WHEN Anacreon, towards the close of his life, was shown by his friends some vines and grapes with which his urn was to be festooned, he begged them to convert the grapes into wine, that he might enjoy them while living.

A statue of Anacreon was raised to him on the Acropolis at Athens which represented him in a state of vinous hilarity. Tom Moore, a poet of congenial spirit, very successfully translated his Odes. The light and flowing verses celebrated only wine and beauty. A single example will show the character of the whole:

B. B.C. 106.

CICERO. D. (assassinated) B.C. 43.

ONE of the boldest examples of Cicero's great confidence in himself is to be found in one of his orations, where, referring to his great Roman rival (Antony), he exclaims: "Would he wish to engage with me in a contest of eloquence? He would then confer an obligation on me; for what ampler field,

what more copious subject could I desire, than opportunity of speaking on behalf of myself and against Antony?"

The conspicuous vanity of Cicero is well known, especially in his Dialogues, where he makes his friend Atticus and others decorate him with constant praise. In his remarks on "eminent orators," of whom it is not too much to say he was himself the most eminent, after referring to the gradual decay of the eloquence of Hortensius, he makes, as usual, the personal pronoun prominent, and says: "I, at the same time, spared no pains to improve and enlarge my talents, such as they were, by every exercise that was proper for the purpose, but particularly that of writing. Not to mention several other advantages I derived from it, I shall only observe that about this time, and but a very few years after my ædileship, I was declared the first prætor by the unanimous suffrages of my fellow-citizens. For, by my diligence and assiduity as a pleader, and my accurate way of speaking, which was rather superior to the ordinary style of the bar, the novelty of my eloquence had engaged the attention and secured the good wishes of the public." After all this he adds, "But I will say nothing of myself."

When Lucceius announced his purpose of writing a history which should include the Catilinian Conspiracy, we find that Cicero did not scruple to beg him to enlarge a little on the truth. "You must grant something to our friendship," said he; "let

me pray you to delineate my exploits in a way that shall reflect the greatest possible glory on myself.”

Cicero, in his Commonwealth, is loud in praising himself for services in saving the Republic from the conspiracy of Catiline. He never forgets it, and says:

"Since, on my quitting the Consulship, I affirmed in the assembly of the Roman people, who re-echoed my words, that I had saved the Commonwealth, I console myself with this remembrance for all my cares, troubles, and injuries. Indeed, my dismission had more of honor than misfortune, and more of glory than disaster; and I derive greater pleasure from the regrets of good men than sorrow from the exultation of the reprobate. But if it had happened otherwise, why should I complain? Nothing befell me unforeseen, or more painful than I expected, as a return for my illustrious actions. I was one who, on occasion, could derive more profit from leisure than most men, on account of the diversified sweetness of my studies, in which I have lived from boyhood."

After Pompey had overthrown Mithridates, and was coming back with the fame of successes in Asia, Cicero feared that the lustre of his own name might be eclipsed. "I used to be in alarm," he confesses, "that six hundred years hence the merits of Sampsiceramus 1 might seem to have been more than mine." Montaigne did not admire Cicero, and says:"As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that (learning excepted) he had no great natural parts. 1 The nickname which Cicero often gave to Pompey.

He was a good citizen, of an affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was, usually are, but given to ease, and had a weighty share of vanity and ambition. Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be published. 'Tis no great imperfection to make ill verses; but it is an imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the glory of his name For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of comparison. I believe it will never be equalled."

Cicero, though master of much legal knowledge, evidently rated it much lower than eloquence. He was an advocate, or an orator, before he was a juris consult, which in Rome was then equivalent to what is understood by the term of special pleader or attorney in England at the present time. The special learning of these, in his defence of Murena, he affects to scorn, and says, "If you put me upon my mettle, overwhelmed with business as I am, I will in three days declare myself a juris consult." David Paul Brown, the Philadelphia orator, seems to have adopted in his work of "The Forum" this sneer of Cicero, and declares, "The advocate, compared to a mere lawyer, is Hyperion to a Satyr."

Cicero, when asked about his lineage, responded, "I commenced an ancestry."

"There was never yet," he once said, 66 a true poet or orator that thought any other better than himself."

B. B.C. 87.

SALLUST.

D. B.C. 35.

"Ir becomes all men, who desire to excel other animals, to strive to the utmost of their power not to pass through life in obscurity, like the beasts of the field, which Nature has found grovelling and subservient to appetite.

"All our power is situate in the mind and in the body. Of the mind we rather employ the government; of the body the service. The one is common to us with the gods; the other with the brutes. It appears to me, therefore, more reasonable to pursue glory by means of the intellect than of bodily strength; and, since the life which we enjoy is short, to make the remembrance of us as lasting as possible. For the glory of wealth and beauty is fleeting and perishable; that of intellectual power is illustrious and immortal."

B. B.C. 65.

HORACE.

D. B.C. 8.

HORACE pays a very indifferent compliment to a contemporary in the ode addressed to him, in order to claim a higher one for himself. “No one,” he says, "is happy in every respect. And I may perhaps enjoy some advantages which you are deprived of. You possess great riches: your bellowing herds cover the Sicilian plains; your chariot is drawn by the finest horses; and you are arrayed in the richest