A Changing Order

THE warm partisans of Cicero have at all times been sorely exercised because he displayed so little of the traditional Roman dignity and fortitude during the fifteen months of his exile. There is no denying the fact. He was not a hero at that time, or, at all events, he took no pains to behave like one. It was his first great reverse, and he bore it very impatiently. His heart was bursting with solicitude for the family from whom he had been so rudely torn ; with amazement at the success of the plot for his destruction; with wrath against the half-hearted friends, political and personal, who had basely, as it then seemed, abandoned him at the last. He did not learn the full extent of his calamity until some days after he had quitted Rome. Loitering with his attendants along the coast below Naples, still hoping for an immediate recall, but intending, if need were, to cross over to Sicily, where he thought he could rely on the friendship of the people, the tidings reached him, in rapid succession, that he had been proscribed by name, that he was forbidden to halt within four hundred miles of Rome, that it would be held a capital offense for any one to harbor or assist him, that the governor of Sicily would not permit him to land upon that island, and, finally, of the ruthless destruction of his property. Pecuniary ruin — or what then seemed inevitably such — was now added to his other causes of distress, and he would not have been the man whose acute sensibilities and vehement candor are among the traits which most move us to sympathy, if his lamentations had not been loud and his reproaches bitter. The latter were, in the beginning, quite indiscriminate, and in many cases palpably unjust. Cicero darkly hints at the invidiam of Hortensius as well as the perfidiam of Pompey, and reviles his beloved Atticus for not having allowed him to commit suicide, until human nature, one would think, could hardly have suppressed the retort that self-destruction was, after all, a resource of which no friend or enemy could deprive him, and a remedy still within his reach. The tolerant Athenian said nothing half so unkind. The two friends may well have smiled together over these unreasonable letters in later years ; but for the moment Atticus confined himself to providing that neither the exile on his travels, nor the wife and children left in so painful and even perilous a position in Rome, should suffer for the lack of ready money. He could manage this easily enough, having, in addition to his own large fortune, fallen heir, at about this time, to the name and estates of his rich uncle, Cæcilius. But what a rare and excellent sort of friend to possess !

What really hindered Cicero from taking his own life, in that black hour, was not fear, for he was no coward, least of all when his heart was hot. It was, as we learn abundantly from the letters of this period to his wife and his brother, his intense realization of what they, his family, must suffer in such a case. It was a scruple quite as alien to his race and time as fear, but as Anthony Trollope says, somewhere in his admirable and never half - appreciated life of Cicero, we love this Roman most of all because he was so unlike the popular idea of a Roman.

The impassioned and exceeding tenderness of the letters written, at this period, by Cicero to his wife is in strange contrast with what we know of subsequent events ; with the fatal chill that came over their relations, the discord whose causes were so proudly concealed, their ultimate separation after more than twenty years of honorable married life. If Mr. Froude, whose antagonism to Cicero is so pronounced a sentiment could have been the literary executor of this famous pair, we might have known the whole story, — possibly even more than the whole; but it would perhaps have been no better for the world. Meanwhile. these are the terms in which, on the last day of April, 696, Cicero addressed his family from Brindisi: —

“ Tully to his Tcrentia, his Tulliola, and his Cicero : Yes, it is true, I have not written as often as I might; and the reason is that, while I am wretched enough all the time, I get such a fit of weeping when I either read your letters, or attempt writing to you, that I positively cannot bear it. Ah, if I had but loved life less, I should have known little or no evil in it! If fortune have in store for us any revival of hope, I shall not have done ill [to live] ; but if these woes are irremediable, then all I can desire, my own, is to see you as soon as may be, and to die in your arms. For it will seem that the gods whom you have so devoutly worshiped, and the men whom I have so unremittingly served, are equally ungrateful.” Most inconsistently, he goes on to relate with what a noble contempt for his own personal risk one M. Lænius Flaccus had entertained him for a fortnight at Brindisi, and he only hopes he may be able some time to give substantial proof of his gratitude. “ I now intend,” he proceeds, “ to go to Cyzicus by way of Macedonia. Wretched, ruined man that I am, can I ask you to come to me, — you, with your fragile health and prostrated by anxiety ? How can I not ask it, — how live without you ? And yet, so far as I can see, this will be best: if there be any chance of my restoration, you can strengthen and promote it where you are ; but if, as I fear, all is indeed over, then come to me in the way you best can. Of one thing you may be sure : I shall not feel that I am utterly destroyed, if I have you. But what will become of our darling Tullia ? You must decide ; I cannot. Certainly, whatever happens, we must think of her conjugal happiness, poor girl, and of her good name. I hope you are right in believing that Piso ¹ will remain true to us.” Then follow some words about their money difficulties ; and “ for the rest, my Tcrentia, bear up bravely, as it is your nature to do. We have lived uprightly; we have been very prosperous. It is our virtues, not our vices, which have brought us to this pass.” Then he tells how devoted the three slaves have been who had gone with him as body servants, and finally, “ Take all possible care of your health, and remember that your sufferings are much worse for me to bear than my own. My Terentia, best and truest of wives, my dearest daughter, and little Cicero, our only hope, farewell.”

Atticus had begged Cicero to take possession of his own castle, or fortified country-house, at Buthrotum, in Epirus ; but Cicero declined, partly because, as he says, that place without his friend would be sadder to him than any other, and partly because he thought it too accessible from Athens, where he had powerful enemies. Instead, after crossing to Dyrrachium, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, he moved on, over the mountainous country, as far as Thessalonica, in Macedonia, where the quæstor, Cnæus Plancius, received him very warmly, and made every possible provision for his comfort. Of this good friend, at least, he was able well to repay the kindness, when, six years later, he defended him on a malicious charge of illegal practices in suing for the ædileship. Very skillfully, in the peroration to the speech for Plancius, did Cicero refer to the disinterestedness of the quæstor, and the affecting circumstances of their meeting in Macedonia : —

“ Oh, sorrowful vigils in your house, Cnæus Plancius ! Oh, tearful passage of the bitter night! Oh, fatal, indeed, the cares you lavished upon me, if, living, I could fail you who might well have profited by my death! I remember, I remember, — can I ever forget it ? — one night in particular, when you sat, full of sorrow, by my bedside, and I, poor soul, flattered by I know not what vain and empty hope, vowed that if ever I were restored to my country, I would reward your goodness; or, if I died, or were in any other way prevented, I pledged these very men here present — for whom else had I in my mind ? ” (and he indicated the jury) — “ to discharge on my behalf, and to the uttermost, my great obligation to you ! ”

Plancius was acquitted, of course. Hard-hearted though the Romans were, as a rule, they must thoroughly have enjoyed this kind of appeal to their feelings, or their orators would not have essayed it so often. They were much of the temper, no doubt, of those two excellent old French ladies, who used to seat themselves comfortably in the front of their box at the beginning of a tragedy, and spread out their fine cambric pockethandkerchiefs with the contented remark, “ Nous allons bien pleurer.”

