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| Latin word "demuntiat" in Footnote 222 has been    |
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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, ÆTAT. 52, 53, 54.                 38

 CHAPTER III.

 MILO                                      59

 CHAPTER IV.

 CILICIA                                   76

 CHAPTER V.

 THE WAR BETWEEN CÆSAR AND POMPEY         110

 CHAPTER VI.

 AFTER THE BATTLE                         129

 CHAPTER VII.

 MARCELLUS, LIGARIUS, AND DEIOTARUS       147

 CHAPTER VIII.

 CÆSAR'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 Quæstor, Ædile, Prætor, 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 Prætor 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 Cæsarean
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 Cæsar, the attempt to make the best of
Cæsar 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 Cæsar, 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
Cæsar's creatures, who was a witness against Sextius. Then there is a
seventh, regarding the disposition of the provinces among the Proprætors
and Proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of Piso
from Macedonia and Gabinius from Syria, and to win Cæsar's favor by
showing that Cæsar should be allowed to keep the two Gauls and
Illyricum. To these must be added two others, made within the same
period, for Cælius and Balbus. The close friendship between Cicero and
the young man Cælius was one of the singular details of the orator's
life. Balbus was a Spaniard, attached to Cæsar, 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, ætat. 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 Cæsar 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
pæan 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 Prætors 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 Cæsar 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 Prætors 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. Cæsar 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 Cæsar. 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 Cæsar. It
failed altogether.[6] The fear of Cæsar 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 Cæsar were
conspirators against the Republic. Cæsar was the bolder, and therefore
the more dangerous. It might probably come to pass that the services of
Pompey would be needed for restraining Cæsar. Pompey naturally belonged
to the "optimates," while Cæsar 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
£16,000 for its re-erection, and £4000 for the damage done to the
Tusculan villa with £2000 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, ætat. 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 Cæsar. This he had called a
[Greek: palinôdia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to Cæsar
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 Cæsar. Therefore it becomes necessary for him to truckle to
Cæsar, not for himself but for his party. Unsupported he cannot stand in
open hostility to Cæsar. He truckles. He writes to Cæsar, singing
Cæsar'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, ætat. 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 Ædile, there had come
on debates as to a law passed by Cæsar 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, ætat. 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 Ædile, 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 Cæsar and to procure Cæsar's assent. Cæsar 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 pæan 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 Cæsar's, and Cicero was
able to say words as to Vatinius which he was unwilling to speak as to
Cæsar and his doings. It must be added here that two years later Cicero
pleaded for this very Vatinius, at the joint request of Cæsar and
Pompey, when Vatinius on leaving the Prætorship was accused of
corruption.

[Sidenote: B.C. 56, ætat. 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 Semproniæ, 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 prætorian provinces and consular
provinces, though there was no law making it sure that any province
should be either consular or prætorian. 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 Prætors, 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. Cæsar 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
Cæsar 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 Cæsar,
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 Cæsar. 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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. Cæsar
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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, which meant a great deal.

But Cæsar 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 Belgæ, 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
Cæsar.[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 Cæsar 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
Cæsar 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 Cæsar had been his enemy, what of that?
Cæsar was not his enemy now. He had told the Senate what offers of
employment Cæsar 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 Cæsar from this time up to the
day on which Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar'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 Cæsar'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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar than by opposing him. He was far enough from succeeding
in the management of Cæsar, but he did do much in keeping his party
together. It was in this spirit that he advocated before the Senate the
maintenance of Cæsar's authority in the two Gauls. The Senate decreed
the withdrawal of Piso and Gabinius, but decided to leave Cæsar 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 Cæsar." 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 Cæsar'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 Cæsar'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 Cicéron et ses Amis. Among his chapters one is devoted
to Cicero's remarkable intimacy with Cælius, 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 Cælius. Cælius 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.
Cælius 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, Cælius and afterward
Dolabella, were companions with whom he loved to associate. When he was
in Cilicia, as Proconsul, this Cælius became almost a second Atticus to
him, in the writing of news from Rome.

But Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Cælius was tried for the
offence. There were no less than four accusers, or advocates, on her
behalf, of whom her brother was one. Cælius was defended by Crassus as
well as by Cicero, and was acquitted. All these cases combined
political views with criminal charges. Cælius 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 Cælius which has brought down on Cicero the wrath of the
moralists.




CHAPTER II.

_CICERO, ÆTAT._ 52, 53, 54.


[Sidenote: B.C. 55, ætat. 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar
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 Cæsoronius 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 Cæsoronius
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. Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Ædile, you say; the Roman people
choose a Piso for their Ædile--not this man from any regard for himself,
but because he is a Piso. The Prætorship 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 modération, et que la gravité d'un orateur consulaire
y fait trop souvent place à 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 Æsopus 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
Prætor 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
Cælius 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 Cæsar'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 Cæsar 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 Ædile. 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 Cæsar; 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 Cæsar.

[Sidenote: B.C. 54, ætat. 53.]

In the spring of the year we find Cicero writing to Cæsar in apparently
great intimacy. He recommends to Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, with whose name we become familiar in Cicero's
correspondence, though I do not remember that Cæsar ever mentions him.
"Send me some one else that I may show my friendship," Cæsar had said,
knowing well that Cicero was worth any price of the kind. Cicero
declares to Cæsar that on hearing this he held up his hands in grateful
surprise, and on this account he had sent Trebatius. "Mi Cæsar," he
says, writing with all affection; and then he praises Trebatius,
assuring Cæsar 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 Ædile, 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 prætorian honors contest any place with one of consular
family. Let no mere knight stand against one with prætorian 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, Cæsar, 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
Cæsar 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 Cæsar
was destined to reach, and which was now probably fixed before Cæsar'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
Cæsar'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 Cæsar, doubting,
not for his life but for his character, as to what might be the best for
the Republic. He did not fear when Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, and with Pompey,
who at this time was Cæsar'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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, 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 Cælius, 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, ætat. 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 Quæstor, 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar
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 Cæsar's success.
Julia, Cæsar'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 Cæsar
and Pompey; so much so that we are surprised that such a feeling should
have been so powerful among the Romans of the time. "Concordiæ 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
Cæsar 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, ætat. 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 Cæsar in the Consulship when Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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, ætat. 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,
Hypsæus, 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 Hypsæus 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
Bovillæ, 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 Cælius 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 Hypsæus, 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
Cælius, 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 Ænobarbus 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 Hypsæus 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. Cæsar 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, ætat. 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
Cæsar 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 Cæsar, 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 Quæstors, Ædiles, Prætors, 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, ætat. 55.]

This was the year in which Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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, ætat. 56.]

We cannot but think that at this time the return of Cæsar 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 Cæsar: "If Cæsar 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
Cæsar 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 Prætor 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 Proprætor
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 Cæsar 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-Prætors 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, ætat. 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-Prætor 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 Cumæ 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 Cæsar. He has borrowed money of Cæsar, 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 Cæsar,
who was still absent in Gaul. This Marcellus, and others of his family
who succeeded him in his office, were hotly opposed to Cæsar, 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 Cæsar. He had endeavored to get a
decree of the Senate for recalling Cæsar at once, but had succeeded only
in having his proposition postponed for consideration in the following
year--when Cæsar would naturally return. But to show how little was his
regard to Cæsar, he caused to be flogged in Rome a citizen from one of
those towns of Cisalpine Gaul to which Cæsar 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 Cæsar when Cæsar 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 Cælius, from whom he had requested information as to
what was going on in Rome. But Cælius 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 Cælius without begging
Cælius to assist in bringing about his speedy recall. Cælius troubles
him much afterward by renewed requests for Cilician panthers wanted for
Ædilian 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 Cælius 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 Cæsar. 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 Scævola, 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 Æmilius Paulus, who
had also been elected Consul for the next year. He writes, also, a
despatch to the Consuls, to the Prætors, 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 Cælius 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
Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar, and the effect was to postpone any such recall till it
would mean nothing; but Cælius specially declares that the intention of
recalling Cæsar 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 Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Cælius--"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 Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Cælius 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 Ætolia 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 Cælius.
"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, ætat. 57.]

Lucius Æmilius 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 Cælius 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 Cæsar. 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 £50,000 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!"
Æmilius 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 £8000 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 "Cnæus 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 Cælius, 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 Cæsar, 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 linguæ" 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 Cælius continued to send Cicero accounts.
The Triumvirate was now over. Cælius says that Pompey will not attack
Cæsar openly, but that he does all he can to prevent Cæsar from being
elected Consul before he shall have given up his province and his
army.[110] For details Cælius 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 Cælius, as were the
commentaries we so well know the compilation of Cæsar. 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, ætat. 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 Cælius
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 Quæstor named C. Cælius--no close
connection of his friend Cælius, as Cicero finds himself obliged to
apologize for the selection to his friend. "Young, you will say. No
doubt; but he had been elected Quæstor, 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 £8000. We hear elsewhere, as will be mentioned again, that Cicero
realized out of his own legitimate allowance in Cilicia a profit of
about £18,000; and we may imagine that the "cohort" should think itself
aggrieved in losing £8000 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 Cæsarianos"[115]--"dreadful reports
as to outrages by Cæsar;" that he would by no means dismiss his army;
that he had with him the Prætors 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 CÆSAR 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 £18,000 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-Prætor, 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 Cæsars 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 considered by them. Should
a Senator be held to have lived as did not befit a Senator, a Censor
could depose him. As Appius was elected Censor immediately after his
acquittal, together with that Piso whom Cicero had so hated, it may be
understood that his influence was very great.[117] It was great enough
to produce from Cicero letters which were flattering and false. The man
who had been able to live with a humanity, a moderation, and an honesty
befitting a Christian, had not risen to that appreciation of the beauty
of truth which an exercise of Christianity is supposed to exact.

"Sed quid agas? Sic vivitur!"[118]--"What would you have me do? It is
thus we live now!" This he exclaims in a letter to Cælius, written a
short time before he left the province. "What would you say if you read
my last letter to Appius?" You would open your eyes if you knew how I
have flattered Appius--that was his meaning. "Sic vivitur!"--"It is so
we live now." When I read this I feel compelled to ask whether there was
an opportunity for any other way of living. Had he seen the baseness of
lying as an English Christian gentleman is expected to see it, and had
adhered to truth at the cost of being a martyr, his conduct would have
been high though we might have known less of it; but, looking at all the
circumstances of the period, have we a right to think that he could have
done so?

From Athens on his way home Cicero wrote to his wife, joining Tullia's
name with hers. "Lux nostra," he calls his daughter; "the very apple of
my eye!" He had already heard from various friends that civil war was
expected. He will have to declare himself on his arrival--that is, to
take one side or the other--and the sooner he does so the better. There
is some money to be looked for--a legacy which had been left to him. He
gives express directions as to the persons to be employed respecting
this, omitting the name of that Philotomus as to whose honesty he is
afraid. He calls his wife "suavissima et optatissima Terentia," but he
does not write to her with the true love which was expressed by his
letters when in exile. From Athens, also, where he seems to have stayed
nearly two months, he wrote in December. He is easy, he says, about his
triumph unless Cæsar should interfere--but he does not care much about
his triumph now. He is beginning to feel the wearisomeness of the
triumph; and indeed it was a time in which the utter hollowness of
triumphal pretensions must have made the idea odious to him. But to have
withdrawn would have been to have declared his own fears, his own
doubts, his own inferiority to the two men who were becoming declared as
the rival candidates for Roman power. We may imagine that at such a time
he would gladly have gone in quiet to his Roman mansion or to one of his
villas, ridding himself forever of the trouble of his lictors, his
fasces, and all the paraphernalia of imperatorial dignity; but a man
cannot rid himself of such appanages without showing that he has found
it necessary to do so. It was the theory of a triumph that the
victorious Imperator should come home hot (as it were) from the
battle-field, with all his martial satellites around him, and have
himself carried at once through Rome. It was barbaric and grand, as I
have said before, but it required the martial satellites. Tradition had
become law, and the Imperator intending to triumph could not dismiss his
military followers till the ceremony was over. In this way Cicero was
sadly hampered by his lictors when, on his landing at Brundisium, he
found that Italy was already preparing for her great civil war.

[Sidenote: B.C. 50, ætat. 57.]

Early in this year it had been again proposed in the Senate that Cæsar
should give up his command. At this time the two Consuls, L. Æmilius
Paulus and C. Claudius Marcellus, were opposed to Cæsar, as was also
Curio, who had been one of Cicero's young friends, and was now Tribune.
But two of these Cæsar managed to buy by the payment of enormous bribes.
Curio was the more important of the two, and required the larger bribe.
The story comes to us from Appian,[119] but the modern reader will find
it efficiently told by Mommsen.[120] The Consul had fifteen hundred
talents, or about £500,000! The sum named as that given by Cæsar to
Curio was something greater, because he was so deeply in debt! Bribes to
the amount of above a million of money, such as money is to us now,
bestowed upon two men for their support in the Senate! It was worth a
man's while to be a Consul or a Tribune in those days. But the money was
well earned--plunder, no doubt, extracted from Gaul. The Senate decided
that both Pompey and Cæsar should be required to abandon their
commands--or rather they adopted a proposal to that effect without any
absolute decree. But this sufficed for Cæsar, who was only anxious to be
relieved from the necessity of obeying any order from the Senate by the
knowledge that Pompey also was ordered, and also was disobedient. Then
it was--in the summer of this year--that the two commanders were desired
by the Senate to surrender each of them a legion, or about three
thousand men, under the pretence that the forces were wanted for the
Parthian war. The historians tell us that Pompey had lent a legion to
Cæsar, thus giving us an indication of the singular terms on which
legions were held by the proconsular officers who commanded them. Cæsar
nobly sends up to Rome two legions, the one as having been ordered to be
restored by himself, and the other as belonging to Pompey. He felt, no
doubt, that a show of nobleness in this respect would do him better
service than the withholding of the soldiers. The men were stationed at
Capua, instead of being sent to the East, and no doubt drifted back into
Cæsar's hands. The men who had served under Cæsar would not willingly
find themselves transferred to Pompey.

Cæsar in the summer came across the Alps into Cisalpine Gaul, which as
yet had not been legally taken from him, and in the autumn sat himself
down at Ravenna, which was still within his province. It was there that
he had to meditate the crossing of the Rubicon and the manifestation of
absolute rebellion. Matters were in this condition when Cicero returned
to Italy, and heard the corroboration of the news as to the civil war
which had reached him at Athens.

In a letter written from Athens, earlier than the one last quoted,
Cicero declared to Atticus that it would become him better to be
conquered with Pompey than to conquer with Cæsar.[121] The opinion here
given may be taken as his guiding principle in politics till Pompey was
no more. Through all the doubts and vacillations which encumbered him,
this was the rule not only of his mind but of his heart. To him there
was no Triumvirate: the word had never been mentioned to his ears. Had
Pompey remained free from Cæsar it would have been better. The two men
had come together, and Crassus had joined them. It was better for him to
remain with them and keep them right, than to stand away, angry and
astray, as Cato had done. The question how far Cæsar was justified in
the position which he had taken up by certain alleged injuries, affected
Cicero less than it has done subsequent inquirers. Had an attempt been
made to recall Cæsar illegally? Was he subjected to wrong by having his
command taken away from him before the period had passed for which the
people had given it? Was he refused indulgences to which the greatness
of his services entitled him--such as permission to sue for the
Consulship while absent from Rome--while that, and more than that, had
been granted to Pompey? All these questions were no doubt hot in debate
at the time, but could hardly have affected much the judgment of Cicero,
and did not at all affect his conduct. Nor, I think, should they
influence the opinions of those who now attempt to judge the conduct of
Cæsar. Things had gone beyond the domain of law, and had fallen
altogether into that of potentialities. Decrees of the Senate or votes
of the people were alike used as excuses. Cæsar, from the beginning of
his career, had shown his determination to sweep away as cobwebs the
obligations which the law imposed upon him. It is surely vain to look
for excuses for a man's conduct to the practice of that injustice
against him which he has long practised against others. Shall we forgive
a house-breaker because the tools which he has himself invented are used
at last upon his own door? The modern lovers of Cæsar and of Cæsarism
generally do not seek to wash their hero white after that fashion. To
them it is enough that the man has been able to trample upon the laws
with impunity, and to be a law not only to himself but to all the world
around him. There are some of us who think that such a man, let him be
ever so great--let him be ever so just, if the infirmities of human
nature permit justice to dwell in the breast of such a man--will in the
end do more harm than good. But they who sit at the feet of the great
commanders admire them as having been law-breaking, not law-abiding.
To say that Cæsar was justified in the armed position which he took in
Northern Italy in the autumn of this year, is to rob him of his praise.
I do not suppose that he had meditated any special line of policy during
the years of hard work in Gaul, but I think that he was determined not
to relinquish his power, and that he was ready for any violence by which
he might preserve it.

If such was Cicero's idea of this man--if such the troubled outlook
which he took into the circumstances of the Empire--he thought probably
but little of the legality of Cæsar's recall. What would the Consuls do,
what would Curio do, what would Pompey do, and what Cæsar? It was of
this that he thought. Had law-abiding then been possible, he would have
been desirous to abide by the law. Some nearest approach to the law
would be the best. Cæsar had ignored all laws, except so far as he could
use them for his own purposes. Pompey, in conspiring with Cæsar, had
followed Cæsar's lead; but was desirous of using the law against Cæsar
when Cæsar outstripped him in lawlessness. But to Cicero there was still
some hope of restraining Pompey. Pompey, too, had been a conspirator,
but not so notorious a conspirator as Cæsar. With Pompey there would be
some bond to the Republic; with Cæsar there could be none; therefore it
was better for him to fall with Pompey than to rise with Cæsar. That was
his conviction till Pompey had altogether fallen.

His journey homeward is made remarkable by letters to Tiro, his slave
and secretary. Tiro was taken ill, and Cicero was obliged to leave him
at Patræ, in Greece. Whence he had come to Cicero we do not know, or
when; but he had not probably fallen under his master's peculiar notice
before the days of the Cilician government, as we find that on his
arrival at Brundisium he writes to Atticus respecting him as a person
whom Atticus had not much known.[122] But his affection for Tiro is very
warm, and his little solicitudes for the man whom he leaves are
charming. He is to be careful as to what boat he takes, and under what
captain he sails. He is not to hurry. The doctor is to be consulted and
well paid. Cicero himself writes various letters to various persons, in
order to secure that attention which Tiro could not have insured unless
so assisted.

Early in January Cicero reached the city, but could not enter it because
of his still unsettled triumph, and Cæsar crossed the little river which
divided his province from the Roman territory. The 4th of January is the
date given for the former small event. For the latter I have seen no
precise day named, I presume that it was after the 6th, as on that day
the Senate appointed Domitian as his successor in his province. On this
being done, the two Tribunes, Antony and Cassius, hurried off to Cæsar,
and Cæsar then probably crossed the stream. Cicero was appointed to a
command in Campania--that of raising levies, the duties of which were
not officially repugnant to his triumph.

His doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit;
but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? The
effect had been to take all power out of his hand. Cæsar had given him
up. Pompey could not do so, but we can imagine how willing Pompey would
have been that he should have remained in Cilicia. He had been sent
there, out of the way, but had hurried home again. If he would only have
remained and plundered! If he would only have remained there and have
been honest--so that he would be out of the way! But here he was--back
in Italy, an honest, upright man! No one so utterly unlike the usual
Roman, so lost amid the self-seekers of Rome, so unnecessarily
clean-handed, could be found! Cato was honest, foolishly honest for his
time; but with Cato it was not so difficult to deal as with Cicero. We
can imagine Cato wrapping himself up in his robe and being savagely
unreasonable. Cicero was all alive to what was going on in the world,
but still was honest! In the mean time he remained in the neighborhood
of Naples, writing to his wife and daughter, writing to Tiro, writing to
Atticus, and telling us all those details which we now seem to know so
well--because he has told us. In one of his letters to Atticus at this
time he is sadly in earnest. He will die with Pompey in Italy, but what
can he do by leaving it? He has his "lictors" with him still. Oh, those
dreadful lictors! His friendship for Cnæus! His fear of having to join
himself with the coming tyrant! "Oh that you would assist me with your
counsel!"[123] He writes again, and describes the condition of
Pompey--of Pompey who had been Magnus. "See how prostrate he is. He has
neither courage, counsel, men, nor industry! Put aside those things;
look at his flight from the city, his cowardly harangues in the towns,
his ignorance of his own strength and that of his enemy! * * * Cæsar in
pursuit of Pompey! Oh, sad! * * * Will he kill him?" he exclaims. Then,
still to Atticus, he defends himself. He will die for Pompey, but he
does not believe that he can do any good either to Pompey or to the
Republic by a base flight. Then there is another cause for staying in
Italy as to which he cannot write. This was Terentia's conduct. At the
end of one of his letters he tells Atticus that with the same lamp by
which he had written would he burn that which Atticus had sent to him.
In another he speaks of a Greek tutor who has deserted him, a certain
Dionysius, and he boils over with anger. His letters to Atticus about
the Greek tutor are amusing at this distance of time, because they show
his eagerness. "I never knew anything more ungrateful; and there is
nothing worse than ingratitude."[124]

He heaps his scorn upon Pompey: "It is true, indeed, that I said that it
was better to be conquered with him than to conquer with those others. I
would indeed. But of what Pompey was it that I so spoke? Was it of this
one who flies he knows not what, nor whom, nor whither he will
fly?"[125] He writes again the same day: "Pompey had fostered Cæsar, and
then had feared him. He had left the city; he had lost Picenum by his
own fault, he had betaken himself to Apulia! Then he went into Greece,
leaving us in the dark as to his plans!" He excuses a letter of his own
to Cæsar. He had written to Cæsar in terms which might be pleasing to
the great man. He had told Cæsar of Cæsar's admirable wisdom. Was it not
better so? He was willing that his letter should be read aloud to all
the people, if only those of Pompey might also be read aloud. Then
follow copies of a correspondence between him and Pompey. In the last he
declares[126] that "when he had written from Canusium he had not dreamed
that Pompey was about to cross the sea. He had known that Pompey had
intended to treat for peace--for peace even under unjust conditions--but
he had never thought that Pompey was meditating a retreat out of Italy."
He argues well and stoutly, and does take us along with him. Pompey had
been beaten back from point to point, never once rallying himself
against Cæsar. He had failed, and had slipped away, leaving a man here
and there to stand up for the Republic. Pompey was willing to risk
nothing for Rome. It had come to pass at last that he was being taught
Cæsarism by Cæsar, and when he died was more imperial than his master.

At this time Cicero's eyes were bad. "Mihi molestior lippitudo erat
etiam quam ante fuerat." And again, "Lippitudinis meæ signum tibi sit
librarii manus." But we may doubt whether any great men have lived so
long with so little to tease them as to their health. And yet the amount
of work he got through was great. He must have so arranged his affairs
as to have made the most he could of his hours, and have carried in his
memory information on all subjects. When we remember the size of the
books which he read, their unwieldy shapes, their unfitness for such
work as that of ours, there seems to have been a continuation of study
such as we cannot endure. Throughout his life his hours were early, but
they must also have been late. Of his letters we have not a half, of
his speeches not a half, of his treatises not more than a half. When he
was abroad during his exile, or in Cilicia during his government, he
could not have had his books with him. That Cæsar should have been
Cæsar, or Pompey Pompey, does not seem to me a matter so difficult as
that Cicero should have been Cicero. Then comes that letter of which I
spoke in my first chapter, in which he recapitulates the Getæ, the
Armenians, and the men of Colchis. "Shall I, the savior of the city,
assist to bring down upon that city those hordes of foreign men? Shall I
deliver it up to famine and to destruction for the sake of one man who
is no more than mortal?"[127] It was Pompey as to whom he then asked the
question. For Pompey's sake am I to let in these crowds? We have been
told, indeed, by Mr. Froude that the man was Cæsar, and that Cicero
wrote thus anxiously with the special object of arranging his death!

"Now, if ever, think what we shall do," he says. "A Roman army sits
round Pompey and makes him a prisoner within valley and rampart--and
shall we live? The city stands; the Prætors give the law, the Ædiles
keep up the games, good men look to their principal and their interest.
Shall I remain sitting here? Shall I rush hither and thither madly, and
implore the credit of the towns? Men of substance will not follow me.
The revolutionists will arrest me. Is there any end to this misery?
People will point at me and say, 'How wise he was not to go with him.' I
was not wise. Of his victory I never wished to be the comrade--yet now I
do of his sorrow."[128]

[Sidenote: B.C. 49, ætat. 58.]

Pompey had crossed the sea from Brundisium, and Cæsar had retreated
across Italy to Capua. As he was journeying he saw Cicero, and asked him
to go to Rome. This Cicero refused, and Cæsar passed on. "I must then
use other counsels," said Cæsar, thus leaving him for the last time
before the coming battle. Cicero went on to Arpinum, and there heard the
nightingales. From that moment he resolved. He had not thought it
possible that when the moment came he should have been able to prevail
against Cæsar's advice; but he had done so. He had feared that Cæsar
would overcome him; but when the moment came he was strong against even
Cæsar. He gave his boy his toga, or, as we should say, made a man of
him. He was going after Pompey, not for the sake of Pompey, not for the
sake of the Republic, but for loyalty. He was going because Atticus had
told him to go. But as he is going there came fresh ground for grief. He
writes to Atticus about the two boys, his son and nephew. The one is
good by nature, and has not yet gone astray. The other, the elder and
his nephew, has been encouraged by this uncle's indulgence, and has
openly adopted evil ways. In other words, he has become Cæsarian--for a
reward.[129] The young Quintus has shown himself to be very false.
Cicero is so bound together with his family in their public life that
this falling off of one of them makes him unhappy. Then Curio comes the
way, and there is a most interesting conversation. It seems that Curio,
who is fond of Cicero, tells him everything; but Cicero, who doubts him,
lets him pass on. Then Cælius writes to him. Cælius implores him, for
the sake of his children, to bear in mind what he is doing. He tells him
much of Cæsar's anger, and asks him if he cannot become Cæsarian; at any
rate to betake himself to some retreat till the storm shall pass by and
quieter days should come. But Cælius, though it had suited Cicero to
know him intimately, had not read the greatness of the man's mind. He
did not understand in the least the difficulty which pervaded Cicero. To
Cælius it was play--play in which a man might be beaten, or banished, or
slaughtered; but it was a game in which men were fighting each for
himself. That there should be a duty in the matter, beyond that, was
inexplicable to Cælius. And his children, too--his anger against young
Quintus and his forgiveness of Marcus! He thinks that Quintus had been
purchased by a large bribe on Cæsar's side, and is thankful that it is
no worse with him. What can have been worse to a young man than to have
been open to such payment? Antony is frequently on the scene, and
already disgusts us by the vain frivolity and impudence of his life. And
then Cicero's eyes afflict him, and he cannot see. Servius Sulpicius
comes to him weeping. For Servius, who is timid and lachrymose,
everything has gone astray. And then there is that Dionysius who had
plainly told him that he desired to follow some richer or some readier
master. At the last comes the news of his Tullia's child's birth. She is
brought to bed of a son. He cannot, however, wait to see how the son
thrives. From the midst of enemies, and with spies around him, he
starts. There is one last letter written to his wife and daughter from
on board the ship at Caieta, sending them many loves and many careful
messages, and then he is off.

It was now the 11th of June, the third day before the ides, B.C. 49, and
we hear nothing special of the events of his journey. When he reached
the camp, which he did in safety, he was not well received there. He had
given his all to place himself along with Pompey in the republican
quarters, and when there the republicans were unwilling to welcome him.
Pompey would have preferred that he should have remained away, so as to
be able to say hereafter that he had not come.

Of what occurred to Cicero during the great battle which led to the
solution of the Roman question we know little or nothing. We hear that
Cicero was absent, sick at Dyrrachium, but there are none of those
tirades of abuse with which such an absence might have been greeted. We
hear, indeed, from other sources, very full accounts of the
fighting--how Cæsar was nearly conquered, how Pompey might have
prevailed had he had the sense to take the good which came in his way,
how he failed to take it, how he was beaten, and how, in the very
presence of his wife, he was murdered at last at the mouth of the Nile
by the combined energies of a Roman and a Greek.

We can imagine how the fate of the world was decided on the Pharsalus
where the two armies met, and the victory remained with Cæsar. Then
there were weepings and gnashings of teeth, and there were the
congratulations and self-applause of the victors. In all Cicero's
letters there is not a word of it. There was terrible suffering before
it began, and there is the sense of injured innocence on his return, but
nowhere do we find any record of what took place. There is no mourning
for Pompey, no turning to Cæsar as the conqueror. Petra has been lost,
and Pharsalia has been won, but there is no sign.

[Sidenote: B.C. 48, ætat. 59.]

Cicero, we know, spent the time at Dyrrachium close to which the battle
of Petra was fought, and went from thence to Corcyra. There invitation
was made to him, as the senior consular officer present, to take the
command of the beaten army, but that he declined. We are informed that
he was nearly killed in the scuffle which took place. We can imagine
that it was so--that in the confusion and turmoil which followed he
should have been somewhat roughly told that it behooved him to take the
lead and to come forth as the new commander; that there should be a time
at last in which no moment should be allowed him for doubt, but that he
should doubt, and, after more or less of reticence, pass on. Young
Pompey would have it so. What name would be so good to bind together the
opponents of Cæsar as that of Cicero? But Cicero would not be led. It
seems that he was petulant and out of sorts at the time; that he had
been led into the difficulty of the situation by his desire to be true
to Pompey, and that he was only able to escape from it now that Pompey
was gone. We can well imagine that there should be no man less able to
fight against Cæsar, though there was none whose name might be so
serviceable to use as that of Cicero. At any rate, as far as we are
concerned, there was silence on the subject on his part. He wrote not a
word to any of the friends whom Pompey had left behind him, but returned
to Italy dispirited, silent, and unhappy. He had indeed met many men
since the battle of the Pharsalus, but to none of whom we are conversant
had he expressed his thoughts regarding that great campaign.

Here we part from Pompey, who ran from the fighting-ground of Macedonia
to meet his doom in the roads of Alexandria. Never had man risen so high
in his youth to be extinguished so ingloriously in his age. He was born
in the same year with Cicero, but had come up quicker into the
management of the world's affairs, so as to have received something from
his equals of that which was due to age. Habit had given him that ease
of manners which enabled him to take from those who should have been his
compeers the deference which was due not to his age but to his
experience. When Cicero was entering the world, taking up the cudgels to
fight against Sulla, Pompey had already won his spurs, in spite of Sulla
but by means of Sulla. Men in these modern days learn, as they grow old
in public life, to carry themselves with indifference among the
backslidings of the world. In reading the life of Cicero, we see that it
was so then. When defending Amerinus, we find the same character of man
as was he who afterward took Milo's part. There is the same readiness,
the same ingenuity, and the same high indignation; but there is not the
same indifference as to results. With Amerinus it is as though all the
world depended on it; with Milo he felt it to be sufficient to make the
outside world believe it. When Pompey triumphed, 70 B.C., and was made
Consul for the second time, he was already old in glory--when Cicero had
not as yet spoken those two orations against Verres which had made the
speaking of another impossible. Pompey, we may say, had never been
young. Cicero was never old. There was no moment in his life in which
Cicero was not able to laugh with the Curios and the Cæliuses behind the
back of the great man. There was no moment in which Pompey could have
done so. He who has stepped from his cradle on to the world's high
places has lost the view of those things which are only to be seen by
idle and luxurious young men of the day. Cicero did not live for many
years beyond Pompey, but I doubt whether he did not know infinitely more
of men. To Pompey it had been given to rule them; but to Cicero to live
with them.




CHAPTER VI.

_AFTER THE BATTLE._


[Sidenote: B.C. 48, ætat. 59.]

In the autumn of this year Cicero had himself landed at Brundisium. He
remained nearly a year at Brundisium, and it is melancholy to think how
sad and how long must have been the days with him. He had no country
when he reached the nearest Italian port; it was all Cæsar's, and Cæsar
was his enemy. There had been a struggle for the masterdom between two
men, and of the two the one had beaten with whom Cicero had not ranged
himself. He had known how it would be. All the Getæ, and the men of
Colchis, and the Armenians, all the lovers of the fish-ponds and those
who preferred the delicacies of Baiæ to the work of the Forum, all who
had been taught to think that there were provinces in order that they
might plunder, men who never dreamed of a country but to sell it, all
those whom Cæsar was determined either to drive out of Italy or keep
there in obedience to himself, had been brought together in vain. We
already know, when we begin to read the story, how it will be with them
and with Cæsar. On Cæsar's side there is an ecstasy of hope carried to
the very brink of certainty; on the other is that fainting spirit of
despair which no battalions can assuage. We hear of no Scæva and of no
Crastinus on Pompey's side. Men change their nature under such leading
as was that of Cæsar. The inferior men become heroic by contact with the
hero; but such heroes when they come are like great gouts of blood
dabbled down upon a fair cloth. Who that has eyes to see can look back
upon the career of such a one and not feel an agony of pain as the
stern man passes on without a ruffled face, after ordering the right
hands of those who had fought at Uxellodunum to be chopped off at the
wrist, in order that men might know what was the penalty of fighting for
their country?

There are men--or have been, from time to time, in all ages of the
world--let loose, as it were, by the hand of God to stop the iniquities
of the people, but in truth the natural product of those iniquities.
They have come and done their work, and have died, leaving behind them
the foul smell of destruction. An Augustus followed Cæsar, and him
Tiberius, and so on to a Nero. It was necessary that men should suffer
much before they were brought back to own their condition. But they who
can see a Cicero struggling to avoid the evil that was coming--not for
himself but for the world around him--and can lend their tongues, their
pens, their ready wits to ridicule his efforts, can hardly have been
touched by the supremacy of human suffering.

It must have been a sorry time with him at Brundisium. He had to stay
there waiting till Cæsar's pleasure had been made known to him, and
Cæsar was thinking of other things. Cæsar was away in Egypt and the
East, encountering perils at Alexandria which, if all be true that we
have heard, imply that he had lived to be past fear. Grant that a man
has to live as Cæsar did, and it will be well that he should be past
fear. At any rate he did not think of Cicero, or thinking of him felt
that he was one who must be left to brood in silence over the choice he
had made. Cicero did brood--not exactly in silence--over the things that
fate had done for him and for his country. For himself, he was living in
Italy, and yet could not venture to betake himself to one of the
eighteen villas which, as Middleton tells us, he had studded about the
country for his pastime. There were those at Tusculum, Antium, Astura,
Arpinum--at Formiæ, at Cumæ, at Puteoli, and at Pompeii. Those who tell
us of Cicero's poverty are surely wandering, carried away by their
erroneous notions of what were a Roman nobleman's ideas as to money. At
no period of his life do we find Cicero not doing what he was minded to
do for want of money, and at no period is there a hint that he had
allowed himself in any respect to break the law. It has been argued that
he must have been driven to take fees and bribes and indirect payments,
because he says that he wanted money. It was natural that he should
occasionally want money, and yet be in the main indifferent. The
incoming of a regular revenue was not understood as it is with us. A man
here and there might attend to his money, as did Atticus. Cicero did
not; and therefore, when in want of it, he had to apply to a friend for
relief. But he always applies as one who knows well that the trouble is
not enduring. Is it credible that a man so circumstanced should have
remained with those various sources of extravagance which it would have
been easy for him to have avoided or lessened? We are led to the
conviction that at no time was it expedient to him to abandon his
villas, though in the hurry-scurry of Roman affairs it did now and again
become necessary for him to apply to Atticus for accommodation. Let us
think what must have been Cæsar's demands for money. Of these we hear
nothing, because he was too wise to have an Atticus to whom he wrote
everything, or too wary to write letters upon business which should be
treasured for the curiosity of after-ages.

To be hopeful and then tremulous; to be eager after success and then
desponding; to have believed readily every good and then, as readily,
evil; to have relied implicitly on a man's faith, and then to have
turned round and declared how he had been deceived; to have been very
angry and then to have forgiven--this seems to have been Cicero's
nature. Verres, Catiline, Clodius, Piso, and Vatinius seem to have
caused his wrath; but was there one of them against whom, though he did
not forgive him, his anger did not die out? Then, at last, he was moved
to an internecine fight with Antony. Is there any one who has read the
story which we are going to tell who will not agree with us that, if
after Mutina Octavius had thought fit to repudiate Antony and to follow
Cicero's counsels, Antony would not have been spared?

Nothing angers me so much in describing Cicero as the assertion that he
was a coward. It has sprung from a wrong idea of what constitutes
cowardice. He did not care to fight; but are all men cowards who do not
care to fight when work can be so much better done by talking? He saw
that fighting was the work fit for men of common clay, or felt it if he
did not see it. When men rise to such a pitch as that which he filled,
and Cæsar and Pompey, and some few others around them, their greatest
danger does not consist in fighting. A man's tongue makes enemies more
bitter than his sword. But Cicero, when the time came, never shirked his
foe. Whether it was Verres or Catiline, or Clodius or Antony, he was
always there, ready to take that foe by the throat, and ready to offer
his own in return. At moments such as that there was none of the fear
which stands aghast at the wrath of the injured one, and makes the man
who is a coward quail before the eyes of him who is brave.

His friendship for Pompey is perhaps, of all the strong feelings of his
life, the one most requiring excuse, and the most difficult to excuse.
For myself I can see why it was so; but I cannot do that without
acknowledging in it something which derogated from his greatness. Had he
risen above Pompey, he would have been great indeed; for I look upon it
as certain that he did see that Pompey was as untrue to the Republic as
Cæsar. He saw it occasionally, but it was not borne in upon him at all
times that Pompey was false. Cæsar was not false. Cæsar was an open foe.
I doubt whether Pompey ever saw enough to be open. He never realized to
himself more than men. He never rose to measures--much less to the
reason for them. When Cæsar had talked him over, and had induced him to
form the Triumvirate, Pompey's politics were gone. Cicero never
blanched. Whether, full of new hopes, he attacked Chrysogonus with all
the energy of one to whom his injured countrymen were dear, or, with
the settled purpose of his life, he accused Verres in the teeth of the
coming Consul Hortensius; whether in driving out Catiline, or in
defending Milo; whether, even, in standing up before Cæsar for
Marcellus, or in his final onslaught upon Antony, his purpose was still
the same. As time passed on he took to himself coarser weapons, and went
down into the arena and fought the beasts at Ephesus. Alas, it is so
with mankind! Who can strive to do good and not fight beasts? And who
can fight them but after some fashion of their own? He was fighting
beasts at Ephesus when he was defending Milo. He was an oligarch, but he
wanted the oligarchy round him to be true and honest! It was impossible.
These men would not be just, and yet he must use them. Milo and Cælius
and Curio were his friends. He knew them to be bad, but he could not
throw off from him all that were bad men. If by these means he could win
his way to something that might be good, he would pardon their evil. As
we make our way on to the end of his life we find that his character
becomes tarnished, and that his high feelings are blunted by the party
which he takes and the men with whom he associates.

He did not, indeed, fall away altogether. The magistracy offered to him,
the lieutenancy offered to him, the "free legation" offered to him, the
last appeal made to him that he would go to Rome and speak a few
words--or that he would stay away and remain neutral--did not move him.
He did not turn conspirator and then fight for the prize, as Pompey had
done. But he had, for so many years, clung to Pompey as the leader of a
party; had had it so dinned into his ears that all must depend on
Pompey; had found himself so bound up with the man who, when appealed to
as to his banishment, had sullenly told him he could only do as Cæsar
would have him; whom he had felt to be mean enough to be stigmatized as
Sampsiceramus, him of Jerusalem, the hero of Arabia; whom he knew to be
desirous of doing with his enemies as Sulla had done with his--that, in
spite of it all, he clung to him still!

I cannot but blame Cicero for this, but yet I can excuse it. It is hard
to have to change your leader after middle life, and Cicero could only
have changed his by becoming a leader himself. We can see how hopeless
it was. Would it not have been mean had he allowed those men to go and
fight in Macedonia without him? Who would have believed in him had he
seemed to be so false? Not Cato, not Brutus, not Bibulus, not Scipio,
not Marcellus. Such men were the leaders of the party of which he had
been one. Would they not say that he had remained away because he was
Cæsar's man? He must follow either Cæsar or Pompey. He knew that Pompey
was beaten. There are things which a man knows, but he cannot bring
himself to say so even to himself. He went out to fight on the side
already conquered; and when the thing was done he came home with his
heart sad, and lived at Brundisium, mourning his lot.

From thence he wrote to Atticus, saying that he hardly saw the advantage
of complying with advice which had been given to him that he should
travel incognito to Rome. But it is the special reason given which
strikes us as being so unlike the arguments which would prevail to-day:
"Nor have I resting-places on the way sufficiently convenient for me to
pass the entire daytime within them."[130] The "diversorium" was a place
by the roadside which was always ready should the owner desire to come
that way. It must be understood that he travelled with attendants, and
carried his food with him, or sent it on before. We see at every turn
how much money could do; but we see also how little money had done for
the general comfort of the people. Brundisium is above three hundred
miles from Rome, and the journey is the same which Horace took
afterward, going from the city.[131] Much had then been done to make
travelling comfortable, or at any rate cheaper than it had been
four-and-twenty years before. But now the journey was not made. He
reminds Atticus in the letter that if he had not written through so long
an interval it was not because there had been a dearth of subjects. It
had been no doubt prudent for a man to be silent when so many eyes and
so many ears were on the watch. He writes again some days later, and
assures Atticus that Cæsar thinks well of his "lictors!" Oh those
eternal lictors! "But what have I to do with lictors," he says, "who am
almost ordered to leave the shores of Italy?"[132] And then Cæsar had
sent angry messages. Cato and Metellus had been said to have come home.
Cæsar did not choose that this should be so, and had ordered them away.
It was clearly manifest to every man alive now that Cæsar was the actual
master of Italy.

During the whole of this winter he is on terms with Terentia, but he
writes to her in the coldest strain. There are many letters to Terentia,
more in number than we have ever known before, but they are all of the
same order. I translate one here to show the nature of his
correspondence: "If you are well, I am so also. The times are such that
I expect to hear nothing from yourself, and on my part have nothing to
write. Nevertheless, I look for your letters, and I write to you when a
messenger is going to start. Voluminia ought to have understood her duty
to you, and should have done what she did do better. There are other
things, however, which I care for more, and grieve for more bitterly--as
those have wished who have driven me from my own opinion."[133] Again he
writes to Atticus, deploring that he should have been born--so great are
his troubles--or, at any rate, that one should have been born after him
from the same mother. His brother has addressed him in anger--his
brother, who has desired to make his own affairs straight with Cæsar,
and to swim down the stream pleasantly with other noble Romans of the
time. I can imagine that with Quintus Cicero there was nothing much
higher than the wealth which the day produced. I can fancy that he was
possessed of intellect, and that when it was fair sailing with our
Consul it was all well with Quintus Cicero; but I can see also that,
when Cæsar prevailed, it was occasionally a matter of doubt with Quintus
whether his brother should not be abandoned among other things which
were obtrusive and vain. He could not quite do it. His brother compelled
him into propriety, and carried him along within the lines of the
oligarchy. Then Cæsar fell, and Quintus saw that the matter was right;
but Cæsar, though he fell, did not altogether fall, and therefore
Quintus after all turned out to be in the wrong. I fancy that I can see
how things went ill with Quintus.

[Sidenote: B.C. 47, ætat. 60.]

Cæsar, after the battle of the Pharsalia, had followed Pompey, but had
failed to catch him. When he came upon the scene in the roadstead at
Alexandria, the murder had been effected. He then disembarked, and
there, as circumstances turned out, was doomed to fight another campaign
in which he nearly lost his life. It is not a part of my plan to write
the life of Cæsar, nor to meddle with it further than I am driven to do
in seeking after the sources of Cicero's troubles and aspiration; but
the story must be told in a few words. Cæsar went from Alexandria into
Asia, and, flashing across Syria, beat Pharnaces, and then wrote his
famous "Veni, vidi, vici," if those words were ever written. Surely he
could not have written them and sent them home! Even the subservience of
the age would not have endured words so boastful, nor would the glory of
Cæsar have so tarnished itself. He hurried back to Italy, and quelled
the mutiny of his men by a masterpiece of stage-acting. Simply by
addressing them as "Quirites," instead of "Milites," he appalled them
into obedience. On this journey into Italy he came across Cicero. If he
could be cruel without a pang--to the arranging the starvation of a
townful of women, because they as well as the men must eat--he could be
magnificent in his treatment of a Cicero. He had hunted to the death his
late colleague in the Triumvirate, and had felt no remorse; though
there seems to have been a moment when in Egypt the countenance of him
who had so long been his superior had touched him. He had not ordered
Pompey's death. On no occasion had he wilfully put to death a Roman
whose name was great enough to leave a mark behind. He had followed the
convictions of his countrymen, who had ever spared themselves. To him a
thousand Gauls, or men of Eastern origin, were as nothing to a single
Roman nobleman. Whether there can be said to have been clemency in such
a course it is useless now to dispute. To Cæsar it was at any rate
policy as well. If by clemency he meant that state of mind in which it
is an evil to sacrifice the life of men to a spirit of revenge, Cæsar
was clement. He had moreover that feeling which induces him who wins to
make common cause--in little things--with those who lose. We can see
Cæsar getting down from his chariot when Cicero came to meet him, and,
throwing his arms round his neck, walking off with him in pleasant
conversation; and we can fancy him talking to Cicero pleasantly of the
greatness which, in times yet to come, pursuits such as his would show
in comparison with those of Cæsar's. "Cedant arma togæ; concedat laurea
linguæ," we can hear Cæsar say, with an irony expressed in no tone of
his voice, but still vibrating to the core of his heart, as he thought
so much of his own undoubted military supremacy, and absolutely nothing
of his now undoubted literary excellence.

[Sidenote: B.C. 47, ætat. 60.]

But to go back a little; we shall find Cicero still waiting at
Brundisium during August and September. In the former of these months he
reminds Atticus that "he cannot at present sell anything, but that he
can put by something so that it may be in safety when the ruin shall
fall upon him."[134] From this may be deduced a state of things very
different to that above described, but not contradicting it. I gather
from this unintelligible letter, written, as he tells us, for the most
part in his own handwriting, that he was at the present moment under
some forfeiture of the law to Cæsar. It may well be that, as one
adjudged to be a rebel to his country, his property should not be
salable. If that were so, Cæsar in some of these bland moments must have
revoked the sentence--and at such a time all sentences were within
Cæsar's control--because we know that on his return Cicero's villas were
again within his own power. But he is in sad trouble now about his wife.
He has written to her to send him twelve thousand sesterces, which he
had as it were in a bag, and she sends him ten, saying that no more is
left. If she would deduct something from so small a sum, what would she
do if it were larger?[135] Then follow two letters for his wife--a mere
word in each--not a sign of affection nor of complaint in either of
them. In the first he tells her she shall be informed when Cæsar is
coming--in the latter, that he is coming. When he has resolved whether
to go and meet him or to remain where he is till Cæsar shall have come
upon him, he will again write. Then there are three to Atticus, and two
more to Terentia. In the first he tells him that Cæsar is expected. Some
ten or twelve days afterward he is still full of grief as to his brother
Quintus, whose conduct has been shameful. Cæsar he knows is near at
hand, but he almost hopes that he will not come to Brundisium. In the
third, as indeed he has in various others, he complains bitterly of the
heat: it is of such a nature that it adds to his grief. Shall he send
word to Cæsar that he will wait upon him nearer to Rome?[136] He is
evidently in a sad condition. Quintus, it must be remembered, had been
in Gaul with Cæsar, and had seen the rising sun. On his return to Italy
he had not force enough to declare a political conviction, and to go
over to Cæsar boldly. He had indeed become lieutenant to his brother
when in Cilicia, having left Cæsar for the purpose. He afterward went
with his brother to the Pharsalus, assuring the elder Cicero that they
two would still be of the same party. Then the great catastrophe had
come, when Cicero returned from that wretched campaign to Brundisium,
and remained there in despair as at some penal settlement. Quintus
followed Cæsar into Asia with his son, and there pleaded his own cause
with him at the expense of his brother. Of Cæsar we must all admit that,
though indifferent to the shedding of blood, arrogant, without principle
in money and without heart in love, he was magnificent, and that he
injured none from vindictive motives. He passed on, leaving Quintus
Cicero, who as a soldier had been true to him, without, as we can fancy,
many words. Cicero afterward interceded for his brother who had reviled
him, and Quintus will ever after have to bear the stain of his
treachery. Then came the two letters for his wife, with just a line in
each. If her messenger should arrive, he will send her word back as to
what she is to do. After an interval of nearly a month, there is the
other--ordering, in perfectly restored good-humor, that the baths shall
be ready at the Tusculan villa: "Let the baths be all ready, and
everything fit for the use of guests; there will probably be many of
them."[137] It is evident that Cæsar has passed on in a good-humor, and
has left behind him glad tidings, such as should ever brighten the feet
of the conqueror.

It is singular that, with a correspondence such as that of Cicero's, of
which, at least through the latter two or three years of his life, every
letter of his to his chief friend has been preserved, there should have
been nothing left to us from that friend himself. It must have been the
case, as Middleton suggests, that Atticus, when Cicero was dead, had the
handling of the entire MS., and had withdrawn his own; either that, or
else Cicero and Atticus mutually agreed to the destruction of their
joint labors, and Atticus had been untrue to his agreement, knowing
well the value of the documents he preserved. That there is no letter
from a woman--not even a line to Cicero from his dear daughter--is much
to be regretted. And yet there are letters--many from Cælius, who is
thus brought forward as almost a second and a younger Atticus--and from
various Romans of the day. When we come to the latter days of his life,
in which he had taken upon himself the task of writing to Plancus and
others as to their supposed duty to the State, they become numerous.
There are ten such from Plancus, and nine from Decimus Brutus; and there
is a whole mass of correspondence with Marcus Brutus--to be taken for
what it is worth. With a view to history, they are doubtless worth much;
but as throwing light on Cicero's character, except as to the vigor that
was in the man to the last, they are not of great value. How is it that
a correspondence, which is for its main purpose so full, should have
fallen so short in many of its details? There is no word, no allusion
derogatory to Atticus in these letters, which have come to us from
Cælius and others. We have Atticus left to us for our judgment, free
from the confession of his own faults, and free also from the
insinuations of others. Of whom would we wish that the familiar letters
of another about ourselves should be published? Would those
objectionable epithets as to Pompey have been allowed to hold their
ground had Pompey lived and had they been in his possession?

But, in reading histories and biographies, we always accept with a bias
in favor of the person described the anecdotes of those who talk of
them. We know that the ready wit of the surrounding world has taken up
these affairs of the moment and turned them into ridicule--then as they
do now. We discount the "Hierosolymarius." We do not quite believe that
Bibulus never left the house while an enemy was to be seen; but we think
that a man may be expected to tell the truth of himself; at any rate, to
tell no untruth against himself. We think that Cicero of all men may be
left to do so--Cicero, who so well understood the use of words, and
could use them in his own defence so deftly. I maintain that it has been
that very deftness which has done him all the harm. Not one of those
letters of the last years would have been written as it is now had
Cicero thought, when writing it, that from it would his conduct have
been judged after two thousand years. "No," will say my readers, "that
is their value; they would not have otherwise been true, as they are. We
should not then have learned his secrets." I reply, "It is a hard
bargain to make: others do not make such bargains on the same terms. But
be sure, at any rate, that you read them aright: be certain that you
make the necessary allowances. Do not accuse him of falsehood because he
unsays on a Tuesday the words he said on the Monday. Bear in mind on his
behalf all the temporary ill that humanity is heir to. Could you, living
at Brundisium during the summer months, 'when you were scarcely able to
endure the weight of the sun,'[138] have had all your intellects about
you, and have been able always to choose your words?" No, indeed! These
letters, if truth is to be expected from them, have to be read with all
the subtle distinctions necessary for understanding the frame of mind in
which they were written. His anger boils over here, and he is hot. Here
tenderness has mastered him, and the love of old days. He is weak in
body just now, and worn out in spirit; he is hopeless, almost to the
brink of despair; he is bright with wit, he is full of irony, he is
purposely enigmatic--all of which require an Atticus who knew him and
the people among whom he had lived, and the times in which the events
took place, for their special reading. Who is there can read them now so
as accurately to decipher every intended detail? Then comes some critic
who will not even attempt to read them--who rushes through them by the
light of some foregone conclusion, and missing the point at which the
writer subtly aims, tells us of some purpose of which he was altogether
innocent! Because he jokes about the augurship, we are told how
miserably base he was, and how ready to sell his country!

During the whole of the last year he must have been tortured by various
turns of mind. Had he done well in joining himself to Pompey? and having
done so, had he done well in severing himself, immediately on Pompey's
death, from the Pompeians? Looking at the matter as from a stand-point
quite removed from it, we are inclined to say that he had done well in
both. He could not without treachery have gone over to Cæsar when Cæsar
had come to the gate of Italy, and, as it were with a blast of his
trumpet, had demanded the Consulship, a triumph, the use of his legions,
and the continuance of his military power. "Let Pompey put down his, and
I will put down mine," he had said. Had Pompey put down his, Pompey and
Cicero, Cato and Brutus, and Bibulus would all have had to walk at the
heels of Cæsar. When Pompey declared that he would contest the point, he
declared for them all. Cicero was bound to go to Pharsalia. But when, by
Pompey's incompetence, Cæsar was the victor; when Pompey had fallen at
the Nile, and all the lovers of the fish-ponds, and the intractable
oligarchs, and the cutthroats of the Empire, such as young Pompey had
become, had scattered themselves far and wide, some to Asia, some to
Illyricum, some to Spain, and more to Africa--as a herd of deer shall be
seen to do when a vast hound has appeared among them, with his jaws
already dripping with blood--was Cicero then to take his part with any
of them? I hold that he did what dignity required, and courage also. He
went back to Italy, and there he waited till the conqueror should come.

