Cassius Severus

They say of Severus Cassius that his speeches were better the less he thought about them, that he owed more to luck than to his diligence, and that he benefited from getting worked up while he spoke, to the extent that his opponents made sure not to provoke him for fear that anger should make him twice as eloquent.

This natural disposition of which I speak does not need to be goaded and spurred on by strong emotions, like Cassius’s anger (because that energy would be too rough).

Cassius Severus, a man of great eloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books burned, cried out that by the same sentence they should as well condemn him to the fire too, seeing that he carried in his memory all that they contained.