Cicero remained in Thessalonica from June to November of the year 697. His friends were all the while working for his recall, and the stars worked also, through the discovery of a plot of Clodius against the life of Pompey, and the election at midsummer, for the ensuing year, of two comparatively respectable consuls, one of whom, P. Lentulus Spinther, was a particular friend of Cicero. So long, however, as Clodius remained tribune of the people, he was able, by his intrigues and his ascendency over the rabble, promptly to defeat all action on Cicero’s behalf, and the exile remained, for the most part, profoundly depressed. On the 16th of September, he writes to Atticus, that since the exconsul Piso has got Macedonia for his province he will have to remove from Thessalonica, and he thinks he will return to Epirus, where he hopes that his friend will at least assign him land enough for a grave ; and in his letter of October 5th to his family there is a very pathetic passage, which recalls the sharp cry once forced from the lips of another exile, whom nobody ever accused of weakness, — from Joseph de Maistre, at St. Petersburg : “ Black phantoms shake my bed-curtains. I seem to hear my dear ones weeping in Turin.”

Nevertheless, with the autumnal equinox the tide of Cicero’s fate had turned. The successor of Clodius in the tribuneship was that Titus Annius Milo who was one day to compass his death, and the first act of the new consul, Lentulus, on the New Year’s Day of 698 (56 B. C.), was to propose in the Senate a measure for Cicero’s recall. There were plenty of the so-called constitutional devices for delaying legislation yet to try, beside the good old rule and simple plan, freely adopted by Clodius and his party, of mobbing the Senate House, and falling afoul of Cicero’s friends in the streets ; but Milo, also, with his prize gladiators, was now beginning to play at that game, and six months more saw the end of the struggle. The decree for the recall passed the Senate in May,² and was ratified by a unanimous vote of the Comitia Centuriata, or great popular assembly, on the 4th of August. On the next day, Tullia’s twentieth ³ birthday. Cicero landed once more at Brindisi, and was met not only by his daughter, — now, unhappily, a widow, — but by a great popular demonstration. From Brindisi to Rome, his journey was like a triumphal progress, and he was so delayed along his route by congratulatory deputations from half the towns of Italy that he did not reach Rome until September 4th. But we must let him tell in his own proud words to Atticus the story of that reëntry : —

“ So I came to the city, and I think there cannot have been a man of any order,⁴ known to my nomenclator, who did not come out to meet me, except, indeed, such personal enemies of mine as could by no means either deny or dissimulate the fact that they were enemies. When I arrived at the Porta Capena ” (opening on the Appian Way), “ the steps of all the temples, from the ground upwards, were crowded with people, who testified their joy by roars of applause. Similar crowds and similar demonstrations accompanied me to the Capitol, and on the Capitoline Hill there were immense multitudes. On the next day, the Nones of September, I returned thanks in the Senate.”

After fifteen months of the sickness of hope deferred, one hour of unalloyed sweetness, of supreme exultation, and only one ! The concluding passages of this very letter betray the pricking of some of the hidden thorns in this garland of victory. “ This, then, is the state of my affairs: ‘ Good for adversity, shaky for prosperity ’ (as the poet says). I am horribly put to it, as you know, for money to meet my family expenses, and there are other domestic troubles of which I cannot write. My brother Quintus I love, as I ought, for his courage, his constancy, his noble fraternal affection. I am pining for you, and I beg you to come as soon as may be, and to come prepared to give me your counsel. I am in some sort entering on a new life. Already certain men who defended me in my absence are beginning, now that I am here, not merely to chafe in private, but to be openly disagreeable. I need you very much.”

It was when the question came up in the Senate of compensation for the property of the two Ciceros, which had been so wantonly destroyed the year before, that Marcus began fully to realize what life yet lingered in the embers of the conspiracy against him. Clodius, as tribune, had had the ground entirely cleared where the fine houses of the brothers had stood upon the Palatine, as also the adjoining space, occupied by the open portico which commemorated the name and the victories in war of that great and good citizen, Catulus. There had been a pretense of consecrating the vacant space, after which Clodius had the impudence to erect upon it what he called a Temple of Liberty, in the shrine of which he set up the statue of a well-known Greek prostitute. The College of Augurs decided that if the consecration could be shown to be illegal, — that is, made on false pretenses, — the ground might be restored to its previous owners ; otherwise, having once been applied to the so-called uses of religion, it could not again become private property. Cicero argued his own case in the Senate, in the oration Pro Dorao Sua, — the authenticity of which, as we possess it, has been sometimes, though not successfully, disputed, — and he gained his point. But when it came to assessing damages for the personal property destroyed, both on the Palatine and at Tusculum and Formiae, he had a more ungenerous and exasperating opposition to encounter. “ My Palatine house and inyTusculan villa,” he said in the course of his plea, “ were assigned to the two consuls. The marble pillars from my porch were bestowed upon the son-inlaw of the one, in sight of the whole Roman people; while not merely the statues, but the very trees, were transported from my Tusculanum to the estate of the other consul, which adjoins mine. The first sight of the villa at Tusculum, after the sack it had undergone, gave its master so despairing a feeling that he advertised the place for sale ; but was glad in the end that no purchaser appeared, since he subsequently restored it to almost more than its former beauty.

The sum finally voted Cicero for rebuilding was absurdly inadequate ; and the sting of the matter lay in the fact that he read therein, not so much the spite of his avowed enemies as the niggardliness and jealousy of those on whom he had reckoned as friends. Throughout the autumn and winter, while his affairs were under discussion, scenes of the most violent and disgraceful character were continually occurring in the Senate, and a free fight raged, with varying fortunes, in the streets, between the followers of Clodius and those of Milo : all of which things are set forth in the letters to Atticus, in the writer’s most dramatic style. Difficult though his position was, and infinite his vexations both at home and abroad, his courage was once more high. “ I am in better spirits,” he writes to Atticus, “than I was in better times.” The tide of life which had ebbed so low in Macedonia was rising fast. The gladiator had been restored to his arena, and was happy. “ Not a word of my other cares,” he said significantly, at the close of another letter. “ My brother and my daughter love me.”

