cution of his confederates. He acted throughout with the calmness and indifference to personal danger proper to the chief magistrate of the Imperial State. He carried the Senate and people with him at each step, and so when the crisis came he could adopt the stern measures which led up surely to success, and yet at the same time could avoid any division in the government and enable it to present an united front to the enemy. There appears not a single false step to mark from the day when Cicero detached his fellow-consul from Catiline to the day when he broke the back of a formidable conspiracy by the death of five most guilty persons.
Cicero was a man of mild temper and of constitutional timidity, but of honest heart and sincere purpose. On this occasion, in the presence of danger and under the stimulus of great responsibilities, he rose above himself and exhibited unexpected resources of strength and courage. Transformed by the exigencies of his duty into a man of action, he played his part with coolness, with vigour, and with marked practical success. His own conscience fully approved the deed. Nowhere, even in periods of the darkest depression and suffering, when all the world seems to have turned against him, do we find the least hint of a doubt that he has been in very truth the saviour of his country; nor do the personal misfortunes which his act entailed upon him ever lead him to regret the act itself. "For these two mighty generals," he writes[1] of Cæsar and Pompey at the beginning of the Civil War, "so far from setting their
- ↑ Ad Att., x., 4, 4.
