Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/786

772 won it. lie looked on with satisfaction while Cicero excited the passions of the citizens against Antonius in the series of orations to which he gave the name of Philippics, while he armed the consuls Hirtius and Pansa to overthrow him. The orator, now advanced in years, showed at this crisis all the vigour with which he had encountered Catiline twenty years earlier. To him the people entrusted the government of the city, and while all the forces of the republic were concentrated under various leaders on the Cisalpine, he might fancy himself for a moment the real controller of affairs. But after the deaths of Hirtius and Pansa in the battles before Mutina, and the discomfiture of the republicans under Decimus Brutus, Octavius, Anto nius, and Lepidus formed a compact, and assumed to be a triumvirate, or a board of three special officers for the regulation of the commonwealth. Their arrival at Rome was followed by bloody proscriptions of their public and private enemies. Antonius demanded the head of Cicero, and Octavius yielded it. The orator fled, together with his brother, but he could not endure to abandon Italy, and after some weeks delay, which seems to show that the pur suit was not keen, he was overtaken at the door of his Formian villa and his throat cut by the bravo Popilius. His head and hands were cut off and sent to Rome, where Antonius caused them to be affixed to the rostra, and Fulvia, the widow of Clodius and the wife of Antonius, pierced with her needle the tongue which had declaimed against both her husbands. Cicero perished at the close of the year 43, at the age of sixty-three. Octavius, in his later years, as the Emperor Augustus, could coolly say of the great statesman and patriot to whose murder he had consented, &quot; He was a good citizen, who really loved his country.&quot; The saying was indeed well deserved, but it should have come from purer lips. Cicero was indeed not only a good citizen, but a good man ; he loved not his country only but mankind in general ; he loved them not merely from a kindly nature, but from reflection and self-discipline. As a specimen of the highest culture of the ancient world both moral and intellectual he must ever stand pre-eminent. He was a wiser if not a more sincere patriot than Cato ; his private virtues were subjected .to a severer test than those of M. Aurelius. His intellectual superiority is sufficiently attested by the important place he attained, in the face of many disadvantages, in the conduct of public affairs. But a large portion of his multifarious writings still remains, and constitutes an enduring monument to his fame, which has been recognized through all ages. The great bulk of these works may be conveniently classed as (1) political, (2) philosophical, (3) personal. The first division comprises a collection of fifty-six speeches professing to have been delivered in the forum or the curia, though some of them certainly, as for instance that for Milo and the greater number of the Philippics, were written for publication but not actually delivered. The genuineness of that for Marcellus, and of the four which refer to the orator s return from exile, has been much questioned. Besides the speeches themselves, Cicero produced several treatises on the subject of oratory, which as part of the Roman training for public life may be regarded as political. Of these the principal are the de Oratore, the Orator, and the Brutus. The origin of the strictly technical treatises de Inventions and Rhetoricorum is involved in much perplexity. To this division belong still more strictly the important works de Legibus and de Republica, which contain valuable references to the events of early Roman history. To our second division belong the famous treatises on philosophy, from which we derive all our knowledge of the Greek systems which succeeded to the schools of Plato and Aristotle, and in which it becam the fashion to affect an interest at Rome. Of these the Academica, the Tusculance, the de Finibus, and others which have been lost were devoted to speculative questions ; the de Divinations and de Natura Deorum refer more strictly to theological tradi tions ; while the book de Officiis is an elaborate treatise on moral obligations. The smaller works, de Senectute, de Amicitia, de Consolatione, and probably the lost essay de Gloria, may also be ranged more or less definitely under the head of practical philosophy. The third division embraces Cicero s letters in two series, the one those to his friend Atticus, the other (ad familiares) to his correspon dents generally. To these may be added a collection of letters addressed to his brother Quintus. These together give an account of the writer s life almost from day to day ; they are the most valuable of his works for the historical information they afford us, as well as for the insight they give us into the character not of the writer only but of many of the leading personages of the day. In both these respects they stand unique among the remains of antiquity, and few men of historical note even in recent times have been so fully presented to us in their correspondence as Cicero, whose life acquires thereby its transcendent interest for all students of human nature. It may be added that the great philosopher and orator amused himself further with more than one ambitious flight in poetry. His verses on his consulship attracted some attention from his country men, and a specimen of them has come down to us. He made also a Latin translation of the astronomical poem of Aratus, and proposed at least, as has been above mentioned, to execute an epic on the invasion of Britain by Caesar.

1em  CICOGNARA,, (1767-1834), archae ologist and writer on art, was a native of Ferrara. At an early age he evinced strong predilections for the sub jects on which he was to become so high an authority. Mathematical and physical science diverted him a while ; but his bent was decided, and not even the notice of such men as Spallanzani and Scarpa could make a savant of him. A residence of some years at Rome, devoted to paint ing and the study of the antiquities and galleries of the Eternal City, was followed by a visit to Naples and Sicily, and by the publication, at Palermo, of his first work, a poein of no merit. The island explored, he betook himself to Florence, Milan, Bologna, and Venice, acquiring a complete and perfect knowledge of these and other cities from the point of view of an archaeologist and connoisseur. In 1795 he took up his abode at Modena, and was for twelve years engaged in politics, becoming a member of the legislative body, a councillor of state, and minister plenipotentiary of the Cisalpine Republic at Turin. Napoleon decorated him with the Iron Crown ; and in 1808 he vas made president of the Academy of the Fine Arts at Venice, a post in which he did good work for a number of years. In 1808 appeared his treatise Del Bella Ragionamenti, dedicated in glowing terms to Napoleon. This was followed (1813-1818) by his magnum opus, the Storia della Scultura dal suo Risor- gimento in Italia al Secolo di Napoleone, in the composition of which he had been encouraged and advised by Giordano and Schlegel, while the great emperor to whom it was dedi cated had assisted the publication pecuniarily, an example which the Bourbons did not follow, This book, designed to complete the works of Winckelmann and D Agincourt, was the result of many years of meditation and comparison ; it is illustrated with 180 plates in outlines, and if imperfect, is yet of great value. In 1814, on the fall of Napoleon, 