Quintus was now away in Sardinia, acting as one of the fifteen lieutenants of Pompey, to whom had been assigned the sole charge of the grain supply of Rome. Armed with such a power, the “ Emir,” as Cicero used to call him, still towered, a larger figure, no doubt, in the eyes of contemporary Romans, than Cæsar, away in Gaul, with his two provinces for five years and his five legions. The relations between Pompey and the other triumvir, Crassus, were at this moment decidedly strained. The first triumvirate has been wittily called a “ Conspiracy of Genius, Position, and Capital against Law,” and position and capital were already quarreling, as they so easily do. Directly after his return, even before bringing forward the matter of his private losses, Cicero had supported in the Senate the bill for entrusting Pompey with the corn supply; thereby making haste to be even with the great man for having graciously withdrawn all opposition to the exile’s return. Pompey had then paid Cicero the compliment of naming him first in his list of lieutenants, or legates, and Cicero had bowed, metaphorically, and handed the appointment over to his brother, to whom are accordingly addressed some of the most intimate and delightful letters of the present period. That of February 14th, after a particularly animated Essence of Parliament, has some interesting personal matter in the last paragraph : —

“I had written thus far before daylight yesterday. I afterwards attended Atticus’s wedding-banquet. ... I have taken a house for you near the reservoir of Piso Lucinianus, but I hope that before many months — that is to say, by midsummer — you will be able to move into your own. The Lamiæ, most respectable people, have rented your house in the Carinae.” (This was the old town residence of the Ciceros, in the lower part of the city, inherited from their father.)

The lady whom Atticus, a bachelor of more than fifty, now married was named Pilia, and less is known of her ancestry than of her descendants. They had one daughter, who was married to Agrippa, father of Agrippina, the first wife of the Emperor Tiberius.

In the next letter of Cicero to his brother, there is more wedding-news : —

“ I think I have concluded the arrangements for the betrothal of my Tullia, who loves you so devotedly, to Crassipes.” There were settlements to be made, of course. Indeed, Cicero writes to Atticus, at about this time, that Crassipes is running away with all his traveling-money ; and it is with reference to the same business that he goes on to say, alluding, it would seem, to some complaint of Quintus about the difficulty of raising funds for rebuilding : “ As to that affluence you talk so much about ” (he uses a Greek word), “ my desire for it is tempered. My feeling now is that I will receive good fortune gladly if it comes to seek me, but that I will not hunt for it if it hides. At the present moment, I am building in three places, beside making repairs, and I live rather more freely than ever.”

This letter is not dated, but it was probably written some time in March, for in the next we read that Tullia was betrothed on April 4th, that on April 5th the Senate voted Pompey 40,000,000 sesterces (that is, about $1,800,000) for the purchase of grain, and that on the 6th he, Cicero, gave a betrothal supper to Crassipes. “ That dear boy of yours and mine, Quintus, was a little indisposed, and could not come. I went to see him the next day, and found him all right again, and he talked a good while with me, and very sensibly, about the differences between our wives. What would you have ? I have nothing very cheerful to tell. Pomponia now complains even of you; but of this when we meet. I then went to your place. There were a good many workmen about. I endeavored to stir up the contractor Longilius, and he promised to do his best to please me. The house will be very handsome. One can judge of the effect better now than was possible from the plan. Mine too is going up rapidly. The same day, I dined with Crassipes, in his gardens on the Tiber, and was taken thence in a litter to Pompey’s house. I am writing this upon the road, before light, on the 8th of April, because I wish to pass this day with T. Titius at Anagnia. To-morrow I hope to arrive at your Laterium ” (Quintus’s villa at Arpinum), “and after passing five days at Arpinum to go to my own Pompeianum ; taking a look, on my return, at the Cumæan property. Milo’s trial being appointed for May 7,⁵ I must be in Rome on the day previous, when I shall hope, my best and kindest of brothers, also to see you. I thought it better to have the building at Arcanum ” (another villa of Quintus’s, near Minturnæ) “ suspended until you come.”

And so we have Cicero fairly started once more, on that beautiful spring journey, over the hills and along the Mediterranean coast, on which it is always so pleasant to accompany him. From the seaside place at Antium, he writes to Atticus, now returning to Rome from his wedding-tour, that he had found less havoc among his books there than he had anticipated, and that Tyrannio, the learned freedman of Atticus, had done a beautiful piece of work in the repairing and rearranging of those that were left. He hopes that Atticus and his bride will stop with him on their return to Rome, and Tullia, he says, joins her entreaties. We gather from this that Tullia was passing her second honeymoon under her father’s roof, but there is not a word now of Terentia. There is more about the books in the next letter, and how the loose leaves which had been torn out were all once more glued together, and the parchments rolled on their cylinders of wood or reed, and furnished with titles written out in fine scarlet letters. Cicero thanks his friend for having, with his wonted kindness, undertaken to oversee the building operations at Rome while he, Cicero, is away. But in this letter to Atticus there is also other matter, of more serious import.

“ ‘ Anything else ? ’ you say. Yes, indeed! And why should I keep nibbling about the bolus which must be swallowed ? I felt myself that my palinode ⁶ was just a little base. But what I want is a fair, honest, straightforward policy; ⁷ and the perfidy of those men ” (the optimates) " who claim to be our leaders, and might be, if there were a spark of honor in them, is beyond belief. I knew it, I felt it, and yet, cajoled, betrayed, flung aside by them as I had been, I was yet resolved to stick by their side in politics. But they are exactly the same as ever. I resisted the notion when you told me so, but it is true. Yrou will say that your advice had reference only to my actions; that you never wanted me to put anything in black and white. But, by Heaven, I tell you it was I who desired to bind myself to these new associates, so as to preclude the very possibility of ever lapsing again into the arms of those who were hating me all the while that I most deserved their sympathy. However, as I told you, I treated my theme with much reserve. I shall have something more to say, if he ” (Cæsar) “ takes it well, and those men appear to be annoyed who have objected to my having a house which once belonged to Catulus,⁸ — forgetting that I bought it of Vettius ! — and who say that I ought to be selling now, not building. But what does it all signify beside the fact that they have been chuckling over the idea that I should get the ill-will of Pompey by the very speeches I made in their own interest ? I have had enough of it; and since those who have no power are so unfriendly, I will endeavor to recommend myself to those who have some. You will say, ' This is what I have long wished you to do.’ Exactly ; and I was a downright ass not to heed you sooner! ”

So, then, Cicero had changed his politics, and abandoned his party. Or had his party changed its position, and abandoned him ? We have seen him lamenting, even before he went into exile, that there were no true optimates left; and the progressive demoralization and disintegration of the old conservative party must have struck him glaringly on his return to Rome, after an absence of more than a year. Moreover, had he not always regarded Pompey, in spite of the personal antipathy between them, as the true head of the optimates, and representative of their policy ? Why should he not — if only as the least of evils — adhere to Pompey, and to Cæsar, who was shedding such lustre just now upon the Roman arms abroad? Could there be any better hope for the state, in the present chaotic condition of affairs, than in these men ? Nevertheless, the reader will not have failed to notice the angry sense of personal affront which characterizes the last letter, and that Cicero himself, with his own irresistible candor, confesses to feeling a little ashamed of his course. The best defense of his political disinterestedness he was to make twelve years later, by his death. When it came to deciding between Cæsar and Pompey, Cicero turned his back upon the cause of the gods and the conqueror, and adhered to the losing side and that of his early leader. For the present, the zest was out of politics for him, and he betook himself more and more to those labors of the pen, for which the oracle was undoubtedly right in suggesting his more pronounced vocation. Now let us follow him to the hills.

