led a most luxurious epicurean life. As our readers may be curious to know how a Roman gentleman disposed of his leisure and opulence, we extract the following description of Hortensius' style of living, from the volume in our hands:

"An example of splendour and luxury had been set to him by the orator Crassus, who inhabited a sumptuous palace in Rome, the hall of which was adorned with four pillars of Hymettian marble, twelve feet high, which he brought to Rome in his ædileship, at a time when there were no pillars of foreign marble even in public buildings. The court of this mansion was ornamented by six lotus trees, which Pliny saw in full luxuriance in his youth, but which were afterwards burned in the conflagration in the time of Nero. He had also a number of vases, and two drinking-cups, engraved by the artist Mentor, but which were of such immense value that he was ashamed to use them. Hortensius had the same tastes as Crassus, but surpassed him and all his contemporaries in magnificence. His mansion stood on the Palatine Hill, which appears to have been the most fashionable situation in Rome, being at that time covered with the houses of Lutatius Catulus, Æmilius Scaurus, Claudius, Cataline, Cicero, and Cæsar. The residence of Hortensius was adjacent to that of Cataline; and though of no great extent, it was splendidly furnished. After the death of the orator, it was inhabited by Octavius Cæsar, and formed the centre of the chief imperial palace, which increased from the time of Augustus to that of Nero, till it covered a great part of the Palatine Mount, and branched over other hills. Besides his mansion in the capital, he possessed sumptuous villas at Tusculum, Bauli, and Laurentum, where he was accustomed to give the most elegant and expensive entertainments. He had frequently peacocks at his banquets, which he first served up at a grand augural feast, and which, says Varro, were more commended by the luxurious, than by men of probity and austerity. His olive plantations he is said to have regularly moistened and bedewed with wine; and on one occasion, during the hearing of an important case, in which he was engaged along with Cicero, begged that he would change with him the previously arranged order of pleading, as he was obliged to go to the country to pour wine on a favourite platanus, which grew near his Tusculan villa. Notwithstanding this profusion, his heir found not less than ten thousand casks of wine in his cellar after his death. Besides his taste for wine, and fondness for plantations, he indulged a passion for pictures and fish-ponds. At his Tusculan villa, he built a hall for the reception of a painting of the expedition of the Argonauts, by the painter Cydias, which cost the enormous sum of a hundred and fortyfour thousand sesterces. At his country-seat, near Bauli, on the sea shore, he vied with Lucullus and Philippus in the extent of his fishponds, which were constructed at immense cost, and so formed, that the tide flowed into them. Under the promontory of Bauli, travellers are yet shown the Piscina Mirabilis, a subterraneous edifice, vaulted and divided by four rows of arcades, and which is supposed by some antiquarians to have been the fish-pond of Hortensius. Yet such was his luxury, and his reluctance to diminish his supply, that when he gave

entertainments at Bauli, he generally sent to the neighbouring town of Puteoli to buy fish for supper. He had a vast number of fishermen in his service, and paid so much attention to the feeding of his fish, that he had always ready a large stock of small fish to be devoured by the great ones. It was with the utmost difficulty that he could be prevailed on to part with any of them; and Varro declares, that a friend could more easily get his chariot mules out of his stable, than a mullet from his ponds. He was more anxious about the welfare of his fish than the health of his slaves, and less solicitous that a sick servant might not take what was unfit for him, than that his fish might not drink water which was unwholesome. It is even said, that he was so passionately fond of a particular lamprey, that he shed tears for her untimely death. "The gallery at the villa, which was situated on the little promontory of Bauli, and looking towards Puteoli, commanded one of the most delightful views in Italy. The inland prospect towards Cumæ was extensive and magnificent. Puteoli was seen along the shore at the distance of thirty stadia, in the direction of Pompeii; and Pompeii itself was invisible only from its distance. The sea view was unbounded; but it was enlivened by the numerous vessels sailing across the bay, and the ever changeful hue of its waters, now saffron, azure, or purple, according as the breeze blew, or as the sun ascended or declined." pp. 124-125.

