lready becoming noted for
their elegance and charms of upholstery and scenic beauty. Not only had
he climbed to the top of official life himself, but had succeeded in
taking his brother Quintus up with him. In the second of the two years,
B.C. 61, Quintus had been sent out as Governor or Propraetor to Asia,
having then nothing higher to reach than the Consulship, which, however,
he never attained. This step in the life of Quintus has become famous by
a letter which the elder brother wrote to him in the second year of his
office, to which reference will be made in the next chapter.

So far all things seemed to have gone well with Cicero. He was high in
esteem and authority, powerful, rich, and with many people popular. But
the student of his life now begins to see that troubles are enveloping
him. He had risen too high not to encounter envy, and had been too loud
in his own praise not to make those who envied him very bitter in their
malice.

CHAPTER XI.

_THE TRIUMVIRATE._

[Sidenote: B.C. 60, aetat. 47.]

I know of no great fact in history so impalpable, so shadowy, so unreal,
as the First Triumvirate. Every school-boy, almost every school-girl,
knows that there was a First Triumvirate, and that it was a political
combination made by three great Romans of the day, Julius Caesar, Pompey
the Great, and Crassus the Rich, for managing Rome among them. Beyond
this they know little, because there is little to know. That it was a
conspiracy against the ordained government of the day, as much so as
that of Catiline, or Guy Faux, or Napoleon III., they do not know
generally, because Caesar, who, though the youngest of the three, was the
mainspring of it, rose by means of it to such a galaxy of glory that all
the steps by which he rose to it have been supposed to be magnificent
and heroic. But of the method in which this Triumvirate was constructed,
who has an idea? How was it first suggested, where, and by whom? What
was it that the conspirators combined to do? There was no purpose of
wholesale murder like that of Catiline for destroying the Senate, and of
Guy Faux for blowing up the House of Lords. There was no plot arranged
for silencing a body of legislators like that of Napoleon. In these
scrambles that are going on every year for place and power, for
provinces and plunder, let us help each other. If we can manage to stick
fast by each other, we can get all the power and nearly all the plunder.
That, said with