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+Project Gutenberg's Roman life in the days of Cicero, by Alfred J[ohn] Church
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Roman life in the days of Cicero
+
+Author: Alfred J[ohn] Church
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2004 [EBook #13481]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMAN LIFE IN THE DAYS OF CICERO ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, Graeme Mackreth and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+   Roman Life in the
+   Days of Cicero
+   By the
+   REV. ALFRED J. CHURCH, M.A.
+
+Author of "Stories from Homer"
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+New York
+
+
+
+TO OCTAVIUS OGLE, IN REMEMBRANCE OF A LONG FRIENDSHIP THIS BOOK IS
+DEDICATED.
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAP.
+
+I. A ROMAN BOY
+
+II. A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE
+
+III. IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR
+
+IV. A ROMAN MAGISTRATE
+
+V. A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE
+
+VI. COUNTRY LIFE
+
+VII. A GREAT CONSPIRACY
+
+VIII. CAESAR
+
+IX. POMPEY
+
+X. EXILE
+
+XI. A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
+
+XII. CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA
+
+XIII. A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE
+
+XIV. ATTICUS
+
+XV. ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+This book does not claim to be a life of Cicero or a history of the last
+days of the Roman Republic. Still less does it pretend to come into
+comparison with such a work as Bekker's _Gallus_, in which on a slender
+thread of narrative is hung a vast amount of facts relating to the
+social life of the Romans. I have tried to group round the central
+figure of Cicero various sketches of men and manners, and so to give my
+readers some idea of what life actually was in Rome, and the provinces
+of Rome, during the first six decades--to speak roughly--of the first
+century B.C. I speak of Cicero as the "central figure," not as judging
+him to be the most important man of the time, but because it is from
+him, from his speeches and letters, that we chiefly derive the
+information of which I have here made use. Hence it follows that I give,
+not indeed a life of the great orator, but a sketch of his personality
+and career. I have been obliged also to trespass on the domain of
+history: speaking of Cicero, I was obliged to speak also of Caesar and
+of Pompey, of Cato and of Antony, and to give a narrative, which I have
+striven to make as brief as possible, of their military achievements and
+political action. I must apologize for seeming to speak dogmatically on
+some questions which have been much disputed. It would have been
+obviously inconsistent with the character of the book to give the
+opposing arguments; and my only course was to state simply conclusions
+which I had done my best to make correct.
+
+I have to acknowledge my obligations to Marquardt's _Privat-Leben der
+Romer_, Mr. Capes' _University Life in Ancient Athens_, and Mr. Watson's
+_Select Letters of Cicero_, I have also made frequent use of Mr. Anthony
+Trollope's _Life of Cicero_, a work full of sound sense, though
+curiously deficient in scholarship.
+
+The publishers and myself hope that the illustrations, giving as there
+is good reason to believe they do the veritable likenesses of some of
+the chief actors in the scenes described, will have a special interest.
+It is not till we come down to comparatively recent times that we find
+art again lending the same aid to the understanding of history.
+
+Some apology should perhaps be made for retaining the popular title of
+one of the illustrations. The learned are, we believe, agreed that the
+statue known as the "Dying Gladiator" does not represent a gladiator at
+all. Yet it seemed pedantic, in view of Byron's famous description, to
+let it appear under any other name.
+
+ALFRED CHURCH.
+
+HADLEY GREEN _October_ 8, 1883.
+
+
+
+   ROMAN LIFE
+   IN THE DAYS OF CICERO.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+A ROMAN BOY.
+
+
+A Roman father's first duty to his boy, after lifting him up in his arms
+in token that he was a true son of the house, was to furnish him with a
+first name out of the scanty list (just seventeen) to which his choice
+was limited. This naming was done on the eighth day after birth, and was
+accompanied with some religious ceremonies, and with a feast to which
+kinsfolk were invited. Thus named he was enrolled in some family or
+state register. The next care was to protect him from the malignant
+influence of the evil eye by hanging round his neck a gilded _bulla_, a
+round plate of metal. (The _bulla_ was of leather if he was not of
+gentle birth.) This he wore till he assumed the dress of manhood. Then
+he laid it aside, possibly to assume it once more, if he attained the
+crowning honor to which a Roman could aspire, and was drawn in triumph
+up the slope of the Capitol. He was nursed by his mother, or, in any
+case, by a free-born woman. It was his mother that had exclusive charge
+of him for the first seven years of his life, and had much to say to the
+ordering of his life afterwards. For Roman mothers were not shut up like
+their sisters in Greece, but played no small part in affairs--witness
+the histories or legends (for it matters not for this purpose whether
+they are fact or fiction) of the Sabine wives, of Tullia, who stirred up
+her husband to seize a throne, or Veturia, who turned her son Coriolanus
+from his purpose of besieging Rome. At seven began the education which
+was to make him a citizen and a soldier. Swimming, riding, throwing the
+javelin developed his strength of body. He learned at the same time to
+be frugal, temperate in eating and drinking, modest and seemly in
+behavior, reverent to his elders, obedient to authority at home and
+abroad, and above all, pious towards the gods. If it was the duty of
+the father to act as priest in some temple of the State (for the
+priests were not a class apart from their fellow-citizens), or to
+conduct the worship in some chapel of the family, the lad would act as
+_camillus_ or acolyte. When the clients, the dependents of the house,
+trooped into the hall in the early morning hours to pay their respects
+to their patron, or to ask his advice and assistance in their affairs,
+the lad would stand by his father's chair and make acquaintance with his
+humble friends. When the hall was thrown open, and high festival was
+held, he would be present and hear the talk on public affairs or on past
+times. He would listen to and sometimes take part in the songs which
+celebrated great heroes. When the body of some famous soldier or
+statesman was carried outside the walls to be buried or burned, he would
+be taken to hear the oration pronounced over the bier.
+
+At one time it was the custom, if we may believe a quaint story which
+one of the Roman writers tells us, for the senators to introduce their
+young sons to the sittings of their assembly, very much in the same way
+as the boys of Westminster School are admitted to hear the debates in
+the Houses of Parliament. The story professes to show how it was that
+one of the families of the race of Papirius came to bear the name of
+_Praetextatus_, i.e., clad in the _praetexta_ (the garb of boyhood), and
+it runs thus:--"It was the custom in the early days of the Roman State
+that the senators should bring their young sons into the Senate to the
+end that they might learn in their early days how great affairs of the
+commonwealth were managed. And that no harm should ensue to the city, it
+was strictly enjoined upon the lads that they should not say aught of
+the things which they had heard within the House. It happened on a day
+that the Senate, after long debate upon a certain matter, adjourned the
+thing to the morrow. Hereupon the son of a certain senator, named
+Papirius, was much importuned by his mother to tell the matter which had
+been thus painfully debated. And when the lad, remembering the command
+which had been laid upon him that he should be silent about such
+matters, refused to tell it, the woman besought him to speak more
+urgently, till at the last, being worn out by her importunities, he
+contrived this thing. 'The Senate,' he said, 'debated whether something
+might not be done whereby there should be more harmony in families than
+is now seen to be; and whether, should it be judged expedient to make
+any change, this should be to order that a husband should have many
+wives, or a wife should have more husbands than one.' Then the woman,
+being much disturbed by the thing which she had heard, hastened to all
+the matrons of her acquaintance, and stirred them up not to suffer any
+such thing. Thus it came to pass that the Senate, meeting the next day,
+were astonished beyond measure to see a great multitude of women
+gathered together at the doors, who besought them not to make any
+change; or, if any, certainly not to permit that a man should have more
+wives than one. Then the young Papirius told the story how his mother
+had questioned him, and how he had devised this story to escape from her
+importunity. Thereupon the Senate, judging that all boys might not have
+the same constancy and wit, and that the State might suffer damage from
+the revealing of things that had best be kept secret, made this law,
+that no sons of a senator should thereafter come into the House, save
+only this young Papirius, but that he should have the right to come so
+long as he should wear the _praetexta_."
+
+While this general education was going on, the lad was receiving some
+definite teaching. He learned of course to read, to write, and to
+cypher. The elder Cato used to write in large characters for the benefit
+of his sons portions of history, probably composed by himself or by his
+contemporary Fabius, surnamed the "Painter" (the author of a chronicle
+of Italy from the landing of Aeneas down to the end of the Second Punic
+War). He was tempted to learn by playthings, which ingeniously combined
+instruction and amusement. Ivory letters--probably in earlier times a
+less costly material was used--were put into his hands, just as they are
+put into the hands of children now-a-days, that he might learn how to
+form words. As soon as reading was acquired, he began to learn by heart.
+"When we were boys," Cicero represents himself as saying to his brother
+Quintus, in one of his Dialogues, "we used to learn the 'Twelve
+Tables.'" The "Twelve Tables" were the laws which Appius of evil fame
+and his colleagues the decemvirs had arranged in a code. "No one," he
+goes on to say, "learns them now." Books had become far more common in
+the forty years which had passed between Cicero's boyhood and the time
+at which he is supposed to be speaking; and the tedious lesson of his
+early days had given place to something more varied and interesting.
+
+Writing the boy learned by following with the pen (a sharp-pointed
+_stylus_ of metal), forms of letters which had been engraved on tablets
+of wood. At first his hand was held and guided by the teacher. This was
+judged by the experienced to be a better plan than allowing him to shape
+letters for himself on the wax-covered tablet. Of course parchment and
+paper were far too expensive materials to be used for exercises and
+copies. As books were rare and costly, dictation became a matter of much
+importance. The boy wrote, in part at least, his own schoolbooks. Horace
+remembers with a shudder what he had himself written at the dictation of
+his schoolmaster, who was accustomed to enforce good writing and
+spelling with many blows. He never could reconcile himself to the early
+poets whose verse had furnished the matter of these lessons.
+
+Our Roman boy must have found arithmetic a more troublesome thing than
+the figures now in use (for which we cannot be too thankful to the Arabs
+their inventors) have made it. It is difficult to imagine how any thing
+like a long sum in multiplication or division could have been done with
+the Roman numerals, so cumbrous were they. The number, for instance,
+which we represent by the figures 89 would require for its expression no
+less than _nine_ figures, LXXXVIIII. The boy was helped by using the
+fingers, the left hand being used to signify numbers below a hundred,
+and the right numbers above it. Sometimes his teacher would have a
+counting-board, on which units, tens, and hundreds would be represented
+by variously colored balls. The sums which he did were mostly of a
+practical kind. Here is the sample that Horace gives of an arithmetic
+lesson. "The Roman boys are taught to divide the penny by long
+calculations. 'If from five ounces be subtracted one, what is the
+remainder?' At once you can answer, 'A third of a penny.' 'Good, you
+will be able to take care of your money. If an ounce be added what does
+it make?' 'The half of a penny.'"
+
+While he was acquiring this knowledge he was also learning a language,
+the one language besides his own which to a Roman was worth
+knowing--Greek. Very possibly he had begun to pick it up in the nursery,
+where a Greek slave girl was to be found, just as the French _bonne_ or
+the German nursery-governess is among our own wealthier families. He
+certainly began to acquire it when he reached the age at which his
+regular education was commenced. Cato the Elder, though he made it a
+practice to teach his own sons, had nevertheless a Greek slave who was
+capable of undertaking the work, and who actually did teach, to the
+profit of his very frugal master, the sons of other nobles. Aemilius,
+the conqueror of Macedonia, who was a few years younger than Cato, had
+as a tutor a Greek of some distinction. While preparing the procession
+of his triumph he had sent to Athens for a scene-painter, as we should
+call him, who might make pictures of conquered towns wherewith to
+illustrate his victories. He added to the commission a stipulation that
+the artist should also be qualified to take the place of tutor. By good
+fortune the Athenians happened to have in stock, so to speak, exactly
+the man he wanted, one Metrodorus. Cicero had a Greek teacher in his own
+family, not for his son indeed, who was not born till later, but for his
+own benefit. This was one Diodotus, a Stoic philosopher. Cicero had been
+his pupil in his boyhood, and gave him a home till the day of his death,
+"I learned many things from him, logic especially." In old age he lost
+his sight. "Yet," says his pupil, "he devoted himself to study even more
+diligently than before; he had books read to him night and day. These
+were studies which he could pursue without his eyes; but he also, and
+this seems almost incredible, taught geometry without them, instructing
+his learners whence and whither the line was to be drawn, and of what
+kind it was to be." It is interesting to know that when the old man died
+he left his benefactor about nine thousand pounds.
+
+Of course only wealthy Romans could command for their sons the services
+of such teachers as Diodotus; but any well-to-do-household contained a
+slave who had more or less acquaintance with Greek. In Cicero's time a
+century and more of conquests on the part of Rome over Greek and
+Greek-speaking communities had brought into Italian families a vast
+number of slaves who knew the Greek language, and something, often a
+good deal, of Greek literature. One of these would probably be set apart
+as the boy's attendant; from him he would learn to speak and read a
+language, a knowledge of which was at least as common at Rome as is a
+knowledge of French among English gentlemen.
+
+If the Roman boy of whom we are speaking belonged to a very wealthy and
+distinguished family, he would probably receive his education at home.
+Commonly he would go to school. There were schools, girls' schools as
+well as boys' schools, at Rome in the days of the wicked Appius
+Claudius. The schoolmaster appears among the Etruscans in the story of
+Camillus, when the traitor, who offers to hand over to the Roman general
+the sons of the chief citizen of Falerii, is at his command scourged
+back into the town by his scholars. We find him again in the same story
+in the Latin town of Tusculum, where it is mentioned as one of the signs
+of a time of profound peace (Camillus had hurriedly marched against the
+town on a false report of its having revolted), that the hum of scholars
+at their lessons was heard in the market-place. At Rome, as time went
+on, and the Forum became more and more busy and noisy, the schools were
+removed to more suitable localities. Their appliances for teaching were
+improved and increased. Possibly maps were added, certainly reading
+books. Homer was read, and, as we have seen, the old Latin play-writers,
+and, afterwards, Virgil. Horace threatens the book which willfully
+insists on going out into the world with this fate, that old age will
+find it in a far-off suburb teaching boys their letters. Some hundred
+years afterwards the prophecy was fulfilled. Juvenal tells us how the
+schoolboys stood each with a lamp in one hand and a well-thumbed Horace
+or sooty Virgil in the other. Quintilian, writing about the same time,
+goes into detail, as becomes an old schoolmaster. "It is an admirable
+practice that the boy's reading should begin with Homer and Virgil. The
+tragic writers also are useful; and there is much benefit to be got from
+the lyric poets also. But here you must make a selection not of authors
+only, but a part of authors." It is curious to find him banishing
+altogether a book that is, or certainly was, more extensively used in
+our schools than any other classic, the Heroides of Ovid.
+
+These, and such as these, then, are the books which our Roman boy would
+have to read. Composition would not be forgotten. "Let him take," says
+the author just quoted, "the fables of Aesop and tell them in simple
+language, never rising above the ordinary level. Then let him pass on to
+a style less plain; then, again, to bolder paraphrases, sometimes
+shortening, sometimes amplifying the original, but always following his
+sense." He also suggests the writing of themes and characters. One
+example he gives is this, "Was Crates the philosopher right when, having
+met an ignorant boy, he administered a beating to his teacher?" Many
+subjects of these themes have been preserved. Hannibal was naturally
+one often chosen. His passage of the Alps, and the question whether he
+should have advanced on the city immediately after the battle of Cannae,
+were frequently discussed. Cicero mentions a subject of the speculative
+kind. "It is forbidden to a stranger to mount the wall. A. mounts the
+wall, but only to help the citizens in repelling their enemies. Has A.
+broken the law?"
+
+To make these studies more interesting to the Roman boy, his
+schoolmaster called in the aid of emulation. "I feel sure," says
+Quintilian, "that the practice which I remember to have been employed by
+my own teachers was any thing but useless. They were accustomed to
+divide the boys into classes, and they set us to speak in the order of
+our powers; every one taking his turn according to his proficiency. Our
+performances were duly estimated; and prodigious were the struggles
+which we had for victory. To be the head of one's class was considered
+the most glorious thing conceivable. But the decision was not made once
+for all. The next month brought the vanquished an opportunity of
+renewing the contest. He who had been victorious in the first encounter
+was not led by success to relax his efforts, and a feeling of vexation
+impelled the vanquished to do away with the disgrace of defeat. This
+practice, I am sure, supplied a keener stimulus to learning than did all
+the exhortations of our teachers, the care of our tutors, and the wishes
+of our parents." Nor did the schoolmaster trust to emulation alone. The
+third choice of the famous Winchester line, "Either learn, or go: there
+is yet another choice--to be flogged," was liberally employed. Horace
+celebrates his old schoolmaster as a "man of many blows," and another
+distinguished pupil of this teacher, the Busby or Keate of antiquity,
+has specified the weapons which he employed, the ferule and the thong.
+The thong is the familiar "tawse" of schools north of the Border. The
+ferule was a name given both to the bamboo and to the yellow cane, which
+grew plentifully both in the islands of the Greek Archipelago and in
+Southern Italy, as notably at Cannae in Apulia, where it gave a name to
+the scene of the great battle. The _virga_ was also used, a rod
+commonly of birch, a tree the educational use of which had been already
+discovered. The walls of Pompeii indeed show that the practice of Eton
+is truly classical down to its details.
+
+As to the advantage of the practice opinions were divided. One
+enthusiastic advocate goes so far as to say that the Greek word for a
+cane signifies by derivation, "the sharpener of the young" (_narthex,
+nearous thegein_), but the best authorities were against it. Seneca is
+indignant with the savage who will "butcher" a young learner because he
+hesitates at a word--a venial fault indeed, one would think, when we
+remember what must have been the aspect of a Roman book, written as it
+was in capitals, almost without stops, and with little or no distinction
+between the words. And Quintilian is equally decided, though he allows
+that flogging was an "institution."
+
+As to holidays the practice of the Roman schools probably resembled that
+which prevails in the Scotch Universities, though with a less
+magnificent length of vacation. Every one had a holiday on the "days of
+Saturn" (a festival beginning on the seventeenth of December), and the
+schoolboys had one of their own on the "days of Minerva," which fell in
+the latter half of March; but the "long vacation" was in the summer.
+Horace speaks of lads carrying their fees to school on the fifteenth of
+the month for eight months in the year (if this interpretation of a
+doubtful passage is correct). Perhaps as this was a country school the
+holidays were made longer than usual, to let the scholars take their
+part in the harvest, which as including the vintage would not be over
+till somewhat late in the autumn. We find Martial, however, imploring a
+schoolmaster to remember that the heat of July was not favorable to
+learning, and suggesting that he should abdicate his seat till the
+fifteenth of October brought a season more convenient for study. Rome
+indeed was probably deserted in the later summer and autumn by the
+wealthier class, who were doubtless disposed to agree in the poet's
+remark, a remark to which the idlest schoolboy will forgive its Latin
+for the sake of its admirable sentiment:
+
+     "Aestate pueri si valent satis discunt." "In summer boys learn
+     enough, if they keep their health."
+
+Something, perhaps, may be said of the teachers, into whose hands the
+boys of Rome were committed. We have a little book, of not more than
+twoscore pages in all, which gives us "lives of illustrious
+schoolmasters;" and from which we may glean a few facts. The first
+business of a schoolmaster was to teach grammar, and grammar Rome owed,
+as she owed most of her knowledge, to a Greek, a certain Crates, who
+coming as ambassador from one of the kings of Asia Minor, broke his leg
+while walking in the ill-paved streets of Rome, and occupied his leisure
+by giving lectures at his house. Most of the early teachers were Greeks.
+Catulus bought a Greek slave for somewhat more than fifteen hundred
+pounds, and giving him his freedom set him up as a schoolmaster; another
+of the same nation received a salary of between three and four hundred
+pounds, his patron taking and probably making a considerable profit out
+of the pupils' fees. Orbilius, the man of blows, was probably of Greek
+descent. He had been first a beadle, then a trumpeter, then a trooper in
+his youth, and came to Rome in the year in which Cicero was consul. He
+seems to have been as severe on the parents of his pupils as he was in
+another way on the lads themselves, for he wrote a book in which he
+exposed their meanness and ingratitude. His troubles, however, did not
+prevent him living to the great age of one hundred and three. The author
+of the little book about schoolmasters had seen his statue in his native
+town. It was a marble figure, in a sitting posture, with two writing
+desks beside it. The favorite authors of Orbilius, who was of the
+old-fashioned school, were, as has been said, the early dramatists.
+Caecilius, a younger man, to whom Atticus the friend and correspondent
+of Cicero gave his freedom, lectured on Virgil, with whom, as he was
+intimate with one of Virgil's associates, he probably had some
+acquaintance. A certain Flaccus had the credit of having first invented
+prizes. He used to pit lads of equal age against each other, supplying
+not only a subject on which to write, but a prize for the victor. This
+was commonly some handsome or rare old book. Augustus made him tutor to
+his grandsons, giving him a salary of eight hundred pounds per annum.
+Twenty years later, a fashionable schoolmaster is said to have made
+between three and four thousands.
+
+These schoolmasters were also sometimes teachers of eloquence, lecturing
+to men. One Gnipho, for instance, is mentioned among them, as having
+held his classes in the house of Julius Caesar (Caesar was left an
+orphan at fifteen); and afterwards, when his distinguished pupil was
+grown up, in his own. But Cicero, when he was praetor, and at the very
+height of his fame, is said to have attended his lectures. This was the
+year in which he delivered the very finest of his non-political
+speeches, his defence of Cluentius. He must have been a very clever
+teacher from whom so great an orator hoped to learn something.
+
+These teachers of eloquence were what we may call the "Professors" of
+Rome. A lad had commonly "finished his education" when he put on the
+"man's gown;" but if he thought of political life, of becoming a
+statesman, and taking office in the commonwealth, he had much yet to
+learn. He had to make himself a lawyer and an orator. Law he learned by
+attaching himself, by becoming the pupil, as we should say, of some
+great man that was famed for his knowledge. Cicero relates to us his own
+experience: "My father introduced me to the Augur Scaevola; and the
+result was that, as far as possible and permissible, I never left the
+old man's side. Thus I committed to memory many a learned argument of
+his, many a terse and clever maxim, while I sought to add to my own
+knowledge from his stores of special learning. When the Augur died I
+betook myself to the Pontiff of the same name and family." Elsewhere we
+have a picture of this second Scaevola and his pupils. "Though he did
+not undertake to give instruction to any one, yet he practically taught
+those who were anxious to listen to him by allowing them to hear his
+answers to those who consulted him." These consultations took place
+either in the Forum or at his own house. In the Forum the great lawyer
+indicated that clients were at liberty to approach by walking across the
+open space from corner to corner. The train of young Romans would then
+follow his steps, just as the students follow the physician or the
+surgeon through the wards of a hospital. When he gave audience at home
+they would stand by his chair. It must be remembered that the great man
+took no payment either from client or from pupil.
+
+But the young Roman had not only to learn law, he must also learn how to
+speak-learn, as far as such a thing can be learned, how to be eloquent.
+What we in this country call the career of the public man was there
+called the career of the orator. With us it is much a matter of chance
+whether a man can speak or not. We have had statesmen who wielded all
+the power that one man ever can wield in this country who had no sort of
+eloquence. We have had others who had this gift in the highest degree,
+but never reached even one of the lower offices in the government.
+Sometimes a young politician will go to a professional teacher to get
+cured of some defect or trick of speech; but that such teaching is part
+of the necessary training of a statesman is an idea quite strange to us.
+A Roman received it as a matter of course. Of course, like other things
+at Rome, it made its way but slowly. Just before the middle of the
+second century b.c. the Senate resolved: "Seeing that mention has been
+made of certain philosophers and rhetoricians, let Pomponius the praetor
+see to it, as he shall hold it to be for the public good, and for his
+own honor, that none such be found at Rome." Early in the first century
+the censors issued an edict forbidding certain Latin rhetoricians to
+teach. One of these censors was the great orator Crassus, greatest of
+all the predecessors of Cicero. Cicero puts into his mouth an apology
+for this proceeding: "I was not actuated by any hostility to learning or
+culture. These Latin rhetoricians were mere ignorant pretenders,
+inefficient imitators of their Greek rivals, from whom the Roman youth
+were not likely to learn any thing but impudence." In spite of the
+censors, however, and in spite of the fashionable belief in Rome that
+what was Greek must be far better than what was of native growth, the
+Latin teachers rose into favor. "I remember," says Cicero, "when we were
+boys, one Lucius Plotinus, who was the first to teach eloquence in
+Latin; how, when the studious youth of the capital crowded to hear him
+it vexed me much, that I was not permitted to attend him. I was checked,
+however, by the opinion of learned men, who held that in this matter the
+abilities of the young were more profitably nourished by exercises in
+Greek." We are reminded of our own Doctor Johnson, who declared that
+he would not disgrace the walls of Westminster Abbey by an epitaph in
+English.
+
+The chief part of the instruction which these teachers gave was to
+propose imaginary cases involving some legal difficulty for their pupils
+to discuss. One or two of these cases may be given.
+
+One day in summer a party of young men from Rome made an excursion to
+Ostia, and coming down to the seashore found there some fishermen who
+were about to draw in a net. With these they made a bargain that they
+should have the draught for a certain sum. The money was paid. When the
+net was drawn up no fish were found in it, but a hamper sewn with thread
+of gold. The buyers allege this to be theirs as the draught of the net.
+The fishermen claim it as not being fish. To whom did it belong?
+
+Certain slave-dealers, landing a cargo of slaves at Brundisium, and
+having with them a very beautiful boy of great value, fearing lest the
+custom-house officers should lay hands upon him, put upon him the
+_bulla_ and the purple-edged robe that free-born lads were wont to wear.
+The deceit was not discovered. But when they came to Rome, and the
+matter was talked of, it was maintained that the boy was really free,
+seeing that it was his master who of his own free will had given him the
+token of freedom.
+
+I shall conclude this chapter with a very pretty picture, which a Roman
+poet draws of the life which he led with his teacher in the days when he
+was first entering upon manhood. "When first my timid steps lost the
+guardianship of the purple stripe, and the _bulla_ of the boy was hung
+up for offering to the quaint household gods; when flattering comrades
+came about me, and I might cast my eyes without rebuke over the whole
+busy street under the shelter of the yet unsullied gown; in the days
+when the path is doubtful, and the wanderer knowing naught of life comes
+with bewildered soul to the many-branching roads--then I made myself
+your adopted child. You took at once into the bosom of another Socrates
+my tender years; your rule, applied with skillful disguise, straightens
+each perverse habit; nature is molded by reason, and struggles to be
+subdued, and assumes under your hands its plastic lineaments. Ay, well I
+mind how I would wear away long summer suns with you, and pluck with you
+the bloom of night's first hours. One work we had, one certain time for
+rest, and at one modest table unbent from sterner thoughts."
+
+It accords with this charming picture to be told that the pupil, dying
+in youth, left his property to his old tutor, and that the latter handed
+it over to the kinsfolk of the deceased, keeping for himself the books
+only.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A ROMAN UNDERGRADUATE.
+
+
+In the last chapter we had no particular "Roman Boy" in view; but our
+"Roman Undergraduate" will be a real person, Cicero's son. It will be
+interesting to trace the notices which we find of him in his father's
+letters and books. "You will be glad to hear," he writes in one of his
+earliest letters to Atticus, "that a little son has been born to me, and
+that Terentia is doing well." From time to time we hear of him, and
+always spoken of in terms of the tenderest affection. He is his
+"honey-sweet Cicero," his "little philosopher." When the father is in
+exile the son's name is put on the address of his letters along with
+those of his mother and sister. His prospects are the subject of most
+anxious thought. Terentia, who had a considerable fortune of her own,
+proposes to sell an estate. "Pray think," he writes, "what will happen
+to us. If the same ill fortune shall continue to pursue us, what will
+happen to our unhappy boy? I cannot write any more. My tears fairly
+overpower me; I should be sorry to make you as sad as myself. I will say
+so much. If my friends do their duty by me, I shall not want for money;
+if they do not, your means will not save me. I do implore you, by all
+our troubles, do not ruin the poor lad. Indeed he is ruined enough
+already. If he has only something to keep him from want, then modest
+merit and moderate good fortune will give him all he wants."
+
+Appointed to the government of Cilicia, Cicero takes his son with him
+into the province. When he starts on his campaign against the mountain
+tribes, the boy and his cousin, young Quintus, are sent to the court of
+Deiotarus, one of the native princes of Galatia. "The young Ciceros," he
+writes to Atticus, "are with Deiotarus. If need be, they will be taken
+to Rhodes." Atticus, it may be mentioned, was uncle to Quintus, and
+might be anxious about him. The need was probably the case of the old
+prince himself marching to Cicero's help. This he had promised to do,
+but the campaign was finished without him. This was in the year 51 B.C.,
+and Marcus was nearly fourteen years old, his cousin being his senior by
+about two years. "They are very fond of each other," writes Cicero;
+"they learn, they amuse themselves together, but one wants the rein, the
+other the spur." (Doubtless the latter is the writer's son.) "I am very
+fond of Dionysius their teacher: the lads say that he is apt to get
+furiously angry. But a more learned and more blameless man there does
+not live." A year or so afterwards he seems to have thought less
+favorably of him. "I let him go reluctantly when I thought of him as the
+tutor of the two lads, but quite willingly as an ungrateful fellow." In
+B.C. 49, when the lad was about half through his sixteenth year, Cicero
+"gave him his _toga_." To take the _toga_, that is to exchange the gown
+of the boy with its stripe of purple for the plain white gown of the
+citizen, marked the beginning of independence (though indeed a Roman's
+son was even in mature manhood under his father's control). The ceremony
+took place at Arpinum, much to the delight of the inhabitants, who felt
+of course the greatest pride and interest in their famous
+fellow-townsman. But it was a sad time. "There and every where as I
+journeyed I saw sorrow and dismay. The prospect of this vast trouble is
+sad indeed." The "vast trouble" was the civil war between Caesar and
+Pompey. This indeed had already broken out. While Cicero was
+entertaining his kinsfolk and friends at Arpinum, Pompey was preparing
+to fly from Italy. The war was probably not an unmixed evil to a lad who
+was just beginning to think himself a man. He hastened across the
+Adriatic to join his father's friend, and was appointed to the command
+of a squadron of auxiliary cavalry. His maneuvers were probably assisted
+by some veteran subordinate; but his I seat on horseback, his skill with
+the javelin, and his general soldierly qualities were highly praised
+both by his chief and by his comrades. After the defeat at Pharsalia he
+waited with his father at Brundisium till a kind letter from Caesar
+assured him of pardon. In B.C. 46 he was made aedile at Arpinum, his
+cousin being appointed at the same time. The next year he would have
+gladly resumed his military career. Fighting was going on in Spain,
+where the sons of Pompey were holding out against the forces of Caesar;
+and the young Cicero, who was probably not very particular on which side
+he drew his sword, was ready to take service against the son of his old
+general. Neither the cause nor the career pleased the father, and the
+son's wish was overruled, just as an English lad has sometimes to give
+up the unremunerative profession of arms, when there is a living in the
+family, or an opening in a bank, or a promising connection with a firm
+of solicitors. It was settled that he should take up his residence at
+Athens, which was then the university of Rome, not indeed exactly in the
+sense in which Oxford and Cambridge are the universities of England, but
+still a place of liberal culture, where the sons of wealthy Roman
+families were accustomed to complete their education. Four-and-twenty
+years before the father had paid a long visit to the city, partly for
+study's sake. "In those days," he writes, "I was emaciated and feeble to
+a degree; my neck was long and thin; a habit of body and a figure that
+are thought to indicate much danger to life, if aggravated by a
+laborious profession and constant straining of the voice. My friends
+thought the more of this, because in those days I was accustomed to
+deliver all my speeches without any relaxation of effort, without any
+variety, at the very top of my voice, and with most abundant
+gesticulation. At first, when friends and physicians advised me to
+abandon advocacy for a while, I felt that I would sooner run any risk
+than relinquish the hope of oratorical distinction. Afterwards I
+reflected that by learning to moderate and regulate my voice, and
+changing my style of speaking, I might both avert the danger that
+threatened my health and also acquire a more self-controlled manner. It
+was a resolve to break through the habits I had formed that induced me
+to travel to the East. I had practiced for two years, and my name had
+become well known when I left Rome. Coming to Athens I spent six months
+with Antiochus, the most distinguished and learned philosopher of the
+Old Academy, than whom there was no wiser or more famous teacher. At the
+same time I practiced myself diligently under the care of Demetrius
+Syrus, an old and not undistinguished master of eloquence." To Athens,
+then, Cicero always looked back with affection. He hears, for instance,
+that Appius is going to build a portico at Eleusis. "Will you think me a
+fool," he writes to Atticus, "if I do the same at the Academy? 'I think
+so,' you will say. But I love Athens, the very place, much; and I shall
+be glad to have some memorial of me there."
