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The Life of Cicero, Volume II.

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #28676 · 722,703 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Life of Cicero, Volume II.

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: May 3, 2009 [eBook #28676]

Language: English

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| Transcriber's Note:                                |
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| Latin word "demuntiat" in Footnote 222 has been    |
| corrected as "denuntiat" and the Latin words "At"  |
| and "audient" in Footnote 253 have been corrected  |
| as "Ut" and "audiunt" respectively after checking  |
| with reliable sources.                             |
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THE

LIFE OF CICERO


BY

ANTHONY TROLLOPE


_IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. II.


NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE

1881




CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.


                                         PAGE
 CHAPTER I.

 HIS RETURN FROM EXILE                      7

 CHAPTER II.

 CICERO, AETAT. 52, 53, 54.                 38

 CHAPTER III.

 MILO                                      59

 CHAPTER IV.

 CILICIA                                   76

 CHAPTER V.

 THE WAR BETWEEN CAESAR AND POMPEY         110

 CHAPTER VI.

 AFTER THE BATTLE                         129

 CHAPTER VII.

 MARCELLUS, LIGARIUS, AND DEIOTARUS       147

 CHAPTER VIII.

 CAESAR'S DEATH                            172

 CHAPTER IX.

 THE PHILIPPICS                           195

 CHAPTER X.

 CICERO'S DEATH                           231

 CHAPTER XI.

 CICERO'S RHETORIC                        249

 CHAPTER XII.

 CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY                      277

 CHAPTER XIII.

 CICERO'S MORAL ESSAYS                    304

 CHAPTER XIV.

 CICERO'S RELIGION                        321


 APPENDIX                                 333

 INDEX                                    337




THE

LIFE OF CICERO.




CHAPTER I.

_HIS RETURN FROM EXILE._


Cicero's life for the next two years was made conspicuous by a series of
speeches which were produced by his exile and his return. These are
remarkable for the praise lavished on himself, and by the violence with
which he attacked his enemies. It must be owned that never was abuse
more abusive, or self-praise uttered in language more laudatory.[1]
Cicero had now done all that was useful in his public life. The great
monuments of his literature are to come. None of these had as yet been
written except a small portion of his letters--about a tenth--and of
these he thought no more in regard to the public than do any ordinary
letter-writers of to-day. Some poems had been produced, and a history of
his own Consulship in Greek; but these are unknown to us. He had already
become the greatest orator, perhaps, of all time--and we have many of
the speeches spoken by him. Some we have--those five, namely, telling
the story of Verres--not intended to be spoken, but written for the
occasion of the day rather than with a view to permanent literature. He
had been Quaestor, AEdile, Praetor, and Consul, with singular and
undeviating success. He had been honest in the exercise of public
functions when to be honest was to be singular. He had bought golden
opinions from all sorts of people. He had been true to his country, and
useful also--a combination which it was given to no other public man of
those days to achieve. Having been Praetor and Consul, he had refused the
accustomed rewards, and had abstained from the provinces. His speeches,
with but few exceptions, had hitherto been made in favor of honesty.
They are declamations against injustice, against bribery, against
cruelty, and all on behalf of decent civilized life. Had he died then,
he would not have become the hero of literature, the marvel among men of
letters whom the reading world admires; but he would have been a great
man, and would have saved himself from the bitterness of Caesarean
tongues.

His public work was in truth done. His further service consisted of the
government of Cilicia for a year--an employment that was odious to him,
though his performance of it was a blessing to the province. After that
there came the vain struggle with Caesar, the attempt to make the best of
Caesar victorious, the last loud shriek on behalf of the Republic, and
then all was over. The fourteen years of life which yet remained to him
sufficed for erecting that literary monument of which I have spoken, but
his public usefulness was done. To the reader of his biography it will
seem that these coming fourteen years will lack much of the grace which
adorned the last twenty. The biographer will be driven to make excuses,
which he will not do without believing in the truth of them, but
doubting much whether he may beget belief in others. He thinks that he
can see the man passing from one form to another--his doubting devotion
to Pompey, his enforced adherence to Caesar, his passionate opposition to
Antony; but he can still see him true to his country, and ever on the
alert against tyranny and on behalf of pure patriotism.

At the present we have to deal with Cicero in no vacillating spirit, but
loudly exultant and loudly censorious. Within the two years following
his return he made a series of speeches, in all of which we find the
altered tone of his mind. There is no longer that belief in the ultimate
success of justice, and ultimate triumph of the Republic, which glowed
in his Verrine and Catiline orations. He is forced to descend in his
aspirations. It is not whether Rome shall be free, or the bench of
justice pure, but whether Cicero shall be avenged and Gabinius punished.
It may have been right--it was right--that Cicero should be avenged and
Gabinius punished; but it must be admitted that the subjects are less
alluring.

His first oration, as generally received, was made to the Senate in
honor of his return. The second was addressed to the people on the same
subject. The third was spoken to the college of priests, with the view
of recovering the ground on which his house had stood, and which Clodius
had attempted to alienate forever by dedicating it to a pretended
religious purpose. The next, as coming on our list, though not so in
time, was addressed again to the Senate concerning official reports made
by the public soothsayers as interpreters of occult signs, as to whether
certain portents had been sent by the gods to show that Cicero ought not
to have back his house. Before this was made he had defended Sextius,
who as Tribune had been peculiarly serviceable in assisting his return.
This was before a bench of judges; and separated from this, though made
apparently at the same time, is a violent attack upon Vatinius, one of
Caesar's creatures, who was a witness against Sextius. Then there is a
seventh, regarding the disposition of the provinces among the Propraetors
and Proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of Piso
from Macedonia and Gabinius from Syria, and to win Caesar's favor by
showing that Caesar should be allowed to keep the two Gauls and
Illyricum. To these must be added two others, made within the same
period, for Caelius and Balbus. The close friendship between Cicero and
the young man Caelius was one of the singular details of the orator's
life. Balbus was a Spaniard, attached to Caesar, and remarkable as having
been the first man not an Italian who achieved the honor of the
Consulship.

It has been disputed whether the first four of these orations were
really the work of Cicero, certain German critics and English scholars
having declared them to be "parum Ciceronias"--too little like Cicero.
That is the phrase used by Nobbe, who published a valuable edition of
all Cicero's works, after the text of Ernesti, in a single volume. Mr.
Long, in his introduction to these orations, denounces them in language
so strong as to rob them of all chance of absolute acceptance from those
who know the accuracy of Mr. Long's scholarship.[2] There may probably
have been subsequent interpolations. The first of the four, however, is
so closely referred to by Cicero himself in the speech made by him two
years subsequently in the defence of Plancius, that the fact of an
address to the Senate in the praise of those who had assisted him in his
return cannot be doubted; and we are expressly told by the orator that,
because of the importance of the occasion, he had written it out before
he spoke it.[3] As to the Latinity, it is not within my scope, nor
indeed within my power, to express a confident opinion; but as to the
matter of the speech, I think that Cicero, in his then frame of mind,
might have uttered what is attributed to him. Having said so much, I
shall best continue my narrative by dealing with the four speeches as
though they were genuine.

[Sidenote: B.C. 57, aetat. 50.]

Cicero landed at Brundisium on the 5th of August, the day on which his
recall from exile had been enacted by the people, and there met his
daughter Tullia, who had come to welcome him back to Italy on that her
birthday. But she had come as a widow, having just lost her first
husband, Piso Frugi. At this time she was not more than nineteen years
old. Of Tullia's feelings we know nothing from her own expressions, as
they have not reached us; but from the warmth of her father's love for
her, and by the closeness of their friendship, we are led to imagine
that the joy of her life depended more on him than on any of her three
husbands. She did not live long with either of them, and died soon after
the birth of a child, having been divorced from the third. I take it,
there was much of triumph in the meeting, though Piso Frugi had died so
lately.

The return of Cicero to Rome was altogether triumphant. It must be
remembered that the contemporary accounts we have had of it are
altogether from his own pen. They are taken chiefly from the orations I
have named above, though subsequent allusions to the glory of his return
to Rome are not uncommon in his works. But had his boasting not been
true, the contradictions to them would have been made in such a way as
to have reached our ears. Plutarch, indeed, declares that Cicero's
account of the glory of his return fell short of the truth.

It may be taken for granted that with that feeble monster, the citizen
populace of Rome, Cicero had again risen to a popularity equal to that
which had been bestowed upon him when he had just driven Catiline out of
Rome. Of what nature were the crowds who were thus loud in the praise of
their great Consul, and as loud afterward in their rejoicings at the
return of the great exile, we must form our own opinion from
circumstantial evidence. There was a mass of people, with keen ears
taking artistic delight in eloquence and in personal graces, but
determined to be idle, and to be fed as well as amused in their
idleness; and there were also vast bands of men ready to fight--bands of
gladiators they have been called, though it is probable that but few of
them had ever been trained to the arena--whose business it was to shout
as well as to fight on behalf of their patrons. We shall not be
justified in supposing that those who on the two occasions named gave
their sweet voices for Cicero were only the well-ordered, though idle,
proportion of the people, whereas they who had voted against him in
favor of Clodius had all been assassins, bullies, and swordsmen. We
shall probably be nearer the mark if we imagine that the citizens
generally were actuated by the prevailing feelings of their leaders at
the moment, but were carried into enthusiasm when enabled, without
detriment to their interests, to express their feelings for one who was
in truth popular with them. When Cicero, after the death of the five
conspirators, declared that the men "had lived"--"vixerunt"--his own
power was sufficient to insure the people that they would be safe in
praising him. When he came back to Rome, Pompey had been urgent for his
return, and Caesar had acceded to it. When the bill was passed for
banishing him, the Triumvirate had been against him, and Clodius had
been able to hound on his crew. But Milo also had a crew, and Milo was
Cicero's friend. As the Clodian crew helped to drive Cicero from Rome,
so did Milo's crew help to bring him back again.

Cicero, on reaching Rome, went at once to the Capitol, to the temple of
Jupiter, and there returned thanks for the great thing that had been
done for him. He was accompanied by a vast procession who from the
temple went with him to his brother's house, where he met his wife, and
where he resided for a time. His own house in the close neighborhood had
been destroyed. He reached Rome on the 4th of September, and on the 5th
an opportunity was given to the then hero of the day for expressing his
thanks to the Senate for what they had done for him. His intellect had
not grown rusty in Macedonia, though he had been idle. On the 5th,
Cicero spoke to the Senate; on the 6th, to the people. Before the end
of the month he made a much longer speech to the priests in defence of
his own property. Out of the full heart the mouth speaks, and his heart
was very full of the subject.

His first object was to thank the Senate and the leading members of it
for their goodness to him. The glowing language in which this is done
goes against the grain with us when we read continuously the events of
his life as told by himself. His last grievous words had been
expressions of despair addressed to Atticus; now he breaks out into a
paean of triumph. We have to remember that eight months had intervened,
and that the time had sufficed to turn darkness into light. "If I cannot
thank you as I ought, O Conscript Fathers, for the undying favors which
you have conferred on me, on my brother, and my children, ascribe it, I
beseech you, to the greatness of the things you have done for me, and
not to the defect of my virtue." Then he praises the two Consuls, naming
them, Lentulus and Metellus--Metellus, as the reader will remember,
having till lately been his enemy. He lauds the Praetors and the
Tribunes, two of the latter members having opposed his return; but he is
loudest in praise of Pompey--that "Sampsiceramus," that
"Hierosolymarius," that "Arabarches" into whose character he had seen so
clearly when writing from Macedonia to Atticus--that "Cn. Pompey who, by
his valor, his glory, his achievements, stands conspicuously the first
of all nations, of all ages, of all history." We cannot but be angry
when we read the words, though we may understand how well he understood
that he was impotent to do anything for the Republic unless he could
bring such a man as Pompey to act with him. We must remember, too, how
impossible it was that one Roman should rise above the falsehood common
to Romans. We cannot ourselves always escape even yet from the
atmosphere of duplicity in which policy delights. He describes the state
of Rome in his absence. "When I was gone, you"--you, the Senate--"could
decree nothing for your citizens, or for your allies, or for the
dependent kings. The judges could give no judgment; the people could not
record their votes; the Senate availed nothing by its authority. You saw
only a silent Forum, a speechless Senate-house, a city dumb and
deserted." We may suppose that Rome was what Cicero described it to be
when he was in exile, and Caesar had gone to his provinces; but its
condition had been the result of the crushing tyranny of the Triumvirate
rather than of Cicero's absence.

Lentulus, the present Consul, had been, he says, a second father, almost
a god, to him. But he would not have needed the hand of a Consul to
raise him from the ground, had he not been wounded by consular hands.
Catulus, one of Rome's best citizens, had told him that though Rome had
now and again suffered from a bad Consul, she had never before been
afflicted by two together. While there was one Consul worthy of the
name, Catulus had declared that Cicero would be safe. But there had come
two, two together, whose spirits had been so narrow, so low, so
depraved, so burdened with greed and ignorance, "that they had been
unable to comprehend, much less to sustain the splendor of the name of
Consul. Not Consuls were they, but buyers and sellers of provinces."
These were Piso and Gabinius, of whom the former was now governor of
Macedonia, and the latter of Syria. Cicero's scorn against these men,
who as Consuls had permitted his exile, became a passion with him. His
subsequent hatred of Antony was not as bitter. He had come there to
thank the assembled Senators for their care of him, but he is carried
off so violently by his anger that he devotes a considerable portion of
his speech to these indignant utterances. The reader does not regret it.
Abuse makes better reading than praise, has a stronger vitality, and
seems, alas, to come more thoroughly from the heart! Those who think
that genuine invective has its charms would ill spare Piso and Gabinius.

He goes back to his eulogy, and names various Praetors and officers who
have worked on his behalf. Then he declares that by the view of the
present Consul, Lentulus, a decree has been passed in his favor more
glorious than has been awarded to any other single Roman citizen--namely
that from all Italy those who wished well to their country should be
collected together for the purpose of bringing him back from his
banishment--him, Cicero. There is much in this in praise of Lentulus,
but more in praise of Cicero. Throughout these orations we feel that
Cicero is put forward as the hero, whereas Piso and Gabinius are the
demons of the piece. "What could I leave as a richer legacy to my
posterity," he goes on to say, opening another clause of his speech,
"than that the Senate should have decreed that the citizen who had not
come forward in my defence was one regardless of the Republic." By these
boastings, though he was at the moment at the top of the ladder of
popularity, he was offending the self-importance of all around him. He
was offending especially Pompey, with whom it was his fate to have to
act.[4] But that was little to the offence he was giving to those who
were to come many centuries after him, who would not look into the
matter with sufficient accuracy to find that his vanity deserved
forgiveness because of his humanity and desire for progress. "O
Lentulus," he says, at the end of the oration, "since I am restored to
the Republic, as with me the Republic is itself restored, I will slacken
nothing in my efforts at liberty; but, if it may be possible, will add
something to my energy." In translating a word here and there as I have
done, I feel at every expression my incapacity. There is no such thing
as good translation. If you wish to drink the water, with its life and
vigor in it, you must go to the fountain and drink it there.

On the day following he made a similar speech to the people--if, indeed,
the speech we have was from his mouth or his pen--as to which it has
been remarked that in it he made no allusion to Clodius, though he was
as bitter as ever against the late Consuls. From this we may gather
that, though his audience was delighted to hear him, even in his
self-praise, there might have been dispute had he spoken ill of one who
had been popular as Tribune. His praise of Pompey was almost more
fulsome than that of the day before, and the same may be said of his
self-glorification. Of his brother's devotion to him he speaks in
touching words, but in words which make us remember how untrue to him
afterward was that very brother. There are phrases so magnificent
throughout this short piece that they obtain from us, as they are read,
forgiveness for the writer's faults. "Sic ulciscar facinorum singula."
Let the reader of Latin turn to chapter ix. of the oration and see how
the speaker declares that he will avenge himself against the evil-doers
whom he has denounced.

Cicero, though he had returned triumphant, had come back ruined in
purse, except so far as he could depend on the Senate and the people for
reimbursing to him the losses to which he had been subjected. The decree
of the Senate had declared that his goods should be returned to him, but
the validity of such a promise would depend on the value which might be
put upon the goods in question. His house on the Palatine Hill had been
razed to the ground; his Tusculan and Formian villas had been destroyed;
his books, his pictures, his marble columns, his very trees, had been
stolen; but, worst of all, an attempt had been made to deprive him
forever of the choicest spot of ground in all the city, the Park Lane of
Rome, by devoting the space which had belonged to him to the service of
one of the gods. Clodius had caused something of a temple to Liberty to
be built there, because ground so consecrated was deemed at Rome, as
with us, to be devoted by consecration to the perpetual service of
religion. It was with the view of contesting this point that Cicero
made his next speech, Pro Domo Sua, for the recovery of his house,
before the Bench of Priests in Rome. It was for the priests to decide
this question. The Senate could decree the restitution of property
generally, but it was necessary that that spot of ground should be
liberated from the thraldom of sacerdotal tenure by sacerdotal
interference. These priests were all men of high birth and distinction
in the Republic. Nineteen among them were "Consulares," or past-Consuls.
Superstitious awe affects more lightly the consciences of priests than
the hearts of those who trust the priests for their guidance.
Familiarity does breed contempt. Cicero, in making this speech, probably
felt that, if he could carry the people with him, the College of Priests
would not hold the prey with grasping hands. The nineteen Consulares
would care little for the sanctity of the ground if they could be
brought to wish well to Cicero. He did his best. He wrote to Atticus
concerning it a few days after the speech was made, and declared that if
he had ever spoken well on any occasion he had done so then, so deep had
been his grief, and so great the importance of the occasion;[5] and he
at once informs his friend of the decision of the Bench, and of the
ground on which it was based. "If he who declares that he dedicated the
ground had not been appointed to that business by the people, nor had
been expressly commanded by the people to do it, then that spot of
ground can be restored without any breach of religion." Cicero asserts
that he was at once congratulated on having gained his cause, the world
knowing very well that no such authority had been conferred on Clodius.
In the present mood of Rome, all the priests, with the nineteen
Consulares, were no doubt willing that Cicero should have back his
ground. The Senate had to interpret the decision, and on the discussion
of the question among them Clodius endeavored to talk against time.
When, however, he had spoken for three hours, he allowed himself to be
coughed down. It may be seen that in some respects even Roman fortitude
has been excelled in our days.

