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—