96 PROSCRIPTION AND DEATH OF CICERO.
the works were not immediately published. Many of our
historians justly remark that these proscriptions were much
worse than those instituted by Sulla ; for the latter had been
dictated by a fuιious party spirit. Sulla hated the men whom
he sacrificed because they were his antagonists, and he had no
scruples about killing them; but plunder was a secondary
matter, and only an unavoidable consequence, which Sulla
himself would willingly have dispensed with. The proscrip-
tion of the triumvirs, on the other hand, was not so much the
consequence of their desire to take vengeance as of their rapa-
city: wealthy persons, who had not done anything to provoke
their anger, were put on the lists for no other reason than
because they were rich, for the property of all the proscribed
was confiscated. We know the history of a great many who
fell victims during that frightful period, but Iwillhere confine
myself to the fate of Cicero.
He was in his Tusculanum at the time when the lists of the
proscribed were published. He was undecided whether to
await death in his villa or not, but he was prevailed upon by
his brother to take to flight. They went along the sea coast
to Astura, where he took a boat. His brother, who returned,
was murdered soon afterwards. Having gone on board the
boat, Ciccro could not make up his mind as to whither he
should sail: he was in fact tired of life, and unwilling to flee,
so that a murderer was not unwelcome to him. He might
himself have put an end to his existence; but, however much
he respected Cato, such an act was, in his opinion, wrong and
repugnant to all his feelings. He gave himself up to Provi-
dence. Had the winds been favourable he would, perhaps, have
gone to Sex. Pompeius, who was already master of Sicily. If
he had done so, he would probably have died a natural death,
and lived to see the time when Sex. Pompeius made peace,
and when the distinguished proscribed who lived in exile ob-
tained permission to return to Pome. But he was very sick,
and as the rowers wanted to return, he allowed them to land
at Mola di Gaeta, in the neighbourhood of which he had a villa,
intending to wait till the storm was over. He was betrayed by
one of his own domestics, a freedman of his brother. A cen-
turion, Popillius Laenas, a person belonging to one of the most
distinguished plebeian families, and who is said to have once
been defended by Cicero—which is, however, probably a
DEATII OE CICEItO.
97
rhetorical invention to aggravate his crime—overtook Cicero,
who had been persuaded by his friends to allow himself to be
carried out in a Iectica to a plantation near the coast. His slaves
were ready to fight for him, but he forbade it. He put his head
forward from the Iectica, to receive the deadly blow, and died
with the greatest courage. The day of his death was the 7th
of December, 709. His son Marcus, who was at the time with
Brutus in Macedonia, had until then behaved in a manner
which justified the hope that he would one day distinguish
himself, but he afterwards sank into the grossest sensuality
and voluptuousness. He was, however, a man of talent and
wit, which he had inherited from his father, of whom, in all
other respects, he was unworthy. The opinions of Livy,
Asinius Pollio, and Cassius Severus upon Cicero, which are
preserved in Seneca’s seventh Suasoria, differ very much in
their spirit. Some of their sentiments are very beautiful, but
some are only remarkable as characteristic of the authors
themselves.
I have thought it my duty, in my account of Cicero, to
direct your attention to the manner in which he has been
judged of by vulgar men, who had scarcely received such an
education as to entitle them to express an opinion on Cicero.
I will mention, as an instance, Hook, whose voluminous history
is in reality only patch work; he is nowhere master of his
subject. I have never been able to read through his book,
for he is unjust towards Cicero in a manner which is quite
revolting. Middleton’s Life of Cicero, on the other hand, is
written very beautifully, and in a noble spirit. The period in
which Cicero began to be treated with contempt was the time
when I was growing up to manhood, but until that time, and
throughout the middle ages, Cicero was a great name, a sort
of Θeo4 aγvωτo<;, before whom all bowed the knee, but whose
works were read by only a few. Dante, Petrarch, St. Bernard,
a man of great intellect, and other eminent men of the middle
ages, comprehended Cicero well, and were able to enter into
his spirit. At the time of the revival of letters, the admiration
of Cicero still increased. The rage of the Ciceroniani in the
sixteenth century is well known ; they regarded it as a heresy
to use a word or a phrase which was not found in Cicero. Most
of them lost their own wits by their slavish imitation; but
others, such as P. Manutius, were extremely benefited by
VOL. III. H