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CICERO
pleasure-camp; and it was only after, not frightened but sated, they had sailed out
again that people began to ask themselves what was responsible for such a disaster
(92-101).
Cicero was famous for his wit, which sparkles through his letters to Atticus.
He complained that everyone's sallies were attributed to him — even those of
Sestius; but he was flattered when he heard that Caesar not only collected his
bons mots but claimed to be able to distinguish the spurious from the authentic. 1
Three books of them were published after his death by the faithful Tiro. In
De oratore 2. he makes Caesar Strabo, after mocking the idea of classifying
humour, proceed to do so for seventy-five chapters (216—90), a repertoire of
jokes which throws considerable light on Roman mentality. 2 Wit and humour
were naturally characteristic of the plain style, which eschewed emotion, 3 but
they were also valuable in the middle style, which sought especially to please.
Cicero's command of them was one of the things that enabled him to speak
effectively, as he claimed, in whatever style was appropriate to his subject.
In his own speeches we may note a progress from the rather crude puns and
sarcasms cf the earlier ones, not completely outgrown even in the Verrines, to
the more delicate irony of his maturity in the Pro Murena, Pro Caelio and Pro
Ligario. The climax of his defence of Caelius was a brilliant piece of ridicule, of
the implausible story of how one Licinius, allegedly sent by Caelius to deliver a
casket of poison to Clodia's treacherous slaves at the Senian Baths, of all places,
gave the slip to her agents, who lay in wait to catch him in the act (61—9). Even
if there were something in the story, what the jury would retain would be an
impression of farce. Indeed Cicero himself had suggested to them that it was
more like a Mime than a play with a coherent plot.
7. DIALOGUES AND TREATISES
Cicero had always hoped, so he says, that after his consulship he would be free
to enjoy leisure and esteem and to devote himself to literary pursuits. Instead
he had to endure six years of trouble and anxiety, and it was only the leisure
with greatly diminished esteem forced upon him by the Triumvirs in 56, after
he had tried to take an independent line in politics, that brought him to embark,
as a compensation, on two manifestos he had always wanted to write, about
the things that mattered to him most, the De Oratore on his oratorical ideals
and the De republica on his political ideals. He was consciously setting out to
inaugurate for Rome something she lacked, a prose literature worthy of the
Latin tongue.
1
Sen. Contr. 7.3.9; Quint. Inst. 6.3.5; Cic. Fam. 7.32.1.
2
His own irony and humour have been exhaustively catalogued and analysed by Haury (19 5 ?)•
3
Grant (1924).
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