equestria fierent_," "_aediles plebis sacrosanctos esse_," "_de dote_" (an attack upon the luxury of women), and others. His chief characteristics were condensed force, pregnant brevity, strong common sense, galling asperity. His orations were neglected for near a century, but in the Claudian era began to be studied, and were the subjects of commentary until the time of Servius, who speaks of his periods as ill-balanced and unrhythmical (_confragosa_). [13] There is a most caustic fragment preserved in Fronto [14] taken from the speech _de sumptu suo_, recapitulating his benefits to the state, and the ingratitude of those who had profited by them; and another from his speech against Minucius Thermus, who had scourged ten men for some trivial offence [15] which in its sarcasm, its vivid and yet redundant language, recalls the manner of Cicero. In Cato's time we hear of SER. FULVIUS and L. COTTA, SCIPIO AFRICANUS and SULPICIUS GALLUS, all of whom were good though not first-rate speakers. A little later LAELIUS and the younger SCIPIO (185-129 B.C.), whose speeches were extant in the time of Cicero [16] and their contemporaries, followed Cato's example and wrote down what they had delivered. It is not clear whether their motive was literary or political, but more probably the latter, as party feeling was so high at Rome that a powerful speech might do good work afterwards as a pamphlet. [17] From the passages of Scipio Aemilianus which we possess, we gather that he strove to base his style on Greek models. In one we find an elaborate dilemma, with a taunting question repeated after each deduction; in another we find Greek terms contemptuously introduced much as they are centuries after in Juvenal; in another we have a truly patrician epigram. Being asked his opinion about the death of Gracchus, and replying that the act was a righteous one, the people raised a shout of defiance,--_Taceant, inquit, quibus Italia noverca non mater est, quos ego sub corona vendidi_--"Be silent, you to whom Italy is a stepdame not a mother, whom I myself have sold at the hammer of the auctioneer."