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§ 47. The Character of HANNIBAL. Hannibal being sent to Spain, on his arrival there attracted the eyes of the whole army. The veterans believed Hamilcar was revived and restored to them: they saw the same vigorous countenance, the same piercing eye, the same complexjon and features. But in a short time his behaviour occasioned this resemblance of his father to contribute the least towards his gaining their favour. And, in truth, never was there a genius more happily formed for two things, most manifestly contrary to each other-to obey and to command. This made it difficult to determine, whether the general or soldiers loved him most. Where any enterprise required vigour and valour in the performance, Asdrubal always chose him to command at the executing it: nor were the troops ever more confident of success, or more intrepid, than when he was at their head. None ever shewed greater bravery in undertaking hazardous at tempts, or more presence of mind and conduct in the execution of them. No hardship could fatigue his body, or daunt his courage he could equally bear cold and heat. The necessary refection of na ture, not the pleasure of his palate, he solely regarded in his meals. He made no distinction of day and night in his watching, or taking rest; and appropriated no time to sleep, but what remained after he had completed his duty; he never sought for a soft or retired place of repose; but was often seen lying on the bare ground, wrapt in a soldier's cloak, amongst the centinels and guards. He did not distinguish himself from his companions by the magnificence of his dress, but by the quality of his horse and arms. At the same time, he was by far the best foot and horse soldier in the army; ever the foremost in a charge, and the last who left the field after the battle was begun. These shining qualities were however balanced by great vices; inhuman cruelty; more than Carthaginian treachery; no respect for truth or honour, no fear of the

gods, no regard for the sanctity of oaths, no sense of religion. With a disposition thus chequered with virtues and vices, he served three years under Asdrubal, without neglecting to pry into, or perform any thing that could contribute to make him hereafter a complete general. Livy. § 48. From MIDDLETON's Character of CICERO.

All the Roman writers, whether poets or historians, seem to vie with each other in celebrating the praises of Cicero, as the most illustrious of all their patriots, and the parent of the Roman wit and eloquence; who had done more honour to his country by his writings than all their conquerors by their arms, and extended the bounds of his learning beyond those of their empire. So that their very emperors, near three centuries after his death, began to reverence him in the class of their inferior deities; a rank which he would have preserved to this day, if he had happened to live in papal Rome, where he could not have failed, as Erasmus says, from the innocence of his life, of obtaining the honour and title of a saint.

As to his person, he was tall and slender, with a neck particularly long; yet his features were regular and manly; preserving a comeliness and dignity to the last, with a certain air of cheerfulness and serenity, that imprinted both affection and respect. His constitution was naturally weak, yet was so confirmed by his management of it, as to enable him to support all the fatigues of the most active, as well as the most studious life, with perpetual health and vigour. The care that he employed upon his body, consisted chiefly in bathing and rubbing, with a few turns every day in his gardens, for the refreshment of his voice from the labour of the bar: yet in the summer, he generally gave himself the exercise of a journey, to visit his several estates and villas in different parts of Italy. But his principal instrument of health was diet and temperance: by these he preserved himself from all violent distempers: and when he happened to be attacked by any slight indisposition, used to enforce the severity of his abstinence, and starve it presently by fasting.

In his clothes and dress, which the wise have usually considered as an Index of the mind, he observed, what he prescribes in his book of Offices, a modesty and decency adapted to his rank and character: a perpetual cleanliness, with

out the appearance of pains; free from the affectation of singularity, and avoiding the extremes of a rustic negligence and foppish delicacy; both of which are equally contrary to true dignity; the one implying an ignorance, or illiberal contempt of it, the other a childish pride and ostentation of proclaiming our pretensions to it.

In his domestic and social life his behaviour was very amiable: he was a most indulgent parent, a sincere and zealous friend, a kind and generous master. His letters are full of the tenderest expressions of love for his children; in whose endearing conversation, as he often tells us, he used to drop all his cares, and relieve himself from all his struggles in the senate and the forum. The same affection, in an inferior degree, was extended also to his slaves, when by their fidelity and services they had recommended themselves to his favour. We have seen a remarkable instance of it in Tiro, whose case was no otherwise different from the rest, than as it was distinguished by the superiority of his merit. In one of his letters to Atticus, "I have nothing more," says he, "to write: and my "mind indeed is somewhat ruffled at pre"sent; for Socitheus, my reader, is "dead: a hopeful youth; which has "afflicted me more than one would ima"gine the death of a slave ought to do."

