haracter and services to the state. This was followed by a
complete abstention from any farther opposition to the carrying out of
Caesar's law for the allotment of the Campanian land--a subject which he
had himself brought before the senate only a short time before, and on
which he really continued to feel strongly.[14] Cicero's most elaborate
defence of his change of front is contained in a long letter to P.
Lentulus Spinther, written two years afterwards.[15] The gist of it is
much the same as the remark to Atticus already quoted. "Pompey and
Caesar were all-powerful, and could not be resisted without civil
violence, if not downright civil war. The Optimates were feeble and
shifty, had shewn ingratitude to Cicero himself, and had openly favoured
his enemy Clodius. Public peace and safety must be the statesman's chief
object, and almost any concession was to be preferred to endangering
these." Nevertheless, we cannot think that Cicero was ever heartily
reconciled to the policy, or the unconstitutional preponderance of the
triumvirs. He patched up some sort of reconciliation with Crassus, and
his personal affection for Pompey made it comparatively easy for him to
give him a kind of support. Caesar was away, and a correspondence filled
on both sides with courteous expressions could be maintained without
seriously compromising his convictions. But Cicero was never easy under
the yoke. From B.C. 55 to B.C. 52 he sought several opportunities for a
prolonged stay in the country, devoting himself--in default of
politics--to literature. The fruits of this were the _de Oratore_ and
the _de Republica_, besides poems on his own times and on his
consulship. Still he was obliged from time to time to appear in the
forum and senate-house, and in various ways to gratify Pompey and Caesar.
It must have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this new political
friendship when, in B.C. 54, Pompey called upon him to undertake the
defence of P. Vatinius, whom he had not long before attacked so fiercely
while defending Sestius. Vatinius had been a tribune in B.C. 59, acting
entirely in Caesar's interests, and Cicero believed him to have been his
enemy both in the matter of his exile and in the opposition to his
recall. He had denounced him in terms that would have made it almost
impossible, one would think, to have spoken in his defence in any cause
whatever. At best he represented all that Cicero most disliked in
politics; and on this very