" [22]
Happy it would have been for Cicero, and happy for Rome, had he persevered
in the course which he now seemed really to have chosen. Cicero and Caesar
united might have restored the authority of the laws, punished corruption
and misgovernment, made their country the mother as well as the mistress
of the world; and the Republic, modified to suit the change of times,
might have survived for many generations. But under such a modification,
Cicero would have no longer been the first person in the Commonwealth. The
talkers would have ceased to rule, and Cicero was a talker only. He could
not bear to be subordinate. He was persuaded that he, and not Caesar, was
the world's real great man; and so he held on, leaning now to one faction
and now to another, waiting for the chance which was to put him at last in
his true place. For the moment, however, he saved himself from the
degradation into which the Senate precipitated itself. The arrangements at
Lucca were the work of the army. The conservative majority refused to let
the army dictate to them. Domitius intended still to be consul, let the
army say what it pleased. Pompey and Crassus returned to Rome for the
elections; the consuls for the year, Marcellinus and Philip, declined to
take their names. The consuls and the Senate appealed to the Assembly, the
Senate marching into the Forum in state, as if calling on the genius of
the nation to defend the outraged constitution.
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