SELECTIONS FROM CICERO. PART V. CATO MAJOR, SIVE DE SENECTUTE DIALOGUS. EXPLAINED BY JULIUS SOMMERBRODT. TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN, BY THE REV. HENRY BROWNE, M.A. CANON OF WALTHAM, IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH, LONDON: FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. INTRODUCTION. In his consulship, u.c. 691 = 63 B.C., Cicero had gained the meed of distinction which was his due, and had reached the summit of his political consideration. Although the sentence of banishment which fell upon him a few years later (58 B.C.) was speedily followed by an honorable recall (57 B.C.), he had never been able to regain his former importance in the state. In fact, even the manner in which he bore his exile will apprise us no less plainly than his subsequent line of conduct, what it was that incapacitated him for sustaining the leading part in a state in which the course of affairs was prescribed and regulated no longer by the interests of one or another party, but by those of the party-chiefs. Cicero loved his country too well to seek, at whatever cost, to secure his own pre-eminence, and not well enough to be able unreservedly to subordinate his own advantages to the good of the state. In almost all his actions, instead of being guided exclusively and unalterably by a firm conviction of what his country's welfare demanded, he allowed himself to be swayed at the same time by personal motives, in his solicitude to secure and augment his own importance and keep himself foremost in the political movements of the times. When he saw himself overthrown by the intrigues of P. Clodius and forced into exile, he vented his grief in unmanly lamentations, which would have been unworthy of him even if the entire state had been given over with him to destruction. When (in the year 51-50 B.C.) he had served as proconsul in Cilicia, had there restored peace, and order, and public security, and redressed the grievances under which the province had long laboured, the thought which, on his return, before all others filled his mind, was that of the triumph due to his services, although at that conjuncture the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey was on the point of breaking out, and the very constitution of the state was in imminent jeopardy 1. When the strife between the two leaders 1 Incidi in ipsam flammam civilis discordiæ vel potius belli-so he writes from Rome, immediately after his return from Cilicia, ad Fam. xvi. 11; and a little way further on-nunquam majore in periculo civitas fuit: nunquam improbi cives habuerunt paratiorem ducem.-Nobis inter has turbas senatus tamen frequens flagitavit triumphum: sed Lentulus consul, quo majus suum beneficium faceret, simulatque expedisset, quæ essent necessaria de republica, dixit se relaturum. |