tion, we cannot help feeling that the young man 'protests too much,' and we hear that, even after Augustus raised him to the consulate, he distinguished himself by his drunken excesses.* It is a sad reflection to think what the consulate was when the great orator had to strain every nerve to gain it, and what it was when, as a late return for the services of the father, the Emperor conferred it, as a piece of patronage, on a brainless profligate.

It is in his daughter Tullia that Cicero finds his solace and pride. Like Francis Atterbury, he found in the society of a daughter his one refuge from the chances and changes of a troublous life. He is never wearied of recounting her virtues. Indeed, he so eulogises her intellectual powers and her acquired knowledge, that he has almost earned for her the unenviable reputation of an esprit fort, or even a blue-stocking. Her infatuation for Dolabella, her third husband, is quite consistent with her father's account of her. We often find women of really exceptional intellect yielding to the fascinations of a handsome, shallow, somewhat clever Bohemian. Such was the blind admiration which the Bronté sisters felt for their worthless brother; such was the love of George Eliot's Romola for Tito; and such was the strange infatuation which made Tullia cling to Dolabella, in spite of his wicked extravagance, which squandered her dower, and his insulting infidelities with Caecilia Metella, which he hardly took the trouble to conceal. Tullia had lost her first husband, the noble Piso, by death; she was then married to Crassipes. It was when her father was absent in Cilicia that her hand was sought for the third time. Among her suitors was Tiberius Nero, the father of the Emperor. Thus Cicero might have been the ancestor of an Emperor, as Atticus was of an Empress. Tullia died in child

Brutus, however, commended his services at Pharsalia, and the delighted father dedicated to young Marcus the De Officiis. It is very interesting to observe how, under the profligacy and superficial cultivation of the declining Republic, still we may occasionally catch a glimpse of the old Roman qualities, by which fortis Etruria crevit. We can still see the iron hand in war. Quintus lays down his bloody axe and wellworn scourge; young Marcus casts the chaplet from his wine-flushed brow; to wield the sword with all the energy of Camillus or Scipio. Plutarch remarks that by a singular coincidence Divine justice reserved the completion of the punishment of Antonius for the house of Cicero: after the capture of the fleet of Antonius, which was immediately followed by his death, it was to the new consul, M. Cicero, that the official despatch announcing the victory was sent.

birth, at the age of 31, at her father's house in Tusculum, where she had taken refuge from the outrages of Dolabella. Cicero never recovered her loss. He never forgave Publilia, who betrayed joy at her death, and never again received her into his house, in spite of the girl's earnest entreaties for the forgiveness of her aged husband. One cannot but smile to find Cicero at once preparing to deify his dead daughter, as Hadrian afterwards deified his beloved slave. We owe to the death of Tullia the letter of Sulpicius, written to console the bereaved father (Fam. iv. 5). This is by far the best of the extant letters to Cicero, which, as a rule, show an amazing inferiority to the letters of the orator himself. There is a good letter from Matius (Fam. xi. 28), and many amusing letters from others, but this is the only great letter, not by Cicero himself, in the whole correspondence. It is sad to see how little real consolation Sulpicius could offer to his friend. He urges him to moderate his grief for his daughter; to see her father so wretched would wound her loving heart were she alive; perhaps it wounds her even now, si quis etiam inferis sensus est.

In his romantic love for his daughter and his indifference to his wife, the character of Cicero presents a trait familiar in modern French life. Again, we have a view very characteristic of the modern Frenchman in the lightness with which he assigns to Terentia religion as her department, while his own business is with men.† Another thoroughly French feature in his disposi

*She had had no children by her previous marriages.

Neque Di quos tu castissime coluisti, neque homines quibus ego semper servivi.— Fam. xiv. 5, 1; cf. also Fam. xiv. 7, 1. We find often in Cicero casual hints at his agnosticism, for instance, in Att. iv. 10, 1, fors viderit, aut si qui est qui curet Deus; and in the pro Cluent. 171, we have this remarkable passage:-nam nunc quidem quid tandem illi mali mors attulit? Nisi forte ineptiis et fabulis ducimur, ut existimemus illum apud inferos impiorum supplicia perferre. . . quae si falsa sunt, id quod omnes intellegunt, quid ei tandem aliud mors eripuit praeter sensum doloris? In the speech for Rabirius (29) Cicero anticipates an eternal existence for the souls of the good, basing it on the instinctive belief of mankind: again, in the De Har. Resp. (19), he affirms his belief in the existence of gods, grounding it on the evidences of design in Nature. Again, in De Nat. Deor. (i. 37), and in De Rep. (vi. 16), he speaks of an overruling Providence. But it is strange how lightly his beliefs sit upon him, and how little they influence his conduct: in Tusc. i. 74 he says that the God who holds authority in our breast forbids us to leave our post without his leave; yet we know that during his exile he clearly and deliberately contemplates the commission of this act, and we hear nothing at all about any prohibition of conscience, or even a hint that self-destruction is unworthy of a good man.

tion is his hatred for provincial life. I cannot express to you,' he writes (Att. v. 11, 1), 'how I am consumed with longing for the town, how intolerably insipid is this provincial life.' A letter to Caelius (Fam. ii. 12, 2), in the passage beginning Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole, et in ista luce vive, breathes the very spirit of the alon and boulevard.

It is singular that the correspondence of another great letterwriter should be marked by the same overflowing love for a daughter. Madame de Sévigné's love for the prettiest girl in France' certainly was not so well placed as the love of Cicero for Tullia. Madame de Grignan seems to have been selfish, extravagant, and cold-hearted-not, indeed, nearly so loveable as her brother Charles de Sévigné. Indeed we can hardly acquit the clever Frenchwoman of assuming a rôle, and posing in the picturesque attitude of the adoring mother.

