 Chapter 12, Part 2 of the Life of Cicero, Volume 1. Side note, BC 58, Aitat 49. Now we will go back to the story of Cicero's exile. Gradually, during the preceding year, he had learned that Claudius was preparing to attack him, and to doubt whether he could expect protection from the triumvirate. That he could be made safe by the justice either of the people, or by that of any court before which he could be tried, seems never to have occurred to him. He knew the people, and he knew the courts too well. Pompey no doubt might have warded off the coming evil, such at least was Cicero's idea. To him Pompey was the greatest political power as yet extant in Rome, but he was beginning to believe that Pompey would be untrue to him. When he had sent to Pompey a long account of the grand doings of his consulship, Pompey had replied with faintest praises. He had rejected the overtures of the triumvirate. In the last letter to Atticus in the year before written in August he had declared that the republic was ruined, that they who had brought things to this pass, meaning the triumvirate, were hostile. But for himself he was confident in saying that he was quite safe in the good will of men around him. There is a letter to his brother written in November, the next letter in the collection, in which he says that Pompey and Caesar promise him everything. With the exception of two letters of introduction we have nothing from him till he writes to Atticus from the first scene of his exile. When the new year commenced, Claudius was tribune of the people and immediately was active. Piso and Gabinius were consuls, Piso was kinsmen to Piso Frugy who had married Cicero's daughter and was expected to befriend Cicero at this crisis. But Claudius procured the allotment of Syria and Macedonia to the two consuls by the popular vote. They were provinces rich in plunder, and it was matter of importance for a consul to know that the prey which should come to him as proconsul should be worthy of his grasp. They were therefore ready to support the tribune in what he proposed to do. It was necessary to Cicero's enemies that there should be some law by which Cicero might be condemned. It would not be within the power of Claudius even with the triumvirate at his back to drive the man out of Rome and out of Italy without an alleged cause. Though justice had been tabooed, law was still in vogue. Now there was a matter as to which Cicero was open to attack. As consul he had caused certain Roman citizens to be executed as conspirators in the teeth of a law which enacted that no Roman citizen should be condemned to die except by a direct vote of the people. It had certainly become a maxim of the constitution of the republic that a citizen should not be made to suffer death except by the voice of the people. The Valerian, the Porchean, and the Sempronian laws had all been passed to that effect. Now there had been no popular vote as to the execution of Lentulus and the other conspirators who had been taken red-handed in Rome in the affair of Catiline. Their death had been decreed by the Senate, and the decree of the Senate had been carried out by Cicero. But no decree of the Senate had the power of a law. In spite of that decree the old law was in force, and no appeal to the people had been allowed to Lentulus. But there had grown up in the constitution a practice which had been supposed to override the Valerian and Porchean laws. In certain emergencies the Senate would call upon the consuls to see that the republic should suffer no injury, and it had been held that at such moments the consuls were invested with an authority above all law. Cicero had been thus strengthened when, as consul, he had struggled with Catiline. But it was an open question, as Cicero himself very well knew. In the year of his consulship, the very year in which Lentulus and the others had been strangled, he had defended Rabirius, who was then accused of having killed a citizen thirty years before. Rabirius was charged with having slaughtered the tribune Saturninus by consular authority, the consuls of the day having been ordered to defend the republic as Cicero had been ordered. Rabirius probably had not killed Saturninus, nor did anyone now care whether he had done so or not. The trial had been brought about notoriously by the agency of Caesar, who caused himself to be selected by the praetor as one of the two judges for the occasion, and Caesar's object, as notoriously, was to lessen the authority of the Senate and to support the democratic interest. Both Cicero and Hortensius defended Rabirius, but he was condemned by Caesar, and, as we are told, himself only escaped by using that appeal to the people, in support of which he had himself been brought to trial. In this, as in so many of the forensic actions of the day, there had been an admixture of violence and law. We must, I think, acknowledge that there was the same leaven of illegality in the proceedings against Lentulus. It had no doubt been the intention of the constitution that a consul, in the heat of an emergency, should use his personal authority for the protection of the commonwealth. But it cannot be alleged that there was such an emergency, when the full Senate had had time to debate on the fate of the Catiline criminals. Both from Caesar's words as reported by Salist, and from Cicero's as given to us by himself, we