Page:Cicero (Collins 1871).djvu/82

70 animus," he says of him in one of his letters, coining a verb to put his idea strongly—"he wants to be like Sulla." And it was no more than the truth. He found out afterwards, as he tells Atticus, that proscription-lists of all Cæsar's adherents had been prepared by Pompey and his partisans, and that his old friend's name figured as one of the victims. Only this makes it possible to forgive him for the little feeling that he showed when he heard of Pompey's own miserable end.

Cicero's conduct and motives at this eventful crisis have been discussed over and over again. It may be questioned whether at this date we are in any position to pass more than a very cautious and general judgment upon them. We want all the "state papers" and political correspondence of the day—not Cicero's letters only, but those of Cæsar and Pompey and Lentulus, and much information besides that was never trusted to pen or paper—in order to lay down with any accuracy the course which a really unselfish patriot could have taken. But there seems little reason to accuse Cicero of double-dealing or trimming in the worst sense. His policy was unquestionably, from first to last, a policy of expedients. But expediency is, and must be more or less, the watchword of a statesman. If he would practically serve his country, he must do to some extent what Cicero professed to do—make friends with those in power. "Sic vivitur"—"So goes the world;" "Tempori serviendum est"—"We must bend to circumstances"—these are not the noblest mottoes, but they are acted upon continually