It must have been very bitter. Never to have become great has nothing in
it of bitterness for a noble spirit. What matters it to the unknown man
whether a Cæsar or a Pompey is at the top of all things? Or if it does
matter--as indeed that question of his governance does matter to every
man who has a soul within him to be turned this way or that--which way
he is turned, though there may be inner regrets that Cæsar should become
the tyrant, perhaps keener regrets, if the truth were all seen, that
Pompey's hands should be untrammelled, who sees them? I can walk down to
my club with my brow unclouded, or, unless I be stirred to foolish wrath
by the pride of some one equally vain, can enjoy myself amid the
festivities of the hour. It is but a little affair to me. If it come in
my way to do a thing, I will do my best, and there is an end of it. The
sense of responsibility is not there, nor the grievous weight of having
tried but failed to govern mankind. But to have clung to high places; to
have sat in the highest seat of all with infinite honor; to have been
called by others, and, worse still, to have called myself, the savior of
my country; to have believed in myself that I was sufficient, that I
alone could do it, that I could bring back, by my own justice and
integrity, my erring countrymen to their former simplicity--and then to
have found myself fixed in a little town, just in Italy, waiting for the
great conqueror, who though my friend in things social was opposed to me
body and soul as to rules of life--that, I say, must have been beyond
the bitterness of death.

During this year he had made himself acquainted with the details of that
affair, whatever it might be, which led to his divorce soon after his
return to Rome. He had lived about thirty years with his wife, and the
matter could not but have been to him the cause of great unhappiness.
Terentia was not only the mother of his children, but she had been to
him also the witness of his rise in life and the companion of his fall.
He was one who would naturally learn to love those with whom he was
conversant. He seems to have projected himself out of his own time into
those modes of thought which have come to us with Christianity, and such
a separation from this woman after an intercourse of so many years must
have been very grievous to him. All married Romans underwent divorce
quite as a matter of course. There were many reasons. A young wife is
more agreeable to the man's taste than one who is old. A rich wife is
more serviceable than a poor. A new wife is a novelty. A strange wife is
an excitement. A little wife is a relief to one overburdened with the
flesh; a buxom wife to him who has become tired of the pure spirit.
Xanthippe asks too much, while Griselda is too tranquil. And then, as a
man came up in the world, causes for divorce grew without even the
trouble of having to search for faults. Cæsar required that his wife
should not be ill spoken of, and therefore divorced her. Pompey cemented
the Triumvirate with a divorce. We cannot but imagine that, when men had
so much the best of it in the affairs of life, a woman had always the
worst of it in these enforced separations. But as the wind is tempered
to the shorn lamb, so were divorces made acceptable to Roman ladies. No
woman was disgraced by a divorce, and they who gave over their husbands
at the caprice of a moment to other embraces would usually find
consolation. Terentia when divorced from Cicero was at least fifty, and
we are told she had the extreme honor of having married Sallust after
her break with Cicero. They say that she married twice again after
Sallust's death, and that having lived nearly through the reign of
Augustus, she died at length at the age of a hundred and three. Divorce
at any rate did not kill her. But we cannot conceive but that so sudden
a disruption of all the ties of life must have been grievous to Cicero.
We shall find him in the next chapter marrying a young ward, and then,
too, divorcing her; but here we have only to deal with the torments
Terentia inflicted on him. What those torments were we do not know, and
shall never learn unless by chance the lost letters of Atticus should
come to light. But the general idea has been that the lady had, in
league with a freedman and steward in her service, been guilty of fraud
against her husband. I do not know that we have much cause to lament the
means of ascertaining the truth. It is sad to find that the great men
with whose name we are occupied have been made subject to those "whips
and scorns of time" which we thought to be peculiar to ourselves,
because they have stung us. Terentia, Cicero's wife two thousand years
ago, sent him word that he had but £100 left in his box at home, when he
himself knew well that there must be something more. That would have
gone for nothing had there not been other things before that, many other
things. So, in spite of his ordering at her hands the baths and various
matters to be got ready for his friends at his Tusculum, a very short
time after his return there he had divorced her.

During this last year he had been engaged on what has since been found
to be the real work of his life. He had already written much, but had
written as one who had been anxious to fill up vacant spaces of time as
they came in his way. From this time forth he wrote as does one who has
reconciled himself to the fact that there are no more days to be lost if
he intends, before the sun be set, to accomplish an appointed task. He
had already compiled the De Oratore, the De Republica, and the De
Legibus. Out of the many treatises which we have from Cicero's hands,
these are they which are known as the works of his earlier years. He
commenced the year with an inquiry, De Optimo Genere Oratorum, which he
intended as a preface to the translations which he made of the great
speeches of Æschines and Demosthenes, De Corona. These translations are
lost, though the preface remains. He then translated, or rather
paraphrased the Timæus of Plato, of which a large proportion has come
down to us, and the Protagoras, of which we have lost all but a sentence
or two. We have his Oratoriæ Partitiones, in which, in a dialogue
between himself and his son, he repeats the lessons on oratory which he
has given to the young man. It is a recapitulation, in short, of all
that had been said on a subject which has since been made common, and
which owed its origin to the work of much earlier years. It is but dull
reading, but I can imagine that even in these days it may be useful to a
young lawyer. There is a cynical morsel among these precepts which is
worth observing, "Cito enim arescit lachryma præsertim in alienis
malis;"[139] and another grandly simple, "Nihil enim est aliud
eloquentia nisi copiose loquens sapientia." Can we fancy anything more
biting than the idea that the tears caused by the ills of another soon
grow dry on the orator's cheek, or more wise than that which tells us
that eloquence is no more than wisdom speaking eloquently? Then he wrote
the six Paradoxes addressed to Brutus--or rather he then gave them to
the world, for they were surely written at an earlier date. They are
short treatises on trite subjects, put into beautiful language, so as to
arrest the attention of all readers by the unreasonableness of their
reasoning. The most remarkable is the third, in which he endeavored to
show that a man cannot be wise unless he be all-wise, a doctrine which
he altogether overturns in his De Amicitia, written but four years
afterward. Cicero knew well what was true, and wrote his paradox in
order to give a zest to the subject. In the fourth and the sixth are
attacks upon Clodius and Crassus, and are here republished in what would
have been the very worst taste amid the politeness of our modern times.
A man now may hate and say so while his foe is still alive and strong;
but with the Romans he might continue to hate, and might republish the
words which he had written, eight years after the death of his victim.

I know nothing of Cicero's which so much puts us in mind of the
struggles of the modern authors to make the most of every word that has
come from them, as do these paradoxes. They remind us of some writer of
leading articles who gets together a small bundle of essays and then
gives them to the world. Each of them has done well at its time, but
that has not sufficed for his ambition; therefore they are dragged out
into the light and put forward with a separate claim for attention, as
though they could stand well on their own legs. But they cannot stand
alone, and they fall from having been put into a position other than
that for which they were intended when written.




CHAPTER VII.

_MARCELLUS, LIGARIUS, AND DEIOTARUS._


[Sidenote: B.C. 46, ætat. 61.]

The battle of Thapsus, in Africa, took place in the spring of this year,
and Cato destroyed himself with true stoical tranquillity, determined
not to live under Cæsar's rule. If we may believe the story which,
probably, Hirtius has given us, in his account of the civil war in
Africa, and which has come down to us together with Cæsar's
Commentaries, Cato left his last instructions to some of his officers,
and then took his sword into his bed with him and stabbed himself.
Cicero, who, in his dream of Scipio, has given his readers such
excellent advice in regard to suicide, has understood that Cato must be
allowed the praise of acting up to his own principles. He would die
rather than behold the face of the tyrant who had enslaved him.[140] To
Cato it was nothing that he should leave to others the burden of living
under Cæsar; but to himself the idea of a superior caused an unendurable
affront. The "Catonis nobile letum" has reconciled itself to the poets
of all ages. Men, indeed, have refused to see that he fled from a danger
which he felt to be too much for him, and that in doing so he had lacked
something of the courage of a man. Many other Romans of the time did the
same thing, but to none has been given all the honor which has been
allowed to Cato.

Cicero felt as others have done, and allowed all his little jealousies
to die away. It was but a short time before that Cato had voted against
the decree of the Senate giving Cicero his "supplication." Cicero had
then been much annoyed; but now Cato had died fighting for the Republic,
and was to be forgiven all personal offences. Cicero wrote a eulogy of
Cato which was known by the name of Cato, and was much discussed at Rome
at the time. It has now been lost. He sent it to Cæsar, having been bold
enough to say in it whatever occurred to him should be said in Cato's
praise. We may imagine that, had it not pleased him to be generous--had
he not been governed by that feeling of "De mortuis nil nisi bonum,"
which is now common to us all--he might have said much that was not
good. Cato had endeavored to live up to the austerest rules of the
Stoics--a mode of living altogether antagonistic to Cicero's views. But
we know that he praised Cato to the full--and we know also that Cæsar
nobly took the praise in good part, as coming from Cicero, and answered
it in an Anti-Cato, in which he stated his reasons for differing from
Cicero. We can understand how Cæsar should have shown that the rigid
Stoic was not a man likely to be of service to his country.

There came up at this period a question which made itself popular among
the "optimates" of Rome, as to the return of Marcellus. The man of Como,
whom Marcellus had flogged, will be remembered--the Roman citizen who
had first been made a citizen by Cæsar. This is mentioned now not as the
cause of Cæsar's enmity, who did not care much probably for his citizen,
but as showing the spirit of the man. He, Marcellus, had been Consul
four years since, B.C. 51, and had then endeavored to procure Cæsar's
recall from his province. He was one of the "optimates," an oligarch
altogether opposed to Cæsar, a Roman nobleman of fairly good repute, who
had never bent to Cæsar, but had believed thoroughly in his order, and
had thought, till the day of Pharsalia came, that the Consuls and the
Senate would rule forever. The day of Pharsalia did come, and Marcellus
went into voluntary banishment in Mitylene. After Pharsalia, Cæsar's
clemency began to make itself known. There was a pardon for almost every
Roman who had fought against him, and would accept it. No spark of anger
burnt in Cæsar's bosom, except against one or two, of whom Marcellus was
one. He was too wise to be angry with men whose services he might
require. It was Cæsar's wish not to drive out the good men but to induce
them to remain in Rome, living by the grace of his favor. Marcellus had
many friends, and it seems that a public effort was made to obtain for
him permission to come back to Rome. We must imagine that Cæsar had
hitherto refused, probably with the idea of making his final concession
the more valuable. At last the united Senators determined to implore his
grace, and the Consulares rose one after another in their places, and
all, with one exception,[141] asked that Marcellus might be allowed to
return. Cicero, however, had remained silent to the last. There must
have been, I think, some plot to get Cicero on to his legs. He had gone
to meet Cæsar at Brundisium when he came back from the East, had
returned to Rome under his auspices, and had lived in pleasant
friendship with Cæsar's friends. Pardon seems to have been accorded to
Cicero without an effort. As far as he was concerned, that hostile
journey to Dyrrachium--for he did not travel farther toward the
camp--counted for nothing with Cæsar. He was allowed to live in peace,
at Rome or at his villas, as he might please, so long as Cæsar might
rule. The idea seems to have been that he should gradually become
absorbed among Cæsar's followers. But hitherto he had remained silent.
It was now six years since his voice had been heard in Rome. He had
spoken for Milo--or had intended to speak--and, in the same affair, for
Munatius Plancus, and for Saufeius, B.C. 52. He had then been in his
fifty-fifth year, and it might well be that six years of silence at such
a period of his life would not be broken. It was manifestly his
intention not to speak again, at any rate in the Senate; though the
threats made by him as to his total retirement should not be taken as
meaning much. Such threats from statesmen depend generally on the wishes
of other men. But he held his place in the Senate, and occasionally
attended the debates. When this affair of Marcellus came on, and all the
Senators of consular rank--excepting only Volcatius and Cicero--had
risen, and had implored Cæsar in a few words to condescend to be
generous; when Claudius Marcellus had knelt at Cæsar's feet to ask for
his brother's liberty, and Cæsar himself, after reminding them of the
bitterness of the man, had still declared that he could not refuse the
prayers of the Senate, then Cicero, as though driven by the magnanimity
of the conqueror, rose from his place, and poured forth his thanks in
the speech which is still extant.

That used to be the story till there came the German critic Wolf, who at
the beginning of this century told us that Cicero did not utter the
words attributed to him, and could not have uttered them. According to
Wolf, it would be doing Cicero an egregious wrong to suppose him capable
of having used such words, which are not Latin, and which were probably
written by some ignoramus in the time of Tiberius. Such a verdict might
have been taken as fatal--for Wolf's scholarship and powers of criticism
are acknowledged--in spite of La Harpe, the French scholar and critic,
who has named the Marcellus as a thing of excellence, comparing it with
the eulogistic speeches of Isocrates. The praise of La Harpe was
previous to the condemnation of Wolf, and we might have been willing to
accede to the German as being the later and probably the more accurate.
Mr. Long, the British editor of the Orations--Mr. Long, who has so
loudly condemned the four speeches supposed to have been made after
Cicero's return from exile--gives us no certain guidance. Mr. Long, at
any rate, has not been so disgusted by the Tiberian Latin as to feel
himself bound to repudiate it. If he can read the Pro Marcello, so can
I, and so, my reader, might you do probably without detriment. But these
differences among the great philologic critics tend to make us, who are
so infinitely less learned, better contented with our own lot. I, who
had read the Pro Marcello without stumbling over its halting Latinity,
should have felt myself crushed when I afterward came across Wolf's
denunciations, had I not been somewhat comforted by La Harpe. But when I
found that Mr. Long, in his introduction to the piece, though he
discusses Wolf's doctrine, still gives to the orator the advantage, as
it may be, of his "imprimatur," I felt that I might go on, and not be
ashamed of myself.[142]

This is the story that has now to be told of the speech Pro Marcello. At
the time the matter ended very tragically. As soon as Cæsar had yielded,
Cicero wrote to Marcellus giving him strong reasons for coming home.
Marcellus answered him, saying that it was impossible. He thanks Cicero
shortly; but, with kindly dignity, he declines. "With the comforts of
the city I can well dispense," he says.[143] Then Cicero urges him again
and again, using excellent arguments for his return--which at length
prevail. In the spring of the next year Marcellus, on his way back to
Rome, is at Athens. There Servius Sulpicius spends a day with him; but,
just as Sulpicius is about to pass on, there comes a slave to him who
tells him that Marcellus has been murdered. His friend Magius Chilo had
stabbed him overnight, and had then destroyed himself. It was said that
Chilo had asked Marcellus to pay his debts for him, and that Marcellus
had refused. It seems to be more probable that Chilo had his own
reasons for not choosing that his friend should return to Rome.

Looking back at my own notes on the speech--it would make with us but a
ten minutes' after-dinner speech--I see that it is said "that it is
chiefly remarkable for the beauty of the language, and the abjectness of
the praise of Cæsar." This was before I had heard of Wolf. As to the
praise, I doubt whether it should be called abject, regard being had to
the feelings of the moment in which it was delivered. Cicero had risen
to thank Cæsar--on whose breath the recall of Marcellus depended--for
his unexpected courtesy. In England we should not have thanked Cæsar as
Cicero did: "O Cæsar, there is no flood of eloquence, no power of the
tongue or of the pen, no richness of words, which may emblazon, or even
dimly tell the story of your great deeds."[144] Such language is unusual
with us--as it would also be unusual to abuse our Pisos and our
Vatiniuses, as did Cicero. It was the Southerner and the Roman who spoke
to Southerners and to Romans. But, undoubtedly, there was present to the
mind of Cicero the idea of saying words which Cæsar might receive with
pleasure. He was dictator, emperor, lord of all things--king. Cicero
should have remained away, as Marcellus had done, were he not prepared
to speak after this fashion. He had long held aloof from speech. At
length the time had come when he was, as it were, caught in a trap, and
compelled to be eloquent.

[Sidenote: B.C. 46, ætat. 61.]

The silence had been broken, and in the course of the autumn he spoke on
behalf of Ligarius, beseeching the conqueror to be again merciful. This
case was by no means similar to that of Marcellus, who was exiled by no
direct forfeiture of his right to live in Italy, but who had expatriated
himself. In this case Ligarius had been banished with others; but it
seems that the punishment had been inflicted on him, not from the
special ill-will of Cæsar, but from the malice of certain enemies who,
together with Ligarius, had found themselves among Pompey's followers
when Cæsar crossed the Rubicon. Ligarius had at this time been left as
acting governor in Africa. In the confusion of the times an unfortunate
Pompeian named Varus had arrived in Africa, and to him, as being
superior in rank, Ligarius had given up the government. Varus had then
gone, leaving Ligarius still acting, and one Tubero had come with his
son, and had demanded the office. Ligarius had refused to give it up,
and the two Tuberos had departed, leaving the province in anger, and had
fought at the Pharsalus. After the battle they made their peace with
Cæsar, and in the scramble that ensued Ligarius was banished. Now the
case was brought into the courts, in which Cæsar sat as judge. The
younger Tubero accused Ligarius, and Cicero defended him. It seems that,
having been enticed to open his mouth on behalf of Marcellus, he found
himself launched again into public life. But how great was the
difference from his old life! It is not to the Judices, or Patres
Conscripti, or to the Quirites that he now addresses himself, determined
by the strength of his eloquence to overcome the opposition of stubborn
minds, but to Cæsar, whom he has to vanquish simply by praise. Once
again he does the same thing when pleading for Deiotarus, the King of
Galatia, and it is impossible to deny, as we read the phrases, that the
orator sinks in our esteem. It is not so much that we judge him to be
small, as that he has ceased to be great. He begins his speech for
Ligarius by saying, "My kinsman Tubero has brought before you, O Cæsar,
a new crime, and one not heard of up to this day--that Ligarius has been
in Africa."[145] The commencement would have been happy enough if it had
not been addressed to Cæsar; for he was addressing a judge not appointed
by any form, but self-assumed--a judge by military conquest. We cannot
imagine how Cæsar found time to sit there, with his legions round him
still under arms, and Spain not wholly conquered. But he did do so, and
allowed himself to be persuaded to the side of mercy. Ligarius came back
to Rome, and was one of those who plunged their daggers into him. But I
cannot think that he should have been hindered by this trial and by
Cæsar's mercy from taking such a step, if by nothing else. Brutus and
Cassius also stabbed him. The question to be decided is whether, on
public grounds, these men were justified in killing him--a question as
to which I should be premature in expressing an opinion here.

There are some beautiful passages in this oration. "Who is there, I
ask," he says, "who alleges Ligarius to have been in fault because he
was in Africa? He does so who himself was most anxious to be there, and
now complains that he was refused admittance by Ligarius, he who was in
arms against Cæsar. What was your sword doing, Tubero, in that
Pharsalian army? Whom did you seek to kill then? What was the meaning of
your weapon? What was it that you desired so eagerly, with those eyes
and hands, with that passion in your heart? I press him too much; the
young man seems to be disturbed. I will speak of myself, then, for I
also was in that army."[146] This was in Cæsar's presence, and no doubt
told with Cæsar. We were all together in the same cause--you, and I, and
Ligarius. Why should you and I be pardoned and not Ligarius? The oration
is for the most part simply eulogistic. At any rate it was successful,
and became at Rome, for the time, extremely popular. He writes about it
early in the following year to Atticus, who has urged him to put
something into it, before it was published, to mitigate the feeling
against Tubero. Cicero says in his reply to Atticus that the copies have
already been given to the public, and that, indeed, he is not anxious on
Tubero's behalf.

Early in this year he had divorced Terentia, and seems at once to have
married Publilia. Publilia had been his ward, and is supposed to have
had a fortune of her own. He explains his own motives very clearly in a
letter to his friend Plancius. In these wretched times he would have
formed no new engagement, unless his own affairs had been as sad for him
as were those of the Republic; but when he found that they to whom his
prosperity should have been of the greatest concern were plotting
against him within his own walls, he was forced to strengthen himself
against the perfidy of his old inmates by placing his trust in new.[147]
It must have been very bad with him when he had recourse to such a step
as this. Shortly after this letter just quoted had been written, he
divorced Publilia also--we are told because Publilia had treated Tullia
with disrespect. We have no details on the subject, but we can well
understand the pride of the young woman who declined to hear the
constant praise of her step-daughter, and thought herself to be quite as
good as Tullia. At any rate, she was sent away quickly from her new
home, having remained there only long enough to have made not the most
creditable episode in Cicero's life.

At this time Dolabella, who assumed the Consulship upon Cæsar's death,
and Hirtius, who became Consul during the next year, used to attend upon
Cicero and take lessons in elocution. So at least the story has been
told, from a letter written in this year to his friend Poetus; but I
should imagine that the lessons were not much in earnest. "Why do you
talk to me of your tunny-fish, your pilot-fish, and your cheese and
sardines? Hirtius and Dolabella preside over my banquets, and I teach
them in return to make speeches."[148] From this we may learn that
Cæsar's friends were most anxious to be also Cicero's friends. It may be
said that Dolabella was his son-in-law; but Dolabella was at this moment
on the eve of being divorced. It was in spite of his marriage that
Dolabella still clung to Cicero. All Cæsar's friends in Rome did the
same; so that I am disposed to think that for this year, just till
Tullia's death, he was falling, not into a happy state, but to the
passive contentment of those who submit themselves to be ruled over by a
single master. He had struggled all his life, and now finding that he
must yield, he thought that he might as well do so gracefully. It was so
much easier to listen to the State secrets of Balbus, and hear from
Oppius how the money was spent, and then to dine with Hirtius or
Dolabella, than to sit ever scowling at home, as Cato would have done
had Cato lived. But with his feelings about the Republic at heart, how
sad it must have been! Cato was gone, and Pompey, and Bibulus; and
Marcellus was either gone or just about to go. Old age was creeping on.
It was better to write philosophy, in friendship with Cæsar's friends,
than to be banished again whither he could not write it at all. Much, no
doubt, he did in preparation for all those treatises which the next
eighteen months were to bring forth.

Cæsar, just at the end of the year, had been again called to Spain, B.C.
46, to quell the last throbbings of the Pompeians, and then to fight the
final battle of Munda. It would seem odd to us that so little should
have been said about such an event by Cicero, and that the little should
depend on the education of his son, were it not that if we look at our
own private letters, written to-day to our friends, we find the same
omission of great things. To Cicero the doings of his son were of more
immediate moment than the doings of Cæsar. The boy had been anxious to
enlist for the Spanish war. Quintus, his cousin, had gone, and young
Marcus was anxious to flutter his feathers beneath the eyes of royalty.
At his age it was nothing to him that he had been taken to Pharsalia and
made to bear arms on the opposite side. Cæsar had become Cæsar since he
had learned to form his opinion on politics, and on Cæsar's side all
things seemed to be bright and prosperous. The lad was anxious to get
away from his new step-mother, and asked his father for the means to go
with the army to Spain. It appears by Cicero's letter to Atticus on the
subject[149] that, in discussing the matter with his son, he did yield.
These Roman fathers, in whose hands we are told were the very lives of
their sons, seem to have been much like Christian fathers of modern days
in their indulgences. The lad was now nineteen years old, and does not
appear to have been willing, at the first parental attempt, to give up
his military appanages and that swagger of the young officer which is so
dear to the would-be military mind. Cicero tells him that if he joined
the army he would find his cousin treated with greater favor than
himself. Young Quintus was older, and had been already able to do
something to push himself with Cæsar's friends. "Sed tamen
permisi"--"Nevertheless, I told him he might go," said Cicero, sadly.
But he did not go. He was allured, probably, by the promise of a
separate establishment at Athens, whither he was sent to study with
Cratippus. We find another proof of Cicero's wealth in the costliness of
his son's household at Athens, as premeditated by the father. He is to
live as do the sons of other great noblemen. He even names the young
noblemen with whom he is to live. Bibulus was of the Calpurnian "gens."
Acidinus of the Manlian, and Messala of the Valerian, and these are the
men whom Cicero, the "novus homo" from Arpinum, selects as those who
shall not live at a greater cost than his son.[150] "He will not,
however, at Athens want a horse." Why not? Why should not a young man so
furnished want a horse at Athens? "There are plenty here at home for the
road," says Cicero. So young Cicero is furnished, and sent forth to
learn philosophy and Greek. But no one has essayed to tell us why he
should not want the horse. Young Cicero when at Athens did not do well.
He writes home in the coming year, to Tiro, two letters which have been
preserved for us, and which seem to give us but a bad account, at any
rate, of his sincerity. "The errors of his youth," he says, "have
afflicted him grievously." Not only is his mind shocked, but his ears
cannot bear to hear of his own iniquity.[151] "And now," he says, "I
will give you a double joy, to compensate all the anxiety I have
occasioned you. Know that I live with Cratippus, my master, more like a
son than a pupil. I spend all my days with him, and very often part of
the night." But he seems to have had some wit. Tiro has been made a
freedman, and has bought a farm for himself. Young Marcus--from whom
Tiro has asked for some assistance which Marcus cannot give him--jokes
with him as to his country life, telling him that he sees him saving the
apple-pips at dessert. Of the subsequent facts of the life of young
Marcus we do not know much. He did not suffer in the proscriptions of
Antony and Augustus, as did his father and uncle and his cousin. He did
live to be chosen as Consul with Augustus, and had the reputation of a
great drinker. For this latter assertion we have only the authority of
Pliny the elder, who tells us an absurd story, among the wonders of
drinking which he adduces.[152] Middleton says a word or two on behalf
of the young Cicero, which are as well worthy of credit as anything else
that has been told. One last glance at him which we can credit is given
in that letter to Tiro, and that we admit seems to us to be
hypocritical.

[Sidenote: B.C. 45, ætat. 62.]

In the spring of the year Cicero lost his daughter Tullia. We have first
a letter of his to Lepta, a man with whom he had become intimate, saying
that he had been kept in Rome by Tullia's confinement, and that now he
is still detained, though her health is sufficiently confirmed, by the
expectation of obtaining from Dolabella's agents the first repayment of
her dowry. The repayment of the divorced lady's marriage portion was a
thing of every-day occurrence in Rome, when she was allowed to take away
as much as she had brought with her. Cicero, however, failed to get back
Tullia's dowry. But he writes in good spirits. He does not think that
he cares to travel any more. He has a house at Rome better than any of
his villas in the country, and greater rest than in the most desert
region. His studies are now never interrupted. He thinks it probable
that Lepta will have to come to him before he can be induced to go to
Lepta. In the mean time let the young Lepta take care and read his
Hesiod.[153]

Then he writes in the spring to Atticus a letter from Antium, and we
first hear that Tullia is dead. She had seemed to recover from
childbirth; but her strength did not suffice, and she was no more.[154]
A boy had been born, and was left alive. In subsequent letters we find
that Cicero gives instructions concerning him, and speaks of providing
for him in his will.[155] But of the child we hear nothing more, and
must surmise that he also died. Of Tullia's death we have no further
particulars; but we may well imagine that the troubles of the world had
been very heavy on her. The little stranger was being born at the moment
of her divorce from her third husband. She was about thirty-two years of
age, and it seems that Cicero had taken consolation in her misfortunes
from the expected pleasure of her companionship. She was now dead, and
he was left alone.

She had died in February, and we know nothing of the first outbreak of
his sorrow. It appears that he at first buried himself for a while in a
villa belonging to Atticus, near Rome, and that he then retreated to his
own at Astura. From thence, and afterward from Antium, there are a large
number of letters, all dealing with the same subject. He declares
himself to be inconsolable; but he does take consolation from two
matters--from his books on philosophy, and from an idea which occurs to
him that he will perpetuate the name of Tullia forever by the erection
of a monument that shall be as nearly immortal as stones and bricks can
make it.

His letters to Atticus at this time are tedious to the general reader,
because he reiterates so often his instructions as to the purchase of
the garden near Rome in which the monument is to be built; but they are
at the same time touching and natural. "Nothing has been written," he
says, "for the lessening of grief which I have not read at your house;
but my sorrow breaks through it all."[156] Then he tells Atticus that he
too has endeavored to console himself by writing a treatise on
Consolation. "Whole days I write; not that it does any good." In that he
was wrong. He could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that
continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied
himself continually. "Totos dies scribo." By doing so, he did contrive
not to break his heart. In a subsequent letter he says, "Reading and
writing do not soften it, but they deaden it."[157]

On the Appian Way, a short distance out of Rome, the traveller is shown
a picturesque ancient building, of enormous strength, called the Mole of
Cæcilia Metella. It is a castle in size, but is believed to have been
the tomb erected to the memory of Cæcilia, the daughter of Metellus
Creticus, and the wife of Crassus the rich. History knows of her nothing
more, and authentic history hardly knows so much of the stupendous
monument. There it stands, however, and is supposed to be proof of what
might be done for a Roman lady in the way of perpetuating her memory.
She was, at any rate, older than Tullia, having been the wife of a man
older than Tullia's father. If it be the case that this monument be of
the date named, it proves to us, at least, that the notion of erecting
such monuments was then prevalent. Some idea of a similar kind--of a
monument equally stupendous, and that should last as long--seems to have
taken a firm hold of Cicero's mind. He has read all the authors he could
find on the subject, and they agree that it shall be done in the fashion
he points out. He does not, he says, consult Atticus on that matter,
nor on the architecture, for he has already settled on the design of one
Cluatius. What he wants Atticus to do for him now is to assist him in
buying the spot on which it shall be built. Many gardens near Rome are
named. If Drusus makes a difficulty, Atticus must see Damasippus. Then
there are those which belong to Sica and to Silius! But at last the
matter dies away, and even the gardens are not bought. We are led to
imagine that Atticus has been opposed to the monument from first to
last, and that the immense cost of constructing such a temple as Cicero
had contemplated is proved to him to be injudicious. There is a charming
letter written to him at this time by his friend Sulpicius, showing the
great feeling entertained for him. But, as I have said before, I doubt
whether that or any other phrases of consolation were of service to him.
It was necessary for him to wait and bear it, and the more work that he
did when he was bearing it, the easier it was borne. Lucceius and
Torquatus wrote to him on the same subject, and we have his answers.

[Sidenote: B.C. 45, ætat. 62.]

In September Cæsar returned from Spain, having at last conquered the
Republic. All hope for liberty was now gone. Atticus had instigated
Cicero to write something to Cæsar as to his victories--something that
should be complimentary, and at the same time friendly and familiar; but
Cicero had replied that it was impossible. "When I feel," he said, "that
to draw the breath of life is in itself base, how base would be my
assent to what has been done![158] But it is not only that. There are
not words in which such a letter ever can be written. Do you not know
that Aristotle, when he addressed himself to Alexander, wrote to a youth
who had been modest; but then, when he had once heard himself called
king, he became proud, cruel, and unrestrained? How, then, shall I now
write in terms which shall suffice for his pride to the man who has
been equalled to Romulus?" It was true; Cæsar had now returned inflated
with such pride that Brutus, and Cassius, and Casca could no longer
endure him. He came back, and triumphed over the five lands in which he
had conquered not the enemies of Rome, but Rome itself. He triumphed
nominally over the Gauls, the Egyptians, the Asiatics of Pontus, over
the Africans, and the Spaniards; but his triumph was, in truth, over the
Republic. There appears from Suetonius to have been five separate
triumphal processions, each at the interval of a few days.[159] Amid the
glory of the first Vercingetorix was strangled. To the glory of the
third was added--as Suetonius tells us--these words, "Veni, vidi, vici,"
displayed on a banner. This I think more likely than that he had written
them on an official despatch. We are told that the people of Rome
refused to show any pleasure, and that even his own soldiers had enough
in them of the Roman spirit to feel resentment at his assumption of the
attributes of a king. Cicero makes but little mention of these gala
doings in his letters. He did not see them, but wrote back word to
Atticus, who had described it all. "An absurd pomp," he says, alluding
to the carriage of the image of Cæsar together with that of the gods;
and he applauds the people who would not clap their hands, even in
approval of the Goddess of Victory, because she had shown herself in
such bad company.[160] There are, however, but three lines on the
subject, showing how little there is in that statement of Cornelius
Nepos that he who had read Cicero's letters carefully wanted but little
more to be well informed of the history of the day.

Cæsar was not a man likely to be turned away from his purpose of ruling
well by personal pride--less likely, we should say, than any self-made
despot dealt with in history. He did make efforts to be as he was
before. He endeavored to live on terms of friendship with his old
friends; but the spirit of pride which had taken hold of him was too
much for him. Power had got possession of him, and he could not stand
against it. It was sad to see the way in which it compelled him to make
himself a prey to the conspirators, were it not that we learn from
history how impossible it is that a man should raise himself above the
control of his fellow-men without suffering.

[Sidenote: B.C. 45, ætat. 62.]

During these days Cicero kept himself in the country, giving himself up
to his philosophical writings, and indulging in grief for Tullia.
Efforts were repeatedly made to bring him to Rome, and he tells Atticus
in irony that if he is wanted there simply as an augur, the augurs have
nothing to do with the opening of temples. In the same letter he speaks
of an interview he has just had with his nephew Quintus, who had come to
him in his disgrace. He wants to go to the Parthian war, but he has not
money to support him. Then Cicero uses, as he says, the eloquence of
Atticus, and holds his tongue.[161] We can imagine how very unpleasant
the interview must have been. Cicero, however, decides that he will go
up to the city, so that he may have Atticus with him on his birthday.
This letter was written toward the close of the year, and Cicero's
birthday was the 3d of January.

He then goes to Rome, and undertakes to plead the cause of Deiotarus,
the King of Galatia, before Cæsar. This very old man had years ago
become allied with Pompey, and, as far as we can judge, been singularly
true to his idea of Roman power. He had seen Pompey in all his glory
when Pompey had come to fight Mithridates. The Tetrarchs in Asia Minor,
of whom this Deiotarus was one, had a hard part to play when the Romans
came among them. They were forced to comply, either with their natural
tendency to resist their oppressors, or else were obliged to fleece
their subjects in order to satisfy the cupidity of the invaders. We
remember Ariobarzanes, who sent his subjects in gangs to Rome to be
sold as slaves in order to pay Pompey the interest on his debt.
Deiotarus had similarly found his best protection in being loyal to
Pompey, and had in return been made King of Armenia by a decree of the
Roman Senate. He joined Pompey at the Pharsalus, and, when the battle
was over, returned to his own country to look for further forces
wherewith to aid the Republic. Unfortunately for him, Cæsar was the
conqueror, and Deiotarus found himself obliged to assist the conqueror
with his troops. Cæsar seems never to have forgiven him his friendship
for Pompey. He was not a Roman, and was unworthy of forgiveness. Cæsar
took away from him the kingdom of Armenia, but left him still titular
King of Galatia. But this enmity was known in the king's own court, and
among his own family. His own daughter's son, one Castor, became
desirous of ruining his grandfather, and brought a charge against the
king. Cæsar had been the king's compelled guest in his journey in quest
of Pharnaces, and had passed quickly on. Now, when the war was over and
Cæsar had returned from his five conquered nations, Castor came forward
with his accusation. Deiotarus, according to his grandson, had
endeavored to murder Cæsar while Cæsar was staying with him. At this
distance of time and place we cannot presume to know accurately what the
circumstances were; but it appears to have been below the dignity of
Cæsar to listen to such a charge. He did do so, however, and heard more
than one speech on the subject delivered in favor of the accused. Brutus
spoke on behalf of the aged king, and spoke in vain. Cicero did not
speak in vain, for Cæsar decided that he would pronounce no verdict till
he had himself been again in the East, and had there made further
inquiries. He never returned to the East; but the old king lived to
fight once more, and again on the losing side. He was true to the party
he had taken, and ranged himself with Brutus and Cassius at the field of
Philippi.

The case was tried, if tried it can be called, in Cæsar's private
house, in which the audience cannot have been numerous. Cæsar seems to
have admitted Cicero to say what could be said for his friend, rather
than as an advocate to plead for his client, so that no one should
accuse him, Cæsar, of cruelty in condemning the criminal. The speech
must have occupied twenty minutes in the delivery, and we are again at a
loss to conceive how Cæsar should have found the time to listen to it.
Cicero declares that he feels the difficulty of pleading in so unusual a
place--within the domestic walls of a man's private house, and without
any of those accustomed supports to oratory which are to be found in a
crowded law court. "But," he says, "I rest in peace when I look into
your eyes and behold your countenance." The speech is full of flattery,
but it is turned so adroitly that we almost forgive it.[162]

There is a passage in which Cicero compliments the victor on his
well-known mercy in his victories--from which we may see how much Cæsar
thought of the character he had achieved for himself in this particular.
"Of you alone, O Cæsar, is it boasted that no one has fallen under your
hands but they who have died with arms in their hands."[163] All who had
been taken had been pardoned. No man had been put to death when the
absolute fighting was brought to an end. Cæsar had given quarter to all.
It is the modern, generous way of fighting. When our country is invaded,
and we drive back the invaders, we do not, if victorious, slaughter
their chief men. Much less, when we invade a country, do we kill or
mutilate all those who have endeavored to protect their own homes. Cæsar
has evidently much to boast, and among the Italians he has caused it to
be believed. It suited Cicero to assert it in Cæsar's ears. Cæsar wished
to be told of his own clemency among the men of his own country. But
because Cæsar boasted, and Cicero was complaisant, posterity is not to
run away with the boast, and call it true. For all that is great in
Cæsar's character I am willing to give him credit; but not for mercy;
not for any of those divine gifts the loveliness of which was only
beginning to be perceived in those days by some few who were in advance
of their time. It was still the maxim of Rome that a "supplicatio"
should be granted only when two thousand of the enemy should have been
left on the field. We have something still left of the pagan cruelty
about us when we send triumphant words of the numbers slain on the field
of battle. We cannot but remember that Cæsar had killed the whole Senate
of the Veneti, a nation dwelling on the coast of Brittany, and had sold
all the people as slaves, because they had detained the messengers he
had sent to them during his wars in Gaul. "Gravius vindicandum
statuit"[164]--"He had thought it necessary to punish them somewhat
severely." Therefore he had killed the entire Senate, and enslaved the
entire people. This is only one of the instances of wholesale horrible
cruelty which he committed throughout his war in Gaul--of cruelty so
frightful that we shudder as we think of the sufferings of past ages.
The ages have gone their way, and the sufferings are lessened by
increased humanity. But we cannot allow Cicero's compliment to pass idly
by. The "nemo nisi armatus" referred to Italians, and to Italians, we
may take it, of the upper rank--among whom, for the sake of dramatic
effect, Deiotarus was placed for the occasion.

This was the last of Cicero's casual speeches. It was now near the end
of the year, and on the ides of March following it was fated that Cæsar
should die. After which there was a lull in the storm for a while, and
then Cicero broke out into that which I have called his final scream of
liberty. There came the Philippics--and then the end. This speech of
which I have given record as spoken Pro Rege Deiotaro was the last
delivered by him for a private purpose. Forty-two he has spoken
hitherto, of which something of the story has been told; the Philippics
of which I have got to speak are fourteen in number, making the total
number of speeches which we possess to be fifty-six. But of those spoken
by him we have not a half, and of those which we possess some have been
declared by the great critics to be absolutely spurious. The great
critics have perhaps been too hard upon them: they have all been
polished. Cicero himself was so anxious for his future fame that he led
the way in preparing them for the press. Quintilian tells us that Tiro
adapted them.[165] Others again have come after him and have retouched
them, sometimes, no doubt, making them smoother, and striking out
morsels which would naturally become unintelligible to later readers. We
know what he himself did to the Milo. Others subsequently may have
received rougher usage, but still from loving hands. Bits have been
lost, and other bits interpolated, and in this way have come to us the
speeches which we possess. But we know enough of the history of the
times, and are sufficient judges of the language, to accept them as upon
the whole authentic. The great critic, when he comes upon a passage
against which his very soul recoils, on the score of its halting
Latinity, rises up in his wrath and tears the oration to tatters, till
he will have none of it. One set of objectionable words he encounters
after another, till the whole seems to him to be damnable, and the
oration is condemned. It has been well to allude to this, because in
dealing with these orations it is necessary to point out that every word
cannot be accepted as having been spoken as we find it printed. Taken
collectively, we may accept them as a stupendous monument of human
eloquence and human perseverance.

[Sidenote: B.C. 45, ætat. 62.]

Late in the year, on the 12th before the calends of January, or the 21st
of December, there took place a little party at Puteoli, the account of
which interests us. Cicero entertained Cæsar at supper. Though the date
is given as above, and though December had originally been intended to
signify, as it does with us, a winter month, the year, from want of
proper knowledge, had run itself out of order, and the period was now
that of October. The amendment of the calendar, which was made under
Cæsar's auspices, had not as yet been brought into use, and we must
understand that October, the most delightful month of the year, was the
period in question. Cicero was staying at his Puteolan villa, not far
from Baiæ, close upon the sea-shore--the corner of the world most loved
by all the great Romans of the day for their retreat in autumn.[166]
Puteoli, we may imagine, was as pleasant as Baiæ, but less fashionable,
and, if all that we hear be true, less immoral. Here Cicero had one of
his villas, and here, a few months before his death, Cæsar came to visit
him. He gives, in a very few lines to Atticus, a graphic account of the
entertainment. Cæsar had sent on word to say that he was coming, so that
Cicero was prepared for him. But the lord of all the world had already
made himself so evidently the lord, that Cicero could not entertain him
without certain of those inner quakings of the heart which are common to
us now when some great magnate may come across our path and demand
hospitality for a moment. Cicero jokes at his own solicitude, but
nevertheless we know that he has felt it when, on the next morning, he
sent Atticus an account of it. His guest has been a burden to him
indeed, but still he does not regret it, for the guest behaved himself
so pleasantly! We must remark that Cicero did not ostensibly shake in
his shoes before him. Cicero had been Consul, and has had to lead the
Senate when Cæsar was probably anxious to escape himself as an
undetected conspirator. Cæsar has grown since, but only by degrees. He
has not become, as Augustus did, "facile princeps." He is aware of his
own power, but aware also that it becomes him to ignore his own
knowledge. And Cicero is also aware of it, but conscious at the same
time of a nominal equality. Cæsar is now Dictator, has been Consul four
times, and will be Consul again when the new year comes on. But other
Romans have been Dictator and Consul. All of which Cæsar feels on the
occasion, and shows that he feels it. Cicero feels it also, and
endeavors, not quite successfully, to hide it.

Cæsar has come accompanied by troops. Cicero names two thousand
men--probably at random. When Cicero hears that they have come into the
neighborhood, he is terribly put about till one Barba Cassius, a
lieutenant in Cæsar's employment, comes and reassures him. A camp is
made for the men outside in the fields, and a guard is put on to protect
the villa. On the following day, about one o'clock, Cæsar comes. He is
shut up at the house of one Philippus, and will admit no one. He is
supposed to be transacting accounts with Balbus. We can imagine how
Cicero's cooks were boiling and stewing at the time. Then the great man
walked down upon the sea-shore. Rome was the only recognized nation in
the world. The others were provinces of Rome, and the rest were outlying
barbaric people, hardly as yet fit to be Roman provinces. And he was now
lord of Rome. Did he think of this as he walked on the shore of
Puteoli--or of the ceremony he was about to encounter before he ate his
dinner? He did not walk long, for at two o'clock he bathed, and heard
"that story about Mamurra" without moving a muscle. Turn to your
Catullus, the 57th Epigram, and read what Cæsar had read to him on this
occasion, without showing by his face the slightest feeling. It is short
enough, but I cannot quote it even in a note, even in Latin. Who told
Cæsar of the foul words, and why were they read to him on this
occasion? He thought but little about them, for he forgave the author
and asked him afterward to supper. This was at the bath, we may suppose.
He then took his siesta, and after that "[Greek: emetikên] agebat." How
the Romans went through the daily process and lived, is to us a marvel.
I think we may say that Cicero did not practise it. Cæsar, on this
occasion, ate and drank plenteously and with pleasure. It was all well
arranged, and the conversation was good of its kind, witty and pleasant.
Cæsar's couch seems to have been in the midst, and around him lay
supping, at other tables, his freedmen, and the rest of his suite. It
was all very well; but still, says Cicero, he was not such a guest as
you would welcome back--not one to whom you would say, "Come again, I
beg, when you return this way." Once is enough. There were no politics
talked--nothing of serious matters. Cæsar had begun to find now that no
use could be made of Cicero for politics. He had tried that, and had
given it up. Philology was the subject--the science of literature and
languages. Cæsar could talk literature as well as Cicero, and turned the
conversation in that direction. Cicero was apt, and took the desired
part, and so the afternoon passed pleasantly, but still with a little
feeling that he was glad when his guest was gone.[167]

Cæsar declared, as he went, that he would spend one day at Puteoli and
another at Baiæ. Dolabella had a villa down in those parts, and Cicero
knows that Cæsar, as he passed by Dolabella's house, rode in the midst
of soldiers--in state, as we should say--but that he had not done this
anywhere else. He had already promised Dolabella the Consulship.

Was Cicero mean in his conduct toward Cæsar? Up to this moment there had
been nothing mean, except that Roman flattery which was simply Roman
good manners. He had opposed him at Pharsalia--or rather in Macedonia.
He had gone across the water--not to fight, for he was no fighting
man--but to show on which side he had placed himself. He had done this,
not believing in Pompey, but still convinced that it was his duty to let
all men know that he was against Cæsar. He had resisted every attempt
which Cæsar had made to purchase his services. Neither with Pompey nor
with Cæsar did he agree. But with the former--though he feared that a
second Sulla would arise should he be victorious--there was some touch
of the old Republic. Something might have been done then to carry on the
government upon the old lines. Cæsar had shown his intention to be lord
of all, and with that Cicero could hold no sympathy. Cæsar had seen his
position, and had respected it. He would have nothing done to drive such
a man from Rome. Under these circumstances Cicero consented to live at
Rome, or in the neighborhood, and became a man of letters. It must be
remembered that up to the ides of March he had heard of no conspiracy.
The two men, Cæsar and Cicero, had agreed to differ, and had talked of
philology when they met. There has been, I think, as yet, nothing mean
in his conduct.




CHAPTER VIII.

_CÆSAR'S DEATH._


[Sidenote: B.C. 44, ætat. 63.]

After the dinner-party at Puteoli, described in the last chapter, Cicero
came up to Rome, and was engaged in literary pursuits. Cæsar was now
master and lord of everything. In January Cicero wrote to his friend
Curio, and told him with disgust of the tomfooleries which were being
carried on at the election of Quæstors. An empty chair had been put
down, and was declared to be the Consul's chair. Then it was taken away,
and another chair was placed, and another Consul was declared. It wanted
then but a few hours to the end of the consular year--but not the less
was Caninius, the new Consul, appointed, "who would not sleep during his
Consulship," which lasted but from mid-day to the evening. "If you saw
all this you would not fail to weep," says Cicero![168] After this he
seems to have recovered from his sorrow. We have a correspondence with
Poetus which always typifies hilarity of spirits. There is a
discussion, of which we have but the one side, on "double entendre" and
plain speaking. Poetus had advocated the propriety of calling a spade
a spade, and Cicero shows him the inexpediency. Then we come suddenly
upon his letter to Atticus, written on the 7th of April, three weeks
after the fall of Cæsar.

Mommsen endeavors to explain the intention of Cæsar in the adoption of
the names by which he chose to be called, and in his acceptance of those
which, without his choosing, were imposed upon him.[169] He has done it
perhaps with too great precision, but he leaves upon our minds a correct
idea of the resolution which Cæsar had made to be King, Emperor,
Dictator, or what not, before he started for Macedonia, B.C. 49,[170]
and the disinclination which moved him at once to proclaim himself a
tyrant. Dictator was the title which he first assumed, as being
temporary, Roman, and in a certain degree usual. He was Dictator for an
indefinite period, annually, for ten years, and, when he died, had been
designated Dictator for life. He had already been, for the last two
years, named "Imperator" for life; but that title--which I think to have
had a military sound in men's ears, though it may, as Mommsen says,
imply also civil rule--was not enough to convey to men all that it was
necessary that they should understand. Till the moment of his triumph
had come, and that "Veni, vidi, vici" had been flaunted in the eyes of
Rome--till Cæsar, though he had been ashamed to call himself a king, had
consented to be associated with the gods--Brutus, Cassius, and those
others, sixty in number we are told, who became the conspirators, had
hardly realized the fact that the Republic was altogether at an end. A
bitter time had come upon them; but it was softened by the personal
urbanity of the victor. But now, gradually, the truth was declaring
itself, and the conspiracy was formed. I am inclined to think that
Shakspeare has been right in his conception of the plot. "I do fear the
people choose Cæsar for their king," says Brutus. "I had as lief not be,
as live to be in awe of such a thing as I myself," says Cassius.[171] It
had come home to them at length that Cæsar was to be king, and therefore
they conspired.

It would be a difficult task in the present era to recommend to my
readers the murderers of Cæsar as honest, loyal politicians, who did
for their country, in its emergency, the best that the circumstances
would allow. The feeling of the world in regard to murder has so changed
during the last two thousand years, that men, hindered by their sense of
what is at present odious, refuse to throw themselves back into the
condition of things a knowledge of which can have come to them only from
books. They measure events individually by the present scale, and refuse
to see that Brutus should be judged by us now in reference to the
judgment that was formed of it then. In an age in which it was
considered wise and fitting to destroy the nobles of a barbarous
community which had defended itself, and to sell all others as slaves,
so that the perpetrator simply recorded the act he had done as though
necessary, can it have been a base thing to kill a tyrant? Was it
considered base by other Romans of the day? Was that plea ever made even
by Cæsar's friends, or was it not acknowledged by them all that "Brutus
was an honorable man," even when they had collected themselves
sufficiently to look upon him as an enemy? It appears abundantly in
Cicero's letters that no one dreamed of regarding them as we regard
assassins now, or spoke of Cæsar's death as we look upon assassination.
"Shall we defend the deeds of him at whose death we are rejoiced?" he
says: and again, he deplores the feeling of regret which was growing in
Rome on account of Cæsar's death, "lest it should be dangerous to those
who have slain the tyrant for us."[172] We find that Quintilian, among
his stock lessons in oratory, constantly refers to the old established
rule that a man did a good deed who had killed a tyrant--a lesson which
he had taken from the Greek teachers.[173] We are, therefore, bound to
accept this murder as a thing praiseworthy according to the light of the
age in which it was done, and to recognize the fact that it was so
regarded by the men of the day.

We are told now that Cicero "hated" Cæsar. There was no such hatred as
the word implies. And we are told of "assassins," with an intention to
bring down on the perpetrators of the deed the odium they would have
deserved had the deed been done to-day; but the word has, I think, been
misused. A king was abominable to Roman ears, and was especially
distasteful to men like Cicero, Brutus, and the other "optimates" who
claimed to be peers. To be "primus inter pares" had been Cicero's
ambition--to be the leading oligarch of the day. Cæsar had gradually
mounted higher and still higher, but always leaving some
hope--infinitesimally small at last--that he might be induced to submit
himself to the Republic. Sulla had submitted. Personally there was no
hatred; but that hope had almost vanished, and therefore, judging as a
Roman, when the deed was done, Cicero believed it to have been a
glorious deed. There can be no doubt on that subject. The passages in
which he praises it are too numerous for direct quotation; but there
they are, interspersed through the letters and the Philippics. There was
no doubt of his approval. The "assassination" of Cæsar, if that is to be
the word used, was to his idea a glorious act done on behalf of
humanity. The all-powerful tyrant who had usurped dominion over his
country had been made away with, and again they might fall back upon the
law. He had filched the army. He had run through various provinces, and
had enriched himself with their wealth. He was above all law; he was
worse than a Marius or a Sulla, who confessed themselves, by their open
violence, to be temporary evils. Cæsar was creating himself king for all
time. No law had established him. No plebiscite of the nation had
endowed him with kingly power. With his life in his hands, he had dared
to do it, and was almost successful. It is of no purpose to say that he
was right and Cicero was wrong in their views as to the government of so
mean a people as the Romans had become. Cicero's form of government,
under men who were not Ciceros, had been wrong, and had led to a state
of things in which a tyrant might for the time be the lesser evil; but
not on that account was Cicero wrong to applaud the deed which removed
Cæsar. Middleton in his life (vol. ii, p. 435) gives us the opinion of
Suetonius on this subject, and tells us that the best and wisest men in
Rome supposed Cæsar to have been justly killed. Mr. Forsyth generously
abstains from blaming the deed, as to which he leaves his readers to
form their own opinion. Abeken expresses no opinion concerning its
morality, nor does Morabin. It is the critics of Cicero's works who have
condemned him without thinking much, perhaps, of the judgment they have
given.

But Cicero was not in the conspiracy, nor had he even contemplated
Cæsar's death. Assertions to the contrary have been made both lately and
in former years, but without foundation. I have already alluded to some
of these, and have shown that phrases in his letters have been
misinterpreted. A passage was quoted by M. Du Rozoir--Ad Att., lib. x.,
8--"I don't think that he can endure longer than six months. He must
fall, even if we do nothing." How often might it be said that the murder
of an English minister had been intended if the utterings of such words
be taken as a testimony! He quotes again--Ad Att., lib. xiii., 40--"What
good news could Brutus hear of Cæsar, unless that he hung himself?" This
is to be taken as meditating Cæsar's death, and is quoted by a French
critic, after two thousand years, in proof of Cicero's fatal
ill-will![174] The whole tenor of Cicero's letters proves that he had
never entertained the idea of Cæsar's destruction.

How long before the time the conspiracy may have been in existence we
have no means of knowing; but we feel that Cicero was not a man likely
to be taken into the plot. He would have dissuaded Brutus and Cassius.
Judging from what we know of his character, we think that he would have
distrusted its success. Though he rejoiced in it after it was done, he
would have been wretched while burdened with the secret. At any rate, we
have the fact that he was not so burdened. The sight of Cæsar's
slaughter, when he saw it, must have struck him with infinite surprise,
but we have no knowledge of what his feelings may have been when the
crowd had gathered round the doomed man. Cicero has left us no
description of the moment in which Cæsar is supposed to have gathered
his toga over his face so that he might fall with dignity. It certainly
is the case that when you take your facts from the chance correspondence
of a man you lose something of the most touching episodes of the day.
The writer passes these things by, as having been surely handled
elsewhere. It is always so with Cicero. The trial of Milo, the passing
of the Rubicon, the battle of the Pharsalus, and the murder of Pompey
are, with the death of Cæsar, alike unnoticed. "I have paid him a visit
as to whom we spoke this morning. Nothing could be more forlorn."[175]
It is thus the next letter begins, after Cæsar's death, and the person
he refers to is Matius, Cæsar's friend; but in three weeks the world had
become used to Cæsar's death. The scene had passed away, and the
inhabitants of Rome were already becoming accustomed to his absence. But
there can be no doubt as to Cicero's presence at Cæsar's fall. He says
so clearly to Atticus.[176] Morabin throws a doubt upon it. The story
goes that Brutus, descending from the platform on which Cæsar had been
seated, and brandishing the bloody dagger in his hand, appealed to
Cicero. Morabin says that there is no proof of this, and alleges that
Brutus did it for stage effect. But he cannot have seen the letter above
quoted, or seeing it, must have misunderstood it.[177]

It soon became evident to the conspirators that they had scotched the
snake, and not killed it. Cassius and others had desired that Antony
also should be killed, and with him Lepidus. That Antony would be
dangerous they were sure. But Marcus Brutus and Decimus overruled their
counsels. Marcus had declared that the "blood of the tyrant was all that
the people required."[178] The people required nothing of the kind. They
were desirous only of ease and quiet, and were anxious to follow either
side which might be able to lead them and had something to give away.
But Antony had been spared; and though cowed at the moment by the death
of Cæsar, and by the assumption of a certain dignified forbearance on
the part of the conspirators, was soon ready again to fight the battle
for the Cæsareans. It is singular to see how completely he was cowed,
and how quickly he recovered himself.