In the first portion of this speech, Pro Domo Sua, Cicero devotes
himself to a matter which has no bearing on his house. Concomitant with
Cicero's return there had come a famine in Rome. Such a calamity was of
frequent occurrence, though I doubt whether their famines ever led to
mortality so frightful as that which desolated Ireland just before the
repeal of the Corn Laws. No records, as far as I am aware, have reached
us of men perishing in the streets; but scarcity was not uncommon, and
on such occasions complaints would become very loud. The feeding of the
people was a matter of great difficulty, and subject to various chances.
We do not at all know what was the number to be fed, including the free
and the slaves, but have been led by surmises to suppose that it was
under a million even in the time of Augustus. But even though the number
was no more than five hundred thousand at this time, the procuring of
food must have been a complicated and difficult matter. It was not
produced in the country. It was imported chiefly from Sicily and Africa,
and was plentiful or the reverse, not only in accordance with the
seasons but as certain officers of state were diligent and honest, or
fraudulent and rapacious. We know from one of the Verrine orations the
nature of the laws on the subject, but cannot but marvel that, even with
the assistance of such laws, the supply could be maintained with any
fair proportion to the demand. The people looked to the government for
the supply, and when it fell short would make their troubles known with
seditious grumblings, which would occasionally assume the guise of
insurrection. At this period of Cicero's return food had become scarce
and dear; and Clodius, who was now in arms against Pompey as well as
against Cicero, caused it to be believed that the strangers flocking
into Rome to welcome Cicero had eaten up the food which should have
filled the bellies of the people. An idea farther from truth could
hardly have been entertained: no chance influx of visitors on such a
population could have had the supposed effect. But the idea was spread
abroad, and it was necessary that something should be done to quiet the
minds of the populace. Pompey had hitherto been the resource in State
difficulties. Pompey had scattered the pirates, who seem, however, at
this period to have been gathering head again. Pompey had conquered
Mithridates. Let Pompey have a commission to find food for Rome. Pompey
himself entertained the idea of a commission which should for a time
give him almost unlimited power. Caesar was increasing his legions and
becoming dominant in the West. Pompey, who still thought himself the
bigger man of the two, felt the necessity of some great step in rivalry
of Caesar. The proposal made on his behalf was that all the treasure
belonging to the State should be placed at his disposal; that he should
have an army and a fleet, and should be for five years superior in
authority to every Proconsul in his own province. This was the first
great struggle made by Pompey to strangle the growing power of Caesar. It
failed altogether.[6] The fear of Caesar had already become too great in
the bosoms of Roman Senators to permit them to attempt to crush him in
his absence. But a mitigated law was passed, enjoining Pompey to provide
the food required, and conferring upon him certain powers. Cicero was
nominated as his first lieutenant, and accepted the position. He never
acted, however, giving it up to his brother Quintus. A speech which he
made to the people on the passing of the law is not extant; but as there
was hot blood about it in Rome, he took the opportunity of justifying
the appointment of Pompey in the earlier portion of this oration to the
priests. It must be understood that he did not lend his aid toward
giving those greater powers which Pompey was anxious to obtain. His
trust in Pompey had never been a perfect trust since the first days of
the Triumvirate. To Cicero's thinking, both Pompey and Caesar were
conspirators against the Republic. Caesar was the bolder, and therefore
the more dangerous. It might probably come to pass that the services of
Pompey would be needed for restraining Caesar. Pompey naturally belonged
to the "optimates," while Caesar was as naturally a conspirator. But
there never again could come a time in which Cicero would willingly
intrust Pompey with such power as was given to him nine years before by
the Lex Manilia. Nevertheless, he could still say grand things in praise
of Pompey. "To Pompey have been intrusted wars without number, wars most
dangerous to the State, wars by sea and wars by land, wars extraordinary
in their nature. If there be a man who regrets that this has been done,
that man must regret the victories which Rome has won." But his abuse of
Clodius is infinitely stronger than his praise of Pompey. For the
passages in which he alluded to the sister of Clodius I must refer the
reader to the speech itself. It is impossible here to translate them or
to describe them. And these words were spoken before the College of
Priests, of whom nineteen were Consulares! And they were prepared with
such care that Cicero specially boasted of them to Atticus, and declares
that they should be put into the hands of all young orators. Montesquieu
says that the Roman legislators, in establishing their religion, had no
view of using it for the improvement of manners or of morals.[7] The
nature of their rites and ceremonies gives us evidence enough that it
was so. If further testimony were wanting, it might be found in this
address, Ad Pontifices. Cicero himself was a man of singularly clean
life as a Roman nobleman, but, in abusing his enemy, he was restrained
by no sense of what we consider the decency of language.

He argues the question as to his house very well, as he did all
questions. He tells the priests that the whole joy of his restoration
must depend on their decision. Citizens who had hitherto been made
subject to such penalties had been malefactors; whereas, it was
acknowledged of him that he had been a benefactor to the city. Clodius
had set up on the spot, not a statue of Liberty, but, as was well known
to all men, the figure of a Greek prostitute. The priests had not been
consulted. The people had not ratified the proposed consecration. Of the
necessity of such authority he gives various examples. "And this has
been done," he says, "by an impure and impious enemy of all
religions--by this man among women, and woman among men--who has gone
through the ceremony so hurriedly, so violently, that his mind and his
tongue and his voice have been equally inconsistent with each other."
"My fortune," he says, as he ends his speech, "all moderate as it is,
will suffice for me. The memory of my name will be a patrimony
sufficient for my children;" but if his house be so taken from him, so
stolen, so falsely dedicated to religion, he cannot live without
disgrace. Of course he got back his house; and with his house about
L16,000 for its re-erection, and L4000 for the damage done to the
Tusculan villa with L2000 for the Formian villa. With these sums he was
not contented; and indeed they could hardly have represented fairly the
immense injury done to him.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]

So ended the work of the year of his return. From the following year,
besides the speeches, we have twenty-six letters of which nine were
written to Lentulus, the late Consul, who had now gone to Cilicia as
Proconsul. Lentulus had befriended him, and he found it necessary to
show his gratitude by a continued correspondence, and by a close
attendance to the interests of the absent officer. These letters are
full of details of Roman politics, too intricate for such a work as
this--perhaps I might almost say too uninteresting, as they refer
specially to Lentulus himself. In one of them he tells his friend that
he has at last been able to secure the friendship of Pompey for him. It
was, after all, but a show of friendship. He has supped with Pompey, and
says that when he talks to Pompey everything seems to go well: no one
can be more gracious than Pompey. But when he sees the friends by whom
Pompey is surrounded he knows, as all others know, that the affair is in
truth going just as he would not have it.[8] We feel as we read these
letters, in which Pompey's name is continually before us, how much
Pompey prevailed by his personal appearance, by his power of saying
gracious things, and then again by his power of holding his tongue. "You
know the slowness of the man," he says to Lentulus, "and his
silence."[9] A slow, cautious, hypocritical man, who knew well how to
use the allurements of personal manners! These letters to Lentulus are
full of flattery.

There are five letters to his brother Quintus, dealing with the politics
of the time, especially with the then King of Egypt, who was to be, or
was not to be, restored. From all these things, however, I endeavor to
abstain as much as possible, as matters not peculiarly affecting the
character of Cicero. He gives his brother an account of the doings in
the Senate, which is interesting as showing us how that august assembly
conducted itself. While Pompey was speaking with much dignity, Clodius
and his supporters in vain struggled with shouts and cries to put him
down. At noon Pompey sat down, and Clodius got possession of the rostra,
and in the middle of a violent tumult remained on his feet for two
hours. Then, on Pompey's side, the "optimates" sang indecent songs
--"versus obscenissimi"--in reference to Clodius and his sister Clodia.
Clodius, rising in his anger, demanded, "Who had brought the famine?"
"Pompey," shouted the Clodians. "Who wanted to go to Egypt?" demanded
Clodius. "Pompey," again shouted his followers. After that, at three
o'clock, at a given signal, they began to spit upon their opponents.
Then there was a fight, in which each party tried to drive the others
out. The "optimates" were getting the best of it, when Cicero thought it
as well to run off lest he should be hurt in the tumult.[10] What hope
could there be for an oligarchy when such things occurred in the Senate?
Cicero in this letter speaks complacently of resisting force by force in
the city. Even Cato, the law-abiding, precise Cato, thought it necessary
to fall into the fashion and go about Rome with an armed following. He
bought a company of gladiators and circus-men; but was obliged to sell
them, as Cicero tells his brother with glee, because he could not afford
to feed them.[11]

There are seven letters also to Atticus--always more interesting than
any of the others. There is in these the most perfect good-feeling, so
that we may know that the complaints made by him in his exile had had no
effect of estranging his friend; and we learn from them his real,
innermost thoughts, as they are not given even to his brother--as
thoughts have surely seldom been confided by one man of action to
another. Atticus had complained that he had not been allowed to see a
certain letter which Cicero had written to Caesar. This he had called a
[Greek: palinodia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to Caesar
with the view of professing a withdrawal to some extent of his
opposition to the Triumvirate. It had been of sufficient moment to be
talked about. Atticus had heard of it, and had complained that it had
not been sent to him. Cicero puts forward his excuses, and then bursts
out with the real truth:

"Why should I nibble round the unpalatable morsel which has to be
swallowed?" The recantation had seemed to himself to be almost base, and
he had been ashamed of it. "But," says he, "farewell to all true,
upright, honest policy. You could hardly believe what treachery there is
in those who ought to be our leading men, and who would be so if there
was any truth in them."[12] He does not rely upon those who, if they
were true to their party, would enable the party to stand firmly even
against Caesar. Therefore it becomes necessary for him to truckle to
Caesar, not for himself but for his party. Unsupported he cannot stand in
open hostility to Caesar. He truckles. He writes to Caesar, singing
Caesar's praises. It is for the party rather than for himself, but yet he
is ashamed of it.

There is a letter to Lucceius, an historian of the day then much thought
of, of whom however our later world has heard nothing. Lucceius is
writing chronicles of the time, and Cicero boldly demands to be praised.
"Ut ornes mea postulem"[13]--"I ask you to praise me." But he becomes
much bolder than that. "Again and again I beseech you, without any
beating about the bush, to speak more highly of me than you perhaps
think that I deserve, even though in doing so you abandon all the laws
of history." Then he uses beautiful flattery to his correspondent.
Alexander had wished to be painted only by Apelles. He desires to be
praised by none but Lucceius. Lucceius, we are told, did as he was
asked.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]

I will return to the speeches of the period to which this chapter is
devoted, taking that first which he made to the Senate as to the report
of the soothsayers respecting certain prodigies. Readers familiar with
Livy will remember how frequently, in time of disaster, the anger of
Heaven was supposed to have been shown by signs and miracles,
indications that the gods were displeased, and that expiations were
necessary.[14] The superstition, as is the fate of all superstitions,
had frequently been used for most ungodlike purposes. If a man had a
political enemy, what could do him better service than to make the
populace believe that a house had been crushed by a thunder-bolt, or
that a woman had given birth to a pig instead of a child, because
Jupiter had been offended by that enemy's devices? By using such a plea
the Grecians got into Troy, together with the wooden horse, many years
ago. The Scotch worshippers of the Sabbath declared the other day, when
the bridge over the Tay was blown away, that the Lord had interposed to
prevent travelling on Sunday!

Cicero had not been long back from his exile when the gods began to show
their anger. A statue of Juno twisted itself half round; a wolf had been
seen in the city; three citizens were struck with lightning; arms were
heard to clang, and then wide subterranean noises. Nothing was easier
than the preparation and continuing of such portents. For many years
past the heavens above and the earth beneath had been put into
requisition for prodigies.[15] The soothsayers were always well pleased
to declare that there had been some neglect of the gods. It is in the
nature of things that the superstitious tendencies of mankind shall fall
a prey to priestcraft. The quarrels between Cicero and Clodius were as
full of life as ever. In this year, Clodius being AEdile, there had come
on debates as to a law passed by Caesar as Consul, in opposition to
Bibulus, for the distribution of lands among the citizens. There was a
question as to a certain tax which was to be levied on these lands. The
tax-gatherers were supported by Cicero, and denounced by Clodius. Then
Clodius and his friends found out that the gods were showering their
anger down upon the city because the ground on which Cicero's house had
once stood was being desecrated by its re-erection. An appeal was made
to the soothsayers. They reported, and Cicero rejoined. The soothsayers
had of course been mysterious and doubtful. Cicero first shows that the
devotion of his ground to sacred purposes had been an absurdity, and
then he declares that the gods are angry, not with him but with Clodius.
To say that the gods were not angry at all was more than Cicero dared.
The piece, taken as a morsel of declamatory art, is full of vigor, is
powerful in invective, and carries us along in full agreement with the
orator; but at the conclusion we are led to wish that Cicero could have
employed his intellect on higher matters.

There are, however, one or two passages which draw the reader into deep
mental inquiry as to the religious feelings of the time. In one, which
might have been written by Paley, Cicero declares his belief in the
creative power of some god--or gods, as he calls them.[16] And we see
also the perverse dealings of the Romans with these gods, dealings
which were very troublesome--not to be got over except by stratagem. The
gods were made use of by one party and the other for dishonest state
purposes. When Cicero tells his hearers what the gods intended to
signify by making noises in the sky, and other divine voices, we feel
sure that he was either hoaxing them who heard him or saying what he
knew they would not believe.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]

Previous to the speech as to the "aruspices," he had defended
Sextius--or Sestius, as he is frequently called--on a charge brought
against him by Clodius in respect of violence. We at once think of the
commonplace from Juvenal:

  "Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes."

But Rome, without remonstrating, put up with any absurdity of that kind.
Sextius and Milo and others had been joined together in opposing the
election of Clodius as AEdile, and had probably met violence with
violence. As surely as an English master of hounds has grooms and whips
ready at his command, Milo had a band of bullies prepared for violence.
Clodius himself had brought an action against Milo, who was defended by
Pompey in person. The case against Sextius was intrusted to Albinovanus,
and Hortensius undertook the defence. Sextius before had been one of the
most forward in obtaining the return of Cicero, and had travelled into
Gaul to see Caesar and to procure Caesar's assent. Caesar had not then
assented; but not the less great had been the favor conferred by Sextius
on Cicero. Cicero had been grateful, but it seems that Sextius had
thought not sufficiently grateful; hence there had grown up something of
a quarrel. But Cicero, when he heard of the proceeding against his old
friend, at once offered his assistance. For a Roman to have more than
one counsel to plead for him was as common as for an Englishman. Cicero
was therefore added to Hortensius, and the two great advocates of the
day spoke on the same side. We are told that Hortensius managed the
evidence, showing, probably, that Clodius struck the first blow. Cicero
then addressed the judges with the object of gaining their favor for the
accused. In this he was successful, and Sextius was acquitted. As
regards Sextius and his quarrel with Clodius, the oration has but little
interest for us. There is not, indeed, much about Sextius in it. It is a
continuation of the paean which Cicero was still singing as to his own
return, but it is distinguished from his former utterances by finer
thought and finer language. The description of public virtue as
displayed by Cato has perhaps, in regard to melody of words and grandeur
of sentiment, never been beaten. I give the orator's words below in his
own language, because in no other way can any idea of the sound be
conveyed.[17] There is, too, a definition made very cleverly to suit his
own point of view between the conservatives and the liberals of the day.
"Optimates" is the name by which the former are known; the latter are
called "Populares."[18]

Attached to this speech for Sextius is a declamation against Vatinius,
who was one of the witnesses employed by the prosecutor. Instead of
examining this witness regularly, he talked him down by a separate
oration. We have no other instance of such a forensic manoeuvre either
in Cicero's practice or in our accounts of the doings of other Roman
advocates. This has reached us as a separate oration. It is a coarse
tirade of abuse against a man whom we believe to have been bad, but as
to whom we feel that we are not justified in supposing that we can get
his true character here. He was a creature of Caesar's, and Cicero was
able to say words as to Vatinius which he was unwilling to speak as to
Caesar and his doings. It must be added here that two years later Cicero
pleaded for this very Vatinius, at the joint request of Caesar and
Pompey, when Vatinius on leaving the Praetorship was accused of
corruption.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, aetat. 51.]

The nature of the reward to which the aspiring oligarch of Rome always
turned his eyes has been sufficiently explained. He looked to be the
governor of a province. At this period of which we are speaking there
was no reticence in the matter. Syria, or Macedonia, or Hispania had
been the prize, or Sicily, or Sardinia. It was quite understood that an
aspiring oligarch went through the dust and danger and expense of
political life in order that at last he might fill his coffers with
provincial plunder. There were various laws as to which these
governments were allotted to the plunderers. Of these we need only
allude to the Leges Semproniae, or laws proposed B.C. 123, by Caius
Sempronius Gracchus, for the distribution of those provinces which were
to be enjoyed by Proconsuls. There were praetorian provinces and consular
provinces, though there was no law making it sure that any province
should be either consular or praetorian. But the Senate, without the
interference of the people and free from the Tribunes' veto, had the
selection of provinces for the Consuls; whereas, for those intended for
the Praetors, the people had the right of voting and the Tribunes of the
people had a right of putting a veto on the propositions made. Now, in
this year there came before the Senate a discussion as to the fate of
three Proconsuls--not as to the primary allocation of provinces to
them, but on the question whether they should be continued in the
government which they held. Piso was in Macedonia, where he was supposed
to have disgraced himself and the Empire which he served. Gabinius was
in Syria, where it was acknowledged that he had done good service,
though his own personal character stood very low. Caesar was lord in the
two Gauls--that is, on both sides of the Alps, in Northern Italy, and in
that portion of modern France along the Mediterranean which had been
already colonized--and was also governor of Illyricum. He had already
made it manifest to all men that the subjugation of a new empire was his
object rather than provincial plunder. Whether we love the memory of
Caesar as of a great man who showed himself fit to rule the world, or
turn away from him as from one who set his iron heel on the necks of
men, and by doing so retarded for centuries the liberties of mankind, we
have to admit that he rose by the light of his own genius altogether
above the ambition of his contemporaries. If we prefer, as I do, the
humanity of Cicero, we must confess to ourselves the supremacy of Caesar,
and acknowledge ourselves to belong to the beaten cause. "Victrix causa
Deis placuit; sed victa Catoni." In discussing the fate of these
proconsular officials we feel now the absurdity of mixing together in
the same debate the name of Piso and Gabinius with that of Caesar. Yet
such was the subject in dispute when Cicero made his speech, De
Provinciis Consularibus, as to the adjudication of the consular
provinces.

There was a strong opinion among many Senators that Caesar should be
stopped in his career. I need not here investigate the motives, either
great or little, on which this opinion was founded. There was hardly a
Senator among them who would not have wished Caesar to be put down,
though there were many who did not dare declare their wishes. There were
reasons for peculiar jealousy on the part of the Senate. Cisalpine Gaul
had been voted for him by the intervention of the people, and especially
by that of the Tribune Vatinius--to Caesar who was Consularis, whose
reward should have been an affair solely for the Senate. Then there had
arisen a demand, a most unusual demand, for the other Gaul also. The
giving of two provinces to one governor was altogether contrary to the
practice of the State; but so was the permanent and acknowledged
continuance of a conspiracy such as the Triumvirate unusual. Caesar
himself was very unusual. Then the Senate, feeling that the second
province would certainly be obtained, and anxious to preserve some shred
of their prerogative, themselves voted the Farther Gaul. As it must be
done, let it at any rate be said that they had done it. But as they had
sent Caesar over the Alps so they could recall him, or try to recall him.
Therefore, with the question as to Piso and Gabinius, which really meant
nothing, came up this also as to Caesar, which meant a great deal.

