people to be a protection to their liberties.  Now Cicero, when consul, had executed some of the conspirators associated with Catiline, for which he was called the savior of his country.  But by the law which was now passed or revived by the influence of Clodius, Cicero was himself a culprit, and it would seem that all the influence of the Senate and his friends could not prevent his exile.  He appealed to his friend Pompey, but Pompey turned a deaf ear; and also to Caesar, but Caesar was then outside the walls of the city in command of an army.  In fact, both these generals wished him out of the way, although they equally admired and feared him; for each of them was bent on being the supreme ruler of Rome.

So it was permitted for the most illustrious patriot which Rome then held to go into exile.  What a comment on the demoralization of the times!  Here was the best, the most gifted, and the most accomplished man of the Republic,—­a man who had rendered invaluable and acknowledged services, that man of consular dignity and one of the leaders of the Senate,—­sent into inglorious banishment, on a mere technicality and for an act which saved the State.  And the “magnanimous” Caesar and the “illustrious” Pompey allowed him to go!  Where was salvation to a Republic which banished its savior, and for having saved it?  The heart sickens over such a fact, although it occurred two thousand years ago.  When the citizens of Rome saw that great man depart mournfully from among them, and to all appearance forever, for having rescued them from violence and slaughter, and by their own act,—­they ought to have known that the days of the Republic were numbered.  But this only a few far-seeing patriots felt.  And not only was Cicero banished, but his palace was burned and his villas confiscated.  He was not only disgraced, but ruined; he was an exile and a pauper.  What a fall!  What an unmerited treatment!

Very few people conceive what a dreadful punishment it was in Greece and Rome to be banished; or, as the formula went, “to be interdicted from fire and water,”—­the sacred fire of the hearth, the lustral water which served for sacrifices.  The exile was deprived of these by being forced to extinguish the hearth-fire,—­the elemental, fundamental religion of a Greek and Roman.  “He could not, deprived of this, hold property; having no longer a worship, he had no longer a family.  He ceased to be a husband and father; his sons were no longer in his power, his wife was no longer his wife, and when he died he had not the right to be buried in the tombs of his ancestors.” [4]

[Footnote 4:  Coulanges:  Ancient City.]