ready meditating his
surrender. "I ask from you, my Cicero, that if you have seen with what
zeal I have in former times served the Republic, you should look for
conduct equal to it, or surpassing it for the future; and, that you
should think me the more worthy of your protection, the higher are my
deserts."[228] He was already, when writing that letter, in treaty with
Antony. Plancus writes to him at the same time apologizing for his
conduct in joining Lepidus. It was a service of great danger for him.
Plancus, but it was necessary for Lepidus that this should be done. We
are inclined to doubt them all, knowing whither they were tending.
Lepidus was false from the beginning. Plancus doubled for a while, and
then yielded himself.

The reader, I think, will have had no hope for Cicero and the Republic
since the two Consuls were killed; but as he comes upon the letters
which passed between Cicero and the armies he will have been altogether
disheartened.

CHAPTER X.

_CICERO'S DEATH._

[Sidenote: B.C. 43, aetat. 64.]

What other letters from Cicero we possess were written almost
exclusively with the view of keeping the army together, and continuing
the contest against Antony. There are among them a few introductory
letters of little or no interest. And these military despatches, though
of importance as showing the eager nature of the man, seem, as we read
them, to be foreign to his nature. He does not understand war, and
devotes himself to instigating men to defend the Republic, of whom we
suspect that they were not in the least affected by the words they
received from him. The correspondence as to this period of his life
consists of his letters to the Generals, and of theirs to him. There are
nearly as many of the one as of the other, and the reader is often
inclined to doubt whether Cicero be writing to Plancus or Plancus to
Cicero. He remained at Rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among
the official workshops of the State, writing letters, scraping together
money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amid a crowd
of hopeless, doubting, disheartened Senators, whom he still kept
together by his eloquence as Republicans, though each was eager to
escape.

But who can be made Consuls in the place of Pansa and Hirtius? Octavian,
who had not left Italy after the battle of Mutina, was determined to be
one; but the Senate, probably under the guidance of Cicero, for a time
would not have him.