Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/480

428 he pursued it, in spite of danger and suffering, to its goal on the beach of Caieta.

The weaknesses and inconsistencies of Cicero lie on the surface of his character, and they are pitilessly displayed before us by the preservation of his most secret letters. In his case the veil is withdrawn which for most of us shrouds from the eyes of the world the multiplicities of our motives, the perplexities of our judgment, the delusions of our anticipations, and the inconsecutiveness of our action. His memory has thus been subjected to a test of unprecedented sharpness. Nevertheless the faithful friends who resolved to present to the world his confidential utterances, unspoiled by editorial garbling, have not only earned our gratitude by the gift of a unique historical monument, but have judged most nobly and most truly what was due to the reputation of Cicero. As it was in his life-time, so it has been with his memory: those who have known him most intimately have commonly loved him best. The reader must judge whether he rightly claims a place as a "hero of his nation"; at least he was the exponent of its best thoughts and noblest aspirations, its faithful servant in life and its constant martyr in death.

The calm retrospective judgment, perhaps not untinged with remorse, of Cæsar Augustus sums up fairly and honestly the story of Cicero's life. "It happened many years after," writes Plutarch, "that Augustus once found one of his grandsons with a work of Cicero's in his hands. The boy was