In vain, also, was any personal appeal which Cicero could make to the only two men who might have had influence enough to sway the popular vote.  He was ostensibly on good terms both with Pompey and Caesar; in fact, he made it his policy so to be.  He foresaw that on their future course would probably depend the fate of Rome, and he persuaded himself, perhaps honestly, that he could make them “better citizens”.  But he trusted neither; and both saw in him an obstacle to their own ambition.  Caesar now looked on coldly, not altogether sorry at the turn which affairs had taken, and faintly suggested that perhaps some “milder measure” might serve to meet the case.  From Pompey Cicero had a right to look for some active support; indeed, such had been promised in case of need.  He threw himself at his feet with prayers and tears, but even this last humiliation was in vain; and he anticipated the execution of that disgraceful edict by a voluntary withdrawal into exile.  Piso, one of the consuls, had satirically suggested that thus he might “save Rome” a second time.  His property was at once confiscated; his villas at Tusculum and at Formiae were plundered and laid waste, the consuls claiming the lion’s share of the spoil; and Clodius, with his armed mob, set fire to the noble house on the Palatine, razed it to the ground, and erected on the site a temple to—­Liberty!

Cicero had friends who strongly urged him to defy the edict; to remain at Rome, and call on all good citizens to arm in his defence.  Modern historians very generally have assumed that, if he could have made up his mind to such a course, it would probably have been successful.  He was to rely, we suppose, upon those “twenty thousand Roman youths “—­rather a broken reed to trust to (remembering what those young gallants were), with Caesar against him, now at the head of his legions just outside the gates of Rome.  He himself seriously contemplated suicide, and consulted his friends as to the propriety of such a step in the gravest and most business-like manner; though, with our modern notions on the subject, such a consultation has more of the ludicrous than the sublime.  The sensible and practical Atticus convinced him that such a solution of his difficulties would be the greatest possible mistake—­a mistake, moreover, which could never be rectified.

But almost any course would have become him better than that which he chose.  Had he remained and faced Clodius and his bravos manfully—­or had he turned his back upon Rome for ever, and shaken the dust off his feet against the ungrateful city, and become a noble pensioner upon Atticus at Buthrotum—­he would have died a greater man.  He wandered from place to place sheltered by friends whose unselfish loyalty marks their names with honour in that false and evil generation—­Sica, and Flaccus, and Plancius—­bemoaning himself like a woman,—­“too blinded with tears to write”, “loathing the light of day”.  Atticus thought he was going mad.  It is not pleasant to dwell upon this miserable weakness of a great mind, which Cicero’s most eager eulogists admit, and which his detractors have not failed to make the most of.  Nor is it easy to find excuse for him, but we will give him all the benefit of Mr. Forsyth’s defence: