than friendly and cordial strain. Once indeed he composed a letter which even Cæsar's agents Balbus and Oppius thought too strong. They advised him not to send it; and though Cicero was annoyed at the advice, and explained to Atticus that of course it was mere , yet he followed the suggestion.[1]
Cicero's case against Cæsar. It is of course impossible to reconcile Cicero's public utterances, as contained in the three speeches of this period,[2] with the private expressions of feeling of which a selection has been here indicated. Nor is it possible to feel full sympathy with a man thus playing a double part. But it is not difficult to understand and partly condone it. He might plead that he yielded to force majeure: that his exile or death could not benefit his country; whereas by conforming to the inevitable he might hope to benefit his friends, to secure their restoration to civil rights and property, and to raise his voice now and again on the side of equity and mercy. Nor would he have been really safer anywhere else than in Italy. The arm of the Dictator was a long one and would reach to Rhodes almost as easily as to Tusculum. Philosophers had generally taught that the wise man was justified in submitting to superior force, and in living his life under whatever form of government. Again and again he is at pains to justify at great length both his having originally engaged in the war and his having refused to continue it after Pharsalia. The eventual victory of either side was sure to be calamitous to the state, he thinks, and it was better to bear the ills they had than fly to others the extent of which they could not measure.[3] It may perhaps be right to attempt to estimate briefly the justice of the grievance against Cæsar which led a man like Cicero, generally generous, wise, and high-minded, to regard the stupid crime of the Ides of March with such exulting approval, as the righteous punishment of tyranny and treason to the state.
It is useless to argue on general principles as to the blunder as well as the crime involved in an assassination. We must try to get at Cicero's point of view. Cæsar had
