still in his boyhood; yet that author, having collected the opinions of
those who had heard him, speaks with a minute and apparently perfect
intelligence of his mode of oratory. He was what may be called the most
ornamental speaker that had hitherto appeared in the Forum. Though not
without force, gravity, and dignity, these were happily blended with the
most insinuating politeness, urbanity, ease, and gaiety. He was master of
the most pure and accurate language, and of perfect elegance of
expression, without any affectation, or unpleasant appearance of previous
study. Great clearness of exposition distinguished all his harangues, and,
while descanting on topics of law or equity, he possessed an inexhaustible
fund of argument and illustration. In speaking, he showed an uncommon
modesty, which went even the length of bashfulness. When a young man, he
was so intimidated at the opening of a speech, that Q. Maximus, perceiving
him overwhelmed and disabled by confusion, adjourned the court, which the
orator always remembered with the highest sense of gratitude. This
diffidence never entirely forsook him; and, after the practice of a long
life at the bar, he was frequently so much agitated in the exordium of his
discourse, that he was observed to grow pale, and to tremble in every part
of his frame(247). Some persons considered Crassus as only equal to
Antony; others preferred him as the more perfect and accomplished orator:
Antony chiefly trusted to his intimate acquaintance with affairs and
ordinary life: He was not, however, so destitute of knowledge as he
seemed; but he thought the best way to recommend his eloquence to the
people, was to appear as if he had never learned anything(248). Crassus,
on the other hand, was well instructed in literature, and showed off his
information to the best advantage. Antony possessed the greater power of
promoting conjecture, and of allaying or exciting suspicion, by opposite
and well-timed insinuations; but no one could have more copiousness or
facility than Crassus, in defining, interpreting, and discussing, the
principles of equity. The language of Crassus was indisputably preferable
to that of Antony; but the action and gesture of Antony were as
incontestably superior to those of Crassus.
Sulpicius and Cotta, who were both born about 630, were younger orators
than Antony or Crassus, but were for some time their contemporaries, and
had risen to considerable reputation before the death of the latter and
assassination of the former. Sulpicius lived for some years respected and
admired; but, about the year 665, at the first breaking out of the
dissensions between Sylla and Marius, being then a tribune of the people,
he espoused the part of Marius. Plutarch gives a memorable account of his
character and behaviour at this conjuncture, declaring that he was second
to none in the most atrocious villainies. Alike unrestrained in avarice
and cruelty, he committed the most criminal and enormous actions without
hesitation or reluctance. He sold by public auction the freedom of Rome to
foreigners—telling out the purchase-money on counters erected for that
purpose in the Forum! He kept 3000 swordsmen in constant pay, and had
always about him a company of young men of the equestrian order, ready on
every occasion to execute his commands; and these he styled his
anti-senatorian band(249). Cicero touches on his crimes with more
tenderness; but says, that when he came to be tribune, he stript of all
their dignities those with whom, as a private individual, he had lived in
the strictest friendship(250). Whilst Marius kept his ground against his
rival, Sulpicius transacted all public affairs, in his capacity of
tribune, by violence and force of arms. He decreed to Marius the command
in the Mithridatic war: He attacked the Consuls with his band while they
were holding an assembly of the people in the Temple of Castor and Pollux,
and deposed one of them(251). Marius, however, having been at length
expelled by the ascendancy of Sylla, Sulpicius was betrayed by one of his
slaves, and immediately seized and executed. “Thus,” says Cicero, “the
chastisement of his rashness went hand in hand with the misfortunes of his
country; and the sword cut off the thread of that life, which was then
blooming to all the honours that eloquence can bestow(252).”
Cicero had reached the age of nineteen, at the period of the death of
Sulpicius. He had heard him daily speak in the Forum, and highly estimates
his oratoric powers(253). He was the most lofty, and what Cicero calls the
most tragic, orator of Rome. His attitudes, deportment, and figure, were
of supreme dignity—his voice was powerful and sonorous—his elocution
rapid; his action variable and animated.
