Although Cicero's humour was not brilliant, he had sufficient taste to preserve him from pedantry and from solecisms.

His devotion to the Republic was perfectly sincere; and if he changed in his behaviour to Caesar, it was because Caesar changed in his behaviour to the Republic.

Froude's specific charge of rapid tergiversation is disproved by dates.

The speech for Marcellus, with its over-strained flattery of the conqueror, was delivered, not "within a few weeks of his murder," but eighteen months before that event, at a time when Cicero still hoped that Caesar would be moderate.

If Cicero's Republic was a narrow oligarchy, it was also the only form of constitutional and civilian government which he knew or could imagine.