+
+The new undergraduate, as we should call him, was to have a liberal
+allowance. "He shall have as much as Publilius, as much as Lentulus the
+Flamen, allow their sons." It would be interesting to know the amount,
+but unhappily this cannot be recovered. All that we know is that the
+richest young men in Rome were not to have more. "I will guarantee,"
+writes this liberal father, "that none of the three young men [whom he
+names] who, I hear, will be at Athens at the same time shall live at
+more expense than he will be able to do on those rents." These "rents"
+were the incomings from certain properties at Rome. "Only," he adds, "I
+do not think he will want a horse."
+
+We know something of the university buildings, so to speak, which the
+young Cicero found at Athens. "To seek for truth among the groves of
+Academus" is the phrase by which a more famous contemporary, the poet
+Horace, describes his studies at Athens. He probably uses it generally
+to express philosophical pursuits; taken strictly it would mean that he
+attached himself to the sage whose pride it was to be the successor of
+Plato. Academus was a local hero, connected with the legend of Theseus
+and Helen. Near his grove, or sacred inclosure, which adjoined the road
+to Eleusis, Plato had bought a garden. It was but a small spot,
+purchased for a sum which maybe represented by about three or four
+hundred pounds of our money, but it had been enlarged by the liberality
+of successive benefactors. This then was one famous lecture-room.
+Another was the Lyceum. Here Aristotle had taught, and after Aristotle,
+Theophrastus, and after him, a long succession of thinkers of the same
+school. A third institution of the same kind was the garden in which
+Epicurus had assembled his disciples, and which he bequeathed to
+trustees for their benefit and the benefit of their successors for all
+time.
+
+To a Roman of the nobler sort these gardens and buildings must have been
+as holy places. It was with these rather than with the temples of gods
+that he connected what there was of goodness and purity in his life. To
+worship Jupiter or Romulus did not make him a better man, though it
+might be his necessary duty as a citizen; his real religion, as we
+understand it, was his reverence for Plato or Zeno. Athens to him was
+not only what Athens, but what the Holy Land is to us. Cicero describes
+something of this feeling in the following passage: "We had been
+listening to Antiochus (a teacher of the Academics) in the school called
+the Ptolemaeus, where he was wont to lecture. Marcus Piso was with me,
+and my brother Quintus, and Atticus, and Lucius Cicero, by relationship
+a cousin, in affection a brother. We agreed among ourselves to finish
+our afternoon walk in the Academy, chiefly because that place was sure
+not to be crowded at that hour. At the proper time we met at Piso's
+house; thence, occupied with varied talk, we traversed the six furlongs
+that lie between the Double Gate and the Academy; and entering the walls
+which can give such good reason for their fame, found there the solitude
+which we sought. 'Is it,' said Piso, 'by some natural instinct or
+through some delusion that when we see the very spots where famous men
+have lived we are far more touched than when we hear of the things that
+they have done, or read something that they have written? It is thus
+that I am affected at this moment. I think of Plato, who was, we are
+told, the first who lectured in this place; his little garden which lies
+there close at hand seems not only to remind me of him, but actually to
+bring him up before my eyes. Here spake Speusippus, here Xenocrates,
+here his disciple Polemo--to Polemo indeed belonged this seat which we
+have before us.'" This was the Polemo who had been converted, as we
+should say, when, bursting in after a night of revel upon a lecture in
+which Xenocrates was discoursing of temperance, he listened to such
+purpose that from that moment he became a changed man. Then Atticus
+describes how he found the same charms of association in the garden
+which had belonged to his own master, Epicurus; while Quintus Cicero
+supplies what we should call the classical element by speaking of
+Sophocles and the grove of Colonus, still musical, it seems, with the
+same song of the nightingale which had charmed the ear of the poet more
+than three centuries before.
+
+One or other, perhaps more than one, of these famous places the young
+Cicero frequented. He probably witnessed, he possibly took part (for
+strangers were admitted to membership) in, the celebrations with which
+the college of Athenian youths (Ephebi) commemorated the glories of
+their city, the procession to the tombs of those who died at Marathon,
+and the boat-races in the Bay of Salamis. That he gave his father some
+trouble is only too certain. His private tutor in rhetoric, as we should
+call him, was a certain Gorgias, a man of ability, and a writer of some
+note, but a worthless and profligate fellow. Cicero peremptorily ordered
+his son to dismiss him; and the young man seems to have obeyed and
+reformed. We may hope at least that the repentance which he expresses
+for his misdoings in a letter to Tiro, his father's freedman, was
+genuine. This is his picture of his life in the days of repentance and
+soberness: "I am on terms of the closest intimacy with Cratippus, living
+with him more as a son than as a pupil. Not only do I hear his lectures
+with delight, but I am greatly taken with the geniality which is
+peculiar to the man. I spend whole days with him, and often no small
+part of the night; for I beg him to dine with me as often as he can.
+This has become so habitual with him that he often looks in upon us at
+dinner when we are not expecting him; he lays aside the sternness of the
+philosopher and jokes with us in the pleasantest fashion. As for
+Bruttius, he never leaves me; frugal and strict as is his life, he is
+yet a most delightful companion. For we do not entirely banish mirth
+from our daily studies in philology. I have hired a lodging for him
+close by; and do my best to help his poverty out of my own narrow means.
+I have begun to practice Greek declamation with Cassius, and wish to
+have a Latin course with Bruttius. My friends and daily companions are
+the pupils whom Cratippus brought with him from Mitylene, well-read men,
+of whom he highly approves. I also see much of Epicrates, who is the
+first man at Athens." After some pleasant words to Tiro, who had bought
+a farm, and whom he expects to find turned into a farmer, bringing
+stores, holding consultations with his bailiff, and putting by
+fruit-seeds in his pocket from dessert, he says, "I should be glad if
+you would send me as quickly as possible a copyist, a Greek by
+preference. I have to spend much pains on writing out my notes."
+
+A short time before one of Cicero's friends had sent a satisfactory
+report of the young man's behavior to his father. "I found your son
+devoted to the most laudable studies and enjoying an excellent
+reputation for steadiness. Don't fancy, my dear Cicero, that I say this
+to please you; there is not in Athens a more lovable young man than your
+son, nor one more devoted to those high pursuits in which you would have
+him interested."
+
+Among the contemporaries of the young Cicero was, as has been said, the
+poet Horace. His had been a more studious boyhood. He had not been taken
+away from his books to serve as a cavalry officer under Pompey. In him
+accordingly we see the regular course of the studies of a Roman lad.
+"It was my lot," he says, "to be bred up at Rome, and to be taught how
+much the wrath of Achilles harmed the Greeks. In other words, he had
+read his Homer, just as an English boy reads him at Eton or Harrow.
+"Kind Athens," he goes on, "added a little more learning, to the end
+that I might be able to distinguish right from wrong, and to seek for
+truth amongst the groves of Academus." And just in the same way the
+English youth goes on to read philosophy at Oxford.
+
+The studies of the two young men were interrupted by the same cause, the
+civil war which followed the death of Caesar. They took service with
+Brutus, both having the same rank, that of military tribune, a command
+answering more or less nearly to that of colonel in our own army. It
+was, however, mainly an ornamental rank, being bestowed sometimes by
+favor of the general in command, sometimes by a popular vote. The young
+Cicero indeed had already served, and he now distinguished himself
+greatly, winning some considerable successes in the command of the
+cavalry which Brutus afterwards gave him. When the hopes of the party
+were crushed at Phillippi, he joined the younger Pompey in Sicily; but
+took an opportunity of an amnesty which was offered four years
+afterwards to return to Rome. Here he must have found his old
+fellow-student, who had also reconciled himself to the victorious party.
+He was made one of the college of augurs, and also a commissioner of the
+mint, and in B.C. 30 he had the honour of sharing the consulship with
+Augustus himself. It was to him that the dispatch announcing the final
+defeat and death of Antony was delivered; and it fell to him to execute
+the decree which ordered the destruction of all the statues of the
+fallen chief. "Then," says Plutarch, "by the ordering of heaven the
+punishment of Antony was inflicted at last by the house of Cicero." His
+time of office ended, he went as Governor to Asia, or, according to some
+accounts, to Syria; and thus disappears from our view.
+
+Pliny the Elder tells us that he was a drunkard, sarcastically observing
+that he sought to avenge himself on Antony by robbing him of the
+reputation which he had before enjoyed of being the hardest drinker of
+the time. As the story which he tells of the younger Cicero being able
+to swallow twelve pints of wine at a draught is clearly incredible,
+perhaps we may disbelieve the whole, and with it the other anecdote,
+that he threw a cup at the head of Marcus Agrippa, son-in-law to the
+Emperor, and after him the greatest man in Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+IN THE DAYS OF THE DICTATOR.
+
+
+In November 82 B.C., Cornelius Sulla became absolute master of Rome. It
+is not part of my purpose to give a history of this man. He was a great
+soldier who had won victories in Africa and Asia over the enemies of
+Rome, and in Italy itself over the "allies," as they were called, that
+is the Italian nations, who at various times had made treaties with
+Rome, and who in the early part of the first century B.C. rebelled
+against her, thinking that they were robbed of the rights and privileges
+which belonged to them. And he was the leader of the party of the
+nobles, just as Marius was the leader of the party of the people. Once
+before he had made himself supreme in the capital; and then he had used
+his power with moderation. But he was called away to carry on the war in
+Asia against Mithridates, the great King of Pontus; and his enemies had
+got the upper hand, and had used the opportunity most cruelly. A
+terrible list of victims, called the "proscription," because it was
+posted up in the forum, was prepared. Fifty senators and a thousand
+knights (peers and gentlemen we should call them) were put to death,
+almost all of them without any kind of trial. Sulla himself was
+outlawed. But he had an army which he had led to victory and had
+enriched with prize-money, and which was entirely devoted to him; and he
+was not inclined to let his enemies triumph. He hastened back to Italy,
+and landed in the spring of 83. In the November of the following year,
+just outside the walls of Rome, was fought the final battle of the war.
+
+The opposing army was absolutely destroyed and Sulla had every thing at
+his mercy. He waited for a few days outside the city till the Senate had
+passed a decree giving him absolute power to change the laws, to fill
+the offices of State, and to deal with the lives and properties of
+citizens as it might please him. This done, he entered Rome. Then came
+another proscription. The chief of his enemies, Marius. was gone. He had
+died, tormented it was said by remorse, seventeen days after he had
+reached the crowning glory, promised him in his youth by an oracle, and
+had been made consul for the seventh time. The conqueror had to content
+himself with the same vengeance that Charles II. in our own country
+exacted from the remains of Cromwell. The ashes of Marius were taken out
+of his tomb on the Flaminian Way, the great North Road of Rome, and were
+thrown into the Anio. But many of his friends and partisans survived,
+and these were slaughtered without mercy. Eighty names were put on the
+fatal list on the first day, two hundred and twenty on the second, and
+as many more on the third. With the deaths of many of these victims
+politics had nothing to do. Sulla allowed his friends and favorites to
+put into the list the names of men against whom they happened to bear a
+grudge, or whose property they coveted. No one knew who might be the
+next to fall. Even Sulla's own partisans were alarmed. A young senator,
+Caius Metellus, one of a family which was strongly attached to Sulla and
+with which he was connected by marriage, had the courage to ask him in
+public when there would be an end to this terrible state of things.
+"We do not beg you," he said, "to remit the punishment of those whom you
+have made up your mind to remove; we do beg you to do away with the
+anxiety of those whom you have resolved to spare." "I am not yet
+certain," answered Sulla, "whom I shall spare." "Then at least," said
+Metellus, "you can tell us whom you mean to punish." "That I will do,"
+replied the tyrant. It was indeed a terrible time that followed,
+Plutarch thus describes it: "He denounced against any who might shelter
+or save the life of a proscribed person the punishment of death for his
+humanity. He made no exemption for mother, or son, or parent. The
+murderers received a payment of two talents (about £470) for each
+victim; it was paid to a slave who killed his master, to a son who
+killed his father. The most monstrous thing of all, it was thought, was
+that the sons and grandsons of the proscribed were declared to be
+legally infamous and that their property was confiscated. Nor was it
+only in Rome but in all the cities of Italy that the proscription was
+carried out. There was not a single temple, not a house but was polluted
+with blood. Husbands were slaughtered in the arms of their wives, and
+sons in the arms of their mothers. And the number of those who fell
+victims to anger and hatred was but small in comparison with the number
+who were put out of the way for the sake of their property. The
+murderers might well have said: 'His fine mansion has been the death of
+this man; or his gardens, or his baths.' Quintus Aurelius, a peaceable
+citizen, who had had only this share in the late civil troubles, that he
+had felt for the misfortunes of others, coming into the forum, read the
+list of the proscribed and found in it his own name. 'Unfortunate that I
+am,' he said, 'it is my farm at Alba that has been my ruin;' and he had
+not gone many steps before he was cut down by a man that was following
+him. Lucius Catiline's conduct was especially wicked. He had murdered
+his own brother. This was before the proscription began. He went to
+Sulla and begged that the name might be put in the list as if the man
+were still alive; and it was so put. His gratitude to Sulla was shown by
+his killing one Marius, who belonged to the opposite faction, and
+bringing his head to Sulla as he sat in the forum. (This Marius was a
+kinsman of the great democratic leader, and was one of the most popular
+men in Rome.) This done, he washed his hands in the holy water-basin of
+the temple of Apollo."
+
+Forty senators and sixteen hundred knights, and more than as many men of
+obscure station, are said to have perished. At last, on the first of
+June, 81, the list was closed. Still the reign of terror was not yet at
+an end, as the strange story which I shall now relate will amply prove.
+To look into the details of a particular case makes us better able to
+imagine what it really was to live at Rome in the days of the Dictator
+than to read many pages of general description. The story is all the
+more impressive because the events happened after order had been
+restored and things were supposed to be proceeding in their regular
+course.
+
+The proscription came to an end, as has been said, in the early summer
+of 81. In the autumn of the same year a certain Sextus Roscius was
+murdered in the streets of Rome as he was returning home from dinner.
+Roscius was a native of Ameria, a little town of Etruria, between fifty
+and sixty miles north of Rome. He was a wealthy man, possessed, it
+would seem, of some taste and culture, and an intimate friend of some of
+the noblest families at Rome. In politics he belonged to the party of
+Sulla, to which indeed in its less prosperous days he had rendered good
+service. Since its restoration to power he had lived much at Rome,
+evidently considering himself, as indeed he had the right to do, to be
+perfectly safe from any danger of proscription. But he was wealthy, and
+he had among his own kinsfolk enemies who desired and who would profit
+by his death. One of these, a certain Titus Roscius, surnamed Magnus,
+was at the time of the murder residing at Rome; the other, who was known
+as Capito, was at home at Ameria. The murder was committed about seven
+o'clock in the evening. A messenger immediately left Rome with the news,
+and made such haste to Ameria that he reached the place before dawn the
+next day. Strangely enough he went to the house not of the murdered
+man's son, who was living at Ameria in charge of his farms, but of the
+hostile kinsman Capito. Three days afterwards Capito and Magnus made
+their way to the camp of Sulla (he was besieging Volaterrae, another
+Etrurian town). They had an interview with one Chrysogonus, a Greek
+freedman of the Dictator, and explained to him how rich a prey they
+could secure if he would only help them. The deceased, it seems, had
+left a large sum of money and thirteen valuable farms, nearly all of
+them running down to the Tiber. And the son, the lawful heir, could
+easily be got out of the way. Roscius was a well-known and a popular
+man, yet no outcry had followed his disappearance. With the son, a
+simple farmer, ignorant of affairs, and wholly unknown to Rome, it would
+be easy to deal. Ultimately the three entered into alliance. The
+proscription was to be revived, so to speak, to take in this particular
+case, and the name of Roscius was included in the list of the condemned.
+All his wealth was treated as the property of the proscribed, and was
+sold by auction. It was purchased by Chrysogonus. The real value was
+between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. The price paid was something
+less than eighteen pounds. Three of the finest farms were at once handed
+over to Capito as his share of the spoil. Magnus acted as the agent of
+Chrysogonus for the remainder. He took possession of the house in which
+Roscius the younger was living, laid his hands on all its contents,
+among which was a considerable sum of money, and drove out the
+unfortunate young man in an absolutely penniless condition.
+
+These proceedings excited great indignation at Ameria. The local senate
+passed a resolution to the effect that the committee of ten should
+proceed to Sulla's camp and put him in possession of the facts, with the
+object of removing the name of the father from the list of the
+proscribed, and reinstating the son in his inheritance. The ten
+proceeded accordingly to the camp, but Chrysogonus cajoled and
+over-reached them. It was represented to them by persons of high
+position that there was no need to trouble Sulla with the affair. The
+name should be removed from the list; the property should be restored.
+Capito, who was one of the ten, added his personal assurance to the same
+effect, and the deputation, satisfied that their object had been
+attained, returned to Ameria. There was of course no intention of
+fulfilling the promises thus made. The first idea of the trio was to
+deal with the son as they had dealt with the father. Some hint of this
+purpose was conveyed to him, and he fled to Rome, where he was
+hospitably entertained by Caecilia, a wealthy lady of the family of
+Metellus, and therefore related to Sulla's wife, who indeed bore the
+same name. As he was now safe from violence, it was resolved to take the
+audacious step of accusing him of the murder of his father. Outrageous
+as it seems, the plan held out some promise of success. The accused was
+a man of singularly reserved character, rough and boorish in manner, and
+with no thoughts beyond the rustic occupations to which his life was
+devoted. His father, on the other hand, had been a man of genial temper,
+who spent much of his time among the polished circles of the Capitol. If
+there was no positive estrangement between them, there was a great
+discrepancy of tastes, and probably very little intercourse. This it
+would be easy to exaggerate into something like a plausible charge,
+especially under the circumstances of the case. It was beyond doubt that
+many murders closely resembling the murder of Roscius had been committed
+during the past year, committed some of them by sons. This was the
+first time that an alleged culprit was brought to trial, and it was
+probable that the jury would be inclined to severity. In any case, and
+whatever the evidence, it was hoped that the verdict would not be such
+as to imply the guilt of a favorite of Sulla. He was the person who
+would profit most by the condemnation of the accused, and it was hoped
+that he would take the necessary means to secure it.
+
+The friends of the father were satisfied of the innocence of the son,
+and they exerted themselves to secure for him an efficient defense.
+Sulla was so much dreaded that none of the more conspicuous orators of
+the time were willing to undertake the task. Cicero, however, had the
+courage which they wanted; and his speech, probably little altered from
+the form in which he delivered it, remains.
+
+It was a horrible crime of which his client was accused, and the
+punishment the most awful known to the Roman law. The face of the guilty
+man was covered with a wolf's skin, as being one who was not worthy to
+see the light; shoes of wood were put upon his feet that they might not
+touch the earth. He was then thrust into a sack of leather, and with him
+four animals which were supposed to symbolize all that was most hideous
+and depraved--the dog, a common object of contempt; the cock, proverbial
+for its want of all filial affection; the poisonous viper; and the ape,
+which was the base imitation of man. In this strange company he was
+thrown into the nearest river or sea.
+
+Cicero begins by explaining why he had undertaken a case which his
+elders and betters had declined. It was not because he was bolder, but
+because he was more insignificant than they, and could speak with
+impunity when they could not choose but be silent. He then gives the
+facts in detail, the murder of Roscius, the seizure of his property, the
+fruitless deputation to Sulla, the flight of the son to Rome, and the
+audacious resolve of his enemies to indict him for parricide. They had
+murdered his father, they had robbed him of his patrimony, and now they
+accused him--of what crime? Surely of nothing else than the crime of
+having escaped their attack. The thing reminded him of the story of
+Fimbria and Scaevola. Fimbria, an absolute madman, as was allowed by all
+who were not mad themselves, got some ruffian to stab Scaevola at the
+funeral of Marius. He was stabbed but not killed. When Fimbria found
+that he was likely to live, he indicted him. For what do you indict a
+man so blameless? asked some one. For what? for not allowing himself to
+be stabbed to the heart. This is exactly why the confederates have
+indicted Roscius. His crime has been of escaping from their hands.
+"Roscius killed his father," you say. "A young man, I suppose, led away
+by worthless companions." Not so; he is more than forty years of age.
+"Extravagance and debt drove him to it." No; you say yourself that he
+never goes to an entertainment, and he certainly owes nothing. "Well,"
+you say, "his father disliked him." Why did he dislike him? "That," you
+reply, "I cannot say; but he certainly kept one son with him, and left
+this Roscius to look after his farms." Surely this is a strange
+punishment, to give him the charge of so fine an estate. "But," you
+repeat, "he kept his other with him." "Now listen to me," cries Cicero,
+turning with savage sarcasm to the prosecutor, "Providence never allowed
+you to know who your father was. Still you have read books. Do you
+remember in Caecilius' play how the father had two sons, and kept one
+with him and left the other in the country? and do you remember that the
+one who lived with him was not really his son, the other was true-born,
+and yet it was the true-born who lived in the country? And is it such a
+disgrace to live in the country? It is well that you did not live in old
+times when they took a Dictator from the plow; when the men who made
+Rome what it is cultivated their own land, but did not covet the land of
+others. 'Ah! but,' you say, 'the father intended to disinherit him.'
+Why? 'I cannot say.' Did he disinherit him? 'No, he did not.' Who
+stopped him? 'Well, he was thinking of it.' To whom did he say so? 'To
+no one.' Surely," cries Cicero, "this is to abuse the laws and justice
+and your dignity in the basest and most wanton way, to make charges
+which he not only cannot but does not even attempt to establish."
+
+Shortly after comes a lively description of the prosecutor's demeanor.
+"It was really worth while, if you observed, gentlemen, the man's utter
+indifference as he was conducting his case. I take it that when he saw
+who was sitting on these benches, he asked whether such an one or such
+an one was engaged for the defense. Of me he never thought, for I had
+never spoken before in a criminal case. When he found that none of the
+usual speakers were concerned in it, he became so careless that when the
+humor took him, he sat down, then walked about, sometimes called a
+servant, to give him orders, I suppose, for dinner, and certainly
+treated this court in which you are sitting as if it were an absolute
+solitude. At last he brought his speech to an end. I rose to reply. He
+could be seen to breathe again that it was I and no one else. I noticed,
+gentlemen, that he continued to laugh and be inattentive till I
+mentioned Chrysogonus. As soon as I got to him my friend roused himself
+and was evidently astonished. I saw what had touched him, and repeated
+the name a second time, and a third. From that time men have never
+ceased to run briskly backwards and forwards, to tell Chrysogonus, I
+suppose, that there was some one in the country who ventured to oppose
+his pleasure, that the case was being pleaded otherwise than as he
+imagined it would be; that the sham sale of goods was being exposed, the
+confederacy grievously handled, his popularity and power disregarded,
+that the people were giving their whole attention to the cause, and that
+the common opinion was that the transaction generally was disgraceful.
+
+"Then," continued the speaker, "this charge of parricide, so monstrous
+is the crime, must have the very strongest evidence to support it. There
+was a case at Tarracina of a man being found murdered in the chamber
+where he was sleeping, his two sons, both young men, being in the same
+room. No one could be found, either slave or free man, who seemed likely
+to have done the deed; and as the two sons, grown up as they were,
+declared that they knew nothing about it, they were indicted for
+parricide. What could be so suspicious? Suspicious, do I say? Nay,
+worse. That neither knew any thing about it? That any one had ventured
+into that chamber at the very time when there were in it two young men
+who would certainly perceive and defeat the attempt? Yet, because it was
+proved to the jury that the young men had been found fast asleep, with
+the door wide open, they were acquitted. It was thought incredible that
+men who had just committed so monstrous a crime could possibly sleep.
+Why, Solon, the wisest of all legislators, drawing up his code of laws,
+provided no punishment for this crime; and when he was asked the reason
+replied that he believed that no one would ever commit it. To provide a
+punishment would be to suggest rather than prevent. Our own ancestors
+provided indeed a punishment, but it was of the strangest kind, showing
+how strange, how monstrous they thought the crime. And what evidence do
+you bring forward? The man was not at Rome. That is proved. There-fore
+he must have done it, if he did it at all, by the hands of others. Who
+were these others? Were they free men or slaves? If they were free men
+where did they come from, where live? How did he hire them? Where is
+the proof? You haven't a shred of evidence, and yet you accuse him of
+parricide. And if they were slaves, where, again I ask, are they? There
+_were_ two slaves who saw the deed; but they belonged to the confederate
+not to the accused. Why do you not produce them? Purely because they
+would prove your guilt.
+
+"It is there indeed that we find the real truth of the matter. It was
+the maxim of a famous lawyer, Ask: _who profited by the deed_? I ask it
+now. It was Magnus who profited. He was poor before, and now he is rich.
+And then he was in Rome at the time of the murder; and he was familiar
+with assassins. Remember too the strange speed with which he sent the
+news to Ameria, and sent it, not to the son, as one might expect, but to
+Capito his accomplice; for that he was an accomplice is evident enough.
+What else could he be when he so cheated the deputation that went to
+Sulla at Volaterrae?"
+
+Cicero then turned to Chrysogonus, and attacked him with a boldness
+which is surprising, when we remember how high he stood in the favor of
+the absolute master of Rome, "See how he comes down from his fine
+mansion on the Palatine. Yes, and he has for his own enjoyment a
+delightful retreat in the suburbs, and many an estate besides, and not
+one of them but is both handsome and conveniently near. His house is
+crowded with ware of Corinth and Delos, among them that famous
+self-acting cooking apparatus, which he lately bought at a price so high
+that the passers-by, when they heard the clerk call out the highest bid,
+supposed that it must be a farm which was being sold. And what
+quantities, think you, he has of embossed plate, and coverlets of
+purple, and pictures, and statues, and colored marbles! Such quantities,
+I tell you, as scarce could be piled together in one mansion in a time
+of tumult and rapine from many wealthy establishments. And his
+household--why should I describe how many it numbers, and how varied are
+its accomplishments? I do not speak of ordinary domestics, the cook, the
+baker, the litter-bearer. Why, for the mere enjoyment of his ears he has
+such a multitude of men that the whole neighborhood echoes again with
+the daily music of singers, and harp-players, and flute-players, and
+with the uproar of his nightly banquets. What daily expenses, what
+extravagance, as you well know, gentlemen, there must be in such a life
+as this! how costly must be these banquets! Creditable banquets, indeed,
+held in such a house--a house, do I say, and not a manufactory of
+wickedness, a place of entertainment for every kind of crime? And as for
+the man himself--you see, gentlemen, how he bustles every where about
+the forum, with his hair fashionably arranged and dripping with
+perfumes; what a crowd of citizens, yes, of citizens, follow him; you
+see how he looks down upon every one, thinks no one can be compared to
+himself, fancies himself the one rich and powerful man in Rome?"
+
+The jury seems to have caught the contagion of courage from the
+advocate. They acquitted the accused. It is not known whether he ever
+recovered his property. But as Sulla retired from power in the following
+year, and died the year after, we may hope that the favorites and the
+villains whom he had sheltered were compelled to disgorge some at least
+of their gains.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A ROMAN MAGISTRATE.
+
+
+Of all the base creatures who found a profit in the massacres and
+plunderings which Sulla commanded or permitted, not one was baser than
+Caius Verres. The crimes that he committed would be beyond our belief if
+it were not for the fact that he never denied them. He betrayed his
+friends, he perverted justice, he plundered a temple with as little
+scruple as he plundered a private house, he murdered a citizen as boldly
+as he murdered a foreigner; in fact, he was the most audacious, the most
+cruel, the most shameless of men. And yet he rose to high office at home
+and abroad, and had it not been for the courage, sagacity, and eloquence
+of one man, he might have risen to the very highest. What Roman citizens
+had sometimes, and Roman subjects, it is to be feared, very often to
+endure may be seen from the picture which we are enabled to draw of a
+_Roman magistrate_.
+
+Roman politicians began public life as quaestors. (A quaestor was an
+official who managed money matters for higher magistrates. Every
+governor of a province had one or more quaestors under him. They were
+elected at Rome, and their posts were assigned to them by lot.) Verres
+was quaestor in Gaul and embezzled the public money; he was quaestor in
+Cilicia with Dolabella, a like-minded governor, and diligently used his
+opportunity. This time it was not money only, but works of art, on which
+he laid his hands; and in these the great cities, whether in Asia or in
+Europe, were still rich. The most audacious, perhaps, of these robberies
+was perpetrated in the island of Delos. Delos was known all over the
+world as the island of Apollo. The legend was that it was the birthplace
+of the god. None of his shrines was more frequented or more famous.
+Verres was indifferent to such considerations. He stripped the temple of
+its finest statues, and loaded a merchant ship which he had hired with
+the booty. But this time he was not lucky enough to secure it. The
+islanders, though they had discovered the theft, did not, indeed,
+venture to complain. They thought it was the doing of the governor, and
+a governor, though his proceedings might be impeached after his term of
+office, was not a person with whom it was safe to remonstrate. But a
+terrible storm suddenly burst upon the island. The governor's departure
+was delayed. To set sail in such weather was out of the question. The
+sea was indeed so high that the town became scarcely habitable. Then
+Verres' ship was wrecked, and the statues were found cast upon the
+shore. The governor ordered them to be replaced in the temple, and the
+storm subsided as suddenly as it had arisen.
+
+On his return to Rome Dolabella was impeached for extortion. With
+characteristic baseness Verres gave evidence against him, evidence so
+convincing as to cause a verdict of guilty. But he thus secured his own
+gains, and these he used so profusely in the purchase of votes that two
+or three years afterwards he was elected praetor. The praetors performed
+various functions which were assigned to them by lot. Chance, or it may
+possibly have been contrivance, gave to Verres the most considerable of
+them all. He was made "Praetor of the City;" that is, a judge before
+whom a certain class of very important causes were tried. Of course he
+showed himself scandalously unjust. One instance of his proceedings may
+suffice.
+
+A certain Junius had made a contract for keeping the temple of Castor in
+repair. When Verres came into office he had died, leaving a son under
+age. There had been some neglect, due probably to the troubles of the
+times, in seeing that the contracts had been duly executed, and the
+Senate passed a resolution that Verres and one of his fellow-praetors
+should see to the matter. The temple of Castor came under review like
+the others, and Verres, knowing that the original contractor was dead,
+inquired who was the responsible person. When he heard of the son under
+age he recognized at once a golden opportunity. It was one of the maxims
+which he had laid down for his own guidance, and which he had even been
+wont to give out for the benefit of his friends, that much profit might
+be made out of the property of wards. It had been arranged that the
+guardian of the young Junius should take the contract into his own
+hands, and, as the temple was in excellent repair, there was no
+difficulty in the way. Verres summoned the guardian to appear before
+him. "Is there any thing," he asked, "that your ward has not made good,
+and which we ought to require of him?" "No," said he, "every thing is
+quite right; all the statues and offerings are there, and the fabric is
+in excellent repair." From the praetor's point of view this was not
+satisfactory; and he determined on a personal visit. Accordingly he went
+to the temple, and inspected it. The ceiling was excellent; the whole
+building in the best repair. "What is to be done?" he asked of one of
+his satellites. "Well," said the man, "there is nothing for you to
+meddle with here, except possibly to require that the columns should be
+restored to the perpendicular." "Restored to the perpendicular? what do
+you mean?" said Verres, who knew nothing of architecture. It was
+explained to him that it very seldom happened that a column was
+absolutely true to the perpendicular. "Very good," said Verres; "we will
+have the columns made perpendicular." Notice accordingly was sent to
+the lad's guardians. Disturbed at the prospect of indefinite loss to
+their ward's property, they sought an interview with Verres. One of the
+noble family of Marcellus waited upon him, and remonstrated against the
+iniquity of the proceeding. The remonstrance was in vain. The praetor
+showed no signs of relenting. There yet remained one way, a way only too
+well known to all who had to deal with him, of obtaining their object.
+Application must be made to his mistress (a Greek freedwoman of the name
+of Chelidon or "The Swallow"). If she could be induced to take an
+interest in the case something might yet be done. Degrading as such a
+course must have been to men of rank and honor, they resolved, in the
+interest of their ward, to take it. They went to Chelidon's house. It
+was thronged with people who were seeking favors from the praetor. Some
+were begging for decisions in their favor; some for fresh trials of
+their cases. "I want possession," cried one. "He must not take the
+property from me," said another. "Don't let him pronounce judgment
+against me," cried a third. "The property must be assigned to me," was
+the demand of a fourth. Some were counting out money; others signing
+bonds. The deputation, after waiting awhile, were admitted to the
+presence. Their spokesman explained the case, begged for Chelidon's
+assistance, and promised a substantial consideration. The lady was very
+gracious. She would willingly do what she could, and would talk to the
+praetor about it. The deputation must come again the next day and hear
+how she had succeeded. They came again, but found that nothing could be
+done. Verres felt sure that a large sum of money was to be got out of
+the proceeding, and resolutely refused any compromise.
