the author's
great imaginative powers and his keen observation of nature and human
life. Lucretius made the Latin hexameter a fitting medium for the
expression of sustained and lofty thought.

*Oratory.* It was through the study and practice of oratory that Roman
prose attained its perfection between the time of the Gracchi and Julius
Caesar. Political and legal orations were weapons in the party strife of
the day and were frequently polished and edited as political pamphlets.
Along with political documents of this type appeared orations that were
not written to be delivered in the forum or senate chamber but were
addressed solely to a reading public. Among the great forensic orators of
the age were the two Gracchi, of whom the younger, Caius, had the
reputation of being the most effective speaker that Rome ever knew. Others
of note were Marcus Antonius, grandfather of the triumvir, Lucius Licinius
Crassus, and Quintus Hortensius Hortalus. But it was Cicero who brought to
its perfection the Roman oration in its literary form.

*Cicero, 106-43 B. C.* Cicero was beyond question the intellectual leader
of his day. He was above all things an orator and until past the age of
fifty his literary productivity was almost entirely in that field. In his
latter years he undertook the great task of making Hellenistic philosophy
accessible to the Roman world through the medium of Latin prose. In
addition to his speeches and oratorical and philosophic treatises Cicero
left to posterity a great collection of letters which were collected and
published after his death by his freedman secretary. His correspondence
with his friends is a mine of information for the student of society and
politics in the last century of the republic.

*Caesar, 100-44 B. C.* Julius Caesar made his genius felt in the world of
letters as well as of politics. Though an orator of high rank, he is
better known as the author of his lucid commentaries on the Gallic war and
on the Civil war, which present the view that he desired the Roman public
to take of his conflict with the senate.

*Sallust, 86-36 B. C.* Foremost among historical writers of the period was
Caius Sallustius Crispus, "the first scientific Roman historian."
Subsequent generations ranked him as the greatest Roman historian. His
chief work, a history of the period 78-67 B. C., is almost entirely lost,
but two shorter studies on the Jugurthine war and Cataline's conspiracy
have been preserved. In