"That which the Greeks call [Greek: Peitho], _(i.e. Persuasion)_ and which it is the chief business of an Orator to effect, is here called _Suada_ by Ennius; and of this he commends Cethegus as the _quintessence_; so that he makes the Roman Orator to be himself the very substance of that amiable Goddess, who is said by Eupolis to have dwelt on the lips of Pericles. This Cethegus was joint-consul with P. Tuditanus in the second Punic war; at which time also M. Cato was Quaestor, about one hundred and forty years before I myself was promoted to the consulship; which circumstance would have been absolutely lost, if it had not been recorded by Ennius; and the memory of that illustrious citizen, as has probably been the case of many others, would have been obliterated by the rust of antiquity. The manner of speaking which was then in vogue, may easily be collected from the writings of _Naevius_: for Naevius died, as we learn from the memoirs of the times, when the persons above-mentioned were consuls; though Varro, a most accurate investigator of historical truth, thinks there is a mistake in this, and fixes the death of Naevius something later. For Plautus died in the consulship of P. Claudius and L. Porcius, twenty years after the consulship of the persons we have been speaking of, and when Cato was Censor. Cato, therefore, must have been younger than Cethegus, for he was consul nine years after him: but we always consider him as a person of the remotest antiquity, though he died in the consulship of Lucius Marcius and M. Manilius, and but eighty-three years before my own promotion to the same office. He is certainly, however, the most ancient Orator we have, whose writings may claim our attention; unless any one is pleased with the above-mentioned speech of Appius, on the peace with Pyrrhus, or with a set of panegyrics on the dead, which, I own, are still extant. For it was customary in most families of note to preserve their images, their trophies of honour, and their memoirs, either to adorn a funeral when any of the family deceased, or to perpetuate the fame of their ancestors, or prove their own nobility. But the truth of History has been much corrupted by these laudatory essays; for many circumstances were recorded in them which never existed; such as false triumphs, a pretended succession of consulships, and false alliances and elevations, when men of inferior rank were confounded with a noble family of the same name: as if I myself should pretend that I am descended from M. Tullius, who was a Patrician, and shared the consulship with Servius Sulpicius, about ten years after the expulsion of the kings.