No More Learning

According to Quintilian, Brutus was fitter for philosophical
speculations, and books of moral theory, than for the career of public
oratory. In the former he was equal to the weight and dignity of his
subject: you clearly saw that he believed what he said. _Egregius vero
multoque quam in orationibus præstantior Brutus, suffecit ponderi
rerum; scias eum sentire quæ dicit. _ Quintil. lib. x. cap. 1.

For Asinius Pollio and Messala, see section xii. note [e].

[e] Hirtius and Pansa were consuls A. U. C. 711; before the Christian
æra 43. In this year, the famous _triple league_, called the
TRIUMVIRATE, was formed between Augustus, Lepidus, and Antony.
The
_proscription_, or the list of those who were doomed to die for the
crime of adhering to the cause of liberty, was also settled, and
Cicero was one of the number. A band of assassins went in quest of him
to his villa, called _Astura_, near the sea-shore. Their leader was
one Popilius Lænas, a military tribune, whom Cicero had formerly
defended with success in a capital cause. They overtook Cicero in his
litter. He commanded his servants to set him down, and make no
resistance; then looking upon his executioners with a presence and
firmness which almost daunted them, and thrusting his neck as forward
as he could out of the litter, he bade them _do their work, and take
what they wanted_. The murderers cut off his head, and both his hands.
Popilius undertook to convey them to Rome, as the most agreeable
present to Antony; without reflecting on the _infamy of carrying that
head, which had saved his own_. He found Antony in the forum, and upon
shewing the spoils which he brought, was rewarded on the spot with the
_honour of a crown, and about eight thousand pounds sterling_. Antony
ordered the head to be _fixed upon the rostra, between the two
hands_; a sad spectacle to the people, who beheld those mangled
members, which used to exert themselves, from that place, in defence
of the lives, the fortunes, and the liberties of Rome. Cicero was
killed on the seventh of December, about ten days from the settlement
of the triumvirate, after he had lived _sixty-three years, eleven
months, and five days_. See Middleton's _Life of Cicero_, 4to edit.
vol. ii. p. 495 to 498. Velleius Paterculus, after mentioning Cicero's
death, breaks out in a strain of indignation, that almost redeems the
character of that time-serving writer.