intelligence of the arrival in Armenia or Syria of decrees, said to have been passed on my proposition, before I have heard a word about the matter. Pray do not think I am jesting. I assure you I have received letters from princes in the uttermost parts of the earth, returning thanks for the salutation as 'King,' which had been given them on my proposal—people of whom I was so far from knowing that they had been saluted kings, that I had never even heard of their existence."
Cicero was willing, as he said to Varro,[1] "to lend a hand, if not as an architect, then even as a mason, to the reconstruction of the commonwealth." There is no reason to suppose indeed that he any more than Cæsar had a solution for the almost inextricable difficulties which presented themselves in the way of combining liberty with empire. But Cicero at least held fast to that which Cæsar ignored. He felt that it was apostasy and cowardice to slide back from the political faith which Greece had delivered once for all to the world, that it was of the essence of the higher civilisation of the West to protest against arbitrary power, to believe in government by discussion and consent, and in the rule of reason and of law. "From the man," he writes,[2] "who has all power in his hands, I see no reason to fear anything, except that everything is uncertain when once you set law on one side: it is impossible to guarantee a future which depends on the will, not to say on the caprice, of a single man."
