he moment, a solemn oath, not in accordance with the
form common to Consuls on leaving office, but to the effect that during
his Consulship Rome had been saved by his work alone.[212] We have the
story only as it is told by Cicero himself, who avers that the people
accepted the oath as sworn with exceeding praise.[213] That it was so we
may, I think, take as true. There can be no doubt as to Cicero's
popularity at this moment, and hardly a doubt also as to the fact that
Metellus was acting in agreement with Caesar, and also in accord with the
understood feelings of Pompey, who was absent with his army in the East.
This Tribune had been till lately an officer under Pompey, and went into
office together with Caesar, who in that year became Praetor. This,
probably, was the beginning of the party which two years afterward
formed the first Triumvirate, B.C. 60. It was certainly now, in the year
succeeding the Consulship of Cicero, that Caesar, as Praetor, began his
great career.

[Sidenote: B.C. 62, aetat. 45.]

It becomes manifest to us, as we read the history of the time, that the
Dictator of the future was gradually entertaining the idea that the old
forms of the Republic were rotten, and that any man who intended to
exercise power in Rome or within the Roman Empire must obtain it and
keep it by illegal means. He had probably adhered to Catiline's first
conspiracy, but only with such moderate adhesion as enabled him to
withdraw when he found that his companions were not fit for the work. It
is manifest that he sympathized with the later conspiracy, though it may
be doubted whether he himself had ever been a party to it. When the
conspiracy had been crushed by Cicero, he had given his full assent to
the crushing of it. We have seen how loudly he condemned the wickedness
of the conspirators in his endeavor to save their lives. But, through it
all, there was a well-grounded conviction in his mind that Cicero, with
all his virtues, was not practical. Not that Cicero was to him the same
as Cato, who with his Stoic grandiloquence must, to his thinking, have
been altogether useless. Cicero, though too virtuous for supreme rule,
too virtuous to seize power and hold it, too virtuous to despise as
effete the institutions of the Republic, was still a man so gifted, and
capable in so many things, as to be very great as an assistant, if he
would only condescend to assist. It is in this light that Caesar seems to
have regarded Cicero