* * * * *

“Let such, then, be the foundations of your dignity;—­first, integrity and self-control on your own part; a becoming behaviour on the part of all about you; a very careful and circumspect selection of your intimates, whether Greeks or provincials; a grave and firm discipline maintained throughout your household.  For if such conduct befits us in our private and everyday relations, it becomes well-nigh godlike in a government of such extent, in a state of morals so depraved, and in a province which presents so many temptations.  Such a line of conduct and such rules will alone enable you to uphold that severity in your decisions and decrees which you have employed in some cases, and by which we have incurred (and I cannot regret it) the jealousy of certain interested parties....  You may safely use the utmost strictness in the administration of justice, so long as it is not capricious or partial, but maintained at the same level for all.  Yet it will be of little use that your own decisions be just and carefully weighed, unless the same course be pursued by all to whom you delegate any portion of your judicial authority.  Such firmness and dignity must be employed as may not only be above partiality, but above the suspicion of it.  To this must be added readiness to give audience, calmness in deciding, care in weighing the merits of the case and in satisfying the claims of the parties”.

Yet he advises that justice should be tempered with leniency.

“If such moderation be popular at Rome, where there is so much self-assertion, such unbridled freedom, so much licence allowed to all men;—­where there are so many courts of appeal open, so many means of help, where the people have so much power and the Senate so much authority; how grateful beyond measure will moderation be in the governor of Asia, a province where all that vast number of our fellow-citizens and subjects, all those numerous states and cities, hang upon one man’s nod! where there is no appeal to the tribune, no remedy at law, no Senate, no popular assembly.  Wherefore it should be the aim of a great man, and one noble by nature and trained by education and liberal studies, so to behave himself in the exercise of that absolute power, as that they over whom he presides should never have cause to wish for any authority other than his”.

IV.  TIRO.

Of all Cicero’s correspondence, his letters to Tiro supply the most convincing evidence of his natural kindness of heart.  Tiro was a slave; but this must be taken with some explanation.  The slaves in a household like Cicero’s would vary in position from the lowest menial to the important major-domo and the confidential secretary.  Tiro was of this higher class.  He had probably been born and brought up in the service, like Eliezer in the household of Abraham, and had become, like him, the trusted agent of his master and the friend of