_Brutus_.--Well, Atticus, I find that, notwithstanding your friendship
for Cicero and for me, you survived us both many years, with the same
cheerful spirit you had always possessed, and, by prudently wedding your
daughter to Agrippa, secured the favour of Octavius Caesar, and even
contracted a close alliance with him by your granddaughter's marriage
with Tiberius Nero.
_Atticus_.--You know, Brutus, my philosophy was the Epicurean. I loved
my friends, and I served them in their wants and distresses with great
generosity; but I did not think myself obliged to die when they died, or
not to make others as occasions should offer.
_Brutus_.--You did, I acknowledge, serve your friends, as far as you
could, without bringing yourself, on their account, into any great danger
or disturbance of mind: but that you loved them I much doubt. If you
loved Cicero, how could you love Antony? If you loved me, how could you
love Octavius? If you loved Octavius, how could you avoid taking part
against Antony in their last civil war? Affection cannot be so strangely
divided, and with so much equality, among men of such opposite
characters, and who were such irreconcilable enemies to each other.
_Atticus_.--From my earliest youth I possessed the singular talent of
ingratiating myself with the heads of different parties, and yet not
engaging with any of them so far as to disturb my own quiet. My family
was connected with the Marian party; and, though I retired to Athens that
I might not be unwillingly involved in the troubles which that turbulent
faction had begun to excite, yet when young Marius was declared an enemy
by the Senate, I sent him a sum of money to support him in his exile. Nor
did this hinder me from making my court so well to Sylla, upon his coming
to Athens, that I obtained from him the highest marks of his favour.
Nevertheless, when he pressed me to go with him to Rome, I declined it,
being as unwilling to fight for him against the Marian party, as for them
against him. He admired my conduct; and at his departure from Athens,
ordered all the presents made to him during his abode in that city to be
carried to me. I remind you of this only to show that moderation in all
contentions of this kind had been always my principle; and that in the
instances you mentioned I did not act from any levity or inconstancy in
my nature, but from a regular consistent plan of conduct, which my reason
convinced me was the wisest I could follow.
_Brutus_.--I remember indeed that you observed the same neutrality
between Pompey and Julius Caesar.
_Atticus_.--I did so--and that I might be able to do it with dignity, and
without the reproach of ingratitude, I never would accept any office or
honour from either of those great men; nor from Cicero, though my sister
had married his brother; nor from you, Marcus Brutus, whose friendship I
thought the greatest honour of my life.
_Brutus_.--Are there no obligations to a good heart, Pomponius, but
honours and offices? Or could you, by refusing to encumber yourself with
these, dissolve all other ties? But, setting aside any considerations of
private affection or esteem, how was you able to reconcile your conduct
with that which is the ruling principle in the heart of every virtuous
man, and more especially a virtuous Roman, the love of the public?
_Atticus_.--The times I lived in were so bad, and the conflict of parties
had so little to do in reality with the love of the public, that I
thought my virtue much safer and purer by avoiding than mixing in the
fray.
_Brutus_.--Possibly, in the dispute between Marius and Sylla, and even in
that between Pompey and Caesar, a virtuous man might see so much to blame
on both sides, and so much to fear, whichever faction should overcome the
other, as to be justified in not engaging with either. But let me say,
without vanity, in the war which I waged against Antony and Octavius you
could have nothing to blame, for I know you approved the principle upon
which I killed Julius Caesar. Nor had you anything to fear if our arms
had succeeded, for you know that my intentions were upright and pure; nor
was it doubtful that Cassius was as much determined as I to restore the
Republic. How could you, then, with any sense of virtue in your heart,
maintain an indifference and neutrality between the deliverers and the
tyrants of your country?
_Atticus_.--My answer to this will necessarily require explanations,
which my respect to the manes of Brutus makes me wish to avoid.
_Brutus_.--In the other world I loved truth, and was desirous that all
might speak it with freedom; but here even the tender ears of a tyrant
are compelled to endure it. If I committed any faults, or erred in my
judgment, the calamities I have suffered are a punishment for it. Tell
me then, truly, and without fear of offending, what you think were my
failings.
_Atticus_.--You said that the principle upon which you killed Julius
Caesar had my approbation. This I do not deny; but did I ever declare,
or give you reason to believe, that I thought it a prudent or well-timed
act? I had quite other thoughts. Nothing ever seemed to me worse judged
or worse timed; and these, Brutus, were my reasons. Caesar was just
setting out to make war on the Parthians. This was an enterprise of no
little difficulty and no little danger; but his unbounded ambition, and
that restless spirit which never would suffer him to take any repose, did
not intend to stop there. You know very well (for he hid nothing from
you) that he had formed a vast plan of marching, after he had conquered
the whole Parthian Empire, along the coast of the Caspian Sea and the
sides of Mount Caucasus into Scythia, in order to subdue all the
countries that border on Germany, and Germany itself; from whence he
proposed to return to Rome by Gaul. Consider now, I beseech you, how
much time the execution of this project required. In some of his battles
with so many fierce and warlike nations, the bravest of all the
barbarians, he might have been slain; but, if he had not, disease, or age
itself, might have ended his life before he could have completed such an
immense undertaking. He was, when you killed him, in his fifty-sixth
year, and of an infirm constitution. Except his bastard by Cleopatra, he
had no son; nor was his power so absolute or so quietly settled that he
could have a thought of bequeathing the Empire, like a private
inheritance, to his sister's grandson, Octavius. While he was absent
there was no reason to fear any violence or maladministration in Italy or
in Rome. Cicero would have had the chief authority in the Senate. The
praetorship of the city had been conferred upon you by the favour of
Caesar, and your known credit with him, added to the high reputation of
your virtues and abilities, gave you a weight in all business which none
of his party left behind him in Italy would have been able to oppose.