+
+They next made an offer of about two thousand pounds. This again was
+rejected. Verres resolved that he would put up the contract to auction,
+and did his best that the guardians should have no notice of it. Here,
+however, he failed. They attended the auction and made a bid. Of course
+the lowest bidder ought to have been accepted, so long as he gave
+security for doing the work well. But Verres refused to accept it. He
+knocked down the contract to himself at a price of more than five
+thousand pounds, and this though there were persons willing to do it for
+less than a sixth of that sum. As a matter of fact very little was
+done. Four of the columns were pulled down and built up again with the
+same stones. Others were whitewashed; some had the old cement taken out
+and fresh put in.[1] The highest estimate for all that could possibly be
+wanted was less than eight hundred pounds.
+
+[Footnote 1: "Pointed," I suppose.]
+
+His year of office ended, Verres was sent as governor to Sicily. By
+rights he should have remained there twelve months only, but his
+successor was detained by the Servile war in Italy, and his stay was
+thus extended to nearly three years, three years into which he crowded
+an incredible number of cruelties and robberies. Sicily was perhaps the
+wealthiest of all the provinces. Its fertile wheat-fields yielded
+harvests which, now that agriculture had begun to decay in Italy,
+provided no small part of the daily bread of Rome. In its cities,
+founded most of them several centuries before by colonists from Greece,
+were accumulated the riches of many generations. On the whole it had
+been lightly treated by its Roman conquerors. Some of its states had
+early discerned which would be the winning side, and by making their
+peace in time had secured their privileges and possessions. Others had
+been allowed to surrender themselves on favorable terms. This wealth had
+now been increasing without serious disturbance for more than a hundred
+years. The houses of the richer class were full of the rich tapestries
+of the East, of gold and silver plate cunningly chased or embossed, of
+statues and pictures wrought by the hands of the most famous artists of
+Greece. The temples were adorned with costly offerings and with images
+that were known all over the civilized world. The Sicilians were
+probably prepared to pay something for the privilege of being governed
+by Rome. And indeed the privilege was not without its value. The days of
+freedom indeed were over; but the turbulence, the incessant strife, the
+bitter struggles between neighbors and parties were also at an end. Men
+were left to accumulate wealth and to enjoy it without hindrance. Any
+moderate demands they were willing enough to meet. They did not
+complain, for instance, or at least did not complain aloud, that they
+were compelled to supply their rulers with a fixed quantity of corn at
+prices lower than could have been obtained in the open market. And they
+would probably have been ready to secure the good will of a governor who
+fancied himself a connoisseur in art with handsome presents from their
+museums and picture galleries. But the exactions of Verres exceeded all
+bounds both of custom and of endurance. The story of how he dealt with
+the wheat-growers of the province is too tedious and complicated to be
+told in this place. Let it suffice to say that he enriched himself and
+his greedy troop of followers at the cost of absolute ruin both to the
+cultivators of the soil and to the Roman capitalists who farmed this
+part of the public revenue. As to the way in which he laid his hands on
+the possessions of temples and of private citizens, his doings were
+emphatically summed up by his prosecutor when he came, as we shall
+afterwards see, to be put upon his trial. "I affirm that in the whole of
+Sicily, wealthy and old-established province as it is, in all those
+towns, in all those wealthy homes, there was not a single piece of
+silver plate, a single article of Corinthian or Delian ware, a single
+jewel or pearl, a single article of gold or ivory, a single picture,
+whether on panel or on canvas, which he did not hunt up and examine,
+and, if it pleased his fancy, abstract. This is a great thing to say,
+you think. Well, mark how I say it. It is not for the sake of rhetorical
+exaggeration that I make this sweeping assertion, that I declare that
+this fellow did not leave a single article of the kind in the whole
+province. I speak not in the language of the professional accuser but in
+plain Latin. Nay, I will put it more clearly still: in no single private
+house, in no town; in no place, profane or even sacred; in the hands of
+no Sicilian, of no citizen of Rome, did he leave a single article,
+public or private property, of things profane or things religious, which
+came under his eyes or touched his fancy."
+
+Some of the more remarkable of these acts of spoliation it may be worth
+while to relate. A certain Heius, who was at once the wealthiest and
+most popular citizen of Messana, had a private chapel of great antiquity
+in his house, and in it four statues of the very greatest value. There
+was a Cupid by Praxiteles, a replica of a famous work which attracted
+visitors to the uninteresting little town of Thespiae in Boeotia; a
+Hercules from the chisel of Myro; and two bronze figures,
+"Basket-bearers," as they were called, because represented as carrying
+sacred vessels in baskets on their heads. These were the work of
+Polyclitus. The Cupid had been brought to Rome to ornament the forum on
+some great occasion, and had been carefully restored to its place. The
+chapel and its contents was the great sight of the town. No one passed
+through without inspecting it. It was naturally, therefore, one of the
+first things that Verres saw, Messana being on his route to the capital
+of his province. He did not actually take the statues, he bought them;
+but the price that he paid was so ridiculously low that purchase was
+only another name for robbery. Something near sixty pounds was given for
+the four. If we recall the prices that would be paid now-a-days for a
+couple of statues by Michael Angelo and two of the masterpieces of
+Raphael and Correggio, we may imagine what a monstrous fiction this sale
+must have been, all the more monstrous because the owner was a wealthy
+man, who had no temptation to sell, and who was known to value his
+possessions not only as works of art but as adding dignity to his
+hereditary worship.
+
+A wealthy inhabitant of Tyndaris invited the governor to dinner. He was
+a Roman citizen and imagined that he might venture on a display which a
+provincial might have considered to be dangerous. Among the plate on the
+table was a silver dish adorned with some very fine medallions. It
+struck the fancy of the guest, who promptly had it removed, and who
+considered himself to be a marvel of moderation when he sent it back
+with the medallions abstracted.
+
+His secretary happened one day to receive a letter which bore a
+noteworthy impression on the composition of chalk which the Greeks used
+for sealing. It attracted the attention of Verres, who inquired from
+what place it had come. Hearing that it had been sent from Agrigentum,
+he communicated to his agents in that town his desire that the seal-ring
+should be at once secured for him. And this was done. The unlucky
+possessor, another Roman citizen, by the way, had his ring actually
+drawn from his finger.
+
+A still more audacious proceeding was to rob, not this time a mere
+Sicilian provincial or a simple Roman citizen, but one of the tributary
+kings, the heir of the great house of Antiochus, which not many years
+before had matched itself with the power of Rome. Two of the young
+princes had visited Rome, intending to prosecute their claims to the
+throne of Egypt, which, they contended, had come to them through their
+mother. The times were not favorable to the suit, and they returned to
+their country, one of them, Antiochus, probably the elder, choosing to
+take Sicily on his way. He naturally visited Syracuse, where Verres was
+residing, and Verres at once recognized a golden opportunity. The first
+thing was to send the visitor a handsome supply of wine, olive-oil, and
+wheat. The next was to invite him to dinner. The dining-room and table
+were richly furnished, the silver plate being particularly splendid.
+Antiochus was highly delighted with the entertainment, and lost no time
+in returning the compliment. The dinner to which he invited the governor
+was set out with a splendor to which Verres had nothing to compare.
+There was silver plate in abundance, and there were also cups of gold,
+these last adorned with magnificent gems.
+
+Conspicuous among the ornaments of the table was a drinking vessel, all
+in one piece, probably of amethyst, and with a handle of gold. Verres
+expressed himself delighted with what he saw. He handled every vessel
+and was loud in its praises. The simple-minded King, on the other hand,
+heard the compliment with pride. Next day came a message. Would the King
+lend some of the more beautiful cups to his excellency? He wished to
+show them to his own artists. A special request was made for the
+amethyst cup. All was sent without a suspicion of danger.
+
+But the King had still in his possession something that especially
+excited the Roman's cupidity. This was a candelabrum of gold richly
+adorned with jewels. It had been intended for an offering to the
+tutelary deity of Rome, Jupiter of the Capitol. But the temple, which
+had been burned to the ground in the civil wars, had not yet been
+rebuilt, and the princes, anxious that their gift should not be seen
+before it was publicly presented, resolved to carry it back with them to
+Syria. Verres, however, had got, no one knew how, some inkling of the
+matter, and he begged Antiochus to let him have a sight of it. The young
+prince, who, so far from being suspicious, was hardly sufficiently
+cautious, had it carefully wrapped up, and sent it to the governor's
+palace. When he had minutely inspected it, the messengers prepared to
+carry it back. Verres, however, had not seen enough of it. It clearly
+deserved more than one examination. Would they leave it with him for a
+time? They left it, suspecting nothing.
+
+Antiochus, on his part, had no apprehensions. When some days had passed
+and the candelabrum was not returned, he sent to ask for it. The
+governor begged the messenger to come again the next day. It seemed a
+strange request; still the man came again and was again unsuccessful.
+The King himself then waited on the governor and begged him to return
+it. Verres hinted, or rather said plainly, that he should very much like
+it as a present. "This is impossible," replied the prince, "the honor
+due to Jupiter and public opinion forbid it. All the world knows that
+the offering is to be made, and I cannot go back from my word." Verres
+perceived that soft words would be useless, and took at once another
+line. The King, he said, must leave Sicily before nightfall. The public
+safety demanded it. He had heard of a piratical expedition which was on
+its way from Syria to the province, and that his departure was
+necessary. Antiochus had no choice but to obey; but before he went he
+publicly protested in the market-place of Syracuse against the wrong
+that had been done. His other valuables, the gold and the jewels, he did
+not so much regret; but it was monstrous that he should be robbed of the
+gift that he destined for the altar of the tutelary god of Rome.
+
+The Sicilian cities were not better able to protect their possessions
+than were private individuals. Segesta was a town that had early ranged
+itself on the side of the Romans, with whom its people had a legendary
+relationship. (The story was that Aeneas on his way to Italy had left
+there some of his followers, who were unwilling any longer to endure the
+hardships of the journey.) In early days it had been destroyed by the
+Carthaginians, who had carried off all its most valuable possessions,
+the most precious being a statue of Diana, a work of great beauty and
+invested with a peculiar sacredness. When Carthage fell, Scipio its
+conqueror restored the spoils which had been carried off from the cities
+of Sicily. Among other things Agrigentum had recovered its famous bull
+of brass, in which the tyrant Phalaris had burned, it was said, his
+victims. Segesta was no less fortunate than its neighbors, and got back
+its Diana. It was set on a pedestal on which was inscribed the name of
+Scipio, and became one of the most notable sights of the island. It was
+of a colossal size, but the sculptor had contrived to preserve the
+semblance of maidenly grace and modesty. Verres saw and coveted it. He
+demanded it of the authorities of the town and was met with a refusal.
+It was easy for the governor to make them suffer for their obstinacy.
+All their imposts were doubled and more than doubled. Heavy requisitions
+for men and money and corn were made upon them. A still more hateful
+burden, that of attending the court and progresses of the governor was
+imposed on their principal citizens. This was a contest which they
+could not hope to wage with success. Segesta resolved that the statue
+should be given up. It was accordingly carried away from the town, all
+the women of the town, married and unmarried, following it on its
+journey, showering perfumes and flowers upon it, and burning incense
+before it, till it had passed beyond the borders of their territory.
+
+If Segesta had its Diana, Tyndaris had its Mercury; and this also Verres
+was resolved to add to his collection. He issued his orders to Sopater,
+chief magistrate of the place, that the statue was to betaken to
+Messana. (Messana being conveniently near to Italy was the place in
+which he stored his plunder.) Sopater refusing was threatened with the
+heaviest penalties if it was not done without delay, and judged it best
+to bring the matter before the local senate. The proposition was
+received with shouts of disapproval. Verres paid a second visit to the
+town and at once inquired what had been done about the statue. He was
+told that it was impossible. The senate had decreed the penalty of
+death against any one that touched it. Apart from that, it would be an
+act of the grossest impiety. "Impiety?" he burst out upon the unlucky
+magistrates; "penalty of death! senate! what senate? As for you,
+Sopater, you shall not escape. Give me up the statue or you shall be
+flogged to death." Sopater again referred the matter to his townsmen and
+implored them with tears to give way. The meeting separated in great
+tumult without giving him any answer. Summoned again to the governor's
+presence, he repeated that nothing could be done. But Verres had still
+resources in store. He ordered the lictors to strip the man, the chief
+magistrate, be it remembered, of an important town, and to set him,
+naked as he was, astride on one of the equestrian statues that adorned
+the market-place. It was winter; the weather was bitterly cold, with
+heavy rain. The pain caused by the naked limbs being thus brought into
+close contact with the bronze of the statue was intense. So frightful
+was his suffering that his fellow-townsmen could not bear to see it.
+They turned with loud cries upon the senate and compelled them to vote
+that the coveted statue should be given up to the governor. So Verres
+got his Mercury.
+
+We have a curious picture of the man as he made his progresses from town
+to town in his search for treasures of art. "As soon as it was
+spring--and he knew that it was spring not from the rising of any
+constellation or the blowing of any wind, but simply because he saw the
+roses--then indeed he bestirred himself. So enduring, so untiring was he
+that no one ever saw him upon horseback. No--he was carried in a litter
+with eight bearers. His cushion was of the finest linen of Malta, and it
+was stuffed with roses. There was one wreath of roses upon his head, and
+another round his neck, made of the finest thread, of the smallest mesh,
+and this, too, was full of roses. He was carried in this litter straight
+to his chamber; and there he gave his audiences."
+
+When spring had passed into summer even such exertions were too much for
+him. He could not even endure to remain in his official residence, the
+old palace of the kings of Syracuse. A number of tents were pitched for
+him at the entrance of the harbor to catch the cool breezes from the
+sea. There he spent his days and nights, surrounded by troops of the
+vilest companions, and let the province take care of itself.
+
+Such a governor was not likely to keep his province free from the
+pirates who, issuing from their fastnesses on the Cilician coast and
+elsewhere, kept the seaboard cities of the Mediterranean in constant
+terror. One success, and one only, he seems to have gained over them.
+His fleet was lucky enough to come upon a pirate ship, which was so
+overladen with spoil that it could neither escape nor defend itself.
+News was at once carried to Verres, who roused himself from his feasting
+to issue strict orders that no one was to meddle with the prize. It was
+towed into Syracuse, and he hastened to examine his booty. The general
+feeling was one of delight that a crew of merciless villains had been
+captured and were about to pay the penalty of their crimes. Verres had
+far more practical views. Justice might deal as she pleased with the old
+and useless; the young and able bodied, and all who happened to be
+handicraftsmen, were too valuable to be given up. His secretaries, his
+retinue, his son had their share of the prize; six, who happened to be
+singers, were sent as a present to a friend at Rome. As to the pirate
+captain himself, no one knew what had become of him. It was a favorite
+amusement in Sicily to watch the sufferings of a pirate, if the
+government had had the luck but to catch one, while he was being slowly
+tortured to death. The people of Syracuse, to whom the pirate captain
+was only too well known, watched eagerly for the day when he was to be
+brought out to suffer. They kept an account of those who were brought
+out to execution, and reckoned them against the number of the crew,
+which it had been easy to conjecture from the size of the ship. Verres
+had to correct the deficiency as best he could. He had the audacity to
+fill the places of the prisoners whom he had sold or given away with
+Roman citizens, whom on various false pretenses he had thrown into
+prison. The pirate captain himself was suffered to escape on the
+payment, it was believed, of a very large sum of money.
+
+But Verres had not yet done with the pirates. It was necessary that some
+show, at least, of coping with them should be made. There was a fleet,
+and the fleet must put to sea. A citizen of Syracuse, who had no sort of
+qualification for the task, but whom Verres was anxious to get out of
+the way, was appointed to the command. The governor paid it the unwonted
+attention of coming out of his tent to see it pass. His very dress, as
+he stood upon the shore, was a scandal to all beholders. His sandals,
+his purple cloak, his tunic, or under-garment, reaching to his ankles,
+were thought wholly unsuitable to the dignity of a Roman magistrate. The
+fleet, as might be expected, was scandalously ill equipped. Its men for
+the most part existed, as the phrase is, only "on paper." There was the
+proper complement of names, but of names only. The praetor drew from the
+treasury the pay for these imaginary soldiers and marines, and diverted
+it into his own pocket. And the ships were as ill provisioned as they
+were ill manned. After they had been something less than five days at
+sea they put into the harbor of Pachynus. The crews were driven to
+satisfy their hunger on the roots of the dwarf palm, which grew, and
+indeed still grows, in abundance on that spot. Cleomenes meanwhile was
+following the example of his patron. He had his tent pitched on the
+shore, and sat in it drinking from morning to night. While he was thus
+employed tidings were brought that the pirate fleet was approaching. He
+was ill prepared for an engagement. His hope had been to complete the
+manning of his ships from the garrison of the fort. But Verres had dealt
+with the fort as he had dealt with the fleet. The soldiers were as
+imaginary as the sailors. Still a man of courage would have fought. His
+own ship was fairly well manned, and was of a commanding size, quite
+able to overpower the light vessels of the pirates; and such a crew as
+there was was eager to fight. But Cleomenes was as cowardly as he was
+incompetent. He ordered the mast of his ship to be hoisted, the sails to
+be set, and the cable cut, and made off with all speed. The rest of his
+fleet could do nothing but follow his example. The pirates gave chase,
+and captured two of the ships as they fled. Cleomenes reached the port
+of Helorus, stranded his ship, and left it to its fate. His colleagues
+did the same. The pirate chief found them thus deserted and burned them.
+He had then the audacity to sail into the inner harbor of Syracuse, a
+place into which, we are told, only one hostile fleet, the ill-fated
+Athenian expedition, three centuries and a half before, had ever
+penetrated. The rage of the inhabitants at this spectacle exceeded all
+bounds, and Verres felt that a victim must be sacrificed. He was, of
+course, himself the chief culprit. Next in guilt to him was Cleomenes.
+But Cleomenes was spared for the same scandalous reason which had caused
+his appointment to the command. The other captains, who might indeed
+have shown more courage, but who were comparatively blameless, were
+ordered to execution. It seemed all the more necessary to remove them
+because they could have given inconvenient testimony as to the
+inefficient condition of the ships.
+
+The cruelty of Verres was indeed as conspicuous as his avarice. Of this,
+as of his other vices, it would not suit the purpose of this book to
+speak in detail. One conspicuous example will suffice. A certain Gavius
+had given offense, how we know not, and had been confined in the
+disused stone quarries which served for the public prison of Syracuse.
+From these he contrived to escape, and made his way to Messana.
+Unluckily for himself, he did not know that Messana was the one place in
+Sicily where it would not be safe to speak against the governor. Just as
+he was about to embark for Italy he was heard to complain of the
+treatment which he had received, and was arrested and brought before the
+chief magistrate of the town. Verres happened to come to the town the
+same day, and heard what had happened. He ordered the man to be stripped
+and flogged in the market-place. Gavius pleaded that he was a Roman
+citizen and offered proof of his claim. Verres refused to listen, and
+enraged by the repetition of the plea, actually ordered the man to be
+crucified. "And set up," he said to his lictors, "set up the cross by
+the straits. He is a Roman citizen, he says, and he will at least be
+able to have a view of his native country." We know from the history of
+St. Paul what a genuine privilege and protection this citizenship was.
+And Cicero exactly expresses the feeling on the subject in his famous
+words. "It is a crime to put a Roman citizen in irons; it is positive
+wickedness to inflict stripes upon him; it is close upon parricide to
+put him to death; as to crucifying him there is no word for it." And on
+this crowning act of audacity Verres had the recklessness to venture.
+
+After holding office for three years Verres came back to Rome. The
+people of Messana, his only friends in the islands, had built a
+merchantman for him, and he loaded it with his spoils. He came back with
+a light heart. He knew indeed that the Sicilians would impeach him. His
+wrong-doings had been too gross, too insolent, for him to escape
+altogether. But he was confident that he had the means in his hands for
+securing an acquittal. The men that were to judge him were men of his
+own order. The senators still retained the privilege which Sulla had
+given them. They, and they alone, furnished the juries before whom such
+causes were tried. Of these senators not a few had a fellow-feeling for
+a provincial governor accused of extortion and wrong. Some had
+plundered provinces in the past; others hoped to do so in the future.
+Many insignificant men who could not hope to obtain such promotion were
+notoriously open to bribes. And some who would have scorned to receive
+money, or were too wealthy to be influenced by it, were not insensible
+to the charms of other gifts--to a fine statue or a splendid picture
+judiciously bestowed. A few, even more scrupulous, who would not accept
+such presents for their own halls or gardens, were glad to have such
+splendid ornaments for the games which they exhibited to the people.
+Verres came back amply provided with these means of securing his safety.
+He openly avowed--for indeed he was as frank as he was unscrupulous--that
+he had trebled his extortions in order that, after leaving a sufficiency
+for himself, he might have wherewith to win the favor of his judges. It
+soon became evident to him that he would need these and all other help,
+if he was to escape. The Sicilians engaged Cicero to plead their cause.
+He had been quaestor in a division of the province for a year six years
+before, and had won golden opinions by his moderation and integrity. And
+Cicero was a power in the courts of the law, all the greater because he
+had never yet prosecuted, but had kept himself to what was held the more
+honorable task of defending persons accused.[2] Verres secured Hortensius.
+He too was a great orator; Cicero had chosen him as the model which he
+would imitate, and speaks of him as having been a splendid and energetic
+speaker, full of life both in diction and action. At that time, perhaps,
+his reputation stood higher than that of Cicero himself. It was something
+to have retained so powerful an advocate; it would be still more if it
+could be contrived that the prosecutor should be a less formidable person.
+And there was a chance of contriving this. A certain Caecilius was induced
+to come forward, and claim for himself, against Cicero, the duty of
+prosecuting the late governor of Sicily. He too had been a quaestor in the
+province, and he had quarreled, or he pretended that he had quarreled, with
+Verres. The first thing there had to be argued before the court, which,
+like our own, consisted of a presiding judge and a jury, was the
+question, who was to prosecute, Cicero or Caecilius, or the two
+together. Cicero made a great speech, in which he established his own
+claim. He was the choice of the provincials; the honesty of his rival
+was doubtful, while it was quite certain that he was incompetent. The
+court decided in his favor, and he was allowed one hundred and ten days
+to collect evidence. Verres had another device in store. This time a
+member of the Senate came forward and claimed to prosecute Verres for
+misdoings in the province of Achaia in Greece. He wanted one hundred and
+eight days only for collecting evidence. If this claim should be
+allowed, the second prosecution would be taken first; of course it was
+not intended to be serious, and would end in an acquittal. Meanwhile all
+the available time would have been spent, and the Sicilian affair would
+have to be postponed till the next year. It was on postponement indeed
+that Verres rested his hopes. In July Hortensius was elected consul for
+the following year, and if the trial could only be put off till he had
+entered upon office, nothing was to be feared. Verres was openly
+congratulated in the streets of Rome on his good fortune. "I have good
+news for you," cried a friend; "the election has taken place and you are
+acquitted." Another friend had been chosen praetor, and would be the
+new presiding judge. Consul and praetor between them would have the
+appointment of the new jurors, and would take care that they should be
+such as the accused desired. At the same time the new governor of Sicily
+would be also a friend, and he would throw judicious obstacles in the
+way of the attendance of witnesses. The sham prosecution came to
+nothing. The prosecutor never left Italy. Cicero, on the other hand,
+employed the greatest diligence. Accompanied by his cousin Lucius he
+visited all the chief cities of Sicily, and collected from them an
+enormous mass of evidence. In this work he only spent fifty out of the
+hundred and ten days allotted to him, and was ready to begin long before
+he was expected.
+
+[Footnote 2: So Horace compliments a friend on being "the illustrious
+safeguard of the sad accused."]
+
+Verres had still one hope left; and this, strangely enough, sprang out
+of the very number and enormity of his crimes. The mass of evidence was
+so great that the trial might be expected to last for a long time. If it
+could only be protracted into the next year, when his friends would be
+in office, he might still hope to escape. And indeed there was but
+little time left. The trial began on the fifth of August. In the middle
+of the month Pompey was to exhibit some games. Then would come the games
+called "The Games of Rome," and after this others again, filling up much
+of the three months of September, October, and November. Cicero
+anticipated this difficulty. He made a short speech (it could not have
+lasted more than two hours in delivering), in which he stated the case
+in outline. He made a strong appeal to the jury. They were themselves on
+their trial. The eyes of all the world were on them. If they did not do
+justice on so notorious a criminal they would never be trusted any more.
+It would be seen that the senators were not fit to administer the law.
+The law itself was on its trial. The provincials openly declared that if
+Verres was acquitted, the law under which their governors were liable to
+be accused had better be repealed. If no fear of a prosecution were
+hanging over them, they would be content with as much plunder as would
+satisfy their own wants. They would not need to extort as much more
+wherewith to bribe their judges. Then he called his witnesses. A
+marvelous array they were. "From the foot of Mount Taurus, from the
+shores of the Black Sea, from many cities of the Grecian mainland, from
+many islands of the Aegean, from every city and market-town of Sicily,
+deputations thronged to Rome. In the porticoes, and on the steps of the
+temples, in the area of the Forum, in the colonnade that surrounded it,
+on the housetops and on the overlooking declivities, were stationed
+dense and eager crowds of impoverished heirs and their guardians,
+bankrupt tax-farmers and corn merchants, fathers bewailing their
+children carried off to the praetor's harem, children mourning for their
+parents dead in the praetor's dungeons, Greek nobles whose descent was
+traced to Cecrops or Eurysthenes, or to the great Ionian and Minyan
+houses, and Phoenicians, whose ancestors had been priests of the Tyrian
+Melcarth, or claimed kindred with the Zidonian Jah."[3] Nine days were
+spent in hearing this mass of evidence. Hortensius was utterly
+overpowered by it. He had no opportunity for displaying his eloquence,
+or making a pathetic appeal for a noble oppressed by the hatred of the
+democracy. After a few feeble attempts at cross-examination, he
+practically abandoned the case. The defendant himself perceived that his
+position was hopeless. Before the nine days, with their terrible
+impeachment, had come to an end he fled from Rome.
+
+[Footnote 3: Article in "Dictionary of Classical Biography and
+Mythology," by William Bodham Donne.]
+
+The jury returned an unanimous verdict of guilty, and the prisoner was
+condemned to banishment and to pay a fine. The place of banishment
+(which he was apparently allowed to select outside certain limits) was
+Marseilles. The amount of the fine we do not know. It certainly was not
+enough to impoverish him.
+
+Much of the money, and many of the works of art which he had stolen were
+left to him. These latter, by a singularly just retribution, proved his
+ruin in the end. After the death of Cicero, Antony permitted the exiles
+to return. Verres came with them, bringing back his treasures of art,
+and was put to death because they excited the cupidity of the masters of
+Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+A GREAT ROMAN CAUSE.
+
+
+There were various courts at Rome for persons accused of various
+crimes. One judge, for instance, used to try charges of poisoning;
+another, charges of murder; and, just as is the case among us, each
+judge had a jury, who gave their verdict on the evidence which they had
+heard. But this verdict was not, as with us, the verdict of the whole
+jury, given only if all can be induced to agree, but of the majority.
+Each juryman wrote his opinion on a little tablet of wood, putting A.
+(_absolvo_, "I acquit") if he thought the accused innocent, K.
+(_condemno_, "I condemn") if he thought him guilty, and N.L. (_non
+liquet_, "It is not clear") if the case seemed suspicious, though there
+was not enough evidence to convict.
+
+In the year 66 B.C. a very strange trial took place in the Court of
+Poison Cases. A certain Cluentius was accused of having poisoned his
+step-father, Oppianicus, and various other persons. Cicero, who was
+praetor that year (the praetor was the magistrate next in rank to the
+consul), defended Cluentius, and told his client's whole story.
+
+Cluentius and his step-father were both natives of Larinum, a town in
+Apulia, where there was a famous temple of Mars. A dispute about the
+property of this temple caused an open quarrel between the two men, who
+had indeed been enemies for some years. Oppianicus took up the case of
+some slaves, who were called _Servants of Mars_, declaring that they
+were not slaves at all, but Roman citizens. This he did, it would seem,
+because he desired to annoy his fellow-townsmen, with whom he was very
+unpopular. The people of Larinum, who were very much interested in all
+that concerned the splendor of their temple services, resisted the
+claim, and asked Cluentius to plead their case. Cluentius consented.
+While the cause was going on, it occurred to Oppianicus to get rid of
+his opponent by poison. He employed an agent, and the agent put the
+matter into the hands of his freedman, a certain Scamander. Scamander
+tried to accomplish his object by bribing the slave of the physician who
+was attending Cluentius. The physician was a needy Greek, and his slave
+had probably hard and scanty fare; but he was an honest man, and as
+clever as he was honest. He pretended to accept the offer, and arranged
+for a meeting. This done, he told the whole matter to his master the
+physician, and the physician told it again to his patient. Cluentius
+arranged that certain friends should be present in concealment at the
+interview between the slave and his tempter. The villain came, and was
+seized with the poison and a packet of money, sealed with his master's
+seal, upon him.
+
+Cluentius, who had put up with many provocations from his mother's
+husband, now felt that his life was in danger, and determined to defend
+himself. He indicted Scamander for an attempt to poison. The man was
+found guilty. Scamander's patron (as they used to call a freedman's old
+master) was next brought to trial, and with the same result. Last of all
+Oppianicus, the chief criminal, was attacked. Scamander's trial had
+warned him of his danger, and he had labored to bring about the man's
+acquittal. One vote, and one only, he had contrived to secure. And to
+the giver of this vote, a needy and unprincipled member of the Senate,
+he now had recourse. He went, of course, with a large sum in his
+hand--something about five thousand six hundred pounds of our money.
+With this the senator--Staienus by name--was to bribe sixteen out of the
+thirty-two jurymen. They were to have three hundred and fifty pounds
+apiece for their votes, and Staienus was to have as much for his own
+vote (which would give a majority), and something over for his trouble.
+Staienus conceived the happy idea of appropriating the whole, and he
+managed it in this way. He accosted a fellow-juror, whom he knew to be
+as unprincipled as himself. "Bulbus," he said, "you will help me in
+taking care that we sha'n't serve our country for nothing." "You may
+count on me," said the man. Staienus went on, "The defendant has
+promised three hundred and fifty pounds to every juror who will vote
+'Not Guilty.' You know who will take the money. Secure them, and come
+again to me." Nine days after, Bulbus came with beaming face to
+Staienus. "I have got the sixteen in the matter you know of; and now,
+where is the money?" "He has played me false," replied the other; "the
+money is not forthcoming. As for myself, I shall certainly vote
+'Guilty.'"
+
+The trial came to an end, and the verdict was to be given. The defendant
+claimed that it should be given by word of mouth, being anxious to know
+who had earned their money. Staienus and Bulbus were the first to vote.
+To the surprise of all, they voted "Guilty." Rumors too of foul play had
+spread about. The two circumstances caused some of the more respectable
+jurors to hesitate. In the end _five_ voted for acquittal, _ten_ said
+"Not Proven," and seventeen "Guilty." Oppianicus suffered nothing worse
+than banishment, a banishment which did not prevent him from living in
+Italy, and even in the neighborhood of Rome. The Romans, though they
+shed blood like water in their civil strife, were singularly lenient in
+their punishments. Not long afterwards he died.
+
+His widow saw in his death an opportunity of gratifying the unnatural
+hatred which she had long felt for her son Cluentius. She would accuse
+him of poisoning his step-father. Her first attempt failed completely.
+She subjected three slaves to torture, one of them her own, another
+belonged to the younger Oppianicus, a third the property of the
+physician who had attended the deceased in his last illness. But the
+cruelties and tortures extorted no confession from the men. At last the
+friends whom she had summoned to be present at the inquiry compelled her
+to desist. Three years afterwards she renewed the attempt. She had taken
+one of the three tortured slaves into high favor, and had established
+him as a physician at Larinum. The man committed an audacious robbery in
+his mistress's house, breaking open a chest and abstracting from it a
+quantity of silver coin and five pounds weight of gold. At the same time
+he murdered two of his fellow-slaves, and threw their bodies into the
+fish-pond. Suspicion fell upon the missing slaves. But when the chest
+came to be closely examined, the opening was found to be of a very
+curious kind. A friend remembered that he had lately seen among the
+miscellaneous articles at an auction a circular saw which would have
+made just such an opening. It was found that this saw had been bought by
+the physician. He was now charged with the crime. Thereupon a young lad
+who had been his accomplice came forward and told the story. The bodies
+were found in the fish-pond. The guilty slave was tortured. He confessed
+the deed, and he also confessed, his mistress declared, that he had
+given poison to Oppianicus at the instance of Cluentius. No opportunity
+was given for further inquiry. His confession made, the man was
+immediately executed. Under strong compulsion from his step-mother, the
+younger Oppianicus now took up the case, and indicted Cluentius for
+murder. The evidence was very weak, little or nothing beyond the very
+doubtful confession spoken of above; but then there was a very violent
+prejudice against the accused. There had been a suspicion--perhaps more
+than a suspicion--of foul play in the trial which had ended in the
+condemnation of Oppianicus. The defendant, men said, might have
+attempted to bribe the jury, but the plaintiff had certainly done so. It
+would be a fine thing if he were to be punished even by finding him
+guilty of a crime which he had not committed.
