- Edition: Julius Caesar
Life of Caesar
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3III. Afterwards when Sylla's power began to decay, Caesar's friends wrote unto him, to pray him to come home again. But he sailed first unto Rhodes, to study there a time under Apollonius the son of Molon, whose scholar also Cicero was, for he was a very honest man and an excellent good rhetorician. It is reported, that
Caesar's eloquence.
Caesar had an excellent natural gift to speak well before the people; and besides that rare gift, he was excellently well studied, so that doubtless he was counted the second man for eloquence in his time, and gave place to the first, because he would be the first and chiefest man of war and authority, being not yet come to the degree of perfection to speak well, which his nature could have performed in him, because he was given rather to follow wars and to manage great matters, which in the end brought him to be lord of all Rome. And therefore in a book he wrote against that which Cicero made in the praise of Cato, he prayeth the readers not to compare the style of a soldier with the eloquence of an excellent orator, that had followed it the most part of his life.