The first note to Atticus from Arpinum says that Cicero found an incredible row (fremitus incredibilis) among his rustic townspeople, on account of some engineering operations — probably the diversion of a watercourse — which Quintus, in his usual reckless and highhanded fashion, had undertaken at the Laterium. " I was really sorry about it, but he ” (Quintus) — and he quotes a line from the Odyssey — “ did not deign to heed my remonstrances.” A few days later there is a note from Antium, which begins with a facetious allusion to a bad debt which Atticus had recently made : " Your letter amused me immensely, especially your ' dish of potted fish and cheese.’ ” Atticus appears to have made some philosophic remark to the effect that he could recoup himself for his loss by living a little more plainly, and the point of the joke is that his table had always been more frugal than had suited the bans vivants who visited him. Perhaps the new wife liked a more liberal style of housekeeping. At all events, there was talk of a villeggiatura for the household of Atticus, and Cicero proceeds : “I can find no house for you in the open country. There is one in the town, and very near my place, but I am not sure that it is for sale. One thing I can tell you : Antium is the Buthrotum of Rome, as yours is that of Corcyra. You cannot imagine anything sweeter, more tranquil, more salubrious.” (Let the reader take the " steamtrain ” for Porto d’Anzio, early some fine morning, on the occasion of his next visit to Rome, and see whether Cicero exaggerated.) " And now that Tyrannio has put my books in order, my house seems to have got a soul.”

There is always such an aroma about these letters from the country that I gladly pass over those of the ensuing’ summer and autumn — which, indeed, are few and not very important — to the opening of the next year, 699 (55 B. c.), when Cicero is once more at the restored Tusculanum, writing to Atticus in Rome. The three triumvirs had held, in the mean time, their famous meeting at Lucca, and their league was more firmly established than ever. Pompey and Crassus were the new consuls, and Cæsar had got another five years’ tenure in Gaul.

Cicero has some curious remarks about the defeat of Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had also run for the consulship. “ A fig is n’t liker to a fig,” he says in a Greek quotation, “ than his case to mine [when I was exiled]. The same influences were at work, the optimates were nowhere, and the result surprised everybody. The only point of difference is that he tempted his fate ” (by threatening, if elected, to deprive Cæsar of his command). “ Nay, I am not sure but his case was the harder of the two. For what can be more disgusting than defeat, to a man who has been, so to speak ” (from his rank and position), " a consul-elect all his life, — especially when he was canvassing alone, or at least with only one competitor ? But if it is true, as they say, — I do not vouch for it, — that Pompey has in his pocket-book as long a list of consuls to be as of those who have been, the republic is worse off than Domitius, for the republic is past hope.”

Later in the year we have a new date, that of the legendary Cumæ, the home of the Sibyl. The immemorial Greek town overlooked both the Lucrine lake and the silent sheet of Avernus, ringed with its wooded hills. Something of solemnity and mystery still pervaded the remoter mere, but the shores of the Lucrine were become excessively popular. Cicero was building there, — from the foundations, apparently, not restoring, — and there were scores of villas of wealthy and influential people all about. Pompey had one, and Faustus Sylla another ; and Cicero was making much use of the splendid library of the latter, which his father, the dictator, had found means to appropriate in Greece. Cicero seems to have studied and written in the one finished corner of the new house, keeping an eye upon the workmen all the while.

“ I am feasting upon Faustus’s library,” he writes to Atticus. “ ‘ I rather fancy,’ you will say, ' that you are feasting on the good things of Puteoli and the Lucrine lake ’ ” (meaning the oysters for which the region was then famous). “ Well, there is no lack of these, but I swear by the gods that since the state of the country has robbed me of my relish for other pleasures, I find my sole support and recreation in letters; and I would rather occupy that little seat of yours at the base of Aristotle’s statue than sit in any of their curule chairs ; rather walk with you in your portico than with him with whom I must now walk. . . . Pompey came to Cumæ at the feast of the Paralia ” (April 23d), “ and sent me a formal announcement of his arrival.”

A few days later, Cicero is beseeching Quintus to join him. “ I want you here to call out to me, and talk to me, and scold me. Is there anything I like better? I swear that no moonstruck poet ever more enjoyed the reading of his last effusion than I enjoy your talk, whether of public, private, or bucolic affairs. It was very stupid in me not to take you with me when I came. But you gave, as an unanswerable reason, the health of my boy Cicero, and I said nothing ; and then you pleaded that both our boys needed you, and I acquiesced. Now, behold, I get a charming letter from you, dashed, however, with one drop of gall, in that you seem to have feared, and still to fear, that you would be in my way ! On my word, I should like to try the case with you in court; but if it comes to that, I shall confine myself to deposing that it is I who fear being troublesome to you, when we are together. I should have liked also to fling our friend Marius into a litter [and bring him with me], for the sake of enjoying the fine flavor of his oldfashioned politeness and his highly cultivated talk. It would have been a peculiar pleasure to have him here, for you know that, as my neighbor at Pompeii, he is the very sunshine of the place. But I dared not ask a man of his delicate health to a villa still unfinished and open to the sky. As for me, I am such a philosopher that I can live here very well, even with the carpenters about.”

To this M. Marius, of whom we here get so attractive a glimpse, was addressed from Rome, a little later in the same spring, one of the most interesting and celebrated of all Cicero’s letters, — that in which he describes the magnificent games given by Pompey at the opening of the great theatre and adjoining temple of Venus Victrix, which the triumvir had built in the Campus Martius.

