Today we would call Cicero’s self-promotion efforts over the top—for example, writing to beg a historian to write an account extolling how well he put down the Catiline’s conspiracy: “I have a very strong, and, I trust, a very pardonable passion, of being celebrated in your writings. . . . I hope you will excuse my impatience. . . . [I have] the most ardent desire of being immediately distinguished in your glorious annals.”36