The constitutional weakness of Cotta prevented all such oratorical
vehemence. In his manner he was soft and relaxed; but every thing he said
was sober and in good taste, and he often led the judges to the same
conclusion to which Sulpicius impelled them. “No two things,” says Cicero,
“were ever more unlike than they are to each other. The one, in a polite,
delicate manner, sets forth his subject in well-chosen expressions. He
still keeps to his point; and, as he sees with the greatest penetration
what he has to prove to the court, he directs to that the whole strength
of his reasoning and eloquence, without regarding other arguments. But
Sulpicius, endued with irresistible energy, with a full strong voice, with
the greatest vehemence, and dignity of action, accompanied with so much
weight and variety of expression, seemed, of all mankind, the best fitted
by nature for eloquence.”
It was supposed that Cotta wished to resemble Antony, as Sulpicius
obviously imitated Crassus; but the latter wanted the agreeable pleasantry
of Crassus, and the former the force of Antony. None of the orations of
Sulpicius remained in the time of Cicero—those circulated under his name
having been written by Canutius after his death. The oration of Cotta for
himself, when accused on the Varian law, was composed, it is said, at his
request by Lucius Ælius; and, if this be true, nothing can appear to us
more extraordinary, than that so accomplished a speaker as Cotta should
have wished any of the trivial harangues of Ælius to pass for his own.
The renown, however, of all preceding orators, was now about to be
eclipsed at Rome; and Hortensius burst forth in eloquence at once
calculated to delight and astonish his fellow-citizens. This celebrated
orator was born in the year 640, being thus ten years younger than Cotta
and Sulpicius. His first appearance in the Forum was at the early age of
nineteen—that is, in 659; and his excellence, says Cicero, was immediately
acknowledged, like that of a statue by Phidias, which only requires to be
seen in order to be admired(254). The case in which he first appeared was
of considerable responsibility for one so young and inexperienced, being
an accusation, at the instance of the Roman province of Africa, against
its governors for rapacity. It was heard before Scævola and Crassus, as
judges—the one the ablest lawyer, the other the most accomplished speaker,
of his age; and the young orator had the good fortune to obtain their
approbation, as well as that of all who were present at the trial(255).
His next pleading of importance was in behalf of Nicomedes, King of
Bithynia, in which he even surpassed his former speech for the
Africans(256). After this we hear little of him for several years. The
imminent perils of the Social War, which broke out in 663, interrupted, in
a great measure, the business of the Forum. Hortensius served in this
alarming contest for one year as a volunteer, and in the following season
as a military tribune(257). When, on the re-establishment of peace in
Italy in 666, he returned to Rome, and resumed the more peaceful
avocations to which he had been destined from his youth, he found himself
without a rival(258). Crassus, as we have seen, died in 662, before the
troubles of Marius and Sylla. Antony, with other orators of inferior note,
perished in 666, during the temporary and last ascendancy of Marius, in
the absence of Sylla. Sulpicius was put to death in the same year, and
Cotta driven into banishment, from which he was not recalled until the
return of Sylla to Rome, and his election to the dictatorship in 670.
Hortensius was thus left for some years without a competitor; and, after
670, with none of eminence but Cotta, whom also he soon outshone. His
splendid, warm, and animated manner, was preferred to the calm and easy
elegance of his rival. Accordingly, when engaged in a cause on the same
side, Cotta, though ten years senior, was employed to open the case, while
the more important parts were left to the management of Hortensius(259).
