It lay in the humanisation of society by the rational development of law, and by the communication of Greek thought and literature to the western world.

This was what occupied the best days of Cicero and Sulpicius Rufus and many others; and they succeeded at the same time in creating for its expression one of the most perfect prose languages that the world has ever known or will know.

They did it too, helping each other by kindly and cheering intercourse,--the _humanitas_ of daily life.

It is exactly this humanitas that the northern mind of Mommsen, in spite of its vein of passionate romance, could not understand; all the softer side of that pleasant existence among the villas and statues and libraries was to him simply contemptible.

Let us hope that he has done no permanent damage to the credit of Cicero, and of the many lesser men who lived the same honourable and elegant life..