HIS RELATIONS WITH CICERO
We should not know Brutus without Cicero’s letters. As he has never been spoken of with composure, and as political parties have been accustomed to screen their hatred or their hopes under his name, the true features of his character were early effaced. Amid the heated discussions that his mere name raises, while some, like Lucan, exalt him almost to heaven, and others, like Dante, resolutely place him in hell, it was not long before he became a sort of legendary personage. To read Cicero brings us back to the reality. Thanks to him, this striking but indistinct figure, that admiration or terror have immoderately enlarged, becomes more defined and takes human proportions. If it loses in grandeur by being viewed so close, at least it gains something by becoming true and living.
The connection between Cicero and Brutus lasted ten years. The collection of letters they wrote to each other during this interval must have been voluminous, since a grammarian quotes the ninth book of them. They are all lost, with the exception of twenty-five which were written after the death of Caesar.[[320]] Notwithstanding the loss of the rest, Brutus still holds such a large place in the surviving works of Cicero, and especially in his correspondence, that we find in it all the elements necessary for becoming well acquainted with him. I am going to collect these references, and to re-write, not the narrative of Brutus’ entire life, which would oblige me to dwell upon very well-known events, but only the history of his relations with Cicero.