HORTENSIUS, QUINTUS, one of the greatest orators of Rome, was born of an equestrian family, B.C. 114. At the early age of nineteen he appeared in the forum, and distinguished himself so as to attract the notice of the consuls Scævola and Crassus, the former the greatest jurist, and the latter the greatest orator of that day. Attaching himself to the Sullan faction, he found ample scope for his professional services in defending the numerous adherents of that party who were tried for misgovernment or extortion in their provinces. His success in these trials was so great that till the appearance of Cicero he was called the "rex iudiciorum;" but Hortensius was never very scrupulous as to the means he took to secure a verdict in favour of his clients. Extant evidence proves that he was only too well acquainted with all the arts of bribery, and that he often practised them in flagrant defiance of justice. Though both at the bar, as well as in politics, Hortensius was always opposed to Cicero, yet in private life the rivals seem to have been on terms of intimacy, if not of friendship, with each other. On Cicero's side, however, the friendship seems never to have been wholly cordial. Perhaps friendship was impossible to a man of so suspicious and irritable a temper as he. At all events, when Cicero was obliged to leave Rome after failing in his impeachment of Clodius, he suspected that Hortensius had a share in procuring his exile, and censured this supposed duplicity in no measured terms. All the efforts of Atticus to undeceive him failed, and it was only after his return that he acknowledged the groundlessness of his suspicions. For ten years before his death Hortensius had retired from political life, and confined himself to his practice as an advocate. He had gone through the usual career of public office; and had distinguished himself by the almost unparalleled splendour of the games which he celebrated when quaestor, ædile, and prator. His luxurious tastes and habits remained with him to the last; and as his professional gains were enormous, he had ample means of gratifying them. He lived in a style not inferior to Lucullus; and his villas at Baui, Tusculum, and Laurentum were proverbially magnificent. He died B.C. 50, two years before the final overthrow of the Republic. Cicero remarked it as of a piece with Hortensius' usual good luck that he had been spared the pain of seeing this catastrophe completed. He is mentioned by Cicero and Quintilian as the author of Orationes and Annals, which have all perished. He also wrote love songs, some of them not very decent. Nearly all that is known of Hortensius is gathered from the works of his friend and rival Cicero. An analysis of his genius as an orator is given by Cicero in his Brutus, and in the opening chapters of the De Claris Oratoribus.