Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/101

 DEMOSTHENES AND CICERO. 93 on maritime usury was likely to be thus indifferent, is whiit we cannot assert. But that Cicero refused, from the Sicihans when he was quiBstor, from the king of Cappa- docia Avhen he was proconsul, and from his friends at Rome when he was in exile, many presents, though urged to receive them, has been said already. Moreover, Demosthenes's banishment was infamous, upon conviction for bribery ; Cicero's very honorable, for ridding his country of a set of villains. Therefore, when Demosthenes fled his country, no man regarded it; for Cicero's sake the senate changed their habit, and put on mourning, and would not be persuaded to make any act before Cicero's return was decreed. Cicero, however, passed his exile idly in Macedonia. But the very exile of Demosthenes made up a great part of the services he did for his country ; for he went through the cities of Greece, and every^vhere, as we have said, joined in the conflict on behalf of the Grecians, driving out the Mace- donian ambassadors, and approving himself a much better citizen than Themistocles and Alcibiades did in the like fortune. And, after his return, he again devoted himself to the same public service, and continued firm to his opposition to Antipater and the Macedonians. Whereas L^lius reproached Cicero in the senate for sitting silent when Ccesar, a beardless youth, asked leave to come for- ward, contrary to the law, as a candidate for the consul- ship ; and Brutus, in his epistles, charges him with nursing and rearing a greater and more heavy tyranny than that they had removed. Finally, Cicero's death excites our pity; for an old man to be miserably carried up and down by his ser- vants, flying and hiding himself from that death which was, in the course of nature, so near at hnnd ; and yet at last to be murdered. Demosthenes, though he seemed at