 CHAPTER XII It will have been observed that in the list given in the previous chapter, the works commonly published as Cicero's philosophy have been divided. Some are called his philosophy, and some his moral essays. It seems to be absurd to put forward to the world his Tuscalan inquiries, written with the declared object of showing that death and pain were not evils, together with a moral essay such as that deoficis, in which he tells us what it may become a man of the world, to do. It is as though we bound up Lord Chesterfield's letters, in a volume with Hume's essays, and called them the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It might be true, but it would certainly be absurd. There might be those who regard the letters as philosophical, and those who would speak so of the essays, but their meaning would be diametrically opposite. It is so with Cicero, whose treatises have been lumped together under this name, with the view of bringing them under one appellation. It has been found necessary to divide his works and to describe them. The happy man who first thought to put the De Natura Deorum and the De Amichitia into boards together, and to present them to the world under the name of his philosophy, perhaps found the only title that could unite the two. But he has done very much to mislead the world, and to teach readers to believe that Cicero was in truth one who endeavoured to live in accordance with the doctrine of any special school of philosophy. He was too honest, too wise, too civilised, too modern for that. He knew, no one better, that the pleasure of the world was pleasant, and that the ills are the reverse. When his wife betrayed him he grieved, when his daughter died he sorrowed. When his foe was strong against him he hated him. He avoided pain when it came near him, and did his best to have everything comfortable around him. He was so far an epicurean, as we all are. He did not despise death, or pain, or grief. He was a modern, minded man, if I make myself understood, of robust tendencies, moral, healthy, and enduring. But he was anything but a philosopher in his life. Let us remember the way in which he laughs at the idea of bringing philosophy into real life in the De Natura Deorum. He is speaking of the manner in which the lawyers would have had to behave themselves in the law courts, if philosophy had been allowed to prevail. No man could have grieved aloud, no patron would have wept, no one would have sorrowed. There would have been no calling of the Republic to witness, not a man would have dared to stamp his foot, lest it should have been told to the Stoics. You should keep the books of the philosophers for your tusculine ease, he had said in the preceding chapter, and he speaks in the same page of Plato's fabulous state. Then why, it may be asked, did he write so many essays on philosophy, enough to have consumed the energies of many laborious years? There can be no doubt that he did write the philosophy, though we have ample reason to know that it was not his philosophy. All those treatises beginning with the Academica, written when he was sixty-two, two years only before his death, and carried on during twelve months with indomitable energy. The De Finibus, the Tusculine Disputations, the De Natura de Orum, the De Divinazione, and the De Fato were composed during the time named. To those who have regarded Cicero as a philosopher, as one who has devoted his life to the pursuits of philosophy, does it not appear odd that he should have deferred his writing on the subject, and postponed his convictions till now? At this special period of his life, why should he have rushed into them at once, and should so have done it as to be able to leave them aside as another period? Why has all this been done within less than two years? Let any man look to the last year of his life, when the Philippics were coming hot from his brain and eager from his mouth, and ask himself how much of Greek philosophy he finds in them. Out of all the sixty-four years of his life, he devoted one to this philosophy, and that not the last, but the penultimate, and so lived during all these years, even including that one, as to show how little hold philosophy had upon his conduct. I deo my troas, was that Greek philosophy, or the eager exclamation of a human spirit in its weakness and in its strength, fearing the breath of his fellow men, and yet knowing that the truth would ultimately be expressed by it. Nor is the reason for this far to seek, though the character which could avail itself of such a reason requires a deep insight. To him literature had been everything. We have seen with what attention he had studied oratory, rhetoric rather, so as to have at his fingers ends the names of those who had ever shone in it, and the doctrines that they had taught. We know how well-read he was in Homer and the Greek tragedians, how he knew by heart his enius, his naivius, his pacuvious, and the others who had written in his own tongue. As he was acquainted with the poets and rhetoricians, so also was he acquainted with those writers who have handled philosophy. His incredible versatility was never at fault. He knew them all from the beginning, and could interest himself in their doctrines. He had been in the schools at Athens, and had learned it all. In one sense he believed in it. There was a great battle of words carried on, and in regard to that battle he put his faith in this set or in the other. But had he ever been asked by what philosophical process he would rule the world, he would have smiled. Then he would have declared himself not to be an academician, but a republican. It was with him a game of play, ornamented with all the learning of past ages. He had found the schools full of it in Athens, and had taken his part in their teaching. It had been pleasant to him to call himself a disciple of Plato, and to hold himself aloof from the straightness of the Stoics, and from the mundane theories of the followers of Epicurus. It had been well for him also to take an interest in that play. But to suppose that Cicero, the modern Cicero, the Cicero of the world, Cicero the polished gentleman, Cicero the soft-hearted, Cicero the hater, Cicero the lover, Cicero the human, was a believer in Greek philosophy, that he had taken to himself and fed upon those shreds and tatters and dry sticks, that he had ever satisfied himself with such a mode of living as they could promise to him, is indeed to mistake the man. His soul was quiveringly alive to all those instincts which now govern us. Go among our politicians, and you shall find this man and the other who, in after dinner talk, shall call himself an Epicurian, or shall think himself to be an academician. He has carried away something of the learning of his college days, and remembers enough of his school exercises for that. But when he has to make a speech for or against protection, then you will find out where lies his philosophy. And so it was with Cicero during this, the penultimate year of his life. He poured forth during this period such an amount of learning on the subject that when men took it up after the lapse of centuries they labelled it all as his philosophy. When he could no longer talk politics nor act them, when the forum was no longer open to him, nor the meetings of the people or of the senate, when he could no longer make himself heard on behalf of the state, then he took to discussions on carneades. And his discussions are wonderful. How he could lay his mind to work when his daughter was dead, and write in beautiful language for such treatises, as came from his pen, while he was thinking of the temple which was to be built to her memory. It is a marvel that at such a period, at such an age, he should have been equal to the labour. But it was thus that he amused himself, consoled himself, distracted himself. It is hard to believe that in the sad evening of his life such a power should have remained with him, but easier, I think, than to imagine that in that year of his life he had suddenly become philosophical. In describing the Academica, the first of these works in point of time, it is necessary to explain that by reason of an alteration in his plan of publishing, made by Cicero after he had sent the first copy to Atticus, and by the accident that the second part has been preserved of the former copy, and the first part of the second, a confusion has arisen. Cicero had felt that he might have done better by his friends than to bring Hortensius, Catulus and Leculus discussing Greek philosophy before the public. They were none of them, men who, when alive, had interested themselves in the matter. He therefore rewrote the essays, or altered them, and again sent them forth to his friend Varro. Cicero has been so far kind to them as to have preserved portions of the first book as altered, and the second of the four which constituted the first edition. It is that which has been called Leculus. The Catulus had come first, but has been lost. Hortensius and Cicero were the two last. We may perceive, therefore, into what a length of development he carried his purpose. It must be, of course, understood that he dictated these exercises, and assisted himself by the use of all mechanical means at his disposal. The men who worked for him were slaves, and these slaves were always willing to keep in their own hands the good things which came to them by the exercise of their own intelligence and adroitness. He could not multiply his own hands or brain, but he could multiply all that might assist them. He begins by telling Varro that he has long since desired to illustrate in Latin letters the philosophy which Socrates had commended, and he asks Varro why he, who was so much given to writing, had not as yet written about any of these things. As Varro boasted afterwards that he was the author of four hundred and ninety books, there seems to be a touch of irony in this. Be that as it may, Varro is made to take up the gauntlet and to rush away at once amidst the philosophers. But here, on the threshold as it were of his inquiries, we have Cicero's own reasons given in plain language. But now, hit hard by the heavy blow of fortune, and freed as I am from looking after the state, I seek from philosophy relief from my pain. He thinks that he may in this way perhaps best serve the public, or even if it be not so, what else is that he may find to do? As he goes on, however, we find that what he writes is about the philosophers rather than philosophy. Then we come to the Leculis. It seems odd that the man whose name has come down to us as a byword for luxury, and who is laden with the reproach of overeating, should be thus brought forward as a philosopher. It was perhaps the subsequent feeling on Cicero's part that such might be the opinion of men which induced him to alter his form, in vain as far as we are concerned. But Leculis had lived with Antiochus, a Greek philosopher, who had certain views of his own, and he is made to defend them through this book. Here, as elsewhere, it is not the subject which delights us, so much as the manner in which he handles certain points almost outside the subject. How many things do those exercised in music know which escapes us? Ah, there is an therapy, they say. That is Andromache. What can be truer, or less likely we may suppose to meet us in a treatise on philosophy, and therefore more welcome? He is speaking of evidence. It is necessary that the mind shall yield to what is clear, whether it wish it or know, because the dish in a balance must give way when a weight is put upon it. You may snore, if you will, as well as sleep, says Coneides. What good will it do you? And then he gives the guesses of some of the old philosophers as to the infinite. Thales has said that water is the source of everything. Anaximander would not agree to this, for he thought that all had come from space. Coneides had affirmed that it was air. Anaxagoras had remarked that matter was infinite. Xenophonies had declared that everything was one whole, and that it was a god, everlasting, eternal, never born and