Mommsen finishes his history with a loud pæan in praise of Cæsar, but
does not tell us of his death. His readers, had they nothing else to
inform them, might be led to suppose that he had gone direct to heaven,
or at any rate had vanished from the world, as soon as he had made the
Empire perfect. He seems to have thought that had he described the work
of the daggers in the Senate-house he would have acknowledged the
mortality of his godlike hero. We have no right to complain of his
omissions. For research, for labor, and for accuracy he has produced a
work almost without parallel. That he should have seen how great was
Cæsar because he accomplished so much, and that he should have thought
Cicero to be small because, burdened with scruples of justice, he did so
little, is in the idiosyncrasy of the man. A Cæsar was wanted,
impervious to clemency, to justice, to moderation--a man who could work
with any tools. "Men had forgotten what honesty was. A person who
refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man but as a personal
foe."[179] Cæsar took money, and gave bribes, when he had the money to
pay them, without a scruple. It would be absurd to talk about him as
dishonest. He was above honesty. He was "supra grammaticam." It is well
that some one should have arisen to sing the praises of such a man--some
two or three in these latter days. To me the character of the man is
unpleasant to contemplate, unimpressionable, very far from divine. There
is none of the human softness necessary for love; none of the human
weakness needed for sympathy.

On the 15th of March Cæsar fell. When the murder had been effected.
Brutus and the others concerned in it went out among the people
expecting to be greeted as saviors of their country. Brutus did address
the populace, and was well received; but some bad feeling seems to have
been aroused by hard expressions as to Cæsar's memory coming from one of
the Prætors. For the people, though they regarded Cæsar as a tyrant, and
expressed themselves as gratified when told that the would-be king had
been slaughtered, still did not endure to hear ill spoken of him. He had
understood that it behooved a tyrant to be generous, and appealed among
them always with full hands--not having been scrupulous as to his mode
of filling them. Then the conspirators, frightened at menacing words
from the crowd, betook themselves to the Capitol. Why they should have
gone to the Capitol as to a sanctuary I do not think that we know. The
Capitol is that hill to a portion of which access is now had by the
steps of the church of the Ara Coeli in front, and from the Forum in
the rear. On one side was the fall from the Tarpeian rock down which
malefactors were flung. On the top of it was the temple to Jupiter,
standing on the site of the present church. And it was here that Brutus
and Cassius and the other conspirators sought for safety on the evening
of the day on which Cæsar had been killed. Here they remained for the
two following days, till on the 18th they ventured down into the city.
On the 17th Dolabella claimed to be Consul, in compliance with Cæsar's
promise, and on the same day the Senate, moved by Antony, decreed a
public funeral to Cæsar. We may imagine that the decree was made by
them with fainting hearts. There were many fainting hearts in Rome
during those days, for it became very soon apparent that the
conspirators had carried their plot no farther than the death of Cæsar.

Brutus, as far as the public service was concerned, was an unpractical,
useless man. We know nothing of public work done by him to much purpose.
He was filled with high ideas as to his own position among the
oligarchs, and with especial notions as to what was due by Rome to men
of his name. He had a fierce conception of his own rights--among which
to be Prætor, and Consul, and Governor of a province were among the
number. But he had taken early in life to literature and philosophy, and
eschewed the crowd of "Fish-ponders," such as were Antony and Dolabella,
men prone to indulge the luxury of their own senses. His idea of liberty
seems to have been much the same as Cicero's--the liberty to live as one
of the first men in Rome; but it was not accompanied, as it was with
Cicero, by an innate desire to do good to those around him. To maintain
the Prætors, Consuls, and Governors so that each man high in position
should win his way to them as he might be able to obtain the voices of
the people, and not to leave them to be bestowed at the call of one man
who had thrust himself higher than all--that seems to have been his
_beau ideal_ of Roman government. It was Cicero's also--with the
addition that when he had achieved his high place he should serve the
people honestly. Brutus had killed Cæsar, but had spared Antony,
thinking that all things would fall into their accustomed places when
the tyrant should be no more. But he found that Cæsar had been tyrant
long enough to create a lust for tyranny; and that though he might
suffice to kill a king, he had no aptitude for ruling a people.

It was now that those scenes took place which Shakspeare has described
with such accuracy--the public funeral, Antony's oration, and the rising
of the people against the conspirators. Antony, when he found that no
plan had been devised for carrying on the government, and that the men
were struck by amazement at the deed they had themselves done, collected
his thoughts and did his best to put himself in Cæsar's place. Cicero
had pleaded in the Senate for a general amnesty, and had carried it as
far as the voice of the Senate could do so. But the amnesty only
intended that men should pretend to think that all should be forgotten
and forgiven. There was no forgiving, as there could be no forgetting.
Then Cæsar's will was brought forth. They could not surely dispute his
will or destroy it. In this way Antony got hold of the dead man's
papers, and with the aid of the dead man's private secretary or
amanuensis, one Fabricius, began a series of most unblushing forgeries.
He procured, or said that he procured, a decree to be passed confirming
by law all Cæsar's written purposes. Such a decree he could use to any
extent to which he could carry with him the sympathies of the people. He
did use it to a great extent, and seems at this period to have
contemplated the assumption of dictatorial power in his own hands.
Antony was nearly being one of the greatest rascals the world has known.
The desire was there, and so was the intellect, had it not been weighted
by personal luxury and indulgence.

Now young Octavius came upon the scene. He was the great-nephew of
Cæsar, whose sister Julia had married one Marcus Atius. Their daughter
Atia had married Caius Octavius, and of that marriage Augustus was the
child. When Octavius, the father, died, Atia, the widow, married Marcius
Philippus, who was Consul B.C. 56. Cæsar, having no nearer heir, took
charge of the boy, and had, for the last years of his life, treated him
as his son, though he had not adopted him. At this period the youth had
been sent to Apollonia, on the other side of the Adriatic, in Macedonia,
to study with Apollodorus, a Greek tutor, and was there when he heard of
Cæsar's death. He was informed that Cæsar had made him his heir and at
once crossed over into Italy with his friend Agrippa. On the way up to
Rome he met Cicero at one of his southern villas, and in the presence
of the great orator behaved himself with becoming respect. He was then
not twenty years old, but in the present difficulty of his position
conducted himself with a caution most unlike a boy. He had only come, he
said for what his great-uncle had left him; and when he found that
Antony had spent the money, does not appear to have expressed himself
immediately in anger. He went on to Rome, where he found that Antony and
Dolabella and Marcus Brutus and Decimus Brutus and Cassius were
scrambling for the provinces and the legions. Some of the soldiers came
to him, asking him to avenge his uncle's death; but he was too prudent
as yet to declare any purpose of revenge.

Not long after Cæsar's death Cicero left Rome, and spent the ensuing
month travelling about among his different villas. On the 14th of April
he writes to Atticus, declaring that whatever evil might befall him he
would find comfort in the ides of March. In the same letter he calls
Brutus and the others "our heroes," and begs his friend to send him
news--or if not news, then a letter without news.[180] In the next he
again calls them his heroes, but adds that he can take no pleasure in
anything but in the deed that had been done. Men are still praising the
work of Cæsar, and he laments that they should be so inconsistent.
"Though they laud those who had destroyed Cæsar, at the same time they
praise his deeds."[181] In the same letter he tells Atticus that the
people in all the villages are full of joy. "It cannot be told how eager
they are--how they run out to meet me, and to hear my accounts of what
was done. But the Senate passes no decree!"[182] He speaks of going into
Greece to see his son--whom he never lived to see again--telling him of
letters from the lad from Athens, which, he thinks, however, may be
hypocritical, though he is comforted by finding their language to be
clear. He has recovered his good-humor, and can be jocose. One Cluvius
has left him a property at Puteoli, and the house has tumbled down; but
he has sent for Chrysippus, an architect. But what are houses falling to
him? He can thank Socrates and all his followers that they have taught
him to disregard such worldly things. Nevertheless, he has deemed it
expedient to take the advice of a certain friend as to turning the
tumble-down house into profitable shape.[183] A little later he
expresses his great disgust that Cæsar, in the public speeches in Rome,
should be spoken of as that "great and most excellent man."[184] And yet
he had said, but a few months since, in his oration for King Deiotarus,
in the presence of Cæsar, "that he looked only into his eyes, only into
his face--that he regarded only him." The flattery and the indignant
reprobation do, in truth, come very near upon each other, and induce us
to ask whether the fact of having to live in the presence of royalty be
not injurious to the moral man. Could any of us have refused to speak to
Cæsar with adulation--any of us whom circumstances compelled to speak to
him? Power had made Cæsar desirous of a mode of address hardly becoming
a man to give or a man to receive. Does not the etiquette of to-day
require from us certain courtesies of conversation, which I would call
abject were it not that etiquette requires them? Nevertheless, making
the best allowance that I can for Cicero, the difference of his language
within a month or two is very painful. In the letter above quoted
Octavius comes to him, and we can see how willing was the young aspirant
to flatter him.

He sees already that, in spite of the promised amnesty, there must be
internecine feud. "I shall have to go into the camp with young
Sextus"--Sextus Pompeius--"or perhaps with Brutus, a prospect at my
years most odious." Then he quotes two lines of Homer, altering a word:
"To you, my child, is not given the glory of war; eloquence, charming
eloquence, must be the weapon with which you will fight." We hear of his
contemplated journey into Greece, under the protection of a free
legation. He was going for the sake of his son; but would not people say
that he went to avoid the present danger? and might it not be the case
that he should be of service if he remained?[185] We see that the old
state of doubt is again falling upon him. [Greek: Aideomai Trôas.]
Otherwise he could go and make himself safe in Athens. There is a
correspondence between him and Antony, of which he sends copies to
Atticus. Antony writes to him, begging him to allow Sextus Clodius to
return from his banishment. This Sextus had been condemned because of
the riot on the death of his uncle in Milo's affair, and Antony wishes
to have him back. Cicero replies that he will certainly accede to
Antony's views. It had always been a law with him, he says, not to
maintain a feeling of hatred against his humbler enemies. But in both
these letters we see the subtilty and caution of the writers. Antony
could have brought back Sextus without Cicero, and Cicero knew that he
could do so. Cicero had no power over the law. But it suited Antony to
write courteously a letter which might elicit an uncivil reply. Cicero,
however, knew better, and answered it civilly.

He writes to Tiro telling him that he has not the slightest intention of
quarrelling with his old friend Antony, and will write to Antony, but
not till he shall have seen him, Tiro; showing on what terms of
friendship he stands with his former slave, for Tiro had by this time
been manumitted.[186] He writes to Tiro quite as he might have written
to a younger Atticus, and speaks to him of Atticus with all the
familiarity of confirmed friendship. There must have been something very
sweet in the nature of the intercourse which bound such a man as Cicero
to such another as Tiro.

Atticus applies to him, desiring him to use his influence respecting a
certain question of importance as to Buthrotum. Buthrotum was a town in
Epirus opposite to the island of Corcyra, in which Atticus had an
important interest. The lands about the place were to be divided, and to
be distributed to Roman soldiers--much, as we may suppose to the injury
of Atticus. He has earnestly begged the interference of Cicero for the
protection of the Buthrotians, and Cicero tells him that he wishes he
could have seen Antony on the subject, but that Antony is too much
busied looking after the soldiers in the Campagna. Cicero fails to have
the wishes of Atticus carried out, and shortly the subject becomes lost
in the general confusion. But the discussion shows of how much
importance at the present moment Cicero's interference with Antony is
considered. It shows also that up to this period, a few months previous
to the envenomed hatred of the second Philippic, Antony and Cicero were
presumed to be on terms of intimate friendship.

The worship of Cæsar had been commenced in Rome, and an altar had been
set up to him in the Forum as to a god. Had Cæsar, when he perished,
been said to have usurped the sovereign authority, his body would have
been thrown out as unworthy of noble treatment. Such treatment the
custom of the Republic required. It had been allowed to be buried, and
had been honored, not disgraced. Now, on the spot where the funeral pile
had been made, the altar was erected, and crowds of men clamored round
it, worshipping. That this was the work of Antony we cannot doubt. But
Dolabella, Cicero's repudiated son-in-law, who in furtherance of a
promise from Cæsar had seized the Consulship, was jealous of Antony and
caused the altar to be thrown down and the worshippers to be dispersed.
Many were killed in the struggle--for, though the Republic was so
jealous of the lives of the citizens as not to allow a criminal to be
executed without an expression of the voice of the entire people, any
number might fall in a street tumult, and but little would be thought
about it. Dolabella destroyed the altar, and Cicero was profuse in his
thanks.[187] For though Tullia had been divorced, and had since died,
there was no cause for a quarrel. Divorces were so common that no family
odium was necessarily created. Cicero was at this moment most anxious to
get back from Dolabella his daughter's dowry. It was never repaid.
Indeed, a time was quickly coming in which such payments were out of the
question, and Dolabella soon took a side altogether opposed to the
Republic--for which he cared nothing. He was bought by Antony, having
been ready to be bought by any one. He went to Syria as governor before
the end of the year, and at Smyrna, on his road, he committed one of
those acts of horror on Trebonius, an adverse governor, in which the
Romans of the day would revel when liberated from control. Cassius came
to avenge his friend Trebonius, and Dolabella, finding himself worsted,
destroyed himself. He had not progressed so far in corruption as Verres,
because time had not permitted it--but that was the direction in which
he was travelling. At the present moment, however, no praise was too
fervid to be bestowed upon him by Cicero's pen. That turning of Cæsar
into a god was opposed to every feeling of his heart, both, as to men
and as to gods.

A little farther on[188] we find him complaining of the state of things
very grievously: "That we should have feared this thing, and not have
feared the other!"--meaning Cæsar and Antony. He declares that he must
often read, for his own consolation, his treatise on old age, then just
written and addressed to Atticus. "Old age is making me bitter," he
says; "I am annoyed at everything. But my life has been lived. Let the
young look to the future." We here meet the name of Cærellia in a letter
to his friend. She had probably been sent to make up the quarrel between
him and his young wife Publilia. Nothing came of it, and it is mentioned
only because Cærellia's name has been joined so often with that of
Cicero by subsequent writers. In the whole course of his correspondence
with Atticus I do not remember it to occur, except in one or two letters
at this period. I imagine that some story respecting the lady was handed
down, and was published by Dio Cassius when the Greek historian found
that it served his purpose to abuse Cicero.

On June 22nd he sent news to Atticus of his nephew. Young Quintus had
written home to his father to declare his repentance. He had been in
receipt of money from Antony, and had done Antony's dirty work. He had
been "Antoni dextella"--"Antony's right hand"--according to Cicero, and
had quarrelled absolutely with his father and his uncle. He now
expresses his sorrow, and declares that he would come himself at once,
but that there might be danger to his father. And there is money to be
expected if he will only wait. "Did you ever hear of a worse knave?"
Cicero adds. Probably not; but yet he was able to convince his father
and his uncle, and some time afterward absolutely offered to prosecute
Antony for stealing the public money out of the treasury. He thought, as
did some others, that the course of things was going against Antony. As
a consequence of this he was named in the proscriptions, and killed,
with his father. In the same letter Cicero consults Atticus as to the
best mode of going to Greece. Brundisium is the usual way, but he has
been told by Tiro that there are soldiers in the town.[189] He is now at
Arpinum, on his journey, and receives a letter from Brutus inviting him
back to Rome, to see the games given by Brutus. He is annoyed to think
that Brutus should expect this. "These shows are now only honorable to
him who is bound to give them," he says; "I am not bound to see them,
and to be present would be dishonorable."[190] Then comes his parting
with Atticus, showing a demonstrative tenderness foreign to the
sternness of our northern nature. "That you should have wept when you
had parted from me, has grieved me greatly. Had you done it in my
presence, I should not have gone at all."[191] "Nonis Juliis!"[192] he
exclaims. The name of July had already come into use--the name which has
been in use ever since--the name of the man who had now been destroyed!
The idea distresses him. "Shall Brutus talk of July?" It seems that some
advertisement had been published as to his games in which the month was
so called.

Writing from one of his villas in the south, he tells Atticus that his
nephew has again been with him, and has repented him of all his sins. I
think that Cicero never wrote anything vainer than this: "He has been so
changed," he says, "by reading some of my writings which I happened to
have by me, and by my words and precepts, that he is just such a citizen
as I would have him."[193] Could it be that he should suppose that one
whom he had a few days since described as the biggest knave he knew
should be so changed by a few words well written and well pronounced?
Young Quintus must in truth have been a clever knave. In the same letter
Cicero tells us that Tiro had collected about seventy of his letters
with a view to publication. We have at present over seven hundred
written before that day.

Just as he is starting he gives his friend a very wide commission: "By
your love for me, do manage my matters for me. I have left enough to pay
everything that I owe. But it will happen, as it often does, that they
who owe me will not be punctual. If anything of that kind should happen,
only think of my character. Put me right before the world by borrowing,
or even by selling, if it be necessary."[194] This is not the language
of a man in distress, but of one anxious that none should lose a
shilling by him. He again thinks of starting from Brundisium, and
promises, when he has arrived there, instantly to begin a new work. He
has sent his De Gloria to Atticus; a treatise which we have lost. We
should be glad to know how he treated this most difficult subject. We
are astonished at his fecundity and readiness. He was now nearly
sixty-three, and, as he travels about the country, he takes with him all
the adjuncts necessary for the writing of treatises such as he composed
at this period of his life! His Topica, containing Aristotelian
instructions as to a lawyer's work, he put together on board ship,
immediately after this, for the benefit of Trebatius, to whom it had
been promised.

July had come, and at last he resolved to sail from Pompeii and to coast
round to Sicily. He lands for a night at Velia, where he finds Brutus,
with whom he has an interview. Then he writes a letter to Trebatius, who
had there a charming villa, bought no doubt with Gallic spoils. He is
reminded of his promise, and going on to Rhegium writes his Topica,
which he sends to Trebatius from that place. Thence he went across to
Syracuse, but was afraid to stay there, fearing that his motions might
be watched, and that Antony would think that he had objects of State in
his journey. He had already been told that some attributed his going to
a desire to be present at the Olympian games; but the first notion seems
to have been that he had given the Republic up as lost, and was seeking
safety elsewhere. From this we are made to perceive how closely his
motions were watched, and how much men thought of them. From Syracuse he
started for Athens--which place, however, he was doomed never to see
again. He was carried back to Leucopetra on the continent; and though he
made another effort, he was, he says, again brought back. There, at the
villa of his friend Valerius, he learned tidings which induced him to
change his purpose, and hurry off to Rome. Brutus and Cassius had
published a decree of the Senate, calling all the Senators, and
especially the Consulares, to Rome. There was reason to suppose that
Antony was willing to relax his pretensions. They had strenuously
demanded his attendance, and whispers were heard that he had fled from
the difficulties of the times. "When I heard this, I at once abandoned
my journey, with which, indeed, I had never been well pleased."[195]
Then he enters into a long disquisition with Atticus as to the advice
which had been given to him, both by Atticus and by Brutus, and he says
some hard words to Atticus. But he leaves an impression on the reader's
mind that Brutus had so disturbed him by what had passed between them at
Velia, that from that moment his doubts as to going, which had been
always strong, had overmastered him. It was not the winds at Leucopetra
that hindered his journey, but the taunting words which Brutus had
spoken. It was suggested to him that he was deserting his country. The
reproach had been felt by him to be heavy, for he had promised to
Atticus that he would return by the first of January; yet he could not
but feel that there was something in it of truth. The very months during
which he would be absent would be the months of danger. Indeed, looking
out upon the political horizon then, it seemed as though the nearest
months, those they were then passing, would be the most dangerous. If
Antony could be got rid of, be made to leave Italy, there might be
something for an honest Senator to do--a man with consular authority--a
something which might not jeopardize his life. When men now call a
politician of those days a coward for wishing to avoid the heat of the
battle, they hardly think what it is for an old man to leave his retreat
and rush into the Forum, and there encounter such a one as Antony, and
such soldiers as were his soldiers. Cicero, who had been brave enough in
the emergencies of his career, and had gone about his work sometimes
regardless of his life, no doubt thought of all this. It would be
pleasant to him again to see his son, and to look upon the rough doings
of Rome from amid the safety of Athens; but when his countrymen told him
that he had not as yet done enough--when Brutus, with his cold, bitter
words, rebuked him for going--then his thoughts turned round on the
quick pivot on which they were balanced, and he hurried back to the
fight.

He travelled at once up to Rome, which he reached on the last of August,
and there received a message from Antony demanding his presence in the
Senate on the next day. He had been greeted on his journey once again by
the enthusiastic welcome of his countrymen, who looked to receive some
especial advantage from his honesty and patriotism. Once again he was
made proud by the clamors of a trusting people. But he had not come to
Rome to be Antony's puppet. Antony had some measure to bring before the
Senate in honor of Cæsar which it would not suit Cicero to support or to
oppose. He sent to say that he was tired after his journey and would not
come. Upon this the critics deal hardly with him, and call him a coward.
"With an incredible pusillanimity," says M. Du Rozoir, "Cicero excused
himself, alleging his health and the fatigue of his voyage." "He
pretended that he was too tired to be present," says Mr Long. It appears
to me that they who have read Cicero's works with the greatest care have
become so enveloped by the power of his words as to expect from them an
unnatural weight. If a politician of to-day, finding that it did not
suit him to appear in the House of Commons on a certain evening, and
that it would best become him to allow a debate to pass without his
presence, were to make such an excuse, would he be treated after the
same fashion? Pusillanimity, and pretence, in regard to those Philippics
in which he seems to have courted death by every harsh word that he
uttered! The reader who has begun to think so must change his mind, and
be prepared, as he progresses, to find quite another fault with Cicero.
Impetuous, self-confident, rash; throwing down the gage with internecine
fury; striving to crush with his words the man who had the command of
the legions of Rome; sticking at nothing which could inflict a blow;
forcing men by his descriptions to such contempt of Antony that they
should be induced to leave the stronger party, lest they too should
incur something of the wrath of the orator--that they will find to be
the line which Cicero adopted, and the demeanor he put on during the
next twelve months! He thundered with his Philippics through Rome,
addressing now the Senate and now the people with a hardihood which you
may condemn as being unbecoming one so old, who should have been taught
equanimity by experience; but pusillanimity and pretence will not be the
offences you will bring against him.

Antony, not finding that Cicero had come at his call, declared in the
Senate that he would send his workmen to dig him out from his house.
Cicero alludes to this on the next day without passion.[196] Antony was
not present, and in this speech he expresses no bitterness of anger. It
should hardly have been named one of the Philippics, which title might
well have been commenced with the second. The name, it should be
understood, has been adopted from a jocular allusion by Cicero to the
Philippics of Demosthenes, made in a letter to Brutus. We have at least
the reply of Brutus, if indeed the letter be genuine, which is much to
be doubted.[197] But he had no purpose of affixing his name to them. For
many years afterward they were called Antonianæ, and the first general
use of the term by which we know them has probably been comparatively
modern. The one name does as well as another, but it is odd that
speeches from Demosthenes should have given a name to others so well
known as these made by Cicero against Antony. Plutarch, however,
mentions the name, saying that it had been given to the speeches by
Cicero himself.

In this, the first, he is ironically reticent as to Antony's violence
and unpatriotic conduct. Antony was not present, and Cicero tells his
hearers with a pleasant joke that to Antony it may be allowed to be
absent on the score of ill-health, though the indulgence had been
refused to him. Antony is his friend, and why had Antony treated him so
roughly? Was it unusual for Senators to be absent? Was Hannibal at the
gate, or were they dealing for peace with Pyrrhus, as was the case when
they brought the old blind Appius down to the House? Then he comes to
the question of the hour, which was, nominally, the sanctioning as law
those acts of Cæsar's which he had decreed by his own will before his
death. When a tyrant usurps power for a while and is then deposed, no
more difficult question can be debated. Is it not better to take the law
as he leaves it, even though the law has become a law illegally, than
encounter all the confusion of retrograde action? Nothing could have
been more iniquitous than some of Sulla's laws, but Cicero had opposed
their abrogation. But here the question was one not of Cæsar's laws, but
of decrees subsequently made by Antony and palmed off upon the people as
having been found among Cæsar's papers. Soon after Cæsar's death a
decision had been obtained by Antony in favor of Cæsar's laws or acts,
and hence had come these impudent forgeries under the guise of which
Antony could cause what writings he chose to be made public. "I think
that Cæsar's acts should be maintained," says Cicero, "not as being in
themselves good, for that no one can assert. I wish that Antony were
present here without his usual friends," he adds, alluding to his armed
satellites. "He would tell us after what manner he would maintain those
acts of Cæsar's. Are they to be found in notes and scraps and small
documents brought forward by one witness, or not brought forward at all
but only told to us? And shall those which he engraved in bronze, and
which he wished to be known as the will of the people and as perpetual
laws--shall they go for nothing?"[198] Here was the point in dispute.
The decree had been voted soon after Cæsar's death, giving the sanction
of the Senate to his laws. For peace this had been done, as the best way
out of the difficulty which oppressed the State. But it was intolerable
that, under this sanction, Antony should have the power of bringing
forth new edicts day after day, while the very laws which Cæsar had
passed were not maintained. "What better law was there, or more often
demanded in the best days of the Republic, than that law," passed by
Cæsar, "under which the provinces were to be held by the Prætors only
for one year, and by the Consuls for not more than two? But this law is
abolished. So it is thus that Cæsar's acts are to be maintained?"[199]
Antony, no doubt, and his friends, having an eye to the fruition of the
provinces, had found among Cæsar's papers--or said they had found--some
writing to suit their purpose. All things to be desired were to be found
among Cæsar's papers. "The banished are brought back from banishment,
the right of citizenship is given not only to individuals but to whole
nations and provinces, exceptions from taxations are granted, by the
dead man's voice."[200] Antony had begun, probably, with some one or two
more modest forgeries, and had gone on, strengthened in impudence by his
own success, till Cæsar dead was like to be worse to them than Cæsar
living. The whole speech is dignified, patriotic, and bold, asserting
with truth that which he believed to be right, but never carried into
invective or dealing with expressions of anger. It is very short, but I
know no speech of his more closely to its purpose. I can see him now,
with his toga round him, as he utters the final words: "I have lived
perhaps long enough--both as to length of years and the glory I have
won. What little may be added, shall be, not for myself, but for you and
for the Republic." The words thus spoken became absolutely true.




CHAPTER IX.

_THE PHILIPPICS._


[Sidenote: B.C. 44, ætat. 63.]

Cicero was soon driven by the violence of Antony's conduct to relinquish
the idea of moderate language, and was ready enough to pick up the
gauntlet thrown down for him. From this moment to the last scene of his
life it was all the fury of battle and the shout of victory, and then
the scream of despair. Antony, when he read Cicero's speech, the first
Philippic, the language of which was no doubt instantly sent to him,
seems to have understood at once that he must either vanquish Cicero or
be vanquished by him. He appreciated to the letter the ironically
cautious language in which his conduct was exposed. He had not chosen to
listen to Cicero, but was most anxious to get Cicero to listen to him.
Those "advocates" of whom Cicero had spoken would be around him, and at
a nod, or perhaps without a nod, would do to Cicero as Brutus and
Cassius had done to Cæsar. The last meeting of the Senate had been on
the 2d of September. When it was over, Antony, we are told, went down to
his villa at Tivoli, and there devoted himself for above a fortnight to
the getting up of a speech by which he might silence, or at any rate
answer Cicero. Nor did he leave himself to his own devices, but took to
himself a master of eloquence who might teach him when to make use of
his arms, where to stamp his feet, and in what way to throw his toga
about with a graceful passion. He was about forty at this time,[201] and
in the full flower of his manhood, yet, for such a purpose, he did not
suppose himself to know all that lessons would teach him in the art of
invective. There he remained, mouthing out his phrases in the presence
of his preceptor, till he had learned by heart all that the preceptor
knew. Then he summoned Cicero to meet him in the Senate on the 19th.
This Cicero was desirous of doing, but was prevented by his friends, who
were afraid of the "advocates." There is extant a letter from Cicero to
Cassius in which he states it to be well known in Rome that Antony had
declared that he, Cicero, had been the author of Cæsar's death, in order
that Cæsar's old soldiers might slay him.[202] There were other
Senators, he says, who did not dare to show themselves in the
Senate-house--Piso, and Servilius, and Cotta. Antony came down and made
his practised oration against Cicero. The words of his speech have not
been preserved, but Cicero has told us the manner of it, and some of the
phrases which he used. The authority is not very good, but we may
imagine from the results that his story is not far from the truth. From
first to last it was one violent tirade of abuse which he seemed to
vomit forth from his jaws, rather than to "speak after the manner of a
Roman Consular." Such is Cicero's description.

It has been said of Antony that we hear of him only from his enemies. He
left behind him no friend to speak for him, and we have heard of him
certainly from one enemy; but the tidings are of a nature to force upon
us belief in the evil which Cicero spoke of him. Had he been a man of
decent habits of life, and of an honest purpose, would Cicero have dared
to say to the Romans respecting him the words which he produced, not
only in the second Philippic, which was unspoken, but also in the twelve
which followed? The record of him, as far as it goes, is altogether bad.
Plutarch tells us that he was handsome, and a good soldier, but
altogether vicious. Plutarch is not a biographer whose word is to be
taken as to details, but he is generally correct in his estimate of
character. Tacitus tells us but little about him as direct history, but
mentions him ever in the same tone. Tacitus knew the feeling of Rome
regarding him. Paterculus speaks specially of his fraud, and breaks out
into strong repudiation of the murder of Cicero.[203] Valerius Maximus,
in his anecdotes, mentions him slightingly, as an evil man is spoken of
who has forced himself into notice. Virgil has stamped his name with
everlasting ignominy. "Sequiturque nefas Egyptia conjux." I can think of
no Roman writer who has named him with honor. He was a Roman of the
day--what Rome had made him--brave, greedy, treacherous, and
unpatriotic.

Cicero again was absent from the Senate, but was in Rome when Antony
attacked him. We learn from a letter to Cornificius that Antony left the
city shortly afterward, and went down to Brundisium to look after the
legions which had come across from Macedonia, with which Cicero asserts
that he intends to tyrannize over them all in Rome.[204] He then tells
his correspondent that young Octavius has just been discovered in an
attempt to have Antony murdered, but that Antony, having found the
murderer in his house, had not dared to complain. He seems to think that
Octavius had been right! The state of things was such that men were used
to murder; but this story was probably not true. He passes on to declare
in the next sentence that he receives such consolation from philosophy
as to be able to bear all the ills of fortune. He himself goes to
Puteoli, and there he writes the second Philippic. It is supposed to be
the most violent piece of invective ever produced by human ingenuity and
human anger. The readers of it must, however, remember that it was not
made to be spoken--was not even written, as far as we are aware, to be
shown to Antony, or to be published to the world. We do not even know
that Antony ever saw it. There has been an idea prevalent that Antony's
anger was caused by it, and that Cicero owed to it his death; but the
surmise is based on probability--not at all on evidence. Cicero, when he
heard what Antony had said of him, appears to have written all the evil
he could say of his enemy, in order that he might send it to Atticus. It
contained rather what he could have published than what he did intend to
publish. He does, indeed, suggest, in the letter which accompanied the
treatise when sent to Atticus, in some only half-intelligible words,
that he hopes the time may come when the speech "shall find its way
freely even into Sica's house;"[205] but we gather even from that his
intention that it should have no absolutely public circulation. He had
struggled to be as severe as he knew how, but had done it, as it were,
with a halter round his neck; and for Antony's anger--the anger which
afterward produced the proscription--there came to be cause enough
beyond this. Before that day he had endeavored to stir up the whole
Empire against Antony, and had all but succeeded.

It has been alleged that Cicero again shows his cowardice by writing
and not speaking his oration, and also by writing it only for private
distribution. If he were a coward, why did he write it at all? If he
were a coward, why did he hurry into this contest with Antony? If he be
blamed because his Philippic was anonymous, how do the anonymous writers
of to-day escape? If because he wrote it, and did not speak it, what
shall be said of the party writers of to-day? He was a coward, say his
accusers, because he avoided a danger. Have they thought of the danger
which he did run when they bring those charges against him? of what was
the nature of the fight? Do they remember how many Romans in public life
had been murdered during the last dozen years? We are well aware how far
custom goes, and that men became used to the fear of violent death.
Cicero was now habituated to that fear, and was willing to face it. But
not on that account are we to imagine that, with his eyes open, he was
to be supposed always ready to rush into immediate destruction. To write
a scurrilous attack, such as the second Philippic, is a bad exercise for
the ingenuity of a great man; but so is any anonymous satire. It is so
in regard to our own times, which have received the benefit of all
antecedent civilization. Cicero, being in the midst of those heartless
Romans, is expected to have the polished manners and high feelings of a
modern politician! I have hardly a right to be angry with his critics
because by his life he went so near to justify the expectation.

He begins by asking his supposed hearers how it has come to pass that
during the last twenty years the Republic had had no enemy who was not
also his enemy. "And you, Antony, whom I have never injured by a word,
why is it that, more brazen-faced than Catiline, more fierce than
Clodius, you should attack me with your maledictions? Will your enmity
against me be a recommendation for you to every evil citizen in Rome?
* * * Why does not Antony come down among us to-day?" he says, as though
he were in the Senate and Antony were away. "He gives a birthday fête in
his garden: to whom, I wonder? I will name no one. To Phormio, perhaps,
or Gnatho, or Ballion? Oh, incredible baseness; lust and impudence not
to be borne!" These were the vile knaves of the Roman comedy--the Nyms.
Pistols, and Bobadils. "Your Consulship no doubt will be salutary; but
mine did only evil! You talk of my verses," he says--Antony having
twitted him with the "cedant arma togæ." "I will only say that you do
not understand them or any other. Clodius was killed by my counsels--was
he? What would men have said had they seen him running from you through
the Forum--you with your drawn sword, and him escaping up the stairs of
the bookseller's shop?[206] * * * It was by my advice that Cæsar was
killed! I fear, O conscript fathers, lest I should seem to have employed
some false witness to flatter me with praises which do not belong to me.
Who has ever heard me mentioned as having been conversant with that
glorious affair? Among those who did do the deed, whose name has been
hidden--or, indeed, is not most widely known? Some had been inclined to
boast that they were there, though they were absent; but not one who was
present has ever endeavored to conceal his name."

"You deny that I have had legacies? I wish it were true, for then my
friends might still be living. But where have you learned that, seeing
that I have inherited twenty million sesterces?[207] I am happier in
this than you. No one but a friend has made me his heir. Lucius Rubrius
Cassinas, whom you never even saw, has named you." He here refers to a
man over whose property Antony was supposed to have obtained control
fraudulently. "Did he know of you whether you were a white man or a
negro? * * * Would you mind telling me what height Turselius stood?"
Here he names another of whose property Antony is supposed to have
obtained possession illegally. "I believe all you know of him is what
farms he had. * * * Do you bear in mind," he says, "that you were a
bankrupt as soon as you had become a man? Do you remember your early
friendship with Curio, and the injuries you did his father?" Here it is
impossible to translate literally, but after speaking as he had done
very openly, he goes on: "But I must omit the iniquities of your private
life. There are things I cannot repeat here. You are safe, because the
deeds you have done are too bad to be mentioned. But let us look at the
affairs of your public life. I will just go through them;" which he
does, laying bare as he well knew how to do, every past act. "When you
had been made Quæstor you flew at once to Cæsar. You knew that he was
the only refuge for poverty, debt, wickedness, and vice. Then, when you
had gorged upon his generosity and your plunderings--which indeed you
spent faster than you got it--you betook yourself instantly to the
Tribunate. * * * It is you, Antony, you who supplied Cæsar with an
excuse for invading his country." Cæsar had declared at the Rubicon that
the Tribunate had been violated in the person of Antony. "I will say
nothing here against Cæsar, though nothing can excuse a man for taking
up arms against his country. But of you it has to be confessed that you
were the cause. * * * He has been a very Helen to us Trojans. * * * He
has brought back many a wretched exile, but has forgotten altogether his
own uncle"--Cicero's colleague in the Consulship, who had been banished
for plundering his province. "We have seen this Tribune of the people
carried through the town on a British war-chariot. His lictors with
their laurels went before him. In the midst, on an open litter, was
carried an actress. When you come back from Thessaly with your legions
to Brundisium you did not kill me! Oh, what a kindness! * * * You with
those jaws of yours, with that huge chest, with that body like a
gladiator, drank so much wine at Hippea's marriage that in the sight of
all Rome you were forced to vomit.* * * When he had seized Pompey's
property he rejoiced like some stage-actor who in a play is as poor as
Poverty, and then suddenly becomes rich. All his wine, the great weight
of silver, the costly furniture and rich dresses, in a few days where
were they all? A Charybdis do I call him? He swallowed them all like an
entire ocean!" Then he accuses him of cowardice and cruelty in the
Pharsalian wars, and compares him most injuriously with Dolabella. "Do
you remember how Dolabella fought for you in Spain, when you were
getting drunk at Narbo? And how did you get back from Narbo? He has
asked as to my return to the city. I have explained to you, O conscript
fathers, how I had intended to be here in January, so as to be of some
service to the Republic. You inquire how I got back. In daylight--not in
the dark, as you did; with Roman shoes on and a Roman toga--not in
barbaric boots and an old cloak.* * * When Cæsar returned from Spain you
again pushed yourself into his intimacy--not a brave man, we should say,
but still strong enough for his purposes. Cæsar did always this--that if
there were a man ruined, steeped in debt, up to his ears in poverty--a
base, needy, bold man--that was the man whom he could receive into his
friendship." This as to Cæsar was undoubtedly true. "Recommended in this
way, you were told to declare yourself Consul." Then he describes the
way in which he endeavored to prevent the nomination of Dolabella to the
same office. Cæsar had said that Dolabella should be Consul, but when
Cæsar was dead this did not suit Antony. When the tribes had been called
in their centuries to vote, Antony, not understanding what form of words
he ought to have used as augur to stop the ceremony, had blundered.
"Would you not call him a very Lælius?" says Cicero. Lælius had made for
himself a name among augurs for excellence.

"Miserable that you are, you throw yourself at Cæsar's feet asking only
permission to be his slave. You sought for yourself that state of
slavery which it has ever been easy for you to endure. Had you any
command from the Roman people to ask the same for them? Oh, that
eloquence of yours; when naked you stood up to harangue the people! Who
ever saw a fouler deed than that, or one more worthy scourges?" "Has
Tarquin suffered for this; have Spurius Cassius, Melius, and Marcus
Manlius suffered, that after many ages a king should be set up in Rome
by Marc Antony?" With abuse of a similar kind he goes on to the end of
his declamation, when he again professes himself ready to die at his
post in defence of the Republic. That he now made up his mind so to die,
should it become necessary, we may take for granted, but we cannot bring
ourselves to approve of the storm of abuse under which he attempted to
drown the memory and name of his antagonist. So virulent a torrent of
words, all seeming, as we read them, to have been poured out in rapid
utterances by the keen energy of the moment, astonish us, when we
reflect that it was the work of his quiet moments. That he should have
prepared such a task in the seclusion of his closet is marvellous. It
has about it the very ring of sudden passion; but it must be
acknowledged that it is not palatable. It is more Roman and less English
than anything we have from Cicero--except his abuse of Piso, with whom
he was again now half reconciled.

But it was solely on behalf of his country that he did it. He had
grieved when Cæsar had usurped the functions of the government; but in
his grief he had respected Cæsar, and had felt that he might best carry
on the contest by submission. But, when Cæsar was dead, and Antony was
playing tyrant, his very soul rebelled. Then he sat down to prepare his
first instalment of keen personal abuse, adding word to word and phrase
to phrase till he had built up this unsavory monument of vituperation.
It is by this that Antony is now known to the world. Plutarch makes no
special mention of the second Philippic. In his life of Antony he does
not allude to these orations at all, but in that of Cicero he tells us
how Antony had ordered that right hand to be brought to him with which
Cicero had written his Philippics.

The "young Octavius" of Shakespeare had now taken the name of
Octavianus--Caius Julius Cæsar Octavianus--and had quarrelled to the
knife with Antony. He had assumed that he had been adopted by Cæsar, and
now demanded all the treasures his uncle had collected as his own.
Antony, who had already stolen them, declared that they belonged to the
State. At any rate there was cause enough for quarrelling among them,
and they were enemies. Each seems to have brought charges of murder
against the other, and each was anxious to obtain possession of the
soldiery. Seen as we see now the period in Rome of which we are
writing--every safeguard of the Republic gone, all law trampled under
foot, Consuls, Prætors, and Tribunes not elected but forced upon the
State, all things in disorder, the provinces becoming the open prey of
the greediest plunderer--it is apparent enough that there could be no
longer any hope for a Cicero. The marvel is that the every-day affairs
of life should have been carried on with any reference to the law. When
we are told that Antony stole Cæsar's treasures and paid his debts with
them, we are inclined to ask why he had paid his debts at all. But
Cicero did hope. In his whole life there is nothing more remarkable than
the final vitality with which he endeavored to withstand the coming
deluge of military despotism. Nor in all history is there anything more
wonderful than the capacity of power to re-establish itself, as is shown
by the orderly Empire of Augustus growing out of the disorder left by
Cæsar. One is reminded by it of the impotency of a reckless heir to
bring to absolute ruin the princely property of a great nobleman brought
together by the skill of many careful progenitors. A thing will grow to
be so big as to be all but indestructible. It is like that tower of
Cæcilia Metella against which the storms of twenty centuries have beaten
in vain. Looking at the state of the Roman Empire when Cicero died, who
would not declare its doom? But it did "retrick its beams," not so much
by the hand of one man, Augustus, as by the force of the concrete power
collected within it--"Quod non imber edax non aquilo impotens Possit
diruere."[208] Cicero with patriotic gallantry thought that even yet
there might be a chance for the old Republic--thought that by his
eloquence, by his vehemence of words, he could turn men from fraud to
truth, and from the lust of plundering a province to a desire to
preserve their country. Of Antony now he despaired, but he still hoped
that his words might act upon this young Cæsar's heart. The youth was as
callous as though he had already ruled a province for three years. No
Roman was ever more cautious, more wise, more heartless, more able to
pick his way through blood to a throne, than the young Augustus. Cicero
fears Octavian--as we must now call him--and knows that he can only be
restrained by the keeping of power out of his hands. Writing to Atticus
from Arpinum, he says, "I agree altogether with you. If Octavian gets
power into his hands he will insist upon the tyrant's decrees much more
thoroughly than he did when the Senate sat in the temple of Tellus.
Everything then will be done in opposition to Brutus. But if he be
conquered, then see how intolerable would be the dominion of
Antony."[209] In the same letter he speaks of the De Officiis, which he
has just written. In his next and last epistle to his old friend he
congratulates himself on having been able at last to quarrel with
Dolabella. Dolabella had turned upon him in the end, bought by Antony's
money. He then returns to the subject of Octavian, and his doubts as to
his loyalty. He has been asked to pledge himself to Octavian, but has
declined till he shall see how the young man will behave when Casea
becomes candidate for the Tribunate. If he show himself to be Casea's
enemy, Casea having been one of the conspirators, Cicero will know that
he is not to be trusted. Then he falls into a despairing mood, and
declares that there is no hope. "Even Hippocrates was unwilling to
bestow medicine on those to whom it could avail nothing." But he will go
to Rome, into the very jaws of the danger. "It is less base for such as
I am to fall publicly than privately." With these words, almost the last
written by him to Atticus, this correspondence is brought to an end: the
most affectionate, the most trusting, and the most open ever published
to the world as having come from one man to another. No letters more
useful to the elucidation of character were ever written; but when read
for that purpose they should be read with care, and should hardly be
quoted till they have been understood.

[Sidenote: B.C. 44, ætat. 63.]

The struggles for the provinces were open and acknowledged. Under Cæsar,
Decimus Brutus had been nominated for Cisalpine Gaul, Marcus Brutus for
Macedonia, and Cassius for Syria. It will be observed that these three
men were the most prominent among the conspirators. Since that time
Antony and Dolabella had obtained votes of the people to alter the
arrangement. Antony was to go to Macedonia, and Dolabella to Syria. This
was again changed when Antony found that Decimus had left Rome to take
up his command. He sent his brother Caius to Macedonia, and himself
claimed to be Governor of Cisalpine Gaul. Hence there were two Roman
governors for each province; and in each case each governor was
determined to fight for the possession. Antony hurried out of Rome
before the end of the year with the purpose of hindering Decimus from
the occupation of the north of Italy, and Cicero went up to Rome,
determined to take a part in the struggle which was imminent. The Senate
had been summoned for the 19th of December, and attended in great
numbers. Then it was that he spoke the third Philippic, and in the
evening of the same day he spoke the fourth to the people. It should be
understood that none of these speeches were heard by Antony. Cicero had
at this time become the acknowledged chief of the Republican party,
having drifted into the position which Pompey had so long filled. Many
of Cæsar's friends, frightened by his death, or rather cowed by the
absence of his genius, had found it safer to retreat from the Cæsarean
party, of which the Antonys, with Dolabella, the cutthroats and
gladiators of the empire, had the command. Hirtius and Pansa, with
Balbus and Oppius, were among them. They, at this moment, were powerful
in Rome. The legions were divided--some with Antony, some with Octavian,
and some with Decimus Brutus. The greater number were with Antony, whom
they hated for his cruelty; but were with him because the mantle of
Cæsar's power had fallen on to his shoulders. It was felt by Cicero that
if he could induce Octavian to act with him the Republic might be again
established. He would surely have influence enough to keep the lad from
hankering after his great uncle's pernicious power. He was aware that
the dominion did in fact belong to the owner of the soldiers, but he
thought that he could control this boy-officer, and thus have his
legions at the command of the Republic.

The Senate had been called together, nominally for the purpose of
desiring the Consuls of the year to provide a guard for its own safety.
Cicero makes it an occasion for perpetuating the feeling against Antony,
which had already become strong in Rome. He breaks out into praise of
Octavian, whom he calls "this young Cæsar--almost a boy;" tells them
what divine things the boy had already done, and how he had drawn away
from the rebels those two indomitable legions, the Martia and the
Fourth. Then he proceeds to abuse Antony. Tarquinius, the man whose name
was most odious to Romans, had been unendurable as a tyrant, though
himself not a bad man; but Antony's only object is to sell the Empire,
and to spend the price. Antony had convoked the Senate for November,
threatening the Senators with awful punishments should they absent
themselves; but, when the day came, Antony, the Consul, had himself
fled. He not only pours out the vials of his wrath but of his ridicule
upon Antony's head, and quotes his bungling words. He gives instances of
his imprudence, and his impotence, and of his greed. Then he again
praises the young Cæsar, and the two Consuls for the next year, and the
two legions, and Decimus Brutus, who is about to fight the battle of the
Republic for them in the north of Italy, and votes that the necessary
guard be supplied. In the same evening he addresses the people in his
fourth Philippic. He again praises the lad and the two legions, and
again abuses Antony. No one can say after this day that he hid his
anger, or was silent from fear. He congratulates the Romans on their
patriotism--vain congratulations--and encourages them to make new
efforts. He bids them rejoice that they have a hero such as Decimus
Brutus to protect their liberties, and, almost, that they have such an
enemy as Antony to conquer. It seems that his words, few as they
were--perhaps because they were so few--took hold of the people's
imaginations; so that they shouted to him that he had on that day a
second time saved his country, as he reminds them afterward.[210]

From this time forward we are without those intimate and friendly
letters which we have had with us as our guide through the last
twenty-one years of Cicero's life. For though we have a large body of
correspondence written during the last year of his life, which are
genuine, they are written in altogether a different style from those
which have gone before. They are for the most part urgent appeals to
those of his political friends to whom he can look for support in his
views--often to those to whom he looked in vain. They are passionate
prayers for the performance of a public duty, and as such are altogether
to the writer's credit. His letters to Plancus are beautiful in their
patriotism, as are also those to Decimus Brutus. When we think of his
age, of his zeal, of his earnestness, and of the dangers which he ran,
we hardly know how sufficiently to admire the public spirit with which
at such a crisis he had taken on himself to lead the party. But our
guide to his inner feelings is gone. There are no further letters to
tell us of every doubt at his heart. We think of him as of some stalwart
commander left at home to arrange the affairs of the war, while the less
experienced men were sent to the van.

There is also a book of letters published as having passed between
Cicero and Junius Brutus. The critics have generally united in
condemning them as spurious. They are at, any rate, if genuine, cold and
formal in their language.

[Sidenote: B.C. 43, ætat. 64.]

Antony had proceeded into Cisalpine Gaul to drive out of the province
the Consul named by the people to govern it. The nomination of Decimus
had in truth been Cæsar's nomination; but the right of Decimus to rule
was at any rate better than that of any other claimant. He had been
appointed in accordance with the power then in existence, and his
appointment had been confirmed by the decree of the Senate sanctioning
all Cæsar's acts. It was, after all, a question of simple power, for
Cæsar had overridden every legal form. It became necessary, however,
that they who were in power in Rome should decide. The Consuls Hirtius
and Pansa had been Cæsar's friends, and had also been the friends of
Antony. They had not the trust in Antony which Cæsar had inspired; but
they were anxious to befriend him--or rather not to break with him. When
the Senate met, they called on one Fufius Calenus--who was Antony's
friend and Pansa's father-in-law--first to offer his opinion. He had
been one of Cæsar's Consuls, appointed for a month or two, and was now
chosen for the honorable part of first spokesman, as being a Consular
Senator. He was for making terms with Antony, and suggested that a
deputation of three Senators should be sent to him with a message
calling upon him to retire. The object probably was to give Antony time,
or rather to give Octavian time, to join with Antony if it suited him.
Others spoke in the same sense, and then Cicero was desired to give his
opinion. This was the fifth Philippic. He is all for war with Antony--or
rather he will not call it war, but a public breach of the peace which
Antony has made. He begins mildly enough, but warms with his subject as
he goes on: "Should they send ambassadors to a traitor to his country?
* * * Let him return from Mutina." I keep the old Latin name, which is
preserved for us in that of Modena. "Let him cease to contend with
Decimus. Let him depart out of Gaul. It is not fit that we should send
to implore him to do so. We should by force compel him. * * * We are not
sending messengers to Hannibal, who, if Hannibal would not obey, might
be desired to go on to Carthage. Whither shall the men go if Antony
refuses to obey them?" But it is of no use. With eloquent words he
praises Octavian and the two legions and Decimus. He praises even the
coward Lepidus, who was in command of legions, and was now Governor of
Gaul beyond the Alps and of Northern Spain, and proposes that the people
should put up to him a gilt statue on horseback--so important was it to
obtain, if possible, his services. Alas! it was impossible that such a
man should be moved by patriotic motives. Lepidus was soon to go with
the winning side, and became one of the second triumvirate with Antony
and Octavian.

Cicero's eloquence was on this occasion futile. At this sitting the
Senate came to no decision, but on the third day afterward they decreed
that the Senators, Servius Sulpicius, Lucius Piso, and Lucius Philippus,
should be sent to Antony. The honors which he had demanded for Lepidus
and the others were granted, but he was outvoted in regard to the
ambassadors. On the 4th of January Cicero again addressed the people in
the Forum. His task was very difficult. He wished to give no offence to
the Senate, and yet was anxious to stir the citizens and to excite them
to a desire for immediate war. The Senate, he told them, had not behaved
disgracefully, but had--temporized. The war, unfortunately, must be
delayed for those twenty days necessary for the going and coming of the
ambassadors. The ambassadors could do nothing. But still they must wait.
In the mean time he will not be idle. For them, the Roman people, he
will work and watch with all his experience, with diligence almost above
his strength, to repay them for their faith in him. When Cæsar was with
them they had had no choice but obedience--so much the times were out of
joint. If they submit themselves to be slaves now, it will be their own
fault. Then in general language he pronounces an opinion--which was the
general Roman feeling of the day: "It is not permitted to the Roman
people to become slaves--that people whom the immortal gods have willed
to rule all nations of the earth."[211] So he ended the sixth Philippic,
which, like the fourth, was addressed to the people. All the others were
spoken in the Senate.