are aware that an idea of the illegality of the proceeding was present in the minds of senators at the moment. But, though law was loved at Rome, all forensic and legislative proceedings were at this time carried on with monstrous illegality. Consuls consulted the heavens falsely, tribunes used their veto violently, judges accepted bribes openly, the votes of the people were manipulated fraudulently. In the trial and escape of Riberius, the laws were despised by those who pretended to vindicate them. Claudius had now become a tribune by the means of certain legal provision, but yet in opposition to all law. In the conduct of the affair against Catiline, Cicero seems to have been actuated by pure patriotism, and to have been supported by a fine courage, but he knew that in destroying Lentulus and Cethigus he subjected himself to certain dangers. He had willingly faced these dangers for the sake of the object in view. As long as he might remain the darling of the people, as he was at that moment, he would no doubt be safe. But it was not given to any one to be for long the darling of the Roman people. Cicero had become so by using an eloquence to which the Romans were peculiarly susceptible, but though they loved sweet tongues, long purses went farther with them. Since Cicero's consulship he had done nothing to offend the people except to remain occasionally out of their sight, but he had lost the brilliancy of his popularity, and he was aware that it was so. In discussing popularity in Rome we have to remember of what elements it was formed. We hear that this or that man was potent at some special time by the assistants coming to him from the popular voice. There was in Rome a vast population of idle men who had been trained by their city life to look to the fact of their citizenship for their support, and who did in truth live on their citizenship. Of panemitchid kensis we have all heard, and know that elemosenary bread and the public amusements of the day supply the material and aesthetic wants of many Romans. But men so fed and so amused were sure to need further occupations. They became attached to certain friends, to certain patrons, and to certain parties, and soon learned that a return was expected for the food and for the excitement supplied to them. This they gave by holding themselves in readiness for whatever violence was needed from them till it became notorious in Rome that a great party man might best attain his political object by fighting for it in the streets. This was the meaning of that saying of Crassus that a man could not be considered rich till he could keep an army in his own pay. A popular vote obtained and declared by a faction fight in the forum was still a popular vote, and if supported by sufficient violence would be valid. There had been street fighting of the kind when Cicero had defended Caesconelius in the year after his pritorship. There had been fighting of the kind when Riberius had been condemned in his consulship. We shall learn by and by to what extent such fighting prevailed when Claudius was killed by Milo's bodyguard. At the period of which we are now writing, when Claudius was intent on pursuing Cicero to his ruin, it was a question with Cicero himself whether he would not trust to a certain faction in Rome to fight for him and so to protect him. Though his popularity was on the wane, that general popularity which we may presume had been produced by the tone of his voice and the grace of his language, there still remained to him that other popularity which consisted in truth of the trained bands employed by the Borny and the Optimates, and which might be used if need were in opposition to trained bands on the other side. The bill first proposed by Claudius to the people with the object of destroying Cicero did not mention Cicero, nor in truth refer to him. It purported to enact that he would cause to be executed any Roman citizen not duly condemned to death should himself be deprived of the privilege of water or fire. This condemned no suggested malefactor to death, but in accordance with Roman law made it impossible that any Roman so condemned should live within whatever bounds might be named for this withholding of fire and water. The penalty intended was banishment, but by this enactment no individual would be banished. Cicero, however, at once took the suggestion to himself and put himself into mourning, as a man accused and about to be brought to his trial. He went about the streets accompanied by crowds armed for his protection, and Claudius also caused himself to be so accompanied. There came thus to be a question which might prevail should there be a general fight? The Senate was as a body on Cicero's side, but was quite unable to cope with the triumvirate. Caesar no doubt has resolved that Cicero should be made to go, and Caesar was lord of the triumvirate. On behalf of Cicero there was a large body of the conservative or oligarchical party who was still true to him, and they too all went into the usual public mourning evincing their desire that the accused man should be rescued from his accusers. The bitterness of Claudius would be surprising. Did we not know how bitter had been Cicero's tongue? When the affair of the Bonadere had taken place there was no special enmity between this debauched young man and the great consul. Cicero, though his own life had ever