Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 11.djvu/893

* LATIN LITEBATUBE. 809 LATIN LITEBATUBE. reer was attained in the year of his consulship by the suppression of Catiline's conspiracy (B.C. 03 ). Of the four Catilinarian orations, two were delivered before the Senate and two to the people in the Forum. Xor were his orations confined wholly to jjolitical cases and criminal trials. In B.C. 62 he undertook the defense of the poet Archias, a Greek of Heradea in Southern Italy, in his claim to Koman citizenship: and this gave Cicero an opportunity of expressing; his keen in- terest in and love of" poetry, of which the s[)eech is a rather declamatory eulofry. In n.c. 58, through the machinations of his political enemies, and particularly of the notorious P. Clodius, lie was banished from Italy, and sjicnt a miserable year in exile at Thessalonica and Dyrrhachium. His return in 57 is marked by four orations, Post Rcditum. offering thanks to the Senate and people of Rome, and discussing the question of his house, which had been confiscated and de- stroyed. The following years saw the publication of a number of speeches, which it is not neces- sary to name here. His last important efforts in oratory were the fourteen so-called I'hilippicn, violent personal invectives directed against An- tonius, which led to the disgraceful murder of Cicero in B.C. 4.3. We possess fifty-seven of Cicero's orations, with fragments of twenty more, and the titles of thirty that are lost. It is not only as a consummate orator, how- ever, that Cicero stands high in the world of letters. Indeed, much of his fame rests on his more purely literary work. He was an essayist, a philosopher, a letter-writer, and, if not a poet, at least a versifier. His earlier rhetorical and philosophical studies were pursued as an aid to perfection in oratory: but in his riper years his leisure time was devoted to writing, and tlie number of his literary essays attests his indus- try and omnivorous reading, and his facility with the pen. Already as a young man he wrote an essay known as Rhetorica. or De Inroilionc. in two books. It was after his return from exile, however, when the uncertain state of political af- fairs led him to seek rest and refreshment in study and writing, that he put forth his greatest rhetorical work, the De Oratorc. perhaps the most careful and finished of all his writings. It is an imaginary dialogue, in three books, between the former orators Crassus and Antonius. su])- posed to have taken place in B.C. 01. The point of view of the debaters is Cicero's own: he was particularly fond of the dialogue form of essay, and used it also in other works, as in the lirutun, de Claris Oratorihus, published in B.C. 41! — a his- tory of oratory down to his owni time, with in- teresting sketches of almost two hundred Roman orators. In the same year appeared his Orator, dedicated to M. Brutus. This work sums >ip Cicero's ideal of what an orator should be. His other rhetorical works, f'artitioncs Oratoria-. Topica. and De Optimo flencrc Orutorum, are of lesser importance. The philosophical essays are more numerous. In philosophy Cicero was an eclectic, with a decided bias toward the Xew Academy. He s^Tnpathized with the Stoics and was repelled by the Epicureans. His philosophic ■works show a fine perfection of style and a won- derful adaptation of the Latin language to the niceties of thought, but display no very profoiind study, and are careless in citation and in the treatment of his authorities. We notice only the more important: (1) De Re Puhlica. a dialcigue planned on the lines of Plato's Repuhlic, written in B.C. 54. Only about a third of the work is preserved. (2) De Legibus, never completed, also based on Plato. Three entire books are ex- tant. (3) De Finibus lionorum ct Malorum, in five books (B.C. 45), a discussion of the Greek ideas of good and evil. It is in many respects the finest of Cicero's philosophic essa3s. (4) Tiiseulan Disputations (B.C. 45-44), imaginary conversations at Cicero's country house at Tus- culuni, in live books, dedicated to Brutus. (5) De yatura Deorum (B.C. 44), an exposition of the value of religion. (6) Cato Maior or De Senectute (B.C. 44), a very interesting essaj- on old age. The argument is put into the mouth of old Jlarcus Cato (see above), who expounds the beauties of old age to .Scipio and Loelius. (7) Lwlitis, or Dr Amicitia (B.C. 44), a similar dis- cussion of friendship by the younger La>lius and his two sons-in-law. (8) Dc O/Jiciis (B.C. 44), a discussion of moral and political duties, ad- dressed to Cicero's son Marcus. The Correspondence of Cicero occupies a unique place in Latin literature. We have other Latin letters, but none so spontaneous, so sincerely the expression of the writer's thoughts and moods without regaid to the public or the future, none that disclose so completely the intimate tlioughts and emotions of a great intellect, none that af- ford so clear an insight into the real life of the Roman world at one of the most critical and in- teresting periods of its history. Here we see Cicero the man. in strength and weakness, in suc- cess and failure, in public life and with family and friends, as writer and thinker, as wit and connoisseur. Here. too. we may gain an idea of the colloquial Latin of the Roman gentleman, as contrasted with the more elegant but less elastic diction of literature. The greatest genius of the ancient world, the statesman, general, orator, student, and writer C. .Julius Ca-sar (B.C. 100-44). exercised but a minor influence upon Latin literature as com- pared with Cicero, yet his Conuncntarii de Bella tlnllico have always been a model of Latinity for simplicity and clearness of style, straightforward- ness of narrative, and utter absence of self- praise, though the writer was at the same time the hero of his story. The book makes no pre- tensions to being an elaborate history: it is mere- ly the 'memoirs' of the seven campaigns in Gaul (B.C. 58-.r2), written by the gencral-in-ehief dur- ing the long idle hours in winter quarters after the crushing of Vercingetorix. Cicsar also pre- pared an account of the civil wars, which was published after his death, from the manuscript- ilraft which he had never carefully revised. His army ofiicers. men of little or no literary ability, followed their gifted leader also into the domain of histoiy. .ulus Hirtius, one of his ler/nti, added an eighth book to (he Commentaries, and the Alexandrian. African, and Spanish campaigns were written up by other ofiicers. These works are decidedly inferior in style, language, and ac- curacy to Cipsar's. The "Memoirs' are the only works of Ca-sar that have survived. A contemporary of C:rsar. but of very inferior importance, was D. Laberius (B.C. 105-43). a Roman eqiies, who raised the mimns, or farce- comedy, to a literary level. We have no more than the titles of his plays. . younger writer in the same line of work. Publilius Synis, of . ti- och ( ? ), was extremely popular for more than a