Hortensius has received more justice from Cicero than another orator, Licinius Calvus, who, for a few years, was also considered as his rival in eloquence. Calvus has already been mentioned as an elegant poet; but Seneca calls his competition with Cicero in oratory, _iniquissimam litem_. His style of speaking was directly the reverse of that of Hortensius: he affected the Attic taste in eloquence, such as it appeared in what he conceived to be its purest form--the orations of Lysias. Hence that correct and slender delicacy at which he so studiously aimed, and which he conducted with great skill and elegance; but, from being too much afraid of the faults of redundance and unsuitable ornament, he refined and attenuated his discourse till it lost its raciness and spirit. He compensated, however, for his sterility of language, and diminutive figure, by his force of elocution, and vivacity of action. "I have met with persons," says Quintilian, "who preferred Calvus to all our orators; and others who were of opinion, that the too great rigour which he exercised on himself, in point of precision, had debilitated his oratorical talents. Nevertheless, his speeches, though chaste, grave, and correct, are frequently also vehement. His taste of writing was Attic; and his untimely death was an injury to his reputation, if he designed to add to his compositions, and not to retrench them." His most celebrated oration, which was against the unpopular Vatinius, was delivered at the age of twenty. The person whom he accused, overpowered and alarmed, interrupted him, by exclaiming to the judges, "Must I be condemned because he is eloquent?" The applause he obtained in this case may be judged of from what is mentioned by Catullus, of some one in the crowd clapping his hands in the middle of his speech, and exclaiming, "O what an eloquent little darling(290)!" Calvus survived only ten years after this period, having died at the early age of thirty. He left behind him twenty-one books of orations, which are said to have been much studied by the younger Pliny, and were the models he first imitated(291).
Calvus, though a much younger man than Cicero, died many years before him, and previous to the composition of the dialogue _Brutus_. Most of the other contemporaries, whom Cicero records in that treatise on celebrated orators, were dead also. Among an infinite variety of others, he particularly mentions Marcus Crassus, the wealthy triumvir, who perished in the ill-fated expedition against the Parthians; and who, though possessed but of moderate learning and capacity, was accounted, in consequence of his industry and popular arts, among the chief forensic patrons. His language was pure, and his subject well arranged; but in his harangues there were none of the lights and flowers of eloquence,--all things were expressed in the same manner, and the same tone.