210 ROMAN PHILOSOPHY. 



is often at its zenith in his own generation ; while the author, who is 

 in the highest repute with posterity, may perhaps have been little 

 valued or courted in his own day. Virtue indeed so conspicuous as 

 that of Cicero, studies so dignified, and oratorical powers so command- 

 ing, will always invest their possessor with a large portion of reputa- 

 tion and authority ; and this is nowhere more apparent than in the 

 enthusiastic joy displayed on his return from exile. But unless other 

 qualities be added, more peculiarly necessary for a statesman, they 

 will hardly of themselves carry that weight of political consequence 

 which some writers have attached to Cicero's public life, and which 

 his own self-love led him to appropriate. 



The advice of the oracle, 1 which had directed him to make his own 

 genius, not the opinion of the people, his guide to immortality (which 

 in fact pointed at the above-mentioned distinction between the fame of 

 a statesman and of an author), at first made a deep impression on his 

 mind ; and at the present day he owes his reputation principally to 

 those pursuits which, as Plutarch tells us, exposed him to the ridicule 

 and even to the contempt of his contemporaries as " a pedant and a 

 trifler." 2 But his love of popularity overcame his philosophy, and he 

 commenced a career which gained him one triumph and ten thousand 

 mortifications. 



It is not indeed to be doubted that in his political course he was 

 considerably influenced by a sense of duty. To many it may even 

 appear that a public life was best adapted for the display of his parti- 

 cular talents ; that, at the termination of the Mithridatic war, Cicero 

 was in fact marked out as the very individual to adjust the pretensions 

 of the rival parties in the commonwealth, to withstand the encroach- 

 ments of Pompey, and to baffle the arts of Caesar. And if the power 

 of swaying and controlling the popular assemblies by his eloquence ; 

 if the circumstances of his rank, equestrian as far as family was con-, 

 cerned, yet almost patrician from the splendour of his personal 

 honours ; if the popularity derived from his accusation of Verres, and 

 defence of Cornelius, and the favour of the senate acquired by the 

 brilliant services of his consulate ; if the general respect of all parties 

 His which his learning and virtue commanded ; if these were sufficient 



Consulate. qualifications for a mediator between contending factions, Cicero was 

 A! c! 63.' indeed called upon by the voice of his country to that most arduous 

 and honourable post. And in his consulate he had seemed sensible 

 of the call : " Ita est a me consulates peractus," he declares in his 

 speech against Piso, " ut nihil sine consilio senatus, nihil non appro- 

 bante populo Romano egerim ; utsemper in rostris curiam, in senatu 

 populum defenderim ; ut multitudinem cum principibus, equestrem 

 ordinem cum senatu conjunxerim. 8 



1 Plutarch, in Vita. 2 TpaiKos /cat ffxoXaffriKos. Plutarch, in Vita. 



8 [" I have, throughout my consulship, so acted, that I have done nothing with- 

 out the advice of the senate nothing without the approval of the Roman people ; 

 that I have ever defended the senate in the rostrum, the people in the senate- 



