While the stage was given up to Mimes, cultured men wrote tragedies for their improvement in command of language. Both Cicero and his brother wrought assiduously at these frigid imitations. Caesar followed in their steps; and no doubt the practice was conducive to copiousness and to an effective simulation of passion. Their appearance as orators before the people must have called out such different mental qualities from their cold and calculating intercourse with one another, that tragedy writing as well as declaiming may have been needful to keep themselves ready for an emergency. Cicero, as is well known, tried hard to gain fame as a poet. The ridicule which all ages have lavished on his unhappy efforts has been a severe punishment for his want of self-knowledge. Still, judging from the verses that remain, we cannot deny him the praise of a correct and elegant _versateur_. Besides several translations from Homer and Euripides scattered through his works, and a few quotations by hostile critics from his epic attempts, [25] we possess a large part of his translation of Aratus's _Phaenomena_, written, indeed, in his early days, but a graceful specimen of Latin verse, and, as Munro [26] has shown, carefully studied and often imitated by Lucretius. The most noticeable point of metre is his disregard of the final s, no less than thrice in the first ninety lines, a practice which in later life he stigmatised as _subrusticum_. In other respects his hexameters are a decided advance on those of Ennius in point of smoothness though not of strength. He still affects Greek caesuras which are not suited to the Latin cadence, [27] and his rhythm generally lacks variety. Caesar's pen was nearly as prolific. He wrote besides an _Oedipus_ a poem called _Laudes Herculis_, and a metrical account of a journey into Spain called _Iter_. [28] Sportive effusions on various plants are attributed to him by Pliny. [29] All these Augustus wisely refused to publish; but there remain two excellent epigrams, one on Terence, already alluded to, which is undoubtedly genuine, [30] the other probably so, though others ascribe it to Germanicus or Domitian. [31] But the rhythm, purity of language, and continuous structure of the couplets seem to point indisputably to an earlier age. It is as follows-- "Thrax puer, astricto glacie dum ludit in Hebro, Frigore concretas pondere rupit aquas. Quumque imae partes rapido traherentur ab amne, Abscidit, heu! tenerum lubrica testa caput. Orba quod inventum mater dum conderet urna, 'Hoc peperi flammis, cetera,' dixit, 'aquis.'" This is evidently a study from the Greek, probably from an Alexandrine writer.