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Updated: September 19, 2025
Caelius will always repay fresh study; he was amusing and interesting to his contemporaries, and so he will be for ever to us. He is a veritable Proteus you never know what shape he will take next; Omnia transformat sese in miracula rerum we can trace no less than six such transformations in the story of his life.
There was much talent in Caelius, and in accusations chiefly he showed a great urbanity; he was a man worthy of a better mind and a longer life. I have found those who prefer Calvus to any orator; I have found others who thought with Cicero that by too strict criticism of himself he lost real power; but his style is weighty and noble, guarded, and often vehement.
The chief are Polybius, Silenus the Sicilian a friend of Hannibal, Caelius Antipater, Sisenna, Caecilius, Rutilius, and the Fasti, which are now almost or quite continuous; and still further on he followed Posidonius, and perhaps for the Civil Wars Asinius Pollio, Theophanes, and others. There is evidence that these were carefully digested, but by instalments.
The rhetorical education made men good professional orators, but indifferent and dilettante historians, and the example of more accurate historical investigation and reflection set by Polybius was not followed, except perhaps by Caelius Antipater in the Gracchan age.
But this I am able to affirm, that, out of the very small number which I have been able, to trace back to their original authors, I have found two to be wrongly quoted, one of them being a gross misrepresentation. The first is from the ancient Roman author, Caelius Aurelianus; the second from the venerable folio of Forestus.
And yet there had not been even one day in these eight years when Catullus had felt that he and his brother were not as close to each other as in the old Verona days. He had lived constantly with his friends and rarely with his brother, but below even such friendships as those with Caelius and Calvus, Nepos and Cornificius lay the bond of brotherhood.
Caelius' father brought his son to Cicero, as soon as he had taken his toga virilis, to study law and oratory, and Cicero was evidently attracted by the bright and lively boy; he never deserted him, and the last letter of Caelius to his old preceptor was written only just before his own sad end.
There is an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good ones for he has of all sorts where he pleasantly tells the story of Caelius, who, to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to colour this anointed his legs, and had them lapped up in a great many swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make him one indeed: "Quantum curs potest et ars doloris Desiit fingere Caelius podagram."
This may be trustworthy, although the derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is certainly nothing but an improbable conjecture of the archaeologists who busied themselves with legendary parallels.
Caelius said that Curio was violent against him: and so Curio had been. Curio was a young man of high birth, dissolute, extravagant, and clever. His father, who had been consul five-and-twenty years before, was a strong aristocrat and a close friend of Cicero's.
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