Antony demanded his life, and Octavius covered himself with infamy by yielding it. The orator met his fate near his villa at Formiæ; timid throughout his life, in the last scene he exhibited manly fortitude. He is said to have been calmly reading the “Medea” of Euripides in his litter when Antony’s myrmidons overtook him; a desperado who owed him many favors, while even his brutal companions covered their eyes, struck the fatal blow. The head and hands of the murdered orator were cut off and sent to Antony, whose inhuman wife, as she fondled the ghastly head in her lap, maliciously thrust her bodkin into the tongue that had denounced her husband.—True as it was, it ill became the time-serving Octavius to say, when afterward wielding the sceptre of the world as Augustus Cæsar, “Cicero was a good citizen, who really loved his country.” CICERO’S WORKS.—Cicero was emphatically a many-sided man, and filled a wide space in Roman literature. Though he excelled chiefly in oratory, he has left us, besides fifty-nine orations, a number of philosophical treatises, essays, and many letters to his friend Atticus, his brother, and other correspondents. While deeply absorbed in public duties, he found opportunities, without neglecting these, to pursue the study of philosophy, having in view not only his own relaxation, but also the moral advancement of his countrymen. His works on this subject, some of which, for the sake of interest and variety, he wrote in the form of dialogues, present a valuable survey of the Greek systems. They assert his belief in the existence of one Supreme Creator and the immortality of the soul. (_See Mayor’s “A Sketch of Ancient Philosophy.”_) Cicero’s chief philosophical writings are “the Tusculan Disputations,” imaginary discussions of various practical questions at the author’s Tusculan villa,—the scorn of death, the endurance of suffering, etc.; “the Offices,” a moral essay; treatises “On Friendship” and “On Old Age,” justly considered as among the most charming productions of their class in any literature; political dissertations “On the Republic” and “On Laws;” and a theological disquisition “On the Nature of the Gods.” THE END OF LIFE. [From Cicero’s Treatise on Old Age.] “An old man, indeed, has nothing to hope for; yet he is in so much the happier state than a young one; since he has already attained what the other is only hoping for. The one is wishing to live long, the other has lived long. And yet, good gods! what is there in man’s life that can be called long? To my mind, nothing whatever seems of long duration, in which there is any end. For when that arrives, then the time which is past has flowed away; that only remains which you have secured by virtue and right conduct. Hours indeed depart from us, and days, and months, and years; nor does past time ever return, nor can it be discovered what is to follow.