But Caesar had already done great things in Gaul. He had defeated the
Helvetians and driven Ariovistus out of the country. He had carried
eight legions among the distant Belgae, and had conquered the Nervii. In
this very year he had built a huge fleet, and had destroyed the Veneti,
a seafaring people on the coast of the present Brittany. The more
powerful he showed himself to be, the more difficult it was to recall
him; but also the more desirable in the eyes of many. In the first
portion of his speech Cicero handles Piso and Gabinius with his usual
invective. There was no considerable party desirous of renewing to them
their governments, but Cicero always revelled in the pleasure of abusing
them. He devotes by far the longer part of his oration to the merit of
Caesar.[19] As for recalling him, it would be irrational. Who had counted
more enemies in Rome than Marius? but did they recall Marius when he
was fighting for the Republic?[20] Hitherto the Republic had been forced
to fear the Gauls. Rome had always been on the defence against them. Now
it had been brought about by Caesar that the limits of the world were the
limits of the Roman Empire.[21] The conquest was not yet finished, but
surely it should be left to him who had begun it so well. Even though
Caesar were to demand to return himself, thinking that he had done enough
for his own glory, it would be for the Senators to restrain him--for the
Senate to bid him finish the work that he had in hand.[22] As for
himself, continued Cicero, if Caesar had been his enemy, what of that?
Caesar was not his enemy now. He had told the Senate what offers of
employment Caesar had made him. If he could not forget, yet he would
forgive, former injuries.[23]

It is important for the reading of Cicero's character that we should
trace the meaning of his utterances about Caesar from this time up to the
day on which Caesar was killed--his utterances in public, and those which
are found in his letters to Atticus and his brother. That there was much
of pretence--of falsehood, if a hard word be necessary to suit the
severity of those who judge the man hardly--is admitted. How he praised
Pompey in public, dispraising him in private, at one and the same
moment, has been declared. How he applied for praise, whether deserved
or not, has been shown. In excuse, not in defence, of this I allege that
the Romans of the day were habitually false after this fashion. The
application to Lucceius proves the habitual falseness not of Cicero
only, but of Lucceius also; and the private words written to Atticus, in
opposition to the public words with which Atticus was well acquainted,
prove the falseness also of Atticus. It was Roman; it was Italian; it
was cosmopolitan; it was human. I only wish that it were possible to
declare that it is no longer Italian, no longer cosmopolitan, no longer
human. To this day it is very difficult even for an honorable man to
tell the whole truth in the varying circumstances of public life. The
establishment of even a theory of truth, with all the advantages which
have come to us from Christianity, has been so difficult, hitherto so
imperfect, that we ought, I think, to consider well the circumstances
before we stigmatize Cicero as specially false. To my reading he seems
to have been specially true. When Caesar won his way up to power, Cicero
was courteous to him, flattered him, and, though, never subservient, yet
was anxious to comply when compliance was possible. Nevertheless, we
know well that the whole scheme of Caesar's political life was opposed to
the scheme entertained by Cicero. It was Cicero's desire to maintain as
much as he could of the old form of oligarchical rule under which, as a
constitution, the Roman Empire had been created. It was Caesar's
intention to sweep it all away. We can see that now; but Cicero could
only see it in part. To his outlook the man had some sense of order, and
had all the elements of greatness. He was better, at any rate, than a
Verres, a Catiline, a Clodius, a Piso, or a Gabinius. If he thought that
by flattery he could bring Caesar somewhat round, there might be conceit
in his so thinking, but there could be no treachery. In doing so he did
not abandon his political _beau ideal_. If better times came, or a
better man, he would use them. In the mean time he could do more by
managing Caesar than by opposing him. He was far enough from succeeding
in the management of Caesar, but he did do much in keeping his party
together. It was in this spirit that he advocated before the Senate the
maintenance of Caesar's authority in the two Gauls. The Senate decreed
the withdrawal of Piso and Gabinius, but decided to leave Caesar where he
was. Mommsen deals very hardly with Cicero as to this period of his
life. "They used him accordingly as--what he was good for--an advocate."
"Cicero himself had to thank his literary reputation for the respectful
treatment which he experienced from Caesar." The question we have to ask
ourselves is whether he did his best to forward that scheme of politics
which he thought to be good for the Republic. To me it seems that he did
do so. He certainly did nothing with the object of filling his own
pockets. I doubt whether as much can be said with perfect truth as to
any other Roman of the period, unless it be Cato.

Balbus, for whom Cicero also spoke in this year, was a Spaniard of
Cadiz, to whom Pompey had given the citizenship of Rome, who had become
one of Caesar's servants and friends, and whose citizenship was now
disputed. Cicero pleaded in favor of the claim, and gained his cause.
There were, no doubt, certain laws in accordance with which Balbus was
or was not a citizen; but Cicero here says that because Balbus was a
good man, therefore there should be no question as to his
citizenship.[24] This could hardly be a good legal argument. But we are
glad to have the main principles of Roman citizenship laid down for us
in this oration. A man cannot belong to more than one State at a time. A
man cannot be turned out of his State against his will. A man cannot be
forced to remain in his State against his will.[25] This Balbus was
acknowledged as a Roman, rose to be one of Caesar's leading ministers,
and was elected Consul of the Empire B.C. 40. Thirty-four years
afterward his nephew became Consul. Nearly three centuries after that,
A.D. 237, a descendant of Balbus was chosen as Emperor, under the name
of Balbinus, and is spoken of by Gibbon with eulogy.[26]

I know no work on Cicero written more pleasantly, or inspired by a
higher spirit of justice, than that of Gaston Boissier, of the French
Academy, called Ciceron et ses Amis. Among his chapters one is devoted
to Cicero's remarkable intimacy with Caelius, which should be read by all
who wish to study Cicero. We have now come to the speech which he made
in this year in defence of Caelius. Caelius had entered public life very
early, as the son of a rich citizen who was anxious that his heir should
be enabled to shine as well by his father's wealth as by his own
intellect. When he was still a boy, according to our ideas of boyhood,
he was apprenticed to Cicero,[27] as was customary, in order that he
might pick up the crumbs which fell from the great man's table. It was
thus that a young man would hear what was best worth hearing; thus he
would become acquainted with those who were best worth knowing; thus
that he would learn in public life all that was best worth learning.
Caelius heard all, and knew many, and learned much; but he perhaps
learned too much at too early an age. He became bright and clever, but
unruly and dissipated. Cicero, however, loved him well. He always liked
the society of bright young men, and could forgive their morals if their
wit were good. Clodius--even Clodius, young Curio, Caelius and afterward
Dolabella, were companions with whom he loved to associate. When he was
in Cilicia, as Proconsul, this Caelius became almost a second Atticus to
him, in the writing of news from Rome.

But Caelius had become one of Clodia's many lovers, and seems for a time
to have been the first favorite, to the detriment of poor Catullus. The
rich father had, it seems, quarrelled with his son, and Caelius was in
want of money. He borrowed it from Clodia, and then, without paying his
debt, treated Clodia as she had treated Catullus. The lady tried to get
her money back, and when she failed she accused her former lover of an
attempt to poison her. This she did so that Caelius was tried for the
offence. There were no less than four accusers, or advocates, on her
behalf, of whom her brother was one. Caelius was defended by Crassus as
well as by Cicero, and was acquitted. All these cases combined
political views with criminal charges. Caelius was declared to have been
a Catilinian conspirator. He was also accused of being in debt, of
having quarrelled with his father, of having insulted women, of having
beaten a Senator, of having practised bribery, of having committed
various murders, and of having perpetrated all social and political
excesses to which his enemies could give a name. It was probable that
his life had been very irregular, but it was not probably true that he
had attempted to poison Clodia.

The speech is very well worth the trouble of reading. It is lively,
bright, picturesque, and argumentative; and it tells the reader very
much of the manners of Rome at the time. It has been condemned for a
passage which, to my taste, is the best in the whole piece. Cicero takes
upon himself to palliate the pleasures of youth, and we are told that a
man so grave, so pure, so excellent in his own life, should not have
condescended to utter sentiments so lax in defence of so immoral a young
friend. I will endeavor to translate a portion of the passage, and I
think that any ladies who may read these pages will agree with me in
liking Cicero the better for what he said upon the occasion. He has been
speaking of the changes which the manners of the world had undergone,
not only in Rome but in Greece, since pleasure had been acknowledged
even by philosophers to be necessary to life. "They who advocate one
constant course of continual labor as the road to fame are left alone in
their schools, deserted by their scholars. Nature herself has begotten
for us allurements, seduced by which Virtue herself will occasionally
become drowsy. Nature herself leads the young into slippery paths, in
which not to stumble now and again is hardly possible. Nature has
produced for us a variety of pleasures, to which not only youth, but
even middle-age, occasionally yields itself. If, therefore, you shall
find one who can avert his eyes from all that is beautiful--who is
charmed by no sweet smell, by no soft touch, by no rich flavor--who can
turn a deaf ear to coaxing words--I indeed, and perhaps a few others,
may think that the gods have been good to such a one; but I doubt
whether the world at large will not think that the gods have made him a
sorry fellow." There is very much more of it, delightfully said, and in
the same spirit; but I have given enough to show the nature of the
excuse for Caelius which has brought down on Cicero the wrath of the
moralists.




CHAPTER II.

_CICERO, AETAT._ 52, 53, 54.


[Sidenote: B.C. 55, aetat. 52.]

I can best continue my record of Cicero's life for this and the two
subsequent years by following his speeches and his letters. It was at
this period the main object of his political life to reconcile the
existence of a Caesar with that of a Republic--two poles which could not
by any means be brought together. Outside of his political life he
carried on his profession as an advocate with all his former energy,
with all his former bitterness, with all his old friendly zeal, but
never, I think, with his former utility. His life with his friends and
his family was prosperous; but that ambition to do some great thing for
his country which might make his name more famous than that of other
Romans was gradually fading, and, as it went, was leaving regrets and
remorse behind which would not allow him to be a happy man. But it was
now, when he had reached his fifty-second year, that he in truth began
that career in literature which has made him second to no Roman in
reputation. There are some early rhetorical essays, which were taken
from the Greek, of doubtful authenticity; there are the few lines which
are preserved of his poetry; there are the speeches which he wrote as
well as spoke for the Rome of the day; and there are his letters, which
up to this time had been intended only for his correspondents. All that
we have from his pen up to this time has been preserved for us by the
light of those great works which he now commenced. In this year, B.C.
55, there appeared the dialogue De Oratore, and in the next the treatise
De Republica. It was his failure as a politician which in truth drove
Cicero to the career of literature. As I intend to add to this second
volume a few chapters as to his literary productions, I will only
mention the dates on which these dialogues and treatises were given to
the world as I go on with my work.

In the year B.C. 55, the two of the Triumvirate who had been left in
Rome, Pompey and Crassus, were elected Consuls, and provinces were
decreed to each of them for five years--to Pompey the two Spains, and to
Crassus that Syria which was to be so fatal to him. All this had been
arranged at Lucca, in the north of Italy, whither Caesar was able to come
as being within the bounds of his province, to meet his friends from
Rome--or his enemies. All aristocratic Rome went out in crowds to Lucca,
so that two hundred Senators might be seen together in the streets of
that provincial town. It was nevertheless near enough to Rome to permit
the conqueror from Gaul to look closely into the politics of the city.
By his permission, if not at his instigation, Pompey and Crassus had
been chosen Consuls, and to himself was conceded the government of his
own province for five further years--that is, down to year B.C. 49
inclusive. It must now at least have become evident to Cicero that Caesar
intended to rule the Empire.

Though we already have Cicero's letters arranged for us in a
chronological sequence which may be held to be fairly correct for
biographical purposes, still there is much doubt remaining as to the
exact periods at which many of them were written. Abeken, the German
biographer, says that this year, B.C. 55, produced twelve letters. In
the French edition of Cicero's works published by Panckoucke thirty-five
are allotted to it. Mr. Watson, in his selected letters, has not taken
one from the year in question. Mr. Tyrrell, who has been my Mentor
hitherto in regard to the correspondence, has not, unfortunately,
published the result of his labors beyond the year 53 B.C. at the time
of my present writing. Some of those who have dealt with Cicero's life
and works, and have illustrated them by his letters, have added
something to the existing confusion by assuming an accuracy of knowledge
in this respect which has not existed. We have no right to quarrel with
them for having done so; certainly not with Middleton, as in his time
such accuracy was less valued by readers than it is now; and we have the
advantage of much light which, though still imperfect, is very bright in
comparison with that enjoyed by him. A study of the letters, however, in
the sequence now given to them affords an accurate picture of Cicero's
mind during the years between the period of his return from exile B.C.
57 and Milo's trial B.C. 52, although the reader may occasionally be
misled as to the date of this or the other letter.

With the dates of his speeches, at any rate with the year in which they
were made, we are better acquainted. They are of course much fewer in
number, and are easily traced by the known historical circumstances of
the time. B.C. 55, he made that attack upon his old enemy, the late
Consul Piso, which is perhaps the most egregious piece of abuse extant
in any language. Even of this we do not know the precise date, but we
may be sure that it was spoken early in the year, because Cicero alludes
in it to Pompey's great games which were in preparation, and which were
exhibited when Pompey's new theatre was opened in May.[28] Plutarch
tells us that they did not take place till the beginning of the
following year.[29] Piso on his return from Macedonia attacked Cicero in
the Senate in answer to all the hard things that had already been said
of him, and Cicero, as Middleton says, "made a reply to him on the spot
in an invective speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever was spoken by
any man, on the person, the parts, the whole life and conduct of Piso,
which as long as the Roman name subsists must deliver down a most
detestable character of him to all posterity."

We are here asked to imagine that this attack was delivered on the spur
of the moment in answer to Piso's attack. I cannot believe that it
should have been so, however great may have been the orator's power over
thoughts and words. We have had in our own days wonderful instances of
ready and indignant reply made instantaneously, but none in which the
angry eloquence has risen to such a power as is here displayed. We
cannot but suppose that had human intellect ever been perfect enough for
such an exertion, it would have soared high enough also to have
abstained from it. It may have been that Cicero knew well enough
beforehand what the day was about to produce, so as to have prepared his
reply. It may well have been that he himself undertook the polishing of
his speech before it was given to the public in the words which we now
read. We may, I think, take it for granted that Piso did make an attack
upon him, and that Cicero answered him at once with words which crushed
him, and which are not unfairly represented by those which have come
down to us.

The imaginative reader will lose himself in wonder as he pictures to
himself the figure of the pretentious Proconsul, with his assumption of
confidence, as he was undergoing the castigation which this great master
of obloquy was inflicting upon him, and the figure of the tall, lean
orator, with his long neck and keen eyes, with his arms trained to
assist his voice, managing his purple bordered toga with a perfect
grace, throwing all his heart into his impassioned words as they fell
into the ears of the Senators around him without the loss of a syllable.
This Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoronius had come from one of the highest
families in Rome, and had possessed interest enough to be elected
Consul for the year in which Cicero was sent into banishment.[30] He was
closely connected with that Piso Frugi to whom Cicero's daughter had
been married; and Cicero, when he was threatened by the faction of
Clodius--a faction which he did not then believe to be supported by the
Triumvirate--had thought that he was made safe, at any rate, from cruel
results by consular friendship and consular protection. Piso Caesoronius
had failed him altogether, saying, in answer to Cicero's appeal, that
the times were of such a nature that every one must look to himself. The
nature of Cicero's rage may be easily conceived. An attempt to describe
it has already been made. It was not till after his Consulate that he
was ever waked to real anger, and the one object whom he most entirely
hated with his whole soul was Lucius Piso.

By the strength of Cicero's eloquence this man has occupied an
immortality of meanness. We cannot but believe that he must have in some
sort deserved it, or the justice of the world would have vindicated his
character. It should, however, be told of him that three years afterward
he was chosen Censor, together with Appius Claudius. But it must also be
told that, as far as we can judge, both these men were unworthy of the
honor. They were the last two Censors elected in Rome before the days of
the Empire. It is impossible not to believe that Piso was vile, but
impossible also to believe that he was as vile as Cicero represented
him. Caesar was at this time his son-in-law, as he was father to
Calphurnia, with whom Shakspeare has made us familiar. I do not know
that Caesar took in bad part the hard things that were said of his
father-in-law.

The first part of the speech is lost. The first words we know because
they have been quoted by Quintilian, "Oh ye gods immortal, what day is
this which has shone upon me at last?"[31] We may imagine from this
that Cicero intended it to be understood that he exulted in the coming
of his revenge. The following is a fair translation of the opening
passage of what remains to us: "Beast that you are, do you not see, do
you not perceive, how odious to the men around you is that face of
yours?" Then with rapid words he heaps upon the unfortunate man
accusations of personal incompetencies. Nobody complains, says Cicero,
that that fellow of yesterday, Gabinius, should have been made Consul:
we have not been deceived in him. "But your eyes and eyebrows, your
forehead, that face of yours, which should be the dumb index of the mind
within, have deceived those who have not known you. Few of us only have
been aware of your infamous vices, the sloth of your intellect, your
dulness, your inability to speak. When was your voice heard in the
Forum? when has your counsel been put to the proof? when did you do any
service either in peace or war? You have crept into your high place by
the mistakes of men, by the regard to the dirty images of your
ancestors, to whom you have no resemblance except in their present grimy
color. And shall he boast to me," says the orator, turning from Piso to
the audience around, "that he has gone on without a check from one step
in the magistracy to another? That is a boast for me to make, for
me--"homini novo"--a man without ancestors, on whom the Roman people has
showered all its honors. You were made AEdile, you say; the Roman people
choose a Piso for their AEdile--not this man from any regard for himself,
but because he is a Piso. The Praetorship was conferred not on you but on
your ancestors who were known and who were dead! Of you, who are alive
no one has known anything. But me--!" Then he continues the contrast
between himself and Piso; for the speech is as full of his own merits as
of the other man's abominations.

So the oration goes on to the end. He asserts, addressing himself to
Piso, that if he saw him and Gabinius crucified together, he did not
know whether he would be most delighted by the punishment inflicted on
their bodies or by the ruin of their reputation. He declares that he has
prayed for all evil on Piso and Gabinius, and that the gods have heard
him, but it has not been for death, or sickness, or for torment, that he
had prayed, but for such evils as have in truth come upon them. Two
Consuls sent with large armies into two of the grandest provinces have
returned with disgrace. That one--meaning Piso--has not dared even to
send home an account of his doings; and the other--Gabinius--has not had
his words credited by the Senate, nor any of his requests granted! He
Cicero, had hardly dared to hope for all this, but the gods had done it
for him! The most absurd passage is that in which he tells Piso that,
having lost his army--which he had done--he had brought back nothing in
safety but that "old impudent face of his."[32] Altogether it is a
tirade of abuse very inferior to Cicero's dignity. Le Clerc, the French
critic and editor, speaks the truth when he says, "Il faut avouer qu'il
manque surtout de moderation, et que la gravite d'un orateur consulaire
y fait trop souvent place a l'emportement d'un ennemi." It is, however,
full of life, and amusing as an expression of honest hatred. The reader
when reading it will of course remember that Roman manners allowed a
mode of expression among the upper classes which is altogether denied to
those among us who hope to be regarded as gentlemen.

The games in Pompey's theatre, to the preparation of which Cicero
alludes in his speech against Piso, are described by him with his usual
vivacity and humor in a letter written immediately after them to his
friend Marius. Pompey's games, with which he celebrated his second
Consulship, seem to have been divided between the magnificent theatre
which he had just built--fragments of which still remain to us--and the
"circus maximus." This letter from Cicero is very interesting, as
showing the estimation in which these games were held, or were supposed
to be held, by a Roman man of letters, and as giving us some description
of what was done on the occasion. Marius had not come to Rome to see
them, and Cicero writes as though his friend had despised them. Cicero
himself, having been in Rome, had of course witnessed them. To have been
in Rome and not to have seen them would have been quite out of the
question. Not to come to Rome from a distance was an eccentricity. He
congratulated Marius for not having come, whether it was that he was
ill, or that the whole thing was too despicable: "You in the early
morning have been looking out upon your view over the bay while we have
been staring at puppets half asleep. Most costly games, but I should
say--judging of you by myself--that they would have been quite revolting
to you. Poor AEsopus was there acting, but so unfitted by age that all
his friends could not but wish that he had desisted. Why should I tell
you of it all? The very costliness of the affair took away all the
pleasure. Six hundred mules on the stage in the acting of Clytemnestra,
or three thousand golden goblets in The Trojan Horse--what delight could
they give you? If your slave Protogenes was reading to you something--so
that it were not one of my speeches--you were better off at any rate
than we. There were two marvellous slaughterings of beasts which lasted
for five days. Nobody denies but that they were very grand. But what
pleasure can there be to a man of letters[33] when some weak human
creature is destroyed by a sturdy beast, or when some lonely animal is
pierced through by a hunting-spear. The last day was the day of
elephants, in which there could be no delight except to the vulgar
crowd. You could not but pity them, feeling that the poor brutes had
something in common with humanity." In these combats were killed twenty
elephants and two hundred lions. The bad taste and systematical
corruption of Rome had reached its acme when this theatre was opened and
these games displayed by Pompey.

He tells Atticus,[34] in a letter written about this time, that he is
obliged to write to him by the hand of a secretary; from which we gather
that such had not been, at any rate, his practice. He is every day in
the Forum, making speeches; and he had already composed the dialogues De
Oratore, and had sent them to Lentulus. Though he was no longer in
office, his time seems to have been as fully occupied as when he was
Praetor or Consul.

