MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO. 231 



the Psalms.' In the part now recovered, Scipio discourses on the 

 different kinds of constitutions and their respective advantages ; with 

 a particular reference to that of Rome. In the third, the subject of 

 justice was discussed by Laslius and Philus ; in the fourth, Scipio 

 treated of morals and education ; while in the fifth and sixth, the 

 duties of a magistrate were explained, and the best means of preventing 

 changes and revolutions in the constitution itself. In the latter part 

 of the treatise, allusion was made to the actual posture of affairs in 

 Rome, when the conversation was supposed to have occurred, and the 

 commotions excited by the Gracchi. 



In his treatise * De Legibus,' which was written two years later <De Legibus.' 

 than the former, and shortly after the murder of Clodius, he repre- 

 sents himself as explaining to his brother Quintus, and Atticus, in 

 their walks through the woods of Arpinum, the nature and origin 

 of the laws, and their actual state, both in other countries and in 

 Rome. The first part only of the subject is contained in the books 

 now extant; the introduction to which we have had occasion to 

 notice, when speaking of his stoical sentiments on questions con- 

 nected with state policy. Law he pronounces to be the perfection of 

 reason, the eternal mind, the divine energy, which, while it pervades 

 and unites in one the whole universe, associates gods and men by the 

 more intimate resemblance of reason and virtue, and still more closely 

 men with men, by the participation of common faculties, affections, 

 and situations. He then proves, at length, that justice is not merely 

 created by civil institutions, from the power of conscience, the imper- 

 fections of human law, the moral sense, and the disinterestedness of 

 virtue. He next proceeds to unfold the principles, first, of religious 

 law, under the heads of divine worship ; the observance of festivals 

 and games ; the office of priests, augurs, and heralds ; the punishment 

 of sacrilege and perjury ; the consecration of land, and the rights of 

 sepulchre ; and, secondly, of civil law, which gives him an opportunity 

 of noticing the respective duties of magistrate and citizens. In these 

 discussions, though professedly speaking of the abstract question, he 

 does not hesitate to anticipate the subject of the lost, books, by fre- 

 quent allusions to the history and customs of his own country. It 

 may be added, that in no part of his writings do worse specimens 

 occur, than in this treatise, of that vanity which was notoriously his 

 weakness, which are rendered doubly odious by the affectation of 

 putting them into the mouth of his brother and Atticus. 1 



Here a period of eight years intervenes, during which he composed 

 little of importance besides his orations. He then published the 

 * Brutus' and 'Orator;' and the year after, his ' Academics Quass- Academic 

 tiones,' in the retirement from public business to which he was driven Qstiones.' 

 by the dictatorship of Caesar. This work had originally consisted of 

 two dialogues, which he entitled ' Catulus ' and ' Lucullus,' from the 



1 Quint. Inst. xi. 1. 



