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For in the twenty-second book of his Moral Epistles, which he addressed to Lucilius, he says pp. 610 f. Hense; except for these fragments, only twenty books have come down to us. that the following verses which Quintus Ennius wrote Ann. 306 ff., Vahlen2; quoted by Cicero, Brut. 58. about Cethegus, a man of the olden time, are absurd: He by his fellow citizens was called, By every man who lived and flourished then, The people's chosen flower, Persuasion's marrow. He then wrote the following about these lines: I am surprised that men of great eloquence, devoted to Ennius, have praised those absurd verses as his best. Cicero, at any rate, includes them among examples of his good verses. Cic. Brut. 58. He then goes on to say of Cicero: I am not surprised that there existed a man who could write such verses, when there existed a man who could praise them; unless haply Cicero, that great orator, was pleading his own cause and wished his own verse to appear excellent. Later he adds this very stupid remark: In Cicero himself too you will find, even in his prose writings, some things which will show that he did not lose his labour when he read Ennius. Then he cites passages from Cicero which he criticizes as taken from Ennius; for example, when Cicero wrote as follows in his Republic: V. 9, 11. As Menelaus, the Laconian, had a kind of sweet-speaking charm, and said in another place: he cultivates brevity of speech in his oratory. And then that trifler apologizes for what he considers Cicero's errors, saying: This was not the fault of Cicero, but of the times; it was necessary to say such things when such verses were read. Then he adds that Cicero inserted these very things in order to escape the charge of being too diffuse and ornamental in his style.
