I can easily understand why
Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Dyrrachium. It has been remarked
also by a modern critic that we find "in the letters from exile a
carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with
the style of his happier days." I will not for a moment put my judgment
in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrrell--but I should
myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's
letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or
to his brother, or to lighter friends such as Poetus and Trebatius; and
very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his
letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in
familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make
such work live to posterity--a grace of loose expression which may
indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the
idle and unpractised writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of
its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to
be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief.

APPENDICES TO VOLUME I.

APPENDIX A.

(_See_ ch. II., note [39])

_THE BATTLE OF THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT._

Homer, Iliad, lib. xii, 200:

[Greek:
Hoi rh' eti mermerizon ephestaotes para taphroi.
Ornis gar sphin epelthe peresemenai memaosin,
Aietos upsipetes ep' aristera laon eergon,
Phoineenta drakonta pheron onuchessi peloron,
Zoon et' aspaironta; kai oupo letheto charmes.
Kopse gar auton echonta kata stethos para deiren,
Idnotheis opiso; ho d' apo ethen eke chamaze,
Algesas oduneisi, mesoi d' eni kabbal' homiloi;
Autos de klanxas peteto pnoeis anemoio.]

Pope's translation of the passage, book xii, 231:

"A signal omen stopp'd the passing host,
The martial fury in their wonder lost.
Jove's bird on sounding pinions beat the skies;
A bleeding serpent, of enormous size,
His talons trussed; alive, and curling round,
He stung the bird, whose throat received the wound.
Mad with the smart, he drops the fatal prey,
In airy circles wings his painful way,
Floats on the winds, and rends the heav'ns with cries.
Amid the host the fallen serpent lies.
They, pale with terror, mark its spires unroll'd,
And Jove's portent with beating hearts behold."

Lord Derby's Iliad, book xii, 2