Omnes et se et suos liberos, amicos,
clientes, libertos, servos, pecunias denique suas pollicentur. Nostra
antiqua manus bonorum ardet studio nostri atque amore. Si qui antea
aut alieniores fuerant, ant languidiores, nunc horum regum odio se
cum bonis conjungunt. Pompeius omnia pollicetur et Caesar, do quibus
ita credo, ut nihil de mea comparatione deminuam."--_Ad Quintum
Fratrem_, i. 2.
CHAPTER XIV.
From the fermentation of Roman politics, the passions of the Forum and
Senate, the corrupt tribunals, the poisoned centre of the Empire, the
story passes beyond the frontier of Italy. We no longer depend for our
account of Caesar on the caricatures of rival statesmen. He now becomes
himself our guide. We see him in his actions and in the picture of his
personal character which he has unconsciously drawn. Like all real great
men, he rarely speaks of himself. He tells us little or nothing of, his
own feelings or his own purposes. Cicero never forgets his individuality.
In every line that he wrote Cicero was attitudinizing for posterity, or
reflecting on the effect of his conduct upon his interests or his
reputation. Caesar is lost in his work; his personality is scarcely more
visible than Shakespeare's. He was now forty-three years old. His
abstemious habits had left his health unshaken.
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