Read Ebook: The Life of Cicero Volume II. by Trollope Anthony

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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 Caesars; 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. 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 Caesar, 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? 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." 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? 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 Caesar that, though Caesar 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 Caesar 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 Caesar 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 Caesar 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." 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.

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. "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 Caesar's creatures, who at Caesar'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 Caesar'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 Caesar'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 Caesar.

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!" 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 Caesar 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 Caesar was still powerful, and to their thinking Antony was fighting on dead Caesar's side. When we read the history of this year, the fact becomes clear that out of Rome Caesar'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.

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 Caesar 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 Caesar's period of command. When Caesar 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 Caesar had fallen. To his eyes it was as though some god had interfered to restore to him, a Roman, his ancient form of government. Caesar was now dead, and all would be right--only that Antony was left alive. There was need for another struggle before Consuls, Praetors, and AEdiles 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 Caesar--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 Caesar 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 Caesar--and if to meet him, then also to congratulate him. Appian tells us that in the Senate Cicero hastened to congratulate Caesar, assuring him how anxious he had been to secure the Consulship for him, and how active. Caesar smiled, and said that Cicero had perhaps been a little late in his friendship. Dio Cassius only remarks that Caesar 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 Caesar, seeing that he had obtained the Consulship at an unusually early age. But, as I have said above, their testimony for many reasons is to be doubted. Each wrote in the interest of the Caesars, 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 Caesar 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 Caesar'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. 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. Caesar 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 Caesar. 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 Caesar, 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 Caesar assented. It did not occur to them, as it would have done to Julius Caesar 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 Caesar should have been compelled to doom any one to death, or that such a one as Cicero should have been doomed by any." Middleton thinks, and perhaps with fair reason, that Caesar'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 Caesar should have been forced to yield, or that any one should have been there to force him. As far as Caesar 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. 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 Caesar; but the men of mark in the city, those who were indolent and rich and luxurious, the "fish-ponders" generally, had thought that, now Caesar 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 Caesar 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 Caesar. 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 Caesar will always be such a citizen as he has shown himself to-day?" 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 Caesar, 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 Caesar 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?

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 Caesar. With his brother's assent he had become Caesar's lieutenant in Gaul, such employment being in conformity with the practice of the Republic. When Caesar had returned, and the question as to power arose at once between Caesar 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 Caesar'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 Caesar's eyes, that Caesar 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 Caesarean 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 Formiae, 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 Caesar'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 Formiae 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 Laenas 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 Caesar, 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 Caesar, lest he should find himself enveloped, through Caesar'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 Caesar's, would they be less so? Could Caesar 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.

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. 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 THE DATE THE WORKS. " " Philosophy " OF The Moral Essays " PUBLICATION.

Rheticorum ad C. B.C. Herennium. 87, 86. } AEtat. De 20, 21. Inventione.

De Oratore. B.C. 55. AEtat. 52.

De B.C. 53. Republica. AEtat. 54.

De Legibus. B.C. 52. AEtat. 55.

De Optimo Genere B.C. 52. Oratorum. AEtat. 55.

De Partitione B.C. 46. Oratoria. AEtat. 61.

The B.C. 45. Academica. AEtat. 62.

De Finibus Bonorum et B.C. 45. Malorum. AEtat. 62.

Brutus: or, De Claris B.C. 45. Oratoribus. AEtat. 62.

Orator. B.C. 45. AEtat. 62.

Tusculanae Disputa- B.C. 45. tiones. AEtat. 62.

De Natura B.C. 44. Deorum. AEtat. 63

De B.C. 44. Divinatione. AEtat. 63.

De Fato. B.C. 44. AEtat. 63.

The Topica. B.C. 44. AEtat. 63.

De B.C. 44. Senectute. AEtat. 63.

De B.C. 44. Amicitia. AEtat. 63.

De B.C. 44. Officiis. AEtat. 63.

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?" 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 Quaestor, AEdile, Praetor, 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 Caesar 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 Caesarean, or must be quiet, or he must go. He would not be Caesarean, 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 Caesar 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.

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 Scaevola the augur, and Sulpicius and Cotta, two rising orators of the period. On the second day Scaevola is supposed to be too fatigued to renew the intellectual contest, and he retires; but one Caesar 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. Caesar, 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 Caesar 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;" 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!" "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." 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." 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."

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