We have records of at least a dozen speeches, made B.C. 55 and B.C. 54,
between that against Piso and the next that is extant, which was
delivered in defence of Plancius. He defended Cispius, but Cispius was
convicted. He defended Caninius Gallus, of whom we may presume that he
was condemned and exiled, because Cicero found him at Athens on his way
to Cilicia, Athens being the place to which exiled Roman oligarchs
generally betook themselves.[35] In this letter to his young friend
Caelius he speaks of the pleasure he had in meeting with Caninius at
Athens; but in the letter to Marius which I have quoted he complains of
the necessity which has befallen him of defending the man. The heat of
the summer of this year he passed in the country, but on his return to
the city in November he found Crassus defending his old enemy Gabinius.
Gabinius had crept back from his province into the city, and had been
received with universal scorn and a shower of accusations. Cicero at
first neither accused nor defended him, but, having been called on as a
witness, seems to have been unable to refrain from something of the
severity with which he had treated Piso. There was at any rate a passage
of arms in which Gabinius called him a banished criminal.[36] The Senate
then rose as one body to do honor to their late exile. He was, however,
afterward driven by the expostulations of Pompey to defend the man. At
his first trial Gabinius was acquitted, but was convicted and banished
when Cicero defended him. Cicero suffered very greatly in the constraint
thus put upon him by Pompey, and refused Pompey till Caesar's request was
added. We can imagine that nothing was more bitter to him than the
obligation thus forced upon him. We have nothing of the speech left, but
can hardly believe that it was eloquent. From this, however, there rose
a reconciliation between Crassus and Cicero, both Caesar and Pompey
having found it to their interest to interfere. As a result of this,
early in the next year Cicero defended Crassus in the Senate, when an
attempt was made to rob the late Consul of his coveted mission to Syria.
Of what he did in this respect he boasts in a letter to Crassus,[37]
which, regarded from our point of view, would no doubt be looked upon as
base. He despised Crassus, and here takes credit for all the fine things
he had said of him; but we have no right to think that Cicero could have
been altogether unlike a Roman. He speaks also in the Senate on behalf
of the people of Tenedos, who had brought their immunities and
privileges into question by some supposed want of faith. All we know of
this speech is that it was spoken in vain. He pleaded against an Asiatic
king, Antiochus of Comagene, who was befriended by Pompey, but Cicero
seems to have laughed him out of some of his petty possessions.[38] He
spoke for the inhabitants of Reate on some question of water-privilege
against the Interamnates. Interamna we now know as Terne, where a modern
Pope made a lovely water-fall, and at the same time rectified the
water-privileges of the surrounding district. Cicero went down to its
pleasant Tempe, as he calls it, and stayed there awhile with one
Axius.[39] He returned thence to Rome to undertake some case for
Fonteius, and attended the games which Milo was giving, Milo having been
elected AEdile. Here we have a morsel of dramatic criticism on Antiphon
the actor and Arbuscula the actress, which reminds one of Pepys. Then he
defended Messius, then Drusus, then Scaurus. He mentions all these cases
in the same letter, but so slightly that we cannot trouble ourselves
with their details. We only feel that he was kept as busy as a London
barrister in full practice. He also defended Vatinius--that Vatinius
with whose iniquities he had been so indignant at the trial of Sextius.
He defended him twice at the instigation of Caesar; and he does not seem
to have suffered in doing so, as he had certainly done when called upon
to stand up and plead for his late consular enemy, Gabinius. Valerius
Maximus, a dull author, often quoted but seldom read, whose task it was
to give instances of all the virtues and vices produced by mankind,
refers to these pleadings for Gabinius and Vatinius as instances of an
almost divine forgiveness of injury.[40] I think we must seek for the
good, if good is to be discovered in the proceeding, in the presumed
strength which might be added to the Republic by friendly relations
between himself and Caesar.

[Sidenote: B.C. 54, aetat. 53.]

In the spring of the year we find Cicero writing to Caesar in apparently
great intimacy. He recommends to Caesar his young friend Trebatius, a
lawyer, who was going to Gaul in search of his fortune, and in doing so
he refers to a joking promise from Caesar that he would make another
friend, whom he had recommended, King of Gaul; or, if not that, foreman
at least to Lepta, his head of the mechanics. Lepta was an officer in
trust under Caesar, with whose name we become familiar in Cicero's
correspondence, though I do not remember that Caesar ever mentions him.
"Send me some one else that I may show my friendship," Caesar had said,
knowing well that Cicero was worth any price of the kind. Cicero
declares to Caesar that on hearing this he held up his hands in grateful
surprise, and on this account he had sent Trebatius. "Mi Caesar," he
says, writing with all affection; and then he praises Trebatius,
assuring Caesar that he does not recommend the young man loosely, as he
had some other young men who were worthless--such as Milo, for instance.
This results in much good done to Trebatius, though the young man at
first does not like the service with the army. He is a lawyer, and finds
the work in Gaul very rough. Cicero, who is anxious on his behalf,
laughs at him and bids him take the good things that come in his way. In
subsequent years Trebatius was made known to the world as the legal
pundit whom Horace pretends to consult as to the libellous nature of his
satires.[41]

In September of this year Cicero pleaded in court for his friend Cn.
Plancius, against whom there was brought an accusation that, in
canvassing and obtaining the office of AEdile, he had been guilty of
bribery. In all these accusations, which come before us as having been
either promoted or opposed by Cicero, there is not one in which the
reader sympathizes more strongly with the person accused than in this.
Plancius had shown Cicero during his banishment the affection of a
brother, or almost of a son. Plancius had taken him in and provided for
him in Macedonia, when to do so was illegal. Cicero now took great
delight in returning the favor. The reader of this oration cannot learn
from it that Plancius had in truth done anything illegal. The complaint
really made against him was that he, filling the comparatively humble
position of a knight, had ventured to become the opposing candidate of
such a gallant young aristocrat as M. Juventius Laterensis, who was
beaten at this election, and now brought this action in revenge. There
is no tearing of any enemy to tatters in this oration, but there is much
pathos, and, as was usual with Cicero at this period of his life, an
inordinate amount of self-praise. There are many details as to the way
in which the tribes voted at elections, which the patient and curious
student will find instructive, but which will probably be caviare to all
who are not patient and curious students. There are a few passages of
peculiar force. Addressing himself to the rival of Plancius, he tells
Laterensis that, even though the people might have judged badly in
selecting Plancius, it was not the less his duty to accept the judgment
of the people.[42] Say that the people ought not to have done so; but it
should have been sufficient for him that they had done so. Then he
laughs with a beautiful irony at the pretensions of the accuser. "Let us
suppose that it was so," he says.[43] "Let no one whose family has not
soared above praetorian honors contest any place with one of consular
family. Let no mere knight stand against one with praetorian relations."
In such a case there would be no need of the people to vote at all.
Farther on he gives his own views as to the honors of the State in
language that is very grand. "It has," he says, "been my first endeavor
to deserve the high rank of the State; my second, to have been thought
to deserve it. The rank itself has been but the third object of my
desires."[44] Plancius was acquitted--it seems to us quite as a matter
of course.

In this perhaps the most difficult period of his existence, when the
organized conspiracy of the day had not as yet overturned the landmarks
of the constitution, he wrote a long letter to his friend Lentulus,[45]
him who had been prominent as Consul in rescuing him from his exile, and
who was now Proconsul in Cilicia. Lentulus had probably taxed him, after
some friendly fashion, with going over from the "optimates" or
Senatorial party to that of the conspirators Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus.
He had been called a deserter for having passed in his earlier years
from the popular party to that of the Senate, and now the leading
optimates were doubtful of him--whether he was not showing himself too
well inclined to do the bidding of the democratic leaders. The one
accusation has been as unfair as the other. In this letter he reminds
Lentulus that a captain in making a port cannot always sail thither in a
straight line, but must tack and haul and use a slant of wind as he can
get it. Cicero was always struggling to make way against a head-wind,
and was running hither and thither in his attempt, in a manner most
perplexing to those who were looking on without knowing the nature of
the winds; but his port was always there, clearly visible to him, if he
could only reach it. That port was the Old Republic, with its well-worn
and once successful institutions. It was not to be "fetched." The winds
had become too perverse, and the entrance had become choked with sand.
But he did his best to fetch it; and, though he was driven hither and
thither in his endeavors, it should be remembered that to lookers-on
such must ever be the appearance of those who are forced to tack about
in search of their port.

I have before me Mr. Forsyth's elaborate and very accurate account of
this letter. "Now, however," says the biographer, "the future lay dark
before him; and not the most sagacious politician at Rome could have
divined the series of events--blundering weakness on the one side and
unscrupulous ambition on the other--which led to the Dictatorship of
Caesar and the overthrow of the constitution." Nothing can be more true.
Cicero was probably the most sagacious politician in Rome; and he,
though he did understand much of the weakness--and, it should be added,
of the greed--of his own party, did not foresee the point which Caesar
was destined to reach, and which was now probably fixed before Caesar's
own eyes. But I cannot agree with Mr. Forsyth in the result at which he
had arrived when he quoted a passage from one of the notes affixed by
Melmoth to his translation of this letter: "It was fear alone that
determined his resolution; and having once already suffered in the cause
of liberty, he did not find himself to be disposed to be twice its
martyr." I should not have thought these words worthy of refutation had
they not been backed by Mr. Forsyth. How did Cicero show his fear? Had
he feared--as indeed there was cause enough, when it was difficult for a
leading man to keep his throat uncut amid the violence of the times, or
a house over his head--might he not have made himself safe by accepting
Caesar's offers? A Proconsul out of Rome was safe enough, but he would
not be a Proconsul out of Rome till he could avoid it no longer. When
the day of danger came, he joined Pompey's army against Caesar, doubting,
not for his life but for his character, as to what might be the best for
the Republic. He did not fear when Caesar was dead and only Antony
remained. When the hour came in which his throat had to be cut, he did
not fear. When a man has shown such a power of action in the face of
danger as Cicero displayed at forty-four in his Consulship, and again
at sixty-four in his prolonged struggle with Antony, it is contrary to
nature that he should have been a coward at fifty-four.

And all the evidence of the period is opposed to this theory of
cowardice. There was nothing special for him to fear when Caesar was in
Gaul, and Crassus about to start for Syria, and Pompey for his
provinces. Such was the condition of Rome, social and political, that
all was uncertain and all was dangerous. But men had become used to
danger, and were anxious only, in the general scramble, to get what
plunder might be going. Unlimited plunder was at Cicero's
command--provinces, magistracies, abnormal lieutenancies--but he took
nothing. He even told his friend in joke that he would have liked to be
an augur, and the critics have thereupon concluded that he was ready to
sell his country for a trifle. But he took nothing when all others were
helping themselves.

The letter to Lentulus is well worth studying, if only as evidence of
the thoughtfulness with which he weighed every point affecting his own
character. He did wish to stand well with the "optimates," of whom
Lentulus was one. He did wish to stand well with Caesar, and with Pompey,
who at this time was Caesar's jackal. He did find the difficulty of
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. He must have surely
learned at last to hate all compromise. But he had fallen on hard times,
and the task before him was impossible. If, however, his hands were
clean when those of others were dirty, and his motives patriotic while
those of others were selfish, so much ought to be said for him.

In the same year he defended Rabirius Postumus, and in doing so carried
on the purpose which he had been instigated to undertake by Caesar in
defending Gabinius. This Rabirius was the nephew of him whom ten years
before Cicero had defended when accused of having killed Saturninus. He
was a knight, and, as was customary with the Equites, had long been
engaged in the pursuit of trade, making money by lending money, and
such like. He had, it seems, been a successful man, but, in an evil time
for himself, had come across King Ptolemy Auletes when there was a
question of restoring that wretched sovereign to the throne of Egypt. As
Cicero was not himself much exercised in this matter, I have not
referred to the king and his affairs, wishing as far as possible to
avoid questions which concern the history of Rome rather than the life
of Cicero; but the affairs of this banished king continually come up in
the records of this time. Pompey had befriended Auletes, and Gabinius,
when Proconsul in Syria, had succeeded in restoring the king to his
throne--no doubt in obedience to Pompey, though not in obedience to the
Senate. Auletes, when in Rome, had required large sums of
money--suppliant kings when in the city needed money to buy venal
Senators--and Rabirius had supplied him. The profits to be made from
suppliant kings when in want of money were generally very great, but
this king seems so have got hold of all the money which Rabirius
possessed, so that the knight-banker found himself obliged to become one
of the king's suite when the king went back to take possession of his
kingdom. In no other way could he hang on to the vast debt that was
owing to him. In Egypt he found himself compelled to undergo various
indignities. He became no better than a head-servant among the king's
servants. One of the charges brought against him was that he, a Roman
knight, had allowed himself to be clothed in the half-feminine garb of
an Oriental attendant upon a king. It was also brought against him as
part of the accusation that he had bribed, or had endeavored to bribe, a
certain Senator. The crime nominally laid to the charge of Rabirius was
"de repetundis"--for extorting money in the position of a magistrate.
The money alluded to had been, in truth, extorted by Gabinius from
Ptolemy Auletes as the price paid for his restoration, and had come in
great part probably from out of the pocket of Rabirius himself. Gabinius
had been condemned, and ordered to repay the money. He had none to
repay, and the claim, by some clause in the law to that effect was
transferred to Rabirius as his agent. Rabirius was accused as though he
had extorted the money--which he had in fact lost, but the spirit of the
accusation lay in the idea that he, a Roman knight, had basely subjected
himself to an Egyptian king. That Rabirius had been base and sordid
there can be no doubt. That he was ruined by his transaction with
Auletes is equally certain. It is supposed that he was convicted. He was
afterward employed by Caesar, who, when in power, may have recalled him
from banishment. There are many passages in the oration to which I would
fain refer the reader had I space to do so. I will name only one in
which Cicero endeavors to ingratiate himself with his audience by
referring to the old established Roman hatred of kings: "Who is there
among us who, though he may not have tried them himself, does not know
the ways of kings? 'Listen to me here!' 'Obey my word at once!' 'Speak a
word more than you are told, and you'll see what you'll get!' 'Do that a
second time, and you die!' We should read of such things and look at
them from a distance, not only for our pleasure, but that we may know of
what we have to be aware, and what we ought to avoid."[46]

There is a letter written in this year to Curio, another young friend
such as Caelius, of whom I have spoken. Curio also was clever,
dissipated, extravagant, and unscrupulous. But at this period of his
life he was attached to Cicero, who was not indifferent to the services
which might accrue to him from friends who might be violent and
unscrupulous on the right side.

[Sidenote: B.C. 53, aetat. 54.]

This letter was written to secure Curio's services for another friend
not quite so young, but equally attached, and perhaps of all the Romans
of the time the most unscrupulous and the most violent. This friend was
Milo, who was about to stand for the Consulship of the following year.
Curio was on his road from Asia Minor, where he had been Quaestor, and is
invited by Cicero in language peculiarly pressing to be the leader of
Milo's party on the occasion.[47] We cannot but imagine that the winds
which Curio was called upon to govern were the tornadoes and squalls
which were to be made to rage in the streets of Rome to the great
discomfiture of Milo's enemies during his canvass. To such a state had
Rome come, that for the first six months of this year there were no
Consuls, an election being found to be impossible. Milo had been the
great opponent of Clodius in the city rows which had taken place
previous to the exile of Cicero. The two men are called by Mommsen the
Achilles and the Hector of the streets.[48] Cicero was of course on
Milo's side, as Milo was an enemy to Clodius. In this matter his feeling
was so strong that he declares to Curio that he does not think that the
welfare and fortunes of one man were ever so dear to another as now were
those of Milo to him. Milo's success is the only object of interest he
has in the world. This is interesting to us now as a prelude to the
great trial which was to take place in the next year, when Milo, instead
of being elected Consul, was convicted of murder.

In the two previous years Caesar had made two invasions into Britain, in
the latter of which Quintus Cicero had accompanied him. Cicero in
various letters alludes to this undertaking, but barely gives it the
importance which we, as Britons, think should have been attached to so
tremendous an enterprise. There might perhaps be some danger, he
thought, in crossing the seas, and encountering the rocky shores of the
island, but there was nothing to be got worth the getting. He tells
Atticus that he can hardly expect any slaves skilled either in music or
letters,[49] and he suggests to Trebatius that, as he will certainly
find neither gold nor slaves, he had better put himself into a British
chariot and come back in it as soon as possible.[50] In this year Caesar
reduced the remaining tribes of Gaul, and crossed the Rhine a second
time. It was his sixth year in Gaul, and men had learned to know what
was his nature. Cicero had discovered his greatness, as also Pompey must
have done, to his great dismay; and he had himself discovered what he
was himself; but two accidents occurred in this year which were perhaps
as important in Roman history as the continuance of Caesar's success.
Julia, Caesar's daughter and Pompey's wife, died in childbed. She seems
to have been loved by all, and had been idolized from the time of the
marriage by her uxorious husband, who was more than twenty-four years
her senior. She certainly had been a strong bond of union between Caesar
and Pompey; so much so that we are surprised that such a feeling should
have been so powerful among the Romans of the time. "Concordiae pignus,"
a "pledge of friendship," she is called by Paterculus, who tells us in
the same sentence that the Triumvirate had no other bond to hold it
together.[51] Whether the friendship might have remained valid had Julia
lived we cannot say; but she died, and the two friends became enemies.
From the moment of Julia's death there was no Triumvirate.

The other accident was equally fatal to the bond of union which had
bound the three men together. Late in the year, after his Consulship,
B.C. 54, Crassus had gone to his Syrian government with the double
intention of increasing his wealth and rivalling the military glories of
Caesar and Pompey. In the following year he became an easy victim to
Eastern deceit, and was destroyed by the Parthians, with his son and the
greater part of the Roman army which had been intrusted to him.[52] We
are told that Crassus at last destroyed himself. I doubt, however,
whether there was enough of patriotism alive among Romans at the time to
create the feeling which so great a loss and so great a shame should
have occasioned. As far as we can learn, the destruction of Crassus and
his legions did not occasion so much thought in Rome as the breaking up
of the Triumvirate.

Cicero's daughter Tullia was now a second time without a husband. She
was the widow of her first husband Piso; had then, B.C. 56, married
Crassipes, and had been divorced. Of him we have heard nothing, except
that he was divorced. A doubt has been thrown on the fact whether she
was in truth ever married to Crassipes. We learn from letters, both to
his brother and to Atticus, that Cicero was contented with the match,
when it was made, and did his best to give the lady a rich dowry.[53]

In this year Cicero was elected into the College of Augurs, to fill the
vacancy made by the death of young Crassus, who had been killed with his
father in Parthia. The reader will remember that he had in a joking
manner expressed a desire for the office. He now obtained it without any
difficulty, and certainly without any sacrifice of his principle. It had
formerly been the privilege of the augurs to fill up the vacancies in
their own college, but the right had been transferred to the people. It
was now conferred upon Cicero without serious opposition.




CHAPTER III.

_MILO._


[Sidenote: B.C. 52, aetat. 55.]

The preceding year came to an end without any consular election. It was
for the election expected to have taken place that the services of Curio
had been so ardently bespoken by Cicero on behalf of Milo. In order to
impede the election Clodius accused Milo of being in debt, and Cicero
defended him. What was the nature of the accusation we do not exactly
know. "An inquiry into Milo's debts!" Such was the name given to the
pleadings as found with the fragments which have come to us.[54] In
these, which are short and not specially interesting, there is hardly a
word as to Milo's debts; but much abuse of Clodius, with some praise of
Cicero himself, and some praise also of Pompey, who was so soon to take
up arms against Cicero, not metaphorically, but in grim reality of sword
and buckler, in this matter of his further defence of Milo. We cannot
believe that Milo's debts stood in the way of his election, but we know
that at last he was not elected. Early in the year Clodius was killed,
and then, at the suggestion of Bibulus--whom the reader will remember as
the colleague of Caesar in the Consulship when Caesar reduced his
colleague to ridiculous impotence by his violence--Pompey was elected as
sole Consul, an honor which befell no other Roman.[55] The condition of
Rome must have been very low when such a one as Bibulus thought that no
order was possible except by putting absolute power into the hands of
him who had so lately been the partner of Caesar in the conspiracy which
had not even yet been altogether brought to an end. That Bibulus acted
under constraint is no doubt true. It would be of little matter now from
what cause he acted, were it not that his having taken a part in this
utter disruption of the Roman form of government is one proof the more
that there was no longer any hope for the Republic.

