XXIV. Cicero, who had at that time the chief power in the State, made himself generally odious, not by any ill acts, but by always praising and glorifying himself to the great annoyance of many people. For there was neither assembly of Senate nor people nor court of justice in which a man had not to hear Catilina talked of and Lentulus. Finally, he filled his books and writings with his own praises, and though his oratory was most agreeable and had the greatest charm, he made it wearisome and odious to the hearers by his unseemly habit, which stuck to him like a fatality. However, though he had such unmingled ambition, he was far removed from envying others, for he was most bountiful in his praises of those before him and those of his own time, as we may see from his writings. There are also many sayings of his recorded; for instance, he said of Aristotle, that he was a river of flowing gold, and of the dialogues of Plato, that Jupiter, if it were his nature to use language, would speak like him. Theophrastus he was used to call his own special luxury. Being asked about the speeches of Demosthenes,[200] which he thought the best, he answered, the longest. Yet some of those who pretend to be imitators of Demosthenes, dwell on an expression of Cicero, which is used in a letter to one of his friends, that Demosthenes sometimes nodded in his speeches; but the great and admirable praise which he often bestows on the man, and that he entitled his own orations on which he bestowed most labour, those against Antonius, Philippics, they say nothing about. Of the men of his own time who gained a reputation for eloquence and learning, there is not one whose reputation he did not increase either by speaking or writing in favourable terms of him. When Cæsar was in power he obtained from him the Roman citizenship for Kratippus[201] the Peripatetic, and he prevailed on the Areopagus to pass a vote and to request him to stay in Athens and instruct the young, as being an ornament to the city. There are letters from Cicero to Herodes,[202] and others to his son, in which he exhorts to the study of philosophy under Kratippus. He charged Gorgias[203] the rhetorician with leading the young man to pleasure and drinking, and banished him from his society. This and a letter to Pelops of Byzantium are almost the only Greek letters of his which are written with any passion, in which he properly rebukes Gorgias, if he was worthless and intemperate, as he was considered to be; but his letter to Pelops is in a mean and complaining tone, and charges Pelops with having neglected to procure for him certain honours and public testimonials from the Byzantines.