--as
thoughts have surely seldom been confided by one man of action to
another. Atticus had complained that he had not been allowed to see a
certain letter which Cicero had written to Caesar. This he had called a
[Greek: palinodia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to Caesar
with the view of professing a withdrawal to some extent of his
opposition to the Triumvirate. It had been of sufficient moment to be
talked about. Atticus had heard of it, and had complained that it had
not been sent to him. Cicero puts forward his excuses, and then bursts
out with the real truth:

"Why should I nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be
swallowed?" The recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and
he had been ashamed of it. "But," says he, "farewell to all true,
upright, honest policy. You could hardly believe what treachery there is
in those who ought to be our leading men, and who would be so if there
was any truth in them."[12] He does not rely upon those who, if they
were true to their party, would enable the party to stand firmly even
against Caesar. Therefore it becomes necessary for him to truckle to
Caesar, not for himself but for his party. Unsupported he cannot stand in
open hostility to Caesar. He truckles. He writes to Caesar, singing
Caesar's praises. It is for the party rather than for himself, but yet he
is ashamed of it.

There is a letter to Lucceius, an historian of the day then much thought
of, of whom however our later world has heard nothing. Lucceius is
writing chronicles of the time, and Cicero boldly demands to be praised.
"Ut ornes mea postulem"[13]--"I ask you to praise me." But he becomes
much bolder than that. "Again and again I beseech you, without any
beating about the bush, to speak more highly of me than you perhaps
think that I deserve, even though in doing so you abandon all the laws
of history." Then he uses beautiful flattery to his correspondent.
Alexander had wished to be painted only by Apelles. He desires to be
praised by none but Lucceius. Lucceius, we are told, did as he was
asked.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]

I will return to the speeches of the period to which this chapter is
devoted, taking that first which he made to the Senate as to the report
of the soothsayers respecting certain prodigies. Readers familiar with
Livy will remember how frequently, in time of disaster, the anger of
Heaven was supposed to have been shown by signs and miracles,
indi