y, of terseness and of
style. His astronomy is the best manual of that subject in Latin. His
works on Engineering surpass anything of their kind in clearness and
preserve for the benefit of future generations more useful and original
ideas than ever before came from the brain of any one man. His works on
divination, particularly that on Auspices, excel everything previously
written on that most important of all human arts.

"But his two books against Cato are his masterpiece. It is wonderful that
any man could have, in the space of eight days, written, with his own
hand, so fiery an invective, so compelling of the attention of any reader,
so completely annihilative of his antagonist's pretensions and
contentions, so convincingly establishing his own: to have made of it, in
the course of composition so rapid and totally unrevised, such a jewel of
Latinity, in a style not only pure and impeccable, but glowing and
charming, is astonishing. But it is downright miraculous that he should
have embodied in it the whole theory of government with all its principles
marshalled in their array with the most perfect subordination of
considerations of lesser importance to main principles. The two
Anticatones contain all that a ruler or any minister of a ruler need know
to guide him aright in his tasks. The First Book displays a complete
theory of internal policy, the Second of external policy. The two together
form a whole which is the most brilliant product of Rome's literary and
political genius."

In accordance with his high esteem for Caesar's masterpiece he had
possessed himself of a beautiful copy of it, written by the celebrated
calligrapher Praxitelides, upon papyrus of the finest quality. It was in
seven rolls, each book of Caesar's text occupying two rolls, the index a
fifth, and the commentaries of grammarians two more. The rollers inside
the rolls were of Nubian ivory, their ends carved into pine cones, each of
the fourteen representing the cone of a different variety of pine. Each
roll was enclosed in a copper cylinder made accurately to be both
watertight and airtight. The seven cylinders were housed in an ebony case,
inlaid with mother of pearl. I have never seen any literary work more
beautifully enshrined.

When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door at
the top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom of
it. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely