It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the Ciceronian period. Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the East, C?sar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda. With very many of the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight concern—so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of them—he who ran through all the offices of the State, who was the chosen guardian¹ of certain allied² cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was essentially³ a public man for thirty-four years. But he was a public man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the Roman Empire. Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him. To C?sar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no allusion⁵, had not his brother Quintus been among C?sar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been confided⁶ by himself to C?sar's care. Of Pharsalia we only learn from him that, in utter despair of heart, he allowed himself to be carried to the war. Of the proconsular governments throughout the Roman Empire we should not learn much from Cicero, were it not that it has been shown to us by the trial of Verres how atrocious might be the conduct of a Roman Governor, and by the narratives⁹ of Cicero's own rule in Cilicia, how excellent. The history of the time has been 63written for modern readers by Merivale and Mommsen, with great research and truth as to facts, but, as I think with some strong feeling. Now Mr. Froude has followed with his C?sar, which might well have been called Anti-Cicero. All these in lauding¹⁰, and the two latter in deifying, the successful soldier, have, I think, dealt hardly with Cicero, attributing to his

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