ps. He was not less
jealous of a rival in his chosen career than any of the leaders of
party and candidates for popular favor. He could not endure
competition for the throne of eloquence and the sceptre of
persuasion. It was on this account perhaps that he sought his
associates among the young, from whose rivalry he had nothing to
fear, rather than from his own contemporaries, the candidates for
the same prize of public admiration which he aimed at securing for
himself. From his pages there flows an incessant stream of abuse
of all the great masters of political power in his time; of Caesar
and Pompeius; of Crassus and Antonius, not to mention his coarse
vituperation of Piso and Gabinius, and his uneasy sneers at the
impracticable Cato. We may note the different tone which his
disparagement assumes towards these men respectively. He speaks of
Caesar with awe, of Pompeius with mortification, with dislike of
Crassus, with bitter malice of Antonius. Caesar, even when he most
deeply reprobates him, he personally loves; the cold distrust of
Pompeius vexes his self-esteem; between him and Crassus there
subsists a natural antipathy of temperament: but Antonius, the
hate of his old age, becomes to him the incarnation of all the
evil his long and bitter experience of mankind have discovered in
the human heart. While we suspect Cicero of injustice towards the
great men of his day, we are bound also to specify the gross
dishonesty with which he magnifies his own merits where they are
trivial, and embellishes them where they are really important. The
perpetual recurrence to the topic of his own political deserts
must have wearied the most patient of friends, and more than
balanced the display of sordidness and time-serving which Atticus
doubtless reflected back in his share of the correspondence
between them.

"But while Cicero stands justly charged with many grave
infirmities of temper and defects of principle, while we remark
with a sigh the vanity, the inconstancy, and the ingratitude he so
often manifested, while we lament his ignoble subserviencies and
his ferocious resentments, the high standard by which we claim to
judge him is in itself the fullest acknowledgment of his
transcendent merits. For undoubtedly had he not placed himself on
a higher moral level than the statesmen and