“Best of all friends in direst strait of war!”

and the applause was redoubled.  The actor drew courage from his success.  When, as the play went on, he came to speak the words—­

  “And you—­you let him live a banished man—­
  See him driven forth and hunted from your gates!”

he pointed to the nobles, knights, and commons, as they sat in their respective seats in the crowded rows before him, his own voice broke with grief, and the tears even more than the applause of the whole audience bore witness alike to their feelings towards the exile, and the dramatic power of the actor.  “He pleaded my cause before the Roman people”, says Cicero (for it is he that tells the story), “with far more weight of eloquence than I could have pleaded for myself".[1]

[Footnote 1:  Defence of Sestius, c. 56, &c.]

He had been visited with a remarkable dream, while staying with one of his friends in Italy, during the earlier days of his exile, which he now recalled with some interest.  He tells us this story also himself, though he puts it into the mouth of another speaker, in his dialogue on “Divination”.  If few were so fond of introducing personal anecdotes into every place where he could find room for them, fewer still could tell them so well.

“I had lain awake a great part of the night, and at last towards dawn had begun to sleep soundly and heavily.  I had given orders to my attendant that, in this case, though we had to start that very morning, strict silence should be kept, and that I was on no account to be disturbed; when about seven o’clock I awoke, and told him my dream.  I thought I was wandering alone in some solitary place, when Caius Marius appeared to me, with his fasces bound with laurel, and asked why I was so sad?  And when I answered that I had been driven from my country, he caught my hand, bade me be of good cheer, and put me under the guidance of his own lictor to lead me to his monument; there, he said, I should find my deliverance”.

So indeed it had turned out.  The temple dedicated to Honour and Virtue, in which the Senate sat when they passed the first resolution for Cicero’s recall, was known as the “Monument of Marius”.  There is no need to doubt the perfect good faith of the story which he tells, and it may be set down as one of the earliest authenticated instances of a dream coming true.  But if dreams are fashioned out of our waking imaginations, it is easy to believe that the fortunes of his great townsman Marius, and the scenes in the Senate at Rome, were continually present to the exile’s thoughts.

His return was a triumphal progress.  He landed at Brundusium on his daughter’s birthday.  She had only just lost her husband Piso, who had gallantly maintained her father’s cause throughout, but she was the first to welcome him with tears of joy which overmastered her sorrow.  He was careful to lose no chance of making his return impressive.  He took his way to Rome with the slow march of a conqueror.  The journey which Horace made easily in twelve days, occupied Cicero twenty-four.  But he chose not the shortest but the most public route, through Naples, Capua, Minturnae, Terracina, and Aricia.