the previous November.

On the very day of the assembly he crossed over to Brundisium, where his daughter met him. He proceeded with her slowly to Rome, being received with congratulations and distinguished honors in the towns along the way. At Rome he was welcomed with extravagant demonstrations of joy. His house on the Palatine and his villas were ordered rebuilt at public expense.

Yet the city was no longer to him what it had been. The triumvirs were all-powerful. They did not deem it necessary to take Cicero into their confidence, and he dared not offer any opposition. In all outward appearances he was friendly to them. He felt obliged to yield to their wishes on many occasions. In their interest, as he himself informs us,1 he even defended men to whom he had previously been unfriendly. Intervals of leisure in his professional work he devoted to writing. In 53 B. C. he was chosen augur.

On Jan. 20, B. C. 52, the collision between the armed bands of Clodius and Milo occurred at Bovillae, resulting in the death of the former. Cicero undertook the defence of Milo. At the trial, in April, the adherents of Clodius created great disturbance, and Pompey filled the Forum with soldiers. Cicero was afraid to deliver his speech, but afterward wrote it out and sent it to Milo, who had gone into exile at Massilia. In the same year a law was passed that a consul or praetor should not be eligible to the governorship of a province until five years after the expiration of his term of office. In the mean time provinces were to be assigned to ex-consuls and ex-praetors who had not yet had such an appointment. To Cicero was allotted the province of Cilicia, with the surrounding region.

He entered upon his duties in Cilicia on the last day of July,

1 Cf. Ep. ad Fam. VII. 1., ad Att. IV., v., VI.

B. C. 51. He administered the affairs of the province with great uprightness, but found the position, as he had expected, not at all to his liking. With the help of his brother Quintus, an experienced officer, he subdued certain mountain tribes along the Syrian frontier, and was weak enough to desire a triumph. As soon as the year of his appointment had expired he set out for Rome, reaching the city on the fourth of January, B. C. 49.

In the beginning of the year 49 hostilities commenced. between Caesar and Pompey. Cicero, having vainly attempted to bring about a reconciliation between them, hesitated with which to cast in his lot. He finally decided to join the side of Pompey. In June he passed over to Greece, and appears to have been with Pompey till the battle of Pharsalus, which was fought on the 9th of August, B. C. 48. In November he returned to Brundisium. Here he remained unmolested till the following August, when he received a letter from Caesar which relieved him of all apprehensions regarding his personal safety. He now devoted himself to the composition of treatises on subjects connected with rhetoric. and philosophy, dividing his time between his different villas.

In 46 he divorced his wife Terentia, whom he had mar

ried about the year 79. She appears to have been a high

spirited woman, having withal a large property, regarding the management of which she and her husband did not agree. Being financially embarrassed, he married Publilia, a wealthy young lady, for whom he had been acting as guardian; but this marriage was soon dissolved. The most crushing blow to his domestic happiness was the death, early in B. C. 45, of his daughter Tullia, to whom he had been devotedly attached. For a time he retired to his secluded 1 See Vocab.

villa at Astura, and gave himself up to grief.1 Her death left a deep impress upon his writings, which were now more than ever undertaken as a means of consolation.

2

Cicero was fully in sympathy with the assassination of Caesar (March 15, B. C. 44). In the reaction against the conspirators he thought it unsafe for him to remain in Italy, and started for Greece. As the ship touched at Regium he learned that there was a prospect of reconciliation between Antony and the party of the Senate, and returned to Rome. All hope of a peaceful solution of the existing complications was soon lost. Antony left the city, where Octavianus gradually acquired control. Cicero was once more in a position of influence, the favorite of the people. He assailed Antony before the Senate and from the Rostra, in the so-called Philippic orations. But the coalition of Antony with Lepidus, and of these two later with Octavianus, was fatal to all hopes of the supporters of constitutional liberty. In the latter part of November, B. C. 43, the new triumvirs made out their proscription list. On it were placed the names of seventeen men who were to be put out of the way at once. That of Cicero was among them. The news reached him at Tusculum. He fled to Antium and took ship. Adverse winds prevented escape. He landed at Formiae and remained in his villa there, resolved to meet his fate. When the soldiers of the triumvirs came (Dec. 7), his slaves placed him in a litter and started with him through the woods to the seashore, a mile away. They were overtaken, and prepared for defence. Cicero bade them be quiet, and put his head forth from the litter. The executioners struck off both his head and his hands, took them to Rome, and, by order of Antony, nailed them to the Rostra, — the scene of so many of his triumphs. 3 See pp. 51, 52.

1 See Ep. XXXIV-XXXVII.

2 See Ep. XL.

ii. CICERO AS AN ORATOR.

No just view of Cicero as an orator can be obtained without some knowledge of the nature of oratory, its place in ancient life, and its history up to his time.

Oratory may be defined as the art of persuasion by means of speech. It aims not simply to convince, but to lead to a decision, to move to action. It is thus distinguished, not only from poetry, the purpose of which primarily is to please, but also from ordinary prose, of which the main function is to make clear to another the thought that one wishes to convey. The oration forms a distinct literary species, with its own traditions, its own laws of structure, and principles of composition.

In the life of Greece and Rome oratory played a much more important part than in that of modern times. In antiquity those who possessed the rights of citizenship, the voters, lived in cities. The land was tilled ordinarily by slaves or subjects, and there was no large farming class, as there is in our country, in possession of the elective franchise, and liable to hold the balance of power between political parties. The number of voters in ancient States formed a small minority of the whole population. Civic life was concentrated. An orator, speaking in the central part of a city, might gather the whole body of citizens within the sound of his voice. In those States where a democratic form of government prevailed, oratory naturally reached its highest perfection; for in the ancient democracies, unlike those of the modern era, questions were submitted, not to representatives of the people, but directly to the people themselves, with whom lay the decision of the most important matters. The easiest way to reach and mould opinion was through public address. This function of oratory

has now been almost wholly superseded by the newspaper and the political pamphlet. Wide opportunity for public speaking was afforded also by the larger governmental bodies, as the Council at Athens and the Senate at Rome. Finally, the constitution of the tribunals, referring the decision of cases generally to a much greater number of individuals than the modern courts, was favorable to the development of oratory.

The practice of oratory at an early date in Greece is clearly indicated by the Homeric poems; but to Athens belongs the glory of having first produced great orators. Among the leaders in the earlier period of her history at least two, Themistocles and Pericles, were hardly less famous for their eloquence than for their statesmanship. But the treatment of

oratory as an art, under the name of rhetoric, began in Sicily in the first half of the fifth century B. C., when the expulsion of the tyrants from Agrigentum and Syracuse, and the establishment of democracies, created a demand for instruction in this subject. Gorgias, the greatest of the Sicilian teachers of oratory, gave instruction at Athens in the latter part of the same century, emphasizing the poetic coloring of eloquence, while the work of the sophists in the same period tended to point out distinctions in the meanings of words, and directed attention to grammatical usage. The golden age of Athenian oratory lasted from the end of the fifth to the latter part of the fourth century B. C. Among the numerous orators of this period later criticism reckoned ten as pre-eminent: Aeschines, Andocides, Antiphon, Deinarchus, Demosthenes, Hyperides, Isaeus, Isocrates, Lycurgus, and Lysias. Demosthenes was recognized both by his own and by succeeding ages as the greatest of them all. After his death, B. C. 322, with the extinction of Greek liberties, Athenian eloquence rapidly declined. A new type of oratory came into vogue soon afterwards in the Greek cities of the western part of Asia Minor,