us and Munda. With very many of
the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight
concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find
how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of
the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has
left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who
was essentially a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public
man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the
Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him.
To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no
allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Caesar's officers, and
his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Caesar's care. Of
Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he
allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments
throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were
it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious
might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives of
Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has
been written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great
research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong
feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his Caesar, which might well
have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter
in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with
Cicero, attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts. With
the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed themselves
from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to the
establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not pretend to
deal, although by far the most momentous of them were crowded into the
life of Cicero. But in order that I may, if possible, show the condition
of his mind toward the Republic--that I may explain what it was that he
hoped and why he hoped it--I must go back and relate in a few words what
it was that Marius and Sulla had done for Rome.

Of both these men all the doings with which history is greatly concerned
were comprised within the early years of Cicero's life. Marius, indeed,
was nearly fifty years of age when his fellow