ff something from him. As the gradual decay of a picture will
be observed by the true critic, though it be not seen by the world at
large, so was it with his decay. From day to day he became more and
more unlike his old self, failing in all branches of oratory, but
specially in the rapidity and continuity of his words. But for myself
I never rested, struggling always to increase whatever power there was
in me by practice of every kind, especially in writing. Passing over
many things in the year after I was AEdile, I will come to that in
which I was elected first Praetor, to the great delight of the public
generally; for I had gained the good-will of men, partly by my
attention to the causes which I undertook, but specially by a certain
new strain of eloquence, as excellent as it was uncommon, with which
I spoke." Cicero, when he wrote this of himself, was an old man
sixty-two years of age, broken hearted for the loss of his daughter,
to whom it was no doubt allowed among his friends to praise himself
with the garrulity of years, because it was understood that he had
been unequalled in the matter of which he was speaking. It is easy for
us to laugh at his boastings; but the account which he gives of his
early life, and of the manner in which he attained the excellence for
which he had been celebrated, is of value.

APPENDIX C.

(_See_ ch. VI., note [117])

There was still prevailing in Rome at this time a strong feeling that
a growing taste for these ornamental luxuries was injurious to the
Republic, undermining its simplicity and weakening its stability. We
are well aware that its simplicity was a thing of the past, and its
stability gone The existence of a Verres is proof that it was so; but
still the feeling remained--and did remain long after the time of
Cicero--that these beautiful things were a sign of decay. We know
how conquering Rome caught the taste for them from conquered Greece.
"Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes intulit agresti Latio."
[286] Cicero submitted himself to this new captivity readily, but with
apologies, as shown in his pretended abnegation of all knowledge
of art. Two years afterward, in a letter to Atticus, giving him
instructions as to the purchase of statues, he declares that he is
altogether carried away by his longing for such things, but not
without a feeling of shame. "Nam in eo genere sic studio efferimur ut
abs te adjuvandi, ab aliis propre reprehendi simus"[287]--