I may not omit any form of self-laudation."[1] A few very indifferent verses of the poem survive, amongst them the often-quoted
"O fortunatam natam me consule Romam,"[2]
but the treatises in prose have been entirely lost.
We possess, however, in Cicero's speeches and letters ample specimens of his utterances on the achievements of his consulship. He has undoubtedly injured his reputation by the undisguised fashion in which he glories over his own action. His consulship was, as Seneca remarked,[3] "non sine causa, sed sine fine laudatus." He spoiled a good thing by making too much of it, and we get tired, as doubtless did Cicero's contemporaries, of "the great Nones of December," with its "inspirations of Providence," and its "glorious deed," and its "eternal fame."
If it be a deadly sin to be thoroughly pleased with one's own conduct and to express that pleasure blushingly, Cicero must stand condemned. But two faults, of very different degree of blackness, are liable to be confused under the common name of vanity or self-conceit. There are men into whose souls the poison seems to have eaten deep; they are pompous,
- ↑ Ad Att., i., 19, 10.
- ↑ Mr. Tyrrell renders the jingle—"O happy fate of Rome to date Her birthday from my consulate." The reference is to his own title of "father of his country." Cicero's enemy, Piso, hit him in a tender place when he said that Cicero was really banished, not for having put Lentulus to death, but for the bad verses he had written on the subject. See In Pison., 29, 72.
- ↑ Seneca, De Brevitate Vitæ, 5.
