The example of their general and their own devotion induced other distinguished men to complete his work. A. Hirtius (consul 43 B.C.), who served with him in the Gallic and Civil Wars, as we have seen, added at his request an eighth book to the history of the former; and in the judgment of the best critics the _Alexandrine War_ is also by his hand. From these two treatises, which are written in careful imitation of Caesar's manner, we form a high conception of the literary standard among men of education. For Hirtius, though a good soldier and an efficient consul, was a literary man only by accident. It was Caesar who ordered him to write, first a reply to Cicero's panegyric on Cato, and then the Gallic Commentary. Nevertheless, his two books show no inferiority in taste or diction to those of his illustrious chief. They of course lack his genius; but there is the same purity of style, the same perfect moderation of language. Nothing is more striking than the admirable taste of the highest conversational language at Rome in the seventh century of the Republic. Not only Hirtius, but Matius, Balbus, Sulpicius, Brutus, Cassius and other correspondents of Cicero, write to him in a dialect as pure as his own. It is true they have not his grace, his inimitable freedom and copiousness. Most of them are somewhat laboured, and give us the impression of having acquired with difficulty the control of their inflexible material. But the intimate study of the noble language in which they wrote compels us to admit that it was fully equal to the clear exposition of the severest thought and the most subtle diplomatic reasoning. But its prime was already passing. Even men of the noblest family could not without long discipline attain the lofty standard of the best conversational requirements. Sextus Pompeius is said to have been _sermone barbarus_. [31] On this Niebuhr well remarks: "It is remarkable to see how at that time men who did not receive a thorough education neglected their mother- tongue, and spoke a corrupt form of it. The _urbanitas_, or perfection of the language, easily degenerated unless it were kept up by careful study. Cicero [32] speaks of the _sermo urbanus_ in the time of Laelius, and observes that the ladies of that age spoke exquisitely. But in Caesar's time it had begun to decay." Caesar, in one of his writings, tells his reader to shun like a rock every unusual form of speech. [33] And this admirable counsel he has himself generally followed--but few provincialisms or archaisms can be detected in his pages. [34] In respect of style he stands far at the head of all the Latin historians. The authorship of the _African War_ is doubtful; it seems best, with Niebuhr, to assign it to Oppius. The _Spanish War_ is obviously written by a person of a different sort. It may either be, as Niebuhr thinks, the work of a centurion or military tribune in the common rank of life, or, as we