never dying, but round in his shape. Parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the earth. Heraclitus believed it to be plenum etinane. What full and empty may mean, I cannot tell. But Democritus could, for he believed in it, though in other matters he went a little further. Empedocles sticks to the old four elements. Heraclitus is all for fire. Melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ever will be. Cicero thinks that the world has always existed, while the Pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics. Your wise men, continues Cicero, will know one whom to choose out of all these, let the others who have been repudiated retire. They are all concealed these things, hidden in thick darkness, so that no human eye can have power enough to look up into the heavens or down onto the earth. We do not know our own bodies, or the nature or strength of their component parts. The doctors themselves who have opened them and looked at them are ignorant. The empirics declare that they know nothing, because as soon as looked at they may change. Hiketas the Syracusan, as the Ephraestus tells us, thinks that the heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars all stand still, and that nothing in all the world moves but the earth. Now, what do you, followers of Epicurus, say to this? I need not carry the conversation on any further to show that Cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. This Hiketas the Syracusan seems to have been nearer the marks than the others, according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in Cicero's days. But what was the meaning of it all? Who knows anything about it? How is a man to live by listening to such trash as this? It is thus that Cicero means to be understood. I will agree that Cicero does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole thing into ridicule. He does generally find it well to say something in praise of these philosophers. He does not quite declare the fact that nothing is to be made of them, or rather there is existing in it all an under-feeling that were he to do so he would destroy his character and rob himself of his amusement. But we remember always his character of a philosopher as attributed to Cato in his speech during his consulship for Morena. I have told the story when giving an account of the speech, he who cuts the throat of an old cock when there is no need, has sinned as deeply as the parasite when breaking his father's neck, says Cicero laughing at the Stoics. There he speaks out the feelings of his heart, there and often elsewhere in his errations. Here in his academica he is eloquent on the same side. We cannot but rejoice at the plainness of his words, but it has to be acknowledged that we do not often find him so loudly betraying himself when dealing with the old discussions of the Greek philosophers. Very quickly after his academica in B.C.45 came the five books De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written as though with the object of settling the whole controversy and declaring whether the truth lay with the Epicureans, the Stoics or the academics. What at last is the good thing and what the evil thing, and how shall we gain the one and avoid the other? If he will tell us this he will have proved himself to be a philosopher to some purpose, but he does nothing of the kind. At the end of the fifth book we find Atticus, who was an Epicurean, declaring to Quintus Cicero that he held his own opinion just as firmly as ever, although he had been delighted to hear how well the academician Piso had talked in Latin. He had hitherto considered that these were things which would not sound well unless in the Greek language. It is again in the form of a dialogue, and like all his writings at this time, is addressed to Brutus. It is in five books. The two first are supposed to have been held at Cumae between Cicero, Torquatis and Triarius. Here, after a prelude in favour of philosophy and Latin together, Torquatis is allowed to make the best excuse he can for Epicurus. The prelude contains much good sense, for whether he be right or not in what he says, it is good for every man to hold his own language in respect. I have always thought and said that the Latin language is not poor as it is supposed to be, but even richer than the Greek. Let us learn, says Torquatis, who has happened to call upon him at Cumae with Triarius, a grave in learned youth, as we are told, since we have found you at your house. Why it is that you do not approve of Epicurus. He who seems to have freed the minds of men from error and to have taught them everything which could tend to make them happy. Then Torquatis goes to work and delivers the most amusing discourse on the wisdom of Democritus and his great disciple. The words fly about with delightful power, so as to leave upon our minds an idea that Torquatis is persuading his audience. For it is Cicero's peculiar gift, in whosoever mouth he puts his words, to make him argue as though he were the victor. We feel sure that had he in his hand held a theory contrary to that of Torquatis, had he in truth cared about it, he could not have made Torquatis speak so well. But the speaker comes to an end and assures his hearers that his only object had been to hear, as he had never heard before, what Cicero's own opinion might be on the matter. The second book is a continuation of the same meeting. The word is taken up by Cicero and he refutes Torquatis. It seems to us, however, that poor Epicurus is but badly treated. As has generally been the case in the prose works which have come down to us, we have indeed the poem of Lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. But I was always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit suicide, a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black colours, though Cato and Brutus the Stoics did the same thing very gloriously. The Epicurians are held to be sensualists, because they have used the word pleasure instead of happiness, and Cicero is hard upon them. He tells a story of the dying moments of Epicurus, quoting a letter written on his deathbed. While I am writing, he says, I am living my last hour, and the happiest. I have so bad a pain in my stomach that nothing can be worse. But I am compensated for it all, by the joy I feel as I think of my philosophical discourses. Cicero then goes on to declare that though the saying is very noble, it is unnecessary. He should not, in truth, have required compensation. But whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be unnecessary. He does not want opinion. He is satisfied with the language in which Cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and severe. In the third book, he, some time afterwards, discussed the Stoic doctrine with Cato at the Tuscalan villa of Lucullus near to his own. He had walked over, and finding Cato there by chance, had immediately gone to work to demolish Cato's philosophical doctrines. He tells us what a glutton Cato was over his books, taking them even into the senate with him. Cicero asks for certain volumes of Aristotle, and Cato answers him that he would feign put into his hands those of Zeno's school. We can see how easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's appeal to the world at large. I have been carried further than my intention. But in truth the admirable order of the system and the incredible symmetry of it has led me on by the gods, do you not wonder at it? In nature there is nothing so close-packed, nor in art so well-fitted. The latter always agrees with the former, that which follows with that which has gone before. Not a stone in it all can be moved from its place. If you touch but one letter it falls to the ground. How severe, how magnificent, how dignified stands out the person of the wise man, who, when his reason shall have taught him that virtue is the only good, of a necessity must be happy. He shall be more justly called king than Tarquin, who could rule neither himself nor others, more rightly dictator than Sulla, the owner of the three vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty, more rightly rich than Crassus, who had he not in truth been poor, would never have crossed the Euphrates in quest of war. All things are justly his, who knows how to use them justly. You make all him beautiful, whose soul is more lovely than his body. He is free, who is slave to no desire. He is unconquered, for whose mind you can forge no chains. You need not wait with him for the last day to pronounce him happy. If this be so, then the good man is also the happy man. What can be better worth our study than philosophy? Or what more heavenly than virtue? All of this was written by Cicero in most elaborate language, with a finish of words polished down to the last syllable, because he had nothing else wherewith to satisfy the cravings of his intellect. The fourth book is a continuation of the argument, which when he had said he made an end, but I began. With no other introduction Cicero goes to work, and demolishes every word that Cato had said. He is very courteous, so that Cato cannot but admit that he is answered becomingly, but, to use a common phrase, he does not leave him a leg to stand upon. Although during the previous book Cato has talked so well, that the reader will think that there must be something in it, he soon is made to perceive that the stoic budge is altogether shoddy. The fifth and last book, De Finibus, is supposed to recount a dialogue held at Athens, or rather gives the circumstances of a discourse pretended to have been delivered there by Poupius Piso to the two Ciceroes and their Casmon Lucius on the merits of the old academy and the Aristotelian parapetetics. For Plato's philosophy had got itself split in two, there was the old and the new, and we may perhaps doubt to which Cicero devoted himself. He certainly was not an Epicurean, and he certainly was not a stoic. He delighted to speak of himself as a lover of Plato, but in some matters he seems to have followed Aristotel who had diverged from Plato, and he seems also to have clung to Carniades who had become master of the new academy. But in truth, to ascertain the special doctrine of such a man on such a subject is vain. As we read these works, we lose ourselves in admiration of his memory, we are astonished at the industry which he exhibits, we are delighted by his perspicuity, and feel ourselves relieved amidst the crowd of names and theories by flashes of his wit. But there comes home to us as a result the singular fact of a man playing with these theories as the most interesting sport the world had produced, but not believing the least in any of them. It was not that he disbelieved, and perhaps among them all the tenets of the new academy were those which reconciled themselves the best to his common sense, but they were all nothing to him but an amusement. In this book there are some exquisite bits. He says, speaking of Athens, that, go where you will through the city, you place your footsteps on the vestiges of history. He says of a certain Demetrius, whom he describes as writing books without readers in Egypt, that this culture of his mind was to him as it were the food by which his humanity was kept alive. And then he falls into the praise of our love for our neighbours, and introduces us to that true philosophy which was the real guide of his life. Among things which are honest, he says, there is nothing which shines so brightly and so widely as that brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race. It comes from our original condition, in which children are loved by their parents, and then binding together the family, it spreads itself abroad among relations, connections, friends, and neighbours. And it includes citizens and those who are our allies. At last it takes in the whole human race, and that feeling of the soul arises which, giving every man his own, and defending by equal laws the rights of each, is called justice. It matters little how may have been introduced this great secret which Christ afterwards taught, and for which we look in vain through the writings of all the philosophers. It comes here simply from Cicero himself, in the midst of his remarks on the new academy, but it gives the lesson which had governed his life. I will do unto others, as I would they should do unto me. In this is contained the rudiments of that religion which has served to soften the hearts of us all. It is of you, I must think, and not of myself. Hitherto the schools had taught how a man should make himself happy, whether by pleasure, whether by virtue, or whether by something between the two. It seems that it had never as yet occurred to a man to think of another except as a part of the world around him. Then there had come a teacher who, while fumbling among the old Greek lessons which had professed to tell mankind what each should do for himself, brings forth this, as it were, in preparation for the true doctrine that was to come. Ipsa caritas generis umani, that love of the human race. I trust I may be able to show before I have finished my work that this was Cicero's true philosophy. All the rest is merely with him a play of words. End of Chapter 12, Part 1. CHAPTER 12, PART 2 OF THE LIFE OF CICERO VOLUME 2. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life of Cicero Vol. 2 by Antony Trollop. CHAPTER 12, Cicero's Philosophy, PART 2. Our next work contains the five books of the Tuscalan Disputations, addressed to Brutus, Tusculanarium Disputationum, Adem Brutum, Libri Primus, Secondus, Tertius, Quartus, and Quintus. That is the name that has at last been decided by the critics and annotators as having been probably given to them by Cicero. They are supposed to have been written to console himself in his grief for the death of Tullia. I have great doubt whether consolation in sorrow is to be found in philosophy, but I have none as to the finding it in writing philosophy. Here I may add that the poor generally suffer less in their sorrow than the rich, because they are called upon to work for their bread. The man who must make his pair of shoes between sunrise and the moment at which he can find relief from his weary stool has not time to think that his wife has left him and that he has desolate in the world. Pulling those weary threads, getting that leather into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taught so that he do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he has not a moment for a tear. And it is the same if you go from the lowest occupation to the highest, writing Greek philosophy does as well as the making of shoes. The nature of the occupation depends on the mind, but its utility on the disposition. It was Cicero's nature to write, will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled himself with one of his treatises on oratory? But philosophy was then to his hands. It seems to have cropped up in his later years after he had become intimate with Brutus. When life was again one turmoil of political fever, it was dropped. In the five books of the Tuscalan Disputations, still addressed to Brutus, he contends, one, that death is no evil, two, that pain is none, three, that sorrow may be a abolished, four, that the passions may be conquered, five, that virtue will suffice to make a man happy. These are the doctrines of the Stoics, but Cicero does not in these books defend any school especially. He leans heavily on Epicurus, and gives all praise to Socrates and Plato, but he is comparatively free. Nullius aductus jurare in werba magistri, as Horace afterwards said, I live for the day. Whatever strikes my mind as probable, that I say. In this way I alone am free. Let us take his dogmas, and goes through them one by one, comparing each with his own life. This it may be said is a crucial test to which but few philosophers would be willing to exceed. But if it shall be found that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions, then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things, because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes. Was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his eyes, not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? Even after Tullius was dead the Republic had come again for him, and something might be done to stir up these fainient nobles. What could a dead man do for his country? Look back at Cicero's life, and see how seldom he has put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work of attack. Was this the man to console himself with the idea that death was no evil? And did he despise pain, or make any attempt at showing his disregard of it? You can hardly answer this question by looking for a man's indifference when undergoing it. It would be to require too much from philosophy to suppose that it could console itself in agony by reasoning. It would not be fair to insist on arguing with Cato in the gout. The clemency of human nature refuses to deal with philosophy in the hard straits to which it may be brought by the malevolence of evil. But when you find a man peculiarly on the alert to avoid the recurrence of pain, when you find a man with a strong premeditated antipathy to a condition as to which he pretends an indifference, then you may fairly assert that his indifference is only a matter of argument. And this was always Cicero's condition. He knew that he must at any rate lose the time passed by him under physical annoyance. His health was good, and by continued care remained so to the end, but he was always endeavouring to avoid sea-sickness. He was careful as to his baths, careful as to his eyes, very careful as to his diet. Was there ever a man of whom it might be said with less truth that he was indifferent as to pain? The third position is that sorrow may be abolished. Read his letters to Atticus about his daughter Tullia, written at the very moment he was proving this. He was a heartbroken, sorrow-stricken man. It will not help us now to consider whether in this he showed strengths or weakness. There will be no doubt about it, whether he gained or lost more by that deep devotion to another creature which made his life a misery to him because that other one had gone, whether, too, he might not have better hidden his sorrow than have shown it even to his friend. But with him at any rate it was there. He can talk over it, weep over it, almost laugh over it. But if there be a thing he cannot do, it is to treat it after the manner of a stoic. His passions should be conquered. Look back at every period of his life and see whether he has ever attempted it. He has always been indignant or triumphant or miserable or rejoicing. Remember the incidents of his life before and after his consulship, the day of his election and the day of his banishment, and ask the philosophers why he had not controlled his passion. I shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his passion had the masterhood. But what attempt did he ever make? Has he shown himself to us to be a man wither leaning towards such attempts? Has he not reveled in his passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a man? As he regretted them, did the occasion him remorse? Will any one tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? That virtue will make men happy. He might probably have granted if asked. But he would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. The commonest Christian of the day will say as much. But he will say it in a different meaning from that intended by the philosophers who had declared as a rule of life that virtue would suffice to make them happy. To be good to your neighbours will make you happy in the manner described by Cicero in the fifth book, De Finibus. Love those who come near you. Be good to your fellow-creatures. Think when dealing with each of them what his feelings may be. Melt to a woman in her sorrow. Lend a man the assistance of your shoulder. Be patient with age. Be tender with children. Let others drink of your cup, and eat of your loaf. Where the wind cuts, there lend your cloak. That virtue will make you happy. But that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he lay down his doctrine. That was not the virtue with which Brutus was strong when he was skinning those poor wretches of Salamis. Such was the virtue with which the heart of Cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the Cilician town come out into the market-place with their corn. Cicero begins the second book of the Tusculans by telling us that Neoptolamus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too much at a time. With himself the matter was different. In what else is there that I can do better? Then he takes the bit between his teeth and rushes away with it. The reader feels that he would not stop him if he could. He does little, indeed, for philosophy, but so much for literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him otherwise employed. He wrote three treatises de natura deorum. Had he declared that he would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had taken up about the gods, he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea of what was Cicero's real notion of that dominancy nobis deus, that God which reigns within us, and which he declares in Cicero's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. Nothing can be further removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us, either in the first book in which the gods of Epicurus are set forth, in the second in which the Stoics are defended, or the third in which the gods, in accordance with the Academy, are maintained. Not but that either, for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect does not say the best that is to be said. Velas is eloquent for the Epicurians, Balbus for the Stoics, and Cotter for the Academy. And in that which each says there is to be found the germ of truth, though indeed Cicero makes his Epicurian as absurd as he well can do. But he does not leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief, which an energetic preacher is sure to create. The language is excellent, the stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot very well reply to them. But they leave on the mind of the reader a sad feeling of the lack of reality. In the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such subjects so late in life. Being sick with ease and having found the condition of the Republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man, I have thought it good, for the sake of the Republic, to write about philosophy, in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens, believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the State, that things of such weight should be set forth in the Latin tongue—not that the philosophy should be set forth but what the different teachers said about it. His definition of eternity, or rather the want of definition, is singular. There has been from all time an eternity which no measurement of time can describe, its duration cannot be understood, that there should have been a time before time existed. Then there comes an idea of the Godhead escaping from him in the midst of his philosophy—modern, human, and truly Ciceroanian. Lo, it comes to pass that this God, of whom we are sure in our minds, and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear to us. By and by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that Cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the Epicureans. Therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in want, in laughing at us. Indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not try to do so, it does not become you. It is not given to you, you have not the power. I do not say this to you," he says, addressing Veleus, for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of our people. But I am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him who is the father of your rules, a man without science, without letters, one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight, without wit. Cicero, I think, must have felt some genuine dislike for Epicurus, when he spoke of him in such terms as