been clean and well-ordered, rather affected the company of fast young men when he found them to be witty as well as clever. This very Claudius had been in his good books till the affair of the Bonadere. But now the tribune's hatred was into nesine. I have hitherto said nothing and need say but little of a certain disreputable lady named Claudia. She was the sister of Claudius and the wife of Metellus Seller. She was accused by public voice in Rome of a living in incest with her brother and of poisoning her husband. Cicero calls her afterward in his defense of Cilius Amica Omnium. She had the nickname of Quadrantaria, given to her because she frequented the public baths at which the charge was a farthing. It must be said also of her, either in praise or in dispraise, that she was the lesbier who inspired the muse of Catullus. It was rumoured in Rome that she had endeavoured to set her cap at Cicero. Cicero in his railery had not spared the lady. To speak publicly the grossest evil of women was not opposed to any idea of gallantry current among the Romans. Our sense of chivalry as well as decency is disgusted by the language used by Horace to women who once to him were young and pretty but have become old and ugly. The venom of Cicero's abuse of Claudia annoys us, and we have to remember that the gentle ideas which we have taken in with our mother's milk had not grown into use with the Romans. It is necessary that this woman's name should be mentioned, and it may appear here as she was one of the causes of that hatred which burnt between Claudius and Cicero till Claudius was killed in a street row. It has been presumed that Cicero was badly advised in presuming publicly that the new law was intended against himself and in taking upon himself the outward signs of a man under reflection. The resolution, says Middleton, of changing his gown was too hasty and inconsiderate and helped to precipitate his ruin. He was sensible of his error when too late and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stand-aboy and less heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such blunders. And he quotes the words written to Atticus, Here my judgment first failed me, or indeed brought me into trouble. We were blind, blind, I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the populace. I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies, while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace, yes you, who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by no personal fears. But the reader should study the entire letter, and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true purport. This the reader must do before he can understand Cicero's state of mind when writing it or his relation to Atticus, or the thoughts which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he resolved while yet uncondemned to retire into banishment. The censure to which Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice which should have been given, the want of which in the first moment of his exile he regrets, and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to catch the exact flavour, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. You will forgive me, he says. I blame myself more than I do you, but I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of my own folly. I take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome and fight it out, or run before his enemies. But in writing the letter afterward, his mind was as much disturbed as when he did fly. I am inclined, therefore, to think that Middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his flight which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating moods he blamed himself. How the battle might have gone had he remained we have no evidence to show, but we do know that though he fled he returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt which had been made to destroy him. In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the Senate to rescue him. It was proposed to them that they all as a body should go into mourning on his behalf. Heed the Senate passed a vote to this effect, but were prevented by the two consuls from carrying it out. As to what he had best do he and his friends were divided. Some recommended that he should remain where he was, and defend himself by street fighting should it be necessary. In doing this he would acknowledge that law no longer prevailed in Rome, a condition of things to which many had given in their adherence, but with which Cicero would surely have been the last to comply. He himself in his despair thought for a time that the old Roman mode of escape would be preferable, and that he might with decorum end his life and his troubles by suicide. Atticus and others dissuaded him from this and recommended him to fly. Among these Cato and Hortensius have both been named. To this advice he at last yielded, and it may be doubted whether any better could have been given. Lawlessness which had been rampant in Rome before, had under the triumvirate become almost lawful. It was Caesar's intention to carry out his will, with such compliance with the forms that the Republic has might suit him, but in utter disregard to all such forms when they did not suit him. The banishment of Cicero was one of the last steps taken by Caesar, before he left Rome for his campaigns in Gaul. He