From the following, it will appear that he was no less a coxcomb than an epicure :

"Like Demosthenes, he chose and put on his dress with the most studied care and neatness. He is said not only to have prepared his attitudes, but also to have adjusted the plaits of his gown before a mirror, when about to issue forth to the Forum; and to have taken no less care in arranging them, than in moulding the periods of his discourse. He so tucked up his gown, that the folds did not fall by chance, but were formed with great care, by means of a knot artfully tied, and concealed in the plies of his robe, which apparently flowed carelessly around him. Macrobius also records a story of his instituting an action of damages against a person who had jostled him, while walking in this elaborate dress, and had ruffled his toga, when he was about to appear in public with his drapery adjusted according to the happiest arrangement-an anecdote, which, whether true or false, shows, by its currency, the opinion entertained of his finical attention to every thing that concerned the elegance of his attire, or the gracefulness of his figure and attitudes. He also bathed himself in odoriferous waters, and daily perfumed himself with the most precious essences. This too minute attention to his person and to gesticulation, appears to have been the sole blemish in his oratorical character; and the only stain on his moral conduct, was his practice of corrupting the judges of the causes in which he was employed-a practice which must be, in a great measure, imputed to the defects of the judicial system at Rome; for, whatever might be the excellence of the Roman laws, nothing could be worse than the procedure under which they were administered." pp. 130-131.

In this connexion a rather curious question suggests itself. How did Hortensius amass this princely fortune, and what compensation did the Roman advocates receive for their forensic services? Judging from the visible results, it was liberal enough to excite the envy even of Lord Eldon, who is said to have retired upon something like a million sterling.

It is a remark of Mr. Dunlop, that Cicero's treatise De Claris Oratoribus, makes mention of scarcely any orator of however inferior note, that did not rise to the highest dignities of the state; from which he infers that eloquence was in in those times a mighty engine of political advancement. This conclusion, though just in point of fact, is illogically drawn, and our author we suspect, mistakes an effect for the cause. It may be true that every speaker became a great man, but it was equally true that every great man was necessarily a speaker. Eloquence and the civil law, such as they were in those early times, were essential accomplishments, as they were the peculiar, hereditary province of the nobility. That in the age of feudal anarchy every baron should be a knight, and every knight excel in the use of arms and the management of the war-horse, was not more indispensable. These occupations were emphatically called the militia togata or forensis. They grew out of the relation of patron and client-some of the incidents and consequences of which strikingly resemble those of the feudal tenure. It was the privilege as it was the interest of every plebeian to choose a patron out of the patrician order, whose duty it was to expound the law to him, to maintain his rights, to protect his person, to appear for and defend him in all suits and trials, and, in general, to afford him his counsel and assistance in every important concern. In return for these services, it was the duty of the client to assist his patron in making up his daughter's portion, to redeem him or his children from captivity, to pay such fines and forfeitures as he might incur, to help him to support the expenses of public shows, &c. The same sort of connexion was extended to the colonies, the cities in alliance with Rome, and even to whole nations, who chose distinguished individuals for their protectors and advisers. The relation was looked upon as a bond of peculiar intimacy and sacredness, and in strict theory as well as in the practice of primitive ages, these reciprocal services were regarded as a sufficient consideration for each other, and for all other services whatsoever.* But as in the case of feods, in process of time, what was at first be

Heinecc: Antiqnit. J. E. 1. i. Tit. ii. § 29, cf. a remarkable passage in Cic. de Orat. 1. iii. c. 33.

