ge will not think that the gods have made him a
sorry fellow." There is very much more of it, delightfully said, and in
the same spirit; but I have given enough to show the nature of the
excuse for Caelius which has brought down on Cicero the wrath of the
moralists.

CHAPTER II.

_CICERO, AETAT._ 52, 53, 54.

[Sidenote: B.C. 55, aetat. 52.]

I can best continue my record of Cicero's life for this and the two
subsequent years by following his speeches and his letters. It was at
this period the main object of his political life to reconcile the
existence of a Caesar with that of a Republic--two poles which could not
by any means be brought together. Outside of his political life he
carried on his profession as an advocate with all his former energy,
with all his former bitterness, with all his old friendly zeal, but
never, I think, with his former utility. His life with his friends and
his family was prosperous; but that ambition to do some great thing for
his country which might make his name more famous than that of other
Romans was gradually fading, and, as it went, was leaving regrets and
remorse behind which would not allow him to be a happy man. But it was
now, when he had reached his fifty-second year, that he in truth began
that career in literature which has made him second to no Roman in
reputation. There are some early rhetorical essays, which were taken
from the Greek, of doubtful authenticity; there are the few lines which
are preserved of his poetry; there are the speeches which he wrote as
well as spoke for the Rome of the day; and there are his letters, which
up to this time had been intended only for his correspondents. All that
we have from his pen up to this time has been preserved for us by the
light of those great works which he now commenced. In this year, B.C.
55, there appeared the dialogue De Oratore, and in the next the treatise
De Republica. It was his failure as a politician which in truth drove
Cicero to the career of literature. As I intend to add to this second
volume a few chapters as to his literary productions, I will only
mention the dates on which these dialogues and treatises were given to
the world as I go on with my work.

In the year B.C. 55, the two of the Triumvirate who had been left in
Rome, Pompey and Crassus, were elected Consuls, and provinces were
decreed to each of them for five years--to Pompey the two Spains, and to
Crassus that Syria which was to be so fata