160 ROMAN HISTORY: 



fear that Cicero must be submitted. He was Seivos 

 in the strongest sense of the phrase. His speeches against 

 Verres, Catiline, and Antony, show how large an armoury of 

 caustic language he had at command. But in his epistles and 

 elsewhere, we find the most copious collection of laudatory 

 terms in existence one, indeed, that has served as a lexicon 

 to the learned flatterers of every later timo, It is impossible 

 not to see that he generally praises with a reflex view towards 

 himself. He is governed much more by the seduction of his 

 own style than by the reality before him. If the letters of 

 introduction, of which he is so liberal, were but half true as 

 to the virtues of those recommended, Rome could not have 

 been so speedily submitted to the servitude which now hung 

 over her. 



The character of Cato is not formally brought forward by 

 our author among those of the other great actors of the time. 

 This we regard as an omission. He is one of those personages 

 in history who have become, in some degree, the property of 

 the poet and the moralist, and respecting whom there is a 

 conventional language of panegyric not wholly in accordance 

 with the rough and rude reality. The succeeding part of 

 Mr. Merivale's narrative, in as far as it relates to the Roman 

 Stoic, shows what the truth of history requires to be deducted 

 from common repute regarding him. 



The account of the intrigues and combinations which pro- 

 duced the first Triumvirate is clear and forcible. It was an 

 unprincipled cabal, annulling by a transient union the real 

 powers of the constitution, while keeping up its outward 

 forms. The interests of the senate and nobles were sacrificed 

 by one triumvir ; those of the people by another ; while the 

 third ministered to the alliance that power which wealth 

 gives in a corrupted state. What individual ambition could 

 not yet effect, was attained by this conjunction. It was the 

 empire of Augustus by anticipation, and conducting to this as 