He continued the undisputed sovereign of the Forum, till Cicero returned
from his quæstorship in Sicily, in 679, when the talents of that orator
first displayed themselves in full perfection and maturity. Hortensius was
thus, from 666 till 679, a space of thirteen years, at the head of the
Roman bar; and being, in consequence, engaged during that long period, on
one side or other, in every cause of importance, he soon amassed a
prodigious fortune. He lived, too, with a magnificence corresponding to
his wealth. An example of splendour and luxury had been set to him by the
orator Crassus, who inhabited a sumptuous palace in Rome, the hall of
which was adorned with four pillars of Hymettian marble, twelve feet high,
which he brought to Rome in his ædileship, at a time when there were no
pillars of foreign marble even in public buildings(260). The court of this
mansion was ornamented by six lotus trees, which Pliny saw in full
luxuriance in his youth, but which were afterwards burned in the
conflagration in the time of Nero. He had also a number of vases, and two
drinking-cups, engraved by the artist Mentor, but which were of such
immense value that he was ashamed to use them(261). Hortensius had the
same tastes as Crassus, but surpassed him and all his contemporaries in
magnificence. His mansion stood on the Palatine Hill, which appears to
have been the most fashionable situation in Rome, being at that time
covered with the houses of Lutatius Catulus, Æmilius Scaurus, Clodius,
Catiline, Cicero, and Cæsar(262). The residence of Hortensius was adjacent
to that of Catiline; and though of no great extent, it was splendidly
furnished. After the death of the orator, it was inhabited by Octavius
Cæsar(263), and formed the centre of the chief imperial palace, which
increased from the time of Augustus to that of Nero, till it covered a
great part of the Palatine Mount, and branched over other hills. Besides
his mansion in the capital, he possessed sumptuous villas at Tusculum,
Bauli, and Laurentum, where he was accustomed to give the most elegant and
expensive entertainments. He had frequently peacocks at his banquets,
which he first served up at a grand augural feast, and which, says Varro,
were more commended by the luxurious, than by men of probity and
austerity(264). His olive plantations he is said to have regularly
moistened and bedewed with wine; and, on one occasion, during the hearing
of an important case, in which he was engaged along with Cicero, begged
that he would change with him the previously arranged order of pleading,
as he was obliged to go to the country to pour wine on a favourite
_platanus_, which grew near his Tusculan villa(265). Notwithstanding this
profusion, his heir found not less than 10,000 casks of wine in his cellar
after his death(266). Besides his taste for wine, and fondness for
plantations, he indulged a passion for pictures and fish-ponds. At his
Tusculan villa, he built a hall for the reception of a painting of the
expedition of the Argonauts, by the painter Cydias, which cost the
enormous sum of a hundred and forty-four thousand sesterces(267). At his
country-seat, near Bauli, on the sea shore, he vied with Lucullus and
Philippus in the extent of his fish-ponds, which were constructed at
immense cost, and so formed that the tide flowed into them(268). Under the
promontory of Bauli, travellers are yet shown the _Piscina Mirabilis_, a
subterraneous edifice, vaulted and divided by four rows of arcades, and
which is supposed by some antiquarians to have been a fish-pond of
Hortensius. Yet such was his luxury, and his reluctance to diminish his
supply, that when he gave entertainments at Bauli, he generally sent to
the neighbouring town of Puteoli to buy fish for supper(269). He had a
vast number of fishermen in his service, and paid so much attention to the
feeding of his fish, that he had always ready a large stock of small fish
to be devoured by the great ones. It was with the utmost difficulty he
could be prevailed on to part with any of them; and Varro declares, that a
friend could more easily get his chariot mules out of his stable, than a
mullet from his ponds. He was more anxious about the welfare of his fish
than the health of his slaves, and less solicitous that a sick servant
might not take what was unfit for him, than that his fish might not drink
water which was unwholesome(270). It is even said, that he was so
passionately fond of a particular lamprey, that he shed tears for her
untimely death(271).
The gallery at the villa, which was situated on the little promontory of
Bauli, and looking towards Puteoli, commanded one of the most delightful
views in Italy. The inland prospect towards Cumæ was extensive and
magnificent. Puteoli was seen along the shore at the distance of 30
_stadia_, in the direction of Pompeii; and Pompeii itself was invisible
only from its distance. The sea view was unbounded; but it was enlivened
by the numerous vessels sailing across the bay, and the ever changeful hue
of its waters, now saffron, azure, or purple, according as the breeze
blew, or as the sun ascended or declined(272).
Hortensius possessed another villa in Italy, which rivalled in its sylvan
pomp the marine luxuries of Bauli. This mansion lay between Ostia and
Lavinium, (now Pratica,) near to the town of Laurentum, so well remembered
from ancient fable and poetry, as having been the residence of King
Latinus, at the time of the arrival of Æneas in Italy, and at present
known by the name of Torre di Paterno. The town of Laurentum was on the
shore, but the villa of Hortensius stood to the north-east at some
distance from the coast,—the grounds subsequently occupied by the villa of
the younger Pliny intervening between it and Laurentum, and also between
it and the Tuscan sea. Around were the walks and gardens of patrician
villas; on one side was seen the town of Laurentum, with its public baths;
on the other, but at a greater distance, the harbour of Ostia. Near the
house were groves, and fields covered with herds—beyond were hills clothed
with woods. The horizon to the north-east was bounded by magnificent
mountains, and beyond the low maritime grounds, which lay between the port
of Ostia and Laurentum, there was a distant prospect of the Tuscan
sea(273).