He entertained very high notions of friendship, and of its excellent use and benefit to human life; which he has beautifully illustrated in his entertaining treatise on that subject; where he lays down no other rules than what he exemplified by his practice. For in all the variety of friendships in which his eminent rank engaged him, he never was charged with deceiving, deserting, or even slighting any one whom he had once called his friend, or esteemed an honest man. It was his delight to advance their prosperity, to relieve their adversity; the same friend to both fortunes; but more zealous only in the bad, where his help was most wanted, and his services the most disinterested; looking upon it not as a friendship, but a sordid traffic and merchandise of benefits, where good offices are to be weighed by a nice estimate of gain and loss. He calls gratitude the mother of virtues; reckons it the most capital of all duties; and uses the words grateful and good as terms synonymous, and insepaably united in the same character. His

writings abound with sentiments of this sort, as his life did with the examples of them; so that one of his friends, in apologizing for the importunity of a request, observes to him with great truth, that the tenor of his life would be a sufficient excuse for it; since he had established such a custom, of doing every thing for his friends, that they no longer requested, but claimed a right to command him.

Yet he was not more generous to his friends, than placable to his enemies; readily pardoning the greatest injuries, upon the slightest submission; and though no man ever had greater abilities or opportunities of revenging himself, yet when it was in his power to hurt, he sought out reasons to forgive; and whenever he was invited to it, never declined a reconciliation with his most inveterate enemies; of which there are numerous instances in his history. He declared nothing to be more laudable and worthy of a great man than placability; and laid down for a natural duty, to moderate our revenge, and observe a temper in punishing; and held repentance to be a sufficient ground for remitting it: and it was one of his sayings, delivered to a public assembly, that his enmities were mortal, his friendships immortal.

His manner of living was agreeable to the dignity of his character, splendid and noble; his house was open to all the learned strangers and philosophers of Greece and Asia; several of whom were constantly entertained in it as a part of his family, and spent their whole lives with him. His levee was perpetually crowded with multitudes of all ranks; even Pompey himself not disdaining to frequent it. The greatest part came not only to pay their compliments, but to attend him on days of business to the senate or the forum; where, upon any debate or transaction of moment, they constantly waited to conduct him home again: but on ordinary days, when these morning visits were over, as they usually were before ten, he retired to his books, and shut himself up in his library without seeking any other diversion, but what his children afforded to the short intervals of his leisure. His supper was the greatest meal; and the usual season with all the great of enjoying their friends at table, which was frequently prolonged to a late hour of the night, yet he was out of his bed every morning before it was light; and never used to sleep again at noon, as all others generally did, and as

it is commonly practised in Rome to this day.

But though he was so temperate and studious, yet when he was engaged to sup with others, either at home or abroad, he laid aside his rules, and forgot the invalid; and was gay and sprightly, and the very soul of the company. When friends were met together, to heighten the comforts of social life, he thought it inhospitable not to contribute his share to their common mirth, or to damp it by a churlish reservedness. But he was really a lover of cheerful entertainments, being of a nature remarkably facetious, and singularly turned to raillery; a talent which was of great service to him at the bar, to correct the petulance of an adversary; relieve the satiety of a tedious cause; divert the minds of the judges; and mitigate the rigour of a sentence, by making both the bench and audience merry at the expence of the accuser.

His failings were as few as were ever found in any eminent genius; such as flowed from his constitution, not his will; and were chargeable rather to the condition of his humanity, than to the fault of the man. He was thought to be too sanguine in prosperity, too desponding in adversity and apt to persuade himself, in each fortune, that it would never have an end. This is Pollio's account of him, which seems in general to be true; Brutus touches the first part of it in one of his letters to him; and when things were going prosperously against Antony, put him gently in mind, that he seemed to trust too much to his hopes; and he himself allows the second, and says that if any one was timorous in great and dangerous events, apprehending always the worst, rather than hoping the best, he was the man; and if that was a fault, confesses himself not to be free from it: yet in explaining afterwards the nature of this timidity, it was such, he tells us, as shewed itself rather in foreseeing dangers, than in encountering them: an explication which the latter part of his life fully confirmed, and above all his death, which no man could sustain with greater courage and resolution.

But the most conspicuous and glaring passion of his soul was the love of glory and thirst of praise: a passion that he not only avowed, but freely indulged; and sometimes, as he himself confesses, to a degree even of vanity. This often gave

his enemies a plausible handle of ridiculing his pride and arrogance; while the forwardness that he shewed to celebrate his own merits in all his public speeches, seemed to justify their censures: and since this is generally considered as the grand foible of his life, and has been handed down implicitly from age to age, without ever being fairly examined, or rightly understood, it will be proper to lay open the source from which the passion itself flowed, and explain the nature of that glory, of which he professes himself so fond.