“If it was illness, or bodily infirmity of any sort,” he says, “ which prevented your coming to the games, I will praise your good fortune rather than your good sense. But if you were strong enough to come, and would not, because you think these things at which the world gapes are rather to be condemned, then I must congratulate you on your soundness both of body and mind; provided always that you have reaped the full benefit of the leisure which you had so rare an opportunity of enjoying, when you were left almost alone, in that most exquisite spot on earth. I think of you as lying in that chamber of yours, whose windows look across the bay of Stabiæ ” (Herculaneum) “ to far-off Misenum, and taking little dips into your books during those early morning hours, when those who had left you were dozing over farces of which they had only too near a view. The remainder of the day you passed in the employments which are most to your taste, while we had to sit out whatever plays Sp. Mæcius ” (the public licenser) " had chosen to sanction. Unquestionably the pieces were very gorgeous, but not such as you would have relished, if I may judge your feeling by my own. For, in the first place, to do honor to the occasion, certain actors were recalled to the stage who, for their own honor, had better have stayed away. There was your and my old favorite, Æsopus, who made such an appearance that every one was glad to have it over. When it came to taking the oath, his voice broke entirely in the passage ' Si sciens fallo.’ Why should I continue? You have heard about the other plays. They were less enjoyable than more modest entertainments. The very splendor of the stage-setting made them heavy, and you are doubtless quite resigned to not having seen that splendor. For what real pleasure is to be got out of six hundred mules in the Clytemnestra, or three thousand bowls in The Trojan Horse, or the varied costumes and trappings of cavalry and infantry in a stage battle ? ” (Cicero should have asked these questions of Mr. Henry Irving.) “ These things tickle the popular fancy, but they would not have gratified you.”

He alludes to the matches of the athletes, and then : “ For the rest, there were beast-baitings twice a day for five days : magnificent, — nobody denies it; but what, after all, is the charm, to a cultivated man, of seeing either a helpless human being mangled by a mighty beast, or a noble animal pierced by a spear ? At all events, whatever may be thought of such shows, you have seen them often; nor was there anything novel about this one until the last day, when the elephants were introduced, to the amazement of the mob, but not to their approbation. On the contrary, there were signs of pity, due to the prevailing notion of a very close kinship between these animals and man.”

Other ancient writers have described even more fully the strange events of this day, and the unprecedented reaction of popular feeling in favor of the elephants. The poor beasts tore around the arena when wounded, uttering cries so heart-rending that even that unfeeling assembly rose to their feet as one man, and cursed Pompey for his horrible novelty. A mysterious whisper ran along the benches that the elephants understood human language, and had exacted a bond before they left Libya that no harm should be done them; and that when they tossed their trunks upward, in their agony, they were calling down vengeance from heaven for the perfidy of their captors.

Cicero closes his letter by saying that if his friend is not convinced of his own wisdom in remaining away from Rome, he must come and see the next games for himself, and hopes that he will do him, Cicero, the honor of staying at his house. I see no reason to suppose, as some of Cicero’s critics have done, that the letter was written as a mere rhetorical exercise. It is more studied and ornate in style than the hurried notes he dashed off to Atticus and his brother, but we have seen that he had a great respect for the literary taste and accomplishments of Marius, while the latter, though so highly esteemed, can hardly have been one of his oldest friends.

The first letter of the year 700 (54 B. c.) is addressed to the triumvir Crassus, in Syria. Domitius Ahenobarbus had got his consulate at last, along with Appius, the brother of Clodius Pulcher ; and Crassus, with his son Publius, was off to that Parthian war in which both were slain. The younger Crassus was an enthusiastic admirer and imitator of Cicero, who was as much the fashion as ever among the gilded youth of Rome; and it was due in part to the boy’s influence, doubtless, that his father and his hero had just been reconciled, after their third sharp quarrel. Cicero had called the elder Crassus a rascal — hominem nequam — more than once, in his emjiortements, hut they parted for the last time as friends, and this letter is wholly courteous. Then comes a short note to Quintus in the country, noticeable for a perfect crystal of criticism on one of the greatest of Cicero’s contemporaries : “I agree with you that the poems of Lucretius are radiant both with inborn genius and acquired art.” But it is not the well-known historian of whom the writer says, disrespectfully, in the next sentence, “ I shall reckon you of more than mortal mould, if you have been able to get through the Empedocles of Sallust.”

And now there begins to be talk of Quintus Cicero’s going to join Cæsar in Gaul. Ever since the time, in the preceding year, when Marcus had somewhat abruptly withdrawn his opposition to the division of the Campanian lands among Cæsar’s soldiers, the great general and diplomate, with his own consummate tact, had been working to secure the complete and hearty adherence of the two brothers. We can but admire the delicacy with which he proceeded, never compromising his own dignity nor offending theirs by anything too palpable or flagrant in the shape of an inducement. On one occasion, in the hearing of the ubiquitous Spaniard Balbus, Cæsar spoke of it as “ too good to be true,” that he should have Quintus Cicero as a lieutenant; and Balbus of course repeated the remark to Marcus in Rome.

Cæsar knew well enough — what did he not know ? — that he could bind Marcus more securely by favors to his brother than to himself; and for the rest, that he did not misjudge the military capacity of Quintus is shown by the really magnificent defense which the latter made of a besieged camp near the modern Charleroi.

On the 13th of February, A. U. c. 700, Marcus writes to Quintus in the country : “I laughed at your allusions to black snow ” (for us, alas, who have not seen Quintus’s letter, the point of this joke is lost), “ and it is always delightful to me to see you in good spirits and disposed to joke. I think of Pompey just as you do, — or rather you think as I do ! But as for Cæsar, I have now, as you know, for a long time been singing his praises : I have taken him to my heart, and shall not let him go.” The next letter to Quintus is written in May, from one of the southern villas, and speaks of hearing from the latter when he had advanced as far as Rimini, on his journey to Gaul. “ I am reveling in the beauty of this region, and mean to stay until the 1st of June. I am writing away at that political treatise of which I told you ” (the De Republica), “ and it is a tough and toilsome piece of work. However, if I succeed to my satisfaction, the labor will not have been thrown away ; and if not, I can but fling my manuscript into the sea, which my windows overlook, and begin something else ; for rest I cannot.”

From the 4th of June onward, all the letters to Quintus are sent by Cæsar’s couriers to Gaul. There are others, also, mostly of a jocose character, to another of Cicero’s friends in the same province, whom he had recommended to Cæsar’s willing patronage, — to Trebatius, a man of letters and a lawyer, some twenty years younger than Cicero, and for all the rest of his life a fast friend and frequent correspondent. Trebatius, who had arrived at the age of thirty without achieving much distinction in his profession, went to Gaul to make his fortune ; but his fastidious tastes were dreadfully revolted by the rough manner of life in those remote regions, and it is on his “ aromatic pains ” that Cicero chiefly rallies him. Trebatius, it may be remarked in passing, lived far on into the age of Augustus, a link between republican and imperial Rome. “ He could speak,” says M. Boissier in his delightful Cicéron et ses Amis, “of Lucretius to Vergil, of Cicero to Livy, of Catullus to Propertius.”

