some papers which he was holding dropped from his hand. In the end he was carried by storm, and acquitted the accused."
Another notable instance of clemency, the pardon of Marcus Marcellus, who, as consul in the year 51, had taken a prominent part in the opposition to Cæsar, overpowered the resolution of Cicero not to open his lips again in the Senate. "This day," he writes[1] to Servius Sulpicius, "seemed to dawn so fairly on me, that I fancied I could see, as it were, some vision of the Republic springing to life again. . . . When my turn came, I departed from my original intention. For I had resolved, not, I assure you, from sloth, but from a sense of the aching void left by the loss of my old independence, to hold my peace for ever. My resolution broke down in the presence of Cæsar's magnanimity and of the loyalty with which the Senate had pressed our friend's cause. And so I made a long speech of thanks to Cæsar; I only fear that by so doing I have debarred myself for the future from that decent quiescence which was my only consolation in these bad times."
This speech, too, has been preserved. From the enthusiasm with which Cicero speaks of the occasion in the confidential letter to his friend, it will readily be conceived that the public expression of thanks is conveyed in language whose fervour knows no bounds. The hyperbolical protestations of gratitude and devotion are in painful contrast to the satisfaction which Cicero afterwards took in Cæsar's assassination; but at the moment the speaker was doubtless
- ↑ Ad Fam., iv., 4, 3.
