Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/102

80 worthless life by a heroic end. In the last dreadful days of the Proscription, the two brothers set forth together on their flight. Quintus returned with his son to Rome to procure supplies for their journey, and the two fell into the power of the head-hunters. They died like worthy Romans, each striving to sacrifice his own life for the preservation of the other. Young Marcus, the son of Cicero, alone survived. Like his uncle he was a gallant soldier, and he did good service both under Pompey and under Brutus; but with the Civil War his credit ended; thenceforth he was known chiefly as the hardest-headed toper in Rome. Nevertheless in his case too "the whirligig of time brings in his revenges." The pious historian deemed it a clear case of the special interposition of Providence, that Marcus Tullius Cicero was consul in the latter part of the year 30 B.C., and that so it fell to his lot to announce in the Senate the tidings of the final defeat and death of Antony, and to decree the destruction of Antony's statues and the legal damnation of his name.