“ Come now,” writes the lively mentor, in the first of his letters to Trebatius which we possess, “ have done with your weak pining for the city and its refinements, and address yourself diligently and manfully to the purposes for which you went.” He then introduces one or two poetical quotations, to the general effect that “ home-keeping youth have ever homely wits,” — “in the number of whom,” he adds, “ you surely would have been reckoned, if I had not fairly pushed you out of the country. . . . But you, who know how to take such care of yourself, must look out that you are not caught by one of those British charioteers.” Cæsar was just starting for his first invasion of Britain, and in the next letter to his young friend, Cicero says, “ I hear there is n’t an ounce of gold or silver in the island; and if that is the case, I advise you to capture a chariot, and return as fast, as possible.” “ Keep well with Cæsar,” he adds in the same letter. “ Both my brother and Balbus will aid you in this, but your own modesty and diligence, believe me, most of all. You have an exceedingly generous leader ; you are exactly of the right age, and most fortunate in your friends ; the one danger is that you may fail yourself.” And again: “ Cæsar wrote me, most courteously, that he had been too busy as yet specially to cultivate your acquaintance, but that he fully intended to do so. ... I am longing for your letters from Britain.”

Trebatius, however, did not go to Britain. He appears to have drawn the line there, and Cæsar good-naturedly allowed him to remain in Gaul. Cicero was rather disappointed in his protégé, but took the matter lightly, with his own inexhaustible indulgence for the faults of those younger than himself. “ It cannot be,” he says in one place, “ that such a famous swimmer as you are objected to crossing the Channel; ” and he laments having missed a capital farce which might have been entitled The Lawyer in Britain.

Trebatius was certainly no soldier like Quintus Cicero, who afterwards distinguished himself so splendidly, but even Quintus grumbled a little now and then, and threatened to throw up the Gallic service, until Marcus had to remind him of the absolute necessity of repairing his fortunes in one way or another. Quintus was an uncontrollable spendthrift, and we shall hear more, in the course of the year, of the extensive building operations which Marcus was overseeing on his behalf, both in Rome and in the country. That summer in Italy was exceptionally hot, and there was also great excitement in Rome on account of the discovery of a political plot, involving the most shameless and widespread bribery in high places. A disgraceful compact had been entered into and formally signed between two of the four candidates for the consulship of the ensuing year and the outgoing consuls, Domitius and Appius Clodius, by virtue of which the latter were to get the provinces and equipments they wanted, in return for good offices in securing the election of the former. The sums pledged and forfeited, in case of failure, were enormous on both sides, and even the very reverend College of Augurs was implicated in the transaction. In the month of July, however, under the influence of Pompey, who wanted to be sole consul again for the next year, Memmius, the candidate whom Cæsar was thought especially to favor, turned state’s evidence, and laid the whole affair before the Senate. Cicero’s letters, both to his brother and Atticus, are now interspersed with sorrowful and biting reflections on this humiliating business ; but his wit never forsakes him, and after observing that the rate of interest at Rome had doubled since the exposé of the bribery cases, he adds that he cannot expect Atticus, as a money-lender, to be very deeply afflicted on that account.

In the next letter there are a few interesting words about the splendid public works which are going on at Rome, under Cæsar’s auspices and at his expense, — the extension of the Forum, the restoration of the Æmilian and beginning of the Julian basilica, and the surrounding by marble barriers and roofing of the inclosures in the Campus Martius, where the Roman citizens voted by centuries in the great popular elections. Cicero’s imagination is still fired by thoughts of that remote and savage island of Britain, further news from which he is awaiting “ suspenso animo ; ” but when he speaks of its “rampired walls,” — molibus muratis, — I think he is referring, not to the chalk cliffs, but to those titanic earth-works, like Maiden Castle, Eggar Dun, and others, which form a conspicuous feature of the coast of Dorset to this day.

Early in September, Cicero managed to escape to Arpinum, and writes to Quintus, " I am recruiting my strength, after the great heats, the greatest I ever knew ; enjoying the inexpressible beauty of the place and the comfort of river bathing.” He makes little trips from Arpinum to various localities among the hills, where the lavish Quintus owned houses and farms; especially to one where there was trouble with the contractor who had undertaken to remodel the dwelling, of which Cicero gives a description too fascinating to be omitted : “I like the idea of the changes you propose to make. The villa, in its present state, is too like a philosopher whose plainness is a reproach to the luxury of his neighbors. The addition will make it charming. I admire your plan fora garden, too. At present everything is overrun with ivy: the foundations of the villa are concealed, and a network is woven from pillar to pillar along the colonnade, so that the very statues seem to have taken to fancy gardening, and to be offering the ivy for sale.” (Can we not see them, with their marble hands elegantly extended, and here and there a finger broken ?) “ You can imagine nothing cooler than the apodyterium, and nothing more mossy.” Additions are made at several points to this long and captivating letter, and it is finally completed at Rome. Cicero wishes he had taken Quintus’s son with him on this beautiful autumnal journey. The boy wanted to go, but Pomponia appears to have made difficulties, and Quintus is asked to authorize his going with his uncle at another time. Cicero says he could have brought the lad on in his studies by the way, and promises at the same time not to neglect his own literary work, in the press of forensic labors. “ But when,” he says wistfully, the glamour of the peaceful country being still upon him, “ when shall I live ? ”

The trial of the ex-consul Gabinius, under whom Cicero had been exiled, was now about to come off. There were three distinct charges against him, of leze-majesty, bribery, and peculation. Cicero had been asked to defend him, but at first he scouted the idea. “ He is the worst of men,” he observes curtly to Quintus, in one of the entries in this same epistle, “ although his fellow-consul Piso runs him hard.” Cicero gave evidence against Gabinius, during his trial under the first charge, which helped to secure his condemnation ; yet, after all, under pressure from Pompey, he did defend him on the third. We heartily wish that he had done nothing of the kind, and are glad to turn to the concluding passages of this long letter, in which the writer speaks with poignant and strangely prophetic sympathy of the manly sorrow of Cæsar for the death of his daughter Julia. She was Pompey’s fourth wife, as the reader will remember, and the fate of Rome and of the world was involved in hers, for the strongest of the ties which had temporarily united the two great rivals was now broken.

That autumn in the city was a stormy time. In October, Cicero sends to meet Atticus, on his way back to Rome from Epirus, a letter describing the scene in the Senate when the great bribery cases came on again. “ It was a perfect Bedlam ” (Abdera, where the folks were popularly supposed to be mad), “and I made my share of the noise.

' Could you not have held your tongue ? ’ methinks I hear you saying. With all due deference, I do not think I could.

. . . You will ask what I can find to say for any of them.” (Cicero had been engaged by Memmius, Cæsar’s candidate.) “ I ’ll be hanged if I know ” (ne vivam, si scio). “I have discovered nothing to the purpose in any of those three books you lauded so.”

