Cicero to ethics and metaphysics seemed comparable to that of the great
Greek thinkers; the _De Natura Deorum_ was taken as a workable argument
against atheism, and the thin and wire-drawn discussions of the
_Academics_ were studied with an attention hardly given to the founder of
the Academy. When a sounder historical method brought these writings into
their real proportion, it was inevitable that the scale should swing
violently to the other side; and for a time no language was too strong in
which to attack the reputation of the "phrase-maker," the "journalist,"
whose name had once dominated Europe. The violence of this attack has now
exhausted itself; and we may be content, without any exaggerated praise
or blame, to note the actual historical effect of these writings through
many ages, and the actual impression made on the world by the type of
character which they embodied and, in a sense, created. In this view,
Cicero represents a force that no historian can neglect, and the
importance of which it is not easy to overestimate. He did for the Empire
and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his far greater philosophic
genius, totally failed to do--created forms of thought in which the life
of philosophy grew, and a body of expression which alone made its growth
in the Latin-speaking world possible; and to that world he presented a
political ideal which profoundly influenced the whole course of European
history even up to the French Revolution. Without Cicero, the Middle Ages
would not have had Augustine or Aquinas; but, without him, the movement
which annulled the Middle Ages would have had neither Mirabeau nor Pitt.

The part of Cicero's work which the present age probably finds the most
interesting, and the interest of which is, in the nature of things,
perennial, has been as yet left unmentioned. It consists of the
collections of his private letters from the year 68 B.C. to within a few
months of his death. The first of these collections contains his letters
to the friend and adviser, Titus Pomponius Atticus, with whom, when they