So bitter Cicero was that he once told Atticus he could almost
wish himself to be the object of some cruel prosecution, that the tyrant
might have the disgrace of it.[2]
He could not deny that "the tyrant" was doing what, if Rome was to
continue an ordered commonwealth, it was essential must be done. Caesar's
acts were unconstitutional! Yes; but constitutions are made for men, not
men for constitutions, and Cicero had long seen that the Constitution was
at an end. It had died of its own iniquities. He had perceived in his
better moments that Caesar and Caesar only could preserve such degrees of
freedom as could be retained without universal destruction. But he refused
to be comforted. He considered it a disgrace to them all that Caesar was
alive.[3] Why did not somebody kill him? Kill him? And what then? On
that side too the outlook was not promising. News had come that Labienus
and young Cnaeus Pompey had united their forces in Spain. The whole
Peninsula was in revolt, and the counter-revolution was not impossible
after all. He reflected with terror on the sarcasms which he had flung on
young Pompey. He knew him to be a fool and a savage. "Hang me," he said,
"if I do not prefer an old and kind master to trying experiments with a
new and cruel one. The laugh will be on the other side then." [4]
Far had Cicero fallen from his dream of being the greatest man in Rome!
Condemned to immortality by his genius, yet condemned also to survive in
the portrait of himself which he has so unconsciously and so innocently
drawn.
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