What a fair prospect was here of good order, peace, and liberty at home,
while abroad the Roman name would have been rendered more glorious, the
disgrace of Crassus revenged, and the Empire extended beyond the utmost
ambition of our forefathers by the greatest general that ever led the
armies of Rome, or, perhaps, of any other nation! What did it signify
whether in Asia, and among the barbarians, that general bore the name of
King or Dictator? Nothing could be more puerile in you and your friends
than to start so much at the proposition of his taking that name in Italy
itself, when you had suffered him to enjoy all the power of royalty, and
much more than any King of Rome had possessed from Romulus down to
Tarquin.
_Brutus_.--We considered that name as the last insult offered to our
liberty and our laws; it was an ensign of tyranny, hung out with a vain
and arrogant purpose of rendering the servitude of Rome more apparent.
We, therefore, determined to punish the tyrant, and restore our country
to freedom.
_Atticus_.--You punished the tyrant, but you did not restore your country
to freedom. By sparing Antony, against the opinion of Cassius, you
suffered the tyranny to remain. He was Consul, and, from the moment that
Caesar was dead, the chief power of the State was in his hands. The
soldiers adored him for his liberality, valour, and military frankness.
His eloquence was more persuasive from appearing unstudied. The nobility
of his house, which descended from Hercules, would naturally inflame his
heart with ambition. The whole course of his life had evidently shown
that his thoughts were high and aspiring, and that he had little respect
for the liberty of his country. He had been the second man in Caesar's
party; by saving him you gave a new head to that party, which could no
longer subsist without your ruin. Many who would have wished the
restoration of liberty, if Caesar had died a natural death, were so
incensed at his murder that, merely for the sake of punishing that, they
were willing to confer all power upon Antony and make him absolute master
of the Republic. This was particularly true with respect to the veterans
who had served under Caesar, and he saw it so plainly that he presently
availed himself of their dispositions. You and Cassius were obliged to
fly out of Italy, and Cicero, who was unwilling to take the same part,
could find no expedient to save himself and the Senate but the wretched
one of supporting and raising very high another Caesar, the adopted son
and heir of him you had slain, to oppose Antony and to divide the
Caesarean party. But even while he did this he perpetually offended that
party and made them his enemies by harangues in the Senate, which
breathed the very spirit of the old Pompeian faction, and made him appear
to Octavius and all the friends of the dead Dictator no less guilty of
his death than those who had killed him. What could this end in but that
which you and your friends had most to fear, a reunion of the whole
Caesarean party and of their principal leaders, however discordant the
one with the other, to destroy the Pompeians? For my own part, I foresaw
it long before the event, and therefore kept myself wholly clear of those
proceedings. You think I ought to have joined you and Cassius at
Philippi, because I knew your good intentions, and that, if you
succeeded, you designed to restore the commonwealth. I am persuaded you
did both agree in that point, but you differed in so many others, there
was such a dissimilitude in your tempers and characters, that the union
between you could not have lasted long, and your dissension would have
had most fatal effects with regard both to the settlement and to the
administration of the Republic. Besides, the whole mass of it was in
such a fermentation, and so corrupted, that I am convinced new disorders
would soon have arisen. If you had applied gentle remedies, to which
your nature inclined, those remedies would have failed; if Cassius had
induced you to act with severity, your government would have been
stigmatised with the name of a tyranny more detestable than that against
which you conspired, and Caesar's clemency would have been the perpetual
topic of every factious oration to the people, and of every seditious
discourse to the soldiers. Thus you would have soon been plunged in the
miseries of another civil war, or perhaps assassinated in the Senate, as
Julius was by you. Nothing could give the Roman Empire a lasting
tranquillity but such a prudent plan of a mitigated imperial power as was
afterwards formed by Octavius, when he had ably and happily delivered
himself from all opposition and partnership in the government. Those
quiet times I lived to see, and I must say they were the best I ever had
seen, far better than those under the turbulent aristocracy for which you
contended. And let me boast a little of my own prudence, which, through
so many storms, could steer me safe into that port. Had it only given me
safety, without reputation, I should not think that I ought to value
myself upon it. But in all these revolutions my honour remained as
unimpaired as my fortune. I so conducted myself that I lost no esteem in
being Antony's friend after having been Cicero's, or in my alliance with
Agrippa and Augustus Caesar after my friendship with you. Nor did either
Caesar or Antony blame my inaction in the quarrels between them; but, on
the contrary, they both seemed to respect me the more for the neutrality
I observed. My obligations to the one and alliance with the other made
it improper for me to act against either, and my constant tenor of life
had procured me an exemption from all civil wars by a kind of
prescription.
_Brutus_.--If man were born to no higher purpose than to wear out a long
life in ease and prosperity, with the general esteem of the world, your
wisdom was evidently as much superior to mine as my life was shorter and
more unhappy than yours. Nay, I verily believe it exceeded the prudence
of any other man that ever existed, considering in what difficult
circumstances you were placed, and with how many violent shocks and
sudden changes of fortune you were obliged to contend. But here the most
virtuous and public-spirited conduct is found to have been the most
prudent. The motives of our actions, not the success, give us here
renown. And could I return to that life from whence I am escaped, I
would not change my character to imitate yours; I would again be Brutus
rather than Atticus. Even without the sweet hope of an eternal reward in
a more perfect state, which is the strongest and most immovable support
to the good under every misfortune, I swear by the gods I would not give
up the noble feelings of my heart, that elevation of mind which
accompanies active and suffering virtue, for your seventy-seven years of
constant tranquillity, with all the praise you obtained from the learned
men whom you patronised or the great men whom you courted.