CHAPTER X. CICERO NO HISTORIAN—HIS ORATORICAL STYLE DEFENDED—ITS PRINCIPAL CHARM—OBSERVATIONS ON HIS FORENSIC ORATION—HIS ORATORY ESSENTIALLY JUDICIAL—POLITICAL ORATIONS—RHETORICAL TREATISES—THE OBJECT OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS—CHARACTERISTICS OF ROMAN PHILOSOPHICAL LITERATURE—PHILOSOPHY OF CICERO—HIS POLITICAL WORKS—LETTERS—HIS CORRESPONDENTS—VARRO. Such were the life and character of Cicero. The place which he occupies in a history of Roman literature is that of an orator and philosopher. It has been already stated that he had some taste for poetry: in fact, without imagination he could scarcely have been so eminent as an orator; but though the power which he wielded over prose was irresistible, he had not fancy enough to give a poetical character to the language. Nor had he, notwithstanding the versatility of his talents, any taste for historical investigation. He delighted to read the Greek historians, for the same purpose for which he studied the Attic orators, merely as an instrument of intellectual cultivation; but he was ignorant of Roman history, because he took no interest in original research. His countrymen[810] expected from him an historical work, but he was unfit for the task. It is plain from his “_Republic_,” how little he knew as an antiquarian. The greatest praise of an orator’s style is to say that he was successful. The end and object of oratory is to convince and persuade—to rivet the attention of the hearer, and to gain a mastery over the minds of men. If, therefore, any who study the speeches of Cicero in the closet find faults in his style, they must remember the very faults themselves were suited to the object which he was carrying into execution. During the process of raising the public taste to the highest standard, he carried his hearers with him: he was not too much in advance; he did not aim his shafts too high; they hit the head and heart. Senate, judges, people understood his arguments, and felt his passionate appeals. Compared with the dignified energy and majestic vigour of the Athenian orator, the Asiatic exuberance of some of his orations may be fatiguing to the sober and chastened taste of the modern classical scholar; but in order to form a just appreciation, he must transport himself mentally to the excitements of the thronged Forum—to the senate composed, not of aged, venerable men, but statesmen and warriors in the prime of life, maddened with the party spirit of revolutionary times—to the presence of the jury of _judices_, as numerous as a deliberative assembly, whose office was not merely calmly to give their verdict of guilty or not guilty, but who were invested as representatives of the sovereign people with the prerogative of pardoning or condemning.