Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/479

Rh conduct of affairs, he allows himself to be led astray, where a man of less discursive mind might have shaped his course better. But we must never forget that during the greater part of his political life he had no choice before him but a choice of evils. The critics who have blamed him most bitterly would find it hard to define how, believing as he believed, Cicero ought to have acted. Cicero accepted it as the first axiom of politics, that "some sort of Free State" is the necessary condition of a noble and honourable existence; and that it is the last calamity for a people permanently to renounce this ideal and to substitute for it the slave's ideal of a good master. Englishmen and Americans, worthy of their birthright, are not likely to disagree with Cicero's judgment. If this be indeed the cardinal doctrine of the political faith, then Cicero was sound in the faith. At any rate this was the creed in which he lived, and to maintain this he laid down his life. For such a man to accept as sufficient the solution which Cæsar attempted to force on the world, would have been treason against the best light of his soul and conscience. But it was no less true, that to accept in its fulness the doctrine and policy of Cato was to court defeat and to take refuge in mere counsels of despair. Can we wonder, and shall we withhold our sympathy, if an honest man in so inextricable a situation was the prey of doubts and scruples? if he halted between two opinions and was sometimes at a loss to discover where the path of honour and duty lay? Cicero sought that path diligently, and when at last it was made clear to him,