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knew him to be a true patriot, a real friend of his country and its constitution, and therefore an enemy to all usurpation of a preponderating power in the state.* He therefore beheld in him the greatest obstacle to his own ambitious designs, and resolved to accomplish his ruin. Cicero was aware of his own danger, and therefore had for some time declined all share in the offices of state; while his high character and eminent public services procured him the esteem of every man of virtue. But such were not the prevailing party in the republic, either in point of influence or numbers; for the populace ever bestowed their favor on those who best paid their court, and ministered most largely to their avarice and love of pleasure. Clodius, a mortal enemy of Cicero, was pitched on by Cæsar as his fittest instrument to accomplish the ruin of this illustrious man. By Cæsar's influence, Clodius was chosen one of the tribunes of the people, and was no sooner in office than he proposed various laws which tended to ingratiate himself with the people, and at the same time secure the favor of the chiefs of the republic. He procured the passing of an act for remitting the debts due by the poorer class for corn bought from the public granaries; and another for the restoring and increasing the number of public corporations, which had been abolished on account of the turbulence and faction of which they were the seminaries. He gained much influence with the senate by a regulation for abridging the power of the censors in purging that order; and finally he proposed a law which made it a high offence to condemn or put to death any citizen before he had been judged by the people. This important law was evidently levelled at Cicero, who, by his authority as consul, warranted indeed by a decree of the senate, had condemned Catiline's accomplices to death-a measure which the necessity of the times and the imminent peril of the republic had justified in the opinion of all good men.

Cicero, with all his high qualities, was of a weak and pusillanimous spirit. Instead of manfully endeavoring to avail himself of the great and essential services which he had rendered his country, sufficient to insure him the support of every good citizen, in

*The first occasion on which Cicero distinguished himself as an orator, was one of great difficulty and delicacy, the defence of Roscius, who, during the time of Sylla's horrible proscriptions, had been robbed of his whole fortune by some of his wicked relations, who had put to death his father under the pretended authority of that proscription, though in reality his name was not in the list of victims. Ä favorite of Sylla, named Chrysogonus, had shared this infamous plunder, and, to secure his possession, accused the son of being the murderer of his father. Such was, at this time, the dread of offending Sylla, that none of the old advocates or orators would undertake the defence of this injured man. Cicero, then in his twenty-seventh year, nobly stood forth as his defender; and, with admirable skill and address, prevailed in obtaining justice for his client, without incurring the resentment of that man who was the protector of his oppressors. The reputation of the pleader rose from that moment to the highest pitch, and he was regarded as the first orator of the age.

averting or opposing this adverse current which threatened his destruction, he meanly sunk under the apprehension of its force. His resolution entirely forsook him. He clothed himself in a mourning habit, as did most of the equestrian order to which he belonged; and he presented himself in the assembly of the people, in the abject character of a suppliant whose life and fortunes were entirely at their disposal. He claimed the friendship of Pompey, to whom he had done essential services; but he shamefully abandoned him. Cato, the real friend of Cicero, and who would have generously supported him at all hazards, was purposely invested with a commission to reduce the island of Cyprus, in order to remove him from Rome at this critical moment when the fate of his friend was in dependence. Before leaving the city, he is said to have counselled Cicero to yield to the necessity of circumstances, and betake himself to voluntary banishment from his ungrateful

country.

