CHAPTER III.
_THE CONDITION OF ROME._ It is far from my intention to write a history of Rome during the Ciceronian period.

Were I to attempt such a work, I should have to include the doings of Sertorius in Spain, of Lucullus and Pompey in the East, Caesar's ten years in Gaul, and the civil wars from the taking of Marseilles to the final battles of Thapsus and Munda.

With very many of the great events which the period includes Cicero took but slight concern--so slight that we can hardly fail to be astonished when we find how little he had to say of them--he who ran through all the offices of the State, who was the chosen guardian of certain allied cities, who has left to us so large a mass of correspondence on public subjects, and who was essentially a public man for thirty-four years.

But he was a public man who concerned himself personally with Rome rather than with the Roman Empire.

Home affairs, and not foreign affairs, were dear to him.
To Caesar's great deeds in Gaul we should have had from him almost no allusion, had not his brother Quintus been among Caesar's officers, and his young friend Trebatius been confided by himself to Caesar's care.