Plutarch · a new plain-English translation from the original language
As for what is worth remembering in the accounts told of Demosthenes and Cicero, this has now come to our knowledge; but setting aside the comparison of their ability in speeches, I think I should not pass over in silence this: that Demosthenes strained toward oratory every gift he had, whether from nature or from training, surpassing in vividness and force those who competed with him in contests and lawsuits, in grandeur and magnificence the display-orators, and in precision and technique the sophists;
whereas Cicero, having become a man of wide learning and varied application in his devotion to speech, left to posterity quite a number of philosophical works composed by his own hand, following the Academy's approach; yet even in the speeches he wrote for trials and contests, he clearly wished to display some acquaintance with letters.
There is also a certain difference of character visible in the speeches of each. For the Demosthenic style, kept entirely free of ornament and playfulness, is drawn together into force and earnestness, and does not smell of the lamp-oil, as Pytheas mocked it, but rather of water-drinking, of careful thought, and of the reputed bitterness and grimness of his manner,
whereas Cicero, often carried by his fondness for mockery into buffoonery, and treating in his lawsuits matters worthy of seriousness with laughter and jest in an ironical way, disregarded propriety for the sake of expediency—as in his defense of Caelius, where he claimed there was nothing strange in the man indulging in pleasures amid such luxury and extravagance, since it is madness not to partake of what is permitted, especially when the most eminent philosophers place happiness in pleasure.
It is said that when Cicero, as consul, was defending a man prosecuted by Cato, and made many jokes at Cato's expense mocking the Stoic school for the absurdity of its paradoxical doctrines, and a great burst of laughter came down from the bystanders upon the judges, Cato, smiling quietly, said to those sitting near him, "What a ridiculous consul we have, gentlemen."
Cicero seems indeed to have been naturally inclined to laughter and fond of jesting, and his face wore a look of smiling calm, whereas upon Demosthenes there always lay a certain seriousness, and this pensive and thoughtful cast he did not easily set aside; for which reason his enemies called him difficult and ill-tempered, as he himself says.
Furthermore, one may observe in their writings that the one touches on praise of himself gracefully and without giving offense, whenever this was needed for some other, greater purpose, and is otherwise cautious and moderate; whereas Cicero's immoderate self-praise in his speeches revealed a certain lack of self-control in his desire for reputation, as when he shouted that arms ought to yield to the toga and the tongue to the triumphal laurel.
In the end his self-praise extended beyond what he had done and accomplished to encompass the very speeches he had spoken and composed, as though vying boyishly with the sophists Isocrates and Anaximenes, rather than aiming to lead and set upright the Roman people—weighty, warlike, a wrestler in arms, dreadful to his rivals.
For while it is necessary for the statesman to be strong through speech, it is ignoble to delight in and hanker after the reputation that comes from speech. In this respect Demosthenes is weightier and more magnificent, declaring his own ability to be a kind of skill requiring much goodwill from his hearers, and considering those who prided themselves on it to be, as indeed they are, illiberal and vulgar,
Now the capacity for public speaking and statesmanship existed equally in both men, so that even those in command of arms and armies had need of them—Demosthenes of Chares, Diopeithes, and Leosthenes; Cicero of Pompey and the young Caesar, according to what Caesar himself relates in the memoirs he dedicated to Agrippa and Maecenas.
But that which most seems, and is said, to reveal and test a man's character—power and office, which stir every passion and expose every vice—this Demosthenes never had, nor did he give such a trial of himself, having held no prominent office, since he did not even command in the field the force he himself had organized against Philip;
whereas Cicero, dispatched as quaestor to Sicily and later as proconsul over Cilicia and Cappadocia, during an era when greed for riches had reached its peak, and when the generals and governors sent out, thinking mere theft ignoble, turned to outright plunder, so that taking bribes did not seem terrible but the man who did it moderately was even loved—Cicero made great display of his contempt for money, and great display of kindness and generosity.
And in Rome itself, having been appointed consul in name but given the authority of an absolute commander and dictator against the followers of Catiline, he bore witness together with Plato's prophecy that cities would find respite from evils when, by some good fortune, great power and wisdom should meet together with justice in the same persons.
As for making money from speech, Demosthenes is spoken of with reproach, for secretly writing speeches for the opponents of Phormio and Apollodorus, and for being accused in the matter of the king's money, and being convicted in the Harpalus affair. But even granting that those who put these charges in writing—and there are quite a number of them—are guilty of falsehood,
still it is impossible to deny that Demosthenes would not have dared to look with indifference upon gifts given by kings with favor and honor, nor was this the conduct of a man who lent money on maritime ventures; whereas concerning Cicero it has been said that he resisted, both when he was market-overseer for the Sicilians and proconsul for the king of the Cappadocians, and when his friends in Rome, at the time he was driven from the city, offered him much and begged him to accept it.
And indeed exile befell the one shamefully, as a man convicted of theft, but the other as a man who had cut out the most wicked citizens from his country in the noblest of deeds; for which reason no one spoke a word for the one when he was driven out, whereas for the other the Senate changed its dress and went into mourning, and was persuaded to vote on behalf of no one else before voting Cicero's return.
Cicero, however, spent his exile idly, sitting in Macedonia, whereas for Demosthenes exile too became a great part of his statesmanship. For, as has been said, striving alongside the Greeks and driving out the envoys of the Macedonians, he went about the cities, proving himself, under similar misfortunes, a citizen considerably superior to Themistocles or Alcibiades; and indeed, on returning, he gave himself again to this same statesmanship, and continued warring against Antipater and the Macedonians.
Cicero, by contrast, was reproached in the Senate by Laelius, when Caesar—not yet bearded—asked leave to stand for the consulship contrary to law, and Cicero sat in silence. Brutus too wrote, accusing him of having fostered a tyranny greater and heavier than the one he himself had overthrown.
At the end, as for their deaths, one might pity the one—an old man, through lack of spirit carried this way and that by his servants, fleeing death and hiding from men who came against him not long before nature would have taken him anyway—and then being cut down; whereas for the other, even if he yielded a little in his supplication, admirable was the preparation and keeping of the poison, and admirable its use, since when the god did not grant him sanctuary, he went off as though taking refuge at a greater altar, having freed himself from the weapons and the spearmen, laughing at the cruelty of Antipater.