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After some ineffectual endeavors to try the attachment of his former friends, which only ended in fresh mortification, Cicero followed the counsel of Cató. He set off in the middle of the night, and embarked at Brundisium for Macedonia, on his way to Thessalonica, where he had fixed the scene of his exile. Here he betrayed in a lamentable degree the weakness of his mind. The letters which he wrote to Atticus, it has been well observed, "resemble more the wailings of an infant, or the strains of a tragedy composed to draw tears, than the language of a man supporting the cause of integrity in the midst of unmerited trouble."* wish I may see the day (he thus writes to his friend) when I shall be disposed to thank you for having prevented me from resorting to a voluntary death; for I now bitterly regret that I yielded in that matter to your entreaty. What species of misfortune have I not endured? Did ever any one fall from so high a state, in so good a cause, with such abilities and knowledge, and with such a share of the public esteem? Cut off in such a career of glory, deprived of my fortune, torn from my children, debarred the sight of a brother dearer to me than myself-but my tears will not allow me to proceed." In contemplating such a picture, the historian I have just quoted truly says, "It appears from this and many other scenes of the life of this remarkable man, that though he loved virtuous actions, yet his virtue was accompanied with so unsuitable a thirst of the praise to which it entitled him, that his mind was unable to sustain itself without this foreign assistance; and when the praise to which he aspired for his consulate was changed into obloquy and scorn, he seems to have lost the sense of good or evil in his own conduct and character." How different this conduct from the sentiments he had expressed as a philosopher, in his beautiful

* Ferguson's Rom. Rep. vol. ii. p. 448.

treatise De Finibus, 1. i.: “ Succumbere doloribus, eosque humik animo imbecilloque ferre, miserum est: ob eamque debilitatem animi, multi parentes, multi amicos, nonnulli patrian, plerique autem seipsos penitus perdiderunt.”* But speculative and practical philosophy are widely different.

Cicero's departure from Rome was regarded as a full justification of that sentence of banishment which Clodius immediately caused to be passed against him as an enemy of the republic, accompanied with a decree for confiscating his whole estates, and demolishing and razing to the ground his elegant palaces and vil las. Such were the rewards of that true patriot whom, a few months before, his country had justly hailed as its preserver from utter destruction! But popular opinion is ever apt to pass from one extreme to another; and the latter part of the life of Cicero was a perpetual alternation of triumph and disgrace.

We have remarked that, in the divisions of the provinces between Cæsar, Pompey, and Crassus, the first of these had for his share those extensive territories on both sides of the Alps, distinguished by the names of Gallia Cisalpina and Transalpina. Or these he obtained the government for five years, and in that period he carried to its highest pitch the military glory of the republic, and his own reputation as a consummate general. The Helvetians, leaving their own territory, had attempted to obtain a settlement within the Roman Province. Cæsar, in the first year of his government, utterly defeated these invaders, and drove them back to their native seats with the loss of near 200,000 slain in the field. The Germans under Ariovistus, who had attempted a similar invasion, were repelled with immense slaughter, their leader narrowly escaping in a small boat across the Rhine. The Belgæ, the Nervi, the Celta, the Suevi, Menapii, and other warlike nations, were all successively brought under subjection. In the fourth year of his command he invaded Britain. The motive to this enterprise was purely ambition, although the pretext was that the Britons were the aggressors by sending supplies to the hostile tribes of Gaul. Cæsar landed near Deal, and found a much more formidable opposition than he had expected, the natives displaying considerable military skill with the most determined courage. The Romans, indeed, gained some advantages; but Cæsar soon becam sensible that the conquest of the island required a much greater force than had yet been brought against it, and was not to be achieved in a single campaign. The approach of winter in the country of an enemy whose spirit seemed to be roused to the most desperate resistance, gave him some alarm for the safety of his army; and, therefore, binding the conquered parts of the country

**To yield to misfortunes, and bear them weakly, is miserable. By such infirmity of mind, many have brought ruin on their relations and friends, some even on their country, but more on themselves."

to terms of submission, he thought it prudent to re-embark his legions, and, after settling them in winter-quarters in Gaul, returned himself to Italy, to attend to the concerns of the capital, where the splendor of his foreign campaigns had highly increased his popularity.

