and magnifying himself. For
neither senate, nor assembly of the people, nor court of judicature
could meet, in which he was not heard to talk of Catiline and Lentulus.
Indeed, he filled his books and writings with his own praises, to such
an excess as to render a style, in itself most pleasant and delightful,
nauseous and irksome to his hearers. This ungrateful humor, like a
disease, always clove to him. Still, though fond of his own glory,
he was very free from envying others, but was, on the contrary,
most liberally profuse in commending both the ancients and his
contemporaries, as any one may see in his writings. He called Aristotle
a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter
were to speak, it would be in language like theirs. He used to call
Theophrastus his special luxury. And being asked which of Demosthenes's
orations he liked best, he answered, "The longest." And as for the
eminent men of his own time, either in eloquence or philosophy, there
was not one of them whom he did not, by writing or speaking favorably of
him, render more illustrious.

An example of his love of praise is the way in which sometimes, to
make his orations more striking, he neglected decorum and dignity.
When Munatius, who had escaped conviction by his advocacy, immediately
prosecuted his friend Sabinus, he said in the warmth of his resentment,
"Do you suppose you were acquitted for your own merits, Munatius, or was
it not that I so darkened the case, that the court could not see your
guilt?" When from the Rostra he had made a eulogy on Marcus Crassus,
with much applause, and within a few days after again as publicly
reproached him, Crassus called to him, and said, "Did not you yourself
two days ago, in this same place, commend me?" "Yes," said Cicero, "I
exercised my eloquence in declaiming upon a bad subject." At another
time, Crassus had said that no one of his family had ever lived beyond
sixty years of age, and afterwards denied it, and asked, "What should
put it into my head to say so?" "It was to gain the people's favor,"
answered Cicero; "you knew how glad they would be to hear it." When
Vatinius, who had swellings in his neck, was pleading a cause, he called
him the tumid orator; and having been told by some one that Vatinius was
dead, on hearing soon after that he was alive, he said, "may the rascal
perish, for his news not being true."

Upon Caesar's bringing forward a law for the division of the lan