294
After the Conference of Luca.
[54 B.C.
monwealth," is meant to indicate that a place might be found in Rome for a kind of monarchical power, to be exercised by Pompey. It is clear, however, from the account of the magistracies in the third book of The Laws, that no extraordinary authority, like that established by Augustus in the next generation, was contemplated in Cicero's Republic. The character drawn, so far as we can judge from the few lines that remain, seems to be only that of the "best citizen," the ideal statesman, who guides a free commonwealth by his advice and influence. It was a part[1] which might have been played by Pompey or by Cæsar or by Cicero himself, or even by all three at once.
- ↑ An extract from Moore's Life of Byron (ch. li.) may serve to illustrate Cicero's conception of the "princeps." "In politics, as in every other pursuit, his ambition was to be among the first; nor would it have been from any want of a due appreciation of all that is noblest and most disinterested in patriotism, that he would ever have stooped his flight to any less worthy aim. The following passage in one of his journals will be remembered by the reader: 'To be the first man (not the Dictator), not the Sylla, but the Washington or Aristides, the leader in talent and truth, is to be next to the Divinity.'"
