infuriate a trained judge; but give him a jury, and, if possible, a large Italian one, and he is irresistible, now with translucent rapid narrative, now with clever mystification, breaking off into thundering appeals to conscience or heaven, or again with passionate denunciation of his opponent or majestic encomium for his client. In the senate he is not at his best. We are told that a few blunt words from Cato had more power to move that assembly of practical men than all the Catilinarian orations. But if Rome had been governed as Greece was, by orations in the market-place, Cicero would have been in Cæsar’s place as dictator of the world. Imagine the Roman mob assembling in 63 B.C. to hear their consul’s account of Catiline’s flight-- tandem aliquando, Quirites, L. Catilinam, furentem audacia, scelus anhelantem, pestem patriæ nefarie molientem, uobis atque huic urbi ferrum flammamque minitantem, ex urbe uel eiecimus, uel emisimus, uel ipsum egredientem uerbis prosecuti sumus. abiit, excessit, euasit, erupit. nulla iam pernicius a monstro illo atque prodigio mœnibus ipsis intra mœnia comparabitur. non enim iam inter latera nostra sica illa uersabitur: non in Campo, non in foro, non in Curia, non denique intra domesticas parietes, pertimescemus[27] --his voice screams with passion, or sinks into pathos; presently he drops into the tones of calm reason or fluent narrative; as he nears his peroration his eyes flash, his hands gesticulate, his body sways from side to side, his foot stamps the ground, he seems to foam at the mouth: dolebam, dolebam, patres conscripti, rempublicam uestris quondam meisque consiliis conseruatam, breui tempore esse perituram ... audite, audite, patres conscripti, et cognoscite reipublicæ uolnera....[28] “Why, you did not even stamp your foot!” he exclaims in rebuking the coolness of an opposing counsel. It is true that there were purists of the severer school of Roman oratory who thought such vehemence meretricious and undignified. The true Roman eloquence of the old school is to be found in that ambassador who came to the Carthaginian senate with “peace or war,” gathered in the folds of his mantle and briefly commanded them to choose; or that other who drew a circle in the dust round the Great King and demanded an answer before he left the circle. Cicero had studied his art both in the flowery Asiatic and the severer Attic schools. There was still, his critics complained, too much Asia in his style. But that was part of the tendency of his age. The austerity of Cato, with his simple formulæ, was gone for ever. The Romans of this age are more emotional, more sentimental, more characteristically Southern.