called consequently Marius Gratidianus. His style of eloquence
was best suited for noisy crowds on the Forum, ¹ but not for re-
fined ears. This popular politician, whose name was one of his
chief assets, as praetor resorted to a politician's trick to outdis-
tance his colleagues in the pursuit of public favor. There were
then in currency many coins, particularly denarii, much below
the standard of weight. Thereupon all the praetors took steps to
settle this matter by an edictum (or proclamation) which was to
be officially issued at a certain hour, but Marius Gratidianus,
straight from the private conference, proceeded to the Rostra,
where personally and alone he issued this important official
announcement. ² So lively was the gratitude of the public, that
statues were erected in his honor. In the last years of his life
Cicero condemned the morality of this personal action; still even
then he referred to him as a kinsman (noster Gratidius). All
this must have greatly stirred the little Arpinatian family
circle in the Carinae.

About this time i.e. when Cicero was 20-21 (Off. 2, 87) he made a
Latin translation of Xenophon Oeconomicus, a notable production in
the eyes of Jerome as late as 380 A. D., after his version of Aratos, the
latter affirms. Did Jerome transcribe from Suetonius? Perhaps the
third book, dealing with agriculture, was the most important in the esti-
mation of Roman readers. We notice that Cicero published it: originally
it was conceived as an important exercise in Latin expression. With the
active ambition, never merely dormant in Cicero's breast, the step from
production to publication was probably made without much hesitation.
The young scholar, still barred from practical oratory and filled with a
consuming desire to have his name noted and known, decided to make a
book in Latin, dealing with the theory of Rhetoric at large. And before
and during this time his professional and cultural industry moved forward
incessantly. Many things in the passages of De Oratore which are put
into the mouth of the orator Crassus, must really be understood as auto-
biographical of Cicero himself and describing in a way his own making,
e.g. de Or. 1, 154 "in daily notes with my pen (commentationibus) as a
young person I was wont to set before me that training particularly
. . . having taken some lines from a poet, lines pre-eminent for weighty
meaning or having read some speech to a point of extent which I could
comprehend in memory, I reproduced the very subject-matter which I
had read (but) with different words and as choice words as I possibly
could. But afterwards I observed that this procedure had this fault,
that those words which were most specifically suitable, had been 1 appropri-

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