He writes to Decimus at Mutina about this time a letter full of hope--of
hope which we can see to be genuine. "Recruits are being raised in all
Italy--if that can be called recruiting which is in truth a spontaneous
rushing into arms of the entire population."[212] He expects letters
telling him what "our Hirtius" is doing, and what "my young Cæsar."
Hirtius and Pansa, the Consuls of the year, though they had been Cæsar's
party, and made Consuls by Cæsar, were forced to fight for the Republic.
They had been on friendly terms with Cicero, and they doubted Antony.
Hirtius had now followed the army, and Pansa was about to do so. They
both fell in the battle that was fought at Mutina, and no one can now
accuse them of want of loyalty. But "my Cæsar," on whose behalf Cicero
made so many sweet speeches, for whose glory he was so careful, whose
early republican principles he was so anxious to direct, made his terms
with Antony on the first occasion. At that time Cicero wrote to Plancus.
Consul elect for the next year, and places before his eyes a picture of
all that he can do for the Republic. "Lay yourself out--yes, I pray
you, by the immortal gods--for that which will bring you to the height
of glory and renown."[213]

At the end of January or beginning of February he again addressed the
Senate on the subject of the embassy--a matter altogether foreign from
that which it had been convoked to discuss. To Cicero's mind there was
no other subject at the present moment fit to occupy the thoughts of a
Roman Senator. "We have met together to settle something about the
Appian Way, and something about the coinage. The mind revolts from such
little cares, torn by greater matters." The ambassadors are expected
back--two of them at least, for Sulpicius had died on his road. He
cautions the Senate against receiving with quiet composure such an
answer as Antony will probably send them. "Why do I--I who am a man of
peace--refuse peace? Because it is base, because it is full of
danger--because peace is impossible." Then he proceeds to explain that
it is so. "What a disgrace would it be that Antony, after so many
robberies, after bringing back banished comrades, after selling the
taxes of the State, putting up kingdoms to auction, shall rise up on the
consular bench and address a free Senate! * * * Can you have an assured
peace while there is an Antony in the State--or many Antonys? Or how can
you be at peace with one who hates you as does he; or how can he be at
peace with those who hate him as do you? * * * You have such an
opportunity," he says at last, "as never fell to the lot of any. You are
able, with all senatorial dignity, with all the zeal of the knights,
with all the favor of the Roman people, now to make the Republic free
from fear and danger, once and forever." Then he thus ends his speech.
"About those things which have been brought before us, I agree with
Servilius." That is the seventh Philippic.

In February the ambassadors returned, but returned laden with bad
tidings. Servius Sulpicius, who was to have been their chief spokesman,
died just as they reached Antony. The other two immediately began to
treat with him, so as to become the bearers back to Rome of conditions
proposed by him. This was exactly what they had been told not to do.
They had carried the orders of the Senate to their rebellious officer,
and then admitted the authority of that rebel by bringing back his
propositions. They were not even allowed to go into Mutina so as to see
Decimus; but they were, in truth, only too well in accord with the
majority of the Senate, whose hearts were with Antony. Anything to those
lovers of their fish-ponds was more desirable than a return to the
loyalty of the Republic. The Deputies were received by the Senate, who
discussed their embassy, and on the next day they met again, when Cicero
pronounced his eighth Philippic. Why he did not speak on the previous
day I do not know. Middleton is somewhat confused in his account.
Morabin says that Cicero was not able to obtain a hearing when the
Deputies were received. The Senate did on that occasion come to a
decision; against which act of pusillanimity Cicero on the following day
expressed himself very vehemently. They had decided that this was not to
be called a war, but rather a tumult, and seem to have hesitated in
denouncing Antony as a public enemy. The Senate was convoked on the next
day to decide the terms of the amnesty to be accorded to the soldiers
who had followed Antony, when Cicero, again throwing aside the minor
matter, burst upon them in his wrath. He had hitherto inveighed against
Antony; now his anger is addressed to the Senate. "Lucius Cæsar," he
said, "has told us that he is Antony's uncle, and must vote as such. Are
you all uncles to Antony?" Then he goes on to show that war is the only
name by which this rebellion can be described. "Has not Hirtius, who has
gone away, sick as he is, called it a war? Has not young Cæsar, young as
he is, prompted to it by no one, undertaken it as a war?" He repeats the
words of a letter from Hirtius which could only have been used in war:
"I have taken Claterna. Their cavalry has been put to flight. A battle
has been fought. So many men have been killed. This is what you call
peace!" Then he speaks of other civil wars, which he says have grown
from difference of opinion--"except that last between Pompey and Cæsar,
as to which I will not speak. I have been ignorant of its cause, and
have hated its ending." But in this war all men are of one opinion who
are worthy of the name of Romans. "We are fighting for the temples of
our gods, for our walls, our homes, for the abode of the Roman people,
for their Penates, their altars, their hearths for the graves of
ancestors--and we are fighting only against Antony. * * * Fufius Calenus
tells us of peace--as though I of all men did not know that peace was a
blessing. But tell me, Calenus, is slavery peace?" He is very angry with
Calenus. Although he has called him his friend, he was in great wrath
against him. "I am fighting for Decimus and you for Antony. I wish to
preserve a Roman city; you wish to see it battered to the ground. Can
you deny this, you who are creating all means of delays by which Decimus
may be weakened and Antony made strong?"

"I had consoled myself with this," he says, "that when these ambassadors
had been sent and had returned despised, and had told the Senate that
not only had Antony refused to leave Gaul but was besieging Mutina, and
would not let them even see Decimus--that then, in our passion and our
rage, we should have gone forth with our arms, and our horses, and our
men, and at once have rescued our General. But we--since we have seen
the audacity, the insolence, and the pride of Antony--we have become
only more cowardly than before." Then he gives his opinion about the
amnesty: "Let any of those who are now with Antony, but shall leave him
before the ides of March and pass to the armies of the Consuls, or of
Decimus, or of young Cæsar, be held to be free from reproach. If one
should quit their ranks through their own will, let them be rewarded and
honored as Hirtius and Pansa, our Consuls, may think proper." This was
the eighth Philippic, and is perhaps the finest of them all. It does not
contain the bitter invective of the second, but there is in it a true
feeling of patriotic earnestness. The ninth also is very eloquent,
though it is rather a pæan sung on behalf of his friend Sulpicius, who
in bad health had encountered the danger of the journey, and had died in
the effort, than one of these Philippics which are supposed to have been
written and spoken with the view of demolishing Antony. It is a specimen
of those funereal orations delivered on behalf of a citizen who had died
in the service of his country which used to be common among the Romans.

The tenth is in praise of Marcus Junius Brutus. Were I to attempt to
explain the situation of Brutus in Macedonia, and to say how he had come
to fill it, I should be carried away from my purpose as to Cicero's
life, and should be endeavoring to write the history of the time. My
object is simply to illustrate the life of Cicero by such facts as we
know. In the confusion which existed at the time, Brutus had obtained
some advantages in Macedonia, and had recovered for himself the legions
of which Caius Antonius had been in possession, and who was now a
prisoner in his hands. At this time young Marcus Cicero was his
lieutenant, and it is told us how one of those legions had put
themselves under his command. Brutus had at any rate written home
letters to the Senate early in March, and Pansa had called the Senate
together to receive them.

Again he attacks Fufius Calenus, Pansa's father-in-law, who was the only
man in the Senate bold enough to stand up against him; though there were
doubtless many of those foot Senators--men who traversed the house
backward and forward to give their votes--who were anxious to oppose
him. He thanks Pansa for calling them so quickly, seeing that when they
had parted yesterday they had not expected to be again so soon convoked.
We may gather from this the existence of a practice of sending
messengers round to the Senators' houses to call them together. He
praises Brutus for his courage and his patience. It is his object to
convince his hearers, and through them the Romans of the day, that the
cause of Antony is hopeless. Let us rise up and crush him. Let us all
rise, and we shall certainly crush him. There is nothing so likely to
attain success as a belief that the success has been already attained.
"From all sides men are running together to put out the flames which he
has lighted. Our veterans, following the example of young Cæsar, have
repudiated Antony and his attempts. The 'Legio Martia' has blunted the
edge of his rage, and the 'Legio Quarta' has attacked him. Deserted by
his own troops, he has broken through into Gaul, which he has found to
be hostile to him with its arms and opposed to him in spirit. The armies
of Hirtius and of young Cæsar are upon his trail; and now Pansa's levies
have raised the heart of the city and of all Italy. He alone is our
enemy, although he has along with him his brother Lucius, whom we all
regret so dearly, whose loss we have hardly been able to endure! What
wild beast do you know more abominable than that, or more monstrous--who
seems to have been created lest Marc Antony himself should be of all
things the most vile?" He concludes by proposing the thanks of the
Senate to Brutus, and a resolution that Quintus Hortensius, who had held
the province of Macedonia against Caius Antonius, should be left there
in command. The two propositions were carried.

As we read this, all appears to be prospering on behalf of the Republic;
but if we turn to the suspected correspondence between Brutus and
Cicero, we find a different state of things. And these letters, though
we altogether doubt their authenticity--for their language is cold,
formal, and un-Ciceronian--still were probably written by one who had
access to those which Cicero had himself penned: "As to what you write
about wanting men and money, it is very difficult to give you advice. I
do not see how you are to raise any except by borrowing it from the
municipalities"--in Macedonia--"according to the decree of the Senate.
As to men, I do not know what to propose. Pansa is so far from sparing
men from his army, that he begrudges those who go to you as volunteers.
Some think that he wishes you to be less strong than you are--which,
however. I do not suspect myself."[214] A letter might fall into the
hands of persons not intended to read it, and Cicero was forced to be on
his guard in communicating his suspicions--Cicero or the pseudo-Cicero.
In the next Brutus is rebuked for having left Antony live when Cæsar was
slain. "Had not some god inspired Octavian," he says, "we should have
been altogether in the power of Antony, that base and abominable man.
And you see how terrible is our contest with him." And he tries to
awaken him to the necessity of severity. "I see how much you delight in
clemency. That is very well. But there is another place, another time,
for clemency. The question for us is whether we shall any longer exist
or be put out of the world." These, which are intended to represent his
private fears, deal with the affairs of the day in a tone altogether
different from that of his public speeches. Doubt, anxiety, occasionally
almost despair, are expressed in them. But not the less does he thunder
on in the Senate, aware that to attain success he must appear to have
obtained it.

The eleventh Philippic was occasioned by the news which had arrived in
Rome of the death of Trebonius. Trebonius had been surprised in Smyrna
by a stratagem as to which alone no disgrace would have fallen on
Dolabella, had he not followed up his success by killing Trebonius. How
far the bloody cruelty, of which we have the account in Cicero's words,
was in truth executed, it is now impossible to say. The Greek historian
Appian gives us none of these horrors, but simply intimates that
Trebonius, having been taken in the snare, had his head cut off.[215]
That Cicero believed the story is probable. It is told against his
son-in-law, of whom he had hitherto spoken favorably. He would not have
spoken against the man except on conviction. Dolabella was immediately
declared an enemy to the Republic. Cicero inveighs against him with all
his force, and says that such as Dolabella is, he had been made by the
cruelty of Antony. But he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much
more miserable than Trebonius was Dolabella himself, who is so base that
from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have
been held as disgraceful by other children. Then he turns to the
question which is in dispute, whether Brutus should be left in command
of Macedonia, and Cassius of Syria--Cassius was now on his way to avenge
the death of Trebonius--or whether other noble Romans, Publius
Servilius, for instance, or that Hirtius and Pansa, the two Consuls,
when they can be spared from Italy, shall be sent there. It is necessary
here to read between the lines. The going of the Consuls would mean the
withdrawing of the troops from Italy, and would leave Rome open to the
Cæsarean faction. At present Decimus and Cicero, and whoever else there
might be loyal to the Republic, had to fight by the assistance of other
forces than their own. Hirtius and Pansa were constrained to take the
part of the Republic by Cicero's eloquence, and by the action of those
Senators who felt themselves compelled to obey Cicero. But they did not
object to send the Consuls away, and the Consular legions, under the
plea of saving the provinces. This they were willing enough to do--with
the real object of delivering Italy over to those who were Cicero's
enemies but were not theirs. All this Cicero understood, and, in
conducting the contest, had to be on his guard, not only against the
soldiers of Antony but against the Senators also, who were supposed to
be his own friends, but whose hearts were intent on having back some
Cæsar to preserve for them their privileges.

Cicero in this matter talked some nonsense. "By what right, by what
law," he asks, "shall Cassius go to Syria? By that law which Jupiter
sanctioned when he ordained that all things good for the Republic should
be just and legal." For neither had Brutus a right to establish himself
in Macedonia as Proconsul nor Cassius in Syria. This reference to
Jupiter was a begging of the question with a vengeance. But it was
perhaps necessary, in a time of such confusion, to assume some pretext
of legality, let it be ever so poor. Nothing could now be done in true
obedience to the laws. The Triumvirate, with Cæsar at its head, had
finally trodden down all law; and yet every one was clamoring for legal
rights! Then he sings the praises of Cassius, but declares that he does
not dare to give him credit in that place for the greatest deed he had
done. He means, of course, the murder of Cæsar.

Paterculus tells us that all these things were decreed by the
Senate.[216] But he is wrong. The decree of the Senate went against
Cicero, and on the next day, amid much tumult, he addressed himself to
the people on the subject. This he did in opposition to Pansa, who
endeavored to hinder him from speaking in the Forum, and to Servilia,
the mother-in-law of Cassius, who was afraid lest her son-in-law should
encounter the anger of the Consuls. He went so far as to tell the people
that Cassius would not obey the Senate, but would take upon himself, on
such an emergency, to act as best he could for the Republic.[217] There
was no moment in this stirring year, none, I think, during Cicero's
life, in which he behaved with greater courage than now in appealing
from the Senate to the people, and in the hardihood with which he
declared that the Senate's decree should be held as going for nothing.
Before the time came in which it could be carried out both Hirtius and
Pansa were dead. They had fallen in relieving Decimus at Mutina. His
address on this occasion to the people was not made public, and has not
been preserved.

Then there came up the question of a second embassy, to which Cicero at
first acceded. He was induced to do so, as he says, by news which had
arrived of altered circumstances on Antony's part. Calenus and Piso had
given the Senate to understand that Antony was desirous of peace. Cicero
had therefore assented, and had agreed to be one of the deputation. The
twelfth Philippic was spoken with the object of showing that no such
embassy should be sent. Cicero's condition at this period was most
peculiar and most perilous. The Senate would not altogether oppose his
efforts, but they hated them. They feared that, if Antony should
succeed, they who had opposed Antony would be ruined. Those among them
who were the boldest openly reproached Cicero with the danger which they
were made to incur in fighting his battles.[218] To be rid of Cicero was
their desire and their difficulty. He had agreed to go on this
embassy--who can say for what motives? To him it would be a mission of
especial peril. It was one from which he could hardly hope ever to come
back alive. It may be that he had agreed to go with his life in his
hand, and to let them know that he at any rate had been willing to die
for the Republic. It may be that he had heard of some altered
circumstances. But he changed his mind and resolved that he would not
go, unless driven forth by the Senate. There seems to have been a
manifest attempt to get him out of Rome and send him where he might have
his throat cut. But he declined; and this is the speech in which he did
so. "It is impossible," says the French critic, speaking of the twelfth
Philippic, "to surround the word 'I fear' with more imposing oratorical
arguments." It has not occurred to him that Cicero may have thought
that he might even yet do something better with the lees and dregs of
his life than throw them away by thus falling into a trap. Nothing is so
common to men as to fear to die--and nothing more necessary, or men
would soon cease to live. To fear death more than ignominy is the
disgrace--a truth which the French critic does not seem to have
recognized when he twits the memory of Cicero with his scornful sneer.
"J'ai peur." Did it occur to the French critic to ask himself for what
purpose should Cicero go to Antony's camp, where he would probably be
murdered, and by so doing favor the views of his own enemies in Rome?
The deputation was not sent; but in lieu of the deputation Pansa, the
remaining Consul, led his legions out of Rome at the beginning of April.

[Sidenote: B.C. 43, ætat. 64.]

Lepidus, who was Proconsul in Gaul and Northern Spain, wrote a letter at
this time to the Senate recommending them to make peace with Antony.
Cicero in his thirteenth Philippic shows how futile such a peace would
be. That Lepidus was a vain, inconstant man, looking simply to his own
advantage in the side which he might choose, is now understood; but when
this letter was received he was supposed to have much weight in Rome. He
had, however, given some offence to the Senate, not having acknowledged
all the honors which had been paid to him. The advice had been rejected,
and Cicero shows how unfit the man was to give it. This, however, he
still does with complimentary phrases, though from a letter written by
him to Lepidus about this time the nature of his feeling toward the man
is declared: "You would have done better, in my judgment, if you had
left alone this attempt at making peace, which approves itself neither
to the Senate nor to the people, not to any good man."[219] When we
remember the ordinary terms of Roman letter-writing, we must acknowledge
that this was a plain and not very civil attempt to silence Lepidus. He
then goes on in the Philippic to read a letter which Antony had sent to
Hirtius and to young Cæsar, and which they had sent on to the Senate.
The letter is sufficiently bold and abusive--throwing it in their teeth
that they would rather punish the murderer of Trebonius than those of
Cæsar. Cicero does this with some wit, but we feel compelled to observe
that as much is to be said on the one side as on the other. Brutus,
Cassius, with Trebonius and others, had killed Cæsar. Dolabella, perhaps
with circumstances of great cruelty, had killed Trebonius. Cicero had
again and again expressed his sorrow that Antony had been spared when
Cæsar was killed. We have to go back before the first slaughter to
resolve who was right and who was wrong, and even afterward can only
take the doings of each in that direction as part of the internecine
feud. Experience has since explained to us the results of introducing
bloodshed into such quarrels. The laws which recognize war are and were
acknowledged. But when A kills B because he thinks B to have done evil.
A can no longer complain of murder. And Cicero's criticism is somewhat
puerile. "And thou, boy," Antony had said in addressing Octavian--"Et
te, puer!" "You shall find him to be a man by-and-by," says Cicero.
Antony's Latin is not Ciceronian. "Utrum sit elegantius," he asks,
putting some further question about Cæsar and Trebonius. "As if there
could be anything elegant in this war," demands Cicero. He goes through
the letter in the same way, turning Antony into ridicule in a manner
which must have riveted in the heart of Fulvia, Antony's wife, who was
in Rome, her desire to have that bitter-speaking tongue torn out of his
mouth. Such was the thirteenth Philippic.

On the 21st of April was spoken the fourteenth and the last. Pansa early
in the month had left Rome, and marched toward Mutina with the intention
of relieving Decimus. Antony, who was then besieging Mutina after such a
fashion as to prevent all egress or ingress, and had all but brought
Decimus to starvation, finding himself about to be besieged, put his
troops into motion, and attacked those who were attacking him. Then was
fought the battle in which Antony was beaten, and Pansa, one of the
Consuls, so wounded that he perished soon afterward. Antony retreated to
his camp, but was again attacked by Hirtius and Octavian, and by
Decimus, who sallied out of the town. He was routed, and fled, but
Hirtius was killed in the battle. Suetonius tells us that in his time a
rumor was abroad that Augustus, then Octavian, had himself killed
Hirtius with his own hands in the fight--Hirtius having been his
fellow-general, and fighting on the same side; and that he had paid
Glyco, Pansa's doctor, to poison him while dressing his wounds.[220]
Tacitus had already made the story known.[221] It is worth repeating
here only as showing the sort of conduct which a grave historian and a
worthy biographer were not ashamed to attribute to the favorite Emperor
of Rome.

It was on the receipt of the news in Rome of the first battle, but
before the second had been fought, that the last Philippic was spoken.
Pansa was not known to have been mortally wounded, nor Hirtius killed,
nor was it known that Decimus had been relieved; but it was understood
that Antony had received a check. Servilius had proposed a supplication,
and had suggested that they should put away their saga and go back to
their usual attire. The "sagum" was a common military cloak, which the
early Romans wore instead of the toga when they went out to war. In
later days, when the definition between a soldier and a civilian became
more complete, they who were left at home wore the sagum, in token of
their military feelings, when the Republic was fighting its battles near
Rome. I do not suppose that when Crassus was in Parthia, or Cæsar in
Gaul, the sagum was worn. It was not exactly known when the distant
battles were being fought. But Cicero had taken care that the sagum
should be properly worn, and had even put it on himself--to do which as
a Consular was not required of him. Servilius now proposed that they
should leave off their cloaks, having obtained a victory; but Cicero
would not permit it. Decimus, he says, has not been relieved, and they
had taken to their cloaks as showing their determination to succor their
General in his distress. And he is discontented with the language used:
"You have not even yet called Antony a 'public enemy.'" Then he again
lashes out against the horror of Antony's proceedings: "He is waging
war, a war too dreadful to be spoken of, against four Roman Consuls"--he
means Hirtius and Pansa, who were already Consuls, and in truth already
dead, and Decimus and Plancus, who were designated as Consuls for the
next year. Plancus, however, joined his legions afterward with those of
Antony, and insisted in establishing the Second Triumvirate. "Rushing
from one scene of slaughter to another, he causes wherever he goes
misery, desolation, bloodshed, and agony." The language is so fine that
it is worth our while to see the words.[222] "Is he not responsible for
the horrors of Dolabella? What he would do in Rome, were it not for the
protection of Jupiter, may be seen from the miseries which his brother
has inflicted on those poor men of Parma--that Lucius, whom all men
hate, and the gods too would hate, if they hated as they ought. In what
city was Hannibal as cruel as Antony at Parma; and shall we not call him
an enemy?" Servilius had asked for a supplication, but had only asked
for one of moderate length. And Servilius had not called the generals
Imperatores. Who should be so called but they who have been valiant, and
lucky, and successful? Cicero forgets the meaning of the title, and that
even Bibulus had been called Imperator in Syria. Here he runs off from
his subject, and at some length praises himself. It seems that Rome was
in a tumult at the time, and that Antony's enemies did all they could to
support him, and also to turn his head. He had been carried into the
Senate-house in triumph, and had been thanked by the whole city. After
lauding the different generals, and calling them all Imperatores, he
desires the Senate to decree them a supplication for fifty days. Fifty
days are to be devoted to thanksgiving to the gods, though it had
already been declared how very little they have done for which to be
thankful, as Decimus had not yet been liberated.

Fifty days are granted for the battle of Mutina, which as yet was
supposed to have been but half fought. When we hear the term
"supplicatio" first mentioned in Livy one day was granted. It had grown
to twenty when the gods were thanked for the victory over Vercingetorix.
Now for this half-finished affair fifty was hardly enough. When the time
was over, Antony and Lepidus had joined their forces triumphantly. Pansa
and Hirtius were dead, and Decimus Brutus had fled, and had probably
been murdered. Nothing increases so out of proportion to the occasion as
the granting of honors. Stars, when they fall in showers, pale their
brilliancy, and turn at last to no more than a cloud of dust. Honors are
soon robbed of all their honor when once the first step downward has
been taken. The decree was passed, and Cicero finished his last speech
on so poor an occasion. But though the thing itself then done be small
and trivial to us now, it was completed in magnificent language.[223]
The passage of which I give the first words below is very fine in the
original, though it does not well bear translation. Thus he ended his
fourteenth Philippic, and the silver tongue which had charmed Rome so
often was silent forever.

We at least have no record of any further speech; nor, as I think, did
he again take the labor of putting into words which should thrill
through all who heard them, not the thoughts but the passionate feelings
of the moment.

I will venture to quote from a contemporary his praise of the
Philippics. Mr. Forsyth says: "Nothing can exceed the beauty of the
language, the rhythmical flow of the periods, and the harmony of the
style. The structure of the Latin language, which enables the speaker or
writer to collocate his words, not, as in English, merely according to
the order of thought, but in the manner best calculated to produce
effect, too often baffles the powers of the translator who seeks to give
the force of the passage without altering the arrangement. Often again,
as is the case with all attempts to present the thoughts of the ancient
in a modern dress, a periphrasis must be used to explain the meaning of
an idea which was instantly caught by the Greek or Roman ear. Many
allusions which flashed like lightning upon the minds of the Senators
must be explained in a parenthesis, and many a home-thrust and caustic
sarcasm are now deprived of their sting, which pierced sharply at the
moment of their utterance some twenty centuries ago.

"But with all such disadvantages I hope that even the English reader
will be able to recognize in these speeches something of the grandeur of
the old Roman eloquence. The noble passages in which Cicero strove to
force his countrymen for very shame to emulate the heroic virtues of
their forefathers, and urged them to brave every danger and welcome
death rather than slavery in the last struggle for freedom, are radiant
with a glory which not even a translation can destroy. And it is
impossible not to admire the genius of the orator whose words did more
than armies toward recovering the lost liberty of Rome."

His words did more than armies, but neither could do anything lasting
for the Republic. What was one honest man among so many? We remember
Mommsen's verdict: "On the Roman oligarchy of this period no judgment
can be passed save one of inexorable and remorseless condemnation." The
farther we see into the facts of Roman history in our endeavors to read
the life of Cicero, the more apparent becomes its truth. But Cicero,
though he saw far toward it, never altogether acknowledged it. In this
consists the charm of his character, though at the same time the
weakness of his political aspirations; his weakness--because he was vain
enough to imagine that he could talk men back from their fish-ponds; its
charm--because he was able through it all to believe in honesty. The
more hopeless became the cause, the sweeter, the more impassioned, the
more divine, became his language. He tuned his notes to still higher
pitches of melody, and thought that thus he could bring back public
virtue. Often in these Philippics the matter is small enough. The men he
has to praise are so little; and Antony does not loom large enough in
history to have merited from Cicero so great a meed of vituperation! Nor
is the abuse all true, in attributing to him motives so low. But Cicero
was true through it all, anxious, all on fire with anxiety to induce
those who heard him to send men to fight the battles to which he knew
them, in their hearts, to be opposed.

The courage, the persistency, and the skill shown, in the attempt were
marvellous. They could not have succeeded, but they seem almost to have
done so. I have said that he was one honest man among many. Brutus was
honest in his patriotism, and Cassius, and all the conspirators. I do
not doubt that Cæsar was killed from a true desire to restore the Roman
Republic. They desired to restore a thing that was in itself evil--the
evils of which had induced Cæsar to see that he might make himself its
master. But Cicero had conceived a Republic in his own mind--not
Utopian, altogether human and rational--a Republic which he believed to
have been that of Scipio, of Marcellus, and Lælius: a Republic which
should do nothing for him but require his assistance, in which the
people should vote, and the oligarchs rule in accordance with the
established laws. Peace and ease, prosperity and protection, it would
be for the Rome of his dream to bestow upon the provinces. Law and
order, education and intelligence, it would be for her rulers to bestow
upon Rome. In desiring this, he was the one honest man among many. In
accordance with that theory he had lived, and I claim for him that he
had never departed from it. In his latter days, when the final struggle
came, when there had arisen for him the chance of Cæsar's death, when
Antony was his chief enemy, when he found himself in Rome with authority
sufficient to control legions, when the young Cæsar had not
shown--probably had not made--his plans, when Lepidus and Plancus and
Pollio might still prove themselves at last true men, he was once again
alive with his dream. There might yet be again a Scipio, or a Cicero as
good as Scipio, in the Republic; one who might have lived as gloriously,
and die--not amid the jealousies but with the love of his countrymen.

It was not to be. Looking back at it now, we wonder that he should have
dared to hope for it. But it is to the presence within gallant bosoms of
hope still springing, though almost forlorn, of hope which has in its
existence been marvellous, that the world is indebted for the most
beneficial enterprises. It was not given to Cicero to stem the tide and
to prevent the evil coming of the Cæsars; but still the nature of the
life he had led, the dreams of a pure Republic, those aspirations after
liberty have not altogether perished. We have at any rate the record of
the great endeavors which he made.

Nothing can have been worse managed than the victory at Mutina. The two
Consuls were both killed; but that, it may be said, was the chance of
war. Antony with all his cavalry was allowed to escape eastward toward
the Cottian Alps. Decimus Brutus seems to have shown himself deficient
in all the qualities of a General, except that power of endurance which
can hold a town with little or no provision. He wrote to Cicero saying
that he would follow Antony. He makes a promise that Antony shall not
be allowed to remain in Italy. He beseeches Cicero to write to that
"windy fellow Lepidus," to prevent him from joining the enemy. Lepidus
will never do what is right unless made to do so by Cicero. As to
Plancus, Decimus has his doubts, but he thinks that Plancus will be true
to the Republic now that Antony is beaten.[224] In his next letter he
speaks of the great confusion which has come among them from the death
of the two Consuls. He declares also how great has been Antony's energy
in already recruiting his army. He has opened all the prisons and
workhouses, and taken the men he found there. Ventidius has joined him
with his army, and he still fears Lepidus. And young Cæsar, who is
supposed to be on their side, will obey no one, and can make none obey
him. He, Decimus, cannot feed his men. He has spent all his own money
and his friends'. How is he to support seven legions?[225] On the next
day he writes again, and is still afraid of Plancus and of Lepidus and
of Pollio. And he bids Cicero look after his good name: "Stop the evil
tongues of men if you can."[226] A few days afterward Cicero writes him
a letter which he can hardly have liked to receive. What business had
Brutus to think the senate cowardly?[227] Who can be afraid of Antony
conquered who did not fear him in his strength? How should Lepidus doubt
now when victory had declared for the Republic? Though Antony may have
collected together the scrapings of the jails, Decimus is not to forget
that he, Decimus, has the whole Roman people at his back.

Cicero was probably right to encourage the General, and to endeavor to
fill him with hope. To make a man victorious you should teach him to
believe in victory. But Decimus knew the nature of the troops around
him, and was aware that every soldier was so imbued with an idea of the
power of Cæsar that, though Cæsar was dead, they could fight with only
half a heart against soldiers who had been in his armies. The name and
authority and high office of the two Consuls had done something with
them, and young Cæsar had been with the Consuls. But both the Consuls
had been killed--which was in itself ominous--and Antony was still full
of hope, and young Cæsar was not there, and Decimus was unpopular with
the men. It was of no use that Cicero should write with lofty ideas and
speak of the spirit of the Senate. Antony had received a severe check,
but the feeling of military rule which Cæsar had engendered was still
there, and soldiers who would obey their officers were not going to
submit themselves to "votes of the people." Cicero in the mean time had
his letters passing daily between himself and the camps, thinking to
make up by the energy of his pen for the weakness of his party. Lepidus
sends him an account of his movements on the Rhone, declaring how he was
anxious to surround Antony. Lepidus was already meditating his
surrender. "I ask from you, my Cicero, that if you have seen with what
zeal I have in former times served the Republic, you should look for
conduct equal to it, or surpassing it for the future; and, that you
should think me the more worthy of your protection, the higher are my
deserts."[228] He was already, when writing that letter, in treaty with
Antony. Plancus writes to him at the same time apologizing for his
conduct in joining Lepidus. It was a service of great danger for him.
Plancus, but it was necessary for Lepidus that this should be done. We
are inclined to doubt them all, knowing whither they were tending.
Lepidus was false from the beginning. Plancus doubled for a while, and
then yielded himself.

The reader, I think, will have had no hope for Cicero and the Republic
since the two Consuls were killed; but as he comes upon the letters
which passed between Cicero and the armies he will have been altogether
disheartened.




CHAPTER X.

_CICERO'S DEATH._


[Sidenote: B.C. 43, ætat. 64.]

What other letters from Cicero we possess were written almost
exclusively with the view of keeping the army together, and continuing
the contest against Antony. There are among them a few introductory
letters of little or no interest. And these military despatches, though
of importance as showing the eager nature of the man, seem, as we read
them, to be foreign to his nature. He does not understand war, and
devotes himself to instigating men to defend the Republic, of whom we
suspect that they were not in the least affected by the words they
received from him. The correspondence as to this period of his life
consists of his letters to the Generals, and of theirs to him. There are
nearly as many of the one as of the other, and the reader is often
inclined to doubt whether Cicero be writing to Plancus or Plancus to
Cicero. He remained at Rome, and we can only imagine him as busy among
the official workshops of the State, writing letters, scraping together
money for the troops, struggling in vain to raise levies, amid a crowd
of hopeless, doubting, disheartened Senators, whom he still kept
together by his eloquence as Republicans, though each was eager to
escape.

But who can be made Consuls in the place of Pansa and Hirtius? Octavian,
who had not left Italy after the battle of Mutina, was determined to be
one; but the Senate, probably under the guidance of Cicero, for a time
would not have him. There was a rumor that Cicero had been elected--or
is said to have been such a rumor. Our authority for it comes from that
correspondence with Marcus Brutus on the authenticity of which we do not
trust, and the date of which we do not know.[229] "When I had already
written my letter, I heard that you had been made Consul. When that is
done I shall believe that we shall have a true Republic, and one
supported by its own strength." But probably neither was the rumor true,
nor the fact that there was such a rumor. It was not thus that Octavian
meant to play his part. He had been passed over by Cicero when a General
against Antony was needed. Decimus had been used, and Hirtius and Pansa
had been employed as though they had been themselves strong as were the
Consuls of old. So they were to Cicero--in whose ears the very name of
Consul had in it a resonance of the magnificence of Rome. Octavian
thought that Pansa and Hirtius were but Cæsar's creatures, who at
Cæsar's death had turned against him. But even they had been preferred
to him. In those days he was very quick to learn. He had been with the
army, and with Cæsar's soldiers, and was soon instructed in the steps
which it was wise that he should take. He put aside, as with a sweep of
his hand, all the legal impediments to his holding the Consulship. Talk
to him of age! He had already heard that word "boy" too often. He would
show them what a boy would do. He would let them understand that there
need be no necessity for him to canvass, to sue for the Consulship cap
in hand, to have morning levees and to know men's names--as had been
done by Cicero. His uncle had not gone through those forms when he had
wanted the Consulship. Octavian sent a military order by a band of
officers, who, marching into the Senate, demanded the office. When the
old men hesitated, one Cornelius, a centurion, showed them his sword,
and declared that by means of that should his General be elected Consul.
The Greek biographers and historians, Plutarch, Dio, and Appian, say
that he was minded to make Cicero his fellow-Consul, promising to be
guided by him in everything; but it could hardly have been so, with the
feelings which were then hot against Cicero in Octavian's bosom. Dio
Cassius is worthy of little credit as to this period, and Appian less
so, unless when supported by Latin authority. And we find that Plutarch
inserts stories with that freedom which writers use who do not suppose
that others coming after them will have wider sources of information
than their own. Octavian marched into Rome with his legions, and had
himself chosen Consul in conjunction with Quintius Pedius, who had also
been one of the coheirs to Cæsar's will. This happened in September.
Previous to this Cicero had sent to Africa for troops; but the troops
when they came all took part with the young Cæsar.

A story is told which appears to have been true, and to have assisted in
creating that enmity which at last induced Octavian to assent to
Cicero's death. He was told that Cicero had said that "the young man was
to be praised, and rewarded, and elevated!"[230] The last word,
"tollendum," has a double meaning; might be elevated to the skies--or to
the "gallows." In English, if meaning the latter, we should say that
such a man must be "put out of the way." Decimus Brutus told this to
Cicero as having been repeated by Sigulius, and Cicero answers him,
heaping all maledictions upon Sigulius. But he does not deny the words,
or their intention--and though he is angry, he is angry half in joke. He
had probably allowed himself to use the witticism, meaning little or
nothing--choosing the phrase without a moment's thought, because it
contained a double meaning. No one can conceive that he meant to imply
that young Cæsar should be murdered. "Let us reward him, but for the
moment let us be rid of him." And then, too, he had in the same sentence
called him a boy. As far as evidence goes, we know that the words were
spoken. We can trust the letter from Decimus to Cicero, and the answer
from Cicero to Decimus. And we know that, a short time afterward,
Octavian, sitting in the island near Bologna with Antony, consented that
Cicero's name should be inserted in the fatal list as one of those
doomed to be murdered.

In the mean time Lepidus had taken his troops over to Antony, and Pollio
joined them soon afterward with his from Spain. After that it was hardly
to be expected that Plancus should hesitate. There has always been a
doubt whether Plancus should or should not be regarded as a traitor. He
held out longer than the others, and is supposed to have been true in
those assurances which he made to Cicero of Republican fervor. Why was
he bound to obey Cicero, who was then at Rome, sending out his orders
without official authority? While the Consuls had been alive he could
obey the Consuls; and at the Consuls' death he could for a while follow
the spirit of their instructions. But as that spirit died away he found
himself without orders other than Cicero's. In this condition was it not
better for him to go with the other Generals of the Empire rather than
to perish with a falling party? In addition to this it will happen at
such a time that the soldiers themselves have a will of their own. With
them the name of Cæsar was still powerful, and to their thinking Antony
was fighting on dead Cæsar's side. When we read the history of this
year, the fact becomes clear that out of Rome Cæsar's name was more
powerful than Cicero's eloquence. Governed by such circumstances, driven
by events which he could not control, Plancus has the merit of having
been the last among the doubtful Generals to desert the cause which
Cicero had at heart. Cassius and Brutus in the East were still
collecting legions for the battle of Philippi. With that we shall have
no trouble here. In the West, Plancus found himself bound to follow the
others, and to join Antony and Lepidus in spite of the protestations he
had made. To those who read Cicero's letters of this year the question
must often arise whether Plancus was a true man. I have made his excuse
to the reader with all that I can say in his favor. The memory of the
man is, however, unpleasant to me.

Decimus, when he found himself thus alone, endeavored to force his way
with his army along the northern shore of the Adriatic, so as to join
Marcus Brutus in Macedonia. To him, as one of those who had slain Cæsar,
no power was left of deserting. He was doomed unless he was victorious.
He was deserted by his soldiers, who left him in batches, and at last
was taken alive, when wandering through the country, and sent (dead) to
Antony. Marcus Brutus and Cassius seem to have turned a deaf ear to all
Cicero's entreaties that they should come to his rescue. Cicero in his
last known letter--which however was written as far back as in July--is
very eager with Cassius: "Only attempts are heard of your army, very
great in themselves, but we expect to hear of deeds. * * * Nothing can
be grander or more noble than yourself, and therefore it is that we are
longing for you here in Rome. * * * Believe me that everything depends
on you and Brutus--that we are waiting for both of you. For Brutus we
are waiting constantly."[231] This was after Lepidus had gone, but while
Plancus was supposed to be as yet true--or rather, not yet false. He
did, no doubt, write letters to Brutus urging him in the same way. Alas,
alas! it was his final effort made for the Republic.

In September Octavian marched into Rome as a conqueror, at the head of
those troops from Africa which had been sent as a last resource to help
the Republicans. Then we may imagine that Cicero recognized the fact
that there was left nothing further for which to struggle. The Republic
was done, his dream was over, and he could only die. Brutus and Cassius
might still carry on the contest; but Rome had now fallen a second time,
in spite of his efforts, and all hope must have fled from him. When
Cæsar had conquered at Pharsalia, and on his return from the East had
graciously met him at Brundisium, and had generously accorded to him
permission to live under the shadow of his throne, the time for him must
have been full of bitterness. But he had not then quite realized the
meaning of a tyrant's throne. He had not seen how willingly the people
would submit themselves, how little they cared about their liberty; nor
had he as yet learned the nature of military despotism. Rome had lived
through Sulla's time, and the Republic had been again established. It
might live through Cæsar's period of command. When Cæsar had come to him
and supped with him, as a prince with one of his subjects, his misery
had been great. Still there was a hope, though he knew not from whence.
Those other younger men had felt as he had felt--and Cæsar had fallen.
To his eyes it was as though some god had interfered to restore to him,
a Roman, his ancient form of government. Cæsar was now dead, and all
would be right--only that Antony was left alive. There was need for
another struggle before Consuls, Prætors, and Ædiles could be elected in
due order; and when he found that the struggle was to be made under his
auspices, he girded up his loins and was again happy. No man can be
unhappy who is pouring out his indignation in torrents, and is drinking
in the applause of his audience. Every hard word hurled at Antony, and
every note of praise heard in return, was evidence to him of his own
power. He did believe, while the Philippics were going on, that he was
stirring up a mighty power to arouse itself and claim its proper
dominion over the world. There were moments between in which he may have
been faint-hearted--in which he may have doubted as to young Cæsar--in
which he feared that Pansa might escape from him, or that Decimus would
fall before relief could reach him; but action lent a pleasantness and a
grace to it all. It is sweet to fight with the hope of victory. But now,
when young Cæsar had marched into Rome with his legions, and was
doubtless prepared to join himself to Antony, there was no longer
anything for Cicero to do in this world.

It is said, but not as I think on good authority, that Cicero went out
to meet Cæsar--and if to meet him, then also to congratulate him. Appian
tells us that in the Senate Cicero hastened to congratulate Cæsar,
assuring him how anxious he had been to secure the Consulship for him,
and how active. Cæsar smiled, and said that Cicero had perhaps been a
little late in his friendship.[232] Dio Cassius only remarks that Cæsar
was created Consul by the people in the regular way, two Consuls having
been chosen; and adds that the matter was one of great glory to Cæsar,
seeing that he had obtained the Consulship at an unusually early
age.[233] But, as I have said above, their testimony for many reasons is
to be doubted. Each wrote in the interest of the Cæsars, and, in dealing
with the period before the Empire, seems only to have been anxious to
make out some connected story which should suit the Emperor's views.
Young Cæsar left Rome still with the avowed purpose of proceeding
against Antony as against one declared by the Senate to be an enemy; but
the purpose was only avowed. Messengers followed him on the road,
informing him that the ban had been removed, and he was then at liberty
to meet his friend on friendly terms. Antony had sent word to him that
it was not so much his duty as young Cæsar's to avenge the death of his
uncle, and that unless he would assist him, he, Antony, would take his
legions and join Brutus and Cassius.[234] I prefer to believe with Mr.
Forsyth that Cicero had retired with his brother Quintus to one of his
villas. Plutarch tells us that he went to his Tusculan retreat, and that
on receiving news of the proscriptions he determined to remove to
Astura, on the sea-side, in order that he might be ready to escape into
Macedonia. Octavian, in the mean time, having caused a law to be passed
by Pedius condemning all the conspirators to death, went northward to
meet Antony and Lepidus at Bononia, the Bologna of to-day. Here it was
necessary that the terms of the compact should be settled by which the
spoils of the world should be divided among them; and here they met,
these three men, on a small river island, remote from the world--where,
as it is supposed, each might think himself secure from the other.
Antony and Lepidus were men old in craft--Antony in middle life, and
Lepidus somewhat older. Cæsar was just twenty-one; but from all that we
have been able to gather as to that meeting, he was fully able to hold
his own with his elders. What each claimed as his share in the Empire is
not so much matter of history as the blood which each demanded.
Paterculus says that the death-warrants which were then signed were all
arranged in opposition to Cæsar.[235] But Paterculus wrote as the
servant of Tiberius, and had been the servant of Augustus. It was his
object to tell the story as much in favor of Augustus as it could be
told. It is said that, debating among themselves the murders which each
desired for his own security, young Cæsar, on the third day only, gave
up Cicero to the vengeance of Antony. It may have been so. It is
impossible that we should have a record of what took place from day to
day on that island. But we do know that there Cicero's death was
pronounced, and to that doom young Cæsar assented. It did not occur to
them, as it would have done to Julius Cæsar at such a time, that it
would be better that they should show their mercy than their hatred.
This proscription was made by hatred and not by fear. It was not Brutus
and Cassius against whom it was directed--the common enemies of the
three Triumviri. Sulla had attempted to stamp out a whole faction, and
so far succeeded as to strike dumb with awe the remainder. But here the
bargain of death was made by each against the other's friends. "Your
brother shall go," said Antony to Lepidus. "If so, your uncle also,"
said Lepidus to Antony. So the one gave up his brother and the other his
uncle, to indulge the private spleen of his partner; and Cicero must go
to appease both. As it happened, though Cicero's fate was spoken, the
two others escaped their doom. "Nothing so bad was done in those days,"
says Paterculus, "that Cæsar should have been compelled to doom any one
to death, or that such a one as Cicero should have been doomed by
any."[236] Middleton thinks, and perhaps with fair reason, that Cæsar's
objection was feigned, and that his delay was made for show. A slight
change in quoting the above passage, unintentionally made, favors his
view; "Or that Cicero should have been proscribed by him," he says,
turning "ullo" into "illo." The meaning of the passage seems to be, that
it was sad that Cæsar should have been forced to yield, or that any one
should have been there to force him. As far as Cæsar is concerned, it is
palliative rather than condemnatory. Suetonius, indeed, declares that
though Augustus for a time resisted the proscription, having once taken
it in hand he pursued it more bloodily than the others.[237] It is said
that the list when completed contained the names of three hundred
Senators and two thousand Knights; but their fate was for a time
postponed, and most of them ultimately escaped. We have no word of their
deaths, as would have been the case had they all fallen. Seventeen were
named for instant execution, and against these their doom went forth. We
can understand that Cicero's name should have been the first on the
list.

We are told that when the news reached Rome the whole city was struck
with horror. During the speaking of the Philippics the Republican party
had been strong and Cicero had been held in favor. The soldiers had
still clung to the memory of Cæsar; but the men of mark in the city,
those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders"
generally, had thought that, now Cæsar was dead, and especially as
Antony had left Rome, their safest course would be to join the Republic.
They had done so, and had found their mistake. Young Cæsar had first
come to Rome and they had been willing enough to receive him, but now he
had met Antony and Lepidus, and the bloody days of Sulla were to come
back upon them. All Rome was in such a tumult of horror and dismay that
Pedius, the new Consul, was frightened out of his life by the clamor.
The story goes that he ran about the town trying to give comfort,
assuring one and another that he had not been included in the lists,
till, as the result of it all, he himself, when the morning came, died
from the exertion and excitement.

There is extant a letter addressed to Octavian--supposed to have been
written by Cicero, and sometimes printed among his works--which, if
written by him, must have been composed about this time. It no doubt was
a forgery, and probably of a much later date; but it serves to show what
were the feelings presumed to have been in Cicero's bosom at the time.
It is full of abuse of Antony, and of young Cæsar. I can well imagine
that such might have been Cicero's thoughts as he remembered the praise
with which he had laden the young man's name; how he had decreed to him
most unusual honors and voted statues for him. It had all been done in
order that the Republic might be preserved, but had all been done in
vain. It must have distressed him sorely at this time as he reflected
how much eulogy he had wasted. To be sneered at by the boy when he came
back to Rome to assume the Consulship, and to be told, with a laugh,
that he had been a little late in his welcome! And to hear that the boy
had decreed his death in conjunction with Antony and Lepidus! This was
all that Rome could do for him at the end--for him who had so loved
her, suffered so much for her, and been so valiant on her behalf! Are
you not a little late to welcome me as one of my friends? the boy had
said when Cicero had bowed and smiled to him. Then the next tidings that
reached him contained news that he was condemned! Was this the youth of
whom he had declared, since the year began, that "he knew well all the
boy's sentiments; that nothing was dearer to the lad than the Republic,
nothing more reverent than the dignity of the Senate?" Was it for this
that he had bade the Senate "fear nothing" as to young Octavian, "but
always still look for better and greater things?" Was it for this that
he had pledged his faith for him with such confident words--"I promise
for him, I become his surety, I engage myself, conscript fathers, that
Caius Cæsar will always be such a citizen as he has shown himself
to-day?"[238] And thus the young man had redeemed his tutor's pledges on
his behalf! "A little late to welcome me, eh?" his pupil had said to
him, and had agreed that he should be murdered. But, as I have said, the
story of that speech rests on doubtful authority.

Had not Cicero too rejoiced at the uncle's murder? And having done so,
was he not bound to endure the enmity he had provoked? He had not indeed
killed Cæsar, or been aware that he was to be killed; but still it must
be said of him that, having expressed his satisfaction at what had been
done, he had identified himself with those who had killed him, and must
share their fate. The slaying of a tyrant was almost by law enjoined
upon Romans--was at any rate regarded as a virtue rather than a crime.
There of course arises the question, who is to decide whether a man be a
tyrant? and the idea being radically wrong, becomes enveloped in
difficulty out of which there is no escape. But there remains as a fact
the existence of the feeling which was at the time held to have
justified Brutus--and also Cicero. A man has to inquire of his own heart
with what amount of criminality he can accuse the Cicero of the day, or
the young Augustus. Can any one say that Cicero was base to have
rejoiced that Cæsar had been killed? Can any one not regard with horror
the young Consul, as he sat there in the privacy of the island, with
Antony on one side and Lepidus on the other, and then in the first days
of his youth, with the down just coming on his cheeks, sending forth his
edict for slaughtering the old friend of the Republic?

[Sidenote: B.C. 43, ætat. 64.]

It is supposed that Cicero left Rome in company with his brother
Quintus, and that at first they went to Tusculum. There was no bar to
their escaping from Italy had they so chosen, and probably such was
their intention as soon as tidings reached them of the proscription. It
is pleasant to think that they should again have become friends before
they died. In truth, Marcus the elder was responsible for his brother's
fate. Quintus had foreseen the sun rising in the political horizon, and
had made his adorations accordingly. He, with others of his class, had
shown himself ready to bow down before Cæsar. With his brother's assent
he had become Cæsar's lieutenant in Gaul, such employment being in
conformity with the practice of the Republic. When Cæsar had returned,
and the question as to power arose at once between Cæsar and Pompey,
Quintus, who had then been with his brother in Cilicia, was restrained
by the influence of Marcus; but after Pharsalia the influence of Marcus
was on the wane. We remember how young Quintus had broken away and had
joined Cæsar's party. He had sunk so low that he had become "Antony's
right hand." In that direction lay money, luxury, and all those good
things which the government of the day had to offer. Cicero was so much
in Cæsar's eyes, that Cæsar despised the elder and the younger Quintus
for deserting their great relative, and would hardly have them. The
influence of the brother and the uncle sat heavily on them. The shame of
being Cæsarean while he was Pompeian, the shame of siding with Antony
while he sided with the Republic, had been too great for them. While he
was speaking his Philippics they could not but be enthusiastic on the
same side. And now, when he was proscribed, they were both proscribed
with him. As the story goes, Quintus returned from Tusculum to Rome to
seek provision for their journey to Macedonia, there met his son, and
they both died gallantly. Antony's hirelings came upon the two together,
or nearly together, and, finding the son first, put him to the torture,
so to learn from him the place of his father's concealment; then the
father, hearing his son's screams, rushed out to his aid, and the two
perished together. But this story also comes to us from Greek sources,
and must be taken for what it is worth.

Marcus, alone in his litter, travelled through the country to his
sea-side villa at Astura. Then he went on to Formiæ, sick with doubt,
not knowing whether to stay and die, or encounter the winter sea in such
boat as was provided for him. Should he seek the uncomfortable refuge of
Brutus's army? We can remember his bitter exclamations as to the
miseries of camp life. He did go on board; but was brought back by the
winds, and his servants could not persuade him to make another attempt.
Plutarch tells us that he was minded to go to Rome, to force his way
into young Cæsar's house and there to stab himself, but that he was
deterred from this melodramatic death by the fear of torture. The story
only shows how great had been the attention given to every detail of his
last moments, and what the people in Rome had learned to say of them.
The same remark applies to Plutarch's tale as to the presuming crows who
pecked at the cordage of his sails when his boat was turned to go back
to the land, and afterward with their beaks strove to drag the
bedclothes from off him when he lay waiting his fate the night before
the murderers came to him.

He was being carried down from his villa at Formiæ to the sea-side when
Antony's emissaries came upon him in his litter. There seem to have been
two of them--both soldiers and officers in the pay of Antony--Popilius
Lænas and Herennius. They overtook him in the wood, through which paths
ran from the villa down to the sea-shore. On arriving at the house they
had not found Cicero, but were put upon his track by a freedman who had
belonged to Quintus, named Philologus. He could hardly have done a
kinder act than to show the men the way how they might quickly release
Cicero from his agony. They went down to the end of the wood, and there
met the slaves bearing the litter. The men were willing to fight for
their master; but Cicero, bidding them put down the chair, stretched out
his neck and received his death-blow. Antony had given special orders to
his servants. They were to bring Cicero's head and his hands--the hands
which had written the Philippics, and the tongue which had spoken
them--and his order was obeyed to the letter. Cicero was nearly
sixty-four when he died, his birthday being on the 3d of January
following. It would be hardly worth our while to delay ourselves for a
moment with the horrors of Antony's conduct, and those of his wife
Fulvia--Fulvia the widow of Clodius and the wife of Antony--were it
not that we may see what were the manners to which a great Roman lady
had descended in those days in which the Republic was brought to an end.
On the rostra was stuck up the head and the hands as a spectacle to the
people, while Fulvia specially avenged herself by piercing the tongue
with her bodkin. That is the story of Cicero's death as it has been
generally told.

We are told also that Rome heard the news and saw the sight with
ill-suppressed lamentation. We can easily believe that it should have
been so. I have endeavored, as I have gone on with my work, to compare
him to an Englishman of the present day; but there is no comparing
English eloquence to his, or the ravished ears of a Roman audience to
the pleasure taken in listening to our great orators. The world has
become too impatient for oratory, and then our Northern senses cannot
appreciate the melody of sounds as did the finer organs of the Roman
people. We require truth, and justice, and common-sense from those who
address us, and get much more out of our public speeches than did the
old Italians. We have taught ourselves to speak so that we may be
believed--or have come near to it. A Roman audience did not much care,
I fancy, whether the words spoken were true. But it was indispensable
that they should be sweet--and sweet they always were. Sweet words were
spoken to them, with their cadences all measured, with their rhythm all
perfect; but no words had ever been so sweet as those of Cicero. I even,
with my obtuse ears, can find myself sometimes lifted by them into a
world of melody, little as I know of their pronunciation and their tone.
And with the upper classes--those who read--his literature had become
almost as divine as his speech. He had come to be the one man who could
express himself in perfect language. As in the next age the Eclogues of
Virgil and the Odes of Horace became dear to all the educated classes
because of the charm of their expression, so in their time, I fancy,
had become the language of Cicero. It is not surprising that men should
have wept when they saw that ghastly face staring at them from the
rostra, and the protruding tongue and the outstretched hands. The
marvel is that, seeing it, they should still have borne with Antony.

That which Cicero has produced in literature is, as a rule, admitted to
be excellent; but his character as a man has been held to be tarnished
by three faults--dishonesty, cowardice, and insincerity. As to the
first, I have denied it altogether, and my denial is now submitted to
the reader for his judgment. It seems to have been brought against him
not in order to make him appear guilty, but because it has appeared to
be impossible that, when others were so deeply in fault, he should have
been innocent. That he should have asked for nothing, that he should
have taken no illicit rewards, that he should not have submitted to be
feed, but that he should have kept his hands clean while all around him
were grasping at everything--taking money, selling their aid for
stipulated payments, grinding miserable creditors--has been too much for
men to believe. I will not take my readers back over the cases brought
against him, but will ask them to ask themselves whether there is one
supported by evidence fit to go before a jury. The accusations have been
made by men clean-handed themselves; but to them it has appeared
unreasonable to believe that a Roman oligarch of those days should be an
honest gentleman.

