before him he refused to enforce payment of more than the legal interest of 12 per cent., instead of the 48 per cent. for which it was alleged that they had bargained. Nevertheless, when he discovered that the real creditor was Brutus, he refrained from giving a judicial decision, and dissuaded the Salaminians from depositing the money in a temple, the effect of which would be that interest would cease to run. He left the matter to his successor, with what result we do not know. He appears to have given more direct assistance in enforcing payment from the needy king of Cappadocia, to whom Brutus had also lent money, though, perhaps, at a less exorbitant rate. Neither Brutus nor Cicero comes out of the business with much credit. The whole transaction was of questionable legality, for loans to provincial towns raised at Rome were forbidden, and the interest demanded was far beyond what was recognised by law. From our point of view it was altogether indefensible. But, unhappily, Brutus only did what the rest of the world did. The king of Cappadocia was deeply indebted to Pompey also, and a great number of the Roman aristocracy increased their wealth, or staved off the bankruptcy with which their extravagance threatened them, by these questionable investments. Brutus is to be condemned, but rather for not rising above the moral standard of his age than for falling below it. The second charge, of treacherously betraying the direction of Pompey's flight to Cæsar, rests upon what seems to be a mistaken interpretation of Plutarch. It can be all but proved to be impossible. Pompey had not, in fact, made up his mind whither he should go, and, had he done so, Brutus could hardly have known it. After the defeat of his cavalry Pompey left the field and retired to the camp. He waited for a time to see what would happen, and finding that Cæsar was advancing against the camp, he mounted his horse and galloped to Larissa, and thence hurried on to Tempe and reached the sea by boat down the river. Plutarch represents Brutus as remaining in the camp till it was being actually attacked, when he too escaped to Larissa and there remained. Recalled from Larissa by Cæsar's offer of indemnity, he is represented by Plutarch as conversing with Cæsar and conjecturing' (eikale) that Pompey would make for Egypt. Cæsar thought it the best of the suggestions made, but it does not seem to have been regarded by him as of the nature of information. For some weeks afterwards he was still quite uncertain. As he followed him through Asia Minor, when he heard that Pompey had

'been seen in Cyprus, guessing that he was making for 'Egypt, because of his connexions there and the conveniency of the country for landing . . . he made his way to Alex'andria.'* Pompey, in fact, seems at first to have intended to go to Syria, or even to join the Parthians, as his lieutenant Bassus actually did. Egypt was an afterthought, of which Brutus could have had no knowledge. A mere conjecture, founded on general ideas of what was likely, is a very differen' thing from a treacherous betrayal of confidential knowledge. Brutus very likely had very few personal or confidential relations with Pompey. He was serving in his army at the instigation of his uncle Cato, because it was fighting on what he held to be the constitutional side. For Pompey himself-the executioner, under circumstances of some treachery, of his own father-he could have had little affection. But however that may have been, he could not betray to Cæsar what neither he nor Pompey himself knew. The third accusation, of having joined the assassins from disappointment at the adoption of Octavian, rests also on what seems to us a very questionable assumption. There is no evidence that Marcus Brutus ever desired or expected to be Cæsar's heir; and, if he did, there is still less evidence that Cæsar adopted Octavius in his lifetime. Every one of our authorities speaks of the adoption as being made by will. Before his arrival at Rome, after his uncle's murder, Cicero always calls him Octavius, not Octavianus. His enemies, who refused to acknowledge the will, constantly refrained from giving him his name of Octavianus or Cæsar; and his first grievance against Antony and his party was the hindrance to the passing of the lex curiata necessary for the completion of the adoption; whereas, if the adoption had been completed in Cæsar's lifetime, this would not have been necessary. This supposition, then, adopted by our editors from a conjecture of Schmidt, cannot be held as good ground for such a charge. Brutus was, no doubt, narrow and pedantic: we are not disposed to regard him as a hypocrite and a traitor. We have thought it worth while to dwell on this point, because their view of Brutus appears to us to a certain degree to distort the judgement of the editors, especially as to the course of events after the battles at Mutina. They seem to regard Brutus as having played Cicero false in not crossing to Italy to resist the combination which was formed in Gaul by the junction

*Cæsar, B.C. iii. 106.

of Antony, Ventidius Bassus, Lepidus, Pollio, and Plancus, and to neutralise the growing pretensions of Octavian. But Brutus probably took the only prudent or perhaps possible course. He could not have then possessed the means of transporting so large a force; nor, apart from Cassius, would it have been sufficient to meet the formidable combination of those generals. The Senate had given him authority over Asia after the murder of Trebonius: the best chance of making head against Antony seemed to be to consolidate a great power east of the Adriatic. There was no evidence that his advent in Italy was desired by any but a small party, and without a general feeling in his favour it would have been a desperate venture to go thither. Nor is his refusal to execute Gaius Antonius, as Cicero wished him to do, a proof of treasonable dallyings with the enemy. Such an execution could not be justified even by martial law, and would do no good in itself.

