ho had ever shone in it, and the doctrines they had taught. We
know how well read he was in Homer and the Greek tragedians; how he knew
by heart his Ennius, his Naevius, his Pacuvius, and the others who had
written in his own tongue. As he was acquainted with the poets and
rhetoricians, so also was he acquainted with those writers who have
handled philosophy. His incredible versatility was never at fault. He
knew them all from the beginning, and could interest himself in their
doctrines. He had been in the schools at Athens, and had learned it all.
In one sense he believed in it. There was a great battle of words
carried on, and in regard to that battle he put his faith in this set or
in the other. But had he ever been asked by what philosophical process
he would rule the world, he would have smiled. Then he would have
declared himself not to be an Academician, but a Republican.

It was with him a game of play, ornamented with all the learning of past
ages. He had found the schools full of it at Athens, and had taken his
part in their teaching. It had been pleasant to him to call himself a
disciple of Plato, and to hold himself aloof from the straitness of the
Stoics, and from the mundane theories of the followers of Epicurus. It
had been well for him also to take an interest in that play. But to
suppose that Cicero, the modern Cicero, the Cicero of the world--Cicero
the polished gentleman, Cicero the soft hearted, Cicero the hater,
Cicero the lover, Cicero the human--was a believer in Greek
philosophy--that he had taken to himself and fed upon those shreds and
tatters and dry sticks--that he had ever satisfied himself with such a
mode of living as they could promise to him--is indeed to mistake the
man. His soul was quiveringly alive to all those instincts which now
govern us. Go among our politicians, and you shall find this man and the
other, who, in after-dinner talk, shall call himself an Epicurean, or
shall think himself to be an Academician. He has carried away something
of the learning of his college days, and remembers enough of his school
exercises for that; but when he has to make a speech for or against
Protection, then you will find out where lies his philosophy.

And so it was with Cicero during this the penultimate year of his life.
He poured forth during this period such an amount of learning on the
subject, that when men took it up after the lapse of centuries they
labelled it all as his philosophy. Whe