which have been collected
from the notes which Asconius wrote upon it. It was full of personal
abuse of Antony and Catiline, his competitors. Such was the practice of
Rome at this time, as it was also with us not very long since. We shall
have more than enough of such eloquence before we have done our task.
When we come to the language in which Cicero spoke of Clodius, his
enemy, of Piso and Gabinius, the Consuls who allowed him to be banished,
and of Marc Antony, his last great opponent--the nephew of the man who
was now his colleague--we shall have very much of it. It must again be
pleaded that the foul abuse which fell from other lips has not been
preserved and that Cicero, therefore, must not be supposed to have been
more foul mouthed than his rivals. We can easily imagine that he was
more bitter than others, because he had more power to throw into his
words the meaning which he intended them to convey.

Antony was chosen as Cicero's colleague. It seems, from such evidence as
we are able to get on the subject, that Cicero trusted Antony no better
than he did Catiline, but, appreciating the wisdom of the maxim, "divide
et impera"--separate your enemies and you will get the better of them,
which was no doubt known as well then as now--he soon determined to use
Antony as his ally against Catiline, who was presumed to reckon Antony
among his fellow-conspirators. Sallust puts into the mouth of Catiline a
declaration to this effect,[149] and Cicero did use Antony for the
purpose. The story of Catiline's conspiracy is so essentially the story
of Cicero's Consulship, that I may be justified in hurrying over the
other events of his year's rule; but still there is something that must
be told. Though Catiline's conduct was under his eye during the whole
year, it was not till October that the affairs in which we shall have to
interest ourselves commenced.

Of what may have been the nature of the administrative work done by the
great Roman officers of State we know very little; perhaps I might
better say that we know nothing. Men, in their own diaries, when they
keep them, or even in their private letters, are seldom apt to say much
of those daily doings which are matter of routine to themselves, and are
by them supposed to be as little interesting to others. A Prime-minister
with us, were he as prone to reveal himself in correspondence as was
Cicero with his friend Atticus, would hardly say when he went to the
Treasury Chambe