On this subject then, as well as in some points in their summary of Cæsar's constitutional position, we think that the views of our editors admit of question. But this must not be allowed to weigh against the good work which they have done in putting before us the characters and careers of nearly all Cicero's correspondents. For the most part this is accomplished with admirable clearness, conciseness, and impartiality. Their estimate of Cicero himself is always interesting and often convincing. His was a character full or lights and shades, sure to be viewed differently by different men, and according to the prepossessions with which it is approached. It was scarcely worth while for our editors to spend so much time and space in refuting Froude and Beesly. Their estimate of Cicero, coloured by their eagerness to glorify Cæsar and Catiline, has had little influence on students, or, indeed, on the world at large. But the great name of Mommsen has given weight to a singularly onesided and unsympathetic judgement or rather condemnation of Rome's least mortal mind.' To him Cicero is not only dishonest, but insignificant as a statesman, contemptible as a philosopher, a mere rhetorician, and as a letter-writer an 'inferior journalist.'

'A lie that is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie that is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.'

And the worst of this perverse judgement is that it has a certain element of truth. Cicero was not as great a political force as he perhaps himself believed; he was not a profound

philosopher; his rhetoric must at times be taken with the usual discount; and some of his letters are insincere and tiresome.

Yet a man deserves to be judged by his best, and not only by his worst. If he lacked some of the qualities of a great and powerful statesman, yet his splendid eloquence, his unstained life, his fervent patriotism, made his alliance an object of ambition to the leaders of every party, and twice at least placed him in the very highest position in the State. If he was not a great or original philosopher, he yet interpreted to his fellow-citizens, as no one else had done before or has done since, the practical lessons of the philosophers of Greece. He did for philosophy what Shakespeare did for English history-he made it interesting and human. Let us only think what would have happened if the same task had fallen to Varro or the elder Pliny. How many would have laboured through pages of crabbed and repulsive Latin? How many who did so would have brought away anything but weariness and disgust? By the magic of style the mists are made to roll away. The surface at any rate is bright and lustrous, and if the reasoning is not profound or the facts always indisputable, at least ordinary readers are drawn on to speculate with interest on the great questions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of life and death. It was a true answer that he made to Antony's taunt:

'I have never been wanting in my duty to the State or my friends, and yet by my writings of every kind-in spite of interruptions-have contrived that my studious nights and my literary labours should contribute some improvement for the rising generation and some reputation to the Roman name.' (2 Phil. § 20.)

As to Cicero's letter-writing, which Mommsen sneers at as mere journalism, readers have now a better opportunity than ever of judging. There are certain letters, like those for instance to Appius Claudius from Cilicia, which are tiresome, because they are elaborate and yet insincere. There are others-like the earlier ones dealing with Clodius and the intrigues of that period-which, while interesting and amusing enough, yet do not reach a very high level of taste or feeling. Yet there are hundreds of others which possess every charm which letters can have-personal revelation, literary style, variety of incident, generosity of sentiment. They lead us, with some important gaps, from the fifth year before his consulship (B.C. 68) to within a few months of his death in December B.C. 43. Naturally they

are most numerous in times of difficulty and excitement, and there is evidence that a considerable number once existedespecially to Marcus Brutus and Octavian-which have not come down to us. The first batch consists of eleven letters before the year of his canvass for the consulship (в.C. 64), which show us Cicero as the successful advocate and the rising official, without having yet taken a very decided place in politics. Our editors insert here the celebrated tract on the mode of canvassing for office, which is in the form of a letter from Quintus to his brother. Whether the de petitione was really written by Quintus Cicero or not, it suggests a starting-point for an estimate of Cicero's political career which we shall now attempt.

The writer dwells on the fact that Cicero was a novus homo, who will have to fear the opposition of the exclusive nobles. He suggests that he has not yet fully declared himself to be of the party of the Optimates, and that some of his utterances in fact rather pointed to sympathy with the Populares. It was not, therefore, until the consulship and the vigorous suppression of the Catilinarian conspiracy that Cicero became avowedly and in the eyes of all the world a party man and a consistent supporter of the boni. His action in that business committed him irrevocably. How far from a moral point of view-regarding the safety of the State as paramount-he was justified in executing the conspirators is a fair subject for debate. But it cannot be denied that in so acting he strained the constitution. The theory that the senatus-consultum ultimum invested the consul with dictatorial functions, and therefore with the power of life and death over citizens, rested on no lex and had not been well established by custom or precedents. However, Cicero did it, and always maintained that he had thereby saved the State. But his action was not popular, and from the moment of laying down the consulship he sank into a secondary position. Even the nobles, in whose interests he had acted, gave him but a lukewarm support. A Catulus or a Cato might hail him as father of his country,' but the majority of the aristocrats, if they made complimentary speeches in public, in private depreciated his services and held aloof from any active support. Hence, when the correspondence recommences in B.C. 62 (there are no letters of B.C. 64 and 63), we find Cicero feverishly anxious as to what men of influence will say and think of his action.

We begin with a letter to Pompey, who was probably in