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1.The Problem
Q. Hortensius Hortalus and M. Tullius Cicero were successively Rome's leading orators.1 Both used their talents over many years to aid a wide variety of defendants before the bar; and, in spite of differences in family background - Hortensius being the scion of families long active in politics, Cicero a novus homo2 -, both staked out, ultimately, very similar positions in Roman politics. The two were also personally acquainted and shared a broadly philhellene outlook; and both published versions of the speeches they had delivered in public. Yet posterity has treated the two men very differently. For Cicero we have a series of portrait busts that go back to an original prepared shortly before his death or posthumously;3 for Hortensius no authentic ancient portrait survives.4 While Quintilian could still read a speech thought to be that of Hortensius (Inst. 10.1.23), he is the last person of whom that can be confidently asserted, the quotations of phrases by the grammarians Charisius and Priscian being probably owed to earlier collections of exempta rather than their own reading.5 Perhaps objective factors were determinative; Cicero asserts dicebat melius quam scripsit Hortensius (Orat. 132), so his value as a model for future generations might have been reduced. Nonetheless the difference is striking: fifty-eight of Cicero's speeches are extant in whole or in substantial part, but no speech of Hortensius has survived; again a substantial theoretical corpus on rhetoric and philosophy has come down to us from Cicero's pen, whereas Hortensius' book on loci communes is known to us by a single brief mention (Quint. Inst. 2.1.11); though the two men's historical writings have perished,6 a fair amount of Cicero's verse survives,7 whereas Hortensius' has disappeared down to a single word;8 finally, a rich collection of Ciceronian letters survives, providing in detail his private views about inter alias Hortensius, his politics and oratory; we have no extant letter by Hortensius. Hence we view Hortensius overwhelmingly through a Ciceronian lens. But Cicero was a professional rival of the older man and by no means immune to jealousy and pettiness. We need to be alive to the possibility that the portrait of Hortensius we have has been crafted in subtle ways to enhance Cicero's own image. The existing studies of...