Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/76

58 sentiment has found expression in the immortal verse of Virgil—

In Cicero the affectation o[ indifference is merely playful and is not long sustained; but while it lasts it is very pretty fooling, and affords an excellent specimen of the "mendaciuncula," or mystifications, with which, as he tells us, an advocate is permitted to season the gravity of his discourse.

The following description, which comes at the very beginning of this section of the speech, will give a sufficient idea of Cicero's manner.—"In the house of Heius there was in the place of honour a shrine, an inheritance from his ancestors, of great antiquity, in which there were four admirable statues of the finest style of art and famous of their kind, such as might give pleasure not only to this virtuoso and connoisseur, but to any one of us—to any 'ignoramus' as he would say. One of these was a Cupid in marble by Praxiteles—you see that in getting up my case against Verres I have learned the names of the artists. . . . On the opposite side was a Hercules, excellently moulded in bronze;