In this same month of October, 52 B. c., Cicero sent to Publius Lentulus Spinther, pro-consul in Cilicia, an elaborate review of the political situation, and of his own somewhat devious course since his return from exile, which constitutes his formal Apologia for going over to the triumvirs. It is far too long to be analyzed here. It is forcible, ingenious, affecting in parts, but it has the fault common to almost all apologies : it is too subtle. In nine such cases out of ten, the facts speak better for a man than the most eloquent can speak for himself. When it comes to searching systematically the arcana of one’s own consciousness ; to investing with visible symbols of language the infinite complexities of human motive, and defining the shadowy and shifting limits of human free agency, the finest literary instrument ever wielded by a Cicero or a Newman becomes too coarse for the purpose, and counsel is darkened rather than illumined, even by the flight of winged words.

The next letter to Atticus records the acquittal of Gabinius, by a majority of six, on the first of the charges against him. “ Do you wonder how I take it ? Very calmly, I assure you; and I am glad that so I can. My dear Pomponius, we have lost not merely the sap and life-blood, but the very hue and outward semblance, of the state of olden time. The republic of our hearts, in which we gloried, is no more. ' And can you take this lightly ? ’ you will say. Even so. I remember how noble a country we had awhile ago, when I was at the helm, and what thanks I got for my services. I do not distress myself at one man’s having gotten all the power. They who objected to my having any are, at all events, torn asunder by faction. I have many consolations; I have bated nothing of my dignity. I betake myself to that mode of life which is most in accordance with my nature ” (he was thinking, doubtless, of the Delphic response), — “to literature and the studies we love. The pleasure I have in oratory consoles me for the labor of speaking. My house and my countryplaces are sources of great interest ; I think of the depth from which I have arisen, not of the height from which I have fallen. If I can but have my brother and yourself to philosophize with, those men ” (the optimates) “ may go to the devil.”

It is not thus that Cato would have written, or any of the stern Romans of the “ elder day.” But how characteristic of the charmingly fallible man of genius whom these letters have taught us to know is this debonair acquiescence, — albeit under half-petulant protest, — in a sinister turn of affairs ; this almost too facile and graceful acceptance of the inevitable ! When Cicero writes to Quintus from the Tusculanum, during his annual autumnal visit, of the terrible inundations at Rome, and how those beautiful gardens of his son-in-law, Crassipes, upon the Tiber, —the scene of the wedding-banquet, — had been quite carried away, he protests that he sees a sign in this calamity of the wrath of the gods with Rome ; but he says it in apt Homeric quotations, and with no very serious air of religious conviction. And so ends the year 700.

We miss almost entirely, from the correspondence of the two succeeding years, the familiar names of Atticus and Quintus. Both were probably much of the time in Rome. In their stead appear those of two of Cicero’s younger friends, with whom his relations were henceforth very familiar and always interesting. One was Cœlius, whom Cicero defended on a charge of attempted poisoning, brought by the too famous Clodia. The other was that same young nobleman, Curio, who had paid such admiring court to Cicero five years before, when the latter was rusticating at Antium and Formiæ. Curio was now fairly launched on his political career, as quæstor in Asia Minor ; full of spirit, ability, and ambition, recklessly extravagant still, and conspicuously profligate, but endowed with many amiable and popular qualities, and animated, apparently, by a certain honorable sense of the high obligation, to the state, of a Roman patrician. “ Ingeniossime nequam,” an extraordinarily clever rascal, is what one Roman writer calls him; and Lucan says that Curio, as leader of the optimates, was “ a monument of the changed order of things.”

But this “ Roman Alcibiades,” as he has also been aptly called, made a Socrates of Cicero, imploring his counsels upon all occasions, and receiving them with the most gracious deference, while Cicero’s letters to him are, for the most part, very noble. They are somewhat formally expressed, as befits the great difference in age of the correspondents, but full of worldly and political wisdom, and very heartily friendly.

“ I have regretted your long absence as depriving me of some very pleasant companionship; but I have been much gratified by the admirable manner in which you have discharged your duties, and by seeing how, in all your undertakings, the event has answered to my own desires. There is not much which the great love I bear you prompts me to offer you by way of advice. I will only say, in view of the great expectations excited by your temper and abilities, that I hope and believe you are coming back to us, prepared to fulfill all those high hopes.”

Curio’s father had died on the eve of his return to Rome, and Cicero writes feelingly of his young friend’s bereavement, and promises anew his own affection, little less than paternal. He furthermore tries his best to dissuade Curio from his foolish purpose of honoring his father’s memory, and impressing the blasé Roman populace, on his arrival, by exhibiting games of extraordinary magnificence. “ Your coming,” he says, u falls upon a time when you are much more likely to obtain the great prizes of the state through the endowments of nature, fortune, and your own energy than by giving entertainments for which no one will respect you ; since it is money only, not merit, which is requisite to produce them, and of which, moreover, every one is just now wearied to death.”

“You must be my stay,” the elder statesman says in another place, “ now that the years are beginning to tell upon me. I want to feel that I can rest in your affection, and in the strength of your youth.” . . . “ Whether you have hope of the republic, or whether you have none,” he writes fervently, forgetting, in a glow of fine feeling, his own late despondency, “ let your thoughts, your plans, your purposes, be ever such as becomes the good citizen, bent on vindicating the ancient freedom and honor of a commonwealth brought low by degenerate manners and calamitous times.” . . . And it is Curio who calls forth the epigrammatic warning : “ You have an enemy declared and fully equipped in the very greatness of the hopes which are entertained of your future.”

It is impossible to doubt the sincerity of these injunctions, or that Cicero, despite his own personal admiration of Cæsar’s genius, saw later, with a certain sickness of spirit, how the enormous debts which Curio was not to be prevented from incurring placed him completely in the power of the omniscient master of Rome. But he had another motive, and a less disinterested one, for wishing to bind the young patrician to himself. He wanted him to support Milo in his canvass for the consulship of the ensuing year, 702. Clodius was a candidate for the prætorship at the same time, and Milo was the one man in Rome who had shown himself able to meet and worst, with his own lawless weapons, the unsleeping enemy of Cicero. He was likelier, too, perhaps, than any other Roman, in Cæsar’s absence, to have baffled those designs of Pompey for the sole consulship which were now matters of common notoriety, and to have maintained outward tranquillity in the turbulent city. But, Dis obiter visum. The elections were interrupted by riots, as was now so frequently the case, and on the 20th of January that happened which Cicero had long before predicted. “ If nobody else kills Clodius, Milo will do it yet.”

