Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/356

314

and altered, which Cicero would have allowed to posterity, Tiro has preserved over eight hundred and fifty, and these he has treated as a sacred trust, and has kept them absolutely untampered with, so that we read them to-day just as they came from his master's pen.

Cicero landed at Brundisium on the twenty-third of November, 50 B.C., having been absent from Italy not quite a year and a half. The interval had been occupied with a long series of intrigues and proposals for compromise regarding Cæsar's claim to retain his province and army, until he should enter on his second consulship at the beginning of the year 48 B.C. Cæsar's opponents wished that there should be an interval between his proconsulship and his consulship, and it is pretty certain that they meant to use the interval, during which he would be unshielded by office, to bring him to trial for his illegal acts, when consul ten years before. Of this controversy it will be sufficient to say that Cæsar appears to have had no legal ground for resisting supersession at any time after March 1, 49 B.C., when his ten years' governorship would expire; but that a successor could not have been sent out to take his place until the end of that year, had not the rules for the appointment of provincial governors been purposely altered by Pompey during his sole consulship in 52 B.C. (see above, p. 289). Thus Cæsar was practically cheated of an expectation, which under the old rules of succession he had a full right