pp. 52, 56, 65.]

[Footnote 142: See p. 57.]

[Footnote 143: The _lex Cincia_ (B.C. 204) forbade the taking of
presents for acting as advocate in law courts.]

XXVI (A II, 1)

TO ATTICUS (IN GREECE)

ROME, JUNE

[Sidenote: B.C. 60, AET. 46]

On the 1st of June, as I was on my way to Antium, and eagerly getting
out of the way of M. Metellus's gladiators, your boy met me, and
delivered to me a letter from you and a history of my consulship written
in Greek.[144] This made me glad that I had some time before delivered
to L. Cossinius a book, also written in Greek, on the same subject, to
take to you. For if I had read yours first you might have said that I
had pilfered from you. Although your essay (which I have read with
pleasure) seemed to me just a trifle rough and bald, yet its very
neglect of ornament is an ornament in itself, as women were once thought
to have the best perfume who used none. My book, on the other hand, has
exhausted the whole of Isocrates's unguent case, and all the paint-boxes
of his pupils, and even Aristotle's colours. This, as you tell me in
another letter, you glanced over at Corcyra, and afterwards I suppose
received it from Cossinius.[145] I should not have ventured to send it
to you until I had slowly and fastidiously revised it. However,
Posidonius, in his letter of acknowledgment from Rhodes, says that as he
read my memoir, which I had sent him with a view to his writing on the
same subject with more elaboration, he was not only not incited to
write, but absolutely made afraid to do so. In a word, I have routed the
Greeks. Accordingly, as a general rule, those who were pressing me for
material to work up, have now ceased to bother me. Pray, if you like the
book, see to there being copies at Athens and other Greek towns;[146]
for it may possibly throw some lustre on my actions. As for my poor
speeches, I will send you both those you ask for and some more also,
since what I write to satisfy the studious youth finds favour, it seems,
with you also. [For it suited my purpose[147]--both because it was in
his Philippics that your fellow citizen Demosthenes gained his
reputation, and because it was by withdrawing from the mere
controversial and forensic style of oratory that he acquired the
character of a serious politician--to see that I too should have
speeches that may properly be called _consular_. Of these are, first,
one delivered on the 1st of January in the senate, a secon