As to his cowardice, I feel more doubt as to my power of carrying my
readers with me, though no doubt as to Cicero's courage. Cowardice in a
man is abominable. But what is cowardice? and what courage? It is a
matter in which so many errors are made! Tinsel is so apt to shine like
gold and dazzle the sight! In one of the earlier chapters of this book,
when speaking of Catiline, I have referred to the remarks of a
contemporary writer: "The world has generally a generous word for the
memory of a brave man dying for his cause!" "All wounded in front," is
quoted by this author from Sallust. "Not a man taken alive! Catiline
himself gasping out his life ringed around with corpses of his friends."
That is given as a picture of a brave man dying for his cause, who
should excite our admiration even though his cause were bad. In the
previous lines we have an intended portrait of Cicero, who, "thinking,
no doubt, that he had done a good day's work for his patrons, declined
to run himself into more danger." Here is one story told of courage, and
another of fear. Let us pause for a moment and regard the facts.
Catiline, when hunted to the last gasp, faced his enemy and died
fighting like a man--or a bull. Who is there cannot do so much as that?
For a shilling or eighteen-pence a day we can get an army of brave men
who will face an enemy--and die, if death should come. It is not a great
thing, nor a rare, for a man in battle not to run away. With regard to
Cicero the allegation is that he would not be allowed to be bribed to
accuse Cæsar, and thus incur danger. The accusation which is thus
brought against him is borrowed from Sallust, and is no doubt false; but
I take it in the spirit in which it is made. Cicero feared to accuse
Cæsar, lest he should find himself enveloped, through Cæsar's means, in
fresh danger. Grant that he did so. Was he wrong at such a moment to
save his life for the Republic--and for himself? His object was to
banish Catiline, and not to catch in his net every existing conspirator.
He could stop the conspiracy by securing a few, and might drive many
into arms by endeavoring to encircle all. Was this cowardice? During all
those days he had to live with his life in his hands, passing about
among conspirators who he knew were sworn to kill him, and in the midst
of his danger he could walk and talk and think like a man. It was the
same when he went down into the court to plead for Milo, with the
gladiators of Clodius and the soldiery of Pompey equally adverse to him.
It was the same when he uttered Philippic after Philippic in the
presence of Antony's friends. True courage, to my thinking, consists
not in facing an unavoidable danger. Any man worthy of the name can do
that. The felon that will be hung to-morrow shall walk up to the
scaffold and seem ready to surrender the life he cannot save. But he
who, with the blood running hot through his veins, with a full desire of
life at his heart, with high aspirations as to the future, with
everything around him to make him happy--love and friendship and
pleasant work--when he can willingly imperil all because duty requires
it, he is brave. Of such a nature was Cicero's courage.

As to the third charge--that of insincerity--I would ask of my readers
to bethink themselves how few men are sincere now? How near have we
approached to the beauty of truth, with all Christ's teaching to guide
us? Not by any means close, though we are nearer to it than the Romans
were in Cicero's days. At any rate we have learned to love it dearly,
though we may not practise it entirely. He also had learned to love it,
but not yet to practise it quite so well as we do. When it shall be said
of men truly that they are thoroughly sincere, then the millennium will
have come. We flatter, and love to be flattered. Cicero flattered men,
and loved it better. We are fond of praise, and all but ask for it.
Cicero was fond of it, and did ask for it. But when truth was demanded
from him, truth was there.

Was Cicero sincere to his party, was he sincere to his friends, was he
sincere to his family, was he sincere to his dependents? Did he offer to
help and not help? Did he ever desert his ship, when he had engaged
himself to serve? I think not. He would ask one man to praise him to
another--and that is not sincere. He would apply for eulogy to the
historian of his day--and that is not sincere. He would speak ill or
well of a man before the judge, according as he was his client or his
adversary--and that perhaps is not sincere. But I know few in history on
whose positive sincerity in a cause his adherents could rest with
greater security. Look at his whole life with Pompey--as to which we see
his little insincerities of the moment because we have his letters to
Atticus; but he was true to his political idea of a Pompey long after
that Pompey had faded from his dreams. For twenty years we have every
thought of his heart; and because the feelings of one moment vary from
those of another, we call him insincere. What if we had Pompey's
thoughts and Cæsar's, would they be less so? Could Cæsar have told us
all his feelings? Cicero was insincere: I cannot say otherwise. But he
was so much more sincere than other Romans as to make me feel that, when
writing his life, I have been dealing with the character of one who
might have been a modern gentleman.




CHAPTER XI.

_CICERO'S RHETORIC._


It is well known that Cicero's works are divided into four main parts.
There are the Rhetoric, the Orations, the Epistles, and the Philosophy.
There is a fifth part, indeed--the Poetry; but of that there is not
much, and of the little we have but little is esteemed. There are not
many, I fear, who think that Cicero has deserved well of his country by
his poetry. His prose works have been divided as I have stated them. Of
these, two portions have been dealt with already--as far as I am able to
deal with them. Of the Orations and Epistles I have spoken as I have
gone on with my task, because the matter there treated has been
available for the purposes of biography: the other two, the Rhetoric and
the Philosophy, have been distinct from the author's life.[239] They
might have been good or bad, and his life would have been still the
same; therefore it is necessary to divide them from his life, and to
speak of them separately. They are the work of his silent chamber, as
the others were the enthusiastic outpourings of his daily spirit, or the
elaborated arguments of his public career. Who has left behind him so
widely spread a breadth of literature? Who has made so many efforts, and
has so well succeeded in them all? I do not know that it has ever been
given to any one man to run up and down the strings of knowledge, and
touch them all as though each had been his peculiar study, as Cicero has
done.

His rhetoric has been always made to come first, because, upon the
whole, it was first written. It may be as well here to give a list of
his main works, with their dates--premising, however, that we by no
means in that way get over the difficulty as to time, even in cases as
to which we are sure of our facts. A treatise may have been commenced
and then put by, or may have been written some time previously to
publication. Or it may be, as were those which are called the Academica,
that it was remodelled, and altered in its shape and form. The Academica
were written at the instance of Atticus. We now have the altered edition
of a fragment of the first book, and the original of the second book. In
this manner there have come discrepancies which nearly break the heart
of him who would fain make his list clear. But here, on the whole, is
presented to the reader with fair accuracy a list of the works of
Cicero, independent of that continual but ever-changing current of his
thought which came welling out from him daily in his speeches and his
letters. Again, however, we must remember that here are omitted all
those which are either wholly lost or have come to us only in fragments
too abruptly broken for the purposes of continuous study. Of these I
will not even attempt to give the names, though when we remember some of
the subjects--the De Gloria, the De Re Militari--he could not go into
the army for a month or two without writing a book about it--the De
Auguriis, the De Philosophia, the De Suis Temporibus, the De Suis
Consiliis, the De Jure Civili, and the De Universo, we may well ask
ourselves what were the subjects on which he did not write. In addition
to these, much that has come to us has been extracted, as it were
unwillingly, from palimpsests, and is, from that and from other causes,
fragmentary. We have indeed only fragments of the essays De Republica.
De Legibus, De Natura Deorum, De Divinatione, and De Fato, in addition
to the Academica.

The list of the works of which it is my purpose to give some shortest
possible account in the following chapters is as follows:

                         NATURE OF THE WORK.
 TITLES OF        Those as to Rhetoric are marked [a]         THE DATE
 THE WORKS.         "    "  Philosophy      "     [b]            OF
                  The Moral Essays          "     [c]        PUBLICATION.


 Rheticorum  { Four books, giving lessons in Rhetoric;        }
 ad C.       { supposed to have been written, not by Cicero,  } B.C.
 Herennium.  { but by one Cornificius.[a][240]                } 87, 86.
                                                              } Ætat.
 De          { Four books, giving lessons in Rhetoric,        } 20, 21.
 Inventione. { supposed to have been translated from the      }
             { Greek. Two out of four have come to us.[a]     }

             { Three dialogues, in three books--supposed to   }
             { have been held under a plane-tree, in the      }
 De Oratore. { garden at Tusculum belonging to Crassus,       } B.C. 55.
             { forty years before--in which are laid down     } Ætat. 52.
             { instructions for the making of an orator.[a]   }

             { Six political discussions--supposed to have    }
 De          { been held seventy-five years before the date   } B.C. 53.
 Republica.  { at which they were written--on the best mode   } Ætat. 54.
             { of governance. We have but a fragment of them. }
             { [c]                                            }

             { Three out of six books as to the best laws for }
             { governing the Republic. They are carried on    }
 De Legibus. { between Atticus, Quintus, and Marcus. They     } B.C. 52.
             { are supposed to have been written B.C. 52      } Ætat. 55.
             { (ætat. 55), but were not published till after  }
             { his death.[c]                                  }

 De Optimo   { A preface to the translation of the speeches   }
 Genere      { of Æschines and of Demosthenes for and against } B.C. 52.
 Oratorum.   { Ctesiphon--in the matter of the Golden Crown.  } Ætat. 55.
             { [a]                                            }

 De          { Instructions by questions and answers,         }
 Partitione  { supposed to have been previously given to his  } B.C. 46.
 Oratoria.   { son in Greek, on the art of speaking in public.} Ætat. 61.
             { [a]                                            }

             { Treatises, in which he deals with the various  }
             { phases of Philosophy taught by the Academy. It }
 The         { has been altered, and we have only a part of   } B.C. 45.
 Academica.  { the first book of the altered portion and the  } Ætat. 62.
             { second part of the treatise before it was      }
             { altered. In its altered form it is addressed   }
             { to Varro.[b]                                   }

 De Finibus  { A treatise in five books, in the form of       }
 Bonorum et  { dialogues, as to the results to be looked for  } B.C. 45.
 Malorum.    { in inquiries as to what is good and what is    } Ætat. 62.
             { evil. It is addressed to Brutus.[b]            }

 Brutus: or, { A treatise on the most perfect orators of past }
 De Claris   { times. It is addressed to Brutus, and has, in  } B.C. 45.
 Oratoribus. { a peculiar manner, been always called by his   } Ætat. 62.
             { name.[a]                                       }

 Orator.     { A treatise, addressed to Brutus, to show what  } B.C. 45.
             { the perfect orator should be.[a]               } Ætat. 62.

             { Or the Tusculan Inquiries, supposed to have    }
 Tusculanæ   { been held with certain friends in his Tusculan }
 Disputa-    { villa, as to contempt of Death and Pain and    } B.C. 45.
 tiones.     { Sorrow, as to conquering the Passions, and the } Ætat. 62.
             { happiness to be derived from Virtue. They are  }
             { addressed to Brutus.[a]                        }

             { Three books addressed to Brutus. Velleius,     }
 De Natura   { Balbus, and Cotta discuss the relative merits  } B.C. 44.
 Deorum.     { of the Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic Schools. } Ætat. 63
             { [b]                                            }

             { He discusses with his brother Quintus the      }
 De          { property of the gods to "divine," or rather    } B.C. 44.
 Divinatione.{ to enable men to read prophecies. It is a      } Ætat. 63.
             { continuation of a former work.[b]              }

 De Fato.    { The part only of a book on Destiny.[b]         } B.C. 44.
             {                                                } Ætat. 63.

 The Topica. { A so-called translation from Aristotle. It is  } B.C. 44.
             { addressed to Trebatius.[a]                     } Ætat. 63.

 De          { A treatise on Old Age, addressed to Atticus,   } B.C. 44.
 Senectute.  { and called Cato Major.[c]                      } Ætat. 63.

 De          { A treatise on Friendship, addressed also to    } B.C. 44.
 Amicitia.   { Atticus, and called Lælius.[c]                 } Ætat. 63.

             { To his son. Treating of the Moral Duties of    }
 De          { Life. Containing three books--                 } B.C. 44.
 Officiis.   {    I. On Honesty                               } Ætat. 63.
             {   II. On Expediency                            }
             {  III. Comparing Honesty and Expediency.        }

It is to be observed from this list that for thirty years of his life
Cicero was silent in regard to literature--for those thirty years in
which the best fruits of a man's exertion are expected from him.
Indeed, we may say that for the first fifty-two years of his life he
wrote nothing but letters and speeches. Of the two treatises with which
the list is headed, the first, in all probability, did not come from his
pen, and the second is no more than a lad's translation from a Greek
author. As to the work of translation, it must be understood that the
Greek and Latin languages did not stand in reference to each other as
they do now to modern readers. We translate in order that the pearls
hidden under a foreign language may be conveyed to those who do not read
it, and admit, when we are so concerned, that none can truly drink the
fresh water from a fountain so handled. The Romans, in translating from
the Greek, thinking nothing of literary excellence, felt that they were
bringing Greek thought into a form of language in which it could be thus
made useful. There was no value for the words, but only for the thing to
be found in it. Thence it has come that no acknowledgment is made. We
moderns confess that we are translating, and hardly assume for ourselves
a third-rate literary place. When, on the other hand, we find the
unexpressed thought floating about the world, we take it, and we make it
our own when we put it into a book. The originality is regarded as being
in the language, not in the thought. But to the Roman, when he found the
thought floating about the world in the Greek character, it was free for
him to adopt it and to make it his own. Cicero, had he done in these
days with this treatise as I have suggested, would have been guilty of
gross plagiarism, but there was nothing of the kind known then. This
must be continually remembered in reading his essays. You will find
large portions of them taken from the Greek without acknowledgment.
Often it shall be so, because it suits him to contradict an assertion or
to show that it has been allowed to lead to false conclusions. This
general liberty of translation has been so frequently taken by the Latin
poets--by Virgil and Horace, let us say, as being those best known--that
they have been regarded by some as no more than translations. To them to
have been translators of Homer, or of Pindar and Stesichorus, and to
have put into Latin language ideas which were noble, was a work as
worthy of praise as that of inventing. And it must be added that the
forms they have used have been perfect in their kind. There has been no
need to them for close translation. They have found the idea, and their
object has been to present it to their readers in the best possible
language. He who has worked amid the bonds of modern translation well
knows how different it has been with him. There is not much in the
treatise De Inventione to arrest us. We should say, from reading it,
that the matter it contains is too good for the production of a youth of
twenty-one, but that the language in which it is written is not
peculiarly fine. The writer intended to continue it--or wrote as though
he did--and therefore we may imagine that it has come to us from some
larger source. It is full of standing cases, or examples of the law
courts, which are brought up to show the way in which these things are
handled. We can imagine that a Roman youth should be practised in such
matters, but we cannot imagine that the same youth should have thought
of them all, and remembered them all, and should have been able to
describe them.

The following is an example: "A certain man on his journey encountered a
traveller going to make a purchase, having with him a sum of money. They
chatted along the road together, and, as happens on such occasions, they
became intimate. They went to the same inn, where they supped, and said
that they would sleep together. Having supped they went to bed; when the
landlord--for this was told after it had all been found out, and he had
been taken for another offence--having perceived that one man had money,
in the middle of the night, knowing how sound they would sleep from
fatigue, crept up to them, and having taken out of its scabbard the
sword of him that was without the money as it lay by his side, he killed
the other man, put back the sword, and then went to his bed. But he
whose sword had been used rose long before daylight and called loudly to
his companion. Finding that the man slumbered too heavily to be stirred,
he took himself and his sword and the other things he had brought away
with him and started alone. But the landlord soon raised the
hue-and-cry, 'A man has been killed!' and, with some of the guests,
followed him who had gone off. They took the man on the road, and
dragged his sword out of its sheath, which they found all bloody. They
carried him back to the city, and he was accused." In this cause there
is the declaration of the crime alleged, "You killed the man." There is
the defence, "I did not kill him." Thence arises the issue. The question
to be judged is one of conjecture. "Did he kill him?"[241] We may judge
from the story that the case was not one which had occurred in life, but
had been made up. The truculent landlord creeping in and finding that
everything was as he wished it; and the moneyless man going off in the
dark, leaving his dead bedfellow behind him--as the landlord had
intended that he should--form all the incidents of a stock piece for
rehearsal rather than the occurrence of a true murder. The same may be
said of other examples adduced, here as afterward, by Quintilian. They
are well-known cases, and had probably been handed down from one student
to another. They tell us more of the manners of the people than of the
rudiments of their law.

From this may be seen the nature of the work. From thence we skip over
thirty years and come at once to B.C. 55. The days of the Triumvirate
had come, and the quarrel with Clodius--of Cicero's exile and his
return, together with the speeches which he had made, in the agony of
his anger, against his enemies. And all this had taken place since those
halcyon days in which he had risen, on the voices of his countrymen, to
be Quæstor, Ædile, Prætor, and Consul. He had first succeeded as a
public man, and then, having been found too honest, he had failed. There
can be no doubt that he had failed because he had been too honest. I
must have told the story of his political life badly if I have not shown
that Cæsar had retired from the assault because Cicero was Consul, but
had retired only as a man does who steps back in order that his next
spring forward may be made with more avail. He chose well the time for
his next attack, and Cicero was driven to decide between three
things--he must be Cæsarean, or must be quiet, or he must go. He would
not be Cæsarean, he certainly could not be quiet, and he went. The
immediate effect of his banishment was on him so great that he could not
employ himself. But he returned to Rome, and, with too evident a
reliance on a short-lived popularity, he endeavored to replace himself
in men's eyes; but it must have been clear to him that he had struggled
in vain. Then he looked back upon his art, his oratory, and told himself
that, as the life of a man of action was no longer open to him, he could
make for himself a greater career as a man of letters. He could do so.
He has done so. But I doubt whether he had ever a confirmed purpose as
to the future. Had some grand Consular career been open to him--had it
been given to him to do by means of the law what Cæsar did by ignoring
the law--this life of him would not have been written. There would, at
any rate, have been no need of these last chapters to show how
indomitable was the energy and how excellent the skill of him who could
write such books, because--he had nothing else to do.

The De Oratore is a work in three divisions, addressed to his brother
Quintus, in which it has undoubtedly been Cicero's object to convince
the world that an orator's employment is the highest of all those given
to a man to follow; and this he does by showing that, in all the matters
which an orator is called upon to touch, there is nothing which he
cannot adorn by the possession of some virtue or some knowledge. To us,
in these days, he seems to put the cart before the horse, and to fail
from the very beginning, by reason of the fact that the orator, in his
eloquence, need never tell the truth. It is in the power of man so to
praise--constancy, let us say--as to make it appear of all things the
best. But he who sings the praise of it may be the most inconstant of
mankind, and may know that he is deceiving his hearers as to his own
opinions--at any rate, as to his own practice. The virtue should come
first, and then the speech respecting it. Cicero seems to imply that, if
the speech be there, the virtue may be assumed.

But it has to be acknowledged, in this and in all his discourses as to
the perfect orator, that it is here as it has been in all the inquirers
after the [Greek: to kalon].[242] We must recognize the fact that the
Romans have adopted a form of inquiry from the Greeks, and, having
described a more than human perfection, have instigated men to work up
toward it by letting it be known how high will be the excellence, should
it ever be attained. It is so in the De Oratore, as to which we must
begin by believing that the speech-maker wanted is a man not to be found
in any House of Commons. No Conservative and no Liberal need fear that
he will be put out of court by the coming of this perfectly eloquent
man. But this Cicero of whom we are speaking has been he who has been
most often quoted for his perfections.[243] The running after an
impossible hero throws a damp over the whole search. When no one can
expect to find the thing sought for, who can seek diligently? By degrees
the ambitious student becomes aware that it is impossible, and is then
carried on by a desire to see how he is to win a second or a third
place, if so much may be accorded to him. In his inquiries he will find
that the Cicero, if he look to Quintilian or Tacitus--or the Crassus, if
he look to Cicero--is so set before him as the true model; and with that
he may be content.

The De Oratore is by far the longest of his works on rhetoric, and, as I
think, the pleasantest to read. It was followed, after ten years, by the
Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, and then by the Orator. But in all of
them he charms us rather by his example than instructs us by his
precepts. He will never make us believe, for instance, that a man who
talks well will on that account be better than a man who thinks well;
but he does make us believe that a man who talks as Cicero knew how to
do must have been well worth hearing, and also that to read his words,
when listening to them is no longer possible, is a great delight. Having
done that, he has no doubt carried his object. He was too much a man of
the world to have an impracticable theory on which to expend himself.
Oratory had come uppermost with him, and had indeed made itself, with
the Romans, the only pursuit to be held in rivalry with that of
fighting. Literature had not as yet assumed its place. It needed Cicero
himself to do that for her. It required the writing of such an essay as
this to show, by the fact of its existence, that Cicero the writer stood
quite as high as Cicero the orator. And then the written words remain
when the sounds have died away. We believe that Cicero spoke divinely.
We can form for ourselves some idea of the rhythm of his periods. Of the
words in which Cicero spoke of himself as a speaker we have the entire
charm.

Boccaccio, when he takes his queen into a grassy meadow and seats her in
the midst of her ladies, and makes her and them and their admirers tell
their stories, seems to have given rise to the ideas which Cicero has
used when introducing his Roman orators lying under a plane-tree in the
garden of Tusculum, and there discussing rhetoric; so much nearer to us
appear the times of Cicero, with all the light that has been thrown upon
them by their own importance, than does the middle of the fourteenth
century in the same country. But the practice in this as in all matters
of social life was borrowed from the Greeks, or perhaps rather the
pretence of the practice. We can hardly believe that Romans of an
advanced age would so have arranged themselves for the sake of
conversation. It was a manner of bringing men together which had its
attraction for the mind's eye; and Cicero, whose keen imagination
represented to him the pleasantness of the picture, has used the form of
narrative with great effect. He causes Crassus and Antony to meet in the
garden of Crassus at Tusculum, and thither he brings, on the first day,
old Mucius Scævola the augur, and Sulpicius and Cotta, two rising
orators of the period. On the second day Scævola is supposed to be too
fatigued to renew the intellectual contest, and he retires; but one
Cæsar comes in with Quintus Lutatius Catulus, and the conversation is
renewed. Crassus and Antony carry it on in chief, but Crassus has the
leading voice. Cæsar, who must have been the wag among barristers of his
day, undertakes to give examples of that Attic salt by which the
profundity of the law courts is supposed to have been relieved. The
third conversation takes place on the afternoon of the second day, when
they had refreshed themselves with sleep; though Crassus, we are
specially told, had given himself up to the charms of no mid-day siesta.
His mind had been full of the greatness of the task before him, but he
will show neither fatigue nor anxiety. The art, the apparent ease with
which it is all done, the grace without languor, the energy without
exertion, are admirable. It is as though, they were sitting by running
water, or listening to the music of some grand organ. They remove
themselves to a wood a little farther from the house, and there they
listen to the eloquence of Crassus. Cotta and Sulpicius only hear and
assent, or imply a modified dissent in doubting words.

It is Crassus who insists that the orator shall be omniscient, and
Antony who is supposed to contest the point with him. But they differ in
the sweetest language; and each, though he holds his own, does it with a
deference that is more convincing than any assertion. It may be as well,
perhaps, to let it be understood that Crassus and Cæsar are only related
by distant family ties--or perhaps only by ties of adoption--to the two
of the First Triumvirate whose names they bear; whereas Antony was the
grandfather of that Cleopatra's lover against whom the Philippics were
hurled.

No one, as I have said before, will read these conversations for the
sake of the argument they contain; but they are, and will be, studied as
containing, in the most appropriate language, a thousand sayings
respecting the art of speech. "No power of speaking well can belong to
any but to him who knows the subjects on which he has to speak;"[244] a
fact which seems so clear that no one need be troubled with stating it,
were it not that men sin against it every day. "How great the
undertaking to put yourself forward among a crowd of men as being the
fittest of all there to be heard on some great subject!"[245] "Though
all men shall gnash their teeth, I will declare that the little book of
the twelve tables surpasses in authority and usefulness all the
treatises of all the philosophers."[246] Here speaks the Cicero of the
Forum, and not that Cicero who amused himself among the philosophers.
"Let him keep his books of philosophy for some Tusculum idleness such
as is this of ours, lest, when he shall have to speak of justice, he
must go to Plato and borrow from him, who, when he had to express him in
these things, created in his books some new Utopia."[247] For in truth,
though Cicero deals much, as we shall see by-and-by, with the
philosophers, and has written whole treatises for the sake of bringing
Greek modes of thought among the Romans, he loved the affairs of the
world too well to trust them to philosophy. There has been some talk of
old age, and Antony, before the evening has come, declares his view. "So
far do I differ from you," he says, "that not only do I not think that
any relief in age is to be found in the crowd of them who may come to me
for advice, but I look to its solitude as a harbor. You indeed may fear
it, but to me it will be most welcome."[248]

Then Cicero begins the second book with a renewal of the assertion as to
oratory generally, not putting the words into the mouth of any of his
party, but declaring it as his own belief: "This is the purpose of this
present treatise, and of the present time, to declare that no one has
been able to excel in eloquence, not merely without capacity for
speaking, but also without acquired knowledge of all kinds."[249] But
Antony professes himself of another opinion: "How can that be when
Crassus and I often plead opposite causes, and when one of us can only
say the truth? Or how can it be possible, when each of us must take the
cause as it comes to him?"[250] Then, again, he bursts into praise of
the historian, as though in opposition to Crassus: "How worthy of an
orator's eulogy is the writing of history, whether greatest in the flood
of its narrative or in its variety! I do not know that we have ever
treated it separately, but it is there always before our eyes. For who
does not know that the first law of the historian is that he must not
dare to say what is false: the next, that he must not dare to suppress
what is true."[251] We wonder, when Cicero was writing this, whether he
remembered his request to Lucceius, made now two years ago. He gives a
piece of advice to young advocates, apologizing, indeed, for thinking it
necessary; but he has found it to be necessary, and he gives it: "Let me
teach this to them all; when they intend to plead, let them first study
their causes."[252] It is not only here that we find that the advice
which is useful now was wanted then. "Read your cases!" The admonition
was wanted in Rome as it has been since in London.

But the great mistake of the whole doctrine creeps out at every page as
we go on, and disproves the idea on which the De Oratore is founded. All
Cicero's treatises on the subject, and Quintilian's, and those of the
pseudo-Tacitus, and of the first Greek from which they have come, fall
to the ground as soon as we are told that it must be the purport of the
orator to turn the mind of those who hear him either to the right or to
the left, in accordance with the drift of the cause.[253] The mind
rejects the idea that it can be the part of a perfect man to make
another believe that which he believes to be false. If it be necessary
that an orator should do so, then must the orator be imperfect. We have
the same lesson taught throughout. It is the great gift of the orator,
says Antony, to turn the judge's mind so that he shall hate or love,
shall fear or hope, shall rejoice or grieve, or desire to pity or desire
to punish.[254] No doubt it is a great power. All that is said as to
eloquence is true. It may be necessary that to obtain the use of it you
shall educate yourself with more precision than for any other purpose.
But there will be the danger that they who have fitted the dagger to the
hand will use it. It cannot be right to make another man believe that
which you think to be false.

In the use of raillery in eloquence the Roman seems to have been very
backward; so much so that it is only by the examples given of it by
themselves as examples that we learn that it existed. They can appall us
by the cruelty which they denounce. They can melt us by their appeals
to our pity. They can terrify; they can horrify; they can fill us with
fear or hope, with anger, with despair, or with rage; but they cannot
cause us to laugh. Their attempts at a joke amuse us because we
recognize the attempt. Here Cæsar is put forward to give us the benefit
of his wit. We are lost in surprise when we find how miserable are his
jokes, and take a pride in finding that in one line we are the masters
of the Romans. I will give an instance, and I pick it out as the best
among those selected by Cicero. Nasica goes to call upon Ennius, and is
informed by the maid-servant that her master is not at home. Ennius
returns the visit, and Nasica halloos out from the window that he is not
within. "Not within!" says Ennius; "don't I know your voice?" Upon which
Nasica replies, "You are an impudent fellow! I had the grace to believe
your maid, and now you will not believe me myself."[255] How this got
into a law-case we do not know; it is told, however, just as I have told
it. But there are enough of them here to make a small Joe Miller; and
yet, in the midst of language that is almost divine in its expressions,
they are given as having been worthy of all attention.

The third book is commenced by the finest passage in the whole treatise.
Cicero remembers that Crassus is dead, and then tells the story of his
death. And Antony is dead, and the Cæsars. The last three had fallen in
the Marian massacres. There is but little now in the circumstances of
their death to excite our tears. Who knows aught of that Crassus, or of
that Antony, or of those Cæsars? But Cicero so tells it in his pretended
narrative as almost to make us weep. The day was coming when a greater
than either of them was to die the same death as Antony, by the order of
another Antony--to have his tongue pierced, and his bloody head thrust
aloft upon the rostra. But no Roman has dared to tell us of it as Cicero
has told the story of those others. Augustus had done his work too well,
and it was much during his reign that Romans who could make themselves
heard should dare to hold their tongues.

It would be useless in me here to attempt to give any notion of the laws
as to speech which Cicero lays down. For myself I do not take them as
laws, feeling that the interval of time has been too great to permit
laws to remain as such. No orator could, I feel sure, form himself on
Cicero's ideas. But the sweetness of the language is so great as to
convince us that he, at any rate, knew how to use language as no one has
done since: "But there is a building up of words, and a turning of them
round, and a nice rendering. There is the opposing and the loosening.
There is the avoiding, the holding back, the sudden exclamation, and the
dropping of the voice; and the taking an argument from the case at large
and bringing it to bear on a single point; and the proof and the
propositions together. And there is the leave given; and then a
doubting, and an expression of surprise. There is the counting up, the
setting right; the utter destruction, the continuation, the breaking
off, the pretence, the answer made to one's self, the change of names,
the disjoining and rejoining of things--the relation, the retreat, and
the curtailing."[256] Who can translate all these things when Quintilian
himself has been fain to acknowledge that he has attempted and has
failed to handle them in fitting language?

And then at last there comes that most lovely end to these most charming
discourses: "His autem de rebus sol me ille admonuit, ut brevior essem,
qui ipse jam præcipitans, me quoque hac præcipitem pæne evolvere
coegit."[257] These words are so charming in their rhythm that I will
not rob them of their beauty by a translation. The setting sun requires
me also to go to rest: that is their simple meaning. At the end of the
book he introduces a compliment to Hortensius, who during his life had
been his great rival, and who was still living when the De Oratore was
written.

[Sidenote: B.C. 52, ætat. 55.]

The next on the list is the De Optimo Genere Oratorum--a preliminary
treatise written as a preface to a translation made by himself on the
speeches of Æschines and Demosthenes against Ctesiphon in the matter of
the Golden Crown. We have not the translations; but we have his reasons
for translating them--namely, that he might enable readers only of Latin
to judge how far Æschines and Demosthenes had deserved, either of them,
the title of "Optimus orator." For they had spoken against each other
with the most bitter abuse, and each spokesman was struggling for the
suppression of the other. Each was speaking with the knowledge that, if
vanquished, he would have to pay heavily in his person and his pocket.
He gives the palm to neither; but he tells his readers that the Attic
mode of speaking is gone--of which, indeed, the glory is known, but the
nature unknown. But he explains that he has not translated the two
pieces verbatim, as an interpreter, but in the spirit, as an orator,
using the same figures, the same forms, the same strength of ideas. We
have to acknowledge that we do not see how in this way he can have done
aught toward answering the question De Optimo Genere Oratorum; but he
may perhaps have done something to prove that he himself, in his
oratory, had preserved the best known Grecian forms.

The De Partitione Oratoria Dialogus follows, of which we have already
spoken, written when he was an old man, and was in the sixty-first year
of his life. It was the year in which he had divorced Terentia, and had
been made thoroughly wretched in private and in public affairs. But he
was not on that account disabled from preparing for his son these
instructions, in the form of questions and answers, on the art of
speaking.

We next come to the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus, a dialogue
supposed to have been held between Brutus, Atticus, and Cicero himself.
It is a continuation of the three books De Oratore. He there describes
what is essential to the character of the optimus orator. He here looks
after the special man, going back over the results of past ages, and
bringing before the reader's eyes all Greek and Roman orators, till he
comes down to Cicero. I cannot but say that the feeling is left with the
reader that the orator optimus has been reached at last in Cicero's
mind.

We must remark, in the first place, that he has chosen for his friend,
to whom to address his piece, one whom he has only known late in life.
It was when he went to Cilicia as governor, when he was fifty-six years
old, that he was thrown by Atticus into close relations with Brutus. Now
he has, next to Atticus, become his most chosen friend. His three next
treatises, the Orator, the Tusculan Disquisitions, and the De Natura
Deorum, have all been graced, or intended to be graced, by the name of
Brutus. And yet, from what we know, we can hardly imagine two men less
likely to be brought together by their political ambition. The one
compromising, putting up with the bad rather than with a worse, knowing
that things were evil, and contented to accept those that were the least
so; the other strict, uncompromising, and one who had learned lessons
which had taught him that there was no choice among things that were
bad! And Brutus, too, had told Cicero that his lessons in oratory were
not to his taste. There was a something about Cicero which enabled him
to endure such rebukes while there was aught worthy of praise in the man
who rebuked him; and it was to this something that his devotion was
paid. We know that Brutus was rapacious after money with all the greed
of a Roman nobleman, and we know also that Cicero was not. Cicero could
keep his hands clean with thousands around him, and with thousands going
into the pockets of other men. He could see the vice of Brutus, but he
did not hate it. He must have borne, too, with something from Atticus of
the same kind. The truth seems to me that to Cicero there was no horror
as to greediness, except to greed in himself. He could hate it for
himself and yet tolerate it in others, as a man may card-playing, or
rackets, or the turf. But he must have known that Brutus had made
himself the owner of all good gifts in learning, and took him to his
heart in consequence. In no other way can I explain to myself the
feeling of subservience to Brutus which Cicero so generally expresses:
it exists in none other of his relations of life. Political subservience
there is to Pompey; but he can laugh at Pompey, and did not dedicate to
him his treatises De Republica, or De Legibus. To Appius Claudius he was
very courteous. He thought badly of Appius, but hardly worse than he
ought to have done of Brutus. Of Cælius he was fond, of Curio, of
Trebatius. To Pætus he was attached, to Sulpicius and Marcellus. But to
none of them did he ever show that deference which he did to Brutus. I
could have understood this feeling as evinced in the political letters
at the end of his life, and have explained it to myself by saying that
the "ipsissima verba" have not probably come to us. But I cannot say
that the name of Brutus does not stand there, written in imperishable
letters on the title-pages of his most chosen pieces. If this be so,
Brutus has owed more to his learning than the respect of Cicero. All
ages since have felt it, and Shakespeare has told us that "Brutus is an
honorable man."

There is a dispute as to the period of the authorship of this treatise.
Cicero in it tells us of Cato and of Marcellus, and therefore we must
suppose that it was written when they were alive. Indeed, he so compares
Cæsar and Marcellus as he could not have done had they not both been
alive. But Cato and Marcellus died B.C. 46, and how then could the
treatise have been written in B.C. 45? It should, however, be remembered
that a written paper may be altered and rewritten, and that the date of
authorship and that of publication cannot be exactly the same. But the
time is of but little matter to those who can take delight in the
discourse. He begins by telling us how he had grieved when, on his
return from Cilicia, he had heard that Hortensius was dead. Hortensius
had brought him into the College of Augurs, and had there stood to him
in the place of a parent. And he had lamented Hortensius also on behalf
of Rome. Hortensius had gone. Then he goes on to say that, as he was
thinking of these things while walking in his portico, Brutus had come
to him and Pomponius Atticus. He says how pleasantly they greeted each
other; and then gradually they go on, till Atticus asks him to renew the
story he had before been telling. "In truth, Pomponius," he says, "I
remember it right well, for then it was that I heard Deiotarus, that
truest and best of kings, defended by our Brutus here," Deiotarus was
that Eastern king whose defence by Cicero himself I have mentioned when
speaking of his pleadings before Cæsar. Then he rushes off into his
subject, and discusses at length his favorite idea. It must still be
remembered that neither here are to be traced any positive line of
lessons in oratory. There is no beginning, no middle, and no end to this
treatise. Cicero runs on, charming us rather by his language than by his
lessons. He says of Eloquence that "she is the companion of peace, and
the associate of ease."[258] He tells us of Cato, that he had read a
hundred and fifty of his speeches, and had "found them all replete with
bright words and with great matter; * * * and yet no one in his days
read Cato's speeches!"[259] This, of course, was Cato the elder. Then we
hear how Demosthenes said that in oratory action was everything: it was
the first thing, the second, and the third. "For there is nothing like
it to penetrate into the minds of the audience--to teach them, to turn
them, and to form them, till the orator shall be made to appear exactly
that which he wishes to be thought.[260] * * * The man who listens to one
who is an orator believes what he hears; he thinks everything to be
true, he approves of all."[261] No doubt! In his power of describing the
orator and his work Cicero is perfect; but he does not describe the man
doing that which he is bound to do by his duty.

He tells us that nothing is worse than half a dozen advocates--which
certainly is true.[262] Further on he comes to Cæsar, and praises him
very highly. But here Brutus is made to speak, and tells us how he has
read the Commentaries, and found them to be "bare in their beauty,
perfect in symmetry, but unadorned, and deprived of all outside
garniture."[263] They are all that he has told us, nor could they have
been described in truer words. Then he names Hortensius, and speaks of
him in language which is graceful and graphic; but he reserves his
greatest strength for himself, and at last, declaring that he will say
nothing in his own praise, bursts out into a string of eulogy, which he
is able to conceal beneath dubious phrases, so as to show that he
himself has acquired such a mastery over his art as to have made
himself, in truth, the best orator of them all.[264]

Perhaps the chief charm of this essay is to be found in the lightness of
the touch. It is never heavy, never severe, rarely melancholic. If read
without reference to other works, it would leave on the reader's mind
the impression that though now and again there had come upon him the
memory of a friend who had gone, and some remembrance of changes in the
State to which, as an old man, he could not give his assent;
nevertheless, it was written by a happy man, by one who was contented
among his books, and was pleased to be reminded that things had gone
well with him. He writes throughout as one who had no great sorrow at
his heart. No one would have thought that in this very year he was
perplexed in his private affairs, even to the putting away of his wife;
that Cæsar had made good his ground, and, having been Dictator last
year, had for the third time become Consul; that he knew himself to be
living, as a favor, by Cæsar's pleasure. Cicero seems to have written
his Brutus as one might write who was well at ease. Let a man have
taught himself aught, and have acquired the love of letters, it is easy
for him then, we might say, to carry on his work. What is it to him that
politicians are cutting each other's throats around him? He has not gone
into that arena and fought and bled there, nor need he do so. Though
things may have gone contrary to his views, he has no cause for anger,
none for personal disappointment, none for personal shame; but with
Cicero, on every morning as he rose he must have remembered Pompey and
have thought of Cæsar. And though Cæsar was courteous to him, the
courtesy of a ruler is hard to be borne by him who himself has ruled.
Cæsar was Consul; and Cicero, who remembered how majestically he had
walked when a few years since he was Consul by the real votes of the
people, how he had been applauded for doing his duty to the people, how
he had been punished for stretching the laws on the people's behalf, how
he had refused everything for the people, must have had bitter feelings
in his heart when he sat down to write this conversation with Brutus and
with Atticus. Yet it has all the cheerfulness which might have been
expected from a happy mind. But we must remark that at its close--in its
very final words--he does allude with sad melancholy to the state of
affairs, and that then it breaks off abruptly. Even in the middle of a
sentence it is brought to a close, and the reader is left to imagine
that something has been lost, or that more might have been added.

The last of these works is the Orator. We have passed in review the De
Oratore, and the Brutus; or, De Claris Oratoribus. We have now to
consider that which is commonly believed to be the most finished piece
of the three. Such seems to have become the general idea of those
scholars who have spoken and written on the subject. He himself says
that there are in all five books. There are the three De Oratore; the
fourth is called the Brutus, and the fifth the Orator.[265] In some MSS.
this work has a second title, De Optimo Genere Dicendi--as though the
five books should run on in a sequence, the first three being on oratory
in general, the fourth as to famous orators, while the last concluding
work is on the best mode of oratory. Readers who may wish to carry these
in their minds must exclude for the moment from their memory the few
pages which he wrote as a preface to the translations from Æschines and
Demosthenes. The purport is to show how that hitherto unknown hero of
romance may be produced--the perfect orator.

Here as elsewhere we shall find the greatest interest lies in a certain
discursive treatment of his subject, which enables him to run hither and
thither, while he always pleases us, whatever attitude he may assume,
whatever he may say, and in whatever guise he may speak to us. But here,
in the last book, there does seem to be some kind of method in his
discourse. He distinguishes three styles of eloquence--the simple, the
moderate, and the sublime, and explains that the orator has three duties
to perform. He must learn what on any subject he has to say; he must
place his arguments in order, and he must know how to express them. He
explains what action should achieve for the orator, and teaches that
eloquence depends wholly on elocution. He tells us that the
philosophers, the historians, and the poets have never risen to his
ideas of eloquence; but that he alone does so who can, amid the heat and
work of the Forum, turn men's minds as he wishes. Then he teaches us how
each of the three styles should be treated--the simple, the moderate,
and the sublime--and shows us how to vary them. He informs us what laws
we should preserve in each, what ornaments, what form, and what
metaphors. He then considers the words we should use, and makes us
understand how necessary it is to attend to the minutest variety of
sound. In this matter we have to acknowledge that he, as a Roman, had to
deal with instruments for listening infinitely finer than are our
British ears; and I am not sure that we can follow him with rapture
into all the mysteries of the Poeon, the Dochmius, and the Dichoreus.
What he says of rhythm we are willing to take to be true, and we wonder
at the elaborate study given to it; but I doubt whether we here do not
read of it as a thing beyond us, by descending into which we should be
removing ourselves farther from the more wholesome pursuits of our
lives.

There are, again, delightful morsels here. He tells us, for instance,
that he who has created a beautiful thing must have beauty in his
soul,[266]--a charming idea, as to which we do not stop to inquire
whether it be true or not. He gives us a most excellent caution against
storing up good sayings, and using them from the storehouse of our
memory: "Let him avoid these studied things, not made of the moment, but
brought from the closet."[267] Then he rises into a grand description of
the perfect orator: "But that third man is he, rich, abundant,
dignified, and instructed, in whom there is a divine strength. This is
he whose fulness and culture of speech the nations have admired, and
whose eloquence has been allowed to prevail over the people.[268] * * *
Then will the orator make himself felt more abundantly. Then will he
rule their minds and turn their hearts. Then will he do with them as he
would wish."[269]

But in the teeth of all this it did not please Brutus himself. "When I
wrote to him," he said to Atticus, "in obedience to his wishes, 'De
Optimo Genere Dicendi,' he sent word, both to you and me, that that
which pleased me did not satisfy him."[270] "Let every man kiss his own
wife," says Cicero in his letter in the next words to those we have
quoted; and we cannot but love the man for being able to joke when he is
telling of the rebuff he has received. It must have been an additional
pang to him, that he for whom he had written his book should receive it
with stern rebuke.

At last we come to the Topica; the last instructions which Cicero gives
on the subject of oratory. The Romans seem to have esteemed much the
lessons which are here conveyed, but for us it has but little
attraction. He himself declares it to have been a translation from
Aristotle, but declares also that the translation has been made from
memory. He has been at sea, he says, in the first chapter, and has there
performed his task, and has sent it as soon as it has been done. There
is something in this which is unintelligible to us. He has translated a
treatise of Aristotle from memory--that is, without having the original
before him--and has done this at sea, on his intended journey to
Greece![271] I do not believe that Cicero has been false in so writing.
The work has been done for his young friend Trebatius, who had often
asked it, and was much too clever when he had received it not to
recognize its worth. But Cicero has, in accordance with his memory,
reduced to his own form Aristotle's idea as to "invention" in logic.
Aristotle's work is, I am informed, in eight books: here is a bagatelle
in twenty-five pages. There is an audacity in the performance--especially
in the doing it on board ship; but we must remember that he had spent his
life in achieving a knowledge of these things, and was able to write down
with all the rapidity of a practised professor the doctrines on the
matter which he wished to teach Trebatius.

This later essay is a recapitulation of the different sources to which
an orator, whether as lawyer, advocate, philosopher, or statesman, may
look for his arguments. That they should have been of any great use to
Trebatius, in the course of his long life as attorney-general about the
court of Augustus, I cannot believe. I do not know that he rose to
special mark as an orator, though he was well known as a counsellor;
nor do I think that oratory, or the powers of persuasion, can be so
brought to book as to be made to submit itself to formal rules. And here
they are given to us in the form of a catalogue. It is for modern
readers perhaps the least interesting of all Cicero's works.

There is left upon us after reading these treatises a general idea of
the immense amount of attention which, in the Roman educated world, was
paid to the science of speaking. To bring his arguments to bear at the
proper moment--to catch the ideas that are likely to be rising in the
minds of men--to know when the sympathies may be expected and when
demanded, when the feelings may be trusted and when they have been too
blunted to be of service--to perceive from an instinctive outlook into
those before him when he may be soft, when hard, when obdurate and when
melting--this was the business of a Roman orator. And this was to be
achieved only by a careful study of the characters of men. It depended
in no wise on virtue, on morals, or on truth, though very much on
education. How he might please the multitude--this was everything to
him. It was all in all to him to do just that which here in our prosaic
world in London we have been told that men ought not to attempt. They do
attempt it, but they fail--through the innate honesty which there is in
the hearts of men. In Italy, in Cicero's time, they attempted it, and
did not fail. But we can see what were the results.

The attention which Roman orators paid to their voices was as serious,
and demanded the same restraint, as the occupations of the present
athlete. We are inclined to doubt whether too much of life is not
devoted to the purpose. It could not be done but by a people so greedy
of admiration as to feel that all other things should be abandoned by
those who desire to excel. The actor of to-day will do it, but it is his
business to act; and if he so applies himself to his profession as to
succeed, he has achieved his object. But oratory in the law court, as in
Parliament, or in addressing the public, is only the means of imbuing
the minds of others with the ideas which the speaker wishes to implant
there. To have those ideas, and to have the desire to teach them to
others, is more to him than the power of well expressing them. To know
the law is better than to talk of knowing it. But with the Romans so
great was the desire to shine that the reality was lost in its
appearance; and so prone were the people to indulge in the delight of
their senses that they would sacrifice a thing for a sound, and
preferred lies in perfect language to truth in halting syllables. This
feeling had sunk deep into Cicero's heart when he was a youth, and has
given to his character the only stain which it has. He would be
patriotic: to love his country was the first duty of a Roman. He would
be honest: so much was indispensable to his personal dignity. But he
must so charm his countrymen with his voice as to make them feel while
they listened to him that some god addressed them. In this way he became
permeated by the love of praise, till it was death to him not to be
before the lamps.

The "perfect orator" is, we may say, a person neither desired nor
desirable. We, who are the multitude of the world, and have been born to
hold our tongues and use our brains, would not put up with him were he
to show himself. But it was not so in Cicero's time; and this was the
way he took to sing the praises of his own profession and to magnify his
own glory. He speaks of that profession in language so excellent as to
make us who read his words believe that there was more in it than it did
in truth hold. But there was much in it, and the more so as the
performers reacted upon their audience. The delicacy of the powers of
expression had become so great, that the powers of listening and
distinguishing had become great also. As the instruments became fine, so
did the ears which were to receive their music. Cicero, and Quintilian
after him, tell us this. The latter, in speaking of the nature of the
voice, gives us a string of epithets which it would be hopeless to
attempt to translate: "Nam est et candida, et fusca, et plena, et
exilis, et levis, et aspera, et contracta, et fusa, et dura, et
flexibilis, et clara, et obtusa; spiritus etiam longior,
breviorque."[272] And the remarkable thing was, that every Roman who
listened would understand what the orator intended, and would know too,
and would tell him of it, if by error he had fallen into some cadence
which was not exactly right. To the modes of raising the voice, which
are usually divided into three--the high or treble, the low or bass, and
that which is between the two, the contralto and tenor--many others are
added. There are the eager and the soft, the higher and the lower notes,
the quicker and the slower. It seems little to us, who know that we can
speak or whisper, hammer our words together, or drawl them out. But then
every listener was critically alive to the fact whether the speaker
before him did or did not perform his task as it should be done. No
wonder that Cicero demanded who was the optimus orator. Then the
strength of body had to be matured, lest the voice should fall to "a
sick, womanly weakness, like that of an eunuch." This must be provided
by exercise, by anointing, by continence, by the easy digestion of the
food--which means moderation; and the jaws must be free, so that the
words must not strike each other. And as to the action of the orator,
Cicero tells us that it should speak as loudly and as plainly as do the
words themselves. In all this we find that Quintilian only follows his
master too closely. The hands, the shoulders, the sides, the stamping of
the foot, the single step or many steps--every motion of the body,
agreeing with the words from his mouth, are all described.[273] He
attributes this to Antony--but only because, as he thinks of it, some
movement of Antony's has recurred to his memory.

To make the men who heard him believe in him was the one gift which
Cicero valued; not to make them know him to be true, but to believe him
to be so. This it was, in Cicero's time, to be the optimus orator.

Since Cicero's time there has been some progress in the general conduct
of men. They are less greedy, less cruel, less selfish--greedy, cruel,
and selfish though they still are. The progress which the best among us
have made Cicero in fact achieved; but he had not acquired that
theoretic aversion to a lie which is the first feeling in the bosom of a
modern gentleman; therefore it was that he still busied himself with
finding the optimus orator.




CHAPTER XII.

_CICERO'S PHILOSOPHY._


It will have been observed that in the list given in the previous
chapter the works commonly published as Cicero's Philosophy have been
divided. Some are called his Philosophy and some his Moral Essays. It
seems to be absurd to put forward to the world his Tusculan Inquiries,
written with the declared object of showing that death and pain were not
evils, together with a moral essay, such as that De Officiis, in which
he tells us what it may become a man of the world to do. It is as though
we bound up Lord Chesterfield's letters in a volume with Hume's essays,
and called them the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It might be
true, but it would certainly be absurd. There might be those who regard
the letters as philosophical, and those who would so speak of the
essays; but their meaning would be diametrically opposite. It is so with
Cicero, whose treatises have been lumped together under this name with
the view of bringing them under one appellation. It had been found
necessary to divide his works and to describe them. The happy man who
first thought to put the De Natura Deorum and the De Amicitia into
boards together, and to present them to the world under the name of his
philosophy, perhaps found the only title that could unite the two. But
he has done very much to mislead the world, and to teach readers to
believe that Cicero was in truth one who endeavored to live in
accordance with the doctrine of any special school of philosophy.

He was too honest, too wise, too civilized, too modern for that. He
knew, no one better, that the pleasure of the world was pleasant, and
that the ills are the reverse. When his wife betrayed him, he grieved.
When his daughter died, he sorrowed. When his foe was strong against
him, he hated him. He avoided pain when it came near him, and did his
best to have everything comfortable around him. He was so far an
Epicurean, as we all are. He did not despise death, or pain, or grief.
He was a modern-minded man--if I make myself understood--of robust
tendencies, moral, healthy, and enduring; but he was anything but a
philosopher in his life. Let us remember the way in which he laughs at
the idea of bringing philosophy into real life in the De Oratore. He is
speaking of the manner in which the lawyers would have had to behave
themselves in the law courts if philosophy had been allowed to prevail:
"No man could have grieved aloud. No patron would have wept. No one
would have sorrowed. There would have been no calling of the Republic to
witness; not a man would have dared to stamp his foot, lest it should
have been told to the Stoics."[274] "You should keep the books of the
philosophers for your Tusculan ease," he had said in the preceding
chapter; and he speaks, in the same page, of "Plato's fabulous State."

Then why, it may be asked, did he write so many essays on
philosophy--enough to have consumed the energies of many laborious
years? There can be no doubt that he did write the Philosophy, though we
have ample reason to know that it was not his philosophy. All those
treatises, beginning with the Academica--written when he was sixty-two,
two years only before his death, and carried on during twelve months
with indomitable energy--the De Finibus, the Tusculan Disputations, the
De Natura Deorum, the De Divinatione, and the De Fato--were composed
during the time named. To those who have regarded Cicero as a
philosopher--as one who has devoted his life to the pursuits of
philosophy--does it not appear odd that he should have deferred his
writing on the subject and postponed his convictions till now? At this
special period of his life why should he have rushed into them at once,
and should so have done it as to be able to leave them aside at another
period? Why has all this been done within less than two years? Let any
man look to the last year of his life, when the Philippics were coming
hot from his brain and eager from his mouth, and ask himself how much of
Greek philosophy he finds in them. Out of all the sixty-four years of
his life he devoted one to this philosophy, and that not the last, but
the penultimate; and so lived during all these years, even including
that one, as to show how little hold philosophy had upon his conduct.
[Greek: Aideomai Trôas]. Was that Greek philosophy? or the eager
exclamation of a human spirit, in its weakness and in its strength,
fearing the breath of his fellow-men, and yet knowing that the truth
would ultimately be expressed by it?

Nor is the reason for this far to seek, though the character which could
avail itself of such a reason requires a deep insight. To him literature
had been everything. We have seen with what attention he had studied
oratory--rhetoric rather--so as to have at his fingers'-ends the names
of those who had ever shone in it, and the doctrines they had taught. We
know how well read he was in Homer and the Greek tragedians; how he knew
by heart his Ennius, his Nævius, his Pacuvius, and the others who had
written in his own tongue. As he was acquainted with the poets and
rhetoricians, so also was he acquainted with those writers who have
handled philosophy. His incredible versatility was never at fault. He
knew them all from the beginning, and could interest himself in their
doctrines. He had been in the schools at Athens, and had learned it all.
In one sense he believed in it. There was a great battle of words
carried on, and in regard to that battle he put his faith in this set or
in the other. But had he ever been asked by what philosophical process
he would rule the world, he would have smiled. Then he would have
declared himself not to be an Academician, but a Republican.

It was with him a game of play, ornamented with all the learning of past
ages. He had found the schools full of it at Athens, and had taken his
part in their teaching. It had been pleasant to him to call himself a
disciple of Plato, and to hold himself aloof from the straitness of the
Stoics, and from the mundane theories of the followers of Epicurus. It
had been well for him also to take an interest in that play. But to
suppose that Cicero, the modern Cicero, the Cicero of the world--Cicero
the polished gentleman, Cicero the soft hearted, Cicero the hater,
Cicero the lover, Cicero the human--was a believer in Greek
philosophy--that he had taken to himself and fed upon those shreds and
tatters and dry sticks--that he had ever satisfied himself with such a
mode of living as they could promise to him--is indeed to mistake the
man. His soul was quiveringly alive to all those instincts which now
govern us. Go among our politicians, and you shall find this man and the
other, who, in after-dinner talk, shall call himself an Epicurean, or
shall think himself to be an Academician. He has carried away something
of the learning of his college days, and remembers enough of his school
exercises for that; but when he has to make a speech for or against
Protection, then you will find out where lies his philosophy.