was already in command of the legions, and was just without the city. He had endeavoured to buy Cicero, but had failed. Having failed, he had determined to be rid of him. Claudius was but his tool, as were Pompey and the two consuls. Had Cicero endeavoured to support himself by violence in Rome, his contest would in fact have been with Caesar. Cicero before he went applied for protection personally to Piso the consul, and to Pompey. Gabinius the other consul, had already declared his purpose to the senate, but Piso was bound to him by family ties. He himself relates to us in his oration spoken after his return against this Piso, the manner of the meeting between him and Rome's chief officer. Piso told him, so at least Cicero declared in the senate, and we have heard of no contradiction, that Gabinius was so driven by debts as to be unable to hold up his head without a rich province, and that he himself Piso could only hope to get a province by taking part with Gabinius, that any application to the consuls was useless, and that everyone must look after himself. Concerning his appeal to Pompey, two stories have been given to us, neither of which appears to be true. Plutarch says, that when Cicero had travelled out from Rome to Pompey's Alban villa, Pompey ran out of the back door to avoid meeting him. Plutarch cared more for a good story than for accuracy, and it is not worthy of much credit as to details unless when corroborated. The other account is based on Cicero's assertion that he did see Pompey on this occasion. Nine or ten years after the meeting he refers to it in a letter to Atticus, which leaves no doubt as to the fact. The story founded on that letter declares that Cicero threw himself bodily at his old friend's feet, and that Pompey did not lend a hand to raise him, but told him simply that everything was in Caesar's hands. This narrative is, I think, due to a misinterpretation of Cicero's words, though it is given by a close translation of them. He is describing Pompey when Caesar, after his Gallic wars, had crossed the Rubicon, and the two late triomvirates, the third having perished miserably in the east, were in arms against each other. Altair ardet furore tskelere, he says, Caesar expressing on unscrupulous in his passion, Altair is quinos si bicond amad pedestratos ne subleu abad quidem, quise nihil controjuos volantatem aibat facere pose. That other one, he continues, meaning Pompey, and pursuing his picture of the present contrast, who in days gone by would not even lift me when I lay at his feet, and told me that he could do nothing but as Caesar wished it. This little supposed detail of biography has been given no doubt from an accurate reading of the words, but in it the spirit of the writer's mind, as he wrote it, has surely been missed. The prostration of which he spoke, from which Pompey would not raise him, the memory of which was still so bitter to him, was not a prostration of the body. I hold it to have been impossible that Cicero should have assumed such an attitude before Pompey, or that he would have so written to Atticus had he done so. It would have been neither Roman nor Ciceroanian, as displayed by Cicero to Pompey. He had gone to his old ally and told him of his trouble, and had no doubt reminded him of those promises of assistance which Pompey had so often made. Then Pompey had refused to help him, and had assured him with too much truth that Caesar's will was everything. Again, we have to remember that in judging of the meaning of words between two such correspondence as Cicero and Atticus, we must read between the lines, and interpret the words by creating for ourselves something of the spirit in which they were written, and in which they were received. I cannot imagine that in describing to Atticus what had occurred at that interview nine years after it had taken place, Cicero had intended it to be understood that he had really groveled in the dust. Toward the end of March he started from Rome, intending to take refuge among his friends in Sicily. On the same day Claudius brought in a bill directed against Cicero by name, and caused it to be carried by the people. Uttmarco Tullio, Aquatigni interdictum sit. That it should be illegal to supply Cicero with fire and water. The law went past forbade anyone to harbour the criminal within four hundred miles of Rome, and declared the doing so to bear capital offence. It is evident from the action of those who obeyed the law, and of those who did not, that legal results were not feared so much as the ill will of those who had driven Cicero to his exile. They who refused him succour did not do so because to give it to him would be illegal, but lest Caesar and Pompey would be offended. It did not last long, and during the short period of his exile he found perhaps more of friendship than of enmity, but he directed his steps in accordance with the bearing of party spirit. We are told that he was afraid to go to Athens, because at Athens lived that Atronius whom he had refused to defend. Atronius had been convicted of conspiracy and banished, and having been a Catalanarian conspirator, had been in truth on Caesar's side. Nor were geographical facts sufficiently established to tell Cicero what places were and were not without the forbidden circle. He sojourned first at Vibo, in the extreme south of Italy, intending to pass from thence