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58 B.C.]

which give their charm to his writings as they doubtless did to his conversation, are compensated in the economy of nature by an equal sensitiveness to pain. There never was a man of less equable temperament than Cicero, nor one born more completely under the influence of the planet Mercury. In the stir of life and action he is alert and sanguine; when he is struck down by misfortune he becomes nerveless and depressed, and all that remains of his ingenuity is employed in devising fresh reasons for torturing himself. During times of prosperity he suns himself in the society of his friends, in the affection of his children, in the applause of his fellows, in the approval of his own judgment and conscience; whenever these fail him, the gloom of anxiety and disappointment closes around him, and he sets forth his grief and despair as frankly as he had set forth his self-satisfaction. Happiness and misery affect him with equal keenness, and his unrivalled powers of expression are employed in both cases to display to his friends, and, as fortune would have it, through them to future centuries, feelings which had better have been buried in his own breast. If we are inclined to think hardly of him, let us remember that these are, as the French say, "the defects of his qualities."

About the end of the year Cicero left Thessalonica for Epirus. He could hardly remain in Macedon; his friend Plancius' term of office was out, and his enemy Piso was expected as the new governor. Besides the horizon had already begun to clear; Cicero could now afford to disregard