This, if it be not intended for a portrait of Cicero on that occasion, exactly describes his position and his success. We have a fragment of Cornelius Nepos, the biographer of the Augustan age, declaring that at Cicero's death men had to doubt whether literature or the Republic had lost the most.[9] Livy declared of him only, that he would be the best writer of Latin prose who was most like to Cicero.[10] Velleius Paterculus, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, speaks of Cicero's achievements with the highest honor. "At this period," he says, "lived Marcus Cicero, who owed everything to himself; a man of altogether a new family, as distinguished for ability as he was for the purity of his life."[11] Valerius Maximus quotes him as an example of a forgiving character.[12] Perhaps the warmest praise ever given to him came from the pen of Pliny the elder, from whose address to the memory of Cicero I will quote only a few words, as I shall refer to it more at length when speaking of his consulship. "Hail thou," says Pliny, "who first among men was called the father of your country."[13] Martial, in one of his distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of Cicero's writing he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero himself.[14] Lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of peace in the camp of Pharsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should have said nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all honor.[15] Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author whose essay De Oratoribus was written about the time of Tacitus, and whose work has come to us with the name of Tacitus, has told us of Cicero that he was a master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[16] Everybody remembers the passage in Juvenal, "Sed Roma parentem Roma patrem patriæ Ciceronem libera dixit."