into Sicily. It was there that he learned that a certain distance had been prescribed, but it seems that he had already learned that the proconsular governor of the island would not receive him fearing Caesar. Then he came north from Vibo to Brundisium, that being the port by which travellers generally went from Italy to the east. He had determined to leave his family in Rome, feeling, probably, that it would be easier for him to find a temporary home for himself than for him and them together. And there were money difficulties in which Atticus helped him. Atticus, always wealthy, had now become a very rich man by the death of an uncle. We did not know of what nature were the money arrangements made by Cicero at the time, but there can be no doubt that the losses by his exile were very great. There was a thorough disruption of his property, for which the subsequent generosity of his country was unable altogether to atone. But this sat lightly on Cicero's heart. Pecuniary losses never weighed heavily with him. As he journeyed back from Vibo to Brundisium, friends were very kind to him in spite of the law. Toward the end of the speech which he made five years afterward, on behalf of his friends C. Plankius, he explains the debt of gratitude which he owed to his client, whose kindness to him in his exile had been very great. He commences his story of the goodness of Plankius by describing the generosity of the towns on the road to Brundisium and the hospitality of his friend Flavius, who had received him at his house in the neighbourhood of that town, and had placed him safely on board a ship when at last he resolved to cross over to Diracium. There were many schemes running in his head at this time. At one period he had resolved to pass through Macedonia into Asia, and to remain for a while at Cisacum. This idea he expresses in a letter to his wife, written from Brundisium. Then he goes, wailing, no doubt, but in words which seemed to me very natural as coming from a husband in such a condition, o me perditum, o me afflictum. Exclamations which it is impossible to translate, as they refer to his wife's separation from himself, rather than to his own personal sufferings. How am I to ask you to come to me? he says. You, a woman, ill in health, worn out in body and in spirit, I cannot ask you. Must I then live without you? It must be so, I think. If there be any hope of my return, it is you must look to it, you that must strengthen it. But if, as I fear, the thing is done, then come to me. If I can have you, I shall not be altogether destroyed. No doubt these are wailings, but is a man unmanly because he so wails to the wife of his bosom? Other humans have written pristily about women. It was common for Romans to do so. Catullus desires from Lesbia as many kisses as are the stars of the night or the sands of Libya. Horus swears that he would perish for Chloe if Chloe might be left alive. When I am dying, says T'Bullus to Delia, may I be gazing at you, may my last grasp hold your hand. Propercia tells Sintlia that she stands to him in lieu of home and parents and all the joys of life. Whether he be sad with his friends or happy, Sintlia does it all. The language in each case is perfect. But what other Roman was there of whom we have evidence that he spoke to his wife like this? Ovid in his letters from his banishment says much of his love for his wife, but there is no passion expressed in anything that Ovid wrote. Claudius, as soon as the enactment against Cicero became law, caused it to be carried into effect with all its possible cruelties. The criminal's property was confiscated. The house on the Palatine Hill was destroyed and the goods were put up to auction, as we are told, a great lack of buyers. His choicest treasures were carried away by the consuls themselves. Piso, who had lived near him in Rome, got for himself and for his father-in-law the rich booty from the townhouse. The country-villas were also destroyed, and Gabinius, who had a country-house, close by Cicero's Tusculin Retreat, took even the very shrubs out of the garden. He tells the story of the greed and enmity of the consuls in the speech he made after his return, Prodomo Sua, pleading for the restitution of his household property. My house on the Palatine was burnt, he says, not by any accident, but by arson. In the meantime the consuls were feasting and were congratulating themselves among the conspirators, when one boasted that he had been Catiline's friend, the other that Cethigus had been in his cousin. By this he implies that the conspiracy which, during his consulship, had been so odious to Rome, was now, in these days of the triumvirate, again in favour among Roman aristocrats. He went across from Brindisium to Dirachium, and from thence to Thessalonica, where he was treated with most loving kindness by Plankius, who was Quyster in these parts, and who came down to Dirachium to meet him, clad in mourning for the occasion. This was the Plankius whom he afterward defended, and indeed he was bound to do so. Plankius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plankius for some months. The letters from Cicero during his exile are to me very touching, though I have been told so often that in having written them he lacked the fortitude of a Roman. Perhaps I am more capable of appreciating natural humanity than Roman fortitude. We