+
+In defending his client, Cicero relied as much upon the terrible list
+of crimes which had been proved against the dead Oppianicus as upon any
+thing else. Terrible indeed it was, as a few specimens from the
+catalogue will prove.
+
+Among the wealthier inhabitants of Larinum was a certain Dinaea, a
+childless widow. She had lost her eldest son in the Social War (the war
+carried on between Rome and her Italian allies), and had seen two others
+die of disease. Her only daughter, who had been married to Oppianicus,
+was also dead. Now came the unexpected news that her eldest son was
+still alive. He had been sold into slavery, and was still working among
+a gang of laborers on a farm in Gaul. The poor woman called her kinsfolk
+together and implored them to undertake the task of recovering him. At
+the same time she made a will, leaving the bulk of her property to her
+daughter's son, the younger Oppianicus, but providing for the missing
+man a legacy of between three and four thousand pounds. The elder
+Oppianicus was not disposed to see so large a sum go out of the family.
+Dinaea fell ill, and he brought her his own physician. The patient
+refused the man's services; they had been fatal, she said, to all her
+kinsfolk. Oppianicus then contrived to introduce to her a traveling
+quack from Ancona. He had bribed the man with about seventeen pounds of
+our money to administer a deadly drug. The fee was large, and the fellow
+was expected to take some pains with the business; but he was in a
+hurry; he had many markets to visit; and he gave a single dose which
+there was no need to repeat.
+
+Meanwhile Dinaea's kinsfolk had sent two agents to make inquiries for
+the missing son. But Oppianicus had been beforehand with them. He had
+bribed the man who had brought the first news, had learned where he was
+to be found, and had caused him to be assassinated. The agents wrote to
+their employers at Larinum, saying that the object of their search could
+not be found, Oppianicus having undoubtedly tampered with the person
+from whom information was to be obtained. This letter excited great
+indignation at Larinum; and one of the family publicly declared in the
+market-place that he should hold Oppianicus (who happened to be present)
+responsible if any harm should be found to have happened to the missing
+man. A few days afterwards the agents themselves returned. They had
+found the man, but he was dead. Oppianicus dared not face the burst of
+rage which this news excited, and fled from Larinum. But he was not at
+the end of his resources. The Civil War between Sulla and the party of
+Marius (for Marius himself was now dead) was raging, and Oppianicus fled
+to the camp of Metellus Pius, one of Sulla's lieutenants. There he
+represented himself as one who had suffered for the party. Metellus had
+himself fought in the Social War, and fought against the side to which
+the murdered prisoner belonged. It was therefore easy to persuade him
+that the man had deserved his fate, and that his friends were unworthy
+persons and dangerous to the commonwealth. Oppianicus returned to
+Larinum with an armed force, deposed the magistrates whom the
+towns-people had chosen, produced Sulla's mandate for the appointment of
+himself and three of his creatures in their stead, as well as for the
+execution of four persons particularly obnoxious to him. These four
+were, the man who had publicly threatened him, two of his kinsfolk, and
+one of the instruments of his own villainies, whom he now found it
+convenient to get out of the way.
+
+The story of the crimes of Oppianicus, of which only a small part has
+been given, having been finished, Cicero related the true circumstances
+of his death. After his banishment he had wandered about for a while
+shunned by all his acquaintances. Then he had taken up his quarters in a
+farmhouse in the Falernian country. From these he was driven away by a
+quarrel with the farmer, and removed to a small lodging which he had
+hired outside the walls of Rome. Not long afterwards he fell from his
+horse, and received a severe injury in his side. His health was already
+weak, fever came on, he was carried into the city and died after a few
+days' illness.
+
+Besides the charge of poisoning Oppianicus there were others that had to
+be briefly dealt with. One only of these needs to be mentioned.
+Cluentius, it was said, had put poison into a cup of honey wine, with
+the intention of giving it to the younger Oppianicus. The occasion, it
+was allowed, was the young man's wedding-breakfast, to which, as was
+the custom at Larinum, a large company had been invited. The prosecutor
+affirmed that one of the bridegroom's friends had intercepted the cup on
+its way, drunk off its contents, and instantly expired. The answer to
+this was complete. The young man had not instantly expired. On the
+contrary, he had died after an illness of several days, and this illness
+had had a different cause. He was already out of health when he came to
+the breakfast, and he had made himself worse by eating and drinking too
+freely, "as," says the orator, "young men will do." He then called a
+witness to whom no one could object, the father of the deceased. "The
+least suspicion of the guilt of Cluentius would have brought him as a
+witness against him. Instead of doing this he gives him his support.
+Read," said Cicero to the clerk, "read his evidence. And you, sir,"
+turning to the father, "stand up a while, if you please, and submit to
+the pain of hearing what I am obliged to relate. I will say no more
+about the case. Your conduct has been admirable; you would not allow
+your own sorrow to involve an innocent man in the deplorable calamity of
+a false accusation."
+
+Then came the story of the cruel and shameful plot which the mother had
+contrived against her son. Nothing would content this wicked woman but
+that she must herself journey to Rome to give all the help that she
+could to the prosecution. "And what a journey this was!" cried Cicero.
+"I live near some of the towns near which she passed, and I have heard
+from many witnesses what happened. Vast crowds came to see her. Men, ay,
+and women too, groaned aloud as she passed by. Groaned at what? Why,
+that from the distant town of Larinum, from the very shore of the Upper
+Sea, a woman was coming with a great retinue and heavy money-bags,
+coming with the single object of bringing about the ruin of a son who
+was being tried for his life. In all those crowds there was not a man
+who did not think that every spot on which she set her foot needed to be
+purified, that the very earth, which is the mother of us all, was
+defiled by the presence of a mother so abominably wicked. There was not
+a single town in which she was allowed to stay; there was not an inn of
+all the many upon that road where the host did not shun the contagion
+of her presence. And indeed she preferred to trust herself to solitude
+and to darkness rather than to any city or hostelry. And now," said
+Cicero, turning to the woman, who was probably sitting in court, "does
+she think that we do not all know her schemes, her intrigues, her
+purposes from day to day? Truly we know exactly to whom she has gone, to
+whom she has promised money, whose integrity she has endeavored to
+corrupt with her bribes. Nay, more: we have heard all about the things
+which she supposes to be a secret, her nightly sacrifice, her wicked
+prayers, her abominable vows."
+
+He then turned to the son, whom he would have the jury believe was as
+admirable as the mother was vile. He had certainly brought together a
+wonderful array of witnesses to, character. From Larinum every grown-up
+man that had the strength to make the journey had come to Rome to
+support their fellow-townsman. The town was left to the care of women
+and children. With these witnesses had come, bringing a resolution of
+the local senate full of the praises of the accused, a deputation of the
+senators. Cicero turned to the deputation and begged them to stand up
+while the resolution was being read. They stood up and burst into tears,
+which indeed are much more common among the people of the south than
+among us, and of which no one sees any reason to be ashamed. "You see
+these tears, gentlemen," cried the orator to the jury. "You may be sure,
+from seeing them, that every member of the senate was in tears also when
+they passed this resolution." Nor was it only Larinum, but all the chief
+Samnite towns that had sent their most respected citizens to give their
+evidence for Cluentius. "Few," said Cicero, "I think, are loved by me as
+much as he is loved by all these friends."
+
+Cluentius was acquitted. Cicero is said to have boasted afterwards that
+he had blinded the eyes of the jury. Probably his client had bribed the
+jury in the trial of his step-father. That was certainly the common
+belief, which indeed went so far as to fix the precise sum which he
+paid. "How many miles is your farm from Rome?" was asked of one of the
+witnesses at a trial connected with the case. "Less than fifty-three,"
+he replied. "Exactly the sum," was the general cry from the spectators.
+The point of the joke is in the fact that the same word stood in Latin
+for the _thousand_ paces which made a mile and the _thousand_ coins by
+which sums of money were commonly reckoned. Oppianicus had paid forty
+thousand for an acquittal, and Cluentius outbid him with fifty thousand
+("less than fifty-three") to secure a verdict of guilty. But whatever we
+may think of the guilt or innocence of Cluentius, there can be no doubt
+that the cause in which Cicero defended him was one of the most
+interesting ever tried in Rome.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+COUNTRY LIFE.
+
+
+A Roman of even moderate wealth--for Cicero was far from being one of
+the richest men of his time--commonly possessed more country-houses than
+belong even to the wealthiest of English nobles. One such house at least
+Cicero inherited from his father. It was about three miles from Arpinum,
+a little town in that hill country of the Sabines which was the
+proverbial seat of a temperate and frugal race, and which Cicero
+describes in Homeric phrase as
+
+   "Rough but a kindly nurse of men."
+
+In his grandfather's time it had been a plain farmhouse, of the kind
+that had satisfied the simpler manners of former days--the days when
+Consuls and Dictators were content, their time of office ended, to plow
+their own fields and reap their own harvests. Cicero was born within its
+walls, for the primitive fashion of family life still prevailed, and the
+married son continued to live in his father's house. After the old man's
+death, when the old-fashioned frugality gave way to a more sumptuous
+manner of life, the house was greatly enlarged, one of the additions
+being a library, a room of which the grandfather, who thought that his
+contemporaries were like Syrian slaves, "the more Greek they knew the
+greater knaves they were," had never felt the want; but in which his
+son, especially in his later days, spent most of his time. The garden
+and grounds were especially delightful, the most charming spot of all
+being an island formed by the little stream Fibrenus. A description put
+into the mouth of Quintus, the younger son of the house, thus depicts
+it: "I have never seen a more pleasant spot. Fibrenus here divides his
+stream into two of equal size, and so washes either side. Flowing
+rapidly by he joins his waters again, having compassed just as much
+ground as makes a convenient place for our literary discussions. This
+done he hurries on, just as if the providing of such a spot had been his
+only office and function, to fall into the Liris. Then, like one adopted
+into a noble family, he loses his own obscurer name. The Liris indeed he
+makes much colder. A colder stream than this indeed I never touched,
+though I have seen many. I can scarce bear to dip my foot in it. You
+remember how Plato makes Socrates dip his foot in Ilissus." Atticus too
+is loud in his praises. "This, you know, is my first time of coming
+here, and I feel that I cannot admire it enough. As to the splendid
+villas which one often sees, with their marble pavements and gilded
+ceilings, I despise them. And their water-courses, to which they give
+the fine names of Nile or Euripus, who would not laugh at them when he
+sees your streams? When we want rest and delight for the mind it is to
+nature that we must come. Once I used to wonder--for I never thought
+that there was any thing but rocks and hills in the place--that you took
+such pleasure in the spot. But now I marvel that when you are away from
+Rome you care to be any where but here." "Well," replied Cicero, "when I
+get away from town for several days at a time, I do prefer this place;
+but this I can seldom do. And indeed I love it, not only because it is
+so pleasant, so healthy a resort, but also because it is my native land,
+mine and my father's too, and because I live here among the associations
+of those that have gone before me."
+
+Other homes he purchased at various times of his life, as his means
+permitted. The situation of one of them, at Formiae near Cape Caista,
+was particularly agreeable to him, for he loved the sea; it amused him
+as it had amused, he tells us, the noble friends, Scipio and Laelius,
+before him, to pick up pebbles on the shore. But this part of the coast
+was a fashionable resort. Chance visitors were common; and there were
+many neighbors, some of whom were far too liberal of their visits. He
+writes to Atticus on one occasion from his Formian villa: "As to
+composition, to which you are always urging me, it is absolutely
+impossible. It is a public-hall that I have here, not a country-house,
+such a crowd of people is there at Formiae. As to most of them nothing
+need be said. After ten o'clock they cease to trouble me. But my nearest
+neighbor is Arrius. The man absolutely lives with me, says that he has
+given up the idea of going to Rome because he wants to talk philosophy
+with me. And then, on the other side, there is Sebosus, Catulus' friend,
+as you will remember. Now what am I to do? I would certainly be off to
+Arpinum if I did not expect to see you here." In the next letter he
+repeats the complaints: "Just as I am sitting down to write in comes our
+friend Sebosus. I had not time to give an inward groan, when Arrius
+says, 'Good morning.' And this is going away from Rome! I will
+certainly be off to
+
+   'My native hills, the cradle of my race.'"
+
+Still, doubtless, there was a sweetness, the sweetness of being famous
+and sought after, even in these annoyances. He never ceased to pay
+occasional visits to Formiae. It was a favorite resort of his family;
+and it was there that he spent the last days of his life.
+
+But the country-house which he loved best of all was his villa at
+Tusculum, a Latin town lying on the slope of Mount Algidus, at such a
+height above the sea[4] as would make a notable hill in England. Here
+had lived in an earlier generation Crassus, the orator after whose model
+the young Cicero had formed his own eloquence; and Catulus, who shared
+with Marius the glory of saving Rome from the barbarians; and Caesar, an
+elder kinsman of the Dictator. Cicero's own house had belonged to
+Sulla, and its walls were adorned with frescoes of that great soldier's
+victories. For neighbors he had the wealthy Lucullus, and the still more
+wealthy Crassus, one of the three who ruled Rome when it could no longer
+rule itself, and, for a time at least, Quintus, his brother. "This," he
+writes to his friend Atticus, "is the one spot in which I can get some
+rest from all my toils and troubles."
+
+[Footnote 4: 2200 feet.]
+
+Though Cicero often speaks of this house of his, he nowhere describes
+its general arrangements. We shall probably be not far wrong if we
+borrow our idea of this from the letter in which the younger Pliny tells
+a friend about one of his own country seats.
+
+"The courtyard in front is plain without being mean. From this you pass
+into a small but cheerful space inclosed by colonnades in the shape of
+the letter D. Between these there is a passage into an inner covered
+court, and out of this again into a handsome hall, which has on every
+side folding doors or windows equally large. On the left hand of this
+hall lies a large drawing-room, and beyond that a second of a smaller
+size, which has one window to the rising and another to the setting sun.
+Adjoining this is another room of a semicircular shape, the windows of
+which are so arranged as to get the sun all through the day: in the
+walls are bookcases containing a collection of authors who cannot be
+read too often. Out of this is a bedroom which can be warmed with hot
+air. The rest of this side of the house is appropriated to the use of
+the slaves and freedmen; yet most of the rooms are good enough to put my
+guests into. In the opposite wing is a most elegant bedroom, another
+which can be used both as bedroom and sitting-room, and a third which
+has an ante-room of its own, and is so high as to be cool in summer, and
+with walls so thick that it is warm in winter. Then comes the bath with
+its cooling room, its hot room, and its dressing chamber. And not far
+from this again the tennis court, which gets the warmth of the afternoon
+sun, and a tower which commands an extensive view of the country round.
+Then there is a granary and a store-room."
+
+This was probably a larger villa than Cicero's, though it was itself
+smaller than another which Pliny describes. We must make an allowance
+for the increase in wealth and luxury which a century and a half had
+brought. Still we may get some idea from it of Cicero's country-house,
+one point of resemblance certainly being that there was but one floor.
+
+What Cicero says about his "Tusculanum" chiefly refers to its furnishing
+and decoration, and is to be found for the most part in his letters to
+Atticus. Atticus lived for many years in Athens and had therefore
+opportunities of buying works of art and books which did not fall in the
+way of the busy lawyer and statesman of Rome. But the room which in
+Cicero's eyes was specially important was one which we may call the
+lecture-room, and he is delighted when his friend was able to procure
+some appropriate ornaments for it. "Your _Hermathena_" he writes (the
+_Hermathena_ was a composite statue, or rather a double bust upon a
+pedestal, with the heads of Hermes and Athene, the Roman Mercury and
+Minerva) "pleases me greatly. It stands so prettily that the whole
+lecture-room looks like a votive chapel of the deity. I am greatly
+obliged to you." He returns to the subject in another letter. Atticus
+had probably purchased for him another bust of the same kind. "What you
+write about the _Hermathena_ pleases me greatly. It is a most
+appropriate ornament for my own little 'seat of learning.' Hermes is
+suitable every where, and Minerva is the special emblem of a
+lecture-room. I should be glad if you would, as you suggest, find as
+many more ornaments of the same kind for the place. As for the statues
+that you sent me before, I have not seen them. They are at my house at
+Formiae, whither I am just now thinking of going. I shall remove them
+all to my place at Tusculum. If ever I shall find myself with more than
+enough for this I shall begin to ornament the other. Pray keep your
+books. Don't give up the hope that I may be able to make them mine. If I
+can only do this I shall be richer than Crassus." And, again, "If you
+can find any lecture-room ornaments do not neglect to secure them. My
+Tusculum house is so delightful to me that it is only when I get there
+that I seem to be satisfied with myself." In another letter we hear
+something about the prices. He has paid about one hundred and eighty
+pounds for some statues from Megara which his friend had purchased for
+him. At the same time he thanks him by anticipation for some busts of
+Hermes, in which the pedestals were of marble from Pentelicus, and the
+heads of bronze. They had not come to hand when he next writes: "I am
+looking for them," he says, "most anxiously;" and he again urges
+diligence in looking for such things. "You may trust the length of my
+purse. This is my special fancy." Shortly after Atticus has found
+another kind of statue, double busts of Hermes and Hercules, the god of
+strength; and Cicero is urgent to have them for his lecture-room. All
+the same he does not forget the books, for which he is keeping his odds
+and ends of income, his "little vintages," as he calls them--possibly
+the money received from a small vineyard attached to his
+pleasure-grounds. Of books, however, he had an ample supply close at
+home, of which he could make as much use as he pleased, the splendid
+library which Lucullus had collected. "When I was at my house in
+Tusculum," he writes in one of his treatises, "happening to want to make
+use of some books in the library of the young Lucullus, I went to his
+villa, to take them out myself, as my custom was. Coming there I found
+Cato (Cato was the lad's uncle and guardian), of whom, however, then I
+knew nothing, sitting in the library absolutely surrounded with books of
+the Stoic writers on philosophy."
+
+When Cicero was banished, the house at Tusculum shared the fate of the
+rest of his property. The building was destroyed. The furniture, and
+with it the books and works of art so diligently collected, were stolen
+or sold. Cicero thought, and was probably right in thinking, that the
+Senate dealt very meanly with him when they voted him something between
+four and five thousand pounds as compensation for his loss in this
+respect. For his house at Formiae they gave him half as much. We hear of
+his rebuilding the house. He had advertised the contract, he tells us in
+the same letter in which he complains of the insufficient compensation.
+Some of his valuables he recovered, but we hear no more of collecting.
+He had lost heart for it, as men will when such a disaster has happened
+to them. He was growing older too, and the times were growing more and
+more troublous. Possibly money was not so plentiful with him as it had
+been in earlier days. But we have one noble monument of the man
+connected with the second of his two Tusculum houses. He makes it the
+scene of the "Discussions of Tusculum," one of the last of the treatises
+in the writing of which he found consolation for private and public
+sorrows. He describes himself as resorting in the afternoon to his
+"Academy," and there discussing how the wise man may rise superior to
+the fear of death, to pain and to sorrow, how he may rule his passions,
+and find contentment in virtue alone. "If it seems," he says, summing up
+the first of these discussions, "if it seems the clear bidding of God
+that we should quit this life [he seems to be speaking of suicide, which
+appeared to a Roman to be, under certain circumstances, a laudable act],
+let us obey gladly and thankfully. Let us consider that we are being
+loosed from prison, and released from chains, that we may either find
+our way back to a home that is at once everlasting and manifestly our
+own, or at least be quit forever of all sensation and trouble. If no
+such bidding come to us, let us at least cherish such a temper that we
+may look on that day so dreadful to others as full of blessing to us;
+and let us look on nothing that is ordered for us either by the
+everlasting gods or by nature, our common mother, as an evil. It is not
+by some random chance that we have been created. There is beyond all
+doubt some mighty Power which watches over the race of man, which does
+not produce a creature whose doom it is, after having exhausted all
+other woes, to fall at last into the unending woe of death. Rather let
+us believe that we have in death a haven and refuge prepared for us. I
+would that we might sail thither with widespread sails; if not, if
+contrary winds shall blow us back, still we must needs reach, though it
+may be somewhat late, the haven where we would be. And as for the fate
+which is the fate of all, how can it be the unhappiness of one?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A GREAT CONSPIRACY.
+
+
+Sergius Catiline belonged to an ancient family which had fallen into
+poverty. In the evil days of Sulla, when the nobles recovered the power
+which they had lost, and plundered and murdered their adversaries, he
+had shown himself as cruel and as wicked as any of his fellows. Like
+many others he had satisfied grudges of his own under pretense of
+serving his party, and had actually killed his brother-in-law with his
+own hand. These evil deeds and his private character, which was of the
+very worst, did not hinder him from rising to high offices in the State.
+He was made first aedile, then praetor, then governor of Africa, a
+province covering the region which now bears the names of Tripoli and
+Tunis. At the end of his year of government he returned to Rome,
+intending to become a candidate for the consulship. In this he met with
+a great disappointment. He was indicted for misgovernment in his
+province, and as the law did not permit any one who had such a charge
+hanging over him to stand for any public office, he was compelled to
+retire. But he soon found, or fancied that he had found, an opportunity
+of revenging himself. The two new consuls were found guilty of bribery,
+and were compelled to resign. One of them, enraged at his disgrace, made
+common cause with Catiline. A plot, in which not a few powerful citizens
+were afterwards suspected with more or less reason of having joined, was
+formed. It was arranged that the consuls should be assassinated on the
+first day of the new year; the day, that is, on which they were to enter
+on their office. But a rumor of some impending danger got about; on the
+appointed day the new consuls appeared with a sufficient escort, and the
+conspirators agreed to postpone the execution of their scheme till an
+early day in February. This time the secret was better kept, but the
+impatience of Catiline hindered the plot from being carried out. It had
+been arranged that he should take his place in front of the
+senate-house, and give to the hired band of assassins the signal to
+begin. This signal he gave before the whole number was assembled. The
+few that were present had not the courage to act, and the opportunity
+was lost.
+
+The trial for misgovernment ended in an acquittal, purchased, it was
+said, by large bribes given to the jurymen and even to the prosecutor, a
+certain Clodius, of whom we shall hear again, and shall find to have
+been not one whit better than Catiline himself. A second trial, this
+time for misdeeds committed in the days of Sulla, ended in the same way.
+Catiline now resolved on following another course of action. He would
+take up the character of a friend of the people. He had the advantage of
+being a noble, for men thought that he was honest when they saw him thus
+turn against his own order, and, as it seemed, against his own
+interests. And indeed there was much that he could say, and say with
+perfect truth, against the nobles. They were corrupt and profligate
+beyond all bearing. They sat on juries and gave false verdicts for
+money. They went out to govern provinces, showed themselves horribly
+cruel and greedy, and then came home to be acquitted by men who had done
+or hoped to do the very same things themselves. People listened to
+Catiline when he spoke against such doings, without remembering that he
+was just as bad himself. He had too, just the reputation for strength
+and courage that was likely to make him popular. He had never been a
+soldier, but he was known to be very brave, and he had a remarkable
+power of enduring cold and hunger and hardships of every kind. On the
+strength of the favor which he thus gained, he stood again for the
+consulship. In anticipation of being elected, he gathered a number of
+men about him, unsuccessful and discontented like himself, and unfolded
+his plans. All debts were to be wiped out, and wealthy citizens were to
+be put to death and their property to be divided. It was hoped that the
+consuls at home, and two at least of the armies in the provinces, would
+support the movement. The first failure was that Catiline was not
+elected consul, Cicero being chosen unanimously, with Antonius, who had
+a small majority over Catiline, for his colleague. Enraged at his want
+of success, the latter now proceeded to greater lengths than ever. He
+actually raised troops in various parts of Italy, but especially in
+Etruria, which one Manlius, an old officer in Sulla's army, commanded.
+He then again became a candidate for the consulship, resolving first to
+get rid of Cicero, who, he found, met and thwarted him at every turn.
+Happily for Rome these designs were discovered through the weakness of
+one of his associates. This man told the secret to a lady, with whom he
+was in love, and the lady, dismayed at the boldness and wickedness of
+the plan, communicated all she knew to Cicero.
+
+Not knowing that he was thus betrayed, Catiline set about ridding
+himself of his great antagonist. Nor did the task seem difficult. The
+hours both of business and of pleasure in Rome were what we should think
+inconveniently early. Thus a Roman noble or statesman would receive in
+the first hours of the morning the calls of ceremony or friendship which
+it is our custom to pay in the afternoon. It would sometimes happen that
+early visitors would find the great man not yet risen. In these cases he
+would often receive them in bed. This was probably the habit of Cicero,
+a courteous, kindly man, always anxious to be popular, and therefore
+easy of access. On this habit the conspirators counted. Two of their
+number, one of them a knight, the other a senator, presented themselves
+at his door shortly after sunrise on the seventh of November. They
+reckoned on finding him, not in the great hall of his mansion,
+surrounded by friends and dependents, but in his bed-chamber. But the
+consul had received warning of their coming, and they were refused
+admittance. The next day he called a meeting of the Senate in the temple
+of Jupiter the Stayer, which was supposed to be the safest place where
+they could assemble.
+
+To this meeting Catiline, a member in right of having filled high
+offices of state, himself ventured to come. A tall, stalwart man,
+manifestly of great power of body and mind, but with a face pale and
+wasted by excess, and his eyes haggard and bloodshot, he sat alone in
+the midst of a crowded house. No man had greeted him when he entered,
+and when he took his place on the benches allotted to senators who had
+filled the office of consul, all shrank from him. Then Cicero rose in
+his place. He turned directly and addressed his adversary. "How long,
+Catiline," he cried, "will you abuse our patience?" How had he dared to
+come to that meeting? Was it not enough for him to know how all the city
+was on its guard against him; how his fellow-senators shrank from him as
+men shrink from a pestilence? If he was still alive, he owed it to the
+forbearance of those against whom he plotted; and this forbearance would
+last so long, and so long only, as to allow every one to be convinced of
+his guilt. For the present, he was suffered to live, but to live guarded
+and watched and incapable of mischief. Then the speaker related every
+detail of the conspiracy. He knew not only every thing that the
+accomplices had intended to do, but the very days that had been fixed
+for doing it. Overwhelmed by this knowledge of his plans, Catiline
+scarcely attempted a defense. He said in a humble voice, "Do not think,
+Fathers, that I, a noble of Rome, I who have done myself, whose
+ancestors have done much good to this city, wish to see it in ruins,
+while this consul, a mere lodger in the place, would save it." He would
+have said more, but the whole assembly burst into cries of "Traitor!
+Traitor!" and drowned his voice. "My enemies," he cried, "are driving
+me to destruction. But look! if you set my house on fire, I will put it
+out with a general ruin." And he rushed out of the Senate.
+
+Nothing, he saw, could be done in Rome; every point was guarded against
+him. Late that same night he left the city, committing the management of
+affairs to Cethegus and Lentulus, and promising to return before long
+with an army at his back. Halting awhile on his road, he wrote letters
+to some of the chief senators, in which he declared that for the sake of
+the public peace he should give up the struggle with his enemies and
+quietly retire to Marseilles. What he really did was to make his way to
+the camp of Manlius, where he assumed the usual state of a regular
+military command. The Senate, on hearing of these doings, declared him
+to be an outlaw. The consuls were to raise an army; Antonius was to
+march against the enemy, and Cicero to protect the city.
+
+Meanwhile the conspirators left behind in Rome had been busy. One of
+the tribes of Gaul had sent deputies to the Capitol to obtain redress
+for injuries of which they complained. The men had effected little or
+nothing. The Senate neglected them. The help of officials could only be
+purchased by heavy bribes. They were now heavily in debt both on their
+own account and on account of their state, and Lentulus conceived the
+idea of taking advantage of their needs. One of his freedmen, who had
+been a trader in Gaul, could speak the language, and knew several of the
+deputies, opened negotiations with them by his patron's desire. They
+told him the tale of their wrongs. They could see, they said, no way out
+of their difficulties. "Behave like men," he answered, "and I will show
+you a way." He then revealed to them the existence of the conspiracy,
+explained its objects, and enlarged upon the hopes of success. While he
+and his friends were busy at Rome, they were to return to Gaul and rouse
+their fellow-tribesmen to revolt. There was something tempting in the
+offer, and the deputies doubted long whether they should not accept it.
+In the end prudence prevailed. To join the conspiracy and to rebel
+would be to run a terrible risk for very doubtful advantages. On the
+other hand they might make sure of a speedy reward by telling all they
+knew to the authorities. This was the course on which they resolved, and
+they went without loss of time to a Roman noble who was the hereditary
+"patron" of their tribe. The patron in his turn communicated the
+intelligence to Cicero. Cicero's instructions were that the deputies
+should pretend to agree to the proposals which had been made to them,
+and should ask for a written agreement which they might show to their
+countrymen at home. An agreement was drawn up, signed by Lentulus and
+two of his fellow-conspirators, and handed over to the Gauls, who now
+made preparations to return to their country. Cicero himself tells us in
+the speech which he delivered next day in the Forum the story of what
+followed.
+
+"I summoned to my presence two of the praetors on whose courage I knew I
+could rely, put the whole matter before them, and unfolded my own plans.
+As it grew dusk they made their way unobserved to the Mulvian Bridge,
+and posted themselves with their attendants (they had some trusty
+followers of their own, and I had sent a number of picked swordsmen from
+my own body-guard), in two divisions in houses on either side of the
+bridge. About two o'clock in the morning the Gauls and their train,
+which was very numerous, began to cross the bridge. Our men charged
+them; swords were drawn on both sides; but before any blood was shed the
+praetors appeared on the scene, and all was quiet. The Gauls handed over
+to them the letters which they had upon them with their seals unbroken.
+These and the deputies themselves were brought to my house. The day was
+now beginning to dawn. Immediately I sent for the four men whom I knew
+to be the principal conspirators. They came suspecting nothing,
+Lentulus, who had been up late the night before writing the letters,
+being the last to present himself. Some distinguished persons who had
+assembled at my house wished me to open the letters before laying them
+before the Senate. If their contents were not what I suspected I should
+be blamed for having given a great deal of trouble to no purpose. I
+refused in so important a matter to act on my own responsibility. No
+one, I was sure, would accuse me of being too careful when the safety of
+Rome was at stake. I called a meeting of the Senate, and took care that
+the attendance should be very large. Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the
+Gauls, I sent a praetor to the house of Cethegus to seize all the
+weapons that he could find. He brought away a great number of daggers
+and swords.
+
+"The Senate being now assembled, I brought Vulturcius, one of the
+conspirators, into the House, promised him a public pardon, and bade him
+tell all he knew without fear. As soon as the man could speak, for he
+was terribly frightened, he said, 'I was taking a letter and a message
+from Lentulus to Catiline. Catiline was instructed to bring his forces
+up to the walls of the city. They meanwhile would set it on fire in
+various quarters, as had been arranged, and begin a general massacre. He
+was to intercept the fugitives, and thus effect a junction with his
+friends within the walls.' I next brought the Gauls into the House.
+Their story was as follows. 'Lentulus and two of his companions gave us
+letters to our nation. We were instructed to send our cavalry into Italy
+with all speed. They would find a force of infantry. Lentulus told us
+how he had learned from Sibylline books that he was that "third
+Cornelius" who was the fated ruler of Rome. The two that had gone before
+him were Cicero and Sulla. The year too was the one which was destined
+to see the ruin of the city, for it was the tenth after the acquittal of
+the Vestal Virgins, the twentieth after the burning of the Capitol.
+After this Cethegus and the others had a dispute about the time for
+setting the city on fire. Lentulus and others wished to have it done on
+the feast of Saturn (December 17th). Cethegus thought that this was
+putting it off too long.' I then had the letter brought in. First I
+showed Cethegus his seal. He acknowledged it. I cut the string. I read
+the letter. It was written in his own handwriting and was to this
+effect: he assured the Senate and people of the Gauls that he would do
+what he had promised to their deputies, and begged them on the other
+hand to perform what their deputies had undertaken. Cethegus, who had
+accounted for the weapons found in his house by declaring that he had
+always been a connoisseur in such things, was overwhelmed by hearing his
+letter read, and said nothing.
+
+"Manlius next acknowledged his seal and handwriting. A letter from him
+much to the same effect was read. He confessed his guilt. I then showed
+Lentulus his letter, and asked him, 'Do you acknowledge the seal?' 'I
+do,' he answered. 'Yes,' said I, 'it is a well-known device, the
+likeness of a great patriot, your grandfather. The mere sight of it
+ought to have kept you from such a crime as this.' His letter was then
+read. I then asked him whether he had any explanation to give. 'I have
+nothing to say,' was his first answer. After a while he rose and put
+some questions to the Gauls. They answered him without any hesitation,
+and asked him in reply whether he had not spoken to them about the
+Sibylline books. What followed was the strangest proof of the power of
+conscience. He might have denied every thing, but he did what no one
+expected, he confessed; all his abilities, all his power of speech
+deserted him. Vulturcius then begged that the letter which he was
+carrying from Lentulus to Catiline should be brought in and opened.
