleasant and had the greatest charm, irksome and tedious to his hearers, since this unpleasant practice clung to him like a fatality. But nevertheless, although he cherished so strong an ambition, he was free from envying others, since he was most ungrudging in his encomiums upon his predecessors and contemporaries, as may be gathered from his writings.

There are also many sayings of his on record which prove this; for instance, he said of Aristotle that he was a river of liquid gold,[*](Acad. Prior. ii. 38, 119.) and of the dialogues of Plato that Jupiter, were it his nature to use human speech, would thus discourse,[*](Brutus, 31, 121 (si Graece loquatur).) Theophrastus, too, he used to call his own special delight. And when he was asked which of the speeches of Demosthenes he thought the best, he replied, the longest.

And yet some of those who pretend to be imitators of Demosthenes dwell much upon an expression which Cicero used in a letter to one of his friends, to the effect that in some parts of his speeches Demosthenes nods; but of the great and admirable praises which he often bestows upon him, and of the fact that those speeches of his own to which he devoted most labour, namely, the speeches against Antony, were entitled by him Philippics, they say nothing.

Moreover, of the men of his own time who were famous for eloquence or learning, there is not one whom he did not make more famous by what he said or wrote in favour of him. For Cratippus the Peripatetic he obtained the Roman citizenship from Caesar, now in power, and he also induced the council of the Areiopagus to pass a decree requesting him to remain at Athens and discourse with the young men, and thus be an ornament to the city.

Furthermore, there are letters from Cicero to Herodes, and others to his son, in which he urges them to study philosophy with Cratippus.[*](These letters are not extant.) But Gorgias the rhetorician he censured for leading the young man into pleasures and drinking parties, and banished him from his son’s society.[*](The younger Cicero, in a letter to Tiro (ad fam. xvi. 21, 6), says that he had found Gorgias useful as a teacher of declamation, but had dismissed him in obedience to his father’s positive command.)

This is almost the only one of his Greek letters (there is also a second, addressed to Pelops of Byzantium) which was written in a spirit of anger; and Gorgias he properly rebukes, if, as he was thought to be, he was worthless and intemperate; but towards Pelops he shows a mean and querulous spirit for having neglected to obtain for him certain honorary decrees from the Byzantians.