remember the story of the Spartan boy who allowed the fox to bite him beneath his frock without crying. I think we may imagine that he refrained from tears in public before some herd of school-fellows or a bench of masters or amid the sternness of parental authority, but that he told his sister afterward how he had been tortured, or his mother as he lay against her bosom, or perhaps his chosen chum. Such reticences are made dignified by the occasion, when something has to be won by controlling the expression to which nature uncontrolled would give utterance, but are not in themselves evidence either of sagacity or of courage. Roman fortitude was but a suit of armour to be worn on state occasions. If we come across a warrior with his crested helmet and his sword and his spear we see no doubt an impressive object. If we could find him in his night-shirt the same man would be there, but those who do not look deeply into things would be apt to despise him because his grand trappings were absent. Chance has given us Cicero in his night-shirt. The linen is of such fine texture that we are delighted with it, but we despise the man because he wore a garment, such as we wear ourselves indeed, though when we wear it nobody has then brought in to look at us. There is one most touching letter written from Thessalonica to his brother, by whom, after thoughts vacillating this way and that, he was unwilling to be visited, thinking that a meeting would bring more of pain than of service. Mi frater, mi frater, mi frater, he begins. The words in English would hardly give all the pathos. Did you think that I did not write because I am angry or that I did not wish to see you? I angry with you, but I could not endure to be seen by you. You would not have seen your brother, not him whom you had left, not him whom you had known, not him whom, weeping as you went away, you had dismissed, weeping himself as he strove to follow you. Then he heeps blame upon his own head, bitterly accusing himself because he had brought his brother to such a pass of sorrow. In this letter he throws great blame upon Hortensius, whom together with Pompey he accuses of betraying him. What truth there may have been in this accusation as to Hortensius we have no means of saying. He couples Pompey in the same charge, and as to Pompey's treatment of him there can be no doubt. Pompey had been untrue to his promises because of his bond with Caesar. It is probable that Hortensius had failed to put himself forward on Cicero's behalf with that alacrity which the one advocate had expected from the other. Cicero and Hortensius were friends afterward, but so were Cicero and Pompey. Cicero was forgiving by nature and also by self-training. It did not suit his purposes to retain his enemies. Had there been a possibility of reconciling Antony to the cause of the Optimates after the Philippics, he would have availed himself of it. Cicero at one time intended to go to Bousrotum in Apyrus, where Atticus possessed a house and property, but he changed his purpose. He remained at Thessalonica till November, and then returned to Dirachium, having all through his exile been kept alive by tidings of steps taken for his recall. There seems very soon to have grown up a feeling in Rome that the city had disgraced itself by banishing such a man, and Caesar had gone to his provinces. We can well imagine that when he had once left Rome, with all his purposes achieved, having so far quieted the tongue of the strong speaker who might have disturbed them, he would take no further steps to perpetuate the orator's banishment. Then Pompey and Claudius soon quarreled. Pompey, without Caesar to direct him, found the arrogance of the patrician tribune insupportable. We hear of wheels within wheels, and stories within stories, in the drama of Roman history as it was played at this time. Together with Cicero it had been necessary to Caesar's projects that Cato also should be got out of Rome, and this had been managed by means of Claudius, who had a bill passed for the honourable employment of Cato on state purposes in Cyprus. Cato had found himself obliged to go. It was as though our prime minister had got parliamentary authority for sending a noisy member of the opposition to Asiatic Turkey for six months. There was an attempt, or an alleged attempt, of Claudius to have Pompey murdered, and there was street fighting so that Pompey was besieged or pretended to be besieged in his own house. We might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history of this political witch's revel, says Monson, speaking of the state of Rome when Caesar was gone, Cicero banished, and Pompey supposed to be in the ascendant. There was at any rate quarrelling between Claudius and Pompey, in the course of which Pompey was induced to consent to Cicero's return. Then Claudius took upon himself, in revenge, to turn against the triumvirate altogether, and to repudiate even Caesar himself. But it was all a vain hurly-burly as to which Caesar, when he heard the details in Gaul, could only have felt how little was to be gained by maintaining his alliance with Pompey. He had achieved his purpose, which he could not have done without the assistance of Crassus, whose wealth, and of Pompey whose authority, stood highest in Rome, and now, having had his legions voted to him, and his promises, and his prolonged term of years, he