http://www.gutenberg.org/files/8945/8945-h/8945-h.htm
NOTE: The chapters in the text of Trollope's The Life of Cicero are sometimes subdivided into Sections in the Libravox recording to which I am listening. My Quotes posts will be subdivided accordingly, where subdivisions occur in the recording. I anticipate that this will help the posts from becoming too long to be digestible to the reader.
"It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. Cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so 33write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary. [...]"Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
"[...] We are apt to think, judging from our own idea of liberty, that there was so much of tyranny, so little of real freedom in the Roman form of government, that it was not good enough to deserve our sympathies. But it had been successful. It had made a great people, and had produced a wide-spread civilization. Roman citizenship was to those outside the one thing the most worthy to be obtained. [...]"
Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
"The love of absolute liberty as it has been cultivated among modern races did not exist in the time of Cicero. The idea never seems to have reached even his bosom, human and humanitarian as were his sympathies, that a man, as man, should be free. Half the inhabitants of Rome were slaves, and the institution was so grafted in the life of the time that it never occurred to a Roman that slaves, as a body, should be manumitted. The slaves themselves, though they were not, as have been the slaves whom we have seen, of a different color and presumed inferior race, do not themselves seem to have entertained any such idea. They were instigated now and again to servile wars, but there was no rising in quest of freedom generally. Nor was it repugnant to the Roman theory of liberty that the people whom they dominated, though not subjected to slavery, should still be outside the pale of civil freedom. That boon was to be reserved for the Roman citizen, and for him only. It had become common to admit to citizenship the inhabitants of other towns and further territories. The glory was kept not altogether for Rome, but for Romans.
Thus, though the government was oligarchical, and the very essence of freedom ignored, there was a something which stood in the name of liberty, and could endear itself to a real patriot. With genuine patriotism Cicero loved his country, and beginning his public life as he did at the close of Sylla's tyranny, he was able to entertain a dream that the old state of things might be restored and the republican form of government maintained. There should still be two Consuls in Rome, whose annual election would guard the State against regal dominion. And there should, at the same time, be such a continuance of power in the hands of the better class—the "optimates," as he called them—as would preserve the city from democracy and revolution. No man ever trusted more entirely to popular opinion than Cicero, or was more anxious for aristocratic authority. [...]"
Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
"It may, however, be said that the need of biographical memoirs as to a man of letters is by no means in proportion to the excellence of the work that he has achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. Cæsar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so write that the world at large shall care to read what is written, no other memoir will, perhaps, be necessary."
Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
"[...] The greatest men have been those who have stepped out from the mass, and gone beyond their time—seeing things, with eyesight almost divine, which have hitherto been hidden from the crowd. Such was Columbus when he made his way across the Western Ocean; such were Galileo and Bacon; such was Pythagoras, if the ideas we have of him be at all true. Such also was Cicero. It is not given to the age in which such men live to know them. [...]"
Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
"[...] I am conscious that I cannot much promote this view of Cicero's character by quoting isolated passages from his works—words which taken alone may be interpreted in one sense or another, and which should be read, each with its context, before their due meaning can be understood. [...]"
Anthony Trollope, The Life of Cicero, Vol.1, Ch.1 (Introduction), 1881
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