But the story of the killing of Clodius must be told at some length,
because it affords the best-drawn picture that we can get of the sort of
violence with which Roman affairs had to be managed; and also because it
gave rise to one of the choicest morsels of forensic eloquence that have
ever been prepared by the intellect and skill of an advocate. It is well
known that the speech to which I refer was not spoken, and could not
have been spoken, in the form in which it has reached us. We do not know
what part of it was spoken and what was omitted; but we do know that the
Pro Milone exists for us, and that it lives among the glories of
language as a published oration. I find, on looking through the
Institutio Oratoria of Quintilian, that in his estimation the Pro Milone
was the first in favor of all our author's orations--"facile princeps,"
if we may collect the critic's ideas on the subject from the number of
references made and examples taken. Quintilian's work consists of
lessons on oratory, which he supports by quotations from the great
orators, both Greek and Latin, with whose speeches he has made himself
familiar. Cicero was to him the chief of orators; so much so that we may
almost say that Quintilian's Institutio is rather a lecture in honor of
Cicero than a general lesson. With the Roman school-master's method of
teaching for the benefit of the Roman youth of the day we have no
concern at present, but we can gather from the references made by him
the estimation in which various orations were held by others, as well as
by him, in his day. The Pro Cluentio, which is twice as long as the Pro
Milone, and which has never, I think, been a favorite with modern
readers, is quoted very frequently by Quintilian. It is the second in
the list. Quintilian makes eighteen references to it; but the Pro Milone
is brought to the reader's notice thirty-seven times. Quintilian was
certainly a good critic; and he understood how to recommend himself to
his own followers by quoting excellences which had already been
acknowledged as the best which Roman literature had afforded.

Those who have gone before me in writing the life of Cicero have, in
telling their story as to Milo, very properly gone to Asconius for their
details. As I must do so too, I shall probably not diverge far from
them. Asconius wrote as early as in the reign of Claudius, and had in
his possession the annals of the time which have not come to us. Among
other writings he could refer to those books of Livy which have since
been lost. He seems to have done his work as commentator with no glow of
affection and with no touch of animosity, either on one side or on the
other. There can be no reason for doubting the impartiality of Asconius
as to Milo's trial, and every reason for trusting his knowledge of the
facts.

[Sidenote: B.C. 52, aetat. 55.]

When the year began, no Consuls had been chosen, and an interrex became
necessary--one interrex after another--to make the election of Consuls
possible in accordance with the forms of the constitution. These men
remained in office each for five days, and it was customary that an
election which had been delayed should be completed within the days of
the second or third interrex. There were three candidates, Milo,
Hypsaeus, and Q. Metellus Scipio, by all of whom bribery and violence
were used with open and unblushing profligacy. Cicero was wedded to
Milo's cause, as we have seen from his letter to Curio, but it does not
appear that he himself took any active part in the canvass. The duties
to be done required rather the services of a Curio. Pompey, on the other
hand, was nearly as warmly engaged in favor of Hypsaeus and Scipio,
though in the turn which affairs took he seems to have been willing
enough to accept the office himself when it came in his way. Milo and
Clodius had often fought in the streets of Rome, each ruffian attended
by a band of armed combatants, so that in audacity, as Asconius says,
they were equal.

On the 20th of January Milo was returning to Rome from Lanuvium, where
he had been engaged, as chief magistrate of the town, in nominating a
friend for the municipality. He was in a carriage with his wife Fausta,
and with a friend, and was followed, as was his wont, by a large band of
armed men, among whom were two noted gladiators, Eudamus and Birria. At
Bovillae, near the temple of the Bona Dea, his cortege was met by Clodius
on horseback, who had with him some friends, and thirty slaves armed
with swords. Milo's attendants were nearly ten times as numerous. It is
not supposed by Asconius that either of the two men expected the
meeting, which may be presumed to have been fortuitous. Milo and Clodius
passed each other without words or blows--scowling, no doubt; but the
two gladiators who were at the end of the file of Milo's men began to
quarrel with certain of the followers of Clodius. Clodius interfered,
and was stabbed in the shoulder by Birria; then he was carried to a
neighboring tavern while the fight was in progress. Milo, having heard
that his enemy was there concealed--thinking that he would be greatly
relieved in his career by the death of such a foe, and that the risk
should be run though the consequences might be grave--caused Clodius to
be dragged out from the tavern and slaughtered. On what grounds Asconius
has attributed these probable thoughts to Milo we do not know. That the
order was given the jury believed, or at any rate affected to believe.

Up to this moment Milo was no more guilty than Clodius, and neither of
them, probably, guilty of more than their usual violence. Partisans on
the two sides endeavored to show that each had prepared an ambush for
the other, but there is no evidence that it was so. There is no
evidence existing now as to this dragging out of Clodius that he might
be murdered; but we know what was the general opinion of Rome at the
time and we may conclude that it was right. The order probably was given
by Milo--as it would have been given by Clodius in similar
circumstances--at the spur of the moment, when Milo allowed his passion
to get the better of his judgment.

The thirty servants of Clodius were either killed or had run away and
hidden themselves, when a certain Senator, S. Tedius, coming that way,
found the dead body on the road, and carrying it into the city on a
litter deposited it in the dead man's house. Before nightfall the death
of Clodius was known through the city, and the body was surrounded by a
crowd of citizens of the lower order and of slaves. With them was
Fulvia, the widow, exposing the dead man's wounds and exciting the
people to sympathy. On the morrow there was an increased crowd, among
whom were Senators and Tribunes, and the body was carried out into the
Forum, and the people were harangued by the Tribunes as to the horror of
the deed that had been done. From thence the body was borne into the
neighboring Senate-house[56] by the crowd, under the leading of Sextus
Clodius, a cousin of the dead man. Here it was burnt with a great fire
fed with the desks and benches, and even with the books and archives
which were stored there. Not only was the Senate-house destroyed by the
flames, but a temple also that was close to it. Milo's house was
attacked, and was defended by arms. We are made to understand that all
Rome was in a state of violence and anarchy. The Consuls' fasces had
been put away in one of the temples--that of Venus Libitina: these the
people seized and carried to the house of Pompey, declaring that he
should be Dictator, and he alone Consul, mingling anarchy with a
marvellous reverence for legal forms.

But there arose in the city a feeling of great anger at the burning of
the Senate-house, which for a while seemed to extinguish the sympathy
for Clodius, so that Milo, who was supposed to have taken himself off,
came back to Rome and renewed his canvass, distributing bribes to all
the citizens--"millia assuum"--perhaps something over ten pounds to
every man. Both he and Caelius harangued the people, and declared that
Clodius had begun the fray. But no Consuls could be elected while the
city was in such a state, and Pompey, having been desired to protect the
Republic in the usual form, collected troops from all Italy.
Preparations were made for trying Milo, and the friends of each party
demanded that the slaves of the other party should be put to the torture
and examined as witnesses; but every possible impediment and legal
quibble was used by the advocates on either side. Hortensius, who was
engaged for Milo, declared that Milo's slaves had all been made free men
and could not be touched. Stories were told backward and forward of the
cruelty and violence on each side. Milo made an offer to Pompey to
abandon his canvass in favor of Hypsaeus, if Pompey would accept this as
a compromise. Pompey answered, with the assumed dignity that was common
to him, that he was not the Roman people, and that it was not for him to
interfere.

It was then that Pompey was created sole Consul at the instigation of
Bibulus. He immediately caused a new law to be passed for the management
of the trial which was coming on, and when he was opposed in this by
Caelius, declared that if necessary he would carry his purpose by force
of arms. Pretending to be afraid of Milo's violence, he remained at
home, and on one occasion dismissed the Senate. Afterward, when Milo
entered the Senate, he was accused by a Senator present of having come
thither with arms hidden beneath his toga; whereupon he lifted his toga
and showed that there were none. Asconius tells us that upon this
Cicero declared that all the other charges made against the accused were
equally false. This is the first word of Cicero's known to us in the
matter.

Two or three men declared that because they had been present at the
death of Clodius they had been kidnapped and kept close prisoners by
Milo; and the story, whether true or false, did Milo much harm. It seems
that Milo became again very odious to the people, and that their hatred
was for the time extended to Cicero as Milo's friend and proposed
advocate. Pompey seems to have shared the feeling, and to have declared
that violence was contemplated against himself. "But such was Cicero's
constancy," says Asconius, "that neither the alienation of the people
nor the suspicions of Pompey, no fear of what might befall himself at
the trial, no dread of the arms which were used openly against Milo,
could hinder him from going on with the defence, although it was within
his power to avoid the quarrel with the people and to renew his
friendship for Pompey by abstaining from it." Domitius AEnobarbus was
chosen as President, and the others elected as judges were, we are told,
equally good men. Milo was accused both of violence and bribery, but was
able to arrange that the former case should be tried first. The method
of the trial is explained. Fifty-one judges or jurymen were at last
chosen. Schola was the first witness examined, and he exaggerated as
best he could the horror of the murder. When Marcellus, as advocate for
Milo, began to examine Schola, the people were so violent that the
President was forced to protect Marcellus by taking him within the
barrier of the judges' seats. Milo also was obliged to demand protection
within the court. Pompey, then sitting at the Treasury, and frightened
by the clamor, declared that he himself would come down with troops on
the next day. After the hearing of the evidence the Tribune Munatius
Plancus harangued the people, and begged them to come in great numbers
on the morrow so that Milo might not be allowed to escape. On the
following day, which was the 11th of April, all the taverns were shut.
Pompey filled the Forum and every approach to it with his soldiers. He
himself remained seated at the Treasury as before, surrounded by a
picked body of men. At the trial on this day, when three of the
advocates against Milo had spoken--Appius, Marc Antony, and Valerius
Nepos--Cicero stood up to defend the criminal. Brutus had prepared an
oration declaring that the killing of Clodius was in itself a good deed,
and praiseworthy on behalf of the Republic; but to this speech Cicero
refused his consent, arguing that a man could not legally be killed
simply because his death was to be desired, and Brutus's speech was not
spoken. Witnesses had declared that Milo had lain in wait for Clodius.
This Cicero alleged to be false, contending that Clodius had lain in
wait for Milo, and he endeavored to make this point and no other. "But
it is proved," says Asconius, "that neither of the men had any design of
violence on that day; that they met by chance, and that the killing of
Clodius had come from the quarrelling of the slaves. It was well known
that each had often threatened the death of the other. Milo's slaves had
no doubt been much more numerous than those of Clodius when the meeting
took place; but those of Clodius had been very much better prepared for
fighting. When Cicero began to address the judges, the partisans of
Clodius could not be induced to abstain from riot even by fear of the
soldiery; so that he was unable to speak with his accustomed firmness."

Such is the account as given by Asconius, who goes on to tell us that
out of the fifty-one judges thirty-eight condemned Milo and only
thirteen were for acquitting him. Milo, therefore, was condemned, and
had to retire at once into exile at Marseilles.

It seems to have been acknowledged by the judges that Clodius had not
been wounded at first by any connivance on the part of Milo; but they
thought that Milo did direct that Clodius should be killed during the
fight which the slaves had commenced among themselves. As far as we can
take any interest in the matter we must suppose that it was so; but we
are forced to agree with Brutus that the killing of Clodius was in
itself a good deed done--and we have to acknowledge at the same time
that the killing of Milo would have been as good. Though we may doubt as
to the manner in which Clodius was killed, there are points in the
matter as to which we may be quite assured. Milo was condemned, not for
killing Clodius, but because he was opposed at the moment to the line of
politics which Pompey thought would be most conducive to his own
interests. Milo was condemned, and the death of the wretched Clodius
avenged, because Pompey had desired Hypsaeus to be Consul and Milo had
dared to stand in his way. An audience was refused to Cicero, not from
any sympathy with Clodius, but because it suited Pompey that Milo should
be condemned. Could Cicero have spoken the words which afterward were
published, the jury might have hesitated and the criminal might have
been acquitted. Caesar was absent, and Pompey found himself again lifted
into supreme power--for a moment. Though no one in Rome had insulted
Pompey as Clodius had done, though no one had so fought for Pompey as
Cicero had done, still it suited Pompey to avenge Clodius and to punish
Cicero for having taken Milo's part in regard to the consulship. Milo,
after his condemnation for the death of Clodius, was condemned in three
subsequent trials, one following the other almost instantly, for
bribery, for secret conspiracy, and again for violence in the city. He
was absent, but there was no difficulty in obtaining his conviction.
When he was gone one Saufeius, a friend of his, who had been with him
during the tumult, was put upon his trial for his share in the death of
Clodius. He at any rate was known to have been guilty in the matter. He
had been leader of the party who attacked the tavern, had killed the
tavern-keeper, and had dragged out Clodius to execution. But Saufeius
was twice acquitted. Had there been any hope of law-abiding tranquillity
in Rome, it might have been well that Clodius should be killed and Milo
banished. As it was, neither the death of the one nor the banishment of
the other could avail anything. The pity of it was--the pity--that such
a one as Cicero, a man with such intellect, such ambition, such
sympathies, and such patriotism, should have been brought to fight on
such an arena.

[Sidenote: B.C. 52, aetat. 55.]

We have in this story a graphic and most astounding picture of the Rome
of the day. No Consuls had been or could be elected, and the system by
which "interreges" had been enabled to superintend the election of their
successors in lieu of the Consuls of the expiring year had broken down.
Pompey had been made sole Consul in an informal manner, and had taken
upon himself all the authority of a Dictator in levying troops. Power in
Rome seems at the moment to have been shared between him and bands of
gladiators, but he too had succeeded in arming himself, and as the
Clodian faction was on his side, he was for a while supreme. For law by
this time he could have but little reverence, having been partner with
Caesar in the so-called Triumvirate for the last eight years. But yet he
had no aptitude for throwing the law altogether on one side, and making
such a coup-de-main as was now and again within his power. Beyond Pompey
there was at this time no power in Rome, except that of the gladiators,
and the owners of the gladiators, who were each intent on making plunder
out of the Empire. There were certain men, such as were Bibulus and
Cato, who considered themselves to be "optimates"--leading citizens who
believed in the Republic, and were no doubt anxious to maintain the
established order of things--as we may imagine the dukes and earls are
anxious in these days of ours. But they were impotent and bad men of
business, and as a body were too closely wedded to their "fish
ponds"--by which Cicero means their general luxuries and extravagances.
In the bosoms of these men there was no doubt an eager desire to
perpetuate a Republic which had done so much for them, and a courage
sufficient for the doing of some great deed, if the great deed would
come in their way. They went to Pharsalia, and Cato marched across the
deserts of Libya. They slew Caesar, and did some gallant fighting
afterward; but they were like a rope of sand, and had among them no
fitting leader and no high purpose.

Outside of these was Cicero, who certainly was not a fitting leader when
fighting was necessary, and who as to politics in general was fitted
rather by noble aspirations than supported by fixed purposes. We are
driven to wonder that there should have been, at such a period and among
such a people, aspirations so noble joined with so much vanity of
expression. Among Romans he stands the highest, because of all Romans he
was the least Roman. He had begun with high resolves, and had acted up
to them. Among all the Quaestors, AEdiles, Praetors, and Consuls Rome had
known, none had been better, none honester, none more patriotic. There
had come up suddenly in those days a man imbued with the unwonted idea
that it behooved him to do his duty to the State according to the best
of his lights--no Cincinnatus, no Decius, no Camillus, no Scipio, no
pretentious follower of those half-mythic heroes, no demigod struggling
to walk across the stage of life enveloped in his toga and resolved to
impose on all eyes by the assumption of a divine dignity, but one who at
every turn was conscious of his human duty, and anxious to do it to the
best of his human ability. He did it; and we have to acknowledge that
the conceit of doing it overpowered him. He mistook the feeling of
people around him, thinking that they too would be carried away by their
admiration of his conduct. Up to the day on which he descended from his
Consul's seat duty was paramount with him. Then gradually there came
upon him the conviction that duty, though it had been paramount with
him, did not weigh so very much with others. He had been lavish in his
worship of Pompey, thinking that Pompey, whom he had believed in his
youth to be the best of citizens, would of all men be the truest to the
Republic. Pompey had deceived him, but he could not suddenly give up
his idol. Gradually we see that there fell upon him a dread that the
great Roman Republic was not the perfect institution which he had
fancied. In his early days Chrysogonus had been base, and Verres, and
Oppianicus, and Catiline; but still, to his idea, the body of the Roman
Republic had been sound. But when he had gone out from his Consulship,
with resolves strung too high that he would remain at Rome, despising
provinces and plunder, and be as it were a special providence to the
Republic, gradually he fell from his high purpose, finding that there
were no Romans such as he had conceived them to be. Then he fell away
and became the man who could condescend to waste his unequalled
intellect in attacking Piso, in praising himself, and in defending Milo.
The glory of his active life was over when his Consulship was done--the
glory was over, with the exception of that to come from his final
struggle with Antony--but the work by which his immortality was to be
achieved was yet before him. I think that after defending Milo he must
have acknowledged to himself that all partisan fighting in Rome was
mean, ignoble, and hollow. With the Senate-house and its archives burnt
as a funeral pile for Clodius, and the Forum in which he had to plead
lined with soldiers who stopped him by their clang of arms instead of
protecting him in his speech, it must have been acknowledged by Cicero
that the old Republic was dead, past all hope of resurrection. He had
said so often to Atticus; but men say words in the despondency of the
moment which they do not wish to have accepted as their established
conviction. In such humor Cicero had written to his friend; but now it
must have occurred to him that his petulant expressions were becoming
only too true. When instigating Curio to canvass for Milo, and defending
Milo as though it had been a good thing for a Roman nobleman to travel
in the neighborhood of the city with an army at his heels, he must have
ceased to believe even in himself as a Roman statesman.

In the oration which we possess--which we must teach ourselves to
regard as altogether different from that which Cicero had been able to
pronounce among Pompey's soldiers and the Clodian rabble--the reader is
astonished by the magnificence of the language in which a case so bad in
itself could be enveloped, and is made to feel that had he been on the
jury, and had such an address been made to him, he would certainly have
voted for an acquittal. The guilt or innocence of Milo as to the murder
really turned on the point whether he did or did not direct that Clodius
should be dragged out of the tavern and slain; but here in this oration
three points are put forward, in each of which it was within the scope
of the orator to make the jury believe that Clodius had in truth
prepared an ambuscade, that Clodius was of all Romans the worst, and
that Milo was loyal and true, and, in spite of a certain fierceness of
disposition, a good citizen at heart. We agree with Milo, who declared,
when banished, that he would never have been able to enjoy the fish of
Marseilles had Cicero spoken in the Forum the speech which he afterward
composed.

