Atticus had sent him a memoir, also written in Greek, on the same subject, and the two packets had crossed each other on the road.

He candidly tells Atticus that his attempt seems to be "horridula atque incompta," rough and unpolished; whereas Posidonius, the great Greek critic of Rhodes who had been invited by him, Cicero, to read the memoir, and then himself to treat the same subject, had replied that he was altogether debarred from such an attempt by the excellence of his correspondent's performance.[244] He also wrote three books of a poem on his Consulate, and sent them to Atticus; of which we have a fragment of seventy-five lines quoted by himself,[243] and four or five other lines including that unfortunate verse handed down by Quintilian, "O fortunatum natam me consule Romam"-- unless, indeed, it be spurious, as is suggested by that excellent critic and whole-hearted friend of the orator's, M.Gueroult.Previous to these he had produced in hexameters, also, a translation of the Prognostics of Aratus.

This is the second part of a poem on the heavenly bodies, the first part, the Phaenomena, having been turned into Latin verse by him when he was eighteen.

Of the Prognostics we have only a few lines preserved by Priscian, and a passage repeated by the author, also in his De Divinatione.

I think that Cicero was capable of producing a poem quite worthy of preservation; but in the work of this year the subjects chosen were not alluring.
[Sidenote: B.C.60, aetat.