Brutus, as far as the public service was concerned, was an unpractical, useless man. We know nothing of public work done by him to much purpose. He was filled with high ideas as to his own position among the oligarchs, and with especial notions as to what was due by Rome to men of his name. He had a fierce conception of his own rights--among which to be Praetor, and Consul, and Governor of a province were among the number. But he had taken early in life to literature and philosophy, and eschewed the crowd of "Fish-ponders," such as were Antony and Dolabella, men prone to indulge the luxury of their own senses. His idea of liberty seems to have been much the same as Cicero's--the liberty to live as one of the first men in Rome; but it was not accompanied, as it was with Cicero, by an innate desire to do good to those around him. To maintain the Praetors, Consuls, and Governors so that each man high in position should win his way to them as he might be able to obtain the voices of the people, and not to leave them to be bestowed at the call of one man who had thrust himself higher than all--that seems to have been his _beau ideal_ of Roman government. It was Cicero's also--with the addition that when he had achieved his high place he should serve the people honestly. Brutus had killed Caesar, but had spared Antony, thinking that all things would fall into their accustomed places when the tyrant should be no more. But he found that Caesar had been tyrant long enough to create a lust for tyranny; and that though he might suffice to kill a king, he had no aptitude for ruling a people.