"I would not remind you," he says, "of Milo's Tribuneship, nor of all
his service to the State, unless I could make plain to you as daylight
the ambush which on that day was laid for him by his enemy. I will not
pray you to forgive a crime simply because Milo has been a good citizen;
nor, because the death of Clodius has been a blessing to us all, will I
therefore ask you to regard it as a deed worthy of praise. But if the
fact of the ambush be absolutely made evident, then I beseech you at any
rate to grant that a man may lawfully defend himself from the arrogance
and from the arms of his enemies."[57] From this may be seen the nature
of the arguments used. For the language the reader must turn to the
original. That it will be worth his while to do so he has the evidence
of all critics--especially that of Milo when he was eating sardines in
his exile, and of Quintilian when he was preparing his lessons on
rhetoric. It seems that Cicero had been twitted with using something of
a dominating tyranny in the Senate--which would hardly have been true,
as the prevailing influence of the moment was that of Pompey--but he
throws aside the insinuation very grandly. "Call it tyranny if you
please--if you think it that, rather than some little authority which
has grown from my services to the State, or some favor among good men
because of my rank. Call it what you will, while I am able to use it for
the defence of the good against the violence of the evil-minded."[58]
Then he describes the fashion in which these two men travelled on the
occasion--the fashion of travelling as it suited him to describe it. "If
you did not hear the details of the story, but could see simply a
picture of all that occurred, would it not appear which of them had
planned the attack, which of them was ignorant of all evil? One of them
was seated in his carriage, clad in his cloak, and with his wife beside
him. His garments, his clients, his companions all show how little
prepared he was for fighting. Then, as to the other, why was he leaving
his country-house so suddenly? Why should he do this so late in the
evening? Why did he travel so slowly at this time of the year? He was
going, he says, to Pompey's villa. Not that he might see Pompey, because
he knew that Pompey was at Alsium. Did he want to see the villa? He had
been there a thousand times. Why all this delay, and turning backward
and forward? Because he would not leave the spot till Milo had come up.
And now compare this ruffian's mode of travelling with that of Milo. It
has been the constant custom with Clodius to have his wife with him, but
now she was not there. He has always been in a carriage, but now he was
on horseback. His young Greek sybarites have ever been with him, even
when he went as far as Tuscany; on this occasion there were no such
trifles in his company. Milo, with whom such companions were not usual,
had his wife's singing-boys with him and a bevy of female slaves.
Clodius, who usually never moved without a crowd of prostitutes at his
heels, now had no one with him but men picked for this work in
hand."[59] What a picture we have here of the manner in which noble
Romans were wont to move about the city and the suburbs! We may imagine
that the singing-boys of Milo's wife were quite as bad as the Greek
attendants in whom Clodius usually rejoiced. Then he asks a question as
to Pompey full of beautiful irony. If Pompey could bring back Clodius
from the dead--Pompey, who is so fond of him; Pompey, who is so
powerful, so fortunate, so capable of all things; Pompey, who would be
so glad to do it because of his love for the man--do you not know that
on behalf of the Republic he would leave him down among the ghosts where
he is?[60] There is a delightful touch of satire in this when we
remember how odious Clodius had been to Pompey in days not long gone by,
and how insolent.

The oration is ended by histrionic effects in language which would have
been marvellous had they ever been spoken, but which seem to be
incredible to us when we know that they were arranged for publication
when the affair was over. "O me wretched! O me unhappy!"[61] But these
attempts at translation are all vain. The student who wishes to
understand what may be the effect of Latin words thrown into this
choicest form should read the Milo.

We have very few letters from Cicero in this year--four only, I think,
and they are of no special moment. In one of them he recommends Avianus
to Titus Titius, a lieutenant then serving under Pompey.[62] In this he
is very anxious to induce Titius to let Avianus know all the good
things that Cicero had said of him. In our times we sometimes send our
letters of introduction open by the hands of the person introduced, so
that he may himself read his own praise; but the Romans did not scruple
to ask that this favor might be done for them. "Do me this favor.
Titius, of being kind to Avianus; but do me also the greater favor of
letting Avianus know that I have asked you." What Cicero did to Titius
other noble Romans did in their communications with their friends in the
provinces. In another letter to Marius he expresses his great joy at the
condemnation of that Munatius Plancus who had been Tribune when Clodius
was killed. Plancus had harangued the people, exciting them against Milo
and against Cicero, and had led to the burning of the Senate-house and
of the temple next door. For this Plancus could not be accused during
his year of office, but he had been put upon his trial when that year
was over. Pompey had done his best to save him, but in vain; and Cicero
rejoices not only that the Tribune who had opposed him should be
punished, but that Pompey should have been beaten, which he attributes
altogether to the favor shown toward himself by the jury.[63] He is
aroused to true exultation that there should have been men on the bench
who, having been chosen by Pompey in order that they might acquit this
man, had dared to condemn him. Cicero had himself spoken against Plancus
on the occasion. Sextus Clodius, who had been foremost among the
rioters, was also condemned.

[Sidenote: B.C. 52, aetat. 55.]

This was the year in which Caesar was so nearly conquered by the Gauls at
Gergovia, and in which Vercingetorix, having shut himself up in Alesia,
was overcome at last by the cruel strategy of the Romans. The brave
Gaul, who had done his best to defend his country and had carried
himself to the last with a fine gallantry, was kept by his conqueror
six years in chains and then strangled amid the glories of that
conqueror's triumph, a signal instance of the mercy which has been
attributed to Caesar as his special virtue. In this year, too, Cicero's
dialogues with Atticus, De Legibus, were written. He seems to have
disturbed his labors in the Forum with no other work.




CHAPTER IV.

_CILICIA._


[Sidenote: B.C. 51, aetat. 56.]

We cannot but think that at this time the return of Caesar was greatly
feared at Rome by the party in the State to which Cicero belonged; and
this party must now be understood as including Pompey. Pompey had been
nominally Proconsul in Spain since the year of his second Consulship,
conjointly with Crassus, B.C. 55, but had remained in Rome and had taken
upon himself the management of Roman affairs, considering himself to be
the master of the irregular powers which the Triumvirate had created;
and of this party was also Cicero, with Cato, Bibulus, Brutus, and all
those who were proud to call themselves "optimates." They were now
presumed to be desirous to maintain the old republican form of
government, and were anxious with more or less sincerity according to
the character of the men. Cato and Brutus were thoroughly in earnest,
not seeing, however, that the old form might be utterly devoid of the
old spirit. Pompey was disposed to take the same direction, thinking
that all must be well in Rome as long as he was possessed of high
office, grand names, and the appanages of Dictatorship. Cicero, too, was
anxious, loyally anxious, but anxious without confidence. Something
might perhaps be saved if these optimates could be aroused to some idea
of their duty by the exercise of eloquence such as his own.

I will quote a few words from Mr. Froude's Caesar: "If Caesar came to Rome
as Consul, the Senate knew too well what it might expect;" and then he
adds, "Cicero had for some time seen what was coming."[64] As to these
assertions I quite agree with Mr. Froude; but I think that he has read
wrongly both the history of the time and the character of the man when
he goes on to state that "Cicero preferred characteristically to be out
of the way at the moment when he expected that the storm should break,
and had accepted the government of Cilicia and Cyprus." All the known
details of Cicero's life up to the period of his government of Cilicia,
during his government, and after his return from that province, prove
that he was characteristically wedded to a life in Rome. This he
declared by his distaste to that employment and his impatience of return
while he was absent. Nothing, I should say, could be more certain than
that he went to Cilicia in obedience to new legal enactments which he
could not avoid, but which, as they acted upon himself, were odious to
him. Mr. Froude tells us that he held the government but for two
years.[65] The period of these provincial governments had of late much
varied. The acknowledged legal duration was for one year. They had been
stretched by the governing party to three, as in the case of Verres in
Sicily; to five, as with Pompey for his Spanish government; to ten for
Caesar in Gaul. This had been done with the view of increasing the
opportunities for plunder and power, but had been efficacious of good in
enabling governors to carry out work for which one year would not have
sufficed. It may be a question whether Cicero as Proconsul in Cilicia
deserved blame for curtailing the period of his services to the Empire,
or praise for abstaining from plunder and power; but the fact is that he
remained in his province not two years but exactly one;[66] and that he
escaped from it with all the alacrity which we may presume to be
expected by a prisoner when the bars of his jail have been opened for
him. Whether we blame him or praise him, we can hardly refrain from
feeling that his impatience was grotesque. There certainly was no desire
on Cicero's part either to go to Cilicia or to remain there, and of all
his feelings that which prompted him never to be far absent from Rome
was the most characteristic of the man.

Among various laws which Pompey had caused to be passed in the previous
year, B.C. 52, and which had been enacted with views personal to himself
and his own political views, had been one "de jure magistratuum"--as to
the way in which the magistrates of the Empire should be selected. Among
other clauses it contained one which declared that no Praetor and no
Consul should succeed to a province till he had been five years out of
office. It would be useless here to point out how absolutely subversive
of the old system of the Republic this new law would have been, had the
new law and the old system attempted to live together. The Propraetor
would have been forced to abandon his aspirations either for the
province or for the Consulship, and no consular governor would have been
eligible for a province till after his fiftieth year. But at this time
Pompey was both consul and governor, and Caesar was governor for ten
years with special exemption from another clause in the war which would
otherwise have forbidden him to stand again for the Consulship during
his absence.[67] The law was wanted probably only for the moment; but it
had the effect of forcing Cicero out of Rome. As there would naturally
come from it a dearth of candidates for the provinces it was further
decreed by the Senate that the ex-Praetors and ex-Consuls who had not yet
served as governors should now go forth and undertake the duties of
government. In compliance with this order, and probably as a specially
intended consequence of it, Cicero was compelled to go to Cilicia. Mr.
Froude has said that "he preferred characteristically to be out of the
way." I have here given what I think to be the more probable cause of
his undertaking the government of Cilicia.

[Sidenote: B.C. 51, aetat. 56.]

In April of this year Cicero before he started wrote the first of a
series of letters which he addressed to Appius Claudius, who was his
predecessor in the province. This Appius was the brother of the Publius
Clodius whom we have known for the last two or three years as Cicero's
pest and persecutor; but he addresses Appius as though they were dear
friends: "Since it has come to pass, in opposition to all my wishes and
to my expectations, that I must take in hand the government of a
province, I have this one consolation in my various troubles--that no
better friend to yourself than I am could follow you, and that I could
take up the government from the hands of none more disposed to make the
business pleasant to me than you will be."[68] And then he goes on: "You
perceive that, in accordance with the decree of the Senate, the province
has to be occupied." His next letter on the subject was written to
Atticus while he was still in Italy, but when he had started on his
journey. "In your farewell to me," he says, "I have seen the nature of
your love to me. I know well what is my own for you. It must, then, be
your peculiar care to see lest by any new arrangement this parting of
ours should be prolonged beyond one year."[69] Then he goes on to tell
the story of a scene that had occurred at Arcanum, a house belonging to
his brother Quintus, at which he had stopped on the road for a family
farewell. Pomponia was there, the wife of Quintus and the sister to
Atticus. There were a few words between the husband and the wife as to
the giving of the invitation for the occasion, in which the lady behaved
with much Christian perversity of temper. "Alas," says Quintus to his
brother, "you see what it is that I have to suffer every day!" Knowing
as we all do how great were the powers of the Roman paterfamilias, and
how little woman's rights had been ventilated in those days, we should
have thought that an ex-Praetor might have managed his home more
comfortably; but ladies, no doubt, have had the capacity to make
themselves disagreeable in all ages.

I doubt whether we have any testimony whatever as to Cicero's provincial
government, except that which comes from himself and which is confined
to the letters written by him at the time.[70] Nevertheless, we have a
clear record of his doings, so full and satisfactory are the letters
which he then wrote. The truth of his account of himself has never been
questioned. He draws a picture of his own integrity, his own humanity,
and his own power of administration which is the more astonishing,
because we cannot but compare it with the pictures which we have from
the same hand of the rapacity, the cruelty, and the tyranny of other
governors. We have gone on learning from his speeches and his letters
that these were habitual plunderers, tyrants, and malefactors, till we
are taught to acknowledge that, in the low condition to which Roman
nature had fallen, it was useless to expect any other conduct from a
Roman governor; and then he gives us the account of how a man did
govern, when, as by a miracle, a governor had been found honest,
clear-headed, sympathetic, and benevolent. That man was himself; and he
gives this account of himself, as it were, without a blush! He tells the
story of himself, not as though it was remarkable! That other governors
should grind the bones of their subjects to make bread of them, and draw
the blood from their veins for drink; but that Cicero should not
condescend to take even the normal tribute when willingly offered, seems
to Cicero to have been only what the world had a right to expect from
him! A wonderful testimony is this as to the man's character; but surely
the universal belief in his own account of his own governorship is more
wonderful. "The conduct of Cicero in his command was meritorious," says
De Quincey. "His short career as Proconsul in Cilicia had procured for
him well-merited honor," says Dean Merivale.[71] "He had managed his
province well; no one ever suspected Cicero of being corrupt or unjust,"
says Mr. Froude, who had, however, said (some pages before) that Cicero
was "thinking as usual of himself first, and his duty afterward."[72]
Dio Cassius, who is never tired of telling disagreeable stories of
Cicero's life, says not a word of his Cilician government, from which we
may, at any rate, argue that no stories detrimental to Cicero as a
Proconsul had come in the way of Dio Cassius. I have confirmed what I
have said as to this episode in Cicero's life by the corroborating
testimony of writers who have not been generally favorable in their
views of his character. Nevertheless, we have no testimony but his own
as to what Cicero did in Cilicia.[73]

It has never occurred to any reader of Cicero's letters to doubt a line
in which he has spoken directly of his own conduct. His letters have
often been used against himself, but in a different manner. He has been
judged to give true testimony against himself, but not false testimony
in his own favor. His own record has been taken sometimes as meaning
what it has not meant--and sometimes as implying much more that the
writer intended. A word which has required for its elucidation an
insight into the humor of the man has been read amiss, or some trembling
admissions to a friend of shortcoming in the purpose of the moment has
been presumed to refer to a continuity of weakness. He has been injured,
not by having his own words as to himself discredited, but by having
them too well credited where they have been misunderstood. It is at any
rate the fact that his own account of his own proconsular doings has
been accepted in full, and that the present reader may be encouraged to
believe what extracts I may give to him by the fact that all other
readers before him have believed them.

From his villa at Cumae on his journey he wrote to Atticus in high
spirits. Hortensius had been to see him--his old rival, his old
predecessor in the glory of the Forum--Hortensius, whom he was fated
never to see again. His only request to Hortensius had been that he
should assist in taking care that he, Cicero, should not be required to
stay above one year in his province. Atticus is to help him also; and
another friend, Furnius, who may probably be the Tribune for the next
year, has been canvassed for the same object. In a further letter from
Beneventum he alludes to a third marriage for his daughter Tullia, but
seems to be aware that, as he is leaving Italy, he cannot interfere in
that matter himself. He writes again from Venusia, saying that he
purports to see Pompey at Tarentum before he starts, and gives special
instructions to Atticus as to the payment of a debt which is due by him
to Caesar. He has borrowed money of Caesar, and is specially anxious that
the debt should be settled. In another letter from Tarentum he presses
the same matter. He is anxious to be relieved from the obligation.[74]

From Athens he wrote again to his friend a letter which is chiefly
remarkable as telling us something of the quarrel between Marcus
Claudius Marcellus, who was one of the Consuls for the year, and Caesar,
who was still absent in Gaul. This Marcellus, and others of his family
who succeeded him in his office, were hotly opposed to Caesar, belonging
to that party of the State to which Cicero was attached, and to which
Pompey was returning.[75] It seems to have been the desire of the Consul
not only to injure but to insult Caesar. He had endeavored to get a
decree of the Senate for recalling Caesar at once, but had succeeded only
in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following
year--when Caesar would naturally return. But to show how little was his
regard to Caesar, he caused to be flogged in Rome a citizen from one of
those towns of Cisalpine Gaul to which Caesar had assumed to give the
privilege of Roman citizenship. The man was present as a delegate from
his town, Novocomum[76]--the present Como--in furtherance of the
colony's claims, and the Consul had the man flogged to show thereby that
he was not a Roman. Marcellus was punished for his insolence by
banishment, inflicted by Caesar when Caesar was powerful. We shall learn
before long how Cicero made an oration in his favor; but, in the letter
written from Athens, he blames Marcellus much for flogging the man.[77]
"Fight in my behalf," he says, in the course of this letter; "for if my
government be prolonged, I shall fail and become mean." The idea of
absence from Rome is intolerable to him. From Athens also he wrote to
his young friend Caelius, from whom he had requested information as to
what was going on in Rome. But Caelius has to be again instructed as to
the nature of the subjects which are to be regarded as interesting.
"What!--do you think that I have asked you to send me stories of
gladiators, law-court adjournments, and the pilferings of
Christus--trash that no one would think of mentioning to me if I were in
Rome?"[78] But he does not finish his letter to Caelius without begging
Caelius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. Caelius troubles
him much afterward by renewed requests for Cilician panthers wanted for
AEdilian shows. Cicero becomes very sea-sick on his journey, and then
reaches Ephesus, in Asia Minor, dating his arrival there on the five
hundred and sixtieth day from the battle of Bovilla, showing how much
the contest as to Milo still clung to his thoughts.[79] Ephesus was not
in his province, but at Ephesus all the magistrates came out to do him
honor, as though he had come among them as their governor. "Now has
arrived," he says, "the time to justify all those declarations which I
have made as to my own conduct; but I trust I can practise the lessons
which I have learned from you." Atticus, in his full admiration of his
friend's character, had doubtless said much to encourage and to
instigate the virtue which it was Cicero's purpose to employ. We have
none of the words ever written by Atticus to Cicero, but we have light
enough to show us that the one friend was keenly alive to the honor of
the other, and thoroughly appreciated its beauty. "Do not let me be more
than a year away," he exclaims; "do not let even another month be
added."[80] Then there is a letter from Caelius praying for panthers.[81]
In passing through the province of Asia to his own province, he declares
that the people everywhere receive him well. "My coming," he says, "has
cost no man a shilling."[82] His whole staff has now joined him except
one Tullius, whom he speaks of as a friend of Atticus, but afterward
tells us he had come to him from Titinius. Then he again enjoins Atticus
to have that money paid to Caesar. From Tralles, still in the province of
Asia, he writes to Appius, the outgoing governor, a letter full of
courtesies, and expressing an anxious desire for a meeting. He had
offered before to go by any route which might suit Appius, but Appius,
as appears afterward, was anxious for anything rather than to encounter
the new governor within the province he was leaving.[83]

On 31st July he reached Laodicea, within his own boundaries, having
started on his journey on 10th May, and found all people glad to see
him; but the little details of his office harass him sadly. "The action
of my mind, which you know so well, cannot find space enough. All work
worthy of my industry is at an end. I have to preside at Laodicea while
some Plotius is giving judgment at Rome. * * * And then am I not
regretting at every moment the life of Rome--the Forum, the city itself,
my own house? Am I not always regretting you? I will endeavor to bear it
for a year; but if it be prolonged, then it will be all over with me. *
* * You ask me how I am getting on. I am spending a fortune in carrying
out this grand advice of yours. I like it hugely; but when the time
comes for paying you your debts I shall have to renew the bill. * * * To
make me do such work as this is putting a saddle upon a cow"--cutting a
block with a razor, as we should say--"clearly I am not made for it; but
I will bear it, so that it be only for one year."[84]

From Laodicea, a town in Phrygia, he went west to Synnada. His province,
known as Cilicia, contained the districts named on the map of Asia Minor
as Phrygia, Pisidia, Pamphylia, part of Cappadocia, Cilicia, and the
island of Cyprus. He soon found that his predecessors had ruined the
people. "Know that I have come into a province utterly and forever
destroyed," he says to Atticus.[85] "We hear only of taxes that cannot
be paid, of men's chattels sold on all sides, of the groans from the
cities, of lamentations, of horrors such as some wild beast might have
produced rather than a human being. There is no room for question. Every
man is tired of his life; and yet some relief is given now, because of
me, and by my officers, and by my lieutenants. No expense is imposed on
any one. We do not take even the hay which is allowed by the Julian
law--not even the wood. Four beds to lie on is all we accept, and a roof
over our heads. In many places not even that, for we live in our tents.
Enormous crowds therefore come to us, and return, as it were, to life
through the justice and moderation of your Cicero. Appius, when he knew
that I was come, ran away to Tarsus, the farthest point of the
province." What a picture we have here of the state of a Roman
dependency under a normal Roman governor, and of the good which a man
could do who was able to abstain from plunder! In his next letter his
pride expresses itself so loudly that we have to remember that this man,
after all, is writing only his own secret thoughts to his bosom friend.
"If I can get away from this quickly, the honors which will accrue to me
from my justice will be all the greater, as happened to Scaevola, who was
governor in Asia only for nine months."[86] Then again he declares how
Appius had escaped into the farthest corner of the province--to
Tarsus--when he knew that Cicero was coming.

