the East, Caesar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the
taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With
very many of the great events which the period includes Cicero took
but slight concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished
when we find how little he had to say of them--he who ran through
all the offices of the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain
allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on
public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four
years. But he was a public man who concerned himself personally with
Rome rather than with the Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign
affairs, were dear to him. To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should
have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother Quintus been
among Caesar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been confided
by himself to Caesar's care. Of Pharsalia we only learn from him that,
in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the
war. Of the proconsular governments throughout the Roman Empire we
should not learn much from Cicero, were it not that it has been shown
to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a
Roman Governor, and by the narratives of Cicero's own rule in Cilicia,
how excellent. The history of the time has been written for modern
readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great research and truth as to
facts, but, as I think with some strong feeling. Now Mr. Froude
has followed with his Caesar, which might well have been called
Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding, and the two latter in deifying,
the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with Cicero,
attributing to his utterances more than they mean; doubting his
sincerity, but seeing clearly the failure of his political efforts.
With the great facts of the Roman Empire as they gradually formed
themselves from the fall of Carthage, when the Empire began,[52] to
the establishment of Augustus, when it was consummated, I do not