CAESAR LICINIUS, a Roman orator and poet, born B.C. 82. At a very early age he devoted himself to study with such intensity, that his constitution was prematurely broken, and he died before proper means had been taken for transmitting his various works to posterity. As an orator, he is generally classed with Caesar and Pollio, and has sometimes been compared with Cicero himself. What he really was as an orator cannot now be ascertained, as of the 21 orations which he left behind him at his death only the titles and some small fragments of five have been preserved. One of these against Vatinus is said by Seneca to have produced so strong an effect upon the accused, that before the orator had finished his speech he cried out, "I ask you, judges, if I am to be condemned because my accuser is eloquent?" As a poet he took rank with Catullus, and distinguished himself by his elegies, his epigrams directed against Caesar and Pompey, and his fugitive pieces of wit and humour. These, unfortunately, have all shared the fate of his orations. The year of his death is unknown;

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1 Vit. Calv. sub. fin. This is the principal source for the facts of Calvin's life. Beza's narrative has been expanded and illustrated from other sources by Dr Henry in his Leben Calvins, of which an English translation has appeared in 2 vols. 8vo, by the Rev. H. Stebbing. Audin has written a life of Calvin in French full of misrepresentations and blunders. A highly respectable work has recently appeared on the same subject from the pen of Mr Dyer in 1 vol. 8vo. but we gather from Cicero, that he had not completed his thirty-sixth year.