cared nothing for either of them. There is a little story which must be repeated as against Cicero in reference to this period of his exile, because it has been told in all records of his life. Were I to omit the little story it would seem as though I shunned the records which have been repeated as opposed to his credit. He had written, some time back, a squib in which he had been severe upon the elder Curio, so it is supposed, but it matters little who was the object or what the subject. This had got wind in Rome, as such matters do sometimes, and he now feared that it would do him a mischief with the Curios and the friends of the Curios. The authorship was only matter of gossip. Could it not be denied? As it is written, says Cicero, in a style inferior to that which is usual to me, can it not be shown not to have been mine? Had Cicero possessed all the Christian virtues, as we hope that prelates and pastors possess them in this happy land, he would not have been betrayed into, at any rate, the expression of such a wish. As it is, the enemies of Cicero must make the most of it. His friends, I think, will look upon it leniently. Continued efforts were made among Cicero's friends at Rome to bring him back, with which he was not altogether contented. He argues the matter repeatedly was Atticus, not always in the best temper. His friends at Rome were he thought doing the matter a miss, they would fail, and he would still have to finish his days abroad. Atticus, in his way to Epirus, visits him at Diracium, and he is sure that Atticus would not have left Rome but that the affair was hopeless. The reader of the correspondence is certainly led to believe that Atticus must have been the most patient of friends, but he feels at the same time that Atticus would not have been patient had not Cicero been affectionate and true. The consuls for the new year were Lentulus and Metellus Nepos. The former was Cicero's declared friend, and the other had already abandoned his enmity. Claudius was no longer tribune, and Pompey had been brought to yield. The Senate were all but unanimous. But there was still life in Claudius and his party, and day dragged itself after day and month after month, while Cicero still lingered at Diracium, waiting till a bill should have been passed by the people. Pompey, who was never wholehearted in anything, had declared that a bill voted by the people would be necessary. The bill at last was voted, on the fourteenth of August, and Cicero, who knew well what was being done at Rome, passed over from Diracium to Brindisium on the same day, having been a year and four months absent from Rome. During the year B.C. 57, up to the time of his return, he wrote but three letters that have come to us, two very short notes to Atticus, in the first of which he declares that he will come over on the authority of a decree of the Senate without waiting for a law, in the second he falls again into despair declaring that everything is over. In the third he asks Metellus for his aid, telling the consul that, unless it be given soon, the man for whom it is asked will no longer be living to receive it. Metellus did give the aid very cordially. It has been remarked that Cicero did nothing for literature during his banishment, either by writing essays or preparing speeches, and it has been implied that the prostration of mind arising from his misfortunes must have been indeed complete, when a man whose general life was made marvellous by its fecundity had been repressed into silence. It should however be borne in mind that there could be no inducement for the writing of speeches when there was no opportunity of delivering them. As to his essays, including what we call his philosophy and his rhetoric, they who are familiar with his works will remember how apt he was in all that he produced to refer to the writings of others. He translates and he quotes, and he makes constant use of arguments and illustrations of those who have gone before him. He was a man who rarely worked without the use of a library. When I think how impossible it would be for me to repeat this oft-told tale of Cicero's life without a crowd of books within reach of my hand, I can easily understand why Cicero was silent at Thessalonica and Derachium. It has been remarked also by our modern critic that we find in the letters from exile a carelessness and inaccuracy of expression which contrasts strongly with the style of his happier days. I will not for a moment but my judgment in such a matter in opposition to that of Mr. Tyrell, but I should myself have been inclined rather to say that the style of Cicero's letters varies constantly, being very different when used to Atticus, or to his brother, or to lighter friends, such as Poetus and Tribatius, and very different again when business of state was in hand, as are his letters to Decimus Brutus, Cassius Brutus, and Plancus. To be correct in familiar letters is not to charm. A studied negligence is needed to make such work live to posterity, a grace of loose expression which may indeed have been made easy by use, but which is far from easy to the idle and unpracticed writer. His sorrow, perhaps, required a style of its own. I have not felt my own untutored perception of the language to be offended by unfitting slovenliness in the expression of his grief. End of The Life of Cicero, Volume 1 by Anthony Trollop