And so it was with Cicero during this the penultimate year of his life.
He poured forth during this period such an amount of learning on the
subject, that when men took it up after the lapse of centuries they
labelled it all as his philosophy. When he could no longer talk
politics, nor act them--when the Forum was no longer open to him, nor
the meetings of the people or of the Senate--when he could no longer
make himself heard on behalf of the State--then he took to discussions
on Carneades. And his discussions are wonderful. How could he lay his
mind to work when his daughter was dead, and write in beautiful language
four such treatises as came from his pen while he was thinking of the
temple which was to be built to her memory? It is a marvel that at such
a period, at such an age, he should have been equal to the labor. But it
was thus that he amused himself, consoled himself, distracted himself.
It is hard to believe that, in the sad evening of his life, such a power
should have remained with him; but easier, I think, than to imagine that
in that year of his life he had suddenly become philosophical.

In describing the Academica, the first of these works in point of time,
it is necessary to explain that by reason of an alteration in his plan
of publishing, made by Cicero after he had sent the first copy to
Atticus, and by the accident that the second part has been preserved of
the former copy and the first part of the second, a confusion has
arisen. Cicero had felt that he might have done better by his friends
than to bring Hortensius, Catulus, and Lucullus discussing Greek
philosophy before the public. They were, none of them, men who when
alive had interested themselves in the matter. He therefore rewrote the
essays, or altered them, and again sent them forth to his friend Varro.
Time has been so far kind to them as to have preserved portions of the
first book as altered, and the second of the four which constituted the
first edition. It is that which has been called Lucullus. The Catulus
had come first, but has been lost. Hortensius and Cicero were the last
two. We may perceive, therefore, into what a length of development he
carried his purpose. It must be of course understood that he dictated
these exercises, and assisted himself by the use of all mechanical means
at his disposal. The men who worked for him were slaves, and these
slaves were always willing to keep in their own hands the good things
which came to them by the exercise of their own intelligence and
adroitness. He could not multiply his own hands or brain, but he could
multiply all that might assist them. He begins by telling Varro that he
has long since desired to illustrate in Latin letters the philosophy
which Socrates had commended, and he asks Varro why he, who was so much
given to writing, had not as yet written about any of these things. As
Varro boasted afterward that he was the author of four hundred and
ninety books, there seems to be a touch of irony in this. Be that as it
may, Varro is made to take up the gauntlet and to rush away at once amid
the philosophers. But here on the threshold, as it were, of his
inquiries, we have Cicero's own reasons given in plain language: "But
now, hit hard by the heavy blow of fortune, and freed as I am from
looking after the State, I seek from philosophy relief from my pain." He
thinks that he may in this way perhaps best serve the public, or even
"if it be not so, what else is there that he may find to do?"[275] As he
goes on, however, we find that what he writes is about the philosophers
rather than philosophy.

Then we come to the Lucullus. It seems odd that the man whose name has
come down to us as a by-word for luxury, and who is laden with the
reproach of overeating, should be thus brought forward as a philosopher.
It was perhaps the subsequent feeling on Cicero's part that such might
be the opinion of men which induced him to alter his form--in vain, as
far as we are concerned. But Lucullus had lived with Antiochus, a Greek
philosopher, who had certain views of his own, and he is made to defend
them through this book.

Here as elsewhere it is not the subject which delights us so much as the
manner in which he handles certain points almost outside the subject:
"How many things do those exercised in music know which escape us! Ah,
there is Antiope, they say; that is Andromache."[276] What can be truer,
or less likely, we may suppose, to meet us in a treatise on philosophy,
and, therefore, more welcome? He is speaking of evidence: "It is
necessary that the mind shall yield to what is clear, whether it wish it
or no, as the dish in a balance must give way when a weight is put upon
it.[277] * * * You may snore, if you will, as well as sleep," says
Carneades; "what good will it do you?"[278] And then he gives the
guesses of some of the old philosophers as to the infinite. Thales has
said that water is the source of everything. Anaximander would not agree
to this, for he thought that all had come from space. Anaximenes had
affirmed that it was air. Anaxagoras had remarked that matter was
infinite. Xenophanes had declared that everything was one whole, and
that it was a god, everlasting, eternal, never born and never dying, but
round in his shape! Parmenides thought that it was fire that moved the
earth. Leucippus believed it to be "plenum et inane." What "full and
empty" may mean I cannot tell; but Democritus could, for he believed in
it--though in other matters he went a little farther! Empedocles sticks
to the old four elements. Heraclitus is all for fire. Melissus imagines
that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and
ever will be. Plato thinks that the world has always existed, while the
Pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics.[279] "Your wise man,"
continues Cicero, "will know one whom to choose out of all these. Let
the others, who have been repudiated, retire."

"They are all concealed, these things--hidden in thick darkness, so
that no human eye can have power enough to look up into the heavens or
down on to the earth. We do not know our own bodies, or the nature or
strength of their component parts. The doctors themselves, who have
opened them and looked at them, are ignorant. The Empirics declare that
they know nothing; because, as soon as looked at, they may change. * * *
Hicetas, the Syracusan, as Theophrastus tells us, thinks that the
heavens and the sun and the moon and the stars all stand still, and that
nothing in all the world moves but the earth. Now what do you, followers
of Epicurus, say to this?"[280] I need not carry the conversation on any
farther to show that Cicero is ridiculing the whole thing. This Hicetas,
the Syracusan, seems to have been nearer the mark than the others,
according to the existing lights, which had not shone out as yet in
Cicero's days. "But what was the meaning of it all? Who knows anything
about it? How is a man to live by listening to such trash as this?" It
is thus that Cicero means to be understood. I will agree that Cicero
does not often speak out so clearly as he does here, turning the whole
thing into ridicule. He does generally find it well to say something in
praise of these philosophers. He does not quite declare the fact that
nothing is to be made of them; or, rather, there is existing in it all
an under feeling that, were he to do so, he would destroy his character
and rob himself of his amusement. But we remember always his character
of a philosopher, as attributed to Cato, in his speech during his
Consulship for Murena. I have told the story when giving an account of
the speech. "He who cuts the throat of an old cock when there is no
need, has sinned as deeply as the parricide when breaking his father's
neck,"[281] says Cicero, laughing at the Stoics. There he speaks out the
feelings of his heart--there, and often elsewhere in his orations. Here,
in his Academica, he is eloquent on the same side. We cannot but rejoice
at the plainness of his words; but it has to be acknowledged that we do
not often find him so loudly betraying himself when dealing with the old
discussions of the Greek philosophers.

Very quickly after his Academica, in B.C. 45, came the five books, De
Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, written as though with the object of
settling the whole controversy, and declaring whether the truth lay with
the Epicureans, the Stoics, or the Academics. What, at last, is the good
thing, and what the evil thing, and how shall we gain the one and avoid
the other? If he will tell us this, he will have proved himself to be a
philosopher to some purpose. But he does nothing of the kind. At the end
of the fifth book we find Atticus, who was an Epicurean, declaring to
Quintus Cicero that he held his own opinion just as firmly as ever,
although he had been delighted to hear how well the Academician Piso had
talked in Latin. He had hitherto considered that these were things which
would not sound well unless in the Greek language.

It is again in the form of a dialogue, and, like all his writings at
this time, is addressed to Brutus. It is in five books. The first two
are supposed to have been held at Cumæ, between Cicero, Torquatus, and
Triarius. Here, after a prelude in favor of philosophy and Latin
together, Torquatus is allowed to make the best excuse he can for
Epicurus. The prelude contains much good sense; for, whether he be right
or not in what he says, it is good for every man to hold his own
language in respect. "I have always thought and said that the Latin
language is not poor as it is supposed to be, but even richer than the
Greek."[282] "Let us learn," says Torquatus, who has happened to call
upon him at Cumæ with Triarius, a grave and learned youth, as we are
told, "since we have found you at your house, why it is that you do not
approve of Epicurus--he who, alive, seems to have freed the minds of men
from error, and to have taught them everything which could tend to make
them happy."[283] Then Torquatus goes to work and delivers a most
amusing discourse on the wisdom of Democritus and his great disciple.
The words fly about with delightful power, so as to leave upon our minds
an idea that Torquatus is persuading his audience; for it is Cicero's
peculiar gift, in whosesoever mouth he puts his words, to make him argue
as though he were the victor. We feel sure that, had he in his hand held
a theory contrary to that of Torquatus, had he in truth cared about it,
he could not have made Torquatus speak so well. But the speaker comes to
an end, and assures his hearers that his only object had been to
hear--as he had never heard before--what Cicero's own opinion might be
on the matter.

The second book is a continuation of the same meeting. The word is taken
up by Cicero, and he refutes Torquatus. It seems to us, however, that
poor Epicurus is but badly treated--as has been generally the case in
the prose works which have come down to us. We have, indeed, the poem of
Lucretius, and it is admitted that it contains fine passages. But I was
always told when young that the writing of it had led him to commit
suicide--a deed on his part which seems to have been painted in black
colors, though Cato and Brutus, the Stoics, did the same thing very
gloriously. The Epicureans are held to be sensualists, because they have
used the word "pleasure" instead of "happiness," and Cicero is hard upon
them. He tells a story of the dying moments of Epicurus, quoting a
letter written on his death-bed. "While I am writing," he says, "I am
living my last hour, and the happiest. I have so bad a pain in my
stomach that nothing can be worse. But I am compensated for it all by
the joy I feel as I think of my philosophical discourses."[284] Cicero
then goes on to declare that, though the saying is very noble, it is
unnecessary; he should not, in truth, have required compensation. But
whenever an opinion is enunciated, the reader feels it to be
unnecessary. He does not want opinion. He is satisfied with the
language in which Cicero writes about the opinions of others, and with
the amusing manner in which he deals with things of themselves heavy and
severe.

In the third book he, some time afterward, discusses the Stoic doctrine
with Cato at the Tusculan villa of Lucullus, near to his own. He had
walked over, and finding Cato there by chance, had immediately gone to
work to demolish Cato's philosophical doctrines. He tells us what a
glutton Cato was over his books, taking them even into the Senate with
him. Cicero asks for certain volumes of Aristotle, and Cato answers him
that he would fain put into his hand those of Zeno's school.

We can see how easily Cato falls into the trap. He takes up his parable,
and preaches his sermon, but he does it with a marvellous enthusiasm, so
that we cannot understand that the man who wrote it intended to demolish
it all in the next few pages. I will translate his last words of Cato's
appeal to the world at large: "I have been carried farther than my
intention. But in truth the admirable order of the system, and the
incredible symmetry of it, has led him on. By the gods, do you not
wonder at it? In nature there is nothing so close packed, nor in art so
well fitted. The latter always agrees with the former--that which
follows with that which has gone before. Not a stone in it all can be
moved from its place. If you touch but one letter it falls to the
ground. How severe, how magnificent, how dignified stands out the person
of the wise man, who, when his reason shall have taught him that virtue
is the only good, of a necessity must be happy! He shall be more justly
called king than Tarquin, who could rule neither himself nor others;
more rightly Dictator than Sulla, the owner of the three vices, luxury,
avarice, and cruelty; more rightly rich than Crassus, who, had he not
in truth been poor, would never have crossed the Euphrates in quest of
war. All things are justly his who knows how to use them justly. You may
call him beautiful whose soul is more lovely than his body. He is free
who is slave to no desire. He is unconquered for whose mind you can
forge no chains; you need not wait with him for the last day to
pronounce him happy. If this be so, then the good man is also the happy
man. What can be better worth our study than philosophy, or what more
heavenly than virtue?"[285] All of this was written by Cicero in most
elaborate language, with a finish of words polished down to the last
syllable, because he had nothing else wherewith to satisfy the cravings
of his intellect.

The fourth book is a continuation of the argument "Which when he had
said he (made) an end.--But I (began)."[286] With no other introduction
Cicero goes to work and demolishes every word that Cato had said. He is
very courteous, so that Cato cannot but admit that he is answered
becomingly; but, to use a common phrase, he does not leave him a leg to
stand upon. Although during the previous book Cato has talked so well
that the reader will think that there must be something in it, he soon
is made to perceive that the Stoic budge is altogether shoddy.

The fifth and last book, De Finibus, is supposed to recount a dialogue
held at Athens, or, rather, gives the circumstances of a discourse
pretended to have been delivered there by Pupius Piso to the two
Ciceros, and to their cousin Lucius, on the merits of the old Academy
and the Aristotelian Peripatetics; for Plato's philosophy had got itself
split into two. There was the old and the new, and we may perhaps doubt
to which Cicero devoted himself. He certainly was not an Epicurean, and
he certainly was not a Stoic. He delighted to speak of himself as a
lover of Plato. But in some matters he seems to have followed Aristotle,
who had diverged from Plato, and he seems also to have clung to
Carneades, who had become master of the new Academy. But, in truth, to
ascertain the special doctrine of such a man on such a subject is vain.
As we read these works we lose ourselves in admiration of his memory; we
are astonished at the industry which he exhibits; we are delighted by
his perspicuity; and feel ourselves relieved amid the crowd of names and
theories by flashes of his wit; but there comes home to us, as a result,
the singular fact of a man playing with these theories as the most
interesting sport the world had produced, but not believing the least in
any of them. It was not that he disbelieved; and perhaps among them all
the tenets of the new Academy were those which reconciled themselves the
best to his common-sense. But they were all nothing to him but an
amusement.

In this book there are some exquisite bits. He says, speaking of Athens,
that, "Go where you will through the city, you place your footsteps on
the vestiges of history."[287] He says of a certain Demetrius, whom he
describes as writing books without readers in Egypt, "that this culture
of his mind was to him, as it were, the food by which his humanity was
kept alive."[288] And then he falls into the praise of our love for our
neighbors, and introduces us to that true philosophy which was the real
guide of his life. "Among things which are honest," he says, "there is
nothing which shines so brightly and so widely as that brotherhood
between men, that agreement as to what may be useful to all, and that
general love for the human race. It comes from our original condition,
in which children are loved by their parents; and then binding together
the family, it spreads itself abroad among relations, connections,
friends, and neighbors. Then it includes citizens and those who are our
allies. At last it takes in the whole human race, and that feeling of
the soul arises which, giving every man his own, and defending by equal
laws the rights of each, is called justice."[289] It matters little how
may have been introduced this great secret which Christ afterward
taught, and for which we look in vain through the writings of all the
philosophers. It comes here simply from Cicero himself in the midst of
his remarks on the new Academy, but it gives the lesson which had
governed his life: "I will do unto others as I would they should do unto
me." In this is contained the rudiments of that religion which has
served to soften the hearts of us all. It is of you I must think, and
not of myself. Hitherto the schools had taught how a man should make
himself happy, whether by pleasure, whether by virtue, or whether by
something between the two. It seems that it had never as yet occurred to
a man to think of another except as a part of the world around him. Then
there had come a teacher who, while fumbling among the old Greek lessons
which had professed to tell mankind what each should do for himself,
brings forth this, as it were, in preparation for the true doctrine that
was to come: "Ipsa caritas generis humani!"--"That love of the human
race!" I trust I may be able to show, before I have finished my work,
that this was Cicero's true philosophy. All the rest is merely with him
a play of words.

Our next work contains the five books of the Tusculan Disputations,
addressed to Brutus: Tusculanarum Disputationum, ad M. Brutum, libri i.,
ii., iii., iv., and v. That is the name that has at last been decided by
the critics and annotators as having been probably given to them by
Cicero. They are supposed to have been written to console himself in his
grief for the death of Tullia. I have great doubt whether consolation in
sorrow is to be found in philosophy, but I have none as to the finding
it in writing philosophy. Here, I may add, that the poor generally
suffer less in their sorrow than the rich, because they are called upon
to work for their bread. The man who must make his pair of shoes between
sunrise and the moment at which he can find relief from his weary stool,
has not time to think that his wife has left him, and that he is
desolate in the world. Pulling those weary threads, getting that leather
into its proper shape, seeing that his stitches be all taut, so that he
do not lose his place among the shoemakers, so fills his time that he
has not a moment for a tear. And it is the same if you go from the
lowest occupation to the highest. Writing Greek philosophy does as well
as the making of shoes. The nature of the occupation depends on the
mind, but its utility on the disposition. It was Cicero's nature to
write. Will any one believe that he might not as well have consoled
himself with one of his treatises on oratory? But philosophy was then to
his hands. It seems to have cropped up in his latter years, after he had
become intimate with Brutus. When life was again one turmoil of
political fever it was dropped.

In the five of the Books of the Tusculan Disputations, still addressed
to Brutus, he contends: 1. That death is no evil; 2. That pain is none;
3. That sorrow may be abolished; 4. That the passions may be conquered;
5. That virtue will suffice to make a man happy. These are the doctrines
of the Stoics; but Cicero does not in these books defend any school
especially. He leans heavily on Epicurus, and gives all praise to
Socrates and to Plato; but he is comparatively free: "Nullius adductus
jurare in verba magistri,"[290] as Horace afterward said, probably
ridiculing Cicero. "I live for the day. Whatever strikes my mind as
probable, that I say. In this way I alone am free."[291]

Let us take his dogmas and go through them one by one, comparing each
with his own life. This, it may be said, is a crucial test to which but
few philosophers would be willing to accede; but if it shall be found
that he never even dreamed of squaring his conduct with his professions,
then we may admit that he employed his time in writing these things
because it did not suit him to make his pair of shoes.

Was there ever a man who lived with a greater fear of death before his
eyes--not with the fear of a coward, but with the assurance that it
would withdraw him from his utility, and banish him from the scenes of a
world in sympathy with which every pulse of his heart was beating? Even
after Tullia was dead the Republic had come again for him, and something
might be done to stir up these fainéant nobles! What could a dead man do
for his country? Look back at Cicero's life, and see how seldom he has
put forward the plea of old age to save him from his share of the work
of attack. Was this the man to console himself with the idea that death
was no evil? And did he despise pain, or make any attempt at showing his
disregard of it? You can hardly answer this question by looking for a
man's indifference when undergoing it. It would be to require too much
from philosophy to suppose that it could console itself in agony by
reasoning. It would not be fair to insist on arguing with Cato in the
gout. The clemency of human nature refuses to deal with philosophy in
the hard straits to which it may be brought by the malevolence of evil.
But when you find a man peculiarly on the alert to avoid the recurrence
of pain, when you find a man with a strong premeditated antipathy to a
condition as to which he pretends an indifference, then you may fairly
assert that his indifference is only a matter of argument. And this was
always Cicero's condition. He knew that he must at any rate lose the
time passed by him under physical annoyance. His health was good, and by
continued care remained so to the end; but he was always endeavoring to
avoid sea-sickness. He was careful as to his baths, careful as to his
eyes, very careful as to his diet. Was there ever a man of whom it might
be said with less truth that he was indifferent as to pain?

The third position is that sorrow may be abolished. Read his letters to
Atticus about his daughter Tullia, written at the very moment he was
proving this. He was a heart-broken, sorrow-stricken man. It will not
help us now to consider whether in this he showed strength or weakness.
There will be doubt about it, whether he gained or lost more by that
deep devotion to another creature which made his life a misery to him
because that other one had gone; whether, too, he might not have better
hidden his sorrow than have shown it even to his friend. But with him,
at any rate, it was there. He can talk over it, weep over it, almost
laugh over it; but if there be a thing that he cannot do, it is to treat
it after the manner of a Stoic.

His passions should be conquered. Look back at every period of his life,
and see whether he has ever attempted it. He has always been indignant,
or triumphant, or miserable, or rejoicing. Remember the incidents of his
life before and after his Consulship--the day of his election and the
day of his banishment--and ask the philosophers why he had not
controlled his passion. I shall be told, perhaps, that here was a man
over whom, in spite of his philosophy, his passion had the masterhood.
But what attempt did he ever make? Has he shown himself to us to be a
man with a leaning toward such attempts? Has he not revelled in his
passions, feeling them to be just, righteous, honest, and becoming a
man? Has he regretted them? Did they occasion him remorse? Will any one
tell me that such a one has lived with the conviction that he might
conquer the evils of the world by controlling his passions? That virtue
will make men happy he might probably have granted, if asked; but he
would have conceded the point with a subterfuge. The commonest Christian
of the day will say as much; but he will say it in a different meaning
from that intended by the philosophers, who had declared, as a rule of
life, that virtue would suffice to make them happy. To be good to your
neighbors will make you happy in the manner described by Cicero in the
fifth book, De Finibus. Love those who come near you. Be good to your
fellow-creatures. Think, when dealing with each of them, what his
feelings may be. Melt to a woman in her sorrow. Lend a man the
assistance of your shoulder. Be patient with age. Be tender with
children. Let others drink of your cup and eat of your loaf. Where the
wind cuts, there lend your cloak. That virtue will make you happy. But
that is not the virtue of which he spoke when he laid down his doctrine.
That was not the virtue with which Brutus was strong when he was
skinning those poor wretches of Salamis. Such was the virtue with which
the heart of Cicero glowed when he saw the tradesmen of the Cilician
town come out into the market-place with their corn.

Cicero begins the second book of the Tusculans by telling us that
Neoptolemus liked to do a little philosophy now and then, but never too
much at a time. With himself the matter was different: "In what else is
there that I can do better?" Then he takes the bit between his teeth and
rushes away with it. The reader feels that he would not stop him if he
could. He does little, indeed, for philosophy; but so much for
literature that he would be a bold man who would want to have him
otherwise employed.

He wrote three treatises, De Natura Deorum. Had he declared that he
would write three treatises to show the ideas which different men had
taken up about the gods he would be nearer to the truth. We have an idea
of what was Cicero's real notion of that "dominans in nobis
deus"[292]--that god which reigns within us--and which he declares in
Scipio's dream to have forbidden us to commit suicide. Nothing can be
farther removed from that idea than the gods of which he tells us,
either in the first book, in which the gods of Epicurus are set forth;
in the second, in which the Stoics are defended; or the third, in which
the gods, in accordance with the Academy, are maintained; not but that,
either for the one or for the other, the man who speaks up for that sect
does not say the best that is to be said. Velleius is eloquent for the
Epicureans, Balbus for the Stoics, and Cotta for the Academy. And in
that which each says there is to be found a germ of truth--though indeed
Cicero makes his Epicurean as absurd as he well can do. But he does not
leave a trace behind of that belief in another man's belief which an
energetic preacher is sure to create. The language is excellent, the
stories are charming, the arguments as used against each other are
courteous, clever, and such that on the spur of the moment a man cannot
very well reply to them; but they leave on the mind of the reader a sad
feeling of the lack of reality.

In the beginning he again repeats his reasons for writing on such
subjects so late in life. "Being sick with ease, and having found the
condition of the Republic to be such that it has to be ruled by one man.
I have thought it good, for the sake of the Republic, to write about
philosophy in a language that shall be understood by all our citizens,
believing it to be a matter of great import to the glory of the State
that things of such weight should be set forth in the Latin
tongue;"[293] not that the philosophy should be set forth, but what the
different teachers said about it. His definition of eternity--or rather
the want of definition--is singular: "There has been from all time an
eternity which no measurement of time can describe. Its duration cannot
be understood--that there should have been a time before time
existed."[294] Then there comes an idea of the Godhead, escaping from
him in the midst of his philosophy, modern, human, and truly Ciceronian:
"Lo, it comes to pass that this god, of whom we are sure in our minds,
and of whom we hold the very footprints on our souls, can never appear
to us."[295]

By-and-by we come to a passage in which we cannot but imagine that
Cicero does express something of the feeling of his heart, as for a
moment he seems to lose his courtesy in abusing the Epicureans:
"Therefore do not waste your salt, of which your people are much in
want, in laughing at us. Indeed, if you will listen to me, you will not
try to do so; it does not become you; it is not given to you; you have
not the power. I do not say this to you," he says, addressing Velleius,
"for your manners have been polished, and you possess the courtesy of
our people; but I am thinking of you all as a body, and chiefly of him
who is the father of your rules--a man without science, without
letters--one who insults all, without critical ability, without weight,
without wit."[296] Cicero, I think, must have felt some genuine dislike
for Epicurus when he spoke of him in such terms as these.

Then, alas! there is commenced a passage in which are inserted many
translated verses of the Greek poet Aratus. Cicero when a lad had taken
in hand the Phænomena of Aratus, and here he finds a place in which can
be introduced some of his lines. Aratus had devoted himself to the
singing of the stars, and has produced for us many of the names with
which we are still familiar: "The Twins;" "The Bull;" "The Great Bear;"
"Cassiopeia;" "The Waterman;" "The Scorpion;" these and many others are
made to come forward in hexameters--and by Cicero in Latin, as by Aratus
in their Greek guise. We may suppose that the poem as translated had
fallen dead--but here it is brought to life and is introduced into what
is intended as at least a rationalistic account of the gods and their
nature. Nothing less effective can be imagined than the repetition of
uninteresting verses in such a place; for the reader, who has had
Epicurus just handled for him, is driven to remember that their images
are at any rate as false as the scheme of Epicurus, and is made to
conclude that Balbus does not believe in his own argument. It has been
sometimes said of Cicero that he is too long. The lines have probably
been placed here as a joke, though they are inserted at such a length as
to carry the reader away altogether into another world.

Farther on he devotes himself to anatomical research, which, for that
age, shows an accurate knowledge. But what has it to do with the nature
of the gods? "When the belly which is placed under the stomach becomes
the receptacle of meat and drink, the lungs and the heart draw in the
air for the stomach. The stomach, which is wonderfully arranged,
consists chiefly of nerves. * * * The lungs are light and porous, and
like a sponge--just fit for drawing in the breath. They blow themselves
out and draw themselves in, so that thus may be easily received that
sustenance most necessary to animal life."[297]

The third book is but a fragment, but it begins well with pleasant
raillery against Epicurus. Cotta declares that he had felt no difficulty
with Epicurus. Epicurus and his allies had found little to say as to the
immortal gods. His gods had possessed arms and legs, but had not been
able to move them. But from Balbus, the Stoic, they had heard much
which, though not true, was nevertheless truthlike. In all these
discourses it seems that the poor Epicureans are treated with but a
moderate amount of mercy. But Cotta continues, and tells many stories of
the gods. He is interrupted in his tale, for the sad hand of destruction
has fallen upon the MS., and his arguments have come to us unfinished.
"It is better," he says, "not to give wine to the sick at all, because
you may injure them by the application. In the same way I do not know
whether it would not be better to refuse that gift of reason, that
sharpness and quickness of thought, to men in general, than to bestow it
upon them so often to their own destruction."[298] It is thus that is
discussed the nature of the gods in this work of Cicero, which is indeed
a discussion on the different schools of philosophy, each in the
position which it had reached in his time.

The De Natura Deorum is followed by two books, De Divinatione, and by
the fragment of one, De Fato. Divination is the science of predicting
events. By "Fatum" Cicero means destiny, or that which has been fixed
beforehand. The three books together may be taken as religious
discourses, and his purport seems to have been to show that it might be
the duty of the State to foster observances, and even to punish their
non-observance--for the benefit of the whole--even though they might not
be in themselves true. He is here together with his brother, or with
those whom, like his brother, he may suppose to have emancipated
themselves from superstition--and tells him or them that though they do
not believe they should feign belief. If the augurs declare by the
flight of birds that such a thing should be done, let it be done,
although he who has to act in the matter has no belief in the birds. If
they declare that a matter has been fixed by fate, let it be as though
it were fixed, whether fixed or no. He repudiates the belief as
unreasonable or childish, but recommends that men should live as though
they believed. In such a theory as this put thus before the reader,
there will seem to be dissimulation. I cannot deny that it is so, though
most anxious to assert the honesty of Cicero. I can only say that such
dissimulation did prevail then, and that it does prevail now. If any be
great enough to condemn the hierarchs of all the churches, he may do so,
and may include Cicero with the Archbishop of Canterbury. I am not. It
seems necessary to make allowance for the advancing intelligence of men,
and unwise to place yourself so far ahead as to shut yourself out from
that common pale of mankind. I distrust the self-confidence of him who
thinks that he can deduce from one acknowledged error a whole scheme of
falsehood. I will take our Protestant Church of England religion and
will ask some thoughtful man his belief as to its changing doctrines,
and will endeavor to do so without shocking the feelings of any. When
did Sabbatarian observances begin to be required by the Word of God, and
when again did they cease to be so? If it were worth the while of those
who have thought about the subject to answer my question, the replies
would be various. It has never begun! It has never wavered! And there
would be the intermediate replies of those who acknowledge that the
feeling of the country is altering and has altered. In the midst of
this, how many a father of a family is there who goes to church for the
sake of example? Does not the Church admit prayers for change of
weather? Ask the clergyman on his way from church what he is doing with
his own haystack, and his answer will let you know whether he believes
in his own prayers. He has lent all the sanctity of his voice to the
expression of words which had been written when the ignorance of men as
to the works of nature was greater; or written yesterday because the
ignorance of man has demanded it. Or they who have demanded it have not
perhaps been ignorant themselves, but have thought it well to subserve
the superstition of the multitude. I am not saying this as against the
religious observances of to-day, but as showing that such is still the
condition of men as to require the defence which Cicero also required
when he wrote as follows: "Former ages erred in much which we know to
have been changed by practice, by doctrine, or by time. But the custom,
the religion, the discipline, the laws of the augurs and the authority
of the college, are retained, in obedience to the opinion of the people,
and to the great good of the State. Our Consuls, Claudius and Junius,
were worthy of all punishment when they put to sea in opposition to the
auspices; for men must obey religion, nor can the customs of our country
be set aside so easily."[299] No stronger motive for adhering to
religious observances can be put forward than the opinion of the people
and the good of the State. There will be they who aver that truth is
great and should be allowed to prevail. Though broken worlds should fall
in disorder round their heads, they would stand firm amid the ruins. But
they who are likely to be made responsible will not cause worlds to be
broken.

Such, I think, was the reasoning within Cicero's mind when he wrote
these treatises. In the first he encounters his brother Quintus at his
Tusculan villa, and there listens to him discoursing in favor of
religion. Quintus is altogether on the side of the gods and the
auspices. He is, as we may say, a gentleman of the old school, and is
thoroughly conservative. In this way he has an opportunity given him of
showing the antiquity of his belief. "Stare super vias antiquas," is the
motto of Quintus Cicero. Then he proceeds to show the two kinds of
divination which have been in use. There is the one which he calls
"Ars," and which we perhaps may call experience. The soothsayer predicts
in accordance with his knowledge of what has gone before. He is asked to
say, for instance, whether a ship shall put to sea on a Friday. He
knows--or thinks that he knows, or in his ignorance declares that he
thinks that he knows--that ships that have put to sea on Friday have
generally gone to the bottom. He therefore predicts against the going to
sea. Although the ship should put forth on the intended day, and should
make a prosperous voyage, the prophet has not been proved to be false.
That can only be done by showing that ships that have gone to sea on
Friday have generally been subject to no greater danger than others--a
process which requires the close observations of science to make good.
That is Art. Then there is the prediction which comes from a mind
disturbed--one who dreams, let us say, or prophesies when in a fit--as
the Sibyl, or Epimenides of Crete, who lived one hundred and fifty-seven
years, but slept during sixty-four of them. Quintus explains as to these
that the god does not desire mankind to understand them, but only to use
them.[300]

He tells us many amusing details as to prophetic dreams and the doings
of soothsayers and wise men. The book so becomes chatty and full of
anecdotes, and interspersed with many pieces of poetry--some by others
and some by Cicero. Here are given those lines as to the battle of the
eagle and the dragon which I have ventured to call the best amid the
nine versions brought forward.[301]

We cannot but sympathize with him in the reason which he prefixes to the
second book of this treatise: "I often ask myself and turn in my mind
how best I may serve the largest number of my fellow-citizens, lest
there should come a time in which I should seem to have ceased to be
anxious for the State; and nothing better has occurred to me than that I
should make known the way of studying the best arts--which indeed I
think I have now done in various books."[302] Then he recapitulates
them. There is the opening work on philosophy which he had dedicated to
Hortensius, now lost. Then in the four books of the Academics he had put
forward his ideas as to that school which he believed to be the least
arrogant and the truest--meaning the new Academy. After that, as he had
felt all philosophy to be based on the search after good and evil, he
had examined that matter. The Tusculan Inquiries had followed, in which
he had set forth, in five books, the five great rules of living well.
Having finished this, he had written his three books on the nature of
the gods, and was now in the act of completing it, and would complete
it, by his present inquiries. We cannot but sympathize with him because
we know that, though he was not quite in earnest in all this, he was as
near it as a man can be who teaches that which he does not quite believe
himself. Brutus believed it, and Cato, and that Velleius, and that
Balbus, and that Cotta. Or if perchance any of them did not, they lived,
and talked, and read, and were as erudite about it, as though they did.
The example was good, and the precepts were the best to be had. Amid it
all he chose the best doctrine, and he was undoubtedly doing good to his
countrymen in thus representing to them in their native language the
learning by which they might best be softened.

  "Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes.
   Intulit agresti Latio."[303]

Here, too, he explains his own conduct in a beautiful passage. "My
fellow-citizens," says he, "will pardon me, or perhaps will rather thank
me, for that when the Republic fell into the power of one man I neither
hid myself nor did I desert them; nor did I idly weep, or carry myself
as though angry with the man or with the times; nor yet, forsooth, so
flattering the good fortune of another, that I should have to be
ashamed of what I had done myself. For I had learned this lesson from
the philosophy of Plato--that there are certain changes in public
affairs. They will be governed now by the leaders of the State, then by
the people, sometimes by a single man."[304] This is very wise, but he
goes to work and altogether destroys his brother's argument. He knows
that he is preaching only to a few--in such a manner as to make his
preaching safe. His language is very pleasing, always civil, always
courteous; but not the less does he turn the arguments of his brother
into ridicule. And we feel that he is not so much laughing at his
brother as at the gods themselves--they are so clearly wooden
gods--though he is aware how necessary it is for the good of the State
that they shall be received. He declares that, in accordance with the
theory of his brother--meaning thereby the Stoics--"it is necessary that
they, the gods, should spy into every cottage along the road, so that
they may look after the affairs of men."[305] It is playful,
argumentative, and satirical. At last he proposes to leave the subject.
Socrates would also do so, never asking for the adhesion of any one, but
leaving the full purport of his words to sink into the minds of his
audience. Quintus says that he quite agrees to this, and so the
discourse De Divinatione is brought to an end.

Of his book on fate we have only a fragment, or the middle part of it.
It is the desire of Cicero to show that, in the sequence of affairs
which men call Life, it matters little whether there be a Destiny or
not. Things will run on, and will be changed, or apparently be changed,
by the action of men. What is it to us whether this or that event has
been decreed while we live, and while each follows his own devices? All
this, however, is a little tedious, taken at the end of so long a course
of philosophy; and we rise at last from the perusal with a feeling of
thankfulness that all these books of Chrysippus of which he tells us,
are not still existent to be investigated.

Such is the end of those works which I admit to have been philosophical,
and of which it seems he understood that they were the work of about
eighteen months. They were all written after Cæsar's triumph--when it
was no longer in the power of any Roman to declare his opinion either in
the Senate or in the Forum. Cæsar had put down all opposition, and was
made supreme over everything--till his death. The De Fato was written,
indeed, after he had fallen, but before things had so far shaped
themselves as to make it necessary that Cicero should return to public
life. So, indeed, were the three last moral essays, which I shall notice
in the next chapter; but in truth he had them always in his heart. It
was only necessary that he should send them forth to scribes, leaving
either to himself or to some faithful Tiro the subsequent duty of
rearrangement. But what a head there was there to contain it all!




CHAPTER XIII.

_CICERO'S MORAL ESSAYS._


We have now to deal with the moral essays of this almost inexhaustible
contributor to the world's literature, and we shall then have named
perhaps a quarter of all that he wrote. I have seen somewhere a
calculation that only a tenth of his works remain to us, dug out, as it
were, from the buried ruins of literature by the care of sedulous and
eager scholars. I make a more modest estimate of his powers. Judging
from what we know to have been lost, and from the absence of any effort
to keep the greater portion of his letters, I think that I do not
exaggerate his writing. Who can say but that as time goes on some future
Petrarch or some future Mai may discover writings hitherto unknown,
concealed in convent boxes, or more mysteriously hidden beneath the
labors of Middle-Age monks? It was but in 1822 that the De Republica was
brought to light--so much of it at least as we still possess; and for
more than thirty years afterward Cardinal Mai continued to reproduce,
from time to time, collections of Greek and Latin writings hitherto
unheard of by classical readers. Let us hope, however, that the zeal of
the learned may stop short of that displayed by Simon Du Bos, or we may
have whole treatises of Cicero of which he himself was guiltless.[306]

I can hardly content myself with classifying the De Republica and the De
Legibus under the same name with these essays of Cicero, which are
undoubtedly moral in their nature. But it may pass, perhaps, without
that distinct contradiction which had to be made as to the enveloping
the De Officiis in the garb of philosophy. It has been the combining of
the true and false in one set, and handing them down to the world as
Cicero's philosophy, which has done the mischief. The works reviewed in
the last chapter contained disputations on the Greek philosophy which
Cicero thought might be well handled in the Latin language for the
benefit of his countrymen. It would be well for them to know what
Epicurus taught, or Zeno, and how they differed from Socrates and Plato,
and this he told them. Now in these moral essays he gives them his own
philosophy--if that may be called philosophy which is intended to teach
men how to live well. There are six books on government, called the De
Republica, and three on law; and there are the three treatises on old
age and friendship, each in one book, and that on the duty of man to
man, in three.

There is a common error in the world as to the meaning of the word
republic. It has come to have a sweet savor in the nostrils of men, or a
most evil scent, according to their politics. But there is, in truth,
the Republic of Russia, as there is that of the United States, and that
of England. Cicero, in using it as the name of his work, simply means
"the government;" and the treatise under that head contains an account
of the Roman Empire, and is historical rather than argumentative and
scientific. He himself was an oligarch, and had been brought up amid a
condition of things in which that most deleterious form of government
recommended itself to him as containing all that had been good and
magnificent in the Roman Empire. The great men of Rome, whom the empire
had demanded for its construction, had come up each for the work of a
year; and, when succeeding, had perhaps been elected for a second. By
the expulsion of their kings, the class from whom these men had been
chosen showed their personal desire for honor, and the marvel is that
through so many centuries those oligarchs should have flourished. The
reader, unless he be strongly impregnated with democratic feelings, when
he begins to read Roman history finds himself wedded to the cause of
these oligarchs. They have done the big deeds, and the opposition comes
to them from vulgar hands. Let me ask any man who remembers the reading
of his Livy whether it was not so with him. But it was in truth the
democratic element opposed to these leaders, and the battles they won
from time to time within the walls of the city, which produced the
safety of Rome and enabled the government to go on. Then by degrees the
people became enervated and the leaders became corrupt, and by
masterhood over foreign people and external subjects slaves were
multiplied, and the work appertaining to every man could be done by
another man's hand. Then the evils of oligarchy began. Plunder, rapine,
and luxury took the place of duty performed. A Verres ruled where a
Marcellus had conquered. Cicero, who saw the difference plainly enough
in regard to the individuals, did not perceive that this evil had grown
according to its nature. That state of affairs was produced which
Mommsen has described to us as having been without remedy. But Cicero
did not see it. He had his eyes on the greatness of the past--and on
himself--and would not awake to the fact that the glory was gone from
Rome. He was in this state of mind when he wrote his De Republica, nine
years before the time in which he commenced his philosophical
discussions. Then he still hoped. Cæsar was away in Gaul, and Pompey
maintained at Rome the ghost of the old Republic. He could still open
his mouth and talk boldly of freedom. He had not been as yet driven to
find consolation amid that play of words which constitutes the Greek
philosophy.

I must remind the readers again that the De Republica is a fragment: the
first part is wanting. We find him telling us the story of the elder
Cato, in order that we may understand how good it is that we should not
relax in our public work as long as our health will sustain us. Then he
gives instances to show that the truly good citizen will not be deterred
by the example of men who have suffered for their country, and among the
number he names himself. But he soon introduces the form of dialogue
which he afterward continues, and brings especially the younger Scipio
and Lælius upon the scene. The lessons which are given to us are
supposed to come from the virtue of the titular grandson of the greater
Scipio who out-manoeuvred Hannibal. He continues to tell story after
story out of the Roman chronicles, and at last assures us that that form
of government is the best in which the monarchical element is tempered
by the authority of the leading citizens, and kept alive by the voices
of the people. Is it only because I am an Englishman that he seems to me
to describe that form of government which was to come in England?

The second book also begins with the praises of Cato. Scipio then
commences with Romulus, and tells the history of Rome's kings. Tarquin
is banished, and the Consulate established. He tells us, by no means
with approbation, how the Tribunate was established, and then, alas!
there comes a break in the MS.

In the third we have, as a beginning, a fragment handed down to us by
Augustine, in which Cicero complains of the injustice of Nature in
having sent man into the world, as might a step-mother, naked, weak,
infirm, with soul anxious, timid, and without force, but still having
within it something of divine fire not wholly destroyed. Then, after a
while, through many "lacunæ," Scipio, Lælius, and one Philus fall into a
discourse as to justice. There is a remarkable passage, from which we
learn that the Romans practised protection with a rigor exceeding that
of modern nations. They would not even permit their transalpine allies
to plant their olives and vineyards, lest their produce should make
their way across Italy--whereby they raised the prices against
themselves terribly of oil and wine.[307] "There is a kind of slavery
which is unjust," says one, "when those men have to serve others who
might 'properly belong to themselves.' But when they only are made to be
slaves who--" We may perceive that the speaker went on to say that they
who were born slaves might properly be kept in that position. But it is
evidently intended to be understood that there exists a class who are
slaves by right. Carneades, the later master of the new Academy, has now
joined them, and teaches a doctrine which would not make him popular in
this country. "If you should know," he says, "that an adder lay hid just
where one were about to sit down whose death would be a benefit to you,
you would do wrong unless you were to tell him of it. But you would do
it with impunity, as no one could prove that you knew it." From this may
be seen the nature of the discourses on justice.

The next two books are but broken fragments, treating of morals and
manners. In the sixth we come to that dream of Scipio which has become
so famous in the world of literature that I do not know whether I can do
better than translate it, and add it on as an appendix to the end of my
volume. It is in itself so beautiful in parts that I think that all
readers will thank me. (See appendix to this chapter). At the same time
it has to be admitted that it is in parts fantastic, and might almost be
called childish, were it not that we remember, when reading it, at what
distance of time it was written, and with what difficulty Cicero strove
to master subjects which science has made familiar to us. The music of
the spheres must have been heard in his imagination before he could have
told us of it, as he has done in language which seems to be poetic now
as it was then--and because poetic, therefore not absurd. The length of
the year's period is an extravagance. You may call your space of time by
what name you will; it is long or short in proportion to man's life. He
tells us that we may not hope that our fame shall be heard of on the
other side of the Ganges, or that our voices shall come down through
many years. I myself read this dream of Scipio in a volume found in
Australia, and read it two thousand years after it was written. He could
judge of this world's future only by the past. But when he tells us of
the soul's immortality, and of the heaven to be won by a life of virtue,
of the duty upon us to remain here where God has placed us, and of the
insufficiency of fame to fill the cravings of the human heart, then we
have to own that we have come very near to that divine teaching which he
was not permitted to hear.

Two years afterward, about the time that Milo was killing Clodius, he
wrote his treatise in three books, De Legibus. It is, we are told, a
copy from Plato. As is the Topica a copy from Aristotle, written on
board ship from memory, so may this be called a copy. The idea was given
to him, and many of the thoughts which he has worked up in his own
manner. It is a dialogue between him and Atticus and his brother
Quintus, and treats rather of the nature and origin of law, and how law
should be made to prevail, than of laws as they had been as yet
constructed for the governance of man. All that is said in the first
book may be found scattered through his philosophic treatises. There are
some pretty morsels, as when Atticus tells us that he will for the nonce
allow Cicero's arguments to pass, because the music of the birds and the
waters will prevent his fellow-Epicureans from hearing and being led
away by mistaken doctrine.[308] Now and again he enunciates a great
doctrine, as when he declares that "there is nothing better than that
men should understand that they are born to be just, and that justice is
not a matter of opinion, but is inherent in nature."[309] He constantly
opposes the idea of pleasure, recurring to the doctrine of his Greek
philosophy. It was not by them, however, that he had learned to feel
that a man's final duty here on earth is his duty to other men.

In the second book he inculcates the observance of religious ceremonies
in direct opposition to that which he afterward tells us in his treatise
De Divinatione. But in this, De Legibus, we may presume that he intends
to give instructions for the guidance of the public, whereas in the
other he is communicating to a few chosen friends those esoteric
doctrines which it would be dangerous to give to the world at large.
There is a charming passage, in which we are told not to devote the rich
things of the earth to the gods. Gold and silver will create impure
desire. Ivory, taken from the body of an animal, is a gift not simple
enough for a god. Metals, such as iron, are for war rather than for
worship. An image, if it is to be used, let it be made of one bit of
wood, or one block of stone. If cloth is given, let it not be more than
a woman can make in a month. Let there be no bright colors. White is
best for the gods; and so on.[310] Here we have the wisdom of Plato, or
of those from whom Plato had borrowed it, teaching us a lesson against
which subsequent ages have rebelled. It is not only that a god cannot
want our gold and silver, but that a man does want them. That rule as to
the woman's morsel of cloth was given in some old assembly, lest her
husband or her brother should lose the advantage of her labor. It was
seen what superstition would do in collecting the wealth of the world
round the shrines of the gods. How many a man has since learned to
regret the lost labor of his household; and yet what god has been the
better? There may be a question of æsthetics, indeed, with which Cicero
does not meddle.

In the third book he descends to practical and at the same time
political questions. There had been no matter contested so vehemently
among Romans as that of the establishment and maintenance of the
Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit,
the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is
very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more
prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you
see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more
unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its evils and to
forget all its merits? You might say the same of the Consuls; for the
very possession of power is an evil in itself. But without that evil you
cannot have the good which the institution contains. The power of the
Tribunes is too great, you say. Who denies it? But the violence of the
people, always cruel and immodest, is less so under their own leader
than if no leader had been given them. The leader will measure his
danger; but the people itself know no such measurement."[311] He
afterward takes up the question of the ballot, and is against it on
principle. "Let the people vote as they will," he says, "but let their
votes be known to their betters."[312] It is, alas, useless now to
discuss the matter here in England! We have been so impetuous in our
wish to avoid the evil of bribery--which was quickly going--that we
have rushed into that of dissimulation, which can only be made to go by
revolutionary changes. When men vote by tens of thousands the ballot
will be safe, but no man will then care for the ballot. It is, however,
strange to see how familiar men were under the Roman Empire with matters
which are perplexing us to-day.

We now come to the three purely moral essays, the last written of his
works, except the Philippics and certain of his letters, and the Topica.
Indeed, when you reach the last year or two of his life, it becomes
difficult to assign their exact places to each. He mentions one as
written, and then another; but at last this latter appears before the
former. They were all composed in the same year, the year before his
death--the most active year of his life, as far as his written works are
concerned--and I shall here treat De Senectute first, then De Amicitia,
and the De Officiis last, believing them to have been published in that
order.

The De Senectute is an essay written in defence of old age, generally
called Cato Major. It is supposed to have been spoken by the old Censor,
149 B.C., and to have been listened to by Scipio and Lælius. This was
the same Scipio who had the dream--who, in truth, was not a Scipio at
all, but a son of Paulus Æmilius, whom we remember in history as the
younger Africanus. Cato rushes at once into his subject, and proves to
us his point by insisting on all those commonplace arguments which were
probably as well known before his time as they have been since. All men
wish for old age, but none rejoice when it has come. The answer is that
no man really wishes for old age, but simply wishes for a long life, of
which old age is the necessary ending. It creeps on us so quickly! But
in truth it does not creep quicker on youth than does youth on infancy;
but the years seem to fly fast because not marked by distinct changes.
It is the part of a wise man to see that each portion of his five-act
poem shall be well performed. Cato goes on with his lesson, and tells us
perhaps all that could be said on behalf of old age at that period of
the world's history. It was written by an old man to an old man; for it
is addressed to Atticus, who was now sixty-seven, and of course deals
much in commonplaces. But it is full of noble thoughts, and is pleasant,
and told in the easiest language; and it leaves upon the reader a sweet
savor of the dignity of age. Let the old man feel that it is not for him
to attempt the pranks of youth, and he will already have saved himself
from much of the evil which Time can do to him. I am ready for you, and
you cannot hurt me. "Let not the old man assume the strength of the
young, as a young man does not that of the bull or the elephant. * * *
But still there is something to be regretted by an orator, for to talk
well requires not only intellect but all the powers of the body. The
melodious voice, however, remains, which--and you see my years--I have
not yet lost. The voice of an old man should always be tranquil and
contained."[313] He tells a story of Massinissa, who was then supposed
to be ninety. He was stiff in his joints, and therefore when he went a
journey had himself put upon a horse, and never left it, or started on
foot and never mounted.[314] "We must resist old age, my Lælius. We must
compensate our shortness by our diligence, my Scipio. As we fight
against disease, so let us contend with old age.[315] * * * Why age
should be avaricious I could never tell. Can there be anything more
absurd than to demand so great a preparation for so small a
journey?"[316] He tells them that he knew their fathers, and that "he
believes they are still alive--that, though they have gone from this
earth, they are still leading that life which can only be considered
worthy of the name."[317]

The De Amicitia is called Lælius. It is put into the mouth of Lælius,
and is supposed to be a discourse on friendship held by him in the
presence of his two sons-in-law, Caius Fannius and Mucius Scævola, a few
days after the death of Scipio his friend. Not Damon and Pythias were
more renowned for their friendship than Scipio and Lælius. He discusses
what is friendship, and why it is contracted; among whom friendship
should exist; what should be its laws and duties; and, lastly, by what
means it should be preserved.

Cicero begins by telling the story of his own youth; how he had been
placed under the charge of Scævola the augur, and how, having changed
his toga, he never left the old man's side till he died; and he recalls
how once, sitting with him in a circle with friends, Scævola fell into
that mode of conversation which was usual with him, and told him how
once Lælius had discoursed to them on friendship. It is from first to
last fresh and green and cooling, as is the freshness of the early
summer grass to men who live in cities. The reader feels, as he goes on
with it, that he who had such thoughts and aspirations could never have
been altogether unhappy. Coming at the end of his life, in the telling
the stories of which we have had to depend so much on his letters to
Atticus, it reminds me of the love that existed between them. He has
sometimes been querulous with his Atticus. He has complained of bad
advice, of deficient care, of halting friendship--in reading which
accusations we have, all of us, declared him to be wrong. But Atticus
understood him. He knew that the privileges and the burden must go
together, and told himself how much more than sufficient were the
privileges to compensate the burden. When we make our histories on the
bases of such loving letters, we should surely open them with careful
hands, and deal with them in sympathy with their spirit. In writing this
treatise De Amicitia especially for the eyes of Atticus, how constantly
the heart must have gone back to all that had passed between them--how
confident he must have been of the truth of his friend! He who, after
nearly half a century of friendship, could thus write to his friend on
friendship cannot have been an unhappy man.

"Should a new friendship spring up," he tells us, "let it not be
repressed. You shall still gather fruit from young trees; but do not let
it take the place of the old. Age and custom will have given the old
fruit a flavor of its own. Who is there that would ride a new horse in
preference to one tried--one who knows your hand?"[318]

I regard the De Officiis as one of the most perfect treatises on morals
which the world possesses, whether for the truth of the lessons given,
for their universality, or for the beauty and lightness of the language.
It is on a subject generally heavy, but is treated with so much art and
grace as to make it a delight to have read it, and an important part of
education to know it. It is addressed to his son, and is as good now as
when it was written. There is not a precept taught in it which is not
modern as well as ancient, and which is not fit alike for Christians and
Pagans. A system of morality, we might have said, should be one which
would suit all men alike. We are bound to acknowledge that this will
suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it
must be worthy of that name. The "honestum" means much more in Latin
than it does in English. Neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the
rendering--not that honor or that honesty which we know. Modern honor
flies so high that it leaves honesty sometimes too nearly out of sight;
while honesty, though a sterling virtue, ignores those sentiments on
which honor is based. "Honestum" includes it all; and Cicero has raised
his lessons to such a standard as to comprise it all. But he so teaches
that listeners delight to hear. He never preaches. He does not fulminate
his doctrine at you, bidding you beware of backslidings and of
punishments; but he leads you with him along the grassy path, till you
seem to have found out for yourself what is good--you and he together,
and together to have learned that which is manly, graceful, honest, and
decorous.

In Cicero's essays is to be found always a perfect withdrawal of himself
from the circumstances of the world around him; so that the reader shall
be made to suppose that, in the evening of his life, having reached at
last, by means of work done for the State, a time of blessed rest, he
gives forth the wisdom of his age, surrounded by all that a tranquil
world can bestow upon him. Look back through the treatises written
during the last two years, and each shall appear to have been prepared
in some quiet and undisturbed period of his life; but we know that the
last polish given by his own hands to these three books De Officiis was
added amid the heat and turmoils of the Philippics. It is so singular,
this power of adapting his mind to whatever pursuit he will, that we are
taught almost to think that there must have been two Ciceros, and that
the one was eager in personal conflict with Antony, while the other was
seated in the garden of some Italian villa meditating words by obeying
which all men might be ennobled.

In the dialectical disputations of the Greek philosophers he had picked
up a mode of dividing his subject into numbers which is hardly fitted
for a discourse so free and open as is this. We are therefore somewhat
offended when we are told that virtue is generally divided "into three
headings."[319] If it be so, and if it be necessary that we should know
it, it should, I think, be conveyed to us without this attempt at
logical completeness. It is impossible to call this a fault. Accuracy
must, indeed, be in all writers a virtue. But feeling myself to be
occasionally wounded by this numbering, I mention it. In the De Officiis
he divides the entire matter into three parts, and to each part he
devotes a book. In the first he considers whether a thing is fit to be
done or left undone--that is, whether it be "honestum" or "turpe;" in
the second, whether it be expedient, that is "utile," or the reverse;
and in the third he compares the "honestum" and the "utile," and tells
us what to choose and what to avoid.

