Authors, Latin -- Biography; Cicero, Marcus Tullius; Statesmen -- Rome -- Biography
coming from Sallust, who would have censured if he could, it is as
eloquent as any eulogy. There is extant a passage attributed to Sallust
full of virulent abuse of Cicero, but no one now imagines that Sallust
wrote it. It is called the Declamation of Sallust against Cicero, and
bears intrinsic evidence that it was written in after years. It suited
some one to forge pretended invectives between Sallust and Cicero, and
is chiefly noteworthy here because it gives to Dio Cassius a foundation
for the hardest of hard words he said against the orator.[24]
Dio Cassius was a Greek who wrote in the reign of Alexander Severus,
more than two centuries and a half after the death of Cicero, and he no
doubt speaks evil enough of our hero. What was the special cause of
jealousy on his part cannot probably be now known, but the nature of his
hatred may be gathered from the passage in the note, which is so
foul-mouthed that it can be only inserted under the veil of his own
language.[25] Among other absurdities Dio Cassius says of Cicero that in
his latter days he put away a gay young wife, forty years younger than
himself, in order that he might enjoy without disturbance the company of
another lady who was nearly as much older than himself as his wife was
younger.
Now I ask, having brought forward so strong a testimony, not, I will
say, as to the character of the man, but of the estimation in which he
was held by those who came shortly after him in his own country; having
shown, as I profess that I have shown, that his name was always treated
with singular dignity and respect, not only by the lovers of the old
Republic but by the minions of the Empire; having found that no charge
was ever made against him either for insincerity or cowardice or
dishonesty by those who dealt commonly with his name, am I not justified
in saying that they who have in later days accused him should have shown
their authority? Their authority they have always found in his own
words. It is on his own evidence against himself that they have
depended--on his own evidence, or occasionally on their own surmises.
When we are told of his cowardice, because those human vacillations of
his, humane as well as human, have been laid bare to us as they came
quivering out of his bosom on to his fingers! He is a coward to the
critics because they have written without giving themselves time to feel
the true meaning of his own words. If we had only known his acts and not
his words--how he stood up against the judges at the trial of Verres,
with what courage he encountered the responsibility of his doings at the
time of Catiline, how he joined Pompey in Macedonia from a sense of
sheer duty, how he defied Antony when to defy Antony was probable
death--then we should not call him a coward! It is out of his own mouth
that he is condemned. Then surely his words should be understood. Queen
Christina says of him, in one of her maxims, that "Cicero was the only
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