these. Then alas, there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero, when alad, had taken in hand the phenomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can be introduced, some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with which we are still familiar—the twins, the bull, the great bear, Cassiopeia, the waterman, the scorpion. These and many others are made to come forward in hexameters, and by Cicero in Latin as by Aratus in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had fallen dead, but here it is brought to life, and is introduced into what is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of uninteresting verses in such a place, for the reader who has had Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long—the lines have probably been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as to carry the reader away altogether into another world. Later on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which for that age shows an accurate knowledge, but what has it to do with the nature of the gods? When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged, consists chiefly of nerves. The lungs are light and porous and like a sponge, just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that sustenance most necessary to animal life. The third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant railery against Epicurus. Cotter declares that he had felt no difficulty with Epicurus. Cotter and his allies had found little to say as to the immortal gods. His gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been able to move them. But from Balbus the Stoic they had heard much which, though not true, was nevertheless truth-like. In all these discourses it seems that the poor Epicurians are treated with but a moderate amount of mercy. But Cotter continues and tells many stories of the gods. He is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction has fallen upon the manuscripts, and his arguments have come to us unfinished. It is better, he says, not to give wine to the sick at all, because you may injure them by the application. In the same way I do not know whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it upon them so often to their own destruction. It is thus that is discussed the nature of the gods in this work of Cicero, which is indeed a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the position which it had reached in his time. The De Natura De Orum is followed by two books De Divinazione and by the fragment of one De Fato. De Divin is the science of predicting events. By Fatum Cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed beforehand. The three books together may be taken as religious discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be the duty of the state to foster observances and even to punish their non-observance for the benefit of the whole, even though they might not be in themselves true. He is here, together with his brother, or with those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated themselves from superstition, and tells him or them, that though they do not believe, they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done, although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He repudiates the belief as unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though they believed. In such a theory as this, put thus before the reader, there will seem to be dissimulation. I cannot deny that it is so, though most anxious to assert the honesty of Cicero. I can only say that such dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. If any be great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so, and may include Cicero with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not. It seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men, and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from that common pale of mankind. I distrust the self-confidence of him who thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of falsehood. I will take our Protestant Church of England religion, and will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines, and will endeavour to do so without shocking the feelings of any. When did Sabaterian observances begin to be required by the Word of God, and when again did they cease to be so? If it were worth the while of those who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies would be various. It has never begun. It has never wavered. And there would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the feeling of the country is altering and has altered. In the midst of this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the sake of an example? Does not the church admit prayers for change of weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as to the works of nature was greater, or written yesterday because the ignorance of man has demanded it, or they who have demanded it have not perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve the superstition of the multitude. I am not saying this as against the religious observances of today, but as showing that such is still the condition of men as to require the defence which Cicero also required when he wrote as follows. Former ages erred in much, which we know to have been changed by practice, by doctrine or by time, but the custom, the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs, and the authority of the college are retained in obedience to the opinion of the people, and to the great good of the state. Our consuls, Claudius and Junius, were worthy of all punishment when they put to see in opposition to the auspices. For men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country be set aside so easily. No stronger motive for adhering to religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people and the good of the state. There will be they who aver that truth is great and should be allowed to prevail, though broken worlds should fall in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amidst the ruins, but they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be broken. Such I think was the reasoning within Cicero's mind when he wrote these treatises. In the first he encounters his brother Quintus at his Tuscalan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favour of religion. Quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the auspices. He is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is thoroughly conservative. In this way he has an opportunity given him of showing the antiquity of his belief. Stare superuia santiquas, is the motto of Quintus Cicero. Then he proceeds to show the two kinds of divination which have been in use. There is the one which he calls Ars, and which we perhaps make all experience. The soothsayer predicts in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. He is asked to say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a Friday. He knows, or thinks he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he thinks that he knows, that ships that have put to sea on Friday have generally gone to the bottom. He therefore predicts against the going to sea. Although the ship should put forth on the intended day and should make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false. That can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on Friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others, a process which requires the close observations of science to make good. That is art. Then there is the prediction which comes from a mind disturbed, one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit, as the Sibyl, or Epimenides of Crete, who lived a hundred and fifty-seven years, but slept during sixty-four of them. Quintus explains as to these that the God does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to see them. He tells us many amusing details as do prophetic dreams, and the doings of soothsayers and wise men. The book, so, becomes chatty and full of anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry, some by others, and some by Cicero. Here I give in those lines as to the battle of the eagle and the dragon, which I have ventured to call the best amidst the nine versions brought forward. We cannot but sympathise with him in the reason which he prefixes to the second book of this treatise. I often ask myself, and turn in my mind, how best I may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest there should come a time in which I should seem to have ceased to be anxious for the state. And nothing better has occurred to me than that I should make known the way of studying the best arts, which, indeed, I think I have now done in various books. Then he recapitulates them. There is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to Hortensius, now lost. Then in the four books of the academics he had put forward his ideas after that school which he believed to be the least arrogant and the truest, meaning the new academy. After that, as he had felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he had examined that matter. The Tuscalan inquiries had followed, in which he had set forth in five books the five great rules of living well. Having finished this he had written his three books on the nature of the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete it, by his present inquiries. We cannot but sympathise with him, because we know that though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe himself. Brutus believed it, and Cato, and that Vileus, and that Balbus, and that Cotter. Or if Pachance any of them did not, they lived and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did. The example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. Amidst it all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his countrymen, in thus representing to them, in their native language, the learning by which they might best be softened. Graechia capta ferum victorum capit et artes intulit agresti latio. Footnote Horus, epistles Book II, I, Greece conquered Greece, her conqueror subdued, and Rome grew polished, who till then was rude. Cunnington's translation. End of footnote. Here too he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. My fellow-citizens, says he, will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank me, for that when the republic fell into the power of one man, I neither hid myself, nor did I desert them, nor did I idly weep, or carry myself as so angry with the man or with the times, nor yet forsooth, so flattering the good fortune of another, that I should have to be ashamed of what I had done myself. For I had learned this lesson from the philosophy of Plato, that there are certain changes in public affairs. They will be governed now by the leaders of the state, then by the people, sometimes by a single man. This is very wise, but he goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. He knows that he is preaching only to a few, in such a manner as to make his preaching safe. His language is very pleasing, always civil, always courteous, but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother into ridicule. And we feel that he is not so much laughing at his brother, as at the gods themselves. They are so clearly wooden gods, though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the state that they shall be received. He declares that in accordance with the theory of his brother, meaning thereby the Stoics, it is necessary that they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that they may look after the affairs of men. It is playful, argumentative, and satirical. At last he proposes to leave the subject. Socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his audience. Quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the discourse de divinazione is brought to an end. Of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it. It is the desire of Cicero to show that in the sequence of affairs which men call life, it matters little whether there be a destiny or not. Things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed, by