The two rival condottieri — “ the Hector and Achilles of the Roman streets,” as Mommsen calls them, — met on the Appian Way, near Bovillæ. Milo was in a chariot with his wife, — Sulla’s daughter, — going out to Civita Lavinia, of which town he was the chief magistrate. Clodius was riding in from Ariccia, on the road to Lake Nemi. Each had, as usual, a numerous and wellarmed retinue. The chiefs had passed one another, when some of their followers fell into a dispute, — those of Clodius being, apparently, the aggressors. The fight became general. Clodius was wounded, and Milo — there can be no doubt about it — ordered him to be dispatched.

When the deed became known in Rome, the excitement was tremendous. The braves of Clodius filled the streets with uproar. They assaulted Milo’s town-house, but it was, as usual, strongly garrisoned, and resisted the attack. The Senate House proper, or Curia Hostilia, was next assailed and burned, with many precious documents and archives, — the wooden benches having been dragged out and heaped together for Clodius’s funeral pyre, while Fulvia, his wife, tore her hair above the exposed remains, and showed his wounds to the Roman people, as that Mark Antony whom she afterward married was one day to show great Cæsar’s upon the selfsame spot.

There could be no more question now of the consulship for Milo. The occasion favored Pompey’s plans ; he was made dictator in February, and in April Milo was arraigned, not for murder, but for sedition. Cicero defended him, as a matter of course. Hortensius was engaged upon the same side, and Marcus Brutus composed and wrote out a fiery oration, in which the ground was boldly taken that the killing of Clodius was a righteous and patriotic deed. The fact is curious as illustrating the penchant of Brutus for assassination as a political remedy, but the two elderly lawyers knew very well that this would not do, and the oration was suppressed. There is perhaps no more magnificent piece of pleading extant in any language than Cicero’s Oratio pro Milone, as we now possess it; but that oration cannot be said ever to have been delivered. No two consecutive sentences could be made audible, amid the frightful din which prevailed when Cicero rose to speak, and he himself, though so well used to an uproarious audience, was fain, for once, to abandon the attempt to make himself heard by the surly mob. Milo was condemned, and banished to Marseilles ; and Cicero’s plea, embodying the line of defense which he had intended to follow, but everywhere retouched, we cannot doubt, and polished to the last degree of perfection, was sent after him there. The exile read it with keen appreciation, and remarked pleasantly, if somewhat cynically, when he had finished, “ It is lucky for me that the Romans never heard this speech, for if they had, I should not now be enjoying these delicious mullet.”

There was a certain Bursa, tribune of the people at the time of Clodius’s death, and a leader in the destructive riots which followed it, whom Cicero himself subsequently prosecuted de vi, and whose condemnation he easily secured. Writing of the circumstances to that Marius whom he had counseled not to attend Pompey’s games, Cicero has a few not ungenerous words for his old enemy:

I know you are glad of Bursa’s conviction, but your congratulations strike me as a little cold. You write as if you expected me to undervalue my success, because the defendant was such a contemptible fellow. But let me tell you I was far better pleased by that legal decision than by the violent death of my foe. For, in the first place, I would rather have owed that riddance to a legal process than to the sword of a private person. I would rather it had brought glory to my friend Milo than calamity. . . . And then, incredible as it may seem to you, I loathe Bursa as I never loathed Clodius himself. The one I prosecuted remorselessly ; but there is something to be said on behalf of the other. He, Clodius, when the fate of the republic hung upon my life, did at least aim at a great and daring thing; and he also acted, not entirely of his own motion, but under pressure from men who must themselves fall, if I continued to stand. But this ape of a Bursa, in mere wantonness, undertook to attack me, and persuaded some of those who do not love me too well that he would always be ready to play the spy upon me.”

This is the last letter of Cicero’s which we possess previous to the year 703 (51 B. C.), when he went, not very willingly, as pro-consul to Cilicia. With the death of Clodius, the banishment of Milo, and the reëstablishment of Pompey’s dictatorship, the third act in the drama of Cicero’s public life came to an end. There was another yet to be played before his grave was “ thoroughly earned,” in some respects the most honorable to him of all. The greater part of his marvelous literary work was yet to be accomplished; the sharpest of his private sorrows were yet to be endured. He had many great thoughts to work out in the quiet of the Volscian highlands, or by the lapping waves of the Mediterranean, — thoughts on the intricacies of statecraft, the moral aspects of human society, the mysteries of life and of death. He had one thing more to do for the country which, amid all his fluctuations of opinion and policy, he always loved so truly, — the last and greatest service which can be asked of any citizen ; and when the supreme hour came, he rendered that service bravely. Of his latest years, as of those which we have already reviewed, a priceless record remains in Cicero’s private letters ; but the examination of these must be reserved for another time.

Harriet Waters Preston.

1. Tullia’s husband, C. Piso, was a near relative of the consul Piso, but stood by Cicero loyally while he lived.↩
2. The Senate happened then to be sitting in that Temple of Honor and Virtue which also went by the name of the Monument of Marius, because erected in commemoration of him. It has been a source of gratification to the lovers of psychic research in all ages that Cicero should have dreamed, on one of the first grim nights of his exile, that he met the great Marius, his fellow - townsman, bearing fasces wreathed with laurel, and was asked by him why he was so sad. Cicero replied that he had been banished by an ungrateful country, and was told by Marius to repair to his Monument, where he would find redress.↩
3. Or her nineteenth. There is a difference of a year, among the best authorities, in their estimate of the ages both of Cicero and his daughter. If Tullia were now nineteen, Cicero was exactly fifty, or forty-eight at the period of his exile.↩
4. A nomenclator was a slave whose business it was to know the name of every citizen, and then to accompany his master when canvassing for any office, and prompt him with the same.↩
5. Clodius, who was now ædile, had prosecuted Milo for promoting riotous disturbances!↩
6. The Παλiυoδíα, about which there has been so much discussion, was probably no other than the magnificent Oration Concerning the Consular Provinces. A re-allotment of these had been proposed, which would have deprived Cæsar of the two Gauls; and Cicero, in opposing the measure, had described the splendid series of Cæsar’s late victories with his own unrivaled eloquence.↩
7. “ Valeant recta, vera, honesta consilia,” etc. It is not my purpose, in this merely popular résumé of Cicero’s letters, to enter into the countless verbal and grammatical discussions which are inevitably provoked by the free elliptical and colloquial style in which they are written. But since this is rather a crucial point, I will observe that the sense usually given to valeant in this passage is that of farewell: “Farewell, the old straightforward policy, ’ ’ etc. The words will, however, bear equally well the meaning which I have given them, and I think that Professor Tyrrell, the latest, and, to my mind, by far the most luminous and interesting, English critic of Cicero’s correspondence, has shown conclusively that the sense “ may it prevail ” makes better logic in connection with what precedes and follows, and also that it corresponds singularly with expressions used by Cicero in other places.↩
8. This was the Tusculanum. Before the days of Catulus it had been the property of Sylla, the dictator.↩