ABSTRACT
Cæsar's sudden reversion to a Democratic policy could not fail to set serious issues in motion. Its first result was abruptly to cut short all hopes of a reconciliation with the Conservative classes. No doubt these classes ought really once more to have been grateful to Cæsar for staying his hand after selling the goods of his fallen enemies. But their feelings were so inflamed at the time that the confiscation of Pompey's goods was indignantly resented as a monstrous act of tyranny and revenge. The right wing of Cæsar's own party was equally dissatisfied; it chafed at the unexpected treatment Cæsar had meted out to Antony on the one hand and Dolabella on the other. So the months during which Cæsar was fighting in Africa were a time of anxious suspense for the upper classes in Italy. Great was the speculation and uncertainty as to Cæsar's intentions. What course would he adopt when he had finally crushed the resistance of the Pompeians? The sale of the goods of Pompey's partisans, the law about rents and the indulgence accorded to Dolabella were ominous of trouble. It is true that since the beginning of 46 Cæsar was no longer Dictator. But would he not force them to give him new honours after his victory, a victory which seemed only too well assured? As in the first fitful days of early spring the sky and the earth are darkened by passing storm-clouds, brightening again after a moment only to be darkened once more, so cloud on cloud of foreboding swept over the mind of Italy during these long-drawn months. We can see their shadow still after the lapse of all these centuries over the books written that same spring by the most delicate interpreter of the thoughts and feelings of the upper classes. Under the encouragement of Brutus, with whom oblivious of their quarrel in Cilicia he was becoming increasingly intimate, Cicero had once more taken up his pen, and, early in 46, had begun to compose a history of Latin eloquence, in the form of a Platonic dialogue, with Brutus, Atticus and himself as the speakers; it is the work known as Brutus seu de claris oratoribus. But these literary relaxations could not distract his mind from political anxieties: although at the beginning of the dialogue Atticus declares that there will be no politics discussed, there are covert allusions on almost every page. Cicero's heartfelt distress at the renewal of the civil war makes him envy the lot of Hortensius, who had died shortly before, not living to behold the Forum deserted and dumb. A little later Brutus delivers a fine eulogy on the first Consul of the Republic, the destroyer of the monarchy, from whom Atticus, who was something of an antiquarian, had shown that Marcus Brutus was directly descended. Then the dialogue goes on to praise Marcellus, the Consul of 51 and a personal enemy of Cæsar, who had retired to Mitylene, far removed from "the common and destined miseries of mankind."
