ave been, I think, some plot to get Cicero on to his legs. He had gone
to meet Caesar at Brundisium when he came back from the East, had
returned to Rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant
friendship with Caesar's friends. Pardon seems to have been accorded to
Cicero without an effort. As far as he was concerned, that hostile
journey to Dyrrachium--for he did not travel farther toward the
camp--counted for nothing with Caesar. He was allowed to live in peace,
at Rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as Caesar might
rule. The idea seems to have been that he should gradually become
absorbed among Caesar's followers. But hitherto he had remained silent.
It was now six years since his voice had been heard in Rome. He had
spoken for Milo--or had intended to speak--and, in the same affair, for
Munatius Plancus, and for Saufeius, B.C. 52. He had then been in his
fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such
a period of his life would not be broken. It was manifestly his
intention not to speak again, at any rate in the Senate; though the
threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as
meaning much. Such threats from statesmen depend generally on the wishes
of other men. But he held his place in the Senate, and occasionally
attended the debates. When this affair of Marcellus came on, and all the
Senators of consular rank--excepting only Volcatius and Cicero--had
risen, and had implored Caesar in a few words to condescend to be
generous; when Claudius Marcellus had knelt at Caesar's feet to ask for
his brother's liberty, and Caesar himself, after reminding them of the
bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the
prayers of the Senate, then Cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity
of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in
the speech which is still extant.

That used to be the story till there came the German critic Wolf, who at
the beginning of this century told us that Cicero did not utter the
words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to
Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable
of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably
written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might
have been taken as fatal--for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism
are acknowledged--in spite of La Harpe, the French schol