+Lentulus was greatly agitated; still he acknowledged the seal and the
+handwriting to be his. The letter, which was unsigned, was in these
+words: _You will know who I am by the messenger whom I send to you. Bear
+yourself as a man. Think of the position in which you now are, and
+consider what you must now do. Collect all the help you can, even though
+it be of the meanest kind._ In a word, the case was made out against
+them all not only by the seals, the letters, the handwritings, but by
+the faces of the men, their downcast look, their silence. Their
+confusion, their stealthy looks at each other were enough, if there had
+been no other proof, to convict them."
+
+Lentulus was compelled to resign his office of praetor. He and the other
+conspirators were handed over to certain of the chief citizens, who were
+bound to keep them in safe custody and to produce them when they were
+called for.
+
+The lower orders of the capital, to whom Catiline and his companions
+had made liberal promises, and who regarded his plans, or what were
+supposed to be his plans, with considerable favor, were greatly moved by
+Cicero's account of what had been discovered. No one could expect to
+profit by conflagration and massacre; and they were disposed to take
+sides with the party of order. Still there were elements of danger, as
+there always are in great cities. It was known that a determined effort
+would be made by the clients of Lentulus, whose family was one of the
+noblest and wealthiest in Rome, to rescue him from custody. At the same
+time several of the most powerful nobles were strongly suspected of
+favoring the revolutionists. Crassus, in particular, the wealthiest man
+in Rome, was openly charged with complicity. A certain Tarquinius was
+brought before the Senate, having been, it was said, arrested when
+actually on his way to Catiline. Charged to tell all he knew, he gave
+the same account as had been given by other witnesses of the
+preparations for fire and massacre, and added that he was the bearer of
+a special message from Crassus to Catiline, to the effect that he was
+not to be alarmed by the arrest of Lentulus and the others; only he must
+march upon the city without delay, and so rescue the prisoners and
+restore the courage of those who were still at large. The charge seemed
+incredible to most of those who heard it. Crassus had too much at stake
+to risk himself in such perilous ventures. Those who believed it were
+afraid to press it against so powerful a citizen; and there were many
+who were under too great obligations to the accused to allow it,
+whatever its truth or falsehood, to be insisted upon. The Senate
+resolved that the charge was false, and that its author should be kept
+in custody till he disclosed at whose suggestion he had come forward.
+Crassus himself believed that the consul had himself contrived the whole
+business, with the object of making it impossible for him to take the
+part of the accused. "He complained to me," says Sallust the historian,
+"of the great insult which had thus been put upon him by Cicero.".
+
+Under these circumstances Cicero determined to act with vigor. On the
+fifth of December he called a meeting of the Senate, and put it to the
+House what should be done with the prisoners in custody. The consul
+elect gave his opinion that they should be put to death. Caesar, when
+his turn came to speak, rose and addressed the Senate. He did not seek
+to defend the accused. They deserved any punishment. Because that was
+so, let them be dealt with according to law. And the law was that no
+Roman citizen could suffer death except by a general decree of the
+people. If any other course should be taken, men would afterwards
+remember not their crimes but the severity with which they had been
+treated. Cato followed, giving his voice for the punishment of death;
+and Cicero took the same side. The Senate, without dividing, voted that
+the prisoners were traitors, and must pay the usual penalty.
+
+The consul still feared that a rescue might be attempted. He directed
+the officials to make all necessary preparations, and himself conducted
+Lentulus to prison, the other criminals being put into the charge of the
+praetors. The prison itself was strongly guarded. In this building,
+which was situated under the eastern side of the Capitoline Hill, was a
+pit twelve feet deep, said to have been constructed by King Tullius. It
+had stone walls and a vaulted stone roof; it was quite dark, and the
+stench and filth of the place were hideous. Lentulus was hurried into
+this noisome den, where the executioners strangled him. His accomplices
+suffered the same fate. The consul was escorted to his house by an
+enthusiastic crowd. When he was asked how it had fared with the
+condemned, he answered with the significant words "THEY HAVE LIVED."
+
+The chief conspirator died in a less ignoble fashion. He had contrived
+to collect about twelve thousand men; but only a fourth part of these
+were regularly armed; the rest carried hunting spears, pikes, sharpened
+stakes, any weapon that came to hand. At first he avoided an engagement,
+hoping to hear news of something accomplished for his cause by the
+friends whom he had left behind him in Rome. When the news of what had
+happened on the fifth of December reached him, he saw that his position
+was desperate. Many who had joined the ranks took the first opportunity
+of deserting; with those that remained faithful he made a hurried march
+to the north-west, hoping to make his way across the Apennines into
+Hither Gaul. But he found a force ready to bar his way, while Antonius,
+with the army from Rome, was pressing him from the south. Nothing
+remained for him but to give battle. Early in the year 62 B.C. the
+armies met. The rebel leader showed himself that day at his best. No
+soldier could have been braver, no general more skillful. But the forces
+arrayed against him were overpowering. When he saw that all was lost, he
+rushed into the thickest of the fight, and fell pierced with wounds. He
+was found afterwards far in advance of his men, still breathing and with
+the same haughty expression on his face which had distinguished him in
+life. And such was the contagious force of his example that not a single
+free man of all his followers was taken alive either in the battle or in
+the pursuit that followed it. Such was the end of a GREAT CONSPIRACY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+CAESAR.
+
+
+At eight-and-twenty, Caesar, who not thirty years later was to die
+master of Rome, was chiefly known as a fop and a spendthrift. "In all
+his schemes and all his policy," said Cicero, "I discern the temper of a
+tyrant; but then when I see how carefully his hair is arranged, how
+delicately with a single finger he scratches his head, I cannot conceive
+him likely to entertain so monstrous a design as overthrowing the
+liberties of Rome." As for his debts they were enormous. He had
+contrived to spend his own fortune and the fortune of his wife; and he
+was more than three hundred thousand pounds in debt. This was before he
+had held any public office; and office, when he came to hold it,
+certainly did not improve his position. He was appointed one of the
+guardians of the Appian Way (the great road that led southward from
+Rome, and was the route for travelers to Greece and the East). He spent
+a great sum of money in repairs. His next office of aedile was still
+more expensive. Expensive it always was, for the aedile, besides keeping
+the temples and other public buildings in repair (the special business
+signified by his name), had the management of the public games. An
+allowance was made to him for his expenses from the treasury, but he was
+expected, just as the Lord Mayor of London is expected, to spend a good
+deal of his own money. Caesar far outdid all his predecessors. At one of
+the shows which he exhibited, three hundred and twenty pairs of
+gladiators fought in the arena; and a gladiator, with his armor and
+weapons, and the long training which he had to undergo before he could
+fight in public, was a very expensive slave. The six hundred and forty
+would cost, first and last, not less than a hundred pounds apiece, and
+many of them, perhaps a third of the whole number, would be killed in
+the course of the day. Nor was he content with the expenses which were
+more or less necessary. He exhibited a great show of wild beasts in
+memory of his father, who had died nearly twenty years before. The whole
+furniture of the theater, down to the very stage, was made on this
+occasion of solid silver.
+
+For all this seeming folly, there were those who discerned thoughts and
+designs of no common kind. Extravagant expenditure was of course an
+usual way of winning popular favors. A Roman noble bought office after
+office till he reached one that entitled him to be sent to govern a
+province. In the plunder of the province he expected to find what would
+repay him all that he had spent and leave a handsome sum remaining.
+Caesar looked to this end, but he looked also to something more. He
+would be the champion of the people, and the people would make him the
+greatest man at Rome. This had been the part played by Marius before
+him; and he determined to play it again. The name of Marius had been in
+ill repute since the victory of his great rival, Sulla, and Caesar
+determined to restore it to honor. He caused statues of this great man
+to be secretly made, on which were inscribed the names of the victories
+by which he had delivered Rome from the barbarians. On the morning of
+the show these were seen, splendid with gilding, upon the height of the
+Capitol. The first feeling was a general astonishment at the young
+magistrate's audacity. Then the populace broke out into expressions of
+enthusiastic delight; many even wept for joy to see again the likeness
+of their old favorite; all declared that Caesar was his worthy
+successor. The nobles were filled with anger and fear. Catulus, who was
+their leader, accused Caesar in the Senate. "This man," he said, "is no
+longer digging mines against his country, he is bringing battering-rams
+against it." The Senate, however, was afraid or unwilling to act. As for
+the people, it soon gave the young man a remarkable proof of its favor.
+What may be called the High Priesthood became vacant. It was an honor
+commonly given to some aged man who had won victories abroad and borne
+high honors at home. Such competitors there were on this occasion,
+Catulus being one of them. But Caesar, though far below the age at which
+such offices were commonly held, determined to enter the lists. He
+refused the heavy bribe by which Catulus sought to induce him to
+withdraw from the contest, saying that he would raise a greater sum to
+bring it to a successful end. Indeed, he staked all on the struggle.
+When on the day of election he was leaving his house, his mother
+followed him to the door with tears in her eyes. He turned and kissed
+her, "Mother," he said, "to-day you will see your son either High Priest
+or an exile."
+
+The fact was that Caesar had always shown signs of courage and ambition,
+and had always been confident of his future greatness. Now that his
+position in the country was assured men began to remember these stories
+of his youth. In the days when Sulla was master of Rome, Caesar had been
+one of the very few who had ventured to resist the great man's will.
+Marius, the leader of the party, was his uncle, and he had himself
+married the daughter of Cunia, another of the popular leaders. This wife
+Sulla ordered him to divorce, but he flatly refused. For some time his
+life was in danger; but Sulla was induced to spare it, remarking,
+however, to friends who interceded for him, on the ground that he was
+still but a boy, "You have not a grain of sense, if you do not see that
+in this boy there is the material for many Mariuses." The young Caesar
+found it safer to leave Italy for a time. While traveling in the
+neighborhood of Asia Minor he fell into the hands of the pirates, who
+were at that time the terror of all the Eastern Mediterranean. His first
+proceeding was to ask them how much they wanted for his ransom. "Twenty
+talents," (about five thousand pounds) was their answer. "What folly!"
+he said, "you don't know whom you have got hold of. You shall have
+fifty." Messengers were sent to fetch the money, and Caesar, who was
+left with a friend and a couple of slaves, made the best of the
+situation. If he wanted to go to sleep he would send a message
+commanding his captors to be silent. He joined their sports, read poems
+and speeches to them, and roundly abused them as ignorant barbarians if
+they failed to applaud. But his most telling joke was threatening to
+hang them. The men laughed at the free-spoken lad, but were not long in
+finding that he was in most serious earnest. In about five weeks' time
+the money arrived and Caesar was released. He immediately went to
+Miletus, equipped a squadron, and returning to the scene of his
+captivity, found and captured the greater part of the band. Leaving his
+prisoners in safe custody at Pergamus, he made his way to the governor
+of the province, who had in his hands the power of life and death. But
+the governor, after the manner of his kind, had views of his own. The
+pirates were rich and could afford to pay handsomely for their lives. He
+would consider the case, he said. This was not at all to Caesar's mind.
+He hastened back to Pergamus, and, taking the law into his own hands,
+crucified all the prisoners.
+
+This was the cool and resolute man in whom the people saw their best
+friend and the nobles their worst enemy. These last seemed to see a
+chance of ruining him when the conspiracy of Catiline was discovered and
+crushed. He was accused, especially by Cato, of having been an
+accomplice; and when he left the Senate after the debate in which he had
+argued against putting the arrested conspirators to death, he was mobbed
+by the gentlemen who formed Cicero's body-guard, and was even in danger
+of his life. But the formal charge was never pressed; indeed it was
+manifestly false, for Caesar was too sure of the favor of the people to
+have need of conspiring to win it. The next year he was made praetor,
+and after his term of office was ended, governor of Further Spain. The
+old trouble of debt still pressed upon him, and he could not leave Rome
+till he had satisfied the most pressing of his creditors. This he did by
+help of Crassus, the richest man in Rome, who stood security for nearly
+two hundred thousand pounds. To this time belong two anecdotes which,
+whether true or no, are curiously characteristic of his character. He
+was passing, on the way to his province, a town that had a particularly
+mean and poverty-stricken look. One of his companions remarked, "I dare
+say there are struggles for office even here, and jealousies and
+parties." "Yes," said Caesar; "and indeed, for myself, I would sooner be
+the first man here than the second in Rome." Arrived at his journey's
+end, he took the opportunity of a leisure hour to read the life of
+Alexander. He sat awhile lost in thought, then burst into tears. His
+friends inquired the cause. "The cause?" he replied. "Is it not cause
+enough that at my age Alexander had conquered half the world, while I
+have done nothing?" Something, however, he contrived to do in Spain. He
+extended the dominion of Rome as far as the Atlantic, settled the
+affairs of the provincials to their satisfaction, and contrived at the
+same time to make money enough to pay his debts. Returning to Rome when
+his year of command was ended, he found himself in a difficulty. He
+wished to have the honor of a triumph (a triumph was a procession in
+which a victorious general rode in a chariot to the Capitol, preceded
+and followed by the spoils and prisoners taken in his campaigns), and he
+also wished to become a candidate for the consulship. But a general who
+desired a triumph had to wait outside the gates of the city till it was
+voted to him, while a candidate for the consulship must lose no time in
+beginning to canvass the people. Caesar, having to make his choice
+between the two, preferred power to show. He stood for the consulship,
+and was triumphantly elected.
+
+Once consul he made that famous Coalition which is commonly called the
+First Triumvirate. Pompey was the most famous soldier of the day, and
+Crassus, as has been said before, the richest man. These two had been
+enemies, and Caesar reconciled them; and then the three together agreed
+to divide power and the prizes of power between them. Caesar would have
+willingly made Cicero a fourth, but he refused, not, perhaps, without
+some hesitation. He did more; he ventured to say some things which were
+not more agreeable because they were true of the new state of things.
+This the three masters of Rome were not willing to endure, and they
+determined that this troublesome orator should be put out of the way.
+They had a ready means of doing it. A certain Clodius, of whom we shall
+hear more hereafter, felt a very bitter hatred against Cicero, and by
+way of putting himself in a position to injure him, and to attain other
+objects of his own, sought to be made tribune. But there was a great
+obstacle in the way. The tribunes were tribunes of the _plebs_, that is,
+of the commons, whose interests they were supposed specially to protect;
+while Clodius was a noble--indeed, a noble of nobles--belonging as he
+did to that great Claudian House which was one of the oldest and
+proudest of Roman families. The only thing to be done was to be adopted
+by some plebeian. But here, again, there were difficulties. The law
+provided that an adoption should be real, that the adopter should be
+childless and old enough to be the father of his adopted son. The
+consent of the priests was also necessary. This consent was never asked,
+and indeed never could have been given, for the father was a married
+man, had children of his own, and was not less than fifteen years,
+younger than his new son. Indeed the bill for making the adoption legal
+had been before the people for more than a year without making any
+progress. The Three now took it up to punish Cicero for his presumption
+in opposing them; and under its new promoters it was passed in a single
+day, being proposed at noon made law by three o'clock in the afternoon
+What mischief Clodius was thus enabled to work against Cicero we shall
+hear in the next chapter but one.
+
+His consulship ended, Caesar received a substantial prize for his
+services, the government of the province of Gaul for five years. Before
+he left Italy to take up his command, he had the satisfaction of seeing
+Cicero driven into banishment. That done, he crossed the Alps. The next
+nine years (for his government was prolonged for another period when the
+first came to an end) he was engaged in almost incessant war, though
+still finding time to manage the politics of Rome. The campaigns which
+ended in making Gaul from the Alps to the British Channel, and from the
+Atlantic to the Rhine, a Roman possession, it is not within my purpose
+to describe. Nevertheless, it may be interesting to say a few words
+about his dealings with our own island. In his first expedition, in the
+summer of 55 B.C., he did little more than effect a landing on the
+coast, and this not without considerable loss. In the next, made early
+in the following year, he employed a force of more than forty thousand
+men, conveyed in a flotilla of eight hundred ships. This time the
+Britons did not venture to oppose his landing; and when they met him in
+the field, as he marched inward, they were invariably defeated. They
+then changed their tactics and retired before him, laying waste the
+country as they went. He crossed the Thames some little way to the
+westward of where London now stands, received the submission of one
+native tribe, and finally concluded a peace with the native leader
+Cassivelaunus, who gave hostages and promised tribute. The general
+result of ten years' fighting was to add a great province to the empire
+at the cost of a horrible amount of bloodshed, of the lives, as some
+say, of two millions of men, women, and children (for Caesar, though not
+positively cruel, was absolutely careless of suffering), and to leave
+the conqueror master of the Roman world. The coalition indeed was broken
+up, for Crassus had perished in the East, carrying on a foolish and
+unprovoked war with the Parthians, and Pompey had come to fear and hate
+his remaining rival. But Caesar was now strong enough to do without
+friends, and to crush enemies. The Senate vainly commanded him to
+disperse his army by a certain day, on pain of being considered an enemy
+of the country. He continued to advance till he came to the boundaries
+of Italy, a little river, whose name, the Rubicon, was then made famous
+forever, which separated Cisalpine Gaul from Umbria. To cross this was
+practically to declare war, and even the resolute Caesar hesitated
+awhile. He thought his course over by himself; he even consulted his
+friends. He professed himself pained at the thought of the war of which
+his act would be the beginning, and of how posterity would judge his
+conduct. Then with the famous words, "The die is cast," he plunged into
+the stream. Pompey fled from Rome and from Italy. Caesar did not waste
+an hour in pursuing his success. First making Italy wholly his own, he
+marched into Spain, which was Pompey's stronghold, and secured it.
+Thence he returned to Rome, and from Rome again made his way into
+Macedonia, where Pompey had collected his forces. The decisive battle
+was fought at Pharsalia in Thessaly; for though the remnants of Pompey's
+party held out, the issue of the war was never doubtful after that day.
+
+Returning to Rome (for of his proceedings in Egypt and elsewhere there
+is no need to speak), he used his victory with as much mercy as he had
+shown energy in winning it. To Cicero he showed not only nothing of
+malice, but the greatest courtesy and kindness. He had written to him
+from Egypt, telling him that he was to keep all his dignities and
+honors; and he had gone out of his way to arrange an interview with him,
+and he even condescended to enter into a friendly controversy. Cicero
+had written a little treatise about his friend Cato; and as Cato had
+been the consistent adversary of Caesar, and had killed himself rather
+than fall into the hands of the master of Rome, it required no little
+good nature in Caesar to take it in good part. He contented himself with
+writing an answer, to which he gave the title of _Anti-Cato_, and in
+which, while he showed how useless and unpractical the policy of Cato
+had been, he paid the highest compliments to the genius and integrity of
+the man. He even conferred upon Cicero the distinguished honor of a
+visit; which the host thus describes in a letter to Atticus. "What a
+formidable guest I have had! Still, I am not sorry; for all went off
+very well. On December 8th he came to Philippus' house in the evening.
+(Philippus was his brother-in-law.) The villa was so crammed with troops
+that there was scarcely a chamber where the great man himself could
+dine. I suppose there were two thousand men. I was really anxious what
+might happen next day. But Barba Cassius came to my help, and gave me a
+guard. The camp was pitched in the park; the house was strictly guarded.
+On the 19th he was closeted with Philippus till one o'clock in the
+afternoon. No one was admitted. He was going over accounts with Balbus,
+I fancy. After this he took a stroll on the shore. Then came the bath.
+He heard the epigram to Mamurra, (a most scurrilous epigram by
+Catullus), and betrayed no annoyance. He dressed for dinner and sat
+down. As he was under a course of medicine, he ate and drank without
+apprehension and in the pleasantest humor. The entertainment was
+sumptuous and elaborate; and not only this, but well cooked and seasoned
+with good talk. The great man's attendants also were most abundantly
+entertained in three other rooms. The inferior freedmen and the slaves
+had nothing to complain of; the superior kind had an even elegant
+reception. Not to say more, I showed myself a genial host. Still he was
+not the kind of guest to whom we would say, 'My very dear sir, you will
+come again, I hope, when you are this way next time.' There was nothing
+of importance in our conversation, but much literary talk. What do you
+want to know? He was gratified and seemed pleased to be with me. He told
+me that he should be one day at Baiae, and another at Puteoli."
+
+Within three months this remarkable career came to a sudden and violent
+end. There were some enemies whom all Caesar's clemency and kindness had
+not conciliated. Some hated him for private reasons of their own, some
+had a genuine belief that if he could be put out of the way, Rome might
+yet again be a free country. The people too, who had been perfectly
+ready to submit to the reality of power, grew suspicious of some of its
+outward signs. The name of King had been hateful at Rome since the last
+bearer of it, Tarquin the Proud, had been driven out nearly seven
+centuries before. There were now injudicious friends, or, it may be,
+judicious enemies, who were anxious that Caesar should assume it. The
+prophecy was quoted from the books of the Sibyl, that Rome might conquer
+the Parthians if she put herself under the command of a king; otherwise
+she must fail. On the strength of this Caesar was saluted by the title
+of King as he was returning one day from Alba to the Capitol. The
+populace made their indignation manifest, and he replied, "I am no king,
+only Caesar;" but it was observed that he passed on with a gloomy air.
+He bore himself haughtily in the Senate, not rising to acknowledge the
+compliments paid to him. At the festival of the Lupercalia, as he sat
+looking on at the sports in a gilded chair and clad in a triumphal robe,
+Antony offered him a crown wreathed with bay leaves. Some applause
+followed; it was not general, however, but manifestly got up for the
+occasion. Caesar put the crown away, and the shout that followed could
+not be misunderstood. It was offered again, and a few applauded as
+before, while a second rejection drew forth the same hearty approval.
+His statues were found with crowns upon them. These two tribunes
+removed, and at the same time ordered the imprisonment of the men who
+had just saluted him as king. The people were delighted, but Caesar had
+them degraded from their office. The general dissatisfaction thus caused
+induced the conspirators to proceed. Warnings, some of which we may
+suppose to have come from those who were in the secret, were not
+wanting. By these he was wrought upon so much that he had resolved not
+to stir from his house on the day which he understood was to be fatal to
+him; but Decimus Brutus, who was in the plot, dissuaded him from his
+purpose. The scene that followed may be told once again in the words in
+which Plutarch describes it: "Artemidoros, of Cnidus, a teacher of
+Greek, who had thus come to be intimate with some of the associates of
+Brutus, had become acquainted to a great extent with what was in
+progress, and had drawn up a statement of the information which he had
+to give. Seeing that Caesar gave the papers presented to him to the
+slaves with him, he came up close and said, 'Caesar, read this alone and
+that quickly: it contains matters that nearly concern yourself.' Caesar
+took it, and would have read it, but was hindered by the crowd of
+persons that thronged to salute him. Keeping it in his hand, he passed
+into the House. In the place to which the Senate had been summoned stood
+a statue of Pompey. Cassius is said to have looked at it and silently
+invoked the dead man's help, and this though he was inclined to the
+skeptical tenets of Epicurus. Meanwhile Antony, who was firmly attached
+to Caesar and a man of great strength, was purposely kept in
+conversation outside the senate-house by Decimus Brutus. As Caesar
+entered, the Senate rose to greet him. Some of the associates of Brutus
+stood behind his chair; others approached him in front, seemingly
+joining their entreaties to those which Cimber Tullius was addressing to
+him on behalf of his brother. He sat down and rejected the petition with
+a gesture of disapproval at their urgency. Tullius then seized his toga
+with both hands and dragged it from his neck. This was the signal for
+attack. Casca struck him first on the neck. The wound was not fatal, nor
+even serious, so agitated was the striker at dealing the first blow in
+so terrible a deed. Caesar turned upon him, seized the dagger, and held
+it fast, crying at the same time in Latin, 'Casca, thou villain, what
+art thou about?' while Casca cried in Greek to his brother, 'Brother,
+help!' Those senators who were not privy to the plot were overcome with
+horror. They could neither cry nor help: they dared not even speak. The
+conspirators were standing round Caesar each with a drawn sword in his
+hand; whithersoever he turned his eyes he saw a weapon ready to strike,
+and he struggled like a wild beast among the hunters. They had agreed
+that every one should take a part in the murder, and Brutus, friend as
+he was, could not hold back. The rest, some say, he struggled with,
+throwing himself hither and thither, and crying aloud; but as soon as he
+saw Brutus with a drawn sword in his hand, he wrapped his head in his
+toga and ceased to resist, falling, whether by chance or by compulsion
+from the assassins, at the pedestal of Pompey's statue. He is said to
+have received three-and-twenty wounds. Many of his assailants struck
+each other as they aimed repeated blows at his body." His funeral was a
+remarkable proof of his popularity. The pit in which the body was to be
+burned was erected in the Field of Mars. In the Forum was erected a
+gilded model of the temple of Mother Venus. (Caesar claimed descent
+through Aeneas from this goddess.) Within this shrine was a couch of
+ivory, with coverlets of gold and purple, and at its head a trophy with
+the robe which he had worn when he was assassinated. High officers of
+state, past and present, carried the couch into the Forum. Some had the
+idea of burning it in the chapel of Jupiter in the Capitol, some in
+Pompey's Hall (where he was killed). Of a sudden two men, wearing swords
+at their side, and each carrying two javelins, came forward and set
+light to it with waxen torches which they held in their hands. The crowd
+of bystanders hastily piled up a heap of dry brush-wood, throwing on it
+the hustings, the benches, and any thing that had been brought as a
+present. The flute players and actors threw off the triumphal robes in
+which they were clad, rent them, and threw them upon the flames, and the
+veterans added the decorations with which they had come to attend the
+funeral, while mothers threw in the ornaments of their children.
+
+The doors of the building in which the murder was perpetrated were
+blocked up so that it never could be entered again. The day (the 15th of
+March) was declared to be accursed. No public business was ever to be
+done upon it.
+
+These proceedings probably represented the popular feeling about the
+deed, for Caesar, in addition to the genius which every one must have
+recognized, had just the qualities which make men popular. He had no
+scruples, but then he had no meannesses. He incurred enormous debts with
+but a faint chance of paying them--no chance, we may say, except by the
+robbery of others. He laid his hands upon what he wanted, taking for
+instance three thousand pounds weight of gold from the treasury of the
+Capitol and leaving gilded brass in its stead; and he plundered the
+unhappy Gauls without remorse. But then he was as free in giving as he
+was unscrupulous in taking. He had the personal courage, too, which is
+one of the most attractive of all qualities. Again and again in battle
+he turned defeat into victory. He would lay hold of the fugitives as
+they ran, seize them by the throat, and get them by main force face to
+face with the foe. Crossing the Hellespont after the battle of Pharsalia
+in a small boat, he met two of the enemy's ships. Without hesitation he
+discovered himself, called upon them to surrender, and was obeyed. At
+Alexandria he was surprised by a sudden sally of the besieged, and had
+to leap into the harbor. He swam two hundred paces to the nearest ship,
+lifting a manuscript in his left hand to keep it out of the water, and
+holding his military cloak in his teeth, for he would not have the enemy
+boast of securing any spoil from his person.
+
+He allowed nothing to stand in his way. If it suited his policy to
+massacre a whole tribe, men, women, and children, he gave the order
+without hesitation, just as he recorded it afterwards in his history
+without a trace of remorse or regret. If a rival stood in his way he had
+him removed, and was quite indifferent as to how the removal was
+effected. But his object gained, or wherever there was no object in
+question, he could be the kindest and gentlest of men. A friend with
+whom he was traveling was seized with sudden illness. Caesar gave up at
+once to him the only chamber in the little inn, and himself spent the
+night in the open air. His enemies he pardoned with singular facility,
+and would even make the first advances. Political rivals, once rendered
+harmless, were admitted to his friendship, and even promoted to honor;
+writers who had assailed him with the coarsest abuse he invited to his
+table.
+
+Of the outward man this picture has reached us: "He is said to have been
+remarkably tall, with a light complexion and well-shaped limbs. His face
+was a little too full; his eyes black and brilliant. His health was
+excellent, but towards the latter end of his life he was subject to
+fainting fits and to frightful dreams at night. On two occasions also,
+when some public business was being transacted, he had epileptic fits.
+He was very careful of his personal appearance, had his hair and beard
+scrupulously cut and shaven. He was excessively annoyed at the
+disfigurement of baldness, which he found was made the subject of many
+lampoons. It had become his habit, therefore, to bring up his scanty
+locks over his head; and of all the honors decreed to him by the Senate
+and people, none was more welcome to him than that which gave him the
+right of continually wearing a garland of bay."
+
+He was wonderfully skillful in the use of arms, an excellent swimmer,
+and extraordinarily hardy. On the march he would sometimes ride, but
+more commonly walk, keeping his head uncovered both in rain and
+sunshine. He traveled with marvelous expedition, traversing a hundred
+miles in a day for several days together; if he came to a river he would
+swim it, or sometimes cross it on bladders. Thus he would often
+anticipate his own messengers. For all this he had a keen appreciation
+of pleasure, and was costly and even luxurious in his personal habits.
+He is said, for instance, to have carried with him a tesselated pavement
+to be laid down in his tent throughout his campaign in Gaul.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+POMPEY.
+
+
+At an age when Caesar was still idling away his time, Pompey had
+achieved honors such as the veteran generals of Rome were accustomed to
+regard as the highest to which they could aspire. He had only just left,
+if indeed he had left, school, when his father took him to serve under
+him in the war against the Italian allies of Rome. He was not more than
+nineteen when he distinguished himself by behaving in circumstances of
+great difficulty and danger with extraordinary prudence and courage. The
+elder Pompey, Strabo "the squint-eyed," as his contemporaries called
+him, after their strange fashion of giving nicknames from personal
+defects, and as he was content to call himself, was an able general, but
+hated for his cruelty and avarice. The leaders of the opposite faction
+saw an opportunity of getting rid of a dangerous enemy and of bringing
+over to their own side the forces which he commanded. Their plan was to
+assassinate the son as he slept, to burn the father in his tent, and at
+the same time to stir up a mutiny among the troops. The secret, however,
+was not kept. A letter describing the plot was brought to the young
+Pompey as he sat at dinner with the ringleader. The lad showed no sign
+of disturbance, but drank more freely than usual, and pledged his false
+friend with especial heartiness. He then rose, and after putting an
+extra guard on his father's tent, composed himself to sleep, but not in
+his bed. The assassins stabbed the coverlet with repeated blows, and
+then ran to rouse the soldiers to revolt. The camp was immediately in an
+uproar, and the elder Pompey, though he had been preserved by his son's
+precautions, dared not attempt to quell it. The younger man was equal to
+the occasion. Throwing himself on his face in front of the gate of the
+camp, he declared that if his comrades were determined to desert to the
+enemy, they must pass over his dead body. His entreaties prevailed, and
+a reconciliation was effected between the general and his troops.
+
+Not many weeks after this incident the father died, struck, it was said,
+by lightning, and Pompey became his own master. It was not long before
+he found an opportunity of gaining still higher distinction. The civil
+war still continued to rage, and few did better service to the party of
+the aristocrats than Pompey. Others were content to seek their personal
+safety in Sulla's camp; Pompey was resolved himself to do something for
+the cause. He made his way to Picenum, where his family estates we e
+situated and where his own influence was great, and raised three legions
+(nearly twenty thousand men), with all their commissariat and transport
+complete, and hurried to the assistance of Sulla. Three of the hostile
+generals sought to intercept him. He fell with his whole force on one of
+them, and crushed him, carrying off, besides his victory, the personal
+distinction of having slain in single combat the champion of the
+opposing force. The towns by which he passed eagerly hailed him as their
+deliverer. A second commander who ventured to encounter him found
+himself deserted by his army and was barely able to escape; a third was
+totally routed. Sulla received his young partisan, who was not more than
+twenty-three years of age, with distinguished honors, even rising from
+his seat and uncovering at his approach.
+
+During the next two years his reputation continued to increase. He won
+victories in Gaul, in Sicily, and in Africa. As he was returning to
+Rome after the last of these campaigns, the great Dictator himself
+headed the crowd that went forth to meet him, and saluted him as Pompey
+the Great, a title which he continued to use as his family name[5]. But
+there was a further honor which the young general was anxious to obtain,
+but Sulla was unwilling to grant, the supreme glory of a triumph. "No
+one," he said, "who was not or had not been consul, or at least praetor,
+could triumph. The first of the Scipios, who had won Spain from the
+Carthaginians, had not asked for this honor because he wanted this
+qualification. Was it to be given to a beardless youth, too young even
+to sit in the Senate?" But the beardless youth insisted. He even had the
+audacity to hint that the future belonged not to Sulla but to himself.
+"More men," he said, "worship the rising than the setting sun." Sulla
+did not happen to catch the words, but he saw the emotion they aroused
+in the assembly, and asked that they should be repeated to him. His
+astonishment permitted him to say nothing more than "Let him triumph!
+Let him triumph." And triumph he did, to the disgust of his older
+rivals, whom he intended, but that the streets were not broad enough to
+allow of the display, still further to affront by harnessing elephants
+instead of horses to his chariot.
