THE
LIFE OF CICERO.
CHAPTER I.
HIS RETURN FROM EXILE.
Cicero's life for the next two years was made conspicuous by a series of speeches which were produced by his exile and his return. These are remarkable for the praise lavished on himself and by the violence with which he attacked his enemies. It must be owned that never was abuse more abusive, or self-praise uttered in language more laudatory.[1] Cicero had now done all that was useful in his public life. The great monuments of his literature are to come. None of these had as yet been written except a small portion of his letters, — about a tenth, — and of these he thought no more in regard to the public than do any ordinary letter-writers of to-day. Some poems had been produced, and a history of his own Consulship in Greek,
- ↑ As I shall explain a few pages further on, four of these speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious.
