s that in which he tells Piso that,
having lost his army--which he had done--he had brought back nothing in
safety but that "old impudent face of his."[32] Altogether it is a
tirade of abuse very inferior to Cicero's dignity. Le Clerc, the French
critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "Il faut avouer qu'il
manque surtout de moderation, et que la gravite d'un orateur consulaire
y fait trop souvent place a l'emportement d'un ennemi." It is, however,
full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. The reader
when reading it will of course remember that Roman manners allowed a
mode of expression among the upper classes which is altogether denied to
those among us who hope to be regarded as gentlemen.

The games in Pompey's theatre, to the preparation of which Cicero
alludes in his speech against Piso, are described by him with his usual
vivacity and humor in a letter written immediately after them to his
friend Marius. Pompey's games, with which he celebrated his second
Consulship, seem to have been divided between the magnificent theatre
which he had just built--fragments of which still remain to us--and the
"circus maximus." This letter from Cicero is very interesting, as
showing the estimation in which these games were held, or were supposed
to be held, by a Roman man of letters, and as giving us some description
of what was done on the occasion. Marius had not come to Rome to see
them, and Cicero writes as though his friend had despised them. Cicero
himself, having been in Rome, had of course witnessed them. To have been
in Rome and not to have seen them would have been quite out of the
question. Not to come to Rome from a distance was an eccentricity. He
congratulated Marius for not having come, whether it was that he was
ill, or that the whole thing was too despicable: "You in the early
morning have been looking out upon your view over the bay while we have
been staring at puppets half asleep. Most costly games, but I should
say--judging of you by myself--that they would have been quite revolting
to you. Poor AEsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all
his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. Why should I tell
you of it all? The very costliness of the affair took away all the
pleasure. Six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of Clytemnestra,
or three thousand golden goblets in The Trojan Horse--what delight could
they give you? If your slave Protogenes was reading