+
+[Footnote 5: _Pompeius_ was the name of his house (_gens). Strabo_ had
+been the name of his family (_familia_). This he seems to have disused,
+assuming _Magnus_ in its stead.]
+
+Two years afterwards he met an antagonist more formidable than any he
+had yet encountered. Sertorius, the champion at once of the party of the
+people and of the native tribes of Spain, was holding out against the
+government of Rome. The veteran leader professed a great contempt for
+his young adversary, "I should whip the boy," he said, "if I were not
+afraid of the old woman" (meaning Pompey's colleague). But he took good
+care not to underrate him in practice, and put forth all his skill in
+dealing with him. Pompey's first campaign against him was disastrous;
+the successes of the second were checkered by some serious defeats. For
+five years the struggle continued, and seemed little likely to come to
+an end, when Sertorius was assassinated by his second in command,
+Perpenna. Perpenna was unable to wield the power which he had thus
+acquired, and was defeated and taken prisoner by Pompey. He endeavored
+to save his life by producing the correspondence of Sertorius. This
+implicated some of the most distinguished men in Rome, who had held
+secret communications with the rebel leader and had even invited him
+over into Italy. With admirable wisdom Pompey, while he ordered the
+instant execution of the traitor, burned the letters unread.
+
+Returning to Italy he was followed by his usual good fortune. That
+country had been suffering cruelly from a revolt of the slaves, which
+the Roman generals had been strangely slow in suppressing. Roused to
+activity by the tidings of Pompey's approach, Crassus, who was in
+supreme command, attacked and defeated the insurgent army. A
+considerable body, however, contrived to escape, and it was this with
+which Pompey happened to fall in, and which he completely destroyed.
+"Crassus defeated the enemy," he was thus enabled to boast, "but I
+pulled up the war by the roots." No honors were too great for a man at
+once so skillful and so fortunate (for the Romans had always a great
+belief in a general's good fortune). On the 31st of December, B.C. 71,
+being still a simple gentleman--that is, having held no civil office in
+the State--he triumphed for the second time, and on the following day,
+being then some years below the legal age, and having held none of the
+offices by which it was usual to mount to the highest dignity in the
+commonwealth, he entered on his first consul ship, Crassus being his
+colleague.
+
+Still he had not yet reached the height of his glory. During the years
+that followed his consulship, the pirates who infested the Mediterranean
+had become intolerable. Issuing, not as was the case in after times,
+from the harbors of Northern Africa, but from fastnesses in the southern
+coast of Asia Minor, they plundered the more civilized regions of the
+West, and made it highly dangerous to traverse the seas either for
+pleasure or for gain. It was impossible to transport the armies of Rome
+to the provinces except in the winter, when the pirates had retired to
+their strongholds. Even Italy itself was not safe. The harbor of Caieta
+with its shipping, was burned under the very eye of the praetor. From
+Misenum the pirates carried off the children of the admiral who had the
+year before led an expedition against them. They even ventured not only
+to blockade Ostia, the harbor of Rome, and almost within sight of the
+city, but to capture the fleet that was stationed there. They were
+especially insulting to Roman citizens. If a prisoner claimed to be
+such--and the claim generally insured protection--they would pretend the
+greatest penitence and alarm, falling on their knees before him, and
+entreating his pardon. Then they would put shoes on his feet, and robe
+him in a citizen's garb. Such a mistake, they would say, must not happen
+again. The end of their jest was to make him "walk the plank," and with
+the sarcastic permission to depart unharmed, they let down a ladder into
+the sea, and compelled him to descend, under penalty of being still more
+summarily thrown overboard. Men's eyes began to be turned on Pompey, as
+the leader who had been prosperous in all his undertakings. In 67 B.C. a
+law was proposed appointing a commander (who, however, was not named),
+who should have absolute power for three years over the sea as far as
+the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar), and the coast for
+fifty miles inland, and who should be furnished with two hundred ships,
+as many soldiers and sailors as he wanted, and more than a million
+pounds in money. The nobles were furious in their opposition, and
+prepared to prevent by force the passing of this law. The proposer
+narrowly escaped with his life, and Pompey himself was threatened. "If
+you will be another Romulus, like Romulus you shall die" (one form of
+the legend of Rome's first king represented him as having been torn to
+pieces by the senators.) But all resistance was unavailing. The new
+command was created, and of course bestowed upon Pompey. The price of
+corn, which had risen to a famine height in Rome, fell immediately the
+appointment was made. The result, indeed, amply justified the choice.
+The new general made short work of the task that had been set him. Not
+satisfied with the force put under his command, he collected five
+hundred ships and one hundred and twenty thousand men. With these he
+swept the pirates from the seas and stormed their strongholds, and all
+in less than three months. Twenty thousand prisoners fell into his
+hands. With unusual humanity he spared their lives, and thinking that
+man was the creature of circumstances, determined to change their manner
+of life. They were to be removed from the sea, should cease to be
+sailors, and become farmers. It is possible that the old man of Corycus,
+whose skill in gardening Virgil celebrates in one of his Georgics, was
+one of the pirates whom the judicious mercy of Pompey changed into a
+useful citizen.
+
+A still greater success remained to be won. For more than twenty years
+war, occasionally intercepted by periods of doubtful peace, had been
+carried on between Rome and Mithridates, king of Pontus. This prince,
+though reduced more than once to the greatest extremities, had contrived
+with extraordinary skill and courage to retrieve his fortunes, and now
+in 67 B.C. was in possession of the greater part of his original
+dominion. Lucullus, a general of the greatest ability, was in command of
+the forces of Rome, but he had lost the confidence of his troops, and
+affairs were at a standstill. Pompey's friends proposed that the
+supreme command should be transferred to him, and the law, which Cicero
+supported in what is perhaps the most perfect of his political
+speeches[6], was passed. Pompey at once proceeded to the East. For four
+years Mithridates held out, but with little hope of ultimate success or
+even of escape. In 64, after vainly attempting to poison himself, such
+was the power of the antidotes by which he had fortified himself against
+domestic treachery (for so the story runs), he perished by the sword of
+one of his mercenaries. For two years more Pompey was busied in settling
+the affairs of the East. At last, in 61, he returned to Rome to enjoy a
+third triumph, and that the most splendid which the city had ever
+witnessed. It lasted for two days, but still the time was too short for
+the display of the spoils of victory. The names of no less than fifteen
+conquered nations were carried in procession. A thousand forts, nine
+hundred cities, had been taken, and the chief of them were presented by
+means of pictures to the eyes of the people. The revenue of the State
+had been almost doubled by these conquests. Ninety thousand talents in
+gold and silver coin were paid into the treasury, nor was this at the
+expense of the soldiers, whose prize money was so large that the
+smallest share amounted to fifty pounds. Never before was such a sight
+seen in the world, and if Pompey had died when it was finished, he would
+have been proclaimed the most fortunate of mankind.
+
+[Footnote 6: The Pro Lege Manilia. The law was proposed by one Manilius,
+a tribune of the people.]
+
+Certainly he was never so great again as he was that day. When with
+Caesar and Crassus he divided all the power of the State, he was only
+the second, and by far the second, of the three. His influence, his
+prestige, his popularity declined year by year. The good fortune which
+had followed him without ceasing from his earliest years now seemed to
+desert him. Even the shows, the most magnificent ever seen in the city,
+with which he entertained the people at the dedication of his theater
+(built at his own expense for the public benefit) were not wholly a
+success. Here is a letter of Cicero about them to his friend Marius;
+interesting as giving both a description of the scene and as an account
+of the writer's own feelings about it. "If it was some bodily pain or
+weakness of health that kept you from coming to the games, I must
+attribute your absence to fortune rather than to a judicious choice. But
+if you thought the things which most men admire contemptible, and so,
+though health permitted, would not come, then I am doubly glad; glad
+both that you were free from illness and that you were so vigorous in
+mind as to despise the sights which others so unreasonably admire....
+Generally the shows were most splendid, but not to your taste, if I may
+judge of yours by my own. First, the veteran actors who for their own
+honor had retired from the stage, returned to it to do honor to Pompey.
+Your favorite, my dear friend Aesopus, acquitted himself so poorly as to
+make us all feel that he had best retire. When he came to the oath--
+
+     'And if of purpose set I break my faith,'
+
+his voice failed him. What need to tell you more? You know all about the
+other shows; they had not even the charm which moderate shows commonly
+have. The ostentation with which they were furnished forth took away all
+their gayety. What charm is there in having six hundred mules in the
+_Clytemnestra_ or three thousand supernumeraries in the _Trojan Horse,_
+or cavalry and infantry in foreign equipment in some battle-piece. The
+populace admired all this; but it would have given you no kind of
+pleasure. After this came a sort of wild-beast fights, lasting for five
+days. They were splendid: no man denies it. But what man of culture can
+feel any pleasure when some poor fellow is torn in pieces by some
+powerful animal, or when some noble animal is run through with a hunting
+spear. If these things are worth seeing, you have seen them before. And
+I, who was actually present, saw nothing new. The last day was given up
+to the elephants. Great was the astonishment of the crowd at the sight;
+but of pleasure there was nothing. Nay, there was some feeling of
+compassion, some sense that this animal has a certain kinship with man."
+The elder Pliny tells us that two hundred lions were killed on this
+occasion, and that the pity felt for the elephants rose to the height of
+absolute rage. So lamentable was the spectacle of their despair, so
+pitifully did they implore the mercy of the audience, "that the whole
+multitude rose in tears and called down upon Pompey the curses which
+soon descended on him."
+
+And then Pompey's young wife, Julia, Caesar's daughter, died. She had
+been a bond of union between the two men, and the hope of peace was
+sensibly lessened by her loss. Perhaps the first rupture would have
+come any how; when it did come it found Pompey quite unprepared for the
+conflict. He seemed indeed to be a match for his rival, but his strength
+collapsed almost at a touch. "I have but to stamp with my foot," he said
+on one occasion, "and soldiers will spring up;" yet when Caesar declared
+war by crossing the Rubicon, he fled without a struggle. In little more
+than a year and a half all was over. The battle of Pharsalia was fought
+on the 9th of August, and on September the 29th the man who had
+triumphed over three continents lay a naked, headless corpse on the
+shore of Egypt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+EXILE.
+
+
+The suppression of the "Great Conspiracy" was certainly the most
+glorious achievement of Cicero's life. Honors such as had never before
+been bestowed on a citizen of Rome were heaped upon him. Men of the
+highest rank spoke of him both in the Senate and before the people as
+the "Father of his fatherland." A public thanksgiving, such as was
+ordered when great victories had been won, was offered in his name.
+Italy was even more enthusiastic than the capital. The chief towns voted
+him such honors as they could bestow; Capua in particular erected to him
+a gilded statue, and gave him the title of Patron of the city.
+
+Still there were signs of trouble in the future. It was the duty of the
+consul on quitting office to swear that he had discharged his duty with
+fidelity, and it was usual for him at the same time to make a speech in
+which he narrated the events of his consulship. Cicero was preparing to
+speak when one of the new tribunes intervened. "A man," he cried, "who
+has put citizens to death without hearing them in their defense is not
+worthy to speak. He must do nothing more than take the oath." Cicero was
+ready with his answer. Raising his voice he said, "I swear that I, and I
+alone, have saved this commonwealth and this city." The assembly shouted
+their approval; and when the ceremony was concluded the whole multitude
+escorted the ex-consul to his house. The time was not come for his
+enemies to attack him; but that he had enemies was manifest.
+
+With one dangerous man he had the misfortune to come into collision in
+the year that followed his consulship. This was the Clodius of whom we
+have heard something in the preceding chapter. The two men had hitherto
+been on fairly good terms. Clodius, as we have seen, belonged to one of
+the noblest families in Rome, was a man of some ability and wit, and
+could make himself agreeable when he was pleased to do so. But events
+for which Cicero was not in the least to blame brought about a life-long
+enmity between them. Toward the close of the year Clodius had been
+guilty of an act of scandalous impiety, intruding himself, disguised as
+a woman, into some peculiarly sacred rites which the matrons of Rome
+were accustomed to perform in honor of the "Good Goddess." He had
+powerful friends, and an attempt was made to screen him, which Cicero,
+who was genuinely indignant at the fellow's wickedness, seems to have
+resisted. In the end he was put upon his trial, though it was before a
+jury which had been specially packed for the occasion. His defense was
+an _alibi_, an attempt, that is, to prove that he was elsewhere on the
+night when he was alleged to have misconducted himself at Rome. He
+brought forward witnesses who swore that they had seen him at the very
+time at Interamna, a town in Umbria, and a place which was distant at
+least two days' journey from Rome. To rebut this evidence Cicero was
+brought forward by the prosecution. As he stepped forward the partisans
+of the accused set up a howl of disapproval. But the jury paid him the
+high compliment of rising from their seats, and the uproar ceased. He
+deposed that Clodius had been at his house on the morning of the day in
+question.
+
+Clodius was acquitted. If evidence had any thing to do with the result,
+it was the conduct of Caesar that saved him. It was in his house that
+the alleged intrusion had taken place, and he had satisfied himself by a
+private examination of its inmates that the charge was true. But now he
+professed to know nothing at all about the matter. Probably the really
+potent influence in the case was the money which Crassus liberally
+distributed among the jurors. The fact of the money was indeed
+notorious. Some of the jury had pretended that they were in fear of
+their lives, and had asked for a guard. "A guard!" said Catulus, to one
+of them, "what did you want a guard for? that the money should not be
+taken from you?"
+
+But Clodius, though he had escaped, never forgave the man whose evidence
+had been given against him. Cicero too felt that there as war to the
+knife between them. On the first meeting of the Senate after the
+conclusion of the trial he made a pointed attack upon his old
+acquaintance. "Lentulus," he said, "was twice acquitted, and Catiline
+twice, and now this third malefactor has been let loose on the
+commonwealth by his judges. But, Clodius, do not misunderstand what has
+happened. It is for the prison, not for the city, that your judges have
+kept you; not to keep you in the country, but to deprive you of the
+privilege of exile was what they intended. Be of good cheer, then,
+Fathers. No new evil has come upon us, but we have found out the evil
+that exists. One villain has been put upon his trial, and the result has
+taught us that there are more villains than one."
+
+Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman,"
+he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable
+watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is
+better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and
+repartee went on. "You have bought a fine house." (Cicero had spent a
+large sum of money on a house on the Palatine, and was known to have
+somewhat crippled his means by doing so.) "With you the buying has been
+of jurymen." "They gave you no credit though you spoke on oath." "Yes;
+five-and-twenty gave me credit" (five-and-twenty of the jury had voted
+for a verdict of guilty; two-and-thirty for acquittal), "but your
+thirty-two gave you none, for they would have their money down." The
+Senate shouted applause, and Clodius sat down silent and confounded.
+
+How Clodius contrived to secure for himself the office of tribune, the
+vantage ground from which he hoped to work his revenge, has been
+already told in the sketch of Caesar. Caesar indeed was really
+responsible for all that was done. It was he who made it possible for
+Clodius to act; and he allowed him "to act when he could have stopped
+him by the lifting of his finger. He was determined to prove to Cicero
+that he was master. But he never showed himself after the first
+interference in the matter of the adoption. He simply allowed Clodius to
+work his will without hindrance.
+
+Clodius proceeded with considerable skill. He proposed various laws,
+which were so popular that Cicero, though knowing that they would be
+turned against himself, did not venture to oppose them. Then came a
+proposal directly leveled at him. "Any man who shall have put to death a
+Roman citizen uncondemned and without a trial is forbidden fire and
+water." (This was the form of a sentence of exile. No one was allowed
+under penalty of death to furnish the condemned with fire and water
+within a certain distance of Rome.) Cicero at once assumed the squalid
+dress with which it was the custom for accused persons to endeavor to
+arouse the compassion of their fellow-citizens. Twenty thousand of the
+upper classes supported him by their presence. The Senate itself, on the
+motion of one of the tribunes, went into this strange kind of mourning
+on his account.
+
+The consuls of the year were Gabinus and Piso. The first was notoriously
+hostile, of the second Cicero hoped to make a friend, the more so as he
+was a kinsman of his daughter's husband. He gives a lively picture of an
+interview with him. "It was nearly eleven o'clock in the morning when we
+went to him. He came out of a dirty hovel to meet us, with his slippers
+on, and his head muffled up. His breath smelt most odiously of wine; but
+he excused himself on the score of his health, which compelled him, he
+said, to use medicines in which wine was employed." His answer to the
+petition of his visitors (for Cicero was accompanied by his son-in-law)
+was at least commendably frank. "My colleague Gabinius is in absolute
+poverty, and does not know where to turn. Without a province he must be
+ruined. A province he hopes to get by the help of Clodius, but it must
+be by my acting with him. I must humor his wishes, just as you, Cicero,
+humored your colleague when you were consul. But indeed there is no
+reason why you should seek the consul's protection. Every one must look
+out for himself."
+
+In default of the consuls there was still some hope that Pompey might be
+induced to interfere, and Cicero sought an interview with him. Plutarch
+says that he slipped out by a back door to avoid seeing him; but
+Cicero's own account is that the interview was granted. "When I threw
+myself at his feet" (he means I suppose, humiliated himself by asking
+such a favor), "he could not lift me from the ground. He could do
+nothing, he said, against the will of Caesar."
+
+Cicero had now to choose between two courses. He might stay and do his
+best with the help of his friends, to resist the passing of the law. But
+this would have ended, it was well known, in something like an open
+battle in the streets of Rome. Clodius and his partisans were ready to
+carry their proposal by force of arms, and would yield to nothing but
+superior strength. It was possible, even probable, that in such a
+conflict Cicero would be victorious. But he shrank from the trial, not
+from cowardice, for he had courage enough when occasion demanded, not
+even from unwillingness to risk the lives of his friends, though this
+weighed somewhat with him, but chiefly because he hated to confess that
+freedom was becoming impossible in Rome, and that the strong hand of a
+master was wanted to give any kind of security to life and property. The
+other course was to anticipate the sentence and to go into voluntary
+exile. This was the course which his most powerful friends pressed upon
+him, and this was the course which he chose. He left Rome, intending to
+go to Sicily, where he knew that he should find the heartiest of
+welcomes.
+
+Immediately on his departure Clodius formally proposed his banishment.
+"Let it be enacted," so ran the proposition, "that, seeing that Marcus
+Tullius Cicero has put Roman citizens to death without trial, forging
+thereto the authority of the Senate, that he be forbidden fire and
+water; that no one harbor or receive him on pain of death; and that
+whosoever shall move, shall vote, or take any steps for the recalling of
+him, be dealt with as a public enemy." The bill was passed, the distance
+within which it was to operate being fixed at four hundred miles. The
+houses of the banished man were razed to the ground, the site of the
+mansion on the. Palatine, being dedicated to Liberty. His property was
+partly plundered, partly sold by auction.
+
+Cicero meanwhile had hurried to the south of Italy. He found shelter for
+a while at the farm of a friend near Vibo in Brutii (now the Abruzzi),
+but found it necessary to leave this place because it was within the
+prescribed limits. Sicily was forbidden to him by its governor, who,
+though a personal friend, was unwilling to displease the party in power.
+Athens, which for many reasons he would have liked to choose for his
+place of exile, was unsafe. He had bitter enemies there, men who had
+been mixed up in Catiline's conspiracy. The place, too, was within the
+distance, and though this was not very strictly insisted upon--as a
+matter of fact, he did spend the greater part of his banishment inside
+the prescribed limit--it might at any moment be made a means of
+annoyance. Atticus invited him to take up his residence at his seat at
+Buthrotum in Epirus (now Albania). But the proposal did not commend
+itself to his taste. It was out of the way, and would be very dreary
+without the presence of its master, who was still at Rome, and
+apparently intended to remain there. After staying for about a fortnight
+at a friend's house near Dyrrachium--the town itself, where he was once
+very popular, for fear of bringing some trouble upon it, he refused to
+enter--he crossed over to Greece, and ultimately settled himself at
+Thessalonica.
+
+Long afterward he tells us of a singular dream which seems to have given
+him some little comfort at this time. "I had lain awake for the greater
+part of the night, but fell into a heavy slumber toward morning. I was
+at the point of starting, but my host would not allow me to be waked. At
+seven o'clock, however, I rose, and then told my friend this dream. I
+seemed to myself to be wandering disconsolately in some lonely place
+when the great Marius met me. His lictors were with him, their _fasces_
+wreathed with bays. 'Why are you so sad?' he asked me. 'I have been
+wrongly banished from my country,' I answered. He then took my hand, and
+turning to the nearest lictor, bade him lead me to his own Memorial
+Hall. 'There,' he said, 'you will be safe.'" His friend declared that
+this dream portended a speedy and honorable return. Curiously enough it
+was in the Hall of Marius that the decree repealing the sentence of
+banishment was actually proposed and passed.
+
+For the most part he was miserably unhappy and depressed. In letter
+after letter he poured out to Atticus his fears, his complaints, and his
+wants. Why had he listened to the bad advice of his friends? He had
+wished to stay at Rome and fight out the quarrel. Why had Hortensius
+advised him to retire from the struggle? It must have been jealousy,
+jealousy of one whom he knew to be a more successful advocate than
+himself. Why had Atticus hindered his purposes when he thought of
+putting an end to all his trouble by killing himself? Why were all his
+friends, why was Atticus himself, so lukewarm in his cause? In one
+letter he artfully reproaches himself for his neglect of his friends in
+times past as the cause of their present indifference. But the reproach
+is of course really leveled at them.
+
+"If ever," he writes in one letter, "fortune shall restore me to my
+country and to you, I will certainly take care that of all my friends;
+none shall be more rejoiced than you. All my duty to you, a duty which I
+must own in time past was sadly wanting, shall be so faithfully
+discharged that you will feel that I have been restored to you quite as
+much as I shall have been restored to my brother and to my children. For
+whatever I have wronged you, and indeed because I have wronged you,
+pardon me; for I have wronged myself far worse. I do not write this as
+not knowing that you feel the very greatest trouble on my account; but
+if you were and had been under the obligation to love me, as much as you
+actually do love me and have loved me, you never would have allowed me
+to lack the wise advice which you have so abundantly at your command."
+This is perhaps a little obscure, as it is certainly somewhat subtle;
+but Cicero means that Atticus had not interested himself in his affairs
+as much as he would have felt bound to do, if he (Cicero) had been less
+remiss in the duties of friendship.
+
+To another correspondent, his wife Terentia, he poured out his heart yet
+more freely. "Don't think," he writes in one of his letters to her,
+"that I write longer letters to others than to you, except indeed I have
+received some long communication which I feel I must answer. Indeed I
+have nothing to write; and in these days I find it the most difficult of
+duties. Writing to you and to my dearest Tullia I never can do without
+floods of tears. I see you are utterly miserable, and I wanted you to be
+completely happy. I might have made you so. I could have made you had I
+been less timid.... My heart's delight, my deepest regret is to think
+that you, to whom all used to look for help, should now be involved in
+such sorrow, such distress! and that I should be to blame, I who saved
+others only to ruin myself and mine!... As for expenditure, let others,
+who can if they will, undertake it. And if you love me, don't distress
+your health, which is already, I know, feeble. All night, all day I
+think of you. I see that you are undertaking all imaginable labors on my
+behalf; I only fear that you will not be able to endure them. I am aware
+that all depends upon you. If we are to succeed in what you wish and are
+now trying to compass, take care of your health." In another he writes:
+"Unhappy that I am! to think that one so virtuous, so loyal, so honest,
+so kind, should be so afflicted, and all on my account. And my dearest
+Tullia, too, that she should be so unhappy about a father in whom she
+once found so much happiness. And what shall I say about my dear little
+Cicero? That he should feel the bitterest sorrow and trouble as soon as
+he began to feel any thing! If all this was really, as you write, the
+work of fate, I could endure it a little more easily; but it was all
+brought about by my fault, thinking that I was loved by men who really
+were jealous of me, and keeping aloof from others who were really on my
+side."
+
+This is, perhaps, a good opportunity of saying something about the lady
+herself. Who she was we do not certainly know. There was a family of the
+name in Rome, the most notable of whom perhaps was the Terentius
+Varro[7] whose rashness brought upon his country the terrible disaster
+of the defeat of Cannae. She had a half-sister, probably older than
+herself, of the name of Fabia, who was a vestal virgin. She brought her
+husband, to whom she was married about 78 B.C., a fair dowry, about
+three thousand five hundred pounds. We have seen how affectionately
+Cicero writes to her during his exile. She is his darling, his only
+hope; the mere thought of her makes his eyes overflow with tears. And
+she seems to have deserved all his praise and affection, exerting
+herself to the utmost to help him, and ready to impoverish herself to
+find him the means that he needed. Four letters of this period have been
+preserved. There are twenty others belonging to the years 50-47 B.C. The
+earlier of these are sufficiently affectionate. When he is about to
+return to Rome from his province (Cilicia), she is still the most
+amiable, the dearest of women. Then we begin to see signs of coolness,
+yet nothing that would strike us did we not know what was afterwards to
+happen. He excuses the rarity of his letters. There is no one by whom to
+send them. If there were, he was willing to write. The greetings became
+formal, the superlatives "dearest," "fondest," "best," are dropped. "You
+are glad," he writes after the battle of Pharsalia had dashed his hopes,
+"that I have got back safe to Italy; I hope that you may continue to be
+glad." "Don't think of coming," he goes on, "it is a long journey and
+not very safe; and I don't see what good you would do if you should
+come." In another letter he gives directions about getting ready his
+house at Tusculum for the reception of guests. The letter is dated on
+the first of October, and he and his friends would come probably to stay
+several days, on the seventh. If there was not a tub in the bath-room,
+one must be provided. The greeting is of the briefest and most formal.
+Meanwhile we know from what he writes to Atticus that he was greatly
+dissatisfied with the lady's conduct. Money matters were at the bottom
+of their quarrel. She was careless, he thinks, and extravagant. Though
+he was a rich man, yet he was often in need of ready money, and Terentia
+could not be relied upon to help him. His vexation takes form in a
+letter to Atticus. "As to Terentia--there are other things without
+number of which I don't speak--what can be worse than this? You wrote to
+her to send me bills for one hundred and eight pounds; for there was so
+much money left in hand. She sent me just ninety pounds, and added a
+note that this was all. If she was capable of abstracting such a trifle
+from so small a sum, don't you see what she would have done in matters
+of real importance?" The quarrel ended in a divorce, a thing far more
+common than, happily, it is among ourselves, but still a painful and
+discreditable end to an union which had lasted for more than
+five-and-twenty years. Terentia long survived her husband, dying in
+extreme old age (as much, it was said, as a hundred and three years),
+far on in the reign of Augustus; and after a considerable experience of
+matrimony, if it be true that she married three or even, according to
+some accounts, four other husbands.
+
+[Footnote 7: Another of the same name was an eminent man of letters of
+Cicero's own time.]
+
+Terentia's daughter, Tullia, had a short and unhappy life. She was born,
+it would seem, about 79 B.C., and married when fifteen or sixteen to a
+young Roman noble, Piso Frugi by name. "The best, the most loyal of
+men," Cicero calls him. He died in 57 B.C., and Rome lost, if his
+father-in-law's praises of him may be trusted, an orator of the very
+highest promise. "I never knew any one who surpassed my son-in-law,
+Piso, in zeal, in industry, and, I may fairly say, in ability." The next
+year she married a certain Crassipes, a very shadowy person indeed. We
+know nothing of what manner of man he was, or what became of him. But in
+50 B.C. Tullia was free to marry again. Her third venture was of her own
+or her mother's contriving. Her father was at his government in Cilicia,
+and he hears of the affair with surprise. "Believe me," he writes to
+Atticus, "nothing could have been less expected by me. Tiberius Nero had
+made proposals to me, and I had sent friends to discuss the matter with
+the ladies. But when they got to Rome the betrothal had taken place.
+This, I hope, will be a better match. I fancy the ladies were very much
+pleased with the young gentleman's complaisance and courtesy, but do not
+look for the thorns." The "thorns," however, were there. A friend who
+kept Cicero acquainted with the news of Rome, told him as much, though
+he wraps up his meaning in the usual polite phrases. "I congratulate
+you," he writes, "on your alliance with one who is, I really believe, a
+worthy fellow. I do indeed think this of him. If there have been some
+things in which he has not done justice to himself, these are now past
+and gone; any traces that may be left will soon, I am sure, disappear,
+thanks to your good influence and to his respect for Tullia. He is not
+offensive in his errors, and does not seem slow to appreciate better
+things." Tullia, however, was not more successful than other wives in
+reforming her husband. Her marriage seems to have been unhappy almost
+from the beginning. It was brought to an end by a divorce after about
+three years. Shortly afterward Tullia, who could have been little more
+than thirty, died, to the inconsolable grief of her father. "My grief,"
+he writes to Atticus, "passes all consolation. Yet I have done what
+certainly no one ever did before, written a treatise for my own
+consolation. (I will send you the book if the copyists have finished
+it.) And indeed there is nothing like it. I write day after day, and all
+day long; not that I can get any good from it, but it occupies me a
+little, not much indeed; the violence of my grief is too much for me.
+Still I am soothed, and do my best to compose, not my feelings, indeed,
+but, if I can, my face." And again: "Next to your company nothing is
+more agreeable to me than solitude. Then all my converse is with books;
+yet this is interrupted by tears; these I resist as well as I can; but
+at present I fail." At one time he thought of finding comfort in unusual
+honors to the dead. He would build a shrine of which Tullia should be
+the deity. "I am determined," he writes, "on building the shrine. From
+this purpose I cannot be turned ... Unless the building be finished this
+summer, I shall hold myself guilty." He fixes upon a design. He begs
+Atticus, in one of his letters, to buy some columns of marble of Chios
+for the building. He discusses the question of the site. Some gardens
+near Rome strike him as a convenient place. It must be conveniently near
+if it is to attract worshipers. "I would sooner sell or mortgage, or
+live on little, than be disappointed." Then he thought that he would
+build it on the grounds of his villa. In the end he did not build it at
+all. Perhaps the best memorial of Tullia is the beautiful letter in
+which one of Cicero's friends seeks to console him for his loss. "She
+had lived," he says, "as long as life was worth living, as long as the
+republic stood." One passage, though it has often been quoted before, I
+must give. "I wish to tell you of something which brought me no small
+consolation, hoping that it may also somewhat diminish your sorrow. On
+my way back from Asia, as I was sailing from Aeigina to Megara, I began
+to contemplate the places that lay around me. Behind me was Aegina,
+before me Megara; on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left hand Corinth;
+towns all of them that were once at the very height of prosperity, but
+now lie ruined and desolate before our eyes. I began thus to reflect:
+'Strange! do we, poor creatures of a day, bear it ill if one of us
+perish of disease, or are slain with the sword, we whose life is bound
+to be short, while the dead bodies of so many lie here inclosed within
+so small a compass?"
+
+But I am anticipating. When Cicero was in exile the republic had yet
+some years to live; and there were hopes that it might survive
+altogether. The exile's prospects, too, began to brighten. Caesar had
+reached for the present the height of his ambition, and was busy with
+his province of Gaul. Pompey had quarreled with Clodius, whom he found
+to be utterly unmanageable. And Cicero's friend, one Milo, of whom I
+shall have to say more hereafter, being the most active of them all,
+never ceased to agitate for his recall. It would be tedious to recall
+all the vicissitudes of the struggle. As early as May the Senate passed
+a resolution repealing the decree of banishment, the news of it having
+caused an outburst of joy in the city. Accius' drama of "Telamon" was
+being acted at the time, and the audience applauded each senator as he
+entered the Senate, and rose from their places to greet the consul as he
+came in. But the enthusiasm rose to its height when the actor who was
+playing the part of Telamon (whose banishment from his country formed
+part of the action of the drama) declaimed with significant emphasis the
+following lines--
+
+   What! he--the man who still with steadfast heart
+   Strove for his country, who in perilous days
+   Spared neither life nor fortune, and bestowed
+   Most help when most she needed; who surpassed
+   In wit all other men. Father of Gods,
+   _His_ house--yea, _his_!--I saw devoured by fire;
+   And ye, ungrateful, foolish, without thought
+   Of all wherein he served you, could endure
+   To see him banished; yea, and to this hour
+   Suffer that he prolong an exile's day.
+
+Still obstacle after obstacle was interposed, and it was not till the
+fourth of August that the decree passed through all its stages and
+became finally law. Cicero, who had been waiting at the point of Greece
+nearest to Italy, to take the earliest opportunity of returning, had
+been informed by his friends that he might now safely embark. He sailed
+accordingly on the very day when the decree was passed, and reached
+Brundisium on the morrow. It happened to be the day on which the
+foundation of the colony was celebrated, and also the birthday of
+Tullia, who had come so far to meet her father. The coincidence was
+observed by the towns-people with delight. On the eighth the welcome
+news came from Rome, and Cicero set out for the capital. "All along my
+road the cities of Italy kept the day of my arrival as a holiday; the
+ways were crowded with the deputations which were sent from all parts to
+congratulate me. When I approached the city, my coming was honored by
+such a concourse of men, such a heartiness of congratulation as are past
+believing. The way from the gates, the ascent of the Capitol, the return
+to my home made such a spectacle that in the very height of my joy I
+could not but be sorry that a people so grateful had yet been so
+unhappy, so cruelly oppressed." "That day," he said emphatically, "that
+day was as good as immortality to me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A BRAWL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
+
+
+Clodius, who had taken the lead in driving Cicero into exile, was of
+course furious at his return, and continued to show him an unceasing
+hostility. His first care was to hinder the restoration of his property.
