Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/312

 304 MARCUS BRUTUS. a man for his leaiuing inferior indeed to many of the philosophers, but for the evenness of his temper and steadiness of liis conduct equal to the best. As for Em- pylus, of whom he himself and his friends often make mention in their epistles, as one that lived with Brutus, he was a rhetorician, and has left behind him a short but well-written history of the death of Csesar, entitled Brutus. In Latin, he had by exercise attained a sufficient skill to be able to make public addresses and to plead a cause ; but in Greek, he must be noted for affecting the senten- tious and short Laconic way of speaking in sundry passages of his epistles ; as when, in the beginning of the war, he wrote thus to the Pergamenians : " I hear you have given Dolabella money ; if willingly, you must own you have injured me ; if unwillingly, show it by giving willingly to me." And another time to the Samians: " Your counsels are remiss and your performances slow : what think ye will be the end ?" And of the Patareans thus : " The Xanthians, suspecting my kindness, have made their country the grave of their despair ; the Pa- tareans, trusting themselves to me, enjoy in all points their former liberty; it is in your power to choose the judgment of the Patareans or the fortune of the Xan- thians." And this is the style for which some of his letters are to be noted.* When he was but a very young man, he accompanied his uncle Cato, to Cyprus, when he was sent there against Ptolemy. But when Ptolemy killed himself, Cato, being by some necessary business detained in the isle of Ehodes, had already sent one of his friends, named Canidius, to take into his care and keeping the treasure of the king ; but presently, not feeling sure of his honesty, he wrote to Brutus to sail immediately for Cyprus out of Pamphylia,
 * Noted, I believe he means, for their false style — as not to be imitated.