Hortensius
Quintus.
1.
A celebrated orator, who began to distinguish himself by his eloquence in the Roman Forum
at the age of nineteen. He was born of a plebeian family, B.C. 114, eight years before
Cicero. He served at first as a common soldier, and afterwards as military tribune, in the
Social War. In the contest between Marius and Sulla he remained neutral, and was one of the
twenty quaestors established by Sulla. He afterwards obtained in succession the offices of
aedile, praetor, and consul. As an orator he for a long time shared the reputation of Cicero;
but, as his orations are lost, we can only judge of him by the account which his rival gives
of his abilities. “Nature had given him,” says Cicero, in his
Brutus (Brutush 88), “so splendid a memory that he never had any
need of committing to writing any discourse which he had thought over; while, after his
opponent had finished speaking, he could recall, word by word, not only what the other had
said, but also the authorities which had been cited against himself. His industry was
indefatigable. He never let a day pass without speaking in the Forum, or preparing
himself to appear on the morrow; oftentimes he did both. He excelled particularly in the art
of dividing his subject, and in then reuniting it in a luminous manner, adapting, at the same
time, even some of the arguments which had been urged against him. His diction was noble,
elegant, and rich; his voice strong and pleasing; his gestures carefully studied.”
The eloquence of Hortensius would seem, in fact, to have been of the showy species called
Asiatic, which flourished in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, and was infinitely more florid
and ornamental than the oratory of Athens, or even of Rhodes, being full of brilliant
thoughts and sparkling expressions. This glowing style of rhetoric, though deficient in
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Hortensius. (Villa Albani, Rome.)
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solidity and weight, was not unsuitable in a young man; and, being further
recommended by a beantiful cadence of periods, met with great applause. But Hortensius, as he
advanced in life, did not correct this exuberance; and his somewhat tawdry taste in
phraseology, which, even in his earliest years, had occasionally excited ridicule among the
senators, being now totally inconsistent with his advanced age and dignity, his reputation in
consequence waned. Possibly, too, from his declining health and strength, which greatly
failed in his latter years, he may not have been able to give its full effect to that showy
rhetoric in which he had indulged. A constant toothache and swelling in the jaws greatly
impaired his powers of elocution and utterance, and became at length so severe as to
accelerate his end. A few months, however, before his death, which happened in B.C. 50, he
pleaded for his nephew Messala, who was accused of illegal canvassing, and acquitted more in
consequence of the exertions of his uncle than the justice of his cause. So discreditable,
indeed, was the case esteemed that, though the speech of Hortensius had
been much admired, he was received, on entering the theatre on the following day, with loud
hisses (
Ad Fam. viii. 2). The speech, however, revived all the admiration of
the public for his oratorical talents, and convinced them that, had he possessed the same
perseverance as Cicero, he would not have been inferior to that orator.
It appears from Macrobius that Hortensius was much ridiculed by his contemporaries on
account of his affected gestures. In pleading, his hands were constantly in motion, whence he
was often attacked by his adversaries in the Forum for resembling an actor; and on one
occasion he received from his opponent the appellation of Dionysia, the name of a celebrated
dancing-girl (Aul. Gell. i. 5). The actors Aesopus and Roscius frequently attended his
pleadings to catch his gestures and imitate them on the stage (Val. Max. viii. 10). Such,
indeed, was his exertion in action that it was commonly said that it could not be determined
whether people went to hear or to see him. Like Demosthenes, he selected and put on his dress
with the most studied care and neatness. He is said not only to have prearranged his
gestures, but also to have adjusted the folds of his toga before a mirror when about to go to
the Forum. He so arranged his gown that the folds did not fall by chance, but were formed
with great care by help of a knot carefully tied and concealed by his robe, which apparently
flowed carelessly around him (Macrob.
Sat. iii. 13). Macrobius also records a story of his instituting an
action of damages against a person who had jostled him while walking in this elaborate dress,
and had ruffled his toga when he was about to appear in public with his drapery adjusted
according to his favourite arrangement.
Hortensius stood, for thirteen years, at the head of the Roman bar; and being, in
consequence, engaged during that long period on one side or other in every case of
importance, he soon amassed an enormous fortune. He lived, too, with a magnificence
corresponding to his wealth. His house at Rome formed the nucleus of the imperial palace,
which was enlarged from the time of Augustus to that of Nero, till it nearly covered the
whole Palatine Mount and branched over other hills. (See
Palatium.) Besides his mansion in Rome, he possessed villas at Tusculum, Bauli, and
Laurentum, where he was accustomed to give the most elegant and elaborate entertainments. His
olive plantations he is said to have regularly moistened with wine; and, on one occasion,
during the hearing of an important case in which he was engaged with Cicero, he begged the
latter to change with him the previously arranged order of pleading, as he was obliged to go
to the country to pour wine on a favourite plane-tree, which grew near his Tusculan villa
(Macrob.
Sat. iii. 13). Notwithstanding this profusion, his heir found no less
than 10,000 casks of wine in his cellar after his death (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xiv. 14). Besides his taste for wine and fondness for
plantations, he indulged in a passion for pictures and fish-ponds. At his Tusculan villa he
built a hall for the reception of a painting of the expedition of the Argonauts, by the
painter Cydias , which cost the sum of 144,000 sesterces. At his country-seat near Bauli, on
the sea-shore, he vied with Lucullus and Philippus in the extent of his fish-ponds, which
were constructed at an immense cost, and so formed that the tide flowed into them
(Varr.
R. R. iii. 3); yet such was his reluctance to diminish the supply that
when he gave entertainments at Bauli he generally sent to the neighbouring town of Puteoli to
buy the fish; and Varro declares that a friend could more easily get his chariot-mules out of
his stable than a mullet from his ponds. He was more anxious about the welfare of his fish
than the health of his slaves, and less solicitous that a sick servant might not take what
was unfit for him than that his fish might not drink water which was unwholesome. It is even
said (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. ix. 55) that he was
so passionately fond of a particular lamprey as to shed tears for its untimely death. At his
Laurentan villa, Hortensius had a wooded park of fifty acres encompassed with a wall. This
enclosure he called a nursery of wild beasts, all of which came for their food at a certain
hour on the blowing of a horn. See Forsyth,
Hortensius (London,
1879).
2.
Son of the preceding, called also
Hortălus, a dissipated person who fought on Caesar's side in the Civil War.
In B.C. 44, after Caesar's death, he joined Brutus and put to death C. Antonius, brother of
the triumvir. After the battle of Philippi, Hortalus was himself taken and slain.
