ortly before the end of his life.

Cicero alludes to a collection of witty sayings (Apophthegms) made by
Caesar, with evident satisfaction at the latter's ability to distinguish
the real and the false Ciceronian _bons mots_.

Like most Roman gentlemen, Caesar wrote in youth several poems, of which
Tacitus grimly says that they were not better than Cicero's. This list
includes a tragedy, 'Oedipus,' 'Laudes Herculis' (the Praises of
Hercules), and a metrical account of a journey into Spain (Iter).

A grammatical treatise in two books (De Analogia), dedicated to Cicero,
to the latter's immense gratification, was written on one of the
numerous swift journeys from Italy to headquarters in Gaul. Passages
from it are quoted by several subsequent writers, and an anecdote
preserved by Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticae I. 10. 4, wherein a
young man is warned by Caesar to avoid unusual and far-fetched language
"like a rock," is supposed to be very characteristic of his general
attitude in matters of literary taste. The 'Anticatones' were a couple
of political pamphlets ridiculing Cato, the idol of the republicans.
This was small business for Caesar, but Cato had taken rather a mean
advantage by his dramatic suicide at Utica, and deprived Caesar of the
"pleasure of pardoning him."

Of Caesar's orations we have none but the most insignificant
fragments--our judgment of them must be based on the testimony of
ancient critics. Quintilian speaks in the same paragraph (Quintilian X.
1, 114) of the "wonderful elegance of his language" and of the "force"
which made it "seem that he spoke with the same spirit with which he
fought." Cicero's phrase "_magnifica et generosa_" (Cicero, Brutus,
261), and Fronto's "_facultas dicendi imperatoria_" (Fronto, Ep. p.
123), indicate "some kind of severe magnificence."

Collections of his letters were extant in the second century, but
nothing now remains except a few brief notes to Cicero, copied by the
latter in his correspondence with Atticus. This loss is perhaps the one
most to be regretted. Letters reveal their author's personality better
than more formal species of composition, and Caesar was almost the last
real letter-writer, the last who used in its perfection the polished,
cultivated, conversational language, the _Sermo urbanus_.

But after all, we possess the most important of his writings, the
Commentaries on the Gallic and Civil Wars. The first may be considered
as a formal report t