y, "who first among
men was called the father of your country."[13] Martial, in one of his
distichs, tells the traveller that if he have but a book of Cicero's
writing he may fancy that he is travelling with Cicero himself.[14]
Lucan, in his bombastic verse, declares how Cicero dared to speak of
peace in the camp of Pharsalia. The reader may think that Cicero should
have said nothing of the kind, but Lucan mentions him with all
honor.[15] Not Tacitus, as I think, but some author whose essay De
Oratoribus was written about the time of Tacitus, and whose work has
come to us with the name of Tacitus, has told us of Cicero that he was a
master of logic, of ethics, and of physical science.[16] Everybody
remembers the passage in Juvenal,

"Sed Roma parentem
Roma patrem patriae Ciceronem libera dixit."

"Rome, even when she was free, declared him to be the father of his
country."[17] Even Plutarch, who generally seems to have a touch of
jealousy when speaking of Cicero, declares that he verified the
prediction of Plato, "That every State would be delivered from its
calamities whenever power should fortunately unite with wisdom and
justice in one person."[18] The praises of Quintilian as to the man are
so mixed with the admiration of the critic for the hero of letters, that
I would have omitted to mention them here were it not that they will
help to declare what was the general opinion as to Cicero at the time in
which it was written. He has been speaking of Demosthenes,[19] and then
goes on: "Nor in regard to Cicero do I see that he ever failed in the
duty of a good citizen. There is in evidence of this the splendor of his
consulship, the rare integrity of his provincial administration, his
refusal of office under Caesar,[20] the firmness of his mind on the civil
wars, giving way neither to hope nor fear, though these sorrows came
heavily on him in his old age. On all these occasions he did the best he
could for the Republic." Florus, who wrote after the twelve Caesars, in
the time of Trajan and of Adrian, whose rapid summary of Roman events
can hardly be called a history, tells us, in a few words, how Catiline's
conspiracy was crushed by the authority of Cicero and Cato in opposition
to that of Caesar.[21] Then, when he has passed in a few short chapters
over all the intervening history of the Roman Empire, he relates, in
pathetic words, the death of Cicero. "It was the custom in Rome to pu