The duty due by a citizen to his country takes with him a place somewhat
higher than we accord to it. "Parents are dear, children are dear to us,
so are relations and friends; but our country embraces it all, for what
good man would not die so that he might serve it? How detestable, then,
is the barbarity of those who wound their country at every turn, and
have been and are occupied in its destruction."[320] He gives us some
excellent advice as to our games, which might be read with
advantage, perhaps, by those who row in our university races. But at the
end of it he tells us that the hunting-field affords an honest and
fitting recreation.[321] I have said that he was modern in his
views--but not altogether modern. He defends the suicide of Cato. "To
them," he says, speaking of Cato's companions in Africa, "it might not
have been forgiven. Their life was softer and their manners easier. But
to Cato nature had given an invincible gravity of manners which he had
strengthened with all the severity of his will. He had always remained
steadfast in the purpose that he would never stand face to face with the
tyrant of his country."[322] There was something terribly grand in
Cato's character, which loses nothing in coming to us from the lips of
Cicero. So much Cicero allows to the stern nature of the man's
character. Let us look back and we shall find that we make the same
allowance. This is not, in truth, a lesson which he gives us, but an
apology which he makes.

Read his advice given in the following line for the outward demeanor of
a gentleman: "There are two kinds of beauty. The one is loveliness,
which is a woman's gift. But dignity belongs to the man. Let all
ornament be removed from the person not worthy of a man to wear--and all
fault in gesture and in motion which is like to it. The manners of the
wrestling-ground and of the stage are sometimes odious; but let us see
the actor or the wrestler walking simple and upright, and we praise him.
Let him use a befitting neatness, not verging toward the effeminate, but
just avoiding a rustic harshness. The same measure is to be taken with
your clothes as with other matters in which a middle course is
best."[323]

Then he tells his son what pursuits are to be regarded as sordid. "Those
sources of gain are to be regarded as mean in the pursuit of which men
are apt to be offended, as are the business of tax-gathers and usurers.
All those are to be regarded as illiberal to which men bring their work
but not their art." As for instance, the painter of a picture shall be
held to follow a liberal occupation--but not so the picture dealer.
"They are sordid who buy from merchants that they may sell again: they
have to lie like the mischief or they cannot make their living. All mere
workmen are engaged in ignoble employment: what of grandeur can the mere
workshop produce? Least of all can those trades be said to be good
which administer only to our pleasures--such as fish-mongers, butchers,
cooks, and poulterers."[324] He adds at the end of his list that of all
employment none is better than agriculture, or more worthy of the care
of a freeman. In all of this it is necessary that we should receive what
he says with some little allowance for the difference in time; but there
is nothing, if we look closely into it, in which we cannot see the
source of noble ideas, and the reason for many notions which are now
departing from us--whether for good or evil who shall say?

In the beginning of the second book he apologizes for his love of
philosophy, as he calls it, saying that he knew how it had been misliked
among those round him. "But when the Republic," he says, "had ceased to
be--that Republic which had been all my care--my employment ceased both
in the Forum and the Senate. But when my mind absolutely refused to be
inactive, I thought that I might best live down the misery of the time
if I devoted myself to philosophy."[325] From this we may see how his
mind had worked when the old occupation of his life was gone. "Nihil
agere autem quum animus non posset!" How piteous was his position, and
yet how proud! There was nothing for him to do--but there was nothing
because hitherto there had been so much that he had always done.

He tells his son plainly how an honest man must live. To be ashamed of
nothing, he must do nothing of which he will be ashamed. But for him
there is this difficulty: "If any one on his entrance into the world has
had laid upon him the greatness of a name won by his father, let us
say--as, my Cicero, has perhaps happened to you--the eyes of all men
will be cast upon him, and inquiry will be made as to his mode of life.
He will be so placed under the meridian sun that no word spoken or deed
done by him shall be hidden.[326] * * * He must live up to the glory to
which he has been born." He gives to his son much advice about the bar.
"But the greatest praise," he says, "comes from defending a man accused;
and especially so when you shall assist one who is surrounded and
ill-treated by the power of some great man. This happened to me more
than once in my youth, when, for instance, I defended Roscius Amerinus
against Sulla's power." The speech is with us extant still.[327] He
tells us much as to the possession of money, and the means of insuring
it in a well-governed state. "Take care that you allow no debts to the
injury of the Republic. You must guard against this at all hazards--but
never by taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. Nothing is so
requisite to the State as public credit--which cannot exist unless
debtors be made to pay what they owe. There was nothing to which I
looked more carefully than this when I was Consul. Horse and foot, they
tried their best; but I opposed them, and freed the Republic from the
threatened evil. Never were debts more easily or more quickly collected.
When men knew that they could not ignore their creditors, then they
paid. But he who was then the conquered is the conqueror now. He has
effected what he contemplated--even though it be not now necessary for
him."[328] From this passage it seems that these books must have been
first written before Cæsar's death. Cæsar, at the time of Catiline's
conspiracy, had endeavored to annul all debts--that is, to establish
"new tables" according to the Roman idiom--but had failed by Cicero's
efforts. He had since affected it, although he might have held his power
without seeking for the assistance of such debtors. Who could that be
but Cæsar? In the beginning of the third book there is another passage
declaring the same thing: "I have not strength enough for silent
solitude, and therefore give myself up to my pen. In the short time
since the Republic has been overturned I have written more than in all
my former years."[329] That, again, he could not have written after
Cæsar had fallen. We are left, indeed, to judge, from the whole nature
of the discourse, that it was written at the period in which the wrongs
done by Cæsar to Rome--wrongs at any rate as they appeared to
Cicero--were just culminating in that regal pride of action which led to
his slaughter. It was written then, but was published a few months
afterward.




CHAPTER XIV.

_CICERO'S RELIGION._


I should hardly have thought it necessary to devote a chapter of my book
to the religion of a pagan, had I not, while studying Cicero's life,
found that I was not dealing with a pagan's mind. The mind of the Roman
who so lived as to cause his life to be written in after-times was at
this period, in most instances, nearly a blank as to any ideas of a God.
Horace is one who in his writing speaks much of himself. Ovid does so
still more constantly. They are both full of allusions to "the gods."
They are both aware that it is a good thing to speak with respect of the
national worship, and that the orders of the Emperor will be best
obeyed by believers. "Dis te minorem quod geris, imperas," says Horace,
when, in obedience probably to Augustus, he tells his fellow-citizens
that they are forgetting their duties in their unwillingness to pay for
the repairs of the temples. "Superi, quorum sumus omnia," says Ovid,
thinking it well to show in one of his writings, which he sent home from
his banishment, that he still entertained the fashionable creed. But
they did not believe. It was at that time the fashion to pretend a light
belief, in order that those below might live as though they believed,
and might induce an absolute belief in the women and the children. It
was not well that the temple of the gods should fall into ruins. It was
not well that the augurs, who were gentlemen of high family, should go
for nothing. Cæsar himself was the high-priest, and thought much of the
position, but he certainly was bound by no priestcraft. A religious
belief was not expected from a gentleman. Religious ceremonies had
gradually sunk so low in the world's esteem that the Roman nobility had
come to think of their gods as things to swear by, or things to amuse
them, or things from which, if times were bad with them, some doubtful
assistance might perchance come. In dealing with ordinary pagans of
those days religion may be laid altogether on one side. I remember no
passage in Livy or Tacitus indicating a religious belief.

But with Cicero my mind is full of such; and they are of a nature to
make me feel that had he lived a hundred years later I should have
suspected him of some hidden knowledge of Christ's teachings. M. Renan
has reminded us of Cicero's dislike to the Jews. He could not learn from
the Jews--though the Jew, indeed, had much that he could teach him. The
religion which he required was far from the selfishness of either Jew or
Roman. He believed in eternity, in the immortality of the soul, in
virtue for the sake of its reward hereafter, in the omnipotence of God,
the performance of his duty to his neighbors, in conscience, and in
honesty. "Certum esse in cælo definitum locum, ubi beati ævo sempiterno
fruantur."[330] "There is certainly a place in heaven where the blessed
shall enjoy eternal life." Can St. Paul have expressed with more
clearness his belief as to a heaven? Earlier in his career he expresses
in language less definite, but still sufficiently clear, his ideas as to
another world: "An vero tam parvi animi videamur esse omnes, qui in
republica, atque in his vitæ periculis laboribusque versamur, ut, quum,
usque ad extremum spatium, nullum tranquillum atque otiosum spiritum
duxerimus, vobiscum simul moritura omnia arbitremur?"[331] "Are we all
of us so poor in spirit as to think that after toiling for our country
and ourselves--though we have not had one moment of ease here upon
earth--when we die all things shall die with us?" And when he did go it
should be to that glory for which virtue shall have trained him. "Neque
te sermonibus vulgi dederis, nec in præmis humanis spem posueris rerum
tuarum; suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad verum
decus."[332] "You shall put your hope neither in man's opinion nor in
human rewards; but Virtue itself by her own charms shall lead you the
way to true glory." He thus tells us his idea of God's omnipotence:
"Quam vim animum esse dicunt mundi, eamdemque esse mentem sapientiamque
perfectam; quem Deum appellant."[333] "This force they call the soul of
the world, and, looking on it as perfect in intelligence and wisdom,
they name it their God." And again he says, speaking of God's care,
"Quis enim potest--quam existimet a deo se curari--non et dies, et
noctes divinum numen horrere?"[334] "Who is there, when he thinks that a
God is taking care of him, shall not live day and night in awe of his
divine majesty?" As to man's duty to his neighbor, a subject as to which
Pagans before and even after the time of Cicero seem to have had but
vague ideas, the treatise De Officiis is full of it, as indeed is the
whole course of his life. "Omne officium, quod ad conjunctionem hominum
et ad societatem tuendam valet, anteponendum est illi officio, quod
cognitione et scientia continetur."[335] "All duty which tends to
protect the society of man with men is to be preferred to that of which
science is the simple object." His belief in a conscience is shown in
the law he lays down against suicide: "Vetat enim dominans ille in nobis
deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare."[336] "That God within us forbids
us to depart hence without his permission." As to justice, I need give
no quotation from his works as proof of that virtue which all his works
have been written to uphold.

This pagan had his ideas of God's governance of men, and of man's
required obedience to his God, so specially implanted in his heart, that
he who undertakes to write his life should not pass it by unnoticed. To
us our religion has come as a thing to believe, though taking too often
the form of a stern duty. We have had it from our fathers and our
mothers; and though it has been given to us by perhaps indifferent
hands, still it has been given. It has been there with all its written
laws, a thing to live by--if we choose. Rich and poor, the majority of
us know at any rate the Lord's Prayer, and most of us have repeated it
regularly during our lives. There are not many of us who have not
learned that they are deterred by something beyond the law from
stealing, from murder, from committing adultery. All Rome and all Romans
knew nothing of any such obligation, unless it might be that some few,
like Cicero, found it out from the recesses of their own souls. He found
it out, certainly. "Suis te oportet illecebris ipsa virtus trahat ad
verum decus." "Virtue itself by its own charms shall lead you the way to
true glory." The words to us seem to be quite commonplace. There is not
a curate who might not put them into a sermon. But in Cicero's time they
were new, and hitherto untaught. There was the old Greek philosopher's
idea that the [Greek: to kalon]--the thing of beauty--was to be found in
virtue, and that it would make a man altogether happy if he got a hold
of it. But there was no God connected with it, no future life, no
prospect sufficient to redeem a man from the fear of death. It was
leather and prunella, that, from first to last. The man had to die and
go, melancholy, across the Styx. But Cicero was the first to tell his
brother Romans of an intelligible heaven. "Certum esse in cælo
definitum locum ubi beati ævo sempiterno fruantur." "There is certainly
a place in heaven where the blessed shall enjoy eternal life." And then
how nearly he had realized that doctrine which tells us that we should
do unto others as we would they should do unto us--the very pith and
marrow and inside meaning of Christ's teaching, by adapting which we
have become human, by neglecting which we revert to paganism. When we
look back upon the world without this law, we see nothing good in it, in
spite of individual greatness and national honor. But Cicero had found
it.--"That brotherhood between men, that agreement as to what may be
useful to all, and that general love for the human race!"[337] It is all
contained in these few words, but if anything be wanted to explain at
length our duty to our neighbors it will be found there on reference to
this passage. How different has been the world before that law was given
to us and since! Even the existence of that law, though it be not
obeyed, has softened the hearts of men.

If, as some think, it be the purport of Christ's religion to teach men
to live after a godlike fashion rather than to worship God after a
peculiar form, then may we be allowed to say that Cicero was almost a
Christian, even before the coming of Christ. If, as some think, an
eternity of improved existence for all is to be looked for by the
disciples of Christ, rather than a heaven of glory for the few and for
the many, a hell that never shall be mitigated, then had Cicero
anticipated much of Christ's doctrine. That he should have approached
the mystical portion of our religion it would of course be absurd to
suppose. But a belief in that mystical part is not essential for forming
the conduct of men. The divine birth, and the doctrine of the Trinity,
and the Lord's Supper, are not necessary to teach a man to live with his
brother men on terms of forbearance and brotherly love. You shall live
with a man from year's end to year's end, and shall not know his creed
unless he tell you, or that you see him performing the acts of his
worship; but you cannot live with him, and not know whether he live in
accordance with Christ's teaching. And so it was with Cicero. Read his
works through from the beginning to the end, and you shall feel
that you are living with a man whom you might accompany across the
village green to church, should he be kind enough to stay with you over
the Sunday. The urbanity, the softness, the humanity, the sweetness are
all there. But you shall not find it to be so with Cæsar, or Lucretius,
or with Virgil. When you read his philosophical treatises it is as
though you were discussing with some latter-day scholar the theories of
Plato or of Epicurus. He does not talk of them as though he believed in
them for his soul's guidance, nor do you expect it. All the interest
that you have in the conversation would be lost were you to find such
faith as that. You would avoid the man, as a pagan. The Stoic doctrine
would so shock you, when brought out for real wear, as to make you feel
yourself in the company of some mad Atheist--with a man for whose
welfare, early or late in life, church bells had never been rung. But
with a man who has his Plato simply by heart you can spend the long
summer day in sweet conversation. So it is with Cicero. You lie down
with him looking out upon the sea at Comæ, or sit with him beneath the
plane-tree of Crassus, and listen while he tells you of this doctrine
and the other. So Arcesilas may be supposed to have said, and so
Carneades laid down the law. It was that and no more. But when he tells
you of the place assigned to you in heaven, and how you are to win it,
then he is in earnest.

We care in general but little for any teacher of religion who has not
struggled to live up to his own teaching. Cicero has told us of his
ideas of the Godhead, and has given us his theory as to those deeds by
which a man may hope to achieve the heaven in which that God will reward
with everlasting life those who have deserved such bliss. Love of
country comes first with him. It behooves, at any rate, a man to be
true to his country from first to last. And honesty and honor come
next--that "honestum" which carries him to something beyond the mere
integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen. Then family affection; then
friendship; and then that constant love for our fellow-creatures
which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should
do unto us. Running through these there are a dozen smaller virtues, but
each so mingled with the other as to have failed in obtaining a separate
place--dignity, manliness, truth, mercy, long-suffering, forgiveness,
and humanity.

Try him by these all round and see how he will come out of the fire. He
so loved his country that we may say that he lived for it entirely; that
from the first moment in which he began to study as a boy in Rome the
great profession of an advocate, to the last in which he gave his throat
to his murderers, there was not a moment in which his heart did not
throb for it.

In the defence of Amerinus and in the prosecution of Verres, his object
was to stop the proscriptions, to shame the bench, and to punish the
plunderers of the provinces. In driving out Catiline the same strong
feeling governed him. It was the same in Cilicia. The same patriotism
drove him to follow Pompey to the seat of war. The same filled him with
almost youthful energy when the final battle for the Republic came. It
has been said of him that he began life as a Liberal in attacking Sulla,
and that afterward he became a Conservative when he gained the
Consulship; that he opposed Cæsar, and then flattered him, and then
rejoiced at his death. I think that they who have so accused him have
hardly striven to read his character amidst the changes of the time. A
Conservative he was always; but he wished to see that the things around
him were worth conserving. He was always opposed to Cæsar, whose genius
and whose spirit were opposed to his own. But in order that something of
the Republic might be preserved, it became necessary to bear with Cæsar.
For himself he would take nothing from Cæsar, except permission to
breathe Italian air. He flattered him, as was the Roman custom. He had
to do that, or his presence would have been impossible--and he could
always do something by his presence. As far as love of country went,
which among virtues stood the first with him, he was pure and great.
There was not a moment in his career in which the feeling was not in his
heart--mixed indeed with personal ambition, as must be necessary, for
how shall a man show his love for his country except by his desire to
stand high in its counsels? To be called "Pater Patriæ" by Cato was to
his ears the sweetest music he had ever heard.

Let us compare his honesty with that of the times in which he lived. All
the high rewards of the State were at his command, and he might so have
taken them as to have been safer, firmer, more powerful, by taking them;
but he took nothing. No gorgeous wealth from a Roman province stuck to
his hands. We think of our Cavendishes, our Howards, and our Stanleys,
and feel that there is nothing in such honesty as this. But the
Cavendishes, the Howards, and the Stanleys of those days robbed with
unblushing pertinacity. Cæsar robbed so much that he put himself above
all question of honesty. Where did he, who had been so greatly in debt
before he went to Spain, get the million with which he bribed his
adherents? Cicero neither bought nor sold. Twenty little stories have
been told of him, not one with a grain of enduring truth to justify one
of them. He borrowed, and he always paid; he lent, but was not always
repaid. With such a voice to sell as his, a voice which carried with it
the verdict of either guilt or innocence, what payments would it not
have been worth the while of a Roman nobleman to make to him? No such
payments, as far as we can tell, were ever made. He took a present of
books from his friend Poetus, and asked another friend what "Cincius"
would say to it? Men struggling to find him out, and not understanding
his little joke, have said, "Lo! he has been paid for his work. He
defended Poetus, and Poetus gave him books." "Did he defend
Poetus?" you ask. "We surmise so, because he gave him books," they
reply. I say that at any rate the fault should be brought home against
him before it is implied from chance passages in his own letters.

Cicero's affection for his family gives us an entirely unfamiliar
insight into Roman manners. There is a softness, a tenderness, an
eagerness about it, such as would give a grace to the life of some
English nobleman who had his heart garnered up for him at home, though
his spirit was at work for his country. But we do not expect this from
the Pompeys and Cæsars and Catos of Rome, perhaps because we do not know
them as we know Cicero. It is odd, however, that we should have no word
of love for his boys, as to Pompey; no word of love for his daughter, as
to Cæsar. But Cicero's love for his wife, his brother, his son, his
nephew, especially for his daughter, was unbounded. All offences on
their part he could forgive, till there came his wife's supposed
dishonesty, which was not to be forgiven. The ribaldry of Dio Cassius
has polluted the story of his regard for Tullia; but in truth we know
nothing sweeter in the records of great men, nothing which touches us
more, than the profundity of his grief. His readiness to forgive his
brother and to forgive his nephew, his anxiety to take them back to his
affections, his inability to live without them, tell of his tenderness.

His friendship for Atticus was of the same calibre. It was of that
nature that it could not only bear hard words but could occasionally
give them without fear of a breach. Can any man read the records of this
long affection without wishing that he might be blessed with such a
friendship? As to that love of our fellow-creatures which comes not from
personal liking for them, but from that kindness of heart toward all
mankind which has been the fruit to us of Christ's teaching, that desire
to do unto others as they should do unto us, his whole life is an
example. When Quæstor in Sicily, his chief duty was to send home corn.
He did send it home, but so that he hurt none of those in Sicily by whom
it was supplied. In his letter to his brother as to his government of
Asia Minor, the lessons which he teaches are to the same effect. When he
was in Cilicia, it was the same from first to last. He would not take a
penny from the poor provincials--not even what he might have taken by
law. "Non modo non fænum, sed ne ligna quidem!" Where did he get the
idea that it was a good thing not to torment the poor wretches that were
subjected to his power? Why was it that he took such an un-Roman
pleasure in making the people happy?

Cicero, no doubt, was a pagan, and in accordance with the rules
prevailing in such matters it would be necessary to describe him of that
religion, if his religion be brought under discussion. But he has not
written as pagans wrote, nor did he act as they acted. The educated
intelligence of the Roman world had come to repudiate their gods, and to
create for itself a belief--in nothing. It was easier for a thoughtful
man, and pleasanter for a thoughtless, to believe in nothing, than in
Jupiter and Juno, in Venus and in Mars. But when there came a man of
intellect so excellent as to find, when rejecting the gods of his
country, that there existed for him the necessity of a real God, and to
recognize it as a fact that the intercourse of man with man demanded it,
we must not, in recording the facts of his life, pass over his religion
as though it were simple chance. Christ came to us, and we do not need
another teacher. Christ came to us so perfected in manhood as to be free
from blemish. Cicero did not come at all as a teacher. He never
recognized the possibility of teaching men a religion, or probably the
necessity. But he did see the way to so much of the truth as to perceive
that there was a heaven; that the way to it must be found in good deeds
here on earth; and that the good deeds required of him would be kindness
to others. Therefore I have written this final chapter on his religion.




APPENDIX TO VOLUME II.

APPENDIX.

(_See_ page 308, Vol. II.)

_SCIPIO'S DREAM._


Scipio the younger had gone, when in Africa, to meet Massinissa, and had
there discussed with the African king the character of his nominal
grandfather, for he was in fact the son of Paulus Æmilius and had been
adopted by the son of the great conqueror at Zama. He had then retired
to rest, and had dreamed a dream, and is thus made to tell it. Africanus
the elder had shown himself to him greater than life, and had spoken to
him in the following words: "Approach," said the ghost; "approach in
spirit, and cease to fear, and write down on the tablets of your memory
this that I shall tell you.

"Look down upon that city. I compelled it to obey Rome. It now seeks to
renew its former strife, and you, but yet new to arms, have come to
conquer it." Then from his starry heights he points to the once
illustrious Carthage. "In twice twelve months that city you shall
conquer, and shall have earned for yourself that name which by descent
has become yours. Destroyer of Carthage, triumphant Censor, ambassador
from Rome to Egypt, Syria, Asia, and Greece, you shall be chosen Consul
a second time, though absent and, having besieged Numantia, shall bring
a great war to an end. Then will the whole State turn to you and to your
name. The Senate, the citizens, the allies will expect you. In one word,
it will be to you as Dictator that the Republic will look to be saved
from the crimes of your relatives.

"But that you may be always alive to protect the Republic, know this.
There is in heaven a special place of bliss for those who have served
their country. To that God who looks down upon the earth there is
nothing dearer than men bound to each other by reverence for the laws."

"Then, frightened, I asked him whether he were still living, and my
father Paulus, and others whom we believed to have departed. 'In truth,'
he said, 'they live who have escaped from the bondage of the flesh. This
which you call life is death. But behold Paulus your father.' Beholding
him, I poured forth a world of tears, but he, embracing me, forbade me
to weep.

"'Since this of yours is life, as my grandsire tells me,' I said, as
soon as my tears allowed me to speak, 'why, O father most revered, do I
delay here on earth, rather than haste to meet you?' 'It cannot be so,'
he answered. 'Unless that God whose temple is around you everywhere
shall have liberated you from the chains of the body, you cannot come to
us. Men are begotten subject to his law, and inhabit the globe which is
called the earth; and to them is given a soul from among the stars,
perfect in their form and alive with heavenly instincts, which complete
with wondrous speed their rapid courses. Wherefore, my son, by you and
by all just men that soul must be retained within its body's confines,
nor can it be allowed to flit without command of him by whom it has been
given to you. You may not escape the duty which God has trusted to you.
Live, my Scipio, and shine with piety and justice, as your grandfather
did and I have done. It is your duty to your parents and to your
relatives, but especially your duty to your country. There lies the road
to heaven. By following that course shall you find your way to those who
crowd with disembodied spirits the realm beneath your eyes.'

"Then did I behold that splendid circle of fire which you, after the
Greeks, call the Milky-way, and looking out from thence could see that
all things were beautiful and all wonderful. There were stars which we
cannot see from hence, and others of tremendous, unsuspected size; and
then those smaller ones nearest to us, which shine with a reflected
light. But every star among them all loomed larger than our earth. That
seemed so mean, that I was sorry to belong to so small an empire.

        *       *       *       *       *

"As I gazed a sound struck my ears. 'What music is that,' said I,
'swelling so loudly and yet so sweet?'

"'It is that harmony of the stars,' he said, 'which the world creates by
its own movement. Low and loud, base and treble, they clang together
with unequal intervals, but each in time and tune. They could not work
in silence, and nature demands that from one end of heaven to the other
they shall be sonorous with a deep diapason. The far off give a loud
treble twang. Those nearest to the moon sound low and base. The earth,
the ninth in order, immovable upon its lowest seat, occupies the centre
of the system. From the eight there come seven sounds, distinct among
themselves, Venus and Mercury joining in one effort. In that number is
the secret of all human affairs. Learned men have made their way to
heaven by imitating this music; as have others also by the excellence of
their studies. Filled with this sound the sense of hearing has failed
among men. What sense is duller? It is as when the Nile falls down to
her cataracts, and the nations around, astonished by the tumult, become
deaf.'

       *       *       *       *       *

"'Then,' said Africanus, 'look and see how small are the habitations of
men, how grand are those of the angels of light. What fame can you
expect from men, or what glory? You see how they live in mean places--in
small spots, lonely amid vast solitudes, and that they who inhabit them
dwell so isolated that nothing can pass between them. Can you expect
glory from them?

"'You behold this earth surrounded by zones. You see two of them, frozen
from their poles, have been made solid with everlasting ice; and how the
centre realm between them has been scorched by the sun's rays. Two,
however, are fit for life. They who inhabit the southern, whose
footsteps are opposed to ours, are a race of whom we know nothing. But
see how small a part of this little earth is inhabited by us who are
turned toward the north. For all the earth which you inhabit, wide and
narrow, is but a small island surrounded by that sea which you call the
great Atlantic Ocean--which, however large as you deem it, how small it
is! Has your name or has mine been able, over this small morsel of the
earth's surface, to ascend Mount Caucasus or to cross the Ganges? Who in
the regions of the rising or setting sun has heard of our fame? Cut off
these regions, distant but a hand's breadth, and see within what narrow
borders will your reputation be spread! They who speak of you--for how
short a time will their voices be heard?

"'Grant that man, unenvious, shall wish to hand down your fame to future
ages, still there will come those storms of nature. The earth will be
immersed in water and scorched with fire; a doom which in the course of
ages must happen, and will deny to you any lasting glory. Will you be
content that they who are to come only shall hear of you, when to those
crowds of better men who have passed away your name shall be as nothing?

"'And remember too that no man's renown shall reach the duration of a
year. Men call that space a year which they measure by the return of a
single star to its old place. But when all the stars shall have come
back, and shall have made their course across the heavens, then, then
shall that truly be called a year. In this year how many are there of
our ages contained. For as when Romulus died, and made his way here to
these temples of the gods, the sun was seen by man to fade away, so will
the sun again depart from the heavens, when the stars, having
accomplished their spaces, shall have returned to their old abodes. Of
this, the true year, not a twentieth part has been as yet consumed. If,
then, you despair of reaching this abode, which all of true excellence
strive to approach, what glory is there to be gained? When gained, it
will not last the space of one year. Look then aloft, my son, and fix
your eyes upon this eternal home. Despise all vulgar fame, nor place
your hopes on human rewards. Let Virtue by her own charms lead you on to
true glory. Let men talk of you--for talk they will. Man's talk of man
is small in its space, and short-lived in its time. It dies with a
generation and is forgotten by posterity.'

"When he had spoken I thus answered him: 'Africanus,' I said, 'I indeed
have hitherto endeavored to find a road to heaven, following your
example and my father's; but now, for so great a reward, will I struggle
on more bravely.' 'Struggle on,' he replied, 'and know this--not that
thou art mortal but only this thy body. This frail form is not thyself.
It is the mind, invisible, and not a shape at which a man may point with
his fingers. Know thyself to be a god. To be strong in purpose and in
mind; to remember to provide and to rule; to restrain and to move the
body it is placed over, as the great God does the world--that is to be a
god. And as the God who moves this mortal world is eternal, so does an
eternal soul govern this frail body.'"

  FOOTNOTES:

  [1] As I shall explain a few pages farther on, four of these
  speeches are supposed by late critics to be spurious.

  [2] See Mr. Long's introduction to these orations. "All this
  I admit," says Mr. Long, speaking of some possible
  disputant; "but he will never convince any man of sense that
  the first of Roman writers, a man of good understanding, and
  a master of eloquence, put together such tasteless, feeble,
  and extravagant compositions."

  [3] Pro Cn. Plancio, ca. xxx.: "Nonne etiam illa testis est
  oratio quæ est a me prima habita in Senatu. * * * Recitetur
  oratio, quæ propter rei magnitudinem dicta de scripto est."

  [4] Quintilian, lib. xi., ca. 1, who as a critic worshipped
  Cicero, has nevertheless told us very plainly what had been
  up to his time the feeling of the Roman world as to Cicero's
  self-praise: "Reprehensus est in hac parte non mediocriter
  Cicero."

  [5] Ad Att., lib. iv., 2. He recommends that the speech
  should be put into the hands of all young men, and thus
  gives further proof that we still here have his own words.
  When so much has come to us, we cannot but think that an
  oration so prepared would remain extant.

  [6] I had better, perhaps, refer my readers to book v.,
  chap. viii., of Mommsen's History.

  [7] "Politique des Romains dans la religion;" a treatise
  which was read by its author to certain students at
  Bordeaux. It was intended as a preface to a longer work.

  [8] Ad Div., lib. i., 2.

  [9] Ad Div., lib. i., 5: "Nosti hominis tarditatem, et
  taciturnitatem."

  [10] Ad Quintum Fratrem, lib. ii., 3.

  [11] Ibid., lib. ii., 6.

  [12] Ad Att., lib. iv., 5.

  [13] Ad Div., lib. v., 12.

  [14] Very early in the history of Rome it was found
  expedient to steal an Etruscan soothsayer for the reading of
  these riddles, which was gallantly done by a young soldier,
  who ran off with an old prophet in his arms (Livy, v., 15).
  We are naively told by the historian that the more the
  prodigies came the more they were believed. On a certain
  occasion a crowd of them was brought together: Crows built
  in the temple of Juno. A green tree took fire. The waters of
  Mantua became bloody. In one place it rained chalk in
  another fire. Lightning was very destructive, sinking the
  temple of a god or a nut-tree by the roadside indifferently.
  An ox spoke in Sicily. A precocious baby cried out "Io
  triumphe" before it was born. At Spoletum a woman became a
  man. An altar was seen in the heavens. A ghostly band of
  armed men appeared in the Janiculum (Livy, xxiv., 10). On
  such occasions the "aruspices" always ordered a vast
  slaughter of victims, and no doubt feasted as did the wicked
  sons of Eli.

  Even Horace wrote as though he believed in the anger of the
  gods--certainly as though he thought that public morals
  would be improved by renewed attention to them:

   Delicta majorum immeritus lues,
   Romane, donec templa refeceris.--Od., lib. iii., 6.

  [15] See the Preface by M. Guerault to his translation of
  this oration, De Aruspium Responsis.

  [16] Ca. ix.: "Who is there so mad that when he looks up to
  the heavens he does not acknowledge that there are gods, or
  dares to think that the things which he sees have sprung
  from chance--things so wonderful that the most intelligent
  among us do not understand their motions?"

  [17] Ca. xxviii.: "Quæ in tempestate sæva quieta est, et
  lucet in tenebris, et pulsa loco manet tamen, atque hæret in
  patria, splendetque per se semper, neque alienis unquam
  sordibus obsolescit." I regard this as a perfect allocution
  of words in regard to the arrangement both for the ear and
  for the intellect.

  [18] Ca. xliv.: "There have always been two kinds of men who
  have busied themselves in the State, and have struggled to
  be each the most prominent. Of these, one set have
  endeavored to be regarded as 'populares,' friends of the
  people; the other to be and to be considered as 'optimates,'
  the most trustworthy. They who did and said what could
  please the people were 'populares,' but they who so carried
  themselves as to satisfy every best citizen, they were
  'optimates.'" Cicero, in his definition, no doubt begs the
  question; but to do so was his object.

  [19] Mommsen, lib. v., chap. viii., in one of his notes,
  says that this oration as to the provinces was the very
  "palinodia" respecting which Cicero wrote to Atticus. The
  subject discussed was no doubt the same. What authority the
  historian has found for his statement I do not know; but no
  writer is generally more correct.

  [20] De Prov. Cons., ca. viii.

  [21] Ca. xiii.

  [22] Ca. xiv.

  [23] Ca. xviii.

  [24] Pro C. Balbo, ca. vii.

  [25] Ibid., ca. xiii.

  [26] Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ca. vii.

  [27] There was no covenant, no bond of service, no master's
  authority, probably no discipline; but the eager pupil was
  taught to look upon the anxious tutor with love, respect,
  and faith.

  [28] In Pisonem, xxvii. Even in Cicero's words as used here
  there is a touch of irony, though we cannot but imagine that
  at this time he was anxious to stand well with Pompey.
  "There are coming on the games, the most costly and the most
  magnificent ever known in the memory of man; such as there
  never were before, and, as far as I can see, never will be
  again." "Show yourself there if you dare!"--he goes on to
  say, addressing the wretched Piso.

  [29] Plutarch's Life of Pompey: "Crassus upon the expiration
  of his Consulship repaired to his province. Pompey,
  remaining in Rome, opened his theatre." But Plutarch, no
  doubt, was wrong.

  [30] We may imagine what was the standing of the family from
  the address which Horace made to certain members of it in
  the time of Augustus. "Credite Pisones," De Arte Poetica.
  The Pisones so addressed were the grandsons of Cicero's
  victim.

  [31] Quin., ix., 4: "Pro dii immortales, quis hic illuxit
  dies!" The critic quotes it as being vicious in sound, and
  running into metre, which was considered a great fault in
  Roman prose, as it is also in English. Our ears, however,
  are hardly fine enough to catch the iambic twang of which
  Quintilian complains.

  [32] Ca. xviii., xx., xxii.

  [33] "Quæ potest homini esse polito delectatio," Ad Div.,
  vii., 1. These words have in subsequent years been employed
  as an argument against all out-of-door sports, with
  disregard of the fact that they were used by Cicero as to an
  amusement in which the spectators were merely looking on,
  taking no active part in deeds either of danger or of
  skill.--_Fortnightly Review_, October, 1869, The Morality of
  Field Sports.

  [34] Ad Att., lib. iv., 16.

  [35] Ad Div., ii., 8.

  [36] See the letter, Ad Quin. Frat., lib. iii., 2: "Homo
  undique actus, et quam a me maxime vulneraretur, non tulit,
  et me trementi voce exulem appellavit." The whole scene is
  described.

  [37] Ad Fam., v., 8.

  [38] Ad Quin. Frat., ii., 12.

  [39] Ad Att., iv., 15.

  [40] Val. Max., lib. iv., ca. ii., 4.

  [41] Horace, Sat., lib. ii., 1:

                                       HOR. "Trebati,
     Quid faciam præscribe."--TREB. "Quiescas."--HOR.
    "Ne faciam, inquis, Omnino versus?"--TREB. "Aio."--HOR.
    "Peream male si non Optimum erat."

  Trebatius became a noted jurisconsult in the time of
  Augustus, and wrote treatises.

  [42] Ca. iv.: "Male judicavit populus. At judicavit. Non
  debuit, at potuit."

  [43] Ca. vi.: "Servare necesse est gradus. Cedat consulari
  generi prætorium, nec contendat cum prætorio equester
  locus."

  [44] Ca. xix.

  [45] Ad Fam., i., 9.

  [46] Ca. xi.

  [47] Ad Fam., lib. ii., 6: "Dux nobis et auctor opus est et
  eorum ventorum quos proposui moderator quidem et quasi
  gubernator."

  [48] Mommsen, book v., chap. viii. According to the
  historian, Clodius was the Achilles, and Milo the Hector. In
  this quarrel Hector killed Achilles.

  [49] Ad Att., lib. iv., 16.

  [50] Ad Fam., lib. vii., 7.

  [51] Vell. Pat., ii., 47.

  [52] We remember the scorn with which Horace has treated the
  Roman soldier whom he supposes to have consented to accept
  both his life and a spouse from the Parthian conqueror:

    Milesne Crassi conjuge barbara
    Turpis maritus vixit?--Ode iii., 5.

  It has been calculated that of 40,000 legionaries half were
  killed, 10,000 returned to Syria, and that 10,000 settled
  themselves in the country we now know as Merv.

  [53] Ad Quin. Frat., lib. ii., 4, and Ad Att., lib. iv., 5.

  [54] "Interrogatio de ære alieno Milonis."

  [55] Livy, Epitome, 107: "Absens et solus quod nulli alii
  umquam contigit."

  [56] The Curia Hostilia, in which the Senate sat frequently,
  though by no means always.

  [57] Ca. ii.

  [58] Ca. v.

  [59] Ca. xx., xxi.

  [60] Ca. xxix.

  [61] Ca. xxxvii.: "O me miserum! O me infelicem! revocare tu
  me in patriam, Milo, potuisti per hos. Ego te in patria per
  eosdem retinere non potero!" "By the aid of such citizens as
  these," he says, pointing to the judges' bench, "you were
  able to restore me to my country. Shall I not by the same
  aid restore you to yours?"

  [62] Ad Fam., lib. xiii., 75.

  [63] Ad Fam., lib. vii., 2: "In primisque me delectavit
  tantum studium bonorum in me exstitisse contra incredibilem
  contentionem clarissimi et potentissimi viri."

  [64] Cæsar, a Sketch, p. 336.

  [65] Ibid., p. 341.

  [66] He reached Laodicea, an inland town, on July 31st, B.C.
  51, and embarked, as far as we can tell, at Sida on August
  3d, B.C. 50. It may be doubted whether any Roman governor
  got to the end of his year's government with greater
  despatch.

  [67] No exemption was made for Cæsar in Pompey's law as it
  originally stood; and after the law had been inscribed as
  usual on a bronze tablet it was altered at Pompey's order,
  so as to give Cæsar the privilege. Pompey pleaded
  forgetfulness, but the change was probably forced upon him
  by Cæsar's influence.--Suetonius, J. Cæsar, xxviii.

  [68] Ad Div., lib. iii., 2.

  [69] Ad Att., lib. v., 1.

  [70] Abeken points out to us, in dealing with the year in
  which Cicero's government came to an end, B.C. 50, that
  Cato's letters to Cicero (Ad Fam., lib. xv., 5) bear
  irrefutable testimony as to the real greatness of Cicero.
  See the translation edited by Merivale, p. 235. This applies
  to his conduct in Cilicia, and may thus be taken as evidence
  outside his own, though addressed to himself.

  [71] The Roman Triumvirate, p. 107.

  [72] Cæsar, a Sketch, pp. 170, 341.

  [73] Professor Mommsen says no word of Cicero's government
  in Cilicia.

  [74] I cannot but refer to Mommsen's account of this
  transaction, book v., chap. viii.: "Golden fetters were also
  laid upon him," Cicero. "Amid the serious embarrassments of
  his finances the loans of Cæsar free of interest * * * were in
  a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration
  for the Senate was nipped in the bud by the thought that the
  agent of Cæsar might present a bill to him after the close
  of the sitting." There are many assertions here for which I
  have looked in vain for the authority. I do not know that
  Cicero's finances were seriously embarrassed at the time.
  The evidence goes rather to show that they were not so. Had
  he ever taken more than one loan from Cæsar? I find nothing
  as to any question of interest; but I imagine that Cæsar
  treated Cicero as Cicero afterward treated Pompey when he
  lent him money. We do not know whether even Crassus charged
  Cæsar interest. We may presume that a loan is always made
  welcome, or the money would not be borrowed, but the "high
  degree of welcome," as applied to this especial loan, ought
  to have some special justification. As to Cicero's anxiety
  in borrowing the money I know nothing, but he was very
  anxious to pay it. The borrowing and the lending of money
  between Roman noblemen was very common. No one had ever
  borrowed so freely as Cæsar had done. Cicero was a lender
  and a borrower, but I think that he was never seriously
  embarrassed. What oration was nipped in the bud by fear of
  his creditor? He had lately spoken twice for Saufeius, once
  against S. Clodius, and against Plancus--in each case
  opposing the view of Cæsar, as far as Cæsar had views on the
  matter. The sum borrowed on this occasion was 800,000
  sesterces--between £6000 and £7000. A small additional sum
  of £100 is mentioned in one of the letters to Atticus, lib.
  v., 5., which is, however, spoken of by Cicero as forming
  one whole with the other. I can hardly think that Mommsen
  had this in view when he spoke of loans in the plural
  number.

  [75] M. C. Marcellus was Consul B.C. 51; his brother, C.
  Claudius Marcellus, was Consul B.C. 50, another C. Claudius
  Marcellus, a cousin, in B.C. 49.

  [76] Mommsen calls him a "respected Senator." M. De Guerle,
  in his preface to the oration Pro Marcello, claims for him
  the position of a delegate. He was probably both--though we
  may doubt whether he was "respected" after his flogging.

  [77] Ad Att., lib. v., 11: "Marcellus foede in Comensi;" and
  he goes on to say that even if the man had been no
  magistrate, and therefore not entitled to full Roman
  treatment, yet he was a Transalpine, and therefore not
  subject to the scourge. See Mr. Watson's note in his Select
  Letters.

  [78] Ad Div., lib. ii., 8.

  [79] Ad Att., lib. v., 13.

  [80] Ibid.: "Quæso ut simus annui; ne intercaletur quidem."
  It might be that an intercalary month should be added, and
  cause delay.

  [81] Ad Div., lib. viii., 2: "Ut tibi curæ sit quod ad
  pantheras attinet."

  [82] Ad Att., lib. v., 14.

  [83] Ad Div., lib. iii., 5.

  [84] Ad Att., lib. v., 15.

  [85] Ibid., 16.

  [86] Ad Att., lib. v., 17.

  [87] Ad Div., lib. iii., 6.

  [88] Ad Div., lib. xv., 1.

  [89] Ibid., iii., 8.

  [90] Ad Div., lib. viii., 8.

  [91] Ad Div., lib. viii., 10.

  [92] Ibid., ii., 10.

  [93] This mode of greeting a victorious general had no doubt
  become absurd in the time of Cicero, when any body of
  soldiers would be only too willing to curry favor with the
  officer over them by this acclamation. Cicero ridicules
  this; but is at the same time open to the seduction--as a
  man with us will laugh at the Sir Johns and Sir Thomases who
  are seated around him, but still, when his time comes, will
  be pleased that his wife shall be called "My Lady" like the
  rest of them.

  [94] Ad Div., lib. ii., 7.

  [95] Ad Att., lib. v., 2.

  [96] Ad Div., lib. xv., 4.

  [97] Ibid., xv., 10, and lib. xv., 13: "Ut quam
  honorificentissimum senatus consultum de meis rebus gestis
  faciendum cures."

  [98] Ad Div., lib. viii., 6.

  [99] Ibid., 7.

  [100] Ibid., iii., 7.

  [101] Ibid., 9.

  [102] The amount seems so incredible that I cannot but
  suspect an error in the MS. The sum named is two hundred
  Attic talents. The Attic talent, according to Smith's
  dictionary, was worth £243 13_s._ It may be that this large
  amount had been collected over a series of years.

  [103] Ad Att., lib. v., 21.

  [104] Ibid., vi., 1. This is the second letter to Atticus on
  the transaction, and in this he asserts, as though
  apologizing for his conduct to Brutus, that he had not
  before known that the money belonged to Brutus himself:
  "Nunquam enim ex illo audivi illam pecuniam esse suam."

  [105] In the letter last quoted, "Flens mihi meam famam
  commendasti." "Believe," he says, "that I cling to the
  doctrines which you yourself have taught me. They are fixed
  in my very heartstrings."

  [106] See the former of the two letters, Ad. Att., lib. v.,
  21: "Quod enim prætori dare consuessent, quoniam ego non
  acceperam, se a me quodam modo dare."

  [107] Ad Att., vi., 1: "Tricesimo quoque die talenta Attica
  xxxiii., et hoc ex tributis." On every thirteenth day he
  gets thirty three talents from the taxes, the talent being
  about £243. Of the poverty of Ariobarzanes we have heard
  much, and of the number of slaves which reached Rome from
  his country. It was thus, probably, that the king paid
  Pompey his interest.

     Mancipiis locuples eget æris Cappadonum rex.--Hor. Epis.,
     lib. i., vi.

  Persius tells us how the Roman slave-dealer was wont to slap
  the fat Cappadocian on the thigh to show how sound he was as
  he was selling him, Sat. vi., 77. "Cappadocis eques
  catastis" is a phrase used by Martial, lib. x., 76, to
  describe from how low an origin a Roman knight might
  descend, telling us also that there were platforms erected
  for the express purpose of selling slaves from Cappadocia.
  Juvenal speaks also of "Equites Cappadoces" in the same
  strain, Sat. vii., 15. The descendant even of a slave from
  Cappadocia might rise to be a knight. From all this we may
  learn what was the source of the £8000 a month which Pompey
  condescended to take, and which Cicero describes as being
  "ex tributis."

  [108] Ad Att., lib. vi., 2.

  [109] Ad Att., lib. vi., 3.

  [110] Ad Div., lib. viii., 11.

  [111] Ad Att., lib. vi., 4, 5.

  [112] Ad Div., lib. ii., 15: "Scito me sperare ea quæ
  sequuntur."

  [113] Ibid.

  [114] Ad Att., lib. vii., 1.

  [115] Ad Att., lib. vi., 8.

  [116] Ad Att., lib. xi., 1.

  [117] Appius and Piso were the last two Censors elected by
  the Republic.

  [118] Ad Div., lib. ii., 15.

  [119] Appian, De Bell. Civ., lib. ii., 26. The historian
  tells us that the Consul built a temple with the money, but
  that Curio had paid his debts.

  [120] Mommsen, book v., ca. ix.

  [121] Ad Att., lib. vii., 1: "Video cum altero vinci satius
  esse quam cum altero vincere."

  [122] Ad Att., lib. vii., 2: "Adolescentem, ut nosti, et
  adde, si quid vis, probum."

  [123] Ad Att., lib. vii., 20-23.

  [124] Ibid., lib. viii., 4.

  [125] Ibid., lib. viii., 7.

  [126] Copy of letter D, enclosed in letter to Atticus, lib.
  viii., 11.

  [127] Ad Att., lib. ix., 10.

  [128] Ibid., lib. ix., 12.

  [129] Ad Att., lib. x., 4.

  [130] Ad Att., lib. xi., 5.

  [131] Horace, Sat., lib. i., sat. 5.

  [132] Ad Att., lib. xi., 7.

  [133] Ad Div., xiv., 16.

  [134] Ad Att., lib. xi., 24.

  [135] Ad Att., lib. xi., 24.

  [136] Ibid., lib. xi., 20-22.

  [137] Ad Div., xiv., 22, 20. The numbers going the wrong way
  is only an indication that the letters were wrongly placed
  by Grævius.

  [138] Ad Att., lib. xi., 22.

  [139] Oratoriæ Partitiones, xvii., xxiii.

  [140] De Officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxi.: "Catoni cum
  incredibilem tribuisset natura gravitatem, eamque ipse
  perpetua constantia roborasset, semperque in proposito
  susceptoque consilio permansisset, moriendum potius quam
  tyranni vultum aspiciendum fuit."

  [141] This was Lucius Volcatius Tullus.

  [142] But it is now, I believe, the opinion of scholars that
  Wolf has been proved to be wrong, and the words to have been
  the very words of Cicero, by the publication of certain
  fragments of ancient scholia on the Pro Marcello which have
  been discovered by Cardinal Mai since the time of the
  dispute.

  [143] Ad Div., iv., 11.

  [144] Pro Marcello, ii.

  [145] Pro Ligario, i.

  [146] Pro Ligario, iii.

  [147] Ad Fam., lib. iv., 14.

  [148] Ad Div., lib. ix., 16.

  [149] Ad Att., lib. xii., 7.

  [150] Ibid., 32.

  [151] Ad Div., lib. xvi., 21.

  [152] Pliny, Hist. Nat., lib. xiv., 28.

  [153] Ad Div., lib. vi., 18.

  [154] Ad Att., lib. xii., 12.

  [155] Ibid., 18, 28.

  [156] Ad Att., lib. xii., 14.

  [157] Ibid., 18, 28.

  [158] Ad Att., lib. xiii., 28.

  [159] Suetonius, Julius Cæsar, ca. xxxvii.

  [160] Ad Att., lib. xiii., 44.

  [161] Ad Att., lib xiii., 42.

  [162] Pro Rege Deiotaro, ii.

  [163] Ibid., ca. xii.: "Solus, inquam, es, C. Cæsar, cujus
  in victoria cecide it nemo nisi armatus."

  [164] Cæsar, De Bello Gallico, lib. iii., 16: "Itaque, omni
  Senatu necato, reliquos sub corona vendidit," he says, and
  passes on in his serene, majestic manner.

  [165] Quint., lib. x., vii.: "Nam Ciceronis ad præsens modo
  tempus aptatos libertus Tiro contraxit."

  [166] Horace, Epis., lib. i., 1: "Nullus in orbe sinus Baiis
  prælucet amænis."

  [167] Ad Att., lib. xiii., 52.

  [168] Ad Div., lib. vii., 30.

  [169] Mommsen, book v., xi.

  [170] He left Brundisium on the last day of the year.

  [171] Shakspeare, Julius Cæsar, act i., sc. 2.

  [172] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 9, 15.

  [173] Quintilian, lib. vii., 4.

  [174] These words will be found in M. Du Rozoir's summary to
  the Philippics.

  [175] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 1.

  [176] Ibid., 14: "Quam oculis cepi justo interitu tyranni."

  [177] Morabin, liv. vi., chap. iii., sec. 6.

  [178] Velleius Paterculus, lib. ii., ca. lviii.

  [179] Mommsen, book v., xi.

  [180] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 4.

  [181] Ibid., lib. xiv., 6.

  [182] Ibid., lib. xiv., 7.

  [183] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 9.

  [184] Ibid., lib. xiv., 11.

  [185] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 13.

  [186] Ad Div., lib. xvi., 23.

  [187] Ad Div., lib. ix., 11.

  [188] Ad Att., lib. xiv., 21.

  [189] Ad Att., lib. xv., 21.

  [190] Ibid., lib. xv., 26.

  [191] Ad Att., lib. xv., 27.

  [192] Ibid., lib. xvi., 1.

  [193] Ibid., lib. xvi., 5.

  [194] Ibid., lib. xvi., 2.

  [195] Ad Att., lib. xvi., 7.

  [196] Phil., i., 5: "Nimis iracunde hoc quidem, et valde
  intemperanter." "Who," he goes on to say, "has sinned so
  heavily against the Republic that here, in the Senate, they
  shall dare to threaten his house by sending the State
  workmen?"

  [197] Brutus, Ciceroni, lib. ii., 5: "Jam concedo ut vel
  Philippici vocentur quod tu quadam epistola jocans
  scripsisti." I fear, however, that we must acknowledge that
  this letter cannot be taken as an authority for the early
  use of the name.

  [198] Phil., i., ca. vii.

  [199] Ibid., i., ca. viii.

  [200] Ibid., i., ca. x.

  [201] The year of his birth is uncertain. He had been Consul
  three years back, and must have spoken often.

  [202] Ad Div., lib. xii., 2.

  [203] It may here be worth our while to quote the
  impassioned language which Velleius Paterculus uses when he
  chronicles the death of Cicero, lib. ii., 66: "Nihil tamen
  egisti, M. Antoni (cogit enim excedere propositi formam
  operis, erumpens animo ac pectore indignatio), nihil,
  inquam, egisti, mercedem cælestissimi oris et clarissimi
  capitis abscissi numerando, auctoramentoque funebri ad
  conservatoris quondam reipublicæ tantique consulis irritando
  necem. Rapuisti tu M. Ciceroni lucem solicitam, et ætatem
  senilem, et vitam miseriorem, te principe, quam sub te
  triumviro mortem. Famam vero gloriamque factorum atque
  dictorum adeo non abstulisti, ut auxeris. Vivit, vivetque
  per omnium sæculorum memoriam; dumque hoc vel forte, vel
  providentia, vel utcumque constitutum, rerum naturæ corpus,
  quod ille pæne solus Romanorum animo vidit, ingenio
  complexus est, eloquentia illuminavit, manebit incolume,
  comitem ævi sui laudem Ciceronis trahet, omnisque posteritas
  illius in te scripta mirabitur, tuum in eum factum
  execrabitur; citiusque in mundo genus hominum, quam ea,
  cadet." This was the popular idea of Cicero in the time of
  Tiberius.

  [204] Ad Div., lib. xii., 23.

  [205] Ad Att., lib. xvi., 11.

  [206] On referring to the Milo, ca. xv., the reader will see
  the very different tone in which Cicero spoke of this
  incident when Antony was in favor with him.

  [207] It was a sign of an excellent character in Rome to
  have been chosen often as heir in part to a man's property.

  [208] Horace, Odes, lib. iii., 30.

  [209] Ad Att., lib. xvi., 14.

  [210] Philippics, lib. vi., 1.

  [211] "Populum Romanum servire fas non est, quem dii
  immortales omnibus gentibus imperare voluerunt."

  [212] Ad Div., lib. xi., 8.

  [213] Ad Div., lib. x., 3.

  [214] Ad Brutum, lib. ii., 6.

  [215] Appian. De Bell. Civ., lib. iii., ca. 26.

  [216] Vell. Pat., lib. ii., 62: "Quæ omnia senatus decretis
  comprensa et comprobata sunt."

  [217] Ad Div., lib. xii., 7. This is in a letter to Cassius,
  in which he says, "Promisi enim et prope confirmavi, te non
  expectasse nec expectaturum decreta nostra, sed te ipsum tuo
  more rempublicam defensurum."

