"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba ?" asks Hamlet, when he finds himself stirred by the passion thrown into the bare recital of an old story by an itinerant player.

What is Cicero to us of the nineteenth century that we should care so much for him as to read yet another book?
Nevertheless, Hamlet was moved because the tale was well told.

There is matter in the earnestness, the pleasantness, the patriotism, and the tragedy of the man's life to move a reader still--if the story could only be written of him as it is felt! The difficulty lies in that, and not in the nature of the story.
The period of Cicero's life was the very turning-point of civilization and government in the history of the world.

At that period of time the world, as we know it, was Rome.

Greece had sunk.