" [3]
After passing a deserved panegyric on the suppression of the pirates,
Cicero urged with all the power of his oratory that Manilius's measures
should be adopted, and that the same general who had done so well already
should be sent against Mithridates.
This was perhaps the only occasion on which Cicero ever addressed the
assembly in favor of the proposals of a popular tribune. Well would it
have been for him and well for Rome if he could have held on upon a course
into which he had been led by real patriotism. He was now in his proper
place, where his better mind must have told him that he ought to have
continued, working by the side of Caesar and Pompey. It was observed that
more than once in his speech he mentioned with high honor the name of
Marius. He appeared to have seen clearly that the Senate was bringing the
State to perdition; and that unless the Republic was to end in
dissolution, or in mob rule and despotism, the wise course was to
recognize the legitimate tendencies of popular sentiment, and to lend the
constant weight of his authority to those who were acting in harmony with
it. But Cicero could never wholly forget his own consequence, or bring
himself to persist in any policy where he could play but a secondary part.
[Sidenote: B.C. 66-63.]
The Manilian law was carried.
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