His great acquisition of fame had now sensibly obscured the glory of Pompey, whose influence was visibly on the decline. To strengthen himself by the interest and by the talents of Cicero, whom he had before so meanly abandoned, he now procured the recall of that illustrious exile, and the repeal of the sentence of confiscation which had deprived him of his whole property. Cicero returned to his country after an absence of sixteen months. His journey from Brundisium to Rome was a triumphal procession. All Italy, as he said himself, seemed to flock together to hail his auspicious return; that single day made his glory immortal.* He was loaded with honors; and his houses and villas, which had been razed to the ground, were rebuilt with increased magnificence at the expense of the public.

By the influence of Cicero, Pompey regained for a while his popularity. The triumvirate, though secretly animated with mutual jealousy, still continued to support each other in their power. Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls; the former having, for five years, the government of Spain, and the latter that of Syria, Greece, and Egypt. They had unlimited power to levy troops, and to exact whatever pecuniary supplies they found necessary, from the tributary princes and states under their government. Crassus, insatiable in accumulating wealth, plundered the Eastern provinces without mercy; but having engaged in an inconsiderate expedition against the Parthians, he was totally defeated, his whole army cut to pieces, and he himself and his son were slain in the field.

Cæsar in the meantime was prosecuting his military operations in Gaul, and seemed to take no concern in the affairs of Rome yet, in reality, his influence there now regulated every measure of importance. His partisans, to whom he remitted large sums of money, overruled all proceedings in the comitia, and carried whatever measures of a public nature he chose to direct as instrumental to his own views. Pompey was not blind to these views; and the apparent union and cordiality which they yet affected to maintain was any thing but real. We shall soon see an open rupture, and a contention for undivided sovereignty, whose issue must decide the fate of the commonwealth.

"Meus quidem reditus is fuit, ut a Brundisio usque ad Romam agmen per petuum totius Italiæ viderem. Unus ille dies mihi quidem instar immortalita Lis fuit."

CHAPTER II.

Cæsar passes the Rubicon-Marches to Rome-Named Dictator - Battle of Pharsalia-Flight and Death of Pompey-Defeat of Pharnaces-Death of Cato-Cæsar's Reforms in the Roman State-Reform of the Calendar-Is created perpetual Dictator with the title of Imperator-Character of CæsarIs assassinated-Artful conduct of Mark Antony-His ambitious viewsSecond Triumvirate-Bloody Proscription-Death of Cicero- Battle of Philippi, and End of the Republic-Battle of Actium-Death of Antony and Cleopatra-Octavius (afterwards Augustus) sole master of the Roman Em

pire.

THE brilliancy of the warlike exploits of Cæsar, and the influence of his partisans in the public measures of the commonwealth, easily procured the prolongation of his government of the Gauls, to a period double the length of that for which it had been originally granted. In the course of ten years, he had reduced the greater part of what is now called France into a Roman province; a conquest, in which his political talents were no less signally displayed than his abilities as a general. His Commentaries, a military journal which contains a brief and perspicuous detail of his campaigns, are no less a proof of his excelling in those splendid features of a public character, than of his possessing all the qualities of a skil ful and eloquent historian.

The renewed term of his government was on the eve of expiring; but this extraordinary man had no design of relinquishing his military command. To secure himself against a deprivation of power, he bribed Curio, one of the tribunes, to make a proposal which wore the appearance of great moderation, and regard for the public liberty. This was, that Cæsar and Pompey should either both continue in their governments-or both be recalled; as they were equally capable of endangering the safety of the commonwealth by an abuse of power. The motion passed, and Cæsar immediately offered to resign on condition that his rival should follow his example; but Pompey rejected the proposal, probably aware of the real designs of Cæsar, but too confidently relying on the strength of his own party, and the influence he had with his troops. A civil war was the necessary consequence. Every connection between these two ambitious men was now at an end. The death of Julia, the daughter of Cæsar, and wife of Pompey, dissolved that feeble bond of union which had hitherto subsisted between them.* They were now declared enemies, and each pre

* This lady died in childbed. She was beloved by Pompey with the fondest

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