Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/96

76 peace was made with the triumvirs, he was privileged to offer a shelter to the proscribed, and his estate in Epirus became a sort of unchallenged sanctuary. After the battle of Philippi we find him at the same work, and his biographer mentions the names of many republicans who owed their lives and fortunes to Atticus. For all this, the human instinct of Homer is true, when he marks it as a grievous and a dreadful thing that Priam must needs stoop to what never man had borne to do before, and that he should put his lips to the hand which had slain his son. This instinct did not touch Atticus. In his youth he made himself so charming to Sulla, that the proconsul, while he remained at Athens, could never bear to have him out of his sight; he refused Sulla's pressing invitation to come back with him to Italy, on the ground that in the opposite camp there were friends against whom he could not lift a hand ; but of the dead friend Sulpicius Rufus, whom Sulla had murdered, he took no account. So it was again in his old age; and better would it have been for Atticus, if his name had remained on the Proscription List.

Atticus cannot have been a selfish man, for he spent his life in doing good to his friends, at the cost of unceasing trouble and sometimes of serious danger. He must have been a lovable man, for every one loved him, and such affection is not to be gained except by a kindly and tender heart. But