  [218] Appian, lib. iii., ca. 50. The historian of the civil
  wars declares that Piso spoke up for Antony, saying that he
  should not be damnified by loose statements, but should be
  openly accused. Feelings ran very high, but Cicero seems to
  have held his own.

  [219] Ad Div., lib. x., 27.

  [220] Suetonius, Augustus, lib. xi.

  [221] Tacitus, Ann., lib. i., x.: "Cæsis Hirtio et Pansa,
  sive hostis illos, seu Pansam venenum vulneri affusum, sui
  milites Hirtium et, machinator doli, Cæsar abstulerat."

  [222] Philip., xiv., 3: "Omnibus, quanquam ruit ipse suis
  cladibus, pestem, vastitatem, cruciatum, tormenta
  denuntiat."

  [223] Philip., xiv., 12: "O fortunata mors, quæ naturæ
  debita, pro patria est potissimum reddita."

  [224] Ad Div., lib. xi., 9.

  [225] Ibid., lib. xi., 10.

  [226] Ibid., lib. xi., 11.

  [227] Ibid., lib. xi., 18.

  [228] Ad Div., lib. x., 34.

  [229] Ad Brutum, lib. i., 4.

  [230] Ad Div., lib. xi., 20: "Ipsum Cæsarem nihil sane de te
  questum, nisi quod diceret, te dixisse, laudandum
  adolescentem, ornandum, tollendum."

  [231] Ad Div., lib. xii., 10.

  [232] Appian, lib. iii., 92.

  [233] Dio Cassius, lib. xlvi., 46.

  [234] Vell. Paterculus, lib. ii., 65.

  [235] Vell. Paterculus, lib. ii., 66: "Repugnante Cæsare, sed
  frustra adversus duos, instauratum Sullani exempli malum,
  proscriptio."

  [236] Vell. Paterculus, lib. ii., 66: "Nihil tam indignum
  illo tempore fuit, quam quod aut Cæsar aliquem proscribere
  coactus est, aut ab ullo Cicero proscriptus est."

  [237] Suetonius, Augustus, 27: "In quo restitit quidem
  aliquamdiu collegis, ne qua fieret proscriptio, sed inceptam
  utroque acerbius exercuit."

  [238] Phil., iv., ca. xviii.

  [239] In the following list I have divided the latter,
  making the Moral Essays separate from the Philosophy.

  [240] I have given here those treatises which are always
  printed among the works of Cicero.

  [241] De Inventione, lib. ii., 4.

  [242] Quintilian, in his Proæmium or Preface: "Oratorem
  autem instituimus illum perfectum, qui esse nisi vir bonus
  non potest." It seems as though there had almost been the
  question whether the perfect orator could exist, although
  there was no question he had never done so as yet.

  [243] Quint., lib. iii., 1: "Præcipuum vero lumen sicut
  eloquentiæ, ita præceptis quoque ejus, dedit unicum apud nos
  specimen orandi, docendique oratorias artes, M. Tullius."
  And in Tacitus, De Oratoribus, xxx.: "Ita ex multa
  eruditione, ex pluribus artibus," he says, speaking of
  Cicero, "et omnium rerum scientia exundat, et exuberat illa
  admirabilis eloquentia; neque oratoris vis et facultas,
  sicut ceterarum rerum, angustis et brevibus terminis
  cluditur; sed is est orator, qui de omni quæstione pulchre,
  et ornate, et ad persuadendum apte dicere, pro dignitate
  rerum, ad utilitatem temporum, cum voluptate audientium
  possit." This has not the ring of Tacitus, but it shows
  equally well the opinion of the day.

  [244] De Oratore, lib. i., ca. xi.

  [245] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xxv.

  [246] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xliv.

  [247] Ibid., lib. i., ca. lii.

  [248] Ibid., lib. i., ca. lx.

  [249] De Oratore, lib. ii., ca. i.

  [250] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. vii.

  [251] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xv.

  [252] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxiv.

  [253] De Oratore, lib. ii., ca. xxvii.: "Ut probemus vera
  esse ea, quæ defendimus; ut conciliemus nobis eos, qui
  audiunt; ut animos eorum, ad quemcumque causa postulabit
  motum, vocemus."

  [254] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xliv.

  [255] De Oratore, lib. ii., ca. lxviii.

  [256] De Oratore, lib. iii., ca. liv.

  [257] Ibid., lib. iii., ca. lv.

  [258] Brutus, ca. xii.

  [259] Ibid., ca. xvii.

  [260] Ibid., ca. xxxviii.

  [261] Ibid., ca. l.

  [262] Ibid., ca. lvii.

  [263] Ibid., ca. lxxv.

  [264] Brutus, ca. xciii.

  [265] De Divinatione, lib. ii., 1.

  [266] Orator, ca. ii.

  [267] Orator, ca. xxvi.

  [268] Ibid., ca. xxviii.

  [269] Ibid., ca. xxxvi. Here his language becomes very fine.

  [270] Ad. Att., lib. xiv., 20.

  [271] Topica, ca. 1: "Itaque hæc quum mecum libros non
  haberem, memoria repetita, in ipsa navigatione conscripsi,
  tibique ex itinere misi."

  [272] Quint., lib. xi., 3. The translations of these
  epithets are "open, obscure, full, thin, light, rough,
  shortened, lengthened, harsh, pliable, clear, clouded."

  [273] Brutus, ca. xxxviii.

  [274] De Oratore, lib. i., ca. liii.

  [275] Academica, ii., lib. i., ca. iii.

  [276] Ibid., i., lib. ii., ca. vii.

  [277] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xii.

  [278] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix.

  [279] Academica, i., lib. ii., ca. xxxvii.

  [280] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxxix.

  [281] Pro Murena, ca. xxix.

  [282] De Finibus, lib. i., ca. iii.

  [283] Ibid., lib. i., ca. v.

  [284] De Finibus, lib. ii., ca. xxx.

  [285] De Finibus, lib. iii., ca. xxii.

  [286] De Finibus, lib. iv., ca. 1.

  [287] De Finibus, lib. v., ca. ii.

  [288] Ibid., lib. v., ca. xix.

  [289] Ibid., lib. v., ca. xxiii.

  [290] Epis., lib. i., 1, 14.

  [291] Tus. Disp., lib. v., ca. xi.

  [292] Tus. Disp., lib. i., ca. xxx.

  [293] De Natura Deo., lib. i., ca. iv.

  [294] Ibid., lib. i., ca. ix.

  [295] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xiv.

  [296] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xxix.

  [297] De Nat. Deo., lib. ii., ca. liv., lv.

  [298] De Nat. Deo., lib. iii., ca. xxvii.

  [299] De Divinatione, lib. ii., ca. xxxiii.

  [300] De Divinatione, lib. i., ca. xviii.

  [301] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xlvii.

  [302] De Divinatione, lib. ii., ca. i.

  [303] Horace, Ep., lib. ii., ca. i.:

   "Greece, conquered Greece, her conqueror subdued.
    And Rome grew polished who till then was rude."

    CONINGTON'S Translation.

  [304] De Divinatione, lib. ii., ca. ii.

  [305] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. li.

  [306] The story of Simon Du Bos and his MS. has been first
  told to me by Mr. Tyrell in his first volume of the
  Correspondence of Cicero, p. 88. That a man should have been
  such a scholar, and yet such a liar, and should have gone to
  his long account content with the feeling that he had
  cheated the world by a fictitious MS., when his erudition,
  if declared, would have given him a scholar's fame, is
  marvellous. Perhaps he intended to be discovered. I, for
  one, should not have heard of Bosius but for his lie.

  [307] De Republica, lib. iii. It is useless to give the
  references here. It is all fragmentary, and has been divided
  differently as new information has been obtained.

  [308] De Legibus, lib. i., ca. vii.

  [309] De Legibus, lib. i., ca. x.

  [310] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xviii.

  [311] De Legibus, lib. iii., ca. ix., x.

  [312] Ibid., lib. iii., xvii.

  [313] De Senectute, ca. ix.

  [314] Ibid., ca. x.

  [315] Ibid., ca. xi.

  [316] Ibid., ca. xviii.

  [317] Ibid., ca. xxi.

  [318] De Amicitia, ca. xix.

  [319] De Officiis, lib. ii., ca. v.

  [320] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xvii.

  [321] De Officiis, lib. i., ca. xxix: "Suppeditant autem et
  campus noster et studia venandi, honesta exempla ludendi."
  The passage is quoted here as an antidote to that extracted
  some time since from one of his letters, which has been used
  to show that hunting was no occupation for a "polite
  man"--as he, Cicero, had disapproved of Pompey's slaughter
  of animals on his new stage.

  [322] Ibid., lib. i., ca. xxxi.

  [323] De Officiis, lib. i., ca. xxxvi. It is impossible not
  to be reminded by this passage of Lord Chesterfield's
  letters to his son, written with the same object; but we can
  see at once that the Roman desired in his son a much higher
  type of bearing than the Englishman. The following is the
  advice given by the Englishman: "A thousand little things,
  not separately to be defined, conspire to form these
  graces--this 'je ne sais quoi' that always pleases. A pretty
  person; genteel motions; a proper degree of dress; an
  harmonious voice, something open and cheerful in the
  countenance, but without laughing; a distinct and properly
  raised manner of speaking--all these things and many others
  are necessary ingredients in the composition of the pleasing
  'je ne sais quoi' which everybody feels, though nobody can
  describe. Observe carefully, then, what displeases or
  pleases you in others, and be persuaded that, in general,
  the same thing will please or displease them in you. Having
  mentioned laughing, I must particularly warn you against it;
  and I could wish that you may often be seen to smile, but
  never heard to laugh, while you live." I feel sure that
  Cicero would laugh, and was heard to laugh, and yet that he
  was always true to the manners of a gentleman.

  [324] De Officiis, lib. i., ca. xlii.

  [325] De Officiis, lib. ii., l.

  [326] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiii.

  [327] Ibid., lib. ii., ca. xiv.

  [328] De Officiis, lib. ii., ca. xxiv.

  [329] Ibid., lib. iii., ca. i.

  [330] De Republica, lib. vi. It is useless to give the
  chapters, as the treatise, being fragmentary, is differently
  divided in different editions.

  [331] Ad Archiam, ca. xii.

  [332] De Republica, lib. vi.

  [333] Academica, 2, lib. i., ca. vii.

  [334] Academica, 1, lib. ii., ca. xxxviii.

  [335] De Officiis, lib. i., ca. xliv.

  [336] Tusc. Disputationes, lib. i., ca. xxx.

  [337] De Finibus, lib. v., ca. xxiii.




 INDEX.


 A.

 Abeken, German, biographer of Cicero, ii., 39.

 "Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit," i., 228.

 Academica, The, i., 33; ii., 251, 281.

 Actio Prima, contra Verrem, i., 139.

 Actio Secunda, contra Verrem, i., 138.

 Aculeo, Cicero's uncle, i., 42.

 Adjournments, on account of games in the trial of Verres, i., 138.

 Advocate, duty in Rome, i., 85, 165;
   his duties, ii., 319.

 Ædile, Cicero as, i., 162.

 "Æstimatum," tax on corn in Sicily, i., 152.

 Agrarian law, two speeches, i., 190;
   two supplementary speeches, 191.

 [Greek:Aideomai Trôas], i., 288.

 Allobroges, their ambassadors, i., 230;
   alluded to by Horace, 231;
   rewarded, 233.

 Æmilius, the Consul, bribed by Cæsar, ii., 116.

 Amanus, Cicero's campaign at the mountain range, ii., 90.

 Amicitia, De, ii., 252;
   Lælius tells its praises, 313.

 Amnesty, granted after Cæsar's death, ii., 181;
   Cicero's opinion respecting it, 214.

 Anatomical researches, ii., 296.

 Antiochus of Comagene, Cicero pleads against, ii., 48.

 Antiphon, an actor, criticism on, ii., 48.

 Antonius Caius, Cicero's colleague in the Consulship, i., 185;
   not trusted, 186;
   was worth nothing, 229;
   Cicero expects money from, 251.

 Antonius Marcus, the orator, i., 43.

 Antony, abuse of, i., 151;
   silenced by Cicero, 204;
   Cassius had desired his death, ii., 178;
   forges Cæsar's writing, 181;
   writes to Cicero, 184;
   Cicero desires to make him leave Italy, 190;
   desires Cicero to assist in the Senate, 191;
   desires that Cicero's house shall be attacked, 192;
   determines to answer the first Philippic, 195;
   left no friend to speak for him, 196;
   his character by Paterculus, 197;
   the same from Virgil, _ibid._;
   how he sought favor with Cæsar, 201;
   how he quarrelled with Dolabella, 202;
   his letter to Hirtius, 222;
   wages war against four Consuls, 224;
   one of the Triumvirate, 238.

 Appius Claudius, letter to, ii., 79;
   runs away from Cicero, 87;
   takes away three cohorts, 87;
   sends ambassadors to Rome to praise him, 88;
   his dishonesty, 113;
   twice tried, _ibid._;
   Censor, 114.

 Apronius, who he was, and his character, i., 153.

 Arabarches, nickname for Pompey, i., 291.

 Aratus, the Phænomena translated, i., 46;
   the Prognostics translated, 277; ii., 296.

 Arbuscula, the actress, ii., 48.

 Archias, Cicero's tutor, i., 47;
   Cicero's speech, 252.

 Ariobarzanes, in debt to Pompey and Brutus, ii., 100.

 Army, Cicero joins it, i., 48.

 Arpinum, Cicero's birthplace, i., 40.

 Asconius Pedianus, commentator of Cicero, i., 180;
   declares that Cicero had accused Crassus of joining Catiline, 218;
   tells the story of Milo's trial, ii., 61.

 Asia, Cicero travels in, i., 56.

 Asians, the character given them by Cicero, i., 296.

 "Assectatores," who they were, i., 112.

 Athens, Cicero is afraid to live there, i., 322;
   Cicero's description of, ii., 289.

 Atticus, letters, private, i., 10, 12, 13, 16;
   Cicero's faith in, 19;
   general letters, 58;
   his character, 58, 166, 182;
   Cicero informs him as to Clodius, 255;
   and of his speech in Pompey's favor, 258;
   did not quarrel with Cicero, 302;
   Cicero complains of his conduct, and then apologizes, 318;
   leads money to Cicero, 323;
   no letter of his extant, ii., 139;
   receives a commission to see Cicero's debts paid, 188;
   Cicero's last letter to, 206.

 Augurs, College of, ii., 58.

 Augustine has produced a fragment of the De Republica, ii., 307.

 Augustus, devoid of scruple, i., 77;
   born in the Consulship of Cicero, i., 239.

 Aulus Gellius, tells a story of Cicero's house, i., 249.

 Aurelia, Via, Catiline had left the city by that route, i., 228.

 Autronius, selected Consul, i., 214, 252.


 B.

 Bacon, compared to Cicero, ii., 100.

 Balbus, messenger from Cæsar to Cicero, i., 270;
   his citizenship defended, ii., 34;
   his descendant Emperor, 34.

 Battle of the eagle and the serpent, i., 46.

 Beesley, Mr., as to Catiline, i., 205.

 Bibulus as Consul, i., 282.

 Birria stabs Clodius, ii., 62.

 Boasting, habit of the Romans, i., 151.

 Boissier, Gaston, his book on Cicero, ii., 34.

 Bona Dea, her mysteries violated, i., 255.

 Bovilla, at, Milo meets Clodius, ii., 62.

 Brennus, when at Rome, i., 75.

 Brougham, Lord, as to "Memnon," a tale, i., 46.

 Brundisium, Cicero lands at on his return from exile, ii., 129;
   Cicero's misery at, 142.

 Brutus, proposes to make a speech in behalf of Milo, ii., 66;
   his usury, 96;
   the story of his debt in Cilicia, 97;
   Cicero's opinion, 103;
   letters from, 140;
   how he should be judged for the murder of Cæsar, 174;
   his character, 180;
   no aptitude for ruling, _ibid._;
   Cicero meets him at Velia, 189;
   his manners to Cicero, 190;
   praised, 216;
   correspondence with, doubted, 216;
   an honest patriot, 227;
   will not assist Cicero, 235;
   Cicero's respect for, 267.

 Brutus, The, ii., 251;
   Brutus, or De Claris Oratoribus, 265.

 Brutus, Decimus, letters from, ii., 140;
   preparing to fight, 206;
   deficient as a general, 228;
   is slain, 235.

 Buthrotum, Atticus, writes to Cicero respecting, ii., 185.


 C.

 Cæcilia Metella, her tomb, ii., 160.

 Cæcilius, put up to plead against Verres, i., 132;
   ridiculed as to his insufficiency, 136.

 Cæcina, Cicero's speech for, i., 163.

 Cælius, one of the young bloods of Rome, i., 36;
   his character, ii., 35;
   one of Clodia's lovers, _ibid._;
   defended by Cicero, 36;
   harangues the people for Milo, 64;
   scolded for the folly of his letters, 84;
   asks for panthers, 85;
   style of his letters, 89;
   attached to Cicero, 90;
   letters from, 140.

 Cælius, C., left in charge of Cilicia, ii., 106.

 Cæparius, one of Catiline's conspirators, i., 232.

 Cærellia, her name mentioned, ii., 186.

 Cæsar, devoid of scruple, i., 77;
   his debts, 103;
   his cruelty, 104;
   Cicero's treatment of, 152;
   passing the Rubicon, 176;
   did he join the conspiracy of Catiline, 215;
   in debt, 216;
   his prospects, _ibid._;
   no ground for accusing him as second conspiracy, 219;
   his opinion of Cicero, _ibid._;
   attempt to murder as he left the Senate, _ibid._;
   present at the first Catiline oration, 225;
   speech as to Catiline, 236;
   his career commenced, 241;
   did not think of overthrowing the Republic, 242;
   had not thought of ruling Rome, 260;
   money nothing to him, 266;
   his general character, _ibid._;
   his first Consulship, 282;
   illegality of his actions, 283;
   has the two Gauls allotted to him, 284;
   endeavors to screen Cicero, 292;
   naturally a conspirator, ii., 20;
   defence of his Proconsular power, 29, 30, 31;
   his doings in Gaul, 31;
   Cicero's conduct in reference to, 32;
   why Cicero flattered him, 33;
   intends to rule the Empire, 39;
   crosses into Britain, 56;
   money due to him by Cicero, 82;
   returns the two legions, 116;
   sits down at the Rubicon, 117;
   tramples on all the laws, 118;
   Cicero excuses his letter to, 122;
   his clemency to Romans, 137;
   absence of revenge, _ibid._;
   does not allow Cicero to sell his property, 138;
   is magnificent, 139;
   sits as judge, 153;
   returns to Spain, 156;
   returns from Spain, 161;
   is likened to Romulus, 162;
   his five triumphs, _ibid._;
   is flattered by Cicero, 165;
   sups with Cicero, 168;
   his death, 172;
   his assassination esteemed a glorious deed, 175;
   Cicero present, 177;
   an altar put up to, 185;
   his laws to be sanctioned, 193.

 Calenus, talks of peace, ii., 214;
   attacked by Cicero, 215.

 Caninius, Consul for a few hours, ii., 272.

 Capitol, description of, ii., 179;
   Brutus returns to, _ibid._

 Cappadocian slaves, ii., 101.

 Cassius, Cicero says that he would not obey the Senate, ii., 219;
   will not assist Cicero, 235.

 Castor, the temple of, in the trial of Verres, i., 143.

 Castor, accuses his grandfather, Deiotarus, ii., 164.

 Catiline, one of Sulla's murderers, i., 78;
   Cicero opposed to for Consulship, 110, 183;
   Cicero does not defend him, 183;
   the Catiline speeches described by Cicero, 191;
   a popular hero, 205;
   a step between the Gracchi and Cæsar, 207;
   Mr. Beesley's opinion as to his high birth, 211;
   and courage, _ibid._;
   his real character, 212;
   not elected Consul, 214;
   second conspiracy, 218;
   accused by Lepidus, 222;
   he leaves the city, 228;
   third speech against, 230;
   fourth speech against, 235;
   he dies, 239.

 Cato, accuses Murena, i., 193;
   his stoicism laughed at, _ibid._;
   speech as to Catiline, 238;
   opposed Clodius, 256;
   keeping gladiators, ii., 23;
   opposes Cicero's request for a "supplication," 105;
   his death, 147;
   Cicero praises him, 148;
   a glutton with books, 287;
   his suicide defended, 317.

 Cato the elder, praise of, ii., 307.

 Catullus, his epigram on Cæsar and Mamurra, ii., 169.

 Caudine Forks, i., 76.

 "Cedant arma togæ," an impotent scream, i., 65.

 Cethegus, one of Catiline's conspirators, i., 232.

 Chesterfield, Lord, his advice to his son, ii., 318.

 Christian, Cicero almost one, ii., 325.

 Christina, Queen, on Cicero, i., 19.

 Chrysogonus, creature of Sulla's, i., 85, 86, 91, 92.

 Churches, rules complied with for the sake of example, ii., 298.

 Cicero, young Marcus, wishes to serve under Cæsar, ii., 156;
   money allowed for living at Athens, 157;
   does not do well, 158.

 Cilicia, governed for a year, ii., 8;
   Cicero's mode of government, 77;
   why undertaken, _ibid._;
   Cicero's government had cost no man a shilling, 85.

 "Cincia Lex De Muneribus," i., 100.

 Cispius, defended, ii., 46.

 "Civis Romanus," his privileges, i., 158.

 Claterna, taken by Hirtius, ii., 214.

 Claudian family, desecrated by Clodius, i., 275.

 Clodia, her character, i., 317.

 Clodius, Cicero's language to, i., 186;
   accuses Catiline, 213;
   intrudes on the mysteries of the Bona Dea, 255;
   acquitted, 257;
   quarrels with Cicero, _ibid._;
   Cicero's speech against, 262;
   his Tribunate, 272;
   favored by Cæsar and Pompey, _ibid._;
   is made a Plebeian, 273;
   prepares to attack Cicero, 311;
   had put up a statue of a Greek prostitute
     as a figure of liberty, ii., 21;
   slaughtered, 62;
   his mode of travelling about, 72.

 Cluentius Aulus, speech on his behalf, i., 179;
   work in defending immense, 189.

 Cluvius, leaves Cicero a property, ii., 182.

 "Cohors," Cicero, in anger, so calls his suite, ii., 107.

 College of priests, oration spoken before, ii., 20.

 Commentarium of Cælius, ii., 105.

 Conduct, Cicero's, as governor, ii., 22.

 Conservative, Cicero was one, i., 308.

 Consolation, Cicero complains that nothing is of use, ii., 160.

 Consular speeches, twelve, i., 190.

 Consulatu de suo, Cicero quotes his own poem, i., 271.

 Consulatus de Petitione, i., 108.

 Consuls and other officers reconformed by Sulla, i., 78;
   the manner in which they were selected, 184;
   their duties, 187;
   never two bad Consuls together, ii., 14;
   Cicero asks them to praise him, 92;
   are they to be sent out of Italy? 218.

 Cornelius, a Knight employed to kill Cicero, i., 223.

 Cornelius Caius, speech on his behalf, i., 180.

 Cornelius Nepos, on Cicero, i., 14;
   his sayings as to Cicero's letters, 166.

 Cotta, Lucius Aurelius, elected Consul, i., 214.

 Cotta, the orator, Cicero knew him in his youth, i., 43.

 Courage, as to the nature of, i., 299;
   shown in the Philippics, ii., 199.

 Cowardice, Cicero accused of, ii., 220;
   the charge repelled, 246.

 Crassus, noted for usury, i., 102;
   did he join Catiline? 215;
   like M. Pourier, 217;
   present at first Catiline oration, 225;
   belauds Cicero in the Senate, 258;
   one of the Triumvirate, 267;
   says a man cannot be rich unless he can keep an army in his pay, 315;
   destroyed in Parthia, ii., 57.

 Crassus, Lucius, the orator, i., 43;
   his death, ii., 263.

 Curio the elder, Cicero's lampoon, i., 328.

 Curio and Claudius, speech against, i., 262.

 Curio bribed by Cæsar, ii., 116;
   intimate with Antony, 201.

 Curius, betrays Catiline's conspiracy, i., 222.

 _Cybea_, the ship built for Verres by the Mamertines, i., 155.


 D.

 Dates, as to those to be used, i., 39.

 Death, endured bravely by Cicero, i., 298.

 Decemviri, to be appointed under the law of Rullus, i., 198.

 "Decumanum," tithe on corn in Sicily, i., 152.

 "Deductores," who they were, i., 115.

 Deiotarus, Cicero pleads for, ii., 163.

 Democrat, Cicero wrongly called, i., 304.

 De Quincey, his opinion of Cicero, i., 20;
   his anger against Middleton, ii., 107.

 Deserter, in politics Cicero defended from the accusation, i., 305.

 Despotism, personal, ill effects of, i., 309.

 Dio persecuted in the trial of Verres, i., 145.

 Dio Cassius, as to Cicero, i., 18;
   as to Cicero's oath, 241.

 Diodotus, Cicero studies with, i., 50.

 Dionysius, the Greek tutor, ii., 121.

 Dishonesty, the charge repelled as to Cicero, ii., 245.

 Diversos, Ad, letters to, i., 166.

 "Divinatio, in Quintum Cæcilium," i., 132.

 Divinatione, De, ii., 252, 297.

 Divorces, common with Romans, ii., 144.

 Doctrine, Cicero does not live according to his own, ii., 291.

 Dolabella, Cicero's pupil in oratory, ii., 155;
   his cruelty, 186.

 Dorotheus, an enemy of Sthenius, i., 147;
   trial of Verres, _ibid._

 Drusus, his gardens to be bought, ii., 161.

 Du Bos, Simon, ii., 304.

 Duty to the state, ii., 316.

 Dyrrachium, Cicero's protection of, i., 101;
   sojourned there during his exile, 325.


 E.

 Education, expense of, i., 61.

 Egypt, Cicero asked by Cæsar to go there, i., 288.

 Eleusinian mysteries, i., 59.

 Elizabeth, Queen, glory of her reign, i., 77.

 "Emptum," tax on corn, i., 152.

 Encyclopædia Britannica, character of Cicero, i., 11.

 Ephesus, how Cicero was received there, ii., 85.

 Epicureans, i., 58.

 Epicurus, dying, ii., 286;
   Cicero's peculiar dislike to, 295.

 Epistles, number written by and to Cicero, i., 58;
   the first we have, 166;
   do not deal with history, 167;
   their truth, _ibid._;
   Tiro had collected, 70; ii., 188;
   his last official and military, 231.

 Eques, or knight, Cicero one, i., 40.

 Equites, i., 128;
   their duties as tax-gatherers, 280.

 Equity, Cicero accused of trifling with, ii., 100.

 Erasmus, his opinion of Cicero, i., 123.

 Erucius, accuses Sextus Roscius, i., 84, 87.

 Eryx, Mount, temple of Venus, i., 145.

 Exile, Cicero's, i., 125, 297;
   sentence against Cicero, 322;
   attempt to bring him back, 329;
   did not write during, 330.


 F.

 Famine, in Rome, ii., 18.

 Fato, De, i., 252, 297, 303.

 Finibus, De, i., 33; ii., 251, 284.

 Fish-ponders, who they were, ii., 180.

 Flaccus, speech on behalf of, i., 295.

 Flavius, his goodness to Cicero when exiled, i., 323.

 Florus, as to Cicero, i., 16;
   as to Catiline, 209.

 Fonteius, Cicero's speech for, i., 163;
   purchase of a house, 170.

 Formiæ, Cicero killed at, ii., 243.

 Formanum, purchases for the villa, i., 171.

 Forsyth, Mr., i., 7, 9;
   passage quoted, 20;
   defends the English bar, 214;
   as to Cicero's exile, 298;
   as to the story of Brutus, ii., 99;
   quoted as to the Philippics, 226.

 Fortitude, Roman, i., 326.

 Froude, Mr., accuses Cicero of a desire for Cæsar's death, i., 9, 10;
   his sketch of Cæsar, 63;
   hard things said of Cicero, 123;
   as to Cicero's exile, 298;
   gives his reason for Cicero's going to Cilicia, ii., 77.

 Frumentaria, De Re, third speech on the Actio Secunda in Verrem,
   i., 141.

 Fulvia betrays Catiline's conspiracy, i., 222.

 Fulvia, widow of Clodius, exposes the body of Clodius, ii., 63.


 G.

 Gabinius, A., abuse of, i., 151;
   proposes law in favor of Pompey, 172;
   Consul when Cicero was banished, 312;
   takes his shrubs, 325;
   whether he shall be punished, ii., 9;
   comes back to Rome and is defended by Cicero, 47.

 Gabinius, P., one of Catiline's conspirators, i., 232.

 Gain, the source of mean or noble, ii., 318.

 Gallus, Caninius, defended by Cicero, ii., 46.

 Gavius, Cicero's treatment of, ii., 102.

 Gavius, P., a Roman citizen, i., 158.

 Geography, Cicero thinks of writing about, i., 289.

 Getæ, shall he bring them down on Rome, ii., 123.

 Glabrio, Prætor at the trial of Verres, i., 138.

 Gloria, De, translated, ii., 188.

 Godhead, Cicero's belief in, ii., 26;
   Cicero's ideas of, 295, 326.

 Gracchi, the two, i., 76;
   latest disciple of, 203;
   what they attempted, 215.

 Grævius, arranged Cicero's letters, i., 168.

 Greece, Cicero travels in, i., 56.

 Gueroult, M., his enthusiasm for Cicero, i., 252.


 H.

 Heaven, Cicero's idea of, ii., 324.

 Hierosolymarius, nickname of Pompey, i., 289.

 Heius, Marcus, his story in the trial of Verres, i., 155.

 Helvia, Cicero's mother's story respecting, i., 42.

 Heraclius, the story of, on the trial of Verres, i., 145.

 Herennius, killed Cicero, ii., 243.

 Hirtius, on Cicero's side, ii., 209;
   killed, 223.

 Historians, what they would say of Cicero, i., 301.

 Homer's verses of the Eagle and the Serpent, i., 46.

 Honest man, how he ought to live, ii., 319.

 "Honestum," what it means, ii., 315.

 Horace, his boasting, i., 151;
   his treatment of women, 317.

 Hortensius, on the trial of Verres, i., 130, 138, 161;
   comes to see Cicero as he leaves Rome, ii., 82.

 House, purchased on the Palatine Hill, i., 250;
   the spot consecrated by Clodius, ii., 16.

 Human race, Cicero's love for, ii., 290.

 Hypsæus, candidate for the Consulship, ii., 61.


 I.

 "Imperator," Cicero is named, ii., 91.

 Income, Cicero's amount of, i., 61, 99.

 Insincerity of Cicero, ii., 112;
   almost necessary, _ibid._;
   Cicero's defended, 247.

 Invective, bitterness of Cicero's, i., 32.

 Inventione, De, i., 51;
   four books remaining, ii., 251, 253.


 J.

 "Jews," gold of their temple saved, i., 296.

 Jonson, Ben, his description of Catiline, i., 208, 222.

 Journey into Greece, Cicero intends a, ii., 184.

 Judges, how they sat with a Prætor, i., 93.

 Julia, Cæsar's wife, dies, ii., 57.

 Jupiter Stator, Cicero's first speech against Catiline
     in the temple of, i., 224;
   Cicero returns thanks for, in the temple, ii., 12.

 Jurisdictione Siciliensi, De, i., 141.

 Juvenal, as to Cicero, i., 16;
   as to Catiline, 209.


 K.

 Killing Roman citizens, Cicero to be charged with, i., 295.

 Kings, odious to Cicero as to all Romans, ii., 175.


 L.

 Labienus, an optimate, i., 293.

 La Harpe, his opinion of the Pro Marcello, ii., 151.

 Lælius in the dialogue De Republica, ii., 307.

 Lanuvium, Milo returning from, ii., 62.

 Laodicea, Cicero is governor, i., 86.

 Lawyers, Cicero ridicules them, i., 194.

 Legacies, a source of income, i., 103.

 Legions, the, are Cæsarian, ii., 229.

 Legibus, De, ii., 251;
   taken from Plato, 309.

 Legation offered to Cicero, i., 292.

 Lentulus, letters to, ii., 22;
   explaining his conduct, 51.

 Lentulus, Publius Cornelius, one of Catiline's conspirators, i., 232;
   killed, 238;
   Cicero broke the law in regard to, 313.

 Lepidus, his character, ii., 210;
   recommended peace, 221;
   one of the Triumvirate, 240.

 Leucopetra, Cicero landed at, ii., 189.

 Lex Porcia forbidden death of Roman, i., 236.

 Liberty, Roman idea of, i., 26.

 "Librarii," short-hand writers, i., 189.

 Ligarius, Cicero speaks for, ii., 152.

 Lilybæum, Cicero Quæstor at, i., 114.

 Literature, Cicero's reason for devoting himself to, ii., 256.

 Livy, as to Cicero, i., 15;
   his evidence as to Catiline's conspiracy, 217;
   his political tendencies, ii., 306.

 Long, Mr., his opinion of the Pro Marcello, ii., 151.

 Lucan, as to Cicero, i., 15;
   would have extolled him had he killed himself, 303.

 Lucceius, Cicero applies to him for praise, ii., 24.

 Lucretius, the period at which he wrote, i., 24.

 Lucullus, absent in the East seven years, i., 176.

 Lucullus, The, ii., 282


 M.

 Macaulay, Mr., his verdict as to Cicero's character, i., 8.

 Mai, Cardinal, his opinion of the Pro Marcello, ii., 151.

 Mallius, lieutenant of Catiline, i., 222;
   declared a public enemy, 230.

 Mamertines, people of Messina, favorites of Verres, i., 155.

 Manilia Pro Lege, i., 177, Appendix D.

 Manilius, his law in favor of Pompey, i., 177.

 Marcellus, had conquered Syracuse, i., 156.

 Marcellus, M. C., is Consul, ii., 83;
   flogs a citizen of Novocomum, _ibid._;
   his enmity to Cæsar, 148;
   Cicero speaks for him, 150;
   is murdered, 151.

 Marcellus Caius, Cicero congratulates him on his Consulship, ii., 88.

 Marius, born at Arpinum, i., 40;
   origin of his quarrel with Sulla, 49.

 Marius, a poem by Cicero, i., 47.

 Martia, Legio, character of, ii., 207.

 Martial, as to Cicero, i., 15.

 Mendaciuncula, Cicero's use of, i., 164.

 Merivale, Dean, as to Cicero, i., 9;
   History of Rome, 63;
   as to Catiline, 210;
   as to Cicero's exile, 297.

 Metellus, Quintus on the side of Verres, i., 129, 138;
   the history of the family, 248;
   Celer, his complaint against Cicero, 246;
   Nepos, forbids Cicero to speak on vacating the Consulship, 240.

 Middleton, his biography a by word for eulogy, i., 123;
   quoted as to Clodius, 274;
   as to Cicero's exile, 297;
   censures Cicero for going into, 318;
   nature of his biography, ii., 107.

 Milo, gives public games, ii., 48;
   Cicero wishes him to be Consul, 56;
   his trial, 59;
   accused of bringing a dagger into the Senate, 64;
   demands protection, 65;
   condemned, 67;
   his mode of travelling, 72.

 Milone, Pro, Cicero's oration, i., 53;
   specially admired, ii., 60;
   not heard, 67.

 Mithridates, Sulla sent against, i., 50;
   Pompey has command against, 176.

 Molo, Cicero studies with, i., 50, 56.

 Mommsen, his history, i., 63;
   opinion of Rome, 72, 74;
   as to Cæsar and Crassus, 218;
   as to Cicero's exile, 297;
   description of Rome during Cicero's exile, 328;
   deals hardly with Cicero, ii., 33;
   as to Cicero owing money to Cæsar, 82;
   his interpretation of Cæsar's names, 172;
   tells us nothing of Cæsar's death, 178;
   his verdict as to Rome, 306.

 Money, restored to Cicero for rebuilding his house, ii., 21.

 Montesquieu, as to Roman religion, ii., 20.

 Morabin, as to Cicero's exile, i., 297;
   doubts Cicero's presence at Cæsar's death, ii., 177.

 Moral Essays, ii., 304.

 Mourning, Cicero assumes prior to his exile, i., 316.

 Munda, final battle of, ii., 156.

 Murena, Cicero defended, i., 191;
   accused of bribery, 192;
   and of dancing, 193;
   a soldier, 195.

 Musical charm of Cicero's language, ii., 28.

 Mutina, ambassadors sent to Antony before, ii., 209;
   the battle, 223;
   badly managed, 228.


 N.

 Names, Roman, as to forms to be used, i., 38;
   usual with Romans to have three, 41.

 Nasica, his joke, ii., 262.

 Natura Deorum, De, ii., 252, 266, 294.

 "Nomenclatio," the meaning, i., 113.

 Nonis Juliis, ii., 188.

 "Novus ante me nemo," i., 202.


 O.

 Octavius, comes to Rome, ii., 181;
   meets Cicero, _ibid._;
   quarrels with Antony, 204;
   feared by Cicero, 205;
   would he be Consul, 232;
   marches into Rome, _ibid._;
   his enmity to Cicero, 233;
   his insolence, 237;
   is reconciled to Antony, _ibid._;
   the meeting in the island at Bologna, 238;
   his conduct, _ibid._;
   letter to him, supposed from Cicero, but a forgery, 240.

 Officiis, De, ii., 205, 252;
   perfect treatise on morals, 314.

 "O fortunatam natam," i., 277.

 "Old Mortality," torture as there described, i., 88.

 Oppianicus, his life, i., 179.

 Oppius Publius, his trial, i., 126.

 Optimates, Pompey their leader, i., 175.

 Optimo Genere Oratorum, De, ii., 251, 264.

 Orations, how Cicero treated his own, ii., 167.

 Oratiuncula, twelve consular speeches so called, i., 190.

 Orator, The, ii., 251;
   graced by the name of Brutus, 266.

 Oratore, De, Cicero's dialogues, ii., 38;
   sent to Lentulus, 46, 251, 256, 270.

 Oratoriæ Partitiones, ii., 145, 265.

 Oratory, Cicero's three modes of speaking, i., 94;
   his charms, 137;
   purposes of, ii., 274.

 Ornament, Greek taste for, i., 154.

 Otho's law, speech concerning, i., 190, 204.


 P.

 Pagan, Cicero one, ii., 330.

 Palinodia, or recantation, by Cicero, ii., 23.

 Palatine Hill, Cicero's house destroyed, i., 325.

 Pansa, the Consul on Cicero's side, ii., 209;
   slain, 223.

 Paradoxes, the six, ii., 146.

 Partitiones, Oratoriæ, ii., 251.

 Peel, Sir Robert, i., 303.

 Perfection, required in an orator, ii., 257;
   Cicero fails in describing it, 257, 258, 261.

 Perfect orator, not desirable, ii., 275.

 Philippics, origin of the name, ii., 192;
   the first, 193;
   the second not intended to be spoken or published, 198;
   commences with satire against Antony, 199;
   the third and fourth, 206;
   the fifth, 210;
   the sixth, 211;
   the seventh, 212;
   the eighth, 215;
   the ninth, _ibid._;
   the tenth, _ibid._;
   the eleventh, 217;
   the twelfth, 220;
   the thirteenth, 222;
   the fourteenth, _ibid._

 Philo, the academician, i., 43;
   Cicero studies with, 50, 51.

 Philodamus, and his daughter in the trial of Verres, i., 142.

 Philology, discussed with Cæsar, ii., 170.

 Philosophy, Cicero's nature of, i., 33, 58, 59;
   rumor that Cicero will devote himself to it, 97;
   Cicero did not believe in it, 194;
   devotes himself to it, ii., 163;
   the nature of Cicero's treatises, 277;
   the nature of his feeling, 278;
   Greek laughed at by Cicero, _ibid._;
   not real with him, 280;
   apologizes for, 319.

 Philotomus, freedman of Terentia, ii., 105.

 Phænomena, The, by Aratus, i., 46.

 Pindenissum, Cicero besieges, ii., 91;
   his letter to Cato respecting, 92.

 Pirates, picked up by officers of Verres, i., 160;
   commission given to Pompey against, 171;
   their power, 172.

 Piso, abuse of, i., 151;
   Consul when Cicero was banished, 312;
   Cicero appeals to him, 320;
   robs Cicero, 324;
   Cicero's speech against, ii., 41;
   of high family, _ibid._;
   becomes Censor, 42;
   speaks for Antony in the Senate, 220.

 Piso, Calpurnius, Cicero defended, i., 191.

 Plancius, very kind to Cicero, i., 325;
   Cicero pleads for, ii., 49.

 Plancus, Lucius, letters from, ii., 140;
   Cicero writes to him, 211;
   may have been true, 228, 230, 234.

 Plancus, Munatius, Cicero's joy at his condemnation, ii., 74.

 Pliny, the elder, as to Cicero, i., 204.

 Plato, Cicero describes himself as a lover of, ii., 288.

 Plutarch, is to Cicero, i., 16;
   accuses him of running from Sulla's wrath, 57.

 Poetry, Cicero as a poet, i., 47.

 Poetus, gave some books to Cicero, i., 13;
   Cicero's correspondence with, ii., 172;
   Cicero took his books, 328.

 Political opinions, Cicero's, i., 54, 55;
   definition made by Cicero, ii., 28.

 Pollio, may have been true, ii., 228, 234.

 Pompeia, Cæsar's wife divorced, i., 255.

 Pompeius, Strabo, father of Pompey the Great, i., 49.

 Pompey, the rising man, i., 55;
   devoid of scruple, 77;
   appointed to put down the pirates, 172;
   his character, 173;
   how regarded by Cæsar, 216;
   his intercourse with Cæsar, 243;
   Cicero's letters to, 244;
   chosen by him as his leader, 246;
   called home to act against Catiline, 247;
   returns from the East, 257;
   his jealousy, 259;
   Mommsen's opinion, _ibid._;
   one of the Triumvirate, 267;
   his marriage with Julia, 282;
   his ingratitude to Cicero, 287;
   his nick-names, 289, 291;
   promises to help Cicero against Clodius, 294;
   the story of Cicero kneeling to him, 321;
   Cicero forgives him, 327;
   offended by Cicero's praise of himself, ii., 15;
   commissioned to feed Rome, 19;
   Cicero to be his lieutenant, _ibid._;
   his games, Cicero's description of, 44, 45;
   sole Consul, 59;
   Dictator, 63;
   would be unwilling to bring back Clodius, 73;
   claims money from Ariobarzanes, 101;
   begins to attack Cæsar, 105;
   borrowed Cicero's money, 111;
   Cicero clings to, 119;
   was murdered at the mouth of the Nile, 126.

 Pomponia, her treatment of her husband Quintius, ii., 79.

 Pontius Glaucus, a poem, i., 44.

 Popilius Lænas, killed Cicero, ii., 243, 244.

 Populace of Rome, condition of, ii., 11.

 Prætor, Cicero elected, i., 171, 176.

 Prætura Urbana, De, first speech in the second action In Verrem,
   i., 141.

 Proconsul, his desire for provincial robbery, i., 99, 100.

 Property, redistribution of, i., 196.

 Provinces, the struggle for, ii., 206.

 Pseudo Asconius, commentaries on the Verrine orations, i., 180.

 Publicani, their duties, i., 280.

 Publilia, married to Cicero, ii., 155.

 Publius Quintius, speech on his behalf, i., 80.

 Punic wars, the, i., 76.

 Puteoli, at, the story he tells of himself, i., 120.


 Q.

 Quæstor, Cicero elected, i., 107;
   his character in regard to the Proconsul with whom he acted, 133.

 Quintilian, as to Cicero, i., 16, 182, 225;
   as to Cicero's education, 57;
   says that Cicero's speeches were arranged by Tiro, 95;
   description of bar oratory, 96;
   accuses Cicero of running into iambics, ii., 43;
   his opinion of the Pro Milone, 60;
   Pro Cluentio, 61;
   cases given by him, 255;
   his description of an orator's voice, 275, 276.

 Quintus Cicero (the elder), i., 42;
   service in Gaul, 62;
   his character, 169;
   sent out as Proprætor, 262;
   his brother's letter to him, 277, 278;
   affecting letter to, 326;
   speaks ill of his brother to Cæsar, ii., 139;
   and his son, are killed, 243.

 Quintus Cicero (the younger) wishes to go to the Parthian war, ii., 163;
   declares his repentance, 187;
   had been Antony's "right hand," _ibid._;
   his fate, _ibid._;
   his hypocrisy and the vanity of Cicero, 188.

 Quirites, their mode of living, i., 111.


 R.

 Rabirius, Cicero defends, i., 190.

 Rabirius Postumus, Cicero defends, ii., 53.

 Raillery, not good at the Roman bar, ii., 262.

 Reate, Cicero speaks for the inhabitants, ii., 48.

 Religion, Cicero's, ii., 321.

 Republic, Cicero swears that he has saved it, i., 241;
   Cicero's guiding principle, 309;
   held fast by the idea of preserving it, 310;
   as conceived by Cicero, ii., 227.

 Republica, De, Cicero's treatise, ii., 38, 251;
   six books, 305.

 Republican form of government, popular, i., 261.

 Retail trade, base, i., 102.

 Rheticorum, four books addressed to Herennius, i., 51; ii., 251.

 "Rhetores," their mode of tuition, i., 52.

 Rhythm, Cicero's lessons too fine for our ears, ii., 271.

 Roman citizens, their mode of life, i., 315.

 Romans, the, had no religion, ii., 321.

 Rome, falling into anarchy, i., 50;
   how she recovered herself, ii., 204.

 Roscius, the actor, Cicero pleads on his behalf, i., 105.

 Roscius, Titus Capito, i., 85, 90.

 Roscius, Titus Magnus, i., 85, 89.

 Rosoir, Du M, his testimony as to Cicero, i., 127;
   his accusations against, 178;
   as to Cicero's exile, 297;
   his accusations, ii., 176;
   accuses Cicero of cowardice, 191.

 Rubicon, the passage of, i., 125; ii., 120.

 Ruined man, Cicero returns from exile as, ii., 16.

 Rullus, brings in Agrarian laws, i., 196;
   his father-in-law had acquired property under Sulla, 198;
   ridiculed for being "sordidatus," 199;
   spoken of in the Senate, 203.


 S.

 "Saga," when worn, ii., 223.

 Salaminians agree to be guided by Cicero, ii., 99.

 Sallust, as to Cicero, i., 17;
   as to Catiline, 187, 209, 219;
   his story not conflicting with Cicero's, 220, 227.

 "Salutatores," who they were, i., 112.

 Sampsiceramus, nickname for Pompey, i., 291.

 Sappho, the statue of, by Silanion, i., 157.

 Sassia, her life, i., 179.

 Saufeius twice acquitted, ii., 67.

 Scævola, Quintus, instructed Cicero, i., 43.

 Scaptius, the story of, ii., 93, 102;
   agent of Brutus in getting his debts paid, 96, 99.

 Scipio the great, gives the idea of Roman power, i., 76.

 Scipio the younger, in the dialogue De Republica, ii., 307;
   his dream, 308;
   translated, 333.

 Scipio, Q. Metellus, candidate for the Consulship, ii., 61.

 Sempronia, accused by Sallust of dancing too well, i., 193;
   Catiline's plot carried on at her house, 230.

 Sempronia Lex declares that a Roman should not be put to death, i., 237.

 Senate, their honors, i., 116;
   their disgrace, 117;
   pass a vote that they will go into mourning for Cicero, 319;
   Cicero's presence demanded in, ii., 189.

 Senate house scene described in a letter to Quintus, ii., 22, 23;
   is burnt, 63;
   archives destroyed, 70.

 Senectute, De, ii., 252;
   Cato tells its praises, 312.

 Servilius, compliment paid to, at the trial of Verres, i., 140.

 Serving his fellow creatures, Cicero's way of doing, ii., 300, 301.

 Sextus, letter to, as to borrowing money, i., 249;
   defence of, ii., 27;
   Cicero's gratitude to, _ibid._

 Sextus Roscius Amerinus, i., 80.

 Shakespeare, his conception correct as to Cæsar's death, ii., 173.

 Shelley, version of the Eagle and the Serpent, i., 46.

 Short hand writing, the system of, i., 189.

 Sicilians invite Cicero to take their part against Verres, i., 118;
   their wishes for his assistance, 135.

 Sicily divided into two provinces, i., 114.

 Signis, De, fourth speech at the second action In Verrem, i., 141.

 Slaves, tortured to obtain evidence, i., 88.

 Solitude, he had not strength to exercise, ii., 320.

 Soothsayers, appeal made to them as to Cicero, ii., 26.

 Soothsaying, ii., 300.

 "Sordidatus," Cicero's dress before going into exile, i., 301.

 Speeches made by Cicero on his return from exile, ii., 9;
   question whether they be genuine, 10.

 States, Italian, jealousy of, leading to first civil war, i., 49.

 Statilius, one of Catiline's conspirators, i., 252.

 Statues, purchase of, i., 170.

 Stenography, the Roman system, i., 189.

 Sthenius, his trial, i., 127, 146.

 Suetonius, accuses Cæsar of joining Catiline, i., 217;
   character of Cæsar, 273.

 Sulla, Cicero served with, i., 49;
   declared Dictator, 54;
   Cicero on Sulla's side in politics, 55;
   goes to the East, 67;
   his massacres, 68;
   reorganizes the law, 69;
   his resignation, 70;
   attacked by Cicero, 92.

 Sulla, P., elected Consul, i., 214;
   Cicero's speech for, 252.

 Sulpicius, Publius, the orator, i., 43.

 Sulpicius, Servius, laughed at as an orator, i., 194;
   one of the ambassadors dies on his journey ii., 213.

 Superstitions of old Rome, ii., 25.

 "Supplicatio," decreed to Cicero, i., 282,
   nature of, ii., 104;
   granted for Mutina for fifty days, 225.

 Suppliciis, De, fifth speech in the second action In Verrem, i., 141.

 "Symphoniacos homines," i., 160.

 Syracuse, robberies of Verres, i., 156.


 T.

 Tablets of wax used by judges, i., 93.

 Tacitus, as to Cicero, i., 16;
   De Oratoribus, 51.

 Terentia, Cicero's wife, i., 98;
   Cicero's affection for, 324;
   as to the divorce, ii., 105;
   his style to is changed, 115;
   Cicero in a sad condition as to, 138;
   divorced, 145, 154.

 Teucris, nickname for Antony, Cicero's colleague, i., 251.

 Thapsus, battle of, ii., 147.

 Thessalonica, Cicero's sojourn there during his exile, i., 325.

 Tiro, Cicero's slave and secretary, i., 42;
   Cicero's affectionate letters to, ii., 119;
   Cicero writes to, respecting Antony, 184.

 Toga virilis, Cicero assumes it, i., 48.

 Topica, The, prepared for Trebatius, ii., 189, 252;
   taken from Aristotle, 272, 273.

 Torquatus, elected Consul, i., 214.

 Torquatus, young, attacks Cicero, i., 253.

 Translating, Roman feeling in doing it, ii., 252.

 Travels, gives his own reasons for going to Greece and Asia, i., 58.

 Trebatius, confided to Cæsar, i., 62;
   recommends him to Cæsar, ii., 48, 49.

 Trebonius, massacred by Dolabella, ii., 217.

 Tribunate, Cicero's defence of, ii., 311.

 "Triennium fere fuit, urbs sine armis," i., 67.

 Triumph, Cicero applies for, ii., 103;
   nature of, _ibid._;
   the cause of trouble to him, 115, 120.

 Triumvirate, the first, i., 264;
   not mentioned by Mommsen, 265;
   description by Horace, _ibid._;
   not so known, 269.

 Tubero, accuses Ligarius, ii., 153;
   Cicero refuses to alter his speech, 154.

 Tullia, Cicero's daughter, i., 106, 170;
   betrothed to Caius Piso, 171;
   meets Cicero at Brundisium, ii., 11;
   she is a widow, _ibid._;
   divorced from Crassipes, 58;
   marries Dolabella for her third husband, 111;
   Cicero had desired that she should marry Tiberius Nero, _ibid._;
   calls her the light of his life, 115;
   dies, 158;
   her proposed monument, 160.

 Tullius Marcus Decula, defended by Cicero, i., 123.

 Tusculanæ Disputationes, i., 33; ii., 251, 290;
   their five heads, 291.

 Tusculum Villa, gives commission for purchase of statues, i., 170.

 Tusculum, Dialogue de Oratore held there, ii., 259.

 Twenty-six years old when Cicero pleaded his first cause, i., 54.

 Tyranny, in the Senate, Cicero charged with, ii., 72.

 Tyrrell, Mr., arrangement of Cicero's letters, i., 169;
   doubts thrown on a letter to Atticus, 191.


 U.

 Usury, base, i., 102.


 V.

 Valerius Maximus, as to Catiline, i., 209.

 Valerius, Cicero stays at his villa, ii., 189.

 Varenus, his trial, i., 127.

 Vargunteius, a knight employed to kill Cicero, i., 223.

 Varro, the period at which he wrote, i., 24.

 Vatinius, speech against, ii., 28;
   Cicero defends, 48.

 Velleius Paterculus, as to Cicero, i., 15;
   as to Catiline, 209.

 Veneti, Cæsar's treatment of, ii., 166.

 Vercingetorix, conquered at Alesia, ii., 74.

 Verres, his trial, i., 125;
   Governor for three years, 126;
   retires into exile, 141;
   standard-bearer to Hortensius, 149;
   fined and sent into exile, 161.

 Vibo to Velia, Cicero's journey in a small boat from, i., 138.

 Vigintiviratus, offered to Cicero, i., 12;
   Cicero repudiates, 288.

 Vindemiolæ, the way Cicero expends them, 177.

 Virgil, Cicero intended by, i., 14;
   his version of the Eagle and the Serpent, 46;
   his boasting, 151;
   his allusion to Cicero, 203;
   description of Catiline, 209.

 Volcatius, does not speak for Marcellus, ii., 150.

 Voltaire, version of the Eagle and the Serpent, i., 40;
   description of Catiline, 208.


 W.

 Wolf, his criticism on the Pro Marcello, ii., 151.

 Work, the amount of, done by Cicero, ii., 122.


THE END.