the action of men. What is it to us whether this or that event has been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? All this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course of philosophy, and we rise at last from the perusal with the feeling of thankfulness that all these books of Chrysippus of which he tells us are not still existent to be investigated. Such is the end of those works which I admit to have been philosophical, and of which it seems to be understood that they were the work of about eighteen months. They were all written after Caesar's triumph, when it was no longer in the power of any Roman to declare his opinion either in the senate or in the forum. Caesar had put down all opposition and was made supreme over everything, till his death. The Deferto was written indeed after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped themselves as to make it necessary that Cicero should return to public life. So indeed were the three last moral essays which I shall notice in the next chapter. But in truth he had them always in his heart. It was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving either to himself or to some faithful Tyro, the subsequent duty of rearrangement. But what a head there was there to contain it all! CHAPTER XIII. We have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. I have seen somewhere a calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it were, from the buried ruins of literature, by the care of sedulous and eager scholars. I make a more modest estimate of his powers. Judging from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort to keep the greater portion of his letters, I think that I do not exaggerate his writing. Who can say but that as time goes on some future Petrarch, or some future Mai, may discover writings hitherto unknown, concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the labours of middle-aged monks? It was but in 1822 that the de République was brought to light, so much of it at least as we still possess. And for more than thirty years afterwards, Cardinal Mai continued to reproduce, from time to time, collections of Greek and Latin writings hitherto unheard of by classical readers. Let us hope, however, that the zeal of the learned may stop short of that displayed by Simon Dubois, or we may have whole treatises of Cicero, of which he himself was guiltless. I can hardly content myself with classifying the de République and the de Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero which are undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pass, perhaps, without that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping the Delphicces in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as Cicero's philosophy, which is on the mischief. The works reviewed in the last chapter contained disputations on the Greek philosophy, which Cicero thought might be well handled in the Latin language for the benefit of his countrymen. It would be well for them to know what Epicura's taught, or Zeno, and how they differed from Socrates and Plato, and this he told them. Now in these moral essays he gives them his own philosophy, if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach men how to live well. There are six books on government, called the de Repubblica, and three on law, and there are the three treatises on old age and friendship each in one book, and that on the duty of man to man in three. There is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word republic. It has come to have a sweet saver in the nostrils of men, or a most evil sent, according to their politics. But there is in truth the Republic of Russia, as there is that of the United States, and that of England. Cicero in using it as the name of his work simply means the Government, and the treatise under that head contains an account of the Roman Empire, and is historical, rather than argumentative and scientific. He himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amidst a condition of things in which that most deleterious form of Government recommended itself to him, as containing all that had been good and magnificent in the Roman Empire. The great man of Rome, whom the Empire had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a year, and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. By the expulsion of their kings the class from whom these men had been chosen showed their personal desire for honour, and the marvel is that through so many centuries these oligarchs should have flourished. The reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when he begins to read Roman history, finds himself wedded to the cause of these oligarchs. They have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes to them from vulgar hands. Let me ask any man who remembers the reading of his Livy whether it was not so with him. But it was in truth the democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the safety of Rome, and enabled the Government to go on. Then by degrees the people became enervated, and the leaders became corrupt, and by masterhood of a foreign people and external subjects slaves were multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Funder, rapin, and luxury took the place of duty performed—a varies ruled where a Marcellus had conquered. Cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown according to its nature. That state of affairs was produced which Momsen has described to us as having been without remedy. But Cicero did not see it. He had his eyes on the greatness of the past, and on himself, and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from Rome. He was in this state of mind when he wrote his De Repubblica, nine years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical discussions. Then he still hoped. Caesar was away in Gaul, and Pompey maintained at Rome the ghost of the Old Republic. He could still open his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. He had not been as yet driven to find consolation amidst that play of words which constitutes the Greek philosophy. I must remind the readers again that the De Repubblica is a fragment—the first part is wanting. We find him telling us the story of the elder Cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. Then he gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the number he names himself. But he soon introduces the form of dialogue which he afterwards continues, and brings especially the younger Scipio and Lilius upon the scene. The lessons which are given to us are supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater Scipio who outmaneuvered Hannibal. He continues to tell story after story out of Roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered by the authority of the leading citizens and kept alive by the voices of the people. Is it only because I am an Englishman that he seems to me to describe that form of government which was to come in England? The second book also begins with the praises of Cato. Cato then commences with Romulus, and tells the history of Rome's kings. Tarquin has banished, and the consulate established. He tells us by no means with approbation how the tribunate was established, and then, alas, there comes a break in the manuscript. In the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by Augustine, in which Cicero complains of the injustice of nature in having sent man into the world as might a step-mother, naked, weak, infirm, with soul, anxious, timid, and without force, but still having within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. Then after a while, through many lacunae, Scipio, Lilius, and Ronfilus fall into a discourse as to justice. There is a remarkable passage from which we learn that the Romans practised protection with a rigour exceeding that of modern nations. They would not even permit their transalpine allies to plant their olives and vineyards lest their produce should make their way across Italy, whereby they raised the prices against themselves terribly of oil and wine. There is a kind of slavery which is unjust, says one, when those men have to serve others who might properly belong to themselves. But when they only are made to be slaves who—we may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position—but it is evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are slaves by right. Carniades, the later master of the new academy, has now joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in this country. If you should know, he says, that an adder lay hid just where one were about to sit down, whose death would be a benefit to you, you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. But you would do it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it. From this may be seen the nature of the discourses on justice. The two next books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and manners. In the sixth, we come to that dream of Scipio, which has become so famous in the world of literature, that I do not know whether I can do better than translate it and add it on as an appendix to the end of my volume. It is in itself so beautiful in parts, that I think that all readers will thank me. See appendix to this chapter. At the same time it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be called childish, were it not that we remember when reading it, at what distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty Cicero strove to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. The music of the spheres must have been heard in his imagination, before he could have told us of it, as he has done, in language which seems to be poetic now as it was then, and because poetic, therefore, are not absurd. The length of the year's period is an extravagance. You make all your space of time by what name you will. It is long or short in proportion to man's life. He tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the other side of the Ganges, or that our voices shall come down through many years. I myself read this dream of Scipio in a volume found in Australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. He could judge of this world's future only by the past, but when he tells us of the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue, of the duty upon us to remain here where God has placed us, and of the insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he was not permitted to hear. Two years afterwards, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a copy from Plato. As is the topica, a copy from Aristotle, written on board Scip from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first book may be found scattered through his philosophical treatises. There are some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce allow Cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the waters will prevent his fellow Epicureans from hearing and being led away by mistaken doctrine. Now and again he enunciates a great doctrine, as when he declares that there is nothing better than that men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature. He constantly opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men. In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies in direct opposition to that which he afterwards tells us in his treatise De Divinazione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the other he is communicating to a few chosen friends, those esoteric doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large. There is a charming passage in which we are told not to devote the rich things of the earth to the gods. Gold and silver will create impure desire. Ivory taken from the body of an animal is a gift not simple enough for a god. Metals such as iron are for war rather than for worship. In image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of wood or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colours, white is best for the gods, and so on. Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a god cannot want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labour. It was seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world round the shrines of the gods. How many a man has since learned to regret the lost labour of his household, and yet what God has been the better. There may be a question of aesthetics, indeed, with which Cicero does not meddle. In the third book he descends to practical and at the same time political questions. There had been no matter contested so vehemently among the Romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving with considerable wit the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more pestiferous, or more prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. Oh, Quintus, he says, you see clearly the vices of the tribunate. But can there be anything more unjust than in discussing a matter to remember all its evils, and to forget all its merits? You might say the same of the consuls, for the very possession of power is an evil in itself. But without that evil you cannot have the good which the institution contains. The power of the tribunes is too great, you say. Who denies it? But the violence of the people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader than if no leader had been given them. The leader will measure his danger, but the people itself know no such measurement. He afterwards takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on principle. Let the people vote as they will, he says, but let their votes be known to their betters. It is, alas, useless now to discuss the matter here in England. We have been so impetuous in our wish to avoid the evil of bribery, which was quickly going, that we have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by revolutionary changes. When men vote by tens of thousands the ballot will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. It is, however, strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire, with matters which are perplexing us today. We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica. Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life it becomes difficult to assign their exact places to each. He mentions one as written, and then another. But at last this latter appears before the former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his death, the most active year of his life as far as his written works are concerned, and I shall here treat Desenek Tute first, then the Amikitia, and the Deoficis last, believing them to have been published in that order. The Desenek Tute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally called Cato Major. It is supposed to have been spoken by the old censor, 149 B.C., and to have been listened to by Scipio and Lilius. This was the same Scipio who had the dream, who in truth was not a Scipio at all but a son of Paulus Emilius, whom we remember in history as the younger Africanus. Cato rushes it once into his subject, and proves to us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were probably as well known before his time as they have been since. All men wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. The answer is that no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of which old age is the necessary ending. It creeps on us so quickly, but in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy, but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes. It is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act poem shall be well performed. Cato goes on with his lesson and tells us perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of the world's history. It was written by an old man, to an old man, for it is addressed to Atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals much in commonplaces. But it is full of noble thoughts and is pleasant and told in the easiest language, and it leaves upon the reader a sweet saver of the dignity of age. Let the old man feel that it is not for him to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself from much of the evil which time can do to him. I am ready for you, and you cannot hurt me. Let not the old man assume the strength of the young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. But still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. The melodious voice, however, remains which, and you see my years, I have not yet lost. The voice of an old man should be always tranquil and contained. He tells a story of Massinissa, who was then supposed to be ninety. He was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a journey had himself put upon a horse and never left it, or started on foot and never mounted. We must resist old age, my lilius. We must compensate our shortness by our diligence, my Scipio. As we fight against disease, so let us contend with old age. Why age should be avaricious I could never tell. Can there be anything more absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a journey? He tells them that he knew their fathers, and that he believes they are still alive, that though they have gone from this earth they are still leading that life which can only be considered worthy of the name. The de Amikitia is called Lilius. It is put into the mouth of Lilius, and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the presence of his two sons-in-law, Caios Fanius and Muteus Skyvilla, a few days before the death of Scipio his friend. What Daemon and Pithius were more renowned for their friendship than Scipio and Lilius? He discusses what is friendship and why it is contracted, among whom friendship should exist, what should be its laws and duties, and lastly by what means it should be preserved. Cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth, how he had been placed under the charge of Skyvilla the augur, and how, having changed his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died, and he recalls how once sitting with him in a circle with his friends Skyvilla fell into that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how once Lilius had discussed them on friendship. It is from first to last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early summer grass to men who live in cities. The reader feels, as he goes on with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have been altogether unhappy. Coming at the end of his life, in the telling the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to Atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. He has sometimes been quarrellous with his Atticus. He has complained of bad advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship, in reading which accusations we have all of us declared him to be wrong, but Atticus understood him. He knew that the privileges and the burden must go together, and he told himself how much more than sufficient were the privileges to compensate the burden. When we make our histories on the bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. In writing this treatise De Amichitia, especially for the eyes of Atticus, how constantly the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them, how confident he must have been of the truth of his friend. He who after nearly half a century of friendship could thus write to his friend on friendship, cannot have been an unhappy man. Should a new friendship spring up, he tells us, let it not be repressed. You shall still gather fruit from young trees, but do not let it take the place of the old. Age and custom will have given the old fruit a flavour of its own. Who is there that would ride a new horse, in preference to one tried, one who knows your hand? I regard the De Oficis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given, for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language. It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of education to know it. It is addressed to his son, and is as good now as when it was written. There is not a precept taught in it which is not modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for Christians and pagans. A system of morality, we might have said, should be one which would suit all men alike. We are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. The honestum means much more in Latin than it does in English. Neither honour nor honesty will give the rendering, not that honour or that honesty which we know. One honour flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight, while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on which honour is based. Honestum includes it all, and Cicero has raised his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all, but he so teaches that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches, he does not fulminate his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of punishments. But he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you seem to have found out for yourself what is good you and he together, and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest and decorous. In Cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself from the circumstances of the world around him, so that the reader shall be made to suppose that in the evening of his life, having reached at last by means of work done for the State a time of blessed rest, he gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that tranquil world can bestow upon him. Look back through the treatises written during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life. But we know that the last polish given by his own hands to these three books, by El Fikis, was added amidst the heat and turmoils of the Philippics. It is so singular, this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are taught almost to think that there must have been two Cicero's, and that the one was eager in personal conflict with Antony, while the other was seated in the garden of some Italian villa, meditating words by obeying which all men might be ennobled. In the dialectical disputations of the Greek philosophers, he had picked up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted for a discourse so free and open as is this. We are therefore somewhat offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided into three headings. If it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know it, it should, I think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at logical completeness. It is impossible to call this a fault—accuracy must indeed be in all writers of virtue. But feeling myself to be occasionally wounded by this numbering, I mention it. In the Deo Fikis he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he devotes a book. In the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be done or left undone, that is whether it be Honestum or Turpe. In the second whether it be Expedient, that is Utile, or the Reverse. And in the third he compares the Honestum and the Utile, and tells us what to choose and what to avoid. The duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat higher than we are called it. Parents are dear, children are dear to us, so are relations and friends. But our country embraces it all, for what good man would not die so that he might serve it. How detestable, then, is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and have been and are occupied in its destruction. He gives us some excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. But at the end of it he tells us that the hunting field affords an honest and fitting recreation. I have said that he was modern in his views, but not altogether modern. He defends the suicide of Cato. To them, he says, speaking of Cato's companions in Africa, it might not have been forgiven. Their life was softer, their manners easier. But to Cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners, which he had strengthened with all the severity of his will. He had always remained steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the tyrant of his country. There was something terribly grand in Cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of Cicero. So much Cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's character. Let us look back, and we shall find that we make the same allowance. This is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an apology which he makes. Read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanour of a gentleman. There are two kinds of beauty. One is loveliness, which is a woman's gift. But dignity belongs to the man. Let all ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear, and all fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious. But let us see the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright and we praise him. Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging towards the effeminate, but just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with your clothes, as with other matters, in which a middle course is best. Then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. Those sources of gain are to be regarded as mean, in the pursuit of which men are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gatherers and usurers. All these are to be regarded as illiberal, to which men bring their work, but not their art. As for instance, the painter of a picture shall be held to follow a liberal occupation, but not so the picture-dealer. They are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again. They have to lie like the mischief, or they cannot make their living. All mere workmen are engaged in ignoble employment. What of grandeur can the mere workshop produce? Least of all can those trays be said to be good, which administer only to our pleasures, such as fishmongers, butchers, cooks, and polterers. He adds at the end of his list that of all employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care of a free man. In all of this it is necessary that we should receive what he says with some little allowance for the difference in time, but there is nothing if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now departing from us, whether for good or evil, who shall say? In the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked among those round him. But when the Republic, he says, had ceased to be, that Republic which had been all my care, my employment ceased both in the Forum and the Senate. But when my mind absolutely refused to be inactive, I thought that I might best live down the misery of the time if I devoted myself to the philosophy. From this we may see how his mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. Ni hillagere autum quum animus non poset. How piteous was his position, and yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do, but there was nothing because he the two that had been so much that he had always done. He tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. To be ashamed of nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. But for him there is this difficulty. If any one on his entrance into the world has had laid upon him the greatness of a name, one by his father, let us say, as my Cicero has perhaps happened to you, the eyes of all men will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life. He will be so placed under the meridian sun, that no word spoken or deed done by him shall be hidden. He must live up to the glory to which he has been born. He gives his son much advice about the bar. But the greatest praise, he says, comes from defending a man accused, and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and ill-treated by the power of some great man. This happened to me more than once in my youth, when, for instance, I defended Roscoe Samorinas against Sulla's power. The speech is with us, extant still. He tells us much of the possession of money and the means of ensuring it in a well-governed state. Take care that you allow no debts to the injury of the Republic. You must guard against this at all hazards, but never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. Nothing is so requisite to the state as public credit, which cannot exist unless debtors be made to pay what they owe. There was nothing to which I looked more carefully than this when I was consul. Horse and foot they tried their best, but I opposed them, and freed the Republic from the threatened evil. Never were debts more easily or more quickly collected. When men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they paid. But he who was then conquered is the conqueror now. He has affected what he contemplated, even though it be not now necessary for him. From this passage it seems that these books must have been first written before Caesar's death. Caesar at the time of Catiline's conspiracy had endeavoured to annul all debts, that is to establish new tables, according to the Roman idiom, but had failed by Cicero's efforts. He had since affected it, although he might have held his power without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. Who could that be but Caesar? In the beginning of the third book there is another passage declaring the same thing. I have not strength enough for silent solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. In the short time since the Republic has been overturned I have written more than in all my former years. That again he could not have written after Caesar had fallen. We are left indeed to judge from the whole nature of the discourse that it was written at the period in which the wrongs done by Caesar to Rome, wrongs at any rate as they appeared to Cicero, were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to his slaughter. It was written then, but was published a few months afterwards. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of The Life of Cicero Vol. 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Philippa Jevons. The Life of Cicero Vol. 2 by Anthony Trollope. Chapter 14 Cicero's Religion I should have hardly thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book to the religion of a pagan had I not, while studying Cicero's life, found that I was not dealing with a pagan's mind. The mind of the Roman who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times, was at this period in most instances nearly a blank as to any ideas of a god. Horus is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. Ovid does so still more constantly. They are both full of allusions to the gods. They are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the national worship, and that the orders of the emperor will be best obeyed by believers. Cis tem in orem quod geris imperas, says Horus, when in obedience probably to Augustus he tells his fellow-citizens that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for the repairs of the temples. Superi quorum sumus omnia, says Ovid, thinking it well to show in one of his writings which he sent home from his punishment that he still entertained the fashionable creed. But they did not believe. It was at that time the fashion to pretend a light belief in order that those below might live as though they believed, and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. It was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. It was not well that the augers, who were gentlemen of high family, should go for nothing. Caesar himself was the high priest and thought much of the position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. A religious belief was not expected from a gentleman. Religious ceremonies had gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the Roman nobility had come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful assistance might, per chance, come. In dealing with ordinary pagans of those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. I remember no passage in Livy or Tacitus indicating a religious belief. But with Cicero my mind is full of such, and they are of a nature to make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later I should have suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christ's teachings. Monsieur Renan has reminded us of Cicero's dislike to the Jews. He could not learn from the Jews, though the Jew indeed had much that he could teach him. The religion which he acquired was far from the selfishness of either Jew or Roman. He believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of God, the performance of his duty to his neighbours, in conscience, and in honesty. Kertum ese en coelho, defintum locum, ube beati, aiuo sempiterno, fruantur. There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life. Constant Paul have expressed with more clearness his belief as to a heaven. Earlier in his career he expresses in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to another world. Anwero tam parui animi, wedi amur esse omnes, sui in repubblica, atque in his vita e periculis la borbusque versamur, ut, cum, usquerd extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum, atque utiosum spiritum duxerimus, wo biscum simul moritura omnia adbitremur. Are we all of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country and ourselves, though we have not had one moment of ease here upon earth, when we die, all things shall die with us? And when he did go, it should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. Nekwete sermonibus vulgi dereris, nekin primis humanis spem pozueris drerum tuarum, suis te oportet elekebris ipsa virtus trahat adwerum decus. You shall put your hope neither in man's opinion nor in human rewards, but virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the way to true glory. He thus tells us his idea of God's omnipotence. Quam wim animum ese dicunt mundi, e am dem què esse mentem sapientiam què perfectam, quam deum apelant. This force they call the soul of the world, and looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom, they name it their God. And again he says, speaking of God's care, quis en impotest, quam eksistimet adeo se curari, non et dies et noctes diwinum numen horere. Who is there when he thinks that a God is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his Divine Majesty? As demands duty to his neighbour, a subject as to which Pagans before and even after the time of Cicero seem to have had but vague ideas, the treaty's day of fikiese is full of it, as indeed is the whole course of his life. Omne oficum, quod ad coniuctionem hominum et ad socchietatem tuendam walet, ante ponendum est illi oficio quod cognitione et schientia continetur. All duty which tends to protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which science is the simple object. His belief in a conscience is shown in the law he lays down against suicide. Weetat enim dominans ille in nobis deus, in usu hink nos suo demigrare. That God within us forbids us to depart hence without his permission. As to justice I need give no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works have been written to uphold. His pagan had his ideas of God's governance of men, and of man's required obedience to his God, so specially implanted in his heart, that he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. To us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often the form of a stern duty. We have had it from our fathers and our mothers, and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent hands, still it has been given. It has been there with all its written laws, a thing to live by, if we choose. Rich and poor the majority of us know at any rate the Lord's prayer, and most of us have repeated it regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few, like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found it out certainly. Sui ste oportet ille che bris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum decus. Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to true glory. The words to us seem to be quite commonplace. There is not a curate who might not put them into a sermon. But in Cicero's time they were new, and his are too untaught. There was the old Greek philosopher's idea that the tocalon, the thing of beauty, was to be found in virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold of it. But there was no god connected with it, no future life, no prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was leather and prunello, that, from first to last. The man had to die, and go, melancholy, across the sticks. But Cicero was the first to tell his brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. Kertam esse in coelor, definitum locum, ubibiatu, ayuvo sempiterno fruantur. There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life. And then how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should do unto others as we would they should do unto us, the very pith and marrow and inside meaning of Christ's teaching, by adapting which we have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. When we look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in spite of individual greatness and national honour. But Cicero had found it. That brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that general love for the human race. CHAPTER XXIII It is all contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at length our duty to our neighbours, it will be found there on reference to this passage. How different has been the world before that law was given to us and since. Even the existence of that law, though it be not a bade, has softened the hearts of men. If, as some think, it be the purport of Christ's religion to teach men to live after a god-like fashion, rather than to worship God after a peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that Cicero was almost a Christian even before the coming of Christ. If, as some think, an eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the disciples of Christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for the many a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had Cicero anticipated much of Christ's doctrine. That he should have approached the mystical portion of our religion, it would of course be absurd to suppose, but a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming the conduct of men. The divine birth and the doctrine of the Trinity and the Lord's supper are not necessary to teach a man to live with his brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. You shall live with a man from year's end to year's end, and not know his creed unless he tells you, or that you see him performing the acts of worship. But you cannot live with him and not know whether he live in accordance with Christ's teachings. And so it was with Cicero. Read his works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over the Sunday. The abanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are all there. But you shall not find it to be so with Caesar, or Lucretius, or with Virgil. When you read his philosophical treatises, it is as though you were discussing with some latter-day scholar the theories of Plato or of Epicurus. He does not talk of them as though he believed in them for his soul's guidance, nor do you expect it. All the interests that you have in the conversation would be lost, were you to find such faith as that. You would avoid the man as a pagan. The stoic doctrine would so shock you when brought out for real wear, as to make you feel yourself in the company of some mad atheist, with a man for whose welfare early or late in life church bells had never been rung. But with a man who has his Plato simply by heart, you can spend a long summer day in sweet conversation. So it is with Cicero. You lie down with him, looking out upon the sea at Cumae, or sit with him beneath the plain tree of Crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine and the other. So Archesilus may be supposed to have said, and so Carniades laid down the law. It was that, and no more. But when he tells you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it, then he is in earnest. We care in general but little for any teacher of religion who has not struggled to live up to his own teaching. Cicero has told us of his ideas of the Godhead, and has given us his theory as to those deeds by which a man may hope to achieve the heaven in which that God will reward with everlasting life those who have deserved such bliss. Love of country comes first with him. It behoves, at any rate, a man to be true to his country from first to last, and honesty and honour come next, that honestum which carries him to something beyond the mere integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen, then family affection, then friendship, and then that constant love for our fellow creatures which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us. Going through these there are a dozen smaller virtues but each so mingled with the other as to have failed in obtaining a separate place, dignity, manliness, truth, mercy, long-suffering, forgiveness, and humanity. Try him by these all round, and see how he will come out of the fire. He so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely, that from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in Rome the great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart did not throb for it. In the defence of Amorinas and in the prosecution of Veriz, his object was to stop the prescriptions, to shame the bench, and to punish the plunderers of the provinces. In driving out Catiline the same strong feeling governed him. It was the same in Cilicia. The same patriotism drove him to follow Pompey to the seat of war. The same filled him with almost youthful energy when the final battle for the republic came. It has been said of him that he began life as a liberal in attacking Sulla, and that afterwards he became a conservative when he gained the consulship, that he opposed Caesar and then flattered him, and then rejoiced at his death. I think that they who have so accused him have hardly striven to read his character amidst the changes of the time. A conservative he was always, but he wished to see that the things around him were worth conserving. He was always opposed to Caesar, whose genius and whose spirit were opposed to his own. But in order that something of the republic might be preserved, it became necessary to bear with Caesar. For himself he would take nothing from Caesar, except permission to breathe Italian air. He flattered him as was the Roman custom. He had to do that, or his presence would have been impossible, and he could always do something by his presence. As far as love of country went, which among virtues stood the first with him, he was pure and great. There was not a moment in his career in which the feeling was not in his heart, mixed indeed with personal ambition as must be necessary, for how shall a man show his love for his country except by his desire to stand high in its councils? To be called Pater Patriae by Cato, was to his ear the sweetest music he had ever heard. Let us compare his honesty with that of the times in which he lived. All the high rewards of the state were at his command, and he might so have taken them as to have been safer, firmer, more powerful by taking them. But he took nothing. No gorgeous wealth from a Roman province stuck to his hands. We think of our cavendishes, our howards, and our standleys, and feel that there is nothing in such honesty as this. But the cavendishes, the howards, and the standleys of those days robbed with unblushing pertinacity. Caesar robbed so much that he put himself above all question of honesty. Where did he, who had been so greatly in debt before he went to Spain, get the million with which he bribed his adherents? Cicero neither bought nor sold. Twenty little stories have been told of him, not one with a grain of enduring truth to justify one of them. He borrowed, and he always paid. He lent, but was not always repaid. With such a voice to sell as his, a voice which carried with it the verdict of either guilt or innocence, what payments would it not have been worth the while of a Roman nobleman to make to him? No such payments, as far as we can tell, were ever made. He took a present of books from his friend Poetus and asked another friend what Kingius would say to it. Men struggling to find him out and not understanding his little joke have said, Lo, he has been paid for his work. He defended Poetus and Poetus gave him books. Did he defend Poetus, you ask? We surmise so, because he gave him books, they reply. I say that at any rate the fault should be brought home against him before it is implied from chance passages in his own letters. Cicero's affection for his family gives us an entirely unfamiliar insight into Roman manners. There is a softness, a tenderness, an eagerness about it, such as would give a grace to the life of some English nobleman who had his heart garnered up for him at home, though his spirit was at work for his country. But we do not expect this from the pompies and caesars and catos of Rome—perhaps because we do not know them as we know Cicero. It is odd, however, that we should have no word of love for his boys as to Pompey—no word of love for his daughter as to Caesar. But Cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. All offences on their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed dishonesty which was not to be forgiven. The ribaldry of Diocasius has polluted the story of his regard for Tullia, but in truth we know nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us more than the profundity of his grief. His readiness to forgive his brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety to take them back to his affections, his inability to live without them, tell of his tenderness. His friendship for Atticus was of the same calibre. It was of that nature that it could not only bear hard words, but could occasionally give them without fear of a breach. Can any man read the records of this long affection without wishing that he might be blessed with such a friendship? As to that love of our fellow-creatures which comes not from personal liking for them, but from that kindness of heart towards all mankind, which has been the fruit to us of Christ's teaching, that desire to do unto others as they should do unto us, his whole life is an example. When Quistor in Sicily, his chief duty was to send home corn, he did send it home, but so that he hurt none of those in Sicily by whom it was supplied. In his letter to his brother as to his government of Asia Minor, the lessons which he teaches are to the same effect. When he was in Cilicia it was the same from first to last he would not take a penny from the poor provincials, not even what he might have taken by law. Non modo non finum sed nel lignac quidem. Where did he get the idea that it was a good thing not to torment the poor wretches that were subjected to his power? Why was it that he took such an un-Roman pleasure in making the people happy? Cicero no doubt was a pagan, and in accordance with the rules prevailing in such matters it would be necessary to describe him of that religion if his religion be brought under discussion. But he has not written as pagans wrote, nor did he act as they acted. The educated intelligence of the Roman world had come to repudiate their gods, and to create for itself a belief in nothing. It was easier for a thoughtful man, and pleasanter for a thoughtless, to believe in nothing than in Jupiter and Juno, in Venus and in Mars. But when there came a man of intellect so excellent as to find, when rejecting the gods of his country, that there existed for him the necessity of a real god, and to recognize it as a fact that the intercourse of man with man demanded it, we must not, in recording the facts of his life, pass over his religion as though it was simple chance. Christ came to us and we do not need another teacher. Christ came to us so perfected in manhood as to be free from blemish. Cicero did not come at all as a teacher. He never recognized the possibility of teaching men a religion, or probably the necessity. But he did see the way to so much of the truth as to perceive that there was a heaven, that the way to it must be found in good deeds here on earth, and that the good deeds required of him would be kindness to others. Therefore I have written this final chapter on his religion.