Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/403

46 B.C.] It was long before Cicero gave up the hope that after all there was to be "some sort of Free State," and that Cæsar was destined to be its founder. This delusion was fostered, and not unnaturally, by the spectacle of Cæsar's constant clemency and kindness to the conquered. "The all-powerful ruler," he writes to an exiled Pompeian in January, 45 B.C., "seems to me to be daily inclining more and more to justice and to a reasonable view of things . . . Every day something is done with more of lenity and liberality than we were expecting." "No one," he says in another letter, "is so much an enemy to the cause which Pompey supported with more spirit than prudence, as to venture to call us bad men or unworthy citizens; and in this I always admire the rectitude, fairness, and good sense of Cæsar. He never speaks of Pompey, but in the most honourable terms." Cicero is eager to make excuses for Cæsar. If he delays the restoration of the Republic, it is because "Cæsar himself is the slave of the situation." "Since," he says, "I have judged it right to live on, I cannot but feel a kindness for the man by whose favour life has been granted me. If that man desires that there should be a commonwealth such as perhaps he wishes, and such as we are all bound to pray for, he has no power to realise it, so hampered is he by obligations to his followers."