Cicero, Orations Vol. 1

...posed by the seditious Tribunes of the plebs, he did not hesitate to summon the Tribunes to an assembly, and with the people themselves as the arbiter—whose interests he was thought to be opposing—to speak before them. And here he spoke in such a way, and omitted nothing of those things which were necessary for swaying the minds of men, that no one ever persuaded the people of anything with such great popular support as he, most of all, overturned a law that was highly agreeable and pleasing to the people. Not undeservedly, therefore, both while he lived was he said to reign in the courts, and after his death, down to this very day, his name flourishes so among all nations, and grows day by day, that no oblivion seems likely to obscure it, and no eternity to bring an end to his praises. He alone of all orators expressed that very form of absolute eloquence which he himself seeks in his Orator, which we scarcely perceive with our minds, and which Antonius had seen in no one. The more similar anyone is to him, the more eloquent he ought to be considered. We cannot even conceive of anything more ornate than his writings. Would that all those works of his, which perished through either the injury of time or the continuous devastation of Italy by so many wars, had been able to reach our hands! The Roman language would be far more opulent, and the treasury of Latin eloquence far better furnished. But though many have been lost, it has fallen out well that, of these orations which he wrote—in which every power of speaking and every ornament of eloquence is unfolded—we desire but a very few. Although, even in these, we can complain that those which neither the proscription of Antonius, nor the fury of war, nor so many...