In his account of these later contests, Cato merely related the facts, without mentioning the names of the generals or leaders; but though he has omitted this, Pliny informs us that he did not forget to take notice, that the elephant which fought most stoutly in the Carthaginian army was called Surus, and wanted one of his teeth(29). In this same work he incidentally treated of all the wonderful and admirable things which existed in Spain and Italy. Some of his orations, too, as we learn from Livy, were incorporated into it, as that for giving freedom to the Lusitanian hostages; and Plutarch farther mentions, that he omitted no opportunity of praising himself, and extolling his services to the state. The work, however, exhibited great industry and learning, and, had it descended to us, would unquestionably have thrown much light on the early periods of Roman history and the antiquities of the different states of Italy. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, himself a sedulous inquirer into antiquities, bears ample testimony to the research and accuracy of that part which treats of the origin of the ancient Italian cities. The author lived at a time which was favourable to this investigation. Though the Samnites, Etruscans, and Sabines, had been deprived of their independence, they had not lost their monuments or records of their history, their individuality and national manners. Cicero praises the simple and concise style of the _Origines_, and laments that the work was neglected in his day, in consequence of the inflated manner of writing which had been recently adopted; in the same manner as the tumid and ornamented periods of Theopompus had lessened the esteem for the concise and unadorned narrative of Thucydides, or as the lofty eloquence of Demosthenes impaired the relish for the extreme attic simplicity of Lysias(30). In the same part of the dialogue, entitled _Brutus_, Cicero asks what flower or light of eloquence is wanting to the _Origines_—“Quem florem, aut quod lumen eloquentiæ non habent?” But on Atticus considering the praise thus bestowed as excessive, he limits it, by adding, that nothing was required to complete the strokes of the author’s pencil but a certain lively glow of colours, which had not been discovered in his age.—“Intelliges, nihil illius lineamentis, nisi eorum pigmentorum, quæ inventa nondum erant, florem et calorem defuisse(31).” The pretended fragments of the _Origines_, published by the Dominican, Nanni, better known by the name of Annius Viterbiensis, and inserted in his _Antiquitates Variæ_, printed at Rome in 1498, are spurious, and the imposition was detected soon after their appearance. The few remains first collected by Riccobonus, and published at the end of his Treatise on History, (Basil, 1579,) are believed to be genuine. They have been enlarged by Ausonius Popma, and added by him, with notes, to the other writings of Cato, published at Leyden in 1590.