[90] CICERO. Cicero the orator, when his name was played upon and his friends advised him to change it, answered, that he would make the name of Cicero more honorable than the name of the Catos, the Catuli, or the Scauri. He dedicated to the Gods a silver cup with a cover, with the first letters of his other names, and instead of Cicero a chick-pea ( cicer) engraven. Loud bawling orators, he said, were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse. Verres had a son that in his youth had not well secured his chastity; yet he reviled Cicero for his effeminacy, and called him catamite. Do you not know, said he, that children are to be rebuked at home within doors? Metellus Nepos told him he had slain more by his testimony than he had saved by his pleadings. You say true, said he, my honesty exceeds my eloquence. When Metellus asked him who his father was, Your mother, said he, hath made that question a harder one for you to answer than for me. For she was unchaste, while Metellus himself was a light, inconstant, and passionate man. The same Metellus, when Diodotus his master in rhetoric died, caused a marble crow to be placed on his monument; and Cicero said, he returned his master a very suitable gratuity, who had taught him to fly but not to declaim. Hearing that Vatinius, his enemy and otherwise a lewd person, was dead, and the next day that he was alive, A mischief on him, said he, for lying. To one that seemed to be an African, who said he could not hear him when he pleaded, And yet, said he, your ears are of full bore. He had summoned Popilius Cotta, an ignorant blockhead that pretended to the law, as a witness in a cause; and when he told the court he knew nothing of the business, On my conscience, I’ll warrant you, said Cicero, he thinks you ask him a question in the law. Verres sent a golden sphinx as a present to Hortensius the orator, who told Cicero, when he spoke obscurely, that he was not skilled in riddles. That’s strange, said he, since you have a sphinx in your house. Meeting Voconius with his three daughters that were hard favored, he told his friends softly that verse,—

When Faustus the son of Sylla, being very much in debt, set up a writing that he would sell his goods by auction, he said, I like this proscription better than his father’s. When Pompey and Caesar fell out, he said, I know whom to fly from, but I know not whom to fly to. He blamed Pompey for leaving the city, and for imitating Themistocles rather than Pericles, when his affairs did not resemble the former’s but the latter’s. He changed his mind and went over to Pompey, who asked him where he left his soninlaw Piso. He answered, With your father-in-law Caesar. To one that went over from Caesar to Pompey, saying that in his haste and eagerness he had left his horse behind him, he said, You have taken better care of your horse than of yourself. To one that brought news that the friends of Caesar looked sourly, You do as good as call them, said he, Caesar’s enemies. After the battle in Pharsalia, when Pompey was fled, one Nonius said they had seven eagles left still, and advised to try what they would do. Your advice, said he, were good, if we were to fight with jackdaws. Caesar, now conqueror, honorably restored the statues of Pompey that were thrown down; whereupon Cicero said, that Caesar by erecting Pompey’s statues had secured his own. He set so high a value on oratory, and did so lay out himself especially that way, that having a cause to plead before the centumviri, when the day approached and his slave Eros brought him word it was deferred until the day following, he presently made him free.