Cicero

But as soon as it was known that he had fled, Clodius caused a vote of banishment to be passed upon him, and issued an edict that all men should refuse him fire and water and that no man should give him shelter within five hundred miles of Italy. Now, most men paid not the slightest heed to this edict out of respect for Cicero, and escorted him on his way with every mark of kindness;

but at Hipponium, a city of Lucania,[*](Rather Bruttium.) which is now called Vibo, Vibius, a Sicilian, who had profited much from Cicero’s friendship and particularly by being made prefect of engineers during his consulship, would not receive him in his house, but sent him word that he would assign him his country-place for residence; and Caius Vergilius, the praetor of Sicily, who had been on most intimate terms with Cicero, wrote him to keep away from Sicily.[*](Cf. Cicero, pro Plancio, 40, 95 ff. )

Disheartened at this treatment, he set out for Brundisium, and from there tried to cross to Dyrrhachium with a fair breeze, but since he met a counter-wind at sea he came back the next day, and then set sail again. It is said, too, that after he had put in at Dyrrhachium and was about to land, there was an earthquake accompanied by a violent convulsion of the sea. Wherefore the soothsayers conjectured that his exile would not be lasting, since these were signs of change.

But although many people visited him out of goodwill, and the Greek cities vied with one another in sending him deputations, still, he passed his time for the most part in dejection and great grief,[*](As his letters to Atticus (iii. 8-21) show.) looking off towards Italy like a disconsolate lover, while his spirit he became very petty and mean by reason of his misfortune, and was more humbled than one would have expected in a man who had enjoyed so lofty a discipline as his.

And yet he often asked his friends not to call him an orator, but a philosopher, because he had chosen philosophy as an occupation, but used oratory merely as an instrument for attaining the needful ends of a political career. But public opinion has great power to wash away reason, like a dye, from the soul of man, and by force of familiar association to impress the feelings of the vulgar on those who engage in political life, unless one is right well on his guard when he engages himself in things external, and is resolved to participate only in the things themselves, and not in the feelings attendant upon them.