A fragment from one of Livy's lost books says, "Cicero bore with becoming spirit none of the ills of life save death itself." He indeed perished not only bravely but generously, dissuading his devoted slaves from useless resistance, and extending his neck to Antony's assassins. Verres lived to exult at the news, and then shared his enemy's fate, rather than give up his Greek vases to Antony! Nearly every Roman, save Nero, dies well. Upon Cicero's political career our judgment is already indicated. He was always a patriot at heart, though often a bewildered one. His vanity, and yet more his physical cowardice, caused some grievous blots upon the record. His last days, and death, may atone for all--save one. The precipitate desertion of the Pompeians is not to be condoned. The best English life of Cicero is by Forsyth; but quaint, dogged, prejudiced old Middleton should not be forgotten. Plutarch's Cicero "needs no bush." Cicero's oratory was splendidly effective upon his emotional Italian hearers. It would not be so patiently accepted by any Teutonic folk. His very copiousness, however, makes him as a rule wonderfully clear and easy reading. Quintilian well says: "From Demosthenes's periods not a word can be spared, to Cicero's not one could be added." Despite the rout of Verres and of Catiline, the merciless dissection of Clodia, and the statelier thunders of the 'Philippics,' Cicero was most successful and happiest when "defending the interests of his friends." Perhaps the greatest success against justice was the 'Pro Cluentio,' which throws so lurid a light on ante-Borgian Italian criminology. This speech is especially recommended by Niebuhr to young philologues as a nut worthy of the strongest teeth. There is a helpful edition by Ramsay, but Hertland's 'Murena' will be a pleasanter variation for students wearying of the beaten track followed by the school editions. Both the failure of the 'Pro Milone' and the world-wide success of the 'Pro Archia' bid us repeat the vain wish, that this humane and essentially modern nature might have fallen on a gentler age. Regarding his whole political life as an uncongenial role forced on him by fate, we return devout thanks for _fifty-eight_ orations, nearly all in revised and finished literary form! Fragments of seventeen, and titles of still thirty more, yet remain. From all his rivals, predecessors, pupils, not one authentic speech survives. The best complete edition of the orations with English notes is by George Long, in the Bibliotheca Classica. The 'Philippics' alone are better edited by J.R. King in the Clarendon Press series. School editions of select speeches are superabundant. They regularly include the four Catilinarians, the Manilian, and the pleas before the dictator, sometimes a selection from the 'Philippics' or Verrine orations. There is no masterly translation comparable with the fine work done by Kennedy for Demosthenes. The Bohn version is respectable in quality.