en, who had ever spared themselves. To him a
thousand Gauls, or men of Eastern origin, were as nothing to a single
Roman nobleman. Whether there can be said to have been clemency in such
a course it is useless now to dispute. To Caesar it was at any rate
policy as well. If by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it
is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, Caesar
was clement. He had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to
make common cause--in little things--with those who lose. We can see
Caesar getting down from his chariot when Cicero came to meet him, and,
throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant
conversation; and we can fancy him talking to Cicero pleasantly of the
greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show
in comparison with those of Caesar's. "Cedant arma togae; concedat laurea
linguae," we can hear Caesar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of
his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought
so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing
of his now undoubted literary excellence.

[Sidenote: B.C. 47, aetat. 60.]

But to go back a little; we shall find Cicero still waiting at
Brundisium during August and September. In the former of these months he
reminds Atticus that "he cannot at present sell anything, but that he
can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall
fall upon him."[134] From this may be deduced a state of things very
different to that above described, but not contradicting it. I gather
from this unintelligible letter, written, as he tells us, for the most
part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under
some forfeiture of the law to Caesar. It may well be that, as one
adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be
salable. If that were so, Caesar in some of these bland moments must have
revoked the sentence--and at such a time all sentences were within
Caesar's control--because we know that on his return Cicero's villas were
again within his own power. But he is in sad trouble now about his wife.
He has written to her to send him twelve thousand sesterces, which he
had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is
left. If she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she
do if it were larger?[135] Then follow two letters for his wife--a mere
word in each--not a