ece, though it has lost much of its weight and power, still
holds its place by virtue of the renown of this single city".

He had forgotten, perhaps, as an orator is allowed to forget, that in the
very same speech, when his object was to discredit the accusers of his
client, he had said, what was very commonly said of the Greeks at Rome,
that they were a nation of liars. There were excellent men among them, he
allowed--thinking at the moment of the counter-evidence which he had ready
for the defendant--but he goes on to make this sweeping declaration:

"I will say this of the whole race of the Greeks: I grant them literary
genius, I grant them skill in various accomplishments, I do not deny them
elegance in conversation, acuteness of intellect, fluent oratory; to any
other high qualities they may claim I make no objection: but the sacred
obligation that lies upon a witness to speak the truth is what that nation
has never regarded".[1]

[Footnote 1: Defence of Val. Flaccus, c. 4.]

There was a certain proverb, he went on to say, "Lend me your evidence",
implying--"and you shall have mine when you want it;" a Greek proverb, of
course, and men knew these three words of Greek who knew no Greek besides.
What he loved in the Greeks, then, was rather the grandeur of their
literature and the charm of their social qualities (a strict regard for
truth is, unhappily, no indispensable ingredient in this last); he had no
respect whatever for their national character. The orator was influenced,
perhaps, most of all by his intense reverence for the Athenian
Demosthenes, whom, as a master in his art, he imitated and well-nigh
worshipped. The appreciation of his own powers which every able man has,
and of which Cicero had at least his share, fades into humility when he
comes to speak of his great model. "Absolutely perfect", he calls him in
one place; and again in another, "What I have attempted, Demosthenes has
achieved". Yet he felt also at times, when the fervour of genius was
strong within him, that there was an ideal of eloquence enshrined in his
own inmost mind, "which I can _feel_", he says, "but which I never
knew to exist in any man".

He could not only write Greek as a scholar, but seems to have spoken it
with considerable ease and fluency; for on one occasion he made a speech
in that language, a condescension which some of his friends thought
derogatory to the dignity of a Roman.

From the Greeks he learnt to appreciate