Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/426

378 deadly insult to the memory of the chief magistracy of republican Rome. Caninius Rebilus was elected consul for a few hours of the last day of the year 45. It was the public proclamation of the fact that the consulship was now only a mockery and a farce. The account of the spectacle which Cicero gives to his friend Curius in one of the last letters written before Cæsar's death, may serve as a fitting close to his experiences of the government of the Dictator:

"I give up pressing you or even inviting you to return home. All I wish is that I, too, could take to myself wings, and come at some land 'where I shall never hear of the name nor the deeds of the sons of Pelops.' I cannot tell you how mean I feel for having any part in these things. Verily you seem to me to have had a foresight long ago of what was coming on us, when you took your flight from these parts. Bitter as things are to hear of, they are a thousand times worse to see. At any rate you have escaped being present in the Campus Martius at eight o'clock in the morning when the elections for quæstors were being held. The curule chair of Fabius, whom they were pleased to call consul, was duly set. There comes a messenger to say the man is dead, and away goes his chair. Thereupon, Cæsar, who had taken the auspices for an assembly by tribes, held an assembly by centuries instead. At twelve o'clock he returned a consul duly elected to hold office till the 1st of January, that is to say, for the remainder of the day of election. So you are to