nevolence, became duty; aids were exacted as taxes, and a declaratory statute was at length deemed necessary to prevent the impositions which patrons practised upon their clients under the specious colour of friendship. The Lex Cincia, concerning gifts and presents, was enacted in the 549th year of the city. It consisted of three heads; the first, with which alone we have any concern at present, prohibited the taking of any fee or remuneration for arguing a cause. This prohibition extended even to birthday presents, and to gifts on the Saturnalia, the first of January, &c. which pettifoggers made so many pretexts for extortion.* As long as every patron defended his own client, such a law might, perhaps, be enforced, but it must soon have become a dead letter when professional advocates offered their services to all the world, and were indiscriminately employed. Accordingly, although Cicero alludes to it as of force in his time, yet it is certain that he received a very considerable sum from Cornelius Sylla for services in his behalf, which helped him to purchase his magnificent house upon the Palatine Hill; and Plutarch, in his life, mentions that his refusing to take fees, (in general we suppose) was regarded by his contemporaries as a signal proof of self-denial, since his private fortune was not a very ample one, at least for a friend of Lucullus and Hortensius. It may be worth while to mention, that the same law was afterwards revived with additional penalties by Augustus, yet went very soon into desuetude, as appears from a debate in the Senate recorded by Tacitus, under the reign of Claudius; where Suillius, the advocate, makes, what appears to us to be an unanswerable argument in favor of fees.t

Yet, without violating the Cincian law, the Roman orators in common with other distinguished personages, were in the way of receiving immense sums by legacies. It is scarcely credible to us, situated as we are in this country, how common and how magnificent these windfalls were, which are only one example of the unbounded liberality and profusion that according to Heineccius, characterized the Roman people above all others. We may judge how much a matter of course it was for persons of consideration to receive them from its being flung out as a reproach against Cicero by Mark Antony, that the orator had never experienced this liberality of his countrymen. This, however, was a calumny, for both he and his friend Atticus had come in for their full share of it, one of them having received about two hundred thousand pounds in that way.

* Schulting. Jurisp. Ant. Justin. 561. Heinec. Antiq. J. C. 1. ii. Tit. vii. § 10 Tac. Ann. 1, xv, c. 6.

Add to all these sources of wealth, the administration of a province which the orators had, of course, after having been elected to the offices of Prætor and Consul, and which may therefore be fairly included anong the rewards of professional eminence. It would be endless to cite authorities to establish the fact, that the provincial government of Rome was little better than a system of plunder and extortion-so that the Prætors richly merited the title given them by Montesquieu of "the Bashaws of the Republic." The example of Cicero is sufficiently striking. He refused absolutely to take any presents, even those which were usually received by the most scrupulous proconsuls. He is supposed, in this way, to have saved to the Province about a million sterling, yet he left to his credit among the Publicans of Asia Minor, at the end of the year, twenty thousand pounds of not only fair, but as it would seem, unavoidable gains.

Of Calvus, another contemporary of Cicero, we have only a few words to say. He seems to have possessed very considerable talent, but he died at an early age. He is principally remarkable as being one, who with Brutus and Pollio, condemned Cicero's eloquence as pompous and feeble, and endeavoured to exemplify, in his own speeches, the genuine Attic style, as it was called, of Thucydides or Lysias.

We are, at length, come down to the great orator who is to occupy our attention during the remainder of this paper. But, before we proceed to analyze his style of speaking, we shall make a few preliminary remarks upon two interesting topics, in order that we may present a more comprehensive view of the whole subject. These are, 1st, what were the scenes or theatres, so to express it, of Roman eloquence, 2ly, What did the ancients think a good speech, and whether there is any essential difference between their notions of eloquence and those which prevail at present.

1. The Roman orators were called to exercise their powers either before the Prætor and the Selecti Judices, before the Senate, or before the people in the Comitia, or public assemblies. The first of these occasions was very analagous to our jury trial, the Prætor performing the functions of the Judge, and the judices being only a certain number of senators or knights, or both (according to the times) drawn by lot, like our "good and lawful men," to form an assise and pass upon the facts of the

This was the exclusive province of forensic eloquence. The Senate, on the contrary, was the proper theatre of the deliberative. This imposing assembly was made up of the great dignitaries of state, and of those that had been so; as soon as a