gave weight and lustre to his family. _Life of Galba_, s.
iii.

[b] Caius Papirius Carbo was consul A.U.C. 634. Cicero wishes that he
had proved himself as good a citizen, as he was an orator. Being
impeached for his turbulent and seditious conduct, he did not choose
to stand the event of a trial, but escaped the judgement of the
senate by a voluntary death. His life was spent in forensic causes.
Men of sense, who heard him have reported, that he was a fluent,
animated, and harmonious speaker; at times pathetic, always pleasing,
and abounding with wit. _Carbo, quoad vita suppeditavit, est in multis
judiciis causisque cognitus. Hunc qui audierant prudentes homines,
canorum oratorem, et volubilem, et satis acrem, atque eundem et
vehementem, et valde dulcem, et perfacetum fuisse dicebant._ _De Claris
Orat._ s. 105.

[c] Calvus and Caelius have been mentioned already. See s. xvii. note
[c].

[d] Caius Gracchus was tribune of the people A.U.C. 633. In that
character he took the popular side against the patricians; and,
pursuing the plan of the agrarian law laid down by his brother,
Tiberius Gracchus, he was able by his eloquence to keep the city of
Rome in violent agitation. Amidst the tumult, the senate, by a decree,
ordered the consul, Lucius Opimius, _to take care that the
commonwealth received no injury_; and, says Cicero, not a single night
intervened, before that magistrate put Gracchus to death. _Decrevit
senatus, ut Lucius Opimius, consul, videret, ne quid detrimenti
respublica caperet: nox nulla intercessit; interfectus est propter
quasdam seditionum suspiciones Caius Gracchus, clarissimo patre natus,
avis majoribus. Orat. i. in Catilinam._ His reputation as an orator
towers above all his contemporaries. Cicero says, the commonwealth and
the interests of literature suffered greatly by his untimely end. He
wishes that the love of his country, and not zeal for the memory of
his brother, had inspired his actions. His eloquence was such as left
him without a rival: in his diction, what a noble splendour! in his
sentiments, what elevation! and in the whole of his manner, what
weight and dignity! His compositions, it is true, are not retouched
with care; they want the polish of the last hand; what is well begun,
is seldom highly finished; and yet he, if any one, deserves to be the
study of the Roman youth. In him they will find what can, at once,
quicken their genius, and enrich the understanding. _Damnum enim,
illi