He writes again to Appius, complaining. "When I compare my conduct to
yours," he says, "I own that I much prefer my own."[87] He had taken
every pains to meet Appius in a manner convenient to him, but had been
deceived on every side. Appius had, in a way unusual among Roman
governors, carried on his authority in remote parts of the province,
although he had known of his successor's arrival. Cicero assures him
that he is quite indifferent to this. If Appius will relieve him of one
month's labor out of the twelve he will be delighted. But why has Appius
taken away three of the fullest cohorts, seeing that in the entire
province the number of soldiers left has been so small? But he assures
Appius that, as he makes his journey, neither good nor bad shall hear
evil spoken by him of his predecessor. "But as for you, you seem to have
given to the dishonest reasons for thinking badly of me." Then he
describes the exact course he means to take in his further journey, thus
giving Appius full facility for avoiding him.

From Cybistra, in Cappadocia, he writes official letters to Caius
Marcellus, who had been just chosen Consul, the brother of Marcus the
existing Consul; to an older Caius Marcellus, who was their father, a
colleague of his own in the College of Augurs, and to Marcus the
existing Consul, with his congratulations, also to AEmilius Paulus, who
had also been elected Consul for the next year. He writes, also, a
despatch to the Consuls, to the Praetors, to the Tribunes, and to the
Senate, giving them a statement as to affairs in the province. These are
interesting, rather as showing the way in which these things were done,
than by their own details. When he reaches Cilicia proper he writes them
another despatch, telling them that the Parthians had come across the
Euphrates. He writes as Wellington may have done from Torres Vedras. He
bids them look after the safety of their Eastern dominions. Though they
are too late in doing this, yet better now than never.[88] "You know,"
he says, "with what sort of an army you have supported me here; and you
know also that I have undertaken this duty not in blind folly, but
because in respect for the Republic I have not liked to refuse. * * * As
for our allies here in the province, because our rule here has been so
severe and injurious, they are either too weak to help us, or so
embittered against us that we dare not trust them."

Then there is a long letter to Appius,[89] respecting the embassy which
was to be sent from the province to Rome, to carry the praises of the
departing governor and declare his excellence as a Proconsul! This was
quite the usual thing to do! The worse the governor the more necessary
the embassy; and such was the terror inspired even by a departing Roman,
and such the servility of the allies--even of those who were about to
escape from him--that these embassies were a matter of course. There had
been a Sicilian embassy to praise Verres. Appius had complained as
though Cicero had impeded this legation by restricting the amount to be
allowed for its expenses. He rebukes Appius for bringing the charge
against him.

The series of letters written this year by Caelius to Cicero is very
interesting as giving us a specimen of continued correspondence other
than Ciceronian. We have among the eight hundred and eighty-five letters
ten or twelve from Brutus, if those attributed to him were really
written by him; ten or twelve from Decimus Brutus, and an equal number
from Plancus; but these were written in the stirring moments of the last
struggle, and are official or military rather than familiar. We have a
few from Quintus, but not of special interest unless we are to consider
that treatise on the duties of a candidate as a letter. But these from
Caelius to his older friend are genuine and natural as those from Cicero
himself. There are seventeen. They are scattered over three or four
years, but most of them refer to the period of Cicero's provincial
government.

The marvel to me is that Caelius should have adopted a style so near akin
to that of his master in literature. Scholars who have studied the words
can probably tell us of deficiencies in language; but the easy, graphic
tone is to my ear Ciceronian. Tiro, who was slave, secretary, freedman,
and then literary executor, may have had the handling of these letters,
and have done something toward producing their literary excellence. The
subjects selected were not always good, and must occasionally have
produced in Cicero's own mind a repetition of the reprimand which he
once expressed as to the gladiatorial shows and law-court adjournments;
but Caelius does communicate much of the political news from Rome. In one
letter, written in October of this year, he declares what the Senate has
decreed as to the recall of Caesar from Gaul, and gives the words of the
enactments made, with the names subscribed to them of the promoters--and
also the names of the Tribunes who had endeavored to oppose them.[90]
The purport of these decrees I have mentioned before. The object was to
recall Caesar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it
would mean nothing; but Caelius specially declares that the intention of
recalling Caesar was agreeable to Pompey, whereby we may know that the
pact of the Triumvirate was already at an end. In another letter he
speaks of the coming of the Parthians, and of Cicero's inability to
fight with them because of the inadequate number of soldiers intrusted
to him. Had there been a real Roman army, then Caelius would have been
afraid, he says, for his friend's life. As it is, he fears only for his
reputation, lest men should speak ill of him for not fighting, when to
fight was beyond his power.[91] The language here is so pretty that I am
tempted to think that Tiro must have had a hand in it. At Rome, we must
remember, the tidings as to Crassus were as yet uncertain. We cannot,
however, doubt that Caelius was in truth attached to Cicero.

But Cicero was forced to fight, not altogether unwillingly--not with the
Parthians, but with tribes which were revolting from Roman authority
because of the Parthian success. "It has turned out as you wished it,"
he says to Caelius--"a job just sufficient to give me a small coronet of
laurel." Hearing that men had risen in the Taurus range of mountains,
which divided his province from that of Syria, in which Bibulus was now
governor, he had taken such an army as he was able to collect to the
Amanus, a mountain belonging to that range, and was now writing from his
camp at Pindenissum, a place beyond his own province. Joking at his own
soldiering, he tells Caelius that he had astonished those around him by
his prowess. "Is this he whom we used to know in the city? Is this our
talkative Senator? You can understand the things they said.[92] * * *
When I got to the Amanus I was glad enough to find our friend Cassius
had beaten back the real Parthians from Antioch." But Cicero claims to
have done some gallant things: "I have harassed those men of Amanus who
are always troubling us. Many I have killed; some I have taken; the rest
are dispersed. I came suddenly upon their strongholds, and have got
possession of them. I was called 'Imperator' at the river Issus." It is
hardly necessary to explain, yet once again, that this title belonged
properly to no commander till it had been accorded to him by his own
soldiers on the field of battle.[93] He reminds Caelius that it was on
the Issus that Alexander had conquered Darius. Then he had sat down
before Pindenissum with all the machinery of a siege--with the turrets,
covered ways, and ramparts. He had not as yet quite taken the town. When
he had done so, he would send home his official account of it all; but
the Parthians may yet come, and there may be danger. "Therefore, O my
Rufus"--he was Caelius Rufus--"see that I am not left here, lest, as you
suspect, things should go badly with me." There is a mixture in all this
of earnestness and of drollery, of boasting and of laughing at what he
was doing, which is inimitable in its reality. His next letter is to his
other young friend, Curio, who has just been elected Tribune. He gives
much advice to Curio, who certainly always needed it.[94] He carries on
the joke when he tells Atticus that the "people of Pindenissum have
surrendered." "Who the mischief are these Pindenissians? you will say. I
have not even heard the name before. What would you have? I cannot make
an AEtolia out of Cilicia. With such an army as this do you expect me to
do things like a Macedonicus?[95] * * * I had my camp on the Issus,
where Alexander had his--a better soldier no doubt than you or I. I
really have made a name for myself in Syria. Then up comes Bibulus,
determined to be as good as I am; but he loses his whole cohort." The
failure made by Bibulus at soldiering is quite as much to him as his own
success. Then he goes back to Laodicea, leaving the army in
winter-quarters, under the command of his brother Quintus.

But his heart is truly in other matters, and he bursts out, in the same
letter, with enthusiastic praise of the line of conduct which Atticus
has laid down for him: "But that which is more to me than anything is
that I should live so that even that fellow Cato cannot find fault with
me. May I die, if it could be done better. Nor do I take praise for it
as though I was doing something distasteful; I never was so happy as in
practising this moderation. The thing itself is better to me even than
the reputation of it. What would you have me say? It was worth my while
to be enabled thus to try myself, so that I might know myself as to what
I could do."

Then there is a long letter to Cato in which he repeats the story of his
grand doings at Pindenissum. The reader will be sure that a letter to
Cato cannot be sincere and pleasant as are those to Atticus and Caelius.
"If there be one man far removed from the vulgar love of praise, it is
I," he says to Cato.[96] He tells Cato that they two are alike in all
things. They two only have succeeded in carrying the true ancient
philosophy into the practice of the Forum. Never surely were two men
more unlike than the stiff-necked Cato and the versatile Cicero.

[Sidenote: B.C. 50, aetat. 57.]

Lucius AEmilius Paullus and C. Clodius Marcellus were Consuls for the
next year. Cicero writes to both of them with tenders of friendship; but
from both of them he asks that they should take care to have a decree of
the Senate passed praising his doings in Cilicia.[97] With us, too, a
returning governor is anxious enough for a good word from the
Prime-minister; but he does not ask for it so openly. The next letter
from Caelius tells him that Appius has been accused as to malpractices in
his government, and that Pompey is in favor of Appius. Curio has gone
over to Caesar. But the important subject is the last handled: "It will
be mean in you if I should have no Greek panthers."[98] The next refers
to the marriages and divorces of certain ladies, and ends with an
anecdote told as to a gentleman with just such ill-natured wit as is
common in London. No one could have suspected Ocella of looking after
his neighbor's wife unless he had been detected thrice in the fact.[99]

From Laodicea he answers a querulous letter which his predecessor had
written, complaining, among other things, that Cicero had failed to show
him personal respect. He proves that he had not done so, and then rises
to a strain of indignation. "Do you think that your grand old names will
affect me who, even before I had become great in the service of my
country, knew how to distinguish between titles and the men who bore
them?"[100]

The next letter to Appius is full of flattery, and asking for favors,
but it begins with a sharp reproof. "Now at last I have received an
epistle worthy of Appius Claudius. The sight of Rome has restored you to
your good-humor. Those I got from you in your journey were such that I
could not read them without displeasure."[101]

In February Cicero wrote a letter to Atticus which is, I think, more
expressive in describing the mind of the man than any other which we
have from him. In it is commenced the telling of a story respecting
Brutus--the Brutus we all know so well--and one Scaptius, of whom no one
would have heard but for this story, which, as it deeply affects the
character of Cicero, must occupy a page or two in our narrative; but I
must first refer to his own account of his own government as again
given here. Nothing was ever so wonderful to the inhabitants of a
province as that they should not have been put to a shilling of expense
since he had entered it. Not a penny had been taken on his own behalf or
on that of the Republic by any belonging to him, except on one day by
one Tullius, and by him indeed under cover of the law. This dirty fellow
was a follower with whom Titinius had furnished him. When he was passing
from Tarsus back into the centre of his province wondering crowds came
out to him, the people not understanding how it had been that no letters
had been sent to them exacting money, and that none of his staff had
been quartered on them. In former years during the winter months they
had groaned under exactions. Municipalities with money at their command
had paid large sums to save themselves from the quartering of soldiers
on them. The island of Cyprus, which on a former occasion had been made
to pay nearly L50,000 on this head,[102] had been asked for nothing by
him. He had refused to have any honors paid to him in return for this
conduct. He had prohibited the erection of statues, shrines, and bronze
chariots in his name--compliments to Roman generals which had become
common. The harvest that year was bad; but so fully convinced were the
people of his honest dealing, that they who had saved up corn--the
regraters--brought it freely into market at his coming. As some scourge
from hell must have been the presence of such governors as Appius and
his predecessors among a people timid but industrious like these Asiatic
Greeks. Like an unknown, unexpected blessing, direct from heaven, must
have been the coming of a Cicero.

Now I will tell the story of Brutus and Scaptius and their
money--premising that it has been told by Mr. Forsyth with great
accuracy and studied fairness. Indeed, there is not a line in Mr.
Forsyth's volume which is not governed by a spirit of justice. He,
having thought that Cicero had been too highly praised by Middleton, and
too harshly handled by subsequent critics, has apparently written his
book with the object of setting right these exaggerations. But in his
comments on this matter of Brutus and Scaptius he seems to me not to
have considered the difference in that standard of honor and honesty
which governs himself, and that which prevailed in the time of Cicero.
Not seeing, as I think, how impossible it was for a Roman governor to
have achieved that impartiality of justice with which a long course of
fortunate training has imbued an English judge, he accuses Cicero of
"trifling with equity." The marvel to me is that one man such as
Cicero--a man single in his purpose--should have been able to raise his
own ideas of justice so high above the level prevailing with the best of
those around him. It had become the nature of a Roman aristocrat to
pillage an ally till hardly the skin should be left to cover the man's
bones. Out of this nature Cicero elevated himself completely. In his own
conduct he was free altogether from stain. The question here arose how
far he could dare to go on offending the instincts, the habits, the
nature, of other noble Romans, in protecting from their rapacity the
poor subjects who were temporarily beneath his charge. It is easy for a
judge to stand indifferent between a great man and a little when the
feelings of the world around him are in favor of such impartiality; but
it must have been hard enough to do so when such conduct seemed to the
noblest Romans of the day to be monstrous, fanatical, and pretentious.

In this case Brutus, our old friend whom all English readers have so
much admired because he dared to tell his brother-in-law Cassius that he
was

  "Much condemned to have an itching palm,"

appears before us in the guise of an usurious money-lender. It would be
hard in the history of usury to come across the well-ascertained details
of a more grasping, griping usurer. His practice had been of the kind
which we may have been accustomed to hear rebuked with the scathing
indignation of our just judges. But yet Brutus was accounted one of the
noblest Romans of the day, only second, if second, to Cato in general
virtue and philosophy. In this trade of money-lending the Roman nobleman
had found no more lucrative business than that of dealing with the
municipalities of the allies. The cities were peopled by a money-making,
commercial race, but they were subjected to the grinding impositions of
their governors. Under this affliction they were constantly driven to
borrow money, and found the capitalists who supplied it among the class
by whom they were persecuted and pillaged. A Brutus lent the money which
an Appius exacted--and did not scruple to do so at forty-eight per
cent., although twelve per cent. per annum, or one per cent. per month,
was the rate of interest permitted by law.

But a noble Roman such as Brutus did not carry on his business of this
nature altogether in his own name. Brutus dealt with the municipality of
Salamis in the island of Cyprus, and there had two agents, named
Scaptius and Matinius, whom he specially recommended to Cicero as
creditors of the city of Salamis, praying Cicero, as governor of the
province, to assist these men in obtaining the payment of their
debts.[103] This was quite usual, but it was only late in the
transaction that Cicero became aware that the man really looking for his
money was the noble Roman who gave the recommendation. Cicero's letter
tells us that Scaptius came to him, and that he promised that for
Brutus's sake he would take care that the people of Salamis should pay
their debt.[104] Scaptius thanked him, and asked for an official
position in Salamis which would have given him the power of compelling
the payment by force. Cicero refused, explaining that he had determined
to give no such offices in his province to persons engaged in trade. He
had refused such requests already--even to Pompey and to Torquatus.
Appius had given the same man a military command in Salamis--no doubt
also at the instance of Brutus--and the people of Salamis had been
grievously harassed. Cicero had heard of this, and had recalled the man
from Cyprus. Of this Scaptius had complained bitterly, and at last he
and delegates from Salamis who were willing to pay their debt, if they
could only do it without too great extortion, went together to Cicero
who was then at Tarsus, in the most remote part of his province. Here he
was called upon to adjudicate in the matter, Scaptius trusting to the
influence which Brutus would naturally have with his friend the
governor, and the men of Salamis to the reputation for justice which
Cicero had already created for himself in Cilicia. The reader must also
be made to understand that Cicero had been entreated by Atticus to
oblige Brutus, who was specially the friend of Atticus. He must remember
also that this narrative is sent by Cicero to Atticus, who exhorted his
correspondent, even with tears in his eyes, to be true to his honor in
the government of his province.[105] He is appealing from Atticus to
Atticus. I am bound to oblige you--but how can I do so in opposition to
your own lessons? That is his argument to Atticus.

Then there arises a question as to the amount of money due. The
principal is not in dispute, but the interest. The money has been
manifestly lent on an understanding that four per cent. per month, or
forty-eight per cent. per annum, should be charged on it. But there has
been a law passed that higher interest than one per cent. per month, or
twelve per cent. per annum, shall not be legal. There has, however, been
a counter decree made in regard to these very Salaminians, and made
apparently at the instigation of Brutus, saying that any contract with
them shall be held in force, notwithstanding the law. But Cicero again
has made a decree that he will authorize no exaction above twelve per
cent. in his province. The exact condition of the legal claim is less
clear to me than to Mr. Forsyth, who has the advantage of being a
lawyer. Be that as it may, Cicero decides that twelve per cent. shall be
exacted, and orders the Salaminians to pay the amount. To his request
they demur, but at last agree to obey, alleging that they are enabled to
do so by Cicero's own forbearance to them, Cicero having declined to
accept the presents which had been offered to him from the island.[106]
They will therefore pay this money in some sort, as they say, out of the
governor's own pocket.

But when the sum is fixed, Scaptius, finding that he cannot get it
over-reckoned after some fraudulent scheme of his own, declines to
receive it. If with the assistance of a friendly governor he cannot do
better than that for himself and his employer, things must be going
badly with Roman noblemen. But the delegates are now very anxious to pay
this money, and offer to deposit it. Scaptius begs that the affair shall
go no farther at present, no doubt thinking that he may drive a better
bargain with some less rigid future governor. The delegates request to
be allowed to place their money as paid in some temple, by doing which
they would acquit themselves of all responsibility; but Cicero begs them
to abstain. "Impetravi ab Salaminiis ut silerent," he says. "I shall be
grieved, indeed, that Brutus should be angry with me," he writes; "but
much more grieved that Brutus should have proved himself to be such as I
shall have found him."

Then comes the passage in his letter on the strength of which Mr.
Forsyth has condemned Cicero, not without abstract truth in his
condemnation: "They, indeed, have consented"--that is the
Salaminians--"but what will befall them if some such governor as Paulus
should come here? And all this I have done for the sake of Brutus!"
AEmilius Paulus was the Consul, and might probably have Cilicia as a
province, and would no doubt give over the Salaminians to Brutus and his
myrmidons without any compunction. In strictness--with that assurance in
the power of law by means of which our judges are enabled to see that
their righteous decisions shall be carried out without detriment to
themselves--Cicero should have caused the delegates from Salamis
instantly to have deposited their money in the temple. Instead of doing
so, he had only declared the amount due according to his idea of
justice--in opposition to all Romans, even to Atticus--and had then
consented to leave the matter, as for some further appeal. Do we not
know how impossible it is for a man to abide strictly by the right, when
the strict right is so much in advance of all around him as to appear to
other eyes than his own as straitlaced, unpractical, fantastic, and
almost inhuman? Brutus wanted his money sorely, and Brutus was becoming
a great political power on the same side with Pompey, and Cato, and the
other "optimates." Even Atticus was interfering for Brutus. What other
Roman governor of whom we have heard would have made a question on the
subject? Appius had lent a guard of horse-soldiers to this Scaptius with
which he had outraged all humanity in Cyprus--had caused the councillors
of the city to be shut up till they would come to obedience, in doing
which he had starved five of them to death! Nothing had come of this,
such being the way with the Romans in their provinces. Yet Cicero, who
had come among these poor wretches as an unheard-of blessing from
heaven, is held up to scorn because he "trifled with equity!" Equity
with us runs glibly on all fours. With Appius in Cilicia it was utterly
unknown. What are we to say of the man who, by the strength of his own
conscience and by the splendor of his own intellect, could advance so
far out of the darkness of his own age, and bring himself so near to the
light of ours!

