An enumeration of his works, so far as their titles are known, is the best evidence of his versatility. A bit of criticism here and there shows the estimation in which Cæsar the writer and orator was held by his countrymen and contemporaries. Besides the military memoirs and the works spoken of above in connection with his pontificate, we may mention, as of a semi-official character, his astronomical treatise On the Stars (De Astris), published in connection with his reform of the calendar, when dictator, shortly before the end of his life. Cicero alludes to a collection of witty sayings (Apophthegms) made by Cæsar, with evident satisfaction at the latter's ability to distinguish the real and the false Ciceronian _bons mots_. Like most Roman gentlemen, Cæsar wrote in youth several poems, of which Tacitus grimly says that they were not better than Cicero's. This list includes a tragedy, 'Oedipus,' 'Laudes Herculis' (the Praises of Hercules), and a metrical account of a journey into Spain (Iter). A grammatical treatise in two books (De Analogia), dedicated to Cicero, to the latter's immense gratification, was written on one of the numerous swift journeys from Italy to headquarters in Gaul. Passages from it are quoted by several subsequent writers, and an anecdote preserved by Aulus Gellius in his Noctes Atticæ I. 10. 4, wherein a young man is warned by Cæsar to avoid unusual and far-fetched language "like a rock," is supposed to be very characteristic of his general attitude in matters of literary taste. The 'Anticatones' were a couple of political pamphlets ridiculing Cato, the idol of the republicans. This was small business for Cæsar, but Cato had taken rather a mean advantage by his dramatic suicide at Utica, and deprived Cæsar of the "pleasure of pardoning him." Of Cæsar's orations we have none but the most insignificant fragments--our judgment of them must be based on the testimony of ancient critics. Quintilian speaks in the same paragraph (Quintilian X. 1, 114) of the "wonderful elegance of his language" and of the "force" which made it "seem that he spoke with the same spirit with which he fought." Cicero's phrase "_magnifica et generosa_" (Cicero, Brutus, 261), and Fronto's "_facultas dicendi imperatoria_" (Fronto, Ep. p. 123), indicate "some kind of severe magnificence." Collections of his letters were extant in the second century, but nothing now remains except a few brief notes to Cicero, copied by the latter in his correspondence with Atticus. This loss is perhaps the one most to be regretted. Letters reveal their author's personality better than more formal species of composition, and Cæsar was almost the last real letter-writer, the last who used in its perfection the polished, cultivated, conversational language, the _Sermo urbanus_.