+He had contrived to involve part at least of this in a considerable
+difficulty. Cicero's house on the Palatine Hill had been pulled down and
+the area dedicated--so at least Clodius alleged--to the Goddess of
+Liberty. If this was true, it was sacred forever; it could not be
+restored. The question was, Was it true? This question was referred to
+the Pontiffs as judges of such matters. Cicero argued the case before
+them, and they pronounced in his favor. It was now for the Senate to
+act. A motion was made that the site should be restored. Clodius opposed
+it, talking for three hours, till the anger of his audience compelled
+him to bring his speech to an end. One of the tribunes in his interest
+put his veto on the motion, but was frightened into withdrawing it. But
+Clodius was not at the end of his resources. A set of armed ruffians
+under his command drove out the workmen who were rebuilding the house. A
+few days afterwards he made an attack on Cicero himself. He was wounded
+in the struggle which followed, and might, says Cicero, have been
+killed, "but," he adds, "I am tired of surgery."
+
+Pompey was another object of his hatred, for he knew perfectly well that
+without his consent his great enemy would not have been restored. Cicero
+gives a lively picture of a scene in the Senate, in which this hatred
+was vigorously expressed. "Pompey spoke, or rather wished to speak; for,
+as soon as he rose, Clodius' hired ruffians shouted at him. All through
+his speech it was the same; he was interrupted not only by shouts but by
+abuse and curses. When he came to an end--and it must be allowed that he
+showed courage; nothing frightened him: he said his say and sometimes
+even obtained silence--then Clodius rose. He was met with such an uproar
+from our side (for we had determined to give him back as good as he had
+given) that he could not collect his thoughts, control his speech, or
+command his countenance. This went on from three o'clock, when Pompey
+had only just finished his speech, till five. Meanwhile every kind of
+abuse, even to ribald verses, were shouted out against Clodius and his
+sister. Pale with fury he turned to his followers, and in the midst of
+the uproar asked them, 'Who is it that is killing the people with
+hunger?' 'Pompey,' they answered. 'Who wants to go to Alexandria?'
+'Pompey,' they answered again. 'And whom do _you_ want to go?'
+'Crassus,' they said. About six o'clock the party of Clodius began, at
+some given signal, it seemed, to spit at our side. Our rage now burst
+out. They tried to drive us from our place, and we made a charge. The
+partisans of Clodius fled. He was thrust down from the hustings. I then
+made my escape, lest any thing worse should happen."
+
+A third enemy, and one whom Clodius was destined to find more dangerous
+than either Cicero or Pompey, was Annius Milo. Milo was on the mother's
+side of an old Latin family. The name by which he was commonly known was
+probably a nickname given him, it may be, in joking allusion to the Milo
+of Crotona, the famous wrestler, who carried an ox on his shoulders and
+ate it in a single day. For Milo was a great fighting man, a well-born
+gladiator, one who was for cutting all political knots with the sword.
+He was ambitious, and aspired to the consulship; but the dignity was
+scarcely within his reach. His family was not of the highest; he was
+deeply in debt; he had neither eloquence nor ability. His best chance,
+therefore, was to attach himself to some powerful friend whose gratitude
+he might earn. Just such a friend he seemed to find in Cicero. He saw
+the great orator's fortunes were very low, but they would probably rise
+again, and he would be grateful to those who helped him in his
+adversity. Hence Milo's exertions to bring him back from banishment and
+hence the quarrel with Clodius. The two men had their bands of hired, or
+rather purchased, ruffians about the city, and came into frequent
+collisions. Each indicted the other for murderous assault. Each publicly
+declared that he should take the earliest chance of putting his I enemy
+to death. What was probably a chance collision brought matters to a
+crisis.
+
+On the twentieth of January Milo left Rome to pay a visit to Lanuvium, a
+Latin town on the Appian road, and about fifteen miles south of Rome. It
+was a small town, much decayed from the old days when its revolt
+against Rome was thought to be a thing worth recording; but it
+contained one of the most famous temples of Italy, the dwelling of Juno
+the Preserver, whose image, in its goat-skin robe, its quaint, turned-up
+shoes, with spear in one hand and small shield in the other, had a
+peculiar sacredness. Milo was a native of the place, and its dictator;
+and it was his duty on this occasion to nominate the chief priest of the
+temple. He had been at a meeting of the Senate in the morning, and had
+remained till the close of the sitting. Returning home he had changed
+his dress and shoes, waited a while, as men have to wait, says Cicero,
+while his wife was getting ready, and then started. He traveled in a
+carriage his wife and a friend. Several maid-servants and a troop of
+singing boys belonging to his wife followed. Much was made of this great
+retinue of women and boys, as proving that Milo had no intention when he
+started of coming to blows with his great enemy. But he had also with
+him a number of armed slaves and several gladiators, among whom were two
+famous masters of their art. He had traveled about ten miles when he met
+Clodius, who had been delivering an address to the town council of
+Aricia, another Latin town, nearer to the capital than Lanuvium, and was
+now returning to Rome. He was on horseback, contrary to his usual
+custom, which was to use a carriage, and he had with him thirty slaves
+armed with swords. No person of distinction thought of traveling without
+such attendants.
+
+The two men passed each other, but Milo's gladiators fell out with the
+slaves of Clodius. Clodius rode back and accosted the aggressors in a
+threatening manner. One of the gladiators replied by wounding him in the
+shoulder with his sword. A number of Milo's slaves hastened back to
+assist their comrades. The party of Clodius was overpowered, and Clodius
+himself, exhausted by his wound, took refuge in a roadside tavern, which
+probably marked the first stage out of Rome. Milo, thinking that now he
+had gone so far he might go a little further and rid himself of his
+enemy forever, ordered his slaves to drag Clodius from his refuge and
+finish him. This was promptly done. Cicero indeed declared that the
+slaves did it without orders, and in the belief that their master had
+been killed. But Rome believed the other story. The corpse of the dead
+man lay for some time upon the road uncared for, for all his attendants
+had either fallen in the struggle or had crept into hiding-places. Then
+a Roman gentleman on his way to the city ordered it to be put into his
+litter and taken to Rome, where it arrived just before nightfall. It was
+laid out in state in the hall of his mansion, and his widow stood by
+showing the wounds to the sympathizing crowd which thronged to see his
+remains. Next day the excitement increased. Two of the tribunes
+suggested that the body should be carried into the market-place, and
+placed on the hustings from which the speaker commonly addressed the
+people. Then it was resolved, at the suggestion of another Clodius, a
+notary, and a client of the family, to do it a signal honor. "Thou shalt
+not bury or burn a man within the city" was one of the oldest of Roman
+laws. Clodius, the favorite of the people, should be an exception. His
+body was carried into the Hall of Hostilius, the usual meeting-place of
+the Senate. The benches, the tables, the platform from which the orators
+spoke, the wooden tablets on which the clerks wrote their notes, were
+collected to make a funeral pile on which the corpse was to be consumed.
+The hall caught fire, and was burned to the ground; another large
+building adjoining it, the Hall of Porcius, narrowly escaped the same
+fate. The mob attacked several houses, that of Milo among them, and was
+with difficulty repulsed.
+
+It had been expected that Milo would voluntarily go into exile; but the
+burning of the senate-house caused a strong reaction of feeling of which
+he took advantage. He returned to Rome, and provided to canvass for the
+consulship, making a present in money (which may be reckoned at
+five-and-twenty shillings) to every voter. The city was in a continual
+uproar; though the time for the new consuls to enter on their office was
+long past, they had not even been elected, nor was there any prospect,
+such was the violence of the rival candidates, of their being so. At
+last the Senate had recourse to the only man who seemed able to deal
+with the situation, and appointed Pompey sole consul. Pompey proposed
+to institute for the trial of Milo's case a special court with a
+special form of procedure. The limits of the time which it was to occupy
+were strictly laid down. Three days were to be given to the examination
+of witnesses, one to the speeches of counsel, the prosecution being
+allowed two hours only, the defense three. After a vain resistance on
+the part of Milo's friends, the proposal was carried, Pompey threatening
+to use force if necessary. Popular feeling now set very strongly against
+the accused. Pompey proclaimed that he went in fear of his life from his
+violence; refused to appear in the Senate lest he should be
+assassinated, and even left his house to live in his gardens, which
+could be more effectually guarded by soldiers. In the Senate Milo was
+accused of having arms under his clothing, a charge which he had to
+disprove by lifting up his under garment. Next a freedman came forward,
+and declared that he and four others had actually seen the murder of
+Clodius, and that having mentioned the fact, they had been seized and
+shut up for two months in Milo's counting-house. Finally a sheriff's
+officer, if we may so call him, deposed that another important witness,
+one of Milo's slaves, had been forcibly taken out of his hands by the
+partisans of the accused.
+
+On the eighth of April the trial was begun. The first witness called was
+a friend who had been with Clodius on the day of his death. His evidence
+made the case look very dark against Milo, and the counsel who was to
+cross-examine him on behalf of the accused was received with such angry
+cries that he had to take refuge on the bench with the presiding judge.
+Milo was obliged to ask for the same protection.
+
+Pompey resolved that better order should be kept for the future, and
+occupied all the approaches to the court with troops. The rest of the
+witnesses were heard and cross-examined without interruption. April 11th
+was the last day of the trial. Three speeches were delivered for the
+prosecution; for the defense one only, and that by Cicero. It had been
+suggested that he should take the bold line of arguing that Clodius was
+a traitor, and that the citizen who slew him had deserved well of his
+country. But he judged it better to follow another course, and to show
+that Clodius had been the aggressor, having deliberately laid an ambush
+for Milo, of whose meditated journey to Lanuvium he was of course aware.
+Unfortunately for his client the case broke down. Milo had evidently
+left Rome and the conflict had happened much earlier than was said,
+because the body of the murdered man had reached the capital not later
+than five o'clock in the afternoon. This disproved the assertion that
+Clodius had loitered on his way back to Rome till the growing darkness
+gave him an opportunity of attacking his adversaries. Then it came out
+that Milo had had in his retinue, besides the women and boys, a number
+of fighting men. Finally there was the damning fact, established, it
+would seem, by competent witnesses, that Clodius had been dragged from
+his hiding-place and put to death. Cicero too lost his presence of mind.
+The sight of the city, in which all the shops were shut in expectation
+of a riot, the presence of the soldiers in court, and the clamor of a
+mob furiously hostile to the accused and his advocate, confounded him,
+and he spoke feebly and hesitatingly. The admirable oration which has
+come down to us, and professes to have been delivered on this occasion,
+was really written afterwards. The jury, which was allowed by common
+consent to have been one of the best ever assembled, gave a verdict of
+guilty. Milo went into banishment at Marseilles--a punishment which he
+seems to have borne very easily, if it is true that when Cicero excused
+himself for the want of courage which had marred the effect of his
+defense, he answered, "It was all for the best; if you had spoken
+better I should never have tasted these admirable Marseilles mullets."
+
+Naturally he tired of the mullets before long. When Caesar had made
+himself master of Rome, he hoped to be recalled from banishment. But
+Caesar did not want him, and preferred to have him where he was. Enraged
+at this treatment, he came over to Italy and attempted to raise an
+insurrection in favor of Pompey. The troops whom he endeavored to
+corrupt refused to follow him. He retreated with his few followers into
+the extreme south of the peninsula, and was there killed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+CATO, BRUTUS, AND PORCIA.
+
+
+"From his earliest years," so runs the character that has come down to
+us of Cato, "he was resolute to obstinacy. Flattery met with a rough
+repulse, and threats with resistance. He never laughed, and his smile
+was of the slightest. Not easily provoked, his anger, once roused, was
+implacable. He learned but slowly, but never forgot a thing once
+acquired; he was obedient to his teachers, but wanted to know the reason
+of every thing." The stories told of his boyhood bear out this
+character. Here is one of them. His tutor took him to Sulla's house. It
+was in the evil days of the Proscription, and there were signs of the
+bloody work that was going on. "Why does no one kill this man?" he asked
+his teacher. "Because, my son, they fear him more than they hate him,"
+was the answer. "Why then," was the rejoinder, "have you not given me a
+sword that I may set my country free?" The tutor, as it may be supposed,
+carried him off in haste.
+
+Like most young Romans he began life as a soldier, and won golden
+opinions not only by his courage, which indeed was common enough in a
+nation that conquered the world, but by his temperance and diligent
+performance of duty. His time of service ended, he set out on his
+travels, accepting an invitation from the tributary king of Galatia,
+who happened to be an old friend of the family, to visit him. We get an
+interesting little picture of a Roman of the upper class on a tour. "At
+dawn he would send on a baker and a cook to the place which he intended
+to visit. These would enter the town in a most unpretending fashion, and
+if their master did not happen to have a friend or acquaintance in the
+place, would betake themselves to an inn, and there prepare for their
+master's accommodation without troubling any one. It was only when there
+was no inn that they went to the magistrates and asked for
+entertainment; and they were always content with what was assigned.
+Often they met with but scanty welcome and attention, not enforcing
+their demands with the customary threats, so that Cato on his arrival
+found nothing prepared. Nor did their master create a more favorable
+impression, sitting as he did quietly on his luggage, and seeming to
+accept the situation. Sometimes, however, he would send for the town
+authorities and say, "You had best give up these mean ways, my
+inhospitable friends; you won't find that all your visitors are Catos."
+Once at least he found himself, as he thought, magnificently received.
+Approaching Antioch, he found the road lined on either side with troops
+of spectators. The men stood in one company, the boys in another. Every
+body was in holiday dress. Some--these were the magistrates and
+priests--wore white robes and garlands of flowers. Cato, supposing that
+all these preparations were intended for himself, was annoyed that his
+servants had not prevented them. But he was soon undeceived. An old man
+ran out from the crowd, and without so much as greeting the new comer,
+cried, "Where did you leave Demetrius? When will he come?" Demetrius was
+Pompey's freedman, and had some of his master's greatness reflected on
+him. Cato could only turn away muttering, "Wretched place!"
+
+Returning to Rome he went through the usual course of honors, always
+discharging his duties with the utmost zeal and integrity, and probably,
+as long as he filled a subordinate place, with great success. It was
+when statesmanship was wanted that he began to fail.
+
+In the affair of the conspiracy of Catiline Cato stood firmly by
+Cicero, supporting the proposition to put the conspirators to death in a
+powerful speech, the only speech of all that he made that was preserved.
+This preservation was due to the forethought of Cicero, who put the
+fastest writers whom he could find to relieve each other in taking down
+the oration. This, it is interesting to be told, was the beginning of
+shorthand.
+
+Cato, like Cicero, loved and believed in the republic; but he was much
+more uncompromising, more honest perhaps we may say, but certainly less
+discreet in putting his principles into action. He set himself to oppose
+the accumulation of power in the hands of Pompey and Caesar; but he
+lacked both dignity and prudence, and he accomplished nothing. When, for
+instance, Caesar, returning from Spain, petitioned the Senate for
+permission to become a candidate for the consulship without entering the
+city--to enter the city would have been to abandon his hopes of a
+triumph--Cato condescended to use the arts of obstruction in opposing
+him. He spoke till sunset against the proposition, and it failed by
+sheer lapse of time. Yet the opposition was fruitless. Caesar of course
+abandoned the empty honor, and secured the reality, all the more
+certainly because people felt that he had been hardly used. And so he
+continued to act, always seeking to do right, but always choosing the
+very worst way of doing it; anxious to serve his country, but always
+contriving to injure it. Even in that which, we may say, best became him
+in his life, in the leaving of it (if we accept for the moment the Roman
+view of the morality of suicide), he was not doing his best for Rome.
+Had he been willing to live (for Caesar was ready to spare him, as he
+was always ready to spare enemies who could not harm him), there was yet
+good for him to do; in his hasty impatience of what he disapproved, he
+preferred to deprive his country of its most honest citizen.
+
+We must not omit a picture so characteristic of Roman life as the story
+of his last hours. The last army of the republic had been destroyed at
+Thapsus, and Caesar was undisputed master of the world. Cato vainly
+endeavored to stir up the people of Utica, a town near Carthage, in
+which he had taken up his quarters; when they refused, he resolved to
+put an end to his life. A kinsman of Caesar, who was preparing to
+intercede with the conqueror for the lives of the vanquished leaders,
+begged Cato's help in revising his speech. "For you," he said, "I should
+think it no shame to clasp his hands and fall at his knees." "Were I
+willing to take my life at his hands," replied Cato, "I should go alone
+to ask it. But I refuse to live by the favor of a tyrant. Still, as
+there are three hundred others for whom you are to intercede, let us see
+what can be done with the speech." This business finished, he took an
+affectionate leave of his friend, commending to his good offices his son
+and his friends. On his son he laid a strict injunction not to meddle
+with public life. Such a part as was worthy of the name of Cato no man
+could take again; to take any other would be shameful. Then followed the
+bath, and after the bath, dinner, to which he had invited a number of
+friends, magistrates of the town. He sat at the meal, instead of
+reclining. This had been his custom ever since the fated day of
+Pharsalia. After dinner, over the wine, there was much learned talk,
+and this not other than cheerful in tone. But when the conversation
+happened to turn on one of the favorite maxims of the Stoics, "Only the
+good man is free; the bad are slaves," Cato expressed himself with an
+energy and even a fierceness that made the company suspect some terrible
+resolve. The melancholy silence that ensued warned the speaker that he
+had betrayed himself, and he hastened to remove the suspicion by talking
+on other topics. After dinner he took his customary walk, gave the
+necessary orders to the officers on guard, and then sought his chamber.
+Here he took up the Phaedo, the famous dialogue in which Socrates, on
+the day when he is to drink the poison, discusses the immortality of the
+soul. He had almost finished the book, when, chancing to turn his eyes
+upwards, he perceived that his sword had been removed. His son had
+removed it while he sat at dinner. He called a slave and asked, "Who has
+taken my sword?" As the man said nothing, he resumed his book; but in
+the course of a few minutes, finding that search was not being made, he
+asked for the sword again. Another interval followed; and still it was
+not forthcoming. His anger was now roused. He vehemently reproached the
+slaves, and even struck one of them with his fist, which he injured by
+the blow. "My son and my slaves," he said, "are betraying me to the
+enemy." He would listen to no entreaties, "Am I a madman," he said,
+"that I am stripped of my arms? Are you going to bind my hands and give
+me up to Caesar? As for the sword I can do without it; I need but hold
+my breath or dash my head against the wall. It is idle to think that you
+can keep a man of my years alive against his will." It was felt to be
+impossible to persist in the face of this determination, and a young
+slave-boy brought back the sword. Cato felt the weapon, and finding that
+the blade was straight and the edge perfect, said, "Now I am my own
+master." He then read the Phaedo again from beginning to end, and
+afterwards fell into so profound a sleep that persons standing outside
+the chamber heard his breathing. About midnight he sent for his
+physician and one of his freedmen. The freedman was commissioned to
+inquire whether his friends had set sail. The physician he asked to bind
+up his wounded hand, a request which his attendants heard with delight,
+as it seemed to indicate a resolve to live. He again sent to inquire
+about his friends and expressed his regret at the rough weather which
+they seemed likely to have. The birds were now beginning to twitter at
+the approach of dawn, and he fell into a short sleep. The freedman now
+returned with news that the harbor was quiet. When he found himself
+again alone, he stabbed himself with the sword, but the blow, dealt as
+it was by the wounded hand, was not fatal. He fell fainting on the
+couch, knocking down a counting board which stood near, and groaning.
+His son with others rushed into the chamber, and the physician, finding
+that the wound was not mortal, proceeded to bind it up. Cato, recovering
+his consciousness, thrust the attendants aside, and tearing open the
+wound, expired.
+
+If the end of Cato's life was its noblest part it is still more true
+that the fame of Brutus rests on one memorable deed. He was known,
+indeed, as a young man of promise, with whose education special pains
+had been taken, and who had a genuine love for letters and learning. He
+was free, it would seem, from some of the vices of his age, but he had
+serious faults. Indeed the one transaction of his earlier life with
+which we happen to be well acquainted is very little to his credit. And
+this, again, is so characteristic of one side of Roman life that it
+should be told in some detail.
+
+Brutus had married the daughter of a certain Appius Claudius, a kinsman
+of the notorious Clodius, and had accompanied his father-in-law to his
+province, Cilicia. He took the opportunity of increasing his means by
+lending money to the provincials. Lending money, it must be remembered,
+was not thought a discreditable occupation even for the very noblest. To
+lend money upon interest was, indeed, the only way of making an
+investment, besides the buying of land, that was available to the Roman
+capitalist. But Brutus was more than a money-lender, he was an usurer;
+that is, he sought to extract an extravagantly high rate of interest
+from his debtors. And this greed brought him into collision with Cicero.
+
+A certain Scaptius had been agent for Brutus in lending money to the
+town of Salamis in Cyprus. Under the government of Claudius, Scaptius
+had had every thing his own way. He had been appointed to a command in
+the town, had some cavalry at his disposal, and extorted from the
+inhabitants what terms he pleased, shutting up, it is told us, the
+Senate in their council-room till five of them perished of hunger.
+Cicero heard of this monstrous deed as he was on his way to his
+province; he peremptorily refused the request of Scaptius for a renewal
+of his command, saying that he had resolved not to grant such posts to
+any person engaged in trading or money-lending. Still, for Brutus'
+sake--and it was not for some time that it came out that Brutus was the
+principal--he would take care that the money should be paid. This the
+town was ready to do; but then came in the question of interest. An
+edict had been published that this should never exceed twelve per cent.,
+or one per cent, monthly, that being the customary way of payment. But
+Scaptius pleaded his bond, which provided for four per cent, monthly,
+and pleaded also a special edict that regulations restraining interest
+were not to apply to Salamis. The town protested that they could not
+pay if such terms were exacted--terms which would double the principal.
+They could not, they said, have met even the smaller claim, if it had
+not been for the liberality of the governor, who had declined the
+customary presents. Brutus was much vexed.
+
+"Even when he asks me a favor," writes Cicero to Atticus, "there is
+always something arrogant and churlish: still he moves laughter more
+than anger."
+
+When the civil war broke out between Caesar and Pompey, it was expected
+that Brutus would attach himself to the former. Pompey, who had put his
+father to death, he had no reason to love. But if he was unscrupulous in
+some things, in politics he had principles which he would not abandon,
+the strongest of these, perhaps, being that the side of which Cato
+approved was the side of the right. Pompey received his new adherent
+with astonishment and delight, rising from his chair to greet him. He
+spent most of his time in camp in study, being ingrossed on the very eve
+of the battle in making an epitome of Polybius, the Greek historian of
+the Second Punic War. He passed through the disastrous day of Pharsalia
+unhurt, Caesar having given special orders that his life was to be
+spared. After the battle, the conqueror not only pardoned him but
+treated him with the greatest kindness, a kindness for which, for a time
+at least, he seems not to have been ungrateful. But there were
+influences at work which he could not resist. There was his friendship
+with Cassius, who had a passionate hatred against usurpers, the
+remembrance of how Cato had died sooner than submit himself to Caesar,
+and, not least, the association of his name, which he was not permitted
+to forget. The statue of the old patriot who had driven out the Tarquins
+was covered with such inscriptions as, "Brutus, would thou wert alive!"
+and Brutus' own chair of office--he was praetor at the time--was found
+covered with papers on which were scribbled, "Brutus, thou sleepest,"
+or, "A true Brutus art thou," and the like. How he slew Caesar I have
+told already; how he killed himself in despair after the second battle
+of Philippi may be read elsewhere.
+
+Porcia, the daughter of Cato, was left a widow in 48 B.C., and married
+three years afterwards her cousin Brutus, who divorced his first wife
+Claudia in order to marry her. She inherited both the literary tastes
+and the opinions of her father, and she thought herself aggrieved when
+her husband seemed unwilling to confide his plans to her. Plutarch thus
+tells her story, his authority seeming to be a little biography which
+one of her sons by her first husband afterwards wrote of his
+step-father. "She wounded herself in the thigh with a knife such as
+barbers use for cutting the nails. The wound was deep, the loss of blood
+great, and the pain and fever that followed acute. Her husband was in
+the greatest distress, when his wife thus addressed him: 'Brutus, it was
+a daughter of Cato who became your wife, not merely to share your bed
+and board, but to be the partner of your adversity and your prosperity.
+_You_ give me no cause to complain, but what proof can I give you of my
+affection if I may not bear with you your secret troubles. Women, I
+know, are weak creatures, ill fitted to keep secrets. Yet a good
+training and honest company may do much, and this, as Cato's daughter
+and wife to Brutus, I have had.' She then showed him the wound, and told
+him that she had inflicted it upon herself to prove her courage and
+constancy." For all this resolution she had something of a woman's
+weakness. When her husband had left the house on the day fixed for the
+assassination, she could not conceal her agitation. She eagerly inquired
+of all who entered how Brutus fared, and at last fainted in the hall of
+her house. In the midst of the business of the senate-house Brutus heard
+that his wife was dying.
+
+Porcia was not with her husband during the campaigns that ended at
+Philippi, but remained in Rome. She is said to have killed herself by
+swallowing the live coals from a brazier, when her friends kept from her
+all the means of self-destruction. This story is scarcely credible;
+possibly it means that she suffocated herself with the fumes of
+charcoal. That she should commit suicide suited all the traditions of
+her life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+A GOVERNOR IN HIS PROVINCE.
+
+
+It was usual for a Roman statesman, after filling the office of praetor
+or consul, to undertake for a year or more the government of one of the
+provinces. These appointments were indeed the prizes of the profession
+of politics. The new governor had a magnificent outfit from the
+treasury. We hear of as much as one hundred and fifty thousand pounds
+having been allowed for this purpose. Out of this something might easily
+be economized. Indeed we hear of one governor who left the whole of his
+allowance put out at interest in Rome. And in the province itself
+splendid gains might be, and indeed commonly were, got. Even Cicero,
+who, if we may trust his own account of his proceedings, was
+exceptionally just, and not only just, but even generous in his dealings
+with the provincials, made, as we have seen, the very handsome profit of
+twenty thousand pounds out of a year of office. Verres, who, on the
+other hand, was exceptionally rapacious, made three hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds in three years, besides collecting works of art of
+incalculable value. But the honors and profits to which most of his
+contemporaries looked forward with eagerness did not attract Cicero. He
+did not care to be absent from the center of political life, and felt
+himself to be at once superior to and unfitted for the pettier affairs
+of a provincial government.
+
+He had successfully avoided the appointment after his praetorship and
+again after his consulship. But the time came when it was forced upon
+him. Pompey in his third consulship had procured the passing of a law by
+which it was provided that all senators who had filled the office of
+praetor or consul should cast lots for the vacant provinces. Cicero had
+to take his chance with the rest, and the ballot gave him Cilicia. This
+was in B.C. 51, and Cicero was in his fifty-sixth year.
+
+Cilicia was a province of considerable extent, including, as it did, the
+south-eastern portion of Asia Minor, together with the island of Cyprus.
+The position of its governor was made more anxious by the neighborhood
+of Rome's most formidable neighbors, the Parthians, who but two years
+before had cut to pieces the army of Crassus. Two legions, numbering
+twelve thousand troops besides auxiliaries, were stationed in the
+province, having attached to them between two and three thousand
+cavalry.
+
+Cicero started to take up his appointment on May 1st, accompanied by his
+brother, who, having served with distinction under Caesar in Gaul, had
+resigned his command to act as lieutenant in Cilicia. At Cumae he
+received a levee of visitors--a "little Rome," he says. Hortensius was
+among them, and this though in very feeble health (he died before
+Cicero's return). "He asked me for my instructions. Every thing else I
+left with him in general terms, but I begged him especially not to allow
+as far as in him lay, the government of my province to be continued to
+me into another year." On the 17th of the month he reached Tarentum,
+where he spent three days with Pompey. He found him "ready to defend the
+State from the dangers that we dread." The shadows of the civil war,
+which was to break out in the year after Cicero's return, were already
+gathering. At Brundisium, the port of embarkation for the East, he was
+detained partly by indisposition, partly by having to wait for one of
+his officials for nearly a fortnight. He reached Actium, in
+north-western Greece, on the 15th of June. He would have liked to
+proceed thence by land, being, as he tells us, a bad sailor, and having
+in view the rounding of the formidable promontory Leucate; but there was
+a difficulty about his retinue, without which he could not maintain the
+state which became a governor _en route_ for his province. Eleven more
+days brought him to Athens. "So far," he writes from this place, "no
+expenditure of public or private money has been made on me or any of my
+retinue. I have convinced all my people that they must do their best for
+my character. So far all has gone admirably. The thing has been noticed,
+and is greatly praised by the Greeks." "Athens," he writes again,
+"delighted me much; the city with all its beauty, the great affection
+felt for you" (he is writing, it will be remembered, to Atticus, an old
+resident), "and the good feeling towards myself, much more, too, its
+philosophical studies." He was able before he left to do the people a
+service, rescuing from the hands of the builder the house of Epicurus,
+which the council of Areopagus, with as little feeling for antiquity as
+a modern town council, had doomed. Then he went on his way, grumbling at
+the hardships of a sea voyage in July, at the violence of the winds, at
+the smallness of the local vessels. He reached Ephesus on July 22nd,
+without being sea-sick, as he is careful to tell us, and found a vast
+number of persons who had come to pay their respects to him. All this
+was pleasant enough, but he was peculiarly anxious to get back to Rome.
+Rome indeed to the ordinary Roman was--a few singular lovers of the
+country, as Virgil and Horace, excepted--as Paris is to the Parisian.
+"Make it absolutely certain," he writes to Atticus, "that I am to be in
+office for a year only; that there is not to be even an intercalated
+month." From Ephesus he journeys, complaining of the hot and dusty
+roads, to Tralles, and from Tralles, one of the cities of his province,
+to Laodicea, which he reached July 31st, exactly three months after
+starting[8]. The distance, directly measured, may be reckoned at
+something less than a thousand miles.
+
+[Footnote 8: Forty-seven days was reckoned a very short time for
+accomplishing the journey.]
+
+He seems to have found the province in a deplorable condition. "I
+staid," he writes, "three days at Laodicea, three again at Apamca, and
+as many at Synnas, and heard nothing except complaints that they could
+not pay the poll-tax imposed upon them, that every one's property was
+sold; heard, I say, nothing but complaints and groans, and monstrous
+deeds which seemed to suit not a man but some horrid wild beast. Still
+it is some alleviation to these unhappy towns that they are put to no
+expense for me or for any of my followers. I will not receive the fodder
+which is my legal due, nor even the wood. Sometimes I have accepted four
+beds and a roof over my head; often not even this, preferring to lodge
+in a tent. The consequence of all this is an incredible concourse of
+people from town and country anxious to see me. Good heavens! my very
+approach seems to make them revive, so completely do the justice,
+moderation, and clemency of your friend surpass all expectation." It
+must be allowed that Cicero was not unaccustomed to sound his own
+praises.
+
+Usury was one of the chief causes of this widespread distress; and
+usury, as we have seen, was practiced even by Romans of good repute. We
+have seen an "honorable man," such as Brutus, exacting an interest of
+nearly fifty per cent. Pompey was receiving, at what rate of interest we
+do not know, the enormous sum of nearly one hundred thousand pounds per
+annum from the tributary king of Cappadocia, and this was less than he
+was entitled to. Other debtors of this impecunious king could get
+nothing; every thing went into Pompey's purse, and the whole country was
+drained of coin to the very uttermost. In the end, however, Cicero did
+manage to get twenty thousand pounds for Brutus, who was also one of the
+king's creditors. We cannot but wonder, if such things went on under a
+governor who was really doing his best to be moderate and just, what was
+the condition of the provincials under ordinary rulers.
+
+While Cicero was busy with the condition of his province; his attention
+was distracted by what we may call a Parthian "scare." The whole army of
+this people was said to have crossed the Euphrates under the command of
+Pacorus, the king's son. The governor of Syria had not yet arrived. The
+second in command had shut himself up with all his troops in Antioch.
+Cicero marched into Cappadocia, which bordered the least defensible side
+of Cilicia, and took up a position at the foot of Mount Taurus. Next
+came news that Antioch was besieged. On hearing this he broke up his
+camp, crossed the Taurus range by forced marches, and occupied the
+passes into Syria. The Parthians raised the siege of Antioch, and
+suffered considerably at the hands of Cassius during their retreat.