Hortensius had here a wooded park of fifty acres, encompassed with a wall.
This enclosure he called a nursery of wild beasts, all which came for
their provender at a certain hour, on the blowing of a horn—an exhibition
with which he was accustomed to amuse the guests who visited him at his
Laurentian villa. Varro mentions an entertainment, where those invited
supped on an eminence, called a _Triclinium_, in this sylvan park. During
the repast, Hortensius summoned his Orpheus, who, having come with his
musical instruments, and being ordered to display his talents, blew a
trumpet, when such a multitude of deer, boars, and other quadrupeds,
rushed to the spot from all quarters, that the sight appeared to the
delighted spectators as beautiful as the courses with wild animals in the
great Circus of the Ædiles(274)!
The eloquence of Hortensius procured him not only all this wealth and
luxury, but the highest official honours of the state. He was Ædile in
679, Prætor in 682, and Consul two years afterwards. The wealth and
dignities he had obtained, and the want of competition, made him gradually
relax from that assiduity by which they had been acquired, till the
increasing fame of Cicero, and particularly the glory of his consulship,
stimulated him to renew his exertions. But his habit of labour had been in
some degree lost, and he never again recovered his former reputation.
Cicero partly accounts for this decline, from the peculiar nature and
genius of his eloquence(275). It was of that showy species called Asiatic,
which flourished in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, and was infinitely
more florid and ornamental than the oratory of Athens, or even Rhodes,
being full of brilliant thoughts and of sparkling expressions. This
glowing style of rhetoric, though deficient in solidity and weight, was
not unsuitable in a young man; and being farther recommended by a
beautiful cadence of periods, met with the utmost applause. But
Hortensius, as he advanced in life, did not prune his exuberance, or adopt
a chaster eloquence; and this luxury, and glitter of phraseology, which,
even in his earliest years, had occasionally excited ridicule or disgust
among the graver fathers of the senatorial order, being totally
inconsistent with his advanced age and consular dignity, which required
something more serious and composed, his reputation diminished with
increase of years; and though the bloom of his eloquence might be in fact
the same, it appeared to be somewhat withered(276). Besides, from his
declining health and strength, which greatly failed in his latter years,
he may not have been able to give full effect to that showy species of
rhetoric in which he indulged. A constant toothache, and swelling in the
jaws, greatly impaired his power of elocution and utterance, and became at
length so severe as to accelerate his end—
“Ægrescunt teneræ fauces, quum frigoris atri
Vis subiit, vel quum ventis agitabilis aër
Vertitur, atque ipsas flatus gravis inficit auras,
Vel rabidus clamor fracto quum forte sonore
Planum radit iter. Sic est Hortensius olim
Absumptus: caussis etenim confectus agendis
Obticuit, quum vox, domino vivente, periret,
Et nondum exstincti moreretur lingua diserti(277).”
A few months, however, before his death, which happened in 703, he pleaded
for his nephew, Messala, who was accused of illegal canvassing, and who
was acquitted, more in consequence of the astonishing exertions of his
advocate, than the justice of his cause. So unfavourable, indeed, was his
case esteemed, that however much the speech of Hortensius had been
admired, he was received on entering the theatre of Curio on the following
day, with loud clamour and hisses, which were the more remarked, as he had
never met with similar treatment in the whole course of his forensic
career(278). The speech, however, revived all the ancient admiration of
the public for his oratorical talents, and convinced them, that had he
always possessed the same perseverance as Cicero, he would not have ranked
second to that orator. Another of his most celebrated harangues was that
against the Manilian law, which vested Pompey with such extraordinary
powers, and was so warmly supported by Cicero. That against the sumptuary
law proposed by Crassus and Pompey, in the year 683, which tended to
restrain the indulgence of his own taste, was well adapted to Hortensius’
style of eloquence; and his speech was highly characteristic of his
disposition and habits of life. He declaimed, at great length, on the
glory of Rome, which required splendour in the mode of living followed by
its citizens(279). He frequently glanced at the luxury of the Consuls
themselves, and forced them at length, by his eloquence and sarcastic
declamation, to relinquish their scheme of domestic retrenchment.