Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/440

390 the moment in Athens became officers in Brutus' army, the poet Horace and Marcus son of Cicero. It was a proud moment for his father when he had to announce to the Senate amongst other good news from the East, "the legion which was commanded by Lucius Piso, one of Antony's lieutenants, has gone over to my son Cicero, and placed itself at his disposal."

Though despondent as to the future and bitterly disappointed at the result of a deed which "has taken away the despot but not the despotism," Cicero is absolutely fixed in his moral acceptance of the assassination. Looking back on Cæsar's career as a whole, he now made no question that he was a "tyrant" in the Greek sense of the word, that he had destroyed a free State, and that he meant his own domination to be permanent. This granted, the rest was clear. The Greek philosophers and historians, the recognised expounders of morality, spoke with no uncertain sound of the despot and his fate. The slayer of the "tyrant" was a hero and a public benefactor; honour and gratitude were his due at the hands of every free man. Not only in his public utterances, where we might suspect him of a desire to make the best of the actions of his political allies, but in his most confidential expressions to Atticus, Cicero never wavers in his approval of the deed and in his admiration for the Liberators. "Their name will be glorious as heroes or rather as gods. Though the deed may be barren of good results for the rest of us, yet for themselves