+
+Though Cicero never crossed swords with the Parthians, he found or
+contrived an opportunity of distinguishing himself as a soldier. The
+independent mountaineers of the border were attacked and defeated;
+Cicero was saluted as "Imperator" on the field of battle by his
+soldiers, and had the satisfaction of occupying for some days the
+position which Alexander the Great had taken up before the battle of
+Issus. "And he," says Cicero, who always relates his military
+achievements with something like a smile on his face, "was a somewhat
+better general than either you or I." He next turned his arms against
+the Free Cilicians, investing in regular form with trenches, earthworks,
+catapults, and all the regular machinery of a siege, their stronghold
+Pindenissum. At the end of forty-seven days the place surrendered.
+Cicero gave the plunder of the place to his host, reserving the horses
+only for public purposes. A considerable sum was realized by the sale of
+slaves. "Who in the world are these Pindenissi? who are they?" you will
+say. "I never heard the name." "Well, what can I do? I can't make
+Cilicia another Aetolia, or another Macedonia." The campaign was
+concluded about the middle of December, and the governor, handing over
+the army to his brother, made his way to Laodicea. From this place he
+writes to Atticus in language that seems to us self-glorious and
+boastful, but still has a ring of honesty about it. "I left Tarsus for
+Asia (the Roman province so called) on June 5th, followed by such
+admiration as I cannot express from the cities of Cilicia, and
+especially from the people of Tarsus. When I had crossed the Taurus
+there was a marvelous eagerness to see me in Asia as far as my
+districts extended. During six months of my government they had not
+received a single requisition from me, had not had a single person
+quartered upon them. Year after year before my time this part of the
+year had been turned to profit in this way. The wealthy cities used to
+pay large sums of money not to have to find winter quarters for the
+soldiers. Cyprus paid more than £48,000 on this account; and from this
+island--I say it without exaggeration and in sober truth--not a single
+coin was levied while I was in power. In return for these benefits,
+benefits at which they are simply astonished. I will not allow any but
+verbal honors to be voted to me. Statues, temples, chariots of bronze, I
+forbid. In nothing do I make myself a trouble to the cities, though it
+is possible I do so to you, while I thus proclaim my own praises. Bear
+with me, if you love me. This is the rule which you would have had me
+follow. My journey through Asia had such results that even the
+famine--and than famine there is no more deplorable calamity--which then
+prevailed in the country (there had been no harvest) was an event for me
+to desire; for wherever I journeyed, without force, without the help of
+law, without reproaches, but my simple influence and expostulations, I
+prevailed upon the Greeks and Roman citizens, who had secreted the corn,
+to engage to convey a large quantity to the various tribes." He writes
+again: "I see that you are pleased with my moderation and
+self-restraint. You would be much more pleased if you were here. At the
+sessions which I held at Laodicea for all my districts, excepting
+Cilicia, from February 15th to May 1st, I effected a really marvelous
+work. Many cities were entirely freed from their debts, many greatly
+relieved, and all of them enjoying their own laws and courts, and so
+obtaining self-government received new life. There were two ways in
+which I gave them the opportunity of either throwing off or greatly
+lightening the burden of debt. First: they have been put to no expense
+under my rule--I do not exaggerate; I positively say that they have not
+to spend a farthing. Then again: the cities had been atrociously robbed
+by their own Greek magistrates. I myself questioned the men who had
+borne office during the last ten years. They confessed and, without
+being publicly disgraced, made restitution. In other respects my
+government, without being wanting in address, is marked by clemency and
+courtesy. There is none of the difficulty, so usual in the provinces, of
+approaching me; no introduction by a chamberlain. Before dawn I am on
+foot in my house, as I used to be in old days when I was a candidate for
+office. This is a great matter here and a popular, and to myself, from
+my old practice in it, has not yet been troublesome."
+
+He had other less serious cares. One Caelius, who was good enough to
+keep him informed of what was happening at Rome, and whom we find
+filling his letters with an amusing mixture of politics, scandal, and
+gossip, makes a modest request for some panthers, which the governor of
+so wild a country would doubtless have no difficulty in procuring for
+him. He was a candidate for the office of aedile, and wanted the beasts
+for the show which he would have to exhibit. Cicero must not forget to
+look after them as soon as he hears of the election. "In nearly all my
+letters I have written to you about the panthers. It will be
+discreditable to you, that Patiscus should have sent to Curio ten
+panthers, and you not many times more. These ten Curio gave me, and ten
+others from Africa. If you will only remember to send for hunters from
+Cibyra, and also send letters to Pamphylia (for there, I understand,
+more are taken than elsewhere), you will succeed. I do beseech you look
+after this matter. You have only to give the orders. I have provided
+people to keep and transport the animals when once taken." The governor
+would not hear of imposing the charge of capturing the panthers on the
+hunters of the province. Still he would do his best to oblige his
+friend. "The matter of the panthers is being diligently attended to by
+the persons who are accustomed to hunt them; but there is a strange
+scarcity of them, and the few that there are complain grievously, saying
+that they are the only creatures in my province that are persecuted."
+
+From Laodicea Cicero returned to Tarsus, the capital of his province,
+wound up the affairs of his government, appointed an acting governor,
+and started homewards early in August. On his way he paid a visit to
+Rhodes, wishing to show to his son and nephew (they had accompanied him
+to his government) the famous school of eloquence in which he had
+himself studied. Here he heard with much regret of the death of
+Hortensius. He had seen the great orator's son at Laodicea, where he was
+amusing himself in the disreputable company of some gladiators, and had
+asked him to dinner for his father's sake, he says. His stay at Rhodes
+was probably of some duration, for he did not reach Ephesus till the
+first of October. A tedious passage of fourteen days brought him to
+Athens. On his journey westwards Tiro, his confidential servant, was
+seized with illness, and had to be left behind at Patrae. Tiro was a
+slave, though afterwards set free by his master; but he was a man of
+great and varied accomplishments, and Cicero writes to him as he might
+to the very dearest of his friends. There is nothing stranger in all
+that we know of "Roman Life" than the presence in it of such men as
+Tiro. Nor is there any thing, we might even venture to say, quite like
+it elsewhere in the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the
+days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America,
+mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of
+appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their
+owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint,
+of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have
+been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be
+counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than
+their masters, who had absolutely no rights as human beings, and could
+be tortured or killed just as cruelty or caprice might suggest. To Tiro,
+man of culture and acute intellect as he was, there must have been an
+unspeakable bitterness in the thought of servitude, even under a master
+so kindly and affectionate as Cicero. One shudders to think what the
+feelings of such a man must have been when he was the chattel of a
+Verres, a Clodius, or a Catiline. It is pleasant to turn away from the
+thought, which is the very darkest perhaps in the repulsive subject of
+Roman slavery, to observe the sympathy and tenderness which Cicero shows
+to the sick man from whom he has been reluctantly compelled to part. The
+letters to Tiro fill one of the sixteen books of "Letters to Friends."
+They are twenty-seven in number, or rather twenty-six, as the sixteenth
+of the series contains the congratulations and thanks which Quintus
+Cicero addresses to his brother on receiving the news that Tiro has
+received his freedom. "As to Tiro," he writes, "I protest, as I wish to
+see you, my dear Marcus, and my own son, and yours, and my dear Tullia,
+that you have done a thing that pleased me exceedingly in making a man
+who certainly was far above his mean condition a friend rather than a
+servant. Believe me, when I read your letters and his, I fairly leaped
+for joy; I both thank and congratulate you. If the fidelity of my
+Statius gives me so much pleasure[9], how valuable in Tiro must be this
+same good quality with the additional and even superior advantages of
+culture, wit, and politeness? I have many very good reasons for loving
+you; and now there is this that you have told me, as indeed you were
+bound to tell me, this excellent piece of news. I saw all your heart in
+your letter."
+
+[Footnote 9: See page 277.]
+
+Cicero's letters to the invalid are at first very frequent. One is dated
+on the third, another on the fifth, and a third on the seventh of
+November; and on the eighth of the month there are no fewer than three,
+the first of them apparently in answer to a letter from Tiro. "I am
+variously affected by your letter--much troubled by the first page, a
+little comforted by the second. The result is that I now say, without
+hesitation, till you are quite strong, do not trust yourself to travel
+either by land of sea. I shall see you as soon as I wish if I see you
+quite restored." He goes on to criticise the doctor's prescriptions.
+Soup was not the right thing to give to a dyspeptic patient. Tiro is not
+to spare any expense. Another fee to the doctor might make him more
+attentive. In another letter he regrets that the invalid had felt
+himself compelled to accept an invitation to a concert, and tells him
+that he had left a horse and mule for him at Brundisium. Then, after a
+brief notice of public affairs, he returns to the question of the
+voyage. "I must again ask you not to be rash in your traveling. Sailors,
+I observe, make too much haste to increase their profits. Be cautious,
+my dear Tiro. You have a wide and dangerous sea to traverse. If you can,
+come with Mescinius. He is wont to be careful in his voyages. If not
+with him, come with a person of distinction, who will have influence
+with the captain." In another letter he tells Tiro that he must revive
+his love of letters and learning. The physician thought that his mind
+was ill at ease; for this the best remedy was occupation. In another he
+writes: "I have received your letter with its shaky handwriting; no
+wonder, indeed, seeing how serious has been your illness. I send you
+Aegypta (probably a superior slave) to wait upon you, and a cook with
+him." Cicero could not have shown more affectionate care of a sick son.
+
+Tiro is said to have written a life of his master. And we certainly owe
+to his care the preservation of his correspondence. His weak health did
+not prevent him from living to the age of a hundred and three.
+
+Cicero pursued his homeward journey by slow stages, and it was not till
+November 25th that he reached Italy. His mind was distracted between
+two anxieties--the danger of civil war, which he perceived to be daily
+growing more imminent, and an anxious desire to have his military
+successes over the Cilician mountaineers rewarded by the distinction of
+a triumph. The honor of a public thanksgiving had already been voted to
+him; Cato, who opposed it on principle, having given him offense by so
+doing. A triumph was less easy to obtain, and indeed it seems to show a
+certain weakness in Cicero that he should have sought to obtain it for
+exploits of so very moderate a kind. However, he landed at Brundisium as
+a formal claimant for the honor. His lictors had their fasces (bundles
+of rods inclosing an ax) wreathed with bay leaves, as was the custom
+with the victorious general who hoped to obtain this distinction.
+Pompey, with whom he had a long interview, encouraged him to hope for
+it, and promised his support. It was not till January 4th that he
+reached the capital. The look of affairs was growing darker and darker,
+but he still clung to the hopes of a triumph, and would not dismiss his
+lictors with their ornaments, though he was heartily wearied of their
+company. Things went so far that a proposition was actually made in the
+Senate that the triumph should be granted; but the matter was postponed
+at the suggestion of one of the consuls, anxious, Cicero thinks, to make
+his own services more appreciated when the time should come. Before the
+end of January he seems to have given up his hopes. In a few more days
+he was fairly embarked on the tide of civil war.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ATTICUS.
+
+
+The name of Atticus has been mentioned more than once in the preceding
+chapters as a correspondent of Cicero. We have indeed more than five
+hundred letters addressed to him, extending over a period of almost
+five-and-twenty years. There are frequent intervals of silence--not a
+single letter, for instance, belongs to the year of the consulship, the
+reason being that both the correspondents were in Rome. Sometimes,
+especially in the later years, they follow each other very closely. The
+last was written about a year before Cicero's death.
+
+Atticus was one of those rare characters who contrive to live at peace
+with all men. The times were troublous beyond all measure; he had wealth
+and position; he kept up close friendship with men who were in the very
+thickest of the fight; he was ever ready with his sympathy and help for
+those who were vanquished; and yet he contrived to arouse no enmities;
+and after a life-long peace, interrupted only by one or two temporary
+alarms, died in a good old age.
+
+Atticus was of what we should call a gentleman's family, and belonged by
+inheritance to the democratic party. But he early resolved to stand
+aloof from politics, and took an effectual means of carrying out his
+purpose by taking up his residence at Athens. With characteristic
+prudence he transferred the greater part of his property to investments
+in Greece. At Athens he became exceedingly popular. He lent money at
+easy rates to the municipality, and made liberal distributions of corn,
+giving as much as a bushel and a half to every needy citizen. He spoke
+Greek and Latin with equal ease and eloquence; and had, we are told, an
+unsurpassed gift for reciting poetry. Sulla, who, for all his savagery,
+had a cultivated taste, was charmed with the young man, and would have
+taken him in his train. "I beseech you," replied Atticus, "don't take me
+to fight against those in whose company, but that I left Italy, I might
+be fighting against you." After a residence of twenty-three years he
+returned to Rome, in the very year of Cicero's consulship. At Rome he
+stood as much aloof from the turmoil of civil strife as he had stood at
+Athens. Office of every kind he steadily refused; he was under no
+obligations to any man, and therefore was not thought ungrateful by any.
+The partisans of Caesar and of Pompey were content to receive help from
+his purse, and to see him resolutely neutral. He refused to join in a
+project of presenting what we should call a testimonial to the murderers
+of Caesar on behalf of the order of the knights; but he did not hesitate
+to relieve the necessities of the most conspicuous of them with a
+present of between three and four thousand pounds. When Antony was
+outlawed he protected his family; and Antony in return secured his life
+and property amidst the horrors of the second Proscription.
+
+His biographer, Cornelius Nepos, has much to say of his moderation and
+temperate habits of life. He had no sumptuous country-house in the
+suburbs or at the sea-coast, but two farm-houses. He possessed, however,
+what seems to have been a very fine house (perhaps we should call it
+"castle," for Cicero speaks of it as a place capable of defense) in
+Epirus. It contained among other things a gallery of statues. A love of
+letters was one of his chief characteristics. His guests were not
+entertained with the performances of hired singers, but with readings
+from authors of repute. He had collected, indeed, a very large library.
+All his slaves, down to the very meanest, were well educated, and he
+employed them to make copies.
+
+Atticus married somewhat late in life. His only daughter was the first
+wife of Agrippa, the minister of Augustus, and his grand-daughter was
+married to Tiberius. Both of these ladies were divorced to make room for
+a consort of higher rank, who, curiously enough, was in both cases
+Julia, the infamous daughter of Augustus. Both, we may well believe,
+were regretted by their husbands.
+
+Atticus died at the age of seventy-seven. He was afflicted with a
+disease which he believed to be incurable, and shortened his days by
+voluntary starvation.
+
+It was to this correspondent, then, that Cicero confided for about a
+quarter of a century his cares and his wants. The two had been
+schoolfellows, and had probably renewed their acquaintance when Cicero
+visited Greece in search of health. Afterwards there came to be a family
+connection between them, Atticus' sister, Pomponia, marrying Cicero's
+younger brother, Quintus, not much, we gather from the letters, to the
+happiness of either of them. Cicero could not have had a better
+confidant. He was full of sympathy, and ready with his help; and he was
+at the same time sagacious and prudent in no common degree, an excellent
+man of business, and, thanks to the admirable coolness which enabled him
+to stand outside the turmoil of politics, an equally excellent adviser
+in politics.
+
+One frequent subject of Cicero's letters to his friend is money. I may
+perhaps express the relation between the two by saying that Atticus was
+Cicero's banker, though the phrase must not be taken too literally. He
+did not habitually receive and pay money on Cicero's account, but he did
+so on occasions; and he was constantly in the habit of making advances,
+though probably without interest, when temporary embarrassments, not
+infrequent, as we may gather from the letters, called for them. Atticus
+was himself a wealthy man. Like his contemporaries generally, he made an
+income by money-lending, and possibly, for the point is not quite clear,
+by letting out gladiators for hire. His biographer happens to give us
+the precise figure of his property. His words do not indeed expressly
+state whether the sum that he mentions means capital or income. I am
+inclined to think that it is the latter. If this be so, he had in early
+life an income of something less than eighteen thousand pounds, and
+afterwards nearly ninety thousand pounds.
+
+I may take this occasion to say something about Cicero's property, a
+matter which is, in its way, a rather perplexing question. In the case
+of a famous advocate among ourselves there would be no difficulty in
+understanding that he should have acquired a great fortune. But the
+Roman law strictly forbade an advocate to receive any payment from his
+clients. The practice of old times, when the great noble pleaded for the
+life or property of his humbler defendants, and was repaid by their
+attachment and support, still existed in theory. It exists indeed to
+this day, and accounts for the fact that a barrister among ourselves has
+no _legal_ means of recovering his fees. But a practice of paying
+counsel had begun to grow up. Some of Cicero's contemporaries certainly
+received a large remuneration for their services. Cicero himself always
+claims to have kept his hands clean in this respect, and as his enemies
+never brought any charge of this kind against him, his statement may
+very well be accepted. We have, then, to look for other sources of
+income. His patrimony was considerable. It included, as we have seen, an
+estate at Arpinum and a house in Rome. And then he had numerous
+legacies. This is a source of income which is almost strange to our
+modern ways of acting and thinking. It seldom happens among us that a
+man of property leaves any thing outside the circle of his family.
+Sometimes an intimate friend will receive a legacy. But instances of
+money bequeathed to a statesman in recognition of his services, or a
+literary man in recognition of his eminence, are exceedingly rare. In
+Rome they were very common. Cicero declares, giving it as a proof of the
+way in which he had been appreciated by his fellow-citizens, that he had
+received two hundred thousand pounds in legacies. This was in the last
+year of his life. This does something to help us out of our difficulty.
+Only we must remember that it could hardly have been till somewhat late
+in his career that these recognitions of his services to the State and
+to his friends began to fall in. He made about twenty thousand pounds
+out of his year's government of his province, but it is probable that
+this money was lost. Then, again, he was elected into the College of
+Augurs (this was in his fifty-fourth year). These religious colleges
+were very rich. Their banquets were proverbial for their splendor.
+Whether the individual members derived any benefit from their revenues
+we do not know. We often find him complaining of debt; but he always
+speaks of it as a temporary inconvenience rather than as a permanent
+burden. It does not oppress him; he can always find spirits enough to
+laugh at it. When he buys his great town mansion on the Palatine Hill
+(it had belonged to the wealthy Crassus), for thirty thousand pounds, he
+says, "I now owe so much that I should be glad to conspire if any body
+would accept me as an accomplice." But this is not the way in which a
+man who did not see his way out of his difficulties would speak.
+
+Domestic affairs furnish a frequent topic. He gives accounts of the
+health of his wife he announces the birth of his children. In after
+years he sends the news when his daughter is betrothed and when she is
+married, and tells of the doings and prospects of his son. He has also a
+good deal to say about his brother's household, which, as I have said
+before, was not very happy. Here is a scene of their domestic life.
+"When I reached Arpinum, my brother came to me. First we had much talk
+about you; afterwards we came to the subject which you and I had
+discussed at Tusculum. I never saw any thing so gentle, so kind as my
+brother was in speaking of your sister. If there had been any ground for
+their disagreement, there was nothing to notice. So much for that day.
+On the morrow we left for Arpinum. Quintus had to remain in the Retreat;
+I was going to stay at Aquinum. Still we lunched at the Retreat (you
+know the place). When we arrived Quintus said in the politest way,
+'Pomponia, ask the ladies in; I will call the servants,' Nothing
+could--so at least I thought--have been more pleasantly said, not only
+as far as words go, but in tone and look. However, she answered before
+us all, 'I am myself but a stranger here.' This, I fancy, was because
+Statius had gone on in advance to see after the lunch. 'See,' said
+Quintus, 'this is what I have to put up with every day.' Perhaps you
+will say, 'What was there in this?' It was really serious, so serious as
+to disturb me much, so unreasonably, so angrily did she speak and look.
+I did not show it, but I was greatly vexed. We all sat down to table,
+all, that is, but her. However, Quintus sent her something from the
+table. She refused it Not to make a long story of it, no one could have
+been more gentle than my brother, and no one more exasperating than your
+sister--in my judgment at least, and I pass by many other things which
+offended me more than they did Quintus. I went on to Aquinum." (The
+lady's behavior was all the more blameworthy because her husband was on
+his way to a remote province.) "Quintus remained at the Retreat. The
+next day he joined me at Arpinum. Your sister, he told me, would have
+nothing to do with him, and up to the moment of her departure was just
+in the same mood in which I had seen her."
+
+Another specimen of letters touching on a more agreeable topic may
+interest my readers. It is a hearty invitation.
+
+"To my delight, Cincius" (he was Atticus' agent)" came to me between
+daylight on January 30th, with the news that you were in Italy. He was
+sending, he said, messengers to you, I did not like them to go without a
+letter from me, not that I had any thing to write to you, especially
+when you were so close, but that I wished you to understand with what
+delight I anticipate your coming ... The day you arrive come to my house
+with all your party. You will find that Tyrannio" (a Greek man of
+letters) "has arranged my books marvelously well. What remains of them
+is much more satisfactory than I thought[10]. I should be glad if you
+would send me two of your library clerks, for Tullius to employ as
+binders and helpers in general; give some orders too to take some
+parchment for indices. All this, however, if it suits your convenience.
+Any how, come yourself and bring Pilia[11] with you. That is but right.
+Tullia too wishes it."
+
+[Footnote 10: They had suffered with the rest of Cicero's property at the
+time of his exile.]
+
+[Footnote 11: Pilia was the lady to whom Atticus was engaged]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ANTONY AND AUGUSTUS.
+
+
+There were some things in which Mark Antony resembled Caesar. At the
+time it seemed probable that he would play the same part, and even climb
+to the same height of power. He failed in the end because he wanted the
+power of managing others, and, still more, of controlling himself. He
+came of a good stock. His grandfather had been one of the greatest
+orators of his day, his father was a kindly, generous man, his mother a
+kinswoman of Caesar, a matron of the best Roman type. But he seemed
+little likely to do credit to his belongings. His riotous life became
+conspicuous even in a city where extravagance and vice were only too
+common, and his debts, though not so enormous as Caesar's, were greater,
+says Plutarch, than became his youth, for they amounted to about fifty
+thousand pounds. He was taken away from these dissipations by military
+service in the East, and he rapidly acquired considerable reputation as
+a soldier. Here is the picture that Plutarch draws of him: There was
+something noble and dignified in his appearance. His handsome beard, his
+broad forehead, his aquiline nose, gave him a manly look that resembled
+the familiar statues and pictures of Hercules. There was indeed a legend
+that the Antonii were descended from a son of Hercules; and this he was
+anxious to support by his appearance and dress. Whenever he appeared in
+public he had his tunic gired up to the hip, carried a great sword at
+his side, and wore a rough cloak of Cilician hair. The habits too that
+seemed vulgar to others--his boastfulness, his coarse humor, his
+drinking bouts, the way he had of eating in public, taking his meals as
+he stood from the soldiers' tables--had an astonishing effect in making
+him popular with the soldiers. His bounty too, the help which he gave
+with a liberal hand to comrades and friends, made his way to power easy.
+On one occasion he directed that a present of three thousand pounds
+should be given to a friend. His steward, aghast at the magnitude of the
+sum, thought to bring it home to his master's mind by putting the actual
+coin on a table. "What is this?" said Antony, as he happened to pass by.
+"The money you bade me pay over," was the man's reply. "Why, I had
+thought it would be ten times as much as this. This is but a trifle. Add
+to it as much more."
+
+When the civil war broke out, Antony joined the party of Caesar, who,
+knowing his popularity with the troops, made him his second in command.
+He did good service at Pharsalia, and while his chief went on to Egypt,
+returned to Rome as his representative. There were afterwards
+differences between the two; Caesar was offended at the open scandal of
+Antony's manners and found him a troublesome adherent; Antony conceived
+himself to be insufficiently rewarded for his services, especially when
+he was called upon to pay for Pompey's confiscated property, which he
+had bought. Their close alliance, however, had been renewed before
+Caesar's death. That event made him the first man in Rome. The chief
+instrument of his power was a strange one; the Senate, seeing that the
+people of Rome gloved and admired the dead man, passed a resolution that
+all the wishes which Caesar had left in writing should have the force of
+law--and Antony had the custody of his papers. People laughed, and
+called the documents "Letters from the Styx." There was the gravest
+suspicion that many of them were forged. But for a time they were a very
+powerful machinery for effecting his purpose.
+
+Then came a check. Caesar's nephew and heir, Octavius, arrived at Rome.
+Born in the year of Cicero's consulship, he was little more than
+nineteen; but in prudence, statecraft, and knowledge of the world he was
+fully grown. In his twelfth year he had delivered the funeral oration
+over his grandmother Julia. After winning some distinction as a soldier
+in Spain, he had returned at his uncle's bidding to Apollonia, a town of
+the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he studied letters and
+philosophy under Greek teachers. Here he had received the title of
+"Master of the Horse," an honor which gave him the rank next to the
+Dictator himself. He came to Rome with the purpose, as he declared, of
+claiming his inheritance and avenging his uncle's death. But he knew how
+to abide his time. He kept on terms with Antony, who had usurped his
+position and appropriated his inheritance, and he was friendly, if not
+with the actual murderers of Caesar, yet certainly with Cicero, who made
+no secret of having approved their deed.
+
+For Cicero also had now returned to public life. For some time past,
+both before Caesar's death and after it, he had devoted himself to
+literature.[12] Now there seemed to him a chance that something might yet
+be done for the republic, and he returned to Rome, which he reached on
+the last day of August. The next day there was a meeting of the Senate,
+at which Antony was to propose certain honors to Caesar. Cicero,
+wearied, or affecting to be wearied, by his journey, was absent, and was
+fiercely attacked by Antony, who threatened to send workmen to dig him
+out of his house.
+
+[Footnote 12: To the years 46-44 belong nearly all his treatises on
+rhetoric and philosophy.]
+
+The next day Cicero was in his place, Antony being absent, and made a
+dignified defense of his conduct, and criticised with some severity the
+proceedings of his assailant. Still so far there was no irreconcilable
+breach between the two men. "Change your course," says the orator, "I
+beseech you: think of those who have gone before, and so steer the
+course of the Commonwealth that your countrymen may rejoice that you
+were born. Without this no man can be happy or famous." He still
+believed, or professed to believe, that Antony was capable of
+patriotism. If he had any hopes of peace, these were soon to be crushed.
+After a fortnight or more spent in preparation, assisted, we are told,
+by a professional teacher of eloquence, Antony came down to the Senate
+and delivered a savage invective against Cicero. The object of his
+attack was again absent. He had wished to attend the meeting, but his
+friends hindered him, fearing, not without reason, actual violence from
+the armed attendants whom Antony was accustomed to bring into the
+senate-house.
+
+The attack was answered in the famous oration which is called the second
+Philippic[13]. If I could transcribe this speech (which, for other
+reasons besides its length, I cannot do) it would give us a strange
+picture of "Roman Life." It is almost incredible that a man so shameless
+and so vile should have been the greatest power in a state still
+nominally free. I shall give one extract from it. Cicero has been
+speaking of Antony's purchase of Pompey's confiscated property. "He was
+wild with joy, like a character in a farce; a beggar one day, a
+millionaire the next. But, as some writer says, 'Ill gotten, ill kept.'
+It is beyond belief, it is an absolute miracle, how he squandered this
+vast property--in a few months do I say?--no, in a few days. There was a
+great cellar of wine, a very great quantity of excellent plate, costly
+stuffs, plenty of elegant and even splendid furniture, just as one might
+expect in a man who was affluent without being luxurious. And of all
+this within a few days there was left nothing. Was there ever a
+Charybdis so devouring? A Charybdis, do I say? no--if there ever was
+such a thing, it was but a single animal. Good heavens! I can scarcely
+believe that the whole ocean could have swallowed up so quickly
+possessions so numerous, so scattered, and lying at places so distant.
+Nothing was locked up, nothing sealed, nothing catalogued. Whole
+store-rooms were made a present of to the vilest creatures. Actors and
+actresses of burlesque were busy each with plunder of their own. The
+mansion was full of dice players and drunkards. There was drinking from
+morning to night, and that in many places. His losses at dice (for even
+he is not always lucky) kept mounting up. In the chambers of slaves you
+might see on the beds the purple coverlets which had belonged to the
+great Pompey. No wonder that all this wealth was spent so quickly.
+Reckless men so abandoned might well have speedily devoured, not only
+the patrimony of a single citizen, however ample--and ample it was--but
+whole cities and kingdoms."
+
+[Footnote 13: The orations against Antony--there are fourteen of
+them--are called "Philippics," a name transferred to them from, the
+great speeches in which Demosthenes attacked Philip of Macedon. The name
+seems to have been in common use in Juvenal's time (_circa_ 110 A.D.)]
+
+The speech was never delivered but circulated in writing. Toward the end
+of 44, Antony, who found the army deserting him for the young Octavius,
+left Rome, and hastened into northern Italy, to attack Decimus Brutus.
+Brutus was not strong enough to venture on a battle with him, and shut
+himself up in Mutina. Cicero continued to take the leading part in
+affairs at Rome, delivering the third and fourth Philippics in December,
+44, and the ten others during the five months of the following year. The
+fourteenth was spoken in the Senate, when the fortunes of the falling
+republic seem to have revived. A great battle had been fought at Mutina,
+in which Antony had been completely defeated; and Cicero proposed
+thanks to the commanders and troops, and honors to those who had fallen.
+
+The joy with which these tidings had been received was but very brief.
+Of the three generals named in the vote of thanks the two who had been
+loyal to the republic were dead; the third, the young Octavius, had
+found the opportunity for which he had been waiting of betraying it. The
+soldiers were ready to do his bidding, and he resolved to seize by their
+help the inheritance of power which his uncle had left him. Antony had
+fled across the Alps, and had been received by Lepidus, who was in
+command of a large army in that province, Lepidus resolved to play the
+part which Crassus had played sixteen years before. He brought about a
+reconciliation between Octavius and Antony, as Crassus had reconciled
+Pompey and Caesar, and was himself admitted as a third into their
+alliance. Thus was formed the Second Triumvirate.
+
+The three chiefs who had agreed to divide the Roman world between them
+met on a little island near Bononia (the modern Bonogna) and discussed
+their plans. Three days were given to their consultations, the chief
+subject being the catalogue of enemies, public and private, who were to
+be destroyed. Each had a list of his own; and on Antony's the first name
+was Cicero. Lepidus assented, as he was ready to assent to all the
+demands of his more resolute colleagues; but the young Octavius is said
+to have long resisted, and to have given way only on the last day. A
+list of between two and three thousand names of senators and knights was
+drawn up. Seventeen were singled out for instant execution, and among
+these seventeen was Cicero. He was staying at his home in Tusculum with
+his brother Quintus when the news reached him. His first impulse was to
+make for the sea-coast. If he could reach Macedonia, where Brutus had a
+powerful army, he would, for a time at least, be safe. The two brothers
+started. But Quintus had little or nothing with him, and was obliged to
+go home to fetch some money. Cicero, who was himself but ill provided,
+pursued his journey alone. Reaching the coast, he embarked. When it came
+to the point of leaving Italy his resolution failed him. He had always
+felt the greatest aversion for camp life. He had had an odious
+experience of it when Pompey was struggling with Caesar for the mastery.
+He would sooner die, he thought, than make trial of it again. He landed,
+and traveled twelve miles towards Rome. Some afterwards said that he
+still cherished hopes of being protected by Antony; others that it was
+his purpose to make his way into the house of Octavius and kill himself
+on his hearth, cursing him with his last breath, but that he was
+deterred by the fear of being seized and tortured. Any how, he turned
+back, and allowed his slaves to take him to Capua. The plan of taking
+refuge with Brutus was probably urged upon him by his companions, who
+felt that this gave the only chance of their own escape. Again he
+embarked, and again he landed. Plutarch tells a strange story of a flock
+of ravens that settled on the yardarms of his ship while he was on
+board, and on the windows of the villa in which he passed the night. One
+bird, he says, flew upon his couch and pecked at the cloak in which he
+had wrapped himself. His slaves reproached themselves at allowing a
+master, whom the very animals were thus seeking to help, to perish
+before their eyes. Almost by main force they put him into his litter and
+carried him toward the coast. Antony's soldiers now reached the villa,
+the officer in command being an old client whom Cicero had successfully
+defended on a charge of murder. They found the doors shut and burst them
+open. The inmates denied all knowledge of their master's movements, till
+a young Greek, one of his brother's freedmen, whom Cicero had taken a
+pleasure in teaching, showed the officer the litter which was being
+carried through the shrubbery of the villa to the sea. Taking with him
+some of his men, he hastened to follow. Cicero, hearing their steps,
+bade the bearers set the litter on the ground. He looked out, and
+stroking his chin with his left hand, as his habit was, looked
+steadfastly at the murderers. His face was pale and worn with care. The
+officer struck him on the neck with his sword, some of the rough
+soldiers turning away while the deed was done. The head and hands were
+cut off by order of Antony, and nailed up in the Forum.
+
+Many years afterwards the Emperor Augustus (the Octavius of this
+chapter), coming unexpectedly upon one of his grandsons, saw the lad
+seek to hide in his robe a volume which he had been reading. He took it,
+and found it to be one of the treatises of Cicero. He returned it with
+words which I would here repeat; "He was a good man and a lover of his
+country."
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Roman life in the days of Cicero
+by Alfred J[ohn] Church
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