with a purity and distinction that no one else could equal. And along
with this quality, the _mira elegantia_ of Quintilian, his oratory had
some kind of severe magnificence which we can partly guess at from his
extant writings--_magnifica et generosa_, says Cicero; _facultas dicendi
imperatoria_ is the phrase of a later and able critic.

Of Caesar's other lost writings little need be said. In youth, like most
of his contemporaries, he wrote poems, including a tragedy, of which
Tacitus drily observes that they were not better than those of Cicero. A
grammatical treatise, _De Analogia_, was composed by him during one of
his long journeys between Northern Italy and the headquarters of his army
in Gaul during his proconsulate. A work on astronomy, apparently written
in connection with his reform of the calendar, two pamphlets attacking
Cato, and a collection of apophthegms, have also disappeared. But we
possess what were by far the most important of his writings, his famous
memoirs of the Gallic and Civil Wars.

The seven books of _Commentaries on the Gallic War_ were written in
Caesar's winter quarters in Gaul, after the capture of Alesia and the
final suppression of the Arvernian revolt. They were primarily intended
to serve an immediate political purpose, and are indeed a defence, framed
with the most consummate skill, of the author's whole Gallic policy and
of his constitutional position. That Caesar was able to do this without,
so far as can be judged, violating, or even to any large degree
suppressing facts, does equal credit to the clear-sightedness of his
policy and to his extraordinary literary power. From first to last there
is not a word either of self-laudation or of innuendo; yet at the end we
find that, by the use of the simplest and most lucid narration, in which
hardly a fact or a detail can be controverted, Caesar has cleared his
motives and justified his conduct with a success the more complete