Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/412

364 begun in the dialogue De Oratore. The Brutus is especially valuable and interesting, on account of the personal experiences which Cicero there records of his training and practice as a speaker. Several extracts from it are to be found in earlier chapters.

In the same year (46 B.C.) Cicero was engaged with a panegyric of Cato. The theme seems to have been suggested to him by his republican friends soon after the suicide of his hero at Utica in April. It was, as he says, a problem fit for Archimedes, to write on such a topic without giving deadly offence to the party in power. "Cato cannot be fairly treated, unless I make it a theme for praise that he struggled against the state of things which now is and which he saw coming, and that rather than look on its realisation he took refuge in the grave." He succeeded, however, entirely to his satisfaction. Cæsar was too generous to take offence at praises of his fallen enemy, and Brutus was encouraged to follow Cicero's example and publish a work in his uncle's honour. We have a curious record of Cæsar's criticism on the two in a letter to Balbus. He had read Cicero's Cato, he said, over and over again, and had enriched his mind in the process, but Brutus' book flattered him with the idea that he could write better himself. In the midst of the occupations of his Spanish campaign the Dictator found time to pen an Anti-Cato in answer to Cicero's panegyric. While inveighing against Cato, Cæsar spoke in high terms of Cicero, whom he compared for eloquence