the north of Italy, and votes that the necessary
guard be supplied. In the same evening he addresses the people in his
fourth Philippic. He again praises the lad and the two legions, and
again abuses Antony. No one can say after this day that he hid his
anger, or was silent from fear. He congratulates the Romans on their
patriotism--vain congratulations--and encourages them to make new
efforts. He bids them rejoice that they have a hero such as Decimus
Brutus to protect their liberties, and, almost, that they have such an
enemy as Antony to conquer. It seems that his words, few as they
were--perhaps because they were so few--took hold of the people's
imaginations; so that they shouted to him that he had on that day a
second time saved his country, as he reminds them afterward.[210]

From this time forward we are without those intimate and friendly
letters which we have had with us as our guide through the last
twenty-one years of Cicero's life. For though we have a large body of
correspondence written during the last year of his life, which are
genuine, they are written in altogether a different style from those
which have gone before. They are for the most part urgent appeals to
those of his political friends to whom he can look for support in his
views--often to those to whom he looked in vain. They are passionate
prayers for the performance of a public duty, and as such are altogether
to the writer's credit. His letters to Plancus are beautiful in their
patriotism, as are also those to Decimus Brutus. When we think of his
age, of his zeal, of his earnestness, and of the dangers which he ran,
we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the public spirit with which
at such a crisis he had taken on himself to lead the party. But our
guide to his inner feelings is gone. There are no further letters to
tell us of every doubt at his heart. We think of him as of some stalwart
commander left at home to arrange the affairs of the war, while the less
experienced men were sent to the van.

There is also a book of letters published as having passed between
Cicero and Junius Brutus. The critics have generally united in
condemning them as spurious. They are at, any rate, if genuine, cold and
formal in their language.

[Sidenote: B.C. 43, aetat. 64.]

Antony had proceeded into Cisalpine Gaul to drive out of the province
the Consul named by the people to govern it. The nomination of Decimus
had in truth been Caesar's nomination;