The Life of Cicero, vol 1 | Page 6

character of the man, but of the estimation in which he
was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country;
having shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always
treated with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the
old Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no
charge was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or
dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not
justified in saying that they who have in later days accused him should
have shown their authority? Their authority they have always found in
his own words. It is on his own evidence against himself that they have
depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises.
When we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations
of his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they
came quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! He is a coward to
the critics because they have written without giving themselves time to
feel the true meaning of his own words. If we had only known his acts
and not his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of
Verres, with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his
doings at the time of Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia
from a sense of sheer duty, how he defied Antony when to defy Antony
was probable death--then we should not call him a coward! It is out of
his own mouth that he is condemned. Then surely his words should be
understood. Queen Christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that
"Cicero was the only coward that was capable of great actions." The
Queen of Sweden, whose sentences are never worth very much, has
known her history well enough to have learned that Cicero's acts were
noble, but has not understood the meaning of words sufficiently to
extract from Cicero's own expressions their true bearing. The bravest of
us all, if he is in high place, has to doubt much before he can know
what true courage will demand of him; and these doubts the man of
words will express, if there be given to him an alter ego such as Cicero

had in Atticus.
In reference to the biography of Mr Forsyth I must, in justice both to
him and to Cicero, quote one passage from the work: "Let those who,
like De Quincey,[26] Mommsen, and others, speak disparagingly of
Cicero, and are so lavish in praise of Caesar, recollect that Caesar never
was troubled by a conscience."
Here it is that we find that advance almost to Christianity of which I
have spoken, and that superiority of mind being which makes Cicero
the most fit to be loved of all the Romans.
It is hard for a man, even in regard to his own private purposes, to
analyze the meaning of a conscience, if he put out of question all belief
in a future life. Why should a man do right if it be not for a reward here
or hereafter? Why should anything be right--or wrong? The Stoics tried
to get over the difficulty by declaring that if a man could conquer all
his personal desires he would become, by doing so, happy, and would
therefore have achieved the only end at which a man can rationally aim.
The school had many scholars, but probably never a believer. The
normal Greek or Roman might be deterred by the law, which means
fear of punishment, or by the opinion of his neighbors, which means
ignominy. He might recognize the fact that comfort would combine
itself with innocence, or disease and want with lust and greed. In this
there was little need of a conscience--hardly, perhaps, room for it. But
when ambition came, with all the opportunities that chance, audacity,
and intellect would give--as it did to Sylla, to Caesar, and to
Augustus--then there was nothing to restrain the men. There was to
such a man no right but his power, no wrong but opposition to it. His
cruelty or his clemency might be more or less, as his conviction of the
utility of this or that other weapon for dominating men might be strong
with him. Or there might be some variation in the flowing of the blood
about his heart which might make a massacre of citizens a pleasing
diversion or a painful process to him; but there was no conscience.
With the man of whom we are about to speak conscience was strong. In
his sometimes doubtful wanderings after political wisdom--in those
mental mazes which have been called insincerity--we shall see him, if
we look well