riod
in Cicero's life so touching, I think, as that during which he was
hesitating whether, in the service of the Republic, it did or did not
behoove him to join Pompey before the battle of Pharsalia. At this time
he wrote to his friend Atticus various letters full of agonizing doubts
as to what was demanded from him by his duty to his country, by his
friendship for Pompey, by loyalty to his party, and by his own dignity.
As to a passage in one of those, Mr. Froude says "that Cicero had lately
spoken of Caesar's continuance in life as a disgrace to the State." "It
has been seen also that he had long thought of assassination as the
readiest means of ending it,"[1] says Mr. Froude. The "It has been seen"
refers to a statement made a few pages earlier, in which he translates
certain words written by Cicero to Atticus.[2] "He considered it a
disgrace to them that Caesar was alive." That is his translation; and in
his indignation he puts other words, as it were, into the mouth of his
literary brother of two thousand years before. "Why did not somebody
kill him?" The Latin words themselves are added in a note, "Cum vivere
ipsum turpe sit nobis."[3] Hot indignation has so carried the translator
away that he has missed the very sense of Cicero's language. "When even
to draw the breath of life at such a time is a disgrace to us!" That is
what Cicero meant. Mr. Froude in a preceding passage gives us another
passage from a letter to Atticus,[4] "Caesar was mortal."[5] So much is
an intended translation. Then Mr. Froude tells us how Cicero had "hailed
Caesar's eventual murder with rapture;" and goes on to say, "We read the
words with sorrow and yet with pity." But Cicero had never dreamed of
Caesar's murder. The words of the passage are as follows: "Hunc primum
mortalem esse, deinde etiam multis modis extingui posse cogitabam." "I
bethought myself in the first place that this man was mortal, and then
that there were a hundred ways in which he might be put on one side."
All the latter authorities have, I believe, supposed the "hunc" or "this
man" to be Pompey. I should say that this was proved by the gist of the
whole letter--one of the most interesting that was ever written, as
telling the workings of a great man's mind at a peculiar crisis of his
life--did I not know that former learned editors have supposed Caesar to
have been meant. But whether Caesar or Pompey, there is nothing in it to
do with murder. It is a question--Cicero is