ANTONIUS, MARCUS, a famous Roman orator. While he filled the office of pretor, Sicily fell to his lot, and he cleared the seas of the pirates which infested that coast. He was made consul with A. Posthumius Albinus, in the year of Rome 658, when he opposed the turbulent designs of Sextus Titus, tribune of the people, with great resolution and success. Some time after he was made governor of Cilicia, in quality of proconsul, where he performed so many great exploits that he obtained the honour of a triumph. We cannot omit observing, that in order to improve his great talent for eloquence, he became a scholar to the greatest men at Rhodes and Athens, in his way to Cilicia, and when on his return to Rome. Soon after he was appointed censor, which office he dis-
charged with great reputation, having carried his cause Antonius before the people, against Marcus Duronius, who had preferred an accusation of bribery against him, in revenge for Antonius's having erased his name out of the list of senators, which this wise censor had done because Duronius, when tribune of the people, had abrogated a law which restrained immoderate expence in feasts. He was one of the greatest orators ever known at Rome; and it was owing to him, according to the testimony of Cicero, that Rome might boast herself a rival even to Greece itself in the art of eloquence. He never would publish any of his pleadings, that he might not as he said, be proved to say in one cause what might be contrary to what he should advance in another. He was unfortunately killed during those bloody confusions raised at Rome by Marius and Cinna. He was discovered in the place where he had hid himself, and soldiers were sent to dispatch him; but his manner of addressing them had such an effect, that none but he who commanded them, and had not heard his discourse, had the cruelty to kill him. His head was exposed before the rostra, a place which he had adorned with his triumphal spoils. This happened 90 years before the Christian era.