Cicero speaks in the highest terms of his father and mother. Of the former he writes (De Or. ii. 1) as optimi ac prudentissimi viri, and there is good reason to think that the beginning of his poem on his consulship was devoted to an elaborate eulogy of his father.* Cicero has often been accused of want of filial feeling, because he has been supposed to have curtly announced the death of his father to Atticus in the words pater nobis decessit a. d. iii. Kal. Decembres (Att. i. 6, 2; Ep. ii.). In my notes on that passage I have fully discussed the soundness of the text. It is enough here to observe that even if the text be sound, it is quite probable that Cicero had announced to Atticus in more fitting terms his father's death, and is here (in answer to a question from Atticus) merely reminding his friend of the date-'the date of my poor father's death (for this is the force of nobis) was Nov. 24.'†

While acquitting Cicero in this particular instance, one cannot help noticing, even in the most refined of the ancient Romans, an absence of sensibilities which polish, and even sweeten, the intercourse of modern life. In letter VIII. (Att. i. 3) Cicero announces to Atticus the death of the grandmother of Atticus in jesting phrase, which good taste must condemn. It seems that the lady was not dear to Atticus, and that he was not at all likely to feel

See note on Att. i. 19, 10.

For strong expressions of real sorrow for the death of a slave, and again, of a mere acquaintance, we have to go no further than Att. i. 12, 4, and iv. 6, 1.

real grief for her; yet there is certainly a coarseness of tone in the letter. A sentiment of reverence should be inspired by the thought of death, and even if it be not felt, it should be assumed. In such a case, if ever, hypocrisy is a homage to good taste.

In connexion with this vindication of Cicero from attributed want of affection, it will be pertinent to examine briefly a few other charges brought against Cicero on the authority of his own letters.

In Att. iii. 12, 2, Cicero says, 'I am shocked that my speech against Curio has become public. I wrote it under the influence of anger, and as a reply to his attack on me. But I thought I had prevented any chance of its getting into circulation. However, inasmuch as I happen never to have had any verbal altercation with him, and inasmuch as it is written with less than my usual care, I think a good case could be made to show it was not by me.' When Cicero wrote this he was in an agony of suspense about the success or failure of the attempts to bring about his restoration. A speech against Curio and Clodius, of the literary execution of which he was ashamed, and which was extremely likely to inflame still more against him the resentment of his enemies, had, in spite of Cicero's efforts to prevent it, somehow got into public circulation. Cicero accordingly wished that it could be represented not to be his. It seems to me that even at the present day, if a public man wrote something which, on reflection, appeared likely to injure him, and also was unworthy of him in style, he would feel a desire to disown the article, or at least would refrain from acknowledging it to be his, which would probably have very much the same effect. It is, however, extremely unlikely that the supposed modern statesman, even in a letter to an intimate friend, would own his real feelings. And this very fact must be placed to the credit of modern society. Christianity and chivalry have made certain acts and sentiments impossible for a gentleman to avow.

One is bound to take into account the different points of view from which an act presents itself to the moral sense at different epochs of society. Cicero did favour his friend Brutus in a dispute with the Salaminians; but Brutus could hardly understand why Cicero should take the Salaminians into account at all. Cicero was in advance of his age in every way, and behind the present age, not in obedience to the dictates of the moral sense, but only

in the education and refinement of it. This consideration, I think, entitles Cicero to an acquittal in the two following cases.

We learn (Att. vi. 6, 4) that Cicero was desirous of securing the good will of Caelius for his friend Atticus; so he dictated to the copyist of Atticus, who happened to be with him, a letter in praise of Caelius, which he read to Caelius as having come from Atticus.* Cicero, in all naïveté exclaims, at te apud eum, di boni! quanta in gratia posui, eique legi litteras non tui sed librarii tui. It never occurred to Cicero that it was base to stoop to a fabrication even to serve a friend.

In 707 (b. c. 47) a packet of letters from Quintus, directed to various friends, fell accidentally into the hands of Marcus. Some of them he forwarded to their destination. But on learning from these persons that the letters forwarded by him were full of atrocious reflections upon himself, he opened the remaining missives, and sent them to Atticus, leaving it to him to decide whether they should be retained or sent to their destination. The fact that they have been opened,' he suggests, makes no matter, for I fancy Pomponia has his seal-ring.' This, of course, strongly conflicts with modern notions about honour, but the writer is supremely unconscious that the act is in any way questionable. † Yet of those who would now look on such an act as worse than a crime, how few would be capable of the high-mindedness with which Cicero acted on his discovery of his brother's treachery! He wrote to Caesar a letter (of which we still preserve the copy which he sent to Atticus (Att. xi. 12, 2)), completely absolving his brother from the suspicion of having instigated his own hostility against Caesar, or having urged him to fly to Greece, and begging the good offices of Caesar for a brother under the recent sense of whose baseness to him he must have been still smarting.

It seems to me that this is an act of large nobleness and truly chivalrous feeling, quite startling when we remember the times in which Cicero lived.‡

* Att. xi. 9, 2.

+ The same observations apply to a practice which Cicero acknowledges that he adopts in giving introductory letters to friends: see Fam. xiii. 6a.

A much more serious charge which has been brought against the moral character of Cicero is examined in Appendix B, at the end of the Introduction, On the relations which existed between Cicero and Tiro.'