In the splendid panegyric
pronounced on him in the senate after his death,[178] Cicero again
emphatically declared him to be unrivalled in jurisprudence. In
beautiful but untranslatable language he claims that he was "non magis
iuris consultus, quam iustitiae,"--an encomium which all great
lawyers might well envy; he aimed rather at enabling men to be rid of
litigation than at encouraging them to engage in it.
From such passages we might conjecture, even if we knew nothing
more about him, that Sulpicius was a man of very fine clay, of real
_humanitas_ in the widest sense of that expressive word; and this
is entirely borne out in other ways.[179] Emerging at last from
retirement, he stood again for the consulship in 52 B.C., and was
elected. The year of his office, 51, was the first in which the
enemies of Caesar, with Cato at their head, began to attack his
position and clamour for his recall from his command; this violent
hostility Sulpicius tried, not without temporary success, to restrain,
and the fact that a man of so just a mind should have taken this
line is one of the best arguments for the reasonableness of Caesar's
cause.
Pages:
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163