Let us think for a moment of our own Francis Bacon, a man more like to
Cicero than any other that I can remember in history. They were both
great lawyers, both statesmen, both men affecting the _omne scibile_,
and coming nearer to it than perhaps any other whom we can name; both
patriots, true to their conceived idea of government, each having risen
from obscure position to great power, to wealth, and to rank; each from
his own education and his nature prone to compromise, intimate with
human nature, not over-scrupulous either as to others or as to himself.
They were men intellectually above those around them, to a height of
which neither of them was himself aware. To flattery, to admiration, to
friendship, and to love each of them was peculiarly susceptible. But one
failed to see that it behooved him, because of his greatness, to abstain
from taking what smaller men were grasping; while the other swore to
himself from his very outset that he would abstain--and kept the oath
which he had sworn. I am one who would fain forgive Bacon for doing what
I believe that others did around him; but if I can find a man who never
robbed, though all others around him did--in whose heart the "auri sacra
fames" had been absolutely quenched, while the men with whom he had to
live were sickening and dying with an unnatural craving--then I seem to
have recognized a hero.

Another complaint is made against Cicero as to Ariobarzanes, the King of
Cappadocia, and is founded, as are all complaints against Cicero, on
Cicero's own telling of the story in question. Why there should have
been complaint in this matter I have not been able to discover.
Ariobarzanes was one of those Eastern kings who became milch cows to
the Roman nobles, and who, in their efforts to satisfy the Roman nobles,
could only fleece their own subjects. The power of this king to raise
money seems to have been limited to about L8000 a month.[107] Out of
this he offered a part to Cicero as the Proconsul who was immediately
over him. This Cicero declined, but pressed the king to pay the money to
the extortionate Brutus, who was a creditor, and who endeavored to get
this money through Cicero. But Pompey also was a creditor, and Pompey's
name was more dreadful to the king than that of Brutus. Pompey,
therefore, got it all, though we are told that it was not enough to pay
him his interest; but Pompey, getting it all, was graciously pleased to
be satisfied "Cnaeus noster clementer id fert." "Our Cicero puts up with
that, and asks no questions about the capital," says Cicero, ironically.
Pompey was too wise to kill the goose that laid such golden eggs.
Nevertheless, we are told that Cicero, in this case, abused his
proconsular authority in favor of Brutus. Cicero effected nothing for
Brutus; but, when there was a certain amount of plunder to be divided
among the Romans, refused any share for himself. Pompey got it all, but
not by Cicero's aid.

There is another long letter, in which Cicero again, for the third time,
tells the story of Brutus and Scaptius.[108] I mention it, as he
continues to describe his own mode of doing his work. He has been at
Laodicea from February to May, deciding questions that had been there
brought before him from all parts of his province except Cilicia proper.
The cities which had been ground down by debt have been enabled to free
themselves, and then to live under their own laws. This he has done by
taking nothing from them for his own expenses--not a farthing. It is
marvellous to see how the municipalities have sprung again into life
under this treatment. "He has been enabled by this to carry on justice
without obstruction and without severity. Everybody has been allowed
approach to him--a custom which has been unknown in the provinces. There
has been no back-stairs influence. He has walked openly in his own
courts, as he used to do when a candidate at home. All this has been
grateful to the people, and much esteemed; nor has it been too laborious
to himself, as he had learned the way of it in his former life." It was
thus that Cicero governed Cilicia.

There are further letters to Appius and Caelius, written from various
parts of the province, which cannot fail to displease us because we feel
that Cicero is endeavoring to curry favor. He wishes to stand well with
those who might otherwise turn against him on his reappearance in Rome.
He is afraid lest Appius should be his enemy and lest Pompey should not
be his friend. The practice of justice and of virtue would, he knew,
have much less effect in Rome than the friendship and enmity of such
men. But to Atticus he bursts out into honest passion against Brutus.
Brutus had recommended to him one Gavius, whom, to oblige Brutus, he
appointed to some office. Gavius was greedy, and insolent when his greed
was not satisfied. "You have made me a prefect," said Gavius; "where am
I to go for my rations?" Cicero tells him that as he has done no work he
will get no pay; whereupon Gavius, quite unaccustomed to such treatment,
goes off in a huff. "If Brutus can be stirred by the anger of such a
knave as this," he says to Atticus, "you may love him, if you will,
yourself; you will not find me a rival for his friendship."[109] Brutus,
however, became a favorite with Cicero, because he had devoted himself
to literature. In judging these two men we should not lean too heavily
on Brutus, because he did no worse than his neighbors. But then, how are
we to judge of Cicero?

In the latter months of his government there began a new trouble, in
which it is difficult to sympathize with him, because we are unable to
produce in our own minds a Roman's estimation of Roman things. With true
spirit he had laughed at his own military doings at Pindenissum; but not
the less on that account was he anxious to enjoy the glories of a
triumph, and to be dragged through the city on a chariot, with military
trophies around him, as from time immemorial the Roman conquerors had
been dragged when they returned from their victories.

For the old barbaric conquerors this had been fine enough. A display of
armor--of helmets, of shields, and of swords--a concourse of chariots,
of trumpets, and of slaves, of victims kept for the Tarpeian rock, the
spoils and rapine of battle, the self-asserting glory of the big
fighting hero, the pride of bloodshed, and the boasting over fallen
cities, had been fit for men who had in their hearts conceived nothing
greater than military renown. Our sympathies go along with a Camillus or
a Scipio steeped in the blood of Rome's enemies. A Marius, a Pompey, and
again a few years afterward a Caesar, were in their places as they were
dragged along the Via Sacra up to the Capitol amid the plaudits of the
city, in commemoration of their achievements in arms; but it could not
be so with Cicero. "Concedat laurea linguae" had been the watchword of
his life. "Let the ready tongue and the fertile brain be held in higher
honor than the strong right arm." That had been the doctrine which he
had practised successfully. To him it had been given to know that the
lawyer's gown was raiment worthier of a man than the soldier's
breastplate. How, then, could it be that he should ask for so small a
thing as a triumph in reward for so small a deed as that done at
Pindenissum? But it had become the way with all Proconsuls who of late
years had been sent forth from Rome into the provinces. Men to whose
provincial government a few cohorts were attached aspired to be called
"Imperator" by their soldiers after mock battles, and thought that, as
others had followed up their sham victories with sham triumphs, it
should be given to them to do the same. If Bibulus triumphed it would be
a disgrace to Cicero not to triumph. We measure our expected rewards not
by our own merits but by the good things which have been conceded to
others. To have returned from Pindenissum and not to be allowed the
glory of trumpets would be a disgrace, in accordance with the theory
then prevailing in Rome on such matters; therefore Cicero demanded a
triumph.

In such a matter it was in accordance with custom that the General
should send an immediate account of his victorious doings, demand a
"supplication," and have the triumph to be decreed to him or not after
his return home. A supplication was in form a thanksgiving to the gods
for the great favor shown by them to the State, but in fact took the
guise of public praise bestowed upon the man by whose hands the good had
been done. It was usually a reward for military success, but in the
affair of Catiline a supplication had been decreed to Cicero for saving
the city, though the service rendered had been of a civil nature. Cicero
now applied for a supplication, and obtained it. Cato opposed it, and
wrote a letter to Cicero explaining his motives--upon high republican
principles. Cicero might have endured this more easily had not Cato
voted for a supplication in honor of Bibulus, whose military
achievements had, as Cicero thought, been less than his own. One Hirrus
opposed it also, but in silence, having intended to allege that the
numbers slain by Cicero in his battles were not sufficient to justify a
supplication. We learn that, according to strict rule, two thousand dead
men should have been left on the field. Cicero's victims had probably
been much fewer; nevertheless the supplication was granted, and Cicero
presumed that the triumph would follow as a matter of course. Alas,
there came grievous causes to interfere with the triumph!

Of all that went on at Rome Caelius continued to send Cicero accounts.
The Triumvirate was now over. Caelius says that Pompey will not attack
Caesar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent Caesar from being
elected Consul before he shall have given up his province and his
army.[110] For details Caelius refers him to a Commentarium--a word which
has been translated as meaning "newspaper" in this passage--by Melmoth.
I think that there is no authority for this idea, and that the
commentary was simply the compilation of Caelius, as were the
commentaries we so well know the compilation of Caesar. The Acta Diurna
were published by authority, and formed an official gazette. These no
doubt reached Cicero, but were very different in their nature from the
private record of things which he obtained from his friend.

There are passages in Greek, in two letters[111] written about this time
to Atticus, which refer to the matter from which probably arose his
quarrel with his wife, and her divorce. He makes no direct allusion to
his wife, but only to a freedman of hers, Philotomus. When Milo was
convicted, his goods were confiscated and sold as a part of his
punishment. Philotomus is supposed to have been a purchaser, and to have
made money out of the transaction--taking advantage of his position to
acquire cheap bargains--as should not have been done by any one
connected with Cicero, who had been Milo's friend. The cause of Cicero's
quarrel with his wife has never been absolutely known, but it is
supposed to have arisen from her want of loyalty to him in regard to
money. She probably employed this freedman in filling her pockets at the
expense of her husband's character.

[Sidenote: B.C. 50, aetat. 57.]

In his own letters he tells of preparations made for his return, and
allusions are made as to his expected triumph. He is grateful to Caelius
as to what has been done as to the supplication, and expresses his
confidence that all the rest will follow.[112] He is so determined to
hurry away that he will not wait for the nomination of a successor, and
resolves to put the government into the hands of any one of his officers
who may be least unfit to hold it. His brother Quintus was his
lieutenant, but if he left Quintus people would say of him that in doing
so he was still keeping the emoluments in his own hands. At last he
determines to intrust it to a young Quaestor named C. Caelius--no close
connection of his friend Caelius, as Cicero finds himself obliged to
apologize for the selection to his friend. "Young, you will say. No
doubt; but he had been elected Quaestor, and is of noble birth."[113] So
he gives over the province to the young man, having no one else fitter.

Cicero tells us afterward, when at Athens on his way home, that he had
considerable trouble with his own people on withholding certain plunder
which was regarded by them as their perquisite. He had boasted much of
their conduct--having taken exception to one Tullius, who had demanded
only a little hay and a little wood. But now there came to be
pickings--savings out of his own proconsular expenses--to part with
which at the last moment was too hard upon them. "How difficult is
virtue," he exclaims; "how doubly difficult to pretend to act up to it
when it is not felt!"[114] There had been a certain sum saved which he
had been proud to think that he would return to the treasury. But the
satellites were all in arms: "Ingemuit nostra cohors." Nevertheless, he
disregarded the "cohort," and paid the money into the treasury.

As to the sum thus saved, there has been a dispute which has given rise
to some most amusing literary vituperation. The care with which MSS.
have been read now enables us to suppose that it was ten hundred
thousand sesterces--thus expressed, "H.S.X."--amounting to something
over L8000. We hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that Cicero
realized out of his own legitimate allowance in Cilicia a profit of
about L18,000; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself
aggrieved in losing L8000 which they expected to have divided among
them. Middleton has made a mistake, having supposed the X to be
CI[C] or M--a thousand instead of ten--and quotes the sum
saved as having amounted to eight hundred thousand instead of eight
thousand pounds. We who have had so much done for us by intervening
research, and are but ill entitled to those excuses for error which may
fairly be put forward on Middleton's behalf, should be slow indeed in
blaming him for an occasional mistake, seeing how he has relieved our
labors by infinite toil on his part; but De Quincey, who has been very
rancorous against Cicero, has risen to a fury of wrath in his
denunciation of Cicero's great biographer. "Conyers Middleton," he says,
"is a name that cannot be mentioned without an expression of disgust."
The cause of this was that Middleton, a beneficed clergyman of the
Church of England, and a Cambridge man, differed from other Cambridge
clergymen on controversial points and church questions. Bentley was his
great opponent--and as Bentley was a stout fighter, so was Middleton.
Middleton, on the whole, got the worst of it, because Bentley was the
stronger combatant; but he seems to have stood in good repute all his
life, and when advanced in years was appointed Professor of Natural
History. He is known to us, however, only as the biographer of Cicero.
Of this book, Monk, the biographer of Middleton's great opponent,
Bentley, declares that, "for elegance, purity, and ease, Middleton's
style yields to none in the English language." De Quincey says of it
that, by "weeding away from it whatever is colloquial, you would strip
it of all that is characteristic"--meaning, I suppose, that the work
altogether wants dignity of composition. This charge is, to my thinking,
so absolutely contrary to the fact, that it needs only to be named to be
confuted by the opinion of all who have read the work. De Quincey
pounces upon the above-named error with profoundest satisfaction, and
tells us a pleasant little story about an old woman who thought that
four million people had been once collected at Caernarvon. Middleton had
found the figure wrongly deciphered and wrongly copied for him, and had
translated it as he found it, without much thought. De Quincey thinks
that the error is sufficient to throw over all faith in the book: "It is
in the light of an evidence against Middleton's good-sense and
thoughtfulness that I regard it as capital." That is De Quincey's
estimate of Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a laborer who
spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw
himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer
of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and
industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said
that no English library should be without it.

The last letter written by Cicero in Asia was sent to Atticus from
Ephesus the day before he started--on the last day, namely, of September.
He had been delayed by winds and by want of vessels large enough to carry
him and his suite. News here reached him from Rome--news which was not
true in its details, but true enough in its spirit. In a letter to
Atticus he speaks of "miros terrores Caesarianos"[115]--"dreadful reports
as to outrages by Caesar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army;
that he had with him the Praetors elect, one of the Tribunes, and even one
of the Consuls; and that Pompey had resolved to leave the city. Such were
the first tidings presaging Pharsalia. Then he adds a word about his
triumph. "Tell me what you think about this triumph, which my friends
desire me to seek. I should not care about it if Bibulus were not also
asking for a triumph--Bibulus, who never put a foot outside his own doors
as long as there was an enemy in Syria!" Thus Cicero had to suffer untold
misery because Bibulus was asking for a triumph!




CHAPTER V.

_THE WAR BETWEEN CAESAR AND POMPEY._


What official arrangements were made for Proconsuls in regard to money,
when in command of a province, we do not know. The amounts allowed were
no doubt splendid, but it was not to them that the Roman governor looked
as the source of that fortune which he expected to amass. The means of
plunder were infinite, but of plunder always subject to the danger of an
accusation. We remember how Verres calculated that he could divide his
spoil into three sufficient parts--one for the lawyers, one for the
judges, so as to insure his acquittal, and then one for himself. This
plundering was common--so common as to have become almost a matter of
course; but it was illegal, and subjected some unfortunate culprits to
exile, and to the disgorging of a part of what they had taken. No
accusation was made against Cicero. As to others there were constantly
threats, if no more than threats. Cicero was not even threatened. But he
had saved out of his legitimate expenses a sum equal to L18,000 of our
money--from which we may learn how noble were the appanages of a Roman
governor. The expenses of all his staff passed through his own hands,
and many of those of his army. Any saving effected would therefore be to
his own personal advantage. On this money he counted much when his
affairs were in trouble, as he was going to join Pompey at Pharsalia in
the following year. He then begged Atticus to arrange his matters for
him, telling him that the sum was at his call in Asia,[116] but he
never saw it again: Pompey borrowed it--or took it; and when Pompey had
been killed the money was of course gone.

His brother Quintus was with him in Cilicia, but of his brother's doings
there he says little or nothing. We have no letters from him during the
period to his wife or daughter. The latter was married to her third
husband, Dolabella, during his absence, with no opposition from Cicero,
but not in accordance with his advice. He had purposed to accept a
proposition for her hand made to him by Tiberius Nero, the young Roman
nobleman who afterward married that Livia whom Augustus took away from
him even when she was pregnant, in order that he might marry her
himself, and who thus became the father of the Emperor Tiberius. It is
worthy of remark at the same time that the Emperor Tiberius married the
granddaughter of Atticus. Cicero when in Cilicia had wished that Nero
should be chosen; but the family at home was taken by the fashion and
manners of Dolabella, and gave the young widow to him as her third
husband when she was yet only twenty-five. This marriage, like the
others, was unfortunate. Dolabella, though fashionable, nobly born,
agreeable, and probably handsome, was thoroughly worthless. He was a
Roman nobleman of the type then common--heartless, extravagant, and
greedy. His country, his party, his politics were subservient, not to
ambition or love of power, but simply to a desire for plunder. Cicero
tried hard to love him, partly for his daughter's sake, more perhaps
from the necessity which he felt for supporting himself by the power and
strength of the aristocratic party to which Dolabella belonged.

I cannot bring him back to Rome, and all that he suffered there, without
declaring that much of his correspondence during his government,
especially during the latter months of it, and the period of his journey
home, is very distressing. I have told the story of his own doings, I
think, honestly, and how he himself abstained, and compelled those
belonging to him to do so; how he strove to ameliorate the condition of
those under his rule; how he fully appreciated the duty of doing well by
others, so soon to be recognized by all Christians. Such humanity on the
part of a Roman at such a period is to me marvellous, beautiful, almost
divine; but, in eschewing Roman greed and Roman cruelty, he was unable
to eschew Roman insincerity. I have sometimes thought that to have done
so it must have been necessary for him altogether to leave public life.
Why not? my readers will say. But in our days, when a man has mixed
himself for many years with all that is doing in public, how hard it is
for him to withdraw, even though, in withdrawing he fears no violence,
no punishment, no exile, no confiscation. The arguments, the prayers,
the reproaches of those around him draw him back; and the arguments, the
reproaches from within are more powerful even than those from his
friends. To be added to these is the scorn, perhaps the ridicule, of his
opponents. Such are the difficulties in the way of the modern politician
who thinks that he has resolved to retire; but the Roman ex-Consul,
ex-Praetor, ex-Governor had entered upon a mode of warfare in which his
all, his life, his property, his choice of country, his wife, his
children, were open to the ready attacks of his eager enemies. To have
deserved well would be nothing, unless he could keep a party round him
bound by mutual interests to declare that he had deserved well. A rich
man, who desired to live comfortably beyond the struggle of public life,
had to abstain, as Atticus had done, from increasing the sores, from
hurting the ambition, from crushing the hopes of aspirants. Such a man
might be safe, but he could not be useful; such, at any rate, had not
been Cicero's life. In his earlier days, till he was Consul, he had kept
himself free from political interference in doing the work of his life;
but since that time he had necessarily put himself into competition with
many men, and had made many enemies by the courage of his opinions. He
had found even those he had most trusted opposed to him. He had aroused
the jealousy not only of the Caesars and the Crassuses and the Pisos,
but also of the Pompeys and Catos and Brutuses. Whom was he not
compelled to fear? And yet he could not escape to his books; nor, in
truth, did he wish it. He had made for himself a nature which he could
not now control.

He had not been long in Cilicia before he knew well how cruel, how
dishonest, how greedy, how thoroughly Roman had been the conduct of his
predecessor Appius. His letters to Atticus are full of the truths which
he had to tell on that matter. His conduct, too, with regard to Appius
was mainly right. As far as in him lay he endeavored to remedy the evils
which the unjust Proconsul had done, and to stop what further evil was
still being done. He did not hesitate to offend Appius when it was
necessary to do so by his interference. But Appius was a great nobleman,
one of the "optimates," a man with a strong party at his back in Rome.
Appius knew well that Cicero's good word was absolutely necessary to
save him from the ruin of a successful accusation. Cicero knew also that
the support of Appius would be of infinite service to him in his Roman
politics. Knowing this, he wrote to Appius letters full of
flattery--full of falsehood, if the plain word can serve our purpose
better. Dolabella, the new son-in-law, had taken upon himself, for some
reason as to which it can hardly be worth our while to inquire, to
accuse Appius of malversation in his province. That Appius deserved
condemnation there can be no doubt; but in these accusations the
contests generally took place not as to the proof of the guilt, but as
to the prestige and power of the accuser and the accused. Appius was
tried twice on different charges, and was twice acquitted; but the fact
that his son-in-law should be the accuser was fraught with danger to
Cicero. He thought it necessary for the hopes which he then entertained
to make Appius understand that his son-in-law was not acting in concert
with him, and that he was desirous that Appius should receive all the
praise which would have been due to a good governor. So great was the
influence of Appius at Rome that he was not only acquitted, but shortly
afterward elected Censor. The office of Censor was in some respects the
highest in Rome. The Censors were elected only once in four years,
remaining in office for eighteen months. The idea was that powers so
arbitrary as these should be in existence only for a year and a half out
of each four years. Questions of morals were consi

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