True glory then, according to his own definition of it, is a wide and illustrious fame of many and great benefits conferred upon our friends, our country, or the whole race of mankind: it is not, he says, the empty blast of popular favour, or the applause of a giddy multitude, which all wise men had ever despised, and none more than himself; but the consenting praise of all honest men, and the incorrupt testimony of those who can judge of excellent merit, which resounds always to virtue, as the echo to the voice; and since it is the general companion of good actions, ought not to be rejected by good men. That those who aspired to this glory were not to expect ease or pleasure, or tranquillity of life for their pains; but must give up their own peace, to secure the peace of others; must expose themselves to storms and dangers for the public good; sustain many battles with the audacious and the wicked, and some even with the powerful: in short must behave themselves so, as to give their citizens cause to rejoice that they had ever been born. This is the notion that he inculcates every where of true glory; which is surely one of the noblest principles that can inspire a human breast: implanted by God in our nature, to dignify and exalt it: and always found the strongest in the best and most elevated minds; and to which we owe every thing great and laudable, that history has to offer us through all the ages of the heathen world. There is not an instance, says Cicero, of a man's exerting himself ever with praise and virtue in the dangers of his country, who was not drawn to it by the hopes of glory, and a regard to posterity. Give me a boy, says Quinctilian, whom praise excites, whom glory warms; for such a scholar was sure to answer all his hopes, and do credit to his discipline. "Whether posterity will have any respect for me," says Pliny, "I know

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"not, but I am sure that I have deserved "some from it; I will not say by my "wit, for that would be arrogant; but by "the zeal, by the pains, by the reverence "which I have always paid to it."

It will not seem strange, to observe the wisest of the ancients pushing this principle to so great a length, and considering glory as the amplest reward of a well-spent life, when we reflect, that the greatest part of them had no notion of any other reward or futurity; and even those who believed a state of happiness to the good, yet entertained it with so much diffidence, that they indulged it rather as a wish than a well-grounded hope, and were glad therefore to lay hold on that which seemed to be within their reach; a futurity of their own creating; an immortality of fame and glory from the applause of posterity. This, by a pleasing fiction, they looked upon as a propagation of life, and an eternity of existence; and had no small comfort in imagining, that though the sense of it should not reach to themselves, it would extend at least to others; and that they should be doing good still when dead, by leaving the example of their virtues to the imitation of mankind. Thus Cicero, as he often declares, never looked upon that to be his life, which was confined to this narrow circle on earth, but considered his acts as seed sown in the immense universe, to raise up the fruit of glory and immortality to him through a succession of infinite ages nor has he been frustrated of his hope, or disappointed of his end; but as long as the name of Rome subsists, or as long as learning, virtue, and liberty preserve any credit in the world, he will be great and glorious in the memory of all posterity.

As to the other part of the charge, or the proof of his vanity drawn from his boasting so frequently of himself in his speeches both to the senate and the people, though

it may appear to a common reader to be abundantly confirmed by his writings; yet if we attend to the circumstances of the times, and the part which he acted in them, we shall find it not only excusable, but in some degree even neces sary. The fate of Rome was now brought to a crisis, and the contending parties were making their last efforts either to oppress or preserve it; Cicero was the head of those who stood up for its liberty, which entirely depended on the influences of his counsels; he had many years, therefore,

been the common mark of the rage and malice of all who were aiming at illegal powers, or a tyranny in the state; and while these were generally supported by the military power of the empire, he had no other arms, or means of defeating them, but his authority with the senate and people, grounded on the experience of his services, and the persuasion of his integrity; so that to obviate the perpetual calumnies of the factious, he was obliged to inculcate the merit and good effects of his counsels, in order to confirm people in their union and adherence to them, against the intrigues of those who were employing all arts to subvert them. "The frequent "commemoration of his acts," says Quinctilian," was not made so much for glory "as for defence; to repel calumny, and "vindicate his measures when they were "attacked:" and this is what Cicero himself declared in all his speeches, "That no man ever heard him speak of "himself but when he was forced to it: "that when he was urged with fictitious I crimes, it was his custom to answer "them with his real services: and if ever "he said any thing glorious of himself, "it was not through a fondness of praise, "but to repel an accusation; that no

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man who had been conversant in great "affairs, and treated with particular envy, "could refute the contumely of an enemy "without touching upon his own praises; " and after all his labours for the common "safety, if a just indignation had drawn "from him, at any time, what might "seem to be vain-glorious, it might rea"sonably be forgiven to him; that when "others were silent about him, if he could "not then forbear to speak of himself, "that indeed would be shameful; but "when he was injured, accused, exposed "to popular odium, he must certainly be "allowed to assert his liberty, if they "would not suffer him to retain his dig"nity."

