hasty and inconsiderate,
and helped to precipitate his ruin." He was sensible of his error when
too late, and oft reproaches Atticus that, being a stander-by, and less
heated with the game than himself, he would suffer him to make such
blunders. And he quotes the words written to Atticus: "Here my judgment
first failed me, or, indeed, brought me into trouble. We were blind,
blind I say, in changing our raiment and in appealing to the
populace. * * * I handed myself and all belonging to me over to my enemies,
while you were looking on, while you were holding your peace; yes, you,
who, if your wit in the matter was no better than mine, were impeded by
no personal fears."[277] But the reader should study the entire letter,
and study it in the original, for no translator can give its true
purport. This the reader must do before he can understand Cicero's state
of mind when writing it, or his relation to Atticus; or the thoughts
which distracted him when, in accordance with the advice of Atticus, he
resolved, while yet uncondemned, to retire into banishment. The censure
to which Atticus is subjected throughout this letter is that which a
thoughtful, hesitating, scrupulous man is so often disposed to address
to himself. After reminding Atticus of the sort of advice which should
have been given--the want of which in the first moment of his exile he
regrets--and doing this in words of which it is very difficult now to
catch the exact flavor, he begs to be pardoned for his reproaches. "You
will forgive me this," he says. "I blame myself more than I do you; but
I look to you as a second self, and I make you a sharer with me of my
own folly." I take this letter out of its course, and speak of it as
connected with that terrible period of doubt to which it refers, in
which he had to decide whether he would remain in Rome and fight it out,
or run before his enemies. But in writing the letter afterward his mind
was as much disturbed as when he did fly. I am inclined, therefore, to
think that Middleton and others may have been wrong in blaming his
flight, which they have done, because in his subsequent vacillating
moods he blamed himself. How the battle might have gone had he remained,
we have no evidence to show; but we do know that though he fled, he
returned soon with renewed glory, and altogether overcame the attempt
which had been made to destroy him.

In this time of his distress a strong effort was made by the Senate to
rescue h