A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

8. L.AureliusCotta, was tribune of the people in B. C. 95, together with T. Didius and C. Norbanus. When the last of them brought for ward an accusation against Q. Caepio, Cotta and Didius attempted to interfere, but Cotta was pulled down by force from the tribunal (templum). He must afterwards have held the office of praetor, since Cicero calls him a praetorius. Cicero speaks of him several times, and mentions him as a friend of Q. Lutatius Catulus; he places him among the orators of mediocrity, and states that in his speeches he purposely abstained from all refinement, and gloried in a certain coarseness and rusticity which more resembled the style of an uneducated peasant, than that of the earlier Roman orators. (Cic. de Orat. 2.47, 3.11, 12, Brut. 36, 74).