de Oratore_, where the chief _personae_ are
Crassus, Antonius, and Scaevola, the conservative triumvirate of the
day. They all seem grave, or but seldom gently jocular, respectful to
each other, and perhaps a trifle tedious; they never quarrel, however
deeply they may differ, and we may guess that they did not hold their
opinions strongly enough to urge them to open rupture. We seem to see
the same grave faces, with rather noses and large mouths, which meet
us in the sculptures of Augustus' Ara Pacis,[162]--full of dignity,
but a little wanting in animation.

There is one singular exception to the good manners of the period; but
as the result rather of affectation than of nature, it may help to
prove our rule. Again and again in Plutarch's _Life_ of Cato the
younger the mention of his rudeness proves the strength of the
tradition about him. It was said that this lost him the consulship,
as he declined to make himself agreeable in the style expected from
candidates[163]. Even in a letter to Cicero, an old friend, though not
actually rude, he is absurdly patronising and impertinent to a man
many years his senior, and writes in very bad taste. Probably the
enmity between him and Caesar arose or was confirmed in this way,
as Cato always made a point of being rudest to those whom he most
disliked. He fancied that he was imitating his great ancestor, and
asserting the virtue of good old Roman bluntness against modern Greek
affectation; he did not in the least see that he was himself a curious
example of Roman affectation, shown up by the real amenities of
intercourse, for which Romans had largely to thank Greece[164].

In literature too the average capacity of this aristocracy was high,
though the greatest literary figures of the age, if we except Caesar,
do not, strictly speaking, belong to it; Cicero was a novus homo, and
Lucretius and Catullus were not of the senatorial order. But the new
education, as we shall see later on, was admirably calculated to
train men in the art of speaking and writing, if not in the habit of
independent thinking; and among the nobles who reaped the full fruits
of this education every one could write in Latin and probably also
in Greek, and if he aimed at public distinction, could speak without
disgracing himself in the senate and the courts. Oratory was, in fact,
the staple product of the age, and the chief _raison d'etre_ of its
literary activity. Long ago the practice had begun of writing ou