This then was the true state of the case, as it is evident from the facts of his history; he had an ardent love of glory, and an eager thirst of praise: was pleased, when living, to hear his acts applauded; yet more still with imagining, that they would ever be celebrated when he was dead: a passion which, for the reasons already hinted, had always the greatest force on the greatest souls: but it must needs raise our contempt and indignation, to see every conceited pedant, and trifling de

claimer, who knew little of Cicero's real character, and still less of their own, presuming to call him the vainest of mortals. No man, whose life had been wholly spent in study, ever left more numerous, or more valuable fruits of his learning in every branch of science, and the politer arts; in oratory, poetry, philosophy, law, history, criticism, politics, ethics; in each of which he equalled the greatest masters of his time; in some of them excelled all men of all times. His remaining works, as voluminous as they appear, are but a small part of what he really published; and though many of these are come down to us maimed by time, and the barbarity of the intermediate ages, yet they are justly esteemed the most precious remains of all antiquity, and, like the Sybilline books, if more of them had perished, would have been equal still to any price.

His industry was incredible, beyond the example, or even conception, of our days; this was the secret by which he performed such wonders, and reconciled perpetual study with perpetual affairs. He suffered no part of his leisure to be idle, or the least interval of it to be lost: But what other people gave to the public shows, to pleasures, to feasts, nay even to sleep, and the ordinary refreshments of nature, he generally gave to his books, and the enlargement of his knowledge. On days of business, when he had any thing particular to compose, he had no other time for meditating but when he was taking a few turns in his walks, where he used to dictate his thoughts to his scribes who attended him. We find many of his letters dated before day-light; and some from the senate; others from his meals; and the crowd of his morning levee.

No compositions afford more pleasure than the epistles of great men: they touch the heart of the reader by laying open that of the writer. The letters of eminent wits, eminent scholars, eminent, statesmen, are all esteemed in their several kinds: but

there never was a collection that excelled

so much in every kind as Cicero's, for the purity of style, the importance of the matter, or the dignity of the persons concerned in them. We have above a thousand still remaining, all written after he was forty years old; which are a small part not only of what he wrote, but of what were actually published after his death by his servant Tiro. For we see many volumes of them quoted by the ancients, which are

utterly lost; as the first book of his Letters to Licinius Calvus; the first also to Q. Axius; a second book to his son; a second also to Corn. Nepos; a third book to J. Cæsar; a third to Octavius; a third also to Pansa; an eighth book to M. Brutus ; and a ninth to A. Hirtius. Of all which, excepting a few to J. Cæsar and Brutus, we have nothing more left than some scattered phrases and sentences, gathered from the citations of the old critics and grammarians. What makes these letters still more estimable is, that he had never designed them for the public, nor kept any copies of them; for the year before his death, when Atticus was making some inquiry about them, he sent him word, that he had made no collection; and that Tiro had preserved only about seventy. Here then we may expect to see the genuine man, without disguise or affectation; especially in his letters to Atticus, to whom

he talked with the same frankness as to himself; opened the rise and progress of each thought, and never entered into any affair without his particular advice: so that these may be considered as the memoirs of his times; containing the most authentic materials for the history of that age, and laying open the grounds and motives of all the great events that happened in it; and it is the want of attention to them that makes the generality of writers. on those times so superficial, as well as erroneous; while they choose to transcribe the dry and imperfect relations of the later Greek historians, rather than take the pains to extract the original account of facts from one who was a principal actor in them.

In his familiar letters, he affected no particular elegance or choice of words, but took the first that occurred from common use, and the language of conversation. Whenever he was disposed to joke, his wit was easy and natural; flowing always from the subject, and throwing out what came uppermost; nor disdaining even a pun, when it served to make his friends laugh. In letters of compliment, some of which were addressed to the greatest men who ever lived, his inclination to please is expressed in a manner agreeable to nature and reason, with the utmost delicacy both of sentiment and diction, yet without of those pompous any titles and lofty epithets, which modern custom has introduced into our commerce with the great, and falsely stamped with

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