The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern
races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to
have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his
sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants
of Rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life
of the time that it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body,
should be manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not,
as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and
presumed inferior race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any
such idea. They were instigated now and again to servile wars,
but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it
repugnant to the Roman theory of liberty that the people whom they
dominated, though not subjected to slavery, should still be outside
the pale of civil freedom. That boon was to be reserved for the
Roman citizen, and for him only. It had become common to admit to
citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories.
The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for Romans.

Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence
of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name
of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine
patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as
he did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain
a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the
republican form of government maintained. There should still be two
Consuls in Rome, whose annual election would guard the State against
regal dominion. And there should, at the same time, be such
a continuance of power in the hands of the better class--the
"optimates," as he called them--as would preserve the city from